I’m practicing my new violin when Constable Douglas and Constable Fortier come to see me. I hear them at the door asking Mom in quiet voices if it’s okay to question me. Mom says sure and lets them in.
They enter on sock feet, testing me with their eyes and exchanging cautious glances. I lay down the Golden Fiddle with care.
“Kira, how are you doing?” Constable Douglas says, seating himself opposite me, his voice extra kind.
“I’m okay, considering.” I gaze down at my cast.
Constable Douglas clicks his tongue. “You know they caught the guy, right?”
“Yeah, I heard.” I offer an uncertain smile.
“Think you’re up to a few question?” he asks.
“Sure.” I nod.
He pulls out a photo. “Do you know this man?”
I glance at the picture and reel, a shrill cry escaping my throat as I relive the memory of the face pushed up against the glass that night. I know now why he had looked so familiar even in the dark.
“What is it?” cries Mom.
“It’s Jim – from the DVD store!”
Mom jumps up from where she’s sitting and grabs the photo, her face a mask of shock. “But he’s such a nice guy,” she says.
Constable Douglas continues. “Not that nice. His real name’s John Petrovsky. He was a convict at the correctional facility over the mountain in Ryder Lake where your husband treated patients every Thursday night. He was let out on parole about two years ago, but made a run for it and never reported back to his parole officer.”
“John Petrovsky,” says Mom, frowning. “That name sounds familiar, but how could he have been in Hope all this time and not been recognized?” She lowers herself down on the couch.
“Because Mr. Petrovsky changed his appearance substantially, shaving off his beard and cutting his hair short. The only one who would have known him was Paul, and he was too sick to leave the house.”
Mom and I exchange an incredulous look.
“So how did you find out it was him?” I ask, my voice small.
Constable Douglas sighs. “Well, after you went missing, he got careless, and someone witnessed him spray-painting the front of the DVD store where he worked.”
“What did he write this time?” Mom asks.
Eyeing her warily, he pauses before answering. “SHE’S GONE FOREVER!”
Mom and I let out a gasp.
Constable Douglas swallows before continuing. “So they took him in for questioning, and he confessed to all the vandalism and to stalking your family.”
“But why us?” I ask.
“It’s a long story.” He leans on his elbow. “When your dad started treating patients at the prison camp, Mr. Petrov kept asking him for narcotics. Of course your dad turned him down, and so Mr. Petrovsky threatened him, saying he would seek out your family one day and harm you.”
“I remember that now,” Mom says, clutching her hands. “That’s why we had the peephole installed on our door.”
“He told us never to answer the door without looking first,” I say. “And never to open it to someone we didn’t know.”
Constable Douglas continues. “He said he spray-painted your dad’s tombstone because he claimed your dad had promised him the drugs, but then made him go through withdrawal instead. He said it was the most painful thing he’d ever been through.”
“I guess that’s why he wrote the word ‘LIAR’,” I say.
Constable Douglas nods. “Then he broke into the Medical Dental Building where your dad practiced medicine and vandalized his office in retaliation.”
“That would explain the word ‘REVENGE’ at the scene of the crime,” says Mom. “But what about the church? Did he have something against us being Catholic?”
“Well,” says Constable Douglas. “It seems Paul tried to help Mr. Petrovsky out with a bit of religious inspiration, but I guess Mr. Petrovsky felt let down, and decided to desecrate the church too.”
Mom shakes her head. “That’s why he wrote ‘GOD IS DEAD’.”
“And the school?” I ask, recalling the dead eagle.
Constable Douglas pauses, eyeing me. After a moment, he speaks. “It was a message to your family that he was coming, that he hadn’t forgotten his vow. Hence the graffiti, ‘I REMEMBER’.”
I shiver at his words and hug myself.
“But what’s with the dead birds?” Mom asks.
Constable Douglas sighs. “He’s not all there in his mind. He’s fried his brain with hard drugs and has some strange idea that if he could live off the organs of birds, that somehow it would give him more strength and enable his spirit to soar above the world.”
“Oh, that’s so sad,” I say, truly sorry for the man who had seemed so kind.
“He kept trapping and killing birds, and devouring their organs raw. Then he’d dumped their carcasses as a calling card at the crime scene.”
“When we brought him in, he kept babbling something about an angel,” says Constable Fortier.
My ears perk up. “An angel?”
“Yeah. Claims you were protected by some red-headed guardian angel that appeared every time he got near you.”
My heart begins pumping wildly. “What else did he say?”
“He said the night of the concert he saw you and your friend painting the sign. He couldn’t believe his luck, and just as he was about to grab you, the red-headed angel appeared. Said he was terrified and took off like a bolt of lightning.”
My insides are jumping.
“He also said a few nights ago, knowing you’d be alone since you told him so when you rented a DVD, that when he was throwing rocks at your place, this same angel appeared, so he booted it out of there.” His forehead creased. “Not that I believe in that stuff, but maybe there was an angel, and she looked like Kate McDonough? Kind of explains why you thought you kept seeing her.” He shrugs like it’s a mystery that will never be solved.
Speaking of which,” says Mom. “I was so disappointed to hear she’s left us.”
“I know,” says Constable Fortier. “She was what this town needed. Something to get the kids away from computer games and TV. Our town has never been so united. It was really special, but she said she had to move on. Something about her work is done. I don’t quite know what she meant.”
I hide a smile.
“That’s too bad,” says Mom. “I was so enjoying the fiddling. Where will I ever find another fiddling teacher like that again?”
“I don’t know,” says Constable Douglas. “Perhaps we can advertise in some of those Cape Breton newspapers.”
“That’s a good idea,” she says. “But in the meantime, I’ve had the wind taken out of my sails.”
“You can learn from me, Mom. I know a whole bunch of the tunes.”
“You?” Mom points a finger at me.
“Unh-hunh.”
“Okay,” she says with the biggest grin I ever saw. “You’re on.”