I love my work but I have to say, I don’t like the office itself. The Behavioural Science Department is a rabbit warren that even the rabbits would have trouble negotiating. Rumour has it that visitors have disappeared for days trying to find their way to the washroom and one woman is still missing. All of the walls are a grey felt, or what seems like felt, with no windows. Only the head of the department, Katherine MacIsaac, and Dr. Leo Forgach have natural light. The rest of us email weather reports to each other because once inside, you don’t know.
I buzzed myself through the security door and hurried down the hall to see Paula. All of the offices were tiny and hers was currently filled to capacity because two of the other profilers were with her. She waved me in.
“Chris, we were just talking about what happened.”
One of the guys stood up and gallantly offered me his chair. I accepted. Why fight the equality battle here? Ray Motomochi was Japanese and a thoroughly nice man with old-fashioned manners. He, Jamie Stephens, and I had become good buddies in the two years since I’d joined the unit. Ray was our specialist in geographic profiling and Jamie was brilliant at administering polygraphs, which we are called upon to do from time to time. They were both wearing the required office uniform, suits and ties, in which the men expressed mild rebellion and individuality by choosing variant coloured shirts and outlandish ties. Jamie was the acknowledged champion of colour clash. Today it was a pink shirt and an orange tie with green stripes. He made me think of candy floss.
“Leo just called me,” I said. “He’s checked himself out of the hospital and he’s coming here. He’s determined to go on working.”
“Katherine won’t let him be on this one,” said Ray.
“Officially she won’t, but if you want my opinion, she’s not going to be able to stop him unofficially.”
“I didn’t even know he had a daughter,” said Ray. “I’ve never heard him mention her once.”
“He’s got a son as well from a first marriage. The only reason I know is because my wife knows somebody who knows his ex. Poor sod, he must be gutted.” Jamie’s parents were English expats and his speech was often peppered with English expletives and colloquialisms. He turned to me. “You and he were the ones who found her?”
“That’s right.”
I briefly explained.
“Why’d he call you in particular, Chris?” Ray asked. “No offence, just curious.”
“She’s the only single in the department,” Jamie answered for me. “Who else could drop everything at six in the morning and rush to his side?”
“Correction. It was actually twelve minutes past five and pitch-black out and being single has everything to do with it. Leo knew I’d be out of bed fresh as a daisy in a matter of moments, unlike my married colleagues, who are always otherwise engaged.”
They groaned at my little lascivious innuendo. Well, why not? Men don’t have a monopoly on these things.
I got a lot of good-natured flack from the rest of them about being unencumbered, although I doubted anybody would change places with me, except maybe Jamie who often seemed weighed down with family concerns.
“Tell them what the girl did, Chris,” said Paula. Her tone was indignant. I knew that she had faced down many horrible situations with great objectivity but this one seemed to have got to her.
I filled in the two guys with what Nora had told me.
“I remember it,” said Ray. “She was truly raked over the coals by the Packet and the News. She certainly was unpopular. When they published the usual letters to the editor hardly anybody supported Deidre.”
“I’d think not,” retorted Paula. “Hold on.” Her phone had rung. “Yes, Katherine, yes, Chris is here too. I’ll tell them.”
She hung up. “Katherine wants to have a meeting in the boardroom at twelve-thirty. That okay with everybody?”
The guys nodded. Jamie stood up. “I’ve got a report to send off. Ta-ta.” At the door he halted. “What are we going to do about condolences? Shall I ask Janice to order a wreath from all of us?”
We all agreed to that and the two of them gathered up their coffee mugs and left.
I looked over at Paula. She always paid attention to her appearance, careful makeup, good haircuts, but this morning she was haggard and drawn, no makeup visible.
“How’s it going, kiddo?”
“Not great, but I’m trying not to think about it. It could be nothing. You know doctors these days, they’re alarmists.”
I got up and put my arms about her shoulders and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
“You’re going to be fine. Try not to worry.”
“It’s the waiting that’s so hard. You know me, give me a job and bam, I’m there, but we won’t know anything for a few days after the biopsy.” She touched her thick hair, which was layered in a fashionable crisp curl. “Oh God, Chris, I don’t want to lose my hair.”
“Shh. You don’t know that’s what will happen. And even if it does, Canute himself couldn’t stop those waves.”
That elicited a wan smile, but I felt for her. Paula had been a gangly, plain sort of adolescent and her abundant curly hair was her best feature. She’d blossomed into an attractive woman but she still returned to that image of her adolescent self — nice hair, too bad about the face. Nowadays, she wore it short, with blonde highlights. She was always smartly dressed and her makeup was an art. Heads still swivelled in her direction when she was all gussied up.
I sat down again. “What do you need to take your mind off things?”
“Morphine?”
I laughed a little over-heartily.
“Oops, Chelsea fell over.” One of her files had knocked over a framed photograph of her daughter and my godchild, Chelsea, the apple of our eyes. It was a photograph I myself had taken when Chelsea was three years old. She was such a ham even then and loved to pose for the camera. She had on her Halloween outfit, Mary the contrary one, with gingham dress and apron and unexpectedly, by Chelsea’s choice, a diamond tiara. The effect was only slightly marred by the fact that it was a cold day and she had to wear her outfit over her snowsuit. The stuffed lamb I’d brought back for her from the Hebrides was tightly tucked under her arm.
Paula stood the picture up again on her desk and stared at it. She was struggling to hold back tears. “Oh Chris, how could I leave her? Even when she was in utero and I knew she was a girl, I was planning her wedding.”
“My God, La, I don’t believe it. How would you feel if the poor girl wants to be a nun? It’s not likely they will be marrying in our lifetime.”
Paula and the Jackson family were staunch Catholics and Chelsea went to Sunday school regularly. This was one of the few places where Craig and I were in agreement, with the difference being that he had no hesitation in openly deriding Paula’s faith. I’d learned a long time ago to keep my feelings to myself.
She frowned. “That would be all right too, of course it would.”
“Hmm, you can’t do much with that black serge but you could choose a tasteful veil.”
My feeble joke didn’t work. Suddenly she turned and grabbed my arm. “Chris, you know I’m depending on you. If anything happens to me, I want you to look after Chelse. You’re the only one I can totally trust. Craig can be a bit … er … well, he loves her but I’m not sure he understands girls.”
I tried to make a flip comment but failed. I squeezed her hand. “I was planning to come over tonight. I can put her to bed if you like.”
“Let’s see. I might want to do that myself.”
“Okay.”
I waited, feeling awkward and helpless. If this lump proved to be benign, I’d buy a bushel basket of candles and light them, or whatever Catholics did when they wanted to express gratitude to the Almighty.
Paula squeezed back for a moment. “Thanks, Chris. I’d better get on with things, I haven’t come close to reading all the reports on that double homicide case in Hamilton.”
“You can sound it off me when you’re ready.”
“Will do.”
I left her to it and made my way to my own office, which was at the end of the narrow hall next to Ray’s and across from Leo’s.
Ray had his door open and as I went by, he called out.
“Janice said to tell you, your ICIAF package has arrived.”
I groaned to myself. I’d been expecting it but I wasn’t ready. A word of explanation. More than two years ago, I had been hired by the Behavioural Science Department after a long stint on the front lines of the Toronto police force. However, to become a fully-fledged profiler and an associate of the International Criminal Investigative Analysis Fellowship, I had to do what we called understudying. Other professionals call it interning or apprenticeship, and what it meant was that as well as my regular work, I had to spend time observing what the associate profilers did. I’d spent time with the Horsemen (the RCMP to you); I’d been on two long stints with the NYPD hoping I’d run into Dennis Franz (I didn’t); and I’d spent one month with the Miami Police and three weeks in Quantico, Virginia, the home of the FBI. Now I was expected to write the big test. The package that Janice had delivered contained a real case, names removed, which I had to study and write my own assessment on. As the culprit had already been convicted, unless there was an unlikely gross miscarriage of justice, the name I came up with had to be the right one. Three members of the board would interrogate me. Like any other important examination, this one generated a lot of nerves. I didn’t want to fail.
I sat down at my desk. I’d Scotch-taped my favourite pictures to my wall and most of them were of Chelsea at various stages of her growth. There was also an old photo of me and Paula, which we’d taken in one of those booths where you sit on a stool and make faces in the mirror until the flash goes off and the machine spits out a picture. It was almost thirty years old, that snapshot. We had our cheeks pressed together, laughing at nothing except that we were squashed in that booth getting our pictures taken.
It was my turn to bite my lip. I thought about what Craig had said about the doctor’s alarm and my quick response, “It isn’t necessarily a death sentence.”
I could not imagine life without Paula. I couldn’t buy a pair of shoes without consulting her first. She was threaded through my life so tightly that if the thread was pulled out, I feared the whole thing would unravel.
I pulled the package toward me. Better stop thinking and get working.