I was sleep-deprived from the night before, but I still wasn’t tired. Energy is energy, even bad energy, I guess. I felt hungry again, so I put together a little snack. I found a beer in the back of the fridge, a Harp lager, tagged it for later, and refilled my wine glass. Then I sat back to drink, smoke and think. The first two were easy.
I thought of how sweet it was to become slave to a woman’s body, face and mind. How lovely Ruby was. How ready I was. How lucky I wasn’t. How it was all for the best. How I didn’t really believe that. How there would never be another time. How there might be.
I got off that kick and started brooding next over the surreal events in Witka that evening. I winced, recalling the way I’d so bitterly condemned the Mounties to Salim. Whenever I torqued the truth like that, there was always something personal behind it. I knew I was furious at Brennan for suggesting my ten-minute visit to the carving shed had helped drive Jerome Charlie to suicide—he even had me believing it for a while (but it wasn’t true, was it?)—then implying at the presser that “elements” (such as I) might have had a hand in nudging Max Riverton to go out and murder Lars Lovedahl in cold blood. But there was still more to my anger than that. Finally, I had a pretty solid handle on the background leading up to Sloan’s death, but Brennan’s closed, confrontational attitude had made it impossible for me to go to him with what I’d learned. Now, with the murder on Cowrie Street in their laps, and the Vancouver media in their faces, the Mounties were right out of the game. That left me standing in the crosshairs.
I thought about Max and his rage. We all knew he was obsessed to an unhealthy degree over the salmon farmers’ incursion into his postcard-perfect world; he talked about his plunging property values with more hand-wringing despair than chemo patients talking about their cancer. But I saw a lot of that on the Coast. It was as if the urge to be close to Mother Nature and ardently protect her from the vile mechanical world, had brought out the rankest materialism in some people. Max had then just taken it to the extreme.
And poor Lars. He loved nature, too. He had a nice acreage high up on the slopes, raised bighorn sheep in his pasture. Had a good-looking wife, small children. I’d met them all once when he’d driven me up there to see his spread. Kids came running out to greet him. Freckly little tots like their mom with peaches and cream complexions.
Just a guy trying to look out for his own and make his million the only way he knew how. I wondered whether the family would bury him here or ship him back to the fjords of his native Norway. Then I realized, with some dread, that it was already Friday, the day of Sloan’s funeral.
There was a knock on the door.
I felt a thrill as I went to answer it, thinking Ruby had ditched the old man and made it back for that lie-down.
Big Bill towered in the doorway.