Where the Ice Falls Read online

  There came the sound of papers being shuffled. “Wool scarf around his coat collar. Outside. Why?”

  “If it’s his poppy, how did it not get lost during the blizzard? Those things come off every time you shrug. It’s unlikely to have stayed on if he’d been struggling through the storm, hunching his shoulders and pulling his scarf up to his face.”

  “Good question,” said Bull. “I’d like to know how far away his car is, too. First, though, I need you as Victim Services contact to follow up with that woman, Zoe, and her daughter.”

  Sure, if it’ll expedite the chalet sale. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Ask how they’re coping and when they can come in to sign statements.”

  “Anything I can tell them about the progress of the investigation? They’ll be sure to ask.”

  “The body was formally identified as Eric Anders, and the investigation is proceeding. We thank them for their co-operation. If they’ve thought of anything they’d like to add to their statements, or if they’d like to amend them in any way …”

  During a pause filled with Bull’s breathing, Lacey gazed out on the snowy driveway. “What do you mean, amend?”

  “If the girl grabbed the woodshed crossbar and slammed it down because she was panicked about finding a body inside, we need to know that.”

  “You don’t believe it was closed when she found it?”

  “Gotta know for sure. She might’ve been closer to the victim than she admitted. Plus, he had a couple of loose sleeping pills in his pocket. His family told me they weren’t prescribed. They say he hated swallowing any pills.”

  Lacey put her feet up on an embroidered footstool, thinking. If Eric hadn’t struggled through the blizzard at all, but had instead gone directly from a car to the woodshed, his poppy might well have covered the distance with him. Then someone could have moved his car afterward. Or maybe he left his car somewhere and drove to the house with someone else. So many questions. But did Zoe or Lizi have any answers? She doubted it.

  “Do you think the girl is lying, or the mother? Or both?”

  “I don’t think anything. I want to know what the facts are. The kid was upset. She could have been mistaken. We’re doing the tox screen for those pills, but the results could take weeks unless we have a reason to expedite — a reason like someone connected to that kid takes that same brand of sleeping pills.”

  “So, in addition to finding out how Zoe and her daughter are holding up, giving them a so-called progress report, and inviting them to come in to sign and/or amend their statements, I should question them gently about their drug use? No problem. I can make that sound real casual.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Lacey tried calling the number Bull had given her for Zoe Gallagher, but it went straight to voice mail. She left her cellphone number and a message about setting a time to sign the statements. When they called back, she could ask to meet, to gauge for herself how they were coping. Whatever Bull expected of her, there was no credible way for a civilian volunteer to ask about a stranger’s prescriptions over the phone. Next, she checked her email. It was mostly newsletters she couldn’t remember subscribing to, but one was a holiday update from an RCMP wife she’d only ever met once, at Langley detachment’s annual Christmas party. Overcome by a sudden loneliness, she opened it. A few paragraphs of sanitized brags about adorable children would surely remind her why the life Dan wanted for them would never have satisfied her.

  The red poinsettia border promised good cheer, but the first words after “Dear Lacey” shattered the illusion.

  It’s not my place to say anything, but you should know you’ve hurt Dan terribly by going off without a word, and refusing to speak to him in person or on the phone for all these months. He’s really struggling to keep the house in shape and so lonely. He’s a good man, Lacey, and you’re forcing him out of his home too by insisting he sell it. Our men do a hard job and they sure don’t need this kind of grief from their wives.

  Lacey’s stomach churned. She clicked Delete and the poinsettias vanished.

  What had Dan told this woman to get such sympathy? Lies, obviously, because she had talked to him over the summer, by phone and by email, until it was only too clear he was stringing her along, working to sabotage her confidence and her efforts to build a future that didn’t include him. If she hadn’t had Dee to look after, there was a remote possibility she might have slunk back to Langley and taken a more acceptably feminine job, one that didn’t challenge Dan’s masculine pride. But she’d chosen Dee’s needs instead of Dan’s, so here they were, eight months later, with him living in their house at full pay and her scrimping to afford basic groceries out of erratic part-time wages.

  That line about struggling with the house … was he sabotaging the realtor’s showings? Was that why the place hadn’t sold yet? To wipe the foul taste out of her mouth, Lacey rattled off a poinsettia-free email to Jan Brenner. Even while far away on a glamorous Caribbean cruise, Jan would enjoy hearing news from home. And she knew the oil patch and its associated companies and personalities. After passing along Dee’s query about the decorations, Lacey switched gears:

  You weren’t gone two days before we stumbled onto another body, or rather, onto its discovery …

  She filled in the bare details, each keystroke punching through her old RCMP habit of not talking to civilians. Surely Jan or her husband could answer her oil patch–outsider questions.

  What could an intern possibly discover about an oil company that would give someone a motive to silence him? He’s a computer tech, nothing to do with oil drilling. He might have stumbled on a spill cover-up, I guess, since everyone in Alberta seems way more into oil than the environment. If you or Terry can think of any possible motives, or any oil-patch gossip about JP Thompson or his company that I would never hear as a newbie/outsider, let me know …

  She included a description of Eddie Beal yelling about dog shit at the Christmas market and signed off just as Dee called out that supper was ready.

  The chairlift made its distinctive whirr as it descended from the second floor. Sandy was standing by as it reached the bottom, but this time Loreena moved under her own steam to the dining room table. She smiled at all of them in turn. “I’m finished my wrapping. Is there a post office in the village? I’d like to send some knickknacks to a few people back home.”

  Lacey was giving Sandy directions when Dee called from the kitchen, “Lacey, can you get this pot, please?” Sandy carried the side dishes, leaving Dee to hobble in on her walking cast. They had barely gotten the food dished out when Dee said, “Mom, I think you should stay in Alberta with me.”

  “Why would you say that, dear?”

  “Because you don’t —” Dee started again. “Because I want to spend time with you, and it’s hard for me to travel right now. I have to be here to earn money.”

  “If you need money, I can give you some.” Loreena put down her fork as Dee shook her head. “You’ll get it soon enough, dear. It’s not like I’ll need it forever.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “You have to face this, honey. I’m going to die.”

  “I know!” Dee’s voice rose. “But why can’t you stay here until then?”

  “We can discuss that, dear. Nursing homes here should be as good as those in Ontario. Maybe less crowded, too.”

  Sandy, who’d been eating steadily through her tortellini, raised her head. “Not all nursing homes have good standards for patient care, though. The last thing you need is one that slacks off on virus protection protocols. If all staff and residents don’t have their flu shots, never mind the visitors, you could lose your remaining time to pneumonia, stuck on a ventilator and sedated.”

  Lacey lowered her fork. “You’re speaking from experience, Sandy? With nursing homes, I mean.”

  Loreena nodded. “Sandy worked at the Waterloo nursing home when I ran art sessions for the residents. When I needed someone to drive me to chemo and help me out around t
he house, I thought of her.” She smiled at Sandy. “She’ll be with me until the end, won’t you, dear?”

  “To your last breath,” Sandy said. “I’ve seen inside plenty of seniors’ homes, both in Ontario and here. If you decide to stay, I’ll check out a few with you.” She filled Loreena’s fork with pasta and sauce and handed it back to her. “I could stay in Alberta, too — for a while, anyway. I could live with my son and help him out with the finances. He’s been off work the past couple of years and things have been a bit tight.”

  Loreena nodded and changed the subject. Each time Sandy pointed to her fork, she took another bite of something. But when Sandy went upstairs to arrange Loreena’s bed, Dee pounced. “If you can’t afford an Alberta nursing home, stay here with us.” She gave Lacey a pleading look.

  Lacey’s shoulders sagged. How could they look after a dying woman here for months? She could barely keep up with her part-time work for Wayne, and driving Dee to physiotherapy and doctor’s appointments, on top of all the housekeeping, snow shovelling, dog care, and groceries. How could she possibly look after Loreena, too, for months of steadily increasing care needs?

  Loreena glanced between them. “It isn’t the money, dear. I’ve enough between my pension and your dad’s. But Alberta is a bit, well, backward in some areas. Or at least that’s my impression.” She pushed her plate away. Lacey collected it, along with Sandy’s, and took them to the kitchen to scrape.

  “What areas?” Dee’s sharp tone reached Lacey from the other room.

  Loreena’s answer was quieter. Lacey strained to hear it. “Are you sure you want to do this right now? Wouldn’t you rather have a nice Christmas first?”

  Sandy, returning to the kitchen for Loreena’s nighttime pills, frowned and glanced toward the doorway.

  Dee’s voice rose again. “It’s still a week until Christmas. Are we not supposed to talk about your illness? Or the plan for the rest of your life?”

  “Since you insist.” Loreena’s voice was more brittle than Dee’s. “I’ve already discussed with my Ontario doctor the procedures for applying for medical assistance in dying. If I moved to Alberta, I’d have to start over, convincing a doctor I’ve never met that this is what I truly want —”

  Her next words were lost in the sound of Dee’s chair scraping over the floor. Then came a clatter that Lacey recognized: Dee’s cane hitting the floor. She dropped the pot lid she was holding into the sink and hurried back to the dining room. “Is everyone all right in here?”

  Dee was leaning on the heavy dining room table, her face ashen. Lacey picked up the cane and put her hands on Dee’s shoulders, urging her gently back to her seat.

  Meanwhile, Sandy helped Loreena out of her chair and said to Dee, over her shoulder, “I see you’re upset. It would be better to continue this discussion tomorrow.” She led Loreena from the room, and a moment later Lacey heard the chairlift start up.

  “I’ll make tea.” Lacey gathered up the last of the dishes from supper and retreated to the kitchen, giving her friend time to regroup.

  As Lacey was cleaning up, her phone rang. It was Zoe, who reported that she was managing okay and that her daughter seemed calmer. She asked if Lizi really had to go through the whole experience again for the statement.

  “Yes, but it won’t be that bad, I promise. The statements are already typed out. You’ll simply read each of your statements over and sign them. Any changes you want to make, you can scribble them on the page and they’ll print out an amended one.”

  “Is tomorrow afternoon okay? Lizi has school, but we can be in Cochrane soon after four.”

  “I’ll make the arrangements.” Lacey confirmed a meeting place and hung up.

  The last can of evaporated milk sat alone on a shelf. She held it up as Dee limped into the room. “If there was ever a time for the ultimate stress reliever, this is it.”

  Dee pulled a mug toward her. “I can’t believe Mom dropped that bombshell on me.”

  “You did push her.”

  “I want her to move here, not kill herself.” Dee tipped the open can over her mug and watched as a dollop of thickened milk swirled into the amber liquid. “I’ve been trying to keep my financial situation from her, but she might have guessed. God, she wouldn’t kill herself sooner to leave me more money, would she?”

  “Lord, no. If she’s already talked to her doctor in Ontario, it can’t be because of you.” She saw Sandy crossing the hall and waved her in. “Tea?”

  “I’ll take Loreena’s up first.”

  When she returned, Sandy poured a cup for herself and added a generous helping of the canned milk. “Sometimes on a busy shift, the calories in my canned milk were the only lunch I got. That was back in my hospital days — I didn’t start working with the seniors until about twenty years ago. I wanted to understand what I’d face. Most old people don’t have much family support, or they don’t like to ask their families to do the intimate body care, you know. It’s easier to ask a nurse, a stranger.”

  Dee stared into her tea, possibly considering for the first time doing for her mother all the embarrassing personal-hygiene tasks her nurses had done for her during those months in hospital.

  “About this assisted dying,” Lacey said. “Did you know Loreena was pursuing it? Is it easy to get in Ontario?”

  “Yes, I knew. And it depends where you are.” Sandy sipped her tea and let out a satisfied sigh. “The public hospitals and secular nursing homes usually have a designated person on staff now to explain things to the patient, and to go through their rights and help them talk to their doctors and their families. Religious hospitals and nursing homes might refuse to provide the counselling, but they have to refer the patient to someone who will. You require two independent medical professionals to be convinced that you’re in an incurable decline of health and also mentally competent to make an informed decision. Loreena would qualify right now, but she’s worried about being more heavily medicated as her health declines. Too medicated and she won’t be considered competent to consent to the procedure.”

  Dee still said nothing, so Lacey followed up. “What about Alberta is she afraid of?”

  “There are a lot of religious people out here,” Sandy said. “My son’s kids went to a Catholic school for a while, and they were being taught that dying before God takes you is a sin that’ll send you to Hell for eternity. And there are all those homeschooling evangelical types, too. Let them get their teeth into anyone’s assisted dying application, and it gets ugly fast. Loreena saw a news report about someone signing his dying application in a bus shelter off the hospital grounds, in a rainstorm. She’s not strong enough to fight all over again for her rights in Alberta.” Sandy raised her mug and then put it down without drinking. “Before you ask her again to move, maybe look into things, Dee. Find out what resistance she could face here.”

  Dee raised her head. “I’ll check it out right away, and if this is really what she wants, I’ll support her. But I won’t rush her into anything. I want her to be alive as long as she can be. I’m just finding stuff out.” She picked up her mug and cane and hobbled off to her office.

  When she was out of sight, Sandy said softly, “I didn’t want to upset Dee more, but if she intends to stall her mother, please talk her out of it. Loreena is very set on dying before she becomes incapable of providing consent. I don’t want her to lose hope. If you take someone’s hope away, they may take things into their own hands.”

  “Suicide, you mean?” The weight doubled on Lacey’s shoulders.

  Sandy reached for the teapot. “Honestly, I think Loreena would just wait until she was back in Ontario and do it on her own terms, but then she might not tell Dee her plans for fear she’d try to stop her, and they wouldn’t get to have a proper goodbye. It’s best they work things out while we’re here. Now, let’s talk about something else. You were a cop, right? And Loreena says you were married to one, too?”

  Lacey nodded.

  “My husband, Dennis’s dad, was a
cop, too. Mean bugger at home. Treated the family like suspects, interrogating us instead of having conversations.”

  Lacey flicked a quick look at the nurse. Until the end, Dan had only used verbal techniques and mind games, usually when Lacey was exhausted after a hard shift, weaseling his way under her skin when she needed wind-down time and sleep, not to have to defend herself against baseless allegations. But he had come at her that last time, a huge escalation into physical attack. She probably should have reported him right then, but who do you call when your abuser’s co-workers and shift-mates are the ones who’ll respond to an incident report? She looked at Sandy contentedly slurping her tea. It was a comfort to be reminded that not all police wives were sanctimonious poinsettia-posters. Or maybe it was a nurse thing. Tom’s wife was a nurse, too, and she hadn’t hesitated to back up Lacey when she needed it.

  “My friend Marie is married to another RCMP officer, Tom,” Lacey said. “I shudder to think what she’d do if he ever tried treating her like a suspect. And she works with mostly women, which makes a difference. I really only came to have friendships with women after I moved in with Dee. Because I was an officer, too, I couldn’t seek out support from the other RCMP wives without risking them telling their husbands and having the whole detachment gossiping about our marriage. And I didn’t feel any of the male officers would have had my back when it came to going against Dan. Well, except for Tom. He was the closest thing I had to a partner on the Force. Dan used to accuse me of sleeping with him. But most of the male officers, no way. They talked after domestic violence calls like it was more the woman’s fault, either for provoking her partner or for not leaving.”

  Sandy licked her teaspoon. “I understand. Between Den’s dad gaslighting me and being a single parent, I didn’t have room for female friends either, not until I was nearly forty. Then a woman I worked with, Pat, she moved in down the block from me, and we started carpooling. Before I knew it, I was telling her things I’d never told a soul before, and she didn’t bat an eye. Came back with stories of her own screw-ups, and oh, how she would laugh about them. ‘You’ll laugh, too, soon enough,’ she’d say, and eventually I did. She helped me to be stronger during some dark times.” She got up and rinsed her mug. “I see that kind of friendship between you and Dee. You treat each other as equals, and you sure don’t rub her nose in it that she needs you right now more than you need her.”