“To make her seem like a saint.”
“Or! To make sure her body was discovered.”
“In a saint’s grave.”
“Exactly,” said Morgan. “A diabolical irony: drop a depraved killer into a saint’s tomb. With flamboyant finesse.”
“Why?”
“Why not? Whoever is devising the plot enjoys the perversity.”
“Remember,” said Miranda, “the literary thing — the writer getting off on his own creation — it’s only an analogy. The killer as a killer is real.”
“Whose creation is not yet complete. It’s not over, so we wait.”
“That could be dangerous,” Miranda said, and she smiled.
“Yes,” said Morgan. He didn’t smile. chapter fourteen
Penetanguishene
Miranda left police headquarters early to miss the Friday traffic. Morgan was working at home, but when she called him he wasn’t answering. This didn’t mean he was out — he could have been in the bathroom or he was just being perverse. Sometimes when she left a message, he would pick up midway through, explaining he was screening his calls. From whom? Whoever. But she was used to checking in with him. She felt reassured if he knew where she was. She turned outside the building and looked back up at it, thrilled at how articulate architecture can be, enjoying the fact that she worked within this splendid postmodern extravaganza where glass and multi-hued granite the colour of the Canadian shield create shapes in the eye that celebrate through artifice the natural world. She loved working in a building that spoke so eloquently of great things over small, like a medieval cathedral. Not, she thought, like skyscrapers, which celebrate the tyranny of commerce and trade.
Feeling quite pleased with her train of thought, she wheeled around into Morgan’s arms.
“Admiring the scenery?” he asked, steadying her, then standing back. “It’s a great building, isn’t it? Powerful, psychologically accessible. Just what a cop shop should be.”
“I left a message on your machine.”
“Okay, so tell me.”
“I’m in a rush. You’ll hear it when you get home.”
“I can listen from here. I’m clever that way.”
“Well, I said, ‘Hey, Morgan, see you on Tuesday. Alexander’s invited Rachel and me up for the weekend. He’s nearly finished, he wants to show off. So we’re taking the Jag, top down, and going camping. She’s got three days, we’re going to set up a tent, there’s a campground outside Penetang. He invited us to pitch it in his parking lot, but, like, it’s not all about him. I haven’t camped since I was a student. We’re going to have fun. You too. Have a good weekend. Bye-bye.’”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Press erase and you’re gone.”
“I’m gone. Outta here. You take care.”
“You taking your cellphone?”
“We’re going camping, Morgan. Living in a tent for the weekend.”
They chatted for a couple more minutes, then she wheeled away, blew him an ironic kiss, and went striding along the sidewalk toward the subway. He watched her go and for an instant he felt lonely. After she descended underground, he turned and entered the ambiguous embrace of steel and granite.
When she got home, Miranda had a quick shower and called Rachel to see if she was ready. They had both packed up the previous night, conferring by phone about just what to bring in the event of hot weather and cold, rain or shine, mosquitoes and sunbathing. She drove to Rachel’s with the ragtop up and together they tucked it away. Miranda tied a kerchief around her head and Rachel pulled a Metro Police ball cap out of her kit that she put on backward at a rakish angle, so the band cut across high on her forehead with a feathering of hair poking beneath it.
They told Alexander they wouldn’t be there until Saturday, so they drove straight to the campground and set up their tent on a rocky knoll overlooking Severn Sound. It was a tent Miranda had purchased specially for the occasion — a good quality all-season tent, in case she ever wanted to try winter camping. It was cozy without being cramped, and as long as there was a breeze, it wouldn’t be too hot with the zippered doors open and the flaps of the vestibule set to catch the currents of air.
After a picnic supper, they chatted in the waning light of the evening. The mosquitoes came out in force but were easily discouraged by the flapping of hands. Miranda talked about her mother and about her sister in Vancouver who had kids and a career and patronized Miranda for being in police work. At least when she was with the Mounties, she had a certain panache, but with the Toronto Police, according to her sister, well, she could have been a lawyer if she’d set her mind to it. Rachel described her own family life, growing up with three brothers and two sisters. “My parents were influenced by our Catholic neighbours. Everyone around there had big families. It was a form of self-defence. If you can’t out-buy the buggers, outnumber them. That’s what my father used to say. Never was clear who ‘the buggers’ were.”
Rachel’s father was still alive, in his fifties, but her mother was dead. “Just wore out, my dad says. But does he ever miss her. We all do.”
“I miss my dad, too. I was just hitting puberty when he died. It was like everything changed, you know, everything. Sometimes I wonder if I really remember him, or if it’s a fantasy I’ve constructed to take his place.”
“That’s what all memories are,” said Rachel. “They’re stories we tell ourselves to keep the past alive. I remember my mamma differently every day.”
“Wanna go for a swim?” said Miranda.
“Skinny dip?”
“Sure. It’s dark enough; and it’s cool enough that the mosquitoes are pretty well gone, and the water’s gonna feel warmer. Georgian Bay is notoriously cold, you know.”
They edged their way down the smooth stone to the rocks by the shore, stood up in the light of the moon, stripped off their shorts and tops, giggled like girls, and slipped out of their underwear. Each lowered herself carefully into the frigid water, quietly so as not to attract attention. They could hear voices and see several campfires glowing against the dark landscape, and the water rippled with dazzling striations of moonlight. They swam away from shore in companionable silence until they couldn’t make out what people were saying, then floated on their backs, sculling with fingers at their sides, so that only their faces and breasts and their toes broke the shimmering surface, and the rest of their bodies were swallowed in the impenetrable black of the water beneath them. Sometimes as they arched, their pubic hair caught tangles of moonlight, and in the cold their nipples stood proud. Each looked at the other sideways from time to time, lifting her head so that her body sank into the darkness, admiring the gleam of wet skin. After fifteen minutes or so, without exchanging a word, they began manoeuvring back to the rocky shore.
The air was cold when they stood up, but the smooth stone by the tent still glowed with the residual warmth of the sun. They lay down side by side on towels, shivering from the air, their backs warmed by the stone. Rachel reached over and clasped Miranda’s hand and together they stared into the depths of the night. The moon washed the sky clean of all but the most brilliant stars as it shone through a thin veneer of cloud covering. Tomorrow would be rain.
Shortly after midnight, the rain began, waking them both from sound sleep, beating on the tent fly in a sustained fusillade as wind whipped against the flimsy dome structure that had seemed snug and secure when they dowsed their flashlights and settled into their sleeping bags only hours before. They sat up together, surrounded by shuddering darkness and the crackling shriek of the thin yellow membrane that shielded them from the fury of the elements.
“Oh, my God!” Rachel shouted over the din. “We’re gonna be blown away.”
“Or the tent’s gonna tear into ribbons.”
“Or we’re going to float into the lake. My God, can you feel the water flowing beneath us? No wonder no one else pitched a tent here. Pine needles in a depression on the rock. Great place for a tent, you said. It’s a pool — we’re practically floating.”