Suddenly he just let her go, her body still reeling from the erotic surprise. Off-balance, Nina reached for the table corner just to steady herself.
“You're goddamn right, you're not my wife,” he punished her. Sam opened the door and waited for Nina to leave. “Go back before Jo thinks that something's going on between us.”
She could not figure out if he was kidding or if he was as hurtful as he sounded, but she obliged anyway. “Don't take too long,” was all she said as she left. On her way back Nina's body was burning with sensual want, but Sam's shitty notion that he alone determined when they got it on pissed her off to such measures that she decided to dismiss the entire incident as his obtuse need for attention.
“Jo, give me one of your beers, will you?” she ordered when she entered cottage.
“Um, sure,” Joanne smiled and opened the fridge. “I thought you didn’t like beer either.”
“I don't,” Nina pouted under her dark scowl. “In fact, if you had any hard spirits right now I would have sank a few doubles.”
Joanne was not stupid. She could tell that her friend's demeanor had suddenly fallen down a bottomless well. “What did he do?” she asked Nina.
“How could you tell?” Nina choked on the weak drink.
“Psychology. I work with teenagers, remember? I know a lovers' quarrel when I see one,” Joanne shrugged, feeling a bit stung by the obviousness of her crush's feelings toward a woman she could never compete with.
“We are not lovers,” Nina gritted unconvincingly. “And I hope he knows that too.”
“Right, then, let's go to your… not lover's cabin. He’s had his ten minutes and I want to know what we’ve been waiting for for three days,” Joanne suggested firmly.
“Aye,” Nina agreed and left the beer to get warm. It was her passive-aggressive way of getting back at Sam in some roundabout power-play.
Chapter 17 — Contrition
When the three of them sat down at the kitchen table in Sam's cottage, he had his laptop rigged up to some audio-visual equipment so that they could all hear the interview he’d prepared.
He explained, “Now this was yesterday morning, where I interviewed a disturbed patient at a minimum security institution in Montreal. Apparently this bloke is terminal, so he wanted to make amends for all the shit that got him sick and all that, you know?”
On the screen a gaunt, pallid man appeared, no older than fifty-five. At the bottom of the screen rapidly running editing track numbers flickered in white in stark contrast to the man's slow, barely noticeable movements.
“His name is Erich Bonn and I found him by employing that long shot you ladies suggested — by checking the local accommodation logs to locate former managers or clerks who could remember a woman matching Leslie's description checking in,” he smiled. “And believe it or not, I found one lady who was disbelieved by her husband back when the news first talked about the missing woman. She gave me the boyfriend's name from one of her registers in a back room, gathering dust. And I found him!”
“Play it! Play it, Sam! I am dying to know all this. Did they tell you what this Erich guy was locked up for?” Nina asked.
“They did, but according to them there are a file's worth of shit wrong with this boy,” Sam explained. “Delusional, schizo, sociopath, you name it, but… get this, the court did not believe that he was dangerous and he was put in this holiday resort for psycho's. Can you believe that?”
“These days the world's common sense is so goddamn backwards that I could not say I was surprised,” Joanne remarked. “But what is your take on this guy? Is he dangerous, you think?”
“Honestly? I think he is completely sane, but that is a hazard of my vocation, and especially the adventurous side of it. I mean, the things we've seen, the things Nina and I know are possible, would make us sound batshit crazy to any therapist.”
“True, true,” Nine nodded fiercely. “They'd lock us up in a blink.”
With that Sam played the short clip where he asked Erich to tell him the story from a firsthand perspective. Erich spoke clearly, even though he was clearly under mild sedation to assure docility and compliance. He looked terrible, even for a man of his age and illness. Eyes sunken into their sockets made their color barely visible and his lips, if the slight swelling could be called so, were chapped and thin. Deep dimple cuts fell into his face to display his dreadful state of emaciation, but his recollection lacked nothing.
“Is it on?” he asked, his shadowy eyes leering at the camera lens. “You know, I have told my story so many times, but nobody believes me and nobody cares. They just bring another hypodermic, you know?” He sighed and looked up at the ceiling.
The loud audio setting gave the silence in the room an ominous hiss, reminiscent of old horror films of experimentation and medical malpractices. Sam's adjustment of the camera started Nina and Joanne with its sudden crackling sound.
He smiled at their reaction. “Sorry. The lens was off-center.”
Erich's blank eyes stared at the camera and he just started talking without warning.
“I met her two days before I… lost… her,” he said. “She was with some friends in Victoriaville and we met at the lake, you know? So we got along great and such. Then she told me that she had to go back to Montreal, because she didn’t have her own car. She had to go back with her friends in their car. I did not want her to go so soon, so I offered to take her home after we spent some more time together in Quebec City and she could tell her friends I'll take her,” he rambled, wringing his bony hands off camera.
Nina felt uncomfortable just listening to the story. It was an intuitive reaction to the manner in which things progressed in his tale and perhaps the fact that she knew how it was going to end. Joanne placed her hand on Nina's arm and said, “I know. I feel it too.”
“What?” Nina asked curiously.
“That sickening feeling; that apprehensive morbidity that makes you not want to hear what he remembers, but you have to because otherwise you cannot forget,” she told Nina. She caught Sam's dark eyes studying her, but he said nothing.
Erich continued. “But her friends did not trust me…”
“Christ, I wonder why,” Nina mumbled softly.
“…and they took her back to Montreal just as planned. But me and Leslie decided we would meet at the Notre-Dame Basilica after her friends dropped her off, you know? So that is what we did. I met her there and took her to Quebec City for dinner…”
Erich stopped, biting his lip. His forearms stop moving, implying that his locked hands kept still now as his thoughts wandered down a dark and thorny path. He looked at Sam and down again, catching his breath. “That was the last time Leslie was ever happy.”
“Oh God, I really need a drink now,” Nina declared with sorrow plaguing her pretty face. “I’m not sure I’m ready for this, Sam. Can't you just tell us in short?”
“It’s not that much longer, Nina,” he offered. “It’s less than thirty-five minutes long and he doesn't use detail. I know that doesn't make it less evil, but it’s not as explicit as you might expect.”
“While we were… you know, having sex in a motel outside the Mingan Archipelago Reserve, there was a knock at the door. The office of the motel got a call from the people I worked for. They had landed at the Natashquan air strip and needed me to help them up at the weather station in Torngat,” he spoke quickly as if relaying the story quicker would make it easier.