The Last Secret, page 34
“What did you do?” I’m afraid of the answer, afraid of Kay. Smoke mushroom clouds above her head, and her eyes, well, they look chillingly calm, which, I realize now, is some kind of psychosis. “You’re the crazy one,” I say. “Not me.”
She sighs and takes another dramatic lungful of cigarette smoke. “If that’s what you want to believe,” she says, exhaling.
“You told Taras his mother had a Russian visitor just to upset him.” I load a larger brush with paint and fight the desire to hurl it at her, anything to wipe that complacent look from her face. “Then you throw his sister under the bus. Admirable, Kay, really upstanding.”
“Taras? I thought his name was Danek.” She smiles into the middle distance. “Think what you like, love.”
My paintbrush falters in midair. “Don’t call me that. Ever again.”
“I’m gutted,” Kay says with a mock pout. She blows smoke in a volcanic plume toward me.
“You know what they say, don’t hurt the hand that feeds you. And you can’t keep me chained to this easel forever.”
Kay stares down at the burning end of her cigarette. “Enjoy the process. Where you’re going there are only crayons and coloring books.”
My heart stops beating. “What do you mean?”
“You heard Pat, when you finish this, there’s a room waiting for you at the Riverview Mental Hospital.”
Even though I knew this was coming, my hands are numb with the shock of betrayal and with every dumb, slavish hope I once entertained, that my old nurse would return and be my caregiver. “You can’t! Kay—this is me.”
“I know.”
“How can you be so cruel?” I pause at the sound of a car pulling into the driveway and rush to the window, Kay at my heels. She pushes me aside so she can see the beat-up gray Toyota Corolla. I close my eyes with relief. Taras. Then I remember what Pat said last night:
If he dares arrive tomorrow, we’ll deal with him. Just as we have everything else that’s come our way.
Kay throws down her cigarette, stamps on it, then leaps through the door. I follow her down the stairs. As we stand on the porch, Pat rockets out of the house. My old nurses can’t hurt me any more than they already have. But Taras? Through the windshield, his handsome face has darkened like the clouds that amass overhead. How can I possibly protect him from these two evil souls?
46
TARAS
Salt Spring Island
december 12, 1972
before taras can open his car door, Pat charges toward him like a killer who had once tried to shank him in the mess hall at Black Eagle.
“I told you I’d call the police if you stepped foot on this property—”
Taras gets out of the car and stares her down. “Go and call them. I will wait.” He glances toward the guest cabin porch, where Jeanie stands, Nurse Kay clutching her arm. A bitter wind has come up, bringing with it a sharp, briny smell of sea. Taras’s leather coat flaps around him, lashing his body like a whip. “You have not hurt her,” he warns. He’s sure that the nurses have his father’s gun, but hopefully they would never use it. His shiv is in the breast pocket of his coat, in case they try.
Jeanie attempts a desperate lunge forward. “Taras, they’re taking Gladsheim from me…,” then she squeals in pain when Kay yanks her back.
Taras takes a few steps toward them, gravel crunching beneath his boots. “This is Jeanie’s house. I leave when she tells me I leave.” The nurses exchange a look. Taras fears what he might do to Pat and Kay, these women who possibly saw the assassin kill his father and have lied about it for years. “I lift a rock and maggots run, afraid of the light.” His gaze lingers on Kay, certain that she’s the ringleader of this nasty business. But her face reveals nothing.
Taras shouts, “Where did you find my father’s gun?”
Kay smiles, and Taras must strain his ears to hear her over the wind. “It was the Russian who killed him. Not us.”
The Russian.
Taras remembers driving to the Tsawwassen ferry terminal earlier, distracted with worry over Jeanie, going over every reason he could think of, wondering why the nurses weren’t answering the phone, and fearing the worst. The wind had picked up, and he remained in his vehicle during the rough crossing, obsessing over what he might find at Gladsheim. At one point, he’d glanced up at his rearview mirror and glimpsed a black town car parked farther back on the ferry. Paranoid, he’d studied the car in his rearview mirror, finally determining, with relief, that it was an older model than the one that had followed him last week. There was no need for concern.
Taras turns to face Pat. “You did something that night,” he says. “You know something. Only the police know he is dead.”
“If you knew the truth you would hate Jeanie,” Kay yells across to him, “not arrive here to save her.”
Taras pauses. Does Kay mean to accuse his lover of killing Tato? Jeanie also seems stunned at this pronouncement, as she should be. “You will blame a woman confined to a hospital bed for your crimes?” he shouts.
“Confined to bed?” Pat steps toward him, stopping near the fender of his car. “Jeanie had relearned to walk, and her arms were like steel from hauling herself up with that blasted trapeze bar. Listen, if you go now, we won’t press charges.”
Taras backs away from her. “I’m staying here, with Jeanie.”
“We found your father’s gun on the floor of Jeanie’s hospital room,” Kay calls to him.
Taras finally strides toward the guesthouse, charges up the steps and pulls Jeanie from Kay’s grasp. He wraps his arm around her thin shoulders and hurries her to the passenger door of his car. Jeanie stumbles and he pulls her close enough to feel her heart beating against his chest. He pushes Pat aside and bundles Jeanie in, quickly rounding the front of the car, his hand on the hood.
Jeanie locks the passenger door and looks up at him with frightened eyes. He doesn’t notice that Kay has come up to him from behind. He turns, too late, to find her hand held high—a knife, he thinks—as she brings it down like a cobra’s strike. There’s a sting at the back of his neck and he collapses against the hood of the car, dragging himself toward the driver’s door.
But the already dim light grows grayer, and he feels himself slump, sliding down the fender to the ground. Kay stands over him like a terrible statue, clutching an empty hypodermic needle, eyes glittering.
He can hear Pat banging on the passenger door, growling at Jeanie through the window. “Unlock it!”
Jeanie’s voice comes muffled from within the car. “How dare you drug him!”
He can feel Pat rummage through his coat pockets. Taras watches numbly as she jumps up with a triumphant cry. She’s found the car keys, he thinks, slipping into a dream haze. He raises a hand, and before losing consciousness, feels the hard outline in his breast pocket, where the shiv lies, waiting.
47
SAVKA
Salt Spring Island
december 12, 1972
sea spray misting her face, Savka leaned over the railing, staring down at the desolate ocean, cruel waves crashing against the prow of the ferry. She raised her eyes to the hulking shadow of Salt Spring Island as it drew closer, mountains rising into the fog. “How beautiful,” she said to herself, for there was no one else on deck.
Although she could feel curious eyes on her back. Five lines of cars were parked behind her, each with the dimmed profile of its driver and passengers within. They sat and smoked as the ferry chugged forward, as if pulled by a string. She imagined their whispers. Who’s that crazy lady standing on the deck in December?
She eyed the ominous clouds hovering over them. A storm was coming.
The ferry swung into the middle of the channel, and Savka gripped the rail. She was heading straight into the lion’s den but needed to fit a few pieces together before forcing the nurses to admit their involvement. They knew something that would give Detective Jaeger a break in the cold case of her husband’s disappearance and murder.
This trip across the Strait of Georgia to an isolated Gulf Island was so far out of her comfort zone she might as well be on a rocket ship to outer space. Yet by the end of this day, she’d learn the truth. Despite Belyakov’s insistence, she wasn’t a real spy. She wasn’t one to take risks. But she was here and had to muster the same courage that Taras showed the first time he’d stood at this very bow rail, waiting for someone to approach.
Wind had picked up, sending a blurred pattern across the waves. “Stay calm,” she whispered to herself. “Calm.” At least she knew that the Fire Bride lived at the very northern tip of the island. She would find her way there if it meant keeping a taxi waiting and knocking on every door on Southey Point.
She was suddenly conscious that a woman had come to the rail to stand next to her. It was a hippy chick about Zoya’s age, long auburn hair flying in the wind. She was dressed in a tie-dyed sweatshirt and a pair of embroidered bell-bottom jeans. A purple scarf was wound around her head and her feet were bare on the wet deck. Savka wanted to wrap her in a blanket. Wasn’t she cold?
The woman turned her face to the wind. “Isn’t it gorgeously wild?”
The ferry adjusted its course toward the island terminal, waves rolling and cresting against the bow. Savka widened her stance to avoid losing her balance, and she smiled briefly at the woman, who’d begun to twirl like a dervish.
“My boyfriend said I’d get blown over the railing,” the woman said, dancing around her. “But then I saw my sister out here grooving with the elementals.” She punched a fist into the air. “Strong women building a gentle world!” Laughing, she flashed a peace sign. “I’m Kali. After the goddess, dig?” Savka did not dig, but Kali blundered on, not expecting an answer. She glanced back at the line of cars. “I told him to sit on it. He can’t lay a guilt trip on me.”
Savka looked over her shoulder, afraid for Kali, expecting to see her boyfriend charge up behind them and grab her arm. “Didn’t he try to stop you?”
“Fuck no,” Kali said, stretching her arms above her head to feel the wind. “I can split anytime I want. Women’s lib—that’s where it’s at!”
She felt unsettled, bothered. When Zoya spoke of the women’s lib movement, Savka dismissed it as something for young women, not for her. Yet back in Ukraine, she had been a strong woman, trying to protect her family. Once, a teenage Zoya had shouted, “When did you get so uptight and lost?” At the time, Savka had disciplined her for disrespecting her mother. But now, watching Kali sway on the deck, she had an answer to that question:
I lost myself when Marko came back to Deremnytsia.
She thought of that night in February of 1944, how Marko had endangered her family, demanding that she escape with Taras and deliver the shtafeta to Kuzak. At first, she’d refused, her skin prickling with caution.
What if we run into Soviet partisans? It’s winter…
We’ve driven the partisans off the mountain, he’d insisted.
And yet Belyakov had stolen her and Taras, forcing them into the underworld, where they still dwelled among the shadows of the dead. Her lip trembled as she thought of herself floating like a specter beneath the surface of a raging sea like this, while life went on without her in the world of men.
As the ferry approached the island, Kali leaned in, the coming storm forcing a strange intimacy between them. “I saw you walk on earlier,” she said. “Recognized a fellow priestess of the light. Need a ride to the full-moon gathering? It’s going to be rad.”
48
JEANIE
Salt Spring Island
december 12, 1972
“if you’ve hurt him, I’ll kill you!” I can hardly breathe at the sight of Taras, out cold and lying crumpled and helpless on the driveway. His dear head is turned at an awkward angle on the gravel, as if he broke his neck falling to the ground. The wind has changed direction since he arrived, and the palm tree fronds are rattling, the cedar and fir trees lining the bay lashing back and forth like mad ghouls. Numb with shock, I turn to Kay, who stands looking down at Taras, a serene smile on her face. In her element, one could say. She almost seems to be enjoying herself. “You’ll never get away with this…” but my voice dies on a terrified whisper, as Pat begins to pace the driveway, looking pale and stunned. “Let Taras go. Let me go.” I face my old nurses, fists determinedly clenched.
Pat pulled on her new green coat before she came out, but I’m shivering in my overalls and sweatshirt. She turns to Kay. “Get me another ampule—”
“No.” Kay is still looking down at Taras, as if he’s a lab rat she means to dissect. She folds her arms across her chest. “It’s time she hears the truth.” Her hair, normally combed flat over her ears, has been rearranged, courtesy of the wind. Her eyes are wild. My old nurse regards me with something akin to pity. “Do you want to go to prison?”
The sky above us seems to darken another impossible degree. I shake my head. “Why would I go to prison?”
“It was you, Jeanie.”
I’m confused and glance at Taras again. Wake up! “I have no idea what you mean.”
“You killed his father.”
As though Taras has heard, his curled fingers twitch, and he groans in drugged oblivion. My guts twist into a knot. It’s strange and terrible to be told you’re guilty of a crime you don’t remember committing. Most people would deny such an accusation immediately. But I’m not most people. My first instinct is to believe Kay. Did I kill the father of the man I love? The two of them regard me with expectation, waiting for me to confess, but I’ve gone rigid with shock and I’m speechless. Grief or guilt? I don’t know.
“Of course, you can’t remember, Jeanie,” Kay says. “We came into your room that night and found Marko Kovacs laying on top of your bed, the trapeze bar bloodied. You were delirious.”
Suddenly I’m back in my old hospital bed, exhausted from a long day working with a physiotherapist that Dr. Reisman had arranged, painfully learning to walk again. To strengthen my arms, an ancient trapeze bar had been attached to my bedframe—it seemed to have been made in the previous century—and I’d been getting stronger every day. How many times had I reached up to grab the cold, steel handle? My fingers would roam over the chain, ensuring it was clipped in before applying my weight. Despite this precaution, the bar would often come loose. I can still hear the grating sound of the chain links’ clank and rattle, like a prisoner’s shackles.
“You were helpless,” Pat adds, her voice at a treble, “and high on morphine. Marko Kovacs must have been pawing at you.” She points to Taras. “Trapped by his father. You had to make him stop.”
“No,” I croak, hand to my head. “He just stood in the doorway.” I try to sound certain, but what if my brain has blocked the truth? I feel it somewhere inside me, like a flashing beacon warning of hazards at sea, showing me only fragments that shimmer and rise out of the fog, just out of my reach. A crippling doubt enters my mind. I’d completely blocked out entire months of my life. But Marko Kovacs disappeared just before Dr. Reisman had discharged me from the hospital. Had I been strong enough to break through a morphine haze to find someone “pawing at me,” and murdered him?
There are too many missing pieces, I think, glancing up at Pat. “How did you come into possession of Marko Kovacs’s gun?”
“After you beat him to death,” she explains, “we held on to it for safekeeping.”
I look at Taras, horrified. His eyes are still closed, but his lips move slightly, as if he’s fighting his way back to consciousness. Did he somehow hear Pat’s accusation, that I’m the one who killed his father? But if I’d committed such an abhorrent act, I would remember, wouldn’t I?
“He already knows,” Kay says, noticing my glance at Taras. “Why do you think he put you in his car? To take you to the police and turn you in.”
“Wait,” I say, holding up my hand in a vain attempt to halt the progression of this conversation. I don’t like where it’s going. “That night you’d given me my evening medications—my sleeping pill—how could I have moved after that?” With the pressure of accusation goading me forward, I close my eyes, make a concerted effort to climb the brick wall my brain has erected against me. To my surprise, the ghost images firm up, and I see the man standing against the wall near the door. Like a clip from a black-and-white movie, he walks slowly toward me in the shadows. “Marko Kovacs came toward my bed,” I whisper. “It was dark. I thought it was one of you.”
I open my eyes, not wanting to see the rest, and sink to my knees on the gravel drive beside Taras, placing a tentative hand on his arm. Is it possible I killed his father?
Suddenly Pat is behind me. “Don’t do this to yourself. Kovacs did an awful, horrible thing to you. And you fought back.” She sneezes violently, the cold she’s been fighting finally taking hold. “The trapeze bar was unclipped from the chain, and you reached up in a panic as he lifted your sheets,” she says, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “You hit him again and again, then blocked it out.”
“I didn’t kill him.” My voice rises in sudden fury. I tear my hand off Taras’s arm and leap up, turning on Pat. “How could I have had the strength?”
“You were filled with rage at Michael,” Kay says quietly, “how he left you after you’d been burned so horribly, after you’d suffered the devastating loss of your baby. You were delirious, ready to take out your grief and anger on the next man who mistreated you. That man happened to be Taras’s father.”
“We found you in a dither and gave you more morphine,” Pat adds. “You can’t remember. How could you?”
“You wanted me to forget!”
And then Kay says something that chills me to the bone. “Your little friend has to go.”
