One
Reece
“Tell me how you came to find them.”
“I went into the room,” I said, “and saw them on—”
“Let’s go back a bit. What were you doing before you came over here?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m kind of rattled.”
“I get that. It’s okay. Just start at the beginning.”
Here was this detective, giving me advice on how to impart information. I was the one who was supposed to know how to do this.
Spin a tale, let a narrative unfold. Present the facts in a logical order. But I was jumping straight to the conclusion, the
denouement, as it were.
“Right, right,” I said. “I’d decided to drop by.”
“What time would this have been?”
She was patient, this detective. She’d told me her name, but I’d already forgotten it. McCain? McCabe? Something like that.
Again, not like me, who was supposed to be good at this. Remembering names, getting the spelling right. But right now, I could
barely remember my own. Chartwell, I’d said when she’d asked. That a first or last name? Last, I’d told her. When I realized
she was waiting for my first name, I’d had to think about it for a second. Shock does strange things to your brain.
“Reece,” I’d said, and spelled it, lest she think I shared a name with a famous actress. And then the detective had asked
what my father’s name was. “Brent,” I’d said. “Brent Chartwell.” And, knowing what her next question would be, I’d said, “My
mother’s name is—was—Catherine.”
We’d been inside the house when we’d traded introductions, but now we were sitting outside on a decorative white wrought-iron bench.
One of those pieces of garden furniture you admire but don’t often sit on, too uncomfortable.
But Mom liked those kinds of touches, things that looked nice but had no real practical use.
Like fancy flower-shaped soaps you leave in a bathroom but never actually use.
Now, outside, I said, “Around half past one. I’d had lunch at my place, was trying to come up with a strategy, having lost
my job recently, but really wasn’t feeling it, and—”
“Feeling it?” Detective McCain or McCabe said.
“Needed to clear my head. Go out of the house, grab a coffee or something, and I found myself driving over here.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I had an excuse. Couple of books I’d borrowed from Dad, thought I might as well return them.”
“You do that regularly? Drop in, unannounced?”
“They’re my parents.”
The detective waited for me to say more.
“Dad’s the one I’ve always talked to when I’m looking for a sounding board. I’ve been wondering about what to do next.”
Her puzzled look seemed to require some explanation.
“I worked for WorldWide.” One of Canada’s major television networks. “Wrote copy for the midday and evening newscasts. WorldWide’s
been hemorrhaging money, ad revenue collapsing, people getting their news off their phones instead of TV, and when they did
a huge round of layoffs they went after the news division big-time.” What I didn’t bother getting into was that newscasts
with two anchors now had one. There was less local coverage, more segments from south of the border. The noon news broadcast
was axed entirely, replaced with reruns of Hawaii Five-O. But I figured this detective was more interested in what had happened here than a failing network’s program schedule.
I said, “I got a decent package when they laid me off but I need to find something else.”
“So you’d come to ask your father for money?”
“No,” I said somewhat defensively. “I just wanted his advice. He had a good business sense.”
“So you live nearby? Here in Yorkton Hill?”
“Yeah, other side of town. About ten minutes away. Sunnydale.” It was the name attached to our part of town.
The detective nodded. “We could almost be neighbors,” she said. I didn’t know whether she was trying to be affable, or really
did live near us, and didn’t ask. Anyway, she was still interested in why I happened to be here.
“Okay, so, dropping off the books, that was an excuse, but you wanted to pick his brain about your career.”
I nodded. “More or less.”
“And didn’t call ahead.”
Another nod. I thought I’d made that clear.
“So you drive over and get here when? Half past one? Notice anything when you arrived?”
I shook my head. “Car was in the drive.”
Detective McCain or McCabe wrote something down in one of those spiral reporter notebooks. I took a moment to size her up.
About forty, I guessed, five eight, black hair with a few gray streaks running through it. Not striking in any way, I thought.
A plain, oval face. Businesslike.
“That’s your father’s car? The Lexus?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s your mother’s car?”
“She doesn’t drive.” Still using present tense. “There’s an old Plymouth Barracuda in the garage. A ’72, I think. Dad had
a car like that when he was in his twenties. Found one in mint condition, got it fifteen, sixteen years ago.”
The crazy things you think of at the strangest time. I wondered how I’d dispose of the cars when Dad couldn’t sign over the
ownership.
“That’s your car behind the Lexus.”
She was looking at the eighteen-year-old blue BMW sedan in the driveway. I nodded.
There were three other cars at the curb, two of them marked police cars, one a black, unmarked vehicle, the one the detective
had shown up in. A couple more cars were parked farther down the street including a Toyota Corolla that looked as old as my
car.
“So after you got here what happened?”
“I rang the bell. Waited a few seconds, rang it again. Then I tried knocking. And when neither of them came to the door, I
thought maybe they were out back. They like to sit out there, look at the pond.”
“Pond?”
“There’s a couple of acres back there, and part of it’s a pond that’s got trees around most of it. There’s a gate, which is
locked so kids don’t get onto the property and end up drowning, and I looked over it and they weren’t out there, so I came
back around to the front, figured, maybe they went for a walk, although that seemed unlikely. They’re not big walkers. And
out here, you want something as simple as a coffee, you have to drive.”
“So why didn’t you leave?”
I sighed. “For one thing, the car was there, so it seemed like at least Dad would be home. I knocked again, no answer, so
then I just tried the door and it wasn’t locked. Thought I could leave the books just inside. When I stepped in, I called
out.”
The detective was still making notes, glancing up regularly. “Go on.”
“Nobody answered. That made me, I don’t know, a little anxious. I mean, my parents, it’s not like they’re at death’s door
or anything. They’re still active, travel, do things, but they’re at an age where things can happen unexpectedly. A sudden
heart attack, a stroke, you know.” I shrugged.
“But so far as you knew, their health was okay.”
I nodded.
“No bad news from the doctor? For either of them? Something that might have precipitated an event like this?”
I knew what she was getting at. I’d heard of older couples, one of them gets a terminal diagnosis, they decide to check out early. Maybe the person’s spouse doesn’t want to go on living, either, if they’re going to be alone.
“If there was, they hadn’t shared it with me.”
I was starting to feel overwhelmed again, the enormity of what had transpired starting to sink in. You know you’re going to
lose your parents one day. But not like this. Not both of them at once.
“I just can’t . . . I can’t believe they’re . . .”
“You need a minute?” the detective asked.
I nodded, but managed to say, “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”
“Detective McCabe. Janice McCabe.”
I tried to commit it to memory. Said it to myself three times.
“Coffee’s here,” she said.
McCabe had sent someone to fetch it. A uniformed officer approached bearing two red paper cups from the country’s most popular
coffee place. Although their outlets were everywhere, there wasn’t one close to my parents’ house.
“Black, right?” the cop said to me.
I nodded. I pried open the small opening on the plastic lid and took a sip to test how hot it was. It was lukewarm, evidently
having cooled down on the trip here. I gulped a mouthful.
“It’s a lot to process,” McCabe said, putting down her notebook and taking a sip of her own coffee. She gave me another few
seconds, then said, “When did you decide to go into the bedroom?”
I put the coffee down next to me. “I walked through the ground floor first, called down to the basement, and when I got no
response I went upstairs. Their room’s at the end of the hall and the door was partly closed and I thought, did I pick a bad
time to come? Were they having a nap, or, you know, something else?”
McCabe got the drift.
“I start deliberately making noise, clearing my throat, saying things like, hey, I’m here, you guys okay? Stuff like that.”
“Go on.”
I was starting to get the shakes again, picked up the coffee and took a sip. Maybe caffeine wasn’t what I needed right now.
“Even before I got to the door, there was some kind of . . . there was a smell. I don’t know how to describe it. It was almost
like metal, like copper or something. I’m never going to forget it.”
“You pushed open the door.”
“They’re both in the bed, the covers kind of pulled up halfway, although I could see they weren’t wearing anything, and my
mom . . .”
“Take your time.”
“She’s sort of turned away, her back to me, and there’s blood all over the back of her head. And Dad, he’s just sitting in
the bed, up against the . . . the . . .” I was losing my words.
“Headboard?” McCabe said.
“Yeah. Headboard. And his arm is hanging down the side of the bed, and there’s a gun on the floor there, a few inches down
from his fingers. The top of his head, it’s all . . . there’s this painting hanging on the wall over the bed, a seaside thing,
with a lighthouse, they bought it years ago when they were in Cape Cod, and there’s . . .”
“Okay,” McCabe said.
I nod. “It’s . . . everywhere, blood all over the painting, like he must have put the gun under his chin and . . .”
“Okay.”
I closed my eyes tight, picturing it, but trying to substitute the image for something else. No luck there. It was a photograph