Crime Machine

11

WHEN SAM GOT HOME, HER MOTHER looked up from the kitchen table. “Where’s your parka?”

“It got torn. It got caught on the locker at the gym.”

“Bring it to me later and I’ll fix it.”

Sam got a plate and put some lamb stew on it. Her brother, Roger, was at a small computer desk with his back to the table and earbuds plugged in both ears, a thing his father would not tolerate at dinnertime.

“Roger, say hello to your sister.”

“Don’t bug him. You know he can’t hear you.” Sam poured herself a glass of skim milk and sat down opposite her mother. She took a bite of the stew and pointed at it. “Phenomenal, Mom.”

“Why are you so late?”

“Car wouldn’t start. I had to take the bus and I missed the four o’clock.”

“That car is more trouble than it’s worth.”

“Except the bus takes forever and I don’t see how I can ride my bike up to Algonquin once the snow gets serious.”

Mrs. Doucette reached over and took hold of her son’s arm above the elbow. He jerked away. She reached again and he whirled around. “What! Stop plaguing me!”

“Your sister’s home, Roger. Act human. Acknowledge her existence.”

“I acknowledge your existence,” he said to Sam, and turned back to his game.

“Cute, isn’t he?” Sam’s mother was a small, slim woman, still attractive, who worked as a nutritionist for the school board, overseeing cafeteria offerings at the local high schools. It wasn’t as exhausting as her previous life as a chef, but it still left her looking tired at the end of the day. “I wish your father would get home,” she said wistfully. “I don’t know why he insists on wandering off in the bush.”

“Keeps him in touch with the spirit world.”

Her mother laughed. “He doesn’t believe a word of that stuff. I don’t know why he’s always going on about it.” She picked up a TV remote and clicked on the countertop television.

The murders were still the top news story. They showed footage from the house and stuff from the government dock that Sam had already seen. When the announcer gave the names of the victims, Sam thought, Yeah, the woman had an accent. The announcer finished by saying the police were asking anyone with information to call the Crime Stoppers number at the bottom of the screen.

“What can you possibly tell them?” Randall wanted to know. “You don’t have any information. You didn’t see anything. And obviously you’re not going to save any lives at this point.”

“Except maybe mine,” Sam said. “He saw me, Randall.”

“He didn’t get close enough. He saw your car from a distance, you said. In the dark. There aren’t even any street lights out there.”

“There’s one at the hydro turnoff—right where I was parked.”

Randall was driving home. She could hear traffic and his car radio in the background.

“Sam, you’re not calling me from home, are you?”

“I told you, I lost my cell. I’m afraid to use my car, and there’s no pay phone for about three miles.”

“Jesus. You’re really playing fast and loose with my life here. I told you I’d call you.”

“But you didn’t. If that maniac has my cellphone, he’s gonna find me for sure. This is a guy who cuts off heads, Randall. I’m fucking scared.”

“There’s no reason to think he’s coming after you. He’s probably not even in the country anymore. He’s probably gone back to Chechnya or Brooklyn or wherever the hell he’s from.”

“He didn’t sound foreign. The woman did, but he didn’t. See, that’s something the cops don’t know. And if he does have my cellphone, maybe they can find him with it. You know, trace it.”

“Just sit tight, Sam. Let the cops do their job.”

“Well, when am I going to see you?”

“Not for a while, obviously. I mean, I don’t feel like sneaking into an empty house right now, do you?”

“We don’t have to sleep together. I just want to be near you. I need you, Randall. Don’t you care at all?”

“Of course I do. We just have to be careful with this, Sam. We can’t afford to go playing hero. There’s too much at stake. Okay, I’m turning onto my street. Don’t call me. You know I’m crazy about you, Sam. I’ll call your home number as soon as it’s a good time.”

Sam tried to distract herself for the rest of the evening by working on Loreena Moon. A series of night scenes, Loreena’s dark, lithe figure vivid against the snow. Moonlight through trees and the bright silver tips of her arrows. Green-eyed hellcat on the quest for justice. Every once in a while Sam could hear her brother exclaim at some score or setback on his cyber-battlefield.

Her mother went to bed early with a migraine. Sam shut herself in the bathroom with the gauze and rubbing alcohol. The cut on her knee was beginning to close at the ends, but in the middle it was still open. It would leave a scar, and the first time she wore shorts her mother would want to know how it happened and why she never mentioned it. It was one thing to have the private story world of Loreena to escape to now and again, but Sam didn’t like how her own life seemed to be splitting in two.

She was getting into bed when the phone rang, and her heart immediately started to pound as if she’d been going all out on the treadmill. She reached for it from the bed and knocked the handset to the floor. She had to get under the desk to find it, and her knee sent a sting all the way up her body.

“Hello?” Her voice to her own ears like the voice of a timid, fearful person. “Hello?”

The line was open, she could tell by the sound. There was someone there.

“Hello?”

A few more seconds of dead air and then the click of disconnection.

Her mother’s voice from the hall. “Who is it, Sam? Who’s calling at this hour?”

“No one. Wrong number.”

“Thank God. I thought for a second your father was in an accident or something.”

Sam lay in the dark, pressing gauze on her knee. You’re quivering, she said. You’re actually quivering. Her black cat was outlined on the windowsill against the blind, dark ears angled and alert.