(2012) Cross-Border Murder (39 page)

The phone rang. Symansky picked up the receiver.

“It’s for you.”

It was Phil Ryan.

“If you don’t want Symansky to know what I’m going to tell you, just listen and call me back later. I’m at home.”

I listened.

I did not return to my chair.

There seemed to be no point in keeping Symansky in the dark. “They caught up with Gooden,” I said, “he had got as far as Alberta in a rented car. There was a police chase. He went off the road. He’s in a hospital. A preliminary report suggests he will be lucky to come out of it a paraplegic.”

We both stood there staring at the space between us rather than at each other. Maybe justice of a sort prevails eventually, I thought, but I wasn’t sure equity or fairness was necessarily part of the bargain. Not for Montini surely. And not for Hendricks either. I moved towards the door.

To my retreating back, Symansky said softly, “I really have been trying to make amends to some extent, you know. I hope you believe that.” There was just the hint of a hunger for recognition in the statement. A better person than myself might have responded more generously, but the most I could do was let my head give a very slight nod.

We were all trying to make amends, I thought, but I didn’t feel that any of us had yet merited a pat on the back.

As I headed out of the office I glanced at a large picture on the wall near the door. It had obviously been put there for people to admire on their way out. He and Stella were smiling at a ground breaking ceremony for a new Liberal Arts building. Outside I went and sat on the same park bench we had used at our previous meeting.

Phil had told me on the phone things I had not relayed to Symansky. I had felt no desire to buttress his ego. Gooden had rented a car at a downtown agency using an assumed identity and a different address and phone number. And someone had probably provided him with the necessary documents and had driven him there. The clerk had recognized Gooden’s description when the police had made their routine inquiries. The clerk was able to give them a description of the car and its license plate. He had also confirmed that someone had waited outside in another car until Gooden had transferred his suitcases to the rental vehicle. It was all police procedural from there.

But there had been an ironic twist. One which had pleased Phil no end. When the police had checked out the address and the telephone number Gooden had used, they had run into an unlisted telephone number: but one which had clearly belonged to an anonymous federal government agency. Leclair and Ryan had sniffed CSIS, and it had made Leclair angry. He had quickly issued an armed and dangerous all points bulletin. He had wanted it out there across the country before CSIS could interfere. Maybe it had worked. But then maybe CSIS didn’t really care that much. Would I ever know? Could I ever find out? I did not like institutions like CSIS. But Gooden had killed for personal reasons, not institutional ones. I felt sure of that. Gooden, like most killers, was self-centered. Loyalty to institutions was not part of his make-up.

Sitting on that park bench I thought about my father. He had been close to fifty when I was born, and so I was in my late teens when he died. What I remembered was something he had said a year or two before a heart attack had felled him.

“Old people come to know that life is truly a great mystery. And that’s probably a good thing too. Answers would only diminish everything to what can be contained in our brains.” He had smiled in a bewildered way. “The Greeks a long time ago were probably right. They knew some questions are mortal ones, and we have to ask them, but the answers belong only to the gods. I’ve learned not to fret too much about it anymore. I just carry on day to day repairing whatever I can.” At the time he had been busy releading the colored panes of glass in the front door of the house I now live in. But the door and the glass were changed two years after he died. A pity.

With that memory of my father in mind, I came to the conclusion that Symansky was probably right. It was time to stop chasing answers to all the devious questions surrounding Gooden. Like who was really the villain in all of this? Leave the answer to God or to the Devil or to the historians who are interested in the big riddles. As Hendricks had reminded me: stick to the small lives of ordinary people.

In the distance I saw a telephone booth. Had I not thought about my father and Hendricks, I might have phoned Ryan and relayed Symansky’s observations.

But my father had planted a perception in me those many years ago: and Hendricks’ death had in a way awakened it. It had simply taken a long time to flower. I phoned Portland to say that I was on my way.