A Year Less a Day (16 page)

Wilson kneels to peer into the hole and his face lights up. “Gotcha,” he says under his breath, then calls, “Well done,” to the officers standing around.

An hour later, Noreen stands over Ruth as she slumps snivelling at a desk in the interview room, while Wilson is in the next room watching her on a video
screen and combing his hair in preparation for his performance. “Right, Dave,” he tells Brougham, “keep the camera rolling. Let's see what the lovely lady has to say about this.”

The interview room door opens and Ruth cringes at the sound. Noreen has softened under the heat of the camera and is soothing, “Don't worry, Ruth. No one's going to hurt you,” but Ruth is so infused with fear that she cowers like a wounded animal in a leg trap as Wilson enters and towers over her.

“Good morning, Mrs. Jackson,” he begins solicitously as he hams for a future audience of twelve. “I am going to show you something, and I want you to tell me what it is.”

Ruth's eyes go the floor. She knows what's coming. From the moment Trina told her she'd been arrested for stepping on the toes of the forensic officers at the café, she knew her luck would give out and they would unearth her secret.

“What is this, Mrs. Jackson?” Wilson asks as he lays a folded document on the table in front of her.

Ruth's eyes stay down, though her whimper turns into a continuous pitiable whine.

Wilson has no pity and shrewdly lets the moment build before he takes a breath and tries again. “Mrs. Jackson. I'm asking you to explain what it is that I've placed on the table in front of you. Would you please do that?”

“Insurance,” she mumbles without lifting her head.

“Sorry,” he says. “I missed that. Would you speak up, please?”

Ruth can't speak up. The nightmare she has endured for two days has turned into reality and casts a pall over the rest of her life. “It's insurance,” she mumbles again.

“What kind of insurance?”

“Life insurance.”

“And this insurance was on whose life?” carries on Wilson, leading Ruth by a nose-ring through an interrogation maze for the benefit of tidiness. The answers are all printed in bold black and white on the insurance policy on the table, but Wilson wants blood. “Whose life?” he repeats, but Ruth can't bring herself to answer.

“Jordan Artemus Jackson, it says here,” prompts Wilson. “Who is Jordan, Mrs. Jackson?”

“My husband.”

“Correct. Now I want you to look carefully at ...”

And so it goes, detail after pointless detail, page after page—a dripping tap that threatens to drown Ruth in anguish and remorse. There can be no dispute. Ruth Jackson took out a life insurance policy on her husband's life to the tune of one hundred thousand dollars just days after he slipped from the Coffee Shoppe's radar screen.

“Look at the date please, Mrs. Jackson,” continues Wilson, the scent of victory lifting his voice. “What is that date?”

“September nineteenth.”

“Yes. September the nineteenth of this year. Just over three months ago—but only just.”

“I know what you're thinking ...” sobs Ruth, but Wilson cuts her off.

“Just one more question, Mrs. Jackson, and I want you to think very carefully before you answer. Ready?”

Ruth nods, but she already knows the question, and knows that she has no satisfactory response.

Wilson pauses for a second to give the camera an opportunity to savour the moment, then he gloats, “Wasn't the nineteenth of September almost a week after you claim that your husband tested positive for cancer?”

“Yes, but ...”

“And wasn't the nineteenth of September almost a week after your husband was last seen by anyone but you?”

“But ...”

“One second, Mrs. Jackson,” says Wilson, holding up his hand while he prepares for his big finish. “Would you please read this line for me?”

Ruth knows the line well enough to recite it from memory, but she stutters and sniffles her way through it in a small voice. “This policy shall not take effect until ninety days following its acceptance.”

The trap has shut and Ruth gives in. “I knew I'd get caught,” she is crying as Wilson informs her that, in addition to drug trafficking and various assaults, she will also be charged with fraudulently obtaining life insurance; then Sergeant Brougham scuttles in, sidles up to Wilson, and whispers in his ear.

“Oh, shit,” mutters Wilson and switches off the microphone as he turns to Ruth.

“Well, apparently you now have a lawyer, Mrs. Jackson.”

Ruth Jackson doesn't have just any lawyer. Trina has hired Wilson Hammett, known as “The Hammer” to constables and crooks alike—for good reason. He may be small and prematurely balding, but he sits on a throne above the Vancouver underworld and skims the scum off the top. Common murderers and everyday rapists rarely interest him, or can afford his fees, and he seeks out the headline grabbers. Nothing gets him off the golf course faster than a bent politician, a kiddie-porn merchant, or a whiff of heavy-handed police tactics.

“They've beaten her to a pulp,” Trina had exaggerated, as she'd handed over the first instalment of a thousand dollars.

“This could get very expensive,” Hammett had warned with a heavy lisp, as he took the cheque. “Are you quite sure about this?”

“Quite sure. It's my fault. If I hadn't peeked I would never have known he'd gone, and she wouldn't be in this mess.”

“Well, I'm not sure ...”

“Plus, I was the one who took her to kick boxing class.”

“Well, I don't know if you should blame ...”

“But I do. And if I hadn't put the guinea pig in the oven ... Oh, never mind. You probably wouldn't understand.”

Ten minutes later, Ruth is still crying as she is led into the visiting room, surrounded by a posse. Noreen and Annie have been reinforced by a male officer, and as Ruth sits, the three fold their arms and make a wall. “Stop snivelling,” barks Noreen. “You're not a kid.”

“I can't afford a lawyer,” Ruth whimpers as Hammett enters with his young assistant and sits opposite her.

“It's legal aid,” he says, exactly as Trina had suggested, then he turns to the officers. “I'll call you if I need anything.”

“She's very violent ...” starts Noreen, but Hammett waves her off.

“Mrs. Jackson will be fine, I'm sure.”

“What happened to your face?” he asks as she sits, but Ruth waits for the “click” of the door behind her before saying, “I couldn't stop crying. Nobody believes me. The doctor thinks I'm crazy.”

“Miss Dawson will just take a few photos of you,” says Hammett and he has a sly glance at the
room's surveillance camera as his assistant takes out a miniature digital camera. As expected, Noreen blusters back in with her sidekicks and starts bleating about photographic regulations. Miss Dawson swings the lens to catch the enraged matron and has the camera snatched from her hand. Hammett slowly stands and fills the room with his energy as his lisping voice angrily sibilates, “I suggest you give my assistant that back immediately, unless you wish to add a further assault charge to those we are already contemplating.”

Noreen backs off, but Hammett hasn't finished, “And tell your Inspector that I am entitled to a private conversation with my client; that means I expect that surveillance camera turned off immediately.”

“I've spoken to Inspector Wilson,” Hammett tells Ruth, once he's listened attentively to her side of the story. “They'll point to the insurance policy, and they'll say, ‘Why did you hide it under the floorboards?'”

“I didn't want Jordan to think I was trying to make money off of his death.”

“Fair enough, but it seems that everyone has a problem with Jordan's cancer.”

“My husband had only a few weeks to live. Why won't anyone believe me?”

“I want to believe you, but you've got to give me something to go on. Who was his doctor? Which hospital? What kind of cancer?”

“I don't know,” she whimpers.

“Ruth, It's not the most credible defence I've come across, and what's your explanation for his disappearance?”

“I didn't kill him.”

“Ruth. I'm your lawyer. No one knows better than me that you didn't kill him. I'd stake my own life on that. But the judge might think I have a vested interest.”

“What's going to happen to me?” she whimpers.

“As it stands, all they've really got is a little blood on a knife and the fact that you took out a hefty insurance policy on someone who's vanished. Your next court appearance is tomorrow. I'll demand bail, but I may as well warn you,” he shakes his head, “I don't see it happening.”

“But I've got to get out. Jordan needs me.”

As Ruth cries her way back to the cell, Wilson and Brougham are watching on the bank of surveillance screens in the jailer's office.

“What do you think of her, Dave?” asks Wilson.

“If my wife blubbered that much I'd probably take out life insurance on her.”

“I spoke to the insurance broker,” continues Wilson, ignoring the quip. “She didn't mention any cancer—even signed a form saying there was nothing wrong with him. The broker said the only thing that bothered her was that she couldn't claim if he died in the first three months.”

“So you think it was premeditated?”

“Nah. Probably got into a fight over money or another woman. I think he was already dead by the time she took out the policy, then she realized that she had to keep him alive for three months before she could claim. Look at the way she'd hidden it. If that Button woman hadn't noticed his bed was empty she would've waited until his body was found and neatly buried, then dragged the policy out and laughed at us.”

“But where's the body?”

Wilson has a grandstand view of the mountains from his windows and he peers thoughtfully into the snowy peaks as they blush in the setting sun. “He's probably up there somewhere, in the forest or under the snow. A hiker will probably find what's left of him in the spring, unless she comes clean.”

There is no view from Ruth's barred window, and the dark shadow of a high brick wall leans in on her, turning day to dusk.

“My eyes hurt,” she whimpers to the evening officer. “Would you turn off the light, please?”

As the light dims, Ruth lays in the quiet gloom surrounded by the shards of her life, and she stares at the remnants of her nails and prays for salvation from a god that she doesn't have any faith in.
Why is this happening to me?
she wants to know.
What did I do to deserve this?

The sins of the father shall be visited on the son
, replies the god inside her mind—her only god; the god who had turned her from her mother's course; the god who had steered her resolutely along the path of honesty and integrity, until the day she had veered off track and fraudulently taken out life insurance on her husband.

Why did you do it?
her god challenges.
You knew you'd be caught
.

Why me?
she questions, demanding an individual answer to a universal question. But her god has no answer; has never had an answer. The answers have always come from outside, even in childhood. If she'd never actually heard anyone say, “Poor little devil. She doesn't stand a chance,” she'd seen it in their faces as she'd lined up with her mother at food banks and welfare offices. And she'd seen it in the faces of relatives and friends as her mother used her as a bargaining chip for a
bed. And, most often, she'd seen it in the angered faces of her cohorts at school as they'd punched and kicked; “fat ugly people wearing glasses deserve to be squashed like slugs,” their prissy, perfect little faces had sneered.

Why me?
she continues to ask as her mind spins in a turmoil of anguish.
Why does everything go wrong for me?

What about Jordan, bitch? Do you think he's enjoying this?

What's happened to him? Where is he?

Don't pretend you don't know.

He's slunk away to die like a wounded cat.

You know that's not true. Who are you trying to kid? Think; when did you last see him?

I can't remember. You're confusing me.

He wasn't there in the apartment, was he?

Yes. He was.

So when did you last touch him; feel him; make love to him?

I can't remember.

“Jackson. Are you all right, Jackson?” A voice from outside tries breaking through, but Ruth blots it out as her mind whirls with a notion that finally threatens to drag her under.

Had he been there?
she asks herself, as hands gently prod and a voice calls, “Mrs. Jackson—Ruth. Are you all right?”

What if he had been merely a mirage? An apparition of his former self still lingering in his room? His spirit still haunting me
?

“Ruth. Come on. Wake up, Ruth,” continues the voice, worriedly.

Nobody else ever saw him—in three months.

He always went out the back door to the taxi.

Did you see him?

No ...

Neither did the taxi driver. Don't you find that strange?

He was going for treatment.

“Mrs. Jackson. Wake up now!” shouts another voice.

What treatment? Which doctor? Which hospital?

I don't know. You're confusing me.

Do you see him now?

No.

Are you sure? Look deep; look really deep in the darkest corner. What do you see?

“Quick. Call an ambulance. I think she's having a seizure.”

The drizzle has stopped overnight in Liverpool, but the pain in Bliss's leg is still dragging him down as he and Daphne head to the Beatles museum from their hotel in the morning. They had been late to bed and late rising, thanks to Daphne's desire to visit the hotel's nightclub, where a Beatles tribute band had knocked out passable impressions of Fab-Four favourites. Daphne, showing more knee than most, had bopped her way through “Twist and Shout,” “Hippy Hippy Shake,” and most of the other chart-toppers until after one a.m., while Bliss had been forced to sit on the sidelines nursing his throbbing leg.