His body stiffens. His gaze bites into Mal’s. His lawyer moves quickly toward the door, opens it wide. “Jon?”
He starts toward his lawyer and the open door.
“Who is Mia, Jon?”
His eyes flicker. His features tighten and his mouth flattens. His lawyer reaches quickly for his arm, refocusing her client on herself, and they step out into the corridor.
Mal leans back in her chair. As she watches them go, her mobile rings. It’s Benoit.
She connects the call.
“They’ve got her, Mal. The divers have found her and the rug. She’s deep down, trapped under rusted metal debris at the bottom. Lots of silt. She must have been pushed there by the current. They’re strategizing how to safely bring her up now.”
AFTERSHOCKS
Mal feels flattened and tired. The divers were not able to free the body before nightfall due to tidal-current windows and visibility issues, but they did bring up the rug and a white sneaker with an orange stripe that matches the one found next to the king-size bed at the Glass House. Mal is now home for the night. She sits beside Peter on the sofa in their crowded little living room, surrounded by bookshelves, but her imagination is filled with mental images of Kit Darling’s body trapped deep underwater, covered with silt, her soft blonde hair flowing about her face in the darkness. Peter stares at the TV. They have the news on. A cat curls in his lap. He also looks tired, Mal thinks. Her husband seems more vacant than usual tonight. She feels a bolt of loneliness and moves closer to him. She places her hand on his thigh. “You doing okay?”
He glances at her. For a moment he looks confused.
She smiles. “Had enough supper?”
He frowns, then nods. “I think so. How was your day?”
Peter already asked this when she arrived home, and she told him about the body finally being found. She explained how the divers would go down and try again first thing tomorrow. But now she just says, “It was fine. I’m looking forward to the early retirement, though.” It’s a lie. But also a necessity. Peter clearly needs someone at home. She could hire a caregiver—Mal thinks suddenly of Beulah stuck alone upstairs in her home with her carers. Peter and Mal long ago promised theywould be there for each other when times got rough. In sickness and in health. And times are going to get rougher much sooner than Mal ever anticipated. Her mind dwells on Beulah. She decides she’ll pay the old woman a visit once this case is wrapped up, and thank her for making that 911 call.
The newscast flashes onto a scene near the ADMAC construction site.
“Oh, here it is.” She reaches for the remote and quickly bumps up the sound.
A female reporter stands under klieg lights in the darkness near the cordoned-off entrance to the site. She holds a mike.
“The search for missing maid Kit Darling appears to have come to a sad conclusion earlier this evening. A source close to the investigation says divers located a woman’s body underwater near the area where Darling’s yellow Subaru was pulled out of the Burrard Inlet. The body is trapped in debris at considerable depth. The team is currently devising a strategy to safely bring the remains up, hopefully tomorrow.”
The camera switches to the anchor in the newsroom. “Pamela, are the police saying anything more about other aspects of the investigation?”
“At the moment, all we know is that ex-Olympic skier Jon Rittenberg and his wife have been brought in for questioning. They have since been released. Forensic evidence from the crime scene at the so-called Glass House is still being processed. I imagine results could take a while. But once the body has been retrieved, an autopsy will be performed, which should yield additional clues about what happened on that violent and fateful night at a luxury mansion on West Vancouver’s waterfront.”
Beulah watches reporter Pamela Dorfmann on her small television set in her room.
She feels profoundly sad to hear they’ve found Kit’s body. As images of skier Jon Rittenberg and his wife, Daisy, flash onto the television screen, Beulah knows without a doubt that this is the same couple she saw getting out of the Audi.
Beulah is pleased she dialed 911. She didn’treallythink Horton could have hurt anyone, but she’s relieved to hear other people are being questioned and not her son. She’s seen Horton behind the hedge on a few occasions, watching the maid working next door. She also saw Horton spying on the ladies having lunch by the pool. She’s been worried about Horton for quite a while.
She rests her head back in her chair and closes her eyes, feeling content to have had some purpose, to have played an important and exciting role. But she will miss the maid. Beulah will miss her happy wave and smile. As Beulah drifts into an opioid slumber, she tells herself it’s silly to believe she’ll see people again in a heavenly afterlife. But she does like to imagine she might bump into Kit the maid and get to know her properly this time.
Beulah drifts deeper. Part of her knows tonight is the night she will not wake from her slumber. Come morning she will be gone, and this house will be Horton’s.
Boon enters a small and brightly lit gas station supermarket near the town of Hope. It’s pitch dark outside and pummeling with rain. He’s come down from a remote cabin in the mountains to purchase supplies. He fled to the cabin after those cops came to speak to him. He has zero intention of going in to give a DNA sample, or to talk to the police. He could see where their minds were going.
As he puts tins of beans into his shopping basket, he catches sight of the small television screen behind the store counter. He stills as a chyron flashes across the bottom.
POLICE DIVERS FIND BODY.
Boon drops the tin he was holding. It rolls beneath the shelves. Fixated on the television screen, he slowly walks closer to the counter.
“Can you turn that up?” he asks the cashier.
The cashier glances at the TV, reaches for a remote, and turns up the sound.
