“From Paris,” Larysa said.

“I thought you sounded French.”

“Sometime people say I talk like Eastern European, but people with good taste always know I am French.”

“Je parle un peut!” Mrs. Brennan said.

“Oh, very nice,” Larysa said. “You are a very good French speaker!”

“Merci.” The kettle boiled, and Mrs. Brennan turned her attention to it. Larysa looked back down on the baby. Just beyond the upper rim of the bouncy chair, she saw Terry sitting utterly still in his chair, his eyes on her, his mouth frozen in a half-made expression. “So what does Terry tutor you in?”

“Law,” said Larysa.

“Law?” said Mrs. Brennan. “Since when do you teach law, Terry?”

“Law of averages,” said Larysa.

“Oh, math! That’s not law.”

“Law of jungle.”

“Oh, ho,” said Mrs. Brennan now, but there was finally something there, Larysa heard it, the first inkling in the woman’s voice. She moved away from the preparation area and back toward her baby.

“I like a cheese toastie,” Larysa said. Mrs. Brennan leaned over and smelled the baby.

“Oh my, what a rude little baby!” she cried. “Filling his diaper in front of a guest!” The baby had smelled neutral, even nice. But Mrs. Brennan scooped him up and took him out of the room. The instant she was gone, Brennan sprung to his feet and had her forearm twisted up in his fist.

“What the heck are you doing here? How’d you even get here?”

She wrenched her arm away from him. “Tell her come back, Terry. Baby can stay in the other room. But she should be here for this, no?”

“I don’t know what you want, but whatever it is, it can be dealt with the next time I see you.”

“Sure. You think you ever see me again after today? You’re very not smart, Terry.” She showed him the folded hunting knife. “Tell her come in, or I put this into your eye right now and cut it out. Then I go find the baby. Cut baby up.”

“Hey, Colleen! Come back in here.”

“I’m just settling the baby!”

“The baby better wait.”

Colleen crept back into the room. “Whatever this is, I don’t need to be any part of it.”

“It’s nothing,” said Terry. “She just wants a refund because I’m not, I guess I’m not the best tutor for her specialty. How much is the refund, Kitty?”

Then Colleen saw the folding knife in Larysa’s hand. She took a moment to categorize it and put her hand over her mouth.

“She’s going to hurt little Stephen!”

“No, she’s not,” said Terry Brennan.

His wife stood there on one side of the kitchen counter, trapped in her terror. Larysa said, “Terry have something which belongs to me.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Just remind me again what the figure is?”

“Oh, Terry,” Larysa said, laughing brightly. Of course he didn’t have it. But she wasn’t done. She was here now. She said, “Are you sure? Don’t you pick up something of mine?”

“Ah! Ha ha!” Terry Brennan said, urgently remembering something that wasn’t there. “That! Of course, I forgot I had that. Now where did I put it?”

The blade came out with a metallic whack and instantly she had the point at the side of his neck. Mrs. Brennan shrieked very briefly, like a gun going off. Larysa grabbed a handful of hair from the back of Terry’s head and pushed the tip of the knife in, bending his throat back. He swallowed. A little dot of blood appeared under the point. “Go and bend down on the counter. I am moving you there. Careful.”

“I have whatever you need,” he said.

“Terry?” said the wife quietly. “Who is she?”

“She’s from the special needs group, Colleen. It’s gonna be okay. I know her. Right, Kitty? We’re going to talk about this.”

“Yes, absolutely we talk,” she said. Brennan was braced against the countertop, his arms at his sides, and she held the knife against the softness under his chin. “Tell Colleen Brennan what it is you have.”

“Please, Kitty.”

“Tell her what it is. Then you take me to it, and this is over. I go.”

“Terry, you can tell me,” Mrs. Brennan said, her voice wet and anguished. “It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. Just tell her what she wants to know and we’ll deal with the rest of it.”

“Your wife is beautiful,” said Larysa, “she has good thought. You should listen to her.”

The baby began squalling in another room.

“Stay,” Larysa said when Mrs. Brennan twitched. “He is almost ready for tell you.”

The eye that faced her, in the side of Terry Brennan’s head, roved wildly, like a spooked horse, and he said, “I’ll tell her about it all, Kitty, I’ll confess it. But I still don’t know what it is you think I have …”

“I know,” she said, “I know you don’t have it.”

“Good.”

“And I know you will tell her everything.”

“I will! I will!”

“Tell me what, Terry?” said the wife, and Larysa pulled him up off the counter, and then, her hand still on his shoulder, she extended him backwards and drove the knife deep into the middle of his back. This was a knife for quartering game. Brennan collapsed like someone had cut his strings, gasping air inwards the whole way down. She turned to his wife, who was as motionless as a photograph.

“How do you know if a man is telling you the truth?” Larysa asked her.

Colleen Brennan’s stunned eyes ticked over to the stranger. “What?” she said.

Terry Brennan was quivering against the back of the counter. “How do you know when a man tells the truth!” she shouted.

“No, no, no –” the wife gibbered, and Larysa put the tip of the knife into her husband’s throat and pulled it across.

“Answer is: you don’t.”

] 18 [

Mid-afternoon

Hazel sent a text to Wingate – she figured a text might buy him a few more minutes of vacation than a call would – and put her phone back in her pocket as she went through the door to the sound of wailing. It was almost too raw to be human, and she realized it was a baby. The man’s wife was sitting at the kitchen table, trying to calm the infant, but there’d been too much sudden activity all around him and there would be no settling the baby down.

Mrs. Brennan rocked him in her arms, but she was silent, her eyes focused on something in another room. Spere’s SOCO team was already there when Hazel arrived, and it was ranging throughout the house, collecting samples, taking photographs, bagging items, dusting, swabbing, logging. When she came into the kitchen, Mrs. Brennan looked up at her briefly, confused. A PC from Fort Leonard had arrived before she or Spere’s crew had gotten here, a woman whose nametag said Quinn. The movements of the SOCO officers were ghostly in the background.

The girl had been here. This was all Hazel knew. But she had a name now: Kitty. The man had called her Kitty. She’d appeared at the house around three in the afternoon and half an hour later, she was gone, and Terry Brennan had been medevacked to Toronto Western for emergency surgery. But no one thought he’d make it.

The baby had settled a little now, his snuffles coming spasmodically, and Mrs. Brennan was whispering to him and stroking his head.

“Mrs. Brennan?” Hazel said softly. “Do you think we can talk now?”

“I thought she was going to … kill Stephen.”

“How do you think your husband knew this Kitty?” Mrs. Brennan looked up, startled. Hazel put a hand on her knee. “Colleen? It’s okay. There’s no need to be afraid.”

“When is the hospital going to call?”

“Soon. They’re doing what they can. Was Terry involved in anything unusual you know of?” she asked, moving deftly over her omissions. “Or was he absent from the home a lot for unexplained reasons?”

“No … no. Terry taught math at Gilchrist Middle. She said she was a student of his. That he tutored her.”

“Do you think that’s true?”

“No,” she said quietly, wonderingly.

“Mrs. Brennan, did he ever go to Queesik Bay? You know, the reserve? It has a casino on it?”