I was at the foot of the steps leading to the front door. I began looking for my keys.

Hayashida stopped at the end of my walk and called my name again.

“What?” I turned to look at him, the key in my hand.

“Somebody will probably want to talk to you tomorrow. It won’t be me. Is there anything I can do for you now?”

“Yeah, there is.” I pushed the key in the lock and twisted it. “Walk through my house and make sure there’s no man inside, would you?”

“I HELPED PREPARE THE REPORT.” Hayashida was sitting across from me at the kitchen table, both hands around a cup of black coffee. “About Gabe.”

“The one that says he committed suicide.”

“And the forensics report too, the lab tests. They all fit.” He stared into the coffee as he spoke. “He’s alone, some witnesses arrive within minutes of hearing the shot, the gun is there, recently fired, the coroner did a paraffin test and found gunshot residue on Gabe’s hand, and the bullet … forensics confirms it came from his gun.”

“How do they know that?”

“You compare the one that … the one that killed Gabe …”

“The one they dug out of his brain.”

“Yes. Look, we worked on the forensics, Mel Holiday and I. We took the sample here, completed the form, sent it off to the lab in Toronto—and those guys are good, by the way. They compare both projectiles, put them under a microscope—”

“And match up the rifling marks. I know all that stuff. I watched Law & Order. But nobody explained how a guy, and I mean Gabe, winds up with his gun in his hand and naked, out on the beach.”

Hayashida looked embarrassed. “There have been some ideas kicked around about him being naked there.”

“Because he was waiting for me to show up and get naked with him. Do you want pictures, or will a simple Anglo-Saxon word do?”

“That’s not important.”

“Yes, it is. Who waits on a blanket in the bushes for his wife, his girlfriend, his lover, whoever, to come along, with a loaded gun in his hand—a gun that Gabe wouldn’t even put together in the house? Gabe would take the damn thing apart in the car and carry it into the house like that, and put the ammunition clip back when he was in the car again. He hated carrying a loaded weapon, on duty or off. And he never carried one off duty.”

“I know, I know.” Hayashida nodded his head in sympathy. “But you heard Sadowsky back there—”

“Who?”

“Constable Sadowsky. Serge Sadowsky. We were sitting in his patrol car. You heard him say that people who are determined to do what Gabe did, they’re unpredictable. They become obsessive, they change their patterns of behaviour.” He glanced at his watch, took a long swallow of coffee, and stood up. “It’s tough, I know,” he said, looking at me. “I’ve never gone through it, having somebody close to me kill themselves. But I’ve been there when we told their wives or husbands or kids or whoever, ‘Hey, your mom or your dad or your kid committed suicide,’ and they usually don’t believe it. How can they? You know what they say? They say the same things you’re saying. ‘He didn’t do it, he couldn’t do that, he seemed so happy.’ That’s what they say. Eventually they come around, because they spot the pattern or see the clues they hadn’t recognized before.”

I stood up and followed him out of the kitchen toward the front door. “Thanks,” I said. “For checking out the house for me. Did you look under the bed upstairs?”

Hayashida grew serious. “No.” He began to climb the stairs, rather eagerly, it seemed to me. “You want me to?”

“Forget it,” I said. “There’s so much dust that anybody hiding there would’ve choked to death by now. And thanks for talking about Gabe. I’m the only person who doesn’t believe he committed suicide, and it’s taking me a while to accept it.”

Hayashida took a step toward the front door, then looked back at me. “Actually, you’re not the only one.”

“Who else?”

He looked away, considering the question. Then, “You know Mel Holiday?”

“Of course I know Mel.” Of course I screwed Mel, was how the words echoed in my head.

“He’s starting to feel like you do. He’s telling some of the guys at Central that maybe Gabe didn’t kill himself, that maybe we’re not looking hard enough to prove he didn’t. He thinks Gabe was killed by somebody Gabe was investigating, or maybe somebody Gabe had put away or had charged. Keeps saying we’ve gotta keep digging. He says we’re overlooking something, somebody, that Gabe had been investigating on his own. A drug dealer they found shot in an alley, a couple of guys running a car theft ring, maybe Mike what’s his name, he’s with the Mafia. He’s telling Walter Freeman, you know Walter? He’s telling Walter to start looking at that.”

“And nobody believes him?” I leaned against the stair railing. “Mel’s trying to get you guys to listen to him, and nobody believes him?”

“It’s like …” Hayashida began. Then, “It’s not impossible, I guess, but there has to be proof, and so far there’s nothing. Just his opinion and yours. But I’ll hand it to Mel, he keeps digging. He’s following the forensics, asking for more tests, and pissing off Walter Freeman. You okay?”

I told him I was okay.

He pointed to the deadbolt. “Make sure that’s in place.”

“HELLO?”

It had taken six rings, but I was damned if I was going to sleep without talking to him. “Mel?”

He paused as though trying to decide if that was his name. “Josie?”

“Yeah.” I wanted to hear his voice. “You know a detective named Hayashida?”

“What about him? Jesus, Josie, it’s nearly three o’clock.”

“He just left here. Hayashida, he just left my place—”

“What’s going on?”

“He walked me back from the lift bridge. A guy died there tonight.”

“On the bridge?”

“Under it. You’ll hear about it when you go in today. I think he knew something about Gabe, this guy they found under the bridge. Nobody else believes me, but he wanted to talk to me when I went there with Gabe’s ashes—”

“Gabe’s what?”

I was tired. I was tired because it was almost sunrise, I was tired because I felt I had burned off every ounce of adrenaline in my body over the past few hours, and I was tired of trying to explain the world as I saw it to a bunch of men who called me “lady” and wanted to watch me from the garden shed and look under my bed. “Forget it,” I said. “I’ll explain later.”

“So why did you call me?”

“Because Hayashida told me you don’t believe Gabe committed suicide. He didn’t, did he, Mel?”

“Maybe he didn’t.” His voice changed, and I could picture him lying back in his bed. I knew that bed. Once. I knew the apartment. A high-rise in the far end of the city. A balcony facing west at the sunsets. An Ansel Adams print on the wall in the living room. A brass bed. “I’ve got the same doubts you have. He was doing some stuff on his own, talking to some rough people. People who could do something like this.”

“Thanks, Mel.” I waited, listening to his breathing. Then I said goodbye, hung up, and climbed the stairs to bed.

13.

With planning that’s not typical of me, especially when I’ve gone to bed after three a.m., I unplugged the telephone before falling asleep, and it was mid-morning when I woke to the sound of someone hammering on my front door.

I rolled out of bed and slipped on a green silk robe Gabe bought me last Christmas. Passing the mirror, I paused long enough to fluff my hair, wipe the sleep out of my eyes, and wish I had time to cover various wrinkles, but the thump-thump-thump on the front door resumed.

“Just a minute,” I shouted down the stairs, and when I reached the door I opened it without checking to see if it was Mel or a newspaper reporter or a door-to-door religion salesman. It was none of them.