Tonight, though, he actually scribbled a memo to himself on the palm of his left hand. A baby was coming. There was even more to protect.
He unlocked the front door and entered briskly, as if he had a system to disarm by punching in a number code within the time permitted. The house was warmer than the night outside, though not quite as stuffy as Ted had expected. Perhaps Karin had left the central air on low. The first summer after moving in, they’d conserved energy by turning up the thermostat and just opening upstairs windows in summer. As their store of treasure grew, however, they had started closing and locking everything whenever they left the house.
His mouth still dry from the Riesling, Ted went to the kitchen for a club soda. The light on the answering machine was flashing. Three messages. The first was from a carpet cleaning company, the second a resort on Georgian Bay. The third was puzzling.
“Hi, Karin. It’s Daddy-o. Got your message from 400 and Finch and reckon you should be here pretty soon. If not, you’re going to miss that midnight swim. I’ve called your cell and there’s no answer, so I’m thinking you and it aren’t in the same place. Like maybe it’s in the car and you’re back in the house. Ted’s phone is turned off, so he’s no help. Clue me in if you’re staying down overnight, and I’ll stop listening to the radio station with that jolly joe that reports the traffic pileups.” The time stamp was 11:15 p.m., just before Ted had got in.
He put down his drink and listened to the empty house. The reference to a midnight swim suggested Quirk had told her father she’d be arriving late. She usually answered her phone, even when driving, but she could have left it in the car while she stopped to grab a tea. Markus’s voice contained the hint of a smile that seemed inseparable from his soft Scandinavian accent. He wasn’t overly anxious yet. Still, the combination of circumstances was unusual enough that Ted couldn’t blame him for wondering.
Ted crossed a vestibule cum basement stair landing between the kitchen and the garage. When he opened the door to the garage, there was Karin’s blue Honda Insight. So, after starting for the cottage, she had indeed come back. On the floor, in front of the passenger seat, lay her knapsack and in the back of the car her cello, ready to go. Ted thought first of illness. He raced back through the kitchen into the front hall and took the stairs two at a time up to their bedroom. Empty. Bed apparently unused since he had made it this morning. When Karin made the bed, she spread the duvet over the bottom sheet, while Ted left it folded at the foot, as it was now. The door to the ensuite bathroom stood open.
“Karin? Karin!”
He looked inside and saw nothing but an expanse of tiles, with a few water drops on the floor of the shower stall. No longer afraid of waking her, he blundered about the second floor, his senses barely registering, seeing nothing but Karin’s absence, hearing nothing but his own voice calling her name.
Ted stopped to think in the upper hall, hands on the rail as he stared down the curving stairs to the front hall. How to explain this? Karin had for some reason aborted her trip without telling Markus. Maybe the battery in her cell had run down and, rather than get off the highway and find a public phone, she’d come straight home. When she’d pulled into the driveway, she’d happened to see one of the neighbours. And, after an exchanged word or two, accepted an invitation to go over there for a drink. “I’ll just pop the car in the garage first,” she would have said. Which neighbour? Ted knew a name or two. Karin would know more; she always did. He’d look for her address book. But wait. She would have called Markus first, wouldn’t she, if it were just a matter of a friendly nightcap? She’d have unloaded her cello. Maybe the neighbour had noticed she was unwell, rushed her to the emerg. This would be bad, but not as bad as if Quirk were still lying untended somewhere in the house.
That’s as far as Ted got when he noticed the fresh wad of chewing gum on the dark blue stair runner. He knew immediately what this was from his research. It was a tag, a territorial marker that said, “This is no longer your space; it’s mine.”
Ted charged down the stairs and from room to room, flicking on lights as he ran. Living room, nothing. Dining room, nothing. Family room, the same. In his study, there was a hole where his new computer had been and his disk library had been ransacked. Instantly he feared that the disk the intruder had wanted was the one in his briefcase labelled Family Photos, the one that contained the dirt on the Dark Arrows. No Karin here, though, so he didn’t stop. He was hoping now that, when she came in from the garage, she had heard that there was someone in the house and had got out again before being found. She could have run next door or to Meryl’s twenty-four hour gas bar and convenience store two streets over from the end of the crescent. Ted just had to check the basement first.
He returned to the landing from which another door led into the garage, and a third to outside. The fourth side of this cubicle had no door but opened directly to the head of the steep, gerry-built basement stairs Karin hated. When Ted flicked on the basement light, it showed her lying at the foot of them.
On her back on the cement basement floor, feet towards the bottom step, dressed for the cottage, eyes open, and deathly still.
He picked up a splinter from the railing in his haste to get down to her. Her skin was cool rather than cold, but he couldn’t find a pulse. He ripped his cellphone from its pouch on his waist. Never had it taken longer to boot up.
When the young male 911 operator asked what service Ted wanted, he said ambulance and police. His voice rasped. His throat felt tight and dry.
“Is there a medical emergency?”
“Uh-huh,” Ted croaked. “Yes.” He started to give his address.
“One moment, sir. I’m going to start you off with the ambulance.”
Ambulance. The word carried hope. Ted tried to be patient, take things in order. It was going to be all right. It had to be. He bent closer to Karin.
“Quirk, you’re going to be all right,” he stammered.
While the 911 call was being directed, his gaze fixed on her hair. The red strands on the top of her head were pulled up, straight out from the scalp. He reached out to smooth them, but pulled his hand back. Crime scene, he thought. Don’t touch.
He swallowed hard, managed to moisten his tongue enough to speak.
“I have a woman here on the floor with no pulse,” he blurted out as soon as he sensed someone on the other end of the line.
“Is she breathing?” The call taker’s voice was female. It sounded as if she’d asked this question a thousand times before.
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you see her chest rising?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Can you put your face down by her mouth and feel if there’s any breath coming out?”
Ted put his left ear to Quirk’s dear lips. Nothing. Was he just too numbed by shock to feel the puffs of air? Yes. No. He believed both at once.
“Sir? Sir? Are you there? Do you feel any breath?”
“None. Can you please send an ambulance? 19 Robin Hood Crescent.”
“Is there anyone there with you?”
“You mean—”
“Besides the woman on the floor.”