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  Professional certification in both architecture and engineering made her an attractive prospect in both fields. In the end, she chose to join Mulroy & Associates, a respected local real estate development firm that offered integrated project planning, architecture and engineering services. Catherine quickly made her way up the ranks of the firm, capable of handling large, multi-disciplinary teams and notable for delivering quality results in short periods of time. When the firm merged with Atelier Arsenault, another top-rated local construction services firm, to become Mulroy Arsenault & Associates, Catherine was given the responsibility to assure seamless integration of the newly expanded engineering division, bringing the number of professionals and staff that reported directly to Catherine to seventy-three, nearly double what it had been.

  She had been able to build a distinct and robust reputation among senior staff. She was known to have been a major factor in Mulroy & Arsenault’s qualification, within a consortium of collaborating firms, for a long-term mandate on the Larivée Technology Park, an enormous mixed-use development on the South Shore. The project weighed heavily on everyone, and Catherine carried her share of the load.

  Still, her family name had not yet made it to the corporate shingle, though she was convinced that day would soon come. She had always been driven and forceful, and nothing, she felt, would change her path.

  From the comfort of the couch, she gazed through the windows of what was once her Valhalla, hoping no birds would crash into them tonight.

  PART 2

  COUNTER-HUNT

  CHAPTER 6

  DEATH OF A WHITETAIL

  The boys were up first in the morning. They went to the kitchen, fixed themselves cereal with milk and a glass of chocolate milk, then went into the living room media area to play their video games. They made very little sound, said nothing to each other, and wore headphones, so no sound came from the TV to bother Catherine.

  The day was sombre. Enormous clouds hung in a dull sky. A perfect match for all their moods. Catherine heard Anne moving about upstairs, getting dressed.

  Catherine asked her boys if they needed anything, then went into the kitchen, and Anne had joined her by the time the coffee was ready. They sat across from each other and attempted small talk. Worry about Paul’s health dominated their thoughts, but the awkwardness between them was palpable.

  “Coffee’s good,” said Anne.

  “We have great butter cookies if you like?”

  “Thanks. I know,” said Anne. “I don’t eat cookies, actually.”

  “Right, of course,” said Catherine. “What was I thinking?”

  “Oh, it’s not just my usual diet, I don’t really feel like eating.”

  “Neither do I. The coffee is good.”

  “Dark roast, from our family restaurant.”

  “Oh, that’s why it tasted different to me. Paul always liked a smoother blend.”

  “I brought this for a change. Change is good sometimes,” and then realized what she’d said. “Oh, I’m sorry for the way that came out. I really didn’t mean change …. Oh, boy.”

  “It’s okay. I understand. Nothing wrong with what you said.”

  “The hospital is on the phone,” Jack said, striding into the kitchen. “They want to talk to you.”

  “What, I didn’t hear the phone ring?”

  “Noah called.”

  Catherine shot up and looked for her youngest son. “What do you mean Noah called? Noah called the hospital?”

  “Yeah, Nurse Peggy,” Jack explained, as he and his mother went to Noah in the living room.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” said Catherine.

  “Thank you, Nurse Peggy, I’ll pass you to my mom now. Yeah. Okay, I will,” he said, handing the wireless handset to Catherine, who looked him straight in the eye.

  “How did you reach Nurse Peggy?”

  “She gave us her name yesterday and I called 411 for BMP Hospital,” said Noah matter-of-factly.

  “Hello, this is Noah’s mom, Catherine,” she said. “Is this Nurse Peggy?”

  “Yes, that’s right, I’m Peggy in ICU,” said the warm voice on the other end. “Your son wanted to make arrangements to come see his father today.”

  “Of course,” said Catherine, still eyeing her son.

  “If that’s your intention,” said Nurse Peggy, “there’s something you should know before you get here. Now I didn’t tell your son this. I’m just now telling you.”

  “What is it?” Catherine sat down, alarmed.

  “You need to know that your husband suffered hypovolemic shock. That’s from major blood loss. And he slipped into a coma early this morning, I’m really sorry.”

  “He’s in a coma?” repeated Catherine, not fully realizing that she’d she said it out loud. Jack and Noah froze. Catherine lifted her head to look at them. Tears instantly rolled out of her eyes.

  “What does that mean?” Catherine asked.

  “It means he’s stable now,” said Nurse Peggy, “but the coma is unpredictable. We just can never tell. The doctor can tell you more when you get here.”

  Catherine caught sight of Anne in the doorway, staring back, frozen with shock. Anne turned back slowly into the kitchen. Catherine reached out to hold her kids, and they came to her and held her tightly.

  “Thank you,” said Catherine into the handset. “We’ll … we’ll be in to see him soon. Thank you.”

  Catherine hung up, without listening to Nurse Peggy’s final words. Jack sat next to her. Noah moved to his favourite chair and clasped his favourite pillow. He stared at the surrounding valley and the enormous clouds moving slowly across his world.

  The days that followed were full of unbearable anticipation and fear. Catherine, Jack and Noah each did their best to be patient, but it wasn’t easy. Anne did her awkward best to lend support, but she was just as sad and anxious as the others. Together, they waited in Paul’s hospital room. They waited in the waiting room. They waited in the hospital cafeteria. They waited at the house. They waited in their beds. They waited in the gardens, trying to think of nothing, of what might be and what might not be. They waited. Nothing changed for Paul.

  Deputy Chief Tom Doran came by, two days after the incident, to speak to Jack and Noah. He was accompanied by Lieutenant Rachel Yu of the Sûreté du Québec. Tom didn’t know her well, and the Quebec provincial police were rarely called in since Chief Bernier tried as much as possible to keep Beaufort matters in the hands of Beaufort authorities, without what he saw as outside interference. In the end, Tom knew very little information would be shared with the Sûreté du Québec. That was the Beaufort way.

  Tom didn’t care, one way or the other. He had his job to do. Over and above longstanding local debates on jurisdiction with the Sûreté and his boss’s insecurities, Tom thought that Lieutenant Yu’s compassionate presence—though she was perhaps a bit shy—might work well in this situation, considering his own blunt communication style.

  Catherine invited Tom and Lieutenant Yu to sit at the kitchen table, and pulled the boys away from their video games to join them. She thought the boys, despite their sadness and worry, were lovely, sitting straight and attentive to the police officers’ questions, one on each side of the table. Noah stared at Tom’s holstered pistol and examined every detail of his rumpled police uniform. Jack looked away into the depths of the kitchen, and when he did look at the officers, it was only to look away again. If Tom didn’t know better, he might have thought Jack was either rude or guilty of something. Lieutenant Yu introduced herself and confirmed to the boys that she knew their names and was aware of the circumstances. The boys didn’t respond.

  Lieutenant Yu gently reached out to Jack’s arm, though he still looked away.

  “I know this is hard, but do you mind telling us what happened?”

  A moment passed in silence.

 
“You saw,” said Jack, finally. “We drove him to the hospital.”

  “I mean from the beginning,” said Lieutenant Yu.

  “We just found our dad on the ground, at the woodpile.”

  “Did you see anything else?” asked Tom.

  “There was blood,” said Noah.

  “Blood everywhere,” added Jack, as he wiped at one eye as if it was itching him. A long silent moment filled the room.

  “Yes, we understand,” said the Lieutenant.

  The interview with the boys continued for another twenty minutes, but in those minutes, Tom and Lieutenant Yu felt they had obtained as much information as they needed, to get a clear picture of where the boys had been, relative to their father, and what they had observed on the evening of the shooting. Neither of them had heard gunshots near the house. Jack had been exploring in the woods with his friend Zeph and then had raided the fridge at Zeph’s house before coming home. Noah had been in his room, headphones over his ears, playing his explosive video games.

  Lieutenant Yu thanked the Carignan family for their cooperation, expressed her sympathies and went back outside to Tom’s truck. Tom took a moment more with the Carignans, assuring them of his intention to investigate and of the vigilance of his department, but promising nothing. Making or keeping promises was not possible for Tom. Not since losing Lauren, the love of his life, in a traffic accident. There had been many promises made, and none of them had been kept. Tom had learned from that. From that point forward, he stayed focused on essentials and on known facts, for himself and everyone around him.

  He could sense Catherine and her sons expected more, but he kept his words to a minimum, thinking it better to be reserved than to carelessly inspire hope. He’d seen that often enough, and realism was better. The incident would remain inexplicable, an accident without a culprit. Better not to talk about it at all, at least not until some concrete clue could lead them to a different assumption.

  Tom left the Carignans, feeling their raw pain. Catherine watched him go, having no difficulty imagining why he was known as ‘Brooder.’ There was something heavy and cautious in his demeanour. She found him attractive, admittedly, especially his dark hair and his muscled arms, but the very thought was useless and untimely, and the truth was, he repelled her just as much. There was something wrong under the surface, she felt, something dark and angry. She was pleased to see him go.

  She wanted to be alone with her kids as they did their waiting.

  Tom rejoined Lieutenant Yu at his truck.

  Catherine awoke before her boys the following morning. She went to look at them, sleeping in their beds as the day’s new light crept in, thinking how long it had been since she and Paul had “made” them. There might have been a third, but she had had a placental abruption early in that pregnancy. The healing from that had been difficult, but so many phases in Catherine’s life had been difficult. Paul had helped, as he always helped, thinking positively and confident even in tough circumstances. It came from a life of success, thought Catherine, smart investments of effort and money along with a steady stream of luck. He was protective of his family, and convinced he would always rise above adversity, no matter what came at him. He had never figured on a bullet changing his fate.

  After observing her boys, Catherine went to the kitchen, where she realized she didn’t need to make a big pot of coffee this morning. Anne was already outside, loading her car with her belongings. Catherine walked out to the veranda, huddled in her sweater, for the morning air was bracing. Anne closed the trunk of her car and looked back at the house. About twenty-five metres separated the two women who shared similar feelings for Paul. Their eyes met. Anne’s discomfort was palpable. Catherine felt as though she had caught a child with her hands in the cookie jar. That, or something a lot worse.

  As she looked more carefully, though, she saw a scared young woman who had gotten far more than she had bargained for, from her liaison with a married man. This shooting was too much for her. Instead of resenting her for this, Catherine felt compassion, seeing some of herself in Anne, whose eyes communicated the nervousness of a wild animal who’d been cornered and was taking the first way out. Catherine knew Anne would never return.

  Anne climbed into her car and drove off, and Catherine returned to her coffee-making, portioning it out just for herself. How would Paul judge Anne, she wondered, if he were to know her morning’s decision. Catherine decided—there was no spitefulness in this, or just a tinge—she would whisper this development into his ear when she got to the hospital. She knew there were conflicting theories on whether the comatose can understand what they are told, whether they can hear at all, but either way, Catherine felt the urge to tell him. Maybe Paul would register it all and come out of the coma. Or perhaps it would have no effect other than getting her own frustrations and her own jealousy off her chest. Would that be so bad?

  Catherine powered up the kitchen iMac. One of Paul’s rituals had been to sit at the kitchen writing nook scanning the financial press and news updates. Sometimes Catherine did the same. She sipped her coffee and clicked on La Gazette de Beaufort. The home page was dedicated to a charitable organization that supported summer camps for children with learning difficulties. The key fundraiser appeared to be Gabrielle Bernier, the Police Chief’s wife.

  The next item focused on repairs to a small covered bridge between Beaufort and the next county and the heated debate over which county was responsible for maintenance of the bridge. None of this interested Catherine, and she had decided she’d seen enough of the morning news when she spotted Paul’s name, far down in the list of topics.

  She clicked on “Beaufort financier Paul Carignan in critical condition after shooting.” The article was brief, quoting Police Chief Bernier. “An investigation is underway by Beaufort Police, hand-in-hand with the Sûreté du Québec. It’s a regrettable incident, that we’re still trying to understand, perhaps caused by a stray bullet, but we aren’t sure of anything at this point.” Paul was described as a family man and investment banker with longstanding ties to the community.

  “Stray bullet?” whispered Catherine to herself. “What is that?”

  With the boys coming downstairs, she clicked out of the web page and started putting together a big breakfast of eggs and toast. Noah wanted his eggs perfectly round, sunny-side-up, and unbroken, with just the right amount of salt and pepper. It they were misshapen or too well seasoned, he would reject the eggs. Jack was more accommodating, concerned mostly with the volume of food.

  Catherine felt good cooking in her Valhalla kitchen again. How odd life is, she thought, that things you think are settled rarely are and things that are ended are rarely over.

  She was concerned the boys would miss too much school. Had Paul not been shot, the boys would have returned to Kirkland with her, for school had already begun. If Paul’s condition didn’t change soon, she’d have to get them to school until there was news from the hospital. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but then nothing about the current situation was ideal. Catherine weighed the pros and cons and the consequences various options might have on her sons. Would they be able to concentrate on schoolwork at all? What pressures would that put on them?

  “Mom! Mom!” said Noah, eating the whites of his eggs, followed by the yellows.

  “Yep, sorry,” she said to her perfectionist son.

  Jack had lumped his eggs onto several slices of toast, squeezed ketchup over them, and then folded it all into a thick, leaky egg sandwich, before taking his breakfast outside to a wicker chair on the front porch.

  “I’m going to eat outside too,” said Noah, gathering his plates, utensils and glass of orange juice, all too much to carry.

  “Stay here with me, come on,” pleaded Catherine. “Why take all that outside?”

  She was about to elaborate on the many reasons he should stay with her when a gunshot reverberated through the valley. Cathe
rine looked to where the shot might have come from, but the sound bounced from hill to hill so that it was hard to know what direction it had taken. Noah stayed calm and looked toward the front porch, then turned back toward his mother and gave her a worried look. He was looking for Jack, who was no longer on the porch.

  Catherine ran.

  “Stay here!” she instructed Noah, who didn’t listen, but followed behind her.

  They ran through the porch to the gardens and spotted Jack running fast toward Chemin Van Kleet, far ahead of them.

  Jack had taken off like a hare the instant he heard the shot. He knew where it had come from. His strong legs churned, and his arms pumped. The fact that he was barefoot and still in his pajamas was of no concern to him. He moved fast over the gravel driveway and back onto the cold dew of the grass. Once past the tree line that separated the Carignan property from Chemin Van Kleet, he found what he expected.

  Jeffrey Lennox’s pick-up truck was at the side of the road. Lennox had walked out to a field. Their field. Their property. Jack ran back off the road, and out toward him, full steam. The boy was relatively silent, despite the energy he was putting into his movements. His bare feet made no sound.

  Lennox was focused on his prey, a slim whitetail making its delicate way westward to the boundary of the Carignan property, where the land flattened into soft brush and clusters of old maples. He raised his rifle in his thick arms, took a few deep breaths, then held his body still. He squinted into the ocular of his scope and lined up the whitetail’s shoulder in his crosshairs, with no idea about what was about to hit him.