Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue by Christine Higdon

Author:Christine Higdon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2023-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Birds of prey. They hunt to kill; they eat their catch. It’s a fact of nature, and nothing that Llewellyn has ever been sentimental about, not particularly. Llewellyn’s a country boy. Big birds, big animals, eat smaller ones; they eat rabbits and field mice and all manner of creatures that have no defence other than speed, or agility, or the ability to hide. Fairness plays no part in it, as his father always used to remind him. It’s an eternal law: Nature, red in tooth and claw.

Now, seeing the grief in Padula’s eyes, the weight of it bowing his big shoulders, Llewellyn feels his notion of the justness of that law of nature sliding away. Llewellyn gave this inquest life—he harnessed Morrison’s zealousness to his own desire for revenge—despite Chief MacIntyre’s explicit orders not to; it has gone awry, and he no longer has the power to stop it. It will march along of its own volition and come to flawed conclusions. Gilchrist is a man with a machete, bushwhacking, with one aim in mind: to crucify Padula. Crucifying an innocent man was not Llewellyn’s intention. It was a name he was after, one name. Padula does not have it, and that much, now, is very clear.

“Mr. Padula, why, if you knew that your lover was undergoing an illegal procedure, did you still help her to do so? Did you understand the risk she was taking? Not to mention the laws she was breaking?”

Padula seems to wipe a tear from his cheek. The courtroom is parched by a long, unbearable silence. Llewellyn can hear only the deafening roar of his own guilt.

“Please note that the witness does not choose to answer,” the coroner says quietly, as if he might have decided that some kindness, in the face of Padula’s emotion, might be observed. “We will record that as No answer.” He nods at the court stenographer, whose poised fingers return to her machine, and Gilchrist continues, Padula’s grief clearly of no concern to him.

“Mr. Padula, why didn’t you accompany her that day?”

“She was told to come alone.”

“And you accepted that? What made you obey that order?”

The colour of shame slides up from under Padula’s collar.

Beside Llewellyn, a man taps the woman next to him on the arm. She leans toward him. “Italians,” the man whispers. “Can’t keep their gospel-pipes in their pants. Gotta obey the Pope.”

Llewellyn pulls his police badge from his pocket and puts it far too close to the man’s face. “Get out,” he says.

The couple’s low laughter stops and the man pulls back, squinting. “What’ve we done wrong? We haven’t done anything, have we, Alma?” he says. His hands grip his chair and he doesn’t get up, though the woman named Alma, wide-eyed, tucks her thermos into her bag.

“You’re”—dreadful people, Llewellyn wants to say—“disturbing the peace. And I need your seats. For other police officers.”

The two of them gather their things slowly and leave. Now Llewellyn is obliged to turn and signal the availability of the seats to Morrison and MacIntyre.

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