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  Kate looked at him with something like admiration. Ray was nodding. Steve, who had come out of the bathroom and was leaning in the bedroom doorway, was nodding, too.

  I wasn’t so sure. “How do you know where the power outages are localized to?” I demanded.

  “I live on the twenty-fifth floor of the Strathcona Tower. From my kitchen window, I can see west and south; from my balcony I can look northwest and catch a glimpse of downtown. When I was leaving via the stairwell, I saw lights beyond to the southeast out of my neighbor’s window. May I recommend you never move into a highrise if you worry about power outages.”

  It sounded reasonable, but then again, why was Winston Graham all of a sudden showing up in my apartment building tonight of all nights? I looked over at Kate, who was punching something into her Palm Pilot and nodding.

  “Well, your address checks out, Winston. Sit down a spell and tell us again what your interest in all this is.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about, Detective,” Winston/Sanders drawled. “I came to apologize for being so curt to Randy when she was asking me about the Uof A Assassins and discover that she has her own militia. Most people would settle for a building with an intercom, you know.”

  Kate looked as if she was about to say something when Ray broke in.

  “Looks like Sanders here is in the clear. The alarm on the locker in the bus depot just went off.”

  “Have they got the guy?”

  “I don’t know about that. All I know is that the ­locker has been touched somehow. I’m monitoring it through my computer.”

  “So it could be Tremor, or it could be some diversionary tactic. It could even be some drunk falling into the side of the locker, for all we know. I’ll let you know when the bus-depot crew report in,” Kate replied.

  I was still wondering if Sanders wasn’t some diversionary tactic on this end of things when Steve decided that I was too much of a target in the living room and herded us back into the kitchen/dining-room area. Sanders took a seat on the stepstool I keep by the garbage bin so that I can reach my highest shelves. With his knees up around his chest, he looked like an overgrown schoolboy eager to be part of a wild adventure. All he lacked was a school scarf and scabs on his knees.

  I might have mustered up a full head of antagonistic steam toward anyone else, but somehow Sanders managed to diffuse my edginess and make things feel rather exciting, but controllable, like a glorious Enid Blyton book. I expected Kiki the parrot to show up, rhyming words, any minute. In spite of myself, I grinned. Maybe it was transference, putting all the friendship I’d forged with Alchemist over onto a human person from Babel, but I felt very close to Sanders at that moment. I sure hoped he didn’t have anything to do with Tremor.

  The fact that he was so much at ease in a situation that he wasn’t supposed to know anything about didn’t make him seem all that innocent to me. Of course, he was nattering on about assassin games and societies for creative anachronisms, and other similar affiliations. Apparently he had even once been part of a Dungeons and Dragons game where the participants had dressed the part and had badges similar to the Scouts to sew on the sleeves of their gowns. I wasn’t sure if there was anything that could faze Sanders. Trying to find out was probably what made me blurt out more information than I should have.

  “You see, there’s a hired killer working out of Babel,” I said, waving my hand around as if this should explain everything he saw—the task force, the Kevlar, the ­weirdly taped windows, the computers and laptops everywhere you looked.

  “Oh, you mean Tremor?” he asked casually, and you could almost hear jaws dropping open all over the room. Kate leaned forward, straining toward information the way sunflowers reach for the sun. Steve had his hand on his holster.

  “How do you know about that?” I squeaked, thinking my whole transference was in jeopardy. I couldn’t trust anyone.

  “A few weeks ago in Babel, Maia was running a game of Truth or Dare. Tremor was there, and he got a truth, which was ‘What do you do for a living?’ and he answered that he was a hired killer.” Sanders was still smiling, but it was just beginning to dawn on him that his answer was a revelation to those of us in the room. He looked at all of us, one by one, as if for some sign we were collectively pulling his leg. “You mean this is real? He really is a hired killer? He’s coming to kill us? That’s what this is all about? I thought you were joking.”

  “You thought we were joking, or he was joking?” I wasn’t following things too clearly.

  “Well, both. So let’s backtrack here. Tremor is a real contract killer and he has a target here. You get the wagons in a circle and leave some money somewhere for him, and he in turn puts out the lights for about a six-mile radius, leaving you scrambling. So he’s got the money, he knows where you live, and you’ve lost track of him? And I happen to be sitting in the kitchen of the target site of the hit? Oh goodie.”

  “That’s about the extent of it, yes,” said Kate, somewhat drily. I had a feeling she hated sitting around and waiting about as much as I did. At least I was in my own place, even though it felt, at the moment, like Grand Central Station.

  “I can’t believe that Tremor actually told the world that he was a hired killer. What is it about on-line discourse that makes people so blasé about their intimacies?”

  “Well, for one thing, no one but folks wanting to hire him would really believe him when he said it, right? And people joke about that sort of thing all the time. I saw a fellow the other day walking down HUB Mall in a tee-shirt that said, ‘Don’t recognize me—I’m in the Witness Protection Program.’ I said to myself, Wouldn’t that be a great idea for real? So that if a loved one did spot you, they could read what everyone else saw as a joke tee-shirt, and be warned not to give you away to the mobsters waiting to rub you out. It’s what my dad used to call ‘kidding on the square.’”

  “You’ve been reading too many thrillers.”

  He looked abashed. “I know I have. Time to get back into a senior-level English class. It’s a toss-up between a seminar on Virginia Woolf and a Restoration drama ­survey.”

  Kate was starting to grin, and Ray was shaking his head. Sanders just seemed to have that sort of effect on people, I guess. I was wondering who was teaching the Woolf course and was just about to ask when the phone rang.

  All eyes were on me as I reached for the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Let there be light.” I was assuming this was Tremor’s voice, rather high with a mid-western twang to it. As he spoke, all the lights in the apartment clicked on, making me drop the phone. I grabbed for it.

  “What’s your game? Why did you turn out the lights?”

  “Why do you think, pretty lady? I see everything so much clearer in the dark. Stay by your phone.” And he clicked off.

  52

  The phone call had been recorded and played back ­several times. Sanders was taken to the laundry room, which I found an interesting irony, so that the team could talk in peace. At this point, we couldn’t be sure whether his happening by had more design to it than he was admitting. If he was a confederate of Tremor, the last thing we needed was for him to be listening in to our plans and reactions.

  According to Kate, Tremor was moving into a cat-and-mouse play where he intended to make me jump through some hoops. We still weren’t clear whether he was just being cautious prior to moving in on the intended kill, or whether he had figured out that this was a sting and he was going to exact some sort of retribution on me. One thing, I didn’t have to worry about him tracking down and killing Alchemist. Now, there was a load off my mind.

  We decided that if Tremor was going to be phoning, we might as well make it possible to get away from the phone without him knowing it. Steve made a quick call and created a forwarding from my land line phone number to a cell phone. Kate made me slip another charged battery into my jeans pocket, just in case I ended up on the run with the cell phone.

  I didn’t like
the sound of that, but she assured me that if I was made to move, I would be tracked closely. To that end, she asked to see a pair of my shoes. She inserted a small disc about the size of a loonie under the insole, around the arch. She asked me if I understood GPS tracking systems. I replied, of course, in the negative.

  “Well, your shoes are now emitting a signal that we can track by satellite and pinpoint to the nth degree. I’d suggest you put them on now and forget the quaint Canadian way you all have of taking your shoes off at the door for the next little while.” I obediently tied my laces and clicked my heels together for good measure. Ray smiled. Steve looked worried. I wasn’t sure what I was thinking. It was about 8:00 in the evening, and I hadn’t had much more than three hours or so of sleep in the previous thirty-six hours. The lights were on again. There was a hired killer out there somewhere with five thousand dollars and my phone number in his pocket. A forty-something-year-old perpetual student was being held under police guard in my laundry room, and my feet were being tracked in space. Just another day in the life of Randy Craig.

  Tremor called back at 8:51.

  “So, are you all ready to go for a little walkabout?”

  “Tell me, is this to get me out of your way, or am I meeting you for some reason?”

  “Now, now, do I tell you how to teach college students? Why don’t you just listen to what you’re going to do and this will go much more efficiently.”

  There was nothing of the Marlon Brando in Tremor’s voice. I was hearing much more James Woods, and if that isn’t scary, then I don’t know what is. The folks in my kitchen were nodding at me to agree with him and get on with things, but this felt like standing at the edge of the bungie-jump platform. Once I started into this conversation with the killer, the results were entirely unclear, but I couldn’t see them being overwhelmingly in my favor. I was in no hurry.

  “Are you still there, Ms Craig?” He seemed to be flaunting the information. Although I knew that it was very easy to access everything he had and that I had even given him some of it, it felt like a violation for this professional murderer to be running his fingers through my private life.

  “Yep. I’m here.”

  “Well, that’s not where I want you. Take the LRT to the Bay Station and exit to the second-floor walkway. It’s a cold night. Bring along a cell phone with this number forwarded to it. I’ll be getting back to you.”

  He rang off before I had a chance to say anything else.

  It was agreed that I would do as he said, with a couple of detectives tailing me and others moving into place in pre-designated areas downtown. Steve wouldn’t be one of them, just in case the whole scheme was in fact a way to get me away from the scene of the supposed crime. Ray and Kate would continue to monitor from my kitchen, which I doubt was Kate’s idea of a good time, since my kitchen chairs are none too comfy. Detective Lewis was staying with Winston Graham in the laundry room. They had my Scrabble game and more coffee, and they seemed reasonably content.

  Detective Iain McCorquodale was going to trail me, so he set out first and headed toward a condo a couple of blocks between my apartment and the university LRT station. From my apartment it was usually easier to take the bus downtown, but Tremor had specified the Light Rail Transit system, so I would have to walk five blocks to take the train instead of crossing the street to catch the bus.

  Officer Armstrong, who had been one of the people in the front hall, pulled on her toque and mittens and deked out the back door of the apartment and through a fraternity back yard to appear on the street at the front of my building as I went out the front door. To anyone watching, it appeared that I was coincidentally running into an acquaintance on the street. She and I walked to the university, talking about nothing in particular and everything in general. I had a wild urge to confide in her, tell her my deepest secrets and my favorite colors. She, in turn, told me to call her Michele and filled in awkward gaps with proud stories about her two exemplary children.

  She came with me on the subway but said goodbye and got off at the Corona Station just before the Bay Station where I was supposed to leave the train. I wasn’t sure if she was going to race the four blocks above ground to be somewhere near where I got off, or whether I was being handed off to someone else.

  I was assuming Iain McCorquodale was somewhere on the train, but I hadn’t seen him since I left my apartment. It spoke volumes of his talent as a policeman, I suppose, that someone with that large a presence and bluster could efface himself into the woodwork, or, in this case, the trainwork. Either that, or he was off having a beer while I waltzed off to meet a killer. I was hoping he was supercop.

  I got out of the train at the pretty blue ceramic station that was the Bay. Of course, the station was still called Bay Station because above ground the original Hudson’s Bay Company building still stood, but the store itself had since bounced all over the city, and a television station had taken up residence in the building. The second floor of the Bay building led into a series of pedways that linked several blocks of downtown buildings, making it possible to walk indoors from the corner of 104th Street and Jasper Avenue to the Hilton on 101th Street and 103rd Avenue. Or, in fact, it hit me, as I heard the cell phone ringing the opening bars to “Oh Suzanna” in my pocket, the YMCA on 100th Street.

  “Have a nice train ride?”

  “Are you watching me?”

  “Now, what do you think?”

  I turned around, continuing to head northward to the pedway entrance. I always felt awkward speaking into cell phones in public, never sure how far my voice was carrying.

  Tremor laughed into my ear. “You’re going to make yourself dizzy doing that.”

  I was standing in a windowless hallway with ­absolutely nobody in view either ahead of me or behind me. This was freakier than I wanted to admit, even to myself. I didn’t particularly like being downtown at night anyhow, but to be downtown, by myself at 9:30 at night, with a killer chuckling into my ear, was a little too much to bear. I’m sure he could hear the mounting hysteria in my voice.

  “Where are you?”

  “That’s irrelevant, don’t you think? It’s completely irrelevant since you don’t have a redundant husband, do you? You aren’t actually hoping I turn up anywhere anytime soon, right? This is all about keeping Babel shiny clean, right? That’s your job, right? Or is Alvin just coincidentally dropping weekly allowance checks into your bank account? Believe me, you can’t keep secrets from me, Chimera. What is relevant is that you’ve been dicking around with my livelihood, and I don’t take to that very much at all.”

  “What do you mean? You could be accused of the same thing, Bucky. Right now the police are swarming all over Babel. What do you think it will take for Alvin to shut it all down on me, and there will go my job.” I was getting angry with his high-handed attitude. After all, he could kill anywhere he pleased. Where was I going to get another monitoring job that fit my schedule so ­beautifully?

  “Oh, come now. You got into this because you ­wanted to play Nancy Drew, not out of some misguided loyalty to your job. Well, you’re lucky I didn’t pop your boyfriend, missy.”

  “So why did you haul me out here if you have it all figured out?”

  “Simple. With the whole gang focused on keeping you safe, I can get out of this end-of-beyond without sacrificing the bride price.”

  “I thought you already had the money.”

  “That’s what you were meant to think.”

  “So how will making me come to meet you help?”

  “Don’t worry your pretty head overmuch. Ciao for now.” Click.

  By this time, I had managed to make my way over 103rd Street into the Manulife II building, and was getting closer to the Holt Renfrew corner of Manulife Plaza. Since he hadn’t given me any further directions, I was following instincts that were taking me toward the Y, the last place I’d had him in my mind. For all I knew he was on the street below me in an idling car, but I didn’t think so. I had a vision of him mar
ching toward me from the far end of the pedway system, and meeting me somewhere in the middle. According to my calculations, the middle should be the pedway from Manulife into the City Centre West section of the downtown shopping mall, but the only people I could see were on the escalators probably coming from the cinemas on the third floor. I turned away from them, heading east toward Edmonton City Centre, the original section of the mall sprawl.

  A janitor was washing the faux marble pedway across 101st Street. This was a double-decker pedway. Tremor might be above me on the third floor, heading in the other direction. I felt very vulnerable, all alone in this huge, well-lit glass tunnel in the air.

  Where were the police, anyhow? Kate had told me that they would know my exact location at all times. But what good was knowing my longitude and latitude if it took half an hour to get to me? Tremor had managed to acclimatize to this city very well, instinctively finding the easiest way to make me feel safe enough to get vulnerable. Here I was, out in the open, with no way of getting out of the loop, but it would take several minutes for anyone not already in the maze of pedways to get to me. If I couldn’t see someone, it meant they were too far away to do me any good. I stomped my GPS shoe a little extra hard, just to punish someone’s ear somewhere.