Chapter 12. Maria's Reveries
Maria was at the wheel when the sensation of sudden terror washed over her. Her first inclination was to fight the irrational terror. She had had panic attacks before and she attributed this one's origins to her unsettled wits and their fugitive ways. They spent three days wandering west over the back roads of Ontario, sleeping in tents at night by the shores of lakes or streams, because Sergio thought he might have been recognized when he bought the car, or when he was doing his errands, and he feared the police would set traps in the forms of a roadblock for them on the main highways. After three days of dirt roads Sergio finally relented and now they were driving west on Canada 1. As the seconds elapsed it became obvious to Pamela that the fear of the hunted was upon her. She felt as if a huge tiger was stalking her. Her pulse was racing and a cold sweat enveloped her in fear. There was no doubt in her mind now - never mind the fact that she didn't have a shred of real evidence to substantiate her intuition - the cops were closing in on them.
At Brandon, Maria turned off Canadian Highway 1 and veered the Ford Crown Victoria to the north, on Manitoba 10. The map she had glancing at earlier told her that 10 led, in a couple hundred more miles, to Grass River Provincial Park, and then other roads led to Lac La Ronge Provincial Park in Saskatchewan. These seemed secluded enough. It's true that the lesson they learned on Isle Royale was to never back themselves into a corner. Maria asked herself if that was what she was doing now as she drove north on Manitoba 10. She could see how an island in a frigid lake could be construed as a corner, whereas the whole Canadian landmass stretching out before her hardly seemed a trap of any sort that she could discern. Her pulse was slower now that she was driving North on Manitoba 10. Maria could help but notice that her panic was in remission. At least she was no longer suffering from cold sweat, no longer frozen with quite so much fear as before. Her thoughts seemed to her to be more or less coherent. She reasoned that if they were about to be arrested while driving down Canada 1, then it was wise for her to veer off on to Manitoba 10. And if they were not about to be arrested on Canada 1, then the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were probably not setting up a roadblock for them up ahead on Manitoba 10.
Maria thought her logic was impeccable. She ought to be able to convince everyone she made the right decision, even though in half of her mind she suspected she was acting on blind, irrational fear. She had her explanations ready to go, and she would soon have to explain to her passengers why she was driving them toward isolated Flin Flon rather than toward cosmopolitan Vancouver, and driving in this direction not long after Pamela had delivered a big sermon about how they must never again get trapped in isolated locations.
As the others slept, and as Maria drove deeper into Manitoba, the moon and the stars were shining down upon her, illuminating the roadway which carved its path through the evergreens rising up on both sides of the highway. Maria glanced over at Amanda, who was resting her head against the passenger side window. Amanda looked as if she was drifting sweetly in dreamland, with the rhapsody of the wind rushing by her window to sing her to sleep. Maria recalled how happy Amanda was when she hugged her and her husband that night under the bridge in Thunder Bay. Maria now seemed convinced, in her own mind at least, that her action in turning on to Manitoba 10 had saved them from arrest, just as surely as they had been saved on their flight to Isle Royale, and saved from tragedy that night in the launch with the terrible wind and the mountainous waves on the Great Lake. It was impossible to prove but somehow she knew a police roadblock was waiting for them on Canada 1.
Maria liked to drive and she liked to relive the good old days as she drove. Tonight was a little different. Tonight Maria thought of a night when she was standing outside her apartment in Grand Marais. There was a slit between the window frame and the window shade, but the slit was wide enough for her to see some things. She was coming home during a break in the middle of her shift at the beer-hall. She had some suspicions and she wanted to check them out. She wanted these suspicions either substantiated or dispelled. She knew Pamela liked to take baths at her place and she suspected she would see exactly what she saw when she peeped through that slit: her husband and her best friend were naked together in her bathtub. Maria resolved, more or less immediately, to kill Haakon for cheating on her in that way with Pamela. The only questions were when and how. The inclination to kill didn't lessen any over the course of a few weeks, though Maria decided she had to wait a little before she pulled the trigger. It was certainly no extortionist, but rather it was Maria, Haakon's own beloved wife, who tried to murder her husband by gunning him down in the woods, and using a poisoned bullet to make the kill. Some time after seeing her best friend with her husband in the tub, Maria remembered she had some poisoned bullets which she kept from her days in the CIA. She knew she was insanely jealous. She knew that that was the way she was. Of course she felt remorse two seconds after the bullet hit her husband, and of course she was ecstatic to see Haakon still alive later that evening when she found him in the beer-hall with all the blood on his sweater. How amazing it was that he never suspected her! Normally when a man is having an affair with another woman, and then is shot, he puts the usual suspects at the top of his list of suspects. In any event, two weeks later, Maria suspected that the tragedy with the FBI agent might have struck as a result of her insane jealousy…
Maria didn't like to think about that. But she remembered how it was, a day after Sergio, Pamela and Amanda decided to not desert her and Haakon, and not leave them all alone under that bridge in Thunder Bay, a day after Amanda gave her a big hug with tears in her eyes, she remembered that she, Maria, on a wild caprice, confessed to Amanda that she had attempted to kill Haakon. Maria thought about telling a fib to Amanda: saying it was some woman she didn't recognize in the tub with Haakon, but the truth slipped out and Amanda learned that day that her mom used to cheat on her father with Haakon.
Maria thought that if she told Amanda her secret then Amanda would feel that her friend, herself, Maria, really trusted her, and truly believed she was innocent. And then, wonder of wonders, Amanda, decided she needed to tell Maria a few things. Maria suspected as much, and Amanda confirmed these suspicions when said she killed the FBI agent. Amanda had been living in terror, thinking that that her mom or dad would be the next victim of this killer with the poisoned bullets. Amanda would watch her parents go off to work in those spooky woods, either to that beer-hall or to patrolling Von Helleman's estate, leaving their daughter to wonder when one of them would be shot and killed. Amanda explained how she would sit and brood by her window at night, looking out at that dark and ominous forest. What else in nature has such a split personality? In the daytime the forest looks innocent, magnificent and beautiful even, but at night it becomes so sinister and menacing. At night, in the North Woods, your imagination conjures up witches lurking behind every tree. Well, as Amanda explained, Von Hellemann came by their cottage one night - he did this fairly often as Sergio is a scholar and Von Hellemann liked hearing about Sergio's researches. On this particular night Von Hellemann stayed with Amanda and Al but he asked Sergio to check the beer-hall to ensure that she - Maria - was all right. It was only two weeks after the `thug' had shot Haakon, and everyone was nervous about another shooting, except of course for Maria. Von Hellemann, who didn't seem to mind taking strolls at night through the woods, perhaps because he knew he was paying lots of money to lots of bodyguards to protect him, asked Sergio to check on Maria. Von Hellemann and Al were sleeping while Amanda was brooding in the dark, sitting in a chair looking out her bedroom window, worried that her mom would be murdered as she walked home through the dark woods. And after Sergio had left, she was now worried that her dad would be shot and killed. As Amanda sat in her bedroom looking out her window at the woods, with everything so dark and ominous, she was almost at her wit's end trying to find a way to end this nightmare….And then, suddenly, she saw a man creeping along
the pathway! She watched in horror as he hid himself beneath some pines. Amanda was so terrified she couldn't move. She wanted to scream but her voice was frozen with fear. Eventually, as the minutes slipped by, Amanda calmed down a little. She watched as the man remained where he was. Quite suddenly she decided she wasn't going to wait for her mom or dad to come along that path and be murdered by this extortionist. She decided that if she screamed he would only run off, and would then return to murder her mom or her dad the next night, or the night after that, or the night after that. She thought that if she woke Von Hellemann, he would chase the thug away, or get shot himself, and then she would have the same problem when the thug came back. Amanda decided that she would fix him for good. She was going to make sure that what happened to Haakon wasn't going to happen to her mom or dad. So, she got up very slowly from the chair she was sitting in. She walked silently out of her room. She got the shotgun out of the hall closet and made sure it was loaded. She quietly opened a window in her parents' bedroom. This room was on the opposite side of the cottage from where the man was waiting in the darkness under the trees. She was being very careful to wake neither Al nor Von Hellemann, and to not make any sounds which would alert the stranger outside. She climbed out the window and set herself on the ground. Then she took the long way round, treading slowly so as to not make a sound, finding at last a path that she could follow until she was situated only twenty feet right behind the man lurking in the shadows. There was no moon to illuminate anything. There was only starlight to take aim by. Maria couldn't help thinking of how she had enough light to draw a bead on Haakon, whereas Amanda merely had a vague shadow to aim at when she found her target. And Amanda had to get very close just to see this vague shadow of the man. She raised the shot-gun, got the shadow in her sights, and pulled the trigger. The roar of both barrels exploding stunned her for a few moments. She had fired shotguns before so she knew to be ready for the recoil. But the blast broke the silence of the forest so violently that she was stunned, stunned as if by the roar of a cannon. Amanda stood frozen for a few seconds and then she advanced to find a man dying fast while his groans slowly went silent. Amanda didn't know at the time that she got him right in the middle of his back, right in his spine with the 12 gauge. But she could indeed hear his groans fade away, and then she heard his breathing cease, and she was seeing no movement from the shadow under tree. Everything was perfectly still under the starlight. Amanda tugged on the man's coat to check to make sure he was dead, and then she ran back into the cottage. There she discovered that both Von Hellemann and Al were still sleeping! She was ready to do a little dance, ready to celebrate with them at having eliminated a murdering extortionist. For some reason, she then thought it best to pretend that she didn't kill the guy. She thought it best to pretend the man might have been accidentally killed by one of his extortionist buddies. And then, a little later still, she decided it was best to say that she heard a shot but hadn't gone outside to investigate. She had lots of time to think with Von Hellemann and Al snoozing on the sofas! Maria put the shotgun back in the hall closet. Then she woke Von Hellemann and told him that said she heard a gun shot. Von Hellemann got up and said he would have a look round outside. He set off in the wrong direction, looked around some, saw nothing, heard nothing, and then came back inside the cottage. He told Amanda that he encouraged his bodyguards to point their weapons at the ground and fire off shots. That was one way to tell trespassers and extortionists to keep off his property. He wondered if one of his bodyguards had followed his advice. Von Hellemann then went back to sleep! Amanda didn't realize she left her footprints in the soft earth all around the dead man's body. She was in a daze when she lay down herself on a couch. She closed her eyes and thought about what she ought to do next. Haakon must have peered into the window around this time and saw Amanda, Al and Von Hellemann all sleeping on the sofas. Amanda might have had her eyes closed but she wasn't sleeping. Eventually Von Hellemann woke up again, and he told Amanda he thought he better check with his staff to see if anyone fired a shot. He told Amanda he would be back in 30 minutes and told her to keep the door locked. Amanda then told him she knew how to use the shotgun in the closet! She remembered saying that because she regretted saying it half a second after she said it. When Von Hellemann left, Amanda, as she described it, said her `brain was a lump of chaos.' One moment she wished she had simply asked von Hellemann to deal with the man in the shadows. The next moment she was glad she did what she did.
Maria was remembering Amanda's account to her as she drove north on Manitoba 10. Well of course Amanda made some crazy decisions, thought Maria. When Amanda decided to make a run for it with Al, she decided to take the guy's money and his weapon when she ran, which wouldn't have been so crazy if she hadn't left her fingerprints in just about every incriminating place. She left the note telling Von Hellemann that she found a dead body outside and that she was too scared to stay in the cottage, fearing more thugs were lurking about, and that she was taking Al and going to look for her mom. Von Hellemann came back, saw the cottage was empty, found the note, found the body….Maria was trying to recall Amanda's exact words when she told her how it all happened. When Amanda was carrying Al past the dead man, she stopped, put the still sleeping Al on the ground, got the man's gun, got his cash. She of course didn't put the wallet back into his pocket; she just dropped it after taking the cash. Then, with Al in her left arm, and the gun in her right hand, and the cash in a slim purse in the pocket of her blue jeans, she set off to find her mom. She took the gun of course because she feared she would meet `another' thug on the path. She took the cash because she didn't see any problem taking money from a dead guy who had been terrorizing her. She continued down the mountain until she found her mom and Haakon.
After getting drunk and after freezing in the lake, Amanda naturally would make mistakes - like buying the Doritos and the Diet Cherry Coke with a crisp $100 bill - still crisp because the bills were in the slim purse which was wrapped with their weapons in plastic bags before they took the swim in Lake Superior - make lots of mistakes - like stumble drunk into the beer-hall in front of a hundred witnesses, though at the time she didn't see herself as a fugitive.
For Maria, the realization that the FBI agent's wife and kids would still have their husband and father if she hadn't set the whole chain of anguish into motion, by shooting her husband, thereby by giving Amanda the impression that killers were running loose in the woods, was of course something which Maria tried to shove out of her thoughts.
Amanda and she both swore they would tell no one else what happened. They had to consider the innocent - Sergio and Al - and telling the world what happened wasn't going to bring the FBI agent back to life. Maria debated with herself about telling Amanda that it was her mother who was in a bathtub with her husband. She could blame it on some woman she didn't recognize. But Maria told Amanda the truth about her mom because she thought a lie might come back to bite her somehow.
Maria later reasoned that Amanda would eventually become sick and tired of shouldering the responsibility for making fugitives out of everyone. And soon or later Pamela would cast a glance at Amanda that told Amanda that her mom wasn't so sure about her, a glance which said that she suspected her daughter might have murdered a man for his money - and then the daughter might not keep a secret secret - she might explain to her mother that she knew who the woman was who Maria saw with Haakon in the bathtub. Then Amanda might say to her mom that Maria would not have shot Haakon, and then she - Amanda - would not have been so quick to jump to the conclusion that the man lurking in the shadows was a gangster, and then she would not have killed the FBI agent by accident, if her mom was never seen with Haakon in the bathtub, and then, soon enough, if Sergio heard all this, all hell would break loose…
After confessing to Amanda her secret, Maria debated in her mind for a day whether or not to confess everything to Pamela. If she was going to learn
the truth sooner or later, it was perhaps best she learned it sooner, and from herself. Perhaps the secret could then be limited to the womenfolk. Al and Sergio could be protected. Maria asked Amanda if they should tell everything to Pamela, tell her what really happened. Maria went through all the reasons why it was necessary. Amanda agreed; it would be best that her mom knew everything: that her daughter had killed the FBI agent because she thought he was a hood who would murder one of her parents, that Maria intentionally shot Haakon, and that she, Pamela, was found guilty of adultery, and was guilty along with Haakon of starting all the trouble. Later that same day Maria and Amanda certainly opened Pamela's eyes to a few things! That was a tough day for Pamela, to have to learn that both her daughter and her best friend knew about her adulterous affair with Haakon, to have to learn that her best friend had tried to commit murder, and tough to learn that her daughter really did kill the FBI agent, though not for his money of course. After the shock wore off somewhat Pamela was glad to know the truth about what happened, not that there was in the back of her mind any suspicion that Amanda might have actually murdered a man in cold blood for his cash, so that she could buy for herself a Diet Cherry Coke and some Doritos. So the women made a deal. They would keep Al and Sergio in ignorant bliss. They promised to try their best to never let Al and Sergio ever know what really happened.
They all applauded Maria's decision to turn north on Manitoba 10 when each, turn by turn, awoke from his or her nap. The authorities had no way of knowing the names and passport numbers which they were now using, and though their new papers and their license plates could not be traced to their former identities, they acknowledged it was wise to leave the main trans-Canadian artery between Eastern and Western Canada. And really, what else can you expect someone to do when they feel as if a huge tiger is chasing them? You have to let them try to get away from that horrible sensation of panic, such as by letting them veer off on to a different highway.
Pamela was ready to take the wheel when Maria confessed she needed sleep. They fueled up at a quaint little gingerbread-house sort of gas station - with four of the five fugitives - Al was of course not considered a fugitive by the authorities - crouching low so they couldn't be seen by the attendants. Haakon filled the tank and paid the bill. Then they set off done a dark and secluded stretch of Canadian roadway. Amanda thought the woods here were as spooky as any she had every seen. By the time they reached the desolation beyond the town of Swan River the first glimmers of dawn were discernible in the eastern sky. Pamela thought it wise to get out of Manitoba and steer towards Saskatchewan and the western provinces. She was thinking the high country of British Columbia was the best refuge. These lowlands were fine for now but in another month the mosquitoes would be too obscene to endure. They wanted the high mountains where the nocturnal frosts would kill all the vicious blood sucking insects. They also wanted to lose themselves in the wilderness for six or seven months. Sergio had an M-16 and plenty of ammo in the trunk to deal with grizzlies if it came to that. He had connections in Thunder Bay, and after the fiasco on Isle Royale he decided he better use them. They had $70,000 with them in cash and had plenty more in the Swiss accounts. They wouldn't suffer too much as long as they eluded the cops and weren't eaten by bears. They had plenty of blankets and coats, tents and air mattresses, guns and bullets. They had enough money to buy everything else they required to survive in the Canadian Rockies.