Shock seizes Daisy’s heart.
“Nice to meet you, Daisy,” Haruto says. “Vanessa, come. Let’s go.”
Vanessa shoots Daisy a desperate, embarrassed look. “I’m so sorry, Daisy. I—I really need to go.” She gives a light laugh that comes out more of a choke. “That pregnancy brain—I completely forgot what time I told Haruto I’d be done.”
Her husband ushers her to the door and out into the windy day. The door swings shut. Riveted, Daisy watches them through the window. Haruto steers his wife across the street and down the opposite sidewalk beneath the turning trees. Daisy realizes her mouth is open, and she shuts it.
Vanessa—so self-assured, so poised, cool, and collected—crumbled in that man’s presence.
A bitter taste leaches into Daisy’s mouth. She doesn’t like the feeling of recognition. She glimpsed something of herself in Vanessa in that moment her husband walked in the door. Daisy knows exactly how it feels to be confronted with an angry, coercive, and strong husband.
Maybe that’s what happened to snarky teen Daisy, the confident schoolgirl. She’s been slowly eroded over time by her own marriage. Daisy thought she was in control of the relationship. But maybe she’s not. Maybe she never was. Maybe her increasing isolation from family and friends blinded her to what she was becoming. Perhaps her campaign to convince Jon that a baby and a move home would fix them as a couple was misguided. Or even a subconscious cry for help, safety.
A little warning bell begins to clang in her head.
DAISY
October 18, 2019. Friday.
Thirteen days before the murder.
After paying for her and Vanessa’s lunches and saying hello to Ty Binty—the bistro owner—who popped out from the bakery, Daisy shrugs into her coat and walks down the sidewalk to where she has parked her little white BMW. She goes in the opposite direction to the way Vanessa and Haruto went, and the couple weighs heavily on her mind as she walks. She keeps replaying Haruto’s arrival, and their departure. The way Haruto manhandled his wife. Her fear. Daisy did not anticipate that her sleek and beautifully pregnant friend might live in a scared and dark shadow. Vanessa might not be sleek and controlled at all. Appearances can be so deceptive.
Daisy decides she’s worried for her friend.
Perhaps she should swing by Vanessa’s house one of these days. Arrive unannounced. Because not only is Daisy worried, she’s also insatiably curious. She reaches her BMW, the autumn wind flicking her hair about her face. Daisy beeps her lock and climbs into her safe, buttery-leather cocoon. As she starts her car, she sees it. A note. On her passenger seat.
WELL, HELLO, DAISY.
It’s inside her car.
Her heart begins to slam against her rib cage.
It’s inside her locked car.
Her phone pings. She jumps and grabs it. A WhatsApp text appears. It’s from an unfamiliar number. A roaring noise begins in her brain. With trembling hands, she opens the message.
It’s another GIF. Chucky with blood on his knife. With the GIF are the words: Chucky’s INSIDE now.
Ticktock
Quicker goes the clock.
MAL
November 1, 2019. Friday.
“You know what they never show on TV?” Benoit asks as he feeds their unmarked vehicle into the stop-start congestion on Lions Gate Bridge.
“I’m sure you’re about to tell me.” Mal starts to type a text to her husband as she speaks.
“Traffic. Cops in fictional shows go straight from point A to B, score parking right outside the establishment. They never sit for hours in traffic.”
Mal laughs and continues typing.
Did you find the lasagna?
She waits for an answer from Peter. Wipers squeak as they smear rain across the windshield. It’s coming down hard now, and at 5:00 p.m. it’s already full dark. The clear day was short lived, as they tend to be in this part of the world, and at this latitude at this time of year.
“Is everything okay?” Benoit asks as he glances at Mal’s phone.
Mal tightens her lips and nods, still waiting for Peter’s reply. Perhaps her husband has his headphones on and can’t hear his phone. Or he’s forgotten to turn on his mobile. Or misplaced it again. Mal turns to look out over the inky waters of the Burrard Inlet. She sees the silhouette of the old grain silos and abandoned dockyard on the shore far below. The area is slated for a new residential development. She notices the cam high up on the bridge struts. That cam is a cop’s friend. It’s caught people trying to climb over the railings to jump—it’s saved more than a few lives.
“Peter’s getting worse,” she says finally. “He left the stove on again yesterday. Whole day. Lucky he didn’t have oil in a pan or something. He’s forgetting words, using wrong ones, and then he gets furious with himself and whoever he’s trying to talk to, which is usually me.” A long pause. “So much anger,” she says softly. “It’s the embarrassment, the humiliation. For a cerebral man like him, a professor of forensic psychology who’s defined by his mind . . .” Her voice fades.
“I’m sorry, Mal.”
The emotion that surges into her eyes at Benoit’s words surprises her. Mal hasn’t really opened up to anyone about her husband’s young-onset dementia. Benoit knows of Peter’s diagnosis, though. Mal is close to her working partner. It happens with people you trust with your life. Benoit has been candid with her, too, about his struggles in being a young, first-time dad. About the sleepless nights with a newborn. He’s told her bits about his horrific childhood in the Congo, when he was kidnapped by rebels at age seven and forced to kill people from his own village as a drugged-up child soldier. If not for a Ghanian-Canadian NGO worker, Benoit might never have been extricated from his situation. The worker brought young Benoit to Quebec for treatment. Without this intervention and a subsequent adoption, Benoit’s life probably would have ended violently a long time ago. How he’s managed to survive, Mal will never know. That kind of trauma doesn’t leave. She suspects a part of Benoit Salumu’s psyche still inhabits that dark place of childhood nightmares and always will. Being a cop, fighting for justice now—he says it’s what keeps him moving forward. And there is Sadie, his wife, and now their new baby. Sadie is working to complete her law degree long distance while caring for a new baby. Mal is in awe of both of them.
When they finally enter the Point Grey neighborhood and head down Fourth Street, Benoit says in an exaggerated voice, “Oh, look, Detective, a parking space right across the street from Bea’s Blooms florist. Just like TV.” He chuckles darkly and pulls into the space. Mal smiles in spite of herself.
The bumblebee logo on the florist door is a match to the logo embossed on the card found at the Glass House. Mal and Benoit enter the store. It’s humid inside. Warm. It smells like a greenhouse. Ferns hang in pots strung from the beams across the ceiling. A wall of fridges houses a variety of freshly cut blooms in a rainbow of colors. The background music is soft. Classical piano. Peaceful.
Mal whispers to Benoit, “I could live in a place like this.”
An arrestingly beautiful woman in her late thirties approaches them. Her brown skin is smooth and flawless. Long locs woven through with a fine silver thread are pulled into a ponytail that hangs down her back. Both her arms are full with silver bracelets. No makeup. She moves like a ballet dancer, with a powerful and fluid grace. The kind of woman Mal can never be. The kind of woman who makes Mal feel like an oversize, blundering Labrador retriever.