Neither piece of Gabe’s gun was where he would hide it. I leaned against the kitchen counter, staring into the sink.

“It’s his gun, Josie.” Mel was watching me, his head tilted to one side.

“He wouldn’t take it with him,” I said. “Not to meet me. He knows I hate guns.”

Someone called Mel’s name from the door to the garden, and he left me alone for the first time since I arrived home. Gabe disliked carrying a gun, and he disliked police officers who expressed a desire to use their weapon. “If I didn’t have to carry one, I wouldn’t,” he told me once. “Anybody who collects weapons or loves to fire them or says he loves them—I’ve heard guys say that—well, they’re sick.” Gabe was always late for his tests at the firing range, and he always dismantled his gun as soon as he arrived home because he knew I hated the sight of it. He would not have taken it with him to the caragana bushes for that reason. Not to meet me. Not to use it on me. He loved me that much. I knew he did.

When Mel returned, he closed the door behind him. “The coroner wants to move the … to move Gabe,” he said. “The officer in the cruiser out front is ready to take you to the morgue. You’re sure you want to do this?”

I nodded.

“You could ride with me, but …”

Riding with Mel was the last thing I wanted to do. No, seeing Gabe on a slab in the morgue was the last thing I wanted to do. I could avoid one, but not the other. I wanted no one to accompany me to see Gabe. I wanted to speak with no one. I didn’t even want to look at anyone. I buried myself in myself. I didn’t want to do that, either, but I had no choice.

4.

I don’t know how long it took the officer to drive me to the morgue, or the route he took to get there, or even what he looked like. I just made myself as small as possible against the corner of the back seat of the cruiser and kept my eyes closed, wishing at times that someone was with me and wishing at other times that I would see no one for days.

The car pulled to a stop and the officer driving it said, “We’re here.” Through the windshield I saw a small, frosted door with morgue stencilled across the glass, and I followed the cop inside.

We entered a room that looked like the reception area of my dentist’s office. Clean, antiseptic and grey. Chrome and vinyl chairs. Dated magazines spread across a low table. I steadied myself against a wall while the officer disappeared through a metal door and emerged a few minutes later with a woman dressed in a green top and trousers who said I should wait for a few minutes and that she could bring me coffee or water. I think I said, “Just bring me my husband,” and sat alone on one of the vinyl chairs.

I waited ten minutes. I know because I looked at a clock on the wall and was surprised to find it was three minutes after midnight. At thirteen minutes after midnight the woman returned and asked me to follow her, please, and I did, down a corridor and into a room that was all stainless steel, like the inside of a dishwasher, and there was Gabe, on a stainless steel table. Someone had laid a white towel across his groin. Another towel covered his head above his eyebrows, where the wound would show. His hands were wrapped in plastic bags. A man in a white coat stood with his back to me, preparing something on a counter, and the woman in green took my arm and held it, and I think she said she was sorry as we walked to the table.

I took Gabe’s arm in my hands, and it was my turn to say I was sorry, over and over again, telling Gabe while the woman stood at my elbow watching and the man in the white coat fussed over his instruments, his tools of dissection.

I have no idea how long I stood speaking to Gabe. I know I looked up to see the man in the white coat, an older, sweet-faced man who looked as though he mourned for every person he encountered on the slabs, watching me over the top of his glasses. I saw him flick his eyes from mine to the woman beside me and felt a slight tug on my arm. It was time to go. I pulled away from her long enough to lean over Gabe and kiss him lightly on the lips, whispered goodbye, and walked away.

The officer who had driven me to the morgue was waiting in the reception area, talking with Mel Holiday, and as I emerged from the morgue the two men separated. Mel asked me to sit down, took a chair beside me, and asked if he could get me anything. All I could do was stare at the floor and shake my head.

“Walter wants to get things started,” Mel said, “do the tests as soon as possible, get the autopsy results, get a report issued, and wrap everything up.” When I said nothing, he added as though I had asked why there was such a rush, “When this happens to an officer, people speculate, they talk, the media makes it a big deal, you know that. The longer it takes to settle things, to get the official word out, the more they talk.”

I remained silent.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked, bending to look at me.

“No,” I said. “I’m not okay. But I will be eventually. I hope.”

“You shouldn’t be alone tonight,” he said. “Who can you stay with?”

I shook my head. Wherever I was, I would not sleep.

“The woman who was talking to you, she and her husband,” Mel said. “Your neighbours, next door. They say you can stay with them, or the woman, she’ll come in and stay with you. It’s late, but we could call her. She’s waiting for us to call her.”

“The Blairs. Tell them no. Tell them thanks, but no.”

“You can’t stay alone. I can have a female officer sent over.”

I had been the emotionally crippled victim long enough. I no longer felt emotionally crippled. I began to feel anger at what had been done to Gabe, what had been done to me, what had been done to us. “Lovely,” I said to Mel. “We’ll sit and do embroidery together.”

“Damn it, Josie!” Mel snapped. He looked around. The uniformed officer had left to wait for me in the police cruiser, and the woman in green had returned to be with Gabe and the sweet old man with the knives and saws. “Gabe’s dead. I’ll miss him too. We worked together nearly a year. You know how close we were. And all you can do is come up with smart-ass comments?”

“No!” I shouted loud enough for anyone to hear. “No, I can’t keep playing the broken-hearted widow, because I don’t know how, Mel. Do you have something that will tell me how to behave? Is it in the police procedures manual? Do I dress in black and wear prayer beads? The hell I will. Take all your compassion and crap about sending female cops to sit with the grieving wife and shove it. I don’t need them. I need Gabe.”

I sat with my head in my hands and felt my rage dissolve. I heard Mel walk outside and speak to someone. When he returned, he stood in the middle of the room and said, “There will be two officers at your house all night, keeping things secure.”

I looked up to see him standing with his hands in his pockets, his eyes avoiding mine.

“We’ll have more forensics people there in the morning, when the light’s better,” he added. “If you need something, just ask the officers.”

“Tell them to stay outside,” I said. “Tell them I don’t want them knocking on my door, checking up on me or wanting to use the john.”

“The constable outside will take you home. You should stay with somebody tonight, but it’s your choice. I’ll be back at my place in a couple of hours.” Mel walked to the door and stood with his hand on the knob. “Call, just to talk or whatever, all right?”

“Mel?”

He looked back.

“Why did Walter Freeman want to know if Gabe had bought me any expensive gifts recently?”

Mel looked puzzled. “He asked you that?”

“Yes.”

“He must have something on his mind. I’ll find out.” Mel glanced out the window in the back door, then walked toward me. “Did he, Josie?”