Chapter Fourteen – Edmonton on Her Mind

 Janet hunched over her laptop, the Threema transcript glowing on the screen. The line replayed in her head: “The cold cuts through your bones here. You wake up in February and wonder if the sun will ever come back.”

She lit another cigarette, the air in the condo already blue with smoke.

The phone buzzed. Lorne Luft’s gruff voice came through, muffled as if pressed against his stubble.

“You see it, don’t you?” he said.

“See what?”

“That bit about winter. That’s not Toronto talking, Brown. That’s prairie cold. Edmonton cold. Minus thirty, frost that breaks your skin if you breathe wrong. I grew up with that. It gets in your bones, just like she said.”

Janet scrolled to Evelyn Shaw’s file, the first victim. “Evelyn was Edmonton too. Lorne, that can’t be coincidence.”

“It’s not,” Lorne said. “She’s planted here. You want to smell her trail, you’ve got to come west.”

Janet leaned back in her chair, staring at the stacks of notes scattered across the table. “Marianne will never approve the expense. Not yet. She’ll say it’s too early, that I don’t have enough.”

“So don’t ask.”

“Lorne—”

“You’re the one who taught me this job’s about showing up where the story is. You can’t trace her from a condo in Toronto. You want to understand her, walk the same streets, feel the same air. Out here, the air alone will tell you something.”

As if on cue, Lorne coughed and chuckled. “Listen, Environment Canada’s been blaring warnings all day. Cold front rolling in tonight. Minus thirty-six with the windchill. They’re telling people to cover every inch of skin or risk frostbite in under five minutes. You want to know how she thinks about winter? Come freeze in it yourself.”

Janet stubbed out her cigarette and poured herself a whiskey, neat. Her father, still awake in the next room, shuffled into the kitchen.

“You’re pacing,” Edward said.

“I’m considering Edmonton.”

His brow rose. “Does your editor know?”

“She wouldn’t approve it. Not yet.”

He lowered himself into the chair across from her, wearing the same steady expression he’d worn on the bench. “Asking forgiveness instead of permission?”

She smirked, swirling the amber glass. “Something like that.”

Edward shrugged. “Sometimes you have to see the ground with your own eyes. But be prepared to pay the cost.”

Janet closed her laptop with a snap. “I’ll book the flight tonight.”

Later, as she zipped a small carry-on shut, she stood by the balcony window, looking out over Toronto’s skyline washed in sodium light. Somewhere beyond it, the prairies were locked under a brutal cold front — the kind that cracked asphalt and killed car batteries. She could almost hear Lorne’s voice again: five minutes to frostbite.

She touched her cigarette to the glass and whispered, “Edmonton it is.”

The plane rattled as it clawed its way west, thin clouds streaking across the night sky. Janet sat in her economy aisle seat, a blanket of fatigue pressing down on her. She was already on her third whiskey, straight up, the cubes long melted. Every sip burned hot and fast — a substitute for the cigarettes she wasn’t allowed to light. Her hands itched for the ritual of smoke, ash, and flame.

Beside her, a kindly older couple — gray-haired, smartly dressed, their voices pitched low but carrying in the tight cabin — spoke to one another over the hum of the engines. Janet wasn’t trying to listen, but their words snagged her attention.

“…poor Eleanor,” the woman said, shaking her head. “She really believed he was coming. A Canadian sergeant, stationed with NATO in Eastern Europe. Sent her pictures in uniform, said he was finishing his last tour before retirement. He told her she was the only one who made him feel alive, that he wanted to spend his remaining years with her.”

The husband muttered, “Pictures were probably stolen off some real soldier’s Facebook page.”

“She sent him fifty thousand,” the woman went on. “First it was airfare for his leave home. Then, when he said his account was frozen because of military red tape, she covered the fees. Then he said his mother was ill, needed surgery. Eleanor kept saying she couldn’t afford more, but he begged. Said he’d pay her back the moment he landed in Canada. She believed him.”

Janet could see it: a lonely widow clinging to the dream of a soldier flying across an ocean for her.

“And then?” the husband asked.

“Then he vanished. Phone dead, email gone. The bank wouldn’t help — said she authorized it herself. The police said there was nothing they could do. She’s seventy-two, alone, broke, and too ashamed to tell her children. She still keeps the soldier’s picture framed on her dresser, as if he’s real.”

The man shook his head. “Bastards. They don’t just steal money. They hollow people out.”