Women were targets of violence everywhere, but Indigenous women and girls were targeted in numbers that scared Amelia—by close family members, but also by men they only knew in passing and so many by strangers. Not just in Canada. It was the same for sisters in the US. And for African American women too—so many missing. She looked at her Aunt’s haunted face. No one would know these stats better than Auntie Rosie. For eight years, she’d been the Director of a shelter for Indigenous women and their children fleeing violence.
“Did she have her cell with her Auntie?” Amelia asked.
“It’s not here, so she must have had it. It goes to voicemail.”
Michael put a protective arm around Rosie. Nobody voiced the obvious. If Carey wasn’t answering, her phone was most likely lying on a roadside somewhere. Cells are easy to track.
“It’s gonna be okay, Rosie. They’re going to find her and bring her back to us, safe and sound.” Michael’s words, hollow, bounced off the walls. Bill Cumberland hadn’t mentioned Carey’s cell. Michael would call and ask him about it after dinner.
Amelia had always felt safe, even when she moved to Vancouver, on her own for the first time in her life. The pressures of university life aside, it was exhilarating, not scary. But Carey had been taken in a public field, surrounded by her teammates, Beth right beside her, her mom at the women’s shelter only three blocks away! And they didn’t even know the name of the guy she got in the car with. She knew this kind of thinking wouldn’t help Carey. She had to do something. But what? She decided to go see Kate Brennan as soon as she got back to campus. Kate was a PhD Criminology candidate and the lecturer for the Introductory Crim course she was taking. Kate was awesome and smart. She’d have some idea what Amelia could do to help find Carey.
CHAPTER 2
Kate phoned to let me know she’d pick Amelia up first, then swing by and get me. “I should be there in an hour, Morgan.”
“Thanks Kate. See you in a bit.” I met Amelia Boudreau for the first time when Kate brought her to our cottage to meet Lucas and me. That was five days after her cousin Carey Bolton was abducted. Time was still on their side that they’d get her back safe. Nearly 90% of children reported missing in BC return home within a week. Kate knew this, as did Lucas. They’re both criminologists. But everything changed when four days later, Michael Bolton spotted Carey getting into a car behind the Clarendon, a private members club in downtown Vancouver. He saw two other children in the car and was sure there were three men altogether. He reported the sighting to the Vancouver Police that night.
Kate, Amelia, and I had coffee with Michael the next day. He was still badly shaken because he’d only realized it was Carey as the car sped past him. The last place he expected to see her was in the alley behind the club he belonged to. It’s almost 1,400 kilometres from Terrace to Vancouver. Carey was a long way from home.
We had dinner with Michael at the club a few days later. He wanted us to have a look at the place. I only have one black dress—really all a woman needs—and that’s what I wore. When Lucas and I walked through the front door of the club, I felt like a pretender to the throne, now that I have firsthand experience of what that means. ‘So, this is how the other half lives’, dad would have said. ‘You mean the top 1%’, Kate would have corrected.
Michael was there to meet us, looking every inch the high roller that he is. He signed us in and took us up to the second floor for drinks. Amelia was already there, sipping on something pink and we settled in with scotch and sodas, single malt. The club started off as a white enclave and the times might be a changin’, but I didn’t spot many brown folks enjoying the amenities. I’m sure the four of us turned a few heads that night.
After drinks and dinner in a private dining room, Michael took us on a tour of the place—and not to show it off. He’d been doing lots of snooping around since spotting Carey behind the club. We gathered our things—like we were leaving—and hopped an elevator, but instead of taking it down to the basement and parking access, we took it up to the fifth floor, where the overnight accommodation is. Once there, we made our way back down to the main floor by way of a labyrinth of old stairwells. Michael didn’t need to point out that we didn’t encounter a single person coming down. From there we took an elevator to the basement. Before picking up our cars, we followed Michael out the club exit to the street. He showed us where he was standing when he saw Carey and we all huddled around him as he described, once again, exactly what had happened.
After a dinner meeting with clients, he decided to walk home through Gastown. He was leaving the club via the pedestrian entrance when he noticed a young girl getting into a Suburban, off to his left. As the car pulled away from the curb and drove past him, he realized the young girl was Carey. He pulled out his cell as he ran after the car, trying to get a picture of the license plate, but all he managed was a blurry shot as the car turned at the next side street. I’m a filmmaker and have access to excellent equipment. I played with the file, but no luck.
It’s been a week since Michael saw Carey behind the Clarendon. Then late this morning, there’d been a call to Carey’s mom, by a man who told her he’d seen Carey enter a house on Franklin Street. She called the Vancouver Police and Detective Corporal Hermes from Missing Persons paid a visit. She phoned Rosaline back and told her that it appeared no one was living there. The caller had been so specific about the location that Rosaline just couldn’t believe Carey wasn’t there. She asked her niece to please visit the address again—just to be sure. She wanted Amelia to take George with her, but he’d already left the university for a weekend visit home. Amelia left messages for both Kate and me.
Amelia had gone to Kate in the first place because Kate has a reputation for going to bat for women’s rights on campus. What Amelia doesn’t know: back in her native Ireland, Kate ended a relationship with a guy who’d become physically abusive. He didn’t take no for an answer and began stalking her. In Ireland, stalking isn’t grounds for a safety order. He showed up at her home, her school, the homes of her friends—a ‘friggin eejit’ was how she described him to me. She finished her last year of high school and a few years after that, looking over her shoulder. I spent more than a few years looking over my shoulder as well. Thunder Bay is my hometown, and too many young men and women from my community have died under suspicious circumstances.
I was in my final year of film studies when I took a semester off to work as a production assistant on another filmmaker’s documentary about our missing and murdered Indigenous women. Our missing. Our murdered. I will take my memories of the interviews with their families to my grave.
Greenwood Lake Reserve is where some of my family still live. I’m more beige than brown because of my Irish dad, who never left the house without a sunhat and a liberal dose of sunscreen. Some folks think it’s oh so romantic being mixed race these days. Then there’s the folks that wish we’d go away. Then there’s the folks who think we’re the answer to the race problem. But I don’t think we are, not yet anyway. My last name’s O’Meara and no one ever asks me if I’m Irish.
Canadians are some of the most analyzed people on the planet. The non-Indigenous ones, that is. The government did a big study a few years back, wanting to capture illusive information like where everyone comes from and who they’re hanging with. I looked it over. There were lots of boxes and you could tick where you came from and your language and whether you married one of your own and they also wanted to know if you didn’t. Now the government can talk about how many of whom made it here and from where and who speaks what language at home. How many are visible; how many aren’t. Kate would say boundaries and borders are pointless in a world where millions have been on the move—mixing it up as they say, for centuries now and what’s happening in Canada is happening everywhere. She’s right. But how we’re different is very important to a lot of people.
And then I remember Ray, a friend of my older cousin Maynard, an African American from Buffalo, NY. They
met in Toronto. Ray came up to Thunder Bay a few times to visit Maynard. He loved coming to Canada. ‘No heat on us niggers up here. You Indians take our place,’ I remembered Ray once saying, with a big grin. And my cousins all nodding and Maynard saying, ‘He’s right about that.’ I was just a kid then. I still play that conversation in my mind.
Lucas spent the first ten years of his life in the Guatemalan highlands. He never talks about it. I wish he would. Maybe some day. I’ve done the reading and I know that part of his childhood included dodging bullets and witnessing atrocities that are difficult to read about, never mind experience. After he finished his masters, he worked for a few years in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. For lots of the folks he worked with, histories of trauma, individual and collective, have fueled addiction and mental illness. People missing, women, children, men. In some cases, it was years before the VPD would even consider letting the family file a report. When news of the case against serial killer William Picton hit the papers, Lucas was devastated. 49 women dead. Half of Picton’s victims were identified as Indigenous and Métis women and he’d worked with some of those women, and when they disappeared—their families. He’d tried and often failed to get the attention of the police.
A muffled honk interrupts my thoughts. Kate’s here. I quickly don a rain jacket and grab my umbrella. The rain is pouring down and in my dash to the car my pants and shoes get soaked. Kate cranked the heat, but no real chance to dry off because not ten minutes later, we pulled into the curb in front a fish wholesaler, a nondescript, cinderblock building next door to 168 Franklin Street.
As soon as Kate killed the engine and the wipers came to rest, rain coursed across the windshield in waves. The rain had been a constant for days, a grey that matched the sky and those patches of ocean visible only a few blocks away. It was the kind of day where you’re happy to see evening come, with its warm, welcoming lights.
168 Franklin Street has a grimy stucco facade and faded green trim; the only holdout in this dreary, light industrial area—the high windowless walls of a computer parts distributor on one side and on the other, thick trees and the back-alley entrance. If Carey had been brought to this desolate house, what must Amelia be thinking.
“Thank you both for coming,” Amelia said, looking sideways at the house. Her face said it all.
“I’m glad I could be here, Amelia,” said Kate.
“Me too.”
“Auntie Rosie is so hoping that Carey is here,” she said as she got out and quickly opened her umbrella against the pouring rain.
Kate’s glance caught mine in the rear view, the steady thrum of rain on the roof an unneeded counterpoint. She looked worried and very tired. I reached for the wet umbrella on the floor at my feet and exited the car, quickly popping it open. Kate got out and ducked under mine and we followed Amelia back to the address and up the wooden stairs to the front door. I noticed the stairs were a fairly new addition, at odds with the rest of the house. Newer stairs could mean the house was in use. Amelia knocked and we waited. Nothing. Amelia moved to the left of the door and was trying to peer into a grimy side window.
“The curtain is pulled shut,” she said.
“Maybe we should go around to the back door,” Kate suggested.
“I’ll try one more time.” I knocked again. We all heard it—the sound of something hitting the floor.
“Someone’s in there,” said Amelia, reaching for the front doorknob. “It’s locked.”
“Wait. I hear footsteps,” she said, her ear to the door and sure enough, moments later, the latch was released, and the door opened a few inches to reveal a young woman in her late teens or early twenties.
“I din’t order anything.” It was hard to miss: the slurred speech; how she had to work hard to stay standing. She was high.
“We’re very sorry to bother you,” said Amelia.
“We’re not delivering anything,” I said.
The young woman nodded, like that was a good thing and gave us a faint smile.
“T’at’s good, cause I’m not ‘ungry.” She moved to close the door, so I jumped in quickly.
“We’re looking for a young girl. Her name’s Carey. Carey Bolton. Is she here?”
“Carey?” she said, looking from me to Amelia to Kate. The smile disappeared. She looked confused.
“That’s right,” said Amelia. “Carey. She’s my cousin. She’s 11 years old, about this tall,” and she indicated the top of her shoulder. “Have you seen her?”
“No ... No one here. Jus’ me,” and she tapped herself on the chest. The hand remained there, fingers splayed, like they needed a resting place.
“But she was here, wasn’t she? Before today I mean?” Amelia tried again; voice full of hope.
“No. Not here,” the woman said, shaking her head vehemently. “Like I tol’ you. Jus’ me.”
“But a man called Carey’s mother and told her she was at this address,” I said.
“He made mist’ke,” she said, trying hard to focus as she turned to me with a vacant, hooded stare. I persisted.
“Carey’s been missing for more than two weeks and her family is desperate to find her. Please! If you can help us in any way. Was Carey here recently? Maybe she here before but now she’s gone?”
“No one here.” She’d been leaning against the door jam for support, but now stepped back into the room.
“Please. Wait,” said Amelia. Do you live here alone?”
The young woman moved to close the door, but I applied pressure to keep it open.
“Are you here by yourself?” Kate asked. “It’s a big house for one person.”
She moved to close the door again, but I moved faster and positioned my foot to prevent her closing it.
“We’ll go to the police,” I said. “They think no one is living here. We’ll tell them you’re here.”
Her eyes flew wide in confused alarm. She struggled as best she could to close the door.
“Best to let her go, Morgan,” said Kate. “You’ll not get a thing out of her, not right now anyway.”
“But what if she knows something, Kate!”
“Let her go,” Kate said softly.
Reluctantly, I stepped back, and the door slammed in our faces. We heard her struggle with the deadbolt, finally sliding it into place.
“She’s not going to give us anything,” said Kate. “She’s too stoned.”
“Kate’s right,” said Amelia. “I think she’s an addict. I don’t think she knows anything about Carey.”
Kate gave Amelia’s shoulder a squeeze. “Auntie’s going to be so disappointed,” she said, heading down the front steps.
Without a word, we followed her to the car. As soon as we were in, Amelia pulled out her cell. “I’ll leave a message with Detective Hermes at Missing Persons that someone is living here and ask her to check the place out again.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Kate. “Just to be certain.”
“Warn her that the occupants are probably drug users,” I added.
“Right,” said Amelia.
Kate drove Amelia back to her residence on Burnaby Mountain, then the two of us came back to the East Village and grabbed a bite at the Pemberton Hotel, just down the hill from the house on Franklin. Lucas was away at a prison reform symposium in Victoria till Monday evening. Kate’s husband Bart is a psychiatrist. He was settling in a new patient at West Sanctuary, a trauma clinic, one of the programs of the Institute of Mental Health at the University of BC.
“What do you think, Morgan?” Kate asked me over tea.
“That young woman was not happy to see us. I wish I hadn’t threatened her with the police. It was stupid of me.”
“No it wasn’t. We’re all starting to feel desperate.”
“She was so wrecked though. Hard to tell if she was lying or just stoned.”
“True that.”
We finished our tea and retrieved the Prius where Kate had parked
it, just west of the Pemberton.
“Let’s check the house one more time,” said Kate, as she turned right on Victoria Street. We bounced uphill along the cobblestones, slick and shiny with rain, which had backed off to a thin, steady drizzle. She turned onto Franklin and parked in front of the house.
We got out of the car, approached the house, and stood at the bottom of the porch stairs, looking up. The house loomed dark. We climbed the stairs to the front door, knocked and waited. When there was no answer, we went around to the rear of the house and up the stairs to the back door. We knocked loudly. There was no sign of life: no lights; no sound from inside the house; not a flicker of movement. The only sound was the rain beating a gentle, irregular patter on the porch.
“I don’t think anyone’s here now,” said Kate.
“It’s my fault, Kate!”
“No, it’s not, Morgan! I think that whatever was going on here, isn’t now. That’s my sense of it.”
“Damn!”
“Maybe the guy will call Carey’s mom again,” said Kate.
The visit to the house left me feeling depressed, tense, and useless. Once Kate dropped me off, I puttered around the cottage for awhile, did a load of laundry and checked my email. No word from Lucas yet but I didn’t expect to hear from him tonight. He threw himself wholeheartedly into everything he did, and this conference would not be an exception. Prison reform was a subject close to his heart.
I didn’t want to bother him with bad news about a dead-end lead—especially when there was nothing, he could do about it. Instead, I decided on a hot bath, my go to fix for most everything. It was about 10:00 pm when I put on some Bill Evans and climbed into the tub with a mug of tea and my relaxation pillow. A glass of wine would have been more to my liking, but I wanted to have a clear head tomorrow. I was sleepy and the water was lukewarm when I climbed out of the tub, pulled the plug, and got ready for bed.
I went for a run early the next morning down at New Brighton Park because relentless drizzle doesn’t count as rain in Vancouver, not with me anyway and I needed to wind out. I was back at the cottage by 8:00 am. I changed into warm fleece, then had some yogurt and fruit.
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