Victoria Falls

by James Hornor

  Charlie listened in dead silence. His fate could now be partially in Heather’s hands. She could easily use the opportunity to get back at him. For all she knew, he had lied about not sleeping with Jenny, and then something had happened. Either Jenny had left in disgust or Charlie had found a way to keep her quiet. Either way, Charlie thought about Heather’s propensity to become prosecutorial. Her new plan might be to put him behind bars and for her and Ryan to begin a new life together with a man who would be trustworthy and responsible.

  “How do you know so much about what the RCMP will assume?”

  “We have people show up at Victoria House who have had all sorts of scrapes with the law. Part of their healing is to be able to talk to someone who is nonjudgmental. Some try to hide the lives they have left behind; others need to talk to keep their sanity. So we give them food, a place to sleep, and (if they ask) even a little therapy.”

  “How can I soften the blow of this with the RCMP?”

  “We need to call the inspector and tell him we have additional information. They probably won’t discover the scent and fingerprints until Monday or Tuesday. It will be much better if they hear the truth from us instead of reading it on a forensics report.”

  “Won’t they still assume that it’s an alibi?”

  “Probably, but at least we will have a fighting chance. We need to get the inspector on our side. The sergeant is probably a lost cause. What we need is some evidence that points to the mechanic.”

  “How about Jenny’s phone?”

  “The sergeant put it in his belt pack. He said something about also needing a password, but I don’t think her phone is password protected.”

  “Instead of giving it to the sergeant, we should have driven it to Edmonton. Some techie could have gotten into the call history. If the sergeant has already decided that I’m the only valid suspect, he may not go out of his way to chase down other leads.”

  “There are scores of innocent men and women who are sitting in prison because some district attorney wanted another notch in his belt. False accusations have a way of gathering their own momentum.”

  “So should I call the inspector?”

  “Let me call him first thing in the morning. You have to respect his privilege of having one day a week to spend with his family.”

  Charlie remembered that he would also be calling Heather and his office the next morning to tell them that he was required by the RCMP to remain in Canada, so now he felt as if his entire life was pivoting toward tragedy.

  That evening, Charlie barely touched the casserole that James made for dinner, and as the house darkened, Charlie sat paralyzed next to the fire. He was not only in danger of losing his job and his family; he was in danger of being arrested for a crime that he did not commit. By his own fault, the circumstantial evidence was mounting against him, and despite his father’s ongoing support, he couldn’t imagine a sequence of events that would return him to the normal existence he had enjoyed just a week ago.

  The thought of spending the night on the sofa held little appeal. He was already emotionally exhausted, and he desperately needed a good night’s sleep. He was hesitant to return to Jenny’s bed, since his sleeping there last night had caused his own incrimination, but despite that hesitancy, he headed up the stairs to her room, rationalizing that the damage had already been done.

  Her robe was no longer there, but her pillows and sheets still smelled of her, and as he removed his clothes and slipped under the sheets, a great sadness engulfed him. He was sad for his own situation, but the smell of her reminded him that she was out there somewhere, perhaps dead, but just as likely still alive and feeling frightened and alone. As Charlie drifted off to sleep, he also thought of Heather and Ryan. He knew that despite her bravado, Heather was also feeling lonely and afraid. Charlie imagined Ryan clutching one of his stuffed animals, wondering when his father would return. It was all a little too much, and when sleep finally did arrive, he embraced its quiet oblivion as a last refuge before the storm.

  Several hours later, Charlie was awakened from a dead sleep by the sound of his own name.

  “Charlie.”

  The voice saying his name was distinctive and feminine. For a moment he thought it was Jenny. But the image appearing just next to the bed was not his sister; rather, it was his mother.

  Charlie knew immediately that it was Teresa, because as he was opening his eyes, she again repeated his name, and she gave him one of her broad and welcoming smiles. She looked remarkably younger. Charlie immediately thought of the pictures he had seen of her when she was in her mid-twenties, and she was dressed in typical Teresa style: silk scarf, hair clips, collar up in the back.

  “Charlie. All will be well.”

  It was one short sentence as she began to evaporate into the darkness, but it was said with such clarity and conviction that it immediately filled him with the same sense of assurance that Teresa was able to give him when she was alive. Teresa always had a way of coming to the rescue, and she did it in a way that seemed unrehearsed and effortless. Her sure confidence alone was always able to stem the tide.

  Charlie lay staring into the darkness for the next thirty minutes. His mother had died five months ago, and yet she had just been in the room, larger than life, to comfort her son. Charlie had this crazy idea that she may have also appeared to James, since they didn’t have a chance to say goodbye before she died. He thought about going into James’s room to tell him about her apparition, but he reconsidered when he thought about his tenuous credibility regarding the night visit of the mechanic. James might begin to think that he had a difficult time distinguishing between fantasy and reality.

  Still, Teresa’s appearance and her hopeful message had a profoundly positive effect on Charlie, and he fell fast asleep until a little after dawn, when he heard his father head down the stairs to the kitchen.

  After breakfast, James took his phone and went out to the driveway to call the inspector. When he returned, he seemed subdued and distracted.

  “How did the call go?”

  Charlie was still cleaning up from breakfast and rehearsing his call to the office. He had already decided that the office call should precede his call to Heather.

  “The inspector said that if any of your original report has changed, you should write it down and they will take a look when they return on Wednesday. He seemed very businesslike on the phone.”

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “He asked me if I would be willing to take on the responsibility of being sure you remained in Alberta.”

  “I told them yesterday that I wouldn’t leave. Why all the formality?”

  “He mentioned that they would get fingerprint results by tomorrow afternoon and that they would share them with us on Wednesday.”

  “So there is also at least a chance that the phone will give them the call history by Wednesday?”

  “He didn’t mention the phone.”

  “But the phone is the best chance of proving his guilt.”

  “Phone calls back and forth wouldn’t necessarily lead to an abduction.”

  “But at least the man could be found and questioned.”

  “Maybe. He could always have been using a throwaway cell phone.”

  “That would have involved quite a bit of planning. I think the abduction was something he dreamed up that morning. Did the inspector say anything else?”

  “He asked me to get your car keys.”

  “What?”

  “It’s just a precaution on their part.”

  “For all they know I could walk down to the village and get on a train.”

  “True. But from their perspective the convenience of just getting in your car and driving away would no longer be an option.”

  “Shouldn’t I get an attorney?”

  “Let’s wait until Wednesday and see what they have to say. If you get an attorney now, it may make you look more culpable.”

  James decided that to talk anymore about
it was just making Charlie feel worse. He wasn’t going to demand the keys, but he felt better when Charlie quietly left the keys on the kitchen table. James’s philosophy since India had been “the less said, the better,” and so he intentionally wanted normalcy to return despite Jenny’s disappearance and Charlie’s cloud of suspicion. His job as a father was to keep things on an even keel in spite of deteriorating outward circumstances.

  The morning had not been the ideal preamble for calls to Williston, Hughes and Meyers, or Heather, but Charlie knew he had no choice. As he dialed the office, he hoped that Todd Hughes would be available since Todd liked him and always gave him the benefit of the doubt. The person he wanted to avoid at all costs was Craig. Craig was undoubtedly keeping track of every call Charlie had missed from a client as well as every unreturned email. Craig envied Charlie’s position as a partner, and he celebrated when Charlie did something that might jeopardize client relations. As he dialed the number, he realized that it was nearing the lunch hour in Chicago.

  “Williston, Hughes and Meyers.”

  “Hi, Diane. It’s Charlie. Is Todd around?”

  “Todd is having lunch with clients. Do you want his voice-mail?”

  “How about Bill Meyers? Is he also at lunch?”

  “I think Bill just finished a meeting in the conference room. I’ll try over there.”

  “Conference room; this is Craig Ela.”

  “Hey Craig. It’s Charlie. Is Bill around?”

  “Bill is in Todd’s office, signing papers. Are you finally back?”

  “Not yet. I should be back by Wednesday, Thursday at the latest.”

  “Hey, while I have you on the phone, you’ve missed a ton of client calls. When I talked to Heather, she said you’d be home by Saturday, so I wasn’t that worried. Thursday? Really? I tried to forward the voicemails to your cell phone but your mailbox was full. Do you want me to listen to the calls and get back to them? I know Todd would be shocked if he knew that client calls were not being returned.”

  “Craig, when I get off this call I will clear my mailbox and you can forward them to my cell. How’s everything else going?”

  “Todd and Bill were beyond upset that the contract deadline with Overton expired. We lost two hundred grand overnight. I know that Overton was not your client, but it was like a morgue around here last Friday.”

  “Yeah, I’ve had a few difficult days out here as well.”

  “Oh, is your brother-in-law still having a tough time?”

  Charlie didn’t want to perpetuate the brother-in-law story even though he ostensibly went to western Canada to help Heather’s brother. Mostly he wanted to end the call with Craig.

  “Listen Craig, speaking of my brother-in-law, I need to meet him in a few minutes. Tell Todd that I called and I’ll check in on Wednesday.”

  As Charlie hung up the phone, he couldn’t imagine how long he could keep up the charade of being “almost home.” His office had an above average tolerance for family emergencies, but when business was being impacted, it could go quickly downhill.

  Worse than talking to Craig would be the call to Heather. Her parting words in their last conversation had amounted to a request for a trial separation. As he dialed her cell phone, he didn’t know if she would even talk to him.

  “Hello.”

  “Heather, it’s Charlie.”

  “I know. I saw it on the caller ID.”

  Neither of them spoke for about twenty seconds.

  “So why did you call?”

  “I called because I felt bad about the way our last call ended.”

  “Talk is cheap, Charlie. If you really felt bad about the call, you’d be home by now.”

  “I’ve actually been advised by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that I cannot leave Canada until the thing with Jenny gets sorted out.”

  “You’ve been ‘advised.’ What does that mean, ‘you’ve been advised’?”

  “It means that I cannot leave here, and the timeframe is indeterminate.”

  “What did you do to her? You lied to me. You slept with her, didn’t you, Charlie? You slept with her and then what? Did you get mad and do something stupid?”

  “I didn’t sleep with her, but there is some bogus circumstantial evidence that is not working in my favor.”

  Charlie could hear Heather put the phone down, and he could hear Ryan in the background.

  “Here, Charlie. I don’t want to talk to you. You are a lying, unfaithful bastard. So if you want to call here in the future, I don’t want to talk to you. But Ryan misses you and he wants to say hello to his father.”

  “Hi Dad.”

  “Hey Flyin’ Ryan, how’s everything going?”

  “I miss you, Dad.”

  “Hey buddy, I miss you to the moon and back. I’m hoping I’ll be home soon.”

  “Will you be here for my soccer game?”

  “Maybe not for your Thursday night game, but we’ll see.”

  “Thursday night is father-son night.”

  Charlie could barely speak but he knew that he had to stay upbeat for his son.

  “Hey, when I get home, every game night will be a father-son night.”

  “Ok, Dad.”

  Charlie could hear the disappointment in Ryan’s voice.

  “I love you Ryan.”

  “I love you too, Dad.” Charlie saw “call ended” appear on his phone. Ryan either ended the call or he handed the phone to Heather and instead of saying goodbye, she simply hung up.

  “How did your calls go?”

  James had his coat on and Charlie wasn’t sure if he was headed out or had just returned.

  “Not great. The one with Heather was particularly volatile.”

  “May I give you some fatherly advice?”

  “Anything would be helpful at this point.”

  “Stay focused on your son. Be more proactive. You might call him at the end of the school day or after a game. Let him know that while you are here in Alberta, you still want to support him and be a part of his life. With Heather, be brutally honest and ask for her forgiveness. Let her know that you care for her despite all that has happened. She may be volatile, but there is a part of her that desperately wants your marriage to work. Agree with her and don’t be adversarial. You will notice how the whole dynamic will change.”

  “And what about the office? How should I handle things?”

  “Call the partner who you trust the most, and again be brutally honest. If you are honest with people, they are willing to accept almost anything. Any lying or cover-up will work against you in the end. And do whatever work you can by phone or email to stay current. If I were you, I would call the office every day.”

  Just listening to James’s calm and clear direction was like a balm for Charlie. Of course there were solutions to each of his problems, and James had a way of offering very specific directions of what he should do next. Charlie remembered that Craig was going to forward voicemails. He quickly cleared his voice mailbox and texted Craig that he could go ahead with the forwarding.

  Redirecting his focus to work-related issues helped Charlie regain some perspective, and he used the next forty-eight hours to reassert his stature at the firm. He still had not spoken to Todd, but he wanted that conversation to be interspersed with his accurate observations of how things were progressing with clients.

  James seemed pleased to see Charlie so motivated, so he decided not to mention that the inspector had called to arrange a 10:00 A.M. meeting at the house on Wednesday.

  This time two RCMP vehicles arrived, a sedan and a small van. The inspector and the sergeant emerged from the sedan, and a fully uniformed Mountie got out of the van. James noticed a pair of handcuffs dangling from the Mountie’s side. Charlie was resting in Jenny’s room, and as the men strode across the driveway, James called up to him to come down.

  In the doorway, brief introductions were made, and James invited the three men to sit by the fire. All three seemed particularly formal, and after ever
yone was seated, the inspector was the first to speak.

  “Quite a bit has transpired since our visit on Sunday, and both of you are entitled to know where things stand.”

  Charlie noticed that the Mountie with the handcuffs would only look at the inspector. The sergeant looked down at the floor.

  “On Sunday afternoon after we left here, we went to talk with your neighbors. We won’t mention any names, but one of them remembered seeing Miss Monroe’s black Saab pulling out of the driveway late Thursday afternoon, and a man who they didn’t recognize was driving.”

  “That was the mechanic driving. He was probably testing out the new relay.”

  Charlie’s outburst seemed incongruous with the calm demeanor of the inspector, and instead of responding to Charlie, he quietly continued.

  “When we were here last Sunday, the sergeant found duct tape and scissors stuffed under the front seat. And Mr. Benjamin’s fingerprints were all over the driver’s side of the car.”

  James had listened to so many stories of false accusations while at Victoria House, he felt compelled to jump in.

  “Inspector, so far what you are describing is circumstantial evidence. I think we need to be careful about jumping to conclusions.”

  “If you’ll let me continue, Mr. Monroe, I think you will see that this goes well beyond a few circumstantial facts.”

  He paused to allow the next bit of evidence to sink in.

  “The sergeant also found Mr. Benjamin’s fingerprints all over the outside of the bathtub and even underneath the clawfoot tub. It seems more than plausible that he placed an object under the tub and groped around for it—possibly to use against Miss Monroe.”