Lament for Bonnie

by Anne Emery

  “It was even harder on the head working with the psychiatric patients.” The ones with mental problems. “That’s not what I want to do. It’s very nerve-racking at times.”

  “Because some of the people are so weird?” John Rory asked her. “Or because they’re dangerous?”

  “Oh, not many are dangerous. Some are of course, and many of those ones are more of a danger to themselves than to you or me. But still.”

  “So, what do you think after working with . . . those people? Do you think it’s a guy like that who took Bonnie? Somebody who should be in a mental hospital?”

  “It may be, John Rory. I mean, who in his right mind would do something like this? Take a young girl like that and terrify her and cause such grief to a family?”

  “I think this guy knew exactly what he was doing,” Lee said, “and didn’t give a good goddamn what it would do to her family or anybody else. He’d just do what he wanted to do and think tough shit for anybody else.”

  “Or somebody who came from a crappy family himself,” said John Rory, “so he either wouldn’t know or wouldn’t care what a family goes through when one of their kids is stolen.”

  I asked them all a question then. “Do you think there are a lot of bad families like that around here? I mean, it’s Cape Breton!” Cape Breton always meant family to me: visits with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. Parties and ceilidhs and family bands. Mum once told me that when she went to college, the Cape Breton students were so keen to get home they would start hitchhiking home on Wednesdays and Thursdays, even before the week of classes was over!

  “There are bad families everywhere,” Lee said. “People are assholes. They’ll turn on you, even people you think you can trust. Why would Cape Breton be any different? I mean, it’s not as bad as Halifax, where I grew up, though even Halifax isn’t too bad compared to the big cities like, say, New York or Detroit. But it can happen here, too. Why wouldn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” said John Rory, “all you have to do is look at the McCurdys. Jeff and his old man. One’s as bad as the other. When you’ve got a father and a son beating the shit out of each other, you can’t expect anything good to come out of that house.”

  “Things are pretty rough behind those doors,” Nancy agreed.

  “And he gets pissed off so easy, Jeff does. You just think that any minute something is going to set him off. I figured he’d throw somebody overboard on that boat trip, when some of the guys started ragging him about not being smart enough to know that fish is brain food. Guess he figured Phil Thomson would throw him over, too, or have the Mounties meet us at the wharf and take him in.”

  “Yeah,” Lee said, “he’d be smart enough to figure that out. There’s nowhere to run on a boat.”

  “I keep coming back to the crazy news about Bonnie sneaking off with him at night. That’s friggin’ unbelievable. I figured once the cops got wind of that, they’d have him in handcuffs. What are they waiting for?”

  So John Rory really thought he was the criminal who took Bonnie? How could he stand there and talk to him on the boat then? I was going to ask him that, but then I remembered the argument between John Rory and Jeff, and it was about Lee. Jeff didn’t like Lee. He even said Lee smiled about people being sick and hurt, just because he would smile at them to make them not be so afraid! But Jeff probably didn’t like anybody. Still, now that Lee was being nice again, I didn’t want to say anything that would make him feel bad or embarrassed, so I kept my mouth shut.

  Then Lee surprised me. He said, “It’s not McCurdy that took Bonnie.”

  “How do you know?” That was Nancy.

  “I just know he’s not the type who could pull it off.”

  “Pull what off?”

  “Grab her and not be noticed, and then keep her hidden somewhere and leave no clues that the police can find.”

  “But what if he . . .” Nancy began, and then you could tell she didn’t want to say it.

  “If he did something to her?” Lee didn’t want to say the worst thing, that maybe somebody killed Bonnie. As soon as I said it to myself, I could feel myself starting to cry. Nancy caught on and got up and came around the table and put her arms around me and hugged me. I didn’t want them to see that I couldn’t stop crying, so I told them I had to go to the bathroom, and I left. After I came out of the bathroom, I didn’t really want to go back to the table and hear all that bad stuff, so I stood outside the dining room. But I couldn’t help but hear.

  “She’s out there somewhere,” said Nancy, “and she’ll come back. I really believe that.”

  Lee said, “Somebody has her, for reasons of his own, and when he decides the time is right, right for him, he’ll let her go. Or he’ll . . .”

  Nancy must have looked upset, and no wonder! Lee hurried on to say, “Listen, if somebody — I’m sorry, but if somebody killed her, there would be evidence of that somewhere. A crime scene, signs of a struggle, forensic evidence, blood, something. I know this stuff, remember? I attend at crime scenes. Well, the cops have been all over the place looking for those signs, and there aren’t any.”

  “That’s weird,” said Nancy. “These are good cops. They’ve been working their tails off trying to solve this. How can they not find anything at all?”

  “Maybe there was no struggle,” said Lee. “No resistance because it was somebody she knows.”

  “We know everybody she knows, and nobody we know would do this!” Nancy was getting really upset, and so was I, standing out there listening.

  “You never really know another person, Nance. Way of the world. How many times have I said that?”

  “Yeah, but you’re so cynical about everybody, Lee. You’re always saying you can’t trust anybody. We all know there are bad people out there, perverts and killers, but you just said it’s somebody she knows. Well, it can’t be!”

  “All I’m saying is you have to be prepared for it to be somebody close to home.” He was quiet for a second, then said, “Prepare to have your heart broken.”

  Then Nancy burst into tears and ran out of the room and nearly knocked me over! It was the first time I had ever seen her lose her cool, and I don’t mean that’s bad. Who wouldn’t cry and get mad at the idea that somebody around here could be so nasty and evil that he would steal Bonnie and maybe even . . . do something to her?

  John Rory said, “You didn’t have to fucking say that, Kaulbeck!” He was whispering, but I could hear him, and I could understand why he swore. Everybody was on edge about Bonnie. John Rory went on, “I know what you’re getting at, but you didn’t have to spell it out in front of his daughter.”

  “If Nancy Campbell wasn’t my girlfriend, I’d be saying a lot more than that. In fact, if you want to know the truth, I’m tired and sick of having to pussyfoot around the subject.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Jesus, man, you are sick.”

  “I’m sick? Take it from somebody who’s been around the block a few more times than you have, you little dickhead, somebody who’s spent years on the front lines with law enforcement. Take it from me: I’m not the one who’s sick around here.”

  Nancy went flying past me into the room. And she was furious. “Stop this! What has got into you, Lee? Sometimes I feel I don’t even know you! Everything will be going great and all of a sudden you get all bent out of shape about something, and you freeze me out, and you won’t say anything at all. And then you say something horrible like this. What is the matter with you?”

  This was terrible. Poor Nancy! It made me think of something my mum says sometimes: “You never know what goes on behind closed doors.” Maybe this was what Nancy had to put up with from her boyfriend when other people weren’t there to see. But now it was right here in front of us.

  I didn’t want to stand there by myself any longer, so I crept
back into the dining room and sat down at the table. Lee was standing up now, and Nancy was standing in front of him. They were glaring at each other. Then, I couldn’t believe it — Lee started laughing at her.

  “Look who’s being sensitive now! I’d better disappear before I get the little woman any more upset than she already is.”

  “What, you’re going to walk out now? Without even apologizing?”

  “Apologize? What have I got to be sorry about? You’re the one in hysterics, making a fool of yourself.”

  “You sit here and accuse my father —”

  “Your father? I don’t recall any names being mentioned.” He looked at me and John Rory and put his arms and hands up in a shrug like the comedians on TV. And he said, “Did you guys hear her father’s name? No?” Back to Nancy, “What made you think of your father in connection with this?”

  John Rory jumped up from his chair and said to Lee, “Get out of this house, you fucking arsehole!”

  Lee looked down at him. “Are you gonna make me, you little prick?”

  “Maybe not, but I’ll go down trying!”

  Lee just laughed at him, then he turned back to Nancy. “As a matter of fact, Nance, I’ve had enough of you and your cousins or your step-cousins or whatever they all are, everywhere we go. I had enough a long time ago. But I didn’t want to say anything because you’d cause a scene. Like this one.”

  “I’d cause a scene? What about all the times you threw a tantrum about something so minor —”

  He put his hand up, and John Rory moved towards him. But all Lee did was roll his eyes up. Then he looked at his watch and said, “I hate to break this up, but I’ve got more important things to do than listen to your whining and bawling. Places to go, people to see. So, adios.”

  And he turned around and walked out of the house!

  Was he really going to leave like that? Maybe he was just pretending. I got up and went into the living room. I looked out the window, and there was Lee on the way to his car. I saw him flip his keys up in the air and put his hand up to catch them. It looked as if he — what do they say about that? — he looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  I went back to the dining room and heard John Rory say, “What’s he got up his hole?”

  I saw that Nancy was shaking. “This isn’t the first time he’s been like that. He was so nice at first, sweet and considerate, and then he started getting these weird moods, and he’d fly into a snit. I was getting fed up with him long before this. But for him to come out and say . . .”

  “Nancy, has he ever hurt you?”

  “No! No, he’s never hit me or pushed me. Nothing like that. Just going all cold and saying shitty things.”

  “How long has he been acting like an arsehole?”

  “I’m embarrassed to tell you. A long time. The last year or so. Sometimes he’s great, sometimes not so great. I kept excusing it because he comes from kind of a poor family. Not a bad family, just a family that had to scrape by on very little money. And it was the classic never good enough for his father. He’s always talking about how he could never measure up. He would have some little success at school, or in sports, and instead of saying, ‘Good job,’ the old man would find some reason to belittle him. No wonder Lee is so prickly at times! He’s trying to make something of himself. He’s still striving for that one big success that will earn his father’s approval. Maybe becoming Doctor Lee Kaulbeck, cardiologist, will finally put a smile on the old man’s puss!”

  “That’s really mean,” I said, “for parents to treat their kids like that!”

  “But he shouldn’t be taking it out on you,” John Rory told her.

  “I know, I know. Still, I’ve tried to be understanding and patient. But, after a while . . . Sometimes I just feel like saying the hell with him.”

  She stopped to have a little sip of her wine and then said, “Normie, there’s a lesson in this. When you’re older and you’re going with some guy and he starts to treat you mean, no matter what the reason is, dump him sooner, not later! Next time Lee Kaulbeck shows his face at my door, if he ever does, I’m going to tell him to get lost. And I won’t let him charm me into changing my mind — again!”

  “Too bad we can’t nail him for Bonnie’s kidnapping!” John Rory said.

  “Yeah. But we can’t. The Mounties checked into the timing and cleared him — and me! — and everyone else at the party. Except . . .”

  She didn’t have to say it. Except her dad and Bonnie’s mum, Sharon, because they left early and never came back.

  Pierre

  We got a call from Collie MacDonald on Friday night. He had found something interesting in the basement of his house. A lens from a pair of eyeglasses. He hadn’t noticed it before with all the mess down there.

  “I never saw Jeff McCurdy with glasses on, though,” he said.

  But we had found a pair of men’s glasses with a lens missing in McCurdy’s hideout beneath the old grocery store. Just to be sure, though, I asked Collie, “Bonnie doesn’t wear glasses, does she?”

  “No, her vision is fine.”

  “All right, Collie, wait for me at your place. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Right-o.”

  I went to the evidence room and got the bag containing the glasses and put it in my pocket. Then, because I knew damn well they were going to be a match, I went to the house of a justice of the peace — a guy who was used to me interrupting him at home — and got a warrant for the arrest of Jeff McCurdy.

  A storm had moved up the Atlantic. It was a wild night with rain being lashed sideways by gale-force winds. I got soaked just getting to the car. I was going to be making an arrest, so I took one of the patrol cars with the roof light, door decals, and, most importantly, the silent patrolman. That’s the screen we can raise between the front and rear seats to separate us — protect us — from whoever we’ve picked up and put in the back seat. We were already ninety-nine percent certain it was McCurdy who broke into Collie’s. Now, with the lens that I was sure would fit into the frames we found, it was time to stop dicking around. Normally there would be two of us on an arrest, but this was not a normal night. In some places, the power had gone out, and a guy in Marion Bridge had set his house on fire with a kerosene lamp. Dougald was with the team assisting at the fire, and other members were tied up as well, so I went out on my own.

  I picked up the lens from Collie, held it up against the frames, confirmed the match, and put the lens in a separate bag. Then I left Collie’s and headed for the McCurdy place on the outskirts of Kinlochiel.

  McCurdy’s mother answered the door, and I asked for Jeff.

  “He’s . . . he’s not here.”

  “Who is it, Ma?”

  Her face flamed red, and she did the worst “acting surprised” act I’d seen in years of standing at doors like these. Worse than in the school plays my kids put on for parents’ day. “Oh! He must have just come in.”

  Jeff McCurdy came to the doorway wearing torn jeans and a sweatshirt that said High School Skin Team on it. Dry as the Mojave Desert. He hadn’t come in from the rain any time recently.

  “Jeff McCurdy, I have a warrant to arrest you for the break and enter at the home of Colin MacDonald on the third day of August, 1994.” I would read out the formal charge and read him all his rights when I got him to the detachment.

  Jeff didn’t say a word but his mother wailed, “Oh my God! Jeff wouldn’t do anything like that. You fellows have it in for him. You always did. You have it in for this whole family. My husband isn’t here. He’d tell you Jeff didn’t do it.”

  Her husband would also tell me he’d never laid a hand on his wife or anyone else in his unhappy brood, including that pale-faced, skinny little girl staring at me with terrified eyes from behind her mother’s pant leg. But he wasn’t home. That was a bit of good cheer on a shitty night on the
road; I wouldn’t have to deal with Bonsai McCurdy.

  “We don’t have it in for anyone, ma’am,” I told her. “We act on the basis of evidence. Put a raincoat on, Jeff.”

  “Fuck that. I’m not scared of a few little raindrops! And I didn’t break in anywhere,” he protested as I bundled him into the back seat of the car. Once again, he did not exercise his right to have a parent with him. I didn’t cuff him; the silent patrolman was in place, and the doors can’t be opened from inside the back seat.

  He had not been cautioned, and I would not be asking him any questions until all the cautions and formalities had been completed at the detachment. Let him spend the twenty-minute drive to the detachment fretting in the silence, worrying about what was to come.

  The driving was hellish. It was a tropical storm with blinding rain and howling winds. The driving was so treacherous that I made the decision to stick to the narrow country road as long as possible, which was bad for branches and maybe animals but at least did not have oncoming transport trucks. With my tires barely in contact with the pavement, I didn’t want to go skating across into one of those.

  I was so intent on trying to see out the windshield that I almost didn’t hear what McCurdy said from the back seat. But I did get it: “Whatever you found, it must have got in the house when I was in there.”

  Exactement, that’s the whole point. He was in there. But I didn’t say it out loud.

  The silence made him edgy, the way it often does with our suspects, and he spoke up again. “Me and Bonnie were in there, when her old man was out.”

  “Oh yeah? When was that?”

  “I don’t know. Couple of months ago. And we didn’t fucking break in!”

  I had to let that rest. And I didn’t ask him again about the cuts that matched the broken window in the basement. Any admission he might make if I questioned him without giving him his rights would be inadmissible. And besides, this was not the time or place to carry out the interrogation. It was getting more difficult by the minute to see the road. Suddenly there was a loud crash. The branch of a tree smacked into the windshield and put a bunch of cracks like a huge spiderweb in it. Just as I was recovering from that, something ran across the road. An animal big enough that I couldn’t chance hitting it. I swerved, and the cruiser hydroplaned across the centre line. It was all I could do to get her back on track.