by Helga Zeiner
Macintosh turned his head. “I told you about the video clip. Someone recognized her, and the next thing we knew her name was all over Twitter. Remember the Vancouver riots after the Stanley Cup loss? The public knew about the whole mess faster than we did. That’s the way it is these days. Everybody’s connected.”
“But what do they want from us?”
Melissa yanked her hand out from under her mother’s.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Mother, what do you think? It’s news. They want to get as many gory details as possible.”
Harding navigated through the city traffic.
“I’m afraid so. They probably secured interviews with all the eyewitnesses already. By the time we contact them again for an in-depth statement, all sorts of crap will have been published and their statements will be next to useless. It’s pretty damn frustrating.”
They drove on in silence. When they arrived at the police station, Harding directed the women to an interview room on the fourth floor and asked them if they needed anything.
Louise wanted coffee.
“I’ll get you some. We’ll be back shortly.”
Harding and Macintosh left them in the room.
“Now that you got them in there,” Macintosh said, once they reached their desks, “they are all yours, my friend.”
“No problem, it’ll just be routine anyway. I’ll go check my messages, then I’ll take care of it.”
Macintosh was glad to avoid this, in his opinion, futile exercise. Everything about this case rubbed him the wrong way. Why couldn’t this have happened after he retired? His thirty years on the force shouldn’t be crowned by a possible homicide involving a teenage girl. She was about the same age his daughter had been when killed.
To avoid drowning in sorrow and self-pity, he decided to eat something. Send his blood supply to his stomach, since it wasn’t doing his brain any favors. He got a pre-wrapped mayonnaise laden triple-decker BLT and a large candy bar from the canteen, then went back to his desk. Harding was still busy with his emails.
On the spur of the moment, totally unexplainable to him, but maybe stemming from a mixture of remorse he couldn’t quite shake and a latent desire for self-punishment, Macintosh decided to go to the room adjacent to the interview room and observe the women while eating his lunch.
Macintosh couldn’t say if the women were aware that the interview had a two-way mirror. He thought by now everybody knew that, yet those two certainly seemed ignorant of the fact that he was watching them.
The women sat next to each other, silent. Jesus, that body! Macintosh wasn’t keen on big women, or big guys for that matter. People let themselves go to pieces, and he had to deal with the sorry results of their sorry lives.
He suddenly lost his appetite and put the rest of his sandwich back in its cellophane wrapper.
A police officer brought a tray with two mugs filled with coffee, a milk jug and a few portioned sugar bags on it into the room next door. Louise immediately got up and asked the officer how long they were supposed to wait in here.
The officer said, “someone will be with you shortly,” and left again.
Louise went back to her seat, ripped a sugar sachet open, poured its content into one of the mugs, stirred and slid it over to her daughter, who suddenly came out of her stupor and pushed the mug in an irritated I-get-my-own gesture back to her mother. It spilled a few drops and nearly fell over.
Her mother raised her eyebrows but didn’t seem offended. She added some milk to the mug, stirred again and straightened in her chair, nipping on the warm drink. A yapping Pekingese next to a lazybones St. Bernard.
Melissa got her own mug now, ripped open one sugar sachet after another (he counted five) and stirred them in, prompting the Pekingese to press her lips into a thin line and shake her head.
No love lost between those two.
Macintosh mulled over the idea of going in after all to ask them a few questions. The girl had played the stubborn mule, doing her best to look lost and misguided. Maybe earlier in life, that might have sparked some empathy in him. Nowadays he wasn’t into that hope-and-faith-and-goodness positive thinking trap any more, but it irked the detective in him that she had tried to outsmart him. By checking out the mother and the grandmother he might unearth something Harding could use as leverage to get the girl talking.
On the other hand, it was hardly worth his effort. No matter if the victim lived or died, he was sure the drug test would prove that the girl had been under the influence. Her shrink would say she was socially challenged, a lawyer would argue that she came from an unstable family background (just one look at the mother should do the trick there) and the girl would disappear into the system for a short while before they tossed her back on the streets to commit another offense.
He sighed.
He was just about to leave the room when he heard Melissa break the silence.
“Whatever they ask, Mother, don’t tell them anything. You hear me? Just this once, keep this blabbermouth of yours shut, understood?”
Macintosh jolted to attention. A shiver of anticipation sharpened his senses, same as when he was out in the wilderness. Waiting, half-asleep, half-awake, for so long that he was forgetting, or at least questioning, the reason why he was bracing the cold and wet at all, and suddenly there it was, the faint noise of a breaking branch or rustling leaves, a deer perhaps. His hunter instinct told him to stake the prey.
He nonchalantly strolled into the interview room.
“Ladies, I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. Melissa, if you’ll follow me to the next room, please. I have Detective Harding waiting to take your statements. And you, Louise, will be attended to soon after.”
Chapter 10
I’m pathetic! I was supposed to go to class this morning—who knew prisons had schools?—but I told them I had a splitting headache, and they let me stay in my cell. It’s Friday, so I have until Monday to think of a new excuse. Being stuck in a room with a bunch of other inmates—excuse me, residents—is not an option.
Since I have the day to myself, I open the journal. Might as well write down everything that’s on my mind, as little as that is. Maybe I can get the memory-juices flowing.
Nothing comes easy. The glaring white of the empty page hurts my eyes, and my head starts to throb in earnest. Proves the old proverb: lies always come back to bite you.
After lunch the psycho-doc strolls into my cell and asks me how I’m doing.
He was done with me, wasn’t he? He has sent me back to prison.
I want to reply with an eff-you-too, but I can’t. That’s were pathetic comes in. I’m a murderer—at least I hope so—crazy, unhinged, out of control, a total nutcase, but I can’t say the eff-word! Can’t even write it, that’s how pathetic I am.
So, why can’t I say to the psycho-doc that I am eff-ing pissed off with him? For not leaving me alone at first, and then leaving me alone! Why can’t I say, eff-you, you miserable, perfidious snob, which is so much more to the point than screw you?
“How’s it going?” he asks. “I see you’re writing, that’s great!”
All I can do is grunt my displeasure.
He chats a bit as if we’re the best of friends before he bids me good-bye. I’m left steaming with unspecified anger until I decide to take to writing again. That calms me, as it forces me to focus on something.
My pen starts to scribble away, while I’m still wondering why the doc paid me a visit. Hasn’t he given up on me yet?
Birthday Two
Another birthday I’m too young to remember, so again, I fall back on stories Gracie told me.
She had an album full of pictures, which she leafed through all the time. Like really, all the time. She got a copy of every single shot her photographer friend had taken of me throughout the year—and there were so many, they filled the whole album. When she realized that, she stuck a big pink Number One on its cover. She would stick a new number on every new album. Some years there were more than one alb
um.
There I am, page after page, chubby and adorable, in all sorts of outfits and in the cutest poses Gracie and her photographer friend found creative and deserving. Dressed like a cowgirl, holding a toy gun. Then on my tummy, little tutu skirt stuck up in the air. Or with plastic apples dangling from my ears, sitting in an oversized wooden bowl, surrounded by plastic fruit. Stupid pictures like that.
Some evenings, when Gracie took out an album, she squealed in delight.
“Look at that one! How she smiles at the camera! She just loves her picture taken, the little darling-angel.”
Gracie loved me, and I loved her. Gracie was my life, she gave me what Mom couldn’t, back in the small, square house in the third row behind the highway that was our home. The one with the low ceiling to keep the cool air in, and the iron bars on every window to keep the bad stuff out.
Gracie adored me and spoiled me, her little angel, while Mom cleaned the house and cooked and left me in Gracie’s care. Every afternoon Mom went to her room and I wasn’t allowed to disturb her.
“Don’t go in there,” Gracie said, “she’s sleeping”, while in fact all Mom did was lie on her bed and stuff her mouth. Meanwhile, Gracie took me on stroller and photography trips.
Mom had been true to her word and had come along to that second photo session, right after she had snapped out of her Missing-Mikey-Melancholy. She watched how Gracie and her photographer friend fuzzed over me and said: “This is ridiculous. It’s taking forever. I’ll never understand why anybody would want to be a model.”
“Many models are superstars,” the photographer friend said.
“It’s not so easy to become famous,” Mom said. “You need to be really beautiful.”
Gracie said: “You think she’s not pretty enough?”
The photographer friend tried to please my mom.
“Let’s take a picture of the two of you, mother and daughter together.”
My mom agreed but complained non-stop about the way he was setting it up and how long he took for it.
“Tell you what, Melissa,” he said, “Gracie and I can handle the pictures. We don’t want to waste your time.”
“Who the hell do you think you are,” Mom said. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
“There go the extra fifty bucks,” Gracie said.
“See if I care,” Mom said. “If you want to waste your time. I got better things to do.”
And that was that. Mom never came along again, but she did like the extra income.
“It hurts me when your mom says she doesn’t think you have it in you to be famous,” Gracie told me again and again. “I know better. I love you so much. You’re my girl, and I know you’ll be a star one day. My beautiful angel, I’ll see to that. I’ll make sure of it. When your mom gets mean, just come to your Gracie and she’ll take care of things. Because you’re Gracie’s girl.”
Mom was often mean to my Gracie. She just didn’t get it that I had it in me. But Gracie did, and I repaid her devotion with stoic obedience and a smile that drove her and her photographer friend bonkers with delight.
The one picture from this year of me with Mom shows her still reasonably shapely, light-skinned, blond, a little smile contradicting the sadness in her eyes. There are many pictures of me and Gracie. She’s all southern comfort. Her breasts are cushions, she radiates, glows, gives, is a buffer to the outside world, the way she folds herself around me.
When I was little, I was drowning in her love.
Chapter 11
At 9 pm, Pete Macintosh got an email from his Sergeant, with three documents attached. He printed them all out, looked for his yellow highlighter, got a beer from the fridge and settled in his seasoned leather recliner. Its faint odor of tobacco dated back to the times when he still enjoyed the occasional cigar. The patina it had developed after many nights of sitting and pondering—on some of them he had even fallen asleep in it and woken up with a cramped neck—only increased its sentimental value, while the deep indentation in the seat cushion begged for re-upholstery and reduced it again to just a notch above the dump. But that didn’t matter. It was the only piece of furniture he would take with him. Him and the old chair, sitting out what was left of his life once the force didn’t need him anymore.
He leaned back, lifted the footrest, settled into a relaxing position, opened his beer can and began to read the documents. He highlighted the segments he found most interesting. He needed a sheet of paper in his hands, two dimensions, words in black and white. Marking them with yellow anchored them in his brain, and that way he could recall them whenever he needed them. Various pieces of information that by themselves didn’t make sense would eventually find their place in the puzzle. All he had to do was collect enough of them.
Document One:
Memo by Dr. Stanley Eaton, M.D. F.R.C.P. copy to VPD, re: Tiara Brown …
Alleged suspect refuses to cooperate with case manager, psychologist or social worker …. states repeatedly her name is Princess Tia…is non-disclosive …
Princess Tia? Really?
Document Two:
Interview of Melissa Brown, mother of alleged suspect Tiara Brown
“… I really don’t know what I can tell you. There is nothing to tell. I told you everything I know already, what else should there be?
…. we lived in Galveston before we came here.
… it’s been a while. It was 358 or 357, I’m not so sure anymore, Carolina Road.
…Galveston is close by Houston. Lovely ocean town. Most of it is on a bay.
… I worked at different places. Supermarkets, you know, wherever I could get a job.
… no, I have no idea who this woman might be. No idea at all. That’s what’s driving me crazy—oh, I didn’t mean to say that. It’s just a figure of speech, right. Driving one crazy doesn’t mean one is, right?
… Tiara has never, never, I mean never, shown any aggression toward anyone. You can ask anybody.
… whom? What do you mean, whom?
…well, you can ask the people in our neighborhood.
…Friends? I can’t really say. My daughter kept mostly to herself, she is more the quiet type. Sure she had friends.
… please, I told you, I can’t think straight. How could I write anything down now?
… sure, I’ll make you a list of her friends later.
Document Three:
Interview of Louise Brown, grandmother of alleged suspect Tiara Brown …
“I can’t say anything. I’m just the grandmother and I didn’t know her until she came back to Canada three years ago. We have not been close. Talk to my daughter, she will tell you everything you need to know.”
Macintosh let the documents rest in his lap, lowered the recliner a notch, closed his eyes and thought about what he had read. It was ridiculous to get sucked into the case by one stupid comment, but what could he do. He had a curious nature. That’s how he’d become a decorated detective.
He had a feeling the grandmother would crack first, admit to whatever she and Melissa were trying to hide—and that could be anything from small mistakes they had made in Tiara’s upbringing to major problems associated with her. He couldn’t really imagine what it was, but it was certainly relevant to the case and he wanted to find out what was behind it.
The girl was guilty, it didn’t need much police work to establish that, but something about her mother and her grandmother bothered the hell out of him. He couldn’t put his finger on it. It was just a hunch, one that wouldn’t let him rest until he figured it out.
He would zero in on those two ladies. The mother first. He made a mental note to go and see her. Put the pressure on. But first he had to talk to the girl once more. Figure her out. Even if she doesn’t tell you much, there’s always something to gain from an interview. Her background, her upbringing. Anything. You’re a detective, you’re good at this. You can crack her, she’s just a young girl.
Chapter 12
It’s Sunday night in the big city.
All the people out there can move around and do whatever they fancy while I’m locked up in a cell of maybe eight by eight feet. Does it bother me? Not really, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself out there anyway.
What I do find disturbing is the thought of having to sit in a class room tomorrow morning, with other girls next to me. It scares me quite a bit. So much so that I can’t sleep.
After the third control round by the security guy who shines his torch into my room and probably smiles when he sees me wave at him from my bunk bed like a dolphin flapping its fin, I get up. I open my journal and fish for new images from my childhood. It really is like fishing. Thoughts appear on the surface, and when I try to grab them, most of them slip through my hands and wriggle away again. I can hold on to only one, it’s another birthday.
Birthday Three
The cake has pink icing, and is decorated with silver candy pellets. Mom lights the three candles, and I’m supposed to make a wish. What does a three year old wish for? Not what grown-ups imagine. Kids that age live in the moment.
Gracie says: “Don’t you want to have a pretty little doll? One you can dress up? I’ll make her a dress just like yours, and the two of you can be like sisters? Do you want a new dress? Shall I make you one? With a matching bonnet?”
Mom claps her hands and shrieks yes, that would be lovely.
Gracie always makes stuff for me. She is so good with her hands, better, much better than Mom. She spends a lot of time and money on me. I should be grateful, but at age three I don’t understand the concept of grateful. I don’t feel indebted yet.
Now I want cake. I grab for the pellets, and Mom slaps my hand, very lightly, but still. I start crying.
“How often do I have to tell you, don’t slap my little girl!”
“Oh, it’s your daughter now?” Mom yells back louder to overpower my screeching me, want, cake.