by Wayne Jones
“You broke up?”
“No, no, nothing like that. We weren’t like that. Just met up once and came here and then he was gone.”
I consider for a moment that this might be some kind of bizarre oblique confession, and I search my database of a mind for keyword Mitch. Nothing.
“Oh, a date?” I offer.
“Right. One night. You know, that kind of thing.”
That kind of thing. In fact, I don’t really know, not from personal experience at any rate. We both finish our soups, Tony exactly one sip behind me, like the swimmer who misses touching by just a couple of hundredths of a second. The waiter has been monitoring from the bar at the back of the restaurant, and he is there at the side of our table immediately. The bowls go, nods are exchanged, and the dishes arrive in all their splendour within about a minute. The smells waft again and we are both smiling broadly.
“I have a confession to make,” she says, and I nearly guffaw a hunk of naan and lamb vindaloo. I look up. “I’d noticed you in the library before,” she continues, “right in there among all that murder stuff. I didn’t quite stalk you or anything, but I thought that it was interesting that you were interested in the same stuff I am, and so I kind of, well, waited around for you.” She stops. “This is kind of embarrassing.”
I laugh in spite of myself, in spite of my minutest worry—about what, I don’t know—my own safety? I fake it a little, trying not to divulge being concerned or, frankly, flattered.
“That shouldn’t be embarrassing at all. No problem. Thanks for telling me ...” and perhaps three or four similar reassurances which convey very little truthful information. I was a good poker player when I lived in Toronto—a group of us from the department played for dollar bets every Saturday night—and the skills necessary for that much-underrated game serve me well in real-life human interactions in which a little dissembling is necessary for protection against revealing too much to an adversary whom I’m not sure I can trust yet. She smiles, looks down, then up, and then down again to resume her eating.
The non-fatal confession, and perhaps my own transparent reply, have had a dampening effect on the conversation. Her comments are confined to the food now, and I do no better. She sneaks a look at her watch, and the whole business makes me sad and disappointed, seeing the efforts at whatever degree of genuine human contact reduced to a dueling restaurant review. Some of the dishes are excellent, some are middling, and some are horrid, and when we are going our separate ways on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, I feel somewhat that everything has cancelled everything else out, the meal and the evening amounting to nothing. I’m surprised when she speaks up.
“We should do this again,” she says and the invitation doesn’t seem perfunctory.
“That would be—would be wonderful.”
She shakes my hand and then seems to position herself for landing a hug, but apparently thinks better of it and simply starts walking away, waving nervously and saying something that I can’t quite catch. I consider for the briefest moment querying her on it (as if it might be a vital clue to something or other), but I change my mind, turn exactly 90 degrees, and head home.
Chapter 6
Sometimes a mystery in real life can be solved by studying fictional ones, and there is the added benefit to me in that such research satisfies a scholarly urge which has lain unroused for well over a year now (how the time flies!).
I get up early on a brisk Friday morning, walk to my neighbourhood coffee place (they’ve called it, alas, the Coffee Place since 1984), and sit for about a half hour with the Globe and Mail, a latte, and an exquisite cranberry scone before I set to planning my strategy for the day. Once the last crumbs of news and biscuit have been consumed, I sit for a moment or two and watch the traffic hurrying by (whence and to where? I wonder), a young girl also right there out on the sidewalk, standing still, underdressed for this weather, but standing quite still looking up at the sky—
Distractions.
I decide that I will spend some time digging out information about the Canadian mystery novel. Where did it come from? Where has it gone? What is it at all? I exit the Place just as an old man enters whom I recognize but just cannot identify. He nods affectionately and pauses ever so briefly, apparently expecting me to do the same. Not wanting to prolong the awkwardness, I point at my watch in a vague attempt to indicate a pressing appointment, and he seems genuinely pleased. He is babbling something or other as I step out onto the street and the door whooshes closed behind me.
It’s a short walk to the library and I luxuriate in it even more as a brisk wind pushes at my back. The sun is out, too, and I have to squint when it peeks out from behind clouds occasionally. The library is modestly crowded, just the way I like it. I find out that the first crime fiction by a Canadian was a novel now known as The Mysterious Stranger, by Walter Bates. It was published under that title in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1817, and later in the same year (I believe) in London, England, under a cacophonous mouthful of a title, beginning Companion for Caraboo and going on for nearly a hundred words.1
Bates was in fact born in the United States, but he eventually moved to Canada and settled in Kingston, Ontario.2 The other writer with some claim to the title of first Canadian mystery writer was at least born in Canada—actually near Kingston, on Wolfe Island, just a 15-minute ferry ride from the city across the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. His name is Grant Allen and he published a collection of short stories entitled An African Millionaire: Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay (London, 1897).
One or two hundred years later, and the crime fiction which crowds the review pages of the newspapers is almost all American. The reviewers crow about the books being more than crime fiction: one is “a brilliant history of a time and place,” another teaches “some really important and useful lessons,” and the plot of still another (I can go on) is “woven with ancient lore.” The only Canadian in the gaggle has apparently squawked out a book with a “grisly set-up” and “plenty of well-written gore.”3
As a scholar, I don’t know what to think. I don’t expect anything like what might be called “improvement” in the course of the literary history of any genre. Literature is not a moral adventure, a macrocosm of the story about starting from nothing and developing into something better. Joyce is not superior to Homer: he is just writing about three thousand years later. Still, I would have at least hoped that the state of the lowly mystery, crime fiction, the narratives of murder—I would have hoped that they would not have degenerated into dullness and didacticism and mere bloodshed.
“Anything interesting?” I hear behind me, and at first my concentration prevents me from realizing that the question is directed at me.
“Andrew?”
I turn around and see Rachel gleaming in front of me. Perhaps it is the reading I have been doing all day, mysteries on mysteries, but I don’t have the sudden joy I should have in seeing her again. Damn this impressionable head of mine, but the first thing I think about is how she could possibly know I would be here. Why is she following me around? Why is she spying on me? What is she up to that she needs to be sure that I am secured so that she can carry on with her nefarious activities?
“Hi, Rachel.” Cold, factual.
The dear girl, not at all aware of the ridiculous machinations going on in my mind, and positively brimming with a joie de vivre that I haven’t experienced since my early halcyon days at Toronto U.—the dear thing just smiles down on me, now squirming awkwardly in my seat.
“How goes the research?”
“I’m taking a bit of a break today, sort of,” I say as she makes her way around to where I am sitting and plonks herself down confidently on the low table.
“Sort of?”
“Yes, just doing some research into murders generally. Murder mysteries, actually.” I might suspect the girl for some unfounded fantastical reason, but she is disarming. “What have you been up to?” I dare, and before she can answer: “It�
��s quite a, well, coincidence meeting you here?”
“No, not really, I guess. I mean, I often come down here to the university library. Sort of like a busman’s holiday thing, I guess.” She chuckles. “But I often come down here just to read some of the papers that we don’t get at the public library, that kind of thing.”
“So you’re reading newspapers?”
“Well, today, no, not today actually. Just thought I’d have a look around.”
Somewhere now deep inside me I do realize the utter inappropriateness of my interrogation of her. Even the thought of her being somehow involved in two murders is so outlandish as to defy reason. I relax and accept the fact that I am chatting with a friendly librarian.
“That sounds productive.”
She sits up straight on the table and fixes me with her eyes. “Listen,” she says, “can I ask you something, or—not so much a question, but could I offer something?”
“Of course, but I’m not quite sure what you mean.”
“It’s simple really. I’m not meaning to interfere with your work or anything: I have a lot of respect for any kind of research, especially research which can have practical results in real life, I do. I guess I’d just like to offer my services”—she blushes—“I mean to say, I know a lot about sources, and I’d just like to say that if you need any guidance in getting at those local sources, I’d be more than happy to help you out. That’s all.”
“Rachel, that’s a very kind offer, and I will definitely take you up on it. If you can point me to a few things that would save me time—well, in fact you’ve already done that when I’ve already been at the library—but if you could do that more, say, comprehensively, I’d be very appreciative.”
She beams again after her nervous offer and reaches into a little leather purse that she has strung over her shoulder.
“Here’s my card and I’ve taken the liberty of writing my home phone number on there as well. I hope you’ll call. I’d love to help in any way I can.”
I take the card and nod to let her know that I will definitely call upon her.
“Well,” she says, getting up, “I should be going.” She reaches her hand out awkwardly and at first I think she has something else to give me until I realize that she’s offering to shake. We do and she scurries off.
A funny thing happened as I sipped my skim-milk café au lait later in the afternoon. I was barely aware of the bustle all around me as I pored over a stack of four or five books, some germane to my research and some, I confess, not. I was right in the middle of the room and I could sense something. The guy by the window was watching me. The cute kid of the earnest couple at the table next to me was poking through the book on forensic science that I had laid on the empty chair at my own table. And generally speaking, while I was concentrating on the more horrific details of murder and mutilation, I was still aware of orders being solicited and placed, money received and change remitted, napkins, stirrers, and condiments taken and used at the little station just by the cash register. Suddenly, I felt worried, about nothing in particular. I didn’t expect the guy by the window to lunge at me, or for the murderer who wanders the Knosting streets to burst through the door and shamelessly choose me as his next victim. It was nothing that specific: rather, just a feeling, perhaps the result of too much criminal reading, or a personalization of the civic geist. Sometimes, no matter how dedicated one is to the task, no matter now diligent, how committed, the base fear which afflicts a whole city cannot be avoided.
Later, at my favourite Cambodian restaurant, a hole in the wall where I eat weekly, I choose the number 14 and read a section of the Globe while the chef works his magic behind me. It occurs to me for the first time that I never really hear any sounds of cooking back there, no clanking of kitchen implements, no sizzling, dishes being clacked. I place my order, he always repeats the number back to me, and within about five minutes a plate of freshly prepared food is gently slid in front of me. I enjoy the fact that most of the staff there, the nervous guy behind the counter, the friendly but efficient waiter, the woman who replenishes the jug of water—they all recognize me as a regular, and, for example, don’t put a knife and fork down as they do for others, because they know I prefer chopsticks. There are many fewer people here this evening, and I imagine that that is because either they are at home or in coffee shops discussing this horror, or frankly some of them are more scared to be out on the streets now. A neighbour whom I’ve nodded to a couple of times on leaving and returning home approaches me.
“Nothing but bad news, I’m sure,” he says, nodding his head down at the newspaper.
“Yes, I suppose so. Hello, Tom. It is hard to believe, isn’t it?”
He stands there a little awkwardly, as if I’ve asked the wrong question, or muffed my line.
“Listen, I don’t mean to be forward, but may I join you?” he eventually asks.
I have limited options, of course, and acquiesce with a muted “Yes.”
He sits and when the waiter comes with my food. Tom predictably orders the pad thai—the equivalent of getting spaghetti and meatballs in an Italian restaurant—and, selfishly on my part, I worry that the main result of his order being out of sync with mine is that mine will be cold while I defer eating out of courtesy.
“Please, eat,” he says, and whether he means it or not I dig in with my chopsticks. A piece of chicken flecked with chili, the sauce, chunks of fresh tomatoes for contrast, the delectable rice.
“Who do you think did it?” I ask a little simplistically, not really expecting an answer but hoping to generate some conversation between mouthfuls.
“God, I mean—do you really think there is someone here in town who could do something like that?”
“Well, the alternative is not too appealing either: a visitor, someone who just happens to be here, or, maybe even worse, has made the trip here expressly to do this.”
“Jesus.”
His pad thai arrives, looking rather bland in comparison to my half-finished wonder. The meal and the personal interaction are not quite the same after that, and I have to admit to wolfing mine down in an effort to escape him.
Chapter 7
Exit the third victim.
I was sitting in my stately but comfortable wing chair when I was compelled to turn on the television, exactly 6 pm and the news was bad: Richard Easley, of “no fixed address” as the euphemism has it for poverty and homelessness, was run over by a stolen car. The details are not pretty. As far as the police can glean or reveal, Easley was struck at the corner of Queen and Montreal, dragged a couple of blocks east, and then simply abandoned (with the car). The killer wanted to make it clear that this is one of his “trophies” (his language, as quoted in the news item, not mine) and so he left a simple but crude note in the man’s pocket: “This is the third person I’ve killed.” The news reader, a normally stolid man whom I’ve watched many nights before without incident, chokes at the word “third,” clears his throat, looks down at his script, and then looks up with determination. He quotes the rest of the note in a noticeably quieter voice, as if he has been subdued by the facts or the threat. I find it all a little hard to believe. I will have to do more research to determine when a mere spree of murders becomes bona fide serial killings, but as I have already noted, the means and the variety of means that this person is using to carry out his murders are very unusual.
I am drawn now, right away, to the few good monographs I have here in my room on the topic, but instead I put on my coat and head outside. It’s cold and the force of the wind on my face is salutary, making me pay attention to something other than murder. I have my hands in my pockets, my head down, the sidewalk just repetitive slabs of bleak concrete, and by this time I am trudging north along Bagot. The wind dies down, the temperature moderates, and I stop, realizing that I am within minutes of the scene of the crime. Do I want to see this? I wonder. A car goes by and I have a mental image of poor Easley being dragged. I wonder whether he was killed on im
pact (one can hope) or whether it was the sandwiched ride between pavement and chassis which did him in. I think of the possibility of him being struck by the car but not really being hurt; instead, just thrust under the bumper and alive and conscious for however many horrific seconds it would take to be slammed to death, trapped down there, dirty, noisy. I picture him not even holding on but just wedged up there amid the machinery somehow so that he couldn’t escape even if he wanted to, even if he preferred being plonked down on the hard ground and possibly run over to being dragged to death.
I can’t really bear to be here. I turn around and nearly run back to my room. My landlady greets me in the foyer.
“A cold night to be out,” she says, stating the obvious.
“Yes,” I reply.
“Did you hear about that poor man who was run down by that car?”
“Yes. I saw the news.”
“It’s a terrible world and I don’t know what it’s coming to when those things happen. In a small town, too, no less. It’s a terrible world,” she repeats, and then walks into her living room, her head down for a moment and then up again, shaking. I walk upstairs to my room.
I feel quite comfortable as I sink back down into the same chair where I got the bad news. I dare not turn on the television again out of fear that something worse may have happened, if that is even possible. I ease back into the dark silence and think about the police chief, only a month or two on the job, and now faced with this horror. He took over the position quickly after the old chief, more than thirty years on the force, was fired and left disgraced after he had been caught in a scandal—things have been so hectic lately (murder’s like that) that I forget all the details, but I know that he had been stealing confiscated drugs and giving them back to a dealer, who sold them and split the proceeds. Through some legal machination or another, he was able to avoid jail time, but the image of him that adorned the papers and the TV, a broken man, was sad and haunting. He was burly and red-faced (from both embarrassment and drinking, the wags wagged) on the first day of the investigation into his actions, but by the end of it all he was unhealthily skinnier, soft-spoken when he used to be categorical, deferring to reporters’ invasive probing when he had apparently made a career out of talking over them, cutting them off, answering the question he wanted to and not the one they’d asked.