The Canary List: A Novel

by Sigmund Brouwer

“I’m twelve,” Jaimie said. “Old enough. I want to help you guys, but not until I know we’re going to get Mr. G out of trouble.”

  “Okay, then.” Dr. Mackenzie looked at the Father. “Father O’Hare, what are we doing to help?”

  Now we’re getting somewhere, Jaimie thought. Time and again, in conferences that were “for her own good,” she was like a Ping-Pong ball for adults to bat back and forth. She’d learned to figure out who had the power and who didn’t. Looked like there was a reason Father O’Hare was here.

  “We have considerable resources,” Father O’Hare chimed in, speaking directly to Jaimie.

  “We?” Jaimie said. “Who’s we?”

  “The people I represent.”

  “Nice try,” Jaimie said. Her quick judgment was that this guy liked a bit of sass.

  “And the people I represent,” he said with a smile that said she’d guessed right, “really prefer to remain in the background.”

  “So let me get this straight. You want me on a plane to Italy. To help you out with this voodoo stuff with a nearly dead pope? And ‘considerable resources’ is all the answer I get? Maybe I don’t want to go to Italy after all.”

  “Jaimie,” Dr. Mackenzie began. “Voodoo isn’t exactly what we’re talking about. You know that.”

  “I need an answer,” Jaimie said. “It’s not Mr. G’s fault he’s in trouble. It’s mine. Because I didn’t want to spend a few hours alone on the streets. I should have been able to handle it. Even if Dr. Mackenzie didn’t answer her phone like she promised she would, no matter what time I called.”

  “My battery died,” Dr. Mackenzie said. But she was tapping her knee with her fingers, like maybe she wasn’t quite telling the truth. “I wish you would understand that.”

  “I can see why you like this young woman,” Father O’Hare said to Dr. Mackenzie. “You know what she’s doing, of course. Trying to get a sense of how much power she has in this situation.”

  Interesting, Jaimie thought. Father O’Hare understood exactly what Jaimie was doing. And he let her know he knew.

  “So what you got?” she asked him. “Nobody can make me get on the plane, right? And even if you did, I could go all stupid on you when I get there.”

  Jaimie played with the bracelet on her arm, sending a clear signal. She knew it was all about the bracelet.

  Father O’Hare gave a theatrical sigh. “Just so I understand, Miss Piper. You’re wondering if I can really deliver on a promise to help Mr. Grey. And if I do, that’s going to tell you something about the people involved here. And it will tell you how important you are to us.”

  “I want you to get him a lawyer,” Jaimie said. “The best one there is. And I don’t get on a plane until Mr. G is out of jail.”

  “Certainly,” O’Hare said.

  “I want to see the contract with the lawyer.” Not that Jaimie figured she’d understand it, but she wanted to show they couldn’t push her around.

  “Certainly,” O’Hare said.

  “And one other thing.”

  He lifted a dignified eyebrow in silent query.

  “What can you do about getting me a horse of my own?” Since Father O’Hare didn’t seem in a hurry to say no, she continued to push. “And a place to keep it.”

  In the hallway, as Jaimie headed to feed the horses, Madelyne faced Father O’Hare.

  “I’m not sure you’ve been entirely forthcoming with me,” Madelyne told O’Hare.

  “Of course not,” O’Hare answered. “We’re all genetically wired to protect ourselves.”

  “Classic evasion.”

  “As was your accusation. I’m very comfortable addressing any questions you may have.”

  “Good. I’ll be direct. Who is behind what happened to Crockett Grey, and why did it happen? Let me go back a little further. Who started the fire and why? You assured me from the beginning that Jaimie would always be safe.” Madelyne knew what was at stake, and that was why this was the time to ask the difficult questions. “She could have died in the fire. Which means she wasn’t safe. I don’t like the implications. Either you’ve misjudged the situation from the beginning, or your judgment is fine but you lied to me. Perhaps you gave me this assurance because from the beginning I said that her safety is more important than what you wanted her to accomplish?”

  O’Hare’s expression narrowed, and it gave Madelyne a slight chill. This affable man, perhaps, had a wolf lurking inside.

  “Let’s not fool ourselves about what motivates you and me,” he said. “Is Jaimie’s safety more important to you than dealing with your own past? Is it more important to you than using her to advance your professional reputation?”

  “Yes, Jaimie’s safety comes first,” Madelyne said firmly. But she disliked herself for the slight shiver of hesitation inside.

  “Then think of the one motivation you and I do share. About the one man we both know must be exposed with Jaimie’s help. And think of what lengths he would go not to be exposed.”

  “So you’re saying that somehow he knows about Jaimie,” she said. “I can’t accept the implication.”

  “I don’t want to accept the implication either. But if he does know what we’re trying to accomplish, we need to get Jaimie away from here as soon as it is practical.”

  Eighteen

  eard you like little girls.”

  Crockett looked up at a runty kid from where he sat in a corner of a room with about a dozen caged men. The kid was staring at Crockett, chattering with the others. Crockett tried to ignore the smells of urine and vomit. And sweat. The smell of sweat, loaded with fear and anger, filled the cell.

  Crockett was terrified, but now was not the time to show it. “You heard wrong,” he replied.

  Things couldn’t possibly get worse. After Dave abandoned Crockett, he’d been assigned a public defender, a man who’d shown up half-drunk and who had fallen asleep as Crockett tried to explain his story. Crockett knew, no thanks to the public defender, that he would remain in jail over the weekend to await a bail hearing. Of course, he had no chance of coming up with bail money even if there was a bail hearing and even if a judge granted it on Monday morning.

  He tried to fight the despair that covered him like the thick air of the cell. Mickey had been all but taken from him. And if Crockett didn’t find a way out of this, Mickey would grow older believing his father was a child molester.

  He kept telling himself he’d survived worse.

  That, for Crockett, was the moment that Ashley took her last breath, her hand clutching his, the muscles of her hand tight with pain that made her convulse, a pain that he was begging God to take away until her grip relaxed. Then it was just Crockett, weeping, begging God to bring Ashley back, even if it put her back into the pain. Wasn’t a morning he woke up without the thought of Ashley’s physical pain in the last few minutes, her face contorted as she struggled to breathe out her last words. “Daddy, where’s Mommy? I thought you said she would be here.” Crockett, telling a lie, because he didn’t know where Julie was. “Her car broke down on the way here. She wants to be with you so bad.” Then Ashley’s last words to him. “Daddy, don’t cry. It’s okay. I get to go to heaven. I’ll see you there. Right? Daddy?” And Crockett lying to her again. “Yes. I’ll see you in heaven.”

  He’d survived worse. But this looked like it was getting close to the bottom.

  “You spend the night with little girls and everything, right?” the runt said, voice rising. He didn’t look older than a year into his twenties and wore a black sleeveless T-shirt to show off ropy biceps and crude tattoos.

  Good test. Send the smallest guy over to challenge Crockett. Establish Crockett’s designation as the new jailhouse squeeze. This was just the holding area. What would it be like after full incarceration?

  “Twelve-year-old girls,” Runty Kid continued, looking around for encouragement. “My sister is about that age. I’d kill anyone who touched her.”

  “You heard wrong,” Crockett repeated.
/>   The room full of caged men was silent with tension.

  This was the hidden face of the justice system. Maybe one of the guards, Crockett guessed, had passed on information to set this up. Same guard or guards who would ignore any screaming from Crockett, pretend not to notice what was happening on the surveillance cameras high in each of the corners of the room.

  “You’re here, aren’t you?” The kid glared, working himself up for action. “That tells me I didn’t hear wrong.”

  Like watching a car skid, slow motion, through a red light in a crowded intersection, Crockett could see it all about to unfold. Runty Kid looking to make himself a bigger man by being the first to bully Crockett. Everyone else looking for a place to unload rage and frustration. Crockett the designated target.

  “Maybe you should get a taste of it yourself.” Runty Kid’s eyes were wide. A vein had started to bulge on his neck. This was primal. Crockett’s blood filled with the chemical cocktail that adrenaline served when all civility was stripped away.

  A few of the other men shifted closer. These weren’t runts. They were looking to jump in.

  The runt slapped Crockett’s face, a short quick snap of the hand that Crockett couldn’t dodge. It rocked Crockett’s head sideways. The blow stunned him but also filled him with a roaring sensation of rage.

  A cold and calculating part of Crockett began to plan a response, and a detached part of himself was amazed to find the coldness within.

  Crockett leaned forward. He clutched his stomach and made noises as if he was going to vomit. From that position, he drove his right fist upward as hard as he could, directly into the runty kid’s crotch. Then he rose and pulled the kid upright as the kid went into the instinctive fetal ball.

  Crockett wasn’t a fighter. He was a teacher. But everyone knew about the most lethal of wrestling moves. Arms under the other guy’s armpit, hands locked behind his neck. Crockett spun the kid around and snaked his arms into position. Full nelson.

  Crockett outweighed the kid by at least fifty pounds. He didn’t feel a second of remorse at taking advantage of it. He shuffled backwards, making sure he got into a corner, Runty Kid in front.

  “I’ll snap your neck,” Crockett threatened. “Yell for a guard.”

  Runty Kid had retched already from the blow to his groin, and vomit dripped down his shirt front.

  Crockett applied pressure. Hopefully his plan would work. He figured a disturbance would bring the guards. A fight might get him into solitary confinement. “Scream. Like a girl,” he ordered the kid. He guessed that the guards were already scrambling.

  “Scream,” Crockett hissed. He was so angry and mentally exhausted he was almost ready to kill. It felt good, lashing out at the hell that had been inflicted upon him. “Scream, kid. Scream!”

  Runty Kid let out a bawl, all bravado gone.

  That was enough.

  His noise checked the advance of the others, who anticipated correctly that the guards would be there in seconds.

  When three guards pushed inside the cell, Crockett saw the grin of the first guard, holding a Taser. Like they’d been anticipating this.

  Crockett realized the part he hadn’t planned for. Yes, the guards would be watching through the surveillance cameras, but they wouldn’t turn a blind eye. The caged men around him weren’t the only ones who might look for a reason to beat him.

  Nineteen

  s freedom worth a couple million to you?” The attractive woman addressing Crockett looked about his age. She also looked expensive, from the style of her short, dark hair to the fabric of her tailored gray suit.

  It was Monday morning.

  Crockett’s first surprise was learning from her that a bail hearing had been arranged for shortly after this meeting. Saturday, the sloppy public defender had predicted it would be days. His second surprise was the woman herself. She’d introduced herself as Sarah Rinker, the replacement attorney for the public defender, who had replaced Dave. That made her third in a list of lawyers.

  Crockett wasn’t optimistic Sarah Rinker would stay either. The public defender’s aura had screamed incompetence. Hers screamed money. Her opening question had confirmed his suspicion.

  In answer to her question, Crockett said, no smile, “Be worth it if I had a couple million.”

  “I know you don’t have it,” she said. “At least not yet.”

  “Yet?”

  In answer, she pulled a camera from her briefcase, which sat on the table between them. Burnished caramel-colored leather. The shine-of-money leather.

  She pointed the camera at him. “These will be the money shots.” That word again. She snapped a photo. “Good,” she said, at Crockett’s dour expression. “Hold that pose.”

  Crockett had not looked in a mirror since the guards beat him. He didn’t need a reflection to tell him how he looked. He’d already seen the bruises on his ribs, dark like plums. The skin on his cheekbones felt ready to burst from swelling. Several teeth were loose. He’d eaten Advil as if it were M&Ms.

  “Great,” she said. “Take these shots too early, and they don’t have an impact on a jury. Nice we’ve had a little time to let things ripen. You look horrible. I love it.”

  She put the camera back and pulled out sheaves of paper. Gave Crockett a cocky smile. “These notes are just for show. I never forget something once I read it or write it down. It’s why I get the big bucks.”

  Money, again.

  He remained silent, waiting for her to get the picture. He couldn’t pay her.

  “What we’ve got,” she said, without referring to the notes, “is a kid named Wiley Jergensen, on record as saying that a prison guard named Alfred Richards pointed you out to him as a child molester and implied that there would be a period of time when the guards had an extended coffee break. Said prison guard has a son who was molested a few years back at a day care and is highly motivated to see punishment inflicted on all molesters. Wiley Jergensen, as you might recall, almost had his neck broken by a certain Crockett Grey.”

  Crockett was too tired and too depressed to respond.

  “What we’ve also got is a video record of Wiley Jergensen striking said Crockett Grey, which clearly gives Crockett Grey a motivation for self-defense. This, combined with an excessive amount of force applied to Crockett Grey by the aforementioned Alfred Richards and fellow guards, puts the city and county in a delicate position should said Crockett Grey file a lawsuit.”

  Sarah Rinker sat back, smiling. “Word for word, that’s my half of the conversation I just had with the prosecutor. It would have been even more effective with photos in my hand.”

  She gave him a sympathetic grimace. “Dang, your face must really hurt.”

  Crockett ignored her pity. “And the prosecutor’s half of the conversation?” he asked.

  “Half isn’t quite accurate. It’s fair to say that, as usual, I dominated, so at best he got in ten percent. He did manage to bleat out that with no fingerprints on the hard drive, he’d make the case that you were in the habit of wiping it clean as a precaution before returning it to your hiding place. He said the eyewitness you claim for support is still unavailable, and he said it’s obvious that you came up with a lie about a fake social worker showing up for Jaimie to try to throw blame elsewhere. Then there are the complaints on your school record, made against you by adolescent girls. But you told the public defender that had to be a computer glitch, right?”

  “Not my theory. I just said it wasn’t me. He suggested a computer glitch. But he sounded sarcastic. I wasn’t. Get my principal. He’ll tell you those complaints didn’t happen. Find out who put the hard drive in my house, you’ll find out who messed with my records.”

  “Why?”

  “You have no idea how badly I want to find out,” Crockett said. Almost as badly as he wanted to go the other direction. Crawl in a hole and let events bury him. Succumb to the temptation of despair. But Mickey needed him.

  “So we’ll find out, but it might not be necessary,
” Rinker said. “I told the prosecutor that anonymous complaints from adolescent girls are viewed with suspicion until corroborated.” She leaned forward. “Then he made a big mistake. He tried to make the case that because your daughter would be the same age as Jaimie if she’d lived, it won’t be difficult to convince a jury that you were looking for substitution in one form or another.”

  The mention of Ashley once again put Crockett back at the hospital bed on the night of his daughter’s death. Just Crockett at the hospital. Julie had gone because she couldn’t handle it, said she needed a break, just for one night. Neither of them knew the end was so near. She left Crockett with their girl, bald from chemo, eyes dark sockets on a face that had shrunk down to the outline of her skull.

  Here, in front of Sarah, the memory crushed him again. He wasn’t even able to protest. All Crockett could do was close his eyes. With his tongue, he probed his loose teeth, looking for a distraction in the sharpness of jagged nerve endings.

  “I told the prosecutor,” Sarah said, voice dangerously soft, “if he did try dragging your daughter into this, I’d arrange for someone to match on him the damage done to you by the guards. My father passed on six months ago. If you loved your daughter near as much as my dad loved me, I can’t imagine what it was like for you to lose her.”

  Crockett opened his eyes again. “Thanks,” he croaked.

  She held eyes with him, then nodded and resumed her fast patter. “As part of my ninety percent of the conversation, I told him that he’s up against a respected teacher of troubled kids, Jaimie’s testimony in your favor, and no fingerprints on the hard drive. Just as easy to spin it that someone planted it and made sure it was clean. I told him I have a witness who may have seen someone matching Nanna’s description sitting in the front of your Jeep at the fire scene.”

  “You have someone?” A ray of hope.

  “Listen carefully. I told him I did. I’ll find a witness, but I just haven’t had time. I’ve only been on this since eight this morning. I’m good, but not a miracle worker.” She gave him a grim smile. “Which leads to my original question. Is freedom worth a couple million to you? Because we’ve got a deal of sorts on the table. I can get you on the street today, but you’re going to have to waive any future shots at a lawsuit.”