Invisible darkness : the strange case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka

by Williams, Stephen, 1949-

  Donna had gained some weight over the past decade but she was still a handsome woman and her eyes had a certain sparkle. She had started working in a halfway house seven months earlier. It was a place where convicts were reintegrated into society. Things had not become any easier, the way they were supposed to for good people such as the Frenches. The recession had wreaked havoc on the economy in St. Catharines. In 1991, Doug had had a heart attack.

  When Kristen was no more than two years old, Donna had shut the kitchen door on her left baby finger. Donna cried for days after the doctors amputated the tip. Given the length and breadth of God’s bounty when it came to Kristen French, nobody in the family, including Kristen, really got too excited.

  Kristen had been a Brownie and a Girl Guide. If she apphed herself she would get her bronze medaUion this summer and become a hfeguard. Some of the kids called her Browner, as

  INVISIBLE darkness 219

  much for her mane as for her academic prowess. It might be a touch derogatoi-y, but if that was as bad as she ever got she would be very kicky.

  Her brother called her kid. The “kid’s” marks were always in the high eighties. Kristen was on the grade nine honor roll. She did volunteer work at a nursing home. Her girlfriends called her Kris; the men in the family still called her Kristie.

  Kristen looked at her watch—the background was a profile of Mickey on red. There was a gold band around the watch face. It was just after eight. She hung up the phone, drank a glass of orange juice and put her lunch in her bag along with a copy of Introduction to Business in Canada. She slipped on her maroon Bass loafers; the right shoe had a lift. The chiropractor had said it would help ease her back pain. Her back would need some attention, since she was about to start a part-time job as a shampooer at a hair place called Al’s Locker Room.

  She wore her black leather-and-suede jacket with puffy shoulders and two leather straps on the bottom that tied up—a derivation of the motorcycle jacket. It was very cool.

  The drive to school barely took five minutes. Kristen complained about her leg; it was numb, she said; she thought the thing in her shoe was supposed to help. It was hard to see an angel in pain, but Donna could not do anything about the numbness in Kristen’s leg at that very moment. She dropped her daughter in front of Holy Cross and went on to work.

  The morning passed without incident. Kristen’s two morning classes, advanced geography and advanced introduction to business, were over quickly.

  Dr. Patti Weir, the vet with whom Karla worked at the Martindale Clinic, was bemused. Karla’s strongest point as an employee was her reliability. She had only missed four or five workdays over that past few years. But Dr. Weir viewed Karla with a slightly jaundiced eye. There were things about Karla that she found disquieting. Every Thursday, for instance, Karla would go to the library and come back with a bag full of library books, which she would keep under her desk.

  The books always contained graphic descriprions of sex and death. True crime, such as Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule’s book about Ted Bundy, or Dying to Get Married by Ellen Harris, a sordid stor>’ about the bizarre courtship of JuHe Miller Bullock, which was characterized by extreme sexual and sadistic violence that ended in murder. It was set in Missouri in the fifties. The most bizarre and gruesome by far was one called American Psycho.

  Karla w^ould enthusiastically read the most graphic passages out loud to the other girls at the chnic. They were never nice. Karla’s tastes in literature were so consistent that Dr. Weir thought it very^ abnormal.

  Karla was also manipulative. For instance, the way she manipulated the receptionist, Sherri Berry, prior to the long Easter weekend. For some reason, it was very important to Karla that she have the extra half day on Thursday off. It was Sherri Berr'‘s turn, but Karla started to work on Sherri the week before. She succeeded. Karla was gone by noon on Thursday. April 16, 1992. Sherri was still there.

  Doug French had left the restaurant and gone to pick up his paycheck. From there, he went to John Deere to meet with Norm Lassard and give him quotes on some rubber products. He went home around 1:00 p.m., did some paperwork and paid a few bills.

  Kristen ate her lunch in the school cafeteria with her friends, Lori Armstrong and Ana Lara; Ana and Kristen sort of stole Lori’s M&Ms and ate them. Kristen and Lori laughed and giggled but Ana, who had only met Kristen three weeks earher, did not talk much. Ana really wanted to be Kristen’s friend. Kristen was efferv^escent, happy.

  Kristen’s math class started at two. Her math partner, James Dowiing, thought Kristen was really good-looking. He had known her two earlier boyfriends: Ryan Shepard, who had moved to Kitchener the year before; and before Ryan there was Ryan Smith. That was James’s problem: his first name was not Ryan.

  Kristen had so much self-confidence. James would not mmd getting a litde closer to Kristen. Maybe at the California Club tonight. “Are you going?” he wondered.

  They were friends, but not in that way. Nevertheless, Kristen usually told James what her weekend plans were—smce she did not say anything, maybe she would be there. James knew her new boyfriend was big Elton Wade, but Mr. Wade stickhan-dled pucks—he did not dance. Kristen did seem to be a little stuck up sometimes, just by the way she talked. In James’s estimation, she was very intelligent and very pretty.

  Doug drove over to the Wayside Center to pick up Donna’s car-ownership papers. He then drove over to the registry oflFice to get her new license-plate stickers. He was home by three.

  When her last class ended at 2:43 p.m., Kristen did not dawdle. She could not wait to get home. It was Thursday, but it felt like Friday. She always let her dog out of its pen and fed her at 3:00 P.M. This afternoon, she was eager to talk to Elton again. There was something else she wanted to tell him. Kristen almost always walked home; the same route everyday. She waved to Ana Lara in the hall.

  “Bye, Kristen,” Ana said. Kristen hurried to her locker, then headed for the Lake Street exit.

  Kristen always went across Lake Street, east on Prince Charles Drive, south on Royal Road and then east on Linwell, walking on the north sidewalk across the intersection at Howard Avenue to Geneva—they lived on Geneva—and then Kristen was home. She loved the way her dog, Sasha, jumped for joy at the sight of her. It took about fifteen minutes at the most to walk home. It was still raining lightly.

  Linwell Road is a main thoroughfare in St. Catharines. At three in the afternoon there was always a steady stream of cars. It was the kind of street a person might have to wait a couple of minutes to cross, in the middle of the day.

  At 3:30 P.M., Doug French looked out the window and saw the dog still in its pen. He thought Kristen a bit late and wondered where she was.

  The phone rang. It must be her. What time was it now?

  “I’ll have her call you when she gets in. Elton.” he told his daughter’s attentive boyfriend.

  In retrospect, Doug would probably say at that moment he was seized with such powerful foreboding it was hke an angina attack of the mind. It went through his system like the dye they had pumped through his arteries during the angiogram. He suddenly felt excessively warm and faint.

  At four o’clock he decided he would go out and get stamps, taking a circuitous route along Linwell Road, right by Holy Cross. Just before he went out. the phone rang agam.

  “No Elton, she’s still not home,” Doug said. “I’m starting to get a bit worried.”

  Looking intently for his daughter, whom he knew was dressed in her Holy Cross school uniform, Doug French did not notice Janet Migata. who at that very moment was walking past the parking lot of Grace Lutheran Church just beyond Howard Avenue. Janet saw a Bass loafer in the middle of the church parking lot and wondered what it was and why it was there.

  There were as many churches in St. Catharines as there were doughnut shops. Johnny Carson once told millions of “Tonight Show” newers that St. Catharines was the doughnut capital of the world. The mayor, Joe McCaffers’, sail fumed ab
out that one.

  Doug bought his stamps and took the mail over to the Grantham post office. Darren had just arrived home from work when Doug pulled up to the house around 4:30 p..vi.

  Darren immediately sensed his father was off” balance. Doug tried to reason wnth himself—she probably had a commitment after school he did not know about, or she had gone down to the rowing club. Another ten minutes went by. Before he left the house he picked up the phone and called Donna to ask her if she knew where Kristen was. But Donna did not know. She should be home by now. Donna said. She’s probably talking to somebody.

  After talking to Doug, Donna called the school. They paged

  INVISIBLE darkness 223

  Kristen over the public-address system. Her name echoed in the abandoned corridors and classrooms.

  Doug French, who was not born yesterday, suddenly became very suspicious of young Mr. Wade. He picked up the phone. In no uncertain terms he demanded: “Have you seen Kristen, Elton?” Emphatically, Elton repHed that he had not.

  “I’m going out to look for her,” Doug said and put down the phone.

  At 4:30 P.M. Donna left work, went to the bank and drove home. It was not until she saw the dog still in her pen that she too was overcome with a sick, hopeless feeling. It took all her inner resources simply to get out of the car and go in the house. Sasha v^as a blue-eyed rotund ball of white fur. Kristen had bought the Samoyed-Husky cross with her own money. She always came directly home after school, let the dog out of its pen, took it for a walk and played vigorously with Sasha for half an hour or so. Kristen would never leave Sasha unattended.

  Donna called Cher Knotley at the unisex hairdresser on Scott. Kristen sometimes babysat for Cher. Kristen also babysat for Donna’s boss and a woman named Judy Pula on Margery Street. She called them.

  Then Donna started on the girlfriends. On a long shot, Doug went down to the rowing club on Henley Island to see if Kristen had just happened to stop in.

  “Is that a shoe?” Sandy Grabatian, the secretary at Grace Lutheran Church, said to herself as she rushed out to her car on an errand at 4:55 p.m. The Easter weekend was one of the busiest two or three weekends of the year for the church. Grace Lutheran had been built two decades earlier by its parishioners, German immigrants with vivid images of Luther and the manifesto he pinned on his famous water closet’s door fixed in their minds. The early morning services were still conducted in German at Grace Lutheran.

  “I should pick that up and put it in the lost and found,” she thought to herself as she pulled out of the parking lot and maneuvered into the busy long-weekend traffic.

  When Elton pulled up in the Frenches’ driveway, Kristen’s brother, Darren, was standing in the doorway. The dog was still

  in the pen. Mrs. French was cryii^. I>arren goc in with Elton and told hini no one had seen Krisien. They went over to Henky Island to kx^ They lan into Mr. French by Scotecard Harry’s^ a popular sports bar on the ftir^p of Port Dalhousie. He had kx^oed afl over the island and no one had seoa her.

  Back at the house, I>arren and his gidftiend invent over to Holy Crass to look. Ellon started to phone around and talked to a bunch f^peo|Je. Then he joined Darren at the school. The iwent inside and looked aD over, even in the bmler room. Etnpc schcKils are stratHge places. He thought he could hear Kristen’s name echoir^ in the corriclors.

  Mrs. French thought about Tammy Robert, her eldest sister Joyce’s dai^ter. Kristen was siqiposed to be a bridesmaid at her wedding next mtMith; she had already picked up her dress. It was green. Sie had bctoi a bridesmaid at Tammy’s sister’s wed-dii^ a year and a half eartier. Kristen was so beautiful in those bridesmaids’ dresses. At 5:55 Mrs. French, now almost hysteri-caU called die pcdice. Kristen seemed to have vanished into thin

  When Sandy C^abatian returned to Grace Lutheran Church a lew hours bier, she saw the shoe again. A sii^e maroon Bass loafer lyii^ on its side, a lift halfway out. It looked £adom in the steady rain. She had too umoA on her mind to read the s^pK, even when they said the end was near. She walked past the shoe into the chuich.

  twenty

  nlike almost every other city, town and hamlet in North America—all of which had been planned on gridirons—St. Catharines had the distmction of having been designed on a radius. Its roads follow old Indian trails that converge radially on the city’s center, where Twelve Mile meets Dick’s Creek. Navigating a radius is a conundrum. Visitors to the small city frequently get lost. Consequently, everyone who lives in St. Catharines is constantly being asked for directions.

  When the young, attractive blond woman in the shiny sports car called out to Kristen French for directions, Kristen did not think twice. Kristen blithely walked the fifty yards to where the car had pulled up in the Grace Lutheran Church parking lot. The woman opened her door and stepped out. Her hair was held back in a ponytail. She had a map in her hand.

  Kristen French was an intelligent, street-smart girl. In spite of the fact that Linwell was a busy street and it was the middle of the afternoon, if it had been a man alone, or two men in the car, Kristen would never have left the sidewalk.

  Paul and Karla had planned it that way. They both knew everybody was always getting lost in St. Catharines. After two years there, Paul still got lost himself If Karla held a map and pretended she needed directions—to the Pen Center, where she used to work—they would not have any trouble finding another sex slave.

  There was a degree of extemporaneousness about it. They had tried the ploy a dozen times already, but the sun, moon and stars would not line up. This time, Karla had pointed Kristen out and Paul thought she looked pretty good. In terms of Paul’s personal mythology, Kristen had Jennifer Galligan hair. She was walking alone and coming up to a place where they could get off the road easily. Paul and Karla both appreciated the lethargy of the casual observer. Karla smiled. Kristen leaned over to study the map. It happened so fast that Kristen never had time to realize the map Karla was holding was a map of Scarborough.

  Before Kristen could focus, the guy who had been sitting in the driver’s seat was behind her with a knife and the girl had jumped into the backseat. Although Kristen tried to put up a fight, the man was too strong, and once he had pushed her down into the bucket seat, the woman grabbed her long hair and pulled hard. Kristen found herself cheek to Naugahyde with the armrest between the seats, unable to move after the driver slammed the passenger door shut.

  When she cried out, the man told her to shut up or he would slit her throat. They drove slowly out of the parking lot. They did not seem to be in any hurry whatsoever. The woman continued to hold her hair. Minutes later, they pulled up in a

  INVISIBLE d.rknes. 227

  driveway and drove into a garage. The driver got out and shut the garage door. He came back and put a Hindfold over Kirs-ten’s eyes. Then his companion jumped out of the car and left them sitting in the car.

  Karla ran into the house and disconnected all the phones. She took them upstairs and dumped them in the closet, leaving only the phone with the answering machine connected. While they kept sex slaves, it was best if Karla or Paul returned any calls they might get. Karla closed all the blinds and made sure all the doors were locked. Paul brought the girl in the house and took her upstairs. He told Karla to stay put.

  It was just after three in the afternoon when Paul guided Kristen into the upstairs washroom across the hall from the master bedroom. The blindfold swaddled her forehead like a large, broad bandage. He had tied it at the base of her neck, allowing her long, dark curls to flow freely. Paul focused the lens of the of his video camera on her thighs while Kristen urinated. When she anxiously asked for toilet paper he handed her half a roll. Returning it to him, she politely thanked him.

  Finding her maroon bikini briefs in the dark worried Kristen, but she hastily pulled up the beige elastic top and began tugging on her green leotards, straightening them above her knees and pulling them up, along with the navy-and-white Georgetown boxer shorts. Paul noted
they were covered in fierce cartoon bulldogs. He liked that. As Paul peered through the viewfmder, a red mark blossoming on Kristen’s lower lip was clearly evident, a memento of her belligerent struggle with him w^hen he had tried to get her quietly into the car.

  Paul was always pleased when a girl said she had to use the washroom, particularly when circumstances dictated that he should watch. Kristen had to go again.

  “Show me something nice,” he told her as she sat on the toilet, clutching her kilt around her waist. He reached out to spread her legs further apart.

  “There’s not much nice to see,” said Kristen.

  She wiped herself quickly and pulled her panties up with a snap of the elastic.

  “Is It past six o’clock?” she asked, disoriented by the Hindfold and unable to check her left wrist to see where the Mouse’s hands were.

  “Ya,” said Paul.

  “My mom’s gonna be worried,” said Kristen, expelling a worried si2;h ot her own. Paul turned off the camera.

  Constable First Class Pam Carter had just begun her shift when she received a report about a missing fifteen-year-old girl. Working alone that day, she drove her cruiser over to the Geneva Street address, arriving at 6:37 p.m.

  Even though the day was cloudy and dreary, light filtered through the closed blmds in the dormer window. Fully clothed, Kristen was sitting on the gray carpet in the master bedroom. A picture of Tammy Lyn Homolka sat on the television set next to Karla’s cherished hope chest. Her parents had given her that on her eighteenth birthday. Now the chest was covered with photo albums and the usual disarray of Karla’s clothes. Kristen held the blindfold to her forehead with her left hand, unaware that just behind her shoulder there was a roll of brown cord, the same one that Karla kept in the dog’s closet when it wasn’t needed to restrain sex slaves. Kristen took a sip from the tumbler of orange juice and vodka Paul had given her.