“That.”
Jonas kept his eyes on the compass. “Don’t hear anything.”
“Wait. There.” It was breathy and irregular, like the whisper of the tiny bow-wave, but somehow with more to it. It sounded like a distant conversation.
“Oh. Wait . . . Someone out there?” He shouted. “Hello?” He raised the horn again and sounded it for a couple of seconds, obliterating any other noise.
Distantly, directionless, another horn answered, much deeper.
“That wasn’t the lighthouse.”
“Nope.” Jonas held his finger to his lips, frowning, listening. A sound was coalescing in the fog, everywhere, as if it was the fog’s heartbeat, a deep, muffled drumming. It swallowed whatever Goose had heard, or thought she’d heard. It seemed to be spreading, as if it was coming closer.
The new horn blared again.
Jonas checked his watch, nodded to himself, and touched the throttle forward, speeding them a little faster toward everything they couldn’t see. “Should have remembered,” he said. “Ferry’s coming in.”
7
The fog cozied up to the mountains above the town and settled. Goose drove back to Rupert slowly. The cars she passed made haloes with their headlights, hanging them in front like anglerfish navigating the white murk. She tracked down Margaret Sampson and her shawled and bespectacled posse, did the apologies, made nice, heard out as many statements as people wanted to give, and took notes and photos to show she was taking them extra seriously. She let the old guy complain about his malfunctioning TV. He said a couple of his buddies in trailer homes up the hill were having the same problem. She waited as long as she thought respectful before suggesting he call the TV company. She talked to Mr. Hill about his stolen kayak and promised the police would look for it. One of his sons had come home and stood in the background during the interview, in the dingy interior of their house, looking hostile on principle, as the local young guys always did when she was in uniform. She looked for traces of Jennifer’s passing, certain she wouldn’t find any.
The fog lifted around four. She was on her way back home to Alice, technically off duty. Halfway there and the world unveiled itself around her, the mist thinning and melting as if it had never been anything more than cloud blowing by. A kilometer or two later Cope radioed to call her back to the station in Hardy.
That gave her ten minutes to contemplate the upcoming discussion. They weren’t the most pleasant minutes. She spent the majority of them trying to recall what she was supposed to know about the RCMP’s disciplinary procedures. She was fairly confident she couldn’t be dismissed or demoted without a formal hearing; she was less sure whether the official grounds for instigating a formal hearing included screwing up. Back at the Depot in Regina they’d talked a lot about “misconduct.” Did losing a teenager count as misconduct? Turning it over as she drove, it occurred to her that the only thing she really dreaded was her mother somehow hearing the news. Séverine’s in trouble! Séverine messed up! Boring, reliable Séverine; Séverine who wasn’t vampy and glamorous and wouldn’t wear makeup; Séverine who liked rough sports and joined the police and chose to speak English and moved out west near her Anglo father—Séverine screwed up badly enough to risk forfeiting her precious childhood dream of being a Mountie. Please, Staff Sergeant, don’t tell my mom.
But Cope turned out not to be angry at all. There was no telltale purpling around his collar. On the contrary, his jowly neck had less color than usual; if anything, he looked grey. When she stood to attention in his office, he gestured wearily to a chair. The usual scatter of paperwork covered his desk. He tapped at it absently with his pen instead of saying anything. She actually found herself listening to the clock tick. She glanced at it, not sure where else to look. Four twenty. Assuming the fog had cleared out of the Passage for good, the ferry would leave in ten minutes.
“I hear you did a good job with that woman over in Rupert.”
She sat straight-backed, hands on her knees, and tried not to let her surprise show. “The liaison officer, sir?”
“Nothing worse than when she gets on the warpath. Holy hell. I wish I could lock her up. Throw the key in the chuck.”
Goose thought it best not to react at all. Cope sighed, flipping the cap of the pen up and down. “Anyway. She’s your new best friend now. ‘Delightful young lady.’ She had to tell me all about it personally. Five damn minutes I didn’t have. I guess you used your feminine empathy or whatever they call it.”
“I don’t have any empathy, sir. I just like kicking ass.”
It was her standard comment about being a female policeman. She didn’t know how it had popped out now, perhaps because this conversation was nothing at all like the one she’d unconsciously rehearsed as she drove into town. “Excuse me, sir,” she added, but he was neither amused nor irritated. Whatever was on his mind, she barely seemed to figure in it at all.
“So,” he said. “That girl hasn’t shown up.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“What have you got? Anything?”
She gave him a brief version: nothing at all the previous day, the accidental sighting in Rupert that morning, the search broken off in the fog. He stopped fidgeting while she told him those parts, and was silent for quite a while after she finished.
“This kid in the kayak,” he said at last, and Goose saw at once where he was going, and in the same moment understood what this conversation was going to be about. It was nothing to do with her at all; she should have known it wouldn’t be. He didn’t care about her. He was the one looking for an excuse. “How far out was she when you first saw her?”
“I’m not sure, sir. It’s hard to tell on water. Two or three hundred meters?”
“A fair way off, you’re saying.”
“I guess.”
“And there were a bunch of other people with you?”
She recited the names, all of which she’d learned that afternoon in the course of her note-taking and apology-making.
“At least a couple of that crowd know the Knox family pretty good. For sure. Probably all of them. Margaret Sampson knows every man, woman, child, and dog in that town all by herself.” He looked at Goose expectantly, and when she didn’t respond, added, as if stating the obvious, “So none of them identified the person in the kayak as Jennifer?”
“It was pretty—”
“That was what we in English-speaking Canada call a question, Maculloch.”
“No, sir. None of them did.”
“So how come you think that’s who it was?”
She thought about trying to explain. Not for very long, though, since (firstly) it was essentially inexplicable and (secondly) she appreciated now that Cope was going to have his version of events no matter what she said.
“I guess there’s no way I could make a positive identification.”
“At that distance.”
“Yes, sir. At that distance.”
“The person had their back to you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I guess not either. Is there any evidence at all that the Knox girl was in Rupert this morning? Anything?”
“There’s no evidence at all that she’s anywhere, sir.”
He leaned back in his desk chair. “That’s what I thought.”
“Someone stole Mr. Hill’s kayak and paddled away in it.”
“Kids are always stealing stuff around here. I reckon it’s boredom. So it could have been anyone, as far as you know, is that right? That one’s what we call a rhetorical question, incidentally.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“So. Who else knows your theory?”
“I’m not aware of having a theory.”
“Give me a break, Maculloch. It’s been a long day. Did you tell anyone else that you were off chasing that girl?”
“Oh, I see. No, sir. We
ll, Officer Paul. It was his boat. I kind of had to.”
“No one else.”
“No.”
“You’re sure about that.”
“Cross my heart.”
He glared at her while the clock ticked.
“You asked Jonas to get you that file, didn’t you.”
Janice must have said something about it. Janice was big on sharing information where she thought it ought to be shared. Gossip, in other words. “Yes, I did. I was looking for—”
He grunted away her explanation. “I don’t want to know.” He bowed his head, rolling the pen between his palms. “All right,” he went on, as if only now coming to the point. “Here’s what I’d like you to do from now on, Maculloch. You check in when you’re supposed to check in and do what the rota tells you to do and you leave the whole damn business with that girl alone. Okay? Leave the file alone, leave your suspicions alone, follow up that damn kayak and whatever else Margaret Sampson’s on my ass about without making any assumptions at all. How’s that? You’re sure you didn’t so much as mention her name to anyone except Jonas?”
“Absolutely sure.”
“Well.” He made it sound like nothing more needed saying. “Let’s keep it that way. All right?”
From outside, down in the bay, three sharp hoots echoed over the town. Goose looked up at the clock. Four thirty-two. There wouldn’t be that much traffic on the ferry; nothing to hold it up. Nineteen hours up the Inside Passage, bleak islands on the west side and to the east the wildest coast south of the Arctic Circle, on its way to Prince Rupe. Her deadline had passed and was even now turning sluggishly to face north, steaming away from her.
“Not meaning to be difficult, sir, but what about the facility up in George? They’re going to notice when she doesn’t arrive.”
“I’ll talk to them.”
Was Staff Sergeant Cope actually looking shifty? She’d hardly ever seen him hiding behind his desk before. Normally he perched on its edge. Normally he folded his arms and looked at the members of his detachment over his glasses as if daring them to annoy him. Now he pushed the spectacles up his nose and fiddled with them, like a suspect pretending not to be nervous.
“Sir,” she began, carefully. “I appreciate that I take responsibility for Jennifer disappearing from custody. In which case I think it’s appropriate for me to know whether I can expect . . . how my service record might be affected.”
“Trust me,” Cope said. “No one cares about your service record at the moment. We’ve got bigger problems.”
“What I’m asking, sir, is what you’re planning to say to the people in George.”
“I’m going to tell them what happened. Surprisingly.”
“Which bits of what happened?”
“The bits we know. The kid got out of the cell somehow, ran off, whereabouts unknown. We’ll keep an eye out in case she shows up and we’ll ship her up to George whenever.”
“You’re going to start a missing child investigation?”
“No, Maculloch. No damn way am I going to start a missing child investigation. I was kind of hoping this meeting wouldn’t take too long but I guess you don’t get it, so let me spell this out for you.” Still he didn’t shout, though some of the blood came back into his face. Shouting might have attracted curiosity; his office wasn’t all that well insulated from the rest of the station. “That place up in George don’t want that kid. No one wants that kid. I sure as dammit don’t want that kid. Her own damn mother doesn’t want her. The law can’t figure out who’s responsible for her. So as long as no one’s got her . . . You see? You can stop worrying about covering your own damn ass. I won’t tell anyone how you messed up. If”—he pointed a pudgy finger at her—“if you let it all drop too.”
She sat still and straight, discipline hiding her bafflement. “So what happens if she shows up again? Sir.”
“What do you think she’d do?” He tried to sneer, unconvincingly. “Make a complaint?”
“I thought maybe—”
“She’s just a crazy kid. That’s what makes me so sick. All she ever was is a girl who lost her mind and pushed her brother down the stairs. All this damn fuss and driving her up and down and TV and this and that. She’s a messed-up kid from a waste-of-space family. She’s not going to turn up. How long do you think a crazy kid’s going to last by herself in a kayak in February?”
Oh, Goose thought. Okay.
“You’re not being disciplined.” Cope turned his attention to the paperwork in front of him, flicking the cap off the pen ostentatiously. “I called you here so you understand we don’t have anything to do with Jennifer Knox anymore. As long as you got that, you can go.” He made a note. “Okay?”
She stood up. She felt like she ought to be bubbling with relief, but she wasn’t. “Okay, sir. Thank you.”
He waved her away without looking up. “Then we’re done.”
Since he wouldn’t meet her eyes, she found herself staring at his fidgety hands. She was turning to go when he made another note, a brief scribble. It caught her eye with its shape and color. A quick red loop and a few letters in the margin. She frowned.
He raised his head. “Class dismissed.”
“Sorry, sir. Thank you.” She recovered herself and left.
• • •
“Jonas? Goose.”
“Hey. How’d it go?”
“Weird.”
“Weird?”
“Weird.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Well, I’m still a constable.”
“Congratulations. Caught the sarge in a good mood, huh.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way. Do you still have the file?”
“Man. No, Janice had me turn it back in first thing. What’d he do, give you extra reading as a punishment?”
“Something I wanted to check again.”
“We need to get you more stuff to do.”
She’d spent long enough looking at it the night before that it had stuck in her memory. Mostly because it had been the only thing to stand out from the blur of hospital paperwork. That one sheet, the one brief reference to the security guard’s story, which was itself the one brief reference to any kind of flaw in Jennifer’s immaculate silence; and the person who’d scribbled a quick loop and a marginal note on the sheet—SF 12/1—was Sergeant Cope. She was certain of it. She’d just watched him make exactly the same kind of annotation, right before her eyes. Most probably with the very same red pen.
She drove up to the station in Alice instead of going home. Jonas lived in the apartment attached to it. When he answered the door the TV was noisy in the background, showing a hockey game. She asked whether she could come in for a minute.
He sighed exaggeratedly. “I’m kicking back, you know? Had folks hassling me about the bank all day.”
“It’s only a second. Okay, look, a commercial, that’s as long as I need.”
“Nah, I’m kidding. You want a beer? Come on in.”
“Honest. I just need to ask you something before I forget.”
He muted the TV while she hunted around for pencil and paper, and watched as she made a version of Cope’s note. “There was something from the hospital in the file, that big place down-island. The sarge had written on it. Like this.”
Jonas waited a while. “And?”
“Do you know what it means?”
“Don’t mean anything. It’s a reminder. He does that. Helps him keep stuff together.”
“A reminder of what? Does what?”
Jonas looked longingly at the now silent game. “You sure you care about this?”
“I’m not leaving till you tell me.” She moved to stand between him and the screen. “There. Don’t make me turn it off.”
“Whoa. Look, it’s just a way of getting the pages together. You know, so h
e can find stuff.”
“You need to go back a few steps, Jonas. I’m the rookie here, remember? I don’t understand what the letters mean. The numbers.”
“Oh, okay. Name and date. Sorry, man. Thought that was obvious. SF is Fitzgerald and 12/1 is the date. So there’s a report from Shawn for that date, goes with whatever he’d written that on.”
She looked at her own scribble. “You sure?”
“Goose. You promised.”
She stepped away from the TV. “Sorry. So, this is like a cross-reference?”
He snapped his fingers. “That’s the word.”
“And it means this goes with . . .”
“Whatever Shawn filed that day.”
“There wasn’t anything in the file.”
Jonas shrugged. “Big file. I should know.”
“I read all the station reports. I went through it like ten times and read all of them first. They’re short, that’s why. And you can understand them.”
“Something got into you?”
“Maybe,” she said.
• • •
After her interview with the sarge that afternoon she was absolutely sure she’d never get hold of the file again, no matter whom she asked. On the other hand, she thought, sitting on her bed and staring absently at the packing boxes, she didn’t need to. She remembered, quite clearly, spending extra time trying to figure out what had happened to Jennifer in those second and third weeks of January, after the girl had been charged on the basis of her mother’s accusation. It was precisely the paucity of documentation that had struck her. Putting kids in jail for more than a night was a serious business that usually left a prominent paper trail. She was as sure as she could be that there’d been nothing signed by Fitzgerald with that date anywhere in the file.
And why would Cope have referred to one of his officers’ reports anyway? Perhaps he hadn’t been cross-referencing anything at all. Perhaps he’d got the date wrong. It was just a scribble. It was, however, unmistakably, unarguably, a response to that particular couple of sentences in the hospital report. The suggestion of Jennifer sneaking out of bed and singing and dancing around in the middle of the night must have reminded him of something.
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