Stanton- The Trilogy

by Alex MacLean

  Jade nods.

  “I went there for a couple of days.”

  “Why?”

  Her question gives me pause. How exactly do you tell your daughter you left because of her mother’s attitude, her baseless suspicions? Do Jade and Jaleesa register the conflict going on between us? I have a gut feeling they do. Children are like little Geiger counters, picking up signs we never think they do.

  “I needed a vacation,” I say at last.

  I don’t bother mentioning Almonte. The girls know nothing of my hometown or their grandparents who live there. There would be too much explaining to do, and I’m not in the mood to answer a million questions.

  Carrying Jade into the bedroom, I switch on the light. Jaleesa looks up from her bed, blinking at the sudden brightness.

  “Daddy,” she says.

  “Hi, honey.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Pennsylvania,” I tell her. “To that park we were at last summer. Remember it?”

  “Yeah.” She frowns. “Why did you go there?”

  “Oh, to see the turning leaves. To have a little vacation.”

  I put Jade down on her bed, and she pulls the blankets over herself.

  “You never called us,” she says.

  “I’m sorry about that. I wanted to, but I had no cell coverage.”

  Heidi appears in the doorway.

  Jade perks up. “Mommy, Daddy’s home.”

  “Hmm, I see that.”

  I detect the flat tone in her voice. When I look over my shoulder at her, she avoids eye contact. I imagine she probably thinks I was off with my phantom mistress or something stupid like that.

  She asks Jade, “What did you wake me up for?”

  “Jaleesa said there was a monster under my bed.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Jaleesa,” Heidi says sternly. “Stop scaring your sister.”

  “There are no monsters,” I tell Jade.

  Heidi finally looks at me. “Jaleesa was teasing her earlier. Probably because Halloween’s tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, Daddy,” Jade says, excited. “You can take us trick-or-treating now.”

  I pause before giving her a weak smile. “Of course I will.”

  I’m not a fan of Halloween, even though I enjoyed it as a kid. I don’t consider myself a helicopter parent; some parents are too overprotective. I just don’t like the girls wolfing down loads of unhealthy sugar.

  Then there’s the safety issue.

  Two years ago, a woman here in the city found a Tylenol capsule in a box of Smarties her daughter had picked up at someone’s house. Just last Halloween, another parent found a capsule filled with brown powder inside a grab bag.

  I never did hear what the substance tested out to be. Maybe it was brown sugar, maybe it was poison. Every year it seems you hear about parents finding tampered candy in their kids’ treat bags.

  “Well,” Heidi says, “I’m going back to bed. You girls get to sleep.” She glances at me. “I’ll get your blankets out of the closet.”

  “Daddy can sleep in here,” Jade says, moving over in her bed. “He can sleep beside me.”

  Heidi looks at her then at me. I can tell by the cold pitch in her eyes she doesn’t approve.

  I smile at Jade. “If you want me to.”

  She gives a big nod. “Yes, Daddy.”

  Heidi tosses her arms up. “Whatever. I’m going to bed.”

  “Night, Mom,” the girls call to her.

  “Night,” she calls back.

  I remove my coat and hang it off the doorknob.

  When I reach for the light switch, Jade says, “Stop.”

  I turn to her. “What?”

  “Check under my bed.”

  On the other side of the room, Jaleesa giggles.

  “And what am I checking for?”

  “Monsters.”

  “Right,” I say, kneeling down. “Nope, I don’t see any.”

  I shut off the light and climb on top of the blankets next to Jade. She moves close, resting her head on my shoulder.

  “Sure, Daddy?”

  “I’m sure, honey.” I kiss the top of her head. “There’s no such thing as monsters.”

  But as I lie there thinking of Heidi, I realize that’s not entirely true.

  There are monsters. The world is full of them. And the scariest ones have friendly faces.

  38

  Cranbrook, October 31

  9:45 a.m.

  Audra’s gaze bounced back and forth between the face in the composite sketch and the face in the photocopied driver’s license.

  Not even close, she determined. Both men had cleft chins, but that was where the similarities ended. The man in the driver’s license had a softer, rounded face when compared to the strong bone structure the man in the sketch had. Their eyes and noses were different shapes. Their eyebrows differed as well, in both arch and thickness.

  “No real likeness, is there?” Allan said, looking over her shoulder.

  Audra shook her head. “Might not be Jacob Stark who Liam Clattenburg saw that morning.”

  “Never know. It’s hard describing a person’s face to begin with. Let alone someone you met in the span of a few seconds. We have to establish if Mr. Stark was even in Halifax on the dates in question.”

  Audra glanced at Logan, who stood on the other side of the office, speaking in muted tones to Huey Nolan—the manager of Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

  “Stark lives in Burlington.” Audra turned to Denis. “How far is that from Huntsville?”

  “About two hundred seventy-five klicks,” he said. “It’ll take you probably three hours to drive there, depending on which route you take.”

  “Is there an airport in Burlington?”

  Denis shook his head. “There’s one in Hamilton.”

  “Do they have flights to Halifax?”

  “Westjet does, as far as I know.”

  “Is that airport closer than Toronto?”

  “For this guy? A little bit, yeah.”

  “We never even considered Hamilton,” Allan said. “We were too focused on Toronto.”

  Denis said, “We had the right idea, though.”

  Audra nudged Allan’s arm. “I’ll get Thorne on this.”

  She stepped out of the office, punching in the captain’s number on her cell phone.

  “Detective Price,” Thorne answered. “What can I do for you this early on a Sunday morning?”

  “Did I get you up?”

  “No.” He laughed. “Been up for a few minutes.”

  “We need your help with something.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Can you contact the Stanfield airport for us? We’re looking for a passenger named Jacob Stark. He might’ve flown in on Westjet from Hamilton.”

  “Just a sec,” Thorne said. “Let me write this down.”

  Audra heard the rustle of papers.

  “Jacob Stark, did you say?”

  “Yes,” Audra said.

  Thorne breathed into the phone. “What dates are we looking at?”

  “Before October seventeenth. Let’s say October tenth to the sixteenth. I can’t see him arriving earlier than that. If his name comes up on any of the flights, we need to know when he departed.”

  “I’m guessing you’re hoping it’s after the seventeenth?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  “Oh, Captain,” Audra said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “We need them to check for Stark’s name on flights from last October as well. Same days.”

  Thorne paused. “Mary Driscow.”

  “Yes.”

  “You guys got a lead out there.”

  “We’re not sure,” Audra said. “Maybe.”

  “K. I’ll get back to you as soon as I find out something.”

  “Thanks, Captain.”

  As Audra hung up, Allan poked his head out the door.
<
br />   “Mr. Nolan says he has GPS tracking on all of his vehicles,” he told her. “He’s going to bring up Stark’s route for us.”

  Audra went inside. They all huddled around Huey Nolan as he took a seat at his computer and logged into the GPS tracking system.

  The digital street map that appeared on the monitor resembled that of any GPS navigator out there. Several pin icons showed the locations of every vehicle Huey had in his fleet. Many were scattered all over the area. A few were grouped together at the airport.

  Huey asked, “Would you prefer this map or the satellite view?”

  Logan said, “That’s fine right there.”

  “Mr. Stark rented the Corolla.” Huey moved the cursor over the icons until he found the one that represented the car. “This is it here. Right now I can tell the Corolla is located at Saint Mary’s Street in Fort Steele. It’s been idle for fifteen hours, thirty-seven minutes.”

  Allan said, “We’re interested in the car’s movements on Saturday, the twenty-third of October. Can you pull that up for us, please?”

  Huey nodded. “Sure can.”

  He opened a menu on the screen and produced a calendar. Selecting the twenty-third, he clicked playback.

  The pin icon moved out from a location in Cranbrook that Audra guessed was the Elizabeth Lake Lodge. With a sense of awe, she watched the icon move westward on Highway 95 then north on 95A, creeping toward Kimberley.

  Logan leaned closer to the monitor as the icon traveled partway through the town and then hung a left onto St. Mary’s Lake Road.

  “He’s driving right beside Kimberley Nature Park,” Logan said.

  After a short distance, the icon stopped and then turned back in the same direction from which it came. Where it had stopped, a gray icon showed up.

  Logan said, “Pause that for a second.”

  Huey did.

  Logan tapped his finger on the gray icon. “What’s that?”

  Huey said, “It indicates the car had stopped there for a period of time.”

  “How long?”

  Huey moved the cursor over the icon, and a dialogue bubble popped up. “Idle for one hour, forty-one minutes.”

  “Switch it to satellite view.”

  As Huey did, Logan nodded. “Just what I thought.”

  Audra looked at him. “What?”

  Logan indicated a dirt road heading into a treed area. “We couldn’t see this on the map view, but that’s Jimmy Russell Road. We parked there on Friday when we went into the Kimberley Nature Park. Remember?”

  Audra chewed on the inside of her lip.

  She asked Huey, “What time did he arrive there?”

  “Ten thirty-four,” he said. “Left at twelve fifteen.”

  “Yup,” Logan said, nodding again. “Yup.”

  He motioned for Audra, Allan, and Denis to follow him outside of the office.

  Allan asked him, “What time was Guillaume Mills at the park?”

  “He left his home at around ten that morning. Family said it might’ve been a little after ten. They weren’t exactly sure.

  “Regardless, he lives about five kilometers from the park. Very close. Give him ten, fifteen minutes to ride there on his bike. You’re looking at ten fifteen to ten thirty.”

  Audra could see hope come to life in Logan’s eyes.

  “No question,” he said. “Mills and Stark were at the park around the same time.”

  Allan said, “It means Stark was in the area. Not that he murdered Mills, or even saw him, for that matter. Look at how big that place is. We need to exercise caution here. Take this step by step.”

  Audra agreed. “Like I said yesterday, we can’t get ahead of ourselves. You don’t have any evidence linking him to Mills. We need more.”

  Lips pressed into a tight line, Logan dropped his head. “Yeah, I know.”

  “You must admit,” Denis said. “This has just upgraded Jacob Stark to a person of interest.”

  “It has,” Audra admitted. “But we have to find out if he’s been in any of these other areas.”

  They walked back into the office.

  “Mr. Nolan,” Logan said. “Thank you for your help. We might need to come back and retrieve the memory card from that car’s GPS tracker.”

  Huey nodded. “Sure. No problem.”

  “In the meantime, make sure nothing happens to it.”

  Forty-five minutes later, they were back at the RCMP detachment in Kimberley when Audra’s cell phone rang. It was Thorne.

  “It’s all in whom you speak to,” he said.

  “What’d you find out, Captain?”

  “Are you sitting down?”

  Audra looked at the three men seated around the table with her.

  “We all are,” she said.

  “I’m glad my best detectives are on this case,” Thorne said.

  Audra straightened in her chair. “Oh?”

  “On October fourteenth, Jacob Stark flew into Halifax from Hamilton via Westjet flight five thirty-two at thirteen ten hours. He flew back to Hamilton on October eighteenth at fourteen forty-five hours our time. He arrived in Hamilton at sixteen hundred hours Eastern time.”

  Audra felt a frisson of excitement. She met Allan’s eyes and winked at him. He leaned forward in his chair, gazing at her with attentive focus.

  “What about last October?” she asked Thorne.

  “This is your dunker,” he said. “He flew into Halifax from Hamilton on October fifteenth. Left again on October nineteenth.”

  “Two days after the murder,” Audra said.

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  “Keep me informed.”

  “Always,” she said and hung up.

  As she set her cell phone on the table, Allan asked, “Thorne?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’d he say?”

  Audra looked at him, unable to hold back her smile. “He was there, Al. Jacob Stark was in Halifax during both murders.”

  39

  Burlington, October 31

  6:35 p.m.

  The neighborhood is quiet, almost somnolent.

  I see only a handful of ghouls, witches, and superheroes out trick or treating. Every year the number seems to get smaller. I wonder if people are just having fewer kids, or if parents are taking their children to the upscale neighborhoods that have gained a reputation for giving out full chocolate bars and cans of pop.

  Jaleesa is dressed like that girl from the Toy Story movies. Jade is dressed like a ladybug.

  We work the houses on Shadeland Avenue first then make our way down Townsend toward Forest Glen. I enjoy watching the girls go door to door, hearing them say, “trick or treat,” and holding out their pillowcases.

  The weather is perfect too. The evening sky is clear and starry. The breeze coming off Hamilton Harbor chills the air as it creeps through the streets.

  Despite the few kids around, a lot of people have decorated for Halloween. Jack-o-lanterns adorn steps. Fake spiderwebs are strung up on trees or stretched out over entryways. A few, I see, have even gone a little overboard.

  We come along a house on Townsend that has so many fake headstones set up on the front lawn, it looks like a graveyard. A coffin with a skeleton crawling out of it sits near the walkway. Spooky noises, pumping out from speakers, add to the creepiness. Screams. Evil laughs. Chains rattling. Lightning clashes.

  Jade freezes and looks back at me with frightened eyes.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. “We can skip this one.”

  “Scaredy-cat,” Jaleesa says.

  She skips up the walkway to the door and rings the bell. The owner has even dressed up like Dracula. Cape, fangs, white face, shadowed eyes, the whole weird bit.

  Jaleesa comes back wearing a big smile. She holds up a miniature chocolate bar in front of Jade.

  “I got a Kit Kat,” she taunts and dumps the bar into her pillowcase.

  I watch Jaleesa move on ahead of us, more fascinated by her behavior than
concerned. I always thought she was her mother’s daughter. But I just witnessed a piece of me reveal itself in her. The way she taunted Jade almost mirrored the way I used to taunt Joshua.

  Her behavior incites a smile I can’t contain. Warmth radiates throughout my body. I feel bigger, taller somehow. It must be pride.

  Dead leaves crunch under our feet as we finish up on Forest Glen and hit the posh waterfront homes on North Shore Boulevard.

  At the second one, Jade turns from the door, excited. “Look, Daddy,” she calls. “Root beer.”

  I give her a smile. “Nice. What do you say?”

  She turns to the gray-haired woman. “Thank you, nice lady.”

  “I got Pepsi,” Jaleesa says as she comes back.

  I check my watch, surprised at the time: 7:49 p.m.

  The girls have school tomorrow.

  We head up the back end of Shadeland Avenue, hitting the remaining houses before home.

  “Daddy,” Jade says. “My arms are getting tired. Can you carry my bag?”

  I take it from her. The pillowcase, three-quarters full, does have some weight to it. Jaleesa has hers slung over one shoulder like a burglar.

  “Jaleesa,” I call to her. “You okay?”

  She looks back at me. “Yeah. Fine.”

  When we reach home, Jade takes the pillowcase from me, and then she and Jaleesa run up the steps to our front door, ringing the doorbell.

  Heidi answers.

  “Trick or treat,” the girls say in unison, giggling as they open their pillowcases.

  Smiling, Heidi looks at Jaleesa. “And who are you supposed to be?”

  “Jessie,” she says.

  As a healthy alternative, Heidi prepared special goody bags just for the girls. Inside she had tangerine pumpkins, banana ghosts, and some monster mouths she made using slices of Granny Smiths, peanut butter, and yogurt-covered raisins for teeth.

  Heidi drops a goody bag into Jaleesa’s pillowcase, then she turns to Jade.

  “Oh look,” she says, “a little ladybug.”

  Jade giggles some more. “Yes.”

  “Cute.” Heidi gives her a goody bag. “Okay, girls. It’s after eight. C’mon. You’ll have to get ready for bed soon.”

  “Can we have some candy?” Jaleesa asks.

  Heidi says, “You can both pick out two favorite pieces after I look it over.”