by Lou Allin
Len gave her a broad, welcoming smile. He thumbed a gesture toward the shambling figure, dog trotting along as if it hadn’t a care in the world. “Would you believe he was top cross-country runner in the OFSSA finals? Captain of the Sudbury Secondary School team. Schizophrenia hits in the teens. I pass over a few bucks now and then. Guess I’m a softie, because my nephew in Halifax had the same problem. His parents couldn’t keep him off the streets. Walked in front of a train one day. Game over. Maybe a blessing for him.”
“Sorry to hear that. It’s a tricky problem.” Belle realized the legal quagmire in trying to force people to take their medicine, live in safe housing, get basic medical care. “How does he feed the dog?”
“Corky gets what he does. Catholic Charities Soup Kitchen. But there’s a bag of kibble in his pack. Sometimes he hangs out by the Royal Bank, cadging small change from elderly women. He’s one of the few who can tolerate the classical music they play over the speakers to chase off drifters. No big deal, he says. His dad was a music teacher.”
Belle wondered how the indigent survived on the winter streets in -35°C, but somehow they did. The occasional freezing death in Toronto and Ottawa hit the headlines, but rarely happened NOB, North of Barrie.
“The kid turn up yet?” he asked, with a worried frown. “Dave called me right off. I missed the news this morning. Don’t want to bother him for an update.”
“I haven’t heard anything. Why doesn’t Micro admit he did a stupid thing and come back?”
“Makes me glad I have a girl. They don’t pull that sort of stuff. Dave doesn’t need this. He has enough on his plate to sink the Bismarck.”
Belle cast her eyes at the sidewalk as a patrol car swept down the street, two officers looking left and right. “Maybe Micro has friends we don’t know about,” she added, remembering Tom Beerchuk. Yet surely he wouldn’t seek help from someone he despised, nor would responsible parents shelter a runaway.
Inside, taking their customary chairs, Belle folded her hands with a satisfied smile. “Here’s some good news. I talked to Broughton. What a nasty piece of work.”
Len stood abruptly, unsteady on his bum leg, his face flushing. A wormy vein at his temple pulsed as his voice rose, and he dropped a lighted cigarette on the desk, fumbling to retrieve it. “Jesus, woman. You could have gotten hurt. I never told you to find him.”
Taking a clue from Micro, Belle said with a wink, “You never told me not to.”
He shook his head, grabbing an ashtray and dropping back into the chair. “Caught me on a technicality. I thought you were a realtor, not a legal beagle. So go on. Don’t keep me in suspenders.”
Suspenders. Her father would enjoy that one. She related the Old Mill scene. “In jail that night. Verifiable enough. But he’s a real pig. His description of Bea disgusted me. That’s why I don’t believe his innuendos about Dave.”
“I like the guy, too, but if he’s been pulling a con, withholding information, it’s sayonara. I’m seasoned enough to suspect that anyone might have a secret side.” Len tipped back his head and focused his thick glasses on her, eyes bulging like a bullfrog’s. “I had a hunch about Leonora Bruce, so I’ve been tailing her. If you think about it, she stands to gain a lot from Bea’s death, maybe get the business in a distress sale. She’s no movie star, that banger of a nose and all, but who can say what attracts a man . . . or woman? My wife and me, for example. Maybe she’s working with someone.”
Wife? He’d never mentioned one. Had they divorced? Belle left the subject alone. “I talked to her at the viewing. She seemed devastated about Bea. She and Dave embraced, but that’s only natural.” Or was it?
Raising a seedy eyebrow, Len consulted a notebook. “Stakeout again tonight, the most boring part of my job. With luck, Leonora will turn in by ten like a good girl, and I’ll be snoozing at home an hour later.”
Suddenly, the door opened without a knock, and into the office walked a statuesque beauty who made a grey business suit look like a Vogue photoshoot. Her makeup was subtle and flawless, accenting high cheekbones beneath glittering violet eyes. A delicate scent of jasmine filled the air. She carried a black leather laptop computer case and a designer bag, and her shapely legs stretched from there to eternity. “Dad,” she said, then smiled at Belle. “Sorry for barging in.”
Len made the introductions. “My daughter, Lillian. She’s a social worker at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.” The timbre in his voice spelled PRIDE.
“Pleased to meet you. So are you helping Dad on his case?” As Belle gave a dubious nod, Lillian glanced at the pizza boxes in the wastebasket, shaking her coppery curls, artfully arranged in a high-maintenance style. “Just stopped to remind you about dinner tomorrow. Meat loaf the way you like it. I haven’t seen you for so long that I’ve forgotten your face.”
“Nobody forgets this ugly puss. Make that Tater-Tot casserole of yours, sweetie.” He squeezed her manicured hand.
After Lillian planted a kiss on his raspy cheek and left, Belle said, “She’s lovely,” calculating the timeline with curiosity. The daughter seemed in her mid-thirties, yet Len wasn’t far into his fifties.
He smiled, touching a finger to the framed picture on his desk, and turned it toward Belle. A couple stood on a beach, palm trees in the background. She had long, reddish hair, cascading in curls around her face, and he was skinny enough to worry about his trunks. No mistaking those trademark glasses. “I was only nineteen when Lilli was born. Mayda and I met on a kibbutz. The hot sun, the shimmer of the sea.” He gave a Gallic shrug.
“Your wife is a beauty, too . . . I mean . . .” She shifted her feet, hoping he’d rescue her.
Waving off her embarrassment, he lit another Camel and cleared his throat as his voice assumed a faraway tone. “Mayda died in childbirth. Lilli was raised mostly by her aunt in Montreal. With all my wandering, I’ve been making it up to her for the last fifteen years. Changed our name from Hulitsky. The aunt’s idea. Social advantage or something. Didn’t matter garbanzo beans to me.”
Belle didn’t know what to say, insulated from premature deaths. Her mother had been in her seventies when she had died from bowel cancer, like Audrey Hepburn, both members of an earlier female generation which often traded survival for privacy behind the closed curtain until it was too late. Changing the subject seemed wise. “Sorry about crossing the line on Broughton. Micro’s disappearance has me on edge, too. Just thinking of sitting safe at home tonight like a useless lump . . .” She looked up at him with the same winsome expression that had melted her father from cradle to college. “That stakeout. May I come along?”
He flashed a genial smile. “Why not? The old beater’s seat hurts my back, and I don’t see so sharp at night anyway. If I had a pension, I’d pack it in.”
Belle called Hélène to give Freya her supper and let her out, then waited until Len “dressed.” When he emerged from the rear of the office, he wore black pants, shirt, socks and shoes. She tried not to laugh. “Is that necessary?”
“Keeps me in the right mindset. I’m not wearing any camo face paint though. It’s hell to wash off, and I get odd looks.”
They took her van to Quizno’s on LaSalle, a new arrival of a popular American chain. Studying the sumptuous menu, they ordered toasted subs and bottles of water. Smoked turkey, rosemary sourdough buns, shaved Black Angus steak. Len floated a twenty onto the counter, then grimaced as he was asked for another fifty cents.
Minutes later, they settled into a dark parking lot at an apartment complex on Voyageur Street near Gagnon Opticians. Len pointed to a large bright window on the first floor and passed her a pair of monster binos. With the curtains open and the high vantage of the sloping lot, they could see into the living room as if watching television. He nodded toward a shadowy ravine and pulled a squished roll of toilet paper from his pocket. “Open-air bathroom. A PI’s life story, though I usually use a bottle. Hope you’re not too fussy.”
She laughed. “A bushwoman can drop her
pants anywhere.” And pee on her shoe, too.
With his tiny penlight for assistance, they unwrapped their sandwiches and ate ravenously. Blotting her mouth on a serviette, Belle said, “They’re good, but people will vote with their pocketbook. Northerners like to squeeze the nickel.”
From six to eight, a few cars came and left the lot. Belle saw Leonora get up, leave the room, and return. Windsor the poodle curled up in a chintz armchair. Taking turns, she and Len took advantage of the cover of the ravine. Belle twitched at the scutter of animals, city rats, no doubt, foraging the brush and debris of Junction Creek. Hearing a feral shriek, she wasted no time hustling to the van. The radio kept them company, a CBC program about Canada’s lack of competitiveness among the G-7 nations. “How can you compete fairly when half the year you’re relocating frozen water by shovel, blower, or plow? We deserve a handicap, like racehorses,” she said.
Len nickered in response and lit a tenth cigarette. Then he pulled a tape out of his pocket. “That wholesome government pap is putting me to sleep. I got this at Just-a-Buck. It’s a riot. My dad loved this stuff.”
She looked at the case. Wacky Songs from the Fifties. In the next half hour, they listened to “Transfusion”, “The Old Philosopher”, “The Purple People Eater”, “The Chipmunk Song” and “Witch Doctor”.
As the last ting-tang-walla-walla-bing-bang sounded, she was beginning to develop a nostalgia for the foulest rap music. Len touched her arm and pointed to a familiar car entering the lot. “Heads up, or rather, down. Check this out.”
Dave Malanuk parked the SUV and walked into the lobby, a large bouquet in his hand. “Damn,” she said, wondering how she could ever tell the DesRosiers. “He seemed like such a nice guy.” So Bea’s husband had been cheating on her. Belle’s batting average on character assessment took a major hit.
Thanks to the huge lenses, they could nearly read the lips of the people in the picture window. Windsor made it to the door first, then Leonora. She turned off the television and took Dave’s coat, along with the flowers, placing both on a table. Then they sat on a sofa, their upper torsos visible. After twenty minutes and an indecipherable series of hand gestures, there was a chaste hug, and Dave left. “Maybe that’s all she wrote, but we’ll wait a bit in case he went out for pizza,” Len said. “One minute can make the hours worth it.”
But Dave didn’t return. At ten o’clock as predicted, Leonora turned off her lights. Len stuffed the last butt into Belle’s overflowing ashtray. The van needed a steam cleaning after this assault. “Wait until I give that guy a blast,” he said, nodding grimly. Then he turned to her, offering a porky handshake. “Thanks. The company was nice. It’s a lonely job.”
After letting Len off, on the way home Belle welcomed the soothing ebony night rolling over her as she left the harsh city lights behind and sorted out her thoughts. Micro had been gone two days. Hélène had her cellphone number if any news broke. As she slowed for the Edgewater Road turn, her beams lit two red eyes in the undergrowth. She paused until they disappeared. In a duel between moose and vehicles, the odds were even money.
When she got home, she let Freya out again and went to her computer room, where she kept her maps. That sleeping bag had given her an idea. The OPP hadn’t seen Micro on the four major highways out of town, but what about rougher secondary roads? They branched in every direction, winding around over two hundred lakes in the region. The phone rang, and she jumped. Eleven o’clock. It had to be serious.
“Belle, I’ve discovered something else. All my jerky is missing. It was in Ziplocs in the cupboard . . .” Hélène paused, and Belle heard fear charge her voice. “And what’s worse, Ed’s .22. I know we should have locked it in a gun safe, but we don’t have children around that often.”
“Jerky sounds desperate for a vegetarian. And a gun?” Hadn’t he said something about living off the bush when they hiked to Surprise Lake? A boy’s dream, a parent’s nightmare. “Hélène, do you suppose he’s camping out somewhere? Bea said he loved to sleep up in his treehouse.”
“All the provincial campgrounds must be closed now, but I’ll tell Dave. We’re in constant touch. He’s called all of Micro’s friends, too.”
In the current crisis, Belle said nothing about the scene with Leonora. Time enough for that to emerge. Then Hélène added, “And the police took the computers, ours and his at the house. It’ll be a few days before we hear about that.”
Computers. That sounded ominous, though it was probably procedure. “They’re just being thorough. That’s what we want.” As she hung up, Belle wondered if Dave had Chris Forth on his list. Bea would have known all the boy’s friends, but not Dave. She’d met the lad and felt comfortable with him. Len would approve of her initiative.
The next morning, Belle reached the boy before school. Filling him in on the latest details, she asked, “Tell me anything you can about what he liked to do, any place that he mentioned.”
Chris talked about games, films, toys, the information he’d given the police already when his mother had called them. Then he grew silent.
Belle tried not to rush him. Interrogations were tricky. “Did you remember something?”
The boy sniffed. “Micro said that the best time he ever had in his whole life was the summer when he was ten.”
Belle frowned and grabbed a notepad and pen. “Why ten?”
“It was the last summer before . . . Dave came. He wouldn’t call him Dad.”
An intelligent boy like Micro could be stubborn, she imagined, her memorable time with him more of a vacation free of rules. Keeping her voice upbeat so as not to alarm Chris, she asked the obvious question. “Why didn’t he get along with his stepfather? Did he give you any reasons?”
“Not really. He shut up every time Dave’s name came up. I thought he was okay, as parents go. He had a super BBQ at the lake on Micro’s last birthday. Loot bags for every kid. That bike was da bomb.”
“Da . . . getting back to that summer, what happened to make it so special?”
She heard silence, then “Oh, yeah. Now I remember. It was a camp. He learned how to canoe, built a lean-to, practiced survival skills.”
So the idea wasn’t that far-fetched. One hand reached to her throat, fast constricting. Stay in the woods in the summer. With counsellors and tons of food. Not survive in fall when the temperature dipped below freezing. They’d had several hard frosts before he left, but the recent days had been unseasonably warm. It wouldn’t last, global warming aside, a concept which made Northerners laugh.
“Do you know its name or location?”
“It wasn’t the Y camps, John Island and Camp Falcona. I’ve been there myself. You could ask his teacher. He said that he wrote a story about it when school started.” He paused. “Oh, Miss?”
She smiled at the polite, all-purpose name. “Yes, Chris?”
“Is he gonna be all right? I mean, will they find him?”
“My fingers are crossed, and I’ve never been wrong.” Safe enough, as promises go.
After hanging up, Belle was forced to do some hard thinking. Trusting instincts, she called Dave at his office. What she had seen at the apartment wasn’t yet the ocular proof of adultery Othello demanded. Len’s suspicions were typical for an investigator, but there could have been a sound reason for his visiting Leonora. Dave’s secretary told her that he had flown to London for preliminary work on a Thanksgiving telethon to raise money for a wing on the Veterans’ Hospital. “Imagine having to run all over the province when your son’s missing,” the woman said. “But he has commitments, and Dave never lets anyone down. He’ll be back tonight.”
A call to the DesRosiers turned up no information about the camp. Hélène and Ed had taken an Alaskan cruise that summer and visited relatives in Nanaimo.
“How about the computers?” Belle asked. “Anything yet?”
“They gave it top priority. Got a hotshot from Information Systems at Nickel City College. They accessed the history, or whatever it is. In a
chatroom about Castle King Three, they found his conversations with Dreamweaver.”
Belle drummed her fingers on the table. “Dreamweaver?”
“They all use code names. It’s part of the . . . fun.” Her voice quivered with fear. “But there’s something worse. The police are afraid that he met someone on the Internet and agreed to join him. An e-mail message arrived here at ten the morning he disappeared. It said: “We’re on for nine. CU.” That’s a C and a U. All these abbreviations mean something. They don’t think it’s a person’s initials. But he didn’t read it, because he was already gone, so—”
“Who sent it? Dreamweaver?”
“Someone else. Rapper 219. They’re trying to trace it. It sounds to me like a gang or something.”
“It’s just a kind of music. Every kid wants to be a rapper.” Belle wondered about the logistics. “The message could have been a confirmation of an earlier agreement, because ‘nine’ must have meant night. That night. Why send it at ten if the meeting were in the morning? Any other files? Did they check the history?”
“You know how neat the boy is. Everything else was erased, or deleted, whatever they do.”
Belle remembered computer forensics she’d learned on the DorothyL mystery discussion group. “Sometimes deleted data can be recovered.”
“I’m sure they’ll try everything. One of the officers gave me some brochures for parents to keep their kids safe online. It sickened me.” She’d slipped one of the brochures under Belle’s door. “Our boys were off at college before computers came around, and the grandkids are too young to worry about. When Micro finished his homework, he was allowed to surf the net, he called it, for one hour, according to Dave. If he was visiting a friend, the game Grand Theft Auto was off-limits, for obvious reasons. We didn’t set any other rules, just left him on his own.”
“I had a thought, but I’m not telling Ed. I know how he’d react.”
Belle couldn’t imagine where this was going. Hélène keeping secrets from Ed was a new one. They were joined at the hip, steel ball joint aside. “What do you mean?”