Prisoners of Hope

by Barbara Fradkin

“In Toronto?”

  “Nooo!” Almost a wail. “In the islands. There are islands and water everywhere. Little houses with nobody home, nothing but bears and snakes, and our boat has a hole.”

  “So you’re still in Georgian Bay?”

  “I don’t know.” A pause. In the silence, the wind crackled over the phone and the waves whispered. After a muffled conversation, she returned to the phone. “Georgian Bay, yes.”

  “Do you have a map? A compass?”

  “No.”

  “Does your phone have a map function? Or a GPS?”

  “It’s a cheap phone. Just for phoning.”

  “Then call the police.”

  “No police!”

  Amanda scribbled on a napkin and Matthew nodded. “Then the coast guard.”

  “But I have to get out of the country.” Danielle’s tone sharpened. “I can’t stay here. You told my friends you would help me with documents. Can you help me?”

  “What documents?”

  “Passport. I have no passport.”

  “Did you lose it in the lake?”

  “No, no! It was gone.”

  “Gone from where?”

  “From the safe. When I look …” She broke off with a sharp gasp.

  Amanda shot Matthew a surprised frown and scribbled a hasty note on the napkin. How does she know? “How do you know it was empty?” Matthew asked. “Did you look?”

  “No! The safe was open.”

  “When? Before Dr. Humphries died?”

  “After. No, I mean before. Someone took it.”

  Matthew wasn’t buying any of it. “Danielle, were you in the room after Dr. Humphries was dead?”

  A moan, followed by muttered conversation. Amanda could almost see her scrambling to cover her tracks and think up a new explanation.

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  Silence. When she came back on the line, her voice shook. “Please. I need a new passport. New visa.”

  “Danielle, I can’t do that,” Matthew said. “Come to Toronto and —”

  “No! They will put me in jail.”

  “Why?”

  “It was an accident! He was already dead, but the police will not believe me. I didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “Are you talking about Benson Humphries? Or Ronny Gifford?”

  A stifled cry. The sibilant swish of waves in the silence. “They found Ronny?”

  “Yes.”

  “Diyos ko po! Who will believe us? Mrs. Humphries will make sure we go to jail.”

  Amanda was bursting with questions, but Matthew’s calm, soothing voice was drawing Danielle out, and Amanda was afraid she’d hang up in panic if Amanda spoke. She scribbled on her napkin again. How did Benson die?

  “In Canada, rich people don’t control the police,” Matthew said, although his expression betrayed his doubts. “There are laws and protections for you. You said Benson’s death was an accident?”

  “The drugs. He was not supposed to …”

  “You gave him drugs?”

  “No, no! I think they were not for him.” A murmured voice stopped her. “Stop asking questions! I need help. If you can’t help me —”

  “Okay, Danielle,” Matthew said, as if to buy time while he figured out an answer. “I’ll help you. But I need some time.”

  “We have almost no food left. Or water.”

  “Is there anything around? Cottages? Boats?”

  “Nothing.”

  Amanda wrote. Catch fish? Build fire? When Matthew put her questions to Danielle, the woman began to cry. “We have nothing. We are lost. And my little boy is hungry.”

  “Then you have to call the coast guard.”

  “No army! No police!” she cried, and the phone clicked dead.

  Matthew and Amanda stared at each other for a long time. “Fuck,” Matthew muttered.

  Amanda fought a familiar sense of frustration. She hated to do nothing. “Let me see that phone.”

  When he handed over the phone, she studied the number. It stirred a vague memory. “That’s …” She paused to check her own phone. “This was one of two numbers made from Ronny’s phone on the afternoon he died. The first was Janine, the second was this one.”

  “Ronny phoned Danielle’s phone?” Matthew looked puzzled. “But she was with him.”

  “This is not her phone. She had no phone when we picked her up. This must be a cheap phone Fernando bought so he could contact her. I think Danielle called him that afternoon using Ronny’s phone to tell him where to meet them.” Her thoughts raced ahead. It was one small piece of the puzzle explained but another piece shaken loose. Had she phoned her husband before or after Ronny’s injury? Ronny would be too heavy for her to move on her own. Had she phoned Fernando in a panic to help her deal with the body?

  Amanda shook her head sharply to rid herself of her nagging concerns. All those questions would have to wait. What mattered was that Danielle, Fernando, and a six-year-old boy were stranded on an island with nothing but a dumb phone to communicate. “Maybe I should try to find her. Chris has gone home, but I have to go back up there anyway to finish my tour planning.”

  He rolled his eyes. The waiter, who’d hovered nearby during the phone call, came to remove their plates. “Dessert, coffee?”

  Both declined and thanked him. “It’s a big place,” Matthew said. “Thirty thousand islands. It’ll be a needle in a haystack.”

  “We do know they were heading south several days ago. Even if they went in circles, they should have covered some distance, but since there are islands all around, they’re probably still in the archipelago, not the open lake. I’m guessing they’re quite far south of Parry Sound.” She paused, warming to the idea as she analyzed the background sounds on the phone. “There was a gusting wind, but the waves sounded gentle. Maybe in a protected bay?”

  “Pure speculation. Amanda, we have to call the cops. They have a BOLO out on her. No matter what Danielle said, two people are dead because of her.”

  “Maybe they were accidents, as she said. Ronny could have fallen down the cliff and hit his head. And maybe she’s right that no one will believe her. Where she comes from, the police aren’t on the side of poor people like her.”

  He stared at her, shaking his head slowly back and forth. “You’re not Superwoman, you know. You don’t have to save the world.”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, Matthew! I’m not trying to save the world. Just help one very scared woman who’s backed into a corner. She’s been stranded out there for days, without enough food or water, through the storm we had, with a scared little boy. She will hide if she sees the police, but maybe I can persuade her to come back with me and turn herself in.”

  “Like I said, Superwoman.” He sat back. Gave a theatrical shrug. “Do you want company?”

  “God, no! You can barely swim. No, I’ll find somebody local up there to help me.”

  “Who?”

  “I have some ideas.”

  “Promise?”

  She reached across the table to touch his arm. Inside, she was in knots of apprehension and self-doubt, but she was damned if she’d let him know. The phrase Danielle had let slip — that the drugs were “not for him” — looped around and around in her head. Had the lethal drug been intended for someone else, and if so, who? The most obvious target was the woman who stood in her way, not only by exploiting her and withholding her papers, but also simply by being married to Benson, whose relationship with Danielle was anything but innocent. Janine.

  Chris was standing in line at the Air Canada gate, waiting to board. He had spent a restless couple of hours in the departure lounge, ostensibly reading the newspaper but instead thinking of Amanda. Of their week together, which despite the craziness had gone better than he’d dreamed. Of the silk of her skin, the scent of her hair, the taste of her lips. She was fragile but strong. Tender but tough. Playful, prickly, infuriating, and most of all, alive. This week had confirmed what he’d first thought back in Newfound
land eight months ago. He wanted her in his life. Yet his life and hers had their own paths that were not easy to weave together. He doubted she would ever settle for being a Mountie’s wife, following him from post to post and finding her own work in the shadow of his. She had a mission of her own, at least as important as his.

  But her mission meant even more transient roots than his. She had no place to call home besides her aunt’s cabin in the Laurentians. She spent much of her time on the road with her motorcycle and her dog, travelling from coast to coast. If they were going to build a life together, one of them would have to compromise. He loved his job. He was in midcareer with a dream of being a detachment commander some day. Because of some rocky moments in the past couple of years, he had to watch his step, but he was building a reputation as an effective, capable officer in remote postings.

  Unlike some of his colleagues who had their eye further up the ladder, he loved being in small detachments, connecting with local communities, and hunting for lost hikers and snowmobilers rather than jostling big-city crowds en route to the halls of power.

  A pang of sadness swept over him now as he stood in line, clutching the boarding pass that would take him two thousand kilometres from her. September seemed very far away.

  His phone rang. He glanced at it. Matthew. Stepping out of line, he picked up. “I’m about to get on the plane. What’s up?”

  “Glad I caught you.” Matthew sounded frazzled. “I wasn’t sure if I should call but thought you’d want to know. Our girl has gone off half-cocked again.”

  The line was inching past him. “What’s she done?”

  He listened while Matthew described the phone call from Danielle and Amanda’s decision to set off on a search. He glanced out the airport window at the flat expanse of tarmac scattered with planes. Up above, the last blush of sunset filled the sky with lilac gloom. “Oh for fuck’s sake! Now?”

  “Either now or first thing in the morning. You know how she gets.”

  Chris thought back to their time on the water in Georgian Bay. It was easy to get lost between two coves, let alone in the whole huge bay. “She probably won’t find them,” he said. Who was he kidding? This was Amanda, about to move heaven and earth. Again.

  “She said she’ll get a local to help,” Matthew added.

  “Well, that’s something. Have you called the police?”

  There was a pause. Chris could hear traffic revving in the background and the tinny strains of jazz. “Not yet.”

  “They’ll be able to find Danielle faster than Amanda can. They can put out search helicopters with heat-seeking sensors and lots of boats to cover the area.”

  “I know, but Amanda would kill me if I called them.”

  Chris gripped the phone in frustration. “Better that than getting herself killed!”

  “I hope she’s not in danger, at least from Danielle. The woman sounded very scared and said she really wants help.”

  “What does she think the cops are? Monsters?”

  “Probably. Don’t forget, her husband’s brother was murdered by cops.” There was a pause, punctuated only by jazz and by the drone of the airport PA. “I’m not convinced she’s as innocent as she claims, but Amanda seems hell-bent on rescuing her. I was hoping you could go with her.”

  Chris glanced at the gate. The last passenger had passed through, and the attendants were looking at him expectantly. Two thousand kilometres away, Sergeant Knotts was also waiting expectantly, his disciplinary pen poised.

  Frustration clashed with fury. “I can’t. I’m about to board. Call the cops, Matthew. Neville Standish in Parry Sound. He’s not a monster.”

  Matthew muttered a phrase that sounded suspiciously like “thanks for nothing,” but before Chris could counter him, he hung up. Chris held up a finger to the waiting flight attendants as he dialled Amanda’s number. If he could reach her, perhaps she’d listen to reason.

  But her phone rang and rang. Goddamn the woman! Was she already on the road, or was she deliberately ignoring his call in order to avoid a full-blown fight?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  At that moment, Amanda was en route to a cheap roadside hotel in Vaughan on the northern fringe of Toronto. She planned an early start in the morning, and this way the congestion of the city would already be behind her. Her phone was tucked into her pocket, and by the time she rumbled into the hotel parking lot, darkness had fallen, Kaylee needed a walk, and she was dead on her feet.

  After completing her chores, she unpacked her pyjamas, washed, and fell into bed. She was awake as the first coral tendrils of dawn were shooting across the eastern sky. Too early for the hotel’s dubious self-serve breakfast, she brewed a cup of coffee, packed up, and was about to climb on her bike again before she fished out her phone to check the route to Parry Sound.

  Five alerts. Three missed calls — one from Matthew and two from Chris — and two voicemail messages. Maybe one last tender goodbye from Chris. Smiling, she accessed her voicemail.

  Chris’s voice was anything but tender. “Amanda! Pick up! Matthew called. For god’s sake, woman, don’t be an idiot! Let the cops handle it. That’s our job.”

  Her irritation flared. She deleted the message after the prompt, and a few seconds later the second voicemail came on. He’d pulled back from the brink. “Where are you? Please call me.”

  Mollified, she considered calling him. It was an hour and a half later in Newfoundland, so he should be up and on his way to work. But when she ran through the possible conversations in her mind, all of them ended in a fight. He would try to forbid her, and she would refuse. It was no way to maintain the tender but fragile intimacy they had built.

  In the end, she decided on a text. Don’t worry, I’m fine and won’t do anything rash. Love you. Her finger hovered over the last two words. They’d been said only jokingly in the past week, which was a start, but not enough. She replaced them with xox. The moment she punched “send,” she shoved the phone into her pocket, climbed on her bike, and roared off in a blast of fumes.

  Chris woke early after a fitful night’s sleep. The hotel’s ancient air conditioning had rattled on and off all night, and the constant roar of jet engines kept pulling him back to consciousness. He checked his phone and read the cheery but empty words of Amanda’s text. Don’t worry, my ass!

  His phone call to her went to voicemail. Fuming, he went downstairs for the hotel’s advertised do-it-yourself hot breakfast, only to find the coffee urn empty and the line-up for the waffle iron too long for his frayed nerves. Families who were up even earlier than him occupied most of the tables, cranky babies screamed in high chairs, and sleep-disordered toddlers raced in manic zigzags between the tables.

  He stepped out of the hotel into the swirl of early morning rush hour. The breeze was tainted with the smell of jet fuel, and the sun was struggling to poke through the gauze of smog that hung over the horizon. He found a twenty-four-hour diner down the street and ordered a traditional breakfast of fried eggs, sausage, and home fries. Since he didn’t know what the day held in store, he decided it would be wise to stoke the fires.

  Once he’d downed half a cup of scalding, dishwater coffee, he phoned Matthew. “Have you heard from Amanda?”

  Matthew mumbled an indecipherable reply. Belatedly, Chris glanced at his watch. Early, but not criminally so.

  “Rise and shine, God.”

  “Fuck you, Tymko. It’s still the middle of the night here.”

  “No, it’s not. And I’m right down the street.”

  “What?”

  “I never left. When I couldn’t get a reply out of Amanda, I postponed my flight. I’m hoping you’ll tell me she called the whole thing off.”

  “Well, I can’t.” Matthew sounded as if he were waking up by degrees. “Let me check if I’ve got an email from her.” There was silence on the line, broken only by the journalist’s wheezy breath. Then a quiet curse. “Nothing.”

  “So she’ s off in the Georgian Bay wilderness somewhere, on t
he trail of a possible killer.”

  “She did say she was going to get help, but she didn’t say who. Probably winging it in her usual fashion.”

  Chris’s blood pressure rose. The waitress arrived with his platter of food, heaped with enough home fries to feed half of Ethiopia. The coffee was curdling his stomach, and the smell made him slightly nauseated. Goddamn the woman! he raged as his mind leaped to all the perils.

  “I’m glad you’re still here,” Matthew mumbled.

  “Well, I couldn’t leave it like this. But I need to get back to my job, or I won’t have one. Matthew, I’m calling the OPP.”

  “She’ll be mad as a hornet.”

  “I don’t give a fuck. At least she’ll be alive.”

  “Who will you call?”

  “Neville Standish in Parry Sound. He’s not in charge, but he’ll know who is. He’ll be over the moon to get this news, but at least he’s already on the ground up there.”

  “Okay,” Matthew said quietly. “You’re right. And better you than me.”

  Chris had Neville Standish’s cellphone number in his contacts list. While he waited for the man to pick up, he picked at the sausage that lay congealing on his plate. The taste matched the smell.

  “Sergeant Standish, West Parry Sound Detachment,” Standish rattled off.

  Chris identified himself.

  “I thought I’d seen the last of you two.”

  “Afraid not.” Chris gave him a quick summary of Danielle’s desperate phone call to Matthew and Amanda’s decision to go up to search for her. “She has some cockamamie idea she’s going to persuade Danielle to trust the authorities and come back with her.”

  “And you let her do that?”

  “Of course not! I didn’t know about it until I was almost on my flight home. Not that I could have stopped her.”

  Standish let fly with a string of graphic, imaginative curses. “Why the fuck didn’t you folks tell us right away! How in hell’s name are we supposed to do our jobs with one hand tied behind our backs? Does this Doucette woman think we’re a bunch of incompetent morons up here in the sticks who couldn’t find our own asses?”

  “What’s important is that I’m telling you she’s up there looking for them.”