Missing Chldren

by Gerald Lynch

  It was the length and coherence of that very un-Veronica-like speech, the fact that it had obviously been rehearsed a few times, that put the icicle through my heart. All I could manage was, “That is so unfair.” By then I was sitting up on the edge of the bed, in my Nobody-Knows-I’m-Elvis T-shirt and baggy blue jockeys. I’m sure I looked a bargain. “Veronica, really, it’s everything that’s happened. Let me get you something, get back into bed.”

  She smiled genuinely and shook her head. “You’d better watch that Valium.”

  I felt my head. It hurt differently from a hangover, hypersensitive everywhere, like my scalp had shrunk and been stapled to my skull.

  She was still smiling. “Of course, it’s never you. It’s me or the kids or someone else. Even now, when you’ve been behaving half out of your mind, you won’t seriously consider what I’ve said. Even with all the evidence, our little girl abducted, your precious Caddy sacrificed for Bob Browne, and Art Foster in jail for being with a teenage prostitute in your car, maybe even for assaulting a girl in your car. In jail, Lorne!”

  “But you’re not making coherent sense, Veronica!”

  “When did you last talk sensibly with Owen, your son, who is obviously deeply depressed?”

  “But I do respect you! I love you!”

  She pinched her mouth and looked at me with those dead brown eyes.

  “They’re not the same thing. And by the way, that was a doozy of a non sequitur… Okay, at least picture this, Dr. Thorpe, which I witnessed from Jack’s house. You drunk and high on who knows what, washing my car in a heat wave, chasing reporters down the driveway to the end of the hose — when we still didn’t know where Shawn was!”

  At the bedroom door she hopped into her other sock and turned her back to me. From the sound of her voice, she may finally have been crying: “I’m leaving you, and I want a divorce. Jack says I can use his lawyer.”

  I didn’t believe her for a second, though I was alarmed at her playing such a card. But then she picked up the suitcase, which had been pre-packed. I couldn’t speak. Nor did she try again.

  Soon the air seal on the back door whooshed like the non-negotiable kiss-off it was.

  Where were the kids? I shouted, “Shawn?… Owen?” Nothing. Nothing came back but the nothing sound of the TV, which no one must have been watching. What could be more nothing than a know-nothing TV playing to no one?

  I lay back and pulled the sheet over my head. I was suddenly greasy with hangover sweat and felt biliously green. I rolled back and forth and back and forth till I was trapped in a winding sheet. Flailing and kicking the mattress, I tore the sheet off. I lay still for a time, getting my breath, or sort of whimpering, I guess.

  I looked in on Owen. He’d slept the night with his earplugs in. He didn’t look depressed to me. I turned off his CD player and he still didn’t stir, so I left the plugs in place.

  In the kitchen there was a note from Shawn: “Dad work phoned and they want you to call back right away, I could save myself time by making photocopies of this message! Next door. Love S.”

  Just like that, like all was back to normal. We’d come so close.

  I stepped towards the side door, but turned back and phoned Tamara at CHEO. Little Marnee (congenital heart) had died during the night. In the absence of Dr. Foster, who’d been scheduled for the day, would I please cancel my unscheduled holiday and come in just to close some routine matters?

  Foster. I’d promised Kevin I’d visit Foster first thing that morning. I would. Then to work. It was late already. We’d slept in, for the last time, it looked.

  I stopped again on my way to the door, slipped the CD of Abbey Road from the Beatles’ digitally remastered box set, hurried upstairs, slipped it into Owen’s player, lowered the volume and hit play. I watched until he smiled in his sleep. “Come Together.” For once the black rapper wasn’t threatening to tear him a new A-hole. I could have cried. I touched his cheek, felt my own. What the hell!

  Chapter 15

  “Bring it, Thorpe, your best shot,” he challenged half-heartedly. Crossing the floor towards him, I stopped and struck a pose, palms up and arms spread: “Foster, I come not to shoot you in your cell but to retrieve a pimpmobile.”

  He crossed his arms on his chest and deadpanned the two words, “Not funny.”

  “I’m, uh, sorry, Art. It’s just that I’m nervous here.”

  “You’re nervous here?” He dropped his head and wagged it, looking around surreptitiously. He was signalling me to see where he’d landed himself. And landed was the word for Foster in his ill-fitting orange jumpsuit — parachuted behind enemy lines, delivered into the camp of “the other.”

  I’d been able to walk right through the media congregated at the front because they were distracted surrounding some woman who’d just emerged. Only “A-Channel videographer Donny Kynder” had recognized me, but too late. It was past ten, yet I found Kevin nowhere. Then I was stalled for some two hours because I’d never visited before and I wasn’t a relative of Art. It made no difference that I was Dr. Lorne Thorpe. No one in the long chain at Police HQ would authorize my visit and it took forever to locate Kevin, who vouched for me and had them pass the message that he was delayed. Luckily it was a day of “free-time visitation,” which meant a relaxed approach to time, and signalled either administrative irony or cruelty, or both.

  Walking into the “visitation pod,” I’d thought first of a school’s cafeteria, a Catholic school’s, where big kids were being prepped for confession. The place breathed such an air of institutional normality, with open concept and lots of glass (or Plexiglas). The impression of normality was strong because I’d been expecting TV expressions of incarcerated evil: shanking relays at a cafeteria counter, raging homophobic panic, big Black men in bib overalls. Not these mostly white and brown and swarthy guys in orange jumpsuits.

  Then a correct impression of the regional detention centre sank in. A couple of well-armed guards kept alert proximity to the dull action. The inmates seemed to be either short and powerful or all sinew in suits that were two sizes too large (perhaps a preference; Owen dressed similarly “gangsta”). And they all looked so young compared to Foster and me. All had some form of facial hair, with the beards and moustaches sparse (Owen again). Further bold examination discovered the tattoos: crosses and other insignias on cheeks, lines running from cuffs like black blood or rising up the neck like dark flames, even tattooed teardrops. (Owen would never be getting a tattoo.) Men looked away shifty-eyed from their earnest or upset female visitors…looked at me standing there casually dressed, taking it all in like a day at the Museum of Nature. The very man at whom I was staring kicked his chair over backwards, pointed at me and shouted: “Who the fuck does he think he is?”

  Ah, yes, we were in jail, a Canadian jail, Ottawa, Ontario. I’d been the target of that question a few times in my life, if never during my American days.

  A guard took a step, riot stick at his chest, hand on Taser like a quick-draw, but the well-conditioned prisoner was already striding out the interior door. Perhaps he’d merely exploited my bad manners to end his visit (his woman-child, who looked pregnant, was sobbing with face in hands).

  From that point on I knew exactly where I was: deep in the land of unreason, a foreign country of perpetual conflict. That true impression went well with the tang of cleanser and the other odour that now insinuated and could never be masked: human waste. As I’ve said, in my place of work, disease and death also go well with the smell of disinfectant. So there was still that something familiar in the experience.

  Without looking up, Foster said, “Don’t stare so fucking obviously, Lorne.”

  Everything told me to come right to the point, my point, screw Beldon. “Art, where were you on Sunday morning?”

  He looked up and took me in. “Lorne, you don’t look well. You look worse than I feel.”

  “Answer
the question.”

  “Lorne, I forgive you beforehand for asking it. But I’ve talked with Detective Beldon a couple of times. I know about Shawn and I can’t tell you how relieved I am she’s all right. But, Lorne, we have both been set up, though for the life me, I don’t know why.” He dropped his head again. “Why, oh why, did I let her lure me back out Monday night? She was much younger than she’d said, we’d only talked and had supper Sunday, I went again only for her sake, she was so young and mixed up — hand to God, Lorne. She’d insisted on meeting in the Market both nights. There are witnesses now who will say your vintage Caddy was cruising the Market all weekend. If the Market Slasher hadn’t been arrested — thank God for small favours — they’d be saying I was him! Or you were! Why, why didn’t I return your Caddy Monday morning like we’d agreed? It’s this fucking cock of mine.”

  I believed him, who was too shallow to lie so convincingly. Foster was no child-molesting criminal, whatever else he was. Beldon had misled me when he’d said that Art had no corroborated alibi for Sunday when Shawn had been taken. Beldon had withheld the information that Foster had met with the girl Monday and Sunday — the teenage hooker was his Sunday alibi! — and Beldon had done so to control my visit with Art, to make me aggressive, interrogative, a better source of evidence. Some lawman, that Detective Kevin Beldon.

  Foster deflated. “Look where I am, Lorne.” He glanced past me. “Do you know who that is over there? Blond kid alone in the so-called ‘containment corner’?”

  I looked. Tousled blond hair, a well-fed momma’s-boy face, in general appearance a clean cut above his fellow inmates. I said, “Charlie’s Canadian cousin, Norman Manson?”

  “A riot as usual, Thorpe. But not here. Nothing’s funny here…including riot jokes. You’re not far off the truth, though — the Market Slasher, that’s who. Did you even know you lived close to a facility that deals with his likes?”

  The boy-man in the lightly guarded “containment corner” was transformed. I turned my back on him, or it, for part of the transformation was his becoming nonhuman. “Who visits him? They let him sit out in the open like that, with these young women all around?”

  “They have no choice, it’s the law. He already has more people advocating for his rights since he’s been caught than wanted him dead before, lawyers on the make, media types, sick women. He’s our star attraction. But what do I care? I’ve got troubles enough of my own.”

  “When are they going to let you out of here, Art? How are you holding up?”

  “They? Who are they? My fucking lawyer’s been great on two costly divorces, but when it comes to finding me a good criminal lawyer, he’s tit-fucking useless! CHEO’s fucking team will have nothing to do with me! How am I holding up? I’m not holding up, that’s how! I’m cracking up!”

  He again dropped his head and pinched his forehead in his right hand. I’d never heard Foster swear so much. And I remembered: once upon a time we’d been friends, Art and I, young doctors starting out, building CHEO Oncology and Respiration together.

  He spoke into his lap: “If it weren’t for Bob …”

  I could have been touched by a Taser. “Bob Browne? He’s been here?”

  “He’s the only friend who visits me, right from yesterday morning.”

  “I really am sorry for not having come earlier, Art. But about Bob, will you tell me the contact you use for him, or an address would be even better.”

  “And every time after me, he visits with the Slasher there. Quite the man, that Bob Browne.”

  “What? What’s their connection?”

  Foster appeared to relax. “I asked Bob that very question. He said a lady friend had reminded him that it was his duty as a fellow human being to visit the sick and imprisoned, and he may as well since he’s here visiting me anyway.”

  My scalp felt on fire. “What lady friend? What do Bob and the Slasher talk about? Do you have an address for Bob? Think, Art. Or tell me your contact for him? This is of extreme importance.”

  Foster frowned in the Slasher’s direction. “Believe it or not, they talk about boxing mostly. There’s a long lineup of weirdos wanting to visit with the Slasher, but so far only Bob and his lady friend have been permitted, also since yesterday. Supposedly she produced proof that she’s the Slasher’s American cousin, and she convinced the authorities that Bob was a relative too. You just missed her, by the way. But some cousin, some friend, some lady, one who dresses like a slut and talks like some Honey Booboo. Her visits always rile the Slasher, then Bob has to settle him. I don’t like the look of any of it, but Bob won’t tell me more. And I know what you’re thinking, me slagging a slut.” He hung a sheepish smirk.

  “Art.” I got his attention. “If you’ve overheard anything, anything at all, you have to tell me exactly what they said.”

  “Like I said, they’re both big fight fans. At the first visitation this morning, a guard had to break up their argument over some Lennox guy’s place in heavyweight history. It was quite the show. Can you believe —”

  “Art, listen carefully, this is of life-and-death importance. Detective Beldon believes that Bob Browne may be the one who set you up, me too. And now Browne’s chumming with the Market Slasher, who was conveniently arrested the same night as you? And who is this American cousin? Just who the hell’s in charge here! Or, wait, forget all that. You must give me your contact for Bob Browne, now.”

  Foster grew irritated. “That’s all Beldon cared about, contacting Bob, but I was having none of it.”

  I fought to control my eagerness and realized I should have taken another Valium. “Art, the next time Bob visits, you tell the guards to get on the phone right away …”

  Foster had been frowning with increasing annoyance but suddenly beamed past me: “Say but his name and he shall appear!”

  I was turning when Foster’s hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. “You’d better be careful, Thorpe, Bob’s no friend of yours anymore, that’s for sure, not since you cheated him and spread all those insults. I’ve never heard Bob say an unkind word about anybody, but he hates your guts. Why are you spreading lies?”

  “Art, I’ve said nothing, I’ve done nothing. It’s complicated. He mistakenly blames me for not being paid for his work cleaning up Troutstream’s playgrounds. He threatened me. He may even be in cahoots with these guys, the Lewis brothers, to frame both of us. And what about this new connection with the Slasher? Browne must be schizoid or something. Or somebody else is lying to him about me. Who’s this American cousin? Trust me, Art, please, for old time’s sake.”

  He was still gazing past me and speaking sotto voce through his grin: “Bob schizoid? I do not think so, my friend. The man’s a magician of the soul.”

  I swung round — and came face-to-face with Bob (as best we could). He didn’t even look up at me and didn’t so much smile at Foster as irradiate him. Instantly my suspicions were scattering, just like that.

  “Art, you’re looking better today!”

  “Thanks, Bob. I think I’m feeling a bit better already. Sit down, please.”

  “Since you already have a visitor, I think I’ll talk first with Michael. I’ll be back.” He turned away talking: “One good thing about being short, the media don’t even see you.”

  “Bob?” I said. He looked at me, radiating absolute zero. “Are you involved with the Lewis brothers in a plot against me?”

  “Are you out of your fucking mind, Thorpe?” Foster said. “Bob, I’m sorry about this.”

  I held Bob’s eyes. “I have been trying for a week to get the Troutstream Community Association to pay you what’s owed. I swear on the heads of my children.”

  His face looked calm enough and when he spoke it was evenly, but I felt him vibrating: “That is a mighty oath for the great white doctor. But why would Bwana Thorpe fight to have a pygmy pederast paid for his, uh, vastly substandard work?”


  I knew then that Bob Browne was not my enemy. I don’t know how I knew, as I am the least superstitious person I know. I just knew, I felt it, in my heart, like I’d known one evening that I would love Veronica forever.

  “Bob, I can’t believe someone convinced you I said anything like that. Do you cut your friends so easily? Who told you that?”

  He was moving off: “A little fucking bird,” and flapping his arms.

  “Bob, listen to me, please, for one minute, that’s all I ask.” He stopped. “Whoever told you those lies — and they are lies — is a danger to us all, probably mentally ill. It was the Lewis brothers, wasn’t it?”

  “Thorpe, what the fuck are you —”

  “Shut up, Art. And, Bob, I will take my strongest oath again if it will convince you that I have never said anything against you. I swear by my family. I think you do know what my family means to me.”

  I waited and saw him relent a touch. I was aware of my breathing and didn’t care that we were being watched with interest by those nearby. Now or never, go for it.

  “I thought we were friends, Bob. I don’t make friends easily, never have. And I’m not a very good friend when I do. Ask Art here. I should have visited him right away yesterday, I’m sorry to say. I was afraid of the mess of it all, coward that I am. And whatever you decide, Bob, I’m still your friend. I’m an asshole in more ways than even you could imagine, but I would never betray you. You said it was a shame about my father and me. You shouldn’t just walk away now because it’s become difficult for you. That’s what he did, that’s what I did with him, what I’ve always done, and I’ve always been wrong. I’ve always been a coward. But I never thought you were, that’s what I first liked about you — your courage, your courage in your convictions, your belief in your own experiences, your true heart. Some very sick person is manipulating both of us, all of us. It’s those Lewises, isn’t it?”