Missing Chldren

by Gerald Lynch

  Uh-huh uh-huh, Jake nodded.

  Kevin and I stood in no little awe, after our shameful failure to wrestle information from him. We watched and listened as Veronica drew forth the whole story. I translated in a whisper for Kevin.

  Shawn had secretly been telling Jake that a nice woman was going to be taking her and her special friends to see Wy. Jake, too, Shawn’s most special friend. This nice woman lived in a big magical bus that was just for kids. She had lots of candy and toys and pets. But if any kid told his parents, all the other kids would go to live with Wy forever and ever and he would be left behind.

  Jake made a big baby face, just a nanosecond from loud crying: “I’m telling Mom Shawn made fun of me now too. They wented forever without me…no friends… They had a whole bus of Oreos.” He blubbered and ripped into a crying jag like a blaring train. Veronica hugged him and he settled again, whimpering only a few times, “Go see Wy, go see Wy …”

  Kevin said, “Veronica, your husband and I are going back to your place. What’s happened this morning could not have been anticipated and prevented. So I’m not going to keep apologizing. You have to admit, Shawn kept it from her mom and dad, as did the other Troutstream kids from their parents. I’m not making excuses. I just want us to keep this honest. I’m not going to promise you again that Shawn and the kids are safe. They’re not. But we have called in the RCMP’s Missing Persons Service and we’ll soon have an OPP chopper in the sky, not to mention a few dozen police already out in cruisers. We’re covered all the way from the St. Lawrence River to Algonquin Park. We’ve ordered a stop to all school bus movement. There is no way on earth one big yellow school bus full of kids can go unnoticed much longer. That I can promise you.”

  I heard Veronica exhale forcefully through her nose, a bad sign. “Even if it has so far? What has she done to them already? What will she do if trapped?”

  “Everybody’s been told to go very easy with Alice Pepper-Pottersfield. Right now —”

  “I don’t give a fuck about Alice!” She still hadn’t turned from Jake and her vehemence evoked a whimpered Go see Wy like an aftershock.

  Kevin compressed his lips. “I’m going next door with Lorne, where I will be in constant communication with the police. But you’re right, Veronica. The fact that she’s not been spotted and apprehended already is troubling. And that’s why I need you to stay here and keep talking with Jake. Learn whatever else you can. But I need to talk privately with Lorne. Right now, that is our best hope.”

  “What? Me? No way, I’m not leaving here.”

  I was ignored. Kevin stepped forward and lightly placed his hand on Veronica’s shoulder. “Keep the faith, Veronica. You’re doing marvellously and holding up bravely. If you learn anything else from Jake, anything, come right over and tell me.”

  She said evenly, “They have obviously not gone to see…you-know-whom. Where have they gone? Not far, since they’ve not been spotted by all your mighty forces.”

  Kevin popped his eyebrows. “That’s true …”

  She sat back from Jake, turned and spoke across the ugly coffee table to the wall. “Lorne?”

  “Yes?”

  “We’ve gotta go,” Kevin said, pushing me on the upper arm, “like right now.”

  “Lorne, I’m sorry about the past few days. I don’t know what got into me, delayed stress or something, like you said. I’m all right here, here is where I’m needed, for now. Go with Detective Beldon, find Shawn.”

  “Please don’t you apologize, dear —”

  “No time now for making up, kids. I can’t impress on you strongly enough that we move quickly, now.”

  I’d been pushed into the hallway and was struggling to look back. She was standing. I said, “It was all my fault, Veronica. Whatever you’ve done, you were driven to it by me!”

  “Jesus Christ! Move!”

  He had shoved me out of sight, and I called, “Is Owen okay?” I had to open the aluminum door or be crammed against it. I glanced back and caught sight of Veronica heading down the hallway to the kitchen.

  “Owen’s safe at school!”

  Kevin kept pushing me ahead to my house and right back into the family room, where with one last shove he landed me on the small couch. What surprising strength the lanky man had.

  “Sorry to be so pushy, Lorne. You understand.”

  “No, I don’t!”

  He wasn’t listening. He stood flipping his lower lip with forefinger, like a distracted kid. He was looking down at me absently.

  I said, “Veronica’s right, how could no one have spotted a big yellow school bus packed with wild kids?”

  He stared at me in a piercing kind of distraction; in fact, I didn’t think he was aware of me at all. He closed his eyes and dropped his chin on his chest, breathed deeply for too long. When he finally looked at me again, his pupils were slightly dilated.

  “Put on your deerstalker cap, Dr. Sherlock. After the first twenty minutes, the police search had eliminated all possible exits. Like the real Sherlock says, we now have to consider the improbable, the impossible.”

  “I’m sorry I —”

  “The bus is still in Troutstream.”

  “That really is impossible, Kevin. Unless Bob Browne taught Alice to make a whole busload of kids invisible. Wait. I’m assuming the police have checked the community centre, where Bob had been hiding his backhoe?”

  His eyes widened. He called on his cell: “Have we checked the Troutstream Community Centre?” He was staring blankly at me as he waited for the answer. “Remember, call this number first as soon as you hear anything.”

  He went to the patio door and stood staring out, absently holding onto a leaf of the dying fig tree. “They had checked right after talking with Carswell. But that was smart thinking, Lorne. I am right to rely on you. Our talking together just now made you think of the community centre. That’s how I need your help.”

  I had nothing to say to that. He commenced rubbing a fig leaf between thumb and two fingers, like a tailor checking texture for a new suit.

  “Tell me again, what was the key to your solving the arsenic-poisoning case at CHEO? Some of the boys downtown were mightily impressed at how you did that.”

  “What?…I… Well, like I told you, I sat down with the father and made him tell me his story over and over, till I picked up the clue about burning the treated wood. I put one and one together. I don’t see how that helps here. I mean, we don’t have Shawn or Bob Browne or even the Market Slasher to interview. Veronica seems to have got all Jake has to tell us. Ditto you with Art Foster. There’s still Debbie, I guess.”

  “Forget Debbie!” he commanded, still facing the patio door.

  “Frank Baum —”

  “There’s you, for Christ’s sake!” He turned and faced me. “We’ve got a busload of missing children and I think you’re the only way to them before real harm is done!”

  “Me? I don’t know where she’s taken them!”

  He came over and plopped down beside me on the couch. His voice went quiet:

  “It’s not where she’s gone, Lorne. I know you don’t know that. Or I’m hoping you just don’t know you know. It’s where she would go. You know Alice better than you think.”

  My look made him continue. “Stay with me on this, big guy. I’m already impressed by what a hard-ass you are, Lorne, so you can stop proving that to me. But Shawn’s safety depends on what we’re going to do here in the next ten minutes. Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then I want you to stop thinking of Alice as being out there.” He tapped my temple with his finger: “She’s in here. That’s what I need you for, to get out what’s in there. You’re the only person in the world right now who can tell me what we need to know.”

  I pulled back and would have stood, and maybe even run back to Veronica, but he grabbed my arm.r />
  “You’re talking crazy!” I tried to shake him off. “Let go of me and get the fuck out there and find my daughter!” It was like being at the Museum of Science and Technology all over again. Was I caught forever in some mad loop?

  He let go. I stood, but instantly wavered. Feeling a touch of vertigo I remembered Shawn kneeling happily by the dog, saw her coming towards me hopefully with the Styrofoam cup swinging upside down like a bell, then that cup snowballing through the darkly yellow parking lot, clean and tasteless, Kevin’s coming for it with outstretched hand. I sat back down, because I had nowhere else to go for help.

  “It’s just that, well, you’re not making sense to me, Kevin, you’re —”

  “Okay, listen. You saw how Veronica was with Jake over there? You saw how she got the information out of him? She held his hand and petted it. Did that make sense?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Well, we, you and I, are going to have to do something like that. It’s just remembering, like you did with the father in the arsenic-poisoning case. People could remember a helluva lot more than they ever thought they could, most of it bad, which is probably why we don’t.”

  “I just don’t know what you’re talking about, Kevin, honestly.”

  “Leave that to me, trust me, remember.”

  I could only pinch my mouth and stare straight ahead. I would do whatever he thought needed to be done. Why couldn’t I convey that?

  “Look, Lorne, you don’t have to be Wy or Bob Browne or full of shit like Foster to accept that we still know very little about how the mind works, how we work, that some things may be possible we’d thought impossible. I mean, look what animals can do — communicate over great distance without benefit of satellites, find their way home across whole countries, know somehow when their owner leaves work, migrate —”

  “Okay, okay, already.”

  “You agree then?”

  “Not entirely. I was going to say that you do have to be Art Foster to have such…faith. I’m not prepared to abandon rational thinking, especially in this crisis.” I managed a smirk: “But I’m still completely at your disposal, Kevin. My daughter is in the hands of a madwoman. I do trust you. I’ll do whatever you say. That’s reasonable. I’m just surprised at the turn you’ve taken.”

  He went to the kitchen and returned with a chair. He set it directly in front of me and sat. Our knees were touching. Controlling my unease, I watched as, unsmiling, he turned up his hands in front of me.

  “I want you to place your fingertips on mine.”

  “What? That really is crazy.”

  “You saw how Veronica held Jake’s hand. Well, I’m not asking you to hold my hand, Lorne, just touch fingertips. Believe me, it will help.”

  “I don’t like touching people, especially other men.”

  “You’re a surgeon, for Christ’s sake!”

  “That’s different.”

  “Lorne, I’ll bet you think a lot about touching people—Veronica, Shawn, Owen.”

  “Okay, okay, get on with it.” I set my fingertips on his as if lightly touching a keyboard. “What next?”

  “Now we talk, that’s all. Or you do. Wait.” He dropped his hand to shut off his cell.

  “Is that smart? Couldn’t there be news? Weren’t you just scolded for turning off your phone?”

  “Yes. Relax, Lorne.” He returned his fingertips to mine. “And remember this, believe it: if there’s a solution, if we’re to find Shawn, it’s in you, not out there. You’re in control, Lorne, so just relax, let it come, relive it. Start at the beginning and tell me everything you know about Alice Pepper-Pottersfield, right from the first Troutstream Committee meeting, if you like, when you walked in and Debbie Carswell introduced you and said where you worked, and Alice sent up a silent prayer of thanks to the god Fortuna for delivering a Great White Doctor into her hands.”

  “Just remember and talk?”

  “Remember everything and start talking, as detailed as you can. But don’t be afraid to guess if you have to, that’s important.”

  “My daughter’s life might depend on guesswork?”

  “Much does, you’d be surprised, or I’d bet you really know so from your own work. Or call it imagination, if that helps. But Shawn’s life may now depend on your memory and imagination. You have to bring Alice before us here in this room if we’re to get Shawn back. Now shut up and talk.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “Good. Go.”

  So I started talking, worried only for the first little while that we were wasting time. Then I couldn’t stop. Kevin asked questions, made me backtrack, started me over from the beginning, kept my fingers dancing lightly on his like he was playing me. All the while he kept his eyes on mine. I felt perfectly normal, wholly conscious…when suddenly his head seemed to get bigger, then grew to fill my field of vision, the whole family room, and I had no sense of time passing…

  He suddenly bounced all eight of my fingers at once and startled me out of a surprisingly pleasant reverie.

  “Stop. Go back to where you said that was the only time Alice ever stood up to Debbie.”

  I was instantly dead tired and dying to flop over sideways and sleep; my own head was a bag of toxic playground topsoil, my lids were drooping. “Yes…?”

  “Yes, back there again, tell me again about Alice’s booth at the children’s history fair. Close your eyes if you like, Lorne, and relax, rest, dream it, that’s all it is, a pleasant dream you control, no call for concern. There, see it again, just as you remember it… Alice is touching the granny reading glasses on their red-beaded necklace, it’s the nineteenth century and Blackburn Dodgson has just built a sawmill on the river. See it again, Lorne, just as you saw it. It’s only a dream, you’re in complete control.”

  I felt my arms levitate, as if by some gentle anti-gravity off his fingertips. I was back in the community centre at the children’s history fair, as real as any reality. Children chimed, “Tell us the story again, please, Miss Pepper-Pottersfield.” I was one of them for a while and it was wonderful. But someone had to do it and I was the only adult present who could.

  So I gave the talk on local history and only for a short spell did I know I was doing so in Alice’s voice. Then I wasn’t watching myself doing Alice, I was Alice, and I was completely there, then, that…earlier time far better than this time, of family fun connected to the patient rhythms of nature, a half-tamed forest world, a leisurely river, golden Troutstream, and a big yellow-and-black paddlewheel steamer, the Troutstream Belle, in no hurry to depart, families picnicking on the grassy slopes of Dodgson’s Landing, children rolling hoops with a stick, shooting marbles, playing tag, red rover red rover come over, blind man’s bluff, hide-and-seek, children with nothing to do but be children, ignored and cherished just for being children — there’s the steamer’s whistle! All aboard! For a safe place, a place of safety, a —

  Back in the classroom my knuckles were smacked with the pointer stick and Kevin boomed from the sky, “Wake up, Lorne! Let’s go! Move it!”

  I awoke to nightmare. He is standing and I am still sitting, in the deepest ignorant shame again. I start trembling and can’t stop, I’m afraid of everything. Then somebody’s crying like a big baby, just blubbering and gushing. “Bob? Where are you, love?” I’m so tired, dead tired, of this, the whole ugly show, and I just want it to stop, I want to go back there, to that safe place. I closed my eyes again…

  “They always make me touch their big things, and pull them. Robbie says he has to put it in his mouth too sometimes. Ee-yoo! And they won’t stop touching me…there… That’s where I go from, silly… No!… Please, Mister, no. Please! I’m gonna be sick! Stop! Stop! Mom-mee! Mom-mee! —”

  My head’s on fire when I opened my eyes again and was looking along Kevin’s forearm. He had a fistful of my hair and my head twisted up sideways. I smelled
vomit.

  “Aaaaaa …” That’s what I said, and again: “Aaaaaa …”

  He let go and said, “I’m very sorry about that, Lorne. But I had to shock you. You all right? Here, wipe your chin.”

  “No,” I sulked. Then, cleaned up some, I set the handkerchief aside and touched my tender scalp.

  “Ouch. You did the right thing, Kevin, I’m myself. I did the same to Bob Browne’s flaming rug when he was dying. Those poor kids. Where the hell did all that come from?”

  “Those tapes we watched, but mainly from you. Hurry, let’s go.”

  “Go? Where?”

  “The school bus is hidden in the woods down by the old steamer landing only minutes from here.”

  “You figured that from what I said?”

  “You made me see it almost as clearly as you did yourself, as Alice saw it and felt it. I just put one and one together, Doctor.”

  “Shouldn’t you call for, uh, backup or something?”

  “I will, but we’re closest. Alice sees it as a safe place, so I’m hoping she’s not out to hurt anybody, but no time to lose.”

  “You’re hoping? What’s safe mean to Alice Pepper-Pottersfield? When are children ever safe? When they’re dead, that’s when!”

  But he was out the side door, with me hurrying after. “Wait,” I called, “what about Veronica? Maybe she should come with us for the children’s sake.”

  He started the car, I hurried to get in. As we were shooting backwards he said, “Veronica’s done her part, Lorne. Thanks to Veronica, we know what Alice used to lure the kids, the promise of Wy. And it was Veronica made me first realize the bus had not left Troutstream. Right now she’s keeping the Kilborns from total disaster. I made her a promise and we’re going to keep it right now. What’s the best way down to the river?”

  “River? There’s no river. But north on Izaak Walton, just before St. Joseph’s, cut left at the sign for the Troutstream Toboggan Hill. We’ll have to walk from there. Are you sure about this, Kevin?” He didn’t answer. I closed my eyes: “Of course, that’s where they are.”