by Brad Kelln
"Don't be stupid," he said out loud and reached for his phone. "It's probably just the unit." He put the phone to his ear. "Hello."
A male voice spoke, "Oh, I'm sorry, I must have the wrong number." Click.
Dr. Claric pulled the phone away and stared at the receiver. Now they know, he thought. Fuck. They know who I am.
***
No vans on the street today, Dr. Claric thought as he pulled into his driveway after leaving work a bit early. That's a relief. Maybe they decided not to zap me after all. He laughed.
He turned the ignition off and reached into the back seat for his leather briefcase.
As he walked to the steps he flipped through keys to find the one for the house. He came to a stop at the door and found the right key. When he slid the key into the deadbolt, the door pushed opened easily. His heart jumped.
Just relax, he tried to tell himself. This doesn't mean anything. Maybe I just forgot to shut the door tightly this morning.
He gave the door another, stronger push and let it swing in until it came to a rest against the closet. He looked down the hallway towards the kitchen. There were no obvious signs of a break and enter. He stepped through the doorway and removed his key from the deadbolt.
"Hello," he called out and then immediately felt foolish. If there's a burglar in here, they wouldn't just answer me.
"I've got a shotgun and a big dog with rabies!" He smiled. Don't be stupid, Brian.
He set the briefcase down and hung the keys on a hook beside the door.
He stepped forward and peered into the living room. It was empty, no sign of damage or theft. He kept moving through to the kitchen. Nothing seemed disturbed, although Dr. Claric wasn't exactly sure what he should be looking for.
He took a mug out of the cupboard and poured a glass of orange pop. He only drank orange pop because he felt that it had some nutritional value, maybe a drop of orange juice. The other stuff was just sugar and caffeine.
He opened the freezer and broke three cubes of ice out of the tray, dropping them one by one into his drink. He found himself tempted to go through the house and check every room, but he refused to be paranoid. He resolved to just relax and put everything out of his mind. He didn't like feeling rattled, and he felt like he'd made an ass out of himself at Catherine's rounds this morning. And just to add fuel to the fire of his stupidity, he'd called the damn phone number on the Web site.
Ridiculous, he thought. But what exactly did I expect? Doing stuff like that is just making it worse.
He took a sip of his drink and set it on the coffee table.
But who called the moment I hung up the phone?
Dr. Claric reached for the remote control on top of the TV but it wasn't there. He looked back at the couch. No remote. He looked back at the TV. He definitely remembered leaving the remote on top of the TV before leaving for work that morning.
He sat down on the couch and scanned the room. There! Dr. Claric went over to the far corner of the room. The remote was on the end table, under the lamp. He shook his head. How'd it get there? I don't sit anywhere near that end table when I watch TV.
Dr. Claric decided it was time to check the rest of the house.
He went down the hall to his bedroom, stepped through the doorway and flicked on the light. Everything was in order. He wandered around the room, carefully inspecting the dresser, the bedside table, the bed. He opened the closet and looked in, still not knowing what exactly he was looking for: something out of place, missing? Maybe something new, something he'd never seen before?
This is crazy. I shouldn't be doing this to myself.
Dr. Claric left his bedroom and moved across the hall to his small office. It was a converted bedroom with a computer and a filing cabinet. He occa- sionally used the computer but otherwise was rarely in this room. He turned to leave but something caught his eye.
A light was blinking on the computer monitor. He stepped closer and looked. The green light on the power button was blinking. He'd almost missed it.
What the hell? He looked at his computer tower and it was off. He looked back at the monitor. Has this light always blinked? He put a hand on top of the monitor and it was cool to the touch. Maybe I just forgot to turn it off, but I haven't been in this room in ages. Damn!
He turned off the screen and left the room, heading to the guest room. He wasn't sure he'd remember where things had been left or what was in the room anyway, but everything seemed okay.
The basement!
The basement was unfinished: just a concrete floor, wooden beams and a few windows that were dirty and let in very little light. He kept his washer and dryer in the back.
Dr. Claric peered down the steep stairs, cursing himself for not having the light switch at the top fixed. The lights in the stairwell had a switch at the top and another at the.bottom. Fixing the top switch had been on his "to do" list for months. It hadn't seemed important, until now.
The basement was dark. He took a step down and held tightly onto the railing. You're working yourself up for nothing, he tried to convince himself.
Halfway down the stairs he peered into the dark room but could only make out shadows. He thought he could see. the big garbage pail where he kept empty bottles and cans and he could clearly see his mountain bike, but that was about it.
Dr. Claric took another step and a grinding, hissing noise exploded through the basement. His foot slipped out from under him and as he slid down a few stairs, he grabbed for the railing to break his fall. He looked around wildly as he tried to identify the shrill noise, then he realized it was the furnace.
Feeling a little foolish about being so jumpy he stood and stepped confidently down to the bottom of the stairs. He felt along the wall, found the switch and turned it on. Light flooded the room and he let out a sigh of relief. He slowly scanned the basement. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.
Dr. Claric decided to be thorough and take a quick walk around. He moved across the room to the washing machine. He examined the soap, the laundry basket, the washer and dryer, but found nothing suspicious. He headed towards the boxes stacked up in the corner. What the hell?
In the corner of the room he kept a number of storage boxes stacked in neat columns. Each box was labelled: "Christmas Decorations," "Clothes,"
"Magazines." One box lay on its side with the contents spilled onto the floor. He crouched down beside it. The box looked like it had been knocked off the top of the pile and left there. He looked carefully at the clothes. There were no obvious signs of dust or dirt on them, which meant they hadn't been there long. He got up and looked at the other boxes. There was a box sitting by itself on the other side of the stacks. It was labelled "Old Notes" and con- tained assignments and miscellaneous items from his graduate student days. One of the flaps on the box was up, which was odd because Dr. Claric always folded the flaps down when he put them away. He bent to l
ift the other flaps and look inside. He didn't even remember exactly what was in this box. He couldn't remember the last time he'd looked in it.
Dr. Claric stood and put his hands on his hips. He stared at the boxes for some time, trying to put things in perspective, trying to stay calm. Nevertheless he could feel himself filling with anger, frustration and fear. Don't do this to yourself. There's got to be a reasonable explanation.
He shook his head. It was no use trying to convince himself otherwise he knew there wasn't a reasonable explanation. He knew he always locked his front door, that he had left the remote control on top of the TV. He knew he wouldn't have left the computer monitor on, and there was no way he would ever leave his storage boxes in this state.
Dr. Claric was leaning over to shut the "Notes" box when the phone rang. He paused and waited for it to ring again. It did. He ran up the stairs and reached the phone on the fourth ring, just as the answering machine cut in.
"Hello," he said breathlessly.
Click.
He couldn't take the receiver away from his ear. He kept listening to the dead air, hoping that somehow an answer would come to him and explain what was going on.
He slowly lowered the receiver back to the cradle and dropped it into place. He turned away from the phone and it rang again.
He spun back around and grabbed the receiver. "Don't fuck with me!" he screamed and slammed the phone back down.
Near hysterical, Dr. Claric ran to his front door and swung it open. He stared out onto the street, looking for the white van, but it wasn't across the street. His eyes searched frantically up and down the street when he saw a large vehicle just turning the corner. That's the van, he told himself. It has to be. He ran down his front steps and out to the street. The van was just turning the corner.
"YOU STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!" he shouted, waving his fist.
THIRTEEN
A nine year old had been sexually molested behind Mic Mac Mall in Dartmouth. The victim had been lured out of The Bay and taken across the parking lot to a nearby private park at an apartment complex. The boy could only give a partial description of the suspect, probably because he'd been scared out of his mind. The offender told the boy his whole family would be murdered if he "squealed."
Sergeant Wa was heading up the investigation. Some footwork had turned up a couple of witness accounts of a tall, bearded man near the library on the same day of the attack. Others reported a beat-up station wagon. The reports only confirmed what was suspected anyway the assault was most likely the work of a recently parolled sex offender from the Atlantic Correctional Institute in New Brunswick: Terry Messier. He'd only served eighteen months of his four-year sentence for convictions of sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching and sexual assault. Even though he'd been diagnosed as an exclusive homosexual pedophile-the most difficult type of pedophile to treat and the type most likely to re-offend he'd responded well to treatment and was considered an "acceptable risk" for community release.
Wa was seated in a small, sparsely furnished room. A single microphone sat in the centre of the metal table. A large two-way mirror was installed in one wall and a small video camera was visible in the corner near the ceiling. Across from Wa sat Terry Messier. He was a tall, awkward looking man with a thick, unkempt beard, who emitted a slight smell of body odour. The idea of this man touching children made Wa sick to his stomach.
"So Mr. Messier, can you tell me what you've been up to since your release from prison?"
"I 'ad not been doing anyting. I attend treatment and do what de docs tell me," he said in a thick French-Canadian accent.
"How's that treatment going for you?"
"Oh, it is fine. I guess dere's lots to know, eh? I want to know all dis tings."
"All what things?"
"About, 'ow you say, my cycle." He made a circular motion in the air with his finger. "So dat I am never offend anymore."
Wa knew that identifying an offense cycle was one of the fundamental components of treatment for sex offenders.
"You're pretty concerned about not offending, then."
"Oh yes, certainement"
Wa shifted in his seat, leaning forward to more closely examine Messier.
"What were you doing two days ago, Monday, at about three in the afternoon? '
"Oh I see. Why it is dat you ask?"
"Just answer the question."
"I link it is dat I do not 'ave to answer dese question."
"Got something to hide, Terry?"
"Certainly not. I am, 'ow you say, reformed."
"Don't rack with me. This isn't a joke."
"Oh, but I tink it is. In fact, I tink you are a joke. I tink you an dis whole departmon is a joke. You pick de first name dat de computer spit at you and you bring me in. I tink dis is a joke and I leave now." He stood and pushed his chair back.
"Sit the fuck down," Wa barked without even looking up at him.
Messier froze, uncertain about his next move. He was reasonably sure the police had no right to hold him, or even question him, without charging him.
"I said sit your faggot ass down," Wa grumbled in a low, even voice.
"You 'ave no right You cannot speak at me dis way."
"Sit."
"Non"
Wa looked up slowly. His head ached and he was tired. He hadn't seen his own children in almost a month. He couldn't bear the thought of a confrontation with a suspect, especially a suspect as distasteful as Terry Messier.
"You sit down or I'll-" Wa began again but stopped suddenly. The man standing across from him had suddenly changed. Wa was now looking at a thin, gaunt, pasty individual in dishevelled clothes. He had a yellowed grin and his face was disfigured, the flesh hanging slack from his face. At a glance it still could have been Terry Messier, but the man standing in front of Wa didn't have a beard.
"What the fuck?" Wa screamed and jumped to his feet with such force that his chair skidded back into the wall.
Messier looked towards the door. He didn't understand what was hap- pening but he thought he should leave. He wondered why there weren't other cops coming into the room, taking control of this situation.
"Edward Carter?" Wa screamed as the man leaned on the table and sneered at him.
Wa, you never knew, did you? It was never you. It was just me. I used you. I used all of you. It was in Qumran that I found myself.
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
The man leaned further over the table until he was speaking directly into Wa's face. You, your life, your wife and kids. Soon they will be mine. All that is tainted comes to me. More and more and more.
"You stay the rack away from them. You stay the fuck away from me!"
I think I'd like to do some kids. I should start with yours. The man paused and then added, If you haven't already fucked them.
"Shut your fuckin' mouth," Wa bar�
�ked. His whole body was shaking in fury.
"What is going on? You are crazy!" Messier said, backing towards the wall.
"You stay away from my kids!" Wa screamed and leapt across the table, tackling him around the chest. The two men dropped to the ground with Wa landing heavily on top. He felt the hard bones of a man's face meeting his right hand as his left hand tightly held his neck. Soon he felt hot fluid coat his knuckles and every blow sent droplets of blood out in all directions.
Without any warning someone tackled Wa from the side. He went sprawling out on the floor and recognized Sergeant Andrew Stevenson on top of him.
"What the fuck are you doing, Wa?"
Wa struggled against Stevenson and then lay still. He heard another voice yell, "Get an ambulance right now!"
"It's all on tape. You can't do that," Stevenson was saying, but Mitchell
Wa couldn't hear him. His head had rolled to the side and he was looking at the bloody, bearded face of Terry Messier.
There was no Edward Carter. There never was.
FOURTEEN
Max watched Catherine Mercer return from the non-contact visiting area. His eyes darted back and forth looking for staff, co-clients, probably even for demons. He wanted to talk to Catherine again. He needed to talk to her again. He understood her pain.
Catherine slowed as she saw him.
"Who were you talking to?" he hissed.
She almost smiled. Max was odd but harmless and probably the nicest person she'd met at the Maximum Security Psychiatric Centre. "Just the pastor from my church."
"You won't ever convince any of them," he whispered. "If they ever took us seriously they'd be out of work. They need mental patients in order to keep their jobs."
She nodded with reluctance. "I know, but I need to talk to someone. I just have to…" Her voice faded away.