Blink & Caution

by Tim Wynne-Jones

“Fingerprints? I’ve never been arrested. Nobody’s got no prints.”

  “They do, Brent.”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “Okay, Blink, if that’s what you want. But they are looking for you.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way! Listen. Your mom got you fingerprinted when you were in grade school.”

  The Captain is going crazy. He’s charging headlong up the ladder to the bridge. He’s heading for the wheelhouse, and he is going to turn this boat around!

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t remember? At school?” She’s making it sound as if she were there when it happened, and it’s freaking you out.

  “Operation Child Find, or something like that,” she says. “The cops take the fingerprints of kids in case they ever go missing or whatever. My parents did the same thing with me.”

  You try to think. Did your mother ever care that much, Blink? How could you forget?

  “Anyway, the cops have your prints, and they know who you are. They know what you look like.”

  The drunk turns as if he can feel your eyes on him. He’s still pissing.

  “No way.”

  “Blink, they have been to your mother’s place. I’m not making this up. They’ve got a picture of you.”

  “I don’t live there anymore.”

  “They’ve got a picture from last Christmas.”

  The drunk is smiling at you now, broken-toothed, tucking himself back in, wiping his fingers on his belly.

  “How do you know all this? Is there some cop there beside you, feeding you all this crap?” You shake your head. How could these hands clinging to this phone have the same prints as a child?

  “Blink?” she says gently. “There are no cops here. I’m in bed, for God’s sake. But the police in Toronto are keeping us informed through my father’s lawyer there. I didn’t tell you before, because you were coming here, anyway, and I didn’t want to . . . Well, I didn’t want to freak you out.”

  You laugh. “Right. Nice try!” You laugh again. It’s a crazy laugh. The drunk joins in, like you’re sharing a joke. Like you’re best friends.

  “The truth is,” she says, “you’re probably safer here than there.”

  “Oh, yeah. Good one.”

  “Seriously. No one here is in on this. You’re the only lead they’ve got, according to Dad’s lawyer, and, as far as they know, you’re in Toronto.”

  “Until you tell them.”

  “I can’t tell them!” If it’s possible to scream and whisper at the same time, Alyson just did it. You feel a jolt all the way down the telephone line. “I cannot tell anyone I’m in communication with you,” she says, more calmly and carefully, as if English is not your first language. Then there is a sob. “I thought I explained it to you. I guess you didn’t understand.”

  Your new drunken buddy starts weaving his way toward you.

  “I promise you it’s not a trap,” she says. “Is that what you’re afraid of ?” Her voice gets quiet, secretive. “Jesus, don’t you get it? There’s no way in the world I can tell the cops what I told you. If what you were saying is true and if my father is at the lodge, then telling anyone would get him in huge trouble. Think about it. Just, please — please — think about it. Think about my situation. Will you do that?”

  The drunk has stopped as if he’s forgotten something. Like maybe he pissed out his brain back there at the wall. You squint — try to read what he wrote there. It glistens but says nothing.

  Think about it, she said. That’s where you went wrong, isn’t it? Starting to think about any of this. That’s not what a thief does. A thief doesn’t put money back into a wallet. He takes it all. A thief doesn’t scroll through someone’s smartphone. He takes it to the nearest pawnshop. A thief doesn’t call a victim’s daughter. But there was a reason for this, Blink. You wanted more — you’re not even sure what. Just more. And that is exactly what’s on offer if you’re smart enough to stay in the game.

  Meanwhile, the drunk resumes his journey, staggering toward you, closer and closer.

  “Blink, I really, really need your help.”

  “Shit,” you say.

  “This is our secret,” she says.

  You take the receiver and bang it down hard on the ledge under the phone. “Shit!”

  “Ow!” she says.

  “Sorry.”

  “Are you coming?”

  “Okay.”

  You hang up and step out into the cold wetness of the tunnel. The drunk smiles again, stops, scratches his head as if maybe he knows you but can’t remember from where. You curl your fists in case he’s got any ideas about getting to know you better. Then he melts.

  Caution: Contents Corrosive.

  She can see in her mind’s eye the little warning on the Clorox bottle with a picture of a skeletal hand. She feels the acid inside her churning. If parking Merlin’s car in front of the police station is a victory, why does it hurt so much?

  She walks up Parliament, her hands stuck deep in her pockets, too wired to stop for a bus or to wait for a streetcar at King or Queen or Dundas. Her crazy blue jacket is quilted under its electric blue pelt, so her torso is warm enough, but no other part of her is on this insane night. Shivering, she arrives at Carlton and digs in her pocket for change. She has enough; the first sign that anything might go right tonight. Carlton becomes College, and sometime just before eight, she pulls the cord and steps back out into the night, to find her way up Major Street.

  The mystery house is semidetached, sand-blasted brick, with shutters on the lower windows and the porch light on. The door is bright yellow with a curtained window in it, but the step leading to it is tilted drunkenly. Caution looks behind her, afraid she might have been followed. The poison of anger that coursed through her as she abandoned the Nissan has left her weakened, paranoid. She can’t bring herself to knock on the door. She feels as if this is just the next phase of the nightmare that began a year and a half ago, has lain dormant, malingering in her bloodstream for these past seven months but is now in full force. She has this strong feeling that she will not get through this night alive, and yet something spurs her on. If she really wanted to die, all she’d have to do is go back to Merlin. And even though she feels certain she cannot escape him now, she has her part to play in this horrible game, knowing that every minute she evades him will only make his bloodlust more virulent. He is the worst of sicknesses.

  There is a knocker on the door — a lion with a ring in his teeth. She takes it in hand and announces her shivering presence.

  A light comes on in the hall. A vestibule door opens, and a shadowy figure appears. Then the front door opens, revealing a slim black woman in oval glasses with silver rims. Her hair is short. She’s wearing a purple shawl around her shoulders over what looks like Chinese pajamas.

  “Kitty,” she says, without a shade of question in her voice.

  And Kitty recognizes her immediately, though the shock makes it impossible to speak.

  “Tamika,” says the woman. “Tamika Holmes. We’ve met.”

  She ushers Caution in and dead-bolts the door behind her. “Come,” she says, and leads her down a narrow corridor past a steep and narrow stairway to a warmly lit kitchen and sitting area in the back. There are French doors leading out onto a deck, slippery with dead leaves in the light spilling from the house.

  “Have a seat,” she says, indicating a table and chairs as sunshine yellow as the front door. “Can I get you something to eat? You must be starved.” Caution falls into the chair pulled out from the table for her. “I’ve got some lasagna I can nuke. Vegetarian.”

  Caution nods, swallows. “You were at the funeral,” she says.

  “I figured you’d remember,” says Tamika, busying herself in the little kitchen. She throws Caution a smile over her shoulder. “Not too many black folk up there in Wahnapitae, far as I could tell.”

  There were three friends of Spence’s from school: this woman and two
guys. Her mother and father had been so touched that they’d driven all the way up — six hours or so. Jake and James and Tamika: her brother’s closest university friends.

  Tamika sets the timer on the microwave and then makes a little startled gesture as she recalls something.

  “Your cousin wants you to phone as soon as you get in,” she says. She takes a cordless phone from its stand on the counter and, consulting a little ringed notebook beside the phone, punches in Wayne-Ray’s number.

  “The eagle has landed,” says Tamika, and then hands the phone to Caution.

  “Where’ve you been?” he says. “I was worried shitless.” Caution swallows, raises her hand to her throat, can hardly speak. “Kitty?” he says. “What’s going on?” Tamika comes to her aid with a glass of water. She drinks, while her cousin swears at her, the concern brimming in his voice. Why does she do this? she wonders. She seems programmed to bring hurt to those she loves most.

  “I had some business I had to — Oh, forget it. I’m here now. I’m sorry.”

  He growls. A big old bear. “I was afraid he’d gotten you,” he says. Then he launches into telling her what happened: Merlin out on the street, not knowing where to go, standing there with his cell phone in his hand, as if maybe there are others — as if maybe they have the house surrounded. Then, after a few minutes, he moved off up to Sunnyside.

  “I can’t figure it out,” says Wayne-Ray. “How they could get this close and not know where you were?”

  The word “they” fills Caution with new dread, as if Merlin has morphed into an army.

  “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I ended up cutting through a bunch of backyards and ended up on . . . I don’t know. I got kind of turned around. Is Sunnyside the next street over?”

  “Yeah,” says Wayne-Ray. “The first block west of Roncesvalles. So you were there. Weird.” But before she can say anything else, he goes on. “Phone before you come home, okay?”

  She nods at the receiver and then remembers to say something. “Okay,” she squeaks. “Thanks.”

  Home, he said, as if there were such a place.

  “I just don’t want you to walk into some trap,” he says. “Jesus, Kitty.” She can hear the love in his voice and the exasperation. She resists apologizing again. If she starts apologizing, she might never stop.

  She hangs up, and the timer goes off on the microwave. Next thing she knows, Tamika is exchanging the receiver for a thick golden-brown ceramic plate loaded with steaming lasagna.

  Caution wants to cry. The goodness of people, the badness of people. She feels like some plaything of the angels: the kind ones and the fallen.

  “Eat up, sugar,” says Tamika, taking a seat across from her. “You look like you could do with some comfort.”

  Tamika’s eyes are as warm as fondue chocolate. There is a smile on her full lips, but it is tinged with sadness. This is the way Drigo looked at her yesterday morning, but there was calculation in his sad eyes.

  Tamika gestures at the plate of food, and Caution manages a shaking forkful of lasagna.

  Tamika leans back in her chair, her arms crossed on her chest. Her eyes ask an easy question.

  “It’s great,” says Caution when her mouth is no longer full. And yet the word “great” doesn’t seem adequate. “Thanks,” she says. Then she takes a sip of water and dives back into the lasagna, somehow knowing that anything this good will not last. Cannot last.

  “I liked meeting your family,” says Tamika. “Your mother and her sisters, Wayne-Ray’s mom . . .”

  “Lanie,” says Caution.

  “Right. And who was the other one?”

  “Dorcas. She’s the youngest.”

  “Right, Dorcas, who married a Wayne, which is why Wayne-Ray is Wayne-Ray, is that it?”

  Caution nods. “And Dorcas’s husband is Wayne-Mac.”

  “That’s it. They were all so kind. Good people.”

  Caution drops her head. Here it comes, she thinks: the recrimination. How could you hurt such good people? How could you destroy this good family?

  She can feel Tamika’s eyes on her. She’s in the principal’s office, waiting on judgment. But the difference — well, there are so many differences — but the big difference is that she has no idea why she is here. She puts her fork down, wipes her lips with a napkin.

  “Why am I here?” she asks.

  Tamika’s face screws up tight, as if the easy part of the exam is over and now she’s come to the essay questions.

  “This is hard,” says Tamika. “Wayne-Ray has kind of put me on the spot.”

  “If you don’t want —”

  “No,” says Tamika, holding up her hand as if to stop Caution from speaking and stop her from fleeing, which is what Caution wants to do, despite the fullness in her belly and the warmth of this cozy kitchen.

  “I don’t mind,” says Tamika. “I probably should have done this a long time ago, but I had my reasons for not doing it — good reasons, I thought. My intentions were good, Kitty. And I am sorry if I was wrong about that. It was hard to know what to do.”

  Caution is filling up with apprehension. There is to be some new twist to her nightmare — some new chasm to fall into. She can sense it and can do nothing to stop herself from falling.

  Tamika folds her hands together on the table. She is wearing many rings, many bracelets.

  “Spencer and I were more than friends,” she says. She waits for a reaction. Caution says nothing but nods encouragingly, though there is a fear rising slowly in her that she has no power to resist.

  “Your brother was engaged,” says Tamika.

  “To Melody Tourangeau,” says Caution.

  “To Melody, yes. His high-school sweetheart. The summer after he finished his freshman year in the Big Bad City, he gave Melody a ring, knowing that despite everything, he would still be the same sweet country boy when he finished his degree.” She looks down at the many rings on her own fingers. “That’s the way he put it,” she says. “I certainly never meant to steal him away from Melody.”

  Caution swallows hard, drinks some water. This is spiraling away from her. This beautiful woman is seeking pardon from me, she thinks, and seems to have forgotten why they are speaking of Spence in the past tense.

  “I was one of his tutorial leaders,” Tamika says. “I was recovering from . . . well, it’s not important now . . . but Spence was there, this kind and loving young man — six years younger than me but so wise. You know?”

  Caution’s neck is too constricted to nod. Her throat is burning. There is a strong hand wrapping pitiless fingers around her heart.

  “He was going to tell you — tell your family — about us when you came down for graduation, but then when your mom got sick and you couldn’t make it, he knew he’d have to come home. And, of course, he’d have to tell Melody.”

  Now Caution nods. “They were fighting,” she says.

  Tamika nods sadly. “I felt so guilty. He, Spencer . . . he was such a gentleman, in the truest sense of that word. I knew how hard it was for him. I told him to take as long as he needed — as long as Melody needed.”

  The hand around Caution’s heart starts to squeeze.

  Tamika is frowning now at a memory. She is staring away, holding herself tightly. “When I met her at the funeral — Melody, I mean — I could tell that she knew nothing about Spencer and me. He hadn’t told her. I was a friend of Spence’s from school — that was all she knew. And when I saw how nice she was, how deep her grief was, how well loved she was by your family, there was no way I was going to say anything to upset her. It made no sense anymore. It would only be hurtful. I had nothing to prove.”

  She stops and rubs her eyes. “Sorry,” she says. “It’s . . .”

  Caution sits silently, across a table in another universe. Was this what Wayne-Ray wanted for her? To know that beyond killing her parent’s beloved son, Wayne-Ray’s best friend, and her own brother, she had also robbed this stranger of the love of her life? Because Caut
ion can see in Tamika’s eyes what Spence had meant to her. How many murders have I committed? she thinks.

  Tamika takes a deep breath, wipes her face with her hands, and opens her eyes wide. They are glazed now with tears that do not fall, and they shine like jewels. “Okay.” she says. “Enough already. I’m not sure how much time we have. I feel as if there is a ticking clock out there. Some trouble. Wayne-Ray didn’t explain. So I had better get on with it, right?”

  And it is then that it happens. The merest mention that there was more to get on with was enough to make Caution see what she had so far failed to register. The most commonplace of things. Something standing by the sink on the counter. She can see it now from where she sits. Had been able to see it all along. A cup. A pink sippy cup. And the sight of it sparks a memory of something she saw in the vestibule not half an hour earlier, though it had not registered to her at the time: a folded-up stroller. And the combination of these two images — one right before her, the other recalled — suddenly explodes in her head, and she sees a hundred things she hadn’t seen or perhaps hadn’t wanted to see: the photos on the fridge, the bib slung over the chair to her right, a stuffed monkey on the floor.

  The hand inside her chest crushes her heart, stops her breath. She clutches the edge of the table, afraid she is going to faint.

  “Are you all right?” says Tamika.

  And then the phone rings.

  “I think I know what’s going on,” says Wayne-Ray.

  Caution grips the receiver tightly. She has no idea what he’s talking about.

  “This Merlin guy,” he says. “I think he’s tracking you somehow.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s got a bug on you.”

  The bad dream is now swirling out of sense and out of mind, and Caution feels as if she’s being sucked into the vortex of it. “I don’t understand.”

  “He wasn’t talking to someone on his cell,” says Wayne-Ray urgently. “He was reading coordinates or something. Like he’s got Internet or whatever.”

  “It’s an iPhone,” says Caution.

  “There you go! Okay, listen, Cuz. If I’m right, then there’s some kind of transmitter on you.”