by LR Wright
Enid, amazed by her wickedness, leaned toward Bernie again and said, her lips inches from Bernie’s ear, “I found it in my lodger’s underwear drawer,” and then she had to grab Bernie’s arm to prevent her from springing to her feet.
The second after the guitar came down on the cop’s head, Eliot had been at the front door, turning the catch, tugging it open. He heard Alvin yell, “Yes! Go!” and he felt like he was doing it for both of them when he sprinted away from the house, away from the sea, up the track, and then off into the bush.
Eliot ran until he couldn’t run another step. Then he sank to his knees. There was a rich, powerful scent in the air that he knew was fallen leaves, forest stuff rotting, feeding the soil. He stayed on his knees for a long time, panting, his hands leaning heavily on his thighs, until the roaring in his ears stopped and his breath was coming more slowly. He was warm, because he’d been running, but the fallen leaves beneath his knees were soggy from the rain, and he knew he was going to be very cold any minute now; he only had a T-shirt and jeans on.
Eliot decided almost in spite of himself to return to the house: he couldn’t think what else to do. He wouldn’t stay there—he wasn’t that stupid—but he had to get stuff, clothes, and food. He knew the cop might have called another cop to come and take Alvin away while the first one stayed there in case Eliot showed up again. But he decided that even if they thought he might go back, they wouldn’t expect him to do it this soon. They’d figure he’d keep on running for a while, maybe break in to some house and steal what he needed. So the quicker he returned, he told himself, the better.
He got up and made his way back along the trail he’d left through the forest—which was another reason for going back, he thought. When they came after him, they’d follow his trail and it would just end there, all of a sudden, there in the middle of the woods.
When he got to the house he skirted it, cautiously, slipping from tree to tree. The cop car was gone, which was a good sign. The front door was closed. Eliot went around to the back, where he thought there was less chance he’d be seen, and went inside.
His guitar lay smashed on the floor. The crayons and coloring book were on the floor, too—scattered there when Alvin upset the TV tray in his haste to flee upstairs. The cop had probably heard that, Eliot thought.
He couldn’t believe how little time had passed since he looked out the window and saw that cop car.
Despite the bright sun that had suddenly started to shine, Eliot was afraid. He was afraid of the house, but even more, he was afraid of the beach that was so near. Terrified that if he were to go back down there again and stand in the clearing and look down, this time it wouldn’t be clean; this time there’d be blood there, rivers of it…
He stumbled blindly upstairs, his heart hammering, and shoved his door open—couldn’t let himself think about it couldn’t let himself think —pulled off his clothes, shivering now, and put on dry socks, dry jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt over it.
Then he made himself go into his parents’ room, because he’d remembered that sometimes his dad left money—change from his pockets—on the lopsided night table that was on his side of the bed. And yeah, there was—Eliot scooped it up, not bothering to count it: a handful of change and some bills, folded; the one he could see was a twenty, good.
He rushed downstairs, almost tripping in his hurry, and pulled on his denim jacket and the wool gloves that were Alvin’s. Then he grabbed Alvin’s knapsack and hastily filled it with cans and boxes from the kitchen cupboard and pop cans from the fridge. He remembered to take a can opener, too, and a spoon.
Eliot, standing in the doorway, ready to leave, looked around him and felt himself to be a foreigner, somebody dropped someplace where nobody knew him and he couldn’t speak the language.
What am I doing? he thought. And there was no answer to that.
So Eliot picked up the rolled-up sleeping bag and grabbed the overloaded knapsack and left.
Chapter 24
“IT WOULD BE GOOD if I could stay here,” said Alvin, swinging his legs. He was hanging on to the seat of his chair, and his eyes were scrawling expansive messages all over the walls and ceiling of the interrogation room.
“Why?” said Alberg, and Alvin shrugged.
“What’s gonna happen to Eliot?” the boy asked suddenly. “If you catch him. You might not catch him. But if you do.”
“I don’t know, Alvin. That depends on a bunch of things.”
“Like what?”
“Like if he turns himself in. Things would be better for him if he did that.”
Alvin’s black hair flopped across his forehead as he bounced in his chair. “So what’s gonna happen to me?”
“If the woman from Social Services gets here in time, she’ll take you back to Vancouver. Otherwise she’ll find you a foster home for the night, and take you back in the morning.”
“I hate foster homes.”
“How come you run away from your own home, then?”
“Oh, well,” said Alvin vaguely, kicking the table leg. “I’m pretty hungry, by the way.”
“We can do something about that,” said Alberg, standing up. “Come on.” He took Alvin by the hand. “We’ll be at Earl’s,” he told Henry Loewen, “if anybody asks.”
He noticed, as he unlocked his car and got Alvin belted into the passenger seat, that Jack Coutts’s truck was nowhere to be seen, and he allowed himself a cautious surge of hope.
When Enid got home from the funeral she went straight upstairs to change into a long robe and a pair of matching slippers. It wasn’t a bathrobe, it was a comfortable but elegant garment to wear in the house instead of a sweatsuit. She believed that she looked trim in her sweatsuits, but today she wished to feel not trim, but elegant.
She cleaned her teeth, washed her face, and brushed her soft gray curls. It was almost dinnertime, but she wasn’t hungry, even though she hadn’t been able to enjoy any of the refreshments after the funeral. Bernie hadn’t let her. Bernie had hauled her out of there right after the service, then climbed into the car after her—well, Enid had to admit that she’d brought this behavior on herself. If she’d only kept her mouth shut about the damned gun…
“What is he doing with a gun?” Bernie had said, almost shouting it, as soon as they were both in Enid’s car.
Enid had immediately turned on the motor and started driving, in a hurry to get Bernie home. “I don’t know what he’s doing with it for heaven’s sake. Maybe it’s some kind of souvenir.”
“Souvenir of what?”
“I told you,” Enid said, “I don’t know—maybe he was in a war somewhere. God knows there’ve been enough of them.”
“I have a bad feeling about this, Enid, a very bad feeling, a very very bad feeling.”
“Oh, Bernie. I just told you about it to be mischievous. I’m not the slightest bit alarmed. He probably does target practicing,” she added, “as a hobby.”
Bernie was staring hard at the side of her face. “You know your trouble, Enid, every bit as well as I do, and that’s men, where men are concerned you’ve got no sense whatsoever, no good judgment whatsoever.”
Enid stopped the car in front of Bernie’s house. “Well, what do you suggest I do?” she said, exasperated.
“Give the man his notice!” said Bernie, raising her voice again.
Enid turned to look at her. “I will consider it,” she said, with dignity.
Bernie had a lot more to say, but it was really the same message repeated again and again, with only minor variations. Finally she stopped, and directed her gaze out through the windshield. “If you haven’t given him notice by this time tomorrow, Enid,” she said, “I’m going to take the matter up with Staff Sergeant Alberg.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Enid muttered, nearing the end of her rope.
“There are laws in this country,” Bernie announced sonorously, “about the possession of weapons. And I bet he’s broke them all, keeping that thing in a drawer with h
is underwear, in an underwear drawer in somebody else’s house for pete’s sake, without telling them it’s there.” She looked at Enid truculently. “I will telephone you tomorrow afternoon, Enid, and if you don’t answer, I will assume you’re dead, shot to death in your own kitchen. And if you do answer, and you tell me you haven’t given your lodger notice, then I will march myself straight over to Mr. Alberg.”
Enid, powdering her nose, dismissed her friend’s warnings.
She descended two floors and tapped on Jack Coutts’s door.
The sky had been entirely cleared of clouds, and as the sun descended into the ocean Eliot realized that with the change in the weather had come a substantial drop in temperature. He wasn’t going to be able to sleep outside anymore. He almost wept, then, because if things had worked out the way he’d expected he’d have been sleeping in his own bed again this very night. Now he’d have to wait until it was real late, then prowl around the town and look for a place where he could be warm and dry and safe for a few hours, and maybe get some sleep.
Meanwhile, he was huddled against the trunk of a big old tree out in the middle of the woods somewhere, he wasn’t exactly sure where, wrapped in the sleeping bag, the knapsack next to him. He’d eaten tinned spaghetti and some stale chips and drunk a can of Pepsi and was now trying to think through his situation.
His dad had left thirty-seven dollars on the bedside table. This was at least a start on the bus fare to Nova Scotia. But he had to spend some of it on a ferry ticket.
There were really two parts to his situation. The first part, getting back to Vancouver, that was the hardest part. He’d have to go around the town somehow, and get a long way toward Gibsons before trying to hitchhike. In fact it would be a whole lot safer to walk the entire way, which would take him a couple of days…but there’d be cops looking for him everywhere. Including on the ferry. So maybe it’d be better to hitchhike. And then on the ferry he could maybe hide on the car deck while the people who’d picked him up went to the cafeteria or whatever, and meet them back at their car when they got to Horseshoe Bay. And he could hide his face behind a newspaper or something when they drove off the ferry.
And the second part, that was getting from Vancouver to Nova Scotia. Maybe he could get another busboy job, make enough money that way. But where could he live while he did this? And how could he get some kind of disguise happening? This situation, thought Eliot, this two-part situation, it was pretty hopeless. And he shook his head, holding back tears.
But, yeah, he’d done a pretty good job as a busboy, so there was that, at least. He saw himself at Earl’s, cleaning tables, and doing dishes, and sweeping up in the storage area that was in the back. The café was closed from ten o’clock at night until six in the morning, he remembered. He wondered if it might be possible to get himself in there.
Eliot yearned for the place, suddenly, because it was familiar, because it was a place he’d made partly his own. So after ten, he’d check it out. There was a small window, high in the wall. And he knew Earl didn’t have an alarm. He was starting to feel a little bit more optimistic.
Meanwhile, though, his teeth were chattering with the cold, despite the sleeping bag. He’d better walk some more, get himself warmed up. The daylight was almost gone but maybe there’d be moonlight, if he could just get himself out from under these trees, onto a beach maybe. Eliot stood up and put the knapsack back on, and doubled the sleeping bag and draped it over his shoulders, and set off in the general direction of the sea.
Chapter 25
ALBERG HAD LET HIS coffee grow cold while he watched Alvin devour one of Earl’s jumbo hamburgers with fries and gulp down two glasses of milk and a Coke. Alvin’s attention had been so wholly on his food that he hadn’t been moving around much more than would a regular kid. But now he finished a second Coke and pushed the glass away, and immediately started bouncing on his chair. Alberg had an image of the kid asleep in his bed, eyes shut, bouncing.
Alvin squinted up at the clock. “What time does the ferry go?”
“Last one’s at eight-thirty,” said Alberg.
“That’s pretty late for a ten-year-old kid to be up, you know,” said Alvin, hanging on to the sides of the table. “I mean, I wouldn’t get to bed till, like—when?”
“The ferry takes thirty-five minutes, another thirty to the detention center—you’d be in bed before ten.”
“Wow. That’s late,” said Alvin, shaking his head, his unfocused gaze voyaging all over the café.
“How come your clothes are so dirty?” said Alberg. Alvin looked at him straight on for a second, and Alberg wondered again how much of all this hyperactivity was an act.
“Well we been sleepin’ outside, haven’t we? Whaddya expect?”
A woman hurried into the café, looked around, and approached their table. “I’m Rebecca Webster,” she said. “Social Services.”
“Karl Alberg. And this is Alvin. Sit down, Ms. Webster.”
She pulled out a chair and sat. “I’m going to take you to a house in Sechelt for the night, Alvin.”
Alvin’s hands were drumming the tabletop, quietly, and one of his restless feet suddenly hit Alberg in the knee. He said, “Argh.” Alberg didn’t know if that indicated assent, or dismay, or apology.
Rebecca Webster, a plump woman of about forty, had a lot of thick brown hair, a pink complexion, and a very steady gaze. She spoke slowly, directly to Alvin. “In this house lives a mother, and a father, and two kids, both of them a lot older than you.”
Alvin said something that sounded to Alberg like “Goop!” and picked up his hands and waved them around in the air.
“Also in this house,” said Rebecca Webster, lifting her hand, “is a cat”—she placed the palm of her hand against one of Alvin’s—“and there is also a dog”—their hands, still touching, descended slowly to the tabletop—“a little dog, very friendly”— and Alvin’s hand lay quiet, while Rebecca Webster stroked it with her fingertips—“who when she walks across the kitchen floor makes a click-click-click sound with her nails, and you know what?”
Alvin shook his head.
“She sounds just like a little guy wearing tap-dancing shoes.”
“I know what those are,” said Alvin. “My aunt had some.”
“I’ve got the paperwork with me,” said Rebecca Webster to Alberg. “It’s a good place. He’ll be fine there.”
There was no response when Enid tapped on her lodger’s door. She knew he was there, because his truck was parked outside. She arranged the folds of her robe while she waited. Finally, though, she realized that he wasn’t going to answer her knock, so she turned the handle and pushed open the door.
He was lying on his bed. Again, there was a light on in the living room, but the bedroom was dark. Enid had the impression that he had been lying there for a long time—not sleeping, since his hands were behind his head—thinking. She couldn’t see his face.
“Mr. Coutts,” she said softly, and heard the rustle of the pillowcase as he turned his head.
“What do you want?” he said flatly.
“Will you tell me about your daughter?”
Enid had clasped her hands in front of her and was standing in the doorway, not yet having received permission to enter. She waited for a long time.
Finally he got off the bed—slowly, as if it hurt to do this, and Enid felt it empathetically in her own joints, the ache of moving again after being still for a long time. He got up and came around the bed until he was close to her, facing her. She could smell his breath, which was stale, and saw that he hadn’t shaved today.
He took her face in his two hands. “I killed her.”
But Enid knew this couldn’t be true, unless it had been an accident; there was too much pain in his eyes. “No,” she said. He was still cupping her face with his hands: Enid felt like a rose about to be plucked.
“Have you ever killed anyone?” he said.
“No,” she said.
He continued to look inten
tly into her face; she had no idea what he saw there. Finally he let her go, and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“The man knows fuck-all,” he said. “But he was right about one thing. For twelve years I watched her die.”
Enid let herself sink quietly into the high-backed chair. He was staring at the doorway that led to the living room. A streak of light fell softly across the threshold, beckoning. But they stayed in the shadowy bedroom.
“I had this fantasy,” he said. “That I’d be sitting in the chair next to her bed, with the television on, and all of a sudden something would touch my hand. I’d turn, and I’d see that she had touched me. I’d see that her eyes were open, and she was starting to smile at me. This is what kept me going.” He took a deep, irregular breath, and scoured his face with his hands. “But when I dreamed about it—in the dream, when she wakes up and touches me, her eyes are empty; in the dream I see nothing in her eyes but her dead brain.” He turned his head slightly in Enid’s direction. “It’s a funny thing, time. Sometimes it doesn’t move at all. Then one day you look up, and a dozen years have passed.”
He stood and moved to the doorway, looking into the living room. “When I did it, when I told them to pull the plug, I was afraid she’d breathe on her own. Like the Quinlan girl.”
He turned to look at her. Enid felt the light on her face, but his was in darkness.
“She didn’t, though,” he said.
He went to the door, and opened it wider. “I think you should go now, Mrs. Hargreaves.”
Enid, her head bowed, rose from the chair and exited.
Eliot’s gloves were getting shredded and his entire body was shaking with cold. He was climbing an enormous pile of rocks that had just suddenly appeared, right in front of him. He could hardly see a damn thing—there was just a thin little strip of moon in the sky, plus a whole bunch of stars. He wished he’d thought to stick the flashlight in the knapsack. It was a struggle trying to hang on to the sleeping bag because he really needed to use both hands for climbing.