“I want to help,” Frieda said.
Henry repeated himself. “We’ll just knock.”
The three walked around the corner and up the hill to the alley which provided access to the back of the shops on this block of East Hastings. Except for the usual dumpsters and telephone poles with an absurd number of wires attached to them, the alley was empty.
“No cars,” Frieda said.
The back door to the pawnshop was easy to find, metal, and next to a large garage-type door that opened vertically.
Henry knocked several times without a response. He held out his empty hands, suggesting they leave.
“Want me to pick it?” Frieda asked.
“That’s not necessary, Fred. I also think it’s breaking and entering.”
Tess spoke, and Henry turned to see her standing with the door open and one foot already inside the back of the shop.
“It’s unlocked,” she said, repeating herself.
“Wait.” Henry shot out his palm, his fingers spread wide. “We were just going to knock. Why would it be unlocked? Maybe someone’s in there.”
Tess leaned in the door and shouted, “Hello?” After a second, she shrugged at Henry.
“Tess, what if we set off an alarm?”
“Then we call the police ourselves. We ask to speak to Tipton or Stubbing and explain that we were following up on the chat room conversation that we handed over. They should thank us for doing the leg work for them.”
Tess disappeared inside.
“Yeah, they should thank us,” Frieda added, following Tess as though attached by a string. “Are you coming?”
Deep breath.
Henry looked up and down the alley once more. There wasn’t even a breeze to stir the bits of garbage or sway the knots of power lines. Nothing moved.
Still skeptical of the merits of this plan, his priority was watching after Frieda. He followed the pair through the door.
The lights in the back of the shop were already on. Still, the room was dim, as the towers of shelves blocked out most illumination that wasn’t directly overhead. Right next to the door was a heap of random furniture: desks, tables, and chairs.
“What are we looking for?” Frieda asked.
“Anything that tells us something about Julian or Net-Tectives,” Henry said.
“Or Cooper,” Tess added.
Tess and Frieda disappeared into the stacks of pawned items.
Henry proceeded straight into the front, retail area of the shop. The ceiling was lower, but the gray light that filtered its way through the dirty windows made it easier to see than in the back. He bent at the mail on the floor. Today was Thursday. Each of the Vancouver Metro newspapers from Monday through to this morning was there. The shop had not been open all week.
He looked around at the walls covered with guitars, leather jackets, and the occasional framed hockey jersey. Glass cabinets held X-Boxes and other video game consoles. The glass counters had hundreds of watches, rings, and other jewelry. Large displays of knives were kept behind the counter.
One floor-to-ceiling showcase contained military surplus and police memorabilia: helmets, bayonets, handcuffs, and stun guns.
Henry returned to the back and spotted each of Frieda and Tess in the rows of shelves.
“How are we doing?” he called out. Shouts of “Fine” and “Good” echoed back.
In the very back of the shop, near to where they had entered, Henry walked over to a couch. It was covered with so much nylon sheet that it looked more like a nest than a bed. A bundle of clothes made a makeshift pillow.
“I think someone’s been sleeping here,” Henry said, loud enough for the others to hear.
Frieda emerged from the stacks of shelves to join him. “What kind of sleeping bag is that?” she asked, pointing at the drab, gray sheets.
“It stinks.” She kicked at the folds of fabric on the floor.
Henry lifted it with his foot and pulled some of it to the ground. The material had long, strong seams, and bits of cord had been trimmed off the edges. “I think this was a parachute. There is a bunch of army and police surplus in the front. Whoever is sleeping here must have borrowed this chute from there.”
“Ohmigod,” exclaimed Frieda, picking up a bundle of nylon in her arms, mildew and odor instantly forgiven. “It’s Cooper’s.”
“I don’t think so,” Henry said. “It’s too new.”
“Then maybe he thinks he’s Cooper because he’s crazy, right?” she suggested. “That’s why he attacked Mr. Benham. Because he’s off his meds.” She caught herself. “I mean, because he’s not getting help.”
She turned the thin nylon over in her hands. It looked woefully inadequate for a blanket. Even the young girl on the sidewalk had down-fill in her sleeping bag.
“Why can’t he get help, Hen?”
The irony of delivering a life-lesson in the middle of breaking and entering wasn’t lost on Henry.
“I wish I knew, Fred. There could be a million reasons. I’ll bet that a few of the people we passed on the way in here could be helped if they got solid medical attention.”
“But they can’t?”
“They can’t, or they won’t. I don’t know the answer to that. Everyone has a different story.”
He watched her taking this all in. The world was a big, complicated place.
“I’m going to copy this down as evidence.” She had found a label on the parachute. She knelt, pulled her notebook from her satchel, and began writing.
And, just like that, the learning moment’s over. He, too, had once borne that youthful resilience. So, whose lesson was that?
Henry walked over to the stacks of familiar banker boxes. Each looked just like the one he had packed his office into under the watchful eyes of his former boss.
The dates on the boxes reached back years, the stacks tall and leaning on one another. Gravity and entropy were gradually turning an organized record-keeping into a single solid mass.
He moved the top boxes to see how far back they went. “1973. When was DB Cooper again?” he asked aloud to no one in particular.
Frieda had wandered back into the stacks.
Tess’s voice said, “November 24, 1971.”
It didn’t take a minute to find the right box within the deceptively well-organized mound.
Inside were envelopes containing receipts and invoices, as well as three ledgers. A shoebox contained cards like the one that Frieda had found on the lawn.
He read one of the cards.
June 29, 1971
DJ Dudley
660 Jackson Ave, Apt. 314, Vancouver, BC.
Men’s watch. Breitling. 17 jewels.
On the back, $12.00 had been written and crossed out in pen. A stamped date read CLOSE July 12, 1971.
Each card was a separate pawn loan. The ridges on the side indicated where the ticket was torn off and given to the customer. There were hundreds. It was going to be much faster to start with the ledgers.
At the bank, the old ledger binders were no longer in use, but every so often there would be some reason to look through old records. Those binders always had stiff, leather-bound covers. These here were thin, flimsy cardboard. He pulled out the one labeled September 17 – December 31, laid it out on a large freezer, and flipped through the green, lined pages.
The freezer was a little more than waist-high, and Henry leaned over onto his elbows as he read. He skimmed the neat writing and remarked at how little the pencil had faded, being half a century old.
November 24 was a Wednesday, and a slow one at that. A collection of LPs (purchased), a wedding dress (pawned), and few other items had passed through the shop’s hands. If the index card with the Richardson Street address on it was a loan, it should match an entry in here.
What date was the loan?
“Hen?”
Henry shouted with surprise and twisted painfully, bending backward over the deep freeze. Frieda gave a high-pitched shriek of laughter.
&nb
sp; “Did I scare you?”
“Oh my god, Fred,” Henry said. He felt his heart beating in his chest. He sat on the ground, thinking he might faint if he stood.
Tess came running out of the stacks of shelves. “What the hell is going on? Is everyone okay?” Her eyes darted between Frieda and Henry.
“We’re fine,” Frieda answered, still laughing. “I was just going to say that I think you found the keys to the doors.” She reached over Henry’s head and grabbed the large ring of keys, hanging from the lock in the deep freeze. The key stuck in the lock, and the lid lifted open and closed a little as she wrestled with it. Cold air escaped in small bursts.
“Good eye. Hold this,” Henry said, handing the ledger to Frieda. “Let me have a go.”
Henry took his turn, twisting the key, lifting the freezer lid higher each time he tried to pull the ring away.
“Stand back, everyone,” Tess said. Her grand solution consisted, in fact, only of removing the stuck key from the ring and all the other keys. She made a big show of it, pretending to roll up her sleeves, taking a deep breath, cracking her knuckles, and stretching the muscles on the sides of her neck.
She froze.
“Do you hear that?”
They stared at one another, barely breathing, eyes wide.
An engine shut off in the alley, and a car door opened.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“We need to go,” Henry said, taking Frieda’s hand. Tess raced ahead of them to the back door, opened it, and closed it again. Her face was pale.
“It’s not Julian.”
“How do you know it’s not?” Henry said. “You mean it’s…”
Tess nodded. “We have to go out the front.”
Henry dragged Frieda behind him as they raced into the front of the store. Even before he finished unlocking the deadbolt, he could see the bars of the front gate held fast with a padlock and chain.
“Stuck,” was all he could manage.
Tess’s mouth opened to speak, but the sound of the backdoor opening cut her off.
The trio darted behind a wooden counter display of watches and rings.
Henry strained to listen. Frieda’s breathing was loud as any security alarm, and Henry lifted a part of her cloak to her open mouth. She hid her entire face in the green wool.
“No,” said a voice from the back room. “No!” A low, hoarse scream was followed by a loud thud and a cacophony of things clattering to the floor.
A second growl came. Closer. From the front of the store. The overhead light turned on.
Through the scratched glass of the display, Henry could only make out the large shape of a man. The hulk stood still. Listening? Surveying the room?
The suddenness with which the man moved almost caused Henry to bolt upright. He caught himself, realizing that the man was moving away from them to the far side of the store.
Glass shattered.
“Fuck,” came the voice again, different. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
Henry mouthed to Tess, “Is he crying?”
From the other side of Frieda, Tess nodded back.
“Not like this,” the man said, moving things and rustling. “Too close. I’m too close.”
Henry thought about making a dash for the back room. If he sent Frieda and Tess first, he might get caught, but they could make it out.
But the man was on the move again, passing so near to where they hid that he blocked out the light and cast an ominous shadow.
Henry rolled onto his toes and put his back to the cabinet, trying to watch to the right and left at once, eyes and ears alert.
A minute of silence, then the now-familiar sound of the backdoor slamming shut.
Henry and Tess stared into each other’s eyes. Waiting, listening.
Frieda lifted her head from her cloak, and Henry held a finger to his lips in response.
He began counting, mouthing the numbers.
At thirty, Frieda started counting along.
At one hundred and fifty, Tess whispered, “I’m going to look.”
Henry shook his head and made to rise, but she was already moving in a crouch toward the back of the store. He tapped Frieda.
“You okay?” he mouthed.
She whispered back, “I have to pee.”
Before he could answer, Tess’s full voice came from the back room. “He’s gone!”
They rose, and Frieda sprinted into the back.
Tess stood at the open door, looking out. Natural light covered half of her body and looked like welcome freedom to Henry. A flushing sound came from behind the stacks, followed by the appearance of a relieved Frieda.
One of the shelves had been tipped and leaned onto the others, dumping its contents of DVD players, clocks and boxes on the floor.
Henry stepped over the odd debris and placed the ring of keys on the freezer. Indentations remained in his palm from having gripped them the entire time.
“Let’s go,” Tess said.
“One sec.” Henry strode back into the front of the store. The display of military and police surplus was smashed. A helmet lay on the floor. Something was missing.
“Let’s go!”
“Coming,” Henry shouted, and he turned to join the others. He gave the broken case one more glance over his shoulder as he shut out the light behind him.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Somehow, the closed doors and windows of Tess’s tiny Tercel made Henry feel safe. He twisted in the passenger seat to face the others. No one had said a word the entire run back to the car.
“So, that sucked.”
“I didn’t like that at all,” Frieda said in the back.
Tess slid her seat back so she, too, could face the small group. “We still need to find Julian.”
Henry couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “No, we’re done. I don’t think we need to find anybody. And how do we even know that that wasn’t Julian?”
“It was the white K-car,” Tess said.
“Okay,” Henry said, playing along. “That suggests it was the guy from the coffee shop, with the crosswords. Fred’s Mr. Creepy. Between the name Keller on the pill bottle and his name on the Net-Tectives site, we’re pretty sure he’s the American that came to get something from Julian. Plus, he smashed a couple cases in the front of the store to take something. Julian owns the store, and he wouldn’t have needed to do that.”
“What did he take?”
Henry clenched a fist. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to remember what was in that case when I first saw it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tess said. “Either our American guy is using Julian’s shop, or Julian is using the American’s car. One way or another, that’s the guy that trashed my place. And now we know where he sleeps. We have to, at least, tell the cops.”
“Right,” Henry said. “We’ll just call up and say, ‘Hello, Sergeant Khatri. Remember how you warned us to stay out of it? Well, we broke into a pawn shop and found your guy. Oh, and he smashed things up a bit, but that wasn’t us.’”
“We have to do something,” Frieda said.
The three of them sat in silence. Henry looked up and down the street, checking for a familiar car or face.
Tess brushed dust off the dashboard with her hand as she spoke, her voice soft.
“How do we go home before they catch this guy?”
“Maybe we just leave this to the police. Maybe we just move into a hotel in the meantime.”
Henry watched her stiffen, her back coming away from the seat. Her compact frame grew tall in the confined space.
“That’s nice for you, Henry. A hotel?”
“If this is about the money—”
“It’s not about money.” She swiped the dust from her hands onto her jeans. “This is my bloody home we’re talking about. This is my life. It may feel like a hotel to you, Henry. A stop-over before you move to Toronto. But I live there. Bernadette lives there. Mr. Benham lives there.”
In his peripheral vision, He
nry was aware of Frieda looking at him. There was no way she had missed that.
“You’re moving to Toronto, Hen?”
Henry opened his mouth to speak and closed it again, unconfident that his next words would be the right words.
“Fred, I’m sorry. I was going to tell you. I’ve been looking for jobs and I was speaking to some people in Toronto.”
“Why would you leave?”
“I didn’t get the job.”
“Why do you need a new job?” Her voice cracked.
“It’s a good opportunity—”
“No! You’re mad at Sarah, and you want to throw everybody away.”
“That’s not true. I’m not mad—”
“But you want to leave us.”
“I don’t want—”
“For a job.”
“Look, Fred—”
“Don’t call me that.”
Frieda pulled her hood up over her head and slid against the window, behind Henry, out of his view.
“Thanks,” Henry said to Tess.
“Don’t blame her,” Frieda said.
Henry faced forward in his seat and adjusted the rear-view mirror to see what little of Frieda that continued to poke out from beneath her cloak.
“Frieda, I love you very much. You’ll understand when you’re older.”
Nothing.
“I’m not moving any time soon,” he continued. “If I find a job somewhere else, it’ll be a city like Toronto, or Montreal, and then you’d have a place to stay there. How cool is that?”
The green wool hood fell back, and Frieda’s young dark eyes, defiant, met his in the mirror. “Whatever, Henry. You’re not even you anymore.”
Tess cut in before Henry’s mind could process the deep cut.
Softly, she said, “I know this isn’t what you want to hear. But maybe she should stay with her aunt.”
Henry felt the window crank on the door jab into his back as he tried to create as much distance between himself and the two young women.
“That’s not fair.”
“For who?”
“I can look after her.”
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