Sunday, August 17, 1972
He waited east of the intersection of Harris and Riverside roads. Albert Doer would take a right turn there, heading toward Abbotsford. He would glance left, just long enough to make sure there was no oncoming traffic, then pull out. He wouldn’t notice a white panel van parked on the shoulder about a hundred yards away. Why should he? Albert had no reason to suspect anything. Besides, by the time they got around to reporting what was about to happen, the Doers wouldn’t remember a detail so inconsequential. And if they did? There were thousands of white panel vans in the Lower Mainland. This one would be scrap.
Frank inhaled and exhaled slowly. On the brink of the unthinkable he felt more alive than ever, feeding off the monstrous energy of his plan. Oh! What a feeling; what a rush!
He winced. Hated Rock n’ Roll and everything the song stood for. But you couldn’t control what the brain connected to, and he had to admit the music excited him, torqued his nervous energy. Gonna fill your head with music, satisfy your soul…
Blasphemy! It was the type of screeching and yowling Crystal Doer liked. That’s why it had come to him. Maybe it was being broadcast that very moment by one of the Vancouver radio stations polluting the airwaves with their smut. Maybe Crystal was tuned in, lying on her stomach, on her bed, letting its rhythms infect her.
Frank grunted, rested his head against the steering wheel, concentrating. Her last few times at church she had pouted like an underpaid harlot. Then stopped attending altogether. And the Doers let her get away with it. They were sinners. Worse sinners than Crystal. Hadn’t they allowed her to inhale the contaminating dust of Sodom and Gomorrah still circling the globe?
“Good fruit can spring from crooked limbs,” he muttered, raising his binoculars. Watching. Waiting… until suddenly there they were! The Doers. They followed his script to the letter. Albert stopped, glanced left, then turned right. Crystal, as expected, was not in the back seat. She would not be going to church that day.
~~~
Crystal didn’t mean to make her parents angry, it just sort of happened. The shudder of the front door closing behind them echoed through the empty house. She loved them, but hated their stupid rules. The devil had got into her. They wouldn’t say so out loud, might not even allow themselves to think it, but that’s what they were afraid of. That’s why they went on and on and on about how much they loved her, God loved her, Jesus loved her…
She felt imprisoned by their love, like a pupa in its cocoon, being shaped into something she didn’t want to become by forces she couldn’t understand… Stop it!
The house absorbed her plea, its walls, plush carpets and chintzy furniture muffling outrage effectively as a padded cell, where she was forced to breathe in the middle-class miasma of freshened air, lingering tendrils of her mother’s perfume, shoe polish. The atmosphere was cloying, but Crystal couldn’t leave. Not yet. And that made her resentment fierce. A gnawing anger. Kindling, she called it.
Beau padded up to the sofa and prodded her with his moist, rubbery nose. He placed his head on her stomach and she stroked his chocolate brown fur. At least there was one being in the Doer household everyone loved unconditionally. It was so easy to love Beau. “Nobody expects you to be perfect,” she said, patting him. “You already are, I guess.” His irrepressible tail banged against the coffee table, a drumbeat of affection. He’d sensed her sadness, knew instinctively what to do.
Suddenly Beau woofed and trotted over to the living room window.
“Shit!” Crystal groaned. Her parents must have had second thoughts. They’d come back to argue some more. “No way,” she vowed, closing her eyes against them.
Beau woofed again, louder. Then let loose a long string of barks that merged into a sort of howl. Alarmed, Crystal bolted off the sofa and over to the living-room window. “What’s wrong, boy?” she said, peeking out through the chink in the curtains. A white van had backed into their drive. She didn’t recognize the vehicle, but did recognize Mr. Umbach from church clambering out. What does he want? she grimaced.
Crystal didn’t like Umbach. Creep! You could tell he was thinking you naked whenever he looked at you, the old goat. And judging you at the same time. He was nothing but a crotchety old perv disguised as a Christian. For a second she thought of hiding, pretending no one was home, but he caught a glimpse of her at the window and waved stiffly. She’d have to open the door, explain that her parents had already left. No doubt he’d be wondering why she wasn’t with them. What’s he doing here? It didn’t make any sense… His rap at the door cut short Crystal’s uneasy thoughts.