Boy From Under

Before he went to see her he wanted to check out the place where their lives had converged then flown apart like shards of shattering glass.

So he headed east on the Trans Canada to 232nd Street, then south and east again to the Salmon River bridge. Maybe, just maybe, he’d find something there to trigger a memory?

But the closer he got, the more out of place he felt, traversing the flat, alluvial farmland. Like prey. Overhead, a squadron of vultures circled, buoyed by an invisible updraft. He wondered how the cool autumn light could generate enough lift to keep them airborne.

It would have been the dead of night when the boy came up from the Salmon River. Victor imagined a feral creature, lost, confused, wondering where its mother had got to…

Where did he come from? How did he get here?

The coordinates must have been lodged somewhere in the folds of Victor’s own brain, but he didn’t have a clue how to get back to his starting point and track from there toward the future he would become.

The road dipped, and he began his descent into the Salmon River gully. How did the boy, Emanon, get down there without being seen? Surely, even at 2 a.m., somebody would have spotted him if he’d been slinking along the shoulder of the road. There would have been nowhere for him to hide. Snaking down into the ravine, the road narrowed, steep embankments closing in from both sides.

Someone should have seen him!

Crossing the bridge, he glanced into the boulder-strewn creek bed below, imagined a naked, shivering creature down there—a Gollum like being, that would eventually turn out to be the boy…

Emanon, Victor insisted. Me.

~~~

Half an hour later he maneuvered up her suburban street, easing by a ball hockey net, which the kids refused to move. They leaned on their sticks watching warily. “Cool,” one of them said, impressed by his Porsche. “Thanks, guys,” he apologized.

It occurred to him that they were looking at a potential draft pick of the West End Bump ‘n’ Grind roller hockey squad. It was the only team he’d ever been recruited for; he’d declined. Still, I might offer to sign a few T-shirts or something. He smiled, inching past the second net.

“Game on!” someone yelled, and once again the players’ shouts echoed up and down the cul-de-sac, punctuated by the thwack and scrape of sticks against pavement.

Darlene Cassels’ house sat on a pie-shaped lot at the very end of the road, a standard yellow bungalow with burgundy trim, flower boxes at the windows, a tidily mown lawn. If it stood out at all, it was as a typical example of well maintained, minimalist suburban architecture, a place that lived up to the 1960s everyman ideal.

Snob! Victor scolded. Not without a pinch of pride.

He parked in the drive, behind a blue Volkswagen Golf, which looked like it might not have been moved that day. Walking briskly up a path marked by intermittently placed concrete slabs, he rapped purposefully at the door. After a long while the shuffle of slippered feet approached, the occupant fumbled with locks and chains, and the door swung inward just far enough for Darlene Cassels to peer out at him.

“Ms. Cassels?”

“Yeah?” She was obviously wondering what kind of salesman or religious nut he might be. If Darlene Cassels was embarrassed to be found in her housecoat at three in the afternoon, she didn’t show it. Raking her hand through her frizzy grey hair, she squinted up at him suspiciously. “If you’re peddling some type of salvation, mister, I suggest you save your own soul and leave me to save mine.”

“No, I’m not selling tickets to heaven,” he smiled, appreciating her worn beauty and forthright manner. “My name is Victor Daly,” he began, but stalled, not having prepared for the interview. He’d wanted his introduction to be spontaneous—to believe she would recognize him, even though she’d only seen him for a few desperate minutes, splayed unconscious on the deck of the Salmon River bridge, three decades ago!

“So?” she prompted, annoyed.

Stupid, man! Of course she doesn’t recognize me! She’d been traumatized that night, in a state of panic. He’d been a locus of terror and guilt for her; a creature to bundle off into someone else’s care.

“You don’t remember me, of course. How could you?”

Her eyes widened suddenly, not in recognition, but fear… the fear that she might recognize him. “Who are you?” She squinted, deepening the wrinkles that spread like spider webs from the corners of her eyes.

“I’m the boy, Ms. Cassels. You met me once, at the Salmon River Bridge in 1978.”

“My God!” she gasped. “My God! It can’t be you, can it?”

She opened the door wide and stepped out onto the concrete stoop. “My God,” she touched his chest, skimmed the sleeves of his jacket. “I never thought I’d see you again. I mean, I’m not your mother or anything. It’s not like there’s some kind of registry you can sign up with to locate kids you’ve knocked down with your car.”

A raspy spasm of laughter escaped her, metamorphosing into a wracking cough.

“I didn’t know about you until quite recently, Ms. Cassels. My parents never told me what happened that night—how I made my entrance into this world. It was something we just didn’t bring up.”

“You mean your adoptive parents, don’t you?”

“Yes. I’ve never thought of them that way, but you’re right.”

“Your real parents, whoever they are, deserve to roast in hell.”

Why?

“Come in!” she beckoned, stepping back and waving him through. “Can I make you something? Coffee? Tea?” She sat him at a small, round table next to the kitchen window. He wondered if perhaps she’d been sitting there herself, watching him pull up and approach the house. A half-full cup of coffee and brimming ash tray were within easy reach.

“I’ve often wondered who you turned out to be. This is unbelievable!” She busied herself at the stove, putting on a kettle, tidying the immaculate countertop. “To this day, I still think of you, how close I came to… you know.”

He nodded. “You saved my life.”

What’s happened to her? he frowned.

“I’ve never been so terrified in all my life: not before or since. And I can tell you the doctor at Langley Memorial and the police didn’t help. They grilled me. Thought I had something to do with you being out on the road at that god-awful hour. It felt like lying, to tell the truth, the way they went on.”

“Why would they think that?”

Darlene looked back over her shoulder from the stove, her eyes moist.

Could a bond so intense, so durable have been forged in those few frantic minutes that ticked by thirty years ago, their fates fused in the blink of time that transpired between her hitting him, reviving him, driving him to Langley Memorial Hospital? Had she been left empty ever since, mourning the loss of a stranger who had become her child?

“What else could they think?” Darlene was saying. “I mean, the situation was so weird: a kid out on his own in the middle of the night on that stretch of road? It didn’t make any sense, so I guess their instinct was to blame the first person they set eyes on, otherwise they might have ended up blaming themselves. That ‘first person’ happened to be me.”

“What do you think happened, Darlene?”

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You want to track them down.”

He nodded. “That and I did want to meet you.”

She laughed dismissively at the very thought.

“To thank you,” he insisted.

She flustered about the stove. “Don’t know that I can provide any useful information,” she said, flipping open a pack of cigarettes and lighting up. “Terrible fucking habit,” she rasped, “but don’t ask me to quit.”

“Is there anything about that night you can remember that might give me a clue as to who my parents were?”

Darlene shook her head.

“Anything at all, Ms. Cassels?”

“Well there is one thing… The police and just about everyone else thinks you were dropped off on 56th, somewhere east of the Salmon River.”

“But you don’t?”

“Nope. I think you came down the creek.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Can’t say. On the face of it, it doesn’t make much sense. I mean, there’s no proper trail in there; it’s a tangle of blackberries, devil’s club, you name it. But you did come up from under the bridge; that much has been more or less proven.”

“How so?”

“Mud on your feet. Water on your legs. Scratches from the blackberry thorns.”

“So why don’t the police believe I came down the Salmon River?”

“Try walking up that ravine and you’ll see why, but bring a machete because you’ll have to bushwhack every step of the way. They think you came down the road, hid under the bridge, and came up just before I hit you.”

“You didn’t see me come up, though?”

“Nope. First I saw you was when you were staring into my headlights like the proverbial petrified deer.”

“And everyone else thinks I must have been dropped off, right?”

“Yup. They got that notion fixed in their heads and it would have taken more arguing than I could muster to dislodge it. My ex, Bart, he’s big on hunting. Goes out every fall and blasts some poor moose to kingdom-come so he can make wild sausages and stuff like that.” She chuckled at the notion of wild sausages. “Anyway, he’s the only guy who’s ever believed my theory.”

“Your theory?”

She took a drag on her cigarette. Joined him at the table.

“I think you were running away from something—that you came down the Salmon River gully, then climbed up to the road and ran right into my car.”

Victor thought about that for a second. Darlene watched him appraisingly over the rim of her cup.

“If I’d been running through that kind of underbrush, wouldn’t I have been torn to shreds, not just scratched up a bit?”

“You were tiny. You could have wriggled through warrens like a mouse. Most of the scrapes and scratches they attributed to your close encounter with my Pinto, the rest to your side trip down under the bridge. They poked around up the gully, but never took a serious look.” She didn’t conceal her disgust. “I talked to Tom Cochran about it a couple of times—he was the cop who first interviewed me. I was working at the Rendezvous Pub at the time. He’d cruise through every now and again on his rounds. They weren’t interested in getting their spit-and-polished shoes muddy, though. After a while I dropped it. Didn’t want to be a nag, especially to a guy who wasn’t even my husband and who carried a gun.”

Again, the wheezy laugh.

He grinned obligingly. “You said your husband believes your account?”

“My ex,” she said bitterly. “Yeah. Bart said the first place small game heads when it’s in trouble is the underbrush. He figures instinct would have taken over, and that even in the dark, as a kid, you would have flown through that bush like a rabbit with a wolf on its tail.”

“What do you think might have been chasing me?”

Darlene grimaced, her jaw set in disgust. “The devil himself, Victor. I think you must have been running away from something so horrible you can’t even put a name to it, that decent folk can’t even begin to imagine what it might have been.”

“You said the police didn’t want to get their shoes muddy?”

“Yeah. Just my way of being sarcastic. I’m a sour old bird.”

“Old birds have seen lots, and for what it’s worth, I think you’re right. I think I did come down the Salmon River.”

Why?

“Because what you’re saying sounds like memory to me.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t have any complete memories of that night, Darlene, or any nights before. But I’m starting to remember bits and pieces now, and what you’re saying fits.”

Her explanation was based on speculation, not fact, but Victor couldn’t deny it. Like her, he was convinced evidence of his passing still haunted the Salmon River ravine, suspired by its vegetation into the cool, dank atmosphere.

I’m a creature of the river and the underbrush. 

~~~

“Is there anything about this place you’ll miss?”

Cathy’s question echoed through the stripped, empty rooms of the Taj.

“Nothing three million dollars won’t cure,” Maria answered, surprised at how hard and calculating she sounded, how utterly void.

She was grateful to Cathy for coming along, of course, but wished her friend would just shut up for a couple of seconds. Victor had been too busy to join them on this final inspection. Constructive avoidance, she figured.

True, he was obsessed with his research into the Crystal Doer case. It was his personal quest. But that wasn’t the only reason he’d declined; it was just his most readily available excuse. He’d phoned from Langley to recount his meeting with the woman who’d knocked him unconscious with her car all those years ago. “It changed her life, Mar,” he said excitedly. He went on about how Darlene Cassels suspected something horrible had happened to him just before the accident, something unspeakable he must have been fleeing.

“I know she’s right,” he’d concluded. “But I can’t bring anything into focus. It’s like a barrier has been erected between me and my past,” he said. A gauze that filtered out everything but ghostly nightmare sequences.

Wish it would filter them out, too, Maria sighed. Make you forget there was anything to forget…

“Man, this place is tighter than Fort Knox,” Cathy shouted from Laurence’s study. She must have found his vault. The cops had confiscated all his papers and his computer during their murder investigation. Maria smiled grimly. A lot of cockroaches would be scurrying for cover, she guessed.

Inspector Reger had her suspicions, of course. “You were afraid of him, Maria. Terrified. You thought he’d taken a contract out on you?” she’d pried in their last interview, those manipulative eyes of hers pleading for Maria to come clean, as if telling the truth might be a ticket to some kind of salvation.

Maria shook her head. No way, she thought, as if Reger was one of the ghosts haunting the emptied rooms of the Taj. He deserves an unsolved death.

Of course, keeping Laurence’s murder unsolved was the other reason Victor wanted to stay well away. He’d made Maria promise to never talk about what had happened. Ever. But she knew the missing puzzle pieces to Laurence’s grisly finale had Victor’s prints all over them. The last thing he wanted was to be seen traipsing about, appraising the vacated mansion of his girlfriend’s murdered husband.

No, there’s nothing about this place I’ll miss. Nothing at all.

Maria had insisted on burial rather than cremation, which she likened to incinerating the evidence. When she thought of Laurence she liked to be reminded of his rotten corpse, moldering in the dirt like a buried piece of shit.

“So where is the President and Chief Executive Officer of a corporation like Selkirk Shipping going to live once she’s sold her posh West Vancouver mansion?” Cathy wanted to know.

“For now, I’m happy right where I am,” Maria answered brusquely. “And I’m not about to become the President and CEO, as you’ve so blithely put it, of Selkirk Shipping. My sole executive decision was to hire a head-hunting company to find the best damned man for the job and pay him enough to do the CEO stuff properly and honestly.”

“Man?” Cathy protested.

“I meant that in the generic, gender-neutral sense, my dear. The ‘best damned person’ for the job lacks fervour and ‘the best damned woman’ sounds discriminatory…”

“Argh!” Cathy shook her head. “You’re hopeless!”

“Come on,” Maria laughed. “Let’s get out of here. I know a nice little coffee shop up in Dundarave Village. You can lecture me there on the politically correct terminology for gender based, affirmative hiring.”

Cathy grinned. Then frowned.

“What’s wrong?” Maria prodded.

“It’s stupid I know, but I can’t help thinking, the last time I was hustled out of here it was Laurence’s goon who had me by the elbow. They’re both dead now. This place feels like a mausoleum.”

“He tried to kill you, remember?”

“Yeah. And I hated the bastard. Still, it leaves you feeling pretty creepy inside.”

Maria put her arm around Cathy’s shoulders and steered her toward the door. “Let’s go,” she said.

~~~

“Where’s Toobee?”

“Last I checked he was curled up at the foot of Aaron’s bed. Did I ever tell you he has a foot fetish?”

“You don’t have to tell me. I know.” Maria made a face.

“Like dog, like master,” he joked, lifting her leg off his lap and kissing her ankle.

“Tell me, why do I feel like a chunk of Kentucky Fried Chicken right now?”

They laughed. He lowered her leg back onto the cushion of his lap and rubbed her calves. Maria smiled. It amazed him how easily they had slipped into a routine, and how quickly being ordinary seemed so special. Will it always be like this? Could they spend the rest of their lives together, or were they living inside a bubble whose transparent, distended boundary would eventually pop, letting the ‘real’ world in?

“I love you.”

Simple as that. He’d never been able to simply say it before, though. Instead he’d take his girlfriends to the theatre, the latest ‘trending’ bar, on weekend jaunts to posh resorts. He bought them flowers. Expensive dinners. Concert tickets. They had lots of fun. But he never, ever said I love you the way he said it to Maria, because it would have sounded fake to him, like a lie, even if it wasn’t. Even if, in fact, he had loved them. All of them.

But not the way I love Maria.

“Ready for bed?” she asked.

He lurched sideways, snuggling close beside her. He caressed her cheek and kissed her, a gentle, sensuous kiss triggering depth-charges of desire. There was no hesitancy to their love making. His hand skimmed lightly down her shoulder, over her breast, down her hip and thigh. Maria sighed. To evoke that kind of bliss in the woman he loved, that excited Victor.

They kissed again.

“Let’s go,” Maria said.

Holding hands, they padded up the stairs.

~~~

Leaves, branches, stones underfoot, mud. His own breath sucked in and blown out, like a panicked dog’s, his ribcage heaving. He ran.

From what?

That, he could not say. He should have been able to remember, but the thing that chased him was fear itself. It hadn’t taken recognizable form. All he knew was flight. He ran, and ran, the thing hunting him closing in by inches. Forever. There’d never been a time when this predator had not stalked him; never would be a time he would outrun his pursuer.

His only hope lay in the frantic calculus of flight: if you divide a space in half, half yet remains; and if you divide that space, half again yet remains. This paper-thin delusion separated him from absolute, paralyzing terror. How many creatures in full flight had believed instinctively in this theorem—believed in it right up to that final moment when fangs broke skin, grabbing haunch or neck to pull them down? Most every creature that had ever slithered or walked the face of the earth, every organism that had ever pulled itself out of the primordial muck to become thinking, seeing matter.

He knew the leaves and branches that tugged at him were phantasms. That didn’t lessen his fear. They were claws and fangs fashioned out of the material of consciousness, or perhaps the material behind consciousness, what shrinks called The Unconscious. Waking reality, it seemed to him, was a construct of latex, like a balloon. What lay beyond could sometimes press up against its distorting boundary becoming shapes as frightening as anything ‘real’.

Fucking stupid!

How could he be thinking these things when the hot, panting breath of the devil was on his neck? How, as a desperate child in full flight?

He caught sight of something high up in the canopy of the trees. Glimpses of the moon. It ran along beside him, a goddess couched in mist, watching the chase from the box of her chariot.

“Help me!” he pleaded.

Then a new certainty gripped him. He’d never seen the moon before that moment. He was remembering the goddess from the future he would become, of course. But that hadn’t happened yet. His future-to-be was juxtaposed, layered onto this dream-present like an effect you’d achieve in Photoshop. The moon had materialized out of nowhere—out of the night mist—and he recognized it instantly, even though the only light he’d ever seen was the effulgence from a naked bulb dangling over his mother’s bed… the only adumbration of this moon, a picture in a children’s book that had something to do with cows and silver spoons.

“Please help me!” he begged.

She remained cool and distant. For a moment he wished himself back there, back in the room he knew. Back, where a light bulb was just a light bulb, where no creatures from hell pursued, and where there was nothing to pray for.

He came to, curled up at the bottom of an utter blackness. He lay still, snuffling the air like a lost dog, then listened intently. A line of lumpy objects jabbed him in the back. Shoes. Maria’s shoes, he realized. Fuck! He must have crawled into her closet. How would he explain that! Maybe she was still asleep. Sneak back into bed, he thought. But just as he was about to slide the door open he heard the rustling of sheets and a dreamy yawn from the other side.

Fuck! he cursed. Trapped.

~~~

Sunlight. Slanting in through the bedroom window. Maria closed her eyes and enjoyed the warmth inside her blanket-cocoon. Victor was already up, brewing coffee, she hoped. He was staying over more frequently, but hadn’t moved in. They both liked the special aura of their nights together, which was accentuated by their nights apart. Laughed about the ‘romantic phase’ of their engagement. He sometimes brought coffee in to her so the two of them could spend a leisurely half-hour sipping and chatting, propped up on stacks of pillows against the headboard. She was happy.

And yet?

There were compartments to his life, places he went in dreams. She knew it had to do with the lacuna in his own story—the mysterious time before, he was trying to piece together from newspaper clippings and interviews. Maria sometimes felt she was competing with the ghost of Crystal Doer. Absurd, of course, and she blamed herself for thinking it. But Victor had made no denial, a frankness she found both reassuring and unsettling when she probed.

“It’s not something I can do anything about,” he’d apologize.

“Can’t do anything? Why the DNA analysis, then? Your meetings with the Doers? All your research? Your visit with Darlene Cassels?”

“You know what I mean, Mar.” His patience made her wince. “I can’t do anything to stop all this; the only way to ‘The End’ is through it. I have to find out who I was and what happened to me before I woke up in that hospital bed thirty years ago. My quest, if you want to call it that, might trigger a memory, that memory cascade into more memories—call it mental fission. I can’t think or research my way back; but if I trigger that right memory, I might be able to relive those lost years.”

What am I getting myself into?

Damaged goods. Maria rejected the phrase angrily. I love him. It was that simple. For the first time in years she was enjoying the sound of her own laughter.

Her eyes blinked open. Did I fall back to sleep? Still no Victor. No coffee. What was taking him so long? Maria sat up groggily, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. She’d have to track him down and complain about this lapse in service. The thought of teasing him revived her smile. Shoving her feet into her slippers, she hoisted herself upright and shuffled across the bedroom. Grabbing her housecoat off its hook, she steered herself into the hallway.

The door to Aaron’s room was opened a crack. She decided against peeking in, and avoided the upstairs bathroom for fear of waking him. He and Toobee would be up and at it soon enough, demanding her undivided attention.

“Love!” She called softly, padding down the stairs into the foyer.

No answer.

Sleepily, she sauntered into the kitchen, then through the dining room into the living room. No Victor. She scratched her head and pondered. His Porsche was parked out front. Gone for a walk? He’d never done that before, unless he was dragged out by the Toob, or me, or Aaron. Victor didn’t really like walking. The back yard? Enjoying the early morning frost, perhaps!

She gave up, the urgency of her morning ablutions taking precedence over the pleasures of a kiss and gripe. When she emerged, there he was, brewing coffee.

“Hey!” She hugged him from behind. “Where did you get to this morning?”

“Huh?” he said.

“I looked all over the house. Couldn’t find you anywhere.”

“Did you check under the bed?”

She was not amused.

“Sorry. Guess I was in the upper loo.”

Maria let the matter go. But she couldn’t remember a seam of light under the upstairs bathroom door. Had it been closed? How long had she lain in bed without hearing any sounds from that quadrant: no running water, no toilet flushing? He’d given her an answer. Or has he? she wondered.

~~~

Aaron rocketed ahead on his bike, Toob yapping furiously in hot pursuit. Maria and Cathy followed at hobbling speed along the Kits Beach walk. They had a couple of hours before Victor would arrive to whisk Maria away for an evening out with Mr. and Ms. Daly, then a night at Victor’s. No kid, no dog, just the two of them, compliments of Cathy Vermeer.

“Thanks for taking them tonight, Cath,” Maria said. “Aaron and the Toob are inseparable these days.”

“No problem. It’s not as if I had to scratch anything off my busy social agenda. It’ll be fun.”

Gone were the sunbathers and beach volleyball players. Fallen leaves crabbed across the path, driven by a chill ocean wind. Cathy was still using crutches, but had graduated to a walking cast, so a short stroll was possible, even beneficial, just to the concession stand and back, they’d agreed.

“I thought you had something going,” Maria probed.

For a while Cathy had been seeing another ‘mature student’ she’d met at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design, a high profile psychologist who’d taken up art because she wanted to translate ‘states of mind into vision maps’.

“Going, going, gone… maybe.”

“What happened?”

“Anika’s not sure the time is right.”

“What does that mean?”

“Maybe I don’t move in the right circles. You know, lowly photo tech with high profile shrink. There’s more than a bit of the snob in her. I’ve never had much tolerance for that kind of stuff, so I guess I’ve got doubts too. Besides, she hasn’t come out yet, so it would be one of those hide and seek affairs—pretending it’s a girls’-night-out when you bump into friends, making sure there’s no evidence of co-habitation, that sort of thing.”

“I’m sorry, Cath. How do you feel about her?”

“Ambivalent desperation, I guess. Let’s talk about something else.”

They walked on in gloomy silence, Cathy swinging through the aluminum crutches with practised determination.

“How ‘bout you and your legal beagle?” she asked after a while.

Maria sighed unhappily. “I don’t know, Cath. I love him—can’t imagine being without him—but there’s three of us in the relationship right now: me, him and the ghost of Crystal Doer. Until we can get that sorted, I just can’t say where things might go. I mean, it’s bad enough having one potential mother-in-law, but two, especially when one of them is a teen ghost? That’s crazy-making.”

Cathy looked surprised, then angry. “Why doesn’t he go to the police, Mar? He could be charged with obstruction of justice or something, couldn’t he, knowing what he does but not telling the cops?”

Maria shrugged. “He’s afraid that if he does tell them about his relationship to Crystal Doer he’ll never be able to get at the real truth.”

“That doesn’t make sense!”

“Well, actually it does. Once the cops get involved they’ll shut him out. He won’t be able to get within ten miles of the case. He thinks Crystal was lured into a relationship. Essentially this guy kept her as a sex slave—that’s what Vic has been able to piece together from recovered memory frags… That’s his father, Cath. A pedo-rapist. And Vic’s mother was the victim. He has nightmares. It’s awful… I shouldn’t be talking about it.”

“You have to, Mar, or it will drive you insane. What nightmares?”

“It’s really bad… He remembers his mother being raped, repeatedly, while he was locked in a closet in some kind of cell where this guy kept them prisoners. I’m scared of what might happen when he breaks out of there.”

They stopped and hugged. The harsh wind off the bay chafed Maria’s cheeks and whipped Cathy’s hair into her eyes. Was it cold enough, she wondered, to freeze my tears?

“I love him, but I don’t know if I can stay with him. Don’t know how much damage was done by this pervert, and what Vic’s going to do if he ever finds him. That’s what he wants: to find the jerk and Crystal too, if she’s alive. That’s why he won’t go to the cops.”

Aaron whooped, cycling by in the opposite direction like a fiend, Toobee in hot pursuit.

“Maybe you should take things into your own hands, Mar?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, never mind what Vic’s going to do if he ever finds this guy; what’s will his pervert father do to Vic? That’s what I’d be worried about.”

Why didn’t I think of that?

Maria shook her head, though. “I can’t go to the police. It would be a complete betrayal. He’d never forgive me.”

“Yeah, but will you ever forgive yourself if he gets himself in trouble?”

“I don’t know, Cathy. I just don’t know.”

~~~

An hour in their company and Maria felt as if she’d known the Dalys all her life. She found herself thinking what great in-laws they would make. Can’t help it. Nora obviously adored her; Richard treated her with the difference due a monarch. Normally that kind of attention made her squirm, but with the Dalys it seemed so, well… natural.

And their house! Compared to the Taj or to Victor’s designer condo, it was like stepping into a comfort zone, a place where you were supposed to kick off your shoes, shuck all worldly cares, and laugh at what the neighbours might think. Maybe even laugh with them!

Before dinner, she and Victor walked up McSpadden to Commercial and around the block. She imagined him as a child, not much older than Aaron, growing up in this neighbourhood, playing ball hockey with his friends, their shouts ringing up and down the street. Or heading up to Commercial to buy pop and candies at the corner store, mingling with the aging hippies, radicals, immigrants, gays and lesbians that patronized the European delis, pool halls and coffee shops up and down The Drive.

“You’re a lucky man, Victor,” she said, drawing him close as they cut through the park next to the Daly’s house. “They’re wonderful; this is wonderful.”

“Yeah, I guess it is,” he agreed.

But he seemed strangely subdued. “What’s the matter?”

“How lucky can a guy get, Maria? I’m beginning to feel like the lead character in a Greek tragedy, the one who’s about to get smacked by the gods for being so ridiculously happy.”

They laughed, then went in for dinner.

“So, did he show you all his favourite haunts?” Richard asked.

“Oh, I’m sure there’s a few he left out.”

“I’m sure there’s a few we’ve never heard about ourselves,” Nora agreed.

“Hey! What is this? Gang up on Victor night?”

Maria enjoyed the dinner: chicken Tetrazzini served with a home-grown kale salad and a selection of red and white wines, followed up with cheesecake and gourmet organic coffee. Sated, they relaxed around the table, trying to summon the energy to clean up, not wanting the postprandial lull to end.

“I’m so looking forward to meeting Aaron,” Nora said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had children in the house. You mustn’t hesitate to leave him with us from time to time if you and Victor want a free day.”

“Mom!” Victor cautioned.

She glanced his way, a glint of mischief in her eyes, then said to Maria, “Don’t you listen to him. He has no idea how exhausting it can be raising children, and how important it is to get a day off every now and again. We’re here if you need us.”

Victor rolled his eyes.

Table cleared and dishes done, he led Maria up into his old attic room. It seemed a shrine to her, as if the Dalys half expected him to move back in someday. A single bed occupied one side of the dormer space, a desk and shelves the other. The window looked over McSpadden Street. Again, she sensed the spirit of a young boy growing up happy.

“It’s like living in a tree fort!” she said. “It must have been great for a kid.”

He nodded. “I never knew how lucky I was. Kids usually don’t, I guess.” A note of regret coloured his mood. “Until now I’ve never looked beyond Nora and Richard as my family. Like I said, we all knew there was a past outside this home, but it was like a black hole that sucked up any evidence of its own existence. We were secretly terrified of getting too close to the edge. Now I’m heading straight for it, Maria. I feel like I’m already in its gravity and it’s going to pull me away from Mom and Dad and everything I’ve ever known.”

“Then stop!” She joined him at the window. “It’s not too late. Fire up your reverse thrusters, Captain, and get the hell out of there.”

They looked out on the darkening street.

“If I do that, hon, the black hole will still be there. It will sap the vitality out of my life, and yours, and Aaron’s.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he stopped her with a glance.

“You know I love you, Maria. Won’t ever stop loving you, no matter what.”

“What do you mean, ‘No matter what…’?”

“I don’t know. But there’s no escape. I have to drive through this to the other side.”

He told her about his fear of the Salmon River gully, how he panicked just thinking of the place. “It’s as if the ground is saturated with some contaminate too horrible for words, and it rises up in the mist. I can’t get away from it, Maria. Can’t breathe. And no matter where I go, it will choke me. I have to track that stink to its source. It’s my only hope.”

She hugged him. Hard. They lingered at the window, looking out on his childhood street. But even here, in the refuge of his room, she sensed a permeating fear, an explosive potential in the air.

“Ready to go?” he coaxed.

Maria nodded. But she didn’t really want to leave what, for her, had so quickly become a home away from home. She wanted to stay, and exorcise its ghosts. 

~~~

If you ever do see him, you must not look directly into his face. It will enrage him.

What does that mean, ‘enrage’?

You know the shows we see on TV about the wild beasts in Africa, lions and things?

Yes.

When they fight, that’s what it is to be enraged.

Do you think I will ever see him?

You may one day.

And what should I do, if I can’t look into his face?

Perhaps you should look at the toes of his boots and try to figure out what he is from there.

He laughed. She smiled.

I could put anything into his boots.

Like what?

A kangaroo.

She joined in his laughter. It made him happy to make her happy, even if only for a moment.

A rhinoceros.

She mussed his hair and laughed some more.

A giraffe. An elephant. A walrus…

Walruses don’t have feet.

A dinosaur.

Okay! Enough! she said, trying to wind him down. We’re going to have to watch something other than nature shows for a while. Just remember what I said.

How could he forget. There wasn’t a single chink in the evenly stacked brickwork of their cell for the littlest thought to wriggle out or in through. The cell was overcrowded with thoughts, darting about like frightened birds, bumping into each other and the walls again and again.

Air came in through a vent in the ceiling, light through a wire attached to the naked bulb overhead, television through another wire. The jailor could switch the light on and off at will, creating day or night. If the light flashed urgently it meant he was coming to do whatever it was they did outside the closet door, and Emanon would have to scurry inside his cell-within-a-cell like a cockroach. That was the rule, the Eleventh Commandment, Crystal called it.

Do you and him fight?

His question caught her off guard, as if she hadn’t realized he could hear them out there tussling and grunting.

If I had the teeth and claws of a lioness I would kill him, Em. I would sink my fangs into the wrinkled flesh of his neck and tear out his jugular; I would scratch out his eyes; scoop out his guts… But I don’t have the teeth and claws of a lioness, so I am his victim. There is nothing you or I can do about that right now, Emanon, except hope and survive…

She was about to say more, but the light flicked off and on suddenly.

Quick! she commanded. Inside!

But I don’t want to!

Don’t argue! She shoved him into the wardrobe and latched the door shut. 

A moment later their tormentor clomped into the room. The muffled rumble of his angry voice reached Emanon though the ornate cabinet door and the shroud of surrounding garments. Then the sound of flesh colliding with flesh and her stifled cry.

“No!” Emanon banged against the closet door with his frail body. No! he roared, sprouting claws, teeth, muscles, and a murderous will.

~~~

Sleep talk. They’d agreed Maria shouldn’t wake him when it happened; instead she let his dreams run their course, listening for snippets of information emerging from the other side. But they frightened her, these squirming, pleading tantrums of a terrified child.

This one’s different, though.

When they got home from Nora and Richard’s, they went straight to bed, made love, then slipped into contented slumber. She’d awakened to his restless energy at 3:47am according to the digital clock on the night table.

He seemed almost chatty to begin with, the way Aaron sometimes got when he wanted to connect by entertaining. Except a nervous edge inflected the boy’s voice, as if he and Crystal might be interrupted at any moment. It’s the sound of someone talking while listening over his shoulder, she thought. He was trying his best to make the conversation absorbing, a dialogue with weight and momentum. But the only mode he had in his childish kit was comedy.

Maria propped herself on her elbow and watched. In the feeble light she could make out fleeting emotions, playing themselves out in Victor’s face. Laughter, puzzlement, anger—they flowed through him, currents of emotional electricity. He laughed. Conspiratorially.

Then suddenly, fear! She’d expected it, like you would the climax of a horror movie. Felt her anticipation had somehow summoned it. “But I don’t want to go!” he shouted, his body stiffening. “I don’t want to!”

Then he was up, stumbling through the darkened room.

“Victor!” she cried, frightened by his erratic, jerking flight.

He lurched toward the closet at the foot of their bed, pawing at its sliding door. Maria kicked off the blankets, darted swiftly across the room, rolled the door aside. He dove in, cowering on the closet floor, curled into a ball.

End it! Stop it now!

Maria hesitated. Then summoning her resolve, slid the closet door shut. He followed a script she knew must be unraveling in his head. Panting, she stepped back, as if she’d tripped the timer on an explosive device.

At first silence. Then whimpering. Then…

“No!” Victor roared. The door burst off its rails, crashing into the foot of the bed, its mirror shattering.

“Victor!” Maria screamed. “Victor!”

She switched on the light.

Confused, blinking, he oriented himself amidst the wreckage. “My god!” he groaned, meeting her frightened gaze. “My god!”

Maria hesitated an instant, then clambered over the bed. Rushing to him, where he stood, trembling like a naked child. His sobs coursed through her.

“It’s okay, love,” she soothed. “It’s okay.”

“Look at me! Look at this!” He scanned the wreckage.

She quaked, holding in her anguish.

“I could have hurt you.”

Me and Aaron. She couldn’t help thinking.

“Where were you, hon? Can you tell me?”

He straightened. Sniffed. “They locked me in a closet Maria, whenever he came in to rape my mother. She was talking to me about how I should behave if I ever met him… the etiquette of meeting my dad, the rapist, the monster. She was so afraid, Mar… for me, not herself. We were talking and suddenly the light flashed…”

“The light?”

“He’d flick the light on and off to let her know when he was coming—I guess so she could get ready and lock me away. We’d been joking around, making fun of him…”

“What, Victor? What is it?”

“It’s like he knew what we were saying. Like he had a microphone concealed somewhere in the room. As soon as he barged in he started beating her. I could hear everything, every blow. I wanted to get at him, kill him. I started hammering at the door, trying to beat it down…”

“Then?”

“I woke up here. To this.” He glanced at the bent, splintered closet door. “I’m trying to catch a ghost, instead I’m terrorizing you.”

Damaged goods, she thought.

“I’m not going to leave you,” she said.

“And Aaron? What about him?”

“You love him. And he loves you, Vic. We have to protect that.”

He looked stunned, helpless. “Are you sure?”

“You’re out now,” she said emphatically.

You won’t have to break down that fucking door ever again.

“Yes. I’m sure… And there’s something else I’m sure of…”

Victor watched, waited pleadingly.

“What?”

“We’ve got to go up that river, Vic. You and me. We have to do it together.”

Astonished, he cocked his head and gazed at her.

“I know what you’ve done for me and Aaron,” she said, quaking. “You don’t have to prove anything to me. So let me help. There’s nobody else in the world for me. You’re it, mister. We can’t let this monster destroy us.”

He wrapped his arms around her and they clung to each other tightly for a long moment. Survivors of a sudden wreck. Nothing can separate us. She knew that now. No matter what, nothing would ever come between them.

~~~

The intercom buzzed. “Mrs. Doer is here to see you,” Vanessa said, puzzled.

“She’s here? Now?”

“Uh-huh.”

Jesus! He had a backlog of work to get done, but every time he turned to it something else came up. A part of him cringed at the prospect of meeting his grandmother; that, and the feeling that he was toppling into a self-dug pit. “Send her in,” he said, hoping he could put on a passable bright and cheerful act.

A few seconds later his office door opened, just wide enough to admit his grandmother’s slight frame. Victor sprang up, his grouchiness obliterated, hurried around the desk and ushered her to a chair, the same chair she had fainted in when she’d learned about their true kinship a few weeks earlier.

“I’m sorry to stop in unannounced like this,” she was saying. “But I didn’t know if I could go through with it, you see, until I actually got here.” She sounded disoriented, like the survivor of a plane crash, trying to figure out where she was and how she’d got there. “It’s stupid, really. I didn’t make an appointment because I hate not keeping them, so instead I’ve barged in like the Queen of Sheba…”

“I’m glad you’ve come. Please, don’t apologize. Can I get you something? A glass of water? Coffee?”

She shook her head. “The funny thing is, now that I’m here I don’t have any idea how to begin. You’ve thrown our lives into chaos, Victor—it feels funny calling you that, but how can I call my own grandson Mr. Daly?”

“I hope you can get used to using my name, Barbara, and that someday it might not be too awkward for me to call you Grandmother. I hope we’ll be able to say hello Vic and goodbye Gran without even thinking about it.”

She glanced up at him. He was perched on the edge of his desk.

“I honestly can’t say where all this is going,” she sighed. “If Albert knew I was here, he’d be angry. He’s not prepared to accept the situation yet.”

“What do you mean?” Victor did his best to sound puzzled, not indignant. “Is he rejecting the DNA analysis or renouncing me as his grandson?”

“He’s a good man. A decent man. But he’s built his house upon the rocks, as the Bible commands, and that can make change difficult.” She allowed a hint of a smile. “He will do what he thinks right. That’s all I can say. Unfortunately, that may not be what you think is right, and it may not be what I think is right. He’s a man of strong convictions, quietly spoken… a gentle man, in every sense of the word.”

“I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for you two, dealing with Crystal’s disappearance all these years.”

Barbara closed her eyes, taking a deep breath, then releasing it slowly. “I honestly don’t know if we have dealt with it, or even survived it, actually. I’d helped people before with their grief, and I’ve helped them since, but you cannot understand the pain of losing a child until it happens to you. Imagine taking the sun out of the centre of our universe—how everything would fly apart, the vast emptiness that would take its place. Then imagine it’s your fault the sun has died. The pain is infinite and eternal. Honest to God, I’ve never said this to Albert, but I don’t see how I am ever going to get over this pain, even in heaven. Whoever took Crystal from us destroyed our lives.

“But it would be some relief to know what happened to her?”

She paused, looking up at him anxiously.

“I don’t have any clear answers, Barbara. Not yet. My memories of Crystal are sketchy. I can’t even be sure what’s real and what’s imagined. But I do know for sure she was alive right up ’til the time I was found in Langley…”

“Found? What do you mean by that, Victor?”

She doesn’t know! How could I have been so stupid? Victor blushed. He’d never had a chance to tell them that part of his story. So he explained what had happened in the Salmon River gully all those years ago, how he had been wandering around in the fog, how he had been hit by Darlene Cassels, how he hadn’t remembered any of it until he’d recognized Crystal’s photograph on the evening news, and how fragments of memory were surfacing every day now… He spared her the horrifying details.

“I wasn’t dumped on that road, Barbara, at least not by Crystal. She loved me,” he concluded. “The only reason she kept on living was to love me.”

“Which means?” Barbara raised her hand to her lips, trembling.

“No! No!” he consoled, suddenly aware of the implications of what he’d said, the grim logic. “I didn’t mean that. All I meant was she lived for me while I was with her, and would have done anything to free me from that dungeon. She was brave, Barbara, and through it all managed to convey a mother’s love to the condemned child that had been forced on her.”

“So, you weren’t put up for adoption, then?”

“No!” he said. “Not by her. Somehow I either got away or was taken from Crystal and abandoned. For a brief period I was a ward of the state. Then I was adopted by my mom and dad and christened Victor Daly.”

He sensed her disappointment. Oh my God! She had probably come wanting him to sign onto an adoption registry in the hopes that Crystal might have done the same. She thought that, through him, they might be able to find their daughter.

I’ve quashed that hope.

“I’m sorry, Barbara…”

“No, no.” She waived off his condolence. “You’ve been very forthright, Victor, and generous with your time, but I really should be going.”

“You know,” he stalled thoughtfully, “there is something we can do that might help us find Crystal.” Barbara watched, waited. “We could register with an outfit like Ancestry.com. If she is alive, she will be looking for us. We might be able to make contact that way.”

Barbara frowned, puzzled. “But she knows where her home is, Victor,” she said. “Surely if she were free to do something like you suggest, she would already have contacted me and Albert?”

“Of course!” he flustered. “Sorry.”

He resisted the urge to help her out of her chair, and kept a polite distance walking her to the door. “Will you allow me to keep in touch?” he asked as she was leaving.

“I can only speak for myself. As I’ve already explained, Albert is not ready. I do intend to get to know you, Victor, but I can’t say what’s possible. We may not like each other very much, and I have to be honest, right now I cannot be around you without being painfully aware of Crystal… That’s the terrible truth. It’s all such a shock.”

“I understand.”

She paused, turning toward him. “We promised when we last saw you to maintain strict confidentiality about anything we learned in your office, Victor. At least I did on our behalf.”

“Yes,” he said uneasily.

“I don’t know if we can keep that promise or that it was fairly extracted.”

“What do you mean?”

“You tricked us, really. We didn’t know in making it that we would be forced to withhold evidence crucial to an ongoing police investigation. Albert does not feel bound by it.”

“If he does go to the police, I think he will lessen our chances of finding out what happened to Crystal, not improve them.”

“How so?”

“I think Crystal’s abductor—my biological father—will clam up tighter than Fort Knox once he knows the police are onto him. But if I can reach him first… who knows.”

“I must go,” she said.

“Do you understand what I’m saying, Barbara?”

“Yes.”

“Then there is no contract between us, not even a verbal one. You and Albert have to make up your own minds about what to do, and I must learn to understand.”

A fleeting look of exasperation pulled her features into a frown, then Barbara regained her composure. “I like you. I don’t like what you do, but I like you. I can see you are a good man. That’s the best I can say for now.”

Victor wanted to hug this slight, brave woman. He wished he could say something to dissipate the forces that pushed them apart. But it was too soon, he realized. A lifetime might not be long enough to overcome their fate.

~~~

Perhaps if he waited long enough something would happen to make up his mind for him. Maybe an officer would march out of the Langley RCMP detachment and say, “Good afternoon, sir. Can I help you?” Then he’d have to do what he’d come to do, wouldn’t he? That would surely be a sign.

But no police officer emerged: only people who looked grumpy, afraid and shifty. Albert was not used to associating with such people. He didn’t blame them for who they were, but shunned the very notion that he might be like them, the types who had to visit the RCMP in order to make a statement or plead a case. The sort who had to do with the authorities.

Not that he disliked the police. They were necessary. But his obedience was to a higher order. Criminal law was but a faint, distorted echo of God’s law, imposed on sinners and non-believers. Without it, society would disintegrate into a weltering cesspool of tribal factions, and Christianity itself would be threatened. It was still the law of the swamp though, not a covenant between God and His faithful.

So he hated having to appeal to it.

But if you built a cathedral in a mire, it would soon tilt and sink. That’s why God had established the civil laws: so Christians could turn their faces toward heaven and their backs to the savagery of The Beast. It gave atheists and sinners the structures of decent human interaction without the reward of saving grace. The civil law turned something sacred and beautiful into a form of moral bartering and imprisonment.

Why did Crystal renounce her faith?

The question zapped him, a capacitor of remorse that released its stinging charge whenever he forgot, for even a moment, what had happened. He should have grabbed Crystal that morning thirty-five years ago and made her go to church. Should have torn her from the clutches of the devil and dragged her, kicking and screaming if necessary, into God’s light. He had failed her, and crushing guilt was the penance he must suffer for the rest of this days. He’d brought it on himself. He’d sinned by not keeping Crystal in the ways of the Lord. Because of his waffling, evil had prevailed.

Barbara disputed this interpretation. The evil that had befallen them was ugly evidence of the flux and flow of the devil’s power in the world. They could not be held accountable for it; they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She rejected the suggestion that they had somehow drawn God’s wrath upon themselves—that they had sinned and Crystal’s disappearance had been the consequence. “What kind of God are you talking about, Albert?” she’d shouted…

Barbara never shouted!

She didn’t understand the fullness of God’s love or the depths of His knowing, and Albert couldn’t make her. So, he had to understand and sometimes act for the two of them. He was certain of one thing: even if he and Barbara couldn’t make sense of the events in their lives, God could. There was no such thing as unknown or unknowable to God, no such thing as an accident.

And God was telling him he must go to the police with this new information about Crystal, the fact that she’d had a son, and that her son was now a lawyer, living in Vancouver.

They need to know who Victor Daly is.

Straightening his shoulders, Albert shoved open the cab door and stepped out of his pickup. Barbara would be angry. He accepted that. Victor Daly—Albert bridled at the notion of calling Victor his grandson—had falsely procured their promise to keep secret what he had shown them in his office that day. The promise carried no weight in the eyes of God. Even by the lax moral standards of the atheists, Victor Daly’s contract with them would have been deemed null and void.

Purposefully, he strode into the Langley headquarters of the RCMP. The case of their missing daughter, which had been cold so many years, was about to be reopened. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, he recited. What they had learned about Victor Daly and Crystal had to be passed on to the authorities.

~~~

“He shoots! He scores! Yahoo!”

All hell broke loose out in the hallway. Victor, Larry and Aaron yodelling like fools, chanting the Hockey Night in Canada anthem while Toob barked and howled in chorus.

“Hey! Keep it down, you guys!” Maria complained. “And if you put any dings or scratches in that floor I’m going to use those sticks on you.”

The game had been Larry’s idea. He’d gone to a dollar store and bought five miniature hockey sticks and a couple of plastic pucks. The girls opted to stay in the kitchen and slurp wine rather than join in the shenanigans.

“Aw, come on!” Larry had urged. “The least you can do is ref.”

They demurred and fifteen goals, three fights and several loud disputes later Maria was glad they’d let discretion be the better part of valour. “They never grow up.” She grinned, nodding in the direction of bedlam.

“I heard that!” Victor shouted.

“You were meant to.”

“Snob!”

Thwack! “He shoots! He scores!” Aaron whooped.

“No fair! The goal is waived! Your mother distracted me. You two are in cahoots!”

As the game degenerated into another round of shouting, arguing, barking and laughing, Maria and Cathy retreated into the dining room, farther removed from the melee. They had been talking quietly about Victor’s ‘episode’ in the closet.

“Christ. What do you think happened!” Cathy shook her head doubtfully once they were settled in.

“The details are sketchy, Cath, but Vic thinks his biological mother was held captive and repeatedly raped by a guy who must be his biological father. Victor spent half his life in a closet, while the old goat raped Crystal Doer.”

“Old goat?”

“Victor figures that much by the sound of the guy’s voice.”

“Are you and Aaron safe? This is mind-fucking shit, Mar.”

“It’s scary. But he wouldn’t hurt me or Aaron. I know it.”

“Not when he’s himself. But what about these episodes. We’re talking about serious psychic disturbances here. Category five mental hurricanes.”

True. But Maria rallied to Victor’s defence. “It’s not like he’s a werewolf or anything, Cath. It’s a nightmare triggered by a horrible series of revelations from his past. It’s centered in that place out in Langley, that gully. Something terrible happened there, something too horrible to remember.”

“You’re avoiding the issue, my dear.”

“No, I’m not! I know the risk,” Maria snapped.

Cathy suppressed a hurt look, taking a sip of wine.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to come out like that.”

“Of course you did. You’re a she-wolf, and you’re afraid. It’s a painful conversation, Mar… You know I like him too. If my sexual compass wasn’t so erratic and you weren’t such a dear friend, I might be interested in him myself. But I never know which direction the needle’s pointing: toward the Goddess of Ogden Street or the Adonis of False Creek.”

Maria laughed. “What about Adonis’s friend?”

“Larry? The thought never entered my mind!”

“I don’t think the lack of interest is mutual, my dear.”

Don’t play dumb with me, my pet, Maria smirked.

“Oh, my god! Where’s the powder room? I need to gird myself for romantic action…”

“Don’t,” Maria put her hand on Cathy’s. They were facing each other across the corner of the dining room table. “Just be yourself, Cath.”

“This is who I am. If I wasn’t so bad at it, I’d be a stand-up comic not an oh-so-sincere Emily Carr student of the arts. Self-deprecation is in my shtick, hon—it’s my best asset. I’m pretty sure it’s what Larry likes about me… I know it’s what I like about him.”

Go for it, babe.

Leaning across the table, they hugged.

~~~

Victor hurried through the Vancouver Court House lobby, making a beeline for the Smithe Street exit. So much to think about; so much to do; so little time. He felt rumpled and rushed. They’d stayed up too late the night before at Maria’s

It surprised him that Larry and Cathy had hit it off so well. All evening he’d sensed something between them, but when Larry offered Cath a lift home, Victor knew for sure something was up. Is she his type? Victor didn’t think so, but he shunned predictions. Who could have guessed even a couple of months ago that he himself would be ready to give up his vaunted bachelorhood! He smiled ruefully, pushing through the glass doors onto the street. He and his best friend would have a lot to talk about next time they sat down for a couple of pints. That’s for sure.

A bitter wind gusted down Smithe. Victor pulled his hat tighter onto his head and turned up his coat collar. Perhaps a cab back to the office would be in order, he thought, considering the elements and the weight of his briefcase. He looked up the street and, not seeing any, decided to forge ahead on foot. The walk would do him good. There was a Starbucks at Robson and Howe where he could take refuge for a few minutes if need be.

He plodded on, thinking about another wild card that had emerged the night before. Maria was as determined as ever to explore the Salmon River with him. “This weekend,” she’d insisted. That would be tomorrow! She’d already made arrangements to have Cathy sit with Aaron, and Cathy had invited Larry over to keep them company. They planned on carving pumpkins for Halloween.

Did he regret telling Maria about the Salmon River ravine? No. But she couldn’t understand how powerful his reaction had been that day, looking up from the bridge. Would he be able to go down the embankment? Push upstream into terra incognita? It might just as well have been a tributary of the Amazon, teeming with piranha and anacondas, as a burbling brook in suburban Vancouver…

“Mr. Daly?”

Startled, Victor swiveled round to confront the brusque voice that summoned over his shoulder.

“Sorry to bother you, sir,” the man said. “My name’s Tom Cochran, Inspector Tom Cochran, with the Lower Mainland Integrated Crime Unit.” He held up his badge for Victor to see. “I’d like to talk to you for a minute, if I may.”

“About?”

“Crystal Doer.”

No, Victor thought. He didn’t want to talk to this burly, grey-haired cop about the strange case of Crystal Doer. The man carried himself with an air of meticulous confidence, like someone used to getting the right answers to the right questions.

“How can I help?”

“We’ve been led to believe that you may have new evidence to shed on an outstanding case, sir. You do know who Crystal Doer is?”

“She’s my mother, Inspector. You know that already, don’t you?”

“Is your mother? Do you have information as to Crystal’s whereabouts?”

It seemed odd to Victor that the inspector referred to Crystal by her first name, almost as if she was a friend. “I have no idea where my mother might be, or even if she’s alive. I’ve only just learned she is my mother, Inspector. I’m still trying to figure things out myself.”

“When did you last see her?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Your source may have told you that I recognized her from a newscast that aired on the CBC a while back. I managed to confirm our relationship through DNA analysis. There’s no doubt I’m Crystal Doer’s son.”

“Can you provide us with that documentation?”

Victor agreed. “That’s the only reliable piece of evidence I can offer, Inspector,” he said. “I don’t have any clear memories of her, or where we were for the time I was with her.”

“You were found abandoned in the Salmon River gully at age four or five, Mr. Daly. Do you remember anything leading up to that incident?”

“Bits and pieces. I am beginning to recall things—feelings mostly, nothing that would be of much use to your investigation. I suffered complete amnesia with regard to the accident and any time before. That hasn’t really changed. And I can’t be sure my recall relates to anything real.”

“You said you are experiencing ‘feelings’ from before, though. What kind of feelings, Victor?”

Again, the familiarity. Victor knew the police sometimes befriended witnesses as a ploy. This doesn’t feel like that. An aura of genuine kindness emanated from Inspector Cochran, as if he were Victor’s godfather or long lost uncle. Who is this guy? he wondered. Do I know him?

“Fear mostly,” Victor said, having considered the inspector’s question.

“So, you were in some kind of danger?”

Victor described his recurring dream of being locked in the closet, overhearing the sounds from outside: the tread of boots, the cell door being unbolted and opened, the muted cries of his mother, the thud of flesh on flesh…

“Crystal was being raped?”

“Yes.”

“Repeatedly?”

“Yes.”

“But you never saw her assailant?”

“No. At least I can’t remember having seen him.”

“And you believe this man was your father?”

“Is my father, Inspector,” Victor corrected.

“Jesus,” Inspector Cochran stared hard, as if the disturbing visions they had talked about might be real, whirling around inside Victor like holograms in a jar. “Have you had any other dreams?” he asked.

“Yes. One other. It’s my last recovered memory from before the accident. I’m outside, alone, running through dense underbrush. The branches are clawing and slashing at me and I’m scared shitless. I have no idea how this vision fits in with the others. It’s a dream sequence, Inspector—as coherent as coloured ink on water.”

“Do you remember being in a vehicle of any kind, Victor? A van or a car?”

“No.”

“Any other details about that last memory?”

“I remember seeing the moon through gaps in the trees.”

“What phase was the moon in?”

“Pardon?”

“Was it a crescent moon? Half? Gibbous? Full?”

“Full moon,” Victor answered. “And it was veiled in cloud.”

“So, it was cloudy that night?”

“Above the fog, yes,” Victor said.

“And where was the moon in the sky?”

“To my left, over my shoulder, just visible above the ridge and the trees.”

He knew the importance of Inspector Cochran’s question. The detective would go back and compare Victor’s description of events to the lunar calendar and weather on the date of the accident. A match would be significant. It was also significant, he suddenly realized, that he’d seen the moon at all. It meant he must have come down from the flats into the Salmon River gully and the fog. Victor studied the police officer with heightened respect. Shrewd, he thought.

“I’ll need you to sign a statement,” the detective said, handing Victor his card. “Can I ask you to come in next week?”

Victor sighed. Suddenly two police investigations had moved from the dormant onto the active list: the disappearance of Crystal Doer from her Abbotsford home some thirty-five years ago; and the abandonment of a child in the Salmon River ravine five years later… and Victor was the incontrovertible missing link between them.

“I’ll see you next week, then?” Inspector Cochran repeated.

“Huh?”

“To give your statement?”

“Of course. Yes, I’ll see you next week.”

“Maybe sooner if you remember anything else?”

“Maybe sooner,” Victor agreed, desperate to go…

Then he remembered. “Cochran?” he said out loud.

Inspector Tom Cochran raised his eyebrows and waited.

“You’re the cop who interviewed Darlene Cassels at Langley Memorial, right?”

Inspector Cochran nodded curtly. “Yes,” he said.

~~~

Richard took Victor fishing once. He borrowed some gear from friends, bought some tackle and boots, and read a skinny book that promised to unlock the secrets of the river. They came back bedraggled and empty-handed after a miserable day stumping around in the rain, untangling lines from trees and emptying wet boots on slimy rocks.

“At least you had your chance,” Maria said over her shoulder, making her way down the embankment into the Salmon River ravine. “I never even got the opportunity to stick a worm on a hook, and I’m not about to try it any time soon. Empathy gets in the way.”

“For the worm, or the trout?”

“Both of the above. But mostly for the fisher.”

They’d talked about past experiences during the drive from Vancouver. It had been one of those distracted conversations that chattered around the edges of dark subjects. Maria said her family never went on camping holidays, and since there were no rivers running through their East Vancouver neighbourhood, she had very few memories involving water. “My dad did take us to the docks one year for some kind of company party, which he used as an opportunity to remind us how shitty his job was,” she said cheerfully.

For the Salmon River excursion they’d each bought a pair of gumboots. Victor felt like a clumsy robot, thudding down the steep dirt trail. You couldn’t move your ankles properly was the problem, so you had to clunk along stiffly. He didn’t complain, because Maria was putting on a show of being unencumbered. The boots had been her idea. He would have preferred sneakers, even soggy sneakers.

Their winter jackets added to the robotic special-effect. “I feel like I’m suited up for a Mars mission,” he joked.

“We don’t know how long we’ll be down here. Better to be overdressed than shivering like wet dogs. Take your jacket off and tie it around your waist if it’s too cumbersome.”

His impressions from the bottom of the ravine were not what he’d expected. He hadn’t realized how deep it was, or how the bridge would tower above them on its slender concrete struts. Looking down from the deck, everything had been foreshortened. A tributary stream flowed into the Salmon River from the east, the combined flow spilling over a little weir, then continuing on. So far, no flashbacks. If anything, he felt strangely detached, like a scientist conducting some kind of obscure study into the stream ecology of abused minds. Am I missing something? What?

Perhaps Maria’s company altered the energy of the place. Alone, would he have been more susceptible to its haunting influences? She makes me feel safe?

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. Fine.”

“Which way?”

Standing in the gravel pan behind the weir, Victor surveyed the steep, densely forested terrain hemming them in. There were only two choices, really: up the narrow tributary, or up the slightly wider source of the Salmon River. Downstream did not even occur to him. I came this way. He sloshed up the main channel. “It was night time. Imagine thrashing and splashing through the underbrush in the dark as a frightened five-year-old.”

They had considered mounting their expedition at night, but not only would it have been difficult blundering up the brush-choked channel in the dark, they would also have drawn more attention. Even in broad daylight, Maria’s parked SUV drew curious glances; what would anybody be doing snooping around the Salmon River gully after dark? The real argument against going nocturnal didn’t need stating.

Victor stopped.

“What’s wrong?”

“This isn’t working. I’m not in the right headspace.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have to regress, become that little boy again, Aaron’s age, running through this forest alone, at night, terrified…” Why am I running? What’s chasing me?

He closed his eyes, listened.

The ghosts, they’re here. It’s just that we’ve learned not to be afraid. We wander about in a civilized bubble, pretending there’s nothing to fear, that we’re protected by our habits and ideals—that we’ve somehow got beyond natural rights, declawed and defanged the world, when in fact…

“What are you hearing?”

“It’s close. I know it is.”

“What’s close?”

“The starting point, Maria. The place the nightmare begins.”

He cocked his head. But what he listened for remained just out of range, like the sound of a siren a long, long way off you’re not quite sure is real. It did have direction, though, this notion of sound, and he set off briskly, pushing up the narrowing channel purposefully. The branches closed in on them, guarding their domain—the feral habitat of raccoons and foxes, unused to the tramp of boots. Victor forged ahead, crashing through the tangle of clawing blackberry wands, clambering over logs and boulders, afraid the impetus might evaporate before he could catch up to it.

Of course, the sane thing to do would be give it up: forget this quest, return to his successful practice, devote himself to Maria and Aaron. I could make that choice. Maria would marry him, life would be good. All nature was shouting stop! Turn back, abandon this madness. But to obey would leave an abscess at the heart of his being, a place he’d been too terrified to go, which would nullify any chance of complete joy.

They broke into a small clearing, where the stream widened, gurgling over a gravel bed. Victor shivered, as if he’d opened a freezer door, letting absolute zero out. Maria watched, waited. He couldn’t say what triggered his phantom memory—whispering trees, trickling stream—but he knew this place. It wasn’t the starting point, but it was certainly a coordinate on his backward journey. I made a life and death decision here…

“My life, her death!”

God! No!

“What are you seeing?” Maria coaxed. “What is it, Victor?”

He studied the embankment. How could anyone have come down there? The sides sloped at an impossible angle. Dense thickets barred the way. Up at the very top something caught his eye: the back of a diamond-shaped sign. Then he noticed a scree of rip-rap and garden clippings dumped over the edge, into the ravine. “There! That’s where I came down,” he pointed.

“Are you certain?”

“Absolutely.”

“Come back here! Come back!”

The voice had been echoing three decades in this valley. It only needed him to hear it. He knew that voice, remembered it. My father? he grunted, disgusted he’d contorted throat and lips to silently pronounce the word.

“Come back!”

The shout emanated from beyond the beginnings of Victor’s remembered-time, and he knew they’d tuned into the frequency of his nightmares. He remembered the other side of that sign at the top of the hill because he’d seen it thirty years ago. It was dark and the plaque had been illuminated by the glancing beam of a flashlight, which wobbled crazily in his pursuer’s hand.

Dead end. That’s what it stood for.

“Can we get up there from here?”

“Don’t have to,” he said. “We can drive around. It’ll be easy to identify the street end.”

She rubbed his back. “You okay, hon?”

He nodded warily. Wanted to puke.

“Can you go through with this?”

“Have to.”

“Call the police.”

No! Victor shook his head. I’ve come too far for that.

~~~

“Mr. Daly? Ms. Selkirk?”

“Hello, Inspector Cochran.” Victor nodded curtly.

They’d emerged from the Salmon River ravine to find his unmarked car parked behind Maria’s SUV. He’d been watching from the deck of the bridge as they made their way downstream.

“Mind if I ask what you were doing up there?”

“Looking for my past.”

“And did you find it?”

“No, Inspector, I didn’t… Maria, I’d like you to meet Inspector Tom Cochran, Lower Mainland Integrated Crime Unit.”

She swept back her mussed hair, shook his hand. “Victor has told me about you.”

“Did you see anything interesting on your hike, Miss?”

She thought about it. “No. Nothing that relates to your investigation.”

“You folks are something of a Bermuda Triangle when it comes to unsolved cases. First, there’s the disappearance of Crystal Doer; then the abandonment of her son—you Mr. Daly—in the vicinity of this ravine; then the murder of your husband and his body guard, Ms. Selkirk. What are the odds? Three unsolved files converging on one couple?”

Victor shrugged. “I’m more interested in the odds of a police officer happening to be at the location where two citizens are going about their perfectly legitimate weekend pursuits. Are we being tailed, Inspector? If so, why?”

Anger flared in Cochran’s eyes. “A patrol car noted Ms. Selkirk’s vehicle parked here and called in the plate number. The number has been flagged. Presto, I appear. No, you’re not being followed, but we are interested in your movements.”

“I’m not sure I like being a person of interest.”

“It’s nothing to be concerned about, provided you haven’t committed a crime, Mr. Daly.” Tom Cochran gazed at the two of them, letting his remark sink in. “By the way, it is an offence to knowingly withhold evidence from the police concerning a criminal matter under investigation. I expect you, as a lawyer, would know that, Mr. Daly, and would have informed Ms. Selkirk.”

Victor nodded. “I’m aware of my responsibilities and rights under the law. I have nothing to hide.”

Cochran relaxed. “You’re trying to find the missing end to a broken thread, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Victor didn’t like liking this guy. “As I’ve said, the pictures of Crystal Doer on TV have triggered memories, dream sequences. I can’t be certain they bear any resemblance to what really happened to me as a child. They’re phantom images, but they might help me pick up the thread of memory that leads back to some sort of truth. That’s what I’m hoping.”

“You know I was the first one to interview Darlene Cassels that night, Victor?”

“I pointed that out when you first interviewed me, remember?”

“I’ve never forgotten your case. I think every detective has a file like that in the back of his mind: one he couldn’t solve that’s been quietly added to the limbo list. You can’t keep committing resources to an investigation that’s going nowhere. At some point you have to admit it’s stalled and let it slip into the cold case category.” Inspector Cochran frowned. “I wasn’t even a detective when your story broke; I was still learning the ropes on patrol here in Langley. But it’s been bubbling away in my brain ever since, Victor, a slow chemical reaction that won’t ever stop until it’s solved. It’s irritating, that itch inside your head at a spot you just can’t reach.

“So, with fresh information concerning Crystal Doer, I’m thinking, maybe this is it? Maybe we can solve this one at last, and scratch that thirty-year itch. I want to find out how you ended up abandoned here, Victor, and what that has to do with the disappearance of that girl. I’m hoping you’ll cooperate. What I’m saying is, don’t try to solve this on your own. You’ve got one of the best trained and equipped police forces in the world on your side, and we’ve been waiting a long, long time to reopen this file. So let me help, okay?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. Inspector Cochran produced a card and scribbled something on the back. Handing it to Maria, he got into his car and drove off.

“What did he write?” Victor asked.

“Home number. Call any time,” she read.

He shook his head, annoyed.

“He seems like a nice guy, Vic?”

“Yeah. But I’m getting sick of meeting nice cops, aren’t you? I mean, if we keep this up, we’ll know everyone on the invitation list to the annual policeman’s ball!”

Maria laughed, then looked serious. “Are we going to take that drive now?” she prompted.

~~~

“Right here!”

Victor braked, wrenched the wheel, sent the SUV careering off 248^th into a narrow road with a No Exit sign posted on its shoulder.

“Jesus!” Maria complained. “How come, every time I get into a car with you, we end up screaming around like street racers on a Saturday night?”

“Don’t blame me, Ms. Navigator.”

“All you had to do was stop and back up.”

He glanced at her, grinning.

“Honest to God, you’re just a big, goofy kid.”

On either side of them, acreages: some gentrified into the rural seats of wealthy business types, giant brick mansions surrounded by manicured lawns; others, plodding on as working farms, weathered barns, vintage tractors and cattle grazing in open fields. Victor didn’t recognize anything about the place.

Maria studied the scrolling image on the dashboard GPS. “This should be the road. It dead-ends right by the river.”

Half a kilometre up, the road narrowed, shoulders crumbling, potholes pocking its surface. Victor slowed. The fields off to the left gave way to scrub; to the right, a dilapidated fence marked the boundary of a ramshackle farm. In the back field, a couple of long barns clad in corrugated metal looked like they might once have housed chickens. Strewn about, as if deposited by a tsunami, were dozens of derelict vehicles: cars, trucks, tractors, buses. And beyond that, a sagging wood frame farmhouse backed onto the Salmon River ravine.

Victor parked the car.

“What is it?” Maria said.

“It’s what isn’t that’s bothering me. This should be the place…” He nodded through the windscreen at the diamond-shaped, dead end sign.

“But?”

“Nothing. I don’t feel any connection at all.”

He shut off the engine, hoping the ambient sounds might trigger memories: the shush of the breeze in the treetops, the fluting of a robin, someone hammering nails off in the distance. Victor shoved open the door and stepped out beside the SUV. The smell of wood smoke hung in the air, probably a homeowner burning branches and leaves. “Still nothing. I feel like the kid who got the wet firecracker.”

Maria flashed a smile over the hood. “You really are a big kid, aren’t you?” She scanned the property. “Maybe this isn’t the place.”

“Has to be.”

“If you came back at night, would that help?”

Victor shrugged. “Maybe. It’s so fucking frustrating! I know there are memories here, but I can’t activate them. It’s like recognizing a face, but not having a name.”

“More like having a computer, but forgetting the access code,” she said.

As they walked the last few metres to the farm gate, Victor studied the rusted collection of vehicles. “It’s an elephant’s grave yard, a place old beaters come to die.” Most of the wrecks dated from the ‘60s and ‘70s. “They would have been newer vehicles thirty years ago; this field was probably empty then.”

“Good point, Doctor Watson.”

“And those barns would have been in use.”

“Okay?”

“So, that implies certain activities, right?”

“Such as?”

“Farmyard routines. Trucks coming and going to drop off feed and take livestock to market. That sort of thing.”

“Good,” she agreed.

“Still nothing, though.”

“The house would have been in better shape,” Maria observed.

“Why would someone let a place go like this? What’s happened here?”

“I suppose it’s not all that unusual, sort of archetypal, isn’t it? The run-down farm house at the end of desolate, Ozark road.”

“Great location for a horror film,” he agreed. “But I don’t know if this was the setting for my nightmare.”

The gate into the farm was locked and plastered with ‘Private Property; No Trespassing’ warnings. “Doesn’t like company.” Victor peered down the drive, hoping to see signs of habitation. Nothing moved, except for the trees surrounding the house. They gyrated in a macabre dance, animated by the wind.

“Places like this give me the creeps,” Maria shivered. “Someone might be watching us from behind the curtains.”

Continuing on past the drive, they reached the end of the road, stopped by the concrete barrier with the dead-end sign sticking out of it. They peered into the steep ravine, through the choking thickets of blackberry and sumac. “How the hell could a five-year-old get from up here to down there?” Victor wondered.

“Terror?” Maria guessed.

“Run so hard you leave even your memories behind.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But eventually they catch up with you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Somewhere on this road.”

She watched him intently. He knew what she was thinking. They turned and trudged back to the car.

~~~

On the way out Victor pulled into a corner store. “Maybe I can wheedle a bit of information out of them while we’re buying bread and milk. These country grocers get to know everybody’s business.”

“Oh! Where did you glean that bit of bumpkin lore?”

“Reality TV? I don’t know.”

“And you think they’re going to talk to you?”

“Sure. I’m interested in any property that’s up for sale nearby, stuff that’s not necessarily listed. I’m particularly interested in this area. It looks affordable, and there’s a school a few blocks away, quiet—you know, that kind of banter.

“But…” he paused for effect. “I’m a bit concerned about this strange farm at the end of the road. The one that looks like it’s been relocated from the billy hills. It’d be natural to ask, don’t you think? People get nervous about places like that when they’re house hunting. They imagine all kinds of things…”

“And what are you imagining, Vic?”

“Nothing specific. Just a feeling that if there is a weirdo in the neighbourhood, that would be his shack.”

Maria nodded.

“While I talk, you shop. Take your time, okay?”

“Is this routine procedure for a divorce lawyer?”

“I’m frustrated, hon, and running out of options.”

They stepped inside, and back in time. It was the kind of place locals frequent when they want a jug of milk or a carton of eggs, but don’t want to drive all the way into town for a ‘major shop’. Or where their kids go on hot summer days to buy slushies or Popsicles and hang out. The woman behind the counter glanced and smiled when they entered, then went back to reading a paperback, half sitting on a high stool.

“Hi,” Victor said breezily.

“Hello,” she acknowledged.

Pale, tired, slightly overweight. The skin around her eyes drooped sadly.

“My wife and I are looking for property in the area. We live in Vancouver, but we’re thinking of getting out of the city.”

She stared as if he was speaking a foreign language.

“Seems like a really nice neighbourhood here.” He inclined his head toward the door.

“It’s okay.”

“We’ve been looking in this area because we noticed there’s a school just up the road…”

“North Otter? Yeah. It’s terrific.”

Bingo! She’s probably on the Parent Advisory Committee or something. “We have a four-year-old, who’ll be going to school next year. Want to be sure he’s in an environment where he’ll be safe… you know what I mean. There’s so much bullying and stuff goes on these days.”

“Everyone knows everyone at North Otter,” she assured, ready to be offended. “If there’s even a whiff of that kind of action, it’s dealt with, like now. My eldest went on to high school last year, D.W. Poppy, just over that way.” She pointed in the general direction. “It’s a great school, too. He never complained about North Otter and believe me, that’s a wonder, because if you butter his toast on the wrong side he’ll start yapping.” They laughed. “My daughter’s in Grade 5. She’s really happy at North Otter too.”

“Check.” Victor made an imaginary tick in the air. The woman smiled.

“There’s one other thing… I hope this doesn’t sound snoopy, but I’m a bit curious.”

“What?”

“There’s a farm at the end of the road, there. It’s run down, looks sort of like a wrecker’s yard or something…. bunch of old cars and trucks parked out front, and the house is falling apart…”

“That’d be Frank Umbach’s place.”

“Can you tell me anything about it? We’re concerned for our son… you know, how safe the area is for him to grow up in.”

“Frank’s harmless enough I guess, but a dour old coot. Comes in here from time to time to buy groceries and things. Like clockwork, actually. Buys a week’s worth of canned spaghetti, eggs, milk… nothing you’d find in a healthy-living magazine. Pays cash, then leaves. Let’s just say Frank minds his own business. We’ve owned this place going on eleven years now, and I don’t think he’s said enough words to make a full sentence in all that time.”

“Does he run some kind of business from the farm?”

“He’s got a backhoe and dump truck. Does excavating for people when he can get the work. From what I’ve heard, people put up with him because he’s good at what he does and he undercuts just about everybody else.”

“Does anyone else live there with him? A wife? Kids?”

A flicker of suspicion clouded the woman’s countenance.

“I hate to ask,” Victor apologized. “It’s just that we might be neighbours and I’m worried about our boy’s safety. I mean, you can’t watch your kids all the time. They’ll get into mischief. Sneak onto people’s property to steal apples, that sort of thing.”

She nodded. “I’ve lived here all my life, Mister. And even when I was a kid Frank Umbach was known as something of an oddball. It was always a bit of a dare to sneak onto his property. I’ve never heard of anything ever happening, but as kids we were pretty sure he’d blast us to kingdom come if he ever caught us.”

She looked thoughtful for a moment, deciding whether or not to say more, then met his eyes directly.

“He had a wife one time, Rachel I think her name was. But she’s gone. That’s when Frank turned really weird. It’s like he’s been holed up there thirty years, living like a hermit. Rumour is he and his wife couldn’t have kids of their own. They used to be really religious and meticulous about their place. But after she left, things fell apart. That’s how long it’s taken to turn a working farm into a junk yard.”

“Nobody’s ever complained about the unsightliness of the place?”

“He’s not breaking any laws, I guess,” she shrugged. “Although you do hear things about Frank that send a chill down your spine.”

“What kind of things?”

“I’m not one for passing on gossip, but nobody ever found out where Mrs. Umbach went. The police sniffed around for a bit, I’m told, but she’s never been seen or heard from since. Just sort of disappeared.”

“You mentioned they were religious. Did they belong to some kind of church or something?”

“They went to a church in Abbotsford. A real fire-and-brimstone kind of congregation. Armageddon and all that. I think he’s a religious survivalist.”

“What’s that?”

“A guy who’s preparing to live through Armageddon in his bunker, while the rest of us sinners fry like cockroaches in a burning brothel.”

Whoa! She’s got lots to say about Frank Umbach!

“Bunker?”

“Not saying. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Frank has one. That’s the kind of thing survivalists get into.”

“Oh. I see.”

Maria sauntered up to the checkout with her arms full of groceries. As they left, Victor thanked the woman behind the counter.

“No problem,” she smiled. “Hope I haven’t put you off buying just ‘cause of old Frank. It’s a real nice neighbourhood. Honest.”

They smiled politely, Victor feeling grateful and guilty.

~~~

“No lights.” The blank windows of Maria’s house stared out into Ogden Street like unseeing eyes. She and Victor had stopped for dinner on the way back from Langley. While they waited for their order, Maria phoned to let Cathy know they’d be late. She’d talked to Aaron, too. “We made punkin faces!” he’d reported excitedly. “They’re scary!”

“Probably admiring their pumpkin art,” Victor offered as they hurried up the walk. He placed his hand in the small of Maria’s back while she fumbled open the door and they stepped inside. “Vic! There’s something wrong with the light switch. Something’s covering it up,” she complained.

“What?” He reached around her and tried too.

Duct tape. Larry’s doing. Halloween prank, of course. “I’m scared,” he said.

“Whooo!” A chorus of ghostly voices emerged from the depths of the living room. “Whooo!”

Maria shrieked, gamely.

Get into it! Victor urged himself.

An orange light suddenly lit the insides of a leering pumpkin face. The thing grinned, floating in the air above the sofa.

“Wow!” Maria clapped.

“Whooo!” the ghosts moaned. Another pumpkin face grinned. Now they could make out the shadows of Cathy, Aaron and Larry moving behind the macabre, grinning jack-o’-lanterns. Suddenly a beam of light shot upwards and Aaron’s face loomed in the darkness, lit from below.

Maria shrieked again.

Victor froze. It was only Aaron, doing his childish best to scare them. But it wasn’t Aaron’s face Victor saw. Instead he recoiled from the ghostly mask of a terrified five-year old, captured in the powerful beam of a flashlight that had been frantically piercing the darkness, searching, searching for him…

The probing light revealed the terrain sector by sector in its helter-skelter search: the grassy verge of a path leading up from the side of the house; blazed details of the house itself—white shingles and green trim; a sweep of the gravel drive that ran in front of the porch; the corrugated ribs of a long steel shed. If the light found him, he would have to break cover and run, but for now his best chance was to remain still, creep slowly along when the beam pointed in another direction. He could make out the shadow of a human form moving behind the searching wand, a nameless, faceless being who must never be looked at directly…

Suddenly, the light swung round and pointed straight at Emanon. The man lunged forward, running, the light jiggling up and down with every stride. Victor could hear his pursuer’s boots crunching in the gravel, closing in. He had to dislodge his own feet…  run, run, run for his life. Even if he was running away from everything he knew. Even if he would never, ever be able to forget or forgive himself…

He crashed into the metal gate at the top of the drive, fell, then got up and clambered over. Turning right, he fled along the slash of blackness toward a yellow checkered sign which was illuminated by remnants of reflected light. Emanon vaulted the concrete barrier, tumbling over the edge of his world into utter dark, rolling down the steep embankment.

“Come back here! Come back!” the man yelled.

“I will come back,” Victor mumbled fiercely. “I will!”

“Victor? Hey, Vic!”

Startled, he came too.

Larry was shaking him. “Vic! Snap out of it!”

He was back in the hallway, the terror and rage of his vision draining out of him. Aaron romped around the room, celebrating the success of their pumpkin theatre, Maria and Cathy distracting him, cheering, clapping.

“Okay?” Larry asked.

“Yeah.”

But he wasn’t. An innocent prank had set him off. Thank God Aaron hadn’t noticed. But how long until he does, until I do something that really scares him.

“Sorry,” he whispered when he could get close enough to Maria.

She touched his arm. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t be.”

She cupped his face in her hands. “What happened?”

“Another flashback.”

She waited. “Can you tell me more?”

“Someone was chasing me. He had a flashlight. Seeing Aaron’s face lit up triggered the recall… I was hiding, he was searching for me. When the beam found me, I ran. I remember going over the embankment into the Salmon River gully, and someone shouting after me to come back.”

“Who was shouting?”

Victor shook his head. “Never saw him.”

“But you know who it was?”

“No. Not for certain, hon. And I can’t allow myself to guess.”

Maria kissed him, a fierce kiss, the kind a mother might bestow on a son heading off to war. “I love you,” she said. “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. Remember that Vic.”

“I do.”

“You mean I will,” she smiled.

“I mean both.”

Aaron dragged him away, eager to show Victor the ingenious technique Larry had come up with for lighting ‘punkins’ from the inside. They’d carved holes out of the backs of them, through which they inserted dollar-store flashlights. “Cathy’s friend is even smarter than you,” Aaron proclaimed. “He’s even smarter than Toobee!”

“Hear that?” Cathy laughed.

Victor grinned; Larry looked pleased. “After all,” he bragged later, “it’s not every day you get pronounced smarter than a mutt… smarter than two mutts!”

~~~

His suspicions were circumstantial. Nothing you could take to court, or even to the cops…

Isn’t even evidence, really, Victor sighed, unhappily. Not unless you could insert nightmares into evidence bags and have them entered into the record of court proceedings.

His flashback had been real, though; it’s implications undeniable. He had been on Frank Umbach’s farm, had fled like the proverbial bat out of hell from there into the darkness and over the brink of the Salmon River Gully.

Which—beyond reasonable doubt—meant it had to be Umbach behind the cone of light, sweeping the terrifying terrain between them, searching for…

Me! Emanon.

You must not look directly into his face, his mother had warned. It will enrage him.

Emanon disobeyed. He tried to identify the shadow behind the light just as its wand blazed straight at him, blinding him, forcing him to break cover and—Run!

Inhale. Exhale. Let go.

He recalibrated, centering himself in the present, willing panic to subside—evaporate through the open pores of his skin.

Where else can I look for him? Victor asked himself.

He tracked back, point by point, over what he’d learned about Umbach.

Weird. That was the first descriptor that came to mind. Who would let a farm run down like that, except a weirdo?

Scary. Even if you’d never met him, you’d be more than a bit nervous knocking on Umbach’s door. His property would make a perfect set for a horror movie.

So what? Being antisocial wasn’t a criminal offence.

But then there’d been the gossip about his wife. She’d disappeared about thirty years ago, around the time the boy appeared on the Salmon River bridge.

Rebecca, he remembered. Have to find her.

Proximity. The Salmon River bridge was about 300 metres from the Umbach farm, which was located on the steep embankment of the Salmon River ravine. Darlene Cassels was certain the boy had fled from something up that ravine.

So am I. His flashback of tumbling into the ravine after having been chased off what he recognized as Umbach’s farm confirmed it.

All the pieces fit. They add up… But it’s still circumstantial. “And speculative.”

Connections seem so obvious once they’re made, once the switch has been flipped and the current jolts you. Victor gasped when he made his first tangible connection between Umbach and Crystal Doer.

Church!

Umbach went to a church in Abbotsford, the Doers went to a church in Abbotsford; their daughter disappeared while they were at church. There must be a connection between the ‘fundamentalist church’ Frank Umbach attended and the church Crystal Doer’s parents went to. Had to be!

Excited, he punched in the Doers’ number and asked Barbara Doer point blank what church they attended, and if it was the same church they had been attending when their daughter disappeared.

“Why do you want to know?”

He hesitated. The last thing Victor wanted was Albert Doer roaring off to Frank Umbach’s farm to confront the old man. Or taking this fresh info to the cops.

“Can I call you Barbara?” he asked.

“Yes. We’ve already been through that. Please do.”

“I’m tracking down some information I think will bring us closer to the truth. But I need to find out a lot more before I start naming names.”

“You mean after what Albert did, you’re not prepared to trust us with anything. Am I right?”

“Albert did what he had to. He has his conscience to live with; he couldn’t abide keeping what he knew from the police. I get that. You said he’s a good man, I get that, too.”

“You’re a forgiving soul, Victor. That’s a very Christian trait, you know.”

He smiled at the gentle taunt. Surely teasing was a good sign. Still it vexed. Atheists can be forgiving souls, too, he thought… well, forgiving beings.

He asked again which church she and Albert attended.

“The Church of Christ the Redeemer,” she answered. “We’ve been members of the congregation more than forty years. It’s where Albert and I met.”

“Can I use you as a reference, Barbara, if I go there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Can I say I’m acting on your behalf or with your permission?”

“You know,” she began after a moment’s hesitation, “it would be easier if you just asked me your questions, Victor. There’s hardly anyone left at the church who’s been there as long as Albert and I. Let me help.”

“I don’t want to put you on the spot.”

“Sometimes we need to be put on the spot. I’m beginning to see that. This conversation is between you and me. You have my word.”

Now it was his turn to pause, to think. Memories wounded. The pain of what he had to reveal might be unbearable—like hot shrapnel. “You’re sure about this?”

“Yes.”

He took a deep breath, then let go. “Is the name Frank Umbach familiar to you?”

Silence! The premonitory pause of an implosion at the very centre of her universe, threatening to suck every vestige of tattered dignity into the vacuum of its mushroom cloud.

“How do you know that name?” she demanded.

“That, I can’t answer, Barbara. I need to know everything you do about Frank Umbach, though. I take it from your reaction that you do know him.”

“An awful man,” she quavered. “He belonged to our congregation, but honestly, I think he was Satan’s kin—an infiltrator. Even after all these years I find it hard to talk about him without hatred. I’ve never encountered a more repulsive creature.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said wearily. “Shocked is all. To hear that name after all these years.”

“Can you talk about it?”

“Frank Umbach blamed us for our daughter’s disappearance. Oh, not to our faces, but through malicious gossip. It didn’t get back to us at first. Other members of the congregation wanted to protect us during our period of grieving. But he kept at it. We had allowed her to abandon the church and Christ’s love. Everyone knew she was a sinner, that’s what he said. He insinuated she was involved in sex and drugs, like so many teenagers of the time. Eventually his vitriol did spill over.

“Albert went berserk. Honestly, I thought he was going to kill the man… and he might have, too, if other members of the congregation hadn’t intervened. The church tried to reconcile our differences, but it became clear that either we or Frank Umbach had to go. In the end, he left. Nobody was sad to see the back of him. To this day I dread the thought of Albert encountering Frank Umbach in the street. I don’t know what he’d do.”

“Were the police ever informed about this?”

“No. Why should the police have been involved?”

Victor didn’t answer, but she must have guessed. Had Frank Umbach had ever been a ‘person of interest’ in their investigation into the disappearance of Crystal Doer? He didn’t press. Figured she would have said so if that had been the case.

“So you’re going to make inquiries at the church about Frank Umbach?”

“Yes,” he said. “I hope you’ll keep your word on this, Barbara?”

“Yes,” she promised. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thank you.”

“But I have a suggestion.”

“Yes?”

“Why don’t I make the arrangements and accompany you to the church. Pastor Droettboom is a friend as well as our pastor. I could smooth the way, so to speak.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, very sure,” she insisted.

~~~

Rain drummed on the roof, spattered the windscreen. Victor huddled in the dry den of his new Porsche, watching the bleary image of Umbach’s farm. If only the downpour would wash it away, sluice it down the embankment and into the Salmon River ravine. If only, he shook his head. He could make out the shaggy, green clumps of the intervening field; derelict hulks of old cars; sagging outlines of the house with the orange crown of a maple tree off to the right. The farm was a lurid, pointillist composition seen through blurring glass.

He thought of Maria. “This is crazy,” he muttered.

Have to do it. With a sigh, he levered open the door and stepped out onto the wet, crumbling pavement. If Frank Umbach had looked out his window in the last fifteen minutes, he would have seen the Porsche sitting there, just beyond his property line. Victor glanced up at the tattered curtains. They hadn’t moved. Maybe Umbach wasn’t home. Maybe he’d gone shopping up at the corner store for his weekly haul of canned spaghetti, or was out on a job with his backhoe. Victor didn’t really think so, but a part of him couldn’t help wishing it. The thought of actually coming face-to-face with Umbach unnerved him.

“Stop it!”

But he couldn’t deny the weight of intuition, even though training, experience and temperament all strained against it. Even though he knew you had to let the facts speak for themselves, without prejudice. His feelings about this place and its inhabitant would not be quelled; the truth about Frank Umbach crouched in some sealed closet of Victor’s brain, as real as the scuttle of his own footsteps on the wet, disintegrating pavement.

What I’m looking for is face-to-face confirmation—to recognize the devil incarnate without the necessity of time-wasting legal deductions. That’s what I want.

Shoulders hunched, he trudged from his car to Umbach’s gate, then stood, staring stupidly at the chain and lock. A mailbox on a rotting post by the ditch was stuffed with soggy, uncollected letters. As if the gate itself was not warning enough, a big wooden sign threatened prosecution to all trespassers. Victor paused, a force like sorcery holding him fast. If he didn’t break the spell, he would become rooted to the spot.

Fuck you! He strode forward, climbed the metal bars, hoisted his leg over, then clambered down the other side. He stood there a few seconds, reconnoitering. For the first time in his life he felt the true dread of trespass. The very molecules of surrounding air had become eyes, aware of his presence, as if a billion intelligent, swarming insects were monitoring his every move, his every thought.

Calming himself, he snapped the spell again and proceeded briskly up the drive, a man with business to transact and an official reason for being. He turned down the cracked, tilting sidewalk that led to Frank Umbach’s porch. The house sat below the level of the drive, down a sloping, overgrown lawn. Victor hopped over the rotting steps onto the collapsing veranda and knocked loudly at the front door. He waited almost a full minute, then knocked again. Still no answer. The door’s glass panes were obscured by a gauzy curtain. Pressing his face close, Victor peered inside. Through the gossamer veil and interior gloom, he could make out a dingy hall, a set of stairs going up to the right, a threadbare carpet leading to a doorway, which he assumed to be the kitchen. An alcove entrance to the left led to what must have been the living room. He grasped the doorknob and twisted. The door gave way, swinging inward on decrepit hinges.

“Mr. Umbach?” Victor called. Still no answer. He stepped over the threshold, entering the vestibule. “Mr. Umbach? Are you home, sir?”

“Take one more step, mister, and I’ll blow a fucking hole through your guts.”

Victor froze.

“Get out of my house and off my property, and don’t ever come back, got it? If you do come skulking, watch out. I’ll do whatever I have to, to protect myself.”

Victor scanned the musty darkness of the living room, his eyes stopping at a gnarled, ancient figure slouched in a sagging armchair on the opposite side of the room. Frank Umbach had a shotgun leveled at him. “I need to talk to you, sir…”

“You need to get off my property and never come back.”

“I’m a lawyer, Mr. Umbach. My name is Victor Daly.” Carefully he slipped his wallet out of his jacket pocket and fumbled out his card, which he placed on top of the staircase’s newel post. “I need to talk to you.”

“Are you deaf, man? Or just plain stupid? I’ve told you twice already, and I won’t tell you again, I don’t want to talk to you and I don’t want you on my property. So get out!”

This is crazy! Continuing a conversation with an armed lunatic. He should have turned and run—gone straight to Detective Inspector Tom Cochran. His story would give the RCMP an opportunity to interview Umbach. Who could say where that might lead. But a perverse logic overruled instinct.

“Mr. Umbach,” he said gingerly. “I have a client who believes he is related to you, sir, and it’s vital to him that he either prove or disprove his suspicions.”

A malevolent silence greeted this appeal.

“And you’re willing to risk your life for this client?” Umbach said at last.

“My client doesn’t want anything from you, sir. He’s very well off and doesn’t need anything in the way of material goods. He simply wants to give some roots and branches to his family tree, so to speak.”

“I have no living relations. Tell him that.”

“He would like to rule that out scientifically, sir.”

“Scientifically?”

“Through DNA analysis.”

A dry chortle emerged from the living room, the sound of a harsh wind rattling dead leaves. “Tell you what,” Umbach said. “Once I’m dead, you can have a hunk of my flesh to run your fucking tests. Until then you and this client of yours can go to hell. Now, for the last time, I’m telling you to get off my property.”

Victor backed out the door. “I’m not going away for good, Mr. Umbach. My client needs an answer.”

He heaved a sigh of relief as he drew the door closed behind him, then turned and walked quickly back to the gate and climbed over it. As he tramped to his car, his mind raced. What had just happened? A madman pointed a gun at me… but Victor wouldn’t call the cops.

He shook his head. “This is nuts.”

It wasn’t until he slammed the car door and twisted the key in the ignition that he was struck by an unsettling fact: he still didn’t recognize the old man. Then he remembered Crystal’s warning: If you ever do see him, you must not look directly into his face. It will enrage him.

Victor shook his head, sadly.

“Idiot! You’re lucky to be alive.”

~~~

Frank uncocked his shotgun and tossed it onto the sofa. A groan forced its way up from deep inside, but he held it down, gritting his teeth and cussing against it under his breath. It was someone else’s strangled cry emerging from his chest, someone else’s anguish weighing upon him, making him sink deeper into the enveloping cushions of the arm chair.

“What do you want?” he shouted into the empty vestibule where the man had stood.

He knew the answer of course. Knew it as well as this Victor Daly character possibly could. Daly posed a threat, no denying it. You’d have to be a fool not to see the likeness.

“Liar!”

The intruder might have been a lawyer like he said. He’d left a card, which no doubt confirmed the fact. “But you’re more than that, boy. You’re much more than that, aren’t you?”

Jerking himself out of the enfolding cushions, Frank shuffled over to the living room window. He nudged the curtain aside a crack, watched Victor tramp down the drive, climb the gate and push on through the slanting rain back to his fancy car. Frank had seen him pull up and he’d watched for almost a quarter-hour until Daly made his move. As soon as the Porsche’s door popped open, he fetched his gun from the hall closet and positioned himself in the armchair. He wouldn’t have needed much of an excuse to blow this flesh and blood to Kingdom Come.

That would have created problems, though, wouldn’t it? Cops. Forensic experts. Reporters. How far would they go, rooting through his home? His farm? His past? If the boy hadn’t told anyone where he was going, then Frank might have been able to get away with it. Disable him with the first barrel; finish him off with the second. Even if Victor Daly managed to crawl out the front door, he wouldn’t have got very far, there’d be no one around to witness the coup de grâce.

But odds were Victor had told someone where he was going, which meant the cops would react quickly. He would have had a few hours at most to dispose of the body, clean up the mess and get rid of the car before they showed up at his front door. All of that without a plan. And even if he succeeded at those grisly tasks, the cops were sure to get a warrant to search his farm. Frank sighed, unable to keep straight in his own mind what they might find.

Besides, all the permutations fell apart when he remembered the intruder’s face. Even Victor Daly’s voice had been enough to tighten Frank’s gut…

After all these years, he thought. All this time.

Bitch!

At almost eighty he still ached for her. No matter how often he mewled and prayed to his ominously silent God to cleanse him, release him, the yearning returned along with his rage, his indignation. Now this!

At last the car swung round and drove away. Frank allowed a sigh of relief. If only it was that simple. It couldn’t be, though, and he knew it. Victor Daly would be back. This was just the beginning of a grinding retribution—unstoppable as thunderclouds roiling over the flat horizon, the dark underbelly of a storm that would discharge vengeance soon enough, blasting him from the purgatory of this life into hellfire.

He’d come to believe he might be allowed to die of natural causes, and that the truth would not be known until he’d slipped away. Then someone would come to take care of his estate and they’d find what they’d find. Now the prospect of being judged by men as well as God loomed, and Frank bridled.

The boy had not recognized him. Not properly, as kindred flesh. He knows, though. Somehow he’d traced his ancestry back to a place he was no longer wanted, where he’d been disowned. But I know you, Boy. “Fruit of a corrupted seed,” Umbach muttered, turning away from the window. How else could you explain everything that had happened? You’re a sin that needs making right.

He tottered into the vestibule, snatched the card off the newel post, then made his way into the kitchen. Make a cup of coffee. Sit and think for a while, as if that would make a difference.

Emanon, she called him. Spat the name at Frank that horror-filled night before he’d ended her. It was him alright… and her rolled up in him. Tossing Victor’s card onto the kitchen table, he collapsed into a chair, his head between his knees. “How many times?” he moaned. How many times, and in how many guises, would he have to kill the ghost of Crystal Doer?

~~~

“What did you find up there, Victor?” Detective Inspector Tom Cochran leaned back precariously in his swivel chair, watching his subject with interest. It was an odd pose. Made Victor feel like a bug under surveillance from a great height.

“I’ve just signed a statement, Inspector. It pretty well sums up what I have to say.”

“Still not cooperating?”

Victor sighed. “Just because I don’t have the answers you want doesn’t mean I’m not cooperating. It might mean I really don’t have the answers you want. Ever think of that?”

“Of course. But you haven’t given me a reason for your expedition up the Salmon River. I’m assuming you were following some kind of lead. You remembered something that made you look up there. What was it?”

“Leading question, based on a false premise. I’ve walked up 56th Avenue both ways, too, and down the Salmon River. You just happened to see me at one point in my search, and you’ve assumed that’s the only direction I’ve looked.”

Now it was Tom Cochran’s turn to blow off some steam. “This isn’t a game, Victor. I’m not trying to outsmart you. I’m trying to solve a missing person file that’s been on the books thirty-five years, and a possible case of child neglect that’s also been on the books for a long, long time. I know you want the same thing. So why not work together instead of against each other?”

“Again, Inspector, you’re making a false assumption. I’m not hiding anything! All the evidence I have, I’ve divulged.” He paused for effect, staring hard at Cochran. “And that’s not much more than vague impressions, and dream fragments that don’t add up. I’m Crystal Doer’s son. That’s been established. From the statement I’ve made already, it’s pretty clear I was with her until shortly before I was struck by Darlene Cassels at the Salmon River bridge. It also seems pretty clear Crystal was in an abusive relationship, and that she was being held against her will, whether by her abductor or someone else, I don’t know. I don’t even know that she was abducted. She might have gone wherever she went willingly.”

Cochran rocked forward, his face thrust toward Victor. “Darlene Cassels seemed pretty sure you’d come down the Salmon River ravine that night. She felt we were wasting our time looking anywhere else. We couldn’t find anything up there thirty years ago. No footprints, no physical evidence at all. Any evidence we might have missed then is long gone by now. But your memories of the place haven’t been washed away, Victor, have they? You remembered something, and that’s why you went up there.”

Victor clammed up.

“You know what I think?” Detective Inspector Cochran waited, hoping Victor would rise to the bait. “I think you came down that ravine from one of the roads that dead-ends onto it. I did a little exploring of my own. Even a skinny little kid would find the Salmon River impassable a few hundred metres up from 56^th. So, my assumption—and I don’t think it’s wrong—is that you came downstream from one of the streets up on the escarpment no more than a few blocks from 56th. You wouldn’t have been able to travel very far in your state without being spotted. Even at night. So, my guess is you were either dumped from a car at the end of one of those roads, or you came from one of the houses up there.”

He paused.

“I can’t deny it because I don’t know,” Victor shrugged.

“The statement you’ve given suggests you were held captive in a specially constructed room, Victor. So, the most logical assumption is that you escaped from one of those houses up there, fled down the Salmon River and ended up getting hit by Darlene Cassels, who was on her way home from work that night. Any of that ring a bell?”

“It could fit the evidence, yes.”

“I suppose you could have been driven to that location from somewhere else,” Cochran tested. “But why would someone who’d gone to the trouble of building a secret cell for Crystal Doer risk exposure by driving her toddler to some dumping ground, even in the dead of night? Doesn’t seem likely, does it?”

“No. Not likely,” Victor agreed. “Unless it was Crystal he wanted—only Crystal, not her child. But he didn’t have the guts to kill me like an unwanted calf. So, when I was old enough, he drove me to the Salmon River gully and dumped me…”

“After four or five years! He keeps his son four or five years, then dumps him?”

“This is a strange case, Inspector,” Victor sighed. “One theory’s as plausible as another, really. Isn’t it?”

Cochran shook his head. “I’m sticking with my working assumption,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “That limits our primary search area to a square kilometre, maybe less.”

Victor nodded. “Okay.”

“And you haven’t come across anything in that square kilometre that might narrow it even more?”

“No, not yet. But you’ll be the first to know if I do.”

~~~

“Why don’t you just tell him, Vic?” Maria urged. “Why this game? Tell Cochran you think Crystal was forcibly confined on Frank Umbach’s farm, that she was repeatedly raped, that you are her child by him, and that you now remember escaping from his ‘bunker’—or whatever the hell you call it—thirty years ago. That will be enough for them to get a warrant to search the place. They’re sure to find something; Umbach could be in custody inside a week.”

“If it was just Umbach I was after, I’d probably do just as you say.”

“But?”

“It’s Crystal I want to find, Maria, and my guess is he’s the only guy who will be able to tell me what happened to her and where she is.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“If I hand this over to Cochran and he questions Umbach, what’s he going to find out?” Victor paused. “Nothing!” He spread his arms like a man being frisked, then let them drop to his sides. “Umbach has kept his mouth shut this long, he’s not about to start blabbing now, just because Detective Inspector Tom Cochran comes a-calling. And what if Cochran does get a search warrant? What kind of physical evidence do you suppose might still be around after thirty years?”

She nodded reluctantly.

“So, the net result of siccing the cops on Umbach is we scare him into his shell, and lose any chance of finding out what really happened to my mother. He’ll take that with him to his grave. We might even lose any chance of convicting him!”

“And how are you going to do any better than the cops?”

“I haven’t figured that part out yet.”

“An even better question is: how are you going to do it without getting yourself shot?”

Don’t have an answer for that either.

She took his hand and placed it on her waist. “You’re not alone anymore, mister,” she said. “There’s me and Aaron in your life now. That’s part of the equation, right?”

“The biggest part, believe me.”

Maria drew him to her. Kissed him. It was a benediction of sorts, her kiss and their lovemaking after, for she knew she could not stop him, that her only choice was to be with him. “You be careful, mister.” She held his head between her hands. “I don’t want you disappearing into this nightmare of yours, you understand?”

She realized a part of him already had disappeared into that other dimension… and there was no other way out but in. “I love you,” she said.

“I’ll never leave you,” he promised.

~~~

The Church of Christ the Redeemer doesn’t make any concessions to non-functional architecture. It’s a stucco bungalow blown up to the dimensions of a cathedral. Surrounded by its vast parking lot, it could also be mistaken for a shopping mall or casino. None of that was accidental. Plainness is next to Godliness as far as the Redeemers are concerned; practical and comfortable access to God requires bountiful, free parking.

“Thank you for doing this,” Victor said to Barbara, holding open the lobby door.

She’d been talking about her husband as they walked toward the building, defending Albert, nudging Victor toward the reconciliation she prayed for. She slipped into the lobby ahead of him. “You’ll get used to him, Victor; and he’ll get used to you—if only you’d give up that photography hobby of yours, or at least point your camera in a different direction… heavenward perhaps.” She smiled sweetly.

He laughed. “I have toned things down.”

“Whether the element’s on high or medium, our fingers still get burned.”

He let the comment go. She had agreed to the meeting; was acting against Albert’s wishes. That’s a stretch.

“Pastor Droettboom will help if he can,” she was saying. “He’s a bit pedantic at times, but kind. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“He may not be able to help. It’s a long shot at best. It’s been more than thirty years since Umbach attended this church. I don’t see how there can be any institutional memory of him.”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” she replied cheerfully. Annoyingly. “Besides, this isn’t an institution, as you’ve put it, Victor. It’s a church. It has a soul and memories. If God wants you to find something out about Frank Umbach, you will.”

They stepped into the office. A young woman greeted Barbara, and nodded at Victor pleasantly. “Go on in,” she said. “He’s expecting you.” Victor smiled, taken aback by her pristine blue eyes. Cheerleader, he thought, regretting the stereotype instantly. Blushing. Fucking snob.

“Hello, Barbara!” Pastor Droettboom boomed, welcoming them into his office. “Mr. Daly. Come in! Sit down.”

Contrary to its plain exterior, The Church of Christ the Redeemer didn’t skimp when it came to decor and furnishings, Victor thought. The pastor’s office would have done justice to any Howe Street executive suite. Pastor Droettboom allowed them a few moments to settle, then asked how he could be of assistance.

Victor coughed, gathering his thoughts. “What we are here to discuss must be held in strictest confidence.” he said.

After a confirming glance at Barbara, the pastor agreed.

“You are aware of Albert and Barbara’s history…”

“Of course.” The pastor looked concerned.

Sighing, Victor glanced at Barbara for help. She nodded decisively, and he launched into his story. He told the pastor about his relationship to the Doers and how it had been verified through DNA analysis; about how he’d been discovered wandering up from the Salmon River valley thirty years earlier. Then he told him about his encounter with Frank Umbach and how it came about.

“I have reason to believe he’s my biological father.”

If Pastor Droettboom was shocked, he concealed it. He stared serenely at Victor, leaving the impression that he was perhaps meditating on what had just been said, letting the sordid implications resolve themselves into something he could comprehend. “I’m not sure I understand,” he said. “Can you tell me more about the relationship between Frank Umbach and Crystal Doer?”

“I’m acting on very strong suspicions, Reverend. I can’t offer conclusive proof. I asked Umbach if he would be willing to take a DNA test; he declined, not to put too fine a point on it.”

“I must draw my own conclusions then, Mr. Daly. I would have to assume the worst, if your relationship to Mr. Umbach is as you say.”

“It’s not proven. And there are several possibilities within that frame,” Victor cautioned.

Pastor Droettboom gave him a pained look. “Please explain.”

“Crystal may not have been abducted. The most probable theory is that she was, however it’s possible she simply ran away or went willingly.”

“Are you all right, Barbara?” Pastor Droettboom asked.

“It’s ghastly to contemplate, Peter. But we have to cope and explore every possibility, if we want to find our daughter or find out what happened to her.”

“And Albert?”

“He and I do not see eye to eye on this.”

Pastor Droettboom gave them an imploring look.

“Can you help us?” Victor pleaded.

“Please!” Barbara echoed.

He sighed deeply, then swung round in his swivel chair. Opening a drawer in the cadenza behind his desk, he flicked through the folders, pulling the one he wanted, then swung round again, placing the folder unopened on the desk in front of him. “Now I must have assurances from both of you. I must have your unequivocal word that you will never reveal anything about the information I am about to share with you… not to anyone.”

Victor exchanged a glance with Barbara. She nodded.

“I promise,” he said.

“God give me guidance.” Pastor Droettboom bowed his head.

After a moment, he opened the folder and snatched a pen from the collection in a jar on his desk. Glancing at the information in front of him, he jotted a name and address onto a note pad, then tore off the page and handed it to Victor. “A woman named Brenda Lanzinger, whose address I have just given you—she lives in Penticton—contacted me about five years ago with a very unusual request. She wanted to set up a scholarship fund in Crystal’s name…”

“What?” Barbara gasped.

“Please,” Pastor Droettboom pleaded. “Let me finish.” He waited a moment before continuing. “It seemed strange to me at the time, to be setting up a fund in the name of someone missing so long. But when it comes to grieving, people act according to their own, inner sets of rules, so I didn’t ask too many questions.

“I never told you and Albert about this fund, Barbara, because the women expressly forbade me. She said the scholarship was not to be used until she gave her consent and until then it was to remain entirely secret. I got the impression her consent would only be given posthumously, and the—even then—she would prefer to remain anonymous. In any case, no one except she, me and my successor was to know about it. When I enquired about this secrecy, she said she was an estranged relation, who nevertheless had loved Crystal deeply and wanted to do something to perpetuate her memory…”

“But I’ve never heard of any Brenda Lanzinger,” Barbara objected. “We have no estranged relations as far as I know.”

“I had questions myself about her story, but it wasn’t my place to pry. Obviously Ms. Lanzinger felt very strongly that she should make this contribution in Crystal’s name, so a trust account was set up to be administered by the Church of Christ the Redeemer. Presently the account has a balance of just over $40,000 dollars…”

“What!”

“Yes. It’s quite a bit of money, and Ms. Lanzinger does not strike me as a wealthy woman. I got the impression she had been saving for a long time in order to make her initial deposit, and that her contributions represent a considerable portion of her worldly earnings. She dresses plainly and takes the bus down from Penticton when she visits.”

“She visits?”

“Never the church, but occasionally we meet privately to discuss her affairs.”

“Her affairs?”

“I can’t say any more, Barbara. I hope you understand.”

“Do you have any idea who Brenda Lanzinger might be?” Victor pressed.

“As I said, I did not believe it was my place to pry. I have never confirmed anything about Ms. Lanzinger.”

“But you do have suspicions?”

The reverend gave them a pained look. “Did you know Mrs. Umbach’s maiden name, Barbara?”

For a second she looked confused. “Lanzinger?”

The pastor nodded. “And her middle name is Brenda.”

“But Peter, if you knew this, surely…”

“I didn’t know! At least not until quite recently,” he cut her short with an anguished look. “And it wasn’t my business to find out. Ms. Lanzinger came to me of her own free will, as a woman in torment. She sought solace and forgiveness, and that I have offered.”

“The CBC report!” Victor guessed.

“What?” Barbara looked at him imploringly.

“She confided in you then, didn’t she? After she saw that report?”

“She told me she was once Rachel Umbach. I suppose I should have seen more ominous implications in that,” Pastor Droettboom said apologetically. “I’d heard about Mr. Umbach’s reprehensible behaviour and departure from the church, and thought perhaps she was making amends for that – she’s a tortured soul, seeking penance.”

He paused, Victor sensing the reverend was deciding whether or not to say anything more. “If I have been blinded, it’s been by duty,” he continued. “Miss Lanzinger is a devout Christian, who has dedicated her life to the service of God. She does not expect to be forgiven for whatever sins she has committed—her actions since have been purely selfless. My duty has been to try and persuade her she is worthy of Christ’s love.”

“What about your duty to us, Peter? To me and Albert?”

“I have never faltered in my duty or my love for you both,” he said quietly.

They sat in awkward silence.

“Thank you, Pastor Droettboom,” Victor said at last. “Thank you for your help.”

He and Barbara walked quickly through the church lobby, she with her eyes fixed straight ahead. In the parking lot, just as she was getting into her car, she suddenly said bitterly, “I told you God works in mysterious ways.”

“Are you all right?”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be all right,” she snapped.

~~~

Aaron laughed and pointed. Toobee had stuck his head down a ground squirrel’s hole and was barking into the tunnel. All the squirrels in the vicinity looked on with interest.

“Jeez, he’s funny!” Maria hooted. “Stupid, but funny.”

Victor reeled Toob in. “Come on out of there, mister. You’re embarrassing yourself… and me.”

Toobee hacked, straining against his collar. “Here,” Victor said, handing the leash to Aaron. “You take him.”

The two charged ahead, whooping and barking like maniacs on the loose at Manning Park Lodge. They’d stopped there for a stretch and a bite to eat, it being the half-way point between Vancouver and Penticton.

Maria smiled. Then frowned. “Do we have to do this, Vic?”

They both knew the answer. Her resistance was pro forma.

“Maybe, with some good therapy, you can get through this stuff without actually having to go through it. Take what you’ve got to Cochran and let him deal with it. Surely there’s enough for him to piece together a case now.”

“I know it’s nuts, hon. I’ve got you and Aaron, what more can a guy want? But I’ve also got this vision of Crystal Doer imprisoned in a dungeon built by that bastard, and she’s got to be released. If I don’t do that—if I fail her a second time…”

“Vic! You were a preschooler, for God’s sake. Brought up in a cave. You didn’t fail anyone; the world failed you.”

“I know that up here,” he tapped the side of his head. “But none of this shit is rational. You can’t make sense of it. It just is what it is.”

They’d been through it all before, and no matter how many times she argued against it, he insisted he had to meet Umbach’s former wife, find out what she’d known about the abduction and forcible confinement of Crystal Doer, why she’d let it happen, or why she hadn’t gone to the police when she found out it had happened. It was impossible she hadn’t known, he figured. So, as far as making a case against Umbach was concerned, there was no question they’d unearthed all the evidence they’d ever need.

But still, Victor had to see her. “I’ll never get to talk to her once the police apprehend her,” he insisted. “And that means I may never get to know what really happened to Crystal. Umbach won’t confess. He’ll take the truth with him into the grave, I’m sure of that.”

Brenda Lanzinger probably hadn’t talked at first because she was afraid, he thought. Umbach would have threatened her, played on her shame. The woman at the market thought Umbach was a survivalist. Lanzinger would probably have been ‘chosen’ to fit that schemata.

“I’ve done some research on these guys,” Victor told Maria. “Pretty scary stuff. They believe the world is going to enter what they call the ‘End Times’. There will be social and environmental cataclysms, like Rwanda, the Tsunami of 2006, New Orleans. Natural disasters will result in a complete breakdown of law and order. Murder, rape, pillaging—those types of brutish incidents will become the new norm—so survivalists stockpile food, water and weapons in their cozy bunkers, planning to ride out the maelstrom, then emerge to inherit a world cleansed by social upheaval and war of racial and religious impurities.”

“Pretty sick,” Maria agreed. “But what’s that got to do with your decision not to go to Cochran now?”

“A guy with a mindset like Umbach’s isn’t going to appeal to very many women, right? He’d have to find someone who fit into the ultra right, survivalist mold. These are fascists, Maria. Capital effing fascists. Racists, too. So what kind of woman is going to fit into that kind of social milieu?”

“Someone who believes the same things they do?”

“Exactly! My theory is Rachel was either in on the plan to abduct Crystal Doer or at the very least knew about it. They couldn’t have any kids, remember? The woman at the store said that.”

“You mean…?”

“Yeah. That’s what I think. They abducted Crystal so they could continue the family line—at least his branch. But things went sideways on them, and Rachel left. And changed her name.”

“What went sideways?”

Victor shrugged. “I’m not sure, Mar, but my guess is it had something to do with my escaping. I’m hoping Brenda Lanzinger will be able to answer that. I’m also hoping she’ll be able to tell me more about my mother.

“I have to go see her, Mar! Have to.”

Walking beside him, Maria rested her chin on his shoulder. “You think too much,” she said. “Let’s catch up to the boy and his dog before they get us into trouble.”

~~~

Is this sin? Brenda flattened her thighs against the mat and straightened her back, relaxing into the pose. That her praying technique looked like Yoga troubled her, but God would forgive a small sacrilege so long as her meditations focused on Him. Besides, she kneeled to pray before the altar often enough, too.

Breathe in, breathe out, relax. The routine helped her. If she stilled her thoughts—the incessant clamour for forgiveness, direction, a sign… If she quelled that ceaseless turmoil, she could simply be with God, sneak into His presence.

Breathe in, breathe out, relax.

Being with God didn’t exactly describe what she craved though, did it? Merging was more like it. Sometimes she imagined herself absorbed into a blue sky. Is that sinful? Was it wrong to expand consciousness to the point where she could sense planets whirling in the vast continuum of space? Or was that a permitted glimpse of Glory.

Stop! 

Breathe in, breathe out.

Later she would creep into the church to pray in a more conventional manner. Not for her own soul, which she hoped would someday burn off like morning fog, but for the soul of Crystal Doer, and for Crystal’s parents, and for all the children and parents abused in all the dark alleys and shabby rooms of the world. Finally she would pray for that disgusting wretch Frank Umbach… that piece of shit.

She couldn’t really say her prayers were for him, so much as an expiation of her undying hatred. Brenda exhaled strenuously, expelling the poisonous air. For thirty years she had wrestled to get his damned and damning spirit outside the sacred precincts of her soul, but spoors of his contaminating lust always blew in, germinating in the moist habitat of her flesh. Rhizomes worming their way through intercellular space. She would never be rid of him, ever. But today was a particularly bad day. With a shuddering gasp, she breathed in, the influx of air satisfying her craving for life—a craving she would have to give in to till the end.

She rolled her mat and stowed it between her dresser and bed. Reverend Light would need feeding soon.

~~~

Victor left Maria and Aaron at the hotel and headed up Martin Street, looking for the address Pastor Droettboom had given him. It turned out to be a stone house recessed onto a property, which it shared with a picturesque church. Victor parked. He pushed through the wrought iron gate, then stepped up to the manse door, and knocked firmly. After a moment, the door opened a crack. A slight, stern looking woman with flinty eyes and grey hair pulled back into a severe bun stared out at him. “Reverend Light is not in,” she announced. “He’s out visiting parishioners.”

“I’m here to see Brenda Lanzinger, actually,” Victor said.

The woman’s eyes widened. “What do you want?”

“Are you Brenda?”

“Who are you?” Her sharp eyes studied him head to toe, the eyes of a ferret. They didn’t register recognition, but Victor sensed fear. He avoided the urge to stick his foot in the door jam.

“My name is Victor Daly. Are you Brenda?”

“I don’t have anything to say! Go away!” She slammed the door.

“Ms. Lanzinger!” He knocked a couple of times and called out to her, but she would not return and he eventually gave up, walking back to his car. He sat there a moment, not sure what to do. She recognized me. How else could he explain her reaction?

He felt light-headed. Sick.

Get a grip! he told himself. But the shivering intensified. Quaking, short of breath, Victor thought he might be suffering some type of breakdown. Stop! he commanded. Stop all this. Go back to being who you are.

“Fuck it!”

But as he reached to twist the key in the ignition, the door to the manse opened and Brenda Lanzinger slipped out. She glanced around, then darted down the path and made for the front entrance of the church. Unlocking the doors, she hurried inside. Again, the feral movements… like a nocturnal creature, flushed out of its den, exposed to sunlight and predation.

He waited a minute, then got out of the SUV and followed up the church steps. Pushing gently against the door, he was surprised to find it open. He crept inside the cool, dimly lit vestibule, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Polished wood and bibles, the scent of institutionalized religion. Victor crossed to an inner set of doors that opened onto the nave. She was kneeling before the altar, in the second row, hunched in prayer. The floorboards cracked and creaked as he made his way down the aisle. She must have heard him, but continued praying, hands clasped, head bowed. He entered the pew behind her and took up a position to her left. Victor kneeled, too, bowing in a gesture of prayer as if an imitation of her piety might help him understand, bring him closer to her.

For a long while they stayed like that: him, silently listening; her, murmuring incantations. If she’d got up to leave, he would not have prevented her. Victor felt it was his place to simply be, there, sharing her anguish.

Pity? 

No! he disallowed it.

She had borne a dark, eviscerating secret all these years, he suspected. It had mummified her. But it lent her a kind of power, too. A constrained energy that fed on itself and upon her, transforming Brenda Lanzinger into a singularity of pure, undeviating purpose.

“I know who you are,” she whispered at last. “I’ve been expecting someone all these years, but I never thought it would be you.”

“Who do you think I am, Brenda?”

“You’re the boy.”

“Is that what you called me?”

“He said you could not have a name unless I gave it to you, and that if I didn’t give you a name you would never be allowed to see the light.”

“My mother called me Emanon.”

“I never knew what happened. I just knew that you had escaped and she was dead—that he’d killed her. I couldn’t stand it.” She wept quietly, her confession tumbling out between sniffs and sobs. She remained bowed in prayer.

“But you did know her.”

“Yes,” she confirmed with a deep, exhausted sigh. “I knew Crystal Doer.”

“How?”

“He had her into the house from time to time, doing chores, baking. ‘Acclimatizing,’ he called it.”

“And the boy?”

“He stayed in the bunkie as ‘collateral’.”

“The ‘bunkie’?”

“It was a bunker he built next to the house. A hole in the ground where he kept them… one step closer to the grave and to hell.”

“Is she still there? Her remains?” Victor asked, startled by the thought.

“No,” she said. “Don’t know where he buried her.”

“What happened, Rachel? Can you tell me?”

“I’m not Rachel anymore. I’m Brenda.

“We couldn’t have any children. The Lord didn’t bless our union—not in that or any other way. I wanted to adopt, but Frank wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Said you could never tell what kind of a mongrel you’d end up getting from the ‘baby pound’. So I assumed that was that, we just wouldn’t have a family. We’d be damned with each other’s company.

“Then he started work on the bunker…”

She paused a moment, gathering courage, the will to continue.

“Why did he build the bunker?”

“Frank thought Armageddon was just around the corner. Said we had to get ready. So he built the bunker. Cut it into the ravine behind the house. Didn’t even get a permit or anything. Frank isn’t one for obeying the laws of men, not when he figures he’s acting direct on orders from God Almighty. He put in a septic field, power generator, camp stove, everything you’d need to survive for as long as you pleased, undetected while the heathens and sinners above ground killed themselves off.

“At least that’s what he said the bunker was for…”

She stopped again, bending for a moment to her prayers. For a long time the sad sibilance of her voice was the only sound in the empty church. Victor couldn’t make out her mantra, just the resigned, pleading tones of a prayer directed toward a distant god.

“Why did Frank build that bunker, Brenda?” he pressed gently.

Her prayers dissolved into sobs. “He built it for her. I didn’t know that when he started, but that’s what it turned out to be: a prison for Crystal Doer…”

“For her?” Victor probed. “You mean he chose her, then built the bunker?”

“Yes. He began pointing her out to me at church, even before he’d started digging that cursed hole. Said she was a whore and a sinner, that she didn’t belong in the church because she polluted the sanctuary. I tried to get him to stop, but he went on and on about it. He thought she should be punished. Thought God would visit damnation on her before she reached her twentieth year.

“I prayed for God to stop his crazy talk, because I was embarrassed and afraid. But he carried on. Then he started hinting at his true intentions… Oh, it was evil!”

Her slight shoulders shivered with rage.

“What did he say?”

“‘Good fruit can spring from a crooked limb’. Those were his exact words. I didn’t understand what he meant. Thought he was raving. ‘The seeds of a rotten apple remain pure.’ That was another of his aphorisms. He was speaking like some kind of lunatic prophet. But his prophecy was a perversion. I never imagined he would do what he did. He said the good fruit should be harvested before the infected tree is hacked down and thrown on the fire.

“To shut him up, I went along with his ravings.” Her voice faltered, then recovered. “But I wasn’t giving him permission to go out and do what he did!” she cried.

“What were you agreeing to, Brenda?”

“I thought he would shut up if I agreed with some of the nonsense he was spouting—that I was only provoking him by arguing. So I said the Doer girl was a whore. I agreed she should be punished. I accepted the lies he used to sanctify his lust.” she sobbed.

Victor let her be. He feared she would snap if he pushed any harder. The two of them continued kneeling before the alter. She prayed desperately, now, her words fluttering like terrified birds up into the rafters.

“What did you agree to, Brenda?” he resumed after she had calmed down.

“That sinners should be punished in the here and now,” she whispered.

“And?”

“That the fruits of a sinner’s womb should be confiscated.”

“What did that mean?”

“I didn’t know what he meant,” she wailed. “We weren’t talking about her! He deceived me… Got me to agree to something I didn’t understand…”

“What did it mean?”

“That we could claim Crystal Doer’s baby as our own.”

“That you could kidnap Crystal Doer and imprison her?”

“It was his idea, not mine!”

“That he should rape her repeatedly until she was pregnant; and then you would take her baby as your own? That’s what you agreed to, isn’t it?” Victor said matter-of-factly, as if he were delivering a decisive piece of evidence in a routine custody case… As if there was no moral judgment attached to the pronouncement.

Brenda nodded solemnly, still facing the altar.

“And what was to happen to Crystal once you’d taken her child?”

She doubled over, her head touching the back of the front pew. “I honestly don’t know what he planned,” she wept. “It all seemed so unreal to me. I never asked.”

“And after all these years you still don’t know?”

Brenda shook her head sadly. “I don’t know what he planned, but I know what happened.” she said. “All his pious ravings about the sacredness of procreation were nothing but lies to shroud his lust. He raped that girl. There’s no other word for it. Raped her, then murdered her.”

“How do you know she’s dead, Brenda?”

“She died the night you got away,” she said flatly.

“Did you see her?”

“No.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“No, just that she’d gone to the devil. But I pretty well know what happened…

“It’s like her ghost is imprisoned in my mind now. She haunts me every waking moment, then she’s there in my dreams. That’s my punishment, Mr. Daly. I let myself be bullied into Frank’s evil, now I’ll pay for it eternally. I’m damned. As long as I’m living, though, I will make amends.”

Again, they prayed silently.

“Wouldn’t a confession help, Brenda?” he said at last.

“I confess every hour of every day, Mr. Daly.”

“I mean a confession to the authorities.”

“That will come,” she promised. “I keep saying to myself ‘tomorrow’, and then the day after that I say it again. It’s not that I’m afraid of being punished, Mr. Daly. I know that’s coming—and a far worse punishment than can be meted out by the courts of men. But I want to do some good in the world before I go, and I won’t be able to do that once I’ve been locked up.

“I think it calms her when I do good in her name, Mr. Daly. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, it does.”

“But you won’t let things stay that way, will you?”

“No. I can’t.”

“God bless you,” she murmured. “I hope you can see it in your heart to forgive me, even if God can’t.”

Then Brenda Lanzinger bowed her head and retreated deep into prayer.

~~~

“Go see Cochran, for Christ’s sake!”

“I will.”

But not right away.

First—crazy as it sounds—Victor had to confront the old man. The police would certainly be able to turn up enough evidence to convict Umbach of unlawful confinement and probably murder, based on Brenda Lanzinger’s testimony and what they’d find at Umbach’s farm. But the exacting sciences of forensics and criminal investigation wouldn’t solve this case. Not really. They wouldn’t ever get beyond the chronology and facts to the obscene truth of the matter.

“When?” Maria demanded.

“I know it sounds crazy, Mar, but first I have to confront him. Knowing who he is, and what he’s done, I have to accuse him face to face.”

“Like, man to man you mean!”

“He kept me buried in a hell-hole for five years! He murdered my mother.”

What is it you’re looking for? Revenge? Victor didn’t think so. What then? The question needed answering, because he would be risking a lot—everything—on getting it answered. The truth, I guess. And a confession.

“You’re thinking something stupid, I can tell,” Maria accused.

They’d been at it since Aaron fell asleep west of Princeton. The disagreement had started the night before, when he told her about Brenda Lanzinger’s story. Maria pleaded with him to phone Inspector Cochran. “It’ll be over, honey. We can get on with our lives.”

She’s right. He knew that, but couldn’t obey the dictates of reason. They applied to a world where notions of right and wrong, smart and dumb, made sense. Not to a world where Umbach and me breathe the same air!

Despite Maria, Aaron, the Toob, Larry, Cathy, his Mum and Dad—everything worth living for—the facts didn’t add up to the obvious decision. He remembered the trials and tribulations of high school calculus, how he had to go over the problems again and again, Richard patiently steering him toward an answer, which they both knew because they’d got it from of the back of the textbook. His present dilemma left him feeling as frustrated and stupid as that. He knew the right answer, the logical choice, but couldn’t get there. A fundamental principle connecting actuality to belief had been broken, and he had to set things straight, or his world would never make sense.

“He pointed a gun at you, Vic. You can’t go back out there.”

He imagined the old man skulking in the musty gloom of his dilapidated farmhouse, his shotgun resting on his knees. Why does Umbach hate me so, as if I’m the criminal, he’s the victim?

Forensics would never answer that. I’m the progeny of evil incarnate, the manifestation of your vile spirit, Frank. I prove who you really are. Is that it?

If so, a deadly finale awaited out on Umbach’s farm. The old geezer was insane, no doubt about it.

So how would he expiate his guilt?

Scapegoat!

The word sprang fully formed into Victor’s mind. That’s what I am to Umbach – a physical entity that can be sacrificed then buried.

“You’re going to go out there, aren’t you?”

He reached across and took her hand. She was crying.

“It’s so stupid, Vic. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know.”

Stupid? Yes, from the vantage of her world, and Aaron’s. But in the place he’d got to, one central truth could not be buried, forgotten, denied; its contaminating seep could not be contained, or neutralized with booze, drugs, overwork. He’s my father, for better or worse! He couldn’t bring himself to say so out loud and cite it as the reason he had to confront Umbach, but that poisonous fact permeated every cell of his being, as undeniable as it was appalling.

I’m his only misbegotten son.

~~~

“The cellular customer you are calling is not available…”

Maria punched the end-call button and threw the phone onto the coffee table. “Bastard!” He must have switched his phone off.

For the umpteenth time she paced up the hall, into the kitchen, then back into the living room. What she must do seemed obvious. Call Cochran! Now! Victor had no right to put her in this position. More than once she’d intended to reach for the phone, dial the number on Cochran’s card, but every time she checked herself.

It was Victor’s call to make, Not mine!

Where is he?

He’d dropped them off when they got back from Penticton, then tried to leave.

“Stay with me tonight,” she’d demanded.

He didn’t answer.

“You’re going out there, aren’t you?”

Couldn’t bring himself to lie or tell the truth.

“Don’t go! This is your home: with me and Aaron!”

Her anger had frightened Aaron, who started crying. So, the two of them put him to bed and read stories until he fell asleep.

Then Victor relented, agreed to stay. They’d gone to bed together, but when she awoke two hours later, he was gone. He’d managed to disentangle himself from their embrace and slide off the mattress without disturbing her.

Think!

If he confronted Umbach, and the old man killed him, Maria would never forgive herself; if she alerted Cochran, and the police intervened,Victor would never forgive her.

Maria stood stock-still in the hallway. Put in those terms, the answer came into sharp focus. She felt her face harden with resolve as she strode back into the living room. Picking up the phone, she punched in Detective Inspector Tom Cochran’s number. This time she would not put the phone down because she knew, beyond doubting, which regret she would rather live with for the rest of her life, and was scared she might already be too late.

~~~

Victor climbed the iron gate, then trudged up the drive, homing in on the porch light, a naked bulb in a rusted fixture. He made no attempt at concealment. Vaulting over the sagging steps and across the veranda, he pounded on the door.

“Umbach!” he hollered. “Frank Umbach! I need to talk to you! Son to father!”

His pounding rattled the window; echoed in his own ears. But he knew the ruckus would not be heard beyond the black shrouded perimeter of Umbach’s farm. Screams, shouts, just about any panicked sounds that might emanate from a constricted human larynx would be engulfed by the omniscient darkness and scudding clouds that blotted out the moon.

Umbach appeared on the staircase, his shotgun cradled in his arm.

“Where is she, Frank?” Victor yelled through the glass.

“Gone to hell, with all the other sinners. Gone where I’m going to send you!”

He raised the gun, pointed…

Victor leapt and rolled away from the door as the glass blew out behind him. Regaining his feet, he fled from the end of the porch into darkness, taking cover behind the big old maple in Umbach’s yard. Behind him, Umbach kicked open the shattered door.

“You killed her that night I ran away, didn’t you!”

“She was the devil’s whore. I sent her home.”

“Where is she, Frank?”

“What do you care? You’re one of them fucking atheists. Worse than her. I thought I could bring something good out of her, but the devil’s whore can only give birth to the devil’s spawn. I know that now. You’re a stinking piece of shit.”

Umbach stood at the edge of his porch, peering into the night, trying to get a fix on Victor’s voice while his ancient eyes adjusted.

“Show me where she is, Frank.”

Umbach cackled. “I’ll bury you beside her, if you want. That’s a favour I can grant. It’ll only take a couple of minutes.” He swiveled, pointing the gun at Victor’s head. “Bang!” he said. “Then I get out the old backhoe and put you six feet under. The ground is soft and dry where I put her.”

He lowered the shotgun and stared defiantly.

“Where, Frank?”

“She’s with the chickens,” Umbach said, racked by a dry wheeze of laughter.

“In the barn, you mean?”

“Yup.”

Victor stepped out of hiding and started up the drive. He didn’t care anymore about Umbach. He trudged up the farm road in a trance, doing what had to be done almost by rote, as if the weight of sadness he’d only just now become aware of was not so much a burden as a sacred momentum.

“Where do you think you’re going!” Umbach hollered after him. “Stop, or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

Maria? Aaron? He held them in his thoughts, but couldn’t turn back, had to obey his mother’s call, find the place where she lay. For thirty years she had lain, unmourned. He had to set her free, set himself free, or she would haunt him forever.

Umbach shuffled off the porch behind him. “I’ll shoot!” he warned.

Victor tensed. Forgive me, Maria. Love you Aaron, he whispered… not out loud because the old man would defile anything tender, anything beautiful, anything fragile as a prayer.

“Well,” Umbach said peevishly. “I guess you can save me the trouble of dragging your carcass up there, eh?” He followed along a few paces behind.

The barn door squealed when Victor shoved it open. He stood back, peering into the cavernous, musty dark for a moment, then entered. A few paces in, he stopped, waited. For what? He couldn’t say. You’ll know when you know. Umbach switched on some lights, their feeble incandescence barely reaching the dirt floor. It was as if a species of blackness inside the arched space exhausted the bulbs’ rays before they could illuminate its gloomy dimensions. The lights glimmered like faint stars in their dilapidated firmament.

“Where is she, Frank?”

Victor heard the old man’s fingers rasping the stubble on his chin. “Now let me see,” Umbach taunted deliberately, slowly.

Victor concentrated, relaxed his senses. It had been days since she had appeared to him, but he felt her spirit now.

“Crystal?”

He waited, head cocked like a faithful dog’s. “Mother?”

“She can’t talk to you from hell,” Umbach grumbled.

“What do you know about heaven and hell? What did you know of my mother except what your crude, disgusting lust discovered?”

“I know she was a sinner.”

The warmth of her body, that’s what Victor remembered. Her soft crooning in the intervals between Umbach’s comings and goings. Her love. Courage…

“She didn’t put me into the closet that night,” he began tentatively. He felt her presence close beside him, pulsing in rhythm to his own heart. This time Crystal would come to him in a welling of recollection, not as a ghost. She’d unlocked the cells that imprisoned memory, and Victor’s body sighed… For the first time in his life he knew what it was to breathe. Truly breathe.

“She hid me under a pile of clothes near the door. She had figured everything out. She’d coached me for days. I was old enough to understand her instructions, and she decided it was time. I was to stay hidden and not make a sound until you were fully distracted. Then I was supposed to sneak out the door and run…”

“Run!”

Her command still echoed over the night soaked landscape.

A surge of nausea threatened to overwhelm him.

He heard Umbach shuffling. Felt the gun at the back of his head.

“But I didn’t run, did I?’ he said, his voice detached, as if another was speaking through him. “When I crawled out from under that heap of clothes, I saw for the first time what had been going on outside the closet door and I froze like a deer in the headlights. Your back was to me. I could see my mother under you, but I couldn’t understand what was happening… what you were doing to her.”

“Shut up!”

“I wanted to stop it. I was torn between my mother’s instructions and the need to do something, anything to stop you raping her…”

“Shut up or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”

“She’d warned me a hundred times that if I ever saw you, I was not to look into your face. She warned me! My mother was afraid of what you’d do if I ever dared look you in the eye, Frank.”

The words forced their way out of him now, a torrent he’d pent up his entire life. He realized suddenly, sickeningly, that he still hadn’t looked Frank Umbach in the eye. Not with knowledge and intent. Not since that night. That’s why he hadn’t been able to recognize the old man. Not really.

“No more,” Victor said.

And suddenly, he remembered Umbach’s basilisk stare from thirty years before.

“I must have gasped, or made some kind of noise, because you turned on me, and I knew in that instant why my mother had warned me about you. Do you know what I saw, Frank? Do you know what I saw in that bloated, ugly face of yours?”

“She was an evil bitch and I was trying to get something good out of her!” Umbach yelled. “I wanted you to be our boy!”

Victor laughed bitterly. The suggestion was both absurd and obscene.

“Rachel left you because you didn’t keep your end of the bargain, did you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Crystal was supposed to bear your child, then you were going to get rid of her and make like the child had been Rachel’s – by home birth.”

Umbach didn’t answer. Victor could hear the old man’s laboured breathing behind him, feel the shotgun still leveled at his head.

“But I was only an excuse, as it turned out. What you really wanted was Crystal, locked up in a room where you could rape her. You made your perverted fantasy real, Frank. You’d put together all the pieces so you could have Crystal Doer whenever you wanted, and when your sick excuse for kidnapping her ran out, you refused to give her up; you couldn’t, right?”

“You’re a liar, just like every other lawyer that’s ever lived to twist the truth.”

“Have you ever heard the term ‘sex slave,’ Frank? Rachel left you because she saw things for what they were, didn’t she? She knows you killed my mother.”

“She’s bound for hell, too.”

“My mother told me not to look directly at you because she was afraid of what I would see and what you would do to me. When you turned on me that night, I didn’t have a word for it, only a feeling, Frank—absolute dread, because yours was the face of evil…”

Victor twisted round at last and stared at the old man behind him, looking past the barrel of the shotgun straight into Umbach’s rheumy eye.

Run!

“She screamed so loud it broke your spell over me, Frank. She grabbed you and held on, I remember that—clawed your face and neck so I’d have time to turn and run. She must have fought like a wildcat, long enough for me to get away…

“Did you kill her then and there, Frank?”

Umbach’s eyes glowed like burning coals.

“Where is she?”

Victor watched as Umbach’s shoulders slumped. In a way, the old man had been waiting thirty years for this confrontation; an ancient bigot, too stupid to realize there was no hell except the one he’d made of his own life, no god except the one he’d perverted to justify his madness. Umbach hadn’t lowered the shotgun. It still pointed at Victor’s head. But pulling the trigger would have been a barren act, devoid of meaning, and Victor knew Umbach wouldn’t do it. Not yet. He needed to recover first—quick-charge the batteries of pious outrage.

“Where is she?”

When Umbach didn’t answer Victor turned and walked toward the centre of the barn. He relaxed his senses again, letting impressions flow, not holding onto anything, attuning himself to the soul of the place. He rotated slowly, sensing its energy. Nothing. But he found himself drifting toward the far end of the barn, drawn by an insinuating force, as delicate as the magnetism of a compass needle, but strengthening as he glided toward it.

The sound of cars, speeding up the road, converging outside the gate, reached them. Glints of red and blue flashed like sparks through chinks in the corrugated ribs of the barn. “Thank you Mar,” Victor whispered.

Then he saw—or thought he saw—a faint pulse of luminescence against the far wall?

“Where are you going?” Umbach shouted.

Victor sank to his knees when he reached the source of the light, reached down and laid his hands on the earth. “She’s here,” he said

He heard the click of Umbach’s shotgun being cocked. Any second now I’ll pitch forward, face first into the dirt. He wouldn’t feel anything, wouldn’t even hear the blast. Then we’ll be done. But the gun didn’t go off right away. Instead Victor heard what sounded like a struggle behind him. “No!” Umbach cried out. “No… you bitch!”

The air behind him erupted. A moment of absolute silence followed, then the thud of Umbach’s body on the earthen floor. Whirling, Victor sprang to his feet, crouched, ready. Only when he saw Umbach’s corpse, its face blown away, did Victor imagine the sequence that had taken place. He closed his eyes and offered a silent memorial to his mother, then walked away from the carnage—from the bloody rose that had suddenly germinated, bloomed and died after thirty years laying dormant in his soul.

Next: Epilogue