Leaving the World (63 page)

‘Then why does he need to see me?’

‘He’ll explain that.’

She dialed a number, then turned around and spoke quietly into the phone. After a minute or so she hung up.

‘He said he could send someone around in a police car to collect you,’ she told me, ‘but as their headquarters are located just behind us he thought you might find it less embarrassing if you just walked over there.’

‘That’s very trusting of him.’

‘I don’t think he considers you a security risk, Jane.’

‘He’ll explain about the psychiatrist and the program they will want you to follow. Please listen to him and please do as he asks. Also, I hope you’ll remember you can always call me if you want to talk anything over. And Ruth Fowler wanted you to know that she would very much like to see you when and if you are willing.’

‘Tell her “thank you”,’ I said, my voice weak. I had suddenly been hit by a wave of tiredness and wondered if I could take any more of this excessive decency.

‘Would you do one favor for me, please?’ I said.

‘Of course.’

‘Would you tell Vern “sorry” for me. He’ll understand.’

Geraldine Woods looked at me as if she was very intrigued, but also sensed it was best not to delve any further.

‘Of course I’ll do that,’ she said.

At that precise moment the phone rang. Mrs Woods answered it.

‘Geraldine Woods . . . Oh, hello, Sergeant . . . Yes, yes, of course I’ll tell her . . . I sit something serious . . . ?’

Her face turned the color of chalk.

‘Oh, God, that’s dreadful . . . When did this happen? . . . I see . . . Absolutely, absolutely . . . Leave it with me . . . I’m so . . . Well, I actually don’t know what to say, Sergeant.’

She put down the phone. She didn’t turn towards me for a good minute, trying to take in what she had just been told. Finally she said: ‘That was Sergeant Clark. He has to cancel his appointment with you. Something has happened.’

‘Something bad?’ I asked.

‘Very bad. George MacIntyre hanged himself in his cell this morning.’

B
Y THE END
of the day the story was everywhere. It was the lead item on all the national news programs in Canada. It was the cover story on the afternoon edition of the local tabloid, the
Calgary Sun:
‘
MacIntyre Hangs Himself
’ was blazoned across the front page, followed by the sub-headline: ‘
Accused of His Daughter’s Death He Leaves Note Saying He Can’t Take It Anymore
’. All the afternoon radio programs also made it their big piece of breaking news. Every inch and minute of coverage concentrated on one salient notion: that MacIntyre hanged himself to escape justice.

One psychologist interviewed on CBC Radio talked about how a guilty individual can live for weeks, months, even years, denying the fact that he is culpable for the heinous crime he committed, and then the moment arises when they have to confront themselves face on. ‘That’s when the urge to take your own life – to essentially become your own judge and executioner – becomes immense. The dawn of reality for a sociopath is the dawn either of self-destruction or of some sort of redemption. Sadly, in the case of George MacIntyre his confrontation with the enormity of what he had done proved too much to bear.’

A senior RCMP inspector held a news conference, in which the facts of MacIntyre’s suicide were officially recounted. He’d not been on twenty-four-hour suicide watch because, upon his arrest, he had none of the telltale signs of someone on the verge of killing himself. On the contrary, he’d been so adamant about his own innocence. ‘Having said that, we did follow all procedures and protocols when it came to ensuring his safety. Sadly these failed him – and I take full responsibility for that.’

Rare as it was to see someone in authority actually take responsibility for a catastrophe (and yes, George MacIntyre’s suicide was just that), I still couldn’t fathom how they could have missed what I saw so clearly in his eyes the first time I caught a glimpse of him on the television: the haunted features of a man who was in the throes of a downward spiral.
He’d been accused of killing his child, for Christ’s sake
 . . . Did they really expect him to take all that on the chin? Who could withstand such torment? And why the hell didn’t they protect him against himself? (Because, no doubt, part of them believed he deserved the self-inflicted fate.)

I myself was in deep shock about all this. George MacIntyre had been my cause, a certain
raison d’être
. But without him to fight for . . .

Oh, will you listen to yourself, sounding like the truly disturbed and pathetic sad case that you are. You and your wacko theories. The evidence – though not watertight – still pointed to his supreme guilt. Accept it – and now get it behind you
.

This line of argument was also put forward by Officer Sheila Rivers, a direct, hard-edged member of the RCMP who stepped in for Sergeant Clark when it came to formally cautioning me.

After Geraldine Woods had received the call from Clark, telling him about MacIntyre’s suicide, he also informed her that I still had to report to the RCMP’s offices – and they would be expecting me in a half-hour or ‘a warrant will be put out for her arrest’.

I was at their headquarters ten minutes later. The uniformed receptionist seemed to be expecting me. She hit a button and spoke into a phone, then told me: ‘Officer Rivers will be with you in a moment.’

Officer Sheila Rivers was in her late thirties: tall, angular, with short black hair and a rapid-fire way of speaking. She was dressed in a simple black pants suit and a white shirt. She could have passed for a businesswoman, had it not been for the holster and gun clearly visible beneath her suit coat.

‘Jane Howard?’

I nodded and accepted her extended hand.

‘We’ll do this downstairs,’ she said, pointing towards a door across the lobby from the reception area. She punched in a code on the external keypad. We were in an identikit version of the same room in which Sergeant Clark had interviewed me.

‘This shouldn’t take too long,’ she said. ‘As you have probably heard, it’s a crazy day around here.’

She opened my file – and explained that I could have legal counsel present for this ‘process’. I told her that wasn’t needed – and she gave me a document in which I waived my right to have such counsel present. I signed it. Then she formally said that it had been decided to place me under something called ‘Alternative Measures’. She explained that, under both provincial and federal law, these ‘measures’ were not looked upon as a criminal charge; that, though it would remain on ‘the system’, it could ‘not be construed as a misdemeanor or felony – which means that if you travel outside of the country and are asked a question on a visa application about whether or not you have a criminal record the answer can be a definitive “No”.’

She then read through the ‘Alternative Measures’ – in which it was explained that, having been ‘involved in activities that wasted police time and also hindered an ongoing criminal investigation’, I hereby was being cautioned that any further such actions on my behalf which were perceived to ‘involve police action’ would result in charges being preferred against me. I also agreed to voluntarily enter a program of psychological counseling, to be administered by the Health Board of Alberta – to submit myself to all medical and psychological examinations demanded of me by the board, and to agree to whatever program of therapy they deemed appropriate for me.

I had a few objections about this clause.

‘Say they decide I need electro-shock therapy?’ I asked.

‘There is a small-print clause here saying you can refuse to accept said therapies if you consider them detrimental to you.’

‘And I bet there’s also a small-print clause allowing them to override my objections.’

‘In my experience, the province isn’t in the habit of letting people they classify as unstable roam the streets. They consider you nothing more than a nuisance – and one who can be helped through more conventional means. My advice to you, Ms Howard, is to accept the terms of the Alternative Measures, see the psychiatrist for however long it is mandated, take the pills they give you and get this behind you. I’ve read your file. You’re not a misfit and you are certainly no dummy. So cut yourself a break – and play by the rules of the Alternative Measures. MacIntyre is dead. The case is closed now. Move on from it.’

But that afternoon I was back at the internet café, watching all those newscasts online, reading every damn column inch that had been written on MacIntyre’s suicide. Halfway through this media binge, my cellphone rang. A woman introduced herself as Dr Maeve Collins and said that she was the psychiatrist assigned to my case. She was wondering if I might be able to come in and see her tomorrow at three p.m.

‘No problem,’ I told her, and took down the address of her office in Kensington.

As soon as I hung up I returned to the CBC website and resumed watching their rolling twenty-four-hour news service. On screen the Rev. Larry Coursen was being interviewed. He was wearing an expression that could best be described as Piously Pained. He was pictured in front of his church, talking to a phalanx of reporters.

‘This is a terrible time for Brenda and her dear son, Michael. First the loss of Ivy, now George. I can only hope that George is in a better place today and that the pain and anguish of his life have been replaced by Eternal Peace. I’ve been asked to speak for the family – and to ask that you respect their privacy at this moment of intense loss for them. Brenda will make a formal statement to the press in the coming days, but for the moment she just wanted me to express to you her infinite sorrow and her belief that George is with Jesus.’

One of the reporters asked: ‘Any thoughts, Reverend, on whether Ivy MacIntyre will now be found alive?’

‘Tragically one must assume that she is dead. Why else would George MacIntyre take his life if she was, verily, alive?’

And I started racing through the files I always carted with me, the files with everything on the case, until I found my notes of my ‘interview’ with him.

‘
She’s not dead
,’ he told me.

And I replied:
‘How can you be so sure
?’

And he said: ‘
I just am
.’

Another reporter tossed out a new question.

‘The police have been very close-lipped on all this, but – presuming, as you said, that Ivy must now be considered dead – do you think MacIntyre left any clue as to where her body might be found?’

There was an involuntary moment when Coursen’s lips almost worked their way into a smile. He caught it before it was noticeable. But
I
noticed it – perhaps because I had the facility, courtesy of the internet and the stop/start feature attached to this broadcast, to replay the moment over and over again. The sides of his mouth began to curve outwards – the hint of an inward grin wiped off his face before it could become discernible to anyone. Anyone, that is, but me. Then again, I was playing it back non-stop. Was the bastard laughing at us? Laughing because he knew . . . ?

I replayed that moment four times over.

‘. . . do you think MacIntyre left any clue as to where her body might be found?’ the journalist asked Coursen.

And then there was, unmistakably, that involuntary, one-eighth-of-a-second smile which crossed Coursen’s face . . . followed by his answer: ‘I’m certain he didn’t.’

How can you be so certain, mister? What gives you the right to make an incontestable statement like that? Why are you telling us it’s a
foregone conclusion
that he didn’t leave a hint where the body could be found? Because MacIntyre didn’t do it? And because you know who did do it
?

The interview ended. The news broadcast rolled on. We were back in the CBC News Studio. The talking head looked at the camera and said: ‘In other news, a terrible crash east of Dundas near Hamilton claimed the life of a family of six today . . .’

Why did the mention of those two placenames suddenly trigger a déjà-vu moment in my brain?

I reopened the file and scanned again the notes of my interview with Coursen. When he’d asked me where I’d grown up, I’d said: ‘Dundas,’ pulling the name out of nowhere. And his reply?

‘
Dundas! No kidding
. I
did some of my early pastoral work in Dundas! Do you know the Assemblies church on King and Sydenham . . . ?
’

Of course he caught me out on that. But . . .

And Dundas is near Hamilton. And in my burgeoning file, there is . . .

A clipping from the
Hamilton Daily Record
about the disappearance four years ago of an eleven-year-old girl. Her name – I hadn’t noticed it before – was Kelly Franklin. And the
Hamilton Daily Record
article spoke about ‘
police investigations
’ into her disappearance, and then, in a later article, about how a ‘
trusted family counselor
’ had been investigated by the local constabulary. No charges, however, were brought against him. The girl, meanwhile, had been admitted to a psychiatric facility, suffering from post-traumatic stress.

Kelly Franklin, Kelly Franklin. I Googled her name. Around two dozen stories surrounding her disappearance and mysterious return. Many police investigations. Suspicions about someone known to the family. And then this, in a later
Toronto Star
article, which I hadn’t bothered to open the first time around: