Lost Girls (29 page)

''Light. Whatever. I don't know.''

He stops waving the file. The grin sags.

''Why did you ask me that?''

''No reason.''

''Hey, man, you're not--''

''No, no, I'm not anything. Relax.''

But now Laird looks anything but relaxed. Arms stiff at his sides, a look on his face as though he requires immediate use of the facilities.

''C'mon, let's see what you've brought me,'' I say, pitching up for a jovial tone. What I don't want is him running out of here without letting me see his little prize. ''Hey, now, let's have a peek,'' I laugh, and now Laird laughs, too, or at least allows the unfortunate grin to return to his face, and hands the folder over to me. Inside there's a single sheet of paper that I pull close so that everything else but its text is blocked out of what I can see.

Rules of the Literary Club
No boys allowed (except for Dad).
No story can be stopped until it's finished.
No real names. No real families.
Everything is make believe.

The words carefully handwritten in blue ink, each sentence resting on dead-straight, invisible lines. Below them, one next to the other, two lipstick kisses for signatures. Perfect red, every wrinkle left marked on the page. The paper held close enough that I can read their lips. The color of their skin surrounding open mouths like maps of two distinct lakes.

''Whose dad are they talking about?'' I say after looking at the thing for what is probably a full minute.

''Doesn't say, does it?'' Laird shrugs. ''But if I had to venture a guess, I'd say 'Dad' is Tripp.''

''Why?''

''He was the only other member of the club, remember? And I don't think they thought of
me
as Dad, do you?'' He looks at me, licks his lips. ''If you're wondering why they thought of him that way--it's a mystery to me, man.''

''So you've had this the whole time. After the police search for the bodies and Tripp was arrested and everything?''

''Suppose so.''

''And now you're giving it to me?''

''To make the file complete.''

I push my back against my chair, scrape its legs a few inches across the floor closer to where Laird sits.

''Why did you keep the rules separate from the rest of the stuff--the rest of the file?''

''Date of acquisition. The rules came later, so I put it in a different place.'' Laird raises his chin and speaks next in what I take to be his idea of an English accent. ''I confess that my current office organization system leaves something to be desired.''

''Do you realize how potentially important these documents are, Laird? That you might be in some serious trouble if it were found that you've been concealing evidence?''

''What do you mean?''

''It means that everything you've given me is not just part of some goofy joke. It means that these rules and the girls' file--that it all has potential bearing on a
murder
trial. See where I'm going here?''

''If it's so important, why haven't you handed it over to the police yourself?''

''Maybe I will. Right now I'm trying to analyze whether it may be fruitful to Tripp's case or not.''

''How would it help?''

''Well, let's think about alternative scenarios here. Let's think about Tripp
not
being the murderer, but somebody else entirely. Somebody who had an interest in them. An unhealthy, or some would say perverse--''

''Hey, I just collect things, man.''

''Like people.''

''
No
. Only the stuff about them. I'm not--I mean, don't try and--''

''Is there anybody who can prove where you were the day the girls disappeared?''

Laird's jaw falls open to expose a yellow, undulating tongue.

''I just came up here to help you out,'' he says, shoulders lifting up to meet his ears as though to block them from hearing anything else.

''No, you didn't. You came up here to give me evidence.''

''That's not--''

''The first package you gave me at the doughnut shop wasn't enough, so you figured you might as well give everything up so that maybe I'd put it all together. Isn't that it? You've been playing a game. Waiting until the police and me and all the other idiots finally got up to speed on the sick kid in the smartass program?''

''No
way
.''

He says this in the unmistakable timbre of boyish protest. The screeching demand that the goal never crossed the line, the incriminating thing in his pocket wasn't his, his friend gave it to him, it was all just a joke.

''Why them, Laird? Why Ashley and Krystal? They wouldn't let you into their little club and it pissed you off? Or did you just want to expand your souvenir collection? Actually have some real girls instead of the gum off the bottom of their shoes?''

''I didn't
do
anything!''

''Let's start at the beginning: you borrowed the keys to your parents' car and met them after the Literary Club meeting that Thursday, asked if they could use a ride home. Then what did you do? Offered them a couple of Diet Cokes with a little extra slipped in, something you stole from your mother's medicine cabinet that she takes on her bad days, and before you knew it they were sawing logs in the backseat. Then off to the lake, where you had some fun and then--what?--did you have to use a boat, or did you just swim their bodies out there one at a time?''

''This is
bullshit
!''

The sight of Laird Johanssen's face streaming with panicked tears is something I could have lived without, but there it is anyway. Spittled lips turned to dancing elastic bands. A string of clear snot swinging down to his chin.

''I'm fucking outta here, man!'' He coughs, but doesn't move.

''You can tell me. I'm a lawyer.''

''Tell you what?''

''Whatever it is that you know. Whatever you did.''

''You wanna know something? This--'' he says, and stops, looks down at his upturned hands as though he expected something to be held there. ''I'm gone.''

And now he actually does rise from his place on the bed and it moans after him as he sticks his arms through the straps of his backpack. Throws the door open and steps out into the hall.

''I can help you, Laird.''

''Never heard
that
one before,'' I hear him say under his breath without turning, his head hanging from his neck like a dead weight.

Once Laird's gone I watch the door for a while as though waiting for a face to appear in the pattern of cracks beneath two oval knots I've come to think of as eyes. Listen to the echo of Doc Martens galloping down the stairs. After it recedes the furnace switches on and a damp breeze sweeps into the room. The floorboards crackle with the change of temperature, the glass squeaks in its frame. The sounds of the hotel closing upon itself, satisfied that once more there's nobody but its solitary guest occupying its rooms.

After a time I reread the paper Laird left with me. The Rules of the Literary Club. Hadn't Tripp said they'd had active imaginations? It appears he was no slouch in that department himself. I read it over and over, lingering over the lipstick kisses, the capitalized
Dad
. Read it for so long, the words eventually fall away from their meanings and I take them in only as abstract markings, the liquid loops of what I immediately recognized as Ashley's handwriting. The paper is high quality, likely taken from Tripp's own desk. Marbled ivory--this would be its name in the stationery store. And below the written text the waxy blossoms of their lips: Krystal's round and pressed hard, Ashley's a narrow graze. The same crimson flourish, the lipstick passed between them. Maybe I'm sure of which is which from how closely I've studied their faces on the wall. Maybe I'm just sure.

How can you be sentimental over the lives of those you've never known? But I know how it happens. Working with Bert and Graham on homicides where the contents of a dead man's pockets are spilled out over a table to be studied for explanations, hints of poor character, complicity in foul dealings. Everything has sinister potential when thought of as evidence. But then after a while you start to get tired and forget about putting a case together and suddenly the same banal scraps become haunted. Look: there's a matchbook from the Fox and Furrow located in an Oshawa strip mall, a fortune pulled from a Chinese cookie (''You are only steps away from learning the truth you have been seeking''), an alligator-skin wallet with a snapshot of redheaded kids buried among the credit cards, a receipt for forty-seven dollars' worth of long-stemmed roses meant for the dead man's wife, his secretary, an unknown beloved. Put it together and it means nothing. It means everything.

It means that Laird is coming forward. He wants to show and tell. He may even be circling around the idea of confessing, a process I've seen before that can take a little time. I tell myself that this is what I'm waiting for. Put a little pressure on and he'll come out with his hands up and we can all go home. I'll be patient. I'll make a clever plan.

I tell myself all of these things. Then I slip the paper in with the rest of the dead girls' file and do nothing at all.

A Saturday morning and I'm lying awake with eyes set upon the door when, for the second time, a note is sent fluttering in beneath it. Watch as its corner comes to stick in one of the grooves between the floorboards and its fold swings open to reveal what from this distance appears only as ballpoint hieroglyphics.

Dear B. Crane, ''Honey. Suite'':
Mrs. Arthurs, ''widow'' of Duncan Arthurs, called up--
''I'd like to meet with the lawyer.'' Says be at Royal George
Tea Shop at 2 p.m.
THE MANAGEMENT.

I take up my position before the window overlooking the corner of Ontario and Victoria. Outside, a young mother with darting, bulbous eyes pulls a shopping cart with one arm and grips the hand of a bawling kid with the other. It's impossible to tell from this distance (and perhaps from any distance) if it's a boy or a girl. The mother stops at the red light, glances down at the child as though unfamiliar with it and only passingly curious about the source of its apparent torment, and continues on when the light changes. When both have nearly passed from sight the thing attached to its mother's hand swings its head to look directly up at me, sneers in an adult expression of hateful contempt, and resumes its tortured screeching.

How much worse could coffee with old Mrs. Arthurs be?

The Royal George Tea Shop is one of those pathetic Hail Britannia places one still finds in certain small Ontario towns. Cramped cafes distinguished by portraits of the young Chuck and Di on every tray, apron, and mug, framed prints of the Queen hanging from all available vantages of paneled wall, and Union Jacks providing the only color to offset the gray faces of the patrons and smoke-stained lace on every table. A small chalkboard lists the daily specials in a shaky hand (sausage rolls, eggs and beans, Salisbury steak). Upon opening the front door I'm greeted by turned blank faces interrupted from the slurping intake of tea the color of sidewalk puddles, along with the clamor from a string of bells tacked to the door to alert all near-deaf ears to any new presence.

''Mr. Crane!'' Mrs. Arthurs calls out from a table at the back, waving her knobbly hand and shaking the roll of loose skin under her arm in welcome. The dead faces mutter and cluck in recognition.

''Hello, Mrs. Arthurs. How are you?'' I settle myself into the small chair jammed between the table and the wall behind it.

''Fine. And you?''

''Satisfactory. Just wondering why it was you decided to call me. And more to the point, how you knew
where
to call.''

''Ah. People know things round here, don't you know.''

''I see.''

''And as for the
why,
I just felt I hadn't told you all I could have at our first meeting.''

''No?''

''No.''

She opens her eyes wide and sips from her cup, holding it in both of her gnarled hands. When the waitress comes round I order coffee and tell myself that as soon as I've chugged it down, I'm out of here.

''Well, then?''

''I didn't tell you about how the Lady has visited me herself,'' she says.

Her voice lowered to a whisper now but the words are nimble and clear. The chalky circles of rouge on her cheeks warmed by the rush of real color.

''Mr. Crane, you'll think me a madwoman for saying this, no doubt, but I know that the Lady is real, and that she's a demon. A
demon,
truly. And while I don't know for a fact that she had a hand in taking those little girls who are your concern, I know it just the same.''

''Mrs. Arthurs, those girls aren't
my
concern--''

''Let me tell you a story. It won't take a second.''

The coffee arrives and as I stick my forefinger through the china handle I'm glad to feel that it's only lukewarm.

''When my husband returned from the war he was young--we were
both
young then--and we set about starting a family. Not long after that--in the same spring the Lady fell through the ice, you'll remember--I found that I was with child. Well, I was
overjoyed,
of course. Duncan had a good job at the quarry at the time, and while it surely doesn't look it today, that wee place on the lake was more than comfortable enough for us both and a couple kids to boot. And so it was that, nine months later as the Lord intended it, our baby Elizabeth was born.''