The Devil You Know: A Novel (37 page)

S
he’d been getting tomato seedlings started in the kitchen. The round table was covered over in newspaper. On top of that there were fifty or sixty tiny brown starter pots and a handful of paper bags of seeds.

I got them at the health food store, she said. Heirloom! A bit more work. But they’ll be beautiful. They’ll be like jewels.

I sat down. How long will Dad be gone?

She glanced at the stove clock. I don’t know. Another half hour. Maybe a bit more.

I need to ask you some things, I said.

Okay. She’d rolled her thin gardener’s gloves on and was ruffling about with the paper seed bags.

I found some more photos and I need to know what they’re about.

She looked up.

Just sit down a moment, I said.

Okay, Evie. What’s up. What happened?

I don’t want you to ask me where I got these. I just need to know what’s going on.

She sat down slowly. Her hair was in her eyes and when she brushed at it, the glove left a dirt streak above her eyebrow.

What do you mean?

What’s the connection between you and Graham Patton?

I told you, Evie. She shook her head. We all knew each other a long time ago. It was rough times.

That photo I showed you, remember? From the paper. I have the original here. I took the stack of photos out of my bag and pulled the drug raid shot and the contact sheet. Look.

Okay.

It’s definitely you.

I told you it’s me, Evie.

Graham Patton took the photo. I found this in his house.

My mother’s face went still.

What are you doing in his house, she said.

It’s his photo. He took it. That’s why his name is attached to it, but he’s not there.

Evie, my mother said. What are you doing in that man’s house?

But look. It’s not the whole shot. There’s something else that wasn’t printed.

I see that.

Who else was there?

What do you mean?

Who else was in this picture? What’s he hiding?

My mother picked up the contact sheet and gave it a squint. She shrugged. I don’t know.

You do know.

I don’t. I don’t know. It was a long time ago.

I pulled out the other photos, Patton at his cabin. My mother’s nude.

This is you, too.

She was quiet.

It’s you, isn’t it? When I was a kid.

Jesus, Evie. What if your father was home.

He doesn’t know?

She picked up the photo and ran her finger along the edge of it. I don’t know, she said. In the end I don’t know what he knows. She looked at me. I worked very hard to keep some things from him, trouble I was in. I owed Patton money, a lot of money.

You said you owed Sawchuk money.

I owed Patton.

Are Patton and Robert Cameron the same man?

Evie.

Sawchuk is Cameron. I already know that. I pushed aside the pots and earth and seeds and spread all the photos out on the dirty tabletop. You can keep trying to hide this from me, Mom, but I am so close to figuring this out. So close. I saw Patton in our house, in the living room, arguing with you the day before Lianne disappeared. I know I did. You can’t hide this forever. Is Patton really Cameron? Is he?

My mother stood up suddenly. You have no idea, she said. Her mouth was set tight and grim. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You think you’re close? I paid him back, every cent. I worked very hard to keep you away from this, I did whatever it took. I flattered him. Don’t go over to Patton’s. There’s nothing for you there.

There was a sound from the front entrance, the door creaking open. My father coming in, kicking off his snowy boots.

And as for Cameron, my mother said. He’s dead. He’s in the ground in Whitefish Falls. You told me that yourself. Her photo was on the table and she flipped it over, facedown. I’m glad. Whatever killed him, I hope it hurt.

D
on’t hang up.

I’d left my parents’ house and spent a half hour walking north up to Yonge Street before ducking into a doughnut shop to use the bathroom and the pay phone.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. I could feel David’s hand hovering over the phone cradle.

You’re right. Okay? I’m an asshole.

I don’t care.

You do care, I said. Please don’t hang up. Please listen. Please.

I don’t want to.

David.

Look, whatever, David said. I went over to see my father to help you out. Because you’re so crazy these days, I thought maybe I could ask him some questions. For you. I went there for you.

You don’t have to do that, I said. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

I fucking hate my father, he said. I go out for beers with him, for you, a thing I do for you, and you know what he tells me? He tells me you’re visiting him for coffee times this afternoon. You’re over at his place snuggling up for coffee. And what a hot piece of ass, that’s what I’m listening to.

That’s not true, I said. I mean. I was over there, but you’re not listening.

You’re just lying to me all the time, Evie.

I was over there trying to figure shit out.

And then I come in and you’re hiding in the fucking basement like one of his girlfriends.

You don’t believe that.

What am I supposed to think.

Don’t think. Just listen. I broke in.

For fuck’s sake.

I saw no one was home and I went in the back door. I found a bunch of photographs. David, you have to see these. They all knew each other back then. I know there’s a connection, I said. I’m almost there. I am so close, David.

There was no answer.

David.

Where are you, he said.

At Eglinton Station. In the Coffee Plus.

It’s late.

I have to talk to Angie. And I need to go talk to the coroner, I said. In Espanola.

When’s the last time you were home?

I was trying to talk to my mother. See? Just like you said. I asked her everything. David, something’s really wrong. You’d know that if you’d just listen.

It’s late, Evie. Go home.

If it’s Cameron in that grave, everything goes back to normal. I just need to know.

David said I’d lost track of normal. You don’t even know what normal is, he said.

There’s a guy out on my fire escape every night of the week and the police aren’t helping, I said. I just need to know. I need to know if it’s Cameron. David, I said. You get this, right?

I don’t know if I can help you anymore, Evie. I need a little break. Go home. Get some sleep. Call me tomorrow.

I’ll be gone tomorrow.

You’re already gone, David said.

I
went down into the subway, heading south to Angie’s, hoping to railroad my way through to a different assignment, or at least to get her car keys. It was close to midnight and the platform already felt deserted at that time of night. Eglinton is too far uptown. People get up early and go to work in the morning. I stood next to the emergency pole, waiting for the train.

I took stock.

Here’s what we know for sure:

On May 23, 1982, my friend Lianne Gagnon went missing in Toronto. She told her parents she was on her way to Varsity Stadium to practice for a track meet. Her body was found twelve days later in a city ravine. Lianne’s murder was traced to an American named Robert Cameron—a repeat offender with a Charles Manson fixation who was known to keep rats as pets and occasionally mutilate them. The day before she disappeared, a man we didn’t know asked Lianne to get in his car and help him find a lost dog. This now seems a terrible coincidence. Cameron was never apprehended.

We know that Cameron operated under several aliases, including Arthur Sawchuk. We know that a man named Arthur Sawchuk also ran a kind of flophouse for hippie runaways in Toronto in 1969 and 1970, and that my mother, Annie, was one of those teenagers. This Arthur Sawchuk also had a Manson fixation. He was known for a kind of cruelty toward women. He kept rodents mostly to torture them. We know my mother owed him money when she left. Sawchuk never forgave a debt.

David’s father, Graham Patton, was also connected to the house, and to my mother, both in 1970 and then again in 1982. My mother also owed him money. They were intimate enough for Patton to
have a nude photo of her stored in his studio, or else that’s how she paid him back. He was almost certainly in my mother’s living room the day before Lianne disappeared—the same day the man with the lost dog approached Lianne and me in the park, only a few blocks away. There are photographs of Patton in connection with the house that Arthur Sawchuk ran on Brunswick Avenue in 1970. There is no photo that shows both Patton and Sawchuk together.

In 1982, a man named Thomas Hargreave had his wallet stolen in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Later that year a man posing as Hargreave rented a room and took a job near Espanola. He died in 1985 and was buried under that name in Whitefish Falls. It’s now suspected that this man was actually Robert Cameron. The real Thomas Hargreave lives in Calgary and was surprised to find federal records listed him as deceased.

Graham Patton has a cabin, a summer house, in Whitefish Falls. It’s where he stores most of his photo archive of the last twenty-five years or so. It’s a house he’s owned since at least 1980.

W
here do you get off telling Vinh Nguyen my personal life?

I’d charged over to Angie’s place to con her into giving me her car keys, and the exchange with Vinh over the Peeping Tom was a good enough excuse to come out swinging. The way he’d thrown his feet up on the desk, like he worked on Wall Street and cared about things like the year on a bottle of wine, or Egyptian thread count, instead of living on salty snacks and staying up all night listening to the scanner in case something dirty or violent cropped up.

Angie came to the door wearing a bathrobe and a pair of dirty red high-tops. I hadn’t even taken off my shoes and she was throwing questions at me. So I hit her back about Vinh.

It’s not your personal life, she said. That’s where you’re wrong. It’s a matter of public record. If a couple more cases like this come in you can write a firsthand account about how victimized you are and get nominated for a prize. She walked away from the door and back
toward her own kitchen. The minute you call the police, you’re in open country, she said. Wide, wide open. You are a free-range girl.

She hadn’t asked me in but she hadn’t given me the keys, either. I followed her back. There was an old Formica table in the middle of the kitchen floor with a handful of mismatched chairs around it that looked like they’d been stolen out of a junkyard or else from the alley behind a TV talk-show set on garbage day. She had a tweedy couch with wood armrests up against the wall under the window in a spot that looked like cabinets had once been there. You could see the mark where the old countertop had met the wall.

Angie collapsed. Kitchen couch, she said. Get yourself a drink. Get me one, too. While you’re at it, yeah?

I’d never been this far into Angie’s house before. She looked like someone who’d been through a rough divorce. It looked like half her stuff was missing: half the pots and pans, half the dishes, half the household appliances. This wasn’t the case. Angie was a confirmed bachelor.
Bachelor
because
bachelorette
sounds like someone who wears kitten heels and wants to get married.

The area around the kitchen sink operated as a wet bar. There was a high cabinet over the faucet that stretched to the ceiling, where most people store dish soap and dishwasher powder and extra rubber gloves, only this one was filled with bottles. She had a wine fridge on the counter that also held a little container of cut limes and I used these to make up a nice-looking tray of tequila shots. The tray had an altered photo of a flying fish on it and a recipe. The fish was laughing and wearing a chef’s hat. It had been produced by the Trade Commission of Barbados.

I put the tray on the table and we fooled around with the salt and the shot glasses a few times.

They’re not gonna find anything down in St. Catherines, I said.

Nope, Angie said.

Because the warrant is shit, I said.