Lost Girls

chapter 17

Someone slips a note under my door. Standing in the middle of the honeymoon suite, my body still dripping from the shower and in it comes--a flash of white traveling across the floor. The shadow of another's hand playing across the light from the other side, the brief, awkward flight of the paper--all a too-easy betrayal of walls, locks, and doors.

After waiting for the sound of the messenger's footsteps to recede back down the stairs I squint over the note's childish print, made less readable by the almost dried-out purple marker used in its execution:

Dear B. Crane, ''Honey. Suite'':

Brian Flynn on phone. Says ''Sorry didn't call back sooner.''

Says ''Can meet today.'' He lives at 212 Grange.

He says ''10:30 a.m. would be good.''

THE MANAGEMENT.

Brian Flynn. Ashley's father, with whom I spoke briefly at the same time I contacted McConnell, telling him how I'd like to get together at his leisure to ask a few questions. He said he'd get back to me later. And now he wants to meet this very morning. All The Murdoch Phoenix had to say about him was that he was a single father, laid off from the nickel mine several years back. He seemed to actively avoid the media throughout the investigation, regularly failing to attend press conferences during the search and, later, choosing to leave the histrionics to McConnell. So why does he want to talk to me now? Had McConnell convinced him that this would be a good opportunity to vent on the next best thing to the bad guy himself? Or was it another trap, the big man standing before the window over at Flynn's right now, poring over a leather-bound Bible, cooking up new hexes for round two? No matter what the plan is, I'm obliged to go. All for the potential benefit of my boy Thommy T.

But before I reach the door I notice something I'd already forgotten: Tripp's bloodied shirt on the floor where it was dropped the night before. The sight of it lying there next to my own dropped shirts, pants, and cotton miscellany causes me to stop, my eyes pondering its shape as though a complex piece of sculpture. But it's not. In fact there's nothing to it at all. A polyester-cotton blend nearly a decade past the fashion even if cleaned and pressed, but in its present condition nothing more than a stained and crumpled rag. If I just look at it there beside my own shirts, as a shirt among shirts, the distinction between them blurs and fades.

So what message could this particular shirt carry all on its own? That I'm now obstructing justice, that's clear. Clear, but unknown to any but myself. And as for Tripp? So little blood, really. Would it have meant all that much when the police discovered it, as they surely would have when some bright spark finally got it in his head to find out who owned the freezer and crowbar the thing open? It wouldn't mean the end of the game, but it would've been an unhelpful turn of events, to employ an understatement. Tripp would have to testify in order to explain the blood away, and even if we could devise something good on that count, God knows what further self-incriminations might escape his mouth on cross-examination. That's the real issue, or at least as real as any other.

I pick the shirt up, stick it in the plastic bag it came in along with the wrappers from yesterday's lunch, and skip downstairs. Pop open the trunk of the Lincoln and toss it in.

Here's a distinction drawn after extended time spent in the company of liars, pushers, and thieves: What's far more amazing than how easily one can come to do wrongful things is the ease with which one can then go on to forget about them.

Brian Flynn lives in the kind of house that is only nominally a house, there being no other word in English usage to describe such a structure (''shack'' or ''shed'' not being quite right either). It's the sort of lopsided affair one sees in towns like this, their occurrence tending to increase for every mile north one travels: square-faced facade with a door in the center and two small windows on either side encased in plastic to help keep out a greater portion of the winter's cold, a sparsely shingled roof supported by walls of equal parts wood and tar. A forgotten place, or a place that should have been forgotten long ago, being originally constructed as a short-term residence for contracted laborers with the view that, when the contracts expired, it would be abandoned and eventually razed. But here it is. Forty years past its due, a wavering plume of woodsmoke rising from its tin chimney and a mailbox stenciled THE FLYNNS at the gate.

I park directly out front, consider for a moment keeping the engine running in case McConnell awaits inside and I need to make a swift retreat, but decide against it. Flynn lives at the end of a street made up of ''homes'' like his own, many with motorcycles and despondent beer guts topped by vacant faces squinting out from the front stoop. In such neighborhoods leaving a rented Lincoln Continental on the street with the engine running may be unwise. So instead I pocket the keys, knock twice, and ready myself for an immediate attack. But when the door is scraped open it's not by a towering threat but by a small man with shaggy black hair and a shapeless beard beginning to yield to outcroppings of gray.

''Mr. Crane?'' he asks, his eyes closed as though unused to even the dull light of a day such as this.

''Thank you for returning my call, Mr. Flynn.''

''Wasn't going to at first, but then I thought, Why not? It's not like you're Mr. Busy these days,'' he says, throws a dry laugh out into the street. ''So I guess you might as well come in.''

Inside the house is cramped, dark (the sun unable to penetrate the rain-streaked plastic over the windows), bookless, but warm. There's also a smell of burnt coffee, canned tomato soup, and cigarettes which, taken together, isn't as unpleasant as the individual components suggest.

''I have to tell you, I was a little concerned about coming over here today,'' I say, standing on the bubbled square of linoleum that counts for the full extent of the front hall. ''I thought that Mr. McConnell may have been here with you.''

''Lloyd? Never spoken to the man in my life,'' Flynn states flatly, now standing in the middle of the living room in a plaid shirt and Montreal Canadiens pajama bottoms.

''Never?''

''Well, no, not never. Called here a couple times last year when Ashley and Krystal were hanging out a lot, saying he didn't think it was a good idea for my girl to be spending so much time with his. When I asked him why he thought so, he'd just say, 'C'mon now, Brian,' over and over, like I should know without his saying. And he was right, I guess. I did know.''

''I don't understand.''

''Because he's got money and I don't.''

Flynn's arms twitch at his sides like snakes held by their ends.

''But I thought none of that would've mattered after the girls went missing,'' he continues, ''so I left a couple of messages with him at the time. He never called back. Still, you've got to give the man the benefit of the doubt, right? Considering all he's been through.''

''Benefit of the doubt. Quite right.''

I take off my coat and hang it over my arm. Flynn doesn't move. For a moment it seems this may be it, the interview's over, he's frozen to his spot on the threadbare shag forever. But when he responds to what I say next it's with a disarming gentleness.

''Mr. Flynn, may I say at the outset how sorry I am about your daughter.''

''Oh, yeah? Well, thanks for saying so. It's funny, but not many people have. They look at you, all right, sometimes with sad faces and other times just curious. But usually they don't say anything. They've probably done all their talking to Lloyd, and they figure there's not much point in giving their sympathies twice.''

He takes the coat from my arm as he speaks and places it over the end of the room's fake leather couch with black hockey tape over the holes where the stuffing has begun to escape. When he's finished speaking he lowers himself into a brown La-Z-Boy with a foldout leg rest. To his right, a side table equipped with a giant ashtray with Pope John Paul II's face painted in its basin and the remote control to the TV, an old set with a cabinet made of molded plastic shaped like a baroque wood carving. He signals for me to sit on the couch, and I do.

''Not much, is it?'' he asks, and while I know he means the extent of his worldly possessions, I shake my head and pretend not to follow. ''My humble home. Ain't much. But it's amazing how you get by. No job for six years now. The breathing's not so good these days.'' He bangs his chest by way of illustration, and in fact it doesn't sound so good, a rattle inside him like an empty can kicked down an alley. ''God knows what sort of nastiness got in the lungs all that time underground, but they're sure as hell not good for much anymore. Then again, I don't know if I've missed much. Don't get a speck of mail but whatever the government sends me. But like I said, it's amazing how you get by.''

Flynn smiles absently, reaches into his shirt pocket, pulls out a cigarette, and lights it without looking at his hands.

''Must have been hard. Bringing up a child all on your own,'' I say, realizing I've left my bag with my notepad in it by the door, but I stay where I am.

''Well, she wasn't a child long. And she was never a problem. Never, not from day one. I can't say I was much of a father. I'm not taking any credit for myself, no sir. She was just a sweet kid somehow all on her own.''

He exhales a shaft of smoke from the hole in his mouth where his two front teeth used to be. Again without looking, digs his hand back into his shirt pocket and extends the pack to me. Under normal circumstances I'm not a smoker (not for health concerns, but a mortal fear of yellowing teeth and the acceleration of wrinkles) but I take one from Flynn now along with his lighter and give him a nod in thanks.

''You know how fathers always say their daughter's just the spitting image of their mothers?'' he asks me. ''Well, with Ashley, it really was the truth. The very spitting image. Would you like to see for yourself?''

''Why not?''

With this Flynn lunges out of his chair, leaves the room for a moment, and returns with a white binder with Your Wedding scripted in flaky gold on the cover.

''I stuck all the wedding photos in the closet and put pictures of Ashley in instead,'' he explains, giving me a look that suggests certain things are too messy and happened too long ago to be worth going into the details. Then he opens the album up near the middle and shows me a picture of his daughter wearing a pink tutu, dark hair tied in a single braid, arms held up in a circle around her head. It was taken in this room, in the place where Flynn now sits, the only difference being that behind the girl stands a stubby artificial Christmas tree sparsely entangled in tinsel.

''That's Ashley,'' he says, pushing the picture closer so that I have to stick my cigarette between my lips and move to the other end of the couch to take half the album on my knee.

''She's eleven there. Always wanted to be a ballet dancer. Never knew where she got the idea, but from as soon as she could talk that's all she wanted. Well, what could I do? There was no classes for that sort of thing up here, and even if there was I couldn't have afforded--well, there weren't any ballet classes. But I got her that tutu there anyway, secondhand. And my God, didn't she wear that thing every minute she could! Come home from school and on it went. And on she'd go, spinning and kicking around the place till dinner and then up round and round again till bed. Had to move all the furniture over against the walls to give her room! I thought my neck was going to snap off from the angle I had to watch the TV at. Not that I minded. No. Of course I didn't mind at all.''

He turns now to the album's back page and puts his finger on the face of a woman in her early twenties with small but clever eyes and a slightly fierce smile broadening her mouth.

''That's her mom,'' he says.

''I see what you mean. Very similar indeed. But I must say, there's definitely some of your genes in Ashley as well, Mr. Flynn.''

''Really?'' He pulls the album back to his own knee and takes a close look. ''Which part?''

''The eyes,'' I half lie, for though both the girl's and her father's eyes were blue, hers were liquid circles and his twinkly slits. ''I believe she had your eyes.''

''You think?'' He sits back, pleased. ''Maybe she did, y'know? Maybe she did take something from the old man.''

For a time neither of us speak, just smoke, and after I stub my cigarette out on the pope's forehead Flynn sticks the pack out at me and again I pull one out. It occurs to me that perhaps I should take the lead here, direct him to some area of inquiry that may be of use. But the truth is I've forgotten what these areas are.

''The police came to talk to me soon after the girls disappeared,'' Flynn starts again, ''and at first I thought they were just being supportive or something, giving me plenty of 'We're very sorry' and 'We're just coming by to get the details straight here, Brian.' Then I realized they thought I might have been the one. That they were coming around so much and asking questions because they wanted to see if I'd slip up. And why not? Strange guy, unemployed, lives alone, nobody seems to know him. Isn't that the sort of person who does these kinds of things?''

He takes an aggressive pull from his cigarette and looks up at me.

''Isn't that why you're here?'' he exhales. ''To see if you can pin it on me so you can save your guy?''

''I would if I could. But the police had nothing on you, and so far neither do I.''

''And you're just here to see if you could dig something up. Well, I guess that's what you're paid for, right? I guess Tripp deserves his rights and all that. And you're the man who's been given the job, so it's no fault of yours. Let me tell you something.''

In one fluid movement he scrunches his current butt out and lights another, sticks his free hand into the wiry scrub of his beard.

''I used to work in a mine outside of town until management figured we'd dug too deep, it was too expensive to go deeper when you could just dig another hole someplace else, so they closed us down. Was out of work nearly two years. And then the men at another mine up the road a couple hours went on strike--saying it wasn't safe and they were trying to get the owner to do something before somebody got killed. But when a bunch of their management guys came to town advertising for temporary workers, I went. And I knew what it meant. I was a strike-breaker, a scab, whatever. All those men on the picket line had their own kids and bank loans and the rest. They needed to work. And me and the others that went up there, we just walked through their pickets to do their work for them, and nobody laughing but the owner.''

He runs his tongue over lips so dry they've lost their color, pulls on his nose between forefinger and thumb.

''But you know what the bugger of it all is, Mr. Crane? I'd do it again. Because I had my own little girl, my own bills to pay. I had my family to take care of, y'see? And while I knew that what I was doing was taking money from those men and bringing that mine closer to shutting down once and for all--while I knew all that, none of it meant a thing. Because it was a job, and I had to take it. Just like you. You've got your job, and nobody's going to like you for doing it--I don't like you for doing it--but you've got to. Besides, there's nothing you or the judge or McConnell or Tripp can do about it. Or me. Nobody can bring her back.''

Flynn sits back in his chair now and looks about him as though there were others in the room who until now he'd been ignoring. Finding it's still only the two of us, he rests his eyes on his mud-caked shoes and moves them back and forth, confirming that the feet within belong to him.

''I'm sorry, I've been going on so much I haven't let you ask a single thing,'' he says after a time.

''Not to worry.'' Take another puff. ''Well, let's see. I guess I'm mostly wondering about alternative explanations.''

''Oh, yeah?''

''For example, do you think it's at all possible that Ashley ran away from home? Took off someplace with Krystal and the two of them just haven't called home yet?''

Flynn's shoulders fall away from his neck. ''You mean, do I think she's alive?''

''Someplace else.''

''No, sir, I don't.''

''You sound fairly certain.''

''That's because I am.''

''You mean, you don't believe Ashley to be the type to run away from home? As far as you're aware, she was happy?''

''I'm not saying she was happy. I'm not saying she wasn't. I'm telling you, I know she's dead.''

''Mr. Flynn--may I call you Brian? I'm not trying to tell you about your own life, but it couldn't have been easy bringing a teenaged girl up all on your own. Maybe there was boy trouble. Maybe she went off to have a little adventure and got carried away. Nobody could blame you for that. I'm just asking if you would admit that it's possible.''

He twists what's left of his cigarette into the ashtray and sits forward.

''I'm going to tell you something now that you can take as fact. With me and Ashley, all we had is each other. That's it. If she were alive today, I'd know about it by now. She wouldn't leave me here alone unless it wasn't her choice.''

With this Flynn jerks back and circles his hands over his hips, feeling the pockets for the lighter. Eyes returned to his shoes.

''I'm sorry, Mr. Flynn. But would you mind if I used your bathroom?''

''Left at the end of the hall,'' he says without looking up.

I move around him past a narrow kitchenette to a hallway of four open doors: linen closet, bathroom, Flynn's shadowed bedroom, and, directly across from it, a tidy off-white square containing a single bed. Ashley's room. I step inside and the first thing I notice is the smell, somehow entirely distinct from the rest of the house despite the open door. Fabric softener, one of those sporty, unisex colognes, and somewhere beneath them the faint traces of gym sock. But nothing out of place now, the navy-striped comforter smoothed carefully over the bed. I glance across the hall into Flynn's room--peaked ranges of laundry, an unglued Pamela Anderson poster folding over itself on the wall beside the bed, the vague corona of sunlight at the edges of tightly drawn curtains--and recognize that it wasn't Ashley who kept her room this way but her father. After she'd gone. Somehow it's obvious that this is where he's spent a number of his subsequent afternoons, picking up the randomly dropped clothes and folding them back into the drawers, washing the sheets and vacuuming the carpet as though in anticipation of an exacting guest. On the walls, the boy TV stars she'd likely grown out of but hadn't got around to taking down, a single framed watercolor of a twirling ballerina on a solid blue background, dancing in space, in sky. The top of the dresser dense with photographs slid into clear plastic sleeves. Postcards--Niagara Falls, Maple Leaf Gardens, the Peterborough Lift Locks--wedged around an oval vanity mirror. All of it as it was before but now pondered over, dusted, and straightened. The kind of room you peek into on guided tours of historic homes, fixed and untouchable on the other side of a red velvet rope.

Move closer to the dresser, my nose probing through the valleys of photos. Ashley glum in her Confirmation dress, taking a vicious whack at a leaping field hockey ball, standing beside her father on a beach of stones the size of dinosaur eggs. None of her mother. I guess her to be the sender of the postcards, although I don't check to see.

Then my fingers find a single loose photograph tilted against the bottom of the mirror, pick it up to hold close before my eyes. Ashley and Krystal standing side by side in white lace dresses with blue ribbons. Standing in front of a leaf-dappled forest, hands held. Their faces not quite grim but kept willfully straight like actresses posing for a period portrait.

It's the only thing I've touched but somehow I can't put it back. Instead I'm sliding it into the inside pocket of my jacket, stepping out of the room and remembering to leave the door open as I'd found it. Leaning into the bathroom to flush the toilet, lowering then raising my fly before returning to the living room and landing on the sofa with a relieved sigh.

''Better?'' Flynn asks, a new cigarette worked into an orange rage.

''Much.''

He holds the pack out to me again and I take two, slip them into my breast pocket. ''For later,'' I say.

''No problem. Here, take a couple more. You never know.''

''Thank you.'' I throw them in with the others. ''I was just wondering, Brian, about how you felt with regard to Ashley's participation in Tripp's after-school group?''

''She was crazy about it. Krystal, too, the both of them. Making up little plays together in Ashley's room there but never letting me see. You know girls. Everything's a big secret.'' Sucks the cigarette in his fingers down to the filter and keeps going so that for a second I'm convinced he's about to swallow what's left. ''Why do you ask?'' he says instead, the butt a dried bean between his lips.

''Just that Mr. McConnell felt that the girls' being in that club was somehow not such a good idea.''

''It wasn't any school club that did them harm, Mr. Crane.''

He waves the air in front of him with the back of his hand.

''Just one more thing,'' I say. ''Why did you decide to call me back? It's one thing to understand what my job is, but it's another to allow me into your home. You must hate me.''

''Oh!'' He laughs once, then coughs. ''There are things in this world I hate, Mr. Crane. Things I'll definitely hate forever. But people? Not really.''

Thinking he's finished, I slide down the couch to collect my coat, but he stands sluggishly and laughs once more before speaking.

''As for why I bothered to call you back, I'm not sure. No, sir, I'm not sure at all.'' He shakes his head, then looks up at me directly, an irregular pulse at the corners of his mouth. ''I suppose it's because, other than the police, and the TV and newspaper people at the beginning, you're the only one who's called.''

I thank him for his time and the cigarettes, leave him standing in the crooked door of his house that is a house only for lack of a better name. Rooted there with arms now lifeless at his sides and on his face the faraway look of the unconsoled.