Lost Girls

chapter 21

The next morning delivers blue sky, clear light, and even a swirl of warmth in the air, and with these invitations Ontario Street is the busiest I've seen it. This is to say that at any given moment half a dozen squinting mouth-breathers could be observed scuffling along, wiping at their noses and waiting for the light to change. I head up toward the courthouse, nodding at those I pass. Nobody responds but I pretend not to notice, chin held up to the sun. Why not? Things--the whole confused lot of them--may not be as bad as they seem. And after all, even if they are, they bear no direct personal consequences. It's not me who sits languishing in a prison cell awaiting his fate. No, sir. I'm out here on the sunny street, overcoat unbuttoned, fresh oxygen and Colombia's finest replenishing my blood.

When I reach the top of the street I make a left and soon find myself standing at the library's front door. Ten after nine and it's still locked. Consider turning around but knock instead, and in a moment the door is opened by little Doug Pittle, his eyes blinking up at me in amusement.

''Been here eighteen years and that's the first time anyone's knocked to be let in before nine.''

''It's ten after, as a matter of fact.''

''Ten after, then. It's still the first time anyone's ever knocked on this door. Period.''

We walk down the hall to his desk where he picks up a paperback of The Catcher in the Rye in the advanced stages of decay.

''The library's most popular selection,'' he explains, cutting off a strip of duct tape and wrapping it around the book's spine as I hold it for him. ''There's a long-standing rumor at the high school that it contains an explicit sex scene. They'd be so much better off going with D. H. Lawrence. Or even Wuthering Heights.''

''Don't you subscribe to Sports Illustrated? Surely the swimsuit issue would be in the highest demand.''

''It would be. But the town council banned it after it was discovered that photocopies from it were being distributed at the school. Black-and-white photocopies.''

''Desperate times require desperate measures.''

When he's finished snipping off the excess tape I put the book back down and look out the narrow window next to the desk. Two men in leather hockey jackets smoke outside the courthouse doors across the way, waiting to be tried or questioned or ordered to relinquish their drivers' licenses. When finished, they flick their butts like fly fishermen, send two orange flares arcing under a sky now flattened by cloud.

''So, was your earlier research here fruitful, Mr. Crane?'' Pittle asks, taking an X-Acto blade to a cardboard box on the floor containing what appears to be the new installment of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

''Call me Barth. And it was very fruitful, yes. But I have a question this time around.''

''Oh?''

''Of a more historical nature, I suppose.''

''I see.''

He stops lifting the volumes out of their box and looks up at me in that unflinching, scientific way of his.

''The other day I bumped into a Mrs. Arthurs, out there on Lake St. Christopher. Nice lady, though given to quite fantastic stories. The one she told me involved a certain Lady in the Lake, attempted child abductions, and her fall through the ice to her death. I'm summarizing here to save you from the macabre details. What I'm wondering is if any of this rings a bell with you.''

''Of course it does,'' he says now, stands, his eyes never straying from mine. ''Everyone who lives around here knows that one.''

''So it's a lie?''

''Wouldn't say that. More like Murdoch's Loch Ness Monster, but without the benefits to the tourist trade. In fact, there's a number of people up here who blame the Lady's bad vibes for the lake's lack of investment. The thinking is that nobody wants to put money into a place known to inhabit a spirit intent on possessing other people's children. And there's a certain logic to that, I guess.''

''And what do you think?''

Pittle slides a hand into a pocket of his corduroys, combs the other through the front tuft of his hair.

''I think Helen Arthurs is a valued relic and entertaining in her way,'' he says, taking his time, ''but quite likely deep in the late stages of senility. I think the woman behind the Lady in the Lake was real but has been dead for a long time and these days is just something high school kids use to scare themselves with at Halloween. It's become a tradition for guys to take their girls up there to tell them their version of the tale, smoke a couple joints, drink booze stolen from their fathers' liquor cabinets and try to get laid.''

I step away from the window to lean my back against a standing bookshelf holding the whole of the Reference section: a copy of the Toronto phone book, a taped-together Oxford English Dictionary, a color atlas of the world, and the Guinness Book of World Records. All of it shaking slightly from a brand-new tic that pulls my shoulder blades together with a sudden violence every few minutes.

''So you don't believe there's anything to it?''

''Believe? That's different. You've been up there yourself, haven't you?''

''To investigate the circumstances--''

''Then you know what it's like. What do you believe?''

I answer with a sequence of cleared throat and unhinged mouth.

''Okay. Tough question.'' Pittle finally laughs. ''And not fair. I don't think I could answer it myself.''

He pulls both his hands from pocket and head to scratch his beard with a sudden vigor, takes a moment to smooth the longer whiskers away from his lips. ''So what was your question?''

''I guess you've already answered it, more or less.''

Pittle returns to lifting the box's contents onto the floor. In his miniature arms each book appears to be the size of the stone tablets Moses carried down the mountain.

''You mind if I ask a question of my own?'' he asks with his back turned.

''Go ahead.''

''I'm having trouble seeing what Mrs. Arthurs's story has got to do with your client.''

The shoulder blades pull together and the Guinness Book thumps over onto its side on the shelf.

''Tripp? It's got nothing to do with him. How could it? I was just wondering how nuts the old lady actually was.''

''Which old lady?''

''Mrs. Arthurs.''

''So you were wondering if she--Mrs. Arthurs--could be of assistance to the defense's case?''

''No. Of course not. No, no.'' I work up four mechanical shots of laughter. ''It's of cultural interest only.''

''I see.''

Pittle's head remains set to the work before him, the muscles in his shoulders pushing tight cords against the inside of his cable-knit sweater. Outside the window a clutter of sparrows emerge from the remaining leaves of a giant maple, startled by some invisible threat. I push my back away from the bookshelf to stand before Pittle's desk.

''Listen, Doug,'' I say, keeping my throat as loose as possible in order to deliver a just-a-guy voice. ''I don't want you to think that I--''

''I don't.''

Pittle stands now and turns to me, his teeth sugar cubes buried in facial hair. ''Lawyers, reporters. Librarians too,'' he says. ''Questions are our business.''

For a time both of us stand there with eyes cast at different corners of the room. Through some crack in a door frame or windowpane comes the faint smell of woodsmoke.

''Well, thanks, Doug,'' I say finally. ''But I suppose I should be getting back to the real world now.''

''Sure. Anytime.''

But before I move I do an odd thing. Raise my hand to wave at him as though he were standing at some distance away. A stupid, inexplicable gesture, but Pittle doesn't acknowledge it. It takes a conscious effort to bring my arm down again. To prevent any further strangeness I keep both hands busy by sending them to my throat where they straighten my tie all the way down the hall and out into the broad world of lights.

Seeing as I'm in the neighborhood I decide to drop in on Tripp on my way back, justify my per diem with a social call on the guy who's paying the bills. Short and sweet, a hang-in-there-big-fella pep talk--this is what I have in mind. But then the interview room door opens and it's clear that even this modest plan was overly ambitious. My client's face an enlarging moon, bloodless, puffjowled.

''You look well, Thom,'' I lie as he lands in the chair across the table from me, his hands absently hooked to the opposite edges.

''I wouldn't know. They don't let me look in any mirrors.''

''That's cruel and unusual punishment for anyone to endure. Want me to smuggle one in for you?''

''I've gotten used to it, actually,'' he says, moving his head around on his neck in a slow orbit of mechanical crunches and squeaks. ''A little while longer and I'll have forgotten who I am altogether.''

''Well, you just give me the word if you need anything else, okay?''

''Anything. Right.''

I've been in here thirty seconds and it feels too long. Like sitting next to the drunk who's decided to talk to you and you alone on a poorly ventilated subway car. And there's something that comes off Tripp's skin--moist, feverish, a wet sheepdog sweat--that shrinks the space around him.

''Just thought I'd check in on you. See how things were going,'' I say, tensing my knees for a quick lift up and out of here. ''But if there's nothing else, I might as well get back and--''

''Have you been up there?''

Awake. My client sounds awake.

''Where's that, Thom?''

''The lake. Where else?''

''Well, yes. I have been up there. As a matter of fact.''

''They always wanted to know about it.''

''The girls--''

''How it was so deep that it never got warm, not really, even at the end of summer. About throwing a penny from shore and trying to find it among the rocks, the only thing shining up through all the silt. And the swimming contests --last one from the raft to the beach did all the dinner dishes. Oh, Lord! They'd make me tell them so many stories I didn't have any more to tell.''

Tripp shakes his head as though it were connected to the rest of him by a loose, insufficient spring.

''It's a hell of a lake, all right,'' I say. ''Quite lovely.''

''They were lovely,'' he exclaims, the neck straightening with a liquid click. ''And curious. Curious kittens. Told them so many things that by the end I didn't know what was true. Or what they'd made up themselves. It got so that the things they said may as well have come out of my own mouth.''

And then he actually does open his mouth, a brief choirboy oval that may have been an illustration of his point or an expression of surprise.

''Water that never got warm,'' he continues when his lips are brought together again. ''And dark enough that you couldn't see your own feet below you with your eyes wide open. Make you wonder what was down there. Told them what I thought, but didn't they have their own ideas!''

Tripp laughs formally in the way of a politician attempting warmth in an election interview.

''All this makes me wonder about something, Thom.''

''Hmm?''

''The Literary Club. What went on during those meetings?''

''Read books,'' he says abruptly, pushing back from the table and placing both hands on his stomach, jaw thrown about in a cud-chewing circle. ''Then we'd talk about them. That was the idea. I think at first some of the other teachers didn't think it would work, that young people today don't read books. And they were right. They mostly don't. Never had any more of them who wanted to come other than Ashley and Krystal. And a boy--''

''Laird.''

''--for a time, but he quit, which makes perfect sense seeing as boys read books even less than girls.''

''So that's it? Things were the same even after Laird-- after the boy was gone?''

''For a time, yes.''

He wipes his hands down the front of his prison overalls as though trying to remove something sticky from the palms or swipe away a layer of crumbs under his chin. Takes his time and I watch him. There's something in this motion--deliberate, self-conscious, a little ashamed--that makes him appear at once much older and younger than he is. He could be a child worried about getting in trouble for making a mess at the dinner table. An ancient bachelor noticing a mysterious crust on his hands and wondering what it could be, how long it had been there, or if anyone had noticed. But when he speaks again it's with a measured calm, his face raised to me, both youth and age gone from his face once more.

''One of the things I tried to teach my students is that narrative--what happens to us, the things we do to others --that the whole thing is organic. Of course it was a waste of breath most of the time. But those girls, they understood right away.''

''What do you mean by organic, exactly?''

''Always changing yet always connected,'' he says, throws his hands a few inches into the air and spreads his fingers wide. ''Always alive.''

''So once you'd taught that lesson to the girls, what else did you do?''

''Let them grow.''

''Let who grow?''

''The stories.''

Tripp pulls himself close to the table, composes his face into a mask of teacherly consideration. The face he would have once used in making submissions to a school administrative board.

''We shifted the mandate, I suppose you could say. From a reading group to something more creative. After that there really were no more lessons to teach.''

''Is that why it became so private? I spoke to your field hockey friend, Miss Betts. She told me of your practice of lowering a blind down over your classroom windows during meetings.''

''Environment is important.''

For the first time during any contact I've had with Tripp I stand up, pace the perimeter of the room. It feels like I may be getting somewhere.

''Did you keep a copy of the materials--of the fictional works the three of you wrote?''

''We didn't really work with texts. Too confining, and it took too long. The pen can never keep up with the mind.'' He raises his eyebrows. ''Did someone famous say that or did I just make it up?''

''I'd put my money on you, Thom.''

Position myself a few feet behind him, my shoes sandy clicks on the tiled floor.

''Tell me one of the stories the girls made up.''

''There was only one. Or many all joined together.''

''So give me a little sample.''

'' 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair.' ''

''That's nice, but it's not entirely original.''

Tripp doesn't try to turn his head to face me. The result is a slight echo in the small room, a fraction of doubling and delay.

''Your principal at the school, Mrs. Warren. I spoke to her too. We were both curious about your budget for the club.''

''You've been a busy bee.''

''Why would you need money for costumes, Thom?''

''Not me,'' he says, holds out his arms and draws them back with his words. ''For Krystal and Ashley.''

''So it was a play?''

''A story. I've told you that.''

''And how did it end?''

''You'd have to ask them.''

''But I can't.''

''So you say.''

The back of his head still as a mannequin's. The skin of his neck a waxy grid of wrinkles, the hair glued into each of the pores.

''Sounds like you all became very close,'' I say.

''As much as any family can be close. Which is how much, Mr. Crane? I have no doubt you've done your research into these things. How close can a father be to a daughter in a time--in a world where everything changes so easily?''

''They weren't your daughters.''

''No, they weren't. They weren't indeed.'' He makes a sound that could be either a sob or a scoffing laugh. ''It is a comfort when your lawyer has all the facts straight.''

''But he doesn't. Not yet. Which leads me to my next question.'' I take in a tight breath. ''There's a book I found at the library here in town. A history--''

Tripp suddenly spins around in his chair and faces me, a fluid turn involving the upper half of his body that cuts my voice off in my throat.

''You hear her, too, don't you?''

''I'm sorry?''

''You heard me. Just as well as you can hear her.''

''Who, Thom?''

''The Lady. She speaks to you, too, doesn't she?''

''No, she doesn't. And I thought we discussed this matter earlier. An insanity plea is something we can consider, if you'd like, but at this juncture I feel our position is relatively secure. So there's no need for these displays-- these desperate measures, okay? Just save it in case we need it for later.''

What I thought might have been progress now collapsing into the black of Tripp's eyes. He's gone again and it's time for me to go too.

Six sharp raps at the door to make sure somebody hears and comes quick. Because the truth is the better I know my client the more he puts me off. And it's not the fear he creates in me but what I see of it in him that does it.

'' 'When shall we three meet again?' '' he says when the guard comes to let me out, and although I could answer the line with the one that comes after there's no way I'm going to play along.

Outside the air smells like rain again, sour as burned peat. I half jog back down Ontario Street and manage to jump through the front doors of the Empire just as the first drops splash off my shoulders.

''Ah! Now, that's a piece of good timin'!'' the front desk clerk calls out from the dark. ''Message for you.''

He bends down to find the note but I'm ready for him, closing my eyes to avoid the sight of his thin-skinned head. When I open them again an arm's stuck out with a quivering slip of three-lined paper in its hand.

''Mr. Goodwin from the Crown's office. Says you ought to call as soon as you can. Sounds kind of excited.''

I bound up to the honeymoon suite and dial Goodwin's office without taking off my coat.

''Crown Attorney's Office. Peter Goodwin speaking.''

''Goodwin. It's Barth Crane.''

''Ah. Hello, Barth.''

''So?''

''Beg pardon?''

''You have some news?''

''Oh, yes. Certainly do. There's new materials to be added to the Crown's previous disclosure.''

''New materials?''

''I advise you to come round and have a look yourself because--''

''What is it?''

''It may not be appropriate over the--''

''Tell me what you've got, Goodwin.''

''Perhaps--''

''Now, if you don't mind.''

There's a pause as the big man at the other end takes a labored breath of savored pleasure.

''The DNA results are in. The blond hair in the Volvo, Krystal's hairbrush, and the backseat bloodstains,'' he says, taking another full breath to deliver the next two words.

''They match.''