Lost Girls

chapter 24

Jury selection is a tricky business under the best of circumstances, but up here the process poses a special challenge. The field of candidates clucking and tooth-picking in the hallway outside Courtroom 109 composes an unsightly logjam of humanity, their faces set by experiences and gene pools I'd prefer not even to consider. Uniformly hirsute, vinyl hockey jackets stained by a sticky, mysterious goo, noses and lips threatening to fall off from the abuses of grain alcohol and tobacco. Their loose-skinned expressions communicating less impatience than a pained confusion.

''No need to bring in the local intelligentsia, Pete,'' I say to Goodwin as I settle at the counsel table next to him.

''You're the one who wanted people from the surrounding area and not from town. I've only accommodated your request.''

''And for that you have my appreciation. I just had no idea so many distinguished members of society would have selected the woods north of Murdoch as the place to work on their memoirs.''

It's true that the field for jury selection was partly my own doing. We'd considered a change-of-venue motion early on to bring the trial down to be heard in Toronto, but Bert argued persuasively against it on the basis that in highly publicized trials of this kind, no town in the whole province could put forward a dozen people who weren't familiar with the reported facts. In fact, it was decided that requesting the Crown to gather a jury to be selected from the northern half of the district would render people with the greatest chance of not having a clue about anything in the outside world. In any other place Tripp would have already been unanimously villainized as the demonic child-snatcher. But up here, where creepiness of all but the most severe kind is largely put up with, the defense stands a reasonably good chance of pulling twelve blank slates from out of the trees.

''Well, what say we bring them on, Mr. Goodwin?''

Goodwin waves his forefinger at the court clerk, who sits in front of the bench with eyes already half closed. Having been interrupted from his clerkish dreams, he shuffles off to bring in the man designated to oversee the proceedings.

But it's not a man. It's Justice Naomi Goldfarb. This is very good news. Well known to be patient with the defense and strict with the Crown and, perhaps best of all, famously antagonistic toward all in the constabulary. Consistently overlooked for appointment to the Court of Appeal due, it is said, to her outspoken criticism of the Old Boys' Club that still runs the show in Upper Canadian halls of justice. I feel for her. The poor woman's been assigned this nasty business, necessitating a long stay away from her comfy Forest Hill digs, where I've drunk deep from the wine cellar at her annual garden party held for invited members of the criminal bar, my own invitation issued solely by virtue of my place of employ. I've appeared before her on a couple of minor matters in the past, though, so she'd likely be aware that this is my first murder. Another blessing. Now I can play the defense naif who needs his hand occasionally held in order to get him through the complicated unpleasantries.

''Good morning, gentlemen.'' Goldfarb sighs as she mounts the steps to the judge's chair, arranging the layers of her robes over the armrests. She has a rib-rattling voice and a sarcastic look permanently draped over her face, which, when she's seated, can barely be seen over the edge of the desk from where Goodwin and I sit in our places below.

''Good morning, Your Honor,'' I chirp in before Goodwin has a chance.

''Ah, the joys of jury selection! Mr. Crane, do you expect to exercise your right to twenty peremptory challenges of the jurors to be arrayed before you this morning? I ask only because it would be really nice if we could select our twelve before the end of the day, don't you think?''

I stand and give her what I hope to be my most accommodating Crane smile.

''While I reserve the right to challenge some of those I will make inquires of today, Your Honor, having viewed the candidates in the hall outside on my way in this morning, I have every expectation that the defense won't be holding up the proceedings, at any rate.''

''Very good, Mr. Crane. I applaud your optimism. Mr. Goodwin, please have the sheriff usher in the first of our lucky contestants.''

And so it begins. By lunch we've got eight suitably unbiased Neanderthals under our belt, and by midafternoon the full twelve plus four on reserve have been duly questioned and given full approval by yours truly. Four retired mine workers, a marina owner, two self-described ''lumberjacks,'' a manager of a Christmas-tree farm, and four bearded mumblers who, reading between the lines, are American draft dodgers who've been in self-imposed exile so long they haven't yet been made aware of the twenty-year-old pardon allowing them the full freedoms of the civilized world. All of them but the marina owner are men, and all, when asked if they had any knowledge of the accused, answered either ''No'' or ''Who?''

They'd do just fine.

''We're ready for opening submissions a week from today, gentlemen?'' Goldfarb winks as she gathers herself up from where she sits, visibly anxious to get in another few hours of city time before the coming Mondays-to-Fridays she'll be required to be stationed in the boonies. Again, playing Goodwin's physical disabilities to full advantage, I leap to my feet to offer my response first.

''Absolutely, Your Honor. And looking forward to it too.''

''Well, that makes one of us, Mr. Crane.''

I haven't called on Tripp yet to inform him of the hair and blood DNA results. The problem is that it's so easy to forget about him. Or, more to the point, it's easy to pretend to have forgotten about him. But it can be delayed no longer.

After Tripp is deposited with me in Interview Room No. 1 we manage to exchange some niceties--hellos, a bloody shame about all this rain, even a joke about prison food--and I wonder if today, now that it's coming down to the wire, he's prepared to offer me some help.

''I'll come right to it, Thomas,'' I start, then tell him about the DNA findings and outline their potentially grim connotations. For a time he appears to consider my words with an appropriate sobriety, places his hands together on the table. Then a mournful downturn hooks itself to his lips once more. Eyes straying away to the dream-in-progress projected onto the enameled wall.

''They had such nice hair,'' he inhales delicately, as though savoring the memory of its smell. ''But they'd laugh when I told them they should tie it up with a bow maybe, that they'd look even prettier that way. Just laugh at me when I told them that's how all the girls used to wear it, years ago.''

''That's amusing, Thom. But let's stick with the program a minute here, okay? First of all, is there anything we can say to explain how that blood got there? I mean, if you think the truth will sound bad, is there anything else?''

''If the truth sounds bad?''

''Don't you see how this looks? It's pretty obvious to me, and it'll be pretty obvious to the jury as well if we can't provide some way of answering the Crown's spin on it.''

Tripp winces, reshapes his mouth into a polite smile.

''Not sure I--''

''Do you think I'm stupid? The longer you play dumb, the bigger the shit we're both going to find ourselves in. And your pile will be far bigger than mine, I promise.''

I'm shouting now, louder than I intended, but Tripp only sits back in his chair and watches me with detached interest.

''How did you cut Krystal, Thomas?''

''I didn't do that.''

''No? Then how did it happen?''

''By accident.''

''Whose accident?''

''Krystal's!'' he shouts now himself. ''Horsing around with some of the boys out by smokers' corner after school and got in the middle of some wrestling match or other and scraped her knee. One of the other teachers brought her in and was going to call her father but I said I'd take care of it. Because I knew the trouble she'd be in if Lloyd found out that she'd been smoking with a bunch of boys instead of being inside at choir practice where she was supposed to be. She just hated going to choir practice! 'Only Christians go to choir,' she'd say, and stick out her tongue--like this!''

Tripp now sticks his own tongue out and laughs from the back of his throat. I can't help but notice that its surface is coated in a glistening layer of lime-green film, and that he displays it for an unnecessarily long time before pulling it back in.

''So I took her in the car to the clinic,'' he continues, ''and they put four stitches in her knee. When they were done I dropped her off near her house. I noticed the blood on my shirt the next morning. And in the car, little dots in the backseat. I didn't mind, though. They were just stains. And they were Krystal's.''

''When did this happen?''

''April Fool's Day. Isn't that amusing?''

I study Tripp's face for evidence of a lie but it's an impossible task. Even in my few years of practice I've had to deal with some remarkably accomplished liars, some you know are so good, you will have made yourself promise to never believe a single word that comes out of their mouths. The next thing you know you find yourself thinking that maybe on this point, this one issue, they're speaking the truth. But they're not. And this is the art of all great liars: making you believe the single fiction that among all the others is most important for them to have you believe. Tripp may well be a great liar himself, or he may only be the fucked-up dullard that he appears. All I know is that I've never met anyone--client, witness, or otherwise--who provided so few clues.

''Thanks, Thom. I'll come by again next week to see you before the big day,'' I say, but he looks at me as though he doesn't know what day I'm talking about or why it would be big.

Bartholomew, this is Houston. Come in, Bartholomew.''

Graham's voice on the speakerphone.

''Roger, Houston. This is Bartholomew.''

''So good to hear your voice, old man! Just wondering how our star is doing up there in the land of the midnight sun. Oh, and I heard who was assigned to your case. Dear Naomi. Lyle, Gederov, and the entire Toronto underworld owe her so much. Three cheers for Justice Goldfarb! Hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip--''

''Graham, I was sleeping,'' I lie. ''Can we do this another time?''

''Of course we can. You need your beauty rest, I know. Only wondering when you were planning on getting back down to the city for a little strategic pow-wow with us old guys. The festivities start tomorrow for you, and I think before things move too far along in the Crown's case it might be nice to have a three-way brainstorm. Make everybody feel better. What say thee?''

''I wasn't planning on it, actually.''

''No?'' He smacks his lips as though working on a hard candy at the back of his mouth. ''You think that's wise?''

''I think it's better that I stay put up here, that's all.''

''I applaud your commitment, but perhaps a meeting of the minds would only make things a little clearer for us and for you before things really get rolling. And you could eat some real food. My God, you must be dying! Do they even have a Thai takeout up there? Or a steak house, for the love of--''

''I'm fine. I'm not hungry.'' Easy now, Barth. He's listening for cracks. ''And you know what? There's really no need for me to come back down to the city. I'm ready to rock up here. Everything's cool.''

For a moment I can almost hear Graham's thoughts gauging whether I'm bullshitting or not, if he was prepared to insist at this point, how all this would pass with Bert. But when he speaks next it's warm and teasing.

''Cool and ready to rock, eh? Well, can I at least make a request that you let us know how you're doing every once in a while? The last thing we want is the wheels falling off our boy's little wagon.''

''I'll stay in touch. I just need to get some sleep now, that's all.''

''Well, you do that, my good man,'' Graham says rather doubtfully. ''You get some sleep. And you stay in touch, too, or I'll have to come up there myself and give you a good thrashing. Understood?''

''Yes, Pa.''

Then Graham's gone and there's nothing but the room again. And me. Me and the room.

It's the eve of trial and I'm walking the streets of town wishing for morning, for a cigarette, for a little company. Three things I normally have no interest in. Surely this is an initial sign of middle age, the sudden desire to dispose of old habits and take on some healthier new ones. Because it's all going, isn't it, little by little? My body calcifying, mysterious pains flashing through internal organs, muscles aching without just cause. Basic mechanics sliding out of my control and nothing but the brain left to count as my own. Which wouldn't be so bad if it, too, hadn't become doddery, endlessly gabbing away to itself but always failing to arrive at conclusions. It's not even interested in conclusions anymore. All it wants is to avoid the big questions and gnaw at a harmless puzzle every once in a while. Still, overall I must consider myself among the lucky. At least I'm not worried about my weight.

In fact, now that I think of it, if anything I'm aware of how light I feel. The weight of a forgotten name. A party balloon blown full of nothing. If I couldn't look down and know that my feet were still tied into my shoes I wouldn't be surprised if I just lifted off the ground once and for all, drifted up past the buzzing streetlights and slumped hydro wires into the supposedly infinite night sky. And the thing is I wouldn't really mind, not too much, although I'm not crazy about the dark and have every reason to believe it would be cold up there.

The offstage yowl of a backyard cat fight. A car washes past in the street, brake lights glaring. Nobody looks my way.

After a while I stop at the playground at the side of St. Mary's Elementary, plant myself into one of the canvas swings. Hold my legs out straight and creak back and forth through solid air.

I'm thinking: This is where kids play. Watched by parents standing on the other side of the fence or from their idling minivans, believing that if they could just manage to be around their children enough of the time they might afford them some protection. But how can you protect them from something you can't see? What defenses can be drawn against the anonymous monster that lives three doors down the hall, delivers your mail, gives you a smile on the way to the bus stop, lies next to you in bed?

I'm thinking: Maybe this was Tripp's daughter's school. Maybe he even pushed her on this same swing once, or stood below her as she clambered over the bars of the jungle gym to make sure he'd be there if she fell. Maybe this was the same place where he stood outside in the rain, looking up at her face in the classroom window. Thinking of how much he loved her, how desperately he missed her, and the injustice of being denied her company. But who knows? Maybe he was thinking to hell with all the goddamn lawyers and cunning ex-wives and court orders that say you can't come within two hundred yards of your own child. Maybe he was already working on alternative plans. How he would take her away and nobody would ever see either of them again. How maybe he'd do something bad to somebody else if it all didn't work out. Or then again it could be that he was just another awkward father who didn't quite know how to love.

Nobody really thought it was the English teacher anyway until he was arrested. He looked normal enough. So why are we always surprised when normal-looking people do terrible things? Almost all of my clients have been the sort about whom it is said that they look and talk just like you or me. Because they are you and me. And this is the only really startling thing about the evil of the world: not that so much of it exists, but that nobody ever expects it.

Later that night I dream of being asleep in my bed in the honeymoon suite. I know it's a dream even as it's happening. Everything as it actually is but with some of the details slightly altered: the distance between my feet and the windows the length of a bowling alley, the moon hanging like a paper plate over the town. Yet when I look up at the ceiling I know where I am. The feeling the same as looking at your own reflection in a mirror: I know I am here; I know I am there.

There's the room's coolness that keeps me from sleep even with the covers pulled around my ears. The newsprint on the walls that in the dark gives the appearance of a papier-mache cave. A nearly human sculpture that is my clothes thrown over the back of a chair, a squirrel digging through the eaves trough outside the window.

Then a new sound. So distant at first it could just be another layer I've added onto the others but slowly coming forward, distinct. The brush of something soft against wood, the squeak and snap of the floor taking on new weight. Outside the bedroom door, moving down the hallway. Closer.

Now I wish the dream was boring again. But this wishing doesn't stop the sound from filling out, unmistakable footsteps landing slow but heavy through the walls. I turn my head--the rustle of hair over the pillow loud enough for the whole hotel to hear--and keep my eyes on the door. Just enough space to slip a note under but it gapes wider even as I watch it. A hand could fit through now. An entire arm, reaching up to the doorknob to let itself in.

But when there's something to see it's not a hand or an arm but bare feet. The skin pale orange in the antique light.

Then I do just as I would likely do in real life: close my eyes and hope it goes away. But it doesn't. It's too real. It is real.

That's why I'm pulling back the sheets, sitting up on the edge of the mattress with eyes locked on the bottom of the door. The feet disappeared from view now; I'm up too high and the angle's changed. But the sound is clearer. A living thing that knows I'm here, waits for me to stand and go to the door.

And then I'm standing and going to the door. My own steps far louder over the floor than whatever waits for me in the hallway although I'm barefoot as well, frozen bones that can no longer feel where the air stops and floor starts.

Hold my ear flat against the wood. My breath a tuneless whistle up through my throat, tight as a straw.

And another's from the other side. A low, sickening rattle.

So cold.

The liquid clack of tongue. Words so unclear they don't even sound as words do but I'm still certain what they are.

Watch as my arm drifts away from my side. The fingers snapping back the bolt, pulling the door open wide and closing my eyes against the staggering wash of frigid air. At once acrid and sweet, bushels of cotton candy thrown onto a fire.

And a woman.

Standing in the middle of the hallway wearing nothing but a moldering hospital gown with holes rotted through to the body beneath. Her face broken open, envelopes of skin hanging across the dull ivory of her skull. Water still dripping off the long strings of her hair and down her stomach, her knees, collecting in a greasy pool around her feet. Stepping forward to take me in.

Hold me.

Raises her arms and her body enlarges to fill the door frame. Then her mouth. A space the size of my fist, and wider. The size of my head. A mouth stretched to break into laughter or a scream that beads my face with the bitter moisture from her lungs.

Close my eyes and wish it away. But again it's not my wishing that does anything, but a voice. Here in this room where I'm asleep, calling myself out from inside the mirror, from what you know can't really be there but is there nevertheless.