Last Song Sung

by David A. Poulsen

  “Hmm, let me think about that. The guy was a loser, so he wasn’t somebody I wanted to remember all that bad. Last name was Bush — that’s all I got. And I remember that only because we all made jokes about him being ‘bush-league.’ The guy wasn’t well-liked, if you catch my drift.”

  “Any reason for that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. People form opinions about other people. Smoke a little weed, have a coupla beers, and make a determination about someone. I did that a lot. All of us did. Maybe the guy was an asshole; maybe he wasn’t. Half a century later … I can’t honestly say.”

  “Did you see him after Ellie disappeared? He come around at all?”

  “No, never.”

  “So he didn’t represent any other artists?”

  “None that we hired.”

  “So you can’t tell me if the guy’s still alive, or where he might live if he is alive?”

  “Sorry, can’t help you there.”

  “Anyone else who was around Ellie — roadies, band members, boyfriends — anybody you think I should maybe talk to?”

  “Jesus, it was fifty years ago.”

  “Yeah, I know, Armand. I know it was fifty years ago. Just thought I’d ask.”

  He cleared his throat. “No, no, you’re right. And I do remember Ellie like she was standing across the room, her guitar around her neck, singing some sad song I didn’t totally understand but would have listened to all damn night, you know?”

  “I’ve heard that about her.”

  “I’ll tell you something.” Armand Beauclaire’s voice was quieter now. “Ellie Foster was going to be big, and I’m talking about as big as Joni. That’s the gospel truth right there. And whoever pulled her into that car in a goddamned back alley in Calgary, they took that away from us.”

  “Look, Armand, I understand that the prevailing sentiment is that she was loved by all. I’ve heard that from everybody I’ve talked to. And I hope this doesn’t sound callous, but somebody didn’t love her. Somebody abducted her, shot two people, and drove off. Can you think of anything or anyone I should be asking about … looking into? However remote … anyone at all?”

  Long pause. “Jesus, it’s tough, you know? And like I said before, I loved her to death, everybody did, even that last time.”

  I waited a few seconds for more. None came.

  “What did you mean by ‘even that last time’?”

  Beauclaire cleared his throat. “Like I said, she’d played Le Hibou two previous times. This time, she wasn’t the same. It wasn’t big, like she was a raving, weird-ass bitch or anything, but she was just different. Quieter, maybe. Introspective. Almost like there was something on her mind, something she wanted to talk about, but never did. But hell, maybe it was a lover or something. I mean, that shit happened all the time. But it was like after she played the other place, she was a little different.”

  “The other place?”

  “Yeah. There was another club. Up in Little Italy. Wasn’t around long. Maybe a year, two at the most. Ellie was one of the first acts they hired. I think they wanted to kick our asses. Didn’t happen. Ellie said she’d never play there again. And she didn’t. Nobody did. At least nobody who mattered. And then it was gone.”

  “Remember the name?”

  “Sure. The Tumbling Mustard. Cool name. But that was the only cool thing about it.”

  “You ever go there?”

  “Once. Cold coffee. Bad talent. I didn’t go back.”

  “You know the club operator?”

  “Nope, not really, except there were two of them, I remember that. Blew into town from the States somewhere, Arizona maybe, or California. Gone in a year or so. Maybe back to the States. I didn’t pay a lot of attention once I figured out they weren’t real competition.”

  “Remember either of their names?”

  Another pause. “Christ, I can’t remember where I left my glasses, but I’ve got one guy’s name. Fayed. Middle Eastern dude. Ahmad or Abdul or something. Anyway, I think he was the main guy. I can’t remember the other guy’s name. Listen, what kind of story you writing about Ellie? You’re asking some questions that seem a little strange to me.”

  I thought about it.

  “I am writing a story about Ellie, but that isn’t the whole truth.” I told him about Monica Brill and our investigation, figuring he’d be pissed off about my lying to him. He wasn’t.

  “Do me a favour,” he said. “You find out what happened to Ellie, I’d like to know. I don’t think you will after all this time. But like I said, I’d appreciate hearing what you find out.”

  “You’re officially on the list. We find anything, I’ll call. That’s a promise.”

  “I appreciate that. And I wish you luck.”

  “Thanks, Armand. And thanks for your time. If you think of anything else, I’d appreciate a call. Does your phone have call display?”

  “Yeah, and I even have a computer. I may be old, but I’m not prehistoric.” He chuckled, but I wasn’t sure if he was laughing at me or at himself. “I can see your number. I’ll write it down, and I’ll call you if I come up with anything.”

  I ended the call and banged together a summary of the conversation. I attached it to an email to Cobb and received a reply within ten minutes. It said only, “Good job. Let’s talk later.”

  The Chinese food was good, and the hot topic of conversation was volleyball, Kyla’s latest passion.

  “So you’ve made the team, then?” I said, after she gave a detailed account of the first few practices of the season.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know yet. We have a game tomorrow night. After that, Mr. Napier’s going to tell us who’s on the team.”

  “And what do you think your chances are?”

  “Pretty good, but it’s not like when your mom’s the manager of the baseball team. Then you’d really have to suck to not make the team. This isn’t like that.”

  “I’ll remember that during next season’s tryouts.” Jill laughed. Then she turned to me. “Now, there was something you wanted to talk about. Is this an adults-only topic, or can all of us be part of the discussion?”

  “Actually, this is something I’d like to share with both of you.”

  It was Kyla and one of her school and baseball buddies who had first sprung the shocking news about Faith Unruh’s murder on us a few months before. Josie, it turned out, lived on the same street Faith Unruh had lived on — and died on — many years before. And Josie had heard snippets of conversation about the murder. She’d shared those snippets with Kyla; then, the two of them filled Jill and me in on what they knew over dinner one night.

  I figured Kyla deserved to know that Cobb and I were aware of the case, and while we weren’t exactly conducting a full-blown investigation, we did have our antennae up and at the ready should any new information present itself.

  I told them about the meeting Cobb and I had had with Marlon Kennedy. I didn’t mention my earlier meeting with Kennedy in the laneway. Jill already knew about it; Kyla did not, and my desire to keep no secrets from her did not extend to sharing stuff that might scare her.

  “And so tonight you’re going to his house for an orientation into the surveillance he’s been conducting on his own all these years,” Jill stated.

  “Yeah, and then I’ll be sort of looking after the stuff and filling in for him during the time he’s gone to be with his ex-wife.”

  “That is so totally sad,” Kyla said softly. “He sits there every day watching those two houses and videoing everyone who comes around?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “It is sad, honey,” Jill agreed. “It’s really sad.”

  We sat silently for a while, watching the evening shadows forming on the street outside.

  “I hope whoever did that to Faith — I hope he comes by there one day and Mr. Kenn
edy gets him.”

  I put my hand over hers. “I hope so too, sweetheart, but one thing that’s really important — Mr. Kennedy has to do things in a lawful way. He has to report what he finds out to the police and let them handle it. It wouldn’t be right for him to take the law into his own hands and try to get some kind of revenge on the person — even if he was 100 percent sure he actually had the killer. You can see that, right?”

  She thought about it for a minute, then stood up and said, “Yes, I can see it, but it’s still really sad. I’m going to bed to read for a while. Is that okay, Mom?”

  “Of course that’s okay.”

  Kyla kissed me on the cheek, gave her mom a long hug, and headed off to her bedroom. After a minute or so, I turned to Jill. “Was I too preachy?”

  Jill smiled. “I don’t think so. It was a useful message to share with her. Kyla likes to think about things before she makes decisions. She’ll think about this, and in a day or two she’ll come back to it.”

  “Are you okay with me doing this?” A couple of times the projects I’d worked on with Mike Cobb had turned ugly. Ugly as in dangerous. I didn’t see any danger in what I was about to do, but there were no guarantees.

  “Actually, this is fine,” Jill said. “I’ve been feeling really guilty that I haven’t been volunteering at the Inn lately, and I’ve wanted to get back to it. This is the perfect opportunity.”

  The Let the Sunshine Inn homeless shelter and food bank was where I had first met Jill during a search Mike and I had conducted for a young runaway addict.

  “Damn boyfriends get in the way of the good stuff,” I said.

  Jill smiled and shook her head. “Uh-uh, this boyfriend is the good stuff. No, a lot of it has been due to Kyla’s being sick. And even though she’s a lot better, I’ve been reluctant to get very far away from her. But I think I’m ready to let things return to normal now.”

  Normal. Ordinary. Surprising how words like that felt really good after a difficult summer filled with worry over the health of someone we cared so much about.

  I looked in the direction of Kyla’s bedroom, then back at Jill.

  “God, I love you two people.”

  “Us two people are pretty darn crazy about you, too. Or is that we two people?”

  “Doesn’t matter … as long as the two people’s names are Jill and Kyla.”

  “Turns out you’re in luck.”

  Four

  I rang the front doorbell of Marlon Kennedy’s house a couple of minutes before ten o’clock. I’d been standing on the front step for a long minute looking around, taking in a yard and house that were remarkably unremarkable. An ordinary house in an ordinary neighbourhood, where, years before, a little girl had died a violent, terrible death.

  Kennedy opened the door and stood looking at me for so long that I began to wonder if he’d forgotten I was coming. And I thought back to the night he’d attacked me — the action of a man pushed over the edge. Not a madman, I didn’t think. But mad people surely didn’t act like they were mad all the time. Did they?

  Finally he stepped back to let me enter. I’d thought about what the place might look like during my drive from Jill’s to here. Not a long drive — that was one of the things about Faith Unruh’s death that had hit home, the close proximity of Jill and Kyla’s home to the death scene that had played out in 1991.

  Now as I moved inside the house that had been the home and workplace of Marlon Kennedy for so long, I made no secret of my curiosity. I stepped to the middle of a large front hallway and looked around. To the left was what looked like the dining room — at least in Kennedy’s configuration of the house. A vintage dining room suite that was a little the worse for wear but still held charm despite its age occupied most of the space in the room.

  Like the neighbourhood that surrounded it, the house, or at least this part of the house, was mundane, almost dull. Nothing to indicate that this was surveillance central for a decades-old murder. Or that the occupant of the home was living an obsession.

  Only one picture in the room, on the southernmost wall. Not a painting — a large two-by-three-foot photo­graph of a little girl. I recognized the photo. I’d seen it before. It was the one several media outlets had used. Faith Unruh when she was eight or nine, a quizzical smile playing over full lips, soft friendly eyes. Trusting eyes … perhaps too trusting.

  I surveyed the rest of the room. The wall opposite the one with the photo contained a doorway leading, I guessed, to the kitchen.

  I let my gaze wander in a semicircle to the right. A larger room spread out before me. It looked to have once been a living room. While I was scanning my mind for words to describe what I was looking at, Kennedy led the way into the room.

  “The business part of the place is right here in the living room on this floor and the back bedroom upstairs.” Kennedy pointed to the far end of the room.

  As I stepped into that space, I noticed right away that the living part of the living room was absent. It was something like a combined study and A/V centre. Two video cameras, tape playback machines, a table with a computer at one end, notebooks and pens at the other. Latest technology and old school sharing the same surface. And it was the latest technology. I stepped to the window. One camera was on a tripod and stood maybe chest high. A stool was in place so that the watcher could sit and have the camera roughly at eye level.

  “Tapes?” I asked him. “All this and you’re still using tapes.”

  He shrugged. “That’s what I started with. I know there’s newer technology, but this is what I know, what I’m comfortable with. And it does the job.”

  I looked through the camera and knew that I was looking at the front yard and the front of the house that Faith Unruh had lived in at the time of her death. Three doors away and on the same side of the street. Kennedy’s house was slightly more forward on the lot it occupied, thus offering a clear and unimpeded view of what had been the Unruh home. I also noted I was looking through the branches and leaves of a couple of trees that stood outside the window.

  I looked at Kennedy. “Camouflage?”

  “Yeah.” He managed a tiny nod. “The neighbours might get nervous if they thought it was them I was watching. I planted those trees the first year I was here. Now I have to keep pruning them back to allow me a clear view of the house.”

  He spent a few minutes telling me how he wanted the comings and goings of people from the house and the area in front of it recorded in one of the notebooks on the table.

  “I’m not going to tell you about the people who live there. I don’t want you getting lazy on me. You watch, you write down everything and everyone you see, and you’ll figure it out for yourself.”

  I thought that attitude a bit childish but didn’t bother to tell him that.

  “You got this part?”

  “What about this second camera?” I asked.

  It sat on a smaller tripod, or at least one with the legs not extended. It was in the corner near the window, but not facing the window, as the other was.

  “Backup. Everything here has a backup. If there’s a breakdown with one piece of equipment, I can be back up and running in seconds, minutes at the most.”

  “Makes sense,” I said, though I wasn’t sure it did. I wasn’t sure that any of this made sense.

  “You okay with this part?” he repeated.

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “The rest is upstairs. Follow me.” He began the climb up to the second floor, and I followed. There were three bedrooms and a bathroom on that level. He led the way into one of the bedrooms.

  “I cleaned this up a little for you, got a bunch of my shit out of the closet. There’s a couple of extra blank­ets in there, if you need them. I don’t use the upstairs bathroom, so you can treat it like it’s yours. I hope it’s all okay.”

  Along two of the bedroom’s walls were booksh
elves. I’m not sure why, but I hadn’t expected Kennedy to be a reader. I noted that a lot of the books were hardcovers, but I didn’t look at any in detail. There’d be time for that later, or at least I hoped there would be.

  “It’s fine,” I assured him. Actually, it looked more than fine. Like the rest of the house, it was neat and clean. Not that Marlon Kennedy was a neat freak; the place wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty damn good.

  He led me down the narrow hall to the last bedroom on the east side of the house, and I followed him into a space that looked to be about the same size as the room he’d designated as mine for the next while. Again, there was no furniture but for one table sitting just off-centre from the middle of the room and covered with more notebooks — several piled high, the record of almost nine thousand days of surveillance. Kyla had been right. The word to describe what I was seeing was sad.

  The rest of the room was a maze of recorders, computers, and video cameras. I turned to see that in one corner of the room, a high-powered rifle leaned against the wall. Kennedy noted my reaction to seeing the rifle.

  “Emergency only,” he said.

  “Good,” I said.

  “The part you need to know about is over here.” Another high-backed stool sat in front of the window and next to another video camera on a tripod. “I’ve got everything set up, so it should pretty much run itself, but I’ll take you through any problems that could pop up.”

  For the next twenty minutes I was given an intensive albeit brief seminar in video communications. He was remarkably thorough. There were two recorders so that when he was checking the tape from, for example, a time when he’d been away, another recorder was capturing the scene in real time. I got the idea that it was from this view that Kennedy thought there was a better chance of one day seeing the killer. And I had to agree. If the person who took Faith Unruh’s life was to return to the scene, my guess, like Kennedy’s, was that he would do it at the actual murder scene as opposed to the place the little girl had lived. I made a few notes, especially relating to the tapes I’d be checking when I couldn’t actually be watching the two houses. I had to admit Kennedy not only knew the equipment backwards and forwards, but he was also able to communicate what I needed to know very well. I’m not sure why, but I hadn’t expected communication to be one of Kennedy’s strengths. Maybe because that hadn’t been the case the night he’d jumped me in the laneway behind my apartment.