The Dells

by Michael Blair

  “No, I … ” Hal paused as one of the waitresses placed a bottle of Molson Export in front of Hallam. Christ, Hal thought rhetorically, how did I ever let myself get into this mess? “About that,” he said. “I’m going to need some more time.”

  Hallam picked up the bottle and half emptied it in three long swallows. He looked at Hal across the table as he took the bottle from his mouth. “You’re not having second thoughts about our arrangement, are you? You know I’m always happy to help a pal out of a jam, but I’m a lot happier when I know there’s something in it for me. I ain’t no altruist.”

  Hal was surprised Hallam even knew the word, let alone the concept. But, he reminded himself, Hallam wasn’t quite as stupid as he liked to have people believe.

  “You make it sound so simple,” Hal said.

  “It ain’t rocket science,” Hallam said. He leaned forward. “Look, don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be. Just think of it as an investment or one of your insurance policies. Business as usual.”

  “It may be business as usual for you, but not for me. Thing is, money is a bit tight right now.”

  “Not my problem,” Hallam said dismissively. “I ain’t running a charity. It was you who called me, remember.”

  “Don’t worry,” Hal said. “You’ll get your money.”

  “Oh, I ain’t worried about that. I am concerned about when, though. Like I said, I’m not into altruism. Motivated self-interest is more my style. And money is a great motivator. You want me to be motivated, Hal. It’s in your best interest too.”

  “Don’t you mean enlightened self-interest?” Hal said.

  “Enlightenment don’t pay the bills, old son. You’re a smart guy, Hal. Smarter than me, maybe. More educated, anyway. But look at where all that book learning has got you. Up to your ass in alligators. You gotta learn to relax.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Hal said. “You’re not the one who’s up to his ass in alligators, as you so colourfully put it.”

  “You just gotta hang in there. Look, what you need is to let off some steam. You probably haven’t seen any action at home in a while, especially since you got so fat. Look at that gut, man. It’s like a huge fucking bowl of jelly. Must be a real turnoff for your old lady, all that jiggling. My lady friend over there — ” He waggled his fingers at the blonde at the bar, who waggled back, smiling vapidly. “Her and her friends ain’t as fussy as your old lady. Suck on your dick for the price of a drink, let you fuck ’em in the ass for a couple more. What say we have us a little party somewhere?”

  “Being with one of your whores isn’t going to make me feel any better.”

  “How do you know? You ever been with a whore?”

  He had, after a fashion, three or four years before, when he and Gord Peters had been in Montreal on business. It had been a humiliating experience. He’d been so nervous and afraid that he hadn’t been able to get an erection, no matter how hard the woman had tried to arouse him. She’d even taken him into her mouth, something he’d never had the courage to ask Maureen to do. Although she’d spent the better part of the hour with him, and had more than earned her fee, he’d asked for his money back, which had been pretty stupid thing to do. She’d laughed so hard she’d had tears in her eyes when she left the hotel room with his $500.

  Hallam beckoned to the woman at the bar. She stood and walked to the booth, wobbling on her high heels.

  “It’s late,” Hal said. “I should be getting home.”

  “Relax,” Hallam said. “Have another beer. Think of it as my way of maintaining good customer relations. I’ll be right back. Doll, keep my friend company for a couple of minutes.” He winked broadly.

  “Okay, Dougie,” she said accommodatingly, as she slipped onto the bench and slid close to Hal’s side.

  chapter twenty-nine

  Sunday, August 6

  When Shoe went upstairs in the morning, Rachel was sitting at the kitchen table, one leg tucked under, eating Cheerios by the handful from the box. The Sunday paper was spread out on the table in front of her. She was drinking instant coffee.

  “I didn’t want to take too many liberties with your supply,” she told him. “Oh, and Hal’s car is gone. Likewise Maureen. She must have got up at the crack of dawn and gone home.”

  Shoe started coffee, enough for two, and ate two pieces of whole wheat toast with peanut butter and a banana while it brewed. At a few minutes to eight the telephone rang, the familiar loud ratchety clatter he hadn’t heard in years. Rachel snatched the handset off the hook before the second ring.

  “Hello? Oh, hi, Moe. What’s — ” Her brows knit. “No, we haven’t seen him.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said to Shoe, “Hal didn’t go home last night.” She took her hand away, listened for a moment, then said, “All right. If you’re sure. See you later.” She hung up the phone. “She sounds pretty worried,” she said. “And more than a little pissed.”

  Maureen had a right to be upset with Hal, Shoe supposed. Shoe didn’t like the idea, nor did he believe it would do much good, but it looked as though he was going to have to have a talk with his older brother after all. He’d rather have his teeth cleaned.

  “What’s on your agenda today?” Rachel asked around another fistful of Cheerios.

  “I’m going to go for a walk in the Dells,” he said.

  “Haven’t changed much,” Rachel said indifferently. “Still full o’ trees. And bugs,” she added. Rachel hadn’t enjoyed the woods the way Shoe had. She’d preferred the sports field or the public library. “But, um, what about Joey?”

  “I thought I’d pay a visit to Dougie Hallam’s bar later, see if anyone remembers him.”

  “Better you than me,” Rachel said with a grimace. “I don’t want to think about the kind of place Dougie Hallam would drink at, let alone own.”

  After cleaning up his breakfast dishes, Shoe called Hannah Lewis’s cellphone, but got her voice mail. He left a message for her to call him at his parents’ number, then put on his trail shoes, slung a water bottle from his belt, and set out into the woods. The path from the bottom of his parents’ yard was somewhat overgrown — it likely hadn’t been used much in recent years — but it was still clearly visible. Shoe followed it to the narrow bridge of aging grey planks that crossed the drainage ditch, then alongside the low, half-collapsed fieldstone wall at the western boundary of the Braithwaite property. The large lot was so wildly overgrown that had it not been for the wall, and the unkempt cedar hedges inside it, Shoe would have been hard pressed to say where the woods ended and the Braithwaites’ backyard began. At the northwest corner of the Braithwaite property, he came to the main footpath from the turnaround at the end of Wood Lane. He angled left and followed the well-beaten path deeper into the woods.

  Until he’d outgrown A. A. Milne, Shoe had spent endless hours in his own “100 Aker Wood” behind his parents’ house, pretending he was Christopher Robin, setting traps for heffalumps with Pooh and Eeyore and Piglet. As he’d grown older, he’d ventured farther afield, imagining he was exploring uncharted wilderness with the La Vérendryes, Lewis and Clark, or Alexander Mackenzie. By his mid-teens, he’d learned to simply enjoy the quiet and the relative solitude. He attributed his love of hiking in the rainforests and mountains of the Pacific Northwest, something he hadn’t done nearly enough of recently, to the time he’d spent in the thickly wooded ridges and ravines of the Dells.

  The Dells had always been popular with dog walkers, and evidently still was, some of whom were less than conscientious about scooping up after their pets. He was leaning with one hand against a tree, scraping the sole of his shoe with a twig, when a voice interrupted the quiet.

  “Don’t you just hate that?”

  He turned to see Claudia Hahn. “I do.” He tossed the smelly twig aside.

  She looked very adventuresome, in a pale blue shirt, sleeves rolled above her elbows and secured with tabs, tan shorts with thigh pockets, and sturdy, well-worn hiking boots with bright red
laces. She had a professional-looking digital SLR camera slung over her shoulder and waist pack fitted with two water bottles.

  “I took your photograph,” she said, showing him his image on the camera’s screen. “I can erase it, if you like.”

  “I’ll leave that up to you,” he said.

  “I’ll add it to my collection on the hazards of suburban hiking.” She looked at him. “What is it?”

  “To be honest,” he said, “I’m a little surprised to see you here. I would have thought these woods held some unpleasant memories for you.”

  “Unpleasant memories tend to fade with time, don’t you find?” she said. “Good memories, on the other hand, such as the taste of dark chocolate or your lover’s touch, often grow even stronger.” She smiled. “It didn’t happen overnight, of course, but learning to appreciate these woods again helped me come to terms with my rape. What about you? You must have spent a great deal of time here when you were growing up. Did the rapes and Elizabeth Kinney’s murder change how you felt about them at all?”

  “I suppose so,” he said, recalling that Elizabeth Kinney had been the name of the park worker who’d been the fourth and, with any luck, final victim of the Black Creek Rapist. “For a long time afterward many people in the neighbourhood, particularly the women and girls, avoided the woods. Things eventually returned to normal.” He looked around. “They will again.”

  “Was it near here that Marvin’s body was found?”

  “Yes. See. There’s still some crime scene tape on that tree over there.”

  She shuddered. “Do you mind if we move along? Or would you rather I left you alone?”

  “No,” he said. “I’d enjoy the company.”

  Together, they descended through the trees into a narrow ravine, then climbed to the top of the higher wooded ridge that formed the southern boundary of the wider, deeper ravine — a small valley, really — through which Black Creek meandered, at places cutting deep into the base of the ridge. Below them, on the other side of the creek, the open meadows of the valley floor had been landscaped into parkland. The grass hadn’t been mowed, except in the picnic areas along the entrance road and by the parking lot, and the creek bank was weedy and the footpaths overgrown. Shoe and Claudia Hahn turned left and proceeded along the path atop the ridge, shafts of morning sunlight spearing through the leafy canopy and dappling the ground ahead of them.

  “Do you live nearby?” Shoe asked.

  “No,” Claudia Hahn replied. “I live in Riverdale, east of the Don Valley. I bought a little row house there when I moved back from England. I’m staying the weekend with a friend who lives near the junior high school.” She placed the emphasis on the second syllable of “weekend,” in the British manner.

  The ridge slowly descended and narrowed, until it terminated on a low knoll overlooking a muddy flood plain. A huge and gnarly old tree had once stood on the tip of the knoll, an elm or a maple, but it had fallen, or been cut down, and no sign of it remained. The knoll was overgrown with young trees, saplings, brush, and wild grasses. Visible through the new growth, a few hundred metres farther down the ravine, the creek disappeared into the detritus of tree branches, old automobile tires, and at least one supermarket shopping cart washed up against the jumbled rock of the flood control dam erected forty years earlier to protect Jane Street, another half a kilometre west of the dam. On the far side of the busy four-lane road lay the surreal and gently rolling lawns of the Black Creek Golf and Country Club. Beyond that, almost lost in the haze of pollution, the great grey sprawl of industrial development and the wide slash of the northbound Highway 400.

  “Do you remember Joey Noseworthy?” Shoe asked. They stood where the tree had once stood. From their vantage point, they could see the housing developments that crowded close on the hills to either side of the conservation area. Out of sight over the brow of the hill to the south was Black Creek Middle School, formerly Black Creek Junior High School. “He was in your other English class.”

  “Smallish? Very intense? You and he were friends, as I recall. Why do you ask?”

  “The police believe he may be able to help them with their inquiries into Marvin Cartwright’s death.”

  “Does that mean what I think it means? They suspect him of killing Marvin? Oh, dear. He didn’t, did he?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But you’re not sure.”

  “No.”

  From the knoll, they descended and followed the path that ran between the creek and the high ridge, heading east again, back the way they had come. The path was overhung with maple and elm and willow. Where the creek curled up against the base of the ridge, the path became narrow, occasionally steep. Claudia Hahn was nimble and sure-footed. Her legs were strong and straight and muscular. She stopped on a slight rise and stared down at the sluggish brown stream.

  “Have you ever been to the Lake District in northwest England?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’ve heard it’s very beautiful.”

  “The water in the streams there is so clear it looks like lead crystal.”

  “There are rivers like that in the Rockies,” he said. “And glacial lakes that from above look like liquid turquoise.”

  “We’ll just have to pretend we’re in the Lake District or the Rocky Mountains then, won’t we?” she said. She resumed walking.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about Marvin Cartwright?” Shoe asked.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “It’s been so long. What would you like to know?”

  “What kind of man was he? Was he a warm person?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say he was warm, but he wasn’t cold, either. Cool, perhaps, and a little distant. I suppose you could say he was neutral.”

  “And yet he was passionate about chess and birds.”

  “So it would appear, I suppose, to the casual observer,” she said. “However, chess is a very precise, logical discipline, is it not? And his interest in birds was more scientific than it was aesthetic.”

  “You said he wrote adventure romance novels. They’re passionate, aren’t they?”

  “But it was make-believe, the imaginary passion of fictional people, idealized and romanticized. It was with real people and real life Marvin had difficulties.”

  “You said you didn’t think he had many friends. What about enemies?”

  “I wouldn’t know. But hatred, like friendship, is an emotional response, wouldn’t you say? Are people who don’t have close friends likely to have enemies?”

  “My sister remembers a warm, friendly man, a sort of real-life Mr. Rogers, with slippers and cardigan, not the cool, distant man you describe.”

  “Perhaps he felt more at ease around children. Did your friend Joey know him when you were growing up?”

  “Yes. And later too. Joey dropped out in our first year of high school, bought a motorcycle, and took to the road. He’s been on it ever since. He ran into Cartwright some years ago, while working in a park in Prince Edward County, near where Cartwright was living. After that, he stayed with Cartwright whenever he was in the area.”

  “On what grounds do the police suspect Joey of Marvin’s murder?” she asked.

  “They received an anonymous tip, a phone call, possibly from a witness who doesn’t wish to be involved.

  Also, Joey has a criminal record, and his fingerprints were found in Cartwright’s car.”

  “Joey and Marvin were friends, you said.”

  “They were acquainted with each other,” Shoe said. “I don’t know if they were friends. Joey was also in possession of a book and a chess set that belonged to Cartwright. He told me Cartwright gave them to him.”

  “Is he telling the truth?”

  “I think so.”

  “I wish there was something I could tell you that would help, but I honestly can’t think of anything more.”

  “Does the name Ruth Braithwaite mean anything to you?”

  “No. Who is she?”

 
; “She and her two sisters are semi-recluses who live in an old house in the woods behind my parents’ house. Cartwright and Ruth Braithwaite may have been friends, possibly even lovers.”

  “Sorry. No. I don’t recall the name. I have a difficult time imagining Marvin having a lover, though. From what I remember of his novels, I don’t think he had much direct experience with sex, if any at all.”

  They walked in silence for a few minutes, eventually coming to a part of the creek that did not match his memories. Where once the creek had flowed more or less straight for twenty or thirty feet or so, it looped around a pair of automobile-sized boulders. Shoe paused and looked up the hillside. The path the boulders had taken when they’d tumbled down into the creek was barely evident, long since overgrown. It had obviously happened some years before, perhaps even decades.

  “What is it?” Claudia Hahn asked.

  “These two boulders used to be thirty feet up the hillside,” he said.

  “Goodness,” Claudia said. “I do hope no one was on the path when they fell.”

  The footpath angled up the hillside, around and over the shoulder of the bigger of the two boulders. Shoe wondered if there was any evidence of Janey’s little hide-away buried beneath the boulders — a rusting can of Irish stew, the remnants of an old sleeping bag.

  “You told me that Mr. Gibson knew Cartwright,” Shoe said as they continued along the path on the other side of the boulders.

  “As well as anyone did,” Claudia said, with a smile.

  “Do you think he’d talk to me?”

  “I’m sure he would,” she said.

  The dry season was at its height and the creek was reduced in places to a mere trickle of water a few hand-breadths wide. The wet mud gave forth a dank, foul odour that evoked memories in Shoe of his youthful explorations. They came to a sharp bend, where once a big elm tree, roots undermined by erosion, had fallen to form a natural bridge, near which Elizabeth Kinney had been killed. The tree was gone, replaced by a pressure-treated timber footbridge, the wood greying with age. Shoe stopped at the approach to the footbridge.