Jimmy opened a bottle of wine and poured them both a glass.
‘It’s those missing persons reports, the ones that Central Intelligence sent.’ He gathered the papers together. ‘Look at this.’ He was leafing through them. ‘There’s a man went missing in Golden Coast. There’s a woman in Golden Coast, too. A teenage boy in Nature Strip. A teenage girl, Golden Coast again. And a little boy in the Magical North. A whole heap of witness statements, and I’ve followed every path I could, but I haven’t got a single one. Five missing people, you’d think I’d have got one by now.’ He glanced at her. ‘I’m usually okay at this sort of thing.’
‘I know.’ Isabella smiled. She sat down, sipped from her wine, closed her eyes. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if Central Intelligence sent them to you, it means they can’t figure them out, right? And if they can’t do it, maybe they just can’t be solved. How did they end up with Central anyway?’
‘That’s the thing.’ Jimmy sat beside her, returned the neatened papers to the coffee table. ‘There’ll be some reason—it’ll be drugs or witness protection or foreign affairs or something. And darn if I can figure why a seven-year-old boy in the Magical North could be connected with any of that.’
‘No wonder you can’t solve them,’ Isabella exclaimed. ‘You’re missing vital information. The drugs or whatever it is, it’s probably pivotal. They’re wasting your time! Am I allowed to look at them?’
‘Go ahead.’
Isabella leafed through the files.
‘I see why you keep trying, though,’ she murmured. ‘This is a thirteen-year-old girl—and the seven-year-old boy—I suppose they have parents.’
Jimmy stood. ‘I’ve got some nice cheese and bread,’ he said, heading to the kitchen. ‘Let me know if you solve them while I’m in here,’ he called.
‘What I want to know,’ Isabella called back, reading fast, ‘is whether this waitress ever found her earring. And why she thought she should include that in her statement.’
‘That’s the seventeen-year-old boy? Went missing from the restaurant in Nature Strip, right? Yeah, and the waitress says something about how the back of her earring fell off, and she was crawling around on her knees looking for it?’ Jimmy leaned out of the kitchen door. ‘They get them to include every little thing cause you never know what might be relevant. But the earring, that’s what you call irrelevant.’
He returned to the kitchen, got the bread board and started slicing bread. It was soft on the inside, gold and crunchy on the outside, flakes of crust scattering as he sliced.
Then he put the knife down.
He walked into the living room.
‘You think it’s going to snow tonight?’ Isabella wondered. She was sitting on the couch again, the files high on her lap. ‘Because if it is, I’ve got this experiment I’m working on at school, and—’
‘Wait a moment,’ said Jimmy.
He took the files from her.
He flicked through one, stopped, put it back.
He flicked through a second, paused with the same narrowing eyes, then replaced that too.
Then the third.
The fourth.
The fifth—and back to the first one again.
He looked at Isabella.
‘I know where they are,’ he said.
It was late and cold, and the banks of the Sugarloaf Dam were scattered with cigarette butts; also with the charred remains of explosives. The field nearby was torn up with tyre marks, from motor-scooter racing.
The others had gone home now, but Elliot and Nikki sat on the darkening grass. They were rolling an empty bottle back and forth between their feet in a slow, idle game; leaning into each other against the cold.
‘What’s up with your Butterfly Child anyhow?’ Nikki said. ‘The sycamore bark didn’t cheer her up?
‘Nope,’ said Elliot. ‘She ate it all, though.’ He gazed across the water of the dam. ‘Which is weird enough,’ he added.
‘It is,’ Nikki agreed. ‘But she’s got to do more than sit around eating bark.’
‘Well, she heads out with her insect buddies now and then.’
‘Okay, more than that, too. She’s gotta fix the situation here in Bonfire, I mean. Get the crops going and so on. Isn’t that her job?’
‘That’s what I hear,’ Elliot agreed.
‘Cause everyone’s hanging by a thread. You know the bank moved in on the Whittakers last week? And I hear that Marcy Tam’s closing up and moving out.’
‘You sure are helping my state of mind here, Nikki,’ Elliot said.
Nikki had a giggle that was low and unexpected, rolling across the air between them like marbles.
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘It’ll be okay. The farms’ll come good eventually, with or without the Butterfly Child’s help. Maybe crops are not her thing. Who said they all had to have the same tricks?’
Elliot looked at Nikki sideways, blowing on his hands. It was getting colder.
Nikki held her own hands towards him. ‘Blow on those for me too.’
They shifted closer and Elliot took both her hands into his and rubbed them hard.
‘But if she can do it,’ Nikki added, thoughtful, ‘but she’s not, because she’s just depressed, well, I guess we’ve got to cheer her up. You tried telling her any jokes?’
He laughed a breath of mist into the air.
‘Okay, what’s she need?’ Nikki was getting determined. ‘A self-help audiotape? Or maybe it’s more of a practical problem. It’s school vacation in a couple of weeks—you and I could spend the time renovating her doll’s house. A new coat of paint can do wonders for your mood, is what I hear.’
Elliot wound a finger through Nikki’s hair. It was that pale, it shone like milk under the moonlight.
‘Or could it be boyfriend troubles?’ She leaned forward, and the hair slipped out of Elliot’s fingers.
‘Boyfriend troubles,’ Elliot repeated. ‘You never noticed the “child” in “Butterfly Child”?’
‘How do we know she’s a child? People just call her that because she’s small, right? Or maybe it’s cause she’s supposed to be the child of a butterfly? You ever asked her how old she is? Come to think of it, you ever asked her why she’s not happy?’
‘She doesn’t talk.’
‘Well, the time I saw her, she didn’t look like a child. More like a young woman, maybe. Only freakishly tiny. Maybe that’s what’s got her down—her own freakish smallness.’ Nikki leaned back again, resting her head on Elliot’s shoulder. ‘Or, like I said, boyfriend troubles.’
‘She does go out a lot,’ Elliot said. ‘Could be she’s got lovers all over the province. Never thought of that.’
‘Ah,’ Nikki nodded, her hair scraping against Elliot’s jacket with the nod. ‘Trying to juggle them all. Tricky.’
Their hands were intertwined now, their faces so close their cheeks were touching. An owl murmured nearby, and in the distance there was music. Somebody in Sugarloaf was having a party. Behind the music was the high-pitched sound of an ATV engine, and behind that was the sound Elliot kept hearing, that faint, low fluting. People always shrugged when he mentioned it, so he’d stopped asking. It must be in his head—maybe some residual Colour poison in his ear canals.
A stray touch of icy wind, and he and Nikki tried to shift even closer, coats pressing together, and then they were kissing.
It felt so much like a natural part of their shifting, or like the next step in the conversation, like defence against this cold, dark night, that they almost didn’t notice what they were doing. Then they noticed, and it felt so good his hands reached around her waist, rotating her towards him, and she followed the trajectory he’d started, climbing onto his lap, and then, abruptly, she stopped.
She climbed right off him, sat herself a good distance away, and said: ‘What are we doing? She won’t even be out of the province yet.’
Elliot scratched his head.
‘We’re drunk, I guess.’
‘We are.’ Nikki jumped
to her feet, offering her hand to pull him up too, but he stayed. He looked at his watch.
‘If they’re not out of the province yet,’ he said, ‘they drive too slow.’
Then she did drag him to his feet, and as he stood, he looked for his own reflection in the water. Couldn’t see it there; the water was too black. Moon must have slipped behind a cloud.
The telephone rang and the Sheriff regarded it a moment.
He was working late at the station, trying to get through the Red Wave Damage Fund applications.
Drinking whisky, eating crackers, lost in paperwork, and that shrill, repetitive sound took him by surprise.
He answered it anyway.
‘You there? I tried you at home first.’ It was Jimmy.
‘I am here,’ confirmed Hector, nodding.
‘Well, I know where they are.’
Hector waited. ‘Who?’ he asked, eventually.
‘Those five missing people. The Central Intelligence reports. There is a connection, Hector. Guess where they are? Guess where they all are?’
Hector waited again.
Jimmy sure wanted to draw out the suspense.
‘Where?’
‘They’re in the World. All of them. All five of them—they’ve gone to the World.’
Hector swung himself into his chair, holding the phone closer to his chin. He was grinning. ‘How do you figure that?’
‘I remembered World Studies classes from school—something Isabella said made me remember. Back in the days of cracks big enough for people to go through, there used to be a kind of displacement when they went. A tremor in the air. An adjustment of reality. Small things would go wrong. A picture would fall off a mantelpiece. Or a branch would shift its position in a tree. It stayed in my mind because I liked the idea.’
‘Sounds familiar, I guess. Yeah. And?’
‘Well, every one of these reports gets me nowhere. I’ve never seen such a series of dead ends. There is no explanation. Or there wasn’t. But tonight I realised that in every one of these reports, there’s something. A waitress loses her earring. A guy has to retie his shoelaces. Somebody else says the radio switched itself on so she turned it off. There’s even a guy says the commas in the letter he was typing suddenly fell down a line. That one I dismissed as plain craziness; the rest I paid no attention to, thinking they were just asides—those irrelevant details people stop and look at when they’re making their way to the point.’
‘Okay.’ The Sheriff scratched at some dried white-out on the edge of his chair. ‘But seems to me you’re drawing a heck of a long bow here. There haven’t been cracks big enough for people in hundreds of years. Just a handful of tiny cracks all this time, and those get closed before you can take a breath. Penalty for not reporting a crack is death. Penalty for even suspecting a crack and not reporting it is banishment. What are the chances that there are five people-moving cracks across the Kingdom and nobody knows? Seriously?’
‘Small as the toenail on a Butterfly Child,’ Jimmy agreed, at once. ‘But there must be, because that’s where these missing people are.’
‘And what’s more,’ Hector continued. ‘If these people went through the cracks, why didn’t they turn around and come straight back?’
‘I think somebody’s moved them across. Without their choice, I mean. Maybe closed them up right after they went.’
Hector sighed. ‘I’ll tell Central your theory.’
‘It’s not a theory,’ said Jimmy. ‘It’s a fact.’
‘I’ll also tell Central to solve their own darn missing persons reports from now on,’ Hector continued. ‘In fact, I’m telling police departments right across the Kingdom- I want my deputy back. I’m at the station working and it’s nearly midnight!’
There was a smile in Jimmy’s voice. ‘Don’t want to be the one to say this, Hector, but . . .’
‘I know, I know.’ Hector sighed again. ‘I asked for them in the first place. You’ve been patient with all this, Jimmy, which makes me feel even worse about the truth of the matter. I’m just about to admit that truth, Jimmy, but before I do, can you promise you won’t make too much noise? When you hear it? I’m too tired for noise.’
‘Can’t promise anything,’ Jimmy grinned. ‘I’ll do my best.’
‘When I asked them to send in their missing persons reports, I only wanted a specific kind. I wanted missing people in the electronics field. Remember the first few? That electrical engineer? The sound technician? Where it went wrong was, you solved them so fast, word got around you were genius at it. So they started sending anything and everything.’
‘All right,’ said Jimmy. ‘Why’d you ask for missing people in electronics?’
‘Because of Abel Baranski.’
‘Ah, Hector.’
‘Well, now, I’d almost prefer you to make a lot of noise than to go all soft-voiced like that.’
Jimmy blew air out of his cheeks and it came down the phone line like a breeze.
‘I knew it wasn’t a Purple,’ Hector admitted. ‘Purple got Jon, sure, but if it’d taken the others, we’d have found their bodies. They’d have turned up nearby, and they didn’t. Thing was, I didn’t want it to be the alternative—those two running off together, Abel running off on his wife and his boy. Leaving his brother to tell the truth, and getting his brother killed for it—not intentional, of course, but still. What a shameful thing for a man to do, and I liked Abel. He was my friend.’
‘I liked him too,’ Jimmy said.
‘So I stuck to the Purple—the idea that it had taken them alive, and in the end they’d find their way back. At the same time, I looked for a third explanation. Got to thinking about the fact that Abel was in electronics and Mischka in physics—sort of related, right? Maybe some Hostile group was snatching up people with those skills. Maybe we’d find a pattern if we looked at unsolved cases in that field across the Kingdom. That’s why I asked for the reports. Trouble was, like I said, you solved them, so they weren’t being snatched by Hostiles after all. No big conspiracy. I was wrong.’
‘Ah, Hector,’ Jimmy said again.
‘Worst thing,’ Hector continued, ‘the worst thing is, my Purple story gave Elliot false hope. Should never have done that. It’s cause of me he’s been off across the Kingdom, putting himself in danger everyplace he turns. Never figured he’d do that.’
‘You know, if Abel and Mischka went off of their own free will, they’re not even technically missing, Hector. It’s not police business.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m thinking,’ Jimmy said, ‘that any strange disappearances from now on, we should consider that they might have been sent across to the World like these five people. But Abel and Mischka? That wasn’t strange. I’ve told you this before, but I’ll say it again. The night before they disappeared, I saw Abel and Mischka walking out of the Toadstool Pub together. The strap on Mischka’s dress fell from her right shoulder, and Abel reached over and fixed it for her. His hand reached out like the next step in a dance. The way he did that, the way his eyes fell on her shoulder as he did so, well, it seems to me there was nothing strange at all about the two of them being gone the next day.’
Jimmy’s last few words disappeared into a cough.
‘Coming down with a cold,’ he explained.
Hector waited for the coughing to finish, then he spoke slowly. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s still a part of me thinks Abel fixed the strap on Mischka’s dress because he’s thoughtful that way. But a bigger part is finally inclined to think you’re right. I’ll talk to Elliot. This one I got wrong.’
‘You lost your mind, Hector. It can happen to the best of us.’
‘You’re a good man, Jimmy. Occasionally you’re off your tree—people going across to the World, for example—but still, a good man. I’ll tell Central your theory about these five missing persons, and it might help to dry up the reports that keep coming your way. Meantime, I promise: any more that do come in, I’ll send them straight back.’
‘It’s a deal. Night, Hector.’
‘Night.’
The fax machine started up just as Hector put down the phone.
He reached for his whisky and watched as page after page whirred through. Eventually, he picked up the cover sheet.
To the Good Sheriff of Bonfire in the Picturesque Province of the Farms, (it began)
We here in Gwent Cwlyd, in the Startling Province of Olde Quainte, have heard tell that you there in Bonfire have a Deputy Sheriff whose skills in missing persons are like to a flower in a staple-box. Hence, we have here a missing persons report—or if not TECHNICALLY a missing persons report, it is, at least, a missing cat report—and we would be grateful beyond—’
‘Oh, for the love of . . .’ Hector murmured.
He was crumpling the fax, ready to throw it away, when he noticed a postscript to the letter.
P.S. We’re also sending through another unsolved case—a child has been missing for some time, and it is our hope that your deputy might solve it. Herewith.
Hector’s shoulders softened. He leafed through the pages.
The child was of a sweet and lively nature, said the report, and had no cause to vanish.
A few paragraphs on:
The child’s mother was known for her whistling—ah, she would go about so gaily, whistling more than she spake, and many it was that mocked her! But not now; not since the little girl set forth.
Hector stopped at that line.
He put the fax into his briefcase.
‘Shame to waste a talent like Jimmy’s’ he said to himself. ‘Just this one last one.’
Then he knocked back the last of his whisky, switched off the lights and headed home.
The clock tower was striking twelve midnight, and Elliot Baranski was knocking on a door.
It was Apartment 4 (Directly Above the Bakery) Town Square, Bonfire.
The home of Olivia Hattoway, Grade 2 teacher; formerly, also, the home of Mischka Tegan.
Elliot knocked through the striking of the clock, and then knocked again into the silence.
Silence drained the air. Then a muffled thud. Slow footsteps. A pause. She must be looking at him through the peephole.
A Corner of White Page 24
