Lost Girls

by Andrew Pyper

  “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 was connected to the rest of him by a loose, insufficient spring.

  “It’s a hell of a lake, alright,” 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,” he shrugs.

  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. Although it’s totally unclear where that somewhere might be at least he’s talking, and I’m hoping a little personal height advantage might help direct him where I’d like him to go.

  “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, pulls the pink skin taut over his cheeks. “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. Four voices speaking at once from behind each of the walls.

  “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?” His words light with discovery.

  “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, O.K.? 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 as my foot hits the bottom step of the stairs. “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 blonde 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.”

  PART THREE

  TWENTY-TWO

  I think of the single photograph in my space in the city. How its details are more distinct here than if held directly to my eyes, the faces assuming a life they’ve been denied in their time spent behind the frame’s glass. The smiles turning to laughter in the moment after the shutter closes, my mother’s high and breathless, my father’s a regular series of quarter notes, the same rattling string plucked on a stand-up bass. What caused them to laugh this way, to fall into each other’s arms, dizzy from its release? It’s the recognition of their own foolishness, the spectacle they’re making—married adults made giddy by posing for a vacation snapshot—this is the fun part. Otherwise serious people whose company could still wipe all seriousness away, a shared joke passing wordlessly between them.

  Slide my hand over the papered walls of the honeymoon suite and work my way back. My mother first, the chances always better with her. But the effort only yields the same jittery super-8 clips, over and over: sitting behind the wheel of a station wagon, turning to face me while she talked and me wishing she’d just keep her eyes on the road; raising a glass of white wine to her lips with one hand while lowering dirty plates into the dishwasher with the other after the dinner party guests had finally left; lifting the lid of a mother-of-pearl jewelry box to pull out a pair of earrings while inspecting her wrinkles in the bureau mirror. What else? Her mouth. Thin, but generous with kisses.

  Wait for more pictures to appear on the screen of my closed lids. But nothing ever comes, and eventually the houselights are raised and the usher arrives to tell me there won’t be a show tonight so I might as well go home.

  At least with my father I’ve got the facts. All the handed-down accounts and loving testimonials from various peripheral Cranes, the caretakers for the remaining years of pre-adult purgatory that followed my parents’ death. With them, I was brought up on sighed repetitions of how great my father was and how kind, examples of the infinite extent of his patience, and always, in hushed wonder, a word about his renowned devotion to his wife. Always, too, a hand placed on my cheek. The same cheek, the very same face as my father, it was said. So much your father’s son!

  For all the years I spent at boarding school I refused to look at myself in mirrors. Wore my hair in a crewcut so I never needed to find where to part it. When I was old enough to shave I did so in the dark, feeling for the missed patches with my fingertips. Through these habits I came to forget my own face. I wanted enough time to pass so that when I looked again I would see neither father nor mother, and only myself. They were gone now, and what little they’d left me with was slipping away. And if I couldn’t know enough to make them whole, I would know nothing at all.

  When I looked again in the mirror I saw all the same things I thought I’d forgotten except now less distinct, anonymous, a face made up of used parts.

  The next time I looked I was a man.

  TWENTY-THREE

  As soon as Goodwin told me that the blonde hair and bloodstains found in the back of Tripp’s Volvo had matched I hung up on him. Not a very professional response, I suppose, but sometimes an inclination for spontaneity can get the better of me. This is regrettable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that now I’m not certain what the test results actually are.

  Later I call Goodwin’s office back but his secretary tells me he’s out for the rest of the day so I make an appointment for the next morning. And when the morning comes I’m out early. A little too early as it turns out, as I have to wait outside the courthouse doors in the rain for half an hour before they’re opened. This is still preferable to any extra time spent alone in my room surrounded by the Incredible Grinning Wallpaper, yet to be removed for reasons unclear even to myself. Every time I reach out to hitch a finger under the corner of one of the pages my arm freezes before it gets there and only a double-barreled whack from the thermos permits the full use of my limbs again. I’d rather stand in the rain.

  When the doors are finally opened I settle myself in Goodwin’s office and wait for his arrival. By the time he shifts his gut around the corner of his desk I’ve thoroughly drenched the chair I sit in, drops of water plinking onto the waxed tiles underneath.

  “You need a towel?” Goodwin gusts, a regretful grin visible beneath overhanging cheeks.

  “That won’t be necessary. I prefer evaporation.”

  “I’m not one to tell another man his business, but you really should get your hands on an umbrella.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  Goodwin shrugs, extends his thick arms out over the stacked papers on his desk, finding what he was looking for and lifting it back in front of him. All of this is done with such deliberate movements one can feel the man’s concentration, his struggle to animate a body which, if left to its own devices, would choose inertia and continued enlargement over action and purpose.

  “This is the full text of the DNA test results,” he says, patting the file’s cover with his palm. “My secretary is assembling your copy right now.”

  “That’s fine. In the meantime, however, could you give me an idea of precisely what the results are?”

  Goodwin gives me a look that suggests that maybe if I’d stayed on the line for five more minutes I would have known the results yesterday, but it’s more a look of amusement than anger. It’s not right. I’d rather he simply not like me than find me funny.

  “Of course, Barth,” he says, digging in to pull out the summary report. “Well, as I indicated yesterday, there’s a match.”

  “Between what?”

  “Krystal’s hairbrush sample, the backseat hair and the blood.”

  “Only Krystal?”

  “That’s right. As far as the blood goes. But there’s also a match between the dark hair found in the backseat and the sample taken from Ashley’s brush. Now, if you require an adjournment in order to review these conclusions, I’d be prepared to consent—”

  “There will be no need for an adjournment. And what conclusions could possibl
y follow from any of this? Or I should say, what conclusions do you think may follow?”

  Leans back in his chair, his gut rising up over the desk’s edge like a whale’s rounded back breaking the surface to take in air.

  “Well, I think the blood and the hair that matches it both come from Krystal McConnell. That’s clear. And I think this fact further indicates that she was in Tripp’s car—likely on several occasions—and that on at least one of those occasions she was bleeding.”

  “Bleeding when?”

  “The test doesn’t determine that.”

  “Exactly. So she could have left those drops there anytime. And we’re talking about drops, nothing more.”

  “I don’t see—”

  “I don’t see what you think you have here, Pete. Hair and a few red stains.”

  “Well, on a balance of probabilities, I think we can show—”

  “Fuck ‘on a balance of probabilities’! Unless there’s been some radical new development in the search for McConnell and Flynn’s bodies, they’re still missing, right? And that’s all you know for sure. You know the two girls left their hair in their teacher’s car, but nobody’s denying he drove them home after class sometimes, so there’s nothing interesting about that. And the blood? Not the volume you’d expect from mortal wounds, is it? And from only one of them. Seems you’ve got more explaining to do with this evidence than me. Or am I missing something?”

  “There are witnesses that will testify to seeing Tripp and the girls together in the car at various times. Maybe you’re forgetting that.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m not forgetting that. I’m merely disregarding it because it’s irrelevant.”

  Although he remains wedged back in his chair I see now a flood of color come into Goodwin’s cheeks and his lips pull flat against his front teeth.

  “I don’t think it’s irrelevant. I think this is evidence that connects the girls and their blood to Tripp and his car. It’s a connection I believe the jury will make as well.”

  “Juries will make connections between anything if you ask them nicely. But they can just as easily be told to pay no attention to any of it. And don’t forget I get to go last.”