She went out the door, closing it behind her, and Graham did as he was told, taking off his shirt and his soggy pants and climbing into the tub, a deep one with feet shaped like claws clutching smoky crystal balls.
The water was perfect and Graham leaned back against the sloping wall of the tub, swishing his legs back and forth to get the pee off them.
* * *
There was a picnic table under a shade tree behind the hotel and Peter sat on it now, watching sunbeams spill through the foliage to dapple the lawn. There was a breeze working back here with a breath of fall in it—that damp, sweet smell of goldenrod and rot—and it sent a chill through him, pebbling his arms with gooseflesh. It was going to be a beautiful day—but not for the Cades, both of them shot and without their boy; not for the families of those two policemen. Maggie Dolan had crossed the line, all the way over this time, compounding her kidnappings with murder.
And yet, God help him, Peter understood. The woman was acting out of the deepest, most fierce breed of love. The tragedy was that she was wrong. Had either child actually been her own, no parent in the world would have faulted her actions. As it stood, only her fractured state of mind made what she’d done even remotely defensible. Either way, once caught, she’d be facing a lifetime of incarceration.
Which brought him back to that single, nagging worry: out there on the highway, the woman had been prepared to die and take the child with her, anything to avoid having him ‘stolen’ from her again. If threatened again, might she not choose a similar path? Murder-suicides were frighteningly common; in Maggie Dolan’s mind, what better motive than this?
But did this strengthen the argument for letting the police handle the situation? Or weaken it? Maggie Dolan had murdered two police officers in cold blood, dispatching them execution-style in the front seat of their own car. How much sympathy would the cops have for a person who could do a thing like that, insane or otherwise?
The trick was to diffuse the situation without setting the woman off, this exceedingly dangerous woman who would clearly do anything to protect the child she believed was her own.
The more Peter thought about it, the more he realized he would have to do this on his own. Approach the woman not with aggression but compassion, try to break through the barrier of her delusions. And even as the thought came to him, he felt that rush of love he’d always felt in David’s presence, the same fleeting feeling that had haunted him over his long summer weeks of inaction.
He thought, Okay, sweet boy, and felt a simple, blissful peace he hadn’t experienced in months. He basked in it a moment, this contented, almost childlike sense that everything was as it should be, then he made his way back inside.
* * *
There was a bar of soap in a wire dish and Graham used it to wash himself off. He didn’t want anyone to see him with no clothes on, so he bathed quickly and climbed out of the tub, using a big white bath towel to dry himself off. He put the brown shirt back on, then wrapped the towel around his waist and hurried back along the hall to the room he’d slept in. His jammies were still on the pillow and he grabbed the bottoms, pulling them on as the woman came back upstairs. He heard her push the bathroom door open, then heard her say, “Sweetie?” with the same raw fear in her voice he’d heard in his father’s voice last night, when he hid behind the hamper.
Something jarred uncomfortably in his young mind as he realized home was only one sleep behind him; it seemed like a very long time ago.
Then the woman was coming down the hall, her footfalls heavy on the floorboards. Graham said, “I’m in here,” because he didn’t want to make her mad, and she smiled coming through the doorway, carrying a plate of bacon and eggs in one hand and a couple of big books in the other. She said, “There you are,” set the plate on the dresser and dropped the books onto the foot of the bed. Opening the closet now, she said, “You scared me, you little scamp,” and brought out a Batman dinner tray. Then she plumped his pillow against the middle of the headboard and lifted him up to lean against it on the bed. She set the tray across his knees and put the plate on it, a kid’s fork already tucked under the eggs. Graham wasn’t hungry anymore—and he was allergic to eggs—but he picked up a piece of toast to nibble on. The woman said, “There,” picked up the books and sat down beside him, her hands resting on the books that Graham now saw were photo albums. She took a big breath and blew it out; it smelled like Listerine, the burny kind his Grandma always used. Graham munched his toast, waiting.
Now she opened the top album and looked inside. Graham heard her say, “Aw, look at you. Sweet baby boy.” He tried to see what she was looking at but couldn’t, the big brown album cover blocking his view. He leaned his head back to try again and she let the cover fall closed.
Turning to look at him, she said, “There’s some things I have to tell you, sweetheart. Things you might have a hard time believing.” She patted the photo albums on her lap. “But I can prove them to you, if you’ll give me the chance. Will you do that for me?”
Graham nodded. He had no spit in his mouth now and couldn’t swallow his toast, a dry ball of it stuck to the inside of his cheek. He put the rest on the plate, away from the runny eggs.
She said, “Oh, this is so hard,” and Graham realized she was crying. He watched her bring a knot of Kleenex out of a pocket in her dress and use it to wipe her eyes. “It seems like such a long time ago now,” she said, “but it really isn’t. I mean, look at you. You’re still the same. I couldn’t believe it when I came home from work that day and they told me you were gone. Do you remember that day, baby? The day the bad man took you?”
Graham was confused. She was the bad man and of course he remembered. It happened just last night. But he didn’t think she was talking about that so he said, “No.”
“No, I didn’t think you would. Do you know what brainwashing is?”
Graham believed he did. His brother Greg explained it to him once when they were watching a cartoon movie that had brainwashing in it. He said, “Is that when someone tells you so many fibs about something you end up believing them?”
She tousled his hair again, saying, “My, aren’t you the clever one. That’s exactly what it is.” Now she looked right at him, using her fingers to tilt his chin so he had to look right back at her. “Well, that’s what they did to you.”
Graham said, “Who?” continuing to look up at her after she took her fingers away.
“The people who stole you from me.”
Now Graham was totally lost. He said, “But...you stole me, from my mommy and daddy.”
“See, honey? That’s the brainwashing part.”
She opened the top album again, angling it so Graham could see inside. The first page had four baby pictures on it, the baby a boy in a blue plastic bathtub, grown up hands Graham knew were the woman’s supporting his blond head, washing his plump little body with a face cloth.
Pointing at the first picture, the woman said, “I know it’s hard to believe, honey, but this is you. You were born at Mercy Hospital in Arnprior one minute before midnight, Christmas Eve nineteen ninety-five, just like the Baby Jesus, practically.”
Graham peeled the dry ball of bread out of his mouth and set it on the tray, rolling it out of sight under the edge of the plate. His stomach felt sick again.
She said, “Your real name is Clayton Dolan, after my daddy, Clayton Barr.” She took his hand in hers and squeezed it. Then she said, “And I’m your ma,” and Graham could barely hear her after that, a dull buzz starting up inside his head. Far away, he heard her say, “That boy you saw prancing around in his drawers this morning is your big brother, Aaron. He was a difficult birth, got stuck coming out and the lack of oxygen made him slow. But he’s a good boy and he loves you to death. I know he’s glad to have you back.”
She turned some more pages in the album now, mostly baby pictures in this one, and Graham watched without seeing, knowing that what she was saying couldn’t be true. His mommy was always telling him what a ter
rific memory he had. He even remembered his second birthday party, when his daddy brought a pony home in a trailer and Graham rode it around in the back yard, his daddy walking along beside him, holding him tight so he couldn’t fall off. Sometimes out of the blue he would say, “Remember when the pony pooed on the grass?” and his mommy and daddy would laugh, telling him they couldn’t believe he remembered that. But he did.
The woman moved the top album to the bottom and flipped the second one open, the pictures in this one harder for Graham to dismiss. Here was one of a blond boy climbing onto a school bus, the woman saying, “Here you are on your first day of school, such a brave little boy, not a peep coming out of you,” and it was him. And there were so many others—even one of him riding a pony, except in this one the woman was holding him so he wouldn’t fall and there was a barn in the background, not his yard at home.
“You don’t have to call me Ma right away,” the woman was saying, “but I’d like it if you did. Because these people you’ve been living with stole you from me, baby, and put all this stuff in your head about being someone else. About being their boy instead of mine. I bet they treated you nice, huh. Gave you whatever you wanted?”
Graham didn’t get everything he wanted, but he nodded.
“You see, Clayton, that’s how they trick you. You’re just a kid, you don’t know any better. And maybe they drug you at first, I don’t know. I’ve read about how it’s done, but I can’t say how they did it to you. But they did.”
She took his face in her hands, the tray almost spilling when his knees came up, and kissed him softly on the forehead. And though Graham understood none of this, he felt only love coming from this woman and he thought that if he just did what he was told, his mommy and daddy would find him soon and take him back home.
He just had to do what he was told.
She said, “Is there anything you’d like to ask me?”
Graham thought for a moment and said, “Where’s your real hair?” and the woman laughed.
She said, “I had to shave it all off so they’d think I was a man. People are easy to fool, Clayton. They believe what they want to believe. On the news they’re saying I’m the kidnapper, can you believe that? But they’re looking for a man.” She slipped the wig off her head and Graham shivered looking up at her. “A bald man.”
She rested the clump of black hair on top of the photo albums; it looked like a dead animal and Graham shivered again, his tummy doing sick little flip flops now. She said, “They’re never going to find us,” and Graham lurched off the bed and ran to the bathroom, just making it to the toilet before his stomach turned.
But there was nothing left inside him.
* * *
They were on the road by 7:15, heading east on the 401 doing the speed limit, Saturday morning traffic rolling along smoothly at this hour. On the way out of Oakville, Peter had pulled into a McDonald’s and ordered Egg McMuffins to go and they’d eaten them in silence, not tasting the food, just filling the hole. Peter had estimated the trip at about five hours and, since neither of them had slept in the past twenty-four, suggested they split the drive into shifts, giving the free man a chance to rest. Incredibly, as soon as he was done eating, Roger tilted his seat back, closed his eyes, and fell asleep. Peter’s mother had always told him that was a sign of a clear conscience, being able to just pop off like that, and in his scattered musings as he drove, Peter thought, Here’s the exception that proves the rule.
He couldn’t begin to fathom the depth of Roger’s guilt. It made him think of a patient he’d had recently, a courageous old girl in her seventies with rheumatoid arthritis that had plagued her since her teens. She was having a knee replacement, and Peter elected to do her awake, under spinal anesthesia. Every movement the woman made caused her pain, and Peter did his best to get her positioned without hurting her too much. It was like handling balsawood, her frailty that extreme, her twisted hands and misshapen feet looking as if someone had flattened them with a hammer, the knee they were replacing swollen to the size of a melon. Peter had to struggle to get the spinal, the soft-tissue spaces in her back narrow and ossified, and the woman sat stoically through it, never complaining as he poked and prodded with the three-and-a-half inch needle. And when he finally found the spot and injected the drug, Peter heard her sigh, a sound of immeasurable relief, a sixty-year burden of suffering suddenly, gloriously lifted. And though they both knew the respite was only temporary, the two of them reveled in it, spending the next couple of hours chatting and telling jokes.
Peter imagined that Roger’s guilt must be something akin to this old woman’s pain, a pitiless, unflagging presence that colored every aspect of life until, like some insatiable parasite, it sucked its victim dry, leaving only a husk. The tragedy was that in Roger’s case, should his son never be found alive, the only effective anesthetic for his suffering would be death. And perhaps not even then.
He took the Lindsay-Peterborough exit off the 401 and followed 115 north to the Trans Canada, Roger snoring restlessly beside him, talking occasionally in his sleep, abrupt, unintelligible bursts that sounded angry and made Peter’s skin crawl. The Trans Canada would take them right past the town of Arnprior. From there it was only a twenty-minute drive to the Dolan farm.
Following a brief discussion in the hotel room earlier this morning, the two of them had agreed upon the ground rules, at least in principle, Peter insisting that he approach Maggie Dolan alone, Roger conceding only reluctantly—and with the proviso that he be in the car while Peter made his bid, out of sight in the back seat or even the trunk if need be. “If she goes ballistic on you,” Roger had said, “you’ll be glad we did it this way.” Considering the damage the woman had already done, Peter was inclined to agree. Still, he was counting on a civil response to a civil approach.
And yet, the more he thought about it on this balmy, late-summer morning, the more unnerved he became. Maggie Dolan had already demonstrated her willingness to do whatever it took to protect what she believed was her own. Pondering it now, Peter was hard pressed to imagine why she would see him as anything other than a threat.
It was madness, all of it. And all he had for counsel was this crazed, volatile man—Maggie Dolan’s first victim—and the vague, possibly imaginary nudgings of his own dead son.
Peter shifted uncomfortably in his seat, an ache awakening in the center of his skull, the nidus of a dark and growing foreboding.
14
WHEN HIS TUMMY SETTLED, THE woman showed Graham the rest of the house, telling him it had been built by his great grandparents more than a hundred years ago and had been in the family ever since. She said it hadn’t been a working farm since his grandparents, her parents, retired in the eighties, when she was still just a girl. She said his grandparents were both dead now, telling him, “Your Grandpa went first. The cancer got him. Grandma died a year later of a broken heart.”
She showed him the summer kitchen first, telling him that in the winter they used to close off this part of the house and not heat it. There was an old wood stove out here, a table with four chairs, and a steel door with a big padlock on it, the door facing the back of the house. On the other side of the room, a screen door led outside to the long front porch.
She took him into the main part of the house next, the dining room and winter kitchen in one big space with a small room next to the fridge she called the pantry, and a family room at the back of the house with a TV and windows that looked out over acres of open field. “You got lost in the corn out there once when you were four and had nightmares for weeks after. Remember that?”
Graham said no, and she told him not to worry, it would all come back in time. There was a window on the far side of the kitchen-dining room, and she picked him up to show him a home-made swing outside, the swing an old single bedspring with rusty legs, the metal frame nestled next to a bush with tiny red berries. She said, “There’s a vegetable garden behind the ’suckle—cabbage, potatoes, cucumbers and such—and a ras
pberry patch, your favorite berries.”
Graham’s favorite was blueberries, and yet this woman had confused him with her pictures and her stories and he felt himself going numb inside, like the time he bumped his head in the music store and the world got all fuzzy for a while.
She led him around by the hand, talking away, and Graham let her, hearing only half of what she was telling him now, thinking only about finding his way home. The stuff about brainwashing frightened him, because this woman really believed it and she had all those pictures of him, doing all those things he couldn’t remember, some of them things he could remember doing but with his real mommy and daddy, and it made him afraid that maybe she was right, maybe he really had been stolen from her and he just couldn’t remember.
She walked him through the summer kitchen again, across the hilly linoleum to a door that opened onto a narrow porch with no railing. There was a clothesline out here, the double line drooping through space to a small building made of rough gray boards Graham could tell had never been painted. She told him the building was the woodshed, saying, “When us girls were bad, Pa’d take us out here to paddle our behinds, winter or summer, didn’t matter, you crossed the line, it was out to the woodshed with you.” This memory seemed to please her and she smiled, saying, “Come on,” leading him down the creaky steps now to a path that sloped downhill through the weeds to a pair of big apple trees. “Macs,” the woman said, stooping to pick one up off the ground. The trees were laden with them, the ground littered with the bright red fruit. She polished the apple in a fold of her dress and handed it to him. “Go ahead, Clay, honey,” she said, “they’re sweet and good as gold for you.” Graham took a bite and his mouth filled with spit, the taste bitter at first, then turning sweet. He chewed hungrily and took another bite, his empty tummy wanting more.
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