All there was up ahead was the light. Step by step, I inched my way towards it.
As I drew nearer, I could vaguely discern the outline of a structure. With every footstep the structure came into sharper silhouette. It was a shack. The light was inside the shack. And from within the shack was the sound of a male voice – Coursen’s voice – panting and heaving and simultaneously shouting stuff.
I was now maybe ten yards from the shack. There was a door directly in front of me and a small window to the left of it. I crouched down and headed for the window. Reaching it I sat below it, listening now to Coursen’s rhythmic breathing and the moans of a female voice.
I dared to raise my head and glance through the window. What I saw was . . . unspeakable. A girl – maybe twelve, thirteen years old – was positioned on a filthy mattress, naked from the waist down. A shackle, attached to a chain, was around her left ankle. Coursen, his trousers pulled down, was on top of her, thrusting in and out of her while berating her at the top of his voice. I sat down again, not knowing what to do next. That’s when I put my hand out and discovered a shovel that had been left against this side of the house. My hands were drenched with sweat as I touched it, my heart going insane in my chest. I felt for the handle of the shovel. It was long, substantial. I carefully got myself into a crouching position. I grabbed the shovel with two hands. From inside the shack Coursen’s rant was getting louder, the girl’s cries even more frightened, extreme. Still hunched down I inched my way nearer to the door. It was closed, but looked flimsy. One, two, three, and . . .
I kicked the door in and came rushing towards Coursen, screaming. He jumped up, startled. That’s when I caught him in the stomach with the shovel. He doubled over and I brought the shovel down on the top of his head. He reeled away from the blow, stumbled a few paces, then fell to his knees, not moving, blood cascading down his face.
On the mattress the girl was howling like a wounded animal. I dropped the shovel and went over to comfort her, but she shrieked when I tried to put my arms around her.
‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ I said, even though I knew that all this was the antithesis of OK. The girl was filthy, the lower half of her body covered in bruises and cuts. There were open sores around her lips, embedded dirt in her fingernails. The shackle on her leg had cut deep into her skin and looked septic, as if gangrene had set in. To the left of the mattress was a bucket from which came a distinct fecal smell. Her hair was matted, her scalp scabby. But it was her eyes that really frightened me. They were hollow, sunken, devoid of any emotion except horror.
‘Ivy MacIntyre?’ I whispered.
She gave a tentative nod. I nodded back, then looked over at Coursen. He had slumped to the floor. I grabbed the shovel again. I approached him, raising it above me, ready to strike again if he dared move. But he was half-conscious – and judging from the bemused look on his face, seriously concussed. When I prodded him with the shovel there was only a groan as a response. His trousers were still down around his ankles. I reached into one pocket and found his car keys and a big chain with around ten keys attached to it. I pulled them both out, prodded him again with the shovel and saw that, stuck into the inside pocket of his leather jacket, was a gun. I reached for it, pulled it out, my hand shaking as I held its flat cold handle. I put it inside my own pocket, then returned to Ivy. She was curled up on the mattress, shaking. I went to work with the keys, trying each one in the lock attached to the shackle. The eighth one opened it. As I carefully lifted the shackle off her the extent of the damage done to her ankle became apparent. The iron mangle had eaten into her flesh. There was exposed bone beneath the septic wound.
Before turning my attention again to Ivy I moved towards Coursen, the shackle in my hand. En route, I pulled hard, testing the strength of the chain. It was attached by another shackle to an iron beam located across a corner of the barn. It seemed to be able to withstand a considerable amount of weight – and I tried not to think about how often she had struggled against its medieval restraint. Now Coursen was about to get a taste of his own monstrousness, as I attached the shackle to one of his ankles, locked it, then slapped him hard across the face to rouse him. His eyes opened momentarily. He seemed to be semi-cognizant of where he was. I leaned down and whispered in his ear three words: ‘Praise the Lord.’
Then I stood up and kicked him hard in the crotch.
This time he let out an agonized groan. I scoured around the floor and found a filthy pair of track pants that had been left near the mattress. Ivy resisted at first when I tried to help her into them, but I kept whispering to her that she was going to be all right, that it was all over now. I managed to get the track pants on her, then tried to raise her to her feet. But the septic ankle gave way and she howled with pain. So I heaved her over my shoulder, expecting to buckle with the strain, but she was so thin, so emaciated, that she seemed to weigh nothing at all. Without stopping to look back at Coursen I moved towards the door. The absolute darkness of the countryside meant that I had to walk with immense care towards a car whose outline was barely visible. It took over five minutes to find it. By the time we reached it I could hear Coursen in the distance, now screaming.
He was back in the land of the fully conscious. And he was going nowhere now.
When we reached the car there was a tricky moment when I had to lean Ivy up against the side as I opened the passenger door. Some weight was put on her ankle and she almost pitched forward from the pain.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ I said as I kept her upright with one hand and opened the door with another. Then I carefully maneuvered her into the passenger seat and lowered it, so it resembled a makeshift bed. Instinctually she curled back up into a ball and started to shudder.
I shut her door, then raced around to the driver’s seat. The car started on the first turn of the ignition. As my hands clutched the steering wheel they began to shake so hard I had to squeeze the wheel tightly to bring the shudder under control. I turned on the lights, put the car in gear, reversed and, peering over the lights, steered it back onto the dirt track. We bumped along for fifteen minutes, Ivy saying nothing, me trying to keep the shock of everything that had just happened at bay. When there was a final bump and we hit tarmacadam, I remembered that Coursen had turned right here. So I knew I would have to turn left. But before I did I dug out my cellphone and a card that was in my wallet. A card with Sergeant Clark’s coordinates on it. His cell number was the last one listed. I dialed it. The phone must have rung nine times before he picked it up – and from the grogginess in his voice it was clear that I had woken him.
‘Sergeant, it’s Jane Howard.’
‘Who?’
‘Jane Howard.’
‘Jesus Christ, do you know what time it is?’
‘Four-thirty-one exactly. And you need to get into your car now and meet me in Townsend.’
‘What?’
‘I’m around ninety minutes from Townsend, so get into your car now. You’re going to meet me in front of the Townsend Assemblies of God church.’
Now he was fully awake.
‘You have really crossed the line now,’ he said. ‘Do you have any idea what sort of trouble is in store—’
‘I want you there,’ I continued, ignoring him. ‘And I want an ambulance there as well.’
‘Why? So they can cart you away?’
‘I’ve got Ivy MacIntyre.’
A silence. Then: ‘You’re talking bullshit.’
‘You want me to drive her all the way to you in Calgary?’
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously.’
‘You’re insane.’
‘You’ve got it in one, Sergeant. I am insane.’
Twelve
TWO DAYS LATER, I left the country. And Sergeant Clark even drove me to the airport – to ensure, as he put it, that I was ‘packed off out of town’.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here . . .
Townsend.
The road was empty and I arrived there in nin
ety minutes, stopping once at the only service station en route to avoid running out of gas and to buy several liters of water. As I paid for everything, the woman behind the counter – she couldn’t have been more than twenty – gave me the once-over and said: ‘You don’t mind me saying so, you look like you’ve had one rough night.’
I managed a crazed smile and said: ‘You have no idea.’
Then I went back to the car. Ivy was still curled up in a ball, her thumb in her mouth. I sat down beside her and opened a liter of water and told her she had to drink it. It didn’t take much coaxing. I lifted her head up and held the bottle as she gulped half a liter down without pause. The water seemed to revive her a bit. When she pushed the bottle away, she then immediately took my hands and pulled it back towards her, downing the remaining half-liter with great urgency.
Then we were off again, a passing road sign informing us we were one hundred and fifty kilometers outside of Townsend.
‘Once we’re there you’ll be with people who will look after you, make you better,’ I said.
‘You promise?’
The voice was small, hushed – but at least there was a voice there.
‘I promise,’ I said.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Eleanor,’ I lied. ‘And what’s your name?’
‘I told you already: Ivy.’
I smiled.
‘I know exactly who you are,’ I said.
She fell silent. Then, ten minutes later, she suddenly said: ‘He killed the other girls.’
‘He told you this?’ I said, trying not to sound shocked.
She nodded.
‘Was he talking about Hildy and Mimi?’
She nodded again.
‘Did he say where he buried them?’ I asked.
‘There’s a basement under the shed. He told me I was going there as well once he was done with me.’
She fell silent again. Then, around five minutes before we reached Townsend she said: ‘I’ve got to talk to my daddy first thing. I know he’s been so worried about me.’
I bit down on my lip and said nothing.
Light was perforating the blackened night as we crossed the town line. Upon turning down a side street towards Townsend Assemblies of God I saw what was awaiting us: two cop cars, an unmarked vehicle, an ambulance. I pulled into the parking lot – and Clark approached us. He was accompanied by Officer Rivers. Clark looked at me with hardened professional skepticism as I got out of the car. I just nodded to both of them, then opened the passenger door. As Clark and Rivers peered inside, Ivy simply looked up at them. I could see what they were seeing – the haunted eyes, the cuts and abrasions, the virulent sores around her lips, the ankle wound that was possibly gangrenous. Rivers put her hand to her mouth. Even Clark – Mr Professional Tough Guy – looked shaken, then immediately waved the medical people over.
Five minutes later, Clark was driving me back from where I had just come, a police car with two officers trailing us. Sunrise meant I could now discern the terrain through which I had already traveled. It was a two-lane blacktop traversing the loneliest stretch of geographic infinity I’d ever seen – bare flat plains which seemed to extend beyond all limits and enveloped you in that most terrifying of scenic prospects: a measureless void without boundaries. On my way back to Townsend I’d made a point of checking the odometer at that exact moment when I turned off the dirt path and back onto this paved road. So I could now tell Sergeant Clark that we’d find a turning off to the right exactly 153 km from the Townsend Assemblies of God church. As I mentioned this I touched my jacket pocket and felt a hard metal object contained within.
‘In all the confusion and excitement back there I forgot to give you something,’ I said. Then I pulled out Coursen’s gun.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Clark said, relieving me of it, weighing it in his right hand (while steering with his left), checking that the safety was on, then telling me to open the glove compartment and find a plastic evidence bag. There were around a dozen such bags in there, along with surgical gloves and other forensic debris. He asked me to hold open the bag as he dumped the gun into it. Afterwards he popped the lid of a storage compartment between the two seats and lay the gun inside it.
‘I think you’d best tell me exactly what happened,’ he said. ‘And I want to know everything, minute by minute.’
I did as asked. Clark didn’t interrupt me until I got to the end of it all.
‘And Ivy definitely confirmed that Coursen told her the bodies are in the basement?’ he asked.
‘I’m afraid so.’
He shook his head and said nothing for a while.
‘So he’s mangled and waiting for us.’
‘You bet.’
‘If we’ve got him for Ivy and Hildy and Mimi and can now reveal him to be the guy behind that hushed-up abduction in Dundas, what else might he have done over the years?’
‘I’m sure the two of you will have a lot to talk about.’
Before we reached the dirt track I informed Clark of something that had been formulating in my mind all the way back to Townsend.
‘When this story breaks in a few hours,’ I said, ‘it will be huge. And you must agree to one thing – in fact, I’m going to go so far as to say this is a non-negotiable demand.’
‘Nothing’s “non-negotiable” when it comes to a major murder investigation,’ he said. ‘But go on, tell me what it is.’
‘I am to remain completely out of it.’
‘You serious?’
‘Completely. I want no one to know about my role in all this.’
‘That’s going to be difficult.’
‘Find a way to make it not difficult, Sergeant. It’s the only thing I ask of you.’
He thought this over for a few moments.
‘You know what you’re turning down by choosing to remain out of the story?’
‘Yeah – instant celebrity . . . the idea of which fills me with horror.’
‘Even though it might also mean a fantastic amount of recognition? Hell, word gets out what you did, you’ll be offered book contracts, deals for the movie rights, not to mention a trip to Ottawa to get some bravery medal from the Governor General. But to hell with the glory . . . think of the money.’
‘I have thought of that. Just as I have thought about how every damn journalist would fashion the story around my . . .’
‘Loss?’ he asked, finishing the sentence for me.
‘That’s right.’
‘Well . . . human interest and all that.’
‘No – good copy and all that. And I want no part of it, Sergeant. You take the glory, just leave me my anonymity.’
‘I’ll have to talk to my chief about this. But I think he’ll be sympathetic.’
We hit the one hundred and fifty-third kilometer of the drive – and there, as I had gauged, was a blink-once-you-miss-it track.
‘This is the right turn,’ I said.
‘Good thing you clocked it,’ Sergeant Clark said. ‘Who’d even notice this?’
‘I sense that was the point.’
‘It’s going to be very interesting to discover how Coursen found this place – who rented it to him etc.’
‘As I said before: I’m sure the two of you will have many long conversations.’
But as it turned out I was completely wrong on that score – as the Rev. Larry Coursen had one more final surprise in store for us.
Police sedans do not handle well on unpaved roads. For the next twenty minutes we were tossed like peanuts along the dirt track. Clark didn’t like this one bit and his face became seriously peeved.
‘Should have taken Coursen’s goddamn Land Rover . . . except that would have been tampering with evidence.’
‘Almost there, I think,’ I said as the shack came into view.
By day it looked even more tumbledown, more forlorn and grim than I had seen the night before. We drove right up to its front door. The marked police car pulled right up by us. Clark conferre
d with the two uniformed officers, then turned to me and said: ‘Your role in all this is now finished. So if you wouldn’t mind waiting in the car . . .’
I wanted to object; to say that, at the very least, I deserved to see Coursen taken into justice. But I was too tired, too wound tight, to argue. So I leaned against Clark’s car as he signaled for the two officers to draw their weapons. He, in turn, drew his own gun. Then, positioning themselves on either side of the door, they waited while Clark also stood to one side and shouted: ‘Police! Do not move!’
No reply.
‘Coursen, this is the RCMP. We are coming inside. Do you understand?’
No reply.
The cops glanced at each other. Crouching down, Clark ran to the window. When he raised his head up to the pane what he saw made him turn white. He charged back towards the other cops, yelling at one of them to call for medical backup as he ran into the shack. The uniformed cop dashed to the squad car and got on the radio, while his partner went inside. Disobeying orders I walked towards the shack. When I got to the doorway I saw Coursen. He was still attached to the shackle – but he was lying face up on the mattress where he had raped Ivy. His throat had been slashed and there was blood everywhere. The knife which had caused this fatal wound was still half-clutched in his right hand.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ I said. Clark knelt down by the body to check for vital signs, then stood up and came charging towards me.
‘Did you know he had a knife?’ he said, his voice raised, the stress so clearly showing.
‘Of course I didn’t know—’
‘You found the gun—’
‘Because it was sticking out of his pocket. The knife must have been—’
‘You should have checked, you should have—’
Leaving the World Page 51
