My back is against the car, and I start to slide down. I buckle from the exhaustion, the cold, the unanswered questions. It’s worse than I thought. They still haven’t found Emily. They don’t know where she is. I’m picked up from either side by an officer, just before I hit the ground. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” It’s all I can say. It’s all that I know.
He stares at me for a moment, then looking at the other officers, motions for them to put me into the back seat of the car. I slide in and feel the warmth and temporary relief from whatever harm is about to come my way.
CHAPTER 25
The police station is buzzing with activity, and the room they put me in this time is different. It says ‘Interview Room’ on it, and as I’m pushed through the door, one of the officers slides the sign to read ‘Occupied’. My handcuffs are taken off, and I’m handed a clean, grey t-shirt to put on in place of the old sack. There’s constant activity in the room as I’m pushed into a chair, and handcuffed once more. The officer who spoke to me at the barn, sets up a tape recorder on the small table between us while the others watch, placing chairs, or standing, around the room.
He seems ready to proceed when we hear the noises. Loud banging noises come from the outer offices, along with yelling. I can’t make out the words, but I can hear the anger. Somebody is very angry. The noises get louder as the commotion gets closer to us. The officer with the tape recorder bristles and hesitates as though he doesn’t want to turn it on yet. I can hear somebody saying, “Get out of his way,” just as the door is thrown open.
He stands in front of me and looks me over for only a moment. His mouth is frothing with anger, and his teeth are clenched. His breathing is heavy, and he’s exhaling, powerfully. He unbuckles his belt and quickly slides it from his pants, wrapping it around his right fist. His eyes are glazed over, but I know the eyes. I’ve seen them before. They’re Heather’s eyes. His nametag reads, ‘John Postman, Commanding Officer’. “Hold him down. Hold him the fuck down.” His voice is breaking, and as he says it, his eyes dart around crazily.
The two officers on either side of me flinch, until he repeats his order, and they each grab my shoulders from the top, and push down heavily. I squirm in my seat and try to use my legs to push up, but it’s no use. These are big strong men holding me down. I manage to turn my head and his first punch grazes me, but as I try to right myself in my seat, his second one comes faster than I anticipate, and hits me square in the face. I feel the pain in my mouth, and blood trickling down my chin.
He adjusts the belt around his hand, as I try to stand, but the officers are steadfast and keep pushing down on my shoulders. I look up and can see the disbelief on their faces, as though they can’t believe what they’re witnessing. I try to speak before the next round of punches comes towards me. “You don’t understand. It’s Heather. The little girl, Emily, she’s with Heather. She’s with your daughter.” John Postman has to be Heather’s father. The resemblance is uncanny.
He cocks his fist back and hits me again and again. I feel the blows against my eyes, my mouth, my cheeks, and when my head droops, he punches me on top of it. He’s grunting between punches. “I know who she’s with. I know she’s with that little bitch. Where are they going? Where are they going?” He keeps asking the same question, and hitting, again and again.
The question rings in my ears, as he stands, ready to strike again. Nothing makes sense. Every bit of me wants to find a way to explain things to the man, but I can’t even explain it all to myself. I feel as though I can’t stay conscious any longer just as the door opens.
“John, for Christ sakes, John, think. Think.” Macklin, the sergeant from the previous day, is standing at the open door, behind Postman, looking at me, then, looking at his commanding officer. I hold my head up, trying to show him what’s happening.
Macklin cautiously lays his hand on Postman as though he’s afraid to touch him.
Postman, stops and looks at Macklin, then at the other officers, before speaking, looking like he’s been awakened from a daze. “I want to know, Sergeant. I want to know where she is, and I want to know within the next five minutes, or I’ll see this son of a bitch leave here on a slab.” His hands fall to his sides. He’s almost vibrating from pounding me. His gaze never leaves my face, and he looks at me with disgust as he talks to Macklin. He just keeps staring. I want to spit my blood in his face, push away the other officers, and hit him as hard as I can, but every time I try to stand, the officers push me back down. I have no energy left.
I take a long look at him through my sore eyes, as he leaves the interview room. He’s probably in his mid fifties, and isn’t a big man, but from the way he carries himself, and the power of his punches, I know that he’s solid, strong. It seems to take every bit of determination that he has, to pull himself away from the room, saying to Macklin, “Five minutes, sergeant, and them I’m coming back in for him.”
It feels like no one in the room breathed while he was here. The only thing I heard was his breathing, and the slap of the belt, and his fist against my face. I try to catch my breath and start choking as the two officers release their grip on me. I can see blood, soaked on my t-shirt.
Macklin takes a deep breath before he starts to speak. “This is going to be really easy, Malcolm. Every time you open your mouth I want to hear the truth coming out of it. I want you to answer my questions honestly, and if you do that, then maybe we can get a doctor in here to work on that face of yours.” As he speaks, he stares at me, and his face has the same trademark expressionless cop look to it that it had during our previous interview, but there’s a difference now. There’s something in his eyes, something that isn’t quite right. His face doesn’t soften, but I can tell. I can tell that this isn’t something he’s used to. I don’t know the relationship between him and Postman, other than the fact that Postman is his superior, but I have a feeling that this isn’t behaviour that he’s seen before.
“We have a child missing, as you know. We know who she’s with, and we know that this woman was with you.” He pauses briefly, before continuing. “I need to know where they’re going.”
They know about Heather already. I can’t comprehend. It just doesn’t make sense. We were so careful hiding her, hiding her from everyone, but somehow they know that Heather is with me. My voice doesn’t sound like it’s mine when I speak. The words are numb sounding. It feels as though my mouth is frozen and I can’t make the words sound the way that they’re supposed to. I’m done. I’ll tell them anything they want to know. Heather has left me, perhaps even used me. I don’t understand it. I just know that I need to save my own ass. “They have my car. It’s a rental. The paperwork on it is back at the motel.”
He cuts me off before I finish. His impatience shows as he keeps staring at me, his lip quivering again. “We know that. We know they have your car. I need to know where they’re headed. Where are they, Malcolm? Where is she taking the little girl?” His voice is raised now, almost shouting.
I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to say the words because I know what the consequences will be, but I have no choice. I don’t know. I don’t know where she’s going, or what her intentions are. I know that in the days leading up to our trip out here, and then when we got here, she changed. It felt as though sometimes I would talk to her, and she couldn’t hear me properly. It was like she was so focused on finding Emily that it blocked everything else out. Macklin’s face falls. He knows what I’m going to say before I say it. “I don’t know. If I knew, I’d tell you. I didn’t know she’d take the kid. She just wanted to see that she was okay.” My voice is different, and the words still don’t sound right. My mouth is numb, sore from the punches.
Macklin looks confused and disappointed at the same time, and his response is immediate. “You don’t seem to understand, Malcolm. That man, that officer in the other room. He’s going to come in here in a minute, and if I don’t have an idea from you, an answer...Well, I can’t be responsible for
his actions.” He says it almost as though he fears the consequences as much as I do.
It’s hard to talk. My words are desperate as they come out of my mouth, mixed with the blood and tears that are running down my face. “She could be going anywhere. She could be going back to Vancouver. I don’t know. She just wanted to see if she was happy, to see if the little girl was okay.” I want to say that Emily is hers, her little girl, but I don’t. I try to lift myself up in the chair with my elbows pushing on the armrests, to emphasize what I’m saying, but there’s no strength left. There’s no need for the officers to get up and hold me down this time. I have no strength. My body is defeated, and I fall back down into the chair.
He keeps looking at me, as though he either doesn’t care what I’m saying or doesn’t believe me. He starts speaking again when the door is suddenly thrown open, and his superior is once again standing there. “Get out here now. We’ve found her. We got the little bitch.” Postman’s eyes are gleaming now as though he’s entered into some kind of madness. His gaze shifts from Macklin to me and then back again, his face lit up, gleefully.
Macklin motions for one of the young officers to stay as he and the others leave the room, and I take comfort in the sound of the door closing behind them.
I have no concept of time as we sit in the interview room. I hear the noises of radios crackling and words being spoken, but I can’t decipher what is being said. There’s excitement, then orders barked, and then silence, presumably as they wait for a response. Postman’s voice is louder and stronger than the others, but his words are fuzzy. I wonder if he’s damaged my hearing as he punched my head. The remaining officer shifts in his seat for a while, then, as I try to wipe the blood away with my hands, he hands me a handkerchief. It’s heavily soiled with blood when my still handcuffed hands, shakily place it on the table in front of me.
I stare at the unused tape recorder sitting on the table. I wanted to ask for a lawyer when the first officer was setting it up. I’ve never been in any kind of trouble with the police before, and I know that I must have some rights, even when it involves a missing child. I had been ready to ask, ready to demand, that I be able to contact a lawyer before Postman barged through the door. By then it was too late. He was madness itself, and my only option had been to not talk. But now it sounds as though they’ve found them. It sounds like they have found Emily and Heather, and I know that the first thing I have to do, for all our sakes, is to find out my own status.
I turn my head and try to look up at the young officer. His nametag reads, ‘Ellison’. He can’t be much more than twenty-three or twenty-four. His eyes are trained on the door as though he doesn’t want to look at me. “I want to talk to a lawyer.” I mumble it, my mouth still not working properly. “I want to make a phone call and call a lawyer.” I keep staring at his nametag.
His expression doesn’t change. He keeps looking at the door as though he hasn’t heard me. I try more forcefully this time. The words come out mixed with spit as I hope for his pity. “I am entitled. I want to speak to a lawyer.”
He hisses back at me, immediately this time, in a low voice. “You’re entitled? You don’t get it, do you. You have no idea what you two have done here. You don’t know who that little girl is, do you?”
“I do know. We do know.” My voice sounds pathetic, as I start to ask again, pleading with him to help me. “I want to call...”
“Don’t ask me. Don’t do it.” His head is steady and hard as he angrily answers, still not daring to look at me.
“I just want to...” I try again, not looking in his eyes, still staring at his nametag, thinking that I have nothing to lose, just as the door opens once more.
Macklin comes in again with another officer, and thankfully, Postman is nowhere to be seen. His face is more relaxed now as though a great weight has been taken from him. “We’re going to put you in a holding cell until we can determine your part in this, Malcolm. At this point the senior officer has not determined whether or not you will be charged. We’ve called for a doctor to come from the hospital, and he will attend to you as soon as he gets here.” He’s all business now, more relaxed, official, and says it in a steady tone, as he motions for Ellison, and the other officer to take me away.
I try again, this time turning my head to Macklin, as they grab me under my arms. “I want to call a lawyer.”
Macklin’s expression doesn’t shift as he looks down at the blood on the table, and moves some papers around. He lets the two officers pull me away, and doesn’t look up as he speaks. “So noted Malcolm, so noted.”
The clanging of the cell door behind me is a relief after the ordeal that I survived back in the interview room. I sit on the small narrow bed of the cell and listen to the buzzing of the faint fluorescent lights that hang from the low ceiling. I touch the lumps on my face, trying to determine what damage has been done. Nothing makes sense. Heather hasn’t been with me the whole time we’ve been in Woodbine, but when she was, I hid her. At the schoolyard and at the motel, we kept her concealed, under hats and scarves. Her name isn’t on the rental agreement for the car or at the motel, but somehow, her father knows that she’s in town, and it was her who took Emily.
I think of the library, of looking over at Heather, as she hid behind the stack of books. Did she know that she was going to take Emily with her? Had she tried to take me with them? The street had seemed so empty when I ran away from the two teachers. The car was gone. I’d been left. Heather had taken Emily and left me. My head pounds. I touch my temples and feel the pain pulsating beneath my fingertips. I need to think clearly. I need to talk to someone.
I close my eyes to try and stop the pain, and fall into a sleep. I’m awakened by the noise of footsteps coming towards my cell and the door being opened.
Ellison, the officer from the interview room, lets a man with a large black satchel into the cell. “It’s mostly his head, doctor, but take a look at the knee too.” He points towards me as he says it.
He stands relaxed, holding the door of the cell, watching as the doctor holds my head between his gloved hands, focusing on my eyes. The doctor takes some gauze and liquid from his bag and treats the cuts on my head, then touches the lumps on my face as I wince in pain.
“Stitches? Hospital?” Ellison asks him in a matter of fact way.
The doctor looks at my face, then my knees as though he’s trying to determine. “You know, I think we’ll be okay. He’ll bleed a bit, but if you keep cleaning it up, I think it’ll heal itself.”
He holds some bandages up as though asking for permission to put them on. When Ellison nods his approval, he wraps one around my head and the other around my knee. There’s no compassion from the man it’s all business, but I have to try. I have to ask. I lean forward although I know that Ellison can still hear me. “I need to make a phone call. They haven’t let me call anyone. I need to call a lawyer. I need some help.” I’m almost pleading, hoping.
There’s no movement, no reaction. The doctor just continues to work on me. He takes my pulse again, then shines a small light into my eyes. He checks the bandages. It’s as though I haven’t spoken at all. I watch Ellison as he waits for him to finish, then they look at me with glassy stares, ignoring my request. I realize that there must have been many, many men held in these cells that have made the same statement, asked the same question, probably to the same doctor.
He finishes his work and stands back, looking at me as though he’s been working on the engine of a car. He looks back at the officer and nods, lifting his satchel, then follows him back to the hallway as the solid door of the cell closes on me once more.
I sleep on and off. Sometimes it seems like minutes, but probably it’s hours. At one point, I wake, and there is a bottle of water, lying on the floor in front of me with a towel. The small hard pillow below my head is soaked from my sweat. I wet the towel and wipe the cool water on my forehead. They must be watching me, checking on me. I try to stay awake, but the tiredness keeps coming ove
r me. I try to fight it, but my body just lies back and falls on the bed. I see food too, on a tray that has been slid through the opening in the cell door. I want to be awake when they deliver the water or pick up the food, but my tired body won’t allow it.
The cycle is repeated, over and over, until finally I wake and have enough strength to keep my body erect. I drink the remainder of the water and put my hands to my head. The pounding is less now but still there. It feels like a night and a day since I’ve been here, but I still don’t know. I prop my body against the back wall of the cell, and sit upright on the bed, determined that I’ll be awake when they next come with food or water. I work my jaw back and forth. I feel my face, feel my bruises. I bend my leg, checking for movement, making sure that I can still use it with the bandage tied tightly around it.
I close my eyes and count, then open them again, and count again, monotonously waiting. It seems like hours, but finally I hear footsteps coming towards me, and to my surprise, Sergeant Macklin stands outside my cell door. He stares at me for a long time before speaking. “We’re letting you go. We’re not going to charge you, Malcolm.”
My Temporary Life Page 19
