The Lost Ones

by Sheena Kamal

  This is the second time he’s said that. He is trying desperately to believe it. A good kid. I wonder what he means by that. She sounds wretched. “Why did you hire a PI to look for me and not her?” I ask. And then the answer occurs to me. “Because you thought she came to me, so I’m your starting point.”

  “Our end point, too,” he says, turning away. “She’s gotten pretty good at running away by now. She’s left us with nothing else to go with.”

  As I walk to my rusty Corolla, I try to fight the panic rising inside me. Everett Walsh has gone out of his way to contact the biological mother of his missing daughter, even though there is no evidence that points to me being in touch with the child I gave up all those years ago. She has been looking for me, but so what? Many children look for their biological parents, with no luck. It’s not uncommon. He gives me a photo, even though I haven’t requested one. He tries to impress me with her worthiness. He’s not lying, but his attempts at manipulation are becoming clear. Her history as a runaway has jeopardized any serious investigation into her disappearance and he is grasping at straws.

  That he’s managed to find me is not a stretch. My name is on her original birth papers, clear as day. But how the hell does he know that I help look for missing people for a living?

  And does he know that his wife was lying about where she was the day their daughter went missing?

  3

  The girl sits on the rocks and contemplates her next steps. She thinks she has a concussion but does not know how to tell for sure. She is bleeding from her head, her arms, her wrists. There is a dull pain at the back of her hip, but she cannot remember ever being struck there. Her ears are full of the sound of waves crashing on the rocks, threatening to sweep her out into the ocean. She is so lightheaded that she knows she wouldn’t be able to fight it. The water has a power of its own, a power that scares her.

  She must get moving.

  Soon they will think she is dead and stop searching for her. She holds on to this thought like a talisman and huddles deeper into herself. The salt in the air bites at her eyes. She flicks her tongue to catch a droplet of seawater on her face and realizes that it is a tear.

  4

  The intersection of Hastings and Columbia is located in the worst neighborhood in Vancouver, the downtown east side. The city is about to embark on a rejuvenation effort targeted at the area, but for the moment it remains what it has been for most of its existence: a shithole. Vancouver real estate prices being what they are, however, it’s the only affordable option for a die-hard downtowner looking to open his own private investigation outfit alongside the love of his life, an award-winning journalist who rents out some office space to freelance, write his book, and work on his syndicated news blog.

  I am the receptionist and research assistant for both. Neither can afford to pay me on his own, but in this new cost-sharing economy, they have found a way to make it work. So have I, for that matter. For the past three years, I’ve been living beneath the firm for free in order to save a down payment for a place of my own. But my bosses don’t know that. They think it’s just a basement with old records and a broom closet and they’ve never bothered to check. Sometimes they comment on my Corolla, always parked in the back lot, but they don’t know that it’s mine. They assume it belongs to the marketing services guy down the hall, and I’ve never bothered to correct them.

  Just down the street, a street filled with junkies, dealers, pimps, and whores, is the hipster haven of Gastown. Gastown is the buffer between the rich and the poor, the people who can afford to live in the nice parts of the city and the others, like me, who squat for free and take whatever we can get. The boss men live in Kitsilano, which is close to the beach but far enough away from the stench of their office environs to make them happy. They are Sebastian Crow, a slope-shouldered divorce survivor, and Leo Krushnik, the most flamboyant homosexual I have ever met. The two are wildly in love, though less on the wild side for Seb—he’s just in love. A brilliant foreign correspondent by all accounts, Seb reconciled himself with his homosexuality late in life, at age forty-three, after two ulcers due to post-traumatic stress of covering the war in Kosovo and during marriage to a lawyer. His passion for his wife’s much younger private investigator and forensic accountant could not be tamed, however, so he left everything to help Leo open up his own investigation firm, which he now works out of. His own journalistic skills contribute every now and then, but it’s mostly Leo’s business.

  Which brings me to a lesson I take to heart: do not ever open a business with your lover. Work and home are now inextricably linked and Seb’s only respite is alone at his desk or alone in the bar across the street when Leo is otherwise engaged.

  “Ah, there’s our expert bullshit detector,” Leo says as I come in.

  I’m late today. This is unusual. I’m never late—living in the basement has its perks—but my meeting with the Walshes has thrown me off my game. Instead of a bringing in a new client, I’ve arrived thirty minutes past nine with nothing to show for it and no desire to offer up an explanation. On the other side of the reception area, Leo peers at me from behind his desk. With his designer spectacles and professionally tailored business casual wardrobe, he doesn’t meet your average expectations of a private investigator, which is part of why he’s so good at it. People usually underestimate him, which is a mistake.

  Seb opens the door to his office and stares at me from the doorway. His own drugstore reading glasses are taped up on one side and perched midway down the bridge of his nose. “Everything okay, Nora?” Seb says quietly. My tardiness has upset his routine. He has had to make his own coffee this morning and is most likely wondering why.

  “Yup.” I sit behind my desk. The red light on the office phone is not blinking. We have not had any calls since yesterday. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “You can be late more often,” Leo intercedes. “Seriously, Nora, you need to get a life. Go out a little. Invest in your wardrobe.”

  All of these three things are unlikely to occur and Leo knows it. He’s had this one-sided conversation many times. My lack of exciting life stories to tell, along with my unfortunate office wardrobe consisting of two pairs of frayed jeans and three ancient oversize cardigans that cover the holes in my T-shirts, are points of contention for him.

  Just as he is about to embark on yet another explanation about the importance of good quality basics and signature pieces, the front door to our suite flies open and hits the opposite wall with a bang. There is a collective wince in the room. A slim blond woman strides in and surveys the place like she owns it. She ignores both Seb and me. Her focus is on Leo. It’s our most regular client. “I have work for you.”

  “Melissa—” Leo begins.

  She narrows her eyes at him. “You’re supporting the father of my child. How is he supposed to make child payments for Jonas if he’s broke? God knows that book money of his is gone and his next one is past deadline while he fiddles with a goddamn blog. Who makes money off of blogs these days?” She announces this to the room, reminding everyone yet again of how well informed she is. Seb’s ex-wife knows that she can’t play the alimony card because she makes more money than him. So she uses their son, conceived as a last-ditch attempt to save their marriage, as leverage to come in here and find out if he really is happier with another man.

  She drops the file on my desk. “We need to find this guy by next week.”

  Seb sighs from his office. “Really, I don’t need your handouts. We’ve talked about this.”

  “Well, I do,” says Leo. His smile has a false edge to it. “If your firm wants to hire me, by all means. I am the best private investigation operation in town. Here, take a pamphlet.” He holds out a slickly designed foldout sheet that he invested close to two hundred dollars in last year as a rebranding effort. “Please, tell your friends.”

  Everyone in the room knows that Melissa, a prominent defense attorney, has no friends. She registers the dig and stares hard at Leo, hostile an
d bewildered. She doesn’t see how this cheery, overweight Polish émigré could be more attractive than her. She doesn’t understand how the private investigator her firm used from time to time, the one she hired to follow her husband when he grew distant, could end up seducing her husband instead of just investigating privately like he was supposed to do. She doesn’t see how her husband turned gay right under her nose.

  It all becomes too much for her. She goes to the door. “Next week,” she says to the room.

  And then she’s gone. There is a collective sigh of relief as the door is shut with as much force as it was opened.

  Seb glares at Leo and slams his door. Leo busies himself with some paperwork at his desk. Everyone pretends not to be humiliated that we need as many cases as we can get because it has been two years since Seb’s moderately successful book on the genocide in Kosovo was published and the money, mostly spent on their townhouse and the divorce, is gone.

  Still, a case is a case and we can’t afford to be picky.

  The folder, of course, is for me.

  I locate the witnesses in this operation and I sit in on the interviews to discern whether or not they’re lying. To see through the bullshit to what people are trying to hide. That is my specialty. Leo offered to pay for me to go to a special training program in lie detecting, just to make it official, but I know he doesn’t have the money for it and I’ve never been one for having my knowledge on the radar, so to speak. Sometimes your greatest strength should be kept under wraps. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way.

  I open the folder and stare at the glossy image of Harrison Baichwal smiling earnestly at the camera. My first impression is of heavy brows and neatly trimmed beard that covers most of his lined face. Behind him is the seawall and overhead the sky is a perfect blue with not a cloud in sight. The man in the photo has no idea what his future holds and how darkness can just seep into any sunny picture, casting shadows. Harrison Baichwal has witnessed a murder, has given a flimsy statement in which he claims not to have seen anything out of the ordinary leading up to the events in question, and has since then disappeared.

  I push all thoughts of missing progeny from my head and get to work. But still. Still it nags at the back of my mind, creating horrific scenarios of what happens to young women who don’t come home. I don’t know this girl from Eve, but I can’t lie to myself anymore. She still occupies a space in my consciousness. In all these years, I’ve never allowed myself to think about just how much real estate she actually owns there.

  5

  People will lie about anything, anytime. When you ask them pointed questions, they will lie then, too. The important thing about catching a liar, even the most seasoned, is to ask the right question. Be specific. “Where were you last night, baby?” is open ended. An amateur bullshitter can coast on dodging questions like these for years. Always better to say, “Were you fucking the cashier from the gas station yesterday between 9:37 p.m. and 10:18 p.m.?”

  An amateur bullshitter will spill the beans almost immediately when presented with a question like that. A seasoned liar will realize that the game may not be over just yet. Perhaps your best friend Nancy saw someone who looked like him go into a motel room with someone who looked like the cashier from the gas station. It was night. Night is dark. There was no moon out the previous evening and he chose a room farthest from the streetlights. There may or may not be photographic evidence. The liar will always try to see the possibility of an out and rebut with questions of his own to discern how much you actually know. Also, can this be proven in court, if voiding a prenuptial agreement is at stake? A very good liar will turn it back on you and make you feel bad about your lack of trust and your jaded worldview.

  There are still many outs to consider when a liar is confronted, but as these thoughts fly through the liar’s head, his body will give evidence that he is thinking them. A flicker of the eye. A twitch at his lips. Tapping fingers or an involuntary clench of the jaw. An almost imperceptible shift in tone. That’s how you know he’s a dirtbag.

  And he could easily be a she. Young, old, and everything in between. Lying is a perfectly normal part of the human experience. Everyone does it and most people do it well enough to fool those closest to them.

  Well, everyone except for me. Lying doesn’t come easily to me. Even the most mundane bullshitting is not an option. Generally I prefer to avoid the truth rather than seek to alter it.

  I stare at the photo of Harrison Baichwal and wonder what it is about his statement that makes him so uncomfortable that he doesn’t want to defend it in court.

  Leo isn’t stupid. He knows I’m unqualified for this work. That’s why the most serious surveillance assignments in our operation go to Stevie Warsame, a young Somali ex-cop from Alberta. Stevie is a very committed freelance contractor and only takes one case at a time, for a substantial chunk of the fees. His thoroughness is astounding; his pace, not so much. You cannot rush what is unfolding, he is in the habit of reminding me whenever he deigns to stop by the office, usually to pick up a check. You can watch and listen and only after you have the full picture can you act.

  Leo quickly realized that subsisting only on legal investigations, the boring stuff, the research, the assignments he did well, was not an option for a new firm. He needed a surveillance guy who had access to a team, if required, and Stevie fit the bill. He is good and, more important, available. Because he knows how easy it is to monitor people, he is secretive to the point of obfuscation. His previous employers could not deal with him. He has no personality or people skills. When on assignment, you can’t find him to save your life, or his, or the client’s.

  That’s why the smaller jobs go to me. I don’t have Stevie’s resume, but I usually get the job done.

  As the receptionist and shared research assistant, it’s a lot to ask, but it was through these witness locations and taking notes at interviews that the bosses discovered the peculiar skill I have. It’s unscientific, though there are plenty out there who claim a scientific knowledge in this field. It’s neither Dr. Watson nor Sherlock Holmes. Elementary, maybe, and something a little more than observational. There’s a feeling I get when a lie is told. A disgust that creeps up when a liar is doing her best to muck things up or, more likely, save her own ass. Oftentimes, I can’t put my finger on it; I can only tell when I see it. And years in foster care honed this skill to an art.

  Harrison Baichwal may not be a liar, but he’s hiding something. A mother of two was gunned down in his convenience store and the kid whose family owned the gun is crying wolf. His wealthy parents want Melissa to rip Harrison apart on the stand, to spread doubt that it was their child in the store that day wielding a stolen weapon, but Harrison isn’t playing the game. He has disappeared and the subpoena can’t be served. And now I have to find him to figure out why.

  6

  I’m not going to lie because, like I said, I generally don’t: the years after I officially became a survivor were particularly dark. There were three godawful relapses during that period and one morning, just a couple of weeks after I spiraled into the third, I heard a whisper of a sound just outside the back entrance of the office. At first I thought it was a manifestation of my hangover but after an hour of huddling in the corner, wrapped in a blanket, I got angry. Okay, that’s not true. I got paranoid, drank a beer to calm my nerves, and then got angry.

  When I went out, steel pipe in hand, I found a huge ball of matted fur sniffing distastefully at a carton of spoiled chow mein I had put in the garbage the night before. The ball of fur looked at me with baleful eyes and stretched out the kinks in her long, elegant back, but made no move to beat a hasty exit when I tried to shoo her away. I’ve called her Whisper ever since. And that day I quit relapsing because an alcoholic is a shitty caregiver, and I know this from experience. If someone chooses you, that’s a damn honor and you’d better be ready to give it your best. It’s not often that you get chosen in the world. Everybody, even a mangy mutt, has options.

>   Whisper is a gray that exactly matches the pavement below and the clouds overhead. She roams the city with me at all hours of the day and night, and sees what others refuse to acknowledge. Although I have no special fondness for animals, it’s impossible to deny that we have a kinship. The best thing about Whisper is that she’s a constant reminder that at least I’m happier than one creature out there. Every day she looks at me with mournful eyes. Even when she passes gas, it’s a hint of a sound and a barely detectable smell, leaving behind only a sad trace of odor. Whatever it was that brought her to my door is her little secret, but it must have been a doozy for her to pick up and go in search of a new life in the worst part of town.

  And she has proven her worth from day one. I take her with me when I’m looking for information because people walk their dogs at all hours of the day and night. It’s an accepted truth of pet companionship that a dog needs exercise and the person has to make sure it happens. No one looks twice at a dog walker, especially if both the dog and the walker appear to be minding their own business. This makes Whisper the perfect cover for surveillance. She is precisely at that age when she’s no longer as delightful as a puppy or as pitiful as an old dog. She’s somewhere in between and doesn’t attract much attention. She reminds me of me, except for her horniness.

  The only downside to Whisper is that she is sex crazed, even though the doctor at the veterinary clinic down the road assures me that she has been spayed. She is part hound, part wolf, and all nymphomaniac. Matted fur aside, I can tell from her excellent physical condition that she was once well taken care of, but I imagine that her slutty ways got her kicked out of a good home. She will gleefully hump anything that sniffs at her for longer than five seconds. She regrets it afterward and spends the following week in a depressed slump. After the hormonal high comes the self-loathing. I don’t get mad at her, because I’ve been there.