by Sheena Kamal
“Someone might be in danger,” I tell her. You don’t get something for nothing. For someone to break her own code, there’s got to be a damn good reason for it.
She stares at me for a good thirty seconds and I use the surplus time to wonder how she’s able to wield a liquid eyeliner wand like a precision instrument. My few attempts at that sort of thing when I was just out of adolescence only resulted in me looking like an astonished raccoon.
“Okay,” she says. “Give me some space. We should be fine for a little bit as long as it’s offline. You’re lucky I know a thing or two about WIN.”
I take a walk while Simone does what she does. I have no clue what that is and would never interrupt her concentration to ask. But I am curious. This kind of skill has always fascinated me. My own computer abilities were gleaned mostly from public library workshops. Librarians don’t teach you how to hack and, in my experience, tend to take offense when you ask them.
“I’m in,” she says, when I return. “What are we looking for?”
“Last name Walsh. First name Everett, Lynn, or Bronwyn.”
She runs a search of their database for each of their names, but nothing comes up. “You sure they’re in here?”
How else to explain the not-cop in the company sedan? “They should be.”
“We don’t have much time,” she reminds me. A security guard saunters by, hands on his hips. From the deliberate way he’s not looking at her, I know he’ll be back.
“Pull up their client list.”
She taps a few keys and a list of names appears. I take pictures from my phone’s camera as she scrolls through. This takes far too long and we’re both sweating by the time I snap the final picture. Without another word, she puts the laptop on the seat next to her and walks away. I slip it back into my bag and head in the opposite direction. Outside the station, I lean against the railing overlooking the ocean and slide the bag off my shoulders. The marina is so busy that you can hardly hear the splash.
I don’t wait for it.
I walk as quickly as I can away from it and resist the urge to look over my shoulder. I learned that bravado from Simone. Stealing, however . . . that’s just something I’ve always known how to do.
18
I stand outside the apartment block in Surrey with a steaming pizza box warming my hands. It’s busy. People are just returning home for the evening. They cast ravenous glances in my direction. The window on the third floor that I’m looking at is fully illuminated, so at least there’s one lucky break for me today.
An elderly woman in an oversize trench coat hobbles toward me from the sidewalk, up the paved walkway, and moves, very slowly, toward the door. Her concentration on where she will place her foot next is complete. Once she fishes out her keys and opens the door, I help her prop it open with my foot and shrug apologetically, nodding to the pizza box as if to say, Look, my dinner is compromising the safety of our building. Whatcha gonna do. She glares at me and shuffles away. Apart from the entrance, accessible only by key or by being buzzed in by someone inside, there are no other security measures. I take the elevator up to the third floor, knock on Amir’s door, and listen as quiet footsteps approach the entryway. There is some motion behind the peephole and then another pause.
“Pizza,” I say.
“I didn’t order pizza,” comes the soft, accented voice behind the door.
“It says here this is for Amir, but I’m a little late.” I hold the pizza up to the peephole so he can see it, and wait for his stomach to overpower his will. A few seconds later, it does.
Harrison Baichwal opens the door to Amir’s apartment and stares at me. His eyes are drawn toward the box in my hands. “Amir just left for work. How did you get up? I didn’t hear the buzzer.”
I shrug. “Someone was coming in and I took my chance.”
Now that the door is open he gets a clearer picture of me and sees that I’m not a pizza delivery person. I’m not dressed for it. I don’t have a warming bag or a uniform. His fear pulses outward from his body like a magnetic field. “W-who are you?”
“Someone who’s as hungry as you are and knows your name, Harrison. Do you want to talk out here about that night a woman got killed at your store or can we have some privacy?”
After a brief hesitation, he waves me in. Once inside I see that he has been spending his time cooped up in the apartment cleaning. There is not a spot of dirt on any surface. The furnishings are sparse and cobbled together from mismatched garage sale pieces, but I can’t fault their cleanliness. I wonder if Harrison Baichwal would be willing to share his skill set with me but Whisper would never let him into our basement. She’s very private about her space. Since we’ve been living together, no one has ever been in there but the two of us.
Harrison disappears into the kitchen and returns moments later with two plates. “I told you people that I’m not going to testify, all right? I’ve done everything you asked. Nobody even knows I’m here.”
“I do.”
He frowns at me and grabs the pizza box. One slice per plate and a plate dutifully handed over to me.
“I was hired by the kid’s lawyer,” I say.
Harrison freezes, a slice oozing with cheese halfway to his mouth. “You’re not with—”
“Nope.”
He puts the pizza slice back down on his plate and removes the plate from his lap. “Have you told the police where I am?”
“Not yet. Dodging a summons to appear in court is serious business. Just wanted to give you the chance to make it right on your own.”
Baichwal isn’t moved by my attempt to manipulate him. He gets up and paces the room. “You think I don’t know that? I’ve been in this country twenty years, work fourteen hours a day every day, always pay my taxes, always obey the rules. You think I would ignore my obligations if I had any other choice?”
“So what? The gang that operates out of this building, they threaten that if you get on the stand they’re going to tank your business? You’ve got insurance, right?”
He shakes his head in disgust. “You people. Always about money, always about work. They don’t threaten my business. They don’t have to. They know where I live! Do you see what I’m talking about?” He looks away, tries to compose himself. There is a quiet despair in his eyes when he turns to me and I’m reminded of Everett Walsh and our meeting at the café. It is a father’s plea. “Please . . . please don’t tell the police I’m here. I promise these drug dealers that I won’t testify. I even hide here in Amir’s apartment so the lawyers can’t find me. I have to protect my family.”
“That kid that went into your store, that killed that woman. He didn’t act alone.”
“What does it matter if he was alone or not? He walked into my store with a gun!” He paces five steps from one wall to the other, and then back again. A hand rakes through his hair and he comes to a decision. “Okay, you want to know? There was another one of those thugs waiting at the entrance, just outside of where the cameras are, but that boy was there to rob me! I was giving him the money, but the lady was in the back. He didn’t see her and then when he did . . . He got scared and the gun went off. It was an accident. But he made the choice to be there.”
“Why wasn’t Amir there? That was the plan, right? The dealers around here knew the store, knew that Amir was supposed to be on shift that night, so why wasn’t he?”
“Don’t blame him. He’s a good boy. They follow him one day in the staircase, tell him that they gonna come in and they don’t want no funny business from him. They say they will come back when me or Bidi are working instead if he doesn’t do what they tell him. They don’t want to scare us because we’re old, we have children, so they gonna come when he’s there. He . . . well, he’s not used to this kind of thing. He can’t sleep when he gets home the night before it was supposed to happen and he takes a few sleeping pills.”
“And misses his shift.”
Harrison nods. “He never shows up to relieve me, and that’
s when they come in to rob me.”
“If you tell them what happened, the police would try to protect you.” Normally I wouldn’t say something like this, but when mothers are murdered, the police usually pay attention. Still, the words feel stiff coming out of my mouth and Harrison Baichwal isn’t fooled.
He scoffs. “Yes, because the police are so reliable in our neighborhood, right? No, I don’t trust anyone with the most important thing in my life. My family. My wife, my children. They are what matters. I came to this country to give them a better life. What kind of man would I be if I didn’t do everything I could to keep them safe? What kind of person? After the trial, I come back to my store and everything’s gonna be okay. That’s what they tell me.”
“The drug dealers?” I don’t even try to keep the skepticism from my voice.
“So what if this is what they are? I have no choice but to trust them! Do you see?”
We sit there without speaking for a long time, me and this frightened man. I know what it’s like to be scared for your life. I wonder if he has nightmares, if his subconscious plots against him when he closes his eyes, bringing back memories of what he saw that night.
We are both immersed in the past and our mistakes. The pizza gets cold, but neither of us makes another move to touch it. When my uncertainty of what to do next becomes absolute I get up and leave. I stop outside of the building and look up at his window. The light is now off in the apartment, but the curtain is lifted slightly to one side. I can feel his eyes on me, watching, waiting for what I’ll do next. His fate is in my hands. He knows this as much as I do.
19
When I get to the office, I can tell that the Seb and Leo are still here, putting in a late night, but something is wrong. Leo’s door is closed. Leo’s office door is never closed. Through the opaque glass window covering the top third of the door, I see three outlines moving inside the office. Two are the familiar shapes of Seb and Leo and the other looms over them, even though they are all sitting down. The voices in the office are muffled, but if I edge close to the ficus near the wall between my desk and Leo’s office and put my ear to the door, I can hear almost every word.
“. . . You’re saying she’s an expert in lie detection?” the stranger in the office says. There is genuine surprise in his voice. I can’t place the accent, but something about it seems familiar.
“Amateur,” Seb says.
“An amateur expert?”
“The most talented amateur we’ve ever seen. Puts some of the expert lie spotters we consult with in this country to shame,” Leo adds. He’s lying, of course, but the stranger doesn’t notice because he’s not an expert, amateur or otherwise. They’ve never consulted another lie spotter because they get me, at a special discounted rate.
“So her duties are not merely secretarial?”
“We’re not discussing her duties.” I can tell by Seb’s voice that his patience with the conversation is at an end. “Can you please tell us what this is about?”
“Do you know who this woman is?”
“What do you mean?” says Leo. “Of course we know who she is.” He’s outraged on my behalf, but I can hear his restraint.
“Nora Watts, born in Winnipeg. Father dead by suicide. Mother’s whereabouts unknown. In and out of foster care as a teenager. No fixed address since she left the Canadian Forces, arrested once for assault during a bar fight.”
“Convicted?” Seb asks.
“No, the charges were dropped.”
“And when was this?” This is what I love about Seb. You can’t win him over with an emotional appeal until he has all the facts. It’s what makes him a brilliant journalist, but a shitty romantic partner. It’s almost impossible to manipulate a person like him.
“Six years ago,” says the stranger.
Leo rises from behind his desk and paces to the window. “So why are you here now? What do you want from her?”
“She’s a person of interest in a break-in.”
“And you’re from WIN Security?”
“Yes.”
“Was the break-in at your establishment or at one of your clients’?”
The man hesitates, as though he doesn’t want to admit that WIN’s own security had been breached. “I’m not at liberty to say. I’d appreciate any information as to her whereabouts.”
“Well, she doesn’t really do much work for us anymore,” Leo says. “Cutbacks, you know. Our office isn’t exactly flooded at the moment.”
“We call her when things get busy but we don’t ask her to come in very often,” Seb adds. If this not-cop has had any experience whatsoever in interrogation, they aren’t fooling him. “We haven’t needed her in weeks.”
“What’s the number that you use to reach her at?”
Seb hesitates. “If the police contact us, I’ll share that information. But for now I have to ask you to leave.”
There’s a pause as the men in the office size each other up. But there’s really no legal requirement for Seb to give out my number and the man knows it.
“I see,” the stranger says. His voice is still measured, but has gotten softer, the way an outlaw speaks in the few vital moments before dawn, when his gun is loaded at his hip and the gunslinger across from him has twitchy hands. “Ask her to call me when you speak with her next.” A card is exchanged and a shadow moves toward the door.
Oh, shit. I edge away from the ficus. The only place left to go is into the open kitchenette or out the door.
“Wait a minute.”
The shadow turns at the sound of Leo’s voice. Leo, who isn’t sure what’s happening, knows that whatever it is, he doesn’t like it. It gives me enough time to slip out of the office and up to the second floor, where a massage clinic has rented the entire level. The door to their offices is locked, so I’m trapped on the landing. From the stairway I hear footsteps traverse the hallway and come to a stop in front of the main entrance, at the bottom of the staircase up to the second floor. These footsteps are not in a hurry to leave. They seem pensive, as if Seb and Leo have given the owner of the feet plenty to think about. What else did they tell him and why does he want to know? That he has information about my past has thrown me off balance.
I risk a peek around the corner and see the figure of a large man with a shaved head open the front door. He is about to step out but something makes him turn his head in my direction. I duck and wait for several breathless seconds as he looks toward the massage clinic. I glance around for a weapon, but there’s nothing around here. As quietly as I can, I extract my key ring from my pocket. On it are five keys. One for the Corolla, one for the main entrance, one for the back entrance, one for the office itself, and the last is for the basement, where Whisper is waiting for me. I arrange each of the keys between my fingers and close my fist over the ring. Crude, but it’s the best I have.
Only a few seconds have passed.
“Anybody there?” the stranger says. He takes a step toward the staircase.
With no door between us I can hear him clearly now. My breath catches in my throat, lodges in there like an errant fishbone, and I feel the bile rise up from my stomach to meet it. Fifteen years has not altered it in the least. I now know where I’ve heard that voice. Quiet, almost muffled orders as they wrapped my limp body up in a sheet. Flashes of red that I mistook for my blood, but no, I remember now that I had lost most of that on the floor. The red stayed with me, though, and the timbre of the voice that ordered the disposal of my body.
The fabric of my shroud, and this man’s voice.
I have this feeling now, this feeling that knocks the breath right out of me, that my past has not just come looking. It has found me. It’s no coincidence, then, that now that the girl is missing, this man is the one who shows up asking questions. That from whatever grainy security footage WIN Security has from my break-in, this is the man who recognizes me. And I know that wherever he is, the other will not be so very far behind. The other with his smooth, manicured hands that pressed
me into a bed, dragged me along a hardwood floor, then pulled me into the woods.
And I can’t help the tiny, mirthless laugh that sneaks up on me just then. That I just barely manage to hold in my throat so that it doesn’t escape my lips. Because maybe Everett Walsh wasn’t so far off when he asked about Bonnie’s biological father. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss the possibility. Maybe this is all connected somehow and I’m only just now starting to see it.
I hear another set of footsteps approaching. “Let me get the door for you,” Seb says.
The stranger hesitates.
“Thank you,” he says finally. I listen to the door closing behind them and wait on the landing for ten minutes afterward with the keys to my life stuck in my fist and the ring sweaty in my palm.
20
I can feel Whisper staring at me and I know what she must be thinking. She’s wondering why her personal food provider is sitting in the dark with four full bottles of painkillers in front of her, caps off. They are your basic over-the-counter painkillers, nothing close to fentanyl or Percocet, though I could get them if I really wanted to. The over-the-counter stuff will do the trick if taken in a large enough quantity.
It is nearing midnight and my phone is somewhere across the room, where I have flung it after going through the images from the WIN Security laptop. The absence of three names on their client list confirms what I have begun to suspect. No Bonnie, Lynn, or Everett Walsh. Whatever is happening here, happening with Bonnie, has spun out of control. So much so that WIN’s surveillance of the Walsh house is officially unsanctioned but unofficially present.
I’m tempted to reach for the bottles, but something holds me back. Still.
Do you know what post-traumatic stress disorder is? Not the term that they bandy about on television, but the actual reality of it? Post-traumatic stress isn’t just reserved for soldiers that experience emotional turmoil because of what they’ve seen in combat. It’s when something is so disruptive to the mind that a person can’t compute what has happened. You know when you feel it that some part of the human experience has gone off the rails. Some part of you will recognize that.
