by Tim McGregor
“Are you sure?”
She looked at the picture again. The man looked benign and ordinary. Grey hair and glasses. The photograph was a three-quarter headshot of his good side, his disfigured ear hidden from the camera. “Absolutely. Who is he?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Oh come on. I won’t breathe a word to anybody.”
Mockler scooped up the photographs save for the one Billie picked out. He pushed it forward. “His name is Clarence Napier. He and his wife established a shelter for abused women back in the sixties.”
Something clicked. Billie studied the face in the photograph again. “A shelter? That must have the safe place these women were at.”
“I think so.”
“So what? This Napier guy just preyed on the women who came to the shelter? How could he do that and not get caught?”
“I think he did it with ease. And impunity.” Mockler tilted his head to look up at her. “These women who came to the shelter clearly had nowhere else to turn. No family or friends. Most of them used false names when they were admitted. This son of a bitch just preyed on them, knowing they would not be missed.”
Billie stepped away from the photograph, as if the image itself was poisonous. “That’s horrible.”
“That’s the way of the world.” He took up the picture and slid it back into his jacket pocket with the others. “Those with power prey on those who have none. And then they get away with it too.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” she said. “You can still catch him.”
Mockler downed his drink and set the glass down. “No, I can’t. The bastard’s been dead for twenty years, Billie. He got away with it after all.”
A hot torch of gall burned inside her gut at what she had just heard. Mockler rose slowly from the barstool, the stink of defeat heavy in the air. He looked back at her once before turning to leave. “Like I said, the way of the world.”
22
THE WINDOWS WERE dark when Mockler pulled into the driveway of his house on Bristol Street. Unlocking the side door, he stepped into the kitchen to find the house quiet. The only light on was the dim bulb under the hood fan.
“Christina?”
His voice echoed through the hallway. Dropping his stuff onto a kitchen chair, he dialled his phone and waited for her to answer.
“Hi.”
“Hey,” he said. “Where are you?”
“I’m at the gallery.” Christina’s voice was strained, like she was carrying something heavy. “What time is it?”
“It’s almost ten. I’m surprised you’re still there.”
“Everything got messed up. The guy whose show is on now demanded an extra day to sell. Now I’ve got less than a day to figure out how to hang my stuff. It’s a nightmare.”
“That’s rotten luck,” Mockler said, turning on the lights in the hallway. “Why did the owner let him do that? What’s his name, Carl?”
“Carlos. He said there was some big art dealer from New York who was coming late. He wanted to extend the exhibit for him.”
“You okay?”
“No,” Christina said. “I’m not. I wanted this to be just right but now I’m going to be rushed. And I don’t even know if I brought the right pieces.”
“I’m sure you’ll make it look great. Don’t stress out too much about it.”
“How can I not? It’s my first show in ages.” Her voice huffed in frustration. “What are you doing right now?”
“I just got home. Why?”
“I think I forgot one piece. Can you check the studio and see if it’s there.”
“Sure.” He crossed the hall to the sun-room at the back of the house, which Christina had converted into a studio to take advantage of the light. Hitting the light-switch, he looked over the room. “What’s it look like?”
“It should be stacked with the others on the east wall. It’s the blue one I did of Wendy. Is it there?”
“Hang on.” Looking through the framed canvasses leaning against the wall, he lifted out one. A portrait of a woman with blue skin. “The one where she’s got fish bones in her hair?”
“Thank God it’s there. I thought maybe I’d lost it.” There was a pause, then her voice softened into a coo. “Honey, could you do me a big favour?”
Mockler sighed. “Let me guess. You want me to run this out to you?”
“You’re a dear,” she said.
He hung up and set the painting aside, wondering if he should wrap it in something first. Looking through the shelves of paints and materials, a page of sketch paper tumbled to the floor. He picked it up and winced at what he saw. A nightmarish portrait of a cadaverous-looking man with no eyes. Flies were crawling out of the open mouth.
He grimaced, looking at the ghastly visage. He’d hoped to never see this face again. Back in the summer when Christina was still in the grips of a deep depression, she had sketched and painted this gruesome portrait over and over. Then one day, she simply stopped and every picture of this character had vanished. He didn’t know whether Christina had packed them all away or if she had destroyed them. He didn’t care either, as long as she had stopped obsessively rendering that awful face. She must have missed this last sketch, tucked away on the shelf somewhere.
He took the sketch with him and gently laid the painting across the backseat of the car. Four blocks from home, he crushed the morbid sketch into a ball and pitched it out the window.
She was almost in tears when he got to the gallery on Locke Street. He could understand why. The previous artist still had pieces on the wall and where his work had been taken down, there were holes in the drywall and dust on the floor. Christina had placed her artwork around the room, trying to figure out the configuration of each piece. Carlos, the gallery owner, was patching the holes in the wall with plaster.
“Can you believe what a mess this guy left?” Christina waved at the pockmarked walls. “He just tore his stuff from the walls and wrecked everything. And after all Carlos had done for him.”
“Sounds like an asshole,” Mockler said. He handed the painting to her. “Here you go.”
Christina took the frame from him, her hand shaking. “This was a mistake. I never should have agreed to this show.”
“You’re gonna do great.”
“No, I’m not.” Her tone became flinty. “What was I thinking, showing these pieces? This stuff is terrible.”
He touched her arm. “Don’t go there. You’re gonna have a great show.”
“I’ll never be ready in time. Even if I had something worth showing. Which I don’t!”
“Christina, it’s just nerves. Your stuff is great.”
She shrugged her arm away. “You always say that. You have no idea how huge this is for me.”
He could hazard a good guess, knowing how far she had come in the last two months but he decided to keep quiet. She was clearly stressed and it was all coming out the wrong way.
He looked over the space with its white walls and tall windows facing the street. “Why don’t you take a break from it? Call it a night and come at it fresh tomorrow.”
“Are you even listening? I’ve got too much to do.”
“Maybe you’re going at it too hard? You spend all your time here now as it is.”
Her fists popped onto her hips. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re never home.”
“That’s good, coming from you,” she said. “You’re gone for days at a time. And when you are home, you’re barely there.”
He bit his tongue and took a step back. A fight was brewing but he didn’t have the energy for it.
“You and your double standards,” she said, unwilling to let it go. “Is my show getting in your way? Are you miffed because dinner isn’t waiting for you when you get home? If you come home?”
“Stop it,” he grumbled.
“I finally have something meaningful to me and you can’t stand it.” She stepped away and then turned back. “You
used to be supportive. Now everything is about you and your work. God!”
On the far side of the room, the gallery owner turned to look at them before politely returning to his work. Pretending not to hear.
Mockler sighed. “I’m not doing this right now.”
“You’ve changed, Ray. You’re not the same person you used to be.”
“Really? Well that makes two of us, doesn’t it?”
Her face darkened, her jaw muscles rippling like she was grinding her teeth. He looked away. A bus roared past the front window.
After a moment, she looked up at him again. “Is there someone else?”
His neck popped from spinning around so fast. “What?”
“Is there?”
“No. Why would you say that?”
“You’ve changed,” Christina said a second time. She fussed with a loose button on her cardigan. “You’re distant. You’re never home. What am I supposed to think?”
“Not that.” He felt his own molars grinding together, anger bubbling up fast. “Don’t spin this out into worst-case-scenario, Chris. That doesn’t help.”
She folded her arms and silence crept back in. The only sound came from the putty blade of the gallery owner across the room, scraping plaster over a hole in the wall.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m stressed and exhausted.”
“It’s okay. Why don’t you wrap it up for tonight? Let me take you home.”
“I can’t. I need to keep working on this.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. You go. I’ll be home soon as I can.”
The goodbye kiss was quick, almost perfunctory. Mockler left the gallery and crossed the street to where the car was parked. A queasy feeling rumbled in his gut at the things that had been said and the things that hadn’t. Dropping under the wheel, he turned the ignition and looked back at the gallery.
Christina stood in the middle of the room, talking to the gallery owner. Carl or Carlos? He couldn’t remember. She still looked upset and her hands were gesturing like she was talking rapidly, unpacking the whole scene to the man. Mockler drummed his fingers along the steering wheel, stewing for a moment, and then he put the car in gear and drove away.
23
“THIS IS A stupid idea,” Billie said to herself.
Standing on the broken sidewalk, she looked up at the Gothic facade of the house before her. There was no sign that read Magdalene House, nothing to mark the building as a shelter for women fleeing from trouble. From what she had read earlier, there was a reason for the lack of signage. They didn’t want abusive spouses finding the place and banging on the front door to get at their spouses and children.
After Mockler had left the bar last night, Billie had tried not to think about the photo he had shown her or the things he had told her. It was too tragic and, with the old man long dead, there was nothing to be done. The dead woman lingering outside of the bar had different plans. She had followed Billie home, staying a block behind at every turn on the walk home. Twice Billie stopped to let her catch up but the dead woman refused. All she did was stare at Billie with those big eyes.
Half-Boy was scuttling across the ceiling when she came home. Billie went to the window and looked down at the street. The dead woman stood on the corner, looking up at her. She couldn’t be sure but Billie wondered if the presence of Half-Boy kept the woman away. Turning back to the room, she said hello to the small ghost and picked up the slate chalkboard from the floor but there were no new chalk marks on it. Half-Boy must have given up his brief attempt to learn how to write.
He crawled down the wall and perched on the arm of the couch as Billie opened her creaky laptop and ran a quick search on the name Clarence Napier. The hypocrisy of it almost choked her. Aside from being a prominent business leader, Clarence Napier was considered a favoured son of Hamilton. Philanthropist and patron of the arts, financial sponsor to countless little leagues and junior Bantam hockey teams. There was even a photo of the man receiving the keys to the city from the mayor back in the early eighties. Billie closed the laptop, feeling ill.
Lying in bed later but unable to sleep, Billie stared up at the ceiling as a plan formed in her mind. Detective Mockler said that Clarence Napier had hidden his tracks well after preying on the women who had come to the shelter his wife had established. Mockler could find nothing solid to tie Napier to the bodies in the old warehouse but maybe she could.
The plan was dead simple. Go visit the shelter. Open herself up to the other side and see who or what would come talk to her.
Standing before the Magdalene House now, the plan seemed dead stupid. Locking her bike up, she felt her nerve slipping away at the prospect of ringing the buzzer. Why was she doing this? This wasn’t her problem. Leave it to Mockler and the police.
She marched up the walkway to the entrance but the door swung open before she could reach the bell. A woman held the door open.
“I thought you were going to stand out there all day,” the woman said. She pushed her glasses up into her hair and gave Billie a warm smile. “Come in and have a look around. We don’t bite.”
Billie blanched. “How did you know I was out here?”
“I have a sixth sense for these things. You’re not the first woman to dither at the doorway. Come on in. I’m Anna.”
Billie introduced herself, thinking too late that she should have given a false name. Anna showed her into the main reception area.
“Are you looking for a safe place to stay, Billie?”
“Oh, it’s not for me,” she said. Think fast. “A friend of mine is in a bad spot. I wanted to see the place for myself first.”
“Right. Well first things first.” Anna retrieved a card from the desk and pressed it into Billie’s hand. “You give this to your friend. Our number’s on there. There’s someone at the desk all hours so she can come anytime she needs to.”
“Thank you.” Billie took another look at the woman. She seemed gentle and unassuming. “Do you get women who show up out of the blue? What happens when they arrive?”
“We get guests all the time. When someone new arrives, she’s often a bit frazzled or scared so one of us will just sit with her for a bit. Let her get settled first, let her talk. If she decides to stay, it’s a simple matter of a few questions and a form then we find her a bed.”
“What kind of questions? About her situation or why she’s here?”
“Oh dear no. The poor things would run off if we did that.” Anna led the way down a hall and on into another room. “We ask if they have family or friends that we can call in case of an emergency. The other stuff, the reasons they’re here, well they’ll tell us in their own good time.”
The room they entered was large and bright with a southern exposure. A television in one corner and a stack of folding chairs against one wall. Anna beckoned Billie inside. “This is the common room. Guests can relax here. We have group sessions in here or there’s another quiet room off the side if someone needs to talk privately.”
The furnishings looked lived-in and worn down. The stale smell of cigarettes lingered over everything and it reminded her of John Gantry. “You mean like therapy?”
“Yes. We have a therapist and a counsellor who both come twice a week. For those that are ready to talk. And there’s always the staff. Everyone who works here is a good listener.”
A buzzing noise sounded from the hallway. Anna threw up her hands. “That’s the door. Excuse me a moment, Billie.”
“Do you mind if I look around?”
“Make yourself at home,” Anna said, before disappearing from the room.
The floor creaked under her feet as Billie walked the room. She sifted through the magazines on an end-table and looked out the window to the street outside. It was now or never, really.
She had kept her senses closed off up until now. Even so, she could feel something cold nibbling at the periphery of her nerve endings. She took a deep breath and let go, opening herself up to the other sid
e.
The pain was immediate and sharp. Something digging into her throat and the struggle to breathe, as if choked by invisible hands. This was how the women died. Then new torments came. Flashes of pain in her stomach and ribs, across her cheek. Powerful blows from a hard fist. Cold fingers clawing her flesh and pushing her legs apart.
It was too much and it was too fast and she closed herself off. The pain lessened but she couldn’t shut it out completely. A lingering sense of the torment these women suffered here stayed in her bones like damprot. They had been beaten and then raped and then choked to death. It was too awful and too overwhelming to bear.
Shut it out.
When she opened her eyes, the dead woman who had followed her home was in the room. Standing stock still against the far wall, as if trying not to draw attention to herself.
“Charlene,” Billie whispered in a soft voice. “Will you talk to me now? Please.”
The dead woman only stared, silent as stone. Billie studied the woman’s appearance, trying to pinpoint the year of her death. Her hair was cut into a bob and a braided rat’s tail hung draped around her neck. Mid-eighties was Billie’s best guess.
Billie pulled out a chair from the table and sat down. She looked at the dead woman but it was hard to maintain eye contact with those unnaturally large eyes. She folded a strand of hair behind her ear. “The man who hurt you. He owned this place didn’t he?”
The woman nodded her head slowly.
“And he hurt many other women here too,” Billie continued. “And he was never caught. Charlene, tell me how he got away with it.”
No response came. Billie wondered if the woman was simply mute, not unlike the Half-Boy. She tried again. “People knew what happened, didn’t they? Why didn’t anyone go to the police?”
“Who would believe us?” The dead woman’s speech was staggered and slow, as if her tongue was unused to forming words. “Why would they? Against him?”
“Because he was rich,” Billie said. “And powerful.”
