Victim Rights

by Norah McClintock

  “You have the address where Ralston lives?”

  Dooley gave it to him. “But he’s not there anymore. He’s gone.”

  Randall wrote down the address anyway.

  “And this kid he was allegedly with?” he said.

  “I didn’t get a good look at him. Ralston sent him up ahead.”

  “Would you recognize him again if you saw him?”

  “Maybe. I doubt it.”

  “How old was he? You think he was a Little Leaguer?”

  “Not the ones he was coaching. They’re all ten or eleven. This kid was a lot bigger. He must have been fourteen or fifteen, something like that.”

  Randall stood up.

  “Give me a few minutes,” he said.

  He left the room.

  Dooley’s uncle glanced at Annette Girondin. Annette’s face was unreadable. Dooley stared at the tabletop. He’d told his uncle. He’d told Annette. Now he’d told Randall. Sooner or later he was going to have to tell Beth. Jesus, what would she think? That kind of stuff was supposed to be behind him now. He was supposed to be a solid citizen. And yet, when faced with Ralston, he’d forgotten everything he’d struggled so hard to learn over the past two years, and he’d lost it. He’d reverted back to what he thought of with disgust as his true self.

  He’d have to tell Beth.

  It was out there now. He had to face the consequences. And one of those consequences was Beth.

  Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut. What had possessed him to come clean to his uncle? What had made him think it was a good idea to come down and bare it all for Randall?

  Only everything he’d supposedly learned in the past two years.

  His only hope: she would come to visit him.

  Or—talk about clutching at straws—maybe they would take his recent past into consideration. Maybe they wouldn’t lock him up. Maybe they’d put him under house arrest. He could deal with that. Or—if you’re going to dream, dream big—maybe just a stricter supervision order.

  It seemed like forever before the door opened and a somber-faced Randall walked back into the room. He dropped down onto the chair directly opposite Dooley.

  “You’re a piece of work, Ryan, I’ll give you that,” he said.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Dooley saw his uncle straighten in his chair, bracing himself.

  “You waltz in here and spin me some yarn about where you were the night Parker Albright was murdered—putting in batting practice on some guy’s head, is that it?”

  Annette glanced at Dooley.

  “I go and check, and what do I find out? Nobody named Ralston has made a complaint against you.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I talked to the guy last year,” Randall said. “You remember?”

  Dooley did. Randall had spoken to Ralston in relation to what had happened to Lorraine.

  “The man does not have a high opinion of you. He made that perfectly clear. You’d think if you had done what you told me, he’d have been in here within ten minutes, pressing charges against you.”

  Randall looked like he always did—hard-nosed, businesslike, no-nonsense, kind of like Dooley’s uncle, only a decade and a half younger.

  “If I were you, Ryan,” he said, “I’d make a few changes in your life. The number one change I’d make would be to stop lying to the police. All it does is cause problems—for everyone. For you, for your uncle, everyone. From a police perspective, well, we don’t like it when people aren’t straight with us. And we sure as hell don’t like it when they come in here with a bullshit story and waste our time.”

  Dooley’s uncle shifted in his chair.

  “Get out of here, Ryan,” Randall said. “Stop spinning me. You got it?” He stood up.

  Dooley stared at him. He looked at his uncle, whose face, like Randall’s, wasn’t giving anything away. But he stood up, too. Annette followed his lead. Dooley stumbled to his feet.

  “Now, if you all will excuse me,” Randall said brusquely, “I have real police work to do.” He showed them to the door.

  “Don’t ask,” Dooley’s uncle said a few moments later when Dooley opened his mouth to ask what the hell had just happened. “Just be grateful.”

  Dooley was that, for sure.

  When Dooley came out of school a week and a half later and saw Randall leaning against a nondescript car at the curb, he thought: Shit. The feeling of doom in the pit of his stomach intensified when Randall pushed himself off the car and came toward Dooley. He imagined that same look of smug satisfaction appeared on Randall’s lips every time he was about to throw the cuffs on someone.

  “Another couple of weeks and you’re done here for the summer, am I right?” Randall said pleasantly. Dooley had to hand it to him—he enjoyed his work. “Step into my office a moment, Ryan,” he said, gesturing toward his car.

  Warren came down the steps. He stopped and watched as Dooley walked to the car with Randall. Dooley tensed a little more with every step he took.

  “Get in,” Randall said, opening—surprise!—the front door for him before circling around to get in behind the wheel.

  Dooley glanced at Warren as he shut the car door behind him. Warren waited on the concrete walkway.

  When Randall turned to Dooley, his face was somber.

  “Ralston never showed up at his place to claim his stuff,” he said. “Wherever he went, it looks like he went in a hurry.”

  Dooley waited.

  “I checked out the team he was coaching. All the kids are ten and eleven, and not a single one looks like he could be mistaken for a fourteen or fifteen year old. I asked around. One of the Parks and Rec outdoor workers thinks maybe he saw Ralston with an older kid a couple of times. He described the kid as best he could. He didn’t know the kid but was pretty sure he wasn’t a park regular. Apart from that—” his shoulders heaved up in defeat—“maybe he’ll surface again. Maybe I’m kidding myself, but I like to think that guys like that always float back into view, kind of like the crap people throw into a lake or an ocean. Sooner or later, it always washes up.”

  Maybe, Dooley thought. But if Ralston did come up high enough and for long enough to register on police radar, it would be because of something he had done. Something bad.

  “Keep your nose clean, Ryan,” Randall said. “And do me a favor—don’t figure in any of my investigations ever again. You got it?”

  Dooley nodded. No problem. He climbed out of the car and watched as Randall drove away. When he turned again, Warren was behind him.

  “Is everything okay?” he said.

  “So far, so good,” Dooley said, smiling.

  Dooley stepped out of the elevator and, for once, bypassed Beth’s door and walked to the window at the end of the hall. The building was on an elevation, and even though Beth’s place was only on the tenth floor, still, it had a view of the city to the south, clear down to the water and, a little to the west, the downtown core.

  Ralston was out there somewhere. Maybe not in the city. Maybe he was hundreds of miles away. Maybe thousands. Dooley wished he’d said something back when Ralston had tried for him. Or that he’d talked Tyler into saying something, maybe even gone with him to back him up. For sure, it would have stopped for Tyler. It might even have put an end to Ralston.

  But he hadn’t done that.

  And now Ralston was out there again, trolling for another kid that no one else cared about. A kid like Tyler.

  He heard the ping as the elevator doors opened behind him, but he didn’t turn around until he heard someone say, “Ryan?”

  It was Beth’s mother, two plastic shopping bags hanging from each arm, a look of alarm on her face.

  “Is something wrong? Isn’t Beth—”

  “She’s fine,” Dooley said. He took the shopping bags from her. “She texted me a couple of minutes ago.”

  Beth’s mother relaxed.

  “I was just ... just looking at the view.”

  Beth’s mother unlocked and opened the apa
rtment door.

  “Hello?” she called.

  “In here,” came Beth’s voice.

  Dooley set the bags down and pulled off his boots. He picked up the bags again to carry them through to the kitchen.

  Beth was where she always was when Dooley came over after school. She was in the dining room, her school books spread out around her, a laptop computer open in front of her. She’d quit going to school. It was too hard, she told him, being around all those people, knowing what they had thought. Her mother hadn’t argued with her. She’d arranged for Beth to work from home for the last few weeks of school and for Beth’s teachers to grade her work. Dooley smiled at her as he passed her with the bags of groceries. He set them down on the kitchen counter and then went back through to the dining room and wriggled out of his backpack.

  “You’re not working tonight?” Beth said.

  “No. But I’m on tomorrow night and the night after that.”

  He sat down beside her. “What are you working on?”

  “English essay.”

  God, she was beautiful. She’d lost some weight and still looked fragile. And because she spent most of her time indoors, she was paler than usual. But all he had to do was look at her, and he could hardly breathe.

  “I brought you something,” he said. He dug in his backpack for the envelope he had wedged between the pages of his math book for safekeeping. He opened it and handed her the small photograph inside. He’d found himself thinking about Lorraine last night—he didn’t even know why. The next thing he knew, he was thumbing through the old photo album he’d found in her apartment. Beth had never seen it. He’d paused when he came to a photograph—Lorraine, with Dooley on her lap, in one of those photo booths in the train station. He thought maybe ...

  Beth frowned as she studied the photo. She glanced at him.

  “Is this—”

  He nodded. “Age four. Doing my thing. Point a camera at me, and I made a face—it was automatic. It drove my mother—” It felt funny saying that word, even now. “It drove her crazy.”

  Beth looked down at it again, and a miracle happened. She laughed. It made his heart stop. It made her mother, busy putting groceries away, appear in the door to the kitchen. Her eyes went from Beth to Dooley, and she nodded.

  “You were adorable,” Beth said.

  “I was a pain in the as—in the butt.”

  She ran a thumb lightly over the surface.

  “Can I keep it?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  She set it into the corner of her computer screen.

  “Are you staying for supper, Ryan?” her mother asked.

  Beth looked expectantly at him.

  “Sure,” he said. “Thanks.”

  Beth pulled her chair closer to his and laid her head on his shoulder. One of her hands slipped under his arm, and he basked in her warmth. She’d had him from the very first time he’d set eyes on her. She’d had him every day since. Now he knew that, no matter what happened, no matter how much things changed, she would have him for the rest of his life.

  Norah McClintock

  Author Interview

  Writing a mystery novel requires a very special kind of talent. Without giving up any secrets, can you tell us why you have been so attracted to this genre throughout your career as a published author?

  Every since I was a kid, I have been drawn to mystery novels. When I was reading Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Brains Benton, and mysteries involving countless other, mainly British, amateur sleuths, I always liked to imagine myself as clever, resourceful, and courageous, just like they were. I’ve never lost my love of mysteries and my (perhaps morbid?) fascination with crime and crime stories.

  In many novels for teenagers, the stories are told in the first person, but not in the Dooley series. Why did you choose to tell his story in third person?

  I’m not sure that this was an entirely conscious decision. It just seemed right. Most of the books I have written have, indeed, been in the first person, which, some would say, lends an immediacy to the story and a ready identification for the reader. But, although the Dooley books are told in the third person, the viewpoint throughout all three books is very much Dooley’s. We are in his head all of the time and see everything purely from his perspective.

  Some writers of novels say they write to find out what will happen to their characters, that they don’t use a plan when they start. When you’re writing a mystery or crime novel, to what extent do you need to know how things will turn out before you begin?

  Experience has taught me that it is wise to plan a mystery novel in advance of sitting down and beginning to write. I usually have a general idea of how it will end and, of course, I know who dunnit it and why and how, so far, they have gotten away with it. I have a plan. But it’s inevitable that changes are made along the way as I get into the characters and understand the possibilities that they present.

  In Canada we don’t think we have a class system as is found in older, more established societies. But what Dooley is dealing with is a kind of class system, in which he’s often placed at a disadvantage. Why does this aspect of his character appeal to you?

  Dooley grew up very disadvantaged. His mother never had a steady job. Money was always an issue. Lack of it, and of a responsible parent, meant that Dooley never had the advantages that even middle-class kids have. When he finds himself associating with well-off kids like Rhodes and Beth, he suddenly becomes very aware that he is not at all like them. They take many things for granted and have a sense of themselves as worthy, even entitled, which is completely foreign to Dooley. His visceral reaction is that these kids don’t have a grasp on what Dooley considers “the real world.” He is somewhat envious of them, but resents their sense of superiority and entitlement and the way they throw him off balance and make him aware of the relative raggedness of his jeans, shoes, etc.

  Dooley is a fascinating, many-layered character. He’s courageous, sometimes dangerous, loyal, dogged in his determination to change his life. When you develop a character like Dooley, to what extent does he come out of your imagination, and to what extent do you model him on real people you have met?

  Dooley is an imagined character based on a series of musings about a very real but very small boy who has a mother very much like Dooley’s. I could not stop wondering what would happen to this boy—how would he turn out, what could he count on in life, what could he not count on? If he got into trouble—which I imagined he would at some point—what would become of him, especially if there was no responsible adult willing to go to bat for him? Or—big what if—what if such an adult were suddenly to appear? What if someone decided to give him a second chance? How would Dooley handle it? Would he recognize this as a second chance and welcome it? Would he blow it off? If he did decide to take it, what would he be up against? And so on and so on ...

  What about other characters in this book?

  Every character is, to one extent or another, a combination of people I know or am acquainted with, and make-believe. Dooley’s uncle (whom I adore) is a tough guy with secrets of his own, but also with a strong sense of right and wrong, which he feels obliged to try to pass on to Dooley. Jeannie is a no-nonsense independent woman who seemed a perfect partner to such a man and who provides some invaluable aid and advice to Dooley along the way. Warren—well, he’s the guy who seems least likely to end up as Dooley’s friend, which only goes to show ... And Beth? Beth is far from perfect herself. But she’s the one who, more than anyone else, inspires Dooley to become a better person.

  What advice do you have for young writers?

  Read. Read, read, read. Then read some more. Write. Write, write, write, and write some more. And don’t listen to anyone—not that doubting little voice in your head, not friends, neighbors or relatives—who tells you it’s impossible. Nothing is impossible if you want it badly enough, are prepared to work at it, and refuse to become discouraged.

  >   Norah McClintock, Victim Rights