by Tim McGregor
There was no need. Billie was long gone.
~
The sitting area of the Emergency Room was filling up fast with the dented and battered citizenry with their broken bones and festering sores. Two men sat in the far corner, the hoods of their sweaters pulled up to shade their faces as they watched each and every person who passed by.
When Billie Culpepper came marching through the waiting area at a fast clip, one man nudged the other.
“Is that her?”
“Yeah. That’s her.”
They remained still, watching the young woman slip through the doors.
“What now?”
“We wait a bit longer. See who else shows.”
The thinner of the two looked at his companion’s hand. “You should get that looked at while we’re here.”
He looked at his hand. Red sores dotted the skin, oozing liquid. “You should talk.”
The thinner man looked at his own hands. They too were covered in festering lesions. “It’ll go away.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
The other man didn’t know. He looked at his colleague. “It’s on your neck now.”
“Ah shit. This isn’t good, bro.”
“Don’t be a pussy. Just man-up and shut your mouth.”
The thinner man thrust his hands back into his pockets and said no more.
Chapter 3
“WHY’D YOU PICK THIS PLACE?”
Billie stood in the grass of the harbour front park and looked out over the blue horizon of Lake Ontario. Sunlight dappled off the waves, making her squint.
“It seemed appropriate,” he said, coming alongside her. He looked out at the bay.
Mockler had called just as she was leaving the hospital. Still upset by Kyle’s vicious words, she almost didn’t answer. He said he wanted to talk. She hadn’t slept in the past twenty-four hours and all she wanted to do was crash but the detective sounded urgent. She was surprised when he asked to meet at Pier Four Park, near the water.
Mockler looked at her and then glanced away.
“What?” she said.
He shrugged. “You look tired. Have you slept at all?”
“Not really. You look like you’re ready to drop.”
“I feel like a zombie right now.” He nodded to where his car was parked. “We can do this another time. You’ve had a helluva day.”
“We’re here now.” She walked on slowly, toward the water’s edge. The smell of the lake was strong. Wet October leaves were plastered across the footpath. “What did you want to see me about?”
“I needed to know if you were okay. How’s the hand?”
She lifted her bandaged fist. Three stitches under the gauze, sliced from the dagger Kaitlin had swung at her back at that awful house. “It’s itchy. How’s your arm?”
The sleeve of his left arm was rolled up to allow for the dressing wrapped where he had been bitten. The two of them looked like a matched set in their twin bindings. “Stings. I’m worried that dickhead had rabies.”
“I’ll call an ambulance if you start frothing at the mouth,” she said.
“That’s awfully reassuring.”
The banter came easy and that still surprised her. If she counted back, Billie hadn’t known the detective that long. Not yet five months. It felt much longer for some reason, like he had always been there. She smiled at him and walked on slowly and stopped at the iron railing at the pier’s edge. Water lapped the concrete embankment below. “They fixed it,” she said.
“Fixed what?”
Billie patted her palm against the hollow metal, making a ringing sound down the railing. “The railing that broke when you knocked me into the harbour.”
“That’s not the one,” he said, pointing further down the pier. “It was down there.”
“No, it was this one. You can see where they patched in the new piece.”
Mockler looked at the metal pipe and its fittings. All of it had been painted black. It all looked the same to him. Still, he screwed his lips into a wry smile. “Are you sure? I coulda swore it was down there.”
“Some detective you are.”
“I ain’t just a pretty face, you know.”
The gulls swooped out over the water before alighting on the pier and calling out in their mindless honks. Billie propped her elbows on the railing and listened to the sound of the water lapping below her, its soft trickling sound lulling her heart until the weight of exhaustion crept over her.
“How’s your friend?” he asked.
“Stable for now. But the doctors aren’t saying much.”
“They never do. She’s young. She’ll be all right.”
Billie nodded but didn’t say anything. She had spent the last seven hours speculating on Kaitlin’s survival, she didn’t have the energy to give it anymore thought.
“I know you’ve had a hell of a night, Billie, but I wanted to ask you a few things.”
She shrugged. “Shoot.”
“What do you remember about your father?”
Billie looked at the detective then turned back to the horizon of the lake. “Not much. He wasn’t around.”
“Meaning what?” Mockler asked. “You only saw him at Christmas and birthdays?”
“Less than that. He’d blow in, rattle mom, take off again.” She straightened up. “I don’t even remember what he looked like.”
“What about family on his side? Did you know any of them?”
“No, I don’t know if he even had any,” she said. “Do you really think it’s him? The body in the pit?”
He sighed and offered a slight shrug. “I honestly don’t know. This whole thing is so strange. We’ll see what the DNA test says, go from there.”
Her hand began to throb, at the cut on her knuckles. She rested it against her collar to keep it raised. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
She took a deep breath, unsure how to start. “What’s going on with you? At home?”
He didn’t move, his gaze locked onto the open harbour before them. She couldn’t tell if he was formulating his answer or shutting down. His silence was an answer in itself and she was probably prying where she had no right to. But that didn’t stop her. “All the boxes at your place, half the house packed up,” she went on. “You said one of you is moving out.”
“She is.”
The air seemed to tighten up, taut as a garrote around the throat.
Billie swallowed. “I’m sorry. That must be hard. Is it over or are you just taking a break?”
His gaze drifted to the water below. “It’s over.”
A sudden queasiness rolled around in her belly. A sense of guilt or responsibility, she couldn’t tell which. Did she have anything to do with this? She had blurted her feelings to Mockler at one point, fool that she was. Then, even more foolishly, she had tried to take it all back. Maybe, Billie wondered, she was overestimating her own influence. Why be so fatuous to think she could possibly have caused the two of them to split?
There was, whispered that little voice inside her, that almost-kiss.
Billie shook her head, snapping herself out of the delusion. “I didn’t know you two were having problems. How come you didn’t tell me?”
“You have problems of your own to worry about,” he said, kicking at a pebble on the ground. “I don’t need to burden you with mine.”
“I wouldn’t be much of a friend if you felt you couldn’t tell me you were hurting. And now, after everything that’s happened. Well…”
“Okay.” It was all he said.
She didn’t know what he meant by that. Okay he wouldn’t keep his burdens to himself or, okay, they weren’t really friends?
“So,” she said, “what happens now?”
“With the case?”
“No. With you and Christina.”
“I’m trying to figure that out. We’ll get some distance. Clear our heads, see where we are.”
“No offense, but that sounds kind
of vague.”
“It’s the best I got.”
She fussed with a loose strand of gauze on her bandaged hand, restlessly picking at it. “You still love her?”
“Of course,” he said. “But things change. People change.”
She nodded her head slowly. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry you’re going through a rough time.”
“Thanks,” he replied. He seemed genuine.
She watched him scratch the stubble on his chin. A gesture she had seen a number of times before, one she knew that meant there was something on his mind. “What is it?”
“What’s what?” he asked.
“The question on your mind. Go ahead.”
“How do you know I have a question?”
Billie tapped a finger against her temple. “I’m psychic, remember?”
He started to laugh but then his expression fell, morphing quickly to suspicion.
“I’m totally pulling your leg,” she said. “I can’t read minds.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Oh? Why’s that? You have a dirty mind?”
He laughed. “Sometimes. Lately though, my mind is nothing but scrambled eggs.”
“Welcome to the club,” she said. Even amid the more sombre topics of break-ups and dead bodies, the banter came easily, bandied back and forth like a tennis ball over a net. She made a mock pretence at being serious. “Back to your question, detective. What do you want to know?”
His smile fell away. “The body. If the tests come back positive and that is your father, I’m going to open your mom’s file too.”
“Her file?”
“The cold case,” he corrected. “Into her disappearance when you were a kid. The two cases are linked. So.”
“Oh.” The bandage on her hand began to unravel and she forced herself to stop fussing with it. “I’m not sure where the question is in that. Do you need my permission?”
“No. But I want your blessing. And,” here he held up a hand in caution, “that would mean asking you a lot of questions. Probably painful ones too.”
She looked down at the ripples on the water. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“Don’t you want to know what happened to her?”
She hesitated for a heartbeat or two and then looked him right in the eye. “No. I don’t.”
“Think about it. You don’t have to answer right now.”
“There’s no point. Whether I know what happened or not, it doesn’t change anything. She’s still gone.” She straightened up and stepped back from the railing. “I should go. I need to crash.”
“You want a lift home?”
“I’m good.”
She turned and walked up the footpath to the street. Mockler stayed where he was and watched her leave, surprised at how quickly the whole conversation had turned sour.
~
The apartment was cold when she got home. A window had been left open, blowing in the cool wind throughout the night. Billie removed the stick that propped up the old sash and eased the heavy window down into its casement. Shivering, she went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. The weariness was so bone-deep it made her clumsy, knocking a bowl to the floor. She left it there and took her tea into the living room where she sank into the couch.
If Mockler had asked that same question ten years ago, her answer might have been different. There had been a long period where she had obsessed over what had happened to her mother. Was she really dead? Had her father really killed her as the police suspected? Or did something else happen that night when she climbed out of the crawl-space to find blood on the floor and her mother gone? She had even, for a brief time, entertained the notion that her mother was alive somewhere, living in a different country under a different name. Some quiet place where the locals wouldn’t treat her like a crazy person.
In the end, reality had settled in and she reconciled herself to the fact that the police were probably right. Her mother was gone and there was simply nothing more to it. Did justice need to be served by finding the guilty party and punishing him? It didn’t change anything and she felt no burning need for revenge. It was done. Let it go, move on. And yet here was Mockler, wanting to dig it all up again. Tear open the wound and expose it all. For what? Truth?
A rattling sound roused her and she leaned up to see what it was. She wasn’t surprised to see the legless ghost of a child nestled in the far corner of the ceiling like some malproportioned spider.
“Why are you still up?” she asked the little ghost. He often left at sun-up, slipping into a shadow to wait until the sun went back down.
The Half-Boy just watched her, his eyes dark under the frayed brim of his newsboy cap. He never spoke, this diminutive phantom who now shared the apartment with her. His tongue, like his legs, had been cut off in life and thus he remained mute in death.
She kicked off her shoes and laid down. “You wouldn’t believe the day I had.”
The Half-Boy stirred at this remark, as if suddenly interested. He scurried down the wall, propelling himself along with his hands, until he reached the floor. He trotted over and clambered onto the cluttered coffee table but Billie’s eyes were already closed, her mouth open in a dreamless sleep.
The ghost dropped his chin in disappointment, sulking the way children do. After a moment she began to snore lightly. He reached past her to fetch the blanket draped over the back of the sofa and covered her with it.
Chapter 4
“THIS IS BULLSHIT. He’s not going to show.”
“Enough, Sergei. Have some faith.”
Sergei paced the hallway, looking at his watch for the tenth time. His watch was nice. A Hublot, ripped from the wrist of a gadje who owed his uncle money. “Faith? Uncle, this man is not coming. He doesn’t even exist.”
Gabor swirled the glass of plum brandy in his hand, his own home brew, and waited for his hot-headed nephew to cease his pacing. “Sit down, Sergei. Be still.”
The younger man grimaced and pulled out a rickety chair. Sergei often disagreed with his uncle’s decisions but now was not the time to disobey. His uncle Gabor’s heart was broken in two and the old man was grasping at straws, waiting for some gadje witch-doctor to show. That unsettled him to no end. One never turns to the outsiders for help. Romany problems are only fixed by the Romany. Anyone on the outside was an enemy or a target, simple as that.
Sergei bounced his knee and fidgeted in the chair. His uncle poured a glass and handed it to the young man. “Drink this. And sit still before I smack you.”
Sergei drank it down and felt the heat of it burn his throat and leech out through his veins. His knee ceased to bounce.
The knock on the door sent Sergei jumping to his feet but his uncle motioned for him to stay calm. “Take a breath,” Gabor said. “Then open the door.”
The younger man ran his fingers through his hair and then turned the lock and opened the door. A man strode into the hallway. Tall and lean, he was dressed in a sharp suit but the tie was loose and his hair a mess. He held a tall can of lager in one hand, like he’d come to watch the game on the telly. “Hullo, chief,” he said to the young man at the door. “You Gabor?”
“I’m Gabor.” The older man stepped forward. He nodded to his nephew. “That is Sergei. You are John Gantry, yes?”
Gantry smiled and swept into the apartment. “In the flesh.”
Sergei seethed at his uncle, hissing in the Romany tongue. “The man is drunk. We can’t trust him.”
“Be polite,” Gabor scolded. “And stick to the gadje tongue for now.”
Gantry looked the place over. A cramped apartment that smelled of fried fish and God knew what. The place was cluttered, the decor cheap and gaudy to the hilt. Lots of plastic gold trim everywhere, squalor dressed up in dollar-store finery. “Where is she?”
“In her room,” Gabor said. “In the back.”
Gantry looked at the nephew. “Anyone else here?”
“No. I made everyone leave, like you r
equested.” The older man looked at the stranger. Gantry carried no bag nor equipment, unless there was something hidden in a pocket. The only thing he had was the can of beer. “Do you have everything?”
“Yup. I was gonna bring my ray-gun but decided to leave it at home.”
Sergei fumed and gestured, rattling the gold chains dangling around his neck. “The man isn’t even serious.”
“Pipe down, junior,” Gantry said before turning to the older man. “Let’s have a look at her, yeah?”
The older man led the way down the hall to a closed door. A padlock had been crudely installed to the outside of the door. Gabor removed the lock, muttered something to himself and pushed the door open.
The smell rolled out like a miasma of poison gas. Gantry covered his nose. “Christ, that’s ripe.”
“It gets worse,” Gabor said. He stepped into the room, hit the light switch and Gantry got his first look at the girl.
She looked to be about sixteen, lying still on the narrow bed. Her nightgown was stained with filth and her hair was damp with sweat, strands of it plastered across her brow. She appeared to be asleep. Her wrists and ankles were bound with nylon rope and lashed to the bed.
Gabor glanced at the girl once and then looked away. “Help her.”
“What’s her name?”
“Sabina,” said the man. “My youngest.”
Gantry looked over the room. It looked like any teenager’s room. The walls plastered with posters, clothes tumbling out of a closet, a laptop on a desk next to a hair-dryer. “How long has she been like this?”
“Over a week now. It may have started before that. We don’t know.”
Sergei hissed from the hallway. “What are you waiting for? Do something.”
“Can you tie him up outside?” Gantry said to the older man. “Hard to concentrate with him yapping like that.”
Gabor hissed at his nephew in a language Gantry didn’t understand and the younger man bowed his head, chastened. He looked at his guest. “What do you need us to do?”
“Just keep back. Has she done anything fun, like spin her head completely around or projectile vomit at you?”
