A Dream of Death

by Harrison Drake

  When he had first gone into the nursing home, I had traveled home to Chatham once a week to see him. The visits became less and less frequent as his condition worsened and he began to lose track of my identity. I could be an orderly or a nurse, the cable repairman, a phone technician, a cleaner or a plumber, a priest or a doctor but I was no longer his son to him. He had forgotten me and I, with no excuse other than my own weakness, had forgotten him.

  A knock at the door of my hotel room reminded me I had no time to dwell on the past. Chen was waiting for me and before long we pulled up at the scene, the doctor and eight of his students at the ready.

  “Sorry about the turnout, boys,” Conroy said. “Two had prior engagements and the other two, well, I don’t think they’re cut out for field work.”

  “No worries, doc,” Chen said. “We don’t have much left to do.”

  Less than a half an hour after our arrival, the team was already hard at work. I excused myself from the scene to take a look at the rest of the surroundings. Following the sound of the river took me to its banks. My reflection shimmered in the water. My left arm still hung by my side—I had managed to hide this from Chen but it glared back at me now, a testament to the power of the mind and the weakness of the body. I walked along the river, followed its path as it wound through the trees and stepped carefully on the loose, mist-sprayed rocks.

  Fish danced on the surface as the water broke and swirled into eddies at my feet. I had to fight the urge to dive in. The temperature was climbing again and the moisture that hung in the air told me that this would be another stifling day. I knelt down and dipped my right hand into the water, cupping as much of the cool liquid as a single hand could hold. My hand met my mouth and I drank of the freshest water I had ever tasted, spring water taken right from the source. With my eyes closed it seemed easier to savour the taste as the water rolled down the inside of my throat. My eyes were still closed as I dipped my hand into the water and drank again, then a third time.

  I opened my eyes and stood up. My hand was chilled, cold drops of water cascaded onto the rocks below. I shook my hand and the water that escaped turned crimson.

  I closed my eyes again and tried to will the hallucination away, forcing myself to realize that it could not be real.

  I took a deep breath and was once again ready to face my fears. The blood was gone and a man stood on my left. Did he really exist? He had to be at least sixty-five although he could have passed for older. It took a minute to notice his clothing—a park ranger.

  “Sorry if I startled you,” he said. He had a country voice, groomed by being raised on the farm listening to western music on the radio. “I’ve been watching you boys, watching you dig.” He must have sensed my apprehension. “Not like that, boy, I’m no creeper. I always wanted to be a cop, but in my day, well, let’s just say I fell short of the standard.”

  I hadn’t noticed his height until I looked down and saw that he was standing on a rock about half a foot taller than mine. The OPP and other police services used to have height requirements, something which had fallen by the wayside many years ago.

  “It’s interesting what you’re doing, of course you’re tearing up my park to do it.” A smile formed, his lips parted and revealed a set of dentures. “Do you know, is it an adult or a child?”

  I wasn’t sure if I should answer him, that information was confidential and a major part of the investigation. But something about this old man set my mind at ease. “A man, in his thirties. He’s been there a while.”

  “I wonder if it’ll be William Jeffries then.”

  My ears perked up at the mention of a name to attach to the body. I took a step closer.

  “It would have been the summer of eighty-four, end of June or beginning of July,” he said. “I hadn’t been working here too long at that point. A woman called us—his mother I want to say—saying that he was three days overdue from his camping trip. We knew the area where he’d been staying, I’d asked him as he passed through.”

  I nodded for him to continue.

  “Another ranger and I went looking for him, found his tent still set up but couldn’t find any sign of him. We called the police and they did a missing persons report. Never found him, but that isn’t rare.” He looked around as if wanting my gaze to follow his, nods cast in the direction of the various dangers of the terrain. “People walk off, get lost, get injured. We’ve even had a few come up here to kill themselves. The next summer a woman got attacked by a bear in this same area, she barely survived. I shot it a few days later. Everyone thought Jeffries had been killed by the bear.”

  “Any other missing people that stand out?”

  “None that would fit the bill.” He paused for a moment, “There were two boys went missing a few years before, not far from here. Both of them wandered off from their campsites in the night. The parents found some of their clothes by the river. It can get pretty hot here, and sleeping in a tent isn’t something a lot of these kids are used to. I figure they went down to the river to cool off, maybe went in, maybe fell in accidentally while dangling their toes in the water.”

  “Did anyone ever find their bodies?”

  “Not that I know of, but this river runs for miles and it can get going pretty fast. Drains out into a small lake too. Everything’s connected in here, if they fell in who knows where they’d end up.”

  “Come take a closer look at what’s going on, just stay outside of the gridlines.”

  His eyes lit up like a child at Christmas morning. “Thanks, detective.”

  “Lincoln.” I held out my hand.

  He took it with a grasp surprisingly firm for the frailty of his body. “Lesley Johnson, nice meeting you.”

  “You too.” We walked back toward the scene as I attempted to work some life back into my left arm. Chen looked surprised to see me return with company, but Lesley made short work of that, introducing himself to Chen and waving to Dr. Conroy.

  “An enthusiast,” I told Chen. “And he might have an ID on our skeleton, a missing person from eighty-four.”

  “William Jeffries,” Lesley said. “Had his camp not far from here when he disappeared.”

  “People thought a bear had gotten him after a woman was attacked in this area the summer after,” I said. “Maybe it wasn’t a bear, unless Yogi learned how to shovel.” Only Chen laughed.

  Chen thanked Lesley for the information. “I’ll get on the phone to the detachment, have them start pulling records. Maybe we’ll get lucky and have some dentals on file for this Jeffries guy.”

  Chen made his way back to the SUV and I left Lesley to watch the dig, a vicarious yearning for a dream gone by. I walked around the perimeter of the grid myself. The students were hard at work digging out the last of the marked squares of dirt, and so far had brought nothing to our attention.

  I weaved through the trees, last year’s leaves crumpled under my feet. A gnarled tree stood tall in front of me, a twisted trunk and ragged branches jutting off in all directions. The roots rose out of the ground and dove back under, crossing over each other and growing together.

  A glimmer of light caught my eye from underneath one of the roots, something hiding in the darkness.

  Instinct drove me at this point. Whatever it was it had to be important, but was it more important to me or to the crime scene? I reached into my pocket—my left arm suddenly working again—and removed a quarter, then knelt down into the dirt. The root scratched against the back of my hand as my fingers wrapped around the object. I slid the coin into the dirt and rubbed it to make it dirty. I held the unknown object between my fingertips then tucked it into the sleeve of my jacket.

  “What did you find?” A voice hollered in my direction, “or did your breakfast come up again?”

  Now I knew why I had hidden the item. I raised the coin to my eye and answered Chen, “just a quarter, two-thousand-and-six. Definitely not related. Oh, and piss off.”

  “Roger on both counts,” Chen said, but kept walking to
ward me.

  I bladed my body, and hid my right side from Chen. With a slight motion the object dropped from my sleeve into my pants pocket.

  Chen talked as he closed the gap between us. “I didn’t get much information yet, the missing persons record is still on file. Not much else on this Jeffries guy though. We’ll have to wait and see if Conroy or the coroner can make an ID. I have them checking for dentals. If not, maybe we can get some DNA and compare it to any living relatives.”

  “If that’s our guy.”

  “Always the optimist, Link.”

  Chen stayed close to me for the remaining hour of the dig, then we drove back to the hotel together. There had been no chance to inspect the object, even answering the call of nature in the woods had prompted Chen to say he had to go as well, and for whatever reason men see to urinate side-by-side, he had decided to tag along. At least women’s bathrooms had separate stalls.

  My fingers had traced the outline of the object through my pants numerous times, and left the inside of my pocket lined with dirt. The shape was clear—a watch with a broken metal band. Knowing what it was didn’t make it better—I needed to see it, to inspect it.

  Patience was a virtue I lacked in droves.

  —13—

  I emptied my pocket the moment I entered the hotel room and locked the door behind me. The watch was aged and weathered, I couldn’t tell how long it had been hidden beneath the tree root but it must have been years. It was a simple watch—a silver Timex with an inset date counter, two numbers that switched over daily and had to be manually changed in the event of a month with less than thirty-one days.

  I wanted to wash the watch clean but it was evidence—stolen evidence, but my training was hard to shake. My fingers rubbed some of the dirt away, just enough to see the details. I turned it over and inspected the back. There was an engraving made more prominent by the dirt that filled the grooves: L.C.M. IV, 1976.

  Nausea and dizziness took over and forced me to sit on the toilet beside the sink.

  Lincoln Charles Munroe the Fourth. My initials. The year I was born. It was my father’s watch, given to him by his father when I was born.

  Memories I hadn’t touched in years came rushing back. The watch was a symbol that my father never removed—a symbol of family, loyalty and an oath made to a dead man.

  I flashed back to my childhood and saw the watch sitting on my father’s dresser while he was in the shower—the only time he ever took it off. I slipped the watch onto my thin wrist and closed the clasp, then stood in awe of the shiny silver against my dark skin. My father interrupted me when he walked back into his bedroom dripping wet with a towel around his waist.

  “It looks good on you, Lincoln,” he had said. “It’ll be yours one day, a long time from now. But before then you’ll have one of your own.”

  A confused look crossed my face along with a wide-eyed stare of anticipation.

  “Your grandfather gave me that watch the day you were born.” He reached for my wrist and undid the clasp, then pointed to the engraving. “Lincoln Charles Munroe the Fourth, nineteen-seventy-six. When you have a son, Lincoln the Fifth, I’ll give you a watch like this one with a new inscription for your son and the year he was born. And he’ll do the same for his son.”

  I nodded, happy and proud to be part of such an important family tradition.

  “You and I, my father and my grandfather are all named after a very special man, a man who didn’t care if people were black or white. One day I’ll tell you more about him and what he did for our family.” I thought I saw a tear form in his eye. “It’s because of him that we’re here, alive and well in a country that accepted us regardless of our skin colour.”

  At that time I knew little of our family history and even less about what my father was saying. He kept the story close to his heart for a while, waiting until I was old enough to understand the horrors that people of colour had to endure.

  My mind moved forward in time, a couple of years later, when I noticed my father wasn’t wearing his watch. He wouldn’t tell me what had happened to it or why he no longer wore it. “We can’t wear these watches anymore, Lincoln, I wish I could explain it to you.”

  I cried in my bed that night, my face buried in the pillow so my father wouldn’t hear me. The tradition that had meant so much to me was gone, along with it the chance of my own engraved watch. As often happens new memories take the place of the old but they are never erased, only buried deeper in the mind waiting to be pulled out.

  Then the implications began to hit. My father had lied to me. We never set foot near Tobermory. We had gone to Algonquin… and something had happened, something so horrible my father had lied to me to protect himself and to protect me. It had been my father fighting with the other man in my dream and he had emerged victorious—he ran his hand through my hair to comfort me.

  And we were digging the other man up now.

  The truth struck hard and made me feel faint again. I was like a child seeing their own blood for the first time, and I was on the verge of passing out. The ceramic tile floor was cold as I lay down upon it. My heart wouldn’t have to work so hard to get the blood to my brain this way, perhaps it would be enough to keep me conscious.

  The accident on the camping trip, falling down an embankment and breaking my arm—it never happened. Something else happened to cause those injuries, something that led me to suffer blackouts at the same time my father was embroiled in a fight to the death. I needed to know more but I had no idea how to dig deeper.

  The only person who knew the answers no longer existed. His body was still here but his mind was gone. Still, I had to try, I had to see if he remembered what had happened.

  It only took a few minutes to pack my clothes and necessities. I closed the hotel room door behind me and knocked on Chen’s door to say my goodbyes.

  After a moment I heard footsteps approach and the deadbolt unlocked. The door opened and Chen stood inside in his boxers, his lean and muscular body inspiring a hint of jealousy. The years had been better to Chen, or perhaps he had been better to his body.

  “I was just about to get in the shower. You leaving already?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a flight out soon. There’s been nothing new happening back home but it won’t be much longer until the proverbial excrement hits the fan.”

  “Understood,” Chen said. “And Link?”

  “Yeah?” The tone of his voice unnerved me.

  “I’m your friend, Link. Never hide things from me again.”

  The fainting feeling came rushing back and it took everything in my power to hold on. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your arm, Link. That old injury acting up again?”

  I sighed. “Yeah, damn football injury.” The old injury was true, a torn rotator cuff during a high school football game. Of course that injury had been to my right arm, not my left. I praised Chen’s faulty memory.

  “No need to hide that shit from me, Link.”

  “I know, Chen. Sorry.”

  “No worries.” He slapped me on what he thought to be my good shoulder. “Now go catch a murderer.”

  “You too,” I said. “And keep me posted on this one. I’m curious to see how it’ll turn out and you know you’ll need my expert crime solving skills.”

  “Whatever, Link. I’ll keep you posted. Fifty says I solve mine before you do.”

  A hundred says I solve them both.

  “A cold case versus a serial killer? I wish I were a betting man, Chen-Chen.”

  We hugged as men do, a quick embrace and a slap on the back to cancel it out. I walked out to the waiting cruiser, my limousine to take me to the airfield.

  —14—

  I was greeted by two very happy children and a very tired wife upon my return home that night. It was late, nearly nine, and past Link and Kasia’s bedtimes. Kat had kept them up after I called her and told her I’d be home soon. There’s nothing like coming home and having your children sprint to the door
and leap into your arms. That alone is reason enough to be a parent.

  I had missed them so much and it didn’t take a detective to notice that the feeling was mutual. I fought back tears and picked them both up—a much harder task than it had been a few years prior—then carried them upstairs. They dressed themselves in their favourite pajamas and brushed their teeth before climbing into my bed. Four more chapters of The Secret World of Og later, they were both dozing off and I was not far behind. Kat joined us and with her help the children were tucked into the beds and sound asleep within minutes.

  Kat came up behind me as I walked down the hall into our bedroom, and hugged me from behind until I felt the air rush. She had always been intuitive to a fault. My emotions were at the breaking point and I couldn’t stop the tears. I turned around and buried my face in her shoulder. Her soft hands caressed my back before she brought one up and ran it through my hair. Images of my father standing above me doing the same flashed upon my closed eyelids and all restraint I had fell by the wayside.

  “My dreams, the hallucinations, this murder in Algonquin, it’s all related,” I said between sobs. “I think my father killed the man and I was there.”

  “That can’t be true, Link, it can’t be”. She never called me Link, not since the day our son was born.

  I took the watch out of my pocket and told her every detail.

  “I know how it looks, Lincoln, but there has to be some other explanation. You’re an amazing detective, you’ll figure it out.”

  She was trying hard, but it wasn’t enough. I knew because I had been trying since I identified the watch.

  “And if it was your father,” she said, “I don’t know. God, what should you do?”

  I looked at her, her gentle pale blue eyes beginning to well up with tears as she realized the gravity. “I don’t know. This may be one I keep to myself.”