Fall from Grace (18 page)

with a subhead of:

Bodies of 16 Women Found in Capital Region

Brent was assigned to help me by going through the list of sixteen names and writing a side piece with their names in chronological order starting with the first victim, Lydia Alexandra, who was found in 1988, to the most recent, Grace Cardinal.

And not only was our coverage a scoop, it made its own news. All of the local media outlets ran stories on it, using the information in the paper for their own story, but at the same time acknowledging that it had come from us. And the resulting blowback meant there were several follow-up stories, press conferences, and all the other fun things that reporters live for. Even though I had started the story, it had taken on a life of its own and all I had to do was keep riding it until it wore itself out. Every day for about a week I was writing something new related to it. Not of all of the stories were groundbreaking and some of them were just follow-ups on info broken by other media outlets—including a TV bit about how police had a list of sixty-three women who fit the profiles of the other victims and had been reported missing over the past fifteen years.

But through it all, the Edmonton Police still claimed that they were not investigating the possibility that a serial killer was on the loose. The media relations people, now the
only
police officials commenting on the story, kept to their talking points: “Despite the perceived similarities in these crimes, the Edmonton Police Service are not investigating the possibility that there is a serial killer operating in the Capital Region” and similar comments, reworded and reframed over and over to sound fresh but to mean the same thing.

After a week and a half, it was over. With all the media in the city clamoring for the story, we finally beat the horse to the ground and the ride ended. The story wasn’t dead, it would linger in the background, but it would only start up again if the police arrested someone or another body was found.

And in that lull, I made the call that I had been thinking about for a couple of months. A few weeks ago, I had actually dialed it a couple of times before hanging up, but this time, I made it through until the first ring. After that happened I knew I couldn’t hang up and let it go.

“Hello, Joan,” I said when the phone was answered after the third ring.

There was a pause on the other side, maybe I heard a sigh, or I was just imagining it.

“Leo. I was kind of expecting you to call,” Joan said, her voice showing no emotion, although she had plenty of reasons to be emotional about a call from me.

Joan was my ex-wife. We had met almost two decades ago when I was the editor of a small-town newspaper and she was the vice principal of the local elementary school. We married after a three-year courtship and stayed together for about seven years, producing two children, Eileen and Peter.

In the years of our marriage, I had two falls into gambling. The second one occurred not long after we moved to Edmonton so she could take an administrative job at Alberta Education. We almost lost our home. Both times she took me back, although following the second incident she took total control of our finances.

There would have been a third transgression into gambling for me in our relationship but I left before that could happen. She didn’t chase me, not even for payment of child support, because she was smart enough to realize that she wouldn’t get it. Sometime, somewhere in the haze of my fall, she divorced me and put all her efforts into raising our children.

“That’s kind of unusual, isn’t it, expecting me to call?” I said, trying to sound as casual as I could. At the same time, the hand that wasn’t holding the phone was shaking and my bowels started clenching in nervous tension.

“Actually it’s kind of obvious. I’ve been seeing your byline for the last few months, and then once checks started to arrive, I’ve been wondering when you would actually call. Thanks for the checks by the way, completely unnecessary, but any little bit helps, you know.”

No, I don’t know. You were the one who raised the kids, I thought. Out loud, I said, “Yeah, now that I’m working, I figured I should do something. I know it doesn’t make up for missing payments all those years, but…” The tendons in my throat clutched, cutting off my words.

My relationship with Joan had been the most intimate one of my entire life; she knew everything, she knew all that I had done and all that I was capable of, for better and worse. And for years, she accepted it, forgiving the worst and putting all of her being into trying to help, trying to keep me on track with our life. But there’s only so much a person can keep on their plate and she realized she had to choose between helping me or raising our children, and as per usual for her, she took the wisest course. I knew it probably hurt her dearly to cut me loose but I knew it also came as a relief.

Once again, she saved me by getting to the point. “So is this just a ‘Hey, how ya doing?’ call or do you have a purpose for conversation?” she asked.

“A little bit of both, I guess.”

“Well, I’m doing good, the kids are doing good, and I see that you are doing good. What else?”

“That’s it? No details? No catching up on what’s been going in your life?”

“No,” she said firmly. “That’s all you get at the moment. State your business, Leo.”

“That’s pretty cold, Joan.”

“Well, we do live in Edmonton. You should be used to it by now. But really, seriously, Leo, I’m glad you are back on track again and I really do appreciate the checks, I really do, but don’t expect anything more out of me. I don’t have it.”

“Well, I was expecting something small,” I said tentatively.

“Then get it over with and ask.”

“I was hoping, now that I’m back on my feet and respectable again, I could see the kids, you know, maybe take them out for lunch, a movie, something like that.”

There was silence for a long time. Joan was a great mother and great mothers are extremely protective of their children. I imagined her pacing the room with the phone in hand, imagined her giving the phone an angry look and a silent scream. Finally she came back. “That’s a big thing, not a small one.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen them and—”

She cut me off. “That’s not my fault. Don’t blame me for that. You made your own choices, Leo, and that was one of them.”

“I know that and now I’m deciding that it would be good if I could see the kids. Only for a brief moment, an hour or two. And then if it works, maybe I can start to try and establish a relationship with them.”

“God, Leo,” she said, her voice cracking. “You are really pushing it here. Really pushing it.”

“Yeah, but I felt I had to ask, even though I have no right to, I felt I had to at least do that.”

There was another long pause, much longer than the other one. I waited it out, said nothing, let her make the decision without any verbal input because if I campaigned further, she would feel pressured and it would end in an instant.

“I can’t make this decision right now. I can’t. It’s too big and important,” she said. “And I’m going to have to ask the kids. They’re both old enough to be a part of this decision, so you’re going to have to wait. You will have to wait for us to make this decision. And in the meantime, please don’t make any more calls about this until you hear from me.”

“I can do that,” I said, a little bit of hope rising inside of me.

“That wasn’t a request. I don’t want to hear from you at all until I get back to you. I want no passive-aggressive phone calls pretending to be about something else, you got that? And if I don’t get back to you, then the answer is no.”

*   *   *

She called me a couple days later. “There’s good news and bad news, which one do you want first?”

“The bad, I guess.”

“Okay. Eileen wants nothing to do with you. If you want me to quote her exact words I can but the gist of it is, No, thank you.”

“What did she really say?” I asked. I hate getting things secondhand or via heresay. Getting the actual quote is always the best.

“You sure?”

“Hit me.”

“When I mentioned your request to her she said, and like I said, these are her words and her punctuation: ‘No fuckin’ way. I can’t believe you’re even asking me such a thing, Mother. Not even if he was dying of some debilitating disease. I never want to see that prick again. No. Fucking. Way.’ Those periods are hers, in case you were wondering.”

“Jesus. Nice vocabulary on the kid.”

“You asked. And after she said all that, she stormed out of the room and we haven’t said much to each other since.”

“Sorry. Hope she won’t be mad long.”

“She’ll be fine. It’s just that the topic of you is a very touchy subject.”

“Again, sorry.”

“It’s a bit late for that. That’s just the way it is. Anyway, the good news is that Peter is okay with it. He’s a bit apprehensive but he wouldn’t mind seeing you for a bit.”

My heart rose to the ceiling. One out of two wasn’t bad and I felt that if I made a good impression on Peter, showed him that his dad had it all under control and was willing to be an important and positive part of his life, then maybe he could convince his sister to give me a small chance. The probability of such an occurrence was still pretty slim but I had won against worse odds, so I was positive. “That’s awesome,” I said with a bounce in my voice. “When can I pick him up?”

“First off, there are a bunch of ground rules and these are nonnegotiable. If you don’t like any of them, then too bad. Suck it up or forget about it. Understand, Leo, I’m very serious here, very serious, and there will be no negotiations in this area.”

“Okay, I understand. No negotiations.”

“The first rule is that at no time will you pick him up at this house or drop him off here. I will not have you coming to our house and disrupting our lives with your presence. Already you’ve created a bit of a mess and I don’t want it escalating further.”

“I can meet you guys anywhere you want.”

“Good, but before we decide on that, there are a few other stipulations. I will not, will not, you hear me, leave you alone with my son until I know for sure he will be okay and is safe. I’m honestly glad you are trying to get your life back, and truly hope that this time it will work, but when all is said and done, I don’t trust you worth shit, Leo. There is almost nothing you can do to gain back that trust, but at the very least I can try to help you create a relationship with your son.

“I know what you and your father went through and I see a lot of you as a little boy in Peter. He’s a great kid, bright, funny, and with lots of friends, and he’s done really well, considering the history of his family. But he always seems to be missing something, like there’s a tiny hole in his heart. God, it would kill him if he heard me talk about him in this way, but I can’t help it, I’m his mother and he’s my little boy.”

Her voice cracked and I could tell she was speaking through tears at that point. “That’s why he reminds me a lot of you, of a lot of those stories you told me about when you were a boy. It’s pretty obvious that your relationship with your father, or lack thereof, played a major role in them. And maybe if I can do something to help improve the situation between Peter and his father, then maybe I can help fill that hole a little bit.” It took her a moment to regain her composure, and when she came back, she was strong and unyielding.

“So while I’ll let you see my son, you’ll have to see him with me there first. There is no way I’m letting you take him out by himself until I believe he’ll be okay. Okay?”

“Sounds fair to me.” It was more than fair, I thought.

“So wherever we decide to meet, probably some coffee shop, I will be there with him and I will stay with him until both he and I believe that I can leave. At first I might move to another table nearby or whatever, but just be prepared for me to be there and for the possibility that you may not get any alone time with him. And that, as I said, is how it will be. None of this is negotiable.”

“Yeah, I got that. But what if he wants you to go, but he doesn’t want to stay in the coffee shop? What if he wants to go somewhere else, like maybe see a movie or something like that?”

“As long as you tell me exactly where you are going, how long it’s going to last, and give your cell number so I can call you, that should be okay,” she said.

“And one final thing, if at any time you do anything stupid or cause my son to be hurt or threatened in any way, you will have blown your chance with him. If Peter feels even the slightest bit uncomfortable with your actions, then that’s it. We will no longer tolerate any connection or contact with you. I will tear up any and all checks that you send to us. I will change our phone numbers, and if you make any attempts to contact us in any way, I will go to the police and seek a restraining order against you. And if I’m in a really bad mood when that happens, I will go to your boss and get him to kick your ass.”

“That’s pretty harsh, Joan.”

“Tough shit, Leo. Let me show you how serious I am about this,” she said angrily. “As soon as your name appeared in a byline in the paper, I did some checking for myself and discovered a familiar name on the masthead, one Larry Maurizo, who I remembered from the paper in Olds. And that’s how I knew how you got hired. And when you called me about the kids, the first person I called was Larry and I grilled him about you. He remembered me, of course, and he was quite helpful answering all my questions without flinching. In fact, he was more than willing to help me.”