Fall from Grace (34 page)

“So I went off on her and told her she was just another drunk Indian who was ruining everything for the rest of us, and if she wasn’t going to listen to her family and her people, she didn’t deserve us. I told my sister that Lydia was too far gone, and the best thing for them to do was to cut their losses and focus on the children they had left.” He paused as the guilt settled onto him, loading him down with the weight of what he had done.

He whispered the rest of the story. “Just over a month after she got out of the hospital, Lydia was dead, her body found in a field near Leduc. After her family buried her, I actually drove to that field, stared out at the openness of the space and the brightness of the night sky, the millions of stars blazing, something we never see in the city, and I thought it was a beautiful place to see when one was alive, but it was probably a very lonely place to die.”

As I thought about the circumstances of how Lydia died and how she had gotten into the hospital in the first place, the chill that had appeared when I first found out about the number of dead women from the streets of Edmonton came back and clung to my bones.

40

I had to go into the hard copy section of the morgue but I found what I was looking for. I made two copies of the story, wrote a short note on each of them, explaining the connection between the story and some names involved in the story, and dropped it on my desk. If I didn’t come back, if they found me somewhere, they would find this on top of my desk and might make the same connection.

Once I finished that piece of business, I signed out another car from the lot, gave a time a half hour later than the actual time, and drove out of downtown.

I did a short drive by the house, checking to see if anybody was home, and on the off chance that I might spy a yellow pickup parked nearby. There was no pickup: I couldn’t expect such luck. But the house looked empty, the windows dark as the sun faded to the west. I made another tour, trying to pass myself off as someone lost.

I parked around the corner half a block down, and pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket and looked at it, but that was only for show. There was nothing on the paper but I was hoping to fool the neighbors. I slowly walked around the block until I got to the front of the house, saw there were no lights on so I was pretty sure that nobody was home.

Should I get back into my car, go back to the paper, and leave things be? Or should I search the house for evidence that was probably not even there? Going back seemed to be the smart move, the one that made more sense, careerwise, lifewise. Walking away from this case and letting it die quietly would allow me to keep my job, allow me to continue in this life that I had created.

But I couldn’t go back, and yet couldn’t walk away, either, even if doing so would have resulted in getting my family back and removing all the bad things that had happened in my life so far. I owed Grace that much. Her death had given me so much. Standing over her body in that field had put me on the path that resulted in some of the best stories I’d ever written, helping rebuild my career. And if I walked away from her and put that field behind me, she would never leave. She would sit at the back of my mind, calling to me, nagging at me, her face rising every time I wrote another story about a dead person. In fact, every time I wrote any kind of article, she would be there, reminding me that there was an unfinished piece back there, a story that I could have brought to an end but hadn’t. If I wanted to live my life in peace, I had to find some kind of peace for her.

But the real reason I couldn’t go back to my new life was that the whole thing was a lie. I had not created anything new for myself. Sure, the places were different, I had a job, success, and money, but not much had truly changed. I had congratulated myself for beating the temptations of the casino, the cards, and the horses, but that didn’t mean I was no longer gambling. Every time I walked into a bank with my ball cap pulled low to hide my face, every time I scribbled the note on the back of a slip and politely handed it over to the teller, I was no different from when I sat down at a blackjack table or disappeared into the empty time of a VLT.

I had gambled with money and lost my family and my career in the past, but I was still gambling. And I had played enough games to realize that the odds always favored the house. I had been on a winning streak for a while with the banks, but soon, today, tomorrow, next year, I would lose, and every incident that I thought was a win would actually become a loss as the authorities put two and two together and connected me with all the other similar robberies. And before that happened, I had to do something that meant something. If not to the world at large, then at least to me.

There was no way I could turn my back on Grace, or Lydia, or any of the women who’d ended up in a farmer’s field.

First, the garage. If there was an actual yellow pickup, if such a vehicle truly existed, then there was a good chance it was there. There was no window in the door so I entered the side yard, not checking to see if anybody was watching because that would look like I was worried about being seen. Instead I just walked in like I belonged, and if anybody saw, they would think that.

Once inside the fenced area, I had plenty of cover from the thick pine trees surrounding the yard. The lawn, even at this time of year, was cleanly cut, no leaves or debris, just the brown grass ready and waiting for the first major snowfall of the year. There was also a deck that further wrapped around the house and it, too, was bare, the outdoor furniture probably stowed for the winter. I gave the house one quick look, waiting to see if I could spot any signs of life, but there was nothing. So I stepped up to the back garage door.

I reached for the handle but then stopped. If it’s locked, I told myself, I will turn around and walk away. So far I was okay, no laws had been broken, but once I stepped into the garage of a private citizen, then all bets were off. Even if the door was unlocked, it was trespassing, more like breaking and entering, both criminal offenses.

It was then that I realized that I had no plan of action, no idea what to do if I did find any evidence. Nothing I could find, save for a corpse or blood from the same, could be used in a court to convict anyone. Not even in something as simple as a newspaper article.

There were laws, serious laws with serious consequences, that prevented newspapers from publishing articles based on stolen evidence or illegal sources without a solid basis in truth, or at the very least, truth that could be proven in court. Freedom of the press was an important statute in Canada’s constitution and its Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but that didn’t give us the right to be able to print just anything. The legal system and Canadian society as a whole took a dim view of such antics.

So I could do nothing if I found any evidence, could not write a front-page article on the discovery of Edmonton’s serial killer. Nothing. My only possibility, and it was a slim one at that, was to hand off whatever I found to someone like Detective Whitford and see if the police could do something with it. But even if they couldn’t, at the very least I would know the truth and Whitford would know it, and maybe, just maybe, that little fact would deter the killer from killing anyone else. I could live with that and hoped that Grace would accept that, as well.

The door wasn’t locked and I really shouldn’t have been surprised. It was a relatively respectable neighborhood and there was also a good chance that many people here left their front doors unlocked while they were home. So I opened the door, and after a few seconds of adjusting to the lower light, I saw it standing there in plain sight: a yellow pickup truck.

I actually gasped with shock and took a couple steps back at the sight of the thing. I was not only surprised that it actually existed, I was jolted by the brazenness of this vehicle, the one that had struck fear in the entire community of Edmonton’s street prostitutes, being kept in an unlocked garage. It just showed how unconcerned he was about being caught and how much faith he put in the system to protect him. And he was correct to have that faith because it had protected him for two decades and, in a sense, was still providing that protection.

I walked around the truck, noting any irregular features, spots of rust, type of tires, shape of the cab, debris in the box, anything that I could use to build a solid description to take to Grace’s roommate Jackie and her fellow streetwalkers in order to get enough evidence to maybe start something. I knew that no cop in his right mind would take on the case on his own, but maybe I could scrape together enough evidence to write something that would spark enough public concern to force the EPS to act. The key question was whether the public was concerned enough about dead prostitutes. I hoped so.

One thing I did know was that I would not rest until I could write something, and even then I wouldn’t stop until someone in the justice system, a cop or a prosecutor, decided to do something like investigate and press charges. There was no longer any indecision or concerns at all in my head and heart.

I would pursue this case, make noise about it, until someone listened, or until someone stopped me. I would stay on it, chase it down to the very end, even if people thought I was chasing another ghost and needed to up my medication. Even if it meant the loss of my job and reputation. Those things didn’t matter. I had lost them before so another time would make no difference. Only death would stop me. And I was okay with that.

For the first time in years, I felt comfortable. There was no confusion, no muddled brain questioning every move I made and being watchful of falling into the abyss. It no longer scared me, because even if I did fall into it, I would have Grace pushing me on, nagging at me to pursue her killer to the very end.

The cab of the truck was locked, but for a pickup of this age, it was oddly clean. The dash was clear of dust, the seats were the original vinyl with no rips, tears, or patches of duct tape. There was no debris, no garbage, nothing to show that this truck had been driven in months. Even the windows were spotless, with no cracks, chips, or even fingerprints. The box of the truck was the same, perfectly clean, no dead leaves, no sand, no bits of wood, the paint free of rust spots or chips, nothing to show that this pickup had been used the way the typical Edmontonian uses an old pickup, for moving, hauling, and/or discarding old furniture and garbage.

There were two stacks of sandbags piled on the opposite sides of the box right behind the cab. That was not unusual because they added weight to an empty truck box to help with traction in snow and ice. Every single pickup or rear-wheel-drive vehicle in the city had sandbags either in the trunk or the box.

I stood on my toes and peered through the driver’s side window to see if I could see the odometer. The dim light and the placement of the steering wheel made that difficult so I jumped up, rested my butt on the side of the box to see if looking through the back window offered a better view. It did. The odometer read about 45,000. Based on the age of the truck, that was probably in miles, not kilometers.

Canada had switched from the old-style imperial system to the metric in the later seventies and the early eighties, and it took manufacturers a few years to make the adjustment, so that meant this truck was almost thirty years old. Still, the mileage was nothing for a vehicle of this age, and when you added its almost pristine state to the equation, then it proved that someone used the truck very sparingly, although the sandbags showed that the vehicle was driven from time to time.

I jumped off the truck, looking around the garage for anything that might give me a clue, but it was just a garage with the typical garage things: lawn equipment, tools, and the like. The truck rocked a bit on its shocks as my weight left it and a couple of the sandbags from the driver’s side rolled over. A decaying cardboard box had been underneath the bags and I peeked over to look inside.

At first glance, the contents of the box seemed typical and not unexpected, a set of booster cables twisted and tangled like a psychotic Möbius strip, a bottle of windshield washer fluid with just an inch of blue liquid at the bottom, a set of frayed and worn work gloves, several crumpled rags, bits of string and wire, and tiny bits of debris and metal, things you expect to find in a cardboard box in the back of a prairie pickup. But the rags seemed a little unusual. One of them was pink and the other was purple. So I took off my glove, reached in, pulled one out, and untangled it from its folds.

It turned out to be a baby doll T-shirt, something worn by small kids or teenaged girls trying to look sexy. The shirt intrigued me, so I dug deeper, pulling out the bits and pieces that weren’t obviously related to vehicle maintenance. A long bit of broken plastic could have been the length of a stiletto heel. Another rag could have been a piece of torn scarf or a section from a pair of panties. A tiny piece of metal that could be a piece of a paper clip or the end of an earring.

I grabbed these pieces and shoved them into my jacket pockets. They could be nothing, or they could mean everything. What was the owner of a truck like this doing with a broken stiletto heel or a piece of silk unless all these pieces had belonged to his wife, were meant to be thrown away, but had been casually tossed into the box instead and forgotten.

But there was something else in the box, and that couldn’t be included in a list of harmlessly discarded female clothing. It was a cell phone, spattered with mud and dirt. The size and brand showed that it was a recent model. I pulled it out and flipped the handset open. I pushed the red button and it beeped, showing a bar and a half of battery power. I thought about making a call on it, to see if it worked, but I stopped. I pulled out my notebook, found the page with the number Grace’s roommate had given me, and punched the series on my own cell. An eternity passed, so long that I breathed a sigh of relief that I had dialed the wrong number.