The Abduction of Mary Rose (6 page)

She thought of herself growing inside of the young girl's womb for those eight months that she lay in a coma, hooked up to tubes and machines to keep them both alive.
She didn't hate me for being there. On the contrary—she wanted me to live. To avenge her.

I never heard her voice. Only her heartbeat, the pumping of blood through her body. Sustaining me until I could survive in the world on my own.
It gave Naomi a strange feeling imagining herself the daughter of this young woman, who, until only recently, was unknown to her. She had no doubt that at some deep level, Mary Rose, even as she lay in a deep sleep, was aware of the child growing inside her.
Aware of me.

"She's been trying to communicate with me for a long time, Molly," she said to her friend curled up at her feet. "Ever since I was a little girl. I was afraid and closed myself to her spirit. She wants me to find her killers."

Molly raised her head and blinked green eyes at her as if in understanding. Naomi turned back to the computer. But her efforts to find some mention of Mary Rose's abduction went unrewarded. She found nothing on the case, although she did find an alarming number of rapes and murders of other Native women across the country in which their perpetrators had escaped justice. One case particularly brutal case involved the murder of Betty Osborne, a Saskatchewan Native girl. The nineteen year old had been picked up in a car by four men, gang-raped, then stabbed to death with a screwdriver. 'Evil' was really the only word to describe such a heinous act.

The gentle command played in her mind.
Find the evil ones, 'Ntus.

"I will," she whispered. "I will."

The fish tank screen saver popped up and she realized she'd been sitting there for a full fifteen minutes without touching the keyboard. She shut off the machine and went out to the kitchen, her mind swimming with thoughts and half-formed thoughts, her resolve strong to find justice for Mary Rose. She could only imagine the terror and pain her birth mother suffered at the hands of her killers.
Why had nothing been done to find and punish those men?
She was suddenly furious.

You don't know that nothing was done. You don't know anything about it.
Well, she would know. She'd make it her business to know.

She opened the fridge door and took out the last quart of milk on the shelf, eyed the expiry date and sniffed the contents. Grimacing at the rank sourness that rose up to her, Naomi poured the milk down the sink, turning on the cold water faucet to wash it and the smell away. Through the window over the sink, she could see big blue patches in the clouds. Should be a nice day, she thought, as her eye wandered across the abandoned field to the backs of the houses on Keel Street. Some ambitious woman had hung out a line of snowy white sheets and pillow cases that blew gently in the breeze. It was rare to see clothes on a line nowadays, with most people preferring the convenience of dryers, herself included. But she remembered her mother would sometimes put out a line of wash on her day off from the hospital, when Naomi was at school. You could bury your face in them, they always smelled so nice.

For some reason, this thought brought a lump to her throat. She
must
be in bad shape to get emotional over laundry.

Naomi checked the cupboard and saw she was down to her last can of cat food. There was a pan of cakes no one had yet touched that she'd put in the freezer.

"How do you feel about brownies, Molly?" she said aloud, even though the cat was nowhere to be seen. She'd do a little grocery shopping while she was out. She'd also pick up some cleaning supplies and scour this place. Her mother Lillian would be appalled at Naomi's slovenliness. Maybe I take after my father, she thought, and laughed aloud. A hollow, bitter sound in the empty house.

Less than an hour later, she was at the library. From the first time she had climbed those wide grey stone steps and entered through the heavy oak doors of River's End Public Library, it was a magical place for her a hushed, warm haven where, through the pages of a book she could travel to far off exotic lands. She could experience vouraciously the characters' lives through the author's words. Naomi loved books, loved their smell, their feel, and their secrets.

But now she paid little mind to the books on the shelves as she made her way to the row of wooden filing cabinets against the far wall, the same cabinets that had been here when she was still in school, each labeled River's End Tribune, with corresponding dates. The sun shining in the high window polished the dark wood, the knobs on the drawers. A grade school girl sat at a far table, reading, and the same sun turned her hair a lovely molten gold, like doll's hair.

Naomi quickly spotted the drawer she was looking for, 64C, and pulled it open. She scanned the row of films in their boxes, selecting four of them. Closing the drawer, she headed for the only machine in the bank of five not in use.

Removing the first film from its box, she placed it on the spindle, slid the film under the roller and glass and threaded it into the take-up reel. She adjusted the controls until the page came into sharp focus. As she began turning the knob, the pages whisked past her eyes in a blur and she slowed the speed, so that she could scan each headline before the next page came up.

As if lying in wait, long before she was ready for the emotional impact the words would have, the headline jumped out at her:

Unidentified Girl Found Unconscious on Black Pond Road.

The blood rushed warm to her cheeks, and her heart beat faster as she read the write-up beneath the headline.

RIVER'S END - An elderly man out walking his dog on Black Pond Road this morning discovered a young woman lying unconscious by the side of the road. But for her socks and one white sneaker, she was unclothed. What is assumed to be her clothing lay beside her, likely tossed there, police say, by her assailant(s). The items included a denim skirt, white shirt, underclothes, and a right sneaker matching the one she wore. The young woman had been badly beaten, apparently left for dead. She is approximately five foot four inches, 110 pounds, and is believed to be aboriginal.

Police are asking for the public's help in identifying the victim.

Reading that, thinking about how she looked when the man discovered her lying there, sent the strangest sensation through her. Something like shock, as if the attack just happened and she had just now heard about it. A sadness welled up in Naomi.

Mary Rose was a petite girl, while Naomi herself was five eight and ten pounds heavier. Marking the article for copying later, she scrolled to a second write-up, published three days later.

Victim of Brutal Attack Identified by Grandfather,
the headline read. This write-up had merited a brief additional paragraph, along with a school photo of Mary Rose. Looking at the girl in the photo, Naomi felt an instant connection.

She has an interesting face, almost pretty. It was perhaps too serious for making friends easily, protecting her tender heart with a necessary detachment from those who would hurt her. A survival technique that couldn't, in the end, save her.

She looked out at Naomi with gentle dark eyes, intelligence shining through. Naomi could see something of herself in the oval-shaped face. Not of Thomas now, she thought, but of this young woman in the photo.

Her blood flows in my veins.

So does his
, came the grotesque thought.
The monsters who ... No. Don't go there. Not yet.
She pushed the thought away, focusing instead on the small crescent moon with the man-in-the-moon profile nestled in the vee of the white shirt Mary Rose was wearing in the photo.

Did she have on that same denim skirt the day this picture was taken, she wondered. But only the top part showed in the picture.

She sat back in the chair, let out a long shuddery sigh. This tragedy had actually happened. It seemed surreal. But this was how her own life had begun. She knew this mentally, of course, but now she knew it emotionally. She read the second write-up:

The victim of a brutal beating and rape has been identified as Mary Rose Francis of Salmon Cove Reservation by her grandfather, Paul Francis, also of Salmon Cove. "When she did not return home from school on Thursday," an obviously distraught Mr. Francis said, "I called the police but no one called me back until yesterday."

Mary Rose Francis lies in a coma at River's End General Hospital. Though doctors say recovery is always a possibility, they are not holding out a lot of hope in this case. "She suffered massive head injuries," Doctor James Melick said. "It's a wait and see situation."

Students at River's End High School were shocked by the news of the attack on their schoolmate. The victim had been visiting at a friend's home earlier that evening.

"She was really nice," said a tearful Lisa Cameron. "I should have let her go home earlier when she wanted to. But we were having fun, listening to music and stuff, and we just lost track of time."

Naomi moved on to the next write-up, published two weeks later.

NO LEADS IN VIOLENT ASSAULT ON NATIVE GIRL
-
Police are frustrated in their efforts to solve the case of a brutal assault against a Native girl, says lead detective, William Keys. "We'll be doing all we can to track down the perpetrators, but there's nothing new to report at this time. The investigation is ongoing."

That was about it, followed by a rehash of the few known facts in the case. Naomi could find nothing further after that. The case had apparently been dropped. She scrolled back to the second write-up in which Charles Seaton, the caretaker at the cemetery told police that he'd heard screams that night, and crested the hill just in time to see a young woman being forced into a car. 'It was enough to curl the hair on your head,' he had told them. But he was too far away to help, he'd said, and could offer no further information, except to say that there'd been two men in the car when it sped away. Mr. Seaton said that he would hear that poor girl's screams for the rest of his life.

Did you yell out?
Naomi asked the man who wasn't there to answer for himself.
Did you try to warn them off? Let them know they'd been seen? Did you do anything at all?

She was being unfair to Mr. Seaton. The abduction probably happened so fast it barely would have had time to register on him until it was over and everything was quiet again. It must have seemed dreamlike in that moment. The story was pretty much as Frank had related it to her. Nevertheless, she jotted down the man's name. It couldn't hurt to talk to Mr. Seaton, providing he was still alive. How old would be now, if he was still around?

She wondered if the police had ever considered hypnotizing him? He might have remembered more details, maybe even the car's license plate number. The subconscious mind can store information the conscious mind is not even aware of. At least it works that way in the movies. The car itself would be long gone of course, to some scrap heap in the sky, but the license number could provide the name of whoever owned it at the time. Would there still be a record of that somewhere?

All her instincts told her that her next stop should be the police department to put all these questions to whomever was in charge of cold cases, and demand the justice for Mary Rose she'd been denied all these years. But she knew that before she could hope to gain their attention, she'd have to make a few waves first. Just walking in there with some old write-ups wasn't going to do it. She needed a lot more.

Beneath Mr. Seaton's name, Naomi jotted down the name of Lisa Cameron, who was probably long married and going by a different name. But she shouldn't be too hard to track down; this was a small town. As an afterthought, she added the name of Dr. James Melick to the short list, followed by Detective William Keys, although they could both be dead by now.

Naomi had been in the library longer than she'd realized. Three of the stations had been vacated while she did her research. The girl was gone. Just one elderly woman was left in the last one, perhaps researching her ancestry, which in a way was what she herself was doing. Although her ultimate purpose was different.

Armed with her notes, and copies of the news items that had run in the Tribune during the investigation, Naomi left the library and drove to the faded red brick building on Corona Street which housed the River's End Tribune.

Someone must know something, and there was only one way to find out.

Chapter Eight

"Good story," Editor-in-Chief Len Hayward said, leaning back in his chair far enough to make it squeak. Lacing his fingers behind his head, he studied Naomi over his bifocals. "You sure you want me to run it?" One scraggly salt and pepper eyebrow raised slightly.

"Of course I'm sure, that's why I'm here. I realize it happened a long time ago, but...."

"Twenty-eight years ago."

"I know that. But cold cases have been solved before. Someone might know something. Maybe someone saw something and chose for one reason or another not to come forward at the time. From what I've read of the case, there sure wasn't a big push to solve it. It seems a Native girl was not all that important a loss."

He nodded slowly, brought the chair forward with another hard squeak, picked up a pen and twirled it in his hand, his eyes never leaving her. "I knew your mom—your adopted mother, Lillian Waters. Not well, mind you, but we were acquainted. You realize, of course, you'll quickly go from being the daughter of a respected nurse and labour leader to being a child born as the result of a vicious rape on a Native girl."

Heat flooded Naomi's neck and face. His words brought a sting of shame at her very existence, something only her Aunt Edna had ever been able to make her feel. Was this how certain people made Mary Rose feel?

Her reaction wasn't lost on him. "Please, don't be upset, Miss Waters. I didn't say I felt that way. But bigotry still exists in this town, and anyone who thinks it doesn't is dreaming." His voice had softened. "I assure you, I don't. We're all children of God, if he's up there at all, and I have my own issues with that. But you need to know what you're up against. Your mother guarded you against the circumstances of your birth for good reason."

With that, the big man, in dark rumpled pants and rolled-up shirt sleeves, got to his feet, and motioned to someone outside the glass cubicle. Turning his attention back to her, he swept a hand over thinning hair.

"I'm happy to run your story, Ms. Waters. Why not? It's got all the elements that sell newspapers sex, violence, even a minor celebrity angle considering your mother was well-known in River's End, and you yourself are not an unknown quantity. In fact, you're my granddaughter's favourite books-on-tape narrator. She'd kill me if I didn't get an autograph." He pushed a sheet of paper across the desk at her. "Emily," he said, smiling. "She looked you up on the net so I recognized you from your picture."

She addressed it To Emily, wrote a brief note, signed her name and passed it back to him.

He folded the paper and slid it into the pocket of his brown Columboesque trench coat hanging on a rack by the door. "I just wonder if you're prepared for the fallout, that's all."