The Devil You Know: A Novel (22 page)

I caught up to him and struggled to match my stride to his.

Look, I was thinking about the open house yesterday. Your father, I said.

Oh, fuck you with this, David said.

I had the search result printout in my hand and while we stood in line at Sarah’s Shawarma I ripped the printer tracks off the sides and wound them around my fingers.

I’m not saying I know what the connection is, I said. But don’t you think that’s weird? Don’t you think it’s strange that I run a search on your father’s name and come up with an address where my mother once lived?

I think it’s strange that someone obsessed with a child molester ran a search on my father, David said. That’s what I think.

We got our food and sat down at a table in the back and I smoothed the news file out next to his tray.

David held up one hand.

For the record, I’m going to say that I am a staunch supporter of the work of the Metro Toronto Police in this matter. While it’s a shame they didn’t catch him, they had Robert Cameron nailed. They don’t need new detectives. They’re not hiring.

Look: the thing about Robert Cameron is that it doesn’t fit. He’s not a child molester, that’s not the history, I said. The things he was arrested for, they were weapons charges, all of them. Armed robberies. Violent crime, sure, but no kid stuff. No little girls.

David took a fork and pushed around at the splotch of hot sauce inside his falafel, spreading it out.

This is ridiculous now, he said. You’re making things harder than they need to be. This doesn’t fit, that doesn’t fit. The guy was a violent maniac, a psycho. You’re not going to find logic here. You’re not going to find anything.

I’m saying the last day I saw Lianne alive, I also saw your father in my living room, I said.

The fork and sandwich froze in David’s hands.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? he said. Did you actually just say what I think you said?

I shook the printout. All I’m saying is, This. What I’m saying is, Now. This.

David grabbed the news file and scanned it.

My father’s not in here, he said.

I know, I said.

Like, not at all. He looked from the page back to me and then tossed the printout onto the table.

But this article came up in association with his name, I said. And that’s the part I need to know about. Maybe he knows something about the photo.

He’s not in the picture. I saw it.

Are you sure? It’s pretty poor quality. You said so yourself.

I saw my father last week, remember? David said. I’m pretty sure I know what he looks like. He finished the sandwich and crumpled the long wrapper in his hand, then tossed it onto the tray.

I
managed to coax David home with me. If one of the guys in the picture was really Graham Patton, at least those two dots would be connected. It would give me an opener with my mother. I wanted him to make the ID.

He wasn’t interested in talking any more than we already had.

If he’s in the picture, I promise to stop bugging you. I’ll ask my mother and leave you out of it, I swear. You didn’t even really try, I said.

Is this about Lianne or you? David sat down on the corner of my bed, low to the ground.

Just take one more good look and tell me if anyone seems familiar.

I curled a leg under me and leaned against his shoulder. He held the picture in his left hand and traced along the faces with a finger.

There’s only two guys, he said. It’s a weird picture to run with that piece. It’s like it’s a picture of the house, like the house says it all.

People hated hippies, I said. No one ever talks about that. They
were scared of them. It was way more wrapped up in biker culture and hoboism than anyone wants to remember. People remember, Are you going to San Francisco? They don’t remember dirty hitchhikers.

La-la-la flowers, David said.

I thought of my friend Melissa, living out in that tent squat parking lot in Nashville and then getting dragged home crazy. People get damaged, I said. By drugs and also by other people.

Acid will burn actual holes in your brain, David said. I looked up. True story, he said. I did a biology project on MS and that’s what the tech I interviewed told me. People come in for CT scans and have these black spots where the holes are. Blackouts: that’s what he called them. The holes from acid don’t look any different. He said he had to ask every patient what kind of recreational drugs they use.

My mom’s this one, I said, pointing.

Yeah. Skinny.

She had beautiful bones, I said. My father says that. All her bones stuck out.

He’s not here, David said.

What do you mean?

My father. I’m telling you he’s not in this picture.

Oh.

My head hurt and I leaned it on David’s shoulder for a moment.

I don’t understand anything, I said. I wanted to stand up but the ground lurched under me. A wave of nausea hit the back of my throat and I leaned forward a little. I would have liked to put my head between my knees. Something’s wrong with me all the time, I said.

Maybe there’s nothing to understand, David said. He shifted his body so that he was a little closer and held an arm around one of my shoulders. I leaned in. You’re pushing really hard right now, he said. Just stop and ask yourself what’s this about. Is it Bernardo, or Lianne. Or is it you.

He smoothed the hair at my temples and tucked it behind my
ear. I looked at him. He’d gone home after the open house and trimmed his beard down to a rim of stubble, like Brad Pitt in
Thelma and Louise
. I rubbed the back of my hand against his jaw and it was rough and soft and I realized I wasn’t thinking of anything but that, the feel of his no-beard against my skin. My head was airy. I tried to remember if I’d eaten anything at Sarah’s.

What, are you gonna slap me now? Relax, I’m joking. Maybe you’re just strung out. Ask Angie to make you do something else.

I can’t, I said.

They can’t fire you over that. It’s like a disability, he said. His hair fell over one eye and I could tell by the look of him that he thought he was being pretty funny.

Oh, I’m disabled all right, I said.

Don’t I know it.

D
avid’s tried to kiss me before, not just once, but maybe a handful of times. Sometimes it works, if we’ve been drinking, or even just hanging out more than usual, without the buffer of other people. So I knew I was safe. I knew if I kissed him he would kiss me back. I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck and pulled myself forward into his lap and let my mouth brush his and he tightened up immediately, his arm wrapping hard around the back of my waist. We slid down off the futon onto the floor with me straddling him and his hand up under my shirt and then outside it, working at the buttons. His mouth on my shoulder and my neck and I pulled his head up so that his mouth would be just on my mouth. I wanted the moment I’d had with my hand against his beard to extend to my whole body. I didn’t want to think or worry about anything and the heat coming off him made me feel full and undamaged and at the same time I was choked by sadness. I was choking. He was wearing a plaid shirt with snap buttons over another shirt and I pulled at the snaps and they were harder to open than I thought. The snaps gave way one after another and under that there was a thin T-shirt and
I slid my hands under it and his whole body was solid and made of bone and would last forever.

We weren’t drunk. We hadn’t been drinking and he kissed my shoulders and my neck and breasts. I was in my bra and the straps were already coming down off my shoulders and I pulled them up and tried to take a break, with my hand pushing flat against his collarbone.

David pulled away and then I did and he sat me on the floor so that I was next to him but not right on him anymore. He looked at me and he was wary.

Today is not my best day, I said.

What do you want me to do.

I pulled my legs cross-legged in front of me and leaned over sideways against the bed.

I’m sorry, I said.

You don’t have to be sorry. It’s not a sorry thing.

I smoothed out his shirt for him.

You’re all over the place, he said.

My head is just rushing all the time.

I just want to know, David said. I like to know where I stand.

The photograph was still lying there. I stared at it a moment.

I know there’s something here, I said. There’s something I’m not getting. I tugged the photo closer. Why is your father’s name on this if he’s not in here, I said.

Are you fucking kidding me, David said.

What?

You’re making shit up.

I’m not. I remember it. I remember him.

You don’t remember shit. You were a little kid. Your brain is overloaded and you’re filling in the blanks.

That’s not true, I said.

You don’t know what’s true. You just jumped on me.

I know. I don’t know what I’m doing. I looked at the picture in my hand. What if Robert Cameron had another alias, too, I said.
What if that’s why they never found him? What if he’s been here all along? Hiding in plain sight.

David looked at me.

Watch your mouth, he said.

David, it makes sense. What if your father is Robert Cameron? It explains everything: the connection to my mother, the photo, everything.

I told you my father is not in that fucking picture.

Why else would I remember him?

Forget you. David got up and went out into the hall. I followed him and watched him prying his boots onto his feet. He hadn’t bothered to untie the laces.

I’m the first fucking one to slag my father, David said. I fucking hate that guy. All he ever did was cheat on my mom. We’d get home from the grocery store or my fucking soccer game and he’d send me down to the basement to put something away. I’d go down there with a tub of ice cream and there’d be some girl there, half-naked, hiding out behind the freezer. David slammed his foot down into the boot and looked at me. He sent me down there on purpose, he said. So I’d be proud of him, big man, big score, some girl.

David.

No. No. Just no.

I was standing there with my shirt still half-open.

I’m allowed to say it, David said. It’s on me. He’s a liar and a shitty father and a shittier guy. But he didn’t kill your friend, he didn’t rape some little girl and leave her body out in the woods for a dog to find. David threw his arms into his peacoat. I don’t want you to say stuff you can’t take back. I can’t take this back for you, so you just have to keep it to yourself. My father is not Robert Cameron. Get it? You want to make shit up, make things fit? Keep it to yourself.

He kept talking like that and repeating himself. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He talked himself right out the door and it slammed and clicked and I stood there and listened to his feet on the steps until the downstairs door slammed, too, and he was gone.

Y
ou got a driver’s license? Angie stuck her head into my cubicle and dropped a file folder on my desk.

I don’t have a car, I said. I picked up the folder and leafed through it. A handful of wires and the release about Bernardo’s arrest. Plus an address, what looked like an old real estate listing, and a copy of a warrant.

Cops are picking the house apart, she said. Down in St. Catherines. They’re not gonna find anything right away. But I want you to go sit and watch them do it.

Angie drives a blue Turismo she bought new in 1982. It’s a good car for blending in or hanging around in and it’s got a great big hatch so if she needs to she can throw photo equipment in there or haul a few guys around with her.

Last year she was working on a guns-and-gangs feature series where she started following leads around town: squad car chasing, mostly, and also a few gangsters. Modern gangsters are a lot less glam than old movies would have you believe. Nobody wears a fedora or goes to the casino with Myrna Loy. It’s hard drugs and guns and sex trade. It’s a moneymaking endeavor operated by thugs.

When she was working on the series, the paper rented her a different car every day of the week for a month. So she wouldn’t be traced, or tracked.