The Devil You Know: A Novel (34 page)

I heard you were working for the paper now, Patton said. You must love that.

I was going home, I said. I don’t want to take the subway.

I hadn’t actually been thinking about going home or the subway, or what I was going to do next at all. I wanted a good look at Graham Patton, the set of his jaw. How tall was he, the size of his hands. I wanted an identifier. I was thinking about David, what he would say about all this, and about my mother’s reaction to my question the night before.

Subway’ll stay shut down now for a few hours, Graham Patton said. They’re not letting anyone into that tunnel. I was supposed
to teach a photo course, but that’s all shut down, too. Come on, he said. I’ll give you a lift home.

I was standing with my back to the wall, halfway between the escalator up to the shopping concourse and the doors onto Bloor Street.

I used to do some photo work for the
Free Press
, he said. A million years ago, geez. You should come by the house. I’ll make you a coffee, get you over the shock. He leaned his body back toward where all the fuss had been.

I looked around. It was almost five o’clock. There was nothing remarkable. It was like nothing had happened at all. People were still rushing by us.

Anyone looking would have thought I was perfectly fine. Graham Patton looked like someone’s father. I thought of how paranoid I’d been, the rush of anxiety in Holt’s. How quickly I’d jumped to thinking someone was chasing me. Lianne’s killer was half out of his grave in northern Ontario. What if I was wrong about everything?

Graham Patton smiled at me and his smile was like David’s.

No one was watching a man in his late forties talking to a girl half his age. We walked together over to the Cumberland parking lot across the street and I got into his car, a silver Toyota. We got in and I wrapped the seat belt around the front of my body. There was the thunk of the door locks all engaging at once.

You can’t be too careful, David’s father said. He popped the gearshift into reverse and laid an arm across the top of my seat to back out of the parking spot. The windshield fan pumped hot air at high volume.

There was a man in the next car over, a green station wagon, writing something in a file folder. His pen jammed and he shook it violently between every word. He never gave us a second look.

D
avid’s father stood on one side of an L-shaped kitchen counter and I stood on the other.

Grab a seat, he said, gesturing to a couple of bar stools lined up along my side. Cop a squat.

The house had been newly renovated back in the ’80s and the kitchen was still decorated in what you could call ’80s gray. A soft gray, meant for pink accents, like a ’50s diner. The kitchen counter had since been done over in blue glass tiles. Patton pulled a couple of coffee cups out of the cupboard. He dislodged the filter cup from an espresso machine on the counter and smacked it sharply over the garbage and I noticed a spray of dry coffee grounds in the corner where he’d missed the garbage another time. There was a Lavazza package on the back of the stove. The window gave onto a tiny backyard with a few raised beds and half a wooden swing set. An A-frame with a slide and one swing, brackets along the top bar where the other swings should have been. A kit you buy at Home Hardware.

Do you have other kids? I said. I didn’t sit. We were both staring out the window.

Not yet, he said.

The answer surprised me. I thought of David’s story about the new Russian girlfriend and caught myself glancing around, looking for some sign of her in the house. A pink umbrella.
Glamour
on
the coffee table. I realized that aside from my recent interest, David almost never talked about his father.

A black Lab had greeted us at the door with a long whip of a tail and now it was lying in the middle of the wood floor, on its side with its legs straight out, relaxed but also ready for the next thing, and I could see it had a long scar along the belly where the fur didn’t grow in right.

What did you want to ask me? he said.

What?

You had questions.

I didn’t remember saying that and I stared at him. He pushed the portafilter firmly into the machine and pulled down on the lever.

Upstairs is where I work, he said.

T
he main floor was designed open concept, with the kitchen at the back door where we’d come in opening out to a dining room and then a living room that faced the front of the house. He took the two coffees and walked around the counter. The stairs led up from the center of the house, with a stringy red oriental runner tacked all the way up to the second floor. There was a skylight overhead blocked with snow and a small stained-glass window on the landing that let in some light. On my way up, I stopped and leaned my face against the rosettes. A shadow moved by outside the house. You could see shapes but nothing defined. I wondered if anyone could see in through a window like that. I took two steps down to look out the window on the ground level and a woman walked by with a dog. David’s father was waiting on the next floor.

Photos ran staggered up the wall: black-and-whites near the bottom, men and women that must have been David’s grandparents or great-grandparents. David’s baby pictures. Leaning on his elbows, propped there for a studio shot; I’d seen the same picture at his mother’s house. Some ’70s Technicolor. At the top of the stairs,
David with his mother outside the white house on Rumsey Road, and then in front of another house. High grass and barn board and a long gravel drive. David down low beside her, on a tricycle.

It was a shock to find her there. Wincing against the sun with her hair in a blue kerchief. A windy day: you could see it in the set of her face and David’s short hair, all pushing up at the same angle. She was wearing a white pantsuit, her hands flat and calm against her thighs. A country house.

Do you still see her? I said. I crossed slowly to where David’s father had set the coffee down on a table by the front window. He was sitting back on an olive-green couch and he shook his head and shrugged at the same time.

You like pictures? he said.

I thought the couch was leather, but when I got close I saw it was made of something else and I reached down and rubbed it with the back of my hand. It was fine and silky and dry. Graham Patton sat at one end with his legs stretched out almost the length of the couch. I expected him to shift as I sat down but he didn’t and I curled up at my end.

Parachute material, he said. Army surplus. I got it made. It’s wildly expensive. Then look here. He pointed to a spot near his own knee. Two tiny burn holes in the fabric. She did it on purpose, he said. With her cigarette. Told me she wanted to see if it would burn.

For a moment I thought he meant David’s mother.

Susanna, he said. My girlfriend.

I’d already forgotten that he had a woman living there, or somewhere, that there was a woman and that he was thinking of more children.

His foot rested heavily against mine now. In the chaos of the shopping center I’d been so keyed up. All I could think about was showing that I wasn’t afraid. Getting into his car was meant to be fearless and pointed.

I probably haven’t seen you since you were, what? Twelve? Thirteen?

Sounds right, I said.

You were the one who knew that little girl, he said. Leslie.

I nodded.
That little girl
is modern code. The thing I’m famous for, knowing a dead girl.

No, wait, he said. What was her name again? You remember?

Lianne, I said. Like he might mean some other little girl. Lianne Gagnon.

That’s right. The French girl. Lianne Gagnon. Shame. He rubbed his beard and smiled over at the dog. That was the one left out in the woods, he said. In a hockey bag. Right? Or the one in the fridge?

Down in the kitchen I’d felt like I was in control. I moved down onto the floor to make a little space between us and leaned against the couch sideways, with my shoulder and elbow.

No, I said. No, the one in the fridge was later on.

I didn’t want him touching me. He moved along the couch a little but it was only to set his coffee down on the table. I had a surge of pins and needles across my forehead. I realized the point of coming here had been to prove myself wrong, to find him avuncular and harmless and simple.

The dog came over and collapsed against my hip and I reached out and laid a hand on her side. I could feel my blood moving and tried to catch my breath.

Is it a girl? I said. The words came out in a gasp.

Maxie, he said. I got her from a rescue up in Sudbury four years ago. He pointed at her belly. She had a barn accident. Someone dumped her at the shelter.

Maxie laid her head in my lap and when she sighed and shifted David’s father leaned in from where he was sitting, over my shoulder, and brushed a hand across her muzzle. He stayed like that, bent over and close enough that I could feel his breath against my cheek when he spoke.

You know I could reach down and snap that dog’s leg, he said. His voice was steady and instructive. She’d let me. She trusts people that much. He clicked his tongue softly. A dog trusts you like that, you can do anything you please.

I stiffened up and snaked an arm around Maxie’s neck.

What did you come here for, he said.

I turned toward him, shifting my body so that I was facing the couch and not leaning on it. Which one’s mine? I said. The coffee.

He pointed and I picked a cup up off the table and then stood up with it, looking first out the window and then strolling along one side of the room.

You don’t see much of David I guess.

The second floor was more or less a giant loft and Graham Patton didn’t answer but watched me walk around it. There was a door off to one side. I stopped in the doorway and looked in. It was a tiny room, almost entirely taken up with photography equipment: two umbrellas and a big soft box in one corner, lights on legs in another, a pile of tripods all folded up and leaning against a tall black filing cabinet. An unmade bed sat low to the ground. Some clothes on the floor, a pair of running shoes and a black bra.

Another door led out to a balcony off the back of the house. A row of heavy bookcases along the wall. Books in piles on the floor. A couple of big open boxes of old photographs. I’d gotten myself back to the open staircase where we’d come up. David’s father had his feet on the floor now. I looked down at the landing below.

How long would it take to get back to the door. I squatted down and ran my thumb along the tops of the photos.

You like pictures? Patton said again.

You must have quite a collection. A lot of years.

I keep most of the archive at my place up north, he said. Here, I’ve got a little darkroom set up. A workspace. Down in the basement.

I didn’t say anything. The boxes were full of contact sheets, I could see that now. Not photos, per se. The tops of the sheets rippled
under my thumb and made a little sound of their own. Patton had them neatly organized by place or by publication, little colorful file separators stuck between each group: Chicago, 1978; Yorkville, 1976;
Saturday Night
;
Evening Telegram; Free Press
. The second box looked more personal: Rumsey Road, Linsmore Crescent, Cabin.

David tells me about you, Patton said.

David tells me you’ve been asking, I said. I turned my head. Do you spend much time on the balcony?

It’s winter, he said. I guess it would be too cold.

I picked out a few random handfuls of contact sheets from the boxes, five or six from each category, and glanced over to see if mixing them up like this bothered him. More black-and-whites, David and his mother. David cold by a creek, hugging himself, his bathing trunks plastered to his legs. All his ribs sticking out and his bony knees. David’s mother in a plastic-weave lawn chair in the high grass, wood slat exterior of a house casting a shadow on the picture.

Where’s this? I said.

Bring them here. Patton was sitting straight up on the couch now, knees apart. He set his coffee down on the table and held a hand out to me. When I offered him the sheet he patted the spot next to him. It seemed tight and too cozy and I leaned on the arm of the couch instead. A half-sit. He held the photo with one hand and leaned his body against my knee. It was familiar. Almost-but-not-quite paternal.

That’s the cabin, he said. It’s fantastic. No neighbors. Deer. You should come up in the summer. Couple kayaks. Go out and get a few salmon. If you want to hunt, I’ll take you out. Get a moose. Twenty-five years of photographs stored up there, too. He handed the photo back to me. You and David, of course.

I had a dim recollection of David going north during the summertimes. Something he liked or didn’t like but had to do. His father had given him a hunting gun and taught him to shoot. I remembered that part. A Crickett 22 target rifle with walnut finish: I’d seen photographs of that as well, ten-year-old David with the
gun in the crook of his arm. Patton taught him to shoot tin cans and then told him to try his luck with squirrels. Told him, Come back with a squirrel.