The Devil You Know: A Novel (43 page)

Patton’s eyes narrowed slightly, then relaxed again.

You like pictures, hey, Evie? He slowed his voice down around my name like it was a new language or a toy he’d bought and wanted to show off. He stood up and pulled me by the hand.

I’ve got something you’re going to want to see, he said. Come on with me.

Patton walked me over to the base of the steps and held an arm out, gesturing to let me pass. The answer to everything was almost certainly hidden away upstairs. The thing I’d come for, once and for all: the proof. The story. My own theory had made me fearless, or bold enough that I’d forgotten how trapped I was. His tone worked as a reminder. My toe caught on the bottom step and I used it as an excuse to grab the railing and steady myself a moment.

Come on, now.

He had the bottle in one hand and he tipped his head back and took a long swallow. I went up slow, with Patton following close behind me. A hand on my back so I wouldn’t change my mind. Once we were up there, I would have no easy way down.

I
n the second bedroom, the cupboard door was still standing open. The box of papers on the floor.

You disappoint me, Evie.

You need to stop using my name like that, I said.

Like how? Evie?

I went to turn back toward the stairs and he caught me by the wrist and squeezed. I whipped around to face him. Take a seat, he said. I see you’ve already made yourself comfortable. He pushed me toward the bed I’d dragged around like a footstool an hour or so earlier. His body was between me and the door. There was no phone anywhere in the cabin. It was the first thing I’d looked for.

Patton took a key from his pocket and opened up the drawer of the nightstand. I’d thought it was stuck and hadn’t wasted time on it. He thumbed through the drawer for a moment and then drew out a long yellow envelope. He tossed it at me. The same kind of envelope I’d found in his file cabinet back in the city, stacked with faceless bondage shots.

No thanks.

Evie. You said that’s what you came for. You told me you like pictures. You going to chicken out now?

I thought of the news clippings he’d saved and the little girl’s clothes and underwear they found in Hargreave’s room. Trophies, the police had called them. I tossed the envelope back at him. I told you I don’t want to open that, I said.

Patton sat down close beside me on the bed and fiddled with the string that held the envelope closed, then drew out one long photo. Half as long as my arm.

Not snuff. The real shot of the house, the drug raid photo. Without cropping. My mother out front. A half dozen more people.

I took the photo from him and held it up close. I didn’t have to ask if Patton was in the photo himself. I could see him, at the front of the lawn. It could have been David standing there. I put the picture down in my lap.

That’s your mother, Patton said.

He pointed to a man, now standing next to her on the porch: And that’s him.

The man he showed me was dark-haired and lumbering. An easy foot taller than my mother with straight shoulders and tangled hair that fell below his chin. A kind of ragged, unplanned beard on him.

Robert Cameron, I said.

You ever seen him before?

He’s the man with the dog, I said. The guy who lost his dog. He was a little heavier than the man I remembered, with slightly longer hair. Memory is a strange thing. I couldn’t have described the man if anyone had ever asked. But the breadth of his shoulders, his stance, his black eyes and the set of his jaw, a kind of swagger to him. I knew him.

You’re right that he went by Sawchuk, Patton said. He’d come up from the States, running a tight ship for a gang of bikers. So he had a lot of names.

And you’re not him.

No. I keep telling you. I’m much, much more pleasant. He flicked the photo with the tip of one finger. Robert Cameron wouldn’t ever lie to you, Evie. If you’ve been doing your research, you know that. He’d be standing here, bragging. He’d want you to know. He’d want you to know everything he’s ever done. He’d tell you the last ten words she said before she died. Maybe make you say the same words back to him, nice and easy, before he killed you, too.

I was holding all the pieces, but somehow I’d arranged them wrong. I looked at the photo again, my mother and then Patton and then Cameron, and I couldn’t make them fit.

You’re right about some of it, he said. But you made it so complicated. Patton lit a new cigarette and handed it to me. Your mother owed Cameron a lot of money. True. Back in the day, on Brunswick. She split owing him three months’ rent. Cameron wouldn’t let a man owe him a red cent, not even for a moment. But the girls? He took it in trade. He let them rack it up. Mary Bramer was so high most of the
time she didn’t know whose dick was up her ass. Your mother paid her own debts. She paid in cash. But then she got sick, see?

Patton massaged my leg with his hand. I wanted to keep him talking and let him do it. The police were cracking down and it was an easy time to get out of there, he said. I think she really believed she could get away without paying him, too.

I flicked the end of my cigarette. The ash scattered all over my leg and the blue bedspread and I took a quick drag on what was left. Patton brushed the ash off his hand.

She thought she was leaving, I said. She thought she was moving to Orillia.

Cameron tracked her down where she was living, with Jones, uptown someplace.

My father.

Patton nodded. He sat outside that place, out on the curb, and watched them for a week, he said. Made sure they knew he was there. He wanted her terrified. Every day he moved closer, till he was sitting on the front porch. Hanging around, looking in the window when your mother was home alone.

I still had the picture in my hand and I looked sharply at the man who was Robert Cameron.

He wasn’t much taller than my father, I said.

No, Patton said. But with Cameron it wouldn’t have been a fistfight. He was cruel. He had no regret in him. This is what, 1970.

Patton lifted a hand and ran his fingers down my jaw. I pushed him off.

Don’t touch me.

I’m trying to tell you the story! Evie! He lifted his hands in mock innocence. Look, your mother didn’t have the money. Cameron had a mouthful of rotten teeth. So Jones found a way to call it even.

That stopped me for a second. What could my father do for a man like Cameron? I rubbed at my own face, brushing away the feel of Patton’s hand on me. A mouthful of rotten teeth.

He pulled Cameron’s teeth out, I said. So he couldn’t be found. So he’d never see another dentist again. That’s what you’re saying.

Every fucking tooth out of his head.

So that paid off the rent, I said.

I didn’t hear from him again, Patton said. Years. I’m at the grocery store one day and there’s your mother. Small world! Hey, Evie? He put his hand down on my thigh again. Chances we live in the same neighborhood. I thought she moved up north.

I need a little space, I said.

By all means. Patton moved back no more than an inch or two. She told me Orillia, like you say. Imagine my surprise.

There was a sudden noise from downstairs, someone kicking at the wooden door. Splintering. Someone trying to get in. I pressed my back against the wall behind me and brought my knees up to my chest.

Who else knows you’re here? I said. Patton’s cheeks twitched. He’d been drinking steadily the whole time and I could see his collegiality was starting to fade.

Me? No one would have followed me up here, Evie. This is my home. This is my place.

I turned in the direction of the sound just as it stopped.

Now Evie you need to relax, Patton said. That’s just Maxie outside, trying to get in.

The dog. I slid along the wall, trying to make a little space between us and get closer to the door without pissing him off, either. He reached out and grabbed me by the shoulder.

You came here to my home for answers and I’m playing real nice with you, I’m telling you the whole story. I could feel the pressure of his thumb in my shoulder socket. He was drunk and it occurred to me that this is what he wanted, a chance to hold me down. A reason for it to go that way. My fault.

Okay, I said. Okay, you’re right. Just go ahead and tell your story. You’re hurting me, I said. Please.

Patton slacked off a little and regarded me from there for a minute
or two. Even a minute seemed long. Then his grip tightened up again.

Evie, someone should have told you this story a long time ago, he said. This is the part you’ll really like.

You’re hurting me, I said. I just need some space.

Okay. He took the hand off me and held it up. Looking to see what I’d do. I didn’t move.

Cameron turns up back in Toronto in ’82, Patton said. Driving a Mustang. Skinny fucker. Lost a bunch of weight. Looking for money so he comes after me. He doesn’t have a fucking thing on me, but he’s bluffing. Your mother, now that’s a different story. Says he never got what she owed him. He wants cash. Tells me he knows she’s got a daughter. He’d been watching your house for days, he said. That house on Bessborough. And there’s Annie trying to raise the money to make him go away.

What about my father?

Jones never saw him that time. He made sure of that. Cameron wanted something from the lady in particular. He wanted her to give in. Started following her around, waiting for her in the driveway, in the parking lot at the bank. Whatever he said, he scared the shit out of her. That’s why she came to me. She wanted it to go away. I offered to give her a loan.

What a gentleman.

I gave her a couple thou in cash.

And she paid you back. I’ve seen the photos, I said. That makes you no better than him.

His brows lifted. You think? Over a few photos? Your mother and I have known each other a long time, he said. Those were lonely days. Seems a small price to keep you safe.

You were in my house, I said. You came to the house on Bessborough Drive. I saw you there.

Patton said: I helped her out.

Did she sleep with you? I said. I’m not asking her. I’m asking you.

Then? On Bessborough? Evie, you were so sweet then. Like a different person. Remember when I used to drive you home at night? So sweet. You were so keen to be a big girl, start babysitting, and your mom was so worried he’d come back.

I had the cigarette he’d given me in one hand, resting on my knee with about a half inch of ash hanging off it. I thought for a moment about bringing it up to his eyeball, the sizzle of that burning ash against his eye. Making a run for it down the stairs.

I grew up, I said.

Huh, Patton said. Did you. He took the last drag off his smoke and crushed it under his heel.

I wrapped my arms around my body. The smell of kerosene from the lamp drifted up from downstairs. It made my head hurt.

Cameron was watching me, I said. Not Lianne. He was watching me.

We saved you, Patton said. Think of it that way.

No, I said. You don’t understand. He wasn’t watching Lianne. She wasn’t part of it. None of this had anything to do with her.

I told you: he liked to make people afraid. He wanted to show your mom he meant business. Or else he just had his mind set on it by that time, he said. I guess. He was mostly an animal, but a clever animal.

But she paid him the money, I said. She thought he was after me.

None of us even noticed there was another girl, Patton said.

But Cameron did, I said. Cameron saw her.

The dog landed against the outside door again and Patton stood up suddenly and looked out the window. The room was starting to close in on me. I was out in the middle of nowhere, alone. Worse than alone. Trapped at the edge of real wilderness. I wanted to lie down on the floor.

Your mom never let Cameron fuck her. That’s what he said. She wouldn’t stay in the room if he was there. One time he got too close and she scratched the fuck out of him. In front of people. It pissed him off. He never forgot. For all I know, he couldn’t tell you
and Lianne apart. Maybe it wasn’t a threat. Maybe he thought she was you.

There was a high, sharp whine between my temples and I dropped my head like you do to keep from fainting. I held my hands together in my lap and looked at them and pressed my fingers hard into each knuckle. The little stab of pain felt good and brought me back.

I’m going to throw up, I said. I grabbed my coat and bag off the floor and staggered out and down the stairs, my back against the railing. Patton followed close behind, a hand at the back of my neck, and I held him off with one arm. When we got to the kitchen I leaned over the sink. The stupid knife was still in there where Patton had thrown it when he first came in. I wanted to laugh. I coughed and spat on it. His arm was around my back. I shrugged it off and tried to push him away. I wanted to look sicker than I was and I gagged until I vomited a little. Outside it was black and I could hear Maxie, still there, scratching and whining at the door. Patton grabbed my chin and turned my face toward him. He took his thumb and wiped at my mouth, hard. His other arm was wrapped tight around the small of my back.

Why are you here, Evie? he said.