The Girl in the Wall (12 page)

Two policemen drove up at no miles per hour and sat for a few minutes before they slowly got out of the car.

“Finally,” Jane said. “What the hell were they waiting for? A song on the radio to be over?”

“Well, it's not what you'd call an emergency, is it?”

Frank found himself getting annoyed with Jane. He couldn't help feeling defensive when anyone criticized the Winnipeg Police Department, even though he had retired nearly four years earlier and had never personally received a complaint from the public in his thirty-year career.

Also, he hated her buried-alive theory.

“Maybe you should just call it a day,” he said. “I can stick around here and answer any questions that come up.”

“Are you kidding? I wouldn't miss one second of this for all the chocolate in Manitoba.”

“Hey, Frank,” said the older of the two cops. “Having a little trouble hanging up the holster?”

“Hi, Chas.” Frank sighed and a small mallet, the type doctors use to check knee reflexes, began to tap away at his left temple.

He introduced Jane to Patrol Sergeant Chas Sampson and he, in turn, introduced his partner, Brad May, before they all headed inside the house and up the stairs.

All four of them gazed down at the creature in the dusty nightgown.

“Holy o liftin' Jesus,” said Brad.

“He's from the east coast,” Chas explained. “He talks funny.”

It was true what Jane had said about the claw-like appearance of the hands, but the body looked to be at rest, no sign of frenzy. She was placed here after death. Frank was sure of it.

Chas was on the phone, contacting the necessary others.

“This body has been here a very long time,” Brad said. “Decades, I'd guess.

“Do you own the place?” he asked, taking in both Frank and Jane with his question.

“No,” they said in unison.

Frank explained about Norm Featherstone and gave Brad his contact information.

“He's going to flip out if the work has to be held up for any length of time,” Jane said.

Frank wished she hadn't said that.

“Well, too bad for Norm Featherstone,” said Brad.

And Frank wished Brad hadn't said that. It was the type of statement that made the public angry with the police — just a few careless words. He looked at Jane but read nothing in her face. She was a real cool customer, as his daughter Sadie was fond of saying. She thought a lot of people were real cool customers.

Chas was off the phone now and crouched down beside the skeleton.

“This is a fairly tight burial spot,” he said. “I'm surprised there isn't more of a mummification thing going on.”

When Frank crouched beside him his knees cracked loudly and he grunted involuntarily.

“You sound like you could use a little
WD
-40 on those joints,” said Chas.

“I guess with it being the north wall and no insulation to speak of,” Frank said, “she didn't have a heck of a lot of protection from the elements.”

“A cold burial site,” said Jane. She held tightly to her arms, hugging them against her body.

“Okay,” said Chas, “I think we should back off now till the forensics people get here.”

He stood up.

Frank peered in closely at the little being. He wanted to touch her softly, maybe on her forehead, but he knew he couldn't do that.

“Okay, Frank,” said Chas. “We're going outside now to wait.” He wrote furiously in his notebook and then herded the others downstairs.

Frank didn't want to leave, but was in no position to argue.

“Shouldn't somebody guard her?” he asked.

Chas smirked. “We can guard her from outside.”

Frank wanted to drill the smirk through Chas's head to the other side.

They stood around, not speaking, waiting for the others to show up. With a suspicious death such as this obviously was, it was necessary to call in a staff sergeant, which is what Frank had been during the most interesting years of his career, before he was promoted to inspector.

“Who did you say the owner is, Frank?” Chas asked.

“Norm Featherstone. I've given Brad his particulars.”

Brad was leaning against an ash tree on the boulevard, staring at the house.

“What do you know about him, Frank?” said Chas. “How long has he owned the place?”

“Not long. He just bought it this last winter to fix up for his daughter.”

“Does he know about this?” Chas nodded toward the house.

“Yeah, he dropped in a couple of minutes after we found her but he had to get back to the office.”

“Odd,” said Brad, who had sauntered over to join them.

“What?” said Chas.

“Finding a skeleton in your house and then scurrying off back to the office.”

It had seemed odd to Frank too, but so many things did these days that he didn't over-analyze it like he might have once, not so long ago. And he had been so glad to see the back of Norm that he hadn't argued; he'd even encouraged him to be gone. Maybe Norm Featherstone was just the kind of guy who ran from skeletons or perhaps he was immune to them unless they interfered with the clockwork running of his days. Most likely, though, he just thought he had something important to do.

“You shouldn't have let him leave, Frank,” said Chas.

Frank glared at him.

“I'm not in the job anymore, Chas.”

He wanted to tell him to go fuck himself long, hard, and sideways, but he kept that to himself.

“Both of you are going to have to stick around for a while,” said Chas.

He was busy writing again.

A small crowd was beginning to gather on the boulevard. Brad was speaking to them, encouraging them to go home, but they weren't budging. It was early July. The kids were just off school and looking for something good to occupy their time.

Someone from the medical examiner's office and a staff sergeant arrived at the same time, followed quickly by two crime scene investigators, one armed with cameras, the other with a bag that Frank knew contained equipment for collecting any trace evidence there was to be found. Not one of these people was familiar to Frank.

The yard was quickly cordoned off.

Chas introduced Staff Sergeant Ames to Frank and Jane and left them there to answer her questions.

Frank recited the story and forced himself not to tell Ames that he was a retired policeman. He was almost positive she wouldn't want to hear it.

Jane spoke little, only when spoken to, and it was over in a few minutes.

“So, shall we just run along, then?” Frank asked.

“Yes, Mr. Foote. I'll tell Sergeant Sampson to let you know when you can get back to work here. It shouldn't be more than a few days.”

“You'll be letting Featherstone know then? The owner?”

“Yes, we'll be in touch with Mr. Featherstone.”

“Okay, good.”

“Uh… our tools are in there,” Jane said. “And my iPod.”

“They'll have to stay, I'm afraid, ma'am, till the investigators are done. But they'll be safe. I guarantee it. We'll have the house guarded when no one is working inside.”

Frank thought she was a little cavalier in guaranteeing that their tools wouldn't be stolen or wrecked, but he bit his tongue. He and Jane climbed into Frank's truck. They both lived in the area but drove to the job site because of their equipment and the need to haul stuff away.

“I don't want to leave,” said Jane.

“We don't want to be known as gawkers,” said Frank. “We don't want to add to the confusion. People will ask us what we know. Do you really feel like answering all their questions?”

“No, I guess not.”

As they drove away a
CTV
news van pulled up to the house.

“Oh great,” said Frank. “The circus has come to town.”

The crowd grew.

They bumped along Lloyd till they came to Coniston and then turned right.

“What's that in your lap, Frank?” Jane asked.

“This? It's just that picture I found inside the wall.”

Jane snorted quietly. It was a disbelieving kind of sound that caused Frank to look at her.

“What?”

“Do you not think you should have given it to that Ames woman?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Wouldn't this be considered interfering with a police investigation or something like that?”

“No. Not if you choose not to think of it that way. I'll hand it over if I think I should; I just want to study it for a while first. It might be important. I don't want it to get lost in the shuffle.”

“The fact that it might be important is exactly why you should have handed it over.”

He wasn't listening.

“If need be, I could pretend I found it before, last week even, when we were first introduced to the place.”

“Frank?”

“Yes?”

“Your investigating days are over.”

Frank pulled up in front of Jane's small bungalow on the corner of Walmer and Ferndale and turned off the ignition.

“Officially, maybe.”

“Uh-oh.”

“It doesn't mean that my unofficial investigating days are over.”

“No, of course not. You can investigate all manner of things till the cows come home, but Frank, not stuff that you've secretly taken from what is probably a crime scene or at best a scene of tremendous weirdness. The police will need all the help they can get to figure this out, especially with Chas and Brad at the helm.”

“Why do you care?”

“You're withholding evidence. If you go to jail I won't have a partner anymore. That's one of the reasons I care.”

Frank sighed.

“I won't be going anywhere, especially not to jail.”

“Plus, the sooner they figure it all out, the sooner we get back to work.”

She fidgeted in her seat.

“Also, the nightgown she was wearing reminded me of something, or someone. I don't know, maybe my own nightgowns when I was a kid. Maybe she reminded me of me. She needs someone to find out what happened to her.”

She opened the door and started to get out.

“Jane?”

“Yes?”

“What if I promise you that I won't in any way thwart what the police are doing?”

“I don't want you to promise me anything.”

Jane looked steadily into Frank's eyes.

He wasn't able to hold her gaze and he didn't know why. Her eyes were a deep green, the same colour as her
T
-shirt. Laugh lines surrounded them even when she wasn't laughing. He liked that.

“It won't be Chas and Brad at the helm,” he said. “Staff Sergeant Ames will be the boss of it and she'll have to report to even higher-ups.”

“Don't get into trouble, okay, Frank?”

“When have you ever known me to get into trouble?”

“Never, I guess. But I haven't known you very long.”

“I'm not the type of person that gets into trouble.”

“Well, good then.”

She got out of the truck, closed the door and stuck her head in the open window.

“I don't like not having my tools,” she said.

“No,” said Frank. “It's a bummer, I know.”

“Or my iPod.”

“I guess we could get started on Mrs. Frobisher's hallway if we're going to be off this job for a while.”

“What about our tools?” Jane asked.

“I've got a basement full of tools. I'll talk to someone and let you know later what we can expect.”

“Okay, Frank. I'll wait for your call.”

He started his truck.

“I'm not looking forward to hearing what Featherstone has to say.”

“If he gives you any trouble tell him to call me.” Jane smiled.

Frank winked as he slowly pulled away. It was something he couldn't remember doing in his entire life before and he shook his head slowly, thinking of the things you could suddenly spring upon yourself. Granted, it wasn't a big thing, but even so.

Sadie was surprised to see him. It was barely two o'clock.

“What's up, Dad?”

“You won't believe what's up, Sadie, darlin'.”

He told his daughter all about it, including the discovery of the photograph, since she relieved him of it as soon as he walked through the door.

“Who could the skeleton be?” she asked, as she looked closely at the picture.

“I haven't got a clue.”

“Do you think it's one of these people?”

“I have no way of knowing that.”

Frank didn't mention the part about the little girl in the photograph being dead. He didn't want to scare his daughter.

“Why do you have this picture?” she asked. “Why didn't you give it to the cops?”

“Good question. Jane asked me that too.”

“Well?”

“I don't know.”

Frank reached out for it, but Sadie snatched it back from his outstretched hand.

“Is she young, old, or medium?”

“Who?”

Sadie rolled her eyes.

“Oh,” said Frank. “I don't know. She's small, that's for sure.”

“How could no one have known she was there?”

“Someone knew. Someone had to have known.”

Sadie stared at the picture.

“This little girl has a freaky look to her.”

Frank washed his hands at the kitchen sink.

“Wouldn't the body have stunk up the place for a while when she was first placed there?” Sadie asked. “As she rotted away?”

“Yes, I'm sure she would have. My guess is that while she was stinking the place up the only person around was the person who put her there. Or maybe the house was vacant during that time and no one noticed.”

“It could have been a she,” Sadie said. “The person who hid the body, I mean.”

“Yes,” said Frank. “It certainly could have. We're going to try and figure out who all lived there throughout the years.”

“Who's we?”

“Jane and I.”

“Cool.”

Frank dried his hands on a dish towel.

“Maybe the police too,” he said. “How much time they'll put in on figuring this out is anyone's guess. It'll depend on manpower and priorities and things like that. I can picture it being shelved pretty quickly.”

He realized he was feeling a possessiveness toward the girl in the wall; he was hoping the cops would treat the situation as old and unimportant so that he could have it for his own.

“The palm trees in the background look fake,” Sadie said.

“Yes,” said Frank. “It looks like it could almost be a studio shot with the props and all. But yet somehow it doesn't look all that professional.”

“Do you want something to eat?” Sadie asked.

Frank managed successfully with one more try to get the photograph out of her hands.

“Yes. I'd love something to eat. What did you have in mind?”

Sadie's head was inside the fridge.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Frank said. “Why aren't you at the swimming pool?”

She mumbled something.

“Pardon?” said Frank.

“I quit my job.”

She took a bowl of egg salad out of the fridge and placed it on the counter.

“Sadie, what happened?”

Tears welled up in her eyes.

“I really loved that job, Dad.”

Sadie had been teaching swimming for less than a week at the swimming pool in the flood bowl. She was only fourteen, but that hadn't mattered to the lifeguards who hired her. Someone quit unexpectedly and Sadie talked them into giving her the job. She passed her lifesaving course at the Y in the spring and had won every race she'd ever entered.

In the summers during the two short months that the pool was open she spent every afternoon and most evenings at the pool with her friends. Even when the weather was cool or rainy and the pool was closed they stood outside the fence and shouted at the lifeguards to open up, darn it, and let them in.

Frank went to his daughter and put his arms around her. She cried quietly into his shirt.

“What happened, sweetheart? Come and sit down.”

They sat at the kitchen table.

Sadie sniffed a few times and wiped her nose on her long-sleeved
T
-shirt.

Frank bit his tongue.

The shirt had a picture of Coldplay on it — Sadie's most recent favourite band.

“Actually, I didn't quit,” she said. “I was fired.”

The tears started up again, shot out in little spurts.

Frank stood up.

“How could anyone fire you? What in the…”

“Sit down, Dad.”

He sat.

“It's that I'm not old enough. You have to be sixteen. Apparently Dustin and Leah shouldn't have hired me in the first place. They got yelled at more than I did, actually.”

“Someone yelled at you?”

“Yeah, the manager guy that came from the City. Well, he didn't really yell, I guess, but he wasn't nice. He said we should all have known better, even me. H-he…”

“What, Sadie?”

“He asked me if I had lied about my age.”

Frank was on his feet again.

“He called you a liar? Who the heck does he think he is talking to you that way?”

“I didn't lie. I didn't mean anything bad by taking that job.”

Tears ran down her smooth plump cheeks.

“Sadie, my darling girl, my beautiful, perfect, honest girl.”

Frank's arms were around her again.

“I know you didn't mean anything bad by anything and you didn't lie and whoever thinks you did should be drawn and quartered.”

“What's drawn and quartered?”

Sadie snuffled against his chest.

“It's nothing. I'm going down there now.”

“No, Dad. Please don't. He won't even be there anymore and Dustin and Leah are real nice. They feel bad enough already.”

“How did you leave it with them?”

“Well, I asked the City man if I could finish today's class and he said no.”

“What the heck kind of…”

“So then I just said I was sorry to Dustin and Leah and they said no, no, they were the ones who were sorry and we kind of hugged and I explained it as best I could to my class. I didn't have to say much. The whole thing happened right there in front of them. A couple of them started to cry. They're just beginners; they're very small.”

Sadie took the plastic wrap off the egg salad.

“I made a point of not saying I was sorry to the City man.”

“Good,” said Frank.

“And then I just grabbed my flip-flops and towel and came home.”

She sniffed loudly and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

“That's about it, I guess.”

“What's the manager's name?” asked Frank.

“He turned a horrible colour of red during it. Oh. And he said I was taking the job away from someone who really needed it.”

“Why that….What's his name?”

“I suddenly feel quite a lot better,” said Sadie. “I don't want to tell you his name, Dad. I don't want you hunting him down and doing that thing to him that you said.”

“Drawing and quartering.”

“Yeah, that. His name's Josh.”

“Josh! What kind of name is that for anyone in charge of anything? How old is he?”

“Da-aad.”

Frank sat down again.

“You'll need to get paid for the work you did so far.”

“Yeah, they're going to mail me a cheque. Let's not talk about it anymore. Let's make you a sandwich.”

“I'd still like to have a word with this Josh character,” Frank said.

“Please, can we just let it go? Rye or whole wheat?”

“Rye, please. What's his last name?”

“He doesn't have one. Butter, mayo, or both?”

“Both, please. What's his last name, Sadie?”

“I'm not going to tell you. You're going to cause a ruckus and I don't want a ruckus. Besides, I actually don't know his last name. It's something long and European and unpronounceable.”

Sadie scooped a generous dollop of egg salad onto one slice of bread, covered it with the other, sliced it in two, and presented it to her father.

“Pickles or olives?” she asked.

“No thanks, honey. This is great. Aren't you having one?”

“I can't eat right now.”

Frank knew what that was like, so he didn't push her.

“Josh is Lacey Featherstone's boyfriend,” Sadie said as she watched her father chew.

Frank stopped eating and stared at her.

“As in Norm Featherstone's daughter?”

“Yup.”

“Those freakin' Featherstones!”

“Yeah.”

“Wasn't she a friend of Emma's at one time?”

Emma was Frank's oldest daughter. She had completed a nursing degree at the University of Manitoba and leapt at a chance to take her skills to Hawaii. It was an easy thing to do if you were a well-qualified nurse from Canada — take your degree elsewhere and earn piles of money while enjoying the experience of a whole new world.

Frank had objected when she first made her decision, but he didn't have much ammunition. He would miss her more than he would miss half of his own body, but that was no argument for keeping your kids close to home in their adventure years. She had to go her own way and she did.

“Yeah, a kind of friend, I guess,” said Sadie. “I think she was Emma's least favourite friend.”

“How's that? This is an excellent sandwich, by the way.”

Frank would have thought it was excellent if she'd slapped a few night crawlers in between two thin pieces of cardboard.

“Thanks, Dad. Well, she was one of those friends you have fights with. You know the kind. One day you're hanging around together doing fun stuff and the next day, for no reason you know about, the friend is with somebody else, whispering about you and hiding from you when you knock on her door.”

“I don't think I had any friends like that when I was a kid,” said Frank. “Not that I remember, anyway.”

“Maybe it's more of a girl thing,” said Sadie. She took a couple of bites of the egg salad with a spoon.

“Do you have any friends like that?” Frank asked. “You sound kind of well-versed in the phenomenon.”

“Not really, I guess. I have had, though. I found it easier to not be friends with her anymore.”

“Who?”

Frank worried that whole worlds of anguish and horror swirled around in the minds of his children — all three of them — and he was never there to help. It wasn't true, of course. He was always there for them, even for Emma, who lived on the other side of the planet. But there was the simple division between one body and another. He could not get close enough to save them. He could not get inside their skins and protect them from the Lacey Featherstones and the European Joshes of the world or attach himself to them like a Siamese twin to ward off drunk drivers or, in Emma's case, tsunamis.

“I'm not telling you, Dad,” Sadie said, “who that non-friend was. You'd probably go marching over to her house and give her what-for and it all happened a really long time ago. Jenna Penner is the least of my worries now. Oops!”

“Jenna Penner, eh?”

Sadie wasn't very good at keeping secrets for more than a few minutes.

“Is that Jack Penner's daughter?”

“Maybe not.”

Frank worked on the last of his sandwich.

“Don't worry, honey. I'm more concerned with your recent troubles with this European character.”

“Oh God, Dad, he's not European. His last name has an eastern European ring to it. That's all.”

The phone rang. It was Norm Featherstone. Frank had to hold the receiver away from his ear as Norm talked in his grating show-off voice, so he missed a lot of what he was saying, but caught the gist of it, which was when the deuce could he and Jane get back to work.

Frank wanted to talk to him about his daughter Lacey's boyfriend and how he was going to track him down and tear him limb from limb if only his own daughter, Sadie, would allow him to do so.

But what he said was, “What's the name of the boy your daughter is going to marry?”

“Josh,” said Norm. “Josh Wynkowski. Why? What's that got to do with anything?”

“Josh, eh?”

Sadie stood in front of her dad with her hands on her hips and stared fiercely into his eyes. Then she held up the index finger of her left hand and waggled it back and forth close to his face.

“What, Frank?” Norm said. “What? Do you know something about him? Tell me. What do you know?”

Sadie touched her dad's forehead with her finger.

“Nothing,” said Frank. “Nothing. I was just wondering who I'm doing this work for. That's all.”

“Me,” said Norm. “You're doing the work for me.”

This man is an asshole, Frank thought. He felt very much like washing his hands of the whole business. But there was Jane. And there was the little house on Lloyd that he had begun to grow attached to. And most of all there was the tiny skeleton in the wall. He couldn't leave her to the likes of Norm Featherstone.

“Frank?”

“Yes, Normy?”

Frank couldn't resist. It had been Norm's moniker as a boy and he'd always hated it, thought it made him sound less of a man, Frank guessed. He very much wanted to make Norm Featherstone feel less of a man right now.

“Let me know immediately if you hear from the cops,” said Norm. “And I'll do the same.”

“Righto, Normy.”

Normy hung up.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

Sadie was sitting at the kitchen table staring at the photograph.

“There's writing on the back of this picture.”

“Yes, I know. I'm going to grab Garth's magnifying glass and see if I can figure out what it says.”

“It says, ‘Living with our Dead' and then ‘1970.'”

“You can see that with your bare eyes?” asked Frank.