Way the Crow Flies (63 page)

Vic hangs up and squeezes out through the folding door, grumbling heartily. “Sonofagun, how did you know it was lettuce?” The phone rings. He raises his eyebrows. “You expecting a call?”

Jack chuckles at the joke before he registers that it was one. A good reflex. How do people train for this type of work? Or are they born liars? Liars with unshakeable loyalty.

The phone rings a second time. Vic reaches back into the booth and picks it up. “Hello, dis place,” he quips, then hangs up. “Nobody there.” And leaves. Strolling toward the PX.

Jack re-enters the phone booth and resumes peering at the Yellow Pages. The phone rings. Vic turns, his hand on the door of the PX. Jack catches his eye, shrugs, picks up the phone and puts it right back down on its cradle. Vic disappears into the store.

The phone rings again and Jack grabs it. Simon says, “Bit of a snafu?”

“A lineup, that’s all.”

“What’s shaking?”

“Si, it was my neighbour who recognized Fried, he’s calling him a war criminal.”

“Christ.” Simon sounds almost contemplative. “When did he tell you this?”

“He didn’t, I found out by accident—Si, is there any truth to it?”

“All I can tell you is, I cleared him for security myself.”

Jack is already relieved but he has to ask: “Then why was Fried so scared he could be hanged?”

“No doubt that’s exactly what would happen if word of his defection got out and the Soviets got hold of him.”

Of course.

It’s time for Jack to grit his teeth and make his report. “Si, the police are looking for Fried in connection with the murder of McCarroll’s daughter.”

Silence. Then, “How, by name?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Is there any truth to it?”

Jack is unprepared for the question. “No, he was—I left him at the apartment—the fact is, Simon, it’s my fault.” He explains how the car was identified when he drove it to Exeter and passed Froelich’s son on the highway on the afternoon the child went missing. “Now the police hear the words ‘war criminal’ and figure there could be someone in the area capable of … this kind of thing.”

“Fantastic,” says Simon, as though surveying a marvel of engineering.

“They don’t know it was me driving. I waved at the boy but the sun was on the windshield, all he saw was my hat.”

“That’s one for us, then.”

“Simon, I’m sorry.”

“My fault, mate, I ought never to have agreed to the bloody car in the first place. Ought to have trusted my instincts.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make it disappear.”

“I take it your neighbour doesn’t know that you know Fried?”

“No one does.”

“What did you say his name was?”

“Froelich. Henry Froelich. He hasn’t the faintest. I got all this dope by accident from McCarroll. The police told him. That’s why I was able to head them off when they asked what I was doing last Wednesday.”

“Well, at any rate, McCarroll’s been good for something.”

The comment pings like a pebble from a speeding tire but Jack presses on. “What about Fried?”

“What about him?”

“Where do we go from here?”

“You don’t go anywhere, your job’s done.”

The sun splinters the booth as if through a magnifying glass, heating the interior. Jack squints. “Well, I thought what with McCarroll out of commission…. Should I drive Fried to the border? What do you want me to do?”

“Not your problem, mate.”

It’s over. Jack should feel glad. “I’ll give him a ring after we hang up.”

“I wouldn’t,” says Simon. “His phone may be tapped at this point.”

“I’ll drop down to London and check on him tomorrow then.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.” Jack swallows his disappointment silently. Simon has every right to question his competence at this point. “Ditch the car and it’s mission accomplished, lad, over and out. I’ll take it from here.”

“Simon, when you’re passing through—”

“Several drinks are in order.”

Jack walks from the phone booth feeling oddly bereft. Fried will cross into the U.S. and Jack will never hear of him again. Fried will have a new name and a new life. He will use his talents to help the USAF space program rival that of his old colleague, Wernher von Braun at NASA.

Jack hurries to the accounts office and gets a cash advance of one hundred dollars. Then he heads toward the ME section to sign out a staff car. It’s entirely possible Froelich is mistaken—after all, he must have suffered terribly during the war. Every face from that time must conjure up horror.

“Did you decide on some lessons?”

Jack looks up. Vic Boucher, laden with grocery bags, a lettuce poking out the top of one of them, is standing with Elaine Ridelle, likewise encumbered with groceries and a baby carriage. They are watching him, expectant. What is Vic talking about?
Lessons…
. Something rumbles from the back of his mind, coming closer, like a
dump truck carrying the information he needs. “Yeah, I found a place on Number 4, out Goderich way. Hicks’s Riding Stable.” Too much information.

“Have you spoken with McCarroll today?” asks Vic.

Jack feels the redness creeping into his face. “I’m going to look in on them later. Drop off Sharon’s boarding pass.” He changes the subject, bending to look in the carriage. “What’ve we got here?”

The baby looks as though he has just swooned into sleep, fingers splayed and stirring slightly beneath his chin, whitish residue on his puckered lips—a flower.

“He’s a bruiser.” Jack grins. “Looks like Steve.”

“Well that’s a relief.” Elaine winks.

There is no way not to register her cleavage now that she’s nursing. Jack feels himself stir, stiffen a little, and sticks his hands in his pockets. Elaine is a flirt but harmless. His response is harmless too—a polite nod to Mother Nature. What is more stimulating than a woman pre, during, and post pregnancy? It makes the world go round. He says, “Well, I better go do a tap of work.”

He takes his leave and walks down Nova Scotia Avenue, back toward his building. He is losing valuable time but he doesn’t want Vic Boucher watching him drive off in a staff car. He thinks longingly of his wife. He has an impulse to head straight home.

When he gets to the next corner, he looks over his shoulder to see that Vic is pulling away in his orange van and Elaine is following, pushing her pram. Jack does an about-face and cuts between the barracks where he lived so many years ago as a pilot in training, and heads for the ME section.

He looks at his watch, calculating how much time he will need, for he knows where he must take the Ford Galaxy if it is truly to disappear.

The tinted windows of the staff car take the edge off the bright hard light. Jack touches the brim of his hat to the guard and drives out through the main gates, past the Spitfire, and turns north on the county road.

He does not enjoy lying, and the thought that the police are wasting time chasing a phantom war criminal when they could be out finding
whoever did this thing is making him feel unwell. He passes through the old Village of Centralia, then picks up speed toward Exeter.

On the other hand, whoever did kill the child is probably long gone by now. A drifter. Unless it’s some sick bastard living alone out here on one of these farms. As he surveys the fields on either side of the road, it crosses his mind to wonder if the locals know something, and whether the police are questioning them. The civilian population. There could be a homegrown pervert among them, some known village idiot who might not prey on a local child, but might consider the transient children of the air force station easier game.

The first streaks of green have begun painting the naked soil. In gullies and along the roadside there remain scabs of dirty snow, but the cows are out and their brown hides have the look of summer already, as though they themselves were a source of sun and heat. Up ahead a tractor lumbers along the shoulder, raising early dust. He wonders if the police have gone door to door up and down these endless driveways. Who lives here, really? They are his neighbours; who are they? Would the police treat this investigation differently if the girl were not an air force child?

It’s eleven-thirty. With luck he’ll be home before dark.

The Kinsmen, the Rotary Club and the Royal Canadian Legion welcome Jack to Exeter on a freshly painted sign. If the Ford is not where he left it, at least he can be sure the police haven’t got it. He half hopes it has been stolen—a thief would be unlikely to come forward with evidence of his own crime in order to help solve another. Crocuses are up around the cenotaph, and two folding chairs have reappeared out front of the barbershop, setting the scene for a summer-long game of checkers. He follows the main street out past the edge of town and pulls in and around the back of the old train station, to see the blue Ford Galaxy, gleaming, untouched but for its dented rear bumper. So much for any hope of a convenient thief. He pulls into the shadow of the boarded-up building and steps out into the winter of the noon shade. From the trunk of the staff car he takes a box of tools, a crowbar and a jack. He brings them to the Ford, gets in, removes his uniform hat, jacket and tie. He is banking on the idea that the police will not put out a bulletin for the Ford until they have finished questioning personnel late this afternoon. By that time, he
will be on his way back home and this car will be as good as scrap—halfway to its next life as a washing machine. If he is pulled over, he has Simon’s telephone number. And if, in spite of everything, the lid blows off the entire mission, well,
c’est la guerre
. Don’t shake hands with the Devil before you meet him.

They have found Claire’s bike. Madeleine can see it in the trunk of the OPP car parked in the driveway of the little green bungalow. Mr. McCarroll is standing on his front porch. One of the policemen takes it out of the trunk and holds it up. Mr. McCarroll nods.

Mike has been tailing Madeleine as usual. Now he says, “Quit staring, come on.”

The policeman puts Claire’s bike back into the trunk.

“I’m not staring, I’m just walking slowly,” says Madeleine, catching up with him. “How come they’re taking her bike away?”

“’Cause it’s evidence,” says her brother.

“What do you mean, evidence?”

“Against whoever did it.”

“Did what?”

“Murdered her, what do you think? What are you doing now?”

Madeleine has sat down in the fine sharp gravel at the side of the road.
Murdered
.

“Well, what did you think happened to her?” asks Mike.

Madeleine doesn’t know.

“Come on, get up.”

Claire died, Madeleine knew that. That’s what happens when children go off by themselves for too long. To the woods, after supper. Sometimes they don’t come home. They stay out after dark and, when you find them, they are dead.
Passed away
.

“Madeleine.”

Madeleine had not thought about how. Something terrible had happened and Claire was dead; “something terrible” had seemed specific. But it wasn’t. Otherwise, Madeleine would not be cut down by the side of the road like a daisy.

“Come on,” says Mike. “Okay, don’t come on.” And he keeps walking toward home, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure she is not getting murdered.

Madeleine stays in the cindery gravel, her bare legs folded under her. Her hands have disappeared. Her head is turned and she is looking and looking down the street at Claire’s house, where the OPP car is backing out of the McCarrolls’ driveway.
Claire got murdered
.

Whatever will become of me?
cried the little girl when the birds had stolen the last of her food. Evil has become of her. Madeleine has the sick smell feeling. Like before, only worse. As if she has done a bad thing—
but I haven’t done anything
. As though she has seen Claire lying dead in her blue dress—
but I didn’t
. Just lying there, that’s the most shameful thing for a little girl to do, to lie there dead and anyone could just pull her dress up. Oh it is a bad smell.

The policeman touches the brim of his hat and Mr. McCarroll raises a hand. Mrs. McCarroll is inside the house somewhere, Madeleine knows. She is in there with Claire’s Brownie uniform and all her ankle socks and unbroken toys. There is nowhere for Mrs. McCarroll to go, the whole world is sore.

The cruiser comes slowly up the street in her direction. When it passes, she sees the handlebars of Claire’s bike hanging out between the bouncing jaws of the trunk. “She only have one streamer,” says Madeleine to nobody. “She only has one streamer,” she corrects herself.

A pair of hands wedges under her armpits and pulls her up. “Hop on,” says Mike. She climbs on and he piggybacks her home. “Sack o’ potatoes,” he says as she slides off his back onto the front porch.

Maman comes to the door, takes one look at Madeleine, feels her forehead and says, “Straight to bed.”

Jack has made a loop west from Exeter, zigzagged south through a series of uncharted dirt roads until he knows he is below Centralia, then veered east again to pick up Highway 4, which he will follow south to London, and thence Highway 2 all the way to Windsor, where so many cars are born and go to die. He realizes he is squinting and tries to relax his eyes against the noonday sun. He knows exactly where his sunglasses are: on his desk.

Maybe it’s time Simon had a word with someone in Ottawa—filter it down to the OPP that they are barking up the wrong tree, going after so-called war criminals. Get them back on the scent
before it goes cold. Jack wishes he had thought to suggest this to Simon over the phone; he’ll call and do so this evening.

He shades his eyes with his hand and longs to put on his hat with its merciful dark brim. But he leaves the telltale hat where it is, on the seat beside him, and points the Ford Galaxy west.

Madeleine convinced her mother that she was not sick. She is surprised at herself, passing up a legitimate opportunity to miss an afternoon of school. But she had a morbid feeling—as though, if she lay down on her bed or even on the couch in front of the TV, her eyes would go glassy, her head would heat up like a furnace and she would never get up again. So she has returned to school after lunch but, apart from the brief respite from monotony afforded by Grace Novotny’s shrivelled-looking hands, she has been unable to concentrate on anything but the window.