Birthdays of a Princess (4 page)

Chapter
9

His day hadn’t started too well, with the milk carton slipping out
of his hand and spilling its content on the floor. Because Macintosh couldn’t
stomach the idea of coming back home to a rancid smell, he had wasted precious
time cleaning up and risked being stuck in city traffic. Before he left his
tiny apartment, he had noticed that the tray with his mail was screaming for
attention. It would be mostly bills piling up there, but he couldn’t delay this
chore much longer. God, how he missed his wife. She had kept such nuisance from
him, and sometimes she must surely have felt unappreciated. It had seemed so
insignificant then, but now he understood she had organized his whole life with
the ease of a juggler. Five years of loneliness left their mark. If she were
still alive, he would tell her every day how much he loved her and how grateful
he was for everything she did for him.

The day didn’t get any better once he had finally arrived at Graveley
Street. All morning he was shoveling files around. Paperwork was tedious at
best but today it performed a strict alibi function. Anything to keep his
involvement in the Starbucks case to a minimum. But there was only that much
desk work he was willing to tackle, and for some strange coincidence it was
unusually quiet in the department. No new homicides, not even a measly brawl
with bodily harm, to break the monotony.

When Harding strolled by his desk, he closed the file he had been
fiddling with.

“Alright then,” he sighed. “What are you up to?”

From there on, his day deteriorated even further.

First he and Harding drove to Starbucks to look around the crime
scene to get a better understanding. The manager on duty was immediately
pestering them for more information. The place had acquired a morbid kind of
celebrity status, he said, and his customers wanted to be fed with coffee,
muffins
and
details. Macintosh realized with a twinge of annoyance that
the manager probably knew more about it than they did.

After that, they drove around the corner to St Paul’s Hospital, only
to be told by the doctor on duty that there was no chance the victim would
regain consciousness in the foreseeable future. In fact, she might never. In
all likelihood, if she’d ever wake up, she’d have permanent brain damage. Her
injures had been too severe and, to make matters worse, she’d gone into cardiac
arrest on the way to emergency which had shut down the oxygen flow to the brain
for a dangerously long period.

After listening to that depressing prognosis, they dropped by the
psychiatrist’s office and were told the doc couldn’t see them. He had to go
back to BYSC. Harding chose to take a route back to the station that let them
down the same street Melissa Brown lived in and two things caught their
attention. A mobile TV unit was racing around the corner at the same moment
Melissa and her mother stepped out of their building.

Macintosh told his partner to hit the brakes and waved at the women.
They were startled at first, then recognized him. Macintosh didn’t waste any
time explaining, but indicated they should get in the backseat.

“What’s going on?” Louise asked, while they sped off.

“Sorry about that,” Macintosh said. “We didn’t want the press to see
you.”

“We should have given those fucking scum-bags a ticket for speeding,”
Harding said.

Macintosh gave him a shut-up glance and turned back to Melissa.

“Sorry, ma’am, but my partner has an intense dislike for the press. Can
we take you somewhere?”

“Yes!” Melissa leaned forward. “How about to my daughter?”

Macintosh didn’t reply but looked at her apologetically, and she
leaned back again, displeased and disapproving.

Louise was holding her daughter’s arm in a motherly grip, hand over
wrist.
Don’t run away, all will be good
.

“We were going to the corner store for some groceries, and then
maybe see a movie. We just wanted to get out of the flat for a while. You know,
it gets boring being cooped up like that.”

So the ladies were getting bored?

“Well, since we’ve got you in the car,” Harding said, “why don’t you
come to the department with us? We can get a few questions straightened out and
won’t have to bother you later on.”

“Of course we’ll come with you,” Louise agreed right away. “But what
on earth did those press people want from us? How come they know where my
daughter lives?”

Macintosh turned his head. “I told you about the video clip. Someone
recognized her, and the next thing we knew her name was all over Twitter.
Remember the Vancouver riots after the Stanley Cup loss? The public knew about
the whole mess faster than we did. That’s the way it is these days. Everybody’s
connected.”

“But what do they want from us?”

Melissa yanked her hand out from under her mother’s.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Mother, what do you think? It’s news. They want
to get as many gory details as possible.”

Harding navigated through the city traffic.

“I’m afraid so. They probably secured interviews with all the
eyewitnesses already. By the time we contact them again for an in-depth
statement, all sorts of crap will have been published and their statements will
be next to useless. It’s pretty damn frustrating.”

They drove on in silence. When they arrived at the police station, Harding
directed the women to an interview room on the fourth floor and asked them if
they needed anything.

Louise wanted coffee.

“I’ll get you some. We’ll be back shortly.”

Harding and Macintosh left them in the room.

“Now that you got them in there,” Macintosh said, once they reached
their desks, “they are all yours, my friend.”

 “No problem, it’ll just be routine anyway. I’ll go check my
messages, then I’ll take care of it.”

Macintosh was glad to avoid this, in his opinion, futile exercise.
Everything about this case rubbed him the wrong way. Why couldn’t this have
happened after he retired? His thirty years on the force shouldn’t be crowned
by a possible homicide involving a teenage girl. She was about the same age his
daughter had been when killed.

To avoid drowning in sorrow and self-pity, he decided to eat
something. Send his blood supply to his stomach, since it wasn’t doing his
brain any favors. He got a pre-wrapped mayonnaise laden triple-decker BLT and a
large candy bar from the canteen, then went back to his desk. Harding was still
busy with his emails.

On the spur of the moment, totally unexplainable to him, but maybe
stemming from a mixture of remorse he couldn’t quite shake and a latent desire
for self-punishment, Macintosh decided to go to the room adjacent to the
interview room and observe the women while eating his lunch.

Macintosh couldn’t say if the women were aware that the interview had
a two-way mirror. He thought by now everybody knew that, yet those two
certainly seemed ignorant of the fact that he was watching them.

The women sat next to each other, silent. Jesus, that body!
Macintosh wasn’t keen on big women, or big guys for that matter. People let
themselves go to pieces, and he had to deal with the sorry results of their
sorry lives.

He suddenly lost his appetite and put the rest of his sandwich back
in its cellophane wrapper.

A police officer brought a tray with two mugs filled with coffee, a
milk jug and a few portioned sugar bags on it into the room next door. Louise
immediately got up and asked the officer how long they were supposed to wait in
here.

The officer said, “someone will be with you shortly,” and left
again.

Louise went back to her seat, ripped a sugar sachet open, poured its
content into one of the mugs, stirred and slid it over to her daughter, who
suddenly came out of her stupor and pushed the mug in an irritated
I-get-my-own
gesture back to her mother. It spilled a few drops and nearly fell over.

Her mother raised her eyebrows but didn’t seem offended. She added
some milk to the mug, stirred again and straightened in her chair, nipping on
the warm drink. A yapping Pekingese next to a lazybones St. Bernard.

Melissa got her own mug now, ripped open one sugar sachet after
another (he counted five) and stirred them in, prompting the Pekingese to press
her lips into a thin line and shake her head.

No love lost between those two.

Macintosh mulled over the idea of going in after all to ask them a
few questions. The girl had played the stubborn mule, doing her best to look
lost and misguided. Maybe earlier in life, that might have sparked some empathy
in him. Nowadays he wasn’t into that hope-and-faith-and-goodness positive
thinking trap any more, but it irked the detective in him that she had tried to
outsmart him. By checking out the mother and the grandmother he might unearth
something Harding could use as leverage to get the girl talking.

On the other hand, it was hardly worth his effort. No matter if the
victim lived or died, he was sure the drug test would prove that the girl had
been under the influence. Her shrink would say she was socially challenged, a
lawyer would argue that she came from an unstable family background (just one
look at the mother should do the trick there) and the girl would disappear into
the system for a short while before they tossed her back on the streets to
commit another offense.

He sighed.

He was just about to leave the room when he heard Melissa break the
silence.

“Whatever they ask, Mother, don’t tell them anything. You hear me?
Just this once, keep this blabbermouth of yours shut, understood?”

Macintosh jolted to attention. A shiver of anticipation sharpened
his senses, same as when he was out in the wilderness. Waiting, half-asleep,
half-awake, for so long that he was forgetting, or at least questioning, the
reason why he was bracing the cold and wet at all, and suddenly there it was,
the faint noise of a breaking branch or rustling leaves, a deer perhaps. His
hunter instinct told him to stake the prey.

He nonchalantly strolled into the interview room.

“Ladies, I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. Melissa, if you’ll follow
me to the next room, please. I have Detective Harding waiting to take your
statements. And you, Louise, will be attended to soon after.”

Chapter
10

I’m pathetic! I was supposed to go to class this morning—who knew
prisons had schools?—but I told them I had a splitting headache, and they let
me stay in my cell. It’s Friday, so I have until Monday to think of a new
excuse. Being stuck in a room with a bunch of other inmates—excuse me, residents—is
not
an option.

Since I have the day to myself, I open the journal. Might as well
write down everything that’s on my mind, as little as that is. Maybe I can get
the memory-juices flowing.

Nothing comes easy. The glaring white of the empty page hurts my
eyes, and my head starts to throb in earnest. Proves the old proverb: lies
always come back to bite you.

After lunch the psycho-doc strolls into my cell and asks me how I’m
doing.

He was done with me, wasn’t he? He has sent me back to prison.

I want to reply with an
eff-you-too
, but I can’t. That’s were
pathetic comes in. I’m a murderer—at least I hope so—crazy, unhinged, out of
control, a total nutcase, but I can’t say the eff-word! Can’t even write it,
that’s how pathetic I am.

So, why can’t I say to the psycho-doc that I am eff-ing pissed off
with him? For not leaving me alone at first, and then leaving me alone! Why
can’t I say, eff-you, you miserable, perfidious snob, which is so much more to
the point than
screw you
?

“How’s it going?”
he asks. “I see you’re writing, that’s
great!”

All I can do is grunt my displeasure.

He chats a bit as if we’re the best of friends before he bids me good-bye.
I’m left steaming with unspecified anger until I decide to take to writing again.
That calms me, as it forces me to focus on something.

My pen starts to scribble away, while I’m still wondering why the
doc paid me a visit. Hasn’t he given up on me yet?

Birthday Two

 Another birthday I’m too young to remember, so again, I fall back
on stories Gracie told me.

She had an album full of pictures, which she leafed through all the
time. Like really, all the time. She got a copy of every single shot her
photographer friend had taken of me throughout the year—and there were so many,
they filled the whole album. When she realized that, she stuck a big pink
Number One on its cover. She would stick a new number on every new album. Some
years there were more than one album.

There I am, page after page, chubby and adorable, in all sorts of outfits
and in the cutest poses Gracie and her photographer friend found creative and deserving.
Dressed like a cowgirl, holding a toy gun. Then on my tummy, little tutu skirt
stuck up in the air. Or with plastic apples dangling from my ears, sitting in
an oversized wooden bowl, surrounded by plastic fruit. Stupid pictures like
that.

Some evenings, when Gracie took out an album, she squealed in
delight.

“Look at that one! How she smiles at the camera! She just loves her
picture taken, the little darling-angel.”

Gracie loved me, and I loved her. Gracie was my life, she gave me
what Mom couldn’t, back in the small, square house in the third row behind the
highway that was our home. The one with the low ceiling to keep the cool air
in, and the iron bars on every window to keep the bad stuff out.

Gracie adored me and spoiled me, her little angel, while Mom cleaned
the house and cooked and left me in Gracie’s care. Every afternoon Mom went to
her room and I wasn’t allowed to disturb her.

“Don’t go in there,” Gracie said, “she’s sleeping”, while in fact
all Mom did was lie on her bed and stuff her mouth. Meanwhile, Gracie took me
on stroller and photography trips.

Mom had been true to her word and had come along to that second
photo session, right after she had snapped out of her Missing-Mikey-Melancholy.
She watched how Gracie and her photographer friend fuzzed over me and said: “This
is ridiculous. It’s taking forever. I’ll never understand why anybody would
want to be a model.”

“Many models are superstars,” the photographer friend said.

 “It’s not so easy to become famous,” Mom said. “You need to be
really beautiful.”

Gracie said: “You think she’s not pretty enough?”

The photographer friend tried to please my mom.

“Let’s take a picture of the two of you, mother and daughter
together.”

My mom agreed but complained non-stop about the way he was setting
it up and how long he took for it.

 “Tell you what, Melissa,” he said, “Gracie and I can handle the
pictures. We don’t want to waste your time.”

“Who the hell do you think you are,” Mom said. “You can’t tell me
what to do.”

“There go the extra fifty bucks,” Gracie said.

“See if I care,” Mom said. “If you want to waste your time. I got
better things to do.”

And that was that. Mom never came along again, but she did like the
extra income.

“It hurts me when your mom says she doesn’t think you have it in you
to be famous,” Gracie told me again and again. “I know better. I love you so
much. You’re my girl, and I know you’ll be a star one day. My beautiful angel, I’ll
see to that. I’ll make sure of it. When your mom gets mean, just come to your
Gracie and she’ll take care of things. Because you’re Gracie’s girl.”

Mom was often mean to my Gracie. She just didn’t get it that I had
it in me. But Gracie did, and I repaid her devotion with stoic obedience and a
smile that drove her and her photographer friend bonkers with delight.

The one picture from this year of me with Mom shows her still
reasonably shapely, light-skinned, blond, a little smile contradicting the
sadness in her eyes. There are many pictures of me and Gracie. She’s all
southern comfort. Her breasts are cushions, she radiates, glows, gives, is a
buffer to the outside world, the way she folds herself around me.

When I was little, I was drowning in her love.