Learning to Swim (32 page)

By the time I reached Lake Placid, I knew what I was going to do. I cleaned the house thoroughly—the guys either hadn’t noticed or cared how grungy it had gotten. I found a roommate to replace Ben, who had moved in with his new girlfriend; produced a special summer section for the newspaper; and wrote a batch of press releases for some quick cash. Paul and Philippe came down with Bear for their weekend, and we picnicked with Baker and her family and Holly and John and their kids.

Parting was only slightly awkward. Paul was sleepy from playing and didn’t protest, although he clung to me after I settled him in his
seat. Philippe kissed me lightly, just before he got in the car. “See you soon,” he said in my ear.

Three nights later the phone rang, when I was almost asleep.

“Hello, it’s Alan,” a voice said. At my long pause, he added, “Jameson, Alan Jameson.”

“God, I’m sorry.” Now I was completely awake. “I didn’t know your name.”

He gave a short laugh. “You thought my first name was Detective, right?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“How are you doing?”

“Okay.” I sat up in bed. My heart was thumping audibly. “Paul and Philippe came down this weekend; Paul seems to be doing fine.” Silence. I went on: “Do you … I mean, how are things?”

“Things are fine. I wanted to check on you.”

“I’m fine.” This was awkward. I plunged on. “Look—”

“Troy,” he said, cutting me off. “I just wanted to see if you were all right. And to remind you that you can call me. You have my numbers?”

“Yes.” The card was in my wallet, where I’d put it the day he’d given it to me.

“All right, then. Good night.”

“Good night,” I whispered, and hung up.

Jesus. I wasn’t sure if I was praying or cursing. Every encounter I had with this man confused me in one way or another.

The next day I left for Burlington.

I
HAD DELAYED THE SEARCH FOR PAUL’S KIDNAPPERS. I HAD
kept Madeleine’s emails to myself. And it was possible that I had somehow led the kidnappers back to Ottawa.

I had to do what I could to make things right.

What could I do? Baker asked me. All I had were some details from Paul, the sketches, and a Craigslist response suggesting the men had lived in Burlington. All of which the police had as well.

“I can try,” I said. The police couldn’t devote full time to this case, and they couldn’t be as motivated as I was. How much investigating would the Montreal or Ottawa police do in Vermont? How hard would the Burlington police work to solve a crime from Québec, with one victim recovered and the other dead?

Baker didn’t try to talk me out of it. She knew it was something I had to do.

Philippe and I emailed daily and talked often. Paul chattered about his puppy and what had happened at school, speaking English except when he got excited. Philippe had found discrepancies in several work files compared to older hard copies, and had brought in an outside firm to do an audit and, as promised, a computer firm to set up company-wide security. No more incidents had occurred, so whoever had tried to run me over and made the phone call to the school was presumably gone. It seemed to have been a one-time thing—maybe to scare me off. In a way it had.

I didn’t tell Philippe I was going to Burlington. Or Simon.

Thomas, surprisingly, was supportive. We hadn’t spoken since I
returned from Ottawa, but he called one evening and asked how things were going. When I told him I was coming to Burlington, he said, “You should stay here.”

“Tommy—” I started.

“It’s okay,” he said, cutting me off. Since we had broken things off we hadn’t talked, and staying at his place seemed strange even for me. But it would be easier and cheaper than anything else, and I could bring Tiger. We could talk about it when I got there. If nothing else, he could keep Tiger and I could find a cheap room to rent.

I drove up on a Wednesday, late in the afternoon. The bright sun and crisp air seemed incongruous with thoughts of kidnapping and murder. I drove south and took the bridge across, because the ferry was expensive if you drove on—more than thirty bucks round-trip. I tried not to think about the what-ifs:
What if I hadn’t had that play to review back in May?
Then I would have planned to stay in Burlington the entire weekend, would have taken my dog, wouldn’t have taken the ferry. And Paul would have drowned.

I was there almost too quickly, pulling up to Thomas’s apartment. He must have heard my car, and came out to meet me. Tiger greeted him eagerly, and he petted her absentmindedly before reaching in the back of the Subaru for my bags.

I made a halfhearted attempt to stop him. But I was tired, and didn’t want to start a discussion on the street, so I let him take the bags and followed him in.

“You can use my study,” he said, pushing the door open with his foot. “I’ve set up the futon for you.” Thomas lived in the front half of a spacious old home that had been divided into two, like many of the old homes near the university that had been carved into apartments. He had the best part of the house, with a big front porch. I stowed my bags in a corner of the study, where the futon couch was already unfolded into a bed, and in the living room sank into an easy chair.

“Would you like some tea?” Thomas asked. I nodded, and started to get up. “No, no,” he said. “I’ll get it.” He disappeared, and Tiger ambled after him.

It felt good just to sit, and I shut my eyes. I felt drained. In a few
minutes Thomas was back with a steaming pot of tea, two mugs, and a plate of cheese and crackers and apple slices. “I thought you might be hungry,” he said.

I hadn’t thought about eating, but I drank the tea and ate most of the food. Thomas turned the television to what seemed to be the second part of some Jane Austen adaptation. The English accents were heavy, and I had trouble following it.

I became aware that Thomas was speaking. “Troy,” he was saying. “Troy!” I opened my eyes. “You’re falling asleep. I’ve taken Tiger out. Why don’t you go to bed?”

I looked at the clock on his mantel: only 9:10, but I didn’t protest. So much for having a heart-to-heart. I crawled between the sheets on the futon. They were crisp, and smelled new. I slept hard, with no dreams for the first time in a long time.

I awoke feeling logy; it was tough to drag myself out of bed. The apartment was still. Thomas had left for work, and had left a note and spare key on the kitchen table. I ate some crunchy earthy type of cereal I found on the shelf, putting the box back exactly as I’d found it, because Thomas liked things just so. Then I walked Tiger briskly around the block and took a quick shower.

Time to get started.

What did I know? That there were two men, French Canadian, and roughly what they looked like. The Craigslist email suggested they had been seen in a bar near the university and that one of them might be named Jock, or more likely Jacques. They had stayed in two different apartments, at least one a basement apartment. And had kept a small boy no one knew about.

I drove to the post office on Elmwood Street and rented a post office box for the minimum six months, in my real name but also listing “Terry Charles” so I could get mail in both names. Next I headed for RadioShack, where I bought a prepaid TracFone, feeling like a kid playing spy.

At Thomas’s kitchen table I wrote out an ad:

I added the box number, TracFone number, and my alter ego’s email address. Presto, a new identity. I called the
Burlington Free Press
and placed the ad for two weeks. The bored woman on the phone didn’t react—I supposed she had heard far stranger. Then I posted a longer version on Vermont’s Craigslist. I wrestled with my conscience only slightly before digging out the Craigslist response I’d forwarded to Jameson and answering it, asking for details. But I didn’t sign onto Madeleine’s account to check emails; that I was done with.

It took less than ten minutes to design a full-page poster with the two sketches, a brief description, and contact information. I printed a color copy on Thomas’s printer, made adjustments, and printed two more before I was happy with it.

My stomach was growling. I had peanut butter on a slice of bread with a glass of milk, and ate an apple in the car on the way to Kinko’s. Less than half an hour later I was leaving with two hundred copies, a fat roll of masking tape, and a container of thumbtacks. By six that evening I’d stuck my poster up on bulletin boards, in grocery stores, and on telephone and light poles.

I knocked lightly on the door of Thomas’s apartment. No answer, so I let myself in with the key he’d left me. A neatly folded index card sat on the kitchen table:
Having dinner at the Pacific Rim Café on Church Street with friends at 7:00. You can meet us there or help yourself to anything here
.

I wasn’t up to meeting anyone, let alone going out, so I rooted around in the fridge and heated some leftover spaghetti, then had a bowl of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie. Like any good Vermonter, Thomas always had a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry’s in his freezer, with at least one variety of chocolate, I suspected for my benefit.

While I ate, I scanned the classified ads in the
Free Press
, looking
for basement apartments. If the men had left town after they’d dumped Paul, the apartment could still be unrented, because of the high rate of summer vacancies in university towns. I marked down a few that seemed like possibilities.

I went to bed early and was only vaguely aware of hearing Thomas come in, and didn’t see him in the morning.

The public library on College Street opened at 8:30, and I was there at 8:34. The reference librarian steered me to the reading room, where the older back issues of newspapers were stored on microfilm. I selected reels dating back to four weeks before Paul was kidnapped, and began to search classified ads, feeding the filmstrips through the machine, cranking away at the handle, peering at the grainy print. Then I switched to reels from the following months.