Waiting For Sarah (12 page)

“How do you know Mr. Dorfman killed Sarah Francis?”

“Look, Inspector, let me ask you a question. This isn't 1982, it's 2000. Do you have any of the killer's DNA — from hairs or other personal stuff like blood, saliva, skin maybe — taken from the crime scene? Because if you've got anything at all then all you need is a sample of Dorfman's DNA, and I guarantee it'll be a perfect match. That would be enough to convict him, wouldn't it?”

Samson ran his hands through his bushy hair, his eyes not weary now but questioning and alert. “Usually, yes. But to obtain a sample of your teacher's DNA we'd need either his voluntary cooperation or a warrant. And to obtain either we'd need some evidence that he might have committed the crime. The word of a high school kid just doesn't make it, I'm afraid. There's got to be a distinct possibility your Mr. Dorfman might have done it. You follow me? In other words: no hard evidence, no warrant.”

“Sarah Francis was on her way home from debating
practice. That much I do know. It was late. Dorfman was the debating coach. He might've given her a lift and then tried to kiss or fondle her in his car. Maybe she didn't like what he was doing and managed to get out of the car and run away and he ran after her to stop her screaming, and maybe he didn't mean to kill her — look, I don't pretend to know exactly
how
it happened, but he did it; that much I know for certain.”

“I'm afraid it's no good. That's guesswork, not evidence. So back to my original question: How do you know for certain — as you put it — that Dorfman murdered Sarah Francis?”

“You wouldn't believe me.”

“Try me.”

“She told me.”

“Who told you?”

“Sarah Francis.”

“Sarah Francis told you that Dorfman murdered her.”

“That's it.”

“In 1982.”

“Right.”

“She told you when you were, what...?” He glanced at his notes. “... a five-month-old baby.”

“She didn't tell me in 1982; she told me yesterday.”

“Yesterday.” Voice flat and suddenly tired.

“Right.”

“Seventeen years after she died.”

“That's right. I said you wouldn't believe me.”

Samson's eyebrows rose in mild astonishment.
“She was, what — a spirit, a ghost? Something like that?”

“I don't know much about spirits or ghosts, Inspector. But she was definitely Sarah Francis.”

“A real flesh-and-blood human being.”

“That's right. I can tell you what she was wearing when she was murdered. I've checked the newspaper stories. The reports made no mention of what she had on, and there was no way I could've been there, so how would I know, right, Inspector?”

The detective said nothing. His black eyes glittered shrewdly at Mike as he waited for him to continue.

Mike could feel his heart pounding. “Her clothes and everything were muddy. And there was blood. She was wearing a red nylon ski jacket, and it was ripped in the back, a long tear, and her dress was torn, too, and she had only one shoe, a Nike runner.”

Inspector Samson glanced through the file. “What color was the dress?”

“Blue. It was a light blue ... with white buttons down the front, most of them torn off and the dress was ripped ... and I bet a blue denim tote bag was found at the scene ...”

“How long you been in the wheelchair?”

Mike could feel himself flushing. “What's that got to do with anything?”

Samson smiled apologetically. “I'll switch off the tape, okay? But I need to know a few things about you, Mike. Put yourself in my place; you're a detective, okay... ?” He leaned over and switched off the
tape recorder. “And a seventeen-year-old high school kid comes in and tells you he knows who murdered a girl in 1982, the same year he was born. How does he know? Why, the murdered girl told him, that's how. This seventeen-year-old kid is in a wheelchair because he's lost his legs; looks like he might've had a rough time of it. Life can't be easy for a kid in a wheelchair, who looks around him and sees other kids walking and running, snowboarding, hitting the ski slopes, mountain-biking, going out with girls — you know, regular stuff — so, wouldn't you want to ask the kid about how he feels? About his teacher — who he says is a murderer — and about his girlfriend, if he's got one? And about his family, and how he got to be in a wheelchair? How else you gonna know whether he's telling the truth? You with me, Mike?”

Mike gave a sigh and relaxed. Samson was okay. He was only doing his job.

When he finally got outside, the Lincoln was parked in the handicap slot and Chris was climbing into his wheelchair. “I was just coming in to get you,” said Chris. “You've been in there almost two flaming hours.”

He had his legs back again, but it was in a dream, or a nightmare more like.

Sarah was playing a grand piano up on a stage in a concert hall full of people dressed in their best. Full orchestra. She was playing a concerto. He sat listening to her, watching her long white fingers flying over the keys. Next, inexplicably, she was by his side, running, and he was running with her — no wheelchair — from the street into the same concert hall, as the orchestra tuned up before the concert. Her hair hid the side of her face closest to him, but he knew it was Sarah. He held her hand.

“It's so late,” said Sarah, worried.

“Don't worry,” he heard himself say. “Our seats are reserved.”

The orchestra was still tuning up as they reached their aisle. The piano stood waiting for the soloist to appear on the stage.

“It's along here. You first, Sarah.”

She released his hand and they excused themselves as they pushed past faceless patrons until
they reached their seats. There was a man sitting in Mike's seat. The man said, “You just made it, Sarah. I've saved you a place right here beside me.” It was Dorfman, eyes magnified twice as much as usual and gleaming behind his glasses, wet mouth — like in an
Alien
movie — dripping a viscous saliva onto the seat beside him.

“Run, Sarah, run!” Mike cried, pulling at her arm.

The first pounding piano notes of the concerto sounded as they fled back up the aisle, Dorfman in pursuit. Mike tried to look back to see who was playing the piano, but Dorfman was blocking the view. Dorfman reached out and Sarah screamed.

He woke in a lather of sweat, crying and thrashing about and falling out of bed onto the floor.

Chris drove him to St. Augustine's and let Mike out at the lich-gate. It was early evening, cold and raw, with a wind that moaned in the church eaves and tossed the bare branches of the graveyard trees.

“I'd rather go alone,” said Mike.

“Looks pretty spooky to me. You sure you'll be okay in there?”

“I'll be fine.”

“If you're not back in ten minutes, I'll come looking for you.”

The graveyard was well cared for, with paved pathways. There was nobody else about, nobody to observe him, which was the way he wanted it.

Most of the graves were very old, their granite slabs cracked and eroded by wind and rain. Many were blackened or clothed in a patina of mossy green. He searched for a fairly new one, a grave only seventeen years old.

He soon found it, a neglected little plot tucked away at the back behind the church, with an un-weathered stone. He left the paved path and struggled to push his chair over the wet grass. Breathing
heavily from the effort, he stopped his chair in front of the polished granite grave marker, beside which, fallen onto its side, was an empty, discolored glass jar that had once held flowers.

He could not read the inscription on the gravestone. He struggled to move his chair in closer.

SARAH STEPHANIE FRANCIS

b. July 14 1969

d. Dec 17 1982

That was all it said. Nothing else.

He didn't know why, but he wanted to take a look at the back of the stone. He pushed himself around, grunting with the effort.

Engraved in the granite were four words:

LETUM NON OMNIA FINIT

It was Latin, he knew that much.
Non
probably meant none or not;
omnia
was all and
finit
probably meant finish or end. But he was guessing. He had no idea of the meaning of
letum
. He read the inscription over several times, memorizing it, then he bowed his head in a brief prayer.

He righted the toppled jar before he left.

With the help of Norma's Latin-English dictionary he translated the grave inscription that same evening.

LETUM NON OMNIA FINIT
NOT ALL ENDS WITH DEATH

He started reading the book Norma had given him for Christmas. The title of the book was
Fight for the Sky.
It was an autobiography of Squadron Leader Douglas Bader, a W.W. II air ace who flew Spitfires and Hurricanes. Douglas Bader had no legs.

She came at the end of February.

Robbie pushed Mike through the wind and rain to the Granville Island Market after school and Mike asked to be left there. He felt restless, didn't want to go home yet, wanted to sit alone for a while out on the deck with the huddled pigeons, away from the shoppers and the lights and the warmth. He felt a need for turbulence: the wind whipping his hair, the sight of the churning sea.

Robbie said, “You can't stay out here in this storm.”

“There's a sweater under my raincoat. I'll be okay.”

Robbie left him alone.

He sat facing the far shore of English Bay with the wind tearing at him, watching the boats in the marina roll and pitch. Rain lashed his face. He sat for a long time, ignoring the cold creeping into him. The wilder the weather became the calmer he felt. And then he became aware of her presence: he could feel her near.

An overhead light came on, a dull yellow smudge.

She appeared out of the rain, smiling and happy. “Michael!”

For a moment he hardly recognized her, then his heart lifted. “Sarah!”

She laughed and threw her arms about him. “Oh, Michael!”

The same laugh, the same voice, the same, yet not the same. She was taller, more lovely than ever in a raincoat, green or gray — it was impossible to tell under the yellow light — its collar turned up against the wind and rain. She had no hat or gloves, but a scarf fluttered at her neck.

“You're so grown up, Sarah.”

Her hair blew about her face. She held out both her hands and he held them and they stared at each other, smiling and happy, saying nothing, words unnecessary.

Then she pushed his wheelchair through the market and on to the sea wall, where the lights from the upscale waterfront condos shone out at them.

“I can push myself from here,” he said. “Walk beside me. I want to look at you.” She walked beside him, her hand softly intimate at the back of his neck.

They moved in silence. He had to push harder on the right wheel because of the cambered pavement. He wanted to tell her about the sweat-soaked nightmares he'd been having about Dorfman pursuing her. He wanted to tell her about the police detective, how he kept dropping in to the co-op to ask more questions, how Norma was starting to believe that
the accident and the loss of his family was making Mike see things that were not there, and about how ... But he said nothing; those were the wrong words: they would spoil everything.

She was wearing stockings and leather shoes with flat heels. He had never noticed before ... “You're pigeon-toed!”

She laughed. “Isn't it awful? My mother is pigeon-toed too; I get it from her.”

He couldn't stop looking at her. She was so grown up. “Let's stop and you can sit on that bench. It's sheltered from the wind here.”

“No, Michael. You're cold. You should get home.”

“I want to look at you on my level; you're so tall I'm getting a crick in my neck. I can't see your face.”

She sat on the edge of the bench. “I don't need to see your face, Michael; I have memorized every line of it.”

“Yours has changed, Sarah.”

“Yours is changed too.”

“Mine? How's that?”

“You used to be such a grouch, hating everyone, frowning, barking at me for no reason — and at everyone else, but now your face is ... happy.”

“Because of you.”

She pulled her coat around her. The yellow light from the living room of a nearby condo fell on her shoulders and hair, and they sat together in happy silence, isolated in a cocoon of wind and rain, cut off from the world.

Sarah nodded towards the lighted window, whispering. “It looks so warm and peaceful in there. Do
you see the woman reading? In an easy chair? The furniture is red and brown and rich. There are paintings on the walls.”

He said, “A man is bringing a tray. Tea or coffee. The husband.”

“It's tea. I see the teapot. He's asking her something.”

“Normal people living normal lives.”

“Yes.”

He thought about his family and about the people who died every day in airplanes and floods and other disasters. “Why do normal people living normal lives have to die too soon, Sarah?”

“Everything must die; you know that, Michael: leaves, flowers, trees, people, all that lives must die. Some lives are long, others short. It's natural.”

“Yeah, but why young people — kids? It doesn't seem right.”

The only reply was the squeeze of her hand.

They watched the storm in silence, holding hands. The wind blew Sarah's hair. The front of her coat fell open at the knees revealing a plaid skirt.

Mike said, “Dorfman — ”

“Don't say anything, please.”

“He ... the police — ”

“I know. Say no more. I can read it in your eyes. You are fighting for me.” She removed the scarf from her neck. It was red, he could see that now. “You are my brave knight, Michael.” She tied the bright scarf to his wheelchair. “You must carry your lady's favor with you into battle.”