Way the Crow Flies (106 page)
Read Way the Crow Flies Online
Authors: Ann-Marie Macdonald
It was only a bit of blue shell, but perhaps it would have been bad luck to take anything from the murder scene—yes, that’s where she found it. A foot or so from the edge of the tamped-down circle. Fairy ring. Was it from Claire’s blue egg? One she found that day?
EXHIBIT No. 50: Statement of Grace Novotny
What if Madeleine had accepted Claire’s invitation and gone with her to Rock Bass? Claire might still be alive. Or would they both be dead?
HIS LORDSHIP: Have you read this statement, Mr Waller?
MR WALLER: I have a copy of Grace Novotny’s statement My Lord, given to me by the Crown Prosecutor, Mr Fraser, this morning. I had not
seen the document before, much as I did not know until last week about the existence of the witness, Marjorie Nolan—HIS LORDSHIP: We’ve been over that, Mr Waller.
Mr. Waller. The nice loser in the shimmering silk robes. Defending Rick.
MR WALLER: My Lord, the question of the propriety of concealing a witness—
HIS LORDSHIP: What do you have to say to that, Mr Fraser?
MR FRASER: My Lord, there is no question of the propriety here since Marjorie Nolan’s testimony was not exculpatory.
MR WALLER: My Lord, with the greatest respect I would like to point out that there is a cumulative possibly deleterious effect that could have the effect of causing this trial to become a mistrial—
HIS LORDSHIP: I’ll be the judge of that, Mr Waller.
MR WALLER: Yes, my Lord, but in the interests of avoiding a costly appeal—
HIS LORDSHIP: The Crown has not breached the law of disclosure that I can see.
MR WALLER: No, my Lord, not the letter, but perhaps the spirit.
HIS LORDSHIP: Gentlemen, we won’t need you for a few minutes.
—Jury retired.
IN THE ABSENCE OF THE JURY…
Many pages of legal arguments. Many cases cited by both sides, with a kind of quiz-show virtuosity. Inspector Bradley has the statement he took from Grace in the classroom after three. The defence wants the statement ruled inadmissible. But the Crown says Grace’s
statement is consistent with Marjorie’s testimony and therefore ought to be read out in court. All this because Grace is not here to testify in person. Her mother left her father and took the younger children. No one knows where they have gone.
It’s not really a statement at all. It’s a stitched-together series of quotes: answers she gave to the policeman’s questions, which he duly recorded in his notebook. The judge decides that Inspector Bradley will be permitted to read out the statement but, in deference to the defence, only if the inspector consults his notes in order to reinsert the questions “and every other detail” that elicited the responses that became the statement. A short recess is called so that the inspector may go over his notes and those of Constable Lonergan’s, and revise Grace’s “statement” after the fact.
IN THE PRESENCE OF THE JURY…
Although Inspector Bradley will be sworn before he reads Grace’s statement, the statement itself may not be deemed by the jury to be a sworn statement. The judge asks the jury to perform the mental gymnastics of listening and weighing, but not too heavily.
INSPECTOR THOMAS BRADLEY, sworn:
MR FRASER: Inspector Bradley, you are a member of the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Ontario Provincial Police?
A. Yes sir.
The inspector had the type of face that made Madeleine feel she was lying the moment she walked into the room. She would have felt guilty no matter what she told him. He knew she was lying. Why did he not know that Marjorie was lying? And Grace?
Q. Inspector Bradley, would you please read the transcript of your interview with Grace Novotny?
A. I said, “You knew Claire McCarroll, didn’t
you?” At that the subject exhibited signs of distress, she proceeded to rock and to moan audibly.
Grace’s eyes rolling, face crumpling….
I asked, “Did you play with Claire last Wednesday?” Whereupon the child began to cry and to wail,
… that sound, peculiar to Grace, that rose from her throat or someplace deeper, until you couldn’t tell where it was coming from, steadily rising like an air-raid siren.
so I gave the child a kleenex and attempted to calm her.
No one could calm Grace.
I asked her if she had seen Claire that day in the school yard and the child nodded, “yes.” I asked if she spoke to Claire and the child shrugged. I asked if Claire had spoken to the child and the child said, “Yes.” I asked what Claire had said and the child replied, “She asked me to go to Rock Bass.”
Marjorie must have told her to say that.
I asked her what she said in reply to Claire and the child said, “I didn’t want to go to Rock Bass.” I asked, “Did Claire say she was going to Rock Bass with anyone?” The child answered, “Yeah, Ricky.”
Madeleine hears Inspector Bradley’s measured monotone; it marries perfectly with the typed page. But Grace is there too,
behind the page. Madeleine can hear her and see her—messy braids, the vague grin, chapped lips. She can smell her, too—old pee and Elmer’s glue….
“Has Ricky Froelich ever touched you as if you were his girlfriend?” She answered, “Yeah, sometimes we do exercises.”
That’s what happened to Ricky Froelich—Madeleine’s guts go liquid—Marjorie and Grace happened to him. And Mr. March, and Jack McCarthy. How did those two wind up on the same side?
“Backbends. And squeezing,” she said.
What has been left out of the inspector’s cobbled-together “statement”? By how many sideways stepping stones did he herd Grace higgledy-piggledy across the stream? Because Madeleine knows Grace never got anywhere on her own.
I asked, “Squeezing what?” She replied, “His muscle. He said to call it his muscle, but it’s really his thing.”
Grace had the courage to say it. Cut from its moorings, but the truth nonetheless. Why was there no one to hear? How loudly must she have wailed it?
“And there’s something else about Ricky,” she said. “He strangles.”
And it was over.
I asked, “Have you ever told anyone about the things Ricky did to you?” She answered, “Marjorie.”
They only had each other.
The child then offered the following statement: “He gave me an egg.” “When?” I asked. “That day,” she said. “What kind of egg? A cooked egg?” “No,” she said. “A blue one…”
Madeleine remembers to breathe.
“What kind of egg is that?” I asked. “A special egg,” she said. “An Easter egg?” I asked. The child nodded, yes, then said, “He said he knew where there was more.”
A
robin’s egg
, not an Easter egg. That’s what “blue egg” means to a child. Why did Bradley not know that, why did he not ask someone qualified—another child?—Why did he not ask Madeleine?
But it was Easter time. There was Easter art up on the walls of the classroom where the interrogation took place. It was a natural assumption on his part….
“Was it a chocolate egg?” I asked. She replied, “Yes.”
Again, a version of the truth. Mr. March gave out chocolate eggs at the drop of an Easter bonnet.
Blue eggshell in the grass….“
I know where there is a nest” is all anyone would have to say, and Claire would follow—it’s what Rick said, according to Marjorie. Perhaps someone did say it. Did Marjorie hear it? Did Grace?
Madeleine squints at the page. In the schoolyard, Claire said only that she was going to look for a nest. She didn’t specify a robin’s nest. And yet blue eggshell was what Madeleine found in the grass…. Why would Grace mention a blue egg in connection with that day?
Madeleine reaches into the grass for the pale blue fragment
. Was it from Claire’s egg? One she was lured with? How could Grace have known that? Dear God … what did the child see?
The shiver runs up her spine—stinging her eyes, which have begun to water, escaping through her lips, and she is gulping air, flipping back to the beginning of Volume IV, to the index of exhibits—because
Grace’s art was also up on the classroom wall that day—the day after Claire was murdered. The drawing she had bent over and coloured so lovingly, Madeleine can see it with its gold star, in pride of place among the lopsided Easter bunnies and brightly coloured eggs—the beautiful picture that Grace made with her dirty bandaged hands that day, brilliant, abundant: a storm of yellow butterflies.
EXHIBIT No. 49: Cotton underpants with yellow moth pattern
They were butterflies, not moths. Only an adult would have seen moths.
Oh Grace. What did you see?
Madeleine’s tears will hasten the deterioration of these archival documents.
They were yellow butterflies, not moths
. Why didn’t anyone ask? It was Moses among the Cattails, not Rushes, or even Bulrushes, because Marjorie was there too, in the field beyond Rock Bass. Both children saw what he did to Claire before he covered her body with what the grown-ups called bulrushes, and purple flowers. Both little girls saw how he laid her underpants across her face, which had gone blue with suffocation, oh God. What happened to the children?
What happens to children?
Madeleine puts her head down, shielded by the boxes.
In the condo in Ottawa, Mimi taps out the pills from the plastic compartment stamped
Thurs p.m
. Once you or a loved one are on this much medication, it’s impossible to mix up the days of the week.
She fills a glass and sees the sunset through the window over the kitchen sink. She is fifty-eight. She is in perfect health and will probably live many more years, despite the smoking. She doesn’t want to go on a cruise with a nice gentleman she meets a few years from now. She wants to go with her husband.
She places the water glass and a cluster of pills on the side table next to his oxygen tank. He doesn’t wake up. She turns off the TV, he opens his eyes. “Wha—? Just restin’ my eyeballs.” And he winks at her.
Women live longer. Mimi knew she would have to do this part of the job eventually, she just didn’t expect it so soon. She got a card from Elaine Ridelle the other day. They have retired to Victoria on the west
coast, she and Steve still golf, they went on an Alaskan cruise last summer. Elaine has become diabetic but, since Steve is a doctor,
I’m his hobby now!
Jack’s eyes are watery with medication. He pops the pills into his mouth like peanuts, sips—brow rising, eyes widening like a child’s, as he tilts back to swallow.
“Merci,”
he says.
I love you, Jack
.
Hot gold pours in through the sheers on the patio doors. Remember those spring evenings in the square in Baden-Baden? Cobblestones and roses, the sound of the fountain. You and I and the kids would get dressed up and go out to look at the rich people, but everyone always wound up looking at us. Where have we gone?
Jack reaches for the remote and turns on the news.
Olivia is waiting on Madeleine’s front step. A barrel-chested short-haired orange dog, with a head like a German Second World War helmet is panting on a leash beside her.
“Whose dog?”
“Mine, but I’m leaving tonight.”
“I thought you weren’t leaving till tomorrow, I was going to drive you to the airport, I still will, hang on—”
“It’s okay, I called a cab.”
“Cancel it, I’ll—”
“No, no, sit.”
“Are you talking to the dog or me?”
Olivia laughs and takes her hand, pulls her down to the step beside her. “This is Winnie.” Winnie is fresh from the Humane Society.
“He’s a pit bull,” says Madeleine.
“She. Winifred is an American Staffordshire terrier.”
“Which is a fancy way of saying pit bull.”
“Technically.” Olivia kisses her.
“Je t’aime.”
Olivia’s kiss is like an electrical gauge. It lets Madeleine know that, against all odds, she is in excellent working order. “Then stay and have dinner with me, we’ll roast wieners over the gas ring, I’ll pop the Manischewitz and we’ll make the beast with two backs, what do you say?”
“I can’t, I got a grant to go on this trip.”
“Give the money back.”
“I want to go.”
Madeleine strokes the dog’s head and is assaulted by a tongue of bovine heft. She looks down and addresses the porch steps. “Why’d you adopt a dog if you were just going to ditch her right away?”
“I’m not ditching her, I’m giving her to you to look after.”
“You expect me to look after her for three months?”
“No, she’s going to look after you.”
Madeleine looks at the dog and the dog grins back—fleshy mouthful of shark teeth, six hundred pounds of exertable pressure ready and waiting between those jaws.
Olivia says, “She loves kids.”
“I don’t have any kids.”
Olivia smiles, raises her eyebrows briefly in a way that reminds Madeleine of someone.
“What does she eat? Cops? Drug dealers?”
“I had to take her,” says Olivia. “She’d been there for six months.”
“Really? Why?”
“No one wanted her. She’s not a puppy. Plus she’s a pit bull.”
“She’s a pussycat.”
Olivia smiles. “I know.” She puts the leash in Madeleine’s hand, kisses her and gets into a waiting taxi.
In the condo in Ottawa, Mimi says, “Jack, do you want some hot?” and switches the TV off.
Madeleine and Winifred watch as the taxi disappears down the street and around the corner. Madeleine goes to rise and notices a drawstring bag on the step. In it, two dog bowls, a sample bag of kibble and a thick red candle with a scrolled note. She puts the note in her pocket for later and goes inside with the dog, feeling like a child of the universe. In the middle of the empty living room her wineglass, crusted red on the bottom, is where she left it by the phone on the carpet. It magnifies the red light blinking on the answering machine. She ignores the light and fills one of the bowls with water, the other with kibble. The dog laps promiscuously, great
plashes of pleasure, then devours the food with a series of contented asthmatic grunts. More porcine than canine.