Web of Angels (31 page)

In a large room on the second floor, a male detective in a brown suit, his hair buzz cut, sat at one of the desks. Several chairs were empty except for notes taped onto them that said
COURT
or
SPRAINED ANKLE
. Near the window overlooking the alley, a female detective with long black hair spoke on the phone. She was slender and well dressed, her shoes flat in case she needed to move fast. “Uh huh. Yes. I’ll be right down,” she said. There was a whiteboard on the wall behind her desk. In black marker were two headings,
CHILDREN MISSING
and
ABDUCTIONS
. Nothing was written underneath.

She let the door swing shut behind her as she came into the narrow waiting area, where a red-haired woman and a pretty girl with a baby in a baby carrier stared at the posters on the corkboard. The woman wore pants with many pockets, a messenger bag slung over a shoulder, one thumb hooked through the strap; she was trying to act casual, but her face was strained. The girl chewed on the ends of her hair. She wore sandals, her toes were wriggling as if she couldn’t stand still and only the weight of the baby, lolling against her chest, kept her from taking flight.

“I’m Detective Chan.” Beside the corkboard was a blown-up photograph of the Christie Pits riot, farther along the wall a smaller photo of the Metro Police West End Hockey Team, a thank-you from the boys and girls club, a calligraphed poem
from the wife of a deceased officer. “You must be Mrs. Lewis. And you’re Cathy Edwards?”

“Cathy Dawson-Edwards,” the girl corrected.

“I have to apologize, Mrs. Lewis. I don’t know why you were told to come to the station. We never do interviews with kids here.” She thought of joking about the claustrophobic prisoner interrogation rooms they had, but the expression on the girl’s face made her think that wasn’t a terrific idea. “We have a child-friendly location on the lakeshore. It’s a great place to talk. I’ll give you the directions, and we can meet there.”

Alec took the address from her, then turned to Ceecee. “It’s just fifteen more minutes. Maybe twenty.”

Her face was sullen as she followed him out. “They tell you one thing and then they tell you another,” she grumbled suspiciously. They walked back to the car and Ceecee got into the front seat, slamming the door.

“Seat belt.”

“Fine,” she said as he leaned over the infant seat, buckling Linny in. “No, wait. Stop.”

“What’s up?” Alec straightened and she turned around to face him.

“This is crazy. I can’t put my parents in jail.” She was biting her nails, which were already bitten down to the quick, a drop of blood on the edge of her thumbnail.

“Let’s talk about it,” he said, keeping his voice level as he opened the door on the driver’s side, and got in behind the wheel. So she’d switched. Better now than at the police station. He just had to deal. “You aren’t putting them anywhere.” His
lips were numb and his hands cold on the steering wheel; too many of his own inside folks were scared to death of cops. Tough shit. He wasn’t taking her back to that house. No way. “You’re just going to say what you’ve got to say.”

“You think they’re bad, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

“It’s not like you think. They came to all my dance recitals. And they clapped hard.” She shook her head. “I love my mom and dad. What kind of person says terrible things about their parents?”

“The kind that has terrible parents.”

“But they’re not,” she insisted.

“Not to you. Because you get to live a normal life while the others of you take the crap. But let me tell you, the worst isn’t what is done to you. It’s what you see done to others you care about. I couldn’t do shit on a stick for my sister Pauline when we were kids, but that didn’t stop me from trying. So don’t think I’m sitting on my hands now. Somebody’s going to jail. Is it gonna be me or are you going to let me do this?” He met her gaze until she looked down, and nodded.

When he checked the rear-view, he saw a nanny pushing a stroller through the parking lot, probably taking a shortcut to the library across the street. As soon as the rear-view was clear, he backed out, turned right to the exit and left onto the street past the library. He was leaving Seaton Grove, heading south toward the lake.
On the floor above Magee’s, the odour of onion rings wafted through the vent in Dr. Dawson’s examination room. She didn’t see her patients in tiny cramped spaces. Her office was big, with several chairs for conversation, and a good-sized examination table. Dolls from around the world sat on a corner shelf, smiling at young patients. On one wall was a gallery of photographs, from babies to adolescents, all of them adorable.

“Do you have any other concerns?” Debra asked as she filled out the camp check-up form for Bonnie Yoon’s son. There was an insulated mug on her desk, which she used for coffee from Magee’s.

“Eric’s still very small for his age,” Bonnie said, her son leaning against her, playing with the stethoscope.

“I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, but I can refer you to an endocrinologist. If he were my child I’d want to rule out everything.”

In the waiting room, the chairs were covered in faux leather, and a tickle trunk overflowed with toys. But nobody was playing with them now, regular hours over. The room smelled of perfume and talcum powder and baby pee and a trace of bitter disinfectant.

The door opened and Eleanor walked in. “Hello,” she said.

“Can I help you?” the nurse asked. She was new, otherwise she would have recognized Eleanor, whose daughter was a patient of Dr. Nash’s. If he hadn’t been such a stubborn old goat, he would have retired five years ago, and Eleanor’s daughter would now be a patient of Debra’s. The thought of it made Eleanor sweat.

“I’m Eleanor Lewis. I called earlier to invite you to the goodbye party.” She waved as Bonnie Yoon came into the waiting room, her son sucking on a lollipop.

“Oh yes.” The nurse leaned forward conspiratorially. “Everyone’s downstairs waiting. That’s her last patient. Let’s pop in and surprise her.”

Debra was sitting at her desk, writing something in a file, and didn’t look up as Eleanor walked in. “Where’s my next appointment?” she asked.

“Right here,” Eleanor said.

“I thought Judy was Dr. Nash’s patient. Is something wrong?”

“Only that you’re leaving us too soon,” the nurse said, following close behind.

“I booked Magee’s so everyone can say goodbye,” Eleanor said.

“But I still have so much to do. I have to pack up everything here.”

“I could help you, after Bram gets home. If you’d like.” Eleanor’s eyes were on her cellphone as she checked for messages. Maybe it isn’t true, she thought. Maybe there is another explanation. She had to think so, at least for the moment, or she would never be able to face Debra.

“I’m sure I can manage.” Debra took off her lab coat, and hung it on a hook behind the door. “I hope you’ll excuse the way I’ve acted toward you, Eleanor. Blaming you for Ingrid living next door was unreasonable, but I’ve been so stressed. This move is long overdue. I can’t wait to get to the cottage with my baby and just relax.”

“Dr. Nash and Dr. Kim and everyone from the breakfast club are downstairs,” Eleanor said. “We should get going.”

Perhaps it was all a mistake. A troubled girl, her troubled sister. Teenagers lie all the time. And if Cathy was telling the truth? Eleanor pretended to admire the cabinet of dolls, walking over as if she needed to see them closer, then turning to look at the gallery of photographs on the wall. No one would notice if she snapped some shots with her cell. On Debra’s desk was a family portrait and beside it another photograph: inside a silver frame, a man and a boy with a gap-toothed smile and cowlick. The boy was holding a fish. While Debra took a bottle of pills from a drawer and deposited them in her purse, Eleanor took another shot with her phone and slipped it back in her bag.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

“Rick’s brother and my godson,” Debra said. “Isn’t it a great picture?”

The child-friendly location was a small wood-frame house overlooking the lake, with a playroom for young children and an interview room for older kids, furnished with an Ikea couch and armchairs, a couple of plants hanging from the ceiling, and a two-way mirror opposite the couch. In front of the couch was a coffee table and on it a pad of paper and pen. Alec put the infant seat on the coffee table and the diaper bag on the floor.

“Any problem finding the house?” Detective Chan asked.

“Directions were good,” Alec said, helping Cathy take the baby out of the carrier and buckle her into the infant seat.

“Can I get you something to drink, Cathy? Are you hungry?”

“No thank you, ma’am.” The girl settled on the couch, Alec sitting beside her.

“Just call me Kelly. Let me guess,” Detective Chan said. “You must be—fifteen?”

“Fourteen.”

“Your sister is alert. Her eyes are everywhere. How old is she?”

“She’s my niece.” This voice was sharper than Cathy’s, the face blander than Ceecee’s, eyes hooded, carefully avoiding Alec’s.

“Oh, are you babysitting?”

A curt nod.

“Where are her parents?”

“One dead, one unknown. That would be the father.”

“I see.” Rapport building wasn’t going too well, even though Detective Chan smiled encouragingly. “What’s your favourite subject in school, Cathy?”

Heather would have cursed and kicked if she didn’t want to be communicative. Not this kid. She was the good girl. Considerate. A polite smile. Almost Cathy’s except that the smile stretched so wide that just a shade more would be a wolfish grin. “Aren’t you too busy for this?”

“Not in the least. I know you talked to Mrs. Lewis about something that’s bothering you, but I’d like you to tell me in your own words what’s going on for you at home.”

“Let’s see. It’s Friday and I’m glad the weekend is coming up.” She sat on the edge of the couch, her knees butting the coffee table. “Mrs. Lewis brought me over here. I’m not really sure what all the fuss is about.” While the voice spoke nonchalantly, the hand seemed to have a life of its own, picking up the pen. In quick lines: a man holding a camera, a man on a bed, a child on the bed, mouth wide in a scream. A few more lines. Another child.

“Can you tell me who these people are?”

“I wanted to work on the yearbook, but the editor said I’m too young. I’d like to be the editor.” The hand moved quickly sideways, drawing arrows, scribbling words, grabbing the page and crumpling it, tossing it in the wastebasket.

Detective Chan picked up the drawing and smoothed it out. “Let’s take a break for a few minutes. Can I get you a drink or some chips?” she asked kindly, calmly, not even a cough revealing the bile that rose up in her throat or the wish to kill the men in the drawing. You crossed the t’s, you dotted the i’s; you put such people away. The girl nodded, and the detective went to the vending machines. She came back with chips and Coke, then went to make a call.

Unseen behind the two-way mirror, she grimaced at the voice on the other end of the line, an expert from the Child Exploitation Unit. “We have people who are specially trained for this. Why do you always think you can handle anything? You’re supposed to bring us in immediately.” The voice didn’t say,
We’re probably going to have to start again from scratch
.

“The girl and her family are in my division,” Detective Chan said. She didn’t add,
You’ll insist on a medical exam when we
know it’s useless. Why put the kid through that?
But she thought it, for this was her territory, and human beings, even when they are doing good, are territorial. So before the officers from the Child Exploitation Unit arrived, she intended to take Mrs. Lewis’s statement, staking her claim.

For Debra’s going-away party, Harold Magee had arranged the tables in two long rows and had produced a magnificent cake. He was proudly wheeling it in on a trolley, a starched white apron tied around his waist, which was only moderately broad for a man who fancied his own baking. Rick stood next to Debra, his arm around her shoulders, smiling at their friends and neighbours, their colleagues and associates. It was a smaller crowd than at the memorial, only the people who knew them well, or believed they did, rushing here from work or home, arranging babysitters at the last minute, excited by the spontaneity, by the rightness of saying goodbye with food and wine and this cake of many layers, topped with sparklers.

In the din of forks and glasses and bottles and I’ll have another slice, Eleanor and Dan stood away from the crowd, near the arched windows. Eleanor muttered under her breath. Dan fiddled with her new cellphone, trying to send an e-mail with an attachment on it.

The other doctors in Debra’s practice made impromptu speeches. Someone had even managed to buy a going-away present and have it professionally wrapped with curly ribbon and bows.

“Cathy should be here,” Debra said, smiling as she unwrapped the present.

“She’s grounded,” Rick said.

“We could make an exception.”

“We could.” He squeezed her shoulder as she took her cellphone out of her bag and dialed.

“That’s funny.” She held out the phone as if he needed to see. “No answer. Should I pop home?”

“Just call her again in a bit. She’s probably changing a diaper.”

First the officers from the Child Exploitation Unit arrived and then the social worker. The baby was asleep in the infant seat while they showed the cameras, the microphone, and the two-way mirror to the sullen girl. Her polite smile was gone, hands stuffed in the pockets of her camo shorts. She said she felt sick, and warned them that she might puke on Detective Armstrong’s shoes. He was grizzled and jowly, the gentler of the two officers from the unit, a big man who’d been a boxer in college. After a brief consultation with his colleagues, he stayed in the observation room with Detective Chan, watching through the two-way mirror.

Cameras were placed so that everyone was in view as Alec and Cathy sat on the couch, the social worker in one armchair, Detective Ellison in the other. She was shorter than Alec, her face smooth because she didn’t frown or smile much, which made her look younger than she was. She wore a T-shirt, jeans and running shoes, loudly cheerful in yellow
and purple. Her movements were precise and controlled, her makeup skilled, minimal. She wore no jewellery except for a wedding band and punky studs in her ears. She began with easy questions—
What grade are you in? What’s your favourite subject?
But the girl didn’t answer or show any reaction until the social worker asked Alec if he’d like to wait next door with the baby. Then the girl stood up so quickly that she bumped the infant seat. Linny started crying and they all had to wait until the baby was fed, her diaper changed, the girl sitting on the couch again.