Lost Girls Read online

  “They’re all the same. ’Cept for the honeymoon suite.” He lifts his eyes to mine, but there’s nothing in them.

  “It’s got a TV, phone, separate shower?”

  “Ever been in a hotel room that didn’t?”

  “Well, in Europe…” I begin foolishly, but the blankness of his eyes remains set. “The honeymoon suite sounds like just the thing.”

  I register, pay for the first night (I’m not asked how many more may follow), take the key and directions from Mr. Hospitality, and ascend a set of stairs marked by a brass plaque with GRAND STAIRCASE on it in raised letters, though now not so much grand as unnecessarily wide. Turn right and all the way down to the end, unlock the door, kick it open, flick on the bedside lamp.

  It’s big. One could certainly say that about it. Bigger than the standard. Right on the corner too, so that each exterior wall has its own window overlooking its own street, as well as a semicircle of glass between them and a ledge wide enough to sit on. The smell of vegetable oil and burnt beef, moisture stains blotched over the ceiling, furniture of a sufficient age and ugliness to be sold at “antique” prices in the city but which in this room showed only their age and ugliness. All of that and still not bad. Unimaginable what set of misfortunes would ever bring present-day honeymooners to spend a single moment in such a room, but for Bartholomew Christian Crane, long-resigned bachelor and afficionado of the seedy, not bad at all.

  Sometime in the dead of night the phone at the reception desk downstairs starts to ring. It’s one of the old ones with a real tin bell inside, and the sound it makes carries up the stairs, down the long hallway and through the heavy bedroom door without any muting of its volume.

  Four rings, five—doesn’t that zombie who checked me in have anyone work the desk overnight? Six rings, seven—who the hell would be calling an empty hotel at this hour for so long? No doubt some long-suffering wife of a regular at the lobby bar attempting to locate her gin-soaked lesser half.

  With each ring I’m pulled closer to consciousness, although I resist opening my eyes. But by the time ring number fifteen finishes I take the Lord’s name in vain, pull on socks and pants, slip over the hardwood floor to the door and step out into the drafty hallway, ready to go down and rip the phone cord out of the wall. But for a time I only stand there. Arms crossed, cool drafts breathing against my back.

  I must have risen too quickly—everything suddenly prickling and light, a black ring closing around my eyes. Throw out my hands for balance and almost touch the walls, the hallway constricting around me like a swallowing throat. A clicking sound that is my tongue wrestling for words that have dried away.

  In the middle of the nineteenth tolling it stops. Echoes in the perfect quiet until it’s replaced by the whisper of dust balls scuttled across the floor by the sour air blown out from under every door.

  I remain there for a time, pretend that I’m ready to slide down the banister and throw the fucking thing out onto the street if it starts up again. But it doesn’t, and eventually the cold forces me back to my room. Pull up the covers and wish for sleep. Eyes held shut, listening to the imagined footfalls of the old hotel.

  FIVE

  It is an unfortunate fact that the largest and most handsome building in Murdoch is its jail, the whimsically named Murdoch Prison for Men. The original building, set in a green cleft next to the courthouse, is a modest but dignified red brick block with oak doors and a marble cornerstone marking its inauguration by some Lieutenant-Governor or other, as well as the date, July 16, 1897. Since then several additions had been made to the rear, and the structure moved within its high walls down a long slope to the edge of the creek that runs through town.

  Its history was obvious enough. Over the decades, with each quarry closing, and the ongoing confirmation that a tourist market was never to be, a sympathetic provincial government would construct another cellblock and expand the region which the jail was designated to serve. These days one of Murdoch’s greatest boasts was that it had criminals bused in from far and wide to serve their summary terms or await trial. And while other small town jails across the country were being shut down in favor of new, computer-managed institutions with state-of-the-art metal shops and swimming pools to assist in “rehabilitation programs,” Murdoch’s would go on with the job assigned to it at the end of the nineteenth century so long as the people who lived in the woods up here continued to do bad things.

  This will be Thomas Tripp’s home for the course of the trial no matter what I have to say, as those accused of first-degree murder are statutorily denied the right to a bail hearing. And it’s just as well as far as I’m concerned. I like my clients in jail as a rule. I do what I can to obtain bail, of course, but if I fail I’m always a little relieved, for this way I know where to find them, and can thus avoid one of the primary challenges of conducting a criminal trial: locating your client.

  Inside, the Murdoch Prison for Men looks like every other jail—waxed hallways, pale green paint over floor, walls and ceiling, barred gates where doors would otherwise stand—except older. Including the guard with blushing nose and alcoholic cheeks set upon a comically Irish face who takes me to the interview room and asks en route, “Up from Toronto, are ya?”

  “I am.”

  “Where ya stayin’?”

  “The Empire Hotel.”

  “The Empire, eh? Nobody but drunks stay there.”

  “That’s fine. I’m something of a drunk myself.”

  He swings around to shoot me a quick look. But he’s a man whose career has been built upon the efficient dispatch of wiseasses, and he doesn’t miss a beat.

  “Think yer man did it?”

  “It would be inappropriate for me to comment on that. Besides, with all due respect, it’s none of your fucking business.”

  “Quite so, quite so.”

  Before he opens the door to Interview Room No. 1 he pauses to smile in a way that is either an expression of friendliness or a practiced mask meant to hide something far more uncongenial.

  “Well, I can tell you this,” he says. “Everyone around here thinks yer man quite a strange one.”

  “The last time I consulted the books, being a strange one wasn’t illegal.”

  “That may be. But taking little girls away sure as hell is.”

  “Thank you so much. Now that you’ve clarified the law for me, could you just do your job and go fetch my client?”

  He meets my eyes for a moment, makes a horsey sound with his nose, but opens the door.

  “You just make yourself comfortable,” he says before closing it, which, it is immediately apparent, is exactly what he says before closing these doors on everyone.

  Who knows whether the guard takes his time bringing Tripp in because he’s busy with other matters of legitimate urgency or is savoring the opportunity to give me the finger from the other side of the one-way glass, but it’s nearly a quarter of an hour before he returns with my guy.

  “Thomas Tripp, meet Mr. Crane. Mr. Crane, Thomas Tripp,” the guard says formally, standing between us with hands extended as though to bring us all closer together in the way of old friends.

  “Thanks. But I think we can get along on our own now,” I tell him, gesturing for Tripp to sit down, but he doesn’t move.

  “I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” the guard says.

  “Look, I’m permitted as much time with my client as I require, as both you and the warden are well aware, and—” I start, and would continue (my appetite for laying into gnomish quasi-officials sufficiently whetted) but he stops me by raising his small palms in surrender.

  “Quite so! Quite so! Take all the time you need, Mr. Crane. Just you knock whenever you’re through.”

  He skips out of the room with something near a click of his heels—suddenly the sprightly leprechaun—and leaves Tripp standing in the same position as when he was brought in, seemingly unaware of the negotiations going on around him.

  “Please sit down,” I tell him, onc
e more indicating the seat on the other side of the table. Once more he seems not to hear.

  “Mr. Tripp, you’ll soon learn that I’m an unconventional sort of lawyer, open to almost any innovation in protocol, with the sole exception of conducting interviews with those who insist on standing while I’m seated. So please, for my benefit, won’t you sit down?”

  “You’re my lawyer?”

  “Didn’t your local counsel, Mr. Norton, confirm this with you? It was upon his recommendation that you have retained the firm of Lyle, Gederov for your defense. I’m their associate, Bartholomew Crane, although I urge you to call me Barth.”

  “Ah yes,” he says with a flare of recognition. “So you’re to be my winged monkey, are you?”

  “Is that how Mr. Norton described me to you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Neither of us says anything for a time until I conclude that the responsibility of carrying out the niceties is to be borne by me alone.

  “Well, for what it’s worth,” I say and extend my hand, which snaps him out of whatever spell had been placed over his motor skills. He gives me a firm, if somewhat moist handshake.

  “I’m Thom Tripp,” he says, and finally slumps into the opposite chair.

  “Well, I’ve reviewed your file, Mr. Tripp, and—”

  “Thom.”

  “Thom, yes—thanks—reviewed your file and now I need to talk to you about your view of things. You offered no statement to the police, which was wise. But what I need now is all the background stuff, anything you feel is relevant. Especially what you think the Crown may already know that I may not yet know, if you see what I mean.”

  He looks at me and breathes through enlarged nostrils, as though he requires more air than his nose was originally designed to accommodate. His file gave his age as forty-two, but I would have put him a few years older. Not because of the usual evidence of baldness, gray hair or wrinkles (his skin is smooth and his hair, although thin, covers most of his scalp and is more brown than anything else) but from the sticky weariness of his eyes. Aside from this one might even say he has an air of youth about him, a schoolboy-turned-schoolteacher precision to his features along with the eager, craning effect of a head sitting a little too high on top of his neck. But the eyes show something else, a white space between sagging rims and irritated lids onto which time has projected itself. Not the face of a handsome man, but there’s a neatness to the mouth and wide brow that suggests he probably pulls off a pleasant appearance in photos taken from at least ten feet away. This, I would guess, is the minimum distance required to diminish the dark grief smeared around his eyes.

  “You want to know if I did it,” he says abruptly, the big nostrils opening wide to release a long gust whistling up from his lungs.

  “Glad you brought that up. I should let you know right off that all communications between you and me are privileged, and as such are not admissible in court. That’s on the technical side. On the practical side, I don’t need to know if you did it. And as for my wanting to know, if I had to express a preference, I don’t think I do. In my experience such things rarely make a difference.”

  “Such things?”

  “The truth, as it were.”

  “So you don’t care if I’m the one or not?”

  “Mr. Tripp, a good part of what you pay me for is to remain single-minded. Caring would cost considerably more.”

  For a moment he holds himself as though caught by an unexpected flashbulb explosion—eyes peeled back, breath held—and absorbs the words that hang between us.

  “Maybe I’m the one who needs to know,” he says finally.

  “Well, unless your two former students show up with some additional information, I would have thought that you’re the only one who does.”

  That’s when the tears start. A series of transparent globes coursing over his skin with such speed that in a single moment they begin to drip steadily from his chin onto the table’s surface. What’s most strange about this performance is that he doesn’t apologize. Doesn’t wipe his face with his sleeve or turn his head away.

  “Well, that’s fine. You don’t really know,” I start, slapping at my jacket pockets to find that I’ve forgotten to pack my Kleenex. “That’s O.K. In fact, that may be good. We can get on without that information, so let’s not worry about it for the moment.”

  “Not worry about it. No.”

  He smiles at me briefly. But maybe not, the parting and closing of his lips so swift that it may have only been an exhalation of air, although that job appeared to be ably performed by his nose alone. What’s more certain is that the tears, so sudden and gushing a moment before, are now gone, leaving only two dishwater stains down his cheeks.

  “Can we go on now, Mr. Tripp? Thom?”

  He inhales.

  “You were the girls’ teacher, yes?”

  “I taught English.”

  “For how long?”

  “A year. They were very bright.”

  “Oh?”

  “Not the best grades in the class, but pretty close. They were interested.”

  “In what?”

  “Books, poetry. Stories. Good Lord, they were even interested in what I had to say!” He laughs at this obviously old and tested joke with a determined effort.

  “And they would come to see you after class for extra help?”

  “They didn’t need my help. They were just interested.”

  “But on the day they disappeared—did they come after class to speak with you then?”

  “Which day?”

  “The day in question, Mr. Tripp.”

  “Which day of the week?”

  I gage his seriousness in this, but his face is unchanging, so I check the file.

  “It appears it was a Thursday.”

  “Then yes, because the Literary Club met on Thursdays. That was when we’d talk.”

  “So on that Thursday, after you got together to talk, did you go for a drive?”

  “Drive…”

  “To the lake. Did you take the girls to Lake St. Christopher?”

  He lifts his eyes away from mine and up to the ceiling, blinks into the anemic fluorescent light as though in brief prayer. The stubble on his exposed neck like a clearcut of timber viewed from the air. But when he brings his eyes back there’s a narrowed concentration, the effort of memory.

  “Do you want to know something funny? I wanted to live in this place ever since I was a kid,” he says, suddenly breezy. “Back when my family used to come up from the city in the summers. I thought that one day when I was old enough I’d move here and live on that lake in my own little place forever.”

  “I see. But what—”

  “Just one of those cheap, rickety-as-all-get-out sort of vacation cottages. You know the ones? Nothing much at all. It’s always a little embarrassing, isn’t it? The things you wish for when you’re young.”

  “I wonder if we could—”

  “And then comes the real world. Flattening everything in its path, handing out the just deserts. So I end up living alone in a bachelor apartment in the ghost town down the road, teaching literature to students who can’t read the back of a hockey card. This is what happens to children’s dreams, Mr. Crane.”

  “That’s too bad, Thom. It really is. But for the time being I’m just wondering about you and the girls and the lake.”

  “The girls.”

  “That’s right. Did you take them up there that Thursday?”

  “They always talked about it.”

  “Going for a drive?”

  “About the lake.” He sweeps his knuckles over his lips. “They liked stories.”

  “That’s fine. But what I’m looking for here is a sequence of events starting, oh I don’t know, say, from the beginning, and going to the end. To your drive to the lake, if there was a drive to the lake.”

  “A regular water rat, that’s what my mother called me. I was such a good swimmer.”

  “How about the girls? Were th
ey good swimmers too?”

  He presses his lips together so tightly they disappear altogether except for the bloodless white crease they leave halfway between nose and chin.

  “There’s not much…”

  “Not what?”

  “…not much I can say without…”

  Then the tears again, a splashing torrent that falls onto his face but affects no other part of his body. No shaking shoulders or trembling lips. It’s as though they arrive on their own for reasons that are either unknown to him or so well known he has ceased to supplement them with any other expression.

  “Please, Mr. Tripp,” I say, pushing back the impatience rising in my voice. “It’s apparent that you’re under a great deal of stress. But frankly so am I, and you’re not helping very much. If I’m to act for you, there are some things I need to know. At the moment, I don’t have much: girls went missing on Thursday, May the twelfth; a fruitless search over the course of the following weeks; warrant issued for your apartment and car a couple weeks later which yielded cut-out catalog pictures of girls in pajamas on your bedroom wall, muddy pants in the laundry hamper, muddy shoes at the door and a few bloodstains in the backseat. Two months later you’re under arrest. There’s an outline of a story there, and certainly a whole number of potential inferences, but I think it needs some fleshing out, so to speak. Don’t you?”

  Sarcasm may not be the best approach under the circumstances, but the truth is I’m finding Tripp more recalcitrant than the usual. Clients are rarely forthcoming at first and even more rarely articulate, but if this guy’s la-la-land routine is as intentional as I suspect it is I have to let him know I’m not convinced. So I sit for a time with pen poised over notepad and wait. Count to thirty in my head and wait some more, although I lower my eyes for the next thirty because I have the feeling that if I got into a staring match with this guy I’d lose. And in the end he wins anyway.

  “O.K., Thom. Let’s try just yes or no. Did you drive the girls anywhere that Thursday?”

  “It’s not me you want to ask.”