“What?” Richard’s jaw dropped open.
“Don’t you remember what happened with your Mum and Dad?” Keller said, “Did they ever arrest anybody?”
“Well, no…”
“Forget the cops,” said Keller. “Look – you’re a good guy, Richard, but you’ve spent most of your life with your nose buried in a book – you’re out of touch. Take my word for it – you’ll grow old and die waiting for the cops to find Danny.”
Richard shuddered and tilted sideways as if he was about to faint.
“You okay?” said Keller.
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
Keller leaned forward with his hands on the table. “I don’t think you’re on top of how much worse things have gotten in the past few years. Big cities like Vancouver were built with the idea that there would always be cheap oil. The oil’s gone, or at least it’s so expensive it might as well be gone. The old ways of doing things don’t work anymore – it’s as simple as that.
“Cops, firemen, ambulance attendants – they need fuel to operate like everybody else. It’s a different world now – one where you can’t depend on anybody else to help you, and that includes the cops.”
Richard hung his head. Finally he looked up and said, “There’s something else I haven’t told you.”
Keller raised an eyebrow.
“I didn’t mention it before because I was hoping that Danny would show up,” said Richard. “I didn’t want to worry you. I talked to one of his friends from school, a kid named Matt Foster. He tells me that Danny has been going to Surrey.”
“Shit,” said Keller under his breath.
“Jim, I know you spent a lot of time on the road…”
“Yeah,” said Keller, “I did my share of riding the rails – me and plenty of others.”
“Be honest. What are Danny’s chances out there?”
Keller didn’t speak – just stared blankly at the table top. After a few seconds he said, “We better start looking ourselves. I’ve still got connections with people on the road. I can find out if anyone’s seen Danny or heard about him.”
After Keller had left, Richard tossed Danny’s room. He flipped through the pages of all the books on the bookshelves, rifled through all the dresser drawers, and checked the pockets of all Danny’s clothes. He found nothing. He was about to give up when it occurred to him to try under the mattress of the bed…
The Mystery Deepens
It was a worn, stapled notebook – the cheap kind kids used for taking notes in school. Its black cardboard cover was creased, scuffed, and bent, as if it had been folded and carried in somebody’s back pocket. With a sense of dread Richard slid the book from under Danny’s mattress and carried it into the living room to read. Zonk lay in a corner and lazily opened one eye as he passed. Sitting on the edge of the couch with the book on his lap, Richard thumbed through the faded blue-lined pages.
It was some kind of journal, but it didn’t contain a narrative, like a diary. It was filled with terse notes, mostly unintelligible, presumably about where Danny had been going, though it never mentioned what he was actually doing there. There were scribbles around the margins, and sometimes even in the middle of the page. Some entries were dated. The journal wasn’t exactly written in code, but the entries were succinct, as if Danny had included only enough information to jog his memory about things he already knew. Most of the pages were blank, and even the ones with writing weren’t completely filled. The first entry he read was:
Apr 11 – 101st and Heather. Some indication. Nothing definite.
Another read:
5 blks S 8 W KG.
Beside the entry, in a different colour of ink, was written:
False alarm.
One word that was repeated several times, seemingly at random, was
Eldorado
, once in giant letters with lines radiating from it as if it were glowing with light.
Near the middle of the notebook, half-way down the page, an entry caught his attention. It read:
9 blks E 20 N KG. W*ld Rose Energy Ltd ! ! !
Under the text was a long line of exclamation marks, and around the page were excited scribbles, most of which were meaningless. In the upper left-hand corner was a crude drawing of a flower, which, in keeping with the scribbling below, Richard guessed to be a Wild Rose. Beside the picture was scribbled the word,
Yes!
He hit several blank pages. At first he thought he’d reached the end, but then he found a new entry, written with a different coloured ink. It wasn’t dated, but Richard had the impression that some period of time had passed between the previous entries and this new one. The entry read,
F says C can get transportation.
Don’t know if I should trust him – sounds kind of unstable – dangerous.
He went back and re-examined the entry that Danny seemed excited about:
9 blks E 20 N KG – W*ld Rose Energy Ltd
So… he thought.
9 blks – that is, blocks – E – that is, east and 20 – blocks? N – that is, north. So it’s: 9 blocks east and 20 blocks north – of KG… KG? But what is KG?
That night Richard was exhausted. His affliction was something deeper than physical fatigue – it was an exhaustion of spirit – as if his will to live was draining away. He sat with his head in his hands and for the thousandth time re-lived a night four years ago.
He’d been in class at the College. Danny had been staying over at a friend’s. A tired looking cop told him later what the police had been able to piece together – that his parents had surprised thieves who probably planned to steal from their garden.
He pictured his father’s lifeless body as he’d found it, twisted like a broken stick and lying in a pool of his own blood on the path to the back yard. His mother lay bleeding nearby, in the back doorway. Both were rushed to hospital. Richard contacted the people where Danny was staying and they sped to meet him.
His father was dead on arrival. His mother was still breathing; they allowed Richard to visit her. She was awake and lucid, though extremely weak. She tried to speak, and Richard leaned down and put an ear close to her lips.
“Your father?” she whispered. He couldn’t suppress his tears. She closed her eyes and shook her head faintly.
“Promise me you’ll look after of Danny,” she said, her voice fading. “He’s not like you – he needs someone…”
“No,” Richard said, the tears flowing freely now. “You’re going to live!”
“Promise…” his mother’s whisper was barely audible.
Richard nodded his head as his mother’s eyes closed for the last time.
He thought back on his life before the tragedy: a
degree
in Environmental Biology in his sights, a future of glowing possibilities stretching out before him. Though academic achievement was increasingly giving way to the more practical problems of staying alive, Richard had still dreamed of getting his Doctorate and teaching at the University, and his parents had sacrificed everything to pay for his education. His father, himself a Ph.D., had sworn that his sons would have opportunities equal to his own – and Richard’s father always kept his word. He owed them a debt that, after their deaths, he could never repay.
After the tragedy he’d given up on the degree. Danny, then only thirteen, still needed someone to look after him. The class Richard now taught at the Community College, while considered one of the most important in the modern curriculum, demanded little of his advanced knowledge.
He taught gardening.
The deaths of his mother and father had spawned orphaned memories among the living ones, like holes in his life. You could paper over the holes, he considered, blending them into the live bits so that even you couldn’t tell the difference, or you could obsess about them and let them eat away at you until your life was no longer worth living. He’d always done his best to choose the first option, but the second was always out on the edges of his psyche, threatening to come in.
In a fleeting instant, the two most important people in his world had been obliterated. Now, with equal speed, the deathbed promise he’d made had been broken. The brother he’d sworn to protect had disappeared, and Richard had not the slightest idea how to find him.
As if sensing his mood, Zonk ambled over and sat beside his knee. Zonk was a mongrel – slightly overweight and vaguely brick-shaped, with stick-like legs, a head that looked too small for the rest of his body, pointed ears that stood straight up, and a pointed nose. He wasn’t beautiful, but he had a way of staring up at you with a serene, beatific expression that was immediately endearing.
Richard had picked Zonk up at an animal shelter not long after the murders. No-one there knew anything about the dog’s history. He’d been found tied to a fence outside, in good condition, but with no note of explanation. His spaced-out expression had bought him his nickname, and the name stuck.
Richard had been looking for a dog to protect their property. It didn’t take more than a glance to see that Zonk was no guard dog, but when thirteen-year-old Danny saw him it was love at first sight – they took the dog home.
Richard reached down and scratched affectionately behind Zonk’s ears, and for a moment almost forgot his troubles. Zonk turned his head back and gazed up with his characteristic otherworldly expression, as if he were the guardian of some wonderful secret that, if Richard were lucky, he might someday be willing to share. Richard smiled, in spite of himself.
“Good boy, Zonk,” he said. “That’s a good dog.”
The College library was nearly empty early the next morning as Richard signed in at the desk and logged onto a computer. He’d used up his days off – and in any case wanted to do some research. Like most people, he couldn’t afford to own a computer and, more importantly, couldn’t afford the electricity to run one. From the street names mentioned in the journal it was clear that the entries referred to Surrey. After a short time on the search engine he located a detailed street map of the sprawling suburb.
He examined the ‘Wild Rose’ entry.
KG…
he thought as he studied the map, trying to match some landmark with the initials. Nothing. He hadn’t realized how huge Surrey was. After half an hour of searching at different map resolutions without success, he was about to give up. He sat staring at the screen, as if willing the answer to reveal itself.
As he stared, a feature came to his attention that he hadn’t noticed before. A faint dotted line, with pale circles at regular intervals along its length, snaked across the entire breadth of the deserted suburb. Straining his eyes, he saw that it was labeled: ‘Old Sky-train Line’. The Sky-train was an elevated railway that had been an integral part of the city’s mass-transit system since long before the turn of the century. Parts of the line still ran through the center of town, but service to outlying areas had been discontinued long ago.
Surrey’s been abandoned for years…
he thought.
Maybe Danny’s describing something that was there in the past. Maybe KG is some landmark that isn’t significant anymore and doesn’t appear now on maps
.
He adjusted the search to bring up a representation from forty years earlier and studied it carefully. The Sky-train line, almost invisible on the new map, was a major landmark on the old one, depicted by a thick, bright red line. He examined the line, following it to its end. A small red dot marked each station along the route. The very last dot was labeled: ‘King George’.
King George… KG, he thought
–
of course!
Armed with this last piece of information, he deciphered the journal fragment:
Nine blocks east and twenty blocks north of King George Sky-train Station.
He was so preoccupied with the journal he had trouble keeping his mind on his classes that day. He made two photocopies: One for the Police – as little faith as he had in them he was determined that they should have the information, and one for himself – to take along. He’d made a decision. After work he headed out once again for Jim Keller’s place.
“I can tell by your face the news isn’t good,” said Keller, as Richard joined him sitting by the fire. Keller poured them each a cup of tea from a kettle lying in the coals.
“I found a journal Danny’s been keeping,” Richard said, sitting down on a sawed-off stump beside him. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I understand it well enough to confirm that he’s been going to Surrey on a regular basis.”
“And I think I know how he’s getting there,” said Keller. “I talked to some friends of mine that are still on the road. They’re telling stories about a kid with a dog biking the Surrey road. But what the hell could the boy possibly want there?”
“His friend said Danny called it ‘prospecting’. The journal gives clues about where he was going, but nothing about why.”
Richard hesitated, not sure how Keller would react. Finally he said, “I’ve decided to go to Surrey myself. Maybe you could help me.”
Keller nearly dropped his teacup. “You? On your bike alone? Now that
would
indicate a death wish.”
“Danny was doing it.”
“You’re not Danny. Come on, Richard – you’ve barely stepped out of the classroom since your parents died.”