Hippie House (16 page)

That evening the three of us sat in Megan's living room, where we watched Mr. and Mrs. Young appear on TV. They were
appealing for someone—anyone who might have seen Fiona—to step forward. This was followed by a film clip of searchers fanning out over the fields surrounding their home.

A week later, Fiona had still not been found despite search efforts centering on the fields, the roadsides and particularly on the farmers' outbuildings in the area.

One afternoon I spotted my father returning from the direction of the duck house. I knew he had been down there earlier in the day and I wondered why he had gone down a second time. There was a small sense of relief in his voice when he spoke to me next, and it occurred to me that he had not been to the duck house at all. He had been checking out the area where the Hippie House had once stood.

Like Katie, Fiona Young had just disappeared. But unlike when Katie disappeared, there was little talk of her running away. We obviously didn't know her, but nobody talked of hidden personality quirks or questionable activities, despite the drug found in her purse. Instead we braced for another body to be found.

A
T THE END OF MARCH
there seemed to be no happy news in the world. On March 29, Charles Manson and three of his “family” were sentenced to death for the murders of actress Sharon Tate and several others. On the same day, Lieutenant William Calley was found guilty of the massacre of twenty Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. The pictures of children starving in Biafra broke our hearts, and Bangladeshi civilians, under attack by Pakistani troops, streamed by the thousands toward the Indian border.

And three weeks after she disappeared, Fiona Young's body was found.

She was found in a drainpipe by Boy Scouts on a scavenger hunt. It was a large drainpipe with room enough for a child to stand up. It connected the road ditches at the end of a lane leading to a rural community hall about two miles from where Fiona's purse had been found. A chill spread through me when I read about it. What a horrible place to be left until somebody found you. Especially at that time of year with the snow melting and the water running through it, with all the muck and animal waste and winter debris winding its way to the sewer. I only
hoped she wasn't lying face down in it, in which case her eyes and mouth would be filled with mud—a suffocating and almost unbearable image for me to entertain.

I wondered how the twelve-year-old boys who discovered Fiona's body were coping. Boy Scouts, like Eric had once been. In a race against other members of their scout pack they'd set out to search the park, fields and ditches for perhaps a duck feather or a rusty nail. Maybe it was a pine cone they were after, or a stone of a specific diameter, when they stumbled into the drainpipe. Did they trip over her? Or did they stop and stare, unable to speak as Eric had been unable to speak after discovering Katie, wondering if they could believe their eyes?

Fiona had been strangled in much the same way as Katie, although the newspaper article didn't say what with. Her hands had been bound behind her back before she was killed—the work of a wimpy, spineless coward, Megan and I agreed. Her murder caused a sudden influx of detectives into Pike Creek once again. My father said they were likely looking for similarities. It could not have been their hair color; Katie's hair was dark and straight, and Fiona's was curly and blond. It also could not have been their size because Katie was petite and Fiona was big boned. They must have been looking for something less apparent, perhaps something cryptic that connected the two girls. It could have been the friends they had, but more likely, Eric told me, it was something taken or left behind.

On a Sunday afternoon, Detective Mather showed up at Ruddy Duck Farm. He took another walk around the area of the Hippie House, through the woods and up and down the ditches on both sides of the road. He wandered down the lane between the barn and the workshop, leaned against his car, lit a cigarette, and smoked and thought. After a while, Dad invited him into the house for a cup of tea. At first he declined, but finally he tore his gaze from the treetops that rose from the woods where the
Hippie House had once stood, stamped out his cigarette and followed Dad into the house.

I remembered him from a few months earlier when he had questioned my brother. We had been so thankful when he'd arrived at the farm and taken control, particularly at a time when my father was not able to tell us things would be alright and assure us that this was a normal blip in life. I recalled Detective Mather being forthright in his questions, concerned and confident. I remembered his shadow, how when he'd stood up and put on his coat it had filled most of the wall. He'd left us believing that Katie's murderer would be found in a matter of days. But on this day in April it was apparent the long weeks of work and frustration were beginning to erode that confidence. I could see this in the way he leaned forward hopefully when he asked a question. And in the dark shadows that had developed beneath his eyes.

“These guys are our worst nightmare,” he told my father. “They just get the urge or they blow a fuse and we can't predict them. What happens is they get bolder each time.”

He was telling us they were not even close to catching the murderer. He was telling us it would happen again, and maybe again after that. It would happen until whoever did it was so certain he was invincible that he made a mistake big enough to get caught.

“Oh my gosh,” my mother lamented once he had left. “I can't believe this. We're living a nightmare. Emma, you're going to stay in this house until this crazy person is behind bars. Or electrocuted or hung—whatever they do, it will be too good for him!”

“But Mom what about school?”

Dad intervened on my behalf. “Clare, you know that's not practical.”

Of course I went to school, but again, I was not to leave the house without a bodyguard. And because Halley was so friendly,
she didn't count. The rules that had relaxed a little over the five months since Katie's death were reestablished. It was the same in every house; no girl or woman would walk alone. No girl or woman would drive down a country road to visit her neighbor, at least not without a couple of large dogs.

Once the news of Fiona's murder reached Mr. DeSousa, he returned home and stayed for two weeks. When he left for Vancouver, Ruby's brother came to stay at the castle. Buddy Garland—or Uncle Bud as he had us call him—was living in a motel at the time. He had recently separated from his wife. Ruby explained to Hetty and me that the separation was the result of some communication issues that the couple needed to resolve. Whatever the reason, the stress of the separation had proved too much for Bud and he had also taken a leave of absence from work. He was able to move in immediately. This put Mr. DeSousa's mind at ease. He knew how capable his family was, but somewhere out there was a monster, and he did not want to leave them on their own.

The snow was now melting in the open fields and the ice was creeping back from the edge of the pond. The cattle were almost done calving, and twice that week, large flocks of geese had passed overhead. The long winter was drawing to an end. It was time to shed our winter boots and for the buoyancy to return to our step. But it didn't happen that year. There were too many restraints on our movements. We were too frightened to stray from what had become routine. The mood in town was subdued and the conversations that had just begun to drift away from murder returned to it.

Yet a stranger who wandered into Pike Creek might think it was a vibrant little town. The population had boomed with all the plainclothes policemen standing on street corners, straining for any scrap of information, waiting for hours hoping the killer might sit down at their table and brag a little about what he'd
done. One of the most likely places for this to happen, aside from the Dairy Bar, was the local pool hall.

Blane's Pool Hall was on the main street of Pike Creek, tucked in between the Army Surplus Store and General Seed. I had never been inside it. I was underage, of course, but aside from that, there was nothing appealing about it. The windows were greasy and yellow with smoke, and if the door was left open the smell of stale beer and sweaty men wafted into the street.

The pool hall was the only drinking establishment serving a large rural area, and judging by the number of bodies visible through the window, there was no shortage of thirsty farmers around. Sportsmen would drop in on their way north, or bikers on their way to the beach or a rally. There was also the parade of surveyors and highway road crews who needed a place to unwind.

The younger men who frequented the pool hall, the James Dean wanna-bes, often stood on the sidewalk outside the door. Leaning with one foot up against the brick wall, they would comb their hair, loudly comment on the pedestrian traffic and whistle at passing girls. Cars, money and women dominated their conversations. But for all their talk, the Rosses and Lyles of Pike Creek never went anywhere.

On occasion a fight would break out on the sidewalk. Mr. Blane was a heavy, gray-haired man who had owned the pool hall for more than thirty years. In that time he'd seen many tempers lost, and he knew the motivations and weaknesses that ended in swinging fists. He was also a busy man. He had a business to run and as he was no longer young, his patience was leaving him. From experience, Ross and his boys had learned the limits of his tolerance. They also knew they would have no place to go if banished from the pool hall. Mr. Blane had only to step out onto the sidewalk to break up their fights.

I didn't understand the attraction of hanging around the pool hall. It seemed like such an idle thing to do. But then I
didn't understand much about the group of guys who hung around on the sidewalk except that most of them had dropped out of school.

I knew my brother and his friends were very different sorts of people. “Long-haired hippie freaks” the pool hall regulars called after Eric and Jimmy when they passed them on the sidewalk. Eric and Jimmy in turn called them “greasy-haired punks.” A lot of it was in the image. But there was an avid interest in knives, brass knuckles and all things leaning toward physical violence that really separated Ross and his friends from the boys I knew. Switchblades looked good in a boot, and chains could be used for more than just propelling bicycles. It seemed to be an image based on muscle, threats and retaliation, and it had always frightened me.

Eric had already told me that in bigger places there were tougher punks than our own homegrown Ross and Lyle. Getting drunk and smashing up playground equipment was kid stuff. There were guys with serious issues. Hoods you wouldn't want to turn your back on, who stayed alive at some unlucky sucker's expense.

The detectives confirmed what my brother said was true. I knew they had spent a few minutes interviewing the pool hall regulars after Katie's murder, but now they virtually ignored them. Which made me wonder—if Ross and Lyle were the most dangerous Pike Creek had to offer, yet they were of no interest to the detectives, what warped sort of animal were they looking for?

DESPITE HAVING TO PLAN
our every move and the constant presence of the police, we tried to continue on with our lives. But fear does nasty things to people. At its most rudimentary it's a life-preserving response. In nature there are two options: to flee or to fight back. We could not flee from Pike Creek, and even if we could, we did not know who or what we were running from.
Feeling powerless to fight back, the entire town was left in a heightened state of terror.

After news of a second murder, doctors heard more than the normal number of complaints; unexplained illnesses—headaches and stomach aches—and absences from school rose. People developed phobias to things that didn't exist. Megan said that every time she walked somewhere she heard footsteps behind her. She was getting a stiff neck from turning suddenly to check it out. Hetty was now in the habit of closing every blind in the castle as soon as dusk hit. It had become a ritual because the thought that someone was peering in on them just creeped her out.

Those already predisposed to a general fear of life were paralyzed completely. Doug McCrae's older sister was a timid person and had been a good friend of Katie's. After Fiona's death, she and her month-old baby moved back in with Doug's family. Her husband worked out of town for days at a time and she was too frightened to leave the house and do the normal things a person does. She had trouble dragging herself out of bed, so she lay around day after day, lamenting the fact that her baby had been born into a world filled with violence and dread.

I became jealous of Eric, who went about his business freely. He drove himself to band practice. They were practicing in Jimmy's garage in town now. And he walked where he wanted to go after school. Eric and his friends continued to drive down to Brampton to see movies that wouldn't make it to Pike Creek for months, if at all. After returning one night he stopped by my room to tell me about a new restaurant they had gone to after the movie.