Last of the Independents (26 page)

The big lights snapped off. I looked towards the office. A woman in heels was dragging the security cage around the inside of the showroom. She locked it into place behind the windows and locked the front door. She was walking to her car when she noticed me. Her smile was warm, but she grasped the strap of her handbag tight as she got closer.

“Were you still looking?” she asked. She was my height, around fifty, wearing a leather skirt and a frilly purple blouse with a plunging neckline. A big faceless watch on a platinum band.

“Just browsing,” I said. “Sorry to startle you.”

“Was there a car you wanted to look at? I can open up and get the keys, it's no trouble.”

“No,” I said. “It'll be a while till the settlement comes in.”

Her Nissan was parked next to the van. As she beeped the doors open I asked, “Do you sell a lot of blue sports utility vehicles?”

She raised one eyebrow, no mean feat considering the amount of work that face had been put through. “Why blue?”

I held up a business card for her to read. “I'm trying to find someone. All I know is he drives a blue SUV.”

“No year, no make, no model?”

“No.”

“But you're sure he bought it in town?”

“I'm not sure it has anything to do with anything,” I said. “Just a longshot.”

“Well if he bought it in town within the last eight years, chances are he bought it from us.” She pointed off towards the residential area. “I own the GM dealership, too.”

“You keep records? A database of who you sold to?”

Bemused, she shook her head and smiled. “If you have to ask that, evidently you don't know much about the car business.”

“Next to nothing,” I said. “I used to help my grandfather buy cars at police auctions, but that was pre-onboard computers. Now, something goes wrong under the hood, I'm completely clueless.”

“What's this for?”

“I'm trying to find a kid.”

“A runaway?”

“Somewhere between that and an abduction. The motive is still fuzzy.”

She nodded, looked at the office, at her watch, her Nissan and back at me. “Two hundred.”

“Pardon?”

“You were leading up to asking me if you could check the database, weren't you?”

“I was hoping you'd offer to help out of pity.”

“Not in this economy, kiddo.”

The dealer's name was Alessandra Bock. We quickly found that it was easier for her to compile the search results. I stared over her shoulder, inhaling hairspray and Chanel, as she narrowed the list by make and colour and gender of purchaser.

“You'd be surprised how many women buy SUVs,” she said.

After an hour she had it down to twelve names. I waited as she pulled the files.

“None of these leave the office,” she said. She set the stack of files on the desk. She lit a cigarette in the small inner office and opened the window while I read.

The problem was, I didn't know what I was looking for. Twelve names, twelve SUVs. Irvin Singer, Rob Hargrove, Gerald Barton, Bud Schmidt. I looked over Singer's profile carefully, thinking that Dominique La Chanteuse might be an in-joke. But Singer had bought his Escalade in late September of this year, and Perry had seen Dawn in August.

“I could use a coffee,” Alessandra volunteered.

While she readied the packet of instant, I read through Singer's paperwork again. Perhaps he'd driven an SUV before — but no, he'd traded in a four-cylinder Mazda towards the Escalade. I flipped to the end and stared at the photocopy of his driver's license. Singer was a harmless-looking seventy-year-old.

I flipped through Hargrove's and Barton's and the others. Something clicked. I went back through them slower.

Gerald Barton had bought his Grand Cherokee two years ago. No trade-in, no lease, payment in full secured by a loan from the local credit union. His business and home address were the same. Same phone number. Under the
occupation
space on the application he'd put
self-employed
. I knew from experience that that was never a point in one's favor when securing credit.

Alessandra put a mug of coffee in front of me and sat down at the desk. “So are you married?”

“No. You?”

“Not at the moment. Seeing someone?”

“Sort of.” My attention was on the files.

“What does ‘sort of' mean?”

I looked up. She was regarding me over the brim of her mug, which said
Proud Parent of a Bill Reid Secondary Honour Student
.

No sense in lying to her. I said, “It means we had sex once and now she's in Iceland.”

Alessandra took a moment to process this and decided it was funny.

“Scared her off the continent, did you?”

Barton's driver's license photo showed a forty-year-old white man, average height, and slender build. I almost didn't recognize him without his glasses. Gerald Barton. Jerry Barton. The Ostrich Man.

I
woke up Mira Das, had her repeat to me what she'd found out about Dawn Meeker from Zak Atero. Raised in a foster home. Brother missing. Was there any way to check if two people with different surnames had grown up with the same foster parent? Not at night, Mira said.

I wished Gavin or Mira had been with me, or Katherine or Ben. Someone who had my back and would speak up if what I was doing was reckless. But all my friends were other places.

I left Alessandra and the dealership with Barton's address in my pocket. My exit had been abrupt. It was late, and I knew where Barton would be.

The Palatial's parking lot was around back. The lot was half-f and poorly lit. No one milled about for a smoke or a private chat. I found the Cherokee. I peered inside. A large cage sat on the back bench. The cage was empty. Nothing but feathers on the seats.

I stabbed my knife into the front right tire, working it around. I did the same to the back right. As I extracted it the blade snapped. Taiwanese craftsmanship for you. Crouching, I moved back to the street and looked through the window. I couldn't see him inside, but I saw Shoshona and Di, mucking it up with a trio of bikers. I left before they saw me.

B
arton's address was 622 Mason Lane. 400 Block and 800 block showed up on the road map. I used my cellphone's GPS to plot a course that I could follow in the dark. And it was dark. I drove down the same unnamed logging road, past the Rusk home, down to the crossroads and left of Mason. 400. 500. At 600 I killed the headlights and pulled onto the shoulder, stuck a hastily-scrawled G
ONE FOR
G
AS
note under the wiper blades. My grandmother was right. It was too cold for just a shirt and coat. I felt my gun in my pocket.

Most of the addresses were attached to undeveloped tracts or farmsteads, their true size hidden from the street by thick second-growth forest. Driveways were long ribbons of hard-packed dirt or gravel. The addresses were marked on mailboxes or on boulders set by the driveways, almost impossible to see in the dark. Barton's drive had no indicator of address, not even on the rusty mailbox. I checked the GPS, then followed the driveway until the house came in sight. I cut east through the trees so that as I inched closer I was hidden from both the house and anyone coming down the drive after me.

The lights were off in the house save for a porch light, a naked incandescent bulb at midpoint over the stoop of fresh cedar along the front of the house. A white two-person rocking chair sat still beneath the bulb, burdened with coils of Christmas lights. A mosquito zapper hung beneath the eaves.

I followed the treeline to the side of the house. A stack of firewood beneath a moss-covered lean-to, blackberry bushes encroaching. A path of old car mats had been laid over the mud, leading to the rear of the house. The property rivaled Yates Manor in size, the difference being that here, nature had been beaten back instead of manicured and tamed.

The backyard was dirt, clumps of grass, and blackberry brambles; vegetation grew up through the old pens that formed a grid of posts and wire mesh. Half a chicken coop, gutted by fire. Behind the property was a knoll, steep and dotted with young pines. The moon reflected in the water-logged crevices and ditches of the property.

I knocked, entered, and turned on the lights. A kitchen, microwave door open, orange grease on the range hood, smell of pork in the air but not from tonight. A line of empty Grolsch bottles on the windowsill, an empty jam jar holding twist ties and feathers. Formica table, vinyl-upholstered chairs, and a booth done in naugahyde. A pack of cards and a cribbage board left out. A scratch pad, the logo of Duncan Perry Realty across the top. The page was divided into two columns, a scorecard, the initials
F
and
D
underlined at the top.
Django/Dawn/Dominique/Dad/Duncan/Di
. And
F
— whose name started with F? Father?

The microwave clock read twelve past three. I moved room by room, turning on lights as I went. Living room, hallway, broom closet, bedrooms, all nondescript, showing signs of regular use. A coat rack by the front door, his, hers, and junior's rain slickers and galoshes arranged with military precision. Apple box full of old newsprint.

Wrong house, maybe. The basement door was locked but only with the kind of knob that prevents a person from walking into an occupied bathroom. Enough pressure and it snapped open without damage. The lights in the basement were already burning and it was warmer than the rest of the house. The smell of birds told me why. Down the stairs I saw cages everywhere, orange-light incubators for chicks. Some finches and some chickadees and another half-dozen green-winged conures whose beaks followed my hand as I waved it in front of them. More exotic-looking species in hand-built ventilated crates, stuffed with straw and heaters. No ostriches, though. Sacks of feed leaned against a mini-fridge which held Tupperware cartons of grubs and other wriggling things.

The Ostrich Man actually raised birds. Imagine.

I phoned the RCMP and talked to a Constable Snyder. She seemed reluctant to speak candidly over the phone. I dropped Delgado's name, and Fisk's, and when that didn't convince her I rattled off my old badge number and told her as a fellow law enforcer I expected her to extend the same courtesy to me she'd expect in my place, and not a bunch of god-damned rigamarole at quarter to four in the fucking morning. She actually apologized to me while she checked Barton on CPIC.

“Nothing but a disturbing the Peace complaint against Mr. Barton,” Snyder said, “and that's seventeen years old.”

“Worth a try,” I said. “You know Barton?”

“By sight, not to speak to.”

“He seems a bit standoffish.”

“Well put, sir.”

“'Preciate the candor. Sorry to gripe. Have a safe shift.”

I'd been wrong before and was happy to be so again. For Christmas this year Jerry Barton would receive a pair of all-weather radials from an anonymous benefactor. As for breaking into his house and violating his privacy, chalk it up to caution and concern.

I almost missed the second door. The basement was painted beige and the stairs had been drywalled and painted the same colour. The door was behind the staircase, handle and hinges painted over, easy to overlook in the shadows cast by the orange light.

The door opened onto another staircase. Another basement. I remembered a Stephen King story, rat-catchers descending into basement after basement, each leading to bigger and more ferocious vermin.

Probably a salt cellar. Probably nothing. I pulled my gun just in case.

Down, down.

Django

Y
ou
go far enough, descend enough stairs, and you come out where you started. At the bottom of the staircase, propped upside down on newspaper with the wheels in the air, was a blue Schwinn Stingray. Someone was in the process of replacing the inner tube of the back tire.

I expected horror or emptiness in this hidden basement with its low ceilings and painted brick walls. I didn't expect another home, but that's what I found. When the lights were on I saw a small kitchen and a study and a dining room with a hand-carved oak table and three chairs. Saran-wrapped leftovers in the fridge, stack of vinyl placemats and a lazy Susan. Dishes and crock pot drying in a rack by the sink. No Django, though.

The living room had no television, only a furnace and two bookshelves stuffed with primers and Dr. Seuss books, Funk & Wagnall's encyclopedias with yearbooks up to 1994. On the top shelf behind a glass case was a row of elegantly bound notebooks, Moleskines or the like, each with a date chalked on its spine. Games on the lower shelves, backgammon and chess. A child's wind-up record player. No dust on anything.

I was drawn to the notebooks, but first the door. Like the other it was built beneath the staircase. The light switch was nearby, but flicking it did nothing as the bulb had been removed. The door was unlocked. I pulled out my cell and used the screen's backlight for illumination. A captain's bed, neatly made and tucked in, glow-in-the-dark moons on the comforter. A chemical toilet and basin next to the bed. And in the corner a great cage stretching to the ceiling, a bed of newspaper inside that spilled out through the grille to the surrounding floor.

The phone's backlight flicked off ominously. I hit random buttons to keep it lit as I examined the cage. On the floor were two dishes, water and brown hard spheres. I recognized the smell of dry kibble.

Once I was sure I was alone, I moved back into the living room. I slid open the glass case and took down the first notebook. I flipped through. In legible block printing, the title page read:

R
EDEEMING THE
F
AMILY

B
y

G.V. B
arton

A dedication: To James and Dawn.

An epigraph from Tolstoy.

At a distance, evolution seems linear. Birds from winged reptiles, homo sapiens from apes. We think this way about society, too, as if we move through the generations from ignorance to enlightenment, from evil to good, towards perfection. These are but convenient fictions. In truth, society grows misshapen and deformed. The family, our social heart, has stopped beating. Not only have we not protested this erosion-from-within, we have applauded it. We think technology and wealth will fill the void. Like flightless birds, we have lost our most valuable gift.

There is no progress without the family. By this I don't mean the ‘nuclear family,' that creation of a century's worth of advertising and propaganda. I mean a unit of people concerned with the welfare of each other, nurturing a spirit of community and love. All my life I pursued wealth and autonomy and excellence: I see now that all of this is fleeting and inconsequential without a family to share my blessings with, and to transmit my knowledge to.

I know my sister Dawn shares these feelings, even though we've never spoken of them. We have seen the horror of an empty and broken family, and we know that the only way to rectify things is to create our own.

As children I often held her at night in our shared bed, kissing her cheeks still slick with our foster father's semen. To reassure her I promised her that it wouldn't always be like this, that one day the old man would be gone and we'd have a proper family. Since arriving back in town, Dawn seems healthier than she has in years. Much of this is due to her young friend, James, who I presume has run away from similar horrors. How fitting that the three of us would find each other now.

What followed were dates and entries, some tending to the scientific, others journal-like.

Today I pitched my idea to the other women. Dawn remained characteristically silent. Barbara seemed reluctant to let Dawn and I adopt the boy, in part I think because she believes there is money in withholding her approval. Deirdre has bowed out, wanting nothing to do with us. She doesn't seem the type to betray her friends. I think she is eager to see her animals again. I can relate.

This morning Deirdre left and Barbara moved back into town. Dawn and James are sullen. I handed Barbara seven thousand dollars in exchange for “keeping her big yap shut,” as she put it. A small price to pay to start a family.

I'd hoped it wasn't true, but it is: the missing child on television is unquestionably our James. He is quiet and often sullen, but I believe he is happy here. He wouldn't try to contact his birth parents, even if we did have a phone in the house. In any case, I can't risk our family on the whims of a child. Tomorrow I will clean the sub-basement and furnish it for him. This shouldn't be hard, as the sub-basement is well-provisioned and built to withstand the end of the world. Our foster father was many things, God forgive him, but he was not unprepared.

Starting on June 6th, the tone of the journals shifted and the handwriting became sloppy, lapsing into bursts of cursive.

The lock on the sub-basement was broken. He was hiding beneath the sacks of feed, as if I wouldn't notice a different configuration of sacks. I don't know what to do with him. I don't believe in parental violence, having been on its receiving end. I will be lenient this time. We will see what develops. Maybe his “escape attempts” are simply part of a developmental phase.

He was in the backyard, having snared his leg in wire from the ostrich pen. Thank God Dawn and I found him in time. That settles it. I cannot raise a beast like a human. I will put the old cage in his room, so that it is visible from the bed, and vice versa. He will have a choice.

Success! After a week in the cage James emerged meek and obedient. Dawn is buying food for tonight's feast, the boy's first hot meal in seven days. I knew there was a better way than the belt.

Today I gave James his first bird, a chick with a maimed wing and vestiges of its absorbed twin still grafted to its torso. It won't live long, but it will teach James how to care for something, and allow him to observe nature taking its course. In the real world, kindness and cruelty are often intertwined. On a personal note, it feels wonderful to have someone to share my hobby with.

I am glad I was the one to find the body and the note. “Sick experiment” indeed! Fine sentiment from a career prostitute. My dear sister fell into low company before I intervened, and this “sick experiment” has made her happier than she has ever been. The child is safe and loved. All we need is a respectful distance kept by those who would meddle. Perhaps Barbara's decision to end her life is for the best. It does beg the question of Deirdre.

It's done and I'm back home. God will forgive me or he won't, but the three of us are safe. Maybe Deirdre would have kept her word, but I doubt it. Cleaning her apartment I found her own diary. She shared the same apocalyptic perspective that Barbara had. I didn't read it before shredding it. God can judge me, History can judge me, but I will not be naysayed by those with no grasp of the importance of my work. Don't they realize that if Dawn and I are successful with James, there will be a blueprint for others to follow in rehabilitating their own families? My sole comfort is that time has exonerated other visionaries before me. And if we are unsuccessful? I gave it my all and have no regrets.

Today Dawn left. I found drug paraphernalia in her abandoned room. Has she been in a stupor the entire time? I feel weary. Everything is off-balance. How can she prefer that life to this one? I must gather my wits. James is my responsibility now. If I set the correct example she will doubtless come back.

In the last book, the dates late September:

Life is funny. I sit at my table, alone with Precious, night after night, maintaining the illusion that I'm a harmless eccentric. “The Ostrich Man,” they call me. As if, to these drunks and harlots, I'm a kind of mascot. A pet. I cannot wait for posterity to vindicate me. The books they will write: “Barton's first great work was written in peculiar circumstances.” If only I could live to see that.

All great advances are predicated on failure. I wonder how much of my work I could salvage if circumstances forced me to flee. I love James. I consider him my son. Sometimes, though, I think of the mistakes I've made with him and I want nothing more than a clean slate. Maybe this is how Dawn felt. We are both hopeless dreamers. Sometimes the world seems so drab and mundane compared to our designs. Why can we not say to hell with the world and live in these designs instead?

I pocketed the first and last of the notebooks and headed out of the sub-basement. Nothing had been disturbed in the aviary. The house was still, save for the clicks and groans and hums that empty houses make. I went to the bedrooms on the main floor and tossed them. Gerald Barton was meticulous in his bookkeeping and kept a tidy room. Dawn Meeker's was filthy, and judging from the dust on the bedsheets, had been vacant at least a month. I wondered if they fucked and where.

I left the house via the back and retraced my steps past the wood pile. I noticed built into the side of the house a wooden hatch with a bar across it. I didn't have the stomach for another basement. I unlatched it and peered inside, once again using the cell as a flashlight. The door didn't lead down but sideways, in a narrow crawlspace that ran beneath the kitchen and living room, between the first basement and ground level.

A water barrel on its side. A long slim zippered pouch. I recognized the latter as a rifle case. I bent and reached inside, clutching the gun by the barrel through the bag. A lever-action Winchester 30-30, some sort of limited edition with elaborate scrollwork on the metal. I checked to see if the rifle was loaded. It was. Foolish to store a gun that way.

I bent and straddled the entrance, leaning inside the crawlspace. I righted the barrel and used my free hand to work off the lid. I leaned in and hugged the barrel and twisted the lid, which came off in my hand. The barrel tipped towards me.

That smell of human meat decaying, liquid sloshing out, soaking the crawlspace, soaking my shirt and hands. A yellow eye, stringy black hair, and that smell.

I fell backwards out of the crawlspace, landing on wet grass. My cell was out of my hand, lost somewhere. I grabbed the rifle, tried to push myself to my feet and gave up.

So there he was. Dead for over a month judging from the decomp. No indication how.

I couldn't look at him again. I wrote off my cellphone and sealed the crawlspace, my hands and torso soaked in Django James Szabo. I knew what came next. I picked up the rifle and flung the wet case into the bushes.

I sat on the edge of the porch out of the light and I waited — two hours? Four? Tears on my face, my clothes drying solid in the cold air. I froze but didn't care.

The first inkling of morning shone through the trees. Eventually I saw high beams down the path. The Cherokee stopped in the patch of dead grass that served as a driveway. I heard the door thunk closed, another open and then close. The Ostrich Man was whistling.

He reached the door to the house. He set down the conure's cage and fumbled with his keys. He stopped, maybe sensing something out of place. I crossed the stoop with the gun at my hip and stepped into the halo of the porch light so he could see the son of a bitch who was about to kill him.

Recognition on his face. Terror. A glance towards his truck. I stepped off the porch, cutting off his escape. He ran for the opposite side of the house. I shot from the hip like a fucking amateur and missed, the report louder than fury.

I followed him around the side of the house where there was no light. He cleared it, racing across an open stretch of backyard. Our feet made rude noises as we worked them free of the mud. I took another shot but missed him again, transferred the rifle to my left hand and came out with the Glock. I took two shots at him as we ran. I stopped and let the rifle fall and aimed two-handed with the Glock and squeezed off the rest of the clip, slow and with regulated breathing. He dropped but came up immediately and I knew I'd winged him but not killed him.

I tossed the pistol in frustration and bent to take up the rifle, the smooth shoulder rest covered in mud. My cast made it awkward to grasp the barrel. I held my breath and sighted on his back and fired. In the fraction of time between noise and impact I prayed to whatever God would listen please let me kill him. I saw the shot catch him almost square in the back and propel him down into the grass, scant feet from the base of the knoll.

I ran towards him through the mud with the gun held over my head like some kind of trophy. He was facedown, still alive. He managed to turn onto his back and look up at me. I saw the dark splotch of the exit wound above and to the right of his heart. His right hand held the knife blade which he'd worked out of the tire, clamped in a dirty linen handkerchief.

It took him almost a minute to drag out a full sentence. “I can explain if you'll listen.”

I pulled the notebooks from my pocket and held them in front of his face. He clutched at them and I lifted them just out of his fingers' reach.

“I did not kill him. Swear I didn't.”

“Your sister then?”

“Neither of us. We're not murderers. Not a hair on his head.”

“This isn't your house?” I kicked him. “Not your barrels?”

“I loved James,” he said.

“How'd he die?”

“Fell.”

“On the stairs?” A nod. “You push him?”

“He tripped.”

“You're lying.”

“He fell.”

I ripped the title page out of his book.