Chapter 17

(Monty)

But it was back to business the next morning. Brennan’s story about someone selling access to the Delaney family had gone in one of my ears and out the other the first time I had heard it. With so much else happening, I had just let it go. Then, with Delaney’s acquittal, it had faded from my consciousness. But after the squalid scene in the church parking lot, I wanted to know what was going on. The Crown had just under two weeks to appeal, and I would be on edge till the deadline was safely behind us. I couldn’t escape the feeling that there was more to the Delaney saga than I had been led to believe, and if there was bad news out there, I wanted to be prepared for it. I called Brennan after I saw a number of clients in my office. He came over, and we directed our minds to the Delaney family access scam.

“Fill me in on this poor little Cody,” I said.

“Cody was one of the two boys who followed the Delaney kids to the choir school and demanded their money back. Turned out of course that the Delaney kids knew nothing about the scheme. Anyway, I spoke to the two lads, Cody and Mitchell, and got their contact information. They had each paid one hundred fifty dollars to somebody claiming he represented the Delaney family. Fifty was for a promised ride in the Mercedes van. One hundred was supposed to get them an interview with the aim of, well, becoming part of the family. Whoever cooked up this plan convinced the boys that they had a chance to join the family as foster children. Seeing what young Cody has for a family life, it’s little wonder they jumped at it. Mike O’Flaherty was on the phone all morning with social workers. He learned that Cody’s mother is a hooker. Well, we gathered that, didn’t we? She lives on and off with that individual, that pimp, who wreaked such havoc that night. He beats her, of course, and beats the young fellow. The mother does nothing to stop it, as we saw for ourselves. In fact, she sticks up for the boyfriend. At the expense of the child and anyone who tries to help. We witnessed that first-hand.”

“As did Normie.”

Burke closed his eyes. He put his hands to his temples and massaged them. He let out a loud, exasperated sigh, then resumed speaking: “Anyway, not surprisingly, Mike learned that Cody has been taken into care.”

I nodded. That was inevitable. “And we’ll all be called as witnesses when the guy goes to court for assault causing bodily harm.”

“Good,” he said. “Monty, have you ever heard of psychosocial dwarfism?”

“I have. Also called psychogenic dwarfism. It occurs in children who are so deprived of love and nurturing that they actually fail to thrive and grow.”

“Mike was wondering whether that might be the case with Cody. He’s thirteen years old. Only looks about ten.”

“Could well be.”

“I still want to make sure he’s reimbursed for the money he paid out.”

“It will have to go to the Department of Community Services now that he’s a ward of the state.”

“Be that as it may, I’d like to arrange it. There’s also the other young fellow, Mitchell.”

“You know where he lives?”

“I have his phone number.”

“Give him a call. I assume he’ll remember your voice. How many Irishmen would he have spoken to recently?”

“How many Irishmen have promised him money in the bank?”

“Exactly. Go ahead.”

Burke punched in the number. “Hello. Would Mitchell be there, please?” He waited. “All right. I’ll try another time. Could you tell him Father Burke called? What’s that? Oh.” He put his hand over the receiver. “Someone said he’s not there. Now, a second later, he is.”

“Typical. The first response is always to claim the person’s not home.”

He took his hand off the mouthpiece and waited. “Ah. Mitchell. It’s yourself. Good. This is Father Burke, from the choir school. That’s right, and that’s why I’m calling you. We could do that today.” Burke looked at me and raised his eyebrows. I nodded. “No, I’m not bullshitting you. I promised, didn’t I? No police. What? No, I’ll be taking care of Cody separately. If you can meet me at the choir school within the hour, we can set up that account today. Fifteen minutes? Even better. See you there.”

So Brennan and I made our way to the corner of Morris and Byrne streets to await Mitchell’s arrival. When he came, there were two of them. Were we going to be the next victims of a shakedown? Brennan greeted the younger boy. He was bigger than Cody, but he looked to be around the same age, thirteen or so, and hardship was stamped into his face already. The other guy was considerably bigger, and older, probably fifteen or sixteen. He, too, had been down a long, hard road.

“Who would this be now?” Brennan asked.

Mitchell replied: “This here’s Kyle. It happened to him, too.”

“How many people were victims of this scam?” I asked. I refrained from asking whether they were now running a scam of their own.

They looked at me without speaking. Brennan said to the big guy, Kyle: “This is Mr. Collins. Tell us your story.”

“You’re the lawyer, right? That did the court case for Delaney?”

I said I was.

“Okay, so Corbo told me he could get the keys to the Mercedes and —”

“Hold it a sec,” I said. “Who’s Corbo?”

“Corbett.”

Of course. The foster son who didn’t work out. “Okay, go on.”

“He said we could take the Merc for a ride some night when Delaney was asleep.”

“I see. Did he make any other kind of offer to you?”

“No, he didn’t say nothin’ else. Like, he told Mitchell and Cody they could move into Delaney’s house with his wife and kids. He didn’t try that with me. I woulda known it was bullshit.”

Mitchell looked down at his feet.

“Excuse me!” I turned at the sound of a woman’s voice. She was coming towards us on Morris Street with a little curly-haired boy in a stroller. When she got past us, she lifted him out and gave him a loud kiss on his cheek. He giggled and she did it again, then placed him gently on the sidewalk. “You come with Mummy to Daddy’s office. We’ll both push the stroller, and you can walk in and show Daddy that his little boy can walk now. He’ll be so excited he won’t be able to do his work! Go ahead, darling, keep walking.”

The little fellow wore a grin from ear to ear; he looked as if he’d won the Nobel Prize. Proudly, he toddled along the street, one hand on the side of the stroller, savouring every step. His mum beamed as she walked at his side.

Mitchell didn’t look up.

I turned my attention to Kyle: “How much money did Corbett demand in return for a joyride in the Mercedes?”

I could almost see the wheels turning in his head. “Seventy-five bucks,” he said.

That could have been the truth, if the other boys were charged fifty to ride in the Mercedes minibus with Delaney at the wheel. The joyride with Corbett at the controls would have fetched a higher price. And this guy did not claim he was charged the extra amount for possible admittance to the Delaney household.

“When did this happen?”

Kyle and Mitchell looked at each other. Mitchell said: “After school started, right?”

“Yeah, it was when the leaves were red and starting to come off the trees, ’cause I thought I might be able to earn the money by raking leaves for people. But everybody I asked said no. Anyway, it was last fall.”

“Why wait till now to try to get the money back?”

Kyle shrugged, then said: “Corbett was like ‘Don’t sweat it’ when I saw him downtown in the wintertime. He said he’d get hold of the car in the spring.”

“I seen him, too,” said Mitchell, “and he told me some of the Delaneys’ kids would be moving out, so there’d be room for new kids in the house. And then when . . .”

“When what?”

“When the mother got killed, I said to Corbett ‘We won’t be able to go there now ’cause she died,’ and he said ‘Don’t worry about it. He’ll get a new one.’”

“Who would get a new what?”

Mitchell hesitated for a beat before replying: “Delaney would get a new woman.” His voice went up in volume when he added: “She was almost, like, Corbett’s mother, and he didn’t give a shit!”

We were all silent as we thought that over.

Then Burke spoke up: “All right. Mr. Collins and I will take you fellows to the nearest bank, and set up accounts for you.”

“You’re bullshitting us, right?” Kyle asked.

“No. Let’s take a walk. First bank we see, in we go.”

So that’s what we did. Burke and I split the cost of repaying the boys for Corbett Reeves’s fraud, and we put the money in accounts in the names of the two young boys. They said thanks. Burke urged them, for what it was worth, to save the money or at least use it wisely.

“Don’t be spendin’ it like a pair of drunken gobshites! Oh, and if your mothers see your passbooks and have any questions about all this, get them to call me at St. Bernadette’s. I’ll assure them it’s all legitimate.”

I wanted to know a bit more about Corbett Reeves before we let them go. Mitchell said he had met Corbett hanging out on the street somewhere, and the conversations about the Delaney family developed after that. The older guy, Kyle, seemed to know more. They were both anxious to get going, and I told Mitchell he could go. Brennan left with him. But I asked Kyle to stay for a minute and fill me in.

“I met Corbo in Shelburne.” The Shelburne Youth Centre in southwestern Nova Scotia. A detention centre for young offenders.

“When was that?”

“A few years ago, I dunno. I was, like, thirteen. Corbo woulda been twelve, I guess, ’cause as soon as he was old enough that they could put him in there, he was in there. Cops had just been waiting for him to come of age. So anyway that’s where I met him. This old lady used to come and visit him sometimes, bring him stuff to eat. These meat pies she used to make for him.”

“Who was she?”

“Some relative. I think her name was Mrs. Victory. Or Vickery. Something like that. She used to drive all the way to Shelburne from someplace in the Valley, where she lived. Probably took her hours and hours to get there in this old shitbox of a car. He used to joke about what a bad driver she was, because he lived with her sometimes, and she’d take him out in the car, and she’d drive really slow and she was half blind. So Corbo would laugh about her and her meat pies. He wouldn’t even eat them, said they tasted like roadkill, and said how funny it would be if the old lady got killed in a car crash when she was bringing him a pie, and she’d be roadkill too, and somebody would make a pie out of her. Sick, eh? Like, she must have really loved him, and all he did was laugh about her behind her back, and he couldn’t care less if she died.

“He didn’t want to live with her. Because other times he was living with this big, rich family in the south end of Halifax. That was the Delaneys. I thought it was bullshit. But he said it was true, and maybe we could get money off them when we got out. He used to steal stuff from their house and sell it. Like they had all this gold and diamonds, jewels and stuff, that belonged to the grandmother who was dead. It was just lying there in an old suitcase in one of the bedroom closets. The rest of them didn’t even catch on that Corbo was taking the stuff out of the house. He figured it served them right for leaving it around. And there was other things he said he’d do.”

“Such as?”

“I dunno. I can’t remember now.”

“Try.”

“Well, he said there was a couple of girls in the family. He said he might take pictures of them.” Kyle shuffled his feet and looked away. “Like, when they were changing their clothes or taking a bath or something.”

I felt sick, but tried not to show it. “Did he ever produce pictures like that?”

“No, no, I never heard nothin’ about it after we got out. Guess he never got near them, or he woulda taken the pictures. He’s a fuckin’ sicko. Delaney woulda killed him if he knew about that.”

So would I, I thought.

“Hell, Delaney was gonna kill him about the money he took off me and Cody and Mitchell for the rides that we never got, or the chance to move into the big house. Cody and Mitchell are suckers, if they thought that was gonna happen. But that was Corbo’s big scheme when he got out of Shelburne and went back to the Delaneys. Then he disappeared. Corbo did. I figured he was dead.”

“Oh? Why did you think that?”

“Because Delaney threatened to kill him.”

“Well,” I said, “I can believe Mr. Delaney would be a little upset when he learned of the things Corbett was up to.”

“You don’t get it, man. Delaney wasn’t just a little upset. He went ballistic. He took Corbo into the woods at night. Somewhere outside Halifax. He did something to him, some commando move or something that made Corbo scream and cry like a girl. Corbo said he couldn’t believe anything could be that painful, and he was scared shitless. Delaney got in his face and told him to get the fuck out of Halifax and told him in all these gory details what he’d do to him if he ever showed his face around here again. He said he’d kill him, and nobody would ever find him. Corbo, who’s a psycho himself, didn’t have no doubts at all that Delaney would do it. Corbo decided to fuck off that night. He came and woke me up and told me what happened, and bummed some stuff off me, so he could get out of town. I had some cash, and I gave him some. And he went. Like I say, I thought Delaney got him, and he was dead, until he showed up on TV.”

I was hardly aware of Kyle. The only thing in my mind was Beau Delaney looming over Corbett Reeves and threatening to kill him. Is this what Reeves had been planning to say on the stand? Had he come back to play out his revenge on Delaney? Was this the alibi he was going to offer Delaney for the night of his wife’s death? “I wasn’t there, My Lord, I was in the park threatening to kill my foster son. And I was so convincing, the kid blew town that very night.”

Oh, God. I had to get a grip. I cleared my throat and spoke to Kyle again. “When was this? When did Corbett come to you and say he was running away?”

“It was just before I got arrested again. I gave Corbo some of my cash, so I wanted to go out and get some more. I pulled a knife on a guy on Maitland Street, but I got caught. So they had me in court the next morning. That was at the end of October.”

“You’re sure of the time?”

“Yeah, ’cause that’s when I ended up in a group home in Dart-mouth. So I know when it was.”

I tried not to show my relief. The night Corbett fled the city after his encounter with Delaney was nearly three months before Peggy’s death.

“Do you think Corbett came back to get revenge on Mr. Delaney, by maybe telling this story in court?”

“Corbo’s more twisted than that. It’s more like he’d mess around with Delaney for the hell of it. Make him nervous. But he’d try to get something out of it too. You know, give fake evidence for Delaney, Delaney gets off because of it, then Corbo squeezes Delaney for money for the rest of his life. He’d have to stay out of reach, though, in case Delaney killed him. You wouldn’t want Corbo on the witness stand. No way, man. But you didn’t need him anyway. Delaney got found not guilty. Guess you did a good job. But Delaney woulda got off no matter what.”

I couldn’t help asking: “Why do you say that?”

“Because he didn’t do it. No way he killed his wife.”

“Again, why do you say that?”

“Because if he lost it with her and freaked out enough to kill her, they’d have had to pick up the pieces. He wouldn’t just push her down the stairs and leave it at that.”

(Normie)

I went to the Delaneys’ house on Tuesday. It was the ninth of June and it was a big day for us at school because we didn’t have any. Didn’t have any school, I mean, on account of our teachers all going to a meeting. Except Father Burke; he doesn’t like meetings. But he let the rest of them go. All the other schools in Halifax had the day off too. It was a hot, sunny day and Jenny Delaney invited me to her house. Mum said it was okay. Even Richard Robertson was allowed, but I kind of wondered if he lied about where he was going. Anyway, he came in this really cool old green car that made a lot of noise. Gordo was driving and he called the car a beetle. Jenny and her sisters and brothers had a big surprise planned for their dad because of him living in the house again and not killing their mum. He’d already moved back in, but they never got the plan together till now.

When we arrived at the house, Jenny and Laurence were in charge because the big kids all went shopping for stuff for the surprise. I asked what kind of stuff, and Jenny said treats and streamers and balloons. Sarah and Ruthie would probably sneak in some shopping for clothes, too, so they would be gone a long time.

The little kids were really cute. There were four of them: three boys and only one girl. Their names were Sammy, Danny, Edward, and Kristin. What they were going to do was draw beautiful pictures all over the driveway with coloured chalk. They were allowed to do whatever pictures they wanted, but Jenny gave them a paper showing how to spell “We love you, Daddy!!!”

I was going to help Jenny bake a big humongous cake and decorate it. She showed me some cookbooks as soon as I got there, and we gawked at all the pictures of amazing cakes that looked like castles or music boxes or even birthday presents with fake ribbons and bows on them. The only cakes we ever had in our own house, unless we bought them, were flat in a square pan. It was going to be hard to decide which kind to make for Mr. Delaney.

Richard was supposed to help Laurence build this big archway to put in front of the door, so Sarah and Ruthie could put flowers and balloons and everything all over it, for their dad to walk under. But when me and Jenny went down to the basement to see what the boys were up to, they weren’t doing their job. They were playing with the hockey game, or I should say they were trying to make the Delaneys’ two kitty-cats play and chase the players and the puck. But the cats didn’t want to play, and kept trying to get away. No wonder the game is always broken!

Richard was talking about his cat, whose name is “Filth.” Laurence asked him why he called it that, and he said his mother always called it “that filthy thing” and wouldn’t let it come in the house, so him and Gordo built a secret cabin for it outdoors. He said he’d show Laurence how to build a cabin, and even a place for the cats to do number two, and that’s when Jenny said: “Ahem! You guys are supposed to be making the archway, remember?” So they said okay and went to look for the wood and the toolbox.

“Boys!” Jenny said, shaking her head, when we were back in the kitchen.

She bent down and looked in the cupboards and got out bowls and a mixer, and she told me where the flour and sugar and food colouring were.

“Do you cook a lot?” I asked her.

“Yeah, I really like it. You?”

“I’m the one in our house that likes to cook. Mum doesn’t enjoy it much.”

“Ruthie and Derek do most of the cooking here, and Dad.”

So we chatted away and gathered all the stuff we needed, and decided not to use any of the designs in the book but to make our own cake, to look like the Delaneys’ big white house, with the black roof and shutters. We were going to cut cherries up and make them look like bricks for the chimney, and make some green trees for the front. We didn’t even need to keep running out and looking at the front to remember what it looked like, because their house is in a book about beautiful old houses in Nova Scotia, and Jenny had the book open on the counter.

It was fun swirling stuff around in big glass bowls and using the mixer. When we had flour puffing up in our faces and were in a fit of the giggles, Edward and Kristin came in and asked if they could use the paints and brushes, and Jenny said it was okay to play with their paints as long as they didn’t use them on the driveway, just chalk. Then we went back to our baking. There was a box of Smarties on the counter and we tried to figure out where to use them in the design, but we couldn’t, so we ended up gobbling them all up. We could hear hammering and sawing, and Laurence and Richard making dumb jokes and laughing in the basement. Then we heard them lugging stuff outdoors, and hammering out there. It seemed to take hours to do it all, but not in a boring way. I couldn’t wait till we had everything made and could see how happy Mr. Delaney would be when he got home.

Just when we got the cake in the oven we heard somebody burst out crying. The sound was coming from outside the house, so Jenny made a big sigh and ran out. I followed her.

She screamed “Oh my God!” and I knew it must be something bad for her to say that, because she’s not allowed to say it.

When I got outside I saw a bunch of big paint cans on the lawn, and thought maybe the little kids had spilled some paint in the grass. Then I saw Sammy all covered with red paint, and crying his eyes out. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Jenny was staring at the house like someone in a horror movie. Oh my God is right! You should have seen it. The kids had painted all the parts of the house they could reach. Instead of white, it was now green and black and red and yellow in ugly blobs of colour. It looked horrible! You wouldn’t believe it was the same white house that is included in the beautiful Nova Scotia house book.

Jenny turned to the kids. “What did you do? Are you guys crazy?”

They all started to cry. Sammy got mad and threw his brush at Jenny. It made a big red stripe down the front of her blue jumper. Sammy stomped away into the house.

“Why did you do this?” she asked Kristin.

“You said we could play with the paint!”

“I thought you meant your paint-by-number kits, not Daddy’s real paint!”

Laurence and Richard came running from the backyard then, and they gawked at the house and their mouths were hanging open.

Jenny started up again at the little kids. “Sarah and Ruthie and Derek and Connor are all going to have a heart attack when they see this! And Daddy’s going to kill you. He’ll kill us all, if we can’t get this paint off before he comes home!”

Richard looked at me and I thought he was going to make a funny joke, but he didn’t. He looked worried. Really upset.

“Let’s get this off,” Laurence said.

“What kind of paint is it?” Richard asked.

“I don’t know, just old paint from the garage.”

“Because if it’s oil paint, you need special chemicals to get it off, and even then it won’t really come off.” He went over and picked up one of the cans. “Holy shit. It’s oil paint, all right. Let’s go and look for some paint remover.”

But Laurence went to the house, and grabbed a bunch of leaves and tried wiping some of the paint away. All it did was smear around and around without coming off. It looked as if some of the paint was already dry, maybe because of the hot sun.

Richard had left and was gone for a few minutes, then came back. He said there was no chemical to remove the paint.

The little kids were still bawling, and Jenny went over to them. They backed away. “Never mind. You guys didn’t know any better. We’ll tell Daddy you meant to paint the house as a nice surprise for him.”

“We did!” Kristin said. “We thought he’d like the new colours!” She was sniffling and so were Danny and Edward. Jenny gathered them all up in a big hug, and Laurence went over and ruffled their hair.

“We’ll get you off. This time!” And he kind of laughed, and they did too, through their tears.

Then we heard the phone ring inside the house, and Jenny ran to answer it. She came back with a scared look on her face. “He’s on his way home!”

“Your dad?” I asked.

She nodded her head. Then she gave Laurence a weird sort of look and said: “We’d better check out back.”

And they took off around the back of the house. Me and Richard ran after them.

Jenny was standing there as if somebody had put a hand out and stopped her in her tracks. “Where’s all the wood?”

Laurence said: “Uh, we used a whole bunch of it for a log cabin. Over behind the maple tree . . .”

“A log cabin! You were supposed to be using those thin, bendy pieces of criss-crossed wood to make an archway. You weren’t supposed to get into Daddy’s wood pile!”

“I know! We just did, because it was fun.”

“Weren’t we allowed to use those logs?” Richard asked.

“No, but it’s not your fault,” Laurence said. “It’s just that Dad likes to, well . . .” Then he shut up.

Jenny filled in the rest of it: “When Daddy gets mad, which he hardly ever does, he goes outside and chops at that woodpile with this little axe he has, and he keeps doing it till he’s not mad anymore.”

Richard’s eyes were like great big saucers. Then I couldn’t believe it. He started shaking, as if he was cold. Or afraid. Richard!

Jenny said: “He’s never mean to us when something gets him upset. He just hits the wood, not us. But now there’s hardly any wood.”

“What are we going to do?” Laurence asked.

“I don’t know! Maybe Sarah will get home before Dad, and she’ll tell us what to do.”

That’s when we smelled something burning. There was smoke coming from the kitchen window.

“No! Our cake!” Jenny took off inside.

I started to follow her. But then I saw Richard going behind one of the trees in the backyard. I didn’t know what to do, help Jenny with the cake, or see what Richard was doing. But Laurence went with Jenny, so I walked over to Richard.

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” Richard was saying. He’s a funny guy, but his jokes don’t usually include swearing.

“Don’t worry, Richard,” I said. “He’s not going to go after us with the axe!”

But he didn’t calm down. He was curled up in a ball, shivering, and he couldn’t seem to stop. There were tears in his eyes. It was as if he didn’t know I was there, and when he saw me and caught on, he got mad. In a shaky but angry voice he said: “You think I’m a baby!”

“I don’t think that! I just think you’re worried. About, uh, the other kids.”

“Guys aren’t supposed to cry!”

“Who said? I’ve seen lots of guys cry. What’s wrong with it?”

“Well —” he wiped his eyes with his knuckles “— now that I think of it, I’ve seen tears in Gordo’s eyes . . .”

“Sure. Why not?” The things guys worry about! It’s sad. “But remember, Jenny said Mr. Delaney never hits the kids.”

“Maybe not. But he’s going to be really upset. He’s not going to approve of what they did.”

“Well, not approving . . . that’s not so bad.”

He looked at me as if I had said something wacky. “I don’t know how you’ve been brought up, Collins, but disapproval is a big deal in our house! Nobody gets hit, but it’s almost worse the way they react. You feel like shit when it happens. And you feel it for a long time. It’s a big, big deal.”

And it must have been, if Richard was shaky and all in a panic.

Then we heard the honking of a horn.

Jenny came running out of the house with oven mitts on and the cake on fire, and stared out at the street. “It’s Dad!” she croaked.

Richard said: “Oh God!” And then — it was unbelievable — he threw up in the grass.

I wanted to help him even though it was gross, but I also wanted to help stick up for the Delaney kids, so I ran to the driveway.

There he was. Mr. Delaney, getting out of his car and looking huge and staring at the house. I read somewhere about a person looking “thunderstruck” and that was him. He glared at the house as if it was a house of horrors. Then he turned and looked at all the kids, who were lined up in front of it, including Sammy and Edward who were covered in paint and Jenny with the black, smoking cake. The kids all looked too stunned and scared even to cry.

Then Richard came running towards us. “Don’t want you to face the music by yourselves,” he whispered to me.

Mr. Delaney saw him and me amongst the crowd of guilty people.

He took his eyes off us and looked down at the driveway. The little kids had written in chalk: “We lave you, Doddy!!!”

Mr. Delaney made this big noise, and everybody jumped. But then they realized it was a big roar of laughter. He started laughing so hard he bent over, and then he leaned against the car and put his arms out, and the kids knew he wanted to hug them, and they all ran into his arms.

Jenny threw the cake on the ground on the way to her father, and Richard picked it up. He grabbed this dirty, paint-covered paper towel from the ground and placed it over his arm the way they do in snobby restaurants. And he had this big grin on his face and he presented the burnt-up cake to the Delaneys’ dad. “Welcome home, Mr. Delaney.”

(Monty)

When I got back to the office after my conversation with Kyle on Tuesday, I called Beau Delaney at work and then reached him at home, and ordered him to come see me. Now.

When he came in and closed the door, I gestured for him to sit. He kept his eyes on me as he sat down. I didn’t waste time.

“I’ve just received some disturbing information.” Delaney blanched, but did not speak. His reaction made me wonder just how many disturbing bits of information might be out there. “It’s about Corbett Reeves.”

Delaney swallowed and looked down at his hands. He tried to sound bored, but could not quite pull it off: “Yes, what about him?”

“He was selling access to your family!”

“As I said to you during the trial, things didn’t work out with Corbett.”

“Didn’t work out? What if there’s another trial? What if the Crown appeals and is successful, and we’re in court again, and Corbett Reeves gets another chance to insinuate himself into the proceedings, and into your life? Maybe as a Crown witness. What’s he going to say?” I leaned across the desk towards him. “This Corbett took money from disadvantaged children in return for a promise of a ride in your Mercedes bus, and he squeezed them for more money with the promise of a chance to join the family as foster children. Held out the hope that they could have a loving mother and father and a beautiful home and brothers and sisters and a dog and a cat and who knows what else? They could buy into this happy future by paying a few hundred dollars to your foster son at the time, Corbett Reeves! And you can be sure the kids he shook down got the money from criminal activity because there is no other way they could have come up with it. They could have been caught and charged with theft, and had a whole new nightmare forced upon them. I know for a fact one of the kids got into trouble after giving Corbett money to run away. And you tell me ‘things didn’t work out’? What do you have to say for yourself, Beau? Somehow I suspect you would have reacted quite strongly when you got wind of this. Now, what the fuck happened with this kid Corbett Reeves?”

“There was a blow-up.”

“Between you and him.”

“Yeah.”

“Did it get physical?”

A hesitation, then: “No.”

“Why do I find that hard to believe?”

“I don’t give a shit what you believe.”

“Yes, you do. You want me to believe you were at the top of the stairs with Peggy when she died and yet you had nothing to do with her death! I think there’s something going on in the background here. It has me spooked and I think it has you spooked too.” He glared at me, fury in his eyes. “And I think the confrontation with Corbett did get physical.” I could almost see the effort he made to compose his features into an expression of unconcern.

“If you call pushing the kid to get him out of my way ‘physical,’ then it was physical. If you heard anything more than that, if Corbett has been spinning tales, all I can say is: consider the source. So get over this stuff about Corbett Reeves. What matters is that I didn’t kill my wife, intentionally or accidentally. Got it, Monty? Now stay focused on that fact and on how you’re going to counter the Crown’s factum if they do appeal. I don’t think they have any grounds, but that hasn’t stopped them in the past. And if it does happen, I’ll expect another superb defence and another acquittal. Now, if you have nothing positive to offer here today, I’ll be on my way, so I can have a bit of peace now that I’m back with my family again.”

I had no intention of getting over Corbett Reeves. And I had a lead to his whereabouts. Kyle had mentioned a Mrs. Victory, or Vickery, a relative who used to visit Corbett in Shelburne. She apparently lived in the Annapolis Valley. It didn’t take long to find a few Vickerys, and to narrow the search down to one: Alice Vickery, of Bridgetown. So the day after my confrontation with Beau, as soon as I got away from the office, I was headed west on Highway 101, and it took me an hour and a half to get to Bridgetown. I pulled up at the given address, and saw a big blue Queen Anne–style house with a high corner tower and a wraparound porch.

Mrs. Vickery greeted me on the porch and invited me inside. Her thinning white hair was held together with a number of hairpins. Despite the mild June weather, her trembling hands held a black wool cardigan closed over her wasted body. She led me to the front parlour, where we sat facing each other on Victorian loveseats.

“So. Mr. Collins. How can I help you? Would you like a cup of tea?”

“Sure. Thank you.”

She got up, painfully, and went to the kitchen. The tea must already have been on, because she was back in about two minutes with the tray. I took my cup and thanked her.

“Now. You’re here about Corbett? Where is he?”

“I’m not sure, Mrs. Vickery. As I explained on the phone, Corbett appeared in the courtroom during Mr. Delaney’s trial. I don’t know where he is now.”

“Oh! Well, now, he lived with the Delaney family for a while last year, spring to fall, and years before that, too. A very wealthy family, Corbett told me. Apparently, they relied on Corbett to help keep things running smoothly in a household full of children. He was indispensable to them. It’s a shame he had to leave.”

“Right. I was never clear on why he had to leave . . .”

“The jealousy and resentment, from what I hear. Corbett is so gifted, really. Athletic, intelligent, talented. Not everyone has those gifts. It is my understanding that some of the children in the Delaney home had various difficulties, handicaps, unfortunate backgrounds, that sort of thing. It would be quite natural, I suppose, for them to resent a boy like Corbett, with his good looks and his robust health and abilities. The situation just became impossible for Corbett.”

“I see.”

“But he’ll always have a home in this house, as long as I’m here anyway! My husband and I never had any children, so we were overjoyed when Community Services found us all those years ago, and asked us if we could take in this grand-nephew we had never met. We didn’t even know our niece had a baby. She hasn’t been living in Nova Scotia since she was a child, so we had lost contact with her completely. But we certainly had the space for Corbett when he arrived. He pretty well has the third floor to himself whenever he’s here. The whole area up there is one big room, with a magnificent view of the Annapolis River. I haven’t been up there in dogs’ years, myself. Like the basement, it’s out of my range now. I’m not good on stairs. You can go on up, if you wish.”

“Maybe I will in a minute, thanks. Tell me a bit more about Corbett. What is he like?”

“He’s a sensitive boy, a very trusting child. There are always people who will take advantage of a young person like that. He got in with some ruffians here. I never met them, thank goodness, probably because I go to bed so early and these juvenile delinquents would be a bunch of night crawlers! My daughter came for a visit from Calgary, and she discovered that some of my things were missing. Silver, my husband’s cameras, some foreign currency, and other items I had stored in the basement. I can’t get down those stairs now, with my hip. So I didn’t realize the things were gone. I asked Corbett if he knew anything about it. He said he would look into it. Turned out these companions of his had helped themselves to our family heirlooms! Corbett was mortified. He did his best to track the items down and get them back, but it was too late. He came to me practically in tears. ‘I’m sorry, Auntie Alice, I can’t get those things back. But I promise you I’ll never see those guys again.’ And he was as good as his word. He never saw them again.”

He never saw them in the first place, because they didn’t exist. To Mrs. Vickery, I said: “What else can you tell me about him? How far along is he in school?”

“Well, now, school. You know what the schools are like. Not everybody fits in. So he didn’t get the best of grades. But there are different kinds of intelligence, aren’t there? Corbett is an extremely bright youngster. He spent a lot of time here, studying on his own. He’s very interested in history, which delighted my husband, George, when he was alive. George taught European history at Acadia till he retired, and we came back here. His area of specialty was Germany in the 1930s and 40s — the war and what led up to it. George had been retired for a good many years, so he loved having the young boy around. He had a real student in Corbett! Oh, I miss him. I miss them both. My husband died two years ago. And Corbett, well, he comes and goes. I hope he comes back soon. You go ahead, up to his room. He did some painting up there. I hope he did a good job! Maybe you’ll see something that will give me an idea of his plans, or when he might be back.”

So I excused myself and headed up the two flights of stairs to Corbett’s aerie. If I had expected black walls and heavy metal posters in the teenage boy’s room, I had it all wrong. Everything was white. The walls, the painted wood floor, the furniture and linens. And, most emphatically, all the people whose images adorned the walls. Without exception, the pictures he had tacked up were of white folks with blond hair and blue eyes. Some were actors and actresses who looked familiar. Others I did not recognize, with one notable exception: SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. Not only was there a photo of the ss man with a little biography taped underneath it, there were chapters ripped from history books, giving all kinds of details about Heydrich. I flipped through the pages and shook my head.

A small portable television and VCR were shoved in a corner, with a stack of World War Two movies piled precariously on top. Then I found a homemade comic book with a superhero — more like a human killing machine — with an ss uniform and a face and haircut that looked a lot like those of Corbett Reeves.

When I returned to the parlour, I told Mrs. Vickery I had not seen anything that would offer a clue to Corbett’s intentions, at least not his travel plans. We chatted about him for a few minutes more, then I thanked her and said goodbye.

“Corbett Reeves is the blond beast,” I reported to Brennan that night at the Midtown.

“The boy reads Nietzsche?” Brennan said.

“Doesn’t have to. He has a twentieth-century role model who upheld the ideal of the blond Aryan warrior, and carried it through to its logical conclusion.”

“This would be someone from the Third Reich, I presume.”

“Reinhard Heydrich. Corbett has a collage of Heydrich memorabilia — photos of him in his ss uniform, excerpts from books about him, how he was taunted and mocked by the other schoolboys for — get this — his high-pitched voice, and whatever other flaws they picked up on, how he rose in the ‘racially pure’ ss and ran the Gestapo for Himmler, how he helped plan the ‘final solution’ in which the Jews would be wiped out. A Nazi so feared he made other Nazis tremble at the knee. Did you know Heydrich was the product of a very cultured, musical family?”

“That sounds familiar. He played the violin, didn’t he?”

“Right. The father was an opera singer. He sang Wagner — no surprise there. They even gave Heydrich the middle name of Tristan. They had a lovely house, a life of culture. And the son grew up to be a cold and murderous Nazi.”

“Well, Germany was one of the most civilized countries in the world when all this happened.”

“And the Nazis will always have their admirers. Like our Corbett. I found a comic book he created, with himself as a blond killer in an ss-style uniform.”

“What got him on to Heydrich?”

“The great-uncle, dead now, taught German history at Acadia University. When Corbett lived there years ago, the professor used to tell him all about the war, the Third Reich, the Holocaust. He showed him the materials he had collected for his classes on the subject. He didn’t expect the child to become a fan!”

“Do we know that? Maybe he did. Maybe the uncle was a fan himself. And Corbett seems to be exactly the type to become fascinated with the Nazis.”

“Mrs. Vickery had no insight into the kid at all. You should have heard the poor old soul going on about him. ‘Corbett is very bright, you know.’ And: ‘Corbett does not like the coarser things in life,’ she told me when I was leaving. ‘He needs comfort, a certain amount of refinement. He always loved this house, the furnishings . . . I cannot bear to think of him living in poverty, in squalor.’ He was robbing the old lady blind, and she didn’t have a clue! That young fellow, Kyle, told us Corbett used to brag to the inmates in Shelburne about living in a big house in the posh part of Halifax. He obviously thinks that’s the style to which he is entitled to become accustomed.”

“I’d say the Delaneys were well rid of him.”

“And I wish they’d stayed rid of him. I don’t like the fact that he’s out there, circling around us, with accusations against Beau.”

“What sort of accusations?”

I shook my head and raised a “don’t ask” hand in his direction.

Then I said: “I want to find Corbett. Either that or receive a message from a higher power, assuring me that Corbett has found true happiness on the other side of the continent, and has no plans to travel east ever again. The latter option is as fantastical as Corbett Reeves’s sense of entitlement in this world. So I guess I’m stuck with option one, track him down and try to determine what kind of a threat he might pose to Delaney.”

“How do you intend to find him?”

“I’ll start with you. Do you still have the phone numbers of those kids, Mitchell and Kyle?”

“I think I know Mitchell’s number, but I’ll check when I get home to make sure I have it right. I’ll give you a call.”

Brennan gave me Mitchell’s number and, through him, I found Kyle and, after a bit of rigmarole with him, I found out where Corbett Reeves was staying. So, the following morning, Corbett and I were face to face outside his current place of residence, a group home in Dartmouth. He told his story in his high, grating voice.

“Beau took me out to the woods. Somewhere outside the city, off the Bedford Highway. It’s got some name like poison. Hemlock Forest or something.”

“Hemlock Ravine?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“When was this?”

“I don’t know. Well, the leaves were red and yellow, so fall time. He took me along a path and then into the trees. There was nobody around. He told me off for getting money from all those little losers who thought I was going to give them a ride in the Merc, or get them into the family. And some other stuff I did.”

“What other stuff?”

“None of your business. So then I badmouthed him back, and he picked me up and practically choked me, then threw me down on the ground. He was going to kill me!”

“And yet, here you are, alive and well.”

“Only because he’s chickenshit.”

“He was afraid of you, is that what you’re saying? He’s over a foot taller than you, and he weighs twice as much.”

His face flushed, and he put his hands on my chest and tried to shove me away. “You fuck off! People who laugh at me don’t end up laughing very long.”

“All right, all right, settle down and tell me your story.”

“Bet you didn’t know Delaney wears special shoes!”

What had I heard about that? It sounded familiar, but I didn’t let on. “No, I can’t say the subject ever came up.”

“It wouldn’t ever come up! He freaks out if he thinks somebody might find out. They have things in them to make him taller!”

I remembered it then. Sergeant Morash had told me. Well, I wasn’t about to get into it with Corbett. “Let’s be serious here. Why do you say Delaney was going to kill you?”

“Because he told me!”

The boy was becoming more and more agitated, and in my own way, so was I.

“What did he say to you?”

“He said: ‘I know what you are. I’m going to send you to hell.’”

“Corbett, if Delaney was going to kill you, why do you suppose he didn’t just flatten you with one big fist? Why all this chat leading up to it?”

“Maybe he was chicken, and he was trying to talk himself into it. Trying to psych himself up.”

“What did he mean by saying ‘I know what you are’?”

“There are two kinds of people in this world. Did you know that, Monty?”

“What kinds of people, Corbett?”

“Masters and slaves.”

“I see.”

“Ever hear of the master race?”

“Oh, come on, Corbett.”

“I told you, people who make fun of me end up not laughing in the end!”

“Are you saying you have hurt people who have made fun of you?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. It’s none of your business.”

“Okay, go on.”

He studied me for a moment. “What are you? Dutch or something?”

“Irish and English.”

“Oh yeah? Well . . . English might not be too bad.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“That’s what Beau meant about me. I’m the blond warrior type, and I could cause a lot of death and destruction if I wanted to.”

I wanted to laugh out loud again at this preposterous child, but I kept it in. “Is this what you were going to say if you had taken the stand in Delaney’s trial?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not? Didn’t you want to take revenge on him?”

“I told the TV and the court that he didn’t do it.”

“You said he ‘didn’t kill.’ Maybe that meant he didn’t kill you. But you say he threatened to. Is that what your evidence was going to be?”

“I was going to keep him out of jail.”

“How were you going to do that?”

“By telling them he was with me that night.”

“Why would you do that, if the man tried to kill you?”

“You’re not very smart sometimes, are you, Monty?”

“I guess not.”

“I was going to get him off. Then he would be in debt to me for the rest of his life. And he’d pay me money over and over again.”

“You were going to blackmail him.”

“So what? He would owe me, fair and square.”

“But there’s a flaw in that reasoning. If he’s the killer you say he is, he’d just come get you some night, and bump you off.”

“No way.” Corbett shook his head. “I would have made sure he knew I left the true story in an envelope in a safe place, with orders for somebody to open it if anything happened to me. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Do you watch a lot of television, Corbett?”

“I said I’m not stupid, you asshole!” He looked as if he might burst into tears. His fists were clenched and he screamed into my face. “Fuck off! I’m leaving, and you’ll never find me! But I know where to find you!”

I grabbed him by the arm and stopped him. “Settle down. And I don’t want to hear any more threats out of you.”

“Why? What are you going to do about it?”

“It’s a criminal offence to utter a threat. Did you know that?”

“Oh yeah? Then maybe Beau Delaney better go to court all over again, because of the way he threatened me.”

“Seriously, now, Corbett. You didn’t really believe Delaney was going to do anything to you.”

“Oh, I believed him all right.” The bluster was gone from the young boy’s demeanour. “He meant it. He picked me up off the ground and made like he was going to hit me. He looked at me for a long time, like he was thinking. Then he told me to get out of Halifax and not come back. If I went anywhere near his house or his family, or even if I showed up in the city again, he would kill me. He would make me disappear. Then he just dropped me, and walked away. I took off in the other direction, and I got lost. When I finally found my way out, I hopped on a bus to get to my buddy’s place downtown. A friend of mine. To get some money and stuff. I got out of town that night, and hitchhiked all the way to the old lady’s place in Bridgetown. Because, believe me, I believed him!”

My mind was reeling as I drove to the office after my encounter with Corbett Reeves. In spite of myself, I found the kid credible. Had Delaney really been on the verge of killing his former foster son? “I know what you are.” What? A young misfit living in a world of neo-Nazi fantasies? When I got to the office, I saw a couple of clients, did my paperwork, and made some calls. This freed me up for the afternoon, I realized, and I decided to hook off for the rest of the day. As I made preparations to leave, I thought back over what I knew about Beau Delaney. Had I ever heard anything that would suggest he might attempt or threaten to kill a fifteen-year-old boy? I had just defended him on a charge of killing his beloved wife. The jury had found him not guilty. Were they wrong after all?