4.

IT WAS AN ORDINARY DAY on the River Road construction site. The sun was shining. The river was sparkling in a crisp, light breeze. The workers were on a coffee break in their truck cabs. There was no abandoned Suzuki. There were no boats. No dogs. No helicopters. No police. No one was searching. No one, apparently, was missing.

The construction workers shook their heads when I asked about the police in my poor French. They had been there since seven. They had seen no one.

I hit the bridge over to the Ontario side at eight-thirty with every other commuter from Chelsea. The traffic annoyed me. I usually waited until after rush hour to go in to work. I was here because I’d woken up too early and been compelled to go for a drive.

It wasn’t my business. The police knew what they were doing. Or not doing. They had to make sure it was legitimate. Maybe Lucy had left on her own. Maybe she didn’t want to be found. I was supposed to tell someone named Anna—if she even existed—that Lucy was safe. Maybe she was safe because she’d taken off. Maybe she was safe because she was dead. No. I didn’t believe that. I couldn’t believe that.

Then why was I supposed to look in a poplar grove?

God, a psychologist would have a field day with a missing person showing up in my dreams, urging me to search for her.

I inched my brain back to reason as the traffic inched over the bridge. I was going to go to work and leave the searching to the police.

Roots Research was located in an aging red-brick building above a second-hand bookstore in Ottawa’s Byward Market. Angel, the company founder, joked that the bookstore was the company library. It did have its uses. In fact, there were quite a few “company libraries” along this stretch of Dalhousie. A few streets over, the market proper offered up fresh fruits and vegetables from local vendors during the growing season and, all year, excellent cheese, meat, fruit, and fish. There were good restaurants and bars, and live music that Marc sometimes came down to hear with me. The best part was that it was close to the interprovincial bridge. If I had to work in the city, there was no better place.

There were three of us working for Angel. He was a remnant from the hippie era, with a balding head he now shaved every day and a love of all things rock ’n’ roll. I’d been with him for five years, since he’d rescued me from a government job. My ideal was to be working for myself, like Lucy. But this was the next best thing. Angel was an easy boss. The hours were flexible, the atmosphere relaxed, and I could do things like Internet searches and report write-ups from home.

“Good God, Ellen,” was Angel’s startled greeting.

I gave him a warning look. “I’m researching the effects of traffic jams on the moods of Ottawa commuters. I wouldn’t advise talking to me yet.”

My computer wouldn’t boot.

“Your computer isn’t used to working this early either,” said Angel. “Go get a coffee or something. Don’t come back for awhile.” He waved me away and sat down at my desk.

I took myself across the street to Mellos. Coffee was the last thing I needed. Look how it wired Lucy. Where was she? Why weren’t the police searching? I downed a coffee I didn’t want and dodged traffic on Dalhousie, feeling a twinge down my leg as I did.

My home page was staring at me benignly when I returned to my desk.I picked up the phone. Put it down. Picked it up. Dialled. Put it down. Repeated this process until I finally got to the ringing stage.

Tim picked up on the second ring. His frustration matched mine. They’d sent only one cop up, he said. He’d filed a missing person’s report in Ottawa on his way home from my house. He’d told them about his record, he said. They’d asked him to come back this morning. He’d been grilled, he said. Now they wanted to talk to me.

He gave me the number for Detective Sergeant Howard Roach of the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police.

“Our hands are tied,” said Sergeant Roach when I was put through. His voice was gruff and pleasant and cynical.

There was a click on the line. “My partner is going to listen in.”

I told my story to the sergeant and his anonymous partner. My co-workers looked up from their desks and I let them listen too.

“We don’t have any official capacity once we cross the border into Quebec,” explained Sergeant Roach in my ear. “We’ve offered our ’copters and dogs, but they refused our help. We’re going up to the site this afternoon. We’re treating it as suspicious. Where do you work? We’ll come and take your statement on our way back.”

“Do you have any idea what time it will be?”

“Later this afternoon is the best I can do.”

“I’m not sure if I’ll be here or at home.”

“Give me all your coordinates—we’ll find you.”

“I’d rather you found Lucy.” My tone was dry.

“We’re working on it, Ms. McGinn.” He sounded cheerful.

I gave him directions to the office and my house.

I was too restless to work. I put my coat on to leave. I assured a now much more concerned Angel that I was fine.

I drove back to the site. I was hoping to see a full-scale search in progress. I was hoping to meet a couple of Ottawa cops.

I found a couple of Quebec cops instead, and Tim with a woman I’d never seen before. The Sûreté officers were just getting into cars. One of them gave me his card: Luc Godbout, Agent.

“Has anyone taken your statement?” asked Agent Godbout. “Non? I will return in half an hour. Can you attend?”

I could attend.

Tim was visibly shaking. “I didn’t sleep all night,” he said. “This is Marnie Baxter. She’s a good friend of Lucy and me.”

Marnie was a strong-looking stocky woman. Maybe the same age as Lucy. Her hair was a deep auburn with grey streaks in it. Her face was so freckled it looked permanently tanned.

This was the woman Tim had called from my house. I had never heard Lucy mention her. But that didn’t mean anything. Lucy and I had never talked about her other friends.

Marnie didn’t smile. There was no expression that I could read in her pale blue eyes. Possibly there was no expression in mine either. We were, after all, in shock. All of us.

“You live on Cameron,” she said. Her voice was raspy, a smoker’s voice. “I know the area. I have friends on McDonald. Where are you on Cameron?”

I tried to be vague. I didn’t like her knowing the name of my road. If she knew the name of my road that meant Tim had told her. But I had never mentioned the name. Which meant Tim had read the sign at the top of the road. There was no reason he couldn’t have; it wasn’t as if he couldn’t read. Except that odd comment of Lucy’s stuck in my head—that he found his way around by landmarks.

“We’re going to walk down the tracks,” said Tim.

I watched them go. They walked slowly, chatting, disappearing around the bend. It was all wrong, their manner of walking. They looked like they were going for a pleasant stroll. No one was supposed to be going for a stroll when Lucy was missing.

It seemed forever before they came back in view.

They got in Tim’s truck. It pulled up beside me and Tim rolled down the window. “We’re going to the station in Hull,” he said. “I’m supposed to meet Godbout at three-thirty.”

I didn’t tell him Detective Godbout was coming back. The two vehicles met a little way down the road. Words were exchanged from rolled-down windows. Then the green pick-up drove off, and the dark blue unmarked Sûreté vehicle pulled up beside me.

The driver leaned over and opened the passenger-side door.

Detective Godbout had sad, kind blue eyes. He looked more like a family physician than a police detective. It was the eyes, the clipboard in his hand. He might have been taking my medical history. The training was the same: ask questions that will illicit the truth, no matter how bad it is.

There was a difference. A doctor will assume a headache and work towards a tumour. Detective Godbout was assuming the worst. And he was assuming Tim was involved. He wanted to know if I knew of any problems between Lucy and Tim. He wanted to know if I thought Lucy had been abused or beaten. He wanted to know if I knew of Tim’s criminal record. And what I knew about the “disparition” of Lucy Stockman. And what Tim’s reaction had been when I had talked to him on the phone and in person.

Detective Godbout wrote out his first question on a piece of foolscap and handed me the clipboard and pen. I wrote out the answer I had given verbally and handed him back the clipboard. He wrote out the next question. Back and forth we went with the clipboard and pen.

When I was done answering his questions, I had one of my own: “When are you going to start searching?”

“If we don’t do it tonight, we will certainly do it tomorrow.”

Tonight? Tomorrow? A woman was missing. They needed to do something now.

It was as if he could read my mind. Detective Godbout smiled his reassuring family physician smile. “We will do everything we can. You leave it to our hands.”

I was uneasy, but I had done everything I could do. The police were on the case. I drove home.

The dogs were hyper for a walk. I started down the road, but with each uncomfortable step my nerves got more on edge. Now that I wasn’t sitting in the safe unmarked car with the kindly physician cop, his questions seemed more ominous. What if Tim had abused her? Or worse? And what if he came after me? How would I defend myself? And the house. With the doors unlocked, it was vulnerable too.

I tried to keep walking but every nerve ending tingled. Thick bush lined the road on either side, obscuring the railway tracks that were only metres away. The nearest neighbours were below the tracks, right on the waterfront. I had never felt the isolation of where we lived before. Never felt fear. This wasn’t a fear of dream ghosts. This was a fear I couldn’t ignore.

I headed back to the house as quickly as my leg would allow. In the kitchen, I rummaged through drawers until I found what I was looking for: Marc’s spare ring of keys and an old fishing knife. I stuck the fishing knife in my waistband and pulled my jacket back down to cover it. I worked the house key off the ring, locked the door behind me, and stuck it in my pocket.

It was still a short walk. My nerves were shot, including the actual nerve down my leg. I left the dogs outside and did some stretching exercises on the living room floor. Detective Godbout’s words echoed in my mind: If we don’t do it tonight, we will certainly do it tomorrow.

My anger took me aback. If the police weren’t going to take immediate action, someone had to. The word needed to be spread, the media needed to be called. I gave up on the exercises. I pulled out food to make a sandwich, mulling as I spread butter on bread. I jumped when the phone rang. The call display was only on the phone in the office upstairs. I hesitated, then picked it up. Tim wouldn’t be home yet.

I was wrong about that. At the sound of his voice, my heart raced. I forced myself to sound normal. I didn’t wait to hear what he wanted. In my nervousness, I launched into my idea of getting the media involved. Horrified to hear myself suggesting that he help me.

Tim’s little-boy voice calmed me down. He sounded eager, innocent, but out of his element. He had, he said, no idea how to start a publicity campaign. I flipped through the phone book, looking for city newspaper phone numbers to pass on to him, and offered to call CBC radio myself. Unable to avoid agreeing to check back with him. When I got off the phone, I looked at the sandwich and felt sick.

The phone rang again two minutes later. Again I hesitated and then picked up the receiver.

I wasn’t prepared for the voice at the other end. Its familiarity was like a massaging hand on a muscle you suddenly realize is tight.

“Oh, Marc.”

I wanted to cry. I never cried.

I told him about Tim calling. And about finding Lucy’s car. I told him about being questioned by the police. I told him I was happy to leave it in their hands and not get involved. I told him I’d spent the day in complete frustration because the police weren’t doing anything.

“They said they’d bring out the dogs, put a boat in the water. I went up to the site in the morning, and talked to the construction workers and nothing, nothing has been done. And then I talked to Tim—”

“Ellen—”

“And he was frustrated too—”

“Ellen—”

“And we decided we’d start calling the media—”

“Ellen!”

“What?”

“You just said you did not want to get involved.”

“I don’t. God knows I don’t. But the police are dragging their asses. And Tim seems so helpless. He has no idea who to call. Someone has to do something, to—”

“It does not have to be you.”

“But I just want to light a fire under their butts and then I—”

“Ellen, I do not want it to be you.”

There was a silence between us.

“How was your trip there?” I asked at last.

“Bon. I got here Sunday. There was snow in Marathon.”

Another long pause.

“Marc,” I said finally. “Why did you phone?” My heart was beating fast.

Another silence. I felt him reviewing all the possible answers, rejecting most of them, and settling on the mundane: “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“You are not.”

“No. I’m freaked out. Marc, I was stupid. He knows where I live.”

A sharp intake of breath over the line. “You … had him to our house?”

I shut my eyes. Hoping that would prevent the tears that were threatening to form. “Don’t,” I said, “yell at me.” My voice was barely audible.

Another intake of breath. This time slower. “I don’t want you to stay there. I warned you about him.”

Closing my eyes wasn’t making any difference. I swiped at the tears. “Marc. That does not help. And where am I supposed to go?”

“Here.”

“There? Thunder Bay?”

“I’ll pay for your ticket.”

I felt an almost physical wrenching in my arm sockets: I wanted to go. I didn’t want to go. I tried to think of practical reasons why I couldn’t. “The dogs.”

“Mary Frances will take them.”

No. It wasn’t fair. He was always wanting me to go to him. “Will you come home?” The question came out sounding like a child pleading.

“Ellen. I can’t. I just hired a crew. We’re just getting organized. I can’t leave. You know I would….”

I didn’t know that at all.

Marc was silent, too.

Finally I trusted my voice. “I’ll be fine. I’ve got the dogs.”

“Oh yes, our big brave dogs.”

The sarcasm was so unlike him it caught me off guard. “I’ve got the police.”

“You think they are going to give you twenty-four-hour protection?”

“No, but maybe they could talk me out of my fears.”

Marc snorted.

This also uncharacteristic response fired me up. “Right,” I said. “You could give me much better protection than the police.”

“Oui.”

The quietness of his tone threatened to spill the tears in earnest.

“How is your leg?” Marc asked.

“My leg?” The pain, I realized, had dissipated. Just since Tim’s call. “The chiropractor’s helping,” I said, to say something.

“Did she say anything about running?”

“Yeah, she said probably in a few weeks. I’m skeptical but I’ll see how I feel.”

“Why don’t you go to stay with Mary Frances?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “He has no reason to—”

“But if you are scared—”

“I’m not scared.” I was defensive. And also lying.

“Marc,” I said. “I’ll be fine.” I was talking very fast. “I’m going to phone the Sûreté and find out what’s going on. Tim says Lucy’s family is coming up from Toronto tonight. They want to go to the site. We’re meeting at the station in Hull tomorrow to demand action. I’ll call you tomorrow night.” The urge to hang up was so strong I made sure we actually said good-bye before I gave in to it.

On Wednesday morning I made the brief walk from the market to the Château Laurier. Ottawa’s fairy-castle hotel, with its copper-topped roof and turrets, was home to the local CBC radio station. I let a liveried doorman hold a heavy glass door for me and made my way across the marble-floored lobby. An elegant elevator carried me up to the seventh floor, where I told my story, the bare bones version, to a reporter and her tape recorder.

Afterwards, I bought some food in the market and headed back to the office. I sat at my computer and pretended to work. Every fifteen minutes I checked my answering machine at home for a message from Tim.

At noon I drove back across the interprovincial bridge to the police station in Hull. There was no sign of Detective Godbout or Tim or Lucy’s family. I continued on up the highway to Chelsea. No traffic to contend with now.

River Road finally looked like the scene of an investigation. Several dark blue sedans and a police van were parked on the shoulder. A German shepherd was being put into the back of the van. There was a police boat out on the river. The activity both relieved me and worried me.

Two big men in tweed sports jackets were standing with Detective Godbout. They extended their hands to me in turn: Sergeant Howard Roach and his partner, Sergeant Alan Lundy.

“Ellen McGinn,” said Sergeant Roach. “Or should I pronounce that ‘Mc-Gin’?” He pronounced it with a soft ‘g’. “Then you could call me McScotch.” He winked. He was a tall man with a shock of white hair and a ruddy complexion. A pronounced widow’s peak disguised an otherwise receding hairline.

“That would be my preference, too,” I said. I was used to the jokes on my name. “Did they—did they find anything?” I didn’t think they would have been standing around like this if they had, but I needed to ask.

Lundy shook his head. He was the bulkier of the two. He looked like he had been squeezed into his clothes. Under his tie, the top button of his shirt was undone, and only one of his jacket buttons was done up. He didn’t smile, but there was a kind of grim sympathy in his expression.

“The dogs have just finished a search,” said Roach. He nodded over at the van. “They’re going to bring them back this afternoon.” His eyes never stopped moving. They looked everywhere except at me. But I had the feeling he was memorizing everything about me, including my vital statistics and my car make and plate number.

“Have you seen Tim Brennan today?” I asked. “I was supposed to meet him and Lucy’s family in Hull but they weren’t there. He said the family was coming up from Toronto last night. They wanted to see where we found Lucy’s car. I thought I must have missed them.”

They had not seen Tim. “We’ll drop by later this afternoon to take your statement,” said Roach. “I’ve got the directions you gave us yesterday. Will you be at work or home?”

“Home,” I said. I wondered where Lucy’s family was. And Tim.

When I got home, I automatically pushed against the front door, expecting it to give. It didn’t. The car keys were still in my hand. I found the little-used house key and jammed it into the lock.

I was changing into jeans and a sweatshirt when the phone rang. It was CBC Television, wanting an interview. I arranged for them to come at four.

I had not been off the phone two minutes when it rang again. “I’ve been trying to get you,” said Tim. “We’re here at the Tulip Valley restaurant—me an’ Anna and Doug.”

“Anna?” The hair on the back of my neck prickled.

“Yeah, Lucy’s sister and her husband Doug. That Quebec cop Godbout is supposed to come an’ talk to us. D’you wanna meet us here?”

Lucy’s sister. Lucy must have mentioned her sister’s name to me and it had lodged somewhere in my memory. I could not have pulled it out of thin air.

I glanced at the clock on the stove. One o’clock. Roach and Lundy wouldn’t show up for awhile. I had time to go. Maybe they would show up there, too.

The Tulip Valley restaurant sat at the intersection of Highway 105 and River Road, a ten-minute drive north of my place. It was here that Tim had gone in to ask directions the other night. I checked the road sign at the corner and smiled wryly. It said Chemin de la Rivière. I doubted he was bilingual. He’d probably had good reason to stop after all.

The restaurant did double duty as a coffee shop and sports bar.

Tim was sitting at a table on the restaurant side with a man and a woman. Anna thanked me for coming. Her voice had the same low timbre as Lucy’s, but her colouring and features were fairer. And she emanated a milder temperament. Her eyes were big and brown, filled with gentleness and worry. “Dad wanted to come too. But he’s not well. And this—” Her voice broke.

Beside her Doug put a hand over hers. He was a tall lanky man with a full beard that hid most of his face. He wanted to order me a coffee and hear every detail of my finding the car.

I described the events of Monday evening.

In the back of my head, Lucy’s voice was whispering, insistent.

I tried to ignore it. I was going to sound like some kind of flaky visionary if I passed on her “message.” And why give false hope? But Lucy’s voice compelled me. Lucy’s voice and her sister’s eyes across the table.

I made my voice apologetic. I didn’t tell her who had given me the dream message—just “a friend.” I felt Tim listening. I wished I had waited until we were alone to speak.

Anna’s eyes gleamed with tears. And gratitude. Suddenly Doug was handing over a sheaf of paper. I glanced down and was startled to see Lucy smiling at me from a photocopied photograph. I hadn’t thought of posters. I promised to put them up.

Detective Godbout arrived with his kindly, now tired, physician’s eyes and no reassuring news. The dogs had picked up no scent. That, said Detective Godbout in his careful English, meant it was now in the hands of the Ottawa police; that was the last place Lucy had been seen.

He asked if anyone had questions. They did. His answers were not guaranteed to satisfy. He knew this. He spread his hands in apology and left us.

We pushed back our chairs and rose to go.

Anna touched my arm. She let the others go on ahead. “Can I call you, to…?”

“Of course.” I gave her my phone number. I didn’t think I had anything helpful to offer, but I couldn’t refuse.

“Curtis is sure he did it. But I don’t know. He’s so upset. I don’t think he’s thinking straight. Maybe—”

“Curtis?” I interrupted. That name had been in one of Tim’s letters.

“Curtis,” repeated Anna. She must have seen my blank look. “It was Curtis she was living with when she met Tim. Tim was so jealous.”

Lucy hadn’t just been seeing someone; she’d been living with him.

“We all wrote letters of support to the National Parole Board—me, my father, Doug, all her friends. We pledged our support. You said she was safe. Do you think she’s just … got away?”

I had no answer for her. None I believed. I hugged her close. I told her I would call her if I heard anything.

She was turning to go but this time I stopped her. “Anna, I didn’t want to say anything in front of the others, but the person speaking in my dream wasn’t just any friend.” I paused and met her eyes. “It was your sister.”

A startled look came over her face. And then something like confusion. “I’m sorry,” I added. “I know it sounds crazy. And I hope it doesn’t upset you. But I thought you should know.”

Her eyes filled with tears again. She nodded, wiping her cheek. “Thank you. I appreciate it.” Through the open door we could hear Doug calling her. “I should go, but I—I just need to ask you.” She hesitated, looked away. Looked back at me. “Are you sure she said, ‘Anna’”?

I nodded. “I had no idea who ‘Anna’ was but the name was clear. I only realized it was you when Tim mentioned your name when he called this afternoon.” I looked at her questioningly.

She gave me a teary smile. “Okay. Thanks. Really, thanks, Ellen.” She pressed my hand and rushed out of the restaurant.

The television crew arrived at my door just after I did. They rolled the camera while I taped one of Doug’s posters to the side of the cluster of green mailboxes at the top of the road.

In the photo on the poster, Lucy is standing on her front porch. She is dressed up to go out somewhere, wearing a knee-length patterned dress and heels. She is smiling right beside the block-lettered words “MISSING PERSON” and her physical description.

LUCY STOCKMAN
46 YEARS OLD
5'1" TALL
100 POUNDS
DARK BROWN SHOULDER LENGTH HAIR
TANNED COMPLEXION, BROWN EYES
LAST SEEN APRIL 22 (SAT) WEARING A DARK BLUE COAT WITH SMALL RED STRIPE, BLACK OR NAVY COLOURED TIGHT PANTS, NIKE RUNNERS.
HER YELLOW AND WHITE SUZUKI SIDEKICK WAS FOUND PARKED ON RIVER ROAD JUST SOUTH OF THE LARGE ROCK QUARRY AT THE BOTTOM OF THE HILL WHERE THE ROAD CONSTRUCTION SITE IS.

The police contact information was provided at the bottom.

There was one message waiting on my machine when I got home. It was from Curtis. He spoke in a quiet voice that seemed to mask some great emotion. He had got my number from Tim. He hoped I would call him back.

From Tim? Was he in league with Tim? That made no sense. He was, I assumed, the jilted lover. How would I feel if something happened to Marc? Devastated.

I made myself eat dinner to work up my nerve to call him back. His exchange was in the Wakefield area.

Our conversation was awkward. He wanted to hear the story of how I’d found the car. I gave him the same bare bones version I’d given the CBC. I remembered he’d gotten my phone number from Tim. “Did you call Tim?” I asked.

“I called Lucy,” said Curtis. “On Sunday. Tim said she wasn’t home and I hung up, but he called me back. He must have star-sixty-nined me.” He was referring to the phone company last-number-called service. He didn’t sound pleased. “He gave me some song and dance about Lucy coming to stay with me on the weekend.”

“Lucy told me she was going to be in the Gatineaus on the weekend,” I said.

“We never made any definite plans.” He sounded adamant. And defensive, as if others had already brought this up. Then, in a disquieting tone, he added, “She wouldn’t listen to me.”

No, I thought. There wouldn’t be many people Lucy would listen to. I thought about what she’d said about being abandoned by all her lovers. Until Tim. If she’d still been with Curtis when she started seeing Tim, he must have been absent in some way. I could well imagine the conflicts that would have created. Still, it must have been a slap in the face when she’d started corresponding with Tim. Had Curtis been jealous? But Anna had said it was Tim who’d been jealous.

“Have you talked to the police?” I asked.

“They’ve been here.”

There was a silence. He obviously didn’t want to say more. As I didn’t. I tried to think of something neutral. “We’re trying to get a media campaign going. I got Tim to call the papers. I talked to CBC. Anna and Doug made some posters.”

“I’m knocking on doors in the area,” said Curtis. Then there was a pause, and his voice became more conciliatory. “I don’t have any connections to Lucy’s friends anymore. If you hear anything, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.”

I reviewed our conversation in my mind after we hung up. He had sounded as wary as I had felt. We had danced around each other, neither giving the other too much information. His reactions were the same as mine. He must be innocent. I caught myself. What do you know? Trust no one.

I had agreed to call him. But I didn’t intend to.

I drifted in and out of sleep. Voices were filling my head with unintelligible words. There were no faces attached to the voices. They kept waking me up. And then the voices faded, and Lucy was again sitting on my bed.

Her mouth begins moving. She speaks as if with great effort. But I hear every word. “He’s trying to frighten me. So I’ll stay.” An image comes, a silent-screen image. A small figure with long, dark hair lying on a couch, eyes closed, then opening, expression angry, her mouth moving as if yelling. Someone hovers over her. A faceless male figure. He forces something down her throat. Pills. A second, shorter figure watches. Again, no face. Then Lucy’s voice, in eerie voice-over: “You’ve looked in her eyes.”

I am in a vehicle, moving to the end of a street with houses on either side. I see stores on a busy street. Then an odometer, larger than life. The numbers click over. Five, six, seven. The odometer fades and I’m back in the car, watching it stop beside a dark shadow of a building.

Lucy’s voice again. “Abandoned buildings—outbuildings. I’m wrapped in something—a man-made material. She’s afraid. Follow her.”

Then Lucy reappears on my bed. Looking at me. Pointing at her watch. Frantically.

I sat up in bed, and reached for the light. My heart was pounding, my T-shirt soaked. Oh God, it was happening again.

I got up to get a drink of water. Lucy’s voice was still in my head. He’s trying to frighten me. So I’ll stay. “He” could only be Tim.

The images returned, vivid in my memory. Pills being forced down Lucy’s throat, her anger. Tim had mentioned Lucy had a supply of Valium. My subconscious had clearly taken that idea and run with it. Because I didn’t want to entertain more violent thoughts. Because I didn’t want to think about why she might have needed Valium.

But there were lots of things in the dream that couldn’t have come from my subconscious. The involvement of a second person. Someone whose eyes I had looked into. Who had I met that Lucy and Tim knew? Only Marnie. Was Marnie involved? She was the second person Tim had called from my house. She had been right there with him the next day. Follow her. Why? Was Marnie checking on her? Could Marnie lead the police right to her? I had been in a car, driving down a main street, stopping at a building. Abandoned outbuildings.

He’s trying to frighten me. So I’ll stay. Of everything in the dream, those words made the most sense. She’d been trying to get away. Maybe she had got away. Maybe she’d abandoned her car to make it look like Tim had done something to her. The car had been found up somewhere near where Curtis lived. Maybe Curtis was in on this. Maybe he had helped her get away. Maybe he had called Lucy on Sunday to look innocent.

Or maybe the figure in the dream was Curtis….

I splashed water on my face. It was a dream. Nothing more. I would get a grip.

But it was fear that had the grip. Had I locked the door? Could he get in?

At the front door, Belle and Beau waited, mouths drawn back in expectant smiles, tails wagging.

“We’re not going out.” I punctuated my words with a pull on the door knob to make sure it was locked. It was almost funny: their eagerness to go out, mine to stay in.

I started at my reflection in each window. I had never seen the need for curtains. Before.

“No one’s out there,” I said aloud. I looked at the dogs. “What reason would anyone have to be out there? What threat am I? No one knows I know anything. I don’t know anything.”

But I did know some things. Things that weren’t the suspect messages from a bizarre dream. They were there, on the videotape of my memory, waiting to be replayed once again: the odd things from my encounter with Tim on Monday evening.

I looked at the dogs again. I wanted them to tell me I was being irrational. Instead, I heard Lucy and her second message from the previous night: Write it in a book.

Oh Lucy, what are you doing to me?

But I couldn’t refuse her. Whether she was a figment of my imagination or not. I went in search of paper and pen.

It took an hour. I finished the description of my dealings and conversations with Tim, all the odd things he had said. But I didn’t stop writing. The things Lucy had said in my dream, the scenes she’d shown me, were still vivid in my memory. The dream, hallucination, whatever it had been, it fit with all the odd things. I couldn’t dismiss it. There was no way around it. I was going to have to go to the police.

I paced up and down the living room, avoiding the windows. Belle and Beau paced with me and whimpered. Every few minutes I deviated from my path to check the clock on the stove.

At two a.m. Lundy and Roach were not likely to be on duty. Was it worth getting them out of bed to hear my far-fetched tale? They would never believe me. I didn’t believe myself.

But even if everything else was bunk, the odd things were probably worth something. The odd things might get their attention. And then what? Entertain them with visions visited on me by the victim? The dreams were so convoluted, so vague. The first seemed more believable, more straightforward in its messages. Maybe I should simplify the second. The kilometres must have been indicating how far from her house they had gone. I needed a map of Ottawa. Please let there be one in the house. I wasn’t ready to go outside.

I found an old torn city map buried under the shoes in the coat closet. I pieced it back together on the kitchen counter and pulled up a bar stool. I found Lucy’s street on the map. The nearest street with stores on it would be Bank. North would take them downtown. That made no sense. South headed out of town. I checked the map scale and measured, with my fingers, the equivalent of seven kilometres south on Bank from the intersection with Lucy’s street. I noted the name of the closest main artery: Hunt Club Road.

Then I reached for a pen and paraphrased additional one-line instructions from Lucy.

I wouldn’t bring her into it at all. I would just say I had heard a voice in my head. Oh God, they were going to think I was certifiable, no matter what I said.

I sat at the kitchen counter with my head in one hand and the other on the phone receiver. In my mind, I could see Lucy, pointing frantically at her watch.

Ellen. It was a voice in my head. Not an imaginary voice. My own. And it was loud and clear: You might find her. She might still be alive.

The words shot through my brain like a bolt of lightning. They snapped me to attention. They triggered an adrenalin rush that didn’t let up for ten weeks.

*

THE PHONE CALLS HAD TO come collect from Tim. “The operator comes on right away,” he explained. “I hate to make you pay. I got no choice. I got no choice about time either. We only have six phones in our cell block, and there’s a few dozen of us who gotta share it. We have a system worked out, a schedule of who gets to talk when. I’m working during the day—doing maintenance, taking mechanics and carpentry courses. I put myself down for six-thirty p.m. on Tuesdays. We got twenty minutes. Is that okay? I don’t mean to be presumptive about us talking every week—it’s just easier to book it ahead. It’s totally up to you.”

She assured him once a week was fine. And she didn’t mind paying. She didn’t mind the time of day either. She found it interesting that he couldn’t call during the day when Curtis was at work. It was going to have to be out in the open, this time, whether she liked it or not. She liked it. A pattern was being broken. The days of covertly running from one man to another were over. Maybe by breaking that pattern, she’d break another. Maybe this was about not expecting everything from one man. Maybe in getting the intimacy of sharing with Tim she would stop expecting it from Curtis. Maybe she could let him be. And then maybe he’d stay.

When the second phone call came, Curtis announced that he was leaving.

“I am not,” he said, “accepting calls in my house from a murderer.”

“It is not your house! And he’s not a murderer! If you call him a murderer one more time, I’ll—”

“Great.” Curtis gave a grim smile. “He’s teaching you well. No, you already knew the fine art of threatening. You two are obviously made for each other.”

“Yes,” she threw back. “We are. Which is a lot more than I can say for you and me.”

There was a deep, unexpected, sigh from Curtis. And a long look. Then that quiet voice: “You’re wrong, you know. And if you weren’t so pigheaded, you’d see it.”

He suddenly smiled—a teasing, affectionate smile she hadn’t seen in awhile.

She steeled herself against that smile. She would not let it suck her in, not anymore. She crossed her arms. “If you weren’t so pigheaded, you’d show it.”

Curtis shrugged. “You mean I’d show it in the way you want me to show it. You may as well be having this relationship with yourself.”

“I am,” she snapped.