We climbed the wide wood steps that went up to the elevated deck, the alarm still making a terrible racket. We had been able to see the way the chairs and sofas were arranged on the deck from the beach, so we sat on the ones we had planned to occupy, facing the big picture window. It indeed seemed that Fiat’s whole wall facing the beach was window, and you could tell when you got close that it could be unlatched and slid across, so that whole part of the house could be open to the elements. It was spectacular. So was the way we had placed the burned piece of timber on our knees and what we could now see approaching us from the interior of the house.
It was a man, heavy-set, blond, dishevelled hair, wearing a shining gold housecoat, which he had obviously hastily thrown onto himself since it was wide open in the front, displaying a remarkable pair of pajamas with a Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck pattern, the top buttoned right up to the neck.
What wasn’t so spectacular was what he had in his hands. It was a gun, a rifle of some sort, and it didn’t look like it was for shooting squirrels. Jim Fiat likely had a weak gun-control policy, and this proved it.
He looked our way anxiously from the other side of the window, then focused on us, and seemed to relax a little. He slid the door back carefully and pointed his weapon right at us.
“It’s all right, honey!” he called back over his shoulder. “Nothing to worry about. Just a couple of kids. The security people should be here any minute.”
Then he turned back to us and stepped out onto the deck.
“Hello,” he snarled.
“Hello, Mr. Fiat,” I said pleasantly, “nice jammies.”
I heard Antonine laugh.
“Hey, don’t I know you?”
“Yes, you looked me right in the face earlier today.”
“Really?” He glanced over at Antonine. “And where are you from?”
“I’m from here, Jimmy,” she said.
“That’s no way to speak to your elders.”
“You need to respect them first.”
“You can be as smart aleck as you want, but you two are deep trouble. I’ve unlocked the front door. The security people will be here in five minutes, and I will bring the full force of the law down upon you, believe me. I’m a law and order guy.” He looked at me again. “Yes, now I remember. You said you were from Toronto, didn’t you? Figures. And bringing her along to do your dirty deed, you should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Actually,” said Antonine, “I brought him along, not the other way around. My family has lived here for twice as long as yours. No, that’s not right, ten times as long...maybe more. Do you recognize this?” She looked down at the burned piece of wood on our knees.
Fiat had taken a few steps forward and was looming over us, his gun still pointed our way, ratcheting up the intimidation factor as high as he figured it could go. Over his shoulder, deep in his house, we could see someone coming into the living room and approaching the window.
“I don’t see what a piece of—”
“It comes from your house.”
He looked down at it. “Where did you get that?”
“My father found it in the water out on the bay thirteen years ago during one of the most incredible sightings of the ghost ship ever experienced in these parts.”
The figure in the house sat down on a chair right near the section of the window Fiat had opened.
We could both see the “man of the people” swallow.
“What does that have to do with me?”
“We thought you might like to tell us yourself,” I said. “By the way, we went for a little spin out on the bay earlier today, just as the sun was setting. We explored that little island—” I turned around on the sofa and pointed out toward it. “Right there.”
Even from where we were, we could all see a little light on the island, the headlight of a motorboat, which was just beginning to make its way back from a visit out there.
“Oh,” said Antonine, “that must be Constable Leblanc. You know, Forensic Identification Section of the Bathurst Police Department?”
“Gabby? Why would she be out there?” asked Fiat. He looked worried and stared out over the water. Then his face relaxed. “I’m pretty sure her parents have one of our lawn signs.”
“We found the remains of a body on that island, Jim,” I said, “in a shallow grave. Do you know anything about that?”
He appeared not to know what to say.
“My father saw her thrashing around in the water in the vicinity, thirteen years ago, just before he fished out this piece of wood. I saw her, too. She was on fire!”
Jim Fiat looked back and forth from Antonine to me, as if gauging what we knew. Then his face grew red.
“You two think you’re really smart, don’t you? Coming here and trying to frame me for the death of some immigrant girl. Is someone paying you to do this?”
“Immigrant girl?” asked Antonine.
“Gabrielle Leblanc is a friend of mine, and so is Gaetan Boudreau, the police chief. Gates understands who I am and who I’m about to be. He wouldn’t ever consider connecting anything like this to me. He knows how things work.”
I could see the figure sitting on the chair in the living room, just on the other side of the window, shuffle uneasily.
“Constable Leblanc has seen the remains by now, Jimmy,” said Antonine. “What did you mean by ‘immigrant girl?’”
“I don’t care whether she’s seen the remains or not!” shouted Fiat. “What does that have to do with me?” His last word echoed out over the bay. “A corpse from long ago, some person of no consequence, likely not even identifiable. What does that have to do with me? How does that connect to ME?”
“We have this piece of—” I began.
“So what? Do you think that is the only piece of this sort of wood in the world? And even if it does come from my house, that doesn’t mean I had anything to do with it!”
“To do with what?” I said.
“This!” He motioned the gun with a jerk toward the island. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck jumped up and down.
“Did you?” asked Antonine.
We saw a gleam in his eye.
“Do you know how far I’ve come to get where I am today? Do you know how other kids made me feel in school around here, just because I was the son of one of the richest people on the beach? The son of the real estate tycoon of the entire region? Do you know what it was like to be nearly failing at school that last year?” He stopped suddenly, as if he had said too much.
“Thirteen years ago?” I asked. We needed him to say more.
He paused. “I wasn’t accepted by a single university, not a single one. And Dad, Mr. Christopher Fiat, to whom I was supposed to be a scion, his successor, had planned for me to go to the University of Toronto, or McGill or UBC, some place like that, ride onto one of those campuses on a white horse with a huge scholarship in my hand!” For a second, he almost looked like he was going to tear up.
“I’m an only child, too,” I said.
“So am I,” said Antonine.
“Yeah, but it was different for you. My father was up for re-election that year. He was looking at three consecutive terms! He hadn’t been given a cabinet appointment, nothing, the elites in Ottawa had passed him over time and time again.”
“Maybe he didn’t deserve it,” I suggested.
Fiat glared at me. “How would you know? They were sabotaging him from above! That’s why the campaign wasn’t going well. It looked like he was going to lose. Right when he was building this bloody mansion too, to live here forever like a god of Chaleur Bay. He was in a foul mood just as my rejection notices were coming back from the universities. My failures made him even angrier because he had given me some responsibilities in connection with building the house. He felt like I had let him down.” Fiat paused again. “My father hated me…for that. He thought I was useless. He figured I would never make anything of myself.”
“What did you do?” asked Antonine. “You did something about it, didn’t you?”
“Shut up!” said Jim Fiat. “I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this. The security people will be here in another minute or two. In fact, I would have thought they would be here by now. They are likely local people. They won’t believe a word you say, burned plank or not. They wouldn’t believe I was ever desperate either. Neither would Gabrielle Leblanc and Gates Boudreau. You two are deep trouble. Let’s see, once I’m done with you, if you even get to go back to Toronto. I’m sure there’s a juvenile hall not far from here just perfect for you.”
“Um…” said Antonine, “I’m from here. I’ve told you that.”
Fiat ignored her. “You two think you are better than me, don’t you?”
“No,” I said.
He paused again. Then he smiled. “Here’s what I’m going to do.” He looked down, thinking, then back up at us. “I’m going to tell you exactly what happened. I’ve let some things out of the bag anyway.” He leaned toward us. “Once I’ve told you my secret, then you will have to live with the fact that you know all this and can do nothing about it. Nothing! No one will accept your story over mine. Not a snowball’s chance in hell.” He smiled again, though this time with a crazy sort of grin. “I have to get this off my chest anyway,” he said quietly, as if to himself.
He stepped back a stride or two and set the gun down so it was resting against his thigh. The shadowy figure in the living room leaned forward.
“It’s all understandable, really. I had failed. I had no way of proving myself to my father. The job on the house was a nothing job, something he had given me, and no one could have screwed it up. I was at my wits’ end. I didn’t have marks in school or Dad’s ability in the real estate business or an articulate way of speaking or any real popularity at school. I didn’t even have a girlfriend.” He glanced toward the house for a second. Then he looked back at us. “I had to do something spectacular!”
“What?” I said. It was almost the id thing. It just came out of me.
“I thought of the ghost ship.”
I could hear Antonine gasp.
“I decided to recreate it.” Fiat looked over our heads and out across the water as if he were in a trance. “I fudged some purchase invoices and stole some timber from the contractor here and put together a crude raft with a few poles and canvases sticking up so that it might look like a ship from a distance. Then…I needed a girl.”
I could feel an actual shiver go down my spine, and the sofa shook a little right beside me.
“I knew many legends about the ship involved a girl,” continued Fiat, “wronged somehow, who was at the bow of the vessel, engulfed in flames like the rest of it, haunting the waters of Chaleur Bay.” Fiat’s eyes looked glazed over. “I told you I didn’t have a girlfriend, but it was more than that. I didn’t really know any girls or feel comfortable around them, and any girl in her right mind wouldn’t want to be part of this sort of thing, anyway, so I was stuck. That was when I encountered her.”
“Her?” asked Antonine.
“The girl.”
“You don’t remember her name?”
“It started with an M. It was short. I think it had two syllables.”
“You’re a monster,” said Antonine quietly.
“Do you want to hear this or not?” asked Fiat.
“Go on,” I said, taking Antonine’s hand, since she had seemed like she wanted to get up and leave. “Not yet,” I whispered to her.
Fiat wasn’t listening, his mind cast back in time again, thirteen years ago.
“I met her downtown at the unemployment office…a place I’d been trying to avoid for a number of weeks, where my father said I had to go to look at job postings for the area. There she was: an immigrant, desperate for a job, looking for menial work, just like Christopher Fiat’s son.”
I could feel my phone vibrate in my pocket…the phone I’d poached out of Mom and Dad’s room while they were sleeping. I pulled it out and slid my thumb across the screen. “MAYA KHAN, AGE 17, LOOKS YOUNGER, DISAPPEARED BATHURST AREA, SEPTEMBER 13 THAT YEAR.” I peered over Fiat’s shoulder at the figure in the living room.
“Are you looking at your phone?” said Fiat. He shook his head. “Bloody millennial.”
“I may not actually qualify as—”
Fiat ignored me. He was in full story mode.
“She was desperate for money. I convinced her to be the young maiden in the boat. She would have done anything for a few dollars...immigrants will. I built my dressed-up raft and paid my little maiden some change to sail on it. We towed it out to a spot on the other side of the island and she got on it, I tied her on, waited for dark, and set it on fire and pushed it off from my boat toward a spot where it could be seen from shore.”
My phone vibrated again. I glanced down. “EVERYONE IN MAYA’S FAMILY BUT HER MOTHER KILLED IN A BOMB BLAST IN AFGHANISTAN.”
“It was a perfect day to see the ghost ship of legend!” said Fiat. “It was also a day, an early evening, when there were lots of people on the beaches. It felt so good…so good…to make them look at what I had done. Jim Fiat, loser-son of the greatest man in the region. I intended to photograph it. No one, no one in history, had ever done that with any success. No one had ever been close enough for any details to be evident. I would have a ringside seat out there in the bay, with an extraordinary view of the famous ghost ship! I would be able to sell that photograph for a great deal of money, gain acclaim as the only person who ever accomplished the feat, the man who finally proved the existence of the burning ghost ship of Chaleur Bay! James Fiat, me…I would go down in history and profit too. My photograph, which would have been shown on media around the world, would have drawn attention to the region, increased real estate values…I was imagining what my father would think of me then!”
He didn’t notice me peek at my phone again. “SHE AND HER MOTHER STRUGGLED IN CANADA.”
“It does feel good to get this off my chest. I have told no one. I couldn’t.”
“MAYA’S MOTHER DIED. MAYA WAS ON HER OWN. NO ONE REPORTED HER MISSING FOR A YEAR.”
“The fire, however, took off,” said Jim, “the wood was particularly combustible…it was an inferno in minutes. My plan went up in flames.”
“And so did she,” muttered Antonine.
“I had tied the girl loosely to what I hoped would look like a mast from a distance, just a pole and canvas, really. In her terror, she had a difficult time getting away, and got caught up in the rope…and engulfed in the flames as the ship went under. I remember she screamed.”
Antonine put her hands over her face.
“She screamed…and she flailed her way to the island…but died as I raced toward her in my boat. She…she breathed her last gasp just as I got there, expiring at my feet.”
Antonine wiped a tear from her eye.
Fiat was staring into the distance. “I buried her in that shallow grave.”
The figure in the living room got to its feet.
Fiat shook his head. “I knew something of her situation. I figured she would not be missed, and went on with my life. I am not proud of it, but accidents happen and she was a willing participant. Likely in this country illegally to boot. I…I only had time to take a single terrible photograph and destroyed it soon after.” He looked sad. “I had been paralyzed with fear the instant the fire grew out of control. For a short while, I simply watched it burn…listening to her shriek.”
The figure from the living room stepped silently out onto the deck behind Fiat.
“Six months later, my father got me into a university, I began working for the family company, did well, knew the art of the deal, and as you know, decided to run for federal office this very year. I have worked my tail off.”
I imagined Antonine and Jackson Clay on the other side of the raft from Jim Fiat, getting close to the fire, glimpsing the girl but having to retreat, and Fiat zooming up to the scene as they returned to shore.
“My method and my message to the people of this region burns with truth! No immigrant’s indiscretion, no one who tempted me into a mistake, will put a stain on my life! Here is one thing I will guarantee you: I will be more successful than my father—much more!”
The man behind Fiat was wearing a uniform. Bathurst Police Force. He was putting his cellphone—full access to police records —into his pocket.
“I somehow doubt that, Jim,” he said.
Fiat whirled around.
“Hello, Chief Boudreau,” said Antonine.
“Hello, Mademoiselle Clay. How is your mother?”
“How long have you been here?” demanded Fiat.
“Hell of a story, Jim: that first word being the key one.”
We heard the front door creak and Constable Leblanc squeaked and squished toward us, her boots obviously a little wet.
“Gabby!” said Jim Fiat.
She gave him a withering look and kept her distance.
“It was a girl,” she said to us, “mid- to late-teen, deceased at about the time of the incident.”
“James Fiat, you’re under arrest,” said Gates Boudreau, “for the manslaughter of one Maya Khan.”
He took out a pair of handcuffs and slapped them onto the man of the people.