Lost Girls (33 page)

''And so she ended up here.''

''One of the camp barracks at Auschwitz was called
Kanada
. It was where all their food, clothes, gold, jewelry, and other confiscated goods were kept. It was real, but in another sense it was totally imaginary. Somehow the name had meaning for all of them. A safe, protected place. I didn't know that. Did you?''

''No, I didn't.''

Then the waitress arrives with two baskets of slippery-looking wings, each liberally glazed with a fluorescent red ointment. ''Suicides,'' she announces as she sets them down and drops two roll-ups of cutlery into the puddles around our now empty beers. Pittle orders two more.

''They look good,'' I lie, staring into the piled limbs in front of me. Pittle says nothing in return, his small hands already clenched before his mouth, grappling with his food.

''Well, now,'' I push on, pulling a wing of my own out of the carnage. ''She got out, made it over. What I'm wondering is why she wasn't given official refugee status when she got here.''

''Maybe she didn't ask for it. Maybe she was too used to running. And even if she had asked, her acceptance wouldn't have been a foregone conclusion. Canada's immigration and refugee policies in 1945 were not what you'd call liberal, particularly given that a world war had just come to an end. We were way behind the other Allied nations in accepting DPs, and in the end it took a couple of years for the government to really open the doors. So she must have figured she'd be better off going up north and trying to melt into some backwater on her own.''

''And you think that's why they took the girls away from her? Because she didn't have the right papers?''

''Could've been. But more likely because she was different. Noncommunicative, husbandless. And from what you've told me there were also rumors that she had been providing certain--that she was 'morally questionable,' according to the language of the day. Based on this they probably also assumed she was nuts, or called her that in order to do what they wanted with her. Either way they locked her up, shipped off the kids, and forgot all about it. That is, until she broke out from the hospital and started inviting the local kids for a walk in the woods. The rest is history, as they say.''

Pittle places his hand on the cover page of Dundurn's journal, then quickly pulls it back, leaving an oily stain of chicken fat and Tabasco in its place.

''Dammit,'' he mumbles, mouth full.

''She escaped the war and made it to freedom only to be hunted down right here in happy old Murdoch.''

''It's funny, isn't it, in a terrible sort of way.''

''Funny,'' I say, feeling the broken ice lapping up to the knees, the chest. Arms held out to the puffing faces on the shore. ''Terrible.''

For a time neither of us says anything while Pittle eats and I pretend to eat. These things really
are
hot, yet utterly tasteless except for the painful burning they leave on the end of my tongue. I glance over toward the bar and find the waitress standing there looking back at us, and although it's too dark to make out her face I imagine a cruel, satisfied smile playing over her lips.

''Okay, Doug. Let's go back a second,'' I say once I've given up on lunch for good. ''Even if I go along with your interpretation that Dundurn was there at the lake when it happened, how does that help me with Mrs. Arthurs's theory that the Lady has come back to claim Flynn and McConnell? Not that that's possible. But as a matter of argument--''

''As a matter of
argument,
of course.'' He lowers his wing and clears his throat. ''Well, Dundurn goes on to detail certain instances where the Lady was said to have reappeared in the years following her death. Sightings up near the lake. Walking through the trees at night in her hospital clothes. Rising up out of the lake at dusk, or a scream echoing out over the water in the middle of the night. What's most interesting perhaps are the reports made by children. Cottagers' kids running in crying to their mothers saying that a mean, green old lady had approached them, asking them to take her hand and go for a little swim. Crazy stuff like that. Dundurn figures that these stories even played a part in the region's failure to make it as a viable tourist destination. People got the creeps bad enough that they decided to spend the extra money to buy places fifty miles to the south. You can take that argument or leave it. But what's important is that Mrs. Arthurs isn't alone in her opinion. It's just that she may be the last person alive to express it.''

I nod once and finish my beer. Lay my napkin over the food in front of me like a white sheet.

''Why didn't you tell me about Tripp, Doug?''

''Sorry?''

''The last name on the sign-out card of that Dundurn book I took from the library was his.''

''That's interesting.''

''Yes, it is. And given that the circulation desk of the Murdoch Library is not exactly a busy place, you would have known about it. And then you recommend the same book to me.''

Pittle smiles once, a carnivorous flash, then pulls it back into the bush.

''I didn't know what he was looking into specifically at the time,'' he says. ''I mean, it's just a book of local history, right? The guy can read. But after he was arrested and the rest--I had some ideas of my own.''

''So then you handed it over to me.''

''You were interested. So was Tripp. And I thought if you saw his name in there it might mean something to you.''

Now Pittle slurps at his beer, lifts a chicken wing to his mouth. ''So?'' he asks, takes a bite.

''So what?''

''What do you think he was doing with Dundurn's book?''

''Listen, Doug, I'm not sure I can--''

''Off the record.''

''Legally speaking,
off the record
doesn't mean a thing.''

''I give you my word, then.''

It's moments like this they drill into you at law school. How never to betray your client's confidence even with your closest friends, colleagues, or loved ones, and Pittle not even qualifying as any of the above. And yet I want to tell him something. Part of me thinks I might make the unclear clear through putting it into words. Part of me just wants to say it to someone else.

''Tripp ran an after-school club with Ashley and Krystal where they would read books and talk about them, do creative writing exercises and other stuff like that,'' I start, and Pittle stops eating for the first time.

''I'd heard something about that.''

''Well, that's how it all began, anyway. But I have reason to believe it went farther. That they started to dramatize events. Put on plays of their own making. That was one of the rules, as a matter of fact. Nothing could be real.''

''And you think this is of importance to the defense?''

''Probably not. But it might be important, nevertheless.''

For a while we keep our eyes lowered to the table, let the static of sports statistics fill our ears. Then Pittle shakes his head as though he'd just stepped through cobwebs.

''The imagination can be a very dangerous thing,'' he says.

''How's that?''

''When you stop seeing it only as the hypothetical and take the step into making it real. Think about it. This is really what we mean when we talk about someone having an evil mind. Charlie Manson, Oppenheimer, Hitler, Dahmer, whoever. People who let themselves go too far into their heads.''

''C'mon, Doug. There's an entire body of science-- the hangover of traumatic childhoods, chemical imbalances, whatever. There're many other ways of explaining--''

''I'm a librarian,'' he interrupts. ''A part-time reporter. I prefer my world to be the world of facts. At the same time I know the control it takes to keep it that way. Sometimes I wish I could be something different. But I have to resist those kinds of thoughts. Remind myself that so long as I stay with the facts, I'm safe.''

''Safe from what?''

''What I might be if I let myself.''

At the bottom of our baskets the waitress has thrown in a wet nap that each of us now struggles to rip open. Inside, the sharp lemon of jet-travel hygiene. I smear it over the bottom half of my face as Pittle, so aggressive with his food a moment ago, now makes delicate stabs at his lips and pushes his basket to the side of the table. A male voice from the TV above us panting, ''I just went out there to kick some butt and that's exactly what I did.''

Then Pittle starts again, this time jumping forward in his chair, hands diving and poking up through his papers. ''I can't believe I didn't even show you.''

''Show what?''

''Dundurn's picture.''

''What difference does it make what he looks like?''

''Not him.'' He pulls a square of paper away from a paper clip, holds it a foot away from my eyes. ''Her.''

I hold out my hand and he drops it into my palm. Too small to convey an entire person really, a white-fringed square the size of a commemorative stamp. Black-and-white, but more yellowy brass than anything else. And coated with a fog that at first obscures the subject: a woman in a buttoned cardigan (a little too tight at the shoulders) framed from the waist up. Hair tied and pinned into a disordered nest the color of carbon dust. A long, weary neck, riddled with vertical bulges that could be muscle or tendon or vein. And a face of the kind of beauty that somehow resists the simplicity of such a term, a beauty against the beautiful. A face like a historical map, rough marks indicating shifting boundaries, the outside bordered by hypothetical coastlines. Not aged but suggestive of vast expanses of endured time. The face of Europe pushing through an out-of-focus lens.

''So?''

''So.''

So she was real. Real in the manner of the unreal. Someone you could base a story on, as soon a romance as a tale of vengeful horror. A once-living woman, but more than this? Nothing but a flayed, insistent slip of history.

''Hard to believe this woman is the Lake St. Christopher monster,'' I say after a while.

''She's not. Or only a part of her is.''

''And which part is that?''

''What we've had to make up. The worst parts we could imagine.''

I thank him for the beers, say we should do it again sometime soon. Raise myself as he assembles his notes and photocopies into a pile and pushes them across the table at me. But I shake my head, eyes held above the words on the paper.

''Don't think I'll need that, thanks.''

Pittle frowns briefly, launches back into his chair. ''How's the trial going?'' he asks as I put on my coat to leave.

Struggle for a moment to think what it is I'm being asked.

''It's only just started,'' I say.

Outside, the clouds have broken up into islands of ice. The air cold enough to tighten skin against nose, chin, and forehead. Make my way over to where the Lincoln's parked with the unsure steps of a Legion Hall drunk, an old man crumpled under the burdens of solitude and war stories.

I keep both hands buried in coat pockets. The right plays its fingers over a slip of glossy paper. No larger than a pack of matches but it fills my hand, warms through the layers of fabric to the skin. A picture of a woman, a face stolen from an unfinished history.

Everyone loves a crime scene. This is where I'm parked, looking out the Lincoln's passenger window at Murdoch's most recent historical site. It must be that I love a crime scene as much as the next guy, or at least as much as the guys and their guests who came out here last night and built a fire on the other side of the police tape using an empty beer case for kindling. Around it the evidence of secondary entertainments: strewn beer bottles and a mickey of Captain Morgan, a forgotten hash pipe and a condom (unused) left wrinkled in the dirt like a shed snakeskin. The Murdoch Tourist Board is clearly missing an opportunity here. They should be commissioning a statue. There should be guided tours.

I'm here for a tour myself. A search for a derelict cottage that, if Mrs. Arthurs is to be believed, lies somewhere down the trail on the undeveloped side of the lake. Pop a couple of Extra Strength Tylenols to combat the headache that threatens to claw through my forehead. Blast the car's heater to full and let it blow over hands and face until the skin feels like it's about to curl back from the bone. Ready.

I follow the trail past Mrs. Arthurs's, keeping my eyes straight ahead in case she happens to be fussing around her woodpile again. Beyond her property the path narrows and reduces my progress to a hunched stumble, an arch of cedar branches scrabbling across my back. Twice my head connects with wet bark and twice a
fuck
exits my mouth to echo out into the dripping forest. A bloodstain appears on my pants (dropped from my hand, cut trying to push aside a tentacle of spiky sumach) but I'm not yet wondering why the hell I'm out here or what I hope to find. I just keep going.

How is it that if one walks far enough in the woods one eventually comes across the rusted frame of an abandoned car? There's never an obvious indication of how it got there, no nearby road, level field, or habitation. In fact the fin-tailed sedan I see now, fifty feet off the trail and obscured among the high ferns, is so tightly encircled by a half-dozen glacial boulders, there seems no way it could have gotten there unless dropped from above. Stripped of all rubber, leather, and glass, its rims buried in the soft earth, the hood gaping open. For a time I stare at its drooping front grille and its headlight sockets stare back at me, bewildered, watery with moss.