Lost Girls (52 page)

''I don't understand, Your Honor.''

''Your principals from Lyle, Gederov contacted me from Toronto a few moments ago. It is their view that there is sufficient reason to question your competence in continuing this trial.''

''But my client and I have duly elected--''

''And I felt that, given the extent of the Crown's evidence and what I expect you are about to propose, they may well be right.''

Her lower lip pushed up into a wrinkled fist.

''No. Don't do this. Please, Your Honor, you can't let--''

''Sit down, Mr. Crane.''

''--can't let him go--''

''Sit
down,
Mr. Crane.''

I tumble back into my chair and almost miss the mark, bouncing off the armrest with a metallic squawk.

''Until alternative counsel is made available for the accused, this court is adjourned,'' Goldfarb is saying to the jury now, and they look back at her with a variety of seasick expressions. ''So it's the old routine again, people. Don't discuss any of this with anyone until we can get this show back on the road.''

Blink up to see the bailiff coming over to haul Tripp away but taking his time about it, gut sucked in, a thumb hooked over the butt of his pistol. Can't hear Goodwin offering an understanding word somewhere off to the side, can't move my head back from where it hangs over the smudge of papers on the desk. Nothing at all but a weight on my shoulder that is my client's hand resting next to my cheek in silent comfort.

It's hard to see Graham Lyle sitting on the window ledge of the honeymoon suite, hands gripped to his knees, eyes touring the walls of photocopied newspaper while trying to remain calm. But there he is, real as anything else. Arrived the morning after he pulled me out of court and was knocking at my door before I'd gotten out of bed myself although it's difficult to say who looks worse between the two of us. Apparently he wasn't kidding about being allergic to the country air. Pulling a nasal spray out of his breast pocket every couple of minutes to give each nostril a swift blast followed by an automatic
Pardon me
under his breath.

''Would you like some Kleenex?'' I offer him from my place at the end of the bed. Graham's gaze held somewhere to my left, on the photo of the Lady possibly, although she would be too small to make out from where he sits.

''No, thank you. I think I'll just stick with the prescription drugs.''

''Now there's wisdom.''

''I don't anticipate being here long anyway. As a matter of fact, I'd very much like to be on the road the day after tomorrow.''

''Are you going to play tag team with Bert for the rest of the trial, then?''

''It requires only
one
lawyer to deliver a motion to dismiss.''

''What are you talking about?''

''The Crown is finished with its case and there's not enough to nail our friend. You know this yourself, or
would
have known it before your wits abandoned you. So I'm going to ask Goldfarb to finish this silly business right now so we can all go home.''

Graham throws his head back to glance out the window and finds something on the street that catches his interest, or at least it appears he does, for he remains turned away from me for a long while.

''I hope you understand why I did what I did,'' I say finally.

''Well, then, you hope in vain, my boy, because I don't have a clue. Although I could
guess
it has something to do with what you might mistakenly see as some kind of moral reckoning or other. But
understand
? That I don't.''

''I don't believe you.''

''Seems you've inherited your client's taste in interior decoration,'' he says, pretending not to hear and swinging his head back to show an upper lip glistening beneath his still-streaming nose.

''They're not decoration.''

''Beg your pardon. What
would
you call all this, then?'' He circles his arm around the room. For a moment I actually search for an answer, though I know there isn't one.

''Why don't I pack all this stuff up so you can get to work?'' I say instead, and for the first time Graham turns his eyes to the still largely untouched disclosure materials stacked on my desk.

''Yes, why don't you do that.'' Gives his nose another injection. ''I'll be in Room Twenty-four at the end of the hall.''

Clips over to the door and places a hand on the tower of bedsheets that comes up to his chin.

''You were the best student I ever had, you know,'' he says on his way out, as much to himself as to me. But by the time I think of something to say in return he's already gone.

The next morning I manage to find a seat in the gallery without meeting anyone's eyes. Focus on nothing but Graham's back as Goldfarb comes in to take her chair. Watch only his hands as they begin to dance in the air at his sides, framing his points in clean boxes and ovals. A motion to dismiss. Insufficient evidence to meet the charge. A waste of the court's resources to continue with the trial. Your Honor, the law on the matter is plain.

It doesn't take long.

Then a moment when several things happen at once:

The jury turning to each other to determine whether any of them knows what the hell just happened while Goldfarb mumbles thanks for their responsible conduct throughout the proceedings. An explosion of violent sobbing from someone in the rows behind me, followed immediately by a howl of troubled digestion and a sigh of such strangled anguish--
Oh, Christ!
--it sounds like the speaker's last living breath. Tripp throwing his head around to look my way. And what he sees is a man who appears pained, though only by some minor physical irritant. A full bladder perhaps, heartburn, a pinched nerve between the shoulder blades.

Soon everyone is working out ways to leave the room, attempting to control equal urges to remain where they sit for the rest of their days or make a dash for the door. A full minute required for each of us to pull on our coats without touching whoever stands next to us.

Tripp the last one to move. And in the end it's the bailiff who has to grip him by the arm and lead him over to the side door once again. But they don't quite make it. The bailiff turning to hear something. Spinning on his heel, as a matter of fact, so he can put a face to the voice now booming out from the back of the courtroom. Squeezes his mouth tight at the disappointment of seeing that it's only Lloyd McConnell. And who else would it be? Shouting not in grief but a strange, giddy triumph.
You're going to burn in hell! You hear me, you filthy bastard?
Goddamn you to burn in damnation forever!

Then, without turning to look, Tripp releases his arm from the bailiff's grip, pulls the door wide, and is free.

I end up hanging around town for a couple of days. With Graham gone it's just me alone in the hotel again, a situation I'm starting to get miserably used to. There is, after all, nothing for me to return to in the city now except another empty room. And by that standard this one is as good as any.

But I'm staying for a reason. There's always a reason, isn't there, even when it comes to the most addled courses of action. I need to talk to my client. My former client. The trouble is he's nowhere to be found.

I've tried calling but his phone is out of service and he doesn't answer the buzzer at his apartment although I'm convinced he's up there. There haven't been any sightings of him since his last day in court and God knows the whole town's had its eyes wide open. Everybody wants to see what a man who's gotten away with it looks like.

He's up there because I can feel him up there. Then have these feelings confirmed when I go through the garbage bins in the lane behind his building and discover the teen girl magazines that I'd seen strewn across his bed. Loose clippings that sit there as a bundle of colored ribbon atop eggshells, burnt toast, and coffee grounds.

The next night I stand across the street from his apartment and wait. The front windows are dark, but once or twice there's a murky brush of movement inside, a body whose shifted weight causes the glass to warp the streetlight reflected against it. Then sometime halfway to morning it comes to stand and look down at me. A charcoal outline within the window's frame.

I wave up to him. Stepping out into the street, one arm arcing above my head in what could be seen as either greeting or warning to someone far away. Don't call out his name because I'm frightened of how my voice would sound on its own in the hardened air. So I just keep waving up at him, a man caught passing through an unlit living room like a thief.

But before he pulls the blinds down for good he takes a half step forward so that there's a second when he's almost visible. The floating circle of his face. Fixed by a look of shallow horror, eyes held open to something he doesn't want to see but knew was there all along.

I'm walking out into the frigid lake with my shoes on. One minute I'm looking up at the vaultless night sky from where I stand on one of the big rocks near shore, the stars precise and screwed to their places, and in the next I'm stepping off into the shallows, the water so still, my feet make a dull
thunk
as they push through. The kind of cold where the body can't decide between pain and numbness so it flashes between them. My legs could be sawed off at the hip. They could be on fire.

There is no breeze, yet the air carries a dusty half rain that meets my face in dry pricks. It may even be snow of the not-quite-there-yet sort but it's too dark to make the distinction. Look down to watch the water creeping higher up my chest but it's me moving, not the water. Wading out with elbows lifted up in line with my ears like a beach tourist who's determined to go all the way in this time but delays the inevitable with a goofy, off-balance jig.

So cold it's clear I won't get far if I go out much deeper. More than five minutes spent up to your neck in this and it's all over.

I've got some time.

An attempt at a breaststroke at first but my arms won't go out that wide, so I make my way with a kind of tadpole wriggle instead, throwing my shoulders forward and kicking legs joined at the knees. Making enough noise that I can't hear whether I'm holding my breath or not, and I'm glad for this because I know such a faltering sound would only panic me more than I already am. But greater than fear there is an idea of purpose, a grim duty that must be tended to.

The cramps start no more than twenty feet out. Glance back toward shore and I can still make out the detailed shape of the trees, the cracked trunks and nubbed crookedness of the branches. Nose kept an inch above the water. Wriggle out some more.

Then a sound I didn't notice before, an echo of the same disturbance of the water that I'm making myself. Someone swimming beside and slightly behind me. The rippling waves of our bodies meeting with tiny slaps in the space between us.

A face that cuts through the surface and stops the same time I do. And at first I see it as my own, although I realize in the same instant that it looks nothing like me aside from the blue skin and ice-crusted hair. A man with little strength left pulling catches of air through a frozen grimace. Then it becomes who it's supposed to be. My client. Working to tread water no more than an arm's length away, but going down in half-inch increments even as I recognize who he is.

He doesn't say anything, although it's unlikely he could even if he tried. I know this because I try myself but without results. We are left to watch each other without any gesture of forgiveness or horror or rescue. The fact of our situation so plain, there's no point even acknowledging it. We've brought ourselves out here and we can't stay afloat for much more than a dozen seconds longer and following that we'll both drown.

But Tripp decides not to wait that long. The bobbing of his head caused by whatever movement is keeping him up abruptly stops and yet for a moment he stays exactly where he is. Eyes open on mine but he's not seeing me anymore, they're just frozen that way. The grimace turned to an empty show of yellow bone. Sits like this above the waterline as though his skull were made of Styrofoam.

And then he goes down all at once.

Maybe my own head goes under because my body exhausts itself at the same time he decides to give up. Maybe I go down just to watch him go.

The darkness enfolding him in the time it takes me to focus on where he is only a couple of feet below. And once he's gone it all goes with him--there's no water or cold, up or down, me or him. A dream that ends not with waking but the revelation of what it is to be nothing at all.

It's the crushing pain in my chest that brings me back. Overcoat thrown off onto the stones that glow mottled blue in the dawn light. Shoes still tied to my feet and pants held stiff down my legs, crisp with ice. Sitting up, clutching at my neck and the top of my arms. First time I've ever had a heart attack for an alarm clock.

After a while the pain drains away on its own, though, or most of it, a weight still wrapped around my ribs like a lead vest. The lake licking up to my ankles over the blistered sand. There's no sign of Tripp or anyone else except for a whiff of burning spruce that floats downwind from Helen Arthurs's chimney. No prints left on the pebbly shore, although I don't really bother to look. Nothing in my head but the idea that I have to get up now or I never will.