The Dells (19 page)

“Hi,” she said, smiling uncertainly, running the fingers of her free hand through her hair.

“Marty,” Rachel said, with a smile. She got up. “I'm so glad you decided to join us. Sit. Would you like a glass of wine or a beer?”

“Um, well,” Marty said. She looked at Shoe, an expression close to panic on her face.

“What's wrong, Marty?”

“Could I talk to you for a minute?”

“Of course,” Shoe said.

“In private?” she added apologetically.

Shoe handed the barbecue tongs to Rachel and followed Marty to the front of the house. A road-weary, two-cylinder Triumph motorcycle stood in the drive. The bike smelled of old oil and dried gasoline and the paint was chipped and peeling from the dented fenders and fuel tank. The tires looked new and the bike was equipped with oversized saddlebags. Marty laid her helmet on the cracked leather of the saddle and unzipped the jacket. The front of her T-shirt was sweat-stained below her breasts.

“Joey called me,” she said. “He wants me to meet him, bring him my bike. Do you think — I mean, could you maybe come with me?”

“I could,” Shoe said. “If you're sure that's what you want to do.”

Marty lifted the motorcycle helmet off the saddle, held it for a moment, as if she were going to put it in, then put it down again. “I know Sergeant Lewis told me I should call the police if I heard from him, but I — I can't do that. I was thinking, maybe you could talk him into turning himself in.”

“I could try.”

“He didn't do it, y'know.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Uh, no, but he got real mad when I asked him. ‘What do you think?' he said. I told him I didn't think he did it. He said, ‘Well, there you go.'”

Not exactly a vigorous denial, Shoe thought. “Where does he want to meet?” he asked.

“At Downsview Park,” Marty said.

Downsview Park was a former Canadian Forces base east of Keele Street. Decommissioned in the early 1990s, the huge area included a film production centre, an aerospace assembly plant, a municipal airport, and a vast public park. In 2003, the Rolling Stones had performed in the park for half a million people, along with AC/DC, the Guess Who, Blue Rodeo, and a number of other bands, as part of a daylong open-air benefit concert to reassure the world that Toronto was still safe following the SARS outbreak. Pope John Paul II had performed there for even more people on World Youth Day in 2002.

“The police may have been watching you,” Shoe said.

“Maybe,” she said. “But I took a couple of detours getting here a car couldn't follow.”

Shoe didn't think it would take much imagination on the part of the police to guess she might be coming to see him.

Marty zipped up the motorcycle jacket, donned the helmet, and threw her leg over the Triumph. “You shouldn't have any trouble following me.” Her voice was muffled by the face shield of the helmet. “Just watch for the smoke.”

Shoe asked her to wait a moment. He made his excuses to the others, without going into detail, then got his wallet and car keys from the house and went out to the car. Marty flipped the start lever out with her foot, stood on it, and bounced. The Triumph coughed and emitted a thin cloud of blue smoke, but with a little coaxing,
started on the first kick.

He didn't have any trouble following her. The Triumph did indeed burn oil, but Marty also took it easy, staying well within the speed limits, coming to a full rest at stop signs, and respecting yellow lights. She was a cautious rider, or a considerate one, or both, and Shoe was still right behind her when they turned into the main entrance to the big park. They followed the winding access road to the large — and apparently full — parking lot, where Marty stopped and gestured for Shoe to pull alongside her. She raised the face shield of her helmet.

“He said to meet him behind the bandstand,” she said.

She pointed in the direction of a tall structure on the far side of a large open area that thronged with people, half of which seemed to be children. Many people stood, swaying to the beat of Celtic dance music produced by the dozen or so musicians fiddling and jigging on the stage. Far more people sprawled on the grass or sat in folding chairs. Hawkers moved through the crowd selling soft drinks, bottled water, and snacks. The sun was a dark, burnt orange, huge and low over the western suburban skyline.

Marty found room for the Triumph in a space occupied by a big gleaming Harley-Davidson with a teardropshaped sidecar, and a small, hot pink Honda scooter, stowing the helmet in a saddlebag. Shoe circled the lot until he finally gave up and was forced to squeeze the Taurus into a space on the access road only slightly longer than the car itself. He and Marty then set out through the crowd and across the field toward the bandstand. They made their way to the edge of the crowd gathered close to the front of the stage, and worked their way round to the rear of the bandstand.

“That's him,” Marty said. “Sitting by that big electrical cabinet.”

Shoe wouldn't have recognized him if Marty hadn't pointed him out. His face was lean, deeply etched by wind and sun and time, and his thinning grey-blond hair fell straight to his shoulders. Noseworthy evidently recognized Shoe, however; as they made eye contact, his face tightened and his mouth compressed into a grim line. He stood, clutching a green canvas backpack. For a moment, Shoe thought he was going to bolt, but he waited as Shoe and Marty walked toward him. Although he was still quite a bit shorter than Shoe, he was taller than he'd been the last time Shoe had seen him — the result of a late growth spurt, perhaps — and slightly thick through the middle. He was wearing black jeans and an old, naturally distressed jean jacket.

“What's this shit?” Noseworthy said to Marty, anger making his voice shrill. “What the fuck'd you bring him for?”

“Hello, Joey,” Shoe said. “It's been a long time.”

Ignoring Shoe, Noseworthy grabbed Marty's arm and pulled her into the deeper shadows between the tall electrical cabinet and the underside of the bandstand.

“Goddamnit, Marty. He's a fucking
cop
.”

“No, he's not, Joey,” Marty said. “Shoe, tell him.”

“I'm not a cop,” Shoe said. “I haven't been one in a very long time.”

“Once a cop, always a cop, far as I'm concerned,” Noseworthy said.

“Sorry, Marty,” Shoe said. “I guess this wasn't such a good idea after all. Good luck, Joey.” He turned to leave.

“Wait,” Marty said. “Shoe. Please. Joey, talk to him,” Marty pleaded.

“We got nothing to talk about,” Noseworthy said. “How about Marvin Cartwright's murder?” Shoe said.

“What about it?”

“Did you kill him?”

“Get to the point, will you?” Noseworthy said. “I got a busy schedule.”

“Did you?”

“Like I said, once a cop,” Noseworthy said. He looked around. “Where are they? I don't see 'em. My allergies must be acting up. Usually I can smell 'em a mile away.”

“We didn't bring the police,” Marty said.

“So what're you doing here?” Noseworthy asked, looking at Shoe.

“Trying to help a friend,” Shoe said.

“All things considered,” Noseworthy replied, “I'd rather be poked in the eye with a stick.”

“I get it,” Shoe said. “You're still angry with me. But it's a long time to carry a grudge, Joey. What could I do? I wasn't going to let them get away with what they did to you.”

“What the fuck do you know about what they did to me? Nothing like that ever happened to you. No one ever bullied you in the school yard, stole your lunch or the money you collected for UNICEF at Halloween. You ever wonder why I never had a bike? Because every time I had one, it got stolen or smashed and my parents couldn't afford to keep buying me a new one. Anyone ever pull down your shorts in front of the girls' gym class, piss in your gym shoes, or glue the pages of your math book together? You ever get beat up by a girl? No? Well, that kind of thing happened to me all the time.”

“What can I say, Joey?” Shoe said. “I did what I thought was right. You were my best friend. I had to do something.”

“Yeah, well, maybe what Dougie Hallam and that shit-for-brains brother of yours did was worse than most times, but you didn't make it any better. Okay, so it was a lose-lose situation. I'd've been pissed at you if you
hadn't done anything and was pissed at you when you did. That's life, though, right? One thing I've learned, you gotta carry your own water.” He shrugged and some of the anger left his face. “Who knows? Maybe what you did helped me learn it.”

“Can we put it behind us, Joey?”

“I ain't that guy anymore, so I guess it's behind me. I don't know about you.”

“I'll let you carry your own water,” Shoe said. “But does it make sense to carry more than you have to?”

He shrugged again. “You carry what you got.”

Shoe changed tack. “Have you been on the road since you left?”

“I move around a lot. My driver's licence says Canmore, Alberta, but I don't really live there. My sister's place, an address of convenience, like, so I can register the bike, that sort of thing.”

“What do you do for money?”

“This and that. Taught shop in the Northwest Territories one summer and worked for the phone company in Louisiana the next winter. My folks would be proud.” Joey's father had worked for Bell, Shoe recalled, as he saw a brief flash of regret beneath Joey's mask. According to Rachel, he'd missed both his parents' funerals. “I visited their graves the other day,” he said, as if reading Shoe's thoughts.

“How well did you know Marvin Cartwright when we were kids?”

“I visited his house once or twice. I didn't hang out, like your sister and Marty did, if that's what you mean. His old lady gave me the creeps, the way she was always calling to him from her room in the back in that whiney voice of hers. Marvin do this and Marvin do that, Marvin bring me this and Marvin bring me that. It was pathetic. He was pathetic, how he never stood up to her. And the place stank of medicine. We either met at the school or
in the park and all we ever did was play chess and talk a little.”

“Did you keep in touch with him after he moved away?”

“I ran into him about fifteen years ago when I was working in Sandbanks Provincial Park in Prince Edward County. He moved to Picton after his old lady died. I think he grew up around there. I'd stop by his place every couple o' years, whenever I was in the area. He was always good for a hot and a cot. And a few bucks if I was short.”

“The police found your fingerprints in his car, and when they went through the stuff you left at Marty's, they found a signed book and an engraved chess set that belonged to him.”

“He gave me those things.”

“When?”

“The day they say he was killed. We met in the Dells in the afternoon, in the parking lot on the other side of the old flood control dam. We sat in his car because he said the sun bothered him, played a couple of games — tried to, anyway. He couldn't concentrate, kept forgetting whose move it was. That's when he gave me the chess set and the book. And, well, some money. A lot more than usual. Later we walked up to the dam and talked for a bit more. He talked, anyway. If I was gonna kill him, I'd've done it there and buried him in all the old tires and shit that's washed up against the back side of the dam.”

“The police didn't find any money at Marty's apartment.”

Noseworthy patted his stomach. “I keep my money and ID in a money belt and the essentials in my rucksack. You never know when you're gonna need to move on in a hurry.”

“What did you and Cartwright talk about?” Shoe asked.

“Like I said, he mostly did all the talking. He rambled on about all sorts of stuff. Rachel and Marty and the other kids he used to invite into his house. His mother, how hard he tried to be a good son to her, but how he was always a disappointment to her. The kids — Dougie Hallam, your brother, Tim Dutton — that used to play practical jokes on him. Some weird shit about making amends to someone, atoning for his sins before it was too late. I asked him what sins, but he wouldn't tell me. Most of the time he didn't make a lot of sense, like he couldn't finish his thoughts or they were all jumbled and mixed up inside his head. Every so often, he'd sort of drift off and stare into space. It was the meds, he said. He looked like shit.”

“Did he tell you what was wrong with him, what the meds were for?”

“No.”

“Do you remember the sexual assaults that occurred in the woods that summer?”

“Sure,” Noseworthy said.

“Marvin Cartwright was a suspect.”

“Yeah,” he said again, dragging the word out warily.

“Do you think he was guilty?”

“Why ask me? How would I know?”

“Do you remember a cop named Ron Mackie? He would've been in uniform, about twenty-five.”

“I talked to a lot of cops that summer,” Noseworthy said. “I didn't ask their names. Why? What's that got to do with anything?”

“There may have been a witness to one or more of the rapes or the park worker's murder,” Shoe said.

“Well, it wasn't me, if that's what you're thinking. I'd've told the cops, man. Anyway, I never went back into those damned woods.” He turned to Marty. “You bring the bike?”

Before Marty could reply, Shoe said, “If you didn't kill Cartwright, why run?”

“Force of habit. I don't trust cops. Ex-cops either, for that matter. They don't care if you're guilty or innocent, they just want to make an arrest so they can go on TV and say they're winning the war on crime.”

“Some are like that,” Shoe said. “Most aren't. The detective in charge of Cartwright's murder, she's one of the good ones.”