“City in Fear” reads the banner headline of the next day’s
National Star,
and for me, at least, it’s not overstatement. The accompanying piece is one of those “man on the street”, mood-gauging surveys that only retreads what is already known of the two recent victims—unrelated, no known involvements in crime, no indication of sexual assault, nothing of value taken from their persons. Indeed, there is no reason to believe their killer to be the same person. This report is followed by interviews with people in the neighbourhood who admit they’re not planning to go out at night until “they catch whatever sick bastard that would do this”. I read the article to the end to see if there’s any mention of the poem found next to Carol Ulrich’s body, but it looks like Tim was right. The editors killed it.
And then, perhaps most troubling of all, there is an account of the various eyewitness statements and anonymous call-in tips received by police.
A well-dressed, bald white man says one. Two black men are cited—one with gold teeth and a Raiders toque, the other grey-haired, nice-looking, a “Denzel Washington look-alike”. A pair of curlyhaired men who “may be twins”. An elderly Portuguese lady in mourning black.
“People are seeing killers in whoever sits next to them on the subway,” one policeman points out.
And why not? It
could
be them.
The morning’s walk through the City of Fear confirms that the three million hearts pounding their way to work all around me have turned a darker shade of worry. Each cluster of newspaper boxes shows that the
National Star
’s competition have run similarly alarmist pieces, the always hysterical tabloid putting smiling photos of Carol Ulrich and Ronald Pevencey side by side under the headline “Are You Next?” A question that’s impossible not to give some thought to. Everyone getting off the streetcars or emerging from the mouths of subway entrances sees these front-page faces and, through them, sees themselves. Not stony-faced mobsters or gangland hoods (the kinds who had it coming), but the faces of those whose primary goal was the avoidance of trouble. That’s the security most of us count on: we belong to the majority who never go looking for it. Yet all of us know at the same time that this is an increasingly hollow assurance. Fear is always there, looking for a way to the surface.
No matter how we might keep to ourselves, sometimes the Sandman finds us anyway.
The Quotidian Award, affectionately known as the Dickie, is the nation’s second-richest literary prize. The honour was established by Richard “Dickie” Barnham, a Presbyterian minister who, in his retirement, became an enthusiastic memoirist, recounting the mild eccentricities of his quaint Ontario parsonage. He was also, in the year before his death, the purchaser of a $12-million-winning lottery ticket. The Dickie is today awarded to the work of fiction that “est reflects the domestic heritage of Canadian family life”, which has led to a series of hushed, defiantly uneventful winners. A rainy-day parade of stolid farmers and fishermen’s widows.
It also happens to be one of the gala events of the season. A ticket to the Dickie marks one’s membership in the nation’s elite, a Who’s Who of country club philanthropists, TV talking heads, corporate barons. The
National Star
’s publisher has never missed it. It’s in part why, each year, a photo of the winner and a hyperventilating description of the menu and ladies’ gowns appear on the front page.
It’s the sort of assignment I’m no longer considered for. Even when I was the literary columnist, the paper preferred to send one of the party girls from the Style section who could recognize not only the celebrities in attendance, but the designers
who did their outfits. This year, however, the reporter they had in mind called in sick four hours before the event. The Managing Editor was out of town at one of her executive retreats, so the task of choosing a last-minute alternative came down to the News Editor who asked if I could do it for him. I accepted.
The press pass allows me to take a guest. The wise course would be to go alone, write the story they’re looking for, and be in bed by midnight. Instead, I call Len.
“You could slip someone your manuscript,” I tell him.
“You think?”
“Every editor in town is going to be there.”
“Maybe just a couple short stories,” he decides after a moment. “Something that could fit under my jacket.”
By the time I rent a tux and spin by in a cab to pick up Len (who has also been fitted in black tie, though for someone a foot shorter and thirty pounds lighter than he) we arrive at the Royal York just in time to catch the last half of the cocktail hour.
“Look!” Len whispers on our way into the Imperial Room. “There’s Grant Duguay!”
I follow Len’s pointing finger and find the emcee of tonight’s proceedings. The same waxy catalogue model with a used car salesman grin who acts as host of
Canadian MegaStar!
“That’s him alright.”
“And there! That’s Rosalind Canon!”
“Who?”
Len looks at me to make sure I’m being serious.
“At the
Brain Pudding
launch. The one who got half a million for her first novel.”
I get Len to point Rosalind out to me. And there she is, the mousy girl who is now shaking hands with every culturecrat and society wife who make their way to her. Even from across the room I can lip-read the same earnest
Thank you
in reply to the congratulations, over and over. It makes me want to say the same thing to someone. A passing waiter will have to do.
“Thank you,” I say, plucking a pair of martinis, one for each hand, from his tray.
We settle at the press table before the other hacks arrive. It allows me to stick one of the two bottles of wine on the table between my feet, just in case the steward is unavailable at a crisis point later on. Then the
MegaStar!
guy is up at the lectern saying something about how reading made him what he is today, which seems reasonably true, given that managing a teleprompter would be tricky for an illiterate. Following this, as the dinner begins to be served, each of the nominated authors take the stage to talk about the genesis of their work. The bottle between my feet is empty before the caribou tartare is cleared.
It’s absurd and I know it. It’s shallow and unfounded and generally reflects poorly on my character. Because I haven’t published a book.
Haven’t written a book. I don’t have anything in mind to one day turn
into
a book. But in the spirit of full and honest disclosure, I’ll tell you what I’m thinking as I sit in the Imperial Room in my itchy tux watching the night’s honourees bow into the waves of applause.
Why not me?
Luck. Pulled strings. Marketability. Maybe they have this on their side. Though there is always something else, too. A compelling order to things, a story’s
beginning, middle and end
. Me? All I have is all most of us have. The messy garble of a life-in-progress.
To turn my mind from such thoughts, I lean over and share with Len the killer’s secret poem. It leaves him goggle-eyed. Encouraged, I go on to outline my interpretation of the poem’s meanings, including the unlikely hint at the author’s identity.
“You think there’s a connection?” he asks, wiping the sweat from his lip.
“I think it’s a coincidence.”
“Hold on, hold
on
.” Len fusses with the cutlery set out in front of him as though it represents the thoughts in his head. “If you’re right, then it means whoever’s been doing those things is either in our writing circle, or has read Angela’s story.”
“No, it doesn’t. Anyone can call themselves the Sandman. And he doesn’t call himself
anything
in the poem. It’s just a theory.”
“And my theory is it’s William.”
“Slow down. It’s not—”
“Hello! A kid who disembowels cats and horses for fun? He’s basically
telling
us what he’s capable of.”
“It’s a
story,
Len.”
“Some stories are true.”
“If writing fiction about serial killers makes you a murder suspect, there’d be a hundred freaks within ten blocks of here the police would want to talk to.”
“Still.
Still,
” Len says, chewing his lip. “I wonder what Angela would think if she—”
“You can’t tell anyone.”
Len is crestfallen. A real horror story dropped in his lap, and he’s not allowed to run with it.
“I mean it, Len. I only told you because—”
Why
did
I tell Len? The martinis helped. And I suppose I wanted him to be impressed. I’m a journalist at a real newspaper. I
know
things. But more than this, I think I wanted to
entertain
the big geek.
“Because I believe you can be trusted,” I say finally, finishing the sentence Len has been waiting for. And he looks away, visibly touched by the compliment.
After dessert, Mr
MegaStar!
announces the winner. And once I’ve jotted the name down, I’m out of there.
“I’m off, Len. Got to write this thing up licketysplit.”
Len eyes my untouched maple syrup cheesecake “You going to eat that?”
“All yours.”
I squeeze his shoulder as I get up from the table. And although Len smiles in acknowledgment of the gesture, the fact is if I hadn’t grabbed him I would have fallen face first into a passing tray of beaver-shaped shortbreads.
After a couple hours punching keys on my laptop, keeping focused with the help of the Library Bar’s Manhattans, I hit Send and start the long stagger home. It’s not easy. My legs, lazy rascals, won’t do what I tell them. Pretzelling around each other, taking sudden turns toward walls or parking meters. It takes me a half-hour to get two blocks behind me. At least my arms seem to be working. One hugging a lamp-post and the other hailing a cab.
Despite the cold, I roll the window down as the driver rockets us past the Richmond Street nightclubs that, at this late hour, are only now disgorging the sweaty telemarketers, admin assistants and retail slaves who’ve come downtown to blow half their week’s pay on cover, parking and a half-dozen vodka coolers. I hang my elbow out and let the air numb my face. Sleep coils up from the bottoms of my feet.
But it’s interrupted by a news reader’s voice coming from the speaker behind my head. I roll up the window to hear him tell of a third victim
in a murder spree police continue to publicly deny believing is the work of a single killer. Like Carol Ulrich and Ronald Pevencey, the body was found dismembered. A woman again, her name not yet released by investigators. The additionally puzzling twist is that she had only arrived in Toronto the day before from Vancouver. No known relation to the first two victims. Indeed, police have yet to determine if she knew anyone in town at all.
And then, right at the end of the report, come the details that chill me more than if I was being driven home tied to the roof rack.
The victim’s body was found in the playground around the corner from us. The one where I take Sam.
And not just anywhere in the playground. The sand box.
“Eight fiddy,” the driver says.
“Home. Right. I need to pay you now.”
“That’s how it works.”
I’m stretching out over the back bench, grunting to pull out my wallet when the driver informs me the whole city’s gone crazy.
“Kids got guns in the schools. Cops takin’ money on the side. And the
drugs
? They sellin’ shit that turn people into
robots
. Robots that stick a knife in your gut for pocket change.”
“I know it.”
“And now this insane motherfucker—‘scuse me—goes round and chops up three people in
three weeks. Three
weeks
! What, he don’t take no holidays?”
I hand the driver a piece of paper that, in the dark and with my Manhattan-blurred vision, could be either a twenty-dollar bill or a dry-cleaning receipt. It seems to satisfy him, whatever it is.
“I been out here drivin’ nights for eight years,” he says as I shoulder the door open and spill out into the street. “But I never been scared before.”
“Well, you take care then.”
The driver looks me up and down. “How ‘bout this? How ‘bout
you
take care.”
I watch the taxi drive up Euclid until its brake lights shrink to nothing. Snow suspended under the streetlights, neither falling nor rising.
In the next moment, there is the certainty that I must not turn around. Not if I want to preserve the illusion that I am alone. So I step off the street, lurch toward my door. Only to see that this is a journey someone has already made.
Boot prints. At least two sizes larger than mine. Leading across the postage-stamp lawn and into the narrow walkway between our house and the house next door.
At least, this is the trail I think I’m following. When I look back, the prints, both mine and the boots’, are already obscured by powdery snow.
I am the ground beneath your feet…
I could pull out my keys, unlock the front door, and put this skittishness behind me. Instead,
something starts me down the unlit walk between the houses. If there is a danger here, it is my job to face it. No matter how unsteady I am. No matter how frightened.
But it’s darker than night in here. A strip of sky running twenty feet over my head and no other way for the light of the city to get in. My heart accelerated to the point it hurts. Hands running over the brick on either side, making sure the walls don’t close in on me. It’s only thirty feet away, but the space at the far end that is our back yard feels like it’s triple that. Uphill.
Along with another impression. This one telling me that someone else was here only moments ago.
The man in dark alleys you don’t want to meet.
Once out, I slide my back along the rear wall. The branches of perennials reaching up from the snow like skeletal fingers. The old garden shed I keep meaning to tear down leans against the back fence to remain standing, much as I do using the wall behind me.
I side-step up on to the deck. The sliding glass door is closed. Inside, the living room is illuminated by the TV. An infomercial demonstrating the amazing utility of a slicer-and-dicer gadget. It may be the booze, or the comforting images of advertising, but something holds me here for a moment, peering into my own darkened home. Taking in the mismatched furniture, the frayed rug, the overstuffed bookshelves, as though they are someone else’s. As they could well be.