The Weight of Stones (24 page)

“Gerry!” Jessie cried, and went to his side, using her blanket to clean the blood that was rushing from the gash. She looked back up to McKelvey, hatred in her eyes, and she said, “He was just doing his job, you know. He was trying to protect me. We get a lot of creeps around this place. You don't have to be such an asshole.”

“I need you to come with me,” McKelvey said, and he realized how drained he was from the brief scuffle, too old for all this. His heart was hammering, and he was winded. His cheek was beginning to throb now, and he could feel the flesh rising, tightening. In the excitement of the moment, he had failed to recognize the power of the punch.

“I'm not going anywhere with you,” Jessie said. “I told you, there was no baby!”

McKelvey was about to reach across and grab her arm when the side door opened and Duguay came in, the blonde girl behind him, her eyes hungry for a fight. The two men stared for a long moment. Duguay recognized McKelvey from the black and white photo he'd gleaned from a source, a shot of McKelvey in uniform, young and fresh-faced and unsmiling in his serious policeman's pose. And McKelvey recognized Duguay from the file of photos, from the very images, both real and imagined, that were scorched across his memory. All of the fantasies, all of the dreams of being alone in a room with this man, it was suddenly here and now, and McKelvey wanted nothing more than to take the girl and find his kin.

Duguay said simply, “I didn't kill your son.”

“I didn't come here to settle with you,” McKelvey said.

“She's coming with me.”

Duguay shook his head. “No,” he said, “she belongs to me.”

McKelvey pointed the pistol at Duguay's face.

“She doesn't belong to you any more,” McKelvey said.

“Are you going to protect her like you protected your son?” Duguay said.

McKelvey's eyes flickered, his jaw clenched, but he came back with a shot of his own, one that would hurt Duguay in the worst place: his street credibility. “You don't know anything about me and my boy. You know what makes me sick about you assholes? You kill people, you steal from them, and you put little girls to work on the street, then when you get caught, you're not even man enough to do your time. Your friends here know you turned over and made a deal with the Crown your last go-around?”

The dancers didn't say anything, but they all looked over to Duguay. McKelvey knew the gossip would make the rounds, and the number who disbelieved it would matter not at all.

“I'm not making any deals, fucker. You're already a dead man, so you might as well pull the trigger. Nobody shoves a gun in my face, not in my house. Come on. Do it.”

McKelvey pulled the gun back a little and said, “I'm taking her with me. I'm taking the girl. And if you try to stop me, I'll kill you. If I see you again, I'll kill you, I swear to God.”

“I will see you again, make no mistake,” Duguay said.

McKelvey motioned with his hand, but Jessie stayed where she was, holding the blanket to Gerry's face. Duguay nodded toward the door. This girl he had lifted up, offered work to.

“Go,” he said. “You're done here.”

Jessie rose slowly, confused, her arms wrapped around her chest. She glanced between the two men, the girls she worked with, Her fate once again and always completely beyond her grasp.

“Go!” Duguay hollered. “And take the fucking pig with you.”

McKelvey took the girl's arm and walked backwards out the door.

Twenty-Two

I
n the little truck, the girl changed again, everything about her. Her body language gave McKelvey the idea of somebody who didn't seem heartbroken at the prospect of being pulled away from the club. Duguay had said he was done with her. Perhaps she understood the finality of things in this life much more profoundly than other girls her age. When she did protest, he felt that she was going through the motions.

“This is fucking crazy,” she said. “He'll come after you, you know.”

“Probably,” he said, and he drove.

“So what's your plan now, Sherlock?”

“I just want to talk with you a little, that's all.”

“What are you going to do if I jump out of the car the next time you stop?” she said.

“Handcuff you to the door.”

She looked at him. He stared at the road. He was staying away from the main streets. It was dark, everything turned a brown-yellow from the dim street lamps. He felt her eyes on him, his face illuminated each time they passed beneath a light.

“You wouldn't,” she said. “That's confinement or something. It's a crime, right?”

“Yes, it's a crime,” he said. “And yes, I would.”

He let the threat of handcuffs hang there while his mind tallied the half-dozen charges he was already facing. He shivered through one of those very rare moments when it becomes glaringly clear that your life has taken an entirely new direction. He saw himself from a whole new angle; saw something that had perhaps been there all along, maybe just beneath the surface. Who knew. It was a question of environment. Working as a cop in the city had changed him. In ways that he couldn't even fully articulate for himself, let alone for Caroline. It didn't matter; unless you had been shot at in the middle of a lonesome night by a seventeen-year-old with a stolen handgun, unless you had hurt men and been hurt by them in the course of wearing a badge, unless you had been
The Law
in a city like this with its immigrants and its extremes of poverty and riches, unless you had
done it,
there was just no way you could understand how the job changed a man from beginning to end.

He pulled up the driveway and shut the engine off. They sat there, the engine ticking. He looked over at her. Just a girl. A child. The last person to love his son.

“I'm going to get out of the truck and head inside. I'd like you to come and talk to me. But I'm too old, and it's too late at night for me to run after you. That's the truth of it. So it's up to you,” he said. “I do have some clothes you could wear. And I make a pretty good grilled cheese.”

“You're an asshole,” she said, “hurting Gerry like that.”

“I wish I hadn't done it,” he said.

She glared at him for a long minute.

“I only like grilled cheese with the yellow kind,” she said.

She was so serious. Tough.

“Cheddar, sure,” he said. “It's the only way I make them.”

The girl named Jessie Rainbird was a walking contradiction. She was small, yet she seemed a large presence. She was scared, yet she was aiming for threatening. In her hazel eyes there was a fierceness that McKelvey thought he recognized. The defiance, the smouldering anger in his boy's eyes. It was there. From where did this originate, he wanted to know. Was it something inborn, or was it developed? Was it generational angst that was beyond comprehension or explanation? Was it his fault, his poor parenting, or was it an inevitable character trait? His boy had always been stubborn, strong-willed. His favourite phrase was “no, me do” by the time he was three. But still, there had been a child there, a happy child…

“Gavin told me a little about you, you know,” she said. “How you're a cop.”

McKelvey was standing at the stove, flipping a grilled cheese. She was seated at the table dressed in a pair of his jeans, the legs rolled up and the waist cinched with a belt. She wore one of his T-shirts and a fleece over top, her black hair pulled back in a ponytail. Rudolph was sitting there watching.

“I bet he had lots to say about that,” McKelvey said.

“I think he wanted to be one some day. He said it would have made you proud.”

“I wouldn't have liked it very much,” he said. “It's not a job I'd recommend.”

“He never really said anything bad about you, in case that's what you want to know. Just how you guys argued all the time, and it got to the point where he couldn't stand being in the house.”

He gave the frying pan a flip with his wrist and shot the sandwich onto a plate. He used the spatula to slice it in half on the diagonal and presented it to Jessie.

“Can I get you a drink?” he said, then doubted he had any fresh milk in the fridge.

“You have any rum?” she said and levelled him with stone eyes. Unblinking.

He looked at her for a moment and thought he was looking into the eyes of a fifty-year-old. He had to remember that she took her clothes off for rooms full of strange men, and who knew what else. Those charges which had sent her to rehab were for prostitution. This was no innocent angel. A rum in the grand scheme of things?

“Why not,” he said. He went to the cabinet in the living room and came back with two glasses and a bottle of Captain Morgan's dark rum that was a little less than half full. It was what he and the school teacher had gotten into that night. After the wine. Now he measured out two shots. He pushed her a glass then took his own and brought it to his lips, smelled the rich woody scent, hoped the stuff would steer him clear of the usual sadness tonight.

“Sorry, no Coke,” he said.

She shrugged and said, “Just waters it down anyway.”

“I wasn't the world's best dad, but...” McKelvey began. He cleared his throat, started again. “We didn't see eye to eye on some important issues, and...well, you know how it goes.”

“It was dope at first,” she said. “The dope and the skateboarding and the whole lifestyle. Gavin changed when he was out there, though. He wanted to get off the drugs. And he did. And then...”

He waited. Had been waiting a thousand days to hear this. But it was too much, and she changed subjects like throwing a switch.

“I never knew my dad,” she said, then took a bite of the sandwich. She chewed. “He was a hockey player. He was good at it, too. A goalie. I wish I could at least remember something about him. It'd be nice to have something to try to forget.”

“Did he play in the minors or the NHL?”

“I don't want to talk about all that,” she said.

He drank, and the booze burned his throat. The sting of the hard liquor reminded him of winter nights spent in cold patrol cars, that good belt of rye or rum waiting at the bar at the end of a shift. He looked down into the glass and thought of the nights he had gone to the bar straight after work, killing a few hours before heading home. Hell, more than a few hours. Just like his father. The nights he kept looking over at the clock, his buddies roaring about something, always finding a reason to stay another five minutes. What was he avoiding? What had he missed all those years?

“They're overrated,” he said.

“What is?” she said.

“Fathers.”

Jessie finished half the sandwich then took a long drink of the rum. She barely winced, and McKelvey knew without a doubt the girl could drink him under the table. He was already softening at the edges from the meagre mouthful of rum. So this is what had become of the young man hanging on until closing time, grasping at a shot at immortality.

“That's not very nice to say,” she said. “I bet you got to know your dad, that's why. Or else you wouldn't be saying that.”

“My dad was a good man, it's true,” he said. “He was just never comfortable as a family man. But then neither was I. You see things a little clearer as you get older. I don't hold anything against him. He was just a jackass like me trying to make it through the best he could, putting one foot in front of the other. He got up every day, though, and got back in the game.”

With that he raised his glass in a toast and downed it. Jessie shook her head. “Fuck, you're a box of giggles, aren't you? Gavin said you could be pretty intense.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I never should have said that about fathers. You're right, I don't know what it's like not to have a father.”

“Apology accepted,” she said.

“So what about your mom?” he said and did not want to reveal the fact he had information on her background, the social workers, the involvement of an aunt.

“She's a loser,” she said. “Useless. End of story.” She took a drink and said, “Were your parents proud of you being a cop?”

“I don't know about that. My dad was a miner, and he wanted me to be a miner. Where I grew up, the boys were miners, and the girls were miner's wives. I took off for the city and joined the force. My dad and I never really talked too much after I moved away. We had less and less in common.”

“What did your mother think?”

“I broke her heart, moving away like that,” he said. “But I think she was proud. She'd tell everybody back home about where I was working, show them clippings from the
Sun
that I'd send her.”

McKelvey finished his drink and thought about another. He knew without a doubt that Duguay or some of his guys would make a run for him. He had known that the moment he brought the gun out, the moment everything turned sideways, that they would make a play for him. The thing was to get a step ahead. He and the girl would leave at first light, and if they made good and steady time, they would be on Manitoulin Island by late afternoon. A call to Hattie with the details. She could put a cruiser on his house. And the dog. Jesus. He'd forgotten about the dog. He'd call Seeburger's daughter again, for the fifth or sixth time, and leave another message. He was beginning to see the truth, that Seeburger wasn't coming home again, and the daughter was long gone. Seeburger's last laugh from his deathbed.
Well played, old man.