Chapter Thirty-Two
Jean and Janet were on the phone…
Jean and Janet were on the phone. While he had this horrid thing hanging over his head, their relationship, so full of promise, was on hold. The reasons for this were very simple. For Jean to be seen with her would endanger her and the children. He was supposed to be at his residence between the hours of dawn and dusk, and the day was short this time of year. He also knew it would endanger Jason and Ashley if it became known in the schoolyard that he was seeing Janet. Every school has its bullies, and any excuse will do.
“So Polly and Nathan are out tonight?”
“Yes. It’s really nice to see the old girl out having fun, for all I know for the first time in her life.”
They were trying to focus on positive or at least neutral subjects, things outside of themselves.
“Where did they go?” Janet hoped that it would do Jean good to talk about almost anything else, to avoid the great pain in his life that the accusation had brought, the shitty thing they’d done to him.
“Another dance. It’s funny. I feel somehow vulnerable when I’m alone in the house, like I need a frickin’ witness or something, even though the cops are probably sitting right around the corner.” The trouble was, almost any subject or casual reference could be brought back to, or related in some way, to his present troubles.
“I’m happy for them. Hopefully, people can separate them from you.”
Damn. There, she had done it again. You simply couldn’t escape it. Polly hadn’t done anything, but she was connected to Jean.
“She told me someone was giving her a hard time at the market the other day.” Jean sighed. “But Nathan stepped up to the plate and put a stop to it right quickly. She’s not my mother, you know? Thank God my parents have passed on. I don’t know what it would be like for them to live in this town, or even pick up a newspaper.”
They talked about his abduction. Jean said that a guy named Harry Morden and friends of his had been involved, but he had also sworn Janet to promise not to discuss it.
“What good would it do?” He was trying to make her understand, to realize that there just wasn’t much point.
He hadn’t exactly explained how he escaped, other than to tell her the knots were loose after a couple of days, and that one of them fell asleep, and there was a Harry Morden, painted on the mailbox.
“I’ve seen them guys around. But the trouble is, I just couldn’t prove anything.”
The odds of them coming out and telling the cops where Jean was when Caitlynn disappeared were rather slim. To try to explain his side of that story would just make it worse for him, he explained. Jean had learned a lot about human nature in his previous experiences, and Janet had no choice but to defer to his judgment. The fact that at least four people knew he was innocent in addition to Janet, and on the face of it Polly as well, wasn’t much comfort when the men obviously weren’t going to talk about it.
The pair chatted about sweet nothings. She was telling him that Jason had scored an A-plus on a science project when Jean heard a couple of indistinct thumps from the front door.
While it was unusual for Polly and Nathan to make such an early night of it, it was only when he heard something at the back door that his instincts were aroused. Jean sat in the kitchen, as it was not usual for him to lay in bed and talk on the phone. The habits of a lifetime were hard to break, in spite of going seven years without a phone at all.
A strange, dull rumbling, a kind of rushing as of great winds, came to him through the walls, as if a thunderstorm was coming in. Yet the night was a calm one in mid-winter…a snowplow? But they were usually accompanied by thuds and clangs as the blade stuck curbs, the ends of driveways, and cracks and ridges in the frost-heaved streets. It wasn’t Polly, she would have been inside by now.
“What the hell?”
The glass had just cracked in his back door.
“Holy shit. The house is on fire. Janet, call the fire department.”
Jean was out of his chair, staring bug-eyed at an orange glow from the back hallway.
“Jean. Oh my God. Oh. God. No.”
“I’m going to hang up. Someone set the house on fire.” His voice firm and strong in her ear, and with little evidence of panic, just a kind of patient resolve.
She heard him gasp a swear word, and the click of the phone button as it hit the switch. Heart thudding in deep, abject fear, she put her hand on the button and waited a second, then began dialing nine-one-one.
“Oh, God, oh, God-fucking-damn it.” She breathed, just breathe, as she waited for the dispatcher to pick it up…those foul bastards, she was thinking, even though swearing wouldn’t do any good.
Just for one brief moment of time, Janet felt real hatred, suddenly understanding that this was the kind of thing Jean had lived with for so long. Was this what hate felt like?
Oh, Jesus Christ, she thought in wonder and then she was blurting out the information as the dispatcher finally came on the line.
“Where did you say that was?” The dispatcher had a cool, careless tone, as she heard a loud, theatrical yawn being ostentatiously stifled.
“Twenty-one-forty-eight. You fucking bastards. Get going.”
“There’s no need to be rude, madam.”
She could almost hear the sardonic smile in the smug male voice on the line.
“I’ll see if we have a unit available.”
“Damn you. God damn you all to hell.” She flung the phone at the wall, grabbed her keys and purse and headed for the door.
She hated Scudmore right then.
***
The boys were reconsidering their options and their past actions regarding the man they called Frenchie. Ted was frankly livid that Frenchie had outsmarted him, and didn’t want to give up.
“I’ll get that fuckin’ perverted son-of-a-bitch if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
Ted’s facial muscles worked, they had been indicating a lot of teeth-grinding lately.
Teddy: grinding his teeth a lot...
“He didn’t have anything to do with the Isaacs kid.” Slick Wilson pointed out reasonably enough, but Teddy was having none of it. “We had him under lock and key the day she went missing.”
“He’s sick.” Teddy insisted. “Everybody hates him. We could kill him in the street and no one would say a damned thing about it.”
He wanted to kill Frenchie real bad.
“The question is, what can we do now?” Jeff McCabe, asking reasonably enough.
Harry Morden sat with the corners of his mouth tugging insistently downwards. Poor Harry had been sinking into a real depression since the Frenchman escaped.
“We can’t do nothing. The cops got him tied up as tight as a drum.”
“We’ll never get close enough to him. But where there’s a will there’s a way.” Hiltz looked around darkly.
No one said anything, but he absolutely reeked of gasoline.
It was a good thing he had made it to the Morden house without being picked up by a speed trap. Even a city cop could hardly ignore the obvious implications of that. Slick just watched him.
“I want you boys to promise me you won’t do nothing.” McCabe was back on top of the group’s pecking order now that Teddy’s little plan had failed. “We have to think about damage control at this point. We’ll get another chance at him later.”
His thoughts on the subject were left unspoken, that is to say if he had any thoughts at all.
“You guys seem to be missing the point.” Slick had some anger, a little heat noticeable in his words.
He glared at Teddy, but kept his other thoughts to himself.
“What are you getting at?” Teddy had gone back to being stupid now that their hopes, dreams and aspirations had been shattered by events beyond their control.
“If Gagnon didn’t take the Isaacs kid, ah, well then, who did?” Slick stared in disdain.
“Who did?” He repeated it.
They sat there in silence.
“It’s none of our concern, anyway.” Jeff’s voice was gruff. “Who fuckin’ cares? Fuckin’ Jews. They could all be shot and pissed on. Look what they did to the Palestinians.”
“That ain’t right.” Slick groaned. “She’s just a little kid. She might be buried in a box somewhere. Fuck, she might even still be alive, uh, somewhere still. What did she do?”
“What’s that got to do with us?” Teddy was practically barking now...
The boys stared at Slick like he was some kind of traitor to his kind. What the fuck did the Isaacs kid do to them Palestinians?
“As long as the cops and everyone thinks Gagnon did it, they ain’t going looking for her, are they?” Fuck, he’d had it with them guys.
All Slick wanted to do was to sell up and move somewhere else. These guys, who were supposedly his best friends, were showing their true colors. And the color most prominently displayed was a kind of shit-brown.
His guts in a cold rage.
Slick’s guts quivered in cold anger when he thought of the kid. Fuck, at least I know I’m an alcoholic—
“I told you I wasn’t doing no time for that French fucker, and the same goes for the kid.” Teddy was adamant. “I don’t give a fuck. I got car insurance, I got car payments, I owe the credit company. I want to go to fucking Mexico…fuck them all. Fuck ‘em all.”
Slick had the distinct impression that if he wasn’t careful, they’d shoot him. Christ.
Look what they did to the Palestinians. When have you ever cared about the Palestinians, thought Slick.
It would be laughable, if it wasn’t so dirty.
***
A group of them hovered in front of the house. Polly and Nathan, Jean and Janet, half a dozen firemen, still intent on watering-down hot-spots, along with Sergeant Cournoyer, and three or four other cops keeping the crowd back and traffic moving on the street.
“I’m sorry. I sometimes wonder what’s wrong with the human race.” Cournoyer stood there, having dealt with all of that first.
His words were greeted by an immense and profound silence. After all that had happened, what could anyone say to contradict him? There’s always going to be gawkers.
With great depths of sadness evident in the dark pools of her eyes, Polly stood there in her black wool coat, hugging herself, hands with grey knitted gloves shoved under her armpits, stamping her feet on the frigid sidewalk. She gazed at the towering hulk of what had been her home for decades. If she didn’t already know that it was time to let go, the smoking front porch of the house put the fine point of reality on it.
One big house...
“I don’t know how much smoke damage there is inside the place. It’s possible your clothes and stuff might not be too bad.” Jean’s voice trailed off.
His few possessions were in there too, but Jean could live with less, after seven years in a jail cell, not counting the time awaiting trial. First in one institution, and then another.
What was one more room? One more used pair of jeans? One more jacket picked off a rack at the Salvation Army? The one he wore now was probably a size too small, when he thought about it. He was lucky to escape with his life. You couldn’t look at it any other way. Jean realized with a shock that he actually had money in the bank. Huh.
“Who all was in the house?” Cournoyer, turning back towards them after a brief council with the Fire Chief and a pair of constables, and one other man, some guy in an ill-fitting brown suit with a topcoat of thick blue flannel, and heavy-looking black Oxfords.
Jean shrugged in his Gallic fashion.
“Just me.”
He waited for the inevitable barrage of questions.
“Well, that’s lucky then.”
Jean could only dream of punching him in the mouth—
The sergeant beckoned at a constable.
“You and Wainwright get the details.” He gingerly made his way past the puddles, towards the main bulk of the crowd.
Called out from home again, he was wearing his good shoes.
A tall, brown-haired cop-woman held a notebook and pen. Her shorter male partner looked on. The plain-clothes detective hovered nearby but pretended he wasn’t eavesdropping, with two big, pink, oval ears, flapping like Dumbo’s. He assiduously avoided all their eyes. He was just trying to gain an impression.
“Have any of you been handling gasoline tonight? Filling up a snow-blower? Anything like that?”
Jean shook his head and the others followed suit.
“What are you trying to say, Constable?” Nathan had an arm around Polly.
Jean just stood there, reeling.
Jean was in shock, and the sidewalk interrogation wasn’t exactly the most welcome thing right now. For some reason the voices of the crowd were rushing inside his head.
“We’ll be getting the Fire Marshall in to investigate.” She made this announcement with an air of satisfaction. “Where were all you folks tonight?”
She began with Nathan, whom she recognized from the Farmer’s Market, besides which, an uncle of hers lived just down the road from him.
“Polly and I were at the Legion Dance when somebody came running in. I think it was Hank Mathers. He was yelling for the boys from the volunteer fire department.”
Nathan’s statement was pretty simple.
Nathan.
“Which one’s Polly?”
“I am. I live here…” The words, at least I used to, hung unspoken in the frosty night air.
Polly had a look of dumb incomprehension on her pinched face. She had aged thirty years in a night.
“I’m Janet Herbert. I called it in. Jean and I were talking on the phone when the house caught on fire.” Janet went next.
“Yes. Well, you shouldn’t be yelling and swearing at the dispatcher like that, but of course people get pretty upset at times like this.” The heavy-set male cop eyed Janet.
She flushed but kept silent, angry eyes making her feelings clear. Some things are better left alone, she supposed. It occurred to her just how badly Jean must want or even need to blow off a few sternly repressed emotions. She wondered at all the stuff the man, a man whom she hardly knew, had been through. No one could have remained unaffected by it all…right?
“And you, sir?” Asked the lady constable.
“I’m Jean Gagnon.” There was a note of total resignation apparent in his voice.
Janet, watching closely, felt inside of Jean. She felt something deep inside of Jean, a fatalism. It was surrender, a giving up of hope, courage and dignity. She saw Jean give up his very humanity at that moment. It was a feeling one could not describe to another, but she just felt it. After a pause that seemed to go on all too long, Jean spoke.
“It’s my house.” The officer instantly stopped writing, and lifted her eyes to Jean’s downcast face.
“Oh, really.”
The male cop put his hand on his holster.
“And what can you tell us about the gasoline all over the front and back doors?”
Jean Gagnon just stood there, with his face a rictus of total defeat, pulling and tugging his features into a mask of pure tragedy, like some carved wooden thing from a shaman’s lodge.
***
After an hour of questioning, the four of them ended up back at Janet’s house.
There was nowhere else to go, and they had to figure out what to do next, whether to go to a hotel, or sleep on someone’s couch, or what? It was emotional exhaustion.
“Or what?” Murmured Jean, seated in Janet’s sagging recliner-rocker.
Polly’s tired eyes sought his out as Janet got the kettle going for a pot of tea. She and Nathan sat on the couch. It was about two-ten a.m. in the morning, and exhaustion had caught up with all of them. Janet came back into the room, perching on the arm of Jean’s chair. Her hand, still red with cold, sought out his.
“Oh, Jean.” She took in Jean’s dull eyes and hopeless expression.
“If you don’t have any money. I can get you a motel room, and put it on my card.” Nathan had a suggestion.
Jean slumped in the chair, not answering him right away. Defeat was visible in his posture.
“He’s staying with me. I’m not putting up with any arguments.”
Nathan and Polly exchanged a quick glance, a smile stealing over their faces.
Polly.
“Well, this may not be the best time. But Nathan and I have an announcement to make.”
“Really?” Janet was perhaps quicker on the uptake than Jean, who had been through so much tonight.
“Huh? What? I’m sorry?” It sank in, what they were trying to say.
Nathan stood. Jean got up and shook hands with him. A sudden wide grin transformed his features.
“Really?” He asked, looking in approval from one to the other.
“We’re a couple now.” Polly was a little stunned when Jean stepped in close and gave her an impulsive hug.
She grinned beside his shoulder into Janet’s eyes.
“Well. Mister Gagnon.”
Polly found the outpouring of emotion from Jean a little overwhelming. Janet stepped over and gave Polly a quick hug as well.
“I’m so happy for you guys.”
The whistle of the kettle made itself known in the background as the four of them struggled for words.
“I’d be happy to give the bride away.” Jean was joking, but as he subsided back into his chair, the sadness stole over him again.
“That won’t be necessary.” Polly had this gleam in her eye. “You see, Nathan and I are eloping.”
This brought a tired smile to Gagnon as Janet moved into the other room.
They could hear crockery rattling around. About then a door unlatched and Jason was there, on his way to the bathroom, eyes a-goggle at the strange sight of all these people in his family’s living room in the middle of the night.
“Your mom’s in the kitchen.” Jean told him.
Jason nodded dumbly and kept going.
“He’s a good kid.”
They nodded sagely.
When Janet came out with a tray filled with tea and the makings, there was water running in the bathroom.
“Oh.” Janet had run out of the house in a panic, both kids sleeping, and kind of relied on him to be mature.
“Doesn’t he sleep in the basement?” Polly asked as Jean and Nathan looked on.
“Hey.” Jason came out of the bathroom looking sheepish and a little confused.
Jason. A good kid
Jean lit up at the sight of him.
“I hear you got an A-plus on the science thing.”
The boy smiled shyly at the newcomers.
“Hi. Yeah, thanks.”
“Mom?” Jason was suddenly not so much the nine-year-old man-of-the-house, very much the frightened little boy.
“We’re just a bunch of adults talking.” Jean nodded. “But don’t worry. We’re not drunk or anything.”
Jason giggled appreciatively, and Jean winked at him.
“Please go to your room, honey. Thanks for looking after Ashley.”
Jason’s bright and curious eyes took it all in. He knew something was up. You could hardly hide it from the kids. His nose wrinkled, and his eyes narrowed, but he reluctantly shuffled on, headed for the kitchen and the basement, with just one quick look back.
“We’ll talk about it in the morning.” Jean called after him.
“I don’t mind sleeping on the couch.” He gave a tired grin. “It sure beats the garage.”
The others chuckled. It was best to try and keep the spirits up.
“So, what are you guys planning?” Janet was sipping at her tea cup.
“We’re going to run off to Florida for a while.” Nathan spoke first. “We’re going to live in sin.”
Polly slapped him firmly on the arm.
“Sure we are.” Her cheeks flushed in a kind of crimson.
“I’m so happy for youse guys.” Jean gave them an exaggerated Quebecois accent, and they all laughed again.
There was a strange, heady air in the room as the tea took its effect. It was a kind of catharsis, a release. They were all quite giddy with the relaxation of tension, but the adrenalin high was short-lived. It wasn’t long before Jean yawned, and the others could see that he was ready to collapse. Then everyone was doing it.
END
Images. Louis.
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