Mind Games Read online

  Central to his distress was “an ironclad case” that Sally Pascoe has been having an affair: “a real one, with a person not of her gender.” He accused Celestine Post of covering up for Sally – and intimated that I was in league, that Sally had confided to me about adulterous acts, and that I was withholding this from him.

  Plunging his mood lower is a new hypothesis about his genesis. He was conceived, to use his euphemism, “in a socially unacceptable manner.”

  Did Victoria say why she was cancelling?

  I gather she had an upsetting talk with you.

  I blew it. I was a zombie, I was in a state of shock. I’d just found out! Cousineau, how could she … that fop! This fucking drug makes me feel too detached, I can’t rage.

  I don’t think it’s slowed your mental processes.

  Yeah, but I went off the road, I could have broken my arm. Hell with it. Maybe I’ll try Benzedrine, shoot up before the race. A month to go, I’m falling apart. Why did she have to skulk behind my back? We’re separated, she’s free to screw whomever she wants, even a sleaze like Cousineau. Is it the thrill of cheating, or is sex more enjoyable when illicit?

  Maybe she didn’t want to hurt you.

  Sure, and maybe she intended to tell me in her own good time.

  And maybe you’re continuing to make demands on her. Is she so free as you claim?

  He made an effort to control his anger.

  Okay she’s free, but does she have to be so ridiculous? Ellery Cousineau, he’s as shallow as a rain puddle, he’s … there’s something abnormal about him, too. You can see it in his eyes, the way he’s constantly studying women, but it’s as if he’s seeing them only on the surface.

  This is a man she works with …

  A writer, shmoozed his way to senior editor at Chipmunk Press. He’s been trying to get into Miriam’s pants … Sally’s, I mean … for years.

  Let’s explore that slip of the tongue.

  Miriam … Okay, maybe that’s the message I’m getting from Cousineau. A Humbert Humbert, he preys on little girls in dirndls.

  Seek another direction. How deeply do you associate Sally and Miriam?

  That’s obvious. Miriam is Sally at the age of eight, there’s even a resemblance in her old photos.

  Go deeper.

  He reflected for a minute.

  Okay, you’re right. I’ve been treating her as a child.

  What are some of examples of that?

  I make all the decisions. The plays and restaurants. The rented movies. The choice of Oscar Peterson over Diana Krall. The hour we go to bed.

  Another silence.

  I wonder why it took her so long to bolt.

  I was more a mess leaving your office than coming in. Walking off without my shoes … Was it the wounding insight? The Xanax? Had my struggle to maintain sanity taken too great a toll?

  Murder, betrayal, a crippling truth revealed: the past seven days were designed by the devil in hell himself …

  Yet it all began so innocently: Sunday, my backup dinner date with Sally. She’d picked me up, was subdued during the ride. Though bothered by l’affair Celestine, the incident in the VW van, she preferred not to talk about it. “I don’t want it to dominate the evening. I intend to have some words with her.”

  What she wanted to talk about was you. I took some small pleasure in confessing – in the broadest outline – to our cookout at the Ego. I found it odd that her initial reaction was pique, but presumed she was castigating herself for her haste in dumping a master chef.

  She wanted to know what level of intimacy had been reached that night. (“Did she stay over?” “Please, darling, Allis is my therapist.” “What kind of therapy was she offering?”) I remained vague, didn’t even mention you’ve sent Richard packing – though others seem to know. Evelyn Mendel phoned me. I gather she’s being a pillar of support.

  Left to her speculations, Sally treated me with silence for most of our date – this was upon a moonlit setting by the Fraser River: the Floating Lotus (my choice, okay, but only after she suggested Chinese). We sat by candlelight, studied menus, drank wine, listened to the river. I’d vowed to stop probing, to let her fill conversational gaps with her own words. I sensed she was rehearsing them: her lips were softly working, and there was that telltale tilt of her head.

  The silence was so tense that I jumped when my cellphone rang. Once again, it was Jack Churko. Once again, he had ugly news: another body had been discovered, mouldering in an East End basement suite, multiple stab wounds with a pair of scissors.

  I pleaded for an hour’s grace. Churko reminded me I’d been placed on a retainer. He needed me at the scene of the crime. I might be able to help connect this with the other attacks, he didn’t know yet if this victim, too, was gay. “And this time we’re talking killers, plural, at least two.” I put him on hold and turned to Sally, who sighed and offered to drive me.

  Our wonton soup, crab-in-the-shell, and shrimp with baby asparagus were already coming from the kitchen, so management provided takeout boxes. We ate as we drove, a slapdash, shirt-soiling ride. Soon we saw flashing lights ahead and stopped by the crime-scene tape. I told her I’d call her later.

  “It’s all right. We’ll talk tomorrow when you’re fresh.”

  We kissed, tenderly enough, but in no lingering fashion. “I love you,” I said.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  I nodded. She looked away, and as I stepped from the Saab onto a dreary street of wood-framed one-storeys I felt a hint of nausea (we’ll talk about what, tomorrow?). After watching the tail lights disappear, I turned wearily toward a shabby cottage, the scene of the crime, and I put my worries aside, grasped at the lifeline of cold reality. A savage murder had been committed here.

  I identified myself to a uniformed woman, and as I ducked under the yellow tape I felt as if I were passing between zones of the psyche – it was as if the tape marked the boundary of two personalities, the neurotic nerd and the forensic investigator, the two faces of Tim Dare. I’ve told you, Allis, how I’m morbidly allured by the murderous mind – and I think this helped me concentrate that Sunday night.

  The roof of the cottage was sagging, patched with tar shingles, and the yard was overgrown with weeds. Churko was near a side door leading to a half-basement, and he motioned me over to meet the homeowner, Mr. McLaird, in his eighties, a squint-eyed fellow with unwashed ears.

  “This is Dr. Dare,” Churko said. “He’s going to want to talk to you.”

  He excused McLaird for the moment to put me in the picture: the late tenant of the downstairs suite, José Pierrera, was an immigrant from Portugal, a laid-off bricklayer subsisting on employment benefits. A loner, according to McLaird, with no close friends. His only occasional visitor was a married older sister, but on Wednesday evening last he’d entertained two or three men, presumably the assailants.

  McLaird hadn’t seen him for several days, and tonight, noticing a gamy aroma, entered the suite to check. He found Pierrera’s naked body lying in the kitchenette, the blood that had poured from multiple wounds pooled around it. He had died several days ago – the pathologist would give a more exact estimation later.

  Churko suggested I might apply my forensic expertise to the motive behind a macabre joke; a pair of bloody shears had been in the corpse’s stiffened right hand – as if, impossibly, the victim had stabbed himself. I told Churko it seemed a very Grundyesque gesture. He snorted and lit a cigarette.

  Inside I could see a worn couch, a table and chair, a bed behind a partition, its sheets rumpled, clothing strewn over it. The ID team was still probing into crannies, bagging hairs, food crumbs, beer-bottle caps. Fingerprint dust mottled the many beer empties strewn about.

  I stood aside as the morgue crew removed the sheeted body: a short man, a pot belly. I looked into the tiny kitchenette at its stained wallboard, loose ceiling tiles, and worn linoleum. The silhouette of the former José Pierrera showed on the floor in a wash of red. I felt sickened, struggled
with an urge to vomit.

  When I returned outside, Churko drew me into a huddle with the landlord. “I want you to tell Dr. Dare what woke you up Wednesday night.”

  “Like I said about José, I never known him to have friends, but he was having a party, and that’s what waked me up – they was laughing, making a racket. Couldn’t tell how many. Two, three fellers. No girls. They didn’t have girls. I wouldn’t of allowed it.”

  “Could you make out their words?” Churko asked.

  “Can’t say I did.”

  “Even when you put your ear to the floor?” I asked.

  McLaird looked uncomfortable, as if exposed as one who performs unseemly acts.

  “To be honest, I didn’t hear nothing. No screams, nothing.”

  “You might have felt something,” I said. He looked blank. “Vibrations. Thumps.”

  “Well, now, the fridge makes that kind of noise, so I wouldn’t of noticed.”

  He hadn’t been able to identify Pierrera’s voice. “Never spoke much, anyway, and you couldn’t understand him for his accent.” He had no idea whether his visitors came by foot, taxi, or private car. He was asleep before they left.

  “Any reason to think he was homosexual?” Churko asked.

  McLaird couldn’t say, but hadn’t considered him “of that fashion.”

  Churko led me back inside, where we looked through a box of personal papers. Correspondence, letters from Portugal, bills, a passport. Nothing to hint he was gay.

  The only reading material – it was folded under the phone – was a page of classifieds from the Georgia Straight, the giveaway weekly. Not employment listings but personals, pleas from the lonely for companionship. On a margin, someone, presumably Pierrera, had inscribed in pencil, in laborious, crude letters, the name Jimmy.

  The phone had a redial function. Churko isn’t dull, and after he checked with identification to make sure they were finished with it, he put it on speaker and pressed the redial button. An unctuous voice answered. “You have reached the Adonis Hot Line. Do you want to speak with Philip or Conrad or Jimmy?”

  Churko hung up, preferring not to give notice that he’d be dropping by to talk to Jimmy and seize any records or tapes. “Guess we’re going to have to put some effort into this one.”

  This murder happened Wednesday, September 17, the same night the homeless man was killed in Brighton Park, and I asked Churko if he’d learned the whereabouts of Grundy and Lyall that night.

  “Relax about it, Doc. To make you happy, we checked. They were home. We got two employees confirm that.”

  A night watchman and a live-in maid at The Tides insisted Grundy and Lyall had been there all evening. They had been interviewed at a “neutral” location.

  “We had to tell them to keep their mouths shut about this. We don’t want to get in a hassle with prominents. I’m a year shy of retirement with full pension.”

  What about August 22, the night of Chauncey Wilmott’s death – had he asked about when Grundy and Lyall actually showed up for their rafting trip?

  “For Christ’s sake, Doc, why are you beating this dead horse? They were up there, it was in all the newspapers, Grundy saved some girl’s life. Okay, he has a bad report card from the past, and I know you got a hard-on for him, but cut him some slack, he’s a hero. We can’t allocate all our resources to one wild theory.”

  I shut up. Keep things safe and simple: that is Churko’s attitude, don’t get caught up in something messy on the eve of retirement.

  I followed Churko outside, where reporters had gathered. He took on a grave look for the cameras, responded to a few questions. Yes, there has been a murder, a stabbing, that’s all we’re going to say right now. Don’t know if it’s tied to any previous incidents. All avenues will be explored. Now let us do our work.

  I lingered for a while, then found my way by foot to Kingsway, the yellow scar that runs across Vancouver’s right cheek: fast food, fast gas, fast in-and-out motels. A teenaged boy on the corner, obviously a prostitute, living dangerously in these ugly times. Down the street, a woman plying a similar trade. I was lonely, in need of companionship that was healthy and real and proven. I felt incomplete after my aborted evening with Sally, in need of answers: had she intended to announce it was all over or to hold out a carrot of hope?

  I was desperate to know, to be with her. I flagged a taxi, and soon was standing in front of the house on Creelman. Only a porch lamp was on, Sally’s upstairs bedroom was darkened. But something was missing: there was no Saab in the driveway or carport. No Saab on the street.

  I rang the doorbell three times, insistently. She’d told me she was going home … I was concerned, then frightened. I dialled Celestine on my cellphone, and after several rings a sullen, sleepy voice replied.

  “It’s fucking after midnight.”

  “Just tell me if Sally’s there.”

  “Why would I tell you?”

  “Because she has disappeared. I’m at her house.”

  After a moment, she spoke with lowered voice: “She’s here, asleep on the futon in the other room, and I’m not going to wake her. Go home to bed.” She hung up.

  This was an alibi more likely prepared than off the cuff. Celestine’s role was to bear false witness for an under-the-counter affair.

  Pause to let me catch my breath. Pause for an academic aside: Reik speaks of a sense-perception that seeps unrecognized into the unconscious, a telepathy still available to the life forms from which we evolved but largely lost to us. It can still communicate beneath awareness, can even emerge within our dreams. I’d seen Sally dressed as a little girl, as Miriam, I had dreamed of Ellery Cousineau by her side, whispering words of seduction.

  He is a pedophile.

  Cousineau lives in a West End condominium: I have been there once for drinks. I took a taxi there, a spindly tower near Stanley Park. Cousineau’s condo was on the ninth floor – was that it, the one with the light glowing?

  I walked toward his building, thinking I’d buzz his suite, but then I saw the ghastly proof of my fears: a blue Saab was parked out front – the grinning Miriam doll hanging from the rear-view was distinctive, the cold truth of perfidy.

  I waited under a chestnut tree in a mindless fog. I felt again that sense I was outside my body, lost in a world without reality. But ultimately I was no longer able to shut out Sally and betrayal and jealousy, and when mind joined body I found myself still under the chestnut tree, still a hundred feet from Cousineau’s building.

  I waited through the night, shivering in the autumn cold. At a quarter to six, she emerged, wearing her dress of the evening before, and started her car and drove away.

  You can’t begin to comprehend the crushing loss I felt. There was no dealing with this feeling, no way to placate it. I could only bury it, like the dead, bury it deep beneath anger. So despite my exhaustion I carried on savagely into the day, gulping bitter coffee at an all-nighter, arriving at the office at eight a.m. to find James already there. I barked at him: Cancel my patients for the day, I’m feeling too foul to deal with the lesser problems of others. He withdrew from me and silently set about his tasks.

  I lay down and tried to nap – to no avail. I stood, I paced. I went out to the balcony, clenching my fists, wanting to scream, to be heard across the inlet. I slammed on my helmet and strode off to unleash Vesuvio II onto the streets of Vancouver.

  I was gearing into high on the Burrard Bridge when a four-wheel sports pickup swerved at me so suddenly that I skidded, fell, scraped my arm. It sped away before I could read the plate or see the driver, but I didn’t assume the act was intentional. All my thoughts were directed to exposing Ellery Cousineau for what he was: Category 302.2, exclusive type, sexually attracted to female children, extremely high recidivism rate, typically justifies his acts by claiming the child was sexually provocative. I pictured myself confronting Sally with the truth, watching the revulsion play on her face.

  I worked my way through the West End, through the checkerbo
ard maze of one-way streets, then to Denman Street. There, looming ominously, was your building, and I stalled. Was this my destination? Had unconscious impulses urged me to seek the safety of Allison Epstein’s couch? Will she recommend a straightjacket when I run out of fuel, when my rage deserts me?

  But you, too, I’ve learned, are capable of anger. You were correct in dumping all over me today. I apologize for accusing you of withholding information. My irrational suspicions had Sally uttering a dark confidence to you, an admission of adultery.

  Obviously, you weren’t implicit in the scheme – for that is what it is – or aware of its extent, or that Celestine Post is pulling the strings. Oh, yes, she’s the hatcher of this plot, the author of my misfortune. It all comes clear, her Iago-like urgings in Sally’s ear: If you think Cousineau’s such a hunk, go to bed with him. I dare you.

  So I’ll direct my anger at where it belongs. It is the witch, not the pedophile, not the children’s artist, who deserves my outrage. What impels Celestine? Lesbian possessiveness no longer seems likely. She dared Sally, challenged her to enter Cousineau’s bed. But why? To clear the way for an even more bizarre romance? Behind the acerbity, the sharp, digging elbows of her repartee, was there an attraction to me? Had Celestine actually been honest in saying she was pouring out her fucking heart to me?

  If so, how long had she felt this way about me? And why hadn’t my antennae picked up the signs? I was always too focused on Sally, unable to make out Celestine in the background. She might have planted the seeds of marital rupture many months ago, pressing on Sally the notion that she should have a life of her own, that she should undo the shackles. Find freedom, oh, my sister: challenge the nerd, insist on Bologna, if he really loves you, he’ll let you go.

  A blacker thought: Had Sally been having affairs all along? Had I blocked the clues, refused to read them? Is this the way it ends? With ugly irony? Sally will have Ellery. Celestine will have Timothy. We will live happily ever after.