Mind Games Read online

  Her work in the orchards done, money in her pocket, Victoria hitchhiked to Nelson to attend a rock concert in a baseball park. That’s where she met Peter.

  “I was attracted to him. He was tall and sinewy and handsome, if you can forgive the scraggly beard. He’d been hanging around third base, surrounded by girls, and I thought, Who is this guy – some kind of movie star? When I got closer, I realized he was hawking grams of hashish.”

  When he was finally alone, she came up behind him and said in a low voice, “You’re busted.” He froze, started running, glanced behind, then stopped abruptly when he saw Victoria laughing. They talked, connected. He said she was the most beautiful creature he’d met since escaping prison. At first, she thought the prison reference was a joke.

  “I don’t know how old he was, early twenties. He was American, from Portland. A deserter, he went AWOL. His story’s all in here, I wrote it down. Don’t read the poems.”

  For God’s sake, I thought, a dope dealer, an army deserter, and, if his initial reaction of running from Victoria meant anything, a coward.

  “Pete, he called himself, though I preferred Peter. I don’t think he wanted me to know his last name – he was, to put it bluntly, wanted by the law, at least in the States. He lived in the Kootenay Valley. Just hanging around and moving about, he said. Currently, he was following a band called Brain Damage from town to town.”

  “Brain Damage?”

  “A local version of the Grateful Dead.”

  A smarmy entrepreneur, a rock-and-roll tent-follower setting up shop at every stop. My recurring dream came back. The town square, the longhairs playing music on the bandstand, their scraggly beards hiding the different faces of Timothy Dare. The smell of marijuana.

  “Did he play a banjo?”

  Victoria almost jumped. “Yes. My God, where did that come from?”

  “Primal knowledge.”

  She looked puzzled, shook it off, continued: “We got on like a damn volcano. We went for a walk by the lake, and we … Well, we got stoned on his hash, and I invited him into my sleeping bag.”

  Proof that the product of their union was damaged – high-THC spermatozoid cell meets high-THC egg, creating an unstable life form.

  “And we tripped.” She waited for me to respond.

  “Over what?”

  “Tripped, darling. On LSD.”

  “How much LSD?”

  “Four hundred micrograms a hit.” While Brain Damage played on.

  I stopped stirring the bouillabaisse. “Victoria, can I ask you another question?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Was this before or after I was conceived?”

  “In between.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you want the clinical details? I can’t remember the number of times we made love.”

  “Willingly?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Willingly, on your part?”

  “Of course. My God, yes.” She seemed astounded by the question.

  I’m relieved that Victoria wasn’t raped, but the truth was harsh enough. I was conceived during a hallucinogenic high, my two fusing cells ripped on eight hundred micrograms of acid. It is a miracle that I’m not a drooling ghoul with five eyes.

  “He was bright, Tim. He had his B.Sc. He wasn’t a medical student, but he hoped to be one. I had a backgammon set in my pack, and we played it, and he beat me – I thought I was a bit of an expert. He was politically committed. He got fairly garrulous, and began telling me his history. He’d joined the U.S. Marines, and he was politicized in Vietnam. After he made the run to Canada, he helped organize an underground group helping draft dodgers cross the border. He was selling pot to finance it.”

  As I doled out the bouillabaisse, I found myself softening to Peter – he was anything but a coward, held ideals that I didn’t find unworthy. Victoria had told her story cleverly, the bad news first, the psychedelic impregnation that she’d gone to such pains to withhold. I understood now why she shied from the subject while I was in my teens.

  Victoria and Peter parted the next day. She had to return to Vancouver, to register at UBC. Peter was heading off to the bush, the undefended border, to smuggle in a couple of Californians. He offered no forwarding address, though Victoria gave him hers.

  “Peace,” he said as he left.

  She was still coming down from the lysergic acid and went into a deep depression.

  There was no thought of an abortion. I would be her only memory of him. Though love may not have completely cemented after a single night, Victoria’s feelings for him were strong, and she was slow to abandon hope he’d reappear. But he hasn’t communicated since.

  So I’m still left with that troubling question: Where is he now? Has he returned to the States, and does he sit rotting in a military prison? Or has he become the hermit of Jackson Cove, spotted occasionally by Clinton Huff selling beads at the weekend market?

  I left it at that, gave words of love, embraced her, thanked her for telling me the truth. We talked about other matters through dinner, then I settled into an armchair with her diary.

  “Please don’t read the icky poems,” she said and retreated to her room, a little flushed. But she had unwound, and it showed in her expression, her carriage. No medicine could have been as effective as your advice that she’d been protecting herself – out of fear of rebuke, of filial censure from a drug-born sleeping-bag baby sired by a fan of Brain Damage.

  I confess that I read her post-pubescent poetic maunderings. I shall put it kindly: Victoria wisely chose a less hazardous literary direction. Some of her prose, however, was riveting: the account of her one-night fling with ex-Private First Class Peter Without a Surname (perused with a flush of embarrassment) and the history he had related to her.

  When he was twenty, seduced by thoughts of adventure in far-off places, he quit college to join the Marines. His naïveté was stripped away in the rice paddies of Vietnam: it was an unwinnable war, futile. When Peter witnessed his best friend die in a booby-trapped barn, he became a dissenter in uniform. He returned to the U.S. on leave, deserted, found his way across the border. Soon, he was smuggling others to Canada. There were perilous border crossings, harrowing escapes, once from the military police.

  And that’s all she wrote. But the news isn’t so bad. I may be a scrambled egg, chemically unbalanced, thanks to Peter, but there’s also a genetic inheritance of bravery that I find encouraging.

  North Kamloops Station. I heist my pack and disembark. The air is sharp, a cool cloudless night, and I can only hope the weather holds for my trial run. I must try to record which curves are dangerous, which can be taken at full speed.

  As Vesuvio II is released to me, I notice that the man with the lute has also got off here. He is sauntering toward an old farm truck, and I chase after him.

  “Wait, what’s your name?”

  He frowns, looking me over with hooded eyes. “Harry Baker.”

  “It’s not Pete.”

  “No. Harry.”

  We shake hands. “I enjoyed the music.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Date of Interview: Friday, October 17, 2003.

  Earlier this week, Tim telephoned me from Kelowna, inviting me for a sail, which he hoped would serve as an apology for his abruptness of last week, and I accepted. On the phone, he’d reported himself as in good spirits, but when I joined him today he appeared troubled and angry. A fourth murder has occurred, though it hasn’t been labelled as such or been in the news. He was frustrated at the lack of evidence implicating the two prime suspects.

  As well, he has found himself “nonplussed” by an unexpected turn of fortune in his mother’s libel trial.

  He did his best to present a more tranquil face during our sail, and seemed pleased that I knew some boat craft. I picked up a sense of determination from him, and he may be correct when he says anger has fortified his strength. He has refused to move to a secure location, as advised by the pol
ice, who are concerned he may have compromised his safety by his blunt inquiries at The Tides.

  When I urged him not to dismiss this advice, he said he would not hide from phantoms any more, “whether real or fantastical.” However reckless, his more resolute attitude must be seen as a sign of further healing. During his training run, while camping in a provincial park, he had a dream that spoke to his growing boldness.

  During our sail, he entertained me on his clarinet with a few jazz standards but otherwise was silent for long periods. I was reluctant to break into his thoughts, given that he regards sailing as a meditative exercise.

  We did chat briefly about Sally Pascoe – he claims to have come to grips with his “fading hopes for reunion.” I’ve some doubts about this, because of his past wavering, but I feel I should encourage this more resigned attitude, as the relationship may not be repairable.1

  Victoria’s diary discloses a rather robust history of his father, but Tim won’t reject the medically improbable chance that his genes were damaged during conception. This gives him another tool to avoid dealing with his identity crisis as it relates to his father. I went to pains to convince him there are no easy outs, even bolstering my case with the medical literature.2

  Okay, Allis, but I’m not sure if Mazurky and Hall controlled all the variables. They weren’t able to provide many examples of conception during an LSD experience. Nor did they take into account those raised by single parents, particularly male subjects who never knew their father. So it seems a reach to say there is behavioural correlation.

  Look instead at the proof that stares you in the face. Why are you so insistent that I’m within the normal curve, or at least fluttering about the margins? “It’s okay to be imperfect,” you said. “It’s an attainable goal and ultimately more fun.”

  Maybe you’re right, maybe I enjoy not being content with myself. Maybe I should take pride in being, as you put it, a unique medley of internal contradictions. And maybe I should stop seeking excuses for what I am, stop blaming Victoria and Peter for their hippie drug experience.

  I was surprised to learn that the ballerina knows how to reef a sail. You kept the Ego in the wind nicely, I must say. You looked radiant with the wind and sun playing on your face. Clearly, you like periods of thoughtful quiet, and were grateful that I didn’t present as my usual yammering bundle of neuroses. I didn’t want to cast gloom with another tale of murder, and gave you the merest outline, but I need to vent about it, get it out of the way.

  You haven’t heard about this latest death because it’s been hushed up. Two weeks ago Thursday, probably only hours before my visit to The Tides, young Sylvester Frummell was hanged from a tree on Burnaby Mountain.

  Churko might have found the body faster had he followed my advice to send dogs into the deep woods near Simon Fraser University. But there hadn’t been any reports of missing persons, and he joshed me: my mysterious powers must be failing me.

  Then, two days ago, he phoned me. Hikers had noticed the furious activity of ravens in a wooded ravine on Burnaby Mountain. They’d been attacking a body hanging from a maple tree.

  A ninety-minute, heart-pumping ride on Vesuvio II brought me to the Simon Fraser campus, where I met Churko and members of his team. Churko wouldn’t look me in the eye; under the tragic circumstances, I couldn’t feel any vindication. I was led on a fifteen-minute scramble down the gully to the maple tree; there I saw a nylon rope dangling from a branch. (In When Comes the Darkness: a chestnut tree, a cord from a bathrobe.) The remains had been removed.

  Sylvester Frummell was seventeen, a freshman from Fort St. John. Nobody noticed he’d disappeared. I find it outrageous that a young student could be so lacking in friends and caring relatives that no one would report him missing for two weeks. His landlady had been interviewed: Frummell had his own key, his own entrance, she wasn’t monitoring his comings and goings, he was a very private person. Acted a little strange, mumbled to himself.

  The RCMP in Fort St. John have talked to his parents and a few acquaintances. His divorced mother claimed he rarely phoned. His father hadn’t talked to him in thirteen years. Neighbours recalled him as strange, a loner. So did the SFU students whom the detectives interviewed.

  “Everyone says he was straight, not a homo,” Churko said. “Doesn’t fit the pattern. I don’t know about murder, he could have climbed the tree and jumped.”

  Churko can’t seem to stifle his eagerness for solutions that don’t involve work. However, he came around, reluctantly accepted my hypothesis: Frummell wasn’t gay, but Grundy isn’t discerning and may have chosen to believe so. Frummell was different, that’s all that mattered. Grundy hadn’t shared any classes with Frummell, but obviously he and Lyall had taken note of him on the campus. They had chosen this friendless soul, enticed him into the thick woods of Burnaby Mountain.

  So as not to warn the suspects, the official verdict has been announced as suicide. Churko is confident they don’t know they’re being watched, but I’m not so sure. They’ve been lying low since my visit, sticking to their routines, only once going out for an evening, to a hockey game.

  This death has impacted deeply on me. Frummell had entered college on a generous scholarship. He had hoped to be a mathematician. His habit had been to wander along the mountain trails working out equations in a scribbler.

  Grundy had a sufficient window within which to act: an hour-long gap between classes. Professor Walton (Biology 200) remembers Grundy at his eight-thirty – he made a point of looking for him each day. Professor Sewell (Statistical Analysis) recalls Grundy hurrying into his ten-thirty: he seemed distracted, tense, and when called upon wasn’t able to define the coefficient of correlation.

  Both these teachers know Bob Grundison’s background, as does the entire faculty, but were unaware till now that their student was a suspected serial killer. They were sworn to secrecy, of course, until the police could buttress their circumstantial case.

  It’s a political hot potato now that the Grundison family is linked. Churko was summoned to the Attorney General’s office, and by the time he finished his report, the A.G. had subsided several inches in his thronelike chair. Churko was warned to make no mistakes. He is to operate by the letter of the law; the government can’t afford any fallout. Churko has developed a slight facial tic.

  The investigation plods on. Of the four victims, only José Pierrera may be a source of leads, but former workmates shrugged when asked what they knew of the man, his hangouts. His only relative, a sister, rarely visited him. Uniformed beat constables have been checking out the gay bars, showing his photograph, but so far no one has recognized him. How could someone, even a recent immigrant, be so invisible? I worry that slipshod work is being done by inexperienced constables, but Churko claims he doesn’t have enough detectives to put on the street. “These ain’t the only unsolved murders on my dance card, Doc.”

  James took umbrage when I asked if he knew of some hangout where Pierrera might have sought male company. “I don’t frequent such establishments.” But while I was in my consulting room, toiling over some new referrals from the criminal bar (business is picking up, by the way), he must have been logging on to some manner of gay newsgroup or chat room, because he bustled in and handed me a printout.

  “These three bars are within a radius of approximately one kilometre from where the victim lived.” I was impressed: James had seen the logic of starting close to home – Pierrera had no car. And Churko’s foot soldiers might not have concentrated much effort in the working-class East End.

  I could have asked Churko to recheck these three addresses – if they’d been visited at all – but he was chafing at what he claimed was my assumption of command. Dotty wasn’t trusting his uninspired approach either: she worried that some “male aggressive” would make a botch of things. She will spend an evening cruising these bars.

  Though Dr. Martha Wade hadn’t seen Grundy since his anger therapy ended in August, I thought I should confer with her. (I took
the elevator to her office, no sweat.) She was alarmed by the indications her former patient was a murderer, and upset over her misconceived regard for Lyall DeWitt.

  Martha had met Jossie Markevich, whom she found rather coarse and self-centred. Like me, she felt Grundy’s avowals of affection for Markevich were feigned – she shares my doubt about his ability to love others. Still, she’d encouraged Grundy to pursue the relationship – he needed the stability of a female partner and wasn’t likely to make a better fit.

  But my account of walking into the aftermath of a scène ménage à trois at The Tides took her aback. “That doesn’t make sense, he’s too possessive, it challenges all his self-perceptions of being manly, a stud.”

  Given Churko’s overly cautious line of attack, I’m going to try to bring matters to a boil. I have an appointment with Grundy next week, a session in my office that will be secretly monitored by Churko and Dotty. I must find a way to get behind his cool façade.

  You can see how absorbed I am in this case, Allis, and it is well that I am: the occupied mind has no room for sadness and loss. I don’t dwell much on Sally any more, don’t phone her, don’t go bicycling down Creelman Street. So I hope you don’t mind my detailed accounts of these murders: I’m pouring out what fills me, as I must, as you’ve counselled me to do.

  Anyway, these investigative musings filled my own silences on this truant afternoon as we beat our way off the Point Grey shores. You smiled softly at me, as if in conspiracy, as you brushed back wayward strands of salt-wet hair. You seem to be surviving your bad patch with far more grace than I.

  In a way, you’re luckier – you’re no longer in love with your former partner, the worst is over for you. Dotty caught Richard in a compromising position, so he must consent to the divorce. Let him wed the business partner, as he threatened in that hostile message he left. When forbidden fruit becomes legal – especially in around-the-clock relationships – lovers face boredom and disillusionment.