Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“Yeah, ’63, I could tell ’cause it has the new fastback.”

“What else could you tell?”

“Well I could see where it had a dent in the rear bumper.”

“Oh yeah?” The officer digs his notebook from his chest pocket and starts writing it all down. The one behind the wheel seems not to be taking any notice. The back of his head, his wide neck, impassive.

Rick leans forward between the two blue hats and searches his memory for any stray detail that might help. “It had a bumper sticker.”

“What kind of sticker?”

“Yellow. You know, like from Storybook Gardens.”

The policeman smiles slightly and nods, slowly repeating Rick’s words as he writes: “Story … book … Gardens.”

Rick feels suddenly a bit guilty. “I don’t think it’s going to help you much.”

“Why not?”

“Well, whoever it was was wearing an air force hat, so….”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I couldn’t see who ’cause of the sun, but he’s prob’ly not the guy you’re looking for.”

“Who are we looking for, Rick?”

“Well”—Rick hesitates—“whoever, you know. Took her.”

“Is that what you think happened?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

The cop smiles in the mirror, “Well we’re in the same boat then, ’cause neither do we.” He returns his eyes to his notebook. “Let me get this straight,” he says, pen poised. “You couldn’t see his face, but you saw his hat.”

“Like the outline of his hat,” says Rick.

“Right.” Then to his partner, “Rudy, how do you spell ‘silhouette’?”

“Don’t ask me.”

Rick laughs with them and says he can’t spell it either. The cop clicks his tongue thoughtfully, then says, “I’m just trying to calculate…. How long would you say it takes to jog from here back to the intersection where you left her?”

“Oh, uh. I got home around five-thirty, quarter to six, so … and that’s about the same distance, so I guess an hour or so?”

The cop raises his eyebrows companionably and writes it down, saying, “How can you be so sure when you got home?”

“I had a game. Basketball.”

“Who you play for?”

“Huron County Braves.”

“Good stuff.”

No discernible signal passes between the officers, but the car pulls away from the shoulder once more and gathers speed. They travel in silence through the rain until the cop behind the wheel says, “You sure it was an air force hat? Could’ve been a cop.”

“Naw,” says Rick.

“How do you know?” asks his partner.

“He waved.”

“Thought you said you didn’t know him,” says the driver.

“I couldn’t see him,” says Rick. “But I must’ve known him.”

“I guess all the air force guys know all the air force brats, eh?” says his partner with a smile.

“I’m not an air force brat.”

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”

“No, I know,” says Rick. “I just mean my dad’s not personnel, he’s a teacher at the school.”

They drive on and the officer behind the wheel says, “Just because a man is in uniform doesn’t make him a saint.”

“You can say that again,” says Rick.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothin’.” And the other cop winks at him in the mirror.

When Rick gets home, he taps the roof of the cruiser as it backs out of the driveway and touches two fingers to his forehead, the way the air force men do. The cop on the passenger side does likewise.

Upstairs, Colleen holds Elizabeth steady in the tub while Karen Froelich washes her. The door is closed to prevent the baby from crawling out and getting into everything. The other baby is down in the living room, sound asleep on Henry Froelich’s sleeping chest, serenaded by Joan Baez.

Karen hears the front door and says to Colleen, “Everything’s fine, baby.” Elizabeth reaches for her mother, Karen catches her wrist and kisses the back of her hand. “See? Ricky’s back already.”

Though television is permitted on Holy Saturday, Perry Mason is strictly verboten at all times, but Madeleine is not deriving as much guilty pleasure as she should because things are out of joint. When Dad came in from helping with the search, her mother turned on the television herself, and told her to watch something. Now, Perry’s theme music comes up, sexy and swaggering, but her parents continue to confer, oblivious, at the kitchen table.

Madeleine catches the tail end of her mother’s sentence. “… they’ll go to pieces.”

“Who’s going to pieces?” pipes up Madeleine from the living room.

“Never you mind, go back to your program.”

Ordered to watch Perry Mason . Things are coming apart. She curls up on the couch with a cushion in her lap and resists an atavistic urge to suck her thumb.

Perry, Paul, Della and a “B-girl” with fishnet stockings and brassy hair are in a bar. The B-girl flirts with Paul, batting her eyelashes, chin raised to emphasize her industrial-size chest — bosom. This is supposed to be Holy Saturday, doesn’t anyone care? Madeleine looks imploringly toward the kitchen, but her parents are huddled in the gathering darkness. Twenty-five minutes later, the B-girl winds up murdered and we are in court. “What in the name of time are you watching?”

“But Dad, Maman said I could watch it.”

“Maman said you could watch TV.”

“It’s almost over.”

“You mean to tell me you’ve digested most of this garbage already?”

“We’re just about to find out who did it.”

“Oh,” he says, sitting down. “Well, let’s see.”

They watch, Madeleine curled in the crook of his arm. After two minutes, Jack says, “The gardener did it.” Twenty minutes later, Perry points to a bony-faced man on the stand who is clutching a crumpled hat. “The hose you used to water the grounds; the hose you used to strangle Miss Delaney; the hose you then disposed of at the Fairmont Country Club!”

Madeleine gasps, “How did you know?!”

“You can’t fool the old rooster. Now let’s go get some supper.”

Rick has taken his sisters to see Kim at the movie theatre on the station. On their way home, he tells them to wait while he stops in at the search headquarters set up in Number 4 Hangar.

He looks at the enlarged wall map of Huron County and sees that the search has been expanded to include the route of his Wednesday run. He wonders if the police are wasting their time — how likely is it that an air force man could have had anything to do with Claire’s disappearance? On the other hand, there’s over a thousand personnel on the station — Rick doesn’t know them all. No one does.

It is turning out to be an excellent Holy Saturday. Madeleine piously reminds herself that it would be better if Maman were enjoying it with them, but she is down the street “keeping Mrs. McCarroll company.” It wouldn’t be very nice to say so out loud, but sometimes it’s more fun to be on your own with your dad.

After they paint the hard-boiled eggs for Easter Sunday morning, Madeleine and Mike drive into Exeter with their father to pick up Dixie Lee fried chicken. Aroma! Flavour! Tenderness!

At the counter Jack leaves the kids to wait for the food. “I’ll be right back.” He drives down the main street, past the empty fairgrounds on the outskirts, to the old train station. It’s boarded up, weeds flourishing between the tracks. He drives around the back. The Ford Galaxy is still there.

Too bad he can’t simply keep it as Simon suggested. The police will auction it off. If this were a big city like New York, the car would have been lifted by now, or stripped. But this is Exeter — not exactly the crime capital of Canada. As Jack pulls away again he thinks of the McCarroll child and revises that last thought.