Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

They have never spoken on school property during school hours. They don’t speak much now. Madeleine proposes a plan.

By two o’clock the report has come in on the registration search Bradley ordered on Ford Galaxys. It turned up eleven possibilities: five in Toronto, two in Windsor, two in Kingston, one in Ottawa, one in Sudbury. In ten cases, the owner was at work between four and five P.M. last Wednesday, with his car. In one he was out of the country altogether.

Jack accelerates. The police will be wrapping up their session at the arena right about now. Just east of Windsor, his heart leaps at the sight of a black-and-white cruiser in his rearview mirror. Gaining on him, tailgating. He’s had it. He waits for the flashing light, even now preparing himself to pull over, to say nothing and insist on making a phone call. But the black-and-white pulls into the passing lane. Jack keeps his eyes on the road. What is more natural — to glance at the passing driver? Or to keep his eyes forward? His face feels like a beacon. The cruiser takes forever to pass — is the cop on his radio right now? Finally it pulls past Jack, steadily gathering speed, widening the distance between them. He breathes again.

Welcome to Windsor . Jack heads for the waterfront. Smoke rises from the GM factory across the river in Detroit — you could almost skip a stone to it. He finds what he’s looking for on the edge of town.

Stretching before him are acres of bodies, some rusting, others wrecked — jagged windshields, gaping hoods, crumpled snouts. One great tumbling car crash. At the far end, stacks of neatly pressed chassis loom near a shack that sits in the shadow of a crusher, its magnet like a giant pendulum. Henry Froelich and his boy would be in heaven here, thinks Jack, as he takes the tools from the trunk. He gets to work, calm now. Maybe he is cut out for this sort of thing after all. He removes the hubcaps and sends them saucering in four directions. Then the tires. He unscrews the steering column and yanks it by the wheel, dangling wires and ignition. Uproots sparkplugs, pries off the bumpers, and hurls them. He funnels dirt into the gas tank, removes the fan belt, the battery, and, holding the crowbar like a baseball bat, goes at the exterior. Finally, he smashes the windows.

There are bound to be bigger wrecking yards in Detroit, but he didn’t wish to risk being stopped at the border, now that a bulletin has surely gone out on the Ford. Not to mention having to walk back across the bridge an hour later — although the guards are unlikely to pay much attention to him on either side of this point on the world’s longest undefended border. Four thousand miles of freedom.

He drops the plates in the river.

In the recreation director’s office at the curling arena, the last uniformed, hatted air force man goes out the door, closing it behind him. Constable Lonergan folds his notebook away, turns to his superior and asks, “Should I put out a bulletin on that Ford Galaxy now, sir?”

Inspector Bradley looks at the man, his face betraying no opinion as to the merit of the question he has just been asked, and says, “There was no Ford Galaxy.”

If Mr. March wonders where Madeleine is when the rest of his class returns to their desks after recess, he doesn’t show it. He neither informs the principal nor phones the child’s mother. Has he thought ahead to what he will say when the parents ask why they were not alerted to their daughter’s absence, now of all times? Or is he counting on Madeleine to make sure her parents don’t find out, thus sparing him the ordeal of answering their questions as to why she would choose to avoid his classroom?

Perhaps Mr. March doesn’t care what happens to Madeleine. Or maybe he doesn’t believe her to be in any danger.

Jack directs the taxi to the Hertz dealership in downtown Windsor — he’ll be able to get most of the grease off his hands there. His head has begun to ache, the pain radiating from his left eye. He decides not to take the time to find a drugstore, he’ll grab a couple of Aspirins when he gets home. He rents a car — no need for back roads now. He’ll bomb straight up the 401 to London and, with luck, be back before dark, although he knows his family will be safe at home.

He can hardly bear to think of his daughter; her face becomes overlaid with the face of the McCarroll girl and he feels almost terrorized by his good fortune. His child is alive and happy. And right now she is in one of the safest places of all. School.

THEY HAVE TO FIND her other streamer. That is the mission. But Madeleine knows that what she really needs to find is where Claire was for three days and nights. Rex found her. “Good boy, Rex.”

The two of them hid against the windowless exterior wall of the gym until the recess bell rang, then slipped away. Madeleine waited at the railway tracks by Pop’s Candy Store while Colleen went home and got Rex, then they took the fields all the way to Rock Bass.

Madeleine doesn’t feel she is doing anything wrong by playing hooky. This is like missing school for church. Or the hospital. Anyhow, they haven’t taken off in order to fool around. There is something solemn about risking getting in trouble for the sake of finding Claire’s other streamer. And visiting the spot. It’s a necessary sacrifice. Colleen follows her through the gap in the wire fence.

They have brought Rex in case the murderer is still there. Murderers always return to the scene of the crime. Perhaps they ought to have brought weapons. Don’t worry, Colleen always has her knife. And Madeleine can pick up a stone if necessary. She did think fleetingly of Mike’s rifle, but that’s a toy, and this is not a game.

Colleen leads the way down into the ravine. They have brought no food; this is not a picnic. They remove their shoes and socks and wade through the icy stream, ankles aching, then climb up the embankment, their frozen skin numb to the thistles, and into the newly sprouted cornfield. Be careful .

They put their shoes back on and walk for a long time, single file, between the furrows, feet growing heavy with mud, Rex in front, the lope of his hindquarters, his reassuring fur shining in the sun. They don’t speak. The cornfield becomes the meadow.

Oh it is Tuesday, bright and sunny, but inside Madeleine’s stomach it is chilly. Everything is so quiet, school-day quiet. Look for something pink and gleaming in last year’s fallen-down grass, or draped perhaps across a sticky milkweed pod or bulrush — furry brown spike bursting fluff. Maybe they will see it blowing across the tops of the lacy stinkweeds that are scattered like dropped napkins across the meadow — the entire countryside is a tablecloth laid for a banquet — or down among the dull burrs snagging their ankle socks — something winking back the sun, that will be her streamer. We have to find it because it was hers. And it is still out there, all alone. Keep walking. Rex knows the way.

He zigzags out in front, looking over his shoulder from time to time, stopping, letting them go ahead for a while. He is herding them. The lily of the valley release their scent, crushed underfoot in the new grass.

The ground becomes marshy. Up ahead, standing alone, announcing the woods, is a stately elm.

There, stop. Don’t step in. Stay at the edge. Like stumbling upon a pond, you don’t want to get a soaker. If this were a pond, you might see your own reflection and wonder if there was a tiny world down there looking back at you. But it’s not a pond, it’s a circular patch of tamped-down grass and weeds, as though someone had a picnic there. A spot the size of a puddle. Big enough for one to curl up in. That is where she lay. But already the tender grass is springing back. Soon there will be nothing to see. Around the edges, bluebells and dandelions have been plucked, the milk dried in their severed stems, their blossoms tossed among broken bulrushes. There is no sign of her pink streamer.