Andrew Pyper - The Guardians

"Regarding Tracey Flanagan," Randy says when the woman doesn't seem to register either us or what we've just said.

"I know what it's regarding ," she replies. "Have a seat."

When two officers finaly emerge, it's a Laurel and Hardy pair, a slim felow with jug ears and a short waddler heaving a basketbal around inside his shirt. The big one introduces himself to Randy and takes him down the hal to an interview room, leaving the tal one standing over me, nodding as though something in my appearance has just settled a wager and he'd won.

"Trevor," he says. And then, when this fails to remove the puzzled expression from my face, he taps the name tag pinned to his shirt. "It's Barry Tate."

"Barry. I think I remember."

"I was a year behind you. We even had a couple of classes together."

"Hairy Barry," I say, and then he's al there. The only kid in school with a handlebar moustache that, unbelievably, actualy suited him. "You played hockey too, right?"

"I took your number the season after . . . after you stopped playing."

"Did it bring you luck?"

"Eighteen goals."

"Not bad."

"Some goon broke my wrist in a game against Kitchener the next year, and that was it for me."

"Now you're one of Grimshaw's finest."

"Pension, dental, paid holidays. And you get to drive a car with lights on the roof."

Barry starts down the same halway, but I have a little trouble lifting myself out of my chair. It brings him back to grip my elbow and heave me up. "You okay?"

"Just a little stiff in the mornings."

He gives me a look that says he's not buying that for a second, but hey, a man's body is his own business. I'm expecting him to make a joke instead, something to brush away the awkwardness, but he just stands there with his hand on my arm.

"I'm sorry about Ben," he says.

"Me too."

"I used to see him up there in that window of his. Thought about caling on him, but never did."

"I'm not sure he would have come to the door."

"Even so. I feel lousy about it."

Barry guides me down to an interview room next to the one I can hear Randy giving his statement in (". . . delivery guy. Just a boyfriend giving his girl a kiss. Didn't see much more to it than that . . ."). Next door, we take our places on opposite sides of a metal table, Barry slapping a notepad onto its scratched surface.

"Okay, then," he sighs. "Tel me about your night at Jake's."

It takes only a minute. Me and Randy having drinks after Ben's funeral. Todd Flanagan and Vince Sproule there watching the game. And Tracey bringing us pitchers and whiskeys. Other than the pizza-delivery guy, who dropped by to say helo to the girl, nothing to report. And judging by the way Barry Tate flips the notepad closed when I'm finished, he didn't expect there would be.

"That's great, Trevor. We appreciate you stopping by."

He rises, extends a hand to be shaken, but I don't move.

"So unless you have any questions of your own . . ." Barry says, now puling his hand away and using it to open the door.

"It's not realy a question so much as a suggestion."

"Oh?"

"Maybe you guys should check out the Thurman house."

He looks like he might laugh, as if he's not sure if I'm being serious. "Why would we want to do that?"

"It's just a thought."

"Have you seen or heard something that makes you have such a thought?"

"Not realy. I just thought I spotted some movement in one of the windows last night."

"You happened to be walking by?"

"I'm staying with Ben's mother for a couple of days. I'm the executor of his estate. She's a little lonely, so I'm staying in his room."

"Which has a view of the Thurmans'."

"That's right."

"Where you saw . . . ?"

"A flash. Something passing behind the glass."

"Male? Female?"

"I don't know if it was even a person."

"Wel, I have to tel you, that's not going to be enough for a search warrant."

"You think you need one of those? Even if you got one, who would you serve it on? The place has been empty more or less since you and I were shooting spitbals in Mrs. Grover's French class."

Barry Tate crosses his arms over his chest. Considers me. Perhaps wondering whether the years have left old Trev as bonkers as Ben McAuliffe was.

"Hel of a business," he says finaly. "What they puled out of that place back when we were kids."

This is a surprise. It shouldn't be, but it is. Even though al of Grimshaw remembers the bad news of the winter of 1984, it feels as though it's private knowledge, something shared by me, Randy and Carl alone.

"No doubt about it."

"You think that's got something to do with you wanting us to take a look in there?"

"How do you mean?"

"The mind, the way it works sometimes. It can get roling along certain tracks and not want to stop," Barry says, touching his now neatly trimmed moustache as though it was helping him find words. "What happened to Ben, and now you're staying in his house and everything. Could be that you're just a little spooked."

"I'm spooked sily, to tel you the truth. For me, this whole town is crawling with ghosts. I'm forty years old , for Chrissakes."

"I hear that."

Barry coughs, though between men, it is a sound to be understood as a kind of muted laugh.

"Okay. I'l try to clear some time in the afternoon," Barry says, puls the door open a foot more.

"Thank you."

I get to my feet. It takes longer than I'd like.

"My dad had the Parkinson's too," Barry says.

"No kidding?"

"Sorry to mention it. It's just—"

"It's getting hard not to notice, I know. How's your dad doing?"

"He died four years ago."

I nod. We both do. Then I make my way down the hal to where Randy waits for me by the exit.

Once we're outside he says, "That was Hairy Barry Tate, wasn't it?"

"Certainly was."

"What were you two talking about in there?"

"Hockey. He played for the Guardians too. A Kitchener guy broke his wrist."

Randy shakes his fist skyward, raging at heaven in his not bad Charlton Heston voice. "Damn those Kitchener guys. Damn them to hell"

Randy walks me back to Ben's, offers to hang around as I "alphabetize his Archie and Jugheads or whatever you're doing up there." I tel him there's little point in both of us being bored senseless.

"Any plans for tonight?" he asks. "Sounds like you're pretty close to wrapping up. Could be our last evening in town to check out the culinary offerings."

"I'm grabbing something with Sarah, actualy."

Randy bugs his eyes out. "Are we talking date?"

"She mentioned we might go to the Guardians game."

"That's as close to 'Come up and see my etchings' as you get around here."

"She's just being nice."

"I could go for some of that kind of nice."

Up in Ben's room, I tape up some of the boxes I've been tossing stuff into, marking them "Books + Mags" and "Hockey" and "Misc." I'm not sure if there's much point to even this basic sorting—what is Betty going to do with it once I'm gone, other than let it rot in the basement or drop it off at the Salvation Army to be piled into their Pay What You Can bin?—but it gives me the idea that I'm helping, bringing some kind of expertise to the job. A job I'm nearly done now. The closet empty, the clothes bagged, the room emptied of knick-knacks and clutter. Randy was right: there's no reason we can't be on the train out of here tomorrow.

I pick Ben's diary off the bed. I've already decided this wil be the only keepsake I wil take with me. Not because I feel any special warmth from the thing—the Ben who authored it wasn't the Ben I knew—but because it can't be left behind.

I sit in his chair by the window and I've just opened it up when a Grimshaw Police cruiser rounds Church Street and eases to a stop. My first instinct is to hide. I slide off Ben's chair to kneel on the floor, nose pressed to the sil so that I'm able to peer down at the street.