HARRY WATSON -- Chapter Eight
Janine was as uncomfortable as her prey, the plastic seat she was in cracked and pinching her generous upper thigh. A uniformed officer stood guard at the door but Janine was easily twice his size and it was hard to say who would have the better upper hand should Richard Alansi decide to start throwing punches. He had a nasty red mark on the side of his face, and from the way he glared at Janine from his shackled position across from her, he had a very intense memory over how it got there. A slight, prim woman in a grey and beige power suit sat beside him, her briefcase placed in front of her on the table, a tiny physical barrier that was meant to intimidate. Janine wasn’t buying it. Alansi could lawyer up all he wanted, the facts were they had him.
“Before you question my client I want it to be known that he is pressing charges of police brutality against you, Janine Yeats, current Mayor of Trinity and, rather unofficial, RCMP representative of the surrounding area. From what I understand your son, Dan Yeats is currently the acting officer and you retired from your position at your post just last year. Is there any reason why you are currently here in a position to question, let alone arrest, Mr. Alansi?”
“I have specialty clearance from Chief Superintendent Gordon of the RCMP, and am currently working in tandem with an Agent from the American Federal Bureau of Investigation. If you need contact info with the Agent spearheading that side of the arrangement, that can be done. Debbie Whitehead of the serial crimes division is already in my contact list in my phone. I’m sure she’d love to talk to you.”
Alansi’s lawyer gave her a prim, expressionless nod of acknowledgment at this. She whispered something in Alansi’s ear and then folded her hands in front of her as though carefully meditating on what was just said. Janine figured she’d have to do some fancy two-stepping to get around the massive amount of evidence they’d already compiled in the little precinct that was tucked away in a local shopping mall, a weird injection of force blending into community that was still an uneven experiment. No one really questioned how Alansi’s DNA sample somehow found its way into the tread of Janine’s boot, but it had been a heated confrontation in the Gallery. No one questioned Janine’s version of events, of how he went for her and she had to subdue him. Some blood got on the floor, that’s all. The nasty cut on Alansi’s cheek was black and crusty, what was within leaking through.
“It’s kind of funny, just how busy a guy you are, though I guess money makes that happen. You can afford to travel back and forth across the north and south of this continent, from our shores back to Vancouver and down along California and across the States. You’re just a tumbleweed across North America. Word is you got your fortune in real estate, though that can be a bit of a boom and bust business, all dependent upon whether or not you get the property cheap and build from there. You own three apartment buildings in Los Angeles, a couple of them in Reno, there’s one in Boston, and look at that, one in Vancouver that you snatched up way back in 1997 when the real estate bubble burst, your first property and you got it on the cheap. Eleven story high rise, must be worth close to a billion by now. Would have thought you’d have flipped that one, doesn’t seem like good business sense to me to keep it when houses the size of stamps are going for millions in Vancouver right now.”
“Begging your pardon, Ms. Yeats, but not only do you not have the experience necessary to criticize my client on his business dealings, you are also wasting his time. If there is no relevance to the assault on my client, nor the circumstances surrounding this trumped up ‘domestic dispute’ arrest, I demand that he be released immediately.”
Janine ignored her. Lawyers were good at flinging flack when it wasn’t needed, and she was going to shut up real quick as she opened the manila folder in her hand and began laying out the pictures, one by one, in front of Alansi’s stunned face. Shrugging, she fixed the photos so they were in perfect alignment, four in all, three young women and one young man, all of them obviously dead. She watched Alansi’s expression turn from outrage into pale understanding, the shackles at his wrists clenching tight together as he curled his meaty fingers into fists.
“You got a real temper, Mr. Alansi. You’re a guy used to getting his way. Not very likable, I’m afraid, and I guess there’s a good reason for that. You got quite a reputation among the prostitutes, male and female, here in Halifax, and several escort services have even gone so far as to put you on their bad date list.” Janine gave the unfortunate souls in the images before her a helpless shrug. “These folks, well, a couple of them were street junkies, they don’t have anyone looking out for them, do they? Easy pickings. No one would miss them once they’re gone, disposable people, that’s not just how someone like you thinks of them, that’s how the world at large sees them, too. It’s a shame. They all have stories, there’s a person somewhere who misses them. Loves them. This one, the one on the end, her name was Violetta, and she was a young trans woman whose sister was devastated by her loss. Violetta had problems, severe drug use being the main one, but every now and then she’d try to clean up and she’d do it for her sister, who is currently an addictions counselor for the Sunshine Coast Health Centre. She was making pretty good progress the last time, she stayed clean for two years before the relapse, which was when she met someone in your apartment building in Vancouver. Someone who lived on the top floor.”
“Relevancy?” the lawyer reminded her.
“We’re getting to that. See this one beside her? This woman, right here?” Janine pointed to the image of a rather stout woman wearing a Habs hockey jersey and sporting a rough brush cut. “Alison Gravehurst, butch lesbian, and at first I couldn’t figure out what she would be doing going up to that same apartment on the top floor. She was also a drug user, and I get the weird feeling that she wasn’t seeking a hook up, but a fix. She’d gotten addicted to Oxycontin after back surgery, a fairly common story, sadly. These last two, similar tales, this pretty little thing that looks the size of my pinkie finger, Nina Demoines was a trans woman, just beginning her transition if you can believe it, and this last one, this young man, Greg Ulster, is kind of out of the ordinary, being a trans man and not a drug user at all. He did, however, have a profile on Grindr. His last text to his former partner stated that he was hooking up with someone for a ‘quickie’ on Seymour Street, oddly enough the same street as your Vancouver apartment building. So, you see my trouble already, Mr. Alansi. I have four brutal murders in front of me that all have direct connections to an apartment building you own in Vancouver. And while that alone isn’t enough to put you under suspicion, it could be a nasty tenant after all, the thing is, you’ve been known to frequent that upper level apartment—I’ve seen some business blog pics, it’s more of a massive condominium, actually. In fact, I had a very long, interesting conversation about these particular murders with Inspector George Goulet of Vancouver homicide, and it appears he’s had you on his radar for quite some time.”
Alansi shifted uncomfortably in his seat, while his lawyer likewise huffed in impatience. She fussed with papers and notes while Janine smiled at the way the large man seemed to diminish before her, well aware that she had him by the balls. If he could get those meaty hands of his free he wouldn’t hesitate to give her a good crack across the side of her head. She had to wonder how such a dull witted bull managed to wield the power he did, but then the world of business did love a good bluster, and as long as you had capital people would make the mistake of thinking you were smart. Richard Alansi was as much a financial genius as he was a criminal mastermind. He earned both false titles through sheer dumb luck.
“Your investigation into the attack on Mr. Sebastian Harding has no correlation with my client,” the lawyer argued. “Your questioning of him is outside of your current obligations, not to mention that he has openly accused you of police brutality. There is still no explanation as to the injury my client has received, that being the obvious gash on his upper cheek. From what I understand from witnesses, Mr. Maurice Harding did not retaliate. Also, this has been labelled a domestic dispute, a highly unlikely charge as there is no relationship between Mr. Alansi and Mr. Harding. This is a simple assault case, a misunderstanding between Mr. Alansi and Mr. Harding, who by leaving the scene as he did without giving his statement, clearly does not wish to pursue it.”
“Mr. Alansi was demanding to see his child,” Janine said. “He claims Joy is his daughter.”
“Mr. Alansi has assured me that there is no such claim.”
“Really? Because that’s definitely not what half a dozen witnesses heard, one of them being the current Gallery owner, Agnes Grey. There’s also the little problem of your client pounding on Mr. Harding’s door with the exact same violence, as witnessed by Mr. Harding’s neighbours and the FBI Agent currently housed within Mr. Harding’s residence, about two hours before the incident at the Gallery.”
“That bitch pulled a gun on me!” Alansi shouted.
“Another unsubstantiated accusation.” Janine shook her head and sighed, seemingly helpless in the face of Alansi’s obvious madness. “Sorry, but I just have a hard time seeing you as a victim in all this when you were the one instigating the violence in the first place. You were going on and on about Joy being your kid. You tried to bash down the door at Mr. Harding’s house in Trinity and when you didn’t get satisfaction there you showed up at the Gallery to attack him in person. You gave him a whollop with your iron fist across his face that sent him to the floor in front of a currently active RCMP Inspector. That would be me. You are easily three times Mr. Harding’s size and the blow was unprovoked. You were a clear danger to the public. We had every right arrest you, Mr. Alansi, two witnesses outside of the Gallery saw the altercation and called it in to 911. You were belligerent and resisting arrest. You fell to the floor as you struggled to break free and cracked your cheek on the linoleum.”
“That’s a fucking lie!”
Janine leaned forward, her fingertips tapping along the edges of each photograph in front of her. “Do you know these people?”
Alansi glared at his lawyer who looked ready to say something but he stupidly beat her to it. “No. Never saw any of them before.”
“That’s really put me in a pickle then with the Vancouver homicide division,” Janine said, shaking her head in false wonder at Alansi’s declaration. “You see, as I’ve said they’ve had some suspicions about you for a long time, but for some reason you’ve been able to keep your DNA to yourself. All efforts to have you forcibly give it up were very carefully blocked by your legal team. The thing is, you got sloppy today. That’s the trouble with a bad temper, it catches up with you.”
Alansi paled. “What are you talking about?”
“DNA. When you had that little fall to the floor, you left a bit of blood on my boot and, well, on a hunch we dabbed the smear and sent it off to the lab on Oxford Street, put a rush on it so we could talk to the folks in Vancouver while we had you. They know me there, and it’s not like Halifax is murder central, they aren’t backed up in the lab like in other cities, so processing your genetic bits wasn’t too difficult. Well, imagine our surprise when we found out that the DNA you left on my ratty little boot is the same DNA found on these victims. This one, Alison, she must have punched you to get your blood on her knuckles like that. And this young man here, Greg, there’s lots of your skin cells under his nails. Same with Violetta and Nina, you’re just smeared all over the place.” Janine threw up her hands giving both Alansi and his stunned lawyer a helpless gesture. “I dunno, seems to me you’re looking like a serial. And I’m already looking for one of those and I have to wonder about the whole birds of a feather scenario here.” It was hunch but she rolled with it, she knew she had Alansi in his cage and it wouldn’t take much to rattle what she wanted out. “So what’s the deal here, Mr. Alansi? What’s your connection to Sebastian Harding?”
Alansi let out a huff in indignation at this. “You got nothing...”
“I got plenty and we’ve already handed it over to Vancouver homicide. They’ve been real tickled over getting access to your condominium now that it’s become a crime scene. So how much drugs are they going to find? You can’t get a fish without bait, you can ask any maritimer that. Even a lobster doesn’t get trapped without a nibble given. So what are you peddling to get them into bed with you? Heroin? Meth? Cocaine? All of the above?”
Alansi’s fists were curled tight, his knuckles bone white.
“Say nothing,” his lawyer said, but Alansi cursed and gave her a glare that pretended to know what he was doing. His lawyer rolled her eyes.
“I knew Sebastian a while back. Before...I knew he was Maurice Harding’s brother before I got involved with the Gallery. Sold him some blow for one, it’s what junkies like him do.” He wouldn’t meet Janine’s steady glare, staring at his knuckles instead and ignoring the constant whispered pleas from his lawyer to not say another word. “He stole my wallet, the little prick. I had ten thousand in cash in there. And before you start, no, I didn’t send anyone to kill him.”
He ground his teeth, his bullish form folding in on itself, a tethered beast that was about to be executed, but Janine held no pity for him. Here was a murderer, and one that had every motive to kill Sebastian Harding. But he was too big for the job, his bulk would get in the way and he certainly wasn’t small enough to squeeze through that upstairs window and crawl down a drainpipe. “You hired someone to kill Sebastian.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Really? I’m seeing links like sausages all over you, Richard Alansi, and that red forehead of yours is telling me this little piggy is getting closer to market. You met Sebastian a couple of years ago, had a transaction with him that went sour, and suddenly you’re on the Halifax Gallery Group board and harassing his brother. Fast forward a couple years ahead and Sebastian is brain dead. I guess it took a while to find someone you could trust to do it. Who did you hire to kill him? He did a shit job, leaving him less than half alive like that. Hope you got a discount.”
“I didn’t hire anyone!” Alansi’s fists were so tight they bruised the insides of his palms. He pounded the metal table, the shackles holding tight to his wrists and leaving thick red gauges. “I got my revenge just fine!”
Janine narrowed her eyes at this. “How?” She felt a sick well within the pit of her stomach. “Did you rape Sebastian’s girlfriend? Did you kill her, is that why we can’t find her?” She swallowed, feeling sick. “Is that why you attacked Maurice, demanding to see your daughter?”
Alansi rolled his eyes, laughing at Janine’s attempt to unravel his sick plans. She didn’t like being at the raw end of a tangle of threads with Alansi holding the power to knot them closed. He grinned at her, and she could swear she saw smoke snort through his thick, flaring nostrils.
“If you want the answer to that, you can ask Maurice. As far as I’m concerned, that junkie prick brother of his got what he deserved. But I didn’t have a thing to do with that.”
“I guess that’s what happens to all of us in the end,” Janine said, reclaiming the photographs and tapping them neatly back into the manila envelope. “Thanks for the confession. We’ll add drug charges and soliciting to your long list of criminal activities. Have a nice trip back to Vancouver when the authorities decide to transport you out of Antigonish. Might be a while yet. Oh yeah, in case you forgot, you’re being formally charged with four counts of murder and a possible fifth. We’ll get that all squared away officially in about a half an hour, so just sit tight here while we get all the right paperwork in order. Vancouver homicide Inspector Goulet wanted to do the honours himself, he’s in Halifax now, he’ll be here at the station very shortly. That will be a nice little reunion, won’t it? I’ll make sure the tea is on.”
“CAN YOU BELIEVE THERE’S more snow coming?” Ann-Marie shook her head at the weather channel as though the information it gave was a personal slight against her. “We just finished digging out from the last one and now we’re getting another blizzard right on its heels. Been a bad year for it, my dear. We’ll all going to be buried up to our necks in this crap.”
Ann-Marie cradled her mug of hot coffee while Harry yawned, forcing herself awake. She’d been up most of the night going over the newest leads and facts in the case, incorporating Richard Alansi’s influence over it as best she could. His actions seemed unrelated on the surface, but with what Harry knew Alansi’s involvement had taken on a far more sinister route. The four victims he was directly tied to in Vancouver were all trans people, and though she hadn’t said anything yet to Maurice, it was highly unlikely Alansi’s attack on him wasn’t unrelated. Alansi knew about Maurice’s secret before he had made any investments in the Gallery.
She didn’t like thinking on how that happened.
“Where’s Maurice? Has he gone to the Gallery this morning? He looked a real mess, I’m not sure that was wise.”
Harry blinked as though just waking up. “No, actually, he’s gone to the hospital to visit Sebastian. The doctors say he’s not doing very well, his liver has shut down and jaundice has settled in. There’s a good chance he won’t live out the week, they’re probably going to talk to Maurice about taking his brother off of life support.”
Ann-Marie held her hand in front of her face, the horror of it all still too much to take in. “He was a rotten piece of work, Sebastian was, but he was still family. He could be so kind sometimes, there was a good person hidden under all that poison he took all the time. Used to shovel my walkway on the bad days, and mowed my lawn in summer. Things a kid should do, I guess. Sebastian never did grow up. A ten year old in a grown man’s body, that was him.” She craned her neck to get a look at Joy in the other room, the baby quietly playing in her playpen and giving her a squeal of delight when she saw Ann-Marie watching her. “Sebastian never liked the baby. Wouldn’t even hold her. Acted like she was an intrusion instead of his responsibility, he was always so cold. Sometimes I’d catch him staring at his brother with this look that was so...I don’t know...Pitiable? Like he was sickened that Maurice had taken on this role. It made my skin crawl whenever he was here, but for the last couple of years Sebastian was mostly sleeping elsewhere, if not on the streets then on the couches of his many drug addict friends. Jason and Linda, specifically, but even they got fed up with him and kicked him out more than once.”
Harry’s cell phone dinged again and she ignored it, knowing it was her family in Jersey, a latent tragedy waiting to explode and one she couldn’t focus on just yet. Alansi’s involvement in the Gallery was not by accident any more than The Sandman’s attack on Sebastian was, she knew this instinctively, yet finding the connection was going to be difficult. Perhaps what she had to do was start backwards, working out from Alansi’s influence first, since that was starting point. He was robbed by Sebastian, and he wanted revenge. He weaseled his way into the Gallery and attacked Maurice as a form of retaliation. How did he know Maurice was trans?
There was only one answer for that. Sebastian told him.
The reason why he would do this lay in a sickening heap in Harry’s gut. Before he had joined the Gallery, Alansi must have had another altercation with Sebastian, and the junkie had to have used his own brother as a bargaining chip, either for his life or for money, it was uncertain yet. Either way, an act of terrible betrayal had occurred, and Maurice was the one to suffer for it, for no discernible reason other than Alansi’s sick compulsion to harm trans people and Sebastian’s need for a fresh fix. Maurice was stuck between two evil addictions and miraculously was not destroyed by either of them.
But someone made Sebastian pay for what he did. He’d crept into the house and made his hasty escape down a window, the basement route he used to know no longer there. Wasn’t this the same as Florida? The young mother, so distraught, and yet Harry had found the vials of crack and had earned the tearful admittance that she was still using, that she wasn’t a good a mother but she was trying to hard to be one. That on occasion she left the baby alone, sleeping, in the crib for hours while she went out to earn some money. But she was getting better, she was making an effort, that had to count, didn’t it? She hadn’t been a good mom, but she was trying. She was going to get clean, she had to.
There’s a big difference between effort and resolution and Harry had to wonder, were The Sandman’s motivations less random than she’d thought?
Ann-Marie was now in the living room with Joy, giving her a change and getting her ready for lunch. Harry, with the steaming mug of tea in her hand, made her way back up the stairs to the cold room where the murderer had made his escape, the hunt now taking a far more personal shape than it had before. Her cell phone buzzed again, and she dared to peek at the small screen, her sister’s name in bold blue light across it. “the fuck is wrong with you” the message read. Harry turned her phone off.
Outside, the wind howled, gearing up for another thick snowfall that arrived in the form of white clouds that obscured one’s view until all that remained was a blank page. That was how Harry had to approach this, she knew, and she stood in front of the wall, the images and notes projected onto it from her small netbook, her hands firm on her hips as she studied it.
The victims. She had taken it for granted that they were all imperfect people, for who wasn’t in the grand scheme of life, our foibles always following us through unexpected avenues and highlighting our greatest faults.
Florida was a lesson. She’d thought he’d changed his tactics, but he hadn’t, not really, the victims in that case a small family rife with addictions, the baby likewise damaged. The infant was what was termed a ‘crack baby’, a child born as addicted as its mother was, with significant cognitive delay and other deformities, namely a hole in her heart and a sickly disposition that had her mother regularly visiting the local clinic to administer oxygen to the tiny, malformed lungs. Considering how quickly the mother’s addiction to crack was spiralling, despite her assurances she was going to quit, Harry had to wonder if The Sandman knew about this, too. If this was why he had selected her and her child as his victims.
A perusal of the other victims over the past six years showed a similar pattern of self neglect and addiction, an alcoholic here, a gambling issue there. She could have kicked herself for not having seen it, the layers of compulsion stacking on top of one another until it they were sediments of human misery pressed tightly into lines of murder that connected, one after the other. The Sandman was moving along the course of addicts, one hospice and recovery centre at a time. This one in Texas, the alcoholic, and then the connection to the meth addict in Queens, following the man’s acquaintances in the twelve-step program he was in. Harry frantically connected the dots between them all, a sponsor here and reformed drug user there, until she was left with a concentrated epicentre from where all the horror had sprung forth.
The Sandman had begun his journey just outside of Trinity, Harry realized, with the murder of a homeless man on the outside, western edge of Halifax, the only murder they’d had in ten years. The pieces fit together neatly, leaving it crystal clear to anyone with the power to look.
The Sandman had come home. Back to where it all began.
Why?
Alansi. He fit into this and yet Harry couldn’t quite get him on the murder map, a nag that was causing her no end of frustration. She pressed the heels of her hands against the side of her head and closed her eyes, fighting the urge to stomp out of the house and march across the streets, clad only in her jeans and t-shirt, her bare feet torn on ice and jagged rock.
She couldn’t let what happened in Florida happen here, she had to keep this tiny family safe. Maurice deserved that, he wasn’t a part of The Sandman’s scheme, he wasn’t meant to be harmed in any way, Harry knew this, but the connection wasn’t coming and it was driving her mad. She could still see that distraught mother, sitting on her torn couch, the sounds of wailing sirens a constant hum throughout her dangerous neighbourhood, the way she held her arms around her stomach, rocking back and forth in despair. She’d been meant to suffer, Harry suddenly realized. Her murder a week later was no respite.
Sebastian Harding was punished for what he had done to his brother.
A knock at the door had her near leap out of her skin, and she shook off the remnants of fear that continued to crawl along inside of her, itching compulsions that rode along the sweep of her arch. Flexing her bare toes, she stood halfway down the stairs and find Maurice in the door’s frame, snow rolling in behind him. He was stoic and cold, his usual posture when faced with an insurmountable problem. He closed the door behind him and looked up at her, his skin damp with melting ice and blushed with winter.
“Sebastian is dead,” he announced. He held his chin high and kept Harry in his stubborn sphere, his mouth a grim line as he spoke. “It happened this morning, I was there when he died. His kidneys and liver function had completely ceased and he was showing no brain activity at all. The machines were keeping alive a corpse. The minute they took him off, his heart stopped beating.” Maurice ground his teeth and grimaced through the pain of his loss, a mourning Harry wasn’t so sure he should indulge in. “Please, come downstairs and join me. I have sent Ann-Marie home and asked her to mind Joy for the night. Much as I appreciate my solitude, you are the only person whose company I both tolerate and crave right now.” He gave a nod to her silence, and slowly began taking off his wool coat, revealing the overly neat and trim suit beneath, his body lean and wound tight within it. “I was thinking of doing some painting, but...Everything feels so out of control right now, and I just want to be surrounded by my paints and my space and some understanding company.” The corner of his mouth twisted into that small, nervous tic she had grown to find charming. “Is it all right for me to ask you to join me?”
She shrugged and marched down the steps, the distance between them now dangerously breached. There was so much loss that couldn’t be properly acknowledged, grieving told to step back while an evil malignancy hummed behind it, demanding that Harry silence it. She wasn’t sure what made her lean forward and kiss him, returning that which had been hinted at in vulnerable need the night before, but this time Maurice was not ambivalent. Harry’s kisses were returned with masculine fervour.
They didn’t go to his studio, where the cold whipped around the top of the house, placing ice in secreted spots, hidden paintings holding all manner of emotional torment within them. His arms around her waist, her feet floating against his steps, and they were back on the second story and in his bedroom, the white sheets and comforter beckoning. The bedroom door closed with a gentle click behind her, and it was then that he paused, hands still roving and searching her body, his breath sweet against her mouth. “I’m...I’m not sure what you expect...”
Harry kissed the bob of his throat, the overwhelming need to comfort him and thus herself overriding any second thought. “I expect to make a very good man forget his troubles for a little while. The way he’s going to make mine go away. Not forever. Just for now.”
“Is it wise to forget?”
He pressed his forehead against hers, his lips agonized and hungry for her, kisses stolen with starving need. Hands found her small, pert breasts, the gentle tease making her gasp.
“We don’t have to be wise,” she reminded him. She cradled his head in her hand, pulling him close, the gentle force of his will pushing her towards the edge of the bed. “It’s just me, and just you, and here we are. Let’s make that all that matters.
HE USED THE CROOK OF her arm as a pillow, the clouds now spilling out into the world as sheets of snow began to pummel the vista beyond the bedroom window. White ice reflected like moonlight into the room, making Harry shiver. Maurice pulled her closer against his chest, his arms, stronger and more muscular than their hidden spindles suggested beneath his suits, wrapped tight around her waist. He nuzzled her shoulder, giving it a nip and a light kiss, tiny bits of stubble tickling her skin.
“Sebastian never accepted you,” Harry said, and the words fell like a whisper in a confessional, dusty fragments of a long buried conflict.
“On some level he did, but I can understand why it was hard for him, he’d grown up with a sister and when he showed up on these shores he had a brother in her place. The decision to transition was never a secret to him, but I imagine it’s quite a different thing to see that wish come to fruition as opposed to the idea of it.” He pressed his lips against the soft underbelly of her upper arm, tasting her skin as he spoke. “I wanted him to be more accepting, of course, but Sebastian had his own demons and seeing mine eradicated created, I don’t know...A strange spark of jealousy in him. He could never give up being an addict any more than I could give up being a man. The difference was that one was a choice of destructive compulsion and the other was a healing resolution for what my biology couldn’t fix. Sebastian wasn’t born an addict, that was something he cultivated. I did not have that option.”
Harry turned on her side to face him, her pillow shared. It was warm in the bed, tucked in with an intimacy she hadn’t had in a long while, if ever. She liked Maurice’s hesitant way of speaking, the inflections of his English accent soft and prodding in the near dark. She was used to people who were always bullying their way through meandering, meaningless conversations, relationships that were doomed to drift as the discovery that Harry didn’t share the same material needs of her partners rose to the very shallow surface. But Maurice was not like this, he had hidden caverns within him that she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to prop open. He was opening slightly now, but he was still nervous, decades of keeping who he knew he was a secret had left him spiritually isolated. “My parents never knew I transitioned. I remember being forced to wear dresses when I was a child and my mother...My mother is not an understanding person. Nor is my father. I was so confused in their house, I felt trapped in what they wanted me to be opposed to what I was. When I came to Halifax, when I broke free of them, of all the expectations...It was like tossing off shackles.” He winced at this, and Harry shifted, her warm skin caressing his as they pressed tightly together. “It hasn’t been easy. I was mocked, teased, my whole life. I was beaten pretty badly more than once, and that was when I visited Sebastian in London before I headed to Halifax, to start my life. I often feel as though I was born at twenty-two years old, that the childhood I had was a fleeting nightmare I can just forget. That makes it easier sometimes.”
“Joy must have been a shock to your system,” Harry said.
“She was. I didn’t deal with the pregnancy as well as I perhaps should have, I definitely didn’t look like a pregnant woman, I was, weirdly, a pregnant man. The experience was very surreal, at times I felt like an alien was growing inside of me and not a baby, the very concept so strange. I hadn’t expected anything of that sort to visit me in my life. What relationships, if you can call them that, that I’ve had have been fleeting, experimental trysts. I was quite committed to being alone and had made my peace with that as long as I could live being the person I knew I was.”
He closed his eyes, the air in the room chilly while they were warm and close beneath the covers, the shadow of snowfall falling in thick flakes coursing across them, a tundra within the bed. “I’ve never regretted Joy. Sebastian wanted me to, he had a hard time understanding me becoming a man and then her existence put a wrench into that, adding dimensions not even I was expecting. But I told him, nothing stopped the fact that I was a man, that I was his brother above all else, that we were and are family. I would do anything for Sebastian, I know the hurt he went through in that house was under the same oppressive regime I suffered. No one just wakes up and decides to become an addict. Sebastian has pain that I haven’t been able to tap, and he won’t reveal them to me.” That nervous tic curled the corner of his mouth and he buried his face into their shared pillow. “Now that he’s dead, there’s no way of ever knowing it.”
Harry thought about her cell phone, and the frantic pleas of her sister, the texted curses and recriminations, her mother’s unacknowledged death its very epicentre. There was going to be a lot of healing that had to happen after this, but she didn’t have time for it, not now, not when Maurice was so vulnerable and The Sandman was gearing up to take out his next victim. She felt a well of emotion rise up within her at the thought of Joy and Maurice, here alone in the house with no one to truly protect them. The gun, hidden away in her upstairs work station in the bottom of an empty file drawer, was hardly a good defence against the storms gearing up against the tiny Harding family. Richard Alansi had good lawyers, and even though the case against him seemed ironclad the facts were he could delay his court date over and over, the trial years away, Some fancy legal footwork could have him under house arrest in his sprawling murder condo in Vancouver and his influence on the Harding family was still dangerous. He had made a claim on Joy, practically announced his paternity. It wouldn’t be long before he’d try it again, in a far more official, public way, and then where would Maurice be? Trapped handing over Joy for supervised visits with a monster who would insist he wanted to be a father, while his real purpose would be to torture his victim further.
“I wasn’t exaggerating, you know.” Harry brushed her knuckles against Maurice’s cheek, the soft rasp of stubble grating against them.
Maurice’s eyes were hooded as he drifted into sleep at her touch. “About what?” he asked, and yawned.
Her heart clenched, as though she’d felt a squeezing fist close around it, emotion threatening to spill. “You are the strongest person I have ever met. I’ve only ever been the one who keeps it all together, who has to face the ugliness and not bring it home. The people I’ve been with in my life, they were all so selfish and brittle, they didn’t have room for my kind of crash and burn. This is a big leap for me, Maurice. You’re so much more than a guy keeping his junkie brother in line, and believe me, people recognize that.”
His ice blue eyes were open now, intensely scrutinizing her. “So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I don’t know if I deserve this. I’m pretty fucked up, actually. I hide it okay but I’m not stable, that’s the damned truth of it. I...” She bit her bottom lip. “I was in the nut ward for a while, about a month, after The Sandman case in Florida. I took off out of my apartment in the middle of the night and kept walking. Bare feet on the pavement, cut my heels up pretty bad. I just couldn’t stop walking, I just wanted to march and let my feet take me away from all of it. I couldn’t control it, that’s what was really scary. I would have walked right off a pier and across the bottom of the fucking ocean, I really would have, and that’s the part that made them keep me in the hospital for so long.” Harry laughed at Maurice’s serious expression. “It’s a hell of a fucked up physical metaphor, isn’t it? I literally tried to walk away from all of it. I was with Charmaine then, and well, she wasn’t exactly the kind of person you can dump that kind of crazy on. She’d have a breakdown if her mascara smeared. Funny, isn’t it, how people are. We all got breaking points. Except for you. When someone tries to break you, you just get stronger. How are you doing that?”
He stared at her across the pillow, studying every shadow that coursed across her features, her wide eyes plaintive and begging him for understanding. He leaned in and passionately kissed her, tongue searching for an answer she couldn’t give.
“Come upstairs to my studio,” he said to her. “I have to show it to you.”
With great reluctance they slid out of bed, housecoats draped over nude bodies, the glow of moonlight reflecting off of snow illuminating the room and sending it into further chill. The fireplace had long died down and all that was left was dead embers, the heat in the room coming from the overextended furnace tucked into a back room on the main floor, its comfort uneven and not quite meeting the needs of this section of the house. She could practically see her breath as she cinched the fluffy housecoat closed and followed him out of the room, a handy flashlight in his grip. “There’s no proper lighting on the stairs,” he explained. “They’re pitch black this time of night. I’ve gone up there at all hours and there have been times I needed a bit of light to guide my way through this house without turning the main ones all on and risking waking Joy, so I keep a flashlight on my bedside table.” He dipped his head as though embarrassed. “It’s an opulent house, one that is far too much for a single family and yet I’m too stubborn to sell it. I earned this home, and all of it inconveniences. It’s as much a part of my own transformation as my very flesh.”
She followed him out of the bedroom and into the narrow hallway, pausing in front of the equally narrow door that led up to the attic studio. Careful to keep the light on the steps so they didn’t trip, they made their way upwards, the steep climb difficult and claustrophobic. The open space was welcoming, and richly illuminated with moonlight that streamed in from the large windows on the opposing walls. An easel was set up in the middle of the room, and Maurice went to it, the thick broadcloth draped over it gently rolled away to reveal his latest work.
Harry held her hand to her mouth and audibly gasped.
“I understand,” he said to her. He stood back from the easel, frowning with a more critical eye than her stunned shock. “It’s a disturbing piece. This is where my anger goes, my frustrations, my personal demons. They are trapped here, and I will not let them out.”
He stared at the small puddle of red paint that had collected in small circular dots on the floor from where it had dripped from the corner of the canvas. “Suffice to say, there are times they do their best to escape.”