HARRY WATSON -- Chapter Seven
Janine stood over the shackled man like a prize hunter who had just taken down the biggest buck of the year. Within minutes of her call the Gallery was swarming with uniformed police, officers taking statements from everyone in the immediate area. Maurice was adamant that he didn’t want to talk about it, or press charges, he simply wanted to go home to his daughter. Janine had to gently remind him that assault charges like this weren’t up to the victim, as an officer of the law she was a witness to the crime and she didn’t need Maurice’s permission. It was a domestic law meant to protect him, but Maurice was definitely not seeing it that way.
Agnes tried to wipe the blood from his face, her hands shaking with flustered horror, but Maurice angrily turned away from her attempts at care. “I’m going home.”
“I need your statement,” Janine said.
“What’s to be said? He punched me, and now I’m leaving!”
Janine wasn’t about to let the whole thing go, not without getting at least a hint of what the punch up was about. “He said something about you not letting him see his kid. Is this about Joy?” Janine grabbed Maurice by the shoulder in an attempt to stop him, but he furiously shook her off. “Look, if there’s any kind of issue about the paternity of Joy, especially with a moneybag bigwig like Richard Alansi, you’re going to have to tread real careful. You need to get a family lawyer, see if you can track down the mother and...”
But Maurice was having none of it. With a low curse he broke free of her and stormed off into the elevator leading into the parking lot of the building. She tried to follow him and he shut the doors on her, leaving Janine as speechless and shocked as Agnes who was worried and full of angst beside her.
“I hope he cleans himself up before that poor baby sees him like that,” Agnes said, shaking her head at Maurice’s folly. “This is a tragedy all around, it really is. Richard Alansi is one of our main financial contributors, to have this kind of conflict can seriously hurt the Gallery. At least that’s one way of looking at it, I personally have always hated the man.”
“Is that why he took off? He has to know that the law states I can’t let this Alansi prick walk, I witnessed the assault myself, and any assault has to be reported. With him going on about Joy I have to assume this is a domestic dispute.” Janine sighed and stared longingly at the elevator, wishing Maurice hadn’t chosen to run instead of facing his attacker. It was becoming a pattern of sorts, Janine knew. She placed her hands on her ample hips and paced in front of the elevator, Agnes standing silent behind her.
“So this Alansi guy has been giving you problems?”
Agnes’s mouth twisted into an ugly burgundy line. “He’s an asshole.”
“But he’s an asshole with money.”
“I believe the politically correct version of that statement is that he is a regular contributor to our efforts here at the Gallery. I can also state that he has been trying to push his own agendas within it far too much as of late, bringing in pieces from overseas when he knows we are a local centred project, and not his vanity shelf.” She crossed her arms, her long fingers delicately turning one of the ornately carved orange beads at her wrist. She was a creature of baubles, Janine observed, all sorts of little nervous points of reference that her fingertips turned to when faced with the unpleasant. From the ritualistic way she kept turning and turning those beads, Agnes’s outer calm was a complete ruse, she was deeply disturbed by what had just happened. “Richard Alansi has been a problem for a very long time. From what I understand, he and Maurice had words the last time they interacted, and that was nearly a year and a half ago, during a black tie affair we had when we were fundraising for the Descartes. Maurice argued that would make more sense to procure more local interests, even expand on the folk art theme that’s had great success at The Nova Scotia Art Gallery. They were willing to give us some Maud Lewis shutters on loan as a tie-in with their own exhibit. They managed to get her whole house and have it on display on the ground floor, it’s really quite impressive and a little gallery like ours is hardly in the market to compete against them, as artists we’re a collective community, not adversaries.”
“I take it your punchy benefactor doesn’t see it that way?”
Agnes sighed and twiddled her little beads ever quicker. “He insisted on the Descartes, he put all of the wheels in motion for us to get it for the week. He completely over-rode what Maurice wanted to do, and took full advantage when Maurice was so sick and stuck in Montreal for treatment. After that first fight, well...” Agnes trailed off, but she didn’t need prodding from Janine to continue again, the details of that fateful night still bothering her. “It was a week after Christmas, after that last really bad storm we had. I think people were just relieved to be able to get out of their homes and to shake off the last of the holidays, you know how stressful that time of year can be.”
“I sure do,” Janine agreed, thinking on her son, Dan, and his annual need to complain about how she made the stuffing even though he routinely was the one who ate most of it. As her only child at home, Dan was an overgrown toddler during the Christmas season, whining about the decor and the food and the endless parade of visitors and relatives throughout the day, the forced socialization always putting his career goals into harsh spotlights. This past Christmas hadn’t been much better, the jibes at his being an outpost cop coming fast and furious from an uncle on his father’s side. George, Janine’s husband, remained an immovable fixture in his Lay-Z-Boy, never leaving the chair nor the static strewn television propped in front of him. He hadn’t done much else since the stroke.
“Yeah, the holidays are hard on everyone,” Janine said.
“So really, even though it was a black tie thing, the mood was pretty light. Everyone was sipping champagne and eating those little canapes on puffed crackers and there was a buffet off to the side, it was nice. Lots of big donors from around the area were here, and plenty of artists and their patrons, a friendly atmosphere. At least, it was, until Richard Alansi arrived. He was drunk before he even got through the doors. Staggered up to the bar and had three doubles before attacking the guests with his loud opinions on art and how everything produced locally meant nothing to anyone, that we had to start showing off some ‘real’ art before people were going to take notice. It’s the same ignorant speech that people who don’t understand art give, they want images of tangible things and lack the conceptual perspectives needed. One person may see a mere stroke of ink across the page while another sees an entire audience. That’s what art is meant to provoke.”
“Much as I’m appreciating the sermon on art appreciation, Agnes, I really wish you’d get to the point. I do have a suspect to have a word with.”
Agnes stared back at her, blinking. Lost.
“The argument?”
Her eyes closed behind her overly large orange glasses and Agnes gave herself a small reproach. “Oh, yes, of course! Well, it was a splendid evening up until then, and Maurice, ever the one to come to the rescue of our project, he pulled Alansi aside and told him to either stop throwing his ignorant weight around or he would have to leave. He was quite drunk, and Maurice had every right to have him ousted.”
“I take it Alansi didn’t like that?”
“Oh he was dreadful! He started cursing and screaming in Maurice’s face, calling him a charlatan and lots of other words I won’t repeat. He stormed Maurice into the men’s washroom, and there was definitely some words exchanged there, but it was hard to tell what they were talking about. We sent security in after half an hour passed, but Maurice insisted he was fine.”
Agnes’s fingers worked the beads at her wrist at a near breakneck pace now. Janine’s eyes narrowed.
“But he wasn’t.”
“I...No, I don’t think he was. I don’t know what...Richard Alansi is a dreadful, terrible man, to have him ousted from the Board, regardless of his money, would be an excellent boon to us in spirit if not fiscally. A whole half an hour passed before Alansi stepped out of that men’s washroom, after security poked their head in, and then Maurice came out twenty minutes after that, not looking well at all. I don’t know what was said to him. He was dishevelled, a button at his neck was popped off and he looked pale, and kind of sick. I tried to approach him, but he left very quickly, not a word to anyone. Alansi remained until he was staggering drunk, a good two hours later. It was a strange and terrible business. The evening was a disastrous nightmare. It sits ill with me still.”
Janine chewed the inside of her cheek at this, knowing exactly how Agnes felt. For now, she had the miserable rich bastard in custody and she’d do what she could to make sure he didn’t go after Maurice and his family again. “This thing with Joy...” Janine said, again.
“I don’t think you should concern yourself with that,” Agnes said, shaking her head. “Richard Alansi is not a likely candidate to be a father, regardless of the delusional drunken crap he’s spewing. For all the years that I’ve been forced to know him, he’s never been anything other than gay. And yes, from what I’ve heard from certain circles, he’s just as much of a vile lout in that community as in any other. Abusive and miserable. He relies on rent boys. Like the usual of his type, no one in their right mind would ever have him.”
SHE QUICKLY MARCHED along jagged rocks, the heels of her feet bleeding. She couldn’t stop walking, the need to keep moving a relentless wail within her body that refused to be quelled. Her feet were torn to ribbons, blood staining the small, sharp rocks that sliced into her flesh, and though the pain was great the need to keep going was stronger. She broke into a run, heedless of the horror this transferred onto the soles of her feet, her bones aching at every impact, her muscles shivering in shock. Her goal was clear. The dock, seeping into the mist in the distance, holding at its edge the willowy figure that Harry knew well.
Her mother.
“Harry,” she could hear her mother whisper across the crashing waves and over the slippery, blood soaked rocks at her shredded feet. “Harry, I’m so sorry. I can’t hold on any longer.”
“Mom!”
The figure teetered at the edge of the dock. Her mother’s skeletal hand reaching through fog as she slipped.
Harry awoke on the couch, gasping for breath. She held her hand in front of her mouth, holding in the panic that was still coursing through her body. Her cell phone was ringing, but she was loathe to pick it up, for she could see through the corner of her eye the tell tale blue messages trying to get through. Messages from her sister, Brenda, about their mother.
She couldn’t answer them. Not right now.
She let out a thin sigh of breath as she sat up, her hands working over her face in rough strokes as she tried to properly awaken and banish the dream. A cup of steaming tea was placed in front of her by Ann-Marie, who gave Harry’s pinched scowl an answering frown of her own. It was immensely kind of the woman not ask questions. She went back into the kitchen, to tend to Joy, who was busy having lunch in her high chair. Cheerios and cheese bits.
She felt rancid. She tried to remember the last time she’d showered and realized she hadn’t since before she’d left for Halifax, and the stink of airports and murder and the hospital was ripening to a torrid degree. She scooped up her cell phone from the coffee table making a point not to look at it, and also took up the mug of tea if only to placate Ann-Marie’s efforts. It might still be warm when she got out of the shower.
Marching dreams. Running dreams. They were the worst. Her feet itched with anticipation and she shook the nervous tension out of them as she made her way up the stairs, doing what she could to get rid of the residual tight spasms still coursing through her calves. At least she didn’t walk out the front door, like she was prone to do, not this time. Ending up a victim of hypothermia in a snowbank wasn’t the way she wanted to ended her time on this investigation.
The bathing room was a small, but neat little spot of efficiency, with all the male accouterments one would expect, if not a little too fussily presented. Maurice definitely had control issues. Shaving cream on one shelf, a tidy electric razor with disposables for extra trimming. Aftershave and mysterious skin creams in sandalwood print plastic containers. Masculinity outlined in commercial tones of beige, brown and dark green. Harry herself had little more than a hair comb and toothbrush to add to the assortment. She ran her tongue over her teeth, not at all liking the mossy feel of them. Fur with a touch of slime. Sighing she picked up her toothbrush and searched for a tube of toothpaste, the one toiletry she needed hidden out of reach. She carefully opened various drawers, finding towels and facecloths first, before opening the second last one which offered up an odd puzzle. The toothpaste was in the drawer underneath it. She took out the perplexing find and then the toothpaste and laid the two things beside each other on the edge of the bathroom sink, as though trying to figure out how they belonged together.
A tube of toothpaste, still in the box. Maurice must have run out that morning and forgot to leave out the new one. Beside it was a box of opened maxi-pads.
This wouldn’t have been odd, save for the fact that this was a home consisting of men. They couldn’t be Ann-Marie’s, she was well past that stage of life and it was highly unlikely the package was there for Harry herself, not with it being opened already. What it did suggest was that Sebastian’s ex-girlfriend, and Joy’s mother, was not a mystery as Maurice had claimed, but was a regular visitor to their home, one comfortable enough to leave this behind. Gender fluid though she often considered herself to be, Harry’s biology and understanding was still female and she knew a girl wouldn’t leave something like this behind in a man’s home on a whim.
Maurice had lied.
Why?
The steam from the shower beckoned, but curiosity got the best of her and she picked up her cell phone, quickly dialling Janine. She earned the gruff snort of her investigative partner after two rings. “Nice of you to call. Bit late now, though.”
“What’s going on?”
“What’s that noise in the background?”
“I’m taking a shower.”
“Take a long one. I’ve got Richard Alansi in custody for assaulting Maurice Harding. He showed up at the Gallery and his fist made a beeline for Maurice’s face. Was going on about Joy, insisting he was the baby’s daddy. Quite the Maury Povich show around here.”
“He must have gone straight there right after he was here.” Harry bit her bottom lip. The bathroom was filling up with steam, the mirror obscured with whirls from when it had last been meticulously cleaned. “You say he hit Maurice?”
“Yeah. Left his face a bloody mess. I’m going into the local police station now to go and have a chat with Alansi about this ex-girlfriend of Sebastian’s, see what I can find out about her. I dunno what kind of arrangement Alansi had or what, but he’s still saying Joy is his, which is kind of weird in my book.”
Harry frowned. “How so?”
“Agnes seems to think the guy is gay as a Christmas tree. We’re talking about addicts in the background of this, and I’ve already got the whole scenario working itself out in my gut. Alansi is upset that his very illegal surrogate heir investment didn’t pan out. Guys like this opt for changelings to pass along the family jewels, their version of twisted procreation. He’d be going for the family man angle now that he’s getting older, and everyone trusts a good daddy, right? Probably paid Sebastian and this skipped out girlfriend a good hefty sum for Joy. I guess he wasn’t banking on them doing what addicts do, which is not hold up their end of the deal.”
Harry frowned as she listened. “Yeah. Sounds like something like that.” She didn’t let on that she didn’t think this was the case at all, that Janine was reaching all the way to the moon.
“He’s not being co-operative. Won’t give us any DNA samples to work with, so that’s sending up some big red flags to the boys and girls here at the local. Got his prints, though, and while they don’t match our Sandman...”
“They wouldn’t,” Harry instantly interrupted.
“...We’re putting his prints on a fast track through the system, should know in a couple of hours if there are any hits.” Janine paused, as though unsure if she was supposed to continue. “Look, Maurice is going to be at the house soon, can you try and convince him to at least give Dan a statement? He was real angry, and while I know it’s embarrassing getting punched up, he’s impeding my investigation into this creep. He acted like I wasn’t on his side in this, got all defensive and took off. Considering Alansi assaulted him before...”
Harry’s ears perked up at this. “What do you mean?”
“Agnes witnessed an altercation between them about a year and a half or so ago, during some Gallery Group formal function. Maurice had words with Alansi in the men’s washroom, and she didn’t get the feeling that particular meeting went very well. They argued in the men’s washroom for half an hour before Agnes sent security in. Maurice left the party early and Alansi stuck around, being a drunken nuisance. You might want to ask Maurice about that.”
Harry stared at the whirls in the bathroom mirror the steam eating away at the lines, obscuring their once invisible secret from view.
“I will.”
She sat on the lid of the toilet and let the phone lay loose in her cupped palms. Texts from her sister were still pouring in, fragments of sentences insisting she pay some attention to family tragedy. Harry didn’t have room for it, not right now. The one she had to face first was going to be home soon. She shut off her phone. Thinking about what Janine told her about Alansi made her want that shower more than ever
“JUMPING JESUS, THE state of you! What happened? Were you in an accident?” Ann-Marie fussed around Maurice who impatiently waved her concerns away and refused to answer her, insisting he was fine. This only served to make his elderly neighbour even more persistent, her angry worry invading the tense space between them. “Is this about that man? Did he do this?”
Maurice gave Ann-Marie a confused look, but Harry noted how wary it truly was. “What man?”
“The one who came banging on the door and I had to hide upstairs with little Joy while Ms. Watson here held him at bay with the barrel of a gun pointed at his fool bull’s head! I have a very hard time believing you don’t know who he is, Maurice! I may be an old woman but you’ve never believed me a fool, and now is not the time to start! What is happening? What does that foul thing want to do with Joy?”
Harry was still towelling her hair dry when she made her way down the steps, Maurice paused at their base, still dressed in his winter coat, his scarf pulled up high around his neck. He gave her a passing glance and Harry instantly caught the tiny shimmer of guilt within it, along with the now constant hum of nervous anger.
“I hope you have talked to the police.”
“Ann-Marie, I really think you need to go now.”
“But the police, Maurice!”
He nodded at the stairs, where Harry was still standing midway. “Obviously that can be taken care of immediately. Please, Ann-Marie, don’t concern yourself, I appreciate all that you’ve done and continue to do for me and my family, but right now...” He pressed his battered face further into his scarf. “Right now I just need to talk to Ms. Watson. In private.”
Ann-Marie was clearly in distress and wasn’t so eager to leave her small charge behind in such a tense environment. But she gave Maurice a tutting worried frown and a quick kiss on his cheek that made him wince. “You call me when you need me,” she said, forcing him to agree. She grabbed her galoshes and her scarf and wobbled out of the front door, tutting again over the splinters she found there, and the mess of boot prints that had hammered the snow on the front steps into a thick paste of dirty slush.
Maurice waited until he heard her front door open and close behind her before he gingerly took off his jacket, and then unwound the scarf from around his face, revealing a thick, viscous splatter of dried and fresh blood smeared across his lips and cheeks. Bruising had already begun just beneath his left eye, the point of impact, and it had been a meaty fist indeed that had done this damage to his delicate features. Harry noted that Maurice had to have strong bones to have avoided a broken eye socket, though his nose was certainly a mess of blood and cracked cartilage. By morning he would look as though he’d gone head first through a windshield.
“Doesn’t look like much of a fair fight,” Harry said. Maurice glared at her, and she shrugged his ire off. “Come on, you can’t be standing there bleeding all over the place, not with these nice floors. Let’s get you cleaned up. Maybe we can figure all this shit out.”
“There’s nothing to ‘figure out’,” Maurice snapped as he followed her into the kitchen, his eyes scanning both the living room and the dining room, and relaxing only when Joy came into his vision. She was still chasing Cheerios in the tray of her high chair. He made a move to go to her and Harry stopped him.
“You seriously want to pick up that baby looking like dripping hamburger? Clean up first.”
Maurice hesitated, his movements uncertain, the telltale little tic at the corner of his mouth suggesting his displeasure but acknowledging wordlessly that she was right. He joined her at the sink, where she already had the cold water running, a clean tea towel drenched beneath the tap. He flinched when she began to wipe away the dried blood from his injured cheek, and she made a point to dab it clean instead. His posture was stiff and he leaned away from her, shoulders braced as though expecting another blow.
She kept her touch light, Maurice’s tension a spring ready to snap if she made the wrong move. He was proud and stoic, fists clenching and unclenching in mute fight against his humiliation, what undercurrent of terror there still might be within it had now morphed into a steady anger. Harry wisely kept her thoughts to herself for now, dabbing away the blood, her gentle touch seeming to soothe his latent ire.
He winced when she brushed the wet cloth beneath his nose, and she took extra care to give it a soft touch. “He was here earlier, like Ann-Marie said, barking at the door about Joy. Janine called me before you got here, she told me he showed up at the Gallery and spewed the same shit. They’ve got him in custody now, and I’ve got a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach about him.”
Maurice frowned. “What kind of feeling?”
“Like he’s a very bad guy who was blindsided and thus just made the biggest misstep of his bad guy life. He’s got you to thank for that, I think. You’re going to have one hell of a bruise across that nose and cheek, like you went headfirst through a windshield. I’ve been on the receiving end of one of those more than once in my career. I’ll get some ice.”
But she was reluctant to leave him, the blood soaked cloth still doing its work. He frowned, though the effort clearly pained him. “What makes you think I made him take a misstep?”
Harry shrugged at this, letting a small chuckle escape. “Well, he tried to mess with you, didn’t he? Biggest mistake anyone could make. He’s not a smart guy, this Richard Alansi, that’s for sure.”
“I didn’t do anything to retaliate.”
“I’d say your restraint speaks volumes and an unprovoked attack with no returning blows is going to look real bad in the courtroom, no matter how fancy his lawyer might be. I get the feeling Mr. Alansi doesn’t have many friends.” She gave him a crooked smile as she wiped the last smear of wet blood from beneath his nose, the cloth teasing his upper lip. He was still a mess, but a slightly more tamed one. “You, on the other hand, have plenty of people who care about you.”
He stared at her, mute and stunned. Fleeting expressions of confusion and anger mixed in a painful collection across his face and Harry felt a pang of sorrow at having put them there. “It’s true,” she said, moving closer, keeping a visual grip on Maurice’s icy blue eyes that were now brimming with emotion. “You have Ann-Marie, you have Janine, you have Agnes, hell, everyone I talk to is on your side, Maurice. That’s some hell of a rare thing to be that respected and liked by everyone you meet.”
Maurice swallowed. “Do you?”
Harry blinked. “Do I what?”
“Do you...Do you care?” He backed away from her as though the question was loaded with bullets.
Harry frowned. “About what?”
“About me?”
“Of course I do,” she said, as though the question was ridiculous. But Maurice reacted as though she’d hit him herself, a sudden bundle of nerves that were tangled in emotions that tripped all over each other. She wanted to put her hands on his shoulders and steady the small quake she found there, to reach into him and start picking at those threads all knotted up within him and help him untie them, complex as they were.
She wasn’t sure what made her do it. If it was his stoic posture and the way he looked down at her, scared but willing a dare, or if it was the way she found that tiny little shred of vulnerability peeking through and she felt the perverse need to poke it. She tossed the blood soaked cloth into the sink and placed her palm along the bruised side of his face, as gentle a caress as she could make it. Warmth spread through her at the way he sank into her touch.
“I’ve never met anyone stronger in my life.”
She could taste blood on her lips as he roughly kissed her, an experimental, rash act that was quickly morphing into passion, one that Harry most definitely wanted to enjoy. But Maurice pulled back, his hands trembling as he held her shoulders, uncertainty again rearing its ugly head. He pulled away completely, leaving them both disappointed.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“I’m not...” He hesitated, cast her an imploring look only to turn his head away as he headed for Joy. “I’m not what you want.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“Please, Harry, accept my apology, I overstepped a boundary, I didn’t mean...”
Harry stood in front of him, blocking his way to Joy, forcing him to face her instead. “You did mean it. You didn’t overstep anything. You can’t stand there and keep pretending that I wasn’t going to find out, I’m one of the top profilers and investigators for the FBI for a reason, Maurice, and I already know, the pieces have already fallen into place.”
Maurice shoved past her to pick up Joy, who was fussing in the high chair. He held her on his hip as he turned on her. “What do you think you know?”
Harry was stern. “I know that Joy is your daughter.”
Maurice shrugged. “Then that makes Richard Alansi’s comments all the more ridiculous, doesn’t it? Of course she’s my daughter, I’m the only one who’s raising her! It’s not like Sebastian could be counted on!”
“She’s your daughter,” Harry reiterated. “And Richard Alansi is her father.”
“No he isn’t!” Maurice shouted, instantly regretting it when Joy began to wail. He forced his voice to be softer, jostling her into calm before turning on Harry once again. “He is not...He has nothing to do with our lives...”
“It didn’t happen on purpose or by accident, you were forced into this situation.” Harry sighed and kept her distance, worried about how defensive Maurice was going to be. “Richard Alansi assaulted you. He raped you. That’s what happened. That’s the truth. Sebastian has nothing to do with Joy. In fact, it’s why he resented her.”
Maurice was pale. He choked on his words. “How...How dare you! Of all the ridiculous conclusions...”
“You didn’t go to Montreal for cancer treatments, you went there to give birth to her. Sebastian was in on your ruse, but he was never happy about it, especially since he knew he was going to be the one looking like the bad guy in all of this. Junkies are terribly selfish, even in the face of their closest loved one’s tragedies. Going to Montreal for a few months must have been quite a relief, you didn’t have to listen to or deal with Sebastian’s ranting.”
Maurice was shaking now, and Harry took Joy from his arms as the man really did look like he was ready to fall over from shock. She led him into the living room, where a warm fire was rolling, and bid him to take a seat, which he did with shivering effort. She placed Joy in her playpen and went back into the kitchen, returning with a stiff decanter of whiskey and a healthy pour over ice in a tumbler was handed to Maurice, who took it gratefully. He sipped it and winced, the cut on his upper lip smarting. The ice clinked like chimes against the sides of the glass.
“You need to tell me about it,” Harry said, and she felt sick at the sudden grimace of pain Maurice gave her at the request.
His hands shook as he took another drink, the dancing flames in the fireplace seeming to singe him. Joy was quiet in her playpen, fussing over a collection of rattles, and Maurice’s mixture of anger and terror softened as he looked on her. Harry knew without asking that Joy had become his anchor, that there was nothing he wouldn’t do to protect her. She had to wonder, if Richard Alansi had come banging on the door when Maurice was home, if the man would have let him live. She carefully watched the way Maurice looked at his daughter as he spoke, and she knew, without question, that Richard Alansi would not have made it past the second knock. That fire poker would have been brought to deadly use.
Maurice’s voice was soft in the closing darkness of the room, dusk settling in. There were still smears of blood on his cheeks, and staining his shirt, but shadows overtook the evidence. “It was during a black tie function, just after Christmas. We were having a celebratory fundraiser and were hoping to expand on some of our exhibits. Agnes always gets the local rabble, many of dubious talent and marketing ability, so it was exciting to bring in works that would be more of a public draw. I was keen to have a discussion with the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia about their Maud Lewis project. I was hoping we could do a tie-in with other local folk artists of note from the province, and make a more collective effort, create a collection of outsider art that complemented their exhibit. Alansi was fiercely opposed to the idea, his concepts of art are of the narcissist’s variety, focused too strongly on classics and not on the periphery that surrounds them, nor does he have any appreciation for local talent. He is a part of our Gallery because of money and the tax break he earns when giving to the arts.”
“Sounds more like extortion than donation,” Harry observed.
“Quite. I have made it my goal to ensure his influence is no longer a barrier to the Gallery’s vision, and while this has been difficult, I have been assured that the securing of the Descartes on loan was far too removed from our efforts to promote local, homegrown artists and his injections into our community have been nothing short of gauche. He has no love for what we are doing and it’s obvious. The other board members agree that his vanity is not worth appeasing when it harms us with these costly whims. The Descartes is his last shred of influence. Today was meant to be a pivotal meeting with the board members, it was to be the official vote that he was to be ousted from the Halifax Gallery Group’s partnership.” Maurice closed his eyes before continuing. “That January night, I warned him he had overstepped his influence, and the vote was to be cast later in the year. He would soon no longer be a part of our community and no amount of money was going to buy his way back in.”
“I don’t imagine he liked that.”
“He was quite angry.”
“I can just imagine, this is a spoiled brat who likes getting his way.” Harry frowned. “What happened after you told him?”
Maurice kept his eyes closed and swallowed. He brought the tumbler of whiskey to his lips, but the memory sat so ill within him he couldn’t drink it. He swallowed, no doubt keeping the contents of his stomach in check. “I went to the men’s room. He was causing a scene and I didn’t want him to disturb the other guests...” His shoulders shook, his mouth pressed in a firm line.
“I don’t want to talk about what happened in there,” he said. Harry nodded, though he didn’t need her permission. She had experience enough on the beat, she could fill in the ugly blanks herself.
“He found out about you. Did he know before then?”
“No. He...” Maurice shook his head and downed the rest of his whiskey in a thick gulp. “He had the wrong idea that I am a gay man. I am not. A lot of people make that mistake, they see art curator and instantly hop onto the quickest cliche they can find.” He placed his empty whiskey tumbler onto the table before them, the ice melted and clinking within the pale amber remnants. “I could use another one of these.”
Harry was quick to oblige. She picked up the decanter and poured it over the melting ice, filling it just shy of the brim. Maurice took the glass back, and gave her a nod before taking another long sip before continuing.
“I don’t suppose being English helps me in that regard. North American media tends to paint the Oxford Englishman as a bit of gay villainy, any Bond film will give you that. However, I doubt in the predicament I found myself in that any resolution would have been adequate, as Mr. Alansi was determined to get what he wanted, in any form. I imagine his original plan was simply to grab my crotch and rely on latent homophobia to humiliate me. He was shocked not to find what he was looking for.” Maurice held the chilled glass of whiskey at his split lip. “He may have not retaliated the way that he did had he not spun into a further rage at the problem I presented. I don’t rightly know if he would have attacked an intact heterosexual man, but he did attack this, admitted imperfect, one. When it was over, he left the men’s room and I was left alone, and I remained there. I vomited for about twenty minutes and then pieced myself together and left.”
The matter of fact way in which he talked about his ordeal made Harry’s insides clench in fury, the compartmentalization of it harrowing in its own right. She was unsure if it was okay to touch him or not, he seemed so cold in that moment, a person etched from stone instead of flesh and hardly one ready to yield to empathy. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t believe it would have mattered to him. Janine tells me Richard Alansi is a very bad man, and he’s been known to be an equal opportunity assaulter.”
Maurice’s head shook. “Meaning?”
“She sent me a text about an hour ago before you arrived, letting me know how his interrogation is going. He’s been on charges for assaulting female and male prostitutes in Vancouver, four others from what Janine could find. His money and costly lawyers kept him free, at least until now.”
Maurice gave her a worried frown, which she quickly waved away. “DNA,” she clarified. “He’d been able to sneak his way past it in the other cases, but this time he was real sloppy. We’ve got him in ViClas now, and that along with the tissue sample Janine was able to get out of him is no doubt going to show us how bad of a prick he really is. Let’s just say the Vancouver detectives are salivating over our findings as we wait.”
“I suppose that should make me feel better.”
“Nothing is going to do that but time. You were raped and you had a child as a result of it. That’s the ugly truth, Maurice. Sebastian knew it, and he wasn’t supportive, he knew a baby would take up a lot more of your resources, the money wouldn’t flow as free. He hated that you made him your scapegoat, the cover story to your tragedy. He had a lot of reasons to hate Joy and to hate you.”
Maurice bit back tears. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Wasn’t it? Janine talked to Sebastian’s friends, they said he was pretty nasty about Joy, saying he wished she’d been aborted, that she was a burden nobody needed. I have to ask, Maurice, because if I don’t I wouldn’t be doing my job. Did Sebastian threaten to hurt Joy?”
Tears fell, hot and large, and were hastily wiped away with Maurice’s long, slender fingers. “Never.”
“Really?”
“I told you, he wasn’t like that. Of course he was angry at first...But not for the reason other people believe.” Maurice concentrated on the drink in his hand, the amber liquid swirling within it, the ice now fully melted. “When he saw Joy, he could only see how I had been the victim of an assault. The two things were very difficult for him to separate at first, and yes, he resented Joy when she first came into our lives. But he was changing, he was just beginning to accept her. Not long before he was attacked he had a very telling conversation with me, one where he said he understood that Joy was as much a victim as I was.” His face crumpled into a tortured grimace and this time Harry didn’t hesitate to place her hand on his shoulder. He didn’t shake her touch away and instead curled into it. “He was beginning to accept her, and the possibility of us all becoming a family was stolen from all of us.” His breath was uneven, his body shaking, the ice stone cracking with no hope of anything else taking its place. “How do I keep going now? I know I have to, for her, but I can’t...There’s no one, you see. I can’t let anyone near me, the dysmorphia went into overdrive after I had her and while I adore her, and she is my whole universe, I can’t help but feel...I feel erased as a person. I feel like an ugly secret, and I can’t...”
The tumbler fell out of his grasp and rolled along the uneven floor, spilling watered down whiskey that was quickly absorbed into the wood. Maurice buried his battered face in his hands and wept. Harry placed her tentative touch along his back and his shoulders, holding the tremors at bay.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? For being a human being? We’re all sorry, then.”
“I should be stronger than this.”
“You are, by a damned long margin, the bravest man I have ever met, and if only half the pricks I’ve met in this life had near enough balls as you there’d be no need to call anyone a hero. You kept going when a lot of other people would understandably stop. But you can’t keep doing it all alone, it’s going to eat you up otherwise, and you are needed, Maurice Harding, you are too important to disappear.”
He sighed into his palms, and when he broke free of them his bloodshot eyes were filled with such empty despairing Harry thought she was chained to their icy deeps, never to come up for air.
“I’m not a lesbian,” he said.
Harry shrugged. “Neither am I.”
“I shouldn’t be attracted to you.”
“Why not? I’m a person. You’re a person. The only shit getting in between us is all the stuff we make up. That’s the trouble with us sentient beings, we overthink it all, we put rules where they don’t need to be. I like you. You’re a pompous English ass, but you’re a handsome man, got lady killer vibes all over you, no need to squint. Kissing you again, that would be really okay by me, it really would.”
He gave her raised brow a small, grimacing smile, one that held his usual, nervous tic. “You’ve got a strange way with flattery, Harry Watson.”
“I’m fucking Shakespeare when I wanna be.”
“Quite.” He was silent a long moment, the air between them punctuated with Joy’s infant babble that ended at sharp shrieking points of happiness over the way her favourite busy box squeaked when she pressed the red rubber ball. Maurice gave his daughter a warmer smile which descended into a look of worry. “How did you know? About me.”
“A box of maxi-pads,” Harry said, biting her bottom lip in thought. “I couldn’t think anyone Sebastian dated would ever feel comfortable enough to keep a supply of those in this house. Junkies are only easy with other junkies, the paranoia over being found using under this roof would be magnified twice with a girlfriend in the mix. And you didn’t seem the sort to keep that kind of important information from me, not to mention you didn’t have a motive to. Paired up with how much Joy looks like you and not your brother, along with all the breaking of family ties and I had to wonder...But it wasn’t until Janine called me and told me that Alansi had gone to the Gallery and attacked you that the pieces sort of came together. Alansi called you a bitch. Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll be hearing that word in regards to himself plenty in prison.”
Maurice smiled ruefully at this. “Did you really pull a gun on him?”
“Those rumours are unsubstantiated,” Harry said, giving him a sly smile in return. “As, apparently, are the rumours of Janine’s police brutality when taking him into custody.” She bit her bottom lip again, watching Maurice’s thoughtful processing of this. “He hasn’t said a word, by the way, about how he’s Joy’s daddy. If anything, he’s letting them believe that he and Sebastian had the same mystery girlfriend. He’s got a cover story to keep, the one where he’s the benign gay benefactor, when in reality he’s an opportunistic sexual predator. His hunting grounds are set to get a lot more restrictive if people know the truth.”
Maurice frowned over this. “You really think he’s that much of a monster?”
“He travels a lot. He’s violent, he’s already been long on the Vancouver police radar. He’s a problem. One that’s finally been solved.”
“I see,” Maurice said. But he wasn’t convinced.
Harry wasn’t, either, but she wasn’t going to spoil the mood with facts and doubts. “You need some ice on that cheek,” she said, and she left Maurice behind in the living room with Joy, the bruises on his skin and soul too deep for her to even attempt to help heal just yet.
She gave a guilty look over her shoulder at Maurice and Joy before taking out her cell phone, wondering how much she needed to tell Janine. Nothing that transpired between Maurice and Alansi had anything to do with the attack on Sebastian, and she couldn’t see the point of harming him further by outing him. She’d make a plausible story, one that was easy for anyone to read to swallow, and yeah, it was fucking illegal, but sometimes a person’s soul needed to catch a break, just once.
The texts from her sister Brenda were the first thing she saw when she swiped her finger across the screen. Shouting demands wanting to know where she was and phone calls that went to voicemail, no doubt full of her sister’s expletives. There, at the top, too bold and ugly to continue further, the truth stared at Harry in pale blue clarity.
She’s dead.
Harry shut off her phone. She put it in her pocket and kept the stone rolling around in her gut into an uneasy settlement in the centre of her stomach. She kept her shoulder’s braced and forced an easy, slow gait as she returned to the living room. Joy was now in Maurice’s arms, happily playing as he held her close.
Harry measured every step she took, her feet itching to take her out the front door and start walking, marching, stomping down every street, down the main highway, through snowdrifts and across piers, to walk along the bottom of the ocean. To walk until there was nowhere left to go.