Читать книгу Outside the Line - Christian Petersen - Страница 9

In some cases, such as with suspected sex offenders, one condition of bail is that the accused live in a residence approved by a probation officer, which then requires a home visit. Peter has this task on his agenda the next morning, so he signs out a Jeep and writes out the offender’s name — Martin — and the address where he’s headed on the whiteboard. Number 16 in a trailer park beside the railway tracks, about the lowest rent in town, and mostly paid via welfare. He’s been there before to see other clients.

The sky is hazy with smoke from not-so-distant forest fires, sunlight tinted grey, and the air gritty with dust scattered by the trucks rumbling to and from the nearby mills. Trailer 16 has settled into the gravel and weeds over twenty years, the green aluminum faded and warped by seasons. The yard space is a tangle of weeds and cast-offs — a vinyl-and-chrome chair with broken legs, the skeleton of a child’s bicycle. The add-on wooden steps wobble under Peter’s weight as he draws a breath and firmly knocks. He holds the Martin file in the other hand at his side, the documents of authority enclosed.

Peter hears slow steps, the squeak of handle and hinges, greeted by a mumble, and the door left open while the man retreats inside. He follows, putting off his next breath, the stale air fetid. Martin has two previous convictions for sexual interference with children, and there have been other investigations yielding insubstantial evidence. The man is fifty-seven years old. His victim profile is prepubescent girls, in all cases from dysfunctional homes, neglected, easy prey to his deviant kindness, too often unreliable as their own witnesses. But the case under way looks clear-cut so far, and if convicted, Martin is looking at a few years in jail, federal time. The man now leans against the counter, limbs like sticks, his belly oddly distended, taking in the visitor with a murky, bitter gaze.

No conversation to speak of. Peter reiterates the conditions of Martin’s bail, the mandatory visit, while noting to himself the meaning formed from contradiction. He wouldn’t be here otherwise. Every surface is filmed with grease and dust, every corner and crevice of the trailer. Wood panelling, brown paint. With Martin’s nod and a grunt for consent, Peter walks down the narrow hallway, briefly glancing in the rooms for anything obvious to flag concern. There’s no expectation to look under the bed or start rooting through boxes, fortunately. And if he does spy a stash of adult porn, it may be noteworthy, but it’s not against the law. There are no signs that Martin is a heavy drinker, nor are there firearms or strange tools lying around. In one corner of the living room, near the worn-out recliner padded with towels, are several framed photos on the wall.

“Who are these children, Mr. Martin?”

“Grandkids,” he says, rubbing his chin. “Haven’t seen them for years, since… since all this business began.”

The photos do appear fairly old, slightly faded. “By this business, are you referring to your convictions for sexual interference in 1997 and 1999?”

He sneers wearily. “Yeah. All that, sure, the tapestry of justice. And my daughter didn’t buy it, neither, but her husband does. So I talk to her maybe twice a year, never to the kids.”

“That must be difficult,” Peter says with a modicum of compassion and a degree of disgust. “Thank you for your cooperation. I’ll see you at the office next week.”

“Sure, you bet, Officer.”

Back in the Jeep, Peter jams the file into his leather case. Despite the smoky haze and roving dust, he unrolls both front windows to let the rush of air rid him of Martin’s smell and dark aura. There is no typical sex offender. Some are obsessively clean, but others, it seems, are almost anti-hygenic, living in littered hovels, the material reflection of their minds. Peter shudders and exhales. Instead of heading straight back to the office, he drives north past the mills, past the city limits, until he can peer into the gorge where the creek runs toward the river, the spring high water. He pulls off the road and takes in the view for a few minutes, leaning out the window, hoping the wind will help air out his mind.

There’s a second file in his bag, on Nolin, that he brought along on impulse, thinking he might have time to swing by the victim’s residence and give her a copy of the bail document. Usually, it’s mailed out, or it’s picked up at the office. But his brief conversation with Marina Faro has stayed with him, the nature of her voice. He’d like to offer her some reassurance, if possible, and he’s curious.

The Jeep wends its way through town, and Peter pulls into the Arbour Villa parking lot. From the Nolin file he takes a manila envelope in hand, opens the door, and swings himself out. The building is clad with green-stained wooden siding, and he follows the sidewalk along in front.

A woman is bent over in the bordering flower garden. Although her back is toward him, she straightens at his approach, turns, and he’s surprised by the age in her face yet the firm way she blocks his advance toward unit 5. She steps onto the concrete with a pronged garden tool upraised as though to parry the envelope in his hand. “No visitors today, sorry,” she says.

“I’m just delivering this,” Peter explains. “It’s important that Ms. Faro receive it.”

She studies his clothes, the hair curling over his collar, and raises an eyebrow. “Are you a policeman?”

“No.” He balks at much more explanation to this woman but doesn’t want to be rude. He notes the tended soil around the flowers and shrubs. “You have a very nice garden going here.”

“I’m the caretaker, my husband and I, for nine years now,” she says as though wary of his compliment, alert to any tactic and the envelope in his hand. She glances briefly past him, then back over her shoulder at unit 5 where the curtains of both front windows are drawn. “What brings you here?”

“To deliver this,” he repeats, waving the envelope, ready to retreat.

“But what’s your job?”

She wants to nail him down, and now it seems he can’t escape without some explanation. “I’m a probation officer. My name’s Peter Ellis.”

The woman nods, outright scowling at him now. “So it’s about that trouble on Saturday.” Her raised voice reveals the trace of an accent he can’t identify. “That young man’s in jail now where he belongs!”

Her statement is incorrect, by lack of information, and this raises a bit of a dilemma for Peter. On the one hand, he’s obliged to protect Nolin’s confidentiality as best he can, though his release on bail is, in theory, public knowledge. On the other hand, given that Nolin is prohibited from being within three blocks of the complex, the caretaker is an ideal watchdog, so to speak, especially if she knows about the condition. Then there’s the fact that one of her tenants went on a rampage in the apartment next door to her own, held his girlfriend hostage, forced a police standoff, and caused havoc for everyone in the building for several hours last Saturday night. She’s got a right to her feelings, and maybe some explanation.

“As a matter of fact, ma’am, he’s not in jail. He’s been released on bail under certain conditions, and part of my job is supervising him.”

Her face freezes for a moment. “How can you let him go like that? After what he did here, and what he did to her?”

“I share your concerns. He’s facing a number of serious charges in court, but at the moment he hasn’t been proven guilty, so he can’t be held in jail.”

“Prove what? I saw it all. The judge can talk to me. I heard the proof that night, and I listened to it for months before that.” She glances again at the curtained windows of unit 5. Then she gestures at him to follow, leads him along the walk in front and up the steps to where her own door stands ajar. She leaves her garden clogs on the landing.

Once standing on the inside mat, he can see her floors are spotless, so he’s faced with taking his own shoes off, and he’s not sure about this meeting she’s called. “I really should get going.”

“I’m making coffee, a cup for you,” she says in a persuasive manner, so he slips his shoes off and takes the chair she pulls out for him. Her name is Fay Kubova, she offers. Her husband’s name is Juri, and he’s lying prone in an armchair in the next room, lying very still but apparently breathing.

“This has always been a quiet complex, stable tenants, usually older people, some retired. They never have problems with their rent, never any noise. Until that couple moved in.” She points at the wall her unit shares with number 5. “I spoke with her the very first weekend. Their party kept me awake until three, and I was over there knocking on the door at nine. Finally, she opened it, standing there barely dressed, and I gave her a piece of my mind. At least she had the decency to apologize, even when it wasn’t her fault. Because she couldn’t stop that… that monster. It happened again and again.”

According to Fay, she would have never rented the place to the young couple in the first place, or else they would have been evicted after a month, had it not been for the fact that Juri knew that Todd Nolin had played in the NHL. This gave him status in Juri’s eyes. The old man has followed the game since defecting to Canada nearly forty years ago. He roots for the Czechs, his countrymen, whatever team they play for.

“And he’s mostly deaf,” she points out, looking briefly at her inert husband in the other room. “So the noise never bothers him the way it does me. And it was getting worse, even on weeknights. So I got fed up, and I gave them a written warning two weeks ago.”

“Sounds like they’ve caused you some grief,” Peter says.

“Grief? Yes, he’s caused grief, all right, mostly for that poor girl,” Fay fumes, plunking a mug of dark coffee in front of him. She sets out sugar and cream. Then she sits down, fixes her eyes on him, leans across the table, and tells Peter what happened.

Juri was watching the hockey game, sipping his third beer against the doctor’s orders, oblivious to anything else.

Next door they were watching the game, as well. Several vehicles were crowded into the parking lot. Male voices and laughter, cheers and jeers boomed through the kitchen wall, and Fay wasn’t happy about it. She finished the dishes, tidied up the kitchen, and considered marching over to complain.

“They’re having another party next door,” she informed Juri, moving over the carpet into his line of vision far enough to get his attention.

“What?”

“There’s a party next door,” she repeated, raising her voice over the announcer’s commentary blaring from their own television. “Between this, and them, I can hardly hear myself think!”

“It’s the playoffs!” Juri hollered as if she were standing twenty yards away. He craned his neck, not in anger but with the simple need to see the corner of the television screen her skirt was obscuring. The streak of a rubber puck. Clearly, he thought his answer explained everything — the weather, the economy, the ungodly noise next door.

Fay bustled around a bit, madder by the minute, then finally got her garden overshirt out of the closet and stepped outside. The evening was warm and pungent with the scents of greening lawns, spruce and pine, all the vegetation, roots, and leaves awakening.

She walked around the yard, checking the coiled yellow yard hoses, picking up the odd piece of litter. Traffic on the street was more aggressive than on an average night. Everyone was in a hurry to get somewhere, like a hockey game party. She gathered a couple of tools from the aluminum garden shed, then criss-crossed the lawn in a vengeful campaign against any and all weeds. From inside the apartments she could still hear the roar of the televisions, and raucous cheers from number 5.

Herbicides weren’t something Fay had much experience with. On that point she’d stood her ground against Juri, who had been inclined to spray with just about anything short of green paint to achieve a flawless lawn. But last summer he had done little at all in the yard. Now she could already see where the dandelions had seeded, and she imagined their lengthening white roots. Some were more than she could oust with her hand shovel.

Dusk crept up on the neighbourhood and Fay’s yard. Finally, there came a great roar from within unit 5, signalling the end of the hockey game. Soon after, young men appeared on the front steps, each with a beer in hand, laughing and yelling at one another in foul language. When she spotted Todd Nolin, Fay straightened and stared across the lawn until he noticed her. He avoided eye contact and made some remark to his buddies, which scored a great laugh. Not long after that they all piled into their vehicles and disappeared, much to Fay’s relief. She supposed young Marina was inside cleaning up after the louts.

Fay put her tools away and climbed the steps into her own apartment. There she found Juri asleep in his easy chair. Fay shut off the television. She roused him gently and supported him as he made his way to the bathroom to rinse his dentures and prepare for bed.

“Who won?” she asked, then regretted the question.

He mumbled irritably, and she guessed he didn’t know, that he’d fallen asleep before the game’s end. This would trouble Juri greatly, and Fay did her best to prevent such embarrassment for him.

After he was settled in, she returned to the kitchen, plugged in the kettle, prepared the coffee maker for the morning, and set out the box of wheat biscuits. Once the water boiled, she fixed her nightly cup of Ovaltine, a thirty-year habit. Fay took her drink into the living room and was seated in her chair just in time for the ten o’clock news. She trusted the anchorman, admired how his voice portrayed all the grief and disaster he was given to cover. Sometimes she wondered what he did when the program concluded, and if he ever had a problem sleeping. As for Fay, she made her way to the bathroom, where she changed and washed, applied facial cream, and then went to bed.

She awakened later with a start, fumbled for her glasses, saw that it was almost 3:00 a.m. A horrendous crash and roar was coming from the next apartment. She rolled out of bed, grabbed her housecoat, and hustled downstairs.

Something smashed against the wall, something fell and was dragged or kicked aside. For a moment the voices were muted by struggle, then a short, vicious oath, then a wail. Then words and fragments blasted through the wall.

“They’re laughing at me! Laughing, you slut! You want a good laugh, here —”

“Oh, dear God,” Fay whispered, pacing back and forth from her kitchen to the walk-in closet at the end of the hall, trying to track whatever was going on. The girl screamed.

“Fucking little bitch…”

“Todd! Pleeease!”

Another crash, and a scramble of feet and objects overturned. A prolonged wail, a series of cries, and pounding steps indicated that the girl was running upstairs. Fay turned and followed up her own stairwell, heard the man’s steps thunder upward past her.

“Where do you think you’re going?” a man’s voice roared.

Fay tilted her ear to the wall at the top of the stairs, followed the girl’s voice along to the upstairs bathroom, heard the door slam, frantic hands on the lock.

“Open the door!”

“Please, Todd!”

“Open this door, you slut!”

Fay was breathless. She heard a great thud against their bathroom door, then the crack and splintering. The girl’s terrified sobs. It was less than two minutes since she awakened. Stricken with guilt for not acting sooner, she ran to the telephone and called 911.

Within five minutes there was a loud rapping at her own door, and Fay opened it to the alert concern of a young police officer. As she was explaining, she heard another officer knocking repeatedly at unit 5, and already a second patrol car was pulling in, its red and blue lights pulsing.

A window shattered. The young officer whirled away from Fay, one hand guiding her back into her apartment, the other unlatching his holster. The second officer backed away from the doorway of number 5, gun already in hand.

“Oh, dear God,” Fay whispered, this time in earnest prayer.