Helpless Read online

  He has parked next to the dumpster. People park here all the time, and the streetlight up ahead is burned out, so even with all the windows down he feels invisible. For a change, the landlord isn’t on the porch. Neither are the dogs. It’s just Rachel, by herself.

  “Shine it at your feet,” he says.

  He wishes he’d brought along a pair of binoculars. And then it occurs to him: maybe he has. In the trunk he keeps finding things—nylon cord, a blanket—he can’t remember having put there. He opens the glove compartment and fumbles around. Nope, no flashlight. Only his Perly’s guide and the roll of duct tape he bought to secure the broken rearview mirror.

  He takes out the tape and sets it on the dashboard. “Come on, sweetheart,” he says. Her light seems to intensify and it is from this, rather than from the sudden dimness of the world around him, that he becomes conscious of the power failure. He climbs out of the car.

  Rachel descends the porch steps. “I just want to see!” she calls over her shoulder. Ron starts moving toward her. It’s dark but not pitch black, because of the cars on Parliament. Rachel aims her light that way, then sweeps it past him and looks down her own street.

  He reaches the curb.

  Should he cross? No, he thinks. Yes.

  He takes a step.

  She turns and runs into the house.

  Through the living room window he makes out her staggering beam.

  CELIA IS wrapping up her set with “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” and Wanda is over by the window, gazing dreamily at the Scotia Bank building, where her married boyfriend works as a security guard, when the lights go out.

  “Oh, my God,” Wanda says.

  The businessman across from Celia jerks awake. In the stumpy flame from his candle his face is ancient.

  “The whole city, it went poof!” Wanda says.

  “What?” the businessman says.

  “Looks like a power failure,” Celia tells him.

  “Maybe is the terrorists!” Wanda gasps.

  “I think it’s too many air conditioners,” Celia says, although she’s feeling a twist of unease.

  The man slides a cell phone out of his jacket pocket. Celia picks up a candle from the nearest table and heads for the bar to use the phone there.

  “Forgot to charge the damn thing,” the man mutters.

  Celia gets a speeded-up busy signal. She tries again, but now there’s no dial tone.

  “This calls for a Manhattan!” the man declares. He slaps the table and turns to Wanda.

  Wanda remains at the window. “Not one single light,” she says.

  “I’m going home,” Celia announces.

  The man comes to his feet. “I’d wait if I were you,” he says. By grasping the backs of chairs he’s making his own way to the bar. “Driving’ll be chaos. Hell on wheels.”

  NANCY POKES her head out her kitchen window. “Ah, jeez,” she says. She thinks it’s her fault. Just as she turned on her air conditioner the electricity went off…in the entire neighbourhood, from what she can see.

  “I HAVE a battery-powered fluorescent lantern,” Mika tells Rachel. “Also a windup radio. We’ll be able to find out what the story is out there.”

  He is heading toward the stairwell, Rachel illuminating his path with her penlight.

  “You better have it,” she says about the light.

  “I’m okay,” he says. “You just keep guiding me.”

  He takes a step down. The dogs follow. He orders them back upstairs, but Osmo squeezes by on his right side. Then Happy tries to go through his legs, and he trips. His head hits the wall. He reels, makes a grab for the railing and misses. He tumbles to the floor.

  “Mika!” Rachel cries.

  No answer, not a sound.

  She races down the stairs, calling his name. She drops to her knees. His eyes are closed. He isn’t moving. She shakes his shoulder. The dogs lick his face. The penlight slips from her hand and rolls away.

  In total darkness she scrambles up the stairs. She gets to the kitchen phone and presses what she thinks is 9—1—1. Nothing happens. She drops the phone and runs outside.

  At the bottom of the porch steps she bumps into someone. A man.

  “Hey,” he says, catching her arm. “What’s going on in there?”

  “I need to phone nine-one-one!” she cries.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No! Mika, he fell! I think he’s dead!” She starts sobbing.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “I have a phone in my car. Come on. We’ll phone.”

  Chapter Eleven

  THE DRIVING ISN’T bad. It’s the pedestrians you’ve got to watch out for. All the way up Yonge Street gangs of teenagers are strolling into traffic, slapping hoods. There’s a lot of excited shouting and hooting. Not having a car radio, Celia still doesn’t know what happened but it seems unlikely there’s been a terrorist attack.

  And yet she can’t shake her anxiety. She has to keep telling herself that Rachel is with Mika, and nobody is better prepared for disaster than Mika with his gas generator and windup radio and his boxes of candles and batteries. Right now, he and Rachel will be out on the porch. It’s a clear night…they’ll be looking up at the stars.

  She holds on to this picture until she turns off Parliament and sees the police cars. She pulls over, slamming her foot on the accelerator instead of the brake and mounting the curb. She gets out. Kicks off her high heels. People are in the lane, people with flashlights. A plank of light falls alongside her.

  Two policemen stand in the middle of Mika’s living room. They blind her, then lower their beams. Mika is on the sofa. He holds a towel to his head. Seeing her, he opens his mouth.

  “Are you Celia Fox?” the nearest policeman asks.

  “Where’s my daughter?” she says. Everything pulses: the room, the men.

  “I’M NOT going to hurt you,” Ron tells her. “I’m taking you somewhere where nobody will ever hurt you again.”

  She’s on the floor. He didn’t put her there…she slid off the seat. It crossed his mind that he should put her in the trunk but he was afraid she’d suffocate. Anyway, without streetlights, you can’t really see into other people’s vehicles.

  “How are you doing?” he asks. He glances over. Her face is turned away. He can make out only the tender curve of her neck and the earlobe with its pearl stud, like a drop of saliva. “Is the air conditioning too cold for you there?” He adjusts the direction of the vents.

  She’s able to breathe, he knows that. He was careful not to tape her nostrils. It was like taping a doll. He had her mouth covered before she even began to put up a struggle. Which was pathetically easy to contain. He quickly bound her hands and feet and that was the end of it.

  He has seen the same thing happen on nature programs: animals giving up once they accept they’ve been overpowered. He tries to explain the phenomenon to her: “You’re in a state of shock. It keeps you from feeling pain or getting too excited. It’s like being injected with a tranquilizing dart. Have you seen those TV shows, you know—Discovery and National Geographic, where the scientists shoot tranquilizing darts at the animals so they can give them medicine or take their measurements?”

  He wonders if he’s speaking too technically. That he can speak at all astounds him. His heart is going like a pump drill. His hands, from touching her, feel irradiated. Not since he was a child himself has he touched a child. This time he only did what was necessary to get her into the car and subdued.

  The trip isn’t a long one: fifteen minutes. He turns into the delivery lane and parks next to his garage, switching on his high beams. All the neighbouring businesses are closed for the day. Still, when he’s out of the car he waits, listening, before going around to her door. “Ups-a-daisy,” he whispers. He drapes her over his shoulder. She’s as weightless as a garment bag.

  His high beams, though he stays out of them, guide him across the lawn to the back entrance and straight through the house to the shop. Here, it is completely dark. With
his free hand he feels along the counter to the basement door. “Good girl,” he says, descending the stairs. At the bottom he puts her down while he goes to get flashlights from the furnace room and to move the car around to the front. When he returns, she’s twisting and making choking noises.

  “Hold on,” he says, alarmed. His hands shake. He has trouble inserting the key. “Bingo,” he says, finally jamming it in. He enters the apartment and sets the flashlights on their ends, then comes back for her. She has gone still and quiet. He carries her to the bed and makes a place for her among the stuffed animals. For the first time he notices how fast she’s breathing, the rapid throbbing of her chest.

  “Okay, let’s get that tape off,” he says.

  His hands won’t stop shaking but he finds a corner of the tape and gently pulls. Her lovely mouth, revealed, unsteadies him. He staggers to one side. “I’m a little nervous about all this,” he confesses. He has a harder time unwinding the twisted tape from her wrists and ankles. He picks up one of the flashlights and leaves the room to get a knife.

  “This should do the trick,” he says when he comes back. She hasn’t budged. He positions one of the flashlights to shine on her wrists and starts sawing. If he cuts her…He doesn’t. He gets the tape off, then moves the light again and does her ankles. Her bare feet squirm under the duvet.

  “Are you cold?” he asks.

  She curls onto her side and begins to whimper—a pathetic animal sound, like a dog left to die.

  What should he do? What he wants to do is sit on the bed and stroke her quivering little form. If he has ever witnessed anything more heartwrenching, he can’t remember. He lifts the duvet and drops it over her legs. She flinches.

  “I’ll leave you to get yourself settled,” he says. “There’s a bathroom behind you, a clean glass if you’re thirsty.” The whimpering doesn’t let up. He’s not even sure she hears him. He keeps talking anyway, just in case. It’s important she understand he isn’t some kind of pervert. “If you get hungry or anything, bang on the door. I’ll hear you. There’s a twenty-four-hour variety store at the corner, and I can run out and get you whatever you like. Ice cream. A chocolate bar. Or I can fix you a sandwich. Grilled cheese. Bacon and tomato. Whatever you like.”

  The canopy’s net curtains are tied back, and for the sake of being able to see her from the doorway he decides to leave them that way. He goes out and double bolts the lock. Her cries seep through. “It’s for her own good,” he mutters. “For her own good.” The apprehension of what he’s done, and what it signifies, is striking him in short, stunning blasts: he has abducted her; there’s no turning back; it’s too late.

  He heaves himself up the stairs.

  In the shop he paws through drawers until he finds a pack of matches. He strikes one after another as he heads for the kitchen. Nancy brought over a big scented candle a couple of weeks ago, and once he has that lit, he takes a couple of gulps of rye, then carries the candle and his drink back to the shop. He picks up the phone to call Nancy, but the line’s dead. He tries his cell. It works, but at Nancy’s end there’s a rapid busy signal. She has only the one phone. He’ll have to wait.

  He walks over to the stairwell and listens. She’s still whimpering. He returns to the counter and forces out a few whimpers of his own. He can’t keep it up, though. A little wick of elation has ignited inside him and is burning through the pity and astonishment, the fear.

  He has her. She’s his.

  Chapter Twelve

  “OKAY,” CELIA SAYS, once the police fill her in. She releases her breath. They shouldn’t have said missing. Rachel isn’t missing, she just isn’t here; she isn’t back yet. Obviously she’d have gone running for help. Maybe the person she’s with is waiting for the phone lines to come back on.

  “Celia…,” Mika says, coming to stand beside her. All she can see is the white towel he holds pressed to his head.

  “Why did you go down there?” she asks.

  He hesitates. She knows he’s only forming his thoughts but his silence goads her. “I don’t understand,” she says, her voice rising. “Why would you go down to the basement?”

  “To…to…”

  “To what?”

  “Get the lantern.”

  “But you have candles. Up here. All those candles in the dining room.”

  “I…I know. Celia…I’m…” He moves back to the sofa and sits. “I’m so…sorry.”

  “You went down there in the pitch dark.?”

  “Rachel had the penlight. She was behind me, in the kitchen, guiding the way. Then the damn dogs…they…”

  She stares at him, uncomprehending.

  One of the officers is speaking. “What?” she says, turning around.

  It’s the black officer. He has introduced himself as Constable Joe Bird. The name of the other officer—the young, lanky blond one—she has already forgotten.

  “We’re checking hospital emergency rooms. But with the phones dead, information is slow in coming in.”

  “Why are you checking emergency rooms?”

  “There might have been an accident. She might have fallen, running around in near-zero visibility.”

  “Oh, okay.” Celia can picture this: a fall, a broken arm or leg.

  “At Mr. Ramstad’s suggestion”—Bird nods at Mika—“we’ve had officers around to Tom’s Video and the variety store.”

  “Wong’s Variety,” the younger officer chips in.

  “She hasn’t been to either place but we’re continuing to canvass stores and homes in the vicinity. What about her friends? Any of them live nearby?”

  Celia shakes her head. “Only Leonard Wong.” Why didn’t Rachel go there? she wonders.

  “No others in the neighbourhood?”

  “Not nearby. I mean, they’re all in Cabbagetown. Her best friend, Lina, lives in Regent Park, but I think she’s away—”

  “Do you have an address?”

  Celia gives it to him and he uses his radio to pass the information to an officer outside. “Anyone else?”—turning to Celia again.

  “From around here?”

  “Anywhere. Someone she might have gone to if this Lina friend wasn’t home.”

  “She has lots of friends from school. I don’t know where they all live, though.”

  “We’ll get those names in a minute.” He sets his flashlight on the bookcase, pulls out a notebook, and holds it up to the beam. “Just to verify what Mr. Ramstad told us. Rachel is nine years old, small, thin build, light brown complexion, blue eyes, blond curly hair in a ponytail. Wearing a short white skirt and a red tank top.”

  “And earrings. Pearl studs.” Why is she telling them this? Who’s going to notice her ears?

  Bird, however, makes a note. “Any visible scars, medical conditions?”

  “No. Just…”

  He waits.

  “She’s really pretty.”

  “Okay.” But he doesn’t write it down, and Celia is aware of coming across as one of those mothers who enter their daughters in beauty pageants.

  “I mean, that’s what people notice.”

  “She’s an usually beautiful girl,” Mika offers quietly. Bird’s gaze shifts to him.

  “Just a couple of weeks ago,” Celia says, “this guy from a modelling agency chased us up the street. He wanted her to take a course.”

  “What agency?” Bird says alertly.

  Celia tells him. “The guy’s name was Jason, I think. Yeah, Jason. He seemed all right.”

  “Anyone else bothering her?”

  “Not that she’s said.”

  “Any strange phone calls?”

  “No.”

  Bird returns to his notes. “Father’s whereabouts unknown,” he reads.

  “That’s right.”

  “And there’s no other family—no cousins, aunts, no boyfriends or ex-boyfriends she’s close to.”

  “Just us.” She glances at Mika, who is visible at the edge of Bird’s light. He has let go of the towel, and the
bump on his temple is stunningly large. “God, Mika,” she says. “Shouldn’t you go to the hospital?”

  “I’m fine,” he murmurs.

  For a reason that isn’t clear to her or doesn’t seem worth pursuing, not right then, Mika has to wait out on the porch while she takes the officers through the house. They begin in her and Rachel’s apartment. Bird has instructed her to speak up if anything is missing or appears to have been disturbed. The cracked and toppled ceramic planter out on the deck, the unlocked screen door, the piles of books and sheet music scattered all over the carpet…is this how things were left? Celia admits that it is. In the scouring wash of the flashlights she’s seeing the handprints on her walls and the worn, shiny places on her upholstery. She opens her desk drawer and takes out the three photos of Rachel in her white lace dress. She hands them to the young officer. “This is her.”

  “Whoa,” he says quietly. He passes them to Bird.

  Bird studies each one.

  “I keep meaning to get them framed,” Celia says.

  “She’s a beautiful girl all right,” Bird says.

  It’s a concession, an apology, and Celia feels free to press her earlier point: “People remember her.”

  “When were these taken?”

  “Last Christmas. For her school concert. Mika took them.”

  “Is he a photographer?”

  “Well, not a professional.”

  “Has he taken any other pictures of her?”

  “A few.” She wonders at his asking. “Over the years, you know.”

  “Can we borrow these?”

  “Okay…”

  “We might want to start getting her face out there.”

  “Really?”

  “When the power’s back.”

  But why doesn’t he imagine that Rachel will be found by then? They’ve only been searching…Celia peers at her watch: a quarter to eleven. “You’ve been here, what, half an hour?”

  “About forty minutes,” the young officer says.

  “Forty minutes,” she repeats, unable to gauge whether that’s a long time or no time at all.