“Hey, ya keep yer head down and stay friendly, ya hear stuff.”
Eliza was right, of course.Staying friendly and keeping her head down was precisely how a person could overhear important things.But what Emily needed to do waswitnessthem.“Can I ask why you’re here?”she inquired.
“Ah,” Eliza said, shaking her head at the floor.“Well, home’s a wreck.Da’s a drunk, Mam’s his punchin’ bag.Six kids, never enough food.Electrical gets cut off all the time, we get evicted.An’ when Mam’s had enough, Da beats on us kids.”
Emily grimaced.“Good Lord.”
“I’m the youngest,” Eliza went on, eyes still on the floor as she worked.“All but two of me brothers already up and left, nobody finishes school.Mam won’t do nothin’ about it, so I get meself tossed in here on purpose.”She looked at Emily, whose mop had stilled.“Hey, ’s three meals a day.Me own bed.Some clothes, heat ’n electricity.’S better here than home.And no men tryna get at me, like on the street.After they turf me outta here I just steal and let meself get caught til they send me back.”
Emily was unsure how to respond.
“And no beatings here unless you step outta line,” Eliza continued.“So s’long as I keep me head down, it’s fine.Once I’m grown up like you I’ll skip town.Try to get a job.I’ll know enough about cleaning and laundry, anyway.I can do somethin’ for meself.I seen what it cost me mam, needing Da for money.Hell, I’m not doin’ that.”
Emily processed all Eliza had said.“I’m very sorry,” she said, and meant it.No child should have to live like that.
“Ah, hell, some’s got it worse, right?I can’t gripe.”
Emily didn’t know what do other than nod understandingly.But her ears had pricked.She waited a moment before speaking again.
“So there’s no beatings unless we step out of line?”she asked quietly.
“Yeah.If you really piss ’em off, they’ll beat ya with leather straps in the basement.The doctor supervises it.I guess to make sure no one gets hurt too bad, but me, I think she likes it.She’s right twisted, that one.Soul’s as black as that hair o’ hers.”
After her encounter with Dr.Stone that morning, Emily had no doubt that Eliza was right.
CHAPTER 17
RACHEL
Toronto—June, 1996
Rachel knocks back the last of the cold drive-through coffee she stopped for in Kitchener as she merges onto the Gardiner Expressway, headed for Grosvenor Street right downtown where the Centre of Forensic Sciences office is located.She left Bayfield at dawn to try to avoid some of the worst of the rush hour traffic into the city, with marginal success.
After the CFS, she has an appointment at Cartwright-Cambridge Co.’s offices and warehouse just north of the Junction.She’d contacted a colleague at the Toronto office of the OPP yesterday afternoon, asking him to check the local Yellow Pages.Fortunately, the coffin maker is still in business, so Rachel called and spoke with the owner, the son of the man who established the company in 1956.He’s expecting her around midday.
She finds some overpriced parking just off Bay Street and heads through the financial district up Grosvenor to one of a cluster of government buildings surrounding Queen’s Park.
Once she’s through the security checkpoint, she’s led into a large tiled lobby, where Sawyer is waiting for her in a crisp grey skirt and white lab coat, her dark hair clipped short like Winona Ryder’s inReality Bites.She offers Rachel her hand and a brief smile.
“Nice to see you, Mackenzie.I hope the traffic wasn’t too bad.”
“Oh, it was.”
Sawyer chuckles, and Rachel feels a silly little swell of pride.A chuckle from Sawyer is a belly laugh from anyone else.“Come on this way.”
As Sawyer leads Rachel to an elevator bank, they make brief small talk that echoes in the dark but expansive foyer.They descend to the basement levels, and after another security check outside the evidence-bay doors in the windowless corridor, Sawyer hands her a pair of gloves, keys in a passcode, and guides them to Jane Doe’s locker.
Rachel has only ever seen smaller evidence bins and storage, nothing bigger than the size of a high school locker.This feels a bit like stepping into the giant walk-in refrigerator they had at Two Scoops, only slightly warmer and without droplets of fudge and squashed strawberries stuck to the floor.It’s temperature- and humidity-controlled down here, and silent as a library.Sawyer ushers Rachel through the door, and a motion-sensor light flickers to life overhead.
“It’s a drying cabinet,” Sawyer says.“I didn’t want to contribute any more to the rot it had already been subjected to.Although as I said on the phone, I’ve seen worse, for the age of it.Go ahead.”
Rachel pulls her file and notebook out of her bag and squats down as Sawyer hangs back.The photos Sawyer sent her were good, but she always needs to see her evidence in person.Feel it, smell it.Get to know it.
The casket is laid out on a table in the centre of the small room.Rachel pores over it, squinting closely at the stamped serial number, then asks to see the smaller items: some remnants of fabric and the brass plaque.Sawyer takes her out of the walk-in cabinet to the outer room, where she fetches two plastic bags from a storage wall similar to a library’s card catalogue.She lays them out for Rachel on a stainless-steel table beneath a harsh overhead light, then picks up the bag with the fabric, hands it to Rachel.
“They’re tiny,” she says.“I’m not sure how far it’ll get you.It’s just blue dyed cotton, nothing fancy or distinctive.”
She waits silently until Rachel hands the bag back to her.There really isn’t much to see.Sawyer passes over the brass plaque.“Did you get a lead on that?”she asks.
