Chapter 38 Kobe
Kobe
Yates ignored my calls. I tried five times, getting voicemail repeatedly, before he turned his phone off, and it stopped ringing altogether and skipped immediately to the robotic messaging system.
I got Yates’s address from Jim at reception and drove to his house.
His wife answered, their three-month-old daughter wrapped snuggly in her arms.
“He’s not here.” She didn’t know where I might find him and had no better luck getting him on the phone. “He’s been stressed,” she explained. “He tells me he needs air. I think he’s spending time at the bars.”
I left Yates’s and aimed for Dominique’s, prepared to unload all my research at his feet, but the second I saw his car in the driveway, I chickened out and found a café instead. I drank too much coffee and ate a sandwich I didn’t taste.
An odd numbness moved through my body, settling in my limbs.
My ears rang, and I became increasingly aware of the sound of my heart thundering behind my ribcage.
It felt like I was standing on the cusp of this dimension and an alternate version of reality, witnessing both futures before they happened.
Two paths. In one world, I obeyed the law.
I did my job. In the other, I followed my heart.
Right and wrong.
Good and evil.
Black and white.
But what happened to those of us who lived in the gray?
I made a phone call.
The bridge to Gatineau was without traffic. I followed my phone’s GPS to the address I’d been given, my thoughts a maelstrom. Parking, I remained in the car, staring into the distance, numb, numb, numb.
The streetlights stopped at the road, and I’d left the road behind.
The night was dark. Although the moon was nearly full according to the calendar, thick cloud cover hung over the city, deep shadows impeding my view.
Another storm threatened its wrath. The impending snow would soon blanket the world.
A black night. A white world.
Me in the gray.
Two girls and a boy in a place they didn’t belong. In over their heads. Drowning in fear and despair. One chose to hide. One chose to fight. One chose to die.
Memories came back to me. Things I’d seen. Things I’d read. Things I’d heard. I could stop it, end it tonight, but did I want to?
I pushed the thoughts away.
Get out of the fucking car.
I got out of the car. In a daze, I walked between worlds, between realities, to a place in the near distance. A crust had formed over the untrampled snow. My boots broke through easily, eerily crunching as I crossed to my destination.
The boy waited exactly where he promised, under a mournful willow, beside the cold stone slab of a memorial. Huddled in a ski jacket, shoulders by his ears, he hunched forward—against the wind or ghosts, I wasn’t sure.
I joined him at the foot of the grave belonging to the girl he couldn’t save.
He didn’t speak, and neither did I. We hung our heads. In sorrow or prayer, it didn’t matter. She was a girl who had left the world too soon. A girl broken by boys much older than she. They had taken what she wasn’t willing to give.
“I loved her,” the boy beside me said after a time, his voice muffled by the collar of his jacket.
“I know.”
“If I could go back—”
“You can’t.”
“I know, but if I could—”
“Don’t do that to yourself.”
The boy went silent. He stared at her resting place with such soul-wrenching agony, I thought he might fall to his knees and dig a hole beside her, so they could be together again.
“She tried to move on,” he said.
“I believe you.”
“She shut me out,” he said.
“I know.”
“I blame myself,” he said.
“Don’t.”
“I hope they rot in hell!” His cry filled the dark, echoing through the cemetery.
“They will,” I whispered. “They are.”
He sobbed.
I wrapped an arm around his shoulders and tugged him against my side, taking his weight and sharing his sorrow. His body trembled. I doubted he felt the cold. I doubted he felt anything at all.
I held him together while he fell apart. He was too young to know this kind of pain, and I wished I could take it away.
“What will you do?” he eventually asked. “Will you tell?”
I stayed quiet for a long time. Two paths. Which one would I take?
“I’ll follow my heart.”
“Even at the cost of your career?”
“We all make choices. This one is mine. Good people sometimes do bad things, and the sad truth is, sometimes bad things happen to good people. The question is, what will you do, Bastian?”
“She has my loyalty. Forever. What else can I do?”
“Forgive yourself and move on now.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is. Those men are dead. Has justice been served?”
He stayed silent, staring at the gravestone at his feet.
I squeezed his shoulder and released him. “Get home, kid.”
He glanced at me with a look of shock, his nose pink and running, his heart shredded. “So that’s it? It’s over?”
“That’s it. Find Jolie. Tell her what I said. No more, Bastian. No more.”
“Okay. I’ll tell her.”
I took a business card from my wallet and held it out. “If you ever need to talk.”
Shivering, the boy took the card and examined it. He burrowed deeper into his jacket and turned back to the grave. Nothing more was said.
I took one last look at the name on the headstone and turned to leave. Halfway back to my car, a quiet sob carried on the wind. I turned and found the boy on his knees, bawling, face buried in his hands.
On my way back to Ottawa, I tried calling Yates again. His phone tripped instantly to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. Debating my next step, I veered toward Dominique’s, prepared to lay my cards on the table and see what he had to say.
His car was not in the driveway. When I knocked, a girl of sixteen or seventeen answered and explained that Dominique had gone out.
“Out where?”
She shrugged.
Confused, I landed in the car and called Dominique’s number. No answer.
I tried Yates again. Voicemail.
As I stared out the windshield, soft flakes danced in the air, falling from the heavens. The storm had arrived. So silent. So peaceful. So utterly deceptive. The serenity of the scene felt incongruous with the thumping rhythm of my heart.
Where was Dominique? Why had he gone out?
Why wasn’t Yates answering his phone?
I thought of Bastian at the cemetery. His grief. His self-hatred. His tears.
His anger.
I thought of Jolie, driven to hysterics because of a man she considered to be responsible for her best friend’s death. The bite mark on Yates’s cheek. The blood. The fury in her eyes.
I thought of a fourteen-year-old girl, suffering and suffocating in a world she no longer understood. Dying a little more on the inside each day. Alone. Telling no one. Until she couldn’t take it anymore and left it all behind.
I drove with no destination, landing at Ari Yates’s residence, at the closed university, at the twenty-four-hour gym where Dominique spent his early mornings a few days a week. I drove and drove and drove.
The storm raged. The snow fell. Accumulated.
Eventually, I made my way to the station, traveling southeast on Elgin in a daze.
The streets were bare of pedestrians and cars, so when I noticed a familiar vehicle parked a short distance from a pub, I hit the brakes hard enough that my tires slipped on the snow-covered roads.
Swinging the wheel, steering into the skid, I gained control and drifted to a stop at the side of the road, parking crookedly but not caring.
The wiper blades worked overtime. Thick whorls of snow poured from the heavens, gathering on every surface. I checked my rearview mirror to be sure it was Dominique’s car, convinced its new white coat had tricked me.
It was. My cop brain had long ago registered his license plate, and it matched.
Scanning the street, I zeroed in on the only place open for business this late in the evening on a holiday. An Irish pub.
Why was Dominique at an Irish pub?
Yates’s wife’s words came back to me. He’s been stressed. I think he’s spending time at the bars.
I zeroed in on the restaurant’s parking lot but didn’t know what Yates drove. “Fuck me.”
I scrambled to get free of the seat belt and shouldered the door open, barreling into the street without checking for traffic.
A transport zipped by close enough that I felt the push of air against my face, and my heart nearly stopped from shock.
Its tires spun through the slushy, track-bare road, wetting my pants and boots.
I took a second to regulate my breathing, ordering myself to calm the fuck down. Safely across the street, I tried peering through the stained-glass windows, but its opalescence made it impossible to see anything.
I entered the main door into a dark alcove that led to a dimly lit dining area.
Chandeliers hung at intervals, emitting nothing more than soft yellow pools over the patrons.
A man and woman occupied a table near a roaring fire.
They shared pints of lager and stuffed potato skins.
The only other customers sat at the bar, seemingly engrossed in conversation.
Ari Yates and the love of my life, Dominique Chevalier.
Neither had noticed me, so I took a second to watch them, study them, decide what to do. I’d made a decision tonight, but it was not one I planned to share with the world.
Bastian knew my plan, out of necessity. Jolie would learn in time—hopefully sooner rather than later. The boy had promised to find her and relay my message.
Dominique was a given, but Yates was untrustworthy. Yates was a problem, and he needed to be dealt with.
The neglectful constable removed his wallet. I thought he was about to pay for his drinks, but he removed something else from within. Not a bank card or cash but a photograph. He handed it to Dominique.
The bartender’s attention remained fixed on the TV over the bar. The only waitress working hadn’t noticed me yet since the alcove was in shadow, and no bell or chime had announced my arrival.
I stepped behind a nearby pillar, not wanting to be seen as I watched the two men interact.
Dominique gazed at the picture. The forlorn look in his husky-blue eyes, the one I used to see all the time when we first met, returned. He said nothing, but I read his thoughts all the same.
When he returned the photo, he stared at Yates for a long time, and I wondered what he saw.
Was Yates a man who indirectly killed a fourteen-year-old girl with his irresponsible choices?
Was he a changed man, on the road to redemption?
Was he a new father prepared to do whatever it took to keep his baby girl and all other innocent girls who may fall victim to entitled boys safe?
Dominique raised a finger at the bartender, gesturing for him to bring Yates another beer.
As the mustachioed man set to work, pouring a new pint, Dominique stood and dug a handful of bills from his pocket.
He tossed them on the bar top and clasped Yates’s shoulder, bending to whisper something in his ear. Whatever he said, I could only guess.
Yates ducked his chin and nodded.
Dominique rapped his knuckles on the bar top, gave the bartender a wave, and headed for the door.
I moved to the opposite side of the pillar, staying concealed as Dominique slipped by and went out into the snowstormy night.
I glanced at Yates, head hung low, a new beer in front of him. He wasn’t going anywhere yet. That was fine. I had time.
I followed Dominique out the door, walking fast in the blustering wind to catch up.
With his back turned, he didn’t see me. As he reached for the door handle on his vehicle, I called out loud enough to cut through the gale so he caught every word.
The streets were empty; the storm had driven anyone with half a brain inside.
We were alone.
“Angelique was your daughter, not your wife.”