“And what do you think your chances are?”
“Pretty good, but it’s not like when your mom’s the manager of the baseball team. Then you’d really have to suck to not make the team. This isn’t like that.”
“I’ll remember that during next season’s tryouts.” Jill laughed. Then she turned to me. “Now, there was something you wanted to talk about. Is this an adults-only topic, or can all of us be part of the discussion?”
“Actually, this is something I’d like to share with both of you.”
It was Kyla and one of her school and baseball buddies who had first sprung the shocking news about Faith Unruh’s murder on us a few months before. Josie, it turned out, lived on the same street Faith Unruh had lived on — and died on — many years before. And Josie had heard snippets of conversation about the murder. She’d shared those snippets with Kyla; then, the two of them filled Jill and me in on what they knew over dinner one night.
I figured Kyla deserved to know that Cobb and I were aware of the case, and while we weren’t exactly conducting a full-blown investigation, we did have our antennae up and at the ready should any new information present itself.
I told them about the meeting Cobb and I had had with Marlon Kennedy. I didn’t mention my earlier meeting with Kennedy in the laneway. Jill already knew about it; Kyla did not, and my desire to keep no secrets from her did not extend to sharing stuff that might scare her.
“And so tonight you’re going to his house for an orientation into the surveillance he’s been conducting on his own all these years,” Jill stated.
“Yeah, and then I’ll be sort of looking after the stuff and filling in for him during the time he’s gone to be with his ex-wife.”
“That is so totally sad,” Kyla said softly. “He sits there every day watching those two houses and videoing everyone who comes around?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“It is sad, honey,” Jill agreed. “It’s really sad.”
We sat silently for a while, watching the evening shadows forming on the street outside.
“I hope whoever did that to Faith — I hope he comes by there one day and Mr. Kennedy gets him.”
I put my hand over hers. “I hope so too, sweetheart, but one thing that’s really important — Mr. Kennedy has to do things in a lawful way. He has to report what he finds out to the police and let them handle it. It wouldn’t be right for him to take the law into his own hands and try to get some kind of revenge on the person — even if he was 100 percent sure he actually had the killer. You can see that, right?”
She thought about it for a minute, then stood up and said, “Yes, I can see it, but it’s still really sad. I’m going to bed to read for a while. Is that okay, Mom?”
“Of course that’s okay.”
Kyla kissed me on the cheek, gave her mom a long hug, and headed off to her bedroom. After a minute or so, I turned to Jill. “Was I too preachy?”
Jill smiled. “I don’t think so. It was a useful message to share with her. Kyla likes to think about things before she makes decisions. She’ll think about this, and in a day or two she’ll come back to it.”
“Are you okay with me doing this?” A couple of times the projects I’d worked on with Mike Cobb had turned ugly. Ugly as in dangerous. I didn’t see any danger in what I was about to do, but there were no guarantees.
“Actually, this is fine,” Jill said. “I’ve been feeling really guilty that I haven’t been volunteering at the Inn lately, and I’ve wanted to get back to it. This is the perfect opportunity.”
The Let the Sunshine Inn homeless shelter and food bank was where I had first met Jill during a search Mike and I had conducted for a young runaway addict.
“Damn boyfriends get in the way of the good stuff,” I said.
Jill smiled and shook her head. “Uh-uh, this boyfriend is the good stuff. No, a lot of it has been due to Kyla’s being sick. And even though she’s a lot better, I’ve been reluctant to get very far away from her. But I think I’m ready to let things return to normal now.”
Normal. Ordinary. Surprising how words like that felt really good after a difficult summer filled with worry over the health of someone we cared so much about.
I looked in the direction of Kyla’s bedroom, then back at Jill.
“God, I love you two people.”
“Us two people are pretty darn crazy about you, too. Or is that we two people?”
“Doesn’t matter … as long as the two people’s names are Jill and Kyla.”
“Turns out you’re in luck.”
Four
I rang the front doorbell of Marlon Kennedy’s house a couple of minutes before ten o’clock. I’d been standing on the front step for a long minute looking around, taking in a yard and house that were remarkably unremarkable. An ordinary house in an ordinary neighbourhood, where, years before, a little girl had died a violent, terrible death.
Kennedy opened the door and stood looking at me for so long that I began to wonder if he’d forgotten I was coming. And I thought back to the night he’d attacked me — the action of a man pushed over the edge. Not a madman, I didn’t think. But mad people surely didn’t act like they were mad all the time. Did they?
Finally he stepped back to let me enter. I’d thought about what the place might look like during my drive from Jill’s to here. Not a long drive — that was one of the things about Faith Unruh’s death that had hit home, the close proximity of Jill and Kyla’s home to the death scene that had played out in 1991.
Now as I moved inside the house that had been the home and workplace of Marlon Kennedy for so long, I made no secret of my curiosity. I stepped to the middle of a large front hallway and looked around. To the left was what looked like the dining room — at least in Kennedy’s configuration of the house. A vintage dining room suite that was a little the worse for wear but still held charm despite its age occupied most of the space in the room.
Like the neighbourhood that surrounded it, the house, or at least this part of the house, was mundane, almost dull. Nothing to indicate that this was surveillance central for a decades-old murder. Or that the occupant of the home was living an obsession.
Only one picture in the room, on the southernmost wall. Not a painting — a large two-by-three-foot photograph of a little girl. I recognized the photo. I’d seen it before. It was the one several media outlets had used. Faith Unruh when she was eight or nine, a quizzical smile playing over full lips, soft friendly eyes. Trusting eyes … perhaps too trusting.
I surveyed the rest of the room. The wall opposite the one with the photo contained a doorway leading, I guessed, to the kitchen.
I let my gaze wander in a semicircle to the right. A larger room spread out before me. It looked to have once been a living room. While I was scanning my mind for words to describe what I was looking at, Kennedy led the way into the room.
“The business part of the place is right here in the living room on this floor and the back bedroom upstairs.” Kennedy pointed to the far end of the room.
As I stepped into that space, I noticed right away that the living part of the living room was absent. It was something like a combined study and A/V centre. Two video cameras, tape playback machines, a table with a computer at one end, notebooks and pens at the other. Latest technology and old school sharing the same surface. And it was the latest technology. I stepped to the window. One camera was on a tripod and stood maybe chest high. A stool was in place so that the watcher could sit and have the camera