Birthdays of a Princess (29 page)

“Sorry,” I mumble and think for a second she is suppressing a grin.

“If you accept this person as your legal guardian, your release can
be arranged with immediate effect. Do you understand?”

“Can I reject
that person
?”

Now she does grin. “Yes, you have a right to do so. But I strongly
advise against it as it will leave me with very few options. Don’t you want to
know who it is? I understand he is present right now?”

My head spins around. Macintosh stands up.

“Yes, Your Honor. I am.”

I think I’ll faint. “But… he didn’t… tell me… what…”

“Detective Macintosh, I understand you’ll ask for early retirement
if I grant you legal guardianship of the accused and release her on probation?”

“Yes, Your Honor, I have arranged for this already. My supervisors
are informed and have granted me leave with immediate effect if I am to take
care of Tiara Rodriguez.”

“And how do you plan to do this? The application states you’re a
widower. It is, let’s say, a bit
unusual
to place a young victim of
sexual abuse into the care of an elderly man.”

They talk above my head, which twists back and forth between the two
of them.

“Your Honor, I’ve been serving on the police force for over thirty
years, with an impeccable record. I can supply you with letters of
recommendation from the Chief of Police himself and believe to be above any
suspicion. In preparation for my retirement, I have bought a home in the
country, up north. It has three bedrooms and two bathrooms. My wife died five
years ago. The house is big enough for the two of us and would give Tiara
plenty of privacy. The town close by has an excellent psychologist for ongoing
supervision as recommended by Dr. Eaton. Tiara is nearly sixteen. Through no
fault of her own, she has problems adjusting to a crowded environment. I
believe a secure and quiet country home, as I can offer, would help her heal at
her own pace. It would be a tragedy if she’s placed in a foster home, and she
shouldn’t be sent to any half-way house. She knows me well by now, I’ve been
visiting her regularly at the Burnaby Youth Secure Center. I think I’ve gained
her trust. Furthermore, I trust her, I respect her and I like her.”

Judge Carr raises her eyebrows at me.

“What do you say, young lady?”

I break out in a smile.

“I take him.”

Chapter
60

Birthday 16

The small problem of where I would be living until Macintosh had
sorted out the paperwork for his retirement, the legal guardianship, the
arrangements for my ongoing psychological treatment and God knows what other
hoop-jumping bureaucracy demanded of him, was solved very elegantly. The rent
on Mom’s flat had been paid until the end of April, and after I agreed that I
wouldn’t leave the flat unsupervised, they’ve let me move in there for the
remaining weeks. She wouldn’t come back, I knew that with absolute certainty,
yet I still asked Macintosh to put another security lock on the door.

I spent my time sorting through her stuff, deciding what to give to
charity and what to dump. Very little of it was mine, and of that even less was
worth keeping. I didn’t want a keepsake. Louise called a few times offering to
help, and I let her drive by and pick up the stuff I had put in front of the
apartment door. I didn’t let her in.

First of May, Macintosh picks me up. We hand the keys to the landlord,
I grab my rucksack, he takes the suitcase with the rest of my clothes, and off
we go.

We drive over the Lion’s Gate Bridge on to the Sea-to-Sky highway
that connects Vancouver with Whistler. We are on our way up north, into the
wilderness. I’ve never been there. Macintosh starts telling me things about the
countryside where his house is and how beautiful it is up there. I’m not really
listening. His words float past my ear while I look down at the ocean.

The road winds along steep cliffs and most of the time the view to
the left is breathtaking. And the sun shines, finally. It glitters on the ocean
surface, taking me back to the early days of my childhood. The Galveston days.
The seagulls look just the same here and are just as eager to dive down for the
spoils of the sea. The water must be similar too, salty, strong, possessive, a
bit colder though. And the sun, it hits me, is the same sun that shines in
Texas.

Am I still the same?

I shiver and pull my hoodie closer. No, I’m not. I’m not sun and water
and seagull. The landscape I leave behind is bleached by relentless stale heat,
pastel colored rolling hills with sparse desert vegetation, light turquoise
river beds trickling through gullies of burnt-out sand. That is my past. What I
exchange it for is lush green mountains and deep dark-blue seas, crowned by an
endless sky full of clouds. I breathe sweet-smelling cool air that energizes
me. That is my future.

Macintosh must have heard me sighing deeply and interrupts his
litany of praise for a community we both know I will not stay in very long.

“That’s right, take a deep breath. It feels good to be out of the
city.”

On his account, his town in the country is quiet and small—yet it is
still too large for me. We both agreed that I need a place much more secluded
than the smallest village even. Nobody needs to find out that I will only stay
with him for a few days, get my first psychologist’s appointment set up and
officially settle into his home, after that, he will take me to his hunting
cabin in the woods. It’s only an hour’s drive away. He’ll visit me every week,
bring supplies, maybe stay a day or two to teach me the basics of survival in
the wilderness, and see if I get tired of being by myself. I only need to meet
the doc every second week, and Macintosh will take me back for that. That suits
both of us fine. I need him in my life but I won’t take his daughter’s place.
We both need our space. We got it all worked out.

“Hey, Macintosh,” I say, thinking about this wonderful arrangement.
“Did I ever thank you?”

“You can call me Pete,” he says graciously.

I’m still not very good with fist names, but I don’t want to offend
him. “How about Mac?”

“That’ll do.”

A turn-out is coming up. He sets the blinker and slows down. When we
come to a halt, he reaches behind, grabs a laptop from his bag on the backseat
and hands it to me.

“What’s that?” I ask, while blood shoots into my face. I know, right
away I know, it’s my computer. “Where did you get it from?”

“We have contacts working the Eastside. One of them met your friend
Connie, and she gave it to him. She was told it would help get you free. But
something went wrong. The laptop wasn’t delivered to our office until the day
after the trial.”

My final all-important teeny, weeny little secret is out, I think.

“Did you look at it?”

He stares over my shoulder into the mountainside.

“Should I?”

My mouth already forms a ‘no’ when my mind says ‘stop’. He looks
hurt. I owe him. It’s hard to give up my last secret, but maybe that is what’s
needed to transform myself from desolate desert to lush landscape.

“I found Gracie on the internet,” I say. “I hacked into some
pedophile rings, posed as a… uh, you know, a client, until I had established
contact with her. Then I lured her to Canada.”

He straightens in his seat, faces the windshield.

“How did you do it?”

“It wasn’t difficult at all. A few emails went back and forth, and
eventually I identified myself to her. I told her I couldn’t stand living with
Mom anymore, wanted to come back to her. Missed her. Missed my dream juice, I
said. She offered to send money for me to come back, but I told her to cross
the border on my own was out of the question. I couldn’t travel by myself as
long as I’m still underage. I begged her to pick me up. She should pose as my
mom, I said. We have the same surname, so it should be a piece of cake. She
agreed without much persuasion, I guess she wanted her girl back badly. I’m too
old for her business by now, but I’m sure she had something lined up for me
that would make her money. When she waited for me at Starbucks, she really
thought I’d go back with her.”

“She entered the country under Inez’ name, so she couldn’t have
played the role of your mother. My guess is, she was going to take you back illegally,
maybe she had a fake identity ready for you.”

“Of course, I figured that much. She would smuggle me back in and
thereby gain total control over me. I wouldn’t even exist down there. But I
pretended to be the stupid girl who believed every promise. Just to make sure
she would come. Disneyland all over again. And it worked.”

The implications of my admission hang in the air between us until I
can stand it no longer.

“I’m sorry I lied to you. I should have told you.”

He shakes his head very quickly and decisively.

“No. I’m glad you didn’t. I would have had to use it, and then the
attack would have been premeditated. The laptop arrived too late, somebody in
the department forgot to give it to me in time. Pure luck that it was handed to
me and not Harding, he’s a stickler for rules and regulations. It’s over now,
no point in bringing it up again.”

“Nobody will find out?”

He looks a little sad all of a sudden.

“I’m not so sure about Dr. Eaton. Do you really think you can fool a
psychiatrist?”

I laugh, loud and happy. “No way. He knew there were, what he called,
underlying issues.”

“So you played him, and all of us, all along.”

“No, not all along. I had refused to co-operate with anybody but him
from the start, which was lucky as it reduced the danger of accidentally giving
away anything of importance. But, honest to God, I hadn’t planned to deceive
him. When Stanley started working with me, I remembered nothing. I didn’t even know
that it was Gracie I had attacked—not until the day I remembered the rape.
That’s when it all came back to me. Only then did I remember who the Purple
Shadow was.”

“How did you figured out that it was Inez?”

This is a tough one.

“Actually, it wasn’t.”

Silence. Another deep breath.

“It was Gracie.”

My legal guardian does a double take. “What?”

“On the day they took the rape video, Gracie made a big mistake. She
forgot to put her black gloves on. Too anxious to get it over with, I guess. When
I looked at the camera, I recognized her hands! It’s always been Gracie.
Always. At every single session, it had been her who’d left the room, got changed
and came back disguised as the Purple Shadow.”

“Good Lord!” Macintosh nods, frowns, shakes his head, huffs and grunts,
has a really hard time to digest this ultimate betrayal. At the same time, his
disappointment in me evaporates into thin air. He goes all soft and limp and
gentle. For once, I don’t mind being pitied.

“That’s what I tried to tell Mom when I came home.”

“Oh shit,” he says.

“She didn’t want to hear it.”

“And when you remembered again, you couldn’t tell Dr. Eaton or me—”

“You’d have figured it all out before the trial and, like you said, the
attack would have been premeditated.

“Which it was.”

“Yeah, kind of.” A little pride swings in my voice.

“You were damn lucky we found the computer too late.”

“Yes, that was my one big mistake while the memories slowly came
back, telling Stanley about Connie and the computer. But then again, it wasn’t
really a mistake, I didn’t know any better then. You got to believe me, I
didn’t know for a long time and once I knew, I couldn’t tell you.”

Macintosh waves it aside. His detective brain needs to work out the
snags that might still bring me down.

“Your laptop must have all your emails on it.”

I keep quiet.

“The Texans will discover it. They are sifting through all the stuff
on your aunt’s computers just now.”

For a whole minute I contemplate if I can risk making him an
accessory to my deceit, before I decide he deserves the truth.

“I used the computer at the course I was doing. I signed off as ‘Mija’,
identifying myself to Gracie with small details only the two of us would know,
until I had established contact. Once I had her on the hook, I always called
her.”

“Disposable, of course?”

“Of course. They’ll never figure it out.”

He digests this and when he finds no more loopholes, he nods slowly,
sets the blinker, starts driving and merges into the highway traffic. Quite a
bit later, he throws me a glance and I can see his eyes twinkle.

“You did good. Really good.”

I smile back, and he reads me again like an open book.

“It’s not over yet, is it? You are not done yet.”

No, I’m not. But now I have an ally. I’m not alone any more.