Page 17

Sarah Anderson walked into another police station, this one in the heart of Ottawa. There were similarities to the detachment in Patricia Bay: stark walls hung with faded safety posters, bulletin boards coated in outdated announcements, and a low administrative hum. The similarities were comforting and frightening. She felt trapped in a moment, like some twisted version of the movie Groundhog Day : Matthew was neither here nor gone, so they lived in a perpetual repeat of his absence.

Two weeks ago, she’d stood in a misty rain being told that the documents she’d found in a storage facility would be seized by the police as part of the investigation. She watched as Boychuk sealed off the unit with yellow police tape, muttering words like evidence and suspicious to which she only half listened. She understood enough to know that the focus of the investigation had shifted.

Yesterday, she’d been asked to come in to talk to the lead investigator. Sarah followed a young female officer into the bowels of the building, through a maze of halls and doorways, past quiet conversations and efficient movements, and into a large room that looked like a university-dorm kitchen. Sarah paused on the threshold of the room. She thought about the last few weeks and everything she’d said and not said in the face of questions about Matthew and her marriage. Before stepping into the room for another barrage, she swallowed down the cocktail of shame and trepidation that had been a constant companion and buried them deep within herself so she could go to battle again here.

Sunshine fell from high horizontal windows onto a facsimile of a cozy room penned in by off-white cinder-block walls. A couch and two upholstered chairs were grouped around a rectangular coffee table. Against the wall farthest from the door, coffee brewed on an L-shaped kitchen counter, the smell of dark roast not quite masking industrial cleanser. Three small round sets of tables and chairs filled out the room.

Rob Boychuk, wearing dark jeans and a golf shirt, stood up from one of the couches when Sarah walked in. Seeing him out of uniform was disorienting. Sarah searched the room for clues to better situate herself in the unfolding story. Her eyes landed on a tall ginger-haired man in the chair across from Boychuk. He wore a blue tailored suit and buttoned up his jacket as he stood. By the expressions on their faces, Sarah guessed she had walked into a conversation. An open banker’s box sat on the coffee table between them.

“Hi, Sarah.” Boychuk moved toward the door, offered his hand.

She took his hand warily. Her eyes followed the other man.

“This is Detective Sam Ritter,” Boychuk said. “He’s with the Ottawa Police. Missing Persons Unit.”

Sarah looked back to Boychuk, a question on her lips.

“Why don’t we sit down? There’s a lot to go over,” Boychuk said.

Sarah accepted a cup of tea and settled into one of the chairs around the coffee table. Ritter had closed the banker’s box as she was removing her coat, though it still sat on the table, a purposeful showpiece.

“How are you?” Boychuk asked, genuine concern in his voice. “How are the kids?”

“We’re okay. Hanging in. The kids have started back at school, but I’m still off work. Can’t seem to focus on anything.”

“That’s pretty normal,” Boychuk said. “This is tough on all of you, I’m sure. Is your sister still with you?” The question was matter of fact, but Sarah detected a deeper curiosity.

“She is. She’s moved in for a little while to help with the kids until Matthew comes home.” Sarah caught the glance between the two men. “Do you want to explain to me why I’m here?” she said.

Boychuk gave a nod and looked to Ritter.

“Sarah, Rob called me in based on the information found in the storage locker. As I believe you already know, the contents in the locker and the abnormalities in this case make it a missing persons investigation under my jurisdiction. I’ve been getting up to speed on the case, and we’ve been processing the documents here in Ottawa. Now, I understand you were the one who found the storage unit. Can you explain how you located it?”

“I found a key under Matthew’s desk. I hadn’t known about the place until then.”

“Did you look through the contents at all?” Ritter said, his gaze direct.

“A little, but not much. I couldn’t make sense of it all when I found it.” Sarah hadn’t gone back into the storage locker after Boychuk found her. He said he would process the scene. She knew that Matthew had rented a storage locker and that the documents inside were all under the name of Jonathan Evans. “You know all this already. Why are we going over this again?”

Another look passed between the officers.

“What the hell is this all about, Rob? You haven’t told me anything about those documents or why Matthew had that storage locker?”

Boychuk took a breath, held it for a second, and answered on the exhale. “There’s no easy way to say this, but Jonathan Evans is Matthew.” Boychuk’s words dropped like a stone into a deep lake.

Sarah knew her face betrayed her, even as she fought to hide her emotions from these men. For the last two weeks, she’d indulged the idea she was living a surreal coincidence. The fantasy in her mind—that there was a reasonable explanation for the documents—lay comfortably beside the sharp pieces of reality. Sarah recognized how silly and infantile her hopes had been. She looked from one man to the other, not able to see beyond the ripples of her sinking illusion, and felt hopelessness spread across her features. She closed her eyes against Ritter’s stone expression. “I gathered that,” she said, her voice weaker than she wanted, “but I still don’t understand what’s going on?”

“It seems your husband has been lying to you, Mrs. Anderson,” Ritter said. “And, from the looks of it, for a very long time.”

A funny thing happened to rational thought through tragedy. To cope, the mind followed strange paths carved by grief and wishful thinking. As long as no one voiced it, the relationship between Matthew and Jonathan Evans, like Schrodinger’s cat, was both alive and dead to Sarah. Though she knew what Ritter said to be true, hearing the words from a stranger’s mouth felt like a slap. Sarah brought her hand to her cheek and felt the heat against her fingers.

Ritter proceeded to bring down Sarah’s carefully crafted world. Matthew had rented the locker more than ten years ago. They had searched it but hadn’t found anything more relevant than a handful of files. They were still validating some of the documents. Their working theory was that Matthew had run away from his previous life.

“I can’t help but wonder if Matthew ... I mean Jonathan ... was thinking about leaving again and whether someone stopped him?” Ritter said.

Sarah sat back on the chair and crossed her arms. Anger surged in her. She directed it squarely at Ritter and his casually tossed out, baseless theories. “That’s just ridiculous. Even if Jonathan Evans is Matthew, it’s a massive leap to assume my husband was about to leave his family. I have to say, it also takes a particularly twisted imagination to imply that I knew and wanted to harm him.”

“I’ll grant you that. That’s what a cop does, though, isn’t it? Indulges the twisted imaginings of our darker natures,” Ritter said, as if he were talking about the plot of a book he’d been reading. “I extrapolate theories and test them. For example, maybe you stumbled on Matthew’s future plans? Or maybe he used the camping trip to tell you he was leaving? Maybe you were hurt, angry, and lashed out?”

Sarah glared at the child who passed himself off as a detective. She took in his smug face and the overlooked lapel stain on his otherwise neat suit. What did he know about family and marriage? About the thousands of little compromises that were swallowed and cheeks that were turned? He couldn’t possibly understand how hard she worked to keep her family together. How exhausting it all was. Shame hurled itself against Sarah’s thoughts, dragging with it the things she didn’t want these men to know. She looked away from Ritter, avoiding the judgment in his gaze.

“Matthew would never leave the kids,” she said with finality.

“Why just the kids, Sarah?” Ritter asked.

“What?”

“Why did you say he would never leave the kids? What about his job? And you?”

“I don’t know. You just insinuated my husband was plotting to leave his family, and you’re arguing the semantics of my word choice?”

Boychuk intervened. “I think it was a poor choice of question on my colleague’s part. He was trying to ask, clumsily, if you could think of any reason why Matthew would be trying to run away?”

“We’ve gone over all of this a dozen times, Rob.” Sarah enjoyed tossing contempt into his first name. “Matthew and I have had our problems, sure, but as I told you back in Patricia Bay, no more than most couples. We’ve been married for nine years, and we have two kids. You try to find a couple who don’t have the occasional hurdle to deal with.”

Boychuk slid the lid off the banker’s box. “Sarah, there were some pictures in the filing cabinet I’d like you to take a look at. Do you recognize anyone in them?” He pulled out a small handful of photos and placed them in front of her on the table.

Sarah leaned over and spread the pictures out with the tips of her index and middle fingers. Matthew appeared in each one, younger, carrying the lankiness of youth, one that had morphed as life tugged and pulled his body into different shapes. She guessed him to be in his early twenties. His hair was longer, almost covering his eyes with disheveled curls. She smiled sadly at the familiar careless charm. Her finger traced the outline of his celluloid face in the only close-up, taken near a harbor, with schooner masts and steel-gray high-rise buildings in the background.

She felt her mind slip; an image of Matthew by the fire as she’d stood outside the ring of light, watching. She saw the similarities with the boy in the photo—same jawline, same unkempt hair. Her eyes drank greedily of the young Matthew, hungering for a taste of a time before careers, before kids, when it was only the two of them. Mommy. A whisper of a voice overlay the image in her mind. Sarah shoved guilt and fear into her core, deeper than she knew was possible.

She stared so intently at the youthful version of Matthew that she didn’t register the child in the photos at first. Like her husband, the child aged through the pictures, appearing as a swaddled baby in Matthew’s arms in one, asleep on his bare chest in another, sitting astride a backpack baby carrier in the next. Whoever the child was, it was clear she meant something to Matthew.

“Who is she?” Sarah asked without taking her eyes off the photos.

“Her name is Grace Evans,” Ritter said.

“Sarah.” Boychuk’s tone was delicate. “We are still confirming, but we think she’s Matthew’s daughter.”

Sarah looked up abruptly. Grace. Not the specter of infidelity she had thought was haunting her marriage, but one that was equally shattering. Her mind scrolled through all the suspicious moments in the last few months, letting the pieces fall into place.

Though the words should have shocked her, should have made her feel like the world was unraveling, there was no surprise. The bank statements for the trust in Matthew’s study and the photos told it all. The pictures were moments in time that a parent would tuck away for safekeeping, to revisit once the child had grown and set off on their own path. They were mementos and vain attempts to trap a version of happiness.

Sarah looked at both officers watching her carefully—one with concern, the other with unbridled suspicion.

“We believe your husband’s real name is Jonathan Evans, born June fourteen, 1979, in Vancouver, BC, to Gwen and Charles Evans,” Ritter said. “Siblings Charlotte Yung, née Evans, and Nathanial Evans. Predeceased by his father. His mother currently lives in Vancouver, BC. His first wife, Faith Marks, lives on Vancouver Island with their twelve-year-old daughter, Grace Evans.”

Sarah’s body seized. The air in her lungs went stagnant. Twelve. The child was older than Bella. Her mind screamed at her to take a breath, but her body refused to comply. Finally, she drew in a breath and locked eyes with Boychuk.

“Sarah, Jonathan Evans went missing in April of 2007,” Boychuk said. “A thorough search of the storage locker found the same set of prints on the documents and around the storage locker. Those prints belong to Jonathan Evans.”

A cavernous silence followed. Thoughts darted through Sarah’s head. She tried to catch one, but they moved through her mind like quicksilver. This is a mistake. Matthew wouldn’t just leave a child. Questions slipped through her fingers. How many others have sat in this space? Facing this type of news? A stream of sunlight from the window found its way into her eyes, distracting her. Did they all sit here and feel a cold creep across their chests?

“Why?” Her voice was hoarse. “How?”

“We followed the document trail, all leading back to BC. Ritter checked with Vancouver Police. He shared the prints we’d found, and they connected them to a cold case,” Boychuk said softly.

“I have to say, it was an ingenious move,” Ritter said, his tone dripping contempt. “He used a student ID card from an actual university student. Not sure how he got his hands on it, but it served him well. The real Matthew Anderson says he’s never met Jonathan Evans, though they do look a little alike. He claims he lost the card while he was a freshman and just got a new one. Apparently, security and privacy weren’t issues back in 1998. Our working theory is that Matthew-slash-Jonathan used the student card to get a driver’s license and health card from the province. Probably claimed his wallet had been stolen or something. Once he had two pieces of ID, the world was open to him. He could order a copy of a birth certificate, open a bank account, hell, even get a passport.”

Sarah latched onto straggling thoughts: There must be some mix-up. This couldn’t be possible. The man she knew wouldn’t do that. Would never have left a child. She pictured Matthew and Bella, partners in crime, pitching the tent for a backyard campout, their laughter rising through the night air to the bedroom window. She imagined the same scene, Bella alone and forlorn. No. Matthew would never do that.

“You don’t know,” Sarah said, unconvincing even to her ears.

“You’re right, Sarah. We don’t know anything definitive yet. Vancouver is pulling the file to send to us, and we’d like to undertake a DNA analysis to confirm,” Boychuk said. “But where there’s smoke ... In my opinion, the person who made those prints is the same one who rented the locker.”

“Look, I know you don’t want to hear it,” Ritter broke in, “but it’s looking pretty obvious to me. Your husband’s a runner.” Ritter dug through his notes and read as if he were pitching a plot for a crime series. “Jonathan Evans was an IT administrator with New Horizons Tech Support in Vancouver. He lived in Surrey with his wife, Faith, and their two-year-old daughter, Grace. On the morning of Friday, May eleven, 2007, Evans left for work as usual. That was the last time his family saw him.”

Every revelation out of the man’s mouth felt like a boot against Sarah’s ribs. She leaned over, trying to keep her breath even.

Ritter went on to explain the Vancouver Police had launched a missing persons investigation for Evans but turned up nothing. He had left with his wallet, though none of his credit or bank cards were used. He hadn’t owned a cell phone. There were no signs of foul play nor evidence anyone wanted to do him harm. The police assumed he had just walked away and wasn’t interested in being found, and they didn’t have the resources to track him further. The first sign of him in nine years popped up when Ritter sent the prints to Vancouver.

“I started a deeper dive on Evans. Local police had a few reasons why they thought he chose to disappear.” Ritter pulled out pages from a small file he was holding. Sarah felt her muscles clench.

“Evans had a bank account in his name only, one his wife at the time hadn’t known about.” The bank statements Sarah had found in Matthew’s study clapped against the cheap particleboard table. “Sound familiar?”

Ritter dropped a copy of the photo page from Matthew’s recently updated passport. “Evans had updated his passport a few weeks before vanishing. Almost as if he was readying to go somewhere. Another coincidence?” Sarah remembered Matthew’s complaints about all the paperwork. She ground her nails into her palm, felt the blood thicken her fingers as they clasped into fists.

“The Vancouver Police tracked down a few witnesses—gal at his local coffee shop, the bus driver—all of whom saw Evans and said he was alive and well, thought he looked sad.” Ritter kept silent, though he slid a narrowed glance Sarah’s way, which she rebuffed with a restrained spasm of her upper lip.

“And his friends at the time reported he’d been distant for several months,” Ritter continued when it was clear Sarah had nothing to add. “Almost as if he was pulling away for some reason.” A memory stirred. A reconnection with an estranged friend. Kwan. Why had she not heard his name before that night?

“None of it was conclusive, of course,” Ritter said with arrogant finality, “but it was enough to satisfy the Vancouver investigator. The case stayed open, but no one pursued it aggressively. The general feel was that the guy had taken off and wasn’t looking to be found.”

Sarah jolted to standing, though she had no idea why nor where she planned to go. Her head swam with everything Ritter had said. She looked down at the banker’s box, the photos and documents still splayed out on the coffee table. The little girl’s pale-hazel eyes looked up at her next to the more familiar ones of her husband.

“Here’s the thing, Sarah,” Ritter said as he leaned back and crossed a foot over his knee. “I say no animal really changes its spots. Ya know what I mean? I think Matthew was planning on running again. But something threw him off this time. It’s weird, don’t you think? A man disappears and yet leaves no real trace. Last time, they had enough to at least speculate on his whereabouts. This time? Nothing. Like it’s been hidden.”

Sarah’s arm moved of its own accord, reached out and swept the coffee table bare. The box landed with a satisfying thud while Ritter’s papers scattered across the floor. Sarah stepped away, breathing hard, shocked by her own actions.

Without a word, Boychuk bent over to pick up the papers. Ritter hadn’t moved. He watched Sarah and made a show of reading her reactions with a curt nod. An almost-smirk glinted on his lips.

After more than an hour in traffic, Boychuk was finally able to see the lights of the Canadian Tire Centre on the edge of the city. His truck crawled along, pinned in between hockey fans making their way to the arena and after-work commuters. Vehicles jockeyed for road space on the long ribbon of the expressway, known as the Queensway, that bisected the city of Ottawa.

Each brake light in front of him reverberated against his temple and reminded him why he disliked cities. He could have waited until morning and avoided game-day traffic altogether. But he was eager to get home. Something about being in a city never felt right, like pulling on a sweater that didn’t fit. When he finally made it past the arena exit and onto the open highway, he sighed out an expletive and pushed the gas pedal. The truck responded confidently. He glanced at the receding glut of headlights in the rearview mirror and felt a knot loosen between his shoulder blades.

“Why do people put themselves through that?” he said to himself. “Ya’ll can get a better view of the game on TV, anyway.” Even as he said it, he was aware how curmudgeonly it sounded. Jesus, I’m getting old.

Boychuk wasn’t sure what had compelled him to come to Ottawa. Technically, the guts of the case were no longer his, though he stayed on as part of the investigative team. Matthew Anderson was an Ottawa resident, and the storage locker was located within the Whitby detachment boundary lines, so Ottawa took the lead. There were still linkages to Patricia Bay, but for the moment, his role had played out. The whole business was in Ritter’s hands now.

If he were being honest, Boychuk would admit he didn’t much like Sam Ritter. He’d come across the type before—young, ambitious, too willing to see the bad in people and make a dramatic case for themselves. Boychuk still thought it was possible Matthew Anderson had simply lost his way in the woods. He wouldn’t be the first and certainly not the last. But even he had to admit, circumstantial evidence was piling up, and detectives like Ritter would try to make a meal out of circumstantial.

Boychuck’s suspicions were confirmed the moment he had arrived at the Ottawa station that morning. “What’s this? Aren’t any interview rooms available?” he asked Ritter. The Ottawa detective was helping himself to a cup of coffee when Boychuk walked in.

“There are.”

“So why are we meeting Sarah Anderson in a lunchroom?”

“I’m trying something new.”

“Which is?”

“I want to see if I can throw her off. Make her think we don’t suspect her.”

“Suspect her of what?”

“Oh, come off it Boychuk. You can’t be that naive. Guy disappears. Wife is the only one around. Something’s off.”

“You ever spend any time in the wild, Detective Ritter? Those woods aren’t a city park. They’ll crush you and spit you out without blinking.”

“Look. Boychuk, I don’t need to be Johnny Hayseed to figure this one out.”

Boychuk scoffed at the backhanded insult, though he suspected the knee-jerk self-assurance came more from lack of confidence than anything else. Ritter was a jackass but he wasn’t an idiot. If he were being smart, Boychuk would just let it go. He was two years away from retirement. There was nothing to be gained by seeing this case through. And he probably would have if the specter of Josh Lussier hadn’t haunted him most of his career. They may never find Matthew Anderson, but Boychuk wouldn’t let it rest until he was satisfied he’d done everything possible.

After the pages Sarah scattered had been gathered, Ritter had launched into an interrogation. Did Sarah know about the other family? How had she not known Matthew’s parents were still alive? How could he have hidden his past from her for ten years? Did she understand her marriage was now null and void and she was no longer considered Matthew’s beneficiary? Boychuk wasn’t sure if that last claim was true or not. He had never come across a case like this before. Though there had been the occasional suspicious disappearance or homicide in Patricia Bay, none of those cases had rivaled this.

Sarah stayed calm throughout the rest of the interview, as if another woman had crawled beneath her skin after the outburst. With each question, Boychuk noticed her spine straighten one iota more until she was perched on the edge of the couch. Her eyes, trained on Ritter, following his movements. Her facial muscles barely twitched, hard as lacquered wood beneath Ritter’s scrutiny.

Finally, after a couple of hours of fruitless attacks, Ritter asked her if she would be willing to provide a sample of Matthew’s DNA and her own.

“Why do you need mine?” she asked.

“Just to rule you out. If what you’re saying is true, it’ll make things easier for you,” Ritter said.

Sarah looked over to Boychuk. “Rob?”

Boychuk felt her gaze. “It’s pretty standard, Sarah. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” He was lying. There was nothing standard about this case. Ritter was digging for bones in an empty yard, but he was going to make a show of doing it. On the surface, Boychuk couldn’t understand why Sarah’s DNA was needed. But his involvement here was at Ritter’s discretion.

To confirm what they already suspected, they would take a swab from Jonathan Evans’s biological sister to compare with Matthew Anderson’s DNA. Taking Sarah’s DNA was more of a scare tactic than anything else. Ritter was trying to rattle her and see how she responded.

Eventually, a uniformed officer took a swab from Sarah’s cheek and then followed her home to collect a sample from Matthew’s toothbrush.

“That was a little harsh,” Boychuk said after Sarah had left the room.

“Ya, well, you won’t think so if it turns out she killed him.” Ritter was carefully packing up the banker’s box.

“You’re more likely to catch flies with honey than with vinegar, Ritter. The lady’s been through enough. If she did something to her husband, she’s not going to be able to hide it. But if she didn’t, she doesn’t need to be destroyed any more than she already has been.”

“Be nice? Is that what passes for police work in hillbilly country, Boychuk?” Ritter stood to his full height, a couple of inches taller than Boychuk.

“No, that’s what passes for common decency, asshole,” Boychuk had said over his shoulder as he’d left the room.

The sun had just dipped below the horizon when Boychuk passed the town of Renfrew, about an hour out of Ottawa. No man’s time, his mother had called it. When light was suspended by dark and bad spirits slipped into the world. Boychuk let everything he’d heard that afternoon settle in his mind, tracing the weaving path of Sarah’s and Ritter’s stories. Undoubtedly, the clumsy detective would root around for a while, do some emotional damage, and try to make something stick. But to succeed, he’d have to stumble around in Boychuk’s backyard. And the wild had a way of keeping its secrets.

In the end, Boychuk concluded that Ritter really was an asshole. No question. But that didn’t make him wrong. Boychuk couldn’t deny there was merit in the suspicions. Did Sarah know about Matthew’s past, and if so, had she acted on it?