Chapter 6
Responsibility was an odd thing. Diefenbaker stayed with Inspector Thatcher out of a responsibility he felt towards Fraser, he had known the Mountie was concerned about her and so he felt that it was his duty to protect her. Ray was going to do all he could to keep the wolf with Thatcher for the same reason: responsibility towards Fraser. However, that same responsibility drove Meg to go to the consulate at nearly midnight to lock the wolf in Fraser's office. She was too tiered and frustrated to spend any more energy looking for the constable himself. Had Diefenbaker felt less responsibility, and left Meg after not getting supper, or if Ray had felt less responsibility and taken the poor wolf out of the clutches of the evil Dragon lady, or if Meg had felt less responsibility and let the wolf find it's own way home, she would have been locked safe in her well lit, well guarded apartment and in the days to come everyone would have been infinitely happier. But as it was, everyone was entirely too responsible.
Meg pulled the consulate car into it's parking space behind the building. She didn't notice the shifting shadows, she didn't even think to look. Elly was sleeping in the passenger seat, and Dief was sleeping in the back.
Meg looked behind her, to the sleeping wolf. Maybe she didn't have to actually get out of the car, maybe she could just keep him in there, maybe she could just let him sleep, and let Elly sleep, maybe she could just let herself take a nap. But Meg Thatcher was far too regulated to give herself that little brake. She opened her door and pushed herself out into the darkness.
The shadows shifted again. The darkest shadow got closer.
Meg stood stock still, with her door opened for a moment. She suddenly felt very afraid, and she didn't know why. Instead of being irrational and following her instincts she took a deep breath and told herself that shadows didn't move. She closed her door and turned her back to the shadows so she could open the door for Diefenbaker.
Dief wasn't sleeping when Meg turned around. He was wide-awake and he was staring out the window with piercing blue eyes and growling, as if ready to attack. But he obviously wasn't going to attack her, he was looking at something behind her. The fear that Meg had felt before doubled, but instead of opening the door and letting the wolf attack the moving shadow, she turned around just in time to see the man step into the half-light. He took a step towards her, she had no doubt that it was a threatening step. She tried to back up, but the car stopped her. Dief was barking now, scratching at the cars windows, trying desperately to get out, to help.
All the noise woke up Elly. As soon as she saw the man, and the expression on his face, and the look in his eyes and the way that her Aunt Meg was pressed against the car she understood that something very scary was happening. She tried to get up, to open the door and do something, but she was still in her seat belt. She was far too panicked to figure out how too get out, so she simply sat, yelling, and watched the man put his hand over her aunts neck, and then over her mouth, and she saw her aunt try to pry the man off, but he was too strong, and Diefenbaker was barking, and Elly was yelling and trying to wiggle out, but she couldn't. And then Meg stopped trying to fight, and the man let go, and she fell to the ground and she didn't move, and Elly's yells were mixed with sobs. The man didn't even look towards the noisy pair in the car as he picked up the limp body of Inspector Thatcher and carried her into the shadows. Elly kept yelling, until her voice gave way, and then she sobbed. She cried so hard that she couldn't breath and she couldn't see and she didn't notice when Dief stopped barking.
In fact, she didn't notice Dief until he started to lick the tears off her cheeks. Elly wrapped her arms around the wolf and cried some more. She cried until she was out of tears, at which point she pushed herself away from the wolf, there was still a trembling in her voice as she asked, "What should I do?"
Dief licked her face a few more times, wiping all the tears away. Then he started to paw at her seatbelt, and managed to do what the little girl couldn't in her panic. Then he half climbed over her and started pawing at the door handle. "What if he's still out there?" Elly demanded. "What if he's waiting to get us?"
Dief whimpered, as if to refute that particular fear, and continued to paw at the door. Taking a deep breath, Elly opened the door and nerviously climbed out of the car after Dief.
She didn't shut the car door, nor did she think to grab her backpack as she followed the wolf down the shadowy streets. He was walking slowly, ever so slightly ahead of her. If anyone came within two meters of the pair Dief would growl and that person would back off. They started walking successively into worse neighborhoods, but no one dared go near the little girl with the guardian wolf. A few people called out things that were less than kind, but Elly was in a state of shock, she couldn't register anything beyond staying with the wolf. That was all that mattered, staying close to the wolf; he was safety. She barely noticed when he lead her inside a building, or up a dirty stair way, and when he pushed open a door to an apartment, she didn't even think twice about entering, even though she didn't know who's it was. And when he lead her a bed, she didn't hesitate to lie down in it, and curl up in a little ball, and start crying again until she was asleep.
***
Fraser had been by the lake. As always, it was cooler by the lake. It had been socking up the heat all summer, and so, with this odd and early coolness, it was stemming like a teakettle. The lakes in the Territories would do that as winter fell, he remembered when he was a child looking out over the lake near his house and watching the steam rise as it was raining. It seemed so odd to him that the water would go up and down at the same time. Part of that vivid memory was his mother humming as she cooked dinner. All the time he had been walking he had heard that tune in his minds ear and smelled the beef stew in his minds sent.
If Ray had seen him as he wandered down the lakefront mindlessly passing the museums and beaches, and asked the Mountie what he was doing, Fraser wouldn't have been able to answer. That was mainly because he was overcome with feelings, and he never quite new how to handle that. He was worried, worried about Meg, and Bear, and about the fact that he might be entirely wrong about the whole thing and there was some other dark haired lady out there who was depending on him, and who he was going to let down. Add to the worry the general distress he felt about the whole affair with the Inspector's parents. He had not only showed disrespect to her, but he had also sabotaged any hope he had of warding off the man with the big hands. At least, he mused, Diefenbaker is with her. That eased his mind a little, the wolf wouldn't let anything happen. He was assured by that thought as he climbed up the stairs to his apartment just before dawn. So, naturally, when he saw his door open, and Diefenbaker sitting in the doorway he was very concerned.
"What are you doing here?" He demanded of the wolf, then, on second thought, he said, "No, no. You have every right to be here, this is you're home too."
To that, Dief growled softly and trotted over to the bed.
"Well, I'm sorry." Fraser said, listening more to Dief's tone than his actual message. "Perhaps you're right, Sleep can . . ." His voice trailed off as he saw the unnatural lump on his bed with strawberry blond curls. He took a few steps closer, hopping the lump was part of his imagination, a waking dream. He had read about that once in his grandmother's library, when a person was deprived of sleep for a long period of time they often became delusional, seeing things that weren't there.
He reached out to touch the lump, fully expecting it to evaporate at any moment. Instead it whimpered and curled up into a tighter ball.
"Elly?" He asked uncertainly, hopping that addressing her would brake the spell, in a way it did.
She must have recognized his voice because she managed to ask, "Constable Fraser?" in a very horse voice.
Fraser licked his lips and exhaled quickly. A habitual action for when trying not to panic. He had to wait, to restrain his vivid imagination from concocting all sorts of wild scenarios which would bring Elly Thatcher into his apartment. He had to wait and hear the perfectly logical, simple, explanation. Slowly, as if rapid movement would somehow shatter the surreal mood, he walked over to the other side of the bed and sat on the ground, laying his chin on the bed. They were eye to eye, and he could see that she had been crying.
"Are you cold?" He asked softly. He tried to keep his apartment several degrees cooler than any other place in Chicago, an in weather like this it wasn't hard. Elly nodded, and sniffled.
"Well, we can fix that." Benny reached out and grabbed his wool blanket that was folded at the end of the bed and raped it around her. "Better?"
Elly shrugged, but didn't say anything.
They sat in silence for a moment, while Fraser accumulated courage. Finally he asked, "Elly, where is you're aunt?"
Elly looked like she was about to cry again, but she didn't have any tears left. "I'm sorry." She managed to squeak out.
"Sorry for what?"
"I wasn't brave. All I did was yell."
"You yelled?" That explained the lost voice.
"I should have been brave, like a Mountie. I should have fought."
"Who should you have fought?"
"The guy that killed Aunt Meg."
Elly said that with hardly any emotion, which frightened Fraser more than if she had been wearing sash cloth and ashes. It meant that it hadn't sunk in yet. It was un-real to the little girl, she knew it had happened, she knew it for a fact, but it was un-real. Fraser could understand that. He had been six, and all of a sudden found himself mother-less. He had been at her funeral. He knew empirically that she was dead, he believed it, he had even been allowed to kiss her dead lips one last time before they buried her and as soon as they got home he had asked his father what Mum had prepared for dinner. It hadn't been real to him. At least not at first. It took a while for it to be real.
How ever, Elly's statements weren't real to Fraser either. He believed that she was mistaken, the inspector couldn't be dead. Garret's dire predictions had suddenly become a beam of hope. She couldn't be dead, not yet. And he was going to find her, and save her. And God help whoever did this, because Fraser was going to try damned hard to make sure no one else would.
"Can you describe the man?" Fraser asked, once he found his voice again. "Tell me what he looked like, what he talked like, anything?"
"No."
"Elly, please, now, you saw him didn't you."
"I wanted to hit him, but . . ."
"No, you were smart not to get close. He was big wasn't he?"
"His hands were really big."
"Was he taller than you're aunt?"
She shook her head. "Shorter,"
"By about how much?"
She placed her hand above the bed, to indicate less then a foot.
"And you saw his skin didn't you. You saw weather it was light or dark, or something in between."
"Light." She muttered, he didn't as much hear her as read her lips.
"And his hair did you see his hair?"
"He didn't hardly have any. None almost."
"Did you see any scars?"
"No."
"How about his eyes."
Elly shivered, as if the room had just dropped ten degrees. "Crazy."
"Crazy? Anything else?"
"They were crazy."
Fraser took a deep breath. "Do you remember what he did?"
Elly nodded.
"Could you tell me?" Elly looked away, frightened. Fraser knew that the more you talked about something like that, the more real it became. And it was less painful to keep it un-real. "Elly, please, it's very important."
Her eyes met his, and somewhere in that connection she found the strength to talk. "I woke up because Diefenbaker was barking, and then I looked at what he was barking about and it was him. He put his hand on her neck and on her mouth. And that's when I began to yell. I should have done something, I should have been brave."
Fraser reached over and stroked the girls hair out of her eyes. "You were very brave." He said softly.
"She fell down, and he picked her up and took her away into the shadows. And all I did was yell."
"That was smart of you, not to try and fight him. He would have hurt you too." He tried to smile at her, but he was less than convincing. "How did you get here?"
"Diefenbaker brought me. . . . I don't really remember, much."
"No," Fraser said, standing up. "Of course you don't." He could see the sun's light start to creep through the space between the buildings. Time was slipping through his hands, and he couldn't afford to lose a second. Garret's words were twice as disturbing now as they had been before: "If you don't come, she'll die."
To Be Continued . . .