Page 72 of The Burnt
“Come and find me,” he whispered, then Dave started to change. What was left of his face grew older, wrinkled, then dissolved into thin air.
Charlie woke with a start. He was panting heavily. He was no longer in Declan’s office. It was a bedroom, but not his. It took a moment before he realised that it was the room at the Miette House Motel. It was dark, and there was no trace of Dave.
“Fuck,” he whispered, settling back down into his pillow. He turned his head. Declan was sound asleep, mouth open, breathing in a semi-snore. A small trickle of drool hung from the corner of his mouth.
Charlie stared up at the ceiling.
What the fuck was that dream about?
He hadn’t dreamt of Dave for a few nights, and that song—crap, it was like something out of a horror film. Dreams of ghosts, hunting, people getting younger and older… This case was obviously getting to him.
Charlie couldn’t get back to sleep. He pondered his dream. Dave had held up Freddy’s picture.What did he say this time?“Come and find me.” Then he—
“Declan,” Charlie whispered. He didn’t want to startle him awake. “Declan,” he repeated, gently rubbing his shoulder.
“Mmmpf.” Declan said as his eyes opened. “Something wrong?” he asked, slowly rolling over.
“Declan. Do you have a copy of the picture of Freddy on your phone?”
“What?” Declan asked, shaking his head.
“I need a copy of the picture of Freddy. The one from your office.” Charlie spoke slowly so Declan’s sleepy brain might understand. “Do you have a copy on your phone?”
“Why?”
Declan sounded more awake.
“I have an idea that I want to test but I need that picture.”
Declan sighed. “Actually, I can do you one better.” He slid slowly out of bed, picked up his duffle bag and put it on the dresser. He reached in and extracted a framed photo of Freddy, and handed it to Charlie. “Will this do? I borrowed it from Katherine O’Grady. I can’t believe I didn’t show it to you earlier.”
“I think that’ll work.”
Charlie put the framed photo on the desk and snapped a picture of it with his phone, then sent it to his computer. He opened up his laptop and retrieved the picture from his email, then pressed the icon for the BenButton app and uploaded Freddy’s photo. It took a minute to follow the software prompts, identifying the year that the original image had been taken, as well as the age of the person depicted at the time. Charlie guessed fourteen. He asked it to age him to a twenty-four-year-old from Jasper, Alberta, Canada. Middle class.
Charlie pressed the button labelled “Age me”.
Declan stood behind him, holding onto his shoulders.
In seconds, an image popped up on the screen. Charlie let out a low whistle. He went back into the program and altered the colour and length of the hair and ran the process again. Staring back at him was a very close match to the server from the Tonquin Bistro.
Declan tightened his grip on Charlie’s shoulders. “It’sgotto be a mistake,” Declan said. “Freddy is dead. He died in a fire ten years ago.”
Charlie turned. Declan’s face had gone pale. Charlie said, “Let me try again. Maybe there’s some distortion from the glass in front of the photo. Can you take the picture out of the frame and we’ll try one more time?”
* * * *
Declan flipped the picture over and started to remove the backing of the frame. It took a bit of effort because the boardwas tightly wedged. When he finally got the backing off, he discovered the reason it was held in place so tightly. The photo in the four-by-five frame was actually an eight-by-ten that had been folded to fit… Or folded to hide what the full picture showed.
Charlie uttered a quiet, “What the…”
The complete photo showed two boys sitting side by side. The boy on the left was clearly Milo at a similar age to the picture provided by Simon Griffin. The boy on the right was Freddy. Milo had a teddy bear sitting on his lap, the teddy bear that was resting in Declan’s bag. The boys were wearing shorts. Both of them had similar crudely inked tattoos on their calves. Milo’s had the initials M+F surrounded by a heart. Freddy’s had the initials F+M, surrounded by a similar heart. It was clear the tattoos were different. The initials were in a different order.
Declan quickly reached for his phone and pulled up the photographs from the police files that Gary Sawchuck had shared. One of those photos was of the leg that had been found after the fire, an image that Declan had carried around in his head for ten years, but he had to be sure. The tattoo in the heart on the leg in the police photo clearly said M+F.
Declan swore. “It can’t be. Archie identified his son. How could he not recognise the difference?”
Charlie shrugged. “Maybe on the day he identified him, he was upset. He probably hadn’t taken a close look at the tattoo—he just knew they were initials in a heart and that they were an M and an F. Do you remember, did he spend long at the morgue?”
