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Cover
Dedication
To all children whose innocence is seized
Epigraph
No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing —
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief.’
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful. sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each days dies with sleep.
— GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS (1844–1889)
Author’s Note
On July 25, 1986, in Toronto Ontario, vivacious Alison Parrott, an eleven-year-old budding track star, was sexually slain by Francis Roy, who had posed as a sports photographer to lure her from her home. He was a convicted rapist out on parole and in police custody shortly after the murder, but was released because he presented a falsified alibi. It was ten years before he was arrested, through matched DNA, a forensic technology that was not available in 1986. He was convicted in a sensational trial and given life imprisonment.
My daughter Clara was among Alison’s immediate circle of friends. Our family was closely involved in the aftermath, both the mourning and the investigation.
Although No Worst, There Is None is a work of fiction, written from my imagination and based on my own experience and philosophy as well as extensive research, aspects of it were drawn from the events of July 1986 and it is certain that the book would not exist without Alison’s tragic death. She is embedded in these pages.
Part One
Murder
Prologue
A Thursday Morning in July 1986
The first thing she notices is the sky. For three days it has been aflame, the rising sun a glaring orange. And there have been violent thunderstorms. “Red sky in the morning …” This morning it is subdued, benevolent, glazed: gold below blending into silvery blue above. There is not a single cloud. And even this early, this low, the sun is yolk-yellow and hot. There will be no rain.
Magdalena is walking from the stone farmhouse to the road. Her wellingtons are muddy and she splashes in the potholes to clean them off.
The long lane dissects a line of ancient maples with sprawling crowns. A few stray drops from the shimmering canopy run down Magdalena’s neck, which already feels sticky in the humidity. She reaches up and touches her head. Her short-cropped grey hair is damp. Her khaki army shorts feel as heavy as canvas. Perspiration trickles down her torso and she pats it with her sleeveless T-shirt. The fabric clings. She runs her tongue over her upper lip and tastes salt. Walking the dogs will be an effort today.
She is a handsome woman, unusually tall and large-boned with elegant, curved cheek bones. A prominent nose offsets her strong, square jaw. Her mouth is full and toothy, prone to great grins. But it is her eyes that influence. They are dark and shadowy, heavily lashed, and though she wears no makeup, they appear lined. In them is a compassionate, profound, constructive warmth.
Magdalena is ambling down this laneway, as she does every morning, to get the city newspaper, her and Joan’s only concession to the outside world. They are anxious to read it. An eleven-year-old girl disappeared Monday afternoon and is feared abducted. Lizbett Warne, actress. By yesterday morning’s newspaper, she still has not been found.
Four years earlier, the Warne family adopted one of Magdalena’s Great Danes, Mistral: daughter of Zeus and Artemis. She had helped to train the dog. Then, at two, Misty had to be put down … “put down” … she hates that expression. Misty was euthanized because of bone cancer. Magdalena had seen sorrow with the death of an animal, but this was … she wouldn’t say excessive because she didn’t doubt their feelings … more wrenching. Lizbett, seven at the time, had called sobbing, “We had to kill her, Maddie. It’s not fair. I loved her so much.” Meredith, the mother, weeping as well, said, “I held her in my arms while the vet gave her the shot. She looked at me with these scared, sad eyes. I know she knew what was happening. I watched the needle go in and suddenly she was limp. She was just gone. I’ve never experienced death so closely before. And Misty was so huge and heavy on me. She just lay there, as if she were asleep. I couldn’t bear to leave her. I kept going back to her. I feel so guilty having such deep grief over an animal when there’s so much suffering in the world. But I’ve lain on every place in the house where she slept.” Thompson, the father, choked up, merely said, “She was a special dog.”
Magdalena can’t imagine their coping with a missing child.
A seven-month-old floppy Great Dane the colour of pewter is close at Magdalena’s heels. She turns and checks the five adults behind, all “blues” as well. The two 180-pound males, Zeus and Apollo, are rearing up, growling and mouthing each other with their powerful jaws. Both dogs stand well over six feet with their front paws on Magdalena’s shoulders. They are equine in bearing: magnificent, with enormous chests, great slabs of muscle and bone and thick, long necks. They even snort like horses. Their coats gleam.
Magdalena can just see the heads of the two smaller females, Artemis and Athena, above the Queen Anne’s Lace and Black-Eyed Susans as they tear around the adjacent meadow. Their leaps are graceful and long. The delineated symmetry of their shoulders accelerating their speed is wondrous. A third, Minerva, is prancing along behind, neck arched, satiny ears flapping (Magdalena does not crop them), proudly carrying a large, fallen branch.
Magdalena’s heart soars at this time with her dogs. She revels in the secure freedom of her fenced fifty acres. And to her, her dogs are numinous, with their effortless, massive elegance, their unfettered zeal. Occasionally they bound up to her and she embraces their hugeness. They nuzzle her face with their big black leathery noses and whiskery jowls and kiss her with great wet slurps. Their eyes are sympathetic, soulful. These dogs are her life.
Magdalena and her partner Joan raise blue Great Danes. At the entrance to their property is a large sign:
CELESTIAL KENNELS
HEAVENLY BLUE GREAT DANES
CHAMPION STOCK KC REGISTERED
OWNERS: MAGDALENA WARD DVM, JOAN RICHTER RN
Boarding and Training available
The puppy bounces in the puddles, unusual for a Dane. Normally they don’t like water. This one is a return from Magdalena’s last litter or, actually, Zeus and Athena’s: the “O” litter — twelve puppies, four males and eight females. All were sold, this particular puppy, Ophelia, or “Lia,” to a family with a teenage boy. Magdalena had had her doubts about the Lavernes because they had never had a dog. They had just moved into a recently gentrified neighbourhood adjacent to subsidized housing where there had been a lot of break-ins. Their son, Jason, an awkward, scrawny and sullen boy with raging acne, had not handled the transition well. His parents indicated that there were problems at school with