Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-Six
9th June 1979
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Marie Alexandra knew that she was borrowing trouble by coming here. Still, after months of living with Jackie she felt obligated to come here to help sound things out. That and she had reached the conclusion that Jack Kennedy deserved a severe beating before she had boarded the plane from Dublin to Montreal. He must have known exactly what he had been doing, having his daughter living with her while they were both attending University. There had been a few young men who had come sniffing around, clearly with the hope that it wouldn’t be too difficult to convince nineteen-year-old Jackie to naively make a few profound lapses in judgement. In their defense, Marie had found that Jackie had thought that they were interested in her personally as opposed to what had really been going on. That much was evidenced by how fast most of them had grown bored with Jackie and had turned their attention to Marie the instant they learned that she was from Germany.
The trouble for Marie was that it had all been spelled out in the files that Jack had given her. All the cases that didn’t involve rape seemed to follow the same depressing pattern. Men sweet talking them into bed only to walk away leaving them to deal with the consequences alone. Marie understood that she wasn’t immune to that sort of flattery herself, but her own social anxiety and experiences had proven to be a defense against that sort of thing. Getting abducted, held hostage at gunpoint as a child, and watching a woman who was basically her big sister get clubbed down in the street sort of made understanding people’s motives extremely important to her. Jack must have known that Marie would see herself, her mother, Jackie and any one of dozens of women she had known in those files when he had given them to her. It was the reason why she had ultimately given the files back. She had come to loath the people, mostly men, who had taken advantage of those women and then opportunistically did it again and again. Marie had found herself starting to agree with her mother’s penchant towards brutality when dealing with certain people.
That wasn’t who Marie wanted to be.
Then Jackie moved in and Marie had seen firsthand why her mother had never been able to avoid getting involved. Jack must have known what would happen because he had not been surprised when she had told him that she was going to Nova Scotia when she should have been on going home for the holiday.
At least the woman Marie was here to visit lived in Halifax as opposed to somewhere further afield. She had never learned to drive having always lived in this or that city center. A bicycle had always been sufficient to get her where she needed to go if transit was unavailable. Nova Scotia was a long way from the Montreal neighborhoods that Marie had lived in. The bus had dropped Marie off on a street that faced the harbor and the house she was looking for was a couple blocks up the hill.
It was a simple house like the others that surrounded it. A low chain-link fence enclosed the small yard that separated it from the street that had a half-hearted attempt at a vegetable garden that had been taken over by weeds in it. The mailbox had the name Campbell stenciled on the side , suggesting that Marie had found the right address. Two dogs that looked like they were the result of generations of random selection started barking at her as a she debated what to do next.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU TWO!” A big man said walking out from the garage that was behind the house before focusing on Marie. “What do you want?” He demanded. His hair and beard must have once been dark but had gone completely grey, he was also red-faced and she could see how bloodshot his eyes were. Marie could smell the beer on his breath from more than a meter away.
“I am looking for Sibéal O’Keefe” Marie said, mustering her courage to do so. She had come a long way to ask Sibéal’s permission before she clawed open old wounds. It was something that she doubted that Jack could have been bothered to do.
“We don’t need any of the trouble that your sort bring” The man growled at her. “Trying to get my wife to answer stupid questions so that you make a name for yourself.”
“Who do you think I am?” Marie asked.
“You’re from the newspapers” The man said, “Right?”
“No” Marie replied, “I’m a Law Student from Trinity College in Dublin working as an Investigator for John Kennedy.”
The man just staired at Marie like if she had grown a second head.
“A Senior Partner at Mallon, McGill, and Ó Doirnáin Solicitors” Marie finished and then thinking quickly she asked, “Are you Henry Campbell?”
“Aye” The man, Henry replied, “You still haven’t said what you want though.”
To help Jack blow apart Irish Society by finishing a battle that he had started decades earlier, Marie thought to herself but didn’t say aloud.
It was then that Marie saw a woman leave the house, pushing a screen door out of her way.
“The Doctor said no more drinking Hank” The woman said sharply in a language that Marie understood perfectly but had rarely heard outside of Ireland. “You act like a complete bastard when you you’ve had a few anyway and hiding your beer in the garage won’t change that. Now, who is this girl?”
Henry, or Hank, Marie corrected. He really did look more like a Hank and the formal Henry didn’t suit him at all. He gave the woman, presumably Sibéal, a guilty look.
“I am Marie Alexandra Blackwood” Marie said, “I am here representing John Kennedy in the matter of…”
“Has it really been so long?” Sibéal asked, a touch annoyed that Marie had understood what she had said, as she opened the gate. “You might as well come in.”
As Marie stepped through, she had the dogs sniffing at her feet as Hank muttered something to Sibéal.
“She’s our guest” Sibéal said, “Her mother was the one who broke me out of the Kilmainham Gaol. Not too many in Ireland were sorry to see the damage Kat Mischner did to place with the fire she set either.”
