Outside the Line. Christian Petersen

      We acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

      Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

       J. Kirk Howard, President

      Printed and bound in Canada

      www.dundurn.com

       To Ann

       For Peter in memory

       acknowledgements

      For their help and encouragement, I am grateful to Kate and Roy Link, Fred Rogger, and Joanne White. Thank you also to Kathryn Mulders, who read the first draft and offered her insight. This novel would not be were it not for Ann.

      This book is a work of fiction. All characters in it are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual people is purely coincidental.

       chapter one

      The Community Corrections office occupies the upper floor of a concrete building, its midriff trimmed with green tiles like a gaudy belt, circa 1977, when it butted into the oldest part of town. The neighbouring clapboard and shingled homes date from the late 1890s. Picture sweaty saddle horses dozing with reins looped over the gatepost, hear cream-rimmed bottles clinking in a cart, smell the cattle, fresh milled lumber drying, sawdust in the air. The claim is that it was a simpler, perhaps more innocent era. Silver maples and weeping willows newly planted then to fend off the frontier dust of Interior British Columbia are now three feet thick at their base and finally shading the yards dreamed by the pioneers. Except now the neighbourhood has gone to hell. Even twenty-odd years faded, the crass newer building intrudes here, along with its unpleasant business. Clients loiter on the sidewalk out front, or sit on the curb smoking cigarettes, sometimes fishing stubs from the ashtray by the door. Always loafing, waiting for a ride to show up or a half-clear decision to hit them, in soiled jeans, all too often looking their part, that of criminals.

      Upstairs with his swivel chair turned toward the window, a smoked glass shield, the probation officer’s eyes meander. Across the street, among the tended yards and gardens, up the gravel alley, padding like a tomcat at a distance, peeking into open porches and off-kilter sheds. Ordinary domestic scenes have come to instill a peculiar mix of envy and suspicion in him. Something of an occupational hazard, as well as the fallout from his own circumstances over the past eight months or so.

      The telephone rings.

      “Peter Ellis,” he answers, listens, pulls a grey metal drawer, selects the legal-size file in question, opens it on his desk, reaches for a pen, and jots notes in the running record. “I see. Can I ask your name? Well, this information should go to the police, and they may want to get in touch with you. All right, I understand, and I will follow up. But without a witness the police won’t charge him, you realize? No, it’s very helpful. I don’t mean to pressure you. Sure, give it some thought. Thank you.”

      Mid-morning and someone has made another pot of coffee. Peter can smell it, and he rises from his chair, drawn by instinct and addiction to the Colombian brew.

      As a former student of literature and lower-case communist who once attended rallies and freely signed all manner of petitions, he had never had any interest or intention of getting involved in the Justice System. When he first began working as a probation officer, a few of his friends questioned the move, and thereby his values. With these keen defenders of human rights he took an almost apologetic tone, claimed the job was a trial run, just a means of survival, certainly temporary. He chews gum at a range of paces, aggressively at the moment, while he swivels back and forth in his chair, prioritizing the work at hand. What he didn’t admit to anyone, even to himself for a long time, was that this job hooked him immediately. Every day it places him at the crisis point in someone’s life, tangent to a stupid mistake, a rage, an arrest.

      In the beginning each crime is new: petty theft, a pensioner hobbling away with a frozen Cornish hen in her purse; auto theft, a car chase that ends in a crash, with one teen in hospital and another in jail; impaired drivers after every weekend; welfare fraud, low-brow credit scams; sexual offences, historical incest come to light; uttering threats, and spousal assault. After almost two years in the business, Peter has dealt with each of these and their variants many times, dozens, hundreds altogether. Common elements of local crime: alcohol, unemployment, ever lurking lust and anger. In this town there are rarely convictions for white-collar transgressions, the recent exception being a pharmacist busted for trafficking pills, with an interesting list of customers. Mostly it unfolds after dark, the offshoot of a noisy night in the bars, the ugly blossom that stems from years of toxic social compost.

      Peter shies from judgment, despite or maybe partly to spite his Baptist upbringing. He suffers with imagination like vertigo lately, glimpsing life’s infinite heartbreaking scenarios. He wonders whether it is some errant part in himself, some piece askew, that enables his rapport with the probation clients, the offenders.

      He turns to his computer, enters one of his numerous required passwords, and spends the mandatory time to scan and delete various emails, weeding out the ones to which he must respond. Then he turns to the physical files stacked upon his desk, all in need of an update — warning letters for missed appointments, collateral phone calls, and the never-ending breach reports requesting a warrant.

      When clients reporting in can’t remember his name, when the administrative assistant asks who their PO is, they refer to him as the guy with the hair. He has a thick shock, dark when cut close, but copper-coloured and unruly in its current length. Beneath this and a tall brow, his eyes are grey, his face long and slightly