Tell Anna She's Safe (39 page)

AFTERWORD

I
had the dream the night after I spotted Louise Ellis's car. It was parked on the shoulder of River Road in Chelsea, Quebec, not many kilometres from my house. I didn't know for sure, then, that the car
was
Louise's. I knew her from Canada Post. We had both been contracted to work on the annual
Souvenir Collection
, she as the writer, I as the editor. We had become friends.

Two hours after I saw the car, I received a phone call from her partner, Brett Morgan: Louise was missing.

I drove back to River Road, confirmed the plate number, and called Brett and the police. Eventually they both arrived at the site.

That night, I didn't sleep well. I was worried, not only about Louise, but also about Brett. He was an ex-convict, with a manslaughter conviction behind him—a man whose release from prison Louise had successfully advocated for just the year before. Tossing in bed, I went over all the things he'd said and done that evening. They didn't add up.

It was when I finally slept that the dream came. My old school friend Joanna was sitting on the bed. Her mouth was moving, her lips still closed, as if she were trying to find the right words to speak. As if she weren't used to speaking at all. Or as if she were trying to translate into words a message that was coming to her in some other language or form I couldn't begin to guess at. The language of the other side.

When she finally spoke, it was three short sentences I have never forgotten:

Look in the 'opler grove. Write it in a book. Tell Mary she's safe.

An image came to me of poplars or aspens. I had no idea who Mary was. And then I woke up.

I had never had a dream like this before. It was more of a visitation. But why Joanna? I hadn't seen her in years. But she had always struck me as someone with integrity. Someone you could trust. Now she was telling me to search, to reassure Mary (I remembered she was Louise's sister.) And to write it in a book.

I immediately got up and recorded in my journal everything from the evening before.

I spent ten weeks searching for Louise, aided by information from a deep-trance psychic.

All during my search, and in the months afterward, waiting for the trial and then giving my testimony, I thought about Joanna's admonition in that dream.
Write it in a book
. I had written in my journal, but my journal is also a source of material for my creative endeavours. And if my own search would make a powerful story, it had been made possible by Louise's even more profound experience. I had to tell both. In fact, I made a commitment to Louise to tell her story.

After testifying, I obtained permission to attend the rest of the trial. I spoke with Louise's other friends and colleagues. I visited the prisons she had visited. I read two of her journals that had been used as trial evidence. There was a stereotype she seemed to fit: a woman taken in by a convict and con artist, trying to “rescue” him. Louise had not been trying to rescue Brett. I knew she had been on a specific journey of her own. But I didn't understand it. And I wanted to understand. I wanted to tell her story with empathy. To do that, I had to get into her head and her heart—into her soul.

It wasn't easy. We had been friends, but not close friends. And her growing negativity the previous fall had put me off. I had shut down the personal side of our working relationship. So I didn't know what had been going on in her life the previous year. But through the research and the writing, through the continuing dreams and encouragement I felt were coming from Louise herself, understanding and empathy gradually came. I was ready for the telling.

My first attempt was to write a true crime story. But even after all my research, I didn't have the full story on Louise. No one did. A more serious stumbling block was that my own story came out sounding so self-conscious it fell flat on its face.

Then I tried fiction—wholly fiction. But the things I did know about Louise, her circumstances and her character, and even the setting and so much about my own search were too compelling to fictionalize. After many false starts, I simply allowed to come through my pen whatever and whoever wanted to be in the story, whether factual or not.

The character of Lucy Stockman remains close to my experience and research of Louise Ellis. I did give myself creative licence with her background and upbringing. I invented Brett's background and the content of his letters to Louise, except for the note that appears on page 264, which Louise had copied into her journal. I kept the facts of their meeting and developing relationship, but the details and the dialogue are my own. I also kept the facts of Brett's previous convictions, and the Supreme Court examination is straight out of the official transcript. The wording of the “Missing Person” poster on page 56 is an exact duplicate of the wording on the poster distributed for Louise.

Ellen McGinn's character, circumstances, and relationships are entirely fictional. She slipped surprisingly well into the facts of my search. Her dreams and visions are similar to some of my own dreams but are derived mostly from the psychic assistance I enlisted. Her eulogy at Lucy's memorial service is cribbed from the one I gave at the service for Louise.

Detective Sergeant Steve Quinn is a creation of my imagination. The Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police were unfailingly professional throughout the investigation.

The remaining characters are either fictional or composite.

Louise did give me a copy of the
Tao Te Ching
for my birthday, with the same inscription that Lucy writes to Ellen. I never read the little book—or understood it—until I started the writing.

In all of the liberties I have taken with our respective stories, Louise's and mine, my intention has been not to hide the truth but to reveal it.

In this blend of fact and fiction, I found the freedom to do that.

A Few Last Words

On March 5, 1998, after a trial in an Ontario court of law that lasted six months and saw more than ninety Crown witnesses testify on entirely circumstantial but compelling evidence, Brett Morgan was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Louise Ellis. He was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison without chance of parole.

On June 23, 1998, on the day Louise would have turned fifty, her sister Mary gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.

And on April 24, 2002, seven years to the day that he reported Louise Ellis missing, Brett Morgan died in hospital after a battle with Hepatitis C.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As a work of fiction based on a true story,
Tell Anna She's Safe
relied on conversations and interviews with innumerable people—family and friends of Louise Ellis, police involved in her search, and officials at the prisons where Brett Morgan served time. My appreciation goes first and foremost to Louise's family, and especially to her sister, Mary Ellis, for giving me her blessing to tell this painful story, for understanding my intention to tell it from a sympathetic, not sensationalist, perspective, and for allowing me access to Louise's two journals that were used as evidence in court.

My research really began the night after Louise was reported missing, when I enlisted the assistance of a deep-trance psychic to help me try to find her. My thanks go to Don Daughtry and the late Jean Daughtry of Myndstream for their assistance in getting answers to my many questions.

I am deeply indebted to Asante Penny for being with me on this journey from that first traumatic night, through all my struggles to understand Louise's interior journey, to rejoicing with me in the acceptance of the novel for publication.

Norm Barton set aside his understandable concern that I not have anything to do with Brett Morgan to help with part of my search and was a rock of support at Louise's memorial service. John Maisonneuve spent hours with me recounting his relationship with Louise and filling in many gaps in my knowledge of her. I know I raised some painful memories but hope that all the time we spent talking was in some way also cathartic. Miriam Russell generously answered all my questions about her close friend. I also appreciate the conversations I had with many of Louise's other friends and colleagues who shared their memories with me before I spoke at the memorial service. My thanks go to Peter Gallinger, Iain Baines, Heather Quipp, Brenda Wagman, Ron Pouliotte, Audrey Kaplan, and Tracy Westdale, and my apologies to anyone I've forgotten.

The trial was another avenue of research. I'm grateful to Ottawa Assistant Crown Attorneys Malcolm (Mac) Lindsay and Louise Dupont and defence lawyer Patrick McCann for granting me permission to sit in on the rest of the trial after I gave my own evidence: I filled seven notebooks with material. I'm also grateful for the support and information on police procedure I received from Staff/Sergeant Bob Pulfer (now retired) and Detective Sergeant John Savage (now deceased) of the then Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police Service.

As part of my research, I visited the prisons where Louise had visited Brett Morgan. My thanks go to all those at Correctional Services Canada who assisted me: Chris Stafford for providing me with contacts at both Warkworth and Pittsburgh institutions; John Odie, who allowed me to persuade him to give me permission to visit Warkworth; and Dave Phair at Warkworth and Donna Shetler and Mike King at Pittsburgh, who showed me around the respective visiting facilities and answered all my questions on visiting protocols. Any errors in police procedure or prison protocol are entirely my own.

I could not have completed this work without the support of my own family and friends. To my Mom and my late father, my gratitude for giving me the opportunities, especially a love of books and a literary education, that set me on the path. To my sisters, Nancy Beverly, Kathryn Missen, and Lynne Jolly, for never doubting my writing aspirations, and especially Lynne, for reading the first, long draft and showing me how to cut half of it out, and for buoying me up when the long process of submitting a manuscript for publication got me down. Special thanks go to my niece Meaghan Beverly for her eagle eyes on the galleys and all the “good catches.”

And then there were my readers: Darrell Neufeld read every chapter (at least twice) with gratifying enthusiasm and egged me on; Akka Janssen, David Black, and Vince Chetcuti gave me invaluable comments, edits and critiques; and Sandy Thomson helped me rework the climax and injected me with renewed enthusiasm and optimism when she declared that the most recent draft be “recommended for immediate publication.”

Jim MacTavish provided me with medical and forensic information. Susan Towndrow kindly identified and spelled out the names of the Hungarian dishes mentioned in Chapter 18. And
merci
to Linda Landry for correcting all my French. If there are still errors, she's not to blame.

Excerpts from the Drowning Accident Rescue Team (
DART
) website (
www.dartsac.org
) are used with permission, including the change of pronoun from the masculine to the feminine.

It may seem odd to acknowledge a provincial park, but given the difficult subject matter I was tackling, I have a great appreciation for the serene lakes and warm Canadian Shield rocks of Algonquin Park, where on my canoe trips I found exactly the environment I needed—beautiful but also isolating!—to pull much of the first draft out of me.

My heartfelt thanks go to my fellow book club members, who graciously agreed to read the manuscript as a book club choice and offered valuable feedback; and most especially to member Luciana Ricciutelli, who happens to be Editor-in-Chief at Inanna Publications: she came to the meeting with something I was not expecting but will always be grateful for—an offer to publish. Lu's sensitive and incisive editing has given the book a polish that even a writer who is also an editor could not achieve. Thank you, Lu, for believing in the novel and in me and for conspiring with the other two Lu's—Louise Ellis and Lucy Stockman—to bring it to the world.

Finally, I want to acknowledge and thank Louise herself. In life, she challenged me; in death, she came in dreams to encourage me and, I swear, charged me with the telling of her story. Louise, I'm sure it took far longer than you were expecting, but I hope I got it right.

Photo: Darrell Neufeld

Brenda Missen's short fiction has been published in the crime anthology
Cottage Country Killers
and in the
Algonquin Roundtable Review
. Her fiction was awarded second prize in the Ottawa Independent Writers' short story contest in 1996. Her work has also been published in
Canadian Wildlife
,
Canoeroots, Kanawa,
and her local newspaper,
Barry's Bay This Week.
Born, raised, and educated in Toronto,
Brenda Missen now lives on the Madawaska River in rural Ontario with her dog, Maddy.