On The Street Where I Live - 7

Our street is buried in snow again this morning. As are all streets in southern Ontario I imagine. Neighbours are digging their cars out, which reminds me of a more sensational kind of burial.

The Abandoned Car

Several years ago, a light blue sedan was parked in front of my neighbour's house across the street and down a bit. We walked by this car every day for over a week. It was parked there day and night, unmoved. It started to collect parking tickets for parking overnight without a permit. Once, I looked in and saw a child's car seat and some blankets in the back. Ours is a family-friendly street, so it's not unusual for cars to have child seats and blankets inside them.

My friend, whose house the car was parked in front of, said sometimes she leaned on the car while talking to neighbours outside.

I guess at some point, the parking officer decided ten parking tickets on the car was enough. One morning, he brought in a tow truck to take the car away. When the car was lifted, they noticed a bad smell. Immediately, they called in the police and sealed off the street. My son came home for lunch and the police wouldn't let him pass. I had to go down the street to intercede so the police would let him through.

In the afternoon, several TV stations came to film the car. When the police took the car away, the reporters told us they found a body inside it. There was to be a murder investigation. Later, after the police were gone, some neighbours and I stood near where the car was parked to talk about what happened. Even with the car gone, I could still detect a stench like nothing I had ever smelled before. I didn't stay long in that gathering.

That night, we saw the news reports on TV. In the newspapers the next day, there were articles about the body they found in the abandoned car on our street. The body belonged to a Vietnamese man in his thirties from the Niagara region. He had a wife and a son. His family reported him missing a few days ago. That's all we knew about it.

For the next two weeks, I tried to follow the case but there were no more reports available. I guess I wasn't interested enough to dig up more information. It creeps me out that someone killed, and thought it fit to leave the body in the back seat of a car, cover it up with blankets and abandon the car on our street. And that we had all walked by the car, peered into it, made fun of the tickets it was collecting, and never suspected a thing.