“I’m amazed to see you here so soon,” she said.
“Hello, June. Good to see you again. Who’s taken over the hospice case?” he asked.
“That’d be Detective Line. He’s been using your desk. He’s in the field right now, but he should be back any minute.”
He knew the man well. He was very competent. “Just Line?” he asked.
“As far as I know.”
“Is the Commander in his office?”
“I think so, but I’d leave him alone right now. He’s been in there for the past hour with the door closed. And you know what that means.”
He did know what that meant. The station rule was that if the door was closed, then the Commander was off bounds. To disturb him would promote a special invite from Hell.
“Would you mind doing me a favor?” he asked.
“Of course, anything.”
“Janine Boar. Can you find out everything you can on her?”
“Detective Boar’s mother?”
“That’s right.”
“How is he?”
He didn’t feel in the mood to elaborate on the direness of Boar’s condition. He kept it short. “He’s in a coma.”
“Shit!”
“Yes. I’ll be at my desk. Bring me what you can find on Boar’s mother when you have it, will you?”
“Of course.”
He almost made it to his desk. But as he was about to take a seat, the Commander’s door swung open to reveal an angry face.
“Bell, come in here for a minute, will you?” said the Commander.
Bell watched the Commander’s face disappear from his office doorway. He pushed aside his need to sit and followed the Commander’s lead. Large bromeliad plants on either side of the door gave off a scent that reminded him of spoiled milk. This experience always accompanied a visit to the Commander’s office. He found the smell unsettling and he often wondered if the plants had been placed there with this intention in mind. The Commander had the reputation for being a master manipulator. It was impossible to know all the angles and inner workings that constituted his mind. The best someone could hope for was a good defense when confronted with the man.
He found the Commander standing, looking out of his window as he entered the office. “Yes, Sir?” he said.
“Take a seat,” said the Commander without turning.
He did as he was asked, he sat staring at the Commander’s back as he continued looking out of his window in silence.
With the smell of the bromeliad plants still dissipating from his nostrils, he waited for a full minute before the Commander spoke again.
“You okay?”
“I’m okay, Sir,” he said.
“I understand that Boar’s not so good.”
“No, Sir.”
“He’s alive, at least.”
He knew better than to lie to the Commander. He explained Boar’s condition in detail, leaving nothing out. The entire time he spoke, the Commander didn’t so much as glance over his shoulder. When he’d finished, another full minute passed before the Commander spoke again.
“What do you know about what Boar was working on before the accident?”
“He was working on the hospice case with me.”
“And this Haybnus?”
“Haybnus, Sir?”
“This God of sleep. It’s all over Boar’s files. What’s it about? Did he find something?”
“He had a theory. But it was nothing more than a theory.”
“And now he’s in a coma?”
“Yes, Sir,” he said, as guilt welled inside of him for the thousandth time since the accident.
“Yes… he’s in a coma…”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I want you to work with Detective Line on this case. We need to clear this hospice business up as fast as possible. And I don’t want you working side by side. Go at it independently, but keep each other informed. Keep me informed. If you need anything that will aid you in the investigation, let me know.”
“Thank you, Sir. I will.”
“And Bell,” said the Commander as he turned from where he stood.
“Yes, Sir.” he said, feeling the steel-like eye contact of the Commander.
“I want you to take a look at this. It’s video footage from the street corner where you had your accident,” the Commander said as he handed over a flash-drive.
Bell could barely keep a tremble from his hand as he took the flash-drive. Looking at video footage of the accident was the last thing he felt like doing. But he’d been given a direct order. He had no choice.
“That will be all.”
“Yes, Sir.”
As he passed back through the door on his way to his desk, he held his breath. He could do without the stench of the Commander’s stinking plants right now.
The mountain of paperwork that had accumulated on his desk in the time that he’d been away further aggravated his deteriorating mood. He sat and looked at it in silent dismay. Even his computer keyboard had been buried. He parted the pile of chaos as best as he could and plugged the flash-drive in.
“Here’s what you asked for,” June said as she approached and laid a file on top of the other clutter.
“Thank you, June. Did you uncover anything odd about her?”
“She hasn’t exactly been a model citizen, if that’s what you mean.”
“How so?”
“The cleft notes... She spent much of her teens in juvenile detention programs for one offence or another. By the time she was eighteen, she’d moved on to conning people for drug money. She swindled one old lady in an interior decorating scam that ran into the hundreds of thousands. Not that the money did her any good. She blew every penny she ever made on meth.”
“Christ! I’m guessing the usual. She was a victim of a broken family.”
“Not exactly. Her father was a lawyer. Her mother was realtor. By all appearances, they were a happy, successful family.”
“Money doesn’t guarantee happiness or success,” he argued.
“It did for Janine’s sister. She’s now the CEO of one of the largest tech companies in the Southern Hemisphere. She has three children of her own and is married to an Australian High Court judge.”
“So, it’s a good sister, bad sister, good parents’ situation?”
“It was.”
“What do you mean?”
“The parents were killed in a housefire under suspicious circumstances.”
“Recently?”
“No, this happened when Janine was twenty, right after she gave birth to James. Janine would have been a suspect in the arson. But at the time, she was in prison for dealing meth.”
“Why would she have been a suspect?”
“It’s all in the file. Janine routinely robbed her parents for drug money. They didn’t exactly get along. And the parents were going to take custody of James when he was born.”
“Christ!”
“He came later,” she said.
“Later? Who came later?”
“She found Jesus after her fourth stretch in prison. That was three years ago. She’s been sober, ever since.”
“You’re telling me that Janine is a world class fuck up who abandoned her son at birth and now that she’s found Jesus, all is well?”
“That pretty much sums it up.”
“Thanks for your help, June.”
He slid further into his melancholy as she left him alone at his desk. Janine was no more of a mother to James than a common criminal from the street. And now she had his life in her hands. Only that life wasn’t a life at all.
In the depths of this despair, he pushed the play button on the video file now open on the screen before him. The view the video camera had recorded couldn’t have been better. It framed the scene in perfect detail, showing the street corner free of traffic for a few seconds before a cyclist crossed over. And in that precise moment, their police cruiser came flying around the corner and smashed into the tree.
Guilt now took priority over his anxiety. How had he been so stupid? If he’d been travelling at a more realistic speed, then they both may have survived. Or better still, they may not have crashed at all.
As the video ended, it skipped back to the beginning and began playing all over again. This time, he had clarity of mind enough to take in further detail. He slowed the video down and examined it frame by frame. The gap in the traffic opened up, the picture devoid of activity. Then the cyclist showed up. With the video playing in slow motion, he could now detect a degree of panic in the cyclist’s movements. The way his body pivoted forward, the way his head moved in all directions, the way he gripped the bicycle. All of the signs were there. Clearly, the man was under pressure. But from what? And was the man a man at all? He now realized that this detail was quite to the contrary. The cyclist was a boy and something about the boy appeared familiar.
He started the video again. This time, he focused on the face of the cyclist. It wasn’t until the boy had crossed the street that he looked up in the direction of the camera. He paused the video there and zoomed in on the image as best as he could. Grainy and distorted as the image was, the features couldn’t be mistaken. Abn’s face stared back at him. The bicycle gave further confirmation. Gary Fisher could be seen printed across its red frame in big, bold lettering. And it only took a few seconds to bring up the pictures of the bicycle from the previous inspection of Abn’s garage. The bicycles were identical.
“Jesus!” he said, under his breath.
His mind raced as he made the calculations with the timeline. It didn’t take a lot of figuring. Indeed, Abn had plenty of time to make it from the hospital to the street corner after administering poison to his adopted father at the hospice.
Perspiration accumulated on his brow as he stared into the image of Abn’s face on the screen. Could Boar have been right? Was he looking into the eyes of a kid who’d murdered hundreds of people?
The more he struggled with the twisted dynamics of the situation, the more he came back to the scene of the car accident. Abn had caused that crash. Speed had not been the only ingredient in the recipe that had put Boar into a coma. New facts resulted from this cataclysm. But what exactly were they?
He felt sure the answer to Boar’s suffering was staring him directly in the face. It felt to him as if a tiny spark of hope had ignited in a vast, dark hall of horror. But what had that spark illuminated?
The phone rang and jolted him from the depths of his thoughts. Angered by the interruption, he snatched the phone from the cradle and barked into the receiver, “Yes!”
“Detective Line?” said the voice of a woman.
“No, this is Detective Bell!”
“I’m sorry, I thought Line had taken over.”
“Taken over what, exactly, Mam? I don’t understand.”
“The hospice investigation, of course.”
“Line and I are working on that investigation together now.”
“Oh… In that case, I need to tell you something. I need to tell you that I think my son’s a murderer.”
Only then did he realize who the caller was. “Mrs. Morrison?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t realize that it was you. I’m sorry.”
“I found some evidence.”
“What do you mean?”
“The syringes. There’s the smell of bleach on one of them…”
“Mrs. Morrison, you’re not making any sense. Slow down and start from the beginning,” he said, now realizing why he’d not recognized her voice earlier. She sounded different. And if he didn’t know better, then he could have sworn she was drunk.
“…It’s the syringes. I should have checked them before.”
Panic rose inside of him. He could now detect outright distress in her voice. And he could tell that he wouldn’t get any more sense out of her over the phone. He glanced at the caller ID and saw that she was calling from her home.
“Mrs. Morrison, we can talk about this face to face. Wait where you are. I’ll come right over.”
“He’s just a…”
He didn’t wait for her to finish her sentence. He hung up and headed for the exit.
CHAPTER 24
As Abn left Michael’s house, for the first time in weeks, he had a sense that things were getting back to normal. Their study session hadn’t been marred by the previous tension. Michael appeared to have accepted him and what he’d done. Even Wellington’s weather seemed to have taken a break today. He wasn’t buffeted by the usual sideways rain and gale force winds.
As he made his way down the stairs, sunshine warmed his skin. Laughter of walkers echoed in the street. The smell of recently bloomed flowers scented the air. And he couldn’t stop a smile teasing the corners of his mouth as he unlocked his bike. However, as he stood and strapped on his helmet, a voice interrupted the serenity of the moment.
“Bro!”
He looked around to find the open window of a rusty Holden Kingswood, only feet away. His heart skipped a beat as he recognized Henry behind the wheel.
“Yes,” he managed as his smile evaporated.
“How are you, Bro?”
“I am okay. What are you doing here? Are you following me?”
“Why would I be following you?” Henry said as he raised a bottle of Jack Daniels to his lips and took a swallow.
“How did you know I was here?”
“I know you, Bro. We’re birds of a feather. And remember, I owe you. I’m gonna take care of you.”
He didn’t at all understand what that meant. But he could see that Henry was well beyond talking any kind sense. The bloodshot and swollen eyes, together with the slurred speech insisted that he’d been on a bender of epic proportion. The best he could hope for was a clean and swift departure.
“I have to get home. What do you want?” he asked.
“Policeman Line came to see me,” Henry said.
“Who is that?”
“Policeman Line is a detective, Bro. He was asking about you,” Henry said between mouthfuls of whisky.
“What do you mean? About what?”
“About details surrounding the goings on at the hospice. About details on the murders there… …and other stuff too, Bro.”
Any remaining calm in Abn vanished and anxiety flooded in to reclaim its throne. “Detective Bell and Boar are working on that case,” he said.
“Not after what you did to them,” Henry said with a wry smile of blackened teeth.
“What do you mean? Did to who? Did what? What did I do?”
“To policeman Bell and policeman Boar.”
Confusion now fought for dominance over his anxiety. “I do not know what you mean. I have not done anything to any detectives.”
“Don’t lie to me, Bro. I know you. We’re birds of a feather. Policeman Line showed me the video of the car accident. I like you, Bro. You’ve got balls; big gigantic balls. If I was behind that wheel, I would have run right over you.”
Abn shook his head. Nothing Henry said was making any kind of sense. He swung a leg over his bicycle. He’d heard enough drunken jabber for one day. “I have to go,” he said.
“Okay, Bro. But I have to warn you, that policeman Line is a crafty little bugger. Look out for him, he’s onto you. And if it comes down to it, Bro, you should remember, I’ve got your back.”
Mute with shock, he watched as Henry drifted from the curbside and back into the traffic as silently as he’d arrived.
With freshly planted paranoia now firmly in place, he scanned his surroundings for any other surprises. Nothing looked off to him. No police car screeched to a halt nearby. No detectives approached him with cuffs at the ready. But a black cloud had now passed under the sun. The previous beauty of the day faded with its presence.
A shiver ran up his spine as he cycled down Hill Street. He knew he had to get home. He had to get things ready for the funeral.
* * * * *
Jane watched her hand tremble as it rested on the kitchen countertop, near her coffee cup. She couldn’t decide if the phone call with Detective Bell had caused the tremble, or if it was a result of discovering the syringe. It wasn’t like her. She didn’t shake. She’d always been the one with the steady hand. Yet she couldn’t deny what she now witnessed.
What had the detective said?
“I’ll come right over.”
The more she thought about this, the more her hand trembled. Having the detective in her house was the last thing she needed right now. What she did need was time to collect her thoughts. Time to calm her nerves. Time to prepare for the funeral.
The funeral… The funeral…
The event soon took charge over her thoughts. How could she go through with it all? And how could she keep a straight face around Abn knowing what she now knew?
She inhaled deeply and tried to focus on her hand in an effort to steady it. When she imagined that she’d regained some level of control, she took a run at picking up her coffee cup. As the trembling mug moved toward her lips, the doorbell rang. The mug fell from her grip and shattered on the marble below it. Hot coffee splattered over her lap. She jumped backward, somehow managing to avoid the worst of the spill.
The doorbell rang again, this time for longer and this time resounding with what seemed like greater urgency. Hurriedly, she picked up the broken pieces of the mug and threw them into the trash. With one sweep of a towel, she mopped up the mess as best as she could before moving to answer the door.
She pulled the door open in the midst of the fourth volley of ringing. “Hello,” she said.
“Mrs. Morrison, I was worried?” said Detective Bell.
“What happened to you?” she asked, unable to ignore the sling supporting Bell’s arm.
“It’s nothing. A car accident… nothing major.”
“You look like Hell.”
“Don’t worry, I’m okay. Can I come in?”
“Yes, come through.”
THE LIFE LEFT: A GRIPPING PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER Page 21