The Butterfly Effect

by Luis A. Santamaría

  “What happened?” Horner wanted to know.

  “I lost him.”

  "Tom, meet me now. We have to plan our next move.”

  "Fred, fuck, leave the moves for your chess match. I'll investigate all I can about Millward and I'll call to let you know. You go home and take a few days off. That's an order.” Carroll now saw his companion as someone to be ordered.

  "Tom, this is my business.”

  "Dude, don’t be a prick. You're not John McClane and this is not Die Hard, okay? Go home and lock yourself there until this ends. Let me work for you for once in your life.”

  It was the first time Carroll had spoken to his companion with the authority of a man of his experience. It was probably due to the excitement of the chase. In any case, he had never felt so alive. So much like a cop.

  "All right, I'll listen to you," Horner promised, in a surprisingly submissive manner. “But Tom, do me a favor.”

  “I'm all ears.”

  “Think along the lines about everything that happened in Ámber, that town in the north of Spain.”

  "A bully is harassing you and you're worried about a small town from abroad? You've lost your mind.”

  "I have a feeling that Ámber is the key to everything. Remember that all this started when our two suspects came from there.”

  "All right, I'll investigate a bit.”

  "Promise me, Tom.”

  "I will, Fred, don’t worry. Now go home it’s about fucking time.”

  Horner felt as if he’d just been hit by a Mack truck when he entered the doorway of his building with the intention of resting. He had not enjoyed a quality dream for days, and with every step he took in the direction that would lead him to solve the Lennard’s case (and his own), he had the feeling of living in hell.

  What he discovered in his mailbox was not going to help reassure him.

  Next to a pair of fast food pamphlets, there was a CD wrapped in a transparent plastic sachet. On the face front, written in permanent marker, a disturbing message:

  IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT IS WAITING FOR YOU, PLAY ME

  Alfred felt a sudden urge to run away and not stop until he crossed the Scottish border. Instead, he entered his house with a harsh knot in his throat and went into his office. The laptop on the desk was slow starting enough to allow time for his breathing to accelerate. He finally inserted the compact disc into the slot and explored its interior. It consisted of a single video file that occupied a few megabytes. Still standing, Horner pushed play and held his breath.

  The video lasted fifty-three seconds, which began with a full-screen encoded image accompanied by irritating noise. Horner, annoyed at the noise, frowned and he continued frowning. Within a few seconds, the encoded noise gave a radical shift to what looked like a home recording, as done with a cheap personal camera that was perched on some smooth surface. Silence. The resolution was low and the colors dark. The target focused on a closed room, so gloomy that its limits were not perceived... "Fuck!" A zombie head suddenly appeared from the right of the frame, in the foreground, and Horner's chest twisted. After the shock, he recognized the figure as a cheap Halloween mask, probably purchased in a souvenir shop for less than twenty pounds. Alfred snorted.

  What the fuck...

  The rubber zombie, illuminated by the light of the device's bulb, began to speak in a slow, uninflected neutral voice. It was a distorted voice, perfectly situated halfway between the masculine and the feminine.

  Alfred Horner... what a surprise... I'll trust you with a secret, Alfred Horner. In this story, you are not the hunter. You are the hunted. And no matter what you do, how fast you think or act. The clues you follow or how good you are. You're going to pay for your sins.

  Despite the menacing content of the words, the tone of voice was not moody. Neither was the mask, whose rubber curves remained immobile with speech. Two black pupils behind two holes that made eyes were the only human distinction in the image. However it didn’t provide Alfred with any clue as to the source of the message.

  The more you pursue me, Alfred Horner, the closer I shall be to finding you. And when that happens, I'll kill you. This is not a deal. Neither is it a threat. It's going to happen, whatever you do. It's just an announcement of your death. Enjoy what you have left, Alfred Horner.

  The recording ended abruptly. Silence.

  Horner bit his lower lip and forced himself to remain calm. He sat down in his chair and played the tape three more times with maximum attention. When he finished, he would see it again from the beginning. Despite the mechanized tone of voice of his enemy, there was something in it that seemed familiar. During the fifty seconds the message had lasted, the author of the threat had repeated his name and surname four times, and in each of them, Alfred had had the feeling of losing a bet. The two girls whose image he mentally placed on the table, Sara Mora and the hooded girl in front of the kebabs' club, came back to his mind, and he looked for a reason why one of them had reasons to kill him. Assuming the zombie in the video is the same one who murdered Lennard, that is, one of only two suspects, he mused softly, it means the voice was that of a woman. In that case, would it make sense for her to have so much desire to get me out of the way? Why bother recording a video and sending it to me? Okay, to scare me, but... just for being the investigator for Mike Lennard's death? No, he said at once. She must have some other reason to wish me dead so badly. His thoughts then traveled to the night of the crime, when he questioned a frightened Sara Mora inside his car. Did she look at that moment as if she were standing before her greatest enemy? Of course, if she had, she had concealed it very well amid so many tears and anxiety attacks.

  As hard as it was to accept it, Henry Millward had just overtaken the two young women as the prime suspect. He realized that on that day he had extended the list of potential suspects, and yet he hadn’t gotten an extra clue. What a fucking mess!

  He withdrew from his desk and walked away from the computer screen. There was something in the case that he could not quite put together, as if there was an elephant in the room and yet he couldn’t see it. He crossed his arms and looked out the east-facing window, in principle without paying attention to the landscape. When he began to notice lovers kissing in the rain, at first it seemed a rather disturbing scene. Then he realized that he was remembering a university party, a pool in which a womanizer tried to sexually abuse a teenager. A broken life, unconscious, dried mud. A while ago, it was his first case.

  Nacho Conde. It was July and that rapist escaped alive.

  What had he done with his existence since then? Had he become a better cop? Alfred had gaps in his memories; he had them since before entering the force. So trying to find out if someone had reason to look for him and kill him could literally make him crazy.

  He tried to remember what the name of the hooded girl was, and discovered that he had forgotten, God knew why. For the zombie who had just threatened to end his life? By Henry Millward and his rented Volkswagen? By the meaning of the outrageous message someone had drawn on the side of his Alfa Romeo? By Mike Lennard's carved torso the night of his death? Because of Mora's presence at the crime scene? By the love letters between Mora and that Diana that Lennard kept at home? By the attack he himself had suffered in his own house while he was inside? The truth is that there were many things that could have removed from his memory the name of the suspect of the gray hoodie.

  He sat up and poured himself a glass of whiskey. He was spinning all the puzzle pieces until he got drunk and got inside the sheets. He fell asleep at three o'clock in the morning with his own name hanging around his subconscious.

  Nacho Conde.

  The next day, during her last walk to the Connor house, Sara was determined in enjoying her new life. She felt deeply happy. She had just made a series of strategic decisions that would change and would certainly improve her closest existence. The first one was to stay at Diana's house, at least temporarily; then they would think about where to live. The second decision was a
consequence of the first decision: that same day she would leave the Connor residence. She did not mind paying them the rent for the remainder of the month, but once she had found the love of her life, it made no sense to stay in that madhouse. She wanted to lose sight of those lunatics, starting with Rolly, the dog vacuum cleaner, and following the hanging spider webs in the shower.

  She mentally visualized her near future and could not help but smile from ear to ear.

  She continued through the north of the city under a leaden sky near dusk, and during the journey she concluded that, after all, her journey had been a success. She had found what she actually flew to England, and for some reason close to that hypnotic feeling of being in love, she did not think for a second about Mike Lennard, Agent Horner, Charley, or nosy Doctor Salas.

  She crossed the corner of Victoria Road and thought it was the most depressing street she had ever seen. It was indeed a tremendous exaggeration, but the sky overcast by the heavy clouds at the moment, coupled with the traumatic experiences that she had experienced during the few days that she had lived there, made sure that Victoria Road would occupy a prominent place in the list of places to which she would never return.

  From the outside of the house there was no light in the interior, nor could she hear the usual bellows that Alice Connor used to devote to her dog. She shrugged. She planned to say goodbye, to Alice at least, but the world would not end if she took her things without warning. She would come back the next day to say goodbye.

  She unlocked the door and headed for the stairs. She realized by the silent darkness that she was alone. When she reached her room, she packed her suitcase in record time. She took a quick glance to make sure nothing was left behind and she faced the stairs again, this time descending. She was scared to death when, before she completed the first step, she saw the silhouette of a man in the shadows next to the first step.

  I'm not alone...

  The figure, who seemed to be watching her, stepped forward. The left end of his face was visible from the dim light from the sunset coming through the window. With a restrained breath, Sara recognized a large, hairless man with disproportionate features. She identified the man in the house.

  "Girl, I was expecting you," said Kurt Payne, the mysterious Buddhist forensic, in a surprisingly high voice. As if he were a giant with a whistle.

  Chapter 17

  “All things begin and end in people, we are capable of the best and the worst.”

  “What do you mean?”

  "That in a few minutes, the nurses will come in very angry and accuse me about what I have done to Félix. They think I'm a monster for attacking him, but my intention couldn’t have been more honest.”

  "But what will happen to him?"

  "God knows. We are all capable of the best and the worst, remember.”

  Monday, November 13, 2006

  "Kurt! I didn’t know you were at home. Were you... waiting for me? I've come to say goodbye.”

  Sara's words were meant to be natural, but since she had just been scared to death, instead they trembled in fear.

  The blue and oval eyes of the coroner, like two pearls, stuck unperturbed in his face.

  "You're in danger, girl," he announced with his own peculiar tone of voice. “Keep your eyes open.”

  Sara glanced sideways alternately, as if searching for a hidden camera on the landing. She didn’t know whether to laugh at the joke or start shaking. The second thing happened.

  "Listen, girl, I have to warn you that this policeman calling himself Alfred Horner will not stop until he catches you," Payne explained with mocking seriousness. “And when he does, he will be ruthless.”

  Sara was close to collapsing on hearing from the mouth of that weirdo that her nightmare was not over.

  "Horner? The cop?”

  “Yes. That arrogant bastard thinks he can always be so high and mighty. He treats people like cheap shit. Well, he can stick it up his ass.”

  "But I don’t understand. Why are you helping me?” She said, making an effort to get information from the coroner hidden in the shadows.

  "Because Alfred Horner is a bad person. I want to see him suffer, to pay for everything. He needs to pay!” He exclaimed, now without control. “Oh, girl, you are so young and beautiful.”

  Sara thought she saw a lustrous gleam in his eyes as he spoke. Then came the memory of Charley Rubial catching her helplessly in her department and forcing her against the bed, so that when Kurt stepped forward, she gave another step back, and when the Buddhist cornered her against the corner of the landing, she didn’t hesitate to take her knife out of her purse. At any other time, one in which Sara could analyze the situation with the objectivity that used to characterize him, the movement of the forensic would have been interpreted as an innocent gesture of parental protection. Or maybe not. What simply happened, in short, was that Sara pointed at him with the edge of the knife.

  “What the fuck, honey?” Payne spat, barely reacting to the sudden attack.

  "Shut up, monster! Don’t you dare touch me or I'll slit your neck!”

  “Stop, Sara, stop!” The coroner continued, shouting, in a voice, if possible, sharper than usual.

  It happened in less than a second. Just as Kurt advanced his hand, Sara made a quick move with her wrist and sliced a large part in his palm. The blood began to gush, and an aberrant howl invaded the upper floor of the house. Then an inner force pushed Sara to run downstairs, open the front door and escape from that crazy house as fast as her legs allowed her. She had left her suitcase by the door of her room, but that didn’t matter anymore. She had to meet Diana and leave Oxford once and for all. She didn’t stop hearing the Buddhist's cry until she turned the corner.

  That Monday afternoon, as Sara fled in terror from Kurt Payne, her faculty colleague, Jaime Vergara, was passing through with his Porsche the territorial boundary of Ámber. Devoid of a map, he was forced to drive through the inner walks of the village, relying more on his instinct than on his capacity for guidance. He rejoiced glimpsing the sea after crossing a paved plaza, because it meant that the crossing was finally over. Now he had only to cross the coast in search of the little house with the white painted fence that Aly had indicated to him in his farewell letter, so that he parked the sports car in the first free space he found and prepared to continue on foot.

  Jaime's worn shoe stepped for the first time on the ground in Ámber, and an odor of moss and salt water quickly permeated his nostrils. He knew that he was being the victim of a paradox: so many years of friendship with Sara, and the only time he walked the streets of her hometown was not to see her (as he had so often promised), but to look for a stranger, instead a girl he had just met that had intrigued him. Jaime chose to take the search for Óliver Morales as a surreal experience that he would surely remember for the rest of his life. To his left, the tide was agitated; enraged by what looked like a storm, and for a second he erased from his brain Madrid, the Shapiro case and everything related to his life in the capital. He inhaled as much air as he could and allowed the sea to guide him to the next episode of this adventure.

  When he had been walking alone for ten minutes and fighting the rising blizzard, out of the corner of his eye he saw the first manifestation of a human person to his right; a very comforting one. On one side of the road, where it widened to connect to a wild road that reached the top of a hill in the distance, a woman cried without comfort, motionless, and she was planted on the grass as if she were one tree among others. Even her hair, dull red, mimicked the deciduous leaves of autumn. While Jaime noticed with very little discretion, he found that the woman held an old photograph between her consumed hands. Consumed, as was her fixed grimace, which Jaime could see as she turned on impulse. Caught in flagrante, she wiped her eyes with her fists and hurried to put the photograph in the pocket of her coat. Her cheeks were soaked, and the clear under her eyes showed that her age was less than her wrinkled skin and her somber face made him believe it.

  �
��Are you OK? Need any help?” Jaime asked, feeling the need to soothe the woman's pain. She seemed about to faint at any moment.

  "Don’t worry and go your way.”

  The woman was still talking in choked sobs. Whatever the cause of her regret, Jaime understood that it was something so serious, so he ignored the caustic tone with which his kindness had been answered and continued talking as if no one was crying.

  "To tell you the truth, I wish I knew my way," he said, scratching his head. “I'm lost.”

  “Where are you going?” She asked with the same interest as if she had none.

  Jaime hesitated. How could he explain it, even if he knew his fate?

  "I'm looking for a house on the beach front, with a patio surrounded by a white fence.” Jaime noticed that the woman frowned, as if his comment had suggested something. "I need to find Óliver Morales, owner of that house.”

  For the first time, the dismayed woman showed her beautiful teeth in a smile as sweet as her grief.

  "What do you want to find him for?" She said.

  "I think we have a friend in common, and I suspect that friend is in danger. I need him only to clarify some doubts about her.”

  The woman opened her eyes in a gesture of fascination. It was as if every word he said was news to her.

  "What's that friend's name in common?"

  "Alyssa Grifero.".

  She took a step back and Jaime watched as she swallowed. She cleared her throat before answering, for now she was the one to launch the unexpected announcement.

  "You see, Óliver Morales is not the owner of the house that you say with the fence, which, by the way, is no longer white, but blue.”

  "Are you sure of that?"

  "As sure as the house is mine, and Óliver Morales only lives there. He's my only son.” Jaime paled suddenly. “Come on, don’t look silly and come with me, it's about to rain. He’s at home.”

  She took his arm in an endearing way, nothing to do with the harshness of her first answers, and Jaime understood that he had fallen into the hands of a good person. They continued the road to the east with great care not to be struck down by a gust of wind.