Gone Cold

by Douglas Corleone

  “And there was a reason we couldn’t find anything on Shauna Adair. Her birth record at the General Register Office in Southport was apparently wiped clean. There are no adoption or marriage records for her either. Only while I was in the ER, watching the victims of a particularly nasty bus accident being carted in, did I realize there was one other record we hadn’t searched for.”

  In my head I saw the emergency room she’d just described.

  “A death certificate?” I said.

  “Exactly. According to her death records, Shauna Adair was born twenty-three years ago in the private wing of the NHS hospital in Westminster.”

  “St. Thomas’?”

  “Right-o, Finder. Cause of death is listed as cerebral hypoxia. Manner of death is classified as homicide.”

  “Mechanism?” I asked.

  “The coroner determined it to be manual strangulation. No sexual assault involved. According to a note in the file, the case is still open, which means the girl’s murder remains unsolved.”

  “When did this happen?” I said, unable to suppress the urgency in my voice. “When did she die?”

  There was a brief pause as she checked the date.

  “Twelve years ago, Simon. When the girl was just eleven years old.”

  Chapter 50

  TWELVE YEARS AGO

  When I step out of the shower Tasha’s still asleep. I tie the towel around my waist and grab the wastebasket from the bathroom. There are used tissues everywhere. Balled up, worn through, torn to pieces from worry. Shreds of tissue lie on our dresser, on the hardwood floor next to our bed, beneath Tasha’s pillow. I begin collecting them, a gesture that would earn me an angry stare were Tasha awake.

  I walk out of the bedroom, snatch a few off the railing then head downstairs, past the dining room into the kitchen, spotting them everywhere I look. On tables and countertops, littering the carpet and floor tiles. The wastebasket fills before I finish. I’m about to dump it when I hear a rap at our front door.

  “Morning, Aubrey,” I say, stepping aside to let her in. “Have a seat in the kitchen. Help yourself to some coffee. Tash isn’t up yet, but she should be any minute.”

  Aubrey wraps her arms around me. I pull her in tightly, do my best to keep tears from falling. It’s been so long since I held Tasha, or anyone, that I don’t want to let her go.

  “I’m going to run upstairs and get dressed,” I tell her.

  “Pour you a cup, Simon?”

  “Please.”

  She places her hands on her bare arms, closing herself off from the chill of the air conditioner.

  “You keep your house like an icebox,” she remarks.

  Upstairs, Tasha is still sleeping. On her side, facing the middle of the bed, wrapped up in the white duvet. She spends more and more hours under these covers every day, rising only to relieve herself and to call downstairs to ask me to bring her bottled waters. She needs to hydrate. She loses an absurd amount of her body’s fluids through tears.

  I set the wastebasket down in the bathroom, drop the wet towel in the hamper. In the bedroom I slip into a clean pair of boxers, the jeans I wore yesterday. I grab a fresh T-shirt from the closet. Try to navigate through the fog in my head to remember whether I’ve put on deodorant. I think so, but just in case, I roll some on again.

  I wait for it to dry before putting on my T-shirt. Staring at our bed, I lock on the Kleenex box positioned dead center on our king-size mattress. Erected like a wall. During the few random hours Tasha and I actually sleep in the same room at the same time, it stands between us like a barrier neither dares penetrate. Whether it’s intentional on Tasha’s part, I don’t know. But its presence has distanced us even further.

  Outside, the birds are twittering. Odd, since I don’t remember hearing them since that first morning after Hailey went missing. When neither Tasha nor I could fall asleep. Since then I’ve woken every morning to …

  What?

  To Tasha’s snoring. She’d never snored before but since Hailey was taken, it has become a constant sound, like the ticking of an analog clock. Not surprising when she spends all her days weeping and blowing her nose.

  But this morning the birds are back. Except that it’s nearing the end of summer so they’d never gone. Their singing was simply drowned out by Tasha’s incessant snoring. But Tasha’s not snoring this morning.

  She hasn’t made a sound.

  “Tash,” I say tentatively.

  Louder. “Tash.”

  A hideous thought gnaws at some distant part of my brain but refuses to come forward. My feet carry me toward the bed. But I’m not sure whether I’m even moving of my own volition.

  “Tasha,” I say.

  As I nudge her, my eyes drift to her nightstand and the four pill bottles standing there, lined up in a neat row like toy soldiers. For a moment, I fear all the bottles are empty. But clearly they’re not.

  I lift each bottle in turn.

  Painkiller.

  Muscle relaxer.

  Tranquilizer.

  Antidepressant.

  Each bottle still contains a number of pills.

  I place my hand on her arm to nudge her again. Her skin is icy to the touch.

  The AC’s on. “You keep your house like an icebox,” Aubrey just said.

  I grab Tasha by the shoulder and roll her over.

  Her lips are blue.

  “Aubrey!” I yell.

  I call her name again even though I can already hear her hustling up the stairs.

  There’s a bottle of Dasani on the nightstand. Only a few ounces left in it, but I twist the cap and toss the water in Tasha’s face in an effort to wake her.

  “What’s happening, Simon?”

  The panic in Aubrey’s voice mimics my own.

  My fingers are on Tasha’s neck. I don’t feel a pulse.

  I wheel around to see Aubrey, her eyes wide as she processes what’s going on. But seconds later, there’s a transformation. From terrified friend to the calm, cool nurse that she is in Costa Rica. She steps forward and takes control.

  “Call nine-one-one,” she says to me.

  For a moment I’m frozen and she has to say it again, louder but just as calmly.

  I dash around to the other side of the bed and grab the cordless. As I dial I watch Aubrey place her lips on Tasha’s, creating a seal.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s the location of your emergency?”

  Frantic, I rattle off our address.

  “Police, fire, or medic?”

  “An ambulance, please. Please, hurry.”

  “An ambulance is on its way. What’s the emergency?”

  “An overdose, I think. Prescription medication.”

  I hear the sound of my own voice but it doesn’t feel as though I’m speaking. I can barely make out the words as I say them and I’m hoping the operator understands me. I hope I’m not speaking gibberish.

  “Do you know which type of medication?”

  Aubrey is performing chest compressions, counting to herself as she works.

  “Sir, do you know which type of medication?”

  “Hydrocodone,” I say. “Benzodiazepines. SSRIs. Muscle relaxants.”

  “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Fisk. Simon Fisk.”

  Aubrey’s back to Tasha’s lips. I try to read her eyes but see nothing except determination.

  “All right, Simon,” the operator says. “Who ingested these pills?”

  “Tasha,” I say, my voice cracking beneath the weight of the call. “My wife, Tasha.”

  “Do you know how many pills she took?”

  “I don’t. There are still some left in each bottle.”

  “Simon,” the operator says, “do you know whether this was an accidental overdose or a suicide attempt?”

  Suicide. “I don’t know. I’ve no idea.”

  “When did she take these pills?”

  “Last night?” My voice doesn’t sound like my own. “I don’t know exactly what time.” />
  “Has Tasha been depressed lately?”

  Aubrey pauses and looks up at me. There are fresh tears in her eyes. That look of determination is gone, replaced by complete and total despair.

  “Simon,” the operator prods, “has your wife been depressed lately?”

  “Of course she has,” I say, crying. “Our little girl was taken a few weeks ago. And I gave her all the blame.”

  “It will be all right, Simon,” the operator says. “An ambulance should be arriving at your house at any moment.”

  I stare at Aubrey. Her eyes are telling me it’s hopeless.

  Still, I look down at Tasha; I need to see for myself.

  Oh, god.

  A thick red-brown liquid is oozing from her nose and mouth onto the sheets. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I know too well what it means.

  Into the phone, I whimper, “It doesn’t matter. It’s too late. It’s over. Now both my wife and daughter are gone.”

  Chapter 51

  After disconnecting with Kati Sheffield, it slowly began to settle on me. Now there was no question, was there?

  As I set the phone down on the table, Zoey asked if I was all right.

  “It’s her,” I said. “There is no Shauna Adair, at least not anymore. She died here in London twelve years ago. The same summer Hailey went missing.”

  “What does this mean, Simon? That your daughter assumed this dead girl’s name right after she was taken?”

  I thought about it. “She couldn’t have. Not right away. Not publicly anyway. Hailey was six that summer. Shauna was eleven.”

  “So it would’ve had to have been much more recent, right?”

  I flashed on my last hour at Gilchrist’s house in Glasgow. “Quigg told me he only met her a couple years ago. At a nightclub, here in London.”

  “Hailey would have been only sixteen,” Zoey said.

  What were Quigg’s words when I asked him how old Shauna was?

  “I don’t ken. I have a ‘naw ask, naw tell’ policy, see.”

  “Quigg knew she was young,” I said. “So did Lennox Sterling. When he asked her what year she was born in, she had to count it out on her fingers.”

  While I attempted to fit this piece of the puzzle with the one I received earlier at Knight’s End, the door to the hotel room received an abrupt rap. Then I heard the electronic click as Ostermann inserted his key card into the lock.

  “If you won’t tell me your name,” Ostermann was saying as the door swung open, “I’ll call you John. How does John suit you?”

  “Like I’m soliciting a bloody prostitute,” said a voice from behind him.

  A familiar voice.

  “John,” Ostermann said, “I’d like you to meet my two associates.…”

  He trailed off as his eyes fixed on me and Zoey, both of us out of our seats, each of our mouths hanging open. He turned to Welker’s client, whose face had contorted much like ours had, whose eyes had nearly bulged out of his skull.

  “Am I missing something?” Ostermann said. “Do you three know each other?”

  “Simon?” my father said as his entire body stiffened. “Tuesday?” He looked hard at Ostermann. “I demand to know what the devil is going on here.”

  I blanked. This third piece of the puzzle, after Shauna’s death certificate and the name of the Knight’s End pub’s owner, seemed not to fit with the others.

  The door closed behind Ostermann and a befuddled Alden Fisk.

  I took a step forward. My father appeared older, frailer, smaller than he ever had before. I’d seen him just over two years ago when I returned to the States from Minsk to ask for his help financing a network of clinics devoted to the children of northern Ukraine and Belarus.

  He had looked old then but nothing like the man who stood before us now.

  “You hired Elijah Welker?” I said to him.

  I didn’t attempt to mask the inherent anger and hatred in my voice. I figured it didn’t matter. My father knew damn well just how I felt about him. He’d known since I was about twelve years old.

  “I hired Eli, yes,” he said with an air of defiance.

  Already he was on the defensive and I wanted to know why.

  “For what reason?” I said.

  “To find my only grandchild, of course. But I suspect you already knew that or you wouldn’t be sitting here, would you?”

  “Why did you think you’d find her here in the UK?” I said.

  He took a step backward, the contours of his face shifting as he came to realize that Zoey and I were as shocked to see him as he was to see us.

  He said, “I think we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, Simon. Why don’t you first tell me what led you here?”

  My initial instinct was to toss up an impenetrable wall, to tell him nothing. But after twelve years I was too close to finding my daughter. Though I could be sure of very little at that point, of one thing I was entirely certain: I loved Hailey more than I hated my father.

  “The photo of the girl wanted for Welker’s murder in Dublin,” I said. “A former FBI analyst I work with suggested it might be Hailey.”

  “And?” he practically hollered.

  “And what?”

  “Is it? Is the girl Welker was following my granddaughter?”

  “We don’t know,” I said. “We haven’t found her yet.”

  “Well, we’d better hurry, hadn’t we? Before the police beat us to her. It would be a hell of a thing, after twelve years, to find her only to have her locked away in that godforsaken country for the rest of her life, wouldn’t it?”

  His belligerence shouldn’t have taken me by surprise but it caused me some confusion.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” I said, moving toward him. “How did you know to look for her here in London? Why did you hire Eli Welker—a British investigator—in the first place?”

  Alden Fisk looked from me to Zoey then to Ostermann.

  A rare look of resignation fell over his visage. “I spoke to someone recently,” he said in a tired voice. “An old mate from medical school here in London. He was vacationing with his wife in Newport, and he looked me up. He told me he’d encountered a boyhood mate of mine recently. A publican in the East End. And that this former friend of mine had mentioned living in the District of Columbia up until about ten years ago. Which would have included the time Hailey went missing.”

  There it was, the piece of the puzzle that linked all the others. Including the name the bartender at Knight’s End had given me—the name of the current owner of Terry’s Pub back in Washington, D.C.

  “Nigel Cummings,” I said.

  My father’s eyes narrowed. “Nigel Cummings? No. No, I know no one by that name.”

  “Then who the hell are you talking about?” I said.

  He motioned with his chin at my sister and said three words that startled us all: “Tuesday’s biological father.”

  Chapter 52

  The story sounded familiar though there were some differences in the telling. Like the solicitor, for instance, he was gone, replaced by a man of medicine. A doctor.

  “Until just now,” my father said from his seat on the bed, “I couldn’t know for sure.”

  “So what finally convinced you?” I said.

  “The name of the pub, of course. The Knight’s End. That’s the name of the pub my medical school mate told me about. Before I heard those words come out of your mouth, I couldn’t be a hundred-percent certain, you understand? Or else I would have phoned you, Simon.”

  “Get on with it,” I told him.

  “Turns out,” he said in his measured cadence, “this is all about two boyhood mates. Born in the same city in the same month of the same year.” He rose as though to emphasize the importance of what he was about to relate. “London. November, 1943. FDR and Winston Churchill were meeting with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo and would then meet with Joseph Stalin in Tehran.”

  “Spare us the World War Two history lesson,” Oste
rmann interjected, “if you don’t mind.”

  “Pardon, Herr Ostermann.” My father shifted his body so that his back was to Ostermann. “So, back to the two boyhood mates. They hailed from the same social class, you see. Both boys were well-built, sharp as swords, and competitive, to boot. In academics and athletics. They were both handsome devils, who attracted the same type of young lady. Smart, sophisticated women every bit as ravishing as Grace Kelly, Jayne Mansfield, or Marilyn Monroe.”

  I said, “Let’s fast-forward a bit, shall we?”

  His iron-gray brows bent inwardly, nearly meeting above his nose. “You never did demonstrate much patience, Simon. It’s why I knew you’d never fit into medicine. Cop was more your speed, then and now, apparently.”

  “Two boyhood mates,” I said as calmly as I could manage.

  “Two boyhood mates,” he repeated, trying to recapture his rhythm. “One of whom would grow up to be a doctor, the other a gangster. The doctor would go on to marry a wealthy woman. The gangster would have a child with a drug-addicted harlot.” He paused, looked sympathetically at Zoey. “The gangster’s daughter, as you may have guessed, was born less than a year before the doctor’s son.”

  “Christ,” I muttered.

  The gangster, he went on to say, named his daughter Tuesday.

  The doctor named his son Simon.

  “Despite their different lots in life—all of which resulted from the boys’ respective decisions, good and bad, and don’t let anyone dare tell you otherwise—the doctor and the gangster remained mates. Good mates, I’d add. The doctor going so far as to risk his medical license in order to treat the gangster and his goons. Gunshots, stab wounds. Venereal disease, even. Oh, the venereal disease in the late sixties, early seventies. It shocked the conscience. You’d be amazed, Simon—”

  “Let’s move on, shall we?”

  He huffed then finally pursed his lips and continued. “Their children, being roughly the same age, played together, of course. They were toddlers, they became close; as close as toddlers can be, anyway, given their degree of emotional maturity. But close enough that their fathers often joked about how the boy and girl would inevitably marry and have children of their own someday.”

  Zoey scoffed. “Since we’ve spent our entire lives believing we’re brother and sister, I think we can skip this part as well.”