by Sean Black
“Okay. Well, if you do—”
“I’ll be sure and call you,” RJ said, cutting him off.
He didn’t know how long he could keep being asked these questions. Not because he was scared about lying to the cops, but because the longer it went on, the more he felt like he might start telling the truth.
As he was talking to them, it was as if he could see another RJ telling them everything from all the way back to now.
He’d once seen a TV show about people who had this problem with their brain that meant they just blurted things out, cuss words, things like that. Things they knew they couldn’t or shouldn’t say. But the more they felt they shouldn’t say it, the more they did. It was called Tourette’s Syndrome.
That was how he felt right now, like he was on the edge of something like that. Except instead of cussing, he would start shouting the truth, including the evil things he had done, or helped get done.
“I got work to do,” he said finally, hoping this would get them moving before he lost his mind entirely.
“Okay. Well, if you see anything,” the older deputy said, handing him a card, “give us a call.”
Years without anyone giving him a business card, and now he’d had two in one morning. He took it, and tucked it into his pocket with the other.
He and George watched the deputies walk back to their patrol car and get in. George seemed a lot sadder to see them go than he was. He scuttled up to the fence, and pressed the tip of his snout against it, his teeth on show the way he did sometimes, like the world was one big joke he couldn’t help smiling at.
RJ was just happy that Sue Ann hadn’t been there. She’d had to go to work.
He walked over to Curious George, and hunkered down next to the fence. It was strange: he knew this animal could kill him with ease but he had never, not for a moment, been afraid of him. Careful, sure, but not scared.
Truth be told, Mimsy scared him more than any alligator. She was more cunning for a start.
After a minute, he straightened up. His mind flashed back on the car, and the woman who’d been trapped inside.
He had a thought. Save her. He pushed it away.
It stayed there. Nagging at him. He tried again to dismiss it. He couldn’t. Now it was there, he couldn’t rid his mind of it.
He cursed himself. A conscience was a burden.
He pulled his pack of smokes from his shirt pocket and lit one. He took a deep draw. He only ever smoked when Sue Ann was at work. They didn’t have the money for cigarettes, yet when he was really stressed it was about the only thing that calmed his nerves.
What if he stumbled across the car? By accident.
She was probably already dead from the crash anyway. He thought he’d heard Lyle say she was alive, but she couldn’t last long out there.
He could drive down. Take a look.
He didn’t have to decide anything now. There was no harm in looking, was there?
51
Ty parked the Ford across from the library and got out. There was a commotion outside the diner. He went down the sidewalk and joined the back of a small knot of people who were gathered outside. He braced himself for bad news. Murmurs of a body being found.
“My belly thinks my throat’s been cut.”
“What’s the matter with him, anyway?”
“I was looking forward to some of those pancakes all morning.”
He quickly established that Lyle, the short-order cook, hadn’t shown up for work, leaving a sidewalk full of disgruntled, and hungry, customers.
Across the street, a County Sheriff’s Department patrol car was parked. A few hundred yards further down there was another.
Ty had worried about the response to his call, but from what he’d seen driving around, conducting his own search, they had taken his report that Cressida was missing with the seriousness it deserved. Of course, their response could also have been down to his making a phone call to Gregg, her editor, in New York. He had presumably made his own calls after he had finished what had been a fraught conversation with Ty.
“What do you mean she’s missing? You’re supposed to be there to make sure nothing happens.”
That had been the editor’s first response to the news. Ty didn’t blame him. He told him about the traffic stop and how he suspected his drink had been spiked. But he wasn’t making excuses. If anything had happened to her, as far as he was concerned it was on him.
One lesson Ty had taken from his military service was that responsibility meant accepting the blame as well as the glory. So far in all of this there had been little glory, and plenty of blame.
He left the hungry diner patrons, and dodged through traffic into the library. It was a huge long shot, but he was running out of places to check. Maybe Cressida had snuck back in. She had been curious about the room down in the basement that had been barricaded behind boxes.
It still didn’t explain why there was no sign of the car, but he figured it had to be a possibility.
Miss Parsons was behind the desk. She seemed surprised to see him.
“I’m looking for Miss King. She hasn’t been here this morning, has she?”
The librarian got up. “No. Why? Is something wrong?”
Ty wasn’t sure if she was serious. Most of the County Sheriff’s Department was crawling over Darling, and the librarian seemed not to have noticed.
“Yes, she’s missing. You haven’t heard?”
She took off her reading glasses and put them down, getting up from behind the desk. “Oh, is that what all the commotion outside is about?”
She sounded concerned, but her smirk told a different story. She seemed to be enjoying this.
Ty had neither the time nor the patience for games right now. Or passive-aggressive bullshit, for that matter.
“Do you mind if I take a look in the basement?”
She smiled. “Be my guest.”
He walked past her. Her face wore the same self-satisfied smirk as he opened the door, flicked on the light at the top and started down the stairs.
Ty was wasting his time and he knew it. But he didn’t know what else to do, apart from keep driving around, or sit in the Ford and wait for a call to say she’d been found, dead or alive. His first real solo gig, and he’d messed up in a way that was off the scale. Outwitted by a racist grandma and a bunch of rednecks.
The desk where Cressida had been working was strewn with papers and notes. He gathered up her notes, leaving the old newspapers and press cuttings.
He walked across to the door that had been blocked by the stack of boxes. He lifted one of the last boxes and moved it to the side.
Above him he heard the door at the top of the steps slam shut. Then he heard it being locked.
Ty put down the box and headed up the stairs, more irritated than anything. The librarian had locked him down here. It was a childish gesture.
He tried the handle. It turned but didn’t open. He rattled it a few times.
52
Lock looked up at the departures board in Grantley Adams International Airport. It was showing column after column of cancelled flights. He had been there for pushing three hours now, and his flight had already been delayed twice.
The word was that a storm was working its way toward the Windward Isles, disrupting both in- and outbound flights. He had tried making some calls to see if any private jets were operating, but they were subject to the same restrictions.
A tropical storm provided equal-opportunity delays. It didn’t matter whether you had a billion dollars and a Learjet or were going to be tucked up in economy with your knees to your chest, air-traffic control was taking no chances.
He walked back to the check-in desk where two polite Bajans were busy dealing with a scrum of irate passengers, who had failed to grasp that there was little they could do.
A few people from his flight had already given up, and walked outside to take a cab back to their hotel, grab some rum punch and hunker down for the high winds and las
hing rain that were forecast to hit at any time.
Under normal circumstances he would have done the same and been grateful. These were not normal circumstances. Ty was out there in Florida, and things had taken a downward turn. He needed to get out of Barbados.
Lock looked back at the departures board as the status of his flight flashed a change. The word “delayed” was replaced by “cancelled”. It looked like his partner was on his own, and there was nothing he could do about it.
53
RJ eased his truck to a stop. He still didn’t know if this was the right thing to do. The past few days had felt like a much more intense continuation of his life. To speak or remain silent? To do what he knew in his heart and mind was right, or protect the woman he loved?
The young black woman, the brooding presence of the man escorting her and a spiral of events had left the choice urgent and stark. He had no idea if she was alive or dead. He didn’t know either how that would change what he had to do now.
If she was dead most people, if they were being honest, would tell him to leave the whole thing alone. Not get involved. After all, nothing he could do would bring her back, not under that circumstance.
RJ didn’t think he agreed. Knowing where a dead person was, or having no idea and living with that doubt, were two very different things for their loved ones.
And if she was still alive? Then his decision was made for him.
He had thought about it on the drive. He might not even have to implicate anyone. He could claim he had happened upon the car. It would be a stroke of good fortune rather than a grave betrayal.
Yes, he thought, as he climbed down from the truck cab. That was how he would play it. As a chance encounter. He was just driving along when he’d noticed something sitting in the swamp that didn’t look right. Maybe the sun had caught the windshield and he’d seen the glare. That could be it. That was plausible.
He walked back down the road to where Mimsy and Lyle had tried to conceal where the Honda had taken off and gone into the water.
He had to hand it to Mimsy, she and Lyle had done a pretty good job. Things might be easy to see, as long as you knew what you were looking for, but most people would have driven straight past this thirty-yard stretch of road without so much as a second glance.
He stepped off the road, moving a broken branch out of his way, and walked toward the edge of the swamp. The car was there, exactly as it had been, passenger side down, submerged in the water, the other half sticking out above the waterline. The front had concertinaed in, but besides that it was in fairly decent shape.
Raising his hand over his eyebrows to shield the sun’s glare, he peered at the cabin. It was empty. It was only then that he saw her, stretched out across the driver’s-side door panels. One arm hung limply over the edge.
She looked like some old painting you’d see in a fancy museum. A deathbed scene. A beautiful maiden laid out to die, maybe after drinking poison. Only instead of her body being arranged over some fancy red-velvet couch she was lying on top of a car in the middle of a swamp, quietly frying in the heat as the insects feasted on her.
No, he thought, he couldn’t leave someone like that. It wasn’t right. No more than leaving Carole Chabon hanging from that tree, like strange fruit.
It wasn’t just that it wasn’t right. It wasn’t decent. That was the word his momma would have used, God rest her soul.
He stood there for a moment, staring at her, and thinking about how wasteful all of this was. Another young woman who only wanted to do something good was dead.
Then she moved.
54
“Hey, can you open this?” Ty called again, rattling the handle for effect, only to be met by silence.
He took a half-step back and almost lost his footing. She was there. He could hear her moving around, no doubt enjoying every second of his frustration.
“I could just shoot the lock clean off,” he shouted, anger starting to rise a little in his voice. “I don’t want to do that, but I will if I have to.”
She had stopped moving. He couldn’t hear any more soft footfalls. But there was a different sound emanating from the other side of the basement door.
He pressed his ear to it. He could hear her talking, but not to him. It sounded like she was on the phone to someone.
It didn’t take him long to figure out who she was speaking with.
“Yes, he was going crazy. I managed to lock him in the basement. Yes, he has a gun. Can you get someone here?” she was saying.
Ty rolled his eyes. From childish to pathetic. She was trying to get him arrested. Cast him as the angry black man threatening the little old white lady.
She must have hung up because she stopped talking. Ty stayed silent, listening. She started speaking again, it sounded like another call, but this time the panic was gone from her voice, replaced by a tone that was cool and calculating.
“Mimsy, yes, it’s me,” she said.
She was speaking more quietly, aware that he might be listening, not wanting him to hear this call.
“Yes, you were right. He’s here.”
Ty cursed under his breath. “You mother––”
“Yes, yes, they’re on their way,” Miss Parsons said. “No, it’s really no trouble. I’ll make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”
Hearing her say that did something to Ty. He was beyond rage now with her, with this town and its mealy-mouthed residents, who smiled to your face while they planned your death. It was done. If she or anyone else thought he would go gently, they were about to be proven very wrong.
He felt himself shifting into a different mental state. One he hadn’t experienced in a while.
Back in the Marines one of his buddies had had a name for it. He’d called it Berserker Mode. It was a place of focused warfare where everything fell away other than the primary objective.
Right now his objective was to get the hell out of there. Ty pulled his SIG Sauer P226 clear, and made sure he had one in the chamber. He called out a warning to anyone who might be on the other side of the door, and squeezed the trigger.
He watched as the wood around the lock splintered. He took another half-step to the side, adjusting his angle, and squeezed off another round. This one took out the lock dead centre.
He holstered the SIG and shouldered the door open. He walked out, shoulders hunched, head on a swivel.
The librarian was nowhere to be seen. He started toward the long desk.
He kept his steps heavy. It had the desired effect. There was movement.
A black-shod foot protruded from under the desk. Ty walked over and pulled out the chair she’d dragged under the desk to help conceal her position. He tapped her heel with his toe of his boot. Just hard enough to get her attention.
She didn’t move.
“Get up before I pick you up,” he told her.
“Please,” she was saying. “Please don’t.”
She scooted herself out backwards on her hands and knees. He reached down with a shovel-hand and helped her to her feet.
“It’s Mimsy. She . . .”
Ty shook his head, slow and deliberate. She quietened down.
The begging started up again. “Please, I have . . .”
He looked at her with total contempt. “You think I’d shoot you, in cold blood? Murder you right here?”
She was crying, big fat tears rolling down her cheeks.
“You people are right about one thing,” said Ty. “I’m not like you, and I pray I never will be.”
He turned and strode out of the library, shoulders back, chest out, head high, mind still set firmly to Berserker Mode.
55
Cressida had heard people speak about the will to live—the ability of a human being to summon the mental fortitude to keep themselves alive when their body wanted to give in. Back in New York she had interviewed an army ranger who had been blown up while serving in Iraq. He had tourniqueted the stumps of his own legs to keep from bleeding out, and survi
ved for almost four hours before he could be medevac-ed to safety.
When she had asked him how he had managed to push through the pain and suffering to survive, he had looked her straight in the eye, and said, “I just decided I wasn’t going to give those assholes the satisfaction of watching me die.”
At the time she remembered asking herself if life was as simple as deciding to keep going.
She had taken him at his word. Now she wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t willing death, but she was in so much pain and so thirsty that she would have taken almost any relief right now. And death had to be the ultimate relief, an eternal black void of nothingness.
Pain was her present. So was thirst. And right now the present sucked.
Then, from nowhere, she could feel eyes on her. Human eyes.
Not that she could see anyone. Not at first. But she knew someone was there. On the bank, by the road. Looking at her.
She had been lying flat on her back because it took some of the pressure off a searing pain that ran from her lower back all the way up her spine and into her neck. Her leg was still unforgiving, as bad as it had been all night.
She could feel her skin burning, and the dryness in her mouth made calling out impossible. Her throat felt swollen, so did her sinuses, and her face burned hot from the sun.
Part of her hoped to lose consciousness, for the decision to be taken out of her hands. It hadn’t happened. She had stayed awake and tortured by the pain.
She tried to get onto her side so that she could face the bank and get a glimpse of whoever she could feel looking at her. Shifting her hips set off another knife-jab of pain that trapped her next breath in her chest.
Trying again, she managed to move an inch or two. She put down her hand and immediately drew it back as the car panel burned her palm.