by Candice Fox
“Is she coming back?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand how I can help.”
“Well, I know your daughter has wanted a dog.”
“How do you know my daughter?” Andrea pulled back, her mouth hardening. This wasn’t going the way I’d planned. I could feel the muscles in my neck and shoulders pulling tighter and tighter. I dropped the dog at my feet, maybe too hard.
“We talk over the fence,” I said, pointed to the back of the house. “I’m Kevin. Your next-door neighbor.”
“Well, Kevin, I don’t know how I can help.” Andrea glanced down at Princess, the cold bitch eyes of a woman without a soul. “We can’t have a dog here. I work. There’d be no one to take care of it during the day. And Penny’s not old enough—”
“Penny is very responsible,” I snapped. “She’s a very mature person.”
“That may be,” Andrea said carefully, eyeing me with the stillness and caution a person reserves for a madman on the street. “But Penny is not having a dog. Not this dog. Not any dog. If your irresponsible sister has dropped this animal on you and gone away, I suggest you keep it yourself or you take it to the pound.”
Princess was straining on her lead, trying to sniff the flowering bushes to the side of the doorway. I yanked her back to my feet. The dog yelped. Andrea took a step back in the doorway, holding on to the jamb.
“Don’t you think it’s important,” I said slowly, “to listen to what Penny wants? She wants a dog. This is the perfect dog for her. It’s not hard to care for a dog. You feed it. You pick up its shit. It’ll bring Penny untold fucking joy. What kind of a mother are you?”
Andrea stiffened. I’d gone too far. I felt sweat breaking out on my temples. I needed to rescue the situation before it got out of control. Before I got out of control.
“I’m sorry.” I wiped the sweat on the collar of my shirt. “I’m really sorry. I just—”
“Take the dog to the pound,” Andrea said. “And don’t talk to my child anymore.”
She slammed the door in my face.
Claudia Flannery arranged herself in the chair in the interrogation room at Crimson Lake police station and sighed, watery eyes wandering disdainfully over every scuff mark and stain on the bare white walls. It was a mystery to Sweeney why the room seemed to inspire such disgust in the bejeweled old crone. She remembered the sour smell of burning oil and human sweat hanging in the air of the cellar beneath the Barking Frog, the occasional unmistakable whiff of Vaseline. She could only imagine what that smelled like when the lights were up, what stains and marks the candlelit darkness hid.
Amanda took a long while finishing up an explosion of friendly chatter with Sweeney’s chief outside the interrogation room door. The friendliness seemed distinctly one-sided. Chief Superintendent Damien Clark had indeed been around when Amanda had committed her murder, and had made it clear to Sweeney that he wanted the bubbly investigator out of the station as soon as possible. Sweeney had assumed that, when Chief Clark discovered she had been working with the private investigator, she would be yanked into his office and given a roasting, and that the lean old man would have insisted Amanda be removed from the investigation altogether. But it wasn’t so. Not yet, anyway. Perhaps the hard-faced, softly spoken man knew that Sweeney felt lonely and intimidated in her role as the station’s only detective-rank inspector. Like a father who tolerates his child’s bad friend, he’d staved off Amanda’s blathering with minimal civility, huffed off to his office, and slammed the glass door, leaving the two to interview the bar owner together.
Amanda watched the preparations of the recording for the interview like a fascinated child. When Sweeney identified herself as Detective Inspector, Amanda gave her a little congratulatory bump in the shoulder with her own, obliterating any air of officialdom Sweeney had managed to gather in the room until that point. Sweeney set her pen to her interview sheet and wrote Claudia Flannery’s name at the top of the page.
“Ms. Flannery,” Sweeney said, “I’m obliged to inform you that we intend to pursue a range of charges against you arising from what Ms. Pharrell and I witnessed last night.”
Claudia yawned.
“The first charge,” Sweeney insisted, her voice hardening, “will be lying to the police. You told us your establishment, the Barking Frog, would be closed yesterday evening. That was not the truth. And you failed to mention the sizeable basement connected to your establishment, thereby preventing our forensics officers from including it in their processing of the crime scene.”
“No one asked me about the basement.” Claudia rolled her eyes. “Perhaps if you’d wanted to search it, you could have told me it was considered part of the crime scene.”
“We never knew it was there!” Sweeney said.
“Then it looks like someone should have checked the building plans to ensure they covered all of the establishment,” Claudia sneered. “Who exactly is in charge of this investigation?”
“Sweeney!” Amanda pointed. “You’re in charge! It was you!”
Sweeney kicked Amanda’s shin under the table.
“We suspect that the release of the sprinkler system that damaged the crime scene at the bar yesterday morning was not an accident,” Sweeney continued. “I put it to you, Ms. Flannery, that you deliberately tampered with a crime scene in order to prepare your establishment for the events of last night.”
“‘I put it to you.’” Amanda closed her eyes, sighed, as though remembering an old, cherished song. “I was waiting for you to say that. I love it when cops say that.”
“Lying to police, overtly and by omission,” Sweeney continued, glaring at Amanda. “Tampering with a crime scene. Attempting to pervert the course of just—”
“I understand what you’re saying, Detective Inspector Sweeney.” Claudia gave a bored sigh.
“Then there are drugs charges,” Sweeney said. “Amanda and I saw people in that room engaging in the use of illicit substances. A search of the establishment will surely render positive results for evidence of drugs on the premises. And I suppose none of the substantial income you receive from events like the one you hosted last night shows up on your income tax statements.”
“Detective.” Claudia put a withered hand meaningfully on one of Sweeney’s. “None of those charges are ever going to be pursued. So why don’t you just dispense with the threats and ask me what you want to ask me?”
Sweeney reeled in her chair, glanced at Amanda to see if there was something the investigator knew that she didn’t. Amanda was examining her chipped black nail polish.
“What are you talking about?”
Claudia fiddled with a huge red stone on a pendant on her spotted chest. “What you saw last night was a well-established, very popular gathering. A very exclusive meeting of very particular people who pay a premium charge to engage in activities of a specialist taste.”
“Well-established,” Amanda crooned deeply, imitating the woman across the table. “Particular people. Premium charge. Specialist taste. I like the way you talk, Clauds. You should work in advertising.”
“My establishment caters to activities that my clients like to keep private,” Claudia said. “I keep secrets. People come to me from all across the state, sometimes from the other side of the country, with unique requests. I do what I can to fulfill those requests. Someone wants to drink human blood, or have someone cut them, shave them, burn them during an intimate act, well, there’s only one place in the whole state where you can experience that in a safe, secure, professional environment.”
“I’m not sure I need to know all this.” Sweeney grimaced.
“Last year I had someone come to me who wanted to experience being eaten. Only in part, of course. I don’t deal with murder. But I was able to find that person a partner, and at one of my parties the two went off together and enjoyed that experience.”
“Are human beings red or white meat?” Amanda asked.
“Could we just stick to
the point, Ms. Flannery?” Sweeney snapped. “We’ve got a double murder on our hands in an establishment that you fully admit caters to dark, twisted tastes.”
“Dark, twisted tastes!” Claudia slammed her hands on the table, her palms spread, as though bracing for an earthquake. “That must be the most ignorant thing I’ve heard in a long, long time.”
“I don’t know if it’s ignorant but it’s certainly politically incorrect.” Amanda nudged Sweeney, waggled a finger in her face. “People can drink each other’s blood if they want to. No one’s forcing you to go watch.”
“You forced me to go watch last night,” Sweeney hissed, blocking the microphone beside her. “We could have been walking in on anything.”
“We did walk in on anything.” Amanda smiled. “Anything and everything!”
Sweeney unblocked the microphone. “Claudia Flannery, did you arrange for someone to murder two young people in your bar as a part of the sexual or … or experiential services you provide?”
“I did not.”
“Do you have knowledge of why these young people were murdered in your establishment that you’re keeping from police?”
“No, I do not.”
“Did you arrange this experience, and then have the person who paid you for it make the whole thing look like a robbery? Did you have them throw the bar’s takings up onto the roof for you to retrieve later? Did you try to tamper with evidence of the crime by releasing the bar’s sprinkler system and destroying the crime scene?”
“No, I did not.” Claudia Flannery hung an arm draped in glittering fabric over the back of her chair. “And now that I’ve told you that I didn’t, you need to put the whole matter to rest, Detective Inspector Sweeney. Because I guarantee you, those are the only answers you’re going to get, and banging your head against the issue for much longer is only going to diminish your obviously vibrant soul.”
“What are you talking about?” Sweeney looked to Amanda again. “Ms. Flannery, you’re facing serious charges here. You need to just—”
There was a tapping on the glass panel in the door to the interrogation room. Amanda jolted in her seat as though stung. It was Chief Clark, curling a finger, beckoning Pip into the hall.
As the door closed behind Sweeney, the tall, immaculately dressed man began to speak. His tone was one of reverence. Quiet, and calm.
“Thank Ms. Flannery for her time and send her out,” he said. “Call her a cab and give her a cab voucher.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Pack it up, and ship her out.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve just had a call from the premier’s office, that’s why,” he said. The two officers stared at each other. Claudia’s words came back to Sweeney in a sickening rush.
A very exclusive meeting of very particular people …
“Oh, Jesus Christ.” Sweeney turned and kicked the wall beside the interrogation room door. It was all she could do not to scream. “Are you serious? Are you fucking serious? I don’t care who’s going to these underground weirdo sex parties or how fucking important they are. I’m trying to find out who murdered two kids!”
“Well, word is getting around to the very important people that the hostess of their ‘underground weirdo sex parties’ is giving an official interview, and that is going to cause mass panic if we don’t shut it down right now.” Chief Clark’s whisper was hard and low, like a snake’s hiss. “I’m not going to field calls from magistrates and celebrities and fucking politicians all day long reassuring them that their dirty little secrets aren’t going to be on the cover of the paper tomorrow just because you don’t have any other leads.”
“I have other leads!”
“Great. Drop this one and get on to them instead.”
Chief Clark tugged open the door to the interview room.
“Cooked it with garlic and olive oil?” Amanda was leaning over the table, mouth agape, embroiled in gossip with Claudia Flannery. “Did you taste some? What was it like?”
“Get out, Amanda.” Sweeney jerked a thumb toward the door, defeat making her limbs seem heavy as lead. “Ms. Flannery, you too.”
When I left the house, Dale was sitting on the porch in the sun staring idly at the list of convicted sex offenders in the area of his home, shifting the pages slowly, eyes wandering over the faces there. It seemed a dangerous thing to leave him doing. He’d been shocked to learn the number of registered offenders in his local area, and I didn’t think that shock was eased by the fact that of the twenty-one people listed in the fifty kilometers from where Claire was abducted, only two had been convicted for sexually assaulting a child. In the collection were men who had raped or molested adult women, their wives or an acquaintance usually, but in one case a woman at a nursing home where the offender worked. There was one female offender on the list, a teacher who had been convicted of sexually molesting a teenage boy. The rest were made up of child pornography charges.
I’d watched Dale looking over the pages for a little while, knowing exactly the kind of dark thoughts that were swirling through his brain. It’s a shock to learn for the first time that there are far more sex offenders around in polite society than the newspapers report. Gang rape and child rape make the national news, but a man’s drunken rape of his neighbor after a house party doesn’t. It’s shocking to learn that they exist at all, and then shocking again to learn that they sometimes go on after serving their time in prison to live relatively ordinary lives working at the local store or sitting down with a friend to coffee on the front porch, or walking their kids to school.
I thought about explaining to Dale that some of the offenses on the list went back decades, and not all of them might be true. But then I imagined a man who I wasn’t completely sure hadn’t raped my daughter trying to explain to me that the world wasn’t such a bad place and I dropped the issue. I’d tried to broach the issue of my new accusations with him, but he wouldn’t look up from the pages.
“I need to know how you feel about them,” I said, struggling to find the right tone. “I mean, you can’t be feeling nothing.”
“I’m trying to get my daughter’s case solved,” he said. “This is about Claire. This is about finding the man who hurt her. I can’t focus on anything but that right now.”
“So you’re just using me,” I said.
“Yes.” He glanced at me. “You think I actually care if you’re a good person or not?”
“Well…”
“What did you think?” he asked. “If I found out you were innocent we were going to be best buds? Go to the pub together and grab a schnitzel? Watch the game?”
“No.”
“The day we find out what happened to Claire, that will be the last day we’ll ever see each other. Maybe it’ll be the last day you’ll see anything at all.”
“What does that mean?”
“What do you think it means?”
I stood uncomfortably, watching him slowly turning the pages of sex offenders over, working his way down the list, reading the details. I left, my stomach in knots, and made a phone call in the car.
Dr. Val Gratteur answered her office phone after only a couple of rings.
“I was just going to call you,” she said.
“Oh, really? Why?”
“No, no. You go first. Mysteries annoy me.” I heard her exhaling, imagined her blowing cigarette smoke. The medical examiner smoked like an old Russian gangster.
“I need a friendly ear. I’m in a bit of trouble.” I told her about Dale Bingley’s haunting presence in my house. The subtle death threat he had just burdened me with.
“Amanda knows he’s there,” I said. “But I feel like someone else needs to know he’s hanging around me in case, I don’t know…”
“In case he does away with you,” Val said.
“He’s been close a couple of times.”
“Well, I’ll make a note of it,” she said. I heard paper shifting against paper, the click of what must have been a p
en. “I’m writing it in my logbook this very instant. Ted Conkaffey … murder … equals Dale … Bingley … I drew a little picture of a knife for good measure.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Are you in the car?”
“I am.”
“Turn it towards Cairns,” she said. “I was going to call you because that murdered boy’s girlfriend is on her way here. She asked to see the body.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” Val said. “Struck me as odd. Thought you might like to watch.”
“I’m on my way,” I said.
* * *
“Don’t freak out,” I said as I entered the medical examiner’s office, the small, frail-looking Val Gratteur turning from her cluttered workbench to greet me. Val had been an early supporter of mine, an unexpected friend in need when I’d turned up at her offices looking for some information about Amanda’s and my first case together. Back then I hadn’t been accustomed to being recognized in public, and she’d sat me down and told me without frills or fuss that she knew who I was and wasn’t convinced of my guilt. Since then she’d proved a good listener when I was afraid or stressed, a solid sounding board for my theories and, of course, an excellent goose babysitter when I went away.
“Oh, crap,” she sighed, noting what remained of my black eyes, the stitches. “You didn’t tell me you’d actually been in fisticuffs with the guy.”
I launched into the placations of a boy who had been in a scrap to a worrisome mother. She sat me down and tested my cracked ribs with her firm hands, looked in my eyes with a little torch. Val was, among all else, my only safe form of medical care since my accusation. She inspected the stitches Amanda had put in me with pouting, thoughtful lips.
“These aren’t half-bad, you know.” She stood back and appreciated my face. “I’d hire her as an assistant if I wasn’t so concerned with how much fun she’d have in here.”
“Are you going to take them out?” I felt the stitches.
“Couple’a days.”
“Will it scar?”