Joe Lucchesi 01 - Darkhouse

by Alex Barclay

  He looked around him. ‘Anna?’ He called out. He got up and walked into the kitchen. It was dark. He checked the fridge again for a message. He checked the empty table top.

  He found himself back on the sofa and this time he knew he was panicked. It was two-thirty. She couldn’t be doing this to him. He tried her again and when she didn’t answer, he went to the hall and grabbed the keys to the Jeep. He drove up the hill and felt a strange shiver when he passed the spot where Katie was found. He slowed as he passed John Miller’s house, then sped up again. ‘Come on, Anna,’ he said. ‘You’re freaking me out here.’ He tapped nervously on the steering wheel. It was cold and dark and his wife was gone and she hadn’t told him where and his gut was saying something was wrong. But it was late and he didn’t know if he could trust his gut when he hadn’t slept and he was wracked with guilt. He tried to work out what he was afraid of: that something had happened to her or just that his shitty letter had happened to her. He didn’t want to be alone. He imagined himself sitting in McDonald’s with Shaun at weekends trying to be his buddy like all the other divorced fathers staring into those slack teenage faces.

  Suddenly, he saw a shape in the centre of the road. He wrenched the steering wheel to the right and swerved into a shallow ditch. He looked back and saw a dead fox. It was clear that most other drivers hadn’t been as quick to avoid it. He reversed back onto the road and kept driving.

  Within minutes he had grabbed his mobile again and redialled. ‘Dammit,’ he yelled, throwing it back on the seat. He drove for hours, just to give her enough time to be home when he got back. His gut spasmed again. He headed home and pulled into the lane, studying the house for any sign that it had changed since he left. He walked in the door and knew it was the same. But he went up the stairs anyway and checked all the rooms. His head started to pound. His jaw felt nailed shut. When he opened his mouth, it was like he was pulling each tooth. He went to the kitchen where he had left his pills and he took too many. He sat on the bed in the spare room, with the portable phone and his mobile beside him. He could feel his head get heavy. If he slept, she could be there in the morning, angry probably, but OK.

  He woke to the phone ringing. His heart leapt.

  Nora never liked Frank’s old armchair. It was brown velour and filled with limp kapok. The arms were bald and the covers were loose. It sat in the downstairs hallway waiting to be taken away for scrap. It was where she found Frank asleep at eight in the morning, his head back, his mouth open. A stack of files was fanned out on the floor in front of him. She knelt down and lay her hands gently on his.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ she said.

  His eyes opened slowly and he struggled to focus on her.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I must have fallen asleep. What time is it?’

  ‘Eight,’ she said. ‘Is this some kind of protest? If I’d known you were going to have a sit-in, I never would have suggested giving the thing away.’

  He smiled. ‘I just sat down for a minute to rest my eyes…’

  ‘What time were you up until?’

  ‘About five,’ he said.

  ‘You poor divil. Anything new?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘Come on,’ she said, patting his hands and standing up. ‘Brekkie.’

  Joe’s heart sank when the voice he heard was not his wife’s.

  ‘Have I caught you at a bad time?’ said Dr McClatchie.

  ‘No. I’m – no.’

  ‘Did you get in contact with that specialist?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I hate to ask, but the fax you brought me the other day…well, I was wondering if I could get another look at it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s really quite important.’

  Joe took a deep breath and spoke quickly to lessen the pain that had built overnight in his jaw. ‘I was way out of line with that, doctor. I was in an emotional situation that shouldn’t have compromised my judgment. And my theory was wrong—’

  ‘I can barely hear you. Could you speak up?’

  He repeated what he said, his gums throbbing, pain pressing against his temples.

  ‘Well, there’s a project it may help me with. I’m giving a talk to—’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Joe. ‘I put it in the garbage once I knew it had nothing to do with Katie.’

  ‘Oh. Did someone tell you that?’

  ‘Not in so many words.’

  He put down the phone and walked around the house again. He felt as if his veins were running hot and cold. He tried Anna’s phone, he took more pills. He lay on the sofa until a pleasant numbness washed over him. But it was happening too quickly; he was sinking too deep. He blinked to keep his eyes focused.

  Myles O’Connor was leaning two elbows on the roof of his car. He had his mobile in one hand and the cord of a handsfree set hanging from his ear. He pulled the small microphone towards his mouth.

  ‘Look! Bottom line? I’m new. He’s old. I’m on the way in, Frank Deegan’s on the way out. Fresh blood versus retiree. Who do you think gives more of a damn about this case than me?’

  Frank stood frozen behind the wall with his sandwich bag in his hand.

  Shaun woke up sweating and unable to move. He stayed that way for five minutes until he finally managed to turn his head. There was a pint of water on his bedside table. He reached out and knocked it onto the floor. He tried to say, ‘Shit’, but he couldn’t pull his tongue free. As soon as he sat up, he felt a rush to his head and he slumped back onto his pillow. His stomach flipped and he knew he wasn’t going to make it to the bathroom. He leaned over the side of the bed and vomited yellow bile into the basin Joe had left there. He vomited again and it shot through his nose, his eyes bulging with the force. He hacked from the acid coating the back of his throat, then heaved until there was nothing left to throw up. He grabbed a T-shirt from the floor and wiped his mouth. He sank back onto the bed, his head swimming. Fragments from the previous night flooded in. He knew Robert and Ali would laugh, but he was not looking forward to facing his parents. Suddenly images of Katie were everywhere. He couldn’t cope with the alcohol coursing through his system and addling his mind.

  Joe knocked on the door and came down. Shaun opened his eyes slowly and thought his father looked drunk. His hair was unkempt and his eyes bloodshot.

  Shaun groaned. ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’

  Joe tried to smile at him. ‘It’s OK, son.’ He walked over to the bed and took the basin out of the way. He sat down.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ he said. ‘I needed you to sleep this off…’

  Shaun saw fear in his father’s eyes for the first time in his life.

  ‘When we got back last night, your mother was gone.’ His words were slow, gently slurred.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s…gone,’ said Joe. He was blinking again, concentrating to hold his head up. He wanted to lie down on the bed and wake up when it was all over.

  ‘What? What do you mean gone? Where?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Joe. ‘She’s not here. She wasn’t here when we came home.’ His lids were heavy.

  ‘Dad, Dad! Are you OK? You don’t seem…are you…have you been drinking?’ He shook Joe’s arm and brought him back.

  ‘No,’ said Joe firmly. ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘What are you saying about Mom?’ said Shaun.

  ‘Your mom is gone somewhere.’

  ‘Where? Did she have plans or something?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘No offence, but your memory sucks.’

  ‘Look, she may have been…mad at me for something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s between me and your mother.’

  Shaun frowned. ‘Well, she wasn’t mad at me. She would have told me if she was going somewhere.’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  Shaun looked hurt. ‘What will we do?’

  ‘Nothing for now. I’ll take care of it. You go to sch
ool. She’ll be back by the time you’re home.’

  ‘I’d rather stay here…I could wait for her…I don’t feel well.’ He flopped his head onto the pillow.

  Joe stood up and threw back the covers. Shaun moaned and curled into a foetal position.

  Joe shook his head. ‘You’re a loser, you do know that.’

  Frank sat at his desk, wondering what O’Connor really wanted that morning. He asked some questions about the progress in the case, but then he just stood with his hands in his pocket, staring out at the sea. The only thing Frank got from his visit was offended. He felt himself redden at the thought. He hoped O’Connor said what he said in anger or to impress someone, not because he thought it was true. Frank found out afterwards that the call had been to Superintendent Brady. And Brady didn’t appreciate bad-mouthing. Maybe that’s what O’Connor had been considering when he was staring out the window.

  Frank unwrapped his sandwich and peeled back the bread. Ham and mustard. There was some comfort in that. But before he ate, he made a quick call to someone he knew would appreciate it.

  ‘Dr McClatchie. Sergeant Frank Deegan here, Mountcannon.’

  ‘Oh, hello.’

  ‘Just a quick call; thought you might be interested to know what those fragments came back as…from Katie Lawson’s skull. You know, after what you said about never finding anything out.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘It was shell. From a Sandhill Snail, would you believe. Probably under the rock you said was used.’

  ‘Well, it’s very decent of you to let me know, sergeant. So I guess the body was moved after all.’

  ‘Yes, but we think it was immediately after the murder. And none of the other trace evidence brought up anything, so…’

  ‘Well, that would make sense.’

  ‘Right. So…well, I’ll let you get back to it.’

  ‘While I have you on, there’s something quite curious I’d like you to hear. I had a visit the other day from Joe Lucchesi…’

  ‘What?’ said Frank.

  Lara had to jerk the phone away from her ear. ‘Well, he’s clearly not in your good books,’ she said. ‘Anyway, he showed me some crime scene photos from the US, asking me if there were any similarities between them and Katie Lawson, which there weren’t. And no, I didn’t tell him that. However, the curious part is, the wounds were almost identical to a PM I carried out just over three weeks ago on that poor girl from Doon – Mary Casey, the one found dead in the field beside her house. I pulled out my file and I would swear that the crimes were committed by the same person. Hers seems more careless, but they’re almost identical.’

  ‘Jesus Christ Almighty,’ said Frank.

  ‘Yes. The odd thing is that when Joe came to my office, which was a bold move, you have to admit, he was very…I wouldn’t like to say pushy, but he was certainly a man on a mission. But when I telephoned him this morning, he had no interest. I mean, I was half-lying to the man about why I was asking, maybe he picked up on that, but anyway, he said he’d thrown the fax away…which I found odd, considering the lengths he’d gone to in the first place. What do you think?’

  The doorbell rang in three short bursts. Joe ran. He fumbled with the latch, then opened the door to a FedEx guy who reached out with a thick, rectangular package and a clipboard. Joe scrawled a signature and closed the door. The Gray file. Joe tore at the plastic and pulled it out. He stared at it – just a bunch of pages with words on them in a plain brown folder. The same kind of folder that could contain your medical notes, tax records, your personnel file…your divorce papers. Every day people got shat on by files. And this one meant more than Joe could bear thinking about. He looked down and saw a bright blue tab towards the back. He flipped it open and scanned a long list of names, one of which was circled. There it was. In black and white, just as Danny liked it. Black and white.

  Oran Butler was bent over in a coughing fit, holding his throat and spraying specks of tomato sauce onto the kitchen floor. A ball of mozzarella and mushrooms shot out. He collapsed into a chair and tried to slow his breathing. Then he picked up the bare pizza slice in front of him and flung it into the sink.

  Richie came in from the living room. ‘Are you all right?’ he said, glancing down at the mess.

  Oran grunted. ‘The whole topping came off in my mouth.’

  ‘I’ll clean that up, don’t worry,’ said Richie, pointing to the floor.

  ‘Well, we know that,’ said Oran.

  Richie was already reaching for a mop.

  ‘We’ll be having a word or two from your pal, tomorrow, by the way,’ said Oran.

  ‘My pal who?’

  ‘Why, D.I. O’Connor. The D.S. is off for the week, so O’Connor is lowering himself to get street with the Drug Squad.’

  ‘Really?’ said Richie. ‘You’ll enjoy that.’

  ‘Not if I’m coming home every evening and you’re here pining for him.’

  Joe sped along the Waterford road, hyper-aware of the few cars that passed him. His mind was shocked out of its fog and raced with the adrenaline pounding through him. He went heavy on the accelerator, feeding the part of him that wanted to keep driving and driving until everything was behind him and Anna was home.

  He parked the Jeep by the quays and went straight to Fingleton’s bookstore, his hand gripping his mobile. From the busy cobbled street, Fingleton’s looked like a regular sized store, but inside, it opened out and up three storeys. It was dark and quiet with a sunken area on the ground floor bordered by tall black shelves. Joe quickly scanned the natural history section and picked out the only book on Harris’ Hawks. The cover shot was of two of them, poised and alert on the branch of a tree. He fumbled as he flicked through the pages, pausing at the photographs and sketches, stopping to skim random passages. The writer was a falconer in awe of his subject. Joe was intrigued by a bird that could capture the imagination of a falconer, a criminal and, now, a cop. He stood for several minutes, absorbed in the words, torn between reassurance and a desperate gnawing panic.

  Duke Rawlins sat back in the white wooden chair, his face lit by the glow from Anna’s mobile phone. He pushed rows of buttons, stumbling in and out of menus. His thumb hovered when a game he vaguely recognised opened up in front of him. He turned the phone around in his hand, held down a small red key and the screen went blank.

  Anna lay curled on her side facing the bedroom wall. She knew the cottage was remote, because for hours she had been allowed to shout her throat raw, buck on the floor against the bindings on her wrists and ankles, wear herself out. But not enough that she was ever going to sleep in this man’s company. She held her eyes closed to block out the absolute darkness; there were no houses nearby, no streetlights, no headlights to give her hope.

  Shaun was waiting in the hallway as Joe walked in. His face was a mixture of hope, relief and anxiety. He looked down at the bag in Joe’s hand.

  ‘You were shopping?’ he asked.

  Joe folded the plastic tight around the book. ‘Research.’

  ‘Mom isn’t back.’ His voice was full of blame.

  ‘I guessed that.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a little strange? Mom has never in her life run out on us. Ever.’

  ‘No I don’t think it’s strange. Right now? I’m thinking your mom was angry at me and she’s looking for space. We’ll just tell everyone that she’s gone to Paris for a few days to see her folks. Do you think you can do that?’

  ‘Yes. But I don’t see why we have to.’

  ‘Because it gives us all time. Your mom will be back and I’ll buy her some flowers and take her out to dinner and everything will be fine.’

  Shaun studied his face. ‘You don’t even believe that.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Joe eyed the phone and briefly thought about calling Frank.

  ‘Stop treating me like some kind of idiot.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Joe patiently. ‘I just need to be calm here.’

  ‘Detached, you mean.’ Shaun
snorted.

  ‘Son, you’re angry,’ said Joe gently. ‘I think this is about you looking for someone to lash out at…’

  ‘Look at Katie! Look at her! What about that? Look how that turned out! That worked out all right. Didn’t it? Didn’t it?’ His voice rose steadily the more hysterical he got. ‘What if someone’s taken Mom? We’re here waiting like two losers…’

  ‘No-one’s taken your mom.’

  ‘What if they have?’ said Shaun. He looked up like he had just thought of something. ‘Could this be to do with that weird email I got?’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Joe patiently. ‘Turns out it was from that commando wannabe from your school.’

  ‘Barry Shanley?’ said Shaun, stunned.

  Frank called Richie into his office and asked him to close the door behind him.

  ‘OK, I need to fill you in on something unusual that’s come up.’ He explained about Joe, Dr McClatchie and the fax.

  ‘Wow,’ said Richie. ‘That’s weird.’ Frank could almost hear the workings of his mind. He was reminded of a game with an upright plastic panel where you had to rotate a series of cogs with slots to manoeuvre a small counter into a tray at the bottom. Downfall. That was the name. He wondered when Richie’s counter would fall down.

  ‘I called Limerick and spoke briefly to the Super there. I’ll be meeting him tomorrow. He’s on holidays up in some log cabin in the Ballyhoura mountains. They’ve no leads. They’ve checked out a couple of local men, but have ruled them out. So this news from Dr McClatchie is interesting. And look at this.’ He turned a map around so Richie could see it. Richie’s wandering right eye rolled back into place.

  ‘No-one wants these crimes to be connected,’ said Frank. ‘But look.’ He unfolded the map until he could see the southern half of the country. He drew a ring around Doon where Mary Casey had been found dead in the field, then Tipperary town where Siobhán Fallon had disappeared. Slowly, he did the same around Mountcannon. He looked at Richie. ‘These towns are all along the same route.’ He paused. ‘I think Joe is a step ahead of us. And in fairness, after the whole snail business, it seems he was right about where Katie went that night, regardless of Mae Miller. We have to follow up on this. Remember, Joe bypassed us to go direct to the State Pathologist…’ Richie nodded.