by Tim Weaver
She headed back to the long grass.
It was so tall, the scrub so thick, it dragged at her legs and arms as she tried to hide in it. The further she went, the harder it became to see through and the more her sense of direction skewed. Without the snow and the frost, there was nothing to inhibit the grass: when everything stilled, she could just about see through to the dirt track, the Cherokee accelerating along it; when the wind picked up, the grass acted like a flash flood, washing around her, confusing her, trapping her.
Her stride stammered.
She tried to reassert her control: above the whisper of the grass, she could hear the ocean and the rattle of the Cherokee, and she knew she could use them to re-establish her sense of direction. The ocean was behind her, through the pines. The Cherokee was to her left, the north. The mill was straight in front of her and she could see a ramp at the side of it, old and collapsed, where the timber had once been moved to the lumber yard out front. It was a way inside. If she could go through the mill, she might be able to exit at the other end and get back onto the Loop further down, without Lima ever realizing.
But then, suddenly, she fell.
She’d hit the ground before she knew what had happened, the impact so hard it was like a fist to the centre of her chest. Winded, she looked back, retracing her footprints in the mud, trying to see what had tripped her. It was a log, half covered with grass, four feet away.
Her whole body hurt like hell.
She’d jarred her shoulder, her ankle.
She got onto all fours and scrambled to her feet, pain shooting up her leg. Along the crown of the grass, as the wind stirred it, she glimpsed the Jeep.
It was parked. Its doors were open.
No one was inside.
He’s already looking for me.
She tried to hide, the grass moving around her. All she could hear was the thump of her pulse in her ears, a drum beat that overwhelmed every other sound. She didn’t know what to do because she didn’t know where he was. Those moments in the pines, the fleeting seconds of victory, the freedom she’d felt as she’d escaped from the car wreck into the trees – knowing she was faster than them – seemed a million miles away.
‘Rebekah?’
She chilled.
It was him.
And he was right next to her.
Meetings
When they got back to Police Plaza, Houser had to sign Travis in. Even such a small act felt weird, a little dispiriting: he’d been coming to the building for eleven years, ever since rejoining the NYPD as part of the Missing Persons Squad, and he’d never had to stop at the front desk. Now he was just another member of the public. Some freelance work and a couple of database logins couldn’t disguise that.
They took the elevator up to where the Cold Case Squad was based. It was a small team and Travis knew only one of its members. Houser introduced him to the rest. When she was done, she said, ‘Time to go and meet the captain.’
They headed back to the elevators.
‘Why’s the captain on a different floor?’ Travis asked.
‘She’s been in meetings all morning. She only joined a month ago, so she’s playing catch-up. She’s from Queens but she was a lieutenant over in Newark.’
Houser hit the button for the tenth floor.
‘A female captain and now a female lieutenant,’ Travis said, after the doors had slid closed. ‘This is progress. No wonder they got rid of a dinosaur like me.’
‘They shouldn’t have gotten rid of you and you’re no dinosaur,’ Houser said, shoving his shoulder gently with hers. ‘You’re more like a Neanderthal.’
Travis was laughing as the doors pinged open. They headed down to an office on the right, all glass with metal blinds. Inside were two women of about the same age: one he recognized, the other he didn’t.
‘You know the CoD?’
‘I met her once in an elevator,’ Travis said, looking through the glass at Chief of Detectives McKenzie. She was at her desk, writing something. On a chair to the side of her was Houser’s captain, talking to McKenzie but with her gaze already fixed on Travis. Even from where he was, Travis could see the fiery colour of her red hair and how blue her eyes were: they were beautiful, like a summer sky, but they were at odds with the rest of her face.
She looked fierce.
‘You said you met the chief once in an elevator?’ Houser knocked on the office door, then wriggled her eyebrows comically. ‘Travis, you sly dog.’
‘Come in, Amy,’ McKenzie said, before Travis could respond to the joke.
Houser and Travis entered, Houser closing the door behind her. She introduced Travis to McKenzie, then to Captain Walker.
Walker didn’t offer Travis her first name.
‘Please,’ McKenzie said, ‘sit down.’
Travis grabbed a chair next to Houser.
‘I think we’ve met before, Frank,’ McKenzie said. He remembered again the stories about her, the nickname she had among some of the male cops – The Dyke – and particularly the observation that she never smiled, or perhaps was physically incapable of it. ‘A few days before you retired.’
Travis nodded. ‘I remember, Chief.’
‘It was early in the morning.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘Did you manage to close the case you were working?’
Travis looked between McKenzie and Walker, and then, very briefly, at Houser. They all knew the answer, because they would already have been through his file, his history, the cases he’d worked and the ones he’d failed to see through. That meant they were just looking for the right response.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, the day I left the force, I had to go to the parents of the woman I was trying to find and admit that I hadn’t been able to locate her.’
This wasn’t the time for reputation-saving bullshit. It was a test.
McKenzie just nodded. ‘Captain Walker.’
Walker came forward in her seat. ‘I know you were here a long time, Frank, but I appreciate you coming in like this. I’ve only been here four weeks so I’m still finding my feet, still getting to know everybody. I don’t know you, other than what I’ve read on paper, and I’ll be totally honest, at Newark PD, I wasn’t a particular fan of outsourcing investigations, even to former cops with experience like you.’ Her face barely moved as she spoke, like her skin had been starched, and Travis thought he could hear the faint trace of an accent. Not New York, even though Houser had said she was from here; not Jersey either, where she’d worked before this. It was an accent from somewhere further afield – but it was so soft he couldn’t be certain where. She went on: ‘All that said, I hear you were an excellent cop, I like your honesty, and Lieutenant Houser says she trusts you, so for now that’s enough. We’ve been given a federal grant to pursue cold cases that stand a good chance of being cleared, which is obviously positive news, but we’ve also got over twelve thousand unsolved murders in the cabinets downstairs, going all the way back to the mid-eighties, which is not so great. We need you to start closing some.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Walker, like McKenzie, just nodded, and then McKenzie went over the terms of the work he was about to agree to, including how much Travis would be paid. It didn’t amount to much, but that was okay with Travis. The money wasn’t the real reason he was here.
‘Okay, thanks for coming in, Frank,’ McKenzie said, putting an end to the meeting. She got up and shook his hand, Walker opened the door for him and Houser, and before he knew it the two of them were back in the elevator.
‘Well, she seems fun,’ Travis said, once the doors had closed.
Houser smiled. ‘Which one?’
‘Walker.’
‘They’re both serious women.’
‘No shit.’
‘You’ve still got it, though, Trav.’
He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You know that thing they say about McKenzie? Well, one of the things they say about McKenzie, that she’s physically
incapable of smiling?’ Houser shrugged. ‘Well, she smiled at you. I think she likes you.’
He laughed. ‘Bullshit.’
‘I’m serious. Would you ever date a cop?’
The doors of the elevator sprang open.
‘She’s ten years younger than me.’
‘So?’
‘And she’s the chief of detectives.’
‘So?’
He thought of McKenzie and remembered the way she’d smiled at him in the elevator that morning, the week before he’d retired, how it had suited her, and how she’d made clear that she didn’t agree with him being forced out. She was attractive, smart and, despite his protestations, he had to admit there was something about her that he liked.
‘I thought she was gay, anyway.’
‘That’s the assumption.’
‘So she’s not?’
‘I don’t know,’ Houser said. ‘No one’s ever been brave enough to ask.’
They arrived back at the Cold Case Squad cubicles. Houser took Travis to the filing cabinets and started digging through them.
‘What about Walker?’ Travis asked.
‘What – you prefer her?’
‘No, I mean, where’s she from?’
‘She told you. She came from Newark PD.’
‘No, where’s she from? She’s got an accent.’
‘Oh.’ Houser pulled some files out of the drawers. ‘I don’t know. I think someone said she moved out from England back in the eighties.’
62
‘Rebekah?’
Lima sounded so close he must have been almost on top of her. Slowly, she put a hand flat against the muddy ground, steadying herself as the wind passed out of the pines, from the sea, and washed through the long grass.
‘Rebekah?’
His voice sounded like it came from behind her this time, but when she turned back to where she thought he would be, she couldn’t see anything.
‘I can’t let you go home, Rebekah.’
Now it sounded as if he was in front of her. What the hell was going on? She looked in all directions, realizing he was using the wind to his advantage, its ability to carry sounds and obscure their origin. She started moving, inching forward. Every time the breeze picked up, she went further in the direction of the mill; every time it calmed, she stopped, put a hand to the ground, not daring to move except to scan her surroundings.
She looked ahead of her, to the wooden track at the side of the sawmill, watched it flicker in and out of view every time the wind roused. It was about a hundred feet from her. Should she make a run for it – or stay put?
Terror spread, like wildfire.
She tried to stop the vibration in her hands, tried to claim back some of her composure, and – as she paused, almost on all fours – she happened to look to her left, through a V-shaped gap in the grass.
It was him.
He was less than thirty feet from her.
His back was to her, his profile in silhouette against the sun, which was casting butter-coloured light across the top of the sawmill. At his side, facing down and pressed against his leg, was the gun. As the grass moved, it began to obscure him again.
She didn’t shift a muscle.
She just watched, trying not to make a sound. A step to his right, then another – and, once more, he was gone.
‘Rebekah?’
His voice was almost lost in the wind.
‘You know I can’t let you escape.’
She started to move slowly, lifting her hands off the ground – her palms perfectly captured in the mud, as if they’d been set in bronze – and inched away from where his voice was, away from the sawmill. She did the first part on her knees, because it kept her as low to the ground as she could possibly get, and then she got onto her haunches again.
As she moved, she spotted something lying in the shadow of a massive, trunk-sized piece of wood: a rusting piece of metal. It looked like a tool of some kind. There was what appeared to be a wheel at the end and a sharp-toothed blade along the underside. She didn’t know what it had been and didn’t much care: all that mattered was it was a weapon.
Sidestepping through the grass, she yanked at it.
Where are you, asshole?
Around her, the grass seemed to pulsate.
Come on.
It towered above her as she crouched on the ground.
Come on, I know you’re …
She stopped.
Something was wrong.
The wind of a moment ago had died out completely. But if there was no wind, there was no way the grass could still be moving – and, yet, it was. It was still swelling behind her, on her shoulder.
Because someone was moving it.
She spun on her heel, propelling herself one-eighty with her hand, but it was already too late: he was right on top of her, a shadow in the grass.
A gunshot ripped through the air.
63
Rebekah staggered backwards. The second she landed, she expected pain – the excruciating agony of Lima’s bullet tearing its way through her – but she felt nothing. When she looked down at herself, at her chest, her stomach, there was no bullet wound.
Had he missed?
From only four feet away?
She looked up, the grass like a wall around her. Lima was gone. She couldn’t see him anywhere. She pushed herself to her feet, still crouched in case he was near.
What the hell had happened?
That was when she saw the blood on the grass.
A slather of crimson on some strands to her left. She saw footprints too: male, big, an eleven or twelve.
They looked like they were going backwards.
She glanced behind her, at the place she’d landed, and saw the rusted piece of metal she’d been about to use as a weapon. Scooping it up, she gripped it tightly, then faced the grass ahead of her again, the spot where the blood lay, like a marker.
Something moved.
She saw it out of the corner of her eye.
She swivelled on her heel, in the direction of the Cherokee, pulse throbbing in her ears. No sign of Lima there. No sign of anyone.
She looked towards the blood again.
Took another step. A second.
The blood was fresh, running in thin red tresses. She reached out, slowly parting the grass, gripping the weapon harder than ever.
As soon as she did, she saw him.
Lima was lying next to some rotting timber. He’d landed awkwardly, propelled backwards by the bullet that had passed through his face. Rebekah took another step forward, his blood swapping the grass for her arm, but she hardly noticed: it was him on the ground, his eyes like glass, the bullet wound a dribble of treacle an inch above his left eye.
Startled, she looked back the way she’d come and suddenly glimpsed the shape of another person. As it moved, she remembered how she’d never been able to get a handle on Lima’s position, how she’d thought he’d tricked her, looped around her somehow.
But now she knew it hadn’t just been Lima out here.
It had been Hain too.
She backed up slowly, one deliberate pace after the next, trying to make as little noise as possible, gripping the weapon so hard it was cutting her skin.
Hain was coming towards her.
She could see him now.
She raised the chunk of metal she was holding. She had to get him before he saw her clearly. She had to strike before he ever got the chance to pull the trigger.
Come on, you son of a bitch.
And then a hand pushed through the grass, an arm reaching out for her, a face, a body – and it wasn’t Hain at all.
It was a man she’d never met before.
His gun was at his side, the barrel pointing down, and the second he saw her properly, he stopped dead and held up a hand to her.
‘It’s okay, Rebekah,’ he said, almost whispering it.
He slowly placed the gun on the ground.
‘It’s okay, I promise. I’m no
t here to hurt you, kiddo.’
The Crossing
That evening, after Travis had washed up the dinner plates and Gaby was busy FaceTiming a friend in Chicago, he sat at the living-room table with the ten cold cases Houser had given him. They were all murders.
With the temporary user ID that Houser had organized, he grabbed his laptop and logged into the NCIC, and found all ten replicated in the system. Most of what was in the physical files broadly mirrored what was on the computer, but some of the digital versions lacked the fine detail of the paper notes he had to hand. That wasn’t unusual. Over the years, he’d worked alongside lots of cops who’d treated the physical file as a Bible, the absolute authority on a case, and the NCIC version as a simple box-checking exercise. Travis had always tried to do both well, but there was little doubt that there was a heartbeat to the paper records, a clarity, that the computer could never duplicate.
‘You okay, Dad?’ Gaby was in the doorway behind him.
‘Yeah, I’m good, honey.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Just looking at some of the stuff Amy gave me today.’ He glanced at the TV remote in her hand. ‘You watching something?’
‘The Thing is on at nine.’
‘Oh, man. A literal stone-cold classic.’
‘“There’s something wrong with Blair.”’
Travis laughed. When the kids still lived at home, he’d carved out a corner of his home life entirely for the three of them by watching classic horror movies with Mark and Gaby. Naomi had never shown much interest in cinema, and that had been fine with Travis: when she was out, or even sometimes when she wasn’t, he’d curl up on the couch, his son and daughter either side of him, and watch films like The Thing. Even now the kids would talk about it: a couple of nights before Naomi’s funeral, the three of them had been talking about Stephen King novels, and it soon turned into a Misery The Shining and Carrie movie marathon that had gone on until 3 a.m.
‘Shall I make some popcorn?’ Gaby asked.
‘Oh, you bet. I’ll be through in a second.’
Travis turned back to his laptop, closing the NCIC login page, and going to a folder marked ‘Montauk’ on his desktop. He’d created it an hour earlier, after Amy Houser had come through for him yet again. Three or four years ago she’d worked a case – a rape and murder – with a detective from Suffolk County PD, but he’d only remembered it because she’d mentioned it at the first lunch they’d shared, four weeks after he retired. As soon as she’d started talking about working with the cop out on Long Island, Travis had thought about Johnny and Rebekah Murphy. So, before he’d left Police Plaza, after Houser had handed him the ten files he now had spread out in front of him, he’d asked her if she’d be prepared to call in a favour on his behalf with the detective at SCPD.