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by J. A. Henderson

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  J A Henderson

  A Black Hart Publication

  Scotland. Australia

  First published 2019 by Black Hart

  Black Hart Entertainment.

  32 Glencoul Ave, Dalgetty Bay, Fife KY11 9XL.

  Janandrewhenderson.com

  Copyright © 2019 by Jan-Andrew Henderson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the authors’ imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  The rights of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been ascertained in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Book Layout © 2019 BookDesignTemplates.com

  Hide by J A Henderson 1st ed 2019.

  ISBN 978-1-64570-601-4 (Print)

  ISBN 978-1-64570-602-1 (eBook)

  Copyright © 2019 by Jan-Andrew Henderson

  For two good reasons I will not enter deeply into this scientific branch of my confession. First, because I have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on man’s shoulders; and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.

  Second, because, as my narrative will make alas! too evident, my discoveries were incomplete.”

  R.L. Stevenson. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

  Nolansville, Texas 1994

  Bonner whistled to the dogs and they loped quietly back. Neither understood what had happened. The man reached into the back of his truck, brought out a rifle and cradled it under one arm. He didn’t see a need for the weapon but it made him feel more secure. In the distance a thin column of smoke rose above the trees, like a static grey tornado. He watched it for a while, trying to calm down.

  Finally, the field hand punched numbers into his satellite phone. His hands were shaking so badly he had to start over three times.

  “Frantos, it’s Bonner.” He made no attempt to keep the fear out of his voice. “I’m at Clementon Heights, bout a mile from the Nolansville turnoff.” His whole body had begun to shake and it was hard to keep the phone against his ear. “You gotta come out here.”

  “You been smoking, Bonner? I’m thirty miles away.”

  “Frantos, I don’t know what happened, man. I mean… shit… Juss please, please get out here.”

  The ranch foreman knew Bonner well. He ranch hand was so taciturn he could fall asleep on a horse. He’d never heard the man sound scared before.

  “Gimme fifteen minutes.”

  Frantos turned up half an hour later, bouncing over the mesa in a green pickup pockmarked with metallic dents. He parked in a cloud of dust and climbed wearily out of the cab - a small, portly half breed with thick white hair. Nodded west to the oily funnel.

  “Looks like a car wreck aways off. Think anyone’s called it in?”

  But Bonner was sitting in the dirt, facing away from his boss. In front of him the mesa ended abruptly and a scrub covered scree plunged fifty feet into the McCluskey River. The field hand had his rifle clutched against a denim clad chest. On either side of him the dogs criss-crossed back and forth, mouths open, panting in circles of confusion.

  “What’s goin on, compadre?” Frantos strode over to the younger man. “You sound like you havin some serious kind o breakdown on the phone.”

  Bonner took off his Stetson and nodded to the rim of the scree. Frantos looked over.

  “Holy Christ.”

  The river below was clogged from bank to bank with dead and dying cattle. Broken horns and raw legs stuck up at unnatural angles, some still moving slowly. Frantos couldn’t tell if these were death throes or the pull of the current. To the west the entire river was a dull red. A wave of nausea brought sweat to his forehead.

  “What the fuck happened? What did you do?”

  Bonner looked up, face muddy and eyes red.

  “The Longhorns walked over the edge, boss,” he whispered. “They juss… walked over the edge.”

  Frantos felt the hairs pricking up on his neck. One of the dogs yawned and collapsed in resignation onto the dirt.

  Bonner shook his head in disbelief.

  “Frantos. It’s like they forgot the fucking cliff was there.”

  -1-

  New Braunfells State Facility, Texas 2003

  The white mantled attendant opened the heavy wooden door of the interview room with a bored expression and steady hand. But he paused before entering, the wary hesitation of a marauder entering enemy territory.

  R.D. Slaither was seated, motionless, on the other side of the interview cell.

  The atmosphere in the room was terse. The only furniture a heavily scarred table, two blistered chairs and another uniformed attendant.

  Detective Ettrick Sinclair followed sentry number one through the doorway with a bad feeling growing worse.

  R.D.’s head was shaved and grey stubble peppered his jaw. He looked old. Much older than Ettrick remembered. He was hunched over, staring up from his desk as if debating whether to cower or spring. It was a dichotomy the detective had seen in many incarcerated killers.

  Then Slaither lifted his face and smiled - and Ettrick felt the flesh between his shoulders tighten. The feeling of revulsion was strong, fastening round his heart like a claw.

  Why? The detective had interviewed more murderers than he could shake a night-stick at and they mostly left him cold. Was it because R.D. had been his friend? Hung out at his house. Drank with Ettrick and his wife. Played with his son.

  Under the sick feeling puzzlement bubbled up. And Ettrick solved puzzles.

  He see-sawed the sickness down.

  R.D. glanced down at the table and the detective followed the direction of the prisoner’s eyes. His hands rested on three photographs.

  The orderlies stared blankly at the detective. Ettrick was still blocking the doorway, trying to think of how he should begin. Had thought of nothing else on the drive out here.

  “You lost weight.” He stepped further into the orbit of the bare cell bulb.

  The frigid form smiled again, without a trace of affection.

  “Hello Ettrick.” R.D.’s distinctive Scottish cadence rolled over the consonants. “It’s been a wee while.”

  The detective motioned awkwardly to the attendants, disconcerted by their unintentional voyeurism.

  “I’d like to talk to the inmate alone.”

  For a moment expressions flirted with their faces.

  “We’re not supposed to leave the room, Sir.”

  Ettrick had no intention of turning this into a discussion, so his voice and manner switched. He became more like a cop and less like a human being.

  “Get out,” he commanded. “I’ll take the responsibility.”

  R.D.’s wards had seen too many tough guys in their time to be impressed. One beckoned to his partner and both sauntered through the door. Ettrick made a mental note to report them. Under no circumstances were they supposed to let a visitor out of their sight.

  “You and I have to talk, R.D.” He walked to the only other chair in the room and bent to push it closer.

  “I’d rather you left that there for the moment.” The reply was instant, almost rehearsed. Ettrick was caught off balance, physically as well as mentally.

  “Can I sit on it, at least?” he shot back, not bothering to hide his annoyance.

  “Of course,” said R.D. steadily, and the detective sat. There they stay
ed, six feet apart, eyeing each other.

  You’re playing mind games with me, you bastard. As Ettrick was about to voice his thought, R.D. spoke.

  “I’m allowed a few small possessions in this hell hole.” He tapped the white squares on the table. “Know what these are?”

  His tone was accusatory, crawling nastily from under the Scottish lilt. Ettrick noted, with dry appreciation, his old friend’s soft shuffle into the interrogator’s shoes. He kept his answer nonchalant.

  “Vacation snapshots?”

  R.D. tilted his head.

  “Sort of.” He held one of the squares up. “They’re pictures of you and I.”

  Ettrick scuffed his chair forward to get a closer look. R.D. started, his face morphing into jerky panic.

  “Stay there! Keep away from me!” The vehemence of his response had Ettrick scuttling back like a crab, holding onto the wooden seat. He held up his hands in a gesture of cessation, indicating he wouldn’t move.

  The same flurry that froze the detective galvanized R.D. into action. He took a deep winging breath, turned the pictures over with card sharp fluidity and tapped each one.

  “On the back of these mementoes I’ve written three questions. I’ve also written the answers.” He seemed calm once more. “I wrote them before you came into the room.”

  He scowled at the detective from under his pointy, white-flecked eyebrows. The motion drew attention to his storm coloured irises, the prominent characteristic of his face. It seemed to Ettrick that a tortured intensity glowed through the shadows around Slaither’s eyes. Or perhaps it was only the bare bulb.

  “I don’t follow you.” The detective was determined to give nothing away. This was a waiting game, one he had played with other suspects. He knew how to wait.

  R.D. made a dubious clicking noise with his teeth.

  “Maybe you do and maybe you don’t.” Pokerfaced. An enigma in institution blues. A fly sprang from the table and flounced between them. The psychologist slowly tracked it with his eyes. He shot out his hand and the insect dived into his closing fist.

  “Nice catch.” Ettrick hoped R.D. wouldn’t pop it in his mouth.

  “When did you last see me, Ettrick? The man sat bolt upright, smearing the doomed insect down his overalls. “Quick... Quick!”

  He leaned forward eagerly, head thrust out like a rapacious, balding bird.

  “At your hearing of course.” The detective was taken aback. “I was the only darned character witness you had.” He frowned at the recollection. “Don’t you remember?”

  R.D. leaned back in the rickety seat.

  “Remembering doesn’t make it real, pal,” he mused. And, once again, that smile opened and the eyebrows twitched.

  Ettrick hadn’t wanted to believe the obvious. Refused, in fact. But sitting here watching the antics of his old buddy, he was finding it hard not to come to the conclusion everyone else had formed.

  R.D. Slaither was insane.

  -2-

  Robert Duncan Slaither was incarcerated for the murder of his one-time friend, Justin Fenton Moore. He was also accused of killing Moore’s wife, Clancy, and his own secretary, Beck Murray.

  During the pre-trail hearing R.D. had stood silently at the defence table, reeling from a gloves-off examination by doctors and a subtle set of character assassinations from former colleagues. He rubbed his right eye occasionally, apparently deep in thought. His speech was slow and faltering and he seemed not quite aware of his surroundings. At one point he protested loudly that he was the victim of a secret conspiracy by his previous employers.

  Ettrick had thought this an especially nice touch.

  R.D. had looked, for all the world, like an ordinary man suffering from a mental trauma far beyond his understanding.

  Ettrick hadn’t bought it. His old friend wasn’t the type to misplace his mind, not even temporarily. Sure, he was a few fruit loops short of a bowl, but Slaither kept a tighter rein on his hang-ups than a prison guard on a pit bull.

  Besides which, R.D. was a psychologist and had once run his own therapy practice. He must have treated hundreds of mental disorders over the years.

  He’d surely be able to fake one.

  After his stint as a character witness the detective had watched from the gallery, stitching little details together to see what kind of picture they formed. R.D.’s normally severe crew-cut had been carefully grown and styled, allowing more grey hair to show through the brown. It gave his face a softer, less menacing look. His expensive black suit and sunglasses were gone. In their place was a light sweater with a shirt and a lamb’s wool tie. His appearance had been that of a kindly, confused boffin. A man whose search to cure the maladies of the human psyche had warped his own mind.

  R.D. claimed to have no recollection of what he had done, though he didn’t deny committing the deeds. When he suggested timidly he might have acted in self-defence, the prosecutor almost choked.

  “You used up every bullet in your gun on Justin Moore,” he roared. “You set his house ablaze with Moore’s wife trapped inside. You stabbed your secretary to death in a basement car park and locked her body in the trunk of your BMW.”

  He put his hands theatrically on his hips.

  “And you don’t remember any of it?”

  “Not a thing.” R.D. had stood stolidly at the defence table, while a single tear slid down his face. Corny as it looked, Ettrick had to admit it was very effective.

  But the prosecutor was unmoved. He wanted to throw the book at R.D. Show the killings had been premeditated and that the accused was sane enough to stand trial.

  Next stop, death row.

  Problem was, the police couldn’t come up with any motive for the horrific crimes. As far as they were aware, R.D. hadn’t seen Justin or his wife for years and he seemed to have a perfectly good relationship with his secretary. Besides, he had almost perished in the blaze himself. Even the prosecution had to concede, his actions were not those of a well-adjusted member of society.

  Nor could the police dig up anyone who could account for R.D. Slaither’s movements in the days before the atrocity. His laptop and phone were missing, he seemed to have few friends and the one other person who might have shed light on his actions was no longer around to answer questions.

  This was the ace up the psychologist’s sleeve. His girlfriend, Maggie Wood, had jumped from the 11th floor window of her apartment block the same morning as the murders.

  The police had hunted for any scrap of evidence that R.D. had forced Maggie to leap to her death. Perhaps even pushed her. After all, he had spent the rest of the day notching up an impressive body count. But he had called a detective Scharges and then Maggie Wood’s apartment from his office, minutes before the woman’s fatal plunge. He could never have made it across town in time to kill her.

  The coroner recorded a verdict of suicide.

  R.D.’s attorney had played that tragedy for all it was worth.

  “The woman he loved had just killed herself,” his attorney said sympathetically. “No wonder the poor guy went off the deep end.”

  Instead of facing trial for murder, the disgraced psychologist ended up being sent to the mental correction centre in New Braunfells, for continued evaluation.

  He had his own room.

  -3-

  Ettrick roped in his recent memories and hog-tied them. R.D. stroked his peppery rash of hair patiently.

  “What I’m going to do, Ettrick.” His voice was careful, deliberate. “I’m going to ask you the three questions I’ve jotted on the backs of these pictures.” He paused, fingers jigging nervously across the ravaged table. “And I hope to God your answers are the same as the ones written here.”

  “Cut the crap,” Ettrick drawled, finally running out of patience. “I already seen Silence of the Lambs.”

  “Humour me,” R.D. replied humourlessly. “I used to be your mate.”

  Ettrick couldn’t tell if the edge to the voice was irony or desperation. He reluctantly gave his co
mpanion the benefit of the doubt.

  “I guess you still are,” he ventured. But R.D. didn’t fall for the ruse.

  “Then how come you waited so long to come and see me?” he replied petulantly. “And no flowers or choccies to say sorry?”

  “Is that one of the questions?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t have to answer.”

  R.D. gave a derisive guffaw.

  “It was my wife’s idea.” The detective decided he may as well tell the truth. “Madison always liked you. She was never convinced you did the things you’re accused of.”

  “But you are?”

  “The evidence is pretty irrefutable,” Ettrick replied evenly. “But she nagged.”

  Somewhere down the corridor, an iron door gritted shut. R.D. coughed politely and began to read as if Ettrick hadn’t spoken.

  “Question one. What was my favourite bar? When I lived in Scotland?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Because I told you often enough how much I missed it.”

  “Oh yeah. You did, didn’t you?” Ettrick thought for a while.

  “It was something to do with a tree. That’s right. The Green Tree.”

  -Part 1-

  MOORE’S COCKTAIL

  You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others...

  R.L. Stevenson. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

  -4-

  Edinburgh, Scotland: 1989

  R.D. Slaither sat in the Green Tree Pub with Big Jim Lindsay. Both had consumed several pints. It was early Saturday night, so the bar wasn’t crowded yet - the haze of cigarette smoke still thin enough for the occupants to see the cracks in the nicotine stained walls, painted on to make the pub look more authentic.

  R.D. was in a talkative mood. He was obviously trying to build up to something important and was taking a meandering approach to draw it out. Big Jim would have preferred a conversation about football.