by W. H. Clark
Ward was stripped down to pajama pants, and he sat on the edge of his bed and prepared for the ritual of trying to get to sleep. Jesús sat and stared at him.
He could hear the wind getting up outside and he hoped that the sound would help him relax. He’d already had some beers but that hadn’t worked.
There was a mirror on a dressing table opposite the foot of the bed. He studied the tattoos which decorated almost his entire torso and arms, and with his hand he covered the one of the little girl which sat on the left side of his chest, nestling amongst the tangled dragons. He tried to avoid his own gaze, but his reflection kept staring back at him, so he keeled back and lay there looking at the dreamcatcher hanging from the light fixture, fighting his thoughts. He stayed there a while and then shuffled onto the bed and pulled the duvet over himself. He waited for Jesús to jump up onto the bed and settle down by his feet, then reached and turned out the bedside lamp, but a little light still leaked into the room from outside.
He closed his eyes as tight as they would go and then relaxed them. He tried to relax every muscle in his body in turn, starting from his head and neck and working down. He concentrated on breathing slowly. When he reached his feet he took in a lungful of air and started counting back from ten like he’d been told. Each number was a step down to a special place where the memories were happy ones and the descent was slow and in time with his deep breaths. By the fifth step he could feel himself drifting off and then a panic took him and shook him back to ten.
On the sixth or seventh try he was gone. The wind whipped up outside and he twitched with each gust.
The field was a golden sea and waves rolled over it toward infinity. He looked all around and saw nobody and nothing else apart from the long barley stalks which appeared to flow one way and then the other on a churning high tide. He hugged his naked body against the cold but the wind was warm and yet he was wet. He looked up at the immaculate blue sky and wondered where the wetness had come from. He tasted the back of his forearm and he realized the wetness was sweat. The wind gusted around him and he thought he could hear the sea in his shell ears. He looked for a sign but there were just barley waves, and he didn’t know what sign he was looking for or why he was there, but he knew he was meant to be there.
And then he looked down at his feet. They were covered in reddish mud, and he realized he was sinking. He lifted one foot out of the mud and the other went deeper, and then he lifted that foot and the first foot went even deeper. The next time he tried, neither foot would release and by now he had sunk almost knee-deep. He frantically looked around for something to get hold of to pull himself out but all that was there were barley waves, and he continued to sink, crying out for help.
He slumped to a sitting position and tried to pull his legs out of the mud, but he couldn’t. His backside started to sink and he tried to lever himself back up. One hand plunged into the mud and stuck there. He waved the other hand in the air and shouted for help but still nobody came, and there were just barley waves and now the waves were over his head. And the wind swirled and the blue sky gleamed and an unseen sun beat down on him as he continued to sink. So he put his free hand on his head, closed his eyes and prepared to drown.
He heard a rustling nearby, and when he opened his eyes the scarecrow stood over him, its head tilted to one side in puzzlement. Thank God, you’ve got to help me. But the scarecrow just stood there with its quizzical look and its arms stretched out to its sides. Won’t you help me? Can you get me help? Please help me. But the scarecrow just peered down at him and he had sunk more now until just his head and shoulders and one arm were not submerged. With his free hand he grabbed at the scarecrow, but he couldn’t reach, and the scarecrow asked a question but he didn’t know the answer. He closed his eyes and behind his eyelids there were just barley waves.
Jesús lay at the foot of the bed, his eyes on Ward gasping in his deep sleep. Outside, the cruel wind tugged at the flags on the roof and they flapped like tethered ghosts. Jesús hunkered down further into the duvet and whimpered gently.
17
Newton arrived to see Ward leaning over McNeely, who stared at her computer. Ward waved him over and Newton automatically looked around to see who Ward was waving at. Ward walked over to him and said, “You’re on the case. We work it together.”
“But I’m… I only got this week and next and—”
“I need your help.”
“Oh, I don’t know… it’s just that…”
Ward took a step back. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
“No, no, I appreciate the… offer… and… but…”
“Okay, like I said, I’m sorry to have tried to drag you into this. I just thought that your knowledge of the old man and the Ryan case might be valuable. But I understand. Hey, only a few more days to go and then you’re out of here. You don’t have to fret over any of this anymore.” And Ward turned his back on Newton and went back to McNeely.
Newton shuffled back to his desk and stood there a while staring at nothing. Then he walked out of the station.
Newton arrived just in time. The mortuary vehicle had its back doors open and someone was fussing around with something inside. Newton went straight into the building and spoke to an assistant, who waved him through without him having to show his badge.
There was a body strapped to a gurney and Newton knew it was O’Donnell inside the bag. There was nobody else in the room. He stood beside the body a few moments and then unzipped the bag to reveal O’Donnell’s head. He looked familiar now. No longer just a shriveled body but the man who had taken Ryan. He felt an urge to peel open his eyelids and look into his eyes once more to see the lies that he was sure he could see twenty-five years ago. Would the opaque veil still be there, or did dead men’s eyes reveal the truth? He knew it was a fancy of folly to think that, but the urge was there. He did peel back the eyelids but the eyes were cloudy and they refused to look back at Newton, so he got in close, but his own eyesight failed him and the eyes became blurs of watercolor splashes. He kicked the gurney.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “Son of a bitch. Fucking son of a bitch.” And he grabbed the sides of the unzipped bag like they were the lapels of a jacket, dragged O’Donnell’s face up to his own and said, “I know. I know. You can fool the rest of ’em, but I know. I know.” Dropping the body back onto the gurney, he staggered back and collided with the dissection table, then steadied himself. Quick, short breaths came out of him and he placed a hand on his chest, and that’s how Packham, the ME, found him.
“Adam,” the medical examiner said, and then he saw the opened body bag. He calmly walked over and zipped up the bag, placing a hand on Newton’s shoulder.
“I’m okay,” Newton said. “I just needed to… I’m okay.”
The ME nodded and squeezed Newton’s shoulder.
When Newton arrived back at the station he went straight to his desk. Ward watched him sit down. He saw him pick up the papers that Ward had left there. Saw him read them. Saw a light flicker in Newton’s eyes and some color come into his cheeks. The next moment Newton was on his feet and striding over to Ward.
“What’s this?”
“Young girl used to visit O’Donnell. I went to see her last night. It’s what she said he said.”
“Confession? What’d he say about a confession?”
“He said the word ‘confession’.”
“You see what this is. He’s confessing. The son of a bitch is confessing about Ryan.”
“I have an open mind. Maybe he knew he was going to die and wanted a priest to confess to. All I can do is let the case play out and see where we are.”
“Damn it, let the case play out. I told you he did it, didn’t I?”
“For your peace of mind I’ll let you know if I find anything. In the meantime I gotta be getting on with what I was getting on with.”
Newton took Ward’s arm firmly in his hand and said, “Okay, I’m in. Reporting for duty, detective. Or whatever it
is I’m supposed to goddamn say.”
Ward looked up at Newton. “Okay,” he said.
Ward stood and led Newton over to McNeely. “We were just reviewing the evidence collected from the crime scene. McNeely ran some latents we found and we don’t have a hit. We’ve sent hair fibers for analysis.” Ward looked at Newton and wondered when the last time was he’d worked a homicide case. “We have Officers Jackson and Poynter interviewing everyone who was in the home at the time of death, an hour each side of the medical examiner’s estimate. We have requested security camera footage and are waiting on that.”
“Okay.”
“We also await results on his clothes. There was a newspaper, the one that the young girl was reading to him on the night he died. We’ve had someone over there going through the trash but nothing.”
Newton moved his weight to his left foot and appeared in pain. More than usual. “He had newspaper ink on his fingers.”
“There are a lot of unanswered questions,” Ward said. “We get the answers to some of those and we could be in the game.” He drew up a chair for Newton to sit but he declined with a short quick shake of his head.
“Doctor Brookline? The girl said he called out his name.”
“Our next port of call. You know him?”
“Retired doctor is all I know,” Newton said. “Where are we on next of kin?”
“None surviving,” Ward said, and he saw Newton grow an inch and then another. “His belongings were picked up by an Alice White. Before we got there. I was going to pay her a visit later.”
“I know Alice,” Newton said. “Used to be a nurse.”
At that Ward said, “A person of interest, you think?”
“More an interesting person,” Newton said.
“She would have access to morphine?”
“We can go see her later if that suits.”
18
The truck pulls off the highway and the road becomes uneven. He slows down as if not to discomfort his passenger and makes steady progress up a short shallow incline, then begins a long descent through ancient plantation woodland. The road is still used by vacationers and it is kept clear from overhanging tree limbs, but he feels as if he’s going through a tunnel, the headlamps of the truck carving out a hollow in front of him, a soft red glow from the taillights following.
A thin line of blue fire lights up the sky as it zigzags to earth and touches down close enough, and almost immediately a booming crack of thunder shakes the air and makes the man jump in his seat, jerking the steering wheel slightly to the left, enough to bump the truck out of the wheel ruts in the road and take off a bunch of tree branches with his side mirror. He straightens the truck then and the wheels find the well-worn ruts in the road again.
He continues for about a mile, occasionally humming an unrecognizable tune when the road becomes lumpy, and eventually draws up in a small clearing made for vehicles to turn. The road runs out and a wall of trees throws back light. A gentle breeze stirs the tops of the trees and the doleful squeal of branches kissing branches sounds to him like disagreeing violins. He cuts the lights and steps carefully down from the truck. A gibbous moon trickles enough light down for him to see his footing, but he takes a flashlight from beneath an oil-stained sheet in the bed of the truck. Out of habit he taps the flashlight against his hand before he turns it on. He walks around to the passenger side and opens the door. His cargo is still there and his heart falls to his boots. He gently scoops up the boy, sheet and all, and starts walking into woodland, his flashlight cutting through the undergrowth and highlighting jutting tree roots. A low branch snatches at the sheet and his forward motion draws away the veil from the boy’s face. The scarce moonlight casts a cold blue wash over it. And Bill O’Donnell cries out.
19
The two of them were silent for the journey to Doctor Brookline’s small bungalow off of the main eastward drag out of town. It was more blue collar than medical professional and every two hundred yards a different dog was to be heard barking.
Ward fiddled with the heating in the car but couldn’t quite get the killer adjustment that made the temperature inside just right. It was either sauna or freezer. Stupid Italian engineering, he thought. In the end he pulled up his collar and settled on freezer. Newton did likewise.
The first thing to see at Doctor Brookline’s home was that it looked abandoned. It looked like a repossession which was never resold. The front yard was overgrown with weeds and decorative plants and shrubs that now looked like weeds.
“We got the right address?” Ward said, his breath made visible in front of him by the subzero northerly. Newton shrugged. They opened the gate which creaked and jammed three-quarters of the way through its swing, the rust on the top of it flaking off in Ward’s hand.
Four steps led up to a front porch. The deck had an ancient wooden chair whose upholstery had been eaten by weather and age. The chair was poked through with weeds which had emerged from the deck boards. Newton was first to the entrance porch, and he opened the screen door, which swung out unsteadily on crippled hinges. He knocked heavily three times on the inner door. Ward let the screen door prop against his back as he studied the yard, if it could be called that. It had the feeling of an ill-tended cemetery, the paving slab walkway suddenly seeming like end-to-end gravestones, and the house cast now as a derelict mausoleum.
Newton knocked again. Before an answer could come, he was trying to peer through the small side window, but drapes resisted his scrutiny. “Do you also have a bad feeling about this?”
“Probable cause?” Ward asked as he adopted a firm stance and looked for something to get a hold of to get extra leverage into his kick. Newton nodded at him and Ward drew back his leg.
“Hold on,” Newton said, and he went to grab the handle.
“Gloves!” There was a shout in Ward’s whisper as he dug into his pocket and then tossed a pair of latex gloves to Newton.
Newton’s eyes apologized but he was clearly annoyed at himself. Said “damn it” under his breath. He pulled the gloves on and slowly turned the door handle. The door opened. “Doctor Brookline,” he called. “Police officers.” There was no answer. None was expected by either man but Newton called one more time as Ward drew his Glock 22.
“We’re in,” Ward said, and he entered slowly. Newton followed. They were in a corridor, four rooms off it, two on each side, and what appeared to be a kitchen at the end, though it was difficult to tell in the indoor twilight. Ward indicated the first room with a nod and Newton took up a position with his back to the opposite wall. He sniffed and Ward saw that and nodded to him. Both recognized the pungent smell of death. Newton drew his weapon and nodded okay.
Ward stepped across the threshold and pointed his gun into the dimly lit room, daylight shunned by dusty purple drapes that hung apologetically over the windows, secured by nails hammered into the walls and bent over with the last blow. Ward pulled out his flashlight and shone it into every corner. The room was empty save for an old couch covered with a crocheted blanket. Newton was already out of the room, and when Ward returned to the corridor he was startled by his call.
“Doctor Brookline. Police officers.”
Ward followed him through the next door off the corridor on the other side of the house, and the smell grew stronger. Newton had sheathed his weapon and replaced it with his cell phone. “I’ll call it in. Possible homicide.”
Ward flicked the light switch with the knuckle of his middle finger, and light laid bare the extent of Doctor Brookline’s decline.
This room mirrored the first one. The only differentiating features were one dead man slumped on the couch and a table next to him that held two discarded plastic medical syringes and a number of vials which had spilled over onto the floor. Another syringe hung from the man’s arm, the hypodermic needle poking into a vein that had already dried up and collapsed.
Ward fished out another pair of latex gloves from his pocket and dragged them on. Newton saw him do it and s
aid, “I guess I need to catch up, detective,” as he picked up one of the vials carefully with forefinger and thumb and held it in front of his eyes, so close that he was almost cross-eyed. He took his glasses out of his pocket and slipped them on with one hand and looked again at the vial. “Morphine.” He replaced it exactly where it had been.
“Shall we wait for McNeely to get down here?” Ward said. “We need to preserve this one.”
“You think they’re related?”
“You think they’re not?” Ward didn’t expect an answer. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“What does your instinct tell you?”
“I don’t necessarily place a whole deal of faith in that neither. I’ve been married.”
Newton didn’t smile.
“Look at this.” Ward’s finger drew a line joining the dotted entry marks on the man’s withered arm. “Guess he was an addict.”
“He had access to morphine. Is this our killer? He kills and then kills himself with an OD?”
“I doubt that. By the look of him he hasn’t been outside for a while.”
“At least this scene hasn’t been cleaned up.”
Ward looked at Newton, took off his hat, rubbed the dark stubble on his head then replaced the hat. “I’m not so sure.”
20
His arms and back ache terribly but he has carried on for an extra mile. The punishing journey has taken him through dense woodland and onto a smaller track now. He imagines horses dragging their freshly felled cumbrous freight from out of the forest and out of history and he feels like them. Like a ghost. He walks for another hundred yards up this track and then he slumps to the ground with the boy’s increasingly heavy tiny frame pressing down on his trembling legs. He drops the dimming flashlight and casts a glance east, where the embers of a new sky smolder. A tepid breeze blown over this looming dawn fire gathers up whispered memories of his woodland past and swirls them all around him as trees shiver off the last of the night. He thinks of beyond the horizon, where day is already alight, and he knows he has to press on.