by Helga Zeiner
We drive over the Lion’s Gate Bridge on to the Sea-to-Sky highway that connects Vancouver with Whistler. We are on our way up north, into the wilderness. I’ve never been there. Macintosh starts telling me things about the countryside where his house is and how beautiful it is up there. I’m not really listening. His words float past my ear while I look down at the ocean.
The road winds along steep cliffs and most of the time the view to the left is breathtaking. And the sun shines, finally. It glitters on the ocean surface, taking me back to the early days of my childhood. The Galveston days. The seagulls look just the same here and are just as eager to dive down for the spoils of the sea. The water must be similar too, salty, strong, possessive, a bit colder though. And the sun, it hits me, is the same sun that shines in Texas.
Am I still the same?
I shiver and pull my hoodie closer. No, I’m not. I’m not sun and water and seagull. The landscape I leave behind is bleached by relentless stale heat, pastel colored rolling hills with sparse desert vegetation, light turquoise river beds trickling through gullies of burnt-out sand. That is my past. What I exchange it for is lush green mountains and deep dark-blue seas, crowned by an endless sky full of clouds. I breathe sweet-smelling cool air that energizes me. That is my future.
Macintosh must have heard me sighing deeply and interrupts his litany of praise for a community we both know I will not stay in very long.
“That’s right, take a deep breath. It feels good to be out of the city.”
On his account, his town in the country is quiet and small—yet it is still too large for me. We both agreed that I need a place much more secluded than the smallest village even. Nobody needs to find out that I will only stay with him for a few days, get my first psychologist’s appointment set up and officially settle into his home, after that, he will take me to his hunting cabin in the woods. It’s only an hour’s drive away. He’ll visit me every week, bring supplies, maybe stay a day or two to teach me the basics of survival in the wilderness, and see if I get tired of being by myself. I only need to meet the doc every second week, and Macintosh will take me back for that. That suits both of us fine. I need him in my life but I won’t take his daughter’s place. We both need our space. We got it all worked out.
“Hey, Macintosh,” I say, thinking about this wonderful arrangement. “Did I ever thank you?”
“You can call me Pete,” he says graciously.
I’m still not very good with fist names, but I don’t want to offend him. “How about Mac?”
“That’ll do.”
A turn-out is coming up. He sets the blinker and slows down. When we come to a halt, he reaches behind, grabs a laptop from his bag on the backseat and hands it to me.
“What’s that?” I ask, while blood shoots into my face. I know, right away I know, it’s my computer. “Where did you get it from?”
“We have contacts working the Eastside. One of them met your friend Connie, and she gave it to him. She was told it would help get you free. But something went wrong. The laptop wasn’t delivered to our office until the day after the trial.”
My final all-important teeny, weeny little secret is out, I think.
“Did you look at it?”
He stares over my shoulder into the mountainside.
“Should I?”
My mouth already forms a ‘no’ when my mind says ‘stop’. He looks hurt. I owe him. It’s hard to give up my last secret, but maybe that is what’s needed to transform myself from desolate desert to lush landscape.
“I found Gracie on the internet,” I say. “I hacked into some pedophile rings, posed as a… uh, you know, a client, until I had established contact with her. Then I lured her to Canada.”
He straightens in his seat, faces the windshield.
“How did you do it?”
“It wasn’t difficult at all. A few emails went back and forth, and eventually I identified myself to her. I told her I couldn’t stand living with Mom anymore, wanted to come back to her. Missed her. Missed my dream juice, I said. She offered to send money for me to come back, but I told her to cross the border on my own was out of the question. I couldn’t travel by myself as long as I’m still underage. I begged her to pick me up. She should pose as my mom, I said. We have the same surname, so it should be a piece of cake. She agreed without much persuasion, I guess she wanted her girl back badly. I’m too old for her business by now, but I’m sure she had something lined up for me that would make her money. When she waited for me at Starbucks, she really thought I’d go back with her.”
“She entered the country under Inez’ name, so she couldn’t have played the role of your mother. My guess is, she was going to take you back illegally, maybe she had a fake identity ready for you.”
“Of course, I figured that much. She would smuggle me back in and thereby gain total control over me. I wouldn’t even exist down there. But I pretended to be the stupid girl who believed every promise. Just to make sure she would come. Disneyland all over again. And it worked.”
The implications of my admission hang in the air between us until I can stand it no longer.
“I’m sorry I lied to you. I should have told you.”
He shakes his head very quickly and decisively.
“No. I’m glad you didn’t. I would have had to use it, and then the attack would have been premeditated. The laptop arrived too late, somebody in the department forgot to give it to me in time. Pure luck that it was handed to me and not Harding, he’s a stickler for rules and regulations. It’s over now, no point in bringing it up again.”
“Nobody will find out?”
He looks a little sad all of a sudden.
“I’m not so sure about Dr. Eaton. Do you really think you can fool a psychiatrist?”
I laugh, loud and happy. “No way. He knew there were, what he called, underlying issues.”
“So you played him, and all of us, all along.”
“No, not all along. I had refused to co-operate with anybody but him from the start, which was lucky as it reduced the danger of accidentally giving away anything of importance. But, honest to God, I hadn’t planned to deceive him. When Stanley started working with me, I remembered nothing. I didn’t even know that it was Gracie I had attacked—not until the day I remembered the rape. That’s when it all came back to me. Only then did I remember who the Purple Shadow was.”
“How did you figured out that it was Inez?”
This is a tough one.
“Actually, it wasn’t.”
Silence. Another deep breath.
“It was Gracie.”
My legal guardian does a double take. “What?”
“On the day they took the rape video, Gracie made a big mistake. She forgot to put her black gloves on. Too anxious to get it over with, I guess. When I looked at the camera, I recognized her hands! It’s always been Gracie. Always. At every single session, it had been her who’d left the room, got changed and came back disguised as the Purple Shadow.”
“Good Lord!” Macintosh nods, frowns, shakes his head, huffs and grunts, has a really hard time to digest this ultimate betrayal. At the same time, his disappointment in me evaporates into thin air. He goes all soft and limp and gentle. For once, I don’t mind being pitied.
“That’s what I tried to tell Mom when I came home.”
“Oh shit,” he says.
“She didn’t want to hear it.”
“And when you remembered again, you couldn’t tell Dr. Eaton or me—”
“You’d have figured it all out before the trial and, like you said, the attack would have been premeditated.
“Which it was.”
“Yeah, kind of.” A little pride swings in my voice.
“You were damn lucky we found the computer too late.”
“Yes, that was my one big mistake while the memories slowly came back, telling Stanley about Connie and the computer. But then again, it wasn’t really a mistake, I didn’t know any better then. You got to
believe me, I didn’t know for a long time and once I knew, I couldn’t tell you.”
Macintosh waves it aside. His detective brain needs to work out the snags that might still bring me down.
“Your laptop must have all your emails on it.”
I keep quiet.
“The Texans will discover it. They are sifting through all the stuff on your aunt’s computers just now.”
For a whole minute I contemplate if I can risk making him an accessory to my deceit, before I decide he deserves the truth.
“I used the computer at the course I was doing. I signed off as ‘Mija’, identifying myself to Gracie with small details only the two of us would know, until I had established contact. Once I had her on the hook, I always called her.”
“Disposable, of course?”
“Of course. They’ll never figure it out.”
He digests this and when he finds no more loopholes, he nods slowly, sets the blinker, starts driving and merges into the highway traffic. Quite a bit later, he throws me a glance and I can see his eyes twinkle.
“You did good. Really good.”
I smile back, and he reads me again like an open book.
“It’s not over yet, is it? You are not done yet.”
No, I’m not. But now I have an ally. I’m not alone any more.
Also Available by Helga Zeiner
Section 132
A fact-based thriller
Lillian grows up in an American fundamentalist Mormon sect that still practices polygamy. At thirteen she becomes the child-bride of a Canadian Bishop. His compound is located deep in the wilderness of British Columbia, totally isolated from the rest of the world.
When the land developer Richard Bergman buys the property next to the Bishop’s compound, he becomes involuntarily drawn into the sect’s secrets …
http://amzn.to/1jcjYUL
Contact the author and find more information on her novels:
www.helgazeiner.com
Table of Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Also Available by Helga Zeiner