by H. P. Bayne
“Um….”
“Um, what?”
“Hal Devereaux reacted a little badly to my turning up. He called the police.”
“The police? Jesus Christ, Sully!”
“No one saw me, all right? Eva knew right away it had to be me, and she tracked me down. Then she took me back to the Devereauxs and smoothed things over. It’s all good, all right? They’re onside. They won’t tell anyone I was there.”
“For someone who’s been screwed over as much as you have, I’d think you’d have learned to be a little less trusting.”
The remark felt like a verbal slap, but Sully bit back a verbal response, deciding physical distance was a better option.
Dez, with an iron grip on Sully’s arm that pulled him back down into his chair, wasn’t allowing that either. “Hey, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant you need to be careful. What don’t you get about that?”
“I was careful. They never saw my face, all right? Not fully, anyway. I kept my hood up and my eyes down. With the beard, no one’s going to put two and two together.”
“Except you were there with Eva.”
“That doesn’t have to mean anything. She’s a cop. She was there doing her job. She could have been there with anyone.”
“Goddammit, Sull—”
“I can’t live the way you want me to, all right? I can’t sit here every day, all day long. I’m going stir crazy not having anything to do, or a real job to go to. I need to do this, Dez, or I swear, I’ll be fit for Lockwood, for real this time.”
Dez sighed, a cross between frustration and resignation. Sully took it as the sound of success.
“Tell me about the past two years,” Dez said.
“What do you mean?”
“You never told me. How’d you get by? How’d you survive? I mean, you keep saying you don’t need me to protect you because you can take care of yourself, so explain it to me. Let’s start with where you stayed.”
“I don’t know, man….”
“You don’t know where you stayed?”
“I don’t know that you really want to hear it.”
“That bad?”
“You’ll think so.”
But Dez wasn’t going anywhere, eyes fixed on Sully as he awaited further response. Sully knew he’d have no peace until he provided one. And then he’d have no peace because of what he was about to provide.
“Ravenswood Hall.”
He’d expected the name would be self-explanatory and, judging by the grimace crawling over Dez’s face, he was right.
“They say that place is the most haunted building in the city,” Dez said. “Like really, really scary haunted.”
Sully waited wordlessly for the other shoe to drop. When it did, it was more like a steel-toed boot.
“That place is in the goddamned Forks.”
The Forks. Once the part of town where the old rich lived, played and socialized, the large island had become a ghost town in the middle of KR after the flood four years ago left it uninhabitable. No one respectable lived there now; no one respectable even ventured across the lone remaining bridge. Once The Forks Bridge, it had been dubbed Hell’s Gate because of what awaited anyone foolish enough to cross. Even emergency services didn’t go there anymore, populated as it was by the most ruthless criminal gangs, psychopaths, and desperately messed up drug addicts who were dangerous enough to keep others at bay.
Sully knew what The Forks had become, far better than Dez did.
“It was the only place in the city where I could really disappear,” he said.
Dez’s voice was a growl, which might or might not have been better than a yell. “You’re just damn lucky you didn’t disappear permanently.”
“Like I said, I’ve been careful.”
“If you’d been careful, you would have stayed the hell out of there to begin with. What the hell’s the matter with you? Forbes Raynor and I almost got killed just driving in there to save you a couple weeks ago. That’s what that place is like, Sully.”
Sully didn’t often lose his temper, but he was rapidly approaching that point now. His voice, when he replied, had an edge to it he barely recognized as his own. “I know what it’s like. I’ve spent most of the past two years there. I handled it, and I’m fine.”
A variety of emotions flitted across Dez’s face as Sully watched him through narrowed eyes—anger, surprise, worry. At last, Dez took a breath and ran a hand through his crop of copper hair, expression settling into one final feeling: exhaustion.
“What is it you want me to say, Sull, huh? You want me to be okay with you taking chances like that? You want me to just step back whenever I think you’re getting into something too deep? I can’t do that.”
“I don’t want you to. I just need you to trust I know what I’m doing. I love that you have my back, and I don’t want that to change. But you have to realize I don’t need it every minute of every day. I put you through hell the past couple of years, and I’m sorry. I’ll never stop being sorry. But I’m okay, man. I really am. And I need you to be.”
Dez studied him for a long time, and Sully waited him out until, at last, he provided a response.
“I’ll never stop worrying about you, because it’s who I am. But I’ll try, all right? I just need you to give me the chance to have your back. You’re not in this alone anymore. Let me help, okay? And God, man, don’t do anything that’ll get you arrested or killed. Do me that one favour at least.”
Sully broke into a grin, and was relieved when Dez matched it—albeit to a lesser degree.
“Thanks, D.”
“I’ll thank you to keep your end of the bargain.”
“I will. I won’t go behind your back again, as long as you pull back a bit on the overprotective big brother thing.”
“Okay.” Dez held up finger and thumb, leaving about an inch of space between them. “A bit.”
Sully smacked his brother’s hand.
He was standing on a cart, the faces of a jeering crowd of people below, a threatening grey sky visible above the Triple Tree. All around him was silence, his senses limited to sight, smell and touch.
It was enough.
It was too much.
He’d been at this site many times before, but never here, never about to be turned off himself. He’d stood where the half-masked hangman waited, at the edge of the cart, the youth’s eyes looking everywhere but at him.
Of course the new hangman would not meet his eye. He’d trained the boy, after all.
The rope had been readied, and he felt the scratch and the so-far bearable pull of it against his throat. The Newgate Ordinary, a short, overfed man, had accompanied the party and now stepped up to the edge of the cart.
His lips moved, forming familiar words. “Pray with me, my son.”
He felt the hateful power within his own sneer, and he revelled in the widened eyes and what must be the gasps and whispers rippling through the large crowd at his reply. “I’ll not pray. Not with you, not with any of your kind.”
The Ordinary’s lips moved again. “But surely you seek redemption.”
“I seek nothing. Nothing but vengeance on every man, woman and child here.”
The Ordinary stepped back while the young hangman and his assistant rushed to the cart. There would be no nightcap for the condemned man. He wanted them to see. He wanted them all to see. To remember.
In the middle of the night, when they were taken by their darkest dreams.
“You fear me,” he called to the crowd. “And you are right to do so. The power of the Spirit Caller does not end with me this day. I see you all, and may my curse find each of you before the end.”
Someone in front screamed. Others ran. In every place in the crowd—from the poor who’d jostled for the best position nearest the cart, to the rich who’d paid extra to sit in Mother Procter’s Pews—the jeering had stopped.
The laugh rumbled from his chest, deep and black and cold. The sound of his soul. He could not
hear it, but he could feel it.
Feel them.
For years to come, they would speak of this day, how his dark laughter had seemed to echo even after they’d pulled the cart away, how his eyes had sought them out as they ran for safety, how he’d met Death not kicking and flailing, but rather as family.
He would allow nothing else. Their fear would end them.
And if it didn’t, he would return to do it himself.
Sully awoke with a start, breath caught so hard in his throat he felt he was choking.
A heavy intake of breath, dragged into his lungs by force, had him first gasping and then hacking, doubled over on Dez’s pullout.
He felt his brother’s hand on his back, but it was a solid thirty seconds before he was able to form an answer to his question.
“I’m okay,” he said at last, hand on throat as he eased away the remaining feel of the rope.
“You swallow a spider or something?”
Sully shook his head slightly, leaving Dez to fill in the blanks with the answer that would trouble him the most.
“It was a ghost, wasn’t it? Someone was choking you.”
“No,” Sully said. “It wasn’t a ghost. Not really. It was a dream. Just a really vivid dream.”
Sure, it was. Just a dream. If he kept repeating that, maybe he’d eventually believe it. Because the truth was, it wasn’t just a dream.
It was a memory.
12
Morning brought a stream of sunshine through the window and the welcome smell of coffee and frying bacon.
Yet a chill lingered over Sully, hovering like a comic strip storm cloud. The dream from last night clung to him, the images and sensations plucking at his brain.
Almost as bad as the feeling of dying at the end of a hangman’s noose was the man’s hate. He’d never felt anything like it, not even for his own worst enemies. He hated Lowell for killing his father, no question. But as heated as the confrontation two years ago had seemed, Sully now knew he’d been naïve to think himself capable of the level of vengeance others were prepared to exact.
Sully hated, but only because he’d first loved; the man in his vision drew his hatred from a well inside him containing nothing but the deepest evil.
The thought had Sully up and out of bed in the next moment, looking to rid himself of the vision’s remnants by immersing himself in the one thing he was certain that man hadn’t known: love for his family.
Pax had plunked himself down next to Dez at the stove, sitting up on his haunches to allow him to monitor the goings-on within the pan. Bacon was a weak spot for the dog, and he barely spared Sully a glance before returning wide brown eyes to what he could see of the pan’s edge.
Dez’s attention span was more malleable, and he met his brother’s approach with a smile.
“Hey, sleep okay?”
“Yeah,” Sully said. It wasn’t a lie. He’d crashed after that vision, slept hard until morning.
Slept like the dead.
“Breakfast’s almost done. Want to get the plates and cutlery out? And I could use something to put the bacon in.”
Sully patted Dez on the back as he brushed past him, more grateful for the diversion than he wanted to explain to his easily worried and paranormal-fearing brother. For now, it had been nothing but a vision, the reason for it unknown to him.
Unless he really thought about it. And that wasn’t something he could allow himself to do.
They ate amidst a conversation Sully purposefully started about their childhood, some memory he drew out to get Dez chatting. He needed the sound of his brother’s voice right now, and as Dez talked and broke on occasion into that funny laugh of his, the chilling effects of the vision fell away. By the end of breakfast, once the dishes had been washed and put away, he felt more or less normal, the way he usually felt a few hours after he’d been forced to sit through a horror movie.
“Hey, Dez, you keep in contact with Marc?”
“Echoles? I hear from him from time to time. He’s still at the university, still teaching those subjects that creep the hell out of me. Why? You need to talk to him about Carter?”
Not so much Carter as the vision, but that was a problem for another day.
“No, I’m good there for now. Just wondering.”
He’d been “just wondering” for some time about something else—someone else—but he’d left it unspoken. Dez hadn’t offered any unsolicited information about Takara Watanabe, and Sully had opted to leave well enough alone. A lot could have happened in two years. Things he didn’t want to know about.
They headed next to Lachlan’s house, Sully hoping to take another look at the police file in case there was anything he’d missed. The info it contained had seemed a little sparse to him, but there was a chance something he’d read hadn’t caught at the time.
Unfortunately, a second read-through didn’t change anything.
“Lars said pretty much the same thing in his written statement as he told me,” Dez said.
Lachlan had been reading as well, but his nose was buried in a biography about Vincent van Gogh. He didn’t bother to look up as he offered his observation. “What about his videotaped statement?”
Sully exchanged a glance with his brother. “What videotaped statement?”
Lachlan at last turned to them, pulling his reading glasses down his nose to fix them with a withering stare. “Good God, don’t either of you two know how to read? It says on the cover page there’s a videotaped statement.”
Sully flipped to the front and read over the sheet in question. Sure enough, not far down the page was a reference to a video.
“There’s no disc,” Dez said.
“They don’t always attach them, not unless a copy’s been made for the Crown.” Lachlan leaned over and tapped the file. “My thinking is a copy wasn’t necessary since nothing went to the prosecutors’ office. No criminal charges were considered necessary.”
“But trespassing was involved.”
“That’s a summary offence. A kid was dead, and the investigation deemed he was alone at the time. Who were they going to charge?”
Not Lars Ahlgren, obviously. He’d told Dez he’d gone down there only because Evan called him about Carter. Evan’s written statement backed up the teacher’s claim.
“How do we go about getting a copy of the video statement?” Sully asked.
“You’re on your own there. You’ll need the lead investigator for that, and he and I aren’t exactly on good terms.”
Sully had been too preoccupied with what was contained in the statements and reports to bother looking to see who had been directly in charge of the investigation. Now Sully raked his eyes over the papers in front of him, trying to find what he’d missed.
Dez, far more experienced in reading police files, spotted it first, voicing his response with a groan loud enough to be heard next door if someone had left a window open.
“What?” Sully asked. He clued in before Dez had the chance to answer. “Not Forbes Raynor.”
“Yee-ep,” Dez drawled. “The very same. We’re screwed.”
Lachlan, sitting in his easy chair, chuckled. Sully suspected, given the path of van Gogh’s life, it wasn’t the book Lachlan was laughing at.
It wasn’t a phone call Dez was about to make in front of Lachlan. The last thing he needed was a background heckler.
He found Forbes’s cellphone number in his recent calls list and found his finger stalling over it as if every cell in his body was hardwired to avoid speaking to the man.
“You’re grinding your teeth,” Sully spoke up from the passenger seat.
“Shut up.”
Dez bit the bullet, hitting the number and putting the phone to his ear as the ringing began. He wasn’t sure whether to count it as a win or not that Forbes picked up.
“It’s Dez Braddock,” he said, the words coming through a locked jaw that proved Sully’s assessment correct. He released it, working it open and side-to-side as Forbes retur
ned the greeting.
“What the hell do you want?”
“I need to see you about something. It’s to do with the Carter Devereaux case. I need you to bring a copy of any videotaped statements you might have.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m serious. Something’s come to light in the case and I need to check a few things.”
“Get lost, Braddock. The case was closed almost as soon as it started.”
“We’re reopening it.”
“We?”
“You know who I mean. And you know what that means.”
Dez was counting on it Forbes would keep it to himself. The cop couldn’t, after all, expose Sully without taking his wife—and himself for protecting her—down in the process. With the charges she’d be facing, she and Forbes had a lot to lose.
Now Dez just had to hope Forbes hadn’t discovered during the past couple of weeks Greta Raynor was more worthy of divorce than protection.
It wasn’t entirely surprising the Major Crimes detective agreed to meet with them right away.
For one thing, it turned out he was still off work, keeping an eye on his wife, who, he claimed, was doing a lot better at kicking the drugs she’d been hooked on.
For another thing, Dez and his brother were essentially threatening to overturn a case Forbes had been central in closing.
“Let’s make this quick,” were the first words out of Forbes’s mouth. “My sister’s been helping me keep an eye on Greta, but she’s not happy about being left alone with her for too long.”
Judging by his appearance, Dez figured he hadn’t shaved in at least a few days, a solid layer of stubble on the verge of becoming a full-on beard. It didn’t suit him. As far as Dez was concerned, nothing suited the man.
“You haven’t gone to the coroner with anything yet?” Forbes asked.
“No, we haven’t. We wanted to talk to you first.”
Forbes took a breath, in and out through his nose. His eyes swept their surroundings before returning to Dez’s face with a sneer acting as accompaniment.
“Nice place.”