Sam staggered backwards as if reeling from a physical blow. He leaned against the concrete and granite wall of the Justice Center, its six-storey foundation feeling barely strong enough to keep him upright.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The bodies recovered from the fire this morning do not belong to your wife and child. Hannah and MaryAnn are still alive.’
Sam rubbed at his face. ‘Who are you?’ he whispered. ‘What kind of sick game is this?’
‘No game, Mr White,’ said the calm monotone. ‘If you don’t want to lose them again, you’ll need to do exactly what I say.’
‘You bastard!’
‘You are mine for three days. If you do all that I ask, you will see your loved ones again. If you disappoint me in any way, I will dispose of them.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ Sam’s voice cracked on the edge of hysteria.
‘Once the police discover the bodies aren’t who they think they are, they’ll be looking for answers. Since you have none, you’ll want to avoid them. The choice is yours. If you do decide to involve the authorities and you are not available when I call, your family will die.’
‘Can I talk to them? Please?’
The caller ignored his plea.
‘You will be given a series of tasks, each one a further test of loyalty to your family. The final stage will be the delivery of one million dollars in cash.’
‘But that’s impossible. I don’t have anything near that amount of money.’
‘Your first task is a simple choice,’ continued the voice. ‘Either you can return to the detectives upstairs or you can disappear off their radar. I suggest the latter, but like everything I shall ask of you, the choice is entirely yours.’
Sam took a deep breath. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘If the bodies aren’t my family’s, who are they?’
16
Detective Hogan filled two mugs with oily black coffee from the communal pot in the tiny staff lunch room. Like most staff rooms, this one had its main corkboard wall decorated with notices for school raffles, garage sales, places for rent, and even a poster for local punk band The Rotten Johnnys, which one of the other detectives played drums for in his off-duty hours.
Hogan added powdered cream substitute to one of the coffees and carried the cups to the two-sided desk he shared with his partner.
Detective Preston tilted precariously on his office chair, balancing the 1½-inch heels of his cowboy boots on the flimsy keyboard tray that jutted from the desk’s underbelly. He accepted the murky coffee from his partner and took a large slurp.
‘This is gawd awful,’ he said with a grimace. ‘How this became our great nation’s most popular addiction, I’ll never know.’
Hogan shrugged, took a sip and winced. It was awful. ‘So what do you think of White?’
Preston tilted further back in his chair. ‘I hate to say it, but I think he’s OK. I rode him hard in there, but he got pissed at me for all the right reasons. His grief seems genuine. That said, I still think the situation is flaky. Just can’t figure what he gets out of it.’
‘I agree. There’s no money angle. He won’t see a penny from insurance. In fact, he’s worse off. I like the frustrated-actor angle though. Maybe he wanted a clean slate so he could return to Hollywood unhindered.’
‘Yeah, that’s definitely worth pursuing. We should talk to the neighbours. See if there were marital problems.’
‘There are always marital problems.’
‘You got that right.’ Preston grimaced again as he took another sip of coffee. ‘If you got on the barkin’ end of my wife, you’d wonder why I hadn’t shot her already.’
Hogan’s laughter was interrupted by the electronic chirp from his desk phone. He answered it with a chuckle. ‘Hogan.’
‘Ah, Detective Hogan,’ said a voice tinged with excitement. ‘Chief Medical Examiner Randy Hogg, here. I have an unusual finding to report.’
Hogan covered the mouthpiece. ‘It’s the coroner.’
Preston dropped his feet to the floor and picked up his phone. He connected to the same line.
‘And what’s that, Randy?’ Hogan asked.
‘I still have a lot of tests to do, you understand, but I discovered an anomaly with one of the bodies.’
‘Speak English,’ Preston jumped in.
Hogg changed tracks. ‘Are you sure of the race of both victims?’
‘The race?’ Hogan was puzzled. ‘Yeah, they’re white.’
‘Hmmm, that’s what I have written down.’
‘But?’ Preston pushed.
‘Yes, well, it seems the younger victim isn’t Caucasian. We found some undamaged skin and it definitely appears to be African American. Naturally, I need to run more tests and compare skeletal and dental records, but on cursory exam, I would say your cadaver does not match your victim.’
17
They’re alive!
Sam’s vision began to swim as he lowered the cellphone. The flimsy plastic shell felt suddenly too heavy, as though its miniature electronics had been replaced by lead.
He looked around, his face a mask of pain. None of the scurrying strangers noticed. They moved in a blur, collars and umbrellas turned up against the spitting rain as they snuck a quick cigarette between meetings or grabbed coffee and steamed hotdogs from gleaming, chrome-accented carts on the corners.
Sam was a ghost to them.
They’re alive!
The realization caused a wave of vertigo to wash over him, weakening his legs and making his stomach churn. He collapsed against the building, his face pressing into the cool damp of chiselled grey brick. Before he could catch himself, his knees buckled.
The rough concrete scraped his cheek as he tried to regain his footing, but his legs had no strength and his feet slid out from under him. He hit the ground with a smack and lay sprawled across the sidewalk.
An elderly couple with an umbrella built for two stepped on to the road to get by his inert form. The man scowled and the woman clucked her tongue in annoyance.
Sam broke into a guttural sob, his chest expanding and contracting with deep, shuddering breaths. No one came to his aid, and after several minutes, he felt drained and empty.
They’re alive!
Sam wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve and pushed off the ground to rest on his knees. Curious faces quickly looked away. Nobody stepped forward to offer a hand. Either fear or indifference held them at bay.
When his thighs stopped shaking, Sam grasped the wall with both hands and climbed slowly to his feet. His legs continued to tremble and his bloody cheek stung, but he knew it was time to use that pain rather than collapse beneath it.
He shoved off from the wall and started to walk. He didn’t have a plan, nor a destination, but he did have a reason to live.
Zack watched Sam stagger from the Justice Center. His movement was unsteady and Zack wondered if he was drunk or mentally unhinged.
He wouldn’t have blamed him for being either. His own desire to climb inside a bottle hadn’t diminished, and if he hadn’t emptied the last one, he would be nipping at it now.
When Sam turned the corner, Zack swung the Mercedes into traffic to follow. He wondered if the two cops he had ditched at the restaurant were looking for him, or if they had decided to let him be. He couldn’t afford to be arrested, not with the fate of his family on the line, but neither could he abandon his car. It contained everything he had left.
Zack picked up the cellphone, hit the preprogrammed speed dial and reported in.
18
Sam boarded a city transit bus and asked the driver how he could get back to his house. The driver told him to either take a taxi or ride the bus to the depot and transfer to a different line.
Sam dropped some coins into the box for his fare and sat on the bench by the door that was reserved for the elderly and handicapped.
Today, he felt qualified as both.
As the bus left central downtown and headed east, the houses b
egan to lose their charm and the faces of the pedestrians became more clouded with defeat. A motel sign in pale blue neon blinked from a block ahead, and as Sam stared at it, he felt a deep weariness pulling at his mind.
Sam pulled the bell cord above his seat, alerting the driver he wanted to get off.
‘This ain’t the depot, bud,’ the driver said.
‘It’ll do.’
Sam hauled himself to his feet and swung around to face the door. When the bus hissed to a stop, he stepped off, checked over his shoulder, and headed for the motel.
The same silver Mercedes he had spotted outside the Justice Center was idling half a block away.
The front-desk clerk at the Bluesman Motel was happy to have a daytime customer until Sam explained he had arrived without luggage or a vehicle.
‘I don’ want trouble,’ said the man in a heavy Pakistani accent. ‘No drugs, no guns, no whores, and absolutely no pornographic movies being filmed on the premises.’
‘I’m just tired.’ Sam handed over his credit card. ‘Give me a bed with clean sheets and hot water for the shower.’
‘We very clean,’ explained the clerk. ‘Very nice establishment. We not allow scum or pornographers.’
‘That’s a relief.’
The clerk narrowed his eyes into slits as he slid Sam’s credit card through a small electronic card reader attached to his phone.
‘You have room four. Very nice. Clean. Fresh. I personally unplug toilet myself.’
‘Good to know.’ Sam’s mouth stretched open in a yawn. ‘There a back door in the room?’
‘No back door,’ said the clerk, his eyes narrowing again. ‘I see who come. I see who go.’
Sam tried to offer a friendly, reassuring smile, but ended up yawning again.
The clerk handed over the key. ‘You want earplugs? They only four dollars extra.’
Sam waved him off and headed for his room, four doors down from the glass-enclosed front desk on the ground floor. As he put the key in the lock, he glanced over his shoulder towards the street.
The Mercedes had moved up a couple of car lengths to park beneath a scrawny tree that somehow survived amidst a steady fog of car exhaust and nightly sprinklings of recycled beer. The gloomy umbrella offered by the tree’s patchwork canopy hid the interior of the car from Sam’s view.
Turning his back on the car and its unknown occupant, he entered his room.
19
MaryAnn awoke in complete darkness, the sour smell of rot invading her nostrils.
She rubbed her eyes, sending tiny white and blue sparks dancing across her corneas, but when the sparks blinked out, the impenetrable darkness remained. She lifted her hand in front of her face and blinked to refocus, but her fingers remained invisible.
Fear made her heart beat faster and icy daggers of panic stabbed her brain.
She didn’t like the dark.
The last thing she remembered was curling up in bed and writing in her diary. Paul had smiled at her in the hallway just before Biology class, and she could tell it wasn’t his ordinary smile. This smile had been special – just for her. It had been a pleasant thought to fall asleep to.
A high-pitched squeak made her jump.
The squeak was followed by the sound of tiny, scurrying feet. MaryAnn pulled her knees in close to her chest. Wherever she was, the air was moist and cold. The floor felt solid, but if she dug in her nails, it could be flaked away. The walls were similar; cold and crumbly. It felt like a grave.
Another squeak made her strain her ears, trying to gauge its direction. A louder squeak answered and without warning the chamber erupted in duelling high-pitched squeals of pain.
MaryAnn cowered in her corner, pressing her back against the packed earth and humming a Coldplay song to drown out the noise.
When silence resumed, she inhaled deeply, holding the oxygen in her lungs for several seconds before releasing it. But then her ears picked up movement, the sound of a dozen tiny feet, sharp claws clicking on hard-pack floor.
She shivered and her lower lip trembled, then she began to hum again, determined to stay calm until she could figure out what was going on. The humming worked until one of the rats scurried across her bare foot.
MaryAnn screamed.
20
The clerk hadn’t lied. The room was clean and the bed looked soft. It took all of Sam’s willpower not to lie down and shut off the world – just for ten minutes. But he knew if he did, he would sleep for hours.
Instead, Sam stripped off his clothes and stepped into the shower stall. The water was hot and he let it pour over his back and shoulders, easing his tense muscles.
He placed his forearms against the tiled wall, rested his head upon them and closed his eyes as the soothing water spilled down his lower back, buttocks and aching thighs. He could feel acres of grit and the oily residue of smoke sweating from his pores as the stall filled with luxurious steam.
When he opened his eyes again, he was shivering; the steam long gone, the water a freezing spray.
Sam cursed himself for falling asleep, grabbed the complementary toy-sized bar of soap, ripped off its flimsy wrapper and scrubbed his shivering body from head to toe. When he finally stepped out of the shower, his lips were blue.
He dressed quickly – the smell of smoke clinging to his soiled clothes – and returned to the bathroom. A large frosted-glass window rested in an old wooden frame above the sink. There was no need for a lock as the years and layers of paint had sealed it tight.
Sam pulled a red-jacketed Swiss Army pocket-knife from his front pocket, opened the smaller of the two blades, and began to cut through the paint at the seams. It took ten minutes, some muscle and the rest of the soap to grease the tracks, but eventually the window slid up high enough for him to squeeze through.
Sam dropped to the ground. A narrow, two-foot-wide alley of broken bottles, discarded needles and scraggy weeds ran the length of the building. Being careful of where he stepped, Sam headed down the alley to the end of the block where a flimsy wire fence had been breached so many times it was practically a door.
Sam crossed the side street to the next block and walked to the corner. A quick check told him the Mercedes was still parked under the tree.
Sam took a deep breath, opened the larger blade on his knife until it locked into place, and moved forward.
21
MaryAnn’s scream brought more movement: the shuffling of feet followed by the snap of a bolt and the sandpaper scrape of rusty metal.
The sounds were followed by a stabbing square of blue light that suddenly appeared as a floating mirage in the curtain of darkness.
MaryAnn shielded her eyes from the painful light, using her fingers to filter some of the glare.
‘You’re awake,’ said a male voice. Its cadence was slow and husky. ‘Feeling sick?’
MaryAnn swallowed, her throat dry.
‘Who are you?’ she asked timidly. ‘Where am I?’
‘Unimportant. How do you feel?’
MaryAnn bit back an indignant retort.
‘I’m very thirsty and . . . there are rats in here.’
‘I’ll bring water.’
The square of light vanished and the darkness returned even deeper and more foreboding than before. MaryAnn struggled not to cry, fearing that if she started, she wouldn’t know how to stop.
Soon, the square of light returned.
‘Don’t cause trouble,’ said the voice, ‘and you’ll be fine.’
MaryAnn heard the metallic clunk of the lock.
‘Where’s my mom?’ she asked.
‘Don’t worry about it.’
The square of light shifted and grew into a large rectangle. Inside the rectangle and blocking most of the light was a hulking silhouette.
The man ducked and entered the tiny cell. He had to remain bent over, as the ceiling was too low. Hunched over, his muscular body took on the shape of an ogre.
MaryAnn had difficulty taking her eyes off the man as
he approached, but she forced herself to scan her surroundings while she had light.
The cell was a rough square carved out of the earth, barely six feet wide and around the same height. The four corners were supported by thick wooden beams, the rough lumber so dark and slick with creosote it looked like fossilized bone. Decaying panels of oil-soaked wood made a rough skirt around the base. Above the wood, the walls were nothing more than dried mud and flecks of rough stone.
MaryAnn glanced up and gulped. The dirt ceiling had so many cracks it reminded her of a giant spider’s web.
The sudden thought that she might die there sent a steel spike through her carefully maintained control, and MaryAnn felt herself begin to crack.
The man handed her a bottle of water. He stood so close that she could smell his cloying aftershave. He had a square of plastic bandage on his neck, the centre of it spotted with dried blood.
‘I want my mom and dad,’ MaryAnn said weakly.
The man shrugged.
MaryAnn stared up at him, a sudden surge of anger igniting a fire in her pale green eyes. She unscrewed the cap on the bottle, took a deep drink of water to slake her thirst, and then unexpectedly sprang to her feet.
Before the man could react, MaryAnn’s mouth opened and a high-pitched, ear-piercing scream punched from her throat using the full capacity of her adolescent lungs. The startled man lurched in surprise, his head smashing into the low ceiling.
He grunted as broken slabs of dried mud rained down in a dirty shower around him.
MaryAnn didn’t hesitate. She ran for the light, breaking through the doorway into a narrow, dimly lit passage as ancient as the cell. The floor was the same hard-baked mud and occasional wooden board; the walls were cracked and crumbling, as if they might collapse at any second. The only light was from a string of bare bulbs attached to the ceiling.
MaryAnn followed the lights, her pace quickening as an angry roar bellowed from behind.
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