Pink Blooded: A Lana Pink Mystery

by Crystal Gallagher

  They floated around me even as Louis grabbed my wrists, held them behind my back, and pushed me towards his waiting BMW which had been there all along after all, just encased in shadows.

  "Where are you taking me?" I snarled, struggling to set myself free. His hands wrapped around me caused a constant shudder of revulsion to rock my body even as I tried to wriggled them free.

  "Away from here. This is the last place you should be, Lana."

  And I realized, Taj hadn't asked me to meet him at the airport because it was more private here -- he'd asked me to meet him here because this was where the base was. And he was going to show me. Tree Valley's very own Area 51. I was standing right on top of it. Or at least, I would be until I was shoved inside the BMW and driven to wherever knows where.

  "I'm not going to hurt you, Lana," Louis said in a voice that sounded very far away like it came from one of the shadows and not from a living, breathing person who was standing behind me. "I love you."

  Excuse me? Had he really just said that?

  Louis had stopped in his tracks. I slid my hands from out of his grip, which had gone limp and turned slowly to look at him. It was like he wasn't fully there, breathing heavily despite the fact it had taken little exertion to push me forty feet across the concrete.

  I had to do it, I had to speak his name.

  "What have you done with Taj?" I asked. "Where is he?"

  Louis slowly came back to earth, his eyes focusing on me in a reptilian gaze. He shook his head, a maniacal look taking over his face. "Don't worry about that right now. Just get in the car and come with me."

  Chapter Nine

  Almost A Working Girl.

  In spite of it being almost-winter, Tree Valley was encased in a sunshine and heat so bright that it was practically tropical.

  I pulled my shades on -- not just for a look this time, I actually needed them -- and walked through the palm-tree filled esplanade of Tree Valley Plaza where people were laughing and eating without a care in the world, sucked up all the envy I had in my body, and headed on up to May's firm where she was waiting for me on the fourth floor.

  "Yikes," I said, looking around May's almost-empty office, which was now mostly filled with cardboard boxes, the expensive furniture returned to the rental store where it was leased from, I supposed. Or it had been sold to pay the credit card bills.

  "Nothing is final," May said, though she was packing up files and throwing them into the boxes. "But it is better to be prepared." That was always May's M.O, to stay three steps further ahead than necessary. I preferred to stay three steps behind. Less effort involved. "Don't panic yet." She straightened up and brushed the hair out of her face, trying to look calm. "I'm not."

  "So what happens now?" I asked, kicking a cardboard box gently. "Do I still have a job?"

  I wasn't sure whether I wanted the answer to be yes or no.

  "Yes..." May said, glancing around. "Actually I want to hire you to do a job right away."

  Great, I thought, unaware if even the voice in my own head was sarcastic or sincere. "What is it?"

  May walked over to the window and gazed out at the beach as she picked up a figurine of a ballet dancer off the window sill and ran a dust cloth over it before throwing it in a box. "But it's off the books. While we are in liquidation I can't have any of this official, okay Lana?"

  I cocked my head at her. "This doesn't sound like the kind of respectable job you wanted me to be doing."

  "I know," she said, digging through her purse for a pile of cash which she then shoved into my hands. I can never say no to a pile of cash, no matter how dangerous the task required to earn it is. "But this is what I need you to do for me right now. Can you handle it?" There was the hint of tears in her eyes which made me uncomfortable. May never cried. Parents aren't supposed to cry in front of their kids.

  I nodded quickly. "Of course," I said. "Whatever you need me to do, May." I shoved the cash into my pocket and waited for her instructions, feeling a little like a Charlie's Angel. My heart beating faster at the thought that I was about to get my first official -- unofficial -- almost-investigation job.

  May gulped.

  "I need you to follow the Mayor. Harris."

  Not what I was expecting for my first job. I certainly hadn't expected May to turn against her own boyfriend. The money in my pocket started to burn. "The--the mayor? You think he had something to do with this?" I asked, lowering my voice. "You think he stole the money from the firm?"

  May nodded slightly as she bit her lip. "I think he cleared me out, Lana. You were right about him. He was using me this whole time, getting close so that he could rob me." She bit down harder on her lip -- it was effective, the tears still didn't fall, even though it looked like it was taking all her strength to stop them streaming down her cheeks. May was a Capricorn and she viewed all emotion as embarrassing.

  If I was right about Harris, I was right about all of them. The secret society of Tree Valley leaders who were involved in covering up The Landing, and everything that had happened since.

  He probably stole the money in order to contribute to the cover up. Billions of dollars. I shook my head. That was the kind of money it would take to pay off those higher up. Who knew what kind of debt the town was truly in.

  I ran a hand through my hair, trying not to show that I was rattled.

  "It's okay Lana, you're not in any danger. You're just trailing him. If you keep your distance he won't even see you. I mean, that's kind of the point."

  May didn't know what men like Harris and Louis were though, that was the problem. She might think she did, she might have thought Harris was dirty enough to steal billions of dollars from her, (which I suppose was a start), but she didn't know what they were really capable of.

  She hadn't been in the back of that BMW with me the night before.

  I nodded grimly. "It's fine. I'm sure I can handle it. Even without a P.I's license."

  "Jyson can give you a few starter tips if you need them," May said, handing me his number on a business card. I doubted that I'd use it.

  A) I didn't want the help. B) I didn't want to drag another innocent person into this.

  ***

  "I'm sorry to call so late..."

  Jyson stepped out of his front door and pulled it shut behind him. I noticed that even though he'd pulled a jacket on and appeared to be wearing pants, he still had slippers on his feet.

  "It's fine. To be completely honest I needed an excuse to get out of the house." Jyson zipped up his jacket. "And I can't exactly just take off at midnight for no good reason when there is a baby screaming for us."

  "Not getting much sleep?" I asked, noticing the lines around his eyes had deepened even further in the three days since I'd seen him.

  He laughed and shook his head. "I've discovered how little sleep humans actually need to survive on...you can get by with only two hours a night without dying, I've discovered."

  "Yikes," I said, nodding down at his shoes. "You going to take those off?'

  "Shoot." He dashed back into the townhouse -- one of the white teeth ones, of course, like all respectable citizens of Tree Valley owned -- and I heard the baby screaming before he closed the door again, actual shoes on his feet this time.

  "Don't have one of your own."

  To be honest the idea of having kids sounded horrible to me. "I wasn't ever planning on it."

  Jyson laughed again. "I felt like that once. Then I met Brent and things just changed for me..." Jyson pulled his gloves on, causing a shot of envy to rock me as I blew on my own chilly fingertips. A tropical day without any clouds in the sky made for a cold night with no cloud cover to lock the heat in. Tree Valley felt exposed that night. It was as clear as the night five years ago when I'd looked up from my law books in my study and seen a strange flicker of hot pink in the sky, and then looked away again, believing I was hallucinating due to study exhaustion.

  "Brent wanted kids?" I asked.

  Jyson nodded, smoke coming fr
om his mouth as he spoke due to the chill in the air. "And I could hardly be the arsehole who said no, could I?" Jyson asked, laughing. "He made some convincing arguments as well...such as, who's going to look after us in our old age, for instance?"

  I shrugged. "I always thought that was a pretty selfish reason for wanting to have kids."

  Jyson nodded. "I agree with you actually. And I can hardly imagine Lucy ever being able to look after us, a baby the size of her. Seems impossible to think she'll ever be a full grown person."

  "Nice name," I said, as we headed to Grace's car, which I was still borrowing. She'd been at work on so many night shifts that she'd barely missed it from the garage. So...I might not have officially asked to borrow it that night. But a P.I could hardly stake out the town's most dangerous man on foot, could she?

  "Did May ever get you to do any jobs like this?" I switched on the car heater and warmed my hands in front of it, double checking that all of the windows were up.

  Jyson nodded. "Every now and then."

  Okay, that surprised me. Maybe there were things about May I didn't know. I'd always thought she was strictly by-the-book, even if I didn't agree with her firm's practices.

  "Okay, so, do you know where we are going?" Jyson asked.

  I nodded. "Harris's house. It's not far from here." He lived in the nicest part of town, and they were all pretty nice, apart from the areas Taj and I lived.

  "Well, you've got to actually start the car if we are ever going to get there."

  I nodded. I'd been stalling, so to speak.

  By the time we approached the palm-tree lined road of the almost-gated neighbourhood that Harris belonged to I was having to grip the steering wheel extra hard so that Jyson didn't see that my hands were shaking.

  "So, we should hang back here, shouldn't we?" I asked. I hated that I sounded like such an amateur. I actually knew that we needed to hang back -- I mean, I didn't think we were supposed to pull up right in front of his house and honk the horn -- but I was second guessing myself, and with Jyson sitting beside me -- the expert -- I started to feel like I had to defer to him.

  Jyson laughed. "You really need to get your P.I's license. And not just for the qualification. The training stuff will actually help you as well, with the practical stuff like surveillance."

  Melrose Avenue had technically been part of Old Traralgon and was one of the areas that hadn't been bulldozed. The rich didn't want to lose their mansions and move into state-of-the-art yet inferior townhouses. Melrose sat on a bit of a hill so anyone who lived there could literally look down on the rest of the town.

  It was lucky I had Grace's car, a model that could only be afforded by a surgeon who paid sixty bucks a week in rent, because any car that I could have afforded would have looked completely out of place in the estate.

  "Yeah, I suppose I will have to get qualified sooner or later..." But if the firm went under, there wouldn't be much point. I'd be putting that off as long as possible.

  If I was dead, there wouldn't be much point anyway.

  And I had way, way bigger things to worry about than going to school to get a piece of paper.

  I glanced down at the bruises around my wrists and pulled the sleeves of my jacket down to my hands so that Jyson wouldn't see them. Dug my wrists under my arms, just to be safe.

  I'm doing this for your own protection.

  My wrists still hurt now as I am writing this book.

  His BMW was warm as we circled the airport. I'd assumed we'd drive away from it, not circle it, again and again.

  "You think you know what they do here, but you don't really know," Louis said as I tugged at the door handles, central locked so I couldn't even open the door and roll out of a moving car.

  "Do you know what happens here at night, Lana?"

  Well....no? Didn't want to admit that to him, though. "I have a pretty good idea." The car is probably going slow enough that I would hardly hurt myself if I jumped out. I glanced over at the dash and tried to figure out how to undo the central locking. Maybe I could just steal the steering wheel from Louis. That would be pretty reckless, though.

  That would be a pretty stupid thing to do.

  "If Taj Robinson really cared about you, then he wouldn't have brought you here, Lana. Not at this time of night. And not ever." Louis' voice was soft now.

  He slammed down on the brakes and I almost slammed into the front window. "You can't trust him!" Louis screamed.

  I tried to control my breathing.

  The airport looked like a dead corpse. It had looked that way ever since the Traralgon to Sydney flights had been stopped over a decade earlier. On the outskirts of Traralgon, it had always been an eerie presence since its death: a ghost and a ghost town at the same time. The military planes that inhabited its body didn't reanimate it, only zombified it. But even the military flights were gone now.

  And then it happened.

  Louis was silent as we watched.

  There was a sudden, blinding flash of light over the airport's hanger like we were being welcomed to an Olympic Opening Ceremony. Light so bright that I couldn't tell you what colour it was. Sounds that were kind of like a motorcycle engine starting, but not exactly.

  After the initial flash, pink lights danced above the hanger, interspersed with green dots that buzzed around, forming strange, alien shapes. Then they were gone.

  I clung to the armrest. "What the heck was that!"

  They came back.

  The lights began to dance like strobe lights, but they didn't move in any logical manner. I didn't want to look at them, they nauseated me.

  Louis sat and stared at the lights, entranced and disgusted by them at the same time.

  When he dropped me home an hour later, the time hadn't actually moved. I arrived back home at the same time I'd left, 9pm.

  Louis leaned over the passenger seat once I was out of the car. "Don't worry, Taj will be fine. But I suggest that you stay well away from him if you want him to stay that way."

  "What are you saying, Louis?"

  "I'm saying. Don't have any more contact with Taj Robison. Or he's going to die."

  Just before he pulled the door shut he added one more thing.

  "Oh, and Lana? So are you."

  ***

  Surveillance work was kind of completely boring. We didn't know exactly how early Harris would leave the house for work, so we'd got there at one am and would stay there until he finally left. I sighed and closed my eyes, wondering how I could do this full time. Maybe I'd never have to worry about that. Stay three steps behind, Lana, it's better for your mental health.

  "Nice up this way, isn't it?" Jyson asked. "I can see why they didn't flatten this land." I opened my eyes to see him nodding over the dashboard. "You know they used to call these the haunted hills."

  I shook my head. There was too much rumor and suspicion in Tree Valley. I wanted to engage in less of it, not more. Still, one glance of Harris' three-story mansion was enough to put me back into full on Conspiracy Theory Mode.

  "Wonder how much cash it takes to buy a house like that," I murmured. "He's only being paid by good old fashioned tax money, isn't he?"

  Jyson let out an uneasy laugh. "Are you suggesting something, Lana?"

  I had to laugh as well. "Well, we are here trailing him. I don't think he's exactly an angel." To understate it. I think Harris worked for the other side entirely.

  "And are you?" Jyson asked. "I think we all should look at ourselves before we cast aspersions on others." Bit of an interesting position for a private investigator to take, I thought. Then I remembered, vaguely, that Jyson was an active member of the church. May had mentioned him taking a lot of religious holidays off. She wouldn't have to worry about that with me.

  "He was born into wealth," Jyson stated, nodding towards the mansion while he opened a bag of gummy worms and offered me one. "You learn to rely on a lot of sugar to get through these shifts."

  I didn't begrudge the mayor, or any person, being born
into wealth. We can't change the situations we'd been born into. It was just that the mayor's backstory didn't quite add up. I'd been digging all day, using the skip tracing software that May had installed on her office computers, trying to figure out where he might have funnelled the money if he really had stolen it from May.

  It had always been the 'story' of Harris Whitemoore that he was a self-made man who came from nothing to become the most powerful man in Tree Valley. He'd been born in a town called Morwell which was located twelve kilometres west and which did not receive the Upgrade. People born in Morwell had it a lot rougher than us local folk of Tree Valley, and Harris had always claimed to be humble due to his difficult early life in the 'slums' of Morwell (no where near that bad in reality. It's a bit of a ghost town, but it's not a slum. Just another example of Harris manipulating the narrative to fit whatever story would get him the crown.)

  But I'd dug through his file, using the database that May's firm employed, and I couldn't find any record of him being born in Morwell.

  I couldn't find any evidence of him being born, at all.

  "Do you think it's right for the mayor of Traralgon to live in a house so much bigger than his constituents?" It was even the biggest house on Melrose. Including Louis' house which sat two streets back, dwarfed by the size of Harris'.

  Jyson was just staring at me like I'd said something wrong. "What?" I asked, wondering if I was drooling out gummy worms or something.

  "You mean Tree Valley," he said softly.

  I felt my cheeks burn a little as I returned my attention to the house. Hadn't meant to make that mistake in front of a human being.

  Jyson sat up suddenly, almost spilling the bag of gummy worms as he threw it on the dashboard. "Shh..." he said, sliding down into the seat while at the same time managing to lean forward.

  "There he is," Jyson said. "Harris."