I was pretty sure Taj's religious beliefs would lead him to much the same conclusions that mine had. Then again, I didn't know what five years of living in a toxic swamp away from the rest of society had done to his faith system.
Taj reached for the knife.
"Fine!" Jyson shouted, breathing heavily. He looked down at the ground. I looked at Taj who shot me a can't believe that actually worked look. "I didn't know anything about the money being stolen till after the fact, all right?" He looked at me first for mercy, then at Taj, who seemed even less likely to give it than I did.
Jyson's chest looked like it might be about to burst through the ropes that held him to the chair. "I didn't know that's what Brent was doing. I didn't know he was that desperate." Jyson gulped for air. "I should have...I should have known months ago when he first came home one late night from the hospital, with a bag of pills and no prescription..."
Taj and I were staring at each other again, trying to decide silently between us if we believed what he was saying.
"You weren't even there for the birth of your daughter, Jyson."
"I know," he said desperately. "And I feel guilty for that okay, but I was working on the case...and she came early...And then I found out what Brent had done. But not till later. I was trying to fix it. I told him he shouldn't even come to the hospital, if he couldn't be a dad..." He was sweating profusely.
It was too late by the time I realised he had been slowly wriggling out of the ropes the entire time.
"With me quitting my job to look after the baby, we weren't going to have enough money," Jyson said. "Not with Brent's drug habit...."
"How did he get the codes to May's accounts, Jyson?" I asked, still not believing him, although I wanted to. "You're the one who worked for her."
"He stole them from me, okay?" Jyson said. "While our baby was being born in hospital." His face was full of pain. The balloon was going to burst. "I wasn't part of it, okay. I wanted to kill him..." Jyson shook his head. "And yet he has the nerve to call me the irresponsible one. Well, no wonder I had to go out, solving cases on the side, getting arrested, seeing as he was swallowing all our money down in pills. Of course I have to be the one to stay home with Lucy. I can hardly trust her in the hands of a drug addict, can I?"
Taj and I looked at each other again.
Jyson cringed as he looked at the floor. "I couldn't handle him going to jail. I had to protect him. Drug crime is treated so severely in Tree Valley. I already knew that I could hack into the town's program...it was easy enough to make it look like it was Harris who'd funnelled all the money."
"And I was a witness," I said flatly. Unbelievable. "Did you care that it could get me killed, by the way?"
Jyson gulped. "I was just trying to protect Brent. I'm sorry Lana, honestly." He looked down at his rope prison. "Well, I'm a little less sorry now, to be honest."
Fair enough.
I got that he was trying to protect the drug-addict husband who was about to divorce him. But did he have to bring me and May into it? I suppose in his mind he did. He was desperate, not trying to hurt anyone -- we were just collateral damage.
I almost reached down to cut the ropes off him. But not before I had some kind of guarantee. "Brent can't have spent all the money yet, no matter how many drugs he takes. Phone him and get him here. You've got your mobile on you, right? And don't tell him that you're tired up, obviously--"
Taj cut in. "Erm, you can't make phone calls from the bottom of the mud pit."
I rolled my eyes. And made the mistake of taking my eyes off of Jyson while Taj and I whispered. "What are you trying to do, Lana?"
"Get my best friend's company back."
I saw the look in Taj's eyes. It was disbelief. It was why am I even doing this?
I took a step backward. Why was he doing this? May's firm was the thing that had destroyed the Traralgon of old, the one that Taj had loved in spite of its millions of flaws, in spite of the fact that the air was poison and it was borderline unliveable. May's firm was the one who made the deal that signed all our fates, turned us into an almost-Utopia.
And Taj had almost destroyed it all with his theories and -- what we all thought at the time were -- lies about the town, about the UFO landing, about the fact that we were under control by an outside source. That the town was corrupt and rotten to the core. That hadn't even been the worst of it. He'd made up a lie about May herself, a rumor that she'd only been made partner at the firm because she was in cahoots with the alien leaders. He'd almost dragged her down into the mud with him.
And May hated him for it. So did I for a long time. But desperate people do desperate things.
But now she really had hopped into bed with an alien. It's funny how even if you can be totally wrong at one point in time, you can be right later on without actually changing your opinion along the way. Everything becomes true eventually.
So I knew why May was taking this all so hard. She'd worked tirelessly, destroyed her personal life, her chance at motherhood, every aspect of her life outside work to become the most powerful, successful woman in Tree Valley. And only just barely survived with her reputation intact. And once again it had been almost taken away from her by a man. But this time Taj wasn't the culprit.
He was actually trying to help her.
"I'm doing this for you, Lana," he whispered.
"Thank you."
Jyson's arms had come free, though, in our huddle, Taj and I were in ignorant bliss of this fact.
I would have expected Jyson to escape sure -- maybe even to push us over or punch Taj in the face to get away and out of the mud pit.
I never expected him to pick up the knife and stab it into Taj's thigh.
Taj screamed out an expletive and reached down to grab the wound while Jyson fled.
"What the heck, Taj..." I gasped, looking down at the color of the blood that was oozing out of Taj's leg, almost indistinguishable from the khaki color of his pants. "Did you get stung by something?"
"Shouldn't we be running after him?" Taj gasped, bending over, breathless, while the green blood seeped from his thigh.
All I could think was, what the hell, what the hell....
What had years of living in a swamp done to Taj Robinson?
Out the back of the shed I could hear Jyson clamouring over the wreckage of our combined lives. "Are you okay?" I asked Taj, asking question in more ways than one. What the hell, what the hell, what the hell.
"Just...stand still..." I said while I searched for a bandage or cloth to wrap the wound in. "Don't you have a first aid kit?"
"I don't usually need one. Don't worry," he said, wincing, "It'll heal quickly."
I found one of Taj's shirts -- a very rare commodity, so I was a little sorry to rip it -- and made a makeshift bandage to wrap his thigh with. To be honest I did it for my sake as much as his. I didn't want to see that green blood.
Thank goodness the shirt was black and it soaked up the green.
"What now?" Taj asked.
I shook my head.
***
"May knows about us," I said to Taj. I had to be out of the reserve before the sun set. I'd stayed as long as I could. Half of me wanted to ask Taj to come back to my house with me, to live like a human, but I knew it was a bad idea. Things were precarious enough between May and I as it was, and if I only knew one thing I knew this: Hanging out with Taj Robinson only brought trouble.
"Us?"
"I mean..." I scrambled furiously to clarify. "She knows that I've been hanging out with you. As a friend."
"We're friends?" Taj asked.
I shrugged. "I suppose so. Either that or co-defenders when we get arrested for kidnapping."
"Don't worry," Taj said, kicking the earth. "He isn't going to tell anyone about this. Trust me. I've got the fingerprints on the knife. And we'll get May's money back."
"Is that what you really want?" I asked Taj.
"I know that she isn't completely to blame for what happened to the
town," Taj said. "I've always known that...it was just easier to lash out at a human perpetrator..." He stopped kicking the earth and looked up at me with his large brown bovine eyes. "I will apologize to her, Lana. I can make things right with her, if that means that I get to come into town occasionally. To see you."
Before I left I unfurled my hand and pointed my finger straight at Taj, opening the wound I'd made the night before, pink blood dripping to the clay below.
"You were right, Taj."
***
The pink glitter on the gown was a bit much, even for me. But I took the dress off May with gratitude and hung it up in my dressing room trying not to think about how familiar it looked and how it would look the following night, mattered with blood. For now, it would rest here for the night, till I was ready to don it the following evening for my last ever performance.
"This doesn't mean that I forgive you, Lana."
We walked out of the dressing room which still smelt like fresh paint and entered the bar which still smelt like spilled whiskey from five years ago in spite of the fact that Gus had ripped up the carpets and replaced them.
May shook her head as she looked around the glitzy club. Even in the daylight with the sun streaming through the windows, you couldn't deny the nighttime glamor of the Pink Bird which managed to permeate through.
"I still can't believe you're really going to perform here," she tutted.
"It will be my swan song," I murmured.
May raised a freshly plucked eyebrow at me. She still had her work suit on and her handbag dangled from one arm as she crossed it over the other. "You really aren't going to perform anymore, after tomorrow night?" She didn't look like she believed me.
Just wait till you try this on for size, then.
I took a deep breath. I didn't have any time for dignity, or any cares about protecting my reputation as a sane person any longer. "May, I'm going to die tomorrow night."
"That's very dramatic, Lana." May rolled her eyes. "You'll just bomb on stage. Maybe hurt your throat so badly that you won't even be able to speak in the future. But you won't actually die."
I looked at the ground and tried to breathe. "No, May, I mean it. That body on the beach, it was me. I don't know how it was, but it was. And it happens tomorrow night."
I showed her my finger, squeezing the freshly sealed wound till it popped and bled pink blood.
May's eyes went wide and watery. "Lana, what the heck are you going to do about it then?"
I shook my head. "It's already fated, it's already written in the stars..."
"Well snap out of it!" May said, looking like she was about to slap me. "Don't accept it as fate, Lana! Find out who is going to kill you and stop them. Save your own damn life. You're a detective, aren't you?"
"I didn't think you cared if I lived or died," I said softly.
"Well, I do. But that should be irrelevant, Lana. You should care. Do you really feel like you have nothing to live for?"
I didn't know what to say.
"Do you really think your own life is not worth saving?" May took a step towards me and brushed my hair out of my face in a motherly way.
I realized there were tears in my own eyes. I bit my lip to stop from crying.
"I don't have my singing anymore, May," I said. "And you still haven't forgiven me, you just said so. So what do I have...my leather jacket?"
"It doesn't matter if I forgive you," May said softly. "You have to forgive yourself. Only you can choose to save your own life, Lana."
Chapter Fifteen
A Farewell To Planet Traralgon
"I've Been To Another Planet -- Traralgon."
The bumper sticker on the car in front of me jolted me like it was dragging me by the hair from one parallel universe to another. How old is that car?? I leaned forward at the traffic lights and saw that it even had an ancient Victoria number plate from the previous century.
They used to sell those bumper stickers in shops. Back when it was still legal to call it Traralgon, and back when people used to have the in-joke that Traralgon was like it was its own separate planet.
The lights changed to green and the car behind me almost came up my rear. Really couldn't afford another car accident so I quickly slammed my foot down on the accelerator.
Planet Traralgon.
Would I miss it in the next life?
Maybe I'd be reincarnated as a person who lived in Traralgon again. That would serve me right.
I turned off the engine of May's car and stepped outside onto the curb of Gun Employment only to find myself confronted with an old almost-friend.
And I was almost pleased to see him.
"I'm surprised to see you here," Jyson said, nodding up at Gun Employment. "You're really not taking the job at May's firm?"
I shrugged. "I still haven't got my P.I's license so I'm not qualified. Plus there's my underage criminal record which is making things difficult after all, according to May. So still officially unemployed. Just got to go in and suck up to those holding the welfare cheques."
I could see Rocco through the window, studying something on his computer screen. Probably looking over my dismal resume, wondering how he was ever going to find a former X Factor contestant with throat nodules and a criminal record a job in this almost utopian town.
I shook my head slowly at Jyson. "How can you show your face here, Jyson? I could have you arrested, you know."
The conviction in my voice sounded convincing. I just knew I wouldn't do it. Brent was the guilty party -- I was almost certain of that. And I would never want Jyson to have to go the jail in post-upgrade Traralgon. Sorry, Tree Valley. There was a reason I wanted to keep my own slate clean and keep out of jail. The jails were not a place fit for humans.
But what about the person who'd killed me? Didn't they deserve to go to jail?
May's voice echoed in my mind. "Save your own darn life, Lana."
But if I caught the killer before I died, then he or she would stay out of jail. I shook my head. Was that justice? How could that possibly be justice?
Yet if I just let myself be killed, and never caught the person, then maybe they still wouldn't go to prison. After all, who was going to solve my murder when I was dead?
Louis?
Dead girls might not care who killed them but living ones still did. Especially when their sociopathic ex-fiancees are in charge of the local police force.
My head was starting to hurt. I'd barely even noticed the thunder on Jyson's face. The pain he was carrying in his own heart, the private death he'd already experienced.
"Brent's gone," Jyson said softly. "Every last trace of him is gone. He's left me holding the baby at home."
Shoot.
I wasn't sure, to be honest, if this was, on the whole, good or bad news for Jyson. From the look on his face, I could see that he saw it as only bad, only dark times ahead. I sort of thought he might be better off without a drug addict criminal hanging around, though. And so might Lucy.
Across the street the door to the police station swung open violently. Louis exited and caught me in his sites. I was a trapped animal. Jyson could still wriggle free.
"You should get out of here," I said to Jyson as Louis started barrelling towards us.
"Thanks for the warning Lana." Jyson backed away and shot me a smile. "Maybe we can still be friends."
Sure. Maybe I'd babysit for him sometime. Then we'd have another mystery to solve. Who murdered Jyson.
"Who was that?" Louis asked suspiciously.
I shook my head and rolled my eyes. "It's not like that. What do you want?"
He swallowed and played with his tie. Nervous. On edge.
"I think we need to speak," he said, coughing the words up like he'd swallowed sand.
Rocco made a face at me through the window and made a "the clock is turning" motion above his wrist, which meant I had to hurry up and get inside or I was going to miss my appointment and thus sleep on the beach that night because I had no money to p
ay for food or housing.
He had no real idea, though.
Do I go inside or not?
Bad decisions have a habit of winning out with me. I had to speak to Louis. I shot Rocco an "I'm so sorry look", unable, in a simple expression, to convey everything that was really happening. You know what? It really doesn't matter if I claim my unemployment cheque or not. Hope you're doing well.
My death has already happened. Even as I write this, I know that. I saw it with my own two eyes.
It was written in the sand; it was pink in the sand.
I turned my attention back to Louis.
"Tell me you've stayed away from Taj," Louis said through gritted teeth.
"I can tell you that, but it won't be true."
Louis rolled his eyes.
"Let's get a coffee."
"Make it food as well and I'm in."
I shrugged at a disappointed Rocco, his mouth drooping through his thick black beard, and walked past the window with a wave.
The esplanade was packed as always, a paradise-like location in an almost-utopian town. There was the smell of crab salad and freshly fried calamari in the air. There was no real ocean to provide real seafood, of course, and most of it came imported and frozen, but it was fun to pretend. More than ever before I was aware of how many people dressed in white. I was almost always boiling hot in my leather jacket. It was a little oven that cooked me.
I ordered my usual double cheeseburger along with a coffee and double checked that Louis was paying.
"I know that body was me," I whispered, stirring my sugar into my coffee while we waited for our food.
The colour drained from Louis's face so that he was paler than the weak vanilla latte he'd ordered.
"How can you know that, Lana?"
"Taj told me," I whispered, leaning in closer to him. Bet he wouldn't like that fact. And he didn't.
He slammed a fist down on the table causing the couple sitting at the next table to jump. I didn't.
Pink Blooded: A Lana Pink Mystery Page 13