“Well, what did he say?” Mitch asked, thinking he was being flirted with.
“He said, ‘Take thee back to the new land from whence thee came, oh ye son of Adam,’” the woman in black said and walked away with her drink, laughing to herself. Mitch looked back to where Jed was filling him another beer and brandy. “What the hell was that all about?” Mitch asked him.
“That’s Gayle. She’s a barrister over in Exeter, from one of the oldest families in the area. Quite a bird, isn’t she?” Jed said and winked at Mitch, apparently not having caught the first part of the dog and pony show he’d just witnessed.
Mitch took his fresh drinks and knocked them back quicker than he’d planned while Jed was still there to refill them. Well into a second level of drunkenness as Jed set down the fresh drinks, Mitch couldn’t resist asking him about the man with the dog. “Why does he keep staring at me?”
“He’s not staring at you, Dr. Bramson. He’s blind,” Jed said, mildly amused, and walked over to the man with the dog, whispering something to him. They laughed.
A moment later the man came over to him, with the dog and a white cane. He was of a stocky build, but still fit in the way former athletes can be in their forties.
“I do apologize, sir, if it seemed that I was staring at you. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” the man said genuinely. “I can only see shaped shadows, and can only recognize people by their shapes. You were a new shape. I do apologize.”
“No, please. I should apologize for my ignorance. I saw the dog but didn’t make the connection. The apologies are all mine,” Mitch said, embarrassed.
“You’re the American archaeologist, here for the Crane castle,” the man said, not sounding surprised. “I’m Sean Donnelly,” the man with the dog said, holding his hand out a foot past where Mitch was standing. Mitch took it and shook.
“You know who I am?” Mitch asked, confounded.
“Yes, of course. Everyone here does. News travels fast in a small village. We’ve all been waiting for you, even Yale here,” Donnelly said pointing down in the general direction of where the old dog had lain down. “Haven’t we Yale, old boy?” Sean asked the dog.
Mitch reached down naturally and scratched the old dog under his chin, still trying to absorb the fact that what Sean Donnelly had said must be true. They all knew he was here, and why he’d come.
“Nice to meet you, too, Yale.”
“Let me buy you a beer, Dr. Bramson, and let’s talk,” Sean said, nodding in the direction of the bar. Jed refilled both their glasses and Sean took Mitch gently by the arm, leading him over to a table in the corner of the room.
As the two men sat in the booth getting acquainted and ass-over-head drunk together, Sean Donnelly told him the recent story of his life. He had been a member of the London Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Division before transferring to Exeter to get married and raise a family five years before. They’d thought Exton would be a nice place to raise a family when they bought their cottage, but it hadn’t turned out as they expected.
The year after the transfer, he was assigned to investigate the disappearance of a girl from the area, the only bit of intrigue that had hit Exton in decades. Early one morning before the sun had even come up he got a call from the old Crane Estate. Apparently old man Crane’s groundskeeper thought he saw a young woman running naked through the woods at the back end of the estate by the ruins while doing his rounds and believed it might be the missing girl.
Drunk as he was, Sean Donnelly got increasingly tense with each word he spoke. He told Mitch that that he went out that morning to investigate the call, coming upon the ruins just after the sun had come up. He put his hand on Mitch’s wrist then, clamping it tightly as he spoke. “When I got to the ruins, I started wandering about, calling out for the girl as I walked around one of the towers. I heard a woman’s voice calling out to me, laughing.”
His voice took on a raspy quality, squeezing Mitch’s wrist harder with each word.
“I followed it into the center of the large foundation area and heard it again, but it wasn’t coming from around me, at ground level that is. It seemed to be coming from the trees above me, so I looked up.” Sean stopped there to take a long slug of his drink, never letting go of Mitch’s wrist, “…and when I did, the sky looked like it was starting to move, like it was opening up before me, a dark spot, like a thick cloud seemed to shift over the sun, like an eclipse. I couldn’t take my eyes off it…and when the sun was completely covered by the dark spot, there was a flash of light, like a fireball coming at me.”
Sean was shaking by then, his grasp on Mitch’s arm tightening to the point of pain. “It was the last thing I ever saw,” he said, sweat dripping down the sides of his face, moisture building around his eyes. “It was the last thing I ever saw, Dr. Bramson,” he said again and gulped the last of his drink, setting his glass down with a loud thud.
“But I don’t understand, why are you telling me this?” Mitch asked, trying to pry Sean’s hand off his wrist.
“Because I know you’re here to dig it up.”
“And you’re warning me?” Mitch asked, not sure he was grasping what the man seemed to be saying to him.
“Leave it alone, Dr. Bramson,” Sean said insistently and got up quickly with his glass, staggering back over to the bar, leaving Mitch there to think…What?
He was so drunk himself by then he didn’t know what to think. He just knew that his head was spinning and he was feeling closed in, confined. He had to get out of there as soon as possible. His head swirled as he got up and went over to the opposite side of the bar from Donnelly, waiting for Jed to come to him. “Another drink, Dr. Bramson?” Jed asked, cheerfully.
“No, not this time, Jed. But I could use a guide to my room, please. I think I’ve had enough, or way too much,” he said, leaning and slurring, his hair falling around his face.
“Fiona!” Jed called out.
A minute later, the young blonde waitress was back and leading Mitch toward the rear of the building, through a small courtyard and into another small, thatched roof cottage. She left him leaning on the wall with the key in his hand as she watched him from around the corner, waiting for him to open the door and go in so she could report to Jed that she’d made sure he got in alright.
***
He heard the tapping sound of light rain, but it wasn’t on a roof or a window sill. He looked around and saw it was coming from the raindrops landing on the shoulders and collar of his raincoat. He looked up. The sky was pitch black. He looked around and saw he was surrounded by tall black buildings; the street was black, everything was black. He was in a city. New York?
Off in the distance, he saw the multicolored glow of lights illuminating the sky from somewhere that seemed to be miles away. He started walking in that direction, walking, walking, walking, until his feet hurt.
He was so wet and cold. Will I ever get there? He had to get there. He couldn’t stop. The lights were calling to him. Will it be warm there? And dry? He could see he was getting closer. Only a little more, he kept telling himself. Only a little more and I’ll be there. Someone special is waiting for me there. Who? He held his head down to keep the rain off of his face, looking at his boots as he took each step.
When he saw the reflection of the lights on his boots he knew he was almost there. Just a little more, a little more. He was exhausted. When he looked up again, he could see a row of big bright, glitzy nightclubs with enormous, multicolored marquees, lights flashing and beams of white light on the rooftops, penetrating the black night sky. He had to get there, someone was waiting for him. But who?
As he got closer he looked sideways and saw his reflection in the pane glass windows of the closed shops he passed. He stopped and looked at his face reflected in the glass. It was his face, but they weren’t his clothes. They didn’t fit, and they were old and worn, torn and dirty. He was dirty. His hair was matted and greasy, like he hadn’t washed it in weeks, then he notic
ed that he looked thinner, like when he was twenty and had stopped eating, before Jack found him.
He went closer to the glass to get a better look. His face looked gaunt and haunted, like a ghost. He had to get there, or die. He knew it then. He walked hurriedly on, faster than before, his feet pinching and squeezing more and more with each step he took. They weren’t his boots. They were too small. They belonged to someone else, that’s why his feet hurt him so badly, but he couldn’t stop now that he was getting closer, so close.
Then he was across the street from the row of glittering nightclubs. He crossed over just as a huge, black stretch limousine was pulling up in front of the one with flashing red and gold lights stylized to look like ancient writing: Club Euphrates.
The door of the limousine opened and a man in a tuxedo got out. He couldn’t see the man’s face but he could see that the man was holding out his hand to the open door. A woman’s hand extended out, long bright red fingernails and a bracelet in the shape of a serpent around her upper arm.
The man took the woman’s hand and they stepped out into the light. She had red hair with gold highlights, but not styled in any modern fashion. It was wound upward and the gold highlights weren’t highlights at all; they were braided stands of gold formed to look like serpents.
She was wearing a waist-cinching, strapless golden bodice; the cloth around her breasts formed to look like outstretched wings, a wolf’s head with rubies for eyes at the center. Her skirt was golden too, long and trailing with the front gathered up so high he could see her inner thighs as she walked, but he couldn’t see her face, the man was blocking her face.
As they stood there together, arm-in-arm, about to walk up the red carpet to the entrance of the club, they stopped, turning to look at him. He gasped with the shock of it. The man was Julian Bramson the Third and the woman…the woman looked remarkably like the French film goddess Catherine Deneuve in her prime. They stared at him for a moment, a hungry look in their eyes, like starving animals, and smiled menacingly.
The woman held her hand out to him languidly but didn’t speak; the man did. “Come to your father, Mitchell,” Julian Bramson said, waving him in, nodding and smiling.
“No, no!” he shouted and turned to run, to get away from them and that place, but he couldn’t move; something was holding his leg. He looked down. There was a heavy metal brace on his right leg. He tried to run again, to drag the brace with him, but it was so heavy.
He’d gone only a few feet when he saw a deep, dark doorway up on his left and the dim silhouette of a figure lurking in the shadows. As he got closer and tried to pass, he heard a hushed, murmuring voice whisper, but he couldn’t understand what it was saying.
Suddenly a small, thin hand reached out of the shadows and grabbed his arm. The figure came out of the shadows. He saw the ripped sleeve of an old hippy shirt. He looked up and saw her face, dirty with soot and smeared from the rain, and felt himself being pulled into the safety of the shadows. “They can’t find you here, Mitchell,” she whispered in his ear as she pulled him closer to her, deeper into the darkness. “You’re safe here with me.”
He woke up to the sound of his own voice crying out as he jumped out of the bed and began to pace back and forth maniacally across the room, not knowing why. His mind was a blank, one great thumping, thudding, crashing blank.
***
Alida Ruales opened her eyes and saw the small nite-glow alarm clock on the bedside table, 8:00 A.M. That can’t be, she thought to herself noticing that it was still dark out. She reached to feel the bed beside her. It was empty. “Yack” she called out quietly in the dark.
When she got no answer she sat up and slid her feet into her slippers. She knew there would only be one place he could be and walked over to the high-backed chair that faced the window over-looking the park. “Yack, are jou okay?” she asked quietly, stroking his hair as she stood behind the chair. He took her hand and she walked around.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, weary.
“Bad dream?” she asked, touching his face.
He nodded. “He was lost and I couldn’t find him,” Jack said rubbing his temples, a light tremble in his hand. She never had to ask who he was; there was only ever one ‘he” in Jack’s life. “It’s nothing, probably just the stress of his leaving and then having that asshole from Boston dropping in on me so unexpectedly. You’re sure the files are safe?”
“Chess. No one will ever find them at Maria’s place on Roosevelt Island,” Alida said, sitting down on the floor and putting her head in his lap. “I promise jou.”
“Thank you, Alida. That takes a great weight off my mind,” Jack said putting his hand on her head, feeling her soft black hair, then asked, “What time is it?”
She took his hand and turned it to look at the watch he’d forgotten to take it off before he went to bed. 8:05 A.M. She told him what it said and took it off, telling him that the battery must be wearing down and that she’d get it replaced that day.
“Come back to bed, Yack. I’m sure he’s fine,” she said pulling him up from the chair and leading him back to the bed. Neither of them would have thought that when it was 3:00 A.M. in New York, it was 8:00 A.M. in England, but when Alida went to lay herself down again and looked at the nite-glow clock. It said 3:15 A.M. It scared her, remembering from her girlhood days in a small village in Cuba that these things usually meant someone was going to die.
Lying on her side, her rear comfortably snuggled against Jack’s, she crossed herself and said a prayer to Santa Maria for the only men she had left in her life, Jack, Mitch and Simon, as she drifted off back to sleep. The next morning she called the Digger’s Rest from the office just to make sure they’d arrived alright.
***
Meredith Bramson had long gotten used to sleeping in a separate bed from her husband, and the truth be told, she preferred it. It gave her the peaceful night’s sleep she required, while still allowing her to know where her husband was at night, not that they were ever clinging, passionate lovers anyway.
She was raised to be a rich girl who would marry a rich man and she’d accomplished that. The fact that they were never really in love mattered very little. She’d conveniently given him two beautiful sons and had all of the comforts and prestige she ever wanted. That was enough for her.
It was a nice contract Annabelle had arranged for her. She never had to do very much and didn’t concern herself with anything that didn’t revolve around having the most beautiful house in Massachusetts, raising her children, being admired by her friends and letting Annabelle pull all the strings. But then things began to change after Annabelle died.
In those seven years, Julian began coming to bed later and later, and he was drinking more and more. When he did come to their room, he was constantly up and down, rarely, if ever, sleeping the whole night through.
When he had come back from his recent trip to New York, things got even worse. He started talking in his sleep, which would have been fine if he had his own room, but he kept waking her up with his mumbling and crying; getting up to pace the room then going back to sleep.
It wasn’t long before his talking in his sleep got louder, so loud she got up to listen. “Mel…an…ie,” he would call out, then toss and turn for awhile, then call out again, “Mi…tch… ell.”
Is he having an affair? She doubted it, and she wouldn’t have much cared if he did, as long as it was discrete and he didn’t embarrass her. They were long past the point where divorce would ever have been an option, especially since Julian the Fourth had been elected to Congress, and …Who is Mitchell?
After a few weeks, she couldn’t take it anymore and she packed his things and had them moved into their largest guest room. He didn’t say a word the next day at breakfast, and life went on for her as usual. But it was a different story for him.
The day after he was moved into the guest room he called his lawyer. Not to ask about a divorce but to have his lawyer hire a private investigator to find out where
Dr. Mitchell Bramson was and to get a detailed view of his life so the next time Julian planned to see him, he would choose his opportunity, and he would choose one that was far away from New York…and Jack Edgeworth. It would be a risk but he knew he would never, ever get another night's sleep again until he saw Mitch, no matter what that meeting would hold for either of them.
***
When Mitch and Simon sat down to breakfast at a table near the window overlooking the road there was no sign of Malcolm, Deck or Jed. Instead a tall, statuesque, young woman with long, wavy, dark red hair highlighted with blonde streaks walked over to them. When Mitch saw her face, he knew. She had those blue-gray eyes and the same pale complexion sprinkled with freckles. Her features were similar to those of the men but more delicately suited her gender, and very, very pretty, indeed.
“Good morning. I’m Dr. Bramson with the party staying in the cottage,” Mitch said to the young woman, working through his hangover to put on a good face; expecting the same or similar greeting that he got from Mal and Deck when they’d checked in.
“I know who you are,” she said coldly, standing in such a way as to avoid having to look him in the face or meet his eyes. She looked to Simon instead. “Would you like something to eat?” she asked stiffly. Simon didn’t know what to do.
Anyone within twenty feet of them could have felt the chill that came off the woman.
“Two English breakfasts and a pot of coffee would be fine, thank you,” Mitch said never taking his eyes off her.
“Would that be white coffee or black?” she asked to Simon.
“Black would be fine, thank you,” Simon said, knowing that they both took theirs black. She walked away. Mitch looked at Simon.
“Did I do something wrong?” Mitch asked him. Simon shrugged.
“Not that I know of.”
“Do I smell?” Mitch asked, lifting his arm, putting his face under it and laughing. Not a good thing since it made his head throb even louder.
“Stop,” Simon said, smiling innocently and blushing as he looked around to see if anyone was watching.
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