Dead Lemons

by Finn Bell

  “It is okay, Finn. Bobby tells me he couldn’t convince you either, but I had to try,” Pruitt says, shaking his head. “And truthfully, I don’t know which way is best.”

  Pruitt takes out a handkerchief and wipes his forehead before continuing. “I chose love over what I believed to be the right thing, but it’s come at such a price. About the only redemption in it is that this way, at least I alone pay the price for doing nothing, instead of the people I care about paying for me if I had done something.”

  And that’s the thing about perpetrating true badness, about committing real sick, revelling acts of evil, I realise. Once they’re done, it’s already over.

  There’s no magical way out, no clean path through, no matter what you choose to do. It doesn’t matter. Either way, everything it touches is already tragedy.

  I hate that.

  CHAPTER 40

  May 15, THREE WEEKS AGO . . .

  My life in hospital has taken on a rhythm that I can sustain for long enough, I think.

  I’ve been spending my time in roughly equal parts between museum stuff, Zoyl stuff, and ridiculously painful physiotherapy for my hand. None of these are really showing much progress.

  But after meals, they do give you little cups of Jell-O.

  They’ve told me, barring any bouts of infection, that I’m due to be released in a few weeks.

  While I want that day to arrive as soon as possible, it’s what happens after that day that I’m not sure about yet. There’s all the practical issues of finding shelter in the form of a new place to stay, and then there’s the trickier concept of actual safety.

  Which I now still have, I think.

  Not only is Dunedin hours away from Riverton, this hospital is a 24-hour bustle of bright lights and people coming and going with, John and Lucas inform me, 24-hour security cameras on permanent connection to the police station.

  And both the twins, whom I have yet to see apart, actually, are frequent visitors.

  I just can’t see the Zoyls trying anything here.

  But how do I go back to Riverton now? So, with no alternative, and despite Father Ress’s and Pruitt’s pleas, I’ve stuck to working my way through everything I know about the Zoyls. If there is something to know, I’m going to find it.

  And not alone, because Pruitt returns the next day, and many thereafter.

  My happiness at his help is only slightly tempered by my guilt at having dragged him fully back into all of this. Together we pore over the past. It’s a tricky thing. But between calling old contacts—those who are still alive—and going over endless notes, we learn nothing we like.

  As sparse and limited as the evidence and documentation is around Alice’s initial disappearance, so overwhelming and copious is everything captured around the disappearance of James.

  Probably because by then everyone was primed and ready to suspect the Zoyls.

  It’s hard to see how they could have gotten away with anything; they just didn’t have the time. The notes show that unlike in Alice’s case, where things really only started that night and the next morning after her disappearance, after James went missing, police were onsite at the Zoyl farm literally within the hour of getting the call.

  At dusk, when James would usually return, a frantic Emily had called Pruitt, who, himself paranoid and convinced, had called the local police chief. Even though they didn’t make arrests, the police were “conducting enquiries” and basically camped out at the Zoyl farm in force. They even had boats out looking for a body that same night.

  “It’s a common enough trick the police use,” Pruitt tells me, “when they don’t have a warrant or any evidence or the right to make any arrests yet, but they think they know something is up. They can, with some wiggle room, enter any property and make any searches they deem necessary to aid in ongoing enquiries.”

  “Isn’t that just normal? Where’s the trick?” I ask.

  “The trick is that there’s no time limit on how slowly they can do it. So often you’ll find that cops will suspect someone of having done something and essentially just camp out at their house for hours until something stinks, sometimes for days, even in shifts. And oftentimes it works, too, because while they’re there, it means the perpetrators can’t get on with hiding the evidence, or running off, or coming back. They can’t plan things or finish things. And for the cops it’s worth the risk of getting a minor harassment claim they can likely put down to incompetence. It was Bobby who ordered them down there to do it, I remember. The police chief told me later that they had a standing order from Bobby that when—not if—the next thing happens, they were to go out to the Zoyl farm and just sit on it until he got there.”

  “And after Alice, what they were hoping to find . . .” I say, trailing off.

  “It’s all right, Finn, I’m not that fragile. They were hoping if they hung around long enough, they’d find the body this time. Because there just wasn’t enough time for the Zoyls to have hidden it or gotten rid of it.”

  “Makes sense. They take Alice, and there’s some time before people get worried about a missing kid, especially because nothing bad has happened here before. But when James goes missing, everybody’s already on edge. And after all the things Emily’s been telling people, the Zoyls know they’re going to be first on the list of suspects,” I say.

  “And there’s practical problems too. Getting rid of a body, even back in 1989, is incredibly hard. They would have had little or no warning. Remember, they didn’t know when or where James was going to show up exactly. So there’s some kind of encounter with James, which comes as a surprise to the Zoyls, and he ends up dead. Now they’ve got a body to get rid of. You can bury it or throw it in the ocean. But both of these are risky if you’re reasonably sure the police are going to come knocking. And you can try destroying it, maybe by burning it or dissolving it in lye. But these things take time, and they would have known they wouldn’t have enough of it. So maybe you just hide it somewhere until you can get rid of it later. And then you still have to clean everything up, wipe for fingerprints, drops of blood, traces of cloth, that kind of thing.

  “And the police were smart about it, too. They were down there so fast, and checked all the engines on their vehicles, but they were all cold. None had been used for hours. And the Zoyls were all there at the farmhouse when they arrived. Their boat was moored in the harbour the whole night. Nothing seemed out of place. They had the dogs sniffing around and people taking pictures and everything,” Pruitt continues, as he points out some of the Polaroid pictures in the file to me.

  I see that they took pictures of pretty much everything. Every room and every angle, including the shed and all the outbuildings and vehicles. Complete lack of evidence aside, I see that it’s a macabre collection of images. The inside of the Zoyl house looks like a hoarder had several lifetimes to perfect his obsession, with stacks of ancient-looking things piled amongst the new in messy categories.

  Like an image of the kitchen showing a shiny new microwave sitting on top of an old, black, cast iron wood burner, and a bright-orange La-Z-Boy recliner next to a thin, wooden rocking chair in the lounge. And a laundry with a row of four fridges, each looking older than the one next to it, the collection clearly spanning decades. Everywhere on the walls there are pictures, old and new, of the Zoyls, always in pairs or groups, and mostly of the men only.

  It just doesn’t look quite like a real home. All the usual pieces are there, but put together, they just somehow don’t ring true.

  “Look at this,” Pruitt says, interrupting my musings, already reading from another file. “I’d forgotten about this. You’ve got to give credit to Bobby. This was just after they found the pubic bone, he actually petitioned to have DNA samples taken from all the pigs at Zoyl farm.”

  Logical, I guess. You find a pubic bone and pig semen. If you can’t find the person the bone belongs to, how about finding the pig? And the Zoyls were pig farmers.

  “It all petered out though,” Pruitt
continues. “Pigs can stand a lot of inbreeding, and most pig farmers will try to breed their sows with big boars to ensure a good size. It is, after all, a question of bacon. And people always want as much as they can get. So you end up with only a few boars being used to breed with literally hundreds to thousands of sows across farms and herds. After a few decades of that, entire herds are so inter-related you can barely tell them apart, so the whole DNA testing plan came to naught. The only thing you would have been able to prove was that the boar would have been local, and that’s after testing thousands of pigs. And that’s not even considering the question of twins, or whether the boar in question was even still alive. And further, of course, if they actually found the right pig, anyone could allege that their boar was stolen or the semen was used without their knowledge, as good semen is sometimes stored and used in artificial insemination. In the end, they did actually test all the boars at Zoyl farm, but nothing.”

  So with every question eventually turned in on itself, Pruitt and I start over again, and again, but we find no way out and no way in.

  Alice is gone. James is gone. No bodies, no traces. Nothing.

  And especially after James disappeared, with the swift and meticulous efforts of the police, as witnessed by Pruitt himself, you’d think that something, somewhere, would pop up.

  But the Zoyls didn’t set foot off their farm for a full month after James went missing, never said a wrong word, and every single person and thing that came and left was scrutinized. The entire farm searched again and again. Ground scanning equipment was even used to search for hidden cavities under the buildings, and nothing. After weeks of exhaustive effort, the police again left with nothing more to show than an official caution for mistreatment of animals, as the pigs were malnourished and appeared extremely underfed. It wasn’t even severe enough to be an official charge, didn’t even carry a fine. Nothing.

  Finally Pruitt and I, too, put down the files in frustration.

  There’s nothing there, and there’s nothing here.

  And I still don’t know what it is they’re after now.

  Why me? Why now? There’s nothing I know now that other people haven’t known for years. If it was something I had, then I didn’t realise it in time and it is surely ash now. Or maybe there was something in the cottage all along, but then why wait all these years? Or, as Father Ress has pointed out, maybe this is not about anything I know or have that’s a threat. Maybe Sean just wants to kill me for the joy of it. No matter which way I think of it, I still come up short on answers.

  It’s not exactly the firm basis you want to continue rebuilding your life on.

  I don’t know how much longer Pruitt or I can keep this up. He’s looking steadily more haggard. I can tell I’m not the only one not sleeping these nights.

  So as a distraction from my frustrations at the lack of movement, I’ve decided to at least move around a bit. After the initial struggle into the wheelchair, I’m pleased to find that I can move around just fine, and am soon rolling along the halls in happy anonymity.

  It’s on one of my laps that I’m surprised to find Betty sitting in my room, writing in a thick notebook, reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose.

  “Betty?” I say, not having expected to see her here.

  “Good morning, Finn. You’re looking well,” she says.

  “Yip, on the mend.”

  “You’ve missed a few sessions. Now, what with your house burning down and you being sedated, I’ve been forgiving, but you look better now. And I was up here in any case and reckoned we may as well get going again,” she says as I roll over next to her.

  There’s no point arguing with Betty, and to be honest, it’s been useful thus far.

  For the first time since we’ve started this counselling thing, I’m the one doing most of the talking and Betty just listens.

  She has a way of listening that just sucks all the thoughts out of you and before I know it, I’m telling her about my fears with the Zoyl business and about Tai and Pruitt and Patricia, and about building a life out here. I only stop when it feels like my head is empty and I finish with, “And that’s the thing, that’s the question. If I now know all the wrong things I do, and I commit myself to stop doing them, then what? Because stopping doing the wrong things doesn’t mean you automatically start doing the right things. What are the right things, Betty?”

  At hearing this, Betty gives a little smile and then proceeds to wrestle a very large, thick, purple-covered book out of her bag.

  “I lugged this heavy thing along all the way from Riverton because I reckoned you were about ready to ask me that question,” she says as she grips the big book on her lap.

  “This book is called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? It’s a thousand pages with really big words—in fine print, too,” she says as she hands it to me. I feel the weight of it in my hands.

  “This is modern science’s answer for the human condition,” she continues. I can tell by Betty’s tone that she’s not impressed by what she’s saying.

  “It’s basically a list of every single thing that can go wrong inside a person’s head. All the kinds of craziness and tragedy and perversion and sickness that people are capable of, put in one long list. And at the bottom of each description they tell you how to treat it. And they make us all use it. Counsellors and social workers and doctors and psychologists and so forth.

  “So when you go for counselling, after you’ve left, we have to go down the list until we find the scientific name of what’s wrong with you and then do what the book says to treat you. And if the treatment works, then you’re done,” she says.

  But, knowing Betty now for a while, I’m waiting for the next bit, because with her there always is a next bit. Looking down at the book in my hands, I notice that it’s still in excellent condition. It looks, in fact, like it’s never been opened. Ah.

  “An entire book about how people go wrong. With the sole purpose of stopping things going wrong. Not a single thing about how people can go right or how to start doing it,” she says.

  “And do you know what most of the treatments it suggests involve?” Betty asks. But I’m with her now.

  “Pills,” I say, and she nods.

  “Pills to take the pain away,” she says, nodding. “And when you finally stop complaining about the pains, whether it’s not sleeping, or depression, or hearing voices, or whatever, when those things stop, we pronounce you cured.”

  And because I know how these things work, having thoroughly medicated my own pains away with alcohol for years, I know what comes next.

  “But you’re only okay as long as you keep using the medication, right? The pills take away the pain, so you have to keep taking them or it all comes back,” I say.

  “And without the pain?” Betty prompts, and I feel it all click into place.

  “And without the pain you don’t learn, and without learning you can’t change. And without changing you’ll never get to fixing the problem actually causing the pain,” I answer.

  Eureka.

  “I think I’m with you so far. But where does that leave me?” I persist.

  “It means I’ve taken you as far as I can, Finn. You’ve come all the way to actually figuring out what has been causing the pain without just trying to medicate it away again,” Betty says with a smile.

  “People go wrong in exactly the same, predictable, boring ways. It’s not complicated. We all do the same four things with pain. It’s either fixing or accepting if you’re strong, or it’s escaping and eventually killing yourself if you’re not. Now, we all end up escaping and killing ourselves in different ways, but the shape of it is the same. It’s what we do when we can’t or won’t face the pain.

  “For reasons neither of us know, you’ve actually stopped running and have faced the pain and accepted all the stupid, sad wrongness you have behind it, without just opting out of the whole process and finding a new way to soothe
the pain and stay the same. Not many people do that. But now you have to answer the next question yourself.

  “Figuring out what the wrong things are and stopping them, that’s called therapy, and we’ve done it. Figuring out what the right things are and how to start doing them, that’s called life, and there’s no manual, it’s up to you,” Betty says.

  Well, colour me surprised.

  “But what about that stuff you said last time about how some people don’t really know their own minds? How some of us think we’re fixing things when we’re really just running away. What about telling yourself you’ve accepted things when you’re actually just working your way up to killing yourself? Because I thought about all of that and I know that’s how I am. I’m full of bullshit. I don’t trust what I think or I decide, not really. I don’t know if I can believe myself,” I say, thinking how easy it’s become to admit horrible things about myself to this woman.

  “Oh, that at least is simple to understand, although it’s often where the few people who make it this far end up failing and just going back to running from the pain.

  “They come this far and figure out all the wrong things they are doing and how to stop them, and then they just get too tired of waiting for the right things to show up. It just weighs them down so that eventually they lose what little faith they have in themselves and just give up.

  “It’s simple, but simple isn’t always easy. See, there’s a part of you that you can’t lie to or trick. It sees everything, and it knows the real reasons behind what you do. It knows when you’re doing wrong and when you’re doing right, no matter what lies you try and tell yourself. It’s the part of you that gives you hope and fear. Call it your soul or your conscience or spirit or whatever you want, really.