Shimmer

by Hilary Norman

  So take it like a man, she’d told him.

  ‘So take it like a man,’ Cal told Tabby now.

  He put on his new gloves and looped one of the masks over his ears, and undressed Tabby, unbuttoned the brown silky shirt and tugged off his D&G loafers, unbuckled the gorgeous belt and unzipped the pants and pulled them off, and he was perspiring as he dragged off the dead man’s wine-coloured underpants, but then he remembered – because even then that part of his mind was still working – that his own clothes needed protection, too, didn’t they, needed folding away in the boat’s dry box. And he was moving real fast, getting it all done, sweat pouring now because it was goddamned hot down here, it was stifling, but he was almost ready for what came next, and he reached for the big plastic two-gallon container and unscrewed the big cap . . .

  The smell made him retch, the way it always did, but the need was filling him, pumping through him, there was no fighting it, and so he picked up the already-human-coated scrubbing brush and knelt down beside the naked man-that-was.

  One stroke.

  Just starting made the fire inside him burn hotter.

  Made him unstoppable.

  He had to go on, had to, had to.

  Oh, Jesus, yes.

  47

  Back home on her bench, Mildred felt cold.

  Which was absurd, since she didn’t believe she was running a fever, and it was particularly warm tonight and very humid.

  She never got sick, could not remember the last time she’d had so much as a sniffle. But tonight, sitting here where she had come to belong, in this tolerant, kindly spot where she often imagined that night itself was wrapping snugly around her, enfolding her, keeping her safe . . .

  Sitting here tonight, she felt sick at heart, and too lonely even to talk to Donny.

  Lonely as death.

  And so cold.

  48

  Cal had done.

  His worst.

  He had stopped a while ago, limp and quivering with exhaustion, and then he’d seen what he had done and gotten sick to his stomach, and when that was finished, too, he’d taken the brush – coated with a thousand, give or take, shreds of the man who had called himself Tabby, coated with his skin, his flesh and his blood – and had begun to punish himself with it.

  Diagonal strokes across his chest, from his left shoulder – bypassing his heart because of his tattoo – down to his upper abdomen.

  Raking himself.

  Too weak to do the job properly, the way Jewel would have.

  And then he stopped doing it at all, becoming aware again.

  Of time passing.

  Of the dead man on the quilt at his feet.

  ‘One hundred and one things to do with a dead Tabby,’ he said out loud, paraphrasing the title of some old best-seller, he thought.

  And felt suddenly appalled by his own flippancy.

  More appalled by that, it seemed to him, than by his deed.

  Though maybe that was the only way he could deal with what still needed to be done.

  Best not to think too much, he decided, about any of this. Neither about the killing nor the stealing of the hundred and eighty bucks in Tabby-the-cheapskate’s Gucci wallet (he’d considered briefly helping himself to the man’s Okamato condoms, but then, for some reason, that idea had repelled him, besides which Cal was an ‘America’s Most Trusted’ Trojan guy himself).

  Best not to think about that either.

  Most of all, not about the premeditation of it all.

  Not just the cord left ready, nor the rest of his paraphernalia, but also the fact that he had already thought through what to do next.

  Better prepared than last time, but still an imperfect plan.

  He could be caught out, found out, at any point.

  Dangerous stuff.

  Fool’s luck the last time.

  He took a long slug from a bottle of Bombay Sapphire that he’d been keeping since Wilmington for a special occasion, and then he rolled the body in the quilt, took two lengths of nylon dock line from the dry box to secure the bundle and felt immense relief as the dead man’s head disappeared from view – his feet and ankles less weird, less disturbing to look at, somehow, almost laughable and certainly pathetic, poor bastard.

  His anger at Tabby was almost all gone now.

  The last time, he’d taken Baby out afterwards, and that had been some kind of a miracle of amateur’s luck, because so far as he knew no one had taken a scrap of notice when he’d started the engine in the middle of the night, and also because it was tough navigating safely in darkness, staying within the channels dredged and marked by the Coast Guard to keep boats from running aground in the shallow waters and constantly shifting seabed all around Miami. Cal had given thanks that night for many things: mostly, though, for the few hours of tuition he’d bought along with the cruiser, and also for the fact that his brain was a whole lot sharper than he’d ever realized – certainly than Jewel had ever given him credit for.

  You had to do a lot more than learn how your boat worked; you had to remember that the rules of the oceans and of Biscayne Bay and the Intracoastal Waterway and the Port of Miami were made to keep you and other ocean-goers in one piece. You had to watch out for the weather, and for great ships and multimillion-dollar yachts and sail-boats, and swimmers and dolphins and goddamned protected manatees – most all, you had to watch out for the Coast Guard and other marine patrols.

  For the law.

  Especially when you were carrying a freshly murdered body on board.

  It seemed to Cal, thinking back, that when he’d started out on that earlier journey, he’d been planning on heading right out to sea and dumping the body into the depths. And he’d certainly started out that way, moving through the waters without a hitch, right under the noses of all the Star Island billionaires and even slipping all calm and nice as pie through Government Cut – his face and hair still all silver, and with a dead man aboard, if you please . . .

  And then he’d seen the rowboat, lit up for just a moment or two by a scrap of moonlight, tied up to a sail-boat anchored out in the middle of nowhere, and no one seeming to keep watch except maybe God, and Cal guessed He must have been looking the other way as he’d dropped his fluke anchor (‘lower the damn thing,’ his teacher had cautioned him, ‘don’t ever throw it’) and had swum across to the rowboat and cut it loose with his Leatherman knife.

  Making the small pink-painted boat all his own.

  It had felt like a brainwave at the time, he remembered that now, though the doing of it all had almost killed him; the tension of it all, and the sheer strength it had taken to secure the little boat to Baby so he could weigh anchor again and move farther out to sea and go about the real business of washing down the body and then heaving its dead weight up and over the side of the cruiser. And the physical strain had made him vomit, had made his heart pound so hard he’d believed he might die, but he’d survived.

  Not just smarter then, tougher too.

  He almost wished he could tell Jewel about it.

  Almost.

  It mightn’t have worked out the way it had. The guy might have missed the rowboat altogether, or he might have capsized it or even smashed it, but then he’d have sunk to the bottom anyway, Cal figured, so it was a kind of win-win situation.

  Kind of.

  And it had worked out.

  This time, he was playing it safer. He had a change of clothes – black T-shirt and grey shorts and sneakers – eye make-up remover for his silver mascara, soap and moisturizer for his face and the rest. He had latched and fastened the door at the top of the steps – not that a padlock would have kept out the cops if someone had called them, but Cal was an optimistic kind of guy a lot of the time.

  Maybe a bit of a gambler too.

  Right now, for instance, he was gambling on his dead Tabby staying safely out of trouble on Baby while he went, by foot, to find himself another little-bitty boat, and he knew he’d seen a couple of dinghies tied up to bigg
er boats at the back of some apartment buildings just a few blocks south.

  Bingo.

  Not one, but two candidates for his purposes. One more expensive looking than the other, so more likely to be alarm-protected. The second a whole lot less special, with a pair of oars on show as well as its outboard motor – and not even tied up to another boat, just tethered to the mooring.

  A breeze.

  He waited a little while, watching and listening for trouble.

  All quiet.

  Decision made, he crouched to untie the line, and suddenly it occurred to him that maybe he could keep this boat, maybe toss Tabby overboard into the deep after all and sail Baby away with this neat little dink for extra insurance.

  But a plan was a plan. And if it all worked out same as last time, Cal found that he was itching to see what went down when this one was found.

  If he was found. He might not be, the dinghy might be hit by a big wave and Tabby might sink without trace, which would be OK, too, in its way. Safer, without question, for Cal.

  But not as interesting.

  The high kept on boosting him all the way to the finish, a constantly growing sense of achievement like nothing else before, better even than the last time because the tension and that touch of beginner’s luck had taken the edge off that accomplishment – but this time he knew what he was doing.

  Paddling the dinghy through the dark water back to Flamingo Marina and Baby, then hitching the line to a cleat.

  ‘Cleat,’ he said out loud. ‘Cleat-clit.’ Thinking about turning the words into a tap-dance kind of tune, the way he had with the ‘Epistle of the Apostles’ – ‘cleat-clit, clit-cleat’ – but this was no time for singing or dancing, this was a time for silent concentration as he got back on board the cruiser, and oh, man, he was turning into such a sailor, and maybe he could consider renting himself out as a deckhand.

  Deck-sex-hand.

  Except time was passing, night wouldn’t last forever, and day started early in marinas, and Tabby had to be off Baby and floating away before dawn, so Cal gathered up his new brilliant discipline, cast off from the dock, started the cruiser’s engine and reversed carefully out, and if he so much as brushed another boat’s fender right now, he might be in a fucking holding cell by breakfast-time . . .

  But he did not. And after that, navigating his way through the markers in the bay, passing under the East Bridge of Julia Tuttle Causeway, staying slow and steady, controlling the impulse for speed, taking Baby around La Gorce Island and under the 79th Street Causeway, heading for Baker’s Haulover Inlet this time, because getting through Government Cut unimpeded really had been more than a little fluky, and Haulover Cut was choppier, but otherwise safer, at least for him; and after all that, after dropping anchor out in the Atlantic, the greatest dangers of all were to his back and arms – and to his mind, perhaps, most of all – when he had to drag another dead weight up the friggin steps and unroll the quilt, exposing that naked, wounded deadness, and then hose him down on deck before heaving him over the side into the dinghy, but he got the job done, he really got it done.

  ‘Who’s a dumb-ass now, Jewel?’ Cal yelled into the remains of the night.

  No one except the birds and fish to hear him.

  And maybe God.

  49

  Grace came downstairs with Joshua a few minutes after seven to find Claudia’s note propped against a marmalade jar on the kitchen table.

  Dearest Grace,

  I reached my decision to go back in the middle of the night, and knew that if I waited to talk it over with you, I might change my mind, and then I might never get up the nerve to do the right thing. I love you all, and thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  Your Claudia.

  Grace burst into tears, which started Joshua off, too.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ she told him, and stopped her own weeping to comfort him. ‘It’s OK, baby, Mommy’s fine.’ She wiped her eyes with the back of one hand, then kissed the tip of his nose, which often made him laugh.

  No laughter now, neither in her son nor herself.

  She waited until he was soothed, then put him in his highchair, picked up the phone and pressed the speed dial key for her sister’s cell phone.

  Switched off.

  50

  Cal didn’t like the way he was feeling now.

  Real shaken up. Nowhere near as good about himself as the last time.

  No singing in the blood.

  This was different. Premeditated and, perhaps partly because of that, starting to feel more than a little scary.

  Wicked.

  He had cleaned and cleaned Baby while they were still at sea, and except for the scrubbing brush, all the evidence was gone, sunk deep in the ocean same as the first time, and after he’d finished that hard labour, he’d considered that maybe this was the moment to take the cruiser someplace new. But in the end he’d brought her back through Haulover to Flamingo because it was, after all, paid for. And because even if he’d aimed at some really distant destination, he’d have had to stop for fuel in a bunch of places, and each time he’d be risking attracting attention to himself, and so far as he’d been aware there had been no one around last night when he’d cycled in with Tabby, so it made no sense . . .

  Not that anything much did make sense anymore.

  He couldn’t really remember now if it ever had, and most of his coherent thinking had been done out there on the water, all of it gone now, intelligence being squeezed out by pain.

  Not really the physical kind, that wasn’t what was getting to him. The stabbing in his neck and shoulders and spine was no more than he deserved, though the pain had been bad enough to stop him from getting off Baby yet again and going back to his hideaway.

  The stink of the bleach down below in the small cabin was worse than the pain, he thought, because it brought it all back. The memory of what he’d done, and what had been done to him. It all seemed one now, one overwhelming agony cut too deep in his mind for him to reach and eradicate it.

  Only one way he knew of – short of killing himself, and Cal didn’t want to do that, not yet at least – only one thing that would blot out those memories, those feelings, for a time.

  So Cal picked up the big brush that was intended for scrubbing decks, its hard bristles layered now with the shreds of three humans, and he pulled off the clothes he’d changed into earlier, after he’d finished . . .

  Don’t think, he told himself.

  All the images were still there, scalding his mind.

  ‘Please,’ he said, beginning to weep. ‘I don’t want to.’

  You have to, Jewel said, inside his head.

  So Cal picked up the brush and did it again, opened up his own still-fresh wounds, and then he took his T-shirt and stuffed it in his mouth to muffle the screams that would come.

  When he picked up the container of bleach and poured every drop that was left over himself.

  51

  Sam was in the office at eight fifteen when his phone vibrated with a new text.

  From Mildred, telling him that she’d seen the silver angel again.

  IN FACT, I’VE SEEN HIM TWICE – THOUGH EARLY MONDAY MORNING HE WAS NOT SILVER AT ALL.

  ‘Think I’ll grab ten minutes later on,’ Sam told Martinez. ‘Check this out.’

  ‘She’s an old lady,’ Martinez said. ‘Might be seeing stuff.’

  ‘More down-to-earth than a lot of us,’ Sam said.

  With Claudia’s phone still switched off, Grace didn’t know what to do for the best.

  She felt so badly for her sister, heading back to what would inevitably be a traumatic confrontation, travelling alone and surely filled with all kinds of trepidation and fears. Yet Grace felt proud of her, too, for reaching that decision and acting on it right away; she accepted that speed and the rejection of more procrastination must have seemed the only way for Claudia.

  Proud, and afraid for her, too.

  What Grace wanted was to be abl
e to tell Claudia that she was proud of her courage, because she knew her sister well enough to realize that a little approval right now might help her just a little, but for now Grace couldn’t even do that much for her, could only wait.

  The house felt strangely empty with her gone. Which was, she decided abruptly, a good reason for her to get right back to the process of returning to work; anything to take her mind off Claudia for a while – and there were still a few more hurdles to jump before she could actually hang up her shingle again, get back to doing what she loved, what she was good at.

  The phone rang and she picked it up quickly.

  ‘Grace, it’s Magda.’

  ‘Magda, you’re psychic,’ Grace said. ‘I’ve just been sitting here wondering if I ought to have a couple of sessions with you before I start seeing patients again.’

  ‘Would you like to arrange that now?’ asked Magda, getting straight down to business, which was one of the many things Grace admired about her psychologist friend.

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Grace said.

  Her sister was in pain, yet she was about to take a major step forward.

  Silver linings, she guessed.

  52

  ‘Sam, did you guys hear it all the way down there?’

  Saul’s call at nine fifteen to Sam’s cell phone came less than ten minutes after the police department’s phones had all started ringing off the hook.

  There had been a third explosion. In broad daylight this time, but at sea again, somewhere further north.

  ‘We didn’t hear a thing,’ Sam told his brother, ‘but we’re starting to hear all about it now.’

  ‘It was pretty loud up here,’ Saul said.

  ‘You and Dad OK?’ Sam checked.

  ‘Sure,’ Saul said. ‘Want me to call Grace?’