Two armed officers found her in the same position and quickly guided her around the side of the burning property and up the steps to safety. A fire engine was on the scene, parked at the edge of the bank, water already jetting from it onto the smoking roof of the lodge.
Mrs O’Doole was waiting at the top, talking to a female police officer, a blue blanket draped about her. Beth realised she was now wearing one, too.
The lines in Mrs O’Doole’s features momentarily evaporated. She shrugged off the blanket and walked to meet her. She seemed to consider an embrace but instead put her fingers lightly on the side of her arm and tugged in a faltering breath. Her brown eyes steadily held Beth’s.
“The boys?” Beth couldn’t see any sign of them.
“They’ve been taken to the hospital. They want to check them for smoke inhalation. I said I wanted to hang back here.”
Suddenly, the blanket felt heavy around Beth’s shoulders. “Kevin’s OK?”
Mrs O’Doole nodded. “Tyler tried to come back for you. The heat was too intense. What happened to the... Is he...?”
Beth coughed and nodded. She spat onto the floor and threw up. When she stood, two medics had joined them. The medics told the officers they wanted to examine Beth before they interviewed her.
“Ma’am, are you OK to walk to the ambulance?”
Beth nodded, and they led her and Mrs O’Doole over to the vehicle. The back doors were open, and they were both taken inside, told to sit on the gurneys. Neither of them spoke. Then the medic treated Beth, and she answered his questions while he dressed her ear.
The two women looked out of the open back doors, their shared ordeal making the frantic activities of the emergency services seem insignificant. Beth’s seared ear prickled as the medic moisturised it. She looked at his sandy moustache but focused on the sound of the trees rustling overhead.
Minutes passed before Beth eventually asked, “When Tyler said he didn’t have much time...” But she already knew why he’d been wearing the bandana. Mrs O’Doole didn’t answer. Eventually, Beth turned to gauge her expression.
She was still looking out of the doors, her expression composed. “He has grade three chondrosarcoma, cartilage cancer.”
Beth’s pain momentarily halted. The medic stepped between them again, but when he shifted, Mrs O’Doole’s expression hadn’t altered. Beth could see just how exhausted she was.
“Doesn’t make him any less a monumental pain in the ass, though.” Her eyes glistened. “Trying not to treat them differently is the hardest thing. Trying to remind them they’re special and ordinary at the same time... and giving them the life they should have, however long it is.”
*
Four days of questioning followed. On the second day, Agent Scott Morales, a softly spoken FBI suit whose sideburns had been painstakingly shaved to razor points, commandeered the cross-examination.
The connection between the gunman’s victims was incontrovertible, but it was obvious from the direction of inquiry that the motive for the murders was as unclear to them as it was to her. She couldn’t offer them any theory as to what the clips contained that warranted the immediate removal of them and their owners. She’d given them the few remaining online remnants of her communication with the gunman and explained how he’d threatened Jody’s life and why she’d been afraid of involving the police. Morales said they’d run a background check on her and asked her about the accident and Luc’s business dealings. She waited, drank endless cups of coffee and wondered what they’d find.
They’d hinted Beth would have to remain in the States pending further investigation, but by Wednesday, they’d given her the all-clear to fly back to the UK. She agreed to return if they needed her further. Beth booked a ticket before they could change their minds.
*
“I’m parking out front.” Marcia O’Doole put her cell on the dash.
It was early evening when she pulled her car into the front lot of the Overton Motel. It was just off Stillwater and not far from home, but nobody wanted to go back there. The FBI had said they’d be in touch.
The boys were staying in the motel with her mom and dad. They’d driven up from Spokane. She thanked God for them. Her sister was gone, and she knew the reality of that hadn’t even begun to sink in for any of them.
The doors at the front of the motel slid open, and they all came out to meet her. Tyler, Kevin, Mom and Dad. Ted was there too. He stood behind the boys, a hand on each one’s shoulder, and she could see how pleased they were to have him there. He would use that as cover, she knew. They were all smiling a little awkwardly, happy to be welcoming her back safe but not knowing what her frame of mind would be.
She’d vowed never to let Ted back into their lives, but now wasn’t the time. She climbed down from the car, and while she got her bags out of the trunk, they crossed the lot to meet her.
She hugged the boys and her mom and dad. Ted didn’t wait for her permission. He squeezed the air out of her, and she briefly inhaled the smell of him from the collar of his sweatshirt. The tears started to well, but she held them back. He released her and took her bag. Dad took the other.
Chapter 83
Jody picked Beth up from the airport but only answered her questions in monosyllables during the drive back. She knew he was furious with her for putting herself and the baby at risk. She slept part of the way.
When she walked into his place, it actually felt like home. It was early morning and she felt completely spaced, but Beth made an appointment with her midwife for the following afternoon. During her medical examination, immediately after the incident at West Glacier, the US doctor had confirmed that, despite the ordeal, her child was still very much healthy. But she didn’t want to take any chances.
Then she sat down with Jody and a pot of decaf and told him everything she hadn’t via the phone calls she’d made to him during questioning.
While she’d been in the States, he’d reassured her time and time again that she was safe and that the gunman wouldn’t come knocking on her door. The police hadn’t recovered the body but had said the currents would make it very unlikely that he would ever be found. Beth knew she wouldn’t rest easy until he was; even now she was back home.
She took a long shower. Standing in Jody’s heavy towelling dressing gown afterwards, she felt the exhaustion she’d kept at bay filtering through, and surveyed her defects in the toothpaste-dappled mirror. With heavy lids, she examined the scars around her mouth from the car accident and her shrunken right ear and burnt shoulder from the fire. The dressing had been removed before her flight, and she’d been given cream to apply, as well as a course of analgesics. Beth touched the top of her ear where the skin was dead. Much longer in the flaming lodge, and it would have withered to nothing.
Her hair had grown considerably and her brown spikes had softened into a boyish cut. Was this her new face? The person who had got into the car with Luc felt almost fictional, the chasm between her life and the harrowing experiences of the new Beth so vast that it was hard to believe she’d ever enjoyed a life of reassuring mundanity. Did she ever want to return to being that woman?
Beth ran her fingers over her stomach. Her touch was blunted because of the dead layer on the tips, but she’d been reassured the skin there would regenerate. She looked at the smooth pads. Would her prints, her identity, ever re-establish?
Having gone to bed at midday, she awoke just after three feeling fully awake and elected to get up for a few hours. She headed to the lounge in her nightshirt to find Jody but heard activity from his recording studio. Beth put her head around the door but recognised the sounds before she did.
“What’s this?”
He clicked his mouse and the sound of the roadside ceased. “If they’re having problems locating the recordings, I thought the FBI would be interested in these...”
Beth stood behind him and examined the two monitors on his desk. On the right hand screen one of the clips was paused. “But this has all been
removed.”
“I recorded them from YouTube.”
“How?”
“Off the screen with my iPhone.” He sounded coy. “It’s why they’re not great quality. Then I ripped them into my FleetSuite editing software.”
“You stitched them together?”
“Minus the one that had been removed before I could record it...’
Beth bit her lip.
“You did ask me to.”
“I should call them straight away about this.”
“By using the people moving through the frame I’ve been able to put together a rough timeline. There are gaps but they’re only a matter seconds.”
“Show me it,” she said, after a few moments consideration.
“You sure?”
She reached down, used the mouse to drag the slider back to the start of the clip and played it.
A phone camera panned from the front of the stationary ambulance at the right hand side of the screen to the crash site. The gendarmes were securing the road. Suddenly the angle, lighting and quality of the clip changed.
“What happened there?”
“The clip jumped because they stopped recording for a few seconds and picked up further along the road. This is a different clip cut into the same timeline.”
“How do you know for sure?”
“Watch the police.” Jody dragged the slider back so the clip reversed slightly.
Beth watched the officers as they moved about the roadside. When the screen quality changed, their progress didn’t alter.
“I was able to assemble the clips in the right order by navigating via the movement of the emergency personnel. And when the cameras aren’t focused on them, I used the other ghouls in the foreground. Like this guy...” Jody pulled the slider along to reveal the clip with Cigarillo Man/Ferrand Paquet in his lemon shirt. “Remember him? He’s actually turned out to be an invaluable marker during the edit.”
“How long did this take you to put together?”
Jody shrugged his shoulders. “I had to occupy myself with something while you were putting your life in jeopardy.”
Beth ignored his rebuke. “How many times have you watched it?”
“So many times, I don’t see it anymore. The patchwork is just over nine minutes long. It does give you a bigger perspective watching it. There’s a lot of overlap. I used the clearest clips, but you can click in the bar at the bottom to switch between the alternate footage.” He rose from the chair to allow her to sit there.
Beth felt cold pins and needles across the top of her shoulders. “I don’t know if I can watch it just now.”
Jody paused it. “I’m sorry. I’m a dick. This has just been a project for me...”
“I do appreciate this, Jody.”
“It didn’t take me that long.”
“I don’t mean just this...’
Jody looked uncomfortable and glanced at the door. “I’m going to hunt out something to eat. What do you fancy for dinner?”
“I’m good, thanks. Can you zip this edit and email it to me?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll forward it to Agent Morales. I think it’ll save them a lot of time.”
“You’ve seen it enough, but it’s there when you feel ready. If you ever want to look at it again.”
Beth didn’t, but when Jody headed to the kitchen, she seated herself, inhaled slowly and viewed Jody’s assembly of the crash site footage from start to finish.
Chapter 84
Beth found Jody in the kitchen, trying to turn an eight egg omelette in a pan. He picked up on her distracted expression.
“You watched it all the way through?”
Beth nodded. “Twice.”
“You OK?” He took the pan off the heat.
“There’s something odd.”
He frowned.
“I only noticed it second time round.”
“Show me.” He turned off the gas and followed Beth back to the studio.
Beth seated herself again and moved the slider to the end of the clip as the helicopter containing her and Luc took off. “Nine minutes and seven seconds in, there.” She paused it. At the far left-hand side of the screen was the back of a white vehicle pulling out of shot around the darkened bend of the forest. “It’s only there for four seconds, but that’s definitely an ambulance.”
“It must have left as soon as the helicopter lifted you out.”
“I’d spotted it before and assumed it was the one at the scene. But now you’ve stitched them all together, I can see it doesn’t pass through the shot at any point.” Beth dragged the slider slowly back through the edit and halted it at the start of the sequence. At one second, the ambulance was stationary.
Beth accelerated the slider back the other way, the road in the shot throughout. No ambulance passed through any of the clips. She paused it on the ambulance leaving at nine minutes and seven seconds.
Jody frowned. “So there are two ambulances.”
“The accident report said only one ambulance attended the site. And that was sent back after the helicopter arrived. Look, the one that leaves the shot after the helicopter took off has a thick blue band across the back doors and...” she moved the slider slightly so they could see it turning out of shot “...down its side. The one that left earlier...” Beth dragged the slider back so they were looking at the first ambulance stationary at one second “...hasn’t any of those markings.”
“So if there were two ambulances, is that much of a revelation? It could be a private or volunteer ambulance that was first to the scene and left when they weren’t required. That would explain the different markings.”
“But where does it come from? There’s no sign of it until this moment.” She slid the slider back to the end of the edit. “And why weren’t they attending us? There are only ever two paramedics in shot: Rae and the man who helped her wheel us to the helicopter when it arrived. There’s no sign of any other ambulance crew. You’d expect them to appear at some point, especially earlier on in the footage. Why wasn’t it mentioned in the report?”
Jody looked pensively at the image on the screen. “Did you check this moment in the alternate clips?” He clicked the bar at the bottom of the edit window and found the same moment in the three other clips. All of them contained brief glimpses of the other ambulance that had been captured as each member of the coach party had directed their phones at the helicopter taking off.
Jody paused the clearest shot and enlarged it. They could make out the licence plate.
“Can you get it any bigger?”
Jody tried with each of the clips, but magnifying the image only obscured the dark numbers there.
“I recorded them with my phone from phone clips. The resolution is useless.”
*
After emailing the clips to Agent Morales, Beth found a variety of images of French ambulances via Google. She thought maybe she could try and find a website for the private response companies, but then remembered the conversation she’d had with the hospital. They hadn’t mentioned an additional ambulance, but then she’d been trying to track down Rae and not another vehicle. Maybe they could quickly clear this up. It wasn’t the presence of the ambulance that bothered her; it was why nobody from it had appeared on the scene.
Beth made the call to Service d’Aide Medicale Urgente from the lounge and was told somebody would get back to her in half an hour. Jody brought her some cold omelette and ate his while she poked at hers. He switched on the TV and they both stared through it while they waited for the phone to ring. Fifteen minutes later, it did, and Beth snatched up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Turn and look out of the window. Mh?” The placatory tone halted the blood in her veins.
Chapter 85
“And do it slowly. I have you and your brother in my sights and can drop you both if you respond to any foolish impulses.”
Beth turned and peered through the dismal afternoon light at the new office block on
the other side of the street.
“First floor. See the open window?”
Beth saw the tiny square of darkness within the smoked glass opposite, vertical blinds bunched beside it.
“Now, alert Jody to the situation. If he tries to stand or dive to the floor, I’ll put a hole through his brain. Turn and do it.”
Beth felt the muscles in her neck tremble as she swivelled on her feet to face him. “Jody.”
He looked distractedly up from the TV and then reacted to her expression.
“Stay seated and listen. There’s a gun on us, the window – other side of the street. We have to do exactly as we’re told...”
“Good.” She heard the gunman swallow in her ear.
Jody cracked his mouth to speak but, knowing of his sister’s recent ordeal, thought better of it. The cushion resting against the back of the sofa beside him exploded, the white stuffing bursting as two more shots sliced through it.
“Stop!” Jody’s hands were in the air, his rigid features anticipating another bullet an inch nearer. “Fuck, stop!” He spat at the fibres of stuffing drifting over his face.
“Precision hardware this time, I’m hunkered down and I have all night. I can see the remote on the arm of the chair. Tell Jody to switch off the TV so I can hear you properly.”
Beth relayed the instruction to Jody and he quickly obeyed. She turned back to the window, gripping the receiver tight. “Don’t hurt him; he isn’t a part of this.”
“He’s as much a part of this as you. Granted, he hasn’t caused as much inconvenience. He’s a loose end, though. Especially given the little package he assembled that you just sent to Agent Morales.”
Beth felt her leg shudder and waited for the spark in the black space she could see through the holes in the cracked glass.
“I’ve been hacking you from the moment you offered to buy the clip that Trip Stillman recorded. You brought yourself into play. You weren’t even part of my contract until then. I extracted the details of Jody’s LA condo from his computer. It was how I made your decision to take a trip to the States so easy. I broke in and waited for you there. You stood me up, first. Things would have been so much easier if you’d shown up. The outcome was always going to be the same, so you could have saved both of us a trip back here.”
Stalk Me Page 27