by D. F. Bailey
“ ‘Toby,’ she said, ‘there’s some things going on you just don’t know about. I realize now I never should have said I’d meet with Uncle Dean. Not tonight.’
“ ‘I know there’s been trouble,’ I said, just so she’d understand I knew the heartache caused by Toeplitz’s sudden death. ‘And you’re not the only one affected,’ I added.
“ ‘No.’ She sat there a moment thinking. About what exactly, I’m not sure.
“ ‘Now I’d like to get us back home. To your Uncle Dean’s place.’
“She shook her head and gazed through the gray window into the night air. She couldn’t see much out there, but she continued to study whatever she’d set her eyes on. In the mirror I saw a tear roll down her cheek. Then another. Then she said something that surprised me.
“ ‘Toby, I need a hug.’
“I turned my head and looked her in the eye. She nodded with a look that said, yes, from you.
“ ‘Can you do that for me? Can you give me a hug?’ ”
Toby paused. His chest heaved and he shook his head as if to say, even I can’t believe what she’d said.
“So I unlocked the doors and got out of the driver’s seat. When I opened her door, when I had it wide enough for me to reach down to hug her — the very thing she asked of me — that’s when she bolted. It caught me by surprise. I didn’t see that coming. But more surprise to me was the way my arm struck out to block her way. It was all one hundred percent, pure reaction, no thinking involved. As she fell back onto the upholstery, she pulled me onto her. With that came another shock. Her body under me. I’d never felt that before. Not someone as beautiful as Miss Gianna.”
He wiped a fist across his face and sipped some water. His throat bobbled as he swallowed, then he continued.
“From then on, I don’t remember exactly what happened. Not in detail. It was … you know, personal. All I know is that it didn’t take much time. And that after the first minute she tried to make it easy for me. Or easi-er. For her, too, I guess.
“When we finished, I tried to tell her how much I liked her. Just as much as Raymond Toeplitz, I said, but she wouldn’t talk to me. In fact she never said another word. Something about her had broken, like she was half-dead and just wanted to be let go from this life in hope something better might be waiting up ahead.
“In that quiet time, it came to me what I’d done. And how it shouldn’t have happened. But now I had to decide what to do next.
“That’s when I eased her into the trunk of the car. I don’t know why I didn’t just let her lie on the back seat. That would’ve been easier for both of us. There’s no accounting for it really. Not so that anyone can make sense of it. Least of all, me.
“By the time I drove down to the ocean, to the wave organ on the far end of Crissy Field, night had come full on. I parked the car and looked back at the Golden Gate Bridge. I might have sat there for an hour, maybe two. Nobody was about, there was no moon. Then I thought about the hundreds of people who’ve jumped over the years. They’d just tossed their lives away, straight into the water below like a fifty-cent coin. I remember wondering if they made a wish like you do when you toss a penny into a well. I realized that Gianna, broken as she was by Toeplitz — she could just as easily throw herself from the bridge railing, too. That’s how crazy she’d become.
“That’s when I understood what to do. I opened the trunk and carried her over to the water’s edge. She wasn’t exactly asleep, but she’d shut herself down into something like it. She simply didn’t want anything to do with this world any more. In a way, she was asking me to help her. Not in so many words, I know that. But I could feel it. Part of me still does. Understand her, I mean. That she wanted to be put away. Dead and gone.
“So it wasn’t that hard in the end. I lifted her and carried her over to the water, up to my knees in it, and pushed her head below the waves and held her by the shoulders. Ever so lightly. It didn’t take much. She had no fight, except at the very end, but that was just a shudder or two, really. I counted to five hundred, holding her under like that, just to make sure.
“I knew that if she jumped from the bridge, her body would be badly broken in all kinds of places. I’d heard it’s not the drowning that kills you. It’s the fall. And knowing that she wouldn’t feel an inch of it now, I pressed my feet onto her collar bones and stood on top of her until I felt the bones snap under my shoes, and then one at a time, I stood on each of her legs and arms. Finally, when her pelvis broke in half, I knew she’d had enough. Then I released her. I just let her go with the current toward the pier.”
Toby glanced at his hands and then set his eyes on the camera with a look of contrition.
“And as the tide picked her up in its arms and swept her away I said a prayer for her. Something like, ‘I’m sorry, Gianna, but you were too good for this world.’ And that’s true. Just like everything else I’ve said tonight is true. Except that’s the truest part of all.”
He tipped his head, a small gesture that announced he had nothing more to reveal. He then gazed into the camera and fixed his attention on the lens without blinking an eye.
※
When the recording concluded, Eve wiped the stream of tears from her face and pulled Finch back to the sofa and laid her head on his chest.
“I never want to see those videos again. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
He tipped his face to her head and inhaled the antiseptic aroma from her scalp. The mix of hospital gels and sanitizing swabs smelled like an germicidal stew.
“When I look at everything that’s happened,” he said, “I wonder if Gianna’s death had anything to do with Toeplitz, or bitcoin — or some damn conspiracy. Maybe she was simply the victim of that sub-human, Toby Squire. Today’s version of the people who tried to kill your grandmother for no good reason. It could be that simple.”
“I don’t know.” She stood up and walked toward the kitchen counter. “Everyone always wants to find the simplest solution but sometimes it’s the most obscure answer that’s correct.”
She gathered the stack of mail she’d collected from her condo and began to sort through it aimlessly. “By the way, where’s the flash drive? Did your tech guy manage to open it?”
“Not yet.” Will was beginning to dread this question. He’d heard it from Wally, Fiona and now, Eve.
“Just as well. I can’t think about it anyhow. It’s all too much.” She extended a hand as if she was straight-arming a line of attackers. “Besides, I need an hour-long shower. My hair smells like disinfectant goo. And my skin feels like a grade-school mould experiment.” She smiled to suggest she was trying to let it all go. Trying desperately to be happy again.
“Okay. My place is yours. Take two hours. Take all day.”
Eve drew her index finger under the seal of an envelope and tugged out a three-page letter. She studied it a moment and then sat down and reread it.
“Will, look at this. I can’t … believe this.” She stood up again and wove a figure-eight around the living room, studying the letter as she went. “It’s from an estate attorney. Apparently I’m ‘the sole beneficiary’ of Gianna’s estate.”
She passed the letter to Finch. He glanced at the letterhead: James, Whitcomb & Taft. He began to read the text aloud:
“Dear Ms. Eve Noon. This is to advise you that you are the sole beneficiary identified in the last will and testament of Gianna Whitelaw….”
“Not only that” — she threw her arms up in astonishment — “Her estate includes the assets that Toeplitz left to her!”
Will jumped to page two:
“Since the assets of the estate of Raymond Toeplitz include both marketplace securities and bonds, and a mix of atypical assets including his intellectual property, at this time it’s impossible to establish an exact valuation….”
Will quickly scanned the last paragraphs until he hit the key number: “…in excess of s
ixty million dollars.…”
He set the letter on the coffee table. “Incredible.”
“I know.” Her face lit up. She wanted to believe it and not believe it. Maybe if it wasn’t true, Gianna might come back somehow. But that was impossible. What was possible — apparently — was that she was the only beneficiary of Gianna’s estate.
“Is it true?” she whispered, still uncertain of her fortune.
Will took up the letter again and started to read it once more. “Yeah.”
“So, okay. This sounds horrible. Like, appallingly crass and horrible.” She examined him as he sat in the chair scanning the letter, his head shifting slightly from side to side as he read each word again.
“What’s horrible?” He looked at her.
“I want to go away. For a week. Hell, for a month.”
He nodded. She deserved a break. Somewhere to make a full recovery.
“I want to go to Hawaii. And I want you to come with me. I’ve never been there and I’ve always wanted to go.” Her eyes widened with a look of expectation.
“Really?”
“Yes. I’m going to shower and then book a flight for tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Will tried to imagine booking off work. In mid-April he’d taken close to a month for his recovery in Eden Veil. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, tomorrow.” She studied his face. “Okay, maybe not a month, but at least a week.”
Maybe, he thought. He could call Wally, ask for unpaid leave. “All right, take a shower and then let’s talk.” He shrugged. “Wow. I haven’t really absorbed this yet.”
The both broke into a hesitant laughter as if they’d heard a joke but weren’t quite sure they’d caught the punchline.
“So. I’m taking a shower. Then we make love. Then we go to Hawaii.”
He smiled. Maybe.
“Then we make love again. The rest I leave to your imagination. Okay?”
※
Finch opened the French doors that led onto his balcony overlooking the Italian garden at the back of the mansion. Mother Russia’s gardener kept the yard in a state of lush, almost shimmering perfection. Clipped, pruned, weedless. How ideal it looked from three stories up, a thought that made him realize he’d never actually strolled through the garden. Never took the time to smell a rose or pluck a blossom growing on the trellis vines. Perhaps the experience was better this way: distant, untouched, utopian.
He heard the sound of water jetting against the shower tiles as Eve turned the taps in the bathroom. The awning window above the shower stall opened onto the balcony and when she pushed the handle forward from inside a light mist breezed through the hinged vent beside Will’s shoulder. Then he heard her adjust the nozzle on the shower head and the surging water slowed to a gentle spray.
He scrolled through his cellphone directory and when he found Wally’s name he clicked the call button. As he waited to connect, he decided to ask for two weeks off. Unpaid. And to make the request before Wally could assign him a story roster that would carry him through July.
“Gimbel.” Wally often answered in-coming calls as if he managed a furniture warehouse. Brisk, to the point.
“Wally, it’s Will. I’ve got a favor to ask. I need two weeks off.”
Silence.
“Unpaid, of course,” he continued, worried that if he didn’t fill the gap quickly Wally would reel him back into the office immediately. “And I don’t expect the eXpress to cover it. I need a break. It just hit me today. With everything that’s happened, I —"
“Have you seen Fiona?”
“Fiona?”
“Did she contact you to set up the interview?”
He heard the worry in Wally’s voice. Something had happened, but what?
“Did you do the interview with her?” Wally’s voice rose with an urgent concern.
“No, I…. ” He had to distract himself from Wally’s voice. He listened to the splashing sounds from the shower stall as they shifted and wavered. He imagined Eve on the other side of the wall, naked and sultry under the spray.
“Look, Will — apparently she’s gone missing.”
“What?”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“What do you mean?” Finch felt his stomach sinking, a long, slow melting that drained through his guts.
“Just what I said. The police are asking me all these questions, so I have to get it right. When was the last time you saw her?”
His eyes settled on the rose bush at the far edge of the garden and he tried to recall their last moments together. In the bog. At his desk. Discussing her plan to meet Justin Whitelaw. “At work,” he said at last. “Just after we watched the video of Toby Squire. We were talking about how to approach —"
“And that was when exactly?”
Finch shook his head, uncertain of the passage of time. “A day ago. Mid-afternoon, I guess.”
“You mean Monday.”
Finch shut his eyes, tried to calculate the sequence of days. “So that makes it what? Two days ago?”
“Yeah.”
“Look, Wally, are they sure about this?”
“Her son spent a night with Fiona’s sister and Fiona failed to show up the next morning. Then the sister called us. Tomorrow will be day three.”
“Alexander?” Finch walked in a tight circle under the shower vent.
“Who?”
“Alexander. Fiona’s son.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “So who’s looking after him? Christ, not the father, I hope. He’s got problems.” He spun a finger in a circle above his ear. “OCD, I think she said.”
“The sister’s got him.”
Finch felt a moment of relief, then his mind turned to his last conversation with Fiona. He’d pushed her a little, hadn’t he? Prodded her to meet with Whitelaw alone. For her rendez-vous privé.
“Will, I’ve got to run. There’s a lot happening here. The police want to talk to you. I’m surprised they haven’t already.”
“Sure,” he said. “Of course.”
He clicked off his phone and stepped over to the railing. He set his hands on the steel balustrade and leaned forward until his weight felt balanced between his feet and his hands. With a minor shift he could dive over the banister and smash onto the rock wall that bordered the edge of the spluttering water fountain below. Steady, he whispered to himself. Fiona’s just missing, not dead. Not yet, anyway.
In a sudden rage he threw his cellphone into the garden below. It rattled against the concrete, took a hop and bounced into the pool under the fountain.
He drew his hands over his face and pushed the hair from his eyes. His muscles tightened, his fingers balled into fists. He could see it now, see clearly what came next. He would find Fiona. He would find her, bring her home to her son, and then destroy the criminals who had broken his world.
~ Bonus Feature 1 ~
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LONE HUNTER
Chapter One
April had come and gone, yet winter still held young Alexei Malinin in its grip. He leaned against a denuded birch tree, the bark stripped up to the lowest limbs by ravenous deer. The snow rose over the tops of his leather boots, and his wool mittens, a Christmas gift from his Baba Tatiana, were clotted with ice above his knuckles. He tugged the parka hood over his hat and shivered.
Along the trapline stood the first of six snares he’d set with his grandfather, Ded Vitaly. The wire contraption consisted of a thin strand of steel tied to the base of a birch tree, then buried under the snow up to the fist-sized noose that Ded Vitaly had twisted into shape and set against two twigs peeled from a limb of the tree. They’d baited the front and back of the trap with raw carrot shavings.
“Don’t touch the bait with your bare hands,” Ded Vitaly had warned him, his breath spiraling from his mouth in long scrolls. “If the rabbits, or any other creatures can smell you, they’ll high-tail it out of here. Then we all go hungry.”
“They can smell people, Ded?”
“Their mothers teach them. Just like Mat teaches you, yes?”
Alexei thought about the lessons that parents can teach their children. Before he’d died, Alexei’s father taught him what he called the most important rule of the hunter: “When you kill an animal, do it quickly and in one blow. Never add to their suffering.”