Those That Remain

by Rob Ashman

  At the end of the call, Mechanic hit *69 and once again the number had been withheld. Mechanic knew that would change as the trust and dependency grew.

  But Mechanic couldn’t invest all the available time thinking about Kaitlin, because there was already a victim in the bag, waiting to go.

  19

  It was the end of the day and Lucas was heading for his favourite after work drinking hole. It was a stone’s throw from the station but you would never know it was there. The bar was in the basement of a large building, reached by walking down a set of narrow stone steps. Lucas shouldered his way through a heavy unpainted door with a bright neon drinks sign above it. Inside, the owner’s affection for bright neon signs was obvious, they were everywhere. An ex-policeman, he accumulated the signs partly because he liked them and partly because when they were all switched on, the richness of the glow meant he could turn off the normal lighting which he said cost a frigging fortune. With no windows, the array of fluorescent colours gave the place an automatic party feel, no matter what time of day it was. Lucas liked it a lot.

  Lucas wandered over to Bassano who was sitting in one of the half-moon booths at the back of the bar. In front of him were two beers with the ice frosting still shimmering an iridescent white on the outside of the glass. When they said they served ice-cold beer, they meant it.

  ‘Why the change of venue, boss?’ Bassano asked Lucas, savouring the prospect of the beer.

  ‘I need to talk with you about the case and it’s best we’re not in the station.’

  ‘Okay, I’m all ears,’ Bassano said, taking a long pull at his beer.

  ‘There are too many aspects to this case which simply don’t add up and the further into the investigation we go the worse it gets. Yesterday was a prime example. I couldn’t for the life of me figure why we were drowning in information about the murder victims but were unable to identify a single common thread linking them. Not one. We needed to look at the evidence differently. It was not how it appeared. That’s why I challenged the profile, it was driving us in the wrong direction.’

  ‘Yeah, that was a great call, though I’m not sure our doctor was too impressed. And she’ll be even less impressed when she finds out we’ve found a connection. She’s still at the McKee house, you know.’ Bassano slurped at his beer.

  ‘Yes I know. We’ll let her cool down.’

  ‘What’s the other revelation? You didn’t bring me here to congratulate ourselves on the progress of the day. Is it to do with the other piece of paper you had in that file this morning? I am a cop you know, and I do notice things.’ Bassano sat back against the push-button leather of the curved seat and folded his arms. ‘So what is it?’

  ‘Okay. If we accept that the profile is wrong, and the evidence from today would strongly suggest that it is, then there are a number of potential follow-on deductions. The other big piece which doesn’t fit in this case is the killing of Victor Galbraith. When we were in the Mason house, I asked Jo Sells why Mechanic didn’t kill them, and she said that was easy, they didn’t fit the target grouping. And she was absolutely right, they didn’t. All Mechanic’s victims have been families with kids, right?’ Lucas paused. ‘Wrong, because Galbraith doesn’t fit the target grouping either, he was a major deviation from the norm. So why kill Galbraith?’ Lucas paused again and took a long slug from his beer. ‘I think Galbraith was killed because he’d worked out the profile he’d drawn up was wrong, and he was about to alter the course of the investigation.’

  ‘Wow,’ Bassano nearly spat his beer onto the table, ‘that’s a long shot.’

  ‘Yes, I know but it gets worse. Harper told me that the night Galbraith was killed he called him in a bar. Harper was drunk, angry and under immense stress. At the time he thought that Galbraith was telling him that his investigation was going in the wrong direction, but in the weeks following Mechanic’s death, Harper revised his recollection of this conversation. He told me that he realized that what Galbraith was actually trying to say was that he, Galbraith, was wrong. In other words, the profile was wrong. Of course, Harper was in such a rage he only heard what he wanted to hear, and the next time he saw Galbraith he was dead.’

  Bassano stopped drinking, his head working overtime. ‘But that would mean Mechanic knew that Galbraith was about to change his profile and change the direction of the investigation. And that would suggest he had a direct line into the case. Are you saying there was a leak?’ Bassano couldn’t believe what he had just said.

  ‘I’m not sure how, but in the same way I had an uncomfortable feeling about our inability to find a link connecting the victims, I have the same feeling about the murder of Galbraith. To compound matters, there’s another significant deviation around his killing.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Bassano.

  ‘All the victims were shot through the head at point-blank range. Even Galbraith took a head shot and must have been dead when he hit the floor.’

  ‘Yes, agreed.’

  ‘So why shoot him in the stomach afterwards?’

  ‘Maybe he was shot in the stomach first.’

  ‘No, he was shot in the stomach when he was lying on the floor. The bullet passed right through the soft tissue and they dug it out of the ground. He was shot post mortem. Why would Mechanic do that?’

  Bassano shook his head, unsure where this was leading.

  ‘I think he shot him again to ensure we found a bullet which could be matched to the previous shells found at the kill scenes. A bullet in the head could mash up on impact, making identification impossible. Mechanic wanted to make sure we knew it was him, so he shot into a fleshy part of Galbraith’s body so we’d find a good match.’

  ‘Why would he want to do that?’

  ‘I think Mechanic wanted to forge a positive link between the kill site and himself. Why was that important? Because that was where he staged the burn-out in the car and faked his suicide. He did it in the same damn place.’

  ‘You said it got worse and you weren’t kidding,’ said Bassano. ‘It all fits but it’s one hell of a piece of elaborate deduction. So now we have a leak in the initial investigation. Galbraith’s murder was to prevent a new profile from ever seeing the light of day while the location of his death was used to secure the impression that Mechanic was in the burnt out car. That’s a shitload of deduction.’

  ‘I know, but at least it begins to put a few of the pieces together. It begins to explain some of the loose ends. It’s a long shot, I agree, but then this morning we thought the same of viewing the women as the real victims.’

  ‘What do we do now? What about Jo Sells – do we tell her?’ Bassano asked.

  ‘I think we keep this between ourselves for now. We need to tread carefully with our dear doctor. Her reaction was completely over the top this morning. I’m not sure how she’ll respond to further bombshells. This is a huge leap of faith, for which we have little supporting evidence. We need to get a list of all of the people who worked on the initial Mechanic case and do a little quiet digging. As far as anyone else is concerned, you’re focusing on the country club lead. I’ll have another chat with Harper to see if he has anything which might help.’

  ‘Okay.’ Bassano finished his beer. Both men stood up and moved across the curved bench seat to get out of the booth. Bassano stopped and looked at his boss. ‘The theory about the Galbraith killing stacks up, but for one thing.’

  ‘Oh what’s that?’

  ‘The matching bullet merely puts the gun at that location, not necessarily Mechanic.’

  Lucas sat back down as Bassano left the bar.

  20

  Mechanic’s shift was coming to an end. One more job and that was it for the day. But this was no ordinary job at no ordinary club. This was the club where Sophie Barrock was a member.

  She was a small Barbie doll of a woman who, despite approaching forty, could still pass for a cheerleader half her age. Her dyed blonde hair and elegantly applied make-up were always immaculate and she strutt
ed around the club, doling out disapproving glances to anyone outside her circle of loyal followers. Sophie had a level of self confidence which was stratospheric and her overall demeanour could best be described as club owner rather than club member.

  For Mechanic, the most annoying feature of Sophie Barrock was that she was one hell of a sportswoman. While she was always dressed in the latest and most expensive designer sports gear, it wasn’t merely for show. She was an excellent tennis player, consistently top of the ladies’ ladder competition, and would regularly play against men as they gave her a better game. In the winter months, she pounded the gym and every aerobics class on offer. Yes, it was annoying for Mechanic to admit, but Sophie Barrock was the real deal when it came to competitive sport.

  It was an unfortunate personality trait for Sophie that she couldn’t let her sporting talent speak for itself. She felt it necessary to brag her latest successes at every opportunity. She had a significant following of female friends who were mesmerized when Sophie held court in one of the coffee shops or when relaxing by the pool. She would talk about who was in and who was out of the latest social crowd, passing sweeping judgments on people she barely knew and telling her admiring followers who they could interact with and who they should not. Mechanic suspected that these women kept close to Sophie as a defence mechanism, to avoid being in the firing line for her cutting comments and bitchy asides which she used so liberally with others. It was a case of either being in the Sophie Barrock crowd and relatively safe, or outside the group where it was open season.

  While the outside world saw a woman brimming over with her own self-importance, Mechanic knew different. Behind the façade, Sophie Barrock was a morass of insecurities and anxiety. Despite her portrayal of herself as a woman who had her act together, her home life was a mess. The whole country club routine was purely a means of escape for her. At the club she could be the person she wanted to be. Behind her front door she was forced to be somebody different. Her list of grievances was endless. Even for Mechanic, this was an impressive set of neuroses, anxieties and hang-ups.

  Sophie was in a total rut, tied down by her kids’ constant demands: ‘Mom, can you do this?’ ‘Mom, can you take me there?’ ‘Mom, have you ironed my shirt?’ She resented her lack of control. Home definitely controlled her. Her husband was unsupportive, excluding Sophie from what she saw as his blast of a social life. His life revolved around work and baseball. When he was at home, he’d be in his den watching games on the television or down at the sports bar with his friends from work. Didn’t he see enough of them in the week? Did he have to see them at weekends as well?

  In the bedroom any supposed action was a joke. Of course, to her ardent admirers at the club she had an active sex life and her husband found it hard to keep up with her demands. He also found it hard to keep up with her constant requests to try something different. Yes, as far as the outside world was concerned, it was fair to say that Sophie Barrock had a better sex life than her entire circle of female followers put together.

  Other than the so-called friends at the club, Sophie didn’t have a close friend she could talk to. In fact, when she thought about it, she had never had a close friend to share her secrets or discuss her problems with. That’s why the offer of someone completely neutral to talk to felt so compelling for Sophie. It was a chance to offload and air her resentment. That’s where Mechanic came into the picture.

  Sophie had undergone around fifteen telephone counselling sessions and the situation was beginning to improve. Mechanic had convinced her that she was entirely right in her assertion that she deserved to be fulfilled in her own life. If her family stood in the way of that, then she should do it without them. In truth, Mechanic had done very little convincing in any of their conversations. Sophie was a steamroller of obsession, more than capable of convincing herself of anything, even if she hadn’t made up her mind what any of this actually meant.

  Did it mean divorce? Did it mean leaving her family or taking a lover? She was constantly wrestling with what action to take. One thing was for sure, she was determined that her life was going to change. Of all the plans, ideas and thoughts Sophie had, this was the statement which Mechanic agreed with most.

  Mechanic had been grooming Sophie for around six weeks, fostering a sense of dependency while at the same time manoeuvring her into more and more desperate positions. The calls fuelled Sophie’s complex anxieties, she was a perfect target.

  There were a couple of items which Mechanic had to finish off, and the scene was set. The preparations for Sophie Barrock and her ungrateful family were nearing completion.

  During that afternoon Mechanic had been running through the details of the McKee killings, ticking off the various aspects which had featured so strongly in the fantasy. Once the initial euphoria had faded, Mechanic was feeling increasingly unhappy. After having basked in the delights of a job well done, as the day went on there was an overwhelming sense that it hadn’t gone well. It was the whole Dave McKee thing which ruined it. The fact that he’d got out of bed and Mechanic had had to dispatch him as he emerged through the archway into the living room was not in the script. Mechanic was pleased with the clinical way McKee had been dealt with, but overall this deviation had spoiled it.

  Mechanic knew this would lead to a problem. When the kill was perfect, Daddy would go away satisfied and not compel Mechanic to kill again for months. But this one was far from perfect. Mechanic feared it would only serve to bring on another command to ‘Go please Daddy’ much earlier than expected. Keeping the urge at bay only worked in the early stages of a new attack and, under the circumstances, would probably only buy an additional couple of days.

  Mechanic knew another kill was only weeks away. The preparations for Sophie Barrock needed to be stepped up.

  Mechanic observed Sophie from a distance of about fifty yards across the club parking lot. She was going through the ritual of saying her theatrical goodbyes to those people who were in the ‘in crowd’. Mechanic pressed the button in the armrest of the truck and the window glided down to half open. Even at this distance you could hear Sophie’s voice trilling on the wind. It was difficult to make out exactly what was being said, but one thing was for sure, whatever it was, it was being said a little too loudly. Mechanic strained to listen and not for the first time thought that Sophie Barrock had all the vocal qualities of a Sea World dolphin trainer.

  Eventually, she got in her car and drove away, down the tree-lined boulevard to the interstate. Mechanic eased the big truck across the parking lot and followed. Sophie made the busy junction well before Mechanic.

  It didn’t matter. Mechanic already knew where she lived.

  As Mechanic sat patiently waiting for a gap in the traffic, Lucas was climbing the stairs to the fifth floor landing heading for the shabby door marked 5 6. He hadn’t called ahead as he correctly figured that Harper’s phone was still disconnected. In any case, Lucas didn’t want to give him an excuse to be out when he arrived. He rapped on the door.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Harper from deep within the flat.

  ‘It’s Lucas. I want to talk to you, if that’s okay.’

  ‘Can’t we do it in the morning? I’m busy.’

  Lucas paused for a few seconds. ‘No, tomorrow’s no good. Can we talk now? It won’t take long.’ And tomorrow you’ll be conveniently out when I call round, Lucas thought.

  ‘For fuck’s sake.’ Lucas could hear shuffling from inside. The door clunked open and Harper swung it wide open.

  Across the room was a single bright orange armchair with a low table directly in front of it. On the table was a microwave lasagne, still in its plastic tray, with a grubby fork sticking out of the top. In front of the table was the television. All three pieces of furniture were in a dead straight line, Harper’s very own version of feng shui. Around the base of the armchair, Lucas counted six empty cans of cheap beer, and in a bucket on the floor another four cans bobbed gently in cold water. Harper watched Lucas survey the scen
e. It was obvious why Harper hadn’t wanted an unexpected visitor. As he made it back to his seat, Harper was swaying, his eyes bloodshot drunk. He left a cloud of alcohol vapour trailing behind him.

  ‘The damn refrigerator broke and I’m waiting for the landlord to replace it,’ Harper slurred, explaining the presence of the bucket.

  ‘Oh,’ was all Lucas could think to reply. ‘Please, eat your food. Don’t let it go cold.’

  Harper swung his leg over the low table and flopped into the chair. He picked up the fork and shovelled a slab of food into his mouth. His hand shook as he waved for Lucas to continue.

  ‘It’s about what you said when we last met. You said Galbraith was trying to tell you that his profile of Mechanic was wrong.’ Lucas watched Harper swallow down the food in one gulp.

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Turns out you were right.’ Lucas allowed this to sink in, waiting for a response. Harper was about to cram another wedge of congealed pasta into his mouth but stopped in mid-air. He replaced the fork on the plastic tray and picked up a beer.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, taking a long drink from the can.

  ‘The original profile said that Mechanic was both a father and a sibling hater. But the problem with that was that neither you nor I could find one shred of evidence to connect the victims. It didn’t add up. We’ve uncovered evidence that suggests that the real targets were the women. He figured the worse thing he could do was to murder their families and leave them alive. The profile should have read, ‘Mechanic was a mother hater’. I believe Galbraith had come to that conclusion and that was what he was trying to tell you.’