by Neven Carr
“Me either.”
“Seeing Cruikshank?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
Reardon lowered his head. Ethan’s work was impressive. And he said as much.
“I know,” Ethan said.
“Making me look incompetent.” After all, why hadn’t Reardon thought of cross-referencing new information with past information?
“Not hard to; not right now.” Ethan’s normally jesting voice came across as uncommonly drab and heavy. And for the first time that night, Reardon openly acknowledged the dark shadows swelling beneath Ethan’s glassy eyes.
“We’re all buggered, mate.” Ethan yanked himself out of his chair, zipped open his blue canvas duffel bag and returned with a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam.
Reardon smiled, lazily. Just what he needed to soothe away the gnawing prickles. He grabbed a couple of glasses from Annie’s top cupboard, some ice from the freezer and was soon relishing the smooth, rich amber liquid. A few sips later, he sensed the tension slowly slip away.
Michael Cruikshank.
Charles Smith.
How did Ethan’s theory fit into his own? Reardon pulled out his earlier scribble and stared at it. “Got that clip with the reporter interviewing Macey?”
Ethan set to work, pulling up the clip. When he did, Reardon said, “Can you hone in on the spot, where Macey begins searching the crowds?”
Ethan did, Reardon grateful that the camera operator had performed a long, leisurely sweep of the crowd.
“Slow it down. And… stop.” Reardon studied it, checked his scribble once more, and then back at the screen.
Ethan’s eyes darted between the clip and Reardon. “What are you seeing?”
Reardon felt that all too familiar instinctual pull and smiled. “Not what… who.”
“And who is?”
“Charles Smith.”
Ethan laughed then stopped midway. “Mate, think you better slow down on the bourbon.”
Reardon didn’t need to slow down. And he was certain his deadpanned face, still focused on the clip, said so.
“You’re fricking serious, aren’t you?”
Reardon certainly was. “Watch that section just before the Senator’s whole demeanor changes.”
Sloane did.
“See that?” Reardon was pointing to the man closest to the reporter. He wore a military-style buzz cut and black sunglasses. “Follow Macey’s line of sight. Who is he staring at?”
“Buzz-boy.”
“And?”
Ethan replayed it slowly a third time. “And Buzz-boy is mouthing something to Macey just before Macey is scared shitless.” Ethan slammed still. “Hell, if you’re right … then… Charles Smith….”
A painful smile scratched Reardon’s face. “Send out an e-mail. We want anything and everything on Buzz-boy, ASAP. And anything on this news clip.”
Ethan’s fingers flew across the keyboard.
Reardon poured two more bourbons. “I know how we can catch the guy who ordered the hit.”
Ethan stopped, stared.
“You said you have the phone of one of Basteros’ men.”
Ethan pulled the phone from the pocket of his light-colored cargoes. “Right here in my hot little hand.”
Reardon was pleased but quiet.
Ethan was beyond quiet. “Are you going to fricking tell me what’s brewing in that irritating head of yours?”
“Absolutely,” Reardon replied, “But first we have some planning to do.”
Chapter 33
Claudia
December 28, 2010
1:32 pm
SAUL AND I were leaving Nankari.
In light of what we now knew, it was for the best.
I placed a newly washed plate into the wooden drying rack and continued the lunch dishes. Nearby, Annie was quietly humming, redressing Saul’s wound.
Saul sat at the dining table working his laptop, his expression a visual mish-mash of concentrated eye squints and frowns. He wore his trademark jeans and a black, sleeveless muscle shirt, my pitiful head registering more muscle than shirt. Several neatly stacked piles of paper, two empty coffee cups and his mobile phone surrounded him.
Saul caught my eyes. “You okay?”
Of course I wasn’t. But I nodded at him, smiled a small, weak smile. It didn’t alleviate his concern however; worry lines still marred that striking face of his.
Annie’s loose, wheaten locks fell to one side. “Leave the dishes, Claudia, just go and….”
“And what?” I said. “Rest?” My manner was sharp, biting and I immediately apologized.
She dismissed it in her usual Annie-like graciousness and returned to Saul. I returned to the dishes and desperately clung onto the lingering smells of freshly baked bread and smoked ham.
“Whatever happened, we will find out the truth,” Saul said.
“I know,” I answered. But did I really want the truth any longer?
The soothing aromas quickly deserted me. The chilling memory of two hours earlier returned like a brazen, ill wind.
I am sitting beside Saul. “Do you know who wants me dead or why?” My words have a ridiculously implausible quality to them.
“Only that it’s not the same person responsible for the other murders.”
I cross my arms on the table, marvel at its dust-free surface and grunt. “Well, that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?”
Saul grins. “Today we rest. We’ll leave late tonight.”
Rest? I have just slept over ten hours.?
“I have something to show you,” Saul says in a non-committal way.
“Hmm, a good something or a bad something.”
He shrugs. “Not sure; maybe both.”
I’m naturally intrigued. He whips his laptop around to face me. And my breath grinds to an instant halt. I side-glance Saul. His brows knit into a tight frown. I lean closer, take in the extraordinary image.
It is a snapshot of my dream, a shot of the long hallway, the ugly portrait, the endless spiral staircase and most importantly, the door, looming as large as I had always visualized it.
“I can’t imagine what this must be like for you,” Saul whispers.
What it’s like? Disturbing, shocking, wonderful… strangely liberating are just my first thoughts.
“Wh… who… who?” I say, sounding like an owl with anxiety issues.
And then Saul tells me.
About Araneya Estate.
Its name conjures up faraway visions of a beautifully quaint cottage, of tall, floral archways and stone cobbled walkways. Of a small, pretty woman with a large, welcoming grin.
Of vast, stately rooms and old, elaborate furnishings.
Of hallways that go on forever.
Of… hidey-holes.
I instantly straighten.
Hidey-holes.
And just like that, fear resurrects into something far more horrible, far more frightening.
I gasp, stumble out of my chair and step back.
“Claudia, what’s wrong?”
I don’t answer… I can’t. Terror has struck me dumb. I fall into the wall, hear blood rush to my head as I stare blindly into an alien past. Saul is shaking me, calling out my name. But I can barely hear him; his voice replaced by others, more fearful, more urgent.
And then I smell that stench, so strong, so putrid… so human….
So absolutely final.
The unmistakable stench of death.
I stare at my hands. I stare at what’s in them… what’s on them.
Oh god… no… no… oh god….
My stomach heaves, once, twice and I stagger forward and grab a chair. It falls. I nearly fall with it. I clutch my stomach. Bile now burns my insides. And the need to run consumes me like a ravenous, wild animal. I get as far as the kitchen. But there my legs desert me and I crumble to the floor. Saul is next to me. He reaches out but I shrink away. I huddle my knees close to my chest and desperately try to forget.
“Tell me what y
ou saw, Claudia.”
I shake my head, thankful that the vision is now dispersing, returning to its original place.
“Baby, please… it’s important.”
I look to Saul’s face. His anxious eyes are pleading. I press my hand to his cheek; it’s clammy, unusually cool. A heavy weight presses against my chest, robbing me of my next breath. My hand falls away as I reluctantly nod. I shrug off the thousands of threatening goose bumps, clutch my knees tighter to me. “I… I saw a small girl,” I stammer.
Icy shivers work through me as I visualize her again. Her terrified face, her long, thick hair, her pretty blue and white dress all caked in blood. I place my palms flat on the floor as I tell Saul. “She’s… she’s…..” My throat begins to clog. “Oh no… please no….”
Strong arms grab my shoulders. “What about her, Claudia? Tell me.”
But I shake my head furiously. “No, just let her run, please just let her run… hide…
… let her forget.”
An emphatic slam of the front screen door snapped me back to the present. Ethan appeared, his hands tucked in the pockets of his long shorts. His eyes darted directly to Saul and he nodded. Saul closed his eyes and nodded back.
It wasn’t easy to shove away the thoughts of the blood-soaked girl. But something about Ethan’s expression told me I should. I forced a playful groan. “You two are doing it again.”
With a click of the bin lid, Annie disposed of Saul’s old bandage. She then stripped some wipes from a commercial container and cleaned her hands. A faint smell of antiseptic wafted from her. “Get used to it, Claudia. They’ve been communicating like that for so long, they don’t realize how irritating it is to the rest of us plebs.” She laughed. I obligingly laughed with her.
Surprisingly, there was no reaction from either man. Worse still, Ethan appeared like one who had just run over his much-beloved cat. “Okay, what’s wrong?” I asked.
Ethan rested his forearm along the bar. His stance was awkward, the bar too low for him. However, any obvious unease he felt seemed pointed towards me. Was he preparing me for something… dare I say it… bad?
I looked to Annie. She screwed her face in a comical sort of way and shrugged. She then took solace in one of the barstools. I wiped my hands and joined her. My stool complained bitterly as I heaved into it, screeching like some distressed parrot.
Again, I asked Ethan what was wrong. He was staring at his black joggers. I noticed the familiar white Nike insignia on one of them and waited for him to answer.
Saul spoke instead. He had his thumb and forefinger pressed to the bridge of his nose. “Just tell her, Ethan.”
I didn’t much care for Saul’s heavy monotone or the fact that both he and Ethan always knew shit well before I did.
“Remember Saul telling you about a Charles Smith?” Ethan’s voice had a hard, tightened edge to it.
“The man who wanted something done to me? Have you found out who he is?”
“Not yet, but I do know what Smith wanted Thomas Bellante to do.”
The fine hairs on the back of my neck coiled. I bit down on my lip and prayed for numbness.
“Smith, or whoever he was working for, wanted you certified as mentally unstable after Simon’s death… he wanted you and everyone else close to you to believe it.”
I didn’t know who gasped louder, Annie or me. I reeled back into the barstool, thankful for its high back. “W… why?”
Ethan dropped his gaze, slumped his shoulders. He appeared vulnerable, apologetic even and I instantly felt sorry for him. “There was a strong chance that the psych you were seeing in Sydney could have helped you remember. Assisting patients to come to grips with their forgotten pasts was apparently his forte. Someone didn’t want to take that gamble. They wanted you back in Nankari under the care of Dr. Malcolm Cruikshank.”
“Weren’t they worried that Cruikshank could have achieved the same result?” Annie asked, reiterating my own thoughts.
Ethan looked to Annie and shook his head. “When Cruikshank wasn’t spending time psyching patients, he spent it on his other sideline, working for Thomas Bellante. That’s what Smith had Bellante do, convince Cruikshank to take on the job of babysitting Claudia.”
Ethan then swung back to me. His sun-tanned face had whitened, his normally lively eyes, flat. “And Cruikshank did. Under Bellante and Smith’s orders he set about making you appear so far gone, that if you ever spilt anything you knew, it would’ve been just the ranting of a grieving lunatic.”
There was a sick, bitter taste in my mouth as I tried to process. “So the whole time Dr. Cruikshank was purposely convincing me that I was crazy?”
Ethan cleared his throat. “Worse than that, Angel. He was actually medicating you with a drug, a hallucinogen called Phencyclidine.”
“PCP,” Saul whispered. It was then that I noticed Saul rounded over, his downturned face mere inches from his tightly clasped hands.
“Yep, only small doses, but enough to accentuate the PTSD symptoms.”
Saul groaned.
But I was past groaning. Visions of the small girl hit me. “Did Dr. Cruikshank know what had happened to me at Araneya?”
Ethan shook his head.
“And the watchers?”
“Were really there, purposely fueling your supposed paranoia. Possibly explains why you felt that they had changed when you returned home to Nankari.”
Numbness began to desert me, replaced by a slow fueling anger.
“Angel, even the behavioral therapy you were getting was to make you….”
I gestured Ethan to stop and jumped off the stool. I began to pace; my fingers ached from the constant twisting. Soon I was on the patio and then on the sand. The scorching heat bit my bare feet. But, in some warped way, it disturbingly helped.
Dr. fucking Cruikshank.
I recalled his harsh, wiry face, his long hooked nose hovering over shrewd, smug lips, over his ridiculous grey goatee. I recalled the many hours we had spent together, the times I tried to convince him, the times he tried to convince me, the times when it got all so horribly draining, until I couldn’t fight back any longer.
Until I just gave in.
Just as he would have wanted.
How could I have been so stupid, so gullible, so easily accommodating? My rising fury began liquefying into tears, blinding me, as blind as I had been then. I searched the pockets of my denim shorts, was relieved to find several tissues. I pulled one out and blew my nose.
You were vulnerable, Claudia, I tried to justify. You had just lost the most important person in your life. Cruikshank, the bastard, took advantage of that.
You were the victim.
As I so often seemed to be.
Fresh anger churned out fresh tears. I was fast tiring of this victim status. I wiped the last of my tears and headed back to Annie’s.
Saul was on one of the swinging seats. I stopped, used a leafy bush for cover and watched him. He had his back hunched over, his hands fastened together. There was no doubting the disquiet on his face. I thought back to when I told him of my vision of the girl. Afterwards, hatred burned bright in his eyes; his muscles were incredibly tense as he vowed that he would find the truth and those responsible would pay. The abrupt change in him was disturbing.
With a heavy heart, I wondered if I was good for a man like him. He who relied on his remarkable self-control to help so many. Did I really have the right to screw that up, as I obviously appeared to be doing? Or was I merely over-reacting, unwittingly trying to sabotage a relationship barely begun? I bagged the thoughts for a later date and walked over to him.
As soon as he saw me, his eyes widened, a smile hung off the corner of his lips. What was it I saw? Relief? Joy? Compassion? I don’t know. But I knew that look would forever stay etched in my mind.
When I reached him, he grabbed both my hands. “Been another hell of a day,” he said.
That it had.
I took his lead and settled in next to him.
“And it’s not even over yet.”
The frightening reality of that hit me more than I would’ve liked.
Chapter 34
Saul
December 28, 2010
4:35 pm
“YOU OKAY?”
REARDON’S eyes snapped opened. The surrounding images appeared a little blurry. He blinked several times and soon recognized Ethan staring down at him, appearing disturbingly… disturbed.
Reardon pressed a clenched fist to one side, straightened his unusually stiff body and leaned back into Annie’s sofa. He welcomed its silky-smooth fabric, so cooling against his hot, irritable skin. “What happened?”
Ethan plunged into the other end of the sofa with an emphatic swoosh creating faint tremors along the seating. In his hand was a half-eaten green apple. “You’re exhausted is what happened. Lack of proper sleep, an annoyingly unwanted bullet wound, and of course, good old emotional preoccupation. You’ve been asleep for well over an hour. I would see that as a good thing.”
“Is Claudia okay?”
Ethan feigned hurt. “Of course she is. As if I would let anything happen to her under my watch. She’s still on the patio, still adjusting.”
Reardon rolled back his head until it found the sofa’s headrest. He closed his eyes and only saw Claudia, confused and shaken.
“So, how are you really feeling, my friend?”
“Fine.”
“Yep, can see that.”
“Ok, fucking damn angry, then.”
“Better. Can I give you a small word of advice?”
Reardon sighed. “You’re so full of advice these days.”
“Ah, mate, that’s because you’re so full of needing it.” Ethan crunched into his apple. “Anyway, just hold off giving Cruickshank his just deserts. At the very least until you’ve calmed down a notch or two. Don’t want you doing something you may regret.”
“He deserves whatever is coming to him.” A wealth of fitting retributions entertained Reardon’s mind, some that even unsettled Reardon.