by Saul Black
He braced the shotgun, reached out. In the story the giant’s magical harp had cried out ‘Master! Master!’ when Jack had got hold of it, and Paulie had a dreamy certainty that the handgun would do the same. But of course that didn’t happen. Paulie slipped the pistol from Xander’s grip and stuffed it into his back pocket.
Xander made a soft noise – a murmur – but his eyes didn’t open.
Back in the hallway, Paulie rested for a long time against the cool of the wall. He was drenched in sweat, but his skin felt cold. It occurred to him that he might be getting Xander’s flu.
He didn’t have long to ponder what that would mean.
Because by the time he’d got his boots back on there was a pounding coming up from the basement.
FIFTY-FOUR
Claudia had thought she was resolved, but when it came down to it she spent a long time just standing with her arms wrapped around herself, shaking. Everything she’d thought had a perverse mathematical insistence. The cold part of her brain knew it was right. But it was weak in comparison to the deep instinct. The deep instinct was to preserve being alive and more or less unharmed and alone for as long as possible. The deep instinct was to wait and hope and pray and plead. The deep instinct was not to do anything which might provoke the men who had taken her captive. Granted she was locked in. Granted the only thing she could hold onto was the possibility of someone coming to her rescue. But still, right now, for these precious moments, she was OK. The thought of doing something to change that – the thought of voluntarily doing something that would, one way or another, take her out of right now and into something unknown (unknown except in that it would be all or nothing, would either get her out or rush the horror of her future into her present) was all but overwhelming. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t. Every time she braced herself and said, inwardly: Now – she found herself unable to move. Every time she told herself it was her only chance the profound habit of life gathered in her and said: No, don’t. It’s madness. It won’t work. You can’t. You cannot do this.
But the thinking – the reasoning – was, she knew, unimpeachable. If she did nothing and no one came to her rescue the two men would rape and torture and murder her. She had absolutely no doubt of that. It might happen in a minute, in an hour, a day, a week – but if no help came it would certainly happen. Which meant either waiting and hoping for help – or trying to get away. It was the part of her that made her unlike Alison that knew this. It was what made her unlikeable. For Claudia the truth had always been the truth, regardless of its ugliness. Her whole life people had been shocked and wounded and outraged and frankly afraid of her because she had no patience with denial and white lies and looking away from things just because they were hideous. Her mother, who was quiet and intelligent and had given both her daughters lots of liberal room for their growing up, had once said to Claudia (after Claudia had sent Alison away from an argument in tears): It’s a great thing to be able to tell the truth, darling. But there is such a thing as gentleness for the people you love. Just because a thing is true doesn’t mean it can’t be used cruelly. Be careful with your talents.
The truth, Claudia now realised, had never been put to the test until now. Because she knew the truth of her situation – yet remained incapable of acting on it. Fear, it turned out, was more than a match for truth.
And so for what felt like hours she had stood with her arms wrapped around herself and the roll of metal in her pocket, the stubborn, clinical part of her mind repeatedly offering her its incontrovertible conclusions – and terror stopping her from accepting them.
But the reasoning didn’t go away. If she acted now she would, in all likelihood, only have one of them to get past. If she waited, there would be two. And she couldn’t make herself believe she’d get past two of them.
She pulled the roll of metal from her jacket pocket.
And if you get past him, then what? If the house is locked? What? If you get out of the house? What? Run? Did they leave the keys in the RV? And if they did, can you drive it? She had a terrible image of herself fumbling with keys, her hands filled with madness, knowing the seconds were racing away, knowing that they were coming. Would she have what it took? If it came to running – just running on her own dreaming legs – would she be able to run far and fast enough?
But that image – of herself free and running into the good darkness, back in the world beyond this one – dizzied her with pure need, and her mind let go a little, and without being fully conscious of what she was doing she lay down on the floor and began kicking the furnace and shouting as loudly as she could.
FIFTY-FIVE
Nell’s scream woke Angelo.
There was a pause in its wake, a shorn silence in which he had to reconstruct everything, where he was, what had happened, who she was, who he was.
It was dark. He had no idea how long he’d slept, but he was exhausted. It had stopped snowing. The window showed the white land and a band of fierce, starred sky. The wood-stove was low, but still burning.
‘Hey,’ he said, pushing himself up onto his elbow. ‘Hey, it’s OK. Nell? It’s OK.’
She was curled up in the sleeping bag by the feet of the stove, whimpering. The residue of whatever nightmare – whatever memory, more like – had ravaged her. The sound she made was terrible to him, a reiteration of reality: what had happened to her had really happened – and there was no answer and no help. The world really contained such things. The world contained such things and distributed them, with random, indifferent violence.
The nerves in his leg shrieked as soon as he moved. Pain stalled him. He breathed through it. Very slowly eased himself off the couch onto his hands and knees on the floor. Since undressing her while she was unconscious, he hadn’t touched her, but now without thinking he put his hand lightly on her head, brushed the sweat-damp hair from her eyes. The contact shocked her into silence then she breathed again, let the sobs come. The smallness and heat of her skull panicked him, filled him afresh with the horror of what had been given to her. There was nothing for him to say. What could there possibly be to say? Nothing had changed. That was the news waking had brought her – again. She’d woken from a nightmare into a worse nightmare: the real world.
For a long time he stayed by her. He moved his hand to her shoulder, rested it there. The body, he thought, was there for when words failed. The dumb eloquence of human touch. It was both an admission of suffering and a defiance of surrendering to it. The humble sacrament of flesh and blood said: Even when there is nothing to say, you are not alone. You are not alone.
Eventually, she stopped crying. Sniffed, mightily. Her face was wet with tears and snot.
‘Hold on a second,’ he said.
He crawled, wincing, teeth gritted, to the minimal bathroom (there was a toilet, a sink, a tub, but no hot water; he’d washed himself with water heated on the stove, though how he was going to manage that now the sciatica had returned was a mystery), took a new toilet roll from the pack he’d brought from the car and crawled back into the living room. He tore off a length of the soft tissue and handed it to her. Keep giving her basic actions to perform. Keep her functioning.
She wiped her face then lay there, blinking, the wad of tissue still clutched in her hand. She was wide awake, staring past him, out of the window.
FIFTY-SIX
‘Ed, check the registers for a legal name change and see if “Xander King” matches a Utah address,’ Valerie said. She, Carla and Ed Perez were in her Taurus en route back to the station, Ed riding shotgun, Carla in the back, getting the word out to the Bureau’s office in Salt Lake. They’d left the uniforms to finish the door-to-door, mainly because the likelihood of anyone in the building knowing Leon’s new address was slim. They’d also searched the apartment, (gloved, pre-forensics), for documents – receipts, title deeds, utility bills – that would have given them what they needed, but found nothing. ‘There’s no reason to suppose he’s done it by the book,’ she continued, ‘especially
given his illiteracy, but it’s worth making sure.’
‘… All Utah real estate sales for 2010,’ Carla said into her phone. ‘Could be in either name. It’s not unlikely that we’re looking for an auction or an outright buy, but include the financed deals anyway.’
The absence of a bank account was driving Valerie crazy. If Lloyd had left Leon money or hit him with a cheque when he sold CoolServ, how could Leon make use of it without a bank? Short of a suitcase full of cash there had to be a legal transaction. As soon as she got back to the station she would find out who handled Lloyd’s will.
‘Must’ve seemed like a fucking divine green light,’ Ed said. ‘Getting the payout.’
Valerie had had the same thought. It was a terrible alignment, one more testimony in the already weighty case against a benevolent God. If she thought of God these days she imagined a being of infinite, calm schizophrenia.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘And he wasn’t short of a big idea of himself even before the money came in to confirm it. “Xander King”? He might not have heard of Alexander the Great, but he knows what a king is.’
‘Ghast,’ Carla said into the phone. ‘G-H-A-S-T. Try it without the H, too.’
‘Bank accounts,’ Valerie shot over her shoulder. ‘Both names.’ Carla looked at her: Don’t tell me my fucking job. Valerie ignored the look. ‘San Francisco and Utah addresses. You can’t buy a goddamned house without a bank account. And get the ball rolling for access to the Conways’ financial records.’
At the station, Valerie headed for her office but Carla stopped her. Her small, sharp face was flushed. Her ponytail had worked itself loose.
‘Deerholt still wants to talk to us,’ she said.
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘No, I’m not. He was very specific about it.’
‘Yeah, well I’ll go when I get a second.’
‘I recommend we go right now. Like I said, he was very clear.’
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Yes?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You left something on Nick Blaskovitch’s desk this morning.’
‘Who’s Nick Blaskovitch?’
She was good, Valerie had to concede. The tone, the mildly perplexed face, with a dash of impatience for added realism.
‘Do you think I’m not going to be able to prove it?’ Valerie said.
Carla shook her head in polite bemusement, a half-smile on her lips. ‘I really… Jesus, Valerie, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The look switched to concern. ‘Are you doing OK? We all saw what happened back there at the apartment.’
Valerie wanted to hit her.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Have it your way. Let’s get this over with.’
Deerholt’s door was closed but his silhouette was visible through the frosted glass. He was, as every cop everywhere was these days, on his cell phone. Valerie raised her hand to knock. Just before she did, Carla said, simply: ‘Baby killer.’
Then Carla knocked.
‘Come in,’ Deerholt yelled – and before Valerie could speak the door was open and Carla was inside.
Valerie, her mouth dry, her mind tumbling, followed her. Deerholt waved the two women towards the chairs facing the desk, but both of them remained on their feet.
‘OK,’ he said, having wrapped up the call. ‘Where are we, Val?’
Valerie swallowed. She was aware of her face in nude shock. Her hands felt packed with blood.
Baby killer.
Nonetheless, she gathered herself and brought Deerholt up to speed. Being a cop trimmed speech of its superfluities. The salient facts, delivered as succinctly as possible. Being a cop meant the clock was always ticking.
By the time she’d finished, Deerholt’s face was a mixture of professional relief and personal anxiety.
‘OK, good,’ he said. (‘Good’, from Deerholt, was as good as it got.) ‘Now, Valerie, if you could step outside for a moment, I need to speak with Agent York first.’
‘Sir, I—’
‘I know. You’ll get your chance, believe me. Just step outside for now.’
Standing as close to the door as she could without being seen through the glass, Valerie tried to listen in. But their voices were lowered, and in any case there was an open office opposite with a murmur of activity that made eavesdropping impossible. She walked down the hall to a water cooler and poured herself a conical cupful.
Baby killer.
OK, so the gloves were off.
But why didn’t York just admit it the first time?
And why the fuck was she doing this?
They were long minutes, for Valerie, pacing up and down the twenty feet between the water cooler and Deerholt’s door. She drank the water mechanically. Mechanically refilled and drank again. The drinking made her realise how dehydrated she was. Which in turn brought back her collapse in Leon’s apartment building. Are you doing OK? She could just imagine what Carla was saying to Deerholt. And this time there were witnesses. The uniforms. The tenants. Jesus, even Ed had seen her crash to the floor. Did she have time, she wondered, to find him (and Galbraith, and Keely) and beg them to deny it?
The spirit of her grandfather hovered. Should you get them to deny it? Aren’t you falling apart? What do you care most about? Catching these fucks before they kill again? Or running the show at all costs?
Carla exited. Didn’t look at Valerie. Walked away down the corridor.
Valerie went in and closed the door behind her. Her face was cold. She was shivering. This time she did sit down.
Deerholt put his head in his hands, drew them down his face, then settled them around the iPhone on his desk. He was fifty-four, tall and bony, with dark hair on the backs of his hands. A hairdo that was perpetually on the verge of becoming a quiff. Small black eyes in deep sockets. A face so closely shaven it looked like the razor must have hurt.
‘Jesus Christ, Val,’ he said.
Valerie was tight in her shoulders, her neck, her arms. The dead women were in the room with her, looking past her failure into a future without revenge. She felt, suddenly, desperate, as if the world were falling away underneath her.
‘What’s going on, Cap?’ she forced herself to say.
Deerholt shook his head. Exhaled.
‘What’s going on,’ he said, ‘is that Agent York has made some pretty serious allegations against you.’
‘What allegations?’
‘Bottom line? That you’re not fit. For several reasons.’
‘Sir, I don’t know what the fuck she’s talking about. I’m fine.’
‘Did you collapse earlier today?’
Valerie shook her head, snorted, dismissed. ‘Collapse? Jesus, I got a cramp, sir. It was nothing.’
‘York says you blacked out. Couldn’t get up off the floor. Says Ed and the blues all saw it. If I get them in here, are they going to tell me it looked like cramp to them?’
‘Sir, whatever it looked like to them, I’m telling you it was cramp.’
‘Like this?’ Deerholt said. He opened a video on the phone. Hit play. Turned it to face Valerie.
For a moment all she felt was the strangeness of seeing herself on film, of seeing herself as the unaware object of someone else’s view. But that was hurried out by the rapid understanding of where and when this had happened.
In Reno. In the woods. After they’d found the alarm clock victim.
C is for CLOCK.
She watched the footage. Herself, walking unsteadily between the dark trees. Stopping. Dropping to her hands and knees. Obviously not from cramp. Obviously because something was seriously wrong with her.
The footage halted. Deerholt put the phone face down on the desk.
‘Well?’ he said.
In the couple of seconds it took her to speak she thought: He’s already made up his mind. How could that be? She had an image of Claudia Grey, hands tied above her head, her face a mess of sw
eat and blood. The wise dark eyes drained of their wisdom by fear, by pain.
‘OK,’ Valerie said. ‘That was a bad morning. I was sick and short of sleep. Come on, sir, you know how it is. Not enough rest, not enough fuel. You know how it is.’
‘I know,’ Deerholt said. ‘And I know how hard you’ve been pushing yourself on this.’
‘Don’t take this away from me, Cap.’
‘Val, listen—’
‘You know how close we are. You heard what I just told you ten minutes ago—’
‘Valerie, stop,’ Deerholt said, raising his hand. ‘It’s not just this.’
Valerie was trembling. There were soft, invisible ambushes everywhere.
‘How much are you putting away every day?’ Deerholt said. ‘No bullshit, Val. I mean if we did a blood test right now.’
Valerie felt her face go from cold to hot. It was like being caught doing something dirty when you were a kid. That time her mom had walked in on her when she’d been lying on her belly on her bed, hands down her jeans.
All she could do was shake her head. ‘Sir, I’m fine. I’m…’
‘I drink,’ he said. ‘Christ, half the department’s probably got last night’s self-help sloshing around in them right now. I know how it is. But word is it’s getting out of hand for you. As in we’re not just talking a marginal fail on a breathalyser. Plus Blaskovitch is back, and I know—’