‘Nothing’s being turned off!’ Ann wasn’t whispering, although she wasn’t speaking loudly.
‘He can’t be gotten better.’
‘I’ll make him better. Stay with him all the time.’
‘Not now, not here like this. We’ll talk about it somewhere else.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ she insisted again. ‘And I’m not going anywhere else until he comes round.’
‘Somewhere else,’ repeated Slater. How long would it take for Ann to accept? How long would it take for him to accept? He didn’t expect either of them would, not completely.
‘Have the police got who did it?’ she suddenly demanded.
‘Not yet.’
‘Why not?’
‘They’ve only got one witness, who scarcely saw anything. There’s something about a stolen car being torched.’ The car that ran David down and then reversed over him a second time and didn’t leave skid marks, Slater thought on. It wouldn’t help to tell Ann that now.
‘What’s that mean?’
‘We didn’t talk it through. I guess they think the thief burned it out to destroy any evidence. It was an off-road vehicle, the sort the witness saw driving away from where he found David.’
‘Someone’s going to be arrested, though, aren’t they? They’ve got to be!’ The indignation sounded odd, although Slater couldn’t work out why it should. How difficult was it to burn a vehicle so completely that any evidence was destroyed? It had never been part of any training he’d undergone.
‘The officer in charge is keeping in touch.’ Twice, as they’d talked, Ann had jerked her head up against letting her eyes droop into sleep. Slater said, ‘You need to rest. We both do.’
‘I’m not leaving!’
‘I’m not suggesting we leave. I’ll fix something here …’ To forestall any further refusal Slater said, ‘If you go to sleep like that you’ll fall over David. You could hurt him more, pull a drip out.’
Ann nodded but didn’t speak.
The hospital had overnight relative facilities on the same floor. They only removed their shoes and jackets, otherwise lying fully dressed on top of their single cots. Slater didn’t expect to drop off and only realized he had when he came jerkily awake at the sound of Ann’s sobbing, although she didn’t wake up. He stayed alert to comfort her if she did, but she didn’t, just sobbed on. And then Slater started to cry and couldn’t stop, his mouth clamped against any sound.
The love-fest was better than the first time – better, in fact, than any in which Mason could ever remember being involved or fanaticizing about – and satiated to the point of sexual exhaustion they actually left the chalet on the Saturday night to walk, with some difficulty and therefore briefly, along the beach before with relief finding an inn overlooking the ocean more for rest than for dinner. Mason had exaggerated intelligence anecdotes ready to maintain the lightness of their previous encounter, but Beverley was on this occasion more serious and Mason recognized the familiar sign. Beverley Littlejohn very obviously considered herself to be involved in a meaningful, maybe even permanent, long-term relationship.
Over their seafood platters she insisted upon telling him of her marriage to an accountant that had lasted three years before her discovery that he was bisexual – too belatedly accepting that she should not have been as devastated as she had been in the homosexual Mecca of San Francisco – and how Glynis Needham had so very determinedly hit upon her that she’d come close to being virtually raped by the woman whom she’d foolishly agreed to let stay during Glynis’s San Francisco visit.
‘I like sex, OK? So why do I attract those who like it differently from me?’
‘I’m not sure how to take that!’ said Mason, still trying to keep it light. But very positively not dismissing her outpourings – as absurd as they were – as had been his first instinctive reaction. And he waited.
Predictably Beverley gushed, ‘No, darling! I didn’t mean that. God how I didn’t mean that! What I’m trying to say is that this time it’s right! We couldn’t be more right together and I couldn’t be happier. Or more satisfied. And I don’t mean just sexually. I mean I couldn’t be surer than I am about anyone.’
Mason toyed with the lobster tail on his plate, stretching the moment to think. His alibi of being in California when he’d hit the kid didn’t work if the timings were too deeply and properly investigated, despite his second Californian flight being booked in his new, untraceable name. But it did if the Californian probation officer under whose control he’d been transferred from Washington DC testified that he had definitely been 3000 miles away at the time and date of David Slater’s accident. And Mason didn’t imagine from the way she was babbling on from the other side of their booth – ‘I’m not getting heavy here … I didn’t mean things to come out like this, not this soon. Help me here, Jack, with a funny story, any story …’ – that it would be at all difficult to persuade Beverley to swear just such a statement.
Picking up on her last remark, Mason said, ‘Maybe the only story I have matches the one you’ve just told.’
‘You want to spell that out a little better than I just did?’
‘I wish I could.’
‘You’re confusing me even more.’
‘You’re a probation officer. I’m an ex-con, a traitor to his country. What chance does that story have!’
‘As much as we want it to have.’
‘You’re the one who said you could lose your job over this.’
‘I don’t give a fuck.’
‘You think I want that to happen to you?’ Mason pushed his plate away, as if the conversation had taken away his appetite.
‘I just told you I don’t give a fuck.’
‘And I’ve just told you that I do give a fuck. I’ve hurt enough people, upset enough lives. I’m not going to do it one more time.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘Just that. No more hurt to anyone.’ He was in California, with Hollywood just down the road! Why didn’t he make a career change and become an actor; this was Oscar material. Because there was more money in the career he’d already chosen, came the immediate answer.
‘Do you wonder why I’ve fallen in love with you?’ asked Beverley.
Back off time now that he’d got her to say it, judged Mason. ‘And do you wonder why I’m saying what I’m saying? Why, for once in my life, I don’t want to risk something as important as we are becoming to each other!’
‘Do you really mean that?’
‘You know I mean it. Just as you know I love you so completely that I’m prepared to walk away to avoid causing you any harm.’
‘I didn’t expect tonight to turn out like this but I’m glad it has,’ said Beverley, smiling. ‘I want to go home now and stop talking.’
Thank Christ for that, thought Mason. He hadn’t expected it to turn out like this either, but he was glad it had. Everything was turning out just fine, in fact. He was anxious now to return to San Francisco, where she could get back to work and he could get back to his computer and find out what was happening in Frederick, Maryland.
Beverley didn’t set out to continue the restaurant conversation during the rest of the weekend nor did she object to Mason’s suggestion that they drive back up to San Francisco earlier than they had from their previous excursion to Santa Barbara to beat the returning Sunday traffic build-up. During the drive Mason expanded his earlier lie about registering with computer employment agencies, both to spare himself from her irritating, job-seeking intrusion on his behalf as well as to test how far he could manipulate and control her.
‘When I make the choice I want it to be right: I don’t want to go into something, find out too late that I’ve made a mistake and have to start all over again. I want to settle down and become a pipe and slippers man.’
‘I don’t see you as a pipe and slippers man.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘What do we do if the job you decide on is in somewhere l
ike San Diego?’
‘They got a parole office there?’
Beverley nodded.
‘Would it be a problem to get a transfer?’
‘I wouldn’t know until I tried.’
‘It’s not something we can talk properly about until I find something and make sure it’s the right one, is it?’ said Mason.
‘Don’t get mad at me if I say something, will you?’
‘What?’ demanded Mason, turning towards her. Believing that he didn’t hold a licence, Beverley always had to drive.
‘It’s an unusual situation, your not needing financially to get a job. But you’ve got to, according to the terms of your early release. I’ve got to make reports and I can’t let the job hunting drift on indefinitely.’
Mason decided upon silence, actually turning away from her to look out of the car.
‘Jack!’
‘What?’
‘I asked you not to get mad at me.’
‘I’m not mad at you.’
‘I know you are.’
‘Let me ask you something,’ insisted Mason, still not looking back into the car. ‘Do you think I would do anything – allow anything – to cause you an official problem?’
‘I know you well enough by now to be quite sure that you wouldn’t,’ pleaded Beverley, risking a smiled look across at him, wishing he would meet her.
‘Then why are we having this conversation?’
‘Please, Jack!’
‘I thought you, of all people, would have known me well enough and trusted me well enough to see and understand the point of what I’m trying to say,’ insisted Mason. ‘I don’t want to be – won’t be – a fly-by-night, jumping from job to job. I told you that already! How’s my work record going to look attached to one of your goddamned official reports showing that I can’t hold a job down longer than a few weeks.’
‘Jack, this is getting out of control! I trust you and I love you and I know you would never do anything to hurt me or cause me a difficulty. I was just telling you what I have officially to do, as your case officer.’
‘Let’s forget it.’
‘I don’t want to forget anything,’ refused Beverley, with a determination that surprised and unsettled Mason. ‘If we’re going to make a go of this, which is what I thought we had decided back in Santa Barbara, we shouldn’t let silly misunderstandings build up into something more than they are. Which is what this is doing. I’m not hassling you. I just don’t want anything to get in the way, put anything at risk. That’s the only reason I mentioned having to file progress reports, OK?’
He’d almost pushed too hard, Mason acknowledged. ‘OK.’
‘You’re not mad?’
‘No, I’m not mad. I don’t want anything to get in the way between us, either. I’ll start setting things up first thing tomorrow.’
Which Mason did, although not in the sequence Beverley inferred. To guard against a sudden, unexpected return Mason curbed his impatience for a full thirty minutes after Beverley left her apartment before turning on his laptop and accessing the website of the Frederick News-Post. The newspaper had led its front page on the first available edition with the running down of David Slater. There were two photographs accompanying the story which turned on to an inside page to include the background account of the boy’s selection for a sports scholarship at the University of Maryland, from which a spokesman described the incident as an ‘appalling tragedy’. There was also a photograph of Ann on that inside page, taken at the gallery exhibition but not one of Slater. David’s injuries were listed, as well as him being on a life support machine. His condition was stated to be grave by a hospital spokesperson. A police source said the hit and run was the subject of a criminal investigation ‘with a particular aspect’ of forensic evidence that was not being disclosed. There was a separate but connected account of the burning to death of an unnamed, unidentified man found close to the totally destroyed wreckage of a stolen 4x4 similar to that seen by a witness driving away from where David was found. The place where the man died was beneath a connecting interstate link commonly used by itinerant alcoholics and drug users. If the dead man were one of the frequent users of the area it would make identifying the badly burned body extremely difficult. It had not been ruled out that the dead man had been the driver of the vehicle but it was considered unlikely and the death was being treated as a criminal investigation.
Mason scrolled anxiously through the follow-up stories in subsequent editions of the newspaper for an explanation of the ‘particular aspect’ of forensic evidence but couldn’t find it. But he was reassured by the repetition in those subsequent stories and police spokesmen quotes that the official investigation was very obviously stalled. The story in that day’s edition was reduced to a single column of little more than two inches. David’s condition was reported as unchanged. No identity had been established for the man who had been burned to death. Nowhere in anything Mason read was there reference to Daniel Slater being a defecting KGB colonel that almost inevitably would have resulted in his being named.
There was nothing new involving or about him on any of his illegal, unsuspected computer ‘cuckoo’ sites but there was a Chase Manhattan sales pitch for an investment portfolio in his PO box. Mason occupied the rest of the morning registering at two computer industry employment agencies, giving the box number for mail and promising to supply fuller CVs later and in the afternoon made the much delayed tourist visit to Alcatraz, thinking that if he’d had to serve his sentence there and not White Deer he probably would have risked being drowned by the bay currents and tried to escape.
Mason was irritated by the uncertainty of the undisclosed forensic discovery in the burned out 4x4, as he continued to be by his stupid CCTV mistake at Ann’s gallery, but objectively he decided he was doing well, reassuring himself that there would almost certainly have been a reference to him in Glynis Needham’s computer system if there had been any official interest in him.
There was still no cause to hurry back east. David Slater still had to die. Mason was enjoying himself.
Nineteen
Ann stayed constantly at David’s bedside, quitting the room only when doctors or nurses needed to change either dressings, drips or the comatose boy himself, and briefly to sleep on her hospital cot. Slater left once, on the first day to collect changes of underwear for them both from Hill Avenue, each uncaring of their outward appearance. Slater spoke morning and afternoon with Mary Ellen, relieved there was no immediately impending work, otherwise leaving her to run the office with instructions to refuse any new orders or enquiries. He also talked daily with Jean at the Main Street gallery, relaying Ann’s disinterested direction on how and in what order to close down the Worlack exhibition and to reject any fresh approaches that might have resulted from its success. Ann was an irregular worshipper but literally embraced the consoling offer from the hospital-attached vicar, praying with him daily with David’s hand still clasped between hers, her eyes fervently clamped shut in her desperation for divine intervention. Slater, who had no belief, prayed with them too, dismissing the hypocrisy. When they remembered or were urged by nurses, they ate off trays.
And throughout David remained artificially alive.
On the fifth day, after the unanswered prayers, Ann abruptly blurted out, ‘Why hasn’t he woken up?’
Slater was startled by the demand: it had become a vigil without words. He said, ‘He’s too ill.’
‘I want him to wake up!’ Ann’s voice was slurred, as it had been when she was drinking.
Slater remained silent.
‘We should get specialists. Better people than here! Why haven’t you got specialists in? Had David transferred?’
‘Are you ready to talk?’
‘No!’ refused Ann, knowing what he meant.
‘We have to talk.’
‘No.’
‘It’s no good, Ann.’
She lowered her head until it rested on her hands that were holding David’s.
‘He’s so cold! He needs more blankets. Get some more blankets.’ She looked up as she spoke, her hair matted and straggled around a face wet and streaked by tears.
‘God can’t bring David back to life. No doctors, no specialists, can bring him back to life. We’ve got to let him go.’
‘No!’ she said, but for the first time her voice was softer, the resignation gradually evident.
‘There’s nothing we can do … nothing anyone can do.’
‘Another day. Just one more day, please.’
‘One more day,’ Slater agreed.
‘Just in case.’
‘I’ll tell them … make arrangements. I need to make arrangements.’
‘Yes, you do that. Leave me here.’
Peter Denting was in his room, wearing street clothes, and rose at once from his desk when Slater entered. Slater said, ‘We’ve decided.’ His voice broke and he coughed and said it again.
Denting said, ‘I’m glad you have. It must … it’s the only decision you could have made …’
‘But Ann wants one more day.’
Time to Kill Page 19