‘Why have you not confronted him about the affair?’
Sheila’s heart raced and her chest heaved as she sucked in air.
‘I didn’t want to rock the boat,’ she replied, and realised instantly how pathetic the excuse sounded. How pathetic she sounded. ‘We have a good life. I didn’t want it to end.’
The voice returned to its original volume and position.
‘You know the woman in question?’
Sheila shook her head. ‘No.’
There was a long silence and then Sheila heard her abductor stand.
‘Don’t leave.’ No reply came back to her. ‘Don’t leave me alone here again, I’ll give you anything!’
The voice growled at her from directly in front of her face as her bonds were suddenly yanked tight again under her jaw.
‘If he does not come up with the money, then you’ll die here.’
Sheila choked on her fear as sobs burst from within her chest, but she snarled her response.
‘He’s not going to come up with any money, you asshole!’ she shouted. ‘He’s gone to the police because he hopes that you’ll kill me. He wants my money, nothing more! That’s all he’s ever wanted! It’s all men ever want from…’
The gag was pulled tight again, cutting her words off into a stream of strangled cries that degenerated into sobs.
The voice spoke one last time into her ear, leaning close to her.
‘Then you’re better off dead, because your time is up.’
As her captor leaned over her, Sheila smelled a carnival of odours that flashed images through her mind. Long ago she had read an article about human pheromones, of how men and women could subliminally detect all manner of physiological and even psychological dispositions just from the natural body odour of other people.
Sheila McKenzie had a sudden, vivid flare of realisation as she smelled the scent of her captor on their shirt, and in an instant she realised not just their sex but recognised the unique scent of them.
Then the ear plugs were shoved back into place. Sheila heard the shutters doors open and close again and the silence of her world returned to consume her.
But this time, she feared it no longer. Sheila McKenzie knew exactly who her abductor was, and her only thought now was a burning desire for vengeance.
She relaxed her burning right wrist. She had clenched her fist tightly and angled it slightly upwards when the bonds were fastened in order to create a small gap between her wrist and the arm of the recliner. Now, although her bonds had been yanked supremely tight, she could just about move her right hand.
Slowly, carefully, she began trying to work it free.
***
28
Kathryn hurried into the precinct station, one eye always on her watch.
The detectives were consumed by a mad final rush to locate Sheila McKenzie, making calls, scouring data, scratching heads. The deadline was already a couple of hours gone and nobody was making any headway.
‘You got anything on Griffin?’ Olsen asked as she rushed by.
‘He’s not in today, right?’
‘Called in sick. You been to his home?’
Kathryn nodded. ‘He’s not there, nor is his wife. I’d like to think that they’ve made up but…’
‘Yeah,’ Olsen replied. ‘You got any idea where he’s headed?’
Kathryn glanced at Maietta, who was sitting at her desk with a phone pressed to her ear, not looking at them but listening surreptitiously.
‘I think so,’ Kathryn replied. ‘Captain, I need to borrow Detective Maietta.’
‘For what?’
‘Finding Griffin,’ she replied, ‘before, y’know.’
‘It’s too late?’
Kathryn did not reply, letting Olsen’s words hang in the air between them.
‘I’ve got a missed deadline and a missing woman who with every passing hour is more likely to turn up dead, and you want me to send one of my detectives to baby–sit Griffin?’
‘The deadline has passed,’ Kathryn said, ‘and your detectives are up to their necks chasing their tails. Griffin is your best bet, and right now he’s no good to anybody, much less himself. You want me to fix him, you’re going to have to give me some help. If I can get Griffin on his feet, maybe he can solve this abduction for once and for all.’
Olsen stared at Kathryn for a long moment, and then at Maietta, who was off the phone and watching the captain expectantly.
‘How long?’ Olsen snapped.
‘Couple of hours, no more,’ Kathryn said.
Olsen considered the request for a moment longer, and then nodded.
It became a long morning, stretching through lunch and into the mid–afternoon before Kathryn had done what she needed to do. A long, straining, emotional conversation with two people whom she had never before met. Asking them to do something that she had no right to expect them to do, that few people would have the strength and the integrity to do in an age where vengeance and mistrust were the currency of mankind, the nobility of ages past now long lost to society.
The track, when Kathryn found it at the second attempt, turned off the main road and wound its way down toward a river. A handful of old farm buildings lay set back into the woods, Kathryn catching glimpses of rusting machinery entombed in coils of foliage and vines.
The sun was already sinking low behind distant hills, dark grey clouds scudding across a sky splattered with streamers and ribbons of molten metal.
Kathryn drove down to where the track opened out into what had once been a farmstead, maybe for cattle and other grazing animals as there were no crop fields anywhere nearby. It hadn’t been used for decades but there was a car parked off to one side that Kathryn recognised instantly as she pulled in alongside it and killed the engine.
The air was cold as she got out of her car, the wind blustering over the nearby water, but it was otherwise silent this far out of town. The kind of place nobody ever visited unless they had bad business on their mind.
Kathryn walked down toward the farmstead, the wind rumbling through rotting timbers nearby and whispering through lonely trees as she walked up to the front door and peered into the gloomy darkness within.
She was reluctant to enter, as though this place was some kind of shrine to suffering, a place of sanctuary for the doomed where the living were not welcome. Kathryn took a breath and a pace into the interior, smelled the odours of dust and decay and saw the carcass of a dead rat lying on its back in a room to her left, teeth bared in rigor mortis.
She stepped carefully as she moved through the building, the floorboards groaning beneath her. Kathryn stopped, looking at the wall beside her where a handful of bullet holes peppered the cheap plasterboard, old scrawlings from police markers identifying rounds fired by police and by their quarry in that last, terrible shoot out.
She heard movement behind her and tensed, turned to see a strip of old police–scene tape twisting in the cold breeze from a doorway back up the hall.
‘You shouldn’t be here.’
The voice came from nowhere and she almost jumped out of her skin as she searched the gloomy shadows. Her heart leaped and then fluttered as her brain resolved the voice into that of Griffin’s, coming from the darkness somewhere ahead.
Kathryn eased her way forward, through the rest of the hall and out into what must once have been a kitchen–diner that overlooked the lake and the brilliant sunset searing the horizon.
Griffin was sitting on a dilapidated old chair in the middle of the kitchen, staring out of the windows toward the west. The glow of the setting sun illuminated his face, scoured it of shadows as though he were laying his guilt out for all to see. In his hand, in a small plastic bag, he held a brass bullet casing that he gently rolled over and over in his fingers.
Kathryn stood silent and still as the cold winter breeze whispered through the lonely old house and spoke of how life had been ripped so cruelly from one little girl and one decent man in the time it had taken to blink.
‘You followed me,’ Griffin said, not looking at her.
‘Jane told me.’
Griffin’s head turned almost imperceptibly toward her. ‘Jane?’
‘She’s worried about you,’ Kathryn said. ‘Everyone is. You keep disappearing and they thought that you might be…’
Griffin’s eye met hers now. ‘What, drinking?’
Kathryn swallowed. ‘Maybe. She figured either you were drinking yourself to death or you were coming up here.’ Kathryn smiled briefly. ‘She tried here first.’
Griffin went back to staring through the gaping windows into the sunset. Kathryn edged her way toward him, folding her arms across her chest to keep warm as the cold air seeped beneath her clothes.
‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.
‘You’re the psychologist,’ Griffin said.
Kathryn looked around at the farmstead and then at the bullet casing Griffin held in his hands. ‘I think that you’re trying to go back to that day, trying to figure out where it all went wrong. Not just the shooting. You’re thinking about everything: your wife, your life, Maietta, the job, trying to understand when and why you stopped being you.’
Griffin looked down at the bullet casing. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I know when and why I stopped being me.’ He held the casing up to her. ‘This is the one,’ he said. ‘This is what they dug out of what was left of Amy Wheeler’s skull.’
Kathryn tried not to look at the casing, instead keeping her gaze fixed on Griffin. ‘You keep it. Why?’
Griffin shrugged. ‘I don’t know why. I just need it.’
‘No, you don’t,’ Kathryn said. ‘You need to let it go.’
‘Just like that, huh?’ Griffin said.
‘Every journey begins with a single step,’ Kathryn replied. ‘We all have things that we wish we could change but no matter how bad those things are we can never, ever go back. We can only ever go forward, and if we don’t the rest of the world leaves us behind.’
‘Or we leave the world behind,’ Griffin murmured.
Kathryn swallowed again, the primal fear of a nearness of death like something alive in the empty farmstead. She could not see a gun anywhere, but Griffin would likely have brought it with him, concealed in his shoulder holster perhaps.
‘That doesn’t achieve anything,’ she said finally. ‘All you’d leave behind is the same grief you carry now, for others to carry for you.’
‘That’s good,’ Griffin admitted, pointing at her as his lips twisted in a tight smile. ‘I kind of get why they hired you now. You’ve got a way with words, haven’t you? All that quiet exterior, the soft voice and all, it’s just a feint, right? Inside, you really are like stone.’
‘I wish that were true,’ Kathryn said. ‘But it’s not. It’s all bluster to keep you from facing what you already know is true.’
‘Yeah?’ Griffin asked. ‘And what’s that?’
‘That you can’t leave this place because you feel responsible for that girl’s death, and you can’t resolve in your mind how to move on.’
Griffin stared at her, half of his face now cast into deep shadow wherein resided the unspeakable pain that must seethe through his soul. He watched her for a long moment.
‘Maybe I’m tough enough to do that,’ he snapped. ‘I killed her, Kathryn. I shot her. I pulled the trigger of my gun, with my hand and fired my bullet that killed her! There are no words counsellor, not in this world or the next that will ever change that, because just like you said we can never ever go back.’
‘I also said we can go forward,’ Kathryn said.
‘You can,’ Griffin replied softly. ‘I can’t.’
‘I know,’ she replied. ‘And I can’t help you, Scott.’
Griffin frowned, confused. ‘Then why the hell are you here?’
‘It’s not me that’s come to see you,’ she said.
Kathryn turned and stood aside. Behind her, holding hands, Henry Wheeler and his wife Mary walked into the house.
Griffin leaped out of the old chair and stumbled back and away from the door as though physically struck. He fumbled with the bag that contained the bullet casing, stuffed it hurriedly into his pocket as he shot Kathryn an angry glance.
‘The hell’s this?’
Henry Wheeler was in his late forties, Kathryn figured, but he was a former soldier and he carried himself with the pride of his service still running in his veins. He let go of his wife’s hand as he approached Griffin.
‘Get away from me,’ Griffin said. ‘I didn’t mean to come here, I just…’
Kathryn saw the panic on Griffin’s face spread like a disease, his movements uncoordinated as his entire psyche lost the ability to maintain the wall of silence that he had constructed around his soul. Henry Wheeler kept moving toward Griffin until the detective was backed into one of the dusty old counters. Griffin’s face began to crease and crumble, folding in upon itself as his pain was likewise cornered and left with nowhere to go but out.
‘Get away from me, man…,’ was all that he could mumble.
He tried to look away from Henry but the old man stood resolute before him. One hand reached out and gently took the bag with the bullet casing from Griffin’s jacket pocket. Griffin did not resist, unable to decide where to look.
Henry Wheeler looked down at the casing, and then slipped it into his own jacket pocket. He looked at Griffin, stared at him for countless long seconds until Griffin was forced to look into the eyes of the man whose daughter he had killed.
Kathryn flinched as Henry Wheeler’s arm flicked up toward Griffin’s face, and then wrapped around the back of his neck as he pulled the detective close to him, wrapped him up as though he were a kid. Kathryn felt tears prick the corners of her eyes as Griffin collapsed into Henry Wheeler’s embrace as he cried great choking sobs. Griffin’s legs gave way beneath him and he sank toward the kitchen floor, Henry Wheeler easing the detective down as Mary Wheeler dashed past Kathryn and dropped to her knees alongside Griffin, her arms wrapping around the detective as they folded themselves protectively around him.
Kathryn backed away from the kitchen and turned, walking quietly out of the farmstead until she could no longer hear the sobs that echoed through the lonely farmstead, dredged out in big, heaving chunks of grief and cast out onto the wind. She checked her watch as she walked. Stephen would be home soon and Kathryn knew somehow that she could not continue her charade any longer. Just like Griffin, she needed to confront her demons face to face.
Outside, Maietta stood beside her car, her arms folded against the growing chill as she watched Kathryn approach. She raised one perfectly arched eyebrow and Kathryn nodded.
‘It’s done,’ she said.
‘Just like that?’
Kathryn sighed, the wind blowing her hair across her face in ragged strands that for a brief moment she felt represented the tattered fragments of her life.
‘It’s what he needed,’ she replied. ‘What he wanted. He just couldn’t see it.’
Kathryn walked past Maietta’s car and headed for her own.
‘You not going to hang around?’ Maietta asked, watching her curiously. ‘See how he makes out?’
Kathryn shook her head as she looked over her shoulder. ‘I’ve seen enough grief for one lifetime, detective. I’ll see him when he gets back to the office. Can you take him home for me?’
Kathryn got into her car and started the engine, then picked up her cell and dialled a number as she guided her car out of the track and onto the highway. The phone rang for only a second or two before Ally picked up.
‘Hey honey.’
‘Hi,’ Kathryn replied. ‘Listen, are you free to talk later tonight?’
‘On a Friday night?’ Ally asked. ‘After work, now that the unbearable dragging lethargy of the working week is over? Does the proverbial bear shit in the proverbial woods?’
‘Can I stay at yours, tonight?’
There was a long pause on the line. ‘Are you okay?’
&n
bsp; ‘Not really,’ Kathryn said, and unexpectedly a seething ball of grief shook her and she fought back tears.
‘What’s happened? Has he hurt you?’
‘No,’ Kathryn said. ‘But I need to end this. You were right, Ally. Stephen is not good for me.’
‘Good,’ Ally replied. ‘Glad you’re finally making some sense. Come straight from work, okay?’
‘I’ve got to get home and pack first.’
‘Don’t,’ Ally said. ‘Just leave, now, and don’t go back there.’
‘I have to,’ Kathryn insisted. ‘I can’t leave him piecemeal, I have to get out and never go back.’
‘Don’t do it, Kathryn. You never really know people until they do something that you don’t expect.’
‘I’ll make it quick,’ Kathryn said. ‘I promise. Call me as soon as you get out of work.’
Kathryn tossed the cell phone to one side, only for it to trill once again. She picked it up, and was surprised to hear Maietta’s voice on the line.
‘Is he okay?’ Kathryn asked.
‘He’s fine,’ Maietta confirmed. ‘He’s coming back into work. I think you ought to be there.’
Kathryn bit her lip as she glanced at her watch. ‘Okay, make it fast though.’
‘You in a hurry now, counsellor?’
‘Got another client booked in for this afternoon,’ Kathryn replied. ‘But I can make room for Scott. I’ll wait at the station.’
***
29
Kathryn drove back to the precinct and sat in Olsen’s office staring down at Griffin’s file, trying to force Stephen’s image from her mind. Calling Ally had in some way cemented in Kathryn’s mind that it was time to finish everything.
Stephen is history, she told herself. Focus on the future.
Griffin’s last proper appointment with her had ended with him storming from the office after making what amounted to a physical threat. For a moment, Kathryn had finally seen the detective for what he was: a man capable, indeed trained to kill who was living on the edge of an abyss of guilt, whose spouse had left him and who saw for himself no future other than one consumed by regrets. Then, she had seen his hardened exterior crumble and his innermost grief exposed for all to see before he had been shielded by the Wheelers’ embrace.
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