Desperation Point

by Malcolm Richards

  Aaron turned down the volume, until the news reader’s voice was just a whisper. He stared at his phone screen. Whoever had called had left a message. His thumb hovered over the voicemail icon. He didn’t want to hear Taylor’s angry and accusatory words. But curiosity got the better of him.

  He tapped the icon and pressed the phone to his ear.

  His heart missed a beat as he listened. Slowly, his face lit up with a toothy smile. Aaron hung up the phone, punched the air in excitement, and reached for his seatbelt. Moments later, he was racing out of Truro toward Devil’s Cove.

  29

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Aaron found himself sitting on the edge of a leather couch, nervously tapping his foot on the carpet and staring at the display of framed family photographs on the mantelpiece. The living room curtains were open, but the dull day allowed in little light, and so he sat in the gloom, anxiously waiting for Carrie to return.

  When she entered the room a few moments later, he felt his pulse race with excitement. She ignored his stare as she handed him a mug of coffee then positioned herself in the opposite armchair. She looked exhausted, he thought. The knitted pullover she wore swamped her thin frame.

  For a moment, the two sat in silence, Aaron nervously waiting while Carrie pressed her hands together on her lap.

  Aaron cleared his throat. “Thank you for agreeing to see me,” he said. “I know it must have been a difficult decision but I want you to know I’m extremely grateful. Your cooperation will help to present a much stronger, unbiased presentation of the facts.”

  Carrie watched him as he produced his digital voice recorder and placed it on the coffee table. She shook her head. “You seem to have misunderstood. I didn’t ask you here because I want to be interviewed for your book. In fact, quite the opposite. I don’t want anything to do with your book. I don’t understand what you’re doing here or why you want to write about something you have absolutely nothing to do with.”

  The sinking feeling in Aaron’s stomach was immediate and despairing, like hearing about the sudden death of a friend who had always been a picture of health. His eyes moved from the recorder, which he had yet to switch on, to Carrie’s steely gaze.

  “Oh? But I thought on the phone, you said—”

  “The only thing I agreed to do was meet with you.” Carrie paused, her gaze wandering over to the drinks cabinet. When she looked back at him, her face was taut with anger.

  “Did you lie to me?” she said, looking him square in the eyes. “Did you lie to me about seeing my son?”

  Aaron shook his head. “Everything I told you was true. I followed you that night, hoping to get an interview, I saw you walk up to that cliff, and then I saw your son. Why would I lie?”

  “To get a reaction. To get me to agree to help you.”

  “Don’t you think I could have come up with a better story that doesn’t involve me looking like a crazed stalker? Besides, I’m not some headline-thirsty reporter. I have a reputation to protect.”

  “Except it’s not much of a reputation from what Nat told me.”

  Aaron swallowed. His face flushed scarlet. Nat was so fired.

  “So now I know why you’re really writing this book,” Carrie said. “It’s not about telling the truth, or because of a passion for the subject. It’s about trying to save your failing career. So how can I be expected to trust anything you say?”

  Aaron clenched his jaw.

  Leaning back in the armchair, Carrie regarded him coolly.

  “Did you really see him?” she said.

  Aaron nodded. “I told you. He was there.”

  For the briefest of moments, a deep longing swept over Carrie’s face. It fell away into desolation. “I want to believe you. But I can’t. I’ve seen nothing, not a sign of him. I think you’re playing a sick game with me.”

  “I’m not playing any kind of game. I’m trying to—” Aaron caught his breath. He leaned forward, his eyes pleading with her.

  “Trying to what?” Carrie demanded.

  They were both quiet, staring at each other like poker players trying to guess their opponent’s next move.

  Aaron picked up his mug of coffee. He put it down again.

  Fuck it.

  “I’m trying to find him,” he said. “I’m trying to find your son.”

  Carrie’s mouth hung open. She stared at him for a long time, her dark, haunted eyes boring into him.

  “What makes you think you can achieve what the police can’t?” she said.

  Aaron sucked in a breath.

  He told her everything—the animal attacks, the map, his fruitless scouring of what he believed to be Cal’s hunting ground. He told her about his theory that Grady Spencer had groomed each of his victims to abduct the next, and about how he believed Spencer had been grooming Cal to continue his horrific legacy of murder.

  As Carrie listened, her complexion paled to a sickly grey, her body grew more and more still, until she resembled a lifeless statue. Then, when Aaron was finished, she slowly rose from the chair and shuffled over to the drinks cabinet. Taking out two glasses, she filled them with whiskey, and handed one to Aaron. Returning to the chair, she sank down and drained half of her glass in two large gulps.

  Aaron stared at the drink in front of him, his mouth running dry. Push it away. Don’t even look at it. . .

  “You think Cal is responsible for all of those animal attacks?” Carrie’s voice was heavy and lifeless, but it forced Aaron’s attention away from the whiskey.

  He looked up and saw pain spreading across her face like splinters across glass. What a terrible thing, he thought, to be reunited with your child after years of believing he was dead, only to lose him again, only to watch him change into . . . into . . . Aaron didn’t know what. A psychopath? A monster?

  Whatever he was, he was no longer Cal Anderson. Cal had died seven years ago. He was never coming back.

  Slowly, Aaron nodded. He told Carrie about the similarities between the attacks, about the malice in the way the corpses had been displayed, just like Margaret Telford’s dog.

  Carrie emptied her glass. Before she could refill it, Aaron pushed his full glass toward her. She took it. For a long time, she was quiet, staring at the floor, the glass of whiskey tipping dangerously in her hand.

  When she looked up again, her eyes were red and raw.

  “You think my Cal could do that to a living creature? Could tear it apart until there was nothing left? You think he could slaughter an entire flock of sheep?”

  “If he’s filled with enough rage, yes. Grady Spencer spent years poisoning his mind, shaping it into something else. God knows what kind of psychological damage has been done.”

  Carrie flinched at the words. Tears splashed down her face. She made no move to wipe them away.

  “But he’s just a boy. My boy.”

  Aaron heaved his shoulders. “Carrie. . . It’s not my intention to cause you more pain. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But what if I’m right about your son? What if it’s only a matter of time before he tires of killing animals and moves onto—”

  “Stop! I don’t want to hear it!” Carrie slammed the glass onto the table, whiskey spilling over the sides. “He’s my son. He would never. . . He’s not like that. . .”

  “Carrie, I think—”

  “Why haven’t you gone to the police?” She glared at Aaron. “If you’re so convinced that Cal is . . . that he’s so dangerous . . . why haven’t you told them?”

  “How do you know I haven’t?”

  “Because if you had we wouldn’t be sitting here right now.” Her face twisted with despair. Her shoulders sagged. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come here.”

  Aaron leaned forward. “Then why did you? If you’re not going to help me with the book, why am I here?”

  “Because I need to know if my son really is alive!” Carrie cried, her hands clenching into fists. “And if he is, I need to know why he won’t come home to me!”

  She stared at him
, eyes round and wild, her body trembling.

  “He’s alive, I promise you,” Aaron said. “And I haven’t told the police because I was hoping I could find him first.”

  “Why?”

  “So I could use him as a bargaining chip.”

  “To blackmail me?”

  “Something like that, yes. I thought if I showed you proof, I could get you to agree to an exclusive interview for the book. In exchange, I could lead you to Cal, give you a chance to try and reach out to him before the police moved in. You save your son, I save my career. Two birds, one stone.”

  Aaron leaned back, shocked at the words spilling from his mouth. But it was obvious now that Carrie would never help him, so why bother hiding the truth?

  He drew in a breath as he waited for Carrie to explode, to scream at him to get out of her house.

  But Carrie was motionless, her face blank, her gaze unfocused.

  “How close are you to finding him?” she asked.

  Aaron sat up. This was unexpected.

  Clearing his throat, he reached for his bag, pulled out the map, and unfolded it on the coffee table. “Wherever he’s hiding out, it has to be nearby. I can’t imagine he’s hitching rides to Devil’s Cove, can you?” He pointed to the black circle on the map. “He’s in there somewhere, I’m sure of it. I mean, he must sleep somewhere, right? An abandoned building, a shed . . . there are plenty of places to hide away on farms. . . So, in answer to your question, I’m close. I just need to keep looking.”

  Carrie was quiet as she studied the map. Slowly, she shook her head. “If it was this easy, he would have been found by now,” she said. “I mean, there was a search party, for Christ’s sake. They found nothing. People think he’s dead.”

  “But I know for a fact that Cal is alive,” Aaron argued. “And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have an invisibility cloak, so unless someone’s hiding him, he has to be out there.”

  Her mouth hanging open, Carrie suddenly sat up.

  Aaron waited for her to speak. He quickly grew impatient.

  “What is it?” Their eyes met across the table. Electricity crackled between them.

  “They tried to take him away from me. But he came back.”

  “Who? What are you talking about?”

  Carrie’s eyes grew larger. “That’s what he said to me. He said, ‘They tried to take him away from me. But he came back.’”

  “Who said that to you? What are you talking about?”

  “Grady Spencer!” Carrie cried. “When he had me tied up in his basement, when he had my son leaning over me with a scalpel in his hand, he said, “They tried to take him away from me. They tried to take him to the farm.’”

  Something connected in Aaron’s mind. He knew something. But what?

  “The farm. . .” he repeated. “What farm?”

  Carrie was on her feet now, pacing the room. “It stuck in my head, but I thought it was just the ravings of a mad man. ‘They tried to take him to the farm, but he came back.’”

  Aaron looked up, a smile spreading across his face. Of course.

  “That’s why no one can find Cal,” he said. “Because someone really is hiding him.”

  Carrie stopped pacing. She came back to the coffee table and, dropping to her knees, stabbed a finger at the map.

  “Who’s hiding him?”

  “And at which farm?” Aaron said.

  The feeling that he already knew the answer surged through him. He stared at Carrie, and for the first time since they’d met, she looked truly alive. It was an opportunity he couldn’t afford to miss.

  “If I can find him, if I can bring you proof, will you agree to an exclusive interview?” he said.

  Carrie glared at him. “I could take this map and go to the police myself.”

  “And then they’ll find him and arrest him. They’ll take him away from you. They’ll send him to a mental institution, a detention centre, somewhere you’ll never get a chance to reach out to him. To save him.”

  Carrie opened her mouth. She drew in a breath.

  “I’m trying to give you that chance, Carrie. And I know it’s for selfish reasons, but it’s the only chance you have.”

  They were both silent, staring at each other with desperate gazes. And then voices filled the quiet. Aaron and Carrie turned in unison toward the living room door. The door opened and Sally appeared.

  “There you are,” she said to Carrie. “See who I bumped into on my way home. We thought we’d surprise you. . .” Her voice trailed off as she noticed Aaron sitting on the couch.

  Aaron raised a hand, then shot a glance at Carrie, who had grown deathly pale. And then Melissa came rushing into the room in a whirlwind of excitement.

  “Mummy!” she cried, barrelling forward with outstretched arms. She slammed into Carrie, almost knocking her to the floor.

  Dylan’s powerful frame appeared moments later. His smile quickly faded as his eyes found Aaron.

  “What’s this?” he said. “What the bloody hell’s going on here?”

  Aaron glanced at Carrie. She stared back.

  Then she nodded.

  30

  NAT HAD BEEN BUSY. Ever since Aaron's underwhelming reaction to her discovery of Grady Spencer’s marriage, a black cloud of frustration had been hanging over her head. On Friday night, after returning from his hotel, she’d headed straight for Porth an Jowl Wine Shop with the purpose of buying tobacco but had left with a half bottle of vodka stashed inside her jacket pocket.

  Yesterday morning, she’d woken with a hangover and had barely spoken a word to Rose over breakfast. The rest of the day she’d spent in her bedroom, swinging back and forth between self-pity and self-loathing.

  Nat had honestly believed her discovery about Grady Spencer had been revelatory. After all, there had been no mention in the media about a wife. But Aaron had barely batted an eyelid.

  Okay, so her research hadn’t revealed anything new about the case like his had done, but that wasn't what Aaron had hired her to do. Her job was to create a profile of Grady Spencer; a man no one knew anything about except that he was a cold-blooded killer of children, and that he was now thankfully dead.

  But now Nat knew he’d had a wife. And ever since she’d found out, she’d been unable to stop thinking about what had happened to the woman. Add to that her growing desire to prove she was, in fact, an excellent researcher, come Saturday evening she’d decided to get over herself, get over her hangover, and get back to work.

  Using her own money, she’d signed up online for a membership to the Family Historical Research Society. Then she’d spent the rest of the night hunched over her laptop, accessing their database and a whole cluster of subsequent websites, putting together an admittedly patchy framework of Grady Spencer's life.

  Spencer had been born on 5th January 1935 to Mrs. Eleanor Spencer (maiden name Pethick), a local seamstress, and Mr. Anton Spencer, a tin miner, who resided in St. Just in Roseland, six miles south of Truro on the Roseland Peninsula. It was the same village where Grady would marry Kathleen-Ann Nancarrow, and where her body would be found less than three years later, on the shore of St. Just Creek.

  Nat had found nothing about Grady Spencer’s childhood, which was understandable due to it being decades before the invent-ion of the world’s greatest archive, the Internet.

  What she did find were the death certificates of both his parents. Both had died on the same night in June 1954. A search of a local history news archive had revealed why.

  The fire that had burned the Spencer household to the ground had started in the basement in the early hours. Mr. and Mrs. Spencer had been asleep upstairs. Suffering from insomnia, nineteen-year-old Grady Spencer had allegedly been out for a late-night walk. By the time he’d returned home, the upper floors were already ablaze. At the time the article had been published, the cause of the fire had yet to be determined.

  Nat had found nothing more about the fire, and nothing more about Grady Spencer until the day of his marri
age, which had brought her circling back to Kathleen-Ann Nancarrow.

  What had attracted her to an unspeakable monster? Had Grady once been kind? Had he made a young woman laugh? Had he made her feel respected and cared for?

  It was highly unlikely.

  Perhaps it was the naivety of youth that had blinded Kathleen-Ann to what she was marrying. But she'd only been two years older than Nat was now, and sometimes Nat felt as old as the hills.

  Kathleen-Ann Nancarrow had died at the age of twenty-one, when her life should have been blossoming. It didn’t matter whether she had thrown herself into that creek and allowed the water to flood her lungs; Grady Spencer was responsible for her death. Of that, Nat was certain, and she was determined to find out more.

  Kathleen-Ann had been forgotten, and people needed to know her name. Just like the rest of Grady Spencer’s victims.

  That was why now, on a bitter cold Sunday afternoon, Nat was stepping off a bus and entering the village of St. Just in Roseland.

  Much like Porth an Jowl, the place was deserted. The quiet was unnerving as she walked past rows of white houses with slate roofs and low garden walls. She felt conspicuous, like she shouldn’t be here. But she didn’t know why.

  Perhaps it was guilt. This morning, before Rose had left to visit Carrie, Nat had lied to her, telling her she was going out to visit a friend. It was an obvious lie—Nat didn’t have any friends—but Rose had nodded and told her to be home in time for supper. There had been hurt in her eyes when she’d said it.

  Now, as Nat turned right, heading out of the village and along a single lane road lined with trees, she wondered if Rose knew she was still working for Aaron. She hung her head. She was such a liar.

  But she was not the only one who’d been lying to Rose.

  Twenty minutes ago, while riding the bus, Nat had been surprised by a phone call from Carrie. She’d asked for Aaron Black’s phone number, which Nat gave her, then she’d begged Nat not to tell Rose that she’d called.