Resurrection Blues

by James, Harper

  Evan jumped up as the middle-aged nurse bustled into the room looking crisp and sterile in her uniform. Adamson shuffled painfully after her, refusing any assistance, looking like he’d been disinterred within the last half-hour.

  It was the first proper look Evan had ever got of Adamson and he wasn’t looking at his best. The last time he saw him he was laid out cold on the dirt floor of Carl Hendricks’ basement, his ginger buzz cut caked with blood as Hendricks caved in his skull with the butt of a shotgun.

  The prolonged months of inactivity as he lay in a coma had left him looking little better than Hendricks’ other victims. He was stooped, clearly dependent on the sticks to stay upright. Without regular use, his muscles had atrophied, his flesh wasting away leaving his bloodless skin hanging loosely from his bones. His head was a thinly coated skull, his face gaunt, pale and unhealthy from lack of sunlight, dark bags under his deep-set eyes. The only color in his monochrome features was the watery green of his eyes, lit with a festering hatred for the man in front of him.

  ‘You sit here,’ the nurse said to Evan, indicating the chair at the other end of the table, the end nearest the door.

  It hadn’t crossed Evan’s mind that he needed to consider the possibility of a quick escape if the patient—never prisoner—turned violent. Looking at Adamson he nearly laughed in her face. He doubted Adamson could punch his way out of a wet paper bag if his life depended on it. The sour scowl on his face said he knew exactly what was going through Evan’s mind.

  ‘Everybody makes the same mistake the first time,’ the nurse said, giving Evan an understanding smile as he made his way dutifully around the table. She saw the look he gave Adamson as he passed him, the smile slipping off her face. ‘I don’t make the rules.’

  She put her hand on Adamson’s elbow to guide him towards the chair Evan had vacated. He pulled it away angrily and dropped his stick, then stood while she picked it up for him with the look on his face of a man trying to pretend a dog isn’t humping his leg. Her sotto voce tut-tutting didn’t improve his mood as he lowered himself onto the chair with an old-person sigh he couldn’t suppress.

  Evan thought about doing a quick handstand to piss him off.

  A large psychiatric technician with a shaved head stepped into the room. It was suddenly very cramped. Evan wanted to laugh again, ask if it wasn’t all a bit of overkill, but rules are rules, it’s more than people’s jobs are worth. Thankfully, the nurse slipped out again, closing the door firmly behind her, giving everybody a bit more breathing space. The technician leaned against it, his muscular arms folded across his pumped-up chest. Evan felt very safe indeed, thank you.

  ‘You know who I am?’ he said.

  ‘The bastard who put me in here,’ Adamson said and banged one of his sticks into the wall. ‘Did this to me.’

  Not an encouraging start.

  ‘Really? News to me.’

  ‘Yes, really. Carl told me all about you, what you did.’

  ‘Then why talk to me if you know it all already?’

  Adamson gave him a smile that was a dentist’s nightmare.

  ‘Who said anything about talking to you. I wanted to see you, that’s all. So that I’d—’

  His mouth snapped shut as he glanced at the technician, thought better of openly threatening Evan in front of a witness. Not that the words needed to be voiced. Evan knew already he was head of the line of people Adamson would be calling on if he got out.

  ‘So that you’d what?’ Evan said, keeping it barely below a taunt.

  Adamson gave that an irritated head shake, his smile evaporating as anger tightened up his face. They stared at each other a few beats, the only sound the buzz of the fluorescent tube above them and Adamson’s breath exiting noisily through his nostrils. Evan broke the silence first.

  ‘I’m actually the bastard who saved your miserable life, God help me.’

  Adamson rocked back in his chair as if he’d been punched, then bounced forward, palms slapping loudly on the table top.

  ‘What?’

  The technician came off the door in an instant, cocked his head in a bring it on gesture. Adamson showed him his palms in apology. The guy nodded several times, then leaned carefully against the door again, a disappointed look on his face. He re-crossed his arms showing Adamson the big muscles that would have him in a choke hold if he tried any of that shit again.

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘You saved my life?’ Adamson said, his voice high and shrill, bouncing off the walls. ‘You nearly killed me is what you did. Put me in a fucking coma. Look at me.’ He pointed at himself with both index fingers, his hands, his whole body, shaking with rage. ‘Look what you did to me, you yellow son of a bitch. Wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t snuck up on me from behind. You’d be the one in a coma.’

  Evan felt like he already was, that he was the one who’d been battered from behind.

  ‘I brained you?’

  Adamson cocked his head at that, his eyes diminishing to slits. He leaned back, then something registered in his face like a cattle prod.

  ‘I suppose you’re going to say it was Carl who hit me.’

  Evan wanted to grab him by the scruff of the neck, bang his head into the table, see if he couldn’t knock some sense into it, knock the smug sneer off it. He pushed himself up, moving behind his chair. He gripped the wooden back tightly to keep his hands away from Adamson’s scrawny neck.

  He closed his eyes and groaned inwardly, instantly back in Carl Hendricks’ basement burial chamber. He’d imagined the feel of his hands around Adamson’s worthless neck and his reward had been to re-awaken a mental image that would forever haunt him. Daniel Clayton, lying across his father’s legs, his head hanging at an obscene angle after Robbie Clayton snapped his own son’s neck in an act of mercy and desperation to save him from a lingering death. He sucked air up from the floor, tried to push the image from his mind.

  ‘I knew it,’ Adamson crowed. ‘You were going to blame Carl.’

  Evan’s eyes snapped open and what Adamson saw in them turned the words in his mouth to dust. He saw his grave in there, heard shovels in the dirt. He swallowed, looked away quickly.

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ Evan said, his voice calm and measured, as if it was someone else’s voice, someone who didn’t have a care in this world or the next. ‘Because that’s what happened.’

  Adamson shook his head angrily, not wanting to acknowledge the truth he knew he’d just heard. His face readjusted itself several times. Any minute now, he was going to put his hands over his ears.

  ‘You know what he was going to do after he laid you out?’

  ‘Say what you want. I’m not listening.’

  ‘He was going to put you’—he jabbed his finger at Adamson’s face—‘in that filthy chamber with me and Robbie and Daniel Clayton—’

  Adamson’s head jerked up at the names.

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘—and brick it up again. If it wasn’t for me, we’d both have died a slow, painful death in that stinking basement. Who knows, one of us might have eaten the other one to keep alive a few more days while good ol’ Carl sat on his porch sipping iced tea and watching the sun go down.’

  ‘No way. You’ve twisted everything around,’ Adamson said, rocking gently back and forth in his chair, hands stuffed under his legs. ‘If you’re so clever, got all the answers, tell me why Carl would do that to me.’

  Evan studied the sorry individual in front of him and worked a sad smile onto his face. He felt sorry for him, for his blind faith in his good buddy Hendricks.

  ‘You really need me to tell you?’

  Adamson thought he was stalling, trying to buy some time while he racked his brains for an answer. A self-satisfied sneer crawled across his lips at his own cleverness.

  ‘I knew it. You can’t. Are we done here?’

  He pushed himself up, his face contorting with the effort, color returning to his cheeks. He rested
one hand on the table, the other one reaching for his sticks. His previous sullen attitude had now morphed into a cocky over-confidence.

  ‘I’m gonna sue you.’

  ‘Sit down.’

  Evan packed a lot of feeling into those two words. Most of the smugness slipped off Adamson’s face.

  ‘Do yourself a favour. Sit down and listen to me. Listen to what your good friend Hendricks told me right before he tried to brick us both up in that hole. You don’t want the first time you hear this to be in court when I’m on the witness stand.’

  He was gripping the back of the chair so hard his knuckles were white, the tendons on the back of his hand rigid. He let go of the chair, relaxed his shoulders and sat down again. Adamson lowered himself slowly back into his chair. The mention of court and witness stands had knocked the last of the smugness out of him. He slumped over the table, his forehead cupped in his hands, furrows of ginger and gray hair sticking up between his fingers.

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said unprompted to the table top.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how did the bodies of Robbie and Daniel Clayton get in that basement chamber?’

  It took a few seconds for Adamson’s brain to put it together—he’d been in a coma after all—but when it finally clicked, his head came slowly up, what little color he had draining out of his face. He tried to speak but no words came, his mouth flapping open uselessly like a stranded goldfish. He cleared his throat, a sound like shoveling gravel.

  ‘He said I put them there?’

  It was barely a whisper, the way you’d ask the Grim Reaper, what, now? as he stood at the bottom of your bed, tapping his foot.

  Evan nodded, his eyes locked on Adamson’s. They both spoke at the same time.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Horror conspired with outrage at his betrayal to give Adamson’s wasted muscles some small part of their former strength, an adrenal spike propelling him out of the chair. The huge technician was on him in a flash. Evan jumped up to help but Adamson was already spent. The tech put one massive hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down onto the chair, compressing his body like a jack in the box’s spring.

  ‘Do that one more time and this is over,’ the tech said, chopping the air with the edge of his hand.

  Adamson’s whole body slumped. He rested his elbows on the table and pinched the skin between his eyes and the bridge of his nose. When he spoke, his voice was small and seemed to come from far away.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said he loaned you an old minivan.’

  Adamson’s head snapped up at the mention of the minivan but he didn’t say anything. The tech was watching him closely from the side of the table now, keeping him in easy reach.

  ‘He said you used it to kidnap Daniel Clayton on his way home from school. You kept him in that basement room, went down there every day and . . . you work it out. When his father knocked on the door one day, you panicked and beat seven shades of shit out of him, nearly killed him. Then you threw him in the hole with his son and bricked the entrance up. Job done. Oh yes, sometime after that they died. Eventually.’

  Adamson looked as if he was trying to dissolve into the table top. His chest lay along it, forehead pressed into the wood with his arms clamped over the back of his head. If he thought it was going to keep Evan’s words out, he was mistaken.

  Evan stood up and walked halfway down the table, flicking the back of his hand at the tech as he stirred. He bent over to put his mouth next to Adamson’s ear so that he didn’t miss the important bit.

  ‘One small detail I wouldn’t want you to hear first in court. Robbie Clayton snapped his son’s neck so he wouldn’t starve slowly to death like he did.’

  The tech coughed softly and shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot behind him at the words. Given the nuthouse they were in, that was quite something. On the other side of the door were some of society’s worst, mentally unstable criminals.

  Adamson lifted his head, the effort almost defeating him.

  ‘Why does all that make him want to kill me?

  Evan snorted, a short, sharp sound.

  ‘Well it sure as hell wasn’t because he was filled with a righteous rage and felt a burning desire to see justice done. Even if you didn’t do it—’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘—you knew too much. You knew where the bodies were buried.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be able to blame me if I was buried under his house?’

  ‘He’s covering all the bases. If he’d buried us, no one would ever know a thing. And if it didn’t come off, which it didn’t thanks to me, you’re in a coma and can’t defend yourself.’

  ‘It wasn’t me.’

  His voice had the forlorn ring of a man who knows he’s never going to be believed.

  ‘It’s going to be his word against yours. Why would he lie to me? He’s about to bury me alive. I’ll never be able to tell anyone what he says—so he tells me the truth.’

  ‘What about you? What will you say?’

  Evan shrugged.

  ‘I’ll say what he told me. It was all you. You abused his hospitality and used his house to bury a young boy and his father alive—’

  ‘Stop saying that!’

  ‘That’s nothing compared to what the prosecutor is going to make of it. There won’t be a dry eye in the court by the time he’s finished. You want to know what I think Hendricks is going to be doing?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I reckon he’s going to be standing there with the tears streaming down his cheeks. I can see it now, wringing his hands, telling them how he found out what you did, how he went berserk and tried to smash your child-murdering head into a pulp. It might even work. Why else would he try to kill you?’

  ‘Because I was about to expose him.’

  Evan shrugged, coughed a wet laugh.

  ‘Now you know why you never see a hungry lawyer. Back and forth, everybody pointing the finger at everybody else. And in the end, they’ll put you both away forever because they can’t sort out who’s lying the most. Everybody makes a ton of money and two scumbags off the board. Perfect.’

  Adamson stared at him a long time, breathing heavily through his nose. He laced his fingers together, then pushed his hands out until the knuckles cracked. The tech checked his watch. Then Adamson’s mind made a connection that had so far eluded him and the balance of power in the cramped, sweaty room tilted.

  ‘You didn’t come here just to tell me this, to rub my nose in it. There’s no reason to. You want something from me.’

  Suddenly, there was something else in his eyes, pushing away the fear and desperation. An animal cunning. He had something Evan wanted, something to trade, even if he had no idea what.

  ‘What is it you want?’

  Evan placed the side of his head on the wall and closed his eyes. His hand slipped into his pocket. He felt the familiar shape of the Zippo lighter. He pulled his hand out again quickly, wiped his hand on the side of his pants. It was too early to tell Adamson what he really wanted. Adamson would have conditions of his own before he gave anything away.

  ‘I want to know what really happened the day Daniel Clayton went missing.’

  Chapter 9

  ‘I DROVE THE SCHOOL BUS that day,’ Adamson said.

  It wasn’t what Evan was expecting to hear.

  ‘What?’

  Adamson nodded.

  ‘Hendricks asked me to.’

  Evan noticed how Carl had now become Hendricks. He looked forward to seeing what it might become next.

  ‘How is that even possible?’

  Adamson shrugged.

  ‘Wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, we don’t look so different. The kids are all piling into the bus laughing and shouting, shoving each other around. Who’s going to notice if the old fart bus driver is the same old fart who normally drives. Check the police reports. I bet none of the kids they inter
viewed said a thing about the driver.’

  ‘Can you prove it?’

  ‘Nope. And Hendricks will deny it, of course.’

  ‘Why did he ask you to do it?’

  ‘He said he had something he needed to do.’

  ‘He didn’t say what?’

  Adamson shook his head.

  ‘And I didn’t ask him.’

  Evan raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Why the hell would I?’ Adamson said angrily. ‘It’s easy for you to point the finger with hindsight. I was living for free in the guy’s house. He asked me to do something for him, I did it.’

  ‘Looks like he set you up, eh?’

  Adamson scowled at him, didn’t answer.

  ‘Did you ever find out what he did? Specifically.’

  Adamson snorted.

  ‘Not until today, no. He used my minivan though.’

  ‘He told me it was his.’

  Adamson shook his head, like why should any of it be true and you’re a fool for believing a word he said.

  ‘And you had no idea what he’d been up to?’

  ‘You mean did I think to myself, I wonder if Carl just abducted a kid and stashed him in the basement. No, that never crossed my mind. Because my mind doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘You never went down there?’

  ‘No. Carl kept it locked. And no, that didn’t make me think, I bet he’s got a kid down there. I should be more suspicious, I know.’

  Evan felt the weight of the Zippo lighter in his pocket as Adamson denied ever having been in the basement. Either he was lying or the lighter wasn’t his. It still wasn’t time to challenge him.

  ‘Was that the only time he asked you to drive the bus?’

  ‘Yup. Why? How many other kids did you find down there?’

  The sudden flippancy made Evan want to lean across the table and slap him. The tech would’ve helped too, held Adamson down if he’d asked.

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘He kicked me out. Made up some bullshit story about me stealing money from him. It felt off at the time, like he wanted to get rid of me. Now I know why.’

  ‘What did you do?’