(2011) The Gift of Death (38 page)

‘
Should be here in twenty minutes.’

‘
So you think this is where he – Ryan- lived?’ said Kate, softly.

‘
Looks like it. Unless it’s Carl Reckard we’re looking for, which I seriously doubt.’ He turned away from her and walked towards Curtis. ‘Curtis – what’s the latest on the other team? Did they find anything?’

‘
I’ve just spoken to them, sir,’ she said. ‘Apparently the house is lived in by a couple of female friends, who knew nothing of either Reckard or Gleason. Occasionally they get a piece of junk mail addressed to Reckard, but apart from that, nothing.’

‘
And Roberta Gleason? She’s still secure?’

‘
Yep.’

‘
Okay. Let’s see if she can tell us anything. Maybe she’s hiding him. Maybe she knew he was alive all along.’

58

Kate watched through the glass as Josh interrogated Roberta. Tears streamed down her face, which was now all red and blotchy. Her eyes looked pained, alive with memories she had tried to bury in the past. Although she knew there was no other way - Josh had to be sure that Roberta was telling the truth – with each question Kate felt like running into the room and shouting at him to stop. She hated to see him behave like this, acting the tough cop, the big man, the adjudicator of right and wrong. She loathed the way he swaggered around the room, the way his eyes hardened, the way his face became fixed and mask-like. In the past there had been a couple of occasions – once in an upscale restaurant in the Hollywood hills, another time at a friend’s gallery opening - when she had had to remind him to stop behaving so bullishly. It was almost like he was conforming to some stereotype, some cliché of how a cop should act. She had told him then that she hated the macho way in which he behaved; but, in truth, it was one of the things that had attracted her to him in the first place.

‘
So you’re telling me that you really believe your brother died on the night of April 4 2004?’

‘
Yes, how many times have I told you,’ said Roberta, her voice small and weak.

‘
So take me through it again. Tell me how it happened. How you heard the news.’

‘
I can’t believe this. I feel like I’ve done something wrong. I haven’t. I haven’t. I told you Ryan is dead. He’s dead.’

‘
Ms Gleason,’ said Curtis. ‘If you’ll just answer the question please.’

‘
My client has already stated her position,’ interrupted her lawyer, a thin, wiry man with skin the colour of straw.

‘
Yes, but if she would be kind enough to just repeat the story one more time,’ said Curtis.

The lawyer nodded at Roberta, who took a deep breath and started to speak.

‘
On the night of April 4 2004 I came home from work after a long shift at the hospital. I had a shower, made myself a snack and started to watch a bit of late night TV. At about eleven thirty or so, I think it was, the phone rang. It was the police. They asked me to confirm my name and asked whether I had a brother named Ryan. I told them that I had, but that I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years. We had kind of lost touch after what happened with – well, you know. They said they were sending a couple of officers around to the apartment. When I asked them what was going on they said they had some bad news. Ryan had had an accident. A bad one. Apparently he had driven his truck over the edge of a canyon somewhere up near Moreno Valley. They didn’t tell me everything over the phone, but when the cops arrived I knew he was dead. I can’t say I was surprised. I kind of knew something bad would happen to him. I suppose you could say he sort of took after my dad.’

‘
And you didn’t go to his funeral, I understand?’ said Curtis.

‘
That’s right, I didn’t. I didn’t feel the need to -’

‘
So you’re saying that you think he was capable of committing a crime?’ Harper interrupted. ‘The kind of crime your father committed?’

‘
I don’t see what that has got to do with anything,’ she said.

‘
I’m not at liberty to say at the moment,’ he said. ‘But you are confident that you’ve had no contact with Ryan Gleason since 4 April 2004.’

‘
For God’s sake, what are you trying to do? Torture me?’ She looked at her lawyer for help. ‘Of course I haven’t had any contact with Ryan. He’s dead, remember?’

Nobody spoke.

‘
Ryan
is
dead, right?’

Again silence.

In that instant, Roberta understood. The realisation was almost too painful to observe. Kate watched as her face contorted with a new level of suffering. She opened her mouth to speak, but could not utter a word. Then an awful cry, the scream of an animal in pain, filled the room. There was no doubt that what she was feeling was real. Roberta battled to control the waves of pain inside her. She struggled for air like person drowning at sea.

‘
Do you want to take a break?’ asked Curtis, in a soothing voice. ‘I think it’s best if we resume the interview a little later.’

Roberta tried to take a series of deep breaths. She was determined to tell the truth. She had survived what her father had done to her. She could get through this.

‘
No – I’ll be fine. Just a little water, please.’

Curtis stood up and fetched her a plastic beaker full of water.

‘
Thank you,’ she said, taking a sip. ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

She wiped the tears from her eyes and took another deep breath.

‘
Roberta – you don’t need to do this now,’ said her lawyer. ‘If it’s something you haven’t talked through with me then I think –‘

‘
No, I want to. I have to say it.’

‘
If you feel ready,’ said Curtis. ‘But anything you might be able to tell us about Ryan would help the investigation.’

‘
Okay,’ said Roberta. ‘You asked me whether I thought Ryan was capable of committing a crime – a crime like my – my father. It’s something I’ve never told anyone. I suppose I still wanted to protect him in a stupid kind of way, like I once wanted to try and protect my father. And I thought it was best to put all that pain behind me. You know, everything that had happened with my dad. I thought it was for the best, I really did. And especially after Ryan’s death. I felt finally free from it.’

‘
Free from?’ asked Harper.

‘
From the two men I feared most in my life.’

‘
So you’re saying that –‘ asked Curtis.

‘
That Ryan abused me just as my father did, yes. They did it together.’

‘
And you didn’t feel you could report it to the authorities?’ asked Curtis.

‘
I was scared,’ said Roberta, her face melting once again. She bit her lip to try and control herself. Another deep breath. ‘I didn’t know what Ryan would do to me if I ever spoke out. Nobody knew apart from Bill – Bill Vaughan. He’s passed away now, hasn’t he? But he gave me his word that I would never have to go on record with what my father – and what my brother – did to me. He assured me that the state prosecutor would have enough to guarantee – well, I never need worry about my dad again. I knew that if I ever spoke about the abuse I would have to tell them about Ryan. And – I just couldn’t.’

Her eyes stretched wide with fear.

‘
And – now. What happens? If you’re telling me that Ryan is not dead, what then? I may as well end it all here. You don’t know what he’s like.’

Her breathing was getting shallower and faster and her whole body started to shake.

‘
You’re safe now, Roberta,’ said Harper. ‘Nothing is going to happen to you. We’ll take you to a place where no harm can come to you.’

That’s what he had promised before, thought Kate to herself. What he had said to her. What he had said to Cassie.

‘
But I don’t understand,’ said Roberta. ‘How? How can Ryan be still alive? Who was –‘

‘
We believe that your brother may have deliberately faked his own death,’ said Harper. ‘It seems like he stole the identity of a Carl Reckard, a paranoid schizophrenic. We believe that the two of them were friends. Ryan set up the whole thing. Probably persuaded Reckard to take a ride with him in his pickup truck towards Moreno Valley. He may have drugged his friend, got him drunk or perhaps he knocked him unconscious. But somehow he swapped possessions, ID documents, clothes. Then he could have positioned Reckard at the wheel, let the hand break off, and threw in a can of petrol for good measure. He would have watched as the car veered over the edge of the cliff into the canyon. By the time it reached the bottom of the 300-foot drop the car was a burning wreck. The cops found Ryan’s car, together with a body and pronounced your brother dead.’

‘
So Ryan’s still alive.’

‘
We believe so, yes.’

‘
And nobody noticed?’

‘
Reckard had no friends to speak of and had had cut ties with his family way back.’

‘
And where is he now?’

Harper went silent. He didn’t want to tell her about the digital image. That he had been caught on camera handing a package into the investigations team containing a couple of his fingertips.

‘
I said where is he now?’

‘
We’re working on that.’

‘
What
?’

‘
We’re investigating his whereabouts.’

‘
You mean you’ve got no idea.’

‘
Roberta, I don’t want to bullshit you. It seems he’s disappeared.’

‘
I can’t believe that –‘

They started talking over one another.

‘
We’ll protect you from –‘

‘
If he knows I’ve spoken to you about him – about what he did – he’ll come after –‘

‘
Like I said –‘

‘
Forget it,’ she whispered. ‘I’m as good as dead.’

59

Perhaps he should have been a writer, a novelist. Perhaps he had missed his true vocation. What fun one could have planning the story, shaping the plot, creating characters – and, most satisfying of all, killing off the ones who didn’t deserve to live.

Maybe once all this over, he could take it up. Attend a few classes. Or perhaps try his hand at screenwriting. After all, he was in the world capital of the entertainment business. But he got the feeling those executives wouldn’t like the kind of stories he wanted to tell. Hollywood was full of decadent types, anyway. Faggots. Drug-takers. Dissipated degenerates who polluted the minds of the young with their sick fantasies.

Maybe he could do some good there after all. That world really did need to be taught a lesson. Some folk could benefit from his wisdom.

But he was running away with himself now. He had to concentrate on the matter in hand. He had set up a situation and had to follow it through. There was no point wasting such a good opportunity, was there? He smiled to himself as he relished the scenes that had yet to be played out. Anticipation was always more fulfilling than the final result, he always thought. And what would happen next? The thought was a delicious one. Why couldn’t his fellow men exist on the same spiritual plane as he? Why did they have to be always dragged down by the world of the senses? There were not many who were as strong as him. Independent of thought, able to live without the pleasures of the everyday, only interested in the higher good.

Yes, what would happen next?

He had set the sinner loose to be hunted. Either by the police or by one of his disciples. After cutting off two of his fingertips he had ordered him to take them into the headquarters of the LAPD at the Parker center, downtown. After that he was free to go. But he told him not to go back to his house in Chatsworth. He warned him that the cops would come looking for him.

It was such an easy scene to direct. And the actor did not have much of a choice about his stage directions. It was either go through with the plan or have his brains blown out. And how pleasing it was for him that he had chosen the former option. How boring that would have been if he had had to shoot him. That would not have been interesting at all.

After he had given him his instructions he had given him two thousand dollars in cash, enough for a couple of weeks in a cheap motel. On handing it over the man had asked him a question.

‘
I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why are you doing this?’