Last of the Independents (27 page)

“I swear to God he fell.”

Crows settled onto the high branches along the edge of the property. Barton's eyes flicked to them reflexively. Without meeting my gaze he said, “He was trying to escape. He fell down the stairs in the dark. He hurt his head. I tried to help him but there was nothing I could do.”

“You take him to a hospital?”

His eyes on the birds. “No.”

“You just, what — hoped he'd get better? Look at me.”

Tears. “I didn't kill him.”

“Where's your sister?”

“I don't know. Swear to God.”

“You hid Barbara in that shed?”

“To protect us.”

“And killed Deirdre for the same reason?”

“To protect James. He could've been happy here. Swear to God.”

With his free hand he reached up for the book. I tore it up the spine and knelt down with the rifle pointed at his chest.

I said, “I want you to know that after I kill you I'm going to burn this book and the others. All your papers, all your notes. Whatever fame you think you're entitled to will vanish. You'll be just another sick bastard. If the world says anything it'll say good riddance.”

I believe I was grinning when I said that. It seemed to take the heart out of him. He didn't react when I worked the lever on the rifle and chambered another round.

“You don't have to do this,” he said.

In fact I felt like I already had. I tried to find words to tell him this.

“This is a nice country,” I said. “We're not set up to deal with people like you.” I stepped on his chest and pulled the trigger.

The gun jammed. Barton rolled away, putting me off balance, sending me into the muck. He swiped at me with the broken blade. I felt the skin tear below my eye. He swiped again but there was no force behind the movement. I regained my feet and took the rifle by the barrel and stove his head in.

No Redress

I
t
took what felt like an hour before I could hear anything besides tidal waves of blood crashing into the rocky coastline in my skull. I stood over him feeling self-righteous as hell until I began to feel the cold creep up through my muddy sneakers and pant legs. The morning sun brought faint showers and no warmth. I tucked my coat around me and began to think rationally. It was my first killing and I found this hard.

I used my coat to bundle everything — guns, shell casings, knife blade and linen, all but the notebooks. I even waded back into the crawlspace, the child's bodily fluids underfoot, and pulled my cellphone from the slime. While inside I noted the other barrels beneath a tarp, like great blue eggs. Someone else's to discover. I righted the barrel with Django's body in it and sealed the lid.

Barton I left for the critters.

In the house I opened the birds' cages and dumped the feed out in a pile on the basement floor. Under the kitchen sink upstairs I found a jug of bleach. As I walked back to the van I stopped to break the rifle on the ground, douse the pieces with bleach and toss them into the forest. Cars came along the road. I turned my back to them and made like I was pissing.

At the van I stripped and dressed in yesterday's clothes. I'd left my appliances at the motel but figured I could live without them. I made a pile of all the artifacts and emptied the jug above them. I tossed them into my suitcase. The notebooks I hid in a crevice of the van. I used the water I'd brought to wash myself as best I could, using a bleach solution to mask the smell of death.

There is an air taxi from Nanaimo to Vancouver which takes less than an hour from takeoff to touchdown. I was tempted, but I needed to bring the van back over. I wondered how much time I'd have.

I had lunch in the same cafeteria booth that I'd sat in with Fisk on the ride over. Ferry ice cream is better than it has any right to be. I had a dish and some tea, hoping a spike in blood sugar would sort everything out. I felt a dull pain from my arm and wished I'd brought my painkillers.

I phoned Katherine from a phone on the boat that charged an extortionist's rate. She told me about Ben and about the office. I didn't share my news.

Halfway across the Strait of Georgia I walked down to the vehicle deck and opened the back doors of the van. I slid out the suitcase and closed the doors, eyed a spot near the stern where there were no security cameras or crew members, and heaved the case over the railing and into the churning white water behind us.

W
hat hadn't been destroyed by Theo Atero and his crew had been stolen or vandalized by the Hastings Street locals, who treat yellow police ribbons as invitations to help themselves. The vultures even took the toilet seat. I worked off the wall panel and found the contracts and the wireless drive and the drawstring Crown Royal pouch I used in lieu of a cashbox. I tore up the Szabo contract and flushed it. I pocketed the pouch. I'd come straight from the ferry terminal to do this, knowing the Ateros could be lurking around and that I'd just pitched my gun into the ocean.

I took the stairs down and crossed to the van and heard someone call my name and turned. Gavin Fisk and Mira Das were walking towards me from the corner. We met at the van.

I held my hands over my head. “I know what this looks like, but officers, please, I swear I'm just holding for a friend.” Only Fisk laughed.

Mira said, “You're lucky you're not dead.”

“There's a good chance you're right.”

“You've heard about your friend Ben?”

“Heading to the hospital right now.”

“Where's this going to end, Mike?”

“What ‘this' are you referring to, Mira?”

“You and the Ateros.” Her expression saying, “What other ‘this' could I mean?”

“It's played out, far as I'm concerned.”

Fisk said, “She's worried you'll go after them with guns blazing. You're more of a nightstick guy, is what I told her.”

“I'm sorry about your office,” Mira said.

“It'll fix.”

“And your face?”

Barton's blade — my blade — had left the faintest of marks. “Cut myself,” I said.

“Your friend Katherine told me you were coming here. She asked us to watch out for you.”

“I didn't tell her I was coming here.”

“She must have assumed it then.” Mira patted my shoulder. “Go home and see your grandmother. And clean yourself up. You need a shower in the worst possible way.”

T
he main hall of the church was in use, but Pastor Flaherty set aside one of the meeting rooms for us. The carpet had cigarette burns and the one window looked out on the building next door. Cliff Szabo was waiting, holding two cups of coffee.

I wanted to confess everything to him. He deserved it. At the same time there was self-preservation to think of, and his own culpability. I pulled two folding chairs off the stack and set them facing each other. I sat him down and told him his son was dead. I'd never seen him emote beyond frustration and anger, but he bowed his head and the tears came, along with a whimpering sound from his throat.

“How?”

“Accident which went untreated,” I said. “I'm sorry as hell.”

I gave him his money and told him to rip up his copy of our contract. A silly precaution given that he'd announced I was working for him on the nightly news, but the less evidence the better. I told him to tell people that I'd been on vacation, that he'd never asked me to accompany Fisk to the Island. I wondered if Fisk would tell what he knew. Hard to say.

“In a week or so,” I said, “you'll get two books in the mail. They're written by the man responsible, in his own hand. They spell out what happened. If I was you I'd burn them, but you deserve the option.” I stared at my hands clasped in front of me, avoiding his face. “I don't think he suffered,” I added.

“What happened to the man responsible?”

I told him.

B
en was lying with his back to the door when I entered the bright hospital room and took in the stale, flower-scented air. I figured he was sleeping and that I'd sit for a while, maybe rustle up a Ludlum or a Travis McGee from the hospital's lending library. But he turned over and I saw the tears on his face.

“Feeling okay?” I said, once again trying to comfort someone to whom the idea of comfort was obscene.

Both legs cast, bandages on his face and hands. “How can you ask me that?”

“Want me to get the nurse?”

“I have a button if I need it,” he said. “Anyway, I'm pretty high right now. That's why there might be tears. Side effect of the drugs.”

“Right.”

He repositioned himself on his back. “How'd it go?”

“Not well,” I said, laughing despite myself at the understatement. “About the same as things here.”

“So he's dead?”

“Yes. No miracles.”

Ben nodded and invented pretexts to wipe his face. I turned away for a moment and pulled a wicker chair closer to his bed.

“That's how Cynthia ended up, didn't she?”

“I didn't find her body there, though I'm sure that's the first thing your mother will ask me. The cases aren't connected.”

“But that's what happened to her, isn't it?”

I began to lie but couldn't summon the effort.

“Probably,” I said. “Almost certainly.”

“Some evil bastard just took her and did what he wanted and killed her.”

“They're out there,” I said, “and there's nothing you can do about them, nothing that can make it right. And that applies to the person that put you here.”

“I gathered that,” he said.

I handed him the wireless drive. “The attack will be on here. No way Theo walks after the police see it.”

Ben nodded and let it fall on his bedsheets. He said, “Until I ended up in here I don't think I ever felt the emptiness of not having Cynthia, just as a presence on the planet. It sounds stupid, but I think I was keeping her alive by writing about her. That's why I write, you know — to keep dead people alive. Magnus Kane started out as this ultra-powerful version of me who could do whatever he wanted, but as I started fleshing him out, he became my brother. And Rosalind, she was just a hostage to be rescued in the first game, but then she grew and became Cynthia. It wasn't so much about rescuing her as about what she'd do once she was rescued, the life she'd lead. The further I went, the less it felt like the real people were really gone. And I can't write anymore because I see it for what it is, a poor substitute, and not fair to their memories.”

“Maybe it'll come back,” I said. “If not, there's a secretary's position open at Hastings Street Investigations.”

Mrs. Loeb opened the door, arms laden with styrofoam containers and parcels. “Any news?” she asked me.

“None. Sorry.”

She nodded and focused her attention on Ben, wheeling over the meal tray. “Chicken soup with kreplach from Cantor's,” she said. “There's enough for three if you're hungry, Michael.”

“I should leave you two alone,” I said, thinking of my bed and my dog, and a woman who wouldn't be there.

Mrs. Loeb handed me one of the containers. “Have a couple of spoons just to be sociable. I can always get more. And I did want to talk with you about something concerning Cynthia.”

“You already asked him if there was news,” Ben said. “Can't it wait?”

“Of course, but I don't see why it should. If you'd rather not hear it, Mike and I can go down the hall.”

Ben flung the napkin she'd spread to the floor. “Mom, she's not coming back. She's dead or worse.”

His mother paused, the soup-lid half-removed.

“I understand you're upset,” she said.

“I understand you want to believe Cynthia's alive but she's not, she's not coming back, because some sick fucker picked her up and probably took her across the country and raped her and sodomized her and tortured her and kept her in a dog kennel, and once she was dead cut her into pieces and tossed them into a well or ate them. And probably you'll never find out. And I know this and the cops know this and Mike here knows. The missing persons groups and those stupid support groups you go to, they all know it too. And you know it, Mom, don't you? Deep down? So why don't we cut out the lies and stop pretending she's alive and well and just forgot to call these last years? Could we do that, put these illusions aside, at least for a while?”

Estelline Loeb put the soup down on the moveable tray. She set out plastic cutlery, including a superfluous knife and fork and individual packets of salt and pepper. She'd bought a box of crackers and pulled one of the packages out of the box and tore it open for Ben to help himself. She unfolded a fresh napkin and made to tie it around Ben's neck, but he flinched and she smoothed it and set it on the tray next to the bowl.

When that was done, she said to me, “Let's go outside and let him eat.”

I followed her to the end of the corridor, where a window looked down on Burrard Street.

“Ben said the file was destroyed by those hooligans,” she said. “Is that right?”

“I have a copy with my lawyer, but it's about two months old. I have most of the rest on file. I'll be able to put everything together as it was, minus my margin scrawls.”

“Forget it,” she said.

“You're sure?”

“I am.”

“All right,” I said.

“Because, you see, a lot of the problem I think is that we've had the material but haven't been able to look at it fresh, and evaluate the original evidence with everything that's come to light. What we really have to do is start at the end and work back. I think that will help us see the original statements with new eyes, and maybe banish some of the fogginess that creeps in when we deal with so much information. Or, tell you what, you could start at the beginning and I'll start with the most recent, and we can spend maybe an hour or two each week comparing and discussing what we've looked at, to see what connections can be made. Do you think there's any sense in that, Michael?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely,” I said.