Time to Kill (24 page)

‘There's medical improvements, breakthroughs, all the time!' implored Ann. ‘There could be something you don't know about.'

‘I know that we can't bring someone who's clinically dead back to life. Nor will we ever be able to.'

Slater spoke just ahead of his wife, reaching sideways to stop her. ‘My wife and I have to talk about it.'

‘Of course,' accepted Denting. ‘I'm very, very sorry.'

‘There's nothing to talk about!' burst out Ann.

‘Let's go back to David,' said Slater, still holding Ann's hand.

She came up at once, turning away from the surgeon. Slater released her hand, looking down at the man. ‘Thank you.'

Denting made another gesture, this time more easily recognizable as haplessness. ‘I just wish …'

They sat as they had before, in their same chairs on their same sides of the bed, each of David's cold hands cupped between theirs, Ann's eyes again closed in silent although lip-moving prayer. From the way his arm was positioned to hold David's hand, Slater saw it was almost eleven, for the first time becoming aware that beyond Ann there was daylight through the window, people walking, sitting on benches, cars passing, an ordinary day. He wasn't sure what time he'd arrived the previous night after Ann's panicked cell phone message but they had to have been in the hospital for more than sixteen hours. This time yesterday David had been alive, a whole person in a whole body. Now he was clinically dead, no longer whole. Couldn't be re-made or restored to being a whole person. There weren't going to be any more camping trips, David leading the way. David wasn't going to go to college, wasn't going to become a basketball star, maybe even a famous professional which he'd been so positive that he would become. Slater could hear the words, David's excited, laughing voice, in his mind:
I'm going to make you proud of me, Dad. You just wait. Have my picture in all the sports magazines. Slater the Slayer! How's that sound? I think it sounds right
.

‘Nothing's being turned off!' Ann wasn't whispering, although she wasn't speaking loudly.

‘He can't be gotten better.'

‘I'll make him better. Stay with him all the time.'

‘Not now, not here like this. We'll talk about it somewhere else.'

‘There's nothing to talk about,' she insisted again. ‘And I'm not going anywhere else until he comes round.'

‘Somewhere else,' repeated Slater. How long would it take for Ann to accept? How long would it take for him to accept? He didn't expect either of them would, not completely.

‘Have the police got who did it?' she suddenly demanded.

‘Not yet.'

‘Why not?'

‘They've only got one witness, who scarcely saw anything. There's something about a stolen car being torched.' The car that ran David down and then reversed over him a second time and didn't leave skid marks, Slater thought on. It wouldn't help to tell Ann that now.

‘What's that mean?'

‘We didn't talk it through. I guess they think the thief burned it out to destroy any evidence. It was an off-road vehicle, the sort the witness saw driving away from where he found David.'

‘Someone's going to be arrested, though, aren't they? They've got to be!' The indignation sounded odd, although Slater couldn't work out why it should. How difficult was it to burn a vehicle so completely that any evidence was destroyed? It had never been part of any training he'd undergone.

‘The officer in charge is keeping in touch.' Twice, as they'd talked, Ann had jerked her head up against letting her eyes droop into sleep. Slater said, ‘You need to rest. We both do.'

‘I'm not leaving!'

‘I'm not suggesting we leave. I'll fix something here …' To forestall any further refusal Slater said, ‘If you go to sleep like that you'll fall over David. You could hurt him more, pull a drip out.'

Ann nodded but didn't speak.

The hospital had overnight relative facilities on the same floor. They only removed their shoes and jackets, otherwise lying fully dressed on top of their single cots. Slater didn't expect to drop off and only realized he had when he came jerkily awake at the sound of Ann's sobbing, although she didn't wake up. He stayed alert to comfort her if she did, but she didn't, just sobbed on. And then Slater started to cry and couldn't stop, his mouth clamped against any sound.

The love-fest was better than the first time – better, in fact, than any in which Mason could ever remember being involved or fanaticizing about – and satiated to the point of sexual exhaustion they actually left the chalet on the Saturday night to walk, with some difficulty and therefore briefly, along the beach before with relief finding an inn overlooking the ocean more for rest than for dinner. Mason had exaggerated intelligence anecdotes ready to maintain the lightness of their previous encounter, but Beverley was on this occasion more serious and Mason recognized the familiar sign. Beverley Littlejohn very obviously considered herself to be involved in a meaningful, maybe even permanent, long-term relationship.

Over their seafood platters she insisted upon telling him of her marriage to an accountant that had lasted three years before her discovery that he was bisexual – too belatedly accepting that she should not have been as devastated as she had been in the homosexual Mecca of San Francisco – and how Glynis Needham had so very determinedly hit upon her that she'd come close to being virtually raped by the woman whom she'd foolishly agreed to let stay during Glynis's San Francisco visit.

‘I like sex, OK? So why do I attract those who like it differently from me?'

‘I'm not sure how to take that!' said Mason, still trying to keep it light. But very positively not dismissing her outpourings – as absurd as they were – as had been his first instinctive reaction. And he waited.

Predictably Beverley gushed, ‘No, darling! I didn't mean that. God how I didn't mean that! What I'm trying to say is that this time it's right! We couldn't be more right together and I couldn't be happier. Or more satisfied. And I don't mean just sexually. I mean I couldn't be surer than I am about anyone.'

Mason toyed with the lobster tail on his plate, stretching the moment to think. His alibi of being in California when he'd hit the kid didn't work if the timings were too deeply and properly investigated, despite his second Californian flight being booked in his new, untraceable name. But it did if the Californian probation officer under whose control he'd been transferred from Washington DC testified that he had definitely been 3000 miles away at the time and date of David Slater's accident. And Mason didn't imagine from the way she was babbling on from the other side of their booth – ‘I'm
not getting heavy here … I didn't mean things to come out like this, not this soon. Help me here, Jack, with a funny story, any story
…' – that it would be at all difficult to persuade Beverley to swear just such a statement.

Picking up on her last remark, Mason said, ‘Maybe the only story I have matches the one you've just told.'

‘You want to spell that out a little better than I just did?'

‘I wish I could.'

‘You're confusing me even more.'

‘You're a probation officer. I'm an ex-con, a traitor to his country. What chance does that story have!'

‘As much as we want it to have.'

‘You're the one who said you could lose your job over this.'

‘I don't give a fuck.'

‘You think I want that to happen to you?' Mason pushed his plate away, as if the conversation had taken away his appetite.

‘I just told you I don't give a fuck.'

‘And I've just told you that I do give a fuck. I've hurt enough people, upset enough lives. I'm not going to do it one more time.'

‘So what are you saying?'

‘Just that. No more hurt to anyone.' He was in California, with Hollywood just down the road! Why didn't he make a career change and become an actor; this was Oscar material. Because there was more money in the career he'd already chosen, came the immediate answer.

‘Do you wonder why I've fallen in love with you?' asked Beverley.

Back off time now that he'd got her to say it, judged Mason. ‘And do you wonder why I'm saying what I'm saying? Why, for once in my life, I don't want to risk something as important as we are becoming to each other!'

‘Do you really mean that?'

‘You know I mean it. Just as you know I love you so completely that I'm prepared to walk away to avoid causing you any harm.'

‘I didn't expect tonight to turn out like this but I'm glad it has,' said Beverley, smiling. ‘I want to go home now and stop talking.'

Thank Christ for that, thought Mason. He hadn't expected it to turn out like this either, but he was glad it had. Everything was turning out just fine, in fact. He was anxious now to return to San Francisco, where she could get back to work and he could get back to his computer and find out what was happening in Frederick, Maryland.

Beverley didn't set out to continue the restaurant conversation during the rest of the weekend nor did she object to Mason's suggestion that they drive back up to San Francisco earlier than they had from their previous excursion to Santa Barbara to beat the returning Sunday traffic build-up. During the drive Mason expanded his earlier lie about registering with computer employment agencies, both to spare himself from her irritating, job-seeking intrusion on his behalf as well as to test how far he could manipulate and control her.

‘When I make the choice I want it to be right: I don't want to go into something, find out too late that I've made a mistake and have to start all over again. I want to settle down and become a pipe and slippers man.'

‘I don't see you as a pipe and slippers man.'

‘You know what I mean.'

‘What do we do if the job you decide on is in somewhere like San Diego?'

‘They got a parole office there?'

Beverley nodded.

‘Would it be a problem to get a transfer?'

‘I wouldn't know until I tried.'

‘It's not something we can talk properly about until I find something and make sure it's the right one, is it?' said Mason.

‘Don't get mad at me if I say something, will you?'

‘What?' demanded Mason, turning towards her. Believing that he didn't hold a licence, Beverley always had to drive.

‘It's an unusual situation, your not needing financially to get a job. But you've got to, according to the terms of your early release. I've got to make reports and I can't let the job hunting drift on indefinitely.'

Mason decided upon silence, actually turning away from her to look out of the car.

‘Jack!'

‘What?'

‘I asked you not to get mad at me.'

‘I'm not mad at you.'

‘I know you are.'

‘Let me ask you something,' insisted Mason, still not looking back into the car. ‘Do you think I would do anything – allow anything – to cause you an official problem?'

‘I know you well enough by now to be quite sure that you wouldn't,' pleaded Beverley, risking a smiled look across at him, wishing he would meet her.

‘Then why are we having this conversation?'

‘Please, Jack!'

‘I thought you, of all people, would have known me well enough and trusted me well enough to see and understand the point of what I'm trying to say,' insisted Mason. ‘I don't want to be –
won't
be – a fly-by-night, jumping from job to job. I told you that already! How's my work record going to look attached to one of your goddamned official reports showing that I can't hold a job down longer than a few weeks.'

‘Jack, this is getting out of control! I trust you and I love you and I know you would never do anything to hurt me or cause me a difficulty. I was just telling you what I have officially to do, as your case officer.'

‘Let's forget it.'

‘I don't want to forget anything,' refused Beverley, with a determination that surprised and unsettled Mason. ‘If we're going to make a go of this, which is what I thought we had decided back in Santa Barbara, we shouldn't let silly misunderstandings build up into something more than they are. Which is what this is doing. I'm not hassling you. I just don't want anything to get in the way, put anything at risk. That's the only reason I mentioned having to file progress reports, OK?'

He'd almost pushed too hard, Mason acknowledged. ‘OK.'

‘You're not mad?'

‘No, I'm not mad. I don't want anything to get in the way between us, either. I'll start setting things up first thing tomorrow.'

Which Mason did, although not in the sequence Beverley inferred. To guard against a sudden, unexpected return Mason curbed his impatience for a full thirty minutes after Beverley left her apartment before turning on his laptop and accessing the website of the
Frederick News-Post
. The newspaper had led its front page on the first available edition with the running down of David Slater. There were two photographs accompanying the story which turned on to an inside page to include the background account of the boy's selection for a sports scholarship at the University of Maryland, from which a spokesman described the incident as an ‘appalling tragedy'. There was also a photograph of Ann on that inside page, taken at the gallery exhibition but not one of Slater. David's injuries were listed, as well as him being on a life support machine. His condition was stated to be grave by a hospital spokesperson. A police source said the hit and run was the subject of a criminal investigation ‘with a particular aspect' of forensic evidence that was not being disclosed. There was a separate but connected account of the burning to death of an unnamed, unidentified man found close to the totally destroyed wreckage of a stolen 4x4 similar to that seen by a witness driving away from where David was found. The place where the man died was beneath a connecting interstate link commonly used by itinerant alcoholics and drug users. If the dead man were one of the frequent users of the area it would make identifying the badly burned body extremely difficult. It had not been ruled out that the dead man had been the driver of the vehicle but it was considered unlikely and the death was being treated as a criminal investigation.