Turtle Island (10 page)

The door finally gave way to the pressure Narla inserted on it
with a large steel screwdriver. She had pulled back on the handle
with all her strength and weight, watching the steel shaft of the
driver bend, hoping it wouldn't break. She no longer cared about
the damage to the door. If she had to she would have used an axe to
gain entry. Charles had been careful enough to take the spare keys
with him. This only confirmed to Narla that he was trying to hide
something. She stepped into the summerhouse. The white pitch board
walls on the outside deflected the sun, making the interior cool
and dark. Charles had boarded over the windows ‘to help keep the
temperature down when I’m working out’. ‘Sure.’ Narla said to
herself. She switched the light on. A neon tube flickered. While
the light was strobing, Narla imagined Charles walking toward her.
A dull ache had begun to throb in her temples, she promised herself
two migraine tablets when she got back in the house. She felt
uneasy entering his domain, even though she knew Charles would be
home late. ‘Was that another of his little secrets, was he meeting
secretly with someone? They could even be making love right now.’
Her mind conjured thoughts that were unimaginable.

Weights were scattered around the floor. His desk was over the
far side of the room. Slowly, she walked toward the old oak writing
bureau. She held on to the screwdriver; the bureau would be locked
but not for long. Narla tugged at the writing flap with her fingers
just in case it had been left open, but its refusal to budge
confirmed the need for the screwdriver. She wedged it behind the
lock at the top of the flap near the centre and pulled back
sharply. It gave way with a lot less protestation than the door.
The flap bounced down. Papers, pens, a book dealing with real
estate law, some property sheets from his office, advertising
Turtle Island’s hottest properties and a photograph of Narla with
Harley were the desks only contents. Narla began to wonder if she
was being paranoid or oversensitive. Her period loomed, which
always made her a little edgy, and now with her head aching she
began to think there was a perfectly innocent explanation for the
Polaroid’s. ‘No, No, No!’ Narla shook her head. She rocked the
bureau back and forward frustrated by the lack of incriminating
evidence. Something inside a secret compartment jingled. Narla
shook the desk again. There were always secret compartments on old
writing bureaus. Her fingers ran along the flat seam edges of all
the joinery, hoping to find a false panel or tiny door. She never
heard the footsteps behind her, creeping closer, stealthily, so as
not to be heard, so intent was Narla at finding out the key to her
husband’s betrayal.

‘Mum?’

‘Jesus.’ Narla turned her heart racing. ‘Harley, you nearly
scared me to death.’ She clutched the screwdriver to her breast,
feeling her heart pound fiercely inside her chest and her head.
Harley stood still, looking admonished, holding her school
bag.

‘You never came to collect me.’

‘Oh my god, is that the time? I’m sorry Lamb. I kinda got
caught up in things. Did Mrs Pearson drop you home?’

‘Yeah. Is it alright if I go to Leigh’s for dinner tonight,
Mrs Pearson said I could sleep over.’

Narla looked at her daughter. ‘Of course it is.’

Harley turned to run away, but before leaving kissed her
mother and said. ‘Thanks, you’re really cool.’

‘Don’t forget to bring some clean clothes for tomorrow and
ring me?’ Narla called after her daughter who was already half way
up the garden heading toward the house. She heard Harley reply
‘Yeah, okay.’ before her daughter disappeared inside the house.
Narla sat against the wall and slid down until she was sitting on
the floor. She felt physically sick and mentally drained. Her
nerves were jangling. Her arms pulsed and felt heavy. After a few
moments, she had calmed sufficiently enough to resume her search.
Narla rocked the bureau again, trying to pin down the exact source
from where the noise was coming from. Lattice carved wood shelves
that housed paper and envelopes took up two columns, which ran from
the right and left of bureau, separated by an arch. Narla felt
around the arch. Two thin joinery lines ran to the back of the
bureau. Her fingers pressed upwards and there was a small click.
She pulled her hand away and in her palm was a little wooden drawer
with two keys rattling around the bottom of it. She lifted the keys
from their sanctuary and looked around the room for somewhere to
fit them. Her heart beat a little faster; expectation and
trepidation were implicit pals. She could feel the pulse in her
head throbbing. Thud, Thud, Thud. Sweat tricked down her back, her
palms were clammy. The heat seemed to engulf the room. There was no
obvious door, maybe it wasn't in the summerhouse; maybe Charles
liked to keep his secrets far away. She pulled the bureau away from
the wall. Set into the wall behind the desk was a small square door
about twelve inches by twelve. It had been painted over to blend in
with the rest of the room’s decoration. Narla inserted a key in to
the tiny aperture and twisted it. The key jammed, the door did not
budge. She jiggled the key, freeing it before inserting the second
key. This time the key span in the barrel and the lock pulled back,
releasing the door from its frame. There were two shelves in the
tiny cubbyhole; on the floor of the cupboard were three rows of
videotapes. Tiny black mini cassettes, each labelled in Charles
handwriting. H in bath, H in bed, H with C, H mouth C, T and G
C-h-tel, M C-h-tel. The list went on. Narla counted over twenty of
the miniature videocassettes. On the shelf above were rows of
neatly stacked Polaroid’s, and a small cash box, metallic green and
locked. Narla picked up the cash box and shook it. She placed it
down on the ground next to her knees and took a pile of the photos,
so neatly arranged.

As she thumbed through them her entire life began to crumble.
She had steeled herself for her husband’s betrayal but nothing
prepared her for the images on the tiny squares of paper. As she
looked at her husband defiling their daughter, it slowly dawned on
her what the ‘H’ might be on the videocassettes. Narla’s stomach
turned. ‘Why didn’t Harley say something to her? How could she, as
Harley’s mother, not have noticed what was happening to her
daughter?’ Narla took the videos marked ‘H’ and left the
summerhouse. Her legs, both laden and jelly-like at the same time.
For a moment Narla thought she was going to be sick, her vision
blurred over.

The tape was even worse than Barbara had indicated. It was
evident that she was shocked by the contents, but nothing, not even
Dace’s warning about the message at the end of the tape, prepared
the detectives for the pure evil savagery played out for their
‘entertainment’. Georgina O’Neil sipped from a cool glass of water.
Her throat felt tight and her stomach was queasy. Leroy closed his
eyes and held the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and
thumb. He breathed deeply. ‘Man, I’ve seen it all now. Don’t worry,
Rick; I am sure the department will pull all of the stops out to
catch this sick son-of-a-bitch. Jo-Lynn and Ray are
safe.’

Rick sat staring at the TV screen. Shock was painted on his
features with a broad brush. ‘I…I…what has he got against
me?’

‘Guards will be getting there right now, Rick. Even as we
speak.’ Leroy’s hand on Rick’s shoulder did nothing to control Rick
Montoya’s deep sense of ill ease.

‘How does he even know I exist?’ Rick said.

‘The threat is non-specific, Rick. We are just taking
precautions.’

‘He’d have to be mad to try anything now. He would know we
would post troops all over your house.’

Rick turned to face Leroy. ‘Tell me, Leroy, did they look like
the actions of a sane man?’

Leroy’s silence amplified what everyone in the room was
feeling.

Norman Frusco rocked back and forth on his office chair. This
was not the sort of job for a man with his patience, then again
what was? Captain, was the moniker on the door but it hardly began
to tell the story of twenty-five years service to the Missouri
police. His once resplendent head of hair was now a memory, his
slim athletic figure gave way to middle age spread; the curse of
promotion to a desk job, though he still liked to get out in to the
‘war zone’ occasionally. The war zone, used to be the city, used to
be areas of deprivation, where tough living forced tough choices on
to people with no choice. God, he and his wife had talked about
retiring to Turtle Island. Frusco watched the news on the slim
portable T.V that was sandwiched between a row of unread books and
the trophy his division won three years on the trot for the highest
arrest and conviction rates. The trophy was now tarnished but then
again what wasn’t? Barbara Dace was looking at him from the tiny TV
screen, reading the major story tonight. In Norman’s mind, she was
not tarnished. Norman Frusco during honest moments with himself,
found Barbara Dace very attractive, he always had done. They went
way back far too long for Frusco to care to count. It seemed that
Norman and Barbara were always destined to be on parallel courses
that were designed to cross. He pressed the intercom in front of
him.

‘Where’s Montoya and LaPortiere?’ he let go of the switch
before anyone would be foolish enough to reply.

It was eight o’clock and it had been a very long day. All
Frusco wanted to do now was go home relax with a beer and take a
month off. The chances of taking a month off were as remote as was
relaxing, unless of course he got totally drunk. As his finger
depressed the intercom switch again the door to his office opened,
Frusco looked up. It was Montoya and LaPortiere.

‘Don’t you guys ever knock; I could have been having a private
moment. Sit down.’

Frusco neither had the patience nor the will to further this
line of conversation, knowing that for every jibe LaPortiere would
repost with two, at least.

‘Where’s O’Neil?’

Rick sat. He answered his boss. ‘She’s still analysing the
tape.’

‘Yeah, the techno boys have got their computers and
microscopes out.’ Leroy chipped in.

Frusco leaned forward on his desk. ‘Rick, I want you to know
that we have already placed an armed guard outside and inside your
house. Ray and Jo-Lynn are perfectly safe.’

‘What I want to know is, how does that sick freak-show know
anything about me?’

‘I don’t know but he seems to have made a link with you for
some reason, but we can use that to our advantage.’ Frusco tried
his best to sound confident; truth was he was worried.

8-55pm. Another long day. Agent O’Neil removed her reading
glasses and rubbed her eyes. The static flicker of the television
was causing her pupils to hopscotch. She scooped the cold remnants
of fried chilli beef between her chopsticks and force-fed herself.
If the job didn’t one day kill her, the diet certainly would. She
longed for home, a cool bath, and a massage. The thermometer read a
sticky 74 degrees that in actuality felt more like 94. She rewound
the tape, now a copy, the lab boys were scrutinising every
micrometer of the original. She decided to watch it one more time
before leaving for the ‘comfort’ of her motel room. The tape
whirred and locked. Georgina pressed the remote. The screen went
blank, before an out of focus image of a man sitting tied and bound
to a chair slowly sharpened. A figure dressed in black walked
behind the bound man, his face was not visible. A hand removed the
carpet tape that had been stuck across Max Dalton’s lips, ripping
roughly from his bloodied mouth. His mouth was a mess. The teeth
had been crudely hammered out, the lips split, swollen and
pulpy.

Off screen the killer spoke one word.

‘Read.’

Even this had been electronically disguised. He pushed the
bound man’s shoulder. The words were barely audible spewing out of
the mashed orifice that was once a mouth. Agent O’Neil turned the
volume up and began to write down Max Dalton’s last
words.

‘By the time you receive this; things will have progressed. I
have a plan.’ Max is interrupted by the sound of the killer
laughing; again it has been distorted, making it sound more
grotesque. All the time he is pacing back and forth in the
background. He tells Max to ‘Continue.’ and strikes the back of
Max’s head with a stinging blow using his knuckles.

‘Mr Max Dalton is already...’ Fear is etched so deeply in
Max’s eyes that a shiver runs up Georgina’s spine even though this
is the seventh time she has viewed the tape. ‘Dead.’ Dalton’s voice
quivers. ‘And now Detective Montoya, you will be looking for…’ Max
Dalton stops reading and breaks down crying. ‘I can’t...I can’t do
this.’

The killer walked around to face Max Dalton, his face still
remaining out of shot. Slowly he began to beat Dalton’s body with a
Hammer. The blows were carefully aimed at the bound man, designed
to break a rib, shatter a collarbone, chip his elbows, pulp an eye
socket. Georgina looked away from the screen as the hammer
pummelled into Max Dalton’s groin. His screams distorted the sound
recorded by the microphone. The screen went blank. Georgina guessed
Dalton must have become unconscious at this point. When the image
came back on, the date recorder on the bottom left hand corner of
the image had moved on by two days. Dalton was still bound and
looking like shit. He was crying uncontrollably mumbling his way
through the rest of the message.