Beneath the Surface

by Tara Marlow

  “The suitcase, it was by the front door. Her handbag was on top. I remember my backpack too.” She smiled. “It was a ‘Dora, The Explorer’ backpack my mum bought me. I had that with me for years. Mum used to call me Dora as a pet name because I always wanted to explore. I was always hiding in cupboards or dressing rooms. I remember she lost me one time at some markets. It was in... Melbourne. Yeah... It was because I noticed a toy I wanted, and I wanted to go look. God, she was frantic. I remember how crazy she looked when she found me but, not long after she did, my father showed up and screamed at her. Called her a stupid bitch, then dragged her out of the markets.”

  “And you think John killed your mother?” Lowell asked. She smiled, then realised she’d have to explain her odd reaction to his bold question.

  “Sorry, but I just realised something. You never call him my dad. Or my father. Only John.”

  “Yes. Because a parent doesn’t do what he’s done. Not if he loves them,” he answered. “Now, back to the point. Do you think he killed your mum?”

  “I don’t know.” She paused, seeing images of them on the floor in the kitchen. She shook her head, shaking off the sticky image. “Yes, I think so. I don’t know. I don’t remember him killing her. Only…” She took in a deep gulp of air, her breath ragged and filled with emotion. She tried to smooth the rough edges of her nails down. She was working on stopping the obsession.

  “Right,” said Lowell simply.

  “I don’t remember what happened next. I keep trying to work out what’s true in the dreams. Running through the bush with thorns scratching my arms. I mean, I remember him screaming for me to run. I remember that. I remember him pulling me along. Hard enough that it dislocated my arm. I remember screaming at the top of my lungs, then his hand covering my mouth before he popped it back in. I remember deep scratches on my arms but I’m not sure if that was then. Maybe it was later?” She looked down at her arms and ran her hand along them, as if the raised lines of torn flesh remained. “I remember staying in a motel that night by the highway. It had bedbugs.”

  “Okay. So, why do you think your name is Grace Pruitt and not Thompson?”

  “Because I know that with every move, my father changed our name. Never my first name. He told me, when I was little, that I was too stupid to keep track of two names. So, my first name always remained the same.”

  “That would also explain why you’ve never seen your birth certificate.” Grace nodded, her mind racing back to the papers and the gun she’d discovered under the dresser. Were they still there? She’d hadn’t told Lowell that part. It was just too confronting for her to imagine why her father would even have a gun.

  “Look, this is what I found.” She turned the laptop around so he could clearly see the screen. It showed a page with the names John and Grace Pruitt in the article. A picture of a very young Grace and a rather rough-looking John appeared midway down. A photo of her mother from her modelling days appeared at the bottom. Seeing the photo of her mother had been like looking in a mirror. No wonder her father had been confused.

  “Whoa, you really look like her,” Lowell said.

  “There’s more.” She clicked back and then opened another article.

  The title read: ZOE PRUITT, DEAD. HUSBAND AND CHILD GO MISSING.

  29

  They both jumped at the knock on the door. Grace’s eyes went to the clock. It was just after eight, but it felt so much later. Panic filled her. What if her father had gotten out of jail? She wouldn’t put it past him. She looked at Lowell and hoped he understood her next move.

  “I’m hiding. In case it’s him,” she whispered, then grabbed her notebook, the laptop and ran to hide behind the door in the bathroom. It was a stupid place to hide, but there was nowhere else in the tiny space. It would have to do.

  “Jelly. What are you doing?” he whispered from the bathroom’s doorway. The knock at the door became more insistent.

  “Hiding. Go see who it is. I’m… I’m scared, Lowell. I don’t want him to find me.” She shooed him away. Shaking his head, he went to the door. There was a pause, then she heard the door open. Grace sucked in a breath.

  “Detective. Hello.” The detective? Wait. Lowell said something about her returning to Sydney. Her mind whizzed. She’s from Melbourne. Her mother. Dead. Is she? What was real?

  “May I come in? I’m looking for Grace. The hospital said they released her and she’s in your care?”

  “Um, yes, please, come in.” Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. She should have closed the bathroom door. She heard the front door close, and Lowell offered the Detective and… someone else, a drink. Someone else? Who else was here? She heard Lowell stalling. Should she go out? She could ask the detective some questions. No. That would reveal she knew something more. Maybe she could just hear what the detective had to say? A cold case, she said she was working on. She knew about her father’s tattoo. The crow. It was very unusual. Distinctive, the detective called it. She was right. But who was the other person with her?

  Lowell offered them a seat on the couch. Shit.

  She took a deep breath. She had to do this. She flinched when she saw her bruised face in the mirror. She mouthed ‘you can do this’ at her reflection, then stood tall and walked out into the lounge room.

  Sitting next to the detective was a stocky man in a light grey suit. He looked older, maybe in his sixties, with hair greying at the temples. She’d seen him before. Where? Her mind raced, then zoomed in like a spotlight in the dark. He was talking to the motel clerk where they’d stayed that first night. The place with the bedbugs. They left quickly after her father had seen the man. She had her Dora backpack with her. The man sitting on Lowell’s couch was the man they’d been running from. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  She wanted to run.

  “Grace. Hello, it’s nice to see you. This is Detective Grant from the Melbourne office. My superior. We wanted to follow up with you on some questions.” Grace stared at the man. He stared right back, his eyes taking in every inch of her.

  “Hello, Grace. It’s nice to finally meet you. We’ve been looking for you a long time.”

  Detective O’Neal shot a look at him. It caught his attention, and he smiled at his colleague.

  “Yes, it’s her.”

  Grace’s heart leapt into her throat. What did he mean ‘her?’. And what did he mean he was looking for her for a long time? Lowell touched her back softly. She jumped.

  “Jelly. It’s okay. You’re okay,” he said.

  “Please, Grace, have a seat,” Detective Grant said, offering her a seat on the couch. Grace shook her head. It was the last place she wanted to be. The detective folded his arms in front of him and remained standing as well.

  “I’m sure you have a lot of questions. And, we have information we would like to share with you.” Lowell shot the detective a look of suspicion. Good. She needed him on her side, relieved now to have shared her past with him. His Dad’s nefarious connections made Lowell just as wary of the police as she was.

  “We know you’ve been through a lot, particularly the last few days,” Detective O’Neal said. She smiled empathetically. She seemed genuine, but Grace wasn’t quite sure. “We’re not here to hurt you, Grace. Just the opposite in fact. We want to protect you. You’re safe from your father now. We believe we have information that will help you.” She looked back at Lowell. His face changed from wariness to hope. She shook her head. She didn’t believe she was safe. Not with this strange man in the room. The man who’d been chasing them all these years. Who was he?

  “Maybe we should listen to what they have to say?” Lowell said quietly, then leaned in and whispered in her ear. “You’re not going anywhere with them, Jelly, I promise. I’ve got you.” Grace nervously picked at her cuticles and continued to stand, ready to flee if she had to.

  “As you know, we’re holding your father in custody. His name is not John Thompson, as we thought.” She studied Grace’s face for any sign of surprise and continued when Grace remained
stoic.

  “After the murder, your father took you and ran.” Grace jolted upright.

  “Murder?” asked Grace, nearly inaudible. The newspaper article was true then. Detective O’Neal nodded. Grace could feel Detective Grant watching her reactions. She picked her cuticles harder and lowered her head when she felt blood on her fingertips. Lowell walked over to the console table by the front door, grabbed a tissue, then handed it to her. She wrapped the tissue around her bloodied finger. Lowell reached over and took her free hand in his.

  “Yes, Grace, I’m afraid your mother was murdered,” Detective O’Neal said. Grace was quiet for a few minutes. She needed to process this. The articles online were right.

  “Your father’s name is Michael Pruitt.” She jumped when Detective Grant took over the narrative in a gravelly baritone. He took a seat beside Detective O’Neal on the couch.

  “We know he changed your last name frequently. We also know he kept your first name the same, but changed his name to John quickly. We are assuming you know that much, since you have had several names over the years. We figured out that your father moved about every six months?” The statement came out as a question. Grace didn’t move. She didn’t confirm their suspicions or deny them. The detective continued. “You’re originally from Melbourne. Your mum, Zoe, was twenty-nine when she died. She was murdered, but we’ll spare you the details.”

  “She was a model,” Detective O’Neal said, picking up the thread, then pulled a file from her bag resting against the couch. “She was very much in demand until she married your father. Your mother came from a wealthy family in Melbourne. Your grandmother has put a lot of money into trying to find you.” Grace tried to remain passive, but her wide eyes betrayed her surprise.

  “Come home to me, sweetness. You’ll be safe here,” Grace whispered.

  “Pardon?” asked Detective Grant. His eyes drilled into hers.

  “That’s what Nanny told Mummy,” she said before realising she’d spoken aloud. Grace remembered the day Nanny gave her the Raggedy Ann doll. something. Nanny took the doll and pointed to the hand-stitched heart under the dress. She whispered she’d made the doll especially for Grace, and put her own heart into it. She told her the doll would protect her and it would wrap her in love, always. Grace loved that doll.

  Could she trust their information? It confirmed what she’d read. Confirmed what she knew, especially what she’d pieced together that afternoon. She lunged ahead.

  “I thought I only dreamt those words, someone saying those words to me, but my Nanny said them. She wanted to…”

  “Save you. Both of you. Yes,” said Detective O’Neal.

  “So, Nanny is still alive?” Grace dared to ask. Both detectives nodded. She felt the lump in her throat.

  “Alive ...” she whispered.

  “And eager to speak with you. I promised her I would call immediately when we found you,” Detective Grant said. “And I will call her tonight. She will want to speak with you, of course.”

  Grace nodded. She was numb. All of this new information was too overwhelming.

  “She never gave up on finding you,” Detective O'Neal said. “She paid for my trip to Sydney when I was here last time. We didn’t know then if it was you. We wanted to be sure.”

  “But first Grace, your father is facing a lot of charges,” Detective Grant said bluntly. “He’s accused of alleged identity fraud, larceny, drug dealing and more. He’ll be incarcerated for certain, and for a long time, I imagine.”

  “But not murder?” asked Lowell. He nudged Grace and suggested they sit on the floor, but Detective Grant got up and offered his seat to Grace. She eyed him suspiciously but took the seat next to Detective O’Neal.

  “No, not murder at this time. We’re still investigating. It’s not, well, open and shut as they say in the movies,” said Detective O’Neal.

  “You don’t trust me, Grace,” Detective Grant said. Oh, he was right about that. The detective remained standing, looking down at her. Lowell took a seat on the edge of the couch, close to Grace. He wasn’t leaving her, as promised. Grace looked up at Detective Grant and shook her head.

  “No. I’ve seen you before. We ran from you,” she said, meeting his gaze.

  “I understand your hesitation. Let me explain,” he said, then surprised her by sitting on the floor opposite her.

  “Your father worked for me as a police informant. I knew him as Michael. Mike actually.”

  “He worked… undercover?” she asked. That made little sense.

  “No, not like that. He was mixed in with a dangerous crowd in Melbourne. He was known in their organisation as The Crow.”

  “Because of his tattoo,” added Detective O’Neal. She pulled a photo from a file. The detective showed Grace an old, blown-up photograph of a man who looked much like her father. He was shirtless, with a large black crow tattoo on his left shoulder. It was taken at a distance, but the tattoo stood out. It was exactly like her father’s.

  “That photo was taken by me about nineteen years ago. The, ah, organisation he was involved in, would send The Crow in if they needed to clean up criminal evidence. He worked as a landscaper, so it was a great cover. Moving from job to job was good for the organisation, and me.”

  “After your mother’s murder, we lost sight of your father. We only knew that he was still in Melbourne. He had broken ties with the organisation, and he wasn’t checking in with us.” Lowell gently squeezed her shoulder. He had to know this was hard to hear.

  “I’m sure it’s a shock to you, Grace,” said Detective O’Neal. Her eyes were kind, but Grace wondered if this was a good cop, bad cop scenario. She looked down at Detective O’Neal’s file. She saw the corner of another image peeking out.

  “Do you have any photos? Of her, before she died?” Grace asked. She couldn’t say her mother’s name to these people. Detective O’Neal reached in and pulled two photos out. The detective handed her a headshot. There was her mother. Her hair was blonde, shoulder length. Her eyes were the same colour as Grace’s, a kind of sage green. Her cheekbones were defined like Grace’s, too. She touched her mother’s face.

  “You look just like her, Jelly,” Lowell said quietly, and she nodded, slowly. “It’s no wonder he called you Zoe.” Grace stiffened.

  “What was that?” asked Detective Grant.

  Grace looked up at the detective, her fingers still tracing her mother’s face. She opened her mouth, then closed it. Looking down at the photo of her mother, she heard her mother’s voice in her head, You’re safe now, baby. They were the same words her Nanny used, but she could hear her mother’s voice clearly. It was as if her mother was speaking directly to her. She looked back at the detective, then up at Lowell. He smiled at her with reassurance. Lowell got up and made them all coffee while she told him what she remembered of her father’s attack.

  * * *

  “There are some things I don’t understand,” Grace said, looking down at the photo she couldn’t part with. She looked up at Detective O’Neal.

  “What are they? Maybe we can join the dots for you. It was a long time ago,” she said and took a sip of coffee.

  “That night. The night she died. I remember running with my father. He seemed frantic. Desperate to get away. Wanting to leave quickly. He kept saying to my mother that night, ‘what did you do?’ He kept repeating it. I remember she was terrified. But I was young. And… I keep having these nightmares, but now I don’t know where the dreams end and where reality begins.”

  “I’ll answer that one. Or at least speculate on why he said that. Around the time of your mum’s death, we learned that the organisation found out that your father was informing for us. We don’t know if your mother was killed in retaliation or whether your father killed her. We don’t think your mother knew about what your father was caught up in. But I think she suspected. She filed an AVO on your father that afternoon,” Detective Grant said.

  “An AVO?” Grace asked, confused.

  “Ah, an Ap
prehended Violence Order. It’s filed to protect victims of domestic violence. When people don’t feel safe or have been threatened by someone.”

  “It’s what we filed on my father at the time of my mum’s attack, remember?” said Lowell, softly. Yes. She remembered that now.

  “Your father was working that afternoon. His landscaping business was legit, so the police tracked him down easily. I got wind of the AVO, but I couldn’t stop it from being served. Your father went back to the organisation’s compound afterwards, but later, he disappeared. I suspect he went to find your mother.”

  “That explains the suitcase by the door. We were leaving. My mother and I,” Grace said. Detective Grant nodded.

  “Because of the AVO, your father was exposed. The organisation didn’t like that.”

  “Was he into drugs back then?” Grace asked.

  “Yes. That’s how your father got mixed up with them originally. He started using, then became a dealer to support his habit. He dug himself a hole he couldn’t get out of when he fell into debt with the wrong people.”

  Detective O’Neal added, “Your dad became a victim of his addiction. Early on, your dad was a solid member of the community. He owned a very successful business. One of his clients was a friend of your mother’s. That’s how they met. Soon after they married, he took on a client who was mixed up with the organisation. That’s when your dad got involved in drugs. For years, your grandmother tried to get you and your mother away from it all.”

  “But by then, he was involved with us, too,” said Detective Grant. “He was pretty desperate.”

  “He got clean once or twice. He was a better father during those times. Taught me how to play the guitar. Taught me how to read and write.” She laughed. “He would rap me over the knuckles if I got lazy with my writing. Said that I could do anything, be anything. Except…”