The Road To Deliverance

by James, Harper

  ‘Obviously it didn’t.’

  ‘No. I didn’t get past first base. I found the bar no problem. Trouble was somebody burned it to the ground first.’

  Evan remembered reading about it. It hadn’t made much of an impact on him at the time. There were suggestions of an insurance scam. He’d have paid more attention if it had been the Jerusalem Tavern. As it was, he’d been too wrapped up in Sarah’s disappearance to give it any thought.

  ‘I even collected hair from her brush and a glass with her fingerprints without her knowing, gave them to a guy I know. It seems nobody ever fingerprinted her or took a DNA sample. So I gave up.’

  ‘You could’ve gone to the police.’

  ‘I could.’ He looked Evan straight in the eye. His mouth twitched. ‘You went to the police, didn’t you? How’d that work out?’

  Evan had to give him that one.

  ‘Maybe by then I didn’t want to find out either. I’d done my best, hit a brick wall. Now I could go back to the woman I was becoming increasingly attached to with an easy conscience. And without having to face the fallout in whatever form it might have taken if I’d gone back and said, hey, guess what—you’re Sarah Buckley. Adios, nice knowing you.’

  Evan couldn’t blame him. He’d still punch him if it wasn’t for the fact that they’d kill each other once one of them started it. His head suddenly snapped around at the sound of a car coming up the dirt road from the highway. Jay raised his hand, waved to an old guy in a blue pickup as he drove by in a cloud of dust. He couldn’t keep the smile off his lips or out of his voice when he saw Evan’s reaction.

  ‘She’s not about to turn up with the week’s groceries if that’s what you were thinking. Hi honey, look what I got you for dinner. And don’t worry, she never called me that.’

  ‘Me neither. Thank God.’

  Suddenly they were both grinning like idiots. The shared bond of the woman they’d both known, the horror at the prospect of her calling them honey, teased a tad more truth out of Jay too.

  ‘I know at least some of the reason why she wasn’t interested in finding out who she was or trying to get back to wherever home was.’

  Evan prepared himself for the worst. Except it couldn’t be anything to do with him if Sarah didn’t even remember he existed. He didn’t know if that made it better or worse.

  ‘She was obsessed with Cole. With getting justice for him, making them, whoever they are, pay for what they did to him. She was worried if she found out who she really was she’d have to go back. And that would take her away from her new purpose in life.’

  Something still didn’t sound right to Evan. He, of all people, knew what she was like when she got her teeth into something. Even so, to develop such an obsession over a man she’d only known for forty-eight hours was extreme even for her.

  Jay saw the doubts in his face, made it a little clearer.

  ‘It was about what they did to her as well. She was convinced they tried to kill her.’

  Chapter 45

  ‘IT’S UP TO YOU whether you want to watch it.’

  Evan stared at the phone in Jay’s hand as he extended his arm towards him. On the screen he saw a city sidewalk, cars parked at the curb, a crowd of people outside a café, everything frozen in time and space, waiting for somebody to tap the little white play triangle.

  He thought about it. Or did he? Did he just sit there, his mind a blank, trying not to think about whether he wanted to see a video of Sarah lying in the road in the aftermath of the accident that erased him from her memory. Day one in the life of the new Sarah. Sarah the stranger.

  ‘I think I’ll pass.’

  Jay pulled back his hand. Then Evan changed his mind.

  ‘No. Let me see it.’

  Jay’s hand seemed to move in slow motion towards him again. Whether that was his own perception or a reluctance on Jay’s part to follow through on an offer he never thought would be taken up, he didn’t know.

  Evan took the phone, didn’t hit play. Held it in his lap, not looking at it.

  ‘How did you get this?’

  ‘Sarah got a call on Cole’s phone right before she was run over. She was convinced that call was made deliberately to distract her as she stepped out into the road.’

  Evan resisted the temptation to look at the phone in his hand, make the road he was talking about more real.

  ‘Did she think the accident was deliberate too?’

  Jay nodded apologetically, don’t blame me, I’m only the messenger.

  ‘I tried to find out who made the call but the account had been closed and none of the call logs were available. So I went back to the cafe in Mobile where we’d met, hoping someone might know the owner of the car that ran her over.

  ‘I asked around. Really laid it on heavy with the waitress. How the police were dragging their heels while she’s trying to get her life back together, learning to walk on two sticks . . . I gave her the works. She was in tears by the time I’d finished. She pointed out this sick bastard sitting in the cafe playing with his phone. He’d caught the whole thing on video. Not the accident, but everything that happened after he heard the first scream and his sick bastard antenna got a hard-on. That’s what you’re holding now.’

  Evan stared at the frozen video frame, at the cars and the voyeuristic everyday folk hoping to spice up a tedious day with somebody else’s misfortune, bring a thrill into their dreary lives. Still he didn’t hit play.

  ‘The little prick wouldn’t let me see it at first. I reckon he was trying to figure out how much to charge me.’

  ‘What changed his mind?’

  Jay was shaking his head at the memory, despair in his eyes that humanity refused to suspend its grossness for even one minute. Evan’s question brought a grim smile to his lips.

  ‘His finger got broken as I tried to pry the phone out of his hand. Or was that the other hand? He got a nosebleed right about then too. I nearly stuffed the phone down his throat when I saw Sarah lying in a crumpled heap on the ground. The sick bastard must have pushed his way through the crowd to get a nice close-up shot. Hoping to get some blood on film, maybe a broken bone or two, some brains spilling out onto the pavement.’

  He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Evan could have told him that shit doesn’t work. And they’d just finished the last two bottles of the only thing that does. Except right now, nothing in a bottle was going to make things better either.

  ‘Luckily, he was a conscientious sick bastard. He’d panned around, got the whole scene. That included the hand of the guy who tried to rip the dog tag from Sarah’s neck. And it also included the license plate of the SUV that ran her down. I forwarded the whole video to my phone. Then I asked a guy I know to trace the license plate number.’

  He didn’t say anything more, let Evan fill in the blanks.

  ‘No trace?’

  ‘Nothing. That license plate hasn’t ever existed.’

  Evan had the impression of things coming together, of a presence he’d sensed lurking in the shadows, dogging his every move, finally revealing itself as the capricious, mischievous sprite it was. The words Jay had spoken were almost identical to those Kate Guillory had used the previous evening: It doesn’t exist. Talking about another license plate number on a vehicle that might have been following her.

  He waved Jay’s phone at him in the vain hope that there was a humdrum, everyday explanation, one that laughed in the face of conspiracy theories and the paranoid men who spouted them.

  ‘Did you show this to the guy who told you that?’

  Jay said he had better things to waste his time doing. Then he extended his hand, gestured with his chin at the phone.

  Watch it or give it back.

  Evan hit play without further hesitation.

  As the little screen flickered into motion, it was as if the traffic on the distant highway stopped and flies hung silently suspended, Jay’s hand frozen in mid-air.

  He heard excited voices, panic and confusion as ev
erybody gave an opinion. And in the middle of the chaos a stranger in a jumbled pile of limbs in the middle of the road. The stranger he was still married to. She looked different, her hair, the expression on her face—because to tell the truth he’d never seen her after she’d been run over before.

  He watched the video pan around to the monstrous black SUV that had hit her. It could have been the vehicle Guillory had described to him. Except he didn’t see an automobile on the little screen in his hand, a shining example in every sense of man’s ingenuity and skill. He saw something altogether more primeval, some huge jungle beast crouched over its prey while the rest of the pack looked on hungrily.

  The video ended and it was as if the world around him released its breath, and movement resumed.

  ‘Send it to me,’ he said as he handed the phone back, despite the fact that every detail had already been absorbed into his subconscious, like water soaking into a sponge, information quietly filling the gaps and hollows in his mind, waiting for the day when something would squeeze it out again.

  Jay nodded, waited to see if he would say anything more or simply sit there in silence forever. He was left in no doubt when Evan felt ready to speak again, his voice as hard and unforgiving as the blade of a shovel.

  ‘Tell me about the dog tag.’

  Chapter 46

  ‘WRITE THIS LICENSE plate number down,’ Evan whispered.

  A loud bang in his ear made him jump, then a hissed expletive coming from a long way off.

  ‘Sorry,’ Guillory said, ‘I dropped the phone getting my notebook out. And speak up. I can’t hear you.’

  He’d called her when Jay said he needed to use the head, maybe re-stock the fridge with beer while he was at it. From the smell wafting out onto the porch, he was making toast too. For reasons he couldn’t explain he didn’t want to share his suspicions with him yet.

  ‘Compare that to the vehicle that followed you the other day.’

  If she noticed the way he didn’t say the vehicle you thought was maybe following you, she didn’t let on. He didn’t have to wait long.

  ‘That’s a neat party trick,’ she said.

  ‘You’re sure it’s the same?’

  It was the same voice he’d heard come out of his mouth when talking to Jay. The one that said, I want to hear a humdrum, everyday explanation. I do not want to hear that the same vehicle that ran Sarah down six years ago is now tailing the woman who might be about to take her place in my life.

  He was out of luck.

  ‘Positive. Where did you get this?’ Immediately she answered her own question with the obvious answer, the one anyone would give if they didn’t know any better. ‘It’s not following you, is it?’

  ‘No.’

  And then the roles were reversed, her telling him to spit it out and he was surprised at the emotion in her voice, as if she’d somehow guessed the significance.

  ‘At least it means it’s not the pedophile gang following you,’ he said, avoiding the question.

  ‘What?’

  For a split second he thought he’d made a mistake, it was all in his mind. Then a heavy breath came down the line that spoke of the futility of denying it to a man who knew her every bit as well as she knew him.

  ‘That obvious, huh?’

  ‘To a highly-skilled investigator like me, yeah.’

  He had to wait quite a while for her to finish laughing, a smile on his own lips at the sound of the genuine pleasure he’d given her.

  ‘That was just what I needed. You got any more good ones?’

  For a moment he thought he’d gotten away with it, that she’d forgotten he hadn’t answered her question. For a moment.

  ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

  Where to start? How do you condense everything it had taken Jay all day to tell him into a couple minutes? He didn’t want to tell her over the phone, either. So he gave her the minimum she needed to know which was almost nothing. He knew there’d be a price to pay down the road.

  ‘Cole Nix has a half-brother. Jay Killinger. He showed me a video of a black SUV with that license plate number.’

  ‘A video of what?’

  He mouthed the words along with her, hesitated before he answered.

  ‘An accident.’ The word stuck in his throat, Jay’s words in his mind: She was convinced they tried to kill her.

  ‘Involving the black SUV?’

  ‘And Sarah.’

  The silence that came down the line was deafening, an all-encompassing void, a complete and utter nothingness. Then a little voice, adrift somewhere in the middle of all that emptiness.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Evan.’

  He had to put her out of her misery quickly.

  ‘No, it’s not like that. She wasn’t killed. She lost her memory. I don’t know what happened after that. I’m hoping this guy Killinger has got some of the answers.’

  A hundred questions came flooding down the line all at once, overwhelming him.

  ‘I don’t want to tell you over the phone. It’d take too long anyway.’

  ‘You should have let me come with you.’

  The accusation—because that’s how it was received even if not meant that way—cut him like a knife, ripping out his entrails, spilling them at his feet. It wouldn’t have helped to say that if they’d tried to do that, then neither of them would have gotten very far. So he bit his tongue and said nothing, tried only to rid his mind of the picture of her eyes filled with hurt, sockets of pain that he’d poked his finger into. And then he relented a little, did say something.

  ‘I know.’

  Because that’s all she needed to hear at that point, an acknowledgement.

  ‘It’s all connected,’ he said. ‘What happened to Sarah back then and everything that’s going on now.’

  ‘And it’s all to do with Cole Nix. Was—’

  ‘Yeah. Sarah was the woman with Nix when he was shot. Adamson was there too.’

  ‘He’s been telling the truth all along.’

  She’d always thought Adamson was stringing him along, taking advantage of his desperation. She’d told him so at every available opportunity too. So he did his best to keep the I told you so out of his voice, kept it flat, emotionless.

  ‘He only knew a very small part of it. The stuff that happened right at the end. It wouldn’t have helped if I hadn’t found Jay.’

  ‘That’s very diplomatic of you.’

  Despite the polite dancing around each other he felt what she really wanted to say coming down the line at him.

  Just tell me what happened.

  And who knows, maybe he’d have tried. That was when Jay pushed open the door with his foot, a plate piled high with buttered toast in each hand.

  ‘Gotta go.’ He felt like a merciless tease, giving her a taste and then leaving her hanging. Eyeing the plates in Jay’s hands, he swallowed hungrily.

  ‘It’s all I’ve got in the house,’ Jay said apologetically, then grinned. ‘Until Sarah gets back with the groceries, of course.’

  Evan shrugged, looks good enough to me.

  ‘Aren’t you having any?’

  Chapter 47

  ‘SHE HAD a recurring nightmare.’

  Jay placed his empty plate carefully under his chair as he said it. Evan reckoned it had less to do with excessive tidiness, more to do with avoiding his eyes while he made a statement that by definition admitted he’d been sleeping with the wife of the man in front of him.

  ‘The first time she had it was in the hospital, right after the accident.’

  Evan hadn’t shared with him the contents of his conversation with Guillory, the details that made it clear in his mind that whatever else it might have been, it was no accident.

  ‘She’d suddenly sit bolt upright screaming stop over and over, arm up in front of her face, trying to protect herself.’

  Evan resisted the urge to raise his own arm as Jay was raising his while he talked. Nonetheless, he was there, at the scene, his mind filled with
images from the video he’d watched on Jay’s phone, images that were burned into his subconscious every bit as permanently as the brand on Jay’s stomach. And equally as painfully.

  ‘She was obsessed with Cole’s dog tag. They come in pairs. If you’re killed in action, one tag stays with your body, the other one is kept by the unit. Cole’s was different. One of the tags was a regular tag with his personal details on it—’

  ‘And the other one was a USB memory stick?’

  Jay cocked his head like a curious dog might.

  ‘I’ve seen them advertised. You keep your medical details and next of kin on them in case of a road accident, that sort of thing.’

  Jay nodded, news to me, then continued.

  ‘When Sarah first showed it to me, neither of us noticed anything unusual about it. It’s not immediately apparent if you don’t know. It flips open to reveal the contact which is otherwise hidden.’ He pulled out his phone, scrolled through his photo gallery. ‘Here, look at that.’

  Evan wanted to tell him he didn’t need to justify himself. Both he and Sarah were in shock after Cole was killed. It was understandable that they didn’t notice. He looked anyway. Jay was right. It was a clever design, very slim and not immediately obvious. More than that, it was covered in dirt and grime. As if a crude attempt had been made to hide its true purpose.

  ‘You didn’t think anything about the fact that those guys tried to get it off her?’

  ‘I didn’t know at the time. Sarah’s memory came back in dribs and drabs. It didn’t all come gushing back in one go. It was very disjointed, not in any particular order. And she wouldn’t tell me what the nightmare was about.’

  Evan looked at him like he was making up words.

  ‘Why not?’

  Jay dropped his eyes once more, his face creasing unhappily. Evan felt like asking if he wanted him to go sit in the car and they could discuss it over the phone if it was that difficult.