The Road To Deliverance

by James, Harper

  ‘You know what condition. She was suffering from total memory loss. A hospital was the best place for her—’

  His mouth snapped shut at the stupidity of the remark, given the grave they were standing beside. Evan was on him in a flash.

  ‘Until she killed herself.’

  ‘We thought it was the best place to help with her memory loss.’

  ‘You wanted to be there when she started remembering things, you mean. In case it had anything to do with Cole Nix.’

  Everybody saw the truth of Evan’s words register in Smith’s eyes, even if his expression said something very different. Here he was, a reasonable, decent man, a busy man with an important job, trying to be nice to some overwrought and aggressive troublemaker, bending over backwards to be nice to him, and where was it getting him?

  The overwrought and aggressive troublemaker wasn’t finished, either.

  ‘How big are those cells?’

  His face was in Smith’s, his arm rigid, pointing up and behind him in the direction of the back of the building.

  ‘The rooms—’

  ‘Cells.’

  ‘The rooms are small. It’s an old building. Things were different in those days.’

  ‘She suffered from acute claustrophobia.’

  It was as if they were back when they’d first met after Evan had been tasered and abducted. This time the roles were reversed. Smith had shouted in Evan’s face, spraying him with spittle. Now, Smith produced a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped at his chin.

  ‘We didn’t know.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘How were we supposed—’

  ‘No!’ He jabbed his finger at the ground at his feet. ‘I don’t believe that’s my wife.’

  For the second time, Smith’s composure slipped momentarily. He stared at Evan in open-mouthed disbelief. But when he spoke again, the solicitous tone was back, more unctuous than ever.

  ‘I can understand how this has come as a shock. It’s difficult to take in. I wouldn’t suggest that we disinter the remains, but . . .’ He hesitated, as if unsure of the wisdom of what he was about to say, then nodded, decision made. ‘You can see the autopsy report if you wish. There are photographs. They are conclusive proof. But they won’t be easy to look at.’

  Evan shuddered, a mental picture of the body intruding into his mind as Smith had intended. An angry raw welt around her neck, her body carved like a holiday turkey in the name of truth, so that it might yield the secret of how she had died—for the benefit of people without eyes in their head.

  They stared at each other a long time, oblivious to the wind that whipped at them, the rain, heavier now, in their faces.

  ‘Or, if you prefer, Detective Guillory can read it. She can bring a professional detachment to it. Yes, I think that would be best.’

  Evan looked away, looked up at the cold gray sky, found no help there, nor in his mud-spattered shoes. He couldn’t explain what had come over him, where the idea had come from. That he was being lied to. It passed as quickly as it came, left him feeling a little shamefaced at his outburst.

  ‘Evan?’

  It was Kate Guillory, taking his hand. Hers was cold. He had the impression of a small animal trying to find refuge in his, looking for somewhere safe and warm. He could have told it, it had made a very poor choice, would’ve been better off thrusting itself into the cold dirt at their feet.

  ‘What do you want to do? I’ll do it for you.’

  He shook his head, his mind full of the words spoken by Bill Dalton, the retired Chief Deputy Sheriff down in Laredo.

  You’ve got to let it go, both of you. Before you kill yourselves.

  Even though the words had been spoken to Evan and Jay—the man whose last name was on the grave marker at Evan’s feet—Evan had no trouble relating it to Guillory and himself just as easily. Except it would be him alone who’d be killing both of them, no assistance needed from her, only her ill-fated presence.

  So he let it go.

  Chapter 62

  EVAN AND GUILLORY watched the door to the Jerusalem Tavern swing shut on the backs of Smith and his two sidekicks, then took their seats at the bar.

  ‘What was in the envelope?’ Kieran, the Jerusalem’s manager, said as he put their beers down in front of them. ‘Nothing that’s going to come back to bite me on the ass, I hope.’

  Evan had asked him to keep the envelope with the dog tag in his safe for a couple of days. It was the safest and least obvious place he could think of. It also had an ironic sense of having come full circle. His six-year search for Sarah began after she drank too much in a bar very similar to the Jerusalem, something he’d done a time or two himself. If it hadn’t burned down some years ago, he’d have suggested to Guillory that they went there to mark the end of his journey. He’d made do with putting Frankie Ballard’s It All Started With A Beer on the jukebox.

  ‘You mean you didn’t look?’

  Kieran shook his head.

  ‘Felt it, like a kid feeling all the presents under the tree at Christmas. I didn’t open it. The faces on those guys who just left makes me think I made the right decision.’

  He wandered away to serve another customer without waiting for an answer. Guillory put her hand on Evan’s arm.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  It wasn’t an easy question. It wasn’t as difficult as the one that would be coming soon.

  ‘I don’t know. Relieved it’s all over? Like a weight has been lifted. I suppose deep down I knew this was how it would all turn out. It was hard to get my head around at the graveside, the way it was suddenly all over when Smith stopped at the grave marker. There’s your answer, deal with it. But now?’

  He shrugged, life goes on.

  ‘Why didn’t you want me to read the autopsy report?’

  That surprised him. Seemed there were two difficult questions, not one. Strangely enough, the answer was there without him having to think about it.

  ‘It didn’t seem the right way to start a new . . .’

  ‘Relationship?’

  He nodded, not what he was going to say, but that’ll do.

  ‘It would be like some weird ceremony.’ He slid off his chair, stood up straight, put a solemn expression on his face. ‘Do you, Kate Guillory, having read the autopsy report in detail and having closely scrutinized the gruesome photographs therein, take this—’

  She slapped his arm, almost knocked him into the guy behind him who was watching him like he was a strange new species of bug.

  ‘Hey! We’re not getting married.’

  He sat back down, took a long swallow of beer.

  ‘You know what I mean. I’m sure you didn’t want to do it anyway.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have minded.’

  ‘You like to make sure all your ex-rivals are safely out of the way, eh?’

  She gave him a free pass on that one. He’d recently learned about the death of his wife, after all. It wouldn’t happen again. So she asked him the difficult question instead. Somehow, he sensed it coming, the childish grin sliding off his face, replaced by something that made her want to look away. It was as if he’d demanded a disinterment after all, was watching in horror as Sarah climbed unaided from her own grave.

  ‘What made you say you didn’t believe it was her grave?’

  He did the translation.

  Do you still think it isn’t her grave?

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe because I didn’t want to say what I felt in front of Smith and those two guys—I don’t want it to be her. So I said . . .’

  He couldn’t believe it. She wasn’t paying attention. After asking him the most awkward question, she wasn’t even listening to the answer. His mouth was already open to castigate her when he realized she wasn’t only not listening, wasn’t simply distracted by something more exciting on the other side of the bar. She was somewhere else altogether, lost in her own mind.

  ‘Do you think it’s her in that grave?’

  ‘O
f course I do.’ The answer came a little too quickly, like something she’d practised in the mirror. She saw he wasn’t happy with the way she hadn’t given it any thought. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  The damage was done, the seed of doubt planted in his mind.

  ‘Tell me.’

  She shook her head, not a refusal, more a gesture of frustration that he wouldn’t ever let anything go.

  ‘It’s nothing. I got a feeling someone was watching us from one of those little windows, that’s all.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Exactly. And when I looked, there was no one there. But you asked me.’

  ‘Maybe I should’ve let you read the autopsy report after all. It’s too late now.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She made it as noncommittal as she could, thinking not too late at all, as the business card in her pocket seemed to take on a life of its own, practically vibrating in an attempt to make its presence known—the one Smith had given her with a whispered, if you change your mind, while Evan was in Kieran’s office retrieving the dog tag.

  She would go back to Smith, read the autopsy report, however difficult it might be. Because words and pictures on a page with an official stamp and a signature at the bottom trump a vague feeling of unease standing at a graveside every time.

  She wasn’t the only one with her secrets.

  The doubts first surfaced in his mind after he’d told her the whole story. Only a small misgiving, the sort of vague anxiety that comes calling at four in the morning before the gray dawn light seeps through the gap in the curtains, bathing the room in a creeping pale radiance, leaving you unable to say what was real and what was a dream. A minor inconsistency, that’s all. When he first realized that Sarah’s admission that she’d put something behind her referred not to himself but to the trauma in Cousin Jack’s basement, he’d been so relieved about how it affected him, he hadn’t considered how it affected her.

  Typical man, he heard Guillory say.

  Does the removal of the cause, also expunge the effect? Did the act of putting the nightmare behind her, of kneeling where she last knelt on the day Cousin Jack blew his young brains all over the wall—he’d seen the imprints in the dust, not said anything to Guillory—finally wash the blood from her face, scour the guilt from her soul, put an end to her fears? Jay’s story proved she’d overcome her loathing of guns. What of her claustrophobia? And if so, how did that sit with her suicide?

  They were questions for greater minds than his.

  And in the cold clear light of day they were nothing at all, didn’t give him a moment’s pause.

  Even so, no misgiving, however slight, should be completely disregarded. Which is why there’d been two USB devices in the envelope Kieran had stored in his safe—Cole Nix’s dog tag and a garden-variety thumb drive that cost Evan five bucks and was now sitting in his pocket.

  Just because you can’t open an encrypted file, doesn’t mean you can’t make a copy of it.

  Epilogue

  ‘DID YOU GET IT?’ Arthur Godwin-Browne said. ‘And for Christ’s sake, Newcomb, stop standing there like you’ve got a poker up your arse. Relax, man.’

  Newcomb—the man Evan and Guillory knew as Smith—relaxed. Not for the first time, he wished Godwin-Browne would piss off back to England. You can shove your Anglo-American special relationship up your arse, and the sooner the better.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Godwin-Browne nodded encouragingly, leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Good. We can all sleep easy now. God help us if that ever came out.’

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  Godwin-Browne gave an aggravated sigh.

  ‘I suppose we should have paid for Nix’s treatment and been done with it, saved ourselves a lot of bother.’

  Not just ourselves, Newcomb thought and kept to himself, deciding not to ask Godwin-Browne exactly how many lives he thought that particular show of stubbornness had destroyed. It is what it is, que sera, sera and all that sort of thing.

  ‘And did Buckley believe you?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Think so, or know so?’

  Newcomb didn’t point out that it was impossible to know anything, beyond what was in one’s own head. He sure as hell knew what he’d like to do to the man in front of him with his fingers splayed across his beer belly—a belly grown huge on warm, English beer.

  ‘I’m not sure about the cop, Guillory,’ he said instead. ‘Buckley doesn’t know his ass’—he put a lot of emphasis on the pronunciation—‘from a hole in the ground. She’s a different kettle of fish. Buckley even came up with his own explanation. Apparently, she’s claustrophobic. Very convenient.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘It means I don’t agree with you. It was post-natal depression, pure and simple. And that’s another thing. That snafu with you talking about her condition. Jesus, man, you might as well have been wearing a white coat with a stethoscope or speculum or whatever it’s called around your neck. What the hell did you think you were playing at?’

  Newcomb studied his shoes, made a mental note to have a not-so-quiet word with the two operatives who’d been with him at the graveside, the same useless pair who’d let Buckley and Guillory kick their arses, left them spread all over the floor in the derelict house. Somebody had been telling tales out of school, would soon be seeking alternative employment as a result. See how that goes with goddamn imbecile on your reference. They weren’t the only ones at fault, either. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. Because his slip of the tongue wasn’t the only case of sloppiness. He cleared his throat, might as well get it over with.

  Godwin-Browne was ahead of him, the amiable buffoon persona nothing more than a trap for the unwary underling, the potbelly and friendly Uncle Arthur exterior a disguise for the ridge of sharp steel underneath.

  ‘Your timeline’s all wrong, too.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Don’t give me that Sir? bollocks with that simpering look on your face.’

  It struck Newcomb that bollocks was a word with many and varied meanings. He suspected that a lot of them were made up as Godwin-Browne went along.

  ‘You didn’t do the maths.’ Godwin-Browne put the letter s on the end of the word as he always did, another expression that irritated the hell out of Newcomb. ‘You assumed that Nix was the father—’

  ‘We didn’t know Buckley existed.’

  Godwin-Browne’s expression suggested that when he wanted interruptions, he’d bloody well ask for them.

  ‘I don’t know what it’s like in this country,’ he said, making this country sounds like a place where childbirth is a ritual that takes place behind a bush, ‘but where I come from women carry a child for nine months.’

  He waited until Newcomb agreed that yes, that was the case in this country too.

  ‘So Buckley’s the bloody father, you idiot.’

  Newcomb nodded sadly.

  ‘Does it make a difference now we know it’s not Nix’s?’

  ‘Don’t see why it should. Do you?’

  Newcomb shook his head. To be fair, now they had the dog tag back safely, they didn’t need the leverage. So why create unnecessary complications?

  ‘Good,’ Godwin-Browne said. ‘You think Buckley had any idea? Given the bloody great clue you gave him?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  Godwin-Browne made a pompous harrumph in his throat. It was another thing that made Newcomb want to kick out four or five of his teeth.

  ‘At least you sound a bit more positive about that.’

  Newcomb nodded enthusiastically, decided there was no need to burden his boss with his doubts about Guillory on that score too, the look she’d given him as he tried to recover from his slip.

  ‘Keep an eye on him all the same. Guildford, too.’

  Smiling obsequiously, Newcomb tuned out the voice of his superior as he prattled on about how Guildford was a strange name for a person, it was the name of
the town where his unmarried sister lived, likely to stay that way too given what she looked like, he’d seen better looking foxhounds.

  He laughed so hard, went so red in the face when the laugh turned into a whistling wheeze, Newcomb thought his prayers had been answered, that his boss was only seconds away from having a seizure. He could picture himself in that chair, as he’d led Buckley and Guillory to believe.

  It wasn’t to be.

  ‘How many times has the stupid woman tried to kill herself now?’ Godwin-Browne said once he’d gotten his breath back, lifting his bulk off his chair to scratch his arse.

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