Having never been a man of frail emotion, he knew how evil mankind could be. Regrettably, he had witnessed horrendous practices before. In some instances, Sam would have had to keep filming the barbaric rapes and tortures of victims by angry mobs in Africa, watching bleeding and weeping women set on fire, and not helping, all for the sake of exposing the truth. Rushing to their aid would have meant certain death and the purpose of reporting such horrible treatment would have been in vain.
All this swam around in his recollection, reminding him of how comfortable his life had become since meeting Dave Purdue. He had spent years in relative safety – relative – compared to the scenes he used to be confronted with. It had been years since he had to drink away the image of his fiancé’s face being blown away by an arms dealer right in front of him. Only now that he had to confront that searing level of brutality again, did Sam realize just how well his soul had healed over the past few years. He had been having it easy, he reckoned.
There was a lot of mental hardening to be done before he could interview Mrs. Cruz so soon after her little boy’s death. For once, he did not know how to conduct an interview, given the sensitive subject. How would he ask those important, but terrible, questions? They were bound to leave the boy’s family with more guilt and sorrow, after he had obtained his precious information. Nervous about the coming hours, Sam wished he could shoot down a few doubles, neat, at a local bar to take the edge off, but he knew it would reduce his reputation and professionalism.
Sam’s GPS told him to turn right off the IP6, to head for Coimbra, a city inland from Peniche. Peter Carroll had arranged for Sam to meet Mrs. Cruz at a local hotel restaurant for a brief interview and assured the distraught mother that it was all in aid of finding her son’s killer. Peter did not mention anything about a serial killer, for the sake of the family, and only offered to assist in getting their story out to the world so that more people would be aware. Sonia Cruz was very forthcoming to the kind former police officer whose voice sounded determined. It was obvious in his use of terminology that Peter was a veteran of law enforcement, a man to be trusted to relentlessly pursue her son’s killer.
At the Tivoli Coimbra, Sam parked his car in the Manuel Rodrigues lane opposite the hotel and grabbed his luggage. For convenience, Peter had booked Sam into the hotel where he was to conduct the interview with Mario Cruz’s mother. Sam checked in twenty minutes before his appointment with the woman, readying his high definition Canon, the small one, as not to intimidate her on first meeting. Sam needed to look professional while down-to-earth, the champion of the police man with the kind voice.
Reception called his room at exactly two o’ clock in the afternoon, summoning him downstairs.
“Senhor Cleave?” the receptionist asked.
“Aye,” Sam answered.
“A lady called Sonia Cruz is at reception for you?” the receptionist reported in a heavy accent.
“Obrigado,” Sam replied. “Tell her I shall be down shortly.”
In the elevator, Sam could not help but feel desperately anxious. Under the glaring white light of the elevator, he felt naked. Every wrinkle and every follicle on his unshaven face seemed magnified in it, just like his steeping emotions were illuminating his compassion.
‘Whatever you do, remember, it is just another murder case. You are a fucking professional. Suck it up!’ his inner voice urged without mercy. Before he could collect himself, the elevator stopped and the silver doors slid open to present the lobby. It was time.
Sam stepped out, keeping his chin up to look more composed. Like a cancerous mass, the strange new emotional handicap grew inside him. Perplexed at its sudden onset, Sam knew he would have to address it head-on in the coming days, otherwise it would plummet him into despair.
The entrance of the hotel blinded him as he approached the reception desk, but he saw the robust beauty in black standing there. She was wearing a scarf over her hair and sunglasses in the fashion of a Sixties film star. She turned and stared at him, clearly familiar with him. After all, Sam was an award-wining journalist and a bit of a celebrity in European circles for his work.
“Senhor Cleave,” she greeted. “Forgive me, but my English is not too good.”
Sam smiled, “Neither is mine, I’m afraid.” Extending his hand to her, he added, “Shall I treat you to a coffee and dessert in the restaurant here?”
“That is nice,” she forced a smile. “Thank you, yes.”
He noticed that she was clutching a tissue in her one hand and guessed what the sunglasses were for. This was going to be daunting for both of them after all, he decided. Sam pulled up a chair for the attractive Sonia Cruz, and tried to keep his camera from open sight. He feared that he would come across as a press vulture if it was in plain sight, but she set him at ease.
“That is expensive, right?” she remarked, pointing at the Canon.
“Aye,” he eagerly engaged, if only to make small talk away from the obvious reason for their meeting. “I had to give up a case of whiskey to buy this.”
Sonia tried to laugh. She honestly found him sweet and she had a similar sense of humor, but laughing had become alien to her in the past weeks since her boy died. It was the first time she attempted to chuckle since the race up the sandy hill with her children, but she pushed that notion far away into the back of her mind. Back there, she also pushed the fevered argument she had with her husband, Carlos, just before coming here to meet with what Carlos called ‘a vicious scavenger’.
Without much of an appetite, she was polite enough to order a custard dessert and macchiato, as per Sam Cleave’s invitation. He was delighted that she appeased him in these circumstances. Unwilling to peruse the menu, Sam ordered the same. It was time to break the ice and take the plunge to the dark waters of the cold truth, and contrary to what he was accustomed to, Sam Cleave was terrified.
11
Markings of Fear
For the first twenty minutes, things went smoothly due to Sam’s choice of mild, general type questions and his eloquent delivery of the slightly harder ones. Fortunately, his subject was not a vulnerable and weepy person, it appeared. She took the tougher questions in stride and answered honestly, with a kind of inner strength Sam admired.
“More coffee?” the waiter asked Sam.
“Aye, thank you,” Sam replied, pushing his cup forward. “And you, Mrs. Cruz?”
“Por favor,” she answered. “And please call me Sonia, Mr. Cleave.”
“And I will be Sam to you,” he answered quickly. Nearing the end of the harrowing interview, he dreaded the last few questions. Deep inside, Sam wondered if she had seen the post mortem pictures of her little boy, those very pictures he had in his satchel up in his room. He was not a father, yet he could strangely empathize with her sorrow on a very personal level.
While they waited for the third cup of coffee after finishing their custard and cinnamon pudding, Sam mustered the courage to just bolt ahead and get it over with. On some subliminal level, the perceptive Sonia could see this. “Just ask, Sam.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Listen, have you ever cut your finger by accident and the cut was so deep that it did not bleed? It did not even hurt at all, because it was too deep?” she asked him. It did not take much for Sam to decipher her meaning.
“Alright,” he sighed. “You really do not have to answer any of this.”
“Will it help you find the filho da puta who took my child from me?” she sneered with a tone between hurt and hate.
“Aye. It will,” he said almost immediately, without hesitation.
“Ask,” she said firmly. Sam liked her a lot. The fire in Sonia Cruz reminded him so much of Nina. He did not care surrounding himself with feisty, difficult women. Sam liked the challenge and the brute honesty of these types of women. Still, he would still try to be sensitive to the situation.
“You say you were nowhere near the beach when Mario was…taken, correct?” he started, to which she shook her
head. “And when did you realize what had happened?”
“When my daughter came running up the hill. She was hysterical, and I knew, I knew something terrible happened,” she recounted. Her voice caught on some of the words, as the nightmare replayed in her head, but she soldiered on. “Carla, my daughter, she babbled about the kite falling from the sky and then she just went quiet. Her friend, Franca, told me the rest. They were all with Carla on the beach while Mario was flying his kite, so none of them saw when and where he went missing.”
“How was he found then?” Sam almost winced.
She took a deep breath. Sam rested his hand on hers to let her know that he understood the weightiness of the question. Her hand was ice cold and clammy, but she finally managed to force the words out. “His body was brought out by the tide while we were walking the beach, calling him.” Sam could see the distress on the corners of her mouth as she hesitated. Then, she released a sickening giggle, a sign of deep emotional turmoil threatening to turn to madness. “You know what was funny?”
‘I do not want to hear this, I am sure,’ Sam thought, but he let her speak while she could.
“We were calling him, screaming at the top of our lungs. Me, Carla and her friend, along with her family. All of us stayed long after everyone left, because of the storm that was becoming bad. The waves were so big like high walls and the sea roared under the dark clouds, you know. It came out of nowhere, or that was how it felt. Then I walked into the ocean to see better,” she said in a voice so calm that made his hair stand on end. “I said, Mario, baby, can you show Mama where you are? And just then, the ocean gave him to me. She put him right in my arms.”
“Jesus,” Sam muttered.
“O sim,” she affirmed. “His little cold, blue body floated just under the top of the water and bumped right into my body. You know, all I could think was, at least he was not swollen yet and the fish left him alone. Sam, I was relieved that my dead son was not dead long enough to look like shark meat. Can you believe that? All I could think was that his corpse was still pretty. Meu Deus!”
This was where she could not handle any more. Since Sam was unable to see her eyes behind the shades, he had been guessing her demeanor thus far by her mouth. Her lips and chin began to quiver uncontrollably.
“Okay, let us stop this,” Sam decided, just as the coffee arrived. The waiter looked worried as the lady sat sobbing softly, head bowed, into her tissue. Sam looked at the waiter and gestured politely for him to bring the check, while his other hand was holding Sonia’s. When the waiter turned, the edge of his empty tray caught on Sonia’s handbag, dislodging it from where it was slung over her chair. It fell to the floor.
“Oh, desculpas, Senhora!” the mortified young man apologized, bending over to pick up at the same time that Sonia did the same. In the attempt, her sunglasses came off. The waiter noticed the same thig Sam did, but out of respect, neither said anything about her black eye and the carefully concealed bruise just above her cheekbone. Sonia acted as if nothing was amiss, and casually replaced her sunglasses.
“Are there more questions, Sam?” she asked, hastening through her last cup of coffee.
“No, no. We are done. Once again, thank you so much for coming out to see me,” Sam dribbled through the obligatory parts, while all he could think of was the beating she got from whom he assumed was her husband.
She nodded and blew her nose daintily. Finishing the last of her coffee, she inhaled slowly. “Are you wondering why my husband hit me?” she asked straight up. Sam was astonished, but while she was on the subject, he figured why not.
“Aye, though it is none of my business,” he replied as casually as he could.
“Oh, it is your business. It is actually completely your business, because you, this meeting, is the reason I got a hiding this morning,” she confessed. He was trying to figure out if she meant for the immense guilt he felt, or if she simply needed to sate his curiosity to avoid the awkward moment. Sam Cleave, the fastest tongue in the land, was speechless for a response.
She continued, “He did not want me to speak to anyone about this, just like he did not want us to go to town that day to see the fireworks. My husband has always been a quick-tempered controlling sort, but he had never before resorted to physical violence at home, Sam. Much as he screamed at me, threatened me, his voice was not full of anger. It was full of fear. Even when he hit me to keep me from coming to meet with you, I could feel that his rage was overrunning with fear. Of what, I do not know, but I came anyway, because finding my son’s killer is much more important than whatever Carlos is afraid of.”
“You have no idea what it is? Did you dare ask him?” Sam asked.
“He will not tell me. He denies he is scared. It only makes him angrier. When we found out my son was missing, Carlos did not even look shocked, even though he was clearly stunned the moment he heard. He did not even come with me to look for him! Why would he not bother? It was like he knew! Like he expected it. But I dare not ask. Perhaps you should,” she suggested.
The thought intrigued Sam as much as it set off red lights in his common sense. While he was groping for a proper answer, the waiter returned with the bill, saving him from having to give her a definite response.
“I have your number, Sonia. Let me call you later tonight to see if I can fit in an interview with Carlos,” Sam told her, feigning interest.
‘Depends on how big this Carlos guy is,’ his inner voice added to the decision-making process. ‘Then again, any guy who hits a girl should be pummeled right. I do not give a fuck how much fear is in his rage.’
“Alright. Thank you for the coffee and sweets,” she concluded with a faint smile, briefly strained for his sake. Sam rose to bid her goodbye before paying the bill. He watched her disappear around the corner and released an audible sigh of relief.
Some of her words would not leave him, though, haunting him. Those merry descriptions bordering on the madness of a mourning mother ate at him more than the prospect of the discussion while he was driving to Coimbra. Sam signed the bill and walked straight across the dining hall to the bar. He plonked himself down on a stool at the studded leather counter.
“Senhor?” the friendly bartender waited for Sam’s order.
“What is your strongest liquor?” Sam asked, sounding desperate.
The barman shrugged and pulled a contemplative face. “Eh, maybe aguardente?”
“Will it hurt my insides?” Sam asked.
The man leaned closer to Sam and whispered, “Senhor, it is more nasty than the devil’s whore.”
“Give me a double,” Sam approved.
12
Chasing Shadows
Night fell over Oban. It was the third night since Nina suffered the unpleasant surprise of Kingsley’s visit, bringing with him the thug he was lying to stay alive, Terry Jones. To her relief, both men had left quite willingly after she had refused to assist them concerning their query about the modern sect of Templars. Nina was familiar with unsavory people and their ways, and the fact that Terry Jones left her house after an obvious threat did not sit well with her. Had he tried to kill her, she would have harbored more trust in his intentions than that which she felt at his easy dismissal. It was too easy, she knew.
Because of this unexpected intrusion, she elected to hold off on collecting her new kitten from the vet. It would take a lot of attention and care, and she was not ready to have to protect it at this point, not with some lunatic devising God knows what plan to get back at her. Sleep came only from exhaustion and even then, her dreams were muddled and ill. Nina hoped that the condition she was in was born from her own paranoia, but she had gut instincts like this before and they had never failed her before.
Her house felt like a coffin, a mausoleum already decked out for her, so she decided to spend as much time away from it. At the gym, she gave the weights a wide berth in favor of cardio. That was the first telling of her off kilter disposition. On an elliptical machine, she thought she would enjo
y blaring music from her iPod that could help her forget that gun in her face a few nights before. But Nina could not have been more wrong. The repetitive training that took no focus and really no effort only gave her more space in her psyche to relive that evening, to remember the words and the odd phone call that summoned some sort of fate for her she could not untangle.
Eventually the suspense drove her nuts, so she hit the showers. After gym, she decided to have her dinner at Betsy’s restaurant on Stevenson Street, right next to Betsy’s B&B. While in the shower at the gym, however, Nina discovered just how disturbing Terry’s threat really was. Being accustomed to people like him, she did not feel particularly worried at the time he made that call, but now things had changed. Her scot-free escape from the situation only exacerbated every hour after the two men left her house.
Her mind would not let her rest. That thug’s words, his tone of voice and the subject matter he was after, all culminated in a heavy river of rushing suspicion. The thought of going home after dinner made her heart jump.
“Hey, you are going to run the water heater out of commission, Dr. Gould,” she heard outside her screen. The obscured glass could not successfully hide the identity of the woman who called her out.
“With the amount I pay in gym fees, Laura, they should give me a goddamn…,” Nina bit short when she realized what she was about to say. A smile started on her face.
“A goddamn what, Nina?” the GP asked as she entered the booth next to Nina’s.
Nina laughed in a thunderous cackle, a proper throw back of the head. “I was about to say I deserve a goddamn golden shower for the money I pay here!” she shrieked in a fit of giggles, joined shortly after by the local pediatrician she had befriended some months before. The two women squealed with laughter for a while, one of the perks of late training. You had the change rooms all to yourself.
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