Behind her the furniture and boxes from the basement are precariously stacked along one wall. It looks like all it would take is one good gust of wind to send the whole lot tumbling down.
*
Ana rests the shotgun down by the door and sets the baby monitor up on the kitchen bench. The green light shows it’s activated but all is silent in the basement. She checks the volume, which is already pushed to full. If he moves she should hear it.
As she stands there, leaning into the bench, she feels her eyelids droop and catches herself. It’s been a long day but the light is fading outside now. With the dark coming she already feels safer. Less visible.
She looks over at River, who is curled up on his bed on the floor. Comfortable and pain free. At least for now. After his initial excitement he slept through most of the day, blessedly untouched by the gravity of the bind she has put them in.
Ana’s ears are so tuned to the monitor that she doesn’t register the more distant sound of a car approaching until it pulls up outside and the engine is turned off. The slam of a car door is followed by silence as whoever it is approaches her front door. Even though she knows it’s coming Ana still starts at the sharp rapping. She shoots a hand out to stop River reacting. He remains still and silent, waiting for her next command.
It’s not quite the end of the business day yet so it can’t be Lenny and it’s not his knock anyway. It’s more likely Ruth come to check on River even though Ana told her not to. She has no intention of answering despite her car in the driveway being a dead giveaway that she’s probably home. It’s unlikely either Ruth or Lenny will leave her alone for long.
The sudden spike of a radio receiver alerts her to the fact that it’s neither of them. Ana grabs the monitor, turning it off. She skulks across the room and peers down the hallway, wincing at the quiet creaks of the floorboards under her feet. She can hear the low voice of the man on the other side of the door as he talks into the radio, but not what he’s saying. As another three raps rebound towards her, Ana makes a silent dash down the hall and slips into the living room. Through the window she catches a glimpse of a uniformed cop walking away from the door.
Was it the grey nomads in the campervan? Were they suspicious, after all? She felt sure the old guy had bought her story but his wife was impossible to read.
She can clearly see her car with its damaged bonnet on the driveway. All she had to do when she got home was put it in the garage but she couldn’t even get that much right. The cop slows as he reaches it and glances back at the house but Ana has already dodged out of sight. She remains hidden until she hears his engine start, waiting until all sound of his car has disappeared before pulling the curtains closed.
A folded piece of paper has been pushed under the front door. Ana snatches it up and unfolds it, revealing Rebecca Marsden’s smiling face. The tension immediately leaves her body. He wasn’t here for her. They’re door knocking, seeking information to help trace Rebecca’s final movements, that’s all.
But that also means he’ll probably be back.
She needs to get her fucking car out of the driveway.
*
With the car safely locked away in the garage Ana returns to the kitchen.
The flyer is on the table, face up, as she left it. Ana turns it over, hiding her face, those eyes that pulled her in and made her a part of all this in the first place. She can’t think about her now. Instead, she gives in to the urge to sink down with River, curling her body around his sleeping form, her hand resting heavily on his side. As soon as she puts her head down she knows it’ll be a while before she can get back up again.
As she drifts off there are two sets of eyes burning into hers. One set green, eyes she wants to see again. The other so dark they’re almost black.
She sat at the other end of the bar, pretending she didn’t know him, making him work for it. He liked that, how she called the shots. Liked the feeling of the two of them there, together but suspended in their separate spaces.
He watched them orbit around her, all of them sensing something different about her. They had no chance. She was already his. They’d only fucked a few times by then but they both knew it.
That ginger prick was practically begging for it and he was the one who followed her outside when she left. The moment he laid him out in the carpark, felt his nose breaking under his fist, he realised she’d set it up that way. Wanting to see what he’d do.
She was waiting for him in the back of his van, already naked under her dress. Her cunt wet and ready for him.
They didn’t care if anyone saw them. This was their place, where they could do whatever the hell they wanted.
NINETEEN
It’s dark when Ana suddenly wakes. She sits straight up, confused and instantly on guard, her eyes latching onto the comforting glow coming from the hallway light. It takes only seconds for the events of the preceding day to crash into her brain, freshly flooding her body with adrenaline.
Next to her River has also raised his head, eyes shining in the dark. She rests her hand on his side, the gesture more to settle herself than him.
Ana isn’t sure how long she’s been asleep but she knows something specific woke her. For a moment she thinks it’s the cop come back and is expecting to hear a knock on the door, but it’s still dark and all is quiet outside.
Then she hears it again.
Muttering.
Ana scrambles up and grabs the monitor, turning the volume right up, but he’s already stopped. She imagines him kneeling on the mattress, head angled up to the ceiling, feeling her presence directly above him.
Ana sneaks out into the garage and peers in through her peephole.
Nothing has changed down there. It seems he was just talking in his sleep. She hopes that’s a good sign. At least it means there’s some activity going on in his brain.
*
Ana’s face is lit up by the screen of her laptop as she hunches in the dark at the kitchen table. There are only two things in the house not found or inherited. The laptop she uses to access the Internet and the widescreen television in the living room. Both luxuries she couldn’t afford but never regretted buying. She hasn’t turned on either for weeks. Like River, she too has been disappearing a little more each day, her tether to the outside world becoming ever more tenuous.
Since she woke, she’s been hunting out information, trying to work out what the cops know. There’s no mention of the van having been found and nothing to indicate whether they’ve connected the man in her basement to Rebecca yet. They did find her car left in the carpark at Rocky’s, which has now become the centre of attention. Ana was so focused on them that day she didn’t take much notice of the other vehicles. She wonders now if she should help push things along by making an anonymous call about the van. It would be one way of finding out who he is.
On the screen in front of her Rebecca Marsden’s Facebook page is still loading. The whole idea of Facebook makes Ana’s skin crawl but she justifies the use of it on occasion as a more remote, less risky, window into other people’s lives. It can be instructive even if it’s only some idealised version of themselves that most people post. She wonders how many of their ‘friends’ they convince by that version. How much they convince themselves.
Rebecca’s profile photo is the same blandly pleasant image the media have been using, the same one that graces the police flyer on the table in front of her. It’s a few years old, Ana realises, as are all of her photos, or at least the ones already loaded. There’s nothing there of her current life. It even lists her as living in Sydney, presumably where she lived before she came to Tasmania. It seems Rebecca didn’t even try to convince herself of the perfection of her life here. Did she exist in Sydney, his Rebecca? Or was she a creation of this place, this time?
A few people have already posted memorials, all expressing shock and sympathy for her family for the loss of such a vibrant, happy soul. Nowhere is there even a hint of the woman Ana glimpsed in the back of
that van. Ana has only discovered one thing that speaks of her from one of the latest news articles. Not only did she not turn up to her TAFE class on the night Ana saw her – as it turns out she was studying, or pretending to study, website design – she never turned up at all. Not to a single class the whole semester. That’s almost three months during which this ‘vibrant, happy woman’ was lying to her family and friends, which could also mean that what Ana witnessed was not a one-off thing.
A muffled sound draws her attention back to the man downstairs.
She looks across at River, who is sitting up, staring intently at the monitor, which true to the shop assistant’s word is crystal clear. This time the man is not talking in his sleep. He’s on the move again but, unlike last time, he’s not in the dark. Ana hears a groan and a stumble. Then nothing, until the urgent rattling of the basement door.
In a flash, Ana is up and running, startling the hell out of River, her hip colliding painfully with the edge of the kitchen table in her haste to get to the garage.
*
The basement door is shaking with the force of the beating. It’s like a wild animal is trying to break through from the other side.
Ana shrinks back until she feels the hard cold edges of her car against the back of her legs. Conflicting feelings rise from the base of her gut. She’s relieved he’s awake but thought he’d be weaker after being out for so long. She’s completely freaked out by it, there’s no doubt about that – fear has every hair on her body standing on end – but she’s also strangely energised by the intensity of the trapped man, a reaction she finds unsettling.
She jumps when River appears at her side barking at the door, drawing energy from the man just as she is. She quiets him with an urgent gesture but silence has already fallen on the other side.
‘Hello?’
His voice is muffled but clearly audible through the door.
‘Is someone there?’
Ana goes into stealth mode. She sneaks across the garage and quietly slides her old single bed mattress out from the items stacked against the wall but doesn’t anticipate one of the boxes balanced behind it toppling to the ground. It spills a mess of women’s clothing across the concrete, including a strappy high-heeled shoe.
Slut shoes.
Ana’s eyes lock onto it. For a moment, all she sees are her mother’s feet stalking through the house searching for the little girl hiding under the bed with car keys grasped in her hand in a misguided attempt to keep her from going out. One Ana would pay for later.
‘I know you’re there. I can see you.’
Ana tears her eyes away from the shoe and dodges back against the wall by the door. She should have realised her peephole would also allow him to see out. From that angle he couldn’t have seen much. Her body maybe. Not her face.
‘What the hell is this? What do you want from me?!’
Ana leans into the wood until she can hear his panicked breathing through the door. A huge bang close to her head jerks her back.
‘Let me the fuck out! Help! Can anybody hear me?! Hello!’
His desperate calls escalate and Ana realises she’s hearing him in stereo, his voice behind the door echoed by a much louder one coming from inside the house. It’s unlikely anyone is around to hear him, especially in the middle of the night, but it still makes her frantic, enough to send her running back into the kitchen where she slams her hand down on the monitor, cutting him off.
*
The clock on the dash reads 6:37. Ana sits frozen behind the steering wheel, staring through the window to where the basement door would be visible if not for the single mattress wedged in front as soundproofing.
He beat on the door for so long she was sure he was going to break through.
She sits there now exhausted and stupidly grateful for one previously meaningless detail – that the door opens into the basement rather than out into the garage. If it was the other way around she’s sure the old hinges would have given way.
The monitor rests in her lap, quiet now but for the soft shuffling of his feet as he continues to stalk around his prison.
She’s been locked in the car for almost an hour with the engine running, garage doors hanging open behind her. Poised for a quick getaway. River sat vigil with her for most of it but he’s now snoring, curled up beside her on the passenger seat.
From outside comes the loud screech of a bird, and then another. Ana recognises the strident pitch – it’s the black cockatoos. She was taking a risk leaving the garage open so close to morning and it’s getting light quickly now. Through the rearview mirror she can see behind her to the front garden beyond. The start of a day like any other. It all looks reassuringly ordinary.
There’s not much she can do without drawing attention to herself now that it’s day again but she’s back-pedalling furiously on her decision to keep him down there longer. She could just drive out of here and explain what happened. She got frightened and covered her tracks but she knows now that was wrong. She might not even have to go back down there. The police could just take him away and all this would be over.
But she’s done more than just cover her tracks now. She’s drugged him with stolen pills. One offence on top of another. Would it even matter that they weren’t stolen for that purpose?
He came out of nowhere, threw himself in front of your car. When you got out to make sure he was okay he grabbed you, forced you to take him home and hide him. Made you lie to that nice old couple.
That could work if he’s guilty – who would trust a killer’s version of events over that of a scared girl’s? – but questions would be asked, her anonymity gone. The last in the line of troubled Saltzman women and she the most troubling of the three.
And what if it turns out he’s not guilty? What if she is doing this to an innocent man? Only a deranged or psychotic person would do that.
Through the monitor something has changed inside the basement. He sounds disorientated. Ana brings it close to her ear. Is he crying?
She jumps as a pure animal roar is followed by the sound of something hitting the door and clattering down the stairs.
There is only one thing that could be. He held out for a long time but he finally drank the juice and is starting to feel the effects. She can hear him desperately trying to keep himself awake.
Ana glances down at the dash. The petrol light has come on, the gauge hovering just above empty. Ana turns the engine off but remains there listening as he slowly loses the fight. A half-formed moan comes through the monitor, followed by a scraping sound, like some strange beast dragging itself across the ground. After that he falls silent.
Ana reaches for the door but stops mid-movement.
She can smell him, like he’s right here with her in the car. She looks around and discovers his jacket behind her seat, still lying where she tossed it when she hauled him into the car. She pulls it over and brings it close, inhaling his scent, surprised she didn’t notice it before.
Fear can shut down the senses. Her grandmother taught her that too but Ana has never directly experienced it until now.
His smell is foreign but not alien. If she had to describe it she’d say it was pleasant and strangely comforting. Strange because there’s nothing at all comforting about the man trapped in her basement. At least not when he’s awake.
As she lingers there, breathing him in, she feels something through the fabric. From an inside pocket she pulls a worn leather wallet. The first thing she sees is his driver’s licence, clearly visible through the plastic pocket. Like most ID photos it’s not flattering but it is unmistakably him, if a slightly younger version. The name reads Luke Mullen. She’s already gotten used to referring to him in her head as just ‘him’ or ‘the man’. Of course she knew he had a name but now that she knows it, it somehow changes everything. He looks so … ordinary. Just like Rebecca.
Just like you do on your driver’s licence.
Don’t you always hear that though? The serial killer who lived acr
oss the road, who always seemed like such a nice man. So polite and sweet with the kids. Even seemingly ordinary people are capable of terrible things.
What about that mouse of a woman who kidnapped a man and held him captive in her basement?
The address on the licence is on the other side of the river in one of the newer generic suburbs full of modern prefab houses. She passed right by the turn-off to it yesterday on her way out to the hardware store.
Full of ordinary people living ordinary lives. The perfect place to blend in.
Ana puts the wallet aside and climbs out of the car. She pauses briefly, hanging on to the door while she finds her feet and recovers her equilibrium, before cautiously sneaking back over to the basement door. After pulling the mattress away she crouches down to peer through the peephole.
The empty juice bottle lies at the bottom of the stairs. Beyond that, the man – Luke – is sprawled half off the mattress. Again she feels that satisfying surge of power. He did exactly what she imagined he would when she left the bottle by the bed. He would have been so thirsty when he woke that even if he suspected the juice was drugged, even if he could taste it as he drank, he still wouldn’t have been able to resist it.
He won’t be so keen the next time he sees a juice bottle.
Ana quickly unlocks the door and enters, taking the stairs two at a time until she hits the bottom. Even before she reaches him she can see he’s a mess, his hands grazed and bleeding. He’s also wet himself. She balks, confronted by the prospect of having to clean him up, but she can’t leave him lying in his own filth. Killer or not.
She takes a deep breath and launches into nurse mode, straining to heft him back onto the mattress. Without stopping she quickly peels off his jeans and underpants and covers his nakedness with the blanket. She backs away, cradling his clothes in her arms.
On the landing she stops to check the basement door. It held up better than he did but one of the wooden panels now has a crack running through it.
As she steps back into the garage Ana realises she left River in the car. He’s sitting up now watching her through the side window. She drops the clothes by the washing machine and sets the cycle before she opens the door to lift him down. He heads straight for the pile of clothes. She knows what he’s up to as soon as he starts sniffing at them and snatches them away just as he’s trying to cock his leg and piss.
Lonely Girl Page 12
