by Tim Weaver
The woman got up as soon as she saw Mills approaching and, when he reached the table, they exchanged a kiss on the cheek. He then said hello to the kids and they responded politely. They weren’t his, not only because I knew already he didn’t have any children, but because none of them – not Mills or the kids – hugged. The woman wasn’t his wife either, because he was divorced, but they were much more at ease.
They looked like a couple who’d just started dating.
He said something to the woman and then started speaking to the kids, rolling his eyes and pulling a face, and they responded in kind, smiling, the boy laughing a little. Mills was so different from the man I’d seen at Black Gale this morning – so warm, his face so expressive and mobile – I barely recognized him. When we’d spoken earlier, he’d hardly moved a muscle, his eyes fixed on me; here, he was the hero cop the media had reported on.
I stood there watching, unsure what to make of it all, as he appeared to ask the three of them what they wanted before heading across the room to the canteen. After he was gone, I watched the mother and her kids, watched how they reacted, waiting for them to look in Mills’s direction and say something about him. But if they did, it could only have been good: they all smiled and the mother made the boy laugh again.
I left the restaurant and headed outside to my car.
They parted company at the mill an hour later. I watched in my rear-view mirror as Mills kissed the woman on the cheek again and said goodbye to the kids, then, as they both left the car park in their vehicles, I let Mills go and fell into line behind the woman. She was heading in the opposite direction to Mills, towards Bradford.
On the outskirts of the city, she pulled into a petrol station.
Apart from us, it was deserted.
I pulled into the pump beside hers, then unscrewed the cap on my Audi. The kids were in the back, the girl on her phone, the boy playing a game on a tablet. I started filling up my car, waiting for her to make eye contact with me, and – as soon as she did – I smiled and did a subtle double take.
‘Sorry for staring,’ I said. ‘It’s just, I’m sure we’ve met.’
She frowned. ‘I don’t … I don’t think so.’
‘You’re Isaac’s friend, aren’t you?’
She looked surprised.
‘Um … Yes. How did you …?’
This time, she was embarrassed that she hadn’t remembered me.
‘How is Isaac?’
‘He’s good,’ she said, still confused. ‘We just met him, actually.’
‘That’s great, uh … Sorry. This is terrible. I can’t remember your name.’
‘Melia.’
‘Melia. Right. I’m Mike.’
‘Hey,’ she said, and grimaced. ‘I’m so sorry, Mike. When was it we met?’
‘Oh, a few weeks ago. In town.’
She nodded politely, as if she remembered.
‘So how long is it that you two have been going out now?’ I asked, not giving her the chance to ask me specifics about our last meeting.
‘It’ll be three months yesterday.’
‘Wow, that’s great. Isaac’s such a lovely guy.’
She nodded. ‘He is. The kids love him too.’
I glanced at her children. ‘Yeah, he always was good with kids.’
A lovely guy, who was good with kids.
Who might have bugged nine missing people.
Who might know where they are.
I filled the rest of our conversation with bland talk about the weather, and once her tank was full, Melia went in and paid. While she was inside I got out my notebook and wrote down her registration plate. I wasn’t sure what I planned to do with it.
I wasn’t sure what to do about any of this.
Because now more than ever, I had no idea who the real Isaac Mills was.
The Suicide: Part 2
1985
Los Angeles | Wednesday 24 July
The two of them found some shade beneath the crooked branches of an elderberry tree fifteen feet from where the body of Donald Klein had been discovered. Jo still held the blue murder book in her hands, the photo from Klein’s first and only arrest staring out at her. She glanced at Ray Callson and said, ‘You really think Klein was working with someone?’
He shrugged. ‘He had the acid containers in his car and I’ll bet, over the next few days, the techs who worked that scene at the motel will also find a bunch of prints belonging to Donald Klein on surfaces in that room. It’ll be a slam dunk.’
‘But?’
Callson eyed her, saying nothing.
‘Is it Klein’s rap sheet that’s eating at you?’ she asked. ‘The kid got busted with six ounces of grass. The way things are right now, the way drug sentencing works, that means ninety days down in Terminal Island. But it was only weed – it wasn’t like he was slinging dope – and being a pothead is a pretty long way from being a killer.’ She looked at the crime scene. ‘Is that what you don’t like?’
He smiled at her, clearly impressed by her instincts.
‘The sort of shit you saw up in that motel room yesterday,’ Callson said, ‘I’ve seen stuff like that before. For my sins, I’ve seen it over and over.’ He stopped himself, obviously wondering if he should continue. He swallowed, using a finger on his right hand to smooth out the edges of his moustache. ‘Trying to dissolve a body in acid …’
‘It takes a certain type of killer.’
‘Right. And a certain way of thinking.’
‘And that’s not Klein?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t know the kid. All I know is that he lived with his disabled mom in Van Nuys and he looked after her real good. Like, this kid cared for her, he was kind and thoughtful. Sure, he smoked some grass, maybe dealt a little, but when I told her Klein was dead, his mom hit the floor. Literally, dropped like a stone. He was everything to her.’ Callson held out his hands. ‘I also picked up the phone and spoke to one of the guards down at Terminal Island. It’s a low-security prison, so the very worst person Klein could have shared a cell with was some white-collar criminal who stole a bunch of money from a pension fund. But this guard, he said Klein was shit-scared for the entire time he was inside. I mean, he reckons this kid was crying himself to sleep every night.’ Callson looked at the spot in which Klein had been discovered. ‘Does any of that sound like a killer to you?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘It doesn’t sound like much of one to me either.’
‘It sounds like someone who could be manipulated easily.’
‘Or blackmailed.’
Jo nodded, looking at the file again. ‘The manager at the motel reckons he saw a station wagon there around the time Gabriel Wilzon died. I think I’ve managed to locate the vehicle: it’s registered to a supplies yard over in Industry. Except, the guy who runs it is the only one who has access to the cars, and he just doesn’t feel like …’ She faded out.
Callson eyed her. ‘Like our killer?’
‘Right.’ She tapped the file with a finger. ‘I asked for an employee list and he’s mailing that over to me, so it should be in the office by the time I get back. But I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘Klein had a blue Fairmont. He’s never been employed by this place, Caraca BuildIt. The witness that puts a station wagon at the motel in the first place is …’ She paused, thinking of the Star Inn manager. ‘I don’t think he’s lying to me, but I don’t think he’s completely credible. I guess what I’m saying is, I get what you’re telling me about Klein, and I agree, but I can’t prove it.’ She smiled. ‘Yet.’
A smile retraced the corner of Callson’s lips too, and then he blinked some of the sweat away from his eyes. ‘That binder you got there, I haven’t put all of what’s written in it into the system yet, which is probably why you didn’t get a hit on the teletypes for the acid when you were looking for it yesterday, or on the NCIC. I’m sorry about that. I’m old, set in my ways. I’m sure computers are gonna make our lives a whole hell of a lot easier in the fut
ure, but I’m a paper guy. I started with paper back in the fifties and I’m going to finish with it. I prefer to get it down in black and white because it helps me to see straight, and once I can see straight, I can see what’s off. So when I started to get the scent something wasn’t right here, I picked up the phone and called your office because I figured, if there was no link to any open-unsolved we had, the Sheriff’s Department was a good next bet. My only hope – when I picked up that phone – was that, if someone in your place had something for me, it would be someone like you.’
‘Someone like me?’
The light gradually started to vanish from Callson’s eyes, and something else moved into its place: a cloud, pregnant with pain.
‘It’s not in there either,’ he said quietly, pointing to the murder book, his hands opening and closing as he talked, like he was restless, or frustrated. ‘What we just talked about, I mean. I haven’t put in my suspicions about Klein not working alone. To be frank, no one gives much of a shit about anyone except the Night Stalker at the moment, plus it’s the same old story at our place as I’m sure it is at yours: we’re way down on our clearance rate because we’re so understaffed and crimes aren’t getting solved. So, if I go to my LT and float this idea in front of him – that Klein was just a support act; that whatever he did in that motel room, he either did with someone else, or did because someone else made him, and that I need more time to push it all the way to the finish line – I’m going to get ignored, or reprimanded, or most likely laughed out of the room. And you know, I’m just …’ His words ground to a halt. ‘I’m exhausted.’
This was what she’d seen when she’d first met Callson: the slowness he’d had in his stride, the weight he carried, it wasn’t a physical impairment, but damage that was deeper, more difficult to shift. He was tired because something was hurting him.
He smiled again. ‘Sorry. I’m maybe being too honest here.’
‘It’s okay,’ Jo said.
‘It’s just, after all these years, I’ve learned a few things, and one of them is the ability to call a person right, to get an accurate read on them.’ He used his fingers to flatten his moustache again. ‘And this case, it’ll need someone like you to take it on.’
She frowned at him.
‘Someone tough,’ he said, ‘but someone who cares.’
‘What do you mean, “take it on”?’
‘The men I work with, a lot of them are corrupt, most of them are racist, and all of them are out for their own. It’s about whatever they can get for themselves first, and solving crimes second. I knew it before I retired and came back, and I definitely know it now.’ He glanced at the view again, as if drawn to it, but all Jo could do was stare at him, transfixed, shocked by his words. ‘You know, sometimes you can come to a place like this and the air is so unexpectedly still, so clear, that for a while you can forget all about the imperfections, all the shit that makes your life less bright than it should be. On a morning like this, it’s easy to see that beauty in so many things, and see it with absolute clarity: the colour of the sky, the warmth of the sun on your skin before it gets too hot, the immensity of a view like this, the purity of the sound. You can see it all, and you’re suddenly as far away from the pain in your life as it’s possible to get.’ He stopped. ‘But it never lasts long.’
Jo didn’t know how to respond to that.
To any of it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, holding up a hand to Jo, and for the first time she could see something else: he had tears in his eyes. ‘I know I’m making you uncomfortable. I’m sorry. This is so unprofessional.’ He took a long, deep breath. ‘It’s just … it’s my wife.’
Jo took a step forward. ‘What about her?’
He swallowed, tried to blink the tears away.
‘Ray?’
‘She’s dying,’ he said. ‘She has Alzheimer’s.’
‘Shit, I’m so sorry.’
‘They reckon she maybe has a week left.’
‘Shit,’ Jo said, the word like an exhalation, ‘that’s terrible, Ray,’ and as she took another step towards Callson, drawn to the sadness flowing out of him, she spun back to this morning, to the drive in, and of her final thought before she’d got to the office.
It didn’t matter how much you loved a person.
Eventually, you had to let them go.
Callson forced a smile. ‘I’ve made a fool of myself.’
‘No,’ Jo said, stopping short of him, uncertain if she should reach out and offer him a hand. In the end she did, squeezing him above the elbow, and he smiled at her again. ‘Shouldn’t you be where your wife is?’ she said. ‘Don’t you want to be with her?’
‘My girls are there,’ he replied softly. ‘I’ll go after this.’
They stood there for a moment, the sun baking the mud, the grass, the hills. From their left, a couple were approaching, a black Labrador running ahead of them.
‘I got a couple of daughters,’ he said, smiling again, trying to put her at ease. ‘One of them is about your age. You remind me of her, actually. They’re tough girls. They’re beautiful and loving and kind, and I’m so proud of them both, but they’re tough. I brought them up to be like that, because women get treated like shit, every day, all the time, which I always find ironic. Because whenever we bring couples in – the parents of kids who’ve been killed, or husband-and-wife teams who’ve robbed a bank, or abused children – it’s always the man that breaks first. Always. Men, they’re weak, that’s what I’ve come to learn doing this job. We cry first and we confess first.’
He wiped his eyes.
‘I guess I’m here proving my point, right?’ He dabbed his eyes again, forcing a smile. ‘In a week’s time, my wife’s not going to be around any more and, man, that’s just hurting me so much … It’s hurting me so much, I can barely even think straight …’
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ Jo said.
Callson nodded, pointing to the file.
‘Find out who really killed that kid in the tub.’
‘Donald Klein is an LAPD case, Ray.’
‘You find out who killed that kid, you won’t need Klein, or the LAPD. That motel is in West Hollywood and that’s your patch. That’s all that matters here.’
She looked down at the file.
‘And you?’ she asked.
‘I’m just glad you landed this,’ he said, by way of a response.
‘Look, Ray, that’s kind of you, but you don’t even know me.’
‘I know enough,’ he replied, and glanced again at where Donald Klein had been found. ‘I should never have come back after I retired. I’ve been coasting in this job for too long. I can barely concentrate any more, barely even function. When I get home in the evenings, and I think of Georgette in that nursing home, I just get drunk and cry. I’m fucked, that’s the truth of it. I’m an old man, standing here, confessing everything to a woman I only met an hour ago. So I’m sorry you had to hear this. I’m sorry you had to be the one that was standing here when all this bullshit finally poured out of me. But you know what? I stopped believing in providence a long time ago. Maybe I stopped believing the first time I ever turned up to a crime scene and saw the damage one person could inflict upon another, and then I definitely stopped believing when Georgette got sick. It’s hard to believe in divine government when the person you love doesn’t even recognize you. But you landing this case, of all the cases you could have landed …’
Jo stared at him.
‘There’s something about it,’ he said, looking at her in the eyes now, suddenly focused and serious, despite the tears. ‘This case, I mean. There’s something about it. After thirty years, you get a sense for these things, and this’ – he gestured to the file – ‘it’s giving off all the wrong vibes. So it’ll need someone strong and relentless to work it, someone who can give it the time it needs. It’ll need someone like you. Because if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s this: the person who forced Klein to help him, the pe
rson who really came up with the plan to dump that body in a tub full of acid, is still out there somewhere – and whoever they are, they’re really fucking dangerous.’
27
Pulling the Audi into the near-empty car park of the motorway hotel, I switched off the engine and peered through the doors into reception. I thought about Isaac Mills, about the possibility that he’d already been here, using the audio recordings of Healy and me as a springboard for finding out where we were staying. In my head, on the drive over from Keighley, I built a picture of him tearing the paperwork off the wall of the room.
But then it began to blur.
And, as it did, I pictured the photograph of him, in the days after he’d stopped an armed robbery, and I saw him at the mill with the family, and replayed the words of the woman he was dating, and the image I had of him reduced to a shadow.
All I was left with then was what I knew for sure: Patrick Perry had called an old source at the Met in London and asked him for information on a missing student.
Beatrix Steards.
Getting out of the car, I headed up to the room. An intense flood of relief hit me when I found everything we’d collated – all the paperwork, the cuttings, the notes – exactly as we’d left them.
As quickly as possible, I began packing it all up, until I was left with just the photograph of the villagers at the Gibbses’ dinner table. I held it in my hands for a second, pinched between my fingers, my eyes moving between the nine villagers, their clothes as ingrained in my head as the expression on their faces. Freda’s floral dress. Emiline’s red-and-blue one. Chris’s checked shirt. Patrick’s green V-neck sweater. Randolph’s dark brown cords.
Where are you all?
I dropped the photo into the box, on top of everything else, and headed back out to the car, loading it all into the boot. Once I was done, I paid the bill for both rooms and then nosed out of the services and on to the motorway.
This time, I drove east.
I’d already called ahead and paid for two nights in a holiday cottage on a farm south of York, and once I found it, I unloaded everything again, chatted politely to the owner of the cottage, and then began the process of sticking everything on to the wall of the living room.
