by Alex Barclay
Parnum recoiled. ‘Are you out of your mind? I can’t, I…’
‘Now let me think. What about Mrs Police Chief and the baby Chiefs? They like to know your secret? What about Reverend Ellis? What about the amazing grace of the First Baptist Church Choir?’
Parnum remained silent. Eventually he spoke. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘No – you’ll DO what you can do.’
‘You’ve murdered five women.’
‘D’ya think?’
Parnum swallowed.
‘Oh, don’t you judge me – don’t you dare judge me, you motherfuckin’ son of a bitch.’
Waves of nausea swept over Parnum. He gripped the table edge.
‘You were there Friday night—’
‘If I was there Friday night, Chief, how could I have gone all-in against your poker of sevens?’
‘I wouldn’t play poker with a—’
‘You wouldn’t play poker with me?’ He snorted. ‘Anyway, wasn’t just me. Donnie Riggs was there too. We wouldn’t have had any beer if it wasn’t for Donnie.’
‘Sweet Jesus. Donnie Riggs. We never—’
‘I guess your life’s about flashin’ before your eyes right now, big boy.’
‘You sick son of a bitch.’
‘Me?’ Duke laughed loud.
‘I know about Rachel Wade,’ said Parnum. ‘You let your uncle go to jail…’
Duke’s eyes narrowed. ‘What? Do I look like a judge to you? Do I look like twelve angry men to you? Or,’ he stopped, ‘maybe I look like the fat fuckin’ donut boys who worked the case. You got the wrong guy. And then, all I could do was support him. I went to that trial every day—’
‘Sat there and listened to the details of your—’
‘Watch your mouth now. You watch what you’re sayin’ there. Wouldn’t want to make any accusations you can’t back up, now, would you?’
‘Bill Rawlins was a good man,’ said Parnum.
‘Never said he wasn’t.’
‘His handkerchief was found in that girl’s mouth…’
Parnum shook his head. ‘You let him die.’
‘I will say to you again. I let nothing happen. I wasn’t there in that prison cell when he clutched his heart and fell to the floor. If I was, I would have been pumpin’ his chest a lot quicker than the retards who found him.’
‘You are one—’
‘Shh, shh, shh, now.’
The room was silent. Outside, Marcy Winbaum banged a drawer shut. The phone rang.
The air conditioning hummed.
Duke spoke. ‘Do you think you’re a good man, Chief? Do you?’
‘Uh, I, uh…’
‘DO you?’ boomed Duke. ‘Do you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know, I knew that. I knew that’s what you thought. Which makes this all the more pleasurable.’ Duke thrust his crotch out and grabbed it with his hand. ‘This way, it’s win-win for me. I get to keep on keepin’ on. I get the goddamn purity of the pleasure that that brings. And for my bonus round, I know that every night when you lie in bed you will be thinkin’ about me. And this time, you won’t be gettin’ no woody in your shorts. You’ll be gettin’ the cold sweat of fear soakin’ into your sheets.’
Parnum was rigid. Duke eased himself up and bent low into his ashen face. He leaned in and kissed him hard on the cheek, trailing his tongue down his jaw. Parnum shuddered.
‘My ass may have been yours at one time, Parnum…but now your ass is well and truly mine.’ He kicked back his chair and walked out of the room.
‘Nothin’ to see here,’ he said to the deputy as he stepped into the cool night air.
THIRTY-ONE
D.I. O’Connor wrenched open the door to the interview room and charged down the corridor. He grabbed the phone from the front desk and punched in the number for Mountcannon station. He was instantly diverted back to his own switchboard. He ran for his car. The siren rang out through the city as he sped onto the road to the small village.
Joe was bent over the drawer in the kitchen, dragging his hands frantically through blister packs and bottles of medicine that would do nothing to stop the pain building all over his skull. He filled a glass of water and tried to drink, but the cold ripped through his teeth and made his head spin. His mind ran through images like slides from a projector, flashing white corpses and black blood. He tried desperately not to imagine Anna among them, injured or dead or…he couldn’t consider what else Duke Rawlins was capable of. Somewhere inside him, a shutter descended to preserve his sanity. He willed himself to think of every beautiful image he had of Anna – walking down the aisle, holding Shaun on her hip, painting their new apartment, standing in the hallway with her tousled hair when he was going to sleep in the spare room.
He wiped away tears and concentrated on the man he knew he would be forced to face. Duke Rawlins had gone to jail for a minor stabbing, but had got away with his vilest crimes. He had managed to get an alibi from a Police Chief that lasted him over ten years. Joe knew he was unlikely to ever find out why. What mattered now was that he had been sucked into the world of a psychopath. His actions on a sunny day in a New York park had brought this killer to his family and to the village they loved. Joe decided he deserved the pain he was feeling.
His one consolation was that he had already struck what he hoped was the final blow to Rawlins’ plan. He had stripped it of its reason for being. He had told him that his wife and his best friend had betrayed him. Then he realised, with a desperate surge of panic, that he had just created a situation where Duke Rawlins had nothing to lose.
The phone rang.
‘There is somebody waitin’ for you at the end of your garden,’ said Duke. ‘And I mean…Some. Body.’
Joe’s stomach spasmed. He ran, grabbing a torch and sprinting from the house into the dusk. He slipped on the damp grass, breaking his fall with his hand, pushing himself up again and running until he came close enough to see the figure lying face down by a tangle of wild bushes. He moved the beam slowly across the grass towards it. His breath caught, then slipped out as a small, guilty sigh of relief. Siobhán Fallon had been trying to run away when two arrows from behind had pierced her flesh. Blood pooled out from under her, showing up black against the grass. Joe recognised the slash on her arm. He remembered the way she had looked at it, surprise replaced by anger. Now he understood. It was the first wound from a man who had promised her the world to join his game, then taken it all back when her part was played.
The phone rang in Joe’s pocket. He pulled it out. After a silence that stretched for several seconds, Joe realised Duke was struggling to breathe he was laughing so hard.
‘Aw, man!’ he said, chuckling. ‘Aw, man.’ Then his voice dropped to a growl. ‘Happy now? It’s just you and me – one on one.’
Joe closed his eyes and spoke slowly through a mouth he could barely open.
‘In some dark corner of your mind, you think what you do is noble, that what you do when you hunt down and rape and murder is noble. You have your technique, your games, your bullshit. But when you strip away the technique, Rawlins, what’s left? Vengeance. Plain old vengeance. A low motivation that makes you no different to the next pathetic piece of shit and the next and the next.’
‘And if you got the chance,’ said Duke, ‘you wouldn’t put a bullet through my heart for what I’m about to do?’
‘What do you mean what you’re about to do?’ Then Joe pulled the phone away from his ear and shouted into it. ‘You know what? I’m not playing anymore, you cowardly, fucked-up son of a bitch!’ He threw the phone across the grass. His vocal cords were raw. Pain erupted across his face. He buried his head in his hands. Then he realised Duke Rawlins wouldn’t be getting any pleasure from all this if he wasn’t watching. So he stopped and looked around, focusing on the best vantage point he could see.
‘Don’t you want the file?’ he roared into the dark. ‘I’ve got the file.’
Suddenly a thick beam of light swept
across him and out to sea.
‘Ah, for God’s sake,’ said O’Connor, leaning to his left, trying to watch the road and punch Frank’s number into the new mobile phone mounted by his radio. The tiny joystick in the centre was lost under his finger. ‘You fiddley little shit,’ he said, pulling into the side of the road. He took the phone in his hand and scrolled to Frank’s number. He dialled and got his message minder.
‘Where are you, you dozy…’ He instantly felt bad. He liked Frank. But right now, he wanted to slap him, even though this was something everyone had missed. O’Connor swerved back onto the road and put his foot to the floor. What happened to Katie was so wrong. A wave of sadness swept over him as he thought of a girl he knew only from a photograph. With D.I. Myles O’Connor at the helm, they had all let her down. His name would always be associated with a travesty of an investigation. All he could do now was get there in time to bring it to the only close that would do Katie Lawson justice.
Richie Bates had parked the squad car carefully behind a row of bushes outside Shore’s Rock. He was transfixed by Joe Lucchesi, cast in an eerie light from an upturned torch on his lawn, slamming something into the air and roaring. He saw him run for the lighthouse.
O’Connor screeched to a stop outside the station within an inch of the wall. He jumped out and ran for the door, about to slam the heel of his hand into the intercom. He stopped, took a deep breath and pressed the button gently. He waited. He rang again. He shouted for Frank. There was no answer.
Anna was slipping in and out of consciousness, slumped forward, folded over the rope that bound her to the ladder, weak with the pressure that cut through her stomach. Her knees had buckled, her feet desperate to take the weight. Bound by thin strips of wire, her wrists were curled tight behind her. A thick piece of tape stretched across her mouth.
‘Jesus Christ!’ said Joe, his voice cracking. Her eyes were closed, her body limp. He slipped the file into his jacket and pulled the tape from her mouth. He reached around the back of the ladder and pulled at the bloody rope. It quickly slipped free and hung in loose folds around her thighs. He tried to pull her close but his hand slid across her lower back with a sensation that turned his stomach. He drew his hand up slowly and, over her shoulder, saw his hand and forearm dripping with blood. He looked down. Her sweatshirt and the top of her jeans were soaked.
Suddenly, he heard footsteps, then a roar behind him. ‘Mom! Mom!’
He spun around. Shaun stood and stared at his parents, shocked into silence.
‘I told you to stay in the house,’ Joe yelled over the noise. Upstairs, the wind howled around the lantern house, slamming the door loudly back and forth.
Joe shouted at him, ‘Close the door up there.’
Joe tried to ease Anna onto the floor in the tiny space and had to kick the loose rope out from under her…rope that had come free with the smallest of efforts. A chill swept over him with a buried memory. Too. Easy. Anna spasmed against him and she was awake. She shook her head violently from side to side. Her eyes were screaming.
Shaun pushed the door closed against the force of the wind. It smashed back against him, knocking him to the ground.
Joe looked up towards the noise and saw Duke Rawlins through the trap door, his face tight against Shaun’s, the dried blood of his knife wound flaking onto the boy’s skin.
‘You just don’t fuckin’ learn, do you?’ said Duke. ‘Things just don’t fall into your lap, detective.’ He grabbed Shaun harder, jerking him back, pushing a curved blade against his throat.
‘Oh,’ he said, reaching down to Joe, handing him a string. Joe took it and looked up to see a silver helium balloon floating at the other end. Duke smiled. ‘Happy birthday.’
As Frank Deegan drove away from the mountains, his mobile beeped back to life. It stayed in coverage long enough to tell him Myles O’Connor had tried him seven times. But not long enough that he could do anything about it.
Richie closed the car door gently behind him and stepped across the ditch and through a gap in the hedge. He crouched low and moved towards the lighthouse and the shadows dancing high in the tower.
‘She tried to help that fat bitch,’ said Duke, nodding towards Anna, her tiny body slumped against the wall. ‘Sheba.’
‘Siobhán,’ muttered Anna. ‘Her name was Siobhán.’
Duke snorted and made a face like he didn’t care. He nodded at Anna again. ‘She even got away from me…but just for a little while.’ He smiled.
The lighthouse lens rotated above them, sending out a sound like a giant blowtorch. Joe looked at the brass vents that ran around the room at floor level and at six feet. He knew from Anna that either the north- or south-facing vents should have been open, depending on the direction of the wind. But they were closed and there was no way to suck out the fumes from the kerosene that were filling the cramped space.
‘OK. This won’t take long,’ said Duke. ‘It’ll be one of those quick decisions, you know, like whether or not to shoot an unarmed man, for example. Yup, I know he was unarmed, detective, because all poor Donnie was holding was the pin. And that was for a reason. He was keeping that close to him for a reason that you will never understand. Loyalty…’ He closed his eyes.
‘A loyal man wouldn’t sleep with your wife, Rawlins.’
‘Well, that’s just the thing.’
‘The file,’ said Joe, pulling it out, staining the cover with Anna’s blood. ‘It’s here. Her name is in this. She was in New York the same day in the same park. Can you explain that? She has admitted to the Grayson County D.A. that Donald Riggs was getting that ransom money for them, not for you – for her and Riggs so that they could be as far enough away from you as possible when you became a free man.
‘Donnie wanted to die holdin’ that pin—’
‘No, he did not,’ said Joe calmly, setting the file gently on the floor between them. ‘He wanted to throw it away.’ He nodded down at the stack of photos, witness statements, autopsy findings, court reports, all held in their light cardboard folder. Duke flashed a glance at it, but he was shaking his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’
They stood in silence like that for some time, Duke swaying gently as he stared into space. Joe held his breath as he watched him, unnerved by thoughts of what could explode out of the growing calm.
‘You can leave now,’ he said. ‘You won’t be caught. You won’t have to spend the rest of your life in jail for all those murders.’
‘What murders?’ said Duke, shrugging. Then something snapped in him again and when he spoke, his voice was ice.
‘Look, I’m not wastin’ my time here, detective. I’m givin’ you a chance. Real quick.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘You gotta be quick.’
Richie Bates could see now that Duke Rawlins had arrived…and had brought with him an opportunity that could change everything.
Shaun stood on the three-inch ledge that ran outside the railing to the balcony. Duke’s arm was gripped around his chest.
‘Shaun, hold tight,’ shouted Joe through the noise of the lens above him and the wind rushing in from the balcony. The pain seared through his jaw and he jerked his hand to his right cheek reflexively.
‘Somethin’ hurtin’ you?’ said Duke, a smile breaking out across his face. He took a step towards him. Shaun rocked back and forth.
Joe’s breath caught. He tried to shake his head.
‘Somethin’ like this?’ said Duke, smashing his fist against Joe’s fingers, driving the pressure deep into his skull. A sharp spasm tore through Joe’s stomach. He doubled over. Water streamed from his eyes.
‘Now, shut your mouth,’ said Duke. He pulled out a mobile phone with his free hand and punched in a number with his thumb. He held it up for Joe to see: 999.
‘I think your wife could use an ambulance,’ said Duke. Joe turned around and looked at Anna. She was in a pool of blood, her face grey, her eyes closed.
‘So here’s your choice,’ said Duke. ‘I drop the phone or
I drop your son. Which is it?’
Joe was rooted to the floor. He looked around the room for something, anything that could help his decision or help him kill the man standing in front of him. His eyes fell on the file again.
‘Please,’ he said. Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
Duke stepped forward, but instead of bending down, he kicked the file open with the toe of his boot. Then he kicked again and the wind caught the sheets and blew them into the air.
‘No,’ said Duke, kicking again. ‘One more time: I drop the phone or I drop your son. Which is it?’
Joe looked again at Anna. For just a second, her eyes flickered open. She shook her head, a tiny movement that took all her energy. Joe stepped towards her.
‘Get the fuck away from her,’ said Duke as he hit SEND on the phone. ‘Ambulance, ma’am,’ he said. He locked eyes with Joe. ‘OK. Time up, detective. Which do I drop – the phone or the boy?’ He stretched his arm out, the phone hovering over the balcony.
‘The phone,’ Joe said quietly.
‘Can’t hear you,’ said Duke. ‘What’s that you said?’
‘No, Dad, no!’ roared Shaun. ‘No!’ He bucked against the railings.
‘What’ll it be, detective?’
‘The phone,’ roared Joe. ‘Drop the fucking phone, you sick son of a bitch.’
‘Ambulance, hello, can I help you?’ The voice was tinny and distant as Duke leaned over the balcony and let the phone fall thirty feet onto the ground below, shattering on impact.
Shaun cried out as Duke released his grip on his chest, then jerked him back quickly towards him at the last second.
‘Oh, I’ve cut the line from your house too,’ said Duke. He spoke to Shaun, ‘Hook your hands into the railing. Then you can come in and say hi to your dad. He’s just killed your mom.’
Shaun climbed back over and as soon as he turned to walk back in, Duke put a foot in the small of his back and sent him forward, landing against Joe, who stumbled backwards with the weight. Shaun staggered away and Joe lunged for the door, but Duke was too quick, out onto the balcony and gone.
