A Killer Harvest

by Paul Cleave

  “None of that matters. It doesn’t matter what kind of man he is, we owe him for what he did.”

  “Is that what Dad would want?”

  “Yes,” she says, and she sounds sure of it.

  Joshua needs to know why this man saved him. Needs to know his intent. Is he a good man or a bad man? Is he neither? Was he following him or Vincent, or was he just somebody passing by? “What if—”

  “Let it go, Joshua. I’m asking you, please, just let it go.”

  FIFTY

  Before Joshua left the police station, Detective Vega gave him back his schoolbag. He now tells his mom he’s going to do some homework, and he carries that bag to his bedroom and closes the door. This time of the morning, the sun is blanketing his bed and almost touching his desk. He gets himself comfortable on the bed, propping a pillow between his body and the wall. He pulls out his phone and checks the messages.

  Hey! Glad you’re doing okay. Sure, looking forward to talking! Then, later, the second text. Hope you’re still doing okay.

  He replies. It takes him a little while to compose the text because his left hand is still in a bandage, which makes the phone harder to hold. Just got home. I still don’t understand what happened yesterday, but I’m okay. How are you?

  It’s barely a few seconds until she texts back. I can’t believe Scott is dead.

  I’m sorry, he texts.

  If I hadn’t told Mrs. Thompson what he had done to you, or if I hadn’t convinced you to use the train tracks, none of this would have happened.

  His texting speed is getting faster. A few weeks ago he’d never sent a text in his life, and now he’s wondering how people managed to socialize without it. It would have happened in a different way. It’s not your fault. Are you going back to school tomorrow?

  I don’t know. Want to catch up today and talk about everything? I can come to your house, or you can come here?

  I’d like that, but I’m not sure mom will. I’ll find out and text you.

  Okay. See ya!

  See ya!

  He decides to wait until his mom is in a better mood before asking if he can see Olillia. He gets out his homework and realizes he can barely remember anything from school yesterday, other than Scott, and Olillia, and getting bullied in the corridor, and bullied in woodshop. He puts his homework aside and figures his teachers will forgive him for not getting it done. Instead he sets up his new cell phone, playing with the settings and entering the contact details of people he knows. When he’s done, he carries on with a book he’s been reading. It’s about a boy who stows away on the wrong boat, and has to keep hiding from the crew once he realizes the meals the crew eats consist of other people who stowed away on the boat. The boy, Danny, is coming to realize it wasn’t skill or luck that enabled him to sneak onto the boat, but the design of some very hungry sailors. The book is called The Cannibal Cruise and it ticks all the right boxes literature-wise, yet today he can’t get into it. Unlike the cannibals in the book, his tastes, apparently, have changed.

  “Hey,” his mom says, knocking on his door, then coming into his room.

  “Hey.”

  “I’m sorry we argued earlier. I just want what’s best for you.”

  “I know,” he says.

  “I just got a phone call,” she says, “from Principal Mooney. He was apologetic, but he said that, well, under the circumstances he doesn’t think you should return to Christchurch North.”

  “Till when?”

  “He means permanently. He said it’s more for your benefit than anybody else’s.”

  He thinks of Olillia. “I liked it there.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you liked it,” she says. “What you told Detective Vega made it sound awful.”

  “There were some nice people there too.”

  “Like this girl you met.”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “So you want to go back there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because of this girl?”

  “Because it’s going to be the same no matter where I go,” he says. “I can’t run from it, I have to face it.”

  She looks happy with his answer. “Then I’ll talk to Principal Mooney in person. I think it will help if I go there now, before his decision is set in stone.”

  “Should I go with you?”

  “I think it will go better if you’re not there,” she says. “Right now that school is emotionally charged, and you showing up will only inflame it. That much he got right, but to not let you go back at all? You didn’t ask for any of this, and you can’t be responsible for the actions of a psychopath. Before I go and plead your case, are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Good.”

  “Umm . . . while you’re at the school, is it okay if I see Olillia? She’s at home today, and we could do our homework together. Plus, I think it would be really good for me because I don’t really know what I’m doing plus I think you’d really like her and not only that but she was there yesterday before the attack and it could have been her and not Scott if the guy had chosen the previous set of tracks and I think it will help to talk about it and—”

  “Okay, okay, slow down,” his mom says, putting up her hand. “You keep talking like that and you’re going to run out of air and faint. You’ve convinced me.”

  “So she can come over?”

  “Why don’t you meet her at the library? I can drop you off, and pick you up when you’re done.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  Vega is tired. And hungry. And irritable. After the interview with Joshua, she’s been brooding all morning, and what really isn’t helping is this churning feeling in her stomach, brought on by the idea that the woman she loves has played a part in all that has happened. She didn’t call Tracey last night, and hasn’t called her this morning, so by now Tracey surely knows something is wrong, but she’ll have no idea about what. Earlier Vega even asked Detective Kent to pick up the two autopsy reports so she wouldn’t have to face Tracey herself. Vega knows she’s being stupid. She should go and see her, and ask her outright if she was involved with Ben and Logan and Dr. Coleman. The problem is Tracey might say yes, and then what? Do they break up? Can she be involved with somebody who was doing something not only illegal, but questionably immoral too? And if Tracey says no, will she believe her? Of course Tracey might not be involved, and probably isn’t, in which case—

  Questionably immoral?

  Did she really just think that?

  Yes, she did. She thought that because she’s seen what people like Vincent Archer can do. She thinks that because Simon Bower took a power saw to his victim. She thinks that because yesterday she said to Ben at the station that Bower got what he deserved, and nobody there would argue it.

  No. You’re thinking that because you’re tired. Because your partner is in the hospital, and because your girlfriend might have been involved with harvesting body parts illegally, but if you ask her about it, the question itself could be seen as a betrayal, because it would tell her that you think she’s capable of it.

  It’s a no-win situation.

  She needs to calm her thoughts and focus on the investigation at hand.

  The autopsy reports show that Scott Adams died almost instantly from the massive injury to his chest, and Vincent Archer was clubbed in the head four times for his own set of traumatic injuries. Detectives have been back out in the field talking to friends and colleagues of both Vincent Archer and Simon Bower. They’ve been taking fingerprints from those who allow it. So far the ones holding out aren’t looking suspicious, just unwilling to help. It’s hard to save the world when the whole world is against you—that’s something Vega’s foster dad told her years ago when she joined the police force. They’re making plenty of progress proving what happened yesterday, they’re just not making any progress determining who the other person involved is.

  That’s what brings her to Christchurch North. It’s lunchtime when she arrives, and she sits in the parking lo
t finishing off a takeaway salad that looks like it was made yesterday and tastes like it was made last week, but she’s so hungry she powers through it anyway. She checks her phone when it beeps. It’s a message from Tracey. Are you okay?

  She feels better now that she’s eaten, and calmer, and she sends back a reply. Yep—just busy. Talk later?

  Looking forward to it.

  The grounds are littered with students. She reaches the administration building and is led into Principal Mooney’s office, where he tells her what a shock it is, that over the twenty years he’s been at the school this is the second time a student has been murdered, that he has lost others too—three to car accidents, one to imitating a “don’t try this at home” moment he had seen on television, and two to cancer.

  “It’s always a difficult time,” Mooney says. “But something like this, something so senseless, it’s hard for the students. It makes them feel lost, that the ground can be pulled out from under them at any moment.”

  He goes on to say he questions whether Joshua should return. “It will be difficult for him,” he says. “I know it wasn’t his fault, none of it is, but the fact is if he hadn’t come to this school, Scott Adams would still be alive.”

  “You’re right,” she says. “It wasn’t his fault. Out of everything you’ve said, that’s the one line you want to cling to.”

  Lunchtime ends and all the students are led to a special assembly. Vega follows the principal into the school hall, where it’s ten degrees cooler than outside. It’s like being pulled back through time, because even though she didn’t go to this school, the hall and everything in it is almost identical to the one she did go to. Same wooden seats that sit four students apiece, all of them side by side in rows, same drab banners hanging from the walls with similar school colors and a crest, brown wooden walls and brown linoleum floor and the smell of dust that makes it feel like an old, abandoned gym. It’s probably looked this way since World War II. There’s a stage up front, and she guesses school plays are put on in here. At the moment the hall is full of chatter. Mooney steps up on the stage and walks to a podium and tells everybody to quiet down, which they do.

  “Yesterday was a tragic day for all of us,” Mooney says, looking out over the room. “Losing Scott . . . it’s heartbreaking for all of us. Senseless for all of us. Scott was a good student and was well liked,” he says, which sends a small murmur through the crowd. “He will be missed. We have counselors on hand if any of you would like to talk to them at any time during the day. Right now it’s the priority of the police to build up a better picture of what happened, and to that end I’d like to introduce you all to Detective Inspector Vega. Detective?”

  She takes the podium. She hasn’t spoken to a roomful of people like this since her own days in high school. She hated it then, and she isn’t too fond of it now. Unlike the speeches at her high school, when the students were whispering or messing around, she now has everyone’s full attention. These kids are looking at her expectantly, like they want her to spill all the gory details. In which case they’re out of luck.

  “I’m sure many of you have heard different accounts of what happened yesterday afternoon,” she says, “but the fact we haven’t released any information to the public means whatever you’ve heard is rumor and hearsay. What I need from all of you is information. I need to know two things: Who uses those train tracks to walk to or from school? Who has seen anybody unusual hanging around?”

  Nobody says anything. No murmuring. Just absolute silence.

  “When Principal Mooney dismisses the assembly, I want all those students who can answer yes to either of those questions to stay behind.”

  There’s a boy in the front row with a look on his face that makes her want to find some reason to arrest him. He’s sneering at her when he puts up his hand. He’s tall and skinny and has black spiky hair that looks like it was styled to look like it hasn’t been styled. He has the shadow of a mustache on his upper lip that looks too frightened to grow in case it touches some of the pimples festering away there.

  “Yes?”

  “Is it true that Scott died saving that blind kid?”

  “Do you take the train tracks?” she asks him.

  “No.”

  “Did you see anybody hanging around outside the school?”

  “No, but—”

  “All of you need to understand I’m not here to answer questions or comment on the case,” she says, looking from the boy and out over the rest of the students. “I’m here so we can start piecing things together. I’m here for Scott.”

  “That’s unfair,” the boy says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re saying you expect us to answer your questions, but won’t answer any of ours. That’s a dick move,” he says.

  “Levi,” Mooney says, “I think you’ve said enough. I want you to stay behind with the others so we can have a word.”

  Levi says nothing, but he keeps glaring at Vega.

  “Any other questions?” Mooney asks.

  No hands go up.

  “Anything out of the ordinary,” Vega says, “I want you to come and tell me. No detail is too small,” she says, and she feels like a salesperson.

  Mooney wraps up the assembly. The school has 986 students. Eighteen are absent. Of the 968 students remaining, 951 of them walk out the door. Seventeen isn’t a bad number, she thinks. It only takes one to have seen their Good Samaritan.

  There are twelve boys and five girls. She steps off the podium.

  “How many of you use the train tracks?” Vega asks.

  Ten boys and two girls put their hands up.

  “And the rest of you, you saw something unusual? You saw somebody hanging around outside the school?”

  There are murmurs of yes, and some nodding.

  “Okay, good. We’re going to go through this one by one, and while that happens, I want everybody else to wait quietly.”

  The first student is a girl named Lelei, who keeps scratching at the back of her neck as she talks. “There was this guy, he was like, you know, hanging around outside the school. He kept looking at his phone, and his watch, as if he was trying his hardest not to be noticed.”

  “So why did you notice him, Lelei?”

  “Because I hadn’t seen him before, and because he was parked behind my mom.”

  “I want to show you some photos, and I want you to tell me if you recognize him, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  At Vincent Archer’s house last night, she made a copy of a photograph of him. That photograph is now mixed in with random mug shots. The photographs are on her phone. She swipes through them.

  “Him,” Lelei says, when she gets to the seventh photograph. It’s Vincent Archer.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “What did this man do? Did anybody get into his car?”

  “No. That’s what was weird about it. We had to wait ages for my brother, but that guy left before we did, without picking anybody up.”

  Archer must have left to follow Joshua.

  Vega goes through similar interviews with the rest of the students from that group, each of them picking out Archer from her phone. All it does is confirm what she already knew.

  She starts with the next group, but right off the mark she learns that of the twelve who use the train tracks exactly six of them went right instead of left. She interviews them anyway, but they offer nothing useful. The other six are more helpful, with a group of three saying they always take those tracks, and that they recognized Olillia following them with a student they didn’t know, and they turned off at the next intersection and noticed a while later Olillia had turned off too. Had they seen anybody else? No. What about on other days? Yes. Sometimes there’s a couple of old drunk guys who like to yell abuse at them, and there’s often a guy there sniffing glue, but not yesterday.

  Principal Mooney comes over and interrupts her. He has the boy who asked the question earlier in the
assembly. He tells her that Levi has something to tell her that might be useful. She hopes he does, because so far nothing has been helpful.

  Levi tells her he wasn’t completely honest when he said earlier that he hadn’t noticed anyone strange hanging around. As he begins to talk, it becomes apparent to Vega that coming here hasn’t been a waste of time after all.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Joshua’s mom tells him that her grandmother was on the team of builders who built their local library. It was back in the sixties, and it was a time when construction and architecture were fields dominated by men. She tells him her grandmother was one of the toughest women she’s ever known, and she had to be because men would undermine her all day long while also hitting on her. In the years that followed, the library’s carpets were updated twice, and the color palette for the interior walls was updated in the early eighties, but other than that it looks almost identical to when she was kid, she says. She tells him it was one of the last libraries in the country to move on from books being listed on a catalogue of cards set in dozens of small wooden drawers to an updated computer system. Stuff like that is from such a different time, and the idea of it is so foreign he’s not even sure he can believe it could have existed. She drops him off outside it and waits until he’s gone in before driving away.

  There’s not a lot of life in the library. A few old-looking people sitting near the windows, reading old-looking books. Some young mothers quietly reading to their toddlers with toys nearby that look chewed on and torn. A librarian with a glazed look in her eyes slowly pushes a cart around, shelving returned books back in their proper places. The place is warm, though, and smells of books, and despite it looking old he’s comfortable here. Olillia waves to him from near the back, and he joins her. She’s wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt that has a silhouette of a woman’s face on it. It looks better than her uniform. She hugs him tight and he hugs her tight back and he likes the way she feels and the way her hair smells. They sit down and face each other and she asks him the same kinds of questions Detective Vega asked him, and he gives the same kind of answers and this is way better than texting, and he wonders if some people have forgotten that. A second librarian glances at them every time she passes, which is oddly frequent, as if she suspects them of committing some horrible, book-related crime.