Missing Pieces

by Tim Weaver

  An archaeology kit.

  ‘Dr Stelzik?’ Johnny called.

  There was a strange kind of hush to the forest: the birdsong had died out; there was no breeze. Rebekah had lost her bearings, felt disoriented.

  ‘Dr Stelzik?’ Johnny repeated.

  He glanced at Rebekah. It was obvious they were thinking the same thing: was it Stelzik they’d heard screaming?

  They crossed into the next swathe of forest.

  It was dense, the trail awkward to follow, but a minute later, they suddenly found themselves in a second clearing, at the crest of a steep slope.

  At the bottom was a man.

  He was on his front, motionless.

  ‘Dr Stelzik!’ Johnny shouted.

  Rebekah felt her muscles harden, a chill passing through her. Could he be dead? Johnny, alarm in his face, led the way down a bank at the edge of the excavation site.

  ‘Johnny …’

  He didn’t stop, his focus on helping the man, but as Rebekah looked around the site, enclosed by the forest, it felt like something was off.

  ‘Johnny,’ she said again – louder, fiercer.

  ‘What?’

  She didn’t know how to explain herself. ‘Something isn’t right,’ she said, her eyes scanning the maze of trees that encircled them, branches creaking in the wind, like the hull of an old wooden ship. Johnny was already moving again, bridging the distance between him and the curator.

  Get your shit together, she told herself – but then images of Kyra and Chloe strobed in her head. I shouldn’t have come here, I shouldn’t have –

  ‘Bek!’ Johnny shouted.

  He was rolling the man’s body over. ‘Bek!’ he called. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  She hurried down, heart beating fast, moving Johnny aside. Instinct and training kicked in, as if she were under the searing white lights of the OR, not miles from home in the middle of a remote forest.

  ‘Do you think this is him?’ she said to Johnny, trying to listen for sounds of gurgling in case there was vomit or fluid in the man’s airways. ‘Do you think this is Stelzik?’

  Johnny nodded, holding something out to her.

  ‘This was on the ground next to him,’ he said.

  A wallet with ATM cards and receipts in it. Rebekah slid a couple of bank cards out – Dr K. Stelzik written on them – and then her attention switched.

  There was blood in his hair.

  ‘Is he alive, Bek?’

  She reached down and felt for a pulse.

  ‘He’s alive,’ she said.

  Johnny heaved a sigh of relief. ‘So what’s wrong with him?’ She looked him over, examining the areas of exposed skin, before using a hand to adjust his clothes, searching for evidence of wounds or more blood.

  There was nothing else.

  Just a cut on his head.

  She shifted forward onto her knees, leaning right over his face, and opened his mouth to double-check his airways. His breathing was regular, steady. There was no obvious sound of fluid. She had no equipment – no way to check his vital signs properly – but he didn’t seem to be struggling, and as soon as she began to initiate the standard procedures for motor response, squeezing the trapezius hard, Stelzik flinched.

  Grabbing her cell, she used the flashlight function to check his pupils: they constricted immediately and identically on both sides. When she removed the light, they dilated. There was more she might have done but, without the right equipment, a lot of the procedures were harder to carry out, and experience told her those checks weren’t going to be needed.

  ‘I think he’ll be okay,’ she said.

  Almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth, Stelzik started to come round. Rebekah moved back from him, giving him room, and watched as his eyelids flickered. He moved, then opened his eyes. As his gaze found her, he moaned.

  ‘How are you feeling, Dr Stelzik?’

  He moaned again, wincing, and Rebekah glanced around the dig site. ‘We need to get him some water,’ she said to Johnny.

  ‘We passed a stream on the way here,’ he replied, and took off, back up the ridges of the site to where they’d seen an old bucket.

  ‘How are you feeling, Dr Stelzik?’ she repeated.

  He’d hauled himself into a sitting position.

  ‘Okay,’ he said groggily. He rubbed a couple of fingers against his right eye. ‘I’ve got a bit of a headache.’ He looked out at the dig site, to the forest beyond, then back to Rebekah. ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I don’t recall …’

  ‘I’m Rebekah,’ she said. ‘My brother’s John Murphy. You were supposed to meet him at the place you’re staying at, but, well …’ She gestured to the fact that he was lying on the ground. ‘I guess we know why you weren’t there.’

  He managed a smile. ‘I must have blacked out,’ he said.

  ‘Do you remember why?’

  He swallowed, a slight wheeze in his throat.

  ‘Dr Stelzik?’

  ‘Karl,’ he said. ‘No, not exactly.’

  ‘You’ve got blood in your hair.’

  He touched his fingers to a cut on his scalp.

  ‘It looks like you might have fallen,’ Rebekah suggested.

  ‘If I did, I don’t remember.’

  She took him in properly. He was younger than she’d imagined – late thirties, early forties – and, despite the mud on his cheeks and the untidiness of his hair, he was athletic and handsome.

  A moment later, Johnny emerged at the top of the dig site, a bucket in his left hand, his body leaning to the right to counter-balance its weight.

  ‘Are you starting to feel any better, Karl?’ Rebekah asked Stelzik.

  ‘A little,’ he said, although he didn’t sound convinced.

  And then: a noise.

  It was coming from the forest.

  ‘Johnny,’ Rebekah said, ‘stop.’

  Her brother came to a halt, halfway up the site. ‘Why?’ he responded, confused. ‘Bek, what’s going on?’

  And then something emerged from the grass.

  Yellow teeth exposed.

  Slowly, Rebekah got to her feet, hand out in front of her. It was a dog, a golden retriever: there was blood at one of its ears, the trail running in a thin path to its jawline.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said softly. ‘It’s okay.’

  It growled.

  ‘It’s okay. Take it easy.’ At the sound of her voice, the dog seemed to shrink a little, its hind legs closing in against its body in an act of submission. Rebekah stole a look at Johnny, told him to stay put with her eyes, and returned her attention to the dog. ‘It’s okay,’ she said again. ‘Take it easy.’

  A long, muted silence.

  And then a split second later, the dog charged her.

  32

  The motorboat was gone.

  How could it just disappear?

  But then she saw it. It was partly obscured by the jetty, drifting on the ocean, rope trailing behind it, like a stray thread, two hundred feet further out.

  As fast as she could, she began taking off her outer layers, stripping down to her underwear and T-shirt, kicking off her wet sneakers, but as the wind crashed in off the water, she had a moment of clarity: she’d been on the island five weeks, it was December, below zero, she had no idea what the tides were like in this part of the world, or how much of a current there was.

  And even if she swam to the boat, what then?

  The Atlantic would be bitter – and there was no guarantee the engine would start because she didn’t know if it even had fuel in it.

  Still only partly dressed, she dropped to her haunches at the edge of the water, her skin rinsed pink from the cold, and tears blurred her eyes again.

  But then she remembered the rowboat.

  She pulled on her clothes and drove back to the workshop in the Jeep, dragging the rowboat from inside, up onto the incline of the trailer. By the time it was secured, her hands were scarred with rope burns, and she’d sweated through her to
p. She stopped, her muscles sore, and looked out at the ocean: the skies were clear and the water seemed calm.

  Back at the harbour, she dragged the rowboat off the trailer and down the slipway, trying to focus on the job of getting into the boat, not on her fear of the journey that lay ahead of her. It rocked from side to side as it hit the sea, rocked again as she got into it, and one of the oars almost escaped its rowlock before Rebekah managed to grab it and haul it back in towards her. But then, finally, she was seated, had hold of the oars, and was moving.

  Driftwood slapped bluntly against the hull as she rowed, jamming the oars into the water to avoid the motorboat she’d had to abandon. Eventually, she got beyond that, the wood, the harbour too, and the only thing in front of her, around her, was ocean. For a second, she felt exhilarated.

  The feeling didn’t last long.

  The further out she got, the choppier the water became, jolting the boat so much it seemed to be fighting her. The wind was nothing more than a whisper, but the boat rocked hard, tilting from side to side as the swells of the Atlantic pounded against the hull.

  She pulled harder, faster, straining every sinew. Slowly, the water began to change colour, green to blue to grey, and she looked behind her, across the vast sweep of the ocean, desperate to see the mainland, a small reminder that it was there. How far would she have to go before she could start to make out Montauk?

  After a while, even though it was still bitter, her hands started slipping on the oars as her palms became slick with sweat. She was unfit, struggling to breathe, her muscles on fire, and she was far enough out that she’d begun to feel vulnerable: a mote of dust compared to the immensity of the ocean.

  She looked towards Helena. She’d come half a mile now, maybe more, and – into the distance, on the other side of the island – clouds had begun to twist and form. Rebekah stared at them. She had no food with her and nothing to drink. She didn’t have a lifejacket. She’d been so desperate to escape, she hadn’t even brought the bare essentials. What the hell am I doing?

  ‘I just want to go home,’ she said quietly.

  The ocean was silent.

  ‘I just want to see my girls.’

  She exhaled the words as if they were her last. And though she wanted to cry, she didn’t this time, feeling the emotion as a ball in her chest. It seemed to come from somewhere deep, a hidden part of her. It began to throb so hard that her entire body hurt.

  She let the feeling come, wave after wave of it, until finally she was back in control. By that time, the weather was changing. The wind had picked up and the clouds had changed again, their colour darkening.

  This isn’t an island, she thought.

  She turned the boat around.

  It’s a prison.

  Before

  Rebekah stumbled back as the dog darted forward, the soles of her shoes clipping the edges of the barrier tape, immediately knocking her off balance.

  She reached out behind her to break her fall and saw Johnny move. ‘Bek!’ he called, and as he took off, the bucket fell from his hand and hit the ground.

  But the dog wasn’t coming for Rebekah.

  Stelzik thrust up an arm, protecting his face, his neck, as the animal leaped at him, its jaws clamping onto his wrist. He yelled in pain, the noise crashing through the trees like a wave, agonizing and terrible. He tried to shake the dog off, to free his arm from the vice of its jaws, but the animal wouldn’t let go. Its paws were trying to get purchase on his body, its claws tearing at his shirt. But just as Rebekah scrambled to her feet, the dog’s jaws snapped open and, a second later, it made a dash for the trees.

  Stelzik rolled around on the ground, blood along his arm, and moaned. As Rebekah dropped to her knees beside him, checking his wounds – seeing they were bad, but not as bad as they might have been – Johnny looked for the dog.

  ‘Roxie,’ Stelzik muttered, nursing his bloodied arm against his body, as if it were in a sling. ‘That was Roxie. She’s my dog. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.’ He tried to gather himself. ‘I’ve brought her here every day for seven months, but today she just … She went absolutely nuts …’

  Rebekah peered into the forest.

  They’d been drawn here by the sound of screaming. But maybe it hadn’t been a scream at all, just Stelzik trying to call Roxie back.

  Rebekah asked, ‘Has she had her rabies shots?’

  ‘They’re all up to date.’

  ‘Any injuries during the last few days?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hasn’t been in any fights with other animals?’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  ‘So she hasn’t been sick during your time here?’

  ‘No, she’s been fine.’

  Johnny had gone to retrieve the bucket from the top of the dig site and now set it down next to Stelzik. He started ladling water out with a cupped hand and used it to wash down the arm. Toothmarks were evident along the ridge of the radius, like black pennies, and there were scratches all down his chest, revealed in fine red lines by the gaps that had been torn in his shirt.

  ‘I think I slipped,’ Stelzik said quietly.

  ‘Slipped?’

  He looked at Rebekah. ‘That’s why I blacked out. Roxie started acting all crazy, took off into the forest, and I tried to follow her but slipped on all this mud. My head feels sore on the crown here.’ He touched the cut again.

  ‘We need to dress your wounds,’ Rebekah said.

  ‘I don’t have anything like that here.’

  ‘It’s okay. I’ve got some basics in my car.’

  He studied her. ‘You sound like you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘Eight years and a residency teaches you how to dress a wound.’

  ‘You’re a medical doctor?’

  She nodded as she and Johnny helped Stelzik into a sitting position.

  ‘What do you think’s wrong with Roxie?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rebekah admitted, ‘but we should probably find out, and that means going and getting her. Is there a medical facility on the island, Karl?’

  ‘No. Just a cabinet with some medicines.’

  But that would likely be better than what she had in the car.

  ‘Where’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘At the hostel I’m staying in.’

  ‘Are you all right to stand?’

  He nodded. ‘I think so.’

  They helped Stelzik to his feet and Johnny stepped forward. ‘We haven’t been officially introduced, Dr Stelzik. I’m John Murphy.’

  ‘Hello, John,’ Stelzik replied, slowly starting to move. ‘I’m only sorry you both had to find me in this terrible state.’ He looked between them. ‘I left my Chevy in the parking area. I assume you have a car too. Maybe you could drive mine, John, and the two of us could talk on the way to the hostel.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want you to feel any pressure to –’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Stelzik said, attempting a smile. ‘Honestly. It’s the least I owe you for the help you and your sister have given me.’ The smile fell away as he glanced at the trees again. ‘What are we going to do about Roxie?’

  ‘We’ll take you back to my car and get your arm patched up,’ Rebekah said, ‘then Johnny and I will come back and try to find her.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ Stelzik said, and Rebekah smiled in response, but she didn’t want to go back into the trees. She didn’t want to go searching for a dog that might be dangerous.

  She just wanted to forget this day had ever happened.

  Daybreak

  Unable to sleep after Amy Houser’s call, Travis headed into the office early. First he got hold of the recording of the call that Houser had picked up the night before, and had it transferred to his work station.

  ‘Tell him to take a second look at the boyfriend.’

  Before Houser had even had a chance to respond, the line went dead, and the recording ended. Travis immediately played it again: it sounded to him as if the caller m
ight have been trying to adjust his voice – or disguise an accent. His words were artificial, too enunciated.

  The logs said that the call had come from a payphone in Greenpoint. Travis returned to his desk and did some ringing around, trying to work out what level of camera coverage there was in that area of Brooklyn. The answer was not much – certainly nothing that might get him a decent image of the person. That, in turn, likely meant one of two things.

  One, the caller was trying to deflect, to alter the course of the case, because he knew what had happened to Louise Mason, and feared that Travis might recognize and ID him, if they actually spoke.

  Or, two, the caller was shit-scared.

  Travis pulled his notebook towards him and flipped through to a page he’d filled off the back of his initial conversation with the man Louise had dated.

  Johnny Murphy.

  Could the caller be frightened of Murphy? Could he be a witness to something that Murphy had done? If the caller was frightened of a reprisal, a 1 a.m. tip-off, when Travis wasn’t around to ask questions, made perfect sense.

  Travis grabbed his notebook and the Louise Mason file and headed to the video suite two floors up. As he waited at the elevators, he went back through some of his notes, reminding himself again about Johnny Murphy – and then the doors pinged open and he was suddenly face-to-face with the chief of detectives, Katherine McKenzie.

  ‘Morning,’ she said.

  She must have been heading for the top floor.

  ‘Morning, Chief,’ Travis replied, and stepped into the elevator. He pushed the button for eight, and glanced at McKenzie again. She was in her early fifties, tall and slim; Travis had always thought she was attractive, but she didn’t smile a lot, so that could sometimes make her look severe.

  ‘Early start?’ she asked.

  ‘Just trying to finish some last things off.’

  ‘So you’ve been in all night?’

  ‘No,’ Travis said, smiling, realizing what she thought he’d meant. ‘No, I’m sailing away into old age in a matter of days, so “finishing things off” is in the more permanent sense.’ He held up his notebook. ‘All I’ve got left is one pain-in-the-ass case that refuses to let go.’