Missing Pieces

by Tim Weaver

  And that was when she realized she wasn’t losing her mind at all.

  She was just seeing a ghost.

  Before

  Rebekah climbed down into the gully.

  ‘If it’s a body, shouldn’t we call the cops?’ Johnny asked, from behind her.

  She glanced at her brother and saw the same reaction in him that she felt: the prickle in her skin, the quickening thump of her heart behind her ribcage.

  It wasn’t the idea of a dead body that frightened her – she saw bodies all the time: she’d seen them all the way through her training, on gurneys, in morgues, in the minutes after the lungs stopped, the heart failed, and the brain died. It was that it was here, in this remote place, far from anywhere.

  She kept going, gaze fixed, even though something was telling her to stay back. It was a man. There was blood at the top of his forehead, a dull red along the fringes of his thinning hairline and against the ridge of one eyebrow. From the distance she was at, Rebekah had an idea of what had caused the blood to spill, and as she moved along the trail of leaves, she saw that she was right.

  A bullet wound.

  ‘This is fucked up,’ Johnny said, panic in his voice as he saw the body more clearly. She rarely heard him swear. ‘We should call the cops, Bek.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Like now.’ His voice was trembling.

  ‘Okay, call them.’

  Johnny removed his cell and started reaching above his head, trying to get the bars to kick back in.

  ‘Damn it,’ he muttered. ‘We need to go back to the spot where Noe called you.’

  The dead man was dressed in a checked shirt and tan pants, black work boots and an unzipped coat, which had twisted around him, encasing him on the side of the bank. His colour was grey, and there was fluid leaking out of him, blisters on the skin: decomposition had started but still mostly appeared to be internal. His bloodstream had filled with carbon dioxide, the toxicity poisoning his cells, enzymes eating away at them. As Rebekah edged closer, she could smell him, and see that one of his eyes was open and had misted.

  ‘He’s been dead for a while,’ she said. ‘Maybe a day.’

  She heard Johnny fall into line behind her, the crunch of leaves under his feet, but still she didn’t take her eyes off the man: he looked to be in his sixties, silver-haired and bearded, the skin of his hand mottled and veined. Parts of him were still obscured behind the snaking, exposed tree roots that broke out of the sides of the gully but she could see enough. There was a kind of natural platform ten feet above him, along the high edge of the gully, and Rebekah guessed he’d been standing there before he’d ended up where he was.

  This is all wrong.

  The second the words came to her, she realized how stupid they were – they’d just found a corpse with a bullet in his head – but it wasn’t only the body. She’d felt the same way even before they left the dig site.

  ‘Bek?’

  She looked across at Johnny.

  ‘Are you listening to what I’m saying?’ he pleaded, coming towards her, his eyes scanning the forest, his gaze moving quickly between the trees. ‘We need to go back to where we had a signal.’

  ‘Give me two seconds,’ she said.

  ‘We need to call 911, Bek.’

  She stopped within reach of the man. The foot she hadn’t been able to see until now was caught inside a coil of roots, reversed to an impossible angle. It was shattered, the ankle broken. His other arm was broken too, the elbow inversed, the wrist bent under the forearm. He must have fallen hard, hit the ground even harder, the only tiny comfort being that he was probably dead by the time he had.

  The bullet was still somewhere inside the skull: there was no exit wound. When she went around to the other side of his head to double-check, she saw his cranium was partially crushed, indented at the dome, the skin bloodied, split, which seemed to confirm that he’d landed as a dead weight.

  ‘Bek. Let’s get the hell out of –’

  Something snapped at the top of the gully.

  They turned quickly, looking upward, to the platform that Rebekah had seen earlier. Now, at its broken edge, someone was staring down at them.

  ‘Dr Stelzik?’

  Johnny’s voice was confused, anxious.

  But, above them, Karl Stelzik didn’t respond.

  He just kept staring at them, hair straightened, clothes changed since they’d left him at the Cherokee. As he raised his right arm, Rebekah saw the ends of the bandaging she’d put there, sneaking out from under the sleeve of his parka, dots of blood close to where the bites had been. She glanced at the man lying dead next to them, then back up the slant of the gully to where Stelzik was, a gun in his hand.

  Except, she now realized, he wasn’t Stelzik.

  He was simply pretending to be.

  The real Karl Stelzik was lying next to her with a bullet in his head.

  36

  As Rebekah emerged from between the houses, she heard the sound again.

  Click click click.

  This time, it was coming from somewhere else.

  The gas-station forecourt.

  Raising the hammer, she edged out of the long grass, stepped over the collapsed fencing that marked the former edges of the lawns, and back onto the road, never once taking her eyes off the building. If someone was there, they had nowhere to exit, except out towards her.

  She had them trapped.

  ‘I know you’re there.’

  She sounded more confident than she felt.

  The windows of the building were all misted with sea salt, making it difficult to see in, but if the person was inside, that meant the door should have been open – and, as far as she could see, it was still closed. That meant they were where the Explorer was.

  ‘There’s no point in hiding,’ she said. ‘You might as well –’

  A shape emerged from behind the building.

  Stunned, Rebekah stumbled to a halt.

  The shape paused, half covered by shadows, but clearly looking in her direction. There was a wound in the space next to the ear, and the injury had swollen that side of the face, closing the left eye. But with her working eye, she found Rebekah and stared at her.

  ‘Roxie?’

  The dog moved, her claws making the distinctive click click click on the polished concrete of the road, then stopped again, looking away from Rebekah, back towards the houses.

  ‘Roxie? Do you remember me?’

  She seemed unsettled, spooked by Rebekah’s presence, and it was clear she was in pain. But, for now, she was still, at the edge of the forecourt.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Rebekah said. ‘It’s okay, girl.’

  She started crossing towards Roxie, placing one foot in front of the other, like she was walking a high wire. The moment she moved, Roxie stiffened and Rebekah stopped, not wanting to scare her.

  For a moment, they were frozen, facing one another, and then Rebekah shivered in the wind, and Roxie seemed to do the same, her fur prickling and shifting, like a wave had passed through it.

  ‘Are you real?’ Rebekah said.

  Roxie blinked at her.

  ‘Where did you come from?’ She looked up and down the road. ‘How have you survived for so long?’

  Roxie remained, an image of an animal that Rebekah worried might be a mirage, a clear and undeniable sign of madness.

  ‘I thought you were dead.’

  The dog flinched, whining a little.

  ‘It’s okay, girl,’ Rebekah said, holding a hand out to her. ‘You remember me, don’t you? I won’t hurt you. I want to help you.’ She took another step. ‘I’m a doctor, I can …’ She faded out.

  She’s a dog, Bek.

  Suddenly, Roxie flinched.

  Rebekah didn’t know why, but then she looked down at her feet: she’d unwittingly taken a big step forwards, drawn closer without realizing.

  ‘Wait,’ she said, and the movement sent another jolt through Roxie’s body. ‘Wait,’ Rebekah repeated. �
�Wait, Roxie. Wait, girl, I don’t want to h–’

  Roxie made a break for it.

  ‘No!’ Rebekah screamed after her. ‘No, no, no!’

  She hurried after her, taking the same route between the houses, Roxie disappearing into the grass ahead of her.

  ‘Roxie!’

  She’d guessed right earlier: a storm was coming, the sky swelling with cloud, the wind picking up. Broken wood rattled on the houses. Grass ballooned and shrank. Everything was moving as she looked desperately around the backyards – but she couldn’t see the dog anywhere.

  Roxie had vanished.

  ‘Please, girl,’ Rebekah muttered, forlorn. ‘Please come back.’

  But the dog didn’t reappear.

  And then, a moment later, things got even worse.

  37

  Between the houses, halfway back to the car, as she took a step to her right to avoid a loose piece of clapboard rattling in the wind, the toe of Rebekah’s sneaker glanced off something.

  She stopped and looked down.

  It was half concealed in the grass.

  Dropping to her haunches, she picked it up. It was a dirty wallet, the leather washed-out, a bifold design that fell open in her hands to reveal a horizontal pocket, three empty credit card slots and a window for a photograph. There were two dollar bills inside and a driver’s licence, long expired. There were some business cards too, old and creased.

  Paul Connors.

  Mechanic – East Hampton/Montauk.

  In the window was a picture of a young family – the man who must have been Paul Connors, then a woman, in their late thirties, and two angelic kids: a boy and a girl, both of them white-blond.

  They were all standing in front of a black Ford Explorer.

  Steve.

  She felt a tremor in her throat as she slid out Connors’ driver’s licence. It was three years past its expiration date, lost here for all that time. He was thirty-eight. He’d been six two, 190 pounds, and had blue eyes, the same as his children. He was listed as a veteran and an organ donor.

  He hadn’t battled to have kids.

  His name wasn’t Steve.

  Deep down, Rebekah had never believed any of those things were true, but saying them, playing around with them in her head, had been a way to anchor her to some kind of normality. Steve had been a step away from the abnormality of her existence. He had been her ballast.

  But now he was gone.

  Just like Roxie.

  Just like everyone else in her life.

  Her eyes searched the empty road as she crossed the Loop, back towards the gas station, silently willing Roxie to reappear. When that failed, she started calling her name again.

  It was hopeless.

  After a while, she started to doubt herself. Had she really seen Roxie? What did it mean if she hadn’t? Could she be going mad? Could this be the beginning of some mania, brought on by the seclusion, and the silence?

  She looked to the Ford Explorer, but there were no answers there, and as she got to the Cherokee, its door still open, she stared at her reflection in the windshield. It was like gazing into the face of a stranger, her eyes smeared with the weight of so much time alone, the skin on her face carved so close to the bone, it was like she was shrinking.

  ‘You’re losing it,’ she said softly.

  Her reflection mouthed the same words back to her, which seemed to break the spell. As she got back into the car and pulled the door closed, then started the engine, she thought of the famous quote about insanity, about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. That was what she’d been doing as she called for Roxie. For twenty minutes, she’d just repeated a name.

  She squeezed her eyes shut.

  And then, from the back seat: a noise.

  It took her a second to find the source. Rebekah looked down, into the space behind the passenger seat.

  Two eyes – one swollen shut – looked up at her.

  The Interview

  ‘Okay, Mr Murphy. I need you to tell me about Louise Mason.’

  It was 12 October and Travis was in Johnny Murphy’s house on 81st Street. Murphy nodded in response, but didn’t seem to know where to start.

  ‘It’s a nice place you got here,’ Travis said, looking around the living room. He’d told a white lie: the house was okay, nothing special. He was just trying to get Murphy to settle and engage.

  ‘Thank you,’ Murphy responded politely, looking up from his lap.

  ‘Have you lived here long?’

  ‘Yeah, this is where we all grew up.’ He glanced around the room, then turned to Travis again. ‘My dad was a cop, like you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. The 68th Precinct on 65th Street.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  Murphy nodded. Travis made a mental note to follow up on that, just in case there was anything worth exploring, then checked the camera to make sure Murphy was correctly framed. In the corner was a date-stamp.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Are we all set?’

  Murphy nodded again.

  ‘Mr Murphy, can you confirm for the camera that you’re happy to be recorded?’ Murphy said he was, and told Travis to call him Johnny. ‘I appreciate that, Johnny. Okay, let’s kick this off properly, shall we? How did you meet Louise Mason?’

  ‘Through a mutual friend.’

  ‘Who was the friend?’

  ‘Her name’s Kirsty Cohen.’ Murphy glanced between Travis and the camera, as if unsure for a moment where to look, and Travis wondered if it was a shift of discomfort, an attempt to conceal something. ‘Actually,’ Murphy continued, ‘maybe “mutual friend” is a bit of a stretch. She used to come to the house a lot at one time because she and my sister were at college together, studying to become doctors. So that was how I got to know Kirsty. She moved up to Baltimore after that, to medical school there, and Bek went to NYU, and whenever Kirsty comes back to the city, Bek and she meet up, and sometimes she’ll drop by the house.’ He stopped, frowned, as if he were confused. ‘I don’t know, I guess we are friends, but she’s definitely more Bek’s friend.’

  ‘Bek is your sister?’

  ‘Yes, sorry. Rebekah, with a k and an h.’

  ‘So it was Rebekah and Kirsty who set you up with Louise?’

  ‘More Kirsty. She’s quite social – she goes to a lot of parties, society stuff, so she knows a lot of people, and somewhere along the line, I guess she met Louise. Bek said she and Kirsty spoke at the end of August, and Kirsty mentioned to Bek that she had a friend called Louise she wished she could set up with someone.’

  ‘And Rebekah suggested you?’

  Murphy nodded. ‘She gave Kirsty my number. I guess Bek thought we might be a good fit.’

  ‘Why would she think that?’

  ‘Louise is an artist. I’m a writer.’ But then Murphy paused, his head dropping slightly. ‘Well, I’d like to be a writer,’ he admitted. ‘I suppose that’s more honest.’

  ‘You work in an electronics store, right?’

  He nodded, seeming disappointed that Travis had brought him back down to earth. He glanced into the camera. ‘We just sounded pretty similar. We were the same sort of age. When Bek found a picture of Louise online, I thought she was really pretty, and although I didn’t really know her work, I soon found out she was this successful artist. Actually, I was surprised she’d even consider dating someone like me – but, in the end, I figured what do I have to lose?’

  ‘When was your first date?’

  ‘Uh, first week of September, I think.’

  ‘And where did you go?’

  ‘She only lived five miles from here, in Park Slope, so we went to an Italian place she suggested on Fifth Avenue. It was nice. We had a good time.’

  ‘What happened after that?’

  Travis watched as Murphy tried to recall: he had a quiet demeanour, spoke softly, seemed nervous – the last didn’t raise any alarms for now, because Travis had long since accepted
being put in front of a camera might create a certain level of anxiety with some interviewees. But the benefits outweighed the losses: nervousness wasn’t the same as evasiveness, and so far Murphy’s responses felt benign.

  Travis repeated the question. ‘So what happened after?’

  ‘We texted a few times, and spoke on the phone,’ Murphy said – and Travis quickly referred to the cellphone records he’d pulled for Louise; it tallied – ‘then we went out again the next week for another meal.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘We went out a third time on the weekend that followed. This time we went to an exhibition at the Guggenheim,’ Murphy said, ‘about the golden age of Hollywood. “Hollywood Babylon”. It was brilliant.’

  ‘So everything went all right?’

  ‘From my side, it went great.’

  ‘From hers?’

  Murphy shrugged. ‘I didn’t get any sense it didn’t. I mean, if it had been a total disaster she never would have invited me to that fundraiser.’ Travis checked his notes again: the exhibition had been on Saturday, 18 September. The fundraiser – and their fourth date – had been the following Thursday, the twenty-third. Murphy rubbed at his eyes, disguising his face for a moment, and it was the first time that Travis didn’t have a clear view of his expression. ‘I picked her up and drove us both to the hotel, and then I got a call on my cell.’

  ‘From who?’

  ‘The next-door neighbour of a friend of mine,’ he said. ‘Noella.’

  Travis asked for her full name and contact details, and then – watching Murphy more closely now – said, ‘What did her next-door neighbour want?’

  ‘He said Noella had been rushed into the ER.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Stomach pain. Suspected appendicitis.’

  ‘So this neighbour called you?’ Travis asked.

  ‘Noella’s boyfriend, Tommy, was away. The neighbour had tried Bek first, but she was bathing the girls and didn’t hear the phone – so, yes, he called me.’

  ‘And you decided to go?’

  ‘I told Louise I was really sorry, made sure she got to the hotel safely – and then I headed back to Brooklyn. Noe had gone to the ER at Langone.’