by Tim Weaver
‘We haven’t got the time for this shit.’
‘I think,’ McKenzie replied slowly, ‘given your monumental screw-up is still breathing –’ she gestured to Rebekah ‘– we’ve got all the time I say we do.’
Hain stayed where he was, silent.
‘He was down in Miami,’ McKenzie said, as if she knew what Rebekah was thinking: why hadn’t Hain just taken care of her himself instead of letting Lima do it? ‘He was part of a joint task force down there, busting some asshole from the Bronx who thought he was Tony Montana. With you, everything was so last-minute. We’d been listening to your calls, reading your texts, and then all of a sudden you decide to head out to Crow Island, and we’ve got our perfect opportunity to make you go away. Only Hain wasn’t here. He was twelve hundred miles away.’ She shrugged. ‘So, reluctantly, he ended up sending this other guy, “Lima” – this former CI of his – and, well, I guess we know how that turned out.’
Lima hadn’t just been a criminal: he’d been an informant.
Hain shook his head at her.
He didn’t like any of this.
‘A comic’s sense of timing,’ McKenzie said, her words echoing the ones she’d spoken earlier. There was a distance in her all of a sudden. ‘I was literally speaking to the commissioner at the fundraiser when Axel called me.’
They were back on the night Louise was killed.
‘“Kathy, help me,”’ McKenzie said, her eyes staring off into space, her voice altered, imitating her brother’s. Even mimicked, the effect was chilling. ‘“You gotta help me. I’ve done something terrible.”’ She stopped. A beat, and then she looked up at Rebekah. ‘He’d taken her down to his car, in the parking garage beneath the hotel, and she’d started to wake up. He screwed it up. Different set of pills, not as strong. Worse, she began fighting back, so he punched her – and, after that, he totally lost control.’
‘Katherine,’ Hain said, ‘stop –’
‘He kept punching her until her face was just paste.’
An awful, shattering silence.
Even Hain didn’t speak, didn’t move. And, in the quiet, the rest of what happened that night filled itself in: Foley called his sister, then she called Hain.
‘“Hain”,’ McKenzie said, using his name but talking to Rebekah. ‘He’s bristling. He doesn’t want you to know this, and I understand why. He’s been trained to internalize everything, to deal with it in silence. I’ve seen him do it for a long time. I know what he can do. I know what he’s prepared to do – and what he has done – for a little extra money. He’s very good at fixing things. Me? I don’t find it as easy. To me, “fixing things” – that just means digging up dirt on opponents, not killing or raping, not burying you way out to sea.’
Her face contorted.
‘Although, I don’t know …’ She glanced over her shoulder, at the grey shapes on the back porch. A flicker in her face, as if she was finally becoming cognizant of what she’d done. ‘I guess I knew what I was getting into. If you’re ambitious, you have to be prepared to play dirty. And if you take one step into the shadows, like we did that first night when we made Louise vanish, you’ve got to be prepared to go the whole way. There’s no retreat. The kind of decisions I made that night – that I’ve made tonight, coming here – you don’t make them if your definition of “fixing things” only extends as far as spreading a little dirt.’ She nodded to Hain again. ‘He said I shouldn’t come, but I felt I had to.’
Rebekah glanced at Hain. He was six feet from her, the gun against his leg, his gaze rooted to hers. She thought of the girls, and then of Gareth. What time would he be home? The longer this went on, the longer Rebekah stayed alive, but the longer it went on, the more Gareth was likely to be caught in the middle. Another innocent, cut down on Katherine McKenzie’s road to power.
McKenzie rubbed a finger against her lips, as if everything she’d said tonight, all her words, had scalded her. ‘I had it all planned out,’ she said, ‘always have. Chief of detectives was just another stepping stone. Next, I was going to be the NYPD’s first ever female commissioner, and after that? I could run for mayor. I could probably kiss a few asses in DC and get the nomination for secretary of Homeland Security. I’ve always been prepared to do what I had to do to get where I wanted. I was prepared to take part in the weaselly little games that get you the positions of power. I can be ruthless. But this? Louise. You. Your brother. All the other women Axel violated and walked away from, whom we don’t even know about, who don’t even know they’ve been raped: this isn’t a game. When Hain called me and told me you were still alive, when he finally made it back to the city – on the run from the same organization he spends his days working for – and he told me we’d have to silence Frank Travis too –’
‘Wait, what?’
‘– because he knew way too much about this –’
‘Wait a second, wait a second …’
They looked at each other.
‘Are you saying Frank’s dead as well?’
Rebekah’s throat felt like it was closing.
Unmoved, McKenzie just looked at her, as if she pitied her naïvety. ‘Of course he’s dead,’ she said. ‘Did you really think I could leave him alive?’
Exorcism
‘I’m really sorry about earlier, Frank,’ Katherine McKenzie said, as they took the elevator down to the parking garage. ‘I don’t know why I told you that.’
He looked at her. ‘You don’t have to apologize.’
‘I’ve never really told anyone about my brother.’
She met his gaze, and this time she was much harder to read: she was the woman he’d heard about, her expression blank as a wall.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m glad you felt I was worthy.’
She just nodded.
As the elevator doors opened onto the bottom floor of the garage, she pointed towards her car – a dark blue Mercedes – and said, ‘I’ve got some files in the trunk. I really think it might help.’
‘Okay,’ he replied.
But something didn’t feel right now.
He’d been so caught up with what was going on in the coffee shop, so fixated on the idea that McKenzie seemed to like him, in the excitement he felt, that he was certain now he’d overlooked something big.
His cellphone buzzed in his pants.
He grabbed it out of his pocket. It was Amy Houser asking him where he was. He glanced at the cardboard drinks tray he had in his spare hand, his and Amy’s coffees in it, then at McKenzie, who was looking at him, then tried to clear his head.
He replied to Houser, telling her he’d be five minutes.
As they approached the Mercedes, McKenzie used her remote to pop the trunk. It sprang up, revealing an empty space with two big boxes.
‘There they are,’ McKenzie said.
Travis’s cellphone buzzed again.
Houser for a second time.
I think Hain might be a cop.
Travis felt himself stumble.
‘Is everything okay, Frank?’
He glanced at the text again, then stopped eight feet short of the Mercedes, his cellphone still in one hand, the drinks in the other, looking between McKenzie and the two cardboard boxes – and he knew in that second that he was right.
Something was wrong.
But, by then, it was already too late.
‘Don’t move,’ a voice said behind him. He felt a gun press to the back of his skull. He’d never seen or heard an approach.
But he recognized the voice.
The man who’d called with the tip about Johnny.
The guy who’d dialled Houser’s phone.
Travis looked at McKenzie again and, for a second, he thought he saw something glint in her eyes. Regret, maybe, or remorse. And then he realized why she’d told him about her brother, why she’d tried to exorcize that ghost.
Because it would never matter.
Travis would never be able to tell anyone.
‘Now get in the fucking trunk,’ Hain s
aid.
80
‘Frank knew way too much about Louise,’ McKenzie said, ‘about you, about all of these cases. It was a shame. I really did take a shine to him. He was smart, kind. In the short time I spent with him, it was easy to see why he was a great cop: he had a disarming quality. He was someone you could trust.’ She stopped and in her face there was written a sadness that looked completely authentic. ‘Talking to him today made me realize I had to come here tonight.’
For a moment Rebekah didn’t understand, but then it clicked: McKenzie had confessed to Frank about her brother, and some part of her had liked it.
Now she was confessing the rest to Rebekah.
She felt a vibration in her chest, a swell of sorrow for Frank, and then McKenzie was talking again: ‘I just sat there, and I listened to Hain tell me what needed to be done, and after I shot Frank …’ She faded out, but those words remained. She was the one who had done it. She had killed him. Rebekah felt like she might be sick. ‘After I shot him,’ McKenzie said, picking up again, quieter now, ‘it finally hit me. I thought, Look at what I’ve become.’
Hain stepped forward. ‘Katherine.’
‘I don’t know what I’m doing any more.’
Rebekah wasn’t sure if she was talking to herself or to Hain.
But, for the first time, Rebekah saw an opportunity. Hain had stepped past her, was occupied, had let her drift from his field of vision. She looked left, at a kitchen knife hanging off a magnetic strip on the wall. It was at least three steps away, and that was still too far, even with Hain distracted. On her right there was nothing, just a swathe of empty countertop. Except that wasn’t quite true.
In the middle there was a granite chopping board.
‘I’ve become everything I’ve ever fought,’ McKenzie said softly. A tiny smear of mascara reached out from the edge of her face, like a black vein. ‘I’m a killer.’
The gun moved in Hain’s hand.
As they stared at each other, Rebekah took a step to her right, closer to the granite board.
‘Katherine, listen to me,’ Hain said, inching closer to the table. ‘I know what’s happening here. It’s the same thing that happened with Travis earlier, and if you keep talking like this, the next time you spill your guts it’ll be to someone who actually matters. People think you only confess once – but you don’t. You keep on doing it – you’ve already done it twice in one day – because it makes you feel better for a while. It’s like a drug.’ He was at least an arm’s length away from Rebekah now. ‘But this needs to be the last time you ever open your mouth about this, you understand me? Because if you keep on doing it, next time, I promise you, it won’t be worm food, like Frank Travis or this bitch – it’ll be a cop, or a journalist.’
McKenzie said nothing.
‘This needs to stop.’
He wasn’t just talking about McKenzie confessing. He was talking about doing what they’d come here to do: severing the sinew that connected Rebekah, Louise and all the other victims of Daniel Foley. It was obvious that he was way beyond where Katherine McKenzie was. He’d seen death and he’d caused it.
And it had claimed all of him.
Finally, McKenzie muttered, ‘You’re right.’
‘Okay, good.’
‘We need to finish this,’ she said softly.
‘Okay,’ he replied, glancing at Rebekah. ‘Okay, goo–’
He never finished his sentence.
The gunshot cut the room in two – a sound so loud it was like the entire house moved – and by the time Rebekah reacted, Hain had already been thrown against the countertop. His head whipped back, blood flecking Rebekah’s face – and then he collapsed like a ragdoll against the kitchen cabinets. When she looked down at him, her ears still ringing, his fingers were clutching a chest wound.
Horrified, shaken, Rebekah screamed, ‘What the fuck?’
But McKenzie was in the same position at the table.
She’d hardly moved, her eyes glazed.
In her hand was a snub-nosed pistol.
‘I think it’s time to call the cops,’ she said.
81
Rebekah was shaking, the adrenalin thundering in her blood.
‘Call the cops,’ McKenzie repeated.
As Rebekah stared at her, unsure if she was serious, Roxie started barking from the other room.
‘Call them.’
She reached into her pants and pulled out her cellphone. I don’t get it, she thought. Why would McKenzie shoot him? Except, of course, she did get it. McKenzie had needed to come here and confess – because that was the only way she could ever be free. Her secrets – the guilt, the remorse, the shame – were the same prison that the island had been to Rebekah.
‘I need to help him,’ Rebekah said, pointing to Hain.
McKenzie shook her head.
‘He’s going to die if we do nothing.’
‘Just call the police,’ she said again, and finally turned the gun on Rebekah. It looked bigger now, scarier. ‘Call them before I change my mind.’
Rebekah called 911 and told them there had been a shooting in her house. She gave them her address but didn’t mention McKenzie’s name. The second she hung up, McKenzie moved the gun, the weapon becoming slack in her hand, and pointed it away from them. ‘He told me it was better if he came alone.’
Her voice was bereft of emotion. She wasn’t looking at Rebekah, or Hain. She wasn’t looking at anything. She was looking into the future: the moment the police turned up, and her career and ambitions were over, and everything she’d worked for was gone.
Hain’s chest was moving but he was starting to drift.
‘His real name’s Bobby,’ she said. ‘Robert. But whenever he was dealing with stuff like this, he’d always use an alias. He’d switch between them all the time.’ She looked at Hain. ‘In my early days as a captain, we were at the same precinct and I did him a favour, got him out of a tight spot that might have cost him his badge, and after that he started doing things for me, fixing things, digging things up. And the more he was around me, the more he’d see of Axel, the more the two of them hit it off. Not that it was hard. Axel hit it off with most people. He was a liar, and liars can be charming.’ She smiled at the irony of that statement, because she was a liar, same as Foley was.
She leaned forward.
‘Hain.’ She smiled, because to her that was just a stage name. ‘Yeah, he helped cover it all up. But there were some things we had no control over. We had no idea how many women Axel had assaulted because he could barely remember. Maybe it was ten, maybe it was fifteen. He didn’t know. Some of the women he vaguely recalled, but we couldn’t find them based on only knowing their first names. For most others, we didn’t even have a name. To him, they were just shapes that passed through his life. So the whole time, it was a guillotine hanging over us, because if these women suddenly remembered Axel, we were exposed. At any moment, one of them might have a flash of recollection and – boom – that was the end. They’d dig into his life, and although I’d insulated myself from him, they’d find me there somewhere, despite my best efforts.’
In the distance, sirens started to fade in.
‘But if Axel committed suicide …’ She shrugged. ‘I can tell you from experience, a rape, a series of rapes, we’re going to work those hard. Cops, we’ll follow that road until we get to the bastard who did it. But a suicide? No one’s going to pursue that for any length of time. No one’s following the data trail. If it looks cut and dried, we write up the report and then we tie a bow around it.’
And Rebekah understood the rest: if one of the women did suddenly have a flash of recollection – a name, perhaps, maybe a physical description, or some vague memory of how Foley’s apartment looked – it was going to be way harder to find the man responsible if he was buried under six feet of dirt.
‘Hain persuaded Axel to go out to that bridge. He didn’t push him but he made him take the leap. He said to Axel, if he didn’t jump, he’d put
in an anonymous call to the NYPD and tell them about Louise. He’d frame him for you and your brother. He’d tell the cops about the other two we took care of.’ She paused, realizing that she’d never mentioned this part before. ‘We did manage to find two of the women from the details he gave us. We got rid of them; hunted them down and made them vanish – like Louise, like we thought we had with you.’
The air chilled.
Now there were three other women, plus Johnny and Travis.
It wasn’t a murder, it was a massacre.
‘Of course,’ McKenzie said, ‘Axel had no idea there was zero chance of us ever putting in an anonymous call to the cops, because it would bring questions to our door that we didn’t want to answer. But we laid out the choice for him: make the jump, or live out your days rotting in a prison cell. A man like Axel, who went around doing whatever the hell he liked, he’d never last in prison.’
More sirens, even closer.
McKenzie looked towards the living room, as if she expected to see cops in the house. If she’d had any doubts about her decision, it was too late now.
She heaved her shoulders and let out a long breath. The words had been coming fast, tumbling out of her, a desperate need to unload everything. But now she quietened. ‘Secrets,’ she said. ‘They’re like those buoys you see out in the ocean. You can hide them, you can drag them down to a hole in the deepest and darkest part of the water, but eventually …’ A tormented smile traced her lips, a wraith drifting in and out of view. ‘Eventually, they’ll force their way up. In the end, secrets float. It’s just a question of how long they take to get to the surface.’
And Rebekah had got to the surface.
She was the secret that came back.
‘I needed to come here,’ McKenzie said softly. ‘Nothing I’ve wanted in my life was worth this. I haven’t slept since the night Axel killed Louise. I’m not sure I slept properly for the entire time he was in my life. All I knew was that I couldn’t do it again. I couldn’t cover up another lie. When I found out you were still alive, I knew I had to look one of you in the face and admit to what I am.’
