by Tim Weaver
As sirens entered the street, McKenzie reached down, into the pocket of her coat. Rebekah heard something jangle, then McKenzie placed a set of car keys on the table. She glanced at Hain, a look in her face that was hard to interpret, before returning to Rebekah. Pushing the car keys towards her, McKenzie said, ‘These are for you. It’s parked at the Walgreens on Prospect.’
That was a couple of blocks from the house.
‘Why are you giving me these?’ Rebekah replied.
‘Because Travis is in the trunk.’
Rebekah’s stomach sank like a shipwreck.
‘I had this photograph of you all for a while,’ she said. ‘You, and your brothers, and your father, the four of you on the front porch of that house you all lived in down on 81st Street. Hain dug it up from somewhere. I don’t know where he got it, but I’m glad he did. I used to look at it a lot when I got home at night, just study it, your faces, and weird as it sounds, I felt jealous. I could see how tight you all were, how you’d forged something remarkable even after your mother abandoned you, and I never had that. I only had this.’ She looked at Hain, at the gun, at the blood on the walls of the kitchen, and then pushed the car keys even closer to Rebekah. ‘I’m sorry we took Johnny away. I can’t give him back to you – but I can at least do this much.’
I can’t give him back to you.
‘Where’s my brother?’
‘I don’t know,’ McKenzie said. ‘That’s the truth. I don’t know what happened that day. But Hain will.’ Her eyes went to Hain again: he was hanging on, moaning gently. ‘I do know something, though. Your brother …’
She stopped, almost winced, as if she’d been shot too.
‘He’s buried in a grave on that island.’
The words crashed against Rebekah.
She’d told herself that Johnny was dead, had known it on some level for five months. But hearing it was different. It felt like a part of her had been torn out.
She was home.
She was finally safe.
But, without Johnny, something of her would always stay lost.
9
* * *
THE SCAR
82
Three days later, the police found the skeletal remains of Louise Mason’s body in salt marshes in Jamaica Bay. There were two other bodies alongside hers: a French exchange student called Mathilde Roux, twenty-two, whose parents in Paris had reported her missing seven days after Louise disappeared; and Carla Lee, thirty-three, who had worked in a bar in Tribeca and was reported missing by her husband three days before Rebekah went to Crow Island. When investigators spoke to family and friends, no one remembered either woman talking about a man matching Daniel Foley’s description, let alone the idea that they might have been raped. Like Rebekah, it appeared the other women had no recall of the night they’d spent with Axel – but Hain had killed them anyway, just to be safe.
Four days after that, a search team returned to Crow Island to recover Johnny. Both days they were there it was overcast, unseasonably cold for early April, and when a task force arrived in Helena, it began to sleet.
With them on that day was a detective called Robert Markowitz, who hadn’t buried Johnny himself but knew where Lorenzo ‘Lima’ Selestino had put him. To Katherine McKenzie, Markowitz had been ‘Bobby’; to the Detective Squad at the 46th Precinct in the Bronx – where he’d worked – he was ‘Mark’. Until that night in her kitchen, Rebekah had only known him as Hain.
He was still working at the 46th Precinct, in Homicide, until the end. The day he’d called Amy Houser’s phone, and Travis had picked up, it was in his capacity as a detective: he genuinely had no idea that Travis would be there. He was calling Amy Houser’s line to ask her about a cold case that might have had links to a murder he was working. The media speculated about how a corrupt cop like Hain could be missed, but particularly how he could disappear for three days after leaving the island. Yet it was easy enough: he didn’t disappear. There were 36,000 officers in the NYPD and 19,000 civilian employees. The day after he’d made it back to the city, he’d taken a sick day to go to the ER and get patched up from the car crash. The day after that, he returned to work at the 46th. His colleagues commented on his injuries, which he said were due to a car accident, but no one suspected a thing. He just did what he always did.
He vanished in plain sight.
And so Hain led the way – in prison greens, handcuffed, bandaged, his weight supported by two officers, slightly woozy from all the painkillers he was on – back to the island’s forest. Detective Bowners had assured Rebekah, before the search team left for Montauk, they would find Johnny and get Rebekah the closure she’d been longing for. And on the afternoon of the first day, she called to fulfil her promise.
‘We’ve found him,’ she said quietly.
Finally, Johnny was coming home.
Katherine McKenzie was primetime news for weeks. The media tore her to pieces, speculating on every aspect of her career, her personal life, the folly and arrogance of her future ambitions. Rebekah read and watched some of it, but much more she ignored. A lot of the time it was because she was fending off interview requests herself, TV appearances, magazine articles, emails from a publisher asking if she wanted to write a book about her experiences. It was the incessant nature of it, the repetition of the questions, the complete absence of empathy, just a sustained parade of faces trying to get her to break.
For weeks, news trucks camped at either end of her road, annoying neighbours, pressuring Rebekah, journalists from papers, websites and TV channels all across the country hounding anyone who strayed onto the block.
Throughout it all, as she left the house to walk Roxie, or took the girls to the park, she remained silent. If there was one thing she’d learned on the island, it was how to do that.
At night, once Gareth had moved out for a second time and in with his new girlfriend, she’d lie awake, or she’d go through to the girls’ bedroom and just sit quietly in the corner, watching them, and she’d think about Katherine McKenzie. And even after everything had come out, every awful detail had run in every news outlet in every city across the country, Rebekah would still feel a weird sense of discord: she hated McKenzie for all she’d been involved in, for every lie, every secret she’d helped conceal, every death; she hated her for all the pain she’d caused the family of Louise Mason, her complicity in the murders of Mathilde Roux and Carla Lee, for how she’d allowed Johnny to be torn away; she hated her for the way that countless women were living victims of Daniel Foley, and although they might have felt that something wasn’t right, that there was a shadow they couldn’t shake, they’d never be certain of why.
And yet …
Despite all of that being true, Rebekah couldn’t deny that McKenzie had had a conscience, a twine of good that had refused to snap, because if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have sat at the kitchen table in Rebekah’s house and made her confession. All the ambition in the world, all the dirty tricks she’d pulled, all the things she’d allowed to happen on her watch, or turned a blind eye to, couldn’t permanently unbalance her sense of what was right. It had remained unimpaired, even if it had taken her too long to find its hiding place.
And, of course, there was Frank Travis.
They’d found him in the trunk of McKenzie’s Mercedes.
He’d been bound and gagged with duct tape.
McKenzie told the police that she and Hain had planned the day: in the afternoon, they were going to get rid of Travis; in the evening, at precisely the time that the changeover was happening outside Rebekah’s house, and the patrol officers’ guard would be down, they would take care of her too.
Except McKenzie had been lying to Hain.
She’d woken up that morning and decided she couldn’t do it any more. Her confessions, the ghosts she was exorcizing, first with Travis in Starbucks, and later with Rebekah at the house, had been products of that. She was done hiding, done killing. So, she’d talked to Hain, told him that he had too
much blood on his hands already and that she would take care of Travis, and although she said Hain was suspicious – ‘because he was always suspicious’ – he agreed. McKenzie was a cop, after all. She might have spent the latter part of her career behind a desk, but she’d walked the beat, she’d been a detective.
She’d drawn her weapon thousands of times.
She’d killed in the line of duty twice.
She and Hain had got Travis into the trunk of the Mercedes, and then she’d said she would call Hain once the deed was done, and Hain could bury the body in the same place he’d put Louise Mason, Mathilde Roux and Carla Lee.
She called him at around 7 p.m. that night and told him it was done, that the Mercedes was parked in a Walgreens a block from Rebekah’s brownstone. That played well with Hain: he once told her that the worst place to leave a car with a body in it was in a deserted back alley. People would pay attention to it there. No one paid attention to it outside a Walgreens. It played even better when she showed him the trunk: Travis was on his belly, his face bloodied, duct tape over his mouth and around his wrists, which were bound behind him. The tableau was good enough for Hain: he said he would put Rebekah’s body inside the car too, once they’d killed her, and drive both her and Travis to Jamaica Bay.
But it was all staged.
Travis’s face was a mess because McKenzie had put a deliberate cut in it and spread the blood out. He was on his belly so it lessened the chances of Hain seeing him breathing. She’d selected a parking bay as far away from any lights as possible because she knew Hain wouldn’t want the trunk open for long in a public place. And all of that was why Rebekah felt so conflicted.
Because Frank Travis was still alive.
Because he got to tell Rebekah all of this himself.
And because they had Katherine McKenzie to thank for it.
83
The memorial service for Louise Mason took place at St John Cemetery, close to her parents’ home in Rego Park. Rebekah left the girls with Noella, and she and Frank Travis, sporting a fetching bandage that stretched from his forehead to the dome of his skull, went together. They sat at the back as Louise’s uncle, her cousin and her father talked eloquently through tears about Louise’s life, her art, her successes and, most importantly, the person she was. Afterwards, Rebekah went up to Louise’s parents and introduced herself. The three of them hugged for a long time. Perhaps, in some other life, it might have been unusual, an act that might have made one or all of them uncomfortable. But in that moment none of them questioned it.
Two days later, Rebekah was burying Johnny.
Noella stood up and read a eulogy for him that was so funny and heartfelt, Rebekah spent the entire ten minutes lurching between laughter and sobs. Johnny had wanted to be cremated, not buried, so there was no rain to contend with this time, no storm clouds above the East River, as there had been when Rebekah had said her goodbyes to Mike and to her father.
They held the wake in a bookshop, after it had shut for the day, three blocks from the house on 81st Street where they’d all grown up. It was a place Johnny had always loved, perhaps even the place he was at his happiest. Rebekah chatted to friends of his she hadn’t seen for years, distant relatives who’d come all the way from Boston for the funeral, and for a while it was easy to forget the ache in the pit of her stomach, the anger she was feeling, the sense of hurt and betrayal. But at the end of the night, when just she, Noella and the store manager were left, Rebekah turned to Noe and said, ‘Why wasn’t she here?’
Noe frowned. ‘Who, honey?’
‘My mother.’
Noe glanced at the store manager and he headed out back to give them space.
‘Forget her,’ Noe said, putting a hand to Rebekah’s arm.
‘Why wouldn’t she come?’
‘Because she never comes, Bek.’
‘But why not?’
‘Because she’s not like you, honey. How you feel about your girls, what you were prepared to do to get back to them, that’s not who she is. If that was who she was, she’d have shown her face when Mike died. Hell, she wouldn’t have walked out on you in the first place.’ Noe put her arm around Rebekah’s shoulders. ‘You’ve got enough to think about without worrying about her. She abandoned you all. You three were only kids. You and Mike were just babies.’ The inference was clear: what kind of a monster would do that?
‘She hasn’t even sent a bloody card.’
‘Perhaps she doesn’t know,’ Noe said.
Except the day after the funeral a card arrived. Rebekah opened it, Johnny’s familiar refrain – ‘It’s better than nothing’ – echoing in her head. Inside, her mother had written, I was sorry to hear the news about John. But no name. No Mum. No Fiona.
Rebekah looked at the envelope: it had British stamps on the front, air-mail stickers, but no return address.
Again, she thought of Johnny.
He’d always kept the cards when they arrived.
Rebekah tossed hers into the trash.
84
A couple of hours later, Frank Travis arrived at the house. Rebekah had prepared some sandwiches and, while the girls ran around the backyard, she and Travis sat on a couple of old wicker chairs, under the shade of the porch, Roxie lying at Rebekah’s feet, chewing an old slipper.
‘This brings back memories,’ Travis said.
‘Were your kids crazy like this?’
He smiled. Kyra was running around in circles, singing a song she’d heard on the Disney Channel, while Chloe was laughing so hard she eventually lost her balance and plopped onto her backside.
‘How are they doing?’ Travis asked.
Rebekah watched Kyra as she poured her and her sister an imaginary cup of tea. ‘They’re doing okay,’ she said. ‘But sometimes they look at me and it’s like …’ Her eyes went back to the girls. ‘It’s like they don’t remember me.’
‘Give it time, kiddo.’
She glanced at him. ‘And then there’s this thing with Gareth. I don’t know what I expected to happen between us when I got home. I didn’t expect us to get back together, but I guess I didn’t expect him to move on so quickly.’
Travis was quiet for a moment, his hands steepled in front of him. ‘This stuff can be hard, Rebekah.’
‘I think it’s time you started calling me Bek now, Frank.’
‘Bek.’ He smiled again, fiddling with the bandage on his head. ‘When my wife left me, Jeez, I was spinning like a top for months. It was nuts, because I wasn’t even happy with her. I didn’t like her. But anything that tilts you, even if it’s something small – and I’m not saying this thing with the girls is small, not at all – it can really play with your head.’ Travis took a bite of his sandwich. ‘It’s like Louise. I got her home – not in the way I wanted to, but I got her home – and I’m still lying awake at night. It still feels like I failed her.’
‘You didn’t fail her, Frank.’
Travis didn’t say anything, just took another bite of his sandwich, and they fell into a comfortable silence, watching the girls. After a while, Travis turned to Rebekah and said, ‘They’re maybe a little confused right now but they’ll come around. Kids are remarkable. They’re so much more resilient than we give them credit for. When they’re this age, they adapt and move on. There’s no rancour or regret. Soon, it’ll be like you were never away.’
Rebekah looked at Travis, and felt an immediate pull towards him: this was the sort of speech her father used to give to Johnny, Mike and her when they were growing up – gentle, incisive words that would draw them back from whatever edge they’d wandered out to. She found herself reaching over to grasp Travis’s hand, and – although he seemed taken aback – he soon took hers in return, understanding.
‘Thanks, Frank,’ she said.
He held her hand for a moment longer and then she saw his expression change, and she knew they were about to get to the real reason for his visit. In truth, a part of her had been scared to ask. If this visit was about John
ny, she knew it would hurt. She knew it from the way Travis was looking at her.
He placed the half-eaten sandwich on his plate, finished his Coke and then moved his hand to the inside pocket of his sports coat. When it emerged, a flash drive was pinched between his thumb and finger. Travis put it down, pushing it towards her. On the side, it said, FAO: Frank Travis.
‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘They figured out what happened to Johnny that day.’
Rebekah blinked.
‘Bowners and her team, in their interviews with “Hain”, they’ve managed to put together a rough idea of what happened when you and your brother got separated.’ He grimaced, as if he was having a hard time forming his words. ‘They know why Johnny’s wallet was at the lighthouse.’
‘Why?’ Rebekah asked, almost fearful of the answer.
‘It sounds like, when you were trying to escape from Lima, Johnny didn’t realize you weren’t behind him to start with, and then when he went back for you – when he was calling your name – he couldn’t find either you or Lima because you’d already drawn Lima away from the track, in the direction of that gully.’ In the beat between sentences, an image of that day flickered behind Rebekah’s eyes. Her tumbling into the gully, hitting her head and blacking out. ‘After that,’ Travis went on, ‘there’s a knowledge gap, but the cops seem to think that when Johnny couldn’t find you he tried to run back up to the main road, presumably to flag someone down. Shortly after, Lima finished with you, because he thought you were dead, and returned to the parking area with the keys for Stelzik’s Chevy. He used it to catch Johnny.’
‘So how did Johnny get all the way out to the lighthouse?’
Travis didn’t respond initially. Instead, it looked like he was gathering his strength, steeling himself for the final assault. ‘He didn’t. Hain says Lima caught up with your brother before Johnny ever managed to reach the top of that trail out of Simmons Gully. I mean, the track was almost a mile long …’
