“I can’t be incarcerated again. I won’t go back to that life!” She shook her head again, more violently. From upstairs a child’s voice drifted excitedly across the landing.
“Is that you daddy?”
Footsteps tripping down the stairs.
Ettrick instinctively glanced towards the stairwell. Clancy sped silently towards him, knife raised.
The detective whirled and fired. Once. Twice.
Bullets lifted the tiny figure into the air, red shoots fountaining across the wall, turning it into one of Clancy’s paintings. The woman landed on the table, fruit bouncing into the air, her pale arms flopping over the sides like bloody tassels.
“Stay there Frankie.” Ettrick cried, sinking to his knees. “Just stay there…”
He dropped the smoking gun.
“Please no,” he groaned. “Please, please, no…”
But he suddenly couldn’t remember what he was pleading for.
-70-
New Braunfells State Facility, Texas 2003
It was one of those Autumn afternoons. Not a cloud in the sky but enough breeze to take an edge off the heat. A perfect day.
R.D. had been given a wheelchair and shunted out to a patch of garden behind the warden’s quarters. It was quiet. No screams, moans or slamming doors. The grass was well watered and sprinkled with foxgloves. The psychologist even caught sight of a Blue Jay. He was beginning to drift off in the heat when he heard a low cough.
He opened his eyes to find Ettrick Sinclair standing in front of him. R.D. smiled.
“Did you get me brought out here? It’s nice.”
“Yeah... it’s quiet.” Ettrick’s expression was impossible to read. “And I got some more questions for you. I pretty much know the answers so don’t... elaborate. Just... don’t.”
There was a cold smoulder behind his stare.
“Clancy hated swearing,” he said. “Didn’t she?”
“Eh? What has that got to do with...”
Ettrick lashed out, a swift savage arc straight from his pocket and his palm cracked across R.D.’s jaw. The psychologist gasped as the blow whipped his head to the side. His wheelchair tilted precariously.
He glared at his friend in astonishment and fear. Glancing round he realised, for the first time, that his green secluded nook was out of sight of any guards.
“What the hell are you playing at?”
“My guess is Clancy hated swearing cause of its macho connotations,” Ettrick growled. “Mebbie it reminded her of the kind of men who used to abuse her. You notice I aint been swearing on my visits, R.D.? Course you fucking noticed! You were the one pointed it out.”
The lips curled back across his teeth.
“Now why would I suddenly stop swearing?”
The detective leaned forward, his face a leering moon floating in front of R.D.’s watery eyes.
“I’ll fucking tell you why... cause Clancy Moore was in my life, nudging my mind this way and that way. And you knew it, you bastard! You knew!”
“I couldn’t be sure,” R.D. said quietly. “But it seemed likely.”
“I had no intention of visiting you. Ever.” Ettrick continued bitterly. “It’s only in the last few days that I suddenly began to question the official version of events. Because Clancy made me think that way!”
“I thought you did it because you were my friend!” R.D. tried to sound indignant but it came out as a whine. “What was I supposed...?”
Ettrick slammed a fist into the psychologist’s shoulder and the wheelchair tipped violently backwards. R.D. yelped grabbing frantically at the wheels, then cried out as his fingers were caught between the spokes, cutting into the flesh. The chair crashed forward again.
“You fucking crazy bastard!” he yelled.
“You knew she’d be manipulating the only person who could get in this place and be alone with you!” Ettrick shouted back. “Not just observing him!”
He grabbed the arms of the chair and R.D. shrank away from his fury.
“You gave me that bullshit identity test... like I might be Clancy... and that’s what it was… Bullshit! You convinced me she was coming for you... that nothin could stop her gettin in here, an that was bullshit too! You knew this is the one place that bitch could never reach you!”
Ettrick straightened, reaching up to the heavens, marvelling at the cosmic scale of his error.
“YOU’RE IN A FUCKING MENTAL INSTITUTION!” he roared. “Wild horses couldn’t drag Clancy Moore into another mental institution! You were safer from her in here than anywhere in the world, weren’t you?”
R.D. stayed silent, nursing his bloody fingers.
“WEREN’T YOU!”
“Yes,” the psychologist whispered. “She was absolutely paranoid about being locked away in some place like this again. That was the problem. She wouldn’t come in and I couldn’t get out.”
He fumbled in his lap for cigarettes and a lighter. Ettrick lowered his arms, finally spent.
R.D. sensed he was safe for the moment.
“Ettrick...” he began. Then he lapsed into silence.
“That’s why I had to fetch you the Mini-AID, wasn’t it R.D.?” the detective rasped. “To force Clancy to break in here. Make her come to you. It was the only way you’d ever get to talk to her.”
The psychologist flicked hopelessly at his lighter but couldn’t get a flame. His cigarette hung, impotent, from dry lips. “Everything I did was calculated, I admit it. Calculated to play on your suspicious nature and pique your interest. I used every trick I had so that you’d hear me out until I had convinced you my story was true.”
He flung the lighter away and it hit the wall with an empty click.
“But I had to start at the beginning and work my way through. Can’t you see that? Sow enough doubts that you’d start your own investigation. You’re too practical a man to take my word. You had to find out conflicting evidence of your own.”
He lifted a bleeding hand in a placating gesture.
“I knew Clancy wouldn’t harm you before you had the location of the Mini-AID and I wouldn’t give out that information until you finally believed me. Then you were on the lookout for her! You’d be able to bring the Mini-AID here without being caught unawares. After that Clancy would leave you alone and go after me instead.”
He leaned forward in his chair.
“I was trying to keep you safe.”
Ettrick hesitated. Even through the mist of his hatred, he could see R.D.’s reasoning. But it wasn’t good enough.
“Then why leave out the most vital pieces of information?” he demanded. “Like the fact that Clancy was already inside my head?”
“Because I’m a fucking psychologist. Telling someone they’re not in control of their own mind is the surest way to put them in denial. You’d have stormed out of here and never come back.”
“And lying about Clancy coming to get you?”
“If you thought I was safe in here, you’d have kept the Mini-AID. I know you. Despite your protests, you would have tried to present the device as evidence and convince the authorities I was telling the truth. Or worse, used it to draw Clancy out and arrest her.”
R.D. shuddered
“Either way, she’d see you as a threat. Come after your ass, all guns blazing. And she has quite an arsenal.”
Ettrick concentrated on the spent lighter lying in the grass. He couldn’t bear to look at R.D.
“She already did.”
“Excuse me?”
“Clancy killed my wife. Took her place these last few days.”
“Oh my God?” R.D.’s hand shot to his mouth. “No… No!’
Madison’s body washed up on the shore of Stonewall Lake yesterday morning.”
“Clancy didn’t have to do that,” R.D. stammered. “Ettrick… I… thought she’d just be hanging around where you lived.”
His face crumpled.
“I never dreamed she’d do something like that.”
“Fuck,” t
he detective rasped quietly. “Everyone said you were a shit psychologist, but I always knew you were good. You’re just a horrible human being. You played me like a fish on a line. Best bit of deception I ever saw and I thought I’d witnessed it all.”
He shook his head miserably.
“Outside of Clancy, of course. The two of you were kindred spirits.”
“Don’t say that.” Tears spilled down R.D.’s cheeks. “You know how much I cared about Madison.”
“Oh, I certainly do.” Ettrick’s face was emotionless. “But not as much as you cared about the monster who killed her. What were you going to do when she got here, huh? Hand over the Mini-AID and beg her to break you out? Take you with her?”
‘No.” R.D. replied. “I was going to make sure Clancy never left this place.”
“What do you mean?”
“The last time I was with her, Maggie told me the highest frequency on the Mini-AID was seven on Teasdale and Jennet’s Graduated Static Scale. The GCS?”
“Stop playing games. How would that help you?”
“I was going to correct her but she cut me off.” R.D. smiled wanly. “What a clever ruse. What a brilliant mind.”
“Explain.”
“Maggie was convinced, rightly, that we were being watched. It was her way of subtly telling me she’d built a trap into the Mini-AID, without going into details.”
“I’m still not sure what you’re getting at.”
“I’m from Edinburgh. So even a crappy psychologist like me knows that Teasdale and Jennet were Scottish doctors. That GCS really stands for Glasgow Coma Scale and seven is a vegetative state.”
“Holy crap,” Ettrick breathed.
“As soon as I gave the device to Clancy, she’d have turned the frequency up as far as it would go, to increase her Inductance and help her escape. Instead the feedback would have short circuited her brain. She’d have collapsed on the spot and never woken up again.”
R.D. bowed his head
“But I underestimated how feral Clancy had become,” he whispered. “All I did was get Madison killed.”
“And Clancy too.” Ettrick pulled back his jacket, revealing his service holster. “I shot her.”
“Good. She fucking deserved it.”
The men shared a moment of loneliness and loss, listening to the whirring of Cicada bugs, hidden like pins among the foliage.
“Clancy’s re-appearance has caused real problems for the department.” Ettrick began hesitantly. “Since my wife was her victim, Scharges is heading the investigation.”
“That figures. Guy sees himself as my nemesis. Pity he’s an idiot.”
“Maybe. But he went through your old office again and found this stuffed down the inside of a chair.”
The detective pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and handed it over.
“The handwriting has been identified as Clancy’s. No point in trying to eat it, though. It’s a photocopy.”
“I thought I left this in Brighton Rock.” R.D.’s voice was heavy with irony. “My memory must be going.”
Please don't be angry. I just long for us to be together again, like in the old days. I need you R.D. I'm not in control of my own mind but you, of all people, will understand.
You'll help me. I know you will.
Clancy
He read it quickly.
“The first half has been cut off. The bit that mentions Justin wanting to see me too.” He crumpled up the note and sighed loudly. “You get creative in any other ways? Besides planting this for Scharges to find.”
The detective unclipped a pair of sunglasses from his breast pocket and put them on.
“He was desperate for an explanation that would incriminate you, since he loathes the ground you walk on. And telling people what they want to hear is a lot easier than the truth. You oughtta know.”
“I take it you had a few words with him, off the record.” R.D. gripped the arms of his wheelchair. His torn knuckles glistened white and red and perspiration ran freely down his forehead. “Some ideas he’d be only too happy to run with.”
“I suggested you’d rekindled an old affair with Clancy because she was the love of your life. But, as a former mental patient, she was dangerously unstable.” Though mirrored lenses shielded his eyes from R.D., Ettrick found it hard to continue. “In a fit of jealousy, she got rid of your other girlfriends. She killed Beck Murray and forced Maggie out of a window at gunpoint.”
“He’d like that.” R.D. gripped the leather rests tighter. “Fits the facts.”
“Detective Scharges worked out the rest, or so he thinks. You couldn’t bear to lose her again, so you both hatched a plot to kill Justin and make it look like he and Clancy’s died in a fire. You drove Beck Murray’s body to the Moore’s residence, intending to burn it down. Hope we would mistake her charred body for Clancy. After all the two women looked very similar.”
“They did, I suppose,” R.D. agreed.
“With no evidence to link you to the crimes, Maggie’s death would be ruled a suicide. and people would think Beck had simply moved on.”
Though his face remained blank Ettrick’s hair was sticking to his head. Despite the breeze, his shirt was virtually transparent.
“But when you got there, Justin wasn’t alone. He had a female friend visiting and that put a spanner in the works.”
“Justin didn’t have any friends…” R.D. began. Then he sighed. “A fact I can’t prove, of course.”
“You managed to kill the woman but Justin escaped and you chased him to the boathouse, while Clancy set fire to the house.”
“This is very inventive.” R.D. nodded, as if he somehow approved.
“But your plan had gone horribly wrong. Justin ambushed you and did some pretty serious damage before he expired. The fire was spreading and Beck was still in the trunk of your car. So Clancy put her titanium star round the neck of Justin’s female companion and took off. Your only defence was claiming not to remember anything. Hope the fact you had no apparent motive for killing Beck, Justin and Clancy would get you certified.”
“But Clancy’s re-appearance, along with the note changes all that,” R.D. muttered.
“The courts will decide you’re sane after all. Evil but sane.” Ettrick’s voice was thick and dry. “You’ll be declared fit for trial, found guilty and sent to death row.”
“Aw, buddy…”
“The poor coroner has been fired for incompetence. After all, he matched Jane Doe’s teeth with Clancy’s dental records, when she was still very much alive. What’s more he claimed Madison had been dead for several days.”
“And nobody believes him, since plenty people saw her after that, not realizing it was actually Clancy.”
R.D. looked longingly at his far away lighter.
“It’s all very plausible,” he said admiringly. “Except it doesn’t explain why Clancy killed Madison.”
“Oh yes it does. Clancy couldn’t stop her vendetta against your ex-lovers and exposed herself by bumping off another one.” Ettrick wiped angrily at his sunglasses, smearing the surface. “My wife.”
“What are you talking about?” R.D. looked horrified. “I never slept with Madison! Neither of us would do that to you!”
“I gave Scharges the photograph she took of you checking into the Schneider’s Motel for a sneaky night together,” Ettrick said bitterly. “He almost shit his pants with glee.”
“The picture was taken by Meike, you idiot.” The psychologist’s jaw dropped. “We used to go there at weekends when we were dating. Meike gave it to Madison because she was into painting that kind of stuff.”
A wave of dizziness swept over the detective.
“That’s not true!” he gasped.
“All you have to do is ask her.” R.D. said. “Not that it’ll change anything.”
He handed Clancy’s note back.
“Knowing how gung-ho you Texans are over the death penalty, the trial date is probably already set.”
; -71-
Ettrick twisted the shades in anguish, bending them out of shape.
“You never slept with my wife?” he whispered.
“Of course not,” R.D. said. “We were friends. That’s all.”
“I falsified evidence to convict you.” Ettrick stared at the crumpled photocopy as if it were a poisonous bug. “Maneuvered Scharges into fitting the pieces together wrongly. Betrayed everything I believed in.”
“I can see why you did it,” R.D. replied. “I know how much you loved your wife.”
“I wanted revenge. I blamed you for taking Madison from me. Twice, I thought.” Ettrick choked on the words. “But you’re not a murderer. You tried to help Justin, Clancy and Maggie.”
He sank to his knees in front of R.D., face twisted in grief.
“You might even have been trying to help me. You just fucked at all up.”
R.D. had been insulted many times but, for some reason, this backhanded compliment hurt more than any criticism he had ever received.
“You caught me in your web, R.D.,” Ettrick rasped. “I’m finished.”
Emotion overcame him and he began to cry.
For a while the psychologist sat motionless and watched the detective sob. He looked out over the asylum wall at the beautiful bright blue sky, soaking up the kind of dry warmth he had never felt in chilly Scotland. The kind he yearned for when he was young and now hated.
He reached out a bleeding hand and rested it on the detective’s soaking shoulder.
“I’ve made a terrible mistake.” Ettrick turned and took the man’s torn palms between his own. “Even if I brought out Meike as a witness and admitted altering the note, it wouldn’t make a difference. The DA will claim we’re both lying cause you were her ex and you’re...”
“You’re my friend?”
“Yes,” Ettrick admitted miserably. “Because you’re my friend.”
“And Scharges version will still fit the facts much better than mine. I know how it works.”
Holding out his arms, R.D. helped the detective from his knees and onto his feet.
“Look on the bright side. You apprehended Clancy and the press will love it. You’ll probably make police commissioner.”
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