Never Coming Back

by Tim Weaver

  ‘I know it,’ Lee said, a hint of steel returning to his voice.

  ‘Why, though? Who’s the guy in the photograph?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  But there was a flicker in his face.

  ‘You said Carrie had taken a small part of a bigger photograph?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She’d focused in on the man.’

  ‘So what was in the rest of the picture?’

  He hesitated. It didn’t feel like he was lying because he was deliberately trying to keep something back. It felt like he was lying because he wanted it to all go away. But it was too late for that now. He’d told me too much, and now there was no going back.

  ‘Come on, Lee.’

  ‘You can see Ray, Eric and Carter in the photo.’

  I studied him. ‘Muire, Schiltz and Graham are with this guy?’

  ‘No. He’s way off, in the background. They don’t even know he’s there.’

  ‘But do you think they knew him?’

  ‘I think it might have been someone from their early years. Maybe they came into contact with him and didn’t even realize. I think Cornell was looking for a reason to take Schiltz out. Silence him. Stop him from ever talking about what that photograph meant.’

  ‘And then there was Ray.’

  His head dropped.

  ‘Do you think he really fell into the river by himself?’ I asked him.

  ‘Maybe I just want to believe he did.’

  Suddenly, the conversation I’d had with Martha Muire echoed back to me. I was burgled a month after Ray died, she’d told me over the phone. The only thing they took was a photograph. ‘It wasn’t an accident,’ I said, and Lee looked up at me. ‘Cornell killed Schiltz. Then, whoever does Cornell’s dirty work here killed Ray too.’

  He nodded; a lonely, mournful movement.

  I told him about the photograph that was stolen from his mum’s place, and then made the natural leap in logic. ‘Schiltz scanned in a load of old photos, right? So what’s the betting he emailed a version of that photo to Ray – and also to Carter Graham?’

  Lee instantly understood. ‘You think Carter’s next?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you?’

  His hands were linked together like he was in silent prayer. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think Cornell will come for Carter just like he came for everyone else.’ He looked at me. ‘Because Carter’s the only one left who knows who D.K. is.’

  I frowned. ‘D.K.?’

  ‘That’s what was written in Carrie’s notebook.’

  D.K.

  Wednesday, 23 November 2011 | Twelve Months Ago

  At first, Eric Schiltz thought it was a sound in his head, part of a dream he was having about being back in the village he’d grown up in. But then the dream fell away and so did his sleep, and he realized he was on top of the sheets, naked, and the doorbell was buzzing. He sat up and looked at the clock. Six-forty. Who the hell was calling so early?

  Shrugging his gown on, he walked to the windows of the bedroom, all of which looked out across the Mesa. Once, Clark Gable had lived in this area of Palm Springs, among its low-rise buildings and coral-coloured roofs. Back then, its tight network of homes, nestled in the foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains, was a big gated community. Now, though, as Schiltz noted the blue Pontiac G8 parked at the bottom of the drive, his gate ajar, he was reminded that those days were definitely over.

  Heading downstairs, into the centre of a sweeping, marble-floored entrance hall with four rooms coming off it – a kitchen, a downstairs bedroom, his study and a sprawling living room – he stopped to check himself in the mirror and ran a hand through his hair.

  Then he opened the door.

  Standing on the front step was Cornell. He was dressed in a pair of denims, a black suit jacket and black brogues polished to a shine. The early sunlight, arcing in across the porch, cast his hairless skin a golden-brown. He didn’t say anything to Schiltz, didn’t even look at him, his eyes shifting over Schiltz’s shoulder and into the house.

  ‘What are you doing down here?’

  Cornell’s eyes pinged back to him. ‘How are you, Eric?’

  Schiltz just looked at him. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘Six-forty.’

  Cornell’s eyes started moving again, darting around the entrance hall, up the stairs, into the doorways, listening to the sounds of the house. He was seeing whether anyone else was home. Schiltz briefly considered telling him there was, his brain deciding in that second, like a survival instinct kicking in, that the best way to head this off was to lie.

  But then, as he went to speak, Cornell said, ‘I’m sorry it’s so early.’

  Except he wasn’t sorry. There was no contrition in his voice.

  His eyes finally settled on Schiltz. They were small and dark, like an inverted photograph of the rest of him: his smooth skin; his perfect teeth; his hair, exactly parted at the side, unruffled, immaculate. He was dressed in designer clothes, the tailored jacket tracing the lines of his body. But his eyes weren’t the same as the rest of him. The rest of him spoke of normality and reason; his eyes spoke of deception and violence.

  ‘May I come in?’

  Schiltz shrugged, as if it made no difference to him. But, in reality, he didn’t want Cornell inside his house. Ever since Schiltz’s laptop had been stolen from his room at the Bellagio, he’d noticed a change in Cornell. He’d always been a little odd: quiet, guarded, often to the point of being rude – but Schiltz had accepted those flaws. He’d known Cornell a long time, knew his background – it was just who he was. But something had changed after the laptop had gone missing: Cornell had called Schiltz obsessively for a week afterwards, telling him to burn the original copy of the photograph he’d had on the laptop; the one of Schiltz, Carter Graham and Ray Muire. When Schiltz had tried to reason with him, to tell him it was just an innocent photograph, Cornell had begun to get more aggressive. Eventually, Schiltz did it, just to get him off his back. But even once the picture was gone, Cornell had called him about it, asking questions about Carrie Ling. This time Schiltz had put up more of a fight, saying Carrie knew nothing about the picture.

  ‘Then why was she asking about it?’ Cornell had said in response.

  ‘When?’

  ‘On the phone, that night you had your laptop stolen.’

  ‘She wasn’t asking about that,’ Schiltz had told him. ‘Do you think the whole world revolves around that picture, Jeremy? We’d got talking about my big project – scanning in all the photographs – and she’d been interested in that. She’s creative. She enjoys stuff like that.’ Schiltz had paused, letting the lie settle. He wasn’t exactly sure why he was deceiving Cornell on Carrie Ling’s behalf, he just knew that he didn’t want her, or the Lings, on Cornell’s radar. He just wanted Cornell to stop calling him.

  ‘Who is she?’ Cornell had asked.

  ‘Just a friend.’

  ‘Where’s she from?’

  ‘Here,’ Schiltz lied. ‘In Palm Springs.’

  And that had been the end of the calls. From the middle of September, Cornell had stopped phoning. No more questions. No more phone calls. No more mentions of the photo or Carrie. Until, at six-forty this morning, he had emerged from the dawn light.

  ‘Let me ask you something, Eric.’

  Schiltz went to push the front door shut – then stopped. Outside, he could see people walking past with their dogs, others in their running gear. Once he shut the door, he shut them all out and the world disappeared – and then it was just him and Cornell.

  ‘You remember that woman you talked about?’

  ‘Woman?’

  ‘Carrie Ling.’

  Schiltz’s heart sank. ‘Uh, vaguely.’

  ‘Vaguely?’ A smile perforated Cornell’s starched face. ‘But when we talked on the phone a few months back, you said she was a friend, that she lived in Palm Springs.’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘But you only vaguely know her?’
r />   ‘What difference does it make?’ Schiltz said, trying to add some steel to his voice. But he knew what difference it made: with one comment, he’d exposed himself as a liar.

  ‘When did you come out of retirement?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Earlier this year. I understand you did an operation.’

  Shit, he thought, Cornell knows all about them. Schiltz nodded, unsure where to go next. ‘Yes, I did. Her daughter had some complicated injuries, and her family asked if I could help.’

  ‘Her family asked?’

  Schiltz nodded.

  ‘You mean Carrie asked?’

  Schiltz nodded again, not wanting to lead himself anywhere.

  ‘But Lee Wilkins says he asked you on their behalf.’

  Schiltz realized Cornell had cornered him, and Wilkins had dropped him in the shit. If he admitted that Wilkins had asked on their behalf, he admitted that the request for help hadn’t come directly from Carrie, and Cornell would make the last leap himself: that Schiltz hadn’t known Carrie before he’d operated on her daughter. It was all a lie.

  Before Schiltz could answer, Cornell started to move away from the front door towards the study. Schiltz just watched him, unsure of what to do. Did he let Cornell wander around freely, and risk being drawn deeper into the house where no one outside could see him any more? He hated the thought of Cornell going through his things and invading the sanctity of his home. But he didn’t want to be alone with him. Not now.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he called after him.

  Cornell didn’t even acknowledge him. He just stepped into the study, out of sight. Then a noise: Cornell was going through the drawers of the desk. Anger rising in his chest, Schiltz stepped away from the door, leaving it open, and headed for the study.

  Cornell was sitting at his desk, opening up the drawers.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  He looked up. Not at Schiltz – it was like Schiltz wasn’t even in the same room as him – but around the study, his eyes checking every surface, every space.

  ‘I said, what the–’

  ‘I heard what you said.’

  Cornell shot a look at him, and the normality fell away. A snake shedding its skin. The slick hair, the teeth, the designer clothes, they were all exposed for the trick they were. This was someone else. Another man. The one Schiltz never wanted to see again.

  ‘Look,’ Schiltz said, holding up a hand and stepping back. ‘I don’t know what it is you want, but …’

  And then he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Cornell remained still. Eyes not moving. Nostrils flared. Hands flat to the desk and perfectly parallel to one another.

  Schiltz swallowed. ‘Look, what I said about Carr–’

  ‘Did you burn the original?’

  ‘The photograph? Yes, just like you asked me to.’

  Cornell got up and came around the desk. He took a big step forward, moving in so close that Schiltz immediately felt trapped. His heart juddered in his chest. When he tried to shift sideways, he realized there was no space for him to go because of the angle Cornell was standing at, so he tried to come back, to stand up to Cornell. But Cornell just stood there. Monolithic. Motionless.

  ‘Look, I–’

  ‘Let me show you something,’ Cornell said, and reached into his jacket. He took out a piece of paper. It was folded, quarter-size. Cornell opened it with one hand and then held it up in front of Schiltz’s face. It was a scan of a notebook.

  At the top of the page was the picture he’d had on his laptop, the picture he’d set fire to as soon as he’d got back from Vegas. Except it was a photograph of a photograph. Ever so slightly blurred, it had been taken quickly with something like a camera phone. Schiltz, Carter Graham and Ray Muire were all still in the picture, arms around each other, smiling, but everything that had been to the right of Ray in the original was gone. Instead, whoever had used their camera phone had zoomed in and deliberately cropped it so that the central focus wasn’t the men, but the space over Schiltz’s right shoulder.

  ‘What’s this?’ Schiltz said.

  In the notebook, beneath the picture, were two yellow Post-it notes, each with handwriting on them. The first said, ‘D.K., far left’; on the other, ‘Photograph taken circa 1971. California (?) USA. Other three men: Eric Schiltz, Carter Graham, Ray Muire.’

  ‘It belongs to Carrie Ling,’ Cornell said.

  Schiltz frowned, trying to put the loose ends together. ‘Carrie?’

  Cornell didn’t reply.

  ‘Where did she get this picture?’

  ‘Where do you think?’

  He looked up at Cornell; Cornell just stared at him.

  ‘She took a photograph of it while she was in here? She must have taken it while I’d been off making them a drink or something. Why would she take a picture of this?’

  ‘She’s interested in history.’

  ‘History?’

  Schiltz looked at the photocopy again. At the edge of the picture, bleeding off, were two men. One was in a hat, flared jeans and a long-collared tan shirt. He was pointing, talking to someone out of shot.

  Then there was a second man behind him, lower half obscured by the first guy, head half-turned in the camera’s direction, watching the three men being photographed in the foreground. ‘Wait,’ Schiltz said quietly. ‘Wait, that’s–’

  ‘I know who it is,’ Cornell replied.

  ‘I never even knew he was in this picture.’

  ‘You should have looked harder.’

  Schiltz studied the old man. He was still lean and strong at the time, silver hair swept back from a tanned face, and the picture was just about clear enough – even with the blurred resolution – to make out the thin, worm-like scar that ran from his hairline, down the left-hand side of his forehead to the ridge of his eyebrow.

  ‘I can’t remember the last time I looked at this picture …’ Schiltz stopped. He must have seen the old man at the edges of the shot at one stage; it must have registered with him at some point. But he hadn’t looked at it for years. Not until Carrie picked it out.

  ‘You’ve brought trouble to our door, Eric.’

  ‘I just forgot he was ever–’

  ‘Now I’ve got to clean up the mess.’

  Schiltz ripped his gaze away from the picture and looked up at Cornell. Silently, he’d backed away, put more space between them. Except this wasn’t a retreat. Cornell was sizing him up, a cold, clinical expression on his face, like a mortician at a slab.

  Schiltz cleared his throat. ‘Look, we can–’

  ‘It’s too late for that.’

  ‘We can make this right.’

  Cornell said nothing.

  ‘Whatever Carrie’s done, I can speak to her myself.’

  Again, nothing. But then movement: Cornell reached down, into the pockets of his jacket, and took something out. Latex gloves.

  ‘Wait a second,’ Schiltz said. ‘This is insane.’

  Cornell wriggled his fingers, balled one into a fist and reached inside his jacket again. A second later, he had a Bowie knife: six-inch blade, brown leather grip. ‘We gave you a version of the truth, because we trusted you as a friend. I’ve known you a long time, Eric. I thought, whatever happened, you’d never let me down.’

  ‘Listen to me: he’s hardly in the picture.’

  ‘But he’s still in it.’

  ‘I didn’t realize! I’d forgotten.’

  ‘You were a friend.’ Cornell took a step towards Schiltz, fingers rolling along the knife, reasserting his grip. ‘But how can we trust a friend who lies to us, a friend who is so reckless he doesn’t even see the destruction he’s causing?’

  ‘That picture means nothing.’

  ‘She knows who he is.’

  ‘She might not–’

  ‘She knows who he is!’

  Schiltz felt his heels hit the wall. He had nowhere else to go.

  Cornell stopped, and raised the knife. ‘I’m sorry,
Eric,’ he said quietly, a flicker of honesty in him for the first time. ‘But we can’t protect you any more. Not after this.’

  Five hours later, as Cornell reached the Las Vegas city limits, his phone started buzzing on the passenger seat. He reached across, picked it up and looked at the display. LVMPD/DR. Ridgeway. One of the cops he’d paid off inside Las Vegas Metro.

  He answered. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I thought you might want to know there’s been a guy snooping around, asking some questions about that whore you got me looking into back in August. Destiny.’

  ‘I know her name. What questions?’

  ‘Trying to find out who she is, her address, what car she drives – trying to ID her. He knows she was associated with Carl Molsson, and he knows Molsson was found dead in the parking lot on East Flamingo on 27 August. It all gets extra fishy when you realize your friend Eric never reported the crime.’ Ridgeway waited for a response, but got nothing. ‘Look, all I’m saying is, you put two and two together, like this guy probably has, and you start to think that Eric, the whore and Molsson’s murder might be tied up somehow. And, believe me, I know this guy from way back. I used to work for him in Robbery-Homicide. He’s good. He’ll be a real pain in the ass if you’re not careful.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Carlos Soto,’ Ridgeway replied. ‘He runs security at the Bellagio.’

  36