by Ray Backley
The more he thought, the more her words came back to him. She’d also said he was going to have a difficult time. He couldn’t remember anything more than that. And what he could remember was hardly to be trusted. He was, after all, under a lot of strain. Did that mean she knew what was going to happen? And how did he and the children end up where they were? Who had moved them?
“I don’t like it in here, Daddy.”
Phoebe’s words drew him away from his confused thoughts, but before he could work out a reply, she spoke again.
“Can’t we leave and go someplace else?”
Again, he struggled to reply. What could he say? There seemed to be no way out. Sure, he had to hope that at some stage someone outside would rescue them, but the timing of that event was in the lap of the Gods. Or, just maybe, up to Cath.
He knelt down to get face to face. “We have to wait here a little while longer,” he replied, trying for a smile but knowing Phoebe would see through his crooked attempt.
“How much longer?”
“I, uh . . . I don’t know, sweetie.”
“But I’m hungry.”
So was Dan. He grabbed some of the supplies from the storage container – a less than ideal breakfast menu of chewy cereal bars and water, and handed them out. Phoebe gave him that look that usually made him laugh inside: you expect me to eat this? Today he couldn’t laugh inside, so he just said, “It’s all we have. Now come on, just eat it. You too, Benjie.”
They ate and drank wordlessly. After Dan had finished his, he said to Phoebe, “Good?”
She flattened her lips out to the side, her way of saying not good.
“I liked mine,” Benjie said.
Dan tousled his hair. “Good for you, little man.”
“But I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Oh.”
“I do too,” Phoebe added.
“Oh, sh . . .” Dan started scanning the room. That didn’t take long, and he wasn’t sure why he did it. Perhaps it was that old playing for time ruse, possibly he wanted to delay for as long as possible the moment when his eyes hit the plastic bucket.
But his gaze did eventually settle there. There was no escaping the fact. He pointed at it. “You have to use that, guys.”
“Why can’t I go to the bathroom properly?” Phoebe said.
“Sorry, sweetie. We don’t appear to have one. Look.” He picked up the bucket and set it down behind her. “You just have to use this. I know it’s not nice, but you just have to.”
They would all have to use it; but Phoebe would have to crouch down, so it only seemed fair to let her go first.
“I don’t want to use that, Daddy.”
“It’s either that or you hold it in.”
And just when he thought tears might flow, she shrugged and said, “Okay.”
Dan turned his back on her and made sure Benjie did too. But they could do nothing about the hissing sound. Some kind of music player might have helped with that.
“Fiii-nished!”
The announcement was hardly necessary.
Dan helped Benjie go, then went himself. Holding his breath for a few seconds, he picked up the bucket and poured the urine into the end container that already held the food wrappers and an empty plastic water bottle. Covering his nostrils, he stared down into it for longer than was decent, desperately trying not to think what it might smell like in a month’s time.
And as he secured the lid on tightly his eyes fell upon the area of wall behind the containers. He cursed and immediately apologized to the children for his language. This was the one area he hadn’t yet checked out; he’d just assumed it would be more of the same.
“Guys, could you be good and move to the other end, please?”
Phoebe and Benjie did as they were asked without a murmur of complaint. Now with more room for maneuver, Dan pulled the four containers away from the wall and into the center of the room.
And there it was.
It was no easy exit, but it had clearly been the way they’d all been brought in. A group of eight concrete blocks were dry – no mortar between them.
How he wished he had shoes on, all the better to kick the crap out of those blocks.
He couldn’t kick the blocks wearing only socks, but he could push them.
He pressed both palms against the topmost one and shoved. It was loose, it was definitely loose, but it didn’t go anywhere, just rocked a few millimeters and settled back to the same place. He tried others, with the same results. Perhaps he needed something with more power. Like a shoulder. No, better still, he could lie down on his back and push – leg press style – with the soles of his feet.
Again, the blocks moved ever so slightly, but always settled back to the same position. If he pushed with all his strength, all that happened was that his body moved in the opposite direction.
It needed more thought.
He retreated to the other end, gathered Phoebe and Benjie in, and pulled a blanket over them all.
They said nothing, just clung onto him.
He needed to work out how to dislodge those loose blocks, but couldn’t stop his mind drifting off to the question of how and why in God’s name they’d all ended up imprisoned.
Inevitably, his thoughts turned to Cath again, and what had happened the previous night. And two memories vied for supremacy in his mind.
There was that phone call. She’d taken the phone out into the kitchen to talk, and seemed upset on her return.
Then there was the drink. Yes, the phone call had been the catalyst. After taking that call, she’d come in and gone upstairs, come back down and poured them each a gin – even though she knew he never really touched the stuff – which, naturally, he didn’t particularly enjoy. He was going to say at the time that it had a bitter taste, but hadn’t mentioned it, had put it down to the effect of the spicy pizza on his taste buds.
So he centered his thoughts on the phone call Cath had taken. And that made him think things about Cath that he didn’t like thinking. Not one bit. But it was all he had to go on. Perhaps the phone call had been such bad news that she felt the need to hide him and the children away.
But no. Cath wouldn’t have done that. His mind was playing tricks on him again. The very natural fear of being imprisoned – entombed, even – was clearly getting to him, twisting his mind. Sure, Cath had had her mental health problems in the past, had almost been on anti-depressants a few years ago, and had lately had trouble sleeping. But counselling had helped her sort her problems out years ago and there was no way she would take such drastic steps against the people she loved. Apart from anything else, there could be no possible reason for her to do all this.
No. Just no. He had it wrong. Someone else had brought them all down here.
Chapter 10
Karen discovered many unsavory things about Vinnie during the court case, but the most unnerving fact was that he was seven years older than he’d told her. It didn’t seem a huge sin in comparison with his other crimes, but lent an even more loathsome angle to his behavior.
How could she ever have loved that man? No, no, no. How could she ever have thought she’d loved him?
For the sake of her sanity, Karen hadn’t followed Vinnie’s trial too closely, but she wanted to be in court for the verdict, just to know for certain he wouldn’t be a free man anytime soon.
It turned out to be a fairly straightforward case, and Vinnie was convicted on all counts, including the big one: voluntary manslaughter. As the verdict was announced, Vinnie jumped to his feet, his handcuffs jangling as he pointed in Karen’s direction. The guards restrained him, but they couldn’t hold his tongue.
“Watch your back, Karen. Might be fifteen years, might be twenty, but I’m coming to get you.”
The public murmured disapproval and the judge shouted for order, but Vinnie just carried right on shouting.
“Don’t you ever feel safe in this world, bitch. I swear to God I’ll find you and I’ll torture and bury alive any
one you hold dear. I’ll take ’em one by one, you hear me?”
He was still shouting as he was dragged out of the courtroom, but Karen was screaming in her own mind to blot out his voice.
There was another outburst two days later when he was sentenced to twenty years, although Karen wasn’t there to see it because she was busy discussing her future.
At first, she didn’t want to take the authorities up on their offer of witness relocation. Vinnie was now behind bars, wasn’t he? And why should she have to suffer any more than she already had. A little persuasion by her social worker took the form of discussing a few case histories. Apparently, plenty of bad people on the inside knew even worse people on the outside who were willing to do any dirty work for a price, and that price wasn’t a fortune to someone like Vinnie, who had spent years squirreling drug cash away for a rainy day.
Taking on a new name and a new life would mean saying goodbye to her maternal grandparents, to the people at the group foster home who were the closest thing she had to brothers and sisters, and to various distant aunts, uncles and cousins. It took a couple of days to realize that the only people in that group who she would have liked to stay in contact with were her two grandparents. It was a hard choice, one moment she dug in her heels for the principle of not letting Vinnie have any kind of influence on her life, the next moment she cried at the cold, hard reality that she would never be safe again if she stayed in Fresno as Karen.
So she gave in, which meant disowning everyone she’d ever known in Fresno and agreeing never to see them again. In a way, she felt sad that the only people she would miss were her grandparents – that she didn’t have any close friends to speak of. Then again, that feeling of detachment was now a positive advantage; she wasn’t giving up too much.
Los Angeles seemed an obvious place to head for; same state, so not too foreign, and not too far from the authorities who knew her case history if she ever needed anything. Vinnie had gone north to San Quentin, and LA was south, so it would put more distance between them. It was also one of the biggest cities in the world, a place where people were less likely to ask awkward questions and more likely to accept her, and where there would be more opportunities for her to develop a new identity.
After learning her cover story from her identity trainers and rehearsing it until her jaw ached, Karen Fisher said farewell to Fresno, and it was Catherine Hall who said hello to a tiny apartment in Maywood, a few miles southeast of downtown LA. The place was cramped, but after two days it was clean and the walls were adorned with a dozen or so cheap posters. Above all else, it was the first time in her life she’d had a front door that would shut out the rest of the world.
During those two days she also pondered on the words of warning from her witness relocation contact: life would not be easy, the change of identity and the stress of keeping quiet about the biggest possible secret had twisted many of their clients’ minds. Added to that, there would be no free ride financially – only an intermediate support package of the apartment deposit, a small lump sum to furnish it, and three months’ rent paid. After that she would be on her own: welfare or a job, the choice was hers.
By the fourth day she’d made up her mind. She wanted nice things in her first home, but more than that, she yearned to impose the new identity of Catherine Hall on both the city and herself. She got two job offers before the week was out and accepted both without hesitation. Daytimes she helped out at a florist, evenings she cleaned an office block, and after that she locked herself indoors, cooked, sometimes watched TV, sometimes listened to music, and sometimes cried at how lonely she was.
In time, and after some social contact with a few co-workers, the feeling of loneliness started to fall away. People would ask about her background, and she would give them the cover story that had been drummed into her: she’d been brought up in various suburbs to the south of LA, but when her parents had both been killed in a tragic car crash and her maternal grandparents – the only ones who she knew of and who lived on the east coast – had declined to look after her, she’d spent the remaining years of her childhood in an orphanage that had since closed. Her middle name was June after her mother’s favorite month, her father had hated sports and had played the electric guitar badly, she had no qualifications worth mentioning apart from a few swimming badges, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
And then there was some history she’d added for herself.
When Karen had been young and living in that trailer, her mom had always scolded her for saying and doing anything out of the ordinary. She’d felt smothered, unable to do or say what she wanted, even when it had been harmless. She remembered eating a raw carrot because there was nothing else in the kitchen to eat. Her mom told her off, but she insisted that she liked the feeling of the carrot on her teeth. Her mom struck her and told her not to say dumb things. And it had worked; the young Karen had had every ounce of spontaneity and individuality beaten out of her.
So now, while reinventing herself, she had the perfect opportunity to reconnect with that old – and sometimes silly – Karen. Her grandfather had given her a little advice as a parting gift: whatever the situation, however bad things seem, check out the upsides and hold them in your thoughts. And the opportunity to reinvent herself was definitely an upside. She found that way of thinking comforting. So, as well as listening to music she should have been into as a younger teen, she spent a lot of time watching TV shows she should have enjoyed as a child. It was just a little bit of her new persona that was very, very genuine. She owed that to herself.
After a year, the cover story was coming to her so naturally that she almost believed it herself, and over that time little embellishments had been added despite warnings from her identity trainers not to get too cocky as she could tie herself up in her own lies. By then she’d also saved enough money to give up the evening job for a year and start a night class learning basic IT skills.
At eighteen, she got a full-time job as a trainee data entry clerk at a local firm: Verusian Financial Services. It was there, eleven days into the job, while making her first visit of the morning to the drinks vending machine, that she heard a baritone voice behind her.
“Guessing you’re new here,” it said.
She turned to find a tall, broad-shouldered hunk of guy with a face that could advertise Armani.
“My second week,” she replied.
“An early starter too.” He let out a gruff laugh. “That won’t last.”
She felt like telling him it would, that rising at six was now a habit of hers and she was determined to keep it that way. But newbies had to tread softly.
“Name’s Bradley,” he said, blurting out the three syllables in an almost military way. He held a hand out and they shook. His hand was large, but a little cold and clammy. And now she noticed that every time he spoke, his mop of blond hair danced this way and that.
“Catherine Hall,” she said. “What do you do around here, Bradley?”
“Oh, pretty much everything, so it sometimes feels.” He flashed her a wide smile but let it drop as another guy passed between them and pressed a couple of buttons on the drinks machine. He had a head full of untidy, mousey hair and wasn’t so well dressed compared to everyone else in the office: open necked polo shirt, chinos, sneakers – smart ones, but still sneakers.
“Say, you’re pretty tall, aren’t you?” Bradley said to her.
She looked him up and down, frowning. “You’re kinda tall yourself.”
“Six three and a quarter.” He breathed in and stretched up as he spoke, as if reaching for six four. He hooked a thumb at the guy at the machine but still spoke to Cath. “Hey, you’re even taller than geek boy here.”
“Geek Boy” was apparently ignoring him.
Bradley continued, “I guess being tall, you find it hard to date guys. Am I right or am I right?”
“Oh, I’m not really into dating.”
It was no put down. The notion of dating had been the furthest thing from
her thoughts for a long time. The words did, however, kick off that idea in the back of her mind.
Bradley leaned in close, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Let me know if you change your mind about that. Trust me, I can show you a good time.” He winked, then turned and sauntered away, shoulders yawing left and right.
She turned to Geek Boy and said, “Sorry about that.”
“No, I’m sorry about him,” he replied without looking at her.
“I meant I’m sorry about the height thing.”
“Hey, no worries.” He shrugged, then pointed to his feet. “Anyways, if only I didn’t forget my heels today, I’d be towering over you, trust me.”
It made her laugh, and she was about to suggest he bring them in tomorrow when his cell phone rang.
He checked the screen and said, “Excuse me, I have to get this.”
It was two days later, just after lunch, while Cath was at her PC, that a wave of fresh musky perfume hit her and made her sit up straight. She looked up to see that Geek Boy had just passed by and was next to the drinks machine at the far wall.
She nudged the woman next to her. “Hey, Donna, who’s the guy at the drinks machine?”
Donna glanced over. “You mean Geek Boy? IT support. Isn’t that all you need to know?”
“But what’s he like?”
“Are you serious?”
“He just seems like a nice guy.”
Donna spluttered a laugh. “Yeah, but who wants a nice guy?”
Cath felt her face blush, her polite smile falter with suppressed anger.
If only some women knew.
Donna clearly noticed her reaction. “Hey, I’m sorry. Each to their own, I guess.” She looked over to him again. “And you’re right, he is a nice guy. And I think he’s single, if that helps.”
“Oh, I just want to make friends around here,” Cath half-lied. No more encouragement was necessary, and thirty seconds later she was at the drinks machine, now certain where that musky perfume was coming from.
