Trinity's Fall

by P A Vasey

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Where was this taken? And when?”

  “In a bar called Joey Malone’s – one of your frequent haunts back at Indian Springs. It is you, but not Sara Clarke. In those days you were Kate Morgan.”

  I came to a decision. “The Hyatt: it’s three blocks away. Let’s go and get a drink.”

  Navarro nodded and smiled. “Good choice. I’m staying there.”

  I shot him a look. “I’m warning you, though – you better have answers for me.”

  The Hyatt lobby bar was dark-lit and modern, tables and booths geometrically arranged around a rectangular space enclosed by tall cubes of wooden strips and hanging lights of various styles and aesthetics. Frank Sinatra was warbling quietly from above, entreating everyone to ‘take it nice and easy’, and there was a quiet burble of conversation from a smattering of office workers wearing crumpled suits and sipping the first of many post-conference drinks. A not unpleasant mixed aroma of scented candles and freshly brewed coffee tickled my nose.

  Navarro led the way over to the bar itself, a long structure at the rear of the room backlit orange and yellow with a huge cabinet of hard liquor glittering invitingly. There were about a dozen barstools, and a couple at the end were unoccupied, so we slid in. I draped my coat over the back of my chair and sat down, popping my handbag on the bar.

  Navarro was trying to catch the eye of the barman. I still couldn’t place him. This close up, there was still nothing recognizable about him. I scrabbled around in my handbag for my cigarettes, then remembered I wasn’t allowed to smoke inside. Getting irritated with Navarro’s inability to get service, I stood up and leaned forward on the bar and waved down the full length to a bartender who was cleaning glasses while in deep conversation with a shapely blonde in a cocktail dress.

  “Hey, some service here, please?”

  The barman heard me and nodded, making his excuses to the woman. Navarro gave me a look. I shrugged. “Use what you got, right?”

  The barman, a good-looking Italian type with bright even teeth and gelled black hair, sauntered over and leaned in toward me. He gave me a mega-watt smile and ignored Navarro. His name badge read Paulo. “Hi there, what can I get you?”

  I sat back down and inclined my head at Navarro, who looked flustered and irritated at the same time. He pointed at the rack of whiskies. “Suntory please, on the rocks.”

  Paulo turned to me, but before I could reply Navarro said, “She’ll be having, if I remember, a Kraken and coke, with lime. Am I right?”

  My chest tightened and my mouth dried up at this throwaway line. How did he know?

  He shrugged out of his tweed jacket and wrapped it around the small backrest on the barstool. He put his room key on the counter and Paulo took it and walked away to get our drinks.

  I snapped my fingers. “Let me see those photos again?”

  He nodded and passed his phone over. I opened the first one and stared at the face looking back at me, the one with Navarro by my side.

  “How do I know that’s not photoshopped?”

  “You don’t,” he replied. “But it isn’t. Why would I?”

  “Then why don’t I fucking know you?”

  Paulo returned with our drinks and a couple of ramekins filled with bar snacks. There was an awkward silence while he arranged everything on coasters and added little plastic accoutrements before slipping the tab in front of Navarro, with his key. When he’d finally sloped back to renew his conversation with the blonde in the dress, Navarro took a sip of his whisky and looked me in the eye.

  “What’s the last thing you remember about Indian Springs?”

  “I’ve no memories at all, seeing’s I’ve never been there,” I said with a flash of annoyance.

  He slid around a little so he was facing me. He had twitchy eyes, flicking left and right to check out the room and its occupants. He’d arranged his drinks and the ramekins in neat parallel lines, which caused me to raise my eyebrows. He rolled the ice around in his glass and took a long drink, crunching the cubes in a very irritating way.

  “Alright,” he said, with a smirk. “How long have you been working here in Motor City?”

  “Eighteen months.”

  He shook his head and gave a lopsided smile. “Not possible. Six months ago you were working with me at Indian Springs. You left, very abruptly. Soon afterwards Clem left too.”

  “Clem?”

  “Clem Reynolds. You and he were the only two medical officers at the hospital. He was the town general practitioner as well. Everything was left in a bit of a state when you both upped sticks, but the Army drafted in two military MOs to fill the positions.”

  I sat back and took a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll go along with this for a while. Tell me more.”

  “You’d been there for approximately six months,” he said, “working in the ER. I remember thinking we were lucky to get someone like you, with all your previous ER experience.”

  “This is bullshit.” I raised my glass to my lips and took a big drink. “I’ve never done an ER rotation.”

  Navarro put his glass down and crossed his arms. “Do you want to hear this?”

  I pulled a face. Shrugged.

  “You left the day after that strange guy was brought into the ER. Remember him?”

  “Of course not.”

  Now he gave me a withering look. “A truck going full on hit some guy walking down I-95 in the middle of the night. When he got to the ER he was comatose, you called me in and we did scans. And this is why I remember it so vividly. The scans were absolutely anatomically perfect. There were no injuries, no defects of any kind. It was like looking at a textbook representation of a human body.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “There were witnesses. Two guys from out of town. The front of their truck was all bashed in.”

  “So what did I do with him?”

  “You wanted to take him to theatre; Reynolds disagreed. Then the guy woke up. The next day he’d left the hospital and all his records had gone missing. I went looking for you, but you’d not clocked in that morning, which was weird in itself. You were rostered on. I went back to review his scans, but they’d been deleted from the system. Luckily I’d sent a copy to someone I know in Vegas for a second opinion. You see, there was something wrong with the scans themselves. There was a kind of interference pattern, an abnormality I’d never seen before.”

  “Did you hear back from your buddy in Vegas?”

  Navarro looked furtively around the bar, and leaned in confidentially. His voice lowered a touch, and I had to lean in as well to hear what he was saying. “No, he never replied.”

  “Oooh, sounds awfully like a conspiracy theory hatching here,” I said mischievously.

  Navarro didn’t take the bait, but stared into his drink. “I went looking for you, you know, so that we could, like, chew it over. But I found out you’d left the hospital. Clem as well. Poof, just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “So what happened to you then?” I said.

  He laughed humorlessly. “A couple of days later I heard that due to ‘national security concerns’ the US Army was taking over the running of the hospital, and everyone was to be relieved of their positions. I was clearly getting sacked, but they were coy about using that phrase. I’ve been looking for work ever since – no one from the hospital will give me a reference.”

  A headache was starting. “Is that what this is about? A scam to get a job? You wanting a reference from me? Are you going to offer me money next? Is a fucking brown envelope going to appear in a second?”

  His eyes blazed. “Kate, you were my friend. I came here for an interview and then I saw you in the cafeteria. Dr Kate Morgan. Clear as day. I called the ER and they’d never heard of you.”

  “Of course they’d never heard of me. My name’s Sara Clarke. And this is nonsense. I think we’re just about done here.”

  Navarro looked angrily at me. “Please, Kate, what’s this all about? A
new identity? Are you in some kind of witness protection program?”

  “Pete, I’m not this person you think I am.”

  He put down his glass and leaned back in the chair. “Tell me about your family.”

  I glared at him. “You’re kidding.”

  “No, indulge me. This is for real.”

  “I’m an only child,” I said, sighing. “My parents live in Miami. Not much to tell.”

  He shook his head and made a kind of ‘tch-tch’ sound. “Not so. Not according to you. You told me your father died of cancer and that you were completely estranged from him. Oh, and that your five-year-old daughter died in the ER when you were on duty at the Memorial in Chicago.”

  “Really? Now I’m also a grieving mother?”

  He nodded slowly. “You told me many times that the reason you moved to Indian Springs was that you needed to get away from Chicago. Too many memories there.”

  I shook my head. “These aren’t my memories, Pete. I’ve never been to Chicago. And a dead daughter? That’s some fucked-up biography you’ve concocted for me.”

  He put his drink on the table and pointed at me, an angry look on his face. “No, Kate. This is your real life. And there’s more. The other reason you went to Indian Springs was that your father used to be a test pilot at Creech Air Force Base in the 70s. You were proud of that. Showed me loads of photos of him and you. Sitting in those old jets.”

  “Fuck you,” I whispered.

  He smiled. “You were a cute toddler, Kate.”

  I tried to get a read on him. Tried to figure out what angle he was playing. Or whether he was, indeed, deranged, and I was right about the meds.

  “Kate, look closely at the photos,” he insisted, gesturing with his phone. “That’s you there. I’ve got no reason to make this up. What’s going on with you?”

  I downed the last of the Kraken, grabbed my coat and struggled into the sleeves. Navarro jumped to his feet and tried to put a hand on my arm but I shrugged him off and put my sunglasses back on so I didn’t have to look at him.

  “You showed me a picture of your daughter once,” he said. “She looked like a mini-version of you. Her name was Kelly.”

  There was a sinking feeling, as if perhaps a rabbit hole was going to open up beneath my feet if I let this go any further. His words were buzzing around my head like a fly you can never swat. I pulled the collar up around my neck and turned sharply on my heel without another word.

  Navarro’s raised voice stopped me in my tracks.

  “Kelly died, Kate. In your arms. Why are you denying all this?”

  I furiously span back to face him. “Fuck right off now, Pete, if that’s really your name. Don’t you dare follow me.”

  “The photos, Kate,” he said. “That’s you.”

  “Fakes,” I said. “Go find some other poor sucker.”

  I hurried through the bar to the door that exited directly onto the street. Stopping, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I was annoyed with myself, frustrated that I’d been taken in by a nutjob. Clearly the guy had issues. But what about the photographs? They must have been doctored. I turned and looked through the glass of the door to see Navarro now in animated conversation with the blonde in the cocktail dress.

  Cursing under my breath, I strode away.

  TWO

  The Moynahan was an upscale block in Corktown, Wayne County, a 1920s building renovated in pale pink and red rising ten stories from the entrance hallway and coffee shop up to the leisure center on the top floor overlooking the Detroit River. I took the elevator to the sixth level and walked the short distance along the deep-pile carpets to my apartment. A solid red door with an old-fashioned knocker and an ultramodern entry system faced me, and I swiped my key. The latch unlocked with a satisfyingly secure-sounding clunk. I entered; the lights automatically flicked on and I threw my jacket into the built-in closet and leaned against the wall to unzip my boots, which I also threw into the closet. I walked past the den and straight into the kitchen where I grabbed a large heavy-bottomed glass from a shelf. There was a half-empty bottle of Kraken on the table, so I popped some ice from the machine and poured myself a few fingers. I wandered over to my small balcony, where there was a single-seat lounger, table and a dainty stainless steel BBQ set. A couple of tired, plastic-looking plants were my only concession to decoration out there.

  I took a long drink, letting the spicy rum linger at the back of my throat. My head was buzzing, and the start of a migraine seemed to be feeling its way around the edges. This all had to be wrong. Someone was playing a game. Or maybe this was a dream, and I was about to wake up.

  Kate fucking Morgan.

  Across the street a couple of floors lower was the top of a neighboring apartment building with a swimming pool lit up electric blue and a few hardy souls doing some end-of-the-day laps. Street noise was muted at this height, but there were distant sirens, and the hum of rubber on asphalt. The sun was setting, the skyline a picture-perfect magenta fading into the approaching blackness. Overhead, the first evening stars were starting to twinkle, and the lights of a wide-body jet coming into Metro Airport could be seen traversing the moon.

  I pulled out my phone and checked for messages. None. I was about to put it away when it started vibrating and to my irritation I recognized the number as Navarro’s. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before accepting the call.

  “Sara?” came a woman’s voice before I had a chance to speak.

  “Who’s this?” I said.

  There was a pause at the other end, and then, “I need to speak with you. Can you let me in?”

  “Who the hell are you? Another one of that Navarro guy’s lunatic friends?”

  The voice on the other end was patient, calm. “No, but you need to hear me out. Please, can you let me in? I’m standing outside your crib. Apartment 605, right?

  I hung up on her, strode through to the door and looked through the peephole. The top of a blonde woman’s head was visible and there appeared to be no one else with her anywhere in the hall — the fish-eye perspective covered most of the space. I fixed the security chain in place and unlatched the door, pulling it open a few inches.

  The woman on the other side looked up and smiled before turning her head to anxiously look behind her. “Can I come in, then?” she asked.

  “Who are you?” I answered. “Someone else from my past or maybe an alternate universe?”

  The woman seemed not to find this funny, and her eyes bored into mine. “I’ve got answers for you, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “About what’s going on. You and Navarro.”

  I gave her a fierce look, which she returned coolly. After a few seconds of this I opened the door and let it swing.

  “You better have some answers then,” I said, turning away and walking into the kitchen without looking back.

  She followed me in and closed the door behind her, shrugged out of her long coat and draped it over an arm. She was squeezed into a yellow dress with gold piping, which ended well above her knees.

  Right, of course. I should’ve known. “Followed me from the bar, did you?” I glowered.

  “Didn’t need to. Got your address from the hospital. And your phone number from your friend Pete’s phone, which I relieved him of.” She lifted it up and shook it for me to see.

  “He’s not my friend,” I said.

  She laid her coat on the counter and walked through the living area toward the balcony. As her high heels click-clacked over the parquet flooring I checked her out. She had shoulder-length ash-blonde hair, olive-brown skin and a perfectly proportioned face with a straight nose and high cheekbones. Her eyes were dark and framed with long black lashes. She must have been early thirties, perhaps younger.

  She stopped and turned, taking in the decor, one hand on her hip, the other idly caressing a pendant that dangled in her cleavage. My living room was an open-plan arrangement with two settees and a single chair arranged around a glass coffee table and facing a firep
lace with a large LCD TV screen above it. Nothing special.

  “Nice place,” she said. “How can you afford this on your salary?”

  I scowled. “What business is that of yours?”

  “Well, I reckon you’re looking at three, maybe four thousand dollars a month here, plus all the bills. And these furnishings don’t come cheap. Or maybe it’s a furnished rental?”

  “Who are you?” I said, getting angry. “Are you going to tell me that we were best buddies in another life too?”

  She walked up to me and looked me in the eye. She was about six inches taller, mostly due to the heels. In one smooth movement she reached behind her head and removed her blonde wig, shaking her head out to reveal a brunette bob.

  I took a step back. “What is this?”

  “You don’t recognize me, do you, Sara? He really did a job on you.”

  “Who? What’re you talking about?”

  “The cover he gave you was flawless, or at least it was until Navarro pitched up. Couldn’t have predicted that. Good job I was looking for you as well. Talk about getting a break.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Colleen Stillman,” she said, still infuriatingly composed. “I work for the FBI. Or at least I did, because after today that may be in question.”

  “Can I see a badge?” I said, arms folded.

  “Hmmm, this is strictly ‘off the books’. But I’ve got something better.” She reached into a hip pocket on the dress and pulled out a USB stick. “Do you have a computer? I need to show you this.”

  I stared at the USB as if it were radioactive. “What’s this about?”

  Her lip twitched. “A big, big secret with you front and center. Now, do you have a computer or not?”

  I nodded dumbly and led the way to the den. There was a small desk with a MacBook connected to a router and printer in front of the window. A couple of office chairs were scattered around and there was a bookcase, empty of anything apart from a photograph in a picture frame.