The Border Part Five

by Amy Cross

  “One that’s very hard to get into. Like all the good clubs, you know? You really have to know someone who can get the door open, and even then, you might be rejected. But that’s okay, because rejection is the price of ambition.”

  “It is?”

  “It is.”

  “So do you…” Bob paused. “Do you know someone who can get the door open for me?”

  “You’re looking at him.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh indeed. Impressed?”

  “What kind of club?”

  “Well, you won’t need Candy Carver anymore, that’s for sure. Not unless you’re actually emotionally attached to her, anyway.” He paused, before laughing.

  Bob laughed too, but much more nervously.

  “Look around the office,” Tom continued. “Look at your colleagues. Some of them might even be your friends, Bob. They live their lives according to rules they were taught from birth, they struggle with primordial desires that were child’s play to men twenty or thirty thousand years ago. Most of the people you see before you are desperately unhappy, possibly even suicidal. I’m often surprised on a Monday morning when everyone turns out to have survived their lonely weekend. Sad, huh? But haven’t you ever looked at me and wondered why I seem so confident? Why I seem to be a winner in a sea of losers?”

  Turning to him, Bob frowned.

  “It’s because I know secrets,” Tom added. “I know short-cuts, and I know the real rules of the world.”

  “So what you’re saying is -”

  “I can get you in,” Tom told him. “To the club, I mean, or at least to the panel who’ll decide whether to take your application further. After that, it’s up to you to show the other members that you belong there, but I can at least get you in for one night. Give you a helping hand, so to speak, and pay forward the favor that someone else paid to me once.”

  “So it’s like a… nightclub?”

  Tom shook his head.

  “A comedy club?”

  Tom shook his head again, slower this time.

  “A… private gentleman’s club?”

  “Think again, my friend.”

  “A…” Bob paused. “A sex club?” he asked incredulously. “Are you serious?”

  “You’ll see,” Tom replied, patting him on the shoulder. “Your eyes are going to be opened wider than they’ve ever been opened before, my friend. We’ll go tonight.”

  “I don’t know if I can get away at such short notice,” Bob told him. “Where is this place, anyway? Is it far? Is it going to be an over-nighter?”

  “It’s right here in Bowley.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way,” Tom said, turning to head toward his office. “Meet me at the Monument at ten and I’ll take you right to the door. After that, the outcome rests entirely in your own hands. Are you the kind of man who can meet destiny with courage, or are you the kind of man who’ll whimper away and die in the corner of his own miserable life? You get to find out tonight, my friend.”

  Left alone for a moment, Bob tried to understand what had just happened. He knew Tom was a great guy, the kind of guy who had life figured out, and he could barely believe that he’d been invited along on one of the infamous nights out, but at the same time he felt strangely nervous for some reason he couldn’t quite understand. And then, as he saw Candy heading to one of the filing cabinets, and as she cast a brief, meaningful glance in his direction, he realized the problem.

  He felt guilty about cheating on his mistress.

  III

  “Unfortunately,” Alex said with a sigh, “a gut feeling is not sufficient justification for making an arrest. If it was, a lot more scumbags would be rightfully locked up in this country.”

  “So you’re just going to let him walk around out there?” Jack replied, barely able to believe what he was hearing. “What if someone else gets murdered? It’s not even a question really, is it? Someone else is going to get murdered if my brother is free to roam the town like this.”

  “Eventually, yes.”

  “Eventually? It could be tomorrow! Hell, it could be today! He could be going out right now to kill someone, just to send you a message!”

  “Let’s calm down at little,” Alex replied. “Whatever else is going on, Ben isn’t a raging psychopathic monster. Given that he just spent a night in one of my interview rooms, I doubt he’d poised to do anything. He’ll most likely keep his head down for a while. That’s another thing about Ben, he’s smart. Hopefully last night I scared him off.” He paused. “It’s Christmas in a few days’ time. How much longer after that is your brother planning on sticking around?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “But there’s a chance he’ll skip town pretty soon after, right?”

  “Definitely. So you’ve got to arrest him before then.”

  “I don’t have any evidence!”

  “What if he’s killing people in other places?” Jack asked. “I mean, he wouldn’t just kill while he’s in Bowley, would he? Most likely he’s also doing it wherever he’s living at the moment.”

  “And where is he living?”

  “I…” Jack paused, starting to feel increasingly helpless. “I have no idea.”

  “Last night,” Alex replied, “he gave me an address a couple of towns over, which is much closer than I expected. I can have it checked out, of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be fake. Ben always seems shifty, but he seemed even more shifty while he was giving me his details. Again, gut feeling.”

  “So he lied to you? Isn’t that enough cause to arrest him?”

  Alex shook his head.

  “What do you need, then?”

  “You know how this works, Jack.”

  “Whatever you’re missing, I can get it for you.”

  Alex raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Tell me what you need in order to arrest my brother,” Jack continued, speaking firmly and clearly, as if he was forcing himself to remain calm, “and I will get it for you. Damn it, whatever it takes, I have resources, I have contacts, I can get the proof you’re after. I get it, you’re a cop, you have to follow certain rules, but I’m not constrained like that, I can dip into the gray areas.” He paused. “I can also promise that I’ll make the resulting story look good for you, ‘cause right now that wouldn’t necessarily by the case.”

  Alex frowned. “Are you threatening me, Jack?”

  “Of course not. I’m just saying that when all of this blows up and hits the front page, there’s a danger that the police could end up looking like incompetent idiots. Given my position here, I can help to sculpt the story in a manner that puts you in a more positive light. I mean, someone has to come out of this as a hero, so it might as well be you.” He waited for a reply. “I’m trying to help you, Alex, but I need you to help me in return.”

  “By arresting your brother.”

  “By arresting a man who’s killed a lot of women. That way, maybe he can get the help he so desperately needs.”

  Alex paused for a moment. “I propose that we wait.”

  Jack sighed.

  “Hear me out,” Alex continued. “We wait, we let him think he’s slithered out of the noose, and that’s when he’s most likely to make a mistake.”

  “So the best case scenario, as far as you’re concerned, is that my brother only slaughters one other girl before he’s caught?”

  “Don’t be melodramatic.”

  “Good advice,” Jack continued, clearly unimpressed. “Did you say that to Ben too? Did you tell him to maybe not be melodramatic? I mean, that could really solve a lot of problems here if my brother would just stop being melodramatic and, I don’t know, keep those knives out of the young ladies’ bodies, don’t you think? The whole heart thing, that’s pretty melodramatic, it’s clearly the product of an incredibly disturbed mind.” He paused. “Fine, sit on your ass and play your waiting game, but I’m going to be a little more proactive.”

  “Jack, I have to
warn you -”

  “I’m busy, Alex. I don’t have time for a chat. You can see yourself out, can’t you?”

  Alex paused, before sighing as he got to his feet and headed to the door. “Don’t interfere with a police investigation, Jack. Your assistance so far has been noted with gratitude, but I have the case in hand.”

  “Great,” Jack replied. “I’ll be sure to include that as a direct quote in tomorrow’s paper.”

  Alex stopped at the door and turned to him, clearly ready to say something but thinking better of it, before making his way out of the office.

  As soon as he was alone, Jack brought up a browser on his laptop and manually entered the IP address for the police station’s email system. He’d managed to learn a lot about covering his tracks in just a few days, and he double-checked that his VPN was working properly before using his wife’s log-in credentials to access the server. To his surprise, he saw that although it was almost 10am and Jane should have been at work for a while, she still hadn’t checked her emails for the morning, but he figured he could just mark them as unread once he was done. With that, he began to go through everything systematically, making copies of all the files he needed while muttering under his breath as he felt his frustration starting to boil over.

  “You haven’t got this case in hand, Alex,” he whispered finally, as he clicked through to access the main file archive, “but it’s okay because I have. I just hope I can do something before Ben kills again.”

  ***

  “He pulled you in for questioning?” Jane replied, shocked by everything Ben had just told her. “Seriously? Okay listen, I swear he didn’t tell me he was going to do that. I would have warned you!”

  Having driven a little way out of town so as to avoid being seen, they’d parked up near the abandoned Packer farm, and Ben was now peering through the dusty old windows, squinting as he tried to see inside.

  “You have to believe me,” Jane continued, stepping toward him. “Alex is a talker, he gabs about everything. The man couldn’t keep a secret if his life depended on it, which means…” She paused, trying to put the most obvious sequence of events together in her mind. “Which means it must have been a last-minute thing. He must have decided to do it after I finished for the night yesterday.”

  “Of course he did,” Ben muttered, making his way to the next window and cupping his hands around his eyes as he tried to look inside. “Jack whispered in his ear and got him to do it.”

  “You don’t know it was Jack.”

  “It was Jack.”

  “He didn’t…” She paused. “Jack didn’t say anything to me either.”

  “Well Jack most certainly is not a talker,” Ben replied, turning to her with a faint smile. “Jack stores things up, that’s always been one of his many, many problems. Do you know what happens to a thought when it goes into your head and just stays there? It rots, Jane, and when something rots, it affects its environment in a negative manner and other things start to rot as well.” Heading over to the door, he tried it a couple of times before taking a step back. “I know Jack doesn’t fill you in on everything he’s thinking. It’s not in his nature to be so open, not even to his wife. He’s like this rusty old place, he keeps his secrets, and getting him to give them up can be difficult. It requires a little imagination.” He paused, before stepping forward and kicking the door down with one swift move.

  “Ben! You can’t do that!”

  “Says who? What are you gonna do, call the cops?” He paused, before turning and smiling as he looked at her uniform. “Oh yeah, right. Whoops. Still, humor me.” He stared at her for a moment, his smile fading, before he turned and headed inside.

  “You really shouldn’t go in there!” she called after him. “I think this place is still private property! Someone must own it!” When she heard no reply, she muttered something under her breath before hurrying to the door and following him into the ramshackle, dirty hallway. “The Packer farm has been abandoned for years, Ben. A strong wind would probably blow it down.”

  “I doubt it,” he replied, making his way through the dimly-lit room. “It was built to last.”

  She paused by the doorway for a moment. “So is this a shakedown?”

  He turned to her.

  “You know what I mean,” she continued. “Are you going to tell me to get Alex off your case? Are you going to threaten to tell him, and tell Jack, about…” She paused again, trying to find the right word. “About everything?”

  “Do you really think I’d do that?” He smiled, before turning to her. “Do you?”

  “Ben -”

  “People around here really have a low opinion of me, don’t they?” he continued. “Jesus, I need to fix that. My brother and my father think I’m a serial killer, my sister-in-law apparently thinks I’m a blackmailer, and that’s just the ones I know about.” He headed to the old fireplace and gave it a tug, finding that it was starting to come away from the cracked wall. “I’m not going to tell Jack or anyone else that you used to work at the Border. I’d never do that, Jane. Never have, never will, I made you a promise many years ago and I’m a man who always keeps his word. Not that I think you should be ashamed of it, of course. Hell, in some ways I think you should be proud, but it’s none of my business, not really.” He tugged at the fireplace again. “If a person wants to keep something secret, that’s their concern.”

  “It’s not that I want to keep it a secret,” she replied, “it’s that I just… It’s in the past. I don’t want to go raking things up.”

  “Now that you’re nice and respectable?”

  “You know what my mother was like.”

  He allowed himself another faint smile. “I do. If you hadn’t found a way to make money by working at the Border, you wouldn’t have ended up with a decent life. I mean, we can’t blame our parents for everything, we really can’t, but it always struck me that you’d have a particularly tough time trying to break free from that old bitch’s orbit. You’d still be scrabbling about in the dirt.” He changed his grip on the fireplace a little, contemplating the best way to pull it free from the wall. “You’d probably be an alcoholic whore like your old Ma, don’t you think? Penniless, drug-addled, worthless, childless. At least two of those four. I totally understand and respect the decision you made to drag yourself out of that life by any means necessary. Frankly, I wish I didn’t know about the Border, I wish old Mac Crutchlow had never got me involved, but -”

  Before he could finish, he pulled on the fireplace again, this time ripping it away from the wall. Stepping aside, he watched as it crashed down and broke into several large chunks as soon as it hit the ground, filling the room with a cloud of dust that he immediately tried in vain to wave away.

  “Ben!” Jane shouted, turning and covering her face with her elbow for a moment.

  “I know, I know,” he said wearily, “it’s vandalism, but hey… I’ve got my reasons.”

  “Why did you want to come out here?” she asked.

  “You’d rather we were seen talking in the middle of town?” Waving away some more of the dust in the air, he clambered over the broken fireplace and reached into the gap in the wall, straining as he fumbled for something in the darkness. “Don’t you think that might set tongues wagging? Don’t you think word might get back to Jack, and then there’d be an awkward conversation at the dinner table later? He’d oh-so-casually mention that you were seen with me, and you’d oh-so-casually say it was a coincidence, and he’d oh-so-casually keep nagging for more details, and eventually there’d be a fight. All things considered, I thought you’d appreciate a little discretion.”

  “But why here specifically?”

  “The Packer farm?” He smiled. “Well, that’s a very interesting question. What do you know about this place, Jane?”

  “It’s been abandoned for as long as I can remember. Every so often there’s talk of knocking it down, but nothing ever seems to get done.”

  “Uh-huh. And?”

 
“And that’s about it. Sorry, local history has never really been my thing.”

  “Well there’s your first mistake. Local history, especially in a place like Bowley, is vitally important if you want to understand how everything intersects. I bet you’re one of those people who religiously watch the national news every night, but turn the TV over when the local report starts.”

  “Ben,” she asked with a sigh, “what are you looking for?”

  He paused, before getting to his feet and stepping back from the wrecked fireplace. “Something that isn’t here, apparently.”

  “But what -”

  “Do you remember,” he continued, interrupting her, “that time when old Crutchlow had got me hauling cases of booze in the Border? I’m talking a long time ago now, one of the many nights when I was just being his general dogsbody, picking up cash for a few little jobs here and there. He told me to keep the hell away from the main part of the place, but I got little glimpses, I caught snatches of things through half-open doors. What can I say in my defense? I’m a naturally inquisitive guy.” He stared at her for a moment. “I figured out pretty quickly what was going on there, I’d have had to have been an idiot not to. It wasn’t even a massive shock, I guess I was already attuned to the idea that there were secrets in the world and things that other people did that I didn’t. The only shock was when I saw you. I already knew you were dating my brother and I’d got you pegged as a prissy, prim little thing, and yet there you were, naked and squirming all over some old fart’s lap. I don’t remember who he was now but -”

  “I remember that night,” she said firmly, with a shiver. “You don’t need to remind me.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever forget?”

  She paused, before shaking her head.

  “Do you want to?”

  “I’ve learned to live with it.”

  “But why protect the place?” he asked.

  She sighed.

  “You’re a cop, for God’s sake. Why let the Border keep going? You could raid it any time you like.”

  “Nothing illegal goes on there.”

  “Doesn’t it?”