The Drowning Child

by Alex Barclay

  Ren laughed. Jesus. ‘What a suckfest of a fucking day.’

  ‘Would a glass of wine make it better?’ said Paul.

  ‘No,’ said Ren, ‘but a bottle might.’ She paused. ‘You look a little sorrowful. Is everything OK?’

  ‘It is now.’

  Hmm.

  ‘OK – let me go take a shower,’ said Ren. ‘I’ll be back. Five minutes.’

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘OK – ten.’

  She left, hurried to the elevator.

  What are you doing, exactly? Wine. Just wine.

  Mmm-hmm …

  As Ren was going into her room, a text came in from Gary. She opened it.

  You need to be back in Denver: Tues a.m. Inspectors re Safe Streets shooting.

  Her stomach plunged. She had been interviewed twice already about the Duke Rawlins shooting.

  This is why Joe Lucchesi was asking about Denver.

  Inspectors … Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuuuck.

  Let’s relive the worst moments of my entire life over and over forever and ever! Amen!

  So, I guess I will be going to Denver after all.

  Ren came back down to the bar fifteen minutes later, dressed in black trousers, a black turtleneck, her lightning strike cuff, her black patent high heels. Her hair was wet, combed back off her face. She had minimal makeup on. She slapped her phone on to the bar, and slid up on to a stool beside Paul.

  ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘You look beautiful.’

  Aw, man. Nooo. I’m dressed like a fucking nun.

  A non-fucking nun.

  Maybe nuns don’t wear patent heels. But still …

  ‘Sorry,’ said Paul. ‘I probably shouldn’t have said that.’

  Ren laughed. ‘No – thank you.’

  ‘You’re negating the effects of possibly the least sexiest bar in the universe.’

  We’re not supposed to be anything to do with anything sexy.

  He raised a bottle of red wine. ‘I took the liberty …’

  ‘I love your liberties,’ said Ren. ‘I’ve missed them. And I welcome them.’

  He poured. They clinked glasses.

  ‘There’s nothing a bottle of wine won’t fix,’ said Paul.

  Your voice is saying ‘a bottle of wine’ and your eyes are saying ‘acts of a sexual nature’.

  Will levels: weak.

  Paul topped up her glass. Very generously.

  He wants to get me drunk. And I shall oblige.

  Jesus.

  ‘You know, I’m fascinated by couples in crisis …’ said Ren.

  ‘Who are we talking about?’ said Paul.

  ‘Sorry – I was just thinking about the Veirs. And all the couples I meet in this job. Just – how trauma impacts on them. Who’s caring for whom? Are they both? Is one reaching out, is the other withdrawing? Do they care? Are they suspicious of each other? And who loves? Truly loves. It’s rare. And that depresses the shit out of me.’

  He was staring at her.

  What are you thinking?

  ‘You know, though, the boring couples can be more rock-solid than the ones who swing from chandeliers,’ said Ren. ‘I will never reject a chandelier, but I like the idea of having someone with big strong arms standing underneath it to catch me.’

  I just can’t for the life of me imagine anyone other than Ben.

  ‘But for now …’ said Ren. Stop.

  ‘For now …?’

  Ugh. I’m just going to stand back and watch the chandelier sparkle. That’s the best I can do. There’s a little light in that.

  Paul reached out, took her hand, squeezed it.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Ren. She tilted her head back, blinked, and the tears were gone.

  She breathed out. They drank. They drank more.

  Before long, Paul called the barman over. ‘Same again.’

  He was still holding Ren’s hand.

  Yup.

  Same again.

  45

  Ren woke up alone. The space beside her in the bed was empty.

  Oh my God.

  She sat up.

  No one has ever done this to me before.

  She looked around.

  What an asshole.

  He took advantage of me. And he sneaks out of his own fucking room! What an absolute fucking asshole. He’s supposed to be my friend. I am such a fucking sucker.

  The bathroom door opened.

  ‘Hey,’ said Paul. He smiled wide. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you. I was trying to be quiet.’

  ‘Well, you succeeded …’ said Ren.

  He took a few steps toward her. ‘Did you think I had abandoned you?’

  ‘No,’ said Ren.

  ‘Good.’

  Uh-oh. What’s that look? Please don’t be nice to me. Or like me in any way. Oh, no. Don’t sit on the edge of my bed like I’m ill. Do I look ill? Am I ill?

  Paul paused, and walked back around the bed as if he had read her mind.

  ‘You’re feeling guilt-ridden,’ he said. He lay on the bed beside her, pulled her into his arms.

  ‘Yes.’ This is too intimate. That word I hate. That feeling I hate.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry if I’ve put you in that position,’ said Paul. He kissed her head.

  Are you? ‘Thanks.’ That was a crap, sterile kiss. ‘I’m sorry for getting emotional the first night.’ And not sorry for not being emotional on any level last night. ‘I do want you to know you can rely on me. Professionally. I know I wouldn’t be on the team without you and Gary batting for me. I really appreciate it.’

  ‘We wouldn’t have given you our backing if we thought you weren’t capable.’

  ‘So, it wasn’t a pity move?’ said Ren.

  ‘I don’t do pity.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Ren. ‘I love this job.’ I love being able to escape. Even though I keep showing up wherever I go. She squeezed his arm, rolled to her side of the bed, got up and went into the bathroom. She stood in front of the mirror.

  Here we go again.

  No pride to be found in that reflection. Don’t waste your time.

  Ren went back to her room, took a shower, got dressed, and rode the elevator down to the lobby.

  I walked by here holding Paul Louderback’s hand, oh, about, four hours ago.

  I’ve come so fucking far!

  She went straight for the coffee machine in the restaurant and poured a large one into a takeaway cup. She grabbed a napkin and wrapped two raisin Danishes in it. She became aware of a presence beside her. An arm reached across her to take a cup.

  ‘Late night?’ said Sylvie.

  Ren went very still.

  Sylvie smiled. ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’

  Oh.

  Dear.

  God.

  Ren arrived in Tate PD, walked through the room with her head down and sat at her desk.

  Everyone needs to stay away from me today for their own safety.

  She had been there only an hour when Paul Louderback came over to her desk. She looked up at him.

  Seriously?!

  ‘Are you OK?’ he said. ‘About last night.’

  ‘Jesus – straight to missiles. Yes – I’m just tired.’

  He smiled.

  ‘Do not smile at me like that,’ said Ren. But she smiled back. ‘Any word on J. J. Nash?’

  Paul shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Has Ruddock said anything?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It’s so strange.’

  ‘Do you trust him?’ said Paul.

  I’m afraid to trust anyone. ‘Ruddock?’ said Ren. ‘I do.’ She paused. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Don’t look so nervous,’ said Paul. ‘Yes, I do.’

  Ren tilted her head. Go on, now go.

  ‘OK, OK,’ said Paul. ‘I just wanted to make sure you were all right.’

  ‘You have a nice day, sir,’ said Ren.

  He laughed as he walked away. ‘Cold,’ he said. ‘Cold.’

  Ren checked her email. There was on
e from Ruddock with the video from the Lister Creek store on the Monday Caleb disappeared. She downloaded the file and pressed Play. The camera captured the side of the cars as they drove into the parking lot at the side of the store, and whatever cars parked out front. Ren watched as a car drove in, parked, then another car, another car, then John Veir’s.

  You lying son-of-a-bitch.

  A bus drove in after John Veir, but stalled before making the turn into the parking lot for buses, blocking Veir’s car from view. Three more cars arrived. One car left. Another car left. Another car arrived. Another car left. John Veir left. He was there for a total of fourteen minutes.

  Ren wrote down the license plate numbers of all the cars that arrived or left within an hour of his arrival.

  ‘Fuck you, John Veir. Fuck you.’

  She went to see Paul in the command center. He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Can’t keep away from me,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Ren.

  She handed him the sheet of paper. ‘John Veir’s been lie-telling,’ said Ren. ‘I just watched the video footage from the store at Lister Creek: he did make a second stop last Monday. I took down the license plate numbers of all the cars that were there around the same time – to do with what you will.’

  ‘I’ll give it to Wiley,’ said Paul.

  ‘I haven’t seen him this morning,’ said Ren. ‘Let me go check with Ruddock.’

  Ren bumped into Ruddock in the hallway outside his office.

  ‘Hey,’ said Ren. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘I’ve been better.’

  ‘We don’t know for sure yet about Luke,’ said Ren. ‘But … one thing I do know is that John Veir lied about Monday. He made a stop off at Lister Creek rest area.’

  Ruddock shook his head.

  ‘Paul wants Wiley to follow up on the other cars that were there,’ said Ren.

  ‘Wiley’s not in yet,’ said Ruddock. ‘It’s Isabella again, his wife. She had a very public meltdown on Thursday afternoon – sitting on the curb in Harvest Road, bawling her eyes out, drunk as a skunk.’ He paused. ‘I told Gil to take as much time as he needs. It seems she’s just not ready to get help …’

  ‘Jesus – that’s really bad,’ said Ren.

  Ruddock nodded. ‘An intervention is the next step.’

  Intervention.

  Ren’s heart flipped.

  Intervention …

  The word went through her like a knife. The evening of the shootings at Safe Streets, her loved ones and friends had been gathered by Gary to sit her down and tell her they knew she had stopped taking her meds, that she would have to go back on them or risk her life, her career, her relationships. They were all in the Safe Streets building that evening because she had gone off the rails. She knew the word ‘intervention’ would forever haunt her.

  Ruddock was staring at her. Fuck. ‘Yes,’ she managed to say. ‘That sounds about right.’ I need to get out of here.

  She could feel him watching her as she left.

  46

  There was a subdued atmosphere in the command center all day. Under the buzz of activity, was the pulsing fear that Beckman could call to tell them that another child had been murdered, that they would now have to look at the possibility that Caleb Veir could have, or was set to, succumb to the same fate.

  Later in the afternoon, Paul came over to Ren’s desk. ‘In the absence of Wiley, I got one of the other Tate guys to trace the vehicles that were spotted at the Lister Creek rest area – no one with a record, no name that’s come up before in the investigation.’

  ‘Have they called them all to see if they saw anything?’ said Ren.

  ‘They’re still going through the list,’ said Paul. ‘On the rental cars, I got the details from Avis: one car was a family from Vermont on vacation, another was a student couple on vacation, the third was a lawyer—’

  ‘Lawyer?’ said Ren, sitting up. ‘Alice Veir?’

  ‘No such luck,’ said Paul. ‘Lawyer’s name is Paula Leon, forty-nine years old, visiting from Maine. I couldn’t reach her, so I left her a message.’

  ‘OK,’ said Ren.

  Investigators who were supposed to go home that day, stayed late, pizza was ordered, conversations moved to brighter places, until silence brought everyone back again to what could lie ahead.

  At nine p.m. Ren’s phone rang. She looked down. Beckman. She walked out of the command center into the quiet of the Tate PD foyer. Beckman hung up before Ren answered.

  Shit.

  Ren tried her again. The line was busy. She texted her.

  Am here. Call when you can.

  Ren stayed in the foyer, her gaze moving to the photographs.

  I can’t believe I only arrived here four days ago.

  Ruddock and Wiley featured in some of the photos, as did some of the investigators from the command center, most of them looking a little thinner in the face, thicker in the hair. Then there was a group of kids standing by a pool, all wearing medals around their necks. She wouldn’t have stopped except she saw something familiar in a little boy with auburn hair to his shoulders, standing proud, his chest out.

  Bless your heart, Seth Fuller. And you used to have hair! And smile …

  Her phone rang again. She picked up right away.

  ‘Beckman …’

  ‘Hi, Ren. Sorry about that. I’ve called to confirm your worst fears.’

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  ‘The choking was staged,’ said Beckman. ‘Luke Monroe was drowned. I looked at the lung-tissue samples. It’s clear there are diatoms, so I can tell you for sure that the drowning happened in fresh or salt water, not, for example, in the bathtub, kitchen sink, etc. I’m sorry I missed this.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ said Ren. ‘This was not an easy call. I get how it works. I did a seminar on water deaths. People make a whole lot of assumptions about fluid in the lungs meaning that someone drowned, but we both know there are lots of reasons why someone could have fluid in the lungs. Luke Monroe was found in his garden. There was no water—’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Beckman.

  I’ll shut up now. ‘I’ll share this with the team. We’ll gather water samples from around the area and send them your way.’

  Ren went to Ruddock’s office first to tell him the news. He sat at his desk, white-faced, his gaze traveling far beyond the walls of his office.

  ‘I can’t help thinking,’ he said, ‘that this is my town …’ He paused. ‘And I have failed my town.’

  Ren was sitting on the edge of his desk. She looked down at him.

  Oh my God … he’s going to cry.

  No fucking way. No, no, no. ‘That’s not how this works,’ said Ren. She reached out, squeezed his forearm. ‘Absolutely not. This is the last thing anyone would have expected somewhere like here.’

  ‘You did,’ said Ruddock. There was a gentle respect in his tone. ‘You were here a couple of days and you knew something wasn’t right.’

  ‘I’m an outsider,’ said Ren, ‘from … a darker world, unfortunately.’ And with a darker shitshow of a mind. I would hate for you to have this mind, you sweet, adorable man.

  ‘I don’t know how you do this all the time,’ said Ruddock.

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Ren. ‘I guess it’s all about getting a missing person safely home and saving the next person from an encounter with a psycho.’

  He nodded.

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ said Ren. ‘I think we should call in an expert on this. There’s a woman called Deb McLean – she specializes in aquatic deaths and homicidal drownings – I went to one of her seminars. She’s outstanding.’

  ‘You do that,’ said Ruddock. ‘Get her here as soon as you can.’ He paused, looked up at Ren, studied her face. ‘Ren, I was wondering, would you like to join me for dinner tomorrow night?’

  Oh. Um …

  ‘Just – you did mention you’d like roast chicken,’ said Ruddock, ‘and as luck would have it, the butcher in town sent me a nice big o
rganic one … to thank me for getting him off a nasty murder charge.’

  Ren laughed.

  ‘The chicken part is true, though,’ said Ruddock. ‘And what I did was catch the brat who threw a rock through his store window.’

  ‘Did you ever think your butcher was offloading a chicken because it was showered with glass?’ said Ren.

  ‘That’s exactly what I said to him, but he assured me this chicken was alive and clucking on a farm when the attack happened.’

  Ren smiled. ‘Well, if the chicken has a solid alibi, count me in.’

  ‘This won’t be a long dinner, don’t worry – I know we’ve got a lot to get through,’ said Ruddock. ‘I just don’t know if I could stand cooking a whole roast chicken for one.’

  Aw, maan.

  ‘Well, I would be very grateful to bypass the hotel restaurant,’ said Ren. ‘And I can’t face pizza again. Thank you.’

  She could see Ruddock drift back into the brutal reality he had just been trying to escape. A profound sadness swept across his face.

  ‘I went in to talk to Luke Monroe’s class about my job,’ he said. ‘It was a few months back. He was sitting right at the front, and he hung on my every word. He asked the most questions, he told me he wanted to be a doctor or a police officer or a firefighter when he grew up. All jobs to help other people. He stood out – he was one of those kids people are drawn to, they have something special, you think “they’re going to be a star”, “the world will know this child.”’ He paused. ‘And the world will never get to know Luke Monroe. For most people, he’ll just be a face from a news report about a killer. Just like Aaron Fuller’s.’ He looked up at Ren. ‘I don’t want Caleb Veir’s to be alongside them.’

  47

  Shannon Fuller walked through the living room and down the hallway to Seth’s bedroom. She knocked.

  ‘Enter!’ he said.

  She opened the door. He was sitting on his bed, watching a video on his laptop.

  ‘Did you hear who died?’ said Shannon.

  ‘No,’ said Seth. ‘Who?’

  ‘Roger Lyle.’ She waited for a reaction. ‘You remember Mr Lyle? The swim coach.’

  Seth nodded. ‘Of course I remember him. What happened?’

  ‘Well,’ said Shannon, ‘apparently, he killed himself. He was out in the retirement home and he went into his closet, hanged himself.’