by Alex Barclay
I am a fucking lunatic.
‘I know you lost your friends,’ said Ruddock. ‘And your boyfriend.’
Ren nodded. She grabbed a napkin and pressed it into the corner of her eyes.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Ruddock.
‘Me too,’ said Ren. ‘For you. Your wife …’
He managed a nod too.
‘You must think I’m nuts.’
‘Well, if you are, I’m nuts right along with you.’
‘It’s so sad,’ said Ren. ‘No one tells you … all the weird stuff. Not the normal stuff – the texts, the emails you keep, the songs that remind you of them.’ She sucked in a breath. ‘Weird stuff. Like … not buying the shower gels you used to use. Mugs I can’t drink from, but I can’t bear to throw away. TV shows I can’t watch any more – I’d feel like I’m cheating. Meals I can’t eat. And if I do cook something we used to have, I just end up crying through the whole thing and I can’t even eat it. And I still have his toothbrush, his razor, his deodorant.’ Which I still take the lid off and smell. Which I would use if it wouldn’t make me feel like I was losing my mind. ‘I still wear his T-shirts.’ And his shorts. Jesus. Christ. When will it go afuckingway?
Poor Ruddock.
‘I wish you weren’t going through all this,’ said Ruddock. ‘It’s not easy.’
‘Everyone is grieving,’ said Ren. ‘Everywhere I look. You’re such a lovely man. I’m so sorry you lost your wife. Life is so unfair.’
‘It will get easier,’ said Ruddock. ‘You won’t believe me now, but you’ll be saying the same thing to someone else down the line. That’s just how it goes. I’m the person to tell you. You’ll pass it on to someone else.’
‘Thank you.’ I should be more embarrassed than I am. But you’re just so fucking nice.
She gave herself one minute of crying, then excused herself to go to the bathroom. She stared in the mirror.
I have those lost eyes. Oh, God. I do. They’re only for other people.
My mascara rocks.
She wiped the tiniest of smudges from the outer corners of her eyes. Her hair was damp at the temples. She pulled it off her face into a high ponytail, then pulled out the elastic and let it fall down. She washed her hands, dried them, and went back out. As she was walking down the hallway, she could hear the click of the front door closing. She stopped.
She heard voices. Ruddock’s … and another man’s.
Oh, God. What’s going on? Why do I always go to the dark side?
‘I didn’t want to mess it up!’ the other man was saying. ‘I’m lying to everyone, I’m lying to you, I’m lying to her—’
Ren felt her sadness cut away by a stab of anger.
I can’t trust anyone. Even Ruddock. My instincts about him. My instincts are gone. I never know who to trust. I shouldn’t be doing this.
She reached for her sidearm. She felt steady, preternaturally calm. She raised it, walked forward quietly, listened. Their voices had dropped, were hushed, urgent.
Fuck.
She looked into the living room, her weapon raised. There was a tall, dark-haired man standing with his back to her, dressed in a black biker jacket, black jeans and boots.
Fuck. That’s J. J. Nash. The plumber. The nephew.
Her heart started to pound.
I’ve been set up.
50
Ren walked into the living room.
‘J. J. Nash?’
J. J. raised his hands in the air immediately. Ren could see Ruddock standing behind him in the same pose, an I’m-as-surprised-as-you-are look on his face, a pleading in his eyes.
You did this on purpose. You suckered me into a low-key, out-of-school-hours first encounter with your fugitive suspect nephew.
‘Ren,’ said Ruddock, firmly, ‘you can lower the weapon. J. J. will explain everything. I had no idea he was going to show up.’
‘He didn’t,’ said J. J. ‘I was away. I just wanted to stop by and let him know I was thinking of him.’
Thinking of him? What?
‘I just didn’t like the idea of him being here alone tonight,’ said J. J.
What? I’m totally lost.
Ruddock picked up on it. ‘It’s my wife’s anniversary tonight.’
Oh, Jesus. He didn’t want to be alone tonight – he wanted to be with someone who would understand. Grieving woman, grieving town. Poor, adorable Ruddock. What a great fucking support I turned out to be.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Ren. ‘I had no idea …’
Ruddock batted away the apology, but she could see his compassion for her. She realized she was still pointing the gun at a terrified J. J. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. He looked like he had never seen one before.
Ren lowered the weapon, put it back in its holster.
I thought that went well.
Ruddock stepped forward. ‘J. J. – this is Special Agent Ren Bryce with the FBI.’
‘Oh,’ said J. J. ‘I thought … you know.’ He gestured to the table, shrugged. ‘It looked like a date, which I thought was weird anyway.’
I’m blushing. I never blush.
‘And then she’s got a gun,’ said J. J. ‘And … I can’t wrap my brain around it. I thought you were being tricked by one of those women who prey on lonely men, those Black Widow ladies—’
By the time J. J. had finished, Ruddock was laughing hard. ‘Ever since J. J. could talk, he didn’t know when to stop,’ said Ruddock. ‘No filter.’
Keep a straight face. This man could still be a child killer.
‘J. J. – you know we’ve been looking for you, right?’ said Ren.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, OK? I’m here now. I came back. I just … didn’t want to do that until I could. Until I had an alibi for those days. I knew I didn’t look good, OK?’
‘Sit down,’ said Ren. ‘Talk to us. Who are all these people you’re lying to? And why?’
Ruddock cleared space at the dining table.
J. J. shrugged. ‘My alibi … for the dates in question … I read about them in the paper … was, well, it was Mrs Dennehy’s daughter.’
Ren exchanged glances with Ruddock.
I know what you’re thinking: a daughter of Mrs Dennehy’s is bound to be at least fifteen years older than him? And: Go, Mrs Dennehy’s daughter? So, she was the older blonde woman with the great nails.
‘Keep talking …’ said Ren.
‘I’ve been seeing Mrs Dennehy’s daughter,’ said J. J. ‘She’s back in town – she’s over there now with her mother, breaking it to her that she’s in love with a plumber “twenty years her junior” is how she describes it. I didn’t want to talk to you until she talked to her mother first.’
‘OK – can we stop calling her Mrs Dennehy’s daughter?’ said Ren. ‘It sounds like a bad Irish movie. Does she have a name?’
‘Eileen.’
Ruddock laughed. ‘Because that’ll knock the Irish out of the whole thing.’
‘Look,’ said J. J., ‘she’s divorced with a mean ex-husband. It’s a … sensitive situation. Hence, we disappeared for a while.’ He spoke like ‘hence’ was a new word in his vocabulary.
Perhaps discovered in the script of Mrs Dennehy’s Daughter.
J. J. turned to Ruddock. ‘I’m so sorry if I made things awkward for you on a professional level.’
Ruddock nodded. ‘It’s OK.’
J. J. talked them through his nascent love affair with Eileen Dennehy, whom he met when he was fixing a radiator in her mother’s bedroom in December.
J. J. the twenty-six-year-old biker plumber, with Eileen, the close-to-fifty divorcée, on the back of his Harley with the wind in her hair. It explains why her mother was saying she was having a ‘switched-off’ long weekend.
‘We’ll talk to Eileen tomorrow,’ said Ren. ‘Now that we’ve cleared up your whereabouts on the other dates, on February eleventh a young boy died – Luke Monroe – right around the block from the Denne
hy house. So, I’d like you to talk me through the last Saturday that you were there …’ She paused. ‘That Rose knows about …’
J. J. laughed. ‘Ha – good point. Not that we’ll be talking to her about any of that. She doesn’t need to know, right?’
‘No,’ said Ren. ‘No, she doesn’t.’
‘We didn’t get it together in her mother’s house, so you know,’ said J. J.
Thanks for that.
‘I called to the house,’ said J. J. ‘Mrs Dennehy was there, she brought me in, and I went to check out the downstairs bathroom. There was a problem with the toilet, but I didn’t have the right part, so I told her I’d go order it as soon as I could, and be back to her.’ He paused. ‘It was a busy time. Then I was kind of afraid to show my face again.’
Ren nodded. ‘Did you see Caleb that Saturday?’
‘Yes – he was in the garden.’
‘Do you know Caleb?’ said Ren.
‘Not really,’ said J. J. ‘But I said “hi”. He didn’t answer. He might have had headphones on. I don’t know.’
‘Where did you park your truck that day?’ said Ren.
‘I parked on another street, cut through a laneway down the side of one of my other client’s gardens into Mrs Dennehy’s.’
Ren got her phone and went to Google Maps. She showed him the Monroes’ street. She went wider.
‘Where were you parked?’
‘Here,’ he said, pointing to a house two blocks away.
‘Would you have had to drive past the Monroes’ house to get where you were going when you were finished at Mrs Dennehy’s?’ said Ren.
‘No,’ said J. J. ‘I would have gone out the way I came in – through the neighbor’s garden, got in my van and went in the opposite direction.’
Shit.
‘Did you see anything suspicious that day?’ said Ren.
‘Nothing,’ said J. J. ‘Nothing I can think of.’
‘Could you email me details of all your clients when you get home tonight?’ said Ren.
‘Sure,’ said J. J. ‘No problem.’
‘And we’re going to need you to come down to the station in the morning, to make a formal statement,’ said Ren.
J. J. nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘In the meantime, don’t go anywhere,’ said Ren. She smiled. ‘And keep your cell phone with you.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
When Ren got back to the hotel, she spent two hours going through Deb McLean’s list of websites. She texted her when she was done.
Jesus Christ, Deb. I’ve been ‘surfing’ your aqua erotic sites of shame. I’d say ‘I need a shower’, but no: I never want to go near water again. I haven’t even made coffee.
Deb phoned her. ‘It’s pretty grim, isn’t it?’
‘Yes!’ said Ren. ‘Why do men want to hurt women so much? Why do they get off on women who look like they’re dying? These women look so fucking terrified. There are women chained to the bottom of pools. And these fat fucks in scuba masks offering … I can’t even go there. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, the aqua-erotic stuff ended up being my gateway drug.’ She let out a breath. ‘God, I love breathing. There’s some fucked-up shit out there. I mean, it’s not like I don’t know that already, but when you are actively looking for it, and you open the portal … I mean – there are photos of women in all kinds of torture gear and then – and this is the true horror – a separate selection of women in torture gear while wearing socks. Socks … I swear to God, please strap me up in leather and chains, but if you use the opportunity to put socks on me, you’ll see how quickly I can get out of a ball gag.’
‘I know, right?’ said Deb.
‘There are so many forums – posts by people talking about all kinds of reasons they do what they do. Lots about how they nearly drowned as kids, and the sexual high that gave them, and how they’ve tried to reproduce that feeling or those circumstances ever since. I nearly drowned as a kid and it was about as sexual as thinking you’re going to fucking die at any moment. And it’s what you said – they associate whatever was going on, or whatever was happening around them, with that sexual experience. Some of these people are really anguished, though – it’s like “take the pain of this obsession away”. They want to be normal …’
‘Most of them think they are,’ said Deb.
‘I kept getting this horrible feeling—’
‘Sinking sensation?’
‘Stop! I kept thinking I was going to see a photo or a video of someone I know.’
‘That’s why I avoid amateur porn sites … hello, neighbor! Hello, kind man from the dry cleaner’s!’
Ren laughed.
‘OK – step away from the ASSes,’ said Deb. ‘You get it. There’s no need to water-torture yourself …’
‘I know too much,’ said Ren. ‘You know, like, next time I’m in a hotel pool …’
‘You know as well as I do,’ said Deb, ‘that people go where their needs are likely to be met. You won’t find a pedophile hanging around a retirement home. Terrible example – I’m ignoring the ones who might be residents or employees – but you know what I mean.’
‘I’ll do one more tour of duty,’ said Ren. ‘But, Deb … it is not purty.’
‘Try seeing them after the fun and games. Losing an eye would be the best-case scenario.’
51
Ren woke up at six a.m. the next morning, on her back, sweating, her hands in fists, her jaw clenched.
One week … nothing.
Fuck this shit.
She got up.
I need to get rid of this energy or I will beat someone.
She packed her overnight bag for Denver, then changed into shorts, a tank, and sneakers, put her hair up in a ponytail and went to the third-floor gym.
This is not a gym; it’s a supply room.
An empty one, at least.
She got on the only treadmill there and started jogging. She speeded it up after five minutes.
Run, bitch, run.
Fuck John Veir, the fucking liar.
Why were you at Lister Creek? What have you done?
She pictured grabbing him by the throat, slamming him up against a wall, and asking him.
Stop.
What is wrong with me?
Where are you, Caleb Veir?
She pushed the speed button three times and ran faster. She upped the speed again. She took deep, rhythmic breaths, could feel it beginning to calm her. She started to go back over everything, all the conversations, the files she had read, who she had believed, who she didn’t, why she didn’t. She got flashes of all the images that came with the case over the previous week.
What the fuck is going on?
When she got into Tate PD, she checked her email – there was one from Emma Ridley from the Innocence Project with the Anthony Boyd Lorden file. Ren read through the original autopsy report, then the second report, including the forensic anthropologist’s views on it being a possible accident.
I’m buying this. I wonder why Alice Veir isn’t.
There was also a police sketch in the file: the flawed eyewitness testimony that Alice Veir had mentioned, but that wasn’t featured in the television show. The face looked familiar: a little like Lorden, but not a lot. Not enough that it should have been taken as seriously as it was. The eyewitness claimed he saw a man pulled in at the side of the road not too far from where the remains were ultimately found … at the time Lorden claimed he was at home with his parents.
Hold on … the TV show. The lawyers. They were all introduced as going to be speaking at ‘next month’s International Innocence Program Conference in Portland’. That means it was on this month.
Ren grabbed her laptop and googled it.
Holy shit: day three of the conference was last Monday, the day Caleb went missing.
Ren clicked on the conference program. One speaker’s name popped out at her: Alice Veir. And a second: Paula Leon, a lawyer from Maine.
Ren called the team ove
r. ‘I’ve found a link between Alice Veir and Paula Leon, the lawyer whose rental car was seen at Lister Creek rest area at the same time as John Veir’s.’ She pointed to the screen.
‘This video is of Leon – she spoke at two p.m., exactly when her car was at Lister Creek rest area. So, someone else was driving her car. And the chances of that being anyone other than Alice Veir are pretty slim.’
Everybody was silent, processing what she was saying.
‘Alice Veir borrowed Leon’s car to go meet her brother,’ said Ren. ‘John Veir was the one who called Alice that morning, told her he’d killed Caleb, asked her to drive down and meet him there, so she could take the body, get rid of it.’
Gary looked at Ren.
Unreadable.
‘Why else would he be meeting her that afternoon, around that time, and lie about it?’ said Ren.
‘Do you really think she’s going to go along with that?’ said Gary. ‘A woman like her? A high-profile lawyer with a strong sense of justice?’
‘Yes!’ said Ren. ‘If she had no choice.’
‘Of course she’d have a choice,’ said Gary. ‘Seriously – would your brother cover up for you like that?’
They locked eyes when they realized what he’d said.
Yes, my brother has covered for me. He’s covered for all of us.
But not quite like this. Not fucking quite.
Gary turned to Paul Louderback. ‘If your sister called you, and said she’d killed your nephew, would you cover for her?’
‘Depends on which nephew,’ said Paul.
Everyone laughed.
I’m right. I know I am.
‘We need to bring John Veir in,’ said Ren.
‘We need to wait until we have more on Lister Creek,’ said Gary. ‘It may not have been Alice Veir driving, there could be another reason why John Veir stopped there. This could be nothing to do with Caleb.’
Don’t be so fucking measured.
‘He could have been getting rid of something in the garbage,’ said Ruddock. ‘We’ll check which landfill site their garbage collection goes to, organize a search.’
