American Crow

by Jack Lacey

  ‘Out of the way,’ I shouted, prizing the flange of the shovel underneath the edge of the lid.

  After a torturous few seconds, it creaked and gave way. I yanked it back triumphantly and saw Olivia’s frail body at my feet. She was lying on a pissed-stained mattress, her eyelids clamped shut, her face a ghostly white.

  ‘Help me get her out!’ I screamed at Tolley, ‘Now!’

  In tandem we reached down and birthed Olivia’s emaciated frame out into the soft Kentucky dawn, where she lay motionless like some frozen sparrow.

  ‘Out of the way!’

  I lowered my ear to her mouth. She wasn’t breathing...I checked the pulse in her neck. I couldn’t feel the slightest twinge. She was dying if not dead already. Hurriedly, I pumped her chest. One, two, three, one, two, three...

  Nothing. I’d been here before...

  ‘Come on Olivia!’

  I pumped harder and blew into to her mouth.

  ‘Breathe, damn you, breathe!’

  One, two...

  Nothing still.

  ‘Shit...’

  I tried again. One, two, three...

  Suddenly she gasped, coughed and opened her terrified eyes as if she’d surfaced from hell itself, then started to cry uncontrollably. I lifted her up into my arms then held her frozen body tightly against mine for a while. Just held her...

  ‘It’s okay, darling. It’s okay,’ I whispered again. ‘You’re safe now. It’s all over. We’re taking you home...’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ‘the film’

  I kicked the door open with the heel of my boot then carried Olivia into the kitchen in my arms. Martha thundered down the stairs as if panic-stricken at the intrusion then just stood there for a second, seemingly shocked at the sight of the girl.

  ‘Blake!’ she said eventually, ushering me over to the sofa where I laid the girl down. ‘You’ve found her?’

  ‘Yes, I have...’

  ‘Oh my god she looks likes death.’

  ‘That’s because she’s been buried alive for the last few days, in a metal box.’

  Martha looked at me aghast, then stooped down and placed a tender hand against Olivia’s cheek.

  ‘She’s asleep?’

  ‘Yes, and she’s weak. But at least she’s alive and in one piece,’ I said.

  ‘Where’s Nance?’ she said righting herself.

  I looked up at her and relayed the news with my eyes.

  ‘No…please no…’ she said softly, her bottom lip quivering.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  I reached out and squeezed her arm unsure of what to do.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she said sounding distraught, the back of her hand held against her mouth.

  ‘Yes. I saw it happen.’

  Martha lowered her head into her hands and began to sob, then looked up angrily.

  ‘If you hadn’t come into our lives then she would still be alive damn you! Why…why…?’ she said over and over, slapping me hard around the face, before wrestling herself into my arms.

  She gripped me tightly, and cried harder.

  ‘I’m sorry...’

  ‘How did it happen?’ she croaked eventually.

  ‘Corrigan strangled her, and I couldn’t do a damned thing to stop him,’ I replied, the euphoria of finding the girl quickly evaporating again. ‘I’m so, so sorry...’

  ‘Corrigan,’ she spat. ‘I’ll kill him...My god, I don’t care how I do it, I-will-kill-that son of…’

  ‘I’ve done it for you already, Martha, and for Nancy and every other good man and woman in Appalachia who’s died at his hands. He’s gone for good, okay.’

  She sniffed and wiped her tears on my shoulder and pulled away slightly.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes. I saw him fall into the stinking slurry basin that’s called Gallow’s Creek. He’s dead...’

  ‘How fitting,’ she said, beginning to compose herself, ‘First Benjamin, then Nancy. My two closest friends...both dead because of that vile man.’

  I turned and helped myself to some coffee on the stove and shook my head.

  ‘I’m sorry that it came to this, Martha, I really am...’

  ‘You didn’t know the depths that that man could stoop to,’ she said calmer, placing a blanket over Olivia.

  ‘No…’ I muttered, knowing that my obsession with finding the girl had ended up getting Nancy killed.

  ‘At least the Corrigan Corporation will be thrown into disarray. Maybe it might even save a few mountains, huh?’

  ‘I’d like to think that,’ I said, thinking that there would always be another monster to replace a monster in the dark world we lived in.

  ‘At least Nancy’s death would mean something, you know?’ she sniffed, taking the generous glass of bourbon I’d poured for her.

  I nodded vacantly, feeling exhausted. I hoped she was right, I really did. Martha downed the tumbler, wiped her streaming nose on her sleeve, then stood up trying to gather herself.

  ‘She needs to eat something. I have some of my famous mountain soup on the go. The sooner she gets some nourishment inside her, the quicker she’ll recover.’

  I went down on one knee and gently roused Olivia by rubbing the outside of her arm.

  ‘Wake up, honey. You’re safe now. Wake up...’

  She murmured then slowly opened one eye, then another. She looked dreadful still. Fragile. But at least the terror had dissipated from her sunken eyes.

  ‘We’re going to give you some soup, darling. You need to eat.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I can,’ she replied eventually, the words whispered lamely from her cracked lips.

  I eased her up into a sitting position as Martha appeared with a steaming bowl of broth, which she then spooned slowly into her unwilling mouth. She coughed suddenly, sending most of it down the clean shirt I’d found for her at the hunting lodge. I smiled reassuringly and went to fetch a cloth.

  ‘Are you serious, that they buried her alive?’ Martha said, administering some more soup.

  ‘I found her six feet down in a small metal container with a camera inside. They were filming her so that bitch, Tolley, could bizarrely draw some inspiration from it.’

  The spoon hovered in mid-air as Martha’s mouth fell open in astonishment.

  ‘Reya Tolley, the famous artist? Are you messing with me?’

  ‘No...she was Corrigan’s mistress. He was helping promote her work and involving her in some of his vile games at the same time.’

  ‘Jesus. Where in the hell is she now? Do the police know?’

  ‘No, and to answer your question…let’s just say she’s reliving the experience of some of her subjects.’

  ‘You buried her?’

  I came back from the kitchen smiling.

  ‘Well the bitch deserved it, huh…And what about Benjamin, did Corrigan have a hand in his death too?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘The bastard…’

  ‘Benjamin must have changed his identity back in the seventies, when his brother started destroying the mountains with his surface mining. He was also in love with Corrigan’s wife and resented his brother for the accident which paralyzed her. You couldn’t write this stuff...’

  Martha shook her head incredulously.

  ‘My god, is there anything else you want to tell me?’

  ‘Only that Benjamin found out about Ethan’s death and went up to the hunting lodge to have it out with Corrigan at some point. After he returned, Corrigan went down there with some of his men and axed him to death. Tolley told me everything before I shut the lid.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Martha said, stroking Olivia’s hair.

  ‘Not as disbelieving as I was when I found the samples.’

  ‘Samples?’

  ‘Corrigan got a kick out of extracting spinal fluid from his victims, and Tolley liked to use it in her artwork. I found the stuff back at his lodge.’

  ‘Are you pissing me?’

  I s
hook my head slowly, feeling exhausted.

  ‘After I took care of Olivia, I dragged Tolley back out to the woods, where she babbled on about how Corrigan coerced her into doing the paintings, how he’d believed that the souls of the weak could be resurrected via the canvas as the good Lord had told him. Something like that...’

  ‘I feel sick,’ Martha said, fiddling with the cross around her own neck.

  ‘There were others involved too...’ Olivia added suddenly, trying to sit up.

  ‘Hey?’ I said trying to help her.

  ‘We went up there a good few weeks ago, not long after we arrived the first time. We were looking for a friend of Ethan’s who’d gone missing. We’d heard rumours about what went on at the hunting lodge and wanted to check it out for ourselves.’

  ‘What did you hear, darling?’ Martha pushed, taking a seat opposite.

  ‘That people who got in Corrigan’s way...disappeared.’

  Olivia broke into another coughing fit.

  ‘Easy now…you’ve been through a lot,’ Martha urged.

  ‘Ethan photographed them gathering, using his phone...’ Olivia continued, ‘up there at Jackson’s Hollow.

  ‘Who?’ I pushed, realizing what the initials meant on the disc I’d found in Minneapolis.

  ‘People turning up at Corrigan’s place. Important people...’

  ‘Go on…’

  ‘Ethan said that he recognized some of them. One was a well-known congressman, another an oil baron, a judge from Louisville, and several other businessmen involved in the mining industry. We took pictures of all of them.’

  ‘And what else did you see, honey?’ Martha said, sounding as hungry for answers as I now was.

  ‘A young boy with brown hair, being brought up from the woods by a couple of Corrigan’s men at dusk. He looked about ten or twelve.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I murmured under my breath, realizing that Corrigan was involved in some sort of high-level snuff-ring.

  ‘We never saw the boy come out again. And we were there most of the night...’

  Olivia started to cough heavily again, prompting Martha to go and fetch a glass of water.

  ‘You okay to carry on?’ she said handing it over.

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘I’m listening,’ I said softly.

  ‘We went back several days later.’

  ‘You were playing with fire…’ Martha said sternly.

  Olivia looked at me. I saw the distress in her eyes.

  ‘Go on…’

  ‘Seeing the security guys drive off at one point, we took our chances and broke in. Ethan thought his friend, Mellissa might have been taken there too, you see…’

  ‘What did you find?’ I asked, tensing.

  ‘Some creepy chamber beneath the billiards room. Ethan found it by chance really. There was a door behind the bar that led to...’

  ‘A basement painted red and black?’ I said, pre-empting her words.

  She looked at me surprised.

  ‘You know about it?’ she queried, looking more confused.

  ‘I found something similar at Corrigan’s ranch and had the displeasure of being held there, amongst other things...’

  Olivia shuddered

  ‘There were cameras down there too, fixed to the ceiling...an examination table and metal rings protruding from the walls. It looked like some sort of weird torture chamber. When I think what that poor boy might have gone through, it makes me shudder. I think he may have died down there, perhaps Ethan’s friend too...’

  ‘Probably,’ I said, thinking about the dark dark world Corrigan inhabited.

  ‘We looked for some sort of evidence, you know, like films. We couldn’t find a thing, save some weird charcoal drawings in a room next door. There was a two-way mirror inside, looking in on the basement. I haven’t been able to get those images out of my head since…’

  ‘That was Tolley’s work probably, some sort of souvenir for those who were involved,’ I said vocalizing my thoughts.

  ‘Then we got disturbed by the security guys returning and had to make a break for it. I dropped the drawings unfortunately as we fled.’

  ‘They saw you?’

  ‘Yes, and shot at us, but we managed to get away, ran the four or five miles back to Crow Creek and hid out at Benjamin’s until things had settled down.’

  ‘And what about the photos you took?’

  ‘We returned to Minneapolis. Ethan then downloaded them onto a friend’s computer and magnified them with photo processing software to try and make them clearer.’

  ‘Go on…’ Martha urged.

  ‘He saved them onto disc for collateral. He told his friend Spike about them in case we got into trouble down here and needed a bargaining chip...’

  ‘Jesus,’ I said, realizing that Olivia and Ethan had signed the old timer’s death warrant by getting him involved, that the Mustangs probably had been hired by Corrigan’s heavies to find the disc back in Minneapolis because he realized how damaging it could be...

  I looked at Olivia and shook my head.

  ‘What?’ she said sheepishly.

  ‘So why in the hell did you go to Corrigan’s ranch when you’d photographed all that stuff back at Jackson’s Hollow. Surely you must have known by that point that the guy was a total maniac?’

  ‘Yes…but you have to understand that Ethan was desperate to find his friend. We’d gone to the police in Lexington afterwards and they just laughed at us when we showed them the pictures on his phone. They said it was a hunting party, that we shouldn’t be making those sort of accusations with those sort of people.’

  Martha shook her head.

  ‘Well, why don’t that surprise me…’

  ‘At that point we knew we had to find Mellissa ourselves. By snooping around the ranch, we hoped to find something more concrete to blackmail Corrigan with into releasing the girl, if she was still alive...’

  ‘You crazy fools,’ Martha added tearfully.

  ‘Not the best idea in retrospect, was it?’ I said.

  Olivia lowered her head.

  ‘I’m so sorry…’

  I placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

  ‘It’s okay, take your time…’

  ‘They took Phil out to one of the horses’ paddocks and buried him up to his neck. We were then made to watch as they sent the horses in...They made them stampede with their guns.’

  She paused, her body beginning to visibly shake.

  ‘Then they grabbed Ethan and threatened to do the same if he didn’t tell them everything he knew about the break-in at the hunting lodge. He didn’t, because he was trying to protect Benjamin, though I think Phil had already told them everything anyway...’

  Olivia’s started to sob, the pain of what she’d seen too immense to vocalize for a second.

  ‘Then they shot him…’

  ‘Sshh,’ Martha said wiping a tear from her face with her thumb. ‘You’re safe now darling…it’s all over.’

  ‘The graffiti was faked too, as was the crash outside, to engender sympathy for Corrigan and his company, and to make it look like we were extremists.’

  I nodded attentively then looked at Martha.

  ‘We better get the hell out of here. The police will be looking for us now...’

  Martha offered a comforting smile.

  ‘What do you need, Blake?’

  ‘Not much. Just some money to pay for enough gas to get us to Mexico, then to buy us some fresh passports to get us over the border...’

  ‘Sure,’ Martha said without any qualms.

  ‘When we get back I’ll send you three times the amount and more, okay?’

  ‘Ahh, forget about it…’ she said as if it were nothing.

  ‘I’m serious. It’s a promise.’

  ‘And you’re gunna drive all the way down there, now?’

  I stood up and helped myself to some soup.

  ‘Safest way to get out of this damned country I reckon...’

  Martha stood
up and hugged me tightly.

  ‘Gunna real miss you, Blake. Nancy really liked you, you know. You were the first person she’d let in since Tom...’

  ‘Is that so,’ I said trying not to think about her smile, the warmth of her skin against

  mine. ‘Is that so...’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  ‘homecoming’

  London. Just after midnight.

  It took us a total of five days to get back in the end. The drive down to New Mexico was long and hard, but thankfully free of any further problems.

  A forger I knew down there, furnished us with some believable passports, and we eased across the Mexican border without any more hassles. With each new day Olivia became visibly stronger too, the colour returning to her cheeks, the brightness to her soft grey eyes.

  We flew back via Madrid on a flight from Chihuahua in northern Mexico. In that time we got to know each other a little better, Olivia filling in any gaps to explain everything that had happened, making me think how in the end, I’d got my timing right when it really mattered...

  When we landed, we took a late night taxi straight back to Lenny’s place in south London, where her father was waiting anxiously for us back at the office.

  I glanced at Olivia as she stepped out of the car, now looking radiant again in black jeans and a T-shirt, her blonde hair hanging freely over her shoulders, her face as fresh like it had been in the photos her father had given me at the beginning of the case.

  I took a deep breath and turned to her on the street.

  ‘You ready for this?’

  She smiled and I realized why Henry Deacon treasured her so much, then for a second saw Laura’s face looking right back at me. I depressed the handle feeling a mixture of emotions, then walked up the stairs, along the corridor, passed another guy sat outside Lenny’s office, then slowly opened the door to reveal the prize...

  ‘Olivia!’ Henry exclaimed, jumping up from his seat at the sight of his daughter.

  ‘Daddy!’

  She ran across the room and fell into her father’s open arms. Lenny and I just stood back and let them enjoy the moment...

  ‘Oh my god, it’s so good to see you...’ Deacon said overjoyed, holding his daughter’s face tightly as he kissed her forehead repeatedly. ‘Thank you, Blake, thank you…’ he said glancing over her shoulder for a second.