“Get dressed, Marcus. I need you to come with us.” MacNeice stood up and put his notebook away.
“How’d you pay for the hotel room?” Aziz asked.
“I used a credit card that’ll bounce for sure. If I hadn’t called Miss Hausser to see if anyone had come looking for me, I’d probably have skipped out on the bill. She gave me your phone number.”
“She’s a very nice lady. Marcus, let’s go. We need to take you in for questioning—and to keep you safe. We don’t know if the people who murdered Lydia are coming after you too,” MacNeice said.
“Can I just take a shower? I reek, and I haven’t changed my clothes for days.” He stood up, sniffed at his stained shirt and looked at MacNeice. “I’m okay, though. I’m actually relieved it’s over.”
“Okay, here’s the deal. While I bring the car around to the front entrance, Aziz will pay for the room. You’ve got ten minutes. If you’re not in the lobby in ten, we’ll be back up to get you.” As he and Aziz headed for the door, Johnson went into the bathroom. They heard the shower start as they stepped into the hall.
At the elevators Aziz said, “Not concerned that he’ll bolt, sir?”
“No, I think he’s done with running.”
In the lobby, a humid two-storey glass-topped greenhouse featuring live palm trees, a water wall with vines growing on either side of it and rainforest birdcalls, Aziz went to the reception desk to check Clark Terry out of his room while MacNeice went out the revolving front door. He was only a few yards into the parking lot when he heard a loud bang followed by several screams. MacNeice burst back through the door. In the lobby, three guests were crouching behind a sofa while Aziz, her weapon drawn, was standing beside the desk clerk, both of them staring straight up.
“Up there,” the clerk said. “Oh my God. Call an ambulance!”
Johnson was sprawled face down on top of the glass roof. A splatter of blood around his head, like a burst red-paint balloon, was starting to streak downwards. His arms were above his head as if he were sleeping, or dancing; one leg was straight down, the other tucked awkwardly behind it. His feet were bare. As they looked up, there was a creaking sound. Blood flowed down the glass, puddling at the mullion. Another creak.
“Aziz, are you okay? Look at me.” MacNeice reached for her arm. She made no acknowledgment of either his words or his touch. “Aziz, come away. Fiza. Fiza?”
Another creak, and then suddenly a whoosh—the entire glass panel, with the young man’s body riding it, burst loose and came crashing towards them. MacNeice wrapped his arms around Aziz and threw himself forward as hard as he could. An enormous explosion seemed to envelop them and then half-inch cubes of bloody glass rained down. When the noise stopped, he opened his eyes. Aziz was beneath him, her eyes still screwed shut, tears washing streaks of dust and mascara towards her ears. MacNeice brushed some of the glass out of her hair, then rolled off her and looked around. The glass panel had landed about a foot away from his shoes, and what was left of Marcus Johnson was now bleeding all over the rug. In that strange way that details present themselves in a crisis, MacNeice noticed the small tattoo low on his neck—a blue line drawing of a Hasselblad camera.
“Come on, Fiza, we’ve got to stand up.” MacNeice got to his knees, then pushed himself to his feet, shielding her from the view behind him. “Give me your hand. Come on, that’s it.” As he lifted her up, she buried her face in his chest and began sobbing convulsively. He held her tight.
The voices around them began to invade—more crying, and people yelling about what to do. The elevator doors opened on a group of guests; seeing the carnage and chaos, they just stood there, hands over mouths, in shock. The doors closed on them again.
He looked around for Aziz’s service weapon, a Glock 17, then realized it was still in her hand, hanging down beside her. He patted her back gently and, as her sobbing subsided, reached down and took hold of the weapon, prying her fingers off the grip and away from the trigger.
MacNeice heard sirens approaching as he led her, stiff-legged, to a chair near the lobby entrance. Easing her into it, he smoothed the hair away from her face and took out his handkerchief to wipe away the tears. She looked up at him and said, “I should have stayed with him, Mac. I should have stayed.”
“I didn’t see anything and you didn’t see anything that indicated he was a risk to himself.” He could hear the first of the emergency vehicles pulling up to the entrance.
“Observation, Mac. Where was it?” She was crying again.
“It’s an imperfect art, Fiza.” He removed another cube of glass from her hair.
The first person through the door was a burly black firefighter carrying a large aluminum case. He recognized MacNeice and rushed over. “She okay?” He was looking at Aziz.
“Yes, she is.”
“Was he a jumper or was he pushed?” the firefighter asked as he turned towards the body.
The question hit them both like an electric shock. Wide-eyed, Aziz pushed herself out of the chair and started running through the lobby, MacNeice close behind.
“You take the elevator, I’ll take the stairs,” MacNeice yelled. “But wait—Here, you might need this.” He held her weapon out and she grabbed it from him, pressing the Up button as he ran for the exit door to the stairwell.
A second firefighter asked the first, “What’d you say to those two?”
OPENING THE STAIRWAY DOOR, MacNeice stood and listened. He could hear the metallic thumping of someone running up or down the stairs, but before he could identify which it was, it had stopped. So he took off down the stairs, drawing his weapon as he ran. At the first level of the parking garage he threw the door open and listened again. The echo of screeching tires making fast, tight turns sent him running back up. He slammed open the lobby-level door and ran towards the entrance, past the growing mass of police, paramedics and firefighters who were tending to several people who were either in shock or had been cut by the flying chunks of glass. Someone had covered the boy’s body with a blanket that was now blotched with large patches of dark blood.
He tore through the front doors and looked up and down the street, but could see nothing. Traffic noise obscured any sound trail. He was certain that they were long gone, but he didn’t like the idea of Aziz being on her own. Back in the lobby, he spotted the hotel clerk—“Give me the key to Clark Terry’s room, now!”—but the clerk seemed frozen in fear, staring at him as the absurd soundtrack of tropical birdcalls played on. MacNeice took a deep breath and was about to ask again when the clerk snapped out of it and handed him a master key.
He made sure the clerk was making eye contact and said, “Find the cop in charge of the scene. Tell him to rush a forensics unit to 2111. Do you understand me?” He looked down at the plastic identity badge on the man’s jacket pocket. “James, do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir. Find the cop in charge.… Room 2111.”
Turning to head for the elevator, MacNeice said, “Good, and when you’re done that, go and check the video feed for the underground parking. I want to know what vehicle left just now.”
“Yes, sir.” The clerk was in motion by the time the elevator doors had closed on MacNeice.
HE FOUND AZIZ STANDING JUST INSIDE the open door, which showed no signs of being forced. But one glance into the room showed him that Marcus Johnson had put up the fight of his life. Blood was splattered on the carpet near the balcony doors, and the brocade drapes had been torn off their hooks as if he had held onto them in desperation. The coffee table was broken in two, its glass top shattered and scattered about the floor. A Nike duffle bag was open beside the bed, T-shirts, socks and jeans spilling out of it like blue, white and grey guts.
Aziz went over to the balcony. “Boss,” she called, “there’s blood on the railing and the floor.” She looked down. The blanket covering Marcus looked to her like a Rorschach test, black blots on grey. Several people were being treated for cuts in a makeshift triage unit over by the waterfall, next to the
long, white snaking sofa. Three uniformed officers were standing beside Johnson’s body looking up, trying to imagine the trajectory of his fall.
“They’re gone,” MacNeice said, holstering his weapon as he stepped onto the balcony and also looked down. “We should get out of here. We know he didn’t jump. Aziz, let’s go. Forensics will take care of the scene.”
“Who did this, Mac?”
A uniformed cop arrived at the door, his weapon drawn.
“Don’t allow anyone into this room until Forensics gets here,” MacNeice said, leading Aziz past him and out into the hall.
“Do I shut the door, sir?” The cop began reaching for the handle.
“Leave it as it is. Don’t touch anything.”
“No problem.” The cop turned his back to the room, holstered his service weapon and stood at ease for a moment before looking over his shoulder at the room again. “Big job for housekeeping.…”
—
AT THE ELEVATORS AZIZ AND MacNeice met the forensics team, two men carrying their kits and a young woman wheeling what looked like a large grey metal suitcase.
“Look for marks from someone swinging something like a baseball bat,” MacNeice told them as he held the elevator door open for Aziz. They nodded.
Aziz backed into the corner, against the brass rail, and looked up at the indicator panel as the numbers began descending. “A baseball bat?”
“Well, a little shorter than that. I think I know who was in there. Gregori’s bodyguards were both carrying thick hardwood dowels—sticks. Short bats.”
“He flew, you know. I mean, he was flying.” She turned her gaze to the numbers again.
“Meaning?”
“To land where he did, he had to be at least ten or twelve feet away from the rail, as if he’d been launched off that balcony. Before he went down, he went out.”
“So it had to be two—one on either side—to launch him. He couldn’t have jumped on his own and one person couldn’t have heaved him that far.”
The elevator doors opened. As they walked over towards the clutch of police surrounding the body, MacNeice noticed that the deputy chief was there, hands in his pockets, looking up to the open sky through the broken grid.
“MacNeice, a word.” Wallace moved over towards the waterfall.
MacNeice handed the keys of the Chevy to Aziz. “Why don’t you wait outside in the car. I’ll be right there.” Then he followed Wallace, who was still standing with his hands in his pockets, now gazing at the tropical splendour.
“Does this kid have anything to do with the dead girl?” The chief pulled a hand out of his pocket and stared down at the screen on his cellphone.
“He was her boyfriend and the father of her child.”
“What’s the story here?” Wallace looked up from his phone.
“His name was Marcus Johnson.”
“He didn’t do the girl, though?”
“Marcus was in love with her.…” MacNeice was struggling to get a grip on himself, to be specific. He wanted to get out of there, now. “He told us he arranged to take her to the beach house and was paid to take nude pictures of her while someone he didn’t know was taking pictures of her too. She didn’t know anything about it.”
“Christ!” He put his cellphone away, pushed his hands into his pockets and seemed to lift his heels as if to gain a bit more height. “MacNeice, I need to know if we are any closer here.”
“I think we are, sir. I don’t have a motive yet, but I believe we’re very close to making an arrest.”
“That’s the first thing you’ve said that has given me hope. I hope you’re right. I’ve got everyone from the mayor to the media climbing up my back for answers.”
“There is a but, however.”
“Fuck. I hate buts.” Wallace glared at him.
“I believe we’re going to be dealing with foreign nationals who will claim diplomatic immunity.” MacNeice rubbed the back of his neck.
“You do your job, Detective, and I’ll deal with the diplomats. For now, am I clear to say that this horrific mess has brought us closer to an arrest?”
“I believe that’s accurate, sir.”
“Good. Don’t prove me wrong.” Wallace walked away, passing the body without looking down, and pushed through the revolving door to face the various media already setting up in the parking lot.
MacNeice took one last look at Marcus Johnson and wished he hadn’t. The young man’s left eye had been dislodged from its socket and was lying like a discarded marble next to his ear. “Jesus,” he muttered, not conscious that he’d said it out loud.
The forensics officer glanced up him from his squat. “Yeah, nasty. I don’t think it popped out with the first impact, though. The second impact was what shook it loose.”
“Please don’t go on,” MacNeice said, holding up a hand to silence him. “But if you can find them in that awful mess, see if you can spot any initial blows from a wood baton.”
“I won’t likely be able to figure that out here, sir, but Dr. Richardson might. I’ll keep looking, all the same.” He turned back to delicately probing the boy’s flattened skull.
As MacNeice walked away he was silently apologizing to Marcus Johnson for not keeping him safe, for not even realizing he was at such risk. The young man had had sense enough to hide, but he and Aziz had been complacent. He went out through the revolving door and swung left to avoid the DC, still facing a dozen or so microphones.
When he got to the car, Aziz was staring out the windshield into the middle distance. MacNeice stopped for a moment to phone Mary Richardson before he climbed in. He got her voicemail. “Mary,” he said, “you’re going to be taking delivery of a young man who was thrown out of a window. I believe he may have been beaten first with a baton, a foot-long dowel roughly an inch and a half in diameter. He’s been badly damaged from the fall—well, two falls, actually—but see if you can’t find something that suggests he was beaten first.”
Putting his cellphone away, he took a deep breath and got into the driver’s seat. Aziz was still staring directly ahead. “What’s that bird?” she asked.
He followed her gaze to a stand of birch on the opposite side of the lot. Halfway up an almost vertical branch was a black and white bird with a pale yellow breast and a red streak on its head. “It’s a yellow-bellied sapsucker, tapping for veins of sap under the bark.”
“Funny name,” she said.
“It’s a beautiful bird, a close relative of the woodpecker.”
They sat in silence watching the sapsucker work the upper extremities of the branch, while behind them the deputy chief was busy working the media. Only when MacNeice saw the black van arrive that would take Johnson’s body away did he turn the key in the ignition. He eased the Chevy as close as he could to the tree, stopping there so Aziz could watch the bird until it flew off.
“I could use a drink. How about you?” MacNeice said as they drove slowly through streets that for a moment seemed like a parallel universe, one that knew nothing about the violent death of a very talented young man.
“I don’t really drink.”
“I forgot. Sorry.”
“Forgot? No, no, it’s nothing to do with my religion. It’s just that I have a very low tolerance for it. I end up falling asleep.” She shifted, sitting up straight in the seat.
“I could make a case for sleep,” he said.
“Okay, let’s have a drink. But I’m not up for Marcello’s right now.” She allowed her head to fall back slowly onto the headrest and looked over at him.
“We’ll go to my place. I’ll pour you a grappa and we’ll look out the window so you can see more birds. I live in a virtual bird sanctuary.” He glanced over to see if that was okay with her.
“Right. let’s do that. I’d love to try grappa—if only for the name!”
She fell silent, and a few minutes later when he glanced her way, her eyes were closed, but he couldn’t tell whether she’d fallen asleep or was closing off the world for
a moment. He drove slowly, avoiding sharp turns and sudden acceleration or braking. It wasn’t until he came to a stop in front of the gatehouse and turned off the engine that she opened her eyes.
TWENTY ONE
—
WALKING INTO MACNEICE’S HOUSE, Aziz was determined to absorb everything about it. She noticed first the dark, wide-planked floor of the hall, then the smell of the place—fresh, as if the windows were always open. The black-and-white photograph on the wall, above the small credenza where he dropped his keys, was of a nude, shot from behind on a stony beach. It immediately, and sadly, brought her mind back to Marcus Johnson’s studies of Lydia.
“Who is this?” she asked.
“It’s a portrait by Bill Brandt, a gift from a few years ago.”
“From whom?”
“From me. It cheers me up. I needed some cheering up.… It was an extravagance, but a day never goes by when I don’t feel grateful for its being there.”
She nodded, then followed MacNeice into the living room, where he stopped to clear away the only visible clutter, a few books on the sofa. He carried them over to the desk.
“Okay—are you ready?” he said as he walked over to the windows.
“I think so.”
He flung open the curtains and the room was immediately flooded with late afternoon light.
“There’s oak, maple, birch, cedar and a few serviceberries, but mostly maples as far as you can see. I tapped them for a few years and took the sap to a local farm. I’d come back a week later and there’d be a dozen bottles of syrup; the farmer kept six and I kept six. It was terrific.”
“Why’d you stop?” She thought she knew the answer but couldn’t resist asking.
“Just lost interest, I guess.” He moved two wooden armchairs in front of the window and said, “Sit down. I’ll fetch the drinks.”
Erasing Memory Page 19
