Life or Death

by Michael Robotham

  She looked into the store windows where emaciated assistants were dressed in black, demonstrating an air of practised indifference.

  ‘Where are all the clothes?’ she asked.

  ‘They only display a few at a time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It makes them seem more exclusive.’

  Belita paused to look at one particular dress.

  ‘Do you want to try it on?’ he asked.

  ‘How much is it?’

  ‘You have to ask.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You just do.’

  She kept walking. It was the same at every store. She would look in the window or through the doors without ever venturing inside. They spent an hour walking the same three blocks, up and back. Belita didn’t want to stop for a drink or coffee or something to eat. She didn’t want to stay. Audie drove her along Santa Monica Boulevard past the Beverly Hills Police Station towards West Hollywood. They saw the Chinese Theatre and the Walk of Fame, which was crowded with Japanese tour groups following brightly coloured umbrellas and taking photographs with living statues of Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson and Batman.

  Belita seemed to relax. She let Audie buy her some ice cream. She told him to wait while she went into a souvenir shop. Through the window, he saw her buying a T-shirt with a stencilled photograph of the Hollywood sign.

  ‘It’s too small for you,’ he said, looking into her bag.

  ‘It’s a present,’ she replied, taking it back.

  ‘We still haven’t bought you any clothes.’

  ‘Take me to a mall.’

  He drove her to a soulless concrete shopping plaza ringed by acres of parked cars and dotted with palm trees that looked fake but were probably real. Belita made Audie sit on a plastic seat outside the changing room. Going back and forth, she modelled for him, skirts and jackets, asking his opinion. He nodded each time, thinking she could have worn a burlap sack and looked beautiful. That’s one of the things that Audie had never understood about women. So many of them felt they needed to get all dolled up in tight skirts and high heels, looking elegant as champagne flutes, when in reality they looked just as good in a T-shirt and faded pair of jeans.

  Belita chose carefully. Audie paid. Afterwards he made her sit down at a restaurant with proper linen on the tables. He found himself feeling unaccountably happy in a way that he could not remember being for a long time. They spoke in Spanish and he watched the way the light played in her eyes and could not conceive of a more beautiful woman. He pictured them sitting at a little seafront café somewhere in El Salvador with the palms shifting above them and the sea a vivid blue, like those pictures you see in travel brochures.

  ‘What did you want to be when you were little?’ he asked her.

  ‘Happy.’

  ‘I wanted to be a fireman.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘When I was thirteen I saw these firefighters pull three people from a burning building. Only one of the victims survived but I remember seeing those firefighters emerge from the smoke covered in soot and dust. They looked like statues. Memorials.’

  ‘You wanted to be a statue?’

  ‘I wanted to be a hero.’

  ‘I thought you wanted to be an engineer.’

  ‘That came later. I liked the idea of building bridges and skyscrapers – things that would outlive me.’

  ‘You could have planted a tree,’ she said.

  ‘That’s not the same.’

  ‘Where I come from people are more interested in growing food than building monuments.’

  Late afternoon, they battled the traffic on the journey home. The sun had dipped, painting a pathway across the ocean, arrow-straight, golden. But a storm somewhere had whipped up the waves, which were breaking on sandbanks offshore, spouting foam and mist.

  ‘I want to walk on the beach,’ she said.

  ‘It’s getting dark.’

  ‘Please.’

  He took the next exit onto the Old Pacific Highway and drove along a dirt track beneath the golden cliffs, pulling up in front of a deserted lifeguard tower. Belita left her sandals in the car. She ran across the stretch of sand, the sun shining through the thin fabric of her dress, accentuating every curve.

  Audie had trouble pulling off his boots. He rolled up his jeans. He found her paddling in the whitewash, pulling the hem of her dress higher on her thighs to stop it getting splashed.

  ‘Salt water is a great healer,’ she said. ‘When I was a girl I had surgery on my foot. My father took me to the ocean and I sat in a rock pool every day and my foot got better. I remember going to sleep to the sound of the waves. That’s why I love the sea. Mother Ocean remembers me.’

  Audie didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I’m going to swim,’ she said, running back up the beach and unfastening her dress, pushing it down over her hips, dropping it onto the sand.

  ‘What about your clothes?’

  ‘I have new ones.’

  She waded into the water in her underwear, gasping at the cold. She looked over a shoulder, a gesture he would never get over, a moment fixed in his mind – the perfection of her skin, the music in her laughter; her eyes brown in places that brown could only dream of reaching. And he knew at that precise moment that he would always yearn for Belita, whether they spent their lives together or if they parted that evening and he never saw her again.

  She dived beneath a wave. He lost sight of her. Time passed. He waded deeper, calling her name. She still hadn’t surfaced. He tore off his shirt and threw it behind him. Going deeper. Frantic. His feet slipped and he went under. The cold closed around him.

  He saw her just before a wave crashed over him, forcing him under, spinning his body. He could no longer tell up or down. He hit his head on something hard. Spun. Kicked for the surface. Another wave pushed him under. He swallowed water, thrashing blindly.

  Arms circled his waist. Words were whispered in his ear. ‘Be calm.’

  She pulled him backward until his feet found the bottom. He spluttered and coughed and felt like he’d swallowed a wave. Belita grabbed his face in her hands and Audie wiped his eyes and returned her stare, looking at her intently, engulfed by a strange, unsettling intimacy.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you couldn’t swim?’ she asked.

  ‘I thought you were drowning.’

  Belita’s underwear clung to her the way it did when he first saw her at Urban’s house. ‘Why do you keep trying to save me?’

  Audie knew the answer, but was frightened of the question.

  27

  Valdez has phoned Sandy four times since breakfast, reassuring her that everything was okay and Audie Palmer would be caught soon. Their conversations were short, tense, remote and sown with unspoken accusations and rebuttals. He wonders when their marriage became defined by the gaps and silences in between the words.

  In the early days it had been different. He met Sandy in difficult circumstances. She was wearing a medical gown and sitting on the edge of a hospital bed, sobbing into the shoulder of a rape counsellor. Her clothes had been sent to the lab and her parents were bringing her fresh ones from home. Sandy was only seventeen and she’d been raped by a wide-receiver at an end-of-season party for her school football team.

  Her parents were religious and law-abiding. Good people. But they wouldn’t see their daughter raped all over again by a ‘scumbag defence attorney’, so the boy was never charged.

  Valdez stayed in touch with the family and five years later he bumped into Sandy at a bar in Magnolia. They started dating and got engaged and married on her twenty-third birthday. In truth the two of them didn’t have much in common. She loved fashion and music and holidays in Europe. He preferred football and Nascars and hunting. He liked their sex to be serious, almost earnest, while she liked to laugh and tickle and be playful. He wanted her to be modest, well-presented and charming, while she wanted him to sometimes flip her over, plant her feet and take her from behind.

  Sandy thoug
ht it was because of the rape that she couldn’t get pregnant. Somehow her ovaries had been seeded with something noxious, which meant nothing could grow in her garden; or maybe it was God’s punishment for her being promiscuous. She hadn’t been a virgin when she went to the party. She hadn’t been a virgin since she was fifteen. If only she’d waited … If only she’d been pure …

  Valdez parks outside the Texas Children’s Hospital and flashes his badge at the medical receptionist, asking to see Bernadette Palmer. Fingers tap on computer keys. Phone calls are made. Valdez gazes across the main foyer and remembers how many times he and Sandy walked through this place. They spent seven years trying to have a baby, visiting the Family Fertility Centre, going through the regimen of injections, egg harvesting and conception in a test tube. He grew to hate hospitals. He grew to hate other people’s children. He grew to hate the monthly cry of anguish he heard when Sandy’s period came in.

  The receptionist hands him a visitor’s badge and directs him upstairs. She tells him to have a nice day, as though he might otherwise have forgotten.

  Bernadette Palmer is on a break. Valdez finds her in the hospital’s deli café on the sixteenth floor of the west tower. She doesn’t look like her brother. She’s tall and big-boned with a round face and strands of grey hair pulling out of her bun.

  ‘Do you know why I’m here?’ he asks.

  ‘I already talked to the police.’

  ‘Has your brother been in touch with you?’

  Her eyes play hooky, going everywhere except his face.

  ‘You know it’s a criminal offence to help a fugitive?’ he says.

  ‘Audie served his time.’

  ‘He escaped from custody.’

  ‘By one lousy day – can’t you just leave him alone?’

  Valdez pulls up a chair and takes a moment to admire the view. It’s not particularly beautiful, but he doesn’t often get to see the city from this angle. From high up it looks less haphazard and he can see the general design – the small streets feeding into larger ones and the landscape divided into neat blocks. It’s a shame that we can’t see everything in life from above, to get our bearings and put things into perspective.

  ‘How many brothers do you have?’ he asks.

  ‘You know how many.’

  ‘One is a cop killer and the other a regular killer – must make you proud.’

  Bernadette pauses and puts down her sandwich, wiping her mouth with a paper napkin. Folding it carefully.

  ‘Audie isn’t like Carl.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You can eat from the same pot of chilli and still be different.’

  ‘When did you last hear from Audie?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  He gives her a long-lipped Coyote smile. ‘That’s strange. I showed your supervisor a photograph. She said somebody who looked just like your brother came to see you this morning.’

  Bernadette doesn’t reply.

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Money.’

  ‘Did you give him any?’

  ‘I don’t have any.’

  ‘Where is he staying?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘I could arrest you.’

  ‘Go ahead, Sheriff.’ She holds out her hands. ‘Better cuff me. I might be dangerous. Oh, no, that’s right – you prefer to shoot people.’

  Valdez doesn’t rise to the bait but would love to wipe that smile off her face with the back of his hand.

  Bernadette folds the wax paper around her sandwich and dumps it into the trash. ‘I’m going back to my ward. Sick kids need looking after.’

  Valdez’s phone is ringing. He looks at the lit screen.

  ‘Sheriff?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘This is the Houston Dispatch Centre. You wanted to know if Audie Palmer’s name came up. An hour ago one of our operators took a call from a woman who wanted to know if a reward had been posted on Palmer. She didn’t give her name.’

  ‘Where was she calling from?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘What about a number?’

  ‘She used a cell phone. We triangulated the signal and traced it to a motel on Airline Drive, just off the North Freeway. I was going to call the FBI.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ says Valdez.

  The girls are watching music videos and dancing on the beds. Once lithe and bold, Cassie now has the making of a muffin top above the waistband of her jeans, but she knows how to move, holding her arms in the air and bumping hips with Scarlett.

  ‘Have I missed the party?’ asks Audie.

  ‘Show us what you got,’ replies Cassie.

  Audie puts on his best moves, singing along to Justin Timberlake, but it’s been so long since he danced that he comes across as gangly and uncoordinated. Both girls finish up collapsing with laughter.

  Audie stops.

  ‘Don’t get self-conscious, keep going,’ says Cassie.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Scarlett, who is mimicking his dance moves.

  ‘I’m glad I could keep you entertained,’ says Audie, falling backwards onto the bed. Scarlett jumps on top of him. He tickles her until she snorts. Then she shows him her latest drawings, propping her scrawny knees on the mattress beside him, rolling a putty-coloured ball of gum around her mouth.

  ‘Let me guess … that’s a princess.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘And that’s a horse?’

  ‘No, it’th a unicorn.’

  ‘Of course it is. And who’s that?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Really? What am I?’

  ‘You’re the printh.’

  Audie grins and sneaks a look at Cassie, who is pretending not to be listening. Scarlett’s inner world seems to be populated by princesses, princes, castles and happy-ever-after endings. It’s as though she’s trying to wish another life into being.

  Cassie is standing with her back against the closed curtains and her arms folded. Audie looks up at her. ‘I didn’t think you’d still be here.’

  ‘We’re leaving tomorrow.’

  There is a long pause. ‘Maybe you should think about going home.’

  Cassie lowers her gaze. ‘We’re not welcome.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Daddy told me so.’

  ‘And when was that?’

  ‘Six years ago.’

  ‘Man can change his mind a dozen times in six years. Does he have a temper?’

  She nods.

  ‘Has he ever hit you?’

  Her eyes flash. ‘He wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Has he ever met Scarlett?’

  ‘He came to the hospital but I wouldn’t let him see her – not after the way he talked to me.’

  ‘You sound a bit like him.’

  A muscle twitches down the side of her jaw. ‘I’m nothing like him.’

  ‘You’re quick to anger, obdurate, argumentative, intransigent.’

  ‘I don’t know what half them words mean.’

  ‘You don’t back down.’

  She shrugs.

  ‘Why not call him? Take the high ground. See what happens.’

  ‘Maybe you should mind your own business.’

  Audie leans across the bed and picks up Cassie’s cell phone. She tries to snatch it back.

  ‘I’ll call him.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I’ll tell him you and Scarlett are okay.’ He’s holding the phone out of her reach. ‘One phone call – what’s the harm in that?’

  She looks frightened, desperate. ‘What if he hangs up?’

  ‘It’ll be his loss, not yours.’

  Cassie sits on the edge of the bed, hands squeezed between her knees, skin pale. Sensing something important is happening, Scarlett crawls up next to her, resting her head on her shoulder.

  Audie makes the call. The man on the end of the line answers gruffly, as though dragged away from his favourite TV show.

  ‘Is that Mr Brennan?’

>   ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘A friend of Cassie’s … Cassandra.’

  There is a hesitation. Audie can hear Mr Brennan breathing. He glances at Cassie, whose eyes have filled with a fragile kind of hope.

  ‘Is she all right?’ asks the voice.

  ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘Scarlett?’

  ‘They’re both OK.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Houston.’

  ‘My other daughter said Cassie had gone to Florida.’

  ‘She didn’t make it, Mr Brennan.’

  There is another long pause but Audie doesn’t let it drag out. ‘You don’t know me, sir, and you have no reason to listen to me, but I believe you’re a good man who has always tried to do his best by his family.’

  ‘I’m a Christian.’

  ‘They say time heals all wounds – even the deepest ones. Maybe you remember why you and Cassie fought. I know how disagreements can escalate. I know how frustrating it can be when you think a person is losing her way and you want to stop her making a mistake. But you and I both know that some things can’t be told or taught. Folks have to find out for themselves.’

  ‘What’s your name, son?’

  ‘Audie.’

  ‘Why are calling me?’

  ’Your daughter and granddaughter need you.’

  ‘She wants money.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Why hasn’t she called me, herself?’

  ‘She’s got a stubborn streak … in a good way. Maybe she gets that from you. She’s proud. She’s a good mother. She’s been doing this on her own.’

  Mr Brennan wants to hear more. His voice has grown thick and laced with remorse. Audie continues talking and answering his questions, hearing about arguments that seem less well defined after so much time has passed. His wife had died. He worked two jobs. He didn’t give Cassie as much time as she deserved.

  ‘She’s here now,’ says Audie. ‘Would you like to talk to her?’

  ‘Yes, I would.’

  ‘Hold on.’

  Audie looks at Cassie. Throughout the conversation she has looked hopeful, angry, scared, embarrassed, stubborn and ready to cry. Now she takes the phone, holding it in both hands as though fearful it might drop and shatter. ‘Daddy?’

  A tear rolls down her cheek and hangs on the corner of her mouth. Audie takes Scarlett by the hand.