Life or Death

by Michael Robotham

  He lowers the phone, cupping the mouthpiece.

  ‘Somebody phoned my son’s high school pretending to be me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Forty-five minutes ago.’

  ‘Where is your son now?’

  ‘They don’t know.’

  46

  Audie takes the South Freeway through the outskirts of Houston into Brazoria County. At Lake Jackson he turns west on the 614 toward East Columbia. A rusted pickup in front has a bumper sticker across the back window: Secede or Die: Texas Patriot. The driver tosses away a cigarette, which bounces and sparks across the blacktop.

  Most of the farms look neat and prosperous. The fields are full of sunflowers, cotton and the broken stalks of harvested corn. They pass silos and windmills and barns and tractors; people going about their daily lives, oblivious to an ordinary-looking Camry carrying a man and a teenage boy.

  Once or twice Audie sneaks a glance at Max, seeing the buds of spittle in the corners of his mouth and the red rims around his eyes. The teenager is frightened. He doesn’t understand. How could he? Children normally grow up believing the world is a certain way. They hear fairytales and watch feel-good movies where every orphan finds a family and every stray dog finds a home. There is a moral to these stories. Good things happen to good people and love always finds a way, but for a lot of kids reality is less glossy and wholesome because they learn about life via a swinging belt or a swishing cane or a cocked fist.

  Audie had an uncle on his mother’s side, who used to enjoy dragging Audie onto his lap at family gatherings. He’d tickle him with one hand, while jamming his other thumb into Audie’s ribs until the boy thought he might faint with the pain.

  ‘Listen to him,’ his uncle would say, ‘he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.’

  Audie had never understood why his uncle chose to hurt him; what pleasure he could have taken in torturing a young boy. Now he glances across at Max and hopes he avoided sadistic uncles and school bullies and others who prey on the vulnerable.

  Two hours after leaving Conroe, they reach Sargent – which is little more than a collection of buildings spread out along Caney Creek, which meanders for miles in wide looping turns until it reaches the Gulf coast. By road the journey is almost dead straight until the bitumen crosses a swing bridge and stops abruptly at Sargent Beach.

  Reaching the T-junction, Audie turns east along Canal Drive, following the single-lane that is spider-webbed with heat cracks and crumbling in places. The road continues for another three miles along the beachfront. Slowly the houses begin to thin out. Most of them are holiday places built on stilts because of the king tides and storm swells that bring seawater sloshing almost as high as the floorboards. They are shuttered up for the winter; the flagpoles bare and deck furniture stored inside or tied down, while boats are garaged in sheds or anchored in front yards.

  Flanking the road to the left is a large canal that carries dredging barges and pleasure cruisers along the Intracoastal Waterway. Further inland are marshes and mile upon mile of treeless prairie and wetland dotted with shallow ponds and narrow watercourses. In the strange twilight, Audie can see ducks moving in a V-formation across the sky, as though forming an arrow that points to a distant shore.

  On the opposite side of the road the long flat beach is dotted with clumps of seaweed and ribbed by tyre tracks. Audie gets out of the car and scans the empty beach. The light is fading the air the colour of dirty water. He walks to the passenger side and opens the door.

  ‘Why have we stopped?’ asks Max.

  ‘I’m going to find us somewhere to sleep tonight.’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘You’re gonna be fine. This’ll be like a sleepover.’

  ‘What am I – nine?’

  Audie ties the teenager’s hands with a roll of masking tape. Then he nudges him forward, pointing toward the beach.

  They approach a darkened house that is shielded by sand dunes and low scrubby trees. Crouching in a hollow above the tideline, Audie watches for ten minutes, looking for any sign of activity.

  ‘You have to promise that you’ll stay here and be quiet. Don’t try to run. Otherwise I’ll take you back and lock you in the trunk.’

  ‘I don’t want to go in the trunk.’

  ‘OK, I won’t be long.’

  Max loses sight of Audie in the gloom and expects to feel relieved, but the opposite is true. He doesn’t like the dark. He doesn’t like how it amplifies the sound of the insects or his own breathing or the waves against the shore. Looking across the beach, he can see lights out to sea that could be a ship or an oil platform, something moving slowly or not moving at all.

  Why isn’t he more frightened of this man? Once or twice he has snuck a glance at Audie, secretly studying his face, trying to work out what makes a killer, as though he might see it in his eyes or written on his forehead. It should be obvious – the hatred, the blood lust, the thirst for revenge.

  All through the drive, Max has been making mental notes of the signs and landmarks, plotting their location in case he gets a chance to call the police. They headed south out of Houston and then turned west through Old Ocean and Sugar Valley to Bay City.

  Audie had tried to make conversation, asking about his parents.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I’m interested. Do you get on with your daddy?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’

  ‘Do you do stuff together?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  Not much. Not any more.

  Now crouching in the dark, listening to the waves, Max tries to remember a time when he and his daddy were close. It might have been different if Max had played Little League or basketball or liked dirt biking. He wasn’t even very good at skateboarding – not compared with Dean Aubyn or Pat Krein, boys in his class at junior high. Max didn’t have much in common with his daddy, but that wasn’t the main reason they’d drifted apart. It was the arguments he hated most. Not his own, but those that he listened to at night, lying motionless in bed.

  You should have seen yourself! Really! You were flirting with him. I know what I saw. Jealous? Me? Never. Why would I be jealous of a barren cold bitch like you?

  These fights ended with thrown objects or slammed doors and sometimes with tears. To Max it seemed like his father believed that his wife and son were unappreciative and ungrateful, perhaps even unworthy, but the arguments rarely lasted until the morning. Breakfast would see normal service resumed, his mother packing his daddy’s lunch and kissing him goodbye.

  Max misses them both and wants his daddy to come. He imagines a convoy of police cruisers with flashing lights and screaming sirens, hurtling down the road toward him, while the blades of a chopper thump the air and a team of Navy SEALs comes roaring onto the beach in inflatables. He cocks his ear for a moment, but doesn’t hear any sirens or helicopters or boats. Cautiously, he begins moving along the path, looking over his shoulder, wondering if Audie is watching. He reaches the car and pauses for a moment, sipping the darkness. The road is another hundred yards away. He can flag down a car. He can raise the alarm.

  Running now, he has a gait almost like a gallop because his wrists are bound together and his arms can’t swing freely. Suddenly he trips over something and tumbles face first into the sand.

  ‘Now that was a proper face-plant,’ says Audie, stepping from behind a fence, resting the shotgun on his shoulder. Max spits sand from his mouth.

  ‘You said you wouldn’t hurt me.’

  ‘I said I didn’t want to.’

  Audie helps him stand and brushes him down. Max angrily pushes the hands away, not wanting Audie to touch him. They turn back along the path, approaching the house from the beach side, climbing the steps to a rear deck that overlooks the ocean. The railings and banisters have been stripped of paint and varnish by a combination of salt, wind and sunlight.

  After checking the shutters and outside doors, Audie wraps his coat around his forearm and drive
s his elbow through a small square pane of glass above the doorknob. Reaching inside, he flips the latch and pushes the door open, telling Max to watch his step because of the broken glass. He makes him sit at the kitchen table and then moves quickly through the house, searching each room. The place feels musty and closed up. Sheets have been thrown over the sofas and the beds are stripped and covered in plastic.

  Audie finds a magazine cradle with maps and old newspapers, which are three months out of date. There are family photographs on the mantelpiece and in some of the bedrooms. Father. Mother. Three children. Toddlers transformed into teenagers over the course of a decade or more.

  He turns on the fridge and checks the cupboards for dried foodstuffs and non-perishables. Without turning on the light, he opens a single shutter on the seaward side of the house and looks across the Gulf at the oil platforms that could be cities floating in the air.

  Max hasn’t said a word. Audie finds linen in storage trunks and lights the pilot light on the water heater.

  ‘It’s going to take a few hours to heat up,’ he says. ‘We might have to shower in the morning. There are some clothes in the wardrobe.’

  ‘They don’t belong to us.’

  ‘That’s true,’ says Audie. ‘But sometimes necessity requires the breaking of rules.’

  ‘Do I have to be tied up?’

  Audie considers the question. Inside one of the bedrooms he had seen a tambourine on a shelf. He fetches it to the kitchen and tells Max to stand before taping the instrument between the teenager’s knees. He can’t move without making a jangling sound.

  ‘I want you to sit in that armchair. If I hear you moving, I’m going to tie up you hands and feet. Understand?’

  Max nods.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ Audie asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to fix something anyway. You can eat if you want to.’

  He discovers a box of fusilli pasta in the pantry and dumps the contents into a saucepan of boiling water. Then he finds a can of tomatoes, some herbs, garlic powder and seasoning. Max watches him cooking.

  Later they eat in silence at the kitchen table. The only sound is the occasional jangling of the tambourine and of forks scraping on plates.

  ‘I’m not a very good cook,’ says Audie. ‘I haven’t had much practice.’

  Max pushes his plate to the centre of the table. He flicks his bangs from his eyes and looks at the scars that seem to be crosshatched on Audie’s forearms.

  ‘Did you get those in prison?’ he asks after another minute of silence.

  Audie nods.

  ‘How?’

  ‘People get into disagreements.’

  Max points to the back of Audie’s right hand where a scar runs from the base of his thumb to his wrist. ‘How did you get that one?’

  ‘A shank made from a melted toothbrush.’

  ‘And that one?’

  ‘Cut-throat razor.’

  ‘How did someone get a razor?’

  ‘One of the guards must have smuggled it in.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  Audie looks at him sadly. ‘To kill me.’

  Rinsing their plates in the sink, he glances out the window, studying the sky. ‘We might get a storm tonight, but if it clears up tomorrow, we could go fishing.’

  Max doesn’t answer.

  ‘You know how to fish, don’t you?’

  He shrugs.

  ‘What about hunting?’

  ‘My daddy took me once.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Up in the mountains.’

  Audie thinks about Carl and the hunting trips they took as teenagers. Always nerveless on the trigger, Carl showed no emotion, not even a flicker, as he made the shot. Ducks, squirrels, white-tailed deer, doves, rabbits, geese – his face was always a mask, whereas everything that Audie killed would twitch with his nervousness and bleed with his anxiety.

  ‘Are you going to shoot me?’ asks Max.

  ‘What? No!’

  ‘Why am I here?’

  ‘I wanted us to be friends.’

  ‘Friends!’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’re fucking crazy!’

  ‘Don’t curse. We have a lot in common.’

  Max scoffs dismissively.

  ‘Have you ever been to Las Vegas?’ asks Audie.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I once got married in Vegas. It was eleven years ago. I married the most beautiful woman…’ He pauses, recalling the moment with a wrinkled smile. ‘It was in one those chapels you read about.’

  ‘Like the Elvis Presley chapel?’

  ‘Not that one,’ says Audie. ‘It was called the Chapel of the Bells on Las Vegas Boulevard. They had an “I-Do Service” that cost $145 with music and a marriage certificate. We went shopping beforehand. I thought she wanted to buy a dress, but she was looking for a hardware store.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She bought two yards of soft woven rope. And she told me I had to find thirteen gold coins and give them to her. “They don’t have to be real gold,” she said. “They’re symbols.”’

  ‘Symbols of what?’ asks Max.

  ‘They were supposed to represent Jesus and his disciples,’ Audie replies. ‘And by giving her the coins, I was saying that I would look after her and her little boy.’

  ‘Boy? You didn’t mention any boy.’

  ‘I didn’t?’ Audie traces a scar on his forearm. ‘He was my best man. I let him hold the wedding ring.’

  Max doesn’t reply, but for a brief instant Audie senses that the teenager might remember. The moment passes.

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Miguel – it’s the Spanish version of Michael.’

  Again nothing.

  ‘During the ceremony, Belita tied the soft cord around my wrist and then her own. She said it signified our infinite bond because our fates were now tied to each other.’

  ‘Sounds pretty superstitious,’ says Max.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Audie, as the first distant flashes of lightning chase away the shadows. ‘I guess she was superstitious, but she didn’t believe that evil lay in things, only in people. A place could not be tainted, only a soul.’

  Max yawns.

  ‘You should get some sleep,’ says Audie. ‘Big day tomorrow.’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’

  ‘I’m going to take you fishing.’

  47

  Police cruisers are parked in the driveway of the Valdez house and unmarked cars line both sides of the street. Detectives are going door to door and a forensic team has taken fingerprints and hair samples from Max’s bedroom.

  Voices are raised in the kitchen. Accusations. Recriminations.

  ‘We don’t know it was Audie Palmer,’ says Desiree, trying to cool tempers.

  ‘Who else would it be?’ says Valdez.

  ‘He’s threatened us already,’ echoes Sandy, dabbing her eyes with a tissue.

  ‘How did he threaten you?’

  ‘By turning up here, of course … and by talking to Max.’

  Desiree nods and looks at Senogles, who is perched on a stool, stroking his chin, playing the wise man.

  ‘That doesn’t explain why he’d kidnap Max,’ says Desiree.

  Sandy loses her temper. ‘Have you been listening? Ryan shot him. Ryan arrested him. Ryan got him locked away.’

  ‘OK, I understand that, but it still doesn’t make sense.’ Desiree tries another angle. ‘How old is Max?’

  ‘Just turned fifteen.’

  ‘Did you ever mention to Palmer that you had a son?’

  Valdez shakes his head.

  ‘Did you have any contact or correspondence with Palmer after his conviction?’

  ‘No. What are you getting at?’

  ‘I’m trying to figure out why Palmer turned up here last Sunday. And if Max was the target, why not take him that first day? Why wait until now?’

  Valdez blinks at her angrily. ‘The man is crazy! Brain-
damaged!’

  ‘Not according to the psychiatrist who treated him in prison.’ Desiree tries to keep her voice calm and even. ‘What did he talk to Max about?’

  ‘What difference does that make?’

  ‘I’m trying to establish his motives.’

  Valdez throws up his hands. ‘We should have had protection. You should have provided us with a safe house.’

  Senogles answers. ‘I would have given you protection, Ryan, but you didn’t ask for it.’

  ‘So it’s my fault, Frank?’

  ‘You said you could look after things.’

  The two eyeball each other. Desiree wonders when they started using first names; perhaps during the original investigation.

  ‘Max should never have gone to school,’ says Sandy, sobbing into her husband’s chest. ‘This is my fault. I should have listened to you.’

  Valdez puts an arm around her. ‘It’s nobody’s fault. We’re going to get him back safe and sound.’ He glances at Senogles. ‘You tell her, Frank.’

  ‘We’re going to do our very best.’

  Senogles stands and rubs his hands together. ‘OK, this is what we know. Sandy and Max’s cell phones were both transmitting for ten minutes after Max left the school. The last signal has been traced to Interstate 45, about sixteen miles north of Woodlands. We’re studying footage from the Interstate and the shopping mall to see if we can identify what vehicle Palmer is driving. Once we know that we can trace his movements on traffic cameras and narrow down the search area.’ He looks at Sandy. ‘We need a recent photograph of Max to give to the media. And we may also decide to hold a news conference. Would you be prepared to make a statement?’

  Sandy looks at her husband.

  ‘It can generate more publicity,’ says Senogles. ‘The emotional plea for help from the family: please give our boy back … that sort of thing.’

  Desiree adds, ‘Does Max have any medical conditions? Allergies?’

  ‘He’s asthmatic.’

  ‘Medication?’

  ‘He has some with him.’

  ‘Do you know his blood type?’