Time of Death

by Alex Barclay

  ‘You have to be shitting me.’

  ‘Nope. I cannot understand all this. It’s insane.’

  ‘Mom was saying something about cards in Rikers. Some playing card belonging to Louis—’

  ‘She had it all wrong. They’re cold-case cards, given to inmates to elicit tip-offs – I explained all that to her.’

  ‘She’s definitely not all there at the moment.’

  ‘While at other times…’

  Matt laughed. It was short-lived. ‘This is so surreal. How does it all work?’

  ‘Catskill PD will investigate it, they have to. All we can do is sit back and wait for them to get a grip.’

  ‘But…who would have sent them our way? I can’t imagine some big inmate in Rikers saying, “Beau Bryce – that’s the guy you need to look at”.’

  ‘The tip’s not necessarily from Rikers,’ said Ren. ‘Those cards get posted online too – for years, in some cases – on missing persons websites. I mean, families will always want to know what happened to a missing or murdered loved one, so they’re happy to have the details plastered everywhere they can. Just about anyone could have called in the tip. It could be a timing coincidence that the cards came out this month. It could have been the publicity done on the release of the cards that prompted someone to call.’

  ‘What does Daryl think?’

  ‘That I’m an arrogant bitch. And that telling me he would treat it the same as any other investigation was going to reassure me. Yeah, right: “Great job on finding that stolen bicycle, Daryl, please apply those same skills to finding the guy who thinks my dead brother is a child killer.”’

  ‘Daryl’s one of the good guys, though?’

  ‘He is,’ said Ren. ‘I’m just being an arrogant bitch.’

  ‘No you’re not – everything you’ve said is what I was thinking.’

  ‘Has Mom talked to the Parrys?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, thank God. Stop her, could you? Because I already called Ricky—’

  ‘You did not.’

  ‘I had to, Matt. He’s the only one who could enlighten me…which he did not. In fact, he ended the conversation with “Why would Beau have killed himself if he wasn’t guilty?”’

  ‘Has he lost his mind? Am I missing something here? When did he go to the dark side? There I was, thinking he would be as upset as we were.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Ren. ‘He’s probably just…I don’t know. Exhausted, at this stage. Quick to grab on to anything. I don’t know.’

  ‘It can’t have been easy for Ricky. God forgive me, but I think all the genetic blessings went to Louis—’

  ‘Like me in our family—’

  ‘As I was saying…’ said Matt. ‘You know what I mean: Louis got the cute looks, the musical talent…and he was such a delicate little thing. Ricky was this chubby—’

  ‘Louis was the piece of china, Ricky was the bull.’

  ‘Yes, Ren, yes. Anyway, look, there we are. The Parrys had their albatross with Louis and we had ours with Beau. Not to sound harsh—’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘At least we know what happened to Beau, however terrible that is. The Parrys might never know what happened to Louis.’

  ‘They definitely won’t know if they’re looking in our house for answers.’

  Matt let out a breath. ‘Ren, I’m going to be devil’s advocate here. Or, rather, I’m going to tip-toe across the topic gently before our eldest sibling comes in and dances a jig on it: could this by any chance be—’

  ‘Something to do with my job?’

  ‘You said it! Thank the Lord.’

  ‘No is your answer.’

  ‘You haven’t gotten someone sent to Rikers to be ass-raped?’

  ‘Not to Rikers, no,’ said Ren. ‘But your doorbell could ring at any minute.’

  Matt laughed. ‘Well,’ he said, the laughter trailing off into a sigh. ‘At least we can see the funny side.’

  ‘For now.’ Ren took a breath. ‘Matt, Helen’s gone missing.’

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘Last time I saw her was the last day she was seen: Monday, the day of my appointment. She didn’t show up at a conference next day.’

  ‘Oh, she’s probably running from all you crazies,’ said Matt. ‘I’d disappear if I had to listen to all the voices talking about all the voices.’

  ‘True.’ Smile through the fear. Smile through the fear.

  ‘Can you do anything?’

  ‘I’m hearing that quite a lot recently,’ said Ren. ‘I’ll find it hard not to try.’

  ‘She’ll be back.’

  ‘She better be,’ said Ren.

  Because I have no idea what I will do otherwise.

  14

  Denver’s 16th Street Mall was a long, grim shopping street monopolized by cell-phone and electronic stores. Bright lights shone on dark slush. Everyone who passed Ren had their head bowed – a parade of hidden faces. Ren’s eyes and nose were streaming. She went into the nearest restaurant and ordered a rare steak and a glass of red wine. She pulled out her notebook and wrote Helen Wheeler on a clean page. She followed it with two question marks and let the pen hover over them.

  Stop. Helen has probably broken up with her boyfriend and disappeared to a log cabin to get over it. Away from the loonies.

  Then something tugged at Ren.

  Her overwhelming compulsion to fix things.

  The parking lot at the back of Helen Wheeler’s building had a dual role. In addition to accommodating forty vehicles, it marked the boundary between a good neighborhood and a bad one. From the back of the lot eastward, the landscape got more ragged and dirty, like the torn ends of jeans dragged through puddles. The front of the building led on to a street of designer stores, organic food markets, an independent bookstore, a stationery store and a restaurant/bar.

  Ren looked around the parking lot and saw three broken security cameras. Surprise, surprise. The lot was prime retail space for the local dealers: close enough to drag their saggy asses up off their mamas’ sofas and go make a sale, just far enough for chickenshit middle-class kids to wander in the hope of scoring some blow.

  When Ren visited Helen, she usually slipped in the back door. Every bone in her body wanted to break in there now. Instead she walked around to the front of the building. The sidewalk was shining, the curbs packed with dirty ice and slush. She circled the block, pausing on each corner, wondering which direction Helen Wheeler could have gone in, wondering how that mattered when there was no other information to attach it to. Wondering what the point of all of this was.

  She left.

  As Ren pulled up outside Annie’s, she caught a glimpse of net curtain flapping in the wind. For a second, she thought she’d left the window open, but as she parked the car, she could see that the window was smashed and the wind was sucking the curtain through a massive, jagged hole into the cold night.

  Oh my God, Misty.

  As she ran up the path, she could see razor-sharp shards of glass sticking up in the snow under the window. Broken from the inside out. Ren knew whoever did it wouldn’t still be in the house. No one would break a front window right on to the street and hang around. But that didn’t stop her drawing her gun before she unlocked the door and stepped into the hallway.

  Adrenaline had kicked in. Mind-sharpening adrenaline. She took a right into the living room. It was ice cold, the curtain blowing in and out, blackened and shredded on the sharp edges of the glass. Ren felt sickened for Annie. Her antique lace ruined, her pretty picture window shattered. As she looked around the rest of the room – the dresser, the drawers under the coffee table – she realized she didn’t know where Annie kept her valuables. She didn’t know if she had a safe, if she kept her things at the bank. And it was not a question she wanted to ask Annie. She couldn’t let her know that the assumed security of an FBI agent staying at her home had no value.

  Ren moved through to the dining room and back into the hallway. She paused and
looked up to the second floor. There are too many rooms in this house. But she worked through them all and up until the final door, had found nothing changed – a house undisturbed. She had saved the best for last. Or at least the most relevant. She opened her bedroom door.

  ‘Misty!’

  Misty lay motionless in the corner. Ren’s heart caught. She ran to her and laid a hand on her silky back. Misty woke up, licked Ren’s hand and rested her head back down.

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ said Ren. ‘Thank God. You’re safe, sweetheart. You’re safe.’ She hugged Misty close. ‘I wonder did barking cross your mind,’ said Ren.

  Ren went quiet when she heard the sound of a door banging back and forth. A cold breeze seemed to come from nowhere and whip around her. She stood up from the bed. For a moment she was rigid. Then she walked across the floor to where the noise grew louder. Annie called it the back attic. Ren never knew if it was Annie’s own creation or the architect’s. She had forgotten about it. She remembered it as being the size of an average bedroom. It had black glossy floorboards and a little window that sounded and felt like it was the source of the noise and cold wind. Ren glanced at the wall beside her and the two-foot-six square door that led to the staircase. She remembered Annie telling the Bryce children that it was magical. Ren had been young enough to believe her, so she had made her tentative way up the stairs and thought yes, magical…when magic is black and creepy and has tentacles that wrap around your head, poke into your eyes and snake all the way up into your brain.

  ‘Misty, they must have come right by you,’ said Ren. ‘You poor, gentle soul.’

  Ren glanced at the curious door. Thirty years on, she told herself: Do it. She opened it and crawled through, then crawled back out for a flashlight. Chicken. She had dealt with all kinds of crime scenes and tuned out the filthy conditions, but the ingrained childhood fear of the back attic was stalling her. She started over and went up the stairs. The light illuminated faint traces of footprints in the dust on the treads. Ren kept close to the wall to avoid them, pausing to shine the flashlight on one and get a picture with her cell phone. Just in case.

  The closer she got to the top of the stairs, the colder the air. She took a chill breath before she climbed up into the room. The small casement window – banging back on its hinges. Ren looked around the room. It was a Victorian time-warp, as if Annie herself had been living in this house for over a hundred years.

  To Ren, attics had always been eerie: dark, overfilled, disordered, but necessary. People discovered all kinds of things in attics, wanted and unwanted. But you had to be willing to explore an attic, because it was never inviting.

  A bolt of panic shot through Ren. ‘The attic’ was the term she used for her mind. The attic: dark, overfilled, disordered, uninviting. And unknown as Ren’s metaphor to anyone but one woman.

  Ren ran to the window and looked out as if she would see Helen Wheeler running across the rooftops with a black cloak spreading behind her into the night sky.

  15

  Everyone in the office wanted to know why Ren hadn’t called them after the break-in.

  ‘You egomaniacs,’ she said.

  ‘But…anything could have happened to you,’ said Robbie.

  ‘I checked the house, there was no one there.’

  ‘Someone might have seen the moving truck,’ said Colin. ‘Thought they’d get some nice boxes, ready to go.’

  ‘Hey, I know I’m a hoarder, but there was no moving truck,’ said Ren. ‘Just me and Removal Robbie.’

  Robbie laughed as loud as Robbie ever would. ‘Oh, you have no idea.’

  ‘Is there something we should know?’ said Ren.

  ‘It’s a Mormon thing,’ said Robbie. ‘If you’re in the Elders Quorum, basically, you move people…’

  ‘What – emotionally?’ said Ren.

  ‘If you break their good china, yes,’ said Robbie.

  ‘You mean you literally help people to move house?’ said Ren.

  ‘Yup. It’s all part of being an Elder.’

  ‘Yet being elderly isn’t,’ said Ren.

  ‘No,’ said Robbie.

  ‘Wow,’ said Ren. ‘Having to help people move. That’s very nice. And slightly weird. But, to your credit, you were very efficient with my boxes.’

  Colin gave Robbie a sucker look. ‘I’d say you were broken into, Ren, because someone was watching the house. Maybe someone walking by noticed that sweet little puppy following the lady around—’

  Ren frowned. ‘Misty’s a grown dog. She—’

  ‘He’s not talking about Misty,’ said Robbie.

  Ren stared at Colin.

  ‘Misty…Robbie – what’s the difference?’ said Colin.

  You dickhead.

  Ren’s gaze wandered to the television and the Breaking News scrolling across the bottom of the screen. A male reporter was standing, mic in hand, his blue and red ski jacket and fur-lined hood protecting him against the falling snow.

  He raised his voice over the wind: ‘The warehouse you see behind me is the controversial “Gitmo on the Platte”, if you remember – a building that first hit the headlines two years ago as what some called a primitive holding cell for potential protestors at the Democratic National Convention…’

  ‘Yup,’ said Colin, ‘protestors outside the building before the DNC even started, protesting against the conditions that they would have to endure if they were arrested for protesting…’

  Ren nodded. ‘Those kind of people, as soon as one avenue is exhausted, they’re on to the next thing they can misdirect their anger at. It’s why they—’

  Oh. My. God. Ren had just registered what the Breaking News was.

  ‘And today,’ said the reporter, ‘the building is once more in the spotlight with the discovery early this morning of the body of missing Denver psychiatrist, Dr Helen Wheeler, several blocks from her downtown office. We understand Dr Wheeler was the victim of a gunshot wound…’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Ren, standing up. Helen.

  ‘That’s your friend,’ said Robbie.

  ‘I know…’ Ren raised her hand to her mouth. ‘I can’t believe it.’ Tears streamed down her face. Instant, reflexive tears. Helen cannot be dead.

  ‘Are you OK?’ said Robbie, going over to her. ‘Sit down. Sit down.’

  They both watched as the gurney with the body bag was loaded into the back of the coroner’s van. Ren sat at her desk. Robbie pulled open her drawer and handed her an unopened packet of Kleenex.

  Ren’s body started to tremble. Helen is dead. I’m going to be sick.

  ‘Let me go make you some tea,’ said Robbie. ‘With sugar.’

  ‘Sorry, thank you. Two…’

  ‘Sugars?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ren was trying to stop crying. Colin was across the room hovering, embarrassed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I…know she was your friend.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ren. ‘I can’t believe it…Who would kill Helen Wheeler? You should have met her. She was…’ Oh, God. How did this happen?

  Ren heard Gary heading down the hallway and into his office. She got up and followed him, closing the door behind them both.

  ‘Helen Wheeler’s been found dead.’

  ‘What?’ said Gary.

  Ren nodded, fighting back tears.

  ‘Where? What happened?’

  She filled him in.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘No,’ said Ren. ‘I’m not. I’m in shock. Why would someone murder Helen Wheeler?’

  Gary nodded.

  ‘We can offer Denver PD all the resources they need on this, can’t we?’ said Ren. ‘I want to do absolutely everything I can.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gary.

  ‘Thank you.’ Ren hung her head. ‘Helen gets me, Gary. Got me. Hardly anyone gets me. And just as she was starting to make me face shit, she’s gone.’

  Gary handed her a Kleenex.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Ren. ‘I don’t know wha
t to do.’ She let out a ragged breath. ‘And thank you for letting me stick with Helen…instead of the agency shrink. It…meant a lot—’

  ‘Well, continuity of care,’ said Gary. ‘I guess Helen’s behind your new ability to cry too?’

  Ren laughed briefly through the tears.

  ‘I have no idea what to do with Weeping Ren,’ said Gary.

  ‘I’m sorry’’ she said. ‘I don’t know…I was totally…’ She shook her head. ‘You don’t need to hear any of this.’

  ‘Ren, take the rest of the afternoon off, OK?’

  Work – Gary’s only currency. ‘OK,’ said Ren. ‘Thanks.’

  She walked to the door and turned back to him. ‘We both know that’s not going to happen, right?’

  Gary nodded. ‘Yup. Let me call Denver PD.’

  Cliff James had arrived in the meantime. The moment Ren saw his face, she knew he had already been told. He was still in his parka, on the phone, listening carefully, saying very little. He looked up at her. His expression was so kind it went straight to her heart.

  ‘I am so sorry, sweetheart,’ he said, standing up, shrugging his jacket off. He walked over and gave her a hug.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ren.

  ‘OK, I just got off the phone with Denver PD,’ said Cliff. ‘My buddy, Glenn – Glenn Buddy is his name, actually – is heading up the case. So, obviously I let him know we’re all here for whatever he needs.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ said Ren. ‘I think Gary has just made the same call.’

  ‘Ah, but he’s not in the inner sanctum. Glenn Buddy was my best man.’

  ‘And, therefore, witness to your best move,’ said Ren.

  Cliff smiled. ‘Indeed. He’d do anything for me, or for anyone I’d do anything for.’ He hugged Ren again.

  Ren sat at her desk beside the can of Red Bull that Robbie knew she really wanted, running ideas through her head.

  ‘What could have happened?’ said Ren. ‘Helen left work, didn’t make it home? Helen left work, was abducted outside? Carjacked? Walked home and was attacked? Helen made it home, was abducted there, taken to the warehouse? What the fuck?’