The Killing Lessons

by Saul Black

  ‘Fuck you,’ Valerie said. ‘I’m still the lead investigator on this case and I still have national cooperation. Deerholt hasn’t suspended me and there’s nothing you can do about it. You want to put me on YouTube, go ahead. But right now we’re going to Ellinson, Colorado.’ She flashed her badge to the pilot. ‘Let’s go,’ she said. The pilot looked at Carla.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ Carla said. ‘This woman is getting off the aircraft.’

  Valerie slipped the Glock from her shoulder holster and jabbed it against Carla’s knee.

  ‘You’re going to shoot me?’

  ‘In the knee? Sure. You’ll get better. I can shoot your knee out or you can put whatever this is with me aside until we catch this bastard. Either way, me and my friend here are going to Ellinson.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ the pilot said. ‘What the fuck?’

  Carla thought about it. ‘Your career’s over,’ she said.

  ‘No doubt,’ Valerie said. ‘But not yet. Let’s go.’

  They hit snow an hour into the flight. Flyable, the pilot said, windspeed less than fifteen knots, but it would get worse the further east they travelled. ATC said weather looked manageable to Denver, but he was radioing ahead to have ground transportation ready just in case. Either way, they’d have to refuel at Grand Junction.

  ‘What’ve they got in Ellinson?’ Valerie said to Carla.

  ‘Less than seven hundred people. Sheriff. Three deputies, part-time. Denver’s sending field agents. Aerial too.’

  ‘Leon will be there by now if that’s where he’s going. He left Grand Junction hours ago.’

  ‘He’ll have been and gone before we even got the word out,’ Carla said.

  ‘Yeah, well, we don’t have anything else. Why don’t you tell me?’

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘Why you hate me.’

  Carla didn’t answer. Just turned and looked out the window into the slanting snow.

  EIGHTY-SIX

  Xander drove through the dark early morning and the falling snow. It had been coming down slowly when he left the motel. Now it was hurrying to earth as if this was its last chance to show itself to the world. He still felt terrible. Hot one minute, cold the next. He’d bought five litre bottles of water. He couldn’t quench his thirst. The only constant was the GPS’s calm, swanky voice. That, and the burning throb of his hand. He kept off the interstate wherever he could. Every time he left it the GPS accommodated the redirection without changing its tone, but it still made Xander feel as if he were making the thing struggle, as if the talking guy resented it and was making an annoyed effort not to sound pissed.

  She saw you and she got away. Ran all the way through the woods. You didn’t even know she was there. You fucked it up.

  It filled him with rage and weakness every time he thought of it. The deep knowledge that Paulie hadn’t been lying. Why couldn’t he just believe that Paulie had been lying? Because he couldn’t. His gift-curse for the truth. He didn’t want to go back but not going back was impossible. You want to fix this, you need to start with that. Half a dozen times he stopped and sorted through the objects in the shopping bags. Something had poked through the cellophane and torn a small hole in the kite. The jug was… No, wait, he’d dealt with the jug. L is for lemon. The smell of the lemon made him feel sick every time he handled it, mixed with the smell of the disinfectant and the bloody bandage. The violin was too big. That was going to be… If there was a girl they’d have found her by now. He saw the police cockroach swarm bristling in the town’s main drag. But he kept driving. His mind went in circles. Mama Jean was in the passenger seat some of the time, laughing to herself. Twice when he looked over he saw not the side of the van but the Redding bedroom spreading out behind her, her hands folded over the soft swell in her pale denims. Any way you look at it it was all going fine until you screwed up in that shit-hole town. If you can’t fix this you’re going to have to start again from the beginning. We’re going to keep doing this until you get it right. You know that. You know that.

  He lost time. He remembered pulling over in a rest area and the soft darkness edging his vision. When he came back to himself he had no clue how much time had gone. The wind rocked the van. He took more painkillers, drank more water. There was a half-eaten Musketeers bar on the dash, but when he bit off a mouthful and began chewing he had to spit it out. The land around him was white under the dull sky. The clouds like a too-low ceiling, pressing on his skull. It felt wrong to be so hot when it was so cold out there. He pictured himself lying down in the snow and it melting around him with a hiss.

  Ellinson’s streets were deserted, the handful of shops closed. Maybe it was a Sunday? He’d lost track of the days. The main drag had been salted recently, but the roads off it were snow-packed, the drifts three or four feet high. He nosed the van, headlights pencilling the gloom. Light snow fell, turned to a chaos of static by the burly wind. Harder to steer with one hand now. He was trying to remember. The house had been well out beyond the town, couple of miles at least. The lanes and the woods and the white fields all looked the same. The snow-lined branches went on for ever. There was a fascination there, if he let his mind go into it, a kind of hypnotism.

  Oh, sure. Hypnotism. You got all the time in the world for that.

  He dragged his sleeve over the fogging windshield and increased the speed of the wipers.

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  Fifty-two-year-old Ellinson Sheriff Tom Hurley, divorced, was not a believer in fate, nor, by extension, the tempting of fate, but he couldn’t help blaming himself when, ten seconds after he’d thought, Jesus, I hope no one calls, someone called. He’d just poured himself a cup of coffee (he was driving over to the Westcotts’ for Christmas lunch later, Leonard Westcott being his friend of more than thirty years and himself an honorary member of the Westcott family; they had him over every Christmas, since the divorce ten years ago) and put his feet up in front of the TV. He was channel surfing for something shiny and inane. A Christmas morning Bond movie, maybe, those heartbreaking girls with the glossy legs and cruel faces. He almost didn’t pick up the call. His son was spending Christmas in Pueblo with his mother and would still be asleep. His sister (who got the brains, and who’d been teaching Renaissance Studies at Columbia for the last twenty years) wasn’t due to call until this evening. And since that was the limit of his living family, it could only be work.

  ‘Sheriff Hurley?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thank God. It’s Meredith Trent. Rowena Cooper’s mom. Something’s wrong.’

  Tom came work-alert, instantly. Excitement and unease in equal measure. He’d met Rowena’s mother several times when she’d been up from Florida to visit her daughter and the kids, but they’d never exchanged more than a couple of minutes’ polite conversation.

  ‘Hey, Mrs Trent, what can I do for you?’

  ‘Look, this might sound like paranoia, but I’ve been calling Rowena’s place since yesterday evening and there’s no answer. Same with her cell phone. I called Sadie Pinker on her cell, but she’s with her family in Boulder. I don’t have a number for anyone else there. I’m sorry, but I’m really going crazy here. It’s Christmas Day and there’s no way they wouldn’t be there. Could you check on them?’

  Tom grabbed the pen and the jotter he kept by the phone. The wind outside was running riot. A horror movie sound effect. ‘When was the last time you spoke with Rowena, Mrs Trent?’

  ‘Four days ago. But I mean we don’t speak every day or anything. It’s just that we said we’d speak as normal on Christmas Day. Please, Sheriff, I’m very worried. She’s so far from everything out there.’

  ‘OK, Mrs Trent, don’t you worry yourself. I’m going to go on over there and check on her myself, how’s that sound?’

  ‘Oh gosh, yes please. Thank you. It’s just not like her to go silent like that.’

  ‘I understand, absolutely. Most likely she’s lost her cell and maybe there’s a problem with the landline, but I’ll take
a ride out there anyway. Now do you have a pen handy? I’ll give you my cell phone number.’

  ‘Are you going to go right now?’

  ‘Right now, yes, ma’am. You ready for the number?’

  Driving out to Rowena’s place through the racing snow, Tom thought how small-town life simplified everything, including – unfortunately – your ability to work out when something was wrong. He imagined a New York officer getting the same call from a worried mother with a daughter living alone in the city. The number of possible explanations for why someone wasn’t answering her phones. A place the size of Ellinson reduced all such explanations to unlikelihoods. He knew Rowena and the kids. She was a good woman. If he’d been ten years younger… Good kids, too, from what he’d seen. The boy, Josh, was quiet, protective of his mother, which Tom liked, and the little girl, Nell, was a funny, smart little thing. Landline down and cell phone out of action? Optimism. An accident. These roads in this weather. He was preparing himself, en route, for rounding a bend and coming face to face with a car wreck. Christmas Day, a vehicle could lie overturned on one of these back roads for twenty-four hours or more, upside down, burnt-out, spilling oil and smoke and shattered glass and blood. Jesus, please don’t let it be bad. Please don’t let it be bad.

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  Xander parked the Dodge a little way past the house, where trees overhung the road. It was a dull morning now and the snow was turning blizzardy. His first thought was to cut off the road and track back through the woods, but the snow was too deep. He’d be wading up to his thighs. He’d have to use the road and hope no one came along.

  It was very cold, which soothed him, briefly (he wore only a windbreaker, jeans, the poorly washed sweatshirt, shitkickers), but within twenty paces, head down, it had him shivering again. He’d lost count of how many painkillers he’d taken. His guts didn’t feel right. It was a long time since he’d eaten. He couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten, in fact. He felt very distant from food, as if he’d gone past the need for it. He only had thirst left to him, apparently. He wished he’d brought a bottle from the van.

  Strange to see the house again. He thought he’d been expecting to see the place yellow-taped off, a crime scene. And yet when he didn’t, he wasn’t surprised.

  The Jeep Cherokee was still where it had been, tyres snow-chained. That was a good thing. When he was finished here he could switch vehicles. The keys would be in the house somewhere. A Jeep would be better in this weather, the chained tyres biting through the drifts. He could get high up. He’d be able to breathe, to think clearly with the world sprawled out beneath him.

  When he’d finished here. What did that mean? He kept approaching it in his mind, but all he got was the sense that he’d know what to do when he got there. He’d planned on bringing the kite and the lemon and the monkey. But walking across the house’s front yard he found he’d brought all the bags. Their soft plastic handles cut into the palm of his good hand. There seemed to be more things in them than he remembered buying. He was afraid, now, to look at what was in there. He’d seen a hammer. Hadn’t he already done the hammer? That was one good thing about Paulie and the iPad videos: they helped him keep track. They helped him keep the things in place. And where would he go when he had finished here? Every time he thought about the bitch cop and the patrolman in his house, in his rooms… He looked over his shoulder. No one. He wanted to get into the house now just to get out of the cold. It was soft gloom under the trees.

  Ran all the way through the woods. You didn’t even know she was there. You fucked it up.

  He knew now how he knew Paulie hadn’t been lying. Paulie had fucked his knee up. Paulie said he thought he saw someone but it was a deer. It wasn’t a deer.

  But if that were true, why hadn’t he known Paulie was lying at the time?

  Because he’d been… Because it had gone wrong. And he’d been searching for the jug. He’d had his mind on the jug, trying even then, even then (the thought made him jam his teeth together) to put it right. The whole fucking thing was Paulie’s fault.

  The kitchen door was unlocked. He opened it and went in. He had the fish knife in his back pocket and the automatic tucked into his jeans. It was warm inside. Heating on a timer. He set the bags down on the kitchen floor. They made a noise but it didn’t bother him much. The house didn’t feel… The house was still. A big solid thing unmoved by the turbulence outside. And there was the smell: rich diarrhoea and rotten eggs. Still, he took the gun out. He’d never tried to fire a gun with his left hand. He didn’t like the feel of it, but when he transferred it to the injured right he found he couldn’t make his fingers grip.

  The kitchen opened into the corridor that led to the bottom of the stairs and the front door. The bloodstains were still there. He followed them to the living room, where he’d dragged her. The memory of it twitched, the feel of his fist wrapped in her hair, a fish-flicker in his cock.

  She was still there, of course. She was as he’d left her. The room stank. Flies hummed. There was a Christmas tree. Its lights winked on and off. He’d kept seeing Christmas decorations when he’d been shopping. It hadn’t registered on him properly. He didn’t remember Christmas much. He remembered the days when it was over. People’s trees and gift wrap stuffed in their garbage. It was like the world was laughing at how dumb it had all been, at what a mistake all the lights and tinsel and presents had been.

  He was hard, so he undid his pants and stood with his cock positioned over her blotched face and sticking-out tongue. The flies murmured, agitated.

  But after a few minutes he gave up. She had nothing in her. The jug would have made her… The violin – no, the kite would… But it was too late now. His head filled up with something. His eyes felt like hard-boiled eggs. He’d thought he would know what to do. The living room’s objects were trying not to look at him. It was like the things in Mama Jean’s house. They went tight and didn’t want to look, though they had to.

  Upstairs, the kid was as he’d left him too. Still with his big headphones on. Still with the TV on mute. Funny to think of all the shows and commercials that would have run, with the kid lying there. Extreme Makeover was on now. A woman in a hospital bed with her face swollen and her nose taped. Looked like she’d been beaten half to death. The amplifier gave off an annoying noise, like a very quiet wasp. Xander reached out to twang the guitar strings – something he’d never done in his entire life – but couldn’t bring himself to touch them. Instead, he backed out of the room.

  The smell was everywhere. It was in the woman’s room at the front of the house, mixed with the scent of her cosmetics and perfume and clean laundry. It was in the bathroom, with its smell of warm towels and toilet cleaner. It was in a spare room full of neatly stacked clip-tight plastic crates (Xander glimpsed a baseball glove, a tennis ball, cotton reels, CDs, magazines).

  And it was in the half-painted room, across the hall from the boy’s.

  EIGHTY-NINE

  Ran all the way through the woods. You didn’t even know she was there.

  Xander sat down on the edge of the bed. Through the swirls and jabs and flashes of the objects and the fizzing mix of rage and panic a part of him was working things out. If she was alive, how come they hadn’t been here and found the bodies? She would have told them. Maybe she was dead? Maybe she fell and broke her leg in the woods and froze to death? Or she was hiding somewhere, too scared to come out?

  It didn’t help him. He was hot and confused. He got up, dizzy, and wandered back into the woman’s bedroom. For a while he poked around opening drawers and cupboards, his mind blank, sinking in and out of the pain in his hand. The wound felt busy. He thought a fly must have crawled in. He unwrapped the bandage. He couldn’t see anything, but he could feel something moving around under the ruptured skin. He thought of that story about the guy trapped in a crevasse who’d had to cut his own arm off to get out. He rewrapped the bandage. He couldn’t imagine himself cutting his own arm off. But the flies. He wanted more painki
llers. And water. He’d left the first-aid kit in the car.

  You’re not fixing this, dumb-ass.

  Shut up. Shut up.

  He had to think.

  Find her.

  He had to think, goddammit.

  The bathroom. Medicine cabinet. Painkillers. Water.

  But on his way to the door, he noticed the photograph on the bedside table. A framed colour print of the woman with her kids. They were standing on a snowy porch in winter clothes, quilted jackets and woolly hats. The boy had one of those dumb ones with ear-flaps. The woman had one in silver fur that made her look like a Russian spy. The little girl wore a blue and white one with toggles hanging down below her chin. That and a red quilted jacket. They were all smiling. Icicles hung from the porch’s pitched roof. The little girl looked like her mother.

  He couldn’t manage the tricksy metal tabs on the back, so he smashed the glass and pulled out the print. He didn’t have a single photograph of himself. He didn’t like the idea any more than he liked mirrors. It still did something weird to him when he saw himself on the iPad videos. He never completely believed it was him.

  In the bathroom he found Advil, took some and drank a lot of water from the tap.

  Through the woods. It won’t be properly fixed until you find her.

  Downstairs, he brought the shopping bags from the kitchen into the living room. There were more things in them than he remembered buying. Big hardware nails. A pineapple. A wristwatch. A yoyo. A doll wearing a crown. The objects were like the flies on her, easily disturbed.

  But it was the kite. He was sure the kite came after the jug.

  NINETY

  Sheriff Tom Hurley parked his Explorer on the driveway and walked, shoulders hunched against the driving snow, up to Rowena Cooper’s front door. He’d noted the Cherokee, undamaged, outside the open garage. If they were in an accident, it wasn’t in their own car. But he’d also noticed that the depth of the snow on and around the vehicle said it hadn’t been driven in a while. If you weren’t going anywhere, why not leave it in the garage? Never mind. They could have been out driving with someone else. A surprise Christmas Day visit. A relative. A friend. Hell, maybe Rowena had a boyfriend. Maybe some guy who’d met her passing through and couldn’t believe his luck. Town gossip was reliable, but it wasn’t omniscient.