Killer of a Mind
by Valerie Albemarle
Published internationally by Side Channel Books
Squamish, BC
Canada
© Valerie Albemarle 2016
The purchaser of this book is subject to the condition that he/she shall in no way resell it, nor any part of it, nor make copies of it to distribute freely.
This book is a work of fiction. All the places are real while all the characters and situations are figments of the author’s imagination.
PROLOGUE
NOW WHAT?Go to the policia and explain in broken Spanish how one drunken gringo had tried to kill another? The whole thing was surreal, a Kafka story set in the paradise of the Mayan Riviera. A story that just might earn Ryan a cell in a Mexican madhouse if not a prison. Besides. There wasn’t a shred of evidence to support what had happened last night, and no witnesses who saw the two of them after they’d left the town. The crime was so perfect it was almost a shame it hadn’t happened. No, going to the authorities was out of the question. Yet Ryan knew he needed to do something. At the very least he needed to worry. The man who almost became his friend had wanted him dead, and this was the kind of man who followed through on what he wanted.
Ryan locked his room and ran through the courtyard to hop on the raggedy-ass rental bike before anyone could see it there. This was of course a silly fear seeing as dozens of raggedy-ass rental bikes waited on the streets of Tulum as their riders shopped or sat in cafes. But as a fugitive Ryan expected the world to set its searchlights on him. He mounted the bike and screeched off toward the intersection, planning to cross the main street and ride toward the ocean; there was a patch of jungle just outside Tulum where he meant to hide the bike before making a dash for Cancun and the airport. He needed to be careful even on this short ride because his new almost-friend could come walking into him any second.
Suddenly Ryan became furious with himself. He’d done nothing wrong, so why was he the one hiding like a rat in a hole? Because the catcher would come no matter where he chose to hide. This would never end with Tulum; he’d been a damn fool to think it could. Tulum would follow him to Vancouver, and his dear almost-friend would track him down and come after him. No matter how big your world was, here in Mexico it became a very small one, just big enough to hold what you needed to survive. And once it became small, it stayed that way no matter where you went.
Something in the storage room of Ryan’s memory shifted and fell off its shelf. He couldn’t see what it was, but he knew where to find it. It was in the book he’d been reading, the playGaslight. Something written on the margins was going to save his life. Back at his hotel twenty minutes later Ryan was witnessing the birth of an idea. The idea was all his, but its birth was helped along by two dead people. One of them had written the play in his hands, the other—the pencil notes on the margins. They say that behind every crime there’s a woman. This woman, the nameless writer of the marginalia, had inspired something more interesting than even the perfect crime: the victim’s comeback.
The perfect denial that a crime had happened.
ONE
It had all started with a crappy fuel pump. A fuel pump proudly made in Canada, no less. With a sticker to show it. Was this irony, or was there some other fancy-ass word for it? Ryan admitted he wasn’t good with words. Or perhaps he was too good with the wrong kind of words, and perhaps this had something to do with the shit he’d brought on himself.
He left his electronic bric-a-brac in the camper before flying to Mexico, wishing to disconnect himself in every way. It wasn’t at all the part of Mexico they’d planned to visit, but now he was alone and making plans only for himself. He chose Cancun on a tantrum of loneliness, an act of shaking an impotent little fist at the universe. It pleased him to think of his decision as spontaneity, and there was no one to contradict him. Only two days before this he and Samantha had been making their way toward the desert of Baja in Ryan’s 1979 Toyota Dolphin camper. Samantha had dreamed of swimming in the Sea of Cortez since she first heard about it from a seafaring man, a widower and dreamer who lived on his boat. It was a trip that began in cheerful anticipation of happiness and ended together with that chapter of their relationship; maybe the entire relationship was over. Its future had been left to ferment like a suspect batch of young wine. Now the camper was in storage next to an onion field on the outskirts of Palmdale, Samantha was on her way somewhere, maybe back home or maybe on a post-quarrel holiday of her own, and Ryan was headed for the tourist steam bath of Cancun. He needed a holiday badly, yet he had no business being happy. And since he’d never liked large and touristy resorts, Cancun was exactly what he deserved.
The brave little Dolphin had trundled from Vancouver down the Pacific coast without giving Ryan any bother, and he loved the machine for its quiet loyalty. It hadn’t been born with the immortal R 22 engine—Ryan installed that after purchasing the camper from a forest redneck in northern BC where it had sat unused for thirty years—but the engine was now part of the machine and Ryan’s great pride. Samantha, used to very small cars with automatic transmission, didn’t dare to drive the camper or to learn how. She sat cradled in the passenger seat upholstered in its shaggy cover the colour of artificial grape juice and looked at the road ahead of them with the eagerness of a child. They bought coffee at gas stations and giggled as they opened thimble-sized containers of creamer to sample the plastic flavours. Samantha declared French vanilla to be the winner while Ryan preferred hazelnut. On their journey they passed two other Dolphins whose aging hippie drivers waved and smiled approvingly, saluting them as members of a dwindling brotherhood. They waved and smiled back. They marvelled at the vast flat beaches of Oregon with remnants of mountains rising from the ocean, at the lonely sand dunes and the giant redwoods and the fantastical grey stone bridges from an era both innocent and frightening, the years of good hope followed by great depression. The sky was grey over the northern stretch of their journey. But once, somewhere in northern California, they emerged from a deep valley onto the shore of the ocean basking under a patch of sunny blue sky. There was a wall of fog on one side and clouds on the other. A strong wind carried a fine spray from the ocean, a mix of water and sunlight. And once, on a walk through the woods near the RV park in southern Oregon where they’d settled for the night, they found a rare and prized mushroom: the king bolete. Someone had torn it out of the turf and left it, probably deciding that it must be poisonous. Ryan thought it was a beautiful journey and a happy one, and at the time Samantha gave no indication that she thought otherwise.
After Eureka they veered inland to avoid the network of busy coastal roads on the approach to San Francisco. Almost all of a sudden the weather was warm again, and very dry. They drove through a landscape of softly rolling hills and small oaks with intricately twisted branches. They stopped on the shoulder beside an endless almond grove where pools of water from the irrigation hoses had given life to small oases of tender jade grass among the parched clods of earth. The trees had been harvested, but enough nuts remained on the ground among the dry leaves for them to glean. In a short time they gathered a whole plastic bag of almonds. There are places in the interior of California, not a day’s drive from the sands of Santa Barbara and the febrile striving of LA, where towns have lost their inhabitants and died by the time you read a map with their names. On the evening of the fifth day they realized they’d passed two such settlements before they saw an RV park with a pale light falling on the sign. Later it occurred to Ryan that the couple who owned the place were both dressed in grey, the same grey as the sky and the bridges back on the coast. It was late October and the camper was making its way from fall to eternal summer, so close to Mexico now. The days were sunny and almost
hot, but nights in the mountains were very cold indeed.
On day six, after traversing a long and painfully monotonous stretch of the Golden State Highway, they arrived at sunset in the foothills and started their climb toward the plateau. Vehicle after impatient vehicle passed the Dolphin as it trundled in the right-hand lane. Later they drove by six of them, parked on the shoulder with their radiators fried. The fools had raced too quickly into the rarefied atmosphere of the plateau, starving their overheated gluttonous engines of oxygen. The Dolphin continued its grandfatherly climb and Ryan was immensely proud of the vehicle’s superior constitution and his own good judgment. He should have known that such conceit never goes unpunished.
The climb ended, and now they were rolling over the plateau. The earth was not earth but sand mixed with clay, and the vegetation consisted of silver sagebrush with a Joshua tree here and there. Ryan turned off the highway onto a minor road he expected to bring them to Palmdale for the night. The whole trip had been a search for minor roads in an effort to bypass big cities and get the heck out of the way of hurried vehicles racing through the middle of nowhere. America the Motorized. But in a place like this, Ryan thought, driving might be the only thing that gives you a sense of purpose. He pulled in at a gas station with a general store, and while they stood in line behind a biker and an Indian, both with ponytails and of the same cheerful disposition as the shopkeeper, they decided they wanted hot dogs and ice cream.
In addition to their hot dogs and ice cream they got an invitation to park the Dolphin behind the shop for the night.
“I’ve worked in Vancouver,” the shopkeeper recalled with casual fondness and a nod, as if a Californian shopkeeper was expected to live and work there at some point in his life. He’d also lived and worked in other parts of Canada, which impressed Ryan immensely. But why would it? He realized he was becoming just another ignorant arrogant Canadian who think that all Americans are insular as well as ignorant and arrogant, and he smiled at himself in goodnatured reproach.
After sunset Ryan and Samantha walked down a country road and back up again, rousing a good number of unaccustomed dogs into vigilant barking. People didn’t go walking here; only cars used this road. Red lights slowly came on and went out on the towers of a wind farm in the distance. Ryan and Samantha had hoped to get close but never did; the towers seemed to recede as they moved toward them. Back at the camper they read in their deck chairs under the lights of the shop’s porch. Soft piebald moths landed on their books and on their hands and faces, and Samantha shrieked and laughed in pretend-horror. They slept well and woke to a hot and motionless morning that promised a scorcher of a day.
Ten minutes into their drive toward Palmdale they knew the sharp smell of gasoline. Ryan pulled over and with the engine running, popped the hood. The fuel pump was leaking, sputtering gas onto the hot engine. He scrambled to turn off the engine and told Samantha to get out of the cabin. They stood and looked at the glistening engine, aware that it could have caught fire if they hadn’t smelled the gas in time. They’d been very unfortunate, and very fortunate.
Ryan found his cell phone inside the camper and turned it on. “Shit. It can only make emergency calls here. I can’t call John or a tow truck.”
“Mine would be the same. So, call nine-one-one, they’ll call the tow truck for us.”
“No! No cops. I want nothing to do with Yankee cops. They might give me shit. The camper has no exhaust filter.”
“There are no Yankees here, this is California,” Samantha said a bit more didactically than was necessary. She knew very well that he used “Yankees” interchangeably with “Americans.” “And why are you scared of calling the cops?” she pushed on. “We’re not criminals on the run. No one will notice you have no exhaust filter: the camper’s not running.”
“I don’t like US officials of any kind! The people are really nice, but the officials can be weird, and mean. You stay with the camper and I’ll go find a phone. Or I’ll stay. Either way.”
“I’ll go. I don’t know how to drive the camper in case I need to move it.”
Samantha walked down the ramp armed with her useless cell phone, credit card and driver’s license, and quite a bit more discontent than she let on.
She arrived at the camper twenty minutes later in the comfy back seat of an air-conditioned patrol car. First a local man had pulled over and asked if she needed help; he gave her his cell phone to use. She called John the shopkeeper from last night, and that was when the cop pulled over behind them. It turned out that they all knew each other and were friends: John, the cop, the man who’d pulled over for her, and the tow truck driver the cop was calling. It was all very neighbourly and reassuring. Samantha wanted to smile with relief at the nice friendly people, at the narrow escape they’d had, and at Ryan’s silliness. After checking her driver’s license the cop treated her like a damsel in distress, and she felt embarrassed. He probably thought her boyfriend was an ass for letting her walk along the highway, and that she was a fool and a doormat for allowing it. He parked his patrol car behind the disabled camper to wait for the tow truck.
An hour later, as they watched the Dolphin get hauled onto the tow truck’s bed, Ryan commented on how the pump was the only new part on the old machine. This was important. What was it the Bible said about not putting new wine into old flasks, or using new fabric to patch up old clothes? Never mind the Bible. The shameful thing was that the pump had a sticker saying “Made in Canada,” with a maple leaf flag. Canada and not China, for fuck’s sake.
At the auto shop in the town of Palmdale Ryan bought a pump made in Korea. It took him some time to install it and to check if it was working properly. It wasn’t. It delivered fuel in stutters and starts, and by now Ryan was too exhausted to figure out why. Slowly and carefully he drove the camper to the nearest motel where they showered and lay on the bed to come to their senses.
“I’ll work on it later,” Ryan explained himself. “I need a break.”
“I didn’t call the cop, I swear,” Samantha explained herself. “He was driving by and stopped. I guess taking strolls along the highway isn’t the thing to do around here.”
“I know you didn’t. It doesn’t matter, he was nice.”
Ryan sounded like the events of the morning had happened long ago and maybe to someone else. It angered Samantha that something he’d made out to be so important could be waived aside so easily.
“You could’ve called him right away and saved me a walk in the blazing sun with cars and trucks zooming by,” she said peevishly.
“I offered to go so you could stay with the camper.”
“I didn’t want either of us to go! There was no need for that.”
“So you offered to go just to show me I was wrong?”
“Yes, I was being passive aggressive!” Samantha mocked her own words and made an ugly grimace.
“I thought you were being helpful. Didn’t realize you were trying to feel sorry for yourself for having such an unfeeling jerk of a boyfriend.” How strange that on good days he found this habit of hers almost cute, while she laughed at it and called herself a drama queen.
Today she looked at him with resentment. “It’s not just about what happened today. This whole trip, Ryan.” She huffed in frustration, not finding the right words to describe this whole trip.
“Oh god, what is it now, Sam? I thought this whole trip was going great! We’ve seen amazing places, we’re chasing the sun, and we’re almost in Baja now. And that pump. We had amazing luck, catching the leak before it caused a fire.”
“Right, I should give thanks for all the blessings.”
“What’s wrong with you, Sam? Is it your time of month? One day you’re all giggly and giddy, the next day nothing is right. No warning, no reason. I haven’t done anything to bring this on! So what’s wrong with ‘this whole trip’?”
“Nothing. It’s been great. You’re right, I’ve been giddy and giggly. That’s because I really want to be happy. It’s be
en like a honeymoon—for college kids. I love our honeymoons. They’re a great thing to do after a wedding. Even before a wedding. Not instead of a wedding.”
“What is so bloody important about a wedding, Sam? People have weddings all the time, and days, weeks, months later they can’t stand the sight of each other. We’re the ones who have the honeymoons. Like college kids, as you say. Do you realize how many rich married couples pay big money just to feel like college kids? If you’re tired of this gypsy lifestyle after a week, I get it. We’re not doing this for the sake of roughing it, we’re doing it for the sake of fun. We can check into a five-star hotel and eat at a restaurant. But for fun, not because we need to prove a point. And admit it: you were happy, Sam. This whole week, right until this morning, you were having fun, and you were happy. I know because I saw you happy, and you can’t fake it. So what’s changed now?”
Samantha glared at him like a child unjustly punished, and said nothing. She was cornered and angry and humiliated. Why was he forcing her to speak, to spell it out, when she’d already told him everything?
Ryan marched on, reassured by his logic and common sense. “Okay, Sam. So nothing’s changed. You’re just tempting fate because everything is going so well.” He insisted on calling her “Sam” because that was a boy’s name, and boys were straight shooters. He’d never liked “Samantha,” a name that lashed like a whip. It was a shape-shifter name, worn by a woman who could shift into a very unlovely shape in a very short time. A woman who had somehow been denied.
They spent the rest of the day in quiet and gentle civility toward each other, careful to avoid any subject more complex than grocery shopping. But at night Ryan was so riled up with indignation that he couldn’t sleep. Not just Samantha’s name but his entire reality with her was a shape-shifter. During the past week he’d felt like they were making their way through paradise, and all the time she must’ve been sulking in silence, or she’d only just decided that she should’ve been sulking. Samantha had done this many times before: changed her outlook on something that was just fine when it first happened. But before today he’d been merely irritated by this behaviour. Today he felt betrayed. He’d been accused of not doing enough, not doing well enough, yet he’d never been informed of the expectations. She wanted a ring on her finger, not a trip to Baja in a time capsule of a Dolphin camper. Maybe she wanted both. Even so, nothing about this trip or their entire life together was good enough without that magic fucking ring on her finger. That somehow changed everything. If only she’d been brave enough to say so. But oh no, she couldn’t do that—that would be so unladylike! It was his job to read her mind and guess her wishes.
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