The Mute and the Liar

by Victoria Best

It’s not Father’s. His is long and looping and it deliberately sweeps dramatically to one side.

  And it wouldn’t be from one of his colleagues – how would I be able to recognise it? I can just about make out a few words from the central area of the piece of paper that managed to escape the fire.

  “I didn’t want to start caring. It just happened…” That’s it. That’s all I can make out, the rest is cut off by the black edging.

  There’s another piece of paper right next to the one I found. It’s very thin and long and the edges have completely curled up. I pick it up. “I know it’s pathetic writing letters but I can’t go to your house …”

  Clearly there were a lot of these, and Father was burning them today. But why would he need to do that? Just to get rid of them? Or hide them?

  I’m about to put the piece of paper I’m holding in my pocket when I realise there’s something written on the back.

  I gasp.

  “Alicia, it’s him.”

  Jayce.

  His voice rings out from the piece of paper. He repeats my name, again and again, softly, sweetly, the way he sometimes did.

  The pounding of his voice in my head stops as soon as the living room door unexpectedly swings open. I startle, looking up to see where the sound came from. I had been crouching down over the fireplace before, and now I cautiously straighten up. My fists clench. I feel the world slipping into a blinding, unforgiving scarlet. It's Father, but I don’t want to see him. Just the thought of him being in the same room as me makes my skin crawl.

  I guess I must have a pretty angry expression, because Father guesses straight away: “so you saw them.”

  I nod my head once, slowly and warily, never moving my eyes away from his.

  “Alicia, it’s not what-” “No.”

  His jaw drops, aghast.

  “You…” he murmurs, out of shock. “You spoke.” “Why didn’t you give me these letters?”

  “My God… You… You actually spoke…”

  “Clearly I’m not speaking because you can’t seem to hear me. I asked you why didn’t you give me these letters?

  “If you wanted them, you should have been more observant. You only needed to look on the floor. He’s been posting them through the letterbox every day. It’s been driving me mad. My God… I just… I can’t believe you’re actually speaking… I can’t… This… This is all I wanted. Alicia, this is all I wanted, this is-”

  “You still haven’t answered me. Why didn’t you give them to me?” I snap, my croaky, uneasy voice suddenly hitting a nerve of warning, a nerve that clearly says “tell me or else.” He notices this and immediately straightens up.

  “Alicia. That criminal has been nothing but a nuisance since the beginning. He kidnapped you, put us both through Hell and now has the cheek to try to contact you, even after I so kindly let him go.”

  That’s when it hits me for the first time how strange it all was. The kidnapping. Father letting Jayce go just like that. I hadn’t thought about it before because I didn’t want to think about it. It made my stomach plummet and my chest heavy. But now that I think about it, it’s strange that Father would have let him go. Crimes like that don’t just get overlooked. Especially when it directly involved my father – Jayce was making him try to kill someone for goodness’ sake!

  “Why did you let him go? After everything he did? That’s not like you at all.”

  “I didn’t get orders to, Alicia. That’s how my job works.”

  “For a kidnapping? Why wouldn’t they give you orders to arrest someone who kidnapped someone else? He made you try to kill his mother!”

  “His mother is safe and very much alive, you are safe and very much alive, so there really is no point pursuing the matter further. I just want to forget about this whole ordeal now.”

  “How did you even find me?”

  “You were staying with Jayce’s old piano teacher. It was hardly that big a jump.”

  “We were in the middle of nowhere when you found us! Miles away from Kit’s house!”

  “I’d been following you. After I escaped from Kaylie and Jory I managed to track you down.”

  That answer throws me. It makes sense. And then I remember something.

  Something that sends me cold and numb and questioning everything.

  You know when I tried to call home and you picked up the phone? You said something about tying up my father to threaten me to go along with Jayce’s plan. Was all of that true?

  And Kaylie’s exact words ring out: “No. Jayce told Jory and I that your dad would leave the house soon and we had to wait until he was gone and then go inside and wait for a phone call from you. He told us there were a spare pair of keys this girl Becky had left for us under the plant pot outside, so we waited for your dad to leave the house like Jayce said and used those keys to get inside. You phoned, I picked up, and made up that whole story about having him tied up. We left straight after that.”

  Kaylie said she and Jory had never attacked my father. Father just said that they had tied him up. She lied to me! She did tie him up after all.

  The living room door unexpectedly slams open. I almost can’t believe it. I swear I’m going mad or dreaming; everything happens in fast forward, spinning out of control and out of focus so fast that only whirling, tumbling colours are left.

  I see him. It’s almost right out of a film, him crashing through the living room door. The person I wanted to see most. That’s what makes me think I’m going mad. Jayce. He’s standing right there, solid and real as I am. And I want nothing more than to run over to him and hold him and know for certain he really is real and that he really has come back.

  And then time catches up with the rest of the world, and so does my mind, and it slowly tells me that something isn’t right. He looks… angry. Furious. And that he’s holding up two things. A key in his left hand and a gun in his right. A gun that’s pointed straight at my father.

  “So sorry for intruding, I really hope I wasn’t interrupting anything. I do apologise for my brash, unanticipated entrance but I was just in the area and thought I’d drop by, you know, to drop off your house keys and see how everyone is, have a nice catch up, maybe have a cup of tea. I saw you left your gun downstairs, Mr Lewis. You shouldn’t really leave it lying around like that, you know. Very dangerous.”

  Dad lunges forward, but Jayce keeps the gun pointed right at him, his white-hot, smouldering glare warning him not to take another step closer.

  “Sorry it’s taken me so long to give you back your keys, please forgive me. It’s my own fault, I was just I was being a little… slow. It only just hit me today, you see.”

  This really is happening, Jayce really is standing opposite me. But why is he holding a gun to my Father’s head? My hand subconsciously covers my mouth, probably worried I’m going to do something stupid like scream.

  “Put my gun down, Jayce,” Father says, in a voice that would have sounded firm and authoritative if it were not for the slight waver at the end. Recovering from my horror, I manage to let out: “Jayce, what the Hell are you doing?”

  “Alicia, don’t panic-”

  “Don’t panic?” I shriek, quickly pressing my hand to my mouth again to suppress that nauseous, shaking feeling once more.

  “Alicia-” Jayce tries again, looking at me.

  “If you have any brains at all, you will put my gun down,” Father warns.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I repeat, even louder this time.

  “Are you trying to get us all killed? Are you completely out of your mind? Put the gun down!” I’m drenched in ice-cold sweat now. It consumes my entire body and sends shivers all down my spine. I’m shaking a lot now and I’m losing my grip on my breathing; I can feel it slowly slipping out of time. I think I’m going to be sick.

  “You heard her. Put the gun down, Jayce, or I will put you behind bars for so long you’ve forgotten what the sun looks like.”

  “Have you gone completely mad? What th
e fuck is wrong with you? Why are you trying to kill my father?” I scream, voice shaking uncontrollably. “What the actual fuck are you doing? Put the gun down!”

  “Alicia!” Jayce screams this time, a deafening, unexpected sound that silences my father and I. “You don’t understand-”

  “I understand perfectly well! You’re fucking crazy! And now you’re going to kill my father, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Listen to me! It’s him! Alicia, it’s him!”

  That stops me for a moment. Where have I heard that before? Without taking my eyes off him, I fish in my pocket for the piece of paper I had been holding just now. I flip it over.

  There it is, written in Jayce’s small, almost unreadable scrawl.

  Alicia, it’s him.

  It is just coincidence.

  But the words cannon around my mind for a moment, writing themselves out in my head again and again, blinding and sizzling and leaving sequined, ghost-like trails behind them.

  And then it makes sense. Clicks into place, like toy train tracks.

  I look at father, who seems so helpless and small now Jayce is pointing a gun at him.

  “It… It was you?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jayce drops the key on the floor and fishes out Becky’s phone from his pocket.

  Becky gave Kaylie a spare house key.

  “Phones are amazing things, aren’t they? They have so much information on them. Phones are just… solid information right at our fingertips. And they can tell you so much about their owners, too. What they’re like, what they’re interested in, what they talk about to other people.”

  Becky knew a lot about me.

  “You can find out about their friends too. Who they’ve been talking to, who their friends are, what they’re friends are like.”

  Becky only contacted Jayce and Sasha.

  “You only needed Becky’s phone. That was it. I asked her mother what happened to her phone. They told me the police had taken it to gather evidence against Donny and Alex in court. Her mother said it had not been returned to the family and she assumed it was still in the hands of the police.”

  She only contacted them through her phone.

  With a slow, shaking, almost horrified voice, I start piecing the puzzle together: “you took Becky’s phone. That’s all you needed to find out about Jayce and Sasha and convince them you were Becky. And you started investigating all of this because…” I waver, unable to work out the answer.

  “Of Marty,” Jayce finishes my sentence. “Your dad found out about Nick through Marty’s case, then found out he lived almost right next to you, and that I’d recently moved in with him.”

  I turn to look at my father. “And when you looked up Jayce’s name in the police records, all the files about Becky came up.”

  Jayce nods. “Ryo, Sasha and I were all interviewed as people of interest in her case. There must have been loads about us on there.”

  “And that’s what inspired you to do all of this. You knew you could use Becky's phone to get information and manipulate them. But… I just don’t get one thing. Why? Why did you do all this? What's the point?”

  “Alicia,” Father says, his voice just above a whisper. “Alicia.” He repeats, louder this time, with a mocking, song-like quality to it. “Why am I the villain here?” his voice is still soft, but it gives me a prickling feeling along my neck. It's... dangerous. A voice I haven't heard him use before. He is looking down, so his face is shadowed from us, but I can see a thin, unnerving, wire-like smile bending upwards.

  Jayce notices this also and edges closer, keeping his gun focused on Father.

  “You must feel so clever trying to solve all of this like you do with all those crimes in newspapers. But you fail to see the obvious. You fail to see why. I’ll tell you, since you’re too ignorant to work it out. It was because I was solving a case too. A case that should have been solved seven years ago.”

  “Alicia,” Jayce turns to face me. “Becky kept pestering me to try to get you to talk.”

  “The day Mum died,” I mumble, my voice sounding muted and broken. “So you did all this just because you wanted-”

  “An explanation,” Father cuts me off. “I’m not the criminal here. I never killed anyone. Not like you.” He says the last sentence in a mocking voice that sends shivers racing through me.

  “Don’t listen to him, Alicia. He’s just trying to get into your head. Don’t let him.”

  “No, Jayce,” Father snaps, turning to face him with an icy glare. “Do you want to know what happened? The day my wife supposedly commit suicide? I heard a gunshot. I went into the garden. And there was my daughter standing over her with my gun in her hand,” Father says slowly, watching me carefully.

  Jayce looks at me horrified. “Is… is that true?” he asks. I nod.

  “But it’s not like that,” I quickly tell him with pleading eyes, hoping he will understand.. “She committed suicide. I went outside, saw her body and picked up the gun.”

  “How am I supposed to believe for a second that you just happened to be standing there with a gun in your hand!” Father yells, spit spewing from his mouth with every word. “Do you know how that felt? Seeing the dead body of the one person that actually mattered to me, the only person that made the world make sense and work?”

  “I already told the police what happened. Even the evidence showed it; it was point-blank range straight in the temple, something a child couldn’t achieve especially when you saw me standing so far away from her. Her right arm was raised to her head. What more evidence do you need? Why was none of that good enough for you? Why did you have to do all this when you know full well what really happened?”

  “I was just doing my job as a detective chief inspector. I was just looking for answers. This was all I could think of. I needed you to speak. It’s been seven years and nothing else has worked so far. So I thought maybe something like this would work.” Father looks directly at me with demanding and accusing eyes. “Tell me what really happened to my wife, Alicia. What did you do to Amanda? You shot her, didn’t you?” he accuses, raising his voice even more. “Didn’t you?” he shouts.

  Suddenly, with crazed eyes and a manic, animalistic expression, Dad charges towards me.

  “Give me my wife back!” he screams, spit erupting from his mouth and his face screwed up into a red, twisted, crazed expression. “Give her back!”

  Screaming inside, my heart pounding and my whole body shaking, I try to run away from him, heading towards the sofa. He’s going to kill me! I scream in my head, and this thought sends me hurtling forwards even faster, gasping aloud with every step. I look over my shoulder for a few seconds to see how close father is to me when I notice Jayce pointing the gun right at him.

  He shoots, but hits the ground next to my father instead.

  There is a moment of confusion where Father turns around to face Jayce, his eyes mercilessly burning through him and his mouth frothing with swearwords, which gives me enough time to duck around him and run to Jayce. Something crazy and consuming takes hold of me. I don’t even know what I’m doing – I let this blinding scarlet emotion control me instead. I snatch the gun out of his hands and point it straight at Father. My hands are shaking uncontrollably – no, my whole body is shaking – but at this range I’m sure I can hit him. And he knows that.

  He watches this happen, slightly confused, before realising exactly what is going on. His face drops. He widens his eyes and he parts his mouth slightly. I watch him carefully, eyes narrowed. He is breathing deeply and just watches me, stone still. It's a cold, penetrating look, but there is also something lost and weak about it - scared.

  “Do it,” Jayce tells me firmly, shooting my Father with a look of pure burning hatred.

  “She wouldn’t dare. Would you, Alicia? Just put it down.”

  I take a deep breath and turn my focus on my hands. They’re still shaking at an inhuman rate. Just breathe. With great effort, I manage to sl
ow the shaking down just a little.

  Father shakes his head slowly, still probing deep into my eyes, as though challenging me. I try to straighten up and stand a little taller, prove I’m the one in control in this situation, even though in reality I feel so weightless and nauseous. My stomach is plummeting and my chest is pounding. I can’t think straight; there are a million things all ricocheting like rockets through my head at once. Half of me, probably the only part with any sense left, is telling me to listen to my father and put down the gun. But at the same time, every bone in my body is telling me to shoot him right now.

  “Put it down, Alicia,” Father repeats. His voice starts firmly, but crackles when he says my name. I notice Father is trying to mould his voice into one that is commanding and in control, but it actually sounds a little off-key. “Please,” he adds, his voice suddenly softer.

  I stare at him. I stare into his pathetic, surrendering eyes. But they’re not surrendering. It’s just a trick. An act he’s been putting on since the day Mum died. A big fat lie.

  I was right all along; he never cared about me. Just looked after me because it’s the law. And he’s not pleading with me; he’s pleading with his life. And his eyes aren’t surrendering, not really. They will never give up. They will never give up this mad search for what really happened to my mum. They will never give up hating me for something I didn’t do.

  “Alicia, it’s me, your dad.” His voice is just above a whisper. “Alicia, it’s me, your dad. You wouldn’t shoot me. Alicia. Please…”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  This isn’t the first time Father has said those exact words. And it’s not the first time he’s been standing in this living room with someone pointing a gun right at him.

  “Amanda, it’s me, your husband. Amanda, it’s me, Charlie. You wouldn’t shoot me. Amanda, please…”

  There were always arguments. Father was always protective over us. He didn’t like me or Mum going out without him knowing. He wanted to know exactly where we were and when we would be coming home. Mum always told me that I had to stay inside because “Daddy doesn’t want us going outside. Okay? Do you promise to stay inside?” One time, when I was a little older, I asked her why. Her answer was short and simple “Daddy doesn’t like it.” The only other thing she said about it was “you know he is a policeman. Policemen keep people safe. So he just wants to know we are safe too.”