Familiar Strangers

by Jackie Walsh

  ‘Well, she called at Dad’s.’

  ‘She what?’

  His face darkens with anger, like it’s my fault she went to Dad’s. As if I’m deliberately bringing unwanted grief down on the man.

  ‘So Bert said. He says she called, got no answer, then asked Bert if I lived there.’

  Danny walks out of the room without saying another word, leaving Joanna and myself staring after him.

  ‘Well that’s a bit weird,’ I say. ‘What’s up with him?’

  ‘Oh don’t mind him, Becca, he’s a bit crabby lately. Missing a night’s sleep doesn’t help either.’

  * * *

  After twenty minutes of listening to Joanna’s account of her night in the hospital, I decide to leave. Danny hasn’t come back. Joanna says he’s probably on his computer in his man cave, but I don’t know. I think I pissed him off.

  The evening traffic is a nightmare, and it takes me more than an hour to get back to my apartment. I knock on Jeff’s door but get no answer. Looks like I’m on my own tonight.

  Standing by the window I look up at the darkening sky, wishing Jeff would call me up, ask me out to a movie or something. Anything to take my mind somewhere else for a while.

  But Jeff doesn’t call, Bert does. Edith has been taken into hospital.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Bert is holding Edith’s hand. Edith is holding Bert’s heart. I’m holding back the tears. I hate this part. This part of life: death. The part when everything enjoyed, or hoped to be enjoyed, loses its value. The ‘what’s it all about’ feeling. I wonder about it, too often maybe… the power of loss.

  Bert puts his lips close to Edith’s ear.

  ‘Rebecca is here, Edi. She’s come to see you.’ His tortured eyes turn to mine. ‘I don’t even know if she knows I’m here,’ he says.

  ‘She knows you’re here, Bert,’ I say, even though I have no idea if Edith knows Bert is here or not. It doesn’t matter; lots of truths no longer matter. Edith is on her way out and Bert is going to have to hang around a bit longer in this world alone.

  It’s important that he thinks Edith can hear him. It matters that he gets to tell Edith a million times how much he loves her, how much he has loved her, how much of his world was built by her and how happy he is that it was.

  I place my hand on Bert’s shoulder and feel the bones, a carcass beneath his sweater. His face has shrunk, sucked in like all the fat has melted and only the skin remains. Bert looks sicker than Edith. That can happen to people; one big shock can literally drain the life out of them. I saw it happen to Dad when he walked out of the hospital the day Mom’s diagnosis was confirmed.

  I was living in a different part of the city at the time, not far from the hospital. Dad rang and asked me to meet him there. I didn’t rush, presuming he was looking to kill some time while he waited on Mom to finish more tests. I didn’t know he had just been told his world was about to change forever.

  I remember being annoyed at getting damp in a light shower of rain as I made my way towards the sliding doors at the hospital entrance, the doors that opened and closed, opened and closed. People were going in, anxious about what they would discover today. People were leaving, some happy, others not giving anything away. Then I saw Dad standing to one side in the lobby. He was giving everything away. His whole shape had changed, it was as if he’d been squeezed by a giant hand. I rushed towards him as slowly as I could.

  * * *

  Back in Edith’s room, Bert is sitting on the only chair, so I hunker down by his side.

  ‘Can I get you anything, Bert? Some water, a cup of coffee?’

  ‘I’m fine, Becca. And thanks for coming down. I didn’t know who else to call… you can go now, if you want.’

  I’ve only just arrived.

  ‘I can stay a while, Bert.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to keep you here late. I just thought you might want to see Edith before… before…’ He tries his best to hold back the tears but his best isn’t good enough. I lean in and give him a hug. He needs more, though. He needs a miracle but I don’t have any miracles. I tell him I’ll say a prayer for Edith. Praying isn’t something I usually do but hospitals have a way of making people reconsider their belief in the next world.

  I stay with Bert until a nurse arrives to tell him they will be moving Edith to a private room as soon as possible. Bert nods a thank you. He is humble now, humble and broken.

  Bending over the bed, I kiss Edith goodbye, wipe the tears from my eyes. I squeeze Bert’s hand, unable to look him in the eye, then shuffle through the curtains and out into the ER. More sick people. I am sick of looking at the sick.

  Finally, I make my way to the reception area, where dozens of people sit waiting patiently to be called. Heading towards the exit, I notice everyone’s eyes are fixed on the wall behind me. I glance behind to see what’s going on, and I see her. Katie Collins.

  Her face is full screen on the big TV bolted to the wall. There’s no sound, so I don’t know what is being said, but I can read the words scrolling across the bottom of the screen. The room goes into a tailspin. My body seems to be shutting down.

  Katie Collins is dead.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Jeff!’ I yell, banging on his door, but there’s no answer. Jeff must be out. He isn’t answering his phone, either. Shacked up with some new date, probably. Walking back to my apartment, the empty corridor seems eerie somehow. All I want to do is scream.

  Back in my own space, I flick from channel to channel. Katie Collins was discovered in Treehill Park, a public park not far from Dad’s. We used to go there for picnics when I was a kid. It has a playground surrounded by forest. A big, lonely forest. Danny went missing in that forest when he was a young boy. Or so we thought. After searching for what seemed like hours, but what Danny remembers to be just minutes, he poked his head out from behind a tree saying, ‘fooled ya’. Mom and Dad were happy to see him at first. I remember smiling at him from behind their backs when he got chastised for scaring them.

  According to all the crime reporters, Katie’s body was found by a man out walking his dog. The forensic experts are at the scene now. All the evidence points to a violent death.

  Hours pass. Still no sign of Jeff. I flick from one station to the next. Katie Collins’ death is the lead story on every local channel. Funneling down coffee, I stay glued to the screen. What will happen now? Will Detective Turner think I’m involved? Curled up on the sofa, my body does not feel like it’s mine. I’m an alien here. Jesus, Becca, how the hell did you get dragged into this?

  When the phone rings I nearly jump out of my seat. It’s her, it has to be her. She’s going to want to talk to me. I answer expecting to hear her dull voice. But it isn’t Turner. It’s Barry, calling from Oakridge. He has the CCTV coverage I was looking for. Do I want to look it over tonight?

  Now I don’t know what to do. I know what I should do – ring Turner and tell her I think Katie Collins visited my mom. But what if it wasn’t her? What if the visitor was a different Katie Collins visiting someone else at Oakridge? Turner will go mad with me for wasting her time. She’ll think I’m trying to mislead her, maybe slap me with an obstruction of justice charge. Right now there’s a knot in my stomach wrapping all my fears into one hard ball. Kick the ball, Becca, kick the ball away.

  I need to see that CCTV coverage. I want to know if Katie Collins visited my mom. If she was the one who put those crazy ideas in Mom’s head.

  I took you, Becca. You’re not my daughter.

  * * *

  There’s no need for me to knock the building down this time. Barry is waiting by the door.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he says as I slip past him, in behind the desk.

  I’m shivering. Coming back here has taken a lot more courage than I ever thought I had.

  I’m nervous about what I’m about to discover, but I believe I already know the truth. All I’m looking for is confirmation. It would be too big a coincidence if the visitor was
some other Katie Collins.

  ‘I think this is the one,’ Barry says.

  My head is ready to explode here.

  ‘I’ll just fast forward to visiting hours,’ he says. His voice is soft, comforting. He even handles the computer gently, pushing buttons like they might break under any pressure.

  Barry starts the footage running at two p.m. The picture is crystal clear, so it won’t be difficult to spot her. A nurse opens the door to a young family arriving with a huge bunch of flowers. They are quickly followed by more visitors. Everyone looks as frustrated as I feel entering this place. They all present with worry scraped across their faces, putting on their polite smiles. I never considered the other people here. I always felt as if I was the only visitor and Mom the only sick person. I can be so selfish at times.

  ‘Will you recognize her?’ Barry says, his eyes on the screen.

  ‘I’m pretty sure I will, yeah.’

  I will, Barry, and so will you. Her face has been front and center on every TV screen for the past six hours. Shit, I never thought of that. What’s Barry going to think when he realizes I’m stalking a dead woman?

  After watching people entering and leaving for over an hour we have come up with nothing. No Katie Collins. I thought once or twice I saw someone that could be her, but when Barry zoomed in, they didn’t fit.

  ‘Well, that’s it,’ he said. ‘You don’t see her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you’re sure it was the 24^th^?’

  ‘That was the day she signed the book,’ I say. I’m feeling deflated even though I should be relieved. ‘Thanks, Barry.’

  ‘Hold on,’ he says, pulling the visitor’s book from below the counter. ‘Let me just check something.’ He flicks through the pages. When he gets to the 24^th^, he reads through the list of names.

  ‘Katie Collins…’

  Then he turns the page to Saturday. It’s empty.

  ‘Oh,’ he says.

  My heart leaps. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Saturday’s page is blank.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that either not one person came to visit on a Saturday, which is unlikely, or that the page wasn’t turned over onto the 25^th^.’

  ‘So she might have been here on the Saturday?’

  ‘Could be. Let’s see what we have.’

  The clock in the corner of the screen is displaying 2.34p.m. when I see her, blonde hair tied back, wearing jeans and a pink sweatshirt. Katie Collins visited Oakridge on the 25^th^ October at 2.34p.m.

  I was here that day; I’m here every Saturday. Christ, I must have missed her by a few minutes. Maybe we even passed one another in the corridor.

  My eyes lock onto the image. My heart races. This is her. Katie Collins. Moving closer to the screen I scan every inch of her face, her neck, her eyes. Why did you come here, Katie? What did you want from me? With my eyes ingesting every detail, her shape steps further into the distance. Away from the camera, closer to the danger.

  Who killed you, Katie?

  * * *

  It’s pink, baby pink. My heart almost jumps out of my t-shirt when I see it.

  The photograph hangs alone on the wall inside the door. Moving closer, I see a child sleeping, cradled in her mother’s arms, wearing a tiny knitted coat.

  There’s a little girl standing by their side, her face glowing with happiness, her smile showing the gap created by two missing teeth. In her hand she holds a naked doll with painted hair and one plastic eye.

  The mother is also smiling for the camera, but there’s a shadow across her face, proof of sadder times etched around her blue eyes. Her lips are bare, no makeup, no curls in the dark greying hair that hangs in clumps to her shoulders. Her floral dress droops loosely over her skinny body. Her feet are bare.

  In the background the sky is flawless, a painted blue without a cloud in sight. The door to the trailer is open, showing the mess inside; clothes scattered across the floor, empty cupboard doors ajar. A teddy bear. A burnt out candle.

  On the wooden steps leading to the open doorway a can of beer sits beside an overflowing ashtray, some of the butts dotted on the dry dusty soil below.

  The baby is about three months old, a small tuft of hair jutting out from the center of her forehead. Her shiny lips are tightly closed.

  But it’s the coat that scares me. The pink coat with the second button missing. Putting my hand on the frame I glide my finger over the baby’s face, over my face.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I don’t think I slept at all last night. My mind was playing games, wondering if Katie Collins spoke with my mom. Did she tell her why she was looking for me? Nothing makes sense, and I still can’t figure out why she looks familiar. Maybe she reminds me of someone I once knew.

  I ring Jeff, but the call goes straight to his message minder. Where are you, Jeff?

  In the meantime, I better go back to work, get this Stephen Black thing over with, face the music.

  ‘You’re going to have to face the music,’ Mom used to say. I don’t know where that saying came from, but I know what it means, having heard it a lot growing up. Like the time I broke my grandma’s plate with the American constitution engraved on it. You’d swear it had been presented to her by President Lincoln – well, maybe not Lincoln, perhaps George Bush, the older one… she was a big fan of his. Anyway, uproar exploded when it broke. I ran out of the house and refused to return, until eventually I was told I had to face the music. And then there was the time I was caught stealing in school. It wasn’t much, just some coins one of the teachers had left in a drawer. After refusing to return to school for a week, kicking and screaming and making myself sick, I eventually had to return and face the music.

  And here I am today. Standing outside Bridgeway about to go in and see Stephen Black for the first time since he threatened me. I don’t expect music.

  Taking a deep breath, I push through the glass doors into the foyer. My stomach feels twisted, sweat clammy on my forehead, and the elevator seems to be taking forever. What will he do? Will he even speak to me? Eventually the elevator comes to a stop and I step out into the office, the constant office. It’s as if no one else bothers to go home at night. Like the space is permanently full of these people and I am the only one who comes and goes. The only thing different about it today is that everyone is looking at me. They don’t even turn away when I notice. I, for some reason, am today’s gossip.

  Oh shit. I hope they don’t know about me and Stephen. But it’s not that – it’s her. Standing outside Stephen Black’s office. Detective Ivy Turner and her partner the tall quiet cop. What the hell are they doing here?

  Stephen has a look on his face I haven’t seen before. Most likely it’s his ‘Why the hell are the cops looking for you?’ look. I’ll know soon enough because he’s heading in my direction.

  ‘What have you done now?’ he says under his minty fresh breath.

  ‘Nothing, honestly, it has nothing to do with me.’ He asks – no, orders – me to follow him into a nearby room, one of the settlement rooms, while I continue my plea of innocence. ‘The cops seem to think I know something I don’t.’

  ‘Get rid of her quick,’ he says, leaving to get Turner and bring her to the room.

  Turner is ferocious in her questioning, wanting to know where I was at every given moment over the last week, as if I might be Katie Collins’ killer. I’m not a killer, Ivy; I’m many things but not a killer. Her hair is annoying me. The straight black fringe etching a line across her forehead as if it was painted on. It doesn’t move even when she does. I don’t like her jacket either, it’s too casual for her important role. Her face, however, is gifted with perfect features, all sharp corners and piercing dark eyes, and her long lean body looks fit enough to catch an escapee. She won’t need it today. I’m not going anywhere. I have nothing to hide.

  ‘I cannot impress on you enough how important it is that you try to remember every little detail, anything at all th
at might help us find out what happened to Katie.’ She says Katie, Katie, Katie over and over again, appealing to my tender side, making the victim human to me. But she’s wasting her time. I’ve nothing to tell her.

  ‘I wish I could help you, detective. I wish there was something I could say that would help. But I never met the girl.’ Her eyes bore a hole in my head. I don’t think she’s even blinking. She makes me feel vulnerable, weak, in danger.

  ‘What about your family?’ she says. ‘Did you check to see if Katie tried to get in touch with any of them?’

  ‘I mentioned it to my brother and my father, but they know nothing about her.’

  Suddenly I’m lying. I’m not telling her about Katie being at Dad’s house. If she starts bothering him, Danny will blame me, and anyway, I don’t even think Dad knows Katie was at his house. At least, he never mentioned it. The last thing that man needs is more crap to worry about. Mom’s deterioration is enough.

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘My mother is in a nursing home. She has Alzheimer’s.’

  ‘Right.’

  Fuck, I’m lying again. Katie Collins was at my mother’s nursing home but I don’t want to tell Turner because if she calls there this whole thing will blow up and everyone will get dragged into it. People who have nothing to do with it. Or should I tell her? Maybe Katie was followed by the van that followed me. The killer could be working in the nursing home and if I say nothing, it could stop them finding him.

  ‘I think she may have visited my mom,’ I say at last.

  Turner’s eyes open wide. ‘Why do you think that?’

  My hands are sweating, trembling below the table.

  ‘Rebecca, why do you think that?’

  ‘Her name was in the visitor’s book.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I saw it the other day. I think she was there last Saturday.’

  ‘Last Saturday.’ Turner sneaks a glance at her colleague, the quiet guy, he’s wearing a navy jacket and seems to stand by her side doing nothing. ‘Did you see her there?’ she says.