CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 

By the time he’d returned home, Tam was ravenous. His father had risen and shaved and was seated at the table in the kitchen watching a game show on TV. Tam’s grandmother had been picked up and ran her dry palm over his shaved head as he came in. She was helping with the preparations even though he knew his mother had tried to do most of them before she arrived so she wouldn’t interfere.

He seated himself at the table with his father and looked at the food under the coloured plastic covers. He knew better than to try and sneak a morsel before everyone else sat down.

There was only room for four around the table. Grandmother didn’t use to come very often on a Sunday, but he’d been told she’d become very lonely since grandfather had passed away. But grandfather had died over two summers ago and Tam wondered if she’d been invited so the empty chair wouldn’t remind them of Songsuda.

From what his father said it was obvious his sister had chosen to become friends with the tourists. They had money so it made sense to Tam that Songsuda had done so because they might share some of it with her. He didn’t know why his father had been so angry about it. He used to sell food to them, he was happy to take their notes and coins when they had their hot plate at the market.

His father often spoke about the tourists when he thought Tam was out of earshot. Tam picked up on things. How could he blame the tourists for what happened to Songsuda when it was him that had shut her out of the house?

He wondered what his father would do if he had one of the tourists locked up in a cage. Would he sit and watch while he sipped his beer like Skinny Man in the chicken factory? He couldn’t imagine him being so cruel.

He looked at his father’s profile while he watched the TV. His skin looked shiny and smooth after his shave and his hair was wet and combed back. It was the only day of the week he looked so clean. He considered telling him about her then. It wasn’t very often his father spoke to him aside from the orders he barked when they were making their deliveries on the bike. This was something important he knew would get his attention.

But Tam liked the idea of knowing something important his father didn’t. The girl was his secret. And after that afternoon he wasn’t frightened of her, more intrigued. Also Songsuda was gone because she’d made friends with the tourists. Tam was scared his father would banish him if he told him where he’d been going. And he didn’t ever want to be locked outside when the sun went down.

Tam wanted to go back, to see more of the girl and find out why she was in the cage. Most of all, he wanted to see under the hood. But he wouldn’t ever take anything from her. That had been Songsuda’s mistake.

 

“We’re the first team to the scene.” Weaver jumped down from the four-wheel’s driving seat and opened the passenger door to retrieve the camera.

Pope didn’t move. Through the smoked windscreen he studied the two cop cars parked across the house’s triple garage. “What’s the hurry?”

Weaver looked stunned. “What are you talking about? We’ve got the jump on everyone else.”

“So what? The police will secure the scene and we’ll have to wait in line with the rest of the procession. This is worthless.” He brandished Weaver’s iPad.

“We got delayed. Frost can only have been here minutes ago. Call the channel, see what they want us to do.”

“OK, OK.” Pope pulled out his phone. “You go get set up.”

Weaver hoisted the camera from the back seat and slammed the door.

Pope held the phone to his ear in case he turned back. It wasn’t working. Even with foreknowledge they hadn’t succeeded in catching up with Frost let alone arriving at the location to capture events as they unfolded. Maybe the occupants of every house were already murdered and it was just Frost’s task to retrieve his daughter’s items from the bodies. None of the police information about the Amberson family or the corpses in Ellicott City intimated at how long the victims had been dead.

Whatever the case, he needed to get ahead of the story or, at the very least, as inside it as Frost was. But he hadn’t established a common thread between any of the victims and Weaver was becoming a liability. He would call the channel if he suspected Pope was acting on his own. It was Weaver’s weekend off, but, after today the desk would be in touch with the cameraman’s new assignment and then his story would fall apart.

His phone vibrated at his ear. The display told him he’d received a text.

 

? 

  

At first he thought it was Lenora, but when he checked the number he realised it was Patrice. Shit. Sean’s twenty-first. He’d promised to head over there today. He swiftly dialled.

“So you’re still going to drop everything for us?”

Pope could hear the washing machine whirring in the background. “Patrice, I had to leave town.” He waited for a reaction, but there was none. “Not my choice.” Another lie, and he couldn’t deny that yesterday’s conversation had gone clean from his mind.

“Maybe his thirtieth then.” She hung up.

Pope leaned his head against the hand holding the phone. Yesterday she hadn’t given him the impression that he was remotely welcome there. Now it was clear she’d been waiting for him to be more insistent. Had waited, given up and called. He should have been round there already, should have just turned up on her doorstep whatever she’d said. Lenora would have understood. Lenora wouldn’t even have known he’d gone. Another chance blown. He wished Patrice just got angry with him instead of having to endure her weary stoicism.

He watched an officer moving Weaver away from the perimeter of the house – too late to the scene again.

 

“Richard Strick.” Carla waited with the hot telephone pressed hard to her ear while Will searched his memory for the name. She could hear his lips move as he repeated it. But, after a few moments, she knew it was as familiar to him as it was to her.

“And he’s what?”

“Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, he was visiting his ex-wife and their children in Ellicott City.” Carla quoted the information from her screen and waited for a further reaction. After the identities of the second family had been reported on CNN, she’d done an online search. “Democrat, lawyer, Roman Catholic, Georgetown University – I’ve cross-referenced the names, but Strick has no immediate association with Holt Amberson.” But Carla was glad she had the new development to distract Will.

Other than Libby’s scan photo, he hadn’t told her what he’d left behind in Pepperwood Springs. He probably thought the fact their unborn grandchild was being used would be distressing enough. It dragged at her heart. They were truly evil people. Libby had shared the photo online with her Facebook friends. The kidnappers would only have had to glance at her wall and seen all the messages there to know she was pregnant.

“There must be a local connection…” Will’s response was a monotone. Was he really hearing what she said?

There was nothing she could do to mitigate Will’s ordeal. She had to keep his mind occupied with the details that had just been made public “Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, Will, the media are all over it. I’ll keep searching. Where are you now?”

“Bowling alley car park,” he said listlessly. “There’s no new information on the site yet.”

She could hear him lean away from the phone to check it again, hear the swish of his body against the car seat. Carla maximised the site window and looked at the next house in the row – a stucco-fronted, luxurious apartment block. There were six floors and a crenulated parapet, but it looked like a relatively new structure. The cut out image had been shrunk to fit the others in the scrapbook street. She wondered how Will felt knowing what he would find there. She had to motivate him. Make him think only of Libby. “That’s three of the items you have now…”

“It’s a woman.”

“What?” she said eventually. But she hadn’t misheard.

“I tried to call ahead to the house and a woman answered. She was the one who killed them. And the police were looking for a woman with a knife.”

Carla’s couldn’t speak.

“I think she called them. Sent them to a house nearby just to toy with me. I’m going to be arrested soon anyway. There was one definite witness, a pensioner next door. And some kids in the street. I was watched from a window when I left the house in Ellicott City as well.”

Carla tried to process how Will could be hunted for the crimes of a woman. “We can explain everything when it’s over.” Over. What did that mean?

The silence from the other end said he was sharing the same thought.

She kept talking, trying to galvanise him. “At this rate you’ll be able to stay ahead of the investigation. The site is our edge. We’re the only ones who have the window between the murders and the police discovering the bodies.” And then it struck her, the reality of what Will was being subjected to. The image on the site of the Ambersons was horrific enough, but seeing death at such close quarters was something she couldn’t possibly have faced alone.

“They’re all in denial.”

Carla said nothing. She knew what he was referring to.

“You saw the Ambersons. The others have been posed like they’re refusing to see something. The Strick family’s heads were buried in the ground.”

Carla clenched her eyes. A detail she’d been spared. She knew Will was thinking out loud. “Let the police work it out. We just have to do what they say.”

“The bracelet, the scarf, now the pendant – I’ve found them all on the bodies of the fathers. I’m taking those things away from the crime scene. They’re more or less mocking the police investigation by hanging the pictures. I’m expected to work something out.”

“There was no picture you missed at the first house?”

“I don’t think so. But then it was a holiday apartment. No family photos to disguise it amongst. Anything alien left there would have stuck out.”

At that moment Simon Haste entered Will’s office.

“Carla?”

Carla held her hand up to him. “Simon’s just barged in,” she said loudly enough for her intruder to hear. “I’ll call you straight back.” She put down the handset.

“Your secretary said you were indisposed…” He his untidy white eyebrows were raised.

Carla was suddenly aware of how much sunlight there was in the office because of the amber halo around Haste’s unnaturally dark hairpiece. Haste was in his early seventies, but looked a lot older. Semi-retired and a fifth wheel board member he retained a 23.9 per cent share in Ingram.

“I am indisposed.” She said it categorically.

“Another gala dinner in the offing? Hope the venue for this one is better than the last.”

The last time she’d spoken to Haste it had been to placate him about the lack of wheelchair access for his wife. She tried to dismiss him. “Can’t talk, but give my regards to Mo.”

Haste lingered. “She’s having another one of her bone scans on Monday. I thought Will was on holiday,” he said petulantly.

“He is.”

“They’ve called me in on this emergency strategics committee so if Will is around.” The words whistled over the acrylic of his dentures.

“He’s not,” she said with equal economy. Haste was obviously after Will so he could absent himself from the meeting.

“OK,” he said with resignation. “Better Sunday here than wrestling with the grandkids, I suppose.”

Carla didn’t respond to his conspiratorial wink.

“Any idea where the Waterloo Room is?”

“Up one floor, ask Nissa to take you up.” She signalled to her.

“Right.” Haste looked around the office as if expecting to find Will hiding somewhere.

“He’s not here, I promise,” she said bluntly.

“Yes. I’m not blind. Hope he’s not neglecting you. I wouldn’t if I were him.” He showed her his false teeth in a smile and left the office.

As he became more fragile it was easy to forget Haste’s aggressive corporate past. She watched him leave unsteadily. After Nissa led him away, Carla slammed and locked the door to the office. Nissa turned back with censure in her expression. Was it because Carla had lumbered her with wet nursing Haste or was her suspicion deepening about what was going on?