Rolling the length of the causeway, Isaac put the Pontiac between the pair of iron gates. Next to him Clara’s gaze seemed fixed on the wall where moss and lichen scattered the bricks. Inside the grounds she saw the burned-out mansion and an audible breath broke from her lips.
‘Something, isn’t it?’ Isaac said. ‘Saw it myself when I first hit back in the world.’ He let a breath go of his own. ‘This is his handiwork, Mom. What you see there, all that’s left of the building, that’s what Ishmael did.’
Next to him Clara was sitting bolt upright, no color in her face and her hands knotted between her thighs. ‘Why have you brought us here?’
He did not reply. Pulling up out front of the main building he sat for a moment holding the wheel and looked sideways to where she twitched a little in her seat.
‘Relax,’ he told her. ‘It’s all right. I know what I’m doing. This is my kind of country. We’ll be fine.’
Getting out of the car he flipped the seat forward and reached to the foot well behind. When he stood up again he had his father’s Colt 45 in one hand and in the other the bayonet.
‘Recognize this?’ he said. ‘North Africa, the Sbiba Pass, or that’s what he told us at least.’ His eyes had glazed a little and from where she sat in the car, Clara’s voice was sharp.
‘What’s the matter? Are you OK?’
He did not reply.
‘What is it?’ She spoke louder now. ‘Are you all right? Is everything OK?’
He did not answer. He seemed to concentrate on the blade in his hand. His lips parted but he didn’t speak.
Clara got out of the car and stood watching him, her face pale, hands almost pasted to her sides. As if noticing her for the first time, Isaac looked up. He squinted. He looked at the blade again then slipped it into his belt.
‘Ish sure set this place alight.’ He strode towards her now with the tunic of his uniform undone and the bayonet hooked at his side. ‘Can you imagine all the buildings going up? They must’ve really pissed him off.’
His mother did not say anything. She was standing by the car still, her gaze shifting from the ruined walls to the barred, glassless windows and back. Isaac stood beside her, the gun in his hand and his hand hanging at his thigh.
‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘Before Dr Beale got a-hold of him my brother never hurt a fly.’
His mother looked into his face.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘There’s no need to be worried. Look at this place: if he shows up there’s a million different spots we can hide.’ He took her hand. ‘But the fact is I don’t think we need to. I figure I can talk to Ishmael because he used to listen to me.’ He looked a little wistful then. ‘Back when we were kids I’m talking about. He always used to listen to me. And the games we’d play, the adventures we’d get up to, whatever it was, always it was me made the suggestion, not him.’ Slowly he shook his head. ‘Ish never came up with anything, not a swimming tank or a camp spot or where to dip a fishing pole.’
Gazing towards the woodland he threw out a hand. ‘That vacation, the one in Lawton before you took off. You pretty much left us to ourselves. Do you remember that? Me and Ish would be gone from the house right after breakfast and only just back ahead of suppertime. What we’d do, the stuff we’d get up to, that wasn’t anything to do with Ishmael, Mom: it was always down to me.’
Sliding the gun into his belt now his hand hung loose at his side. He stared back up the causeway to the gates. ‘Anyway, what I’m saying to you: probably there’s no need to hide from my brother, but we best not be taking the chance.’ He worked his hand a little absently through his hair. ‘He’ll go back to the house for sure. He’ll figure we went back there but I doubt he’ll think to come here.’ Breaking off for a moment he frowned. ‘But then Ishmael’s got a habit of surprising me so we ought to hole up just in case.’
*
When Nancy switched off the tape Quarrie just stared at the floor. Sitting on the arm of the chair his mouth was dry and he could still hear the voices ringing out. A man and a woman, what had started as a stilted conversation had descended into screams and shouts. After that there had only been one voice, Ishmael’s voice, rising in an animal howl.
‘You were there,’ he said quietly. ‘You and Mary-Beth helped set that up?’
Nancy nodded. ‘We were in the next room. I had to supervise the meds so Mary-Beth worked the tape. Dr Beale had to be in the room with them and Briers was in the corridor outside. Someone had to work the tape so Beale asked Mary-Beth if she would do it and for Ike’s sake, she agreed.’
Quarrie looked at her now. ‘She knew Ike from before?’
‘Of course, we all knew Ike from before.’
‘And the three of you – Ishmael knew you were there?’
Again she nodded. ‘The door to the corridor was open. He saw us when Briers walked him past.’
Quarrie considered the tape recorder on the coffee table. ‘Mary-Beth there for Ike’s sake,’ he murmured, ‘so Ike wasn’t there himself?’
Nancy shook her head. ‘He couldn’t deal with it. And besides, Dr Beale didn’t think it was a good idea.’
Quarrie blew out his cheeks. ‘Given what I just heard he was probably right.’ He looked back at her. ‘Nancy, Beale was killed because he showed up at the Bowen house to try and stop Ishmael finding Clara, only he left it too late. Ishmael killed him and stuffed that page from the address book in his mouth. Beale should’ve spoken to us. He should have called the police right off.’
‘He was convinced he could deal with it.’ Nancy lifted a palm. ‘He told me he thought the police would shoot Ishmael and nobody would be able help him after that. Sergeant, you have to understand that, in the beginning at least, he had no idea about Mary-Beth.’
Moving to the window Quarrie gazed across the grounds where some of the male patients were gathered in their oversized robes. Still he could hear that howl. Not a scream or a cry so much as a deep primordial wail.
‘It didn’t work,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘That experiment. Like you told me back in Tulsa, far from snapping him out of anything it only served to lock him in.’ His gaze carried the dividing wall to the women’s wing. ‘I don’t see it,’ he said. ‘I don’t see the reasoning. What was Beale thinking about?’
Nancy gave a helpless shrug. ‘I don’t know, I’m no psychiatrist, but I told you how he wanted to prove to his colleagues that his theory was right. I think he wanted that so badly he didn’t quite think it through. He told us that something had happened to lock Ishmael into his prison and nobody knew what it was. When he explained his reasoning to Ike, he agreed it was worth a try.’
Quarrie looked sideways at her then. ‘And both of them paid with their lives. Nancy, you did the right thing when you took off. If you’d stuck around your apartment we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. You did the right thing driving to Tulsa. You did the right thing trying to warn Clara. But she should’ve told me who she was when I saw her in Cain’s Ballroom, and she should’ve answered her door when I knocked.’
Nancy did not say anything, she just stood there gazing out of the window with her arms folded about her as if she was cold. Quarrie looked on as the side doors opened and a male orderly came out. Behind him Miss Annie seemed to stumble into the grounds, pushing that old metal stroller ahead of her with the breeze catching wisps of her wasted hair. They both watched as she guided the wheels down the series of stone steps with the orderly falling in behind.
Aware of a chill working through him Quarrie turned from the window once more.
‘Nancy,’ he said, ‘I got a question for you. Where was Ishmael born?’
*
Isaac woke to the light from a single, flickering candle. Blinking slowly he peered left and right, taking in the shadows of a room. Brow furrowed deeply, he seemed to contemplate the way the ceiling hung as if the walls labored under the weight. He was sitting in a worn-out chair in front of an empty fire where aged ashes gathered in flakes of gray. A plethora of unlit candles coating the hearth with strings of calcified wax, he sat very still, aware of the sound of rain falling on the roof.
Turning round in the chair he considered the rest of the room, all in shadow, some darker, some lighter; an old woodstove and beyond it opaque-looking panes of glass.
On his feet he could see something staining the floor. Unable to make it out, he reached for the lighted candle and held it aloft. Marks leading from the door to the chairs then all the way back to the door. Boot prints; he recognized the tread from the patch of earth Quarrie had shown him outside the Bellevue wall.
From the doorway he could barely pick out where the woodland stopped and the perimeter of the hospital began. Rain was falling and the wind seemed to skate through the trees.
‘Mom?’ he called. ‘Are you out there, Mother? Are you there?’
No answer. Nobody returned his call.
Hurriedly, he made his way along the path with one arm outstretched like a blind man until he came to the gap in the wall. On the other side he could just about see where the ruin was squatting against the partially clouded sky. Rain still fell but with the way the wind was blowing those clouds were moving away. ‘Mom?’ he yelled. ‘Where are you? Where are you, Mother? Are you there?’
Still she did not reply. No voice lifting through the darkness, he hesitated for a moment, his already faded uniform soaking up water as his eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness. Halfway to the building he scanned the facade as far as the night would allow. He called out again but still there was no reply. He was about to go on when he heard a sound on the path behind.
*
Ishmael studied the shadow that was his father’s sedan. At the corner of the building he rested a shoulder against the burned and rotten boards. From there he scanned the grounds very carefully before he crossed to the car. Rooting around in the glove box he located a flashlight but did not switch it on. He just crouched by the door and stared at the building where the roof was gone and the upper stories were supported by the pillars below. His gaze travelled from those pillars to the second floor and the fifth window out from the door. For a little while longer he remained where he was, then shot a glance back along the path. Finally, with rain beginning to fade now, he started for the entrance once more.
At the top step he halted, taking in the darkness of the wood where it had burned. A hint of kerosene still lacing the air, he peered into the deeper shadow left by the missing doors. Inside the lobby he flicked on the flashlight, though only for a moment so he could pick out the flight of stairs.
His back to the wall he kept to the right of each step as he made his way up to the second floor. On the landing he paused, the broken-down wall ahead of him and the twin sets of doors either side. Again he cast a little light, the doors intact as if the fire hadn’t bothered them at all. He listened, hearing nothing at first, but then he caught the sound of her voice, a sort of mewling cry that only became recognizable as a human sob when he pushed open the door.
Gaze fixed on the corridor, he hovered where the hallway seemed to drip with shadow. He could hear her crying clearly and the sound was pathetic and lost. It was even more fearful now. At the empty doorway he paused. She was at the window, hands half lifted above her head where he had bound them to the bars. When she realised he was there the crying stopped.
Switching on the flashlight Ishmael cast the beam across all four walls. Every inch of space covered in faded scribblings of stick children, he stared for a minute or more. He did not say anything. Clara did not say anything; she just hunched where she was. His gaze falling on her finally, Ishmael worked his elbow across the grips of the Colt in his jeans and hefted the shotgun in his palm where the duct tape was beginning to wear.
He shut off the flashlight and darkness settled the room. Deliberately he picked his way past the broken-down frame of the bed and Clara shrank back. He could not pick out her features, the white of her face hidden by the weight of her hair.
‘What do you want from me?’ she said.
Ishmael did not reply. Rain fell on the world outside and he just stood there looking down. Then he stepped away. Standing a few paces back he cocked his head to one side.
‘You know I killed my dad.’ His voice seemed to echo in the confines of the room. ‘I guess Isaac figured it out otherwise why else would you be here? I know he’s home. I saw him. I knew he was back from the war.’ His voice seemed to fade into the darkness for a moment, then he spoke again. ‘He shouldn’t have done what he did. The old man, he had me brought down here and he knew what would happen and he should never have done what he did.’
He stood over Clara for a moment then he sat down heavily on the floor. Shotgun over his knees he looked across the room where stick-children gathered to stare.
‘I asked him where you were. I asked him but he wouldn’t tell me. I asked Ms Gavin but she wouldn’t tell me either and I got so mad I started the fire.’ He shook his head. ‘Didn’t mean to do that, or at least I never meant for the records to burn. Ms Gavin, she took off right after but I followed her. I knew where it was she went. I left her alone. I let her be and went home. I went to see Dad to ask him where you were, but he wouldn’t tell me so I had no choice but to go back for her.’
‘Ishmael,’ Clara cut in, ‘why’re you telling me this? What do you want?’
He looked coldly at her then. ‘I’m telling you so you know how it’s been. What do I want? I want you, Clara. That’s what I want.’
Through the gloom he stared. ‘Ms Gavin it was who admitted me.’ He spoke now as if to himself. ‘She was the one did the paperwork, though Nurse Nancy was with her and Mr Briers, the orderly who looked after the dogs. Nice to me he was to begin with, had him those three or four hound dogs, told me how he’d let them loose if any of the inmates broke out. He said there was no better trail dog than a Walker hound, not a Blackmouth or Catahoula Cur.’ He fell silent again then he said, ‘I never got to Nurse Nancy. I saw her, wanted to get to her, but she was with another nurse and I had Briers already in the car. I guess talking to her would’ve been a whole lot easier than talking to him but when your mind is set on a thing …’ In the darkness he shrugged. ‘Anyway, Briers didn’t know where you were at; he said he didn’t know who you were.’
‘Did you kill him too?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Knock that off.’
Another cry broke from her in a half-labored sort of cough.
‘Quit that, woman, I said.’
Sitting there with his heels scraping the floor and his back against the wall Ishmael was just a few paces from where Clara was tied.
‘I planned on bringing you down here myself, but Isaac got there ahead of me and I don’t know why he’d think to do that. Double-bluff or something I suppose. I’ll bet he didn’t figure on me coming down here as well though, did he? Second guessing him like that. He forgets how it used to be when we were kids. I always knew what he was thinking, no matter what.’ He shifted his weight where he sat. ‘Isaac doesn’t know what this place means though, does he? Not unless Dad told him and I doubt he would’ve done that. He has no idea what’s been going on. He joined the army; a Bowen in the service because that’s how it’s always been.’ His voice died for a moment before he went on. ‘It should’ve been me though, right? On account of I was a Bowen long before him.’
No more sobs now, Clara had gone very still.
‘It wasn’t just him though, was it, Clara? I was a Bowen long before you.’
‘Where is he?’ Clara cried. ‘Isaac – what happened to him?’
He did not answer. Chin on his chest and the shotgun still on his knees he stared at the walls and the frame of the bed. ‘I was a Bowen before any of you, though the old man had no account of me.’
‘Is that what you think? Is that what you really believe?’
‘You weren’t there. When he’d had a few drinks, you didn’t hear the things he said.’
‘What happened to you, Ishmael? You have to tell me. I can help you. What happened to you back then?’
Still he sat. Gaze peeling across the walls, perspiration ran on his brow. ‘Do you know what they did to me here?’
Clara did not reply.
‘Dad’s idea it was.’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ she said. ‘Dr Beale told me what happened. After the fire he called and told me what’d happened and it was not your father’s idea.’ Her tone was almost angry now. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know about it. I had no idea. If I had I’d have told them you weren’t ready for that.’
‘Dad thought I was,’ Ishmael said. ‘Maybe it wasn’t his idea but he knew what Beale planned to do and he was happy to let him go ahead. I’ve seen the papers: how he signed me out of Houston and let them bring me down here.’ He wrinkled his lip. ‘Well, now Beale is dead and for all his talk he didn’t know what he was dealing with.’
He sat for a while working the points of his fingers into his eyes. ‘I’m not bad,’ he said. ‘Not a bad man. I’m not a killer; at least not on purpose anyway.’
‘I know that, Ish.’ Her voice came to him gently through the darkness then.
‘Do you?’ He looked over to where she crouched. ‘Do you really?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘So why leave out? Why take off on us when you did?’
‘You know why. You know what happened. You’re the only one who does.’
‘What’re you talking about?’
‘You know what I’m talking about. If you think about it you can remember. You were there, Ishmael: you’re the only one who was.’
Ishmael shook his head. ‘That’s what Beale kept telling me. That’s what he’d say when we’d sit down and he’d try and get me to talk. But I couldn’t get my head around it. I didn’t know what it was he wanted me to say.’
Breaking off for a breath, he went on. ‘They never should’ve brought me here. They never should’ve done what they did. OK, so Dad didn’t want to deal with me and you were gone, but I was all right. I was doing all right. In Houston I was doing OK.’
‘No,’ Clara said. ‘You weren’t. You were getting worse and worse, you were just like …’
‘Just like what?’
She was silent.
‘Come on, say it. Just like what, Clara? Or is the word I’m looking for who?’
With an effort he got to his feet. Working the grips of the pistol around in his waistband again, he unbuttoned his jacket and let it hang loose. ‘When I think about it I should’ve let Briers be and squeezed the life out of Nancy instead. You and the old man, Nurse Nancy, the three of you conspiring the way you did.’
‘Ishmael,’ she said. ‘You have to believe me, darling. It’s not how you think it was.’
‘Don’t call me that,’ he snapped. ‘Don’t you call me that; I’m not your darling. Isaac’s your darling. I’m nothing to do with you.’
‘Where is he?’ she cried. ‘What happened to Isaac? For heaven’s sake, what did you do?’
Pacing the floor he had his head down and she could not make out his face. ‘You haven’t seen her, have you? In all these years you haven’t seen her once.’ Dropping to one knee he reached out and gripped her chin. ‘I hadn’t seen her till they brought me down here. I had no idea who she was.’ He stared right into her eyes. ‘So imagine this. Dad tells me that Dr Beale is going to help me now because all those other doctors in Houston have got their diagnosis wrong. He swings by the sanatorium to tell me and that’s something he’s never done. Visit with me, I’m talking about. You know the old man, Clara: he likes to hole up in that big old house by himself. Have you seen it? Have you been there, right up in the grassland all on its own? Everything is just so. Everything is shipshape like he’s in the service still. He did the remodel himself. He even made a storm shelter all stacked with food and water in case of a hurricane or something, I saw the plans before he put it in. You should see the place, a room under the garage with a passage that leads to the house.’ Breaking off suddenly he cocked his head. ‘You hear that?’ he said. ‘I thought I heard something. Did you hear that?’
Moving to the door he stepped out into the corridor to take a look and then he came back. Again the silence took him and he sat cross-legged against the wall.
‘So anyway, there I am in Houston and here’s Dad and this young doctor I’ve never seen before. Told me his name was Beale and he worked a bunch of hospitals and he knew how to help me once and for all.’ He threw out a hand. ‘I don’t know what they think is wrong with me. There isn’t anything wrong with me. I tried to tell you that before you left. I tried to tell Dad but neither of you would listen. Only Isaac ever listened. It was always him and me.’
Clara was weeping. Working her hands across the bars she shifted her position so she could see him where he was hunched against the wall. Outside the rain had stopped and the moon was out and a pale glimmer spread across the half-burned floor. Blinking through tears she could see the scribblings, the bed frame and the corridor beyond the door.
‘Dr Beale,’ Ishmael went on. ‘He brought me down here and I talked to Ms Gavin and I had no idea Dad knew her from before. I talked to Nurse Nancy and Briers let me play with the dogs.’ Lifting a hand he gestured. ‘I had my own room and they didn’t even lock me in. It wasn’t a bad deal actually, what with the dogs and the woods and all.’ His voice had dropped an octave. ‘The patients were all right too, some of them anyway: they worked the garden and a couple of them helped the caretaker with his chores.’ Lifting a hand he bent his little finger at the knuckle and held it to the moonlight so it looked as though part of it was gone. ‘I’d seen him before. He never knew it and I never told him, but I’d seen that old man before.’
He fell silent again, sitting with his chin on his chest. From the window Clara peered at him, trying to penetrate the gloom.
‘What was I talking about?’ Ishmael said. ‘Oh yeah: how they brought me down here, the patients and everything.’ Switching on the flashlight he panned it across the walls.
*
Quarrie saw the light from the hospital gates. A few moments earlier he had driven the length of the causeway with no headlamps burning and made it as far as the drive. As he opened the car door he picked out that snatch of brightness coming from the second floor. He reached for his gunbelt where it lay on the passenger seat. Buckling it around his waist he slipped the hammer clips off and eased both pistols halfway out of their holsters before allowing them to settle once more.
*
Ishmael stared at Clara where she cowered, her gaze shifting from his shadow to the drawings on the walls.
‘This was her room,’ he said as he turned off the torch. ‘This was where she slept and this was where Nurse Nancy showed up one night with a couple of orderlies all those years ago.’ He fell silent, ears pricked as if he heard something from outside again. On his feet he went to the window and peered through the bars.
‘It’s remote here, miles from anywhere. They told me this used to be a rich man’s place. He died though, he died and it was a hospital after, and far enough away from anybody else for it not to be a problem if any of the nut-jobs escaped.’ Turning from the window he looked down. ‘Well, one of them did, Clara. One of them got away.’
Quarrie thought he caught a glimpse of a shadow as it appeared at the window above. Fleeting, no more than a whisper, moonlight breaking the clouds, he was working his way across the lawn.
*
Upstairs Ishmael dropped to his haunches in front of Clara. She twisted her head away but he gripped her chin a second time.
‘The old man’s idea,’ he said, ‘or maybe it was Dr Beale; but whoever it was they brought me down here and let me settle in. They let me wander around, but always with Briers there to keep an eye on me. He showed me those dogs; let me fuss over them. Between him and Beale, Nurse Nancy, they let me settle in.
‘Then one night they came to my room. I don’t know what’s going on because nobody’s telling me, but they walk me around back of this building right past the office and kerosene store. Briers, he brings me into this corridor and as I pass this one room I see the door is open and there’s Ms Gavin from the office along with Nancy McClain. I see Nurse Nancy has a tray of meds and Ms Gavin’s got a tape recorder all set up and I don’t think anything of it till Briers brings me into the next room.’ Breaking off then he curled his lip. ‘That orderly, he sits me down at a table with two chairs and another under a mirror against the wall. On the table there’s a pack of playing cards like the old man used to keep but never play.’
Still he held Clara by the chin, keeping her eyes fixed on his. ‘Dad wasn’t there but he knew what was going on. He told me that much when I asked him and that was just before I shot him on account of how he wouldn’t tell me any more.’ Taking the pistol from his belt he pressed the barrel against Clara’s skull. She gave a squeal, a little whimper, and he could feel her shaking where he pinched her skin.
‘He didn’t squirm. He didn’t cry out. He didn’t do anything at all. He just stared into nothing like he didn’t give a shit. His own gun, I squeezed that trigger. I squeezed that trigger then I sat him up where he flopped in the chair.’
*
Quarrie was inside the building. Taking great care with the front steps, he crossed the ruined lobby floor. A glimmer from the moon through the empty doorway, he could see the staircase where it scaled the wall.
*
Rocking back on his heels, Ishmael let go of Clara’s chin. Lifting the pistol he waved the barrel in front of her nose.
‘So I’m sat there waiting and not knowing what’s going on. Then Dr Beale comes in and I’m at the table and he sits down in the chair underneath the mirror.’ He nodded then as if to himself. ‘He doesn’t sit across the table from me but in that other chair and he starts on about some goddamn cornfield and a game of hide-and-seek. I tell him I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, but then the door opens and there’s Briers with this old witch of a woman everyone avoids like the plague. Thin hair and bug eyes, she looks about a hundred years old.’ He pressed his face close to Clara’s now. ‘Only she’s not a hundred years old, is she? She’s not much older than you.’
Shifting the Colt to his other hand he wiped his palm on his thigh. ‘I’m going to kill you, Clara, just like I killed my dad.’
‘Ishmael, please—’
‘Before I do that I’m going to tell you what I asked that old woman and what it was she said to me.’ In the shadows he clicked his jaw. ‘I had no idea. I had no idea this was what Dad had been talking about when he told me Dr Beale was taking me away from Houston. It’s why they took their time to let me settle in. I’d seen her, they made sure of it. I’d spoken to Briers about her and little by little, I guess, they let it all feed in. How she used to be a nurse and everything, one of four good friends, and how she was married back then.’
He was crying. Clara could hear the tears as they climbed in his voice. She peered through the darkness trying to catch the look in his eye.
‘You don’t have to do this, Ishmael,’ she stammered. ‘You don’t have to—’
‘Yes, I do. Of course I do. This is for her. I’m not doing it for you.’
Outside they heard a sound like the creak of a door and Ishmael was rigid where he crouched. Picking up the shotgun, he stuffed the pistol back in his waistband and scurried to the door. Shoulder to the doorjamb he peered the length of the hall. There was no one there and, shifting his weight, he looked the other way. Briefly he flicked on the flashlight and shone it along the hall then back again to the door. No one, nothing, everything was as before. Switching the flashlight off again he remained where he was for a few moments then turned back into the room.
‘So this woman,’ he said, ‘this pathetic creature clutching her doll, they sit her down across the table and I know this is someone who stabbed her old man three times on account of he was having an affair.’ Pausing in front of Clara, he dropped to his haunches once more. ‘Imagine that,’ he said. ‘Stabbing your husband because he had an affair. But it wasn’t just any old affair. Her old man was sleeping with her best friend, another nurse working nights at the same hospital and that hospital was right here.’
His voice seemed to echo, hollow almost in his chest. ‘No wonder she got so mad. I mean, your husband and your best friend fooling around behind your back, that’s most of what you ever put your trust in gone in a moment, right there.’ He paused for a second before he went on. ‘She only found out because she was sick one day and had to go home. Peggy-Anne her name was, she drove herself home to her husband because she wasn’t feeling so good and needed him to take care of her like a husband is supposed to do. But when she got home she found her best friend’s car parked in the driveway and she couldn’t figure why it was there.’
Clara was trembling, forced against the wall still, her hands caught above her head.
‘Well, anyway,’ Ishmael said. ‘Peggy goes in the house and she can hear voices coming from the bedroom. When she opens the door she sees her best friend half-naked, grinding away on her old man.’
His voice had cracked; knuckles taut around the grips of the gun. ‘Poor Peggy, she was so hurt, so shocked, so distraught by it all she didn’t know what to do. Stumbling around in the hallway she found the bayonet her husband was supposed to have taken from a German in World War II. I guess she picked it up and then her husband comes rushing out of the bedroom to try and calm her down, but she’s not about to calm down and she stabbed him with his own blade.’ As he spoke he worked the barrel of the pistol into Clara’s belly. ‘Three times she stabbed him but he didn’t die. Peggy-Anne Bowen, your best friend and Dad’s wife before he divorced her so he could marry you.’
Getting to his feet he stood above her. He had the shotgun at hip height, fingers flexed around the grips. ‘Attempted murder, they called it. But by then she wasn’t Peggy-Anne Bowen anymore, she was this Miss Annie person who’d been living in Peggy’s head. Too sick to be tried in a criminal court, she was locked away right here.’
Stretching his shoulders he worked his head around in a circular motion as if his neck was stiff. ‘As far as the world was concerned that was OK I guess; only nobody knew what Miss Annie had going on. Nobody knew anything about any of it, not till it started to show.’ Viciously he bent to her then. ‘But that wasn’t all, was it, Clara? By the time you found out she was pregnant you were carrying Dad’s baby too.
‘So, anyway,’ he said, stepping back. ‘I’m set there with Dr Beale and Briers wheels in this sick old woman clutching her doll, and they sit her down at the table and she’s eyeing the deck of cards like she wants to play.’ Vaguely he gestured. ‘Tells me how she used to play blackjack with her husband when she was first married, a whole bunch of years ago. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know why I’m there and I’m not about to play a game of cards with some old loon. So I sit there and I look at her and I look at Dr Beale because I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to a woman who stabbed her husband three times. Miss Annie, it seems she doesn’t know what to say either. She’s not talking now. She’s holding that doll as if she’s afraid I’m going to take it away.’
His voice stalled as tears worked onto his cheeks. ‘But I know I have to say something because that’s why we’re there. So I’m looking at her and I say the first thing that comes in my head. I lean across the table as far as I dare and I nod to the doll she’s clutching and ask Miss Annie what’s her baby’s name.’ Shaking his head he let go an audible breath. ‘You know what she told me, Clara? You know what Miss Annie said? She looked at me across that table with Dr Beale in the corner and Briers outside and Ms Gavin taping the whole thing. My baby’s name is Ishmael, she said.’
Clara was sobbing as he worked the action on the shotgun and pointed it at her head.
‘So now you know. Now you know what happened to me, and that’s why I came after you. It took me a while to track you down, but I told them I would kill them all if that’s what it took, and finally here we are. You betrayed her, Clara; you betrayed your best friend. You stole me from her the day I was born just like you stole my dad.’
‘Ishmael,’ she cried, ‘nobody stole you. Nobody stole your dad. Peggy was sick, she was very ill. There was no way we could leave a newborn baby with her.’
‘But why was she sick? That’s the question. What was it made her that way?’ His words seemed to break like ice. ‘It was you, Clara, you and the old man. Doing what you did behind her back – that’s enough to send anyone crazy for sure.’
Movement in the hall outside and Ishmael froze. He stood there in silence then a voice lifted through the darkness and he stared into Clara’s eyes.
‘Put the shotgun down, Ishmael.’ Quarrie stepped from the corridor into the doorway. ‘You’ve done enough killing. You’re not killing anyone today.’
For a moment Ishmael did not move, his gaze still fixed on Clara’s face. Standing tall he turned. Quarrie no more than a shadow in the moonlight, Ishmael stared at his outline with the shotgun levelled and his head cocked to one side.
‘I’m a cop, Ishmael. Texas Ranger, and I need you to put that shotgun down.’
Ishmael did not say anything. He stood his ground.
‘I ain’t holding.’ Quarrie lifted his palms. ‘You can see my weapons are holstered. I don’t want to shoot you. I don’t want to hurt you. I want you to put that shotgun down.’
Watching him, Quarrie waited; ten seconds, fifteen. Then, through the gloom, he glimpsed the way Ishmael’s shoulders started to twitch. In slow motion almost, he saw the way his arms began to climb. The barrel came up but before Ishmael could squeeze the trigger Quarrie drew a pistol and fired.
Two shots, left hand covering the hammer, the sound seemed to shatter the air. Ishmael slammed against the wall with the shotgun spilling from his grip. For a moment he hung there and then he slid down the wall. Just a pace away Clara was screaming as he buckled at the knees.
He was on his side on the floor, both palms clutching his stomach; he blinked at stick-children where they leered from the walls.
As she bent over him Clara’s arms were stretched across her chest so harshly it seemed they would be sucked from the sockets where she was bound to the window bars.
‘Don’t you die on me,’ she screamed. ‘Isaac – where is he? What happened to him? Ishmael, where’s your brother? What did you do?’