American Crow (32 page)

‘You’ve no idea where the fuck you’ve
buried a teenage girl?’

I yanked away the covers revealing her
warm, pale body and forced the gun between her clamped thighs.

‘How-do-I-find-the girl?’ I said
snarling.

‘We…we spoke to her…yes, spoke to her,
via a microphone next to the monitor downstairs. Maybe
she
could tell
you where she is, if she’s still conscious...He was going to pull the oxygen
this morning because the others couldn’t make it this weekend. He said we’d got
enough out of her.’

‘Enough of what?’ I said venomously.

‘Inspiration…’ she croaked, eyeing the
gun nervously between her legs.

‘Show me where she is! Get up!’ I yelled,
grabbing her by the hair and pulling her out of bed.

She screamed as she hit the ground, then
scrambled on all fours towards the door like a dog, until she pulled herself up
and stood shaking in the doorway.

‘Go…’

I forced her downstairs, then re-entered
the same work room that looked out across the mountains and shoved the gun in
her back.

‘Show me...’

Tolley pointed lamely at the furthest
easel. There was a monitor sat on top of a waist-high table, with a microphone
protruding from its side on a long flexible arm. I just hadn’t noticed it
before in the pre-dawn gloom.

‘Switch it on, quick…’ I yelled, my heart
pounding.

Her trembling frame slipped past me, then
fiddled around with various switches nervously, until the black and white
monitor flickered slowly into life.

The resulting picture was a fluttering
blur...

‘Fix it, fix it!’ I shouted, shoving the
gun into her ribs.

She fumbled with the tuning dials until
the picture steadied. Now I could make out the rough outline of a slender body
lying on a mattress, a pair of feet positioned closest to the screen.

‘Olivia...’ I said anxiously into the
microphone.

No response. I turned to the artist.

‘It’s not working...’

Tolley reached over my shoulder and
pressed another button to activate it. Now I could hear the crackle of a
speaker.

‘Olivia…’ I said again.

Nothing.

‘Olivia...’

No movement.

‘Can I hear her speak?’

‘Yes, it’s two-way,’ Tolley said
shivering.

‘Olivia!’ I shouted, beginning to think I
was too late.

Suddenly a foot twitched. Then some
fingers moved on her right hand.

‘Daddy…’ an anguished voice moaned
softly.

It
was
her.

‘My name’s Blake. Your father, Henry sent
me. I’m here to take you back to London, take you back home...’

‘Where…?’

She was semi-conscious. Weak.

‘Do you know where they buried you,
Olivia?’ I said several times loudly.

‘No…I…’

She was alive, though for how much longer
I couldn’t be sure if Corrigan had pulled the plug on her breathing tube.

‘Now I want you to listen to me, Olivia.
It’s important. I need you tell me how I can find you. I want you to move a
foot left for yes, and no for a right, okay?’

Her foot moved slightly to the left.

‘Good girl.’

‘Did they take you out of the front door
where the lake is?’

Her foot remained still.

‘Olivia, did they take you out of the
back door?’

A toe twitched to the left. I asked her
again. It moved in the same direction.

‘Good girl...’

I glanced at Tolley who now had her arms
wrapped around herself, looking like a ghost of her former self.

‘You better hope that we get her out
alive, you bitch,’ I said, eyeing her with disgust.

‘Now Olivia, I need you to tell me how
far you walked roughly to the burial site. I want you to think hard. Was it
twenty paces?’

Her toe twitched right, signalling a no.

‘Was it forty paces?’

Nothing.

‘Was it forty paces?’

Nothing.

‘Was it forty…’

Her foot twitched to the right.

‘Was it sixty?’

Her foot twitched to the right again. I
stared at the monitor anxiously, fearing she was slipping into unconsciousness
through the lack of oxygen.

‘Olivia, stay with me…was it sixty
paces?’

No movement again.

‘Shit!’ I yelled, slamming the flat of my
hand down onto the monitor table, making it shake.

‘Was it sixty?’ I boomed loudly into the
microphone making it distort.

Her foot moved to the right.

‘Was it a hundred paces, do you think?’

Her toe twitched right.

‘A hundred and fifty?’

Nothing. I ran a hand over my face and
groaned in desperation.

‘A hundred and fifty?’

It twitched slightly to the right.

‘Two hundred?’

Her toe twitched to the left. A yes...

‘Good girl, Olivia, stay with me…Did you
walk straight ahead from the back door.’

Nothing.

‘Did you take a right?’

Her toe moved weakly to the left.

‘Was that a hard right you took?’

It twitched slightly again to the left.

‘Is there a tool shed? A shovel?’ I said
desperately to Tolley.

‘Far end of the building, at the back.
Follow the porch along to its end...’

‘Show me!’

I pushed her angrily out through the
doors. She staggered child-like along the porch, a far cry from the
sophisticated artist I’d seen back at the gallery when she was riding high on a
wave of adulation. Halfway down, she stopped suddenly, fanned the tool-cupboard
open, then stepped aside allowing me to grab a shovel hanging from the wall.

‘Stay there,’ I ordered, running back to
check the monitor.

I grabbed the microphone.

‘Now I’m going to come out and find you,
honey. I want you to count for a whole minute then start hitting the lid of the
box every five seconds, with everything you’ve got left, okay?’

No response.

‘Shit…’

I sprinted back out and grabbed Tolley by
the arm, then threw her down the steps onto the grass. Just as I was about to
haul her up, I felt a presence suddenly come up behind me. I span around
expecting trouble and got it. It was Redhead. And he had an axe raised above
his head...

‘Fuck!’

I leapt out of the way as the weapon
thudded into the earth, then righted myself as the henchman tried to extract it
from the heavy ground. Just as he’d managed to free it and raise it again, I
grabbed the shovel and brought it hard up under his chin, sending him
staggering backwards, temporarily dazed.

I charged at him and swung again, but he
recovered quickly and ducked, then came at me wildly with his fists. I darted
left and right avoiding the fierce blows, then seizing my moment, thrust the
shovel into his guts knocking the wind out of him, before smashing the shovel
against the side of his head with everything I had left.

He hit the ground hard with the impact.
Tolley screamed and ran over to him.

‘I think you’ve killed him.’

‘Really,’ I said hands on knees, trying
to catching my breath.

She nodded, her face ashen.

‘Go!’ I wheezed, pointing behind her, ‘in
that direction. And count two hundred paces!’

Tolley staggered up and broke into a
disorientated run. A second later I followed her into the murky forest to see
her naked figure weaving its way through the trees haphazardly. Eventually she
stopped and turned. 

‘Two hundred...’

I joined her in the small clearing then
scanned the immediate area for signs of disturbance. I couldn’t see a damned
thing in the half-light, nothing even resembling an air pipe...

‘Fuck it!’

Knowing there wasn’t much time left if
any, I knelt down and placed my ear against the cold, damp earth. Silence. Just
the sounds of the dawn chorus breaking cheerfully above us. I stood back up and
shuffled another few metres back then listened again.

Nothing.

‘Come on Olivia...’ I muttered anxiously,
hoping she would have the strength to do this final task and free herself.

I hauled myself up and repeated the
process again, this time a little further...Now I could hear a faint tapping.

‘Yes!’ Over there! Over there!’ I yelled
at Tolley.

I crawled another five metres and pressed
my ear hard against the earth. Tap, tap, tap...I fanned my hands out across the
earth and skimmed over a raised section covered in leaves. Hurriedly I cleared
the ground cover away, then felt a slight depression where an a breathing tube
may once have been inserted.

‘Dig here, you fucking bitch. Dig!’

She looked at me bewildered then slammed
the pointed shovel lamely into the earth as I pointed the gun at her head.

‘I can’t!’

I snatched it from her, then shoved the
gun in my belt and began to dig furiously, working my way through the leafy
loam into darker, root-filled soil. Inches transformed painfully into feet,
turned slowly into a deep oblong hole. Eventually I heard the sound of metal on
metal as the shovel struck the box.

‘Get the rest of the soil off!’ I ordered
desperately.

Crying, she lowered herself down into the
excavation and helped scoop the remaining handfuls of soil out, until I could
clearly discern a four foot by six foot metal container beneath our
feet.     

‘Out of the way,’ I shouted, prizing the
flange of the shovel underneath the edge of the lid.

After a torturous few seconds, it creaked
and gave way. I yanked it back triumphantly and saw Olivia’s frail body at my
feet. She was lying on a pissed-stained mattress, her eyelids clamped shut, her
face a ghostly white.

‘Help me get her out!’ I screamed at
Tolley, ‘Now!’

In tandem we reached down and birthed
Olivia’s emaciated frame out into the soft Kentucky dawn, where she lay
motionless like some frozen sparrow.

‘Out of the way!’

I lowered my ear to her mouth. She wasn’t
breathing...I checked the pulse in her neck. I couldn’t feel the slightest
twinge. She was dying if not dead already. Hurriedly, I pumped her chest. One,
two, three, one, two, three...

Nothing. I’d been here before...

‘Come on Olivia!’

I pumped harder and blew into to her
mouth.

‘Breathe, damn you, breathe!’

One, two...

Nothing still.

‘Shit...’

I tried again. One, two, three...

Suddenly she gasped, coughed and opened
her terrified eyes as if she’d surfaced from hell itself, then started to cry
uncontrollably. I lifted her up into my arms then held her frozen body tightly
against mine for a while. Just held her...

‘It’s okay, darling. It’s okay,’ I
whispered again. ‘You’re safe now. It’s all over. We’re taking you home...’

Chapter Thirty-One

‘the film’

I
kicked the door open with the heel of my boot then carried
Olivia into the kitchen in my arms. Martha thundered down the stairs as if
panic-stricken at the intrusion then just stood there for a second, seemingly
shocked at the sight of the girl.

‘Blake!’ she said eventually, ushering me
over to the sofa where I laid the girl down. ‘You’ve found her?’

‘Yes, I have...’

‘Oh my god she looks likes death.’

‘That’s because she’s been buried alive
for the last few days, in a metal box.’

Martha looked at me aghast, then stooped
down and placed a tender hand against Olivia’s cheek.

‘She’s asleep?’

‘Yes, and she’s weak. But at least she’s
alive and in one piece,’ I said.

‘Where’s Nance?’ she said righting
herself.

I looked up at her and relayed the news
with my eyes.

‘No…please no…’ she said softly, her
bottom lip quivering.

‘I’m sorry.’   

I reached out and squeezed her arm unsure
of what to do.

‘Are you sure?’ she said sounding
distraught, the back of her hand held against her mouth.

‘Yes. I saw it happen.’

Martha lowered her head into her hands
and began to sob, then looked up angrily.

‘If you hadn’t come into our lives then
she would still be alive damn you! Why…why…?’ she said over and over, slapping
me hard around the face, before wrestling herself into my arms.

She gripped me tightly, and cried harder.

‘I’m sorry...’

‘How did it happen?’ she croaked
eventually.

‘Corrigan strangled her, and I couldn’t
do a damned thing to stop him,’ I replied, the euphoria of finding the girl
quickly evaporating again. ‘I’m so, so sorry...’

‘Corrigan,’ she spat. ‘I’ll kill him...My
god, I don’t care how I do it, I-will-kill-that son of…’

‘I’ve done it for you already, Martha,
and for Nancy and every other good man and woman in Appalachia who’s died at
his hands. He’s gone for good, okay.’

She sniffed and wiped her tears on my
shoulder and pulled away slightly.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes. I saw him fall into the stinking
slurry basin that’s called Gallow’s Creek. He’s dead...’

‘How fitting,’ she said, beginning to
compose herself, ‘First Benjamin, then Nancy. My two closest friends...both
dead because of that vile man.’

I turned and helped myself to some coffee
on the stove and shook my head.

‘I’m sorry that it came to this, Martha,
I really am...’

‘You didn’t know the depths that that man
could stoop to,’ she said calmer, placing a blanket over Olivia.

‘No…’ I muttered, knowing that my
obsession with finding the girl had ended up getting Nancy killed.

‘At least the Corrigan Corporation will
be thrown into disarray. Maybe it might even save a few mountains, huh?’

‘I’d like to think that,’ I said,
thinking that there would always be another monster to replace a monster in the
dark world we lived in.

‘At least Nancy’s death would mean
something, you know?’ she sniffed, taking the generous glass of bourbon I’d
poured for her.

I nodded vacantly, feeling exhausted. I
hoped she was right, I really did. Martha downed the tumbler, wiped her streaming
nose on her sleeve, then stood up trying to gather herself.

‘She needs to eat something. I have some
of my famous mountain soup on the go. The sooner she gets some nourishment
inside her, the quicker she’ll recover.’

I went down on one knee and gently roused
Olivia by rubbing the outside of her arm.

‘Wake up, honey. You’re safe now. Wake
up...’

She murmured then slowly opened one eye,
then another. She looked dreadful still. Fragile. But at least the terror had
dissipated from her sunken eyes.

‘We’re going to give you some soup,
darling. You need to eat.’

‘I’m not sure that I can,’ she replied
eventually, the words whispered lamely from her cracked lips.   

I eased her up into a sitting position as
Martha appeared with a steaming bowl of broth, which she then spooned slowly
into her unwilling mouth. She coughed suddenly, sending most of it down the
clean shirt I’d found for her at the hunting lodge. I smiled reassuringly and
went to fetch a cloth.

‘Are you serious, that they buried her
alive?’ Martha said, administering some more soup.

‘I found her six feet down in a small
metal container with a camera inside. They were filming her so that bitch,
Tolley, could bizarrely draw some inspiration from it.’

The spoon hovered in mid-air as Martha’s
mouth fell open in astonishment.

‘Reya Tolley, the famous artist? Are you
messing with me?’

‘No...she was Corrigan’s mistress. He was
helping promote her work and involving her in some of his vile games at the
same time.’

‘Jesus. Where in the hell is she now? Do the
police know?’

‘No, and to answer your question…let’s
just say she’s reliving the experience of some of her subjects.’

‘You buried her?’

I came back from the kitchen smiling.

‘Well the bitch deserved it, huh…And what
about Benjamin, did Corrigan have a hand in his death too?’

‘I think so.’

‘The bastard…’

‘Benjamin must have changed his identity
back in the seventies, when his brother started destroying the mountains with
his surface mining. He was also in love with Corrigan’s wife and resented his
brother for the accident which paralyzed her. You couldn’t write this stuff...’

Martha shook her head incredulously.

‘My god, is there anything else you want
to tell me?’

‘Only that Benjamin found out about
Ethan’s death and went up to the hunting lodge to have it out with Corrigan at
some point. After he returned, Corrigan went down there with some of his men
and axed him to death. Tolley told me everything before I shut the lid.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ Martha said,
stroking Olivia’s hair.

‘Not as disbelieving as I was when I
found the samples.’

‘Samples?’

‘Corrigan got a kick out of extracting
spinal fluid from his victims, and Tolley liked to use it in her artwork. I
found the stuff back at his lodge.’

‘Are you pissing me?’

I shook my head slowly, feeling exhausted.

‘After I took care of Olivia, I dragged
Tolley back out to the woods, where she babbled on about how Corrigan coerced
her into doing the paintings, how he’d believed that the souls of the weak
could be resurrected via the canvas as the good Lord had told him. Something
like that...’

‘I feel sick,’ Martha said, fiddling with
the cross around her own neck.

‘There were others involved too...’
Olivia added suddenly, trying to sit up.

‘Hey?’ I said trying to help her.

‘We went up there a good few weeks ago,
not long after we arrived the first time. We were looking for a friend of
Ethan’s who’d gone missing. We’d heard rumours about what went on at the
hunting lodge and wanted to check it out for ourselves.’

‘What did you hear, darling?’ Martha
pushed, taking a seat opposite.

‘That people who got in Corrigan’s
way...disappeared.’

Olivia broke into another coughing fit.

‘Easy now…you’ve been through a lot,’
Martha urged.

‘Ethan photographed them gathering, using
his phone...’ Olivia continued, ‘up there at Jackson’s Hollow.

‘Who?’ I pushed, realizing what the
initials meant on the disc I’d found in Minneapolis.

‘People turning up at Corrigan’s place.
Important people...’

‘Go on…’

‘Ethan said that he recognized some of
them. One was a well-known congressman, another an oil baron, a judge from
Louisville, and several other businessmen involved in the mining industry. We
took pictures of all of them.’

‘And what else did you see, honey?’
Martha said, sounding as hungry for answers as I now was.

‘A young boy with brown hair, being
brought up from the woods by a couple of Corrigan’s men at dusk. He looked
about ten or twelve.’

‘Jesus,’ I murmured under my breath,
realizing that Corrigan was involved in some sort of high-level snuff-ring.

‘We never saw the boy come out again. And
we were there most of the night...’

Olivia started to cough heavily again,
prompting Martha to go and fetch a glass of water.

‘You okay to carry on?’ she said handing
it over.

‘Yes…’

‘I’m listening,’ I said softly.

‘We went back several days later.’

‘You
were
playing with fire…’
Martha said sternly.

Olivia looked at me. I saw the distress
in her eyes.

‘Go on…’

‘Seeing the security guys drive off at one
point, we took our chances and broke in. Ethan thought his friend, Mellissa
might have been taken there too, you see…’

‘What did you find?’ I asked, tensing.

‘Some creepy chamber beneath the
billiards room. Ethan found it by chance really. There was a door behind the
bar that led to...’

‘A basement painted red and black?’ I
said, pre-empting her words.

She looked at me surprised.

‘You know about it?’ she queried, looking
more confused.

‘I found something similar at Corrigan’s
ranch and had the displeasure of being held there, amongst other things...’

Olivia shuddered

‘There were cameras down there too, fixed
to the ceiling...an examination table and metal rings protruding from the
walls. It looked like some sort of weird torture chamber. When I think what
that poor boy might have gone through, it makes me shudder. I think he may have
died down there, perhaps Ethan’s friend too...’

‘Probably,’ I said, thinking about the
dark dark world Corrigan inhabited.

‘We looked for some sort of evidence, you
know, like films. We couldn’t find a thing, save some weird charcoal drawings
in a room next door. There was a two-way mirror inside, looking in on the
basement. I haven’t been able to get those images out of my head since…’

‘That was Tolley’s work probably, some sort
of souvenir for those who were involved,’ I said vocalizing my thoughts.

‘Then we got disturbed by the security
guys returning and had to make a break for it. I dropped the drawings
unfortunately as we fled.’

‘They saw you?’

‘Yes, and shot at us, but we managed to
get away, ran the four or five miles back to Crow Creek and hid out at
Benjamin’s until things had settled down.’

‘And what about the photos you took?’

‘We returned to Minneapolis. Ethan then
downloaded them onto a friend’s computer and magnified them with photo
processing software to try and make them clearer.’

‘Go on…’ Martha urged.

‘He saved them onto disc for collateral.
He told his friend Spike about them in case we got into trouble down here and
needed a bargaining chip...’

‘Jesus,’ I said, realizing that Olivia
and Ethan had signed the old timer’s death warrant by getting him involved,
that the Mustangs probably had been hired by Corrigan’s heavies to find the
disc back in Minneapolis because he realized how damaging it could be...

I looked at Olivia and shook my head.

‘What?’ she said sheepishly.

‘So why in the hell did you go to
Corrigan’s ranch when you’d photographed all that stuff back at Jackson’s
Hollow. Surely you must have known by that point that the guy was a total
maniac?’

‘Yes…but you have to understand that
Ethan was desperate to find his friend. We’d gone to the police in Lexington
afterwards and they just laughed at us when we showed them the pictures on his
phone. They said it was a hunting party, that we shouldn’t be making those sort
of accusations with those sort of people.’

Martha shook her head.

‘Well, why don’t that surprise me…’

‘At that point we knew we had to find
Mellissa ourselves. By snooping around the ranch, we hoped to find something
more concrete to blackmail Corrigan with into releasing the girl, if she was
still alive...’

‘You crazy fools,’ Martha added
tearfully.

‘Not the best idea in retrospect, was
it?’ I said.

Olivia lowered her head.

‘I’m so sorry…’

I placed a reassuring hand on her
shoulder.

‘It’s okay, take your time…’

‘They took Phil out to one of the horses’
paddocks and buried him up to his neck. We were then made to watch as they sent
the horses in...They made them stampede with their guns.’