Innocent Monsters (22 page)

17 October 2000

JESSICA’S SMILE was still framed on the TV screen when the phone rang in the hotel room. Kaitlyn got off the floor and picked up the receiver by the bed as Sarah Tyler announced she would be at the same place at the same time the following week. Putting the receiver back after a brief exchange that Lisa couldn’t hear, she turned to her friend.

“Lisa, I’m going down the lobby for a minute. There’s someone here to see me. Won’t be long.”

Lisa looked up from the sofa. “Hey! Hold on a minute.
Someone?
”

Kaitlyn grinned, a broad wicked grin from ear to ear. “Yes, someone. I know people, you know, I’ve got other friends.”

“How many
friends
have you told you were staying here, exactly?”

She chuckled. “A few. And stop it right now, you nosey bitch.”

“It’s a man isn’t it? You’re not gonna dump me here on my own, are you?”

“No way. We’re here to celebrate! I won’t be long.”

Lisa straightened herself up on the sofa, held her hands together as if she was about to drop on her knees and start praying. “Why don’t we all go down for a drink together? Oh Kaitlyn, c’mon! Don’t be mean, I just want to have a look at him, I’m not gonna eat him, y’know? C’mon!”

“We are definitely not at the drink-with-my-friends stage. Me and you can go down for a drink when I’m done. As I said, I won’t be long, ok?” She smiled at her friend and walked out of the door.

So they were just having sex. Maybe they had been out a couple of times. Lisa knew Kaitlyn was what many people would disapprovingly call promiscuous. She had started experimenting and enjoying sex early, when most of her peers still spent most of their time worrying about grades. She was always the one who disappeared at parties, always the one boys wanted to dance with. Her glorious full lips had a fame of their own. She was popular.

Even now, high school being nothing but a distant memory, men still chased her, wanted her. But Kaitlyn never boasted about it, it wasn’t what defined her as a person. She never really talked about her affairs unless she thought the relationship was really going somewhere. And Lisa respected that, but what harm could there be in having a look? She didn’t even have to go all the way down the lobby; she could just peek and never even tell anyone what he looked like. She just wanted to satiate her own curiosity.

Lisa waited a couple of minutes then followed Kaitlyn outside. She walked to the middle of the corridor, just where the staircase to the reception opened and squatted on the floor, one eye staring at the bottom of the stairs, the other staring at the big rounded plant pot behind which she was trying to hide. From here she couldn’t see if Kaitlyn was still walking downstairs, but she could see the man waiting in front of the reception desk; a tall young man with long hash blond hair, probably blue eyes and a sad, almost nervous expression on his face. He looked tired and out of place, his stare lost outside the entrance. One of his hands was gripping the edge of the desk as if afraid he would fall face on the floor if he let go.

She watched him for a few minutes trying to take in as many details as possible, then saw him turn his head, looking up towards the top of the stairs. It was almost impossible for him not to have seen her, unless the thoughts that seemed to sadden his face had also distracted his eyesight, but she crawled slowly from the plant pot to the wall behind her anyway, and once she was sure of being out of sight, she straightened up and went back to the room.

24 January 2001

AS LISA finished recounting, invisible heavy stones started to rain on Jessica. She could feel them landing, hurting and she cupped her hands around her skull to protect it while Lisa stood in front of her, trying to figure out what it was that she was doing. She stretched out her arm to touch her but Jessica moved away, squashed herself against the wall.

“Jessy? Are you ok?” Jessica shook her head once, twice. “Jessy, are you all....”

“What are you trying to say Lisa?” She said suddenly. “William has never met her. Why wouldn’t he tell me if he had? You must have him mixed up with someone else.” Bobby was still banging on the door, calling out. “And open the fucking door before someone calls the police!”

“Jessica...”

“Ok then, so what if he knew her, what if it was him? So fucking what?”

“So fucking what? Like you said, why the hell wouldn’t he tell you he knew her? Think about it. Didn’t you say the police was looking into her death? Didn’t they think she was murdered?”

Jessica leaned against the wall, stunned, unable to recover from what the words were insinuating.

...Murdered...

Was Brown right after all? No. It couldn’t be. It was Roger he had questioned. Roger, not William.

Not William.

For what seemed like hours neither of them moved or spoke, then suddenly Jessica walked to the bedroom, came back out carrying Lisa’s bag. She threw it on the floor by her feet, nailed her index finger in her friend’s shoulder.

“Fuck you,” she growled. “You have no idea how hard it is for me to try to move on from all this, to accept that she’s just gone. You have no fucking idea. You think you can say something like that and…”

She’s right
, said a voice inside her head,
she’s right. Think. Think about it...

“NO!” Jessica heard herself scream and saw Lisa moving a step away from her in confusion.

There was a heavy hammering at the door, as it wasn’t just Bobby on the other side but a few angry men. Jessica finally opened it to find Bobby standing alone, red-faced and agitated, his fist floating in midair. Her hand was shaking around the doorknob and she was starting to feel light-headed.

“What the fuck do you think it’s going on in here, you idiot? You think I’ve kidnapped her or something?” She shouted, out of control.

“Who you callin’ an idiot?”

“You. I am calling you an idiot, which is exactly what you are. I-di-ot.”

Bobby leaped forward, apparently ready to hit her, but Lisa moved between the two of them, held her hands around his arm to stop him.

“Jessy, please...” Lisa was crying. She was not sure why, but she was crying her eyes out.

“Just go Lisa. Both of you. Leave me alone.”

“I’m just trying to help. Maybe you should be careful instead of...”

“You’re not helping! You’re just fucking with my head! You’re all trying to fuck with my head!” Someone peeked through one of the doors at the end of the hallway. “Now get the hell out of here. GO!”

Jessica grabbed the bag off the floor and chucked it at Bobby’s feet, she pushed Lisa away towards her husband and slammed the door on them both. Bobby shouted something she couldn’t understand and kicked the door, but after a while she heard the sound of their footsteps recede down the steps and she walked over the windows in the sitting room, waiting to see them leave the building. Then she collapsed on the sofa trying to calm down, breathe, trying not to cry, trying to think clearly, to think of an explanation; because there had to be a logical explanation.

William had never mentioned he knew her sister and that had to mean the person Lisa had seen at the Windsor Hotel was somebody else, because she trusted him, she trusted he would tell her the truth.

Unless he had something to hide.

And what if he had known her sister? What if he had decided not to tell her? What if he had been with her when... What if he...

Think, think about it, think, think...

No. She didn’t want to think, but the thought was there, in the back of her mind, through the late afternoon and through the evening as she laid motionless on the sofa, hour after hour, and she couldn’t ignore it. She wanted it to stop, but the thought tormented her even when she felt tired enough to sleep, until, with the first lights of the morning, it stopped.

Or so she thought.

JESSICA WAS in front of her bedroom door again, in her childhood home. She hadn’t dreamt about this place since the day she had left Crocker Amazon, as if leaving that house behind had meant leaving Kaitlyn’s ghost as well, as if leaving had restored some kind of order in her life.

Now she was here again and again, behind the door she didn’t find beds but the goldenrod walls of the bathroom, the dripping tap. She had expected to see Kaitlyn but all she found was the dried up blood against the bath walls where her body should have been.

Jessica was alone but she could sense someone was coming soon, someone wanted to hurt her. There was no time to run away, all she could do was look for a place to hide and strangely the cupboard’s door in the corner looked wide enough for her to walk through, like a door to a different room, the way it often happens in dreams where time and proportions shift like water in an odd shaped container. But when she tried to move Jessica found she couldn’t, her feet too heavy to lift.

And now she could hear footsteps moving closer, closer and closer to her, so close she could finally see the shadow of the man coming for her.

From somewhere deep in the house, Kaitlyn’s voice was calling again and again it sounded different, like the voice of a frail old woman, but it didn’t ask her to please don’t tell mother. This time she was saying,
It’s him, Jessica. It was always him...

And the man outside the door got closer still. Now Jessica could see his legs, his hands clutched in fists by the side of his thighs, his face...

Murderer, murderer, MURDERER...

“Murderer!”

Jessica woke up on the sofa sweating, a hand on her mouth to stop the word from coming out of it again.

25 January 2001

THE PHONE rang by the sofa the next day around one in the afternoon. Jessica opened her eyes and grabbed the receiver, surprised she had managed to fall asleep again after the dream and for so long.

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s me.”

She was hoping it wouldn’t be him, she was hoping William had decided to stay alone for ever so that she’d never have to face the thought in the back of her mind again, so that she’d never have to ponder the possibility of calling Charles Brown again.

“I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. You ok?”

“I’m ok... I’m sorry about yesterday. Sorry I didn’t call.”

“Yeah, well, Lisa’s gone.” She sat up on the sofa. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to see her again. Probably never.” She waited for him to say something but she heard nothing. “...William, can we meet today?” There was still no answer from the other side. “William? Are you still there?”

“Yes. Is everything ok?”

“Yes, everything’s fine. I just need to talk to you.”

“Ok. Yes, we can meet.”

“Where?”

“I was going to ask you if you felt like taking a walk. It’s a nice day.”

“Walk sounds good. Where?”

“How about the Aquatic Park? It’s close enough to both of us. I’ll buy you an ice-cream.” Her lips curled, and he knew he had made her smile. “An hour? By the East side entrance?”

“An hour and a half. I need to have a shower.”

They both hung up and Jessica finally stood off the sofa and made herself a pot of coffee, stood by the window thinking, took a shower and got ready thinking, left the apartment thinking, still exploring all the different reasons William might have had to be at the Windsor Hotel that night, any reason he might have had to avoid telling her about it, and the more she thought the more the simple notion of him lying seemed preposterous. It wasn’t him. Couldn’t be. He didn’t need any reasons because he was not there that night. It was not him. She wanted to believe it, she needed to believe it because the thought of him somehow linked to her sister was frightening, because what they had was all she had and she wasn’t prepared to lose it because of some look-alike jerk in the reception of the Windsor Hotel waiting for her sister.

The east side of the Aquatic Park opened on a vast meadow populated by kids playing with their kites. Jessica stopped to watch the coloured paper shapes swooping and soaring, littering the clear afternoon sky. William was sitting on the grass nearby, his chin lifted to the sky, admiring the movement of the kites himself. She walked towards him and reached him before he could see her coming, placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Hi.”

He looked up at her with a strange expression in his eyes, a light that made him look like a child, as brittle as a thin crystal glass. How could anyone with eyes like these deceive her, lie to her?

She smiled at him. “Ever owned a kite?”

“Nope.” He stood up brushing grass off his jeans and kissed her lips. “Never had the inclination. But I like looking at them. You?”

“I remember this one time my mother took me and my sister to fly one. It was see-through with the image of a swallow on it. I must have been, what? Five maybe. I think it was a present for Kaitlyn’s birthday, from my grandmother.”

Jessica remembered the three of them laughing, herself, her sister and her mother. She remembered the smell of wet grass, the light of the sky just before the end of the day, Kaitlyn’s delight, a pair of bright red wellington boots on her feet.

“Have you ever been at the Windsor Hotel?” She asked him calmly.

“Sorry?”

“The Windsor Hotel, ever been there?”

“Might have. What does it have to do with kites?”

“Nothing. Nothing to do with kites at all, it’s just... This is what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“The Windsor Hotel?”

“Remember Lisa thought she had seen you somewhere? She seems to think she has seen you there.” He was listening with half a smile on his lips. “She said she saw you there back in November waiting for my sister.”

“Weird. To be honest I’m not even sure what your sister looks like, Jessy. How could I have been waiting for her?” The half a smile still intact on his lips. “Is that it?”

She half smiled back. “That’s it.”

“Funny you should ask me about this: that guy you know, the one that sent you that card at Christmas... Charlie Brown? He left a message on my answering machine this morning.”

She’d felt confused, even angry when Roger mentioned him, but hearing William pronouncing his name now was terrifying.

“What did he want?”

“He just said he needed to ask me a few questions about you and your sister. Any idea what that’s all about?”

He sounded calm, too calm.

She shook her head. “He seems to think there’s still an open investigation regarding my sister’s death.”

“I thought you said she killed herself.”

“I think she did. Personally, I think he’s wasting his time.”

“Any idea how he got my number?”

She shook her head again. “Don’t ask me what he’s doing, I have no idea.”

William stroked her face, brushed stray hair away from her eyes. “Are you ok?”

Jessica couldn’t breath properly. Her head was spinning. She needed to sit down but didn’t want to show him how disturbed she really was. Why was Brown trying to speak to him? What did he know that she didn’t?

“Yes, I’m fine. I’m sorry, I should have told you about him. I had no idea he would try to talk to you. I just... It’s just easier to think that Kaitlyn has killed herself. I know it sounds terrible but I just didn’t want to know about Brown and…”

William held her hand and squeezed it. “I understand. You don’t need to say anything. How can you move on when there’s someone out there who thinks this case is not closed?”

There was a kiosk further down the hill from where they stood, just at the top of a lawn rolling down to the beach. Jessica watched a small group of children running madly around it, one after the other, tugging at each other’s jackets, laughing out loud. She remembered how frustrating she found it as a child when, no matter how fast she tried to run, Kaitlyn always ran ahead, always faster. She remembered a hot summer day, when another defeat seemed so unbearable she decided to slow her sister down by grabbing the back of her shirt and pulling as hard as she could; Kaitlyn losing her balance, falling and breaking her arm. Watching her sister going through a great deal of pain and frustration because of something she had done proved very difficult and it was around this time that Jessica promised herself she would always look out for her, make sure Kaitlyn was safe.

She had not succeeded, that much was obvious, but she could still put things right. If there was anything she should have known about William, she would find out before anyone else could.

“How about that ice-cream, then? Bet we can get one down there.”

She nodded, but she didn’t look at his face. She kept hold of his hand and they both started walking.