The Killing Lessons (30 page)

Valerie opened her eyes. It took her a few seconds, but she realised she was still where she’d fallen, just behind the hallway door. The boot scraper felt as if it had knitted itself to her skull. She rolled onto her side and vomited.

For the moment all she could do was lie there, spitting out saliva. Swallowing. Spitting out more saliva. (That first time she’d got drunk, the hours in the bathroom, dragging herself up from the cold tiles to throw up into the toilet, holding on to the rim of the bowl, trying and failing to keep her hair from the mess. Her sister had said to her, standing with her arms folded: Don’t bother telling yourself you’re never going to do this again. You will. Hundreds of times. And she’d been right.)

She put her hand up to examine the wound on her head. The bullet had grazed her. ‘Grazed’ was the word, but it didn’t seem sufficient for the gouge the shell had taken out of the side of her head. It didn’t make sense to her at first, what she was feeling – until she realised her fingers were touching bare bone. It was an appalling introduction to the fact of her skull. She thought she might vomit again. She took her hand away. Infection. She pictured herself getting stitches. Hospital. Doctors. Tannoy announcements. Vending machines. Magazines. The smell of coffee and antiseptic. The world she’d almost lost.

She got her hands flat to the floor and pushed herself up onto her knees. Her head felt as if it was about to rupture.

A police officer lay on his back a few feet away in a pool of blood. Outdoor air came in from the kitchen. The door was open.

Leon.

Fuck. Where was he?

Was the uniform dead? Where was her gun?

She moved slowly. The Glock was on the floor next to her left knee. She picked it up. It was a reassurance. There was no sign of Xander – but she couldn’t take anything for granted. She crawled on all fours to the officer. No pulse. Multiple stab wounds, including one that had gone through the carotid. His head was haloed in blood. No pulse. His badge said,
Coulson
. To someone, his lover, his mom and dad (she hoped there were no kids), all his details would be precious. To someone, the news that he was dead would make them wonder if they could carry on.

‘Officer Coulson, please respond,’ his walkie said.

Valerie unhooked it from its strap. ‘This is SFPD Homicide detective Valerie Hart. Officer Coulson is down. Code 10-00. No pulse, multiple stab wounds. Send medics immediately to Gale Farm, Garner Road, left after Ivins Reservoir on Old Highway 91. Proceed with caution. Suspect may still be here and is armed. Repeat, extreme caution. And where the fuck is the rest of my back-up?’

‘Please repeat your ID,’ the voice said, but Valerie was already on her feet, gun levelled at the lock on the basement door. Her head felt big and heavy and unreliable. A bull’s head. It was a miracle her neck was holding it up.

She was about to fire – then realised the door was off its latch. He didn’t lock it when he came up. Before he came up. He. Them. There could still be another one down there.

She reached in and found the light switch. Almost overbalanced and went head first down the stairs. Steadied herself. Bare bulbs at the bottom of a staircase. Dizzy, nauseated, she went down.

The first thing she saw was the body of a white male on the basement floor with its head all but completely severed from its neck. The eyes and mouth were open and the head was turned to face the stairs, as if keeping terrified watch. The second thing, aged and split here and there on its folds, was an alphabet chart. It lay half open next to his feet. Apple. Balloon. Clock. Dinosaur.

The third thing she saw was the girl, ball-gagged and tied on the floor in a slew of blood. With the handle of a knife protruding from just below her ribs. Her top had been yanked up over her breasts and her jeans and panties tugged down. A small earthenware jug had been left between her thighs. Her eyes were closed. Valerie ran to her.

It was Claudia Grey.

And she was still breathing. Just.

Valerie worked fast, though the wound in her head threatened to haul the darkness back in. She holstered the Glock, lifted Claudia’s head, unfastened the gag and removed it, carefully. Then the tied wrists. The ankles. The skin had been cut through by the ties and there was a shallow wound on Claudia’s neck, but the knife under her ribs was deep, buried all the way up to the hilt. The impulse to pull it out – the obscene wrongness of leaving it there – was powerful, but Valerie knew better. A blade cut on the way out as well as on the way in. Pull it out now and you risked further haemorrhage. Right now the knife in her might be the only thing stopping Claudia Grey from bleeding to death. Valerie took off her jacket and covered the girl’s exposed genitals.
Please God don’t let her have been raped. Even if she has to die, don’t let her die raped. Please.

Claudia opened her eyes.

‘You’re safe,’ Valerie said, though the truth was she had the Glock back in her right hand because there was no telling where Leon might be. ‘Claudia, listen to me: you’re safe. I’m a police officer. We’re going to get you out of here. Just don’t try to move.’

‘Where is he?’ Claudia said. British, the accent reminded Valerie. She’d been to London once, on vacation with her parents when she was small. The ridiculous helmets of British cops. No guns. The big leafy parks and the Houses of Parliament. They’d taken a boat trip on the Thames. She thought now how far away from all of that Claudia had travelled. She would go back, but it would never be the same. Nothing would ever be the same.

But she would be alive, however not the same it was, and that was all that mattered.

‘He’s not here,’ she said. Technically not a lie. ‘It’s OK. Don’t move. You’re going to be OK. Just stay with me, OK?’

Claudia blinked. There was too much. Valerie had seen it before. The return from death. The unbelievable withdrawal of death. She’d seen it before, but not often enough. Mostly she just saw death.

‘I’m…’ Claudia faltered. ‘Where is he?’

‘It’s OK,’ Valerie repeated. ‘You’re safe.’ She brushed Claudia’s hair out of her eyes. ‘Stay with me, honey. They’re coming.’

With sirens, she could hear, despite her instructions. Right now, she loved them for it.

Xander’s hand was on fire. Everything had gone wrong. It was in his head like an orchestra playing out of tune. It was as if for all these years everything had been fooling him with freedom while secretly planning for this, this rearrangement of the scenery, this shift that had taken, what, minutes? Seconds? Everything had tricked him. And what had started the trick? Fucking Colorado. Fucking
Paulie
.

The kid. The little girl. She saw you and she got away.

What fucking kid? There
was
no fucking kid.

Except the half-painted room must have been hers. Being redecorated. That smell of new paint.

His mind went in circles. He wanted to go somewhere quiet and sleep.

Oh, sure
, Mama Jean said.
Take a nap. Why don’t you just pull over? You’ve got all the time in the world, right?

He’d taken the van. The RV was… It outraged him, the idea of that bitch cop finding his house. It made him feel stupid.

But she was dead, so fuck her. She was dead and the cunt in the cellar was dead and he’d got the jug right.

Yeah, except the jug should have been in Colorado
.

And he hadn’t had time. It sent more heat through his hand, that there hadn’t been time to do it properly. He’d been tempted, shoving her top up and seeing those little tits, feeling the wriggle in her hips when he pulled down her pants. It was a waste. It would have been the best so far. He would have sent her into herself and let her come back so many times.

He had to get his hand fixed. He couldn’t. Gunshot wounds they had to report. The van’s steering wheel was slippery from his blood. Not even a fucking Band-Aid. He’d torn the sleeve off his shirt and wrapped that around it, but that was no good. It hurt so much. He had to find a gas station, a store, a fucking pharmacy. You keep the bad hand in your pocket and pay with the good hand. He had money in his wallet. All that money and everything could still fucking…

Think straight, for Christ’s sake. Find a gas station, wash up. A motel. Fix this.
Fix it.

The shotgun was in the trunk. The machete. Pistol and a dozen clips. But the objects from the shopping bags had tipped out onto the passenger seat next to him and wouldn’t leave him alone.

Paulie wasn’t lying
, Mama Jean said, when he glanced in the rear-view.
You want to fix this, you need to start with that.

It was then that he realised he’d forgotten the most important thing of all.

He’d left the alphabet chart in the basement.

The world was not ideal, granted, but its randomness conferred gifts as well as curses: Angelo found the remains of a packet of Advil in his overcoat pocket. Five liqui-gel capsules still sealed in their foil backing.

‘Here,’ he said to Nell, handing her one with the tin mug filled with water. ‘It’s not much, but it might help the pain for a couple of hours.’

She looked wary.

‘It’s just Advil,’ he said. ‘Here, look, you can see on the back of the wrapper. It’s fine, I promise.’

Her hesitation, he knew, was partly that she’d no doubt been told never to take medicines unless OK’d by her mom, and partly her weighing up if refusing it would hurt his feelings. He was planning on saving all of them for her, over the hours ahead, but to reassure her, he took one himself. ‘I take these for
my
pain,’ he said. ‘They do help. I wouldn’t give this to you if it wasn’t safe. But I understand if you don’t feel you can take it. It’s OK either way.’

She thought about it a few moments, then popped the pill into her mouth and drank.

‘Do you think someone will come today?’ she said.

The question was a permanent presence in his head. Nell had been quiet all afternoon, just lying on her side and staring out the window. A numbness was insinuating itself in her, he knew. Like a submerged rock becoming visible as the last of hope drained away. He resisted the urge to say: I’m sure of it. If he said that and no one came it would be a failure and a betrayal. In the absence of anyone else, he needed her to have faith in him.

‘I hope so,’ he said. Then amended: ‘Can’t be much longer.’

Could
it be much longer? How long could someone lie wounded or dead in their house without someone noticing they’d dropped off the radar? It was, by his reckoning, Christmas Eve. Weren’t these the days when folks were in and out of each other’s houses, delivering last-minute presents and borrowing crucial ingredients for the feast?

‘It can’t be much longer,’ he repeated.

That night Nell dreamed a dream of faces and voices. Sometimes she was in the cabin. Other times in her bed at home. Angelo leaned over her, saying, Drink some water. Please try. The details of his face were sharp, the pores of his skin, the cracked moist green of his eyes. His beard hair was rough silver. She tried to tell him that the bristles reminded her of the paintbrushes her mom had got out of the shed when the redecorating of her room had begun, but he didn’t seem to understand. Her mom came and went, too, in her dressing gown. Heat lay on her like a soft, heavy body. She kept trying to get out from under it. A maddening game. Josh came in wearing his school football gear, his face flecked with mud from the field: Just get on your feet, doofus, he told her. You can walk out of here. Up the ravine to the tree. You can get across that tree easy. You can
stroll
across that tree, Nellie, Jesus. Take that crap off your ankle. What’s the matter with you? In the dream she plucked at the splints on her ankle, but Angelo’s hands got in the way. His voice seemed to be coming from a great distance. His hands were enormous. Her own felt tiny. The splints were very annoying to her. The splints, she thought, were stopping her from getting up. When she looked down, she saw they were attached to the floor. Why would he do that? Nail her to the floor like that?

The golden hare from her bracelet rose up next to her, life-size. It was made, she now saw, from the same yellow-orangey light that came when you scribbled in the dark air with a sparkler. I grant you safe travel, the hare said, moving liquidly around her. There is nothing to fear.
You’re old enough now
. She could see herself moving across the tree, the hare weaving between her feet. Her feet barely touched the fir’s bark.

Angelo hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but he’d slept so little and so brokenly over the last three days that he hadn’t even been aware of it taking him. When he’d lain down on the couch to rest his back the last of the day’s light was waning. Now it was wholly dark outside. The oil lamp’s light threw tremulous shadows.

Nell was on her feet.

Or rather, foot. She’d removed the splints and put her boots on, and was, with both hands gripped around his stick, moving in small, visibly excruciating steps, across the cabin floor, dragging the bad ankle.

‘Jesus,’ Angelo said. ‘Nell? What are you doing?’

She lifted her head and looked at him. Her face was pale, drawn, wet with tears. Her eyes were raw.

‘I can walk,’ she said. ‘I have to go across.’

‘Across?’

‘I’m going to the tree.’

It stunned him, that she’d come to this while he’d slept. It was terrible, the thought of her lying there, gathering her resolve, removing the splints, squeezing her foot into the boot.

‘Give me another pill,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t hurt so much now. I can walk. I have to go.’

Angelo stared at her. He could see exactly how much it hurt. The Advil might have taken the finest edge off, but it still sickened him to think of what these movements were costing her. Kids were so strong. Women.
Women and children first
. Maybe not because we thought they were weak, but because deep down we knew they were strong. Carried the best of the species.

‘Nell, you can’t,’ he said, biting back a cry as he began to lower himself from the couch. He’d moved too quickly. Christ, there was no let-up. The inexhaustible persistence of his own pain enraged him. The single Advil hadn’t touched it. He gritted his teeth. Made it to the floor. Breathed.

‘I can,’ she said, and took another half-hop, half-shuffle towards him. ‘I can do it.’

He had to think. Careful. Don’t scare her. Try to stop her by force and she’ll go crazy.

She took another step. Grabbed the edge of the table. Steadied herself. It was amazing: she was training herself to withstand the pain.

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘It’s night. It’s dark. You can’t do it in the dark. You can’t go across in the dark. You’ll fall.’

Nell glanced out of the window as if she’d lost the awareness that it
was
dark.

‘Think about it,’ Angelo said. (Don’t tell her she can’t do it. Tell her there’s a better way. Buy some time.) ‘Think about it. There’s no way you’ll get across if you can’t see. Wait until morning. You’ll have a better chance. You’ll have a
much
better chance in the morning.’

He watched the sense of this forcing itself on her, against her will. She might be in delayed shock or unhinged by grief, but she wasn’t stupid.

‘In the morning,’ he said, gently, ‘we’ll figure it out properly. I’ll help you. But we have to be able to see what we’re doing. OK?’

She thought about it.

‘You’ll be stronger in the morning,’ Angelo said. ‘You can eat something. And the tablets work better on a full stomach. Get some rest now. Get some sleep. We’ll wait until it’s light, and then we’ll try.’

It took him a while, but eventually he persuaded her. To his advantage, the Advil and the exertion had taken its toll. She was asleep within minutes. In the morning, he knew, he would take the remaining pills himself and try again for the fallen tree. It wouldn’t be enough. It would be impossible. But there was nothing to do but try.

He drank the cold remains of the evening’s coffee and propped himself on the couch.

Stay awake
, Sylvia said.
Watch her. Keep her safe
.