The Long Count (21 page)

Clara just gazed ahead.

‘Was it to do with my dad? Did he hurt you? Was he fooling around?’

Clara glanced at him but did not speak.

‘Tough to talk about, huh? I get that. I understand.’ He offered a smile. ‘Look, we got plenty of time, maybe now’s not good, maybe right now we just need to get where we’re going and you can tell me all about it then.’ Again he looked sideways. ‘Things weren’t the same after that vacation though, were they? Lawton, Mom: you changed after we got home. I remember. I watched you and you weren’t the same. It was like you were somebody else.’

Still she sat there, fists clenched where her arms were folded across her chest.

‘It’s OK,’ Isaac told her. ‘I understand, or at least I’m trying to. I
have
tried to, all these years I’ve been trying to make sense of you leaving out on us when you did. Me and Ishmael, we had a great time over in Lawton but I remember how it was with Dad. Memorial weekend, he and his army buddy hanging out together talking about the old days and drinking all day and all night. That must’ve been hard on you, Mom. I could never remember that guy’s name.’

‘Morley, his name was Morley,’ she said.

‘That’s right, Morley.’ Isaac lifted a hand from the wheel. ‘Well, anyway, on the Saturday night they were setting out on the porch sharing another bottle and talking about all sorts of stuff. I know because though Ish was asleep, I was awake, and I heard every word they said.’

A car swept past in the outside lane and Clara stared at the tail lights where they gathered in red.

‘I always figured it was something to do with that weekend.’ Isaac was nodding as if to himself. ‘You taking off I mean. It had to be because it wasn’t so long afterwards that you left.’

‘It was fifteen months,’ she said.

‘Was that how long it was?’ Isaac looked at her with a glaze to his eye. ‘Really, I never figured that. I guess time’s different when you’re a kid and I guess that was right around the time Ish started having his difficulties. I remember that pretty well. I just don’t remember if he started having those difficulties before you left, or was it on account of how you did?’

They drove in silence. Isaac’s gaze had darkened a little, as if talking about those times had really bothered him. Clara sat where she was, still upright, still very tense; she kept her gaze fixed straight ahead. A couple of miles further down the road she turned to him. ‘So, where are we going?’ she said.

‘I told you, somewhere safe.’

She looked ahead once more as another car came tearing past, only this time it was on the other side of the median and she could see a red light flashing at the grille.

Isaac drove on. Head cocked to one side, he pushed out his cheek with his tongue.

‘Dad had your address,’ he said. ‘I never thought about that till just now, but you were only just up the road and he knew where you were all the time. When we were growing up I mean, so he must’ve been in touch.’ He frowned. ‘Why would he still be in touch? And if he was in touch then why did you change your name? You’re either Clara Symonds or Clara Bowen. Why did you change your name?’

She did not answer. She stared ahead.

‘It’s not so different to your real name,’ Isaac went on. ‘I mean Carla for Clara and Simpson for Symonds, but why change it at all?’ Lifting a hand from the wheel he gestured. ‘I don’t understand. I mean, if you wanted to leave the old man and get a divorce, that’s OK I suppose, but when a woman does that she goes back to what she was called before.’

‘I wanted a fresh start,’ she told him.

‘Sure you did.’ He stared at her. ‘Otherwise why would you leave when you did?’

It was dawn by the time Quarrie drove North Main Street in Tulsa. A glance at the sign outside the ballroom, he was thinking about Clara and why she hadn’t told him who she really was. Why had she not answered the door? And why did she tell him on the phone that she didn’t know who Mary-Beth Gavin was?

When he got to the house he could see the pale blue VW Bug. Another car was bumped up against the curb a little further up the road and he could see a woman in the driver’s seat, fishing around in her purse. Pulling across the bottom of the drive, Quarrie shut off the engine.

On the sidewalk he considered the little house where the curtains were drawn across the windows. At the front door he knocked, but nobody answered. Expelling a breath, he lifted a fist and knocked again. He was thinking about how Isaac must’ve felt after he discovered that his mother was only a couple of hundred miles away. He was thinking about the message he had left in Austin and that last letter he had seen in the box.

He knocked a third time but still nobody answered. He didn’t think anybody was in there but he walked around back just the same. There he knocked one last time but nobody came to the door. When he turned he saw a middle-aged woman watching him from the path.

‘Morning,’ he said, conscious of the way she was staring. ‘It’s all right, I’m not a housebreaker, I’m a cop.’ Reaching in his jacket pocket he showed her his star.

Around five feet five, she had dark hair pinned with a wooden clip and she seemed to stare as if transfixed.

‘Are you a neighbor, mam?’ Quarrie said. ‘Do you know where Ms Simpson is?’

She looked up sharply as if suddenly snapped from a trance. ‘Her name is Symonds not Simpson. You should know that if you’re a cop.’

For a second or so Quarrie stared. ‘Are you OK, mam? Is everything all right?’

She did not reply. She remained where she was: her body stiff, he noticed she was standing on the balls of her feet. She looked like a frightened child, and in some macabre kind of way he was reminded of the etchings on the walls of Miss Annie’s cell.

‘My name’s Quarrie,’ he said. ‘I’m a Texas Ranger. Is everything all right?’

‘I know who you are.’ Visibly gathering herself, the woman started towards him. ‘I talked to Clara on the phone and she said how you showed up here at the house.’

Quarrie raised one eyebrow. ‘Did she tell you why she didn’t come to the door?’

The woman bit down hard on her lip. ‘She was frightened. She was scared. That’s why she didn’t come to the door. She was confused. She told me she’d been going through her old photos and it was all coming back. She told me she couldn’t deal with it.’

‘Mam,’ Quarrie said. ‘I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.’

‘She knows she should’ve spoken to you,’ the woman said. ‘She told me that. She knows she should’ve just come to the door regardless.’

‘Regardless of what?’

‘Of Dr Beale: what he said to her, what he said to all of us.’

Quarrie peered at her now. ‘Who are you, mam? How do you know Dr Beale?’

‘He told her he was taking care of it,’ the woman went on. ‘I told him we had to talk to the police but he didn’t want to do that. He said all the police would do is gun him down and he wasn’t going to let that happen.’

There were tears in her eyes now and she was sounding very confused. Taking her hand, Quarrie led her to his car where she sat down in the passenger seat. He stood before her, resting an elbow
on top of the door. ‘Who are you?’ he asked again. ‘How do you know about this?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘My name is Nancy McClain. I’m a nurse at Bellevue Hospital.’ She looked him hard in the eye. ‘I called there yesterday looking for Dr Beale, but he’s still not back so I spoke to Alice instead. She told me what happened. She told me what you did. She told me how you were in Miss Annie’s room.’

She was quiet again and she seemed to be fighting her emotions. ‘I nursed her – Miss Annie. For twenty-five years I nursed her and before that I worked with her, back when she was still Peggy-Anne. She only became Miss Annie later, after. It was much later that Miss Annie turned up and we never saw Peggy again.’

‘Mam, I—’

‘She’d been having problems.’ Nancy was staring beyond him now as if he wasn’t there. ‘We all knew that but we just thought it was a hazard of working with mental patients. It happens to some nurses; psychiatric stuff, it can take its toll and we all suffered a little I suppose. It’s hard on the nerves working with people who’re so unpredictable, and that’s all we thought it was. We had no idea how serious things had gotten, not till much later on.’ She lifted a hand to gesture. ‘When she was working she seemed just fine, or at least she did until she found out.’ Her eyes darkened as she focused on Quarrie’s face. ‘That’s when things changed, that’s when Miss Annie showed up and she’s been there pretty much ever since.’

‘Nancy,’ Quarrie said. ‘I’m not following you. What’re you talking about?’

Eyes downcast, Nancy chewed her lip. ‘So much has happened. So much happened back then and so much since. Four years ago Dr Beale took over from Dr Sievers down in the Piney Woods, and he was much younger, he was much more modern. He had different ideas about the patients; his was a completely different approach. He was keen to make his mark. He was always so keen to make his mark I think he let his ambition get the better of him. I told him
as much just the other day.’ She turned to look at Quarrie again. ‘What he tried to do, how he brought Ishmael to the hospital and what happened when he did …’

Quarrie squatted on his haunches. ‘Nancy, why did Dr Beale bring him to the hospital? I know he wasn’t violent. Not then. Ishmael wasn’t a criminal. Why bring him to a secure facility?’

Nancy didn’t answer. Again she bit her lip.

‘You need to tell me,’ Quarrie insisted. ‘You need to tell me why Ishmael was brought to Trinity.’

‘Dr Beale,’ she said. ‘He was treating Miss Annie and he found out that Ishmael was in a sanatorium in Houston. He heard what his symptoms were and as far as he was concerned they weren’t treating him properly. It was his area of expertise, his forte; and he had a particular theory. He thought he could help. What he saw in Ishmael was exactly what he’d been working on, but the symptoms – most doctors don’t accept they exist.’

She took a moment to catch her breath. ‘Dr Beale went to visit Ishmael’s father. He told him what he wanted to do and what he thought it would achieve, and Ike agreed to it right off the bat. He came to the hospital and Dr Beale had me in on that initial consultation.’ Tears seemed to burgeon again as she continued. ‘Ike said he would try anything – anything at all that might help. So Dr Beale had Ishmael brought to Trinity and we gave him three months to settle in. We were told he wasn’t dangerous, had never hurt anyone or been in any trouble. We gave him plenty of freedom. He was allowed to mingle pretty freely. Dr Beale wanted him to mingle as freely with the other patients as was safe. His intentions were sound. Dr Beale, I mean – you have to understand his intentions were medically sound and he was doing what he believed was for the patient’s good.’

‘But what was he doing?’ Quarrie said.

She did not seem to be listening. She seemed to be recounting a series of events as if to convince herself. ‘He thought that if we sat
him down, if they were able to talk, it might help Ishmael break out of his trap.’ She nodded then, she nodded as if to herself. ‘We were all there: Mary-Beth and me on the other side of the mirror, with Dr Beale in the room and Charlie outside just in case.’

Taking her hand Quarrie squeezed until she looked up. ‘You just said “trap”. You said Ishmael was trapped. What do you mean, Nancy? Where was Ishmael trapped?’

Nancy did not answer right away. She sat staring across the road. ‘“Trapped” was how Dr Beale described it,’ she said finally. ‘He thought if we brought him in, if he knew what’d happened then perhaps the spell might break and we’d be able to find out what it was that locked him in.’

‘Locked him in?’ Quarrie said. ‘What do you mean, Nancy? What’re you talking about?’

Still she peered beyond him. ‘But that’s not what happened. The spell wasn’t broken. Ishmael was broken instead. What we did, what Dr Beale thought might help – it sent him clear over the edge.’

She was trembling. Hands in her lap, she was shaking. ‘He went after Mary-Beth because she held the records and she called Dr Beale asking for help. When he couldn’t get what he wanted Ishmael broke into the kerosene store and set that fire and the whole place went up.’ She was crying now as she spoke. ‘We thought he was dead. We thought he’d burned in his own inferno. But he hadn’t. He escaped that fire and he knew what had happened and he knew who he thought was to blame.’

With the darkness finally beginning to dissipate Isaac pulled into his father’s house. He had left the pickup parked on the drive but the garage doors were open. Stepping hard on the brakes he brought the car to a stop and sat with his hands white-knuckled around the steering wheel.

He remained like that for a moment, his gaze darting left and right. ‘Somebody’s been here,’ he said. ‘Somebody opened those doors. Wait here while I check it out.’ Opening the driver’s door he had one foot in the gravel before he stopped. ‘No,’ he said, as if he’d had second thoughts. ‘That’s a stupid idea. You can’t stay in the car, it’s not safe.’

Clara looked over at him. She laid a hand on his arm. ‘I’ll be fine. It’s all right.’

He seemed to consider that for a moment then sat back in the seat. ‘Mom, I think it’s Ishmael that might’ve been here and he means to kill you like he killed our dad.’ He took her hand. ‘Do you understand? That’s what he plans to do, but I’m not going to let him do that. I lost Dad already. I’ll lose Ish too if the cops catch up to him. I only just found you, Mom. I’m not about to lose you again.’ He lifted his hand to her cheek. ‘You have to trust me. You have to come with me. You’re not safe in the car by yourself.’

Clara sat there for a moment longer and then she got out. Taking her hand Isaac led her across the gravelled drive.

‘Where are we going?’ she said. ‘Why the garage and not the house?’

Isaac spoke without looking round. ‘It’s all right. I know what I’m doing. You just have to trust me, OK?’

Inside the garage he considered the floor where the trapdoor was closed and seemed to take a few moments to think. Again he looked back the way they had come and then he shut the garage doors before he dropped to his haunches and hoisted the metal hatch.

‘Down there is a storm shelter,’ he explained. ‘This part of Texas is hurricane alley, or at least that’s what Dad used to say. He built the shelter himself and told me you could last six months.’ He gestured to the hole in the floor. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Use the ladder; I’ll be with you in a little bit.’

Clara stared at the hole in the floor then she looked back and Isaac gave her an encouraging smile. Reluctantly she turned around then began to climb down to the passage below. When she got to the bottom of the ladder she looked up.

‘Are you coming?’

‘I’ll be with you in a minute. Don’t worry. There’s a switch for the light right there.’ He pointed to the darkened wall.

‘But why?’ She spoke sharply now. ‘Why aren’t you coming too?’

‘I’ll be there in a bit. Switch that light on and you’ll see how the passage leads to the room Dad built. There’s another light switch behind the door.’

Still she looked up. Still she looked unsure.

‘Mom, it’s all right. You have to trust me. I know what I’m doing. I’m a soldier, remember – same as Dad.’ He nodded now. ‘I’m going to close this door because that’s the way Ish got in before. Just go to the shelter and wait for me. I promise you everything will be OK.’

He let the trapdoor fall then fetched the keys to the pickup, opened the garage doors and went outside. He drove the truck inside and parked right over the trap. After that he closed the doors a second time before crossing to the house.

In the storm shelter Clara found the light. Halogen spots in the ceiling, they created an almost bluish glow. About fifteen feet square, an artificial space, she saw the array of water coolers and a
first aid kit fixed to the wall. She took in the racks of metal shelving, the folding chairs and table and the propane-fired stove. She considered the cans of food and camp beds ready to be assembled, then her attention fixed on the opposing side. The lowest shelf, it was made of concrete as if it had been fashioned as part of the wall. There was something underneath: a sleeping bag, all bulked up as if somebody was inside.

For a long moment she stared. Then she crossed to the shelf. Trembling a little she looked down at the sleeping bag and sucked an audible breath. On one knee she reached out. She hesitated, fingers curling, the trembling so acute suddenly she had to make a fist. Then she spread her palm once more and finally gripped the bag. The weight shifted, the bag rolled over and she could not contain her scream.

In his father’s study Isaac stood stock still. His mother’s voice, like a dim and terrified echo, it lifted from beyond the wall. Wrenching the door to the gun cabinet open, he grabbed a Colt 45 and the bayonet. Then he cut behind the desk to the panelled wall. Working his fingers over the wood, he was in the darkness of the passage on the other side.

He could no longer hear her voice, that one scream then nothing. He was at the door to the storm shelter where the seal was so tight no light crept from inside. Still he could hear no sound and he threw open the door. He stood there with the Colt in one hand and the bayonet in the other and saw his mother crouched among several cans of food that had spilled to the floor. He was halfway to her when he stopped: her face pale, eyes like orbs, she stared at a sleeping bag pressed against the other wall.

Quarrie drove south; right foot flat to the floor, he had the siren wailing and the red light flashing under the Riviera’s clamshell
grille. He had sent Nancy McClain back to Bellevue with instructions to get the safe in Beale’s office open and find out what was on his tapes. He was pretty sure he knew where Isaac would have taken his mother; somewhere he could secure one entrance and guard the other. He would do his best, he would try to keep his brother at bay, but eventually Ishmael would show.

Late morning, he drove up to the Bowen house where he could see no sign of the pickup truck that had been there earlier and the garage doors were closed. Leaving his car Quarrie made his way around the house to the kitchen door. Sliding one of his pistols from its holster he used the butt to knock out a pane of glass.

In the kitchen he stood with the pistol in his hand aware of no sound but the wind blowing hard outside. Moving to the living room he paused. No sign of any disturbance, no furniture out of place. In the hallway he noticed the door to Ike Bowen’s bedroom was closed and he couldn’t remember if he had shut it when he left or not. He could hear nothing from below and he started down the stairs to the basement passage. At the bottom he stopped. The study door was wide open and he listened again but still he could hear no sound. Inside the study he paused. The door to the gun cabinet hung at right angles and he noticed two more empty hooks.

A little more cautiously he moved behind the desk to the panel and there he listened once more. Still nothing, no sound, no hint that anyone was back there. He worked fingers down the lip of wood, feeling for the spot where the lever was housed. Locating it finally he heard the faint click and the panel swung in. Darkness in the passage beyond, no light from the storm shelter, he gripped his gun a little more tightly and made his way to the door.

‘Isaac,’ he called. ‘Are you in there? It’s John Q.’

No reply. Nobody answered. When he pushed open the door blue light flooded the room. There was nobody there. He could see nothing but a few cans of soup where they rolled on the floor. Gathering them up he put them back on the shelves and when he
turned he froze. Slumped under the lowest shelf a dead man was zipped into a sleeping bag. His head encased in a mummy-shaped hood, his eyes were open and his features bruised and bloody.

Quarrie holstered his gun. On one knee he reached for the drawstring that bound the hood and the dead man’s head lolled back, telling him that rigor mortis had already been and gone. That meant this guy had been in here when he came through in the darkness last night. Carefully he worked the zipper all the way down and folded back the flap. No sign of any bullet wounds, the man wore a business suit and tie. His mouth was open and a sheet of paper had been screwed up and forced inside. Pinching with his index finger and thumb Quarrie drew the paper out and saw it was the missing page from the address book he had found in the banker’s box.

A savage-looking purple mark blotted the base of the dead man’s throat, the skin stretched and swollen; a protrusion of bone creating the kind of lump that would be there if he’d been hanged and his neck broken, only he had not been hanged, but his neck was broken just the same. Searching the dead man’s jacket he came up with a wallet containing a driver’s license in the name of Dr Mason Beale.

Upstairs in the kitchen he found the keys to the garage on the drainer. He called the Fannin County sheriff’s department then crossed the drive and unlocked the garage doors. The pickup was parked right over the trapdoor so it could not be raised and he figured it would’ve been Isaac who had done that. He had been back here clearly, he’d been down in the storm shelter with his mother and found Beale’s body, and that was what scared them off. Time was short and as he stood there he wracked his brains trying to figure out where they might have gone.

He was still trying to work it out when a sheriff’s cruiser pulled into the yard driven by the same young deputy he had met before. The guy looked a little sheepish when he saw it was Quarrie and he
shifted the weight of the sidearm buckled on his hip.

‘The body’s in the storm shelter,’ Quarrie told him, ‘Dr Beale out of Shreveport, Louisiana. You’ll find a wall panel open in the study down where you were at before. I figure his car must be somewhere in the woods.’ He gestured to the far side of the house then looked the young man up and down. ‘Your name’s Collins, right?’

The deputy nodded.

‘What we talked about on the phone – I guess Ike Bowen ain’t in the ground just yet so best give the coroner a call.’

Isaac was a few miles north of Marshall, Texas, with Clara in the passenger seat. They had stopped for gas and he had bought her some coffee and a muffin to eat but it lay on the dashboard untouched. He was sipping coffee and telling her she really ought to put something in her stomach.

‘Even if it’s only a mouthful, it’s been a long night and you’ve had one hell of a shock. You need your strength, Mom because where we’re going it won’t be as easy to protect you as it would’ve been in the storm shelter.’

Clara stared at the road ahead.

‘That was Dr Beale by the way,’ Isaac went on. ‘The dead guy in the sleeping bag. I recognized him, Ishmael’s doctor. He’d already been to the house.’

South of Marshall he didn’t take Route 59. Instead he zigzagged, driving a little further east and hit the county road from there. Tiny little hamlets; De Berry, Deadwood and finally Logansport after crossing the state line briefly, before cutting back to Joaquin where they were into the woods.

Next to him Clara peered out of the window. ‘Trinity,’ she said. ‘You’re taking us to the hospital. Why?’

Lights and siren going on the Riviera again, Quarrie drove back to Bellevue with his foot to the floor. Before he’d left the Bowen place he called Alice Barker and told her that Dr Beale was dead. He called the FBI and he called the Louisiana State Police. Then he called Van Hanigan back in Amarillo and gave him the heads up too. Right now every cop in Texas and Louisiana was on the lookout for a blue Pontiac sedan.

Quarrie was trying to stay ahead of this and figure out where Isaac had gone. The truth was it could be just about anywhere, some motel somewhere, some out of the way hidey-hole that he didn’t think Ishmael would find.

It was mid-afternoon by the time he pulled into the main gates of the hospital. Instead of parking where he had before, however, he drove all the way to the main building. Inside the lobby he took the elevator to the third floor.

Alice met him in the corridor and he could see she had been crying from the redness around her eyes. She told him that Nancy McClain had been back for a while and she was in Beale’s office waiting for him. She told him that the police had found Briers’s body in a clump of reeds by an old fishing camp after the owner showed up with his dogs.

Inside Beale’s office Quarrie found Nancy sitting on the couch. Her face was pale and Quarrie gazed beyond her to where the reel-to-reel was plugged into an outlet and a stack of tapes lay on the table marked with Ishmael’s name.