The Long Count (23 page)

‘Did you kill him too?’

‘Yes, I did.’

Clara started to sob.

‘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.’