(2011) The Gift of Death (40 page)

‘
I know. It’s just that –‘

‘
What?’

Cassie sighed. ‘The dream I had. It was about you.’

‘
And?’

‘
Oh, it was nothing. Don’t listen to me. It’s the painkillers. Nothing but –‘

‘
Cassie, I want to know.’

There was silence.

‘
Tell me,’ she said.

‘
You were down at the beach house. You were taking photographs just as you were that morning – when you found the baby. But you had – what are they called? One of those things that produce photos straight away?’

‘
A Polaroid?’

‘
Yes, one of those. As you looked through the camera you saw someone come closer towards you. You couldn’t make him out at first, he was in shadows. And you couldn’t take your eyes away from the viewfinder. Somehow, in the dream, the camera had become your eyes, well, sort of –. Look, I told you it was nonsense, stupid nonsense. Doesn’t make any sense if I - ’

‘
Go on,’ said Kate.

‘
So you carried on looking through your camera until you realised that the man who was walking towards you was Gleason. Well, not quite him, but a younger version of him. And not quite like the man who attacked me, the one you think is Ryan, his son. But a man who looked like both of them. I can’t explain. Anyway, as he came towards you, you realised he was carrying a knife, a long knife with a horrible blade, all raised and serrated. You don’t need to hear any more. Honestly, Kate –‘

‘
I want to hear it all,’ she said. ‘Carry on.’

‘
You couldn’t move. You couldn’t take the camera away. You saw his face coming closer, looking at you through the camera, until all you could see were his eyes. He continued to look at you – and you at him – as he moved his knife down to your stomach. At the moment you felt him push the blade into you, you took a photograph.’

Kate didn’t want to listen to any more, but it was no use. She felt compelled to ask the question, the answer she knew she didn’t want to hear.

‘
And what did the photograph show? What was it of?’

There was no answer.

‘
Cassie?’

‘
That was the odd thing about it,’ she whispered. ‘It was a picture of the man holding a baby. Your baby.’

‘
Was – it – okay? The baby, I mean.’

‘
Yes, she was fine. But the man said he was going to bring it up as one of his own.’

A shiver went through Kate. She thought about what Roberta had endured. Abuse at the hands of her father and her brother. The knowledge that she was both the daughter and sister of a serial killer. She remembered the way she had looked in that interrogation room. Her face pale, miserable. Her eyes lifeless. By the time Kate had left her Roberta had fallen silent, withdrawn, reduced to a mere fragment of a person. Josh told her that she hadn’t uttered a word since. Even if Ryan was apprehended, Kate wondered whether she would ever be able to fully recover.

‘
Cassie, you need to get some rest. It’s not good for you to keep worrying about the –‘

‘
I know. I told you it was stupid.’

‘
It’s not surprising you’re having nightmares, after what you’ve been through. But I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything.’

‘
But you will be careful, won’t you?’

‘
Me? Of course. What am I going to do?’

‘
That’s what I’m worried about.’

Kate looked at her watch. She had a date with Josh. Not a proper date, of course. A catch-up about the case.

‘
Look, I’d better go. I’ve got to see Josh. I’ll come tomorrow, okay. Same time?’

‘
Same time,’ said Cassie, her voice infused by sadness.

Kate took hold of her hand.

‘
We’re going to get through this. We’re all going to be okay.’

‘
You think so?’

She nodded her head. ‘What am I doing?’

‘
You’re nodding your head.’

‘
How do you do that?’ said Kate, trying to lighten the mood. ‘I always said you were a witch.’

Kate turned to go.

‘
You know what I think?’

‘
What?’

‘
I think he’s going to ask you back.’

‘
Who?’

‘
Who do you think? Josh.’

‘
Not in a million years.’

‘
I think he still loves you.’

‘
I think you’ve been reading too many romances.’

‘
I’m blind. Or have you forgotten?’

‘
Point taken. But no, I don’t think it’s going to happen.’

‘
Talking hypothetically – what would you do if he did?’

‘
What?’

‘
Ask you back.’

‘
I told you, it’s not a –‘

‘
I know, but if he did.’

Kate felt a surge of anticipation within her. It was tempting to indulge her feelings, but she had to keep those fantasies in check. She had been there before.

‘
I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said.

64

Kate thought about Cassie’s dream as she drove along the Pacific Coast Highway. She pictured Ryan Gleason holding her child – Cassie had pictured it as a little girl – in his arms. He looked at it neither with affection nor sympathy. His cold, black eyes studied it like a snake gazes upon its prey in the moments before the kill. What would he do to her? Cassie said that in her dream he planned to bring the child up as his own. She couldn’t bear to think of what he might do to her when she reached – what? How old had Roberta been when her abuse started?

Would it all have been different if Mary Gleason had not died? Would Robert Gleason’s murderous urges – his proclivity to sexual violence – have been contained had he not lost his wife? Certainly, if Mary had survived it’s unlikely that Gleason would have fostered a child like Ryan. He had created a monster in his own image.

And now that monster was free. Free to kill again.

She tried to imagine his plan. He was, after all, the kind of murderer who liked to be creative. What was it that reporter, Cynthia Ross, had once said of him? He had a genius for the gruesome, a talent for the macabre. What sick scheme had he dreamt up now? And what did the sequence of film captured by the security cameras have to do with it all? Was he using himself as some kind of bait? And if so, whose attention was he trying to gain?

She glanced in her mirror. The police car was still behind her. She was safe. There was no way Gleason could get anywhere near her.

As she drove into the carport of the beach house she watched the cop car slow down and park outside. She checked her watch. Josh was late.

She walked down the path that led to the terrace overlooking the sea. She stopped for a moment, enjoying the feel of the sun on her face and the faint traces of spray that came off the ocean below. Each time she looked at the water now she felt guilty. She had had to postpone her exhibition yet again. Would she ever get her life back?

She was tempted to try and end it once and for all. To draw Ryan towards her somehow. Or to break away from the cops who tailed her every moment and go looking for him. But what had happened last time? She had nearly gotten herself killed. She wasn’t prepared to do that again. She couldn’t risk losing the baby. And, although she prided herself on her logical mind and sceptical nature, there was something about Cassie’s dream that disturbed her, that chimed with her own worst imaginings.

The only answer was to wait. Surely it was only a matter of time before Josh hunted him down. That, or Ryan accidentally gave himself away, just like his father before him.

She took a deep breath of salty air and turned away from the sea. She unlocked the door and walked into the kitchen. She opened the icebox and poured herself a glass of ice tea. She cut a few slices of lemon and added them to the drink, which she took with her through to the dark room. She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was already 12:40. Josh was 25 minutes late. She took out her cell and dialled his number. It went straight to his answer service. She listened to his voice, but, at the last moment, decided not to leave a message. She didn’t want to hassle him.

He had told her that he had something important to say to her. What could it be? Did he have a lead? Had he discovered where Ryan was hiding? Had he already made an arrest? Was Ryan behind bars? Or had there been some kind of shoot out? Was that why he was late?

The idea turned her stomach. It was something she couldn’t contemplate. No, that wasn’t going to happen. Josh was just stuck in traffic. On one of the freeways he claimed to love so much. The 101, the 405, the 110, the 10.

She finished her ice tea and placed the glass down on the stainless steel trough. She turned on the tap and rinsed her hands with cold water. In the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of something she had been trying to avoid. The clay model of Ryan which she had covered with dry cloth. She couldn’t bear to see his features, that straight jaw, that high forehead, those eyes that stared blankly from the face with such awful indifference. Almost like he didn’t care whether he lived or died.

She felt compelled to move towards it. She took a step – slowly – and then another. Despite the ice tea her mouth was dry. She stretched out her hand, which she noticed was shaking. She hated herself for the fear she felt. For fuck’s sake, she cursed. ‘I’m not supposed to be like this,’ she said to herself. ‘I don’t do superstition. It’s bullshit.’

She steadied her hand and, with a swift motion, whipped the cloth from the bust. There. That wasn’t too bad, was it? It was just a lump of clay that she had worked with. Nothing more. If she chose she could take a hammer or a chisel to it and reduce it back to an amorphous clump, a shape without features, form or fear. She looked around the floor for her box of tools. Where had she put them? Yes, that was right, they were in the cupboard under the trough. She bent down and opened the door. She pushed her hand into the dark space and felt for the ridge of the crate that held her tools. She pulled the box towards her. There was a claw hammer, a chisel, a round of cheese wire, a gavel. Although she was tempted to destroy the model she knew that she couldn’t. Not while the investigation was still ongoing. From the clay maquette the tech-heads in Josh’s team had created a high definition computer image of Ryan Gleason which should have been sent to every force in America. He was going to be hunted down and brought to justice. He would be tried and found guilty and most likely receive the death sentence.

She tried to picture it – Ryan’s arrest, his trial, his imprisonment, his execution – but the images didn’t come. The future was nothing but a black hole, vague and shapeless. And what of herself? What would her future be like? She would have her child and then what? They would live together at the beach house or with her mother? She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the scene. She was in a nursery, its ceiling alive with colourful mobiles, and she was holding a child swaddled in a pure white shawl. Its comfortable form filled her arms. She could smell its milky breath, the honeyed aroma of baby soap. She cooed to it, talked to the baby about how precious she was, how she was mummy’s darling. She went to peel back the top of the shawl to give the child a kiss. But as she did so she realised there was nothing there. She was just holding a mass of blankets, which, as she opened them out to search for her baby, fell apart into fragments of cloth in her arms.

As she opened her eyes, suddenly terrified, she heard a knock at the door. She steadied herself by the sink, pushing the nightmarish images from her consciousness. There was another knock. She couldn’t move. She felt paralysed by the unknown, by the nasty trace of fear left by what Cassie had told her and now by this awful daydream. She touched her stomach and couldn’t feel it move. She stopped breathing. There was nothing. Was it -?

The ring of her cell made her jump and at the same moment, as if mimicking her movements, she felt something kick inside her. Her baby. It was alive.

She took the cell out of her jeans pocket. It was Josh.

‘
I’m standing outside,’ he said. ‘Where are you?’

‘
Just in the dark room.’

‘
What were doing? Working?’

‘
No – but – I’ll be right there.’

‘
Bye.’