Believe No One (27 page)

Soon as she gets a lungful of air, she starts coughing and blubbing and begging.

He doesn't respond, and she falls silent. Outside of the kill room is quiet, except for an occasional rumble of noise from a passing truck, and he can almost
hear
her listening, waiting for the squeak of the pulleys to begin again, for the crushing weight on her chest.

But he can't just stand around all night, making up his mind what to do. He curses under his breath, takes the strain of the weight and unwinds the rope from the cleat hook. Straight off she starts to beg, and he rushes it, then flustered, leaves her under too long: when he raises the weight, she doesn't come round, and he has to strip off the plastic wrap, resuscitate her.

When she comes to, he's so relieved he sits back on his haunches and drops his head in his hands so the cameras can't see that he's crying. That was almost the end of it; he felt so adrift right then, he thought,
I don't know how to do this.
In the past he would have begged for forgiveness, but he's a different person, now – different today than he was even yesterday. Stronger. All Fergus ever did was give orders and make him feel like he was in the way.

He watches himself look up at the block-and-tackle system and feels again that sudden hollowing out at his centre. The pulleys. Another of Fergus's ‘refinements' – they were just a means to get him out of the way
.

He says aloud, ‘This is not what I want. It was never what I wanted.'

Sharla Jane sobs with relief. ‘No … I know that.' The intubation has damaged her voice, and her breath rasps in her throat as she whispers. ‘You don't have to hurt anyone—'

‘Shut up,' he says. ‘No one's talking to you.' He stands with his fingers plucking nervously at the seam of his pants. ‘What I meant was, I'll do it my own way.'

He sounds like a kid. Why the hell is he
explaining
? And to her, of all people.

Her eyes are covered, and he needs to get at them, yet he can't move. He remembers his mouth was suddenly dry as dust and he was too scared to take the tape off, to look in her eyes.

Gradually he becomes aware that she is talking, her voice small and hesitant.

‘Please … I know I've been a bad person, but Riley – he's just starting out in life. He never hurt nobody.'

‘Yeah, well, shit happens. Anyway, he's not the innocent you think he is.'

‘He's a
kid.
' She says it with a pity in her voice and he experiences a pang of pity for himself.

‘You gave a shit about that boy, you would've never touched meth. You gave a shit about him, you wouldn't've put him through what you put him through.'

‘I cared more about crank than I did about him for a little while. But I
never
stopped caring.' Tears seep from under the duct tape, lifting a corner. ‘Anyway, the bad things I did aren't Riley's fault,' she says. ‘They're mine. Punish
me,
don't punish him.'

‘DON'T YOU FUCKING TELL
ME
WHAT TO DO!' He's screaming, out of control, spit flying from his mouth. ‘
Nobody
tells
me
what to do.'

‘No.' She's sobbing and shaking, almost drowning in her own tears and snot. ‘No, I know. I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to sound like that.'

He takes a breath, another, another, another. Sucking in air like it's medicine, backing away from her because what he wanted to do right then was tear her insides out, and losing control terrifies him.

He might edit that part; makes him look bad. But Fergus usually does the editing, and he's not sure he can make a good job of it.

‘I'm sorry,' she says again. Her voice is tremulous, but she tries to stop crying. ‘Can I make it up to you?'

She's offering him sex, when he can just take it. It's almost funny. He moves in, his mouth close to her ear. ‘Time will tell,' he says and she flinches, but the tape holds her.

He could've told her the boy got away, but he can't think of one good reason why he should. Nobody ever comforted him. Nobody ever told him it wasn't his fault. Nor gave him credit, either, for all he did, how hard he tried.

‘I'm a glaikit gull,' he murmurs.

He looks down at the woman and a righteous resentment surges like hot acid in his stomach. ‘I do
everything
to make it work,' he says. ‘I treat you right; I do right by your kids; I bring in money regular, find you a nice place to live. But it's never enough.' He shakes his head. ‘Give a woman something, she'll always want more.'

He bends and finds a box cutter in a canvas carryall on the floor behind him, slices through the duct tape over her eyes. She gasps, tries to flinch from the cold steel, and instinct makes him draw back, jarring his injured hand.

‘Hey,' he says. ‘
Hey
!'

She stops, her breath quick and shallow.

‘I need you to hold still,' he says, pressing the bandaged web of his thumb to staunch a fresh bleed, grimacing behind his mask. The torn flesh slows him down, but he finally gets the duct tape off her face and hair.

She blinks under the bright spot lamps, her eyes wide and wet with all the crying. He wipes her face with one broad hand and dries it on the seat of his pants, then replaces the tape, wrapping it over and over around her forehead, under the boards of wood, binding her tightly to the pallet.

‘That didn't hurt, now, did it?'

She tries to shake her head, says, ‘N-nnnn-n.' But she can't move because of the duct tape, and can't speak because she's so scared, and he realizes he's standing over her with the cutter in his hand, just inches from her face.

‘I know,' he soothes. ‘I know.'

Later, he'll check the recordings on the other cameras, see if the angles make it look closer still.

He retracts the blade, tucks the box cutter in the waistband of his pants and strokes her hair, almost crooning to her. ‘That better?'

But removing one threat only makes her focus on another. She stares at the weight above her, and does not look comforted at all.

He smiles. ‘Sometimes seeing what's coming isn't a good thing, is it?' She doesn't answer, but she doesn't need to – it's written on her face.

‘I'm going to take out the box cutter and cut off the rest of the stretch wrap now. Okay?'

She says, ‘Y-huh,' her eyes on the big disc hanging over her.

The blade is razor sharp, and it's the work of a moment. He drops the cutter into the bag at his feet and Sharla Jane yelps at the sudden noise.

‘Shh-sh,' he says. ‘Everything's fine.'

He riffles through the contents of the carryall, picks up a sealed bag and tears it open. Bends to find a second and a third; finally hooks a roll of micropore tape with his little finger. He lays them out on her stomach for easy access. Feeling well prepped, he probes the muscles of her thigh, near the groin, using the fingertips of both hands, working in the direction of the knee. She doesn't carry much fat, so it's easy to feel the groove between the two big muscles, find the vein nestled between them on the inner thigh. He keeps the fingers of his left hand in place, so he doesn't lose the vein, picks up the wide-gauge hypodermic; the tube is already attached. No need to sterilize.

‘This is going to pinch a bit,' he says.

He inserts the needle and she gives a small ‘Yip!' and struggles to raise her head. He clips the tube so he can attach it to a drainage bag without making a mess. He places the bag on the floor and releases the clip. Instantly blood starts to flow.

‘What are you doing?' She stares at him, horrified, pleading, and he sees another face, one that has tormented his dreams and coloured his life blood-red since he was eight years old.

‘Stop it,' he yells. ‘Quit staring at me. I can't stand the way you
look
at me. What am I supposed to do? I CAN'T HELP YOU.'

She closes her eyes and begins to wail, and she's just plain old Sharla Jane again.

He shuts off the flow. Shushes and soothes her until she's calm again: he doesn't want this to happen too fast and, while she's agitated, it'll go real fast.

‘Okay?' he says, holding her hand, smoothing the cold sweat off her face. ‘Feeling better?'

‘Please, don't do this,' she says.
‘Please?'

‘You want me to stop?'

She tries to nod, but can't. He turns to the camera.

‘Do you want me to stop?'

‘Who're you talking to? Please,
please,
why are you doing this?'

‘There's
some
out there like to watch. The type of jerk-off who watches pay-per-view porn with a Mastercard in one hand, his pecker in the other. People who like to see the fear and pain in the eyes of a dying woman. Get a kick out of watching the light die in her eyes.' He bends to find something in the canvas bag, then straightens to look into the camera again. ‘Well, that isn't me.'

With his finger and thumb, he forces her eyelids open, waits until she is looking at him, then shows her what he has in his hand. The box cutter, its point directly over her right eye.

‘Don't.' She's breathing so fast she can barely get the words out. ‘Please – don't.'

‘Trust me,' he says. ‘Sometimes it really is better not to see what's coming.'

She begins to scream.

‘That's all right,' he says. ‘You go ahead, scream, if it makes you feel better. There's nobody to hear you.'

The man dressed in black stands at the centre of a large, oblong, windowless room. Around him, cameras, tripods, spot lamps, a laptop with a webcam. The signal passes along cables and through steel walls to a satellite dish on the side of a large, rust-red shipping container, shielded from an empty, dusty road on an abandoned and derelict lot.

Tulk residence, Williams County, Oklahoma
Afternoon

Marsha Tulk is working on the business accounts. She likes to do numbers work, as she calls it, sitting in the small office that faces on to the front yard, so she can keep an eye on the comings and goings of her family. The yard is quiet, Harlan and Bryce being on a delivery run. Tyler is tending the pot grows in the eastern section and Waylon – well, that boy is probably still in bed. The accounts detail incomes, costs and expenses for the tomatoes, which show a modest profit. She pays her boys out of these profits, to minimize her tax liability, and Federal and state taxes take their share after deductions and expenses. Income from the marijuana is naturally not recorded on this spreadsheet, or anywhere else but her own head. But since the cost of fertilizer, irrigation and fencing is covered by the tomato crops, the only extras in the equation are cost of seed and transport, and the occasional incidental expense to grease the wheels of the gravy train.

She's working through the receipts, spiking those she has entered onto the computer, almost hypnotized by the sedate routine of the work.

The first surprise of the morning is when her door bursts open and Waylon stumbles in, fully dressed and looking wide awake. ‘Momma, you got to come see this.'

The second surprise is he's been watching the news.

On the screen, blue and red flashing lights – a cruiser and an SUV, Sheriff standing in front of them. The next shot is a close-up of a mobile home.

‘What am I looking at here, Waylon?' she says, then stops. The camera switches to a shot of the entrance to a trailer park. It's Lambert Woods – Tulk property. ‘Drugs arrest?' she asks.

Her youngest son rewinds the TiVo.

‘Waylon, I asked you a question.'

‘I'm trying to answer, Ma.'

He stops at a picture. It's a school records photograph. And it is without doubt the boy, Red. The caption reads ‘Riley Patterson: MISSING'. Well, she never did think his name was Caleb. A crawler on the bottom of the screen gives an emergency contact number to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. The anchorman says this boy attended the last day of school in Hays Elementary and that he lived with his mother over at Lambert Woods Mobile Home Park. This same boy who had sworn to her that his momma was dead and he was running away from a foster home.

Marsha Tulk sits for five minutes listening to the news story so she has it clear in her mind.

She can feel her son getting more and more agitated as he waits.

‘Momma, that trailer is the last one before the woods,' he tells her. ‘It can't be more'n a mile from one of the pot grows.'

She looks at him, thinking,
That boy
lied
to me.

‘Momma, that boy will bring the cops down on us,' Waylon says, pointing at the TV with the clicker. ‘We need to turn him in.'

‘Boy, I know the location and grid reference of every grow we got in these woods,' she says. ‘And I decide what “we” need to do.' She pauses, waiting for that to sink in. ‘Are we clear?'

He hesitates, then puts the remote down like it's a loaded gun. ‘Yes, Momma.'

‘Good,' she says. ‘You can bring the boy to me.'

Mrs Tulk looks mad.

Waylon wouldn't tell him why he was wanted, but Red could tell it wasn't good. He was beginning to feel better, but now his stomach is doing flip-flops again and his legs are shaking.

Mrs Tulk is waiting on the porch. ‘You got some explaining to do,' she says.

‘Ma'am, I—'

She raises a finger. ‘Before you speak, you should think.'

That's all he's been doing since he got here. When they hauled him out of that pit this morning, he was so scared all he wanted was to get away, but now, after all the thinking he's done, he's scared they'll
send
him away, because everybody in these parts knows you do not mess with the Tulk family, and that means they won't mess with him. The thought that they will make him leave just about strikes him dumb.