Flashback (4 page)

When he reached Carrington’s office, Max was pleasantly surprised to find the door slightly ajar. There was a thick cable stretching out across the hallway and Max figured someone was working inside. He gently eased the door open, but the office was empty. Max counted eight medium-sized filing cabinets, some with the drawers still open, others with stacks of papers piled on top of them. Just inside the front door, a solitary winter coat and a couple of old baseball caps hung on a set of hooks. On the opposite wall was a cot, covered by a rolled up sleeping bag and a pillow. Right beside it was a small sink and mirror, plus a glass shelf on which was a toothbrush, the remains of a tube of toothpaste, a disposable razor and a shaving brush. It looked as if Carrington had often worked late into the night, then elected to sleep at the office rather than go home. There was even a small dog dish and water bowl on the floor beside the sink. Max turned his attention to the desk, on which sat a very old computer.

It was clear from the material scattered across the desk that Carrington had recently been reassessing all the information he possessed about David Dexter’s disappearance. Max settled into the battered old chair at Carrington’s desk and began to quickly sift through the paperwork. An old glossy magazine featured the smiling face of Jonathan Dexter on the front cover, below the headline “Ready for the Challenge”. Flipping the page, Max saw an article about Dexter’s anticipated run for the presidency. He put the magazine to one side and began studying newspaper clippings on the David Dexter case. Most of them were covered in yellow post-its filled with scribbled notes or numbers. One story mentioned how Vanessa Dexter had been “driven insane with grief” and had been confined to a special hospital. There was even a story about David’s funeral after the discovery of his body. It included a brief mention that the police were rumored to have used a psychic to help them locate the grave.

“Who the hell are you?”

Max almost fell out of the chair. A middle-aged man with thinning hair stood in the doorway. He was wearing a heavy tool belt and carrying a large toolbox.

“Not really a place for kids,” said the man.

“No,” Max replied. “It isn’t.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“Oh, er,” Max stammered, “I’m just getting some stuff for my dad. He asked me to pick it up, but he’s so messy. It’s hard to find anything on this desk.”

The man didn’t reply and walked over to the wall near the sink, where he put down his toolbox. Max returned to the papers on the desk. In the margin beside the article about David’s grave, opposite the underlined word “psychic”, Carrington had written “Deanna Hastings”. He’d also scribbled the words “Tuesday, 10 am coffee”. Unfortunately, Max couldn’t find any more references to Deanna Hastings or what she and the detective may have discussed.

“Okay,” said the man, as he walked back over to the door, “just as long as you know it’s going to get pretty noisy once we start drilling into that wall.”

Once he’d left, Max found some papers on the desk that he couldn’t read. They were written in what looked to be Russian, the odd script being completely unintelligible to Max.

The type of paper indicated that they were cuttings from magazine articles and were accompanied by a photograph of a group of men. Most were wearing white lab coats, but others were dressed in military uniforms. The men were seated around a long boardroom table in what Max assumed was a scientific facility or even a hospital, judging by the equipment visible in the background. The picture reminded Max of photographs featuring Jonathan Dexter on one of the websites he’d viewed at the library.

The caption beneath the photograph in Max’s hand identified several of the pictured men, but not all of them. At the top of the frame, Carrington had scribbled “Kovac?” There was also a crudely drawn arrow pointing to one of the participants, a middle-aged man with dark, thinning hair, who was wearing thickly framed glasses.

Max pulled open the desk drawer to find some paper on which to quickly jot down a few notes. There was no notepad in the drawer, only a shallow plastic tray, containing paperclips in a variety of colours, pencils, pens, and a pair of keys on a small

metal ring, plus scores of opened envelopes. These mostly contained bills, both paid and unpaid, giving the impression that Carrington wasn’t exactly someone who paid attention to detail in his personal affairs.

Sifting through the collection of old mail, Max found an empty envelope, but immediately noticed that it wasn’t addressed to Carrington’s office, but rather to a PO box number. Max thought that the keys in the drawer were too small for a car or a regular door lock. He guessed that they could possibly belong to a mailbox at a post office. Perhaps Carrington might have kept a few things related to his investigation in a safe, separate place?

Stuffing the envelope and keys into his pocket, Max quickly left the office. As he turned the corner near the building entrance, he almost collided with two police officers.

“Hey,” said one of them. “What’s your hurry?”

“Sorry,” said Max, continuing out into the parking lot.

He had no way of knowing if the officers were on their way to Carrington’s office. But by the time they got there, Max would be long gone.

JOHN CARRINGTON’S MAILBOX
was located at a post office inside a community drugstore only a couple of blocks from his office.

Max made his way along the aisles of the pharmacy to the counter at the back. A young mother with a stroller was being served by a
tall slim woman in her late fifties with poorly dyed black hair
.

The wall beside the counter was filled with identical narrow, steel mailboxes and it took Max a minute to locate the number matching Carrington’s key. He opened the box, reached inside for the contents and pulled them out. There were a few items of personal mail, as well as more bills, plus a letter-sized envelope. Max put everything into the larger envelope and locked the mailbox. The woman at the counter, who now had no customers to deal with, startled him.

“So who are you?” she asked.

“Sorry?” said Max.

“I said, who are you?” the woman repeated. “And what are you doing with Mr. Carrington’s mailbox?”

“I’m his grandson,” Max replied, thinking quickly. “He asked me to come down and collect the mail.”

Glancing nervously at a copy of the morning paper still folded neatly on the counter, Max desperately hoped that the woman hadn’t read the story reporting Carrington’s death.

“That’s funny,” said the woman. “He never mentioned a grandson before. Never heard him talk about any family, to tell you the truth. And he’s always very chatty when he comes in here.”

“Oh well, I, er, don’t live around here,” Max went on, “and don’t see him very often. I’m just here for a few days. He’s always really busy with his work as well.”

“Sure is,” nodded the woman. “He always has some stories to tell too.”

“Anyway,” said Max, “better be going. Don’t want to keep granddad waiting.”

The woman just shrugged and said something inaudible under her breath as Max turned to leave. He hurried toward the exit, keeping his fingers crossed that the woman wouldn’t pick up the newspaper and see the headline about Max’s dear old “granddad” being found dead in the park.

Once he was outside the drugstore, Max spotted a coffee shop on the corner of the next block. He quickly crossed the street, clutching the envelope tightly to his chest. Max ordered one of his favourite cold coffee drinks. He settled in at a table well away from the front windows, where he could examine the contents of the mailbox with some degree of privacy.

From inside the envelope Max pulled out the bills and regular mail, plus a newspaper clipping, a collection of web pages printed from a computer, and some prints of digital photographs. The first paper he examined was a document originating in the local police department years earlier. Although it was a poor quality photocopy, the words “file - not to be removed”, were clearly stamped in the top right corner. The document listed a number of missing person cases and how they’d all been thoroughly investigated, with any links between them dismissed. More tellingly, all investigations were to cease forthwith, in compliance with a recent directive from the FBI.

The newspaper clipping from the local paper concerned the recent retirement of a professor at the university. Max read that Aleksander Kovac had worked in research at the university since his arrival from Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Max had heard of Yugoslavia at school. He’d had a friend in junior high whose family had left there when the civil wars tore the country apart. The picture of Kovac receiving his award from the dean of the university had only been taken a few months earlier. With the connection to Yugoslavia, Max at least partially understood the strange Russian-like script he’d seen at Carrington’s office.
The old picture Max had seen at the office hadn’t been the best quality, but it was definitely an image of the same person as the photograph in the newspaper.

The printed website pages were a selection of news stories, and Carrington had made extensive notes. The stories, some no more than a headline with a few lines of text, all concerned the deaths of prominent people. There were politicians in the U.S., Russia, and in Europe; nuclear scientists in the Middle East; businessmen and women in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, and Australia; and government officials in over twenty other countries. All of them had died officially of natural causes, although all had apparently enjoyed perfect health. Carrington’s scribbled notes seemed to refer to the significance of each of these people, no matter how minor their careers appeared to be, and implied that they were all somehow connected. However, Carrington’s notes didn’t make much sense to Max.

The printed digital photographs looked to have been taken with a telescopic lens. In the first picture, a tall, slim man was stepping out of a building. His shoulder-length, blonde hair was swept back from his face and he wore sunglasses. In the second photograph, the same man was getting into a white car, accompanied by two other men in dark suits. The pictures weren’t very clear and there was no indication of who these

people were, just a scribbled letter “K” written in Carrington’s handwriting. The dates on the pictures were relatively recent.

Clearly Carrington had been onto something. Yet as far as Max was concerned, the collection of material amounted to only having a handful of the pieces to a jigsaw puzzle, with no completed picture as a guideline to put it back together.

With Carrington now dead, probably no one else suspected anything. Except perhaps Vanessa Dexter, thought Max. Carrington had remarked that David’s mother was still alive in a nursing home. She might be completely crazy, but even if she wasn’t, Max still had no idea how he’d be able to meet her. And yet he was determined to find out what was going on, even if only for himself.

WHEN HE STEPPED
out of the coffee shop, Max considered going home and hiding the envelope in his room. Then he thought that it might be useful if he could talk to Mrs. Dexter and back up his story. He checked the Belvedere Gardens website with his phone, noting that they had a barbeque event planned for that day, before making his way to the bus stop.

When he got on the bus, Max sat in one of the seats near the window. In his mind, he went over everything that had happened since he’d been at the cemetery, wondering if he’d ever make sense of it all.
Max worried sometimes if there was something seriously wrong with him, although he’d never admit that to his dad. His mother had been depressed and may have taken her own life. He’d overheard his dad talking to his grandmother about it on the phone once. His dad was apparently very concerned that Max would “end up like his poor mother”, hence all the visits to medical specialists over the years.

Max held Carrington’s envelope close at his side. He still had no idea how he was going to get to see Mrs. Dexter, provided of course she was actually still living at Belvedere Mansions. He also hadn’t a clue what the building was like, what kind of access it had, and if there was any type of security system.

Despite all the activity as people got on and off the bus, Max could hardly keep his eyes open. He soon dozed off as he rested his head on the window.

“I don’t care who he is. I’ve never liked him.”

“Be reasonable, Vanessa. Aleksander has been working on this project for years and I’m responsible for all the agency’s work.”

“Reasonable? You’re asking me to be reasonable? Does that mean we have to have him here at our house?”

“It’s just business and work. It’s not like I have a choice, you know.”

“There are stories, Jonathan.”

“Stories? What sort of stories?”

“About his work, not at the university. They say there’s another place where he experiments on people. They say he used to do it back in Yugoslavia and he’s doing it here and that you’re all covering up for him.”