The Lazarus Effect (7 page)

‘So, what’s this something you’re working on?’

‘Come on. I can’t talk about my cases. It’s unprofessional.’

He hooted. ‘You work at what’s barely a newspaper, not at the Pentagon. Spit it out.’

She threw a used serviette at his head. Then she told him, omitting the part about apparitions and anxiety attacks. That was all hers for now.

‘This kid’s been missing for
two years
and you wanna revive the case. And solve it. What’ve you been smoking?’

‘No, the story’s too twisted to walk away from. As dysfunctional goes, this family’s textbook material. The strangest part? Paulsen hates their guts but won’t go as far as outright accusing them – not of murder, at least. She’s pretty torn up, seeing as the better part of this is her fault. As she sees it, between a lot of careless whispers and screwing around she and Ian managed to
chakla
two families till everlasting. She wants the case closed but not to cause any more pain, which is the dumbest, most passive-aggressive shit I ever heard. Her kid goes AWOL and is most likely dead, and she acts like her biggest decision is whether 
to flip out on them like an avenging angel or just stay self-righteously pissed in her corner.’

‘Maybe there’s your mystery solved. She did it and can’t come right with herself. Ever watched
Snapped: Women Who Kill?
Half of those crazies are kid killers.’

‘Nah.’ Joshua cocked his head and Vee did an adamant flip-flop of her hand. ‘I’m telling you, no. I don’t
know
that she didn’t kill her own daughter but … yeah. I know. If she’s after anything, I’d say it’s money. You know that fancy health-care facility that’s still under renovation, the Wellness Institute?’

Joshua flashed all his teeth. Employees at JPMorgan Chase were bred to run like thoroughbreds, his grin said. Illness was a luxury he couldn’t afford, not on his bonuses.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘some of us are still human enough to get sick once in a while. We can’t all crash-land from Krypton in perfect health and Gucci shirts.’

‘This old thing? Mr Price all the way.’

She shook her head. ‘That glass and chrome building in Claremont. They’re adding a physio unit, mega swimming pool, gym and spa. The works. It’s got everybody lining up.’

‘Since when are you everybody? You’d never see a doctor even if you had an extra pair of eyes. Everything okay?’ He levelled a squint and Vee mumbled something, avoiding his eyes. He shrugged, let it drop. ‘Why in tarnation does a hospital need a pool and spa?’

‘It’s an ‘institute’. Apparently, nobody wants to be openly confronted with the fact they’re diseased and mortal, precisely what hospitals are good at. They say they’re promoting a
spiritual and holistic combination. New Age evasiveness is all the rage now.’

‘My point is the Fouries are far from starving. They’re both senior staff at WI. They’ve offered Paulsen money for her ‘cooperation’ before, when it involved saving their son’s life, but ever since her daughter went missing she’s felt a distinct lack of support on their part. She may’ve changed her mind about recompense.’

She found and spread out the contents of Jacqui’s case envelope: copies of the official police report, statements from everyone questioned, newspaper clippings, hotline numbers for missing children sightings. She pushed the second photograph in the pile towards Joshua.

‘That’s the basket she’s put all her eggs in,’ she said, tapping the image of a man in the snapshot. ‘Ashwin Venter, the boyfriend. Twenty-five, auto mechanic, bit of a bad boy with a record. Obviously, Mommy didn’t approve. She demanded that Jacqui end the relationship; they quarrelled and Jacqui took to sneaking around behind her back. When Adele found out that her precious was still running around with him, grinding gonads no less, well, you can imagine how that went down. Typical mother-daughter stuff.

‘But Adele swears that Venter has the perfect motive for murder. She suspects Jacqui was pregnant from the way she was acting before she disappeared, and that Ashwin found out and flipped. She heard them fight a couple of times just before Jacqui disappeared, but couldn’t really pick out what it was about. Jacqui even came home with bruises one time, wouldn’t
talk about how she got them. She just told her mom that she hoped she was happy now, because she’d broken up with him. He obviously didn’t take it well. Came by their house a few times making threats and causing a ruckus. They had to call the neighbours to get him off their property.’

Joshua eyed the photograph, his expression sceptical. Venter had a protective arm draped around his girl, the look on his face one of overplayed bravado. He was pale and freckled, well-muscled but kind of short. Hardly the toughest stud on the block. ‘I guess bad boys come in all flavours,’ he muttered. ‘What, he offed her when he found out she was having his baby? Doesn’t sound like your average male reaction.’

‘My thoughts exactly. But according to Adele, this guy’s typical coloured trash – her words, not mine. In his teens he was part of a gang. When his father died he inherited the business, which he couldn’t manage, and it started losing money. To top it off, he’s got two kids with other women. He’d been hauled into court for child maintenance and was seriously struggling to make ends meet. Basically, he wouldn’t have been over the moon about baby number three. He probably saw Jacqui as a soft option. Naïve schoolgirl star-struck by a big-time player. The way Adele tells it, he begged Jacqui to get rid of the baby, she refused and it went downhill fast.’

‘Dang, she really has it in for this guy. She knows all this how?’

‘Oh, she’s gunning for him all right, but her gun’s not loaded. Sure, he confessed under interrogation that they’d argued and even fought physically before, and had a huge bust-up on the day she disappeared. But other than that, there’s no proof.
The cops pegged him as their main suspect, especially when it turned out he was the last person to see her alive and he couldn’t produce an alibi other than his sister. They brought him in for questioning a number of times, even held him in custody for two days without a formal charge, but with no evidence they eventually had to let him go. No body, no crime.’

Joshua frowned. ‘So, what, the cops hound one guy without much to go on, then suddenly the case goes cold? They didn’t have a body, but surely they had
some
evidence to build a case. When people go missing, they tend to leave a trace. Girl leaves home …’

‘Girl leaves home on September twenty-second, 2007. It’s a Saturday morning, just after ten.’ Vee took the reins, steering from memory. One thing her brain was good at: spooling facts, running playback. The flipside: glitching out in the face of overwhelming levels of choice or visual input, typically in malls and supermarket aisles.

‘She cleans her room and takes off for tennis practice at Newlands Sports Club with her friends, or so she tells her mom. That part of the story holds up. After that, holes. Just before midday, Adele called to find out where she was, got told they were on their way to lunch in Rondebosch. Like most teenagers, Jacqui was a great white liar, so her mother was in the habit of checking on her a lot, particularly on weekends. Didn’t do much good, because Jacqui still managed to give her the slip. She ditched her girlfriends and went to Ashwin’s garage in Athlone. According to him, it was simply to talk about their relationship, but it escalated into a screaming match. He wanted
her back and she wasn’t havin’ it. Later, he swore up and down that the subject of pregnancy never came up. The prospect of having another child, this time with his beloved, wouldn’t have scared him but would have made him the happiest man alive.

‘
That’s
when the trail goes cold,’ Vee flung her hands up. ‘By about four in the afternoon, Ashwin gave up the bended-knee act and Jacqui left. He swore he never laid a hand on her that day. Nobody admitted to seeing her again. Everybody who tried calling her once they started to get really worried said her cell was switched off. Wherever she ended up, I’m guessing that phone ended up there with her.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Joshua countered. ‘She could’ve lost it or it could’ve been stolen.’

‘True, possible. Too many possibles at this stage.’

‘Whatever you do, you’ve got to roll out with it like a boss.’Cause I bet your boss’s given you this much,’ he held two fingers an inch apart, ‘wiggle room.’

‘Oh, my inner bitch is so poised.’ Vee sat up. She let silence bounce around the room for a minute. Then, ‘Sorry I forgot your birthday.’ She reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. ‘I meant to send you a male stripper for the big three-oh.’

‘Shucks, guess I missed out.’ He stroked her fingers. ‘Don’t worry about it. I wasn’t here, anyway. New York.’

‘I’ll make it up to you.’ She side-eyed him, testing the air with her feelers, wondering if it was safe just to spit out what she’d wanted to get off her chest from the second she’d run into him. Screw it – she was going to ask. He looked so relaxed, though.
Why ruin the mood? No, she would see him on the weekend and bring it up then.

‘So, how’s your friend doing? Where he at?’ she blurted.

Joshua drew his hand away. He didn’t meet her eyes, but his shoulders and the corners of his mouth spasmed. ‘Haven’t heard from him,’ he replied when he did look up, holding her gaze steadily. ‘You know I wouldn’t hide it from you if I had.’

‘Well, does he know how
I’ve
been doing? Does he give a righteous shit?’

Joshua dragged his hands up and down his face and over his head, messing his bramble of hair even more. ‘Uggghh. Vee …’

‘Y’know what’s funny?’ She chuckled. ‘I’ll tell you what’s the final word in hilarity. Filling out a new form at the WI the other day and getting to the section on contact details for next of kin. Ti was mine. He’s been my go-to all the time I’ve been here. So, I’m sitting there with my pen hovering over this piece of paper–’

‘Stop. Don’t do this.’

‘–poised to write who the hell knows what, at a complete loss. He took pride in that position, especially since we weren’t linked by marriage yet but since I knew we would be, I relinquished control. He sure didn’t have a problem with telling some doctor to slice me open and chop off a vital organ; he signed that consent form pretty willy-nilly. Then, because he had to play nursemaid for a few months afterwards when I lost it, suddenly behaving like my kin was too much to handle. He fucks off to …’ she flapped her hands, ‘wherever, and I’m left here dealing with …’

‘V. J.’ Joshua stayed quiet for a full minute. ‘This was too much on both of you. You were unconscious from an ectopic pregnancy gone rogue. He had to make a call. No guy wants to be the one to call his fiancée’s parents, like, ‘Hey, your daughter’s dead by the way, ’cause I kept my thumb up my ass too long deciding what to do.’ And he took care of you afterwards, while you blamed yourself and him and the entire world. You were a mess.’ He made a move towards her and she got up and walked to the sliding glass doors feeding out onto the patio and backyard. ‘And I say ‘were’, because though you’re still pretty shitty now, you’re in much better shape.’ Pause. ‘He loves you. He didn’t abandon you.’

Vee snorted. ‘
Six
months
and no word. How the hell d’you know?’

‘I know what it is to love you.’

Vee stared at her lawn. It was easy to forget, in the throes of her egocentric rages, that she wasn’t the only one dealing with the fallout. Joshua had stuck it out, for his own quasi-selfish reasons, true, but he had, never once railing against his friend. Whatever Code Amongst Men Titus had broken, Joshua hadn’t broken rank and had kept it together for her sake. She wanted her pound of flesh; as much as she loathed to admit it, her ex still had a hold on her. An ever-slackening hold – barring a sprinkle of bad days, Titus now crossed her mind with lazy frequency – but a complete exorcism was in order.

She blinked back the film of sting in her eyes. Other than Connie, Joshua was the size of it in her realm of ride-or-die allies in Cape Town. Titus got the friends after Armageddon.
It’d probably be to her benefit to come clean about the anxiety attacks. Joshua had borne far more than his share of the weight for their friendship, but he deserved honesty. He was a staunch advocate of facing oneself in all things, and the frightening magnitude of her symptoms indicated there could be something concrete to his theory.

Joshua said: ‘Back to your thing. It’s strange, but it made me …’ He stopped. ‘What? You were about to say something.’

‘Hehn? No. Just a random thought.’ She waved it away. ‘What’s strange?’

He squinted at her for a long time. ‘The story sounds familiar. I dunno, something you said in the beginning …’

‘Well, you were here two years ago. Jacqueline Paulsen’s disappearance didn’t make headlines, but it got local media coverage. I’m sure you read or heard about it.’

‘No, that’s not it. More recent … Anyway, it’s gone now. But it’ll come back to me.’ He rose.

She walked him to the front door, a pang knocking round her chest. She didn’t want to be alone just yet. Monro tottered after them, nudging the back of Joshua’s legs, and settled on his haunches at the door. ‘When’re you planning to take your dog back?’

‘Next week,’ Joshua lied promptly. ‘Saturday. Next week Saturday, bright and early.’

Vee sniggered and gave a thumbs-up. ‘Next week’ was a year-old excuse. An attack in childhood left her terrified of dogs until Joshua had dumped the husky on her for a couple of weeks, which had turned into, well. And he went on enjoying
his spacious Sea Point apartment while Monro tore around her tiny yard.

‘Your eyes look like a horror movie. Get some rest. Don’t stay up all night chasing clues down that black hole between your ears,’ he said. ‘And eat something. Fatten up a little. Your ass used to be thorough.’

He dawdled; he always did. Vee dawdled with him. It felt good, smelled good, having a man this close. He gave his customary goodbye, a graze at the edge of her mouth, a little too protracted as always but quite safe. She didn’t expect it when he pulled back, turned her inside out with a look, and kissed her full on without pause or caution. Soft, incredibly warm, right amount of pressure. Vee leaned into it for longer than she should have. She caught herself and pulled away.