First Drop

Sixteen

It was just as we were leaving the barbecue joint that Trey’s mobile rang. He dragged the phone out of his pocket and looked at the display almost fearfully.

“It’s Xander,” he said, not making any moves to pick up the call.

I let it go two more rings, then sighed, lifting the phone out of his hands and hitting the receive button.

“Hi Xander,” I said, careful to keep my tone neutral.

“Oh, hi Charlie,” he said, sounding just as cautious, just as low-key.

“How’s Scott?”

He hesitated and for a second I feared the worst, but when he spoke I realised he’d just wanted to make me sweat. “He’s outta surgery. His mom and dad are with him,” he said grudgingly. “The doctors still aren’t sure if he’ll, like, be able to walk real good, but at least he’s gonna make it.”

Trey, not having wanted to take the call, was hovering at my shoulder, trying to listen in but the passing traffic made it hard for him to hear. Instead, he plucked at the sleeve of my shirt and mouthed, “How is he?” at me.

I gave him a tentative thumbs up and pushed him away. “That’s good news,” I said to Xander, stalling. There was a tightness in my chest as I worked myself up to asking him about Henry’s hard drive, knowing how crass it would make me sound. In the end, I didn’t have to.

“Anyways, Aimee said you needed to know what was on that hard drive so’s you could nail the bastards who shot him,” Xander went on.

“That’s right,” I said, surprised enough to push my luck. “When do you think you might have the chance to have a look at it?”

“Already done, man. I looked at it soon as I got home from the hospital. Soon as my mom and dad were done chewing me out, anyways. You want the whole thing or just the highlights?”

“Whichever,” I said faintly. “Can you tell who he contacted?”

“He sent the first one just to the security department at the company Trey’s dad works for. It was kinda mysterious, y’know? Henry just kinda asked them if they’d lost something and what kinda reward was on offer for the person who, like, found it.”

Some “negotiation on our behalf”, Henry, I thought bitterly. “Did you manage to find the replies?”

“‘Course,” he said, a little disdainful. “It wasn’t encrypted or nothing. I just had to hook the drive up and go look in the In and Outboxes. You don’t even need a password. It was a real cinch.”

“So what did they say back to him?”

“Well, there was some messing about backwards and forwards while they goes, ‘What have you found?’ And Henry goes, ‘What have you lost?’ In the end it was Henry who goes, like, ‘You wanna do a deal or not?’ and that’s when they cut the crap.”

“I’ll bet they did,” I muttered. “I don’t suppose they did anything stupid like signed a name, did they?”

“Didn’t have to,” he said. “Henry’s original mail mighta gone just to security@, but the reply came from jwhitmarsh@.”

I nodded. No surprises there, then. “So what did Whitmarsh say?”

“He wanted some kinda proof that Henry had gotten hold of Trey for real, so Henry spills it about you and Trey changing your hair colour and stuff.”

Bastard. I remembered the lack of any real surprise on Whitmarsh’s face when we’d come out of the house and he’d seen our changed appearance. Now I understood why.

“What then?” I asked, keeping my teeth together with the effort of not breaking into a fit of cursing at Henry’s obvious duplicity. He’d died terrified and I pitied him for that, but the fact that he’d never had any intention of helping us took the edge off my sympathy.

“Whitmarsh, he goes, ‘OK, I’ll go check with my superiors about what we can offer you.’ And then, like a coupla hours later he comes back on line and goes, ‘I’m authorised to go to five grand.’”

“Five thousand dollars?” I echoed. Not even thirty pieces of silver plus inflation? It seemed such a measly bounty to pay on somebody’s life. Two people’s lives, when I thought about it. In fact, it was actually quite insulting to have so low a value placed on me. Two for the price of one. It made me feel like a supermarket special offer. “How did Henry react to that?”

“He went kinda nuts, man,” Xander said, “really lost it. He accuses Whitmarsh of taking him for some kinda fool who don’t know what’s at stake. How he knows that without Trey they got zip and how they should be talking about five hundred grand.”

“I bet that went down well,” I said, unable to keep the irony out of my tone.

“You’re kidding me!” Xander said, missing it entirely. “So Whitmarsh comes back with, ‘You’re bluffing. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ And Henry goes, ‘Oh yeah?’ and he launches into a load of bullshit about how Trey’s been teaching some intelligent software all about how to figure out Wall Street. Is that right, man?” he finished uncertainly.

I glanced at Trey, who’d given up unsuccessfully trying to eavesdrop. He was now sitting on the railing near the door into the diner and blowing bubbles with his gum. He got too adventurous with the last one and it burst all over his face. He tried to peel the exploded goo off his nose and cheek but only ended up sticking his fingers together and increasing the mess. As computer geniuses went he seemed pretty unlikely, I had to admit.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s right.”

“No shit,” Xander said in wonder, and I could almost hear him shaking his head.

“Did they ask Henry for his address?”

“No, but it wouldn’t have been hard to find out. He was mailing out from his own website – y’know, the conspiracy theory one we told you about? It was kinda dumb of him if Whitmarsh’s got pals in the cops. They’d be able to trace him easy.”

“Was there anything else?”

“No, that was it. D’you reckon this guy Whitmarsh is the one killed Henry?”

“Could be,” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t quite as straightforward as that. “I’m still trying to work it out.”

There was a pause, then Xander said, “Look, man, tell Trey I’m kinda sorry I blew up at you guys at the hospital. I was just kinda worried about Scott, y’know?”

“We all were.”

“Yeah, well, I know that,” he muttered. “Anyway, I gotta go. I’m not really supposed to be on the phone. My folks have gone kinda ape-shit at what’s happened. It’s really freaked them out. I am so grounded.”

“Thank you for doing this, Xander,” I said, meaning it. “It helps a lot.”

“Yeah, well, you’re welcome,” he said, embarrassed. “Oh, one more thing, you guys. Don’t go back to Scott’s place. It’s not just that his folks are back, but the cops are all over it.”

“OK,” I said. “Thanks for the warning.”

“No sweat,” he said. “You could come stay here but, like I say, I think I’m grounded ‘til I’m, like, twenty.”

He made twenty sound both a long way off and an extremely advanced age. I was around twice as many years past twenty as Xander still had to go to get there in the first place. It made me feel suddenly very old.

As I ended the call Trey hopped down from his railing. “So what did he say?” he demanded.

“Well, Gerri seems to be letting Whitmarsh do the talking for her but—”

“Not that!” he interrupted, scathing at my mistake. “About Scott! What did he say about Scott?”

“He’s out of surgery,” I said. Trey heard the ‘but’ in my voice and made an impatient, get-on-with-it movement with his hands. “There might be some doubt about how much mobility he’s going to regain.”

Trey stared at me for a moment with his mouth open. The misery spread across his face like a window cracking in slow motion. He slipped his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders forwards, and turned away from me.

I let him get halfway across the car park before I gave in and hurried after him. He didn’t want to look at me, wrenching away when I tried to catch hold of his arm. I tired of this game faster than he did. Eventually my temper frayed far enough for me to catch a flailing wrist and twist a lock onto it. The action brought him up short with a startled cry.

He turned a reproachful, tear-riven face in my direction, staining me with guilt. I pushed it aside.

“Stop it, Trey,” I said, snappy as he struggled ineffectually against the lock. “We don’t have time for self-pity. It’s a luxury we can’t afford. So Scott’s badly hurt. That’s terrible, but there’s nothing you can do to help him right now other than doing your best to get to the bottom of this. Giving in and throwing a wobbly makes a mockery of what he’s going through. It makes it all for nothing.”

He stilled and was quiet for several seconds. I could see his chest rising and falling as he took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself. Then he said, with a surprising dignity, “Would you let go of my arm, please?”

I complied instantly, ready to catch him again if he ran, but he didn’t move.

We stood like that for a time. Above us, the sky had taken on that dramatic pinky blue tinge as day fled into evening, leaving a masterpiece of shape and colour spread across the heavens. Below it, oblivious to the beauty unfolding overhead, traffic sped by along Atlantic Avenue.

It was only when a bright yellow drophead Mustang full of noisy kids turned in a touch too fast off the road and swung in our direction that we moved. Trey was docile now, allowing me to lead him across the road, jogging obediently alongside me through the gaps between the cars. The light was dropping more quickly and they all had their lights on. We walked down the nearest beach ramp and out onto the sand.

It was only then that the boy cleared his throat. “So,” he said, “what did it say?”

I didn’t need to ask what he was talking about, but I searched his face as if to check that he really wanted to know this time. There was no trace of sarcasm there.

I gave him the full report of what Xander had told me. When I was done he was quiet again, frowning. Henry’s duplicity, I considered, must have been hard for him to take. Trey was learning some tough lessons about trust lately.

“So if it was Mr Whitmarsh he was in contact with, how did that cop, like, get to hear about Henry?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “The only explanation that occurred to me was that perhaps they were working together.”

He stared. “But Lonnie killed that guy . . .”

I nodded. “I did say ‘were working together’, but maybe that all went out of the window when Henry let it out of the bag that you could make the program work. Maybe they’ve somehow got hold of a part-finished version when your dad left and now Whitmarsh realises he’s got the opportunity to make some serious money out of it – if they can get hold of you alive. It would explain the abrupt about face.”

Trey was still frowning. “How did Mr Whitmarsh know right off that Henry was talking about me when he wanted proof he’d got a hold of me?” he said slowly. He looked up. “That was what he said, right? But if Dad’s disappeared too, how did they know Henry wasn’t talking about him?”

“My God, I think you’re right,” I murmured and found it was my turn to stare. I’d completely missed the significance of that but the more I thought about it, the more significant it became. Trey was quite right. Whitmarsh had assumed – no, more than that, he’d known – Henry was referring to Trey.

So how could he have known?

He couldn’t. Not unless Keith was controlling this whole thing from behind the scenes. I did some mental shifting to see if that fitted and it did, after a fashion. But for what purpose?

“Did Xander say anything else?” Trey asked.

“Only that he’s grounded until he’s an old man, and that we can’t go back to Scott’s place.”

As the full consequences of that piece of news hit him Trey’s face grew mournful. “So that means . . .”

“Yeah.” I raised a tired smile and waved an arm to indicate the sands all around us. “Looks like we’re back to sleeping on the beach again.”

***

It was dark before we knew it, the inky blackness above us spangled with stars. It gave the sky an illusion of a boundary it didn’t have, dropping straight down into the sea at the far horizon.

We weren’t far away from the area where we’d slept out on that first night, near Walt and Harriet’s place. I suppose I needed time to get my head round the idea of asking for help, but first thing in the morning, I promised myself, we’d go and take Walt up on his offer. With any luck, another of Harriet’s breakfasts would be part of the deal.

We weren’t the only people who’d decided to spend a night out in the open air. The beach itself, as it had been last time, was crowded with kids, half of whom seemed to be courting couples. They grappled with each other in the shadows, tucked up under the walls of the apartment blocks and hotels that edged the seafront, intent on ingraining sand into the most uncomfortable places.

Every now and again we’d get a silvery moonlit flash of naked flesh as we moved past. It was hard to get an adolescent like Trey to concentrate on putting his feet one in front of the other and keep walking. As it was he was so busy ogling that he nearly tripped up twice.

“What d’you want to do?” I muttered eventually, “Give ‘em marks for style?”

“It’s all right for you,” he groused when we reached a quieter stretch. “I bet you’ve, like, done it loads of times.”

“‘Done it’?” I queried. He should have taken the stinging tone as a warning but he had a thicker skin than that.

“Yeah,” he ploughed on, discomfited but persistent. “Y’know – fucked.”

“I don’t ‘fuck’, as you so elegantly put it,” I bit back.

“No way!” Trey said. “Mr Whitmarsh said you were fucking Mr Meyer. He said—”

“Sean and I have slept together, yes, but that’s not the same thing,” I cut in, not wanting to hear Whitmarsh’s cruder description of what Sean and I had shared. Especially not now. I didn’t want to hear Trey talk about it, either. He didn’t even begin to have the right to bring up something so private.

“Why isn’t it?” Trey wanted to know and I suddenly realised why you heard so many parents answer awkward questions from their kids with the waspish phrase, “Because I say so, all right?” through firmly gritted teeth.

Instead, I strapped down my irritation and made an attempt to explain. “Because just fucking somebody is very different from making love with them, where you have a bond, a connection. Fucking implies little more than an all-out, selfish, I’m-using-you-for-my-own-gratification kind of act.”

Trey was at an age where his squirm at the mention of the word “love” was almost a reflex action. Then he just shrugged. “Yeah – and your point is?”

The strap broke and my temper let fly. I rounded on him, almost unable to see his face for the starbursts going off inside my head. “You asked me once why I left the army. Well, shall I tell you why?” I threw at him, not waiting for an answer. “I left because four of the men I was training alongside, four of the men I was supposed to know and trust, got drunk one night and decided they were going to fuck me, regardless of what I thought about it.”

Trey tried to flinch away but I grabbed his arm and spun him back to face me, not letting him escape my bitter words. Some part of me knew he didn’t deserve this but now I’d started I couldn’t stop, it just spilled out and kept coming. “And because there were more of them than me, and they were bigger and stronger than I was, that’s exactly what they did. They had to beat the shit out of me to do it, but they did it, just the same. And when they were done, they stood around and actually had a discussion about how it might be best to kill me, just in case I decided to kick up a fuss. It was like to them I wasn’t even human any more.”

I stopped and realised that my chest was so tight it was making me breathless. I made a conscious effort to relax, to speak normally. “Fucking is something you do to someone. Making love is something you do with them,” I finished, calmer now. “That’s the difference, Trey. Might not sound a lot, but trust me, it is. It really is.”

I let go and this time it was my turn to stamp off, not really caring if he followed or not. After half a dozen strides he caught me up. I could feel him wanting to speak but I wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t give him an opening.

Donalson, Hackett, Morton and Clay.

The litany of names went round and round inside my head in time to the fall of my feet in the sand. The names of the men who’d raped me, who’d finished my army career. The names of the men who’d set me on the path that eventually had led me here.

After another few minutes of silent walking I stopped abruptly. “This will do,” I said, indicating a relatively sheltered spot in the soft sand at the top of the beach. “Make yourself at home.”

I lay down with my back studiously towards him, resting my head on the ridiculous bag containing the bony shape of the SIG. Because of the rumbling hiss of the surf I nearly missed Trey’s quietly spoken words behind me.

“I’m – I’m real sorry, Charlie.”

In the whole of this sorry mess it was the first time he’d apologised or shown any remorse, the first time he’d made any sign of dropping the act and reaching out to me. Too bad that I couldn’t bring myself to meet him halfway.

“You weren’t to know,” I said shortly, not turning round. “Now get some sleep. We’re going to need it.”

Despite my words, sleep didn’t come easy for me. I lay awake, staring into the semi-darkness. I could tell by his breathing rate that Trey was awake, too but we didn’t speak. It seemed to take a long time before he began to snore.

What on earth had possessed me to come out with all those shameful details? Trey was a comparative stranger. I hardly knew him and certainly didn’t like him and yet I’d told him things I hadn’t even shared with my real friends, people I’d known for five years or more. The realisation of what I’d done sent a shiver across my skin in spite of the warm sand I was lying moulded into.

I hadn’t even told Sean the truth, not right away. At first I thought he’d been a part of the whitewash the army arranged to cover what those four men had done, including the ludicrous events of their court martial. What should have been an open-and-shut case degenerated into a farce that had ruined my reputation along with everything else.

It had been years until I’d found out that they’d manipulated Sean as much as they had done me. But once the Powers That Be had accidentally learned of our illicit relationship they’d subtly forced him out of his own career by a war of attrition. The worst thing was that, until we’d met again after five years and discovered what had really happened, he hadn’t really known what he was supposed to have done wrong.

And now I’d blurted it all out to a fifteen-year-old boy who undoubtedly didn’t have enough sense to keep his mouth shut. Oh, wonderful move, Fox. For a while I silently berated myself for my own stupidity, but gradually I recognised what had compelled me to dump that clutch of vitriol onto Trey.

If ever he found himself the aggressor in that kind of situation and it made him pause, just for a moment, then it was worth it. Yeah, a one-woman crusade, that’s me, scoffed the voice in my head.

Maybe I was starting to lose it. After all we’d gone through, maybe this desire to open up to unsuitable people was one of the first signs. The thought was terrifying. I shut my eyes and willed sleep onto my unquiet mind.

***

Surprisingly perhaps, the nightmares I’d been half expecting didn’t come. I slept sound and quiet and didn’t wake until after sunrise the next morning.

And as soon as I did, I knew there was something wrong.

My body woke from the inside out, individual senses coming on line first and hitting the mental alarm buttons. I couldn’t quite put my finger on how it happened, but somehow I was alert to the danger before I ever opened my eyes and found out exactly what it was.

The brightness outside my closed eyelids told me the sun was well on the way up. The slightly receded lull of the surf told me the tide was on the way out. The mingled odours of sour sweat and last night’s joints reaching my nostrils told me we weren’t alone any more. It rippled over the top of the fresh morning smell of the salt water, tainting it.

From somewhere above me I heard the snigger of young male voices. Not Whitmarsh, then. Not Oakley man. There wasn’t time for relief. I kept my eyes shut, regulated my breathing, but my system had started to rev, building up speed like pressure. The SIG was a reassuring lump in the bag under my cheekbone. A last resort.

Eventually, tiring of waiting for us to wake of our own volition, a foot nudged me in the stomach. None too gently. I opened my eyes and saw a sideways picture made up of pairs of tanned legs and baggy jeans. Someone leaned down into my field of vision and smiled nastily.

“Hi, remember me?” he said. It was the skinny kid with the bandana round his head who’d unsuccessfully tried to rob us that first night on the beach. The one whose knife I’d taken away from him and which I’d left, now I belatedly remembered about it, in the backpack I’d abandoned at Henry’s house. Too bad if he’d come to ask for it back.

I’d never even considered that the skinny kid might have gathered reinforcements and be lying in wait for us on the beach. His halfhearted attack had seemed so insignificant compared to the other dangers we’d had to face. Well, not any more.

I sat up fast enough to make him take an instinctive step back. No doubt his reflexes would be sharper this time, in view of the pain and humiliation I’d inflicted on him before. Mind you, he’d partially negated the need for extra vigilance by bringing half a dozen of his mates with him as back-up. Of the fat boy who’d served as sidekick during his last jaunt, there was no sign.

Trey was already awake, I saw, sitting up with his arms wrapped round his shins like he had in Henry’s bath. He looked scared and defensive, as though he was expecting this to hurt. He threw me a single reproachful glance, as though I should have seen this coming and somehow deflected it.

“What do you want?” I said, shading my eyes with my hand so I could look up at the skinny kid against the low sun.

He gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “She wants to know what I want, huh?” He looked round at the others who joined in dutifully with his amusement. Then he looked back at me and the smile blinked out. “You know exactly what I want,” he said, quiet and deadly. He was doing a pretty good impression of total meanness until the flicker of his eyes telegraphed his intentions.

He swung a vicious kick at my body. I caught his foot before it connected and twisted it sideways. It could have wrenched his knee or ankle out if he hadn’t allowed himself to roll with it. He landed hard, sending up a plume of dry sand that was instantly scattered by the breeze.

I bounced to my feet while I had the chance, Trey scrambling up, also. The bag with the flowers on it was in my hand, keeping the SIG only inches from use, but I couldn’t bring myself to get it out, even then.

They were just kids. Offensive and repugnant kids, maybe, but kids nonetheless. Perhaps if I drew the line somewhere I could come back to myself. Perhaps there might still be hope for me.

The skinny kid was back on his feet in a flash, his momentary lapse firing his anger. I turned so Trey was directly at my back and watched the eyes and hands in front of me for the first move.

“Can I ask what the hell you boys think you’re doing?” said a sudden familiar voice from a little way off to one side.

We all spun to face it. Walt stood a couple of metres away, staring at the bunch of us from under the brim of his Panama hat. My heart lurched. Before I’d only had Trey to worry about in this uneven fight. Now I had another civilian to protect. The gun was so close. It would end things quickly and I might not even have to use it . . .

I checked Walt. He didn’t have his bag of seashells with him this morning but instead he carried a stainless steel insulated coffee mug. As we watched he raised the mug to his lips and drank some of the contents. When he was done he looked inquiringly at the group that surrounded Trey and me.

“Well?” he said, with a fine touch of belligerence. “Cat got your tongues?”

For God’s sake, Walt. Don’t provoke them. You’ll only make it worse for yourself.

But he turned to the skinny kid with the bandana, who had been making out like this was the baddest part of South Central LA and he was the baddest dude in it. “Nathan, isn’t it?” Walt said, his voice slow and easy. “What are you doing out when your mother’s sick? Shouldn’t you be at home helping out with the chores?”

“No sir, um, I mean yes sir,” Nathan muttered, hanging his head. “She’s much better.” He all but scuffed his toes in the sand.

“Well, if you’ve finished fooling around with these young friends of mine,” Walt said, his gaze steady, “we’ll let you be on your way.”

It struck me then that he was like an old-time Wild West sheriff, facing down the gunslinging brat pack by the slow weight of his reputation alone. One day they might have the courage to take him on, but today was clearly not that day.

Abruptly, Nathan turned and trudged away and his gang went with him. I studied their retreat but he didn’t even dare to go for a resentful backward glance. I gradually allowed my fists to unclench, my shoulders to unlock. It was only now that I became aware of the stiff ache of my body and the dull thumping pain behind my eyes.

I turned back to Walt, who was calmly drinking more of his coffee as though completely oblivious to what might have been.

“Nathan’s not a bad kid,” he said conversationally. “Gets a little wild now and again but basically he’s OK. Harriet and I go to the same church as his mother.”

He swung his cool gaze onto me then and I struggled not to quail under it just as the skinny kid and his mates had done.

“Not sure about the new hair style, Charlie,” he remarked. “And if you don’t mind me saying so, ma’am, you look like hell.”