Forgotten (49 page)

Heavy footsteps stumbled closer to her, then
stopped short of the grille; someone wearing khaki pants tucked
into a pair of brown steel-capped boots. The girl stiffened, held
her breath.

“
Where’s Carlos? Shouldn’t he be here by now?” a man
replied. His voice, as intoxicated as it was, was still strong,
gravelly with a hard edge to it. The girl recognized it as her
Uncle Johnny’s. She didn’t like Uncle Johnny as much as she liked
the others. He began tapping his steely toe, quick, impatient
taps.

In the distance, a door opened and closed, and footsteps
thudded along the concrete steps. “About time,” Uncle Johnny said.
And he staggered back to the others. Their voices became strangely
serious. She didn’t like it when they were serious. She tried hard
to listen to their conversations. But some of their words were too
muffled to make out. She moved a tiny bit closer, careful not to
make a sound and then strained her ears in their
direction.

And what she heard frightened her.

It frightened her a lot.

Her small body withered and she hugged herself tightly,
praying everything would be all right.

They cheered, clinked glasses and the
serious became joyous and light-hearted again.

All except one.

He was weeping, shaking. “I want to die… I
just want to die,” he kept mumbling over and over again.

It then went quiet. And when the voices
returned, so did the seriousness.

A shiny, black gun appeared, one she easily
recognized.

“
Yes
, please let me
die.”

The girl slapped her hand across her gaping
mouth; her eyes ballooned wide. No… no… no.

What should she do? She was only a little
girl. What could little girls like her do?

But time didn’t wait for little girls’
decisions.

Time waited for no one.

When the single gunshot sounded, she knew it
was all over.

Shock annulled any fear. She shoved the grille open. It
landed with a resounding clang onto the stone floor. She hurriedly
crawled out, scraped her knee on the sharp edge and ran to the
room’s center.

It was a whiplash of heinous sounds, ungodly
smells and….

Wake up… wake up.

The yelling, the painful cries, the nasty
odor of fresh gunpowder and
something else, a stench so strong, so unbearably vile.

The girl studied his blue and white striped
shirt, the one she gave him for Christmas, the one he promised he
would wear forever. Thick, crimson liquid blotted it.

Wake up… wake up.

Blood dripped like a faucet from his slumped head. His eyes
wide, lifeless, staring at her
. No one else just her, as if it was her fault, as if she
could’ve done something to stop it.

So… so… much blood.

And those horrible, horrible eyes calling her, appealing to
her.

Something sharp
burnt
her insides.

Wake up… wake up.

Why wouldn
’t he wake
up?

Hands gripped her quivering shoulders. It
was Uncle Carlos. “What have I told you about hiding here,” he
said.

The little girl said nothing.

“
I think a lesson is in order,” said Uncle Carlos,
“don
’t you, my
friends?”

Lesson? What lesson? The girl felt
dreadfully sick.

“
A lesson. Yes, yes, a lesson,” her uncles said. They
appeared dazed, with half-closed eyes and uncoordinated
gestures.

The girl stepped back, glanced at the concrete stairwell.
It seemed further away than normal. “I… I’m sorry. I won’t do it
again,” she whispered.

“
Too late, dear girl.” She looked at Uncle Carlos and
gasped. He didn’t look like Uncle Carlos, not any longer. He looked
more like a bad man in one of those scary movies she wasn’t
supposed to watch.

Fear ordered her to run and run fast.

She did, heading towards the exit, yelling Alice’s name.
Before she reached it, thick arms circled her waist, lifted her
clear off the floor. She kicked and screamed. It was no use. Uncle
Johnny was too strong.

He brought her back to Uncle Carlos where
Uncle Johnny imprisoned her with his hands. Her heart thumped
crazily.

What were they going to do?

Chilly bumps scurried over her like
thousands of small crawling insects.

“
You look cold, sweet girl,” Uncle Carlos said. In his hand
was a thick, yellow sponge. “I think we should warm you
up.”

They all cackled and she instantly pictured
ugly, craggy warlocks chanting around a huge black pot.

“
Ah, Ricky, my friend, let’s clean you up a bit,” Uncle
Carlos said, as he soaked the sponge with Ricky’s blood. He then
slowly approached the girl, dropped to one knee and began carefully
bathing her bare feet in the blood. It was grossly warm, so very
warm, moving, prickling her as if it were still alive, as if it
were living and breathing on her.

“
No, please… no,” she screamed. “Please, no
more.”

“
But of course, there is more, sweet girl, much, much more.
We have only just begun.”

Horror struck her dumb.
And she began to cry. As she felt the sponge dab higher,
she tried hard to think of good things like Alice and the pretty
fairy-like cottage, like her precious Dolly, the stone lions, the
huge water fountain where she loved to play.

In
time, the acrid
stench became too unbearable, the weight of her now blood-soaked
hair too heavy, the incessant, foul prickling of her skin too
torturous. When Uncle Carlos finally reached her stricken face,
finally began soaking it with the foul-smelling fluid, she
screamed… louder, longer, higher than ever before.

And after that, she remembered nothing.

December 29, 2010

1:25
am

MACEY STARED
INTO
the night, his dark eyes silent,
still. “After the shot,” he whispered, “Claudia appeared from her
usual hiding spot and tried to wake Taccone. In doing so, she
accidently
got his blood all over her.
When she saw the blood, she began screaming.”

“
And all
this took place in the neighboring forests where Taccone was
found?” Something about Macey’s version bothered Reardon, but be
buggered if he could pinpoint what that something was.

Macey
nodded, swung his gaze back to Reardon. “She was like a
fucking Duracell battery, just wouldn’t
stop.”

Reardon
tasted the first savor of rage. This cold bastard recited the event
as if it were nothing more than an irritating hiccup in his
pathetic life.

“
I’m telling
you, Reardon, that scream was the most ungodly sound I’d ever
heard. I reckon the girl always had bloody issues. Mercifully, she
passed out.”

Reardon took
several breaths whilst the haunting picture of a little girl
screaming, stained in blood, of his Claudia, drenched his mind. He
forced down the rising bitterness.

“
So, except
for Cabriati, the whole clan was present when Taccone shot
himself?”

Macey
nodded.
“It was an oath we all took. If
one of us wanted to end it, we would be there as support.
Afterwards, we gave each other alibis, made it looked as if it we
had no involvement of the incident. Took Claudia to Alice. Made
Alice swear on Claudia’s life to keep quiet about what happened.
Fortunately for us, Claudia never remembered anyway.”

What total
‘fuckedup-ness’ was this?
And
then a more disturbing thought struck Reardon. “You knew Claudia
was hiding there.”

“I… I….”

“
Shut the
hell up. You knew. Not to mention that you finally got to wield
your power over her, get your own back, teach her that ‘lesson’ you
spoke of, you sick bastard.”

Reardon furiously rubbed his temple. He
could feel a headache take its first breath.

“
It wasn’t
like that.”

“
Of
course
it bloody was or at least,
something close to it. My god, she was just a child. And Cabriati
worked it out. That explains why he came back for Claudia, washed
his hands of you all.” Reardon tried to maintain control but he was
fast losing the battle. “And then what?”

“And then nothing.”

Bullshit,
there was nothing. This man, however disappointing as an opponent,
was far more evil than Reardon had initially thought. Reardon
lunged to Macey’s rear and seized his neck. Macey instinctively
grabbed Reardon’s arm with both hands, tried pull it away. But it
was useless.

Reardon
pressed his mouth near Macey’s ear, arrowed his blade mere inches
from Macey’s eye. “Not a word now, Senator.”

Macey nodded, but there was a steely
stubbornness in his look.

“
Because I
want you to hear
every
word. Right now, all I’d like to do is slice
this little beauty clean out of its socket, section by raw little
section.” Reardon swiveled the blade to the other eye. “Then I’d do
it all over again with this one, make you as blind as you obviously
are.”

Reardon
dropped the blade, tried to jimmy it between
Macey
’s lips. But Macey’s jaw was clammed
shut. Reardon increased the pressure on his throat. Macey struggled
for air, slackened his jaw. The blade slid in smoothly. Reardon
zigzagged it slowly against the flat of his frozen tongue. “Then
there’s this device you use in voicing your bloody lies…when I’m
through with it….”

Macey gabbled something indecipherable.

Reardon extracted the knife. “What was that,
Senator?”

“
There’s…
there’s more.”

Reardon
shrugged, slid the hungry blade back into Macey’s mouth. “Sorry,
Senator, I don’t believe you.”

Macey’s eyes
bolted wide, his body shook fiercely and the noises he made sounded
more like an opera singer doing his warm-ups. Reardon waited a few
more seconds, slipped the
switchblade
from his mouth and relaxed his hold.

Macey
wheezed, coughed, wheezed some more, began massaging his reddened
neck. Reardon squatted in front of Macey, waited for him to collect
himself, waited for
the
more.

It finally
came in the form of the other members of the
clan. Reardon listened as he heard of their mounting
paranoia regarding Alice Polinski and the possibility that her
sudden appearance and her murder
would
reignite Claudia’s memory
, a
version that corresponded with Reardon’s
recorded phone conversation between Macey and Iacovelli. “And so
they panicked.”

“
Of course
they bloody panicked.” Macey’s voice was jerky, raspy. “I tried to
assure them that even if Claudia did remember, she wouldn’t say
anything because of her father. They weren’t convinced. They
recalled how ridiculously irrational she became after that bloody
fiancé of hers. They were worried that if in the same state, she
would blurt out what happened at Araneya, not even think of her
father.”

“
So after
Struthers’ death, you had Thomas Bellante enlist the psych, Malcolm
Cruikshank.”

“
I told
Cabriati that if he brings Claudia home from Sydney, ensures she
goes to Cruikshank, that Cruikshank would not only help her but
would keep anything she says, that wasn’t in our best interests,
confidential. Cabriati consented.”

“
But he had
no knowledge of the true extent that Cruikshank went in making
Claudia sound unstable.”

“
Of course
not. Cabriati would rather take the rap than have her suffer any
more. He loves that girl like nothing I’ve seen… like she’s his
salvation somehow.”

Reardon
hadn’t been wrong about Cabriati’s love for Claudia. He, at least,
had to be grateful for that.

“
Cruikshank
made Cabriati believe his daughter was truly suffering a serious
form of PTSD,” Macey continued. “That diagnosis also ensured that
if she revealed anything to her friends or family,
they
’d simply think she was delusional. I
also had someone follow her from time to time. Enrich the delusions
just that little bit more.”

The figures.

“
So when
Cruikshank refused to take on Claudia for a repeat performance
after Alice Polinski,
” Saul said, “the
rest of the clan got nervous.”

“
Not just
nervous, they became downright absurd, began talking about coming
clean, having
their
bloody story heard.”

“
And all
this because you made the dumb-arse mistake of wanting revenge on a
seven year old. I’m surprised they didn’t want you
dead.”

“
Not if I got to them first.
”

And there it was.

Just like that.

What was it
about narcissists? That eventual desire to confess all, as if
showcasing what they believed were their unique, extraordinary
talents. “So
you
organized the clan’s deaths?”

Macey was silent, but his eyes spoke
plenty.

Reardon
definitely hadn’t expected this. He stood and stepped back. How
could Reardon have been so wrong, not just for the motive behind
Claudia’s hit but also in his assumption of two doers?