Authors: Peter Robinson
‘We’re only half-brothers, but we both take after our mother. And Mark sort of looks up to me and copies me, you know, like dyeing his hair blond, working out, wearing the same kind of clothes and shit. I guess we look sort of alike. Enough so he can get away with using my driver’s licence. Look, this is really crazy, man. I can’t believe that Mark—’
‘You’ve been taking care of him since Eureka?’
‘You know about that, too? Yeah, since then. I mean, he’s a really bright kid, special schools and all that. They said he was a computer genius. He just has a problem communicating.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He doesn’t speak.’
‘You mean he’s mute?’
‘I mean he doesn’t speak. Hasn’t for years. Give him a modem and he’s off and running, but the kid never opens his mouth. Shit, Mark’s just a computer nerd. That’s all he does. He works out of home. Desktop publishing, customized programs for small businesses, that kind of thing. Does pretty well, too. Look, this is obviously ridiculous. Mark wouldn’t hurt—’
Arvo felt a shiver run up his spine. He stood up. ‘Where is he, Mitch?’ he asked ‘Where is Mark right now?’
‘How should I know?’
Arvo could think of one place he might be.
Joe was already opening the interview-room door yelling for backup and a police helicopter. Arvo and Maria followed him as fast as they could go down to the car.
45
He parked his car by a restaurant on the Coast Highway. No point following any further and risking getting caught by the cop. He knew where they were going.
His heart leapt as he walked down to the beach. She had come home! Just for him! She had finally convinced them to let her go after all this time. Let her go and meet her destiny.
Earlier that evening, keeping watch on the hotel, he had been mystified at what was happening. First he saw the detective pull up in his tan convertible and a wave of hatred surged through his blood. He knew he should have killed him when he had a chance, lit a bigger, better fire. This was the man most responsible for keeping Sally prisoner, for trying to turn her against him. Maybe he should still kill him? But no. Concentrate on the here and now. Remember the True Purpose.
Next he had seen a black-and-white pull up and watched Sally come out with the detective and get into it.
She was going home! To him.
She had finally told them she didn’t want to be a prisoner any more; she wanted to be free to come to the one who loved her. They wouldn’t like it, he knew that, but they had to respect her wishes. This was America, after all, land of the free.
And she had come to the place where she knew he would find her. Their first real home together. He thought of it like that even though he hadn’t even been inside the beach house.
And now, as he walked along the quiet shore towards that same house, the fine sand shifting under him, he felt a little sadness mingled with his joy. After all, he knew it was too late. Too much had happened.
Maybe the police had let her go, but they would probably start watching her; they certainly wouldn’t stop looking for him. He wasn’t a fool. He knew he’d broken some of their petty rules and they would punish him if they could.
If only he could make them understand about love, how it must be bought with blood, how it could only end in blood. But they would never understand the glory and the holiness of his vision. Dull, plodding, pedestrian minds.
The waves broke at the shoreline and smashed into a million pieces, each one shouting her name.
No. It was too late for earthly happiness. Could there ever be such a thing, anyway? Through his love for Sally, he had discovered that to find true happiness one had to push further and further beyond the petty human boundaries. It was the only way. Through his love for her, he had learned not to fear the unknown but to embrace it openly.
They would go beyond the mirrors of sea and everyone would remember them like the other great tragic, doomed lovers of history and myth. Like Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, Abelard and Heloise, Othello and Desdemona, Tristan and Isolde. For what was love without courage and sacrifice? Without blood?
He hurried along the beach. Close ahead, she was waiting for him.
46
The patrolman who escorted Sarah home checked out the house and grounds, then got back in his black-and-white and drove away. Alone and safe in her own home at last, Sarah first phoned Cedars-Sinai again and found out that Stuart was doing fine.
Inside the house, nothing had changed. Except the half-full coffee cup she’d forgotten to wash before going to stay at Stuart’s had started growing mould. The place smelled musty, too, but then it had been shut up for a few days. Sarah opened the sliding glass doors and walked out onto the deck. The gate to the beach was still closed.
Mitch Cameron, her tormentor, was in police custody, Arvo had said, and she was finally free. So why did she feel so edgy?
She was also hungry. She checked the fridge. Nothing but curdled milk, a few eggs, probably stale. Maybe she’d order in. There was the Thai place that had delivered to her before. Maybe some pad thai noodles, garlic squid and yellow chicken. That sounded good. Or burn her taste buds with chicken in red sauce.
First, though, she went into the front room, turned on the dim reading lamps and adjusted the lighting the way she liked it. She put some Chopin Nocturnes on the CD player. She wanted to create the right sort of mood for relaxation.
Then she walked around the place, looking at her paintings, adjusting them a little, running her hands over the soapstone Inuit sculptures and the smooth planes of wood. She took some of her favourite books from the shelves, opened them, sniffed the pages, then put them back.
With the sliding glass doors open, she could smell seaweed and hear the rumbling of the waves below. It was a beautiful, clear evening, with just enough of a cool sea breeze to make her wrap a shawl around her shoulders.
She made some hot chocolate and curled her legs under her on the sofa. Glancing around the room, she thought vaguely about redecorating, now the nightmare was over, or at least buying a new painting for the wall. A Hockney would be great, but not at the prices he was fetching these days. And to think he was just a working-class lad from Bradford, not so far from Barnsley.
Sarah thought she would like to go and visit Hockney. She wondered if he would receive her. Didn’t he live quite near her, in the Hollywood Hills? She had heard that he was a bit of a recluse. But surely they could talk about the old days, about growing up in Yorkshire. Maybe he’d even sell her a painting cheap. Or if he liked her, he might even
give
her one. But why stop at that: maybe he would even want to
paint
her. In the nude, beside a swimming pool, perhaps? Enough foolish fantasies, she told herself.
Her reverie drifted. She also wanted to phone Paula and persuade her to come over with the family as soon as possible, take the kids out of school for a couple of weeks, if she had to. Perhaps she was being selfish, but since her Christmas visit, circumstances aside, she realized how much she had missed her family since the rift, how much a part of her they were, squabbles, irritations and all. And she also knew just from looking at him that her father didn’t have long to live.
To keep her occupied, she started making a list of things to do tomorrow:
1. Visit Stuart in hospital and talk to Karen
2. Go to studio, see what’s happening
3. Call Nat in New York re Broadway deal
4. Get studio to write to David Hockney to try to arrange a meeting (maybe that will impress him!!!!)
5. Until it does, check out a few galleries
6. Pick up and answer
all
mail
7. See about taking those art classes in Santa Monica
9. Go shopping. Buy
healthy
stuff like yog—
Sarah thought she heard a sound outside on the deck. When she looked up, she saw only her own reflection in the dark glass and chastised herself for jumping at shadows. Still . . .
She walked over and pulled the doors fully open. It took her only a split-second to realize that it was no longer her reflection she was staring at.
It was
him,
the one she had seen at Stuart’s house, the one Arvo said had been caught.
Sarah screamed and staggered backwards. He came in and put his hand over her mouth. His skin smelled of Pears soap. She struggled briefly but he was too strong. He pushed her gently down into the armchair and he stood over her, hands on the chair arms, closing her in.
He reached forward gently and touched her hair. She flinched. He looked at her with sadness in his eyes, and she knew that whatever it was he was seeing, it wasn’t what she saw when she looked in the mirror.
She remembered him now. The silent one, always in the shadows: Mitch’s brother.
‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘Why have you been hurting my friends? Why don’t you leave me alone?’
He said nothing, just kept looking at her in that twisted, adoring way.
‘Look, this is crazy,’ she rushed on, trying to keep the hysterical edge from her voice. ‘I don’t love you. I’ve never loved you. I’ve never even given you cause to think I loved you.
Why
are you doing this to me?’
But whatever he was hearing, it wasn’t what she was saying. She wished to God he would speak. His silence and his fixed, loving eyes were making her even more scared than she had been to begin with.
Then he took her hand. She tried to resist, but he grasped her wrist tightly and pulled her up from the chair. She screamed and struggled, knocking over a small table and one of the Inuit sculptures, but he held on to her and dragged her across the floor, through the doors and over the wooden deck. She managed to make him slow down enough for her to stand up. He seemed to want her to go with him down to the beach. He had obviously climbed up the rocks beside the gate, and he wanted her to go back down with him that way.
Sarah didn’t want to get dragged and bumped over the rocks, and she also realized that if she could play for time, then the police might find out they had made a mistake and come looking for her.
‘Wait a minute. There’s a key,’ she said. ‘For the gate. Let me get it.’
He thought for a moment, then nodded and held on to her as she went back inside slowly and took the key from the hook by the doors. Then they walked back out, hand in hand, down the rough-hewn stone steps.
The sky was clear and the moon bright. Sarah opened the iron gate. When they walked out onto the sand, she thought she might be able to make a break for it and run for help, maybe dash towards the first place that would give her access to the road. She didn’t know what she would do when she got there. Run out and flag down a car if she could, if anyone would stop. There were lights on in some of her neighbours’ houses, she noticed, and she tried shouting for help, but the combination of the sea and whatever TV programmes they were watching drowned her cries.
He didn’t seem to notice her screaming, or care; he was completely intent on taking her towards the sea. She felt as if his powerful fingers were crushing her wrist. She screamed again, louder this time, hoping someone in one of the nearby houses would hear between commercials or the canned laughter and come to help her, but still nothing happened, no one came.
She tried to kick him in the shins and fell on the sand. He dragged her behind him, the same relentless pace. The more she struggled, the tighter his grip became, until she could hardly feel her hand.
God, how she wished he would speak, wished he could explain what he was doing and why, what he wanted. Never before had she felt so much in the dark, felt such a desire to
understand
.
When they reached the shoreline, he stopped, turned and faced her, now gripping both her hands in his.
‘Please,’ she begged above the crashing of the waves around their feet. ‘Please let me go. I’ll do what you want. Whatever you want. Don’t hurt me.’
She could make out his expression in the moonlight, and she could see from his eyes that he was trying to tell her he didn’t want to hurt her. But she also knew he was going to kill her. It might seem like something else to him, something grandiose and romantic and transcendental, but he was going to kill her. She remembered his letter:
‘But you must not think I enjoy causing pain. No, that is not it at all, that is not my purpose, surely you can see? . . . My Knives were sharp. I spent hours sharpening them. I was gentle when I bent over him. He didn’t feel a thing. Please believe me.’
She believed him now.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘talk to me. Tell me what you want me to do.’
Then he put his hand over his mouth and shook his head. My God, she realized, he
couldn’t
speak. But at least he could hear her.
Pleading would do no good. Sarah tried to invoke something of Anita O’Rourke’s coolness and competence.
Think,
she told herself. You’re an actress, goddammit, so
act
. She couldn’t tackle him herself; he was far too strong. Her best bet was still to play for time. Just stay alive.