Alex Barclay - The Drowning Child

Weren’t you lucky Alice agreed – and that she was only three and a half hours away.

And weren’t you lucky that Merrifield escaped the day before? He was the perfect person to pin this on. There was a history there, with you, with Seth. So easy to blame him for Caleb’s disappearance.

Weren’t you lucky?

Lots of luck.

Ren’s heart started to pound.

Oh my God: this was planned, it had to have been. You didn’t just find the phone and confront him and then everything magically fell into place. You knew weeks ago that on Monday, March 6, Alice would be in Portland on a speaking engagement. She would be close by. And Teddy wouldn’t be home. And you planned everything around that.

But what about Merrifield? You knew he was dealing. You knew that Lockwood was bringing drugs into BRCI via his sister, Serena. So you worked that into your plan: you approached Lockwood and blackmailed him into helping Merrifield escape. After all, who would suspect the good, kindly, nerdy therapist?

For some unknown reason, Alice agrees to help. She knows not to drive her own car – she borrows Paula Leon’s. She drives that car into Lister Creek Rest Area where you transfer Caleb from the trunk of your car into hers... But how did you persuade him to go along with all this?

How come he didn’t fight you off? Fight her off? Or was he willing to leave Tate behind him? Had you told him enough stories about prison and inmates to terrify him? Did he trust you, was he willing to go along with your plan, spend the next few years in some facility where they could cure people like him?

No. You drugged him. That’s what you did. Your wife’s Xanax. Caleb had no clue what was going on. You gave him a spiked drink, and he was knocked out for the entire ride.

And Alice Veir, I know what you did. You drove back to your hotel and... what? How did you move Caleb? He woke up. He woke up, and you told him what was happening. And maybe he resisted, maybe not, but you parked beside your rental that evening, transferred him into the trunk, returned the keys to the innocent Paula Leon. Then you drove the four-hour journey home.

You arrived at your house in darkness. You have no close neighbors, anyway. You could enter unseen. Days pass – Caleb resents you, you resent him. Or maybe you loved spending time together. I’m guessing the former.

Then you get a phone call from your brother, he’s freaking out, the police are getting closer, they’re asking too many questions, he’s running out of stories, his lies are catching up. Then John Veir’s final panic, the desperation to find another suspect: this time someone who wouldn’t talk, his last-ditch attempt to frame someone was Seth Fuller: he nearly killed Seth Fuller to cover up Caleb’s crimes.

It doesn’t work. John calls you, and you get in the car with Caleb and you drive again. You have rehearsed the story he will tell, pieced together all the evidence you have been fed by your brother, used your brilliant lawyer’s brain to create a convincing story that the police will believe, that will hold up to scrutiny, that will hold up in court, if it comes to that. Only problem is... Caleb runs. You stop at French Prairie Rest Area and he thinks: screw this. He doesn’t want to go back to his father, back to the scene of his crimes, back to a home where he will be scrutinized, watched, encaged, worse than ever before.

You trusted him too much. Caleb runs, and his story is rough, and unpolished. His narrative has holes. Now, you and your brother are hoping he won’t be found.

But he is seen by the wrong woman at the wrong time – a woman whose life isn’t led like yours – on fast-forward, but a woman who is watchful, who knows faces, who studies them, their angles, their features. She knows she has seen that missing boy, Caleb Veir. She may say she is a little less convinced than she really is, just so she doesn’t sound too crazy, but she knows, she knows it’s him.

There is nothing else you can do – you have to continue your drive to your brother’s house. Anything else would raise suspicion.

Oh, fuck: Seth Fuller doesn’t know where the packet is. It had to have been close to him when he was found. That means Clyde Brimmer or Shannon has it. If Shannon Fuller knows you nearly killed Seth, she will kill you, John. If you don’t kill her first.

Shannon Fuller stood with her back against the bar counter, her thoughts on a horrifying loop, her heart shattered. Not one person she loved, all of whom she had loved so fiercely, had been honest with her: not Aaron, not Seth, not John. Everyone had lied to her. What a fool she was. How humiliating it all was. She thought her heart had been as broken as a heart could be, but it just kept on coming. She couldn’t believe that there could be a lower place to which she could be plunged. The place where she now was. She was standing upright, but she felt there was another version of her, some shadow version that was collapsed on the floor at her feet. She would never recover. The hits had come one after the other. But she knew, at least, that Seth, she could forgive. Seth had more demons than she had ever known, but she knew she was right to have always trusted in his beautiful soul. And she would do everything she could to repair that, even if it took the rest of her life.

The phone rang, and it startled her from her thoughts. She let it ring. It stopped, then it rang again. When it rang a third time, she picked up.

‘Shannon, it’s Ren Bryce.’

‘Hi,’ said Shannon.

‘Have you seen John Veir in the past twenty-four hours?’

Shannon’s eyes flicked over to where John sat, ashen-faced by the wall, as she pointed Seth’s gun at his heart.

‘No,’ said Shannon.

‘OK,’ said Ren. ‘I don’t want to alarm you, but please, if he shows up, don’t let him in. I need you to lock up the bar, the house. Do not let anyone in. I’m on my way over.’

‘What?’ said Shannon. ‘Why?’ She stayed calm, but her heart had started to beat wildly.

‘I’ll speak with you when I get there,’ said Ren. ‘I’ll be ten minutes.’

‘Please,’ said Shannon. ‘Tell me. Why? What do you mean?’

‘I can’t,’ said Ren. ‘I’ll speak with you when I get there.’

‘OK,’ said Shannon. She put the phone down.

‘Who was that?’ said John.

‘None of your business,’ she said.

She was staring, now, at two people who thought nothing of taking lives, or of telling the most horrific of lies, of being colder than any two people she had ever been faced with.

And she was pointing a gun at them. And she wanted them to be gone.

Caleb Veir’s steady gaze moved between Shannon Fuller, and his dad. Shannon, Aunt Alice, his mom, his dad... there were a whole load of messed-up adults in his life.

Shannon had asked him five times what had he done, what had he done to her baby. He hadn’t answered her.

He thought back to that day, sitting in a tree at the edge of the Fullers’ front yard where he could see into Shannon’s bedroom. He knew that asshole Aaron was at practice for another hour, he knew that. He figured if Shannon was going to take her clothes off and he was going to see those giant titties the boys all talked about, now would be a good time – when she was alone.

Then he heard it – the familiar sound of the engine of his father’s car, as it drove into the front yard. He watched as he parked, a little haphazard, never like he would at home, as if he was desperate, heading to an emergency, parking outside a hospital where someone was dying or heading to a fire because someone had to be rescued. He thought he was caught – he thought someone had told his father that he was there, in a tree, looking to see some loser’s mom’s titties. But that wasn’t what happened.