Michael Smith - One of Us

Michael Marshall Smith

One Of Us

For Tracey,

sister, friend

and for those who have become invisible:

Sue, Peggie, Betty, Clarice and Mabel

The invisible is the secret face of the visible. M. Merleau-Ponty

Epigraph The invisible is the secret face of the visible. M. Merleau-Ponty

Prologue

Part One - REMtemp

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Part Two - Missing

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Part Three - Becoming Visible

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Thanks to …

About the Author

By Michael Marshall Smith

Copyright

About the Publisher

Night. A crossroads, somewhere in deadzone LA. I don't know the area, but it's nowhere you want to be. Just two roads, wide and flat, stretching out four ways into the world: uphill struggles to places that aren't any better, via places which are probably worse.

Dead buildings squat in mist at each corner, full of sleep and quietness. It seems like they lean over above us like some evil cartoon village, but that can't be right. Two-storey concrete can't loom. It's not in its nature. The city feels like a grid of emptiness, as if the structures we have introduced to it are dwarfed by the spaces which remain untouched, as if what is not there is far more real than what we see.

A dog shivers out the end of its life meanwhile, huddled in the doorway of a twenty-four-hour liquor store. The light inside is so yellow it looks like the old guy asleep behind the counter is floating in formaldehyde. When she was younger, the woman would have done something to help the dog. Now she finds herself unable to care. The emotion's too old, buried too deep – and the dog's going to die anyway.

I don't know how long we wait, standing in the shadowed doorway, hiding deep in her expensive coat. She gets through half a pack of Kims, but she's smoking fast and not wearing a watch. It feels like an eternity, as if this corner in the wasteland is all I've known or ever will see; as if time has stopped and sees no compelling reason to start flowing again.

Eventually the sound of a car peels off from the backdrop of distant noise and enters this little world. She looks, and sees a sweep of headlights up the street, hears the rustle of tyre on blacktop, the hum of an engine happy with its job. Her heart beats a little more slowly as we watch the car approach, her mind cold and dense. It isn't even hatred she feels, not tonight or any more. When the cancer of misery has a greater mass than the body it inhabits, it's the tumour's voice you hear all the time. She's stopped fighting it now. All she wants is some peace.

The car pulls up thirty yards along the street, alongside an address she spent two months tracking down, and ended up paying a hacker to find. The engine dies, and for the first time she glimpses the man's face through the dirty windshield. Shadowed features, oblivious in their own world of turning things off and unfastening the seatbelt. Seeing him isn't climactic, and comes with no roll of drums. It just makes us feel tired and old.

He takes an age to get out of the car, leaning across to gather a pack of cigarettes from off the dash. I don't know for sure that's what he's doing, but that's what she decides. It seems to be important to her, and what she feels about this man is far too complex for me to interpret. She is calm, mind whirling in circles so small you can't really see them at all, but her heart is beating a little faster now, and as he finally opens the door and gets out of the car, we start to walk towards him.

He doesn't notice, at first, still fumbling with his keys. She stops a few yards from the car, and he looks up blearily. Drunk, perhaps – though she doesn't think so. He was always too much in control. Probably just tired, and letting it show while there's no-one around to see. He's older, greyer than she was expecting, but with the same slightly hooded eyes. He looks early fifties, trim, a little sad. He doesn't recognize her, but smiles anyway. It's a good smile, and may once have been quite something, but it doesn't reach the eyes any more.

It's about now that the other car first appears, way off down the other road. I didn't notice it the first time, and she never does. She just stares at him, waiting. A generic smile isn't enough. We want him to know who we are. The bond operates in two directions. She cannot break it alone.

‘Help you?’ he asks eventually, peering at her. He stands by the car, back straight. He's not frightened, sees no need to be, but he's beginning to sense this is not a run-of-the-mill encounter. All he sees is a skinny woman in a good coat, a confidence too often used as something to hide behind. But there's something about us which disturbs him, reminds him of someone he used to be.

‘Hello Ray,’ she says, and then nothing else, waiting for him to remember.

Maybe it's something in her face that does it, puts him in mind of a grin long ago. His eyes open wider and some measure of confidence returns, his face relaxing a little. A picture of reliability. They look at each other for a while, but by now my attention is on the sound of the car. I know it's coming, big and silver and fast.

‘It's Laura, isn't it?’ Ray asks eventually. Her name is still there, near the front of his mind. Maybe it always has been, the way his has been in hers. He nods. ‘Yes, it's you.’ He gives a short, bewildered laugh, sticking a cigarette in his mouth. ‘I never forget a face.’ His left eyelid droops slowly, a little uncertainly. He clicks the wheel of his lighter and starts bringing it up to his face.

The wink is like returning to a childhood playground, and finding a swing still rocking as if you had only just this moment climbed down. It's enough.

The first shot goes straight through his left eye, blatting a baseball of shit out of the back of his skull. He's still trying to back away as the next bullet tears through his groin, and as another splashes through most of his throat. But then he's on the ground, legs spastically twitching, as we step forward to stand over him.

The dog watches it all, from its patch by the wall, but it's got problems of its own and Ray's going to die anyway.

She doesn't stop firing until the gun is empty. The body is still by then, and has nothing worth speaking of above the neck. The cigarette alone is almost intact, clamped between lips which look like something out of an autopsy wastebasket. She decides to leave it that way.

I put my hand in her pocket, and pull out another clip. Her hands are trembling a great deal by then, and I think she already knows she has failed. While she's still fumbling to reload, she finally notices the sound of a car hurtling towards her. Her head jerks up.

I know immediately that it's not the cops, and that I've seen the car somewhere before. Laura doesn't. She doesn't know what to think. Her mind is too empty and fractured to make a decision, and her body makes it for her.