Capture (30 page)

He says, “Cheers,” and drinks.

Brittany holds up a shell and calls to her mother and Dawn walks over, drinking from the bottle. She bends to look at what the child shows her, presenting a view of her ass that takes Exley’s breath away. He feels a rush of desire, his cock stirring in his shorts, and he crouches to hide this sudden tumescence.

His child is dead. His wife—dead by his hand—is barely cold. He’s a cop killer. But here he is in the grip of lust, made all the more intense by how inappropriate it is.

Dawn is back beside him, and he can smell her, a hot saltiness, and her arm touches his as she sits and he feels like a high school kid getting a boner in class.

“We haven’t done any work,” she says.

“On a day like this, who the hell can think of work?” She smiles but he knows he’s being a thoughtless asshole. She’s an unemployed single mother, for Christ’s sake. “Dawn, we can do some capturing tomorrow, okay?”

She nods and says, “Sure,” as if he’s fobbing her off.

“I mean it. Why don’t you and Brittany stay and we’ll do some work in the morning?”

She looks at him. “Sleep over, you mean?”

“Yes. Britt can sleep in Sunny’s room. You can take the guest bedroom.”

“No, Nick, I couldn’t put you out like that.”

“You wouldn’t be putting me out.”

“Anyways, Vernon’s going to be here soon. To take us back.”

Exley sees this opportunity slipping away. “Dawn, I’ve really enjoyed having you and Britt here.”

“Us too.” She rests her fingertips on his arm for a moment.

“Please stay,” he says. Something in his voice makes her stare at him and her eyes narrow and she blinks and looks away, maybe spooked by the weight of his need. “Please,” he says again.

She plants her beer bottle in the sand and gets to her feet and he knows he’s blown it. But she shouts, “Hey, Britt, you wanna have a sleepover?”

The child, kneeling on the wet sand, nods. “Only if I can sleep with Mr. Brown.”

“Ja, I’m sure he’ll be okay with that.” She turns back to Exley and smiles down at him. “Nick, looks like you got you some lady guests.”

Exley realizes he’s been holding his breath and he releases it, in time to hear Vernon Saul’s ridiculous car burping to a halt in the street. By the time Exley stands the buzzer sounds inside the house.

Dawn’s smile evaporates. “That’s Vernon. I don’t think he’s gonna be too thrilled.”

“I’ll handle him,” Exley says, with a confidence he doesn’t feel.

The skinny whitey, all pink in the face, barefoot, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, comes out to the front gate, instead of buzzing Vernon in.

“Somebody upstairs is looking out for you, buddy,” Vernon says, jerking a thumb up at the sky.

Exley shoots him a blank look. “Meaning?”

“Darky down in Mandela Park tried to sell Erasmus’s cell phone. Cops arrested him a few hours back and the stupid bastard was wearing Dino’s watch, all nicely engraved by his wife.” Exley is still looking blank. “Jesus, Nick, join the dots, my brother. You took Erasmus’s service pistol and wallet. Then this darky comes along and swipes his phone and watch. Cops are going after this guy for murder and robbery. Seems he’s already done time for assault.”

Exley’s nodding now. “Shit. Okay.”

“Cops want this thing to go away as quick as possible.”

“What about the prosecutor Erasmus was working with?”

“Already moved on, believe me. They’ll give Dino a nice funeral and his widow’ll get death compensation and a pension and that’ll be that.”

Exley shrugs. “A lucky break, I guess.”

“For fucken sure.” Vernon looks toward the house. “So, Nick, where’s the girls?”

“Inside.” Battling to hold eye contact. “We need to finish the motion-capture in the morning, so they’re staying the night.”

“Ja?”

“Yes.”

“Let me speak to Dawn,” pushing past Exley but the little shrimp blocks him and puts a hand on his body armor. Vernon laughs. “And now? You gonna stop me from going inside?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Nick, fuck it, man, I just wanna talk to Dawn, now get out my way.”

“Don’t make me call Sniper, Vernon.”

“So that’s how it is?” Vernon staring down at him, ready to snap him like a twig.

“Yes, that’s how it is.”

Vernon pulls himself away from the edge, putting a lid on his rage. Even forces a smile that hurts his face as he steps back and holds up his hands in surrender. “Whoa, Nick. Chill, my man. Things are getting to you.” 

Exley shrugs and Vernon feels the poison inside loop up through his innards, seeping into his bloodstream. “Okay, you have a good night. But I’m warning you, that’s rough trade you got inside your house. Don’t be fooled by the nice packaging.”

“Thanks for that insight,” Exley says, and Vernon can feel his knuckles connecting with that mouth, ungrateful little fucker’s teeth flying like popcorn.

Vernon turns and gets into the car. He watches Exley enter the house and close the door, then he starts the Civic and takes off at speed, roars his way along the coast road, no music, nothing, just the image of Doc’s needle in his vein keeping him from totally and completely fucken losing it.

Chapter 45

Exley lies in the dark on the sofa in the living room, covered by the sheet he brought down from the linen closet, his head on a new foam pillow still thick with the smell of the plastic it was wrapped in. The house is quiet but not empty, the ghosts of his wife and daughter diluted by the presence of Dawn and her child.

Exley catches a trace of Dawn’s scent, a mix of cinnamon, woman sweat and tobacco. As he sees her splashing in the waves, laughing, her hair dripping water, he feels his cock harden.

Lifting his head from the pillow, Exley sits up, the sheet sliding from his body. He stares down at the erection tent-poling his shorts, willing it to wilt, but it doesn’t obey. He can’t remember the last time he was this turned on. Maybe back in New Mexico, as a teenager, when he lost his cherry? Definitely not when he and Caroline first slept together, which was arousing more on a cerebral than a physical level.

Exley flicks a finger against his swollen dick. You, my friend, are an unwelcome visitor.

In an effort to distract himself, he thinks of the child asleep in Sunny’s room. He remembers the evening—pizzas and Disney DVDs—Brittany rattling off her own commentary in that garbled, staccato accent. He thinks of Vernon Saul telling him that yet another black man is being sacrificed to protect Exley’s privileged white ass. Thinks of anything but Dawn lying up in the spare room.

It doesn’t help.

So he allows the images of horror that he has kept behind an emotional firewall to seep through: Sunny dead on the beach, Caroline spewing blood, the cop’s skull turning to pulp.

But still his desire is not dimmed. If anything, his cock is even harder now, painfully engorged, throbbing against his belly, the brew of grief, guilt, terror and bloodshed working as a potent aphrodisiac. Perverse, of course, but there it is.

Jesus Christ, you sick bastard, he says out loud, lie down and go to sleep.

But the words slide away into the darkness and Exley finds himself standing and walking to the stairs, his hard-on like a dowsing rod leading him upward.

The door opening wakes Dawn and she thinks it’s Brittany, but there’s enough moonlight coming through the curtains for her to see Nick Exley, standing in the doorway, wearing only a pair of shorts.

“Nick, what’s wrong?” she whispers, sitting up, holding the sheet against her chest even though she’s sleeping in a T-shirt and panties.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “This is crazy.” Turning to go.

Dawn knows, right then, that it is her call. Does her life stay as it is, or does it change? She says, “Nick, come here.”

He does, with his almost hairless boy’s body and his surprisingly big cock, and when what happens happens, it feels shockingly intimate. It’s the first time Dawn has ever slept with a man sober, and it’s the first time since she was raped as a child that she’s let a penis into her without a condom. Even the messed-up night that Brittany was conceived she knows a rubber was used. It must have torn (cheap shit she got free from the sex clinic) but there was no barebacking, ever.

So, this is terrifyingly intense, this broken man with all his pain, deep inside her, carrying her with him, making her feel things that are better left forgotten.

Exley, lost in this woman’s heat, her hair flung dark against the white linen, is visited by his dead wife, her memory coded into his skin. He feels the hard bones of her blue-white, freckled body, her inverted nipples fleeing his hands and mouth. Caroline always holding back, unyielding, fighting him, even now.

He pushes through her and into Dawn, her dark body fuller, warmer, more welcoming, her nipples hard against his chest, her breath hot on his face.

Nick’s cock thickens and hardens and she can feel the small spasms low in his stomach, his breath coming in gasps, sweat from his face dripping onto hers, and that’s okay—Dawn’s no stranger to guys getting their jollies—but now there are no chemicals to keep her dead and detached and safe and she tries to stop herself but she can’t and she feels the orgasm welling up in her, bringing with it all the self-loathing and shame from so long ago.

She fights it, her mind filled with the same hot disgust she felt then. Tries to push it down and away. But it explodes inside her and she hears the filth on her mommy’s bed say, “You like it, you little whore, you like it, don’t you? You. Fucken. Like. It.”

Nick falls asleep almost immediately—lying on her with his arms and legs spread like he’s in freefall—and Dawn slips out from under him and leaves the room without waking him.

She walks naked into the bathroom and has to pass through the main bedroom, its king-size bed a tangle of sheets. Dawn flashes on him in that bed with a faceless woman who is now dead. She pees and wraps herself in a towel and goes downstairs to where her cigarettes lie on the table in the living room, in the mess of pizza boxes and McD’s kiddie food and DVDs. A pillow and a blanket lie on the sofa, where Nick slept. Or lay awake.

Smoking, standing at the glass doors staring out at the moonlight on the water, Dawn feels the presence of the dead woman and child, not like ghosts, but how they live on in the man sleeping upstairs, and always will.

Dawn goes back up and pauses at the door to the spare room. She can hear Nick’s soft snores. She walks down the passageway to the child’s room. A nightlight is on and Brittany sleeps clutching the little bear, her face hidden and, surrounded by the clothes and toys and photographs of Sunny, she could almost be the dead girl.

Dawn is gripped by a crazy panic and turns her sleeping daughter’s head to see that it is still her, that she hasn’t been stolen away, her soul bartered in exchange for the return of this rich white kid.

Stupid thoughts. Of course it’s Brittany, mumbling, her little hand reaching out and grabbing at Dawn, who curls up on the narrow bed with her daughter. But she can’t sleep. Terrified for herself and for her child.

This isn’t their world. She sees how easily Brittany could slide into it, how happy she could become, here in this house with its beach and its endless supply of junk food and kid’s movies.

And what happens when it’s all taken away? Because it will be. That’s how it is, for sure. People give you things but just as quick they take them back, and want more from you than they ever gave.

At first light Dawn packs Brittany’s things, and creeps into the spare room to get her clothes. Nick sleeps on. She feels guilt, for an instant, but knows she mustn’t weaken. That she has to protect them.

She goes back to the child’s room and dresses Brittany and lifts her from the bed. Her sleeping daughter is a deadweight, and Dawn feels like a donkey carrying the bags and the kid down the stairs, trying to make no noise.

Dawn heads for the front door and sees one of those keypads beside it, suddenly terrified that Exley set the alarm and when she opens the door it’ll scream and wake him. But the door opens without a sound and she closes it and breathes the fresh, cool air of morning.

She stresses again when she comes to the high, barred front gate. Locked. No handle. Then she sees a little button to the side and she jabs it and the gate clicks opens and they are free.

She takes off in the direction of the main road, far away, high above the sleeping suburb. Brittany wakes and wants to pee. Dawn lets her do it at the side of the road, the child trickling her piss into some rich person’s gutter. Then the kid won’t walk, so Dawn has to carry her, wondering how the hell she’s going to get all the way up that mountain.

She hears the whine of an engine and a little truck battles it way up toward her, two surfboards in silver covers tilted in the back catching the sun like mirrors. Dawn waves the truck down.

A couple of young white guys with long blond hair and fluff on their chins, dressed in wetsuits, look up at her.

“Hey,” the driver says.

“Give us a lift, man,” Dawn says.

“Where you going?”

“To the taxis.”

“We’re going down to Hout Bay. We can drop you there, okay?”

“Cool,” Dawn says, and the passenger gets out and lets her sit between him and the driver. They smell of seawater and weed. Brittany sleeps on, Dawn hugging her close.

The truck takes off, old-school reggae buzzing through the speakers. Bob Marley telling her:
no woman, no cry
. The guys don’t speak, which is fine with Dawn. She thanks them when they drop her at the circle near Mandela Park, black workers already piling into the taxis on their way to the city.

Dawn gets her and Brittany into a minibus, letting the Xhosa chatter calm her, watching the mountains and trees of the rich give way to the low, ugly suburbs of the poor. Going back to where she belongs.

Chapter 46

Vernon is woken by the whine of a power tool. He sits up on Doc’s rancid sofa, sun blasting through the broken window, all manner of stench welcoming him back to the world. He checks out his watch. After ten. He doesn’t have to work, but he still needs to get his ass into gear.