Thin Blood (30 page)

“Narelle.” Craig
waggled his fingers in his wife’s direction, his voice rasping as he tried to
attract her attention. “Darling.”

“Oh, Craig, I’m
here now,” Narelle whispered, standing up and wiping her eyes. Squeezing his
fingers, she brushed her lips over his closed eyelids. “Rest now. I’ll still be
here when you wake up.” The tension ebbed from her husband’s face, his eyelids
twitching but not opening.

Leaving Narelle
fussing over her husband, Daniel went to check who had been on duty the
previous night. Jacinta had been adamant that someone or something had been
outside her house. He had a possum or a cat tagged as the prime suspect, but
still needed to confirm that Narelle had been at the hospital all night, as she
claimed. At least Jacinta would know then he had taken her concerns seriously.

Waiting at the
nurses’ station for someone to turn up, he wondered how much more Craig knew
but didn’t realise he knew. If only there had been more time. His wife’s
dramatic entrance had put a stop to that. She obviously didn’t want her husband
talking to the police, but what had she meant when she said Craig didn’t know
what he was saying? What had she thought he had been saying? Or about to say?

Daniel strode
back to the room and peered through the small, rectangular window in the closed
door. Craig appeared to be sleeping, the rise and fall of his chest almost
imperceptible. Narelle perched on the front edge of the chair, her forearms and
head resting on the white-sheeted bed next to Craig’s thighs, her face obscured
by a mass of brunette curls.

“Aaron,” he
said, turning to the bored-looking police officer stationed outside the room,
“there’s been a change of plans. I need you inside the room. Under no
circumstances is the patient to be left alone with anyone except a police
officer or a doctor. Make sure you verify everyone’s identity. I’ll arrange for
someone to relieve you shortly. Do you understand?”

Nodding,
Constable Aaron Grant picked up his chair and shouldered the door.

“And Aaron, I
want to know every word that is spoken by or to Craig Edmonds.” Daniel hoped
the constable’s presence in the room would be enough to deter the Edmondses
from concocting some story to suit themselves. Distrustful of the police and
dependent on one another, Daniel knew they would do whatever it took to shield
each other. But why couldn’t they see they were sabotaging themselves? Hiding
from the truth wouldn’t make it any less real.

Margaret Kevron fought to keep the
quaver from her voice. “Grace?” She stood in the lounge doorway and waited for
her daughter to look up from the magazine in her lap.

Grace scrambled
to her feet, the blood draining from her face. “Oh my God, Mum, what are you
doing with that?”

“I thought you
could tell me.” Margaret held the revolver away from her body, her arms
trembling so hard the gun jiggled in her palms. “Oh, Gracie,” she said,
resorting to her daughter’s childhood name, “don’t you know how dangerous guns
are?”

“Of course I
bloody do. Put it down, Mum.”

As Grace
advanced toward her, Margaret angled her body away. “I don’t understand. After
what happened to your father, I thought you hated guns.”

Pain flared in
Grace’s eyes, the rawness of her father’s suicide still evident. “I do! What
are you on about?” Then she gasped. “Oh, no, I hope you don’t think it’s mine.”

“It was with
your things.”

“What things?”
demanded Grace, her voice escalating to a screech. “What are you talking about?
Where did you find it?”

“Please, Gracie,
let’s try and discuss this calmly.”

“It’s not mine.”

Margaret wasn’t
about to contradict her daughter. “I believe you.”

“Do you?” Grace
gave her a baleful glare. “You never have in the past, why start now?”

Margaret’s
stomach churned. Had Grace come off her schizophrenia medication again? She had
only her daughter’s word that she had been taking the prescribed dose. On the
two occasions Margaret had managed to check the Zyprexa pack without Grace
seeing, the right number of tablets had been missing. But why hadn’t Margaret
been more forceful and insisted on watching her swallow them? “Of course I
believe you. Who it belongs to isn’t important.”

Grace’s gaze
fixed on the gun in her mother’s hands. “It’s not mine,” she repeated, her
voice surprisingly calm, “and I don’t know anything about it. Where did you
find it?”

Biting her lip,
Margaret racked her brain for the best way to tell her daughter she had been
poking through some of her personal belongings. “I know how much you like
everything to be neat, and when I was in the garage, I saw the corner of a
newspaper sticking out of that old wooden trunk of your father’s. I wasn’t
prying, Gracie, honest.”

Grace scowled,
holding her hand out, palm up. “Whatever.” Scepticism ran in the family. “Give
it to me.”

As heavy as the
gun felt in her hands, Margaret wasn’t about to relinquish it to Grace. Losing
a husband to suicide had been devastating enough; allowing it to happen again
would destroy her. Whatever Grace’s problems, they could work through them
together. “It’s not the answer.”

“The answer to
what…?” Grace stared at her, bursting into laughter as she read Margaret’s
face. “Oh, Mum, you didn’t really think I would use a gun to top myself, did
you?” She laughed again.

“I guess not,”
murmured Margaret, looking around the all-white room. “Too messy.”

Grace howled,
her hysterical laughter loud but unconvincing. “Sometimes you’re too much,
Mum.”

Margaret didn’t
think she was too much. What mother wouldn’t be concerned to find a gun hidden
amongst her child’s things? Even more so when her child’s father had selfishly
ended his own life with a firearm, no matter that it had been a rifle and not a
revolver? And Grace had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, the same mental
illness suffered by her father. No, she wasn’t too much.

Grace’s laughter
died. “Sorry, Mum. I know you worry, but there’s no need to. I’m in no hurry to
join Dad. That,” she pointed at the gun, “isn’t mine, and I had…” she corrected
herself, “have no intention of using it. You can think what you like, but I
swear I don’t know how it got inside the trunk.”

“In that case,
you’ll have no objection to me surrendering it to the police.”

Grace baulked,
her fingers splaying to cover her gaping mouth.

“It’s the only
sensible thing to do,” continued Margaret.

“Forget
sensible,” Grace said, recovering her composure. “Have you stopped to think of
the trouble you could get me into?”

“What trouble? I
don’t understand.” Margaret understood her daughter less and less with each
passing minute.

Exhaling loudly,
Grace clapped her hands together on top of her head, as if her mother was
beyond comprehending. “Let’s start by you showing me exactly where you found
the gun in the first place. And for God’s sake, put the bloody thing down
somewhere. I’ve already promised you I’m not going to take it.”

A tug of war
started in Margaret’s head. If she put down the gun, Grace could take it. If
she didn’t, her daughter would know she didn’t trust her. She had no choice.
Carefully, as though it were made of fine crystal, she laid the gun on the
white shelf to her right, nudging it behind one of the stereo’s speakers.

Her hands felt
dirty and clammy. Although desperate to wash them with soap under running
water, she trailed Grace out to the garage, wiping her hands against each other
as she went. Squeezing past the wing mirror on Grace’s white Hyundai hatchback,
she then followed her down the side of the single car garage to a suitcase and
two cardboard cartons stacked atop the old wooden trunk.

Grace frowned.
“You say you found it in this trunk?”

Margaret nodded.

“Tell me if I
have this right. You moved the suitcase and the boxes, opened the trunk, saw
the gun, took it out, closed the trunk again, and then lifted the suitcase and
boxes back onto it?”

Margaret nodded
again.

“Why?”

“I wanted to
leave it as I found it,” Margaret said, not mentioning that at the time she
hadn’t known what she was going to do with the revolver.

Grace sighed.
“Except for the newspaper sticking out,” she said, lifting the uppermost box
and setting it on the concrete between the car and the trunk. She then sat the
next box on top of it, before balancing the empty suitcase on that. “You sure
went to a lot of trouble for a scrap of paper, Mum.”

Margaret made no
comment, continuing to watch as Grace wrestled with the trunk’s ancient
latches. With one last grunt, Grace hefted the solid wooden lid upright.

“What the…” Grace
gasped and, reaching in, pulled out a glossy black wig, dangling it in front of
her mother. “What’s this doing in here?”

“Why are you
asking me?”

“Well, it’s not
mine.”

“Are you sure,
Gracie?” Margaret didn’t recall amnesia being a schizophrenia symptom.

Grace snorted.
“Of course I’m bloody sure. What would I want with a black wig?” She tossed the
hairy clump at Margaret before turning her attention back to the contents of
the trunk. “And what the hell is all this crap? Citrus Couriers?” She held up
two white, limp circles the size of large dinner plates, with bold orange
borders and print. “Ever heard of them? I haven’t.”

The ‘Citrus’
part of the name meant nothing to Margaret, but something about a courier and
the orange colour nagged at the back of her mind. Something she had seen.
Something she had heard.

Then she
remembered. She had been watching the news on television while Grace soaked in
the bath. A man had been shot outside his home and police were appealing for
information about a white courier van with orange signage that had been seen in
the vicinity. The driver was thought to have long, dark hair.

Margaret shook
her head, her fingers twisting the long synthetic hairs in her hands. Refusing
to think the worst, she studied her daughter’s face for answers. If Grace’s
lowered brow and clamped lips were an act for the benefit of her mother, she
deserved an Oscar. But if the gun, wig and signage didn’t belong to Grace, how
had they come to be inside a trunk in her garage? What person would go to the trouble
of breaking into a stranger’s garage to hide something? Why?

The other
alternative was far bleaker. During a psychotic episode, could her daughter
have lost touch with reality and done something terrible? Would she have
remembered if she had?

“Mum, are you
all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Margaret managed
a small smile. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Thank God for
that. I thought you were going to tell me Dad was standing behind me.” Grace
slapped the two magnetic signs together, putting them aside as she delved back
into the trunk. “It’s been ages since I went through all this stuff. Hey,” she
said, emerging from the trunk, holding a green and red rubber monster mask to
her face, “maybe that gun you found isn’t even real. Now wouldn’t that be a
laugh?” Grace’s high, pealed cackle bounced from wall to wall.

Call it gut
instinct, call it woman’s intuition, call it whatever, Margaret knew with a
certainty that she hadn’t been holding a replica or toy gun. As much as she
wished otherwise, it was no laughing matter. “Listen to me, Grace.”

“I’m listening,”
Grace said, dropping the rubber mask back into the trunk and picking up a
scruffy teddy bear.

“No, really
listen. I don’t know all the details, but…” Margaret paused, undecided about
what she should and shouldn’t say. “…A man’s been shot.”

Straightening
up, Grace clutched the teddy bear to her chest, her eyebrows arching as if to
say:
So what? It happens all the time
.

“The police want
to speak to the driver of a white courier van with orange signage.”

With each word
her mother said, Grace’s head tilted further to the side.

“The description
of the driver is vague,” continued Margaret, looking down at the wig gripped in
her hands, “but the person is believed to have long, black hair.”

“What are you on
about now? What man? When? Where?” Grace’s clenched fists dug holes in the
hapless teddy bear’s back.

“It was on the
news. I only caught the tail end…”

Taking a deep
breath, Grace bowed her head. When she looked up again, her face was an
expressionless mask. “Mum, I think you’ve been watching too many of those crime
shows.” She tried to laugh, but it fell flat, sounding contrived. “I remember
now,” she said, gathering up the black wig from Margaret’s hands. “I bought
this ages ago, for a fancy dress party.”

Bewildered,
Margaret didn’t protest as Grace, not giving her mother a chance to respond,
ushered her out of the garage and into the kitchen.

One minute Grace
claimed she had never seen the items in the trunk before, the next her memory
was miraculously restored. Margaret knew her daughter well enough to know when
she was hiding something. She also knew her well enough to know when to back
off.

After a light
lunch of tomato on rye sandwiches, Grace excused herself, saying she needed to
sleep. “You look tired, Mum. A lie-down would do you good, too.”

Sleep was the
last thing on Margaret’s mind. The discovery of the gun and her daughter’s
erratic behaviour had made sure of that. Until she found out what was
happening, she doubted she would ever sleep again. Despite that, she stretched
out on the couch, waking with a jolt when she heard a loud clank outside.
Half-dazed, she clambered off the couch and went to investigate.

She crept past
Grace’s closed bedroom door. Another clank. Louder. She froze. Taking a moment
to orientate herself, she realised it was coming from the backyard. She entered
the kitchen, her nose wrinkling at the toxic stench of burning nylon and
plastic wafting through the open window.