Watch Me (31 page)

A cellphone went, the ringtone muted. It wasn’t mine. My first thought was that the unsub had hidden a phone in the car and was calling to taunt us. Except that didn’t fit with his profile. This unsub wasn’t like Chief Kalani’s talent-show reject He wasn’t looking for recognition or headlines. He flew way below the radar.

Hannah was fumbling around in the passenger seat. She pulled a cellphone from her jeans and the ringtone brightened. She connected the call and said ‘Hi’. I only got half the conversation, but it was enough to work out that she was talking to Taylor’s mother. Taylor had arrived at the hospital in Shreveport and been rushed into surgery. He was expected to be there for a while. Hannah asked for an update as soon as there was anything, then hung up.

She sat for a moment, staring out the windshield, gazing into the middle distance. The phone was clutched tightly in her hand, and she was tapping it against her leg in a way that made me doubt she was aware she was doing it. Her left leg was vibrating from all the adrenaline. It was like she was dreaming of running away. Maybe she was dreaming of San Francisco. If she was, I hoped Taylor was with her.

‘How is he?’

‘He’s still alive.’

‘Which is a good thing, right?’

‘Yeah, that’s a good thing.’ Hannah’s voice was flat and she didn’t sound convinced. Not because she didn’t think it was a good thing, but because she was wishing and praying that none of this had ever happened. ‘The next few hours are going to be critical,’ she added. ‘If he gets through that then he might be okay.’

We fell into an awkward silence. Hannah had made no attempt to disguise how big that ‘if’ was. By the sounds of things, Taylor needed a miracle. The problem was that miracles didn’t exist. I wanted to tell myself that he was getting the best treatment possible but that would be a lie. This was northern Louisiana. Shreveport was a city, home to 200,000 people, but however good the medical facilities were, you had hospitals out there that were a damn sight better. Johns Hopkins in Maryland and Massachusetts General up in Boston sprung immediately to mind.

We passed through the town limits and left the houses behind. Trees and fields stretched as far as the eye could see, the leaves glowing in the sunlight.

While I drove, I thought about what might be motivating this guy. Revenge? Money? Belief completed the trinity, and I considered that for a split second before ruling it out. If the unsub had been part of a terrorist group or some ultra right-wing organisation he would have chosen a target that tied into his agenda, whatever that was. Al-Qaeda attacked the American Dream. It wanted to make grand statements and grab headlines. That’s why they hijacked passenger jets and flew them into buildings. That’s why they sent suicide bombers into places where they knew innocent people would be killed.

Sam Galloway just didn’t fit. He dealt in divorces and wills. There was no real statement to be made from his murder, no headlines to be grabbed. His death might be big news in Eagle Creek, but it would only merit a couple of minutes on the regional news, and would probably be passed over altogether by the national news. As for the international news channels, forget it. The only people who were going to get all teary about Sam being burnt alive were his wife, kids and friends.

57

We reached the wide tree-lined streets of McArthur Heights and cruised slowly through the heat. Everything up here was about personal space and personal wealth, and letting the world know how important you were. I turned into the Galloways’ driveway and stopped in front of the tall, imposing wrought-iron gates. The window buzzed down and the hot air rushed in. I reached through and hit the buzzer.

Silence was replaced by static, and a voice asked, ‘Can I help you?’

It was the same voice as before, the sound through the small speaker just as distorted. This time I knew it was the maid straightaway. The rhythm of the voice was all wrong for Barbara Galloway.

‘Jefferson Winter to see Mrs Galloway.’

‘One minute, please.’

I closed the window. It had been open for less than forty seconds, but that was long enough for all the cold air to get sucked out. One minute stretched into two and it had reached the point where I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever be let in when the gates slowly swung open.

We headed along the driveway, undulating plains of pristine green grass stretching out on either side of us. The house looked even more perfect than yesterday. The paintwork seemed whiter, the windows gleamed more brightly, and everything was just somehow more real, but real in a way that made it feel artificial. It reminded me of a film set. If I looked around the back I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a wooden frame.

I drove around to the side of the house and parked in the same spot as yesterday. The Mercedes hadn’t moved. We got out and walked around to the front. The maid was waiting for us in the open doorway. She welcomed us with a ‘good afternoon’ and asked us to follow her. We went inside, into the cool gloom, our footsteps echoing through the house’s large reflective spaces.

Barbara Galloway was waiting in the same room as yesterday. She appeared momentarily perplexed by my appearance, then her conditioning kicked in and she offered a polite hello. She was acting like having someone who looked as if they’d been dragged from a car wreck turn up on her doorstep was an everyday occurrence.

Her gaze followed me across the room, all the way to the Steinway. I laid a hand on the lacquered wood. It felt cool to the touch. ‘Do you mind?’ I asked. 

It took a second for her to work out what I was asking. There was confusion in her eyes. Hannah was looking puzzled too. For a moment I was convinced that Barbara was going to say no, but her conditioning kicked in and she nodded her assent.

I sat down on the stool and rattled off a couple of quick scales. The piano was more or less in tune, but the acoustics in the room were atrocious. The walls were smooth, the floors uncarpeted, the ceiling too high. It was a musician’s nightmare. All those large, shiny unbroken surfaces created too many aural reflections. The notes hung too long in the air, clashing with one another and creating an unpleasant wave of dissonance.

Like everything else in this room, the Steinway was for show. Maybe one of the kids had piano lessons once, and maybe the Galloways had bought this piano to encourage them. If that was the case, then I didn’t doubt for a second that their intentions had been good, but the truth was that anyone who was halfway serious about their playing would not have put the piano in this room, and they would have made damn sure that an instrument this fine was kept in tune.

I stretched my fingers and went straight into Mozart’s Turkish Rondo. To make up for the dreadful acoustics, I played the piece pianissimo throughout. Less volume meant fewer reflections. The tune was bright and cheerful and completely wrong for the mood of the room. Hannah and Barbara were both locked into their own little pockets of despair, and I was filling the gaps in the darkness with playful bursts of sound.

I was six when my mother taught this to me. I remember sitting on the stool beside her, concentrating furiously on the dots on the page, working my way through the piece a bar at a time, my mother encouraging me when I needed encouragement and making suggestions when I struggled with the trickier phrases. Once I’d gone through it a couple of times, I didn’t require the music any more. If I needed to see the dots all I had to do was shut my eyes and they’d be lit up inside my head.

After half an hour of practising, I still couldn’t get it right. All the notes were in the correct place, all the phrases were note perfect, but there was something wrong and I couldn’t work out what. My mother must have sensed my frustration because she told me to stop and look at her. She smiled, then touched the side of her head. ‘Music doesn’t come from here, Jefferson.’ She tapped the left side of her chest. ‘It comes from here. Always remember that.’

She told me to scoot over. Then she placed her hands gently on the keys, shut her eyes and started playing. The notes were exactly the same as the ones I’d been playing, the phrases identical, but that’s where the similarities ended. Her fingers flew effortlessly across the keys and her smile grew wider and the sound that filled our tiny music room was the sound of pure joy.

Every time I hear this piece I think of my mother, and I think about what she taught me that day, and I silently thank her for that lesson. This piece of music is everywhere. You hear it in elevators and on commercials and in stores. A thousand kids’ toys have this melody programmed into them. Most versions you hear have all the heart taken out, but that doesn’t matter. Whenever I hear this piece, wherever I am, I’m transported back to that long-ago day, and all I can hear is the sound of my mother playing.

Eyes closed, I did my best to switch off my brain and play from the heart. For a short while I was back in that tiny music room with my mother sitting beside me. It would be another five years before our world was irrevocably torn apart. I was back in the days when we still had good times, and this was one of the best times of all.

So I played for my mother, and I played for that six-year-old kid who didn’t have a clue what was just around the corner. Most of all I played for Taylor. Sometimes the only way to fight the guilt and the grief is to pretend it doesn’t exist. Sometimes the only way to save yourself from the darkness is by sprinting headlong towards that thin glimmer of light without worrying about the repercussions, or the future, or the what-ifs and what-might-have-beens.

Sometimes you need to make yourself play from the heart, even if that’s the last thing you feel like doing.

I reached the end of the piece and for a moment I just sat there, my hands resting lightly on the keys. Then I turned and looked Barbara Galloway straight in the eye.

‘Sam had a secret. Something worth murdering him for. What was it?’

58

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

There was no hesitation. I’d asked my question and Barbara Galloway had answered immediately. It was like she’d been expecting the question and had her answer ready and waiting, just in case. Her response was respectful and polite. It was a conditioned response that was informed by her upbringing and generations of breeding. Her grandmother would have been a Southern belle back in the days when the term still meant something, her mother would have been influenced by that, and that influence would have been passed all the way down to Barbara.

‘You’re lying,’ I said.

‘And I’d like you to leave now.’ That politeness was still there, but the words were cut from ice.

‘Do you remember Officer Taylor?’

‘Of course I remember him.’

‘Right now he’s in the OR over in Shreveport and it’s touch and go whether he’s going to pull through.’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘The person who attacked him was the same person who murdered your husband.’ I gestured for Hannah to step forward. ‘This is Hannah Hayden. She’s Officer Taylor’s fiancée. They’ve got a whole future planned together. Except that might not happen now.’

‘You can’t blame that on me.’

‘It’s not me you need to worry about. No, what you need to worry about is that little voice inside your head that you call your conscience. That voice has plenty to say when you sneak into the fridge to snack on something you shouldn’t, so what do you think it’s going to make of this? It’s going to have a field day. It’s going to haunt you with this until your final breath. It’s going to wake you up in the middle of the night to torture and accuse you, and when that happens do you think your denials are going to count for anything?’

‘Mrs Galloway,’ Hannah broke in. ‘If there’s something you know that could help, I’m begging you, please tell us.’

Barbara broke eye contact and looked at Hannah. ‘How long have the two of you been together?’

‘Four years.’

‘And you’re going to get married?’

‘One day.’

‘What about children? Are you going to have children?’

Hannah nodded. ‘Not right now, but, yeah, in a couple of years, we’d like to start a family.’

‘How badly injured is your fiancée?’

‘It’s bad.’ Hannah sniffed back a sob. She wiped her mouth, scratched a hand through her spiky hair. ‘He might die.’

Barbara took a moment to process this, then said, ‘I’m sorry. Really I am. But there’s no dark secret.’

‘That’s a lie,’ I said again. ‘If that was true you’d be acting very differently. For one thing, you’d be on the phone to the police right now demanding they arrest us for trespassing. Hell, you’d probably have grabbed a gun and be exercising your Second Amendment rights. But you’re not doing either of those things. Instead you’re just standing there making empty threats, while I’m standing here calling you a liar.’

Barbara was staring at me again, her eyes ever so slightly narrowed. This was as close to a glare as her conditioning would allow.

‘By the way,’ I added. ‘The way you hinted that Sam was having an affair when we first met was a nice touch. Very clever. It gave us something to look into while the big secret remained hidden.’

‘There’s no secret, Mr Winter. How many times do I need to tell you that?’

‘Sam was killed for revenge or money. Which one was it?’ I took out a quarter, flipped it in the air, slapped it down on the back of my hand. ‘Heads we take a look at revenge. Tails we look at money.’

Barbara stared for a second then glanced down at my hand. Her eyes met mine again. I lifted my hand, peeked underneath, then took my hand away with a flourish and let her see the coin.

‘Tails it is. So, did Sam owe anybody money? Did he have a gambling problem?’

I watched Barbara carefully. Neither question elicited a response. This had nothing to do with that conditioned cool detachment and everything to do with being way off the mark.

But there had been a reaction when the coin came up tails. It had been so slight anyone else would have missed it. A tiny flash of something in her eyes, a microscopic tightening of her lips. Money was involved, but it wasn’t the main reason Sam had been murdered.