Three Lives (Mud Valley) - Chapter 43
A dark quest, murder and an unimaginable burden. A 40-year saga of loyalty and the afterlife
To be released soon in digital formats as Mud Valley.
I plan to continue using the title Three Lives for the serialized format.
Start where you like. Here is the table of contents. Three Lives of Jury TOC
They parked near the old cemetery, which clung to the cliffs. | Curated Lifestyle on Unsplash photo.
Chapter 43
Lucy sweated through the trip to Gold Rush the next morning, feeling Whit’s anxiety filling up the autobus and resenting him for it.
She shouldn’t be made to feel this way, an intruder, a voyeur to a scene she never wanted to see.
Whit sulked. He hadn’t spoken since his “good morning” grunt.
Lucy sighed. It’s not really Whit’s fault, she thought. I shouldn’t be too hard on him. Things got rough last night.
She cringed at the memory of Whit and Samay’s basement argument but with Alani dishing a colour commentary from the living room entrance, it had been tough to ignore.
Yeah, I’ll give him a bit of room, she thought.
At Sunday’s dinner, Whit’s new weirdness was obvious to any one. He darted his eyes from side to side during conversations as though searching for escape. He dropped items in his wake, left keys hanging in locks, deposited plates of food on windowsills, flung doors open wide to the outdoors, discarded his wallet in the fridge and stashed his phone in the cutlery drawer. Several times, Whit was chatting amicable, stopped mid-sentence and abruptly walked away.
None of us are coping as well as we used to, Lucy thought. We’ll all be like Whit before long.
She thought of her own body, the migraines, the aches. She was a hive of irritability when loud noises crashed around her. There was also the Rift. Her inability to cope with the Rift; its endless scratching and gnawing for attention, the visions, the nausea.
For Whit, the truth at the base of the previous night’s argument over who controlled his restaurants was undeniable and, in the light of day, almost unbearable. The embarrassment cut like a cold knife to the gut.
Fucking everybody knew, he thought. Everybody but me knew that Paul was running my restaurants behind my back.
He glanced at Lucy sitting next to him on the autobus. Except her. She’s probably not in on the charade. No way. She couldn’t be. She’s had no contact with anybody from around here for 20 years.
But then his mind, running mad with paranoia, turned over a new thought. There was nothing stopping Samay and others in Jury from communicating with her while she was away. They could have outlined the whole scheme to her and invited her back to win me over.
He laughed, realized how crazy that sounded. Jeez, I don’t know what’s real anymore, he thought.
He had lain awake all night poring over his quarrel with Samay, every crumb of the exchange.
Each time, he reached one indisputable conclusion. The person he thought he was, the person he believed himself to be, was not an actual person in the world at all. Nobody, beyond himself, saw him as a savvy businessman or a leader of the community.
So what was he?
To Whit now, every person in his life formed part of a montage of smirking faces. He imagined friends laughing behind his back. He was a fool people tolerated, a dog people petted, fed and played with.
The trip to Gold Rush via the autobus took about 10 minutes. It dropped them at the arena on the edge of town, where they took an autocab to the police department.
The police officer at the counter sniffed full of doubt at first. It was an almost unbelievable story.
But when Lucy elaborated and pulled out her laptop, showed him the flash drives and the printouts, his eyes grew wide and he shepherded Lucy and Whit into a small side room.
Two other officers entered and asked questions. They remained inscrutable through most of the interview.
Whit sat on his hands expressing disinterest, except to give his name and to point to Lucy when they asked for details.
“I’ve only read the note. You know as much as I do,” he said.
The female officer, constable Johnson, wrote the whole time, while the male officer threw out questions. Twice, Johnson poked her partner and turned her tablet around for him to read.
The officers put the flash drives into a police computer and clicked to see that everything was intact: the note, the map, the list of dates and places, most importantly the names of the dead.
Gabriel Salisbury’s disappearance was well known, stemming from when he failed to show up for a Thanksgiving Day feast he planned for Gold Rush’s homeless. People assumed he had returned to England. Many were surprised and a little hurt that he never reached out before he left or tried to contact them after, but people shrugged it off.
Police checked the location tagged with Salisbury’s name on Frank’s map, cross-checked it with a digital map of their own and the male officer, constable Arne, dropped a pin on the spot and entered a date.
The officers next searched for a death report corresponding to the date Frank offered as the day Jules, last name possibly Verne, died. Johnson reported no unexplained death or overdose matched the date.
She said they planned to search a few days before and after the reported death, in case Frank got the date wrong or the body hadn’t been discovered for a few days.
“Or he’s full of shit,” Whit leaned back into this chair and rubbed his temples.
“Or, he’s full of shit,” Johnson acknowledged, and dropped a pin on the map at the location reported in Frank’s message.
The police repeated the procedure for the other four potential murders.
They questioned Whit and Lucy about each, about aspects they would have no way of knowing unless they were in on the murders with Frank.
No one had a clue about the identity of the first Danny person Frank mentioned. It was female, so probably Danielle? They agreed that was a good assumption. If Frank spoke the truth, the police might find her and the other Danny, a male victim, among the incidents reported under and around the Paradise Street bridge, where the vulnerable, the predators and the shambling debris once camped.
The chances of discovering fresh evidence there, however, were severely hindered by a redevelopment, which years ago transformed the spot into an expansive riverside park with brightly painted shops, coffee houses and wide walkways.
The death of a person named Candrew presented an interesting case because, Lucy pointed out, how many missing Candrews could there be? The remote location Frank provided also narrowed down the search.
Ben though, was an outlier. Why did Frank kill him in Jury and in the middle of a busy street, albeit at night? Was Ben simply a killing of convenience that Frank happened across? It occurred almost on the exact spot where Lucy’s mother died, but Lucy didn’t tell police that. It made her wonder if she had ever told Frank about her mother’s death and if she had, would Frank commit such a bizarre recreation?
“Do either of you recall anybody named Ben you might have known back then?” Johnson asked.
Whit and Lucy said they did not.
Just like that, the interview was over.
Within 40 minutes, Lucy and Whit were on the autobus headed back to Jury. They sat side by side on the self-driven transit capsule, which zipped up and down Highway 2 next to the lake.
Gold Rush, at the southern end of the lake, was the final destination for the line. All the capsules slipped into town, zipped around the arena parking lot, stopping briefly to throw riders out and pick up new ones, before they turned and headed northward, to Jury, then Salmon Drop, Remnant and on to Nor Loch, with separate spurs to Esker and Brown. If one car filled up, a second or third or 100th car was dispatched as necessary.
“Rough night, huh?” Lucy thought she might breach Whit’s mood. She watched the lake scenery flicker by through the window across the aisle.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It sounded like things got a bit heated last night.”
Maybe the guy needed to talk, she thought.
“We all heard. It was hard not to, you guys were pretty loud. I just thought you should know.”
Whit continued to focus straight ahead, staring out the window. Apart from the two of them, the car was empty.
Well then, Lucy thought when she got no response. I guess that’s that.
She had been sitting in the living room with Sylvia, Erin and Alani when the argument downstairs started and they heard most of it.
At one point, Alani whispered through her fingers at how stressful such an angry-sounding discussion must be for poor Samay.
The women had been enjoying a friendly chat till then, although Lucy was annoyed at having to repeatedly steer Alani away from asking her about where her ghosts had gone.
“I don’t do that anymore,” Lucy said. “It’s so peaceful. I love it.”
She didn’t mention she had seen her dead father the previous night.
She added it up. It had been almost 10 years since she’d seen even a wisp of the dead. At first, the vanishing nearly drove her mad. She felt vulnerable, convinced the spectres lurked and scratched at her, even if she couldn’t see them. She was sure they’d come for her one day.
Gradually, she learned to appreciate the calm and to bask in a world of people no longer in her care.
But now, the peace was coming undone after only a few days in Jury. Harley’s appearance must mean something, she thought. Maybe something big.
Her head tingled even now as they travelled the autobus to Jury. Something was getting to her. Something in town and in the Rift. A toxic concoction, inert until the volatile final ingredient was added: Lucy herself.
“You know what I do in situations like this, when people are acting like assholes?” she said.
Whit scoffed. “Don’t care.”
“I send them bouquets but not those paper-wrapped, bullshit vase things. I like to send flowers in pots with real soil. But first I like to shit in the pots. Makes their houses smell earthy when they water them.”
Whit’s lips burst out a small chuckle. “Shut up.”
“Whatever it is, Whit, you and Samay are friends. More than that, you’re family and families fight sometimes. It won’t seem so bad after a few days.”
Whit crossed his arms, grunted.
Lucy leaned in and snapped her finger into the side of his head. It made a satisfying thwack.
“Why are you being such a twat,” she said.
They approached the big hill that led up to Jury, when Whit gave in.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. He cleared his throat and repeated it, louder this time.
Lucy squeezed his upper arm. “Don’t overdo it. One apology is fine for now.”
“Hey,” he smiled. “Let me show you something.”
They jumped off the autobus at the lot where Whit had parked his truck and drove to a place where the cliffs dropped 50 metres to the lake. They parked next to the old cemetery, which clung to the edge of the cliffs, thanks to historical preservation funding. Every spring, engineers came and assessed the dirt and rock for faults. Then they glued, braced or seeded the site to shield it from erosion.
Lucy and Whit followed the gravel pathway into the cemetery until they reached the large, flat stone memorial. The original carving, the chisel marks of her name and dates were more worn and dirt-filled, but easily legible.
SAKUYA WATANABE
1939-1944
The black words beneath shone as boldly as they did on the first day Lucy painted them.
The Flower
remains a Flower
Forevermore.
“I’ve been freshening it up every year or so. I thought it seemed important to you.”
“Oh, Whit.” Lucy was touched. How could she not? “It is important. Thank you.”
The wind blew and cleared the air. Whit blew out a hot stream of breath. He felt stronger. He might find courage to face the world again.
Lucy touched his shoulder. “It’s not as big a deal as you think. It’s just a bunch of investors who wanted insurance on their money, a cold business decision,” she said.
Whit nodded. “I know.” But he didn’t, really. How was he supposed to face his old life, his old friends? He wanted to linger here, with Lucy and forget about all that.
“Do you think about her much anymore, Sakuya?” he asked.
“Sometimes. It was one motherfucker of a night, how could I not? But it’s fading.” Lucy bent over and touched the face of the stone. “What about you? You used to avoid thinking about that night, except to please Frank, but what’s this now?”
“I don’t know, exactly. It came back to me and now I just can’t keep it out of my head.”
“It’s called aging,” Lucy said. “Stuff I haven’t thought about for years and people I barely remember are suddenly camping in my mind.”
Whit tilted his nose skyward, sniffed the wind. “I’m sorry I’ve been an asshole. I don’t know why I treated you so shitty when you called. It felt like going backward to a time I didn’t want to be at, I guess.”
“And now it doesn’t?”
“No, it doesn’t. I was wrong. I didn’t know whether I wanted to dredge up all that shit again, you know? You seemed like you were going to be a lot of work, Lucy, and I’m sorry about that because it turns out I’m the high maintenance one.”
Lucy chuckled. “This is news to you?”
“It is. He paused a long while, staring off. “It really is.”
Lucy tsked. “You’re being overly harsh.”
She secretly studied him as he brushed dirt away from the stone. So he’s not the mortar he believed he was, but he’s not as muddled as he thinks either.
He was Whit. The town’s milk carton boy, its mascot. Lucy saw it when they were kids and she saw it again as an adult. He didn’t ask for help, but people pushed gifts on him: money, jobs, cars to use, small tokens mostly, as gestures. They seemed to want to please him.
“Harsh?” Whit scoffed. “Nah, I’m being real for once.” He fell silent and remained quiet for a long while. Lucy waited.
When he spoke next, his voice pitched higher, strange and nasal, like it had been pulled out from somewhere else. “And speaking of overly harsh, you know we’re being overly harsh when it comes to Frank. He’s still that tiny, skinny, little bastard who always pulled shit from the fire. He lived a hard life, fought the whole time. And there was Mud Valley, we can’t forget what he did there.”
Lucy stepped back and peered at him, confused. “Why are we talking about this now? He’s a fucking serial killer. That colours over everything else he’s done. And he burned down the hot springs lodge, that alone should be enough to write him off your Christmas card list.”
“Don’t you feel anything at all for him?”
“I don’t believe I ever felt anything for him. Not the way you do. He was a nerdy friend at one time who wanted to be a bully. And for one brief moment, his fantasy world intersected with the real world and he got to play hero.
“But most of the time, he was asshole who used his illness to get a leg up. He played on people’s sympathies. And that’s on his good days. On his bad days, he was a murderer and an arsonist. You said yourself he was stealing from people at his so-called outreach centre, even selling drugs out of there.”
“That’s not…,” Whit’s voice trailed off mid-sentence. After a few seconds, he said, “Isn’t there a little bit to admire, though? When he established a course, he stuck to it, no matter the danger. He literally accomplished everything he set his mind to.”
“No, there is nothing to admire about Frank Kappens,” said Lucy.
“Nothing? Well,” Whit sniffed, “that’s pretty final.”
Lucy left him and walked up the path toward their car. She wanted no more talk about Frank.
* * *
Bonus material
Check out bonus material, including back stories to the characters in the novel Three Lives of Jury at the link below.
The Underworld Vents also contains short stories of alternative/historical fiction with The Wagon People series.
Check out the new additions with the Tynoffer Common series, humorous flash fiction in bits of letters, bulletins and bureaucratic paranormal madness.