The Quiet People, page 12
I don’t know who I hate more. The whackos who want to kill us, or the whackos who find humour in all of this pain.
I log into my email, aware I’m running late to meet Kent. There are two accounts. One is our joint account for our writing, where readers can contact us through our website, and one is my personal email account. I start with my personal one knowing our fan email account will look like our Facebook page. All the new emails that have come in over the last day have been read by the police. Mostly they’re from friends and family, all concerned and asking how they can help. There are work emails from publishers and editors dealing with the new book. There are insurance bills and newsletters and the general stuff that builds up in your inbox whether your child has been kidnapped or not. There’s an email from Jonas Jones, a self-proclaimed psychic—though I guess they’re all self-proclaimed—who has written books on communicating with the dead, and who now has his own TV show about solving cold cases. We met Jonas years ago as we have the same New Zealand publisher. Lisa had coffee with him back then because we were basing a character on him—not that he knew that. Though, thinking about it, he should have. She said he came across like a genuinely nice guy. I read his email. He tells me he can help, and to give him a call. I hover my finger over the delete button, then, for the first time ever, I wonder, what if it’s not all bullshit? I email him back to ask what he needs.
I switch email accounts. All the fan mail that has come in over the last day has been read by the police. I was right to think it was going to be the same as our Facebook page. Die this way, die that way, suffer this way, suffer that way. People pray for us. Others pray to hurt us.
I look out the window where the journalists and onlookers are waiting. It’s a scene from Dawn of the Dead, where the zombies are milling about, calm and contented, until something whets their appetite.
That whetting happens a moment later when I step outside. The police help me to my car, the first block full of people, the second block free. I swing the car around and drive away. Nobody follows. It takes me fifteen minutes to get to the police station, and another five to find a park. I’m forty-five minutes late. I head through the front door and talk to an officer behind a desk who tells me to take a seat. On the walls are posters recruiting new officers, with slogans like Make a difference and Be somebody.
The elevator dings and the doors opposite open. Kent steps out and signals me over.
Thirty-two
Cameron Murdoch looks tired and dishevelled, and there’s a bruise on the side of his face. They reach the fourth floor. She takes him into the same room they were in yesterday, and they take the same seats.
“We’ve spoken to over three hundred people so far,” she says, “so far most of them neighbours. We’re in the process of cross-referencing all of their statements so we can get a picture of who was where on Sunday.”
His hair is pointing in all directions, and he runs a hand through it, but it doesn’t help. “Did you look into other disturbances in the area? Other burglaries?”
“We did,” she says, “and there was nothing.”
“What about this guy from the fair who hit me? You know who he is?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet? Somebody must know, since Lockwood knows.”
“Lockwood isn’t giving up his source, but we’re working on it.”
“I’m thinking, you know, he might have followed me, right? He was mad enough to punch me, so maybe he’s mad enough to punish me by taking Zach.”
“It’s a lead we’re working on,” she says. “You were saying yesterday Dallas Lockwood accused you of stealing his idea. Have there been similar accusations?”
“Never. Is this all you have?”
“We’re still speaking to people who live near Zach’s regular haunts. We’re talking to teachers, and students, and parents. We’re talking to everybody.”
“It’s not enough.”
“We’ve got people searching wheelie bins too.”
“What?”
“It’s possible other evidence used to get Zach out from his house was dumped.”
“In a wheelie bin?”
“Yes,” she says, watching him closely. “Bin day is today, but many were accessible on Sunday night. We’ve got the collection trucks holding off until we’ve gone through them.”
“All of them?”
“If we can, yes. It will take days,” she says, wanting him to think he has time to retrieve the clothes if he’s the one who put them there. The bin will be returned and placed under surveillance. “Criminals dump things in those bins all the time, thinking they won’t be searched, but if there’s anything to find we’ll find it.”
“Like what?”
“Zach’s schoolbag maybe. Or his glasses.”
“Or even Zach. You think he’s dead, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Good, because he isn’t. If he were, I’d know it. I’d feel it, somehow, and if I thought he was, if I really thought for one moment he was dead, then I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be at home eating a bullet.”
“You have a gun, Mr Murdoch?”
“No, I don’t, but I wouldn’t need one. All I’d have to do is offer myself to the people writing all that shit online about us. Have you seen the crowd growing outside my house?”
“Your story has captured the public’s attention in a way I haven’t seen in a long time,” she says. “A lot of bad things have happened in this city, and a lot of bad people have gotten away with it. The pressure builds, and every now and then a case will come along and that pressure explodes. Zach’s disappearance is that case. I’ve seen the emails and the online anger, and I know you had to be helped to your car earlier. We’ve assigned more police to your house for your protection.”
“Criminals often return to the scene of the crime. Whoever took Zach could be standing in that crowd outside my house right now. Are you watching them? Are you interviewing them?”
“We are. We’re filming everybody who shows up. Anybody suspicious will be spoken to. We’re monitoring all your messages, both the public and private ones. Anybody who threatens you will be warned and possibly charged. There’s something else you should know. People are capitalising on what’s happened, and are asking for a ransom.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Something like this brings people out of the woodwork. You had three emails yesterday from people saying they had Zach, asking for money. We followed through with every one, and each was fake.”
“I didn’t see them.”
“We deleted them so you wouldn’t panic. But I’m going to give you back your phone before you leave here, which will give you access to new emails as they come in. We will continue to monitor your account, and if we see them we will take care of them. It’s important that if you do see one, that you don’t respond or delete it.”
“What if one is real?”
“Then we will discuss that with you and deal with it.”
“People really do this? They pretend to have taken a missing child so they can ask for money?”
“It’s not uncommon.”
“And you arrest them?”
“We do.”
“It’s sick. Doing something like this, when parents are scared and willing to do anything, it’s—”
“I agree,” she says, and she’d put each and every one of them in jail if she could. “Now, I want to come back to something we spoke about yesterday, about your career.” The shift in subject throws him. She carries on. “I asked you how your sales were going, and you said they were good. That’s not entirely true, is it?”
He shrugs. “Look, I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you, but a whiff of failure can end a career. If you’re failing in one country, it may just be a matter of time before you’re failing in another. It doesn’t take long for the rot to lead to erosion. When people ask how things are going, we say they’re going great. It’s a survival instinct. Things have been tough for everybody.”
“You mean for other authors?”
“Yeah. Plenty of writers are losing contracts. People spend more time binge-watching TV these days than they do reading, and there are plenty of folks who find ways to pirate books for free. So yeah, it’s true we’re not doing as well as we used to be doing, but having the mortgage paid off gives us room to breathe.”
“You’re spending more than you’re earning, mostly with travel.”
“We have no choice. It’s all about shaking hands and meeting people. If we don’t travel to promote the books or meet our publishers, then our careers dry up.”
“Our forensic accountant says at the rate you’re going you’ll have to remortgage your house within the next three to four years.”
“It’s not like that. We’ve got a new book coming out in six months.”
“That’s the book that was supposed to come out this month? Before Christmas?”
“It got delayed.”
“We spoke to your agent. He said you’ve struggled on the last few books, and this one has required more work than previous ones, and that the delays were on your end. He said your publishers are becoming increasingly annoyed about it.”
“Sometimes life gets in the way, you know? And every time we’re out there promoting a book is less time we’re at home writing one.”
“Your advances are getting smaller, as are your royalty cheques.”
“Publishing is tough at the moment.”
“You take Zach with you when you travel, right?”
“Not every time. It depends on school, but yes, we often take him, probably more times than not.”
“Must be expensive.”
It takes him a few seconds to answer. “We manage.”
“And his behaviour and mood swings, I imagine it’s hard working from home when he’s there, especially during the school holidays. I saw the video from the berry farm. I can imagine if that happened on one of those long-haul flights, or on a train somewhere, or at a festival, it would be tough.”
“Like I said, we manage.”
“Do you take him to meetings with you? When you’re onstage with Lisa, do you have somebody babysitting him?”
“I know what you’re getting at. You’re trying to establish a motive when there wasn’t one. That video you saw, sure, Zach can be like that, but it’s rare.”
“How rare?”
“Once every month or two. Things build up for him, then he vents.”
She bites her tongue, and doesn’t say, “Like you?”. Instead, she asks, “Did he vent on Sunday night?”
“No. I mean, a little, because he said he was going to run away, but it wasn’t like it was in the video. We love having Zach with us when we travel, and like I said, we have a new book coming out soon that will turn things around.”
“Your agent told us how frustrating the market has become, and that things are on a downward trend for you. But you’re right, it’s not just you, but plenty of other writers too. You have a job you love, but one you can’t know if it will continue to be sustainable.”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” he says.
“And what tree is that?”
“You think we saw Zach as getting in the way of our lives, but you’re wrong. Our lives are better off for him being in it. We would give everything up for him, everything.”
“Okay,” she says. She leans back. “That’s it for now.”
“That’s it?”
“Let me get your phone for you.”
She leaves him in the interview room and goes into the taskforce room. Cameron’s cellphone is in an evidence bag. Earlier, after discovering Zach’s clothes and Cameron’s shoes, and matching the blood type on the T-shirt to Zach’s blood type, they were able to obtain a warrant that allowed them to install tracking software on the phone. She grabs a second bag too, this one with his wallet inside. She goes back into the room and has him sign a form so she can hand them over.
“What about my car?”
“Forensics will have it cleared later today. The bruise on the side of your face,” she says, as she walks him to the elevator. “You want to tell me what happened?”
He reaches up and touches it. “I walked into the bathroom door during the night.”
Maybe it’s true. What’s the alternative? That his mother punched him?
“What happens now?”
“There are a lot of things going on behind the scenes. There are a lot of man hours going into this. We’re doing everything we can.”
“You have anything other than platitudes?”
“Go home and be with your wife. Wait there until we have some news.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” she says, and she takes the elevator down with him, and she stays standing in it and watches him go out onto the street.
Thirty-three
I stop a few metres from the police station and stare down the street at nothing in particular, just cars and pavement and rubbish bins and people and, thankfully, no media. I feel like one of those guys who got thrown back in time and has to ask a bystander what today’s date is. A car races by. Somebody leans out the passenger window and screams “Homo” at me. I can’t tell whether it’s because he thinks I’m gay, or if this is how he identifies himself to strangers. This is one of those Christchurch things. It’s the price you pay to live here. New Zealand is like that. Clean and green. Stunning beaches and mountains that will make your jaw drop, rivers and lakes so beautiful it can make you believe in a higher power. Friendly, innovative, good-natured people who will do anything to help. But we’re also a nation where more babies and children are beaten to death per capita than any other country. We’re a nation where wives are assaulted by husbands and girlfriends assaulted by boyfriends for not having dinner ready on time, for looking at somebody wrong, for the national sport team losing. We’re a nation that has ads on TV to remind us to not drink and drive, not to shake our baby to death when it’s crying, to call for help rather than killing ourselves when things become too much.
The guy leaning out the window calls the next guy a retard before disappearing around the corner.
I walk to the car. I keep my head down and nobody else talks to me or screams abuse. I check my phone. It still has some charge. There are missed calls and messages from people I don’t know, probably reporters, that I will listen to later. Jonas Jones has emailed me back saying he can come to the house this afternoon. I tell him that would be good.
There is a larger police presence when I get home, but there are more people too. There are distinct groups of people. There’s the media, comprised of folks with cameras and microphones. There’s the looky-loos, folks curious whether a real-life show is much different from a TV one. Then there’s the third and largest group—folks who brought the show with them. They’re carrying placards with photos of Zach on them, some with the old chestnut “Child Killer”, others with photographs of me with a bull’s-eye over my face, lots of Justice for Ivy and Justice for Zach.
There are now patrol cars parked at the start of the block using a barrier to allow or deny traffic, but they’re not stopping people from walking. I reach the barrier. “Don’t run anybody over,” the officer tells me, before moving it aside.
I roll forward, not running anybody over like the officer asked. I can hear the crowd chanting something, but can’t tell what it is. I pull into my driveway but don’t have the garage door opener because I’m driving Mum’s car. I get out, and the chanting becomes clear: “Ex-e-cute. Ex-e-cute.” I know some of these people. There are neighbours, there are parents from school, there are people from restaurants and cafés that we visit. Media folks get past the police and push microphones and cameras in my face. I try to back away, clipping the wing mirror. When I reach out to stop myself from losing balance, I knock somebody’s microphone to the ground. The police tell everybody to back up and tell me to get inside, which I do, locking the door and leaning against it. I listen to the shouting, then go into my lounge and listen to it from there instead. I peek out the window at all the people filling the street. On the other side of that madness Zach is still out there.
Thirty-four
Lisa isn’t home. I call Kent, and she tells me Lisa was driven to the station half an hour ago. We must have been there at the same time.
“Do you know if she’ll be coming back home?”
“I don’t know what her plans are, but I’ll tell her you called.”
I go back online. I go to the missing persons website run by the police. Zach’s profile is the top one. Height, weight, blood type, all the data is there. I scroll down the page. There are so many missing people it should be added to the list of things New Zealanders are good at. Mostly these are adults who have decided to live off the grid, but not all of them. There are cases where foul play has been suspected, wallets and phones and cars left behind. There are other missing children. A father who took his son overseas when it was his weekend to have him, and now can’t be contacted. Another father who took his son camping two summers ago on the West Coast, neither of them to be seen again. Down south an eight-year-old boy disappeared a year ago after a fight at a park with his parents. He refused to leave, and his parents drove away to prove a point, only to return two minutes later to find their son gone. There is a small girl, Zach’s age, who went missing two weeks ago after she fell off the back of a boat and disappeared into the water.
I switch off the tablet and turn on the TV. Like I knew it would be, the lead-in for the midday news is Zach’s disappearance. They are crossing to the scene for a live update. Our house, other media, the crowd of people, all of it appears on the screen. Seeing the world outside my window being broadcast back inside is surreal. The reporter has his sleeves rolled up and the top of his shirt open, a real working man slogging it out in the summer heat to give us all the important updates. He’s mid-twenties, with hair slicked to the side and square-framed glasses. I’ve seen him on the news before, and in the past he always seemed like a decent enough guy, but not today.
