The sinister coast boxse.., p.32
The Sinister Coast Boxset, page 32
"No. It's too late," Rogers began, but she didn't hear him.
She dove back into the black water, towards the cave entrance.
77
When West regained consciousness, she was in bed in a private hospital room, her shoulder heavily bandaged and arranged in a hoist suspended from the ceiling. An ECG machine on her bedside tracked her heart rate with a soft rhythmic beep. A TV on the wall in front of her played silently. Outside the window, she could glimpse a city, she didn't know which one. By the foot of her bed, Detective Rogers lay asleep in an armchair; he'd pulled up a small plastic chair to raise his legs, and he was covered by a light blue blanket.
"Hey," West said, but her voice was so weak he didn't wake up. For a moment, she considered trying to shout louder, but her throat hurt. And she realized she didn't know how long he'd stayed awake. She didn't know how long she'd been here. Nor how she came to be here. Let him sleep, she thought. In search of some answers she picked up the TV remote control, which was sitting on her bedside cabinet. She tried to raise the volume on the TV, but the batteries weren't good. So instead, she threw the control at Rogers. It hit him in the chest and then clattered onto the floor.
"Hey," she said again.
Rogers awoke with a start, and then began to rub his face and yawn loudly. He blinked as he looked around, confused.
"What time is it?" he asked.
"I have no idea. What day is it?"
Rogers pushed the smaller chair away with his foot and sat up straighter in his armchair. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt that she didn't recognize. They didn't fit well.
"How are you feeling?"
West considered the question for a moment. "Groggy. My shoulder hurts. Where's the boy?"
Rogers hesitated, a frown on his face. "You don't remember?"
"Remember what?" A sense of dread filled West's mind. "Is he dead?"
Rogers' face changed. The frown turned to a kind of amused disbelief.
"No. Far from it. He's running around the station telling Lieutenant Langley how to conclude this investigation. No one can shut him up from all accounts."
This time West frowned, struggling to remember. "What happened?"
"You really don't remember?"
Fragments of it were already coming back to West. The crazed way she had worked her arms underwater, freed this time from the drag of pulling Stone's body with her. Ignoring the massive pain in her shoulder. "When you first tried to get out, he only got half way. He stopped in an air pocket." Rogers began, but she knew. She'd swum too fast. She hadn't taken the time to fill her lungs with air. She got inside the cave and felt her muscles begin to seize. Her lungs screaming. She was unable to resist rising to the top, but instead of finding the surface and cool air, there was just the blackness of rock. She fought it till the last, clawing her way forwards - no longer in search of the boy - now just in a desperate last fight to prevent her body sucking in salty water as it shut down. And then the air pocket. The boy's light. His frightened face. And then nothing.
"He pulled you out. God knows how the kid did it. I mean I've been down there. Had a look. It's not that far, but Christ. To swim through when it's filled with freezing water. In the dark. Christ. The kid's a god damn hero."
Rogers looked at her seriously.
"And so are you Detective. So are you."
"How about Stone. Did he make it?" West said a few moments later.
"He came out of surgery last night. The bullet somehow managed to miss anything vital. He lost a lot of blood though." Rogers shrugged. "Doc's think he'll make it."
West breathed a few times, the act of it hurting her throat still. "How about her? Emily Franklin?"
"We got her. Langley's with her now."
"I saw her threatening to shoot the boy. She was trying to frame Stone for Curran's murder. Set it up like a murder-suicide."
"We know. The boy's told us everything. There's still a few bits left to piece together, but it looks like she set up the whole relationship with Stone just to cover up killing Curran. Dumb schmuck had no idea what was going on." He raised his eyebrows.
"And what happened before? Billy's twin...?"
"That too. The guy doesn't have too much luck with women does he?"
West frowned.
"Christine Austin left a message on your answer phone. It was pretty confused but she was talking about when Eva Austin was murdered. She claimed responsibility. The Oregon State Police are with her now. And a psychologist who says may have been suffering from postpartum depression. They think her family might have covered up what really happened and blamed it on Stone. To protect their reputation. It seems your visit triggered something."
“No. It wasn’t me. It was hearing about her son being alive."
“Well. Who knows. But you were the one that insisted on going to see her. Without that who knows how this would have ended?"
Rogers took his feet down from the chair. He rolled his neck around. Then he turned back to West and spoke a final time.
"It's not all good news. We recovered Olivia Curran's body from the cave." There was a moment of quiet in the room, when the only noises were the soft beep of the ECG, and the city sounds from outside.
78
I'm sitting in the office of someone really important from the hospital. I'm wearing the clothes the hospital lady gave me. They're a little big for me, and they probably came from a dead person, but they're better than wearing the blue gown I was given first of all, so I don't mind. Detective Rogers is here with me. He let me sit in the big leather chair that swings round. I didn't like Detective Rogers much before because he's like a big bear. But actually, he's OK, although he does ask a lot of questions. That's what we're doing. What we've been doing for hours. Or it feels like hours. I've been telling him everything that happened inside the cave, and earlier, at Emily's house. He writes it all down. I can tell he believes me this time. He's really impressed too. Especially about the part when I swam through the cave entrance. I got stuck halfway in the high part. Then just as I was trying again the other detective got stuck there too so I pulled her out. It was just like when Dad took me surfing and I got pushed underwater by all the waves. I thought Dad was trying to kill me then, because I thought he'd killed Olivia Curran. But he wasn't trying to kill me. He was just trying to save me.
* * *
Detective Rogers keeps bringing me candy and soda from the machines in the hallway. I've got it all stacked up on the desk in front of me. Detective Rogers tells me that Emily is going to go to prison.
"Why do you think she did it?" I ask him. He stops writing and thinks about this for a while.
"It's early days, kid, but a lot of folk have come forward saying Ms. Franklin has had issues for a while now. Your Dad too, he says she made his life hell when he was dating her in secret. He was trying to break it off with her, but she kept threatening to tell you.” He hesitates. "You ever see it yourself? You spent time with her."
I think for a bit. I picture Emily, leaning over my shoulder. Helping me with my science homework, telling me the teachers at school are kind of stupid, and I shouldn’t listen to them.
“No," I say.
* * *
"Can I go in the helicopter again?" I say, a moment later. "When we go back to the island? I didn't really get to enjoy it the last time."
Detective Rogers shakes his head in a funny way but doesn't answer me. Then there's a knock on the door. A doctor comes in and tells Detective Rogers that Dad's awake again. He had to have an operation. To remove the bullet. I asked if I could keep it. As a souvenir. But they said the police would need it for evidence.
The doctor talks with Detective Rogers for a while, talking about how Dad's operation went. They both look happy enough.
"Can I see him now?" I say suddenly. The doctor hesitates. He looks at Detective Rogers.
"I don't have an issue with that. But you'll have to keep it short." He looks at Detective Rogers, who shrugs.
"OK by me."
Detective Rogers gets up and holds the door open for me. "Come on kid," he says.
* * *
Dad's lying in a bed. He's connected to lots of tubes and machines which beep every few seconds. He looks really white but he's got lots of stubble. I can see the top of his chest. Below that it's just bandages. Everything smells of antiseptic. When I come in, he turns his head to look at me.
"Hello, Billy," he says.
"Hi, Dad," I reply. Suddenly I feel really worried. I don't know where to look.
Dad looks away too. He glances over at Detective Rogers, and a look passes between them. Then his eyes come back to mine.
"They told me what you did. What Detective West did."
"They said I might get a medal. I might get my picture in the paper. Do you think I might get my picture in the paper? Do you think that might happen?"
"It might." Dad says.
"Is that going to be OK?" I ask. I remember how Dad doesn't like that sort of thing. He looks at Detective Rogers again, who clears his throat, and looks a bit embarrassed.
"All the charges against you have been dropped." Detective Rogers says it in his gruff voice. "Both here and over in Oregon. There's a hell of a mess to sort out still but..." He doesn't finish his sentence, just fades out.
"I guess it's OK then," says Dad.
I don't move.
"Billy. Come here, will you? Give me a hug."
I walk over to him slowly and put my arms around his shoulders. Only gently, but I can feel him flinch anyway.
"Are you OK Dad?" I suddenly feel a bit worried. I didn't really hear what the doctors were saying, I was a bit too excited. "Are you going to die?"
Slowly Dad begins to smile. "I don't think so kiddo."
But I'm worried now. I feel my eyes begin to prickle like when you're about to cry.
"Is everything going to be OK?" I say. I can't help myself now. I'm properly crying.
"Yeah." Dad says. He pulls me closer and holds me tight. It feels good. I cling onto him.
"I think so. I think we're going to be OK."
The Wave at Hanging Rock - complete book
1
The way my dad died was so funny one newspaper gave him a Darwin Award. That’s not a real award, it’s a joke. They give them to people who die doing something so stupid that it counts as a service to humanity. You know, eliminating their DNA from the gene pool. But the real funny thing was, everyone was so busy laughing none of them realised it was already too late. Because I was already here.
I was twelve years old when he did it. It was a Wednesday afternoon. Normally I liked Wednesdays since we finished school early, and usually Dad would take me to the beach. He’d read the paper for a bit and then fetch up in one of the bars down there drinking beer while I surfed. But things had already gone weird by then. That day we were in the garden, working on his latest project in the shade of the gum trees.
“It’ll be good. You and me being together in school,” Dad said for what must have been the third time that afternoon. He had his plastic goggles pushed up onto his forehead so his hair stuck up like a porcupine.
“Yeah,” I said, meaning no. I didn’t like the idea much. I’d been hoping it wouldn’t actually happen, but I knew just hoping wasn’t going to work for ever.
“Nearly ready for the test eruption.” He sounded so pleased with himself.
A couple of weeks before it had been a rocket made of plumbing tubes that was supposed to demonstrate pressure or something. It made an angry whistling noise like a boiling kettle as it sat on the grass launchpad, but when the needle on the compressor’s dial trembled into the red section, something sprung a leak and the rocket screamed sideways into the fence. Every one of Dad’s experiments seemed to centre on blowing something up. Most of them took out a fence panel or two.
“I bet you’ve never done something like this in science Jesse?”
“I told you already, we did it in like, grade two or something. In Geography.”
A shadow of doubt swam into his eyes but he blinked it away. “Well not like this you didn’t. This one is going to blow your mind.”
That afternoon we’d stirred chemicals together in one of the big glass bowls Mum used to make cakes on my birthday. We didn’t have a bunsen burner but Dad had improvised by using the camping stove. You couldn’t see any of this now though since it was hidden inside a giant model mountain made of cardboard and paper soaked in wallpaper paste. Dad had painted it the night before and I had to admit, it looked a bit more realistic now. I mean you could at least tell it was supposed to be a volcano.
“Course I might not get to teach your class, but if I do, that’ll be good right?”
Dad had given up his job a few months earlier and was retraining as a teacher. A science teacher, because he knew something about chemicals from the factory where he worked. He said he wanted to do something more worthwhile with his life. I could understand that I suppose. I’d been to work with him sometimes, it was like hanging out in a warehouse with all the stupid kids from school, but older. But even so I didn’t like the idea much. I guess I was worried what my mates were going to think of Dad becoming their teacher. Maybe he sensed that. Maybe that explained the experiments.
“Your little pals at school are gonna love this one Jesse,” he said. “None of the pussy shit demonstrations that your… what d’ya call him? Mr Carter? Not like the bloody limp-wristed crap he’s been showing you. Chemistry is all about drama! Elemental drama! Boom!” He demonstrated this by pouring a quart of something red and oily down through the neck of the volcano and replacing the plug. This was the lava.
“So, if you’ve been paying attention you’ll know what’s happening inside our model right now. What reaction is taking place? Jesse?”
I was torn. I didn’t want to encourage him. I didn’t want to look interested, but if we were done here soon enough there might still be time to get to the beach before tea. And there was something cool about your dad coming into your school and blowing away the boring science experiments we had to sit through. Literally blowing them away.
“Messy… Messy zinc?”
“Mossy zinc Jesse. Little nodules of zinc cooled in water which have a greater surface area than zinc strips.” I nodded. I’d grown up with the garage filled with this sort of shit, ends of runs from whatever it was Dad’s work did. “And dropped into Hydrochloric Acid it produces what volatile gas?”
He’d told me so many times. It was just easier to say it back to him.
“Hydrogen.”
“Exactly. The agent which will give a little boost to our simulated eruption here.” He chuckled and then stopped suddenly.
“Did they use baking powder when you did this at school?” He asked. “When you did this before? They did didn’t they? I’ll bet they did. Well this ain’t baking powder son. We’ve got a little more power here to play with.” He gave the model a friendly pat and I just stared at it without any expression on my face.
It sat there on its plastic sheet, maybe four feet high, a little bigger than the garden table next to it anyway.
“I think we’re just about ready. Do you want to light her up Jesse?”
There was only so much enthusiasm I was prepared to demonstrate. I thought about how the waves were good that afternoon and how I was missing them.
“Not really.”
He did a good job of keeping it from his voice, but I could see he was hurt. We’d put effort into this. Well, he had anyway.
“OK. Well get the camera. Stand back a little and get filming, and I’ll light her up.”
I did what he said, backing up till he was happy I’d be able to get the whole eruption in shot with the video camera. If I’d known how famous this video was going to get I’d have tried to hold it steadier.
“Happy?” I could hear my own voice on the recording later. It sounded reedy and thin. Sarcastic.
Through the viewfinder I watched as he gave an awkward smile to the camera and knelt down. We’d left a hole in the side of the model to light the burner. He reached in and grimaced as he struggled to open the valve for the gas. After a while you could see the frustration on his face.
“Fuckin’ shit.”
“What is it?”
“My hand’s too big to turn the gas on. Get over here Jesse and help me.”
So I walked back over, gave Dad the camera and stuck my own hand inside the volcano. I felt around for the valve, a little knurled wheel that sat at the back of the stove.
“Got it? Can you feel it? Don’t open her right up, just a quarter turn. We only need a small amount of gas or we’re going to have a real explosion on our hands.” He chuckled again at the thought of this.
I could feel my knuckles sliding against the glass bowl as I turned it. If I’d been paying attention I might have noticed that was wrong, it had slipped out of position, but I didn’t notice. I pulled my arm back out.
“All yours,” I said, walking backwards to keep the camera pointed on the action.
He picked up the lighter and lit up a long wooden taper. He spent an age trying to get the orange flame to bite into the wood but even though there wasn’t much breeze, it kept blowing out. Dad gave a grunt of frustration. Finally he gave up and just stuck his hand back inside with the lighter poised.
“Ready?”
I shrugged. “Let’s do it,” I said.
You can probably guess it didn’t go according to plan. Dad was aiming for what they call a Hawaiian eruption, it’s also known as a fire fountain eruption on account of how the red hot lava shoots up in the air like a firework show. They’re predictable eruptions. They get the name from the volcanoes in Hawaii where they bus tourists up to watch like it’s a show. But what he got was a more explosive eruption, on account of all the gas. Or maybe it was more like a bomb. But then some volcanoes do go up like that. They’re unpredictable. I told you, we did it in geography.
