Turtle Island: 20th Anniversary Edition (Georgina O'Neil Book 1) Page 16

  The blue flashing light was a part of her daily life, something she saw every day. Something that she should be immune to, but when Georgina saw a police car parked outside her house, the momentary feeling of dread spread through her the way it would anyone else. Thoughts of her father entered her head, memories of her mother and how the news of her death was broken. Georgina was unaware that her speed had picked up to a sprint, her mind concentrated solely on the black and tan with the blue flashing light. Her breath bellowed in white clouds from her nose and mouth. As she drew nearer the car, she saw a familiar face sitting in the back of the car. Leroy LaPortiere allowed a grin to spread across his face on seeing her approach. He opened the door and stepped from the warm interior of the car into a cold Portmorion morning. Georgina instantly recognised the detective’s anxiety and put aside worries of personal tragedy. She knew this had to do with work and also from the look that now occupied Leroy's features; she could tell it was serious. Georgina stopped in front of Leroy, her breath now coming in sharp bursts; she doubled over to catch her breath. Crouched over, her hands resting on her knees for support and recovery, she looked up at him. Leroy's expression remained sober.

  ‘Hi.’ His greeting flat; another ominous sign. ‘We need to talk.’

  The inside of Georgina’s house was not far off the mark as to how Leroy had pictured it in his mind's eye on the flight from Missouri. She was a neat and tidy person whose tastes ranged from the homely dresser in the kitchen with its myriad of plates, cups and saucers, to the slightly modern, with a glass topped wrought iron legged coffee table that stood conspicuously in the centre of a lounge, full of older furniture. None of it fashionable but by the same token not too hard on the eyes either. Rather like Georgina herself, Leroy thought to himself, watching her as she entered the lounge holding two coffee mugs in one hand and a plate of chocolate cookies in the other. She had a towel draped over her shoulders and her hair was tousled from a vigorous rub. She had discarded her sweatshirt and just wore the sweat stained tee shirt, which hung loosely over her jogging pants. Georgina handed Leroy the mug of coffee and placed the cookies by his side on the sofa. She sat down opposite him, the way she had six months previously in his house. Leroy took a sip from his mug; the steaming liquid lubricated his dry throat. Georgina waited for him to speak

  ‘I got three weeks left in the force...three weeks and then I’m out. That’s the plan. Gonna move up north to Washington, join Lia. We talked the other night for the first time since she left, really talked, you know. About six weeks ago I finally tracked her down. She's livin’ with her aunt...’ Leroy left the sentence unfinished. Georgina could sense there was another motive to his visit other than to impart the news of his personal life. ‘Rick and his family have been kidnapped.’ Leroy blurted the line out. He moved back in the chair and rubbed his hands wearily over his face. ‘Oh man, this is bad.’

  Georgina sat stunned for a moment, allowing the information to filter through her shock.

  ‘Korjca's dead.’ Leroy continued.

  The two words sledge hammered into Georgina. The blood drained from Georgina's face. Her lips opened slightly allowing a few words to escape.

  ‘What happened?’ For a moment Georgina felt dizzy, as the shock began to register. She grabbed the edge of the chair for support.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Leroy asked.

  ‘I’m alright...it’s just the run...it’s just the run.’

  ‘I’ll get you a drink.’ Leroy walked to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. A carton of opened grapefruit juice, three pints of skimmed milk and an orange soda bottle, half empty, greeted him.

  ‘Remind me not to come for dinner.’ He said quietly to himself. His eyes cast over to the draining board by the sink. An empty glass with a transfer on the clear surface saying, ‘DRINK ME!’ was lying on its side waiting to fulfil its purpose. Leroy filled the tumbler from the faucet.

  ‘Tap water good?’ He called in.

  ‘Yeah.’ Georgina’s voice sounded broken.

  Leroy entered, holding the glass.

  ‘You sure you’re okay?’ He repeated.

  ‘This job, I get too involved sometimes. I always hate death.’ She sniffed, wiping her eyes with the corner of her sleeve. ‘Oh God, I think I’m gonna be sick.’ Georgina straightened and steadied herself, breathing deeply.

  Leroy handed Georgina the glass, cold beads of water clung to the surface of the tumbler like the tears that Georgina wanted to cry but would only cry during the quiet moments alone.

  Georgina looked at Leroy. The sadness evident in her face. She shook her head. ‘It's just so sad...Korjca was a nice person. What about Rick and his family, any leads?’ She changed tack.

  Leroy grabbed his coffee and took a long slow gulp. ‘Your hunch was right. Frusco and Rick...all of us I guess, except you, were too keen to close the case back on Turtle Island.’ Leroy paused. ‘Charles Fleisher wasn't our man; sure, he was a bastard who got his thrills by tying up and fucking his daughter’s teacher; pardon my French. But he wasn't the Dentist or whatever name the media wished to give him. He's still out there.’

  ‘Fleisher was part of something bigger.’ Georgina knew the implications ran deeper than the surface impression. Apart from having to return to Turtle Island and try to find the perpetrator of the original crimes as well as find Rick and his family, she also knew that there would now be a full enquiry by her superiors into her actions in resolving the original case. Georgina shook her head.

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘I know; it sucks.’ Leroy sympathised with modest understatement.

  Twenty-Seven

  The flight back to Missouri was as bad as Georgina had expected. Air pressure played havoc with her sinuses, causing excruciating pain, and bad turbulence only added to her misery. The sudden drops in altitude churning the contents of her stomach, which already had a higher than usual acid content brought on by the anxiety of flying and bad news. She gripped the steady handle in the toilet and hung her head over the open bowl, trying to force the contents from her stomach, but to no avail. It seemed she was destined to spend the entire flight suffering discomfort. Leroy sat watching the in-flight movie, headphones secured over his ears. A squeaky clean, edited version of ‘Along Came a Spider’. Leroy liked Morgan Freeman as an actor; the man has a quiet, stately grace that many in his trade would do well to inherit. In all the years that Leroy had been flying it always amazed him how the airline industry managed to mess up so many good films with just a pair of scissors and a morality that was slightly higher than that of God. The plane hit another bank of clouds, Leroy remained oblivious, engrossed in the feature, nor did he notice that Georgina had been out of her seat occupying the mid-cabin toilet for the best part of half an hour. A stewardess knocked for a second time on the door and called through.

  ‘Are you alright in there or do you need some assistance?’

  Georgina looked at her sallow complexion and splashed water over her face once more.

  ‘I’m alright, I’ll be out in a minute.’

  The plane rumbled through the cloudbank. Georgina gripped the handrail tighter and wished that the plane would either hurry up and land, or crash. In her present state of discomfort either option would have suited her fine.

  ‘There are people waiting out here for the toilet, Miss O’Neil.’ The stewardess voice called through the door once more.

  Georgina wiped her mouth with a paper towel and stared once more at her reflection in the mirror. Tiny blood vessels in the whites of her eyes were rupturing, streaking tramlines of blood toward the iris and pupil. The pain in her head increased as she felt the aircraft rise in altitude, leaving her stomach floundering. A third knock at the door prompted her to reach out and unlock the latch. She opened the door to be greeted by the exasperated face of one of the passengers. A young man with a serious attitude problem. He ‘dussed and tutted’ as he barged past Georgina, before she could make her way out of the small cubicle. She staggered back to he
r seat, using the headrests to steady her progress and slumped down next to Leroy, who remained unaware of her discomfort.

  ‘This is a good film.’ Leroy said without breaking eye contact with the screen on the back of the headrest. Georgina reached forward for the sick bag, hating every second of the flight. She rested her head back, closed her eyes and prayed for sleep, while gripping on to the small white bag. Every noise, every whine of the engine, every voice that talked, from whiney children to arguing couples, entered her head, nothing escaped. Her senses suddenly seemed to be on hyper alert and try as she might to sleep, she couldn't. The blackness of closed eyelids was not a sanctuary as purple and blue flashing spots invaded the darkness. A menagerie of thoughts and images started to play games inside her head, memories of her time at Turtle Island six months previously. Faces; Korjca's smiling slightly rounded face. Her pure white skin. The sight of Karen Fuller's dead body lying sprawled and naked, under the dead weight of Charles Fleisher. Georgina had her own in-flight movie on constant play.

  The sound of the cabin bell resonating broke the images. Georgina opened her eyes. The film on the screen had finished and been replaced by a map showing an animated aircraft moving over an area marked Missouri. The no smoking sign was illuminated, and the captain spoke over the address system informing her that they were about to land in approximately ten minutes.

  ‘You been asleep.’ Leroy informed her.

  Somehow, she had managed to fall asleep, but how and when, like most sleep, would remain a mystery. As the plane started its descent to the airport, Georgina gripped the armrests tighter, her discomfort now displaced by her fear of crashing. The landscape of Missouri came into view through the small window to Leroy's left. The plane would pass over Turtle Island before landing, Leroy watched out for the small enclave surrounded by water. Georgina eyes were clenched as tightly shut as were her hands encompassing the rounded ends of the armrests. As the plane lowered, cars came into view, milling around, carrying people making their way home after a long day at work. The aircraft followed the highway that led to Turtle Island. Independence Bridge appeared, the link to the Island. Car headlights were being switched on as dusk began to settle over Missouri. Within three minutes the plane’s tyres were touching down on the airport runway and Georgina's heart rhythm began to settle to a more accustomed pattern.

  The air temperature was warmer than Portmorion but much more comfortable than her previous visit. Early 60's Fahrenheit, Georgina guessed. Leroy loaded her small case into the boot of his car, while she pulled a cardigan around her shoulders just to keep the coming night chill away.

  Jo-Lynn tried to move her legs; the cold water was doing its level best to numb them. She curled her toes constantly to keep the circulation of blood moving in them. She no longer had any idea how long she had been kept tied to the chair. The darkness and the cold water were the two constants that remained unchanged throughout her ordeal and both played havoc with her senses. Time was irrelevant; it became suspended, like her senses. The tape over her mouth was uncomfortable at least she could swallow and breathe with ease though she didn't know how much longer she could last before hypothermia began to set in as the cold began to seep through her bones. She prayed that Ray was no longer immersed in the water. If he was, she feared for his life. The thought of him sitting in the cold water, alone and afraid, was about the only thing spurring Jo-Lynn on, keeping her from crumbling, she needed to be strong for Ray. She promised herself that she would take any half chance, any opportunity at all, to escape. Jo-Lynn tried to call through the tape, she desperately wanted to hear from her son, some sign of life, a noise, a muffled cry, anything would be welcome, but her effort was left unanswered. She tried to move her legs, break the tape that was binding them together.

  He watched her struggle, fascinated by the maternal bond that was driving her forward, forcing her fight, driving her on, giving her strength that He knew all too well. He held a torch, the temptation to turn it on, let her know why she was here. It was nearly time for an explanation, things were becoming a little clearer in His head. The time was getting closer...closer. He stood up; sending tiny ripples of water to splash against Jo-Lynn's legs and continued watching her face all the time. The image speckled, through the night sight strapped to his head but none the less effective. He turned and looked at the chair beside Him and saw the body of Rick Montoya, slumped half unconscious, bound to the seat. To His side were three steps leading to a small platform with a further seven steps, going up to a door, whose white luminescence was almost blinding through his night sights lenses. He walked up the steps and through the door bolting it shut from the outside.

  Jo-Lynn sat for a moment, listening hard in the dark for any noise from Ray. She tried to shuffle her chair, dragging it toward the corner where she had a brief glimpse of her son. She inched the chair forward slowly. The sound resonating in the hollow cavernous room, followed by the sound of water breaking against the far wall, and her own efforts escaping from her lips as muffled anxiety. She wanted to call her husband, wake him; work out a plan to escape. She moved the chair sideways. One of the legs fell in to a rut, a divot under the pitch-black murky water causing Jo-Lynn to overbalance and fall sideways. Her face felt the embrace of water in the dark, as her head submerged. Momentary panic swept through her as her body remained tethered to the chair. Instinctively, as the chair began to topple, Jo-Lynn inhaled a deep lungful of air and closed her eyes. The sensation of water over her head whilst strapped to the chair, filled her with dread. She tried to lift her head, turning it to one side. The thought ran through her mind as to how long her lungful of air would last. The prospect of drowning in this hell spurred her on. Jo-Lynn tried to establish her bearings, but it was almost impossible, down was up, up was down, everything was black. Her feet seemed to be above the water level, she hoped that she was lying on her back, bubbles began to escape from her mouth as the pressure inside her chest increased. She knew that soon she would have to exhale and after that, barring a miracle, she also knew it was just a matter of time until she would have to breathe in. She rocked the chair trying to unbalance it from its prone position, each effort resulting in more air escaping from her lungs. One last attempt finally moved the chair from her back to her side and with it the last gasp of air in her lungs, her face briefly felt the rush of cool air and in that fraction she breathed in, before once again being submerged. She wanted to scream; anger and hatred began building to an explosive level within her. The chair settled on its side. The top of her head was just above the water level now, but her nose and mouth remained below the surface. She held onto her last breath and struggled and kicked with all her might, unwilling to let her life end without a fight. The tape that secured her shoulders suddenly gave and she was able to lift her head above the water. She breathed in through her nose, feeling water flow down her throat. She swallowed and tried to gulp the air filling her lungs.

  The car bumped over the ramp as it drove on to Independence Bridge. The sensation woke Georgina from a brief doze. Sleep overcoming her almost as soon as she rested her head back against the restraint. Leroy drove along with the radio low; thought's buzzing through his head, all the time thinking, trying to obtain some sort of grip on the case. He was determined to resolve the case within his last three weeks, but he was equally resolved to leave on the set date. He had lost Lia once and had no intention of doing so a second time. Georgina looked through bleary eyes at the dashboard and the windscreen ahead of her, for a moment she was back in her hire car during that sunny day six months previously. The Saturday of the basketball match. She remembered the tooth on the dashboard, the small child’s tooth. The one time that the killer made contact with her. The whole incident forgotten or lost during the hunt for Charles Fleisher. The tooth would be sitting in a plastic bag tagged as evidence, never to be used, as no trial would follow the death of Fleisher. The ends of the case had all been wrapped up so neatly with his death. Dead men don't talk. She could see the tooth lyi
ng on Leroy's dashboard, so vivid was the image she almost reached forward to grab it.

  ‘The tooth.’ Georgina said.

  ‘What?’ Leroy didn't take his eyes from the road.

  ‘The tooth...I need to see the tooth that was left in my car, remember?’ There was an excitement to her voice, which overcame the tiredness that she felt.

  ‘You need to see this tooth now or in the morning.’ Leroy said knowing which answer he'd prefer to hear.

  For a moment Georgina remained silent while she pondered the possibilities. ‘Now...if you don't mind?’

  ‘I was afraid you'd say that.’ Leroy swung the car around in one easy movement, receiving a blast from the horn of the driver behind until Leroy turned on the blue flashing lights in the grill and on the parcel shelf as they roared along the freeway back toward the police precinct. Georgina began to assemble several threads that could formulate an action plan. Her mind ran over several options but try as she did, everything was still too vague. They needed evidence and clues. They needed more than help if they were to save Rick and his family.

  The e-mail arrived without bells and whistles, but he was waiting patiently for it, all the time he was monitoring Jo-Lynn’s progress as the image from the room was relayed to a monitor in front of him. He minimized the image, happy that she wasn’t going to go and spoil things by drowning, and then opened the mail. He could sense Wesley Timms greed; it dripped off the page like hot fat even though it was an electronic screen. Prentice Fortune smiled.

  ‘And the world will know my name.’

  The tooth was small, a white molar with no sign of decay. Georgina held the plastic evidence bag closer to the light. The small evidence box was placed on the table in front of Georgina. Leroy was surprised that any evidence was left at all. The room was cold, lit with a buzzing neon tube that did little to encourage a warm ambience.