Capture (13 page)

Exley nods, his hair flopping down over his forehead like a kid’s. He pushes it away with a skinny hand. “Yeah, yeah. That’s it exactly. Is that weird?”

“No, no. Not to me.” Vernon settles back, finding a groove here. “Nick, there are two schools of thought.” Where did he get this smooth bullshit? “One is to get away and forget. The other is to feel your pain and work through it, travel a journey, sort of. In my experience, the second is better.”

“And what’s your experience?”

“I was a cop for twelve years. I seen a helluva lot of grief.”

Exley drinks, nods. “Your leg? That end your career?”

“Ja.”

“I don’t mean to pry—”

“No, no. It’s cool.”

“What happened?”

Vernon wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, stifling a burp.

“I was a detective, out on the Cape Flats. You know about the Flats?”

“Not much. But I hear it’s a dangerous place.”

“More dangerous than a bloody war zone, I’m telling you, Nick. Gangs. People crazy on
tik
—what you call meth. Not just the youngsters, neither. Grandmas vacuuming their houses half out of their minds. A place where you gotta watch your back. Serious.”

“I’ve seen the crime stats on TV.”

“Under-reported, believe me. And I dunno if you heard, but there’s this child abuse epidemic out there on the Flats? Bad shit you won’t believe, excuse my French. Anyways, about a year ago I get a call that a piece of rubbish is raping his toddler daughter.”

The white man flinches and Vernon struggles not to laugh. Shit, he should be a bloody writer.

“I go over to the house and the bastard’s locked in the bedroom with the kid, so I kick in the door and the fucker’s got a gun and he plugs me four times, leg and chest. Before I go down, I take him out. Permanent.”

Exley stares, wide eyed.

“Next thing I’m lying on stomach and I’m looking at my blood soaking into the carpet and everything goes all quiet and dark. And then…” Vernon pauses to drink, milking the moment. “Then, honest to God, Nick, I go into this light. A big, bright, shining light. And it’s beautiful. Beautiful. And I know if I just keep on going into the light, I’ll be in a better place than anywhere I ever been before. But, Nick, you know what?”

“What?’ Exley asks, sitting forward in his chair.

“I say to myself: Vernon, it’s not your time, my brother. So I turn my back on that light and head into the darkness, and I wake up in hospital next day full of bullet holes and me not a cop no more.” He shrugs. “That’s it.”

Exley shakes his head.

“You don’t believe me?” Vernon asks.

“No, no, I do. I believe you.”

Vernon shrugs, manufactures a bashful look. “Ja, that experience changed me. I used to be a pretty hard bugger, you know? But now, I dunno, I’m just a bloody softie.” Laughing quietly, like he’s embarrassed.

Exley checks him out. “Vernon, I really appreciate all you did the other evening.”

“I wish I could have done more.”

“You’ve been a true friend. I mean it.”

The whitey chokes up and there’s an awkward moment and then he stands and in a sobby little voice says he’ll get them more beer and ducks into the house.

Vernon sits, relaxed as all hell, well satisfied with his performance.

He’s got Exley now, reeled him in. But exactly what he’s going to do with him, Vernon isn’t sure. He drinks and stares out over the ocean. Let it play out, my brother. Just let it play out.

When Exley gets to the living room he finds that Gladys has cleared away the drinks, so he walks through to the kitchen. The bulky woman stands at the sink with her back to him, hands lost in soapy water.

“Mr. Nick?” she says.

“Yes?” Exley replies, lifting two green bottles from the fridge.

“That thing you are making of Sunny…” She stops, setting a glass in the drying rack.

Exley crosses to her, staring at her profile. She doesn’t look at him.

“What’s wrong, Gladys?”

“That thing you are making, it is very bad luck.” She stops again, scrubbing at a plate, and Exley feels a stab of irritation.

“Bad luck how, Gladys?”

“It is like you are trying to bring her back.”

Exley colors. “Come on, that’s crazy.”

She looks at him now, clasping her hands, soapy water dripping from her fingers. “Some of my people are doing such things. They are using photos or clothes of the dead who have just passed. Taking them to the sangoma, the witchdoctor, to use for muti. Witchcraft. Very bad, Mr. Nick. Very bad. It is keeping her here, Sunny, not letting her go.”

Exley can find nothing to say. She’s right. That’s what he’s doing. Behaving like a primitive. Trying to bring his daughter back.

Exley turns away from Gladys and retreats out onto the deck to where Vernon Saul sits staring over the ocean, his awkward bulk barely contained by the chair, his wounded leg thrown out to the side. The big man sneaks a look at his wristwatch. Suddenly Exley doesn’t want him to go, doesn’t want to be left in the house with these two disapproving women.

Exley dredges up a smile. “Hey, Vernon, were you serious about me animating you?”

The dark guy nods. “Ja, man. It would give me one hell of a kick.”

“Okay, come on, then.”

“What? Now?”

“Yeah. We can do the first part. The motion-capture. Bring your beer.”

Exley leads the way into the chill of the studio and fires up the workstation.

Vernon looks around, taking in the computer gear and the monitors, and lets out a low whistle. “So, Nick,” he says, “this is where you make your magic?”

“Yep. This is the place.”

“State of the art, hey?”

Exley shrugs, opening the steel cabinet where a few mo-cap suits hang, and selects the largest one. He holds it out to Vernon. “Here. Strip down to your underwear and put this on.”

Exley sits at the computer, booting up the motion-capture software, his back to Vernon, hearing zippers and grunts, smelling overheated flesh.

At last Vernon says, “Done,” and Exley turns, seeing for the first time how big this man is. The tight material stretched across his barrel chest, his shoulders square and wide, his good leg thick and muscled. The runt at its side has withered away to half its size.

Exley opens the studio’s sliding door and beckons. Vernon lumbers through onto the tiles, moving awkwardly in the tight suit, his limp even more pronounced.

“So, how’s this work?” he asks.

“Those sensors on the suit translate your movements into digital impulses and send them to the computer.”

“Okay,” Vernon says, blank. “And what do I do?”

“Anything you want,” Exley says. “I’m capturing you right now.”

Vernon walks, looking awkward, dragging his weak leg. Then he loosens up and pretends to draw a gun, bending his knees, doing a James Bond thing. He beats his chest like an ape. Sails into a waltz with an invisible partner.

Exley is amazed to hear himself laughing. The big man joins in. “So, how’s that?”

Exley says, “I think we’ve got it, Vernon,” and he stops the capture.

He wheels another chair to the computer and gestures for Vernon to sit. He selects the segment of Vernon drawing the weapon and marries it to a 3D skeleton, the wireframe’s movements a perfect replica of the rent-a-cop’s.

Vernon sits, entranced, his breath coming in snorts. “Fucken amazing, Nick. Awesome. How did you learn to work all this stuff?”

“Well, I designed the system.”

“You telling me you made this machine yourself?”

“Yes,” Exley says.

“Jesus, you’re a fucken genius.”

“Nah, just a little gimmick.” He crosses to the steel cabinet and removes a plain brown cardboard box, one foot square in size. No fancy branding, no adornment, just the words LIFE IN A BOX stenciled on the top. He opens the box and tilts it so Vernon can look inside, showing him the small metal-cased driver unit that jacks into a computer and the mesh of low-cost sensors that transmit the data. “I built this thing so anybody can do motion-capture. There’s no magic to it, believe me.”

Vernon waves this away. “No, no. Don’t come with that.” Watching the figure on the monitor. “So, what’s it like, sitting here playing God?”

Exley shakes his head. “If only.”

Vernon looks embarrassed, hesitates. “Nick?”

“Yeah?”

“You gonna make some kinda model of me, have me walking and stuff?”

“Yes, over the next while.”

“Can you fix my leg? Make me, like, normal again?”

Exley stares into Vernon’s eyes and reaches out a hand and puts it on his shoulder. “Sure, I can do that for you. No sweat, my friend.”

Caroline’s mobile startles her awake. She battles to open her eyes and when she tries to move her limbs she feels as if she’s swimming through treacle. As her fingers fumble for the phone, doing its little dervish dance on the dresser beside the bed, it falls mute. Caroline checks her missed-call list and when she sees
Butcher
—her code name for Vlad—her body is jump-started by panic. Sudden terror that she has missed her last chance to connect with him.

She sits up, her sweaty hair dangling in damp tendrils across her face. The room is suffocating, the sun flooding through the open curtains, advancing on the bed. Caroline squints against the glare and turns her back to the window, hitting the speed dial, knowing that she’ll get his voicemail again.

But the phone purrs in her ear. “Come on,” she whispers.

“Yes?” It’s him.

“Vlad? Caroline here.”

“Yes. Yes. I try you.”

“I know. I was asleep.”

“This thing with your child. I am sorry.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“I can’t come this morning. Business, you know?”

“I understand.”

“What happen? With the child?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you. When are you free?”

Vlad hesitates and she hears his breath echoing, remembers it hot against her ear as he came. He says something that she can’t catch.

“What? I lost you?” she says.

“I am in car, by mountain. Maybe now you need some time. With your husband.”

Exactly what she doesn’t need. “Vlad, let’s meet. Please.”

“You think?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

A wash of static and she thinks she’s lost him again, visualizing the signal bouncing off that gray anvil-shaped heap of rock and out into space. Then his voice is in her ear, clear enough for her to hear his lack of enthusiasm. “Okay, tomorrow. Lunch. I phone in morning, okay?”

“Okay. Yes.”

The mobile is dead in her hand and she drops it on the rumpled duvet and goes into the bathroom, splashes her face. She feels better, knowing that she will be with him tomorrow. Refuses to let a few tentacles of negativity—nasty little voices whispering that he’ll make an excuse or, worse, stand her up—take hold. She leaves the bathroom and sits cross-legged on the bed and boots up her computer. It grunts and moans and she knows it’ll take forever to grind itself awake.

She decides to go down and brew some filter coffee, to jolt the last of the sleep from her body. She pads downstairs, barefoot, hoping that Nick is locked in his studio. But he lies on the sofa in the living room and looks up at her and stands. As she heads toward the kitchen she feels an unwelcome flash of sympathy for him.

“How are you doing?” he asks, following her.

“How do you think I’m doing?”

He stands with his back to the fridge and she can’t quite suppress a twinge of pain when she sees one of Sunny’s crayon drawings beside his head, held in place by little magnets in the shape of cartoony suns.

“Caro, talk to me, please. I can’t do this alone.”

Caroline looks at her husband and unbidden an old memory surfaces, like something captured on glass, of how he was when she first met him. His shy smile. His goofy sweetness. Caroline realizes she’s in danger of succumbing to her emotions, feeling an urge to confess, to tell him what happened in this very kitchen with Vlad. How she sent their child to her death.

But Dark Caroline shuts that down pretty damn smartly, and she turns pain to fury and seals all grief and compassion behind her barrier of implacable rage.

“There is nobody to talk to, Nicholas. You’re like one of those bloody wireframe things of yours, an empty, soulless little man.” The coffee maker is still half full from this morning and she clicks it on. It’ll be bitter, but she’s not in the mood to grind fresh beans with her needy husband lurking. She dodges him and makes for the sink, where her favorite mug stands upended on the drying rack. “Oh, you dress yourself up with fake emotions, like how much you loved Sunny, but you’re fooling nobody.”

“Caroline, stop. Not now.”

He approaches her and tries to put an arm around her waist but she shrugs him off and pours a cup of black coffee into the mug. Adds two heaped spoons of sugar.

“And you’re all caught up in this pathetic act of penance. Building that monstrosity, that has everything to do with your ego—your God complex—and nothing whatsoever to do with our dead child.”

He wilts before her eyes, which only spurs her on. “She’s dead, Nick, and no amount of wanking on your computer is going to change that.”

She grabs her mug and heads for the door.

“Caro,” he says.

She ignores him, walking away.

“Caro, we need to talk. About tomorrow.”

She stops in the doorway and turns. “What about tomorrow?”

“There’s that thing in Jo’burg.”

“What thing?” Then she remembers: some gathering of the nerds, with Nicholas showing off his toy. “Okay, yes. Right. What time do you fly?”

“I’m supposed to leave early in the morning.”

“Okay.”

“But I don’t think I can go. Not now.”

“Why not?”

He runs a hand through his greasy hair. “Jesus, Caroline, I’m a mess.”

“I think it’ll be good for you. Go and demonstrate your gadget and have them tell you how brilliant you are. Better than moping around here.”

“You’re serious?”

“Perfectly.” She knows he wants to go. To escape from her.

“So you don’t mind me leaving you?”

She laughs. “Jesus, Nicholas, grow a pair of balls. Can’t you see that’s exactly what I need? For you to get your wretched carcass out of my sight?”