Capture (29 page)

He walks into his studio, Sunny still dancing her endless dance. No, not Sunny. Not his daughter. Just a thing on a computer. Cold, digital, man-made. A travesty. He smacks the keyboard, killing the playback.

Exley feels lost, as if he’ll fragment and disappear entirely into some godless black hole of pain and guilt. He sacrificed everything at this digital altar and came up empty. Life, whatever it may be, is not his to manufacture.

But it goes on. Twisted and misshapen and tormented, yes, but his trip is not over. And the hell he has wreaked in the past few days will have to be answered for. But, just maybe, he can take one faltering step toward redemption.

He finds his filthy T-shirt lying on the floor of the studio and pulls it on, kills the monitor and grabs a soft toy—a little brown bear—from the litter around the keyboard, blowing on its fur to get rid of a fall of ash, then walks back out through the living room, each step an act of will. Vernon Saul stands watching, a squared-off silhouette in his body armor. Exley ignores him and goes down to the beach to where Dawn sits on a rock in the shade, holding her white child, stroking her blonde hair, soothing her.

Exley feels his heart pound as he gets closer. Not Sunny. Of course not. But the resemblance is uncanny.

The girl tenses when Exley approaches and grabs at her mother, burying her face in Dawn’s thick hair. Exley stops a safe distance away and kneels down in the sand, as if he’s about to propose marriage.

“Brittany, I’m really sorry I frightened you.” One eye peeps at him and he holds out the little bear, trying to control the tremors in his hand. “This is Mr. Brown. He is very angry with me for making you scared. He wants to be your friend.”

Both eyes looking at him now, blinking away tears, but staring at the soft toy. The child, slow as a sea anemone unfurling, frees one of her hands and reaches out and takes the bear by the arm, and there is the hint of a smile on her face as she brings it to her chest and hugs it close.

“What do you say, Brittany?” Dawn asks.

“Hullo, Mr. Brown.”

Dawn has to fight back a grin. “No, what you say to Uncle Nick?”

“Thank you, Uncle Nick.” The child looks white, but she has her mother’s guttural accent.

“It’s a pleasure,” he says, and he sits down on the rock beside Dawn.

The child hums something and whispers into the bear’s furry ear.

“I’m truly sorry, Dawn,” Exley says.

“Please, it’s okay. Really. I understand. You must feel terrible.” Dawn puts her hand on his. “I think maybe we should go.”

“No,” he says, and he can hear the desperation in his voice. “Please don’t go. I’d really like the two of you to stay.” He looks at the girl. “What do you say, Brittany? We can swim and build sandcastles and get McD’s for lunch?”

The child thinks for a moment, deciding whether he is to be trusted, consults the bear, whispering in his ear again, and then she nods. “Mr. Brown say it’s okay.”

“Good. Excellent.” He stands. “Dawn, I need a shower in the worst way. Why don’t you and Brittany make yourself at home. Okay?”

She looks uncertain, but she nods. Exley walks through the living room and sees that Vernon Saul is gone. He climbs the stairs, has a moment of light-headedness halfway up, then he composes himself and moves on. He stops in the doorway to Sunny’s room, but he doesn’t go in. He closes the door for the first time since she died and walks through to the shower.

He strips and turns the shower to cold, letting the icy water pummel him into alertness, watching Sunny’s ashes drain from him and swirl down the plughole. Then he gets the water as hot as he can stand, before he cranks it back to cold. Repeats the process a few more times, gasping for breath.

Exley feels something happening in his chest, the muscles spasming, and for a moment he’s sure he’s having a heart attack, then the tension is released and with it comes a flood of tears, hot and salty on his face, merging with the shower water.

He sits down, with his back to the tiles, his arms dangling loose, and lets the pain and grief well up. When he can cry no more he stands and shuts off the shower. Dries himself. Finds some drops for the eyes that stare back at him from the mirror, a contour map of burst veins. He brushes his teeth and his tongue, shaves and combs his hair and dresses in a fresh T-shirt and baggy swimming shorts.

Exley walks down the stairs, sure that Dawn has taken her kid and fled, but he sees her standing at the water’s edge, watching over the child who splashes in the surf wearing a pink swimsuit. His phone, lying on the living-room table, flashes and rings. Unknown caller.

When he answers it he hears Vernon Saul’s voice. “You’re lucky. He’s gone. It’s over.”

Exley ends the call. He thinks of the cop’s family. Then he puts that thought in a box with all the other things that fill him with terror and guilt and drops that box into the toxic waste dump that he stores deep inside himself. Stuff that’ll have to be dealt with, he knows.

But not now.

He walks into the studio and sees the room through fresh eyes.

It is sordid. Despite the A/C the room stinks of days of madness and weed and booze and old sweat. The cremation urn stands open, its lid upturned beside the keyboard. Exley, filled with self-loathing, stares down into the urn and sees the dregs of his daughter’s ashes at the bottom. He replaces the lid and carries the container across to the steel cabinet and locks it away.

The mouse is tacky to the touch when he clicks open the Sunny folder and deletes all the information in it. The motion-capture data. The reference photographs and the texture maps. The model that has obsessed him. As the hard drive churns, wiping all trace of his daughter’s digital doppelgänger from its memory, Exley closes his eyes, an aurora of afterimages swirling then fading to nothing. He powers down the work station and hears it sigh itself into silence.

Dousing the lights, he leaves the studio and slides the door closed.

He crosses the living room and goes out into the sun, still dizzy, still torn around the edges, still an approximation of a man. But lighter, now. 

Exley walks across the sand toward the woman and the child at the water’s edge. Not his wife. Not his daughter. But they’re alive. And they’re real. And they’re here.

Chapter 44

You don’t fall in love, not if you’re Dawn Cupido. You love your kid, okay, and you love
things
—shoes, nice clothes and stupidly expensive face lotions—and maybe, just maybe, you have a bit of a kitschy soft spot for puppy dogs. But men? Never. Men are the enemy, to be preyed upon before they prey on you.

Just how it works.

But sitting here on the beach, in the shade of the rocks, Brittany splashing happily in the shallows, Dawn looks down at the sleeping face of Nick Exley and she can imagine somebody falling for him. Not her, of course. Never. His face, as he lies sprawled on the sand, snoring softly, has relaxed, those stress creases have smoothed out, and he looks gentle and sweet. She hates herself for what she did this morning.

Hates herself for sticking around here, too. Much as she tries to con herself into believing it’s because she feels sorry for him, she knows the truth: she’s desperate for a new life for her and Britt, and Nick Exley, screwed up and vulnerable as he is, could be their ticket out.

He’s worked hard through the day to win Brittany’s trust. Doing it in a cool way, not pushing. Just bringing a few toys out of the house—a beach ball, a bucket and spade—leaving them for her on the sand. Making sure she has a supply of fizzy drinks. Handling her the way only a parent of a small girl could. Heartbreaking to watch.

A fly buzzes in and lands on Nick’s cheek and he twitches. Dawn waves the fly away, her hand still hovering over him when his eyes open and he looks startled, blinking. Dawn pulls her hand back and he sits up. 

“I wasn’t trying to smack you,” she says. “There was a fly.”

“Thanks. Okay. Shit, how long was I out for?”

“Maybe an hour. It’s fine. You needed it.”

He reaches for a bottle of beer and takes a drink; it’s warm and he pulls a face. Runs a hand through his hair, his eyes on Brittany. “Looks like she’s having fun.”

“Man, you’ll never know what a treat this is for her.”

“She’s beautiful,” he says.

“Ja, she is.” Dawn catches his eye and laughs. “Come on, Nick, ask the question.”

“What question?”

“The one about how a brown chickie like me gets to have a white kid like that.”

“That was the last thing on my mind,” he says.

“You’re lying.”

He smiles. “Okay. So, how?”

Dawn lights a smoke, speaking softly, even though Brittany is playing in the water, singing. “The father was white, so there’s a lot of milk in the coffee.”

“Where is he? The father?”

“Out the picture. He was just a sperm donor.” She shrugs. “Truth be told, he was never in the flipping picture.”

“Then he’s an idiot.”

“He never even knew, Nick.” She should shut her mouth but she doesn’t. Something in his eyes, the pain and hurt that live there—and how she added more—make her want to confess. “I was hooking. He was a john. I was doing a lot of drugs back then. I don’t even remember him, but looking at Britt I know he had to be a whitey.”

There’s no shock on Nick’s face. Not even surprise. He just nods. “Well, she’s a gift.”

“Ja, she is. Almost makes me believe in God again.” She laughs and grinds her cigarette dead in the sand. Then she’s serious. “I don’t do it no more, Nick, the hooking. Or the drugs. Okay, shit, maybe a bit of weed now and then, but that don’t count, hey?”

“No,” Nick says, “it doesn’t. Dawn, we’ve all screwed up. Christ knows I have.” He looks away over the ocean, then he shrugs and smiles at her. “Don’t you want to swim?”

“I forgot to bring my swimming things, I was so busy getting madam’s stuff together.”

“I could get you one of my wife’s swimsuits. Or is that kind of creepy?”

“No. It’s cool. I’d like that, thanks.”

He disappears into the house and returns carrying a dark blue one-piece Speedo. It’s unused, still has a price tag dangling from the fabric. “Caroline wasn’t much of a swimmer,” he says.

Dawn stands and takes the Speedo. “I’ll go change.” She calls across to Britt, who doesn’t hear, busy dumping sand from the bucket, laughing as a low wave collapses the mound.

“I’ll watch her,” Nick says.

Dawn squints at him. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

She nods and crosses the sand and walks up onto the deck, looking back to see Nick standing over Brittany.

Dawn takes the stairs to the bathroom and cuts the price tag off the swimsuit with a pair of nail scissors lying on the basin. Wonders if they were the dead wife’s, too. Trying not to look at the few cleansers and cosmetics lined up on the tiled surface, because they’ll drain away the happy feeling that’s crept up on her.

Dawn strips and pulls on the Speedo, checking herself in the mirror. It’s crazy, her laying her goods out for sleazy bastards to view every night, but she feels exposed. Thank God the suit, even though it’s a size too small, is as modest as can be, like something a girl swimmer would wear at the Olympics.

She walks down the stairs and pauses on the deck. Nick’s in the ocean. He’s kind of skinny, with the flat, unmuscled body of a teenage boy, the waves gently lapping at his belly. What amazes Dawn is that Brittany is in with him, and he’s holding her, cradling her in his arms, keeping her afloat, both of them laughing.

Dawn goes to the water, tugging the swimsuit out of her ass-crack. Nick sees her coming and he looks at her—really
looks
at her—and she feels stupid and shy and is relieved to let the sea swallow her up, even though it’s cold enough to freeze her tits off.

Exley, standing at the open refrigerator, the cool air soothing his sunburned skin, can’t bear the thought of Dawn and Brittany leaving. The day, even though it started as a waking nightmare, has been an unexpected boon. 

He takes out a couple of beers, opens one and stands at the kitchen window, watching mother and daughter down on the beach. Dawn, unaware of his gaze, walks out of the water, adjusting the Speedo where it cuts into her groin. Brittany, looking for sea shells, says something that makes Dawn laugh as she lifts a red towel and dries her hair, then bends forward at the waist with her legs spread wide apart—he can see the swell of her breasts against the wet Lycra—and shakes the last moisture from her curls. She straightens, her hair falling across her face, and she drops her head back and sweeps her hair behind her neck, shouting something to Brittany, her voice lost in the chatter of the seagulls.

Exley rests the cold bottle against his forehead and shuts his eyes. He’s not drunk, but he’s been drinking beer steadily all day. A kind of mildly alcoholic infusion to keep him calm and offset the hallucinogenic that’s still messing with his serotonin receptors, feeding him little flashbacks that fry his synapses. Afraid if he sobers up completely his nervous system will rebel and the weight of his actions over the last days will plunge him into a state of frenzy and terror.

A sharp knock on the kitchen door startles him and he sees the pallid Sniper technician—Dave? Don?—standing out on the deck with a lightweight aluminum stepladder on his shoulder, a bag of tools hanging from a belt at his waist.

“I’m finished, Mr. Exby.”

Exley nods, doesn’t bother to correct him.

The guy arrived earlier, announcing that he wanted to mount another surveillance camera to cover the deck and the beach, removing the blind spot. Exley, reluctant to have his time with Dawn and her child interrupted, had almost told him to get lost, but he’d shrugged and let the man do his drilling and his cabling.

Exley walks the technician to the front door and buzzes him out. He grabs the beers in the kitchen and steps down onto the sand. Dawn, standing with the late sun golden on her face, her skin still dripping water, smiles at him and takes one of the bottles.

“Thanks, Nick,” she says.