Fourth Day (10 page)

From everything I’d heard of Randall Bane, and what I’d seen first hand of the man during our recon of Fourth Day, I fully expected to find him relaxing in Detective Gardner’s interview room with a phalanx of clever lawyers ready to tie the police up in knots, but that was not the case.

Instead, Bane sat centred and alone in the single upright plastic chair. He neither slouched nor sat rigidly. He didn’t seem overconfident, not at all nervous. He didn’t fidget, didn’t look bored.

He simply sat.

Gardner had deliberately chosen this room, I knew, hoping to unsettle him. It was designed solely for interrogation, with the bolted-down table, bare walls, harsh lighting, and the mirror that obviously wasn’t.

‘You wouldn’t believe the kinda scum I’ve faced across that table,’ Gardner said, not taking her eyes off the obscured glass that separated us from the spartan place where Bane sat. ‘Gang-bangers, rapists, murderers. There was this one kid, hacked two of his classmates to death with a machete
just ’cause they dissed his sneakers. But this guy? He’s something else.’ She shook her head. ‘Kinda gives me the heebie-jeebies, y’know?’

‘Oh yes, I know.’ Chris Sagar pushed his glasses up his nose with a nervous forefinger. Even in the low light I saw the sheen of sweat on his upper lip. ‘Why do I need to be here?’ he muttered. ‘You don’t need me for this.’

As he started to turn away, Sean put a hand on his shoulder.

‘Stay,’ he said. He, too, had not taken his eyes off Bane. ‘You know him well enough to spot the lies.’

Sagar thought about protesting further, slid one look at Sean’s face and subsided again, glowering. It was interesting to note how badly Bane unnerved his former acolyte, even a room away in a building full of cops.

When the door opened suddenly behind us, Sagar jumped. Another detective, a thickset guy with Mexican features, appeared in the gap with a bulky file in his hands. He jerked his head to Gardner, who excused herself and went over. The two of them bent over it, talking fast-and-low Spanish.

‘If Gardner is hoping to shake him by making him wait, I don’t think it’s going to work,’ Sean said, still watching Bane. ‘He has the look of a man who’d outwait an alligator.’

‘Did you
have
to mention the alligators?’

We’d once had the misfortune to be in the water at dusk with a lot of blood and a bunch of alligators. Dusk is when they come out to feed. I’d never forgotten their prehistoric grace, nor the dreadful certainty that every moment was our last. I was still uneasy in the water, even in swimming pools with crystal visibility, when I was as sure as I could be that nothing lurked beneath the surface.

I had that same feeling of unreasonable apprehension now.

Gardner finished her conversation and looked over. ‘I’m gonna get this show on the road,’ she said. She nodded to Sagar without expression. ‘You stay put ’til we’re done and he’ll never know you were here, OK?’

Sagar nodded back, too grateful to react to the slightly mocking note in the detective’s voice.

Gardner went out, closing the door behind her. A few moments later, the door to the interview room opened and she stepped through.

‘Mr Bane,’ she said, offering a brief smile as she came forwards, leaving the door not quite latched behind her. ‘I appreciate you coming in. Thanks for waiting.’

Somewhere between Observation and Interview, she had lost the jacket and was down to rolled-back shirtsleeves, businesslike. She carried a Glock 9 mm high on her left hip. Bane’s eyes dropped to the gun just once, as though marking its position, then he ignored it. If Gardner was disturbed by the man, up close, she hid it well.

‘Just a few things I’d like to clarify from your statement, if that’s OK?’ she said, brisk but casual. Bane inclined his head slightly. We watched him closely for any more telling reactions to all this, but there was very little to see.

Bane was dressed well without any flash. He wore a collarless shirt in what could have been silk, fastened by a single pearl button at the neck, and a suit that was discreetly made to measure without being an obvious designer label.

He was still shaven-headed but, unlike Thomas Witney, would have had a generous head of hair. So, a conscious choice rather than a sop to vanity or pride. He had strange
eyes, I noticed, golden like a cat’s, and he suppressed his blink rate, either naturally or by design, enough for them to be hypnotically compelling.

‘She hasn’t read him his rights,’ Sagar whispered, suddenly fretful. ‘Why not? Anything she gets from him will be inadmissible. You see how Bane manipulates people, even in here. He—’

‘She hasn’t closed the door,’ I said, cutting him off. ‘Gardner can argue in court that it wasn’t necessary because he wasn’t in custody, and it stops him clamming up. Relax, Chris. She knows what she’s doing.’

Over the top of Sagar’s head, Sean passed me a cynical glance.
You think Bane doesn’t know what she’s up to
?

Of course
. I was just hoping natural arrogance would get the better of him.

Gardner sat down opposite, her back to the mirror, and took a sheaf of photographs from the file, fanning them out on the scarred tabletop. I couldn’t see what was in the pictures, but I could make an educated guess.

‘Do you recognise this man?’ Gardner asked. Her voice was softer, I noticed, as if hoping to lull Bane into underestimation.

Bane took a long look at the pictures without expression, studying each in turn. As he put the last one down, something close to pity flickered in his face.

‘If I did not,’ Bane said then, ‘this would be a pointless exercise, would it not, Detective?’ His tone suggested it was pointless anyway, but it was hard to pin down. I struggled to place the origins of that deep voice, compressed with power like a tightly muscled frame. Something about it zipped straight to the roots of my hair.
Alongside me, I heard Sagar’s unsteady hiss of breath.

In the interview room, Gardner shifted a little in her chair. I sensed her discomfort, knew Bane was getting to her just by being, and that fact annoyed her. She tilted her head, cop style, although her voice remained light. ‘Humour me, Mr Bane.’

‘His name is Thomas Witney,’ Bane said. ‘Or, it was. But, of course, you already knew that.’

‘And when did you last see Mr Witney…alive?’

‘Two days ago. He came to see me on the evening he disappeared from my property.’

My property
. So, Bane’s quasi-religious beliefs did not put him above avarice, it seemed.

‘Disappeared, huh?’ Gardner repeated. She made a show of frowning over the file. ‘There’s nothing here about you filing a missing persons report.’

Bane eyed her for a moment. ‘We have learned from experience that LA’s finest are neither interested nor effective when it comes to matters that concern us.’

Gardner’s tone was cynical. ‘You got some proof of that?’

‘Naturally,’ Bane said. ‘Over the last year or so our community has been plagued by a spate of attacks, harassment, vandalism, scare tactics, but no official investigation has been launched.’

‘News to me,’ Gardner said. ‘They still going on, these alleged attacks?’

‘Not since I hired my own security personnel. They have handled things very effectively.’

A sudden vivid image of the girl, Maria, exploded behind my eyes. Her desperate flight brought short by the men sent
to chase her down, and the terrifying delicacy of Bane’s touch when she’d been brought back to him. What else did they handle, I wondered?

‘And was Witney personally affected by any of this?’ Gardner asked.

‘He was injured in one of the early attacks. Run off the road on his way back from the city and ended up in the bottom of a canyon. His legs were broken.’ There was nothing in Bane’s voice as he added, ‘The police claimed he must have been driving too fast,’ but I heard the censure.

Gardner chose to ignore it. ‘He mention he was worried about something more recent?’ Gardner asked. ‘He seem scared?’

‘Not at all.’ The denial came fast and easy, a little too much of both.

I glanced at Sean. We both remembered the way Witney reacted the day we’d seen him teaching his little class under the juniper tree.

He’s lying
.

I know
.

‘So, why’d he come see you?’

‘He wanted to borrow a book. JD Salinger’s
The Catcher in the Rye
.’

There had been a book on the bedside table in Witney’s room, I recalled, the night we’d gone in to bring him out of Fourth Day. A slim volume with a largely red cover. I hadn’t taken note of the title.

Gardner jotted it down. ‘Why that particular book?’

Bane shrugged, the first animation he’d shown. ‘It was next on the shelf,’ he said simply. ‘I am something of a
bibliophile. Thomas had expressed a desire to work his way through the classics.’

‘Well, everybody needs a hobby, I guess. Me? I’m more interested in philately – stamp collecting, y’know?’ Gardner said casually. ‘So he borrows a book, then rabbits. That worry you?’

‘Yes,’ Bane said. ‘I thought it highly unlikely that Thomas would have decided to leave so suddenly, without a word, in the middle of the night, in just the clothes he stood up in. I assumed, of course, that he had been taken against his will.’

‘Any signs of forced entry?’

‘I expected none. The people who took him were, no doubt, experts in their field.’

‘This was, what? Two days ago?’ Gardner rubbed a dubious hand across her chin. ‘And still you didn’t file a report?’

‘Would you have taken it seriously if I had?’

‘Well now, he’s a cool one, isn’t he?’ Sean murmured, and there was a certain heightened interest in his tone.

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ Sagar mumbled, shifting miserably, as though just to stand within earshot of Bane was a painful experience.

‘What makes you so sure Witney didn’t just up and leave?’ Gardner asked now, on the other side of the glass. ‘Seeing as how he was free to come and go.’

Bane ignored the sly dig. ‘Thomas was happy within our community,’ he said. ‘He felt secure there.’

‘Secure from what?’

Bane paused before answering, as if gauging how far to let Gardner push. The detective sat back in her chair,
looking relaxed, patient, as though there was nothing at stake.

‘When Thomas first came to us, he was in a state of some emotional and psychological distress,’ Bane said. ‘We gave him time out, in order to heal, to find peace with himself.’

‘That so?’ Gardner said, her voice still pleasant. ‘Only, I dug out an old report, filed by Mr Witney five years back, in which he alleges that Fourth Day in general, and you, sir, in particular, were responsible for the death of Liam, his son.’ She sat forwards, opened the file and scanned what looked like a sheaf of old photocopies, leaving the pages on view. Bane would have needed superhuman willpower not to sneak a peek, but he didn’t even glance at the top sheet, so temptingly displayed. ‘The same Liam Witney who, shortly before his death, also joined your cult.’

That got a response. Something bright and quick snaked through Bane’s eyes, concentrating his gaze into icy daggers that triggered my automatic flight response. I felt my blood pressure step up slightly as the adrenaline constricted my arteries, boosting the flow to my heart. Beside me, Sagar shifted from one foot to the other. Sean leant fractionally closer to the glass, the natural predator in him sensing weakness.

‘Your information is incorrect, Detective,’ Bane said, covering smoothly. ‘Liam’s unfortunate death occurred some months after he’d left our congregation.’

Gardner’s voice was part mocking, part surprise. ‘Is that how you see your organisation – some kinda church?’

‘I prefer to think of Fourth Day more along the lines of a self-help organisation. But if a man knows himself, it does not matter what others call him,’ Bane said, but there was a
tightness around his jaw as he said it. ‘And “congregation”, I believe you’ll find, means simply an assembly of people.’

Yeah, nice theory. Shame about the practice
.

‘So, Liam was what?’ Gardner asked, and I could tell by her tone that she’d registered the hit. ‘Some kinda disciple?’

‘Liam chose to be with us for a while,’ Bane said, his emotions well back inside his fist now, held tight in check. His voice had regained that calm, almost hypnotic penetration, as though he was trying to project the force of his will directly through it. ‘He was a young man trying to find his place, looking for the right path to follow.’

‘And you helped him find it, huh?’ Contrasting to Bane’s restraint, Gardner’s scepticism was unbridled.

‘Some of us are lucky enough to find a path. Who can tell if it’s the right one?’ Bane said. He straightened his shirt cuff beneath the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Liam believed he’d found his, and therefore his time with us was over.’

Gardner paused, making a play of flipping through the pages of the file, as if hoping Bane would feel the urge to justify what he had or had not done to counsel Witney’s son. Sadly, he did not.

‘So, let me get this straight. Two months before his death, Liam Witney joined a radical eco-group called Debacle,’ the detective said, slapping the facts down cold and hard on the table between them. ‘And now you claim he’d already left Fourth Day at that time? That you had no influence over his decision?’ She looked up sharply. ‘Thomas Witney sure as hell blamed you for that at the time. We got a whole box full of the complaints he filed against you, Mr Bane.’

‘And yet no charges were ever brought,’ Bane said, his manner regretful but unshaken. He sighed. ‘For a time, I believe Thomas blamed everybody. In the end, he blamed only himself.’

‘Damn, he’s convincing,’ Sean allowed.

‘I told you,’ Sagar muttered in a strangled voice.

‘We looked into it at the time, of course,’ Gardner went on as if Bane hadn’t spoken, ‘but no evidence was found to support those allegations – something that caused Mr Witney a good deal of anger. Now, I’m sure you can appreciate, sir, the difficulty I’m having, putting that alongside what you’re telling me now, that Mr Witney only felt safe when he was with you, when it seems that his original intention was not so much to join you, as to infiltrate your organisation in order to expose it.’