Leopard Dreaming (17 page)

‘Can you sense if he said anything?’ asked Moser respectfully. ‘Or gave any other indication why he escaped?’

Mira shrugged. ‘He’s crazy with a capital K. Talks in riddles half the time.’

‘Riddles aren’t always frivolous,’ Symes suggested. ‘Can you give us an example?’

She shrank from the idea. ‘Something about venom inside him, but I’m pretty sure that only means his ability to do evil and manipulate people. He doesn’t always think of himself as a leopard who can his change his spots. Sometimes he’s a snake with seven heads, as a metaphor for all his dissociate personalities.’ However, the more she told them, the more Freddie would have
heard of their voices echoing back through time to him. ‘Quiet please. I need to concentrate.’

She hunts us with her lions,
he said with his hands — as if he didn’t realise she could read him that way too.
So I’ve bled out my poison upon the page for you instead, my angel. In code, and a small dose of it shall be your antidote if put to good use. We can’t live only in hope! Forewarned is forearmed, is it not?

Mira stood beside Maddy’s yester-ghost feeling as puzzled as the matron appeared to be; history repeating itself yet again, the same but different. Separated only by the dimension of time, the two women watched him tug down on the neck of his teddy-bear pyjama shirt to reveal a small pile of papers. Leaning at the same time too, and looking down inside his shirt, Mira could see more of the secret manuscript lying flat against his bony chest, strapped in place by a belt, which was supposed to be contraband for the most dangerous clients, since he could use it to hang himself, or garrotte someone else.

More frightening was the title on the top page, embossed in the unmistakable Braille chords for his latest play. All of them tragedies. Ghostly Braille she could read visually. It was only invisible Braille she needed to touch, and like music, the chords sang
A Leopard’s Dream
as the title, loudly and clearly. Such an odd name, considering he only used Braille to write plays that predicted the future. Never fictional. Perhaps wishful? His muses tortured him with the truth, in all possible permutations. Rarely docile, their voices echoed over and over inside his head, screaming many futures at once, but also whispering softer and softer as the racket from all the truest events rippled nearer to the elusive threshold from future to present, and finally set like stone in the past. And there, at the event horizon for each moment, where the waves of light and sound all splashed together for the rest of the
world to see and hear, the actors in his play became mime artists, leaving only their phantoms to haunt the mists of history for Mira.

She didn’t dare to reveal that much to the detectives. She knew she’d sound as crazy as Freddie, who’d been driven mad by the constant cacophony of alternative futures. A small blessing that she only suffered the pain of processing one set of true moments from the single silent song of the past. Watching him through the fog of time, with the safety of days and distance between them, she couldn’t help but pity him, if only a little. His pale, bald head seemed hardly big enough to fit all the noise that bombarded him.

Confiscating his music stick, or at least turning it down, should have been a kindness. What need did a deaf man have for a beat? Yet, in taking it, Matron Sanchez only managed to upset him, as if a single song or beat had been sound enough to steady his old heart as well as all the discord in his head. Mira wondered which collection he’d been playing that day. Rock, blues or jazz. Perhaps each persona had their own preference, but it never seemed to matter too much, so long as he played it loud enough to frighten glass and make the windows at Serenity tremble behind their bars. Yet most of the time he used headphones with the sound turned up until it buzzed around his ears like an electronic wasp or mosquito.

Better give me that manuscript before it gets any more damaged or sweaty.
Sanchez took it from him as soon as he loosened the buckle, but tossed it aside. She sat on the bumper, oblivious to the forklift approaching, and cuddled Freddie’s prune head against her chest. His cheeks blushed as his face flushed with a deeper shade of purple — making it obvious that he knew even less about coping with intimacy than Mira.

I know you care, Fredarick
… and Mira realised he didn’t need to see the matron speaking with sign
language when he could hear the echoing whispers of her voice a few moments beforehand. Perhaps that also explained the tear that welled in his eye before there seemed to be any reason for it.

I love that you’re such a caring person, I do,
she said, stroking his head,
but you can’t go around sabotaging my car or stowing away every time you hear a future conversation, whether you think you’ve brought absolute proof with you this time or not.
Maddy kissed the dome of his shiny head, but it only caused him to pull away shyly.

History repeats yet again,
he sobbed, while Mira had to kneel to read his lips.
Oh, my Beauty. It’s true, I am such a beast! And they’ll blame me for your fate, no matter how hard I fight to prevent it.

‘Evidence,’ Symes reminded Mira. ‘We need insights that can lead us to something tangible. Or at least verifiable. Better yet, can you sense where she went from here? Or what the patient did with her? If he brought any harm to her?’

‘I’m trying, but please be quiet! You’re just upsetting him!’ Mira bit her lip, having said too much. She turned about slowly, spending a few more minutes to scan as far as she could around the inn and out across the water. No sign of Colonel Kitching lurking anywhere yet in the muddy-purple fog of yester-week, but when she returned her attention to Maddy and Fredarick the forklift driver had approached them and all three were looking up expectantly towards the trawler captain — who waved in reply while holding his spare hand up to his ear as if he was already engaged in a mobile phone conversation. He stayed too far away for her to read his lips, so she doubted Maddy could either.

‘This may sound crazy,’ Mira said, ‘but has anyone brought binoculars?’

‘Smack me,’ Symes said as if someone already had. ‘Binoculars for the blind?’

‘If you can sense things better with a magnifier, why can’t I? Worth a try.’

‘Here.’ Lockman delved into his survival kit. ‘Which setting do you need, heat sensor, night vision or normal day mode?’

‘Day mode, please. I need the lenses to be clear.’ She didn’t want any extra light-filtering technology from his Night Owls to distort the date she could see.

‘Day mode … Go ahead.’

‘Even though the matron was here at night?’ Moser asked.

‘She knows what she’s doing,’ Lockman said. ‘You’re both still set to silent mode.’

Raising the invisible binoculars in front of her shades, he explained how to adjust the focus, while keeping it set for daylight. She also noticed he didn’t attempt to slip the leash over her head, and couldn’t help but feel grateful. She couldn’t bring herself to do it either. Not even for safety. She’d spent far too many years on the end of someone else’s leash already, most of it spent strapped down to wheelchairs, beds or hospital gurneys.

It took her a few minutes to find the right focal length for distance, but the lenses worked well enough for her to adjust her shades back a little in time to catch anything she’d missed. She felt more confident with the new controls now that she’d had a few more hours of practice. She soon found the trawler captain on deck again, still shadowed between night and floodlights, but she brought him close enough that it appeared she could touch him if she stretched out her arm. He wasn’t holding a phone to his ear, though, which surprised her. He was only adjusting the volume control on a sleek c-shaped earpiece, and keeping his hand raised to shade it from a stormy breeze that also tugged at his hair and beard.

Aye, Colonel,
she saw him say, but with such a bushy beard and moustache, Mira found it hard to
read that much, even magnified.
I got them in sight too … aye, sir. I’ll take good care of them.

She refocused on Freddie, wondering if he’d heard it too, and found him sobbing uncontrollably against the matron’s chest — an over-reaction, or perhaps a response to something else that had happened while Mira had been watching the captain since the forklift driver was also back aboard the trawler, rearranging the last of his delivery.

Mira realised she must have adjusted her shades back a little too far, so she tried again and caught up to where she’d left off.

I am such a beast!
Freddie repeated.

We must go now,
he added as the forklift driver headed their way.
She’s coming to search for us.

She won’t have to if we find her first,
Sanchez replied.
I need to know if she’s okay. I can’t let the General’s report of her death be the last I ever hear of her. I need to see for myself that it was faked, and that she’s living with Ben now, happily ever after at his beach house … No, Freddie. It can’t wait until morning.

Is not my word enough that she’s alive?

Alive isn’t enough for Mira. She needs to be free.

Which freedom in all the world is not also leashed? Even love is a chain from one heart to another. Please take care that it’s not merely a dream of freedom that you would suffer her to chase. Such emptiness shall only suffer tragedy upon all of us. Like a true mirror, the evil reflects, as it shall upon you my sweet, who stands the nearest …

Look, I just need to know she’s not being held or used against her will — and that means a quick visit to Ben’s place on North Straddie. Where’s the evil in that, Fredarick? If he’s there, she can’t be far away, can she?

She’ll hunt us and you’ll die! I’ve heard all the staff weeping about it through the halls already. We must
put more days and greater distance between us, so the saddest echoes at Serenity will cease before they begin.

If that’s even possible, then forewarned is forearmed enough
, Maddy argued.
We each have our own hells to conquer, so you let me worry about mine. Okay? Promise me.

But Mira shall …

… never hurt me. Not deliberately. We’re the closest thing she has to family.

Oh, but it isn’t her you need to fear so much as the evil that lurks within the deepest pores of her body!

Mira bit her lip again, stung by a pang of guilt, knowing that much was certainly true enough. Her genes were the root of all her problems. Her Fragile X genes.

Bitter pill!
He sobbed, clamping both hands over his ears as if striving to block out a much louder sound than his own wailing.
Knock, knock in my head. Go away!
He shuddered and shook like a wet dog, and his expression changed almost instantly from senile to … infantile.

Icky Ricky. Mira felt the urge to smack him. Knock him back to his senses, if he’d ever had any. She recognised him by the crooked tilt of his head, the way his eyes seemed to bulge like a mouse cornered by a cat, and the way his bottom lip always trembled when he blubbered like that.

She hadn’t met all seven of his personas, but she knew there was at least one other who despised her lethally, and he was always watching behind the others. Or so Maddy had warned her.

In a show of far more admirable compassion, Sanchez dabbed off Ricky’s spittle, using a tissue from her cleavage, while he struggled like a four-year-old until he realised she wasn’t about to give in to that kind of misbehaviour.

But, but, but she’ll use bee-nock-wellars or an owl to see us,
he sobbed.
An’, an’, an’ she’ll chase us at a hun’red an ten up the freeway! An’ that’s fast, right? An’, an’, an’ you have to listen to me, mama, coz she’ll find you, an’, an’, an’ then you’ll die!

And how exactly will that happen, Ricky? I can dodge bullets much better if you tell me which way to jump, or who to watch out for, specifically.

Doe know,
he sulked, rubbing his face against her breast to dry his eyes.
I only did hears the screamers back in my bed. They was screamin’ how’s they been to your grave! An’, an’, an’ I knows what a grave is! Don’t leave me ’lone again, mama. You can’t fit in your grave no more neither, coz my first mama is already sleepin’ in it.

Tears streamed down his face, and while Mira tapped her shoe, waiting for him to act his own age, more or less, Maddy sang
Rock-a-bye baby,
and stroked his cheek.

Come back to me, Fredarick,
she sang as if it was part of the chorus.

Behind Sanchez, the forklift accelerated down the loading ramp — happening the first time again, like a rerun — and headed straight for her.
I know you care. I love that about you, I do, but you can’t go around sabotaging my car or stowing away every time you hear a future conversation, whether you think you’ve brought absolute proof with you this time or not.

Proof? Mira looked again at the small pile of papers he’d stashed down the front of his pyjamas, but she couldn’t touch them or hand them over to Symes until she found where he took them. She couldn’t even read any more of them by sight unless Freddie laid them out in front of her. Stumped briefly, she glanced about for any sign of Kitching or his associates closing in, but only saw that the delivery driver had come to a halt behind Sanchez and seemed to be calling to her.

Hey, lady!
She read from his lips.
You want to shift your bug out my way? I’d like to get home tonight.

Oh! Yes, sorry, buddy. I’m just desperate to get to North Straddie. No more ferries tonight. Can you point me to the captain of your cargo ship, please?

It’s not a cargo ship, it’s a fishing trawler.

But you were just loading it with big gas cylinders.

The nets at the back are the dead giveaway.