The Writer (28 page)

Dan hurried from the room
and went to his desk. He ran back with an armful of loose papers,
both Sophie and Max’s stories, all jumbled together so it was
difficult to tell one from the other. He slapped them down in front
of Craigfield who had no idea what to make of it all.

“They’re telling me,” said
Dan, “what I need to know, and the more I listen the more I
hear.”

Craigfield was bewildered as
he looked from Dan to the pages and then back again. Dan thought
that his eyebrows might be uneven. He also noticed that his hair
was thinning. Less and less the perfect man.

“This is where I’m getting
it,” said Dan. “Have a good read, and then you can tell me what
you’re doing in both of them.”

Craigfield picked up a page
and after a brief read dropped back to the rest. “This is insane,”
moving to stand up. “You can’t make me read this. What’s this all
about?”

“Why not read it?” Dan asked
as he leaned over him, forcing him to stay where he was. “Are you
hiding something?”

“You can’t make me read any
of that and I refuse to do so without my lawyer
present.”

But he couldn’t help but
take another glance at the page.

“What’s this?” he asked as
he saw his name. “Max Marshall? He’s invented something about his
wife and me? This is why you’ve got me in here?”

He looked through more
pages.

“And what’s this other one?”
he asked. “Sophie Trent? Never heard of her. I think you need to
tell me what’s going on before you do anything else.”

“Have a good read, then you
can tell me what’s true.”

“I told you I’m not reading
it.”

“It doesn’t interest you
that you’re in it? In both of them?”

“What do you mean by
that?”

“You, Craigfield. You’re a
character in their books. In fact, you’d be the most important
character.”

“How could I be a character
...?”

“Have a read, let me know
what you think.”

Dan left him alone with the
door shut, and eagerly watched him through the one-way glass. He
became ecstatic when Craigfield started to read from the pages
scattered before him. After five minutes he couldn’t stand it any
longer and had to go to the food vending machine and was satisfied
with a couple of packets of crisps. When he returned, with three
different varieties, he found Benny Taylor looking into the room
through the glass, wondering why the guy was in there.

“Which one’s he on?” Dan
asked as he began to mow through his salt-and-vinegars.

“Which what?” asked Benny.
Gregory had informed him about Craigfield so he had come running to
see him. Like Dan, he had gone over the two stories several times,
and his conclusion had been that Craigfield was not a real person.
He didn’t like being wrong.

“Story?” Dan asked, nearly
finished with that bag. “Which one? Sophie or Max’s. Watch his face
for clues, will you?”

“I have no idea what you’re
talking about, Dan. How does any of this have anything to do with
Longbottom? You think there’s a connection other than the two
stories? So now we find this Craigfield is real. Big shock to the
system, and I would have put money on him being a figment, but
there he is. But what does it prove?”

Dan stared at him wildly,
which scared him. He hurriedly munched the last chips from the
packet before he answered. “It’s all paranormal and psychic, and
all that. It has to be. There’s no other answer. It’s like
Anger
Angel
.”

“It’s like what?”

“The killer lurking at
Gendry who got Longbottom, if it’s not Craigfield, then it’s
mentioned somewhere in one of those stories. It has to be. Or maybe
it’s in both of them? Could it be both of them? Didn’t think of
that. Or did I?”

He emptied the remaining
crumbs from the last bag and ripped open his last bag, the one that
was barbeque flavour.

Benny felt intimidated but
knew that he needed to point to what was obvious. “We’ve got
nothing to hold him. We need to let him go. He’s asked for his
lawyer, so that’s it.”

“He knows both Marshalls and
he’s lying.”

“But not the girl? Not
Sophie? He doesn’t know her?”

“We’ve got threats against
him from Max Marshall, and an exchange between them that could have
led to violence. Max probably is too humiliated to tell anyone
about the altercation.”

“This is from what, a book?
Marshall’s book or the girl’s?”

“Yeah, it’s from Sophie,
but—“

“Have you got any connection
between him and Sophie? Not talking about their books now. I mean
in real life. What we can take to a real judge?”

“Not yet, no. I’m working on
it.”

“He’s out of here. Get him
out of here, Dan. If you won’t, I will.”

“He’s lying.”

“You’ve got nothing. If he’s
lying, prove it now. If all you’ve got are those so-called
books—more a collection of wastepaper filled with random words,
then you’ve got nothing. You do realise, don’t you, this has
nothing to do with your case? The girl can’t even write good, or
spell to save herself. And this Marshall character, he writes like
a woman. I can’t believe it. It’s like something my girlfriend
reads. Find the Longbottom murderer, that’s all we need to do. If
we can’t then we toss it and move on. Don’t find aspiring authors
and get them headbanging against each other’s walls.”

“He’s lying and they’re
lying,” Dan insisted. He had just waited for Benny to stop talking
before he said what he wanted. “Everyone’s lying. But this is the
interesting part: they are all telling the truth but they just
don’t know it.”

“Get a grip, will you? It’s
over. Forget it. You’re chasing your tail on this one, and you’ve
got nothing. It’s game over and there’s no winners.”

When Craigfield finished
reading all of the papers, Benny made sure he was out of the
building by escorting him out himself.

“Don’t they both have
healthy imaginations?” Craigfield said to Benny as they waited for
the elevator. “And so do you guys. Can I go now or would you like
me to read something else?”

“You’re free to go,” Benny
said formally, “but we may call you in if we have any further
questions.”

“Or anymore
stories?”

“No, sir,” Benny said,
unable to look him in the eye. “That’s most unlikely.”

Benny went to Dan’s desk, to
tell him that he was nuts and taking it too far, but he wasn’t
there. Gregory Retter was there, and he was looking at Benny with a
bemused smile.

“Guess what he said to me
before he left?” asked Gregory, barely able to hold back a
laugh.

“And what’s that?” Benny
answered, expecting some smart-guy joke.

“He says he’s got it
figured. He says he understands how to solve it. As for me, I don’t
know what will burst first, his head or his stomach.”

Benny didn’t laugh or make a
reply, but he did look at his friend’s desk and wondered if he will
ever work with him again.

Sam arrived home with a few
odd groceries and was startled by the presence of her husband. He
was sitting at the kitchen table, staring at nothing. She didn’t
remember the last time he was home before noon and her first
thought was that they could go out and have lunch together
somewhere, if he had the afternoon free. It would be at a healthy
food place too, not somewhere he preferred to go, since she was
very concerned about his weight. She made a mental note that she
needed to find even larger shirts for him. Then she saw the library
book
Anger Angel
on the table, which he had been reading
non-stop for the last two days.

“Are you still reading that
book?” she asked him as she placed the two grocery bags on the
table next to him. “How many times have you been through
it?”

“This should be the last,”
Dan said as he jumped up and hunted through the bags and spotted a
packet of strawberry tarts. “Before I head back there again. I’ve
got to check that church out. Shouldn’t have missed it. Place must
be full of clues.”

Sam watched him take one of
the tarts and then she put the rest of the packet in the kitchen
pantry.

“Max probably based
Anger
Angel
church on that church,” Dan said between bites. “Wonder
if he wrote it there? Some of these small town churches, they’re
really spooky places. That might have given him some strong vibes.
The Sophie girl probably knows about it too. You know what? The
whole town knows about it, I’m sure.”

“Did you say
‘vibes’?”

“Psychic powers, I don’t
know what you’d call them.”

“Since when are you
interested in the paranormal?” she asked and noticed that he was
more fixated on the food in the groceries than on her.

“How can I not
be?”

“Are you feeling all right?
I’m concerned about you. You look a little pale.”

Now he looked at her and she
saw that he was scared. “This might be bigger than any of us
realise,” he said in a way that made her scared too.

She wanted to ask him what
he meant, but he hurried out the door. Then she noticed that the
fridge door had been left open and he had taken about as much food
as he could find. She had a horrible feeling that she would never
see him again.

“Dan, are you sure what
you’re doing?” she called from the front door but he didn’t
answer.

She started to cry when his
car drove away and he didn’t give but one glance in her direction.
Then she irrationally began to worry that the shirt he was wearing
might be too tight for him and she should have provided a bigger
one, and now it might be too late.

It didn’t matter to Dan that
Sophie’s apartment was nothing like the one described in Max’s
story. Neither was there a nice elderly neighbour named Miss
Hudson, and no ginger cat named Ginger. He wasn’t expecting the
building to have a nice flower garden contrasting with any untidy
front lawn. Nor was he expecting dirty floors and a young boy
running past and screaming at him. Then he realised that he had
imagined the place and it was not described by Max. In his mind he
had seen Sophie’s home like he was there. He knew what her
furniture looked like, and the colour of the walls, and all of it
was wrong.

As soon as Sophie answered
her door he invited himself in and she wasn’t sure what to make of
him. He carried in a large cardboard box and she assumed that it
must have something to do with the murder case.

“Is there something else I
can help you with, detective?” she asked with fear in her voice.
She was not sure if she should call for the police or if that would
make it worse.

“Your computer, I need to
see it,” he said hurriedly, looking around for it. Then he took a
breath and tried to stop the sudden pain in his chest.

“I’m sorry?” she
asked.

“You did your writing on a
computer, right?” he said as he rubbed his chest and grimaced.
“It’s special, I know it is. I need to use it to solve the case.”
Then his breathing felt short and he felt the pain more in his
side.

Sophie was perplexed. “I
really don’t know what you’re talking about.” She peaked into the
box that was now at his feet and saw that it was full of packets of
muffins and scones, all with “sale” on them. There were also at
least three large coffee cups jammed in there with them, all with
steam coming from them. It was obvious that he wasn’t about to
share any of it.

“Don’t you get it? We can
solve the case. Right here. For that matter, why didn’t you or Max
describe the murder for me? It would have made it so much easier if
you had. That’s what your story needed; a bit of action. No, wait;
yours did have action, it was Max that didn’t. No mind, I’m sure I
can do it too.”

“You can do
what?”

“Write the
murder.”

Sophie backed away. “Is this
official police business? It sounds most unusual.”

“There’s no other
explanation,” said Dan, his face getting red with the anticipation,
but then his chest started hurting again. He had to loosen his
shirt when he sat down. “You two stumbled on something bigger than
any of us can imagine. You do realise what it is, don’t
you?”

“Realise what?”

“What you had. No? You were
both writing each other’s lives. Didn’t know it, did you. Didn’t
notice at all, I can see from your expression. Like you had any
control over it anyway. Something else was controlling you and you
didn’t even know.”

“Controlling me to do
what?”

“Describe the crime,” he
said as he looked like he was going to hug her computer. “You typed
it, right here, and didn’t know it was really
happening.”

“Are you saying what I think
you’re saying?”

“What do you think I’m
saying?”

“That my computer has the
ability to ...”

“Write real life, as it
happens.”