Chapter 27
Having spent the last couple of minutes standing at the door to Tahlia's home office watching her work, Max's mind distracts him momentarily. Now, rather than thinking about his wife and the conversation he had with Alan last night during their game of pool he thinks of the phone sent by his brother which sits in the drawer of his bedside table. He moves off down the hall to the bedroom wondering if Tahlia actually knew he was watching her and just ignored him.
Their drive home from dinner with the Winters was done mostly in silence after a quick discussion about how nice their night was and how the Winters are a lovely couple. Both had left with plenty to think about but neither wanted to share the lessons learned.
In their bedroom, Max takes a seat on the edge of the bed, opens the drawer on his bedside table and picks up the phone he left inside, still connected to the charger, as always. It has an unread message which he quickly opens.
The message reads: ‘How was dinner with the Winters? How are their daughters?’
He knew they were having dinner with Alan and Irene? He knows where they live? Was he watching? Max isn't sure if he should be concerned but his thoughts are interrupted by the phone in his hand ringing. He looks down at it as the screen flashes and he feels the vibration running up his arm. He accepts the call and puts the phone to his ear.
“Did you get my text?” is Heath's opening line without waiting for Max to initiate talk.
“I was just reading it.” Max replies somewhat softly with new concern for Alan and his family.
Heath takes a sentimental tone, “Why do you think we turned out so differently?”
Max doesn’t pause to think of the answer he already knows, “I grew up, Heath.”
“Really? Just like that, hey?”
“Sure. Just like that. Why not?”
Heath counters Max’s claim with his own thoughts, “I keep thinking, even all these years later, about how much I hated everyone saying how I was such a nice boy. How the parents were so proud of me.”
“Really?” Max sounded like he was mocking his brother more than he meant to.
“You remember their reaction when we burnt our hands?”
Max replies matter-of-factly, “Anger.”
“Yes. But angry at who?”
“At who? Both of us.”
“No, no. Think back.”
“Heath, it’s not like it’s something I’d forget! I remember it clearly ‘cause it I lived it for more than a year. I remember every lecture and…”
“Pfft. Lectures. I don’t care about lectures. I received them too. My point is, who were they disappointed in? You get me? Who did they shake their heads at? I, brother, let them down. I made them look bad in front of their friends. They couldn't say how proud they were of me like they used to. You just did what everyone expected. You never saw the way the old man shook his head at me. A look in his eye of silent condemnation that tore away at me. They were both like that.”
“Wow, slow down with the melodrama there champ.”
“IT'S NOT FUNNY!” Heath explodes through the phone so loudly Max has to pull it away from his ear.
“So killing a bunch of innocent people proves a point to them ‘cause of what they did?” Max asks.
“No, damn it! To me! Not to anyone else! I did it for me! I told you exactly that last time we spoke. I’m showing myself that I no longer live in your shadow. I’ve brought us back together for this. I need you to take part in my performance.”
“How long will it take to prove this sick joke to yourself? How many more people will you murder?”
“That really depends on you, brother. It depends on how quickly you either catch me or kill me.”
“I won't be the one catching you.”
“Yes you will. You won't let this go. It may have been ten years but I know that part of you hasn’t changed.”
“What part?”
“The part where you can't let me win. You've never been able to let me have something over you.”
“You killed people, Heath. Innocent people.”
“And I will again and again until one of us wins.”
“And what if I can't catch you? Another twenty lives? More?”
“You know, I wonder if I’d be happier if I lived like you did. Did what you did.”
“What I did?”
“You were such an evil child. Maybe I should have been one too. Maybe I should have been like you. Maybe I would have had all the friends you did. Maybe I would have hurt all the people I could and not cared. Maybe I could have hurt you without a second thought on how it made you feel. Maybe I could have gotten away with it all, like you did.”
“So you do still live in my shadow?”
Heath laughs bitterly into the phone, “I guess maybe I do. But I'm trying though, give me that.”
“What will it take for you to stop if I can't catch you?”
“Maybe family.”
Max hesitates, “What?”
“Maybe killing family would make me stop.” There’s silence as Heath waits for Max to respond. He doesn’t, so Heath continues. “You see, any heartless monster can kill his folks. I’ve grown indifferent to them. I don’t love them, I don’t hate them. They exist, as I do. They don’t have a role in this game.”
“Claire?”
Heath laughs into the phone again.
Max is furious, “I would snatch the life from your soul…”
Heath interrupts, “Yes very good Max. Very brave. You've only got a short time.”
Max drops the phone and runs out of the apartment after grabbing his keys.
The light traffic helps Max as he speeds his car toward his sister’s house, weaving around the few road users who get in his way. He dares to play chicken with cars coming in the opposite direction the few times he has to cross into the wrong lane. He wins every time but has a few close calls and almost collides head-on with a bus.
He has his phone at his ear and steers with his other hand. In his ear the sound of his sister’s voice introduces callers to her Voice Mail. “Hi, it's Claire, leave a message.”
Max can't drive and hide the concern in his voice at the same time, “Claire, I'm on my way to your place. Call me back ASAP.”
Max had only driven a few streets further, and barely avoided being caught by a passing police car, when Claire rings back. She’s clearly concerned by Max's message and becomes more so when he tells her to lock her doors and stay away from the windows.
A few minutes later he pulls into Claire's driveway. He calls her phone from outside as he scans the street and the cars parked along it.
Claire looks through a window and, based on Max’s assurance that the cop brother and not the murderer brother is outside, she opens the door and invites him in but only after chastising him about how scared he made her.
Compared to her brother, Claire is tiny. Her more than six foot tall brother towers over her tiny five foot frame. Her small stature has been the source of family jokes for years including the occasional, 'are you adopted?'
Claire sits at her dining table drying her eyes with a tissue, police standing around trying to look needed and Max talks with detectives Earl and Carl off to the side. The two senior detectives have only just walked through the door but the sub-surface animosity between her brother and this Detective Earl Mullins character isn't lost on Claire. Plus she remembers him as the rude jerk who interviewed her about Heath. She leaves them to talk as she tries to come to terms with Max's revelation that the brother she hasn't seen since she was a child wants to kill her.
“So you'll put her into protective custody?” Max puts it more as a statement than a question.
Earl is unmoved, “Slow down. Tell me, how do you know there's been a threat against your sister?”
Max suddenly finds himself in an unforeseen and awkward situation where he has no choice but to admit to being in touch with his brother. Without the time to think more deeply for an excuse or a way to soften it he
says, “He rang me.”
Earl is not impressed. “Once more?”
“Today, just before I got here, he made a very real threat against my sister and you need to do something about it.”
Earl doesn't miss a beat, “Go back to the fact that the most wanted man in the country, a serial killer, rang you.”
“How did he get your number?” Carl brings himself into the conversation and asks a second question before his first is answered. "Has he called you before?"
“What I want to know is what you will do for my sister. She needs to be protected.” Max almost seems to be pleading.
Earl is insistent, “Nothing until we get a statement filling us in on this call, or calls.”
“And?” says Max.
Carl tries to be the voice of reason, “Max, mate you know this process. It’s a big call to put someone in protective custody. It’s expensive. We have to tick all the boxes.”
Max accepts this point if only in the hope it would distract from questions about the phone call with his brother, “You're right. You're right.”
Carl reassures him, “Just get her to pack some things and have her stay at your place or with your parents until we've organised something.”
While Carl is being diplomatic Earl is happy to push buttons and says, “I hope you're not blowing this up, Max.”
Max does his best to keep from exploding at the pretentious detective, and he moves in close so he’s not tempted to yell, “Who do you think I am? Who are you to talk? Watch your mouth.”
Earl replies confidently yet softly, “Your brother has only killed randoms. There is nothing to connect him to them so why would he start threatening family members? It doesn't make sense."
Max isn’t so polite in his reply, "Murdering people makes sense to you does it?”
“Don't play with my words Max. There's a pattern to what he does and it’s not in killing family.”
“Earl, it’s simple. The threat is real.”
An hour or so earlier, Tahlia heard Max running down the hall from their bedroom and out the door. She knew he was talking with his brother because after he stopped watching her work - thinking she didn’t know he was there - she heard the mobile ring and stood close enough to the bedroom to hear but not close enough to be seen. She listened until they started arguing about their sister. She was concerned Max would come out of the bedroom to find her eavesdropping so she returned to her office until Max’s thumping footsteps projected through the apartment as he ran from the bedroom to the front door and left.
But now Max is gone. She doesn’t know where and decides to take this moment to go into the bedroom and just hold the phone again. She’s done this a few times since Max went back to work, something about it excites her.
She picks it up from where Max dropped it. It’s still warm from when he was holding it against his cheek. She doesn’t do anything with it. She just looks at it. She scrolls through the menu and opens the messages folder. She’s about to open the first text message when the screen changes to show an incoming call. Her heart races. Why would it be ringing so soon after the last call? Heath would know Max is gone for whatever they fought about. She just stares at the screen as the ring tone plays into her ears and the vibration tickles her hand.
Her thumb hovers over the answer button.
She presses it and the line opens but she keeps it away from her ear. She thinks she can hear breathing. Pushing another button and the speaker phone is activated. She can definitely hear breathing. Her blood goes cold and a shiver runs up her spine when she hears the words, “Hello Tahlia.” That voice could have been Max if it weren’t for the chill it created deep inside her. She throws the phone back in its drawer and slams it shut before running out of the room and into her office. She closes the door behind her and sits in the corner, on the floor, back against the wall, knees curled up to her chin. She hugs her legs and laughs uncontrollably, her stomach in knots.