SARAH

 

The first thing I saw when I arrived back home from the beach was Karl’s car parked up on our drive. On entering the house, I found him in the study deep in conversation with my father. The door was wide open and I perceived that it was because they were waiting for me to return. The moment I was in the hallway, my father called my name. On entering the study, I noted that both men’s faces were very solemn, and my father began getting up from his desk.

“I’ll leave you two to talk,” he said as he slid from behind the big oak desk and sidled past, kissing me on the cheek and shining a crooked smile. This told me that what I was about to hear would upset me.

When dad had closed the door behind him, Karl gazed at me with a benevolent expression. He signaled for me to wheel myself opposite. I did so and wondered what he was about to say. I knew for sure it would involve Josh. He hadn’t spoken directly to me since our last meeting at the house. These past weeks, whenever he’d needed to contact me for the purposes of work, he’d always gotten someone else to call and sort it out.

“Firstly,” he began in a grave tone, “I want to say that I’ve only done this because I care deeply for you and would never want to see you harmed by anyone.”

“I thank you for your concern,” I remarked to him.

He twisted his body and retrieved a thick brown envelope from off of the desk behind him and handed it to me.

“What’s this?” I asked as I held it in my hands.

“Don’t open it yet,” he said. “I want to say a few words first.”

He paused for a moment and looked straight at me.

“Then say them,” I commanded, getting annoyed at his gazing face.

“A few years ago, an associate of mine in Mexico,” he began, “informed me of something that he’d uncovered in his country.”

“So this is about Josh and Heather Todd?” I put to him, interrupting his smug flow.

“Yes, it is.”

“Then what is it?”

“When he first told me, I thought that it was nothing more than idle gossip.”

“Who’s he?” I asked.

“A journalist who was investigating corruption in the local area and came across the story when interviewing a police contact of his.”

“So this reporter found something out?”

“Yes, he did. But when he first told me, I wasn’t overly bothered. I knew that the rich and famous got up to no good and it was simply a meaty piece of scandal that would never make the mainstream news because of the power of the individuals involved and the corruptibility of the Mexican authorities. My journalist friend was told to drop it and even had his life threatened in order to force him to leave it alone. One night they blew his car up while he was asleep in bed with his wife, just to show him they meant business. So he dropped it.”

“So far you’ve told me nothing,” I stated.

“Since you’ve been seeing Josh regularly,” he went on, “it’s played on my mind and I needed to find out if it was merely bullshit or if it was real.”

“What was real?” I snapped, becoming impatient with him.

“That Josh killed Heather Todd.”

It was like an unexpected death sentence, each word the bang of a judge’s gavel.

“And you believe this?” I put to him.

“I do. My friend sent me over everything he had on it. In that envelope is a dictaphone with the interview of someone who was there that night.”

I glared down at the envelope on my lap. With trembling fingers, I picked it up and opened it, pouring the small dictaphone out. I picked it up and looked at it. It seemed strange in my hand, much heavier than any recording device I’d held before.

“Press play,” Karl gently insisted.

I did and the thing crackled on.

“So tell me,” a heavily Mexican accented voice came on, obviously Karl’s journalist friend, “how did you come to be present the night of Heather Todd’s death?”

A silence followed, filling the study and almost deafening me as I awaited what would be said.

“There were eight of us at the villa including myself, Josh and Heather that night,” an American accent began. “We’d been there about two weeks by then, enjoying the summer vacation after graduation. Josh had invited us all out there; we had the whole island to ourselves, except of course for his father’s security who patrolled the place but basically left us alone.”

“How was Josh’s behavior toward Heather at the time?”

“Look, Heather’s always been bat-shit crazy. She does things that make no sense and she’s attempted suicide like a whole bunch of times. That’s why it was so easy for them to cover it all up.”

“Cover what up?”

“That Josh shot her.”

My heart froze at the words and my whole body began to spasm in terror.

“Go back to their relationship leading up to the night,” the journalist said.

“Like I say, Heather was nuts. The first week we were there, she was really cool. She was calm and we just hung out on the yacht, went to the mainland, shopped and partied. It was a regular vacation. But in the second week she started acting up.”

“When you say started acting up what do you mean?”

“I mean that she disappeared for two whole days. Josh was going fucking crazy about it all. We went to the mainland one night and she’d been dancing with these two big-ass Mexicans. Eventually, Josh pulled her away because she was grinding her ass all over them, really pissing him off. Then the two Mexicans had a fight with him. Me and the other guys went to help and the whole bar erupted into a brawl, and, as you’d expect, the locals picked the side of their own people and chased us all out of there. That is all of us except Heather. She wasn’t with us after that. We could only assume that she’d gone off with the Mexicans.”

“And what was Josh’s reaction to that?”

“He was going crazy. We had to hold him off from going back to the bar and taking the whole fucking place on. They would have killed him. Then on the way back across the water to the island, he smashed up one of the cabins in the yacht. You see, this wasn’t the first time she’d done it to him. She’d run off with plenty of guys before. But he’d always take her back. He’s a tough guy, Josh, but she was his Achilles’ heel. She wanted to destroy the poor bastard and then prove how much of a hold she had over him by making him take her back.”

“And he took her back this time?”

“Of course he did. He always did. That time in Mexico she called him up after two days and asked him to come get her. And do you know what? He got straight in the yacht and went and got her, told the rest of us to say nothing about it to her, to forget the whole thing, even though she almost got us fucking killed in that bar.”

“And this was the day she died?”

“Yes, it was. It happened that very night after he brought her back ashore.”

“Describe that night for me.”

“We were partying pretty hard. Heather had locked herself in her room since she’d gotten back, even refusing to speak with the girls about it.”

“Where was Josh?”

“He was with us drinking and taking coke. But he wasn’t himself. He wasn’t talking and just sat there getting fucked up, but being completely silent, just answering with single words. I felt sorry for the guy.”

“Do you feel sorry for him now?” the journalist suddenly put.

“Mmm,” the other mused out loud. “I don't know. He killed her, so I guess not. But I have to say that she really fucked him up, put his head through a meat grinder.”

“Let’s go back to that night.”

“Well, we were partying, like I say, and suddenly Heather comes out of her room and rushes over to Josh. She starts hitting him and shouting at him, calling him a coward, saying he ain’t got no guts, that’s why those Mexicans ran him out of that bar. ‘If you had any guts,’ she says, ‘you would’ve gone back there and burned the whole place down.’ Like I say, she was fucking crazy.”

“Then what happened?”

“She ran back into her room and he followed her. The rest of us watched and wondered what would happen next. When they locked the door behind them we thought that it would be another argument, so we turned the music up and continued with the party. But only five minutes later, we heard the gunshot and raced to the door. We started banging on it, shouting for them to open up. We were doing this for a few minutes, even considering smashing our way in, when the lock on the door flipped and we burst into the room.”

“And what did you see then?”

There was a brief pause and with it my breathing stopped.

“I saw something that I’ll never forget my whole life,” the American voice continued in a solemn tone. “The first thing I noticed was that the wall at the far end was covered in blood. I mean it was coated with the stuff. Then I noticed Josh. He had his back to the door and was standing over something. I was about to rush into the room when I saw the gun in his hand.”

“What was he standing over?”

“Isn’t it obvious? It was Heather. He’d blown a hole in her head and she was lying at his feet. All he did was stand there looking down. I walked to him and when I was about a meter away, he turned and pointed the gun at me. ‘Don’t go near her,’ he shouted at me and I almost shit my pants. His eyes were so dark then and I honestly thought that he’d shoot me. Then one of the security dudes came bursting in and pushed us all out of the room. They must have seen it on the cameras or heard it or something. They basically took us all to a room and locked us in while they covered the whole thing up.”

“What happened after that?”

“They finally let us out of the room and told us to go to our bedrooms and pack. They kept us locked up till the next morning. That’s when we were brought back together in another room and this guy, Helming or Harman or something, came in and told us all that we were going to be well looked after for the trauma we’d been through. Those were his exact words, I think. He was basically buying our silence from us. Someone shouted at him that they’d tell—that Josh couldn’t get away with it. This was when the Hellman guy nodded at one of his men and had him grab the girl who’s said it. He stuck a gun against her head and then this Hellman dude started telling us that money was one option, death the other. He would personally see to it that if this ever got out, he wouldn’t bother trying to figure out where the leak came from. He’d simply have each and every one of us hunted down and killed, regardless of who actually told anything. That way we had to keep an eye on each other.”

“And how much money were you offered?”

“Like the others, I was given five hundred thousand dollars.”

“Why come to me?” was the journalist’s next question. “All the others that I got in contact with told me where to go, but not you. Why?”

“Because I keep getting these nightmares, man. I keep seeing her body there. Covered in blood, that fucking hole in her face. It ain’t right. Am I any better than Josh for taking the money?”

I stopped the recording there, unable to go on, and shuddered, my whole being transfixed in horror.

“Do you see what type of person Josh Kelly is now?” Karl said.

I looked up at him, tears pouring down my cheeks. Such hurt and anger oscillated in me then that I threw the recorder against the wall. It struck and fell to the floor, my feeble effort unable to break it.

“Please understand,” Karl insisted, “I did this to save you.”

“What about the girl’s parents? Didn't they want to know what happened to their daughter?”

“They did at first, but ended up settling for twenty million dollars worth of shares in Kelly Holdings. They receive a one million dividend from it every year.”

“My God!” I exclaimed placing my hand over my mouth.

“They covered the whole thing up, Sarah. All of it.”

“Leave me alone,” I said, instinctively pushing my hand out toward him, even though he was too far for me to reach.

“Sarah, please.”

“LEAVE ME!” I screamed at him and his face went incredibly sad.

He got up from his chair, walked over to the dictaphone and picked it up. Then he left and, the second he did, I burst into tears.