Every Second Counts

Chapter Six

I DON'T HAVE A VIDEO player, so the tapes The Hulk gave me sit on my coffee table with me itching to get on with the job at hand. I search the internet for local retailers who sell video players, but soon discover nobody makes VHS players anymore but if I knew where to look I could get a VCR. I spend some time in annoyance before I realise I know someone who could help me.

Carole, my accountants secretary answers the phone. 'Athena, how nice to hear from you. Everything OK, is it?' and I can hear her voice is full of hope. She really wants me to tell her, 'I'm fine,' which of course is exactly what I do tell her.

'I wondered if I could borrow your video recorder for the day. I have this tape and there is a photo I want to download and print out.'

'Your parents,' she says. I wish I'd thought of that! 'How lovely. Of course. Come by tomorrow and I'll get it ready for you.'

'Um, could I come by today?' I ask.

'I'll just check with my boss,' she tells me. She's back on the phone within the minute, 'Ryan says that's fine and you can keep it as long as you like. Apparently, he's got a new surveillance system installed.' I let the information sink in. A new surveillance system. Could Ryan have discovered I had snuck into his offices in the middle of the night? Am I on his surveillance tape? My heart is literally leaping about madly before I realise I don't have too much to worry about. Ryan does not know anything about Red Picasso. The night I attempted to burgle his offices for info on my parents, I was camouflaged in black and any glimpse of my hair would have been red, not Athena's blond locks.

By nightfall, I'm making progress. However, when I see myself on the video tapes in the days and weeks just prior to my parent's murders it's like staring at someone who isn't actually me, just resembles me. It doesn't look like I'm wearing a belt and my jeans are hanging on me, my shoulders slump as I slink down onto the couch next to an old man whom I can't recall. I honestly thought I had lost weight after their murders, not before and I try to remember back to that time...what was going on in my life then that had me looking and acting like a self-pitying vagrant? But of course, a stupid question to ask myself. Just the same damned nightmares... if only I had realised what was to come!

I watch myself stare blankly ahead then bend forward to scratch an itch on my ankle and I note the collar around my neck is starting to unravel. OMG! I look so dishevelled. It upsets me to view myself as others must have and I'm kind of pleased it is the only sighting of myself I come across as I hunt through the tapes. Not that I'm in any way better now than I was then, I remind myself...my blonde wig sitting on the coffee table is weeks overdue for a shampoo and set and although I changed my clothes before I picked up the video recorder from Carol, they are only a tad cleaner than the ones I took off!

On the third tape I come across my person of interest. Reuben Aberdeen! Unlike me, he marches with confidence into Patricks waiting room. Picks up a magazine from the pile on the counter and walks to the end couch. He sits down and opens the magazine. I freeze the video tape.

Reuben Aberdeen stares back at me. I have only a stilted memory of Reuben when I had attended one of Patricks group sessions where he and I made polite conversation and I glimpsed him overhearing a covert discussion between Patrick and Julia Bolt., but this man is definitely Reuben. Maybe early forties, a well-built man wearing an expensive looking suit. He looks of European descent, dark hair, a roman nose with hooded dark eyes. I twitch the video a fraction and Reuben breaths out, his full lips thins and he flicks his eyes upwards to the woman walking into the room. I restart the video and the attractive woman with dark hair smiles and walks toward Reuben. She sits down beside him. I have the urge to study her but she is not my target. I watch them talk aware he is not a happy man hearing what she has to say. I'm disappointed there is no sound with these old videos. Are they lovers? Or a sister? When he looks directly at the camera I freeze frame.

Within moments I have downloaded several images to my computer and pressed print! When my printer spits his photos out, I have to say, although Reuben Aberdeen is on the ugly side of the spectrum, he doesn't look like a nasty murderer.

* * *

The investigator who knocks on my door is young, tired and looks harassed. After he introduces himself as Justin Walker and explains that he had to get hold of my friend Lila Pickering to find out where I am now residing, I flip between annoyance with Lila and appreciation that she has the smarts to know he needed to contact me. I then feel obligated to explain that I only wanted to disappear from the media and that I had tried to change my appearance, my hair. I stopped at the fact that I had also changed my name.

'This is routine, Miss Morisot,' he tells me. 'We are completing an investigation into the death...I mean the professional life of Patrick Gladstone.'

'Why?'

'Um, it's because of a letter he had on his body which insinuates he may have been guilty of misconduct with some of his clients.'

'Really?' I ask, with all the emphasis I can muster to pretend this accusation is the most ridiculous notion I have ever heard. I am such a good liar!

He sighs. And I recognise it for what it is. Thank the Lords!

'I had to ask,' he says.

'I take it you have not come up with anything? Like, the other clients are not corroborating any unethical behaviour?' I ask.

He nods. 'But, I guess I was hoping you could shed some light on the man. You see, we have seen the video surveillance over the last several months and we need to know why you were visiting him at night.'

My gut twists. And I take a long moment to compose myself. 'Um, well, you know about my parent's murders. I haven't been coping. And Patrick had been wonderful,' I hold down the retch that starts to find its way upwards and Walker sees me pale and I know he thinks it's because of the memories of my parents deaths. But of course it isn't it's because I have described Patrick as wonderful, when he is of course the worst person I have ever been in contact with.

Walker stares at me for the longest moment. 'Miss Morisot, it is my belief you know a lot more than you are letting on.'

'I don't,' I tell him.

'Look, it's in your best interest to tell us all you know. Because, we will find out in the end.'

And the young man standing in front of me now looks nothing like the young tired harassed man that arrived less than 20 minutes ago. I can see it in his eyes. He's hungry. Hungry to bust a case. Jettison his career.

'Think about it, Miss Morisot.' And I know instinctively he's going to do his utmost to claw away at the secrets in my head. This is all I fucking need at the moment! 

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