Dead Lemons Read online

  It’s a common wheelchair thing.

  So my eyes follow the genre signs put up. Romance. Science Fiction. Western. Then my eye falls on Murder Mystery and I decide I’m not getting cat books.

  I don’t care if this is some dumb obsession. I want to put this behind me.

  I’m going to find the newspaper archives; I want to know what happened to Emily Cotter’s family.

  It takes me a while but it’s not that hard to find, and I have help anyway.

  I tell the librarian I’m interested in the history of the cottage I bought and she’s cheerfully away searching right along with me, chatting all the way.

  People are always friendly to wheelchairs.

  It’s not hard to know when we find it.

  It happened way back in 1988 and made the front page several times. Sharon, the librarian, goes quiet as we start piling up the ones following the story. It’s a big stack.

  “Oh, I never knew,” she says as she scans over the pages. “Are you sure you want to know all this?” she asks me uncertainly.

  “It’s what happened so yes, I guess so,” I say, and start reading as Sharon excuses herself.

  I see they even used the same picture of Alice Cotter, a happy 12-year-old, smiling between magnifying glass and brush that I saw on Emily Cotter’s wall.

  It’s the last known picture of her.

  Alice wanted to be an archaeologist when she grew up; used to go about searching for fossils all over the place.

  One bright, sunny Saturday morning she went out the back gate of the cottage with her magnifying glass, brush, shovel, and a bag of cupcakes from her mother and never, ever came back.

  The last her mother saw she was heading over the hill, towards the Zoyl farm.

  I think again of my meeting with Darrell Zoyl this morning and what he said when he saw me. “Over the hill man.”

  The usual searches and public pleas followed, but Alice Cotter was gone.

  Then, six weeks later, on the track in the no man’s land between the cottage fence and the gate in the fence along the Zoyl farm they found a child’s pubic bone.

  The entire community exploded into activity. The searches resumed, prayer meetings were held, neighbourhood watches established.

  The Zoyls were brought in for questioning, the farm searched all over. A team of more than 50 police officers actually established a temporary base by the fence and scoured the landscape for days. Nothing was found. No body, no evidence, nothing. The Zoyls are released, arrested twice more, and again released every time.

  It’s only in the later newspapers, months after the search had been called off, that further details were released. DNA testing confirmed that the pubic bone was that of Alice Cotter. Various tissues found with the pubic bone are identified as part of her uterus.

  Then a later paper mentions three things that make my stomach turn.

  I’m surprised they would even publish it in a newspaper, although even the paper itself warns that this article should not be read by kids, and goes on to state that it is only upon the insistence of the parents, Emily and James Cotter, that they are releasing the information.

  Number one, testing of the uterus tissue reveals traces of what is later found to be pig semen.

  Number two, blood and bone oxidation level tests show that the pubic bone and tissue were removed while Alice was still alive.

  Number three, the remains were found still fresh, which meant that Alice was still alive at least six weeks after she disappeared.

  I push the paper away from me and slowly roll over to the window.

  I feel sick.

  God.

  My mind flashes back to the 12-year-old smiling because one day she was going to find dinosaurs.

  And Emily Cotter repeating, “I remember to remember.”

  So I just sit there, trying to breathe normally.

  This has gone too far. I don’t want to know any more.

  I really want to get drunk right now.

  I roll out, just leaving everything behind me.

  I don’t meet Sharon’s gaze as I roll out, just thank her for her help without slowing down. I’m in the car and on the way out of town on autopilot. The liquor store I pass has a kind of gravity to it that I really want to respond to but instead I just floor it and speed away.

  It’s only about ten minutes out from Riverton on the open road that I remember that I have a game to go to, and luckily am heading in the right direction.

  So I just keep going. For the first time since moving down here I don’t want to go back to Riverton and I really, really don’t want to go back to the cottage.

  I know now why those how-tall-am-I-today notches on the kitchen door frame stop so low.

  CHAPTER 8

  JANUARY 13, FIVE MONTHS AGO . . .

  The game does what it does and I get to breathe in the timeless taste of peace. I sweat and push and rage and crash into things and nothing else exists outside of this cracked tennis court and our wheelchairs chasing each other. And for a while, I get to not be me.

  It’s only afterwards when we’re all talking and laughing in a loose circle, beer and sports drinks scattered everywhere, that I think again of this afternoon.

  What am I doing? I’m not a cop or anything. I’m just some guy, a guy with more than enough problems of his own. I came down here to try and sort my life out. I’ve already given up my life, my legs, even my wife. I know I’m messed-up. My head’s probably a dead lemon.

  I really don’t need to go, possibly even literally, go dig up other people’s skeletons.

  This is just stupid. It’s time to let go.

  Enough now, I tell myself.

  “What’re you thinking, bro?” Tai asks as his massive hand slaps me none too gently on the back, solidly jarring me out of my introspection.

  “Do you know anything about the Zoyl brothers?” I hear myself asking. We alcoholics have no self-control.

  The smile on Tai’s face fades a bit before he answers. “Yeah, a bit. They keep to themselves mostly. Live off the land and only come into town when they go out on their boat. The youngest brother, Sean, he went to the same school as me and my cousins for a bit. We didn’t really get on. He was a strange one,” he says. He pauses in thought.

  “Why are you asking about them?” Tai asks, frowning.

  “I met them the other day. We share power lines and I keep losing power. I went over there to talk to them about it and . . . I’m just curious about them,” I answer.

  Tai’s frown deepens when he hears this.

  “As far as I know, they’ve always been there. Actually, there have been Zoyls out there since before Riverton, I think. Their family used to be whalers and they set up an outpost there on the coast to render the whale fat and then they just stayed. I know because we found out when we put the local land claims in for my iwi,” Tai says.

  Tai takes his Māori heritage seriously. He’s active on all kinds of land claims and cultural protection movements but he says that I’m okay because my sense of humour isn’t too white.

  There’s hope for me yet, apparently.

  “We found out that their family have always been out there, see. Never bought the land from the town or anything, been there since before the town started, just claimed the land for themselves. So we couldn’t get the land back via government. Some of us wanted to take it further but then the elders found out that this was about Zoyl land and put a stop to it,” he continues.

  “Why’d they stop you?” I ask. Tai hesitates before he answers.

  “I’ll tell you, but only because I want you to stay away, bro. Don’t go to the Zoyl farm no more,” he warns. “There’s badness in the land there. Goes way back to long before all that stuff when that girl went missing. It’s in the soil, the trees, and the water, bro. Some of the elders say the Zoyls brought it with them,” he continues, shaking his head. “Look, I know white people are stupid about these things so just listen to me, and don’t go out there. Leave the
m alone, bro,” Tai says, looking more serious than I’ve ever seen him before.

  “Yeah, okay. No worries, Tai. I’m just curious,” I answer.

  CHAPTER 9

  June 4, PRESENT DAY . . .

  I should have listened to Tai and just stopped all of it back then, but no.

  Alice Cotter and the Zoyls; I just couldn’t let it go. Stupid, stubborn me.

  I could have been a million places but here. Who dies of hanging upside from a wheelchair, anyway? It’s got to be a first.

  And I’m more comfortable now with the thought that this is me dying. My head is pounding, my vision is getting worse and I’m shaking all over. The wheelchair keeps creaking every now and again in an alarming way. The tide’s gone out quite a way and it is, present circumstances aside, not a bad day weather-wise.

  I really wish I’d pass out now.

  I know in my situation brave and good people are supposed to be fighting for every second of life, or composing mental goodbyes to all their loved ones, but that’s not me. I fucked-up most of my life, I know it. There’s no denying now.

  I had a lot of chances and a lot of people but I could never make my life work right. I’m not going to leave behind a big hole in people’s lives.

  But I know now, with the useless, pointless wisdom given to those about to expire, that I could have done better. I loved so few and so poorly.

  But I feel some satisfaction in having taken at least one Zoyl with me.

  Though it’s likely nobody will ever know.

  I found the bones but didn’t tell anyone yet.

  They were right where I thought they’d be. Incredible, all these years and no one knew. You just needed to think like the Zoyls and it was obvious.

  When Sean and Archie come back, they’ll figure something out though. Maybe this time take them out to sea. My bones too, I expect.

  Maybe seeing the seagulls tearing into Darrell’s body, which they are still doing right now, has dampened my spirits somewhat.

  I should never have come out here.

  Oh, and then there’s the blood.

  I don’t know where it’s coming from, can’t feel anything hurting, but I notice the dark-red trail running down on the rock behind me.

  There’s a lot of it. It’s slowly finding a path down to the sea.

  A morbid, slightly crazy part of me wonders if that little trail of blood will make it all the way down to Darrell’s body. Connect us again in death somehow.

  Blame it on concussion or blood loss or whatever, but as I have that thought, it suddenly makes me think about Darrell’s body in a different way than before.

  So I turn my head and look down again. Darrell was a big man. His body, now settled almost exactly below me, is a good way out of the water now as the tide keeps moving out.

  In the time I’ve had out here I’ve lost my fear of his body. It’s just a thing now.

  A big and soft thing, conveniently placed directly below me.

  Not just a body, but when you get right down to it, a good place to land.

  It’s not like I have a lot to lose.

  CHAPTER 10

  JANUARY 26, FIVE MONTHS AGO . . .

  I’ve only been here a short time and already my life has found its own rhythm despite me, a pattern I fit into, unplanned and unintended. I notice this now because this pattern has been disrupted.

  Betty has gone off to Australia for a beekeepers conference, leaving me with a strict set of therapy homework expectations. She managed to convey the clear sense that thus far she is underwhelmed by my performance as patient. Aside from her judgment of me, or maybe because of it, I’m really starting to like her.

  In our last session, before she left, I got halfway through my answers to her previous questions about what happened when we went out to those beehives when she stopped me and said, “Enough of that. You’re being stupid. Now if you actually were stupid I’d forgive you, but you’re not, so I’m not. When I come back I want to see some real improvement, or else. I can’t be having this at my age from the likes of you.” Then she gave me some vegetables from her back garden and sent me on my way, adding that I eat too much bad food as well.

  The breakdown in my flow was then added to by Tai’s announcement that there would be no Murderball for two weeks straight. John-John, who owns the court, is having the plumbing re-done, which means digging straight across it. Tai and Patricia are off at a family thing up north, and the cats have gone from a cute-looking puddle of movement by the fire to five separate peeing, pooing, and meowing explorers that get into everything. I found two kittens sleeping in the tumble dryer and one was enthusiastically chewing some of my nerveless toes when I woke up yesterday.

  Separately, all of the above sucks, but the cumulative effect of them all together actually makes me feel good. It tells me that I have things to look forward to, things in my life I want to get back to. It’s good to feel that again—even if it’s only about small things.

  I’m still not sleeping though, and its steadily getting more regular, the old 3:00 a.m. routine. I’m not really surprised. I knew now that I’m not drinking that it would probably come back. So I work my way down the usual list of life issues in an absent way—my mind still comes back to Alice and Emily Cotter though.

  It’s like I share the house with them now.

  I’ve been doing a lot of make-work tasks and odd jobs around the cottage, keeping myself busy. Not wanting to really decide to actually fully focus on this Zoyl business nor finally dismiss it and get on with life.

  And just what I was supposed to be doing about it if I did decide to go digging up the past remained an open question.

  Maybe my unhealthy interest in this business is just a way to avoid having to deal with my own problems. That’s what I told Betty in our last counselling session before she left.

  “Oh, humbug. Tell me—when you’re thinking about all this stuff, are thinking about your own problems or not?” she replied.

  “No, I’m not, I guess,” I answered.

  “So it’s about other people, not about you?” she prompted.

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “Well, it can’t be that bad then, can it?” Betty declared.

  “If you ask me, most of us spend way too much time focussed on ourselves instead of just getting on with things and trying to do some good in the world around us. And your mind probably needs the practice, Finn—how many years has it been now—only thinking about yourself?” she said, staring at me with a slight frown.

  I know it’s true, and I have no comeback, no defence—pain makes you selfish.

  And I’ve come to recognize that look on Betty’s face—it means she’s trying to figure out whether I’m smart enough to understand the next thing she’s going to tell me.

  “People are strange, Finn,” she states after a moment. “For the most part, the more we focus on just ourselves and making us happy, the worse we feel and the more complex it seems to get. While people who are genuinely spending their time only thinking about what’s good for other people tend to be quite happy without even trying.” She stops to see if it’s sinking in.

  “No,” Betty says, nodding to herself. “You do your homework and that’s it—no more time than that spent on yourself. Then you stop mooping and go do things out in the world—even if it is digging up the past. At least it gets you out of your own head.”

  I guess my hesitation is a telling sign.

  I’m probably delaying because I know I’m going to end up intentionally doing this thing anyway, crazy as it is. This time wasting is just me lulling my conscience into a false sense of security.

  Addicts know how to lie to themselves while not actually believing it at the same time.

  Even our bullshit is bullshit.

  So when the kittens finally tire of playing with me—which I tell myself I’m doing for their sake—and the emptiness of the day ahead gives me my first alcohol craving, I decide to take Betty’s advice and get out of my
head and back into the library.

  Sharon the librarian is again friendly to the wheelchair with a smile and a wave but makes no comment, and doesn’t come over this time when she sees me head back towards the old newspaper catalogues again.

  I find the same section of newspapers from back in ’88 and start stacking the ones that have stories about Alice Cotter. It’s a small town, and what happened to Alice was truly horrific, so I end up with a sizable stack. Now that I know how it ended, reading any of it is hard—or rather, how it didn’t end—because they never found her body, only her pubic bone and part of her uterus. Even thinking about that still makes me sick.

  The question that makes it all somehow worse comes up in one of the later editions. The article, which was actually a printed version of a press conference held by the police, has several questions from the community, likely driven by desperate hope and broken mercy. Simply put—could Alice have survived those injuries? Could she still be alive?

  The coroner’s findings seemed almost cruel in that they were inconclusive. While the police could not rule out the possibility that Alice survived the injury, their opinion was that she most likely died. But no one knew. Alice was just gone. The overgrown questions from 1988 still lay unanswered beneath this town decades later.

  It’s more than an hour later that I lay aside the last newspaper, not having learned anything new. Although this second reading of it all was no easier than the first.

  I don’t want to, but I can’t help thinking: What happened to Alice in those six weeks between her disappearance and them finding that bone, and God, what if there was more than six weeks? And what now? I didn’t like the odds of trying to talk to Emily Cotter again, for both our sakes. She likely didn’t know more anyway—and I didn’t want to go back to the Zoyl farm, either. Didn’t even want to go back to the cottage now. Tai had also already made it clear that he didn’t want me asking more questions.

  So I just sat there, staring into space, lost in thoughts I didn’t want.