Central Park by Guillaume Musso (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

friends to celebrate her birthday. She asked to borrow our SUV, and we agreed. I can still see myself, standing on the porch, waving and saying, ‘Be careful, Joanne! Take it easy on the black diamonds!’ She was wearing a pom-pom hat that evening. Her cheeks were red with cold. She was eighteen. Full of life. She got behind the wheel of the Jeep, turned the key in the ignition. And…the car exploded. Those bastards in Englewood had planted a bomb in my car.”

Gabriel took his time lighting another cigarette with the butt of the last one. Then he began speaking again.

“The day after her sister’s funeral, my wife left, taking our son with her. She moved to London, where some of her family live. It all happened very fast after that. She filed for divorce and her lawyers got to work smearing my name. They accused me of being violent, being an alcoholic, going to prostitutes. They came up with false witnesses and used text messages taken out of context. I wasn’t able to fight back, and she got sole custody of Theo.”

He took a final drag on his cigarette and crushed it against the rock.

“I was allowed to see my son only twice a year. So one day, I cracked. I went to visit my wife in England. I tried reasoning with her, but she dug her heels in. Her lawyers did their stuff and they got a restraining order. Now I’m not allowed to see Theo ever again.”

A look of resignation passed over his face. Night was falling. The wind had grown stronger and it was getting cold. Touched by his story, Alice put her hand on his forearm. Suddenly, the phone rang, bursting the bubble of their intimacy.

They looked at each other, aware that the half-open door to this secret garden was about to close. She picked up.

“Seymour?” she answered, switching on the speaker.

“I found the sugar factory. I’m here now. Shit, this place is scary. Out in the middle of nowhere. This must be where they shot Evil Dead, right?”

“Tell me what you see.”

“It’s like the antechamber to hell.”

“Come on, don’t exaggerate.”

“And it’s pissing down, and I don’t have an umbrella.”

“I don’t give a shit, Seymour! Do you have the flashlight, the pliers, and the glow sticks?”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s all in the bag.”

Amplified by the speakerphone, the cop’s crackly voice echoed through the valley, bouncing against the mountainsides.

“According to Castelli, this place has been abandoned for over thirty years. I’m in the main building now. It’s half falling down. Everything’s rusted, and there are weeds taller than me.”

Alice closed her eyes and methodically re-created the topography of the factory as her father had described it to her. “Okay. Go out the back and look for a storage area. A building that looks like a silo.”

A few seconds passed before Seymour spoke again. “All right, I see a sort of high, narrow tank, covered in ivy. It looks like the Jolly Green Giant’s cock!”

Alice ignored this joke. “Walk around the silo until you find three stone wells.”

Another silence.

“Yeah, I see them. They’re covered.”

Alice felt her heart accelerate. “Start with the middle one. Can you remove the cover?”

“Hang on, I’m going to use my earbuds…okay, yeah, the cover’s off. But there’s a metal hatch underneath it.”

“Can you lift it?”

“Jesus, this thing weighs a ton! All right, it’s open.”

Seymour was breathing heavily.

“What do you see inside?”

“Nothing.”

She lost her temper: “Point the flashlight down there, for Christ’s sake!”

“That’s what I’m doing, Alice! I’m telling you, there’s nothing down there.”

“Try a glow stick.”

She heard him mutter at the other end of the line, “How do these damn things work?”

Exasperated, she yelled, “Pick it up, bend it in half, shake it, and throw it down the hole.”

A few seconds later, Seymour reported, “The well is empty. It’s completely dry.”

Fuck, I don’t believe this!

“What was I supposed to find?” Seymour asked.

Alice put her head in her hands. “Vaughn’s corpse.”

“What? Are you crazy?”

“Try the other wells,” she ordered.

“The covers are rusted up. I can’t move them. No one’s opened them in years.”

“Use the pliers to get them free!”

“No, Alice, I’m not going to do that. I’ve had enough of this bullshit. I’m going back to Paris.”

Powerless, stranded in the middle of a forest nearly four thousand miles from that old French factory, Alice balled her fists with rage. Seymour was wrong. There was a corpse in that factory. She was sure of it.

She was about to hang up, when she heard a groan and a flood of curse words.

“Seymour?” she said, alarmed.

Silence. She exchanged a worried look with Gabriel, who, even if he could not understand every word of the French conversation, was aware of the rising tension.

“Seymour, what’s happened?” she shouted into the phone.

There was a long pause, during which they heard a series of metallic creaks. Then Seymour finally said: “Fucking hell. You were right, there’s…there really is a corpse!”

Alice closed her eyes and began to thank God.

“But it’s not in the well!” the cop went on.

Not in the well?

“There’s a corpse in the cab of an old backhoe.”

White-faced and breathless, Alice asked, “Is it Vaughn?”

“No, it’s a young woman. She’s been tied up and gagged. Hang on…oh, fuck! With a pair of tights! She was strangled with a pair of tights!”

Alice tried to stay calm. “What state is the body in?”

“I can’t see much, with the darkness and this goddamn rain, but in my opinion, she’s been dead a few days at the most.”

Gabriel’s face was a mask of confusion and frustration. “Can you tell me what’s happening?”

Alice briefly summarized the situation in English. Immediately, the federal agent formed a question.

“Ask him what color the tights are. According to eyewitnesses, on the day she was murdered, Elizabeth Hardy was wearing pink tights.”

Alice translated this into French for Seymour.

“Impossible to tell,” he replied. “It’s too dark to see…I’m going to have to hang up, Alice. I need to inform the local cops.”

“Seymour, wait!” she screamed. “Please tell us the color of