Erased

Lynda Blair’s piercing screams roll through the streets. They creep into neighbouring houses. Each citizen inside their cocoons race to their windows in order to notice the screeching mahogany car scramble out of the community, hoping to disappear beneath the horizon.

As Private Investigator Turnbull arrives into the grand entrance of the Blair household, the blinding white of the walls and furniture immediately overwhelms them. Each surface is impeccable. Each mirror shimmering, lacking any smudge from dirty fingerprints. There is not a toy in sight, despite the eyes of a 6 year-old girl gawking at them from behind a door up the stairs. She slams it shut, retreating behind it. A sign is placed on the door covered in glitter and pink stickers with the name “Aggie” written in beautiful, flowing calligraphy.

‘Detective Turnbull,’ a voice scoffs, followed by heavy approaching footsteps.

Turnbull turns to see the towering Officer English: a mere patrolman, who they know to habitually keep up the pretence of an esteemed Captain.

‘I know, I know, English,’ they mutter, holding their hand out in defence, ‘but I was called. I’m here to do my job, just like you’, while continuing with contempt in their thoughts, ‘without the added aggression’.

The indignant officer shuffles away, scowling at Turnbull for an uncomfortable duration before proceeding their performance of a useful policeman.

Conley Blair, Lynda’s husband, is sitting on the edge of the long, rigid couch as he stares blankly at the wall opposite. His eyes and nostrils are red and inflamed. Turnbull slowly approaches.

‘Mr. Blair?’ they ask, ‘may I ask you a few questions?’

He does not move or speak a word. Turnbull hesitates, looks around the room for a moment and then carefully sits down next to the inconsolable man.

‘When did you last see your wife?’

‘This morning,’ his voice cracks.

‘How was she?’

He looks down and inhales, stating as he shakes his head, ‘Fine. She was fine’.

Turnbull pauses, as they look away from Conley, unable to handle the pure emotion.

‘What was your relationship like normally?’

Conley exhales and murmurs, ‘Great. I mean, she is the love of my life. I adore her’.

‘I see you have a daughter? Is it just the three of you here?’

‘No,’ he waves in the direction of a young man across the room, ‘Cameron, he’s my half-brother, he has had a hard life. His Dad is mentally and financially unstable, so I look after him’.

‘How is family life living with your brother and being parents? I imagine it must be difficult’.

Conley shakes his head, ‘no, it’s good. I mean, Lynda…’.

He slowly swallows like he’s in pain, ‘I mean, the wife doesn’t like him. She thinks he should be off on his own by now, but he’s only a kid. He’s only like nineteen, I think. Aggie, our daughter, is a little angel. I love being her parent’.

‘How is she coping?’

‘She isn’t. She won’t talk to anyone, no cops, not even me’, he whimpers, his lip quivering.

***

‘It’s Hunter. I ain’t no Blair,’ he spits, slumped down on the chair opposite Turnbull.

‘I’m sorry,’ they reply, ‘so Cameron, how do you find living here?’

He pouts and murmurs, ‘it’s aight’.

He pushes his seat on Turnbull’s chair to lean his backwards off the ground. They scowl in response causing Cameron to scoff and release his feet so his chair plummets back to the ground in a loud thud.

‘Thank you,’ Turnbull says, squeezing their face into a smile, ‘so… are there any problems at home?’

‘Nah’.

Turnbull raises their eyebrows, waiting for an elaboration.

‘I answered your damn question’, he declares, crossing his arms over his chest in defiance.

‘How is your relationship with your brother?’

He laughs. Turnbull frowns, tilting their head displaying their disapproving perplexity.

‘Where were you this morning?’

‘Out’.

Turnbull slumps their body down and blankly stares at them in utter shock.

‘Fine, for fuck sake, I was out with my mates. Aight? They can vouch for me’.

Turnbull, as they look away shaking their head, asks, ‘where?’

Cameron rolls his eyes and leans back, ‘the community centre, bitch’.

Turnbull scoffs, slowly inhales, and then exhales with their eyes closed. They remind themselves to stay professional.

They look at Cameron and ask, ‘do you have a car?’

‘Yeah, my trash brother got me a Volkswagen for my birthday. It’s shit and cheap compared to his fucking cars’.

‘What colour is it?’

Cameron looks down and swallows before he says, ‘red’.

Turnbull slowly nods and then ask him if anyone else drives it.

‘Nah,’ he says before quickly adding, ‘some fucker nicked it though’.

Turnbull nods with their eyebrows raised as they slowly respond ‘right’.

***

‘You sure?’ Turnbull asks, with a high-pitched voice, exposing their uncertainty.

‘Yes, Turnbull, he was spotted by surveillance cameras in the community centre when the kidnapping occurred,’ English taunts.

‘And the car?’

‘He said it was stolen,’ he states, with an eyebrow raised.

Turnbull looks down and shakes their head as English storms off, stamping each feet like he is trying to convince everyone that he is a giant, ready to strike down a whole village.

Turnbull sneaks into the marital bedroom. The room is, at no surprise to them, extremely large. The bed looks like it has never been touched. They lift up the covers, examining the mattress closely.

‘Interesting’, Turnbull thinks, ‘his side is not as sunken as her’s’.

They walk over to a loveseat at the end of the room, which has masculine clothing thrown over it.

‘This is though… so he probably sleeps here… It doesn’t paint the happy marriage that Conley suggested’.

Before they leave the bedroom, they notice a glimmering sparkle on Conley’s bedside table. It is a large, diamond-encrusted ring.

Upon leaving the bedroom and venturing back downstairs, they discover, while peering into the kitchen bin, some blood stained glass. Their eyes widen and they frown, their only relief is the realisation that it is not anywhere near enough blood to suggest a murder.

As the detective continues interrogating everyone involved, all of the neighbours agree: this household partakes in many loud, severe and vicious arguments.

***

‘So, our Captain has informed us that, though Lynda never came to us about anything, according to her medical records, she did go to the hospital multiple times, always refusing to report the bastard’.

‘Jesus,’ Turnbull utters, as they glare back at English, shaking their head in disbelief, ‘I knew something wasn’t right’.

Aggie’s bedroom door slowly opens with a squeaky and tender voice coming from inside: ‘I’m ready to talk now’.

Turnbull follows her into her room, which appears to have been vomited on by the colour pink. They delicately close the door. Aggie sits on her bed and starts to stroke the elegant veil hanging from the ceiling. Turnbull sits next to her, mirroring her admiration of the veil.

‘How old are you?’

‘I’m six,’ she squeaks, as she leans her head down and blushes.

‘Wow, that’s so old!’ they respond, smiling wide with a deliberately higher-pitched voice.

Aggie starts showing them all her favourite toys, explaining all their creative personalities and backstories.

‘This is Sprinkles,’ she squeals as she presents a porcelain unicorn with glittery pink hair, ‘she likes to dance and sing and she poops rainbows’.

Turnbull laughs and then gently leans in to her, asking ‘What do you like to do?’

‘The same,’ she giggles.

Turnbull giggles back, fixing the cuffs of their sleeves.

‘So, how is family life?’

‘Good,’ she answers quickly, still absorbed to her toy.

‘How was your Mum today?’

‘Good’.

Turnbull inhales slowly and asks ‘do your Mummy and your Daddy ever argue?’

Aggie intensely frowns and hisses in a deeper voice, ‘I don’t like Daddy’, pronouncing every word in a staggered fashion and squeezing her unicorn in her hands.

Turnbull retracts her head backwards, shocked at the sudden outburst. Aggie pouts and then places Sprinkles on her bedside table.

‘Can you explain why, Aggie?’

Aggie extends her mouth to the side frowning and then slowly sits on the bed. She looks down and starts fidgeting with her hands.

‘Daddy abuses Mummy’.

Turnbull purses their lips.

‘It started when I was only four and Mummy and Daddy were fighting and Daddy was upset because Mummy accidentally broke the TV because she really likes to dance and got too excited. Daddy starting to hit Mummy and I got really upset and started shouting “No! Stop it! Stop hurting my Mummy!”, but he didn’t like that and so he told me off and said “Hey! Aggie! Stop shouting at your Daddy!” and he pushed me into my room and I could hear my Mummy shouting “Stop! You are hurting me!” and so I hid under my bed and I cried’.

Turnbull swallows and softly asks, while looking down at their hands ‘was that the only time?’

‘No. It happens a lot. A few days ago, my Mummy set up a romantic dinner for Daddy and so I was in my room colouring and then Daddy came home drunk and they were yelling at each other for hours and hours and I just stayed in my room crying with my hands over my ears like this,’ she states as she demonstrates.

‘And then Daddy cut Mummy’, Aggie whimpers, turning her head away from Turnbull.

Turnbull swallows and fidgets with the cuffs of their sleeves asking softly, ‘How often do they argue?’

‘With a piece of glass. Cut right on the wrist and there was blood everywhere!’ Aggie shrieks, a flood of tears streaming down her face.

The door swings open and Conley sprints into the room his eyes wide with fear.

‘Detective,’ his voice bellows, ‘what on earth are-?!’

‘Get out of here!’ Aggie screams, ‘You hurt Mummy! You are the reason she is gone!’

Conley stares at her, his face and body slumping down as if his soul has been bled from his body. His lips flutter and a single tear treads down his cheek. He steps backwards out of the room, refusing to remove his eyes off her until he is buried behind the wall, ready to be ushered away by officers. Aggie hurries over to Turnbull and wraps her arms around them, clutching onto their body as tightly as their little arms can.

***

‘Samira?’

‘Yes, that’s me,’ the sulking middle-aged woman mumbles as she twinkles from her array of diamond encrusted jewellery.

‘I am so sorry about your friend’.

Samira sighs, ‘Yes, that’s why I called. I’m sorry, too’.

Turnbull tilts their head and frowns to express confusion.

‘You see, I feel guilty. I knew. We all knew. But, what did I do before now? Nothing. Absolutely nothing’, Samira moans in distress, ‘I am convinced this is all Conley’s fault. He has finally snapped and did something. Well, something worse than normal’.

‘It’s not your fault if that is what happened, Samira’.

‘I remember one time she came to my house after one of the incidents and he had slammed a door on her hand. I thought the poor thing had broken her hand! Thank goodness, it wasn’t. But, my God, it looked horrendous. I still regret not calling the police right then and there, but she begged me not to’.

At that moment, Cameron passes by and comes to a halt as he hears what Samira is recalling. He stares at her, his mouth ajar.

‘Don’t you dare look at me like that, boy, after what your brother-‘

‘Nah, miss,’ Cameron shakes his head slowly and declares, ‘I ain’t covering for that wanker no longer’.

He slowly turns to look at Turnbull and then he looks down, ‘I lied, bruv. It’s true’.

Then he swings around and bellows across the room towards the police officers, ‘will one of ya gives us a lift? I need to go to work and I ain’t got no car’.

As Cameron and Samira leave the house, Turnbull relays all the evidence to Officer English, who listens grudgingly with his arms crossed. He theorises that maybe Lynda was taken by a stranger, but, most likely, upon a fit of rage, Conley, the husband she loved, faked a kidnapping in order to get rid of her.

‘Why not just kill her here though?’, Turnbull queries, ‘I mean if it was a-‘.

‘He would never get away with that,’ English interrupts indignantly, ‘it is weird for sure, but everything is pointing straight at Conley’.

English’s phone rings. After hanging up, he repeats to Turnbull that a man fitting the description of Conley was spotted with a gun entering an abandoned hospital a few miles away. Both of them dart their eyes around the residence, noticing that he has vanished and, thus, commence to rush into their cars, English beckoning for back=up.

***

Detective Turnbull sprints around the musty maze of the building alone with the police officers spreading out in multiple different directions. They cough up dust after every flight of stairs, yelling out for Lynda. Eventually, upon reaching the seventh floor, they hear a voice shrieking in response: begging to be found. They race in the direction of the sound and find a filthy and exposed woman trembling on the floor. Turnbull darts over to her, instinctively taking off their jacket and wrapping it around the defenceless, scrawny woman.

‘Lynda?’ they ask softly.

She nods slowly, rapidly gaining speed as she grasps Turnbull and falls into their arms.

They stroke Lynda’s hair, whispering soothing pleasantries in her ear, and they start to guide Lynda out of the room. She releases her tight grip and cowers in the corner, like an abused stray dog, scared of its own rescue.

‘No, no, no’, she cries, ‘He will hurt me’.

Turnbull jerks their head outside of the room, ‘that’s okay, Lynda, I won’t let him’.

They slowly walk over to her in the corner and gently lean down onto their knees. They whisper as quietly as humanly possible, ‘Is “he”… your husband?’

The helpless animal furrows her head between her knees and whimpers. A tiny, almost losable ‘yes’ finds its way through the cracks in her thighs. Turnbull delicately places their hand onto Lynda’s knee as they stare at the open door behind them. They softly pat her knee while salvaging their phone out of their pocket with their remaining free hand.

‘Officer English, I’ve found her… Yeah… No, yeah, it is as I suspected. She says it is the husband’.

Lynda screams and starts to thrash. Turnbull spins around. Conley. Gun in hand. Turnbull quickly jerks upwards.

‘Conley, you don’t need to use that gun’, Turnbull states, phone deliberately still at their ear.

Suddenly, Lynda springs upwards, snatches the phone out of their grip, and lobs it across the room with a mighty strength, causing it to shatter in response to the violent contact with the farthest wall. Turnbull barely has any time to react before Cameron has materialised behind Conley pointing a gun at his head.

The smirking creature turns his head to the side and gazes at Lynda, hissing with devilish delight, ‘I’m guessing this jackass took the bait, babe?’

Lynda bites her lip and then produces a gun from behind a pile of rubble, pointing it towards Turnbull’s head as she slowly nods at the defenceless detective.

‘Was any of it real?’ Turnbull mumbles.

Cameron leans back and heartily laughs still waving the gun at Conley, ‘We aren’t figments of your imagination or anything, mate’.

‘She faked it all,’ Conley mutters.

Turnbull looks at Lynda, who is still aiming a gun at their head, finger on the trigger, ‘all of the evidence? The abuse?’

Conley whimpers, ‘no, that part was real,’ as he glances at the freshly healed carving underneath his shirtsleeve.

Lynda squints her eyes at Turnbull, grinning, pleased with the horror on their face, as their ability to peel their eyes away from her ensues in its malfunction.

Conley states, staring down at the gun in his hand, ‘Cameron is just like me though: a pathetic loser who fell for it’.

Cameron lunges forward and wallops Conley over the head with his gun, causing him to bend over, holding the bleeding gash on the back of his head.

‘Be careful, you fucking piece of shit, we need him alive,’ Lynda hisses.

‘So, if you aren’t in on this,’ Turnbull pleads Conley for answers, ‘…then why do you have-?’

They look down at the gun, still placed firmly in Conley’s hand.

‘He knows what he has to do if he ever wants to see his daughter again’, Lynda declares, glaring at Conley, and then she smirks as she continues, ‘…alive’.

Conley straightens up and examines the blood on his hand, a single tear falling down his cheek. He then proceeds to look down at the gun he is clutching.

Staring intently at Turnbull, his eyebrows furrow and his breath is erratic. His lip flutters before he manages to pull the words out, ‘I’m sorry’.

‘Conley, wait,’ Turnbull pleads, holding their hands towards him.

Swiftly, he heaves the gun up. Bang. And the detective crumples onto the floor, blood pooling around their head.