“Sleep well, and I’ll see you next week, angel,” he says, that hypnotic quality to his voice back.
One whole week. He can’t tell me something like that and expect me to wait an entire week before finding out what thehell he’s talking about. But the moment to argue is gone, as Valdemar is led away, the coldness of his shadow remaining.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The return ferrycrossing takes longer than normal, the lake eager to hold on to me, giving me ample time to ponder Valdemar’s words.
“He asked me to shoot him.”
Valdemar was seen shooting my brother by a police officer at the casino, and in the court hearing, he pleaded guilty; it was an open-and-shut case. Per the terms of his plea deal, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison—nothing compared to the taking of someone’s life.
I didn’t attend the court hearing. My grief was too fresh, my wounds too raw. I would never have been able to sit in the courtroom mere feet from Valdemar Montresor and watch him breathing when my brother wasn’t.
But years later, when my grief had soured and only bitterness remained, I read the newspaper reports, applied for the transcripts of the hearing, and asked Dupin to pull in a favour with one of his sources in the police department who got me the case files on the investigation. And I learned everything there was to know about what happened at the casino that night. Once I started reading, I couldn’t stop, hungry for something toexplain the inexplicable, to shed some light on the darkness that had consumed me.
“He asked me to shoot him.”
I can’t recall reading anything that suggested my brother had begged to be killed or that he wanted to die, a detail I would have remembered. What had I missed? And why did Valdemar not mention this during his case? Was it because it was something that might compromise the Raven Hands? Or because it’s a lie to keep me where he wants me.
Ed started at Fortunato Casino when he turned eighteen and worked there for five years. He never professed any delight in his job, but he never complained about it either. It was just after he started working at the casino that Ed had changed. I always thought it was his job, the people he saw, and the fact that he lived in the hours of obscurity. Preferring the night shifts, he slept during the day, only waking when the sun had set and the world hid under the cover of darkness.
We’d always come as a pair. Same womb, same home, same school. When he got the job at the casino, it was the first time he’d done something without me, and that was when I started to lose him.
When he wasn’t working, I had no idea where he went or who he was mixing with—until he went to work one evening and didn’t come back.
Once home, I switch the kettle on even though I have no intention of making a cup of tea, and after throwing my coat on the back of a chair, I grab the box file that has taken up permanent residence on my kitchen table.
I pull back the lid and delve inside, shuffling the creased papers and photos filed in a system only I understand.
I fish out theAmontillado Gazettethat ran the day after the shooting, skimming over the article on the front page until I find the interview with eyewitness Alberto Montani. Ignoringthe part about him and his wife being there for their fifteenth wedding anniversary and it being a trip they’d planned on doing after they’d first met in the casino, I find the quote I’m looking for.
“We’d played the tables, but you gotta know when to quit, so we’d moved on to the slots when someone screamed,” Alberto Montani told theAmontillado Gazette. “It came from over near the roulette tables. There’d been a buzz around those tables all night because Adolphe Fortunato, the owner, had made a rare appearance. I remember saying to Marie that we might get a chance to see the man himself, but we never did. I thought the scream was someone fooling around after having just lost a load of money, but then there was a loud crack and the smashing of glass, followed by more screaming. We couldn’t see the tables from where we were, but others must have, and that’s when people started lying on the floor with their hands over their heads and hiding behind the machines. It’s a classy place, not the sort of venue where you expect trouble, and I thought it must be a hold-up, so I grabbed Marie’s hand and pulled her down onto the floor.”
I stuff the article back into the box, then carry on digging until I find what I’m looking for. I pull out a chair and sit, scanning the already familiar words of Sergeant Psyche in his statement that was taken as the first officer on the scene.
We were called by dispatch to a disturbance at the Fortunato Casino after the report of a gun having been fired.
We entered the casino at 21:24 and made our way to the back of the casino where the roulette tables are.
A smashed chandelier lay broken on the centre of the table, and there was glass underfoot. A female croupier (later identified as Miss LouiseOlivia) told us that the men with the guns had gone to the private suites at the rear of the building.
On arriving at the suite, we found the doors locked.
I said: “Police. Open the door now.”
When the doors didn’t open, Officer Massa Will and I broke them down.
Valdemar Montresor was standing on the far right of the table with Jupiter Prospero and Jacinta Alessandra. Adolphe Fortunato, Dr Ollapod Tem-Pest, Julius Rodman, and Edgar Bransby were on the other side, facing the other two men.
Valdemar Montresor had a gun pointed at Adolphe Fortunato.
I unholstered my weapon and said to Valdemar Montresor: “Put the gun down and put your hands behind your back.”
Adolphe Fortunato said: “There’s no need to cause a fuss. Valdemar Montresor is going to put his gun away.”
Valdemar Montresor kept his gun trained on Adolphe Fortunato.
Valdemar Montresor glanced around the room and then lowered his weapon, but then he raised it again and pointed it at Edgar Bransby before shooting him between the eyes.
