Fear the Darkness: A Thriller Page 10

  Owen blinked once. That meant yes. Two meant no.

  Annette brought in two cups of coffee without asking, handed one to me and one to Mallory, who gestured to put it on the table next to the bed. Annette looked at the vitals monitor and commented that Owen’s blood pressure was up a bit.

  “Should I go?” I asked. “Is my being here too much for you?” I spoke directly to Owen the way Mallory and Annette did, and he blinked twice. Slow blinks that I knew meant an emphatic no. Annette put some extra medication into his IV. Then she put some drops into his eyes. She took away our empty soup bowls. Annette was like that, sort of disappearing so you didn’t think of her, but appearing when something was needed. She was live-in, there most of the time, with her own room close by.

  I noticed one of the photographs on the wall, one that might have been taken by Owen of Mallory in a particularly adventurous pose. I had always wondered and never thought to ask until now. “Is that a real crocodile?”

  “Alligator, actually,” she said, not bothering to look at the picture. “You’ve never talked about how one investigates something. Where do you start?”

  I got the sense that she was focused on Owen now, and I should leave, so I gave the short answer. “Jacquie is so troubled. If I can just make it look like someone really cares what happened to her son, maybe that will help. It shouldn’t be too hard. Seems like everything was slapdash. No autopsy. And she’s talking about having the body exhumed. I don’t know what that would accomplish, but I think it’s best to discourage it.”

  Mallory turned from watching Owen’s chest rise and fall with the machine that pumped air into his lungs. “Exhumed? Didn’t I tell you she was crazy?”

  “Why?”

  “I was at the funeral and interment. Joe’s body was cremated. I saw the urn.”

  There was no body to exhume. Joe’s flesh would remain ever silent, would never speak to George Manriquez. No wonder Tim had left the house so abruptly.

  I figured I’d be in competition with CSI. I’d have to explain you can’t analyze ashes.

  Nineteen

  After talking some more about just how crazy Jacquie Neilsen might be and what I should do about it, I went home, tossed my tote bag by the counter in the kitchen, and planned to settle into a typical evening with a book and dinner. I was in the middle of a Jack Reacher. Carlo was reading Martin Buber’s I and Thou for about the fourth straight time. When I asked him why he was doing that he said he hadn’t gotten everything out of it on the first three go-rounds.

  “Where’s Gemma-Kate?” I asked him, thinking to offer to help with whatever she had planned for dinner.

  “She’s in your office. With Peter,” Carlo added.

  “Peter. In my office.”

  I walked in on them sitting in front of my computer, their backs to me, hunched.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Peter jumped a little as if he was used to being caught at something, but Gemma-Kate turned to look at me with the chipper smile used exclusively for another generation.

  “Remember Peter?” she said.

  I smiled back with my own Mrs. Brady chipperness though annoyed by Gemma-Kate treating me like I had a bad memory.

  “Why, of course I do! Peter,” I purred. “Could I see you a minute, Gemma-Kate? Would you excuse us, Peter?”

  He looked baffled by our excessive courtesy, but nodded as if I was actually asking him for permission. Gemma-Kate and I walked out of the office but not so far, and at such an angle, that I couldn’t keep my eye on the boy.

  “Um, that’s my business office. Even outside the locked file cabinets there can be things I don’t want strangers to see. Off-limits, okay?”

  “Okay. We’ll leave.”

  I stopped her another second, drew her out of his earshot. “What are you guys doing?”

  “Looking at stuff on the Internet.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “School assignment. I’m just helping him out with a biology class. He’s not stupid, but I’ve got a couple IQ points on him.” Gemma-Kate appeared to be amused. “Or do you want to interrogate him yourself?”

  I said, “Maybe.” I walked into the room, where the kid had stood up. Whether he did so to block the screen with his body I couldn’t tell. I pulled aside the chair that Gemma-Kate had been using, one from the dining room set, and sat down, inviting Peter to do the same. “Could we get you something to drink, Peter?” I did my best to get the tone soft enough without it turning oily the way most adults do with teenagers.

  He shook his head without thanks. But he wasn’t running away. I said, “I met your mom at church.”

  That not being a question, he apparently felt no need to confess that yes, he had a mother. I said, “What school do you go to?”

  “Pima,” he said.

  “That’s the one on La Cholla, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your school is pretty big, isn’t it?”

  “I guess. I’ve never been to another one.”

  “What grade are you in?”

  “I’m a senior.”

  “You know any of the freshmen there?”

  “Not really.”

  “What about St. Martin’s? Did you know Joe Neilsen?”

  He couldn’t stop a suspicious glance, narrowing his eyes like he thought he knew where this was going. “No. Not really.” Peter answered that question faster.

  “No, or not really?”

  “Not really.”

  I had him now. “I thought you were in the same youth group?”

  “Aunt Brigid,” Gemma-Kate said, a warning in her tone.

  Peter didn’t answer, knowing Gemma-Kate had his back. I had a flicker of bad feeling about this kid, thinking about what his own mother had mentioned about getting into scrapes. Maybe cops’ kids shouldn’t hang out together. Maybe some alchemy could be at work and the chain reactions could come fast. Trouble, in short.

  But not today. Peter left without either of them complaining, and Gemma-Kate and I made a meat loaf outside of my usual repertoire, a German-style one with sauerkraut and Swiss cheese. Having only expanded to ten dinners that I cooked in rotation, I encouraged her with praise. Later she helped me clean up, too, scrubbing the pan where the cheese had stuck to it.

  I felt good. Hell, I remember feeling absolutely euphoric, a little happy hum inside my head. Hopeful for the Pug and Gemma-Kate alike, I even gave her a small hug when the dishes were dried and put away. We retired to our various chairs, with GK deciding to scope out the offerings on TV. I told her she could do On Demand if she liked. When I heard screams coming from her room I asked her to turn it down some. Apparently she was into horror, but stared at it without appearing horrified. If she’d looked at any of Todd’s books while he was studying to be a detective, that was why. Reality is much worse.

  Todd. He probably was afraid to call me, in case things were not going well. I gave him a call to let him know things were going well. He answered on the second ring.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Clearly this man had caller ID. I said, “Nothing! Everything is actually very nice. Gemma-Kate is teaching me how to cook, and Carlo has been showing her around. Did she tell you?”

  “I haven’t heard from her. I was wondering.”

  I remembered her texting in the backseat of the car when we were coming home from church a few days before, saying it was her dad. “I thought.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. How’re things with you?”

  “Fine.”

  “Okay, fine.”

  And that was a typical conversation with my brother. I wondered for a moment why Gemma-Kate would have told such an unnecessary lie, but chalked it up to adolescent secrecy and dismissed it.

  Though the evening was pleasant enough I had a hard time coming down, even with a glass of wine or two. Didn’t want to take a sleeping pill after the wine and instead lay awake for several hours with my heart pounding the way it used to when I was in trouble
. I must have fallen asleep at some point, but woke up with an upset stomach.

  I pushed aside the covers and made it to the bathroom, thinking I would throw up, but I just had dry heaves.

  “What’s wrong?” Carlo’s voice came from the darkness when I returned.

  “Sorry I woke you. Nothing serious, just a little nauseous. Maybe the sauerkraut disagreed with me.”

  Carlo said, “Could be dehydration. I think you need to cut back on the caffeine.”

  “The hell you say,” I said. I shuffled into the kitchen and fixed an Alka-Seltzer. I watched it fizz in the glow of the night-light plugged near the stove. Then I thought about the Pugs that usually slept on the kitchen floor when it was warm and in our bed when it was cold. We still had the windows open, and this night could have gone either way. I pictured the sick Pug in his hospital room, out cold the way I had seen him last. Do dogs hate the dark? I hoped they left a little light on for him so he wouldn’t be scared.

  Our remaining Pug wasn’t in the kitchen, but I thought I heard a whimper somewhere. My anxiety skipped up a notch. I went into our bedroom to see if the Pug was on the bed.

  She wasn’t. Anxiety building, and remembering that I felt odd about feeling anxious—this is all recounted well after events unfolded and it’s difficult to be precise about how one felt in the past, how strong the feeling was, and why—I roamed through the rest of the house looking for her. I even turned on the back porch light to see if we had accidentally left her outside. Scanned the backyard. No Pug.

  There was only one more place to look, behind the closed door of the bedroom where Gemma-Kate slept. I went back to our room and into my closet and gently pulled my robe off the hanger so it wouldn’t bang against the closet wall. I slipped on the robe and crept across the living room to the opposite end of the house and quietly as possible—so as not to disturb her, you understand—looked inside. There was enough moonlight coming in through the window to see the silhouettes on the bed. Gemma-Kate on her stomach, hugging her pillow, and the Pug down at the foot of the bed. I tiptoed across the room and placed my index finger on the dog’s side. She was breathing. She was asleep, and not whining now.

  “Hello, Aunt Brigid,” Gemma-Kate’s voice came out of the dark.

  The nerve on the side of my neck that sparks whenever danger is imminent sparked now. I jumped like I never had when surprised by the man with a knife. You’re kind of always expecting the man with a knife.

  “Are you having trouble sleeping?” she asked, quite awake.

  I coughed lightly to make sure I had my voice. “I had a bit of stomach upset. Just took an Alka-Seltzer and checking to make sure everything is all right. With you.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I thought I heard the dog crying,” I said.

  “No,” she said.

  “Are you having trouble sleeping?” I asked.

  “A little.”

  “Is something bothering you?”

  “No.”

  “Well then. Good night.”

  “Good night, Aunt Brigid. I love you.”

  Her world had done a one-eighty, I thought. I cleared my throat again. “Well. I love you, too, Gemma-Kate.”

  After that, taking the Pug would have shown a lack of trust, so I left her sleeping on Gemma-Kate’s bed, went back into our bedroom, and got into bed.

  “Is everything all right?” Carlo’s voice came through the dark again.

  “Jesus.” I jumped. “Doesn’t anybody sleep around here? Yeah, it kind of is,” I said, feeling pleasantly surprised, and yet. That anxiety. My heart was still pounding and I couldn’t think of a reason why I wasn’t exhausted after such a busy day. I said so.

  “Maybe the wine,” he said. “Too much coffee and wine. Drink a big glass of water.”

  It was a funny thing. After Carlo found out a year into our marriage that I was capable of killing people with my bare hands, and on several occasions had, he had tended to become a little more protective rather than less. He had the notion that my violent past made me more vulnerable. I said, “Stop hovering, honey. Go to sleep.”

  He had already turned to face the other direction, and I rubbed his back lightly as if he was the one needing comfort. Then I rolled on to my right side and scooched over just enough to feel Carlo’s bare bum lightly touching mine, for comfort.

  Twenty

  Seven in the morning in March: The sky is just lightening up and you get a fine forty-five degrees of dry air. The female Pug was looking downhearted and clung to my side, sitting and staring at me expectantly whenever I sat down. Gemma-Kate left some of the cheddar-and-green-chili omelette she’d made for herself in the pan on the stove, and after eating that and fixing another Alka-Seltzer I felt a little better. Thinking a walk might clear up my lingering stomach upset and general anxiousness, I grabbed my new walking stick that Carlo had made for me, one with a blade in the bottom to fend off critters, saddled up the dog, and headed out to the back of our property.

  They say there are five thousand trails running through Tucson and its environs, maybe more, up and over the mountains, and connecting the area like human veins and arteries. Once I had shown Mallory on the map three trails that, if you knew how to go and were willing to walk the four miles, connected our houses. But she would never do the trails with me or even meet me halfway. Like I said, she was much more a shopper than a hiker.

  While I’m not much of a shopper myself, I understood how she felt about hiking. When I was working for the Bureau I had no time for nature. It was just something you had to go through to get to the next building. Now I had the time and the peace of mind not only to notice the world but to name the things in it. And springtime in the desert can get your attention like nothing else. You think the color purple does that? Try a purple cactus rimmed with hot pink flowers as big as coffee cups. We’d had plenty of winter rain, not the sudden monsoon kind that makes the otherwise dry riverbeds run and fills the dips in the road so you can’t drive through them, but the light cold rain that comes all day, soaking the ground and preparing it for the yellow poppies that coated the ground in certain places now, making it look like someone spread mustard thick over the arroyos.

  I was proud of that thought, thinking the poppies looked like mustard rather than some god-awful vision from a memory of a violent past. Where the ice was melting off the higher elevations I could see the sun glinting off small pools. I remembered how Carlo and I, during a walk toward the mountains in the distance, had seen that sparkle, how he thought of a sprinkling of diamonds or some such while I thought of an angry giant breaking a mirror. I was changing, I thought, thinking of poppies as mustard. Just watch, it was only a matter of time before I’d begin to see butterflies and bunnies in the clouds. Everything wouldn’t make me think of something hideous.

  I was in no hurry, which was just as well since this was the Pug who liked to sniff. Walking is good for thinking, and I put together what I knew so far about Joseph Joe Joey Neilsen.

  Son of a helicopter mom and a stepfather who maybe wasn’t keen on the thought of having a stepson, gay or straight, living with them forever.

  Only hobbies, making handmade gifts for his mother and probably masturbating, maybe in the pool so Mummy wouldn’t find any evidence on his bedsheets.

  Dragged to church, and the youth group, too, I’d bet. Suitable friends forced on him, what they called “socialization” these days. Come Sunday I’d talk to Elias and Lulu’s kid, what was his name, Ken?

  Go see Detective Sam Humphries and stop by the medical examiner’s lab to see George Manriquez, who was always there during the day unless he was at a death scene, but there weren’t that many homicides, suspected or otherwise, in Tucson.

  Tell Jacquie Neilsen that you couldn’t analyze someone’s ashes.

  As I thought of each element of my investigation, I found myself tapping my stick on the ground rhythmically and murmuring, “Joe. Joey. Joseph. Joe. Joey. Joseph.”

  My thoughts were so
far away from my surroundings I almost put the dog in danger. She had been sniffing at a pile of rocks—coyote piss, I thought idly, as she started to paw at the ground next to the pile. I watched her, thinking Joe Joey Joseph, until my attention was piqued by a little pronged thing coming out of the earth. Chicken bone, I guessed with more instinct than certainty, and pulled her leash to keep her from chomping down on it.

  Wasn’t a chicken bone, though. Bird claw? Interested, distracted from my thoughts, I studied it. Then I thought that the pile of rocks didn’t look natural. Someone had placed them there. So, still keeping a tight rein on the Pug’s leash while she strained at the same spot that fascinated me, I kicked aside the rocks and pushed at the dirt underneath with the toe of my hiking boot. The little pronged thing was the drying foot of a frog.

  Bigger than a frog, a dead toad, pretty big. Make that huge, as big around as a saucer. Lying on its back in a shallow grave. I looked more closely, poked at it with my walking stick..

  The toad had been slit open from its throat to its butt, too neatly for an animal attack. Only the organs were missing.

  I always carry a poop bag with me. Even if the dogs go outside the development, you don’t want to encourage any more flies than we already have. I put my hand through the plastic and, still holding the Pug back with a tight leash and my right foot, I bent over and picked up the toad.

  Walked back to the house with the Pug frisking around me saying I want it, give it to me. Like she had a death wish.

  “No. Bad dog,” I said without any real conviction because I was trying hard to get my brain to work with me.