Fear the Darkness: A Thriller Read online

  When I got back to the house I got a bigger plastic bag that we save from grocery shopping, put it on the glass-top table on the back porch, and slid the toad from the poop bag onto the larger one. I turned on the hose hooked up at the back faucet and wet down the body, water running just lightly enough to get the dirt off without pushing it off the table. I looked at the toad more carefully. The slit down its abdomen was clearer now. Clean slice, not made with teeth. Its internal organs had been neatly removed. I went inside to the desk in the living room and pulled open the drawer where we stored pens, stamps, and other small tools. The exacto knife we used for opening up that goddamn packaging that coats everything as if the main purpose is to keep you from opening it was in the drawer where it usually was, but it could have been washed.

  The Pug was scratching and whining at the back door to go out where the toad was.

  “Gemma-Kate,” I said, a flare of anger having subsided into a quiet disbelief. She didn’t respond. I heard screaming from her room—and went there. She was simultaneously staring at a movie and her iPhone. I think the movie was Saw but can’t say which one because I haven’t watched them. “Gemma-Kate,” I said. She looked up at me with blank eyes, but I could swear she knew.

  “Outside,” I said, then turned and walked away.

  Twenty–one

  She followed me out to the living room. “What?” she said.

  When I turned to look at her, she, to my mind, manufactured a shy smile.

  “On the porch. Now,” I said, my voice cracking with fresh anger.

  I opened the door and, grabbing her by her upper arm none too gently, pushed her outside. I shut the door and directed her attention to the table with the wet dead toad. “You did this, didn’t you?”

  She looked at the toad, then looked at me. Not denying, not even looking surprised. I looked into her face and saw neither fear nor doubt nor guilt, only the usual combination of full-eyes and half-smile, a lack of affect. For the first time I recognized those eyes from my past, and they frightened me as eyes like that always had. It was what Carlo would call an epiphany.

  “You poisoned my dog,” I said.

  The back door opened behind her. “Don’t let the Pug out,” I said, but the Pug was out, and Carlo followed. My warning and the momentary focus on the dog seemed to give Gemma-Kate just enough time to assess the situation and resolve it. She slumped into the chair at the table and put her face in her hands.

  “What’s going on?” Carlo asked, watching Gemma-Kate in the universal pose of dejection before noticing the dead toad.

  “She poisoned my dog,” I said.

  “What happened, Gemma-Kate?” Carlo asked.

  Speaking partly through her hands so she didn’t have to lift her face, Gemma-Kate said, “The night you were at that party I found this toad out back. I was going to throw it over the fence. But then I thought it could just jump back into the yard so I should kill it. Then I thought, you know, I’m in biology, and I’d dissected a toad before, but never this big. Why shouldn’t I dissect it? I didn’t have anything else to do. So I did.”

  “How did you do it?” he asked, off the main track, I thought, but I didn’t stop him.

  “I got some things out of the house, an exacto knife from the desk, an old pan from under the stove. It was dusty, so I figured you wouldn’t be using it. Tweezers from your bathroom.”

  “My tweezers,” I said, temporarily distracted by trying to remember if I’d plucked that one little whisker out of my chin before or after the Humane Society affair.

  She went on, her lip trembling a little. “I think your dog must have gotten too close and maybe eaten something I’d pulled out. It wandered back into the house and started throwing up and going into convulsions.”

  “You didn’t tell us when we came home,” I said.

  “I don’t know why not.” Gemma-Kate’s eyes slid to the side as if she was remembering something that didn’t have to do with us. “Everything was happening so fast. I wasn’t even sure that it was connected. When you left for the vet’s I went onto the Internet and googled ‘poison toad’ and found out that was what happened. I guess I knew but I didn’t want to say. I got scared that you would send me home, so I took the toad out behind the house and buried it while you were at the vet’s. Then when you came home you already knew what was wrong, so I figured I didn’t need to tell you.” It looked like she wanted to cry but couldn’t. “Your dog is okay.”

  Jesus Christ, the girl was as good at lying as I was.

  “That wasn’t very smart, was it?” Carlo asked. He looked stern, but somehow that wasn’t doing it for me.

  Gemma-Kate buried her face deeper into her hands and shook her head.

  Who was this Gemma-Kate now?

  Carlo looked at me as if to speak. I wondered what he would say. We were on the same side, weren’t we? I wanted to tell him what I thought, but not with Gemma-Kate present. “I’ll throw this in the Dumpster,” he said. “They’ll be collecting the garbage first thing in the morning, and it’s past smelling anyway.”

  “Wash your hands after,” I said.

  He gave me a duh look, which is unusual for Carlo, wrapped the plastic bag around the toad, and carried it inside. I looked at Gemma-Kate.

  “What did you do with the organs you didn’t give the dog?” I asked.

  “I put them down the garbage disposal,” she said like someone who says, I brought in the mail and left it on the hall credenza.

  I have a very strong stomach. I’ve watched a car containing a two-week-old corpse get pulled out of the Everglades swamp. Maybe it was because I was kind of sick to begin with that the thought of poison toad guts in my own kitchen sink made the bile rise in my throat. Partly because my anger had turned into a hard block in my gut of something more like apprehension, I put my hand on my stomach and pressed.

  “Look,” Gemma-Kate said. “Your finger is bleeding. It’ll get on your shirt.”

  Carlo came into the bathroom as I was washing a small dab of blood off my T-shirt and examining fingers I had chewed without being conscious of doing so. With the odd detached feeling that they were someone else’s hands, I also noted that they were shaking.

  After Carlo washed any residual toad off his hands, I shut the door to the master bedroom area and said, “We need to talk.”

  He led me to the edge of the bed and sat down with me there. It reminded me of the time Carlo and I had gone to the park at night and talked about what we really thought while sitting in the car not facing each other. This had become our favorite way of talking about serious things, sort of like being in a confessional. Carlo took my hand and put it on his thigh, covering it with his own.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “Gemma-Kate needs to go home now,” I said. “I don’t think I’m the right person to look after her.”

  “That seems like drastic—”

  “I’ve got to make you understand. There are … things. Small things but—”

  Carlo said, “For your sake I wish she hadn’t come. You’re clearly upset. Maybe your stomachache last night was nerves. You seem to be making yourself ill over this, and it’s not worth it. Even for the sake of your family.”

  “Making myself ill? That’s all you think is going on here, that I’m upset? Upset is what happens when, when the toilet backs up. Carlo, my instinct is telling me there’s something about this girl, something dangerous.”

  He shook his head harder than a simple no would warrant. “Because she dissected a toad?”

  “No, because she poisoned our dog. Somebody poisons your dog and doesn’t tell you, that doesn’t sound like a person you can trust.”

  “But her explanation sounds logical, hiding it because she’s afraid you’ll be angry. And you are.”

  Carlo put his big hand on the side of my face and drew it to his. “Honey, look at me. I’m on your side. Now think. It’s just a few months. Even if you’re entirely correct about this situation, what’s the worst that could
happen?”

  “The worst. Hm. There’s a so-called triad they talk about that indicates a seriously bad person: hurting animals, bedwetting, and starting fires. So far we’ve got a Pug in the hospital. You want to wait for worse than that?”

  “I have a very difficult time imagining that child purposely poisoning our dog.”

  “Just for shits and giggles let’s say you’ve got a lousy imagination. What if?”

  Carlo gave me the respect of thinking about the what-if. “If she did do it on purpose, she’s been put on notice now. It was a good thing, your finding that toad. I don’t think she wants to go back to Florida, so she’ll be more careful from now on.”

  “More careful about doing something, or more careful about not getting caught?”

  “You can’t be thinking your niece would purposely try to harm Peggy.”

  I looked at him.

  “The other Pug,” he said.

  I paused.

  He said, “Brigid … You can’t be thinking that.”

  I just said, “You’re right, as long as we’re very cautious and don’t do anything to rile her, we should be safe. If we just let her stay in control.”

  “Honey. I’ll be honest with you. You’re sounding paranoid. At this moment I’m more concerned about you than about anything Gemma-Kate might do. It seems to me you’re overreacting. And think of Todd. We can’t put something like this on him. You’d have to explain why you’re sending her back, and it doesn’t seem fair, with his dealing with the death of his wife.”

  Carlo was on my side, I reminded myself, and tamped down a rising huffiness. Maybe I was paranoid. Okay, in retrospect I know I was paranoid in this case. And yet as it turned out I wasn’t totally out of the ballpark, either.

  “Okay, but you better make sure the batteries are working in the smoke alarms.”

  “Are you alone?” Gemma-Kate asked.

  “Does it look like there’s anyone else in the room?” Peter answered.

  “At least keep the volume low in case someone can hear. Listen, my aunt found the toad.”

  “How did she find it?”

  “The other dog dug it up where I buried it. Brigid figured out I did it, and lied about it.”

  “Is your dog still alive?”

  “Yeah, but he’s still at the vet.”

  “Why is he still there?”

  “The poison made him have seizures and vomit.”

  “I still can’t believe you did that. Some balls you got.”

  “Everybody’s making such a big production out of this.”

  “Did they do anything to you?”

  “Not yet. My aunt is acting very bizarre. I overheard her talking to her husband. She wants to get rid of me.”

  “Like have you arrested?”

  “For attempted murder of a dog? Oh, get real. I think she wants to send me back to Florida. I really don’t want to go back to Florida.”

  “Why not? Beach and stuff.”

  “Florida sucked. I swear I’m not going to let her send me back to that shithole,” Gemma-Kate said.

  “What’re you going to do about it, slip her a toad?” Peter laughed.

  Twenty–two

  I let her in my house. I’d been all righteous, keeping my promise to Marylin after she was gone, but I shouldn’t have let Gemma-Kate in my house. I remembered a talk I had with a young agent about how we catch serial killers by staying in touch with the killer inside ourselves. Maybe not everyone had an inner serial killer. Maybe it was just the Quinns.

  Not for the first time I wondered if my whole family was screwed up that way, if to some varying degree there was a genetic lack of humanity and only a random roll of the cosmic dice put any one of us on the side of good.

  After making sure that Annette would be there with Owen and all was well, Mallory agreed to meet me for an emergency lunch. I met her at Blanco, one of the Mexican restaurants that she would go to, not refried beans and enchiladas. At this place you got a salad made with watermelon and mozzarella and they prepared guacamole at the table in a lava mortar bowl.

  Typical spring day, the weather was still nice enough to sit outside on the balcony overlooking the valley that was Tucson. They had turned on the misters, a spray that nearly dried in the low humidity before it touched my skin but cooled the air around it.

  Mallory was already there and had a bottle of white chilling next to the table, and was nibbling from a plate with roasted elephant garlic, blue cheese crumbles, and bread, which she gestured to me to share. Her glass was nearly empty, but the waiter came and poured one for me, topping her off at the same time. She gave him her flirty smile and gently shooed him away when he asked to take our order. I put some of the blue cheese on a slice of bread, squeezed a garlic clove which the roasting had turned soft on top, and yummed it. Had another. Drank some. Drank some more.

  When I looked up I saw Mallory studying me with an uncharacteristic frown. Mallory was not generous with frowns. She said it was a waste of the cosmetic work she had done from time to time, the kind of detail work you can’t see.

  She said, “Why are you limping?”

  “I’m not limping.”

  “Yes you are. I watched you when you came up to the table. Nothing pronounced, just a little hop-step thing.”

  “Oh, terrific. That, too?”

  She stared at me more intently, changed the subject abruptly. “Brigid, are you all right?”

  I realized I couldn’t speak because my jaw was clenched and my tongue was jammed against the roof of my mouth. I forced my mouth to relax enough to ask why she was asking.

  She said, “You seem agitated. It’s not like you.”

  Her asking that made me suddenly aware I could feel my pulse in my neck. Out of curiosity I pressed a finger against the vein and figured I was doing about one-twenty. “I … am … very … tensssse.”

  “Funny, I always think of you as almost scary calm. That’s why I noticed.”

  “I know! I feel like the only thing holding me together is my nerves,” I said.

  “Talk to me,” she said, and raised her hand to click an imaginary stopwatch with her thumb. That was the gesture for our acknowledgment that at our age you could talk forever about ailments but we weren’t going to allow each other to do that because it was too boring. With me it was insomnia, lower back pain, and allergies. With Mallory it was constipation, seasonal arthritis, and the eternal quest to lose twenty pounds.

  “I’m having a hard time remembering if it just started last night or if it’s been going on for a while. I was sick to my stomach last night, and feeling anxious at the same time. Right now I’m kind of befuddled, brain revs without engaging. Maybe that’s because I didn’t sleep well. Carlo thinks it’s stress related. Me, stressed. Tell the truth, my stomach is still a little off.”

  She clicked the invisible stopwatch as if she was turning it off, as if this was more significant than seasonal postnasal drip or a hemorrhoid flare-up. “Electrolyte imbalance? Too much or too little water.”

  Having a sick husband must make you a medical expert by necessity. I shook my head. “Nothing different from the way I always do it.”

  “There’s probably some small thing going on, but when did you have a physical last?” she asked.

  “I can’t remember. Last year, I guess, when I got my flu shot.”

  She picked up her bag, which had been hooked over the back of her chair. It was the kind of thing you see in a shop and wonder why anyone would pay a thousand dollars for a purse. She took out her cell phone. “I don’t know who you’re seeing, but it’s time for a good internist.”

  “No, really,” I said.

  “Yes, really.” She pressed a speed-dial number, I guessed because of Owen, and rolled her eyes; the usual if-this-press-that messages must have started. She knew in advance the button to press that would get her to a real person. “This is Mrs. Hollinger,” she said when someone answered. “Please have Dr. Neilsen call me as soon as he can.”
r />   She paused. “Oh no, Mr. Hollinger is stable. Just have Dr. Neilsen call me.” She disconnected without saying good-bye.

  “I don’t think Tim Neilsen likes me very much right now,” I said.

  “What’s the difference? I’m sure he doesn’t like me much right now after I got him and Jacquie to come to that fund-raiser. Don’t forget, I was the one who introduced you to them. But he’s a doctor, not a date. All he cares about is that we can pay the bill.”

  I didn’t object further. After acknowledging everything that had been bothering me, I was too spent to object to anything. It was easier to let Mallory push me around.

  When she put away her cell she took out a pillbox in the shape of a Fabergé egg. I’m certain it wasn’t the real thing. “Pill?” she said. She opened it, shook several different-shaped capsules and tablets into her hand.

  “What is all that?” I asked.

  She pointed them out one by one. “St. John’s wort, Valium, diet pill, diet pill, calcium, diet pill, Valium, fish oil. Here, have a Valium.”

  I looked at it doubtfully, recognizing it from my stash at home but considering my promise to Carlo to be careful about the stuff. “If I relax it could get ugly.”

  “I’ll risk it. You can take it with the wine,” she said. “It’s only two milligrams. Tim prescribed it for when I get overwrought about Owen.”

  “I have them at home. If I can’t wait till then I’m worse off than I thought. This’ll do,” I said, picking up my wineglass. But wrapping my fingers around the stem made them cramp, so after I took a decent slug and managed to get the glass back on the table without spilling it, I bent my hands back and forth to make the pain go away. “You should stop worrying about your weight,” I said to change the subject. “You look fine.”

  Mallory raised her arm and grabbed some sagging tricep with a look that said Gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case. She said, “This coming from someone who can still wear sleeveless tops. I hate you.”

  I thought of a short time ago when I had turned the lights out on an army veteran a third of my age. “I hate myself. It’s just not me. Can this be hormonal?”