Fear the Darkness: A Thriller Read online

  “Jacquie, how many times altogether did Joey go over to the Hollingers’?”

  “Maybe three, four times.”

  “You don’t turn someone into an alcoholic that quickly.”

  “I didn’t say she did. I just said she encouraged him to drink.”

  “She also said you threatened her. What about that? Did you threaten her?”

  There was a pause. “I don’t remember exactly what I said.”

  “How about, ‘I might look weak but I can hurt you’?”

  She murmured something about maybe saying something like that.

  I said, “Listen to me. I’m not going to deal with you if you do things that are nuts. This qualifies as nuts. Do not do these things. Are we clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me repeat just to make sure I’m communicating. Don’t tell anyone what we discuss between us. Not even Tim. Don’t call anyone.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do I have to worry about you doing something crazy, Jacquie?”

  “No.” She sounded appropriately meek.

  I had seen her in a confrontation and didn’t trust the meekness, but I said, “That’s good. Now I want to hear one more time that you’re going to keep our conversations confidential for the time being and not take any action on your own.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “I won’t call anyone.”

  Forty–six

  I disconnected one more time, belched, and took a deep breath. Having to get tough with Mallory and Jacquie appeared to clear up my brain fog some, and it felt like I was finally able to open my eyes all the way. Figuring I had that situation safely taken care of for the time being, I got more coffee (I was quite certain Gemma-Kate hadn’t been near the pot) and went back into her room, where she sat on the bed engrossed in Drug-Induced Neurological Disorders. Something about the book seemed familiar, and I wondered if I had run across it in my previous life.

  I sat down next to her and absent-mindedly picked up The Pill Book from the stack. I thought of her question about what I was taking, vitamin, occasional sleeping pill, and antianxiety meds. Just occasionally. Except for the antidepressant Neilsen had prescribed. I turned to antidepressants. There were pictures of everything. It’s funny how with thousands of different pills they manage to make them all look different so you can pick them out in pictures. I found the one I started taking shortly after I started investigating the death of Tim Neilsen’s stepson. Maybe it was a long shot, but. I shoved the book at Gemma-Kate. “Find out what happens when you take this stuff. Find out how much is usually prescribed and what happens if you take too much. Find out about interactions between this and other drugs.”

  Gemma-Kate looked up. I could tell for a moment her mind was still in the book, and then she slowly focused on me. What she saw she didn’t like. “You started taking those after you had the blood test at the doctor’s office, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right, so it couldn’t—”

  “I know, but that makes me think of the hospital you went to after your accident. Did they take blood there?”

  “They did. They were looking for alcohol.”

  “Did they find it?”

  “Didn’t say. I don’t think we were there long enough to get the results, and the cop never showed up again, so I guess not.”

  “Couldn’t hurt to follow up on that report. They probably tested for several kinds of drugs. Go to the hospital.”

  I had been following Gemma-Kate along her line of reasoning until, at this second, an old television show came to my mind, about a boy and his family being marooned on another planet. His robot buddy would say, “Danger. Danger, Will Robinson.” I could hear that robot buddy inside my head, and he was saying, “Sucker.”

  “It’s not just the books,” I said.

  “Now what?”

  “It’s poisons. You were specifically looking up poisons on my computer. Before you said you started to research my condition. It’s in the browsing history.”

  “Because of the dog. What do you think I’m going to get a biology degree for? Is it suddenly suspicious that I want to go into forensic lab work? What do you think I should be, a cop?”

  “Awful lot of sudden interest in poison. And then people get poisoned. Don’t play me for a fool, Gemma-Kate.”

  “Don’t play me for one. If I was looking up ways to poison you, do you think I’d leave the browsing history for you to see?” she said, looking like I’d grown a second head and the head was talking nonsense.

  “You would if you thought I wasn’t smart enough to look at it. I can’t believe I was just about to let you manipulate me again,” I said, standing up from the bed. I think I may have thrown the book at her. She ducked. It hit the window behind her. Strong pane. She looked over my shoulder.

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  I turned to see Carlo. He hadn’t left yet. I don’t know if he saw me throw the book. If I threw the book.

  I think he saw me throw it. “Is that how we’re solving problems now?” he asked. “Let me help.” He grabbed the books that were piled on the bed and threw them, one at a time, against the wall. One hit the lamp and it crashed to the floor. He picked up one that Gemma-Kate had open. “Maybe this’ll help, too,” and he ripped out a wad of pages and threw them into the air. They floated down to the floor. “There, have you reached a resolution yet?”

  He stopped to catch his breath and maybe get a grip. Gemma-Kate let out a brief nervous giggle. I kind of felt the same way. We’d seen this kind of action throughout our lives. No matter what Carlo did he simply couldn’t match a Quinn when it came to losing your temper.

  “Both of you. Sit down right now,” he said.

  We obeyed. Sat down next to each other on the bed. It seemed the best course of action. I must also reiterate here, in Carlo’s defense, that he didn’t know, couldn’t know, that everything that was happening to me, all my reactions, were a result of drugs affecting my neurochemistry. I didn’t even know this.

  “Now that I have your attention, let’s get started. You,” he said, pointing at Gemma-Kate. “You may or may not be a homicidal maniac. You may or may not have poisoned a person or persons. All we can be certain of is that before you came into this home it was a very peaceful kind of place, but now I’ve got a wife who throws things. I throw things. You’re creating chaos.

  “And you,” he said, jabbing his finger in my direction. “What the hell are you doing with these books?”

  I explained, keeping my tone as reasonable as possible, that Gemma-Kate had been trying to get me out of the house, why I didn’t know. Gemma-Kate countered that all she wanted me to do was check the results of the blood test at the hospital, taken after the accident, to see if there was anything suspicious in my system.

  Carlo looked back at me. “So go to the hospital,” he said. “Maybe you’ll find out something to incriminate this kid and we can get rid of her. You want me to take you there? I’ll take you there.”

  “I don’t want to leave her here alone,” I said, beginning to feel that everything I said was a little lame.

  “Fine,” Carlo said. “I’ll tell Elias to hold off till I call him. I’ll watch her like a hawk so she doesn’t kill me while you’re gone.”

  I went into the kitchen, picked up the landline, and asked directory assistance to patch me through to Oro Valley Hospital, where Carlo and I had been taken after the accident. It felt like it took me half the morning to talk to the right person in the lab, and more than that to arrange to go there. In the meantime, Gemma-Kate gathered all the tossed books, shoved the torn pages back into the right one, and carried them to the dining room table for further study where Carlo could keep an eye on her.

  I still didn’t trust that she wasn’t pulling some kind of scam, but at least I knew the house was safe. I drove myself to the hospital, found the lab, and presented some identification.

  A guy the color of milk—you can alw
ays tell someone born and raised in Arizona, like vampires they never go into direct sunlight—came to the waiting room and handed me my report, a column of names and numbers, which of course was unintelligible to me. I could tell from his polite smile he knew I was clueless and felt superior for it.

  “Help me out here,” I asked, not having the time to play his game. “Is there anything on this list that looked abnormal to you?”

  “Oh yeah, we got a real high level of MAOI,” the lab tech reported, warming to the topic he must know and love. “That’s this number here,” he added, pointing to a spot on the report.

  “What’s MAOI?”

  “A form of antidepressant.”

  “Real high. Is it in keeping with twenty milligrams once a day?”

  “Oh no, this is more than four times that.”

  “Don’t you think it would have been wise to notify me?”

  He huffed a bit, withdrawing his magnanimity at my sarcasm. “I guess not. They would assume you were smart enough to know what you’d taken. It says here they sent the report to your doctor’s office. Is your doctor Timothy Neilsen?”

  I called the house. Gemma-Kate answered. “Put Carlo on,” I said.

  “Did you find something?” he asked.

  “Possibly. Listen, I’m myself right now, not crazed. Would you please go into my bathroom and look at the pill bottle with Rextal on the label?”

  He did, carrying the phone with him. “Got it.”

  “How many milligrams is prescribed?”

  “Twenty milligrams once a day.”

  “This is going to sound crazy, but I swear I have a good reason. Please count the number of pills.”

  He did, and told me.

  I thought back on how long I’d been taking them. It calculated. Gemma-Kate had not been giving me extra doses. Unless she ordered some from an offshore pharmacy. I asked to speak to her again.

  “Please look up antidepressant overdose and tell me what symptoms you find. I’ll wait.”

  It didn’t take long. Gemma-Kate said, “Nausea, diarrhea, palpitations, anxiety, cramping, irritability, hallucinations. Serotonin syndrome.”

  “What’s that?”

  “This says it occurs when there’s too much stimulation of the biochemical that makes us feel good.”

  “What happens then?”

  “It starts with a feeling of euphoria that rapidly deteriorates into cramps, nausea, diarrhea, anxiety. Rapid pulse.”

  “Paranoia and hallucinations?”

  “Yes, at the extreme. And toward the end, when the body’s control mechanisms start failing, fever.”

  Fever. Toward the end. “How can a person find out if they have this syndrome?”

  “I’m not a doctor, but I think you just did.”

  Doctor. “Tell Carlo I’ll be home in a little while.”

  Forty–seven

  It was Saturday. If they were both at home I didn’t care. I didn’t care who knew what because I was really pissed and wanted answers.

  No one answered the front doorbell, so I walked around the side of the house to the pool area, where I slammed the palm of my hand on the large plate glass window. Before too long Timothy whipped open the back door. “You don’t demand to be let into someone’s house. Get off my property before I call the police.”

  “You know what the police are like. A suspicious lot. Do you want to know why I’m here before you call them?”

  He blanched. It was a shot in the dark but it made him look guilty.

  “Where’s Jacquie?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Either talking to her priest or her psychic.”

  “So she does leave the house? You told me she doesn’t go out.”

  He looked genuinely sad. “She doesn’t tell me anymore. Those are the only two places she’ll go. She has groceries delivered.”

  “I’m glad she’s out. Whatever you’re about to tell me I suspect she doesn’t know, and it’s probably better for her that way.”

  Timothy laughed, but there was nothing funny in it. “I told you before. What’s better for her is if you just leave us both alone.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “She shouldn’t have agreed to let you get information. If only she’d left well enough alone.”

  “You know what happened. And you tried to stop me from finding out.”

  “Oh no. Just because I’m not having the police haul you away doesn’t mean I have anything different to say to you.”

  “Jacquie doesn’t know anything, does she? You know something about the night her son died and you didn’t tell her. That’s pretty disgusting.” I looked over at the fireplace and saw Joe’s shrine. I went to the mantel and with my index finger moved the little ceramic fruit bowl to the edge and a little further. “Talk to me,” I said.

  “You won’t,” Timothy said.

  I moved my finger a millimeter and the fruit bowl crashed to the flagstone floor, where it broke into an ungluable number of pieces. Timothy jumped off the couch and came for me but had no real concept of what going for someone would accomplish. I swept his leg out and he went down on his ass.

  It subdued him a little. “I haven’t done anything illegal.” He didn’t bother to get up off the floor, just spoke from where he was sitting. He put his face into his hands and rubbed hard before looking up at me. “There’s no more truth than that. What else do you want from me? I’ve got nothing else to give.”

  I moved on to a shell gecko while he heaved himself to his feet, blustery but afraid to approach me again. “Where did Joe collect these shells?” I asked. “Not around here, I guess.”

  “Vacation in Bali,” Timothy said with a quaver in his voice, seeing as how I wasn’t impressed by the bluster.

  I stroked the shell gecko. “One of these things broken looks like a dusting accident. Two and it makes you look bad.”

  Timothy started to cry and dropped back to the floor, kneeling by my feet.

  “Please stop,” Timothy whined. “Can’t we just get control and talk like civilized people?”

  “All right, let’s talk. Why didn’t you tell me the hospital gave you the results of my blood test? And that it looked like I had an antidepressant overdose?”

  “What does that have to do with Joe’s death?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out. I start nosing around, you prescribe antidepressants. I mysteriously overdose on them. I get tested and the hospital sends you a report. Why didn’t you tell me about an antidepressant overdose?”

  “What overdose? I didn’t get any message,” he said.

  “Bullshit. Your own lab called me. All they said was that my cholesterol was up.” I started to finger the shell gecko again.

  “We didn’t run a drug test. That’s a different lab!” Timothy dropped to the couch and buried his face in his hands again. It looked like dejection, but he was actually thinking.

  “Besides, we took your blood before I ever prescribed antidepressants,” he said, still thinking. “My usual assistant is on vacation, I’ve got someone filling in. Do you want me to call her right now? I could call her right now.”

  I could kind of tell that my accusation of intentional overdose wasn’t as great a threat to him as whether his malpractice insurance was paid up, and it defused my suspicion. “Let’s get back to Joey,” I said.

  Tim took a deep breath. He needed it. “I was glad he wasn’t in my life anymore. I hated the little weasel.”

  “So far you’re not the only one. You had trouble accepting his sexual orientation?”

  “Oh, bullshit. It wasn’t always that way. At first I loved the kid. I thought we’d be a family and he’d be the son I’d never had because I loved Jacquie so much. I still do. But over a couple of years Jacquie got jealous that he might like me more than her. After that it got weird, it always seemed like it was the Joe and Jacquie show, and no room for me. I took them everywhere, I tried to be a good father. But I could tell that he saw how things were and he had
the upper hand. It got worse and worse. Did you find out he dyed his hair to match his mother’s because he didn’t want people to mistake him for my son? Did the medical examiner tell you that?”

  I shook my head no. “Jacquie told me.”

  “She thought that was so cute. Oh, he knew exactly how to play Jacquie. I saw through it, but if I didn’t give him his way he’d do something to get back. They used to watch CSI together, sitting on our bed, and telling me to go away because I wouldn’t like the show. One night I told them to watch it in the entertainment room so I could go to bed. Next morning I went into the garage and saw my Lexus had been keyed, all along the driver’s side. I came back into the house, accused Joe. Jacquie got on his side. Joe got into my face and I pushed him against the wall. I didn’t hurt him, just pushed him. But he called the cops on me.

  “The cops came and arrested me, said they had to, for child abuse, and I spent a night in jail before they let me out. Oh, you should have seen it, I got the full treatment. Fingerprints, mug shot, orange jumpsuit, baloney sandwich, and a cot in a room with thirty men who screamed at each other all night. In Tucson money works for some things but not assaulting a child. Jacquie didn’t do a thing. She didn’t even come pick me up. I took a taxi home. But you have to understand, I still didn’t do anything to hurt Joe. That night I went out with my associate, and he dropped me off.”

  “Lari Paunchese?”

  “That’s right. I found Joe’s body in the pool. I pulled him out and tried to resuscitate him, but he’d been gone a while. I looked all over the place for a suicide note, but I couldn’t find one. I was afraid Jacquie would blame me for his death, and I was right, wasn’t I? She’s telling you Joe killed himself because of me. Or worse. Which is it?”

  “And you called Paunchese back to the house. He was happy to help you out.”

  “I said I didn’t want an autopsy, that it was unnecessary because it was clearly an accident and I didn’t want to put Jacquie through more pain. I meant it. Oh God, we’re prominent members of this community. I thought it would keep everything low-key. And then, probably because I was arrested for assaulting him, they suspected me of drowning him. Oh God, it’s all such a complicated mess. Oh God.”