Fear the Darkness: A Thriller Read online

  All those parts I’d played while I was working undercover, and here I was, bested by someone who could play a part better than I ever could. She might have befriended me originally because I amused her, but after I started investigating Joe Neilsen’s drowning I had become her prey. She had encouraged my suspicions about Gemma-Kate, who was convenient to her plans.

  What a schlemiel I was. What a dupe. What a, and this is worse than any part I’d played before, victim.

  I’d never been the victim before. I was always the victor, the righter of wrongs, Joan of Arc, goddammit. I was the one who got on her horse and rode off to save the kingdom. I was never the patsy.

  Goddammit.

  I remembered she had tried to discourage me from attending that function where I met the Neilsens. Maybe it was because by that time she found out who I was, that I had been a very special federal agent, and it was too late to cut me off without raising suspicion. So she had used our friendship to hold me close, keep her sights on me. But once I started discovering details about Joe Neilsen’s death, the stakes were raised and she took action rather than risk I might discover she had … had what? The stakes had to be pretty high to slip me those drugs.

  It was easy to call Lulu and find out Joe got dropped off to read to Owen the night before he drowned. And to call the home health care company to check records and find out the night Joe went to read to Owen was Annette’s night off.

  Motive: Joe saw something at Mallory’s house.

  Mallory Hollinger killed Joe.

  Lock out. It had taken just a couple of hours.

  Fifty

  And Frank Ganim, arriving from Cleveland with an assumed name and fake story. Hanging around where we are. I went back over the antifreeze incident, not reconstructing exactly, because there was too much I didn’t know, but rather imagining how it might have played out.

  It’s not attempted mass homicide. Though I don’t yet know why, it’s Frank Ganim she wants that day at the church.

  If it’s Mallory who slips the antifreeze into the coffeepot, how does she do it? What do I see? What can I be sure of? Run it backwards. Mallory at the scene, helping out. Mallory coming out of the bathroom. No, I don’t see that. Where is she between the time she leaves me to go to the bathroom and the time she starts helping the victims? Unknown.

  Before that.

  Mallory with me inside the parish hall. Mallory shaky, saying she’s going to the bathroom. Mallory taking my coffee from me and drinking it. No, I can’t be sure she actually sips from the cup. Unknown.

  Mallory in church. Doesn’t sit with me that day, so I don’t know when she arrived. Was she late? Where is she between the time she arrives and the end of the service? Can she have gone into the parish hall after the coffee has been turned on? Unknown.

  Does Mallory agree to talk to Ganim in the columbarium, a place that’s public enough for his satisfaction and private enough for hers? Does he go out there with his coffee so he doesn’t see what happens to other people who drink it, and she goes to him during the confusion in the parish hall to finish him off? Does he simply succumb after a couple hours without treatment like George said? Or could Mallory have ensured his death by pressing gently on his carotid artery while he was passed out, like with the Choking Game? Unknown.

  Back up. Even before I tell Mallory about the toad poisoning, she has her plan for me. Coupled with her dosing me with the antidepressants, she has everything she needs to make me suspicious of Gemma-Kate.

  And if the whole plan at the church falls apart, there will be no suspicion of Mallory and she’ll come up with some other way to get rid of Ganim.

  Back up. The day of the Humane Society fund-raiser, when Mallory meets Frank Ganim and appears to stumble toward him. Is she flirting? Or is he telling her why he’s there and she nearly collapses in shock? Unknown.

  There was only one person who could answer these unknowns, because Mallory probably told him everything that she was doing, knowing he had no choice but to keep her secrets.

  Owen.

  Indeed, whether Geoffrey Pope II wanted me to get Mallory Hollinger for the sake of his dead father or the sake of half the inheritance, I couldn’t know. But I still didn’t have anything to go to the cops with except all my conjectures and unknowns. What would I say, my best friend gave me prescription drugs and I took them? She killed her first husband and then she tried to kill her second? You don’t believe me? Just ask the man in the bed. All you have to do is ask questions that require a yes or no. He’ll blink the truth.

  And if the cops did believe me, and went to the Hollinger house, if Mallory suspected I knew what to ask Owen, Owen would be gone with his next heartbeat. She would know how to make it happen. Hanging on to life with nothing but his eyes and that still-beating heart, Owen held the answers to what had happened to Joseph Neilsen. And beyond getting to the truth, I was duty bound to save him. You might retire from the business, but that “serve and protect” thing doesn’t die.

  Owen was the slim scrap of humanity I was bound to protect.

  I thought about Owen lying in that bed, probably knowing that his killer was ministering to him with such care that no one suspected. I thought about the equipment, and the private nurse, and Mallory’s insistence that Owen be cared for at home. I thought about the bookshelves with all the books that Mallory said she had read, just a bunch of stage props to make her look good.

  I happened to be walking around the house while I thought this, taking a break from the computer and stretching my back a bit. That was why my eye happened to light on one of the books Gemma-Kate had ordered. It was lying closed on the dining room table. I took another look at the book. It was an odd color. Pumpkin orange. You don’t see many medical references with pumpkin orange covers. Now I remembered why it had been tickling in the back of my head. I had seen this book on the shelf in Owen’s room.

  I read the title again, something about drugs that induce neurological disorders. With a husband who had locked-in syndrome due to trauma, why would a person have a book on drugs that cause brain damage? What use would a person have for a book that showed how prescription drugs could be used to weaken or even kill someone?

  And what about Frank Ganim? Other than the fact they both came from Cleveland, and he was clearly a fraud, I didn’t have anything to tie him, and his death, to Mallory. I asked Gemma-Kate about it.

  “Easy,” she said. “Everybody your age is on Facebook. Look him up there.”

  Sure enough, he was on it, and a social guy he was. Pictures at tailgate parties and in bars, arms thrown around shoulders. I downloaded all the pictures, and e-mailed them to Geoffrey Pope II. He e-mailed back that he recognized one of the men Frank was cozied up to, his father’s accountant. “I never was sure, but always thought the accountant and Mallory were having an affair before Dad died. It was one of the things that pissed me off, like what if she gave him a cut of the inheritance.”

  Easy jump to Frank Ganim knowing something through Mallory’s lover, at least enough to blackmail her. I didn’t have to ask Gemma-Kate in order to make this connection. It doesn’t take genius; more importantly, it takes having part of the dark side of the world inside you. I was a Quinn, too, and we all knew that.

  The evidence was enough to lock out any other possibilities. But still not enough to take to the cops, nail Mallory, and save Owen. If anyone was going to ask him what happened the night the train hit their car, it would have to be me. I remembered the day that Owen had panicked and fought against his ventilator as his blood pressure soared. I’d have to talk to him without frightening him, without a bunch of strangers, so he could confirm my suspicions without panicking. I’d be going back undercover for the first time since my retirement, this time into the web of my best friend the black widow.

  Oh, and before I move on, do I need to remind anyone that if my brain hadn’t been fried by the drugs, I could have figured all this out without Gemma-Kate’s help?

  Fifty–one

&nbs
p; A salesman who thought I was fourteen years old talked about being undercover after I arrested him. He said that sales is a lot like being undercover. You have to pretend a lot and not let on. For example, he said, if you go into some jerk’s office and he’s got a stupid stuffed marlin on the wall behind his desk, you have to be very careful not to look at it and think stupid fish. Because he might not be aware you’re thinking it, but he’ll pick up on some vibe you’re sending, and he’ll reject what you came to sell. People aren’t as stupid as you’d like to believe.

  The initial tactic when you’re going undercover is to convince the suspect you don’t suspect them. So I would drop by Mallory’s house the way I always did. The plan was to make sure I talked to Owen alone while Annette was on the premises. Annette could be used as a distraction and also would prevent Mallory from doing anything stupid in the event she discovered my purpose.

  To know everything, yet behave as if you know nothing—that’s the art of undercover.

  When I got back from the drugstore Carlo still wasn’t back with the rental car.

  “He called,” Gemma-Kate said. “He stopped for lunch with Elias, and after they’re going over to Home Depot, must be a male bonding thing. He said he was sorry for blowing up and did we need anything from the grocery store.”

  “I have to tell him what I’m doing,” I said. “I promised him I wouldn’t do things behind his back.”

  “I figured there would be something like that,” she said. “You haven’t lied to him. I gave him a list of things I need for dinner.”

  “Like what?”

  “Panang curry, cellophane noodles, and sriracha hot sauce.”

  “Oh, no, that sucks, GK.”

  “Look, Aunt Brigid, you tell Carlo about this and he’ll try to stop you. And if something goes wrong and he knows, he’s in danger. He’s not a good liar. Mallory would be able to see through it.”

  Anybody could. It’s the price of being honest.

  Gemma-Kate had told Carlo she’d been an idiot and wanted to make it up to him by cooking a great dinner. “You’ll be back before him,” she said.

  “I’ll be back before him,” I agreed. I still felt guilty. And a little manipulated by this girl I still half-suspected. But the mission was waiting. I threw the bag on the kitchen counter. “There you are, three bottles of activated charcoal, forty grams.”

  “Did you remember the phone?”

  “Yes, I remembered the phone. It’s in the bag.”

  While we broke open the hundred or so capsules and mixed it into a to-go container with apple juice, I reviewed with Gemma-Kate the part she was to play in the operation.

  I had a hard time believing Gemma-Kate and I would be working together on anything, but there you are. While she mixed the concoction I loaded my weapon and put it into my tote, a little regretful that I couldn’t wear a big blouse that would cover its bulge in the back of my jeans. I’d taken to wearing the form-fitting T-shirts. Mallory might notice.

  When I walked into the kitchen Gemma-Kate was finishing up. She fastened a top on the container and handed it to me.

  “Are you sure this will work?” I had asked.

  “I hope so.”

  “You hope so.”

  “I just read about it. Do you want to try it before you go? I read about some professor showing his class how strychnine had no effect after he drank this.”

  She was repeating herself. She must have been nervous. Or excited. I had the fleeting thought that Gemma-Kate was manipulating me just for grins.

  I had the fleeting thought that she was somehow in league with Mallory.

  Paranoia, right? How can a person tell what’s paranoia and what’s a healthy suspicion? But there was no turning back now. I said, “So what do you want me to do, chug some drain cleaner? Just give it here.”

  I took the to-go cup, stainless steel so you couldn’t see what was in it, and picked up my tote bag. Gemma-Kate handed me another bottle, plain water. I asked her what that was for.

  “Before you get there, swish this around your mouth just in case. The charcoal might turn your teeth and gums black.”

  “That’s what you said arsenic does.”

  Gemma-Kate shrugged, not bothering to differentiate between the two. “Are you sure you’re feeling well enough to do this?”

  “If what you say is correct, I haven’t had a dose in a while, and I’m feeling a difference. Now I can see how I would have been up and down.”

  I had already called Mallory and told her, whispering into the phone, that Gemma-Kate was driving me nuts and I had to get out of the house, could I come over? Murmuring her concern, Mallory said of course. I felt good about my deception, like I hadn’t lost the knack.

  I was about to walk out to the car when I thought of something I wanted to get straight just in case I didn’t come back. After all, I would be leaving Gemma-Kate with Carlo, with the Pugs, with what had been my life. I told her this, hoping that, even if she was a lion with a different frame of reference from me, at some level she could understand how I felt.

  “I need to know that you won’t do anything.”

  Understandably, Gemma-Kate looked puzzled.

  “To hurt anyone here,” I added.

  Gemma-Kate shook off my words like a disagreeable chill. “I’m thinking you don’t have to do this,” she said. “You’ll be okay now that we know it was the drugs. You won’t bring that boy back.”

  “I have to get Owen to corroborate what I think. Otherwise I’ve got nothing to take to the cops.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I can’t bear the thought of Owen enduring every minute, unable to scream when Mallory finally decides to end him. I can’t imagine anything more horrible than that.”

  I could see that she was thinking that over, maybe weighing my life against Owen’s and not finding him worth the risk. “You can’t see yourself the way I can, Aunt Brigid. I don’t think you’re as strong as you think you are. Not right now.”

  I said, “Hey, it’s what I do. Look, sweetheart, it’s just another undercover gig. Besides, Annette will be there. Mallory isn’t going to slip me strychnine with witnesses around.”

  It should have all gone very easy, very quick, and Mallory Hollinger should be in jail today.

  Fifty–two

  I was dealing with a murderer whose method of choice was poisoning, so the activated charcoal was my sole protection. I sipped the concoction slowly on the short ride over. It had no taste, but only a thick, oily feel to it, like thin sludge. Gemma-Kate had warned me the effect only lasted a half hour or so, and even that wasn’t precise, so I was going to have to time it right, to eat or drink something at Mallory’s within that time frame so she wouldn’t think I suspected her. I never turned down a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. To do so now would tip her off, because I knew, better than I ever had before, this woman was smart. She was so smart, and by this time she knew me so well, I was going to have to go deeper undercover, be more convincing as the character of Brigid Quinn, than I ever was before. The thing with really smart people, though, is they often underestimate the rest of us.

  Sitting at the bottom of her hill just before pulling into her driveway, I glanced at my watch for the last time as I drank the remaining solution. 1:35 P.M. If I was going to eat or drink anything it would have to be by two to stay on the safe side. I looked in the rearview mirror, and sure enough, my teeth were a little dark. I uncapped the bottle of water, filled my mouth enough to swish it around, and spit. Better. I drove up the steep drive, got out of the car, and rang the doorbell.

  “Look at your poor face!” she exclaimed when she opened the door. She put a comforting hand against the side of my face, and I fought against cringing away from her touch. Did she notice? I needed to get more convincing if I wanted to get Owen alone.

  I remembered the quip I had made to Roger at the Pima Pistol Club about having a run-in with an air bag. I repeated it just to get into character, and started to feel like B
rigid Quinn. “Do I smell coffee?” I asked, as I put my tote bag on the hall credenza as I always did, hoping the sag from the weight of my FBI special wouldn’t show, taking just a little extra care to put it down gently so the clunk of metal against wood wouldn’t give it away.

  “You sure do. I’ll get some for you. Come on in the kitchen.”

  “I can go say hello to Owen and join you in a minute.”

  Her back had been turned to me as I followed her through the living room, but now she faced me as she continued moving backwards, as gracefully as a dancer would, into the kitchen. Maybe she did the Tango Tour after all. She said, “Owen’s fine, he’s not going anywhere. I want to hear about Gemma-Kate.”

  “Is Annette with him?” I asked, trying to make it sound like idle curiosity.

  “No, she’s out for a while. Birthday card for her daughter or something.”

  Mallory turned back, and I followed her into the kitchen, where we had sat so many times before in chummy fashion at the table in the nook by the bay window that overlooked the back patio. I sat down where I could see the digital time on the microwave. 1:25, it said, ten minutes earlier than my watch in the car, which might have been, how much, four minutes ago? Longer? I made a decision and did a quick calculation that according to this clock I had until 1:50 before the activated charcoal might fail to work.

  “Would you rather have wine?” Mallory asked. “I have a nice Cab blend I’ve been saving. Only got an eighty-five, but I’ve heard good things.”

  I gave what I hoped was a convincingly regretful shake of my head, then watched Mallory pour us both coffee from the same pot and bring the cups over to the table without adding anything to mine. She could have always done it this way, knowing that a bit of prescription drug couldn’t hurt her if she took it in small doses. Now that I knew who, what, Mallory really was, every gesture, every affect about her struck me differently. For example, I considered for the first time how lately she sipped her coffee or wine so delicately, and often did not finish it. I thought it was about avoiding calories, but when we were friends she always finished the wine.