Fear the Darkness: A Thriller Read online

  Mallory had introduced the topic of Gemma-Kate, and Gemma-Kate was an easy topic. Part of me hated myself for dissing her after what I had just found out, but I swore I’d make it up to her. So I laid it on thick.

  Mallory shook her head back and forth three times, each shift marked by a “mm.” She took another deliberate sip of coffee, choosing her words in advance. If I didn’t know her now, I wouldn’t have noticed how careful she was. “So you think Gemma-Kate was slipping you antidepressants and that’s what caused all your symptoms? What about the Parkinson’s?”

  “Well, not that, I guess. But the rest, the anxiety, insomnia, even hallucinations and fever.”

  “But how did she get them? They’re prescription.”

  “You can get anything shipped in from India.” The phone should be ringing about two minutes ago, I thought, steeling myself against letting my eyes shift to look at the clock on the microwave oven.

  “How did you find this out?” Mallory asked, unable to keep from smiling, at what I couldn’t know.

  “Find out…”

  “That she ordered the drugs from India.” My thoughts did some tap dancing of their own. I started to say, “She used my credit card,” but I stopped, heart pounding with the near mistake. Mallory would know I couldn’t have found a charge for the drugs because she knew Gemma-Kate didn’t do it. Instead I said, “Where else?”

  “I wonder how long it would take. Doesn’t seem like there would have been enough time,” Mallory said. Was she looking just a little more alert, even though her body was draped comfortably in the kitchen chair? Maybe I’d lost the knack for this, or maybe I’d never gone undercover with someone who knew me as well as Mallory did. I just knew I wanted the phone to ring before there were many more questions and I dug myself into a hole before I got what I came for.

  “But not Carlo,” Mallory said, leaving the drug shipment question behind and going to another one. Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly as she studied me. Did she suspect me because I was accepting Gemma-Kate’s guilt so easily? Or was it because she had given me something that should have taken effect by this time? If so, why did she need something to happen now? It was never imperative in the past that I have an immediate reaction; better if it was delayed, after I was away from her for a while, so as not to create suspicion. Could she have found out what I had discovered? Could she read it on my face, that I wasn’t her best friend anymore? Maybe Mallory was hypersensitive to others’ liking or disliking her. Or was I suddenly reading meaning into a conversation, a look, that had always been there and meant nothing at all?

  If only I could be certain whether something was supposed to be happening to me. I wanted again to look at the clock, but Mallory was fixing me so steadily in her gaze I didn’t dare. She’d know I was looking at the clock and ask why. She’d had the past six months to observe me to an extent I hadn’t matched, and she knew me that well.

  “No, not Carlo,” I finally said. Come on, Plan B.

  She must have run out of questions for the time being, or knew that much more probing might sound suspicious. “So what else have you been doing lately?” Mallory asked. “Anything interesting going on at church?”

  “I don’t spend a lot of time there. I get uncomfortable around people who feel guilty because they want to use their organs for a while before they donate them.”

  Mallory laughed to hear me joke again the way I always did, and then switched to serious. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her face bland but her eyes like sparks.

  All I could think of was my conversation with Sig Weiss and how we weren’t talking about Gemma-Kate at all, like I had thought at the time. The superficial charm, the overriding motivation to satisfy your every desire, the chameleon-like behavior that comes from years of observing normal people … Sig and I had been talking about Mallory. “Nothing,” I said.

  “Yes there is. Remember when we were having that little bonding moment out by the pool and you asked whether we had to watch Beaches together? You always make jokes when you’re uncomfortable. Or nervous. What’s making you nervous, sweetie? Is it really Gemma-Kate or is it something else? Come on, I already know.”

  The nerve in my neck that comes as a warning of danger sparked. “What do you know?”

  She stared at me for a couple beats before she said, “That plain coffee just isn’t the thing for right now. Hold on a minute.” She got up and went into the living room, out of my sight. I took the opportunity to glance at the clock. 1:45. Five more minutes and I wouldn’t be able to count on that stuff working. That was, five more minutes if I had calculated right to begin with.

  Mallory came back to the table gaily rubbing the dust off a bottle of Talisker. “There’s some would say using a twenty-five-year-old whisky for Irish coffee is a sacrilege. But I say liquor is made for man, not man for liquor.”

  “I shouldn’t. I promised Carlo I wouldn’t drink in the middle of the day.”

  “You made that promise before the bad seed moved in with you. It doesn’t count.” Mallory twisted out the cork from the bottle. The seal had already been broken before she came into the room. She poured a generous amount into my mug, and a somewhat less generous amount into her own. I wondered if the same stuff in the coffee was in the whisky. Or maybe she knew alcohol would increase the effect of whatever she had given me. I sipped the mixture. So did she, so I didn’t think it contained anything more toxic than what she had put in the coffee. I have to admit even at that moment I thought it was good and hoped the charcoal was still working, if it ever had.

  Mallory’s cell phone rang with the melody of “Some Enchanted Evening.” She glanced over to where it sat in its little charging station. “I’ll let it go to voice.”

  Da da DA da da da …

  “Good Lord, no. Could be a Humane Society emergency or a Symphony Guild catastrophe. Besides, I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, and just in case I needed to show some effect, “I’m still not feeling too well.”

  Da da da da da DA

  She stopped me from getting up. “You haven’t mentioned how you’ve been feeling lately. You know”—she paused, trying to appear sensitive—“those other symptoms you were having. Did you make that appointment with the neurologist like Tim told you to do?”

  The phone stopped ringing; she must have waited too long to answer it, and it went to voice mail.

  “I’ll be back,” I said, recognizing I couldn’t suddenly not have to pee or whatever it was I was hinting at. I, too, had to work a little harder at being myself. “And then I want you to remind me to rake you over the coals for telling Carlo what I told you the other day. I asked you not to.”

  Mallory looked appropriately contrite. It was only now occurring to me how talented she was at behaving like a human being.

  Da da DA da da …

  I pointed toward the phone as I got up. “Sounds important.”

  While Mallory went to answer the phone I walked out of the kitchen, making sure the angle of the walls was such that she wouldn’t catch me going into the master bedroom instead of in the other direction to the guest bathroom. On the way I grabbed my tote off the hall credenza. I could hear her talking to someone, Gemma-Kate preferably, but anyone would do. Mallory said, “No, I didn’t know I had an appointment with the conductor. For a photo shoot?… When did you say it was?… I’m so sorry. Does he want to reschedule?”

  Yup, that would be Gemma-Kate. Plan B. She was good enough, and Mallory was egotistical enough about having her picture in the paper, that they could be on the phone for a while. If this wasn’t such a deadly game I was playing I would have chuckled.

  I don’t know what I would have done if Owen was asleep. I wonder if he ever was. He was watching the door when I came through it. It also struck me for the first time that he always kept his eyes on the door. I wondered briefly if he lived his whole life in fear, wondering when Mallory was going to finish the job. It was as if I was seeing everything for the first time in a different light. But thi
nk of that later.

  I put my tote bag on the side of the bed, reached in for the weapon I’d brought with me, and pulled it free. I pushed both the tote and the gun just under the bed, easy for access but unable to be seen by anyone entering the room.

  I leaned over the bed, glancing at the heart monitor to see his pulse rise slightly at the sight of me. I said a quick prayer to Who Knows that my questions wouldn’t send him into one of those episodes where he bucked his vent. “I’m sorry I don’t have time to prepare you for this, Owen, but I’m in a hurry and need to know quick. Did Mallory do this to you?”

  Owen’s eyes widened until I could see all the terror that had been stored in his soul while he had been kept a captive here, held down by nothing but his own body and these silken sheets. That terror poured out from his eyes, but it didn’t look like there was any less inside him. His answer wasn’t necessary, but I still watched for the blink. He hesitated. Then blinked once.

  No.

  “Come on, Owen, this may be your only chance. Don’t be scared. She can’t hurt you anymore.”

  One. Two. Yes.

  I could still hear Mallory talking to Gemma-Kate across the house. I said, “Did Joe find out? Joe Neilsen.”

  Owen started to blink erratically, and I thought he might be having a seizure. But it didn’t take long before I picked up a pattern as his eyelids fluttered, squeezed shut, and fluttered again. Short short short long long long short short short. For anyone who’s ever been in trouble it was simple.

  SOS.

  “Fuck,” the word formed silently between my lips, not daring to so much as allow that k to click in my throat.

  Then his blood pressure monitor started to beep loudly. Other than that, I noticed for the first time, there was silence in the house. Still hoping I had retained my cover, I didn’t let on that I was aware of Owen’s warning, and said, “Would you like me to read a little to you, Owen?”

  “Owen’s right, Joe didn’t know,” I heard Mallory say behind me. “Or at least didn’t know what he was seeing when he came over too soon and caught me putting No Salt in Owen’s feeding tube.” I heard her suck air between her teeth the way she did when she was testing a new wine, as if saying the words out loud tasted good in her mouth. My left hand went down for the gun I had placed underneath the bed but within reach.

  “Uh-uh,” Mallory said. “I noticed your tote bag wasn’t on the credenza where you left it.”

  I stopped and turned around to see her with a .32 in her hand instead of her cell phone. It looked quite natural, like she knew how to use it. A little nervous movement around the muzzle, not quite cold-blooded, but steady enough to shoot straight, and a large enough caliber to do sufficient damage at this range.

  “I thought you hated guns,” I said, stupidly.

  Her words were stone cold but her lips twitched nervously. “You must have me confused with a different Mallory Hollinger,” she said.

  Fifty–three

  “So you figured it out,” Mallory said.

  “Mostly. A few gaps, like was Frank Ganim blackmailing you, and did you finish him off with that choke thing to make sure it looked like he died from the antifreeze? And if that hadn’t worked, what was your follow-up plan?”

  While I talked I stepped a little to the left, instinctively coming between Owen and the gun. Mallory didn’t seem in a hurry to take the next step, or act like she was even sure what the next step was. I took advantage of that assumption, poking at her pride. It was certainly useless to try to pretend I didn’t understand what was happening.

  “But it doesn’t sound like you, Mallory, trying to off Owen with Joe around. Did you have a short window, between Annette leaving and Joe arriving? Get the timing wrong?”

  She was very careful to shake her head only slightly so as not to throw off her aim. It wasn’t an admission as much as it was letting me know she wasn’t going to be sucked into answering my questions no matter how much she wanted to. But she couldn’t keep her mouth shut altogether.

  “I tried, Brigid,” Mallory said. “Remember I tried to talk you out of going to that dog thing so you wouldn’t even meet the Neilsens. Right after I saw your office. Remember? But noooo, you had to come and meet the Neilsens. Whatever happens next is your own damn fault.”

  The tone of her voice sounded just like the Mallory who had been my friend instead of my killer. Even knowing what I did about her, this moment felt strange, like we were playacting at being enemies, like she would fire blanks and I would pretend to die.

  I tried stalling for some time until I could figure out how to get my own weapon. “So how did you get Joe drunk and into his own pool?”

  Mallory swallowed before she spoke, and in the hollow way her words came out I could tell she was nervous, that the casual tone seconds ago had been put on, like everything else about her. “You know I always love our chats, but I think we need to move the agenda a bit, darling.”

  I did a quick calculation of Mallory’s distance from me, where the gun was pointed, how quickly I could move, and whether she could hit a vital organ before I got to her. I figured the chances were against it.

  “Well, go ahead. Shoot me,” I said, feeling my muscles galvanized to dive across the bed, taking Owen’s body with me.

  Mallory’s eyebrows raised as she appeared to consider that option. Almost as if leaving it up to me she said, “If I shoot you here I’ll make sure I kill you. Then I’ve got nothing left to lose. So then I call Annette and tell her I won’t be needing her for a week. I cut out of town. Owen slowly starves to death.”

  We both looked at the man on the bed. Owen’s eyes had moved to the right, in my direction. He was begging me. The beeping of his heart monitor told me his pulse had climbed over the safe point. This was his life and he wanted to keep it.

  One more idea: Remembering that Mallory had likely put something in my coffee, and something stronger in the whisky, I brushed the back of my hand against my cheek. I swayed. I swooned. I dropped to the white carpet next to the bed. Knocked my head on the frame as I went down, but that only made the fall seem more realistic. Let’s see what she would do now.

  If she had put something in my drink, though, Mallory had more sense than to get close to my body to see if I was actually gone. I felt her giving me a wide berth as she walked to the other side of the room.

  Next I knew a book landed on my head. One of the big neurology textbooks, I thought, from the weight of it. When I opened my eyes to look I noticed it was the same pumpkin orange book Gemma-Kate had ordered to learn about serotonin syndrome. I wondered if they would think to look for fingerprints on the pages in question after I was gone. There was still Gemma-Kate, after all, and she was a cop’s daughter.

  I heard Mallory say, “You idiot, it was only supposed to make you disoriented. You’re faking. Get up.”

  I started to, but the knock to my head in combination with the activated charcoal and whisky triggered a wave of nausea and I threw up on the white bedroom carpet. The vomit was frighteningly thick and black, likely from the charcoal. Gemma-Kate didn’t say anything about throwing up. That must have just been me and the way I’d been feeling lately anyway.

  “Oh, gross,” Mallory said. “What is that?”

  “Activated charcoal,” I said, pulling my face away from the sludge. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and studied the residue there. Right now, Mallory with a gun. But I wasn’t all that worried yet. I’d been in worse fixes. I knew I was more fit than she was—at least I used to be before I’d been poisoned. All I needed was an opportunity. Plus I remembered my own gun was only ten inches or so from my fingertips.

  Mallory nodded, impressed at my attempt to beat her at her own game. “How did you know about the charcoal?”

  I almost mentioned then that Gemma-Kate and I were in cahoots, but it was important that Mallory think that no one else knew about her. In case I didn’t make it out of this alive, Gemma-Kate would be the next at risk. And maybe Carlo, too. “Old u
ndercover trick,” I said.

  “I tried to warn you,” Mallory said. “So many times I told you to stop the investigation.” She looked a little sad. I wondered even then if she might actually feel that way or if the show was a habit. Then she frowned, and I knew it was a show when she said, “I don’t know if I’ll ever get that out of the carpet. I’ll stop and get a throw rug to cover it so Annette doesn’t notice.”

  I felt my fingers creep toward the gun under the bed, but I had to hand it to her, she was on top of things. “I said uh-uh,” she said. “Roll away from the bed. About halfway to the bookcase. On your back.”

  I obeyed, and stopped in the middle of the big area between the bed and the window where there was nothing to use as a weapon. I stayed there on my back. Amazing how after you’ve thrown up not even a gun pointing at you is more troublesome. “What was supposed to happen?” I asked.

  “Just the usual. I dissolved some of the antidepressant in the coffee. The whisky was to increase the effect. Let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “On a hike. You like hikes, don’t you? I’m sorry I always preferred shopping.”

  “What about Owen?”

  Mallory rolled her eyes. “Oh good Lord, how that man hangs on. He should have been gone months ago. People his age don’t survive this long with locked-in syndrome. Unless I want to keep killing people I’m going to have to take care of him soon, before the next person starts nosing around in my business.”