[Darkthorn 01.0] Pond Scum

by Michael Lilly

  “You recovered from his death remarkably fast. There aren’t any photos of him around your house. You’re uncannily at ease with Beth having put distance between you and the case. A lot of people would be going all Inigo Montoya on this bitch, but you won’t even mention him unless it’s about the case itself.”

  “I guess I don’t really know how to cope.” I’m facing away from him, covers drawn up to my neck. From the way I hear him, I think he’s sitting up.

  He laughs quietly. “That’s bullshit. The thing is, I’m pretty sure you did it. The other thing is, I’m not going to tell anyone. I’m glad you did it. Someone had to.”

  Suddenly I’m treading dangerous waters, playing with sharks of species previously unknown to mankind, and that water is thick with chum. I need to play this carefully. I may be about to gain an ally, a friend, someone to whom I may even be able to relate my dark past. Maybe.

  “Why would I want my father dead?” I say. It’s the only way I can think of to ask the question without dropping my guard and my I-didn’t-do-it pretense. I try to regulate my breathing, but it’s no use; perhaps it’s not too late to salvage my façade by pretending I’m about to cry. But it’s unnecessary.

  “I know who he was. What he was. I know what he did. Because he did it to me, too.”

  Eleven

  I roll over to look at him. What little light manages to slip through the shades gently illuminates angles of his face that lend it mystery, but despite that effect, he suddenly seems vulnerable, transparent, fragile. No person alive knows better than me that broken pasts do not necessarily lead to fragile individuals, but I can’t suppress the urge to protect him from every foul thing that’s ever walked the earth. The lighting at the office lent his face a degree of naïveté, but that couldn’t contrast more with what I see now: the scars of his past burst forward and I wonder if my face is currently betraying the same scars.

  “I’ve never told anyone that before,” he says. His gaze points at a point on the bed near his feet now. “When I saw that he was dead, I was all but delighted. I saw you at the station and you seemed appropriately shocked and shaken, but it didn’t last long. There was a flash of satisfaction in your eyes. The kind an artist has when he’s admiring his own work. It wasn’t vengeful or vindictive. Just … complete.”

  His quiet, steady voice and clarity of word choice have me convinced. He’s sincere. He’s an ally. I take a moment to drink in the moment; I’ve never had an ally before. Not to the caliber of someone who not only knows about my past, but shares it. The darkness of our individual shadows is incomplete, but in that place, where our shadows overlap, we fortify and strengthen each other.

  “He was a monster. And Keroth is going to go to jail for it.”

  “Keroth? Why him?”

  “He was the one circulating the pictures and tapes. He used his contacts from his time in undercover to establish a network, and that industry was, apparently, in high demand. He used to come over to my house all the time. He’d get drunk with my dad and then watch him abuse me. He loved it.”

  “Mother fucker …”

  I surprise myself by my openness, but the words come easily, as though they’ve been lying in wait, in desperate anticipation of a kindred soul to which to reveal themselves. Momentarily, I’m tossed wildly outside of my area of comfort, but that sensation ceases almost immediately, replaced by one of solace. We lock eyes for a time, and suddenly the ambitious sheen of his eyes has become one of innocent determination.

  We share more than our past. Our goals are mutual as well, and one of them has already been completed. The other looms on the horizon, a quarry now sought by not one hunter, but two. The thought is invigorating. Two knights are better than one. Now I need to sacrifice a pawn to get out of check.

  “Why don’t I know you?” I ask. “From before? If you grew up here, I’m sure I’d have met you at one point or another.”

  His voice is shaking now. “After your dad,” he says, after a small pause, “I was put into intense therapy. Without seeing much progress, I got sent to a residential treatment facility in Wyoming. They helped me make progress. Set goals. I decided I’d be a detective. I only got out a few years ago, and went to school immediately. Getting the job was a bit hard, with the background checks and all, but after I got my old therapist to write a letter of recommendation, they accepted me. I saw the photos of your dad in the bullpen and got sick. I almost relapsed into the trauma that I’d experienced as a kid, but I composed myself. I wanted to solve the case. Not for any sort of redemptive sentiment I had for your dad, but to thank the man who did it. So, Detective, thank you.”

  “We should sleep,” I say. I am genuinely touched, and washed over with a massive wave of emotions of which I didn’t even know I was capable, but even as I identify them, they confound and overwhelm me; I’m drained.

  “What do we do now? Does Connors know?” In spite of my suggestion, Love seems to be drawing energy from this. I don’t think I can shut him up without crushing his spirit, and of all people, I know what it means to have your small, well-guarded slivers of hope crushed into dust.

  “Nope. Just you.” He nods, calculating his way through the path I’ve taken so far.

  “He knows who you are. Yeah?” I nod. I didn’t have the advantage of his absence from my life during my blossoming adolescence, escaping his familiarity with my childhood image and emerging a completely different, unrecognizable person. He watched me grow up, saw me become the semblance of the man who would, fate permitting, be his permanent and devastating undoing.

  “Does he know this is all going on?” he asks.

  I sigh. “Yeah.” I tell him about the steps that I took to lay his scent on the trail, and about Keroth’s swift removal of those steps. I tell him about the antagonizing gifts that he’s left in this room, on this bed. I tell him about the developments that have taken place over the years in preparation for this scene, the dramatic act three of my life.

  He’s lying down now, on his stomach, but propped up on his elbows, with a pillow under his chest. “What do we do?” The ‘we’ is empowering, augmenting the sensation of security in this strange new phenomenon.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I have one more thing I can use, but for the life of me, I can’t come up with a good way to use it.”

  “What is it?”

  “His hair comb. I know his DNA will be in the database, so if I can successfully plant that as evidence, I think I can pin him. I don’t even need enough to convict him; just enough to get them digging into his life. Arguably, knowing that he’s under suspicion and that there’s someone trying to frame him for murder, there’s a chance that he’s hidden the evidence of the kiddie porn ring. But for now, I just need to get the ball rolling. I need eyes trained on him. I need to put on the pressure.”

  “Well,” Love starts, breathing deeply. “I know you aren’t supposed to be working this case. But I can be your guy. I can get done whatever you need to on the inside. It won’t look suspicious if I want to look through a few things. I can drop evidence into a bin and pretend it was there the whole time. Just pretend it was overlooked and never got processed. What do you think?”

  I’m taken aback. On the one hand, I finally have an ally. I have someone on my side, ready to fight alongside me, for the benefit of humanity. He’s shown that he is willing to wear the obsidian mantle that I have carried alone for so long.

  But on the other hand, if he’s just another one of Keroth’s goons, his positioning is prime for a kill. I’m keeping my queen close to my king, but if it turns out that that queen is actually my opponent’s, I’m finished. There’s no amount of castling or tricky knight routes that will get me through that. I’m beaten.

  Again still, what other options do I have? I knew from the beginning that my access to the case would be extremely limited, but I didn’t anticipate my efforts from outside the station to be counteracted with such swiftness. And now, with my new friend, I can have a hand in the in
vestigation without appearing anywhere near it. Surely, if I’m being surveilled as heavily and constantly as I suspect, they’re aware of my closeness with both Love and Beth, but that, too, can be manipulated. In order to pull this off, I think I may need to tell Beth about the goings-on of both my mind and my hands.

  Startling both of us, a knock sounds from the door. I get up and open it, and Beth stands there, looking distressed.

  “Nightmare,” she says. “I heard you guys talking, so I thought I’d come set my mind at ease. Anything good?” She sits on the edge of my bed, her image reflecting in detail her past few days. She’s a mess, physically. Emotionally, too, sure, but that’s normal. Compared to the damage she’s already sustained in her mind and heart, this is cake. And in that regard, she’s handling it like a champ.

  “Not really,” Love says. He looks at me, checking for approval and passing the reins to me.

  Beth and I met when I joined the squad a few years ago. Tired of the bullpen having become a cesspool of misogyny, bad jokes, and the unholy offspring of the two, she developed a sort of ‘if you can’t help, fuck off’ attitude. This aided her already laser-like focus on her career, and she skyrocketed through the unspoken ranks, each successive case being more difficult and high-profile than the last.

  It was that same mentality, however, that spawned her general vulnerability that resulted in her dating Patrick McDouchebag. Her guardedness allowed her core to soften, and eventually, a guy showed up who complimented her every triumph, but passively degraded her for her misgivings, prompting her insecurities to fester and putrefy, eventually hollowing out a husk of sarcasm and coffee.

  She liked me immediately, though. Maybe it’s because I didn’t follow any of that ‘harass-the-woman’ bullshit, or maybe it’s because I looked her in the eye when I talked to her, instead of her boobs or ass, but whatever it was came naturally to me, and we became fast friends.

  One thing that may throw a wrench into the works, however: my night hobby. She’s never known about it, never suspected it. She likes having me on homicide because I get results, but she doesn’t know that half of those results are ones that I personally picked out and pinned down. I have imagined telling her multiple times, but none of the scenarios that have played out in my head have ended well. Usually there are lots of swearwords, maybe a punch to the face, and always handcuffs.

  But these circumstances are different from those which I’ve imagined. This story has a clear antagonist and protagonists, and along with telling her that I’m a serial killer, I can point at Keroth and say ‘bad guy’ as well as point to myself and say ‘good guy.’ Do I tell her now? Is that truly my best move here?

  I then recognize that, if it does go badly, there are a couple of possibilities that can still patch the hole in my hope bucket. If she cuffs me, calls the police, and has me taken away, I still have Love. He can still be my guy on the inside, and maybe he, on his own, is sharp enough to take on Keroth, especially since Keroth (presumably) isn’t nearly as familiar with him.

  Second, she may react poorly, but still not call the police, my freedom being saved by the threads of what would remain of our friendship. In this case, we could fight, visibly and publicly, and this would lead any onlookers to believe that we’re having problems, which would serve to get her safely out of the fray. If Beth isn’t going to be in on this with me, at least she can be out of the crossfire.

  Ideally, she takes it in her stride, her sense of justice (and maybe a bit of her protective instinct) obscuring the fact that I should have been in prison a long time ago. I realize that this is under absolute best circumstances, and that more likely, even if she does take it well, it will be emotionally stressful for her, adding to her distrust in men and crippling our friendship forever. Is it worth it?

  Maybe, after a small taste of what togetherness feels like, I’m getting greedy, and need time for my head to clear before I revisit the idea of bringing her in on this. But time is a commodity to which I have extremely limited access right now, and any means I have of buying more must be spent with the utmost care.

  I mentally assess the state of the board; my rook and bishops are gone, having been sacrificed in an attempt at checkmate. My knights are in no position, relative to each other, to be taking risks or moving so boldly. Their synergy must be forced at this point. My king and queen sit tightly together at my end of the board, and most of my pawns are scattered throughout the battlefield.

  Most.

  One of my pawns sits one space away from the edge of the board, ready to return to me my lost, precious rook. I think it’s time to make that play.

  My heart begins to race as I’m pulled back to reality, with Love’s and Beth’s eyes on me. Surely I haven’t been in thought for more than a few seconds, but the amount of information through which I’ve sifted makes it feel like a decade.

  “Beth,” I say, checking for a reaction; usually she doesn’t like me using her first name around others in the squad. I feel as though I’m in the clear, though, and I think that Love has an automatic in with her given that he was instrumental in her rescue.

  She only has to turn her head slightly to look at me, her gaze otherwise fixed on a point on the wall, her mind likely in another dimension, one in which, perhaps, none of us had made it through today alive. Her eyes, while exhausted, defeated even, are attentive.

  “Keroth didn’t kill my dad, Beth. I did.”

  Twelve

  [One Year Ago]

  I woke up from a nightmare, drenched in sweat and clawing at my mattress. I was unsure of whether the moisture on my face was from sweat or tears. Either way, it was salty. After grounding myself in reality, I sat up on the edge of my bed, with my face buried in my hands.

  Deep breaths.

  The nightmares had always haunted me, but had somewhat subsided since I left my dad’s house. No longer surrounding myself with the context and setting of my childhood, I was more or less free to bury those memories, which shed hope on my soul, like a wilting flower finally being exposed to the water and sunlight necessary for its growth.

  But last night, I’d been revisited by the worst of them. Without going into detail, it will have to be sufficient to say that my mind had concocted a steaming heap of my childhood traumas, layer upon layer of unholy acts and ill intent. The stench of this heap was beyond anything I was ever consciously prepared to handle, and its odorous tendrils plunged eagerly through the depths of my mind.

  I needed a shower. A long one.

  I took my time, letting the water burn my skin almost to the point of numbness. After I was sufficiently clean and red, I depressed the mechanism to make the water come out of the faucet instead, drawing a bath.

  Despite the heat of the room and that which I’d absorbed from my shower, I was shaking. I lit a candle with a shaky hand and turned off the lights whilst in wait. When there was finally enough bathwater for me to lie in it, I did so. One of the conditions on my must-have list while I was searching for an apartment was a bathtub that would cover my knees, chest, and crotch at the same time.

  This proved more problematic than I’d anticipated. Still, though, I found this gem, featuring not only the depth that I desired, but an old-fashioned claw-foot model, all the better for long baths; water in this type of tub will remain hot for far longer than its modernized, built-in counterpart.

  I lay down in the tub, relishing in the sting of the hot water against my skin. When I moved my legs or arms under the water, I felt the sting more intensely, like I was carving a path through molten earth with each movement.

  I watched the steam coil above me, dancing in the candlelight like smoke rising from a campfire. Silly as I thought it was, it reminded me of the patterns in the smoke discerned by the tribe Elder in Disney’s Pocahontas. I found myself wondering what trends might be foretold by my bath’s steam. A pooling near the ceiling took the rough shape of a face, but distorted with anger, fear, and a rabid bloodthirst. It only lasted for a split second, however,
after which I consciously acknowledged the effectiveness of a Rorschach ink blot test.

  That train of thought was a welcome distraction, and slowly I reclaimed my consciousness from the depths of my repressed memories, assigning it menial tasks such as being anxious about my workday and double-checking my mental shopping list to assure that I would have milk and bread the next day. As I did so, the steam in the bathroom looked less like a manifestation of future trends and more like evaporated water, and as I recognized that, I also recognized that the temperature and duration of my hot water exposure was probably unhealthy, to a degree.

  I didn’t care.

  Making a mental note to drink plenty of water throughout the day so as not to surrender my hydration to that which was spiraling down the drain, I toweled myself dry and got dressed. My skin was still red and my fingertips wrinkled enough to resemble a peach pit, but these physical, visible tales about my morning would be gone by the time I needed to go to work. Beyond that, there was nothing about my countenance that indicated distress.

  I studied myself in the mirror for a bit longer than usual, double-checking myself; for whatever reason, every time I had a nightmare, I felt sheepish in public, like my unconscious self had sent a memo to everyone I knew telling them that I was fragile and weak.

  I was aware that my nightmares didn’t make me weak.

  I was aware that being fragile and vulnerable isn’t inherently bad.

  But I was also aware that a bunch of murder detectives were not aware of these facts, and I was in absolutely no mood to deal with their bullshit. So, precautionary measures and double- and triple-checking for me.

  In some level of my mind, I was aware that there was no reason for them to suspect my nightmares, nor was there any evidence to suggest that I had had a traumatic childhood. But that layer of mentality was subject to the same onslaught as my self-confidence on these occasions, and suddenly, I was sure that everybody knew my past well enough to write a biography about me.