Somewhere in the Dark

by R. J. Jacobs

  When I finally spot concrete, I focus on the shoreline and paddle with my arms toward the bank as the river begins to curve. I move toward a steady light like it’s a star I want to catch with my hand, like I’m reaching for a firefly that’s frozen in place.

  Rocks slam my knee, scraping upward along my right thigh. I bite my lip to push away the pain. I want to scream, but somehow stretch my foot forward to halt my momentum. My shoe knocks against something else that is jagged and hard. A cinder block, maybe. Getting out will be a scraping mess that could cut me to shreds, but what choice do I have? I reach for branches, brambles—whatever I can grasp and hold onto as the current pulls at me.

  I wedge my foot onto something sturdy, take hold of the corner of a rock, and haul myself up. Over the seawall, I see that the light I followed belongs to a back porch. Bugs circle listlessly around the bare bulb. I move my hand again until it finds another rock I can pull myself onto. I find another, and another, until I fall forward into grass, where a big-sounding dog howls at me from behind a fence. It’s deep-voiced and uncertain—a dog that doesn’t know me.

  I turn my head toward the chipped white fence slats and shush it because I know I have to move. I run between two houses, the stars bright pinpoints above. When I come onto the street, I see that I’m in a neighborhood that is completely unfamiliar to me even though it’s just across the river from where I’ve been. The dog barks on, a steady voice asking for attention, attention. Behind me, I hear the swoosh of a sliding door open, and I make my way onto the quiet street, my shoes sloshing with every step.

  I cut between two more houses and find myself in an alley. The cars a few blocks away sound like sweeping brooms. My knee aches meanly, but I won’t look at it—not yet. I may need to stop if it’s bad, and I can’t stop, even though I don’t know where I’m headed. When I hear the thwack-thwack of a helicopter, I look up and see the hazy edge of a search light.

  Go.

  Who can help me? Detective Marion would have to aid in my arrest. Ms. Parsons would open her door, but she has professional responsibilities. She would have to act appropriately because I am a person running from the police. Thoughts press against the back of my mind—thoughts that I have no time to think about now. How could the police have found the murder weapon in my apartment? Was that even true?

  It has to be. Detective Williams hasn’t liked me from the beginning, but I heard the other officer whisper it to him. They wouldn’t all be working against me, creating a story. The word for when people work together against you … I know better than to think their finding a murder weapon in my place is a conspiracy.

  But what is the weapon? I ran away before I heard.

  I know how that looks.

  Off the main street is a hardware store. A camera, black and round, hangs beneath the eaves, pointing toward the rear door but not the dumpsters out back. I crouch beneath an overhang, my shirt and jeans soaked. Lucky it’s summer, I think. Three months earlier I might have frozen to death. I go as dim as I can, even though I’m trailing a puddle behind me with every step.

  I know already what I mean to do here.

  Before I went into the dark, I lived with a foster kid named Hannah who taught me things about being on the street and running away. She had done it plenty of times. It has been so many years since she told me, but I tell myself: remember, remember. Hannah could make a shelter, and start a fire by short-circuiting a battery, then build it up using dry leaves and twigs.

  She taught me to sleep away from insect nests and places prone to flooding. She’d slept under houses in crawl spaces for half a year before getting caught.

  “I got sloppy,” Hannah told me, lying awake one night, full of advice. She’d been arrested for shoplifting a few days earlier. “I thought living off the land was impossible, but I got water from plant leaves using plastic bags, once. Finding water in a city like Nashville is actually easy.” She could find her way from the position of the sun during the day, then at night by finding the North Star. I think that if she could do it, I can, too. At least until I can make a plan.

  I push aside the fear nestled in my stomach. I wait for the traffic at the intersection to clear, then walk through shadows along the hardware store’s perimeter fence. The rusty dumpster door cuts into my hand as I try to slide it to one side, but I tuck my hair behind my ear and yank it the rest of the way open. Inside, cardboard pieces lie piled in a heap. I pull out three long panels and fold them under my arm. At the fence line, I slip the cardboard underneath, then hop over, skidding down the embankment to the railroad tracks. Like a hobo, I think, turning east, traveling on foot. My wet skin feels like the same temperature as the night air, like I am disappearing into it. As my arms tire, I shift the cardboard onto my back and carry it like a beetle.

  After a while, I realize I don’t hear the helicopter anymore.

  I walk a few miles, trying to keep my feet going. I want something to eat—anything. I think of the food I’ve prepared for parties and the spreads I’ve imagined must be backstage on Owen and Shelly’s tours—trays of sushi and sandwiches, arranged in neat rows. Then later, the waste. The rubble-gray trash bags spilling over plastic bins, straining to contain it all.

  Maybe I will … what? Go somewhere?

  As I pass under a road, I hear the swishing of tires from the overpass. I move through the overgrowth of an empty lot, rain-heavy branches brushing my bare arms. I hop another fence, dirtying the front of my shirt, then move through a clearing behind a large house. A cricket hymn welcomes me. Somewhere in the distance a car alarm sounds. In my mind I beg it to quiet down. There’s no telling the time. The hour is don’t get caught.

  I circle behind the house. Its windows are dark. I hope it’s the right age—mid-century, which Hannah had told me was best, built with an entry to a ventilation space. The air-conditioning unit hums like a giant insect. Thirst begins to hurt, so I find a smooth rock in the garden, wipe it against the hem of my T-shirt, and pop it onto my tongue. I close my eyes at the relief of spit returning to my mouth. I glance back at the tracks of my shoes through the wet grass, then push apart the laurels in the landscaping. I find a little door just where I’d hoped on the side of the house, made of plywood, cream paint chipped from years of weather. I slide the latch left, hunch down, and toss the cardboard into the dark. When I pull the door closed behind me, the blackness is nearly absolute.

  The dark knows me as well as I know it.

  I take my clothes off except for my underwear and lay them under me. My wet skin prickles as the air touches it. I rest my hand on my chest, where my heart is hammering. Finally, quiet—a chance to think, though everything is insane.

  I’ve found a tiny space of no-danger for a moment, but I have nothing: no money, no car. My phone is who-knows-where. Emptiness burns my stomach like I will never feel full again, but hunger is a strange kind of strength, one more thing to prove you can endure.

  There is so much to figure out. Too much to understand.

  Could I have killed Shelly and not remembered?

  No.

  I know I didn’t. But I have to wait until there is proof. Or I have to prove it myself. I have to find a way to tell the police about Sean.

  Then I remember something else about last night—Finch had said my name.

  When I picked her up in my car, she said, “You … you’re Jessie Duval.”

  I’m embarrassed to think it, but it was as though my name wasn’t even a name until she said it. They were two words that didn’t seem like they should come from Finch’s mouth, but also they were the best sounds I’d ever heard. I swallowed the feeling of wanting her to say my name again, to be known by her as a real person with a name.

  She had said it, I’m sure. So then, she knew about me.

  I think about that as I try not to close my eyes, but my body needs to rest.

  I fall into a dreamless nothing for I don’t know how long.

  * * *

  I draw in a gasp when I wake that
pulls me up onto my elbows. I’ve slept a little, maybe. Light frames the small door I came through and wind whistles lazily between the slim gaps. The play of dust motes in the air makes it look like I’m underwater, and a train whistle calls me from the world of sleep, like a fragment of a dream. The air conditioner rumbles as it switches on, but above me the house is silent. Surely, I think, I would hear footsteps if someone were awake.

  And then I hear them: car doors closing outside, the squawk of a radio. Voices talking back and forth. I roll onto my stomach and put my clothes back on, as they have mostly dried. Grit from the dirt on them chafes my skin. The button of my jeans presses into my stomach.

  Sound reverberates through the crawl space: it is a fist pounding on the tiny door so hard that the motes shift in the air. I want to believe I’m still dreaming. But when the door flies open, hands grasp at my wrists, dragging me into the light.

  And I fight.

  I scratch and yell, “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me!” Two try to hold me, even while they look away. The world is so bright it’s like I’ve gone blind.

  Through my thrashing, I hear them talking about me.

  “Is there a blanket or something?” someone asks.

  “The hell is she doing?”

  “The hell are you doing, miss?”

  I try to bite the one who asks me that. I can’t help it. I am, as Ms. Parsons would say, totally overstimulated. It is a self-protective reflex.

  Then another voice tells me: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you.”

  Handcuffs pull my arms back at an angle that lights my shoulders on fire. I’m shoved into a car, my face pressed against warm vinyl. Everything turns sideways before the world begins to move, the sky accelerating. My stomach drops, a sinking that will never stop. I try to sit up and realize I can’t. I am fully restrained.

  * * *

  At the station, the sun is warm on my face as three dark uniforms lead me up a ramp. Worn concrete feels slick beneath my shoes.

  “You’re going to like this a lot more if you just relax some please,” a voice says. “Make this easy on everyone?”

  I do struggle less—I know it is no use fighting my arrest now.

  Green light shines under my fingers as they are rolled over a scanner.

  “Look! Here!” a voice shouts.

  They take my picture, and there is a flash so bright I see veins inside my eyelids. They look like the bare branches of a tree.

  “Hold her still.”

  A prick stings the back of my arm.

  Then comes complete darkness.

  * * *

  I wake in a small cell. A cot with a green blanket is attached to the wall, but I lie curled up on the cement floor. I hear people’s voices, sometimes close and sometimes farther away, but mostly I block them out. I go inside myself, and I stay there. What I knew before, everything I built—my apartment, my job, my visits with Ms. Parsons—that’s over now.

  That life has ended. That me is dead.

  The police think I am Shelly’s killer. If I am to blame, I don’t understand how. I am in jail and a killer is free. I can’t see all of the events of the last two nights—it’s as if a curtain is hiding the part of a stage where the action in a play goes on beyond my view.

  Jail is a place of extremes. When the lights come on, they are very bright. When they go out, the cells become very dark. Sometimes, there are sudden loud noises all around—even yelling—like an accident happening over and over. Banging, slamming. But when those sounds stop, there are moments of extreme quiet. Silences so full they’re like buzzing insects you can never swat away.

  When I am taken to the cafeteria, I don’t stay long. I feel eyes on me. I hear people talking. Someone yells, “This bitch killed Shelly James,” and I keep my head down. I know better than to talk. Hands shove me down, the ground unforgiving against my hands and knees. Another shove comes, then more yelling. Some names I don’t remember, and then spit.

  This is the world now, I know. I’m trapped again.

  After that trip to the cafeteria, I’m switched to a different cell. Instead of taking me out, they bring food to me—which I mostly don’t eat.

  “You’ll be safer this way,” a voice tells me. “By yourself for the time being.”

  Time becomes distorted, but everything is structured—when food comes, when voices start, and when they stop. The lights switch on, then off. Sometimes I sleep and other times I can’t tell if I am asleep or not. I’m somewhere in between.

  One morning, a lawyer from the public defender’s office comes to talk to me. The painted cinder blocks feel cold and damp through my shirt when I sit up and lean against them.

  He introduces himself and tells me, “I’m here to offer you representation.” The overhead light shines through his stack of blonde curls as he pushes his glasses up his nose. “I can help you with the hearing process. You had an attorney help you before, right?”

  “I want to talk to my social worker, Ms. Parsons.”

  The public defender clears his throat. “That’s not going to be possible. Amanda Parsons is on a list of people not allowed to contact you.”

  I sit up straighter. “Why?”

  “Because of the circumstances of when you ran away,” he says. “The state considers what you did evading arrest. They’re trying to decide whether or not she assisted you.”

  I thought life couldn’t get worse, but the idea that I might have gotten Ms. Parsons in trouble seals up my lungs.

  “No,” I tell him. “She didn’t.”

  He blinks at my words, holds up his hand. “The police are just making sure, Ms. Duval. They’re trying to figure out how you spent the day before they found you. They know that you went to her office.”

  I press my palms into the floor to keep the world from spinning. “She had nothing to do with me running,” I say. I can’t see how she would have gotten in trouble for just meeting with me, but the past week has been so full of misunderstandings that I can’t believe anyone is safe. I just know I would say anything to keep her out of this.

  When I look up again, the public defender is saying my name, waving a hand back and forth. He stands, telling me he will come back soon, maybe in a day or so. As the door closes, I run my finger along the concrete edge between the wall and the floor, the edge of my fingernail scraping along the rough texture.

  Maybe the man on top of the hill looked like Sean Peterson, but he could have been anyone. Only one other possibility makes sense: that I went into the woods on the night of Shelly’s party. That I killed Shelly James. And that I somehow just don’t remember doing it.

  That’s what everyone seems to think, and there is evidence to prove it.

  I know it’s not true, but I can’t figure out what happened instead.

  * * *

  Later I’m taken to a room with a kind of metal desk that doesn’t move. There’s a mirror on my left. From TV shows I know people are on the other side, watching me, but I see only my reflection in the blank glass. Me, on my own jumbo TV.

  An overhead light buzzes above me. It blurs everything to a haze, like the smear made by an old eraser on school paper. I wonder if they know about me and dark and sudden light. Maybe they mean to intimidate me. Or maybe questioning is like this for everyone.

  The door opens and a man comes in who I’ve never seen before. He’s bald, maybe in his early forties. He wears a blood-red tie. His expression says he knows I’m guilty. He just has to get me to say it.

  He closes the door and begins to pace around the room. My eyes follow him, but my head hangs low.

  “Ms. Duval, I’m Detective Allen. We haven’t met before, but I have a few questions. Very simple. Okay?”

  My palms leave sweat condensation on the metal table. Because of the light, I can hardly look at him.

  “Okay?” he as
ks again, meanly. There is a hurriedness to the questioning that makes me even more nervous. I think to ask for my public defender, but I want out of this room as quickly as possible. I want to make it clear, if asked, that Ms. Parsons didn’t help me in any way. Then I need to go back to the darker, quieter space. I nod.

  “You’re aware the murder weapon was found in your possession. Correct?”

  “I’m aware they found … what they thought. I don’t know.”

  He leans over the table. “Did you take the murder weapon away from Percy Warner Park last Saturday evening?”

  “I never had a weapon. Any weapon.”

  “The object.”

  Blunt trauma to the head, I remember.

  “I left my car in the gravel lot before the party,” I tell the detective. “When I came back, I drove away. I didn’t take anything from the park.” I try looking up again. “What is the object?”

  He ignores me. “How did the murder weapon come to be in your possession if you didn’t take it?”

  I try to find words. “Come to be in …”

  “How did you get the object?” he asks.

  “I don’t even know what the object is.”

  “How did you?”

  “What object?” I shout.

  The detective steps back. Everyone always steps back whenever I finally let myself get angry.

  “The jagged piece of limestone that was in your possession. There were traces of Ms. James’s skin and blood on it. Did you take it from the park?”

  “No!”

  “Then how did you get it?”

  Round and round. The questions make me feel crazy, feel like I’m falling into hell—and there is no way out. Thinking of skin and blood—Shelly’s—on a piece of rock makes me want to throw up. My eyes feel salty and hot. I wrap my arms around my stomach and start to cry, unable to hold back now. The chair screeches across the cement as I push away from the table.