Gathering Dark

by Fox, Candice

  Kind regards, and hope to hear from you soon,

  Dayly

  JESSICA

  The street was crammed with squad cars, officers finding excuses to stay in the air-conditioned West LA police department building as the heat of the day grew. Jessica had spent the evening in her cramped apartment on Alameda, thinking about the house and the Harbour boy. She’d showered awkwardly, protecting her bandages, and dreamed of being chased by zombies. At midnight she’d got up, taken the keys to the Bluestone Lane house from the coffee table and thrown them into the trash. In the morning, she’d retrieved them.

  At the station, two bored-looking officers she didn’t recognise were manning the desk under the huge framed photographs of chiefs past. Jessica didn’t alert them to her presence, instead buzzing quickly through the door to the back offices with her swipe card. To be ignored on this mission would be a joy.

  She was not so lucky inside the open-plan office of the first-floor bullpen. The familiar smell hit her, of body odour, coffee and cigarettes. She felt the gaze of every person in the room drift towards her. Some of them held phones to their ears, or were leaning over cluttered desks, examining photographs, reviewing CCTV, staring at notes. But Jessica’s presence was like a low siren rising, hitting each officer separately. She cleared her throat and headed for the elevators.

  She was only seconds at the elevator doors, punching the button repeatedly, before she heard the words whispered somewhere behind her. Brentwood. Mansion. Millions.

  Nothing about her injuries. Nothing about Wallert and Vizchen. On the third floor, she didn’t stop to assess her impact on the room. She found Wallert in the coffee area, dumping sugar packets into his paper cup. She waited until he turned away from the counter, then slammed her palm upwards into the bottom of the cup, spraying coffee all over his face, the coffee machine, the counter, the wall. Before her partner could clear his eyes she drew back and punched him hard in the mouth.

  ‘You piece of shit,’ she snarled.

  ‘Oh my god! What the fuck!’

  ‘You fat, fucking traitorous piece of shit!’

  She hadn’t composed her words, hadn’t considered anything more articulate or cutting, something that people would remember in years to come. The insults just exploded out of her like barks. Officers were on her before she could land a second blow. Romley from Narco squad and some woman she didn’t recognise were hooking her arms and dragging her back. A crowd had formed, ostensibly to break up the violence but really to have front-row tickets for the showdown of the month in Homicide.

  ‘I could have been killed, you motherfucker!’ she howled at Wallert. ‘That guy picked me up and put me on the ground like I was a child. If you’d been there I wouldn’t have had to kill him. I shot someone because of you—’

  ‘You’ll get over it.’ Wallert’s shirt was stuck to his front with coffee, showing the outline of the black hairs on his pudgy chest. He wiped blood from his chin. ‘You’ve got all the money in the world to spend on therapy now.’

  ‘Are you hearing this?’ Jessica wrestled herself free from the arms that held her, looked around at her colleagues. ‘Are you all hearing this? This guy bailed on his partner.’ She pointed at Wallert. ‘That’s not what we do here. That’s not us.’

  She examined the faces in the circle, expecting to see her fury reflected back at her. But many eyes were downcast, or locked awkwardly with one another, having silent conversations, judging, weighing. She was surrounded by her people, and yet the word ‘us’ rang in the air thinly, like a squeak. Suddenly, Wallert seemed to be a part of them, of The Great Us, and Jessica was standing there wondering what had happened in the twenty-four hours she’d been away from the office, what discussions had been held, what decisions made, to draw a line in the sand between them.

  ‘This is unbelievable.’ She was suddenly out of breath. ‘This is—’

  ‘Sanchez, why don’t you pipe down.’ Some guy from Personnel division put a hand on her shoulder. Jessica felt the bite wound come alive. ‘Making a scene isn’t going to help your case.’

  ‘My case?’ She shoved him away.

  ‘What Wallert did wasn’t right,’ Romley from Narco said, shrugging. ‘But me and some of the guys have talked about it. Everybody’s been talking about it. From the initial reports, it sounds like you went off on your own. Sure, Wally and Vizchen should have backed you, but you made that decision, Sanchez. And this house in Brentwood thing – this is some incredible bullshit, if I’m honest.’

  ‘Sure would have pissed me off,’ someone said.

  ‘You’re not gonna take the house, are you?’ It was Veronica from West Homicide. ‘Someone said you were. But you can’t.’

  ‘I heard it’s worth nine mill.’

  ‘Talk about bailing on your partner.’

  Romley handed Wallert a bunch of napkins and Wallert smiled beneath them as he dabbed his bleeding gums. Jessica turned and glimpsed Vizchen at the back of the gathering, expressionless, watching. The bodies around her suddenly seemed to be radiating heat, making her wounds burn. Jessica thought of fever, infection, HIV. She gripped her head, tried to tell herself that this was all an act, an office joke gone wrong. That any minute someone was going to push through the crowd and put their arms around her and tell her everything was okay, that she was still a part of this team, that she wasn’t the enemy in their midst. But the person who pushed through the crowd was Captain Whitton, and there wasn’t anything friendly about his expression.

  ‘Sanchez,’ Whitton said. ‘Let’s talk in my office. Now.’

  Jessica sat in her captain’s office, thinking about how Andrew Whitton was a man stamped out of the mould of leadership in the Los Angeles Police Department. He was tall, serious, grave. Emotionless slate-grey eyes and broad shoulders constructed specifically for carrying the weight of responsibility, shoulders that looked dramatically stooped at solemn police funerals and old but powerful when he worked them alongside the boys at the station gym. On his desk sat a picture of his wife, Karen, curly-haired and eager-eyed in colourful spectacles, and their three sons, all cops. Sailing shots dominated the other frames.

  ‘It’s decision time,’ the boss said as he sat down. It was probably always time for something like that in Captain Whitton’s life. A decision. A recommendation. A request. A determination. Things that required paperwork and stamps. ‘You taking the house or not?’

  ‘I’ve known about this goddamn house for exactly forty-eight hours,’ Jessica said. Her tone was dead. ‘In that time I was injured on the job and I killed a man.’

  ‘Sure. And I don’t want you to think I don’t care about that.’ Whitton held up a placating hand. ‘My understanding is that a union rep and one of our health people came and saw you at the hospital straight after. You’ve got your trauma leave paperwork under wraps, haven’t you?’

  ‘They did. I do.’

  ‘Good. Then the Internal Affairs Group will set a date with you about the officer-involved shooting. So the process of dealing with your injuries and the events related to the shooting has started.’ Whitton said. ‘You used your gun, they have to look into it. And aside from offering you my condolences, and my full support as your captain, mentor and friend, all of that has nothing to do with me. What isn’t being handled yet is the potential shitstorm that’s going to come from this whole thing with the Beauvoir inheritance.’

  Jessica pinched the bridge of her nose. An ache was spreading through her face, backwards across the top of her skull. She thought about viruses again. If only she had been more careful, more discreet. But the phone call she’d received from Rachel Beauvoir in the locker room two mornings earlier had left her so stunned she’d repeated the conversation to a woman she barely knew, Fiona Hardy from the Firearms training section, who was standing nearby in a towel. From there, the news had spread.

  ‘A couple of guys from patrol said you were there yesterday,’ the captain said.

  ‘Yeah, I went to look at the house.’ Jes
sica shifted in her chair. ‘I went directly from the hospital. Is that what’s happening now? Patrols are doing sweeps to see if I’m hanging around?’

  ‘They’re curious,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you be?’

  ‘No,’ Jessica said. ‘What other officers in this precinct do with their personal time is none of my fucking business.’

  ‘Hanging around the house sure makes it look as if you’re taking it.’

  ‘A man left it to me in his will,’ Jessica snapped. ‘His dying wish was that I have it. The very least I could do is go look at it, see the gesture in person.’

  ‘But you’d been to the house a million times during—’

  ‘Did you bring me in here just to bust my balls?’

  The captain leaned back in his chair and looked Jessica over. She could see him reminding himself that this wasn’t her doing, that she was the victim, at least of the fallout of the inheritance.

  ‘You must be tempted, surely,’ the captain said. ‘It’s twelve million dollars.’

  ‘Every time I hear about this place the property value has gone up. There must be an oil spring underneath it that nobody told me about.’

  ‘Here’s how it is, Sanchez. The truth.’ The captain glanced at the door as though to make sure it was closed. ‘You deserve all the recognition you can get on the Silver Lake case. I know Wallert slacked on that investigation.’

  Jessica remained silent.

  ‘Wallert’s promotion to detective was an overestimation of his character. A decision made before my time,’ Whitton said carefully. ‘And I expect you not to repeat that outside this office.’

  Jessica still said nothing.

  ‘I feel as though I should make it perfectly clear what’s at stake here.’ The captain opened a drawer beside him.

  ‘I know what’s at stake, Captain,’ Jessica sighed.

  ‘And it’s my responsibility to confirm that, officially.’

  Jessica slumped in her chair. As she had done many times throughout their time together as detective and captain, Jessica sat in Whitton’s office and watched while he traced a finger under the words in a battered copy of the Los Angeles Police Department Policies of the Personnel Department handbook.

  ‘If you were to accept the house in Brentwood as a reward from Mr Beauvoir in exchange for your work on his daughter’s case,’ Whitton began, finding his place in the text, ‘you could be disciplined under section 33.2.’ He read, ‘“Misconduct, on or off the job, seriously reflecting on city employees or employment”, whereby “Employees must perform their duties in a manner that earns and maintains the trust and respect of their supervisors, other employees, and the public.” Your offence would be “Accepting favours or gratuities for services required on the job”.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Jessica said.

  ‘You could alternatively be disciplined under “Fraud, dishonesty, theft, or falsification of records”, whereby “employees must demonstrate personal integrity and honesty both in securing employment and in the performance of duties.”’ He paused for effect, his finger resting on the page. ‘Here, Jessica, you’d come under soliciting, accepting or offering a bribe. That’s an immediate discharge.’

  ‘There was no talk of the house being offered to me by Mr Beauvoir for working his daughter’s case when I was first assigned to it,’ Jessica said. ‘It wasn’t a bribe. The first I heard of his reward was when I was called by his sister, the executor of his will.’

  ‘You were obsessed with that case. People were getting concerned around here.’

  ‘This is exactly my point.’ Jessica threw up her hands. ‘You give a case everything you’ve got and people start getting concerned.’

  ‘You lost weight. You lost sleep. You never went home. You tried to walk out of the locker room to attend an all-staff meeting without a shirt on.’

  ‘I was tired.’

  ‘Just tired?’

  ‘I felt it.’ Jessica paused, trying to find the words. ‘I felt the . . . the heat.’

  ‘The heat?’ Captain Whitton asked.

  ‘You know when you’re in the dark.’ She struggled with her words. ‘And, uh, someone’s there. You can’t see them or hear them but you can feel, like . . . a kind of heat? Like a body heat?’

  The captain stared at her.

  ‘I felt him. I felt how close I was to catching him.’

  ‘Do me a favour,’ the captain said. ‘When you leave here, don’t tell anyone else you caught the Silver Lake Killer because you felt his metaphorical body heat in the dark. You sound crazy.’

  ‘What can I say?’ Jessica said. ‘The guy’s in jail now. You want to talk about crazy? Let’s talk about me sitting here getting chewed out for doing my job too well.’

  ‘Look, all bullshit aside, I don’t think IAG will believe, given the circumstances, that you were just overeager on that case,’ Whitton said. ‘The investigators are going to say it was more than simple passion for the job driving you. Some people are whispering about a relationship between you and Mr Beauvoir. One that would contravene other LAPD policies.’

  ‘I didn’t fuck the seventy-five-year-old father of one of my victims, Captain.’

  ‘I’m just telling you what people are saying, what IAG might bring up.’

  Jessica shrugged. ‘I stopped giving a shit what IAG thought about me a long time ago.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ he said, ‘if you take that house, Sanchez, you’re out of the LAPD. One way or another, they’ll see you out that front door and you’ll never be welcome here again. I think that would be a shame. You belong here, Detective. This is your family.’

  Jessica left Whitton’s office quietly, the throbbing rage she’d felt when she’d entered it slightly dissipated. Members of her LAPD family watched her make her way to the elevator. They watched her standing there, and in the burning quiet her eyes wandered to the records room door to the right of the elevators.

  She felt a surge of defiance hit her. A great, silent wave of anger. While a pressure was forming behind her, a will to see her pushed out the door among the men and women she had once trusted, she was grasping at anything to try to stay where she belonged, where she felt safe.

  The police made a mistake, the boy had said.

  I don’t make mistakes, Jessica thought. I was right then. I’m right now.

  She broke away from the elevators and backtracked to the records room. Jessica found the book for the Harbour murder, a thick blue binder stuffed with papers. She tucked it under her arm and walked down the fire stairs.

  BLAIR

  When I gave birth to Jamie, one of my wrists was shackled to the bed in the infirmary at Happy Valley. I strained against the chain as the contractions thundered through me, feeling something like a wild pig in a pen waiting for slaughter, trying to break free. I got to hold my child for an hour before the social worker came. I didn’t feel anything in that moment, handing him over.

  Looking down at Jamie on my chest in the room in which I’d birthed him, I’d thought how beautiful he was, how appropriate it was that this perfect little thing should be on his way out of the ugliness of that institution in only moments. I hadn’t been sad for me. I’d been relieved for him.

  The deliberate peeling away from the present I’d been doing from the moment my fate was sealed meant I spent the next few months swimming in a fantasy of my own creation. The other inmates had little to do with me. I was generally considered too ‘spaced out’ to bother with. I lay silently on my bed most days, dreaming my incarcerated sisters and I had been abducted from Earth by aliens, and the prison was a kind of holding facility for humans under observation by the extraterrestrial overlords. I’d given up my baby so that he could go back to Earth, where it was safe.

  I didn’t see Jamie in person for the first nine years of his life. It had been a necessary choice for me. The decision meant I didn’t have to watch him grow up behind glass, and that I could imagine him romping around the green fields of the Earth in my imagination, carefree and
joyous under endless blue skies. He would be untouched by my imprisonment when I was finally released, a perfect boy, ready to welcome me as his mom, his only living kindred spirit. We would continue on the plan I’d made for us before the murder.

  It had been a good plan. Measured and calculated, almost clinical. My relentless pursuit of my career after med school had meant I’d fallen into a pattern of casual dalliances with men – usually other doctors, who were as neurotic about their careers as I was. I’d had no desire to get serious about finding a man when I realised I wanted to be a mother. Signing up for a sperm donor hadn’t been weird. I’d had a vision for Jamie and myself, the son that wanted for nothing and the mom who would make him proud. Until I was released, all I had to do was survive. Things would resume like a play after an intermission when I finally came home to my son.

  But now a year had passed since I was released, and our lives were not nearing the ridiculous ideal I’d constructed at all. Jamie loved his foster mother and father, friends from my former life, and he was awkward at best and scared at worst with me. I’d stayed out of his life to protect myself, but in doing so I’d landed him with a mother he didn’t know but was forced to make space for in his already confusing and tumultuous young world.

  As I lifted my hand to knock on the door of Jamie’s house, I heard the boy somewhere inside the spacious home, his voice a high whine. ‘. . . want to go to Benny’s house! It’s not fair! Everyone is going except me!’

  ‘There will be other parties, Jamie. This is more important.’

  ‘It’s not important! It’s stupid!’

  I knocked, swallowing hard. Sasha opened the door, wearing a paisley apron. Perfect bangs. She was that kind of housewife, the kind who ran a blog where she taught people how to make cookies in the shape of action heroes and cartoon characters. Something was baking in the house somewhere, the scent of cinnamon and vanilla wafting out the door. Jamie was in the hall, his face dark with dread.