Gathering Dark

by Fox, Candice

  ‘A drug-induced hallucination.’

  ‘You weren’t there.’ She waved me off. ‘I know a demon when I see one.’

  ‘Sneak, you can’t stay here.’ I went to the window and drew the curtain. ‘If you’re found in my place—’

  ‘I won’t be,’ she insisted. ‘Come on, Neighbour. You’re in this far.’

  She was right. I was in dangerous waters up to my waist. Walking in further, letting the water rise to my neck, seemed like a small compromise. I knew the moment I left her there unattended she was going to ransack my possessions for anything valuable, and once she’d secured her stash she was probably going to pop some pills or snort some cocaine off my coffee table. But I was tired and anxious about Jamie, and the fight seemed more than I had the strength for. I went into the bedroom and packed the silver-framed picture of my son into my work bag, and hid Ada’s money in a shoe inside a box at the top of my wardrobe.

  I went to the freezer to get a scoop of ice cream, a small treat before my venture into the night. The plastic ice cream tub was on the counter. I sighed and picked it up, thinking Sneak must have got into it while I changed. It was too light, almost empty. I noticed the holes punched in the top of the lid at the same time I felt the shuffling movement of something alive inside it.

  ‘Oh, Jesus!’ I dropped the container on the counter.

  ‘Damn,’ Sneak said as she came into the kitchen. ‘I should have warned you. Sorry.’

  ‘Is that the goddamn gopher?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘What the hell is it doing here?’

  ‘I brought it from Dayly’s.’ Sneak peeled the lid carefully from the ice cream container.

  ‘How?’

  ‘In my handbag.’

  ‘That thing has been in your handbag all this time? What the hell is wrong with you?’

  ‘I’m a nice person,’ she said. ‘The cops will have looked at Dayly’s apartment by now. You think they’re going to feed and care for this thing during their investigation? You think Dayly’s housemate will? I know how she was about the pigeon Dayly rescued. She threw a fucking fit.’

  ‘Having you here is bad enough, Sneak. You can’t have that thing here, too.’

  ‘Well, it’s here.’

  ‘Get rid of it.’

  ‘Just hold it, Neighbour.’ She scooped the creature out of the box. ‘You’ll see it’s just—’

  ‘No, Sneak! No, I don’t want—’

  ‘Just hold it, for fuck’s sake! It doesn’t bite!’

  Sneak snatched my hand and held it flat. I winced as I felt the warm, furry weight fall into my palm.

  ‘Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.’

  ‘Look at you. You’re pathetic. How could you be afraid of something so small and cute? This thing is straight out of a goddamn Disney film. Open your eyes.’

  I looked at the creature in my palm. Its pink nose was snuffling at the base of my thumb. A splinter of terror shot through me at the sight of the bucked yellow teeth pressed against the tiny, furry chin. I had one eye open, my face scrunched and arm trembling.

  ‘It’s going to bite me.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘Do you know how they test a human for rabies? They have to drill into your skull and take a brain sample.’

  ‘It doesn’t have rabies.’ Sneak rolled her eyes. ‘Pat it.’

  ‘I’m not going to pat it.’

  ‘Pat it or I will slap you down right here in your own kitchen, bitch.’

  Hand shaking, I brought the little creature closer to me. With the index finger of my free hand I tentatively stroked its oversized head. The thing seemed to enjoy the attention. It rose up on its hind legs, and Sneak and I watched while it scratched at the white fur of its belly like a fat old man waking, yawning. I stroked its tiny pink tail, rolled my finger over its back.

  ‘It’s very soft,’ I conceded.

  Sneak was smiling.

  ‘Now take it away, please,’ I said.

  ‘Just hold it another second.’

  The gopher turned and started walking up my wrist, its little pink paws padding over my forearm, fast, towards my elbow.

  ‘Grab it, Sneak! Oh god! Oh god! Grab it!’

  Sneak plucked the animal from my arm. I watched her return it to the ice cream box and secure the lid. I had no words for her. I gave her a withering look and went to get my work bag.

  There’s a comfort in work. In blessed, mindless routines. Wiping sugar granules from the countertop of the coffee station, slipping bottles of Mountain Dew into the fridge in neat rows, checking off the bathroom cleaning roster. I watched cars move in and out of the lot in waves; cab drivers stocking up on water and aspirin for the long shift ahead, frat boys in juiced-up cars grabbing Red Bulls before heading out for a night on the town, film agents paying for gas for their Maseratis without breaking the conversation on their bluetooth earpieces. In the quieter moments after the red and violet sunset I did the crossword in the newspaper behind the counter.

  A no-show: Absent.

  I thought about Jamie, how many events in his short life I’d been a no-show for. Birthday parties. School awards ceremonies. Baseball games.

  My phone rang, a welcome reprieve from the dark thoughts.

  ‘I’m sending Fred around there,’ Ada said, without any sort of greeting. ‘Don’t run when you see him. I haven’t told him to whack you. Yet.’

  ‘What?’ I shook my head, bewildered. ‘You’re sending him where? Here?’

  ‘That cholo hangout where you peddle Twinkies.’

  A cold chill ran through me. I looked out at the street, the last whispers of white sky being slowly crushed by night. I didn’t like Ada knowing where I worked, didn’t want to think about how she’d acquired the information. ‘What are you sending him here for?’

  ‘I’m giving you a gun. Sneak was right. You might need one. But I wasn’t going to give it to you with that walking train wreck around. She’ll take it and sell it, or she’ll pop you with it while she’s high. She’s dumb as shit, Sneak. Her mama was a hill person. You can tell. One of those types that has a baby and lets the cow feed it from its udders in the barn while she goes about making the next one. She’s probably lifted most of the cash I gave you already, am I right?’

  ‘No, I hid it pretty well.’

  ‘You might think so. I bet you’re wrong.’

  ‘Ada, I don’t want a gun,’ I said. ‘Please don’t send one. I get caught with it and I’m going back to prison, guaranteed. If I’m found in Sneak’s company, maybe I can argue my case. But they’ll throw away the key if there’s a weapon discovered at my place.’

  ‘But I thought you liked guns, Neighbour girl.’ I could hear the smile in her voice. ‘You certainly seem to be a natural with them.’

  ‘How do you know Dayly Lawlor?’ I asked.

  ‘Never mind how I know her.’

  ‘Come on.’ I leaned on the counter. ‘Help me understand why you’re doing this for us. You laughed when you saw her picture on my phone. Was she one of your dancers at some point?’

  There was silence, then a small, sinister laugh, and I heard Ada sigh as if she was giving in.

  ‘I was sitting on Ventura trying to get to a meeting with an associate of mine,’ she said. ‘This was maybe six months ago. Traffic was banked up. I mean, it was at a standstill. I’m sitting in the back of my Lincoln – I got Fred driving – and I’m looking out. We’re stuck under this highway overpass and there are these pigeon nests all clustered up under the concrete ledge. Dozens of them. Shit dripping everywhere. Feathers. Really nasty, nasty business.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘While I’m sitting there, a girl gets out of a cab in front of us,’ Ada said. ‘Pops the back door and walks over to where the wall is all filthy with pigeon crap. She takes her hoodie off – her own damn hoodie, that she’s wearing – and she starts chasing around this goddamn pigeon that’s minding its own business there on the ground. I mean, holy shit. I’d neve
r seen anything like it. She’s trying to catch this disgusting little bird and it’s squeaking and flapping. Nobody else could believe it, either. We were sort of a captive audience, I guess you’d say – all the other people in the cars. Dudes start honking their horns, yelling, hollering.’

  ‘Did she get the bird?’ I smiled, seeing where this was going.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ada laughed. ‘She got it all right. Snatched it up like, uh, like a crocodile you see on the nature channel grabbing a bird off the side of a lake. She’d done it before, you could tell. I was so curious I rolled down my window. I said, “Hey bitch! What the fuck you think you’re doing? You going to eat that thing?” I mean, I couldn’t understand it – woman has got enough money for a cab but she’s taking a skyrat home for dinner. So she comes over to the window of my car to show me the damned bird all wrapped up in her hoodie like a newborn baby.’

  I laughed.

  ‘She says it’s a juvenile,’ Ada said. ‘Baby pigeon fallen from the nest. It’s been blown around by cars going by. It’s bleeding, hungry, dehydrated. She shows me how you can tell it’s a baby from the feathers and the beak and all that. This bitch is giving me a nature-channel lecture right there on the side of the highway. She says if she leaves the bird there it’ll starve to death or get hit by a car, or a hawk will come down from where they sit up on the light poles along the highway and eat it. Turns out pigeons are terrible parents. They won’t go down and help it.’

  I listened, watching the night.

  ‘I tried to tell this girl,’ Ada said. ‘“Honey, that’s what happens in life. Birds fall from nests and get eaten alive or run over or whatever the fuck. They suffer and they starve. That’s life.” And you know what she says? She says, “Not this one. Not on my watch.”’

  I heard two clunking sounds, imagined Ada putting her boots up on the desk in her office.

  She continued. ‘So, anyway, she turns away and tries to get back in the cab she came out of. Well, the cab driver is having none of it. He’s yelling about lice and disease and infection. So I called the girl and I told her to get in my car, and me and Fred gave her a ride to Sunset.’

  ‘That’s hilarious,’ I said. ‘You had that bird in your car?’

  ‘Oh, I had the car taken away and crushed right after,’ Ada said. ‘Shame. I liked that car. But I ain’t riding around in something that’s had some sick fucking vermin bird in it. I had Mike burn all the clothes I was wearing at the time, and Fred’s too.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’ I asked.

  ‘I got body lice in juvie once. Fat girl like Sneak brought it in. Everybody got it. It was hell.’

  ‘No, I mean why did you give Dayly a ride?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She sniffed. ‘Crazy ho amused me, I guess.’

  ‘I think it’s more than that.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I think you recognised the fact that if someone had said “Not on my watch” about you when you were a baby bird, then maybe your life would have been different,’ I said.

  There was silence.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ Ada said eventually.

  ‘What? You think I’m wrong?’

  ‘I know you’re wrong,’ she said. ‘I’m not some scabby fucking highway pigeon who needs rescuing. I’m one of the hawks. I’m a bird of prey, bitch.’

  I felt the smile drift from my face.

  ‘You tell anyone that story or your bullshit backyard psychoanalysis of it and I’ll cut you,’ she said.

  ‘I won’t,’ I answered, but she had already hung up on me.

  Dear Dayly,

  You’re right, I do get a lot of letters from crackpots and weirdos, but ‘Are you my daddy?’ is a subject that had not, until your letter, appeared among their writings. Regardless of the answer, your letter was a breath of fresh air in what is for the most part a monotonous stream of public grumblings and pleadings. Most people write to tell me how awful my crimes were, particularly the Inglewood massacre, in case the idea hadn’t occurred to me. Rarely if ever are these letters from actual victims of the crime; mostly grief tourists wanting to vent their supposed pain. Much of what I’ve received lately has been people writing to see if the $3 million you mentioned was mine, or if indeed there are other caches of my stolen money buried across the state. The find has tripled my mail intake.

  It’s true, your mother Emily Lawlor and I had a brief thing around 2000. She was a bit of a young punk. Smart-ass, but sweet about it. People called her ‘Sneak’ back then because she was real light-fingered, but she mainly stole to support what I thought was a rather minor drug habit. I’m sorry to hear she is an addict now. I’m not surprised you have ‘mixed feelings’ about her. It’s a hard life, having been given up. My mother was a prostitute, and I was raised by my grandparents in Utah. Most people don’t bother looking into my history to try to figure out why I did what I did, but that was a big reason; the abuse and neglect I suffered at the hands of my grandparents and the feeling of abandonment when my mother dropped me on their doorstep at age six and drove away forever. You might be interested to know that I’ve been seen by plenty of psychologists over the years, and have been tested to have an IQ of 142. There have been no findings to support a brain malfunction or tumour or psychological condition to account for me killing all those innocent people that day in Inglewood. I’m just a broken man who was pushed too far.

  So, yes, it’s possible you may have some claim to my DNA. Whether or not you want to confirm that is something you should probably think hard about.

  I’ve never had contact with Sneak in here, and I’m surprised by that, now that you say she’s an addict. There are a lot of former and current addicts in here, and all they ever want to ask me about is the money. I hit a lot of banks over a long stretch of time. The theory is that if I was stockpiling money from all my different jobs, surely it would be stupid to put it all in one place. But even if there was, say, another large cache of money hidden in Los Angeles or its surrounds somewhere, none of these guys would be able to spend a fraction of it in here. There’s only so much commissary you can eat, and they’d be relying on someone on the outside to take care of the rest of it for them without running off. A lot of times these guys just want to know the answer to a question. Questions and secrets can eat away at you in prison, with us all sitting in our cells twenty-three hours a day with nothing to do.

  Most guys on the row are indigent, meaning they live off what the state provides for them in postage, commissary and phone call allowances. Some of the more notorious inmates, serial killers for example, smuggle out pieces of themselves to a broker to sell online. My neighbour on the left gets about $50 on the internet for a lock of his hair. He’s got about six rape/murders under his belt. I have a broker who sells my letters for a lot more than that. People are convinced that one of these days I’m going to drop a hint about more hidden cash, disguised somehow in a letter. They think perhaps I’ll write a message in the first letter of every line, or gradually leak numbers that translate into longitude and latitude. I’ve heard you can leave invisible messages in paper with lemon juice. But I’m not that stupid. The first person to notice something like that hidden in a letter would be a guard. They read, scan and chemically test our mail, and there’s no way I’d risk one of those bastards getting any of my money. If I wanted to give some secret information to someone, it would have to be in person.

  This is all hypothetical, of course, based on the public presumption that there’s more of my money out there. I stole a lot more than I ever spent or gave away, including what was found. But you know how ignorant the public are. They’ll latch on to an idea just because it’s exciting and romantic.

  I hope you write back, but, like I said, think about whether or not you really want to know the truth of your parentage. I can tell you, some parents aren’t worth knowing. And think about selling this letter on the internet. A smart cookie like you should be able to figure out where. Some places, you can get up to $500 for them.
At least, that’s what my broker tells me, but there’s no way for me to know if he’s holding back.

  Take care,

  John Fishwick

  P.S. Why anyone would rescue a gopher or a pigeon is totally beyond me, but your photo is cute. You’ve got my eyes. Tell Sneak I say hello, next time you talk to her.

  JESSICA

  Jessica sat at her desk in the Homicide department, ignoring the eyes on her, scrolling through the six-hour initial interrogation of Blair Harbour over the Adrian Orlov shooting. She had not seen Wallert or Vizchen on her way into the building, but her shoulders ached with tension at the inevitability of their arrival, a feeling that mingled with the dread of someone pointing out that she should be nowhere near the station on account of her trauma leave. On the screen, Blair Harbour seemed shrunken in her chair, the forensic body suit ballooning around her, a smear of blood still in her hair. Jessica had always liked to do that, to get the first interview with the perp as soon as possible after the crime, make it as long as she could. Adrenaline from the crime makes them chatty, and the ensuing exhaustion makes them stupid. She liked to make the perp stare at the blood and dirt under their nails and try to explain it all away. Jessica was leaning forwards in her chair in the video, while her partner at the time, Andermann, stuck to the corner, a silent sentinel. Jessica pressed the right side of the headphones closer to her ear, watched the blurry image of Harbour’s face as she spoke.

  HARBOUR: I had nothing against them. They seemed nice enough. It was just the noise that bothered me. Aside from speaking to them about the noise I really didn’t know them terribly well.

  SANCHEZ: So the only interactions you ever had with Orlov and Zea were negative ones. You complaining about the noise, they defending themselves. You were in that pattern already.

  HARBOUR: Yes. I guess so. But look, you don’t shoot someone because they’re being noisy.