Gathering Dark

by Fox, Candice

  I don’t think that translates into an excuse for panicking during a bank heist and killing a bunch of people. But for me maybe it translates into an interest in the same kind of ‘break free’ mentality. Separation from the real world, from everyone else. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just took off. Packed a backpack and just went away. Anywhere. Nowhere. I could leave behind everything that is Dayly Lawlor and find a space in life where I’m not the outlying piece of the jigsaw puzzle. I could find or build a whole new puzzle where I fit.

  But all that requires stuff I haven’t got. Courage. Worldliness. Money. A car. A fucking backpack, ha ha. I think I would want to understand where I came from properly before I went. All of the different pieces and elements. Because for me there’d be no coming back.

  Sorry, all of that got really heavy, when I said at the outset that I wouldn’t let it. I suppose I’ll just send this letter anyway and see what you think.

  Chat soon,

  Dayly

  P.S. Sounds in your last letter like you’re trying to hook me into the whole mystery about there being more money out there somewhere, but I’m not buying it. Yes, I’ve looked at all the articles and conspiracy theories online. Been to all the subreddits about it. Plenty of experts agree, there is more money missing from the robberies that were attributed to you than was ever found or spent. But I also know how many marriage proposals guys on death row get. Surely you’ve found someone to give the money to, over the years, if there ever was any.

  JESSICA

  The Blue Room was close to home, only a stroll down Alameda from her small apartment. For Jessica, it held comforting memories. She’d sat here alone every year for five Super Bowls, most of the patrons wedged into the huge round booths upholstered in bright, plasticky teal, while she watched from the bar as they leaped from their seats or paced the sticky floor, grabbing their heads as teams scored or fumbled. The blue lights above the bar reminded her of the brick public toilets on Santa Monica beach with their anti-injection bulbs, her early days on the job hustling hobos off the sand or chasing bag-snatchers along the windy esplanade. She lingered now over a second Manhattan with two cherries, the bartender having forgone the fancy glass and given her a napkin to tear to shreds, the way he had a thousand times before.

  She needed a distraction from what she had learned about the Blair Harbour case from Digbert. The cheese sandwich bite, the pathologist had asserted, was distinctly male. Jessica couldn’t think about that now, what that meant about her, her work, the boy behind the vine-covered gate. She retreated from one growing storm in her mind into the chaos of another.

  It’s decision time, she thought. The words that rattled in her mind were in Captain Whitton’s heavy tones. Though she’d never liked being forced into a corner to decide on anything, she needed to make a call. Rachel had wanted to read the letter Stan left in his will, written on his deathbed in the company of his lawyer, over the phone for Jessica on the morning she broke the news about the house. But she couldn’t have that man’s voice in her mind, not then, not when it had taken so long to scrub his daughter’s crime scene photographs from her memory.

  Now, she could no longer ignore the letter. She opened the photos app on her phone. Rachel had sent a picture of the handwritten letter, wanting to keep one of the last things her brother had created before he slipped quietly from the world. She scrolled to the picture and zoomed in.

  Dear Jessica,

  I am writing to you to inform you of my decision to bequeath my house in Brentwood to you. The finer details of the arrangement will be presented to you by the executor of my will, Rachel, who you know, and my lawyer, Martin Astley of Astley, Rich and Pine.

  In the years after Bernie’s killer took her away from me, all I had been able to do was measure and endure the ways in which I could not act. Bernadette was only there at the Ralphs supermarket in the first instance because I’d forgotten some ingredients for dinner and had her stop there on the way home from work. It was my fault that she was available to him in the parking lot. I was unable to find her the night she went missing, or in the days after. I was unable to save her from her fate. I was unable to exact my revenge on the man who did this. I will never be able to hold her again and tell her she is finally safe.

  But there is something that I can do. I hope that my house, where Bernie and I shared so many beautiful memories, goes some small way to demonstrating to you how grateful I am for your service. It’s just a house, and you’ll come to understand that. But please understand that, to me, it is not just a building where I shared the greatest years of my life with my child. The house represents the only powerful act I have been able to exercise after what happened to her. I couldn’t help her, but I can thank you for helping her.

  I hope that it becomes a place of beautiful memories for you too. Maybe you’ll raise a family there. But if you should sell it, or give it away, please know that I am happy with your decision. This gesture is undeniably selfish of me. I realise it will cause problems for you with your job. But I ask you to bear it, as you have done so much already.

  With my deepest regard, and eternal gratitude,

  Stanley Michael Beauvoir

  The phone rang in Jessica’s hand, startling her. Rachel Beauvoir’s name appeared on the screen, as though she had been summoned by Jessica casting her eyes over the woman’s name in the letter. She answered, and heard a rush of breath on the other end of the line: relief.

  ‘Jessica, I’ve just got off the phone with Sal Eriksson at 915 Bluestone Lane. He says there are flashlights sweeping around Stan’s hou— your house. Is that you?’

  Jessica gripped the phone. The napkin she had been given lay in tatters on the bar before her. She sculled the rest of her drink, thinking.

  ‘Flashlights?’

  ‘Inside the house. He’s concerned there are prowlers. Should we call the police? Security?’

  ‘No, no, no.’ Jessica pulled a note from her wallet and left it on the bar. ‘That’s me. I tripped a circuit and I’m just looking for the breaker. Oh, yep. Yep. I think I’ve got it. No need to worry.’

  She hung up, pushed through the door of the bar into the street and ran back towards her apartment, still gripping the phone.

  There were indeed torchlights roaming through the house when Jessica arrived on Bluestone Lane. She parked her car and drew her weapon, skirting a thick hedge to reach the front of the property. The sight of an unmarked police car in front of the house gave her pause, then filled her with dread. A heavy weight flopped into the pit of her stomach like a stone.

  Jessica went to the front door and found it ajar. She pushed it open. Blackness cut through with slices of light from the back of the house, the windows lit by the pool. She heard something break upstairs, a crunch and the tinkling of glass. Laughter.

  ‘Whoops,’ someone cackled. A familiar voice. ‘So clumsy of me.’

  ‘Get down here, assholes,’ Jessica called. There was silence, then footsteps on the floating stairs. Vizchen appeared first, a thin outline with his characteristically hunched shoulders and immaculate short back and sides, before he blasted the torchlight into Jessica’s face. Wallert came slowly afterwards. Jessica could smell the bourbon on him from where she stood in the foyer. She saw Wallert’s gun was out of his holster, then noticed Vizchen going for his.

  ‘Put your guns down!’

  ‘You put yours down,’ Vizchen said. He raised his weapon. ‘We’ve had reports of a break-in at this property. We’re securing the scene.’

  ‘You’re pointing your weapon at a fellow officer!’ Jessica snarled. ‘How fucking dare you? Wally, drag your bitch into line!’

  ‘No can do, Sanchez. You’re on leave. A civilian. For your own safety, we’ll have to disarm you.’

  ‘Hey, hey! What the fuck?’ Jessica was shocked at the desperate sound in her voice as Wallert batted away her pistol and shoved her into the wall. She heard the jangle of his cuffs. ‘You’re drunk. This is . . . Wally, stop!’
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  She twisted out of his grip and scraped a boot down his shin, extracting a yowl that filled the house. Vizchen’s arm slid under hers, wrapped around the back of her neck, a sudden shove downwards locking the hold into place. Outrage was paralysing her. She needed to think about escape routes, counter-manoeuvres, words and threats that would stop them. But the surprise that they dared touch her at all was so all-consuming that she could only stand there, held like a suspect.

  ‘What do you fuckheads want?’

  ‘We just wanted to come see the place.’ Wally walked into the living room. Vizchen pushed Jessica in after him. ‘Half of this was supposed to be mine. Look at the pool. It’s fucking beautiful. I can see myself out there, margarita in hand. It’s like a postcard. Look at the pool house, Viz. They store their fucking surfboards in something bigger than my apartment.’

  ‘Every house in Brentwood has a pool,’ Vizchen chipped in. ‘I told you so.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ Jessica said. ‘Whitton will have your badges for this. This is break and enter, and assault on a police officer.’

  ‘We were conducting routine drive-bys and we saw evidence of a prowler.’ Wallert shrugged. ‘Just like you did on Linscott. What are you going to say? We struggled with a suspect who subsequently fled, some shit got broken. It’s part of the job, Sanchez.’

  The big man pulled an arm back and threw his torch through the plate-glass wall separating living room and deck. The glass split and shattered in a fantastic explosion of electric-blue light and falling shards. Vizchen laughed while Wallert went to retrieve the torch. Vizchen’s chest was hot against Jessica’s back, her twisted arm. She finally came to herself, roused by the gunshot sound of the glass smashing, and drove her foot into Vizchen’s ankle.

  ‘Oh, Jesus!’ He fell and she landed a boot in his ribs. She went for his gun and felt the air leave her body as Wallert barrelled into her side, a heaving black mass reeking of sweat and alcohol. Vizchen had recovered enough to pin her to the plush carpet, twisting her arm again, his fist clamped in her hair.

  ‘You better get used to this, Sanchez,’ Wallert huffed. He dragged himself to his feet. In the huge, bare living room, the man stood above her while Vizchen drove his knee into her back.

  ‘If you take this house,’ Wallert said, unbuckling his belt, ‘someone’s going to be here every goddamn night. Tapping at the windows. Ringing the doorbell. Smashing through the back gate. I’ll bring a fucking special response team down on you, Sanchez. I’ll bring them down on every family in every house on this street. They’ll drive you out of here with pitchforks.’

  He unzipped his fly, and for a moment Jessica’s body seized in terror, every joint locking, her mouth snapping shut and her eyes bulging against the dark. She had a piercing vision of Wallert grinding on top of her, his hand around her throat, his thighs slapping against hers, Vizchen nearby, watching, waiting his turn. A camera phone recording. And then, in an instant, the fantasy had morphed into something more real, not a vision but a memory. The soft carpet beneath her was the cold concrete floor of 4699 Linscott Place. The suspect. His slobbering, drug-slack mouth wrapping around her bicep, his teeth clamping down. Impossible strength. A bite on her shoulder, deeper this time, tearing. It was almost a relief to shake herself back into the impending double rape.

  But she heard the sound of liquid pattering on the carpet, and her horror-blindness cleared to show her Wallert not climbing on top of her but standing and pissing in the middle of the living room. She watched while he emptied himself, hips rotating this way and that, piss foaming on the cream wool, Vizchen’s body on top of hers jittering while he laughed. She lay flat against the floor as they left, too mortified to do anything else.

  In time a blessed breeze, sea air stroking its way through the city towards the mountains, came and lifted the stench of Wallert’s piss out of the room and through the smashed back window.

  Jessica was sitting with her feet in the pool again. She had only just stopped shivering when she heard the boy climbing the lattice, the characteristic ‘Oof!’ that announced his landing.

  ‘I heard glass smashing,’ he said as he rounded the pool fence. He stood looking back at the house, gripping the glass. ‘What happened? Did you have an accident?’

  ‘Don’t your parents wonder about you sneaking around in the middle of the night?’

  ‘They have people over for dinner.’ He waved dismissively at the fence. ‘They think I’m playing my Nintendo.’

  The wind was warm. Jessica wondered if the boy could smell the urine carried on the air, or if the smell just lingered in her nostrils, a part of her for the indeterminable future. She beckoned him and he came. She stepped down the stairs, the cool water rising up over where her jeans were pushed up to her knees. She put out a hand and the boy stepped back.

  ‘No way,’ he said. ‘I told you, I can’t swim.’

  ‘Come on,’ she said.

  ‘My clothes will get wet. Your clothes are getting wet!’

  ‘Live a little, kid,’ she said.

  It was all he needed. The kid stepped down into the water, slowly at first, then launched himself at her, thin arms grabbing at her neck and shoulders. For an instant she felt the arms of her attacker at Linscott Place, the brutal embrace of Vizchen, and then she was back in the moment again, just a woman struggling with a panicked boy in a pool. His floundering brought a smile to her face. She turned him over, hooking her arms under his.

  ‘Look at the sky,’ she said. ‘Relax. I’ve got you.’

  ‘This is crazy,’ the boy was huffing. ‘I’m gonna drown. I’m gonna die. I’m dead. I’m dead!’

  ‘You’re not gonna drown,’ Jessica said. ‘You’ve got this.’

  She walked backwards through the water, dragging him gently along, their arms locked. The bones in his ribcage swelled as he gulped air, the water pooling around his face.

  ‘I’m going to teach you how to float,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Yes, you can. Everybody floats. Arch your back. Stick your belly up. Higher. Higher. Stick your butt up. Lift your chin and just look at the stars. I’m not going to let go of you.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  ‘Really promise though!’

  ‘I do,’ she laughed. ‘I do.’

  She wandered. Jamie watched the stars. Guilt and comfort swirled in Jessica. She had grabbed the child and forced him into a difficult position, taken control, so that she could have something more vulnerable than herself to play with, to take her mind off what had just happened to her. To make her feel strong again. If the boy hadn’t been around, she might have reached for anything: a stray cat, some lonely deadbeat sitting in a bar. Anything would do. She wanted to see fear in something else’s eyes, to know she was not alone. She wanted to watch that fear dissipate. The boy in her hands laughed, bringing her back.

  ‘I’m floating.’

  ‘Put your arms out.’

  He spread his arms and legs, giggling, his strangely round belly protruding from the surface of the water. In the blue light it seemed like a taut, smooth island of spotless sand.

  ‘What happened to your arm?’ he asked. Jessica looked. The sleeve of her T-shirt had been pushed up over the ring of bite marks in her upper arm.

  ‘Dog bite.’

  ‘Whoa! A police dog?’

  ‘No, just a normal dog.’

  ‘Like a labrador?’

  ‘Does it really matter?’

  ‘Why did the dog bite you?’

  ‘It was crazy.’

  ‘Crazy how?’

  ‘Just concentrate, would you?’

  She slipped her arms out from under his and held the back of his head, pulling him gently along.

  ‘Don’t let me go!’

  ‘I’m not what’s holding you up, kid. I’ve just got your head in my hands. That’s it. Look.’

  She dropped her hands. The boy floated on his own, drifting slowly away from her like a chi
ld-shaped log, silently at first, then giggling again. His laughs made ripples in the pool and the island of his belly quake.

  ‘I can do this!’ he told the stars.

  ‘Seems so,’ Jessica replied.

  BLAIR

  Sneak looked terrible in the morning light. She sat on the stool on the other side of my kitchen counter, her chin on her folded forearms, watching me top up the gopher’s food. I rinsed out the bottle cap we were using for his water bowl. There were big, dark circles under Sneak’s eyes and a bloody crust at the side of one nostril, probably from a night spent snorting bad coke, I thought.

  ‘We need a better arrangement for the gopher,’ I announced, shifting the little animal from one side of the box to the other so I could take away the shredded mound of paper towel that served as a bed, and replace it with fresh stuff. ‘There are scrapes and scratches inside the container here as if he’s been trying to chew his way out.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Sneak grunted.

  ‘It’s cruel, him being in a container all day, where he can’t see out. Must be like being in a padded room in an asylum.’

  Sneak looked at the coffee I’d made her, but didn’t touch it.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ I asked.

  ‘Is Dayly dead?’ she responded. I picked up the gopher and held him in my palm. The animal took up a seed stuck to my thumb and pushed it into its furry mouth, sat crunching happily.

  ‘Sneak,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how to answer that.’

  ‘I’d have heard something by now if she wasn’t dead,’ Sneak said. ‘I’m not her favourite person in the world, but she wouldn’t leave me hanging like this. Is she dead or not?’

  ‘I can’t give you an answer,’ I said.