Gathering Dark

by Fox, Candice

  ‘Who was this guy who attacked you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It was pitch black. For all I know it was Tasik. He already set a parole officer onto me.’

  ‘That’s a big leap. The guy did what any sane police officer would do – order a check on a parolee who’s acting strange – and then suddenly he’s trying to rape you in your apartment?’

  ‘I don’t know if rape was the goal.’

  ‘Might it be someone connected to Sneak? Or Ada? You invite these types into your life, you’re going to get—’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ I said. ‘Are you going to help us?’

  Jessica wouldn’t look at me.

  ‘I’ll see what they have on your stolen car,’ she said finally. ‘And I’ll check in on Tasik, see why he’s so determined to crawl up your ass. But that’s it.’

  It seemed too dangerous to celebrate in any way as I stood there, but inside my chest an explosion was happening, of relief, of excitement. I felt an urge to hug Jessica, then an otherworldly repulsion at the idea, a sudden prickle of fury and hatred at this woman and what she had done to me, the necessity of her in my life both a decade ago and today. Outwardly I stiffened, determined not to do anything to let her know how grateful and confused I felt.

  ‘What would you recommend we do?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m curious about this parachuting thing,’ Jessica said. ‘You said the pamphlet was on top of the desk. You didn’t have to dig for it.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So it’s recent.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Go check that out,’ she said. Sneak was standing naked at the pool fence, her breasts and belly pressed against the glass like flat sugared doughnuts. Jessica turned to me. ‘And try to get your little posse of jailbirds under control.’

  I heard rapid, thumping footsteps on grass but didn’t have time to turn before the gate beside me lurched violently as Jamie scaled it from the other side. I looked up to see my son hanging over the top of the leaf-covered lattice, wearing a halo of morning sunshine.

  ‘Whoa!’ I laughed.

  ‘Whoa back,’ he said. ‘What are you doing over there?’

  I remembered Sneak standing naked at the pool fence, but when I looked back she seemed to have submerged in the water again. Ada was watching Jamie with interest. I expected Jessica to answer my child but the detective was examining her fingernails, leaving me to it.

  ‘I was just, uh, visiting.’ I gestured weirdly at Jessica. ‘Visiting my, um . . . friend?’

  Jessica looked up at me. Her eyes blazed.

  ‘Are you having a party?’ Jamie asked. ‘Who’s that near the pool?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be getting ready for school, kid?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be out solving crimes?’ The boy wobbled his head, sassy and proud of it. I bit my tongue as I watched the cogs and wheels in his mind working. He pointed at me. ‘Hey, wait a minute. Do you guys know each other from—’

  ‘Jamie, just—’

  ‘From jail?’

  Neither Jessica nor I spoke.

  ‘Because you put people in jail,’ Jamie said, pointing at Jessica now. ‘And you used to be—’

  ‘Knitting class,’ Jessica blurted. Everyone stared at her. ‘We met each other at knitting class. We both knit. Toys. Sweaters. So do they.’ She jerked her thumb at Ada and Sneak. ‘It’s a knitting circle.’ Sneak was at the deep end of the pool, seemingly engaged in a whispered conversation with the filter box.

  ‘I didn’t know you knit stuff.’ Jamie looked at me, sceptical.

  ‘I’m not very good,’ I said. I reached up and rubbed his arm. ‘Now go get ready for school, buddy.’

  Jamie thumped away like a happy rabbit, up the lawn towards Sasha’s house.

  ‘I love you!’ I called. He made a vomiting noise in response.

  ‘He usually says “I love you back,”’ I assured Jessica. She said nothing. ‘Knitting circle, huh?’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Jessica sneered.

  ‘I actually can knit,’ Ada chipped in with a smile, waving her cigarette. ‘It’s useful to know a variety of knots and ties. Good life skill.’

  A cold shiver ran through me. If Ada had heard our conversation with Jamie clearly enough to comment, perhaps she had heard Jessica warning me to get the dangerous woman off my team. Jessica seemed to be thinking the same thing. She sighed and walked away, into the house.

  Dear John,

  I don’t know what to say to your confession about the homeless guy. You’re telling me to go with it, to follow my instincts, that voice inside that’s saying ‘Fuck it!’, and then you tell me the first time you did, you killed an innocent person. That’s hardly an endorsement of the free life, if I’m honest. But you’re right. I’m slipping. I missed (skipped!) a class at community college the other day so I could go to a party with my douchebag boyfriend. He doesn’t have a lot of respect for me but I’m hanging in there anyway. That’s the first class I’ve skipped. Ever. At the party, I enjoyed the sense of recklessness. I enjoyed it so much, in fact, I got crazy high and have no idea what I did for a while there. I remember that this guy was walking around with a big yellow snake on his shoulders. We left the party in someone’s car, went somewhere, into the mountains maybe. The rush of reality creeping in heavily the next morning was sickening. Like a big monster that came lumbering through the door. I’m so angry all the time. Why do I have to do this? And why do I have to do it alone?

  I feel terrible for talking about how caged and hunted I feel when you’re sitting there in your cell twenty-three hours a day. I just watched a Louis Theroux documentary on San Quentin. I didn’t realise you have steel mesh on the front of your cell. You can’t even see out properly. I guess I thought there might be bars, a view of something, people going by. Maybe a window. It occurs to me that if you did have a secret bag of cash out there somewhere, you might try to find someone who would take it and share the adventures they had on your dime with you. It would kind of be like you’re along for the ride. They could send you postcards. But you know how that goes, don’t you – they send you a few then they get bored and stop, and you can only wonder what they’ve done, whether they’ve got themselves killed in Colombia while chilling out on the beach, and now some cartel scumbags have got your cash. Sounds like torture. While you know where the money is, you have the power. The potential.

  I’m supposed to go to class again tonight, but I have a bag of weed here and no sense of panic or fear in my chest about not going. There’s another party tomorrow night, and another class. Some dangerous people are going to the party, apparently. Sounds fun. I feel no real guilt about the trouble that will come if I keep sliding. Am I turning into you? Following in daddy’s footsteps? If I stop going to school completely I’ll lose my place in the course, lose my scholarship, probably end up out on the street like my mother. What am I supposed to do to turn all this around? Am I fighting destiny?

  You should just come right out and tell me if you have the cash buried out there somewhere or not. I’m sick of thinking about it.

  Talk soon,

  Dayly

  BLAIR

  I needed sleep. It was dangerous, with the probable concussion, but I had a shift at the Pump’n’Jump that night, and every limb weighed twice what it should. I left Sneak, still damp, in the kitchen, searching every cupboard and drawer for Hugh Jackman. I knew the creature was gone, but it seemed cruel to tell Sneak so. The thing was tame, but it had almost certainly walked out the open door when my attacker and I left the apartment. I tried not to think about its tameness likely making it easy prey for cats, hawks or coyotes out there. Him. Making him easy prey.

  I woke to the sound of furious scratching and leaped out of bed, hoping the sound was the gopher trying to make its way under the door to my bedroom. It was not. When I found Sneak she was in the shower, and the scratching noise was my toothbrush working a chemical foam back and forth in the grout between
the floor tiles. The whole house smelled of bleach. She had cleaned every surface. I opened the oven and stared at the gleaming interior. She had cleaned the collected gunk off the little plastic ring around the red ‘on’ light. The curtains had been steamed and were still blotchy. I thought about cocaine or ecstasy or whatever the hell she was on, and how easily I would be able to get through a night at the Pump’n’Jump on it. I saw myself cleaning the fine cracks in the slushie machine of crusty blue sugar crystals with a toothpick and a sponge.

  Sneak came down while we drove out of the city, as we turned off the I-10 and onto the highway towards San Chinto. She watched the vast, flat suburbs of Redlands recede into sun-bleached farmland at the base of the mountains. Road signs to Big Bear Lake encouraged drivers to speed through our destination without bothering to stop and look. There was little township to speak of. A yellow minibus outside the school was waiting for students as we drove by, half of the driver’s face masked by enormous aviator sunglasses and a ten-gallon hat. The only bar in San Chinto had a horse post out the front. Inconceivably, a surf gear shop dominated the corner of one block, blaring loud rock music, a chalk board reading simply SALES! SALES! SALES!

  On the edge of town, Sneak perked up as we followed signs to the aerodrome.

  ‘I can’t believe you asked the cop who arrested you to get involved in all this,’ she said.

  ‘She’s the only cop I know.’

  ‘Well, I appreciate it. It must stir up a lot of stuff.’

  ‘It’ll be worth it when we find Dayly.’

  ‘Why the hell is she doing this for you?’ Sneak asked. ‘You’re her old collar. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.’

  ‘I think there’s something terrible going on there,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid to ask what it is. But she looks awful compared to when I knew her a decade ago. She’s thin and exhausted. That house isn’t hers. Can’t be. And the broken windows? What the hell is that? I think I saw bandages under her shirt. Maybe she’s trying to distract herself from all that trouble, whatever it is, with a side case.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. If she’s going to help find my child, that’s all that counts.’ Sneak picked at her wounded ear. ‘I want to know what’s happened to Dayly, even if it’s bad. Even if it’s the worst.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.

  ‘It has to be bad,’ she said. ‘The gopher’s gone.’

  ‘The gopher’s gone because of me. I knocked it off the counter.’

  ‘It’s a sign.’

  ‘It’s not a sign, Sneak.’

  ‘I want to know if it was my fault, whatever happened to her. I showed her the dark path,’ Sneak said. ‘If she turned and walked that way and got mixed up with some drug dealers or pimps or bad cops or whatever, then I’ve got to know. I can’t wonder forever.’

  We arrived at a windswept field full of long, dry grass. A squat, plain building stood surrounded by large sheds, small aircraft lit yellow and orange by the falling sun. I pulled over in the parking lot and grabbed Sneak’s arm before she could get out.

  ‘Sneak,’ I said. ‘In Happy Valley, you slapped some sense into me when I was lying there pretending I was on another planet for days on end. Remember that? You might not. It was early on. You told me that if I cracked up, everybody would wonder why they weren’t doing the same.’

  ‘Sounds a bit deep for someone like me.’ She shrugged.

  ‘You said “We all get through it or none of us get through it.”’

  She looked at the buildings beyond, didn’t reply.

  ‘It doesn’t matter why Ada and Jessica have come along. They’re with us. You’re not alone. We’re going to get answers. We’re all going to get through it together.’

  She turned away and opened the car door, but in the side mirror I saw a flicker of a smile on her face. I tried to stop her outside the office doors.

  ‘We need a game plan,’ I said.

  ‘I got one,’ she said, continuing ahead. ‘Your turn to follow my lead.’

  The man behind the counter was small and lean, wearing a khaki uniform with little winged badges on the lapels. He was cleaning a glass display case full of aeronautical objects – antique-looking goggles and old maps, a leather helmet with long, dry straps and buckles – that served as a counter. Sneak strode up to the display case and put her forearms right where he’d just finished wiping.

  ‘Sir, I’m Detective Janice Morello and this is my partner, Detective Frances Levine. We’re here to ask you a few questions.’

  I kicked Sneak in the ankle but she didn’t look at me. The man behind the counter took in her greasy T-shirt, which seemed to be from a tattoo shop called ‘Death Punch’ in Las Vegas. He looked out the window at the Gangstermobile, and then at me, with my mom jeans and bruised face.

  ‘You guys are cops?’

  ‘We’ve just come from an undercover job,’ Sneak said.

  ‘What job?’

  ‘Fentanyl shipments coming across the border. We have reason to believe a gang from south of here is using small private airports east of Los Angeles to bring dangerous drugs into the country from Mexico. You watch Dateline?’

  ‘I do.’ The man straightened. ‘I saw the episode last week about fentanyl. Crazy stuff. Have you two got any identification?’

  ‘Identification?’ Sneak shook her head, baffled. ‘You think we’d risk carrying identification around these creeps? My partner and I have just spent three days holed up with a crew of psychopathic drug smugglers in Long Beach, in an attempt to get information on their leader. These guys are lunatics. We saw a guy get his hand chopped off with a chainsaw.’

  ‘Jeez.’ He swallowed. ‘And they’re in this area now?’

  ‘This is an epidemic we have on our hands here, man,’ Sneak said. She started taking leaflets from a stand at the end of the counter and making a stack of them. She tucked the stack into her handbag. ‘A national crisis. Millions of lives are at stake. You think you’ve asked enough time-wasting questions yet?’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ The man put his hands up. ‘Sorry. I don’t know how I can help you. There’s nothing like that coming through here. We’re a family business. We log every landing, and we take ID, and we have ground surveillance twenty-four/seven. I have the manifest right here.’ He leaned behind the counter and hefted a book onto the glass that was so big I was worried the display case would give way.

  ‘Mr . . .?’ I said.

  ‘Danny Rieu,’ he said. He looked at me as though asking for help. ‘It’s French Canadian.’

  The man’s glance awakened me. I thought about interrupting Sneak’s lies before they went too far. I realised how much was at stake. However, Sneak’s plan seemed to be working, judging from the attention Danny was giving her.

  ‘Mr Rieu, we’re looking for any information you have on a particular couple that might have been inquiring about parachuting in the past few weeks,’ I said. ‘We think they might be mixed up in all this.’

  I showed him a picture of Dayly on my phone that I’d taken from one of her social media profiles. Rieu hardly glanced at it.

  ‘I saw the report on CNN about the aerodrome outside Odessa,’ he said to Sneak, his eyes big, earnest, eager. ‘The ground controller who was letting guys through with night flights full of fentanyl. Eleven years, he got.’ He wrung his hands. ‘Eleven years. Just for turning a blind eye. He wasn’t even the one who—’

  ‘Danny.’ Sneak tapped the counter. ‘Try to focus. We’ve got to find these people before they skip town and head for Panama.’

  ‘Right.’ Rieu went to the computer by the windows and started clicking. ‘I’ve got all the footage here for the past six months. I’ll put it on a USB drive for you. I’m really tight on security. That’s how I know there’s nothing to worry about. Nothing I’ve overlooked. Nothing criminal. I don’t remember your girl specifically but a lot of couples inquire about parachuting. It’s the quintessential twenty-first birthday gift. A wholesome, thrilling a
dventure at a reasonable price.’

  He gestured to a poster behind the counter by a window looking out onto the field. The couple from the pamphlets, faces smashed with wind, howling with joy. The slogan beneath that read Wholesome, thrilling adventures at reasonable prices!

  Sneak and I stood back from the counter while Rieu clicked and dragged files onto a thumb drive.

  ‘This is not what I had in mind,’ I told Sneak quietly. ‘Getting caught impersonating police officers would be about as bad for us as sticking a gun in the guy’s mouth.’

  ‘I thought you were anti-guns.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘So it’s the police officer route, then.’ Sneak shrugged.

  ‘Sneak,’ I rubbed my brow. ‘Why didn’t you just tell him the truth?’

  ‘Because this is faster and more fun. Just relax.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I’ve done this a million times before. I learned from the best. I knew this guy who used to play a cop for truckers hauling goods out of the Port of San Diego. He’d pull the trucks over and threaten to write them up for some bullshit infringement, let them buy him off with whatever was in the back.’

  ‘Sneak, we don’t have time for this.’

  ‘He’d get all sorts of goodies,’ she said. ‘Cameras. Fur coats. Golf clubs. It was a great gag. But eventually it went bad, as all good grifts do. A trucker he’d pulled over gave him some DVD players as a pay-off, and one of the boxes was full of chameleons. They’re smaller than you think, chameleons. Expensive on the black market. There were about a hundred of them in the box and they’d travelled all the way from Africa so I guess they were pretty excited about getting out. They crawled all over the inside of his car. The guy freaked out and drove into a tree. Car exploded in a giant fireball. Crispy little chameleons on the ground everywhere.’

  ‘Mr Rieu,’ I said, pushing Sneak towards the counter. I needed to get him away from Sneak to give her time to search. ‘Perhaps we could leave my partner to look at your logbook and you could show me some of your aircraft?’