Gathering Dark

by Fox, Candice

  The veterinarian was a man in his forties with high, bushy hair. He had just washed his face, water clinging to his dark stubble. He came and leaned on the counter beside me.

  ‘This is real cute,’ he said. ‘Who sent you? Stevie Leaf?’

  ‘No one sent me.’

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked. There was a mustard stain on the collar of his white coat. ‘I got Kit Kat and Cristy, fifty a bag.’

  ‘I don’t want any drugs. I didn’t come here as a joke. I just want my gopher examined.’

  He snorted. I folded my arms. In a few seconds, his wide grin drooped slowly. ‘Examined for what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Parasites, fleas, intestinal worms?’ I shrugged. ‘Whatever you’d examine any other pet that came in here for. I want a full check-up. I’ve got money. Cash.’

  ‘You know, there’s a golf course behind my house,’ the vet said. ‘They poison these things by the hundreds. Shovel them dead into bags. Using actual shovels, honey. You ever heard of gopher fishing? Hillbillies do it. It’s a national pastime. Why you’d want to keep one as a pet is one thing, but why you’d spend good money having one checked by a vet is another.’

  ‘Why don’t you just let me spend my money how I want to,’ I said.

  ‘You’re crazy.’ He stood, looked to the woman with the pit bull for confirmation. ‘She’s crazy. What do I care? I’ll examine the damn gopher. I got nothing better to do.’

  ‘One more thing. On the door you say you do pet grooming.’

  ‘That’s for dogs, honey. Dogs and cats, not lawn rats.’

  ‘Okay.’ I nodded as he took the container towards the door near the pill rack. ‘I’ll wait here.’

  I sat by the woman with the pit bull, who had just about fallen asleep again in her chair. I patted the dog and watched the night fall through the dirty windows to the street.

  BLAIR

  Sasha opened the door and stared through the gopher mansion at me, her face distorted through the warped and bubbled plastic. I shifted the house against my hip and smiled, but didn’t get one in return.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘You didn’t call.’

  ‘I came to show you my gopher,’ I said. ‘My very healthy, active, biologically sound lawn rat.’

  Sasha turned and walked into the house. I followed awkwardly behind her. I was about to put the gopher mansion on the kitchen counter when she barked from the other side of the marble surface, ‘Don’t put that there!’

  I walked towards the dining room table.

  ‘Not there, either. No eating surfaces.’

  ‘Well, I can’t stand here holding it the whole time, Sasha.’

  She opened the door and led me out into the backyard, wincing as I placed the house on the glass outdoor table. With the huge enclosure removed from my vision, I could see her eyes and nose were red and puffy from tears. I have learned over the years that it’s better to let Sasha bring a problem to you. Pursuing it makes her retreat into a corner with denials that everything in her world isn’t perfectly peachy and under her tight control. So I opened the top of the enclosure and brought the gopher out into my hands.

  ‘Hugh Jackman,’ I said, ‘this is Sasha. I believe you two have met before. Sasha, this creature has been checked extensively by a vet. It is disease-, virus- and parasite-free, and has been vaccinated against pinworms.’

  ‘Pinworms?’ She grimaced.

  ‘I’ve conducted my own behavioural analysis over a period of days and have determined that the bite risk is low,’ I said. ‘These observations are supported by the—’

  ‘Just shut up, Blair.’ She pinched her brow. Her lip trembled. I stood there, waiting, while she attempted to shove her emotions back into whatever black hole she usually kept them tucked away in, a task as difficult as putting toothpaste back into a tube. Eventually she sat down at the outdoor table and I joined her. I put Hugh Jackman in the chest pocket of my polo shirt, and the little creature turned in a circle a few times and then balled up to sleep.

  ‘Henry’s leaving me,’ she said suddenly.

  The afternoon garden was full of crickets and pretty gold light. I stared out at the scene, trying to decide what to say. I knew exactly what I should say. All women do. I had been consoling friends about break-ups since I was in high school, crammed into a toilet cubicle with four other girls, listening to the wailing of a member of our crew over a two-week Romeo and Juliet–type tryst broken up by a senior with huge breasts. I needed to tell Sasha that I was here. That I was listening. That she would be okay. That men sucked, were pigs sometimes. But I couldn’t do anything in that moment but sit rigidly and stare at the beautiful garden, because terror had seized my limbs, a cold snap gripping at every fibre of my being.

  Sasha and Henry were my son’s parents. If they didn’t stay together as one unit, they would become separate teams both playing for my son. For his time. His love. His attention.

  His custody.

  ‘I found a pair of women’s sunglasses in Henry’s car,’ Sasha said. She took a worn tissue from her pocket and balled it against her nose. ‘He met her on a bus, can you believe that? A fucking bus! What was he even doing, riding a bus? I haven’t ridden a bus in decades.’

  I held my head in my hands.

  ‘They’re moving to Wyoming, apparently. To open a bed and breakfast.’

  ‘They’re what?’ I stood, the chair kicking out from behind me. ‘So Jamie—’

  ‘Jamie doesn’t know,’ Sasha sniffed, pushing back her frizzy hair. ‘Don’t tell him.’

  ‘Sasha, this is awful,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe this.’

  ‘I can see exactly what’ll happen,’ she said, hardly listening to me. ‘This new woman will be super-interesting to Jamie. He’ll want to hang out with her all the time. His world is full of such interesting people, and here I am baking cookies he doesn’t even like and nagging him to clean his room and brush his teeth. There’s a woman back there, a cop, he says.’ She jutted her chin towards the house at the end of the yard. ‘Just moved in. He’s been ducking over there and she’s been teaching him to swim. I noticed her over there and went to say hello. She seems like a hard-ass. Busy. Always on the phone. I was planning on asking her what the fuck she was thinking, deciding all on her own that she’d teach my kid to swim without even meeting me, but you know what? I was too intimidated. What an interesting person, this police officer with her big empty mansion, chain-smoking and taking important calls and intimidating the fuck out of the neighbours. So very, very interesting. And then there’s you with all your . . .’ She glanced at me. Seemed to reconsider her words.

  ‘My history,’ I said.

  Sasha nodded. ‘You’re interesting, too. All these interesting women in my son’s life.’

  ‘Sasha, you are interesting,’ I said. ‘You’re a great mother, and—’

  ‘Spare me.’ She held up a hand.

  ‘I’m serious,’ I said. ‘You’re not only interesting but you’re good. You’re incredibly good at heart. A friend came to you and said, “I’ve been arrested for murder. Will you raise my infant son?” And you said yes. Jesus Christ! Who does that? Who just takes on someone else’s kid like that, without question, without judgement? You let me be a part of his life. When I’d been charged with murder.’

  ‘You didn’t murder that guy.’ Sasha rolled her eyes. ‘It was to help the girlfriend, like you said. You’re too holier-than-thou to murder anyone.’

  ‘I’m going to take that as a compliment,’ I said.

  Sasha sighed. She looked beaten down. I wasn’t getting through. I knew it might takes weeks, months, to remind her of the great woman she was.

  ‘What will Henry want in terms of custody?’ I asked.

  Sasha thought for a moment. Her shoulders were hunched. She lifted them, let them fall again. ‘I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it. I suppose he’ll want fifty per cent.’

  ‘But what about me?’ I cried.

  ‘What . .
.?’ Sasha looked up at me. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I know.’ I dragged my chair back into place. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I just said “What about me” right in the middle of your break-up. I’m so sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.’

  But if Henry wants fifty per cent custody of Jamie, that leaves Sasha fifty per cent, and me zero per cent, I thought. Or it leaves Sasha and me twenty-five per cent each. It was getting hard to breathe. A door at the front of the house slammed. I heard footsteps thumping on the tiles, fast, then Jamie appeared with his school backpack on and threw open the door to the yard like a magician revealing himself safe and unharmed after being loaded into a box of rattlesnakes, wearing a straitjacket.

  ‘I’m here!’ he declared. He pointed at me. ‘Blair! You’re here too!’

  ‘Yeah, buddy. I just dropped by to—’

  ‘Whoa! Look at this thing!’ He shoved his nose against the side of the gopher mansion. ‘What is it? Is it . . . is it a mouse house? It’s a mouse house! Oh, man! Oh, man! Have you got Hugh Jackman? Is he here?’

  ‘Jamie, just settle down a bit, will you?’ Sasha sighed.

  ‘Have you got the gopher?’

  ‘He’s here.’ I scooped Hugh Jackman out of my pocket and handed him to my child. ‘Take him.’

  Jamie bundled the tiny gopher into his hands and ran to the edge of the porch, sitting down on the step. Sasha and I watched him giggling and snickering as the creature ran up his wrist to his shoulder. The boy took the gopher and rested it carefully on the crown of his head, laughing as it began digging and sifting through his hair.

  ‘I know he’s your child,’ Sasha said gently. I turned and looked at her. Her eyes were filled with tears. ‘I know you want more time with him. But I just can’t think about how to work out a custody arrangement with you right now. I’m looking at having to put my kid on a plane to Wyoming every second week.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. My heart actually felt heavy in my chest, like a warm, dull weight sitting painfully on my ribs. ‘It was unfair to ask you to do so.’

  ‘I don’t want to share him with anyone,’ Sasha said. We watched the boy together. ‘He’s mine.’

  No, he’s mine, I thought. I bit my lip to stop it from trembling. Jamie was rubbing the gopher against his cheek, smiling, his eyes closed. He held the creature to his face and the animal gripped his nose in both hands, sniffed the tip, child and pet connected as its tiny whiskers tickled Jamie’s perfect skin.

  The moment was eternal, yet suddenly gone forever. Jamie turned towards us, two women hiding their tears in the shade of the porch.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ the boy said. ‘Where’s Dad?’

  JESSICA

  The last time Jessica had been to San Quentin she had been visiting Jake Trelles, the Silver Lake Killer. The case that had begun it all. She’d had little hope of the man speaking to the cop who had put him away for the unsolved disappearances of women going back a decade, women like Bernice Beauvoir. Young, pretty, full of plans and ambitions, women walking to their cars in darkened parking lots or taking short cuts between backstreets, the kind of women who had been fodder for serial killers seemingly forever. As she’d predicted, Trelles had stonewalled her on questions she still had about the case.

  Now she put her gun, wallet, phone and hire-car keys in the same coin-operated locker in the visitors’ centre and took her badge and ID to the bored yet sceptical women running the processing centre. It was outside of visiting hours, and staff had been specially called in from the prison to see Jessica through. Routines broken. Rules bent. They didn’t like it. Jessica stood with her arms outstretched as a guard ran the body scanner wand up and down her more times than was really necessary.

  Jessica had been to San Quentin to talk to inmates maybe five times in her career. The prison was an hour and a half’s drive from the airport. Three hours of driving, one hour for a standard visit, and two hours’ worth of delays across arrival and departure – waiting on the tarmac, getting coffee at the airport, getting through security, hiring and returning the car. She asked herself why she hadn’t recognised the pattern as soon as she saw the times attached to Dayly’s airline tickets. Jessica consoled herself that without the letters from John Fishwick, Dayly’s trip to San Quentin had been impossible to guess.

  She followed a yellow painted stripe on the sidewalk towards death row. To her left, San Francisco Bay sprawled beyond the fences and watchtowers, glittering and thrumming with life under a hard blue sky. Ferries leaving Alcatraz, crab boats bringing in their loads, followed by enormous black seals. She showed her ID again at the heavy double doors to the row. The long room she entered was empty. The two lines of steel cages where full-contact visits were held were silent and still, their folding chairs stacked neatly against the inner walls of bulletproof glass and steel mesh. Vending machines hummed against one wall. The last time she had come here, she’d stood aside to make room while a little old woman carried a massive tray of snacks towards a cage where a man in his forties, presumably her son, sat waiting in his prison denims in the furthest cage, a pink party hat strapped on his head.

  Jessica took a stool that was bolted to the ground near one of the glass visitation windows, as directed by a guard. When John Fishwick arrived he was not cuffed, and his pale denim shirt was rumpled. He was taller than Jessica expected, broad shoulders pulling the front of the shirt tight, a head of silver hair slicked back against the sides of his head. Jessica had only seen pictures of Dayly Lawlor, but she thought she recognised the girl’s long, thin nose and deep, thoughtful brown eyes in the man’s weathered visage.

  ‘Well, this is a novelty,’ John said when he picked up the intercom handset. He took a packet of cigarettes from his back pocket, lit one and blew smoke against the glass as he looked over what he could see of Jessica’s body. ‘Visiting outside of hours. Cop or fed?’

  ‘Cop,’ Jessica said. ‘West LAPD. I’m here to talk about Dayly.’

  ‘That’s a long way for a cop to come to investigate an assault charge,’ John said. ‘So I assume it’s not that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She came here and visited. I assaulted her. That’s why I’m in here and not out there, where I usually am.’ He pointed through the glass to the cages over Jessica’s shoulder. ‘I lost my contact privileges. Won’t get them back for a couple of years now, I suspect.’

  ‘Why did you assault her?’ Jessica asked stiffly.

  ‘She wrote to me asking if I’m her daddy, telling me she’s all messed up about her life and this and that.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t care. I kept her on the line after I saw her picture. She was a little honey. Most girls who write to death-row inmates are real warthogs. I wanted to see if I could get a piece of that ass.’

  ‘You didn’t stop to think that she might actually be your daughter?’ Jessica scoffed.

  ‘No. I guess I didn’t think too much about it.’ John rubbed his nose on the back of his tattooed hand. ‘A man takes what presents itself.’ Jessica noticed a deep, jagged scar on the inside of his wrist, no doubt a suicide attempt on the inside. They were frequent on the row, she knew.

  ‘So what are you here for, if not the assault?’ he asked. Jessica saw a flash of something in his eyes. Genuine interest poking through the false bravado, the practised boredom, like a thorn hiding in a knitted sweater. ‘I haven’t heard from her in a couple of weeks. What’s going on?’

  ‘She’s missing,’ Jessica said.

  ‘Oh,’ John said. Jessica watched carefully, but the wall had gone up again. The corner of his mouth twitched, and nothing more. ‘Missing how?’

  Jessica described the circumstances of the crime scene at Dayly’s apartment, Al Tasik’s bust on a car full of Crips with Dayly riding in the back. John listened, smoking, staring at his tar-stained fingernails.

  ‘Maybe these Crip fellows found out about me,’ John said. ‘Knew she was coming to see me. Maybe they bought in to all the bullshit about the hidden money and threatened her.’


  ‘So there is no further hidden money?’ Jessica asked. ‘I’ve read your letters to Dayly. You hint at it pretty strongly.’

  ‘Yeah. See, that’s what you’ve got to do to get them here.’ John smirked. ‘The women. Chicks want to come here and visit, but they don’t want to look like sickos. They don’t want to tell their friends they’re in love with a death-row inmate they’ve never even met yet, so they need a reason to visit, at least initially. They need a story. It’s called a Pull. The serial killers – they’re the most popular. Women write to them from all over the world. So their Pull is that they’ve got extra victims they want to confess about. Then the girls have a respectable reason to come here, you know, so they can solve a crime. Help the victims’ families. You pull them in, and then you get your grabby-grabby.’

  ‘Grabby-grabby?’ Jessica said.

  ‘Yeah.’ John flashed his full set of teeth, at least half of them gold. ‘There’s a guy in here. The Silver Lake Killer. You heard of him?’

  ‘I might have.’ She didn’t know if Fishwick knew she’d arrested Trelles, but she wasn’t going to take the bait if he did.

  ‘He told this woman lawyer from San Jose that he has a partner out there somewhere to this day, a guy still killing girls. The lawyer started visiting on the regular, and within a few weeks she’d forgotten all about the whole partner story. She visits once a month now and pays a guard a hundred bucks for that end cage there, the one behind the pylon. Two years she’s been coming here to give him a blow job and stock up his commissary account. They’re getting married, end of the year.’

  ‘Awesome,’ Jessica said. ‘That’s really wonderful. I’m so pleased you told me that.’ She gave him a big, sarcastic smile.

  ‘I had my fun with Dayly while she was here. Shame I won’t be seeing her again,’ John sighed. ‘Maybe I forced her a little, but I was sure she’d be thinking about it some, later on, maybe when she went to bed that night. She’d be back.’