Gathering Dark

by Fox, Candice

  At eleven, my phone dinged. It was Ada.

  You’re not at your house. Are you at that shitbox gas station where you work?

  I texted back. Yes, I’m here. Is everything okay?

  I’m coming by.

  I knew there was no point in asking Ada to explain herself. I exhaled and texted Sneak.

  Can you come to the Pump’n’Jump now? Ada’s on her way here and I don’t want to be alone with her.

  Sneak was a couple of minutes in answering.

  Why?

  WHY? I shook my head, bewildered. Because Macaroni, that’s why!

  I had been sharing a dorm room with Sneak, Ada and thirty other women when the Happy Valley Macaroni Incident occurred. An inmate named Nelly Raddlett, new to the prison, had been loudly professing how thoroughly she had enjoyed the evening’s macaroni dinner to a group of girls in front of the television set, where Ada was trying to watch a rerun of The Sopranos. Raddlett pronounced the word mac-uh-ron-nee, not mac-uh-row-nee. The mispronunciation had so irritated Ada that by the fourth or fifth repetition, Ada had stood up, walked to the front of the room and told Raddlett that if she mispronounced macaroni one more time, she was going to take a belt from the nearest guard and beat her with it.

  I’d watched on from my bunk, curious to see if Raddlett was stupid or bold enough to mispronounce the word again, or if indeed Ada had the kind of clout in the prison to obtain a belt from a guard for the purposes of beating another inmate with it.

  Both happened.

  Thirty-one women and two guards stood idly by that night while Ada Maverick beat Nelly Raddlett for two solid minutes with a doubled-up leather belt over the mispronunciation of a type of pasta.

  No, I mean why is she coming? Sneak asked.

  Just get your ass here, I texted.

  JESSICA

  The noise around them had become nothing. Jessica gripped her drink and waited, like a rider on a roller-coaster slowly making its way up the biggest hill. The plunge was coming. There was nothing she could do to stop it.

  ‘Adrian and his brother, Brosh, were part of this . . . organisation.’ Zea opened her hands. ‘The mob, I guess. I don’t know. I’d seen other Armenian men at the house, and I’d overheard phone calls. But I don’t know if it was like you see in the movies, with the meetings and the structure and all that stuff. I think they were just edging their way in, relying on their family connections to get work. Adrian came home really happy one night. He said they’d been given an amazing job by their cousins. He put this big duffel bag full of coke on the bed in front of me. When it hit the bed it was so heavy it made the whole mattress sink in the middle.’

  ‘When was this?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘A week before the murder. Adrian said we were going to sell the coke, distribute it and make a lot of money, and then his cousins were going to make it a regular thing. I was just so excited that he was telling me all this, you know? He’d always been so cagey about what he did, about his brother. I felt as though I was being let in. It was a new step for us in our relationship.’

  ‘How romantic.’ Jessica caught the eye of the bartender who had wiped their table earlier. The crowd was thinning. He seemed to have decided the no-table-service rule no longer applied and nodded to indicate that he’d fetch Jessica another drink.

  ‘I thought when Adrian said “we” that he meant, like, we,’ Kristi said, pointing to Jessica, then herself. ‘So I wanted to help. Adrian wouldn’t let me work. I was stuck in the house all day. I had no friends. But I knew these guys who could move junk like that real quick, so I took one of the bricks from the bag while Adrian was out and gave it to them. They were supposed to get the money back that afternoon. It was going to be a surprise, you know? It was supposed to show Adrian how useful I could be. I mean, it was New Year’s Eve. Who has trouble moving drugs on New Year’s Eve?’

  ‘Your guys, evidently,’ Jessica said, feeling the roller-coaster crest the hill.

  ‘When I told Adrian, he was livid,’ Kristi said. ‘He started shouting, so we put on the music, but after a while he started beating on me. He’d smacked me a few times before, but nothing close to this. He said the drugs weren’t supposed to be sold off like that. There were already buyers. Now they were down a whole brick, and my guys weren’t coming through. I tried to hide in the laundry but he came through the door, and I guess that’s when Harbour saw us through the window.’

  ‘Did she walk in and go right for the gun?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘No, she . . .’ Kristi stared at the table, remembering. She gave a small, sad laugh. ‘She tried talking to us first. But I couldn’t hear her. I was getting my ass whaled on. And he didn’t even know she was there. When he got into those rages he would just zero in on you and nothing could stop him.’

  The two women sat together, one remembering, one visualising. They held their drinks, staring into them. Jessica could see the house in Brentwood. Blair Harbour walking through the door, stopping dead in the foyer at the sight of small, lean Kristi Zea flopping around in Adrian Orlov’s hands. Blood on the floor. The smack of flesh on flesh. It was something totally outside Harbour’s world, her circle of existence filled with beautiful rooms in beautiful houses, stark, white, clean surgery rooms, the occasional upmarket restaurant with friends. People didn’t fight in Harbour’s world. They didn’t put their hands on each other except to caress, comfort, embrace, heal. All blood was expected. Jessica imagined her shouting and pleading and not being listened to, trying to get into the fray, coming up against the hard muscles of a rage-filled man and never having felt something so impossibly immoveable before.

  Jessica could see Orlov turning at the sound of the hammer on the gun. Outrage, panic, both he and Harbour moving, two steps in a dance that was over before the music began – him coming at her, her blasting him away.

  ‘She picked up the gun as a warning, I think,’ Kristi said. ‘He went for her, got within a few feet and bang. She shot him. Just like that. I could see he was dead before he hit the ground, even from where I was. She was right to do it. He was going to kill me. There’s never been any doubt in my mind about that.’

  Jessica held the table with both hands. The second drink came, and she didn’t move. She knew what happened next, but needed to hear it. Needed to feel it rushing by her. Moments she could never recover, never correct.

  ‘You called nine-one-one,’ Jessica said.

  ‘Not right away,’ Kristi said. ‘I told Harbour that I would. I told her to go wait outside. There was no helping Adrian. She wanted to stay, help me, but I shouted at her. I told her to flag down the ambulance when it came, because our house number was real hard to see with all the palms out front. I knew the police would look at my phone, so I took one of Adrian’s burners and called his brother. The bag of coke was still upstairs in the fucking bedroom, sitting out there in plain sight, and I didn’t have time to hide it. I don’t think I could even have lifted it.’

  ‘Was it his idea to lie?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Kristi said. ‘He said I was going to tell the cops that Harbour shot Adrian for some bullshit reason. That would get them focused on her. On her house. On her life. We didn’t want them walking around our house, trying to come up with reasons why Adrian would want to hurt me like that, trying to, like, find out if the shooting was justified. I was going to be really upset, stricken with grief, you know? That way I’d get them out of the house as soon as I could. It was me who came up with the crazy stuff.’

  ‘What crazy stuff?’

  ‘The weird stuff I said Harbour did. Like with the cheese sandwich,’ Kristi explained. ‘And the, uh, the poisoning of the orange juice. See, I had an uncle with schizophrenia. He thought he was being followed around. That people were poisoning him. That Jesus was talking to him all the time. He went crazy in a Walmart and the cops shot him. Nobody asked any questions. He was crazy, right?’

  ‘So you never went into Harbour’s house?’ Jessica said. ‘You never tampered w
ith her food?’

  ‘No,’ Kristi said. ‘Oh, I mean, we did scratch her car, accidentally, but she was fine about it. She knew we didn’t mean it. And she would complain to us about the noise, but she was never crazy. Not like I made her sound in my statement. I just followed the patrol officer around the house and pointed to things and said, “Oh, yeah, she came in here and made a sandwich. She said the clock was talking to her, telling her to burn the house down. She stood here at the sink staring at nothing.” Half that stuff was from my uncle. When they shot him in Walmart he was trying to make a cheese sandwich behind the deli counter. I figured if I made Harbour sound crazy enough she might get off. You know, like, not guilty by reason of insanity?’

  ‘Ingenious,’ Jessica said.

  ‘The plan worked,’ Kristi said. ‘The cops stayed on the main floor. They took photos of the crime scene, took Adrian away, sat me in a corner where I could see what everybody was doing, gave me a drink of water and listened to what I had to say. Nobody went upstairs for very long – they did a quick sweep to make sure no one was there. When Brosh turned up they let him walk right in. He said he’d go upstairs and get my laptop, get my contacts list, start calling people to tell them the news. No one stopped him. He took the bag with the coke and walked right out the back door with it. By the time the cops did a proper search later, the coke was gone.’

  Jessica could see Brosh Orlov, another big, broad man, exiting the house, skirting the boundary of the property, walking out into the street with the bag, unnoticed, like someone walking to the gym in the early hours with his bag of sweats and towels. Jessica knew exactly where she had been when this happened eleven years earlier. She’d been asking questions of Harbour on her doorstep while officers searched her house. She’d been telling Harbour to turn around. She’d been reciting the Miranda warnings and unhooking the cuffs from her belt while Harbour stood there stiffly, shell-shocked, trying to understand what was happening while her world closed in around her.

  Jessica took her phone from the tabletop and slid it into her pocket, drained the last of her bourbon.

  ‘Where are you going? We’re not done here.’

  ‘We’re done enough,’ Jessica said. ‘For now. I’m going to tell Harbour that her time as a known cold-blooded killer is over.’

  ‘What, right now?’ Kristi Zea stood with Jessica. ‘But you said the case isn’t being reopened. I mean, what’s the point? Aren’t you just going to upset her?’

  ‘Upset her? No, I don’t think so.’ Jessica put more money on the table. ‘I’m sure she’ll be fucking elated. She’s trying for increased custody of her son. The case isn’t reopened yet, but this will reopen it. That’s for damned sure.’

  ‘Okay, hold on, whoa.’ Kristi grabbed Jessica’s shoulders. ‘You’ve got to think about me for a second here. Brosh and his guys, they’ve been relying on me to keep quiet all these years. If this gets out, they’ll come looking for me. This was all meant to be for you. You made it sound like it was just for you.’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ Jessica said. She turned to go. People were beginning to stare at them.

  ‘I’ll deny everything,’ Kristi said. She was shaking all over, her mouth twitching with rage. ‘You put me on a stand and I’ll say exactly what I did the first time. That she shot him. That she’s crazy. That she beat me, and-and-and for weeks she’d been threat—’

  Jessica crossed the room, went out into the gravel parking lot, took her phone from her pocket and stopped the recording app. The scrolling numbers froze, sealing the end of her interview with Kristi Zea. She emailed the file to herself and unlocked her car. As she slipped into the driver’s seat, an email from Diggy landed in her inbox.

  It’s aliiiiiive! the subject header read. Interesting bits recovered from Lawlor laptop.

  BLAIR

  Ada arrived in a Mercedes S-Class, matt black with gold rims. The teenagers who had scammed me for the slushie were across the street, pacing and chatting and planning their next ingenious caper, and they stopped at the sight of the car, staring. I was surprised to see Fred and Mike slip from the back seat of the long, wide vehicle. More still when Sneak climbed out of the front passenger seat.

  ‘I found this dummy trying to hitch a ride on Virgil.’ Ada jerked her thumb backwards towards Sneak as the group walked in. ‘I half expected her to give Fred a hand job when she got in.’

  ‘I made it,’ Sneak muttered to me, coming to my side. ‘Let the record show I got into a car with Ada Maverick and got out again, alive. You sell lottery tickets?’

  ‘I’m here to talk to you about this,’ Ada said to me. She put a hand out and Mike passed her a large folded sheet of paper. She swept an arm across my counter, knocking cardboard displays of Chokitos and Baby Ruths onto the floor to make room for herself. Without asking, Fred took a Snickers from the shelf under the window, peeled open the top and started eating it. Ada weighed down the piece of paper at the corners. Sneak and I leaned in. It was a United States Geological Survey map of downtown San Chinto. I took a moment to examine the different levels of lines, sailing blue topographical isolines slashed through with the thin black outlines of properties and streets, red marks that could have been powerlines or gas.

  ‘Where’d you get this?’ I asked Ada, glancing at the parking lot to check for any incoming customers.

  ‘These guys found it at Officer Marcus Lemon’s apartment,’ Ada said, smoothing out the map.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I blinked. ‘Where?’

  ‘I had them break into his apartment,’ Ada said. ‘You told me he was an interesting person for us. Turns out he was.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus.’ I looked at Sneak. ‘Lemon’s had his phone stolen and his apartment robbed right after. He’ll know something’s up.’

  ‘Forget about it,’ Ada said. ‘They trashed the place and hit three other apartments on the same floor. It will take him a while to notice the maps are gone in the mess. My guys don’t do things half-assed. Now why don’t you tell me what these are all about?’ She gestured to the map. ‘There are others.’

  She clicked her fingers and Mike extracted more papers from his jacket pockets. Some were printed screenshots from the internet. I picked up one from a website called the Los Angeles Open Data portal, one from the San Chinto County website. San Chinto township was featured again on the Data portal page, crossed with lines, these ones heavier than those on the survey map and joined with little red bubbles. A key gave me the ‘data layers’. Sewer easements. Sewer flow direction. Sewer pipes.

  The buzzer above the door sang and I looked up to see Jessica Sanchez walking into the crowded store with a laptop under her arm.

  ‘Jeez, the whole team’s here,’ Sneak said, unwrapping a Clark Bar.

  ‘I need to talk to you.’ Jessica strode forwards and pointed at me. ‘It’s important.’ She grabbed a bottle of water from a rack near the counter and opened it, guzzled a quarter of it. Her face and neck were reddened with some emotion I couldn’t decipher.

  ‘Take a number and get in line, bitch,’ Ada snapped at Jessica. ‘I was here first.’

  ‘What is all this?’ Jessica looked at the maps. She set her laptop slowly on the counter, thoughts obviously whirling through her, slowing her limbs. ‘Where . . . Where did these . . .’

  ‘Marcus Lemon had these,’ Sneak said. ‘We don’t know why.’

  ‘I know why,’ Jessica said. Ada came around the counter to give her space. She threw open her laptop and opened her email account. I heard crackling and noticed Fred opening a hot pocket.

  ‘Could everybody please stop eating things?’ I yelled. ‘I have to pay for this stuff, you know.’

  ‘Look here.’ Jessica pointed. There was a document open on the screen, plain text, a list of words. Under a heading that read ‘Websites last visited’ I noticed ‘Los Angeles Open Data portal’.

  ‘These are bits and pieces recovered from Dayly’s burned laptop,’ Jessica said. ‘Looks like she and Lemon were both researching the sewer sys
tem under San Chinto, sharing the information.’

  ‘Burned?’ Sneak said. ‘You found her laptop burned? Where?’

  ‘Oh, um.’ Jessica looked at me for help that I could not offer. ‘I didn’t tell you. I—’

  ‘Never mind.’ Ada slapped the countertop for attention. ‘What else was on her computer? Anything that says what they were looking at the sewer system for?’

  ‘No, but there are these.’ Jessica pointed to a list on the page. We all leaned in again. ‘This list comes from a document on the laptop named “L’s Recon”. L must be Lemon, so I’m guessing this is reconnaissance that Officer Lemon was doing on some houses in San Chinto.’ She read directly from the file. ‘Number 11 Redduck. Two men. No – Number 13 Redduck. Family of four. No – Number 15 Redduck. Woman lives alone. Possible. Check? – Number 17 Redduck. Hoarder house. Old man. Looks good. Check?’

  Ada snatched the smaller maps away and traced Redduck Avenue on the largest map with her finger. The hairs on my arms were standing on end.

  ‘We were out there yesterday,’ Sneak said. ‘At number seventeen. It was a hoarder house, just like it says here. So number eleven must have two men living in it. Number thirteen must be a family of four. Fifteen has a woman that lives alone. We saw Officer Lemon go into the hoarder house, and there was a plumber there, too. These houses follow the sewer line . . .’ She shook her head. ‘But . . . I can’t work it out.’

  ‘I think I can,’ Jessica said. ‘Watch this.’

  She opened a video file from the email inbox. I saw CDCR in the address of the sender: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. A black-and-white image filled the screen. Two people in what looked like a steel cage, shot from above. A muscular old man was sitting on a plastic fold-out chair. Almost knee-to-knee with him in the small space was a young woman I recognised immediately.