Dark Revelations

by Duane Swierczynski

  “Could be,” Banner said, “but then how do you explain this?”

  Banner pointed to the sketch.

  Which was a pencil rendering of a beautiful—and completely naked—woman. Dark could tell this wasn’t just a practice sketch of some anonymous nude model who worked for an art studio. You could tell because of the care and detail given to the woman’s face. The high cheekbones, the slow sultry smile, the life in her eyes. Which, in turn, made the woman easier to identify.

  “Bethany Millar,” Dark said.

  “Who?” Banner asked.

  chapter 3

  LABYRINTH

  I drive west on Wilshire toward Santa Monica, stopping to complete a few quick errands along the way, ticking off the items on the long checklist in my mind, making a few untraceable phone calls, buying supplies via anonymous Internet cutouts.

  The car I drive is from a long-term lot near LAX and won’t be reported missing for another three weeks. The license plate is a forgery with bogus tags, incredibly easy to obtain. Makes me wonder why anyone in the United States would go through the hassle of actually buying and registering a motor vehicle.

  Not that I need to take these extra precautions, really—there is no physical evidence whatsoever to link me with the gentleman who had entered LAPD headquarters. We just spent a little time together inside his mind.

  I stop for more coffee—check the time.

  Were the LAPD starting to put it together now?

  Had they opened the package by now?

  Of course they’ve opened the package. They didn’t have a choice. Which is why I was forced to destroy those detectives.

  I am not sadistic.

  I needed the LAPD to open my package, and I knew there was no way they’d risk destroying the only shred of evidence in the now high-profile murders of two highly decorated, highly respected police officers.

  Me? I would have rather just dropped off the package and let it be done at that.

  Today, though, you really have to go to extremes to get someone’s attention.

  As I think about what might be happening across town, a woman approaches.

  She’s pretty in that bland California way.

  Probably thinks she’s someone’s idea of PERFECTION, even though inside she’s just another filthy whore, two life-altering experiences away from becoming a moist hole for rent.

  She says,

  Hi, sorry to bother you. . . .

  And then proceeds to ask me directions to some high-end clothing boutique, perhaps I’ve heard of it.

  People are always asking me for directions or help.

  I’ve got that kind of face—someone close to me once told me that.

  Approachable.

  Ordinary.

  Friendly.

  And that was the point, originally.

  But if they could see through MY own eyes . . .

  See the world as it really existed, not the one that had been sold to you by the governments of the world—

  They’d run SCREAMING.

  Like this woman should be.

  I tell her,

  No, I’m really sorry. I’m not from around here. I could look it up for you on my phone, if you like?

  She smiles, suddenly bashful, and says,

  Oh, no worries, that’s okay. Where are you from?

  I nod and smile. She’s not really interested in directions. She wanted an opportunity to meet me.

  I COULD introduce myself.

  I COULD let her in.

  She doesn’t realize how easily I could coax her into my labyrinth—she’s practically begging for it. Just one step and she’d be stumbling down the first corridor, faster than she realized, making her first sharp turn, confused, the first tremors of terror running through her veins, then thinking that the only way out is to turn around and go back the way she came, but that way would be blocked, and she’d have no choice but to wander deeper and deeper into the maze . . .

  . . . to me.

  All of this would take a matter of hours—the afternoon really. And her life would never be the same.

  (If I allowed her to keep her life.)

  But I have things to do, much BIGGER subjects to coax into my maze.

  So I tell her,

  I’m from Chicago, out scouting property for my wife and kids, they’re really excited about moving out to sunny California, you know? All this fresh air and sunshine and friendly people?

  And I see the light dim in her eyes when I say the words wife and kids and she’s polite but she’s also clearly disappointed.

  She doesn’t know how lucky she is.

  She doesn’t know what she’s narrowly avoided.

  As I cruise down Moomat Ahiko Way toward the PCH, I wonder how far they’ve gotten with my little message.

  Are they still staring at the photo of the nude whore, wondering what I may have done to her?

  chapter 4

  DARK

  LAPD Headquarters / Downtown Los Angeles

  Dark stared at the drawing.

  It was Bethany Millar—in the flesh, during the prime of her life.

  Dark recognized her right away. The blond hair, the upturned nose, the classic alabaster skin and full lips. He’d spent many years sitting up late at night, trying to drink himself into a half-coma, watching old movies on cable TV. Bethany Millar was a late 1960s/early 1970s screen siren who starred in a string of B-movies and exploitation flicks, almost all of them released before Dark was born. To the best of his knowledge, she’d done plenty of cheesecake-type stuff, but never nudes. If any members of the LAPD working inside the administration building today were aware of her, it was because their New Centurions–era fathers used to keep a pinup of her in their lockers. Millar was largely forgotten now.

  Except, of course, by the unknown subject who’d sent this package.

  “Uh, Steve?” Banner asked. “Who’s Bethany Millar?”

  “Hang on,” Dark said, pulling the phone from his pocket and aiming it at the sketch. One click and he had a hi-res image saved to his phone.

  “Uh, you really shouldn’t send that image to anyone outside the department,” Banner said.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “At least lie and tell me you’re sending it to Riggins.”

  Dark stopped. Looked at Banner, deadpan.

  “Okay. I’m sending it to Riggins.”

  All of the tension seemed to gush out of Banner for a moment before he sucked it back up again.

  “Wait—you’re lying, aren’t you?”

  Dark was already spinning through his contacts. Vincente Valentine had been a film director until he retired in the 1990s, living in his huge, ostentatious Malibu beach house just a few houses away from where Dark and Sibby used to live. Valentine had once bragged about working with Bethany Millar—“yeah, the Bethany Millar”—in an early 1970s gangster flick called Deep Cut. At the time, Valentine had been astonished that a whippersnapper like Dark even knew who Bethany Millar was.

  CALL ME, Dark typed in the subject line, then sent off the image.

  Valentine called Dark within sixty seconds, and picked up the conversation as if they’d spoken just last night as opposed to five long years ago. You could always count on retired creative types to call you back right away. Most of their lives had been spent waiting by the phone, and it was a hard habit to break.

  “Nice sketch, Stevie,” Valentine said. “Where did you find it?”

  “Inside a box the LAPD thought contained a bomb.”

  “Sheesh. Is that what I’ve been hearing about on CNN? Bombs? The only thing that bombed was Deep Cut. Definitely a low point in my career.”

  Another old-timer trait: Pretend like nothing shocked you. Ever.

  “Does the sketch mean anything to you?”

  “A man my age, it means a lot,” Valentine said. “Bethany’s never looked better. I might have to disappear into the bathroom for a while.”

  Vincente Valentine: always the joker, even afte
r two and a half cardiac arrests and three ex-wives. Every time he saw Dark and Sibby, he made an obvious pass at Sibby—which she thought was cute. Dark knew it was habit for a lifelong lothario like Valentine. Like breathing.

  “Anything else about the sketch?” Dark asked.

  “What should interest you, Stevie, is not the subject, but the artist.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My retired eyes could be failing me, but I swear that sketch was done by Herbie Loeb. Which would be strange, because . . . holy shit, does this mean Herbie Loeb was boffing Bethany Millar? And how did I not know about it?”

  Right there—the connection Dark had needed.

  “Thanks, Mr. Valentine. I owe you one.”

  “Not at all, Stevie. You’ve given this old man plenty. And you kiss that beautiful wife of yours for me. With tongue, if you don’t mind.”

  Dark realized, with a jolt, that he didn’t know.

  It had been five years, and all over the news, but Valentine didn’t know.

  Sibby was gone.

  “Yeah,” Dark said, then pressed END.

  Within thirty minutes an art expert from Holmby Hills had been rushed out to LAPD HQ to authenticate the sketch. Yes, it was a previously unknown sketch by the great Herbert Loeb, one of the most widely acclaimed pop artists of the late twentieth century. This sketch shouldn’t exist, couldn’t exist . . . yet here it was. The art expert looked like he was going to have a stroke.

  “Where did you say you found this? And what will happen to it after it’s . . . uh, evidence?”

  Dark strolled away, pondering the implications. So they were dealing with someone who could pull off an art theft as well as a terrorist attack and a double homicide. There was the remote possibility that this was some sicko who’d rifled through a dead artist’s possessions, and this was some bizarre way of announcing to the world that there were priceless objects now available for purchase.

  But that didn’t fit in with anything else—not the clock, nor the riddle.

  This wasn’t over.

  The unsub was asking a question. No—it was more than that. He was daring them.

  Figure this out before I strike again.

  “Did you pull anything from the note?” Dark asked Banner.

  “Not a thing. And the in-house handwriting analyst kind of just laughed when she saw it. Pretty much a textbook example of how to write in the most nondistinctive way possible. Right down to the ink, which came from the most common pen in the known universe.”

  “Hidden messages?” Dark asked. “Any microdots?”

  It was unusual but possible. Microdots were secret messages compressed into a minuscule piece of typography—a comma, a period, the dot in the letter i. Cold War–era spies were fond of using microdots to smuggle sensitive material out from behind the Iron Curtain.

  “Not a thing,” Banner said. “We ran it through every test we have.”

  “So our unsub’s being literal,” Dark said. “He wants us to answer the riddle.”

  A WOMAN SHOOTS HER HUSBAND. THEN SHE HOLDS HIM UNDER WATER FOR OVER 5 MINUTES. FINALLY, SHE HANGS HIM. BUT 5 MINUTES L ATER THEY BOTH GO OUT AND ENJOY A WONDERFUL DINNER TOGETHER . HOW CAN THIS BE?

  “She’s a photographer,” Banner said; a sheepish look washed over his face. “I, uh, Googled it.”

  “Right,” Dark said. “She shot her husband with her camera, then she drowned the film in chemicals to develop it for five minutes, then hung it—like, in a darkroom. Then they go out and have dinner while it’s drying.”

  “I would have gotten it eventually,” Banner said.

  “Yeah, but it’s too easy to be the real puzzle,” Dark said. “Like you said, you can easily look up the answer online. The question is, what’s this riddle doing on LAPD stationery, packaged along with the nude sketch and the clock? Why the art? Is he threatening Bethany Millar? Is this some crude way of saying that her time is running out?”

  Banner’s eyes lit up. “Okay, hang on . . . here’s a weird thing for you,” he said. “When one of the bomb techs looked it over, he noticed that the alarm clock was set to go off in a little less than five hours.” Banner glanced at his rubber digital wristwatch. “Well, uh . . . make that forty-five minutes now.”

  “Shit, Banner—why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “We kind of got sidetracked on the whole nude sketch thing, remember?”

  The clock was the most obvious message of all.

  Figure this out before I strike again . . .

  . . . in forty-five minutes.

  There was one person who might be able to tie it all together.

  Not Herbert Loeb. The artist had been dead since 1988, having famously overdosed in his Tribeca apartment. Dark needed to find Loeb’s secret model.

  Before the alarm went off.

  chapter 5

  DARK

  Hollywood Hills, California

  Dark parked his Mustang on a downward slope in an illegal, instant tow-away, no-questions-asked, fuck you have a nice day zone. You could say this much about people who lived in the Hollywood Hills: When it came to protecting their parking spaces, they meant it.

  But nobody would touch Dark’s car. That’s because Lisa Graysmith had given him a plastic hangtag that would grant him the parking equivalent of diplomatic immunity anywhere in North America. Much as Dark hated to admit it, the thing came in handy, especially in a perpetual traffic nightmare like L.A.

  Especially when you might be racing to save an old woman’s life.

  Dark had quickly dug up Bethany Millar’s home address and number and called it as he raced up the 101 toward the Hollywood Hills. There had been no answer; a machine picked up instead, and the voice on the digital recording sounded frail and confused. Still, Dark recognized it. You see someone on a screen and it’s as if you know them; your brain learns to recognize the way they look, act, and speak.

  Now he hoped Millar was still alive.

  Dark darted uphill, hopped a wrought-iron fence, then ran toward the house.

  An elderly woman answered the chipped-paint door. Dark recognized her immediately.

  Bethany Millar: in the flesh.

  Dark was not the type to be starstruck, but even he had a vague feeling of dislocation that he should be looking at her on a black-and-white screen, not in living color.

  “Ms. Millar? Can I speak to you for a moment?”

  One look at Dark and the former starlet assumed he was a cop, here to deliver bad news.

  “This is about my daughter, isn’t it,” she said, without preamble. “Oh God, please don’t tell me you found my baby girl, please don’t.”

  The decades had been cruel to Millar. Dark could smell the gin on her breath, as well as the mint mouthwash she no doubt swigged right before she answered the door. Her house, too, screamed faded glory. The front was overgrown with plant life and was a probable brushfire hazard. No doubt her neighbors hoped a little seismic jolt would wrench the old house from its foundations and wipe the slate clean.

  “I’m here for you, actually,” Dark said, casting a wary eye behind her, making sure no one was lurking in the shadows.

  “Me?” Millar asked. “I’m fine. It’s Faye I’m worried about. Is she okay? Please tell me she’s okay.”

  “Do you think Faye is missing?”

  “Missing?” Millar said sharply, as if she’d been grossly offended. “I didn’t say anything about her being missing. I know exactly where she is. With that slimy rat bastard.”

  Faye Elizabeth was Bethany Millar’s daughter, and she’d achieved something her mother never had: A-list status in Hollywood, headlining a series of top-grossing action movies. Elizabeth rarely spoke of her mother, adopting her own middle name as a stage name, and avoiding all questions about her parents. Her father had been an accountant, and had drank himself to death as quickly as you could on six figures a year. Her mother had faded into obscurity.

  But it was clear that Bethany Millar still cared a gre
at deal for her daughter.

  “I can check on Faye if you like,” Dark said, “but I’m here about you.”

  “Me?”

  Dark stepped inside and eyeballed the room. It was spare to the point of absurdity—almost in move-in condition, if Ms. Millar were about to sell the place. Not a personal touch anywhere. No old posters, no memorabilia, no framed photos, no books, not a single piece of entertainment anywhere. She could vanish in an instant and you’d be hard-pressed to tell who lived here. Just someone who clearly didn’t keep up this shell of a house, with its faded, chipped paint and deep cracks running up and down the walls.

  “Do you remember an artist named Herbert Loeb?” Dark asked.

  “Oh God.”

  “So you do know him.”

  “I didn’t say that! Why do you keep putting words in my mouth—I don’t even know who you are, and you’re making this accusation. . . .”

  “Did you know he once drew a sketch of you? Perhaps you modeled in a studio at one point, and Mr. Loeb was in attendance.”

  “I was never a model and I don’t know Herbie and I’d like you to stop talking about me and go look for my daughter and bring her home. She has to be brought home right away so I can talk to her. Will you do that for me? Please!”

  Of course Dark knew she was lying, and doing an extremely bad job of it, hobbled by either the gin or some kind of painkiller. Most likely both. Bethany Millar didn’t want to be in her own head, let alone her own house. Why?