The Dark Heart

by Julie Cave

I’d rather not set foot in that place ever again in my life. “No reason, I guess.”

  “Have you finished your homework?”

  There was no way Chloe could bring herself to log back onto the computer, so she said, “Yeah.”

  She looked up at her mother and realized that Mom herself looked tired and pale. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Mom rubbed her eyes. “Oh, honey, I’m just tired. I can’t wait for your dad to get home.”

  Chloe felt bad. She wondered if she should tell her dad about Facebook, Jessica, and the minions. At one time, she’d told her dad everything, secure in the knowledge that he was the font of all wisdom.

  Now she realized she didn’t want her dad to know she was such a loser.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Mom asked. Chloe realized her mother had been studying her.

  Chloe debated telling her about Jessica Hunter and her minions. But Mom tended to overreact to things. She was likely to march down to the school and demand that the principal take immediate action. She probably would also call Jessica’s parents. Chloe shuddered. It would make everything ten times worse. This is my problem, and I’ll handle it.

  It was something she’d have to work out on her own.

  She helped Mom wash the mugs, and climbed the stairs to her bedroom. She heard the television click on and she felt guilty for being relieved that her mom wouldn’t keep trying to talk to her. She closed the door to her room and walked to her dresser. There, she stared at herself in the mirror. Black hair, chopped into a blunt bob. Two streaks of blue through the front — the color changed every now and then. Before they were blue they’d been hot pink. The color in her hair was one of Jessica Hunter’s favorite targets, but for some reason she fiercely guarded her right to do it.

  She stared at her face. It was round and . . . full. Round and chubby. Round and fat, don’t shy away from the truth, she told herself. Round, soft, pale, and fat. The square-frame glasses that looked funky at the mall didn’t make her look funky. She just looked like a fat nerd.

  Then there was her body. She had never been particularly tall. She’d always been a chubby girl. Her mother liked to say she was strong or robust. Chloe knew these were just nice ways of saying that she was fat. What made it worse was that her mother was tiny, and had never struggled with her weight. Her nickname was Bonesy for goodness sake. Chloe had inherited her broad build from her father. So, it was hard to talk about it with Mom, who could never understand the quiet despair of weight that just wouldn’t shift.

  She scrutinized herself. Flabby, old-lady arms. No waist. Chunky thighs. Wobbly calves. How many pounds would she have to lose to look like Jessica Hunter? Probably 30 pounds. Maybe 40. The thought depressed her. She’d have to stop eating altogether for weeks to lose the weight. Guess that’s why they call me a cow. That’s what I look like.

  A sharp knock at her door startled her and she turned away from her reflection.

  “It’s Mom. I’m going to bed. Good night.”

  “Sure. Good night.” Chloe found herself wanting to run to the door and tell her mom everything. How she was starting to hate everything about herself. How she wished she could walk away from this school and this town and never look back. How she felt so alone that her heart cried. She wished she could run to her mom like she had when she was little. She thought about the first time she could remember feeling that she was not quite the same as the other girls. In the fourth grade she wore a cute balloon skirt to school in place of the usual jeans. She remembered feeling the warm sun on her legs.

  I hadn’t been in the school gate more than five minutes when a sixth grader I didn’t even know pointed at me and laughed. Her gaggle of friends all looked at me and laughed, too.

  I hadn’t heard what she said, but my friend Grace did. Grace turned red with indignation, but fourth graders didn’t usually challenge sixth graders, so we walked harmlessly by. Once past, I asked her, “What did she say?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Grace said. I already needed protection by a prettier friend, even at the tender age of nine.

  But I nagged at her until finally she gave in. “Chloe,” Grace said. “They said that you look fat. That’s all.”

  I tried to pretend that it didn’t matter, but I was wounded. I gave a brittle laugh, as if there were no words in the world that could hurt me. But it was like I had just eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as Eve had done. My eyes were suddenly open to everything shallow, conceited, and self-conscious. I was aware that I just wasn’t good enough. I didn’t look right.

  It was that day that I understood more clearly how the world worked. How it favored the thin and pretty; how it rejected anyone who refused to conform to its ideals. It was because of that day that I could never quite look at myself in the mirror again, that every ice cream I ate carried with it an atomic bomb’s weight of guilt, that I was acutely aware that cute dresses would never look good on me.

  It was that day that I began to hate myself.

  Instead, she listened to her mother’s exhausted steps down the hallway and she kept her silence.

  ****

  By the following morning, the dark clouds had disappeared and given way to a clear, cold day. The sun, a pale, yellow disk, seemed too far away and coldly indifferent to the affairs of men.

  Dinah still felt tired even after two cups of black coffee. She and Elise arrived at the Sheriff’s Department, where Elise was immediately whisked away into some meeting. Dinah didn’t mind — it gave her a chance to concentrate on the next task. Her thoughts were solely focused on the murder case, and the first order of business was to obtain the addresses of the three numbers in Malia Shaw’s cell phone.

  Dinah called the phone company, and went through several layers of the management hierarchy before finally talking to the head of the Public Relations Department.

  She had to start her story again. “I’m Dinah Harris and I’m calling from the Ten Mile Hollow Sheriff’s Office,” she said. “I am investigating a murder, and I need some information about the victim’s cell phone.”

  “I see,” the woman said, coolly. “I’m not sure I can do that.”

  Don’t even go there with me this morning. Just don’t.

  “Well, I can of course get subpoenas and come down to your office,” said Dinah. “I’ll bring every deputy we’ve got, and we can go through your files one by one. Shouldn’t take more than a few weeks. It’d be disruptive, but there’s not much that I can do about that.”

  “Or I can just tell you what you want to know, right?” guessed the head of Public Relations.

  “Right. Here is what I need: there are three numbers in the victim’s cell phone. I need to know if those numbers are registered with your company or not, and if so, their full names and addresses. Now, I’ll hang up and give you an hour to find that information. Then you call the Sheriff’s Office here at Ten Mile Hollow and ask for me. That way, you’ll know I’m genuine.”

  It was strangely satisfying to order the head of Public Relations around, Dinah thought as she hung up. She missed being able to boss people around.

  The woman did call back within the hour, but with less good news than Dinah hoped. Of the three numbers, only the one belonging to Lola was registered with the same phone company. Still, it was a start. Lola’s address was on the western side of the railway tracks, just as Malia’s had been. Dinah waited impatiently for Elise’s meeting to be finished, and when the other woman finally emerged from the office, Dinah grabbed her. On the way, she explained to Elise that they were headed toward Lola’s place.

  Lola lived in a duplex that was nicer than Malia Shaw’s apartment, but still a little shabby. The apricot-colored paint was peeling, the lawn was struggling, and one of the shutters on the front window hung askew.

  Elise knocked on the front door and they waited for a few minutes.

  There was no answer, and she knocked again.

  “Looking for somebody?” a voice behind them ba
rked.

  Dinah jumped, startled, and turned around. Behind her stood a wizened old woman from whose face a pair of dark eyes glared at her ferociously.

  “I’m looking for Lola,” said Elise.

  “And you are?”

  “Detective Elise Jones, Sheriff’s Office, and Dinah Harris, consultant.” Elise showed her badge to the old lady, who looked at it suspiciously and sniffed.

  “I’m Ada Whittaker,” she said. “And I’m looking for Lola, too.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I live next door,” Ada Whittaker said, inclining her head toward the adjoining duplex. “I own this place, and I think Lola has split.”

  “Why is that?” repeated Elise.

  “She’s fallen behind in her rent. Owes me a month,” said Ada, sourly. “Her mail’s been piling up, and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her for well over a week. Maybe it’s been two weeks now, when I think about it.”

  “Have you been inside?”

  “Nope, but now that you’re here, you can do it,” said Ada. “I’ve got no desire to be seeing things that’ll give me nightmares. Not at my age.”

  While Ada found the right key and fiddled with the lock, Elise asked, “What is Lola’s last name?”

  “Lola Albright,” said the old lady.

  “Do you remember from the rental application whether she worked or not?”

  “I may be old, but I still have my memory,” said Ada. She turned the key and eased the door open. “Lola was an office worker for one of those temporary placement places. You know, they work a month at one office, and then go to another office. The placement agency handles it all.”

  Elise nodded. “Thank you, ma’am. We’ll take it from here.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” said Ada, her voice crisp.

  Dinah and Elise walked inside the duplex, which was quiet and dark. It was furnished cheaply, but pleasantly. The kitchen, dining room and living room were all tidy and clean, except for a week’s worth of dust. The bedroom, bathroom, and study nook were similarly attractively furnished, tidy and clean.

  Dinah did a cursory search and found no purse or cell phone. More importantly, she didn’t find a body. She looked through the closet in the only bedroom. There were still clothes hanging there, with no obvious gaps; but it was impossible to know whether Lola packed a bag in a hurry and left of her own accord or simply vanished.

  Elise was also flummoxed. Back outside, in the pale, struggling sunlight, Elise asked Ada, “Did Lola drive a car?”

  “Yes, an old Toyota, I think. I haven’t seen it since Lola vanished into thin air.”

  While Dinah continued looking around the duplex, Elise asked Ada to find the lease agreement. Dinah inspected bookshelves, countertops, drawers, and couch cushions. Nothing seemed disturbed or out of place. It was just as a house would normally look if its occupant had left for work. And didn’t mind a bit of dust.

  A thought struck Dinah, and she frowned. There was one odd thing: like Malia Shaw’s apartment, there were no photos, no knick-knacks, and no mementoes of any kind. That’s what was odd — the place had a sterile feel to it.

  Ada returned with a copy of the lease and rental application.

  Elise inspected the documents and then gave them to Dinah. Dinah was unsurprised when she saw that Lola hadn’t filled in the next-of-kin details either. Her birth date put her at around the same age as Malia Shaw. Another ghost?

  “Did you ever see Lola doing any drugs?” Dinah asked.

  The old woman shook her head. “I don’t tolerate that kind of thing around here,” she said. “I kept as close an eye on her as I could. I didn’t see anything that looked like drugs. She went to work and she came home. She didn’t have any visitors. To me, she seemed kind of lonely.”

  That seems to be a recurring theme, thought Dinah.

  “Did you see anyone suspicious hanging around?” she asked. “Or did you see Lola acting like she was afraid?”

  “Not that I can recall,” said Ada. “I’d know if there were any unsavory types hanging around here.”

  Dinah took one more glance around the duplex and thanked Ada Whittaker for her help. Elise promised to return the lease and rental application when she was finished with it, and both women went back to her car. As she turned the ignition, Elise said, “I know there have been no missing persons reports filed for anyone matching Lola’s age and gender. I’d know, because any report would have come across my desk.”

  “So, she disappeared a week — or perhaps two weeks — ago,” mused Dinah. “Before Malia Shaw died?”

  “Are you thinking of her as a suspect or a victim?” Elise asked. She drove over a residential speed bump like it was a scrap of paper and something in the car made a loud bang.

  Dinah clenched her teeth together. “I suppose both are possibilities, but I’m leaning toward Lola leaving in a hurry because she knew of some danger. It seems she left before Malia Shaw was murdered, so unless she came back to kill Malia, the timeline doesn’t really fit.”

  Elise nodded and they fell into thoughtful silence.

  Dinah stared through the windshield at the pale blue sky, seemingly blanched of its color by the vicious cold.

  Two women in their late thirties. Both lived alone, in sterile and shabby surroundings. Neither seemed to have any family or friends. Both seemed isolated, except for a tenuous link with each other. Now one was dead; the other vanished.

  What was the connection between them?

  ****

  Angus Whitehall had managed to spend the first few hours of the day dealing with pleasantries and pretending to be normal. His cheeks hurt from smiling widely and falsely, and he was heartily sick of shallow platitudes. How are you? Just great! How are you? It was essential to convincing everyone at work that he was fine, that a dead woman found on the wrong side of town had absolutely nothing to do with him.

  When he had finally gotten some time alone, he locked himself in his office at the Ten Mile Hollow First Baptist Church and sat down at his desk. It was a relaxing space: the walls lined with books on theology, philosophy, morality, and ethics; two table lamps throwing warm pools of light onto the carpet; an old, battered, deeply comfortable Chesterfield couch.

  But Angus did not feel relaxed today.

  The panicky feeling in his chest, which felt like a desperate bird thrumming in his rib cage trying to escape, hadn’t reduced in intensity. It left him short of breath, a little like he was slowly drowning on perfectly dry land.

  The detective had called yesterday. His panic had flared intensely in that moment, like a flashpoint, and he had hung up on her. If there were anything that would flag a detective’s interest, it would be an alarmed hang-up. Now he was wondering what he was going to do.

  Last night he’d fully expected several police cars, lights flashing and sirens blaring, to crash into his front yard. He’d been waiting, on edge, for that moment in time in which he’d be arrested in front of his children and wife. It hadn’t happened, but he was a fool if he thought the detective wouldn’t come sniffing around.

  As he had many times before, he felt tired, bone-weary. He was so sick of running and fighting, hoping to stay ahead, wondering if he’d be safe. It felt like he was in the midst of a hurricane, the roaring wind ripping and pulling at his thin veneer of respectability, threatening to tear it off and expose the rotten core hidden beneath. Had he really been so stupid to think that marriage and a family and a reputable job would shield him? Now that stupidity would put Louise, Grace, and Marcus in harm’s way. I am not the person they think I am. They think I’m good, but I’m bad. They think I’m wise, but I’m a fool.

  Louise cannot understand the frequency of nightmares I have — too many for an adult, surely? Not when you’ve done the things I’ve done.

  Louise is frightened of me when I become angry. She can see the monster in me. She doesn’t know what I’m capable of, but she can sense something is not quite right. I know that my anger is lethal and treachero
us, as menacing as a shark in dark waters. It has exploded with deadly force before. But nobody must know about that. Nobody must find out the things I’ve done!

  I’m walking a tightrope nobody knows about, where to fall is destruction, despair, death. To stay steady I must grit my teeth and fix my eyes upon the end. Often, the battle not to fall, not to give in to my old nature, leaves me exhausted.

  I am under no illusion that I will keep this façade up forever. One day, the truth will surface and you will have to decide to forgive or to walk away. Perhaps, one day, I’ll lose the battle on the tightrope, and I’ll fall. I pray you’ll understand how long I’ve fought myself, and know that I did it for you.

  He tried to gather his thoughts, to keep focus and think sensibly. He needed to work out what he would tell the detective when she inevitably contacted him again. God, he implored, I know I need to tell the truth. But I’m so scared.

  How willing was he to expose everything about himself? Inwardly, he cringed, knowing that he was a coward, and always had been.

  He had been in Malia’s apartment, and he was pretty sure the police would discover that. Despite his efforts to be careful, he had to think that they would find a stray fingerprint or some other DNA. There might even be a witness who’d seen him come and go from that apartment. His first priority was to come up with a plausible story about why he’d been at her apartment. He cast around for ideas, each sounding wilder than the last.

  Finally, he settled on the only one that seemed likely — that he’d counseled her, he a concerned minister and she a drug addict, trying to help her change her life.

  He rubbed his burning eyes, realizing he’d been staring at the same spot. What a ridiculous story! Why would a minister go to a dingy apartment to counsel a drug addict when the church had so many outreach programs running from within this very building? It was laughable. He had to come up with a better story.

  Angus shook his head. His thoughts were buckshot, spraying through his head with no target and no aim. He needed to think about what the police definitely knew.

  First, they knew that he had known Malia. They had gotten his phone number from somewhere, and it was likely from her apartment or cell phone. There had probably been witnesses over time who had seen him with her and going into her apartment.