The Dark Heart

by Julie Cave

  Second, they would find out that he’d been in her apartment. He’d always been careful not to leave much of himself there, but there would almost certainly be a fingerprint or some DNA that would connect him with her.

  What they didn’t know was how he knew her.

  This was the exact story that couldn’t get out. It would ruin his career and reputation. It would destroy his family, none of whom knew about his past.

  But there was one thing he knew for sure. I didn’t kill her. I wasn’t there when she died. They have no way of proving that I had anything to do with her death.

  Angus realized with a start that he’d spent every minute since he’d learned of her death thinking about how it would affect him. He hadn’t once thought about the fact that she had died violently at the hands of another. He hadn’t grieved for her. He wasn’t sure he could. In truth, her death was a relief. He no longer had to worry about being seen with her, about her saying the wrong thing to the wrong person in a heroin haze.

  He thought of her, finally, as the broken bird she’d always been. What they’d been through together, he’d survived. But she had been more fragile, more easily bruised, and had not outlasted her pain. That was why he’d continued to help her, despite the fact he knew she wouldn’t live much longer. He’d always thought he’d find her dead from an overdose, the needle still in her arm. He’d never thought that their past would find her first.

  The question now was, if he hadn’t killed her, who had? Had the past he’d been trying to hide for so long finally caught up with him in this small town? Was he himself in danger?

  This led him to think of Lola — the third person in their triumvirate of violence and secrecy. He wondered if she knew, and whether she was scared. He debated whether to call her, to warn her. But perhaps that would put her in worse danger, for surely he was the main target for the killer.

  Angus thought of Malia again, of the girl he’d once known. She’d been bright, vivacious, and cute. In those days, he’d been younger, handsome, and arrogant, with a forceful personality. In those days, he’d been rougher, with less finesse. She had loved him, worshiped the ground he’d walked on. He’d taken advantage of her naivety; he’d always loved himself more. He’d dragged her down into a dark place, from which she’d never recovered.

  He’d fooled himself into thinking that somehow they’d escaped from their past, that it would remain successfully hidden.

  Instead, it rose from the murky depths, like a sea serpent from the old myths, ready to destroy.

  ****

  Late in the afternoon, when those who did their work in the shadows shook themselves from sleep and emerged into the dying light, Elise and Dinah ventured into the seedy neighborhood Simon called home. Dinah had called the phone company, been put on hold and eventually received Simon’s address after two hours of polite requests, negotiation, and finally threats of bringing the full force of the law crashing down upon them. Elise had listened the whole time while she caught up on her paperwork, grinning.

  Dinah had assumed from the nature of the text messages between Malia and Simon, that he had been her dealer. That made him a prime suspect, in her eyes. For protection and intimidation, Elise decided to take along one of the sheriff’s deputies, a building-sized officer named Peyton Hauser. He was big, and he was quick with his gun. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he possessed a frighteningly impassive glare that promised violence and a horrible death to anyone who dared cross him.

  When Simon opened his door and saw the police on his doorstep, he seemed weary and resigned, as though he’d been waiting for them. “Come in,” he said, though his tone indicated that he very much wished they would do the opposite.

  His place was bigger than Malia’s, and kept in better condition. The furniture wasn’t much to speak of, but Simon clearly had a thing for gadgetry: electronics of every description crowded the living room.

  Hauser whistled. “Nice stuff you’ve got here, Simon. What is it you do for a living?”

  Simon was tall and twig-thin, with watery, pale blue eyes, scruffy, patchy facial hair, and a thin mouth. He waved vaguely at a fake-leather couch, an invitation to sit down.

  He smiled. “I’m in the import/export business, sir.”

  Elise snorted. “Of course you are. Lucky for you we’re not here to inspect your goods. We’re here about a woman named Malia Shaw.”

  Simon swallowed. “What about her?”

  “How did you know her?” Dinah asked. “Before you start lying through your teeth, you should know we have dozens of text messages between the two of you.”

  Simon considered this for a long moment and nodded. “Yeah, I knew her.”

  “How long have you known her?”

  Again he took a moment to think. “Musta been three, four years ago.”

  “How did you come to meet her?”

  Simon smiled and stayed silent.

  Deputy Hauser shifted his bulk close to the other man. “Answer the lady, Simon. You don’t want to make me get upset.”

  Simon eyed the officer’s muscle-bound arms and said, “I, uh, helped her get the stuff she wanted.”

  “By stuff, you mean heroin,” prompted Dinah.

  Simon’s eyes slid nervously around the room. “Yeah. She was into it in a big way when I met her. Already a big-time junkie.”

  “How did she pay you for the drugs?”

  “Cash. I don’t accept nothin’ else.”

  “Right. She ever have a problem paying you?”

  “No, she always had cash.”

  “Where did she get cash from? Did she work?”

  Simon considered this. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure she never had a proper job. She was too, you know, too much of a junkie.”

  “What about other sources of income? Did she sell drugs? Steal? Beg?”

  “No,” he said immediately. “I know who’s dealin’ drugs around here. She didn’t have the control to sell smack, anyways. She saw smack, it went straight in her arm. Don’t know about stealing stuff, but I don’t think that sounds right.”

  Dinah thought for a moment. It matched Malia’s condition as a hard-core drug user. What didn’t match was the foresight or control to pay rent in advance.

  “What about herself?”

  Simon shook his head. “I don’t think so. I know she wasn’t on the street. I’d a known about that.”

  Dinah nodded. How on earth had Malia paid for a steady stream of heroin? She had to be getting the cash from somewhere.

  “So you never had a problem with payment with Malia?”

  “Nope, never,” said Simon.

  “Ever have any disagreements with her?”

  “No. We didn’t really know each other well, know what I’m sayin’? She texted me when she needed stuff. I’d go over, get my cash. That was it.”

  “You ever try to stiff her? Cut her drugs with talc, sugar, or anything?”

  Simon had the arrogance to look offended. “No way! I got a good name in this business. My stuff is always good; I’m reliable. I charge a premium for it, so I only get clients who can pay.”

  This mystified Dinah. Malia didn’t fit the stereotype of someone who could afford premium heroin.

  “You ever want more from her, Simon?” Elise asked, leaning forward and watching his eyes intently. “More than a business relationship and she turned you down?”

  Simon looked pained. “I don’t mix business with pleasure. Anyway have you —?”

  “Have I what, Simon?”

  Simon’s face stained faintly red. “Ah . . . I was just gonna say . . . she wasn’t my type.”

  “So you’re saying you didn’t touch her?”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s what I’m sayin’.”

  “If that’s true, the DNA will prove it. DNA doesn’t lie, you know.”

  That didn’t scare Simon. “It’ll tell you true, then. I didn’t touch her.” His eyes widened. “I didn’t kill her either, if that’s what you be thin
kin’.”

  “You didn’t get upset with her, smack her around a bit?”

  “No way! In fact, I never used to even go into her place hardly. Used to stand on the porch, do the deal quick. In fact, it was me who —”

  Simon suddenly clamped his mouth shut.

  “Who what, Simon?” Elise asked.

  Deputy Hauser moved closer to the other man and flexed his bicep. Simon swallowed noisily. He was silent for a few moments, and said: “It was me who called 911.”

  “Really?” Dinah knew that the emergency call had been anonymous. “Tell me what happened.”

  “She texted me for stuff a couple a days before I called,” Simon said. “I took it over, she gave me cash. It was usually every two, three days. I’d give her enough to last her a few days. I didn’t hear from her after that, I went over to check.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  Simon looked embarrassed. “She was a good client. Made lotta money from her.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Knocked on her door. Looked through the little window next to the door.”

  Dinah thought about Malia’s apartment and recalled the small pane of frosted glass next to the front door. How had he seen through the frosted glass? She frowned and started to ask him, but he must have read her thoughts.

  “There’s a strip of glass right around the edge that ain’t frosted,” Simon explained. “Like about half an inch wide. I couldn’t see her at all. I knocked and knocked, and she didn’t come to the door. I thought it was pretty weird. I didn’t know what happened. For all I knew she overdosed or hit her head or somethin’. So I called it in, but I swear I never knew she’d a been murdered.”

  Dinah thought his story rang true. He would be stupid to kill off such a regular customer, unless there had been a problem between them. She needed to dig a little deeper into the real Simon.

  “Where were you last Monday?” she asked.

  “I was with . . . clients most of the day,” he said. “She’d a been one of the first ones.”

  “I need names, addresses, and phone numbers,” Elise said.

  Simon suddenly looked shaken. “I . . . I can’t!”

  “Unless you want a murder rap on your sheet, you can,” said Elise.

  “You don’t understand,” said Simon, his voice high-pitched and desperate. “These aren’t down-and-out junkies like Malia. Most of my clients are . . . regular people, with jobs and families and stuff. They don’t wanta be found out!”

  Wrong, Simon, they’re all addicts. I would know, wouldn’t I?

  “Simon, let’s do a deal,” suggested Elise. “I’ll be discreet with them, if you’ll be upfront. Their secret lives will remain safe with me. But if you mess around with me, I’ll make all kinds of noise and organize lots of drug raids and not only will you be finished, but you’ll be in jail for supply anyway. Then I start thinking all kinds of unhealthy thoughts about how you murdered this woman. You understand me?”

  Simon sighed. He got up, took out a red notebook from a desk drawer and gave it to Elise.

  He’d seen nine contacts during Monday, he told her, including Malia. Dinah looked through the book once Elise had finished copying the details of those contacts. Once, she might have been stunned. Since her own fall from grace, nothing about the human condition surprised her anymore.

  Most of Simon’s clients were middle-class — teachers, mothers, lawyers, bankers. Not the sort of people you normally assumed used drugs.

  But things had changed, Dinah thought. Life was cheap and the strong victimized the weak. She had seen men smack the teeth out of their wives, kids film each other kicking a hapless victim in the head, women put out their cigarettes on their kids’ legs. It was a mad world.

  “Now, Simon,” Elise said, by way of farewell. “You make sure you stick around, okay? We’ll be watching you. Any funny behavior, we’ll take you straight in on any number of drugs charges. You keep playing straight with me, we’re okay.”

  He nodded as Elise, Dinah, and Hauser made their own way out of his apartment.

  Chapter 4

  Acold night filled with soft mist had fallen as Elise and Dinah drove toward Norfolk. The slick blacktop hissed underneath the wheels, a noise that had always seemed comforting to Dinah. It reminded her of long road trips she’d taken as a child with her parents, a peaceful quiet reigning in the car, save for the sweet sound of her mother singing softly. At this moment, though, she was buzzed and wide-awake. The autopsy of Malia Shaw had been done, and she and Elise wanted to be there in person for the results.

  On the way, Elise called home to check in with Lewis and Chloe. This filled Dinah with a considerable amount of anxiety, as Elise’s distracted driving became even worse. She hung on, clenched her teeth, and somehow they arrived in one piece.

  A freezing rain was falling when they pulled into the parking lot at the Medical Examiner’s Office in Norfolk. Elise stopped the car and they ran across the wet parking lot into the building, where cheerful light spilled from the windows in sharp contrast to the miserable weather.

  Dr. Theo Walker was alone there; everyone else had gone home for the night. Elise had explained that he was the doctor who usually did the autopsies for the occasional mysterious deaths that occurred in Ten Mile Hollow. Usually, the autopsy was a formality, a confirmation that the bar fight had gone terribly wrong, or that a husband had finally hit his wife too hard. This one would be different.

  “Evening, detective,” he greeted, cheerily. He looked at Dinah. “Hello. Nice to see you again!”

  Dr. Walker’s cheerfulness only seemed to increase with every dead body he saw, Dinah thought.

  “Evening, doctor,” Elise replied, shaking the rain from her hair. “Thanks for fitting us in.”

  “No problem,” said the doctor. “Follow me. We’ll go have a look at her.”

  Elise and Dinah followed the tall doctor back to an examining room, fitted out in blinding white and stainless steel. It was immaculate, which made the jarring juxtaposition between the spotless room and the ruined body of a human being on the table even more pronounced.

  “Let’s begin with the basics,” said Dr. Walker. “Your victim was female, aged in her late thirties. She had never given birth to a child.”

  Lonely, lonely, lonely, the room seemed to echo.

  “The cause of death was asphyxiation due to strangulation,” continued Dr. Walker. He motioned at the throat of Malia Shaw. “You can see the bruises on her neck, which indicate force was applied, probably with another person’s hands, rather than an instrument like rope or cord. Further evidence of asphyxiation can be found in the eyes — you can see petechial hemorrhages.”

  Dinah saw that the small, red capillary blood vessels in Malia Shaw’s eyes had burst. It was a telltale sign of strangulation.

  “Further, there was some cyanosis to her lips and extremities, indicating a depleted level of oxygen in her body. Again, that’s indicative of asphyxiation. I believe the victim died sometime last Monday. I couldn’t narrow it down much further than that 24-hour period. I mentioned at the crime scene that rigor mortis had passed by the time we got there, indicative that it was at least 48 hours since her death. The cold of the apartment had slowed decomposition, however, so it may be impossible to pin down the exact time. In any case, I have to think that this particular victim wouldn’t have lived much longer.”

  “Drug addiction?” Elise said.

  “Right. This lady was a heavy, long-time drug abuser,” said Dr. Walker. “I’m thinking at least 10 years, but could be as many as 20 years.” He pointed at the inside of her arms. “You can see scar tissue here, to the point that most of the veins in these areas had collapsed. I also found scar tissue in her feet, legs, and stomach, all showing evidence of being used as injection sites. She has other hallmarks of a chronic heroin user: she’s very thin, there are contusions all over her body from scratching and picking.”

  These were evident upon the body — deep, weepi
ng sores because heroin addicts often felt like their skin was crawling and couldn’t help but scratch.

  Dr. Walker consulted his notes. “Internally, she was a mess, to put it mildly. She had contracted hepatitis C, and had not received treatment for it. Her liver was in a diseased state. Her heart was also damaged and I saw some mild inflammation of the lining, which would worsen with time. She had an obvious decrease in muscle mass. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if one day soon, she’d shot up, her heart stopped, and she’d not woken up.”

  Dinah let out a long breath. She felt immense pity for the woman, who seemed to be bent on self-destruction. For anyone who had struggled with addiction, she knew how hard it was to beat. For someone like Malia Shaw, who had been isolated, it must have seemed an insurmountable hurdle.

  “Physically, there is only one other item of note to report,” Dr. Walker said. He rolled her arm back over, so that the outside was more visible. “I found strange scarring that is very old, maybe 15 or 20 years.”

  Dinah looked at the dead woman’s arms closely.

  “You won’t see traditional scar tissue,” said the doctor. “What’s occurred is a bleaching of the skin.”

  Dinah saw what Dr. Walker was referring to — on each upper arm, a large patch of skin that was a shade whiter than the rest of her body appeared. It was more pronounced than a tan line; somehow it seemed much more permanent.

  “What caused this?” she asked.

  “Most commonly, laser removal of tattoos,” said Dr. Walker. “Today, it can be done with minimal scarring and a reasonable result. Twenty years ago, the procedure was much more invasive and left this distinctive scar.”

  “Oh!” Elise sounded surprised. “Wouldn’t that be expensive?”

  “It would be,” agreed Dr. Walker. “Certainly 20 years ago, it would have been more expensive than it is today.”

  Dinah made a note of this, wondering what it meant, if anything. It did seem coincidental that 20 years ago, Malia had gotten tattoos removed and commenced taking heroin. What had happened 20 years ago?