The Dark Heart

by Julie Cave

  All at once, Watson had a gun trained on Angus, pointed straight at his head. “I killed Malia. I killed Lola. Now it’s your turn.”

  Angus dropped the mug in his hands. It fell to the hardwood floor and shattered. For one crazy moment, Angus remembered he had done exactly the same thing the night he had learned Malia had been murdered. “Wh — what are you talking about?”

  “San Diego, 21 years ago.” He looked at Angus sharply. “Do you know what happened in San Diego 21 years ago?”

  “Oh . . . well. . . .” Angus searched his memory furiously, trying to remember what Watson knew about the Southern Cross Militia.

  Watson crossed the room in two strides and put the gun to Angus’s temple. Angus’s knees went weak and rubbery, but he knew it would be over if he fell to the floor. So he forced himself to remain upright.

  “Twenty-one years ago, my son, Jordan, walked home from work at about 11 o’clock at night. He was a respiratory therapist at a private hospital. My wife and I had come from long lines of poverty, and I had worked hard all my life so that my kids could get an education. Jordan was seriously considering applying for medical school. He was the smartest person I ever knew, that boy. So smart, just like his mama. In the meantime, he had a good job and he was a good boy. He was only three blocks from home when four monsters jumped him.”

  The old man’s eyes were red and watery, but they did not waver. In that moment, he looked very old, the weight of grief heavy on his shoulders.

  “There were two girls. They told him their car had broken down. He was such a nice kid he didn’t think twice about helping them. The girls lured him to an alleyway, and two men attacked him. While he was down, they continued to beat him and kick him. Then they left him for dead, in a stinking alleyway, like he was worth nothing more than trash!”

  Angus remembered now. The thrill had been hot lava in his veins. He had been consumed with desire to do nothing else but inflict pain and suffering on his victim. He remembered with the heavy coldness of shame.

  “We always waited up for our kids. When he wasn’t home by midnight, I knew something was wrong. I just knew. We started looking for Jordan at about two in the morning,” continued Watson, not blinking. “We found him at about three. He was unconscious, but still alive.”

  He paused and jammed the gun roughly against Angus’s head. “Jordan was in a coma and had suffered catastrophic brain injury. He’s never woken up, to this day. He lives in a home and my wife visits him every single day. He’s wasted away to almost nothing. He looks like a skeleton lying in a bed. He’s fed with a tube. He can’t think or speak or read or love. He might as well be dead.”

  Angus could no longer stand. He sank to his knees. “How did you find me?”

  “Your friend Harry Purcell spilled his guts in prison, to me and to the state. He turned on you just as you turned on your leader. But by then you’d vanished, and so had my chance for justice. There was no justice for my Jordan or for my wife.”

  With his free hand, Watson took Angus by the chin so that he was forced to look into the sad eyes of the old man. “These hands, they earned a living for my family while my wife raised our kids. These hands loved my kids and trained them up right. When my Jordan was taken from us, I swore that these hands would avenge him because the law failed to do it. And so that’s what I did. I used these hands to choke the life out of those two wretched women, and I’ll use these hands to kill you, too.”

  Just like that, Angus realized his life was forfeit and that it was the right and just thing that ought to be done. He had run away; he had pretended to be someone else. But when all was stripped bare, he was who he had always been.

  Violent, hateful, despicable, unworthy. That is who I am.

  ****

  It was revenge; the whole thing boiled down to simple revenge. A man had lost his son and took justice for himself. Angus had to admire the man. Would he have done the same thing, if the roles were reversed? Didn’t he understand his anger? There was something authentically basic about his desire for justice. It was human nature to try to right wrongs. He couldn’t really blame the grieving father. For Blake Watson, Angus had escaped justice. It was therefore his job to seek it.

  However, it was not easy to be pragmatic about this while a gun was pressed to his head.

  “What did you do?” he asked Watson. “With Malia and Lola?”

  Watson scratched a scrap of beard. “I broke into Lola’s home pretty easily,” he began. “The place was pretty dead. The door lock was pretty old and I used a screwdriver to break the lock. I went into the house and hid in her bedroom.”

  “How did you know she was coming home?”

  “I watched her for a long time. I knew her routine. She went to work and she came home. Sometimes she stopped at Joaquin’s for a drink. But even then, she’d always come home. I just waited for her. As soon as she walked into the bedroom, I attacked her. I strangled her, as you probably know.”

  Pretty straightforward, thought Angus, when one is describing the method of murdering another human being. He couldn’t stop shaking. “But her body wasn’t found there, was it?” Angus tried to recall what the detective had told him. “Wasn’t the body found out in the woods or something?”

  “Guess I learned my lesson,” admitted Watson. “I hoped it would buy me time. I took her from the duplex and drove out of town.”

  “Did she fight back?”

  “She tried, but it wasn’t any good. I took her by surprise; I was taller and stronger than her. She flailed around some, knocked some stuff over. But I fixed it up before I took her away.”

  “How did you track us down?”

  Watson smiled eerily. “That age-old mistake made by people who try to disappear; they contact loved ones from their old lives. Lola kept in contact with her grandmother. From there, it was easy. I didn’t know that all three of you had stuck together and actually lived in this town. So I got lucky in that respect.”

  No, you didn’t get lucky. We got what we deserved. “So what happened with Malia?” he asked, weakly.

  Watson shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. I walked across the street; I opened her apartment door. She was in the bedroom, half-asleep on the bed. I could see she’d recently taken a hit of dope. I walked right up to her, strangled her, and left her. Nobody came to check on her for two days. I know, because I watched from across the street.”

  “How did you get in the apartment?”

  “I’d made myself a copy of her key,” explained Watson. “She used to come into my shop from time to time. She told me once that she loved looking at pieces of other people’s history. I lifted her keys once and made a copy.”

  Angus couldn’t help but look at his hands, powerful enough to squeeze the life out of another. “When did you arrive in town?”

  “About a year ago.”

  Angus nodded and then realized that he’d run out of things to ask the other man, and this meant Watson would probably pull the trigger soon. Panic seized him, despite the knowledge that had always existed deep within him that this day would come.

  “Drop the gun,” said a voice, low and calm, from behind him.

  Dinah!

  Angus had forgotten she was there. He closed his eyes and began to pray fervently.

  Blake Watson started, taking his gaze away from Angus. His gun wavered. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “My name is Dinah Harris. I am a former FBI agent and I trained at the firing range twice as often as anyone else. You need to drop your weapon.”

  Watson shook his head. His gun hand jerked erratically. “Don’t take my one chance for justice away from me!”

  “I’m sorry for what you went through,” Dinah said, still calm. “I can understand your pain. But this is no solution to that pain.”

  “Oh yeah? How would you know what it feels like?”

  “My son died when he was only a little boy,” said Dinah. “He was killed in a car wreck by a truck driver who veered onto the wron
g side of the road. I understand what it’s like to feel like nobody is held accountable for your child’s death or injury.”

  Watson blinked. “I . . . well, I . . .”

  “You need to drop your weapon. You know by now that taking a life in exchange for your son’s life hasn’t made you happier or made you feel better.”

  “It hasn’t,” admitted Watson. His gun seemed to have dropped to his side. Angus continued to pray.

  “Your hatred and anger has only served to give you more pain,” said Dinah. “You don’t deserve to carry around so much pain. Don’t make it worse now.”

  Angus heard a choked sound. He opened his eyes and looked up at Watson, who was weeping openly. “I didn’t know what else to do,” he whispered.

  “I understand,” said Dinah, still so calm she might well have been discussing the weather. “It is time to let go now. Drop your weapon and let go of the hatred that has consumed you.”

  Watson turned his gaze upon Angus, and Angus saw an utterly broken man. The gun wavering at his side in his grasp, great trembling rolled through Watson, his chest heaving, his face lined with pain, tears cascading from his eyes.

  “I am so sorry,” Angus said, meeting the man’s gaze. “I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused you and your wife, and for the life I took from your son. It was not my place to take. I am sorry for that with every part of me. I wish I could take back what I did. I regret it wholeheartedly.”

  The gun crashed to the ground. Blake Watson hugged himself as he continued to weep. Dinah picked up the gun in a flash.

  Angus felt like he was in a surreal dream. The man who had tried to kill him was lying on the floor, consumed with grief. He himself was still sitting, not trusting in his ability to stand up. Dinah was on the phone, calling in the police, still cool and calm.

  When she had finished, she knelt beside Watson. “Sir,” she said. “You know that I am going to have to handcuff you.” She helped him up to his knees, and then handcuffed him with plastic zip ties. She did so gently, as though she didn’t want to hurt the man.

  With the same gentleness, she helped Angus to the couch. Exhausted, he said, “Do you believe that I’m not the killer now?”

  She gave a weak smile. “I do. Do you believe that God loves you despite everything you’ve done?”

  Angus found that he could not answer.

  Sirens wailed in the distance. Soon, the emergency lights would flood the street with their flickering, probing light.

  Angus waited, thinking about the question Dinah had asked him.

  ****

  Did they design these rooms specifically to suck the very last vestige of hope from anyone who dares enter? Dinah wondered. Her mind was randomly and strangely coming up with acute observations, while she, Elise, Lewis, and Louise waited in the hospital waiting room. Dinah found hospital waiting rooms extremely difficult. Memories of waiting to hear that her husband and son had been killed in a room like this one brought back a rush of pain. And so she could not sit still.

  It was painted the same limpid greenish-gray of police interview rooms, she observed. Sickly lighting cast feeble shadows, struggling to light the entire room, as if itself in dire need of medical attention. From beyond the door, she could hear rapid footsteps and low, terse conversation; the controlled calm of professionals under enormous pressure.

  Louise sat beside her, curled away; arms folded around herself, her face grim, staring blankly at the floor.

  Lewis sat on the other side with Elise, stiff and still as a statue, as if not moving could somehow ensure Chloe’s life would be saved. Elise seemed frozen with fear. Her face was as white as wax and only her lips moved, very slightly, as if she were mouthing a prayer.

  Chloe had been rushed into the emergency room, while Elise and Lewis had been shown to this waiting room along with Grace and Louise. Only a few moments later, Grace had collapsed again, her face chillingly pale. She had been whisked away for treatment, leaving Louise shell-shocked.

  Dinah had arrived, intending to tell Elise about the extraordinary events at Angus Whitehall’s place. But now was not the time or place, she saw. She stood up, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she paced along the corridor to the vending machines. She considered their wares: coffee, chips, chocolate bars, and giant cookies, with more concentrated scrutiny than they deserved. She wrestled with the vending machine the way Isaac Newton had wrestled with calculus. Yet the thought of consuming any one of these items made her stomach curdle.

  A sudden shout made her freeze, then she ran back to where she’d been sitting. A loud, insistent machine buzzed alarm throughout the ER beyond the flimsy door obscuring her view, and she heard the footsteps pounding as nurses and doctors poured into the triage.

  The terrible memories threatened to send her into a full-fledged panic attack, making her movements jittery and urgent, like those of a trapped bird. When she arrived back to the quiet group, Elise was asking Louise, “What happened? At my house?”

  Lewis stirred. “Elise. . . .”

  “I need to know,” she insisted.

  Louise sighed. “We’d only just gotten home from the courthouse,” she said. “Grace found something in her bedroom today. She thought it was from Chloe, and I caught a glimpse of it before Grace left. It looked like a gold necklace. Grace thought Chloe had left it at our house by mistake, so she went over there to give it back.”

  Elise stared at the ground intently, listening hard. Dinah sat next to her and took her hand.

  “It was only a few minutes later than I got a frantic phone call from Grace. She was . . . upset, and we drove around there immediately. I stayed with Grace outside, and Angus went inside the house.”

  Dinah felt Elise take a deep breath, steeling herself.

  “He . . . he found her, in her bedroom,” Louise said, her voice thick. “She had used a belt.”

  “A belt to do what?” asked Elise.

  The words seemed to stick in Louise’s throat. “She . . . used the belt to hang —”

  Dinah felt sick, the taste of bile bitter in her mouth. Elise whispered, “Chloe hung herself?”

  Louise nodded. “Angus took her down, did CPR until the paramedics arrived.”

  Elise dropped her head, then started shaking it. “No, you must be wrong. You must have gotten her confused with someone else. I got up this morning, made breakfast. She was right there, dressed for school. She was right there. She was smiling, talking to me. It was just a normal day. She seemed so normal.”

  Louise said nothing. In her silence, Elise finally understood the truth. She put her head in her hands and let giant sobs wrack her frame, shuddering as though an electrical current was running through her. Lewis put both of his arms around her. Dinah felt useless, unable to stem the other woman’s pain.

  “How could this happen? I didn’t know she was so sad! How could I not know my baby was in so much pain? How could I not see she was unhappy?” A high note of pain swelled in her throat, and Elise jammed her fist against her mouth as if to keep it in.

  “Elise,” said Lewis, his voice rough. “You cannot entertain thoughts like those. That way is madness. This is not your fault. Chloe very likely hid everything from us. She probably wanted to protect you; she probably didn’t want you to worry about her.”

  Elise turned suddenly to Dinah, her burning, wet eyes staring at her. “We have to pray. God has to do something about this, right? I know God listens to you. You have to pray!”

  Before Dinah could reply, the door separating the triage from the waiting room swung open. A young woman with a stethoscope around her neck looked around, a serious frown on her face. “Elise Jones?” she asked.

  Elise moaned, standing up. “That’s me,” she said, voice little more than a croak. “That’s me. Where is Chloe? Is she okay?”

  The doctor pressed her lips together, perhaps trying to prevent the passage of bad news. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Jones,” the doctor said.

  Dinah thought of Elise insisting to
the paramedics: I’m not Mrs. Jones! I’m Detective Jones! The look on the doctor’s face indicated that this was news she very much dreaded having to give. “Chloe was pronounced dead on arrival here at the hospital. We tried every method of resuscitation we could, but in the end, it was not enough. I’m so terribly sorry.”

  Elise stared at the doctor uncomprehendingly, her mouth agape, searching for a different answer. Dinah could feel the quaking in her friend’s body. As the news sank in, Elise’s face crumbled like ice sheets dissolving from a glacier, crashing into the sea.

  “No!” she shrieked, voice raw and bleeding, suddenly falling.

  Lewis caught her and helped her to a chair, while the doctor sat next to her and gently talked her through what had happened. Dinah sat next to her, knowing from experience that Elise would understand none of it. The doctor might have been speaking Swahili, for all she knew. Dinah knew that her friend’s life had just been destroyed by a doctor’s words, and where her heart had been broken, guilt would rush in rapidly to fill the void.

  Eventually, the doctor left the room, leaving the stricken occupants alone. The feeling of incredible tragedy and loss enveloped the room thickly. The impersonal green of the hospital room, where a thousand other tragedies unfolded every day, would give no answers to Elise’s questions.

  Dinah felt as if she were sitting in a well thick with poisonous air, slowly suffocating to death. This is how frail life is, how quickly it can be taken, how quickly the spark of life can be blown out. This is the futility of human life, barely more than a breath of wind across a cold earth. The Bible says life is nothing more than a vapor.

  Elise took a deep breath, seeming to calm herself. She turned to Dinah. “I know you will understand what I mean when I say this. I will never, ever recover from this.”

  Chapter 18

  Life at the Whitehall residence had not returned to normal. Angus no longer knew what normal even looked like.

  Louise’s anger toward him simmered and bubbled like a volcano: an eruption was imminent. She couldn’t look at him, let alone speak to him. Grace had been so devastated by Chloe’s suicide that she’d cried non-stop for two days now, refusing to eat or sleep. The hollow, deadened look in his daughter’s eyes filled him with cold fear.