The Darkest Place

by Daniel Judson

  He had slept for only a few minutes at a time that night. His apartment felt foreign to him, cold, not that it had ever really felt otherwise. That night it just seemed even more so, like it was a place he had once stayed at, long ago, decades ago maybe, had stayed at only briefly, not for two years, and was now only revisiting—out of nostalgia, perhaps, for a different, not better, time. Without his routine of obsession and self-destruction to give his life its structure, Kane felt lost, unsettled. He had in his place nothing alcoholic to drink, and it took all he had that night to keep from running out and spending the last of the money in his pocket on a bottle of scotch. He watched the clock till the liquor stores were closed, then watched the clock till the bars were closed. It wasn’t discipline that kept him from leaving, it was fear of what might happen to him out there in the openness of the village—on the sidewalk, crossing the street—what piece of bad luck might accost him, send him back into chaos, make once and for all a ruin of his small life.

  The morning of the second day brought nothing new on the radio. Kane listened all day, sometimes sitting on the edge of his bed, other times in the secondhand chair in the front room. He listened to the radio, to sounds coming up from the street. Sometimes he’d hear a car door close and he’d go to the window and look down onto Nugent Street. It was never anyone he knew, never anyone coming toward his downstairs door. Kane began to wonder if his phone was broken or out of service, if maybe he had forgotten to pay the bill, didn’t understand why no one was calling him. He checked his phone several times during the day, each time hearing a dial tone loud and clear. He thought now and then of calling Mercer but always decided against it, figured Mercer would get in touch with him when he had the chance. Kane knew better than to even think of trying to call Clay or Gregor. Gregor had made his feelings on that clear. And there was no way of knowing, short of leaving his place, if Meg’s husband was still home, so that was out. There wasn’t anyone else for him to call, no one else in his life, aside from his ex-wife, but that would only remind them both of what—of all—they had lost, and there really wouldn’t be any point in that.

  It was in the middle of the second afternoon that Kane gave up listening to the radio—the news was now saying nothing at all about the dead man in Riverhead—and stretched out on his bed to get some sleep. He dozed off, slipped quickly again into a dream of his son, and woke with a feeling of alarm, uncertain for a second time where he was. It wasn’t long after that his phone finally rang.

  He was still sitting on the edge of his mattress, looking out at the late afternoon sky. The number on his caller ID was one of the college numbers. Kane answered it on the second ring.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s Mercer.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’ll be around in ten minutes. I’ve got some things I need to tell you.”

  “Anything wrong?”

  “I’m leaving now. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  The line went dead. Kane put the receiver on the cradle, waited a moment, then got up and went into the bathroom and ran some cold water on his face. He didn’t look at his reflection in the mirror above the sink, knew he’d only see a tired man, all the worse for wear. It was more than enough just feeling that way, he didn’t need a visual to go along with it.

  Kane waited in the front room, standing by the window. He saw Mercer’s old Volvo wagon pull up and park, watched Mercer enter through the door below, listened to him coming up the stairs. It was just starting to get dark now, the sky softening into night. Across the street was the IGA. People walked into it, walked out of it. Kane watched them, wondering if any of them at this moment feared for their lives, felt the need to hurry to the safety of their cars, then speed to the safety of their homes, hide inside, watch out their windows. Probably not, but, if so, then he wasn’t alone in this.

  Mercer knocked, Kane opened the door, let him in, asked if Mercer wanted any coffee or tea, walked as he did so into his narrow hallway—retreated to it, really—and stood by the stove. He felt for some reason suddenly a little foolish in front of Mercer. Perhaps it was because the man had worked so hard to save a life Kane had worked so hard to destroy. Whatever the reason, standing in that dark hallway, with a good ten feet between them, was something Kane obviously needed.

  “I’m fine,” Mercer said. He stayed close to the door, stood with his back to it. “I only have a few minutes.”

  Kane put the kettle on the burner anyway, lit the gas. Something to do.

  “Have you been listening to the news?” Mercer said.

  Kane nodded. “Yeah.”

  “The man the police found was Dean. I don’t know if you’ve heard that. Only his name wasn’t Dean. It was Eric Kosakowski. Dean Moriarty was an alias, one of them anyway. Apparently the guy had quite a record.”

  “Ned tell you this?”

  “Yeah. He just called me a little while ago.”

  “Do they have any leads on who the Professor is?”

  “They’re working on something, that’s all I know. The police don’t even know he exists, so they aren’t even looking for him. The only reason we know of him is because of what Colette told you, and the only reason we know she didn’t make it up is because Ned has apparently seen some videotape of her talking to someone she calls Professor on the phone.”

  “What videotape?” Kane said.

  “He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. But that makes us the only ones who know he’s out there. The guy, whoever he is, knows what he’s doing, I’ll give him that much.”

  “So what’s being done to find him?”

  “There isn’t much anyone can do at this point. Ned’s going to keep looking, following his one lead, whatever it is. But with everyone who ever spoke to the guy dead, he isn’t very optimistic.”

  Kane thought about that, then said, “What about me? Any more planted evidence turn up?”

  “So far, no. Ned’s person in the department is keeping an eye out, though. Let’s hope what they found was all there was to find.”

  “But the person who did that, who planted evidence against me, is still out there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “Ned wanted me to tell you that if you see something you don’t like, anything, you can call him.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “It doesn’t sound like a lot, I know, but—”

  “Everyone else goes on with their lives, and I spend my days and nights looking over my shoulder for a psychopath?”

  “Not everyone’s going on with their lives, Deke,” Mercer said. He gave that a moment to sink in, took a step toward Kane. “Trust me, Deke, I understand what you’re feeling right now. You’re afraid. I’d be afraid, too. But you’re not alone in this. Good people will be looking out for you.”

  “It’s just that I feel so . . .” Kane’s voice trailed off, his eyes, a little glazed, fixed on the floor between them.

  “You feel so what, Deke?”

  Kane shrugged, didn’t look up. “I feel so helpless. So fucking helpless.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was helpless in the chapel, when Dean was kicking the crap out of me. I was helpless when he killed Colette.”

  “He was twice your size, Deke. And, from what you’ve told me, you’ve never been in a fight in your life. What could you have done to stop him?”

  “Nothing. That’s exactly the point.”

  “What do you think you should have done?”

  Kane shook his head, said nothing. Mercer waited a moment, watching him. The only light source in that hallway was the blue flame of the gas burner. It cast more shadows than light. But it was enough for Mercer to see Kane by.

  “I guess you must have felt pretty helpless after your son died, huh?” Mercer said.

  Kane was still looking at the floor between them, his eyes glazed, his mind far away. “You have no idea,” he said softly.

  “Anybody would have felt
helpless then. There was nothing you could have done. Nothing anyone could have done.”

  Kane nodded. “I know.” He nodded for a while, absently, then drew a breath and said, “I used to think it was guilt that was making me do all the things I’ve been doing. For the past four years I’ve been calling what I feel guilt, letting it run my life. I mean, what else could it be, right? What parent wouldn’t feel guilt, wouldn’t go out of his mind with guilt? And I used to think for sure it was grief that was keeping me from writing. I hadn’t finished mourning yet, and all that crap, so I was blocked. But I’m beginning to think now that it isn’t really any of that, that it wasn’t guilt or grief that kept me in this tailspin.”

  “What was it then?”

  “Anger, maybe. Rage.”

  Mercer’s eyes narrowed. “Toward yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Who then?”

  “That’s the thing. There was no one to blame, no one to get angry at. There was nowhere to go with the fury I was feeling. Something I didn’t want to happen did happen, and there was nothing at all I could do about it. Not a fucking thing. And that just ate at me, day and night. It ate at me the first night, was still eating away at me after the first week. A year went by and it was still eating away at me. Then two years, then three, then four.”

  Mercer watched Kane, saying nothing, standing still by the door.

  “It wasn’t fair that he was taken away from us like that,” Kane said. “He was gone and we’d never get to see him again. That was hard enough to get our minds around. But the fact that it was no one’s fault was something we just couldn’t comprehend. We just couldn’t stand it. So, from the moment we were told that he was dead to right now, right here, I have felt nothing but anger and rage and fury—and helplessness. It’s an odd mixture, Doc. It fucks with your head. Like dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean.”

  Neither of them spoke for a long moment. A few cars passed by below the front window. From across the street, outside the IGA, a child was crying. Distant-sounding, echoing across the wide-open parking lot. It stopped abruptly. Kane stared at the floor for a while, then finally looked at Mercer and said, “I take it this wasn’t all you came to tell me, was it? The message from Ned. You’ve got some other news, too, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “I’m fired, aren’t I?”

  “Yeah. Sorry, Deke.”

  “I figured they’d get around to making it official before they closed down for the break. Who gave my finals?”

  “I did.”

  “My students all did okay?”

  Mercer nodded. “They asked about you. I told them you were out sick.”

  Not a lie, Kane thought.

  “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Doc. I don’t just mean at the college. With Ned and Clay, too. It’s safe to say I wouldn’t be standing here right now if you hadn’t done what you did.”

  “You’d have done the same for me.”

  “You wouldn’t have needed me to.”

  “You did the only thing you could, Deke, the only thing you knew how to do. You know that, right? It’s amazing how what our heroes do, we can end up doing. What they value, we value, what they despise, we despise. Where they fall short, we sometimes fall short too, despite ourselves, despite having seen them fall short. There’s a story in all this somewhere. In everything that has happened to you. Maybe writing it will help you let out the rage you can’t let go of, make you feel a little less helpless.”

  “I can’t imagine putting one word on paper, let alone trying to write another whole book.”

  “You did it twice before. And you did it well. Better than I could have.” Mercer waited a moment, watching Kane. “I should tell you, Deke, I got a little nervous when they dragged Dolan’s kid out of the water the other night.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The kid they found in Agawam Lake the other night was Dolan’s son.”

  Kane’s face was blank. It took him a moment to speak. “You’re kidding me.”

  “No. I confirmed it with Ned just a little while ago.”

  “They mentioned finding a kid that night on the radio but they didn’t give a name.”

  “It was Dolan’s son. Kevin.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I’ll be honest, I thought maybe you were involved in all this after all, that it was some kind of elaborate revenge scheme or something, to get back at Dolan for getting you fired.”

  “You thought that.”

  “For about a second, yeah. And then I came to my senses. After that I was more concerned with what some desperate detective might make of it, that he’d see it as some kind of twisted way for you to work out the death of your son. Someone might think that—someone who didn’t really know you, someone looking for a motive, any motive, to explain why someone would ritualistically drown boys. You’ve got to admit, it’s a pretty big coincidence. You have to wonder if whoever was trying to set you up knew all this about you. If he did, then he did his homework.”

  “But who would know that?” Kane said.

  “That’s the million dollar question.”

  Kane tried to think but couldn’t. He’d been given too much bad news too fast, and his still tired mind was reeling. He felt as if he had been stomped in the head once more by Dean. Now that he had been fired, Kane had no income with which to pay his rent and bills, to buy food. But with the Professor, whoever he was, still out there, these concerns seemed now almost ridiculous, perfectly absurd. Kane had no idea where he was standing suddenly, where in his life he was, where he even thought he should be. Everything was foreign to him, his life itself a foreign city through which he didn’t dare roam.

  Kane finally asked the only question that mattered to him. “How’s Dolan doing?”

  “He’s out of his mind. But what do you expect, right?”

  Kane nodded, remembered the moment he had gotten the news about his son; the torture that began then had yet to cease. If there had only been someone to blame.

  “Poor guy,” Kane muttered. There was simply nothing else that he could say.

  Mercer reached into his coat pocket. “Listen, Deke, I’ve got something for you.” He pulled out a small plastic bag, tossed it toward Kane. Kane caught it, barely.

  “What is it?”

  “Just something I thought might come in handy.”

  Kane opened the bag, looked inside. In it, still in its packaging, was a small voice recorder. Kane took it out of the bag, glanced at it, then looked up at Mercer.

  “It’s digital,” Mercer said, “so you don’t have to worry about tapes. It records up to eighteen hours. I know you said that when you’re working on a book, a lot of ideas come to you in the middle of the night. This way you won’t have to turn on the light and write them down, you can just lie there in the dark and talk into that, then go back to sleep.”

  Kane hadn’t been awakened by ideas in a very long time. And the only things that came to him in his sleep were dreams of his son. But he didn’t bother telling Mercer that.

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  “There’s a story in all this, Deke. I mean it. Like I said, it’s just amazing how you followed Bill Young’s footsteps, followed them footprint by footprint straight into hell. Like you were on some kind of holy crusade. The mentor-student dynamic is a pretty powerful thing. It’s the stuff of myths, you know? Definitely, I think, a subject worthy of your talents.”

  Kane said nothing, just looked at the mini-recorder. After a while he nodded.

  “In the bag is a slip of paper with the number Ned wants you to call,” Mercer said. “If you see anything you don’t like, anything, just dial that number. And then call me, okay? I’ll get here as quickly as I can.”

  On the stovetop beside Kane, the water in the kettle began to roil, just a moment now from full boil.

  “I have to get going, Deke. I’ll call you later on tonight, make sure you’re okay. Tomorrow I’ll help you get
your things out of your office.” Kane nodded, thought of Meg’s videotape hidden on his bookshelf. He had forgotten all about it till now. Once it had been his most prized possession, something he couldn’t bear to lose. Now he’d probably just throw it out, into the ocean like he had done with the garbage bag of evidence Gregor had given him.

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  “Watch your back, Deke. Okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mercer left. Kane listened to him go down the stairs, then out the door. A moment later Mercer’s car started up across the street, then pulled away and drove off. Kane turned the gas flame off, and the windowless hallway went dark. He moved the kettle to the other burner, walked out of the dark hall and into his front room, stood at his window, watched the night fall, the lights in town come on, watched them cast both light and shadows along the length of Nugent Street.

  Sophia was standing in the front room of her apartment in North Sea, looking out the window at the empty road, when the phone rang. Clay was still asleep in their bed. She turned her head and could see him through the open door at the other end of the room. There had been daylight in the overcast sky when she went to the window, but it was night now, the apartment dark and still. She turned on the standing lamp by the couch, hurried to the phone on the nearby coffee table, picked up the receiver on the second ring.

  “Hello.”

  “How is he?” Gregor said.

  “He’s fine.” Sophia made no effort to hide the coldness in her voice. “He’s sleeping.”

  “When did he take his last pill?”

  “About four hours ago.”

  “So he should be waking up soon.”

  “Probably.”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “He’ll be out of it for the most part.”

  “I’m not far away. I can be there in a few minutes.”

  “I should give him another pill. He’ll be in pain. Can it wait?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then I guess you’re coming over.”

  “Thanks.”

  The line went dead. Sophia hung up, looked at Clay. The ringing of the phone had awakened him. He was flat on his back, the white bandage on his right shoulder bright against his dark skin. He rolled his head to one side and looked toward her, squinting against the light.