The Mercy of the Night

by David Corbett

  When it got around to sex they turned, well, weird. Like she’d fake them out of their jocks, dunk on them. And so the head games.

  I’m into you but, hey, prove to me you’re worth it.

  Her sister had been no help. Shelly had that magic, damn near tripped over guys in her sleep. If she couldn’t come by them honestly, she poached them off her friends, colleagues. Her redheaded sister. One night over cosmos at the Empire in Napa, she’d slung her arm around Cass’s neck, smiled and winked and sloppily whispered, “There’s only one way to keep a man—confused.”

  The first long-term relationship? Quinn Chislenko, graduate assistant in organic chem. Weeks of silence punctuated by moody blistering fights, slammed doors, wheedling apologies, kinky makeup sex. Trainer marriage. Training for what?

  After that, serial monogamy, one experiment after the next. The male specimen. Don’t forget to turn in your lab results.

  Over time, like a slow-spreading sickness, she felt it growing, this shame-tinged dread. It just wasn’t going to happen. Not her lot in life. She was one of those who never.

  Then there was Phelan.

  They had that thing, that almost effortless, reassuring thing that any sane woman had to think was a lie. But so far, no, it was good. It had its rough spots, sure, but he got her. He saw her. Not the woman he wanted—or secretly hated—but the big goofy redhead right there: me.

  Which was why this bit with Jacqi Garza had her so twisted up. It had her scared. Bad enough she had to compete with the lost wife. Now this.

  And that was the irony. Know what bankrupt really is? Being in love. Because you don’t earn love, it’s a gift. You can never repay what you owe. All you can do is love back, and what if your heart isn’t big enough?

  Another glance in the TV’s direction and there was Teddy again, rooted to his spot, eyes locked on the screen. That same dated photo of the girl. He had his phone out, thumbing in a number, lifting the mouthpiece to his lips.

  “LeQuan, yeah, hit me back. Soon. Like now.”

  44

  She was having trouble with the screaming in her head. Thinman lying there, crushed beneath the car, a face not quite human and all that blood—would he live? She saw him hobbling through the streets of time to track her down, make her pay.

  How odd then that she’d end up here, and yet how perfect, across the street and down the block from her mother’s house—my house, she thought, like she was trying on the idea, checking the fit, so long since she’d worn it—hiding behind the chokecherry tree in the Warburtons’ yard, bumping her hip against the tree’s grooved bark, feeling the knifelike roughness through her skirt.

  Come home. Te amo.

  A harsh wind rustled through the jagged green leaves, but it was the throbbing hum of the TV vans that snapped her back.

  Three of them camped there, waiting. She could walk right up if she wanted, tell them the story, from Fireman Mike to Thinman. Some kinda day, huh? Sit beside the reporters like they were pals, hanging on every word. Just like old times.

  Was it really ten years ago that she’d gone missing, or was it this morning? Was it now?

  She’d been walking the neighborhood that day, thinking of ways not to go home. Ways to stay out of her mother’s hair, avoid the latest bitch fit. Ways to avoid Richie. As for Eastwood, well, he hadn’t come around in a while.

  She wanted to sit on the couch, pillow pressed to her stomach, watch Smallville—she was allowed to tape the show on Monday nights, replay it the rest of the week when she got home from school.

  She knew the show was wack—how could anyone dreamy as Clark Kent be such a hopeless spaztard?—but she just got caught up in it, like you got caught up in a song.

  In fact, she played the opening credits over and over just to hear the theme—Remy Zero, “Save Me”—until Richie barreled in, turned it off, calling her dundo.

  I feel my wings have broken in your hands

  I feel the words unspoken inside

  Instead, that day, she walked—no sense of where to go, though the playground on Magnolia exerted a kind of gravity. She could sit in the swings and wait—for what? When would this be over? How would she know? What would the next thing look like?

  One sneaker slapped the sidewalk after the next and she suffered one of her waking dreams, the one where things dissolved into the background, fitting themselves into the pattern. Everything flattened out, like she wasn’t in the world anymore. She was in a movie about the world.

  Her throat knotted up. There was nothing to do when this came over her, just ride it through. Nothing felt new or real, it had all been said and done before and would all be said and done again. Like a lost episode of Smallville running over and over on some oddball channel and she was trapped inside, everything perfectly predictable and yet scary and strange.

  Maybe when she got to the swings. But that would feel same-as-always too. Like she was watching herself watch herself. Like she was the final piece in a puzzle that someone else snapped into place.

  And yet—what if she got hurt? If she pushed herself as high in the swing as possible, then let go, sailed through the air, free . . .

  Pain would make this go away, wouldn’t it? Didn’t it have to?

  Somebody save me

  I don’t care how you do it

  The car pulled up just a little ahead, stopping at the curb, a flare of red taillights. The engine rattled as it died, and a man got out.

  He was wearing a shirt with a patch on the pocket in the shape of a badge. He’d combed his hair weirdly, an old man’s style, and he had the face of somebody who’d washed all the Me away, his gaze fixed and yet empty, like someone peering through eyeholes in a mask.

  They’ve come looking for me, she figured, at the same time thinking: They’ve always been coming. This has always been happening.

  “You’ve been crying,” the man said. Not an accusation, but not exactly comforting either. An observation. A recognition of the pattern.

  She wiped at her face, but her hands came away dry. Her eyes, her cheeks, nothing. What had he seen?

  “What’s your name?” His voice had that twang.

  “Jacquelina.” Her official name, the one you gave adults, especially ones in uniform. For reasons she would never understand, she added, “I was going to the park.”

  “I know,” he replied, not like he did. Like he was just saying he did. He squinted at the nearest houses, as though wondering where she belonged, then pointed his keys at the car, thumbed the bob, popped his trunk. He smiled but his eyes didn’t change, like this was work, everything was work. And he was tired.

  “I was wondering if I could ask a favor. I’m with the animal shelter. Found a kitten a few blocks over, skinny little Manx, got a brown spot on its nose, white paws? I was hoping maybe you could help me figure out who it belongs to. Be a shame if I have to take it in.”

  Overhead, leaves rustled. Sunlight broke through the shade, blinding her for a second.

  He lunged, grabbed her arm, dragged her toward the trunk and half lifted, half shoved her inside. He cut short her scream by stuffing a rag in her mouth, it tasted like vomit and gasoline and she thought of Eastwood, the way he smelled, working at the Citgo, then the man in the uniform punched her hard, once in the stomach, twice to the side of the head. Stars, darkness, retching into the gag as the trunk slammed shut.

  Normally there was no way he’d have fooled her so easy. Normally she would have scratched and bit, kicked herself free, run. But it was like she’d been outside her body, watching it unfold—there but not there, a trick she’d master over the next three days with Victor Cope. Meanwhile there was a plan, an elaborate, intricate pattern. She was simply a part of it, the last piece to the puzzle.

  And no, there wasn’t enough pain in the world to change that.

  Snapping back to the present, she reached into her pocket, collected her
phone. Time to check for messages. Dragging it out, thumbing the switch—she waited for the display to flicker to life, reminding herself: Three minutes, no more. But what if even that was a trick? What if three minutes was just what they needed to nail you?

  She had another text.

  Somebody’s famous again. Need a place to lie low? Scratch me back: LeQuan.

  45

  Skellenger shook his wrist, flipped his watch, checked the time: half past six. All in all, given how things had kicked off, the day had turned out stellar. Couple stumbles, sure, a few loose ends. But due to a full-court press across the region, every agency kicking in, plus a little luck, all four meatheads on the front end of the video—still the only part made public yet—had tumbled into custody.

  Two right now sat in rooms in the station-house basement—Arian Lomax, Damarlo Melendez—taken from their homes without much fuss and ready for questioning. The other two, Mo Pete Carson and Chepe Salgado, were cuffed in cars and on their way to the station, both tracked to the homes of relatives and apprehended there, one in Hunters Point, one in Boyes Hot Springs.

  A coup, really, that things fell together so quick. Even the media, to hear Pendergast tell it, seemed glad for a positive angle. That wouldn’t last, of course. The tweets and chat rooms and social sites churned with crackpot theories and wild-ass rumors, not all of them so crackpot or wild-ass. The Jacqi Garza Show hadn’t gotten beyond previews and speculation, thank God, but that too could change. One way or another there’d be some new spin by the ten-o’clock news, something cheesy or bleak, most likely both.

  But he had a few hours to batten things down.

  The cages sat in the station basement, four cinder-block rooms arranged in a square, a narrow corridor down the middle lined with one-way glass.

  Holmes sat in one room with Damarlo, youngest of the bunch. Kid might get tried as a juvenile, Skellenger thought, if we don’t rope him in with the others. All the more reason to turn the Lomax idiot toward the light, show him the way out: Put Damarlo at the center of this, you’ve got options.

  Arian the Unawarian. Man of the hour.

  Rosamar leaned into the wall, coffee cup in hand, staring at him through the glass while Skellenger studied his sheet. “What’s the story on this bird’s second pop?”

  “The Special K thing?”

  “Where you found him naked in Browner Park, yeah.”

  Rosamar beamed, took a sip from his cup. “Poor Itchy Homo. So gonna miss him. The sheer entertainment value alone.”

  “Play-by-play is kinda what I’m after, Dick. Not color.”

  “I’m getting there.” His eyes narrowed, boring into the kid. “Check out how skinny he is. Got the hips of an eel. Apparently he made some bet, hundred dollars is what we heard, said he could squeeze into one of the kiddie swings at the playground. Well, first he tries with his clothes on. No go. So he strips down to his boxers. Still no. Everybody’s mocking him now, telling him to cough up the Franklin. So he goes commando for the final try.

  “One of the girls working the park that night has this almond skin lotion with her and he rubs it all over himself, hoping this’ll grease him up. Maybe it worked. Anyway, he manages to stuff himself in. Ta-da! Thinks he’s a genius, demands his hundred bucks. Just one problem. He can’t get out.”

  Skellenger studied the kid a bit more closely. True, he could fit in a pencil sharpener, but there was a rangy kind of intensity about him too. Howling eyes, caved-in cheeks. Tweaking maybe, wired for sure. And pissed.

  Clean him up, lop off the dreads, stuff him in a suit, sit him next to his lawyer—better yet, a pretty little paralegal—maybe a jury would make the connection, maybe not: this kid is a killer. There was always the video, and he was the one who’d played Tyson, swinging first.

  His face looked slack, the smokehound eyes heavy-lidded, like he was ready for a nap. One thing you always looked for in a killing, some bug two steps from a snooze.

  Rosamar said, “By the way, jaybird naked’s not strictly true. He had his kicks and socks on, plus a sweatshirt and peacoat over that. Fucking cold that night. More to the point, the coat’s got these monster pockets.”

  “I’m assuming that’s relevant.”

  “You’re paying attention. Cool.” Rosamar sloshed his coffee around, stopped short of drinking. The cup’s inscription read: Your Life Is Not My Fault. “Anyhoo, Itchy’s homies mock the snot out of him, then just leave him there. Take his pants and boxers, wish him luck, hasta la bye-bye. He stays there a couple hours, trying to make like a Pop-Tart. Finally dispatch gets a call, 3 a.m. I think it was. Somebody lives around the corner, they hear an unidentified male yodeling for help.”

  “We coming to the credits anytime soon?”

  “Jordie, relax. You’ll love this. Two cruisers roll up, they find poor old Lonesome Lomax stuck there. As if that’s not amusing enough, our guys start moseying over—Chuck Tenpenney, Bobby North, those were the guys—and they see Herr Homo here scratching himself raw because he’s got some kinda allergic reaction to the almond extract in the lotion he rubbed all over his legs and butt to fit into the swing.

  “Well, it finally dawns on him to stop worrying about his skin for a second and pitch the three ten-mil vials of Ketaset he’s got in those magical pockets of his. Maybe there were more, but Chuck and Bobby, scrounging around, they found three, and that hurt enough to turn a wobbler into a felony. Possession of ketamine—liquid, injectable—with intent to sell. And since Browner’s less than a block away from a detox center . . .”

  “Convenient,” Skellenger said. Aggravating factor. “How’d they get him out of the swing?”

  “They didn’t. Had to call the paramedics. Unhooked the thing, took the whole contraption, Itchy still in it, over to RM Gen, cut him out with a bone saw.”

  “Am I free to assume somebody took pictures?”

  Rosamar chuckled. “Mercy, mercy. The grit don’t quit. Or, as my dear demented granddad likes to say: ‘That’s the crackers.’”

  “What about the ketamine?”

  “Bottles were from some veterinarian. Maybe Arian was going to cook it up into powder, pimp it around the dance scene, or pass it off to someone who could. Regardless, he wouldn’t work a deal, hand up his contact, so he took it in the glutes.”

  “Sheet says he’s twenty.”

  “Nineteen at the time. No juvie juice, though he was still at Stallworth High. Been held back so many years they oughta charge him rent. Practically illiterate.”

  “Did eighteen months on a two-year stretch.”

  “For winning a bet. Must’ve gotten out, I dunno, what’s it say?”

  “October.” Skellenger read, disposition of sentence. Mr. Lomax was still on parole. “We can violate him right now.”

  “Hello.”

  “It’s leverage.” Skellenger folded up the sheets of paper, stuffed them into his jacket pocket. “But I don’t want leverage. I want a home run.”

  “Do your thing.” Rosamar pinged a fingernail against the side of his cup. “I’ll stay here, learn from the master.”

  Skellenger hitched up his pants. “Attend to the wind, Grasshopper.”

  Before heading in, Skellenger glanced in through the glass one last time at Holmes and Damarlo. The kid was touching his face a lot—all that blood rushing to the skin, so many capillaries around the nose, the eyes—which could mean guilt, could mean nerves, could mean nothing. Tough. D-Lo didn’t deserve much in the way of pity. Even if he did, it wasn’t his day.

  Before coming down to the cages, Skellenger had taken a minute to watch the security footage again. Rosamar was right. This Melendez kid went batshit, kicking like a demon, possessed—head region, torso. The throat.

  Putting in work. Showing his stuff. America’s Got Talent.

  Put the jacket on him, Skellenger thought, make sure the fit’s tight, the Dude Outta Nowhere become
s a nonfactor. And as he goes, so goes Jacqi Garza.

  He opened the door to Lomax’s room and stepped inside.

  46

  “How’s the skin?”

  Arian glanced up slow, as though it was all he could do to lift his dreads. “Yeah.” His eyelids fluttered. “Ha-ha.”

  “I wasn’t making a joke.” Skellenger pulled back a chair, sat. A tablet and pencil rested on the tabletop. All needs met. “Just wondering if you were comfortable.”

  He shoved the table against the wall, wanting no barriers between him and the target, nothing to lean on, hide behind. The screech of the table legs against the floor startled the kid and he twitched himself into a less nap-like posture, shivering his arms into the sleeves of his hoodie and rolling his long-necked head. Obligatory sniff.

  Our children, Skellenger thought. Our future.

  “I have to read you something.” He took out the Miranda waiver sheet, pulled his chair within two feet of Arian’s, then ran through the verbiage calmly, quietly, not too quick, not too slow, like he was reciting the pledge of allegiance. For Latvia. He let Arian use the tabletop to initial every point and sign at the bottom, then sat him back down and tucked the sheet away, mere formality, let’s move on. “You know there’s a video, right?”

  The kid started squirming around in the chair, finally feeling the table’s absence. Pretending to get situated. Sit right, think right.

  “The service station at the corner has a security camera.”

  “Uh-huh.” Still distracted, looking around him on the floor, like something might’ve spilled out of his pockets. Except his pockets were empty, everything gone, bagged and itemized, logged on intake.

  “You threw the first punch, Arian. Kicked it off. Now somebody’s dead.”

  Finally, the light came on. He blinked. Fussed with his nose. His wrist was heavily bandaged from Verrazzo’s snapping it back. “That’s, like . . . deflammatory.”