When the Stars Go Dark: A Novel

by Paula McLain

  “Why don’t I light a fire?” I suggest, trying to buy time. “It’s cold in here.”

  “Sure,” he says stiffly, pointing to the woodstove with the tip of his knife. “Just don’t try anything.”

  His warning makes me think he’s read my body language correctly. I want to bolt, to scream, to attack him and take my chances. Instead I kneel by the woodbox and take out the box of matches, narrow splints of kindling, newspaper. “What do you want?” I ask, aware that my voice sounds oddly hollow. “Why did you come?”

  His mouth tightens almost microscopically. “I think I should be asking you the same, Anna.”

  I glance toward the blade he’s holding lightly in his right hand, nearly grazing his thigh. He’s not brandishing it, not behaving erratically. If anything, he’s too calm, more than certain he has the upper hand here. Because he does. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re the one who came after me. I was leaving you alone. I was showing respect.” The word rings out strangely, with heat and contour.

  It means something. It’s a key. My thinking is still slow and unreliable, perforated with fear. But I’ve been here before. Talked to dozens of murderers and psychopaths. Done complicated profiling, written oceans of case notes. I’ve also stood in Caleb’s room, his laboratory. Somehow I have to use what I know to piece it all together. The origin story that’s driving everything. Old and powerful. Propulsive. What he’s done and still means to do. What’s happening now, in this room.

  “I respect you, Caleb,” I say. “We’ve been friends a long time.”

  “That’s right. We have.” He leans against the doorjamb, his black sweater and black jeans like an unbroken slash against the white paint. “Except you’re not the same, Anna. You used to understand me. I thought you did, anyway.”

  He’s given me more information. Another small piece of the whole. I work to steady my breathing, to unclench the tension in my hands. “I want to, Caleb. Tell me why Cameron is so special. She is, isn’t she? I love her, too.”

  Suddenly Caleb’s face reddens. His throat above the collar of his shirt looks strangely corded, as if he’s barely holding himself in check.

  “You’ve been doing this a long time,” I say, “but Cameron is different for you. You kept her for three weeks, but you didn’t kill her. I don’t think you felt good about hurting her at all.”

  Glancing over, I see his eyes narrow, as if I’ve hit a nerve, but he says nothing. I light the wooden match in my hand and a kick of sulfur burns my nose and eyes. Still, I’m grateful for the action and moments of camouflage. The last thing I want is for him to see me trembling. I can’t be a victim in his mind. A deer in headlights. I’m his friend. He has to believe that I accept him. That I know he can’t control himself.

  “I’m just trying to put myself in your place, Caleb. Did you think you could keep Cameron because she reminded you the most of Jenny?”

  “Don’t talk about her,” he snaps, bouncing forward a little on the balls of his feet. He’s wearing large black sneakers and seems surprisingly light in them, considering his size. He has to weigh close to two hundred pounds, but moves like a smaller man, not with grace exactly but efficiency. Maybe the military had taught him that.

  “I miss Jenny, Caleb. I’ll bet you do, too.”

  Without moving, something seems to seize in him. “You didn’t know her.”

  In front of me, the fire has taken hold, licking past the kindling onto the lengths of pine I’ve placed in a loose tripod shape. The smell of flame touching wood is one of the most familiar and soothing scents I know, deeply knitted into my memories of Hap and home. Of comfort. But all I can think now is how long Caleb will let me live. If these are the last few moments of my life.

  However he’s found me here, following me from town, tracking my movements for days, maybe, or even weeks, he obviously wants retribution now. I’ve stolen something from him. Something precious and irreplaceable.

  I sit back on my heels to meet Caleb’s gaze. “I wanted to know Jenny better. I always thought there was something so sad about your sister. I wish now she would have talked to me more. I wanted to help.”

  I can’t tell from Caleb’s expression if what I’m saying irritates or interests him, but he moves away from the bedroom door and sits on the arm of the plaid sofa, facing me, perhaps ten feet away. The knife resting on his knee. “We used to have a secret language when we were kids.”

  “I’ve heard that about twins. I’m jealous that you had someone to love like that.”

  “It was very special.” The muscle on his right forearm twitches, and the bowie blade jumps as if of its own volition. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I’m sure it was special. But then someone took her. Hurt her.”

  He sits forward now as his pupils snap over me. He looks angry, as if I’ve flipped a switch. “Like I said, you wouldn’t understand.”

  Cricket seems to sense a change in pressure in the room. She’s been resting near the coffee table, not far from where Caleb is, but now her head pops up as she looks at me. I hold her eyes, silently willing her over. Not because she can stop him from hurting me if he decides to, but for the comfort of her body.

  “Are you still mad at your mom, Caleb? Is that what some of this is about? Why you need to make women pay?”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “My mom left, too.” I’m surprised to hear myself say the words, as if they’ve appeared in my mind unbidden. “She killed herself.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I never talk about it. You know how it is,” I say, trying to align us carefully without setting him off. He’s like a human bomb with dozens of trip wires. Some of them I can see, but most are deeply inside him. “Sometimes I wish she was still here so I could show her how much of my life she messed up. Do you ever wish that?”

  His gaze narrows again, but he doesn’t respond.

  “How come your mom didn’t come back after Jenny was murdered?” I’m goading him deliberately now. Testing wires. Hoping I’m not wrong. “Didn’t she care at all?”

  “She did care. She just couldn’t come back. She wasn’t a strong person.”

  Now it’s my turn to react. It’s like I’m looking into a mirror. Hearing lines from a script I wrote a long time ago. I have the strangest feeling that all of this has happened before. As if the path has already been laid. As if there’s only one possible place to step. “Not everyone can be strong,” I say. “I see that. I’ll bet you had to do a lot for Jenny because your mom couldn’t.”

  “I didn’t mind,” he says quickly. “I was good at it. Our dad was always so useless.”

  The word has an inflection that snags and rebounds. Useless. Idiot. Again I have the feeling that I’m looking into a mirror—a dark one. “You were the same age, but you were always the stronger one,” I say. “She could get sad sometimes, but you made her feel better. You cooked for her. You tucked her in at night. I’ll bet you read her stories, too.”

  Suddenly he frowns. Charged ripples of emotion cling to him as he stands up. “Stop trying to get into my head.”

  “I just want to understand, like you said. I feel like I’ve let you down, Caleb. I think a lot of people have.”

  He shifts forward and back, as if to test his balance. “Yeah,” he mutters, almost to himself. “She shouldn’t have tried to leave me.”

  The sentence lands with a jolt between my shoulder blades. He’s not talking about his mother now. It’s Jenny who let him down. Jenny who betrayed him. How could I have missed that before?

  “Not everyone is strong, Caleb,” I echo slowly, inching forward in my crouch. I’ve been kneeling this whole time in front of the fireplace, cutting off my circulation. My feet tingle as the blood reaches them. I risk a glance at the bedroom door, then at Cricket on the floor next to the couch, res
ting but aware, if I read her right, and finally back to Caleb. “She couldn’t take it anymore, just like your mom.”

  “I would have gone with her.” It’s almost a moan. The boy in him is very much here with us, still hurting. That’s where the rage lives. Right at the center of that wound. “But she didn’t want to take me. She wouldn’t listen.”

  “You had to stop her,” I say. “That’s how it happened.” With him I’m calculated, trying not to set down a single wrong syllable, while internally I’m lunging through a pitch-black room for any familiar shape, as in a child’s game. Blindman’s bluff. “You argued. There was a struggle. You didn’t know how strong you were.”

  His chin has tipped down, his eyes on some point in front of him, as if he’s trying to blot all this out and focus on that instead, the bigger drama, the story of his life. They must have argued on her last day at home. She packed a bag, tried to go, but he stopped her and accidentally what? Broke her neck?

  But no, Jenny had gone to work that day. Her coworkers had seen her leave to hitchhike back to the village. Which means he’d taken Jack’s truck and waited for her, knowing she was going to be long gone otherwise. He’d pulled up while she had her thumb out. She’d climbed in thinking she could spend a few more minutes trying to explain why she had to go. And that’s when he’d done it. Bluntly. He’d strangled her and then driven her to the river. All of it something he had to do. A horrible, soul-splitting thing. But part of him had liked it. Part of him had come alive for the first time.

  “I don’t think you’re a monster, Caleb,” I say. “You can trust me. Let me help you find a way out of this.”

  “No.” It’s barely visible, the way his muscles tense. Then a string breaks in him. He lunges with the knife toward the woodstove, toward me. Cricket snaps to her feet and rushes in front of him. It all happens faster than light moves. Slower than days whirl by, or years. Centuries.

  Caleb loses his balance. Trips and stumbles over the dog’s body, comes close to me, but Cricket has no doubt now that I’m in danger. The growl in her throat is low and terrifying as I run for the bedroom door, misjudging it.

  My shoulder bashes against the jamb. A protracted bounce as I keep hurtling forward, chaotic sounds behind me, Cricket barking as I’ve never heard her bark, and then a high yelp as if she’s been kicked or worse.

  Now there are thundering steps along the hardwood floor. The fear in me is like something tectonic, but survival is even fiercer and more undeniable.

  I reach the bed, plunge my hand beneath the mattress, feel the cool muzzle, the ridged grip like a message in braille to turn. Turn now.

  But Caleb has lunged at me before I can lift my hand and pull the trigger. The force of him knocks the breath from my lungs. We crash hard to the floor together, his weight like a mountain on my chest.

  I thrash beneath him, trying to get any kind of leverage, but gravity and strength are on his side. He pins me easily with his hip and elbow, his forearm like a club against my neck and larynx. The gun and my right hand crushed between us against my hip.

  Dark spots swim through my vision as I fight for air. Fight to stay conscious.

  He raises the knife, carves the air over my head. His face looms above me like some sort of warped and wretched planet as I search along the floor with my left hand, desperate for any kind of weapon. There’s nothing but hardwood, worn smooth through the decades.

  I reach over my head, keeping my eyes fixed on the knife, and there. My fingertips graze the iron bedpost. It’s solid, or as solid as anything I’m going to find. I strain a bit farther, grip the post, and buck upward. Twisting from my hip and shoulder as hard as I can, harder, I get one foot under me. Then my left knee up. Blood rushes into my freed limbs.

  Caleb’s eyes bulge with rage as I struggle, the knife passing inches from my face, but maybe he can’t bring himself to stab me. With one last thrust, I pitch him backward into the bed rail, his skull ramming solid iron. He cries out, a growl of pain and fury, as I stumble away from him with strength I don’t really have.

  This isn’t just about saving my own life but for Cameron, so she’ll never have to fear Caleb again, not for one more moment. I have to put an end to what she’s suffered at his hands, and Shannan, too, and all the nameless wounded others, silenced now, stretching out and out in concentric rings.

  I whirl to face him as he lurches to his feet, wrestling himself forward. His face is terrible. Twisted.

  “Anna!” he shouts. But I’ve seen enough. Know enough now.

  He’ll never stop, not ever.

  My right arm is half numb as I raise it in front of me. I steady the muzzle and fire into his chest, not fumbling this time. Not missing. The recoil slams through my clenched palm, three shots, but I only hear the first. The others thump-thump through my inner ear, no louder than my heartbeat, which seems to roll forward like a wave, shaking me out of my trance. Caleb’s eyes are open but dull. Blanked out. His chest streaming blood.

  I stagger into the other room, my nose stinging with gunpowder. Cricket is motionless in the center of the floor, a small river of blood and fluid near her mouth. For one excruciating moment, I’m sure he’s killed her and can barely hold my hand still to check the pulse at her neck, but it’s there. She’s still alive.

  I’m running on steam and shock, a distorted kind of euphoria. I bend over Cricket and pick her up. She doesn’t struggle. She barely seems conscious against my chest as I carry her out of my cabin—like a child, I keep thinking—to my car, leaving the door open wide behind me, so they can come for him and process his body, and take him away, and scour the rooms, collecting evidence. It’s a crime scene now. I never want to see it again.

  (sixty-eight)

  On November 4, I wake in the upstairs bedroom in Tally’s farmhouse, the soft knitted blanket from her own alpacas resting lightly on my chest, Cricket at my feet like a warm stone. The side of her neck is still bandaged from where Caleb stabbed her. Initially the veterinary surgeon thought her trachea or esophagus might be damaged, but the injury had only reached soft tissue. The doctor had sedated her before cleaning the wound, draining the fluid and then closing her up with staples. She’d recovered in the Mendocino Animal Hospital for the first few days before coming to stay with me at Tally’s. It was a temporary move, the first place I thought of in the aftermath of Caleb’s death, since Will didn’t have room for me.

  As I push back the blankets, Cricket stirs and gives me a disgruntled look before yawning and going back to sleep. I throw on some warm clothes from my duffel in the corner and head downstairs smelling coffee and French toast.

  It’s Sam cooking, I notice. Tally is at the kitchen table reading the newspaper as I come up. She lays the paper down quickly. “How’d you sleep, Anna?”

  “Not great, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, dear. Did Cricket keep you up?”

  “No, she’s a perfect patient. I just had weird dreams. I have them a lot. It’s nothing.”

  Sam wheels up behind me and puts a plate down that smells like heaven. Maple syrup and melting butter. Homemade bread.

  “You know I’m never going to leave if you keep feeding me this way,” I say gratefully.

  “No problem,” he answers with a wink. “I’ll catch you two later. Heading into the studio now.”

  When he’s gone, I turn to Tally. “So, what’s in the paper you don’t want me to see?”

  “Oh,” she sighs. “Now stop.” She’s in a dark green terry-cloth bathrobe and fusses with the sleeves. “It’s just a story about Polly Klaas. I thought maybe you could rest longer before getting upset again.”

  “Why would I be upset?”

  “Apparently the town is trying to pass a proposal to hire a missing-child expert, but the Petaluma police are set on rejecting it.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “They say it w
ould disrupt continuity or something.” She pushes the paper my way, relenting. “That they’re close to breaking the case.”

  I scan the page to see a quote from Sergeant Barresi about having plenty of resources and manpower without outsiders, then another from Marc Klaas about how frustrated he is that nothing significant in Polly’s case has broken in more than a month.

  “Maybe it’s time for me to go to Petaluma,” I say after a moment. “I’m not exactly sure how I can help, but I have nothing but time on my hands here. Cameron’s home now. She’s doing well.”

  Tally falls quiet, her blue eyes still. I watch her hands curl around the coffee cup in front of her and suddenly wish I had stayed in bed.

  “What?” I make myself ask. “What is it? You’ve had another vision, haven’t you?”

  “I don’t exactly know how to tell you this, Anna, but Polly’s gone. They won’t find her body for some time, but they will find it, and her killer, too. She’ll be at peace finally. Not for a while, but she’s going to get there.”

  I feel a stuttering wave of sadness. A weariness that’s bone deep, endless. There are too many dead bodies behind me. And too much darkness ahead. “Her poor family. At least they’ll have a body to bury. Maybe that will comfort them.”

  “I hope so,” she replies gently. “Her murder won’t be for nothing, though. Polly is going to be very, very important going forward. She will change things about how we look for the missing.”

  “You mean the Internet,” I say.

  “Other things, too. It will all unfold in time. She won’t disappear. Decades from now, we’ll still be saying her name.”

  I nod, wanting more than anything for Tally to be right.

  “There’s still work for you to do, Anna,” she continues. “You really could stay here with us forever. I love having you around. But I believe you’re supposed to go home now. Your family needs you.”