Dark Channel

by Ray Garton

  7.

  “The police said there’s nothing they can do. I talked to them this morning, as soon as I discovered that … that … Nathan was missing. Mark took all the money from the bank, everything we had. And my son. But it’s not a police matter, they said. I’d have to get a lawyer, they said. ‘He’s your husband’s son, too,’ they said. For all I know … hell, he might have sold the house out from under me.”

  The woman’s name was Lauren Schroeder and she’d knocked back three shots of Johnny Walker within minutes of entering the nearly empty bar they’d found a few blocks from the hotel. Then she’d ordered another. She was still trembling from her experience with Hester Thorne.

  As she drank, they asked her questions, tried to get her to talk, but she didn’t hear them, or ignored them. She drank and stared at the candle flickering in a squat red bowl in the center of the table, her hands fluttering; the fingers of her right hand clawed the gold band on her left, nails clicking against it like dry bones, and the red candlelight spilled over her fingers like blood. She shook her head, muttered, looked like she was going to cry again, then drank some more. That went on for a while until, during the minutes between her third and fourth shots, she began to respond to Jordan and Marvin. Starting slowly, then speaking fast, running her sentences together, she told them everything.

  “Why are you so sure he’s with Hester Thorne?” Jordan asked.

  “Because that … that religion, or whatever it is, is all he’s been talking about, living, for the last, I don’t know, months, over a year maybe, I’m not sure. And he’s tried so hard to pass it on to Nathan, tried to get him to believe in all that … shit. Crystals and extraterrestrials … all of that. And of course Nathan believes it, he’s just a little boy, he’ll believe anything his father tells him. And I … I tried to tell him … I wanted to make him understand that … well, you just can’t take a boy like that and …” She sighed abruptly, a sudden expulsion of breath that put the candle flame in agony, then putting her face in her hands, she breathed, “I have nothing now. He’s taken it all. And after we worked so hard … first toward his career, then with the cocaine … oh, god, what we went through with that, I mean … and deciding how to raise Nathan … that’s not easy, you know, you can’t just …” She reached for the glass on the table, but it was empty. “What am I going to do?” Her voice was nearly inaudible. “What … am I going … to do?”

  Jordan looked at Marvin, who raised his eyebrows high as if to say, So, what now?

  “Not that I doubt what you’ve told us,” Jordan began uncertainly, “but do you have any proof at all, Mrs. Schroeder, of your husband’s attachment to the Alliance?”

  She laughed coldly and without smiling. “What do you think I am, some kind of lunatic? Running into that place, screaming at that woman? Do you think I did that because I thought maybe my husband had run off to live with that … soothsayer?”

  Jordan took a deep breath and closed his eyes a moment, fighting off his impatience. “I said I don’t doubt you. I’m just wondering if you have some proof.”

  She began slapping her hands over the plaid shirt, slipping her fingers in the breast pockets until she found a small piece of paper. “I found this in the bedroom this morning,” she said, unfolding it. “A letter. A note, really.” When she handed it over to him, her fingers were quivering.

  It was written on a page from a palm-sized spiral bound notebook:

  Mark,

  Have courage and be strong. The worst is almost over. Until S.F. …

  Yours in godness, H.

  Marvin squinted at the note, adjusting his glasses, and mumbled, “He might’ve written it.”

  “Might have,” Jordan whispered. “But why?”

  Marvin shrugged.

  “The handwriting looks very … feminine. Don’t you think?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Are you cops?” Lauren asked.

  “No, we’re not. But we have, um, an interest in the Alliance,” Jordan said, looking at the note, then at her. “You said your husband led you to believe he was going to work every day for three weeks after he quit his job. What did he do for a living?”

  “He was a shift supervisor at Diego Nuclear Power Plant.”

  “He just … quit? Just like that?”

  “He told them some story about us moving north, up toward Mount Shasta.”

  Frowning, Jordan studied the note again. “I know it’s none

  of my business, but … did your husband make good money at his job?”

  She shrugged. “We … did okay. In fact, we did very well. At least, we were … doing very well. Before she came along and took it all away.”

  “So, other than the money, you can think of nothing about your husband that would especially interest Hester Thorne?”

  She shook her head and closed her eyes, whispering, “I don’t know why she wants him. And I don’t care. I only want my son.”

  After tossing a glance at Marvin, Jordan said, “During those three weeks after your husband had quit his job, do you think he could have been seeing Hester Thorne? Meeting with her someplace?”

  “He could have. Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. And I really don’t care. I don’t care if they’re married, really. All I want is my son and my share of the money he took.”

  “‘The worst is almost over,’” Jordan read quietly.

  “Sounds like they were … well, planning something, maybe?” Marvin said.

  “Have you looked at your phone bills lately, Mrs. Schroeder?”

  “What?”

  “Your phone bills. To see if he’s been making any calls to Grover.”

  “He takes care of all that. It never occurred to me to—” Her eyes narrowed slightly as she leaned toward Jordan and asked firmly, “Look, who are you? Why are you asking all these questions?”

  “I’m a private investigator.”

  “Really?” she whispered, then louder, hopefully: “Really? Could you … would you help me get my son back?” She clutched his wrist and squeezed. “Please? I need help. I don’t think I can do it alone. And I’m afraid something horrible will happen to him if I don’t get him soon. Right now. She’s awful, that woman, she’s—”

  Jordan pulled his hand away and cleared his throat loudly.

  She stopped speaking but stared at him imploringly, closing her hand into a fist on the table, then relaxing it. Closing, relaxing … closing, relaxing …

  “Why do you think something will happen to your son?” he asked.

  Her eyes darted back and forth between them. “I … well, I … I’m afraid. That woman … those people … there’s something wrong with them.” She grabbed Jordan’s wrist again, her voice wet, lips trembling as she hissed, “Please, Mr. Cross, you have to help me!”

  Jordan snapped his hand away abruptly this time, making no effort to hide his discomfort at her touch.

  Marvin patted his arm, muttered, “Take it easy, Jordan,” then took Lauren’s hand and smiled, “You’re upset, Mrs. Schroeder, and with good reason. But think about it; he’s with his dad, right? Sure, you’re angry at your husband right now, but you don’t think he’d let any harm come to the boy, do you? I don’t think so. And Mrs. Schroeder, in our business—” He nodded toward Jordan, “—we’ve found that missing persons, more often than you think, turn up on their own. I mean, they just come back. I don’t think you have anything to—”

  She tore her hand away and slammed a fist on the table. “Don’t bullshit me! This is something he’s been thinking about, not a whim. He took all of our money and he quit his job three weeks ago! She knew who I was and what I was talking about, couldn’t you tell? She went crazy! She … she was, I don’t know, babbling something. Like she was speaking in tongues, or something. And she knocked me off that stage! I … I think. It felt like it, anyway. I couldn’t breathe for a while. I
t was like … well, it almost felt like she … like maybe she …” Lauren slapped a hand over her eyes and her mouth twisted as she began to cry. “Listen to me, I—I’m starting to sound like him. Believing all that … that …” She scrubbed her face and pushed her chair away from the table. “Forget it. Just forg—I’ll find him my—just forget it.” She spun and swayed a bit, then started out of the bar.

  Jordan watched her leave, then looked around; a man and woman sat at opposite ends of the bar, a fat couple sat at a corner table hunched over their drinks, and the bartender was talking quietly on the telephone behind the register.

  She was right; Hester Thorne had gone crazy. And in front of an audience. The note implied a plan between her and Schroeder; it even sounded like she’d been encouraging him, pressing him, perhaps, to leave his wife. It was impossible, of course, to be sure of anything with just a couple of quickly written lines to go on, but Jordan had no doubt that the two men in the hotel ballroom had been reaching for guns, and he was sure that Lauren Schroeder—whether she was right or wrong—would go to Grover and stir things up to find her son. If Fiske was right and Harvey Bolton had been murdered for learning too much, Grover would not be a safe place for Lauren Schroeder, either.

  Whatever Hester Thorne’s involvement with Mark Schroeder was—if, indeed, there was an involvement—one thing was certain: the Universal Enlightened Alliance had done some damage to the Schroeder family.

  Edmond Fiske would like to hear that.

  Better yet, he would pay to hear it.

  She had reached the door when Jordan called, “Mrs. Schroeder.”

  No one in the bar noticed.

  She stopped, turned slowly.

  He held up the note she’d left behind.

  Wiping her puffy eyes, she returned to the table, took the note, and stuffed it back into her pocket. “Thuh—thank … you.”

  “Uh, look, Mrs. Schroeder,” Jordan began, not quite looking at her, “I can’t make any promises, okay? I mean, I’m not saying I’ll get your son back, but … I think we might be able to help each other. I’ve—”

  She dropped back into the chair and gasped, “Oh, god, thank you, thank you so much, Mr.—”

  “I said I wasn’t promising anything,” he snapped, and felt Marvin’s disapproval, knew that Marvin was frowning at him for being so abrupt and uncompassionate. “But … I’ll see what I can do.” He stood and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where you going?”

  Taking Edmond Fiske’s card from his pocket, he said, “To make a phone call.”

  8.

  The Coke from the machine down the hall hissed as Mark poured it over crackling ice. CNN was on the television and Mark sat at the table by the long window; San Francisco flickered in the night below.

  “Is Mom coming later?”

  “I … I hope so, Nathe.”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “Well, I’m not sure.”

  “Does she know where we are?”

  That was a tough one. Mark didn’t want Nathan to know that they’d sneaked away from the house leaving Lauren no clue as to where they had gone or if they would be back; he didn’t want him to know for a while, anyway. He’d made a game of leaving the house without waking up Mom and Nathan had played along happily. Later, he would tell Nathan the truth, when he thought the boy would be able to understand that they couldn’t tell his mother why they were leaving or where they were going, that she felt nothing but hostility toward everything Mark believed. But for now, he was uncomfortable with that question and chose to ignore it until Nathan moved on to something else. He quietly sipped his fizzing Coke.

  “How long’ll we stay here, Dad?” Nathan asked, tired of the silence that had followed his previous question. He fidgeted on the edge of the bed, picking at the fringe on the bedspread.

  “You mean here in—don’t do that, Nathe, it’ll tear—you mean here in the hotel?”

  “Here in San Frisco.”

  “San Francisco. I don’t know. Miss Thorne is giving a talk here in the hotel. We might leave tonight when she’s finished. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Can we hear her talk?”

  “Afraid not, kiddo. She wants us to wait here in the room.”

  “Do you think Miss Thorne is pretty, Dad?”

  “Sure do,” Mark chuckled.

  But that was not his reason for being there, of course. Hester Thorne was a beautiful woman—much more than just physically beautiful—and Mark had come to feel very close to her during their many meetings over the past three weeks. But his attraction to her was not sexual—

  —Not completely, he thought, no, certainly not completely sexual—

  —it was something much deeper than that, something that had little to do with the physical body—

  —But god knows Hester Thorne’s physical body is just fine, thank you very much—

  —and what frustrated Mark even more than Lauren’s hostility toward the Alliance and her stubborn rejection of his newly awakened spirituality was knowing that as soon as she learned where he’d gone, she would most likely accuse him of having an affair with Hester. She would accuse him of taking all their money to run away and live with Hester; she would probably divorce him without hesitation and take him to court for custody of Nathan.

  It would probably never occur to her—not for a second—that if she would just open up to the things Mark had discovered in the Alliance, if she would just give them a fair chance, maybe she would find in them the comfort Mark had found and they could be together now, instead of playing these ridiculous, hurtful games.

  “Lower plane games,” Hester called them, because, she said, “They are played only on this plane, the physical plane, one of the lowest. Other more spiritually and psychically developed beings on non-physical planes have outgrown these games and lead a pure, uncluttered existence. You can outgrow them, too, Mark,” she’d told him one afternoon during their first meeting in a coffee shop in Dunnigan, midway between Grover and Los Gatos. “I can help you outgrow them and begin your ascent to a higher level of existence. If you’ll let me. You have to let me.”

  “How do I do that?” he’d asked quietly. His voice was low and his words came slowly; he’d had a fight with Lauren the night before—and the night before that and nearly every night for the past several weeks—and he felt low. Mark had finally found something that felt right to him, a belief system that gave his life meaning beyond his status as a husband and father, and Lauren’s constant rejection of it, her relentless scathing attacks on it hurt him deeply. He realized for the first time how she must have felt during his addiction to cocaine; she’d adopted the same close-minded denial that had kept him from seeing his problem for so long. He saw no signs of improvement between them and decided he would have to take some sort of action. As much as he loved Lauren, Mark could not cling to her while she continued to resist growth; he had to get his own life in order. And Nathan: Mark would not allow the weight of Lauren’s bitter stubbornness to drag Nathan down with her.

  After the warm reception he and Nathan—and even Lauren, with her sour face and cold manner—had gotten from Hester Thorne during their visit to Grover, Mark decided to try calling her for some advice. He called from work one day and left a message with her secretary, not really expecting to hear from her.

  Not only did she call back, she remembered him.

  “You’re the gentleman from the nuclear power plant, aren’t you?” she asked pleasantly. “How nice to hear from you.”

  Mark stalled with small talk for a while, unsure of how to turn the conversation to his personal problems, uncertain if he even wanted to. He was rambling about the weather in the San Jose area when Hester interrupted him with a warm whispery voice.

  “What’s troubling you, Mark? What can I do?”

  And he told her.

 
She suggested they meet and Mark took a day off that week and drove up to Dunnigan. It wasn’t much later that he quit his job at Hester’s request to meet with her every day and plan for his future. Also at her request, he kept his actions secret from Lauren. From everyone.

  “It would only make things worse,” Hester told him. “Especially with your wife. It wouldn’t be your fault, of course. She simply insists on playing these lower plane games with you. You’re doing the best you can, Mark. You’re doing fine.”

  Nathan went to the window and looked out at the city, silent for a while. Then he turned to Mark and asked, “Do you think Miss Thorne’s prettier than Mom, Dad?”

  Mark winced, finishing his Coke. “Why don’t you change the channel, Nathe? Maybe there’s some cartoons on.”

  “’Kay.”

  Nathan occupied himself in front of the television as Mark went to the bathroom and washed his face with cold water, noticing that his hands were trembling. It wasn’t an easy thing he was doing, but it was necessary.

  He suddenly wanted a drink.

  That’s not what you need and you know it, he thought, looking at his reflection over the sink. You know what you need and you’ve come for it. You’ve done the right thing. The right thing …

  There was a gentle knock at the door and Mark dried his face quickly, crossed the room, and opened the door to Hester Thorne. She smiled at him, but it was a troubled, unsteady smile.

  “Hello,” Mark said, “come in, please.”

  She entered the room with forearms folded below her breasts, as if she were chilled, and Nathan scrambled to his feet and ran toward her grinning.

  “Miss Thorne!” he shouted.

  “Calm down, Nathe,” Mark said.

  “No, Mark, don’t. He’s fine.” She bent down and hugged him tight, kissed his head. “You can call me Hester, okay Nathan? I don’t call you Mr. Schroeder, do I?”

  “Okay, Hester. I didn’t think you was ever gonna come. There’s nothin’ on television.”

  She laughed and hugged him again, but Mark saw the reserve in her movements, the tense lines around her eyes.