Darkscope

by J. Carson Black

“I don’t understand.”

  “I think she wanted . . . company.”

  Anger flared in Ben’s eyes. “She’ll have to be lonely then. She won’t get you.”

  Chelsea looked at the air above the mine where Kathy had been and felt again the strange longing, tugging at her soul. And then she looked at Ben, and saw the love and worry in his eyes. She knew she would never leave him willingly. “No,” Chelsea said. “She won’t get me.”

  They stood near the mine, holding each other, unaware that the afternoon grew late. The sun was low in the sky when they walked down the hill.

  Fifty-nine

  Jack didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious. It took a moment for him to realize where he was, and why there was so much pain. He sensed it was night, although it was so black in here that it was hard to tell. The voices—(Chelsea’s? Ben’s?)—were gone now. He’d been out for a long time.

  Jack was surprised that the fall hadn’t killed him. Oh, he was done for; he knew that. Something . . . important was busted inside.

  He would try to make himself comfortable and wait for death. There was no self-pity. He’d gambled and lost.

  The only thing that bothered him was the dark. Anything could be down here with him, and he couldn’t see a thing. Cold, inky blackness; that was all.

  A movement. Something whispery, like scales skittering over rock.

  Rattlesnakes?

  Fear galloped through his veins. Alone in the dark. With them. He pictured them coiling around his legs, strangling him, sliding over him in that cool, mindless slither.

  If this cavern had a light switch, and I could turn it on right now, I’d see that I’m in the middle of a rattlesnake nest. Diamondbacks. Copperheads. Maybe coral snakes. Everywhere, in every crevice, coiled and ready. Flat heads, eyes like dull black beads.

  Ssssslither.

  He opened his mouth to scream. He didn’t, though.

  Chill fingers scraped his cheek. And he knew it was no rattlesnake.

  “My grandson,” a voice said. A voice with bells in it, silvery. “At last.”

  The panther. It hadn’t been real. She’d tricked him.

  He threw back his head and laughed. He laughed until he was hoarse, until he almost choked on his own blood.

  Of course, in one sense, the panther was real. It had stalked him most of his life, and now he knew why it had scared him all these years. The panther was death. His death.

  A prepaid death plan, so to speak.

  He giggled. Still have the old wit, yes sir. Things never got so dark that he couldn’t laugh at himself He took a deep breath and nearly puked. Something stuck in his lung, sharp-like a wicked shard of glass (bone, maybe?), making breathing—and laughing—difficult. But not impossible, oh no.

  Got to keep your sense of humor. As long as you can see the humor in something, you aren’t ready for the men in white coats . . . at least not yet . . .

  But he was crazy, wasn’t he?

  Kathy was here in the dark with him, saying things like “my grandson,” and surely he was crazy?

  His thoughts began to flicker, light and dark, like a fading light bulb. This is it, Jack ol’ buddy. This is it.

  The thing to keep in mind . . . he would not be alone anymore, crazy or not. Everything was all right.

  Together, Jack and his grandmother would wait for death.

  Epilogue

  Tucson, Arizona

  June 1987

  Barbara Foudy wiped a sweaty strand of hair from her face and grimaced at the box labeled POSTHUMOUS DONATION: BOB MCCORD. Outside the Arizona Historical Society, a hot, dry wind rattled the hedges.

  Hoping this wasn’t another boxful of the old guy’s papers, she pried open the cardboard top.

  There were only two things in the box. One was a photo album so old it looked like it would decompose in front of her eyes, and the other, a beat-up box camera—probably the first one ever made.

  Barbara picked up the album. A shiver ran along her spine. Why did she suddenly feel as if someone were watching her? She scanned the empty room. Everyone had gone to lunch. Everyone except her, that was, because her mother, who was a bigwig on the board and had gotten her the job for the summer, also wanted her to lose weight and specified that she should have a half-hour lunch period instead of the full hour so she couldn’t walk to any of the tempting stores near the university and would have to eat the crummy yogurt and fruit in her lunchbox instead.

  The pictures were old and blurry. Some of them depicted the Bisbee Deportation (she knew that the fascist McCords had figured prominently in that one), some were of an infant in a blanket. But the most interesting photographs Barbara found toward the back.

  A young woman appeared in every picture, a chronology of photos of her from child to adult. There she was, on some iron steps watching a flood. Standing in front of a drugstore called Central Pharmacy.

  Barbara turned the pages carefully because the paper the photographs were mounted on was fragile with age. The girl was a woman, now, a beautiful woman. It must be the early forties.

  The woman stood in front of a fence, her arms linked with two young men. She was smiling. Barbara experienced a stab of envy that this girl from so long ago had not just one, but two men on her arm—and either one of them could have been in the movies, they were so good-looking.

  She looked at the top right photograph. The woman wore a red-and-white flowered dress; the two men were on either side of her. It was plain they both adored her. One blond man, one dark-haired man.

  Barbara squinted. Was that a train depot in the background?

  A dust devil blasted the windows of the building, and she felt suddenly dirty. Inexplicably, the certainty came to her that she shouldn’t look at the pictures anymore. They were private. But she couldn’t help herself.

  Barbara got the impression that the three people in the photographs were inextricably linked. They might have gone through life that way, in lockstep. Surely the woman must have had to choose?

  Barbara, who had never had a boyfriend in her life, was titillated at the thought of having to choose between two men—and such great-looking men at that.

  To be that beautiful, that . . . popular. I bet she didn’t have to eat yogurt.

  If I could trade lives right now with that girl, I’d do it.

  The wind rattled the hedges outside with feint laughter, like bells.

  Bisbee, Arizona

  June 1987

  “Are you sure you want to go?” Ben asked, touching his wife’s arm. Chelsea had just sold her book of Bisbee drawings to a university press, and there would be a lot of editing to do. Not only that, but they were still exhausted from a month-long honeymoon trip to Europe.

  “I have to go,” Chelsea kissed him gently on the lips. “You don’t have to come.”

  “I don’t run away from things either. I’ll go with you.”

  They drove out to Evergreen Cemetery. Chelsea stood over her great-uncle’s grave for a long time. Tears rose up in her throat as she ran her fingers along the pink stone. I’ll always love him. She had learned that the death of trust did not necessarily mean the death of love. Uncle Bob would always be two people to her: Kathy’s killer and the man she chose to remember— the uncle who took her on adventures and held her tight when her parents had died. Nothing could change those memories, although she mourned her lost trust as a little death.

  Chelsea looked at the shelf behind the graves, the proud legend “McCord” cut into the rock. There were more stones now.

  The monument to Lucas McCord dominated the plot, as he had dominated all their lives. He had been the genesis of everything. His stubborn, strong will had affected three generations and had put Chelsea’s own life in jeopardy. He had hounded one son and destroyed the other, and made conditions ripe for the bitter seed of Jack Perrault to grow.

  Beside John’s grave stood a new marker commemorating Kathy. Kathy, whose body was God knew where. Wherever, Chelsea supposed, the county b
uried Jane Does.

  Not far from Kathy’s headstone, a small plaque had been set in the grass. It said simply:

  In Memory of Dorothy Perrault McCord

  and her son Jack Perrault McCord

  Jack had made it at last. He was heir to the name, if not the fortune.

  Chelsea’s mind wandered to Sydney, the bewilderment in her voice, now months old. Her fiancé had disappeared, vanished into thin air. Chelsea hadn’t the heart to tell her the truth, that Jack had wanted to use her the same way he had wanted to use Chelsea. That they had been interchangeable in his eyes.

  Chelsea knelt at Kathleen’s grave and gently brushed away the dirt at the base of the monument. She placed the wildflowers she had gathered from the hills above Bisbee there, then stood up.

  “We did what we could,” Ben said.

  “Did we?” Chelsea’s expression was ironic. There was more to be done, and she dreaded doing it.

  Bob McCord’s memory was important to Chelsea, but now she was prepared to tell the truth, to release his letter. As much as it pained her, she would have to reveal Uncle Bob’s part in Kathleen’s death.

  Chelsea didn’t want to tell Ben why, but she guessed he knew.

  She was having dreams again.

  _________________

  Read on for a preview of J. Carson Black's

  first thriller in the Laura Cardinal Series.

  Darkness on the Edge of Town

  Visit www.jcarsonblack.com

  Kindle Edition published by Breakaway Media

  DARKNESS

  ON THE EDGE OF TOWN

  J. Carson Black

  Vail, Arizona

  Francis X. Entwistle showed up in Laura Cardinal's bedroom at three in the morning, looking world-weary.

  "Don't get up, Lorie. Just wanted to give you a heads-up. A bad one's coming."

  Frank's complexion was pale and there were shadows under his eyes. In life, his face had been dull red from the high blood pressure that had killed him. A bottle of Tanqueray gin sat on the window table and the tumbler in Frank's hand was about a quarter full. Laura didn't own any tumblers and she didn't drink gin.

  Laura wasn't entirely surprised that her old mentor was sitting in the straight-backed Mexican chair in her bedroom four months after his wife had buried him. Maybe because she knew she was dreaming. Or maybe because he was her last link to her parents, and she didn't want him to be gone for good.

  Frank Entwistle leaned forward, the nightlight from the bathroom illuminating the scroll of white hair above his side part. "You're gonna have to pay attention, and keep on paying attention."

  He stopped to scratch the tip of his nose. Laura Cardinal realized the absurdity of the situation: Sitting in her bed at three in the morning, watching a dead homicide cop scratching his nose.

  "I'm talking about the kind of thing, you aren't careful, could come back around and bite you in the ass. The key word here is vigilance."

  She wanted him to clarify what he meant by that, but he was starting to fade.

  He held his glass up in a salute. "Watch your back, kiddo."

  When she caught the case the next day, there was no doubt in Laura's mind that it was the one Frank Entwistle had alluded to.

  It was the weekend and she was at her little house on the guest ranch where she lived rent-free. The owner, a friend from high school, liked the idea of having a criminal investigator from the Arizona Department of Public Safety living on his property.

  The dream about Frank Entwistle remained with her, vivid and unsettling. It didn't feel like a dream. When she got up this morning she had sleepwalked into the bathroom. In the dim glow of the nightlight she saw a ring on the table left by a sweating glass. Instantly she was wide awake, her heart rate going through the roof, until she realized the real culprit was Tom Lightfoot. Tom never remembered to use a coaster.

  It was Tom who had been on her mind all morning, Tom who had preoccupied her since he left two days ago on a packing trip to New Mexico.

  This was because of the note stuck to the refrigerator: "Maybe we should live together—T"

  Not "love, T," she noticed. The word "love" scared her, anyway, so she wouldn't hold that against him. What she did hold against him was the fact that he had blindsided her, leaving that note on her refrigerator and then creeping out of town. She couldn't reach him in the back country. She couldn't say they'd only been together two and a half months, that his house was just over the hill, that just because he spent every night with her anyway he shouldn't think he could move in. Living together was a whole different proposition from sleeping together. The last man she had lived with had been her husband, and that had not turned out well.

  What bothered Laura most, though, was the part of her that leaped at the thought.

  Restless, she went outside to water, the day already hot enough she had to run the hose a while to avoid scalding the plants. Her mobile rang and she retreated into the shade with the phone.

  It was Jerry Grimes, her sergeant. "You busy?"

  "What's up?" Knowing that whatever plans she had for a quiet weekend were about to be blown out of the water.

  "Bisbee PD's asked for an assist on a homicide."

  As she listened, Laura forgot about Tom's note. Frank Entwistle had warned her it would be bad, and it was. A fourteen-year-old girl had been found dead in a small town south of here.

  "Mike's talked to the chief down there and we all agree," Jerry said. "You're the lead investigator on this. So don't take any shit."

  He always said that, although Laura had never taken any shit yet. She knew the pep talk was just his way of showing support for her, a woman doing a man's job. But being called in to assist on investigations in other jurisdictions—mostly small towns—Laura knew that petty politics were far more obstructive to an investigation than any effect her gender might have.

  "Victor will meet you there as soon as he can. You know where the ADOT yard is this side of the tunnel?" Jerry said. "They'll have someone from Bisbee PD there to escort you in."

  Fifteen minutes later, Laura turned her 4Runner onto Interstate 10 going east, dread pressing into her throat:

  Fourteen years old.

  Darkness on the Edge of Town

  Buy it Now!

  Visit www.jcarsonblack.com

  Kindle Edition published by Breakaway Media

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  Part One: The Box Camera

  Part Two: Kathleen

  Part Three: Dreams

  Part Four: The Evil Legacy

  Epilogue