Find You in the Dark

by Nathan Ripley

  “You didn’t know her. Not really. And I told them that, when they asked. I also said they had no right to be giving you a hard time, what you’re going through right now, you know?”

  “Thanks, Bob. Who’s they?” We were close to where I wanted to be now, the center of the warren of desks that ReeseTech had blossomed out of. In the middle of the room, the first six desks stood where they’d been the day I moved the company in, and the few of us who did all the work sat down and built up the millions we took with us. All except for Gary. That was his desk, at the end, decorated just how I remembered it. I took a look at the camera setup, remembering the day we’d installed it, when I’d made sure that the grid was as unhackable as possible and that, most important, nobody could get a look at what was on any of our screens in that middle hive section. Hyperparanoia, especially in the days before HD digital security cams, but I always liked being vigilant. Which is why I kept Bob Suchana between the nearest camera and myself as I positioned myself next to Gary’s desk, popped my messenger bag onto the surface, and claimed what I’d come for. Bob didn’t notice, and neither did anyone else, because Gary’s original desk backed onto my own—untouched for years except by dusting—original desk. We’d kept them the way they were when we were still plugging in code every day. The new owners had insisted on it, calling it the “preserved heart of the company.” Pickled.

  I closed the bag just as Bob was finishing up.

  “That lady detective, she was right off TV. Too pretty to be a cop, right? Have you met her?”

  “Yeah. I guess she is pretty.”

  “A mad dog, though. She wouldn’t let me finish answering questions, especially when she heard I was definitely elsewhere, and that I hadn’t been around when Rochelle left work. I still think this is all stupid. She’ll turn up tomorrow, hungover from some concert she went to in Portland.”

  I shook hands and reassured a few other staffers, letting them see me looking shook up. I recognized exactly seven people up there, and remembered about four names. One was Priya Canetti, my last personal hire, a short and efficient project manager. The back of her hand, soft but slightly dry, was like Rochelle’s skin, just warmer, fresher. Rochelle, transmuted into cargo that the Ragman was now unloading in some anonymous place, spattered with my blood, waiting to be used against me.

  Concerts on the weekend, no boyfriend. Even Jenny Starks, lying up in that clearing by the gravel pit, when all of this started, back when I was in college—her skin was dead skin. Gone for long enough to undergo the violations and humiliation of death. Other than that prick in her neck and the cut from being dropped on the shovel, Rochelle Stokes had been wearing her living skin, what she came to work in, what she showered in, what she listened to music in. The idea of Kylie being anywhere close to this wretched death, that her brain and her jokes and her brilliance and her ability to see through me like I was a pane of glass could be ended forever and covered in dirt if I stepped wrong just once—it didn’t weaken me, not anymore. It steadied me. I wasn’t allowed to make a mistake. A mistake meant the only worthwhile thing I’d ever made would die. So there would be no mistake.

  I tried to forget it, on the elevator ride down to Detective Gabriel, and I managed to push it aside. Dwelling on Rochelle Stokes, on the fact that she could have continued the collection of activities and thoughts and speech that were her life if I hadn’t started digging around in the Ragman’s past—it wasn’t useful. I shifted my bag, muttered Gary’s name, and put on my best face for company as the doors opened and I walked over to the sitting detective.

  “YOU WANT TO DRIVE YOUR own car?” the big cop asked. “You can follow me, or I can just get one of our guys to run you back here when Whittal’s done with you.”

  “You make her sound menacing,” I said.

  “You’ve met her,” Chris Gabriel said, getting up and walking toward the door, shortening his stride a little to let me keep pace. I’d ditched the dig kit, so the Jeep wasn’t teeming with evidence. But I didn’t like the idea of parking it in the police lot.

  “I’ll hitch along with you, if that’s okay,” I said. “I feel like you guys think I don’t want to help you. You don’t think I’d be protecting Keith Waring over my own daughter, do you?”

  “I don’t think that, sir. I can’t say what Detective Whittal thinks, but I’m sure it isn’t that, either.”

  Gabriel pushed the door open and let me out first, pointing to a sedan illegally parked near the ReeseTech entrance. Not even parallel to the curb. I wanted to chide him, just for a second, phrasing it jokingly to lighten things up, but his flat look and refusal to make eye contact with me killed that impulse very quickly.

  “Detective Whittal probably thinks you’re being less than frank. And she’s not wrong too often.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I’m not concerned about this part of the investigation, sir. As soon as I drop you off I’m getting right back to looking for Rochelle Stokes.”

  “You’ll find her,” I said, trying to get some civic-minded confidence and hope for the future into the words.

  “Yup.” We got in the car and went on a completely silent drive to the cop shop. I almost forgot my bag when I got out of the car, but Gabriel whistled at me and grabbed it from the back seat as I was getting out.

  “Tell Whittal I’ll check in with her in an hour.”

  “An hour? Shouldn’t she be spending this time looking for the man who has my daughter?”

  “I can’t answer any of your questions, buddy. Sir. That or I just don’t want to, right now.”

  Sandra Whittal was talking to the desk sergeant when I entered.

  “I was just telling Sergeant Priestley to send you right over to me whenever you rolled in, Mr. Reese.”

  “Here I am,” I said, the words leaking out as I exhaled. I took a deep breath, feeling the duct tape on my chest again, the hot burn of the cut beneath it. I followed Whittal down into the guts of the station, past Keith’s desk, her desk, and the room where we’d had our first talk. Any cops along the way who looked at Whittal quickly looked away, and none of them glanced at me. We ended up in a small, cold room, just a couple of chairs and thumbtack holes in the walls.

  “All the rooms up top are taken,” Whittal said. “Busy day.”

  “Did you talk to my wife last night?” I asked. A gentle way of starting on the offensive couldn’t hurt me.

  “Today, actually. Just after getting the call about Rochelle Stokes. It was my first stop.”

  “You treat her the way I’m being treated?”

  “And how’s that?”

  “Not so much like the parent of a kidnapping victim as the suspect of a kidnapping.”

  “No, we’re not treating her that way. Could I ask you why you left your phone behind when you last left your house, Mr. Reese?” Whittal pulled her own phone out of her pocket here, typing in her pass, flicking around in it. She waved her other hand at me, a motion that I should sit down. I did, but she stayed standing.

  “I forgot it.”

  “It’s genuinely unusual for a person to leave their phone behind. Unless they’re drunk or something. Everything’s in these little gadgets.”

  “I wear a watch, so I don’t look at my phone as often as many. I got a little burnt out on technology in my career. And I’ve been preoccupied recently, Detective.”

  “You got out of the city the morning after a woman who works at your office vanished.”

  “I did. And, as I think my wife can and probably has already confirmed to you, I was at home the night Rochelle Stokes went missing, and either at my desk or in the living room with her all night. I had no idea Stokes was gone when I left to look for Keith.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Reese said so. Ellen. Don’t worry about that. I don’t think you took Rochelle, if that’s really what happened to her. Could just be a runaway, right? An adult, career-woman runaway. Why not.”

  “I don’t know if that’s the right word, and knowing nothing ab
out her, I can’t say what she might have done. But I definitely hope she’s just going to text her roommate from Vegas or something tomorrow.”

  “Phones have all sorts of annoying software in them. So many ways to track movement. We just kind of got comfortable with them attached, right? Remember when people used to be paranoid about having their credit card bills looked at, because it gave away where you were on a certain day? That worry just seems to have faded right away.”

  “I guess so. Different ideas of privacy, and all that.” I decided to try a different tack, because I was getting scared. A version of honesty. “Look, I’ll level with you. I didn’t want to be tracked, yes. I was looking around for this campsite Keith Waring had described to me a few times, never too accurately, and I was scared of being tailed, in case I found it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us about this campsite?” Whittal asked the question as though she was asking about the plot of a movie she didn’t have much interest in, looking at the wall behind me. My eyes flicked over to the closed door, the doorknob. Whittal caught the glimpse and smiled.

  “Because I didn’t want to alert Keith. In case he’s got friends here, or listens in on a scanner, or something. I don’t want to do anything that will get my daughter killed, Detective. Which, might I add, you guys seem to be getting pretty relaxed about. My wife from our fucking living room is doing more to get Kylie back than you people are.”

  “It may look that way to you, Mr. Reese, but we’re very actively looking for Kylie,” said Whittal, finally sitting down. She was wearing a boxy, not-quite-correctly fitted suit. It looked like something from the earlier seasons of The X-Files. But she still looked sharp, in a way that had nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with the intentness of her speech and eye movements. That voice the Ragman had used when he still had his mask on; here was a version of that, but real. The Ragman made mistakes, but Whittal didn’t seem to really understand what mistakes were, at least at a personal level. She understood fucking-up as something other people did. People like me.

  “Young female cops get asked for their origin story a lot,” Whittal said. I knew she’d noticed that I was studying her, trying to figure her out. “Some of them actually have stories. Family-of-cops stuff, or surviving an assault at some point and getting into the force as a way of getting back control. Domineering parents, too. I almost wanted to make one up, just to have one to tell at the bar. But there’s nothing. I got sick of college, but saw it through, then joined the academy right afterwards. Liked the work and did it for crazy-long hours. The end.”

  “That’s nice. Nice to find work that you love.”

  “That’s what I tell everyone here, anyway. Because there’s no reason to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “I had a very troubled father. A violent man, even though he never brought any of that violence to me.”

  “I had a bad one as well. I’m sorry to hear you had to deal with that.”

  “He was sorry, too, eventually. When I had enough of a brain together to figure out how to get him to stop hitting my mother for good, I said the right things to the right institutions and he ended up shuttling around from jail to mental hospital to care home for the rest of his sorry, short life. Crazy’s one thing, Martin, but crazy and hurting people’s another. You agree?” Whittal watched the ceiling during her threatening version of confession, but locked eyes with me again when she asked me that last question.

  “Sure.”

  “So what’s your origin story?” Whittal asked. She didn’t lean in, she leaned away, looked at the ceiling.

  “I dropped out of school and started a tech company. Made money. Sold the company. That’s it.”

  “Where along the way did you meet Keith Waring?”

  “Postretirement. A few years ago, I don’t know exactly.”

  “At the post office, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Keith had access to all sorts of records, you know. Stuff the press never had a look at. Serial killer records dating back years. Investigative details. Lots of material on Tinsley Schultz. Jason Shurn.” Whittal was watching me. Watching for a reaction. I thought of the knife raking across my chest. I thought of Kylie. I didn’t twitch.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes, Mr. Reese. Waring also looked up your criminal record, did you know that?”

  “I have no record.”

  “Well, not an active one, but these files are never properly gone, you know? You know.” Whittal wasn’t looking at the ceiling anymore. “So why would he do that?”

  “Not sure. A blackmail plan? It was clear to me towards the end that he was getting crazier and crazier. I’d expect anything from him. Short of the kidnapping of my child. Remember that?” Keith wouldn’t think of making an official request for my record as a misstep: he would have thought of it as being cautious and clever. The research is what gets you in trouble, Keith, not what you find out. I’d tell him that if he were still alive.

  “I think your record is part of your origin story, Martin. It may even be part of why Kylie was taken away.”

  “It isn’t a record. Not anymore. And how fucking dare you implicate me in the worst thing that has ever happened to my family.”

  “A record, even a sealed one, is a story of what you used to be like. It just can’t legally be held against you anymore.”

  “I broke into a couple of houses. Dumb teenage shit. My parents didn’t care about keeping an eye on me, and I was acting out. I was a shitty kid.”

  “Definitely not,” Whittal said. It made me understand why she’d taken me to this nameless room. We were invisible down here. Our talk was only for her, and for me.

  “I don’t want you to be concerned, Martin,” she said. “I don’t think you’re killing these women. Bella Greene. Rochelle Stokes.”

  “Are you people even bothering to investigate? Rochelle might still be alive out there. Screw ‘might,’ there’s no reason to believe she’s dead.”

  “Chris Gabriel is the department bloodhound. He’s great at finding people. Living ones. But you know and I know that he’s not going to bring Rochelle back to her family.” Whittal put her phone away. She took a small envelope of photos out of the bulging pocket of her suit jacket and handed it to me. I opened it up and sorted through them as she continued to talk. The Irish cemetery. Not as I’d left it, but as the Ragman had left it. Bella’s body out in the open. Muddy. Ugly.

  “Not a pretty scene, Martin. Not like your usuals.”

  “What?”

  “You make the calls, Martin Reese. I know that’s you on the phone, that it’s been you for years, digging up girls and calling in to tease us. I know that you bought files from Keith Waring. Pretty soon I’ll have proof of that. His bank account was drained, by him, and the boys have already turned up all sorts of irregularities in his monthly income, expenses. Some months he never spent a dime out of his checking account, you know. Like he was picking up envelopes of cash from somewhere or another. But like I said, I don’t think you killed Bella Greene, or took Rochelle Stokes away. Or your daughter.” She reached out and touched me then, her hand chilly enough to radiate through the denim over my knee, as though she were pushing her intellect and hatred through my flesh.

  “But someone is hurting all of these women, and you know who it is. Is it Keith? Maybe. Or maybe he’s dead. I only know that it’s got to stop. I don’t think you’re far enough gone to disagree with me on that. Not a single additional woman can die here, because each one devalues your already questionable existence that much more. Your own daughter, Martin. Cut the shit.”

  “This is completely—”

  “You have a chance to talk to me. You have a chance to get Kylie back.” She grabbed the photos and the envelope, very quickly. One of the photos left a whispering papercut on my right index finger, and I winced. Whittal smiled.

  “That doesn’t count as police brutality, sorry. We’re here because I like your wife.”


  “Pardon me?” I wiped the little trace of blood from my finger onto my jeans, and resisted sucking the cut. I stared right at Whittal, and started to genuinely loathe the smile she was turning on me.

  “Your wife. I like her. Don’t you?”

  “I love her. Are you implying otherwise? I love my wife and my daughter.”

  “Your actions imply otherwise, Reese. Your little secret life threatens everything about Ellen, and it’s going to get your daughter killed. I know you think that this is all just guessing, that you’re several steps ahead of the stupid cops, but you’re wrong. And I’m not the stupid cops. Right now, in this room, looking at you, there’s nothing stupid or official about me, do you get that?” Whittal took off her jacket, dropping it on the floor next to her chair. She dropped the smile, too. She was wearing a white shirt tucked sharply into her pants, no bulge around the waist, just a hard plane of white into gray. No badge clipped to her belt. The pictures had scattered when the jacket hit the ground, and I stared at one, a close-up of Bella’s wrist, the one wearing the bracelet. The one I’d touched.

  “I don’t even know how to begin addressing this insane series of accusations and implications and completely unproven, untested bullshit. How you think you can say these things to me—it makes me wonder how you treat kids you pull in off the streets for actual crimes.”

  “No crimes are more actual than this,” Detective Whittal said. “You may not push the knife or the plunger of that needle, but you glory in it. Dead girls. Women. Humans. Organized and cataloged. Under control. Tackle dummies so you don’t act out against living women, girls you see on the street. Against your wife.

  “Those messages you’ve left for us, years in—you’re so focused on being better than us at investigating, it hasn’t occurred to you that you’re just as bad as them in every other way. Just as bad as Shurn, as Horace Marks, as whoever the guy is out there who killed Bella Greene and took Rochelle Stokes.”