Path into Darkness

by Lisa Alber

  Merrit positioned herself behind Brenda in Nathan’s direct line of sight. He radiated heat and desperation. The nurse’s hand landed on her shoulder again, this time pulling. Merrit ignored her. She grabbed her chance while Brenda positioned the syringe to jab home the sedative.

  “Zoe broke you,” she said. “She broke you, didn’t she? That’s what this is all about. You can say it. She broke you.”

  Nathan’s gaze locked on her mouth. His mouth moved over the words, following Merrit’s lips.

  “You can say it,” Merrit said. “At long last, say the words.”

  His voice struggled over words Merrit couldn’t hear. Brenda injected the medication.

  “Say it again,” Merrit said. “You’re allowed.”

  He sagged against the wall. “She broke me,” he whispered.

  “Take him to the Quiet Room.” Brenda turned to Merrit. “And you, time to leave. Come with me.”

  Merrit grabbed her feeble llama and placed it in Nathan’s hand.

  “I smashed them,” he said in a dull voice.

  “What did you smash?”

  “The sculptures I’d made of Susannah. I smashed them all.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I hated them looking at me, blaming me for all that went wrong.”

  “What did you do wrong?”

  The nurse escorted Nathan away. He resisted for a moment, swiveling toward Merrit. His vague gaze sharpened. She recognized him shining out at her from inside his hell. “I shouldn’t have told Susannah,” he said, and then he disappeared again, back into a medicated stupor.

  seventy-nine

  Cecil Wallace wasn’t kidding when he said he’d use up his kids’ inheritance to pay for a posh rehabilitative facility. The smell of money permeated the place, from the leather chairs in the waiting areas to the hushed footsteps and low-key classical music to the scent of fresh roses. Danny and O’Neil were shown into the “aquatic centre.” Airy, moist, and chlorine-scented warmth greeted them.

  “Hopefully we’ll get what we need out of the old fella,” O’Neil said.

  Their escort pointed to the far end of the pool, where a physical therapist stabilized Cecil under his torso and ordered him to kick harder. Cecil looked comfortable enough with his head and arms resting on a flotation pillow. His voice rose over the splashes and murmurs of the other patients in the pool.

  “I am kicking, you bloody fascist.” He shifted on the float pillow. “Detectives! Coming to arrest my hide for gross indecency?”

  Cecil splashed and flailed his way to the side of the pool. The therapist helped him up the steps and wrapped him in a thick bathrobe. Cecil beckoned Danny to a cluster of cushioned loungers.

  “Nice digs,” Danny said. “Did your kids throw wobblers at the expense like you predicted?”

  “Throwing wobblers wasn’t the half of it. They about put holes in the roof with their bellows.” He cackled. “They’re back in Dublin now, and I won’t hear from them until the next time I land in a hospital.” He crossed himself.

  “Your third child—the oldest—did he ever make an appearance?”

  “Why would he?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. You said he was the child who might have cared. Maybe he did care.”

  Cecil untied the bathrobe cinch, snuggled the robe more tightly around himself, and retied the cinch. O’Neil sat a little apart with notebook in hand. At Danny’s behest, he remained in observation mode.

  “After we found you,” Danny continued, “you said that you heard someone enter Elder Joe’s house. You used the term ‘sneaky.’ By any chance, did this sneaky person provide you with one of the glasses of water we saw by your bedside?”

  “Sonny boy, you’re off your pills, you are.”

  “So you haven’t seen your eldest son, the one you disowned?”

  “What is it you want? Talk plainly, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I know who killed Elder Joe now,” he said. “I’m here to update you.”

  At Ballyhinch House, O’Neil had shown Danny the name inscribed on the nameplate of a copy of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. None other than feisty old Cecil Wallace.

  Cecil fiddled with the cinch. “Do tell.”

  “Cedric Gibson, or Sid as he’s known, turns out to be a loyal son, indeed. Granted, most sons wouldn’t resort to killing, but he did take care of the problem of Elder Joe’s fraudulent and neglectful behavior.”

  “Elder abuse,” Cecil bellowed. “That’s what it’s called, and Elder Joe deserved what he got.”

  “Now you scream ‘elder abuse’? When we spoke previously, you didn’t seem all that peeved by EJ’s lackluster caretaking skills or money grubbing. What changed?”

  “My state of mind.” He huffed and settled back on his chair. “Whoever did him in did the world a favor.”

  “If you can afford this place, it’s a wonder you stayed with EJ at all. You could have found a decent place and still had money left for your kids. Why stay with EJ?”

  Cecil grumbled. Danny prompted him to speak up. “I said,” Cecil said, “maybe I didn’t want to go into a facility. Maybe I thought I’d never get out again. At least at EJ’s, I was in a home. I would have left eventually, but—”

  But what? Danny thought. But your disturbed son thought you needed saving?

  “You still haven’t told me what you want,” Cecil said. “Get on with you.”

  “You can place Sid Gibson inside Elder Joe’s house. He was the sneaky one.”

  Cecil’s expression settled into feisty-old-man obstinance. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you. I don’t remember seeing anyone.”

  So that was the way of it. Danny was pissing in the wind when it came to uncovering concrete evidence against Sid for Elder Joe’s death.

  “I wouldn’t have thought Sid capable of loyalty or familial feeling,” Danny said.

  “You think wrong,” Cecil said. “The thing about Sid is, if he likes you, he likes you—wouldn’t raise a finger to shake it at you.”

  “But do not piss him off, is that it? Sociopaths aren’t known for—”

  “He’s not a sociopath,” Cecil interrupted. “He acted one to get himself sent to Dundrum instead of prison.”

  Danny sipped his orange juice. “What about the north-end kidnapping in Dublin—the diplomat’s daughter?”

  Cecil set aside his orange juice and frowned down at his hands. “He was younger then, less impulse control. The poor girl’s death was an accident.”

  “But you disowned him for it, didn’t you?”

  Cecil grumbled a yes.

  “So, accidental death in the commission of a crime is not allowed, but killing out of loyalty is dandy?”

  Cecil glared at him. “If he killed Elder Joe, Detective. I taught him his lessons. He understands right and wrong. He knows, and he’ll always improve himself.”

  Danny sat back, amazed. And, yes, that was the word for it because his wonder knew no bounds—wonder at the talent people had for self-deception, for rationalization, for sheer obstinate refusal to accept reality.

  He ought to add himself to the list. He understood Father Dooley’s question now, when he’d asked what Danny would really be doing if he let Ellen go. What he’d be doing was accepting reality. He loved her, yes, but as the mother of his children. He’d have to accept that he’d fallen out of love with her years ago, that he’d abandoned her—left her lonely—long before he’d moved out of the house. He’d have to accept that he couldn’t redeem himself for putting her through so much misery. Better to have cut the cord cleanly, let her move on with her life.

  “Fecking hell,” he said.

  He stood to leave, but Cecil tugged him back down by his belt loop. “Sit your arse down, sonny boy, and quit with the fecking language. This is a genteel sort of place.”

  “You bloody old turd. I’ve seen the light of day, and it has nothing to do with your son.” Danny gulped down more juice. “When Sid was a lad, how did you talk to him to teach him his les
sons?”

  Cecil frowned. “I don’t know what you mean. I talked like I talk.”

  “You mean blunt to the point of harsh?”

  “Honest, man, honest. You have kids, I take it? Yeah? Right then, when it comes to the tough stuff, talk to them how you’d talk to an adult. Straightforward but soften some of the vocabulary. Tell them what needs to be told and get on with the business of living. And an ice cream cone never hurts either.” He cast Danny a furtive glance, gauging him. “Sid was a troubled lad from the beginning. He’s my son from my first wife, who abandoned us and ended up dying of a drug overdose. Gibson was her family name. When he was sixteen, he decided he was more Gibson than Wallace. He changed his name and I said good riddance. Still, I fancy my influence shaped him into a better man than he would have been otherwise.” He raised a hand. “I know, don’t say it, but there’s worse out there.”

  “That’s comforting.” Danny stood. “Well, you old geezer, you were no help at all.”

  “The hell I wasn’t.”

  “I’m talking about the case.”

  Cecil raised an arm and Danny obliged him by helping him to his feet. “One of life’s greatest lessons: You can’t have everything, so take your comfort where you can.”

  They left Cecil hobbling on the arm of his physical therapist, subdued and grimacing at the ground.

  “We still have enough on Sid to charge him?” O’Neil said.

  “Not likely. The DPP will want more, seeing as how he’s an expert at playing the system.”

  At the reception desk, Danny asked to see the visitors’ log. He scanned backwards until he found Sid’s name. Sid had visited three times. His status had risen to that of favored son.

  Maybe they could still nab him for Annie Belden’s death.

  Back at the station twenty minutes later, Superintendent Clarkson informed Danny that Sid Gibson was off limits. “He’s bargaining for his freedom.”

  “With what chips?” Danny said. “There’s enough against him to at least—”

  “It’s beyond our watering hole,” Clarkson growled.

  Danny pushed past Clarkson and entered the interview room, where Sid lounged with his usual bland smile, looking relaxed and benign with his ill-fitting sport jacket and tummy pudge. His solicitor shot out of his chair, already bristling. The man sported a fake tan and white teeth. He looked like a bloody American news anchor.

  “I told you you’d need me,” Sid said.

  “Need you for what?”

  “We can talk all about it after the legal system sorts me out. Perhaps we can meet for a drink.”

  Clarkson pulled Danny out of the room and shoved him in the direction of the parking lot. “Fecking hell, Ahern. I said it was out of our watering hole. Find someone who saw Sid Gibson with the sleán. That might help us.”

  But they’d already ventured down that track, and no one had seen the sleán go missing. How had Dr. Browne described Sid? A mad genius. Now Danny understood what she meant, even if he hadn’t a bloody clue what Sid was playing at. Yet.

  “We still have Annie Belden,” he said. “I’m getting that journal.”

  eighty

  Danny was still stewing about Sid when he entered the psych ward to see Zoe holding a giant bouquet of purple irises. She paced with lips thinned to lines and a hectic flush staining her cheeks. As soon as she saw Danny she ran to him, almost bumping into him in her agitation.

  “My dad won’t see me,” she said. “Why won’t he see me? You have to help me get him released.”

  “Calm down,” Danny said.

  “You said you had no power, but I don’t believe that. You can do something if you want.”

  “He shouldn’t be let out yet. He needs help.”

  Zoe shook herself, and her exquisite face smoothed out. She heaved a breath. “Well. If I can’t see my dad, I’ll bring your wife these flowers. Anything to keep from going about the bend.”

  She strode away with hair swinging against her shoulders and purpose to her footsteps.

  “Detective Sergeant?”

  He turned to see Brenda standing with her arm around Merrit. Drying tears streaked Merrit’s cheeks. She sniffled and wiped at her nose.

  “What did I miss?” Danny said.

  “A breakthrough,” Brenda said. “A troubling breakthrough.” Her warm-fuzzy moment ended. She patted Merrit on the arm and stepped away from her. “What do you need, DS Ahern? Now’s not an optimal time.”

  Danny excused himself and Merrit from Brenda and walked with Merrit toward the exit. “Are you fine to drive?”

  “Yes, thanks.” She offered him a weak smile. “He admitted that Zoe was the one who broke him.”

  “Unfortunately, Nathan’s hold on reality is suspect.”

  “I think—” She frowned at the ground. “All I know is that I was certain, and he corroborated it.” She slumped. “Maybe I put the thought into his head.” She waved goodbye without another word and departed.

  Brenda filled the void with her enquiring, harried expression. “How can I help you?”

  As soon as he mentioned the journal that Sid had dropped off for Nathan, she about-faced and marched to her office. Danny was a couple of seconds behind her and entered to see her shuffling through the paperwork spilling out of a plastic tray labeled In. Her desk was a disaster of paper, and it reminded Danny of the incident room desk at the station that DS Sheehy had done his best to organize before being sent back to Killaloe.

  “It’s not here,” Brenda said.

  “Do you mind?”

  Brenda raised her arms in an exasperated gesture to go ahead.

  Danny opened the top desk drawer. Nothing but Brenda’s stash of chocolate biscuits and office supplies. The second drawer stored more of the same, but this time with pretzels. “Stressful job,” he said.

  “Thank Christ I have the metabolism of a hummingbird. Go on then. Have at it.”

  The third drawer stored hanging file folders.

  “That’s the paperwork for the locked-ward patients we’re currently evaluating.”

  Danny found Nathan Tate’s folder, pulled it out, and opened it flat on Brenda’s desk. A spiral-bound student’s notebook sat on top of Nathan’s intake form. Shredded paper caught in the binding indicated that someone had ripped pages out. Danny opened the cover and picked up a note that Sid had tucked inside it. He passed it to Brenda.

  Hello. If you would be so kind, please give this notebook to Nathan Tate. I promised it to him, and I think it will comfort him. It’s written by a mutual friend of ours.

  His friend, Sid

  Brenda set the note on her desk while Danny flipped to the last written-upon page. Sid must have torn out the missing pages but left a final entry written in his own hand. A fare-thee-well note to Nathan. How sweet.

  He scanned Sid’s entry, then read it again more slowly. It took a moment for the ramifications of Sid’s message to sink into his tired head. “Holy shite on a stick.”

  “That bad, eh?” Brenda said.

  “I have to take this with me for now.”

  He flipped backwards one page to read Annie’s last entry, dated the night of her death. He had to squint to decipher the hasty scrawl.

  “Ah, Jesus help me,” he said and ran out of the room.

  eighty-one

  In Ward 2B, Ellen’s IV dripped, the catheter drained, and Zoe hummed to herself. She sat erect in a chair next to the bed. A vase filled with the irises stood nearby, filling the room with their sickly acrid odor.

  Zoe picked up the antique silver hand mirror that went with Ellen’s hairbrush. “This is a beautiful set. Not my style, but beautiful.”

  Danny approached and stood at the end of the bed. Zoe’s beauty appeared illuminated, as if someone had touched her up with glow-in-the-dark colors. Her appearance distracted him from a vacancy he now caught deep within her gaze.

  “I’ll prove it to you.” She set the mirror aside. “Right now.”

  “I don’t want you to
prove anything.”

  “I know you’re skeptical. You don’t believe I can heal, but I’ll show you.” Zoe opened her sunny yellow purse and pulled out a sheath with a rubberized grip. She slid the stainless steel safety sheath off to reveal a filleting knife. Thin, delicate, and razor sharp.

  Every molecule in Danny’s body went on alert. In the corridor, footsteps strode past and then silence surrounded them except for Ellen’s equipment. The heart monitor beeped at periodic intervals and the fan on the oxygen monitor whirred to life.

  Zoe held up the knife. “My dad’s, from his fishing days. I kept it all these years.” She lifted her shoulders with a puzzled expression. “I’m not sure why. A souvenir, I suppose. A reminder.”

  Danny gripped the rail at the foot of the bed to steady himself. “A reminder of what?”

  She dropped the knife onto the bed, next to Ellen’s hand, and burrowed into her purse. The blade glinting within inches of Ellen’s skin made Danny’s skin crawl. He edged toward Zoe. His hand left a sweaty gleam on the bed rail.

  Zoe answered while coating her lips with pale pink gloss. “A reminder of the good times. Sometimes Dad took me along on his fishing trips. Just the two of us. I wasn’t bored even though all we did was sit in a boat all day long.”

  “You carry the knife with you because—?”

  “Habit. Self-protection.” She stored the lip gloss away and smiled up at him. “I like having a bit of him nearby. It’s silly, I know.”

  “Not so silly.”

  “I think he found it in my unmentionables drawer, but he didn’t say anything. Maybe he doesn’t remember.”

  Danny edged around the end of the bed. Zoe picked up the knife again, considering it and then Danny. “Hear me out.” She pointed Danny toward another chair parked in the corner of the room. “And please sit over there.”

  Danny sat down on the edge of the chair, calculating how quickly he could reach her. An ambulance siren pierced the eerie silence that settled over Danny. His vision shrank to a pinhole aimed at the knife.

  “The funny thing is that it’s because of those fishing trips that I discovered my ability.” Zoe set the knife down near Ellen’s hand again. “I don’t call myself a ‘healer.’ That smacks of crystal balls and incense.”