Darkness My Old Friend

by Lisa Unger

  “Sorry,” he said. He allowed himself a smile. “I’m looking forward to tonight.”

  “Me, too,” she said. “I was just wondering about allergies. Or if there’s anything you hate.”

  “Nope,” he said. “I’m wide open.”

  He wasn’t going to tell her that he was nearly a vegetarian, eating meat less than once a month. He didn’t love spicy foods; they made him sweat unattractively and go red in the face. He tried to avoid dairy. Certain wines gave him heartburn. Women didn’t like it when you were fussy about food.

  “Good,” she said. “Food is life.”

  “So true,” he said. He liked that; he did think it was true.

  “I had another reason for calling.” Her tone dropped, went more serious. He prepared himself for whatever disappointment was coming.

  “Oh?”

  “Do you know Cole Carr well?” she asked. “The boy from the woods the other afternoon?”

  “He’s new to the school,” Henry said. “But he does fine. All of his teachers seem to think he’s a good kid, if a little reticent and withdrawn. Why?”

  “Well, he stood Willow up last night. He was supposed to come by and never did. She’s crushed.”

  Henry glanced at the boy’s name on the screen, the two red absence marks by his name. “I was just about to call his family. He’s been out of school for the last couple of days. Maybe he’s sick. Or there’s some family emergency. The parents haven’t called.”

  There was a pause on the line.

  “Willow said she saw him yesterday. That’s when they made plans.”

  He heard worry and disappointment in her voice. And even though he knew that it didn’t have anything to do with him, he felt responsible.

  “He might have been here but not attending class,” he said. “He has a car.”

  “I’m sure he was,” said Bethany. She didn’t sound sure at all. “I really don’t think she was lying.”

  Henry knew all about Willow’s issues with the truth. Lots of teenage girls lied; it was a self-esteem thing. They generally grew out of it.

  “I’ll be reaching out to the family in a while,” he said. He wanted to make her feel better somehow. “I’ll let you know what I learn.”

  “Okay.”

  “Try not to worry, Beth.” He liked the way her name sounded on the air. There was a beat where he wondered if he had been too familiar. When she spoke again, he heard that warmth in her voice.

  “You’re a good man, Mr. Ivy,” she said. Somehow when she said it, it didn’t feel like a punch to the gut.

  The Regal Motel wasn’t the worst place Jones had ever seen. Some motels like this-a depressing concrete U of shabbily appointed rooms-were nests of illegal activities, drugs in one room, prostitution in another. Recently a place like this closer to The Hollows had burned to the ground after the explosion of a small methamphetamine lab.

  But the Regal was at least clean on the outside, with a fresh coat of paint. There was a decently maintained pool area, chairs and pool covered for the winter. The shrubbery along the sidewalk was trimmed. Someone was taking the time to keep the place in order, which meant management was also keeping an eye on the guests. The sign could use a little work. The g was missing, so from a distance it read THE RE AL MOTEL.

  A little bell announced his entry into an orderly, quiet office. It was cool, the heat not yet on. A large woman with a head of tight gray curls tapped on a keyboard behind a desk. She didn’t look up to acknowledge him right away. So Jones glanced around the room. Fake plant. A dingy love seat and coffee table. A magazine rack with overused, outdated women’s magazines. The dark, wood-paneled walls were inexpertly studded with photographs of children in various poses of play, certificates from various agencies announcing compliance or excellence. There were some amateur line drawings of area sights. The carpet was stained, and a path was worn thin from the door to the desk.

  “Help you, sir?”

  She still hadn’t looked up from her computer.

  “I’m looking for a friend. I heard she was staying here. Robin O’Conner.”

  She lifted her eyes from the screen then, pushed her glasses up to the bridge of her nose, and gave him a cool once-over.

  “Cop?” she said. She had the aura of proprietorship; she was not an underling or a worker. She had authority here, wouldn’t be worried about her job. This could be a good thing or a bad thing.

  “No,” said Jones.

  “Retired,” she said. She wasn’t asking.

  Jones offered a slow shrug. With a woman like that, it was better to stick to the truth. “I’m doing a favor for a friend. Robin’s got a boy who’s missing her.”

  “You can leave a message. I’ll see that she gets it.” She turned back to the screen. He could see blue and white reflected in the lenses. She was on that social network. It was weird how into that everyone appeared to be. More into it than the real world, it seemed.

  Jones waited. He walked over to the wall, peered more closely at the certificates. When he was a cop, he’d do things like that to unsettle. If the documents were fake or out of date, people would get nervous, start chattering.

  “I run a clean place here,” she said. When he looked back at her, she was staring at him hard. He was annoying her. She wanted him to leave. Good.

  “I can see that, ma’am,” he said politely. A little too politely, almost but not quite mockingly so.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  Jones glanced at his watch, an old Timex he’d had since college. “Just before noon.”

  She gazed toward the window. Jones looked to see a small diner across the road. “She’ll be headed over there soon, if she’s not there already. She works the lunch shift.”

  Robin O’Conner must have been working off the books, or it would have popped on her credit report. The woman hefted herself from the chair, and it hissed with relief. She had a slight limp as she moved through a door behind the desk. Jones took this to mean that he’d been dismissed. He could just have left, but curiosity got the better of him.

  “Her card was declined here yesterday,” he said. He raised his voice a bit so that she could hear him in the next room. There was silence, and he didn’t think she would come back, but then she filled the doorway.

  She wore a deep frown. “I thought you said you weren’t a cop.”

  “I’m not.”

  She took her glasses off and rubbed the bridge of her nose. He could see the red impression of her frames.

  “Sometimes people need a break. Don’t you think?” she said.

  “I do,” he said. “But in this business I wouldn’t think you could afford to give too many of them.”

  “True. And I don’t. But Robin’s a good girl. She’s not our usual patron.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “Why don’t you go see for yourself?”

  This time when she disappeared through the doorway, he knew she wouldn’t come back. He liked people like that, solid, sure of themselves. They were good judges of character, good witnesses. He remembered what Paula had said about Cole, that he was a good boy, that someone had loved him and done a good job raising him. It jibed with the old woman’s assessment of Robin O’Conner.

  He knew her right away, because her son had inherited all her beauty, the raven hair and almond-shaped eyes. She looked tired and too thin, her collarbone straining against the skin, the knobs at her wrists too prominent. Something about that made him think of Eloise, then in turn about Marla Holt. And he wondered how he had wound up with all these missing and injured women in his sights. You never could resist a damsel in distress, Maggie had said. Maybe she was right.

  Robin O’Conner was working the counter. There was one trucker there, with more food on his plate than Jones had eaten in two days-eggs, hash browns, bacon, sausage, and two biscuits drowning in gravy. And yet the guy, stooped over his meal and eating with gusto, was about the size of one of Jones’s legs. Was there any justice in the wor
ld?

  She came over and leaned on the counter with a sweet smile. “Help you?”

  “Just a coffee,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “Are you sure? You look hungry.”

  Jones glanced over at the trucker. “I’d have what he’s having. But I’d drop dead on the spot.”

  “And just look at him,” she whispered. “I bet he looks better in a skirt than I do.”

  “I doubt that.” But he said it in a gentle, fatherly way. Non-intimidating, nonsuggestive.

  “Charmer,” she said with that same sweet smile. “I’ll get you some egg whites and toast.”

  “Sounds good.”

  When the trucker left and Jones had finished his meal, they were alone in the diner, except for whoever was cooking in the back. He could see why she couldn’t make rent. There were no businesses in the area to attract a lunch crowd. The diner was perched across from the motel on a lonely two-lane road. Truckers pulling off the highway, motel guests, the stray tourist heading up to the mountains for camping or hiking-that was probably the extent of their clientele.

  “Can I get you anything else?” she asked.

  “I’m not here just for the meal. Can we talk?”

  Fear pulled her face long. She looked toward the back, stepped away from the counter.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said. He lifted a hand. “Paula Carr asked me to find you.”

  She still didn’t say anything. He decided to go on. “The best I can figure is that she wanted to get away from her husband, but she didn’t want to leave your boy behind.”

  He watched her eyes fill with tears.

  “But now she’s gone. I don’t know where.”

  “And where’s Cole?” Her voice was a tight whisper.

  Jones hadn’t considered that point. Stupid. “I’m assuming he’s still with his father.”

  “He wouldn’t have left his dad,” she said. A single tear fell down her cheek, and she batted it away. “He loves Kevin.” He heard sadness and not a little bitterness in her voice.

  “I saw Cole the other day,” he said. “He seemed healthy, well cared for.”

  She offered a relieved smile. “I miss him so much.”

  “Kevin told Paula that you had asked him to take Cole because your new boyfriend couldn’t be bothered. He implied that there were drug and alcohol problems.”

  She started to sob in earnest then. “No,” she managed. “No, never.”

  He motioned for her to come sit at one of the booths, and she came around from the counter and sank into one of the red vinyl seats. No one came from the back to see what was happening. The parking lot was empty of cars.

  “I have to pull myself together,” she said. She took a napkin from the dispenser and wiped her eyes, blew her nose. She was pretty even while crying. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Jones Cooper,” he said. “I’m an investigator hired by Mrs. Carr.”

  The words felt like a lie, even though they were as close to the truth as possible. She seemed to accept his answer without question. He guessed he fit the part.

  “It was just supposed to be for the summer,” she said. She stopped then, laced her fingers, and seemed to consider how to go on. “Cole and I were battling constantly. He was hanging out with thugs at school. I found a joint in his backpack. We were fighting every day. It was terrible. I was thinking of sending him to one of those discipline camps.”

  Jones found himself watching her body language, the lacing and unlacing of her fingers, rubbing at her forehead. The inside points of her eyebrows turned up in the middle. She was stressed and sad.

  “Then Cole told me he’d gotten in touch with his dad, even though we hadn’t heard from him in years. He wanted to spend the summer away. Away from me.”

  “And you agreed?”

  “Cole wanted to go. Kevin showed up in his shiny car and laid on the charm. Said all the right things, like how he’d been an absent father, maybe that’s why Cole was so out of hand. Maybe a summer together would straighten him out. He wanted the chance to be a better dad, for Cole to know his half brother and sister. After all, I couldn’t really afford to send him to one of those camps.”

  She stopped, looked out the window. “And honestly, I was tired. Working so hard just to meet our bills, fighting every day with him. Cole is smart, wants to go to college. I had no idea how I was going to pay for that. Kevin said he’d pay. He always knew how to say what I wanted to hear. I should have known. In my heart maybe I did.”

  “Known what?”

  “That either you go along with Kevin when he’s being nice or he gets ugly and you go along the hard way.”

  “Meaning?” But Jones had a feeling he knew exactly what she meant.

  “At the end of the summer, the day Cole was supposed to come back, Kevin came alone. He said he wanted Cole to finish school in The Hollows. And if I let him do it, Kevin would pay for college.”

  “I said no. I wanted my boy back. Even though it was a relief in some ways to have him gone for the summer, I missed him terribly. It was like an ache in my heart to walk past his room and see it empty.” Her eyes filled again, but she seemed stronger.

  “You have kids,” she went on. “I can tell. You love them so awful, don’t you? It takes everything to raise them well, but, man, that love fills you up.”

  “So true,” he said. And it was. “Did he get ugly with you when you said no?”

  “Not at first,” she said. “He implied he’d come alone because Cole was so happy in The Hollows. He loved Paula and the kids; they had such a stable, loving family. He said it like he was trying not to hurt my feelings, but that’s what he was trying to do. And he did. It cut me deep. I thought about letting Cole stay. But no, that was my son. Plus, we’d been talking and e-mailing. He’d said he missed me, was ready to come back and do better at school. I knew my boy. We fought, but we always had a good relationship at the core. Lots of love.”

  She told him how Kevin had seemed to accept this, left a while later, and said he’d come back with Cole tomorrow. But he didn’t. She started calling Kevin’s office, his cell phone that night, but the calls went straight to voice mail. Then strange things started to happen. First Cole’s cell phone number was disconnected. And her e-mail messages to him bounced. She figured he was avoiding her.

  But then her phone was disconnected. She called from a neighbor’s house, and the phone company told her that records showed she’d called to have her service turned off; the caller had had her Social Security number and password. It would take a few days for service to be restored.

  “That’s when I started to get scared,” she said. “I got in my car to drive to The Hollows. I was going to get my son back. I had legal custody, and I would fight for my boy. I remembered what Kevin was, why I’d left him. He was cold. Cold at his center. I mean, he doesn’t feel. People don’t change. How could I have forgotten?”

  “We always want to think the best of people,” said Jones. “It’s normal.”

  But she didn’t seem to hear him. Her face was pale with anxiety, her words rushing out as though she’d been holding them all back for too long.

  “Next my car wouldn’t start. When the mechanic came out to tow it, he told me that the motherboard, the main electrical component that controlled the car, had been fried and that it would take days and thousands of dollars to fix.”

  She shook her head as though she were still incredulous about it.

  “I was in a state of pure panic. For three days I had to call in sick to work.”

  Jones thought of what he already knew about Robin O’Conner. “So you lost your job.”

  He thought she would start to cry again. But she didn’t. “I’d already missed so much time because of my problems with Cole. I was on thin ice. I think Kevin knew that. I think I’d even told him.”

  “So there you were with no job, no phone, no car.”

  “My credit cards were already close to the limit. I didn’t have much money saved. I’ve
never been good with finances, you know? I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck for as long as I can remember.”

  So many people were on the edge like this; it just took a single push to send someone’s life into free fall.

  “I knew I wasn’t going to be able to make my rent that month. I’d already missed payments over the last couple of years. The management company said they wouldn’t make any more allowances.”

  “So… what? You left your apartment and came here?”

  He looked out the window at the motel, then at the woman sitting across from him. She was a good mother, a hard worker-at least that’s how she seemed to Jones, just as the motel owner had said. He didn’t like to see it. Jones, same as everyone, wanted to believe that people who fell on hard times deserved it, had made mistakes that led them to a place like the Regal Motel.

  “Kevin came to see me. Just when I was at my lowest. Just when I was about to get a ride from a friend and make a scene at his house, call the police.”

  “Why wasn’t that the first thing you did?”

  “What-call the police? Make a scene?”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked at him as if he were a moron. “Because of Cole. I didn’t want him to see me freaking out like that. He chose his dad.”

  “Or so Kevin said.”

  She blinked at him, then looked down at the tabletop. It was clean-spotless, in fact-as though it had just been wiped.

  “He asked how I could take care of Cole now with no job and no car. Didn’t I want to see him with a good family, living in a nice house? Didn’t I want to see him go to school? I did. I do want those things for Cole.”

  “So you just let Cole go? Even though you had every reason to believe that Kevin had your phone turned off, destroyed your car?”

  She didn’t say anything. But she straightened up a bit, turned her dark eyes on him.

  “Listen,” she said. “I don’t have anyone. My mom is in a nursing home in Florida; I haven’t been able to afford to see her in over a year. She was a single mother, had nothing to give me but love and encouragement. That didn’t get me into college. If I’d had the money for an education, I might not have spent the rest of my life drifting from one stupid job to another. I wanted Cole to have better than this. He’s smart, way smarter than I am. He deserves a leg up.”