Darkness & Shadows

by Kaufman, Andrew E.

  Marybeth stood in the doorway, in full camping attire, looking positively amazing. “I couldn’t go,” she said with a tiny shrug and smile. “I couldn’t stand being without you. Is that okay?”

  “It’s more than okay,” Patrick said, beaming. He slid his arm around the curve of her waist and pulled her close.

  “Yeah?” she said, her lips barely touching his. Patrick breathed her in, and his knees nearly buckled when she kissed him. She closed her eyes and whispered, “Show me.”

  And he did; he showed her how much he did indeed want her as he pulled her even closer and delivered a deep, passionate kiss. And they kept kissing as he placed a firm hand on her waist, gently backing her up. At the foot of his bed, Marybeth undid his jeans and he coaxed the T-shirt over his head. After carefully lowering her to lay atop the covers, he finished undressing her, unable to take his eyes away, lost in her beauty—she was so amazingly beautiful.

  She buried her mouth against his neck as he eased himself on top of her, and as he entered her, they both cried out, Marybeth bringing her hips to meet his and moaning with pleasure, Patrick unable to get enough of her. His thoughts were getting blurry, every sense heightened and raging with wild intensity.

  At the height of their lovemaking, Patrick brushed her hair back with a hand and met her eyes. He wanted to remember every second of this. Watching her was glorious as they moved in perfect unison against each other, dissolving into the moment, making the rest of the world disappear. There was nothing else. There was just the two of them, creating pleasure he never knew could exist.

  “Patrick. Oh, Patrick…” Marybeth said, looking into his eyes, her breaths fast and delicate. She didn’t say anything else; she didn’t have to. He was feeling the same way, and there were no words to describe it.

  And just when he thought it couldn’t get any better, it did, as their bodies simultaneously culminated with intense and satisfying climaxes.

  Afterward, they lay together, her head resting on his chest, gazing up at him.

  Suddenly, Patrick smiled.

  “What are you thinking right now?” she said with a playful grin.

  He took in a deep, sustaining breath and let it out. “That I never knew it could be this way. You are so amazing and so good for me, Marybeth… so very, very good in every way.”

  Something shifted in her expression—something that transformed the moment, taking it someplace else; he couldn’t tell where, but all he saw was darkness. And in that moment, the face he thought he knew so well changed, and he was staring into the eyes of a stranger. Maybe older, maybe tired, but definitely so very sad.

  He said, “Baby, what’s wrong?”

  She looked even sadder. She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I’m not good for you.”

  He lifted his head slightly, thought he saw a dark shadow moving through her eyes; she closed them and said, “You don’t know everything about me.”

  “But I know everything I need to know.”

  She buried her face in his neck, breathed in and said, “No. You don’t. But I love you for loving me, anyway.”

  And as he began falling asleep, she whispered in a voice so small he could barely hear it, “I did a very bad thing.”

  The next morning when he awoke, she had already left the room. He didn’t see her again until just before the fire. And by the time he remembered those words, she was already gone. Lost forever.

  So too, it seemed, was the meaning of her final message.

  Patrick watched waves slam violently into the rocks, shattering through the air like tiny bits of green, broken glass. Now more than ever, he wondered if those words were somehow connected to her murder.

  And whether she’d finally been punished for her bad thing.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Patrick’s phone went off just as he was about to turn the ignition and leave the beach.

  “Detective Jim Dotson,” the voice from the Bayou said, gruff, rushed, and steeped in a southern drawl.

  “Detective, thanks for the callback.”

  “So, Lorna Clark. That’s a blast from the past. Something new with her?”

  “The interest is actually in her former husband. His current wife’s been murdered, and he’s missing.”

  There was dead silence on the line.

  Patrick checked the screen to be sure they were still connected. They were. “Detective?”

  “Yeah. Still here,” Dotson said through a troubled sigh.

  “Something wrong?”

  “I hope to God he didn’t kill another one.”

  His answer was hardly a surprise, but still it managed to rattle Patrick. He struggled to sound otherwise. “I understood that Lorna killed herself.”

  “That’s what they ruled, yeah. But I never bought that.”

  “What’s your reason?”

  “How many would you like?”

  “I’d like all of them.”

  “For starters, we found her hanging down the side of the house.”

  “Sounds sort of unconventional,” Patrick said.

  “I thought so. Rope was tied to a bar just beneath the window, hands cuffed behind her back.”

  “Cuffed? How is that a suicide?”

  Patrick heard a chair creak. It seemed that Dotson was settling in for the conversation. “You see it sometimes. People use restraints to keep themselves from changing their minds in the moment. Cuffs are easier to manage than rope. Hard to tie a knot behind your back. So in theory, all she had to do was take a leap out the window, and the show was over. The handcuffs alone weren’t necessarily a red flag. Hanging down the side of the house was odd too, but again…”

  “It sounds like something else was,” Patrick said, taking furious notes.

  “There was plenty more. The life insurance policy he’d upped substantially a few months before she died, the marital problems, plus the financial mess they were in—those were definite red flags.”

  “All possible motives,” Patrick acknowledged. “But any evidence?”

  “There was. I just couldn’t get to it.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “Bridget had it all.”

  “The daughter?” Patrick furrowed his brow. “Was she involved?”

  “No, no, but she was scared half to death of him and, oddly enough, she was his alibi. They were supposedly at the movies at the time Lorna died.”

  “Could they prove it?”

  “They had receipts for the tickets, yeah. He dropped her off at a girlfriend’s house on the way back. Said he came home and found Lorna dead. At least the poor kid didn’t have to see her mother like that. We pulled the body down before we sent a car for Bridget.”

  Patrick waited. Sometimes silence was the best question.

  Dotson continued. “She was like a scared little rabbit. Silent, staring at the floor… I talked with Dr. Clark in the living room. When we finished, I sent for her. He was leaving the room, and she was coming in. He had his back to me so I couldn’t see his face, but I could see hers, and when she looked at him…” He sighed down the phone line. “I saw fear on that little girl’s face. Actually, it was worse than that. It was absolute sickly terror.”

  “You think he gave her a warning?”

  “I know he did. Like I said, I didn’t see his face, but I didn’t have to. The message was written all over hers.”

  Patrick felt goose bumps rise on his arm and tried to rub them away. He knew what it was like to fear a parent day in, day out. He’d lived it. He took in a deep breath, tried keeping his emotions in check. Went on. “So what happened once you got her in the room?”

  “Exactly what I expected: absolutely nothing. God as my witness, that kid was terrified into silence.”

  “So, in the end, you had nothing.”

  “I had zilch. My only chance of proving his guilt was locked up inside a very frightened little girl. Can’t use an evil look as evidence in court. Even the coroner’s report worked against me. No bruises o
r marks on Lorna’s skin, no evidence of a struggle. All consistent with suicide.”

  “So, what ended up happening to Bridget?”

  “I worried like hell about that kid. Being forced to hide your mother’s murder—one your own father committed—doesn’t come without a price.”

  “Was there one?” Patrick asked, feeling profound sadness for a child he’d never met but already thought he understood.

  “There sure was. She started losing her mind. A few months after Lorna’s death, we found her wandering around town late one night. Wouldn’t talk, didn’t even seem to know where she was. And she had bruises all around her neck.”

  “From what?”

  “Never found out. Wouldn’t tell us.”

  “Did you suspect she was using drugs?”

  “At first we thought maybe, but when Clark came to pick her up, he gave us permission to test her. She was clean. Then things just got worse.”

  “In what way?”

  “Late one afternoon, a gym teacher walked into the girls’ locker room and heard someone moaning, so she ran in to investigate.”

  “What did she find there?”

  “Blood.”

  “Where?” The goose bumps had now taken up residency on the back of Patrick’s neck. He tried to rub those away, too. No luck.

  “Everywhere,” Dotson said in a grim voice. “She followed a trail of it to one of the stalls and nearly passed out when she pulled the curtain open. Found Bridget curled up in a ball on the floor, in a pool of blood. Apparently, she’d stolen a knife from art class.”

  “She killed herself?”

  “No. She was still alive. The blood was coming from under both arms. She’d sliced herself up something awful.”

  The goose bumps had subsided, replaced by frosty chills shooting through Patrick’s entire body.

  “By the time paramedics arrived, that shower looked like a damned bloodbath. Stunk like one, too. Bridget just laid there on her side, cheek to the tile, eyes wide open, while they tried cleaning her up. No sign of emotion. I don’t think she had any left.”

  “Poor kid,” Patrick said.

  “But there was more,” Dotson said gravely.

  Patrick had been hoping there wouldn’t be.

  “The blood wasn’t just on the floor.”

  Patrick’s voice was shaky and reluctant. “I’m not following.”

  “She’d used it to write a message.”

  “A message…” Patrick wasn’t asking questions anymore—he was just repeating what Dotson said, in astonishment.

  “Actually, it was a word. Written in blood. Everywhere. All over the bathroom walls.”

  Blood and words: two things Patrick knew intimately, and tragically, all too well. The connection rendered him silent for a long moment. Trying to steady his voice, he managed to say, “What was the word, Detective?”

  Jim Dotson paused, and then said, “Damned.”

  For a long moment, silence fell on both ends of the line.

  Patrick’s voice was still trembling when he said, “So what happened after that?”

  “Well, Bridget’s mental breakdown drew a lot more attention than Wesley’d hoped for—or could stand—but now folks around here were starting to wonder what was really going on inside that house. Everywhere he went, heads would turn, not to mention the dirty looks. He couldn’t take the heat any longer. A few weeks later, he packed it up and left town.”

  “Just left? To where?”

  “As far the hell away from here as he could get. Opened up a small practice somewhere in Illinois.”

  “But what about Bridget?”

  Dotson made a disgusted sound deep in his throat. “Bridget Clark now calls a private Illinois mental hospital her home. Wesley dumped her there after he left town.”

  “He found a way to shut her up.”

  “While destroying any credibility she had left about the murder. From what I hear, there’s not much left of Bridget Clark’s mind these days—Wesley did an outstanding job destroying it. Swear to God, that man’s a special brand of evil. As if murdering his wife wasn’t heinous enough, he sacrificed his own daughter’s life to cover it up. Lord have mercy on anyone who stands in his way—because if they do, they sure as hell won’t ever live to talk about it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Patrick was still holding on to the phone but could barely feel it; his fingertips were numb, and Dotson’s final words lingered on his mind like the stain of cold blood.

  Lilliana began laying the groundwork, but the detective nailed it firmly in place. Wesley Clark’s dark side was taking shape—ugly, controlling, and dangerous. Now Patrick knew without a doubt that Marybeth had indeed fallen in with the wrong man—one who probably took her life after she got in his way. How, he wasn’t sure, but he was determined to figure it out.

  And more than ever, Patrick had to get Clark’s former employee, Helene Lockhart, to speak with him. With the clinic recently shut down, and knowing what he did now, it was entirely possible he’d heard fear talking before she hung up on him. Her answer had been definitive, but Patrick had made a career out of turning no into yes. The only thing he had to lose was his pride, and at this stage, there wasn’t much of that left, anyway.

  On his way to Helene’s office, he thought about calling Tristan. She knew how the criminal mind worked—after all, she had one herself, and it was about as sharp and intuitive as any he’d ever seen. He grabbed his cell, was about to get her number, but stopped after having second thoughts. Did he really want to get her involved? Did he even feel he knew her well enough to call? He threw his phone onto the seat, drove on.

  He walked up to the receptionist’s counter. A young woman was busy talking on the phone: attractive, twentyish, brunette. Pink headband, pink cheeks. The most perfect teeth Patrick had ever seen. She didn’t appear to be on a professional call; she appeared to be on an argument-with-a-boyfriend call. During the five minutes Patrick had to stand and listen, he learned the beau’s name was Trevor. Apparently, Trevor was facing some hard time in the doghouse. Patrick eyed the nameplate that said Kirsten. As Kirsten hung up, she gave Patrick a brooding look, as if his arrival were a disruptive nuisance.

  Patrick endeavored to be friendly: “I’m looking for Helene Lockhart.”

  “Do you have an appointment?” Kirsten challenged.

  “Nope.” He smiled. “Just dropping by.”

  Kirsten picked up the phone as if it weighed a hundred pounds and said, “Your name?”

  “I’m a friend.”

  “Your name.”

  “Patrick,” he said, hoping he could get away with just that.

  “Your full name,” she demanded. The glare went flinty.

  “Bannister.”

  “Please have a seat,” she said, and kept the fisheye on him until he did.

  About ten minutes later—just as Patrick was about to give up—Helene came out, but her demeanor wasn’t much better than the receptionist’s. Keeping a stern eye on Patrick, but speaking to Kirsten, she said, “I’m going to step outside for a moment. I won’t be long.”

  Kirsten was back on the phone, tearing Trevor a new one, her hands flailing. She didn’t bother looking up.

  As soon as they reached the hallway, Helene’s expression hiked up in severity; so, too, did her tone of voice. “I already told you, I do not want to talk!”

  “I’m sorry,” Patrick said. “I’m really—”

  “No. Apparently, you’re not. You cannot come to my work and do this. You cannot. Do you understand?”

  “At least please tell me why you won’t help me.”

  She crossed her arms, looked up and down the hallway, and through an urgent whisper said, “Because the guy scares the hell out of me.”

  “All the more reason to talk,” Patrick said. “People could be in danger.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that. I’ve been—” She stopped herself abruptly, as if realizing she’d already said too much.

&
nbsp; “Tell me,” Patrick pleaded. “Please. He’ll never know you spoke to me. I just need information. No quotes. I won’t even print your name.”

  She shook her head but not in a way that meant no—rather, as if she were frustrated, perhaps even wavering.

  “Please,” Patrick tried again. “I’m desperate, Ms. Lockhart. He may not even be alive, and even if he is, he won’t know you spoke to me. I promise. I can assure it.”

  Helene met his pleading gaze and held it for a long moment, as if measuring his sincerity. Then she surprised him by saying, “Fine. I’ll do it.”

  Patrick leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and said, “Thank you.”

  “I’ll meet you after work. There’s a park up the road. Navajo Canyon. I’ll be there at five-fifteen, exactly. If you’re not on time, I’m out of there.”

  Chapter Forty

  Navajo Canyon Park sat at the edge of a southward-facing cliff. On a clear day, you could see the Coronado Bay Bridge, sometimes even as far as Mexico. Not a particularly busy place, but Patrick assumed that was why Helene had chosen it. She was taking no chances at being found out.

  He parked and waited. A few minutes later, a Toyota Camry pulled into the lot with personalized plates reading, LUVANRN. Still wearing her uniform, Helene hurried briskly through the lot, eyes nervously scanning the area. Patrick caught up with her at the foot of a hiking trail.

  “Let’s walk,” she said, not stopping or looking at him.

  About forty feet later, she said, “I hope to God that bastard’s really dead. For everyone’s sake.”

  Patrick waited. She would not have come this far if she didn’t plan to tell him what she knew.

  After another twenty feet in silence, Helene looked back to make sure nobody was there, and then began. “About a week before my scheduled testimony, someone broadsided my car into a guardrail. I ended up at the bottom of a canyon.”

  “How badly were you hurt?”

  “Severe concussion, cracked pelvis, other broken bones.” She drew in a deep, shaky breath. “I almost died. I was in the hospital for over a month.”