The Thief of All Light

by Bernard Schaffer

  They watched Thome turn to his computer and bring up his address book, searching for the address listed under the word Dad. Carrie pursed her lips to keep from smiling in victory, but when she turned to look at Waylon, there was no delight in his face, only a look of deep concern.

  13

  “I’M GOING TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO JACOB Rein,” Waylon said.

  He’d been quiet ever since they reached the highway, following directions from the GPS on his laptop. “It’s important for you to understand why he might not be that happy to see us. It’s not what you’ll read in the papers, or what most people think, but it’s true. I know this because I was there.”

  Carrie watched him sip his coffee as she steered, knowing she was about to be taken into a confidence not easily shared. She kept quiet, waiting for Waylon to continue.

  “At the end of the Krissing case, we were both burnt out. We’d seen too many things. Dead bodies are one thing. Dead kids are another,” he said. “And dead kids, killed for nothing more than the pleasure of a sadistic human being, in a sadistic way, well, that changes a man. Every detective, if he does the job long enough, comes to realize our bodies are just sacks of meat. Organic machines made up of nothing more than systems of working parts. When you see a dead body, it’s not scary or creepy, it’s just the same as looking at a totaled car. Whatever it was before, it isn’t there anymore. But when you see a dead kid, any dead kid, and you realize that all the light they brought into the world is gone, it’s different. All their laughter. All their joy. All their potential. All the love they felt, and were given, when that gets taken away . . . it’s like some kind of light went out in the universe. It was as if I could hear their laughter fading as they ran off into the darkness, never to be heard from again. That’s what Krissing was doing. He was stealing our light.” Waylon flinched under the weight of the images momentarily flooding his mind. He fended them off and said, “So after it was done, and Krissing was arrested, we got put on trial for violating his civil rights. His attorneys claimed we used excessive force and said we castrated him, and they were coming after our badges, our pensions, everything. They were trying to put us in prison for a long, long time. Looking back, I’m not surprised the jury found in our favor. Everybody knew what Krissing had done. I guess they figured that even if we did castrate him on purpose, it was deserved.”

  “I would have,” Carrie said.

  “Would have what?”

  “Cut his nuts off on purpose.”

  “They weren’t cut off,” Waylon replied. “They were accidentally removed by a very, very, complicated and unfortunate mishap with the elastic from my partner’s rubber glove.” Waylon’s face did not give an inch when he said this, but his right eye twitched.

  Blood squirted out from between the screaming man’s legs. He was kicking and thrashing on the floor like a stuck pig, bucking on the cold cement and shrieking. Smoke twisted up from Waylon’s pistol and he shouted, “You like that, you sick fuck? How’s that feel? That was for every one of those fucking kids.”

  Jacob Rein had been standing by Waylon’s side the entire time, watching the old man sink down on his knees to beg for mercy. Instead of mercy, Waylon raised his gun and fired a shot at Krissing’s crotch. While Krissing writhed, Rein calmly said, “You’re going to bleed out unless we do something, Walter.”

  Rein raised his hand and moved Waylon’s gun aside, walking past Waylon, who bellowed, “Leave him be, Jacob. Let him bleed! I want him to scream!”

  Rein reached into his back pocket and dug out a black rubber glove, fitting it onto his hand. “You’re hit in the femoral artery, Walter,” Rein said. “I’m going to have to get in there and pinch it off. It’s going to be a little uncomfortable.”

  “I swear to God, Jacob, you help him, I will shoot you next.”

  Rein turned and looked up at his partner, his face having morphed into something Waylon had never seen before. Eyes blank, the blood drained from his face, like something laying on the slab in the morgue. Rein reached forward, fingers digging into the bullet hole torn through Krissing’s pants, then opened the gaping wound enough to make the old man flop and scream. “Hold still, Walter,” Rein said, holding Krissing down with his other hand as he continued to dig. He used all his effort to pin Krissing at the hips and keep him from bucking as he found what he was looking for and began to twist and pull. “There it is.”

  Rein reached into his left pocket and removed a curved metal tool Waylon had never seen before. He flicked it open with one hand, revealing the talon-shaped blade at its tip as he reached between Krissing’s legs.

  The old man’s eyes rolled back into his head as he convulsed on the floor, slamming it back against the cement of his basement, clotted white foam spilling out of his mouth as his words turned to gibberish. When Rein stood up, he was holding two clumps of dripping wet meat, no bigger than skinned chicken nuggets. He tossed Krissing’s severed testicles down onto the old man’s face and said, “Oh no. Something must have gone wrong with my glove.”

  “On the night they cleared us of all charges, we went out to celebrate. Just him and me. Neither one of us had been sleeping much, with all the stress. I was having bad dreams and living like a zombie at home. My wife was talking about moving out with the kids, because all I did was sit in front of the television and ignore them. I was just shutting down inside. I’d seen too much. It was like I was broken and couldn’t figure out how to put myself back together. Now, luckily, I eventually got help. I can’t imagine what would have happened to me if I hadn’t had them to go home to during all that.”

  Rein sat next to him, slumped forward, staring hollow-eyed at the dirty mirror behind the bar, face drawn, pale, sickly looking. Waylon’s was no better. Waylon swallowed the rest of his beer. “You want another?”

  His partner looked at the last inch of amber drink in his mug and said, “No, one’s enough for me. I feel like I could pass out right here.”

  “That’s good though,” Waylon said. “We could both use some sleep.”

  Rein rubbed his eyes, trying to keep them open. He pushed the mug away, leaving beer still in it. Waylon raised an eyebrow. A fundamental rule of drinking had just been broken. When a man orders a drink, he finishes it. He watched Rein put the mug next to his empty shot glass and say, “I’m going home.”

  Waylon turned on his stool to watch Rein stumble, recover, and head for the door. They’d had only one shot of Jack before their beers. “Hey, you all right?”

  “I’m fine. It’s all hitting me at once,” Rein said as he backed into the door, popping it open and saying, “I think I just need to get to bed.”

  “No problem, you big pussy,” Waylon said, smiling as he picked up Rein’s beer and finished it for him. That’s what friends did. They kept one another from breaking the fundamental rules. Rein backed away, the door creaking closed after him.

  Waylon squeezed the steering wheel tightly with both hands, working it back and forth until the leather covering stretched. “I had a few more beers and called it a night. I remember going out to my car and sitting there, letting it warm up, listening to the radio, when my cell phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize.”

  “Detective Waylon?”

  Waylon frowned, thinking he was being called into work. “Yeah. What is it now?”

  “Your partner, Jacob Rein, has been in an accident. It doesn’t look good.”

  As the officer gave him the location, Waylon dropped the phone without ending the call, tires spinning on the bar’s gravel parking lot. He flew past stop signs and red lights, not bothering to slow down, ignoring the honks and shouts from the other drivers he raced past.

  He saw red and blue lights flashing from the intersection ahead and slammed on his brakes, getting out of the car without remembering to put it in park, jumping back in his seat and slamming the transmission forward without braking, and jumping out again. “Where is he?” Waylon shouted as he ran up, blinded by the sea of
lights.

  Rein’s SUV had smashed into the side of another car, a small four-door that was crumpled inward, behind the driver’s seat. A man was spinning around in circles by the smaller car, being held back by a police officer, crying out, “How is she? How is she? I want to see my little girl!”

  Metal around the car’s rear twisted and groaned as a team of firefighters cut through the frame, showering the night with sparks. “There she is, we’ve got her,” the fire captain said, pushing his men out of the way to climb inside the ruined car.

  Through the broken windshield, Waylon could see the little girl’s curly blond hair matted with blood. He watched the fire captain reach forward and tilt her head, checking for a pulse, and saw the man’s helmet drop forward as he lowered his head.

  “No . . . no!” the father screamed, his words tangling into long strings of incoherent sobbing. Two of the firefighters continued to work to extract the girl’s body as the others stood back, watching in mute horror.

  Only a few feet from the crash, Waylon saw Jacob Rein, his hands cuffed tight, getting stuffed into the back of a squad car.

  “He was under the legal limit,” Waylon said, “but that didn’t matter much. The family was out for blood, and Jacob didn’t put up any kind of fight. He accepted a plea for involuntary manslaughter against his attorney’s advice, our union rep’s advice, and he sure as hell wasn’t listening to me.” Waylon smacked his thumb against the steering wheel with a hard whack, his voice rising. “He could have beaten that case. I studied that accident report, and the girl’s father was just as responsible. That asshole had the stop sign, but he was in such a damned rush to get home, he tried to beat oncoming traffic. Jacob’s fatal mistake was that he told the officers on scene that he must’ve fallen asleep. He said he closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them, they’d already crashed. It could’ve happened to anyone. It could have happened to me. If he’d just kept his mouth shut, none of this shit would’ve happened.”

  Waylon slumped back in his seat, his voice growing quiet again. “He never asked for special treatment or protection from the other prisoners. In the end, he did sixteen months on a four-year sentence. I went to pick him up at the prison, you know, like you see in the movies? He never asked me to, but I figured he didn’t have anyone else to ask, so I went. He walked right past me like he didn’t even know me. I tried to stop him, but he kept going. Haven’t seen him since. Not even at his own son’s graduation from law school.”

  “But why didn’t he fight it?” Carrie said. “Why would anyone in their right mind want to go to prison?”

  “Honestly? I think he wanted to be punished.”

  “For what happened with Old Man Krissing?” Carrie said.

  “For that. Maybe more than that.” Waylon turned to look out the window, seeing fewer trees than they had before. Now it was trailers, decorated with cheap American flags and Confederate flags, parked on dirt lots. People sat alongside their trailers on mismatched folding chairs, drinking beer as they stared back at him. Waylon looked back at the road and said, “I always suspected it was for all those times he went into those dark places and opened up doors that shouldn’t be opened. Who knows what he let inside?”

  14

  MIGRANT WORKERS POURED OFF THE BACK OF THE LANDSCAPE trucks assembled throughout the gravel lot, their yellow T-shirts ringed with dirt, layers of sweat coating their forearms and faces. They hurried toward the foreman, lining up as he passed out thin white envelopes to them one at a time. The boss never bothered to learn their names and did not care if he ever saw them again.

  Dust swirled up around the trucks, sticking to the lawn mowers, weed whackers, and pole saws piled in trailers behind each one. Far behind the brown-skinned workers lined up to get paid stood a white man, resting against a propane tank. He was in no rush to get in line and let the others jostle for position while he stood back, wiping his long brown hair out of his sweaty face. His thick beard was tangled with clumps of dirt. Both were streaked with gray, but he wore it handsomely, Carrie thought. To her surprise, he was staring back at her.

  “That’s him,” Waylon said, pointing. “The one in the back. At least I think so.”

  The man was still staring at her. “You mean fat Jim Morrison?”

  “He’s not fat,” Waylon said. “You think he’s fat? He’s skinnier than I am.”

  Carrie cocked an eyebrow and said, “That’s not saying much, boss. Anyway, I meant like in the movie when he goes to Paris and grows his hair all out and tries to stop being sexy.”

  “Fat,” Waylon grunted, letting himself out the car. “You stay here.”

  Waylon made his way around the front of the car, standing where he could be seen. He took off his sunglasses and squinted in the hard sun, uncovering his face so there would be no mistake. He watched his former partner move forward to take his thin envelope and turn to start walking, his long hair blowing in the wind.

  It was true what she just said, Waylon thought. Rein had a little gut now, but he had a hardness to him also, musculature around his arms and shoulders that had not been there before. It wasn’t the kind of strength you got working out at the gym, though. It came from swinging hammers and working shovels. Real-world strong, Waylon’s father had called it. Waylon was older than Rein by more than ten years, but during the time they’d been apart he’d sat behind a desk, feeling his musculature dissolve into a puddled mass that jiggled when he walked and puffed out over his belt when he sat. Rein’s face was leaner than it had ever been, the hard points of his eyes and nose giving him an almost feral appearance.

  Rein was only a few feet away when he stopped, seeing Waylon. The two of them squared off across the blowing dust without moving, and Rein said, “Well?”

  “Jacob,” Waylon said.

  “Is everyone all right?”

  Waylon knew what he meant. If someone in Rein’s family had died, it would probably have fallen to Waylon to track him down and break the bad news. “Yeah. They’re all fine, far as I know. I just needed to come talk to you.”

  Rein looked past him at the pretty young woman sitting in the car. “Jacob Junior tell you where to find me?”

  “Yeah, he told me. Said you might even be glad to see me. That true?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Waylon said. “I came anyway.”

  “You’re still a master of the obvious, Bill.”

  “We’ve got a few missing girls and a dead body,” Waylon said. “I was hoping maybe you’d talk things over with me. Kick it around and see if we can get some direction on it.”

  Rein turned toward the trucks parked behind him. “All I do now is cut grass, Bill. That’s about the extent of my direction these days.”

  “Is that right?” Waylon said, toeing the dirt with the tip of his boot. “I just thought, you know, for old time’s sake you’d give it a listen.”

  “You wouldn’t want my help. Trust me.”

  Waylon watched Rein walk past him, going wide to avoid having to shake hands. He raised his head and said, “I never bothered you, all these years, Jacob. I left you in peace. Now I’m coming to you as a friend and asking for help. You really gonna just turn your back on me again?”

  Rein looked back at him, holding up his white envelope. “You see this? Twenty bucks, cash. We worked from six this morning until whatever time it is right now. I couldn’t even tell you. Twenty bucks. That’s what my help is worth. You’re a chief of police now, Bill. Get back in your car and go act like one.” He stuffed the envelope in his back pocket and kept walking.

  Carrie came out of the car, staring at Waylon in disbelief. “What the hell was that? Go after him!”

  “And say what?”

  Carrie slammed the passenger door shut and hurried after Rein. “Hey! Hey, excuse me. Mister Rein? Wait a second, sir. I need to speak with you a second, sir.”

  Cops have a special way of saying sir that substitutes for the words asshole and shitbag that Rein recogniz
ed. He turned around. “You’re one of Bill’s people?”

  “That’s right.”

  He peered into her eyes, seeing through her mirrored sunglasses, taking in her tight-fitting dress pants and the shiny police badge on her hip. The gun and holster were also brand-new, all of it matching. Her stylish button-down shirt fit tight around her slender waist, showing off her physique. She’d even taken the time to do her hair that morning. “How long have you been on the job?”

  “Long enough to be the lead on this case. Now, I need to show you something,” she said as she reached into her pocket for her phone.

  “You’re the lead investigator on a homicide?”

  “That’s right.” Carrie held up her phone in the harsh light and raised her glasses, scrolling through her text messages to find Molly’s as she continued talking, “I want to ask you if you recognize this.” When she looked up to show Rein, all she saw was the back of his head, halfway down the driveway. “Hey! Where are you going?” When he didn’t stop, she took off running after him, waving her phone in the air. “I have a picture I need you to see! Wait!”

  Rein spun around on her, his face contorted in anger. “You know, it’s one thing to show up at my work and try to drag me into something I want no part of, but it’s a whole other thing to do it so sloppily. Your lack of expertise is embarrassing me, and I cut grass for a living! You want my help? Fine. Here it is.” He got up close to her, so close she could see the jagged red veins in his eyes. When she didn’t back away, he said, “That’s right. Really get in there. Sink yourself in. Show them you aren’t afraid. Now, here’s what Bill should have taught you, but I’m not surprised he didn’t because he was never that good at any of this in first place. You ready? Right now is when you show someone a picture, so you can see their reaction. That way, if I’d recognized it, you’d know it before I said a single word. You understand? Maybe the next time you interview someone, you’ll keep that in mind instead of being too busy screwing with your damned phone!”