Dark Hearts: Four Novellas of Dark Suspense

by Bates, Jeremy

  “Sorry, thought you were someone else.”

  She hurried away, her cheeks burning.

  “Get a grip, Char,” she mumbled to herself. “He’s gone.”

  ***

  Her final class was Food Production and Service Management. It was the only one she had with Tony that day. She sat at the back of the lecture hall and listened distractedly as the professor rambled on about time management skills. Tony arrived late as usual—ironic, she thought, given the subject matter of the lecture. He tried to ease the auditorium door closed, but it nevertheless made a loud clank, which earned him a few dozen glances. He sat next to Charlotte and doodled stick men and women having sex in different positions. He showed each to her, giving her a thumbs up or thumbs down. She ignored him for the most part and focused on copying all the bullet points on the video projector screen

  Afterward, while she and Tony made their way across the campus to Broadway, he filled her in on all the happenings she’d missed the night before. He showed her a photo he had taken with his phone of Dan, passed out next to a public toilet, a striped party hat clapped on his head, a mustache and surprised eyebrows drawn on his face with permanent black marker.

  Given it was only five o’clock by the time they reached the city’s downtown area, and the reservation Charlotte made at Eddy Spaghetti wasn’t until six thirty, they decided to kill some time at Lexington Avenue Brewery, which was where Tony took her when they’d first met. It was busy, the crowd a mix of locals, hippies, and students. Nevertheless, they found two seats on the patio at a long counter-like table that faced the street. The waiter brought a giant basket of onion rings to three guys a few seats down from theirs. The deep-fried smell would usually get Charlotte’s stomach growling, but right then she wasn’t hungry at all.

  “Do you want anything to eat?” Tony asked her. “Or do you want to wait till we get to the restaurant?”

  “I can wait.”

  Tony ordered an Imperial Rye pale ale, while she asked for one of the five-dollar margaritas.

  “So what’s up, Gilby?” Tony said when the waiter left.

  “Huh?” she said.

  “What’s eating Gilbert Grape? You’ve been a hundred miles away the entire walk here.”

  Charlotte had planned on telling Tony about Luke—at some point—and she decided now was as good a time as any. “You’re going to think it’s nuts,” she said.

  “I love nuts—crazy nuts, I mean. Not balls, obviously.”

  “My ex showed up at my house last night,” she said.

  Tony’s eyebrows jumped. “Your ex?”

  “He drove here from New York.”

  “Just to see you?”

  “Told you it was nuts.”

  “Are you still seeing him?”

  “No! He’s…he’s not well. I never mentioned him because I thought it was all behind me. I guess it’s not.” She shrugged. “Do you still want to hear?”

  “Yeah, I wanna hear. This guy sounds psycho.”

  “He just got out of prison.”

  “You’re bullshitting me. What’d he do?”

  “Beat up some of my friends.”

  “And he went to prison for that?”

  “He nearly killed one of them. She had serious head wounds and was in a coma for nearly three days. She’s okay now.”

  The waiter returned with their drinks, and an uncomfortable silence ensued until he left.

  “He beat up a girl?” Tony said, ignoring his beer.

  “And a guy,” Charlotte replied. “And me. Well, he chased me. I bashed my head on the ground and blacked out for a few seconds. When I came round a bunch of guys staying in a nearby cabin—we were camping—were pulling Luke off me. That’s his name. Luke. It took four of them to pin him down until the police came.”

  Tony blew out some air. “What a fucking tool monkey. Sorry, Char. I know he’s your ex. But going after girls? What the fuck’s wrong with him?”

  “He was a solider, a gunner—you know, the guy who sits behind the turret in a Humvee. A bit over a year ago his unit was escorting a convoy of fuel tankers to a forward operating base. They stopped to examine a dead dog on the side of the road. Apparently terrorists used stuff like that to hide roadside bombs. It turned out they were right. There was a bomb. They called in the bomb guys—but the whole thing was an ambush. Everyone in Luke’s unit was killed except for him. The whole thing messed him up, and he did some stuff that got him kicked out of the army. He lived with me in New York for a few weeks, and he was a totally different person. He got nervous and paranoid in crowds. He had flashbacks and nightmares and all that stuff. He barely left the house, so I organized a camping trip, to get him out of the city. I thought, you know, nature would be good for him, quiet, peaceful. But then he just snapped over nothing.” She shook her head. “After the police took him away, he was kept in custody, and I never spoke to him again—until last night.”

  “So what did he want?” Tony asked.

  “To get back together.”

  “I’m hoping you told him to go fuck himself.”

  “I told him we were done, yeah.”

  “How did he react?”

  “Trashed my kitchen.”

  “Jesus, Char.” Tony took her hand across the table, what felt like an oddly intimate gesture because he’d never done it before. “This guy really is a psycho. Where’s he now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You need to call the police.”

  “He might already be back in New York.”

  “Or he might be pitching a tent in your backyard.”

  “What are the police going to do? He hasn’t really done anything.”

  “If he just got out of prison, he’ll be on parole. Trashing your kitchen would probably be enough to get him tossed in jail.”

  Charlotte shook her head. “This is going to sound stupid, but I don’t want to get him in trouble. I want him to go, yeah, but I don’t want him to go to jail, or to prison, or whatever. I dated him for four years, Tony. We were even engaged. He was a good guy. It’s just, what happened to him, it’s not his fault. It’s the army’s fault.”

  Tony frowned. “The army’s?”

  She shook her head again. She wasn’t going to get into all that. “Anyway, you wanted to know what was on my mind. That’s about all of it.”

  Tony released her hand, sat back. Around them the cacophony of jovial voices and laughter carried on.

  Tony finished what remained of his beer and said, “I’m getting another. Want something?”

  She had about an inch of the margarita remaining. She nodded.

  Tony went inside to the bar. Charlotte stared through the open window at the street, lost in reflection, when someone sat down in Tony’s seat. She was about to tell the guy it was taken, but the words died on her lips.

  “Hey, Char,” Luke said.

  CHAPTER 4

  Charlotte barely recognized Luke. Yesterday he had been sober and well-presented. Now he reeked of whiskey and looked as if he’d slept in a Dumpster. His hair was messy and unwashed, his clothes—the same black jeans and pullover—wrinkled and stained. His eyes shone dully from the booze. Beneath the gloss, however, they were dark and hard. They belonged to a stranger.

  “Luke?” she said, gratified by how calm she sounded, because calm was the polar opposite of what she felt.

  “Fancy running into you here,” he said.

  “Have you been following me?” she demanded.

  “You never used to lie to me, Char.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You said you didn’t have a boyfriend.”

  She glanced the way Tony had gone, but she couldn’t see into the brewery from where she was seated. “I’ll call the police.”

  “A guy can’t sit down with his ex?”

  “What do you want? I told you—”

  “I know what you told me, Char. Heard you loud and clear. You moved on. I get it. So don’t worry. I’m not her
e to beg you to take me back. I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to kill you.”

  Charlotte didn’t think she’d heard Luke right—though she must have, because she’d gone numb all the way to her bones. “What did you say?” she said, though she was no longer able to muster the false calm.

  “I’m going to kill you, Char.”

  She stared at him in horror. Then she stood so quickly she almost fell over.

  “Whoa, calm down,” Luke said, standing too. “I’m not going to kill you right here. I’ll give you a few hours to think about it, get it on your brain.”

  “Luke, you’re sick. You need help.”

  “You were my help, Char. You were what I needed.”

  “Luke, please, listen to me—”

  “What’s going on?”

  It was Tony. He stopped next to Charlotte, beer in one hand, margarita in the other. He was frowning at Luke.

  “Let’s go,” Charlotte told him.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Luke said. “Don’t be so rude, Char. How about some proper introductions? I’d like to meet the guy fucking my girlfriend. Sorry, my ex.”

  Tony set the drinks on the table. “Why don’t you take a hike, Luke?”

  “Luke?”

  “I thought that was your name.”

  “Luke?” Luke repeated, scowling. “You don’t know me. You don’t know me at fucking all. Luke? The fuck you think you are calling me Luke?”

  Other customers, Charlotte noticed, were looking at them.

  “Come on, Tony,” she said. She took his hand to lead him away.

  “That’s right,” Luke said. “Slither out of here on your belly.”

  “Listen, buddy,” Tony said, holding his ground. “She’s not into you anymore. Get that into your fucking head—”

  Luke threw a right hook. Tony dodged the blow, and Luke’s fist deflected off his chin. Charlotte’s cry of alarm was echoed by those around her.

  Tony punched back, but Luke batted his arm aside, grabbed his hair, and rammed his faced into the table.

  “Luke! Stop it!” Charlotte shouted.

  Ignoring her, Luke lifted Tony’s head from the table and might have drove it down a second time, but Tony snatched the pint he’d recently purchased and smashed it against Luke’s ear. The glass shattered, spraying liquid everywhere. Luke stumbled away, a hand going to his bleeding ear.

  Charlotte glanced about for help. Everybody appeared as scared and startled as she did, and she didn’t think they would jump in, not against somebody Luke’s size. Even the three university guys a few seats over were on their feet, backing away.

  Luke drove his shoulder in Tony’s chest and plowed him into a woman in a blue dress. She fell to her butt. Tony tripped over her and went down as well. Luke rained punches down on him.

  “Luke, stop it!” Charlotte cried, throwing herself into the fray, pulling Luke’s hair.

  Suddenly the bouncer appeared, a massive black man who must have weighed three hundred pounds. He shoved her aside and wrapped his meaty arms around Luke’s neck, peeling him off Tony.

  Luke, however, steered the bouncer backward, the two of them knocking chairs and tables aside like bowling pins. They crashed into the wall. Luke snapped his head back so his skull struck the bigger man’s face.

  The bouncer loosened his hold. Luke turned, swinging an elbow that caught the bouncer on the temple. The guy dropped like a sack of rocks.

  The whole patio was in a ruckus now, people yelling, threatening to call the police.

  Charlotte was crouched next to Tony, helping him to his feet, at the same time not taking her eyes off Luke, who was coming toward her again.

  “Luke, I swear to God—” she said, nearly hysterical.

  But he brushed roughly past her, mumbling a threat, and disappeared down the street.

  Someone called for him to stop, but of course he didn’t.

  ***

  The police arrived ten minutes later, and the paramedics shortly after that. The concussed bouncer was taken away on a stretcher, while Charlotte and Tony gave their statements to a burly, fair-haired cop named Dunn, who was not much older than they were, maybe twenty-five.

  “You sure you don’t want to be looked over?” Dunn said to Tony.

  Tony nodded. His was holding a dishrag to his nose to stop the bleeding, though he didn’t think his nose wasn’t broken.

  “So what’s going to happen now?” Charlotte asked.

  Dunn stuffed his notebook and pen into a pouch on his gun belt. “We’ll put out an all-points bulletin and hopefully pick him up.”

  “But what if you don’t? What if he comes back to my house again?”

  “I’d recommend you stay at a friend or family member’s tonight.”

  “She’ll stay at mine,” Tony said, his voice nasally.

  Charlotte looked at him. “He got my address from the university. He could get yours from them too.”

  “Shouldn’t they have a policy of not giving out the addresses of their students to fucking psychopaths?”

  “I’ll get in touch with someone there,” Dunn said. “In the meantime, you two keep a low profile. We’ll get this guy. It’s only a matter of when.”

  ***

  “I can’t believe you actually dated that nutcase for four years,” Tony said, still holding the dishrag to his nose.

  “I told you, he wasn’t like this before,” Charlotte replied. “It’s like night and day.”

  They were in the backseat of a taxi, heading to Tony’s place on College Street. Dusk had settled, cloaking everything outside the window in washed-out blues and purples. The mountains loomed in the distance, black silhouettes.

  Tony said, “What was that you mentioned—you know, about what happened to him being the army’s fault? I mean, they didn’t set up the ambush that killed his unit. How can you blame them?”

  Charlotte explained the Chapter 10 Luke was made to sign and the hypocrisy with the way the army was screwing soldiers out of disability benefits.

  “It’s a bloody travesty,” the taxi driver interjected. He glanced at Charlotte and Tony via the rearview mirror. “My grandson was in the army. Went to Iraq for the big hoo-ha in oh-one. Served two tours, made lieutenant, and then was diagnosed with a personality disorder and kicked out without so much as a thank you. He wanted to be a state cop, but with the personality disorder on his record they wouldn’t touch him ’cause he was supposedly damaged goods.”

  “How’s he doing now?” Charlotte asked.

  “Not good,” the driver said, pulling to a stop across the street from Tony’s building. “He’s in a permanent coma at the hospital.”

  “My God,” she said. “What happened to him?”

  “Shot himself in the head last year with his dad’s rifle.” He stopped the meter. “Sixteen fifty, kids.”

  ***

  While Tony paid the driver, Charlotte stood on the sidewalk, her arms folded across her chest, looking about nervously. Then the taxi drove away, and Tony took her hand. “Relax,” he said, leading her across the street to his building. “There’s no way he knows where I live, Char.”

  “He followed me to the bar, and to do that he had to be following me all day, from when I left my house in the morning. Who’s to say he’s still not following us right now?”

  They reached the opposite sidewalk and stopped. Tony glanced up and down the street. “I don’t see him anywhere.”

  Charlotte almost felt like crying. “What am I going to do, Tony?”

  “You’ll be fine here.”

  “But what about tomorrow? You’re going to Charleston.”

  “Oh shit,” he said, frowning. Then he shrugged. “Guess I won’t be going anymore.”

  “No, Tony. It’s your sister’s debut. You can’t miss it.”

  “Of course I can. Luke threatened to kill you, Char. By the way, what was that he said on the way out? Something about running?”

  “‘Better start running, bitch,’” she said, recalli
ng Luke’s words.

  Tony shook his head. “Who the fuck does this guy think he is? He’s like Dirty Harry’s evil twin or something.”

  “That’s why you don’t need to get involved in this.”

  “I already am. He tried to break my nose.” He flourished the blood-soaked dishrag as proof.

  Charlotte said, “He might try to kill you too.”

  “You really believe that threat?”

  “You saw what he’s become like.”

  “Beating up the guy screwing his girlfriend, to paraphrase his words, isn’t the same as trying to murder him.”

  “I don’t think he looks at killing the same way you or I do anymore.”

  Tony thought about that, then nodded. “Okay, how about this—you come to Charleston with me. You’ll be away for the weekend. The police will probably have picked him up by Sunday. And if not, we can stay with my sister longer. She has her own house. She won’t mind.”

  “Really?” Charlotte said, liking the idea immediately.

  He nodded. “Actually, why don’t we just leave tonight? I have a friend in Colombia who I was going to visit this weekend anyway. I’ll give him a call. We can crash at his place tonight. It’ll break up the drive, two hours tonight, two tomorrow morning.”

  “He won’t mind?”

  “We’ve known each other since we were kids. He’ll be stoked.”

  ***

  Half a block away Luke sat in the driver’s seat of the white van he had stolen in New York and which he had been living in since. He watched Charlotte and the dickhead she’d called Tony talking on the sidewalk. Then they went inside a four-story apartment building, presumably where the dickhead lived.

  Luke drank from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and lost himself in his thoughts for a while until someone passed by the van, unwrapping a chocolate bar. That reminded him of how hungry he was, and he was about to cruise around for a fast food joint when Charlotte and the dickhead emerged from the building, the dickhead carrying a red piece of luggage. They went to the adjacent parking area and got in a shitty maroon Ford.

  Hunger forgotten, Luke started the van and followed them.