The Darkness Gathers: A Novel

by Lisa Unger

  The children’s division of the Missing Persons Department was quiet; somebody’s screen saver made simulated ocean noises, and he could hear the desk sergeant’s phone ringing endlessly down the hall. Everyone else on the team had gone home hours ago. It wasn’t that they had given up on Tatiana; it was just that they knew the realities. Six weeks into an investigation like this, with no leads, no sightings, no legitimate tips—it didn’t look good. Honestly, they would have called the case cold unofficially weeks ago if it hadn’t been for Nathan Quinn breathing down the necks of the mayor and the chief of police, who, in turn, were breathing down his neck. Detective Ignacio knew that he was going to become the scapegoat on this if he didn’t turn up something.

  From the first night, when he had been called to the Quinns’ home, he’d had a bad feeling. Sometimes it was like that with missing children for Ignacio: Sometimes he just knew he was going to find them safe and in one piece, and sometimes he could feel that they were gone for good—fallen prey to drugs, or abducted by someone with unspeakable desires—that their parents would forever be haunted by what might have happened to them. Sometimes he knew that he would end up recovering a body from a ditch, from the bottom of a lake. In this case, he didn’t have any solid feeling like that. Just a nebulous feeling that things weren’t going to go well.

  When he’d arrived at the Quinn home, the first thing he heard was a woman crying—there was something haunting about the sound of it, something resigned and despondent. It was not the desperate, enraged cry of a woman who had just discovered her child was missing. He’d heard that sound so many times, there was something primal about it, something that made him shiver. But there was hope in it, a fierce need to believe that everything would turn out all right. The sound he heard when he stepped into the magnificent foyer was the cry of grief, total and inconsolable. The first thing he saw was the surveillance camera at the front door. Before he had a chance to be briefed by the uniformed officer who was first on the scene, Nathan Quinn had rushed to greet him.

  “She’s gone,” he blurted out. “You have to find her.”

  Something about the way he said it, about the look in Quinn’s eyes, gave the detective a sick chill. There was a petulant anger in his tone, a white rage in his eyes. But then the giant man broke down, sobbing, and Ignacio decided it had just been grief and fear. But he kept coming back to that moment in his thoughts.

  The glorious Mission-style mansion was more opulent than Detective Ignacio had ever seen; the marble floors alone had probably cost more than he made in a year. Jenna Quinn hadn’t risen to greet him when he’d walked up the dramatic staircase, down a wide hallway lined with expensive-looking art, and entered Tatiana’s bedroom. She hadn’t looked at him with hopeful eyes, as most parents did when he arrived to find their lost children. She had stopped crying, but her eyes were pink and swollen, and she sat on her daughter’s bed, holding a tattered stuffed Snoopy.

  He put his hand on her shoulder and said, “It’s going to be all right, Mrs. Quinn.” She jumped a little, but she didn’t respond. She didn’t have the vacant stare of someone slipping into shock, however; she was alert and, Detective Ignacio thought, uneasy.

  Tatiana Quinn’s bedroom was the dream of every teenage girl. The king-size bed on which Jenna sat was covered in the pink-and-white Laura Ashley sheets his own daughter had wanted but couldn’t have because they were too expensive. The matching wallpaper was almost hidden by posters of the Backstreet Boys, ’NSYNC, and other teen idols, ones the detective recognized but couldn’t name. A Sony Viao computer sat on top of a white desk, her school books and notepads were in a neat pile, and a deflated red backpack with stickers and buttons all over it hung from the chair. A huge entertainment center held a big-screen television, DVD player, and CD player, with tiny high-powered Bose speakers sitting on top. Her DVD collection ranged from Snow White and 101 Dalmatians to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Chocolat. The walk-in closet was bigger than his daughter’s entire bedroom, stuffed with more clothes than he had seen outside a department store and a shoe collection that would have made Imelda Marcos blush.

  He had a sense of her from the things in her room: a little girl, on the verge of being a young woman and not sure which she was more comfortable with yet—like all teenagers. As he looked at the Quinns sitting on their daughter’s bed, Nathan with his arm around Jenna, whispering something in her ear, he thought, What could take a young girl from a home like this? Whatever it was, it had to be pretty bad—either she’d been abducted, taken against her will, or there was a drug problem, a bad boyfriend. Or maybe there was something even worse going on behind these expensive doors.

  With the help of Jenna Quinn, who seemed to come alive again, they determined that also missing were Tatiana’s small suitcase, a few of her favorite outfits, her Walkman and favorite CDs, and the $160 she had kept in her jewelry box. The surveillance camera had been turned off at 9:00 P.M., an hour after the Quinns had left to go to a party at the home of the late Gianni Versace, just minutes away. And that was pretty much it. No foreign fingerprints in the home, no sign of struggle or forced entry, no strange noises heard by the neighbors. No one had seen Tatiana leave the house.

  The million-dollar reward had been more of a hindrance than a help in the investigation. In the first few days after the Quinns’ impassioned plea on the five and eleven o’clock news, the phone rang off the hook. Thousands of man-hours were wasted following up on false tips. But then a couple of weeks into the investigation, a Greyhound bus driver had come forward to say someone meeting Tatiana’s description had ridden the 12:05 bus from Miami to New York City the night she disappeared. He had come into the station, given a statement and his contact information to one of the detectives on Ignacio’s team. The team was infused with hope again. But the next day, when Ignacio called to follow up, the contact information turned out to be false, and Greyhound denied having an employee by that name. It had already run in the paper; with all the heat on them, they never revealed to the press that they had been duped. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why someone would do that.

  But there were a lot of things about this case he couldn’t figure out. Like why, when he started looking into some of Nathan Quinn’s business dealings, the police chief himself called to assure Ignacio that he was barking up the wrong tree—and to stop barking, or else. And why had the maid, Valentina Fitore, who generally spent the night when the Quinns went out, gone home early instead? Who had turned off the surveillance camera, since Tatiana supposedly did not know how to operate it? And now, the call from Lydia Strong. So far, the national media had not shown any real interest, specifically because it did look as if Tatiana had run away and not been abducted. How had someone like Lydia Strong gotten interested? What information did she have? She said she was staying at the Delano Hotel in South Beach but wouldn’t be in until late.

  He dialed the cellular number he had scribbled down. Her voice mail picked up.

  “Ms. Strong, this is Detective Ignacio, returning your call. I’m anxious to speak with you and hear what you have to say. You can reach me here tomorrow morning. Or if you get this message tonight, don’t hesitate to try me on my cell phone.” He left the number and hung up. He thought to call his wife but decided it was better just to go home. If he called, she’d bitch at him now and then again when he got home. If he just went home, she’d only have one opportunity to give him hell. He took his suit jacket from the back of the chair he had been sitting on and put it on, noticing that he had some catsup on the sleeve. He shut down his computer, turned off the metal desk lamp, and headed out the door.

  chapter six

  It was nearly ten when they checked into the glamorous Delano Hotel on Collins Avenue in South Beach. Lydia loved the luxurious Ian Schrager hotels for their chic atmosphere and exquisite service. Jeffrey thought everyone who worked there was falsely obsequious, and it made him uncomfortable. It didn’t matter to him where they stayed, as long as the bed was co
mfortable. And on that detail, they both agreed—it was just that he couldn’t believe how much it cost for a truly comfortable bed. The bellman escorted them through the billowing white curtains that towered above them from the twenty-foot ceiling and draped elegantly to the floor, past the dramatically arranged eclectic pieces of antique furniture. A white chaise longue was accented with a faux fur throw, white lilies were glam in their crystal vases atop veined marble surfaces, and each thick column that lined the long hallway hid a cozy sitting area.

  The bellman, dressed in matching white shorts and polo shirt, towed their luggage down the very white, very long hallway to their room.

  “Who’s paying for this?” Jeffrey asked as the bellman left with a five-dollar tip from Lydia.

  “Jacob Hanley,” Lydia answered, smiling as she opened the French doors that led to the balcony. The sound and smell of the ocean swept into the room and billowed the white gauze curtains. He walked out onto the balcony with her and wrapped her in his arms from behind. The palm trees beneath them were illuminated by a glowing amber light, and the fronds rustled in the wind, which seemed to be picking up. And the infinity pool glowed a bright sky blue. In the distance, the sounds of the perpetual party that was South Beach drifted on the night air. A heavy bass from some punk’s too-loud car stereo reverberated like a heartbeat; shrieks that could be delight or terror echoed like the cries of seagulls. Somewhere glass shattered, and a car alarm sounded in protest. The night was in full swing.

  “You feel like going out for a drink?” she asked, sounding hopeful. The ten-year difference in their ages generally manifested itself at around this hour, when he was ready for bed and she was ready to go out dancing.

  “Sure,” he answered, casting a longing glance at the plush king-size bed behind them. “Let’s go.”

  She picked up her big Furla black leather bag.

  “You don’t need that,” he said.

  “I never go anywhere without it, Jeffrey. You know that. It has my notebook, all my addresses.…” she said.

  “Well, I’m not going to wind up carrying it,” he said, knowing of course that he would if she wanted him to.

  Ocean Drive was a parade of supermodels, drag queens, bodybuilders, and dumpy tourists looking around in awe of the scene. Each person was more gorgeous, more boisterous than the last. Surrounded by outrageous outfits, big hair, and loud voices, Lydia always thought of South Beach as the bastard child of the East Village and Mardi Gras on ecstasy. She was fascinated by the endless circus of fabulous, vacuous people … narcissism at its exuberant best. Passing a seemingly endless array of restaurants with hostesses beckoning them in, they finally settled on an Art Deco Mexican restaurant with a mariachi band singing love ballads. They slid into a plush velvet sofa that faced the street and ordered margaritas on the rocks with salt.

  Jeffrey’s cell phone beeped and he pulled it from his pants pocket.

  “Craig sent an E-mail,” he said.

  Lydia always called Craig “the Brain” behind his back. He stood a full head taller than Jeffrey but looked as thin as one of his thighs. He was forever clad in hugely baggy jeans, a white T-shirt under a flannel shirt, and a pair of Doc Martens, and his pockets were always full of electronic devices—cell phone, pager, Palm Pilot, all manner of thin black beeping, ringing toys. A pair of round wire spectacles, nearly hidden by a shock of bleached-blond hair, framed blue-green eyes. Craig called himself “a cybernavigator,” though his title at Jeffrey’s firm was information specialist. He specialized in knowledge of all computer research tools; before being recruited for Mark, Striker and Hanley, he’d been an infamous hacker wanted by the FBI. He was eighteen when he was arrested and could have faced more than a little time in federal prison, but, luckily for him, Jacob Hanley was his uncle. All former FBI agents, with more connections between them than a motherboard, the team at Mark, Striker and Hanley had been able to get Craig a deal. He worked for the firm, kept his act together, and reported to a probation officer for the next three years.

  Now, more or less plugged into the Internet and the Bureau systems, semilegally, twenty-four seven, Craig could gather almost any piece of information needed at any time of the day or night. Lydia wondered when he slept, and she joked that one day Jeffrey would go to Craig’s office and find that he had become a disembodied voice, sucked into the computers like some character in a William Gibson novel.

  “He says that he and Christian will start looking into things in New York for us tomorrow. He also says that he hopes we find Tatiana, because she’s ‘hot.’ ”

  “Hey,” said Lydia, “what happened to his crush on me?”

  “Youth is fickle,” Jeffrey replied.

  “Hmm.”

  “He also says that his uncle Jacob is pissed that we’re gone. Or at least that’s what I translated from ‘My uncle is way freaking that you guys bailed. What’s up his hole, yo?’ ”

  “Well, it’s a good thing that it’s your firm and he has nothing to say about what you do.”

  “Exactly.”

  She waited for him to explain the obvious ill feelings between him and Hanley, but he didn’t. A hunky Latino waiter with black hair longer and more lustrous than Lydia’s and smoldering brown eyes brought two huge margaritas. Lydia immediately started sipping. It was tart and very potent. Just the way she liked it.

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “Well, Detective Ignacio called back. I think rather than return his call, we should pop in on him in the morning. Take the tape, see where it fits, and find out what his thoughts are. He was eager to hear what we have, but he sounded just beaten-down tired. So maybe he wants some help.”

  “What are you thinking about all of this? What are you expecting to find?”

  The mariachi players, who had paused to smoke cigarettes and drink shots of tequila at the bar, took up their instruments again and began another ballad.

  “I don’t know. It just feels like more than a simple runaway case to me. Something about that letter struck a chord. Maybe I’m wrong.”

  He didn’t say anything for a second, just took a slug of his drink, then grimaced at the tartness of it. She could tell he was debating whether or not to say what was on his mind, and she waited for him to make his decision, munching on chips from the basket between them.

  “This is not about Shawna Fox, is it?” he asked finally. “This is not about you wanting to save her in Tatiana?”

  She didn’t deny it. Shawna had never had a chance. It had been too late for her even before Lydia and Jeffrey had taken on the case that would eventually bring her killer to justice. Shawna had been finding her way after years in abusive foster homes, when a madman had robbed her of her life. Too many young girls in the world met an ugly and unjust fate in one way or another. Maybe Tatiana could still be saved. Maybe there was hope for her and the other girls alluded to in the letter. But it wasn’t just about that. It was the buzz drawing her into this case. The feeling that she couldn’t deny or resist.

  “If Tatiana had been easy to find, someone would have found her. If everything was as it should be, then I wouldn’t have received that tape,” she said, leaning closer to him, feeling her passion for her work ignite in the way she was used to. “This is what we do, isn’t it, you and me? Look where no one else looks? Follow our instincts to the truth? Isn’t it why we do this work?”

  “No, that’s what you do,” he answered, smiling, feeling the electricity of her excitement. “I’m along to keep you grounded in reality, to analyze the facts.”

  “We make a good team.”

  “The best.”

  They raised their glasses to each other. He paused and looked away from her for a moment. “Which reminds me,” he said softly, raising his eyes to meet hers, “I was thinking while you were away.…”

  “Oh?”

  “About us.”

  “What about us?” she asked. He watched her shift uncomfortably, start smoothing out the white cloth napkin on the table in front of he
r, staring at it intently. Everything about the moment was wrong, and he knew it. It was absolutely the wrong time and the wrong place to be having this conversation. But he’d been turning the question around in his mind since the night she’d left on her book tour. And now that they were together, under the full moon, the smell of the ocean heavy in the air, it was as if he couldn’t hold it in another second, like if he waited one more hour or one more day, it would be too late.

  “About the future,” he said.

  “Why worry about the future when the present is perfect?” she answered too quickly, folding the napkin into a neat triangle.

  “I’m not worried about it,” he said, shrugging off the lie. “I’m just wondering what you want.”

  She stopped looking at the napkin and turned her gaze on him. He always felt that look in his loins, the intensity of her eyes, the cool beauty of her face.

  “I want you. I want us. Forever. You know that.”

  Love was not a strong-enough word for the way Lydia felt about Jeffrey. “Love” was hearts and flowers, candy and champagne. The feeling that she had in her heart for Jeffrey was riot and hurricane, fire and thunder. She would do anything for him, would adore and remain forever loyal to him all the days of her life. But the conversation, a perfectly natural one for two people who lived and owned property together, was giving Lydia chills. She didn’t like to think about the future, or talk about it. As if assuming that there was a future was like tempting the gods to prove you wrong. She had spent so long resisting her love for Jeffrey because she was terrified of the grief she would feel if anything were to happen to him, knowing that she would disappear into blackness. It was a natural fear for someone who had lost her mother to a serial killer, who had been abandoned by her father at an early age, she thought. As if anything about that was natural. The way she had come to deal with it was by just being grateful for every day together, not worrying about tomorrow.