Fear the Darkness: A Thriller

by Becky Masterman

  “Tony Salazar.”

  “That’s him. He took me, or Elias, that is, seriously, and they had already gone to the Hollinger house and were searching for the car by helicopter by the time your call came in. I drove over there like a bat out of hell and made sure Owen was okay. So when they found you I was within running distance.”

  “You saved my life,” I said. I didn’t have to say thank you because I could tell by the look on his face that he was satisfied this was the case.

  I stared out the car window at Catalina Ridge on our right. Much of the time the mountains looked painted flat against the sky, but the late afternoon sun cast shadows so you could better see the depth of canyons running through them. They’re more interesting that way.

  We were on our way to the Hollingers’ house straight from the hospital. I had spoken with Tony Salazar and Sam Humphries from my bed. Privately I told Tony that I would make an even trade with him. He would have Owen corroborate my story so I could get off on self-defense for shooting Mallory in the back, and I wouldn’t spread the truth about his department screwing up the death investigation on Joe Neilsen. But I figured that would get around anyway. Lulu Manwaring would see to it.

  Annette was at the house, to take care of Owen if anything happened during the interview, and also to act as another witness to his testimony.

  Owen was awake, and his eyes lit with recognition, then questions, when he saw Carlo, Tony Salazar, and Sam Humphries come into the room behind me. I sat down next to him on the bed, where I had seen Mallory sitting so many times, and laid my hand on his arm. Remembering what I had read about his condition on the Internet, I asked if he could feel my hand, and he blinked once, yes. At first the only other sound in the room was the airy suck of the ventilator. If the others noticed the smell I’d gotten used to, they didn’t show it.

  “Hello, Owen,” Carlo said. Couldn’t hurt that we had both a priest and a nurse in attendance. It was hard to know what would happen.

  Owen blinked twice in greeting.

  I said, “Owen, this man is Anthony Salazar. He’s the head of detectives for the Tucson Police Department, and this is Detective Sam Humphries. They want to corroborate with you some information concerning you, Mallory, Joseph Neilsen, and a man named Frank Ganim. Will you help?”

  Owen blinked for yes, and I could swear he did it with a relieved sigh.

  Salazar stood at the foot of the bed with his hands clasped before him, chin tucked down slightly so that he looked like he was bowing even though his eyes stared intently at Owen. His whole posture was reverential, and I liked him for it.

  I began. “Owen, do you know what happened to Mallory?”

  He blinked once. Yes.

  “I think I have a good part of the story now, and maybe you can fill in the blanks for me. Would you do that? All you have to do is guide me with yes and no.”

  Clearly this was leading a witness, but under the circumstances Salazar didn’t object.

  Yes.

  “Sometime after you were married, you found out that Mallory had killed her first husband.”

  Annette was trying to be professional but couldn’t help gasping at this information. I turned to her and said, “I might need you. You can take it, right?”

  She nodded. I glanced at Carlo and understood he would be there for whoever needed him.

  I said again that Owen must have found out Mallory had killed her first husband, but,

  No.

  “You had no suspicion.”

  No.

  “You felt you were happily married.”

  Yes.

  “But you told me yesterday that Mallory had done this to you.”

  Yes.

  “She stopped the car on the tracks, left you in it. Did your seat belt jam?”

  His eyelids fluttered. I’m not sure he even knew all the details of that night.

  “Where did you learn the SOS, navy?”

  Yes.

  “Mallory told me she tried to kill you but that Joe saw her putting No Salt in your feeding tube. So she killed Joe.”

  Yes. Such a sad blink. I hadn’t noticed before how expressive Owen’s eyes were. I might have been able to communicate more with him if Mallory hadn’t always been a distraction.

  We went on that way for a while, me guessing and Owen putting me straight when my guesses were wrong. He had been awake and witnessed with terror as Mallory set about pouring No Salt into his feeding tube. Joe had arrived and walked in on her, intent as she was on doing the deed. He innocently asked what she was doing, and seemed fascinated when she said it was for constipation. He said he would tell his stepfather about it. It appeared that Joey wanted his father’s love and respect more than either Tim or Jacquie assumed. Annette filled in blanks, too, explaining how potassium chloride in sufficient quantity, unlike sodium, would lower his blood pressure until death occurred. How because of Owen’s condition and a living will there wouldn’t be a death investigation.

  “I couldn’t be sure that Mallory killed Frank Ganim with a combination of the antifreeze to make him pass out and pressing on his carotid artery to finish him off. Did Mallory talk to you about Ganim?”

  Owen’s blood pressure spiked again as he remembered. Yes.

  “Why didn’t she use it on you? It would have been so easy.”

  SOS, he blinked.

  “You want to tell me in code? Go ahead.”

  Frnk frst.

  “She was testing it on Ganim to see if it would work without the ME picking up on it. Annette, could you help us out here?”

  Annette gave him something to slow his pulse and when he was recovered enough he blinked Yes.

  We took a long time, with stopping for breaks, but it went faster than it might have because I had guessed so much of the story already and knew what questions to ask. Mallory killed Frank Ganim because he found out what she had done, tracked her down to Tucson, and was going to blackmail her. When no one was around, Mallory would talk to Owen, tell him everything that was happening, and what she was doing to deal with it. She had told him she was slipping me antidepressants to slow me down. Finally she told Owen she was going to have to kill me, and then him.

  When Owen started looking exhausted and we thought we had enough facts, he gave me the SOS sign again.

  “What else?” I asked.

  Long blink. “T,” I said.

  Short short short short. “H,” I said.

  Long short. “N,” I said.

  Long short short long. X.

  “You’re welcome,” I said, saddened by such gratitude for saving such a life.

  Outside the house I talked to Tony and Sam for a while. Overnight in the hospital I’d had some more time to think it all through, how Joe’s drowning might be reconstructed, all conjecture, of course. How Mallory could walk the back trail over to the Neilsen house when Joe was alone. Joe wouldn’t know she’d done that, only that she showed up at the house with a six-pack. Did the job, carried home any remaining beer before either of the grown-ups could return home.

  Carlo made another stop with me, this time at the Neilsens’ house, where I was expected. Tim looked nervous when we sat down on the couch opposite him and Jacquie. I let Jacquie know that her instincts were right, that Joe hadn’t died because of a senseless prank or getting himself off. I let her know her son had not committed suicide because his stepfather rejected him, nor because he was bullied by the boys in the youth group. I told her he was murdered because he had been in the unfortunate position of doing something good, reading to Owen, and that was as much truth as she needed to know. I didn’t tell Jacquie what I knew about Tim concealing the tox report from her. When he saw I wasn’t going to do that, he took a deep breath that Jacquie mistook for sympathy. Carlo and I left the two of them consoling one another.

  I never did meet Dr. Lari Paunchese.

  Owen died shortly after I finished writing all this down, but at least he spent his last days without terror. Elias Manwaring didn’t know everyt
hing. The Hollinger fortune went half to St. Martin’s, which greatly eased Elias’s stresses about church finances, and half to Interfaith Community Services, a Tucson food bank. What would it have been like if Owen had died six months before from cardiac arrest due to the No Salt in his feeding tube, or a year before in that train wreck? Joe Neilsen would be alive. Mallory Hollinger would be alive. We would still be best buds. And maybe she would have already set her sights on husband number three.

  Fifty–seven

  When the mail came the next day, I found out the fine for killing a cactus is ten thousand dollars.

  Late that afternoon we went to pick up Al, who trotted into the house and casually humped his sister to reestablish his alpha standing.

  Over dinner, the three of us talked like we were a family. Only we didn’t talk about how was your day at school and how is the book coming Carlo and gee, isn’t this homemade pizza good. We talked like Quinns.

  “Why did Mallory kill Joe, but not you or Owen?” Carlo asked.

  “She’s dead, so there’s no telling for sure,” I said. “But my guess is that it was easy to kill someone who had no real connection to her except occasionally reading to her husband. That way, not so much risk of suspicion. Second husband dies on her watch and somebody might discover there was a first one. That’s why she wanted Joe to be a witness to Owen’s cardiac arrest, only Joe got there too early and Mallory was afraid he’d tell his doctor stepfather about the salt in the feeding tube. She panicked, probably. Me, she figured she could make me sick enough to stop investigating.”

  “Oh, that reminds me,” Gemma-Kate said. “I was reading some more about antidepressants. There was this thing about aged cheese. Remember how you’ve been eating a lot of cheese?”

  “What about cheese?”

  “That book I was reading says that coupled with antidepressants, besides serotonin syndrome, it can kick you into Parkinsonism.”

  I remembered the Parmesan cheese on the soup, yes, the blue cheese at Blanco’s, the bartender at Ramone’s smiling at me as he poured the chilled vodka over the stuffed olives (was it because Mallory supplied those olives?), and more at Mallory’s house … even the cheese that Gemma-Kate had used, quite innocently, in her cooking.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know the mechanism yet. Just that it creates Parkinson-like symptoms. Odd gait, muscle spasms, shakiness, loss of strength, instability, even cramped handwriting.”

  “So you’re saying that all those symptoms—”

  “Were brought on by the high doses of drugs and cheese. Aged cheese in particular. Isn’t biology fascinating?”

  “Holy Mary Mother of God,” said Carlo.

  “That bitch,” I said to the goat cheese on my slice of pizza, my appetite greatly diminished. And to Gemma-Kate, “How long were you going to wait to tell me this?”

  “Of course, you’re still limping, but maybe it’s from that wound in your leg,” Gemma-Kate said and got up. “I’m eating the rest of this pizza.”

  Mallory had broken my stick, but Carlo bought me a cane at the drugstore before I left the hospital. With the help of that, I insisted on walking the Pugs. Slow going, but nicer than it had been recently.

  “What would you do if I was seriously incapacitated?” I asked as I limped down the sidewalk.

  “Give me specifics.”

  “Let’s say paraplegic.”

  “That’s easy. I’d put you in your wheelchair and take you on a one-way walk into Sabino Canyon.”

  I laughed as I was meant to. “What a romantic.”

  Then it was night. Seems like everyone turned in before me. Maybe I was still a little revved from the adrenaline surge of recent events. The house was quiet and mostly dark. One pug sat hopefully by the back door, and I let it out, hoping there were no toads hiding under the bougainvillea. The light of the full moon had washed most of the stars out of the sky, but you can’t have the moon and the stars, too. The Pug wandered over to the statue of St. Francis, lifted its leg (I knew then it must be Al), and peed on his foot. Then he trotted back to the house and sat expectantly as if he considered my sole purpose for existence was to open doors for him. I did.

  I went into Gemma-Kate’s room. She was in bed but not asleep and still had the light on.

  “Do you ever sleep?” I asked.

  “Not so much. I like it that way.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I feel…” She paused, searching her mind for something like feeling to communicate. And if it was there, she didn’t know how to say it. The only thing she could find was “I want.” Then she stopped.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want … to be touched. Mom used to touch me before she couldn’t anymore.”

  I sat down at the end of the bed and put my hand on her foot where it poked up the covers. She seemed contented with that, didn’t sit up or come close to me for anything like a hug.

  “Did you mean to poison the Pug?” I asked, intentionally out of the blue.

  “No. It was an accident. He chomped down on the head where the poison glands are before I could stop him.”

  It sounded specific enough to be true. And while we were on a roll, “Gemma-Kate, did you love your mother?”

  That one took a couple seconds while she thought. “I don’t think so, no.” She moved her foot away, having had enough of human contact, or at least of the assurance she could get what she wanted. “But I’m not like Mallory.”

  “No. You’re nothing like that,” I said.

  There was something about that halfway honest exchange that made me feel Gemma-Kate and I were communicating like normal humans. Either that, or the lion in me spoke to the lion in her. It made me think about what made us different from Mallory, from any other cold-blooded killer. It was the Quinn thing.

  I said, “Using the toad to raise suspicion, through Frank Ganim’s death, and my poisoning, Mallory was framing you. You’re not a psychopath, you’re just a Quinn.”

  Her sneer was at odds with the innocent roundness of her face. “What’s the difference?”

  “I don’t know. I’m guessing it’s why we make good cops, because we have more equal measures of dark and light than most people. Or some of us have a little more dark and we’re not smart enough to fear it. But emotion is highly overrated. Even if you don’t feel good about doing right, or bad about doing wrong, I think it’s the doing that counts.”

  Did I say that, or did Carlo? I’ve begun to get confused about where his thoughts end and mine begin. I did feel something just now, a surge of gladness that Gemma-Kate had come away from the rest of the Quinns to Arizona. Now that I knew who Gemma-Kate was and who she might have become, I understood better my promise to Marylin. It wasn’t just about letting Gemma-Kate stay with us for three months. The promise was to watch over her and make sure her journey continued on a righteous path.

  “Well I’m not going to be a cop,” she said.

  “You’re going to be a biochemical researcher. Get holed up safely in a lab somewhere.”

  “No, I was thinking I might become a veterinarian.”

  I felt my viscera recoil in horror at the thought of Gemma-Kate hurting small animals. “Terrific. You think some more about that.” I pulled up her covers because it felt like the house got chilly, which often happens in the spring after the sun goes down.

  But before I turned off the light, or maybe because of the reflection of it in her eyes, I caught something in her look, like the North Star in an otherwise black sky. She knew what she was saying and what effect it would have on me. With that crack about being a veterinarian, she was making a joke about herself. And I realized that wherever there was real humanity there was the capability of not taking yourself too seriously. Wherever there was humor there was hope.

  I said good night, and went about turning off the lights and securing the house. I wouldn’t lock Al and Peg in our bedroom tonight.

  Feeling my way through the dark, I remembered what
Elias Manwaring had told me about the guy who said the only way to achieve any happiness at all is to start by admitting that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible. The guy was right about that. Children died before their parents. People you thought were friends betrayed your trust. Wives let their husbands beat them up and sometimes there was nothing I could do to stop it. There was too much haze over which of us was good and which was evil.

  Shit, if you allow yourself to think of all that, sometimes you think it’s better not even to love anymore because all love ultimately ends in abandonment, betrayal, or death. And that is truly horrible.

  Well, shit.

  But what if you think beyond that? If the world was so clearly and completely horrible, then every moment of life that wasn’t horrible must be a bloody miracle. A gift, more valuable for being rare. Like the fact that, for today, I was well, mostly. Like the discovery that Gemma-Kate’s humanity might be limited, but that there was hope she might be made whole enough to live. That she was more like me than she was like Mallory.

  Either way it made no sense to worry about anything else tonight. We were safe right now. Empathy is nice, but sometimes you have to put the death, the mistakes, the suffering, and the betrayals aside. Allow yourself moments of not-feeling rather than get dragged under by the drowning victim you’re trying to save. The way I felt about the nameless woman at the shelter. Not feeling is a way of protecting ourselves to fight another day.

  Because if you can’t stop to appreciate those moments when nothing bad happens, it’s like kicking aside a gift someone left in your path. Everyone was safe in the DiForenza house this night. So while I couldn’t go as far as saying the world was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, I could say that in this particular moment, in this small space, it wasn’t half bad.

  Welcome to the human race, Quinn.

  Also by Becky Masterman