Daughter of Darkness

by Ed Gorman

  "You shouldn't have gone out in the first place, honey," he said. Father really did know best.

  "I think I'll go up now," Jenny said, looking at the winding staircase.

  "You don't want a snack?" her mother said. "Milk and cookies. Something like that."

  She wondered if her parents would ever quit patronizing her. They'd treated her much more like an adult when she was in high school. Of course, she hadn't been a mental patient back then.

  She gave her mother a kiss on the cheek. "I'm really exhausted."

  "A warm bath and then a good night's sleep," her mother said. "That's what you need."

  Her father kissed her on top of the head. "Good night, princess." "Princess" had been his nickname for her when she was a little girl. He only used it these days when he was feeling sentimental about her. He eased her to him, held her for a long and gentle moment. She liked the smell of his pipe tobacco-he smoked one pipeful a day-and his aftershave, the two scents she'd always associate with him. "We need to go out to the stables one of these days."

  "Yes, we do," Jenny said. While she was growing up, she'd shared a great passion for horses with her father. They'd spent hundreds of hours out at a nearby stable. On her tenth birthday, her folks had given her a pony.

  She could feel their eyes on her as she ascended the staircase, the huge chandelier ablaze above her. She knew they felt sorry for her, and their pity was the thing she wanted least. She'd been doing well, too, until eight days ago. What had happened to those days? What had brought it on?

  She thought again of the stranger who'd appeared at her table tonight. The more she thought about him, the more familiar he seemed in some vague way. But why? Did he have anything to do with her missing eight days?

  The dread was back. What could she have done during those times? She thought of the night they'd put her in the psychiatric hospital. Had she done anything like that again? Would the police come after her? She almost wished she'd talked to the stranger, asked him questions. Maybe he could help her reconstruct those lost hours.

  She reached the top of the stairs, exhausted. Her mother's admonition-a hot bath and sleep-sounded wonderful at the moment.

  ***

  David was still in his car. He had yet to leave the garage area and head away from the mansion.

  He was using his cell phone. Punching in the same number again and again. And again and again getting a busy signal. David was not real long on patience.

  Finally he made contact.

  He said, "It's me."

  "You sound pissed."

  "I couldn't get through. Your line was busy."

  "Believe it or not, David, I do have a life of my own. Now what can I do for you?"

  "She dumped me tonight."

  "I'm sorry."

  "I still want to help her. And there may be someone who can help us. A guy I met tonight named Coffey." He briefly described his meeting with Coffey. And gave the other man all the particulars. "Will you check him out?"

  "Sure. Now how about I go back to watching my Humphrey Bogart movie?"

  "I thought you were on the phone."

  "I was. But now the Bogie movie has started."

  "Oh."

  The man was not heartless or insensitive. He picked up on David's mood. "Maybe she'll come back to you. You came back to her, after all."

  "I was so stupid to break up with her."

  "We all do stupid things, David. It's just part of being human."

  "I didn't know private eyes talked like that. You sound like a shrink."

  "That's part of the job description," the man said. "Part shrink." Then he broke the connection. The line immediately began ringing busy again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Coffey woke up to find Crystal sleeping next to him. Every once in a while, one of the cats decided to come into his bedroom and bunk in. Crystal, who was black and white with a nose so cute only Disney could have designed it, yawned and looked up at Coffey. She knew the drill. He'd get up, pad to the bathroom, take care of his bladder, wash his hands, brush his teeth, pull on a pair of chinos, and then pad out to the kitchen where he'd start the coffee and give the three cats breakfast. Crystal looked awfully pleased at the prospect. She nuzzled him and scattered about a few extra meows.

  As soon as he finished up with the cats, Coffey sat down and called a friend of his in Traffic. He gave the man the license numbers of the silver Jag and the van. The friend said he'd get back to him sometime this afternoon.

  He worked out for half an hour, then wrote two pages.

  He was just getting out of the shower, when his phone rang.

  It was Sister Mary Agnes from the shelter. "There was a lady detective here this morning, Coffey. Margie Ryan, her name was."

  "And she was asking about our mystery woman?"

  "Right. Seems a couple of our men saw her come in here and told one of the cops who works this beat. Anyway all this got back to Detective Ryan, so she came over here this morning."

  "She mention me?"

  "Uh-huh. Same guys who saw her saw your cab here. They even remembered your cab number."

  "I know who she is."

  "The mystery woman?"

  "Jenny Stafford."

  "Not the Staffords."

  "The Staffords."

  "Wow," Sister Mary Agnes said.

  He always smiled when she used vernacular.

  "So what's next?" the nun said.

  "I'm going to try and talk to her."

  "Well, I'd better get back to work here, Coffey. I just thought I'd let you know."

  "Thanks, Sister."

  ***

  Coffey did a few more pages.

  Then he had lunch, and sat on the sofa with the three cats watching the WGN noon news. There was another report on the man found dead in the motel room. Now there was also a police sketch of the dark-haired woman seen going in and out of the room. He was stunned by how much the sketch resembled Jenny.

  At one o'clock, he still hadn't heard back from his buddy in Traffic. He decided he'd check his machine later with his remote.

  He also decided it was time to do his least favorite thing of all-a butt-deadening stakeout.

  He brought along a great old William P. McGivern heist novel called Odds Against Tomorrow, about a Southern bigot forced to work on a robbery with a black man. It had made a great movie, too, with Robert Ryan and Harry Belafonte.

  ***

  Eileen, the Stafford maid, was eating a chicken-and-mayo sandwich on Wonder Bread (she'd loved this stuff since she was a kid) and watching the noon news on WGN.

  The Staffords were, as usual, scattered, Tom to his business, Molly to her charities. Jenny was upstairs asleep-still. But after what she'd been through, she needed it.

  Eileen had cleaned toilets this morning. There were eight johns in the place, only three of which ever got used regularly. She'd worn rubber gloves and now her fingertips were puckered, little white worms of flesh trailing down from the nails. She wondered vaguely if her whole body would look like this a few months after her burial.

  She was just taking the last bite of her sandwich when she saw it. And when she saw it, she made a noise in her throat. And her bottom, which had just started to spread now that she had turned thirty-Five, lifted a full inch-and-a-half off the kitchen stool she was sitting on. There on the screen of the 11" portable Molly Stafford like to keep on the kitchen counter-right there in front of her was a drawing of Jenny. No doubt about it. Jenny. Absolutely.

  "Holy shit," she said. Or tried to say. Her mouth was still full with the last bite, so articulating her words wasn't easy.

  The newscaster was saying, "Police insist that the woman is not a suspect but is considered a possible material witness. If you know this woman, call the police right away."

  If you know this woman.

  My God.

  If you know this woman? She could just hear Tom Stafford. He could go from perfectly calm (which he was most of the time) to psychotic (though
Eileen wasn't exactly sure what "psychotic" meant exactly) in under thirty seconds.

  If you know this woman.

  "Holy shit," she said, and this time, having swallowed her last bite, she managed the phrase very well.

  She felt two conflicting emotions-excitement (sweet, quiet Jenny as a murderer was just the sort of thing America's Most Wanted loved to feature) and dread because Tom Stafford was no fun to be around when he was under stress. Molly was always buying him paperbacks on how to handle stress. Eileen had never seen him even pick one of them up. Lately, Molly had tried buying audio books. She didn't seem to be having any better luck with the tapes.

  If you know this woman.

  Eileen reached into the pocket of her gray uniform and took out a small beeper device. She punched 2-7 quickly.

  "Yes?" Frank, her husband, was spending this week painting the Stafford garage.

  "You'd better come in here, honey."

  "Is something wrong?"

  "I'm in the kitchen," she said. "Hurry, please."

  Eileen loved crises and turmoil as much as Tom Stafford hated them.

  If you know this woman.

  Hard to get a bigger crisis than that.

  ***

  Jenny Stafford pulled out of her father's estate at 12:58 p.m. that afternoon. She drove a green Oldsmobile convertible. The top was down, homage to the sunny and warm afternoon. She wore a white scarf that only enhanced the shape of her face and the midnight black quality of her hair.

  Coffey let her get about an eighth of a mile ahead of him and then he went after her.

  He had no idea where she was going. An hour and a half later, he wondered if she had any idea where she was going. She had stopped at the cleaners but emerged with no clothes. She had stopped at the supermarket but emerged with no groceries. And she had stopped at a Barnes and Noble but had emerged with no book.

  Then she pulled her car up to an outdoor telephone. It was too high for her to reach from her car. She got out. She wore a black sweater and jeans. She was so ethereal in Coffey's mind that he was startled by how gorgeous her body was. She was definitely an earthly creature and-for all the romance that bathed her in heavenly light-Coffey's desires were definitely earthly, too.

  She didn't stay on the phone long.

  A few minutes later, she was pulling away from the outdoor phone and getting back into the heavy flow of traffic. Coffey stayed close by.

  ***

  By three o'clock that afternoon, Jenny was starting to feel tired. It made no sense. She'd had plenty of sleep, plenty of good food. So why should she be so tired? Then she remembered something her shrink Priscilla had told her, that mental stress put more strain on the body than did most forms of physical labor.

  She kept wondering about the eight days she'd lost. That, was the stress. Where had she been? What had she done? How did you lose eight days? At a red light, she picked up her cell

  phone and punched in a number. She held the phone to her ear for a time, then broke the connection.

  The headache arrived full-blown. No timid little mouse tracks across her forehead. The thing slammed instantly into complete and total war. She steered with her left hand as she pressed her eye with her right. The eye was throbbing with pain.

  A few minutes later, she was taking an exit.

  The thing was, she had no idea why. Or where she was going.

  There was just the headache. And the disorientation. And this destination she had in mind.

  What was going on?

  ***

  She ended up over by DePaul University. This time of day, there were a lot of students on the streets, talking in small groups, lugging armloads of books back to stuffy little apartments and sleeping rooms, or scoring some drugs from the purveyors who roamed up and down the streets. You could tell the purveyors easily enough. They were the nervous-looking ones. The cops had been on their asses lately.

  The place she went was one of the red brick apartment buildings constructed in the late fifties and early sixties, the notion being that brick would look better longer than any other type of building material. True, it would if it was kept up. But few landlords bothered to keep it up. By now, most of the red brick buildings looked as old and sooty as their wooden contemporaries.

  She parked in back, next to a tan Pontiac sedan. There were no garages, just yellow lines on concrete. Rusted black fire escapes like giant roaches crawled up the backs of the buildings. She went in a rear door and vanished.

  Coffey swept into the parking lot. He was out of his car and in the apartment house in moments. Once he was inside, he heard footsteps two floors above him. He hurried up the steps covered in faded green carpeting. A muddy transparent runner ran from the bottom step in the basement, where he was, to the third floor.

  He came to the top of the steps on the highest floor and then stopped. She. stood at a door near the far end of the hall. He took a couple of steps backward so he could peek around the edge of the stairway without her seeing him.

  She got her purse open and started rummaging through it. She produced, finally, a golden key that she put into the lock on the door. The door opened. She pushed it inward. She glanced suspiciously down the hall. Coffey had time to duck back behind the edge of the staircase. She went inside.

  He gave her a few minutes then went up and checked out the apartment number. 3-C. Why would a woman who lived in a mansion keep an apartment like this in a lower white-collar place like this?

  He went downstairs to check the number 3-C on the mailboxes. These were new boxes. Not a chip on them. Nobody as yet had had time to work them open with crowbars.

  The name on 3-C was Linda Fleming. That was the name Detective Ryan had asked him about. Who was Linda Fleming? He went back to the third floor. The carpeting was dusty and made him sneeze. He also had to go to the john. He'd had three Diet Pepsis so far today. He put his ear to 3-C. Listened.

  What he heard mostly were the ghosts that lurk in all domiciles and disguise themselves as the idle noises of appliances and the gurgle of plumbing and the muffled cries of floor creaks and window rattlings.

  He was just about to try the knob and see if it would turn when he heard the sound of labored breathing and heavy steps coming up the staircase at the other end of the hall.

  She was at least sixty, she was scarecrow-skinny, she wore glasses so thick the people at Mt. Palomar would be envious. And she still smoked cigarettes.

  Flowered, faded housedress. Two stained canvas grocery bags with handles. Industrial strength support hose. Floppy brown oxfords. Gray greasy hair worn like a helmet. And a cigarette that appeared to be at least a foot-and-a-half in length dangling from the right corner of her mouth. And the cough, of course. What could be more pleasant to have-or listen to-than a cigarette hack?

  She studied him skeptically with watery blue-green eyes, coughing all the time, and then said, "She probably ain't home."

  She was responding to the fact that Coffey had posed himself so that it appeared he was about to knock on Linda Fleming's door. By now, she was only three doors away. She set her groceries down and dug in the left pocket of her ratty blue cardigan for her apartment key.

  "I just wondered if Linda was home."

  "Uh-huh," she said, "she works all day." Then, "You sellin' something?"

  He smiled. "No."

  "You better not be because we got this place posted, front and back, NO SALESMEN. That gives us the right to call the law on you if you try to sell anybody anything on the premises here."

  "I'm a college friend of hers."

  "Oh, yeah? You went to the University of Illinois, too, huh?" She was hacking as she said this, hacking and dragging on the cigarette stuck in the corner of her mouth.

  "Yep. I went there, too."

  Great mischief came into her watery eyes and she smiled with tiny black teeth around her cigarette. "That's funny because she never went to the University of Illinois. She went to a girl's college named Clark over in Iowa."

&n
bsp; She'd had her fun. She inserted her key, the door swung inward, she picked up her canvas grocery bags and she started to go inside. "The University of Illinois, huh?" she said. Then she was gone.

  He stood there feeling tricked, foolish. She was a wily old bag, no doubt about that.

  He went back to doing what he'd been doing, putting his ear to the door and trying to spy on the person or people inside. He was still rankled by the hag. On the other side of the apartment door, the phone rang. It was answered on the third ring. Far back in the apartment-the way he was visualizing it, she was in the bedroom-he could hear a female voice speaking. But it was so muffled, he didn't understand a single word.

  His hand, almost as if it were spirit-guided, found the doorknob. Turned the doorknob. And found the door unlocked.

  He eased the door open and stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind him.

  The furniture was about what he'd expected. Clean, sturdy, unremarkable, dark blue couch, two matching armchairs, gray wall-to-wall carpeting, a kitchenette hidden behind two louvered doors, and three paintings that had been painted by artists who were not only starving but blind as well.

  The bedroom door was open an inch. He could hear her more plainly now. She was saying, "Yes, I understand." Jenny's voice. She said good-bye and hung up. Moments later, Coffey heard a shower door being slid back. Then a blast of water. Then the shower door rattling some more as she stepped into the water stream.

  He sat down and waited for her.

  ***

  He could hear her in there, spritzing on perfume. The sound was oddly loud in the silence of Linda Fleming's apartment. He still wondered who Fleming was. and what her relationship to Jenny Stafford could be.

  The spritzing stopped. A closet door was opened, then closed. And then her cell phone rang. But he noted the oddness of the ring sequence-two quick rings, then two long rings. He'd never heard a cell phone use this pattern before. The ringing stopped, then. He assumed she'd picked up. But she said nothing-or if she did, she whispered it very, very quietly. A strange moment, this. And for some reason he wasn't sure of, he thought of the vans that followed her around. And now, followed him around, too.