The Familiar Dark

by Amy Engel

  My first instinct was to confront Cal, step right into his face and ask him what in the hell was going on. But I remembered his expression that day by the river when I’d basically accused him of messing around with Izzy. If I made another misstep like that, leaped without evidence, I wasn’t sure we’d recover. And underneath that worry was a new one, a consideration I’d never really had before with Cal: He might look directly into my eyes and lie to me. I needed to figure this out before I confronted him, nail the facts down tight without any wiggle room.

  Problem was, I wasn’t sure where to start. The answer came to me lumbering through the parking lot of the diner when I drove past. Land, hitching up his pants and heading inside for a predawn cup of joe. And, judging from his ever-growing belly, probably a piece of cherry pie to go with it.

  I swung into the lot, pulled to a stop right in front of him, and leaned across the passenger seat to roll down the window.

  “Jesus, Eve,” Land said, bending down to look at me, one arm braced on the roof of my car. “About took off the tips of my toes.”

  “Sorry,” I said, and he rolled his eyes at my dismissive tone. “I was wondering if you’ve heard anything new about the case?”

  “Nothing we’re ready to share just yet.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Land sighed. “We’re working it as hard as we can, Eve.” I heard the frustration in his tone and the sincerity, too. It shocked me a little. Sometimes I forgot that Land might actually care about who killed Junie and Izzy beyond wanting to clear it off his books. “Wish I had more to tell you, I really do.”

  “What about Matt?” I asked, throwing out my bait to see what I might catch.

  Land jerked back a little, scowl on his face. “Matt? You mean the one dumb enough to mess around with Izzy Logan and then get himself blown to bits?”

  A tiny pulse started ticking in my stomach. “Yeah,” I said, careful.

  “He didn’t have nothing to do with the murders,” Land said, leaning closer now. “I sure do wish I’d had a chance to talk to him about his sniffing around Izzy. I woulda made sure he never pulled something like that again. But he was working a shift at the strip joint when the girls died. Half a dozen witnesses, at least. He had an alibi as tight as those pants he wore.”

  The pulse in my stomach ballooned and bottomed out, leaving a hollow pit behind. What had Cal said when I’d asked him about talking to Matt? He tried denying it at first, but we kept pressing him. Cal and Land talking to Matt about his relationship with Izzy. But here Land was, knowing nothing about it. It was such a small, stupid lie. And yet I couldn’t think of any reason Cal would tell it unless it was hiding something bigger and uglier.

  “You been thinking Matt was the one who killed the girls?” Land asked. “I can see where you might jump to that conclusion after the business with him and Izzy. But like I said, it wasn’t him.”

  “I guess I thought maybe he was involved. Knew something. That’s why I was asking.” I was rambling, words butting up against each other, and I forced myself to take a breath and relax. “Seems like a lot of people dying around here recently. I made a leap I probably shouldn’t have, that’s all.” I tried on a smile. “That’s what happens when you can’t sleep. You lie there overthinking everything.”

  Land stared at me for a moment. “Huh,” he said finally. “Well, try and get some rest, Eve. We’ll let you know when we’ve got something, all right?”

  “Okay.” I nodded. “Thanks.”

  Land knocked twice on my roof in response and then edged around the front of my car and into the diner. It was the first time in years I didn’t have the urge to hurt him.

  * * *

  • • •

  I waited until Cal left for work, watched him pull away from the curb and head west toward the police station. I’d parked a block away from his low-slung duplex, but still huddled down until I barely cleared the dashboard, although from what I could tell Cal never once glanced my way.

  I’d let myself into Cal’s place a hundred times over the years. I had his key right next to my own on my worn key ring. But this morning felt different, covert and suspect. I didn’t exactly slink up to his doorway, but it wasn’t my usual casual stroll, either. I was very aware of myself and the world around me, the sound of my footsteps, the wind through the trees, the open blinds in Cal’s living room window, the sun hitting the back of my neck. The other half of Cal’s duplex was occupied by an elderly woman who rarely came outside. The most contact Cal generally had with her was when she banged on their shared wall when he had a football game turned up too loud. I didn’t think she’d be paying much attention to my approach. Still, I let myself in quickly, didn’t really take an easy breath until I had the door closed and locked behind me.

  “This is stupid,” I said under my breath. What did I think I was doing? What did I actually think I was going to find? Crystal probably wasn’t even right about Cal hanging out with Matt. And there was probably a totally logical explanation for why Cal had lied about him and Land talking to Matt about Izzy. None of it had to mean anything. But what if it does? my mind whispered.

  Cal’s place was nicer than mine by objective standards, bigger, slightly more updated. But he used it only as a place to shower and sleep, a way station. He spent most of his time at work or, before Junie died, at my apartment. There wasn’t much that marked this place as Cal’s. No desk with overflowing drawers or shelves of knickknacks perfect for concealment. I started in the kitchen, although it seemed an unlikely spot for anything suspect. It didn’t help that I had no idea what I was looking for. But half the kitchen drawers were empty, and the other half held standard kitchen fare: a spatula, a whisk with the tag still attached, a pot holder Junie had crocheted as a Christmas present a few years ago.

  I moved on to Cal’s bedroom, ran my hand over the pale oak headboard and matching dresser I’d helped him pick out when he’d first moved in. He hadn’t cared about what we got, seemed content to sleep with his mattress on the floor and his clothes stored in milk crates, but I wanted him to have something homey, something to help turn this bland beige box of a room into his personal space. But other than the furniture, he’d never done much. No art on the walls. No clutter on the nightstand. Only a single framed picture of Junie and me on top of his dresser, both of us laughing, my arms encircling her from behind. Looking at Cal’s room made me sad in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It was too empty, too blank. Like a life that was never fully lived.

  I’d always used the space between my mattress and box springs as my hiding place when I was a kid. Not the most ingenious hiding place, but I never had much to hide to begin with. But Cal had always been cleverer. Like me, he hadn’t had much worth squirreling away, but when he did, he went to great lengths to make sure it wouldn’t be found. I checked all the obvious spots, but I didn’t hold out much hope of finding anything there.

  Eventually I ended up in his closet, reaching my hands into the corners of his high shelf and then on the floor, running my fingers along the baseboards. I’d about given up when I felt the edge of the carpet pulled away from the floor. I tugged and it came up easily, exposing a square of subfloor that had been cut out at some point and then replaced. I sat back on my heels, heart galloping, sweat slicking my palms. Did I want to lift up that piece of flooring? How badly did I want answers?

  “Stop being a chickenshit,” I said, my voice too loud in the stillness. I tried using my bare hands to get the square of plywood up, but had to dig out my keys and use one to pry up an edge enough to slip my finger into the gap. The square came out easily after that, and I peered carefully into the dark space below. I didn’t see anything and I hoped maybe I was wrong. Maybe this was a remnant from the builder. Maybe this hidey-hole had nothing to do with my brother at all.

  I reached a hand down, wincing a little in anticipation of bugs or rats, but my fingers bu
tted up against something smooth and cool. I pulled it out. A freezer-sized ziplock bag filled with cash. A sound came out of me, a moaning kind of cry, and I dropped onto my stomach, reached my whole arm into the space. By the time I was done, there were seven bags of cash on the floor next to me. Thousands of dollars. More money than I’d ever seen in my life.

  Follow the money. Well, here it was, spread out next to me on Cal’s closet floor, but I couldn’t quite put it together with Junie’s death. Partly because I didn’t see how it fit and partly because I couldn’t stand to click the final pieces together. I was making a low, animal humming sound in the back of my throat, and I forced myself to take deep, even breaths until I stopped. I clicked through possibilities in my mind, trying to find one that slotted into place. Cal and Matt stealing money from Jimmy Ray, maybe? Junie killed as a kind of punishment? But then why would Jimmy Ray point me toward the money, and his own guilt? Maybe Cal was stealing directly from Matt and he went after Junie. Sent someone to deliver the message while he worked at the strip joint hiding behind his alibi.

  I sat up, leaned back against Cal’s closet wall. I needed to talk to him, figure out what role he’d played in all this. Because there was no denying now that he was involved, somehow. I leaned forward, reaching to replace the piece of subfloor, and caught a glint of light from the dark hole. Something I’d missed, something shimmering. My brain knew what it was immediately, but my heart refused to believe it until I had it out of the hole, held right up next to my face. A phone. With a pink glitter case and a cracked screen. Izzy’s missing phone. I’d seen her texting on it dozens of times. Izzy’s lost phone hidden away in Cal’s house. There was no explanation for it, no reason he could possibly give for having it that didn’t end with two girls dead in the snow.

  I thought about the text Izzy had gotten on her phone that morning, luring her to her death. Jimmy Ray’s black eye from Cal, and my too-quick assumption that he was interrogating Jimmy Ray when maybe he’d really been covering his own ass. The way Cal steered me away from Jimmy Ray’s advice to follow the money, subtle and delicate, but maneuvering me just the same. How fast he’d shown up after Matt’s trailer had blown up, there practically as soon as the explosion lit up the sky. Because he’d been there all along, I realized. Had killed Matt to keep me from finding out what he knew, to keep Land from asking Matt all the right questions.

  The walls of the closet moved closer to me and then away, rippling like waves, and I lowered my head down between my knees. Up until this moment, some part of me had still hoped that maybe it was only the money. That whatever Cal had been involved with, however bad it was, didn’t relate directly to the girls’ deaths. But the phone changed everything. The phone was proof that the person I trusted most in the world was responsible for my daughter’s death. Now I had to figure out what I was brave enough to do about it.

  * * *

  • • •

  Zach smiled when he opened his front door and saw it was me, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Hey,” he said, “Come on in.” He stood back to usher me inside. He didn’t move farther into the house, though, and his gaze darted toward the kitchen and then away. For my part, I was so jittery that I bounced up and down on my toes, my eyes swinging from him to the door, back and forth, back and forth. All I could think about was the time I was wasting. But for some reason I couldn’t even name, I felt like I owed him this chance.

  “So,” he said when I’d turned down his half-hearted offer of coffee. “What’s up?”

  “I know who did it,” I said. I’d meant to ease into it, not vomit it at his feet, but everything inside me was fizzing and popping, out of control.

  Zach stared at me, the color draining from his face. “What?”

  I flapped a hand through the air, watched it like it wasn’t actually a part of my body. “I mean, it’s possible he didn’t actually do it. But he was involved in it.”

  “Who?” The question came out on a limp puff of air.

  “Cal,” I said, forcing the word from my throat.

  Zach’s whole face scrunched up, blank with incomprehension. “Your brother? But he’s a cop.”

  “I’m aware,” I said, impatient with this part of it. I wanted to fast-forward through all the how? what? why? questions. The truth was, I didn’t have answers to any of them. And Jimmy Ray had been right. When it came down to it, I didn’t care about the why. I only cared about the who. “I’m going to talk to him. Do you want to come with me?”

  “Me . . . what . . . what about the cops? The other cops. Shouldn’t we be calling Land right now?” He turned toward the kitchen, and I grabbed at his arm.

  “No. We’re not telling anyone. Not yet.”

  “What are you talking about?” Zach’s voice was rising with each word, and I pushed down with my hand, trying to silence him.

  “Calm down,” I said. “We’ll tell them soon. But I want to talk to him first. He’s my brother. I want to hear what he has to say before Land and a bunch of lawyers get in the middle of it.”

  Zach forced out a laugh, ran a hand through his hair, leaving it standing up in uneven tufts. “What, you’re going to go all vigilante on his ass? Is that your big plan?”

  “I didn’t say anything about going after him. I just want to talk,” I said again. “I think I’m allowed that much.”

  “I don’t . . .” He sank down onto the bench near the front door. I stayed quiet, let him work through it for a second. “It seems like a really bad idea, Eve,” he said finally.

  “Maybe,” I admitted. A noise in the hall caught my attention, the whisper-light sound of a footstep. But when I turned, no one was there.

  “What if he hurts you?”

  I turned back to Zach. “I don’t think he will.” Of course, before today I would have bet anything, risked anything, on the idea that Cal would never hurt Junie. That he’d take a bullet before he’d harm a hair on her head. So it was entirely possible that I was wrong. The thing was, I didn’t much care. “Look, I didn’t come here for your permission or your blessing. But you were her father. I thought you had a right to know, and I wanted to give you the chance to come with me.”

  Zach stared into his coffee mug like the right answer might be hidden in its depths. “I don’t think so,” he said. “This isn’t me, Eve. It’s not how I handle things. I won’t say anything to Land. Or Jenny. At least not yet. But I won’t go with you, either.”

  In truth, it was exactly the answer I’d been expecting. The one I wanted, really. Because it proved, after everything, that I had been right. Junie had never been his. She’d always been solely and completely mine.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Well, damn,” my mama said when she pushed open her trailer door, still dressed in the same clothes as the last time I’d seen her. “Wasn’t it just yesterday that you told me to forget I had a daughter? So who the hell are you? I don’t allow strangers on my property.” She smirked at her own cleverness.

  This moment was the one that would decide everything. If I crossed her doorstep, asked for her help, trusted her, there was no going back. No pretending ever again that I was anything other than my mother’s daughter. No better than her. No different.

  “Let me in, Mama,” I told her. “We need to talk.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  I was sitting on a rock next to the river when he found me. I’d been watching the water flow past for over an hour, lost in the ripples and eddies, the occasional silver flash of a fish’s scales. I was surprised when I looked up and saw that the sun was slipping through the late-afternoon sky, its edge kissing the horizon and lighting it up with streamers of pink.

  “Hey,” Cal said. “What’s going on? You’ve got Mama worked up into a tizzy. And you know that takes some doing.”

  I could barely look at him; hearing his voice was bad enough. Reminding me of all our childhood hours. The tim
es he’d fed me when I was hungry, comforted me when I was hurt, reassured me when I was terrified. Cal, who I loved more than myself. More than anyone but Junie.

  He sat next to me, and I could feel his eyes on my face, smell his shampoo when the breeze kicked up. “Are you okay?” he asked. “I kind of freaked out when Mama showed up and said I needed to get out here. I think she thought you might have . . .” He gestured toward the river, where water crashed over rock in an endless spill.

  I didn’t say anything. Pulled Izzy’s phone from my jacket pocket and set it on the ground between us.

  Cal inhaled once, sharp and fast, scrambled backward on his butt like I’d put down a grenade instead of a cell phone. “Listen,” he said, voice high and trembling “I can explain it. I can—”

  I turned and looked at him. “You can explain how Izzy Logan’s phone ended up hidden in your house, or you can explain why you killed them?”

  Cal’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, but nothing came out. He looked like one of the countless fish he’d caught and gutted right at this very spot, and I felt the insane urge to laugh. And I knew from the look in his eyes that my worst fear was true. He’d been the one to wield the knife after all.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he said finally. “It happened fast. It all got away from me. So fast.” His voice broke, and fat tears spilled down his cheeks. He covered his face with both hands and wept. I turned back to the river, watched the wind ruffle through the grass on the far side. I could be patient. I could let him cry, and talk, and explain. None of it mattered because this was already ending only one way.

  “Please,” he said, reached out and laid a hand on my arm. I looked down at his fingers, imagined breaking each one until he let go. “Let me . . . let me tell you what happened. It’s not what you think.”