Every Dark Place

by Craig Smith

Blame it on my prayers to Jude and the good bourbon I had found in my cupboards, but I actually thought it was possible. Not likely but possible. I had the whole case on paper, the lies all documented, and one rather nasty suspicion about the initial attack. All it really took was the right question, the appropriate perspective, one explanation nobody had thought to offer. And maybe a small miracle from a quiet God. My optimism lasted about fifteen seconds, until, in fact, I ran into Steve Massey. ‘You got anything for me yet, hotshot?’

  I smiled innocently. ‘Maybe. Do you want a meeting?’ I asked him.

  Massey’s face lost its colour. Nobody needs another meeting. He was back-pedalling by the time his words hit the air, ‘That depends on what you’ve got. Have you got something or not?’

  I pushed on in a mood to tear my door down rather than unlock it. I got my computer started, went for coffee, and then started making some calls on a couple of unrelated matters.

  Folks down in Hegira still had to be coddled and cooed. After about an hour I was feeling ready for murder and plunged into Booker’s case with both fists knotted. As most of the evidence in the case was now officially worthless and had been entered into the appellate case Booker had just won, I concentrated on the background reports. Several of these were signed by a sheriff’s detective named Max Dunn. These I read fondly. Max Dunn, though not an especially competent investigator, could spell better than the average Shiloh Springs law enforcement officer. Shortly before noon, I set the case files aside, checked on an address, and headed out for lunch. After a couple of beers and a roast beef sandwich I couldn’t finish, I found myself driving by old working class houses that had been partitioned into apartments for the college kids. A bit closer to campus, the properties were mostly shacks with front porches attached.

  I found Missy Worth’s address close to Seventh and Elm. The yard was a pad of dirt.

  The front porch was cracked and collapsing. The curtains looked to be made of worn-out sheets.

  I knocked at the front door, then walked around back. The house was not more than fifteen paces from the railroad tracks. A service road of cinders and weeds lay between the tracks and the cinder block that served as Missy Worth’s back porch. I considered briefly going out to find Missy at the bar she managed but let it go. There was still work to do at the office.

  I ASKED ABOUT GARRAT’S PROGRESS with the appeal, but Sandy hadn’t heard from her.

  I saw Heidi Cameron, our domestic crimes prosecutor. She was at her desk, holding an ink pen and contemplating a quarrelsome comma. Nobody did it better. Settling into my government-issue chair, I poured a little Jack Daniel’s straight into my drinking glass, and continued with the history of William Booker.

  In Manassas, his hometown, Booker had been arrested once for trespassing, age ten. That was the extent of his criminal record, though Max Dunn had turned up a lot of suspicion that he had dealt grass. He was extremely bright, according to some of his teachers, but his schooling was spotty. He had made a habit of missing school as often as he attended it, and his grades reflected it. Having grown up from the age of eleven under the guardianship of his maternal grandfather, a retired Army sergeant who had spent three years as a POW, Will was a reclusive and generally disengaged student, with no social life. He had no close friendships, no romantic attachments. ‘Invisible,’ was the way one of his teachers described him to Deputy Max Dunn.

  ‘Whether he was there or not, it didn’t matter. No one paid any attention to him.’

  At twenty, Will’s grandfather committed suicide. Will inherited a little over ten thousand dollars from the old man. It was not long after this event that Will moved north to Shiloh Springs. He picked up and dropped a couple of different jobs after the move but eventually spent most of his time hanging out at the University’s Student Union building, where he claimed to be a fulltime student on an academic scholarship and sometimes sold an ounce or two of grass.

  < /> <="1em" width="1em" align="justify">A lot of people at the university claimed to have seen Will in the months leading up to the mass abduction, but few admitted to his acquaintance. No one interviewed had any idea where he lived. No one had noticed any person Will might have considered a friend.

  Chapter 9

  Thursday 4:15 p.m., March 18.

  NOT HAVING LEARNED MUCH from the files on William Booker I closed them up for good and headed out to find Missy Worth at her place of employment.

  The Dog Daze End was a little bar I had carefully avoided even in my wildest years of alcoholic excess. It sat off at the side of a county highway about the length of a pickup truck, which was something of a waste of space since only motorcycles were parked in front of the tavern. Sixteen if you bothered to count them, every single one a Harley. I parked at the corner of the building and studied the place warily. The building was painted white with big paint-peeled scabs of cinder block showing through. I saw four dirty windows in the long low wall, each covered with a set of bars. Dead centre there was a jailhouse security door that had been swung open and tied against the wall with a weathered string. The main door was made up of patched plywood decorated with bullet holes. I looked back at the road, then toward the field and woods beyond. I had come across the river and into the wilds.

  The smoke of the place billowed out and the stink of spilt beer hit me hard the minute I opened the door. The place was crowded with only twenty or so people inside. I counted three women with a quick glance but with the long hair and standard-issue costumes of denim and black leather, I might have missed one or two.

  I did not miss the one standing behind the bar. Mid-twenties but looking ten years older, Missy Worth was a plain, overweight woman with powerful sloping shoulders and dark, dull, mean eyes. Her hair was a shabby washed-out brown that hung limply to her shoulders. Almost anything could have improved her looks but nothing was ever going to make her pretty. She wore baggy jeans, a dark, torn t-shirt and a faded denim jacket with praises and salutations for one of the more famous West Coast gangs. Coming out of the top of her t-shirt was a tattoo of a spider sitting in an enormous blue web: jailhouse code for a killer. It covered one side of her neck and anyone’s guess how far down her chest the web went. I knew her parents were society sorts. Dad was somebody’s vice president at the university; Mom was a professor of psychology. They lived in the suburbs, drove nice cars, polished their shoes. That sort of thing.

  I was pretty sure they didn’t talk much with their friends about their daughter Missy.

  ‘We’re closed!’ Missy Worth shouted when she saw me. It was 4:45 in the afternoon.

  Another voice shouted, ‘Let him in, Missy. I need the money.’

  ‘You still blowing folks for quarters, Curly?’ she shouted. Several of the men laughed.

  Curly, whoever he was, had no answer, and I stood there feeling like Missy Worth’s straight man. ‘So tell me, sweet cheeks,’ Missy Worth said as she sauntered down the bar toward me, ‘are you lost or just stupid?’

  < < tdiv height="1em">‘You’re Missy Worth?’ I asked, as I held up my identification. Missy Worth’s face twitched. The eyes did a quick take on the ID. Then she tried to stare me down. I felt like road kill.

  ‘Stupid,’ she said finally and walked away. Grabbing an empty glass from a customer, she poured him a fresh beer at no charge that I could see and set it before him. Then she joined a big man at the end of the bar and lit a cigarette from his pack. She ignored me passionately.

  ‘If you’re Missy Worth,’ I said, walking down the bar and knowing exactly who she was, ‘I want to talk to you.’ I had run a quick check on the woman’s record of accomplishments. All in all, Missy Worth was one nasty female. Nothing had crossed over to a felony conviction but not because she hadn’t tried. There was plenty to show she had a hair-trigger temper and a history of assaulting men. Seven arrests for it, actually. There were quite a few intoxication charges of one kind or another in addition and half-a-dozen traffic violations. Even one solicitation of prostitution that was nothin
g more than a misunderstanding, according to her lawyer. Such was the record and being neither a neophyte nor uninformed, I had been expecting anything but a quiet drink and a friendly discussion about the county prosecutor’s plans for her.

  Still, I was not prepared for the woman’s physical toughness and sheer raw power: the scarred hands, the snarling mouth, the murderous eyes. These are the sorts of things photographs and even TV cameras just can’t quite capture.

  ‘And just what are we going to talk about, sweet cheeks?’

  ‘I want to talk about William Booker.’

  Missy Worth let a nasty grin smear over her face, as she shook her head. ‘I got it, Doo.

  Patty Garrat’s boy here just needs the facts of life explained to him, that’s all.’ I looked back and saw a wall of big-bellied flesh between me and the door. The man named Doo nodded solemnly and lifted his chin. It was a signal to the two monsters to either side of him, and they walked back to their table. I had my exit again if I needed it.

  Missy pulled a bottle of Budweiser out of a chest and popped the cap, taking a long drink of it. Absently, she studied the crowd, and seeing something I couldn’t she went to pour another pitcher. I followed her down the bar as she did this, pushing myself between two men to get in her face. ‘The prosecutor has ordered another investigation,’ I said.

  A cool smile, distant eyes, ‘Look, I told the reporters, I’m telling you, I’ll tell Max Dunn, and I’ll even tell that prissy little boss of yours, if she ever has the guts to get face-to-face with me, I’ve got nothing more to say about it. I said what I had to say in court ten years ago, and that’s the end of it. If people don’t like it, I don’t care. I ain’t going into no courtroom and saying that stuff all over again.’

  ‘Actually,’ I told her, ‘Garrat is hoping this time you might try telling the truth.’

  The head on the pitcher rolled over the plastic edge, and the beer kept flowing. Missy Worth didn’t seem to notice. ‘You’ve got a mouth on you, don’t you?’

  Another customer came to the bar. He wanted three bottles. He looked at me like he was trying to decide how many bones he’d like to break. ‘You Curly?’ I asked and blew him a kiss.

  His answer wasn’t even polite. Missy Worth gave him his beers, then dumped half the pitcher she had screwed up and refilled it. She went out into the room to deliver it. When she came back, she rang up the sale before she finally looked at me again. She tried to pretend she couldn’t believe I was still there.

  ‘So what’s it going to be?’ I asked. ‘Are you going to talk to me here or down at the county jail?’

  ‘Look, I told the truth at that trial. The cops screwed it up. It pisses me off, but I’m damned if I’m going to go out of my way to help them straighten up their mess. So don’t try to threaten me. It won’t work.’

  ‘You’re scared, aren’t you?’ Missy Worth’s face went white, but as much as she appeared to want to, she couldn’t quite find the words to answer. ‘You think now that he’s out he’ll come after you if you agree to testify.’

  ‘What’d you say your name was?’ Amused, superior, but under the surface wanting to let loose.

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I? You’re so damn scared of that guy you’ll let him walk before you try to put him back where he belongs.’

  Missy Worth’s emotions seemed to shut down suddenly, and her voice went cold, ‘Why don’t you leave while you can still walk, pal?’

  ‘Is your boyfriend going to hurt me if I don’t?’ I tipped my head out toward Doo, who was watching everything through tight slits. Once you discounted his twenty friends, Doo was all guts and beer.

  ‘ I’m going to hurt you,’ she answered.

  ‘I think you’re all talk, Missy.’ I said it loud enough for everyone in the room to hear me.

  Missy Worth grinned at her audience, but she was not happy. I saw in the mirror over the bar every face in the room staring at us. Nobody looked worried for the bartender.

  ‘Did you put the wrong guy on Death Row, Missy? Is that why you’re not talking?’

  Missy Worth reached under the bar and came up with a policeman’s nightstick. ‘I asked nice. Just remember that when you’re in the hospital.’ She held the thing in her right hand as she put both hands down on the bar. She looked ready to come over the top if I didn’t back off.

  It didn’t look like a bluff either.

  ‘The guy killed your sister, and you want to let him walk? Only way that works in my book is you either made a mistake or you’re just plain scared.’ The whole place got deathly quiet suddenly, and for a terrible second even Missy Worth was frozen. I nodded with the pretence of satisfaction. ‘So which is it? Are you scared or stupid?’

  Her face flooded with colour as she came over the bar with a roaring curse. H eit suddenler hip hitting the wood surface she swung her feet over fast. As she dropped, her right hand came off the bar, cocking the nightstick behind her waist. Her eyes were hot, and I could see she meant to finish things with the first swing. I stepped forward before she got to the floor.

  That was not something Missy was expecting. I reached under her wrist and took her forearm into her shoulder blades. I heard her scream. I heard the nightstick hit the floor. I looked around and saw everyone in the bar standing up. I put my mouth close to Missy’s ear and hissed, ‘Not scared, huh? Well you must have picked out the wrong man from the line up.’ No answer. Doo and two friends were coming toward us fast, so I let her go with a hard push. ‘Just leaving,’ I told them. I kicked the nightstick out of the way and looked at the three men to see if they meant to try to stop me. My size was not going to mean much in that crowd, but the thought of arrest seemed to slow them down half-a-step, and I sauntered to the door before anyone thought to cut off my retreat.

  ‘I’ll tell Pat Garrat you got the wrong man, Missy.’ I said this loud enough for everyone to hear. ‘It’ll save us all a lot of trouble.’

  ‘I DIDN’T GET THE WRONG MAN!’

  The voice was different. Her savagery was suddenly stained with a strange sort of girlish panic. The eyes were changed too. In her face was a look of uncertainty and fear and powerlessness and dumb rage. I knew the expression well. I had carried it around for a few years after Sarah. Sometimes I could still see it in the mirror.

  ‘Sure you did,’ I told her. ‘You thought you ought to know who did it, so you let Nat Hall convince you it was William Booker.’

  ‘I know who it was! You think I could forget something like that? Thirteen days of hell?’

  One of Doo’s friends stepped toward me, reaching his hand out like a peacemaker, ‘Why don’t you leave her alone, man?’ It was a polite question, but there was nothing polite about the man’s face. After a moment, I nodded. Outside, my new friend escorted me part of the way to my car. He stood and watched as I got my keys out. The tavern door opened again and the

  fellow named Doo came out. He was staring at me with undisguised curiosity and I hesitated.

  Doo sent his friend inside and came toward me. He was wearing only a dark t-shirt and jeans.

  He didn’t seem to notice the cold or rain.

  ‘You tell Pat Garrat this thing’s over,’ he said. ‘Will Booker did it. He served his time.

  That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Are you a friend?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re damn right I am, and I don’t want to see Missy messed up by this thing!’

  I reached into my rumpled, sports jacket for one of my business cards and handed it to him. ‘Tell her to call me if she feels like talking about it. Maybe I can help.’

  The guy took the card and stud>

  ‘Give it to her anyway,’ I said.

  I found a friendly bar after that. Maybe it was a couple. Somewhere past midnight I stumbled home and mixed myself one last drink. William Booker was out, and looking to stay out. The only thing I was not sure about was how much mischief he was planning.

  Part II Whispers

  . .Behold how great a matter a
little fire kindleth!

  James 3: 5.

  Chapter 10

  Thursday 8:30 p.m., March 18.

  TAMARA MERRIWEATHER COMES to Will’s bedroom door. ‘Mom said to give you a towel and washcloth.’

  Will steps toward her. Her eyes meet his tentatively. A big girl, he thinks. Tall with broad shoulders and big haunches. Soft. Pudgy. Eighteen, still the child. Tabit is in the hall pretending to walk by. Tabit watches enviously as her sister stands one desperate step inside Will’s bedroom. Sixteen. Thin. Tall. So tall these girls of Pastor. Buds for breasts, the both.

  Hair long and golden on Tamara. Tabit’s black like the sin she dreams. Tabit with that look.

  And there is a question in it that Will cannot untangle.

  ‘It’s just down the hall,’ Tamara tells him.

  The shower, she means. ‘Thanks,’ he answers.