Every Dark Place

by Craig Smith

  ‘Talk to her, Rick. Find out what happened. See if it makes sense. At this point, all I need is for the thing to sound reasonable. Right now, we have got her home at say two-thirty, three o’clock Sunday morning. Booker was up with Connie Merriweather at six-thirty. It’s a tight window of opportunity, but it’s still possible – unless Missy is claiming that Booker was talking to her after the sun was up. Right now, I’ve got statements suggesting that, but they were made while she was still upset.’

  ‘If Missy Worth gives us a credible story, are you going to charge Booker with witness intimidation?’

  ‘If I believe it, I might.’

  ‘You don’t have any doubt about Will Booker, do you, Pat?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what scares me, Rick. It’s that Connie Merriweather doesn’t. Did you know the guy has two teenage daughters, and he has put Booker in a room across the hall from them?’

  ‘Is that preacher out of his mind?’

  ‘He’s invested over eight years in his cause, Rick. That’s way too much for him to admit he could be wrong.’

  Chapter 24

  Monday 11:45 a.m., March 22.

  MISSY WORTH WAS IN BED sleeping when my escort knocked on her open door. ‘You feel up to another visitor, Missy?’

  Missy’s eyes fluttered briefly, then seeing me, she smiled a lazy, drugged gcou I Drin. ‘You come to give me another chance at your sorry ass, sweet cheeks?’ The attendant beside me got a little edgy, but I thanked him. I said I would take it from here.

  ‘How are you doing?’ I asked. I had come into the room but was standing just beyond arm’s reach, the way folks do at the tiger’s cage.

  Missy had a slack jaw and dull, listless eyes. She looked like a woman who had been asleep for days. ‘Feeling better than you look. What happened to your face?’

  Touching my black eye, I answered, ‘I ran into more beers than I could handle.’

  ‘Hey, the docs all have top-of-the-line drugs, but I could sure use a beer. You want to go get drunk with me?’

  ‘Maybe later,’ I said, taking a chair. From where I sat, I had a better view of the spider web. The spider’s body on her neck was about the size of ping pong ball, the legs of it taking it out that much farther. The web was executed with some real skill, and I knew she had paid good money to mutilate herself.

  ‘I like the work,’ I told her.

  She pulled her gown free and dropped it completely down so I could see... everything.

  ‘Cool, huh?’

  I tried not to stare, but Missy had a lot to try to avoid looking at. ‘Local work?’ I asked.

  She shook her head in disgust. ‘New Orleans. I went down there just for this one guy.

  Years ago! If you’re going to do something permanent, do it right. You know what I mean?’

  She covered herself finally and I quit looking at the floor like some dried up old priest.

  ‘You got any?’ A tattoo, she meant.

  I shook my head. ‘A woman in our office has one,’ I told her. ‘It says MOM, right here,’ I pointed to my thigh about two inches from my crotch and sketched the design.

  Missy smiled lewdly, ‘Turn her upside down, it says WOW. You ever think about that?’

  ‘I probably won’t be able to stop thinking about it now that you’ve brought it up.’

  She seemed to laugh at this, then to think about things. Finally, she told me, ‘Hey, you’re pretty quick for an old man. I thought I was going put you down the other day!’

  ‘Yeah, well, before I became a rich and successful businessman I was a city cop for a couple years, then a state trooper for almost a dozen.’

  She gave me the once-over. ‘What happened to rich and successful?’

  I grinned at this and gave her something like the truth. ‘My ex-wife got the security business I started. I went back to working for a living.’

  ‘You call busting people work?’

  ‘I let other people make the busts. I do follow-up investigations, help the lawyers prepare their evidence and witnesses – that kind of thing.’

  ‘You any good?’

  I laughed and shook my head. ‘I’m pretty old. In this game that counts for something.’

  ‘You’re not that old. I’d do you if I was drunk enough.’

  I won’t say I didn’t react, but I sure hurried to change the subject. ‘Missy, what the hell happened the other night?’

  Missy’s eyes closed, and she tipped her face toward the ceiling. I thought for a minute she had gone to sleep. ‘Nothing,’ she said. Her voice seemed to crawl out of her throat. ‘Not a damn thing happened.’

  ‘Doo said Will Booker showed up at your house. Made threats. Put you in the closet.

  Said Will told you he’d kill you if you came out.’

  ‘Look, you’re all right, man. I mean you have got some guts. I like that. Let’s just forget about it, huh?’

  ‘Was he there or not?’

  ‘What difference does it make?’ I didn’t answer her. After a moment she dropped her gaze. ‘I can’t prove it was him. I can’t even say for sure someone was there.’

  ‘You didn’t talk to him?’ She shook her head. ‘You didn’t see him?’

  ‘Look, forget it. The guy was there, but there is no way I can prove it. Will is untouchable. I’m the one in the nut house.’

  ‘They tell me you’re in until noon next Sunday. That’s a pretty good chunk of time just to give up.’

  ‘Observation.’ Missy’s head rocked like a drunk’s. ‘If I screw up in here it could be a lot longer.’

  ‘I assume you have salary insurance? A good medical plan?’

  She laughed at me. ‘What planet are you from, sweet cheeks?’

  I didn’t even smile. ‘Will Booker hit you pretty hard for not even touching you, don’t you think?’

  After a long silence that threatened to fade into sleep again, Missy answered me. The voice was still raw, but there was an element of confiding that had nothing to do with the playful flirtation she’d been manufacturing just to get me off stride. ‘He was whispering my name for a while; at least I think so, I’m not real sure; it could have been me just remembering how he talked, but I’m telling you, I felt him. I don’t know how else to put it. Ten years, I never felt the guy; last night, he was there. He was outside the house, and I heard something, and then it seemed like... he was standing at my closet door, telling me to come out and play.’

  ‘ Play?’

  ‘That’s how he talked the last time. “Missy! Missy! Time to come out and play, uldрMissy. ”

  That’s what I heard last night. Him standing at my closet door, calling to me like that.’

  I had read her testimony and those interviews Nat Hall hadn’t destroyed, but this was the first time I had heard about coming out to play. ‘I got a deputy sheriff’s report that says you saw him, that he threatened you.’ Deputy Doo.

  ‘That’s probably my mother saying that. The woman’s a hysteric. What can I say? Ten years ago the old gal lost two daughters. Can’t be consoled.’

  ‘Understandable. I think if I were her or your dad, I’d kill the guy.’

  ‘Yeah, well, the parents are the kind of folks who want other people to do their dirty work.’ She was quiet a moment. ‘Things were crazy yesterday. I don’t know who said what, but I’m telling you now. Will was there, I heard him, but I can’t prove it. I didn’t actually see him.’

  ‘The sheriff went out to talk to Will Booker yesterday evening,’ I told her almost casually. ‘Booker didn’t have an alibi until about six-thirty in the morning. After that, he’s got friends who are willing to testify he was with them all morning. When exactly did you hear him talking to you?’ I was helping her get her story together with the timeline. If Connie Merriweather found out about it, I would probably be on the cover of Time next week.

  ‘I can’t really say. After I came home he showed up. I don’t know how long he was there. I kind of lost it after I heard him talking to me like old times.�
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  ‘If you actually saw him, I just might get this guy back into prison – at least until there’s a trial.’

  ‘Only thing I care about is Will Booker stays the hell away from me!’ She smiled prettily, ‘And that’s already been taken care of.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Nothing. Not a damn thing, sweet cheeks. Let’s just say, God is in his heaven and all’s right with the world.’

  Chapter 25

  Monday 1:15 p.m., March 22.

  I CHECKED IN AT THE OFFICE, mostly to make an appearance. Garrat was out and could not be reached for the rest of the day; Massey was in court. Linda Sutherlin was getting coffee.

  WOW. A simple matter of perspective. I said something that passed for pleasant, she gave me a smile that looked to have been stolen from some old piece of Greek marble.

  After that I went on to the Shamrock for lunch. I ordered a sarsaparilla and got a Coke with some lip. I held the pool table a while, then grabbed a little lunch. I had mixed feelings about Missy Worth, to put it nicely. She was lawless and violent, vulgar with her sweetness, and positively obscene with her flirtation. But she was also convinced that William Booker was the man who had killed her sister and her friends and left her for dead in a shallow grave. Thirteen days of conviction.

  Whether he had found her early Sunday morning while I was in the drunk tank and the rest of the world was blissfully asleep or simply sent his spirit the way a shaman will do, just to remind her that he was out, I could not say. I doubted she was lying about what happened, but if I sat on a jury I would have to say there was an overwhelming lack of proof that Booker showed up at her door, and a lot to argue the girl was a lunatic.

  But there were larger issues to ponder, chief among which was the fact that the state’s sole witness in a case of ‘he says / she says’ had just gone into psychiatric care – for a psychotic episode. Garrat was off the hook. No public sacrifices needed. I was back and going to keep my job; Steve Massey was going hang on to what little professional dignity he possessed. And folks were still going to mention the name Pat Garrat when talk about the next governor’s election got serious. Happy ending all around.

  I went back to the office late in the day and cleaned up some other business and worked until well after dark writing up quite a few reports and expecting Garrat to return, though she never did. Around ten o’clock I was back at the Shamrock, drinking coffee when I decided to call Garrat at her farm. The farm was an estate on a few-hundred acres that her daddy had built when he was a young man. I got one of her security people on the phone, and then got switched over to the barns. Garrat was spending a late evening playing the country girl with some of her old corporate lawyer buddies from the capital. I told her to go back to business, we would talk in the morning, but she pressed me for information, so I went through my interview. Missy Worth believed Booker was there, claimed actually to have heard him, but she didn’t see anything.’

  ‘Is she willing to sign a complaint?’

  ‘I didn’t ask her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She’s not that convincing, Pat. If she makes the charge in front of a judge, he’ll throw it out.’

  ‘Forget the lack of evidence for a minute. Was he there or not?’

  I hesitated. How to answer? I wasn’t ready to write off Missy’s fears as pure nonsense.

  ‘She thinks he was. She felt him. She heard him.’

  ‘Not my question.’

  ‘What are we getting from the physical evidence?’ I asked.

  ‘The police don’t have anything, and they looked for prints everywhere. They canvassed the area. No strange cars, no pedestrians. But at three in the morning not a lot of witnesses were up and looking out their windows.’

  ‘After I talked to Missy,’ I said, ‘I checked with one of the docs about auditory hallucinations. He couldn’t speak directly to her case, but he said they’re not that unusual in a typical case of post traumatic stress disorder. ‘Nobody is going to say a word if you drop the case, Pat. Not at this point.’

  ‘What if he was really there, Rick?’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Talk to the parents and maybe some family friends. Missy Worth has been in and out of hospitals for years, but so have a lot of people with addictive personalities. I want to know if this woman is troubled or crazy.’

  Chapter 26

  Tuesday 9:00 a.m., March 23.

  I FOUND MISSY WORTH’S MOTHER at her university office the next morning. Missy had said to me that the Worth family had lost two girls. I was curious to know what she meant.

  According to her mother, Missy never really came home. After the trial, she made a habit of disappearing for two or three nights at a time, never calling to say she was all right. She was suspended from high school for a week for drinking at school. A few days after she returned from her suspension, she attacked her guidance counsellor. After that she was permanently expelled and launched into a series of jobs. Some lasted a few days, others a few hours.

  I asked about substance abuse and got the unadorned facts. They had spent years trying to help, ‘…but the truth is,’ she told me, ‘you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to change...’

  ‘And before?’ I asked.

  ‘If she was experimenting with drugs on occasion as people are saying now, we didn’t know about it. We certainly didn’t see any of the classic symptoms.’

  ‘What about Mary?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘Never.’

  When I tracked down Missy’s father at the faculty club, I got more detail but the same portrait. Missy’s father explained that Missy had acted out repeatedly after the abductions. I wasn’t sure what that meant and said so.

  ‘She would disappear with three or four men for a day or two. When they were out of drugs and booze and money, the men would leave her. Sometimes she tried to hitchhike back home. Sometimes she called us. We got her with some of the best psychologists in the country.

  We tried medication. It didn’t matter. The minute she got free from us, she would go off the deep end and only come home when she had no other options.’

  ‘So she spent several sessions at Catherine Howard?’

  ‘We used different facilities, but I’d say… nearly a dozen serious attempts to get clean and sober. Finally, we realised we couldn’t make it happen. She had to. We helped her get set up in town. We never gave up hoping she would change, but after a while we had to accept the life she chose for herself.’

  ‘Does she ever come to visit?’

  Ken Worth looked me straight in the eye. ‘We don’t have that kind of relationship, Mr Trueblood.’

  I pressed him about the kind of girl Missy had been we<ဈ dbefore the attack. These days we had a good deal of evidence suggesting a problem child, but neither parent was comfortable with Missy-the-delinquent. Missy was not a perfect child before Will Booker, he told me, but she wasn’t into drugs, and she wasn’t promiscuous. ‘Look,’ her father told me, ‘Mary and Missy were normal healthy kids. The Missy who came home… I frankly didn’t know and still don’t.’

  LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, I CAUGHT up with a friend of mine at the university. Dale Patterson was a beefy, bearded fellow who liked to affect the lumberjack on campus, but he was too soft for anything more than the boots and plaid shirts. I had used him professionally twice before I had started working for Garrat, and we were drinking buddies as well. Professionally, you couldn’t beat him. For the price of a few beers the guy would tell you anything you wanted to know about criminal forensic psychology and he’d keep talking until his glass was empty.

  As a long-time prof at the U, Dale had known Margaret and Ken Worth for years. Missy and Mary as well. A normal childhood? I asked. Dale laughed at me. ‘Mary was aggressive.

  Missy was violent. Mary had a problem with a boy. Missy went through a whole bunch of them.’

  ‘ Before the attack?’


  ‘She was a party favour at the local fraternity houses, Rick. This was long before anyone ever heard of Will Booker.’

  ‘Missy was only seventeen when she was abducted.’

  Dale lifted his eyebrows. ‘She looked older.’

  ‘Okay. Crazy girl.’

  ‘Wild girl. Crazy came later.’

  ‘Was there a tender side to her?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure. If she wanted something.’ I told him about the flirtation I’d received Monday and then mentioned with a drinking buddy’s wink that when this was all over I might just get lucky – if she was drunk enough. ‘She wants your approval,’ Dale answered, nodding. ‘You’re a channel to authority without being an authority figure yourself. With you she’s willing to talk.