Every Dark Place

by Craig Smith

  Men and women with badges or suits – to hell with them.’

  ‘I’ve got a badge and suit,’ I protested. I showed him my tin and flapped my thirty year old sports coat at him. I was just a little pissed off about the respect I wasn’t getting from a wanna-be-lumberjack. A prosecutor’s investigator, after all, is a serious piece of business.

  ‘This isn’t Missy’s first psychotic episode, Rick. You know that, I hope?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, boy... her parents didn’t tell you about the other incidents?’

  ‘They told me about putting her into rehab and trying to get her dried out and off drugs.’

  ‘I’m talking about serious stuff.’

  I leaned forward nervously. ‘How serious?’

  ‘About two years after Booker, she had the first one. She wandered off after rehab and was missing for ten days before she showed up in Portland, Oregon. The cops out there had&nheibspfound her bare ass naked digging up a cemetery plot. She didn’t have any ID, and she didn’t know who she was. They tracked her through her fingerprints. Thank God for a criminal record, huh? Anyway, they medicated her for a while and she got it together again. There was another incident in Santa Fe a couple of years later where a state trooper found her walking down the centre lane of a highway stark naked. Nothing but rattlesnakes for company.’

  I groaned.

  ‘Same thing. Didn’t know who she was.’ I shook my head, imagining the effect of something like this in the middle of a trial. ‘ Whoever abducted Missy did a real number on her, Rick.’

  Chapter 27

  Darkness.

  BEFORE I LEFT HIM, Dale Patterson asked me about my face. A little run-in with the police, I told him. He pushed it some, and I had a startling snapshot of my folly come back with uncomfortable clarity. Somewhere between six and ten cops in a circle around me, none of them too close. I am like a bear in a pit. Caught, not tamed. The girl, my dancing partner, gone.

  Rain, lights. Dark shadows of a milling crowd beyond the lights. Witnesses to my folly, I expect.

  There is a rookie uniform who is supposed to cuff me. At my feet, I have three Sam Brown belts stripped of all police paraphernalia. I have bloody knuckles. A warm, swollen lip.

  The urge for one more hero to try his luck against me. I stand waiting with my insane bit of trophy collecting at my feet. I’m in the middle of a quiet street. Swaying, drooling. Hoping the next kid comes before I pass out. When I put him on top of his own squad car and strip his belt off him, I walk back and drop my trophy with the others. Four belts in all. It is a record, and I howl in my glory.

  Of course by then, it has to stop. The others step forward en masse. Order is restored.

  The dignity of the senior patrol officers assured. Handcuffs attached. Lessons applied. Bets paid off. I was tempted to relate the full story. Instead, I told Dale, ‘I shoved a cop.’

  Dale stared at me in awe, ‘You pushed a cop?’ I nodded, pretending some embarrassment. Dale shook his head solemnly, ‘You are in serious need of help, my friend.’

  Chapter 28

  Tuesday 9:00 p.m., March 23.

  THERE IS THE BLAST OF a motorcycle engine as Will comes out the front door of the public library. It registers indistinctly. The noise of urban life, but Will is also annoyed by it. He has heard it several times in the last two days. He looks for it. This time he is rewarded. A fellow rolling through the ally, crossing the street and coming into the library’s circular drive. He comes up fast as Will watches him. Tamara is supposed to pick up Will, but she is late. Night has fallen. In the blessed dark, she will take a long, slow road home. Kissing and fondling now.

  The sweetness and compliance of the girl excites him.

  The motorcycle comes to a stop a few feet before him, and Will watches the man settle his bike on its kickstand. His thoughts leave Tamara Merriweather. The huge-bellied man before him gives him a big oafisircn t%8h grin. ‘They closed?’ He is standing with his bike between them.

  Will isn’t sure about the library. He turns to look back at the doors. It is almost nine o’clock exactly, but he thinks the doors are still open.

  The first blow comes over his shoulder, a lightning bolt of pain. Will crumples to his knees under its force. Before he even understands what has happened, the man strikes him again. This too over his back. The next two flail upon him in hard succession. Practically the same spot. Pain courses through him. A light flashes behind his eyes. Will sees a blackjack, not a fist. It saps him so that he collapses against the pavement. He tries to roll away from the attack. His back protected now, his arms reaching out to guard his chest, the next blows descend on his thighs. Left leg, right, left, right. The big muscles of his legs are hammered mercilessly, and Will’s stomach wretches involuntarily with the pain.

  The man puts his knee into Will’s stomach and holds the blackjack against Will’s throat.

  He pushes until Will’s breath is cut off. Will sucks vainly for air, certain he will die in a matter of seconds. Then fathoming the man’s intentions, Will tries to see past his own panic. He knows it is over, that he will live. This is a lesson. Nothing more. Will has had all the lessons the world can teach. He tries to see the face again, to know who has done this to him. Nothing else matters. The beard, the fat red cheeks, the eyes. The narrow pig eyes.

  Profanity and a promise: ‘...you go near Missy again…’ more profanity ‘ …this will feel like Sunday School!’

  Will sees the eyes behind the slits perfectly now. He stares into them. The man stands.

  Huge belly, lumpish, powerful shoulders. Big thighs. But the eyes he will know even in hell.

  He seems to know Will has marked him and takes it for a threat. He answers with an angry kick into Will’s gut. Will retches, tastes bile. He curls up, gasps for air. Blackness descending over him. A second, a third kick. Razors dancing in his lungs. He rocks back and forth. He hears the motorcycle start.

  Will wants to sit up but can’t. The next thing he knows Tamara Merriweather is screaming. Will blinks slowly and looks at her.

  ‘Help me up,’ he whispers. He tries to sit up but still can’t. He looks past Tamara. He sees people standing in a tight semicircle before him. They are spectators at an accident. A siren sounds in the distance. A tall, thin, bald man comes past the watchers. He kneels close to Will.

  ‘They’re almost here,’ he whispers. ‘Just relax. You’re going to be okay.’

  Tamara stands dumbly off to the side as Will is lifted up and taken to the ambulance.

  Tears stain her white soft face. Will lies back, closes his eyes. The siren screams.

  Chapter 29

  Tuesday 11:00 p.m., March 23.

  ‘TROUBLE, RICK. CALL me when you get in.’

  I rubbed my face and swayed in the darkness of my living room. I was reasonably coherent, but that was assuming I would be talking to other drunks. I had left Dale Patterson, called ll n ">TeaTROGarrat with the news about Missy Worth’s various psychotic episodes out west, which, she admitted, might be a problem even with a sympathetic jury, and then I had gone out determined to shoot sobriety dead.

  I had won the fight fair and square. I thought about getting some coffee and food before calling Garrat. Maybe waiting until the next day. It was eleven. The last respectable hour.

  Could it wait? Trouble. Well, what wasn’t? I picked up my home phone and tapped out Garrat’s number at the farm. After going through her intermediaries I gave her my best imitation of sobriety. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Frank Cottrell called me an hour ago, Rick. Routine assault turns out to be an attack on Will Booker.’

  ‘How bad?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t sound surprised.’

  ‘I’m devastated, Pat. I take it the bastard is going to live?’

  ‘He’ll live.’

  ‘Cottrell have any idea who did it?’ Frank Cottrell was the chief of police for the city.

  He had been left out of this party because
of jurisdictional matters, but he was in the middle of it now and no doubt happy about it. Only Frank Cottrell could envy kids playing in a toxic landfill.

  ‘Connie Merriweather has convinced him the sheriff’s office pulled this stunt.’

  ‘Max didn’t order something like this, Pat.’

  ‘Nice of you to have such faith in Max, but can you prove it?’

  ‘It might take me a couple of hours, but I expect I can.’

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Tell Cottrell he might want to hold off repeating the accusations until you talk with him tomorrow.’

  My second trip over the river and into the wilds was fairly uneventful. Clint Doolittle was not at the Dog Daze End. One of his buddies, and everyone was a buddy at the Dog Daze, gave me the name of a tavern over the state line where I could find him. I caught up with Doo around one o’clock at the Silver Dollar. We danced around a while, and finally I said, ‘I need a good rumour that a biker ran Will Booker through the wringer; otherwise, the sheriff’s department is going to take the blame.’

  This really touched the big guy’s heart, and he told me in his own gentle English he really didn’t care about how things went for Max. We moved on from there: what a sheriff’s justified wrath could bring down on a dumb-ass biker and his gnarly-toothed friends.

  ‘You want a rumour?’ Doo asked me cautiously. He wasn’t an entirely stupid guy, and I think he understood something of the mess we were in with Connie Merriweather’s PR machine.

  ‘A good one,’ I answered.

  ‘Anyone going to get arrested?’

  ‘Not without a confession and a couple of eyewitnesses to confirm it.’

  He grinned at this. ‘Say I heard something. What do I get out of it?’

  ‘A good citizen athirward.’

  Doo contemplated this quietly, before nodding sagely. ‘Okay. I heard someone was pissed at what happened to Missy. He decided to leave a message.’

  ‘ Someone?’ I asked sceptically.

  ‘It was some guy at the Dog Daze, but I was too drunk to see who it was. A bunch of other guys heard him talking too. But don’t start asking around who it was. They were all too drunk to remember.’

  ‘Did he have a scraggly beard and a big gut? Ugly as a dog’s butt?’

  Doo gave me a hard look then he told me in all honesty, ‘He was a pretty damn good looking guy, if I remember rightly.’

  Chapter 30

  Wednesday 8:30 a.m., March 24.

  I TOOK A SHOWER THE next morning with my eyes still trying to grab a couple more minutes of sleep and got to the office at eight-thirty, feeling like a real hero.

  ‘What have you found for me?’ Garrat growled the minute I walked into her office.

  ‘I can give you half-a-dozen witnesses who heard some guy bragging that he taught Booker a lesson. Trouble is they were all too drunk to remember the guy’s name.’

  ‘Doolittle?’

  I nodded. ‘He as much as admitted it – unofficially.’

  Garrat absorbed this as though it were yesterday’s news. ‘Good work.’

  ‘But?’

  Garrat’s smile was anything but happy. ‘But we have a bigger problem.’

  ‘The guy’s dead?’

  ‘We are. Sunday night, Max Dunn told Will Booker – in front of Connie Merriweather – he’s going to play Russian roulette with Booker using six bullets in his revolver.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous, Pat. Max carries an automatic.’

  ‘Save it for the bars, Rick.’ She saw my look. ‘I’m sorry.’ She said this quickly,

  dropping her eyes as if genuinely embarrassed. She had bumped into a truth that was better left unspoken. I was a charity case – a washed up drunk from her father’s generation. ‘I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just... damn him, anyway!’

  ‘Who? Max or Connie Merriweather?

  ‘Take your pick.’

  ‘Did Max really say it?’

  ‘Said it and proud of himself.’

  I closed my eyes. We had lost Will Booker. Maybe. ‘I’ve got a theory, Pat.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘When you go out to North Shore Point, the first thing you notice is you can’t even see the lake from the road. Now if Booker’s out cruising for an opportunity, what makes him stop there?’

  ‘He saw cars.’

  ‘ Three cars.’

  ‘It’s a party. That’s apparently what he wanted.’

  ‘He knew who was there, Pat. Finding those kids was no accident.’

  Garrat considered the argument from a trial lawyer’s perspective – how it would play with a jury – then shook her head. ‘Maybe he knows. Maybe he follows them. Maybe he sees the cars and checks things out from somewhere across the lake, then goes back to take them.

  Too many possibilities to make any particular one stick.’

  ‘What if Missy Worth is having an affair with the guy?’

  Garrat laughed. ‘How late were you out last night?’

  ‘Think about it. A relationship with Booker gives Missy Worth a reason to lie about a lot of the details in her original testimony. For a long time, you remember, Missy didn’t say anything to Nat Hall or Herm Hammer; complete amnesia, but pretty soon she finds out Nat Hall doesn’t know about her relationship; doesn’t even suspect it. All Nat wants is the guy who killed her friends and to hell with the facts; so she gives him what he asks for and never bothers to tell anyone the rest – that she and the others were meeting Booker at the lake.’

  ‘It would take away any doubt about her ID…’

  ‘If we can establish a relationship prior to an attack all the rest washes. Lunatic or not, Missy’s ID is solid. Her testimony is unassailable. Booker goes back to Graysville prison.’

  ‘Have you found something?’

  ‘The original investigation focuses on Booker. Where he goes, what he talks about, whether or not anyone else had a creepy experience with the guy: the usual background search on a solid suspect. The second investigation, the one Bernie Samples conducts for the Star –’

  ‘You mean the one Connie Merriweather fed to Samples.’

  ‘Whatever. That one looks at the abuses Sheriff Hall carried out. What I’m saying is this: if Missy Worth was a wild girl with lots of contacts at the university, maybe she ran into Will and struck up an acquaintance.’

  ‘She was seventeen, Rick.’

  ‘Her sister was taking classes at the U and Missy apparently was well known at some of the fraternity houses. The thing is maybe someone remembers something. Maybe Missy is willing to try the truth on for size – if we ask her nicely. And maybe it wasn’t about sex. Maybe Will Booker was her dope dealer. He was peddling a little grass to make ends meet, wasn’t he?

  All I’m saying is we at least ought to try to see if there’s a connection between the two of them.

  This kind of stuff could just be sitting there waiting for someone to ask the right question.’

  ‘You don’t have a thing, do you?’ I studied Garrat’s eyes for a moment, before I shook my head sorrowfully. ‘Rick, Missy Worth spent last Sunday morning hiding in a closet because she thought Will Booker was standing on the other side of the door. Now we’ll just forget that Will Booker was in church at the time with over a thousand leading citizens – all registered voters, by the way. And we’ll make believe that nothing like thuldis has ever happened before.

  What’s a little post traumatic stress disorder among friends? What I’m thinking about – the thing I just can’t get out of my mind – is Max Dunn trying to explain to a jury how you can play Russian roulette with a fully loaded revolver.’ She seemed to come to a decision after she said this. ‘I’m thirty-one, the youngest County Prosecutor since my old man stormed this office when he was a boy. I’ve got friends who want me to rise and not too many enemies in this world besides Connie Merriweather. I’ll put it bluntly, just between you, me and the fence post, and I’ll deny it if you ever repeat this. I see a big horizon out ther
e for me. Nobody expects me to win every battle – especially a battle I’m not responsible for – and I wanted this case win-lose-or-draw. But it’s gone. Max kicked it away Sunday night. Worse than that he’s convinced that what he did was a good thing. I could have taken a loss. I expected it, to tell you the truth, but I can’t go to court and get laughed at. I can’t even send Steve Massey in for that.’