Dark Omen: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel

by Erickson, J. R.

  “Do you have company?” Wes asked, glancing toward the cracked bedroom door just as Bette slipped away from the opening. He hadn’t seen her.

  “Umm… no.” Garret walked back in holding Weston’s drink. “I mean, not now, but I did earlier. My friend Mitch stopped by.”

  “They found Crystal’s car,” Wes muttered. “Did you know that?”

  Garret nodded. “Of course. I was there for the search. I was surprised you weren’t, Wes.”

  “They told me to stay away. The police. And…” He paused and sat up, downing the glass of vodka in one gulp. He set it on the table, not bothering with the coaster.

  Bette saw Garret staring at the glass, fixated on the condensation gathering on the mahogany finish.

  “I’m married. Did Bette tell you? They haven’t printed it, but it’s only a matter of time.”

  Garret nodded, leaned forward and picked up the glass, swiping the wetness with his palm, and putting a coaster beneath it.

  Wes cringed. “Damn, I’m sorry, Garret. I know you keep your stuff nice. I’m such a fucking mess.”

  Garret peeked at Bette, who cracked the door open and mimed taking another drink. She pointed toward the kitchen and then back to Wes.

  “You want another one?” Garret asked, grabbing the cup and standing.

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Wes sat forward, elbows on his knees, hands pressed into his scalp.

  Garret returned with the second glass.

  This time Wes swallowed only half of it before returning it to the coaster.

  “Bette told me you’re married,” Garret admitted, sitting stiffly on the edge of the sofa. “I was pretty angry and hurt too. I mean Crystal loves you so much…”

  Wes screwed his eyes shut.

  “I know,” his voice sounded choked as he spoke, and when he opened his eyes, tears ran over his sunken cheeks. “I ruined everything.”

  “Why? Why did you date her to begin with when you’re married?” Garret asked.

  “People don’t plan to start affairs,” Weston said. “Everyone thinks so, but it’s not true. They say they’d never do that. They say they love their husband, wife, children too much. They don’t realize that affairs come like a blast of fate, a shooting star, a thousand little moments, choices, accidents, creating this meeting, this chemistry. And once you’ve gone, you can never go back. But you believe in those first hours, days, months, even, that it’s casual, a one-time, two-time fling. And both of you are in on it. It’s a secret. Neither of you wants a commitment, so it will be okay. You can have this indiscretion, this once-in-a lifetime thing, and keep your wife.”

  “It never seemed like a fling,” Garret countered.

  “No, it never was,” Wes admitted. He picked up the glass and finished the vodka, allowing an ice cube to slide in his mouth. He crunched it loudly and swallowed.

  “I fell in love. I fell in love with Crystal the instant I saw her in my class. I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. That’s how powerful that moment was. It’s insane. I went insane, maybe. I couldn’t not be with her. And I knew if I told her about my wife, well, that would have been the end.”

  “Then why didn’t you leave your wife?” Garret asked.

  Wes blinked at Garret as if the thought had genuinely never occurred to him.

  “I… she… she saved me. Hillary saved me when I was at the lowest point in my life. I’d been living like a vagabond for years, since my dad had died. I was addicted to heroin.”

  He looked away from Garret as he said the last part.

  “They haven’t printed that either, but it’s only a matter of time. Oh, and Crystal’s pregnant. Let’s not forget that part. Have you ever heard of a more sensational story? And then what? My professional life is over, my marriage is over and Crystal…”

  “Crystal, what? Wes, do you know what happened to Crystal?” Garret asked.

  Wes shook his head. “I thought she took off. She has an aunt or something in Portland. She has friends all over the country. When Bette started saying she was missing, I kept thinking she’d just reappear, tell me to fuck off, and apologize to Bette for scaring her. But then she didn’t. She kept not coming back, and I started to get scared because Crystal cares too much to hurt other people like that. She might have wanted to hurt me for being such a shit, but she’d never hurt Bette. And then they found her car…”

  Garret shifted uncomfortably and snuck a look at Bette, who twirled her finger, encouraging Garret to keep him talking.

  “I would never hurt Crystal, Garret. I would die for her.”

  Garret nodded, but looked unconvinced. “Do you still do drugs, Wes?”

  Wes widened his eyes. “No. God, no. I haven’t touched anything harder than booze in ten years. I quit cold turkey when I was twenty-one. I mean, that sounds like I did something, but it was Hillary. She’s a nurse, and she locked me in a room. She hooked me to a saline bag to keep me hydrated. She got me sober. I owe her my life. That’s why I didn’t leave her when I met Crystal.”

  “But now she knows about Crystal?” Garret asked.

  Wes nodded. “She knows.”

  “And she’s angry?” Garret wondered.

  Wes blinked at his hands, which he’d braced against his knees as if to keep himself upright.

  “She’s quiet. That’s what happens when she gets angry, she goes eerily quiet. I spent a few days in Traverse City, but I had to teach, so I came back. The thought of returning…”

  “Have you looked for Crystal, Wes? Do you have any idea what happened to her?”

  “I keep going over it again and again in my mind,” Wes said. “When they found her car, I wondered if she killed herself.”

  Garret sputtered and shook his head.

  “I know, I know,” Weston said, holding up his hands. “Crystal would never, but I couldn’t think of any other explanation, especially because they found her car at Frasier Gorge, a place where we went together. I wondered if she was trying to tell me something, send me a message. But they didn’t find her body…”

  “The police believe foul play was involved,” Garret said. “There’s nothing in Crystal’s life that points to suicide. Nothing.”

  Wes leaned back. “Thank god. If she did that, I couldn’t live with myself.”

  Bette glanced at the window behind her, shuffling quietly across the room to look into the parking lot.

  Weston’s Wagoneer was parked in the middle of the lot.

  Bette went back to the door.

  “Keep him talking,” she mouthed, and pointed toward the window. She mimed opening the window and jumping down to the ground. “Search his car,” she mouthed and pointed at herself.

  Garret shook his head, and when Wes focused on him, he turned his head to the side and patted his ear.

  “Got some water in my ear in the shower earlier, darn stuff won’t come out.” He shook his head again and widened his eyes at Bette as if urging her not to do it. She ignored him.

  She slipped to the window and undid the latch, sliding it up quietly.

  Refusing to consider the height, she crawled out and held firmly to the ledge until she’d pushed her whole body through the window. She counted to three and let go, landing with a jolt on the grass. The impact reverberated up through her feet and into her knees, but she managed to stay upright.

  Bette jogged to Wes’s car and reached for the passenger door handle. Locked.

  “Damn it,” she cursed.

  She hurried around to the driver’s side and, to her amazement, she found the car unlocked.

  24

  Now

  “Yes,” Bette hissed, pulling the door open and squatting down.

  “Keep him talking, Garret,” she whispered as she slid into the driver’s seat, ducking her head low.

  She popped open the glove compartment and rifled through Wes’s stuff. A handbook for the car was inside, a pack of spearmint gum and a few CDs. Under the driver’s seat, she found a Twix wrapper but nothi
ng else.

  Leaning over, she searched beneath the passenger seat, pausing when her finger brushed something hard. She wiggled it loose, recoiling when she realized she held the black handle of a sheathed knife.

  “Shit.” She dropped it. She shouldn’t have touched it. Now her fingerprints were on the handle.

  Bette pulled her shirt over her hand and picked up the knife a second time, sliding off the sheath.

  It was a hunting blade, sharp with a serrated edge. A scary knife, and just looking at it caused goose bumps along her forearms. She leaned closer, studying the blade, searching for stains.

  “Wes, wait!”

  The sound of Garret shouting startled her, and she dropped the knife. It clattered to the mat on the passenger’s side.

  She peeked over the dashboard and spotted Wes leaving the apartment building.

  He paused and looked back at Garret, who was waving his arms, his face ashen.

  “Oh, crap.” Bette dipped her head, not bothering to cover her hands, and stuffed the knife back into the sheath before flinging it under the seat.

  She slid out of the car and pressed the door closed. Peeking beneath the car, she watched Wes’s shoes moving across the parking lot.

  Bette crawled on hands and knees, concrete biting into her kneecaps, but not daring to stand. When she got behind a van, she stopped, shifting to a squat and listening as Wes climbed behind the wheel.

  She waited until he pulled from the parking lot to emerge.

  “Holy smokes, Bette,” Garret breathed when he saw her. “Have you gone mad? He nearly caught you.”

  Bette didn’t speak. Her heart was still racing. Her fingertips tingled where she’d touched the blade of the knife.

  * * *

  “Officer Hart,” Bette called, trying to get his attention across the busy police station.

  He stood next to the desk of another officer, both of them gazing at a sheet of paper.

  “Hart,” she tried again.

  He didn’t look up.

  “He has a knife in his car!” she shrilled, attracting stares not only from Hart and the officer next to him, but from four or five additional cops.

  Hart closed his eyes as if preparing to deal with another lunatic who’d stumbled in from the street.

  Bette had a moment of embarrassment, immediately followed by a vision of her sister. The embarrassment vanished, and she marched towards Hart.

  “Did you hear me?” she demanded.

  “The sandwich shop across the street heard you,” he retorted.

  “Well, if you had looked at me, I wouldn’t have screamed it,” she snapped. “I said Weston has a knife in his car. You need to search his car. What if he used it to—?”

  Hart held up a hand to silence her, shot an exasperated look at his colleague, and steered her to an empty room.

  “How did you get access to his car, Bette? Please tell me he invited you to borrow it or take it for a ride, because if you broke in, we have a problem."

  “I didn’t break in,” she exploded. “It was unlocked.”

  “I see. So, you consider an unlocked door an open invitation? If a man’s walking down your street and turns the doorknob to your house and finds it unlocked, he’s welcome to come inside and have a look around?” Hart asked.

  Bette fumed. She planted her hands on her hips.

  “If that man’s sister is missing, and he has reason to believe I might be hiding her in my house, then hell, yes, come on in, man! Ransack the place. Why do I feel like Weston Meeks has more rights than the rest of us here? What about my sister? Who’s worrying about Crystal’s rights? It sure as hell isn’t you guys. The supposed upholders of the law.”

  Hart stared at her incredulously.

  “I’ve been working day and night on your sister’s case. Day and night. But I’m a police officer,” he said. “Bette, not only am I bound by a code of ethics and actual laws, any bending of those laws will almost guarantee that Weston Meeks is never held accountable if he did hurt Crystal.

  “Don’t you get it? If I search his car without a warrant, anything we find in it is inadmissible in court. We could find a knife covered in Crystal’s blood and it’s useless. The jury would never hear about it, and guess who decides if Weston Meeks is guilty? A jury. Yeah, so you’re right, Bette, we’re treading carefully around Meeks’ rights because when it comes time to nail him, we need a rock-solid case. He has a wife with money, which means he’s going to have a slippery lawyer who gets guys like Meeks off all day long. And once he’s off, once he’s acquitted, we can never try him again. He’s free forever, and whatever happened to Crystal…” Hart shrugged and let the words hang between them.

  Bette had been filling up with air as he spoke, gathering a storm of rage on which to fly her rebuttal. Instead, she sagged against the wall with a defeated sigh, the fight leaving her body.

  “But—” she managed, shaking her head, still high on the discovery of the knife. Still convinced it was the smoking gun that would force Meeks to talk.

  “I’ll grab us some coffee and fill you in on the latest. Okay?” Hart said, his frustrated tone replaced by one of sympathy.

  Bette nodded and sat down.

  A mirror took up most of one wall - a one-way mirror investigators used to watch criminals squirm under the harsh fluorescent lights.

  Bette wanted Weston Meeks in that room. She wanted to stand behind that glass and watch his eyes dart from floor to ceiling as sweat spread out in a halo beneath his armpits.

  Hart returned a few minutes later holding cups of iced tea.

  “Paulette, the receptionist, turned off the coffeepot and is forcing everyone to drink tea this afternoon.” He shook his head. “Here, it’s terrible.”

  Bette took it. It was unsweetened but flavored with fresh lemon.

  Hart took a drink, stared at it, repulsed, and slid the cup away as if preferring to put distance between him and the tea.

  “We interviewed Hillary Meeks,” he said.

  “And?” Bette slid to the edge of her seat.

  “She was not very forthcoming.”

  “Okay…”

  “She didn’t know about the affair, but she didn’t react in the typical way. She was rather—”

  “What?” Bette demanded.

  “She was rather frigid. My partner called her Siberian,” Hart explained.

  “Siberian?”

  “Yeah, cold. I’ve told spouses about affairs more than once and, well, let’s just say her reaction was unusual. Women often cry. Men get angry. She sat like a statue. When we finished, she said, ‘Is that all?’ and grabbed her purse like she might leave. I explained that no, it wasn’t all. The woman Meeks was having an affair with was pregnant and had disappeared.”

  “And then what?” Bette pushed.

  “And then nothing,” Hart admitted. “She barely batted an eye. She said she’d never heard of Crystal, and that if Wes had an affair, it was something they’d handle at home, not in a police station.”

  “Did you ask about his behavior? If he’d ever been violent toward Hillary? And how about his alibi? I mean he said he was in Traverse City that day, right?”

  Hart nodded. “Never violent. She sort of smiled when I asked that question. It was the most emotion I saw out of her that day. She said ‘Wes gathers up mice in a little box and lets them out the back door when they get into the house.’ He doesn’t hit her. He doesn’t even kill rodents, apparently. She also said he was in Traverse City the day Crystal vanished. He’d gotten sick the night before, and she believed he spent the day in bed. She was running errands and visiting a friend, so she can’t confirm. He was home in bed when Hillary returned at 10 p.m.”

  “It’s a three-hour drive from Traverse City to Lansing. If Wes took her, he wouldn’t have had much time,” Bette thought out loud.

  “No, not really. And it’s hard to believe someone wouldn’t have seen him. We’ve got alerts out to other departments. Any officers working Highway 127 have bee
n asked whether they spotted his car that day. He didn’t get any infractions, so there’s that.”

  “Has the Traverse City house been searched?” Bette asked.

  Hart shook his head. “No. The house is in his wife’s name, and we don’t have probable cause to get a search warrant.”

  “Then he has unlimited time to destroy any proof that Crystal was there and there’s nothing we can do about it?” Bette fumed.

  “There’s no evidence that he took Crystal to Traverse City. His wife was home on Thursday when he returned,” Hart said. “I’m pretty sure she would have mentioned it if he brought his girlfriend with him.”

  “But what if all the evidence is in Traverse City? It might be our only chance—”

  “We’re doing the best we can, Bette. Right now, we can’t search the Traverse City house.”

  25

  Then

  Crystal looked up from her coffee.

  She’d covered the morning shift at Sacred Grounds, the coffee shop she’d worked at for the previous year, and then settled into a table to work on a research paper due the following day.

  Across the cafe, a woman stood rifling through her purse.

  “I’m so sorry. I know I put cash in here this morning,” she said.

  The woman set her purse on the counter and laid it on its side, revealing a hollow stuffed with a paperback book, Clip balm, a notebook, a scarf and more. The paperback slid to the floor, and Crystal eyed a copy of Rebecca by Daphne De Maurier.

  Crystal had read the book at least five times.

  The woman huffed and searched for her wallet, returning an embarrassed gaze to the man behind the counter.

  “I’m so sorry, I must have left it on my table. What an idiot. I won’t be able to pay for this.”

  “Wait—” Crystal called, jumping from her chair and grabbing her purse. She pulled a ten-dollar bill from the inside pocket. “Here, let me,” she insisted, handing the money to the barista, Rick.

  “No, I couldn’t,” the woman started, her face red as she looked at Crystal.