Daddy Darkest

by Ellery Kane

  “Touché.”

  December 23, 1996

  The day after Clare laid Rodney Taylor’s baby in the ground—it helped to think of it as his, not hers, certainly not theirs—she went to school. She clung to routine, to putting one foot in front of the other for as long as she could, until the distance between herself and that unspeakable day was long and wide. Now was no different. She did her usual run in the biting cold, forced down a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, and drove five miles out of the way for coffee. Best to avoid Lizzie if she could.

  She planned to spend the rest of the morning in a deliberate countdown to 9:30 a.m., Cullen’s session time. Door locked, lights off, because the last thing she needed was another surprise visit from Ramirez. And she didn’t have the stomach to handle Fitzpatrick today. But, as usual, he didn’t get the memo.

  “Morning, Clare.” Fitzpatrick leaned against the wall by her office. He’d been waiting for her. “I need to talk to you.” Her heart took off fast as a fox, the dogs behind her, trailing her scent. Part dullard, part bloodhound, Fitzpatrick seemed to have half a nose for trouble. “I was hoping I’d catch you before my nine o’clock meeting.”

  “You caught me.”

  “Indeed.” He twittered like a schoolboy. “I signed you up for a staff presentation in the new year. I hope you don’t mind.”

  She relaxed a little. “The topic?”

  “Whatever you’d like. Your dissertation, perhaps? I seem to remember it had forensic relevance.”

  He knows. He knows. He knows! “Neonaticide.” The word rolled off her tongue, detached, as if it wasn’t an essential part of her, as connected as the very umbilical cord she severed. As if she hadn’t handpicked the topic, desperate to fix herself somehow, to unearth the why that had always eluded her. Her own. “Baby killing,” she clarified. “Usually shortly after birth.”

  Fitzpatrick’s eyes widened a little, but he hid it well. “Intense, but important work. I imagine those poor girls are often misunderstood.”

  Poor girl. Clare saw herself bloodied and alone in the bathroom and nodded. “The typical perpetrator is relatively isolated. Or at least that’s how she perceives her situation. Often, she won’t admit she’s pregnant. Not even to herself. Sometimes, she may believe she’ll miscarry or the baby will be born dead. Magical thinking, you know? Usually, she’s surprised when it comes. Shocked, even. And then she panics. She acts impulsively. Can you imagine?”

  After a long pause, Fitzpatrick replied. “Remarkable. That level of denial.”

  You have no idea. “Remarkable,” Clare repeated.

  Clare sat still as a spider. Breathing in. Breathing out. With each inhale, her paranoia loosened its grip on her neck. With each exhale, she was a little more sure Fitzpatrick had no idea what she’d done. How could he? At 9:20, she answered a soft knock with a tentative, “Who is it?”

  “It’s me. Clive. Are you . . . ” She opened the door just wide enough to see his face, then yanked him inside, turning the lock and checking it twice. “ . . . okay?”

  Clare had planned on easing into it, breaking the news gently. But now that he’d arrived, now that Fitzpatrick had her on edge, the words tumbled out without her permission. “Ramirez is blackmailing me. I—I did something . . . for him. I shouldn’t have. It was so stupid. Now he wants me to set you up.” It felt so good to release it—like coming up for air after holding your breath underwater—that she almost laughed.

  “What did you do?” He didn’t say it, but his tone suggested it. Clare shrank away from him, wondering why all men saw her that way. Even Cullen. Even Neal.

  “Not that. If that’s what you’re thinking.”

  He took her by the arms and turned her to face him. “God, no. I would never think that.” A smoky fire burned in the blue-gray of his wide eyes, and she felt foolish for doubting him.

  “I took some keys from the control room. Briggs said they unlock the kitchen.”

  “Briggs knows?”

  She shook her head. “He knows the keys are missing. Not that I took them.”

  Cullen stayed quiet for a while, but his body talked to her. A whole conversation. He dragged the chair into the corner—as far from the door as it could get—sat down, and pulled her onto his lap. With both hands, he smoothed her hair from her face, holding it in a loose ponytail as he put his mouth on hers. The way he kissed her, it was as if their lives depended on it. Hers anyway. After he’d pulled away, breathless, she wished they were back in the laundry closet last Thursday when she didn’t have to stop herself from wanting him.

  “Tell me everything Ramirez told you.”

  “I’m supposed to meet you somewhere . . . the laundry closet. For a rendezvous. Only I wouldn’t be there. It would be him or his goons instead. The EME. To kill you.”

  “Did he say when?”

  “He’ll let me know.” Clare shuddered at the idea of it. Alone again with Ramirez and his twisted smirk and devil eyes.

  Riled, Cullen paced the length of the office like a caged beast. His jaw tensed just before he smacked his fist on the table, sending her brand-new nameplate tumbling. “I can’t believe I let you get mixed up in this.” With a long drawn breath, he retrieved the nameplate, taking a closer look. “Is this new?”

  She ignored the question. Briggs meant nothing, and she’d only put the damn thing on her desk in case he popped in to look for it. But Cullen wouldn’t see it that way. “You? I’m the one responsible.”

  “Fine,” he agreed. “We’ll split the blame. Eighty, twenty.”

  “Me, eighty. You—” A shadow at the door, obscured behind the wreath and beveled glass, froze her in place.

  “Everything okay in there?”

  “It’s fine, Dr. Fitzpatrick. We’re just finishing up our session.”

  “Alright. Just checking. Looks like your 10:30’s out here waiting.”

  Cullen touched her hand, gave it a quick squeeze. “Just be yourself,” he said. “Act normal.”

  She didn’t want him to leave. Without him, she felt exposed. A turtle without a shell. “I’m not sure I know how to be normal.”

  “Welcome to the club,” he said with a wink that could melt ice.

  Tony Perez acted normal too. An entire session went by, and he hadn’t so much as looked at her cockeyed. Still, it lingered there in the room. The feeling both of them were pretending at something, playing roles worthy of an Academy Award. For the rest of the afternoon and the whole drive home, she analyzed that hour for signs of a crack in his façade and came up empty-handed. He told her about his childhood in Compton. Single mother. Father in prison. Siblings to feed. He joined the Compton Varrio Tokers at fourteen in search of a family. He seemed nice enough for a murderer.

  Clare navigated the turn into her apartment complex, feeling relieved to see her cramped parking space, her green door, her cheesy welcome mat. Sometimes your body knows before the rest of you. And Clare’s body was a finely tuned antenna, humming at any sign of danger. She felt the prickles on her neck, tingling fingers up her spine. Then, she saw it. A small, feathered lump. A canary. Not the kind of bird that just happens to drop dead on your doorstep. She knelt down to inspect it, smoothing its bright yellow feathers with her finger. The bird’s neck twisted, the angle severe, the head nearly broken off.

  She found the note underneath the broken body.

  Dear Dr. Keely,

  Keep your mouth shut. Do what you’re told. December 28. 7 p.m. Remember, we can find you anywhere, and this is what happens to canaries.

  Sincerely,

  Your friends

  Clare read the note again. December 28, the arrival date of el paquete—the package Torres and Bonner discussed. It couldn’t be coincidence.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Clare jerked back like she’d been shot. She tried to figure out which was worse. The menacing note folded in her hand or Neal, open-mouthed in front of her, eyeing the dead bird as if she’d killed it herself. “A canary.”

>   “I’m not asking what kind of bird it is. I’m asking what it’s doing at your front door.”

  Clare shrugged unapologetically. Like that was a reasonable response. “What are you doing at my front door?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Well, how do I know you didn’t put it here?” It was cruel, but desperate times . . .

  Neal just shook his head. She could see now why it never would’ve worked between them. Darkness can only be understood by darkness, and Neal didn’t have a dark bone in his body. “Yep, you got me. And there’s a bunny boiling on the stove inside. Go on in. Check it out.” He didn’t intend it to be funny, but she smiled anyway. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on here? What’s going on with you? Lizzie called me last week. She’s sick about you, Clare.”

  “And you?” Lizzie told him, she thought, utter terror coursing like a drug in her veins. She told him what I said about Cullen. “Are you sick about me?”

  “No.” His roots firmly anchored to the ground, Neal didn’t look away from her. “I feel sorry for you. Whatever you’re doing, whoever you’re doing it with, you’re in way over your head.”

  “So you don’t care?” Her heart cracked down the middle. She wanted him to care. She wanted him not to.

  “Did you have sex with him?”

  “Who?” she asked, clinging to innocence as long as she could.

  “You know who.”

  “Is that how you decide if you care?”

  “That’s how I decide if there’s any of my Clare left for me to care about.”

  She couldn’t say it out loud, but Neal read her silence. He spun around without another word, and Clare watched him walk away. In her mind, she raged at him. Screamed so loud, her throat was raw. In her mind, she yelled, Your Clare never existed anyway.

  26

  TWO

  I stayed close to Levi as he prowled toward the back entrance of Green River Trucking, my eyes focused on the freckle on the back of his neck—at the intersection of chestnut hair and tan skin. It seemed the safest place to look. The room had begun to warm in the midmorning sunlight, cooking the smell of death and fear until it felt hard to breathe. One glance in the wrong direction, and I’d be hunched over again, empty-stomach heaving.

  Levi peered through the small window at the back, then turned the handle and nudged the door ajar. Like a springtime field in Bellwether, the weeds grew knee-high here and thick. So thick, Levi gave the door an extra shove to force it open. So thick, I felt the grass pull against my jeans. Like it wanted me to stay put. Around the perimeter the same tall fence boxed us in. Chain link and razor wire.

  “Geez, it looks like a prison,” I muttered, gazing up at those menacing teeth meant for intruders like me. Even from down below, they threatened. They promised a cut to the bone.

  We started with the first of three unmarked metal buildings, the first two smaller than the last. Levi tried the handle—unlocked—before he cracked the door and let the sunlight in. It reminded me of the time Ginny and I broke into the old Miller house on Halloween afternoon, the one everybody said was haunted by the ghost of Mrs. Miller. Bad things can’t live in the daytime, Ginny had said, her voice steady, and I believed her. But these demons didn’t scatter in the soft, pale light. And I braced myself against the wall, dizzy.

  A few cots, strewn with blankets, dotted one corner. Whoever slept there had just awakened. A brimming pot of black coffee waited on the warmer plate. Two cups, still empty. A loaf of bread, unopened. A hulking, muted beast of a television broadcasted a soccer game, business as usual. In the center of the room, a fan undulated, blowing its cool breeze as gentle as a whisper. To me. To Levi. To the man with half a head lying still on the floor behind the row of cots, the fabric of his loose-fitting T-shirt billowing in the manufactured wind.

  “Holy shit.” Fumbling with his gun, Levi pulled the door shut behind us. In that airless tomb, the only sounds came from the fan and our own lungs desperate to keep up with the sucker punch of our surroundings. I didn’t look at the man again. Instead, my eyes watched the soccer game, the ball passed between feet, skillfully up the field toward the goal.

  “What did that?” I asked finally. Hearing the panic in my voice made me more afraid. What. Not who. I knew better, but I half-expected something inhuman to creep out from its cave, its mouth wet with blood and skull bits. Something wild and ferocious and inevitable. That would make sense.

  “Probably an assault rifle. It’s a high-muzzle velocity weapon.” When I stood there, open-mouthed, he added. “It causes major damage. Obviously.”

  The soccer ball bounced off a knee and skittered out of bounds as Levi moved past me toward the man, his footsteps weighted with dread. Back in play, the ball propelled toward the net, only to be swallowed and spit out by the goalie’s frantic hands.

  “There are two,” Levi said.

  “Two guns?”

  “No.” The ball rested on the turf, waiting, accepting its fate like me. “Two men.” Surprise compelled me to look, but Levi’s back shielded me from the worst of it. Only the man’s splayed legs, his feet bare. The blood spatter that could’ve been paint if I didn’t know it wasn’t. I noticed it now in the television’s glow—a fine spray, up the drywall like mice footprints. “And Sam . . . ” He paused for a heartbeat, and I prepared myself. “They both have tattoos. They’re EME. It looks like somebody surprised them.”

  While Levi busied his hands, rifling through a backpack propped in the corner, I sank against the drab wall behind me, wishing I could blend into it. Disappear. “What does Rodney Taylor have to do with the EME?”

  Levi turned around, his face drained to a sickly color, the hue of chalk and revulsion. “One guess,” he answered, presenting me with a brick-shaped package covered in brown paper and plastic. “There’s more where this came from. At least five kilos.”

  “Drugs?”

  “That’s their thing. The Mexican Mafia controls most of the drug trade in and out of prison.”

  I took the package in my hand, felt the weight of it. It seemed innocent enough. But I imagined a dark heart pulsing underneath the ordinary wrapping, and I couldn’t wait to be rid of it. Like it might bite if I held it long enough. I tossed it onto a small wooden table in front of the nearest cot. “It smells like . . . ”

  “Coffee.” Levi finished my thought. “They package it that way for transport. In coffee grinds, detergent, cheese. Anything to throw the dogs off the scent.” Before he stood up, he swiped a blanket from the floor and covered the dead men. For me, I thought. Then he motioned me to fall behind him as we headed back toward the door.

  “Are you ready?” he asked. I wasn’t. Not at all. But I nodded. Two more buildings, I told myself, and inside one of them, my mother. She had to be. And that comforted and terrified me all at once.

  “What about the gun?” I asked.

  “Not here.” Out there, then. Levi turned the handle. His boots crunched the grass. I found his freckle and followed.

  December 24, 1996

  Briggs pointed across the yard, puffing his chest the way he always did when he thought he was being helpful. “That’s him. Raul Torres. They call him el Oso—the Bear. Want me to wave him over for you?”

  Torres moved like a bear on the handball court, slow but fierce, his paw strikes packing a wallop on the small blue ball. He carried all his weight in his stomach. It extended past his shoes and shifted when he moved. The rest of him was dense, muscles wound tight as rope. Winnie the Pooh on steroids, Clare thought. “No, I’ll catch him later.”

  “Are you sure he requested a psych? Doesn’t seem like the chatty type.”

  “Fitzpatrick told me he put in a request. But I’ll double-check before I call him in.” She marveled at the ease of her deception. Clare could be a good liar when her life was at stake. “Does he speak English?”

  “As well as you and me when it suits him.” Stern-faced, Briggs guided her off the yard onto the dirt path at its perimeter. “Be caref
ul, Clare. He’s hardcore NF. They’ve never been able to prove it, but he’s probably a shot caller. You know what that is, right?”

  She rolled her eyes and laid on the sarcasm. “Yes, Sergeant Briggs. I’m familiar with the term.”

  He scanned the yard for onlookers. Finding no one of importance, he tapped her butt with a flick of his wrist. “Careful, Doctor. Insubordination will get you called into my office.”

  “I hope so.” She elbowed him playfully in the side, seeing the panic in his eyes one second too late. Bonner greeted them both with a gotcha smirk.

  “Good morning, Dr. Keely, Sergeant Briggs. You two sure have gotten friendly.”

  “Yes, sir.” Briggs fell right in line like a good soldier. “Sorry, sir.”

  “J. D. is awfully fond of you, Doc. In fact, he made a special appointment with me just to talk about you and your little problem with the Board of Psychology. Seems you’ve made quite an impression on a lot of menfolk around here.”

  Clare fought the urge to slap him senseless. She bit the side of her tongue to distract herself. Now was not the time to be blunt. “Not intentionally.”

  “Of course.” He patted Briggs on the shoulder, making him look about five years old. “J. D.’s always been a sucker for a pretty face.”

  “And a sharp mind,” Briggs added, with a little too much enthusiasm. “Clare . . . uh, Dr. Keely, is the whole package.” El paquete. Only this package—her—was full-on Unabomber. And she delighted in the knowing, even more in their not knowing, that she was rigging an explosion.

  Clare studied Raul Torres’ face with the dispassionate calm of a practiced surgeon preparing for the one-thousandth incision. The fear in her belly simmered at a low burn.

  She felt it.

  Acknowledged it.

  Ignored it.