Gathering Dark

by Candice Fox

  ‘Sure,’ the man said, smiling brightly. ‘I’ll give you a proper tour. Come this way.’

  Long grass was growing under the wheels of unused planes in the shade. Sun-bleached rubber and faded seatbelts. There was a nest of swallows in the roof of a long hangar, the birds swirling out, going for fast, extended sweeps of the field before returning with tiny bugs in their beaks. A fire was burning in the mountains somewhere, smoke trailing thin and black against the white, blazing sky.

  I should have known something was wrong by the speed with which we walked by the rows of small aircraft sitting like ready white birds, ticking with the heat of the sun. Rieu wasn’t giving me a tour. He was leading me. I didn’t question our path. I was thinking about Dayly, what she might have wanted out here, who the possible cop with the flat-top haircut was.

  I was in the hangar before I really had a sense of the danger around me. Perhaps it was the sun beating down on my head, or the shock of the past twenty-four hours, but I looked at the three men in front of us almost pleasantly, as though Rieu was going to introduce me to them and we were all going to have a friendly chat about aviation fuel types. It was the sight of the bags on the table that brought me to. Large, clear plastic ziplock bags stacked in an enormous pile, some already packed into cardboard boxes marked with a brand of ramen noodle that I recognised from my time in prison. The bags were full to bursting with little white pills. Rieu pushed me forward and the men froze, two pausing in packing the boxes, one slowly lowering his phone from his ear in shock at the sight of me.

  ‘There’s another one in the office,’ Rieu said.

  ‘Whoa.’ I put my hands up carefully, trying to force my screaming brain to focus. ‘Okay. Let’s everybody just stay calm.’

  ‘They’re cops.’ Rieu dragged a chair from beside the table full of pills. ‘I don’t know if they’re wired up or not.’

  I glanced around the huge aluminium hangar. There were more aircraft here, tables of parachuting equipment and coiled ropes, random parts of planes under restoration – the aileron of a Cessna lying on a tarp, covered with fresh white paint. I could see stencils of letters lying in a stack on the ground by one of the planes. These men had probably been switching the tail numbers every few months as they moved drugs across the border.

  The sight of the set-up was so terrifying I almost gagged. I was grateful when Rieu shoved me into the chair before the men, my legs unsteady, tingling as the blood rushed to my head.

  ‘We’re not cops,’ I managed. No one heard me.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ A big guy with long, dark sideburns rounded the table and grabbed Rieu by the shoulders. ‘How did this happen? How did . . . Aw, fuck!’

  ‘They’re not here looking for us.’ Rieu was panting, wringing his hands. ‘They’re after some chick and a guy who might have come out here a couple of months ago. Don’t panic. We can contain this.’

  ‘We’re not cops,’ I repeated. The men who had been packing the boxes were still frozen, bags in their hands, watching Rieu and Sideburns try to work out the situation with the big-eyed stillness of frightened cats. ‘Listen to me.’

  ‘Go get the other one,’ Sideburns stammered. He drew a black pistol from the back of his jeans. ‘Is the parking lot empty? Are they the only ones here?’

  ‘We’re not cops!’ I snapped. The men looked at me. I was gripping the chair for dear life. Words started spilling out of me. ‘We’re just regular people. We’re here looking for our friend. She’s missing. I swear to god, we don’t care what the hell you’re doing here. All the stuff about fentanyl was a—’

  ‘They know it’s fentanyl.’ Rieu’s mouth was downturned with horror. ‘They know about the Long Beach guys.’

  ‘Jesus.’ I gripped my hair. ‘That was all bullshit! It was a lucky guess! My friend was lying her ass off, trying to get you to give us a look at your books. Just . . . We . . . You have to listen to me! Please!’

  ‘Who would lie about being a cop?’ Sideburns asked me. ‘Why wouldn’t you just tell the guy your friend is missing? Ask to see the tapes?’

  ‘Because she lies about everything. She’s just that sort of person. We’re not cops, I swear to you. Let us walk away from here and you’ll never see either of us again.’

  Sideburns looked at Rieu, at the men behind the table, at me. He actioned the pistol. As it swung up towards my head, I felt the seconds begin to lag with shocking clarity, my brain frantically trying to catch up to the situation I had found myself in. My pulse was beating so hard in my head I was seeing disjointed glimpses of the movements around me. The gun coming up. All the men turning towards the sound of an engine roaring outside the hangar. The east side of the hangar collapsing inward, bursting open as the Gangstermobile smashed through it and into the table where the pill bags were piled, sending the men there flying for cover. I sat rigid in my chair as Sneak hung out of the driver’s-side window and levelled a gun the size of her forearm at Sideburns, her aim hardly fixing before she blasted the weapon at him. The noise hammered off the sides of the building. Sneak fired twice more, and I felt the percussion wave of the bullets sailing past my left and then right shoulder as she fired wildly at Rieu and Sideburns, sending both of them scattering.

  ‘You just gonna sit there?’ she shouted at me. I scrambled off the chair and ran numbly to the car door as Sneak backed the vehicle awkwardly out of the hole she’d made in the hangar.

  JESSICA

  Wallert wasn’t at his desk. Jessica made like she was just swinging by to pick up some papers, shuffled things around the keyboard while the few officers at their desks got over the shock of her presence. She took the boxed bar of soap from her pocket, unpacked it and set it on the desk. Jessica took Wallert’s keys from the little tin cigar box he kept beside his monitor and selected a gold key with a black rubber rim from the collection. She pressed the gold key into the soap bar, making a careful impression, then re-boxed the bar of soap and returned it to her pocket, the keys to their rightful place. She ran a finger down the sheet of printed paper taped to the back of the cubicle that read ‘Roster’. Jessica was almost at the elevators when someone hooked a finger into the back of her shirt, tugging her to a stop.

  She smelled the bourbon before she saw him. Jessica turned and stood chest-to-chest with the sour-breathed man, so close she could see the pockmarks on the end of his nose.

  ‘Have you got the call yet?’ Wallert smiled.

  ‘From who?’

  ‘Justin Helger from LA Magazine rang here, trying to reach you. They put him through to me. He’s running a story about the video, wanted you to comment.’ Wallert’s smile had grown into a wide grin. ‘I gave him your cell number.’

  ‘A psychic once told me I’d make the national news one day,’ Jessica said. ‘I bet she didn’t see this in her crystal ball, though.’

  ‘Take the house,’ Wallert said. He glanced around the cubicles, his voice low and threatening. ‘Take the Brentwood house. Sell it. Give me half. Say you’ll do it now, and I’ll stop.’

  ‘Your breath smells like a fucking dumpster, you know that?’ Jessica spat.

  ‘If you think the video was a low blow, you’ve got no idea what else I have in store.’ Wallert’s eyes were wet, pale, desperate. ‘I’ve shown you that I’ll use cops to get to you.’

  Jessica sighed.

  ‘I’ll use other people, too,’ Wallert said.

  ‘Wally’—Jessica edged closer to him—‘I’ll burn that house to the ground before I give you a dime of what it’s worth.’

  Jessica spied Vizchen making his way towards them along the aisles. She backed off. Two of them was more than she had the energy for. She punched the elevator button and slipped inside, watching the doors close on the two men with relief. At the first floor, the doors opened on Captain Whitton, standing with his arms folded, obviously having known she was in the building. Jessica tried to punch the door close button but he stuck his long arm through the gap.

  ‘How many times did I call
you?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Jessica exited the lift. ‘Twenty?’

  ‘Thirty-one,’ he said. They stood by a poster of a patrol cop cleaning his gun on a spotless grey tabletop. Never trust a badly maintained weapon! ‘You don’t ignore calls from your superior officer. Ever. That’s policy.’

  ‘Give it to IAG. They can add it to my file.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘I came looking for you. I figured you’d called so many times it would be rude to just suddenly answer. You deserved a face-to-face.’

  ‘That’s a pile of horse shit,’ Whitton snapped. ‘This thing between you and Wallert has got to stop. It’s reflecting poorly on the department now.’ He leaned in a little, glanced down the hall. ‘I don’t care what your sexual proclivities are, Sanchez. That sort of thing between consenting adults is . . . well, it’s unusual. Untraditional. Unconventional. But it’s fine. It’s really fine.’

  ‘I don’t need you to rubber stamp it for me, Captain,’ Jessica said.

  ‘I had this girlfriend in college—’

  ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘Anyway, look, that video appears to capture you engaging in solicitation, which is a crime. A fireable offence.’

  ‘It was solicitation,’ Jessica said. She looked the tall man right in the eyes. ‘I’ve been going to Goren for years. I like what we do together. I need it. It takes me away from the troubles in my personal life, and it’s a hell of a lot less emotionally taxing than maintaining a real relationship.’

  ‘Would you keep your goddamn voice down?’

  ‘But convicting me on solicitation is going to rely on a conviction of Goren for prostitution, and you won’t get that,’ she continued. ‘He’s been dodging that charge for more than a decade. The man has friends, clients, in high places. Much higher than you, boss.’

  Whitton shook his head, looked distant, as if he was trying to see reason approaching on the horizon, a cavalry of cooperation and sense.

  ‘You and Wallert leave each other alone.’ He pointed a finger in her face. ‘Make a decision about the house so we can all move on from this.’

  Jessica walked off, waving as she went, ending the meeting with what she hoped was a noncommittal but friendly goodbye.

  The first-floor bullpen seemed less personalised than the third floor. There were few if any photographs in frames on desks, novelty posters stuck at the back of cubicles, cut-out comic strips pinned to dividers. While she was used to the coffee station on the third floor, with its leaning towers of coffee mugs and snack plates, and wet huddles of spoons at the bottom of the sink, the station here was spotlessly clean and didn’t seem to require the tattered printed signs about clearing up. Through large, tinted windows at the end of the space she could see patrol officers coming and going to squad cars with their go-bags of weapons, logs, personal equipment. She saw Al Tasik at the end of a row of desks, looking at his phone as he slowly rose from his swivel chair.

  ‘Tasik,’ Jessica called. The man hardly glanced at her, heaving a backpack onto the desk and sliding some paperwork into it.

  ‘Tasik,’ she said again as she arrived. ‘I’m Jessica Sanchez. Third floor. We did our weapons cert together last November?’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Tasik looked down at her, at the people around them who were slowly waking to her presence. ‘I remember. Commiserations on the . . . uh.’

  Jessica waited, forced him to finish.

  ‘The video.’ He shrugged. ‘Complete bullshit. Nobody needs to be caught out like that. Those guys should have turned off their cameras.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You looked good, if you don’t mind me saying,’ he added. ‘It might be some consolation. Everybody agrees. You were red hot.’

  ‘It’s no consolation,’ Jessica said. ‘At all. Can we get down to business? I want to talk to you about a missing person. Dayly Lawlor.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Tasik turned and sat on his desk, rubbed a hand over his blond stubble. ‘Isn’t that a mess.’

  ‘What kind of mess?’

  Tasik shook his head. ‘That was a good girl, you know? Some kind of animal studies person. Steady job. No jacket. Then she falls off the wagon for some reason and gets all wrapped up with a bunch of low-lifes. Probably daddy issues. It usually is.’

  ‘Which low-lifes?’ Jessica sat beside him.

  ‘It’s like this. A few months ago I was doing a ride-along and write-up on a young patrol officer going for a promotion. I’m in the back of a wagon and my guy pulls over this rolling hotbox on Sunset jammed with idiots. We got Trammon Willis and Sean Sykes in that car, a couple of other meatheads, and this kid I’ve never heard of, a girl. Dayly Lawlor.’

  ‘Willis and Sykes are Crips.’

  ‘Yah,’ Tasik said.

  Jessica thought, watched the officers going by outside the window.

  ‘So the guys all eat whatever drugs they’ve got on them as we’re pulling up behind them,’ Tasik continued. ‘The driver’s bugging out, hard. I was sure it was all just a waste of time. But then my guys look in the trunk and they find a duffel bag with two AR-15s in it.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Tasik nodded. ‘The driver tried to do a runner. Bolted, got taken down by some teenagers standing outside a boxing gym in a citizen’s arrest. They split his head open like a coconut on the pavement. Hilarious. We look, and there’s worrying stuff in the bag besides the guns. Wads of cash. Five ski masks. Five kids in the car; five ski masks. That doesn’t look great, does it?’

  ‘What does Dayly say about it all?’

  ‘Well, when I finally get her to stop crying, she tells me she knows nothing about the bag. For once, I believe what I’m hearing. She says she was just catching a ride from one gathering of bottom-dwellers to the next. Says she didn’t even know she was at a Crip party.’

  ‘All the blue do-rags didn’t clue her in?’ Jessica asked. Tasik rolled his eyes.

  ‘Anyway, the kid is losing her mind. Keeps telling me she’s never been in trouble before. She’s right to freak out, too. They booked the four guys. They’re going to trial. Sean Sykes was on probation. He’ll go back for seven years if they pin this on him.’

  ‘So, what, you think the morons in the car have asked her to take the rap for the guns because it’s a first offence? She said no and now they’re after her?’

  ‘Everybody but Sykes bailed on the charges.’ Tasik shrugged. ‘It’s one of the theories I’m working on. Pinning the bag on Dayly would be an easy out for them.’

  ‘What other theories have you got?’

  ‘What’s your interest in this case?’ Tasik glanced at his watch.

  ‘You had someone come in and inquire about it. Blair Harbour.’

  ‘Right.’ Tasik nodded. ‘That was weird. She’s that rich bitch who popped her neighbour over in Brentwood. You know her?’

  ‘I bagged her,’ Jessica said.

  ‘Yeah, well, she’s friends with Dayly’s mother, I think. Came in trying to make anonymous inquiries. I told her to fuck off.’

  Jessica waited for more. There was none. Tasik picked up his backpack.

  ‘And it was Dayly who stole Blair Harbour’s car that night.’ Jessica watched Tasik carefully. ‘You knew that, right?’

  ‘What? No. Harbour didn’t mention that. I’ll have to track that down, see if the car has been found,’ he said. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Harbour.’

  ‘You’re talking to her?’

  ‘She came trying to make inquiries. I told her to fuck off.’ Jessica smiled.

  ‘Wise choice.’

  ‘So what did you do with the kid on the night you picked her up in the car full of douchebags?’

  ‘I didn’t book her,’ Tasik said. ‘I told the guys to hold off. She seemed to me like a kid walking the line, you know? So I didn’t want something stupid like this to be the thing to tip her.’ He rubbed his face, tired. ‘Maybe I was being too soft. Just a
week earlier, I had a real tear-jerker dropped on me. This kid I’d been watching circling the drain for a while got pushed in front of a train by his supposed best friend. It was over a bag of dope. Victim had just got accepted into Harvard. Can you believe that?’

  ‘Crazy.’

  ‘These people’—he shook his head—‘they’re animals. Once you get in among them, you’re part of the group. There’s no escape. You start limping and the rest start moving in, wanting their share of meat. They’ll pick off their own if they have to. They’ve got the herd mentality and the scavenger mentality.’

  ‘Right,’ Jessica said. She was thinking about predators and prey, about Ada Maverick watching Sneak swim laps in the pool.

  ‘Harbour and the mother will only have popped up to get their share of whatever Dayly’s into before the girl goes off the radar completely. Me? I think the kid’s probably dead in the desert somewhere. But you never know. Maybe she’s in New York or something, starting over.’

  ‘Can I have a copy of the file? Just so I can put it to bed.’

  ‘Be my guest.’ Tasik handed her a stack of papers from the desk. ‘But let me warn you. You don’t want to get involved. Nothing good can come from these people. It’s not in their nature.’

  BLAIR

  I couldn’t speak. Not as I sat clutching my seatbelt while Sneak sent us screaming across the tarmac towards the road in the Gangstermobile, bullets tinking off the paintwork, splitting the back window, raining glass over the back seat. Not as we burned through San Chinto and the next two towns, trailing dust, Sneak’s hands gripping the wheel until her knuckles were white. Not as she parked in an abandoned lot connected to what once must have been a drive-in movie theatre, the big screen torn and whipped by wind, emblazoned with a huge spray-painted penis, no doubt the work of local youths. When I could finally put my thoughts in order, Sneak was clicking away at a laptop she’d obviously stolen from the aerodrome.