Gathering Dark

by Candice Fox

  ‘Here at Scream Inc. we deal in all aspects of murder. We’ve got confession tapes, psych reports, cranial scans and medical waste. This here is one of Casey Anthony’s handbags.’ Tania tapped the glass of the cabinet at Jessica’s side. ‘Nabbed it from a yard sale the parents held a couple of years after the kid’s death. You wouldn’t believe what it would go for now. Are you an O.J. fan? I’ve got stones from the garden where Brown and Goldman were stabbed to death, but no certificates, unfortunately. I’ve got a line on one of the outdoor lamps from that scene. Guy says it has blood spatter on it, but they always say that. Should close that deal in the next few days. I can put you on the mailing list if you want to get an alert when the item goes up for sale. Unless you’d like to make an offer now?’

  ‘I’m . . .’ Jessica took a deep breath. ‘I’m just here for the Dayly Lawlor letters.’

  Tania went back to the filing cabinet. Jessica stared fixedly at a pair of scuffed high heels on a low shelf, tried not to think about what might be in the refrigerator by the door. In time, she heard the flutter of papers and went to the desk, where Tania stood carefully spreading out three pieces of paper on the desktop.

  ‘Please don’t touch,’ Tania said. ‘And no photos. That’s all I ask.’

  Jessica looked at the papers. They were letters, typed on an electric typewriter.

  Dear Dayly,

  In your last letter, you were talking about my reasons for killing all those people . . .

  A chill splintered her chest.

  ‘So what am I looking at here?’ she asked.

  ‘What? You don’t know?’

  ‘I’ve come on behalf of a friend.’ Jessica smiled weakly.

  ‘These are letters to a woman named Dayly Lawlor from John Fishwick, the Inglewood Bank killer. Fishwick was a famous bank robber. He’s in San Quentin now, death row. The guy was really prolific, but he went nuts and blasted a bunch of people away in his last bank heist. Six adults and a kid.’ Tania moved behind the desk. ‘Some people, yours truly included, believe that one of these days Fishwick is going to reveal the location of some of his hidden caches of stolen money in one of these letters.’

  Jessica stared at the letters, reading snippets, her heart hammering in her chest.

  ‘Now,’ Tania said, ‘Fishwick letters usually go for about five hundred a pop but in these ones, Dayly appears to be asking the man if he’s her father. That’s different. Special. There are new personal details about Fishwick that haven’t been released to the public, including a murder confession from his childhood. And with the news story last week on the decision made about money of Fishwick’s that has already been found, there’ll be renewed interest in these letters. I’ll be fighting off buyers with a bat. So my earlybird price is fifteen hundred a piece. I take Amex. I assume you’ve got authority from your friend to negotiate on their behalf?’

  Jessica stepped back from the desk. The room felt very small and hot.

  ‘How old are you?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Tania frowned.

  ‘You heard me, Tania.’

  ‘I’m twenty-five.’

  ‘And this is what you do for a living? You gather up the remnants of people’s pain and suffering and you sell it to creeps online?’

  Tania baulked, stunned. She looked up at the square of carpet from the Columbine massacre.

  ‘Listen, lady,’ Tania said carefully. ‘What I do is no different to the work of any person who trades in historical artefacts. People buy and sell war memorabilia on the internet all day long. You go into the game room of any rich guy in the state and you’ll find a gun that was used in the Civil War or stack of letters from someone in the trenches or a . . . a Roman spear. A flag torn down in some foreign battle. This is history.’ She gestured to the walls. ‘You can tour whole museums full of this shit. Only difference is that those pieces are from government-endorsed murders. These are the history of individual murders.’

  ‘This teddy bear.’ Jessica pointed to the burned pink bear in the cabinet beside her. ‘Whose bear was this? What happened to that kid?’

  ‘Look, are you going to buy the letters or not?’ Tania snapped. Her eyes were wide. ‘I didn’t let you down here so you could judge me.’

  ‘I’m not buying the letters,’ Jessica said. She drew her gun out of the back of her jeans, her badge from her front pocket. ‘I’m confiscating them. I’m a cop. These letters are pertinent in an ongoing missing person investigation.’

  ‘You got a warrant?’ Tania asked.

  ‘No, but—’

  Tania brought her hands up from where they had hung by her sides, out of sight below the desk. In them was an enormous 12-gauge shotgun. Jessica looked down the barrel of the gun as the aim swung around at her, her own pistol useless, pointed at the floor by her side. She let her gun slip onto the carpet at her feet with a gentle thud.

  ‘No warrant, no letters,’ Tania said.

  Jessica jolted as Tania pumped the action of the shotgun. The sound was loud in the small space, like the crunch of truck gears. She felt the roof of her mouth turn dry with terror. When she spoke, her voice was gravel.

  ‘How much did you say they were?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Four and a half grand for the lot,’ Tania said, the aim of the gun lingering on Jessica’s stomach. ‘But for five I’ll throw in two jars of toenails. Non-premium killers of your choosing.’

  ‘Just the letters,’ Jessica said. She carefully extracted her wallet from her back pocket.

  BLAIR

  We watched Lemon’s cruiser stop outside a house on Redduck Avenue. The house sat behind a tangle of wild vines that had almost consumed the low brick fence at the front of the yard. Sneak was on her phone, tapping the screen as she zoomed out on our location on GPS.

  ‘Is it Redduck?’ Sneak wondered aloud. ‘Or Red Duck?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We’re, like, two blocks from the police station,’ she noted.

  ‘He’s not calling it in, whatever he’s doing,’ I said. We waited in silence. ‘What do you think? Dropping in on family? Maybe he thought he’d swing by and see what Grandma wanted.’

  ‘Maybe this is his place,’ Sneak mused. ‘We’re not going to see anything from here. Do a drive-by.’

  I took the car around the block, slowing and looking carefully at the house with the vines as we went by. Number 17. The long driveway was packed full of items: buckets and gas canisters, chairs and folded tables, wooden boxes stacked high, rusted bicycles leaning against them, a tarp haplessly flopped over some of it, trying to protect the jumble of objects from the sun. I saw boarded-up windows at the front of the house, others taped with newspaper. Sneak unbuckled her seatbelt and turned in her seat to get the longest view she could as we went by.

  ‘Grandma’s a bit of a pack rat,’ Sneak said.

  ‘Weird,’ I agreed. We returned to the spot a block down from the house where we had pulled in to watch Officer Lemon disappear. The car ticked as it cooled after I turned off the engine.

  ‘I’m going in,’ I said.

  ‘You can’t,’ Sneak scoffed. ‘He’ll recognise you.’

  ‘I’m not going to waltz up and knock on the door,’ I said. ‘I’ll just see what I can see and get out of there.’

  ‘Let me go.’ She opened her door. ‘He doesn’t know me.’

  ‘He’s on the lookout for a fa—’ I swallowed. ‘A woman fitting the description witnesses gave him of the person who stole his phone. Blonde curls.’

  ‘What are you going to do if you get caught?’

  ‘I’ll handle it,’ I said.

  Walking with a deliberately casual air is more difficult than it seems. I kicked my sneaker twice on uneven edges of the sidewalk on the way to the house. A truck parked on the road diagonally opposite read Ramirez Commercial Plumbing. A logo of a smiling plumber brandishing a wrench high above his head like a sword was painted on the side. I turned sharply down the driveway, watching the blocked-out win
dows for any sign of Lemon, and ducked behind the pile of trash at the side of the house. The backyard was packed with old, rusted cars that had probably once been vintage specials patiently awaiting restoration. A tortoiseshell cat was dozing on the bonnet of one, the grass so high inside the car body that I could see it through the windscreen. The cat lifted its head at the sight of me. It was a large beast with a boxy skull, its face slashed through with scars.

  I went to the nearest window and peered through a small rip in the newspaper covering the glass, but all I could see in the darkened room was a bookshelf crammed with sun-yellowed volumes. The next window was blocked completely, but the room after that was revealed through a crack between two wooden panels. I saw rolls of carpet or rugs numbering in the dozens stacked from floor to ceiling.

  ‘Hey!’

  A gasp escaped my throat before I could silence it. A wide-shouldered Latino man was standing in the driveway, wiping grease from his hands onto a filthy towel.

  ‘Oh, hi.’ I smiled.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘No, I’m fine. I’m sorry. I was just looking for my cat.’ I jerked my thumb at the cat on the bonnet of the car at the end of the driveway. ‘I’ll get out of your way.’

  I walked towards the cat. It lifted its head again and gave a low, evil moan that made my scalp prickle with fear. I visualised it launching at my face, latching on to my skull with claws like razor wire. The day had already seen me suffer a minor car accident. I stopped, turned around and kept my head down as I walked back up the driveway.

  ‘You know what? He’s fine. He’ll come home when he’s hungry.’ I flashed a warm smile at the man with the towel. I pointed at some wildflowers growing between the old, rotting wooden chairs stacked against the wall. ‘Nice place you got here. Eccentric. Cute flowers.’

  ‘It’s not my place,’ the man said. ‘I’m the plumber. It’s a hoarder house in there.’

  I stopped in my tracks. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah. Place is crazy. Stuff stacked up to the ceiling.’ The plumber wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘I’ve just come to clear out the toilet. You see that a lot with places like this. The water goes and they just keep using the toilet anyways.’

  ‘Oh, jeez.’

  ‘Guy’s got a lot of dolls in there, too,’ he said. ‘And they’re all naked.’

  We stood awkwardly, staring at our feet.

  ‘I’ll be gone in a couple of days,’ he said.

  ‘Well.’ I started backing away. ‘I hope you . . . uh. Get it all cleared up.’

  ‘I will.’

  I walked quickly to the street, turned a sharp left and broke into a jog when I was safely out of sight. Sneak listened to my story as I pulled out the car, turned and drove the way we’d come so I wouldn’t have to pass by the house again.

  ‘Who’s the hoarder?’ Sneak asked. ‘Officer Lemon?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘That’s not what’s weird to me. It’s the plumber. I was walking out and he seemed almost determined to explain why he was there. Made sure I knew he’d be gone soon.’

  ‘I’ve been reading the rest of the messages,’ Sneak said. She had Lemon’s phone in her hand. ‘I can’t tell if they’re lovers or not. There’s a lot of strange talk from him in the beginning.’

  ‘Strange talk?’

  ‘Yeah, like . . .’ She scrolled the phone. ‘This is going to change everything. A new life. Far away. I’m so glad you chose me.’

  ‘Sounds kind of romantic.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Sneak shrugged. ‘But that’s the thing, right? If it’s You chose me like You chose me to be your partner or your lover, why aren’t there any messages before that time? I mean, the You chose me message is only the third message they ever share. So they met and a week later started talking like that?’

  ‘She chose him for something else,’ I said. ‘The criminal enterprise, whatever it is.’

  ‘So why’d she choose him, of all people?’ Sneak asked.

  ‘Because he’s a cop?’

  ‘Why not some other cop?’ Sneak said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Later he says Trust is everything. And she says It’s the most important thing we have.’

  Sneak and I drove in silence.

  ‘There’s one from Dayly to Lemon that says Are we on track?’ Sneak read. ‘He answers with A week left, maybe less.’

  ‘When was that one sent?’ I asked.

  ‘A week ago tomorrow,’ Sneak said. ‘After that, the messages are all repeated.’

  ‘What do you mean, repeated?’

  ‘It just says Where are you? over and over again,’ she said.

  JESSICA

  The queue at the ticket counter at LAX was ten people deep. A large Greek family was spread out along the length of the counter, little kids playing on ride-on suitcases. Jessica stood tapping out messages on her phone as announcements sounded above her. Midday. She regretted not grabbing something to eat before she parked her car in the short-term lot, not excited about touring the sprawling food courts inside the airport.

  In time she called a number on her phone listed as ‘Beans’.

  ‘What’s the story?’ she asked when the call connected. ‘You getting organised?’

  ‘I’m always organised,’ Beans yawned. She heard him groan as he stretched, the rumple of sheets and blankets down the line. ‘Cool it, chicky. This is going to be great.’

  ‘You have to be there after eight.’ Jessica moved a step forward in the queue. ‘He’s got night shift. If you go earlier it’ll all fall in a heap.’

  ‘No problem. We got this,’ Beans said. ‘So no one will be there when we arrive?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘I like it. I like it. I like it,’ Beans said. ‘You know, I looked at the key you gave me. It’s a soap-bar copy, right? I haven’t seen one of these in years. That’s melted plastic, girl.’

  ‘So what? It’ll work.’

  ‘So that’s some old-school jailhouse shit.’ Beans laughed. ‘I admire your, like, cunning. I mean, who are you? MacGyver?’

  ‘You’re not old enough to know who MacGyver is,’ Jessica sighed.

  ‘You don’t have to do that no more, you know. You can copy a key from a photo if you’ve got something to show the scale.’

  ‘Never mind. It’ll work.’

  ‘I gotta know,’ Beans said. ‘Is this whole thing a prank?’

  ‘I’m not sure “prank” is a serious enough word for what this is,’ Jessica said.

  ‘Cool-cool-cool-cool. So it’s, like, revenge, is it?’

  ‘Now you’re getting closer.’

  ‘Dude.’ Beans snickered. ‘This is epic. We got to go all-out here. Big guns blazing. Cut loose, John Wick–style.’

  ‘You have clearance to launch, Beansie,’ Jessica said. She had reached the counter, so she ended the call. She put her badge and wallet on the desk and smiled. ‘San Francisco. Next available flight.’

  BLAIR

  I was procrastinating. Pushing aside the next step, the only logical step, in our search for Dayly. I’d dropped Sneak off, as she requested, on the corner of Hollywood and Highland, just down from the Madame Tussauds, where fans were waiting in a huddle to take pictures with a wincing Beyoncé figure on the sidewalk. I watched Sneak disappear into the early evening crowds of tourists with shopping bags and huge colourful go-cups, knowing only what she told me – that she needed to run some errands, take care of her shattered life. It was clear she was going to score drugs, get a supply that would keep her stable through the next few days of searching for her child.

  I parked on Sunset in the lot belonging to a Ralphs supermarket. I walked with my ice cream container to a little shop set in a strip mall between a nail salon and a UPS store. A bell rang above the glass door as I entered. The floors were sticky. A wall of dusty dog toys stood to the left of me and a row of leather chairs to the right. A grey pit bull leaped from the ground as I entered, eager to check me out, causing its owner to be yan
ked forwards in her chair, out of what looked like a dream-filled sleep. I got the feeling the woman with the dog was just a prop for the charade that the veterinary office really stayed open twenty-four hours to deal with the needs of Hollywood’s pampered pets. She had no handbag, and the groove she’d made in the chair looked old. There was a striking resemblance between her and the woman behind the counter, who looked up lazily from her computer screen as I entered, rubbing her long, pointed nose on a raggedy tissue.

  ‘I was just hoping for a quick check-up appointment.’ I smiled, putting the ice cream container on the counter.

  ‘Oh, yeah, right.’ The woman yawned into her tissue. ‘We can do that. It’s a hundred bucks, flat fee, and then if we find anything that needs doing you’ll be charged on top of that. How old is your dog?’ She leaned to look over the counter.

  ‘It’s not a dog, it’s a gopher.’ I peeled the lid off the container. The woman stood and glanced in at Hugh Jackman. He was standing on his hind legs, sniffing the air, little paws wringing pensively at his chest.

  ‘Very funny.’ The woman sat back down.

  ‘I’m not joking.’

  ‘We can’t do a check-up on a gopher.’ She gave me a pitying look.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s . . .’ She gestured hopelessly at the container, waited for me to catch on. I just stared at her. ‘Look, lady, if you brought a mosquito in here we wouldn’t run a check-up on that, either.’

  ‘You guys provide care for hamsters?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah, yes, but—’

  ‘So what’s the difference?’

  She slumped in her chair, looking up at me. I waited. In time, the woman with the long nose hauled herself out of her chair and walked through a door beside a rack of worming tablets, closing it behind her. The pit bull was whimpering, its tail thumping on the floor. I lifted Hugh Jackman out of the ice cream tub and ran him through my hands a bit. He crawled up to my shoulder and I let him sit there a while fiddling with a strand of my hair. When the door beside the rack of tablets opened again I put him back in the box.