Gathering Dark

by Candice Fox

  ‘Dayly,’ I said.

  ‘John!’ Sneak gasped, pointed.

  ‘Who?’ Ada asked.

  ‘John Fishwick.’ Sneak tapped the screen. ‘That’s . . . He’s a guy I had a thing with once.’

  ‘It’s not a small club,’ Ada said. ‘What makes him so special?’

  ‘Where was this taken?’ Sneak asked Jessica.

  ‘It’s at San Quentin State Prison. Death row. These are the full-contact visiting cages. This is from two months ago. I went and saw John and asked him about the visit, but I knew I couldn’t trust what he said, so I had the guards send me the security footage as well.’ She hit the button on the video. The figures started moving, talking. We all listened as Fishwick told Dayly about a river near the house where he grew up in Utah. Jessica paused the video and told us about John Fishwick’s bank robberies, the massacre in Inglewood, the buried cash found by construction workers and turned over to the government. ‘I’ve watched the video. He doesn’t tell her anything about anything during the visit, or in his letters to her,’ Jessica said. ‘In the cage they discuss the possibility of him being her father, briefly, but he’s not willing to submit to a DNA test. They chat about his upbringing, her studies. And then this happens.’

  We watched as John Fishwick suddenly leaped from his chair. Dayly didn’t seem to realise the contact was coming. He grabbed her and slammed her body into the side of the cage with his, forcing his mouth onto hers, his hands on her cheeks. I watched as guards rushed the cage, dragging Fishwick off the distressed girl, who slumped into the corner, crying and rubbing her face.

  ‘Oh my god!’ Sneak covered her mouth with her hands.

  ‘He attacks her. He kisses her,’ Jessica said. ‘At first I thought that was all he was doing, but now—’

  ‘Now you know.’ Ada smiled. ‘He passed her something.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Right there.’ Jessica rolled the video back, played the kiss again. ‘See how his hand comes up, covers their mouths? That’s in case the package slips out.’

  ‘What package?’

  ‘He’s got something in his mouth,’ Ada said. ‘I’ve seen it in prison a hundred times. It’s a kiss pass. You tongue a pill or a secret message or a paper clip or something. You go kiss another inmate, pass it to her in the kiss. You grab her face, just like that, so you can make sure the package gets across, make sure nobody sees the pass. Watch Dayly when she falls to the floor. She makes a motion as if she’s wiping her mouth in disgust. She’s taking the package out and pocketing it.’

  We watched the kiss again three times. I searched my memory.

  ‘I saw something at the apartment,’ I said. ‘A little shred of tape on Dayly’s desk. It was sort of folded weirdly, doubled over on itself, making a tube. Maybe it was the seal. He wrote something on a piece of paper and rolled it up tight, covered it in tape to stop it getting wet in his mouth, maybe. Does that sound right?’

  ‘He would have had to do that.’ Ada nodded. ‘If we’re talking about a secret this big, he couldn’t put it in the letters. Or tell her on the phone. Or tell her in the cage. One of the guards would have heard it.’

  ‘So did she know it was coming?’ Sneak asked. ‘The message?’

  ‘She must have,’ Ada reasoned. ‘The exchange is pretty swift. Seamless.’

  ‘But how did he alert her that he’d be passing her something if the guards are watching his letters and calls?’

  ‘Oh, there are ways,’ Ada said. ‘You get the message out through another inmate who tells their visitor, who calls her up and tells her. Or you just show her the package during the visit. Let it poke out between your teeth. She’d have understood what he wanted to do.’

  ‘So, wait a minute,’ Mike broke in. His lip was curled in horror. ‘This chick willingly kissed a guy who’s probably her own dad?’

  Everyone looked at Mike. I was as shocked that Mike had spoken at all as I was at what he’d said. I was used to the almost complete silence of Ada’s goons.

  ‘He kissed her,’ Sneak said. ‘She didn’t really do any kissing. She was kissed.’

  ‘Will you idiots try to focus on the issue at hand here?’ Ada snapped.

  ‘I thought it was weird, him attacking his own daughter like that,’ Jessica said. ‘I asked him about it. He was very convincing. He told me the whole buried cash thing is bullshit. It was just a story to lure her in so he could . . . you know. But then he told me that if he was going to do it again after he buried the first lot, he’d have devised a way to make sure that only the person he chose got the money. It sounded specific. Like he’d thought about it before. He said he’d want to choose his beneficiary.’

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jessica said.

  ‘All that doesn’t matter,’ Ada said. ‘What matters is putting all this together and finding out where the cash is. Because that’s where Dayly is. Whether she’s the chosen beneficiary or whatever the fuck, that note that he passed to her tells her where the money is. It’s probably coordinates. Longitude and latitude. And that tells us where she’s going to be.’

  We looked at the maps before us. At seventeen Redduck Avenue, where Ada’s finger was pressed against the small rectangle indicating the hoarder house into which I’d seen Officer Lemon disappear.

  ‘So what’s with the sewers?’ I asked. ‘If the cash is in the hoarder house?’

  ‘Maybe it’s under the house,’ Sneak said.

  ‘Or maybe it’s nearby,’ Ada said. ‘These houses, eleven through seventeen, they’re not far from the sewer line.’ She traced a line from the hoarder house to a blue line with red bubbles on it that streaked across San Chinto. ‘Maybe thirty, forty yards. Explains the presence of the plumber. He’d have experience working underground. Accessing the tunnels. I think they’re using the house as a way to get underground unnoticed, get into the sewer lines. That’s why they reconned the other houses.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘To see which one would best hide their activities,’ Ada said. ‘Not the house with the family of four. Not the house with two guys living in it. The hoarder house with the old man.’

  ‘So where does the sewer line go?’ Sneak asked. ‘Once they get into it?’

  ‘Well, this way heads for downtown,’ I said, tracing the sewer line on the map. ‘But look. If you follow it in this direction, it goes right under the police station where Lemon works.’

  ‘Who buries a wad of cash under a police station?’ Sneak asked.

  ‘No one move,’ a new voice said. I looked up, and over Ada’s shoulder I saw Al Tasik standing in the automatic doorway of the Pump’n’Jump. He took a step forwards, made the buzzer sound and came more fully into my view. He was holding his gun out from his hip. It was pointed at Sneak.

  ‘You,’ he said to her. ‘You’re coming with me.’

  JESSICA

  Everyone had frozen. Ada’s goons had their hands in their jackets, ready to draw, but the beautiful Black woman stood there giving them no instructions. In the fragmented seconds of stillness, Jessica thought about doing what she really came here to do. Now that everything she knew about Dayly and John Fishwick was out on the table, she wanted to complete her next task. A task she dreaded with all of her being. She looked at Blair and thought about just saying it, here, now, in front of everyone.

  I’m sorry. I was wrong. I know the truth about you.

  Instead she turned to her colleague. ‘Tasik, what the fuck is this?’ she snapped.

  ‘Emily Lawlor,’ Tasik said, taking Sneak’s arm. ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of your daughter, Dayly Lawlor. You have the right to remain silent.’

  ‘Tasik.’ Jessica grabbed his sleeve.

  ‘Back off, Sanchez.’ He shoved Sneak into the counter and cuffed her. ‘Or I’ll be back after I’ve processed this one to arrest your friends Maverick and Harbour for parole violations.’

  ‘Y-you have no evidence to arre
st Sneak,’ Blair stammered. Ada was gathering up the maps on the counter, folding them, giving them to her men. ‘You can’t do this. She didn’t . . . Jessica, do something!’

  Jessica followed Tasik to his car. Sneak trudged beside him, staring at the ground, lost.

  ‘What are you working with here, Tasik?’ Jessica said. ‘Talk to me.’

  ‘I’ve got a couple of Crips snitches who say Lawlor and her daughter had a fight on the night she disappeared.’ Tasik shoved Sneak into his vehicle. ‘I’ve got some suspicious texts. Meetings. Harbour and Maverick might be involved. I don’t know. I’ll have it out with this one in the interrogation room first, then I’ll connect the dots.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Jessica snarled. ‘I’m working with these women, okay? We’re close to a solution here. This arrest is a time-waster. It’s painfully obvious.’

  ‘You can have her after I’ve sweated her out a little,’ Tasik said. ‘She knows more than she says she does. She’s a lifelong scumbag, Sanchez. Maybe you’re having trouble telling the difference. You haven’t been around as long as I have.’

  ‘Oh, fuck you.’ Jessica shook her head. ‘You’re not going to get this woman into the interrogation room. I promise you that. I’ll have you explaining yourself to Whitton at the fucking station fifteen minutes from now while I uncuff Sneak and let her walk.’

  ‘Sneak?’ Tasik snorted. He slammed the door of the cruiser behind his captive, opened the driver’s door. ‘Fair enough, Sanchez. You want to tussle over this heap of shit? Get in.’

  Jessica ran to the passenger side and leaped into the vehicle.

  BLAIR

  Ada grabbed a Coke for herself from the fridges on the wall and made a sweeping motion at me with her hand.

  ‘All right, let’s shut this circus down. Fred, get the back door.’

  ‘I can’t just shut the shop.’ I winced as she picked up my keys from the counter and threw them a little too hard at me. ‘I’ve still got three hours on my shift.’

  ‘Forget your fucking shift, Neighbour.’ She started walking out. ‘We know where Dayly is. Let’s go get her.’

  In the parking lot I tried to get into the front passenger seat, assuming Ada would want me riding up front with her so we could talk through what we’d just discovered. But Mike muscled in beside me, nodding to the back door.

  ‘You ride with Fred,’ he said.

  I sat coldly in the back seat, trying not to look at Fred, who perched stiffly in the seat like a GI Joe doll in the rear of a plastic Jeep. His big, tattooed hands were on his thighs, flat, tense. From what I could see, Mike was sitting exactly the same way in front of me, looking at me now and then in his side mirror. I started getting a queasy sensation: the notion that, had I really protested about shutting the Pump’n’Jump or getting into the car with Ada and her crew, I would have been made to go against my will. At every stoplight I imagined myself trying to open the door and finding it locked. Feeling Fred’s hand on my shoulder, maybe his arm sweeping around my body, dragging me back into the car. Sneak’s words rang in my ears.

  I got into a car with Ada Maverick and got out again, alive.

  I chewed my nails as the city became the long, dark, sweeping freeway. Ada lit a cigarette and I watched its red burning tip rock back and forth on the steering wheel. Lit billboards appeared in the windscreen, gathering speed, whizzing by us. The road to San Chinto was becoming so familiar now it was as if I was heading home. Ada turned on the radio as we breezed past signs for Joshua Tree National Park. A talk show was playing.

  ‘. . . apparently refer to them as “swarm parties”, George.’

  ‘Swarm parties?’

  ‘Yes. Similar to flash mobs, which rose in popularity in the mid-2000s, swarm parties involve a large group of strangers suddenly assembling at a designated place to engage in a celebration.’

  ‘Right, so what we’re seeing here, Erica, is a swarm party in full effect right now at a residence in Woodland Hills. The news desk is hearing that upwards of a thousand people have descended on Esperance Drive, where a house seems to be at the centre of one of these so-called swarm parties. Residents are reporting loud music, motorbikes both in the house itself and in the street, and some kind of . . . drag rally happening out front. I’m told most of the house’s windows have been smashed and there are some belongings out on the lawn. Part of the garage has been burned down. No word of any arrests yet. This doesn’t sound like any party I’ve ever been to, Erica, I can tell you that much.’

  ‘Well, it’s not the party that matters, George, it’s the attendance. The aim is to get as many people to come along as possible so that the figures can be shared on social media. The damage, the mayhem, is a kind of scorecard. You don’t organise one of these things at your own house, that’s for sure.’

  Long patches of black mountains looming over bare earth. I watched the city become farmland, the temperature in the car seeming to dip as we drove further from the city. I thought about Ada’s smile in the Pump’n’Jump. The rare sight of it, and the weird, satisfied quality it had.

  Another voice sounded in my head. It was Jessica Sanchez this time.

  She can smell money. That’s why she’s here.

  ‘We need to talk,’ I said eventually.

  ‘About what?’ Ada said.

  ‘About our plan,’ I told her. Fred was looking at me, his face unreadable in the dark. ‘Our priority is finding Dayly. Making sure she’s okay.’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘We don’t know what else we’re walking into here,’ I said. ‘If the plumber, Ramirez, and Lemon and Dayly have set up what we think they’ve set up, then it’s possible she won’t even be there. When I saw her, she was running. She was scared. Something had gone wrong, and—’

  ‘I’ve got a plan, Neighbour,’ Ada said. ‘You don’t need to worry about it.’

  I wrung my fingers. One of Fred’s hands had moved from his lap to the pocket of his jacket. I thought about my phone in my backpack, which was at my feet.

  ‘My plan is to find Dayly,’ I said. ‘And if there’s anything else going on . . . I mean. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Or for us to, you know, to get involved in something that’s, uh . . .’

  My words drained away. Fred was watching me from across the bench seat. Ada was watching me in the rear-view mirror. Mike was watching me in his side mirror. A vision flashed through my mind, of a cat in a car full of Dobermans. I eased breath through my teeth and tried to focus on the road ahead.

  JESSICA

  Jessica sat quietly in the front passenger seat of the police cruiser, listening to Tasik’s breathing beside her, refusing to look his way, to let him sense that she was scared. She was indeed scared. The tension in the car reminded her of the night in Linscott Place, when she’d lost grip of every aspect of her police training, every expectation she had been given since joining the force. Your partner will back you. Your cries for assistance will be answered. You’ll always have some notion of what the appropriate action is – rarely will something be so bizarre, so left-field, that you won’t have a trained response in your back pocket. But that night she’d dealt with a flesh-eating being and her partner had abandoned her. Her world had been turned upside down, the rules shattered, her trust dissolved. Now she was back there. She should have been on the side of the man next to her, but she found herself constantly checking on Sneak in her side mirror. The plump, downtrodden prostitute and drug addict looked at home in the back of the cruiser. But there was a calm on her face that defied her situation. It was almost as though she expected what happened next.

  On Wilshire, Tasik breezed through the intersection, past a Jamba Juice full of people, instead of turning left towards the West LA police station. Sneak didn’t react. Jessica felt a cold bolt of energy hit her veins. Tasik glanced at her, and she knew.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ Sneak said, giving voice to Jessica’s thoughts.

  Tasik glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. They were head
ing north towards the mountains. Signs for Glendale. He switched on the radio.

  ‘. . . having difficulty containing the situation due to strained police resources and the sheer number of people descending on Esperance Drive. Police say at least two cars are on fire in the street, and that the owner of the residence in question is a male LAPD officer who is not, at this time, present on the scene. Police choppers have . . .’

  Tasik switched off the radio.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll bite. What do you think you know?’

  ‘I know you killed her,’ Sneak said. Jessica could see Sneak wiggling subtly against the back seat. She could tell the other woman was working her handcuff chain under her buttocks, stretching her shoulder joints to the limits to let the bindings slide down the backs of her thighs to her knees. She’d seen it a thousand times, and Tasik would have noticed it too.

  ‘I did, did I?’ Tasik said.

  ‘You got that bad cop stink about you,’ Sneak said. ‘I’ve known a lot of cops in my time. Some of them are good people. Some are wimps with badges who got picked on in high school and want revenge. And every now and then there’s a real predator, and I can see that in you.’

  ‘Give yourself some credit,’ Tasik said. ‘You’ve got a bit of the old hunter blood in you, too. You’re a scavenger. A liar and a cheater and a thief. But, push comes to shove, you’ve got claws and teeth. I can see that in you. And I saw it in your daughter.’

  Jessica put her hand on her gun, but she didn’t draw it. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Needed to wait. To know for sure. To see some physical sign of the danger. Tasik was too comfortable. He eased back in his seat, rolled his window down and put an elbow out. Jessica could feel the rise of the mountain roads under them. He knew these roads, took the corners lazily, the headlights now and then picking out luminescent eyes in the shrubby undergrowth, shining on sheer cliff faces. He was fully relaxed now. Mr Coyote going home to his den on the rocky ridge, where the poison creosote guarded his secret, safe place.