[Darkthorn 01.0] Pond Scum

by Michael Lilly

  Soon, getting to the police station on foot is no longer an option; I either need to make it to Todd’s or find another mode of transport that will get me to the station. With that end in mind, I ascend the bank, inflicting on my aching muscles one last push, and come up on a gravel roadside.

  Before I can fully comprehend where I am, I hear a woman’s shout.

  “Hey!” I’m too on edge to identify the tone, but I turn and look anyway; a car rolls to a stop on the road and, for a moment, I want to flee, but after a second that feels like twenty, Beth’s face takes shape inside the windshield.

  As fast as my body will allow, I open the back door and set Maylynn inside, her absence leaving my chest and arms cold. I get in and barely have the door shut before Beth floors it.

  “I left Todd’s car at the station,” she says. “As soon as you got out and ran, Todd got out and ran in the other direction, and someone else got out of that truck and chased after him. Shots were fired, but I don’t know what came of that. But as soon as he left, I got out and headed to that gas station. The one where Terry works, yeah? Grabbed some gas and ran back, and still no sign of anybody, so I got some gas into the car and drove it to the station.”

  Terry Meadows is a gas attendant at Larry’s Pit Stop. He has a lazy eye, but with his one good eye, he’s sharper than most people with two. He wears an eye patch more out of aesthetic than anything, and through whatever circles he hangs out in, has information on just about everyone. Whenever we hit a dead end in a case, we have a word with Terry which, almost without fail, proves useful. All he asks in return is that we turn a blind eye whenever we catch him firing up a joint, which is all the damn time. But in any case, it’s well worth the exchange. With recent laws evolving to become more and more lenient with cannabis, we feared that we would lose our most useful informant, but he has remained helpful. I’d suspect that his perpetually high mind simply hasn’t taken note of the new laws, but he’s far smarter (and politically aware) than that.

  As much as I want to head back up north to find Todd (or, I shudder to think, his body), Maylynn has priority here and we need to get her to safety at the station as quickly as we can. Once she’s there, her testimony will bring upon Keroth the shitstorm that I intended to visit upon him, but failed. If she’ll talk, that is.

  Testimonies from children are difficult, delicate, nuanced in ways to which other forms of evidence and testimony can’t compare. Add to that the complexity of a sexual abuse case, and nothing can compare. While an adult can talk with a prosecutor and go about his/her day with a little recuperation, children have often been steeped in such fear that they’re gripped by a paralysis that renders them unable to contribute to the prosecution of their perpetrators. It always requires a tremendous amount of trust between the parties involved when the prosecutor is present, in addition to convincing the victim that their loved ones will be safe with the perp behind bars.

  In most cases, the perpetrator threatens the victim, not with their own safety, but with the lives of their family. No child wants to invoke the peril of their loved ones, so they stay silent. Fortunately, the prosecutor is genuine, caring, and very good with kids which, in my experience, can make or break a case.

  Beth drives much more aggressively than Todd on a normal day, so in these dire circumstances, she would run down an eighty-year-old woman if it meant saving thirty seconds. I can’t blame her; with Keroth and his minions swarming Riverdell, there’s no number of seconds that’s safe to waste. Every second ticking by carries with it the potential to unravel everything we’ve worked for so far, and she’s not about to let Sanders’ life have been ended prematurely in vain because a stop sign suggests so.

  With Beth at the wheel, we land at the station in nearly nothing flat. Whether or not I should be disturbed by the lack of obstacles that we encounter is a concern that can wait until later. We’re in the safety of fellow law enforcement, and even if Keroth has some of them by the balls, I’m confident that the overwhelming majority of them are good, honest, noble men and women.

  I nearly break the door off of its old hinges bursting into the front office, drawing alarmed glances from the receptionist and a couple of passersby.

  “This is Maylynn,” I say, steadying my voice as much as I can and hoping that the inherent calmness will rub off on the shivering girl beside me.

  Taking my cue, the receptionist, Dot, smiles her motherly smile dripping with affection. “Well hi, Maylynn,” she says sweetly. “Why don’t you come and wait in here with me?”

  “Can they come?” she asks, gesturing toward me and Beth.

  “Of course they can, sweetie,” she says. I’m convinced that, in another life, Dot was a waitress at one of those small, cozy diners in a tiny town where everybody knows everybody and Dot knows everybody’s order by heart. In this life, her personal skills aid the world in an entirely different, but in certain aspects, much more meaningful way. Dot plays good cop without even knowing it. I love Dot.

  We walk with Maylynn into a waiting room equipped with obnoxious fluorescent overhead lighting, a few magazines issued sometime before this decade, a television with basic cable access, a coffee table that I’m pretty sure was picked up at a yard sale, and a water dispenser. There are two fake plants that serve as a half-assed attempt at bringing the room to life, and a fan that has never been necessary for its primary cooling purpose, but from time to time provides necessary background noise.

  It’s in this moment that the weight of her circumstances slams into Maylynn, and, holding Beth’s left hand in her right, and my right in her left, she bursts into tears; wailing, sobbing, heartrending tears.

  Instead of taking a seat, Dot looks to Beth, then to me, hoping that one of us can communicate to her telepathically what’s happened, but that’s a load that no amount of body language will convey accurately, so Beth takes her outside. I find myself wondering whether Beth tells her everything or omits the details that may yet get one (or both) of us shot.

  But my attention is immediately seized by Maylynn’s gaze. Her tears are slowing, but not stopping, and she looks to me. What happens now?

  “Maylynn. You’ve been through quite a lot over the past while, haven’t you? When they come back in, they’ll ask you a few questions so that they can get your mom here.”

  “Can she take me home when she gets here?”

  “Well, it will be a little while. But before you go, there are going to be some people who want to ask you questions. Questions about what you’ve been through the past few days. It might be really hard. Do you think you can do it?”

  “I think so. What kindsa questions?”

  “Mostly about what happened to you, and who did it. Do you understand why they need to ask you those questions?”

  “I think.” She looks pensive for a moment, and then, “To put the red-haired man in jail.”

  “Exactly,” I say.

  “Do you know him?” she asks.

  “I used to. He’s always been a bad man. But now we can make sure that he can’t do any more bad things. Right?”

  She smiles weakly, tears still streaming down her face at an alarming rate. Her nostrils threaten to join the liquid onslaught.

  “Let’s get you some water,” I say.

  As I fill a cup from the dispenser, Beth and Dot return, Beth holding a blanket that Maylynn can use to warm up. Dot’s eyes are tearful; Beth told her everything.

  “Thanks for this,” Maylynn says, handing my jacket back to me, and reaching for the blanket that Beth holds out for her.

  “Maylynn—”

  “I go by May,” the girl says. I hope that this is a sign of growing confidence.

  “May,” says Beth, smiling, “this is Dot. She’s going to take you to a different room and wait with you while Detective Thorn and I work some stuff out.”

  “How long?”

  “I’m not sure, hon. Not too long, though. Is that okay?”

  May hesitates, but eventually nods. “Promise yo
u won’t be long?”

  “Pinky swear,” says Beth, crouching to May’s height and holding her right pinky out to perform the ritual. May smiles what looks like a genuine smile. Damn—I never knew Beth was so good with kids.

  As promised, Dot takes May by the hand and takes her through the bullpen.

  As soon as the door clicks shut behind them, Beth turns to me. “I called Portland PD and they contacted her mother. She’s on her way. You and I have Sanders and Keroth to sort out.”

  “Any word from Todd?” I ask hopefully.

  “None that’s reached me, unfortunately.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Fuck indeed. But for now let’s focus on the douchebag responsible for this whole thing.” I assume she doesn’t mean me.

  “Have you heard anything more about my dad’s case? I kind of planted some evidence there with Keroth’s DNA on it.”

  Beth exhales an attempted chuckle. “You’re good.” Under more defined circumstances now than at Todd’s, I sense that Beth is at war with herself about how she feels about my vigilantism. Regardless, she knows that she committed to getting Keroth caught. Whether she decides to keep my secret beyond that point in time is yet unknown to me.

  Twenty-Three

  The dull whir of the air circulation system has a familiar comfort to it, but today, it’s laced with the intimidating unknown of what may lie ahead. Countless times before, I’ve sat in this room, playing good cop while Beth bores into a man who didn’t commit the murder for which he was here. In those cases, I assure that my hand has been played in just such a way that one would rather confess to a murder he didn’t commit than for the other atrocities that he’s committed to come to light.

  Up to this point, it’s mostly been matters of ‘which thing would you rather be in jail for?’ If only to defend his ways of thinking, his state of mind, he’ll go for a murder charge rather than whatever other fucked up nonsense he has under his belt, and that works beautifully for me. It can be daunting, however, being that not only is it the final step to my plan, but also the most tenuous. At that point, I relinquish the most control, allowing fate more influence than I ever let her otherwise.

  Despite the chilly temperatures outside, I nearly work up a sweat preparing for the interview that’s about to come. Prior to this week, I’ve never come face-to-face with a fellow victim. Now I’ve met two others. Maylynn has a chance, now. A shot at life. If there’s ever a point in time at which I question what I do or the methods that I use, I can remember this as the moment when a life got saved. As soon as her mother arrives, though, the freshly scabbed wound of her mind must be ripped open yet again, tapped for any and all information that may be relevant. It’s a painful, slow, necessary process.

  With luck, I have almost two hours between now and Maylynn’s mother’s arrival. One hundred-ish minutes in which I must plan a route for this investigation to go that doesn’t get the force on my ass about why I knew things that I did, or played things a certain way. In that endeavor, I need to ‘stumble upon’ our man, subtly point the attention in Keroth’s direction without my suggestion being detected.

  When a witness is asked to point someone out from a group of people, it’s customary to assemble several photographs of similar-looking people, so as to assess their certainty. If I can accomplish it, I have a small window with which I must work up a series of photographs, using men who look similar to how it’s been described to us. I can slip Keroth’s photograph into a flurry of red-haired men, convicts and civilians alike, and if they question me about it, I can simply answer, “I looked for every person I could think of who fit her description. He’s been around a lot lately, so I thought of him.”

  Wow. Who would’ve thought … under our noses this whole time! I can hear them now. And when the dust settles, and Keroth is being turned into Bubba’s bitch in prison, the mere rotation of the earth will seem less … offensive. Naturally, there will be fallout—more like him, who were in his circles. But Keroth isn’t like them. He doesn’t have their loyalty. He’ll sell out every single one of them if they bribe him with so much as an hour of reduced time. And at that point, their loyalty will break. I rely on that.

  I’m not worried about him getting out early, though; from what I hear, he won’t make it out of there alive. Not after his fellow inmates find out why he’s there to begin with. And in this case, as long as Maylynn can stay strong and get her story across, as well as point Keroth out among a handful of his fellow redheads, he’ll be doing time with or without the murder conviction.

  This dynamic presents something of an issue for me, though; if he doesn’t go down for the murder, the investigation will continue, thereby subjecting me to a longer period of supreme caution and anxiety. Framing Keroth would certainly be easier to execute without his gaze sweeping over the bullpen, but even still, it’s difficult to bring up new evidence after the forensics crew has picked apart a crime scene. I’ll have to think on that later.

  For now, though, I focus on my present task. Dot is with Maylynn in the interview room now, exercising her magic power of making lighthearted conversation with anyone at all. It takes less time than I anticipated to collect photos of other red-haired men in the Portland area. It does take some time to locate a photo of Keroth that doesn’t appear, at least in some way, law enforcement-related. This is crucial, because some witnesses may be less inclined to point out a perpetrator if they’re in uniform, or if it’s otherwise evident that they’re involved with the law.

  Before long, Facebook delivers a candid but clear photo of Keroth, and I get one more pang of sharp hatred of him before I glue his stupid face to a poster board along with the others.

  I laugh softly at how much my poster looks like a fifth-grade science presentation, and get up to look for Beth.

  I have about half an hour before Mrs. Brotcher, Maylynn’s mother, arrives. Reportedly, she was almost delirious with euphoria at the news that her daughter is alive and safe, so I may have slightly less time than that, based on how deliriously euphoric people drive.

  I picture Maylynn and her mother (who, in my head, is a grown-up version of Maylynn) reuniting, and smile. With luck, their nightmare is ending, and Keroth’s beginning.

  Now to make ‘luck’ happen.

  I take a quick bathroom break and collect my thoughts—I do my best thinking when there aren’t people around, gazes to track, body language to interpret; and the bathroom is the only place available for that, aside from an interview room. But also I have to relieve myself, so this works out.

  In leaning on the counter after washing my hands, I see myself in the mirror, and my own image startles me. I’m aware of how exhausted I am, as well as the nature of the past few days, but my visage suggests a level of having let myself go that borders on drug addiction. I take just a moment to straighten up, splash water over my face, and hope that others perceive my distraught appearance as a result of grief over my dad’s death rather than having elicited it.

  Mentally, I visit several options. My first option is to go back to the bullpen and look busy until Mrs. Brotcher arrives, then help carry out the interview like normal, resulting in a probable arrest and sentence for Keroth. However, as I’ve figured before, this leaves his name out of the murder of my dad, and I don’t like the idea of leaving that open any longer than necessary.

  This leaves me with no route but to pin him, but that in itself will be something of a task. And even if I do find a way to do it, will I have time to carry out the necessary steps while taking the necessary precautions?

  The interview will take maybe half an hour, give or take a few minutes based on how cooperative Maylynn ends up being, and how willing she is to go into the obscenities that have surely been cast upon her. After that, I’ll be racing the cops, doing anything I can to toss his name into the mix without mine accompanying it. Keroth lives in Portland, and I definitely don’t have time to get there before their own P.D. gets its many hands on it. I don’t know where he is now, and h
is car’s location thus remains unknown to me, as well. Beyond that, the only piece of ‘evidence’ I have left is the comb, which is at my dad’s house, if all went as planned. And if all didn’t go as planned, I don’t even have that.

  In addition, I still have heard nothing from or about Todd, and the newly formed nook in my heart where our friendship has been laying roots aches suddenly in his absence.

  Although I hate to admit it, I feel that my best option is to let this carry out as it will, and maybe see if I can salvage the investigation of my father’s death after the fact. It will take some tricky sleight of hand, but right now, I’m not willing to risk anything that might put the whole thing in jeopardy. This decision isn’t easy, as I’m the type of person who likes to finish things all at once. In school, if I could have, I would have had the teacher hand me every assignment for the year, all in one neat stack. I’d take them home, do them, and return them in the same neat stack.

  But if the past couple of days have taught me anything, it’s that life is not so neat. I must be willing to adapt to the way things are, rather than dwell on the way I wish they would be, if I’m to succeed in my recreational affairs. And, especially in this case, patience is key.

  I step back into the bullpen, into the wall of noise coming from the office: chit-chat, hushed gossip that an outsider might mistake for serious cop talk (but is more likely an enthusiastic exchange of weekend anecdotes, at this point), printers, clacking keyboards, shuffling papers. It’s loud and in-your-face, and my face wishes it were gone.

  I sit at my desk and lean back for only a moment before Beth finds me.

  “Something’s happened,” she says. I don’t know if she fully appreciates the depth of the effect that her vagueness has on me. Reading my inquisitively raised eyebrows, she continues: “A crash. A call was just made for paramedics … near the interstate.”