[Darkthorn 01.0] Pond Scum

by Michael Lilly

  Todd.

  “Do we know who—?” I say, but Beth cuts me off.

  “No. I didn’t catch the vehicle, either. We gotta handle what’s going on here, though. I know you want to charge up there, but this is where we need to be. Nothing we can do will be more helpful than the people who are already on their way. Do you think you can clear your mind for a bit? This is gonna get rough. The prosecutor is on his way here now.”

  I take a moment to consider the massive pile of stuff that my mind needs to shove aside if I’m to have a genuinely clear mind.

  ”I think I can do it,” I say. I really hope I can be the support that Maylynn needs.

  “Good. What’s that?” she points to the poster board, which is leaned against my desk, face down. After checking for potential wandering eyes, I turn it to face her. She looks at it for a few seconds and nods. “I like it,” she says. “Subtle, but useful.”

  She continues to look at it for a minute before snapping back to her gottadothingsnow mentality.

  “Have we heard from Mrs. Brotcher at all since she left?” I’m getting antsy. Not good.

  “Nah, she’s probably doing a hundred on the interstate to get here. Can’t blame her. In any case, I wouldn’t be on the phone giving updates if I were her. Should be pretty soon, though.”

  “Yeah,” I say. I hate it when Beth is right. Sometimes.

  The clock ticks seconds out of my thinking time, but even as my time disappears, I find it more and more difficult to concentrate, to make sense of anything anymore. This level of panic and unease is foreign to me; even when I’m on the hunt, the weight of what’s happening and what’s to follow are held at bay by the intense need to concentrate. In this case, I may have applied that weight in excess, throwing off my careful balance.

  I drum my fingers impatiently on the desk, my scars rippling on my knuckle like buoys on a wave. The cheaply manufactured wood numbs my fingertips over time. I feel the muscles in my back and neck tensing around my spine, squeezing my nerves. I become abruptly aware of how much I ache. Even more than last night, and still everywhere.

  More startling is that I ache equally, if not more, mentally, emotionally. I suppose that in my past dealings, I’ve been able to remove myself from the situation in every aspect other than vengeance, in which my rarely-seen violent yang side still operates hand-in-hand with my natural yin to preserve me as a whole. I’ve become accustomed to administering and maintaining the notoriously delicate balance between the two energies, but to do so requires that I recognize them for what they are. Now, my mind is a constant collision, a star burning without the consolatory release of light, verging on super nova.

  Worse yet, I can’t give these emotions names any more than I can assign them to either side of neutrality. Anxiety, tension, fear, suspense, empathy, desperation, sure. These ones have names and have all been written about extensively by various poets, novelists, etc. The ones underneath do not have names, though, at least not to my knowledge. These ones are pure id, and we definitely didn’t cover them in any of my health or psychology courses. I suppose that if any course would cover such a phenomenon, it would be biology. The barbaric primitiveness, the measured release of chemicals in our brains that drive us to do every single thing that we do.

  I dare to glance at the clock again. Thirty-seven seconds have passed. Ugh.

  A coffee and a walk sound perfect, but the human part of me in charge of self-preservation blares its alarms and warns that Keroth’s guys are likely swarming the area. If I’m to leave here safely, it’s either in, or under the watch of, a marked police vehicle, and I’m too lazy to come up with a believable excuse to necessitate that. Plus, I’d expect that most of our units are on scene at the crash.

  Thankfully, Beth comes back to talk with me. But she has a puzzled, worried look on her face.

  “The prosecutor is here. But we can’t reach Mrs. Brotcher. Home, cell, work. I guess May even has a phone, and they called that. Nothing.”

  “Shit. Wait. That crash.”

  “Oh fuck!”

  Beth whips her dry, functional phone out and dials a number at lightning speed. Just in case there’s any hope of resuscitation, I pull my phone out of my pocket, incurring a small shower of water droplets. I use a tissue to dry the battery door, and a microfiber cloth to dry the more sensitive battery and socket. After dismantling it, I place its guts neatly on my desk, side by side, like one of those diagrams you find in health textbooks that show different systems of the human body layer by layer.

  After maybe twenty seconds, Beth terminates the call and folds her arms, still clasping her phone, thinking.

  “Can we go?” I ask.

  “Fuck it. Why not?” she finally says.

  As Beth and I fly through the bullpen, we overhear a radio; something about two adults: a male and a female. Not Todd, unless a female pursued him and they both crashed. I don’t want the victim to be Mrs. Brotcher, either, but nevertheless, the Jacob’s ladder that is my nervous system loosens slightly.

  Normally, you don’t use your own car when you’re performing detective work. This is a precaution taken by detectives who enjoy not having their tires slashed or advertising where they live. In this small of a town, you’ll find maybe one or two duplicates of any given car, but no more than that, and often fewer.

  In this case, we take the car almost as a formality; our enemies know who we are, where we live, what Beth drives, and for all intents and purposes, both of our eating, sleeping, recreational, professional, and social schedules. There’s no room for us to assume that any information remotely available to them isn’t studied and distributed.

  While this is disturbing, it’s also a relief not to be guessing at what they know anymore. We can just assume that they know everything, and we simply need to make more out of our time than they can out of theirs. If the crash by the interstate is indeed either Mrs. Brotcher or Todd, they’ve dealt a blow to our plans and endangered (or possibly taken) lives.

  As if no time has passed at all, the sun still hangs in the sky, insistent on casting its deepening blaze over us for as long as it can. Still, though, it’s cold, and my body has had little to work with in the endeavor of healing, sustenance, and nourishment. A slight buzz presses in my head, like a swarm of bees is hatching and filling my skull fit to burst.

  Focus.

  Beth has the car started and in gear before I have time to put my seatbelt on.

  Twenty-Four

  The usual evening traffic for Riverdell is tame, and fortunately, tonight is no exception. Not that Beth would have been likely to comply to bossy red octagons anyway, but the thrill-inducing danger of riding passenger to Beth’s driving is somewhat alleviated when other citizens are safely tucked away in their cozy, warm homes.

  A mix of relief and suspicion bubbles to life in my chest as we are not, as far as I can tell, being pursued or observed by anyone nearby. No forty-year-old truck following us, no inconspicuous sedans with passengers trying not to get noticed. That or they’re succeeding.

  We make it to the scene in what I’m sure would easily be record time, if that route had ever had record taken. From where we park, I see a smoldering mess beyond the police cars, their gyrating blue and red lights turning smoke into alternatingly blue and red cotton candy. From that distance, I can see that it’s overturned in a ditch, but by the underbelly, I can’t tell what the car is.

  My gaze flits frantically through face after face, looking for one who may look like a victim. Usually they’re receiving police care, but as we arrive, the ambulance takes off. Its lights are on, but not the siren. A good sign.

  I can’t imagine that a crash like that would leave any humans involved unscathed, so of course medical attention is necessary. But if the ambulance was in no rush, that would mean that there was no longer a person to care for—only a body. At least, from a crash like this. If the sirens were on, that would indicate that the patient was in critical or emergency condition. She’ll likely need int
ensive care of some sort, but in any case, if her life were in immediate danger, there would be more noise.

  Except … there she is. I see as I walk toward the wreckage at Beth’s side. Her eyes sparkle with the seasoned version of the magic that May’s surely had before she was abducted. Her cheekbones mount her eyes in a way that makes her eyes look bigger, which now makes their anguish ever more apparent. That is the face of a woman who’s been separated from her daughter and is now only minutes away from her.

  “Thorn! Connors! Perfect.” Captain Walsh grabs our attention. Beth readies her phone once more, ready to instigate whatever measures the captain requires.

  While Captain Walsh has the support of his squads and crews, it’s widely accepted that, rather than working tirelessly for the position, as per the usual detective’s dream, the title was thrust upon him when he was only a sergeant, because the old lieutenant and captain eloped to Thailand, of all places. They still send a Christmas card to the station every year, inciting an annual discussion of whether or not the postcard smells like fried mushrooms. It does.

  He looks like a stereotypical detective, but the kind from bad ’70s movies rather than in books and comics. No, no trench coat or bowling hat for Captain Walsh, but he’s built like a boulder with an appetite for cheeseburgers, his handlebar mustache seems to be perfectly trimmed in the exact same way every morning, and he parts his hair with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel.

  “Get over here. Let me give you the run-down,” he says. “This kind lady here is on her way to the station to see her daughter. I guess she’s in here from Portland. Find out why the hell her daughter from Portland ended up here, and get this taken care of. Also, see to it that her daughter’s comfortable, yeah? She went missing a few days ago. What’s her name again? Megan?”

  “Maylynn,” says the mother, with less shake in her voice than I expect. She is indeed May’s mother.

  I smile at her as warmly as I can. “She’s doing great. She’ll be happy to see you.” That almost breaks her, but she keeps it together and nods, smiling. A single tear escapes her eye and she hugs me abruptly.

  “Connors! Take her back to the station in the squad car. Thorn. What are you even doing here, anyway?” Damn it.

  “Since I can’t work my dad’s case, I wanted to contribute in some way or another. This seemed doable.”

  “Where the hell was that attitude when Sanders was shot?”

  He almost sends me reeling, flipping through facial expressions until I find one that’s remotely usable, but I find opportunity in this moment, and pounce.

  I do shocked and horrified; a variation of the look I used when Beth told me my dad was dead, but with more emphasis on the surprised factor. It’s a science.

  “Wait. Sanders was…”

  “What, you didn’t know? We musta had ten people tryin’ to get ahold of you and Connors.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. My phone died the other night and Sergeant Connors told me to take a few days off after my dad … well, you know.”

  His face softens, the corners of his mustache drooping wearily. “He died, Thorn. No use avoidin’ the word.”

  I’m not sure whether he’s talking about my dad or Sanders, but then he continues: “I’m sure it woulda been a bigger deal down in the bullpen, but they found the shooter within an hour of finding the body. Guy was unconscious in a car with a needle in his arm. Overdosed. We brought him in and he confessed to the shooting when the prosecutor mentioned they could probably drop the drug charges if he complied.”

  “How’d they know it was him?”

  Walsh laughs. “Poor fucker was crying the minute they put him in the squad car, and kept crying all the way to the station. Because of that and the fact that nobody recognized him, they treated him like a suspicious person in the Sanders case.”

  The Sanders case.

  “So they started the interview and he just confessed?”

  “Well, it took a little bit of coaxing, but that’s the gist of it, yeah.”

  Smart. Guy knew that Keroth’s guys would be after him, and he’ll be safer in prison. Unless the other inmates find out in what sort of business he invested his time.

  By this time, Beth has gotten Mrs. Brotcher into the car and stands outside the driver seat watching to see if I’ll be joining them.

  I wave them off. Beth can handle that situation. I want to look around a bit here.

  “So who was that in the ambulance? Husband? Boyfriend?”

  “Actually, it was Officer Love. You know the one with the big eyes? The floater?”

  “I know the one.” I try desperately to suppress the bodily reactions I’m having to the news, but end up attempting to hide them instead. I shove my hands into my pockets to hide the sweat accumulating on my palms and burst into a fit of fake coughs to conceal my accelerated breathing.

  “Jesus, Thorn, you’re sick now?”

  “No, sir. Just some latent asthma.”

  “Is that a thing?”

  I hope so.

  “Sure it is,” I say. “So what happened?”

  “Apparently,” he begins, as though he doesn’t believe the story, “she was driving into town and saw that Love kid on the side of the road waving like a madman. She tried to slow down to talk to him, but ended up losing control of her car when her front tires hit some mud.”

  He points to the area where she ‘apparently’ slid off of the road. Indeed, there are two tire-sized tracks dipping off the road, slightly at first, but after a well-camouflaged mud bank, the tracks become chaotic. The point where the vehicle’s weight contrasted the resistance of her tires peaks where she was skidding sideways, allowing the ridge at the top of the ditch to send her car toppling over sideways and into it.

  I see Todd’s footprints in the mud, but they disappear right around where the car was no longer in control of its driver.

  “So she loses control, veers right, overcorrects to the left, hits Love in the process, and ends up flipping into the ditch?” I say, reading the story to him as well as I can.

  “Seems about right.”

  I’m afraid to ask, but nonetheless, do so casually: “How’s Love? Is he going to be okay?”

  “Couple of cracked ribs, broken arm. He’ll have whiplash from hell for a while. But overall, I think he’ll be all right.”

  Oh, thank god.

  “That’s good to hear,” I say.

  “Tch. Yeah! Can you imagine the shitstorm we’d be dealing with if we had two law enforcement go down in twenty-four hours?”

  “Yeah,” I say. I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to pretend that that’s all I care about, but the nonchalant response slips out anyway, with an absent look to match.

  “Anyway, we’ll have a crew getting the wreckage out of here any minute now. Why don’t you come with me to the station?”

  “Actually sir, can you drop me off at the hospital?”

  He looks surprised, but doesn’t rebut. “Sure. Not too far out of the way anyway. Get in.”

  The drive is only a few minutes but, particularly in contrast with Beth’s religiously consistent breakneck speeds, his slow pace has me itching by the time he drops me off at our humble hospital.

  Riverdell Hospital was built shortly after the town was first established, a symbol of hope that the town would grow and flourish, but was shut down due to state regulations in addition to having so few qualified staff to run it. However, a few years ago, a big health corporation purchased and renovated the facility, increasing its capacity and equipping it with state-of-the-art medical technology. While we still have relatively few staff with medical or nursing degrees, it’s enough to keep the facility operational, and the bare minimum is all that’s necessary for a town our size.

  I enter through the automatic front doors of the facility and am greeted by a receptionist in the bright waiting room. A short exchange yields directions to Todd’s floor, and I find his room within minutes; there aren’t many patients here.

  His
room is dark; the sun has finally set and leaves only traces of its light in the far reaches of the atmosphere, stripped of its blues and yellows, manifesting as a dim, red square behind the curtains in his room. He appears to be asleep, so I tiptoe around the foot of his bed to sit in a chair on the other side.

  “What, you’re not going to say hi?” Huh. He’s not asleep.

  “Why’re you awake?” I ask, doing my best stern-but-caring bedside manner. “You should be resting.”

  “So you came here to watch me rest?” he teases.

  Based on what Walsh said, I expected Todd to look a little less … awful. His face is a true mess, but I’ve seen quite enough to know that it will heal just fine. Maybe a little scarring, but that’s nothing. He has a couple of shiners that would make boxing veterans cringe and his arm hangs loosely in a sling. The contrast in size between the hospital gown and his typical attire makes him seem small now, swallowed by the sterile, synthetic care of modern medicine.

  But he smiles at me, and I think I may owe Beth ten bucks.

  Twenty-Five

  Gale Quispitt is a sweet lady, and even standing at five-foot-nothing, she commands her floor with the strict structure of a Catholic school. As if by a sixth sense, she zips from room to room, in perfect sync with her patients’ needs. One might argue that she simply operates on routine, but such a routine would be impossible to construct in the ever-changing environment of healthcare, with clients coming and going so frequently.

  She and I have seldom interacted, but on those occasions, she carried herself with a winning combination of professional dignity and empathetic courtesy. It helps that she likes me.

  As if reacting to my presence (and a divine prompting for dramatic and romantic irony), Nurse Gale hastens into the room, spots me, double checks the notes from his triage, and gives him a dose of something-or-other with a cup of water.

  “Detective Thorn,” she says, her eyes remaining on Todd to make sure that he finishes his water, “I’ve never had to tell you to leave my patients alone when they need their rest. What’s the occasion?”