Death Waits in the Dark

by Julia Buckley

  She sighed. “Yeah, I’m afraid so. I have to go see the damage. Frank, our janitor, said it seems like it’s just the legal section.”

  A weird alignment of thoughts happened in my brain under the persistent explosions in the sky. Doug and Belinda started to walk away, toward the house and Doug’s car, but I ran after them. “Doug! Belinda! Wait.”

  They turned, surprised, on the verge of her patio. “What’s up?” Doug said, looking at his watch. Ah, the watch again, my brain said. The tension and uncertainty of time.

  “The legal section,” I said.

  “What?”

  “This vandal—what was it that he hit on the day you guys were putting in our air conditioner?”

  “What? Just a bus bench. We’ve got to get going.”

  “Wait. Do you mean one of those benches with the ads for Luke Kelly’s law office?”

  “Yes.” He moved closer. “Why?”

  “Because, look at the pattern. The statue in the park is of Clarence Darrow. A lawyer. The library is hit, but only in the legal section. And Luke Kelly is a lawyer. A very specific lawyer.”

  “And you’re saying what?”

  “I’m thinking someone might have a pretty big grudge against lawyers right now.”

  He leaned in so close that I could see his gold-brown eyes, and those eyes seemed to read some knowledge in mine. “I’ve got you. Let’s go, Belinda.” He turned back once. “Thanks, Lena!”

  Sam appeared next to me, looking dazed. “I thought he was about to kiss you.”

  “No—we were exchanging brain waves. He doesn’t want to kiss me, Sam.”

  “I do.”

  I squeezed his hand, but Rusty Baxter, who hadn’t gone very far away, was beside us again. “Lena, I’m sorry to bother you, but I want to make something clear.”

  This whole day had seemed off-kilter, and I had experienced enough. “Rusty, I’m not in the mood.” Then, prompted by I don’t know what, I whirled around and faced him. “You know what? I think you’re all hiding things. You all know more than you’re saying, and Camilla and I are going to find out whether you tell us or not. I saw that picture of Carrie crying in the restaurant. I saw your face. You said you liked her, and you wouldn’t forget a thing like that.” I pointed my finger in his face. “So you’re lying, Chief. They all are.”

  Sam leaned in front of me. “Lena’s pretty exhausted, and on medication.”

  Rusty Baxter nodded. “She’s also right. I didn’t forget what Carrie told me, but I told all this to Doug when he came to my office. She was upset because she had visited my dad that day at the station. My dad was chief then, did you know?”

  Sam and I nodded, waiting for whatever unburdening Rusty wanted to do. “I was there when she came into the station with James Graham. She asked to see my father. When she came out she was crying. She and James left together. That was all. I cornered her at the party and asked what she had been crying about. I wanted to be a brave knight to protect her—from James, if need be, or whatever was bothering her. I think I was in love with her.”

  A series of explosions sounded in the sky, and the audience roared. “What did she tell you?” Sam asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing. I just made her cry again.” For a moment I thought I could see the eyes of the young man that he had been shining through the eyes that looked at me now. “Believe me, if there were some way I could go back in time and find out what Carrie told my father—and why she told it to him—I’d be glad to do it. But there’s no way to go into the past.”

  “Maybe Carrie kept a diary,” I said dully.

  “What?” Rusty looked startled.

  “I said—”

  “I heard you. And I’m wrong. There is a way to go back!” He looked something between urgent and euphoric. “Come to the station with me right now—we’ll settle this thing!”

  “What?” I said.

  “You were leaving anyway, right? Let’s go to the station. My dad used to keep a diary. Nothing official, just his way of winding down after work each day. It’s an old leather tome, and I actually keep it in my office as a memento. A prop, really. I haven’t opened it in years.”

  “Why didn’t you look up Carrie’s information long ago?” Sam asked, his tone skeptical.

  Rusty looked sad. “Because life moved on. I got married.” He looked at me. “And I forgot.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  We rushed through the darkness toward the street where Rusty Baxter had parked his car. Rusty said, “One of you lovebirds get in front so I don’t feel like a limo driver.”

  Sam obliged him and climbed into the passenger seat after helping me into the back.

  It wasn’t until the car had pulled away from the curb and the night around us grew quieter, the fireworks and crowd chatter receding, that I looked at the back of their heads and considered that it might be a trap.

  14

  I cannot bear to see a woman cry. If I saw you cry, I think it would kill me.

  —From the correspondence of James Graham and Camilla Easton, 1971

  THE CAR WAS dark and smelled vaguely of cigarettes. Behind us the sound of exploding fireworks put me in mind of war, conflict. The sky brightened with an orange light, then grew dark again. The car’s motor was barely audible beneath the relentless pop pop pop—not just from the park but from all around as people set off homemade fireworks in their yards and driveways, the noise as jarring as gunfire. We were surrounded.

  Rusty’s hands sat large and pale on the steering wheel, and his speedometer rose past the legal limit the moment we hit the highway. “Rusty, you’re speeding,” I said, my voice sounding brittle to my own ears.

  “No problem, I know the chief,” he said. Perhaps it was a joke, but he didn’t smile when he said it, nor did I. His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror; his normally jovial expression had a hard edge to it.

  We hurtled down the dark road, and I wondered at our foolishness. Why had we climbed into a car with Rusty, a man who was a suspect in Jane Wyland’s murder? A man who had been in love with Carrie Wyland? A man who, even now, carried a gun?

  I tapped the back of Sam’s seat with my foot.

  He turned toward me. “Are you all right, Lena?”

  I sent him an urgent glance, but then Rusty’s eyes were watching me again in the rearview mirror. My eyes dropped to the speedometer, which had crept up to seventy miles an hour. “Why are we going so fast?” I asked.

  Sam turned to look at the gauge and raised his eyebrows. “Rusty, the limit is fifty on this road. How about if you slow down? You’re making Lena nervous.”

  “I’m feeling determined,” he said. “I think we’re onto something. I think we three are about to discover something important.”

  “Slow down,” Sam said.

  Rusty shrugged and decreased his speed. “I can’t believe I never thought to look at that old book, not once. I never made the connection between his little hobby and the actual history he was preserving about this town, about the people in it.”

  His words slurred slightly, and I wondered if he had been drinking.

  I tried to sound firm, authoritative. “We should call Doug, too. Someone else, to meet us at the station.” The last thing I wanted was to be alone in a building with this man.

  It was fully dark now, and we could see occasional signs of fireworks from neighboring towns—distant bursts of color on the horizon, illuminating the gently lapping waves of Blue Lake. Rusty rolled his window partway down and a gust of cool air hit my face. I hadn’t even grabbed my purse on the way out. Now I longed for it; I wanted to dig in it and find my keys, to curl my fingers around them and let the sharp ends jut between in a makeshift weapon. I had only one good arm, but it was strong . . .

  Rusty’s police radio squawked in the front seat and he flicked it off with a quick motion. Wa
s he allowed to do that? I met his eyes again in the mirror, and they narrowed at me, suspicious or angry or assessing.

  “Rusty, watch out!” Sam yelled, and Rusty hit the brakes as two deer darted across the road and disappeared into the forested land on our right.

  The moment hung suspended and I heard, once again, Camilla’s screams, felt the impact, and saw a face in my own rearview mirror, eyes narrowed at me in a similar manner . . .

  It was there, but then gone, maddeningly elusive. I dug my nails into my hands.

  “Everyone okay?” Rusty asked.

  Sam turned to look at me, wearing his concerned face. Hadn’t that been his expression since the day we met? Always concerned, always watchful. What was he watching for? It was like . . . surveillance. “Lena? Are you all right?”

  “Fine. Shouldn’t we have turned right there?” Panic fired through my system as Rusty bypassed the police parking lot.

  Rusty shrugged. “Going in the back way.”

  I had not realized there was a back entrance, but there was, and we drove to a well-lit door that said “Police Personnel Only.”

  Rusty parked the car and turned off the engine; the shadowy lot was empty, and we sat for a moment in the dark while he dug in his pocket for something. I feared it was a gun.

  “Sam!” I said.

  He looked back at me, surprised, and Rusty held up a key. “Here we go,” he said.

  I was trembling, almost as much as I had been in the hospital when my arm had been hanging, broken and bleeding, at my side.

  Sam and Rusty got out; Rusty moved toward the back entrance, and Sam opened my door. He leaned in and said, “Oh my God! What happened? Did that scare you, with the deer? You’re okay, babe. Oh, Lena, come here!” He pulled me against him and I clung on like a burr until his skin warmed mine, and that warmth spread inside, calming me.

  “Something’s wrong with me,” I whispered. “I thought Rusty was going to kill us. I can’t—get a handle on myself. Nothing’s calibrating.”

  He leaned close to me, and his eyes looked deeply into mine. “I should have realized,” he said. “I’ll help you, Lena. I’m sorry. About the fireworks, and this ride with Rusty. I—we were just so eager to find out the truth. I forgot your condition.”

  “I don’t want to have a condition. I just want to be Lena again. But I’m not.”

  “I know. It will come back, it will all come back to you. We’ll go to the doctor tomorrow, okay? Just hold on until then.”

  I nodded. He held out his hand and I took it. We walked to the door, where Rusty waited impatiently. Was it a good idea, I wondered, to go into the empty police station?

  But then he opened the door, and I saw that all the lights were on; I spied a receptionist and some uniformed officers. Rusty was their boss; he was the chief of police, and he was trying to help us.

  Despite these comforting facts, my trepidation lingered as I followed Rusty and Sam down a hall to a door that said “Chief’s Office.”

  Rusty unlocked it and flicked on a light. A young officer appeared, holding a cup of coffee. “Chief, Marge Bick called. She said she had spoken to you earlier in the day and you told her to call back.”

  Rusty waved this away. “Yes, I’ll call her.”

  He turned to us. “Have a seat there.” We sat on a small couch across from his desk. He pointed toward a little decorative shelf that sat above a small fireplace in the corner of his office. “This place hasn’t been redecorated much since my dad was in it. The fireplace is from the days before we had central heating, can you believe it? But those books up there were just part of the decor. Old police manuals and some old law dictionaries. This brown one was his diary.” He pulled it down and blew off some dust.

  “Do you remember the date?” Sam said. “It would have been around the time she left, which was at the end of August, right?”

  “Right. Let’s hope he dated these entries. I read some once, when I was in my early twenties, but I found them boring. Little things. A joke his receptionist told, or an anecdote about a deer or raccoon that peered in the window of the station.” He sat holding the book for a moment, his face thoughtful and sad as he recalled his dead father, a life long gone. “Anyway. Let’s see. Yes, I see dates. Nineteen sixty-eight is where it starts. Wow. Okay, here’s ’69, and ’70. Now ’71.” He was turning rapidly but gingerly; the pages were obviously yellowed and frail. “August!” he shouted. He scanned some pages and read, his eyes darting. “I don’t see any familiar names. August eleventh, August fifteenth . . . Wait a minute. Here we go. I think this is it. Hang on.”

  He sat and read. A lamp in his office shone down on his still-thick hair and revealed the red beneath the gray and I realized again that a boy still lingered beneath this man, the boy who had lost a father and a girlfriend and his youth . . .

  “Oh God,” Rusty said. “Oh my God.”

  “What is it?” Sam asked.

  Rusty held up a finger, still reading. Then he sat back, his face slack and pale. “You’d better read it yourselves,” he said. He held out the book, and Sam stood up and took it.

  Then he came back to the couch, sat beside me, and held the book between us so that I could read it, too. Rusty’s father, the former Chief Baxter, had very neat handwriting that was a cross between print and cursive. The entry was dated August 24, 1971. It read:

  Some days in this job are real heartbreakers. And even though I believe in something called justice, I realized today that some people never get it, and never will, and it makes me sick, literally sick. I met with the little Wyland girl today, the blonde one called Carrie. I saw instantly why poor Rusty has a crush on her. She’s a sweet girl and not at all vain, but of course she was distracted and suffering.

  James Graham brought her in. I have always liked and respected James; he’s a lot like his father, and that’s saying a lot, because old Mr. Graham is one of the last true nobles of Blue Lake. James told Carrie that she was being brave and doing the right thing, and he settled her into a chair and then glared over at me, saying Carrie deserved justice. I told her to tell me the problem, but she couldn’t do it. Finally James Graham told me the girl had been raped.

  “Oh no,” I cried. “Oh God.” Sam’s face looked grim, but he kept reading, so I went back to the notebook.

  I asked about the perpetrator. Young Graham said that Carrie hadn’t told him or anyone, not even her family. He wanted me to persuade her to give a name so that the man could be prosecuted. Carrie looked me in the eye and said, “Who would be prosecuted—him or me?” I knew what she meant, and I didn’t lie to her. I told her that I could arrest the man, but that he might not be put in jail pending an investigation, and that if she decided to press charges, she might still be interrogated by the man’s attorneys, if he hired them. I said I would do my best to keep her name out of the papers, but that in some cases I had not been successful in protecting rape victims. She said she had read horror stories about women who were blamed for their own assaults, women who endured long trials during which they were humiliated, and at the end the rapists somehow evaded prison.

  I couldn’t lie to that sweet girl. I told her that the Blue Lake police would do their best to put the man behind bars, but that I knew rape victims didn’t get the support they needed, as a rule. I said I could refer her to some social service programs.

  James Graham stood up then and said, “This is outrageous! She’s a human being! She’s been brutally attacked!”

  She didn’t say another word. She stood up, too, regal as a queen, and told James she was leaving. He glared at me and then followed her out. Rusty had been waiting for me in the lobby; he ran in and asked me what had happened, asked why James was furious and Carrie was crying. I said I couldn’t divulge that information.

  That was the end of August 24, but I read the August 25 entry, which was brief and sad.

&nb
sp; I heard that Carrie Wyland left town today. Rusty and all his friends are buzzing with the news. Even Jane Wyland apparently doesn’t know why, and she’s heartbroken. This anonymous man has a lot to pay for. I wish I could find him. I wish I could wring his neck with my own hands.

  I turned to stare at Sam, and then at Rusty Baxter. “Jane was killed because she was looking into an old crime. She didn’t know that in trying to expose what she thought was James Graham’s crime, she was riling up a man who thought his brutal act was safely buried in the past.”

  Sam set the book down on Rusty’s desk. “And Camilla did the same thing. She said she wouldn’t rest until she had sorted this out. Minutes later someone tried to kill you both. This man is desperate.”

  I pulled out my phone and texted what we had just learned to Camilla, promising her I’d fill her in soon, and assuring her that I was with Sam.

  Rusty’s face, which had looked sinister to me in the car, now looked vulnerable as a child’s. “I wonder how much more Dad could have done for Carrie back then. Let’s face it, he was probably right. The world was not kind to victims of rape in the 1970s.”

  “It often isn’t even now,” I said.

  “But there should have been a way that they could have caught that man and made him pay. A way to save Carrie’s life and happiness.” He tapped the top of the old book, his face thoughtful. “I hope she found some happiness in Chicago. With her baby. We’re looking for the boy. The man, now.”

  Even now, my suspicions bobbed to the surface. Did Rusty assume Carrie had gotten pregnant as a result of the rape? Did he want to find Carrie’s son because the child was Rusty’s son, as well?

  Sam was studying the side of my face. Suddenly he stood up. “Thank you, Chief. This is important news, and I know you and Doug will pursue it. We’ll be on our way.”

  He helped me out of my chair and accompanied me into the hall, where Doug Heller was just leading a small group into what looked like an interrogation room. It included a very angry Luke Kelly, a miserable-looking Star, and Belinda.