When All Light Fails

by Randall Silvis

  “Yes, sir, I did my research. Called himself Magus. Thought he could reform society by sowing chaos?”

  “Something like that.”

  “The letter basically said meet me at the old mill or else, correct?”

  “Correct. So, like an idiot, I did. Even left my phone behind by accident. I got there, he showed himself, we had a momentary chat, and then his shooter in the mill put one in my left lung. And down I went.”

  “Jesus,” the judge said. “And that young trooper…that, uh…”

  “Flores,” DeMarco said.

  “How did she know to go out there after you?”

  DeMarco nodded his head at Jayme, which caused Morrison to turn his eyes on her.

  “I came downstairs,” she told him. “No sign of Ryan, though the dog was there, but still wearing his leash. Ryan’s phone was on the counter, and the kitchen drawer where he kept a handgun was open, but the gun was gone. And the letter was faceup on the floor. I read it, then called the station house while I was pulling on some clothes. Captain Bowen did the rest.”

  The judge nodded, looking somber. “You went out there too, though?”

  “The second I could.” She had been paralyzed for a few moments after telephoning Bowen, had stumbled around the bedroom yanking open the closet door, the bathroom door, the dresser drawer, so completely overcome by terror that her brain had stopped working, her body stiff and shivering violently, her vision reduced to a pinpoint. “I got there maybe thirty seconds before the ambulance.”

  DeMarco put a hand on her knee. “Soon enough to blow the life back into me.”

  Morrison said, “I thought we didn’t do that anymore. Just the chest compressions.”

  “Actually Captain Bowen was giving him CPR,” Jayme said. “What I did was more of a kiss, I guess. I couldn’t help myself.”

  Now the judge was shaking his head back and forth. He looked from her to DeMarco. “It’s a miracle you survived.”

  “So I’m told,” DeMarco said. “I slept through most of the excitement.”

  “Ha,” Morrison said with a little laugh. “I saw the photo of the girl, Trooper Flores, in the paper. Getting the commendation. How’s she doing?”

  “On the mend,” DeMarco answered after a pause. She wasn’t doing well. Depressed. Disheartened. Her pretty face always dark with despair. On those occasions once every two or three weeks when she and Boyd and sometimes Bowen joined DeMarco and Jayme for lunch, she always drank too much and eventually lapsed into a brooding silence. She was seeing a therapist but DeMarco could discern no leavening of Flores’s misery. For a while back around Christmas he’d thought that she and Boyd were secretly a couple, and maybe they had been, but there were no later indications that the relationship was continuing. And he was reluctant to question Boyd about it. It was their business, not his, he told himself, and told Jayme, who was equally concerned. But neither knew what to do for her.

  Now, in the restaurant, Morrison said, “Glad to hear it. The good guys win again.” He slipped a hand into his breast pocket. “Listen, the orders come fast here. Do you mind if we get down to business?”

  “Please do,” DeMarco said.

  The judge produced a single sheet of white printer paper, folded twice. He unfolded it and pressed it flat, then centered it on the table between Jayme and DeMarco. “I received this a few days ago,” he said. He held the corner of the paper down with the index finger of his left hand, and with his other hand reached for his water glass. It was not yet to his mouth when a young male server appeared with his bottle of Dos Equis and an empty glass. “Gracias,” Morrison said as he placed the water glass on the table and picked up the bottle.

  On the paper was a photocopy of what appeared to be a letter composed on a sheet torn from a child’s school tablet. The printing was childlike but neat, the letters made carefully along the printed lines but sometimes slanting to one side or the other. Jayme and DeMarco leaned together over the paper and silently read:

  Dear Sir.

  My name is Emmaline Christina Barrie but most people call me Emma. A couple of the teachers call me Emmy but I like Emma better. I am nine years seven months old. My mother thinks that you might be my father. She is sick and said it would be okay if I write to you. Her name is Jennifer Barrie and most people call her Jen or Jennie. I would like very much to know if you are my father and I hope that you would like to know that too. We live at 271 Walker Road in a green and white mobile home. It is in Branch Township in Mason county in Michigan USA 49402. Our telephone number is 906-743-3901. My mother has a cell phone too but she wants you to use the other number because it has a recording machine attached and sometimes our cell service is bad. She said to tell you that she met you one night when you were up here fishing. You can call us if you want to. If you don’t want to call you can send an email to mom at jbarrie@yahoo.com. She said to tell you that she is 5 feet 5 inches tall and has dark brown hair and that she met you at the Bear Paw grille which isn’t far from where we live. She said you liked to call her Jen-Jen and maybe you will remember that. Okay that is all I know but she will tell you the rest if you want to meet us and I hope you do.

  Sincerely yours,

  Emma Barrie, daughter of Jennifer Barrie who you called Jen-Jen

  P.S. Everybody says I look just like her. I hope that’s true because I think she is beautiful though we are both a little too skinny especially me.

  Jayme was the first to finish reading and look up at the judge, her eyes sad. He said nothing, gave her a crooked smile, then tipped up his beer bottle again. It was nearly empty.

  When DeMarco looked up from the letter, the judge laid his hand atop the sheet of paper and slid it back across the table, then picked it up and folded it and slipped it into his breast pocket again. “Doesn’t that just break your heart?” he asked.

  Jayme said, “Is she right?”

  “That’s what I would like for you two to find out. Discreetly.”

  “Were you there?” DeMarco asked. “That would be…”

  “Ten years, four months ago,” Morrison said. “Yes, I was there. Me and three buddies. We rented a cabin and spent a week there fishing for walleye and bass. Had them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we did. Fried them, baked them, poached them, even toasted them on a stick. It was one heck of a week.”

  Jayme asked, “Do you remember Jennifer Barrie?”

  “Very well. She spent a good bit of time with us.”

  “With us?” DeMarco asked.

  The judge nodded. He leaned into the table and lowered his voice by a few decibels. “So you can understand my concern. If the girl is my daughter, I want to do something for her. For both of them. Good God, I would have done something long ago if I’d had any idea. But I need to be certain, of course.”

  “Has she also contacted the other men?” Jayme asked.

  “Yes and no. The same letter was sent to three of us. One of my friends has passed. I inquired of his widow if she had received a handwritten letter addressed to him from Michigan, and, thank God, she had not. Apparently the elder Ms. Barrie did her research before contacting us.”

  Jayme asked, “Can we assume that the other two men wish to remain anonymous?”

  He nodded. “For the time being. Both are married and want to stay that way. Which is why I am sitting here and they aren’t. My wife passed a couple of years ago.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Judge,” DeMarco said.

  Morrison leaned back against the booth cushion. “It’s why I retired, actually. To be with her at the end. She’d been ill for quite some time.”

  “I didn’t know that,” DeMarco said.

  “She didn’t want anybody to know. A very proud woman. She often said that only the weak enjoy pity.”

  Jayme held her silence for a few seconds, then said, “I’m not sure why you need us for this job. All you need i
s a paternity test.”

  He held her gaze for a moment, looked away, then to DeMarco. “Sergeant, in your honest opinion—and please don’t sugarcoat anything on my account—would you say that I have earned a fairly solid reputation after all my years on the bench?”

  “I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t hold you in high esteem.”

  “Thank you. I would like very much to retain that reputation, and to go out of this world with it intact. The same holds true for my friends. We all rely on a certain public persona, you might say.”

  Jayme said, “Nobody is going to fault a man for taking care of his child and her mother.”

  “Of course not. It’s the…originating situation, I suppose, that is more than a little indelicate.”

  “The gangbang,” Jayme said, which caused Morrison to flinch.

  DeMarco noticed both Morrison’s flinch and Jayme’s subsequent whisper of a smile. He said, “Just so we’re clear on all of this, Judge. Was this little party previously arranged, say through an escort service or—”

  “No, no,” said Morrison, shaking his head. “It was wholly impromptu. After last call. Jennifer was the barmaid. We were all a little tipsy, dancing, laughing… One of my friends invited her and another female, one of the servers, back to our cabin. The server demurred. Jennifer didn’t.”

  “In other words,” Jayme asked, “she didn’t go with you expecting payment?”

  Morrison shrugged. “Underlying intent is impossible to gauge. She never asked for payment. Yet she never declined our generosity.”

  DeMarco could feel an uncomfortable heat radiating off Jayme. Morrison was being too careful to whitewash his participation in the affair while subtly demeaning Jennifer. If the conversation continued its present course, Jayme was likely to give the judge a salsa shampoo.

  DeMarco asked, “Do you have any idea how sick Jennifer is now?”

  “I’m guessing it’s serious. Otherwise why contact us after all these years? What you need to know is that my own health is not the best. I’ve had a couple of ‘incidents,’ the doctor calls them. Myocardial infarctions. Not uncommon with rheumatoid arthritis.”

  They waited for him to say more, but when he didn’t, Jayme asked, “Okay. But why us? You need one person to follow the little girl around and pick up something she drank from, held, whatever. You don’t need two people who together will cost $400 per day plus expenses. And if I’m not mistaken, DNA testing of a minor child requires the mother’s consent.”

  “Which we will obtain, through the courts if necessary, if this preliminary test comes back positive for one of us. It’s not a matter of cost, it’s about getting at the truth without exposing ourselves. We worry that if Jennifer is asked for consent to test the girl, she will say no and threaten us with exposure. At this point, being completely in the dark as we are, it would be a terrible mistake to give her an opportunity to take advantage of us in that way.”

  Jayme chewed on her lower lip for a moment. Looked at DeMarco. He tilted his head. She said, “You’re asking us to do something illegal.”

  “I don’t think so. The legality or lack thereof is a gray area here. If I thought for a moment that it would ever become an issue, we would never ask for your assistance. But we need somebody we can trust. And consider the little girl in this. Consider Emma. She wants the truth of who she can call daddy. I believe that her appeal is genuine and without guile. I also believe that she deserves to know the truth, whether she is my daughter or somebody else’s.”

  Again Jayme looked to DeMarco. His face told her nothing, a slight smile, soft eyes, that annoying placidity of expression.

  “You have to believe me,” Morrison told her. “If that little girl is my daughter, I will make damn certain that she and her mother are well taken care of for a long, long time to come. I have two kids of my own already, and three grandchildren, but there is plenty of money to go around. Plenty of room for another child in my will. My friends feel exactly the same way.”

  “If the test is positive for one of you,” Jayme asked, “will that person then go public as her father?”

  “I can’t speak for the other two,” he said, “but I, without question, will own up to my responsibility. But I have to be honest with you. I don’t have a lot of time left to play the doting father. It is a hard but irrevocable truth. The next infarction could well be my last.”

  Another silence befell their booth, which only made the ambient noise seem louder and more intrusive. Morrison again leaned forward, his belly against the table. “All we are asking is for someone reliable and unimpeachably honest to acquire, very discreetly, a sample of the girl’s DNA, and to certify that Jennifer’s illness is not just a ploy.”

  “A ploy?” Jayme asked. “Are you insinuating that Jennifer is blackmailing you now? Ten years after the fact?”

  Again Morrison winced. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sure that’s not the case. It’s just that this is highly embarrassing for me. Behaving the way we did, having to remember all of that now…” He shook his head. Then addressed DeMarco. “I have the least to lose. My friends are still working, still married. For them, I ask that you indulge our request for the utmost discretion. No mention of my name, no reference to me whatsoever, no implication that you are working on behalf of all of us. You bring the information and test sample to me, and my friends and I will have it tested. If it’s a positive match for one of us, then and only then will that man come out of the shadows, so to speak. And then the child and her mother will want for nothing. Trust me. I would love to provide that dear little girl with the future she deserves. Every time I read this letter of hers, I weep. My heart aches for her. But why risk blemishing a sterling reputation, or three of them, until we know the truth? If the truth is that I do have a daughter, then, by God, I will embrace that truth. And to be completely honest about it, a part of me longs to be Emma’s father. I loved every second of raising my boys. And I have had plenty of time to regret that my job kept me away from them so much. To be given another chance to do a better job? To feel a child’s love again?”

  He stared down at the table for a moment. Then he raised his eyes to Jayme. “I am deeply embarrassed to recognize the lack of dignity with which my friends and I comported ourselves on that fishing trip. Utterly and completely embarrassed. But our activities were wholly consensual, I want you to know that. Jennifer was fully aware of what she was doing. Still, in this current era of…”

  Again he averted his eyes for a few moments and looked out upon the assembled diners. Then his gaze trailed slowly around the room to fall upon the mural of the Hispanic Last Supper. “Shakespeare said it best, didn’t he? ‘No legacy is so rich as honesty.’”

  DeMarco and Jayme watched his face as he continued to consider the mural. His mouth seemed to be trying but failing to hold a smile, the lips going crooked as his eyes narrowed and forehead pinched, which caused their faces, in sympathetic response, to mirror his. He was either on the verge of tears or suffering from acid reflux.

  “Judge,” DeMarco said, only to be interrupted by the arrival of their dinners.

  The young male server placed the heavy plates in front of Jayme and DeMarco, muttered “Cuidado, muy caliente,” then slid away. Estella set a large foam take-out box in a plastic bag atop the judge’s place mat, which caused him to turn.

  “Ah gracias, gracias,” he said, and started pushing himself to the edge of the seat. Estella answered with a nod and a smile and moved away.

  The judge stood and picked up his take-out dinner. “You two make a drive up to Michigan,” he said to Jayme and DeMarco, “or fly, if you’d rather. Take as much time as you need. Spend a couple of extra nights on Mackinac Island if you feel like it, put it all on my tab.” With his free hand he reached into his side pocket and fished out a yellow Post-it Note and handed it to DeMarco. “The Barries’ address. I appreciate you meeting with me, I really
do. Enjoy your supper. It’s on me.”

  Seventeen

  The photons waltz, the illusion shimmers

  Shortly after the judge’s departure from the Mexican restaurant, DeMarco started eating. Jayme sat still a while longer, sorting out her feelings. She didn’t like the judge and was uncertain whether to trust him or not. But that sentiment hadn’t arisen until he brought up the fishing trip. Four men and one woman.

  On the other hand, was she being too presumptive? Even sexist? If four men can have sex with one woman, why blame the woman for that? Why is she the one who gets dragged through the dirt?

  If it even happened in Jennifer Barrie’s case. Maybe it did, she told herself, and maybe it didn’t. But let’s say that it did, and that Jennifer accepted the men’s money for it. Did that make her a prostitute? No more than it would make a wife a prostitute when she uses sex to get what she wants from her husband.

  And when you get right down to it, Jayme argued with herself, why shouldn’t a woman have the right to use her body however she wished? If a woman is forced to choose between earning $12,000 a year by selling beers and greasy hamburgers, for example, or making $100,000 a year by selling her body, why shouldn’t she be not only permitted but encouraged to better her life? Why shouldn’t she be encouraged to lift herself and her children out of poverty and despair in any way she can?

  But now Jayme also had to ask herself: Was it unfair for her to resent the judge and his friends for taking part in those activities?

  She cut a chunk from her chicken and sausage dish and forked it into her mouth and chewed. Swallowed it and tasted nothing. After her second bite, she sat with the fork standing in her hand. “I think we should go to Michigan,” she said.

  “Okay,” DeMarco answered.

  “What? Just okay? Just like that?”

  “I’ve always wanted to visit that state. Hemingway spent summers in the Upper Peninsula as a boy. Most of his Nick Adams stories are set there. And we have an RV parked in the backyard. If we’re never going to use it, we should sell it.”