When All Light Fails

by Randall Silvis

  She worked on the photos for over thirty minutes before calling him over to the screen. He bent down, took a long look. Turned away and went to his canvas bag on the bed, fished around for his reading glasses, put them on and returned to the screen. Leaned close, his nose only four inches from the man’s face. “I can’t believe this,” he said.

  “Believe what?”

  “You don’t recognize this guy?”

  “Obviously I don’t, or I would have said something.”

  He leaned back and put a fingertip beside the man’s head. “This,” he said, “is Mercer County resident Benjamin Szabo.”

  “You’re smudging my screen,” she told him, and nudged him to the side so that she could look again. “I don’t recognize him. He’s from back home?”

  “We put him away back in…’04, ’05.”

  “Before my time, babe. For what?”

  “Burglary, breaking and entering. He rifled the cash registers in both the Subway and Golden Dragon next door. Then, feeling lucky, I guess, he tried for the bar register at the Yellow Creek restaurant. That’s where we got him and his buddy.”

  “Two miles from the station house?” she said. “How bright is that?”

  “Benny Szabo bright. He kicked and spit at us like a camel, so we tagged him for resisting arrest and assaulting an officer too. He already had a handful of other charges on his sheet, so all told he went down for six to ten. Did five and a few months before he was released. And, as far as we knew, never came back to Mercer.”

  “Are you 100 percent sure that’s who this is? I mean what are the odds that somebody from back home—?”

  “Morrison is from back home,” he said. “Maybe his friends are too. That decreases the odds significantly, don’t you think?”

  “So you’re suggesting that one of them sent Szabo up here. Maybe Benny Szabo is Emma’s father.”

  DeMarco gave her a look.

  “Why is that not possible?” she asked.

  “Because Szabo is a flea, a tick, a… What’s lower and more disgusting than a tick?”

  “Tick will do,” she said. “I get your point.”

  “He’s the kind of man who would go around making babies just so he could collect the government subsidy for them. But any woman who would let him would have to be just as low. Besides, didn’t Emma tell her friend that her father was important somehow?”

  “Maybe that’s just the story Jennifer told her. To help her feel better about herself.”

  “Please stop raining on my party,” he said.

  “That’s what I get paid to do, isn’t it? You’re sure it’s Benny Szabo in those photos?”

  “The brain in my gut is certain of it.”

  “Then we need to let Kyle know. He can put out a BOLO and maybe round Szabo up and—”

  “Whoa. Slow down,” DeMarco said. “They can question him but they can’t charge him, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves on this.”

  “Why, babe? What are you thinking?”

  “They question him, and what’s the first thing he does? He bolts. And then he alerts whoever hired him.”

  “You really don’t believe he’s capable of doing it all himself?”

  “Benny Szabo? I’m surprised he was even able to drive to Michigan without screwing up six ways to Sunday. No, he didn’t even know Jennie Barrie, he’s the hired hand. And we don’t want to tip off the boss.”

  “You think it’s the judge?”

  He pursed his lips, shook his head. “I can’t see him ordering a hit on a little girl and her grandmother. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t involved somehow.”

  “You think he’s covering for one of his friends.”

  “That’s how it appears right now, yes.”

  “So what’s our next move?”

  “We jump on a plane going east. And we locate Benny before he or anybody else gets wind that we’re looking for him.”

  “What makes you so sure he went back to Mercer County?”

  “He’s not the kind of guy you pay in advance. You give him his orders, some basic expense money, and wait for him to report back with proof that he completed his job.”

  “I guess what I’m saying is, how do we know that his boss isn’t somebody up here? Maybe Emma’s real father is a local guy who just coincidentally knows Benny Szabo.”

  “It’s possible, I guess. But we have to play the odds, baby. Morrison and two of his pals get a letter from Michigan. The judge, if not the other two, is a Mercer County resident. Benny Szabo, a former Mercer County resident, is now known to have been near the Barrie home the night before Emma died. Put all that together, and what it adds up to is that the judge is likely to have known Szabo, or at least had access to his arrest records. That doesn’t look like coincidence to me. It looks like dominoes lining up for you and me to knock down.”

  Fifty-Nine

  A heart that burns is a heart that yearns

  Soon after DeMarco’s and Jayme’s return to Pennsylvania the following day, favors were called in, contacts reestablished. While Jayme fetched Hero from the kennel in the late afternoon and did her best to soothe his resentment with an unleashed run in the park followed by two double cheeseburgers, no condiments, from Burger King, DeMarco brought Captain Bowen into the loop in regard to Benny Szabo’s apparent but still alleged presence along Scottville’s Walker Road on the night preceding Emma’s and her grandmother’s death. Troopers Boyd and Lipinski were called into the station house meeting and also briefed by DeMarco, after which Captain Bowen tasked them with determining whether or not Szabo had returned to Mercer County, and, if he had, any link between him and Judge Morrison.

  “What about bringing Flores in on this too?” DeMarco suggested.

  Bowen was hesitant. “It’s not in her purview anymore. Though I understand why you would suggest it.”

  “Then make it her purview.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “She’s struggling, Kyle. We have to do more for her. All of us do.”

  “And if she goes back out into the field, who is responsible if something happens to her? I am. I’m sorry, but she’s just not equipped for it now.”

  “Isn’t she the one who should decide that?”

  “You know that’s not the way it works.”

  Trooper Boyd, never one to unnecessarily inject himself into a conversation, addressed his station commander. “Sir, I think she’s more capable than we give her credit for.”

  Bowen’s head cocked, eyebrows lifted.

  Boyd said, “She’s started working out again at Planet Fitness. Going over and beyond what her rehab calls for. And she’s been spending a lot of time on a climbing wall over in Youngstown. Plus she stopped drinking, more or less.”

  “Is she off the brace?”

  “No, sir. That’s permanent.”

  “Then she still runs with a stiff leg, am I right?”

  “I haven’t seen her run, sir, but yes, I would suppose that she does.”

  Bowen shook his head, then looked to DeMarco again. “I can’t allow it. She poses too big a risk. For herself and her partners.”

  “So I’ll hire her myself,” DeMarco said. “As part of my team.”

  “Doing what?”

  “What she’s always done. What she longs to do. Putting the bad guys in jail.”

  “No way,” Bowen told him. “If she wants to moonlight as a bouncer at a bar or a private party, that’s fine with me. Security at a basketball game? Sure, probably. But out there in the boonies traipsing around with you and Jayme, with who knows what kind of clowns hiding behind the trees? Absolutely not. It’s against policy and against common sense. Besides, have you seen her trying to climb stairs? It makes me want to cry.”

  DeMarco sat back in his chair. Crossed his arms. Said, “She stopped Khatri when nobody
else could. Not me, not us, not the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Department, not the FBI, not the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Give the woman some credit, Captain.”

  Bowen held his gaze on DeMarco for a few moments, then looked down at the edge of his desk. Shook his head. Leaned forward over his desk and said in a softer, conspiratorial voice, “Look. I’m as grateful as anybody that she put Khatri down. But how did she do it? At great personal risk and permanent bodily damage to herself. You think it was easy for me to get her that commendation? She acted impulsively. And now she’s living to regret it.”

  “She doesn’t regret it,” Boyd said.

  “And how do you know that?” Bowen asked.

  “She told me. Said she’d do it again if she had to.”

  “There you go,” Bowen said, and held out his hands palms up. “She’d do it again. My point exactly.”

  And so it was decided. DeMarco and Jayme would continue their investigation on behalf of Emma Barrie, while Troopers Boyd and Lipinski would conduct their own investigation. Intel would be shared between both teams, with Bowen briefed daily at a minimum.

  DeMarco returned home to a quiet house just before six that evening. He set four containers of Greek food on the kitchen counter, then walked softly from room to room. Jayme’s car was parked in the backyard, so he had expected Hero to come running around the corner at any second and leap against his chest, and he was disappointed when that didn’t happen. He crept upstairs and peeked into the bedroom and found both Jayme and Hero asleep on the bed. She lay curled around the dog’s body, her knees tucked up to his furry butt, her chin nestled close to his head. DeMarco could hear their breathing and could distinguish between her sibilance and Hero’s. The light was low outside the window, the room warm, and he was very tired. He had failed Flores and did not know what else to do for her. But he had Emma to consider too plus the continuing welfare of those two sleeping beauties on the bed. He was weary to the bone and hungry too and knew that rest was not in his immediate future.

  He went downstairs and sat at the kitchen table with his laptop open, eating out of a carton of grilled lamb while searching on social media for any word or suggestion of Benjamin Szabo. The lamb was overcooked and rubbery, so he switched to the baba ghanoush but found it too bitter with excess lemon. The dolmas were a disappointment too, the grape leaves as bitter as the tahini, yet he ate his fill anyway because there is no such thing as coincidences, and apparently the universe wanted him to have heartburn again that night.

  Sixty

  And sometimes free will sucks

  In the morning, a bright Saturday morning scented by sunlight warming the damp greening grass, DeMarco felt good. Unnaturally good. He had slept well, no heartburn, and a couple of hours later than usual, rising at 7:23 to an empty bed and the sound of the bathroom shower blasting the tiles and glass door. The kitchen too was warm and inviting, though it did smell unpleasantly of the empty baba ghanoush container in the trash. He made coffee and, because Mrs. Nellis was surely already awake next door, checked the laundry room for a pair of pants to pull on over his boxers before he went outside. He found the chinos he had worn in Michigan, profusely wrinkled but a nice match for the Pink Floyd T-shirt in which he had slept, and escorted Hero out back to water the bushes.

  Apparently Hero felt very good too. He made a running leap off the porch, then completed four high-speed laps around the yard, skidding so dangerously close to the porch each time that DeMarco, standing barefoot in the wet grass, chuckled out loud.

  When Hero paused to make his first pit stop of the morning, DeMarco stood there staring off to the east, his gaze just above the rounded humps of horizon where there was nothing but light, light as far as an eye could see. But beyond that light, he knew, there was darkness. And darkness within the light. Darkness from light and light succumbing to darkness. Always one within the other, one becoming the other. The trick was to follow the light whenever you could. Better yet, be the light. Because if you want to talk to a burning bush, and all light fails, you had better be carrying matches.

  He laughed a little at that image. Then he stood there a while longer enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face, the way the light warmed the front of his shirt and the shirt warmed his skin.

  Minutes passed before he brought his gaze back to ground level. Hero was on his next to last stop, the front driver’s side tire of the RV. “Get your business done,” DeMarco called to him. “I’m overdue myself.”

  Just as Hero headed for his last stop, a timid female voice only a few feet away startled DeMarco. “Good morning.”

  He turned to his left, expecting to see a neighbor. But it was Daniella Flores. “Sorry,” she said. “I knocked out front but…then I heard you back here.”

  She looked better, healthier and happier, than he had seen her all year, her face shining, hair neatly brushed and styled, the pale-yellow shirt crisp, olive-drab cargo pants creased, her eyes as bright and eager as he had ever seen them. Only the bulge of the leg brace made him wince a little. “Dani,” he said, and crossed to her. “How nice. What are you doing in this neighborhood so early?”

  “Is it too early? Should I come back in an hour or so?”

  “No, of course not. You want some coffee? It should be ready by now.”

  “I don’t want to interrupt your morning. I mean I do but…”

  “Let’s have some coffee,” he said. Then he slapped his leg twice, called “Hero! Come!” and the dog came running, though to Flores instead of his master. She petted his head and allowed him to sniff her shoes, a pair of white Fila sneakers.

  In the mudroom, DeMarco dried his and Hero’s feet with a towel from the laundry hamper, then in the kitchen took three mugs from the cabinet, lined them up on the counter and filled two of them. “There’s half-and-half in the fridge,” he told her. “Help yourself.”

  “Black is fine,” she said.

  “Finer than fine,” he answered, and handed a mug to her. “Have a seat. Jayme will be coming down soon. She’ll be happy to see you.”

  Flores held the mug in both hands but did not sit, did not sip. “Just tell me what you want me to do,” she said. “I’m ready to go.”

  “Excuse me?” He pulled his usual chair away from the table but remained standing beside it. Hero continued to sniff Flores’s legs.

  “Please don’t be angry with him,” she said.

  “Hero! Go sit!”

  Hero looked at him, appeared to pout, then trotted out of the room.

  “Not Hero,” she said. “Mace.”

  “Trooper Boyd? Why would I be angry with him?”

  “He told me about the meeting yesterday. With Captain Bowen.”

  DeMarco flashed back through the reel, found the relevant frame. DeMarco offering to hire Flores and put her on his team. “He really shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “He didn’t want to. I just sort of…coaxed it out of him.”

  Hmm, an interesting wrinkle. “Are you two…?”

  “We’re friends,” she told him. Looked away momentarily. Brought her gaze back to his. “But, you know… Good friends.”

  He nodded. Smiled. Sipped his coffee. Then he reached for the chair nearest her, pulled it out, and motioned for her to sit. “I would like nothing better than to have us working together again,” he told her. She remained standing, still squeezing the mug with both hands. “But there’s a gray area, I guess, in department policy. Moonlighting is okay for some jobs but not when—”

  She interrupted him with, “I’m done there.”

  “You’re what?” The mug was burning his hands. How could she keep holding hers like that? He set his on the table. “What do you mean, you’re done there?”

  “I resigned.”

  “No, Dani, you did not.”

  “Yes I did. I called the captain last night. Dropped my letter of resignation off this
morning.”

  “He accepted it?”

  “He wasn’t in yet, so I laid it on his desk. But he has no choice but to accept it. He can’t make me stay if I don’t want to, and I don’t want to. I won’t.”

  There were little pools forming in her eyelids now, and the way she was squeezing that mug… He put a hand out, took the mug from her and set it on the table. “Let’s sit,” he said. “Can we sit and talk about this?”

  She stepped forward and sat, very rigidly, he thought, though with her left leg stretched out straight, unbendable. “We can talk,” she told him, “but I’m not going back. I didn’t get into law enforcement to sit and answer a phone all day. I already cleaned out my locker and my desk.”

  He sat beside her. Turned his chair toward hers. “Dani, this is…” He knew he had to choose his words very carefully. Where was Jayme when he needed her?

  “Sir,” she said, and the tear pools in her eyes were bulging now, ready to overflow at any second, “I need to feel useful again. I want this chance with you. I need it. I promise I won’t let you down.”

  “You could never let me down,” he told her. “But what about your insurance, your salary—”

  “I have the reward money, thanks to you. I can pay for my own insurance. You don’t even have to pay me, I’ll work with you for free. What I can’t buy is what I need. Only you can give that to me.”

  Caramba, he thought.

  Sixty-One

  Of creatures great and small and loathsome

  There were times, DeMarco told himself, when he needed to put aside the NDE and the knowledge it had brought. He was back in this world and needed to look at it, if only to get the job done, as he had before being shot—as a place wholly real and solid and miles from perfection. And from that perspective, the planet was populated by six kinds of people. There were wolves, there were worms, there were sheep, there were the decents, there were soldiers, and there were angels. Hybrids did exist, but most people could be relegated to one category or another based on their dominant qualities.