No Woods So Dark as These

by Randall Silvis

  Later, when she was curled up and sobbing, with a full darkness filling the window and a long empty week stretching ahead of her, and with the scent of cigarette smoke drifting up from the kids who liked to hang out in the hardware store entryway after dark, and with nothing and nobody in her life full of nothings and nobodies, she lay there staring at the glass and told herself you can call Boyd if you have to, you can call DeMarco, you can call Jayme, but soon told herself no you can’t, you can’t, you can’t. She would have to wait this out as she always did. She wasn’t her mother, she was a Pennsylvania state trooper now. She was living her dream, wasn’t she? She had nothing left to prove to anybody. She was exactly where she had always hoped to be. As always, she would have to endure the misery of her downtime alone.

  Fifty-Two

  “You feel like meeting us up in Conneaut Lake this morning?” Jayme asked. “I know you’re off today, but Boyd said you might be available.”

  It was barely 8:30 in the morning, the air still gauzy with the last lingering wisps of fog. After reviewing the video from the camera mounted on Mr. Shaner’s porch along Linn Tyro Road in Otter Creek Township and seeing the red Corolla departing Luthor Reddick’s driveway at 1:48 that very morning, DeMarco had first telephoned Boyd, who reported that his plate was full until later that afternoon. DeMarco did not want to wait, and so, when told that Flores was off duty, he handed his phone to Jayme and told her, “See what you can do.”

  Flores, who was lying in bed staring at the ceiling when the phone rang, feeling too ponderous to move, all but shouted “No problem!” in response to Jayme’s query. And suddenly the weight that had been sitting on her chest dissolved. She sat up, swung her feet over the edge of the bed, stood and headed for the bathroom. “Where and when do you want to meet?”

  “We’re a little over twenty miles away, but it’s local roads so, even if we left now, we couldn’t be at Jakiella’s place until a quarter after nine.”

  “I’ll shoot up 79 and then swing over on 285 West. Give me ten minutes to get on the road?” She put her phone on speaker and laid it on the corner of the sink while she loaded her toothbrush with paste.

  “Whatever you need. So you’ll be coming in on Water Street?”

  “Correct.”

  “Then let’s meet at the Sheetz there. Say…9:30ish?”

  “Excellent!” Flores said. “See you soon!” A second later she had the toothbrush in her mouth and was simultaneously soaking a washcloth with warm water. She tried washing her face with her left hand and brushing with her right but it did not work, too much mutually occupied territory, and no hand free for the liquid soap. So she draped the washcloth over the edge of the basin, and, while brushing and gargling, shimmied out of her sweatpants and T-shirt before grabbing the cloth again and doing a quick once-over of her body.

  She really wanted a coffee but figured she could run on adrenaline for another thirty minutes. Or she could grab a coffee at the station house. She needed to check in with Captain Bowen anyway to get his okay. Earlier she had been a useless slug of nothingness but now she could do anything she put her mind to.

  It felt good to be so unexpectedly alive again. She loved being with Jayme and DeMarco, even though she wondered if there might be something sick about that. Headed north, however, with the light pouring in through the passenger window, she had no doubts that hers was a healthy kind of attraction. They made her feel good about herself, about who she was and where she was headed. She saw her own potential in them. She was only messed up in the darkness or alone. In uniform she was purposeful and resolute. In uniform she was living the dream.

  Fifty-Three

  Sonny Jakiella’s home near the corner of South Fourth and Richmond Streets, with the blue Conneaut Lake Area Ambulance Service building across the street, was as far as a resident could get, both in miles and merriment, from the lake to which locals and tourists swarmed every summer and that had given both the historic amusement park and the town their names.

  Back in the summer before DeMarco’s senior year in high school, when the amusement park and hotel were fully operational, he had brought a girl to the park one afternoon and spent the day with her riding the Blue Streak and the Tilt-A-Whirl and the bumper cars, playing arcade games and eating boardwalk fries and making out on the little beach beside the Beach Club. He could remember her face now and the way she had lifted her mouth to his for their first kiss, but her name was gone from his memory.

  He thought it strange how he could feel that experience as if it still lingered several blocks behind him as he knocked on Sonny Jakiella’s door, as if the boy and girl were still kissing their first kiss, the girl’s lips salty from the fries, the couple patiently hanging out in the haunted hotel lobby waiting for his return.

  He knocked a second time, waited, then turned to Jayme and Flores. To Jayme he said, “You have the address for the contractor’s office?”

  She held up her phone.

  He gazed east over her shoulders. Could almost smell the corn dogs and hear the laughter of the long-gone children splashing in the lake. Their laughter when he was young and kissing a girl he did not love had only made him lonelier. He had wondered then if he would ever love or be able to love somebody.

  He smiled at Jayme and Flores and felt better and said, “Let’s roll.”

  * * *

  “I knew that man would be trouble sooner or later,” the office manager had told them.

  She was a stern-looking woman in her late fifties, broad and full-bodied, with enough makeup on her face to make three corpses presentable. She had provided the address of the new home build the contractor was supervising, and had confirmed that Jakiella was on-site. With that information in hand, DeMarco said, “We need to ask you to not notify your boss or Mr. Jakiella that we are on our way.”

  That was when the office manager, scowling, shook her head. “I knew that man would be trouble sooner or later.”

  “Why do you say that?” Jayme asked.

  “You can tell just by looking at him. He’s a loser. The only reason Mark puts up with him is because electricians are hard to find these days. Especially ones who will work piecemeal. So I suppose I should start beating the bushes for a new one?”

  DeMarco smiled. “You might want to hold off on that for a bit.”

  “I’d just as soon be rid of him,” she said. “If it wasn’t for his ex and their kids…”

  “Are the names Choo Choo or Luthor Reddick familiar to you?” he asked.

  “Never heard of either one of them. And I have a strong feeling I don’t want to.”

  “Thank you for your time,” he said.

  Fifty-Four

  While the contractor and three of his other employees watched, Sonny Jakiella walked the trio of investigators across the hardened mud surrounding the large two-story, three-stall garage build. The home had been roofed and wrapped with Tyvek but the interior was unfinished. They had found Jakiella installing electrical boxes and switches to the naked two-by-fours framing the interior walls. Now he walked slowly toward the rear of the property, taking his time as, with trembling fingers, he drew a cigarette from the pack and lit it and released a stream of smoke.

  The thinness of Jakiella’s face accentuated the size of his nose and ears and the sharpness of his chin. His fingers too seemed unnaturally long, the fingernails yellowed by nicotine, his arms as thin as a child’s. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, probably hadn’t changed his clothes either: a sweat-stained camo ball cap, a gray long-sleeved Henley shirt with all four buttons undone at the neck, dirty blue jeans worn white at the knees and with cuffs that bunched up atop dirty black sneakers.

  He turned near the edge of the property, stood crookedly with one knee locked, the other cocked to the right, his shoulders hunched. He kept his head down for another long drag. Then lifted his eyes to DeMarco. “So what’s this about?” he said.
r />   “What were you doing at the home of Luthor Reddick this past weekend?”

  “Who says I was there?”

  “Our surveillance camera. You arrived in your Corolla on Saturday afternoon, left early this morning. Would you like the exact times?”

  Jakiella’s smile was weak; it lifted only one corner of his mouth. “Since when is it a crime to spend time with a buddy?”

  “What kind of business is your buddy in?”

  “Antiques and such. You looking to buy something?”

  “I’m looking for information about him. And about a man named Choo Choo, a woman named Suzi, and another woman called Lady D.”

  Jakiella was doing his best to appear nonchalant, working hard to keep his body still, but tiny twitches kept erupting everywhere. His mouth, his nose, his eyebrows, his fingers, his right leg. One every fifteen seconds or so. “Sorry to say you made the trip for nothing. I don’t know nothing about nobody.”

  With her next breath, Flores discovered that she was downwind of Jakiella and quickly suppressed the ensuing wince; he reeked of the burned hay scent of weed and the distinctive vinegary stench of old sweat infused with black tar heroin. She said, “We have a witness who claims otherwise.”

  “What witness?” he asked.

  Flores said, “How about pushing your sleeves up for us.”

  “How about showing me your breasts.”

  Flores smiled. He was afraid; otherwise he would have said tits.

  “Look,” DeMarco told him. “We know you were in charge of the drugs when Choo Choo was out dealing. He was driving the stolen Santa Fe from Kentucky, and you were in the passenger seat. We know that Amber ‘Sylvia’ Sullivan was in that vehicle at the same time.”

  Something like a snarl pulled at Jakiella’s mouth. He said, “She don’t go by either one of them names.”

  “Which names?” Jayme asked.

  “Amber or Sylvia. We call her Sully.”

  DeMarco said, “Who do you mean by ‘we’?”

  “I mean me, okay? To me and her, she’s always been Sully.”

  Flores read the shadow in his eyes. She said, “Because Sylvia is her working name, right? And Amber is who she used to be.”

  His lips parted as if he were about to speak. But then only a small breath escaped. Followed softly by, “You don’t need to be asking about her.”

  DeMarco said, “When did you and Sully first meet?”

  Another incipient snarl. “I don’t remember.”

  DeMarco reached toward his back pocket. “Let’s see if you remember this.” And produced from his pocket a square of folded paper. He unfolded it twice, then held the photo of Choo Choo in front of Jakiella’s face, the photo showing a shaft of rebar protruding from Choo Choo’s throat.

  Jakiella’s face went white, then alarmingly red as he looked away. His hand shook as he raised the cigarette to his lips again. “That’s a helluva thing to be flashing around in front of people.”

  Jayme said, “It must have been even worse to see it in person.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, lady.”

  DeMarco gave the paper a shake. “You have no idea who did this?”

  “How would I know something like that?”

  DeMarco looked down at Jakiella’s shoes. Then at Flores. “Trooper, did you happen to bring the photos of those impressions we took at the scene?” Before she could answer, DeMarco asked Jakiella, “What size are those?”

  Flores said, “They look like the right size to me. Same tread pattern too, I bet.”

  Jayme said, “You have two daughters, right, Mr. Jakiella? Eleven and eight years old?”

  He was visibly trembling now. Shivering. “What’s that have to do with anything?”

  “Think of what’s going to happen to them,” Jayme said, “when you can’t pay child support. Because you’re sitting on death row.”

  Jakiella jabbed a finger at the photo. “I had nothing to do with that. I wasn’t there or anywhere near it.”

  “Who was?” DeMarco asked.

  Jakiella swallowed. Blinked. Worked up a gob of yellowish phlegm and hawked it off to the side. His head moved jerkily, bobbed back and forth like a pigeon’s.

  Jayme said, “You doing okay, Mr. Jakiella? Not going to pass out on us, are you?”

  He said, “If I’m going to be arrested, I’m not telling you nothing.”

  Flores said, “Did anybody here say anything about arresting you?”

  “You’re sure acting like you’re going to.”

  DeMarco said, “At this point, we are more interested in Luthor Reddick than in you.”

  “So does that mean you’re going to arrest me or not?”

  “What I am going to do,” DeMarco told him, “is to ask three questions. If you answer honestly, we might just let you walk away from here and go back to work. If you don’t, Trooper Flores will take you in for questioning while we get a warrant to search your house and car. Afterward, whether we find anything in your home and vehicle or not, you will be arrested for obstructing justice and interfering with a criminal investigation. We are fully prepared to do that. Am I right, Trooper Flores?”

  She laid a hand on the restraints attached to her belt.

  “What are the questions?” Jakiella asked.

  “One: Is anyone else living in or a regular visitor to Reddick’s house, and, if so, who are they? Two: What kind of business does Reddick really operate out of that house? And three: What was the association between Choo Choo and Reddick?”

  “Huh,” Jakiella said. “That sounds like more than three questions to me.”

  Jayme said, “The clock is ticking, Mr. Jakiella.”

  “Am I getting immunity for this? Cause if there’s nothing in it for me, I got nothing to say.”

  DeMarco asked, “Why would you need immunity unless you were directly involved?”

  “Were you directly involved?” Jayme asked.

  “I already told you I wasn’t.” His body was sagging, going limp.

  “We need your full cooperation,” Flores told him, her voice empty of all harshness, almost plaintive. “Think about your daughters, Sonny. Think about how your actions are going to screw up their entire lives.”

  He gazed into the distance. Spit a piece of tobacco off his tongue. Considered the ground. He was breathing loudly through his nose, his breath quick and shallow. “There’s a couple of women sometimes live there too. With Reddick. Sully’s one of them, though she mostly comes and goes. She ain’t been there for a while. Anyway she never done anything to nobody, so you can just keep your distance from her.”

  “Who is the other woman?” Jayme asked.

  “Micki, we call her. Cheryl McNulty. She’s been with Luthor since long before I ever knew either one of them.”

  “They’re married?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. She wears a bunch of jewelry. Maybe one of them’s a ring. I never looked at her close enough to tell.”

  DeMarco said, “You’ve looked closely at Sully, though, haven’t you?”

  Jakiella jerked his head up, glared at DeMarco.

  Flores smiled. And Jayme asked, “What else can you tell us about Micki?”

  “I don’t like her, I can tell you that.”

  “Why not?” DeMarco asked.

  “Because of the way she treats everybody. Especially Sully.”

  “And how is that?” DeMarco said.

  “Like she’s Queen Shit and Sully is her toilet paper. Sully and me both.”

  DeMarco and Jayme said nothing, waited for him to fill the silence.

  “She’s epileptic,” he continued. “Thinks that gives her the right to boss everybody else around.”

  “Even Reddick?” Jayme asked.

  “Naw, not him. He’d grab her by that beehive hair a
nd knock her head against the wall.”

  DeMarco said, “Have you seen him do that?”

  “I’ve heard him threaten to. That and worse.”

  Flores asked, “So if he’s such a monster, why did you spend last Saturday night at his place?”

  Jakiella blew out a long, heavy breath. “You figure it out.”

  Jayme said, “What about Suzi and Lady D?”

  “What about them?”

  “Who are they? Where are they from? What were they doing messing around with Reddick?”

  “They come up from Kentucky with Choo Choo. Wanted to get into business with Reddick.”

  “Exactly what kind of business would that be?” DeMarco said. “And if you say antiques, you’re going straight to jail.”

  “Drugs and women—what do you think it is?”

  “Were all four women involved?” Flores asked. “Sully too?”

  “She didn’t want to be, but… People need money to live.”

  DeMarco said, “So why did Reddick kill Choo Choo and the females?”

  “When did I say he did?”

  “If it wasn’t him, then who?”

  Jakiella had switched to breathing through his mouth now, taking large gulps of air. “I knew it wouldn’t be just three fucking questions. I knew it. I’m done talking now. If you want to search my place, go ahead and fucking search it. I’d rather go to jail for a couple ounces of weed than end up nailed to a tree.” With that he sidestepped DeMarco, turned and squeezed past Jayme and Flores to head back to the job site.