No Woods So Dark as These

by Randall Silvis

  Fifteen seconds passed in silence. Then Jakiella looked up at DeMarco. “Is this on the level?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  Jakiella dropped his head again. Said, “Okay,” a hoarse, guttural croak. He was bent so low, forearms on his thighs, that his words dropped straight down, barely audible. Flores pushed her phone closer to his head.

  “Okay what?” she asked.

  “Okay, that’s what happened.”

  “You and Sully did what he told you to do,” Boyd said. “Yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who poured the gasoline and torched the vehicle?”

  “I did.”

  “Who told you to do it?”

  “Reddick.”

  “Who held Choo Choo up against the tree?”

  “Me and Sully and Micki. Except that Sully didn’t want to. She was crying the whole time.” His words ran together in a monotonic slur.

  “Then why did she do it?” Flores asked.

  “Afraid of him. Both of us were.”

  “Afraid of Reddick?” Boyd asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he threaten you?”

  “All the time.”

  “Then why did the two of you hang around? Why didn’t you just go your own way?”

  Jakiella lifted his head, regarded Boyd with the most sorrowful eyes DeMarco had ever seen. “He would have cut us off.”

  “From what?” Boyd asked.

  “Black eagle.”

  “I thought Sully wanted to quit using.”

  “She tried. Was always trying.”

  Flores asked, “Did you ever try to stop, Sonny?”

  He dropped his eyes. Shook his head.

  DeMarco thought, Who administered the chloral hydrate?

  And Flores asked, “Who knocked Choo Choo and the others out to begin with? So that you could get them into the car and out to the woods?”

  DeMarco smiled and thought, Good girl.

  “Micki,” Jakiella said. “She put it in their dessert.”

  “Why?” Boyd asked. “Why did Reddick have them killed?”

  “Said they tried to steal his stuff. Money and drugs.”

  “You sound as if you don’t believe that, Sonny.”

  “Choo Choo wasn’t afraid of him. None of them were. He didn’t like that.”

  “So he decided to get rid of them?”

  “Him or Micki did. She didn’t like extra girls taking business from her.”

  Boyd asked, “What else was Micki involved in?”

  “Everything. Start to finish. Everything he did.”

  “And you and Sully never knew she wasn’t the real Micki?”

  Again Jakiella shook his head. “Only one we ever met. I told you that before.”

  “You told us a lot before,” Boyd said. “But most of it was lies. Are you lying to us now?”

  “No.”

  “Everything you have told us is the truth?”

  “Yeah,” Jakiella said.

  Flores said, “Swear it on your daughters’ souls.”

  “Unh,” Jakiella moaned, and drew himself tight in a shiver. “I swear.”

  Boyd turned, looked to Captain Bowen. Bowen nodded.

  To Jakiella, Flores said, “A life well-spent, Sonny. Are you proud of yourself?”

  “Don’t,” he whimpered. “Please don’t.”

  “It’s a little too late for your pathetic little don’ts, isn’t it?”

  He made no answer. Collapsed with his forehead on the hard edge of the table, sobbing, body shuddering. And DeMarco thought, Welcome to the ninth circle of hell, my friend.

  One Hundred One

  In the afternoon DeMarco spent a couple of hours in the basement, sweeping the concrete floor, using a broom to chase cobwebs down off the rafters and walls, sorting through moldy boxes he hadn’t opened in a dozen years—Christmas ornaments not used since Laraine moved out, tax papers, old books with their pages stuck together now, a pasta maker he had forgotten he owned—all the ballast of a shipwrecked marriage. He tinkered with a couple of lamps that had quit working and had been relegated to the darkness, but even after trying three different bulbs they refused to produce a glimmer. The dehumidifier had stopped working too, though he didn’t know when, and nothing he touched seemed worth salvaging. He dragged or carried everything close to the bottom of the stairs and told himself that he would spend the next day hauling them out to the curb for Monday’s garbage pickup.

  The Realtor had told them that clutter was their enemy; clutter would blind prospective buyers to the “good bones” of the house and send them scurrying for the door. So while he cleaned up the basement, Jayme organized the first floor, clearing off the coffee table and other surfaces, vacuuming, dusting, making mental notes about what colors would work best for the new sofa pillows and area rugs the Realtor had suggested she buy.

  For the first fifteen minutes Hero followed her as she moved about the room, but then went to his usual spot at the end of the coffee table, walked in a circle and then flopped down on the floor. Every time she moved to the other end of the coffee table, he lifted his head, checked to see that she was still there, and rested his chin on the rug again.

  DeMarco emerged from the musty dimness near five, his face and hands smudged black with dust, his T-shirt streaked from holding the moldy boxes to his chest. He came into the living room and said, holding his hands at his sides as if they were diseased, “I told the FBI I would bring them the letter.”

  She had her back to him when he spoke; had been considering the curtains and whether or not they should be replaced. She turned. “You have to drive all the way to Erie again? They couldn’t even meet you halfway?”

  “I figured I might as well get everything over with at the same time. I’m going to meet with Joe afterward too. I don’t think you should be there.”

  “Oh, baby,” she said. “You’re going to do that tonight?”

  “It has to be done.”

  “And then what, after you tell him? Are you going to the IAD?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’ll just play it by ear.”

  “I can at least ride up and back with you,” she said. “I don’t have to sit in on the meeting.”

  “I’d rather you stay home. Just please be careful, okay? We both have to start being a lot more careful now.”

  “What time do you think you’ll be back?”

  He glanced at the clock on the cable box. “An hour up, a few minutes to hand off the letter and answer a couple of questions, an hour with Joe, an hour home. So before nine, I hope.”

  “You’re going to take a shower first, right?”

  He held out his hands palms up, smudged black with the years.

  “Want some company?” she asked.

  “I wish I had the time. Hold that thought, though, okay?”

  “Call me when you leave Joe. Where are you meeting him?”

  “Brannigan’s on State.”

  “Does he know why you’re coming?”

  “We didn’t discuss it. But I’m sure he has an idea.”

  “You should eat something before you see him.”

  He nodded. “I’ll grab something along the way.”

  “Fast food?” she said. “All that grease and fat? You know what it will do to your stomach.”

  “My stomach is already a mess, just thinking about going up there.”

  “I’ll make you a fruit smoothie to drink on the way. With ginger to settle your stomach.”

  “Thank you, baby. That would be perfect.”

  “If he gets angry, just walk away.”

  “He won’t get angry. He wanted me to find out.”

  She crossed to him and, despite the filth, slipped her hands around his waist. Laid her head
against his dirty cheek. “Come home to us as soon as you can.”

  Her warmth and scent went into him, filled him up and hollowed him out. “You’re the only place I want to be.”

  One Hundred Two

  Loughner was already two sheets to the wind, red-faced and laughing out loud at the flat-screen on the wall when DeMarco arrived. The Big Bang Theory. Four dysfunctional geeks and a gorgeous, ditzy female. Loughner was seated at the near corner of the bar, his back to the door.

  DeMarco paused for a moment to scan the room: the heavy, dark-brown nineteenth century furnishings, the thick bar and stools, the plank floor and paneling on the walls—all the same shade of liquid cocoa except for the area covered with checkerboard floor tiles, dirty yellow and cinnamon. The few tables on the little platform on the other side of the room were occupied, all with customers younger than the solitary men at the bar. From the dim larger dining room farther back came a soft rumble of conversation.

  The place hadn’t changed an inch since the last time DeMarco had set foot in it, the week before he ended things with Laraine. He had used to stop there for a quick one after leaving the street in front of her home, after sitting in his car and listening to music while she entertained a new friend.

  It seemed so long ago. Everything seemed so long ago.

  He stepped over to the bar. Leaned in between Joe and the burly man next to him, the man’s round face close to a shepherd’s pie he was busy shoveling into his mouth, chasing every other spoonful with a gulp of stout. DeMarco could smell the rich beefy scent of the shepherd’s pie in its white enameled bowl, felt the pulse of the din like a bass drum in his ears. He leaned close to Joe and said, “Want me to see if there’s a table open in the back?”

  Loughner turned his way; the older man’s eyes seemed unfocused. “I like sitting at the bar.”

  “It’s a bit noisy, don’t you think?”

  “Suit yourself,” Loughner said, and raised his glass to his mouth. Scotch on the rocks; DeMarco recognized that scent too.

  He crossed to the hostess station and spoke briefly with a pretty brunette in a plaid skirt and white blouse. She looked at her table chart, then placed an X over one of the icons and told him to follow her. He said, “Let me tell my friend,” went back and spoke to Loughner, then returned to follow the hostess to a booth against the wall midway into the larger room. Not three feet to the left of the booth was a row of tables, all of them full. It would be impossible to speak there without being overheard. He thanked the hostess for her trouble and said they would stay at the bar.

  This time he crossed to the opposite side of Loughner and wedged himself in between Joe and the wall. He did not like the feeling of being boxed in and having to lean down whenever he wished to speak. Things needed to be said that should not have to compete with the laughter and chatter of a hundred people having a good time. His conversation with Joe deserved a closed room with soft lighting, with maybe one of them on his death bed, the other one dressed like Max von Sydow in the original Exorcist movie.

  Joe finished his scotch and signaled the barman for another one. “And whatever he wants,” he said with a nod at DeMarco.

  “Water is fine,” DeMarco said.

  Loughner had to lean a little to his right to look up at him. “You’re not even going to have a drink with me?”

  “I’ve pretty much given it up, Joe.”

  “That’s a stupid thing to do.”

  DeMarco waited until the drinks arrived and the barman moved away before he spoke again. “So Jayme and I made that trip up to Elk County you suggested. Read the logs and talked to Reddick’s mother too.”

  Loughner swished the liquor in his glass, raised it to his lips and took a sip. Held the glass in front of him as if he were checking it for bugs. “I hear you finally got the prick locked up. Took you long enough.”

  The change in Loughner’s tone was obvious. Almost confrontational. But DeMarco recognized it not as anger but preparation. As a boy he had stood before his father a hundred times and had heard that same tone in his own voice, that almost-angry moment of acceptance of what was to come, the slap across his face, the damning curse.

  But DeMarco wasn’t his father. Would never let himself be such a man. “I wish you hadn’t put me in this spot, Joe. Jayme’s in it now too.”

  “What spot would that be?” Loughner asked.

  “Why did you carry it around with you all these years? Why didn’t you take it to your station commander? Or maybe you did.”

  “You’re talking gibberish, Sergeant. If you have something to say, spit it out.”

  “You were watching him every chance you got. Reddick Sr. You became obsessed with putting him away.”

  “Obsessed?” Loughner said. “I don’t like the implication of that word.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Joe. I’m sorry for my word choice.”

  “He was the sick one. You would know that if you really knew what you’re talking about.” His words were coming slower now, thick and low and sticking to one another.

  “What all was he into?” DeMarco asked.

  “You tell me.”

  “He was peddling drugs, of course. I’m not sure what else.”

  “He was selling it to kids. To children. Getting them hooked and then using them for his own sick pleasure.”

  DeMarco leaned a little closer. “You caught him with that girl, right? The one in your report you described as ‘under the influence.’”

  “Did I?”

  “You didn’t say she was only thirteen, though.”

  “Don’t know that I even asked her age.”

  “You must have. Your partner knew it.”

  Loughner smiled, gazed down into his glass. “Lou’s still kicking, huh? Son of a bitch beat three kinds of cancer. Tough, tough bird.”

  “I’m thinking you used your baton on Reddick. At first I figured he was pistol-whipped, but I don’t think you meant to kill him. That was never your intention.”

  Loughner continued to smile. “You have a good imagination, I’ll give you that. Might want to rein it in a little, though.”

  “Multiple blunt force traumas to the head and face. Bruises to his stomach, chest, and legs consistent with being kicked.”

  Loughner’s smile twitched at the corner, then he broadened it. “Somebody did a number on him, that’s for sure.”

  “And then you took the girl home. Cleaned up and went back to work. And you’ve had the truth eating at you every day since.”

  Loughner sipped his drink, set the glass down on its napkin. Picked up his beer glass and drained it. Signaled to the barman for another one.

  Both men watched the barman draw the beer, tilting the glass from slanted to straight up under the tap so as to form a perfect head of brown foam. Only after the beer had been served and the barman moved away did Loughner speak.

  “It’s a good story,” he said. “Too bad it’s bullshit.”

  “Why did you want me to know this, Joe? To do what with it? Take it to IAD?”

  “It’s your fiction, Sergeant. You can sell it to the movies for all I care.”

  “If you wanted to get clean of it, why didn’t you report it yourself?”

  Loughner sipped from his beer glass, wiped the foam from his lips, then leaned to the man on his right, who was sitting back with his eyes on the shelves behind the bar, the white ceramic bowl in front him now empty but for the smears of gravy. “How was that pie?” Loughner asked. “You recommend it?”

  “It’s always good,” the man said. “Very satisfying.”

  Loughner turned to DeMarco. “You want to try one? It’s on me. Gentleman here says it’s highly satisfying.”

  “I’m not very hungry, Joe, but thanks. Why don’t you have one?”

  He picked up his scotch glass. “Liquid diet. Doctor’s orders.”


  DeMarco leaned in close, his hands on the edge of the bar. “What do you want me to do, Joe? You want me to turn you in? It doesn’t make any sense but I can’t figure it any other way.”

  Loughner lifted his chin slightly, raised his eyes to the crowded shelves. The mirror behind the bottles made the shelves appear overloaded, in danger of crashing down. He said, “You ever hear of a guy named Sophocles?”

  “I have, yes.”

  “I used to read those inspirational quotes in Reader’s Digest. When I was a younger man. Trying to improve myself, you know? For some reason, one of them stuck with me. I’ve never been able to get it out of my head.”

  “I would love to hear it, Joe.”

  “Who was that guy anyway? That Sophocles? I never bothered to look him up.”

  “He was a playwright in ancient Greece.”

  “A playwright, huh? I always figured he was something more important than that. Like an emperor or something.”

  “What’s the quote that stuck with you?”

  “Eh. It’s all bullshit anyway, isn’t it?”

  “What is?”

  “Inspirational quotes. Philosophy. Religion. What good are they when the shit hits the fan?”

  “I don’t know, Joe. I think they might be of some benefit. I sort of collect quotes myself.”

  “Is that right? Let me hear a couple.”

  “I had this friend, a writer. Thomas Huston.”

  “I know that name.”

  “From the murders last year in Mercer County. That case I worked on.”

  “That’s where I heard it,” Loughner said.

  “Tom wrote fiction but he also left behind a lot of notes. His thoughts on just about every subject in the world.”

  “So are you going to tell me one or not?”

  “He said that we are all aliens somewhere.”

  “Aliens?” Loughner said. “Like illegal aliens?”

  “I guess. Plus the outer space kind. All kinds.”

  “You sure know how to pick them,” Loughner said.

  DeMarco answered with a smile. “What he meant is that we all feel out of place sometimes. Like we don’t belong here. Strangers in a strange land. It’s just another way of saying that we’re all the same. We all get lonely, we’re all afraid, we all feel lost sometimes.”