No Woods So Dark as These

by Randall Silvis

  You will meet me at the old mill on Slippery Rock Creek.

  I will wait until 6:30 a.m. There are eyes on you wherever

  you go, whatever you do, even now. If you do not come alone,

  or if you are late, consider my invitation withdrawn.

  No future invitation will be extended.

  I am Magus

  One Hundred Six

  There was no time to think about which action was most prudent or to differentiate right from wrong, no time to think about whom to call or what might happen to him. The image of Jayme in their bed flashed across his mind’s eye as he lurched toward the counter and was aware of Hero standing there with the leash attached to his collar and dragging limp on the floor but he had no time for that either. The clock on the stove read 6:19. His focus had narrowed into a pinpoint and his movements felt heavy and thick as he yanked open the drawer and grabbed the 9mm and then spun in the opposite direction to yank his car keys off the hook on his way to the back door. With a quick twist he set the lock and pulled the door shut behind him and raced down off the porch with his thumb repeatedly clicking the Unlock button on his car’s remote.

  Only when he was in his car and moving in reverse with the tires spinning the wet grass into a gel did he remember his cell phone still on the kitchen counter where he had left it forty minutes earlier. Then he slammed the gearshift into Drive and prayed no one would get in his way. He drove bent forward over the steering wheel and calculated the distance to the old mill at six and a half miles. The time was now 6:21 a.m. Nine minutes for six and a half miles. He would need at least three minutes to get out of town if he slowed as usual for all of the turns and paused at the four stop signs and one traffic light. But he would not pause this morning. He would stop for nothing. The seat belt warning kept beeping but he would not take his hands from the steering wheel or look away from the road except for a quick glance at the 9mm sliding back and forth on the passenger seat with every squealing turn.

  One Hundred Seven

  Twenty yards past a yellow diamond-shaped sign that read Hidden Drive, DeMarco made a hard right onto a long gravel lane and glanced at the clock: 6:28. He took a deep breath and tapped the brakes to slow to twenty miles per hour. Three more deep breaths and then he came to a stop halfway across the old blacktop parking lot where brown weeds now stood up through the cracks and frost heaves. He put the gearshift in Park but left the engine running, then, keeping his movements slow and, he hoped, undetectable from the building a hundred feet away, he covered the 9mm with his right hand, slid it across the seat, leaned forward, and slipped the barrel and the trigger housing into the waistband below the small of his back. He made sure that his sweatshirt concealed the weapon, then leaned forward again and waited.

  He had already decided that Khatri would not walk away this time, not even if he was accompanied by two goons carrying assault rifles. If that happened DeMarco would slip the gearshift into Drive, aim the car directly at Khatri, hit the gas and flatten himself across both seats. The bullets would have to rip through a lot of metal to reach him, but steel-jacketed rounds from an L115A3 would pass through a radiator like gamma rays through cardboard. Still, he would take the chance if one were offered.

  The old mill had stood empty for most of eighty years. For a long time it had been an important part of the community but now it stood useless and in decay, surrounded by cracked and broken pavement where nothing grew but the toughest of weeds. He sat facing the rear of the building, the eastern side. The sun had only now reached the bottom of the steeply slanting roof and threw a bright red aura all around that side of the building. A wide path had been made over the years by people walking along the side to the front of the mill, where the huge wheel that turned the grindstone inside could be seen, its big paddles slowly rotting above a dry creek bed.

  The sandstone blocks of the first four floors of the building were the same light brown as the flattened grass and weeds surrounding the mill. Four rows of six tall windows each, most of the glass broken out, with sheets of weathered plywood on the inside of every window. Only the single window below the peaked roof was not boarded shut. Six glass panels in that attic window, all intact except for the one in the bottom right corner.

  The rage still seethed in DeMarco but the tension was slowly slipping out of his body. He had beaten Khatri’s deadline. And now he was prepared to die to keep her safe. If it happened this morning, so be it.

  But Khatri must not escape. If DeMarco had his phone he would have called Bowen and Brinker but he had been mindless and stupid and maybe that was the last mistake he would ever make. He took a look out of the passenger window, then out of his own. Nobody on either side. Trees and weeds and scrub grass. The morning haze had lifted and now the sky was a perfect, unbroken blue. Not since childhood had he seen so many consecutive skies like that, all unmarked by a single cloud. He watched for movement along the flat front of the building and at both corners and at the uppermost window. Nothing. The sun peeked above the bottom corner of the roof and threw a sharp light into the windshield. He put a hand to his eyes and tried to cut the glare. Where are you? he thought.

  His hands were shaking a little and he told himself it was because the air was cold and he hadn’t paused to grab a jacket before leaving the house. But a wiser part of him knew that his decision to come here had been rash and not a flattering decision for a man his age. His love for Jayme and his desire to protect her had coupled with an old hatred for being told what to do and with the equally fiery anger, seared into him by his days as a soldier, toward all bullies who threaten innocent people.

  On the other hand, had he chosen to stay at home with Jayme, to seal them inside their illusory bunker and call the police, what would have happened? Even the township and municipal police would have arrived at the mill after the 6:30 deadline. And Khatri was slippery. Demented but slippery. He would be long gone before any police arrived, and then what? Then DeMarco’s and Jayme’s lives would be a prison of fear.

  He did not believe that Khatri possessed an army of devoted disciples. In each of the security cameras that had caught his image, he had been alone, a scrawny young man grinning at the camera. His only known disciple was awaiting sentencing and would likely grow old behind bars. He had at most one or two malcontents to push around, castoffs like Connor McBride in search of a purpose, any reason to give their life meaning.

  But it did not matter to DeMarco if there were one or three or twenty people inside that building with Khatri. He was not built to hide from danger. Was not wired for it. And there had been no time to think. So he was here now whether he should be or not. Waiting. Hands shaking. Alone with the soft rumble of the engine.

  He glanced at the clock: 6:34. And when he looked up through the windshield he saw a figure backlit by the sun walking around the side of the building. Tall and slender, all legs and arms. Khatri. He was taking his steps gingerly over the uneven ground, even put his hand out against a skinny tree to steady himself. Something about the prissiness of his movements made DeMarco smile.

  Khatri angled toward the center of the building as he moved forward. Held his hands up, palms out and even with his shoulders. He was wearing cream-colored linen trousers baggy around his legs, a blue nylon windbreaker, the hood pulled over his head.

  DeMarco placed his left hand on the door handle. Wisely and slow, he told himself. They stumble that run fast.

  Khatri came to a stop thirty feet from the front of DeMarco’s car. He called out something, but DeMarco heard only a muffled wave of noise. He briefly considered driving forward, staying inside the car, though he would not run down a lone unarmed man, not even Khatri. Foolish was one thing but cowardice was another. He would rather be considered a fool than a coward.

  He opened the car door. Glanced to the unboarded window at the top of the building, saw no shadow, no movement. Then fixed his eyes on Khatri again. And reminded himself, This is
the man who stabbed her. This is the man who killed your baby. He welcomed the rage as it flowed back into him, filled him with strength and resolve.

  He put his feet outside the car door, felt the chill in the air and smelled the dirty scent of broken asphalt and the fumes from his vehicle’s exhaust. He stood behind the door, head cocked, waiting.

  Khatri pushed back his hood. “I said I am glad you came!” he called.

  “I didn’t come here to make you happy.” He was shivering now and heard the tightness in his voice.

  “And yet I am happy. I have traveled all this way to see you again.”

  DeMarco said nothing. Calculated the distance and the likelihood that he could place a shot or two in Khatri’s legs. A skinny man running was not an easy target. Beneath the car’s window, he let his hand slip along his thigh and toward his back.

  Khatri said, his voice sounding almost musical in the stillness of the morning, lilting, “Do you not wish to know, good sir, why I have invited you here?”

  DeMarco offered no reply. He could not stop shivering and knew the tightness of his muscles would do him no good, would slow down every movement but he could not make the quivering stop.

  Grinning, Khatri lowered his right hand to his side, and then lowered his left, and DeMarco looked beyond him and up at the highest window in the building and saw the flash like a tiny star exploding.

  He was aware of the car window shattering before he felt the pain. The glass shattered at the same instant he was thrown backward off his feet. Then came the loud crack and only then did he recognize the blow to his chest and the searing pain. His first thought was, Please not now, I have too much to do.

  He landed on his left side, still reaching for the gun at his back. Sucked in a breath and heard the whistling in his throat. Tasted blood in his mouth. Heard pigeons burst explosively off the rooftop, wings thrumming.

  “That is why!” Khatri called.

  DeMarco scraped his head across the cracked asphalt. Tried to find Khatri in the pool of water that had filled his eyes. He fumbled for the gun and finally found it, struggled to free it, and fired blindly. With each of the four shots his arm rose and the aim went higher, so that the barrel was pointed at the sky with the final shot. Two more shots coming from the building struck the pavement near his head and sprayed his face with slivers of asphalt and dirt. His arm dropped and the gun in his hand clattered away.

  He heard footsteps running, quickly fading. Then a muted thumping echoing inside the building. Ba bump ba bump ba bump ba bump ba bump. Footsteps banging down wooden stairs in a hollow building. Then more silence.

  He blinked, felt a piece of grit in his eye. Both eyes watering, vision blurring. He slid his right hand along his body toward the center of the pain, covered the bullet hole with his palm, pressed down with as much pressure as he could muster. His left arm, stretched out at his side, jerked back and forth, fingers scratching at the rough blacktop. His breath was sticking in his throat now, each inhalation a sloppy, rasping gasp.

  He thought of Jayme sleeping. Wished he had had a chance to thank her for finding him and loving him and bringing him back to life. Felt that pain too suffuse him. That sweet, sorrowful pain. He closed his eyes and waited.

  There was something more than a little bit humorous to the whole situation, he thought. To all of the desperate machinations men and women put themselves through in a lifetime. As if any of it really matters. As if all of the fear and ambition and terror is in any way warranted.

  Now that the adrenaline was seeping out of his brain, he knew what he should have done. He should have called out the horse cavalry to surround the old mill with men and armaments three layers deep. A simple 9-1-1 call would have done it. He should have locked the doors and sat tight and enjoyed a nice cup of coffee in the quiet of the morning. But Khatri had played DeMarco’s ego like a fiddle. The kid had perfect timing. Don’t let DeMarco think. Don’t give him two seconds to take a deep breath. That’s when mistakes happen. When the brain clouds with rage and you go racing out of the house leaving your phone on the kitchen counter. When a simple phone call, three simple digits, would have changed everything.

  Yep, DeMarco thought. He had to smile despite the pain. He played you like a cheap violin.

  Sometime later, how soon or long he could not say, a sound emerged from the stillness, a softly treading sound of someone approaching in no hurry, rubber heels scuffing the ground. The shooter, he thought. DeMarco opened his eyes and moved his head, tucked his chin and blinked to clear his vision. Scratched a quivering hand across the pavement, feeling for the gun.

  But no, the man coming toward him was unarmed, a shadow against the sky, arms low at his side, both hands empty. DeMarco wanted to lift a hand to him, call out, but there was no air in his lungs, no strength in his arm.

  The figure kept approaching, a silhouette of a man taking long, easy strides. The sun was rising above the roof of the building now, surrounding the man with a brilliant nimbus of golden light so that bit by bit his features came into view, the clean-shaven smiling face and the neatly combed blond hair, the clean firm lines of his face and limbs and the easy, rhythmic gait of his stride. He was a tall man, slender but not thin, dressed in a pair of faded blue jeans, a crisp white shirt untucked, a pair of white Chuck Taylor high-tops. The sudden clarity and keenness of his vision surprised DeMarco. And although he had never before looked at a man and considered him beautiful, he did so now, the most beautiful man he had ever seen.

  And that was when DeMarco recognized the man and realized that he had been waiting for him a long time, had been searching for him as a boy escaping into the safety of the woods and in every grain of Iraqi sand and in the flames and screams in Panama. And here he was now, unbidden. Not some comic book character. Not some actor in costume and makeup. He was the real thing. The bona fide. Imagine that, DeMarco thought.

  The man strode up to him, stopped just short of DeMarco’s feet, and smiled down.

  Only seconds earlier DeMarco had thought his last breath gone, but he found himself breathing easier now, the air warmer, his body relaxing in the stillness of the new day. To the man smiling down at him, DeMarco said, “You don’t look the way I expected.” The strength and clarity of his own voice pleased him and he thought that he might be able to stand up soon.

  “I am sorry to disappoint you.”

  “No apology necessary,” DeMarco said, and pushed himself up on one elbow and returned the man’s smile.

  The man said, “‘The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief.’”

  “But you seem like such a friendly thief,” DeMarco said.

  The man held his smile as he turned slowly to the side and lifted his gaze to the whitening blue of the sky. “It is a beautiful day, isn’t it, Ryan?”

  And in that moment every second of DeMarco’s life flashed across his mind’s eye like images on a movie reel, running in reverse through the horror and dread accompanying Khatri’s letter to the tenderness of Jayme smiling in her sleep to his love for Huston and Ryan Jr. and Laraine and the academy, back through the blind unthinking sickness of Iraq and Panama to the relief of his father’s death and the comfort of his mother’s touch, the healing humbling holiness of the woods and their uplifting elegance, the cleansing wind in his face as he stood high above a silent river, the beautiful black rope of shiny-scaled muscle he found sunning itself on the railroad tracks and the small birds swooping and gliding over the water, and every other moment all the way back to his birth with the chill of the hospital room and the inarticulate wonder and hope of his tiny beating heart, all of it not just witnessed but lived again in its fullness, all in that moment between the man’s question and DeMarco’s answer, lived first in reverse and then forward again, all while the air chilled his skin and the glow of a tangerine sun warmed it and he recognized that he was yet in his body but never of it.

  “Ever
y day is beautiful,” he said, and knew that as the truest sentence he had ever spoken.

  The man nodded while still gazing at the sky. Then he looked down at DeMarco once more, the beautiful smile widening as he extended his hand.

  “And now, my friend,” the man told him as their hands came together palm to palm, “I have so many things to show you.”

  Reading Group Guide

  1. At the beginning of this book, DeMarco has officially retired. What is he running away from?

  2. How do you feel about Chase Miller’s sensationalist style of journalism? In what ways can it help or harm a case?

  3. Jayme struggles after her miscarriage, though working the case seems to help her break out of her grief. Why do you think that is?

  4. Both Flores and DeMarco get a bad feeling after interviewing Reddick. Why did they suspect him? Did you feel the same?

  5. Do you think it was wise for DeMarco and Jayme to let Chase, a civilian, get involved with the case? Why or why not?

  6. Discuss Daniella Flores. What motivates her?

  7. Throughout the investigation, the serial killer Daksh Khatri stalks and threatens Jayme and DeMarco. Put yourself in their shoes. Would you want to keep working the case, knowing a killer was hot on your heels? Why or why not?

  8. How do you feel about Sonny Jakiella, the burnout who worked for Reddick and seemed to genuinely love Amber Sullivan? Do you think he is a good person?

  9. Would working an upsetting case like this one make you question the goodness of people? Do you think it’s possible to investigate violent crimes without becoming jaded?

  10. DeMarco starts having strange dreams. What are they about? What is he questioning?

  11. Think about the murder Jack Loughton committed—he killed Reddick Sr., a drug dealer, pedophile, and serial abuser. How does that crime compare with the murders that Reddick Jr. committed—that of vulnerable young women? Are some murders worse than others? Should the punishments be equal?