At Home in the Dark

by Joe Hill

  Of course that’s the moment they hear a sleepy little voice behind them.

  “Nana, why are you naked?”

  5 TWO MONTHS AGO

  After taking custody of the kids from the police Lonergan and Jovie found a hotel just outside Philadelphia city limits. Lonergan didn’t want to stay in Philly proper—as far as he was concerned the city killed their daughter, and he wanted nothing to do with it. Officer Walczak recommended a Radisson, up Route One in nearby Bensalem.

  The room was clean, nothing fancy. Two beds. One for Hailee, the other for Lonergan and Jovie with the baby nestled between them. They ordered chicken tenders and fries for Hailee, who ate as if she’d been stranded on a desert island. Which Lonergan supposed she had, in a way. He couldn’t imagine what she’d been through today.

  Lonergan rubbed his wife’s back. “We’re going to be all right,” he said, mostly because that’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to say in a situation like this.

  Jovie didn’t respond, because she’s always been the most honest of the two.

  Around 3 a.m. the baby started bawling. Jovie sent Lonergan for the bag they’d thrown together at Daria’s house to look for a diaper and wipes. Lonergan’s fingers didn’t work properly and nothing looked familiar. Was this tiny piece of padded plastic really a diaper? Finally he found what Jovie needed and stood by like an idiot as she cleaned up the baby. After a while they settled back in but Lonergan couldn’t sleep. He slipped on his shoes and went outside.

  • • •

  Lonergan dug the pack out of his jacket, tapped out a cigarette, lit it, inhaled, felt the burn in his chest.

  Traffic made its way up and down Route One. Across the highway there was a place where you could buy live crabs and cold beer. A little further up you could buy a dirty movie or a sex toy. This was pretty much the last place Lonergan thought he’d find himself on a Wednesday morning in mid-February.

  Did Jovie know Daria was using again? They’d been through all of this bullshit when she was with Hailee’s junkie father. Daria had gone to rehab. A really expensive rehab. How did Jovie miss the relapse? There were always signs. Did she sound depressed on the phone? Did she borrow more money?

  But you don’t grill a woman on the same day she lost her daughter.

  And really, those questions didn’t matter right now. What mattered now was taking care of Hailee and Brandon. Not just watch them for a weekend; they were going to have to raise them. The enormity of it all didn’t hit him until this moment.

  Lonergan had no idea how they were going to afford this.

  The last few years had been rough, even before his hands gave up on him. Cable news talking heads called 2008 an “economic downturn;” Lonergan referred to it as “when America shit the bed.” His livelihood depended on other families having the money to install a new kitchen or a backyard deck. After Obama took office, work slowed down. A lot. He found himself traveling further away for jobs—even to the northern burb of Philly, sometimes. Which added three, four hours to his work day. By the time Lonergan’s hands decided to go AWOL, their savings were down to fumes.

  One thing that wasn’t going away was the mortgage. When Lonergan bought his house back in 2001, it was a bare-bones shack. He refinanced a few times and built it up into the kind of home Jovie and Daria deserved. And then the housing bubble burst.

  The doors behind Lonergan swished open. In his peripheral vision he could see a polo shirt and khakis. Lonergan took another drag.

  “Sir, I’m sorry, but you can’t smoke that here.”

  Lonergan turned and stared at him. “I’m outside.”

  “You can’t be within 50 yards of the hotel.”

  “There’s nobody else out here except you. And you’re welcome to go back in.”

  “Please, sir. It’s hotel policy. You’re going to have to put that out.”

  Lonergan considered putting it out in his eye. Instead he looked around to see what was fifty yards away. A public park across the street seemed like the best option. He did the frogger thing across the road. Six steps inside, though, he realized the park was actually a cemetery.

  He dropped his cigarette to the ground, mashed it with a twist of boot, then crossed the street again and went back upstairs to the room.

  • • •

  Jovie was already awake, showered and dressed. He doubted she slept much, either.

  “We have to be at the morgue by 10,” she said, as if it were just another errand, like picking up eggs and milk on the way home.

  Lonergan nodded, then stretched his fingers as much as he could, which wasn’t much at all. He felt a buzzing sensation on the left side of his chest, as if there were a cell phone under his skin.

  But he didn’t have time to ponder that much because Hailee was already running toward him yelling “Poppa Poppa!” Lonergan had no choice but to pick her up and sit her on his lap, even though his hands were screaming.

  Hailee was the love and the nemesis of Lonergan’s life. He adored her. But she was also one of the few people on this planet able to catch him off guard. Like she did as she burrowed into his chest like a buzz saw.

  “Easy there, honey.”

  “Nana said we’re going to your house today.”

  “Yeah, that’s right, sweetie.”

  “I really like your house.”

  “I know you do. You like to destroy it!”

  But this wouldn’t be the usual weekend visit with the grandkids, full of pizza and movies and ice cream and every other treat they could give them. This was forever.

  6 NOW

  Lonergan and Jovie tense up against each other. Both of their minds go to the same place: Can Hailee see the body on the hallway floor? And if so—how the hell are they going to explain it to her?

  “Shit,” Lonergan whispers.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got her.”

  Jovie breaks the embrace and runs down the hall toward Hailee, who smiles. Grandma’s playing a game! Jovie scoops up granddaughter and carries her the rest of the way down the hall. “What are you doing out of bed you little boldie!” she whisper-yells. Hailee giggles like a loon. “Let’s get you tucked back in.”

  Lonergan turns around and looks down at his son-in-law’s body, his mouth twisted up in disgust.

  “Better get you tucked away, too.”

  Lonergan is already thinking about the removal and replacement of the floorboards, since some blood had already soaked down into the wood and cops have those CSI flashlights that can illuminate the tiniest specks of bodily fluids.

  But he pushes all that worry aside for the moment and focuses on the task at hand. Dawn will be coming in a few hours, both kids will be awake, and Isaiah’s body needs to be out of the house as quickly as possible. Lonergan can worry about the blood splatter and the million other details later.

  Then he remembers the Dodge Charger, which is still idling out front.

  Lonergan pulls on his jacket, slips on a pair of sneakers, then heads out into the bitter cold.

  • • •

  At the driver’s side door, Lonergan reaches in and fumbles around for the keys. There are no keys. The interior of the car reeks of godawful body spray. Lonergan wants to gag, and he isn’t even dealing with the corpse yet.

  His dumb rubber fingers finally find it: the fat push-button that turns off the ignition. Lonergan pushes it with a knuckle. The mighty engine falls silent.

  Fancy as the car is, the interior looks like a stoner’s bedroom. Fast food litter, candy wrappers, vape pen stuff, an oversized tablet phone hooked to the dash by umbilical cord.

  The backseat is packed tight with stuff from Bullseye. Diapers, baby toys, a bouncy seat, as if Isaiah came straight from a baby shower.

  This bothers Lonergan. If Isaiah drove up here with the intention of taking the baby home with him, why isn’t all of this stuff back home in Philly?

  Lonergan fumbles around a little more until he finds the button that opens the trunk. Sure enough, inside t
he trunk is a big duffel bag and a smaller carry-on type deal. Goddamnit. Isaiah was planning on taking the baby somewhere else. Another state. Hell, maybe even another country.

  Lonergan slams the trunk lid and notices the Charger has a Texas license plate. Is that where Isaiah had been hiding out for the past two months?

  Never mind that now. The bigger question is, where’s he going to stuff the body? Traditionally, the trunk is the storage space of choice. Lonergan realizes he’s going to have to shuffle things around. Haul the baby gear into the house, then put the luggage in the backseat, then put Isaiah in the trunk.

  Simple enough, but not for a man with two bad hands.

  Lonergan used to be one of those guys who would meet his wife at her car after a shopping trip and stubbornly insist on carrying the entire grocery order at once. He’d loop the handles of the plastic shopping bags around his hands until he was balancing $250 worth of food on each arm. Jovie would try to take one, and he’d tell her no way—I’ve got this.

  And that’s what Lonergan thinks now—I’ve got this. He tucks the bouncy seat under his arm and somehow gets a grip on the handles of a plastic bag stuffed to the breaking point with disposable diapers. But halfway back to the house, the bag drops down to the snow and bounces once before rolling down the slight grade of his front lawn. He didn’t even feel it slip out of his hand.

  “Shit.”

  Lonergan releases the bouncy seat out from under his arm and guides it down his body with his arm until it rests in the snow. Then he retrieves the bag with the diaper, using his arms like the tines of a forklift truck, before squatting down to pick up the bouncy seat the same way. He may look like an idiot, but it gets the job done.

  The next trip out Lonergan uses the same technique; his hands can’t be trusted anymore. By the fourth trip, all of the baby gear is out of the backseat and piled up in the living room.

  Back out at the car again, Lonergan pops the trunk and tries to do the same thing with the giant duffel bag—picking it up with his arms. But it is heavier than it looks, and doesn’t quite have the feel of clothing.

  After much fumbling with his useless fingers, Lonergan finally unzips the duffel with his teeth. What he sees confuses him until he stands up straight and takes a step back.

  Inside the duffel are two small wrapped presents, along with more cash than he’s ever seen gathered in one place.

  7 TWO MONTHS AGO

  No parent should have to identify the body of their child.

  Lonergan didn’t know how morgues worked. Would they go in together? And if so, who would watch the kids? What if there was no one available? There was no way he was letting Jovie go in there by herself.

  As it turned out there were a couple of staff members who took care of the kids. As the white-coated morgue attendant greeted them, Lonergan thought about the doctor who delivered Daria, some 24 years ago. Might as well been 24 hours ago. The same disinfectant odor hung in the room. The same bleached sheets, now pulled back. Here’s your baby girl . . .

  Lonergan had his arm around Jovie, who was trembling mightily. It took only a second to identify her, but that second went on forever.

  The body on the metal tray looked like Daria. But it wasn’t her. No more than a clump of hair in the shower was Daria, or a fingernail clipping in the sink. This is the thing she chose to leave behind. She was somewhere else now. That’s what Lonergan had to believe, otherwise he was going to lose his mind.

  They asked them to stick around. Which made no sense until we were shaking hands with a narcotics detective.

  “Valeria Flores,” she said. “You can call me Val.”

  Detective Flores wore a white button-down shirt tucked into dark jeans, badge clipped onto her waistband. She was tall and slender and had an exotic skin tone. Lonergan couldn’t tell if she was Latino or Middle Eastern. She also had a massive pair of breasts. Lonergan’s eyes were drawn to them and the gold and diamond cross hanging between her cleavage. It was sort of a public announcement that, I Believe in Jesus Christ, and oh by the way, Look What His Father Gave Me.

  “I apologize for making you hang around,” Detective Flores said. “And I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  Lonergan was about to mumble thanks when Jovie interrupted. “What do you want, Detective? Our babies are waiting for us.”

  “I knew your daughter, Ms. Lonergan. She was a really good mom.”

  “What do you want?”

  Flores nodded; pleasant talk was over. “I’m looking for Isaiah Edwards. He hasn’t been in town for a few weeks, and I don’t think he knows what happened.”

  “Well, he should have been here,” Jovie said.

  “Yes, he should have. Do you know what Isaiah does for a living?”

  “Shipping. Something to do with international shipping.”

  Flores bit back a smile. “Oh yeah, it’s definitely international. But shipping something very specific. Do you know what?”

  Lonergan was getting annoyed with the cutesy guessing game. “How about you just tell us, Detective?”

  “I’ve been after him for six months. A few weeks ago he dropped off my radar, leaving behind his wife and infant son. Reason I’m telling you folks is, I’m thinking at some point he’s going to want to see the baby. Maybe he’ll show up to the funeral, maybe not. But at some point he’s going to reach out to you, and if he does . . . well, I want to be completely straight with you. Isaiah Edwards is not one of the good guys.”

  “He kind of strikes me as an idiot,” Lonergan says.

  “He shows up,” Flores continued, “I want you to call me right away.”

  “Can we go now?” Jovie asked.

  This seemed to frustrate Flores. “Do you know how your daughter died, Mrs. Lonergan? I mean, specifically?”

  “Come on, that’s enough, Detective,” he says.

  “Daria overdosed on fentanyl,” Flores says. “Fentanyl is a fake version of heroin, only 50 times more powerful. They’re importing it from China, bringing it up through Mexico. It’s all over. Do you know what fentanyl does to the human body?”

  “Yeah, detective,” Lonergan says, “we know.”

  8 NOW

  Lonergan hooks the handles of the duffle bag over his arms, lugs it inside, drops it on the floor.

  Jovie, cleaned up and wearing a robe, is already going through the plastic bags and sorting out the baby items. “What’s that?” she asks, nodding at the duffel on the floor.

  “Presents for the kids,” Lonergan says.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t either. How’s the little demon?”

  “Back to sleep, I think. But just to be sure, I locked the door.”

  “Good thinking. You don’t think she saw anything, do you?”

  “I think she was too focused on Nana being naked.”

  “Right.”

  They stand there for a moment, staring at each other, because both knew what had to come next.

  “Honey, do you have an extra shower curtain and liner? Something you’d use in the guest bathroom?”

  “Yeah, I guess you can use that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Use the Christmas one in the closet. I can always buy another one.”

  “The one with the candy canes?”

  “No, I use that in our bathroom. I’m thinking of the one with the polar bears.”

  “Right.”

  By the time Lonergan returns from fetching the curtain and liner, Jovie has already opened the duffel bag. She is crouched down on her knees in front of it, fingering through the stacks.

  “What is this, Lonny?”

  “Son-in-law had that in the trunk. I think he was planning on taking the baby and going away for a long time. Possibly forever.”

  “Is this drug money?”

  “Pretty sure he didn’t make it giving lap dances.”

  Jovie shook her head. “No, what I mean is, do you think this money can be traced?”

  Lonergan hasn’t
thought about that. Then again, he is purposefully not considering anything that isn’t under the category of corpse disposal.

  “Worry about that later. Just stash the money someplace safe while I go take care of the body.”

  “The body.”

  Lonergan sees the worry and grief on Jovie’s face. He drops the curtain and liner and goes to kneel beside her. He takes her in his arms and pulls her close. The smell of her freshly-washed hair is intoxicating. He wishes they were lying in bed together, instead of out here, doing what they were doing.

  “Don’t think about it. Pretend he never came here tonight. Pretend this never happened. We can think of a million justifications later, I guarantee you, because this man has done harm to our family and probably hundreds of others. The only thing you have to worry about is hiding that money and hugging those kids when they wake up in a few hours. Because they’re all that matter.”

  Jovie pulls away so she can see his eyes. “Where are you going to put him?”

  “Where he belongs.”

  “Lonny, I’m serious.”

  “That’s something you’ll never have to know.”

  9

  The moment Lonergan saw the body he knew exactly where he’d be dumping it: an impossibly deep crack high up in the mountains.

  Nobody knew about it except a few locals. And even those locals stayed away, because nobody knew how deep it really went.

  Lonergan knows about the Crack because of his father. He was a brutal drunk, but once in a while he could be counted on to drop a serious piece of life wisdom.

  The Crack is not far from Giant’s Despair, the location of an annual motor race that twists 650 feet up along the side of the mountain. Dad was a huge fan of the Giant’s Despair Hillclimb, and he’d take Lonergan every year. After getting blasted on beer, he’d wander off to take a piss. Lonergan would always follow him, being a kid and not knowing what else to do. One year, when he was four or five, he wandered over near the Crack. His father yelled and raced over and grabbed him at the last minute, his dick still hanging out of his jeans.