The Darkest Place

by Daniel Judson

  “The funeral’s up in Rochester?”

  “Yeah. In three days. They’re leaving with the body in the morning, once it’s released from the coroner.”

  Kane thought about that, about the coroner he’d met when he identified his son. “Yes, that is my son,” Kane had said. On a metal table in a cold room, the boy’s body lay lifeless. He would never move or speak or laugh again, would never become what he wanted to be, what he was supposed to be. How can that be? Kane had once believed in God, had been raised to, had said prayers all his life in the dark. But he lost that comfort in his early twenties. Blame it on college, on a semester spent studying the existential writers. Bill Young had taught that course, taught it with a kind of fury, had helped lead Kane astray. A few years after that Kane made a point of reading everything he could on the teachings of the Buddha. Existentialism had taken him only so far. In Buddhism there is no god, only actions. Karma made sense to him, explained a number of things, made life less random. Kane needed that. Everyone needs that. But his son’s death took that comfort from him as well. The world was without scheme. Why drown a smiling boy? Mercy was a currency of man, Kane realized then. It did not exist on its own in the universe. It would not be handed down from above to those who need it, who deserve it. We were therefore at the mercy of each other, and at the mercy of dumb luck. Kane found that a less than promising thing. Still, the least he could do was offer it when he saw it was needed, for whatever good it would do.

  “Listen, I hope you can help them out,” Kane said. It was all he could say, all that could be said.

  Clay waited a moment, sizing this Kane guy up. “Yeah, me too,” he said softly. This guy, this Kane guy, seemed decent enough—knee deep in some kind of shit, obviously, by the look of him, by the way he lived, by the scratches on his face. But decent enough nonetheless. Clay waited a moment more, debating whether to say what was now on his mind or to just let it go, just get out of there while he could. It wasn’t any of his business, what he was thinking, and a part of him, a big part, wanted to keep it that way. But he couldn’t not warn the guy, not point out what he had seen. What if something happened, something bad? Clay didn’t want to have to carry that around. He had enough on his conscience. He’d seen enough lives fall into ruin.

  He held back for a while longer, debating all this in his head. Finally, though, he came out with it. There was just no way he couldn’t.

  “Listen, man, it’s none of my business, but it looks to me like maybe someone’s been messing around with your lock recently. I noticed scratches on the lock face. They look pretty fresh to me.”

  Kane nodded, glanced at the door, then back at Clay. “Yeah. My door was open when I came home tonight.”

  “You remember closing it behind you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anything missing?”

  “Not that I can tell.”

  “You’re positive about that?”

  “Yeah. Everything is just as I left it.”

  Clay nodded toward the wall to his right. “What’s your neighbor like?”

  “A little old lady.”

  “You two get along?”

  “As long as I sit in total silence while I’m home.”

  “One of those, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have any enemies? Flunk a student, maybe? An angry ex, or a girlfriend with an angry ex, maybe?”

  Kane thought again about Meg’s husband. He shrugged.

  “It’s probably just some kid, looking for quick money,” Clay said. “I could install a time lapse camera in the hallway, if you’d like, see if whoever it was comes back.”

  “No, that’s all right. But thanks.”

  “I don’t think it’s anything to worry too much about. If it was someone looking for money and didn’t find any, I doubt they’d come back.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “You might want to call your landlord, get the lock fixed.”

  “Yeah, I should do that.”

  Clay’s eyes again went to the set of scratches on the right side of Kane’s face. And again he looked away, quickly. He’d already peered far enough over the man’s fence. He didn’t want to look any farther.

  “You can reach me anytime through my pager,” Clay said.

  “The number’s on the card.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “There’d be no charge for the camera, if you change your mind. Just so you know. I meant what I said about the favor.”

  “Thanks.”

  Clay stepped forward then. He offered his hand. It was the size of an oven mitt. Kane took it. Clay’s grip was firm but not at all forceful. They shook hands.

  Then Clay left, and Kane was alone again.

  The smell of Clay’s cologne lingered, though. It filled the small front room. Kane wondered if whoever had walked through his place had been wearing cologne, too. If so, for how long had it lingered before fading away to nothing?

  Kane kept a bottle of scotch in the cupboard in his kitchenette. He’d bought it a little over a week ago. There was enough left for maybe two glasses. He got it down and poured a glass and stretched out on his unmade mattress, the glass resting on his stomach. Even though his bedroom was in the back of his apartment, he could hear through the window in his front room the cars that passed on Nugent Street. He listened to them, the few that there were, listened to them approach, then go by and fade gradually away. These were the only sounds he heard. Winter night in Southampton. He was at the bottom of his second glass and, strangely, on the verge of passing out, when he heard from somewhere in town the sounds of sirens.

  He thought about the broken lock on his door, then looked at the clock on the table beside his bed. It was twenty after nine. Clay had come by, what, a little after eight? He had stayed maybe ten minutes at the most. Could more than an hour really have passed? Kane wondered.

  He thought then about getting up to fix something to eat. He needed food. He felt very weak. He thought, too, about maybe wedging his door closed with something, or maybe blocking it entirely with the short sofa in his front room. Someone—anyone—could just walk in while he slept. And then what would he do? He thought of Meg’s tape sitting in the bottom of his bureau drawer. He should have put it somewhere else, he thought, somewhere it wouldn’t be so easy for someone to find. He wanted to do that, he intended to do that, but he found that he couldn’t sit up. He tried once, waited, a little puzzled at his condition, then tried again. But he couldn’t move, not even a little. He was certain he’d only had two drinks. He was certain of it. Two drinks was nothing for him. It was barely a good start to a night. He couldn’t be drunk, not yet, not this drunk, not on two drinks.

  Things started to happen quickly then. He heard a humming in both his ears, one louder than the other. There was a throbbing deep down in his head. He felt that he was being pressed against his mattress by some great weight and at the same time being pulled into it. He felt himself sinking into it, being swallowed by it, as though it had become water and he could no longer float on its surface. His legs went numb. Then the numbness rose, spreading through him, into his groin, then into his torso, burrowing finally in his chest, like an animal in its hole. His lips felt rubbery, his face somehow foreign, as if it had been replaced by the face of another. He tried to lift his head from his uncovered pillow but couldn’t. It had become quite heavy, amazingly heavy, as if water had rushed into his skull, filling it to the top, cold water swirling with white slivers of ice the size of teeth . . .

  Something was wrong, Kane thought. Something was terribly wrong.

  He blacked out cold then, unaware of the second wave of sirens moving through town, moving west, following the first wave of sirens, the wave Kane had been just conscious enough to make out.

  It was nine forty-five, an hour and a half since Clay had left Kane in his two-room apartment. When the sirens finally stopped, the town slipped back into a dead silence.

  Four

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nbsp; MILLER WAS STRETCHED OUT ON HIS BED WITH THE LIGHTS OFF. His knee was bothering him; it always seemed to hurt more when it got cold out. He needed to let it rest for a while and had lain down after coming home from work at seven. The plan was that Abby would come over at eight-thirty, after she got out of class. She took night courses at the community college in Riverhead. Miller had looked forward to seeing her all day, thought of little else. But when his phone rang as he was lying on his back, resting his knee, his first thought was that this was her calling, maybe to say she was running late, or maybe to cancel altogether. Maybe she had talked to someone who knew Miller, knew of his past. Maybe she wanted nothing more to do with him. He rolled onto his side, reaching out for the receiver, knocking his clock off the night table in the process.

  “Yeah,” he said. His own voice sounded groggy. He realized then that he must have dozed off. He looked down at the clock to see the time. But the clock had landed facedown. His room was dark, lit by the muted light coming through his windows. “Yeah,” he said again. He felt out of it. Pulling himself out of sleep was like pulling himself fully clothed out of water.

  “It’s Reggie,” Clay said. “You okay?”

  Miller swung his legs out, his bare feet resting flat on the cold wood floor. He was sitting now on the edge of his mattress. “Yeah, I’m fine. What’s going on?” He made an effort to speak clearly this time. The chill in his room helped him with that, helped to wake him up fast.

  “If you’re interested, we’ve got a job for you.”

  “Yeah, sure. What do you need?”

  “There’s a woman tends bar somewhere around here, we’re not sure where. We need to find her, in a hurry.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Right now.”

  Miller thought of Abby then, thought of her on her way to his place, on that long stretch of desolate road that ran between Riverhead and Southampton. When Miller had gotten back to his home the night before and told Abby what he had seen, told her about the dead boy that had been found floating in the Shinnecock Bay, all she could think of was what that weird customer at the deli had said to her, that old German professor who, on a good day, on a sunny summer day, gave her the creeps. Dark forces. Even thinking about that, about something out there in the night, something maybe even nearby, sent a chill down her back. Hearing from Miller that another boy had been found was more than enough to put a serious scare into Abby. She had clung to Miller as they slept, and in the morning, an hour after the slow winter dawn, as Miller drove Abby to her car in town, he sensed her hesitation at leaving him. Southampton Village was empty then, like a ghost town. He imagined her now, in this darkness, driving that long desolate road. She’d be coming to an empty house if he left right now, a house still for the most part strange to her. He didn’t want to do that to her.

  “You there?” Clay said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “No.”

  “We’ll pay you the usual fee. All we need is for you to find her, then let us do the rest. Understand?”

  “Yeah.” Miller waited a moment, then said, “He’s okay with this?” Miller knew not to utter the name of Clay’s boss over the phone, particularly a cordless one.

  “I wouldn’t be calling if he wasn’t,” Clay said. “All we need is for you to find her, Tommy. Are we clear on that?”

  “Yeah. Listen, I appreciate this. You won’t regret it, I promise.”

  “It’s not an audition. You don’t need to impress us. Just find the girl and give us a call.”

  “So who is she anyway?”

  “She knows the kid they found last night.”

  “Larry Foster?”

  Clay was a little surprised by that, maybe even a little put off. He paused, then said, “Did you know the kid?”

  “No.”

  “How’d you get his name?”

  “A friend of a friend of a friend.” Miller shrugged. “What’s this girl look like?”

  “I faxed over what we have.”

  The machine was downstairs, in Miller’s father’s office, which was pretty much exactly as his father had left it five years ago. Miller hardly ever went in there. Same thing with his parents’ bedroom. One of these days, maybe, he’d get around to cleaning both rooms out, storing their things away.

  “Does she have a name?”

  “It’s all in the fax.”

  “I guess I’ll get going right now then,” Miller said.

  “I’m going to take the bars in Southampton. I need you to check out Hampton Bays. We don’t have a lot of time, so cover as much ground as you can. And don’t call attention to yourself. Don’t ask questions, don’t show off, just keep an eye out for her. If you don’t see her in a particular bar, move on. If we both strike out, then we’ll move on to Water Mill and Bridgehampton. Tonight, if we have time.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “And check in with me, got that? Whatever you do or don’t find, check in with me. Understand?”

  Miller nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Call me by midnight, one way or the other. Sooner, of course, if you think you found her.”

  “You got it, man.”

  “Remember everything I just told you.”

  “No problem.”

  “And be careful.”

  The line went dead. Miller hung up and left his bedroom. He moved as quickly as his knee would allow. He made it down the creaking stairs to his kitchen, pulled open the drawer to the right of the sink, and removed the pad of paper and a pen he kept there. He needed to leave a note for Abby. He felt bad about the idea of not being there when she showed, particularly with how spooked she had been that morning, when he dropped her off at her car. But there was nothing he could do about that. This was the chance he’d been waiting for, the chance he needed.

  He wrote quickly, telling Abby that he had to do a job for his friend at the last minute and that he’d be back as soon as he could. She was welcome to wait for him here, if she wanted to, he added. Then he reread the note and thought maybe he should come right out and ask her if she would wait for him. He thought about maybe even going as far as letting her know that was what he wanted her to do. The idea of coming home to her later, of sleeping next to her for a second night, appealed to him. It’d been a long time since he’d had that. But there really wasn’t time to rewrite the note, and anyway, maybe she wouldn’t want to stay. His house was drafty, a stranger’s house to her. She might not feel safe there, waiting around, listening to strange noises.

  He tore the paper off the pad, grabbed a push pin, and walked into his father’s old office. He ignored the trophies on the shelves, his trophies, and the photos on the walls, photos of Miller in his football uniform, of Miller in action. That had nothing to do with him now. A sheet of paper was in the fax machine tray. Miller grabbed it, headed back to the kitchen, put on his coat. Then he hurried out the back door, tacking up the note for Abby before crossing his driveway and climbing into his pickup. He took off toward Hampton Bays without even letting the engine warm up. His heater vents blew cold air for a good five minutes.

  He followed Montauk Highway past the college and through the Shinnecock Hills. To his left was the bay, a flat sheet of darkness under the moonless sky. The first traffic light he came to was at the corner of Main Street and Ponquogue Avenue in Hampton Bays. The light was red. As he waited for it to turn, he looked over the page Clay had faxed to him. The lights from the dashboard were just enough to read by.

  Colette Auster. Five foot ten, one hundred and thirty pounds. Athletic build, maybe a dancer. Twenty-five. Dark hair, pale skin. Leather bands around both wrists. Often wears black clothing.

  There was a word that had been scribbled over. Miller strained to see what was under the heavy ink, but the quality of the fax wasn’t good enough. He couldn’t read the word. After it, though, was another word, a final piece of description.

  Elegant.

  The light changed then to green. Miller headed
toward the western edge of Hampton Bays. He figured he’d start at the working-class bars there and make his way east, toward the Southampton border. There were maybe three or four bars on that side of Hampton Bays, and maybe a half dozen bars and restaurants in the heart of the village. It wouldn’t take him much more than an hour to hit them all, to walk in and have a look around.

  The first bar was a small roadhouse called the Barn. Miller stepped inside. There were no women there at all, not on either side of the bar. Miller didn’t waste much time there. He drove to the next place. Sundowners. The only woman was a cocktail waitress. But she was blond and round, wore blue jeans and a pink T-shirt. Zero for two. It was then that Miller began to wonder if maybe he would have to do more than what Clay had asked him to do. What if tonight turned out to be this Colette Auster girl’s night off? If Clay was as pressed for time as he had said he was, then Miller figured he should get all that he could out of the time he had to search. That would be the smart thing to do. He wanted to impress Clay, he was desperate for that, even though Clay had told him not to try. He wanted that. He wanted Clay to know that he could be more to them than just someone from whom they occasionally got information. Miller wanted to be part of this business. He needed it, if for nothing else than the sake of his own soul.

  Miller asked the cocktail waitress if a girl named Colette worked there. She told him no. He left, doubled back to the Barn, asked the bartender that same question. No. Now I’m getting somewhere. He drove past Sundowners again, stopped at Meghan’s in town. No one there had heard of her. Miller tried three more places, got the same nothing at each one. Only forty-five minutes had passed and he was already through with the western edge of Hampton Bays and all of the places in the village. All that was left were the few bars between the village and the Southampton border. As he drove out of the village he thought of calling his house to see if Abby was there. He wanted to know how she was doing, if she was okay. He figured if she didn’t pick up, he’d talk into his answering machine and tell her to pick up. If after a while she didn’t pick up, he’d know she wasn’t there, that there wasn’t any reason for him to hurry home tonight. But he decided instead to keep going. The hope that she’d be there was better than the disappointment of knowing she wasn’t.