“It’s probably not going to be as easy as that.”
“I can try.”
“That’d be a good place to start.” Mercer waited a moment, then said, “Listen, Deke, I got a call last night from a friend of mine. He asked me if I knew anyone who might be able to help him out with something. It’s pretty specific, and I’d thought about telling him about you, but I figured the last thing you needed was more trouble. I guess now that doesn’t matter, though, huh?”
“What kind of help?”
“I’ll let him tell you. I’ll call him when I get home, set up a meeting.”
“Is this a job?”
“No. But I think maybe in some way it might be good for you to do this. Just a hunch I have. I’ll tell you this: I can’t imagine it making things any worse than they are already.”
The water in the teakettle started to boil then. Mercer turned to it, lifted the kettle off the burner, then switched off the gas. He placed the kettle on the other burner.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” Kane said. “Despite all the evidence to the contrary. I appreciate you getting me the job in the first place. I want you to know that.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“Just stop trying to drown yourself in your own shit. That’d more than make my day.”
Mercer’s coat was hanging on one of the hooks that lined the hallway. It was a workman’s coat, heavy cloth lined with checkered wool. He took it down and put it on.
“Take a cold shower, Deke, wake yourself up. I’ll call you in a little while, let you know where and when to meet my friend.”
“Okay.”
“If afterwards you want to come by, Joanne and I will be up. The guest room is yours, if you want it. I can make you something to eat.”
Kane nodded. “Thanks.”
“My friend’s a good guy, Deke. You can trust him. You can relax around him. He won’t steer you wrong.” Mercer nodded toward the teakettle. “Make yourself some tea and sit tight. I’ll call you in about a half hour. You’ll answer this time?”
Kane smiled, despite himself, despite everything. “Yeah.”
Mercer left then. Kane stayed where he was, listening to him move down the stairs. He heard the door below his front room open, then close. Then he heard a car start and drive off. He thought about taking a shower but decided to sit down for a moment instead. His head was ready to crack open. The throbbing was like something inside trying to get out, a reptile clawing at the shell of its egg. Kane made his way back into his bedroom, sat down on the edge of his mattress, his arms hanging heavy at his sides. Outside his window was the last light of day, not first light of morning, like he had thought when he first awoke. He could see that now, could tell the difference. After a while of looking toward his window, he looked down at the bottle, at the long, ghostly shadow it cast. He watched the shadow fade, then looked at the broken pieces of glass scattered across the floor. He wondered how that had happened, how they had gotten to be there.
Not long at all after that Kane remembered something about the night before. He remembered the last thought to cross his mind before passing into unconsciousness. From there it didn’t take much for him to remember what had led up to that.
It had been dark for a good three hours when he left for the meeting. While he had waited for Mercer to call, Kane picked up the bits of broken glass, tossed them into the garbage can under the sink, then went through the messages of his phone machine. There were the five calls Mercer had made throughout the day, plus two hang-ups and a message from Meg. He checked his caller ID to see who the two hang-ups were from. But the number had been blocked. He thought about that for a while, and then his thoughts went to Meg, at home with her husband. It killed Kane that he had missed her call. He hated it whenever a day would go by and he didn’t get to talk to her. He listened to the message a few times before finally erasing it. It was all he had. But he couldn’t save her message and erase the others, and there wasn’t room for more than ten messages on his machine. It was the cheapest one Kane could find; he had let his wife keep everything in their house. The message from Meg was a quick one, telling Kane that she was sorry she had missed him, that she’d try him at his office. More important, it informed him that she didn’t yet know when her husband was due to leave town next. She ended the message by telling Kane that she loved him and missed him. Nice to hear, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly. Kane was certain that she wouldn’t be able to try to call him again till tomorrow. Still, a part of him wished that she would find an excuse to do that, even if it meant getting out of the house and calling him from a pay phone. Of course what he really wanted was for her to drive over to see him. It wasn’t likely, he knew that, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it, couldn’t stop imagining her knocking softly on his door, imagining himself opening it, her smile as she walked toward him. He wanted that, to see her, to smell her. He felt alive when she was within reach. It was the only time he felt alive.
But more than that, he wanted to tell her what had happened last night, what he had just recently remembered—that his apartment had been broken into, that he believed someone may have spiked his scotch with something that had made him sleep sixteen hours, and that before that he had been visited by two detectives and a private investigator. She didn’t know about any of this, but he wanted her to know, needed her to. He was used to sharing everything with her.
Despite the fact that he knew better than to expect such mercy from her, Kane found himself looking for Meg as he left his place. He looked for her as he walked around back to where his Jeep was parked. He even looked for her car as he drove through the village. But the streets were empty, for the most part—empty of her, at least. He gave up looking as he crossed Job’s Lane and followed South Main Street to its end. There he turned right onto Gin Lane. A half mile west, on the left, was a large public parking lot. It was dark—no need for lights this time of year. Beyond the dunes on its southern edge lay the Atlantic Ocean. Kane imagined it as he steered into the lot. The lot was empty except for one car, parked nose first at the western edge. As Kane approached the car he could see that it was an old Pontiac, maybe early seventies, in mint condition. This was the car Kane had been told to look for, sitting with its lights on, like he was told it would be. Kane drove across the empty lot, parked, leaving a few empty parking spaces between the Pontiac and his Jeep. He left his motor running for the heat but switched off his headlights. The Pontiac’s headlights went dark as well. But its dark yellow running lights remained on, as did its dashboard lights. The passenger door opened and a man climbed out. He swung the door closed, waited there in the cold and the dark for Kane. Kane watched him for a moment, felt a knot in his gut. Then opened his door and he got out to meet the man.
They walked toward each other, stopping halfway between their respective vehicles. Kane looked to see who was sitting behind the wheel of the souped-up car. He thought that maybe he should know that. He saw a woman, saw her by the soft green glow of the dashboard lights. She had a round face, pretty, exotic even. Her head was turned and she was looking at Kane. It seemed that she needed to see him, too. Though he only caught a glimpse of her, Kane’s impression was that she was foreign. Maybe Arab, maybe Egyptian, something like that. Her hair was dark, with long, loose curls. Cut just below her ears, it accented the roundness of her beautiful face.
Kane looked at the man standing in front of him. The man was slightly built, like Kane was, more or less, but well dressed. Black denim jacket lined with dark fur, jeans, and black work boots. Expensive, well cut. Money, Kane thought. He was well groomed, too. Clean shaven, dark hair neat, recently cut. He wasn’t much older than Kane, no older than forty at the most, Kane thought. He didn’t smile but wasn’t unfriendly. He studied Kane with steady eyes, attempting to size him up. They looked silvery to Kane, like polished steel, but maybe that was just a trick of the darkness.
Kane remembered what Mercer had to
ld him back at the apartment, that Kane could trust this man, could relax around him. But Mercer didn’t know what Kane knew, didn’t know about yesterday, didn’t know about last night. Kane could have told Mercer about all that when he had called back with the location and time of the meeting. But Kane kept silent about it instead. It was an instinct, a sudden hunch, and he obeyed it without thinking too much about it. This had seemed to him the thing to do. Maybe Kane just didn’t want to sound crazy. Mercer already suspected that he was experiencing late-night blackouts. Would Kane really want to add paranoia to that? It mattered to him what Mercer thought. After Meg, Mercer was all he had. No, I’ll wait, Kane thought, wait till I find out more, find out something. He needed to be smart now, smarter than he’d been in a long time. For all his faults, his drinking and wild grief and foolish attachment to Meg, he was smart, or at least once upon a time had been. A lifetime ago.
“Thanks for meeting me,” the man said.
Kane nodded. His face was already getting numb. He’d only be able to stand a few more minutes of this cold. It violated him, cutting deep into his being. From beyond the dune to his left came the sound of heavy waves crashing in. He could only imagine how cold that water was tonight. So cold it would burn. He would have preferred they had met somewhere else, away from water and the memories it evoked. But he had gotten the impression that this meeting needed to take place out of the way. He didn’t ask why. Still, there were out-of-the-way places around town that weren’t anywhere near water, that weren’t within earshot of waves breaking, waves falling. Weren’t there? Places out of reach of this freakish cold, at least.
“Thanks for being on time, too.”
“No problem,” Kane said. “Mercer didn’t tell me your name. I got the impression he didn’t really want to say it over the phone.”
The man nodded, then extended his hand. He was wearing fitted leather gloves. Kane had on a pair of green wool ones, old army surplus. He had bought them at the thrift shop in town for a dollar. “My name is Edmond Gregor,” he said. “But my friends call me Ned.”
Kane reached out and took the man’s hand, shook it. The handshake was quick, the man’s grip firm but not aggressive.
“You’re Clay’s boss?” Kane said.
“Actually, we’re partners.”
“And you’re a friend of Mercer’s.”
“Yeah.”
“How do you two know each other?”
“I took a few of his classes while I was at the college.”
“You graduated from there?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“A year before you started. I used to get into jams every now and then. Mercer always tried to help me out.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty good about that kind of thing,” Kane said. “What did you study?”
“Criminology.”
“So you’ve been in this business for a while?”
Gregor shrugged, leaving the question unanswered. He took a look around the empty parking lot, then looked back at Kane and said, “Mercer thought you might be able to help me out now.”
“What do you need?”
“There’s an old abandoned chapel on the campus, behind the gym. I’m told you know it.”
Kane wondered what Mercer might have told Gregor about Kane’s past. But Gregor didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would care about any of that. “Yeah, I know it,” Kane said.
“I own a private investigating firm. It’s small, pretty much a one-man operation. I own it, Reggie runs it.”
“Reggie?”
“Clay.”
Kane nodded. “Oh, yeah.”
“We’ve been hired by Larry Foster’s family to find out what really happened to Larry. The police have labeled it a suicide, but we have very good reason to believe that it wasn’t a suicide, or an accident, for that matter. According to another student of yours, Larry had claimed that there was something weird going on at that chapel. I need to know if what Larry claimed was true or not.”
“What was it he said was going on there?”
“According to this student, Larry had talked about satanic ritual.”
“Devil worship?” Kane almost laughed.
“I take it by your reaction that you don’t think that’s very likely.”
“Well, I didn’t know the kid all that well. But that just doesn’t seem right to me.”
“Why not?”
“He didn’t seem like the type.”
“What type did he seem like, then?”
Kane shrugged. “Not that, that’s for certain. He wore the same blue sweater every day. He played acoustic guitar at the Catholic service on campus, I think. He wasn’t what you’d call a brooder. He laughed at everything. Hard to imagine a kid like that in that kind of situation.”
Gregor nodded. “That’s why we need to know what is or isn’t inside that chapel.”
Kane read something in his tone. “You don’t buy it, I take it,” Kane said.
Gregor waited a moment, then shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I have my reasons.”
Kane expected more. He waited for it. When it didn’t come, when it finally was clear that it wasn’t coming anytime soon, he said, “Why doesn’t Clay have a look around then? Why do you need my help?”
“If Reggie went, that’d be trespassing. The college is private property. I can’t let him break the law like that. He has a license to protect. And I have a business to protect. You, on the other hand, being employed by the college, are free to take a walk out there. Plus, according to Mercer, you’ve done it before. Sneaked in, I mean.”
“The chapel is all boarded up now. It didn’t used to be, when I was a student. I’d have to break in to have a look around.”
“Mercer gave me the impression that he didn’t think that would be much of a problem right now. He didn’t say why.”
Kane said nothing to that. Waves crashed. His ears began to ache, as if someone had grabbed them and twisted.
“You know about the two other boys, right?” Gregor said.
Kane nodded. One of the boys, the one before the Foster kid, had been found in Peconic Bay. He thought of Meg’s elderly neighbor bumping the body during his morning swim. Kane decided, though, not to say anything about his own connection to Peconic Bay. It was a detail that wasn’t all that important. Just a coincidence. Not worth mentioning here. No reason to interrupt.
“Yeah,” Kane said. “I’ve heard about them.”
“Counting Larry, three boys found drowned in a span of ten weeks.”
“You think they were killed.”
“I don’t know anyone who doesn’t, except the police.”
Kane thought about that for a moment, thought about his visit from the two detectives the previous morning. They had seemed convinced that Larry Foster’s death was a suicide. More than that, it seemed they had come to Kane’s office to locate evidence, any evidence, however slight, that might prove their theory.
“The other student,” Kane said after a moment, “the one that Larry told about that satanic stuff. Who was it?”
“Colette Auster.”
“Clay talked to her?”
“Someone did. Not Clay, though.”
“Then why doesn’t she check it out for you? From what I understand, she’s all buddy-buddy with the security guys. And she has a way of wrapping men around her finger. If she got caught, I don’t think she’d get into too much trouble, or stay in it for long.”
“Ever hear of a bar in Hampton Bays called the Water’s Edge?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s where she works.”
“Yeah.”
“Ever been there?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Gregor shrugged. “Last night Clay went to wait for her there. He sat outside till seven o’clock this morning. She never left, not that Clay saw, anyway.”
“So what
does that mean?”
“It means we don’t know where she is right now. We wanted to follow her, see what we could learn about her, see where she might lead us.”
“Why?”
“Her name doesn’t turn up anywhere. No one named Colette Auster ever went to Southampton College. No record of her at the DMV, no listing for such a name in the phone books for the past ten years.”
“I was told she had once been a student at the college.”
“Not under that name. So, until we know who we’re dealing with, I wouldn’t ask her to help us even if I did know where she was. I only work with people I know.”
“You don’t know me.”
“Mercer says you’re our man. That’s all we need. That goes a long way.”
Kane thought about all that. “I don’t know,” he said. He glanced at the vintage car, at the woman sitting behind the wheel. She was looking at him. Had she ever looked away? Had she not taken her eyes off him? Kane wanted to get out of the cold. It was close now to being all that he could think about.
“Look, I don’t mean to rush you,” Gregor said, “but we’re pressed for time. We need to know as soon as possible what is or isn’t in that chapel.”
Kane looked at Gregor then. Despite the cold, despite everything that crowded his already troubled mind, he realized something, realized what was really at stake here.
“The funeral is the day after tomorrow, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Up in Rochester.”
“I think so.”
Kane nodded. “Larry used to wear a cross all the time. On a chain around his neck.” Kane decided to leave it at that. There wasn’t anything more that needed to be said.
“So you understand what we’re trying to do. We’d like to do more if we could, but we can at least do that much for his family.”
Kane thought about what Larry’s parents were going through right now. He didn’t want to think too much about it, though, not with the ocean within earshot.
“All we need is for you to get inside and make a videotape record of whatever’s in there,” Gregor said. “That’s all. I can tell you how to protect yourself, how to do this so no one will ever know you were there. I think you can understand that I don’t want you to get caught, as much for our sake as for yours. You’re removed from us, and by that I mean no one outside of Mercer knows we’ve even met. We’re not connected, not formally. But if you were to get caught and find yourself in trouble, you could easily roll over on us and maybe get yourself off the hook. Needless to say, it’s in our best interest that you get in and get out without any trouble, without anyone ever knowing.”
The Darkest Place Page 13
