The Darkest Place

by Daniel Judson

  “Was that Ned?” Clay said. He was groggy, murmured more than spoke.

  Sophia walked to the bedroom door, stood there with her long arms folded across her stomach. She nursed people back to health for a living, was used to pain and suffering, saw it every day. But that was different; those people were strangers. During the past two days she’d often watched Clay as he slept, sat in a chair or stood in the doorway and listened to his every breath. She could think of nothing else to do. No rounds, no other patients, no paperwork, nothing to distract her, give her momentum, tire her out. Only Clay, lying there, and their apartment around them, as silent as a library.

  “Yeah,” she said. “He’s on his way over.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Five-thirty.”

  “Night or morning?”

  “Night. How do you feel?”

  He shrugged with his one good shoulder.

  “You’re lucky, Reg. You know that, right?”

  “I know.”

  “It could have been a lot worse.”

  “I know.”

  She waited a moment, watching him, then said, “You won’t be going back to work for a long time. If you don’t want to tell him that, I’d be more than happy to.”

  “Ned knows that,” Clay said. He opened and closed his eyes, spoke softly, breathed evenly. “He’s been shot before.”

  “When?”

  “A long time ago.”

  “It’s a shame.”

  “What?”

  “That it wasn’t fatal.”

  Clay smiled at that as best he could, said nothing.

  “If you ask me, Reg, you shouldn’t go back at all, ever.”

  He nodded. “I’m a little dopey, sweetie. Can we talk about this later?” She shrugged. What was the point talking about it at all? They’d talked about it and talked about it, argued about it, shouted at each other about it. And still, every night, he went out. Loyalty, to his friend—so-called friend. She would never understand it, didn’t care to.

  “Do you need anything?” she said.

  “Some water.”

  She nodded, left the room. He lay in the quiet dark for a while, looked at the ceiling, ignored the throbbing in his shoulder, the sickening lightness in his head. When Sophia came back, she held a half-filled glass to Clay’s lips, watched him take a few sips from the bent straw.

  “Here, you should take another pill.”

  “I need to stay sharp.”

  “The kind of pain you’re going to feel in a few minutes isn’t the kind that makes someone sharp.”

  She held out her palm, a pill resting in it. Clay closed his eyes and nodded. She placed the pill in his mouth and put the straw to his lips. He took a long sip, swallowed. When he was done she placed the glass on the nightstand and stood by the edge of the bed.

  Clay looked up at her. “I love you, you know that, right?”

  “I love you, too. Very much. It’d be a lot easier if I didn’t.”

  “Would you leave me?” Clay whispered.

  “In a heartbeat.”

  “You’d be nothing without me,” he teased.

  “Probably.”

  Clay breathed in a few times, testing how far his chest could expand before it triggered pain in his shoulder. Not very far at all. He glanced at the bandage.

  “How bad?” he said.

  “Bad enough.”

  “I don’t remember much after getting shot. I don’t remember how I got here.”

  “Ned brought you. And that kid, too. That wannabe.”

  “Tommy.”

  Sophia nodded. “They helped get you up here. It took the two of them.”

  “You should have taken a picture of that.”

  “It’s not a joke, Reg.”

  Clay nodded. “Sorry. Did the bullet pass through?”

  “No.”

  “Is it still in me?”

  “We got it out.”

  “We?”

  “Ned and I.”

  Clay said nothing.

  “He’s a pretty cool customer, your friend. I’ll give him that much. He learns fast. And his hand didn’t shake once.”

  “Any damage to the bone?”

  “The bullet nicked it. With no X-ray we can’t be sure if it’s fractured or not. We’re going to need to find a way to have a doctor look at you soon.”

  Clay nodded again. “How many stitches?”

  “Ten. Ned’s wife showed up with a suture kit. He helped me stitch you up.”

  “A full house, huh?”

  “It was a real party. Wish you could have been here.”

  “Me, too.”

  Sophia took a breath, let it out, then said, “What do you think he wants now?”

  “Ned?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does he expect you to run his business for him from your sickbed?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You need to heal, Reg. You need time to rest. Christ, someone shot you. I don’t even know what happened. No one’s told me anything. Ned just said you were on a case, wouldn’t tell me anything more than that.”

  “That’s for your own protection.”

  “What are you talking about, ‘my own protection’? What does that mean? Is somebody after you?”

  “I’m not really up to this right now, Sophia.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m a little tired, too, Reg. I need you to tell me. Is somebody after you?”

  “No. It’s just that the less you know right now, the better. Okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay. I’m done being a good sport. I need to know what’s going on. I need you to tell me right now.”

  Clay closed his eyes, opened them. He took a breath. Sophia watched him.

  “What’s going on, Reggie?”

  He was awake now, as awake as was humanly possible, had willed himself that way.

  Sophia kept her voice soft, kept the anger out of it. “What happened, Reg?”

  “I killed a man, Sophia.” He looked up at her. “I killed a man.”

  Neither of them said anything, just looked at each other. A car pulled into the driveway then, swung around back, came to a stop. Clay and Sophia listened as a car door opened, then closed, listened to the sound of footsteps on their back stairs.

  “Are you in trouble with the police?” Sophia whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  The footsteps stopped, and then there was a knock on their kitchen door.

  Sophia didn’t move.

  “Let him in,” Clay said.

  She nodded, left the bedroom, walked through the kitchen, opened the door, let Gregor in. She barely acknowledged him, told him that Clay was in the bedroom. Gregor walked back there. Sophia filled a glass with water, drank it at the sink. There wasn’t anywhere in the apartment she could go where she wouldn’t hear everything that they said.

  So she put the glass down on the counter and returned to the front room, stood at the window, and looked down at North Sea Road.

  Gregor asked Clay how he was feeling. Fine, Clay said. Sophia rolled her eyes in disbelief. Tough guys. Then Gregor and Clay got right down to business, spoke in soft, conspiratorial voices. Sophia listened hard, tried as best she could to follow what was said.

  “There’s no sign of that kid anywhere,” Gregor said. “I found your overcoat a half mile from the house. It’s safe to assume, since no one has found his frozen body on the side of the road anywhere, that the kid made it home okay, wherever that is.”

  “Do the police have any idea who he is?”

  “No.”

  “Did they find anything in the house?”

  “Just the bathtub, a lot of porn, and some clothes. I was hoping they’d find pay stubs or something. Colette had told Kane that Kosakowski had to take some crap job to make ends meet. I was hoping maybe someone he worked with would know something. Or where he worked might give us an idea where to look for the kid. Maybe he was a janitor at a school
or something. But the cops found nothing.”

  “What about Krause?”

  “Yeah, well, that’s where the news gets even worse.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s been bedridden for the past two weeks. Emphysema. He’s under a nurse’s care, whacked out of his mind on morphine. He should have died a week ago; they’ve given him last rites twice already. According to his nurse, he couldn’t hold a phone in his hand, let alone talk into one.”

  “So who was Colette talking to?”

  “Exactly. She could have been talking to anyone, for all we know. Professor could have been a pet name. Whoever he was, he seemed to be something of a mentor to her. That’s clear in their conversations. And there’s always the possibility that she could have been talking to no one at all.”

  “You mean like an imaginary friend?”

  “Not really. She had to have known about the cameras. She worked there. How could she not have known? So it all could have been an act, all part of the plan to pin this on Krause.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “Castello handed over the surveillance tapes pretty quickly, don’t you think?”

  “You think he’s behind this?”

  “Kane said he heard Kosakowski talking to someone on the cell phone out at the chapel. Maybe it was Castello he heard.”

  “But why would he want to kill a bunch of boys? Why would he go to the trouble of making it look like a serial killer? Doesn’t he have resources of his own?”

  “Maybe the boys knew too much. Maybe Colette told them something she shouldn’t have. Maybe he needed to take care of this in a way that wouldn’t get back to his father. I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck is going on. All I do know is that Krause had nothing to do with it. He couldn’t.”

  Sophia heard silence for a moment. And then, when Gregor finally spoke again, his voice was even more hushed than before.

  “Listen, Reg, I’ve taken care of everything. Okay? Your clothes, the galoshes, the overcoat, the knife, they’re gone, I’ve taken care of all that. So you don’t have to worry about any of it. You were never there. The police think that a would-be victim got free and killed Kosakowski. They seem determined to believe that, actually. As far as they’re concerned, that’s that.”

  “The kid knows otherwise, though. He saw my face.”

  “He hasn’t come forward yet, Reg. And I don’t really think he will. I would imagine he’d rather not have to explain how he got in that basement in the first place. It’s safe to say Colette didn’t lure any of the boys out with the promise of candy. I figure she must have made arrangements to meet this boy before she was killed. Either way, he might just keep the whole nightmare to himself. But if for some reason he does come forward, or tells someone the story and they come forward, and the cops put two and two together, you were with me and Miller the entire night, on a case. The paperwork documenting that fact has been taken care of, so it’s done, nothing more to worry about.”

  “That isn’t exactly going by the book, Ned. You’re destroying evidence, like I’m guilty and you’re trying to protect me.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me you were acting in self-defense, Reg.”

  “But destroying evidence like this, covering up, that was the kind of shit Frank Gannon did. You said you weren’t going to end up like him, no matter what was at stake. Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “The cops would make real trouble for you, Reg. I guarantee it. It’s amazing, what they’ll ignore and what they’ll pursue. I don’t care what it does or doesn’t mean. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep them from making trouble for you. They’d only be doing it just to get at me. Unfinished business and all that.”

  Sophia turned her head then, looked toward the bedroom door. She could see Clay, lying on their bed, looking up. All she could see of Gregor was his back as he stood just inside the bedroom doorway.

  “This is how it starts,” Clay said. “You know that. The deal with Castello, then this. This is how it starts.”

  “You don’t have worry to about that, Reg. Just get some rest. I’ll come back in a couple of days.”

  “What about all the jobs we had lined up?”

  “I’m taking them.”

  “You sure?”

  “It’s time for me to stop hiding.”

  “You could hire Miller, start him out on some of the easier cases.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to know if you thought he was ready or not.”

  “He’s still a kid, but if anyone was born for this work, it’s him. Born and bred. And his friendship with Kay Barton is certainly a plus.”

  “I’ll swing by his house after I leave here, ask him if he wants to do a job for us.”

  “Which job?”

  “Actually, I was going to have him keep an eye on Kane for a while.”

  “Why?”

  “The blood on the T-shirt you found in Kane’s apartment is O negative, the same blood type as Kevin Dolan. I got the results yesterday.”

  “You don’t think Kane was a part of this after all?”

  “No. His girlfriend’s security system clears him.”

  “So what will watching him do?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a long shot, I admit it, but it’s all we have. Kane’s always been a connection, and right now he’s the only one left alive. If Krause was supposed to take the blame all along, then why the bloody shirt in Kane’s apartment? It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe it’s not supposed to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe it’s all just some giant mess left behind for the cops to try to sort through, to keep them busy.”

  “A trail of confusion.”

  “Maybe.”

  Gregor said nothing. Sophia could tell by the way he lifted his head and looked toward the wall that he was thinking about that.

  “What about Kosakowski’s phone records?” Clay said. He was still fighting, still willing himself into a lucid state. “Was there something there to help?”

  “The only numbers he called from his landline were a few dozen 900 numbers and a Chinese takeout place in Riverhead. The rest were all calls to and from cell phones, some stolen, the rest the disposable kind.”

  “He planned this well, whoever he is,” Clay said.

  “Yeah.”

  “How’d you find out about his phone calls?”

  “Miller got it from Barton.”

  Clay nodded, decisively, or as close to that as he could get. “So then Miller watches Kane, and we wait. For as long as it takes. You’re right, it’s all we have.”

  “I wait, Reg. You rest. It’s going to hurt, you know that, right? And it’s going to take a long time.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You’re on the payroll, of course, for however long it takes you. Tell Sophia if she needs anything to just call.”

  “You’re well-off, Ned, but you’re not rich.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Clay nodded. His eyes were opening and closing again. Whatever will he had summoned to clear his mind was leaving him now. He reached up with his left hand. Gregor stepped to the bed, took Clay’s left with his right, held it for a moment.

  “Thanks,” Clay said.

  “What are brothers for.”

  Clay swallowed, opened and closed his eyes a few times, then said, “Listen to me, brother to brother. Stick to doing things by the book. My first illegal entry in five years and I get myself shot. Isn’t that how it goes?”

  “Get some rest, Reg.”

  “Miller might be out with his new girlfriend tonight. I think he was going to take her out for dinner. I don’t know where, though.”

  “I’ll find him.”

  “It’s a long shot, you’re right. The Kane thing, I mean. But I guess since we’re the only ones who know about any of this, it’s up to us, huh?” He was drifting now, his voice trailing off.

&
nbsp; “I’ll come by in a few days, Reg.”

  Clay said nothing more, just looked up at Gregor through barely open eyes. Sophia watched them.

  Eventually Gregor let go of Clay’s hand. It hung there in the air, adrift. Gregor took it again and gently set it down on Clay’s stomach. He waited a moment, then turned and walked out of the bedroom. He spotted Sophia at the window, looking over her shoulder at him, and stopped. Neither of them said a thing for a moment.

  Then, finally, Gregor said, “I’ll find him a doctor, if you don’t think you can. One who won’t ask questions.”

  “I wouldn’t know who to ask.”

  “I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

  “Thanks for your help. For saving his life, everything else you did.”

  “No problem.”

  “Of course, his life wouldn’t have needed saving in the first place if it weren’t for you.”

  There was nothing Gregor could say to that. It was, after all, when it came down to it, the truth.

  “He saved a life. That should matter to you.”

  “You’re as dangerous now as you were before you retired. Reggie’s told me all about you. You were bad news then, and you’re bad news now.”

  “I’m not the enemy,” Gregor said.

  “You’re mine.”

  He nodded back toward Clay. “I meant I’m not his.”

  “Not yet. Give it time.”

  Gregor just looked at her for a moment. Her stare was hard. Everything about her was rigid.

  “If you need anything, you know where you can reach me.”

  He waited, maybe for her to say something more. She couldn’t read him, never had been able to. Clay was devoted to him, she knew that. Blindly, she had always thought. It seemed now that Gregor was just as devoted to Clay. But what was devotion, blind or otherwise, when it led to this?

  At last, when she said nothing more, Gregor nodded to her and walked through the kitchen and out the door.

  Sophia waited at the window till the Grand Prix pulled out onto North Sea Road, heading toward Southampton. She watched it until its red taillights disappeared into the darkness.

  Kane sat in his front room, in the dark, till he realized he’d need food if he was going to be holed up in his apartment indefinitely. He waited until just before the supermarket was about to close, then put on his coat and went down his stairs and stood for a moment on the sidewalk. He looked up and down before crossing the street. Looked for what, for who? He felt a little foolish, but what else could he do? The night air was still, the temperature holding steady at thirty degrees. Balmy, compared to the last few days. The supermarket was all but empty now, and Kane moved through the aisles quickly, grabbing things and totaling them up in his head as he went along. The forty-some-odd bucks in his pocket was all he had to his name. Not a lot at any time, but especially now. He felt, again, like he was in some foreign city, out of money, no way to leave and nowhere to go.