Dark & Disorderly

by Bernita Harris

  I listened to her soothing chatter about how she met “her Rob” and their plans to take in several casinos. I was grateful for it. It meant I didn’t have to talk. The flow of warm air and the humming of wheels under me filled me with savage contentment. I had escaped. The fear and confusion were left in the distance. Back there. Behind me.

  Maybe it was true, after all, that you can’t drown a witch.

  “I’m Sam, short for Samantha,” she offered, as she slowed for the bridge.

  “I’m Lillie.”

  “Short for Lillian, I suppose. Old-fashioned, but it’s really pretty. We named the baby Britney Lorraine. ‘Britney’s’ from the singer, you know. The ‘Lorraine’ is after Rob’s mother.”

  I didn’t correct her on the Lillian, and was happy she didn’t get into last names, since either of mine was apparently notorious right now.

  “A lovely name. How old is your baby?”

  “Six months. She’s so good. Aren’t you, Precious?” From the infant seat in the back a quiet crow and a gurgle answered, followed by a squeaksqueak as Britney Lorraine massaged a yellow ducky and kicked her feet.

  “There,” Sam said and pulled to a stop. “Here you go. Nice living here in the old part, I imagine. The Old Town’s grown so, like all those developments. Sure you’ll be all right?”

  “This is wonderful. I can’t thank you enough. I afraid I soaked your car seat.”

  “No problem. It’ll dry. Like, I’m really glad to help. Take care now.” She waved and pulled away.

  Fighting with the silt-encrusted zipper of my sodden shoulder bag to extract my house key, I tottered down the sidewalk toward home, small-mercy grateful I’d never gotten around to attaching the car’s ignition key to my key ring, or I’d be up another sort of creek.

  I heard the phone ringing as I unlocked. It could bloody well wait. I dropped my bag, peeled off my coat, let it fall and then plunked myself on the steps to wrestle off my boots. I left wet sock marks on the stairs as I headed for the bathroom, shedding dank clothes as I went.

  I parboiled for half an hour, turning the tap with my toes at intervals to keep the bath water hot. Bliss to be warm. To be rid of the reek of floodwater that smelled of things dark and disinterred.

  Downstairs, the phone buzzed at intervals. Whoever was playing with the redial button eventually gave up. I dressed in a fuzzy green tracksuit and fuzzy socks, made myself drink hot chocolate and toweled my hair dry. I gave the doors a cursory check, curled up under a pile of blankets and eventually went to sleep, hugging a hot water bottle like a lover. My last memory was of sirens moaning somewhere east on the main drag; my last conscious thought was they weren’t for me. Not this time.

  Of course, I was wrong.

  21.

  I woke at dawn feeling like a ghost. It took two cups of strong coffee for my mind to seep back and settle in place in my body after the nightmares of the night. In one I never reached the bank. Instead, the flood swept me down the rushing creek and out into the main river, while Nathan stood on the high bank and laughed.

  I picked up my coat from its puddle in the hall, hung it and emptied the pockets. Perhaps a drycleaner could restore the leather to its previous butter-soft condition but I doubted it. Its tie-belt was missing anyway, lost when I crawled through the brush. Or maybe it was floating somewhere miles downriver. My boots were probably a write-off as well. My jeans just needed a wash. My sweater could only be worn for scruffing about; the grime on the cuffs when I’d clawed up the slippery bank would never come out.

  The list of the dead from the private cemetery came apart in my hands. No matter. My clipboard and case files were somewhere in the car, a nuisance but they could be reproduced. The other flap pocket triumphantly delivered grit and a clutch of mint roots. I laid the poor, mangled bits carefully aside and emptied out my bag for my wallet and change purse and car rental agreement.

  I made the appropriate insurance calls. All I got was tapes. I left my name and number and a request to return my call. They might not get around to me until Monday. That was fine. The car wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was I.

  I was wrong, again. About the car anyway.

  After patting the mint roots in place at the edge of a flagstone by the sundial, after telling them they were tough, they were safe and they would survive, I sat on the steps of the back veranda in the warm, clean sunshine—in a state of limp physical lassitude.

  First, I took the panic and fear and locked them away in the secure compartment in my head with all the others. One does not reason well in the grip of an emotion like terror. And yesterday I had been terribly afraid. I proceeded to reinforce the walls of that weakened compartment, so I could think cold and clear.

  That both my brakes and the steering went couldn’t be just a coincidence. I considered it probative. The similarity with Nathan’s crash couldn’t be simple fortuity. I thought it fair to conclude I’d survived an attempt on my life, by the most amazing luck. Just how and when the mischief had occurred, or what was involved in producing it, I hadn’t a clue. I knew nothing about the innards of motor vehicles. My adversary must have thought that if a method worked once, it would again. And it nearly had.

  I remembered the night Nathan died, and our last stupid row. He’d insisted I take the car to do an exorcism that he’d arranged for a ride with Kevin. Kevin would leave me with a set of master keys for the property, and Nathan would meet me there after the meeting. I’d refused, as much as to be contrary as anything and because I didn’t want to be anywhere near the ASP’s meetings for professional reasons, husband notwithstanding.

  That aside, there was no good reason for me to work overtime. The case was not a priority. The specter in question did not constitute a hazard. The investigation could easily wait for the next day. But most of all, I’d resented his interference with how I conducted my work. When I looked out later, his car was gone.

  I still hadn’t resolved that case. When I came back to work, I’d shuffled it to the bottom of the pile. Because his friend Kevin was the reason Nathan had been so dictatorial, so insistent that night. Kevin Cornett.

  A pair of mourning doves settled on the lawn and looked about with bright timid eyes. Graceful, gentle, dainty birds. It’s a wonder they survived, considering they made such inadequate, careless nests. Much like me in the way of nests, I supposed. I had not been a good nest-builder either. Mine had fallen apart.

  Maybe we were both intended to die that night at Deadman’s Point.

  Or maybe the wrong person had died. Nathan had never made his meeting.

  I leaned back on my elbows against the warm wooden steps, watched the white clouds sail high in the blue. It was a sufficient, beautiful day. I was alive.

  And that was how Johnny found me.

  The doves took flight in a whiffle of wings. I turned my head and sat up.

  He’d halted at the corner of the house. He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, gave his head a minute shake and came slowly across the grass toward me, like a man wading water. He wore black field gear again. I scrambled to my feet, wondering what made his face tighter, grimmer than yesterday.

  “Sergeant?”

  “Lillie.” He reached out both hands and ran them down my arms, my hair, cupped my cheeks.

  “You’re not a ghost.” He stated it as a fact that surprised him. “Oh, Christ…Lillie…” Abruptly he folded me hard against his body, his fingers clenching my hair, pressing my face against his chest. His sweater smelled of vinyl and sweat. Just as abruptly he let me go, stepped back and looked down at me with cop’s eyes.

  “What sort of game are you playing, Lillie?”

  I backpedaled up the steps, grabbed the newel posts for support and stared down at him, bewildered at the sudden shape change in his manner.

  “I don’t,” I said, enunciating each word clearly, “play games. I never have. What’s your problem? What the bloody hell do you mean by that crack?”

  He hooked his thumbs in his belt and st
ared back.

  “I have been up all night, searching for your body. We rigged spots, the works,” Johnny said, proving he also could articulate with distinctness and clarity.

  “We grappled and towed your car out of the creek sometime after midnight. It showed no indication of collision with another vehicle. One tentative conclusion was suicide, though the car was empty and the passenger door was unlatched, which could mean an attempt to escape. We scoured the banks on either side of the stream clear to the river. Every time I turned around I expected to find your specter at my elbow, accusing me. About dawn a searcher on his way back found a black leather sash in the woods, similar to the one from your coat I saw you wearing yesterday. We’ve called in divers and begun dragging the creek and the river. I came here to search for a note, anything that might give us direction. And find you apparently unmarked, glowing with health and sunning yourself like a cat.”

  When I said nothing—because I couldn’t—he continued, “So I ask you again, Lillie, what game are you playing? Did you just weigh the accelerator, jump out and let it go? We don’t appreciate wild-goose chases set up by Munchausen-afflicted females who crave attention and drama. I’ve a good mind to take you in right now and charge you with public mischief.”

  “Stop! Stop it!” I yelled and put out a palm. “Sergeant, if you can contain your spleen and stop your diatribe long enough, maybe you’ll let me ask you a question?”

  It’s a wonder I got that mouthful out I was breathing so hard. He folded his arms. I folded mine.

  “What side of Molloy’s Creek did my car go in? Surely, that’s obvious. There must be tire marks on the shoulder and I remember barrel-assing through some brush.”

  “West side,” he said curtly.

  “And on which side was my belt found?” I asked and waited, watching him scan back through his data.

  He rubbed at the back of his neck. “East side.”

  “And even if my belt had been found along the bank tangled around a bush, what does that tell you? I’ll tell you what. It proves I was in the bloody car when it went in the creek, that’s what it tells you, you stupid bastard!”

  I sat down on the top step, shaking, stared out over the lawn and said in a quieter voice,

  “I wasn’t trying to commit anything. The steering went at the curve and then the brakes went…I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to get out of that car, the water was so dark and deep.”

  I clasped my arms around my knees and rested my face against them. I could show him my clothes, but what would be the point? By themselves they wouldn’t prove my story. Physical facts can be as ambiguous, as easy to manipulate, as verbal statements. He could say I deliberately doused them in creek water. He seemed to think I was capable of elaborate deception. He’d leaped to that appalling conclusion so quickly it was obvious his suspicion of me was innate.

  “Lillie. Lillie, look at me.”

  I raised my head. He’d put a foot on the steps and was leaning forward, an arm across his knee. His face was very close. His nice mouth a grim line and his eyes were all cop. Hard face, hard case.

  “I want you to tell me the whole story. Start from the time you left me and leave nothing out.”

  I shook my head and repeated my thought. “There’s no point. I suppose you think I resurrected that zombie too, just for fun. You have to call off your people. And you can leave anytime.” I laid my head back down on my knees and let my hair fall forward, hiding my face. I had let my guard down. My mistake. To hell with him.

  “Lillie. Snap out of it. Talk to me, please.”

  I moved my head in negation.

  The step creaked when he removed his weight. I heard him walk a few paces and give cryptic orders in cop code on his cell phone. Something about my car and search and being out of service. As far as I could tell, he didn’t announce I’d been found. Curious. The step creaked again.

  “Lillie. Talk to me!”

  When I realized he wasn’t going to leave, I uncurled and hauled myself to my feet, looked down at him dispassionately, then out over the garden. It had been a nice day.

  “Very well. I’ll make coffee,” I said tiredly, and went into the house. He followed me in. My wallet and money, identity cards and licenses, lay drying on paper towels on the kitchen table.

  “I’m sure you won’t consider it probative, since you seem convinced I play games and make stuff up,” I said, banging open cupboard doors, “but my coat is hanging on the closet door in the hall if you want to satisfy yourself that the belt is gone. There may be some silt in the bottom of my bathtub. Perhaps you’d like to take a sample.”

  “Lillie…” he began. I glared at him over my shoulder. He went.

  I hoped he also took notice of my maltreated boots and the soggy spread of items I’d dumped from my bag still decorating the hall floor, as well as the pile of blankets and the hot water bottle beside the recliner.

  He came back before the kettle boiled.

  “Where would you like to conduct your interrogation, Sergeant? Outside, here or in the lady’s parlor? I prefer the living room where the phone is because there’s a chance I might receive an important callback, but I don’t want to be accused of obstruction in a police investigation.”

  My deliberate sarcasm didn’t produce the slightest change in expression on his cop face.

  “I made note you phoned the insurance company about the car,” he said.

  So he’s checked out the notepad on the desk, probably dialed the numbers. I twitched a shoulder, poured hot water and shoved a mug at him.

  “This morning. My head wasn’t together last night. Please excuse me. I don’t have donuts. After you. Sergeant.”

  I ushered him to the office chair behind the desk. I moved my remaining standing lamp and turned it on, even though the room was perfectly bright from the bay window.

  Then I sat in front of him on a wooden chair I brought from the kitchen, directly under the lamp. His mouth got a little tighter when he realized what I was doing, but he wisely didn’t comment. I didn’t care. By now, I was feeling very sarcastic.

  In a flat, expressionless voice I recounted everything, from the time I’d noticed the oil stain under my car by the cemetery until I reached my house, including my conversation with Samantha.

  When memory roused fear demons, I had to pause to reinforce the walls in my mind so my voice wouldn’t shake. I’d be damned if I was going to let him see how afraid I’d been. My feelings at the time were irrelevant anyway; in his career he’d heard and seen worse incidents—many much worse. My adventure would be dull and mild in comparison. Especially since I had the poor taste to survive it.

  He didn’t prompt, he didn’t interrupt, he listened until I was done, sitting with his head bent a little sideways and his fingers laced together on the desk. Impartial, impersonal, stony faced. Maybe bored, for all I knew.

  Oddly enough, I felt lighter in mind after my recount. Debriefing after combat had psychological benefits. Even if the audience is hostile.

  After I finished, he raised his head, leaned back and sat staring at me with narrowed eyes for the longest time. Holding my empty coffee mug clasped loosely in my lap, I watched him watching me.

  “Then no one knows you survived the crash but the woman who picked you up, who is now on a pleasure trip out of town. You gave her your name, I believe you said.”

  “We exchanged first names, that’s all. As I said. A lot of people went past me—it seemed like a lot of cars anyway. I tried to flag them down. Some of them should remember seeing me.”

  He must be looking for witness corroboration. Mine might as well be nonexistent.

  “Hunh. Have you phoned or talked to anyone besides these numbers here on the pad?”

  “No.”

  “Did you leave a time when you made those calls and did you give a reason for your call?”

  “No, just name and number. Requested a callback.”

  “So, essentially and temporarily, no one knows you�
��re alive.”

  “No one,” I agreed, keeping my voice steady with effort. “Except you.”

  “The media are all over the story. They were getting in our way half the night. As far as the public’s concerned, you’re dead.”

  He rose, stretched and rotated his shoulders. The lamp cast his moving shadow like a gray doppelganger, large and menacing, against the bookcase.

  “Let’s keep it that way,” he said, flexing his hands.

  22.

  I measured the distance to the door. I’d never make it anyway. Just the same, I lurched to my feet and clutched my chair back, ready to send it at his knees if he moved toward me. Some innate belief in him countered my first paranoid instinct and checked a sudden impulse to bolt screaming.

  My face must have showed suspicion, calculation, desperation, maybe.

  “Oh, hell! Lillie, don’t be stupid!” he said, when he realized the possible import of what he’d said. He dropped back into his chair and scrubbed his hands over his face. Then, slowly, “I ought to turn you over my knee.”

  “Don’t try it,” I snapped. “I’m not a child to be disciplined and I’m not into kink.”

  “Is that so?” He glanced at my wrists. “A lot of Talents are. That was neither a threat nor a promise, Lillie. I could use more coffee, if you don’t mind. We have to talk.”

  I marched to the kitchen, glad to be moving, before I opened my mouth and asked, Into kink, are they? And you know that how?

  Before I refilled the kettle, I slid the bolt on the back door. If what he said was true about media interest, there was an even chance a news crew would come sniffing around and not be content with photos taken from curbside. Some reporter might decide that a few interior shots from the victim’s house would be a great exclusive and come jiggling the doors. Since I hadn’t seen Dumbarton this morning, he probably wasn’t around to provide the usual deterrent to trespassers.

  If one saw me through the windows, he’d have an exclusive all right. I could see Psychic Feared Dead—that must be the news line at the moment—followed by The Ghost-Buster’s Ghost—Who Will Exorcize the Exorcist? I’d felt like a ghost in my own house too frequently. I wasn’t sure how I felt about playing one. Or what it might accomplish.