When the Stars Go Dark: A Novel

by Paula McLain

  * * *

  —

  By the time the room begins to empty, it’s late. I’m standing by the front door about to go and check on Cricket when Caleb passes me on his way out. I reach for his arm, feel how stiffly he holds his body. His shoulders seem to be made of stone, but that makes sense. He must be holding back so many memories, so much pain. “I’m glad you came,” I tell him.

  “I almost didn’t. Looks like you got drawn into the case after all, huh?”

  “It seemed too important not to. Get in touch sometime soon, okay?”

  “I’d like that,” he allows.

  When he moves off, Tally appears. “My husband, Sam,” she says, her face warm and open.

  The man beside her in the wheelchair is younger than she is, thirty-five or forty and Native American, with his long black hair in a neat ponytail, and warm dark eyes. When I visited her in Comptche that day, I assumed she was single, but now it seems obvious she wouldn’t be.

  “This is the detective I was telling you about,” she explains to Sam.

  “Thanks for the work you’re doing,” he says. “I can help by answering phones or whatever, but I was also thinking I could maybe make my yoga studio available for anyone who wants to come in and just be quiet for a while, and breathe. The kids from Cameron’s school. Anyone.”

  “That’s so generous. Thank you.”

  “I got into it after my accident, and it’s changed my life. Now I work with a lot of vets, spinal cord injuries, people who have trouble with the mind-body connection.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  He squints one eye at me, his look gently chiding. “Mind. Body. Connection. Which part’s confusing?”

  “Sam.” Tally laughs. “Behave.”

  “It’s okay. He’s funny.”

  “That’s how he works his wiles,” she says. “He can be very persuasive.”

  “Come to one of my classes,” Sam throws out.

  “See?” Tally laughs again, a musical chime.

  I say, “Is it that obvious I need some help?”

  “I think you’d like the people I work with,” Sam answers. “They’ve been through some amazing things, and they’re so resilient. They just keep doing it.”

  “What?”

  “Trying.”

  (forty-eight)

  I’m already halfway to my car when Will catches me, asking if I’ll follow him home for a drink. I’ve never been to Will’s place, so I feel confused when he drives out of the village and south along the coast road, not stopping until we arrive at Elk, fifteen minutes later. The town isn’t much more than a speck on a map. In its early logging history it was a boomtown, but now fewer than five hundred people live here in a clutch of houses around the Elk General Store and Queenie’s Diner, where Hap and Eden used to bring me for breakfast on weekends sometimes.

  Will parks to one side of the store. Whitewashed steps lead up to a narrow door with an apartment number.

  “I didn’t know anyone lived up there,” I say on the darkened street, letting Cricket out of the car.

  “I haven’t been here long,” he says. “Should warn you that I haven’t cleaned up in a while.”

  I follow him up the stairs with Cricket just behind me, watching the space between Will’s shoulder blades. The moment feels a little too intimate, or maybe just intimate enough, depending on how the coin lands. For the moment, it goes on flipping inside me, spinning like a top without arriving at an answer. He opens the door and clicks on the light. It’s a studio apartment, simple and spare. No bachelor squalor in sight. Then again, he isn’t a bachelor.

  “When did you move out?” I ask, looking around. There’s one sofa, a coffee table, a small dining table with one open chair, the other loaded down with files.

  “A few months ago. Beth thought it was better for the kids.”

  “I’m so sorry, Will.”

  He shrugs resignedly.

  Watching his face, I realize that I haven’t been much of a friend since I arrived. He obviously isn’t okay, but I’ve never made an effort to ask him what’s been happening in his marriage. I’ve barely felt capable of dealing with my own crises, let alone inviting his in. But that hasn’t been fair, or generous. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “I’m not sure I have the energy, frankly….” His forehead crumples for a moment before he shakes off the thought or feeling and turns to the icebox, taking out a lean bottle of vodka. After the night we’ve had, it’s probably not the best idea to start drinking straight liquor. I also know I’ve been leaning on alcohol a little too much lately, but for some reason I can’t quite bring myself to say either of these things out loud as he comes over with our drinks, two stiff pours over ice.

  “What came of your trip to Gualala?” Will asks.

  “Not much. Karen was pretty guarded with me, too, but I still think the two girls have more in common than it looks from the outside. Remember when Karen told you and Denny how Shannan started acting out sexually in what—sixth grade? That’s a glaring sign right there. No one at that age gives a blow job in the bathroom by choice, Will. Desire has nothing to do with it. Sex has nothing to do with it. She was working out some kind of emotional garbage, whether she knew that or not.”

  “You’re thinking she was abused, too?”

  “She might have been, but there are lots of other ways Shannan could have gotten messed-up boundaries. If she saw her mother beat up, for instance. If there was too much dislocation, or negligence. Karen might have been so distracted by her own problems, she couldn’t really bond with Shannan, or consider her needs. And where’s the dad in all of this? He must have abandoned the family, and that’s another strike against her. Another hole to fill.”

  He sits forward, swirling his glass until the ice cubes rattle. “Okay, let’s say you’re right, and that they’re both sending out these bat signals, both of them the same kind of not-quite-okay gorgeous girl. What then? What kind of guy preys on that? Who are we looking for, Anna?”

  “I don’t know yet, but it’s all I can think about.” With a snap of my fingers, I call Cricket over and rest my hands on the warm back of her head. It’s amazing to me how quickly I’ve adapted to having her nearby, how much she means to me already.

  “Did you ever wonder why we’re both here right now?” Will asks.

  “Because you wanted a drink?”

  I was hoping for a smile, but he’s all business. “I mean here in Mendocino. With all this going on.”

  “Bad karma?” I try again.

  “Very funny.” He clears his throat and moves closer to me on the couch until our knees are only a few inches apart, near enough so that I can feel his body heat bleed into the space. “It does feel like karma sometimes, though. What’s the saying about life giving you what you can least handle?”

  I manage a hollow laugh. “We’re not the luckiest two people.”

  “No.” He takes a long pull on his cocktail, draining the last of it without effort. It’s a move that’s very familiar to me. The faster you drink, the faster you can try to erase whatever needs erasing. “Can I show you something?”

  I steady myself on the glass in my hand. “Sure.”

  (forty-nine)

  The apartment is one long vaulted space partitioned off at the back with drywall to form a bathroom and bedroom. I expect a bedroom, anyway, and wonder worriedly if I’ve missed some signal and this is a romantic ploy. But when Will opens the door and reaches for the light, I see only storage chests stacked in the center of a bare room.

  “Where are you sleeping?” I have to ask.

  “On the sofa. It’s fine. I don’t sleep much anyway.”

  I think of Hap. His habit of nodding off in the living room, a blanket pulled up over his chin—resting, thinking, and chewing over the problems of the world. Glancing aroun
d at the file boxes, I’m about to ask what it’s all for, but then it hits me. Beth’s decision to split. His insomnia. The way he can drain a glass of vodka as if it’s water. They’re all rooted in a single problem, a single obsession. “This is about Jenny.”

  “Not just Jenny, but yeah.” He opens the lid of the first box and pulls out a grainy photo of a pretty teen. Button nose, straight teeth in an openmouthed smile, eyes with a downward turn but still bright, still open to whatever waited. I don’t recognize her but think I’m supposed to. “Yvonne Lisa Weber,” he says, reading my look. “One of the victims of the Santa Rosa hitchhiker killer.”

  “Wait,” I say, remembering how he’d brought this up with Rod Fraser in Petaluma, grasping for connections. “What’s going on here?”

  “Just a project of mine. A lot of these girls went missing the same year Jenny disappeared.”

  “You think they’re related, then.” I exhale, surprising myself. I didn’t know I’d been holding my breath. “There was never any connection made. I remember that from when we were kids.”

  “That’s right, but I’ve always thought the authorities missed something. That my dad dropped a thread, or that no one really looked close enough.”

  I can see from his body language how wired he is, how none of this is theoretical or remotely casual. But I can’t imagine faulting him. My own obsessions have driven my career from the beginning and are still here, perhaps louder and more insistent than ever. “Do you think these cold cases have something to do with Cameron?”

  His eyes bounce from the box to my face and back again. “Not necessarily. I just can’t let go of the idea that I might still be able to figure out what happened to Jenny. A clue might be here.” He reaches for another photo, of Yvonne Weber’s best friend, Maureen Louise Sterling. “They disappeared together in February of 1972, after leaving a roller rink well after dark. They were thirteen.”

  I almost don’t want to hold the two pictures when Will offers them side by side. The paper they’re printed on is light as a feather and impossibly heavy. The girls could have been sisters, they look so much alike. Brown eyes. Button noses. Dark straight hair parted in the middle and falling over slender shoulders. Their eyes pull me in and in. “When did you start working on this?” I finally ask him.

  He shrugs. “Since Jenny died.”

  Shit. “What have you learned?”

  “That it’ll fuck you up good to obsess over anything for twenty years.”

  “Oh, Will.” My heart flutters. How well I knew. “I’m sorry.”

  “It ruined my marriage.”

  “Tell me about it. Tell me about Beth.”

  He looks away, smoothing his hand over a glassine sleeve filled with old news clippings.

  “Please?”

  “She’s a saint.”

  “No one’s a saint.”

  “She’s close enough for me, then. We met just after college, up near Mount Shasta. I was there with some buddies, camping. She and some friends were in the next campsite. That was pretty much it.”

  I have to smile then. “Love and s’mores?”

  “And a few cases of Coors Light. Yeah.” He reaches into the box again and pulls out more photos, notebooks, and index cards wrapped in crackling dry rubber bands.

  “Besides Jenny, these girls hit me hardest. There were seven victims over eighteen months, including Jenny. But these two were the youngest. The only ones taken together. One watched the other die first. Can you imagine? They were best friends.”

  “Twenty years is a long time for one murder to go unsolved, let alone seven of them, Will.” I let the words float. “Does Beth really not understand why you need to keep pursuing this? She knows your history, right? How close you were to Jenny? How could she just give up on you?”

  “She didn’t. She never did. I gave up on me.”

  I don’t know what to say.

  “I haven’t opened these boxes in a while. A year maybe?” He scratches his head and sniffs, trying to hold back tears the way that men do, by pretending to have a cold. Sinus trouble. It’s something I’ve always found endearing and maddening, but in Will’s case mostly endearing. I feel for him.

  “Why now?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s Cameron and the other girls, all within a hundred miles. Maybe it’s the Internet. We’ve never had a tool like this before, not anything like it. Millions and millions of people are out there, reachable with a few clicks of a button, and at least one of them knows something.”

  He’s right. A whole new day is dawning. A chance to take another crack at this case and so many others, thousands and thousands of searches that had grown cold, enough to fill a yawning morass.

  “It can’t be a coincidence,” he continues. “We were both here back then, and we’re both here now. Doesn’t that seem like a sign or something? We’re supposed to pick this all up again and solve it.”

  I’m almost dizzy listening to him. A big part of me would give anything to finally put away Jenny’s murderer, for all the same reasons Will has, plus my own. But he means the others, too, a massive undertaking by anyone’s standards.

  Will isn’t waiting for my answer or for anything, the momentum inside him building like a wave. “In Petaluma the other day, Barresi mentioned something when you went to grab coffee. The FBI is working on putting together a national database connecting crime labs all over the country. You know how slow everything is now, how disjointed. Once the new database is up and running, a semen sample from a rape kit in Seattle could be matched with a sentenced perpetrator in Philly or DC. Think about all the cold cases that could get new life, Anna. It blows my mind.”

  “Exciting stuff for sure. But how does it help us right now? Why did you bring me here tonight?”

  Some complex feeling shears over his features. He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “I brought you here because I hoped you’d see it, too. That we’re supposed to solve Jenny’s case, too. All of them.”

  His expression is so intense. It’s taken a lot for him to show me the files. “Maybe someday,” I say, finally, afraid to promise more. “When all this is done.”

  Somehow he’s begun to move closer. I can smell his Barbasol shaving cream beneath the vodka we’ve been drinking. I can smell his nervousness, his need.

  “Will,” I say. But he’s already leaning to kiss me. A kiss that has taken forever, plus weeks of full-on crises and chaos. His lips are warm and insistent. His mouth tastes like forgetting.

  I’d be lying to say I don’t want it. Not just the sex but also the distraction from all of this, shutting my eyes and tumbling into his arms. But after it was over, wouldn’t I be right back where I started, only with guilt in the mix, and regret, too? I’ve already hurt Brendan enough. Even if he never found out, I’ve already broken too many promises to add infidelity.

  Will’s lips press harder, his tongue opening my mouth.

  “Please don’t.” I stumble backward. The look on his face kills me.

  He’s hurt, confused. Decades’ worth of disappointment gather in his eyes like a storm. He’s already been kicked out of his marriage. And then all this pressure from the town, an impossible job to do for anyone. It’s not sex he wants at all, but a lifeline. A raft to keep him afloat in the godforsaken nothingness, or even a single piece of driftwood, as long as the two of us could cling hard to it, together.

  The phone rings from the other room and I jump. A shrill burst of sound.

  “Let it ring,” he says.

  “No. Answer it.”

  “Anna.”

  * * *

  —

  The ringing seems to go on for an eternity. Cricket barks once, high and sharp, from the living room, and finally Will goes to get it. Almost shaking, I find the door to the bathroom, shut myself inside, and look into the mirror hard. Don’t do this. My eyes
meet hers in the glass, reversed. I think of Brendan, think of the woman I was not so long ago. I’ve made terrible mistakes, yes. And maybe my work has taken too much out of me, and I haven’t been able to truly be there for him and our family. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love him. There is a part of me that hasn’t given up hoping I could still win back his trust and go home again. But I’ll never have a chance at that if I turn to Will now, no matter how comforting his arms might feel in the moment.

  I hear Cricket at the door coming to look for me but stay a moment longer, splashing my face with cold water, and then using Will’s towel. Even that feels too intimate. The right thing to do is clear. I still know where true north is.

  With Cricket trailing me, I walk down the little hall to the living area, trying to find the words that will let Will know I’ve always cared for him, which is exactly why I have to leave now. That I can’t give what isn’t mine to offer. That we can’t stay broken on that raft, not even for each other. Not for Jenny. Not for anyone or anything. We have to let go and swim like hell, alone, because that’s the only way to any shore that matters.

  He’s just disconnecting, the heavy plastic receiver in his hand looking alien and incomplete. “They found a car that might be Shannan Russo’s. The Sonoma County helicopter spotted it late today. Denny’s crew is heading up at dawn to check it out.”

  “We have to be there.”

  “I agree. We’ll leave at six. Dress warm, okay? It might be a long day.”

  “Will…” I say, needing to settle where we’ve been, to move through instead of around it. We owe each other that.

  But he cuts me short. “Get some sleep. We’ve got an early start.”