That Darkness

by Lisa Black

  But what if she didn’t show? What if she sent a boyfriend or one of her army of homeless people and drug addicts who occasionally helped her cash the checks? What if she got tied up with a new client, or couldn’t tear away from whatever pleasures she had in life besides torturing people?

  And what would happen to the woman he’d left in a room with the dead Dillon Shaw?

  He could have liked Maggie Gardiner, given the chance. He could have liked her a lot.

  She had asked: Why?

  He only had one real answer: Because he could.

  Apparently he was capable of it. Apparently others weren’t. As for why that might be, Jack didn’t know and no longer cared. He couldn’t answer those questions satisfactorily any more than Maggie could have and he had long since stopped trying. He did what he thought was best. If he burned in eternal damnation for it, then he burned.

  Stein had to be coming here, and soon. She had to. He was out of time and out of options.

  He waited.

  The cat waited.

  * * *

  Friday, 8:14 p.m.

  Maggie could see no reason for the window not to open. The latch would not slide, and the window would not move upward. No matter how much she strained and pressed, it acted as if it had been glued in place and perhaps it had. In frustration she shoved against the lower window’s frame until she felt her back muscles begin to rip.

  Nothing.

  However, with all the pushing and shoving she pressed back against the polycarbonate sheet, stressing the hold of its top two anchors until one of them finally popped off. This shot a piece of flaming gauze out onto the linoleum where it burnt out harmlessly, and left the large, heavy sheet of plastic dangling by one upper corner. It also freed up most of the window area.

  Maggie hopped off the desk, picked up the chair that went with it, and climbed up again. Then she swung the chair like a golf club, sending the seat of it into the pane of glass.

  It broke with a satisfying crunch and she breathed out a sigh of relief. No more polycarbonate; obviously Jack had not expected someone to get this far. The frosted contact paper covering it kept her from seeing what was outside, but had the advantage of keeping too many shards from flying back onto her. It also kept the pieces somewhat pasted together, so that a few well-placed kicks removed the entire panel from the frame and it crashed to the ground outside.

  She could see the alley, dimly lit by area streetlights—a five-foot jump would land her safely on the asphalt. But she took her time and appreciated, once again, the leather gloves as she braced her hands on the broken glass littering the sash, bending her spine to move herself out of the window without scraping her skin against the jagged edges. She had swabbed up many, many drops of blood at crime scenes where burglars had cut themselves maneuvering through the window they’d just broken.

  Her athletic shoes hit the alley, and she instantly turned to the left and ran toward her most difficult hurdle yet—a decision.

  Stop Jack? Or join him?

  * * *

  Friday, 8:15 p.m.

  The rats rustled, perhaps wondering if they should try outrunning the cat or use a different exit. Surely there must be more than one. The house was large and the stone foundation had lasted for over a hundred years. That it stood at all could be considered a testament to sentiment and the advantage of hiring the best builders money could buy. And of course the original owner could buy anything.

  And now, he expected, the place had become a living mausoleum. Silent, dark, but very sturdily locked up.

  “You haven’t seen Greta, have you?” Jack asked his fellow stalker. “White, female, bad attitude? Lives in Euclid, most of the time?”

  The cat said nothing.

  Jack left off conversation and went over a mental list of weaknesses in his killing room, trying to reassure himself that Maggie couldn’t possibly get out. He had nailed the windows shut before covering them and had installed the door himself. . . though he had never left anyone there alone. It had not been designed to be used as a prison for any length of time. And if Maggie did manage to claw through a steel door with her bare hands, she would be barely two blocks from the police station. They could have an APB out on him in thirty seconds once she got there, found the sergeant on duty, and described what happened. If Maggie convinced his soon-to-be ex-coworkers of her story, then Jack might be forced out of town before—

  The idea seemed untenable.

  They might not believe her. Jack was the cop. The thin blue line and all that.

  But they had known her longer, and the woman made an impression.

  First, however, they would do two things—send someone to the Johnson Court building to check out her story, and call Riley, who would feel this all explained his many recent misgivings and maybe whatever the homeless Clyde had told him. All that activity might buy Jack at least an hour, probably more. Maggie didn’t know where he was, so as long as he stayed out of sight then getting away from Cleveland afterward would become the only issue.

  How could he have screwed up so badly? How could he have let the details pile up to overwhelm him?

  But then headlights swept up the overgrown driveway as a dark sedan pulled onto the property. Jack felt like shouting. He would make it. He had to make it.

  He put his phone back into his pocket, then glanced across the narrow lawn to the shadows of the elm tree. “Looks like my prey appeared before yours did.”

  The cat said nothing.

  Chapter 34

  Friday, 8:16 p.m.

  Running, her feet hitting the concrete sidewalks hard enough to jar her bones, Maggie moved through the same mental argument Jack had just summarized. To get to East 40th and Euclid from Johnson Court took her directly past the massive Justice Center. She could burst through the glass doors, find the desk officer, cut in front of whoever stood there complaining about a parking ticket or a noisy neighbor, and identify herself. The odds of the desk officer knowing her personally would be slim, since she worked mostly with the detectives.

  Then he would go get his shift sergeant, who would listen to the story again and, provided he could make any sense out of her frenzied tale, dispatch a few uniforms to the Johnson Court building to verify the locked door, the broken window, and the body on the floor to see if these things really existed or if Maggie had simply lost her mind.

  They might call Denny, who would probably be in the birthing suite with his phone turned off. Patty might believe her, if the detective weren’t locked in an interview room with one of their many persons of interest. The sergeant would certainly call Jack, who wouldn’t answer, and Riley, who would be positive Maggie had had a mental breakdown rather than believe his own partner could be some kind of vigilante serial killer. Then the shift sergeant would wonder—quite logically—whether Maggie herself had killed the rapist, or whether her tale could be due to a falling out among whatever twisted little combo she and Jack formed together.

  Meanwhile, Jack would be murdering Maria Stein at East 40th and Euclid. At least Maggie assumed they were at East 40th and Euclid. The Rockefeller mansion, nicknamed “Cettie’s Star” in honor of his wife, sat about two miles east, the same distance she jogged every day. She could run there before she would have even finished telling her story to the shift sergeant, certainly before she would be able to get him to take her seriously. And Jack had been desperate to go, had obviously felt he had a very narrow window of opportunity to take care of some last task. If Maggie allowed any delay, by the time a patrol car arrived at 40th and Euclid there would be no one there except a number of elderly victims in extreme distress and one dead woman. Provided, of course, she had guessed correctly.

  She sped up St. Clair, running easily along the vacated sidewalks and minimal traffic, and passed the Justice Center by.

  All while she wondered what on earth she would do once she arrived. Jack had been right about one thing.

  He was still the guy with the gun.

  * * *

&
nbsp; 8:18 p.m.

  Jack had chosen his hiding spot for precisely this reason, assuming that Stein would not want to stop in the street where her car might attract attention, or stay at the end of the drive, clearly noticeable by passing cars and neighbors. The side of the house, with the building on one side and the trees and a ramshackle fence on the other, neatly hid her and the vehicle from prying eyes. She would have to walk out to the box, of course, but the dark and quiet night would make her feel secure.

  He had wondered before why she simply didn’t rent a post office box rather than trust the security of the mail system in these sketchy neighborhoods, but of course post offices asked for ID and had cameras.

  Jack did not move at first, held his breath as he listened to the engine die. He hoped she would be alone and considered it likely. Maria Stein was not the sharing type. She did not have partners and any boyfriend or acquaintance would not be privy to the full extent of her operation. She would risk it as a woman alone before she would share the stack of envelopes with another person. And, indeed, when she opened the driver’s door to get out, the dome light briefly illuminated an empty vehicle.

  Perfect.

  His blood rushed through his veins, flooding his brain with the intoxication of victory.

  Streetlights along Euclid allowed him to see the outlines of her face as she glanced around, pausing and listening. Then she moved over the remnants of the driveway toward her only goal—the mailbox.

  Sucking in air to the very bottom of his lungs, Jack stepped out of the shadows.

  * * *

  8:18 p.m.

  Maggie turned up East 3rd to Rockwell, planning to cut through Public Square; if there were any foot traffic to speak of it would be there, especially on a Friday night in spring . . . though she couldn’t imagine anyone calling the cops simply to report a woman running through the streets when no one chased her. Her collarbone ached where she had been stabbed and a coolness on the skin below it gave her a clue that the wound had probably opened again. So, yes, onlookers like that group of college students she had just passed who had stared at her oddly might call the police after noticing that half her shirt had been stained in blood. Duh.

  She stepped onto Rockwell in front of the Old Stone Church, dodging a cab.

  As she had hoped, a dark shape rested beneath the statue of Moses Cleaveland. “Sadie!”

  Maggie had always been so careful not to startle the homeless woman, and the woman did not appreciate this change in characteristic. Her face, of indeterminate age and indeterminate race, scowled mightily at the loud tone. “Here, here! No cause for that!”

  “Please, Sadie, please help me. Tell Marty to send cops to the Rockefeller place, East 40th and Euclid. Tell him Maggie said so. Please!”

  The woman squinted. “You bleedin’?”

  “Yes. East 40th and Euclid!” She turned and kept running, hoping that her own urgency would infect the woman. Urgency, or curiosity, either one would do.

  Maggie pounded up the renovated avenue, past the Chocolate Bar. After another two blocks she darted to the other side of the street to avoid the crowds funneling into the theaters at Playhouse Square. She passed the last of the Cleveland State University buildings, darted through the underpass below I-90. Her scalp tingled and tiny stars of light showered through her vision. 30th. Pushing herself far past her usual pace, her heart pounded and her lungs heaved and she could only pray she didn’t develop a stitch in her side.

  She passed the Masonic auditorium at 36th, dark and silent. Her lungs screamed for oxygen and she knew she could not make it much farther.

  And there, suddenly, was 40th.

  Three of the corners were taken up by the sewer district headquarters, a social services center, and a small cathedral, all empty and unlit at this time of night. On the fourth corner a large, dark structure sat back from the road, tucked into an alcove of towering trees and overgrown bushes. Three stories of vacant black windows, tall and arched, watched her halting approach. She started up the drive, or what passed for a drive.

  She saw a car parked next to the house, almost lost in the shadows there, but it did not look like Jack’s. What if she had the wrong place? What if she were about to burst into the modern-day equivalent of an opium den? Her body might never be found. She would become her own entry into NamUs.

  She did not pause, but ran right up the sagging steps to the front porch, across the groaning planks to the open front door. Behind it yawned a gaping hole of pitch black, waiting for her to enter and fall into its depths.

  A breeze picked up, whispering through the branches overhead, nudging at her back as if goading her forward.

  She pushed the door back with one palm. It let out with a groan that should have lifted the hairs on the neck of every single person within two city blocks.

  She stepped over the threshold.

  The soft glow from the distant streetlights penetrated the windows just enough to show ghostly images of a single armchair next to a short table in the room to the right, and a fireplace set into the wall of the room to the left. The small amount of light from the open door behind her let her see that the front foyer, wide and once elegant, had a hallway leading straight back into inky gloom and a staircase.

  Maggie paused, listening. A tiny sound, like the scrape of a shoe against a floorboard. Or an overfed rat squeezing back into its hole.

  It came from directly overhead.

  She put her foot on the first step and wished that Jack had kept a flashlight next to his first aid kit. Second step. She could have used her cell phone display for illumination, except of course she didn’t have that either.

  After the third step it got easier. Her hand grasped the wide, ornate wooden banister. The risers creaked and moaned, but she didn’t try to tiptoe. It would be pointless. Any other living being in the house would have to know she had arrived, unless they were so high they could hear only their own heartbeat. Time to face the inevitable conclusion: She was walking blind into an utterly unknown situation, which could involve anything from a group of tweakers to a band of wilding teens to a horde of starving rats and rabid raccoons to brown recluse spiders. Jack Renner might be the least dangerous entity she could run across tonight.

  But she doubted it.

  She reached the top step. The first floor had been brightly lit compared to the second; closed doors blocked off the exterior windows and the rear of the property did not even have streetlights. But something, perhaps the moon, penetrated with just enough photons through a large Tiffany-style window over the staircase landing to show her the floor and the interior hall.

  It was then that she saw them.

  Chapter 35

  Friday, 8:37 p.m.

  Suddenly the lights came on.

  Maggie blinked in the painfully sudden illumination but did not scream or shout or even move. The situation did not startle her; in fact she felt a sense of relief to find things were exactly as she had expected them to be.

  Jack Renner stood in the hallway with one hand grasping Maria Stein’s hair at the nape of her neck, so tightly that his knuckles were white and pain showed in her face. The other held his gun so that the tip of the barrel dented her carotid artery.

  “I let you be, Maggie,” he said without preamble. “Don’t make me regret it.”

  Her stomach plunged, but she forced herself to speak. “That’s not my intention.” She wasn’t sure that was true, but this might not be the time for full disclosure.

  “Glad to hear it. How did you find me?”

  “I read the file.” She panted a bit, her lungs relaxing enough to suck in the oxygen she needed.

  Jack frowned. “But I didn’t have this address in it.”

  “You wrote ‘Cettie’s Star.’ Everyone called Laura ‘Cettie’ for her middle name, Celestia. I’m guessing ‘Star’ was Rockefeller’s little joke, playing around with the cosmic theme.” She semi-gasped a few more breaths, enjoying, she had to admit, his surprise. “The Historical Societ
y has been trying to find a benefactor for this place for years. Oh, and the slippery elm bud at the Lakeshore building—I’m guessing that came from your shoes.”

  “Maybe. I wouldn’t know a slippery elm if one fell on me.”

  “There are about five of them outside.”

  “My mistake. Meet Maria Stein.”

  “Help me,” the woman said.

  She looked exactly like her photograph. Dark hair with tinges of gray framed an ivory face with round cheeks and wide, dark eyes. She wore a sensible black skirt, a light blue tee, and a charcoal gray blazer with comfortable-looking black pumps. Maggie almost expected to see a conservative clutch bag entwined in her fingers.

  Maggie’s cool appraisal did not seem to be the reaction Maria had been looking for, so the woman added: “He’s going to kill me!”

  “She knows that,” Jack told the woman, pushing his face to her ear. “What she wants to know is why.”

  Maggie said, “I’m guessing it has something to do with the elderly people in the other photos.”

  “Her handiwork.” Jack did not appear to ease his grip on the woman, not by a single iota. “Maria Stein—at least that’s what she went by when I became aware of her, I never did track down her real name—Maria has built a cottage industry of unofficial old-folks’ homes. She finds people who are alone, no family, often foreclosed on with no place to go. People who don’t have relatives to help enroll them in Medicaid and find a facility, and besides, they don’t want to go to a ‘home.’”