Darkness First

by James Hayman

  What she wasn’t all that sure about was what happened after you were dead. Were you just not there any more? Gone. Poof. Like you never existed? Just a rotting lump of meat in a box underground being eaten up by bugs and worms? Or was dying more like what they said in church? Tabitha was by no means certain it was, but if it was, well then there was a distinct possibility Tiff was flying around somewhere in either heaven or hell. She was in what Mrs St Pierre who lived up the road called a better place. Mrs St Pierre came over with some cupcakes after she heard on television about Tiff being murdered. Tabbie didn’t know why she thought cupcakes would help.

  ‘Donnie,’ Mrs St Pierre said, ‘I know this is hard for you to accept but please believe me when I tell you she’s in a better place. They both are. Both Tiff and Terri. Together again. Safe in the arms of Jesus.’

  Tabitha thought her mother might throw Mrs St Pierre out of the house along with her cupcakes because she knew her mother not only didn’t believe in God but also thought Mrs St Pierre was pretty much full of shit about everything. But to Tabbie’s surprise her mother didn’t say anything except thank you.

  Tabbie tended to think her mother was right on the religion thing. But if it turned out she wasn’t and Mrs St Pierre was right, well, Tabbie thought that might make a pretty good argument for killing yourself. Who wouldn’t want to be in a better place? Especially if you lived in Eastport. And double especially if your spirit didn’t actually have to have a body and thus didn’t have to put up with being semi-fat and wholly clumsy.

  Killing herself would be easy. She knew where Pike kept his gun. The bullets too. And she knew how to load it and use it. Pike had taught her himself. So maybe she would kill herself. Or maybe not. She couldn’t make her mind up about that. Tiff might get pretty damned pissed if she showed up unannounced in heaven or hell or wherever Tiff had gone to. She could just hear Tiff saying something like: ‘Oh Jesus, what are you doing here? I told you the last thing I can deal with is a kid trailing along with me.’

  The house was quiet again. Tabitha hadn’t heard her parents screaming at each other for at least an hour so she figured they’d both fallen asleep. Her mother on her bed and Pike downstairs in his chair.

  She picked up the old 3G iPhone Tiff had given her last month when she got the brand-new one for herself.

  ‘I can’t afford this,’ she told her sister when she gave her the phone. ‘I don’t have any money.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Tabs. It’s in my name. I’ll pay the monthly charges. I just need a private way to call you. You just pay for any apps you download. Deal?’

  Tabbie couldn’t believe it. Not a single other kid in her whole class had an iPhone. Not a single one. Not even Toby Mahler, whose family had plenty of money. Just her. It had to be about the best present she’d had ever gotten from anybody. Except maybe for the headboard from Pike.

  ‘Deal,’ she said.

  Tabbie looked again at the text message she got yesterday. Need 2 C U. Alone! Don’t tell anyone!!! 3:00 @ school playground.

  She missed her big sister so much she kept speed dialing Tiff’s new cell phone number. Of course she knew there would be no answer but she liked hearing Tiff’s voice on the message that kept kicking in even before the phone rang. ‘Hi, this is Tiff. You know the drill. Leave your number and I’ll call you back.’ Must have listened to that about twenty times.

  This time, for the first time, she decided to leave a message. ‘Hi Tiff. This is Tabitha. I know you can’t hear me or call me back but I just want you to know I’m really, really going to miss you. You really, really don’t know how much. I’m really, really sorry you couldn’t get the hell out of Dodge like you said. Then maybe you’d still be alive. But it’s okay. I know you tried to make it happen. The one thing I’m wondering, though, is what the heck you want me to do with that package you gave me?’

  16

  3:22 P.M., Saturday, August 22, 2009

  Machias, Maine

  The afternoon sun was throwing golden light on to the porch of the old house on Center Street as Maggie pulled in. A white Victorian with black shutters built in more prosperous days, it was the house she was born in. The old maple in the corner of the front yard was heavy with late-summer leaves and still had a rope swing tied to one of its lower branches. Not the same one Maggie and her brothers played on for years. A new one with a plastic seat instead of wood, yellow nylon cord instead of clothesline. Her father must have hung it for his granddaughters, Ali and Louise. Trevor’s girls. Maggie’s nieces.

  She watched John Savage unwind his long frame from the green wicker rocker on the porch, the one he called his smoking chair, and walk down the steps to greet her.

  He slipped his arm around her waist and walked her back toward the house. ‘Welcome home,’ he said. ‘You must be kind of tired.’

  ‘I’ll live.’

  It had been eight months since Maggie’s last visit at Christmas. Four months before that she’d come for a weekend. Before that not since John and Anya’s wedding a year ago last June. A few times in between, she’d spent weekends with Em, usually hiking or canoeing the wild waters of the Machias River. On those visits she’d only stopped in for a quick hello.

  The gaps were too long, she told herself. Although she once loved coming home, these days there always seemed to be some good reason not to. It wasn’t that John’s new wife made her feel less welcome. Or that Anya was a bad woman. Or even that Maggie’s mother would have resented John marrying again. During the last stages of her illness, with the impossibility of recovery too obvious to allow the use of phrases like when you get better or when you’re well again, Joanne Savage told her husband she wanted him to marry again and marry soon. Asked Maggie to help make sure it happened. Once she even said she thought Anya, a neighbor and friend who was herself recently widowed, might make an excellent replacement.

  No, there wasn’t anything not to like about Anya. It was just that, for Maggie, this house was and always would be Joanne’s. Her mother had laid out and planted the flower beds, selected and hung the wallpapers, roasted and served more than thirty Thanksgiving turkeys from its kitchen.

  For Maggie, the ghost of her mother would always hover around this place and, fair or not, that made her feel uncomfortable with another woman running the show. Maggie would have preferred it if Anya and Savage had sold the house and found somewhere else to live. She’d told her father twice how she felt about that but he brushed off the suggestion both times. He’d lived here for forty years, he said, paid off the mortgage and didn’t want to live anywhere else. ‘They’ll damn well carry me out of this place,’ he said. ‘Just like they did your mother.’

  Up on the porch John Savage welcomed his only daughter home. The child who looked most like him, the one they both secretly knew he loved the most. He squeezed her hard. She squeezed back. ‘It’s been too long, Mag. Much too long. It’s not such a long trip from Portland that we can’t see you more often. And not just when there’s a crisis.’

  ‘I know, Pop. I’m sorry. Things have been kind of busy.’

  ‘You’re a cop. Cops are always busy. You have to make time.’

  ‘I know. I said I was sorry.’ She hoped he wouldn’t make a continuing issue of it.

  ‘Speaking of cops, one of Carroll’s troopers dropped this off for you a little while ago. He handed her a large orange envelope. The case files. She’d read them in the privacy of her childhood bedroom. Either before or after she got a few hours sleep.

  ‘How’s Anya?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s fine. So are Trevor and Cathy and the girls.’

  ‘How’s Harlan?’

  ‘Hard to say. Don’t see him all that often.’

  All through school Maggie and her two brothers, one older, one younger, earned a reputation as ‘independent’, meaning wild. So ‘independent’ they’d been known by just about everyone as ‘the little Savages’.

  Trevor, four years older than Maggie, was the leader back then. He earned a
degree in business from U. Maine Machias and married a girl he met in college. Trev and Cathy lived just a few blocks over on North Street and their two little girls, ten and six, were John’s only grandchildren, at least for now. Possibly forever, Maggie thought, the way things seemed to be going with her so-called love life.

  Trevor had a good job as plant manager with Clement’s Wild Blueberries, one of the largest processors in the country. Like Detroit once produced cars and Silicon Valley makes chips, the hard stony soil of Washington County produced lowbush blueberries. Billions and billions of them every summer.

  Harlan, the youngest, also ended up close to home. Never much of a student – boy’s got learning difficulties, Joanne confided in whispers to her most trusted friends – Harlan joined the marines right out of high school. He served two tours in Iraq, first in special ops and then later as a sniper. He barely survived the battle of Ramadi, when a piece of shrapnel lodged in his brain. But he did survive. Surgeons at the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda managed to take it out and, after months of rehab, Harlan came home.

  At thirty-one he was still a wild child who, according to his father, spent ‘too damn much time in the wrong kind of bars messing around with the wrong kind of women, ’specially for a cop’s kid.’

  Aside from a few bucks picked up shooting pool at the Musty Moose on Main Street, no one really knew how Harlan made his living, not at any given time, but most figured that, like a lot of people in Washington County, it was how and where he could. A little lobstering, a little construction work, a little logging. A little of whatever the hell he could find. No one was real sure. Joanne Savage blamed Harlan’s seeming lack of ambition on the traumas of war. PTSD she called it and maybe it was but Maggie knew, even before he went off to fight, Harlan was and always would be the wildest of the little Savages.

  Maggie followed her father through the house and into the kitchen, where Anya was busy washing some dishes. John’s second wife dried her hands and the two women greeted each other with a hug. The room hadn’t changed since Anya had taken charge. The same old appliances Maggie had grown up with. The same oak table. The same formica countertops. Maggie thought she caught the scent of her mother in the room. Had to be her imagination. It was four years since Joanne Savage had died and Maggie didn’t believe in ghosts.

  Savage refilled his coffee cup. ‘I’ll see you outside when you get what you need.’ He headed back to the porch.

  ‘Would you like something to eat?’ Anya asked.

  ‘No thanks,’ she said, still full from breakfast at the WaCo.

  ‘Anything to drink?’ she asked. ‘Coffee? Tea?’

  ‘Iced tea might be nice if you have it.’

  She watched Anya open the door of the old green GE refrigerator.

  Not green, you understand. Avocado. Maggie could still hear Joanne’s voice mocking the marketing people at the General Electric Company. Avocado. That’s what they called it back in the seventies, when her parents bought the house.

  Anya poured the tea and handed it to her. ‘It’s nice to see you, Maggie,’ she said. ‘It’s been a while.’

  ‘I know. I should come up more often.’

  ‘You should. Your father misses you. And none of us is getting any younger.’

  They say men tend to marry the same woman twice and physically this was true. Anya was ten years younger than Joanne would have been, but she had the same tall, thin build. The same fair Scandinavian coloring. The same ramrod-straight stance. But there were differences as well. Anya presented a more serious mien than Joanne Savage. Even when Joanne was dying with pancreatic cancer she could make everyone smile with a self-deprecating quip. Maggie wondered if Anya ever made jokes. She’d never heard one.

  ‘You didn’t bring a bag?’ asked Anya.

  ‘It’s still in the car. I’ll get it later.’

  Anya pointed at Maggie’s holster and sidearm. ‘Would you mind terribly putting that away? I don’t like people wearing firearms in my house.’

  Maggie bridled for an instant. It’s not your house she thought. Then she pushed the thought away. It was Anya’s house now and not Maggie’s. Not any more. And not Joanne’s either. ‘If you don’t mind,’ she said to Anya, ‘I’ll hold on to the gun. I’m going out later. I’ll want to take it with me.’

  Anya pursed her lips. ‘I’ll leave you and John to it. I know you two have a lot to talk about. Terrible thing, this whole business with Emily. And that Stoddard girl.’ With that she turned and climbed the stairs.

  17

  Out on the porch, Maggie parked herself next to her father in the second of the two big green wicker rockers, the same ones Mag had helped paint and repaint a dozen times over the years.

  As if on cue the two of them, father and daughter, lifted their long legs up on to the railing. Polly Four gave Maggie’s leg a peremptory shove with her nose and Maggie responded, stroking the dog’s head and ears. John found one of his small Camels and lit up.

  ‘How long you here for?’

  ‘Carroll gave me till Tuesday.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘He’s got an option to renew.’

  ‘If he doesn’t?’

  Maggie shrugged. ‘I’m here however long it takes.’

  ‘Even if Carroll tells you Tuesday morning it’s not working out? Tells you to go home?’

  ‘Even if.’

  ‘He won’t like it.’

  ‘Nope. Probably howl like a stuck pig. Might even submit a formal complaint to the AG’s office.’

  ‘You could lose your job.’

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe just a suspension. Or a demotion. Depends on Chief Shockley and whether or not I catch the bad guy. Shockley’d just love letting the media know how it took one of his hotshot Portland detectives to clear a murder case the staties’ hotshot couldn’t.’ Maggie smiled. ‘Hell, if it happens that way, Tom might even promote me. On the other hand –’ Maggie held up both hands, palms out and shrugged. ‘Who knows? There are other jobs. I’ll handle it.’

  ‘I can always swear you in as a deputy. I’ve got three open slots.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘You need anything from me?’ Savage asked.

  ‘You get the information I asked for? About what Tiff was studying?’

  ‘Yup. I spoke to Ellie Morse in the registrar’s office. Took a bit of doing. Ellie actually made me get a warrant before she faxed over Stoddard’s records. Anyway, she had a dual major. English and Business.’

  ‘Ever take creative writing?’

  He reached for a stapled fax that was sitting in a pile of papers on the table by his chair. ‘Yup. Here it is. Took our friend Sam Harkness’s non-fiction course last fall and “Exploring the Short Story” in the spring. A-pluses in both. Gee,’ Savage chuckled, ‘wonder what Stoddard wrote that deserved an A-plus from Sam.’

  Whatever it was it ought to be on her computer. ‘You go over to Stoddard’s apartment this morning with Ganzer and the evidence guys?’

  ‘I was there.’

  ‘Find anything?’

  ‘Quite a bit. Kid was a slob. She had clothes strewn all over the place. Lot of it new and expensive. Some still had store tags on it. And not from Walmart either. But no cell phone, no computer or peripherals. None of the electronics you’d expect from a twenty-two-year-old college student. No drugs either.’

  ‘Bad guy may have cleaned it out. How about prints or other people’s DNA?’

  ‘Plenty of prints and DNA. Mostly Stoddard’s but some from other sources.’

  ‘Where’s the apartment?’

  ‘Cheap one-bedroom in a little four-unit that caters to students near the river on Water Street. Number forty-one. Apartment three. Second floor right if you’re facing the place. Landlady’s name is Laverty. Paula Laverty. She’s nosy and a gossip. Claimed Tiff brought a lot of guys home. Emmett brought her in and showed her a bunch of pics to see if she could ID any of the guys.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘You’ll have t
o ask him. Emmett doesn’t fill me in on his discoveries. Aside from that, Carroll’s got two teams interviewing anybody and everybody they can find who might have known Stoddard. You need anything else?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Maggie decided to press it. ‘Number three’s the biggie.’

  ‘Oh yeah? What is it?’

  ‘Whatever it was you wouldn’t talk about on the phone yesterday.’

  Savage nodded. ‘As usual, you’re saving the best for last. You used to do that with your dinners. Pushed the good stuff off to one side and saved it till you ate the required allotment of string beans or asparagus.’ He sipped the last of his coffee, then stared out into the empty street.

  A couple of minutes passed in silence.

  18

  Maggie studied her father’s face in profile. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said. ‘Not till you tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘Lymphoma. Non-Hodgkin’s. That’s the nasty kind but the docs tell me we caught it early. I started chemo down in Bangor last week. So far they tell me the results are good.’

  A chill went through her. A fear that had lain dormant since Joanne’s death was now hanging right in front of her. That ugly word. Cancer. Once again big, fat, and very, very real. She’d already lost one parent to that bastard of a disease. And now she was facing the prospect of losing another.

  ‘Anya know about this?’ she asked in a calm voice, no sign of distress showing through. At least she didn’t think there was.

  ‘Of course,’ Savage said. ‘She’s the one who insisted I tell you. I didn’t want to. I know the toll it took on you when your mother was ill. Trev knows as well. Didn’t want to tell him either. But I don’t want either of you telling anyone else. Not even your pal McCabe.’

  ‘Most people will just want to help,’ Maggie said, determined to sound reassuring. Not sure she was succeeding.

  John Savage shook his head. ‘I suppose. But there’s nothing much they can do and there’s more than a few around here who don’t even like the idea of a healthy seventy-four-year-old sheriff. If they found out I was sick they’d use it as a lever to get me the hell out of office. And I’m not ready to go yet. I’ve got three years left on term number five and if I beat this thing I may run for number six. So let’s keep this our business. Family business. As long as it doesn’t affect the performance of my duties, we don’t tell a soul. You cool with that?’