by Sam Reaves
Abby thrashed and woke up, a low guttural cry finally making it out of her constricted throat. She lay in the dark gasping, her heart thumping madly in her chest, panicked and lost.
Why was it so dark? Why so silent? Where was she?
The sight of the digital clock on the bedside table brought her fully awake. It was 4:32 in the morning and she was in her bedroom in her new home, lost in the vast dark middle of the continent, and outside there were only the woods and houses where people who did not know her or care about her slept unconcerned. She struggled out of bed, walked into her living room in the dark and sat on the sofa.
Absorbed in her work, Abby had barely noticed as a solitary Sunday had passed. In a few hours she would be on campus again, engaged with people; now there was only this black abyss of loneliness to endure.
The silence, she realized, was not absolute. She could hear the crickets buzzing faintly outside. At long intervals she could hear cars purring by on Jackson Avenue.
She could hear Evan saying, “I’m terrified of losing you.”
Well, Evan, you lost me, she thought. And you’re going to haunt me for the rest of my life.
Beyond the curtain in front of her, outside, a light went on, the edges of the window glowing. Something had triggered the motion-sensitive light high on the eaves. Abby sat holding her breath. She strained to listen, but there was only the murmur of the night. Eventually she breathed, but she did not move.
Abby listened until she thought she heard a step, a scrape, a soft scuffing on the grass. Then there was nothing again. She sat with her heart pounding until the light went off, leaving her in darkness.
Abby stood just outside the door to her apartment, watching branches toss gently in the breeze. The morning air was cool; the sun did not reach the shaded backyard. Birds flitted and fluttered in the shadowy woods at the bottom of the slope. Their twittering was the only sound above the sighing of the trees.
A deer, she thought, scanning the ground near the door and the big picture window. A deer bold enough to forage near the house in the sheltering darkness would trigger the light. The ground told her nothing, the long grass and clover taking no tracks. A deer would have been spooked by the light and gone skittering away, Abby thought. You would have heard something more than the soft step you heard.
Or thought you heard. Abby locked her apartment door, shrugged into her backpack, and went up the steps at the side of the house. On the porch she halted, startled by the sight of her landlord bent over on the front lawn, hands on knees, panting and dripping sweat onto the grass. He was shirtless, in running shorts and shoes with low-cut socks, holding a T-shirt in his right hand. A stopwatch hung from a lanyard around his neck. He straightened up and saw her, then smiled. “Morning,” he managed to say.
Abby went down the steps. “I didn’t know you were a runner.”
McLaren laughed, a single puff. “Used to be. More of a jogger now.” He wiped his face with the shirt and grinned at her. “Age takes a toll.”
More with some than with others, Abby thought, looking at the lean, cut torso slicked with sweat. For a man past the prime of youth he looked pretty fit. “Where do you run?”
He recovered for a few more breaths before answering. “I have a couple of different routes I take. Out south of town, sometimes east. I try to avoid hills.”
“I hear you.” Abby hesitated, her lips parted. Did she want to get into this? “I like to run myself. I’ve been looking for a good safe route. I’ve been running on the track over on campus but it’s really boring.”
He nodded. “I could never run on a track.”
“I hate it. But . . .” Careful, Abby thought. “I ran out along South Street the other day, but I got a little spooked.”
McLaren nodded. “I heard.” He took in Abby’s surprised look and added, “I have a friend in the police department. He told me what happened.”
“Would that be Detective Ruffner?”
“It would. He thought I should know because you’re my tenant.”
“Well, anyway, I want to get back to doing roadwork but I don’t know if it’s safe.”
He wiped his face again. “I’d offer to run with you but you’d probably leave me in the dust.”
“I don’t know. I’m kind of out of shape.”
He smiled. “What’s a nice comfortable mile time for you?”
“Now? Maybe six and a half minutes.”
He considered for a moment. “You’d be making me work, but I think I could do it, for a while, anyway.” He waved a hand, his body language saying he didn’t want to presume too much. “Just a thought. If you want a partner some time.”
Abby smiled. Did she? “I’ll let you know.”
“Well, we know a lot more than we did last week,” said Detective Ruffner. “We know Lyman was last seen in a bar he owns out on Lafayette Road and was probably carjacked in the parking lot. We know a jerry can full of gasoline was stolen from a maintenance shed at the cemetery down the road from the bar and was probably the one found on the back seat of the car. We know Lyman was stabbed to death inside the vehicle. We just don’t know who did it.”
Abby stood at the window of her office, phone to her ear, looking out at the campus green, people ambling across the grass or lounging in the shade of the big maples. “I see,” she said. “So he could still be around.”
“Sure he could. Or he could be a thousand miles away. I can’t tell you anything for sure. What I can say is that it doesn’t appear he was a local. We’ve pretty much turned the local criminal class upside down and shaken them at this point, and nothing’s fallen out. We’ve got our snitches and our contacts like any other department, and what we hear is that the local bad guys are as upset about this as we are. A lot of them were clients and friends of Lyman’s, and I think if it was somebody local who’d done this, we’d have heard about it by now. So we’re looking at outsiders, and the thing that jumps out at us there is the Mexican connection. Last week a Mexican national named Pedro Gutiérrez was arrested by the FBI in Indianapolis for trading guns for drugs to a Mexican cartel down in Texas and bringing the drugs back to sell in Indiana. They’d been tracking him for a while. And this guy had been a client of Lyman’s here in Lewisburg.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. And some of the guns were traced to a store here owned by another client of Lyman’s. Except they hadn’t been purchased, they’d been stolen. The owner had reported a burglary a couple of months ago.”
“So . . . one of his clients stole from another?”
“Looks like it. And Lyman and the store owner put their heads together, maybe. The feds grabbed Gutiérrez at a relative’s house over on the east side of Indianapolis, and the word is, it was Lyman who gave them his whereabouts. And that would seriously piss some people off.”
Abby stood looking out at the inconsequential movements of people who showed no signs of care, much less trauma. She envied them. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s helpful.”
After the call ended, Abby stood at the window for a moment longer and then sat at her desk. She brought up a browser on her phone and searched until she found the news story about Pedro Gutiérrez on the Indianapolis Star website. The idea of Mexican drug gangs having a presence in central Indiana was so outlandish to her that she could hardly credit it. The story gave the bare bones of what Ruffner had told her, without much background.
She started a new search and browsed until she found herself looking at a story headlined: Feds say Mexican drugs move through heartland. An FBI spokesman was quoted as saying, “This operation is run out of Mexico. The cocaine comes from California and the meth from Arizona. The drugs get distributed as far east as New Jersey. Indiana is an important transit point.” A few more taps at her phone brought up an interview with a DEA agent from the Indianapolis office. “They keep discipline in the networks with violence. Murder, intimidation, torture. These are some of the most ruthless people we have ever faced. And they’re here.”
Abby laid her phone on the desktop and put her face in her hands.
The snack bar in the student union had windows that looked out onto the green and offered ample light to work by. Abby was grading problem sets and finishing off a yogurt when Graham came over to her table, briefcase in one hand and a soft drink in the other. “Are you in work mode or can you be distracted?” he said, flashing the high-powered smile. He was in a suit today, the jacket slung casually over the briefcase, a well-groomed, well-dressed, not-hard-to-look-at man.
“If I didn’t want to be distracted I’d be in my office with the door barred.” Abby smiled and shifted papers to make room on the tabletop.
Graham sat down across from her. “I have found that the solution to the problem of homework is not to assign any. You’d be amazed at the effect that has on your workload.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “I’ll assume you’re joking, though the idea is appealing. Do you always dress this way for class? You’re making me feel slovenly.”
“Nah, not always. I had a meeting out at the steel plant this morning.”
“The steel plant?”
“Meteor Steel, out by the highway. It’s my moonlighting gig.”
“Somebody mentioned something about a steel plant but I don’t know anything about it.”
“It’s a big local employer. They’re a minimill company, meaning they melt down scrap steel instead of making it from scratch in big blast furnaces. Their corporate headquarters are in Indy. I’m not sure why they chose to put a plant here, but they kind of saved the town when they did. They brought a lot of jobs.”
“And how did you get hooked up with them?”
He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Well, I’m an economist, and international trade is my area, particularly in heavy industry. And companies always need to know what the long-term economic picture looks like. Does it make sense for them to expand? Can they compete with the Chinese? Is it time to add capacity, or is the whole industry doomed? I got interested in what they were doing and went and talked to them and they wound up offering me a consultant gig. I tell them what they should be doing, what they should be paying their lobbyists to do, and so forth. It’s fun, a little bit of money, and not that much work. Of course, I have to do a little homework from time to time so I have something to tell them.”
“Sounds interesting. It must be nice to have real-world expertise. The kind of math I do has applications in gambling, but I haven’t had any casino executives offer me money for my opinions.”
“How about the other side? If you can come up with a way to beat the casinos they’ll come flocking to your door.”
“If I can come up with a way to beat the casinos, what makes you think I’d share it?”
He laughed, and they were suddenly veering too close to flirting for Abby’s comfort. She picked up her pen, the smile lingering on her face.
Graham watched her for a moment. He lowered his voice and said, “So, how’s the morale? Holding up OK?”
“Under the strain of having witnessed a murder, you mean? All right, I guess.”
“What are the police telling you?”
“They’re telling me they have no idea who did it but I’m probably not in any danger. I’m assuming I can live a more or less normal life. Frankly I don’t really think I have a choice. What am I supposed to do, go underground?”
Graham sat nodding, his look grave. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do. Anything at all. A ride, an escort, somebody to sit up with you at night.” He smiled, just a little. “That’s not a come-on.”
Abby almost believed him, and she returned the smile. “Thanks. I’ll let you know.”
“Look at this term again,” said Abby. “Check your multiplication.”
Ben Larch stared at the paper for a few seconds, then made a noise of mild disgust, erased his calculation, and redid it. “I always do that. I forget the xy part of it.”
“Free throws. Do these until it’s second nature. There’s a bunch of these problems on that site I showed you. Do ten or twenty of them. When the lower-level stuff is solid, the higher concepts will come easier to you. But I think you’re starting to get the idea.”
Ben nodded. “This really helps, thanks. I can see how you get from here to here now.”
“Good. Do those problems and then have another go at the homework from last time. And if you need to come in again before the quiz, you know where to find me.”
Ben smiled, shoving things into a backpack. “If I pass this course, they should give you a medal. Nobody’s ever explained this stuff to me like this before.”
“Glad I can help.”
“Really. You’re amazing.” Suddenly Ben was gazing raptly at her across the desk. “I love your class.”
Alarm bells went off, faintly, in Abby’s head. She pushed away from the desk on her wheeled chair. “I’m glad. Thanks. See you next time.”
“Uh, here.” He was digging in a pocket. “I got you something.” He pulled out a small cardboard box, a couple of inches square, and slid it across the desk. “This is for you.”
Abby froze, her eyes going from the box to the boy and back again a few times. “What’s this?”
“It’s just something I got for you. To show my appreciation.”
Abby frowned. “Um, I’m not sure that’s appropriate,” she said.
“It’s nothing much. Look.” Ben opened the box and showed her a small turquoise pendant, lying on a coiled silver chain. “I think it would look really good on you.”
Abby pulled herself back to the desk. “Ben.”
“It’s just to say thank you.” His eyes came up and locked onto hers.
“You said thank you. And you’re welcome. Gifts really aren’t appropriate. It’s nice of you, but I couldn’t possibly accept it.” She shoved the box back toward him with her fingertips. She gave him a perfunctory smile and his gaze dropped to the desktop again. He made no move to pick up the box.
“I just want to show you I’m grateful.”
“Ace the next quiz. That’s the best way to show your gratitude.”
A silence followed, the boy motionless, staring at the box while Abby groped frantically for a strategy. “Please take it,” Ben said.
“I can’t, Ben. It would be improper. There are rules. It’s my job to help you. I get a paycheck. I can’t accept gifts.” She reached for the box, replaced the lid, and held it out to him. “I appreciate the thought, but it’s really not appropriate.”
He made her wait through an agonizing few seconds, but finally he took the box and put it back in his pocket. “I thought you’d be happy,” he said.
“I’m happy to see you learning the material. That’s as far as it goes. As far as it can go. You can see that, right?”
Now he was giving her an earnest, searching look. “Just because of the rules?”
God help me, thought Abby. “Because I am interested in you as a student, and only as a student,” she said. “We will maintain a thoroughly professional relationship, in and out of class. OK?”
Another excruciating moment passed, Abby trying to harden her look, and then abruptly the boy stood up, slung his bag over his shoulder, and stalked out of her office. Abby listened as his footsteps died away down the hall. A student with a crush on me, she thought. Just what I need.
Abby had been raised to consider herself fortunate; she had been a happy child, only a moderately unruly teenager, and a driven and focused young woman. She had never been a person things happened to. Things happened to other people, careless people, undisciplined people, people who made bad choices. Things happened to schlimazels and losers.
And me, Abby thought, turning to her laptop with a sigh. All of a sudden, I can’t turn around without something happening to me.
Get ready, she thought. What next?
It was not until Abby turned up Hickory Lane that she managed to put a name to what she was feeling, faintly but undeniably: dread. After a solitary supp
er she had returned to campus for a lecture by a celebrity intellectual, one of the occasional cultural perks the college offered. The lecture had drawn a crowd and been reasonably entertaining, and it was only when Abby emerged from the arts center to see that night had fallen that she realized she would be coming home in the dark.
Abby walked past her neighbors’ houses, looking longingly into lighted windows, catching glimpses of placid domestic life, feeling the dread grow. She had begun to think she had left dread behind her in Manhattan. After Evan’s death, walking into an empty apartment had become an ordeal; even after moving back in with her mother, opening the door and hearing no answer to her hello had triggered physical symptoms and visual memories that sometimes made her slide down the wall to the floor, face in her hands. But with a radical change in environment, the effect had gone. Ned McLaren’s house was so different from her former habitat that walking into it had triggered nothing. The link had been broken.
In its place was something new. She crossed Ned McLaren’s porch, triggering the motion-sensitive light, and stood for a moment at the top of the steps. The area illuminated by the light shaded into a penumbra at the edge of the yard and then there was a blackness made all the greater. Down there was her home, and all she had to do was get there. All she had to do was cover fifty feet of lawn, brightly lit, exposed to whatever was out there in the dark woods.
Abby went down the steps, reaching into her purse for her keys. She turned the corner and made for the door, stepping quickly. As she fitted the key into the lock she glanced over her shoulder, quelling the terror of things behind her coming out of the dark. She pushed open the door, slipped inside, slammed the door and threw the deadbolt, and turned to stand with her back to the door, facing the lamp-lit room, letting the beating of her heart subside, convincing herself she was safe.
