A Dark Place

by Keith Yocum

  “That is correct.”

  “How may I get in contact with you?”

  Dennis handed him a business card. “I’ve written down the number of a private cell phone.”

  “And if he does not wish to discuss anything with you, you’ll not hear from him. And I would appreciate you not pressing the issue. If the representative does not wish to talk to you, I hope you’ll honor that wish.”

  “Of course.”

  Dennis had found a public parking space on the National Mall. After he got into his car, an incoming text message pinged his phone.

  tomorrow same place/time as last

  CHAPTER 15

  The sandwich was on white bread with curried egg salad and lettuce. Agata smiled as Judy sat on the bed, eating.

  “You are so pretty,” Agata said.

  “Why am I here?” Judy asked.

  Agata shrugged.

  “What do they want with me?”

  Agata made a face that Judy could not interpret.

  “Is it heroin I’m getting?”

  “Yes, and some fentanyl. Do you like?”

  Judy ignored the question. “Why?” she asked again. “Why me?”

  Agata shrugged again.

  Judy looked at Agata’s arms and could see the pinpricks.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “I don’t know,” Agata said, smiling. “A long time. A short time. One doesn’t count the days.”

  “Did they grab you too?”

  For the first time, Judy noticed Agata’s demeanor change from pure, unadulterated complacency to confusion and conflict.

  “Mmm,” Agata said. “You are not eating well. You must eat. The medicine will make you not hungry, but you must eat.”

  “It’s not medicine, Agata.”

  She smiled and stood up, taking the plate from Judy.

  After the door was locked, Judy got up and began to pace the floor. She had developed a small workout routine out of boredom and a desperate attempt to regain some control over her strange life. She walked around her room for what she estimated was thirty minutes. Then she stretched and completed a sequence of exercises on the cold cement floor. She was in control of the walking and the number and duration of the exercises. At the end of each session, she felt winded, sweaty and healthy.

  But there was also a sickness that had infected her body and mind; each day in the room had broken her down just a little more. She was vaguely aware that her workout routine was a lie; it seemed like she had more control. But she didn’t, really. They were starting to delay her injections, and the mere thought of those delays made her break out in sweat. She noticed that her nose was running, and the injection sites at the crook of her arms were beginning to bruise.

  Do all addicts lie to themselves? Is this how they trick themselves into believing they are in control? Perhaps there are now two Judys, the addict Judy and the Judy who is in control. Or is there just the one Judy who lies to herself?

  Not long after her workouts, she found her focus invariably fell to those glorious and wonderful injections.

  ✦

  Dennis ordered a Chinese chicken salad from Sally at the Cheesecake Factory.

  “Haven’t seen you for a while,” she said. “Business? And what’s with the beard?”

  “I’m trying to look older.”

  She laughed.

  “And yes, I was traveling for work.”

  “Fun, I hope,” she said. “I just work here, go to school during the day, study on my time off. And then repeat.”

  “What are you studying?”

  “Political science, or that’s my major. My minor’s in philosophy.”

  “Philosophy? Really? Why that for a minor?”

  “Don’t ask; I can’t even explain it to my boyfriend. I just like it.”

  “Do you have a favorite philosopher? Aristotle?”

  “If I had to choose, it would probably be Paul Ricœur. Yeah, I’d say Ricœur.”

  “Ha. Never heard of the guy.”

  “He was French. A little obscure, but very interesting.”

  “Okay, so in twenty words or less, tell me why he’s your favorite philosopher.”

  “Wow, that’s a tough one,” Sally said, laughing, placing her hands on her hips and raising her head in thought. “Let me think. I’d say something like, he’s not dogmatic and angry, like a lot of the twentieth-century European philosophers. And he believes we strive to make our lives intelligible, and you can’t divorce the body from the mind like Descartes suggested; they’re the same thing. Or something like that. Boy that was hard!”

  He laughed. “My head’s spinning, Sally, but not my body.”

  “Very good!” she said, moving down the bar to attend to a couple that had just sat down.

  Dennis toyed with his salad for a while. He had lost weight and was fighting the tug of depression that had followed him for many years. With Dr. Forrester he had made great progress in tracing his sordid family life as the origin of his illness, but Freddie’s death and now Judy’s disappearance had shaken him. His mission was to get back to London immediately, sanctioned or not. Today was his last attempt to make it legal.

  “Barely recognized you,” Barkley said, sitting down on the open stool to Dennis’s left.

  “It’s my mountain-man look,” Dennis said.

  “So what’s going on? I have my daughter’s birthday party this evening, so talk fast.”

  “I got yanked from the Arnold investigation,” Dennis said, putting down his fork and grabbing his glass of water.

  “I heard someone got ill and died. But I hadn’t heard they’d pulled you out. Why?”

  “We were getting close to something,” Dennis lied. “Guess they don’t want me poking around there.”

  “Can I get you something?” Sally asked Barkley.

  “Ah, yes. How about a glass of red wine? Cabernet?”

  “You got it,” she said.

  The two men stared in silence at the bottles of liquor on the wall in front of them. Sally brought the glass of wine and placed it in front of Barkley.

  “Thank you,” the congressman said.

  The two men sipped their drinks.

  “When you say you were on to something there, can you be more specific?”

  “Something is wrong with the head of station there,” Dennis said. “Can’t quite figure it out, but it has something to do with the last visit by Arnold to Menwith Hill. I just need more time and another look at the video.”

  “What video?”

  “Closed circuit of Arnold’s last visit. They won’t show it to me.”

  “Who won’t show it? Fort Meade or Langley?”

  “Not sure, to be honest.”

  More silence.

  Barkley took another sip of his wine and then looked at his watch.

  “Do you know why I insisted you get involved with this case?” Barkley said, staring straight ahead.

  “No.”

  “I thought you could unearth something.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

  “No, I don’t think you’re close. I don’t think you know what’s really going on there.”

  “Well, if you know something, you’re not helping me much.”

  Barkley smiled briefly, looked down at his wine, took another sip and pushed it away. “I only have so many chits I can call in, and I’m willing to use one more. But that’s it. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you’re not the person to shock these bastards.”

  Dennis turned toward the congressman, taken aback by the sudden anger in the man’s voice, but he had already stood up.

  “Do you mind picking up the wine?”

  “No, not all. Good evening, Congressman.”

  ✦

  Richardson
drummed his fingers on the tabletop, waiting for Dennis and Louise to sit down. For a man with a reputation for being unflappable and even-tempered, he was remarkably agitated, Dennis thought.

  “You know, I don’t appreciate what’s going on here,” Richardson said.

  “What do you mean, Bill?” Louise said with a small flip of her hair.

  “Something is going on behind my back on this Arnold investigation, and I don’t like it. I’m greatly disadvantaged on this account. I have one boss, the director here, telling me to do one thing, and I’m getting pressure from another boss in the House of Representatives to do another thing. I thought the investigation was over after a man from the NSA was lost, not to mention that our investigator here was ordered back to the States for creating a ruckus in jolly old London, including the disappearance of his Australian girlfriend.” At this point Richardson raised his hands into the air in an isn’t-that-right gesture.

  “And what is it with the beard, for God’s sake, Cunningham? Have you gone completely native?”

  “No, sir,” Dennis said. “Just a change in appearance. I didn’t think the IG was interested in my facial hair, sir.”

  Louise’s good left foot kicked Dennis’s right foot under the table.

  “And now an insolent bearded investigator to boot. Great. Just great.”

  “Bill, Dennis here has been under a lot of pressure, as you well know. He and his NSA partner, Fred Kaczka, were very close to breaking open the Arnold case when a series of deadly events occurred. We believe that they were all related to getting Dennis here off the trail.”

  Dennis shot Louise a glance.

  “Wait,” Richardson said. “I thought the two events were not connected? It specifically states in the report that the Kaczka’s death and the woman’s disappearance are independent of each other. You told me that in person.”

  “We now believe the woman was taken precisely to accomplish the goal of driving Dennis back to the States and off the Arnold investigation. And you’d have to admit it was brilliant. Because here he is, sitting in your office right now, Bill, and he’s not in London tracking down what happened to Arnold.”

  Richardson’s face crumpled into a frown. He started to speak to Louise and then stopped and pivoted to Dennis.

  “I don’t think I like you very much, Cunningham. My job is difficult enough without this kind of trouble. And I’m getting pressure from the House chairman, of all people. Why the hell does he care about this?”

  He turned back to back to Louise.

  “Fine! Great! Send him back to London. Just get him the hell out of here. Louise, would you mind staying behind for a moment?”

  “Certainly, Bill.”

  Dennis stood up and hustled out of the room. He raced back to his office, closed the door and opened the small notebook in which he kept his investigative notes. He turned to the pages where he had listed all of the circumstances around Judy’s disappearance and reread them. He closed the notebook and tossed it on the desk.

  Someone knocked at his door.

  “Come in.”

  Louise poked her head in.

  “Got a second?”

  “Of course.”

  He watched her navigate awkwardly around the single chair he kept for infrequent guests and was reminded about her prosthetic right foot.

  “I just got in trouble back there.”

  Dennis sighed. “I guessed as much. I’m sorry, Louise. You should have just let me resign and try to sneak into the UK. Why are you putting yourself out there on this one? You have a family and a career. I have nothing to lose.”

  “My husband asked me the same thing,” Louise said, staring at her hands as they fidgeted in her lap. “The odd thing is, I don’t have an answer, for him or you. There are too many moving parts in this one, which to me translates to something very serious. I’m not prepared to let this one go quite yet.”

  Dennis tried to figure out where Louise was going with her comments; she had never dropped her guard like this before in his presence, and she appeared oddly vulnerable but heroic at the same time. They were enviable qualities that Dennis did not share. Perhaps it was the same qualities of loyalty and grit that put her in harm’s way in Lebanon but also kept her alive in the rubble. He felt a sudden affinity for the small, blond, disabled warrior on the other side of the desk.

  “How can I make your exposure go away on this case?” he asked. “I don’t want another person’s life or career on my conscience.”

  She stiffened, raised her chin and focused her pale blue eyes on his.

  “I’ll cover you as long as I can back here,” she said. “I’ll only ask two things.”

  “Name them.”

  “You keep me informed — like, really informed.”

  “You got it.”

  “And you work on the Arnold case while you’re looking for Judy. I mean actually work on it.”

  “I will do that.”

  She stood up.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Dennis said.

  “Shoot.”

  “Was that a ploy back there to link Judy’s disappearance to Freddie’s death? I liked it. Very convincing. But was it just a ploy, or do you really think they’re related? You never said anything to me about them being connected.”

  “You know,” she said, tilting her head in the way that she did, “for such a good investigator, you really suck sometimes.”

  “Yes,” he said, frowning, “I guess I do.”

  CHAPTER 16

  They no longer locked the door, which she found odd.

  Judy would sometimes stand by the open door and peer down the poorly lit hallway. She could hear voices, some male, some female. There was often laughter and whispering, but no screaming and no violence. Everything seemed normal, yet she was being kept in a Spartan room, in a silk robe, being fed and given opioid injections on a more or less regular basis.

  Agata had told her that under no circumstances was she to leave her room, and Judy had obeyed. Only once had she yelled down the hallway when they were late with an injection.

  She slept a lot and experienced wonderful dreams after the injections. She was no longer scared or even angry about what was happening to her. Her world had become very small.

  But there was also discomfort when they delayed an injection, and the aching and physical pain was extraordinarily powerful.

  This day Judy decided not to do her physical workout. She lay in bed, staring at the cement ceiling, following a small crack as it spread out toward the wall.

  She looked at the inside of her right elbow; there were many small prick marks and two large bruises where the vein had hemorrhaged. She gently ran the tips of her left hand across the wounds and felt a sudden chill and ache in her stomach.

  They were late again.

  Why do they do this? Just come down here and give it to me. Don’t they know I’m going to get sick? This hurts!

  Her mouth felt dry, and she rolled out of the bed and shuffled over to the sink. Cupping her hand underneath the faucet, she drank the trapped water as it trickled out. Then she walked over to the open door and put her head out into the hallway. Her stomach hurt, and her body began to ache, so she clutched her arms around her chest and started to walk around the room.

  “My God, come on! Let’s get going,” she said out loud.

  She returned to the doorway. “Hey!” she yelled. “Hey. Please?”

  No one answered.

  Judy could feel herself getting sicker by the seconds, and she rushed to the toilet and dry-heaved over it. Out of breath and in pain, she went back to the door and clutched her thin robe around her. She called again, and this time stepped outside the door into the darkened hallway.

  “Hey!” she yelled.

  There were muffled voices far away, so Judy timorously stepped down the hallway i
n her bare feet. She began to shiver from the cold floor and the drug sickness. Her nose began to run again, and she wiped it on the back of her wrist.

  The hallway was twenty feet long, leading to an L-shaped turn to the left. She slowly pushed her head around the corner when she got to it and saw a small room with an oriental carpet, several cushioned chairs, a small table and a floor lamp. The small man sat smoking a cigarette. Across from him sat Agata and another young woman, a thin blonde wearing what looked like an elaborate kimono. All three looked at Judy. Agata showed a restrained, sad smile, and the small man rose and walked toward Judy. His face was expressionless, and as he got closer, Judy pointed to her crooked right arm and said, “Please?”

  He hit Judy so hard in the stomach that she jackknifed forward and her chin made contact with her bony knees. The man grabbed her hair and dragged her down the hallway.

  She screamed and held on to his wrists as she felt some of her hair coming out. He pulled her into the room and dropped her on the floor. She sat up and yelled, “Please!”

  He slapped her hard on the side of the head and stomped out.

  Judy lay on the cement floor and sobbed, her cheeks against the cold floor.

  Agata came in and caressed Judy’s shoulders and finally helped her up onto the bed. Judy clung to Agata and continued to cry.

  “Why?” Judy sobbed. “Why don’t they give it to me? Why?”

  Agata stroked Judy’s hair, comforting her as best she could.

  Judy heard steps coming down the hallway and she turned, already putting her arm out for them.

  The thin man entered the room, and Judy’s eyes focused on the blessed black cloth-wrapped package.

  “Up,” he said.

  Judy got to her feet.

  “Come,” he said, and she shuffled over to him. She flinched as he put out his hand and undid the silk belt holding her robe. He pulled the robe off her shoulders and it slid to the floor. Judy had stopped wearing underwear days ago, preferring the feeling of silk on her ravaged body.

  He walked slowly around her and put his hand on her right buttock, squeezing it briefly. When he completed the circle, he stared at her breasts, putting his hand under her right breast and lifting it slightly. Judy could barely breathe; the drug sickness and physical fear were making her shiver. He dropped his hand from her breast and whipped around and yelled to Agata in a language she could not understand.