Into the Dark

by Alison Gaylin

  Trent hit pause and turned to Brenna. “You get it?”

  “She bares her soul. Shares her secrets.”

  He nodded.

  “And people pay for this.”

  “Yep.”

  Brenna shook her head. “Weird.”

  “Well, the Coke bottle thing helps . . .”

  “When did she go missing?”

  “Less than three months ago.”

  “And the client?”

  “It was a third party.”

  “Who was the third party?”

  “Another PI. Lula’s manager hired him.”

  “And the PI’s name is . . .”

  “Brenna?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “As long as you’re not asking me in order to avoid my question.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Okay.”

  Trent cleared his throat. “When I first showed you Lula Belle . . . you . . . remembered something, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.” Strange how “remembered” could be such a loaded word, but in Brenna’s world it was. Since she was eleven years old, she’d suffered from hyperthymestic syndrome, a rare disorder that enabled her to remember every minute of every day of her life, and with all five senses, whether she wanted to or not. It came, a California-based neuroscientist named Dr. Louis Gettis had told her on June 24, 2006, “from the perfect storm of a differently shaped brain and a traumatic experience”—storm, as it turned out, a good metaphor, seeing as how the syndrome had descended on Brenna, battering her mind into something so different than it had been before. She had two types of memories now—the murky recollections of her childhood and the vivid, three-dimensional images of everything that had happened from August 22, 1981, to the present.

  Brenna could recall, for instance, what she had for breakfast on June 25, 1998, to the point of tasting it (black coffee, a bowl of Special K with skim milk, blueberries that were disappointingly mealy, and two donut holes—one chocolate, one glazed). But her father, who had left her family when she was just seven—he existed in her mind only as strong arms and the smell of Old Spice, a light kiss on the forehead, a story told by one of her mother’s friends, years after he’d gone. He wasn’t whole in Brenna’s head. She couldn’t clearly picture his face. Same with her older sister, Clea, who had gotten into a blue car on August 21, 1981, at the age of seventeen and vanished forever. Clea’s disappearance had been the traumatic event that had sparked Brenna’s perfect storm—yet ironically that event, like Clea herself, was stuck in her fallible pre-syndrome memory, fading every day into hazy fiction.

  Brenna had known that would happen—even as a kid on August 21, 1982, the anniversary . . . Sitting at her bedroom window with her face pressed against the cool of the screen, glancing at the digital clock blinking 5:21 A.M. and chewing grape Bubble Yum to stay awake, her throat dry and stingy from old gum, trying with everything she has to remember the car, the license plate, the voice of the man behind the wheel from a year earlier . . .

  Brenna shut her eyes tight and recited the Pledge of Allegiance in her head—one of the many tricks she’d figured out over the years for willing memories away.

  “So?” Trent said.

  She opened her eyes, took a breath. “What was your question again?”

  “What were you remembering when you looked at Lula Belle?”

  “Not much—a gesture,” Brenna said. “On October 30, Maya and I were in Niagara Falls on vacation, remember?”

  He gave her a look. “I can remember two months ago.”

  “Well, we were on the Maid of the Mist, and there was a girl on the boat who tapped on her lip three times, just like Lula Belle did at the start of the tape.”

  “What did the girl on the boat look like?”

  “Probably in her early twenties. Blonde. Miserable. She was leaving the boat with her boyfriend, and she had mascara running down her face.” Brenna looked at him. “She looked like she wanted to die.”

  Trent’s eyes went big.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but we all probably looked that way,” Brenna said. “We were getting hailed on. It was freezing and windy and everybody was seasick and Maya called me the worst mother in the world for taking her on that boat in the first place.”

  “Still,” he said. “It could have been Lula Belle you saw. Less than a month after she went missing. On that boat with some jerk-off. Praying to be saved from him . . .”

  “Hell of a coincidence.”

  “Happens all the time.”

  “Trent, it was just a gesture. Do we have any idea what Lula Belle looks like?”

  “No.”

  “What about this third party? Do they?”

  He shook his head. “Her own manager doesn’t even know what she looks like. He lives in California. Never met her face-to-face. He maintained her site, made the checks out to cash, sent them to a PO box . . .”

  Brenna sighed. “In that case, I could be Lula Belle.”

  “Oh man, that would be so awesome.”

  Brenna’s gaze shot back to the frozen image on the screen. “Do we at least have her full name?”

  “Uh . . . no.”

  “What about her social?”

  He shook his head.

  “So let me get this straight. All we have on this woman is a fake name, a fake accent, a PO box, and a very obvious skill set.”

  “You think her accent’s fake? Really?”

  “Trent.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why did you think we could accept this case?”

  He picked at a fingernail.

  “Trent.”

  “We . . . we only have this one video.”

  “And?”

  “The Web site’s been taken down since she disappeared. There’s no way of downloading more.”

  “So?”

  “So . . . if we officially accept the case, we can get . . . uh . . .” He cleared his throat. “We can get all the rest of the videos.”

  “Oh, for godsakes,” Brenna said. “You’re a fan.”

  “I know, I know . . . I mean, I never heard of her before yesterday, but I can’t get her out of my head. I can’t stop watching. I don’t even care what her face looks like or how old she is . . . It’s like Errol said—she gets under your skin and stays there.”

  “Errol?”

  “Crap. I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

  “Errol Ludlow? He’s the third party?”

  Trent’s face went pinkish. He bit his lower lip, and stared at the floor like a shamed kid. “Yes,” he said finally. “Errol Ludlow Investigations.”

  Brenna stared at him. “No.”

  “He said you were the best around at finding missing persons—that’s why he wanted to hire you.”

  “No, Trent. Absolutely not.”

  “He wants to let bygones be bygones and—”

  “No!”

  Trent looked close to tears.

  Brenna hadn’t intended to say it that loudly, but she wasn’t going to take it back, either. In the three years that Errol Ludlow had been her boss, he’d put her in serious danger four times. Twice, she’d been rushed to the hospital. Her ex-husband had made her promise to quit and then the one time, three years after Maya was born, Brenna had made the breathtakingly stupid mistake of taking a freelance assignment from him, it had ended her marriage for good. Brenna couldn’t let bygones be bygones. Trent should’ve known that. There were no such things as bygones in Brenna’s life—especially when it came to a king-sized bad memory-trigger like Errol Ludlow. “No, Trent,” she said again—quieter this time. “I’m sorry you’ve grown attached to this girl’s silhouette, but we can’t take this case.”

  Trent started to say something—until Ludacris’s “Money Maker” exploded out of his jeans pocket, interrupting him. His ringtone. He yanked his iPhone out of his pocket and looked at the screen. “My mom.”

  “Go ahead and take it,” Brenna said.<
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  Trent moved from the office space area of Brenna’s Twelfth Street apartment, past the kitchen, and into the hallway that led to the living room. Brenna glanced at the shadow on the screen caught frozen, one delicate hand to her forehead—the swooning Southern belle. “Sorry, Lula.” Brenna wondered why Errol had accepted a missing person in the first place. From what she knew, he only handled cheating spouses. Work must be tight.

  She clicked play. Lula Belle arched into a languorous stretch that seemed to involve every muscle in her body and sighed, her voice fragile as air. Brenna watched her, thinking about what Trent had said. She gets under your skin and stays there . . . Was Errol a fan, too?

  “I miss my daddy,” Lula Belle said. “He was the only person in the whole world, could stop me from being scared of anything.” She turned to the left and tilted her head up, as if she were noticing a star for the first time. “I used to be afraid of all kinds of stuff, too,” she said. “The dark, ghosts, the old lady next door—I was sure she was a witch. Dogs, spiders, snakes . . . even cement mixers, if you can imagine that.”

  Brenna’s eyes widened. She moved closer to the screen.

  “I somehow got it in my head that those cement mixers were like . . . I don’t know, giant vacuum cleaners or something. I thought they could suck me in through the back, and mix me in with all that heavy wet cement, and I’d never be able to get out, wouldn’t be able to breathe.”

  “Me too,” Brenna whispered.

  “But my daddy, he made everything better. He got me a nightlight. He protected me from that mean old lady. He told me those dogs and snakes were more scared of me than I was of them, and he was right. But the best thing my daddy did. Whenever we’d be driving and I’d see a cement mixer he’d sing me this song . . .”

  No . . . It can’t be. . .

  “I don’t know whether he’d made it up or not, but it went a little like this . . . Cement mixer/Turn on a dime/Make my day ’cause it’s cement time/Cement mixer, you’re my pal/Ain’t gonna hurt me or my little gal . . .”

  Brenna’s breath caught. She knew the song—knew it well enough to sing along. She knew it like the blue vinyl backseat of the white Mustang her dad had called the Land Shark, knew it like the strong hands on the wheel, the smell of Old Spice, and the voice—the deep, laughing voice she loved, but couldn’t hold on to. “It’s okay, pumpkin, it won’t hurt you, it’s just a bus for building materials.” Dad. “Just like the one that takes the big kids to school, only this one is for the stuff they make the playgrounds out of! Cement mixer/Turn on a dime . . .”

  “You know what my Daddy called those cement mixers?” Lula whispered to the camera. “He called ’em school buses. For playground ingredients. Isn’t that funny?”

  “Man, I’m gonna miss her,” said Trent, who was back in the room.

  Brenna turned to him, fast. “We’re taking the case,” she said.

  Chapter 2

  Lula Belle didn’t have a Facebook page, personal or fan. No YouTube channel, either. According to Trent, there had been a @misslulabelle Twitter feed that had amassed, at one point, more than ten thousand followers—but it was taken down after it was discovered that it wasn’t Lula Belle tweeting, but a Bible studies major from Azusa Pacific University with a gift for sexual hyperbole and way too much time on his hands.

  Strange that a webcam girl would have so little online presence, but that added to the mystery, didn’t it?

  It added to something, anyway.

  Brenna couldn’t get it out of her mind—that cement mixer song, her father’s voice, deep but with a smile in it . . . How had this shadow of a missing girl known a made-up song word for word? How had this “performance artist”—with a name, by the way, that sounded like Miss Tallahassee Tractor Pull, 1945—how had she been able to reach into Brenna’s head, grab one of the few intact memories she had of her dad, and claim it as her own? So many questions, and Brenna needed answers. She needed them now, and far as she knew, only one person, other than Lula Belle and her manager, might be able to answer them: God help Brenna, it was Errol Ludlow.

  She glanced over at Trent. His computer screen was full of Lula Belle—a freeze frame of her sprawled across the chair, deep-throating the Coke bottle. He was sizing up each part of her body in relation to the inanimate objects in order to discern an accurate height, weight, and set of measurements, using a program he’d developed last year after coming across one too many badly taken photographs.

  The fact that Trent was cursor-gauging every square inch of his new dream girl without so much as a moan or a “who’s your daddy,” impressed Brenna to the point of mild shock. She smiled. Maybe he’s growing up. “Hey, Trent?”

  “Yeah?” He didn’t take his eyes from the screen.

  “Did Errol Ludlow say anything to you about Lula Belle’s family?”

  “Just that she probably learned the Coke bottle thing from her mom,” Trent said. “I think he was being sarcastic.”

  Brenna sighed. Same old Errol, sensitive as ever.

  She Googled Errol Ludlow. The first thing she noticed was a Daily News article from five years ago—a profile piece in the Business section called “Errol Ludlow Is Watching You.” Brenna had already read it on April 19, 2004 (a Monday), on a Fourteenth Street subway platform waiting for the A train at 9:30 A.M. She scrolled through a few reprints of the piece and a New York Times article about “modern-day gumshoes” until she found Errol’s Web site, a new one—LudlowInvestigations.com. She called it up, stared at the home page. Her jaw tightened.

  Unbelievable.

  She printed it out, then tapped his office number into her phone.

  The number hadn’t changed since the last time Brenna had dialed, yes, dialed it at 9 A.M. on October 21, 1998, from the ancient payphone outside the police station in Tarry Ridge, New York, and even now, she had to grit her teeth to keep from feeling the cool plastic of eleven years ago against her ear, from hearing the whir of the rotary dial, such a dated piece of machinery even back then, the scrape of her fingernails against the metal as she called that number, her heart pounding up into her throat, the words spilling out of her mouth as soon as she heard that staccato hello, all too familiar . . .

  “Errol, I know it’s been a while but I need your help in getting a police file . . .”

  “Brenna Spector. My, my. I thought your hubby wouldn’t let you talk to me anymore.”

  “Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation.” Brenna whispered, jolting herself back into the present. It took her a few moments to notice the pause on the other end of the line, and that voice, Errol’s voice, enunciating every syllable, just like always. “Con-ceived in lib-er-ty and ded-i-cat-ed to the prop—”

  “Errol Ludlow.”

  “Yes? To what patriot am I speaking?”

  She took a breath. “This is Brenna Spector.”

  “Brenna Spector! What a pleasant surprise.”

  Brenna stared at the computer printout. It’s not a surprise. You knew I’d call. “Meet me at the Waverly Diner in half an hour.”

  “Will do.” She could practically hear the smirk.

  She hung up without saying good-bye. “Trent, I’ll be back at two.” She grabbed her coat, shoved the printout into her bag, and flung it over her shoulder. “If you need me before then, call my cell.”

  “No worries.” He tore himself away from the screen image and looked at her. “Probably won’t be here when you get back, though. Got a meeting with Mrs. Shelby at one-thirty.”

  Brenna nodded. Annette Shelby, an insanely wealthy former client, had contacted her office a week ago. She was paying Trent three hundred dollars an hour to find her beloved Persephone, who had disappeared shortly after their recent move to the city from Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

  Persephone was Annette’s Persian cat.

  An eye roller of a case if there ever was one, but Brenna tried to take it seriously—number one, because it was Trent’s
first solo job, and he took it so seriously, creating three separate computer renderings of the missing pet—one five pounds lighter, one five pounds heavier, one the same weight, though a little worse for the wear—and canvassing every animal shelter in all five boroughs. Number two was the obvious cash incentive, and number three was the fact that, three months ago, Brenna had found Annette’s presumed dead husband—and she still felt bad about it. At least the cat probably wanted to come home. “Any news on Persephone?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Tonight I hit the fish market.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m more than just eye candy, B. Spec.”

  She blinked at him. “What did you just call me?”

  “B. Spec,” he said. “You know, like J. Lo, only with different letters because, uh . . . your name is not the same as hers.”

  “Trent.”

  “What?”

  “No more nicknames.”

  He looked at her. “But . . . where I come from, nicknames are a sign of affection.”

  “You’re a long way from where you come from.”

  “Staten Island?”

  “Figuratively, Trent.”

  He shook his head, then turned back to Lula Belle. For a few seconds, Brenna watched him, working the measuring tool, staring into the screen until he was once again lost in the world of it.

  “Who’s your daddy,” he whispered.

  It wasn’t until Brenna was out the door and into the hallway that her thoughts went back to Errol Ludlow, and how, in moments, she’d be seeing him again for the first time in eleven years. What memories would he set off? How was she going to stop them?

  Brenna reached into her coat pocket. The previous day, her daughter, Maya, had borrowed the coat, and as expected, the pocket was full of a thirteen-year-old’s detritus—gum wrappers, a wadded-up dollar bill, a receipt from Ricky’s, a couple of hair ties. Perfect. She slipped the hair ties around her left wrist, headed down the hallway, out the door, and down Sixth Avenue.