Into the Dark

by Alison Gaylin

  Gary was saying, “For the life of me, I can’t seem to remember—”

  “This forwarded e-mail,” Brenna interrupted. “This was the last e-mail you received from her. The last PO box she was at?” She wished, more than anything, she could get her voice to stop trembling.

  “Yes,” Gary said. “Is something wrong?”

  “The check you sent there—to that . . . that location. Was it ever cashed?”

  “No,” he said slowly. “Does the location mean something?”

  Brenna cleared her throat. “Probably not to the case,” she said. But if he really had read Lieberman’s book, then Gary had to know it meant something to her. The PO box was in City Island, New York—Brenna’s childhood home.

  Chapter 5

  In Brenna’s dream, her father was crying at a traffic light on City Island Boulevard, head pressed against the wheel. Horns blared all around them and Brenna was staring up at the light, fear racing up her back, through her hair. “Move it, asshole!” someone shouted. It sounded as if he were in the car with them—this stranger yelling swearwords at her father, hating her father, her father who was sobbing at the wheel, his back shaking. Brenna wanted to scream. She wanted to tell her dad to close the windows, lock the doors so that person couldn’t come in. But she couldn’t talk. Why was Dad crying? She’d never seen him cry before. Was it something she’d said? What had she said? How had she gotten here, back in City Island, back in the Land Shark with the sun streaming through the windows and her dad here with her, her dad crying.

  She felt a hand over hers. She squeezed it. Clea. Clea’s hand. Clea’s calm voice. “Daddy, the light is green.”

  “Clea!” Brenna gasped herself awake, but still she heard her talking—the same voice, Clea’s voice. Clea in the room with her, a young girl talking . . . “and Mama didn’t want me to keep a diary, but I told her that Anne Frank kept a diary when she was in hiding . . .”

  Not Clea. Lula Belle. On Brenna’s computer screen twisted into a backbend, Lula Belle, her long legs spread very wide, her fluffy head thrown back. “Anne Frank named her diary Kitty, and she loved Kitty very much . . .”

  Brenna had fallen asleep at her desk, watching the downloads Gary had sent.

  “ ‘You’re not in hiding, Lula Belle,’ Mama said. But she knew I was. I was hiding from the world, hiding from her.”

  Brenna had been watching them for hours, in chronological order. She was currently in the middle of month nineteen—there were twenty-three months in all, around a hundred downloads—and as obsessed as Gary and Trent and Errol may have been with the idea of some faceless albeit extremely flexible woman revealing her so-called innermost secrets, Brenna wasn’t feeling it.

  On the contrary, she’d rather snort bug spray than hear Lula Belle say one more word about herself. Couldn’t she talk about anything else? Politics? The weather? Chocolate-chip cookie recipes? Hell, anything would have been a welcome change from this overwrought pseudo-Tennessee Williams monologue Brenna had been slogging through for the past five hours—all of it meaningless, but for the cheesy music of the words.

  “I want my Kitty, Mama. Let me have a Kitty of my own . . .”

  “I got your Kitty right here,” Brenna muttered.

  She clicked off the download and gloried, for a few moments, in the hum of the radiator, the street noise beyond, the absence in her New York apartment of sugary Southern accent.

  Honestly, Brenna was beginning to think the cement mixer song—like Lula Belle’s decision to make City Island the home of her final PO box—was just a bizarre coincidence. Maybe Brenna’s father hadn’t made up the song after all. Maybe it was just something he’d heard once or twice on the radio, and Lula Belle had heard the same song and created a story to go around it. Because she was creating these stories out of thin air, Brenna was certain. The inconsistencies gave her away. In the early downloads, for instance, Lula talked about spending her “whole entire life locked indoors, seeing nothing.” But in the later downloads, she waxed on about ocean waves and saltwater air, feeling the sand between her toes as a little girl—and this was just one small example. She loved and missed her father; then she didn’t. He had shot himself in the head; then he had simply left home. She took her first lover at fourteen. She was a virgin until she was eighteen and met “the boy on the road”—whom she refused to call by name but prattled on about nearly as much as her sadistic mama. If Gary Freeman honestly believed Lula Belle was baring her true soul to him, then it had to be due to large amounts of blood rushing away from his brain to elsewhere in his anatomy.

  Brenna’s computer made a beeping sound—an instant message coming in. She felt a slight surge in her pulse, the dimmest spark of the most misguided type of hope.

  Jim.

  There had been a time, not too long ago, when she and her ex-husband would instant message for hours, every night. She’d loved it.

  Brenna hadn’t seen Jim in years because she couldn’t handle the onslaught of memories that came from looking into his eyes or hearing his voice or feeling the heat he emitted—Jim, alive and in the room with her. It was too powerful—and not for the bad memories, either. No, it had always been the good times that made Brenna die a little inside when she recalled them, and that wasn’t fair to anyone—not to Jim, or his wife, Faith, or for that matter, Brenna herself.

  The instant messaging, on the other hand . . . That was just words on a screen, and it had been different. Jim and Brenna were both bad sleepers and so they’d talk, late into the night, about their jobs, about the news, about Maya. They’d make each other laugh over old inside jokes and give each other advice and send each other links to new songs or movie clips on YouTube. Nothing too heavy, nothing inappropriate. But every night, for close to a year, until it became something necessary. Weird as it might sound, it had been about as deep and fulfilling a friendship as she’d ever had—until Jim had decided that this time, he was the one who couldn’t handle it. Their relationship had become too necessary, he explained. And he cut things off. Brenna understood. Of course she did. But at the same time, she could remember it all—every joke and piece of advice and warm recollection and movie clip, every word from Jim that had ever appeared on her screen.

  She missed him so much.

  Brenna clicked on her online icon. Her breathing slowed. The instant message was from Kate O’Hanlon, her old friend—if you used the word “friend” very loosely. Got some info on the City Island box, it read.

  Kate worked at the New York Postal Inspector’s Office, and Brenna had e-mailed her asking for her help in finding who the box was registered to, just after speaking with Gary Freeman.

  Brenna typed, And?

  Breakfast. Tomorrow. Artie’s.

  Brenna sighed. Always the quid pro quo with Kate—and always with a meal included. Fine, Brenna typed. 8 A.M.

  7:30.

  Brenna grimaced. Okey dokey!

  She started to go back to the Lula Belle downloads, but that only made her remember that dream again—that strange dream with her father sobbing against the steering wheel. God, Brenna hated seeing men cry. She couldn’t stomach it, never could, and never quite understood why . . .

  Let’s give the downloads a rest.

  Brenna went back online. She called up Google, fully intending to do another search on Lula Belle—see if, this time around, it turned up anything other than a marker for her now-defunct Web site, bed and breakfasts, and lost animal postings (turned out Lula Belle was a surprisingly popular name for English bulldogs).

  But instead, Brenna clicked on Google Images, her fingers typing in “Jim Rappaport” as if they were powered by something other than Brenna’s mind. A dozen pictures popped up, and again with her brain telling her to stop, Brenna was modifying her search, adding “Christmas 1998.”

  She saw the picture, up in the right corner of the screen—Jim and herself, young and smiling—in front of the tree at the Helmsley Palace, where Jim’s paper, the Trumpet, had its holiday part
y that year. The picture was in the Trumpet’s archives, and of course, she knew the caption without having to read it—Senior reporter Jim Rappaport and his wife, Brenna, left their toddler with a sitter to share in the seasonal fun.

  Step away from the computer, Brenna told herself. But she was enlarging the photo and staring into it, into the evening of Saturday, December 19, 1998. She felt the strapless red velvet dress against her skin—bought four days prior at the Dizzy’s on Nineteenth and Fifth. And she let herself lapse into the memory, knowing she shouldn’t, aching even as she did . . . The draft in the hotel ballroom chills her back. Goosebumps. Jim’s hand on her bare shoulder, and through the speaker system, Brenna hears Etta James singing “White Christmas.” Brenna’s had two glasses of champagne and nothing to eat and her head swims a little. They’re standing right next to the tree—an enormous pine, and Brenna is focusing on a snowflake ornament—white ceramic with sparkles mixed in. It reminds her of something, something from childhood, something comforting and warm she can’t quite specify. . .

  “Brenna?” Jim’s fingers move across her shoulder blades, and she turns to him. “You okay?”

  She gazes into his eyes—brown with gold flecks. She is inches away from him. She can feel his breath . . . “If you’re remembering something, tell me, okay? I can help you. I always want to help you . . .”

  Brenna’s buzzer sounded, and she was back, tears in her eyes, alone. Longing. Why had she done that? Why did she do these things to herself?

  Again, the buzzer. “Oh no.” Brenna recalled the awkward phone message she’d left five hours ago, word for word. She swatted the tears from her eyes, cleared her throat, went for the buzzer. “Yes?”

  “Nicholas Morasco to see Brenna Spector.”

  A wave of guilt washed through Brenna—Sorry if I kept you waiting. I was busy crying over someone I don’t know anymore.

  She shook it off, pushed the button. “Shouldn’t that be Senior Detective Nicholas Morasco?”

  “Nah. We’re watching porn, I’m off duty.”

  Brenna smiled, hit the buzzer.

  She listened to Morasco’s footfalls jogging up the stairs and opened the door before he knocked.

  She warmed at the sight of him, standing in the doorjamb with his messed hair and his wire-rimmed glasses, his late-day beard scruff, and his inevitable tweed jacket and jeans combination, all of it working on him for some reason—that rumpled, professorial look. She still couldn’t believe he was a cop. “It isn’t porn you know,” she said. “It’s performance art.”

  “Right . . . I’m definitely gonna need a drink, then.”

  She grabbed a couple of beers from the refrigerator—a nice Brooklyn IPA that Faith had brought by a week ago—and walked Nick over to the couch. They drank, he talked about his uneventful day at work, and she asked him about the new chief of police in Tarry Ridge—a decent guy, according to Nick (though a second choice, Brenna knew. Nick had turned down the job himself).

  Then, she filled him in on everything that had happened over the course of the day—everything, that is, except for her conversation with Gary Freeman. By the time she was through, she was feeling like herself again.

  “Errol Ludlow, huh?” said Morasco. “No wonder there’s porn involved.”

  Brenna nodded. She hated lying to him. Of course, this wasn’t lying, right? She’d just left out the part about Errol getting fired.

  Morasco was staring at her in such a way, though, she had to avert her gaze. He had the type of dark eyes that seemed to see right into your thoughts. Brenna knew that it was largely due to myopia, but still . . .

  Brenna got her laptop from her desk, flipped it open on the coffee table, and settled in next to Morasco. “You ready for a little performance art?”

  He gave her a half smile. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish that was a euphemism.”

  Brenna felt her face color a little. “Me too,” she said, before she noticed how Morasco was looking at the screen—the picture from Jim’s Christmas party filling it.

  Brenna minimized the picture.

  “Pretty dress,” he said.

  “It’s old.” She took a very long swallow of her beer, recalling Ludlow, of all people. Ludlow, sitting across from her at the Waverly Diner at 9:45 A.M., watching her with that knowing smirk she wanted to slap off of his face. Yes, and how is Detective Morasco? Page Six spotted you two at some bar . . . which one was it?

  Ludlow, “knowing” Ludlow, who in reality knew nothing other than what he read in the papers, who had no idea that Brenna and Morasco had kissed only once, on November 9 at 12:45 P.M., in the parking lot of a bar that was never written up in Page Six, and if Ludlow had only seen the look in Morasco’s eyes when she pulled away . . . No, that was wrong. Brenna’s memory couldn’t tell a lie, even a white one. It had been Nick who’d pulled away.

  Brenna gritted her teeth. Don’t go there, not now.

  “Lula Belle,” Morasco was saying now. “Sounds like a cartoon cow from a milk commercial.”

  Brenna laughed. “Wait till you see her.” She called up the next download and hit play. At the start of it, Lula Belle was standing, arms and legs akimbo, backlit as ever so that the edges of her hair glowed, halolike.

  Morasco frowned at the screen, but within moments, Lula Belle turned to the side and arched her back. Then she slipped into the splits, touching her toes to the crown of her head. “I’m open to you.”

  “Oh my,” he said.

  The silhouette rolled onto her back, raised a delicate hand to her brow. “So please, my sweet . . . be open to me.”

  Morasco moved closer. The screen flickered in his eyes.

  “Still thinking about cartoon cows?” said Brenna.

  “Uh, no.”

  She smiled at him. “Didn’t think so.”

  “When I was seven years old,” Lula Belle said, “I found a little bird that had fallen out of its nest. I knew Mama wouldn’t let me have it, for she believed all animals to be crawling with disease. And so I took a shoe box, and I filled it with warm, soft things—cotton balls, scraps of fabric, even a white cashmere glove my grandma had left behind during her last visit.”

  “She knows the color of the glove.” Morasco took a swallow of his beer. “She has a good memory.”

  “A good imagination,” said Brenna. “And just so you know, she says ‘Mama’ so much you could build a drinking game around it.”

  He snorted, though his gaze stayed on the screen.

  “I put that little bird in that shoe box and hid him in my room under my bed. I found an eyedropper in the medicine cabinet, and I fed him sugar water with such tenderness as to make him trust me.” She took a trembling breath. “If Mama were to see me, she’d have been amazed. She thought I was crazy like my daddy. She thought I couldn’t take care of nothin’ without breakin’ it. Mama said that gift for destruction ran through my veins.”

  “Mama,” said Brenna. She raised the glass to her lips, and smiled at Morasco.

  He didn’t smile back, didn’t drink. He set his bottle down on the coffee table and leaned forward, and his expression changed, deepened into something Brenna couldn’t quite figure out. It wasn’t the rapt, obvious lust with which Trent had watched Lula Belle. Sure, she supposed he could have been turned on and trying to hide it from her, but it seemed to Brenna more of a sadness.

  Lula Belle said, “I kept thinking, if I was the reason why that little bird lived . . . then I must have also been the reason why he died. Right?”

  Morasco swallowed hard. He closed his eyes.

  Brenna clicked off the download. “Powerful stuff, this performance art.”

  “It is.”

  “Nick?”

  He looked at her.

  She knew she had no right to ask, not when she couldn’t stand in a parking lot with him for five minutes without lapsing into a memory she couldn’t talk about. She knew it wasn’t fair, but she put her hand on his, and she asked him anyway. “When you watched that
video, what were you thinking?”

  Her cell phone beeped out Morse code—the tone she’d chosen for text messages: SOS. “That might be Maya,” she said, but the text was from Trent.

  At fish market. No sign of Persie.

  Hope U R getting luckier on your porn date.

  She exhaled. “Trent is looking for a lost cat,” she said, her voice trailing off once she caught Morasco’s gaze.

  “Brenna,” he said softly. “It moved.”

  Brenna blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “You asked me what I was thinking about.”

  “And?”

  “During that download. It moved.”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “I . . . um . . . I think so.”

  His mouth twitched into a grin. “The camera, Brenna.”

  “Oh . . . Oh, because . . . Wait. What?”

  “That last bit. When she rolled over onto her side. The angle changed a little—it tilted up.”

  “You’re saying . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re saying there was someone else in the room with her. Someone behind the camera.”

  He looked at her. “There has to be,” he said. “Right?”

  Brenna moved the cursor back to the middle of the download, muting it before she hit play again.

  They watched in silence for several seconds.

  “There,” Morasco said. “It’s at 4:31.”

  Brenna brought the cursor back, and watched again. And this time, she saw it—a slight change of camera angle; an adjustment. “You are so observant.”

  “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

  A cameraman. Someone in the room. Someone who knows what’s behind that shadow—her real name and her age and her height and weight and hair color and maybe even the family she came from . . .

  Someone who may have made her disappear.

  Morasco was still grinning at her. “So . . .”

  “So . . . what?”

  “When I said, ‘It moved,’ what did you think I was talking about?”