Into the Dark

by Alison Gaylin

  Brenna smiled. Now she really didn’t care how many bodies were in Pokrovsky’s window box.

  What do you wear to an interview with a porn mogul? This was a pressing and important question, but Brenna had time to ponder it. It was more important right now to download Tannenbaum’s police report, and so she did.

  It wasn’t a large file at all. She opened it and started to read, skimming the description of RJ and the location of the break-in, then skipping straight to the testimony of the homeowner.

  “We felt that it was just some kind of film school campus dare,” the homeowner told arresting officers in the report of the forty-two-year-old suspect. “Nothing of any note was missing from the house. I’m not a full professor, but I’ve taught courses at the school, and I’m also a graduate. I’m sure that, in a way, RJ believed he knew me.”

  Brenna sighed. Maybe it’s Spielberg, she thought.

  But when she skipped down to the homeowner’s name—which was typed out in all caps directly beneath the testimony, over the line that read Case Dismissed—Brenna’s eyes went big. “Well how about that,” she whispered.

  The homeowner was Gary Freeman.

  Gary stared at the note in his lap. He’d read it so many times since this morning, but he couldn’t stop himself from reading again—as though if he looked at those words enough times, the letters would rearrange themselves and the note would say something different, something better.

  Gary:

  DeeDee called. She says. “It’s done.”

  Jill

  He’d found the note on his nightstand this morning. This, after a night of great sex with Jill and Gary waking up with an honest-to-God smile on his face, feeling for the first time in months—or even years—that all his troubles were behind him. His money problems would ease. The recession would let up, his client base would build back. Life would get better, and if it wound up being a life without Lula Belle, then so be it. He had his memories. Maybe the past was finally through with him. Maybe he was allowed to move on.

  That’s what he’d been thinking. What a joke. He’d even had that Bob Marley song running through his head, Everything gonna be all right . . .

  But then he’d reached out to touch Jill’s soft skin and felt only the pillow. He’d checked the time: ten-thirty already—Why didn’t anybody wake me up? And that’s when he had seen the note. Jill had folded it into quarters, as though it were some kind of gift, as though it would be a pleasant surprise for Gary, the unwrapping of it . . . DeeDee’s name in his wife’s handwriting. What a punch to the stomach.

  That’d teach him to wake up smiling.

  Now Bob Marley was long gone, and Gary had a different song in his head—it had been stuck in there on continuous loop, ever since he’d seen the note. “Oliver’s Army” by Elvis Costello—oh the cruel deejay that was Gary’s brain.

  “Oliver’s Army” had been her favorite song. She’d named Route 666 in Utah after a line in it. The Murder Mile, she’d called it, because she was scared of the numbers. But that was silly, and Gary had told her so. Numbers were nothing to be afraid of. People were.

  “We could drive all night,” the boy said, just him and me. “We could beat the murder mile and watch the sunrise in the rearview . . .”

  Gary shut his eyes tight. You close that door and you lock it. You throw away the key. He folded up the note again. He put it back into his wallet, but that didn’t make it disappear, did it? It had happened. The note had been written. And just like the proverbial writing on the wall, there was no taking it back.

  Oh DeeDee, why, why, why? How could you do that? Why would you call my wife?

  Jill was gone, and the girls were gone. Gary’s life, as he knew it, was over. Would he ever be able to convince his wife that DeeDee had been nothing? One bad mistake, never to be made again? If I could just find her, if I could find The Shadow, he thought, I could make things right.

  But did he really believe that?

  Well, he had to believe it, didn’t he? If he didn’t—if he honestly thought that he could lose it all that easily—and lose it for good—then what had the point ever been? Why had he worked so hard to build a life and a career and a family if it could be destroyed forever by one strong wind?

  There had been many strong winds, though. RJ Tannenbaum and Shane Smith and Errol Ludlow. All those names he tried so hard to forget. And DeeDee. Poor, misguided destructive DeeDee . . .

  The “fasten seat belts” light pinged on as that last name entered his mind, the name he never dared say, even in his thoughts. The Shadow’s name. Her real name. The strongest wind of all.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the flight attendant announced. “We are making our initial decent into New York’s LaGuardia Airport . . .”

  It had taken Gary hours on the phone to secure a reasonably priced seat at the last possible minute, to call all his clients with whom he had scheduled meetings or auditions over the next few days and tell them that he wouldn’t be there—family emergency, couldn’t be helped, but not to worry. Gary would be back soon.

  If he could do all that in such a short amount of time, then he could fix this, couldn’t he? I can, Gary thought, I will fix this, as the plane completed its descent, touching ground in New York. Gary’s birthplace. His home.

  On his way out of the plane, the little girl in front of him dropped her baby doll on the tarmac. Gary jogged to retrieve it, chased the little girl down, and handed it to her, once they were all in the terminal.

  “What a nice man you are,” said the child’s mother. She had bright blue eyes that reminded him of Jill’s.

  “Thank you,” said Gary, who really was a nice man, deep down. A nice man who’d made mistakes. As the other passengers rushed to catch cabs or to claim their baggage, Gary hung back. There was an airport bar next to the gate. Thank God for airport bars—open at all hours. It was 10:30 A.M. here in New York, but who knew when someone would be flying in from Singapore. Gary smiled. What Jimmy Buffet said was absolutely true. It’s five o’clock somewhere. He slipped into the bar and ordered a Scotch rocks—his first drink in three years.

  And the first of many.

  Standing in front of the toaster oven, waiting for the bagels to be ready, Brenna remembered standing outside Columbia-Presbyterian with Morasco two days ago, and getting the call from Gary Freeman’s newest disposable phone. Then she picked up the kitchen phone and punched in Gary’s number. She’d been waiting to do this for hours, figuring Gary wouldn’t appreciate a call from anyone at 4 A.M. his time, even if it was potential breaking news.

  She was very anxious to call Gary, though—mainly because she wanted to hear his reaction. She kept replaying their earlier phone conversation in her head—the long pause on the other end of the line when she’d asked him if he’d heard of RJ, and then, “No. Why?” the “no” so certain, as though this were the first time he’d ever heard the name that he himself had said in the police report.

  Sure, maybe Gary had forgotten. But seriously, who forgets the name of some film student who broke into your house just three years ago?

  The call went straight through to Gary’s voice mail. “I need you to call me regarding RJ Tannenbaum,” Brenna said. Then she ended the call. That was it. No further explanation. The toaster oven dinged, and she slipped back inside the kitchen. Why pretend you don’t know RJ Tannenbaum? Could have been the porn, or the Russian mob connection . . . or something else it wouldn’t befit an upstanding children’s talent agent to be connected with. Or it could have been for different reasons entirely. Whatever it was, Brenna needed to know.

  Diandra was trying to find clues on RJ Tannenbaum’s big flat-screen computer when she heard a noise—a generic ringtone. Weird. She lived at the end of a long hall, with no neighboring apartments, so for her to hear a ringtone, it would have to be right outside her door.

  “Hello?” she called out.

  No answer.

  She found herself flashing on Trent, who had two ringtones: Ludacris
for phone calls, Justin Timberlake for texts. At Bacon last week, Trent had told her he was going to download a special one, just for her calls and texts—David Guetta’s “Sexy Chick.” He wasn’t kidding, either—he’d done it, right there and then. Diandra felt a catch in her throat. She swallowed hard to smooth it out. Trent. Some things couldn’t be helped. Some things were best not to think about.

  She didn’t hear the ringtone anymore. Probably just somebody taking the stairs, Diandra thought.

  She went back to the computer. Opened another Final Cut Pro file, saw still more porn. Had she not known it was RJ Tannenbaum’s computer—the name printed right there on the control panel Trent had open on his screen when she’d come to see him yesterday morning—and if Trent hadn’t closed it up as soon as he saw her looking, bragging that he was “busy cracking the mother of all cases,” she would have thought that this was some kind of elaborate joke he was playing on her. Whatever you do, please, oh please don’t steal this computer that’s got nothing on it but bad porn . . . But Trent wasn’t like that. He was too guileless to play that type of joke. He was more of a hit-you-over-the-head type of guy.

  Her emotions tugged at her again. Stop it. Why hadn’t Mr. Freeman called her? All the hell she’d gone through. Things she couldn’t imagine doing, even in her worst nightmares, she’d done them just for him, only for him, and he couldn’t even be bothered to thank her?

  Diandra moved away from the computer, and that’s when she heard the knocking on her front door. It started out soft, but it was getting louder now, an insistent pounding, as though someone was punching it. “Hello?”

  Her first thought was Saffron. He’d given her all those pills. Maybe he’d expected reimbursement in actual money . . .

  Uh-oh . . .

  Slowly, Diandra crept up to her door, put her eye to the peephole. Her heart swelled as though to burst. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh my God!” She threw open the door and there was Mr. Freeman, standing in her doorway, Mr. Freeman, for the first time in three years, face-to-face, breathing the same air as Diandra, looking into her eyes . . .

  Saying nothing.

  He didn’t smile, didn’t even seem glad to see her at all, but that didn’t matter, nothing mattered. He’d had a long flight from California and was tired, was all. He was here. Mr. Freeman is here.

  Diandra threw her arms around his neck. He smelled of Scotch, which to her felt like the most wonderful type of déjà vu . . . “Mr. Freeman, have you been drinking?” she whispered in his ear.

  He grabbed her by the shoulders, pushed her hard to the floor.

  What? Tears burned in her eyes. She’d whacked her knees good, but that wasn’t it, that wasn’t what hurt so much . . . “What’s . . . what’s wrong?”

  He knelt down and punched her in the stomach.

  The wind shot out of her. White flecks danced in front of her eyes. “What’s wrong,” she said again, her voice dry and weak, tears spilling down her face, snot streaming out of her nose, but too shocked to feel any of it, too hurt.

  And still he said nothing.

  Diandra hugged her knees to her chest, crying, bracing herself against the only man who knew her soul.

  “Why,” she whispered. “What did I do? All I want is to help you.”

  He was still kneeling next to her, moving closer. “Look at me.”

  She couldn’t.

  He took her chin in his hand, made her look. His words slurred together, Scotch-stink curling out of his mouth. “You called my wife.”

  “What? No, I didn’t. I swear I didn’t call her. I . . .” He drew his hand back. Diandra cringed, but as it turned out, he was just going for his wallet. He opened it, plucked out a folded-up piece of paper, and threw it in Diandra’s face. “What’s that supposed to mean, then?” he said, as Diandra grabbed the paper, read the words . . .

  DeeDee called. She says, “It’s done . . .”

  “Oh God,” she whispered.

  “DeeDee called,” he said flatly. “She says, ‘It’s done.�� ”

  “I didn’t call her. I swear, I didn’t call . . .”

  “So Jill was lying?”

  “No,” Diandra said. “No. Listen . . . I didn’t call her. I called our phone. She didn’t say anything when she answered. I thought I was talking to you.”

  Mr. Freeman leaned back. He sighed heavily, the anger draining out of his face along with the air. “You called our phone.”

  “Yes.”

  Two tears rolled down his cheeks, and then two more, until soon, Mr. Freeman was sobbing. Diandra wove her arms around him, cradled his head in her lap like a child. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No it isn’t. I hurt you. I shouldn’t have hurt you.”

  In all the years she’d known him, Diandra had never seen Mr. Freeman shed a tear and here he was, his whole face wet with them, making a wet stain on her skirt. It embarrassed her. “Mr. Freeman,” she said.

  But still he kept sobbing, until Diandra grabbed both of his shoulders and forced him to look into her face. “Mr. Freeman.”

  “Yes . . .”

  “What can I do?”

  “DeeDee . . .”

  “I mean it. I’ll do anything. Anything you want.” Anything to make you stop crying . . .

  “Anything I want?”

  “Yes.”

  “But DeeDee,” he said softly. “You don’t even know me.”

  “I know you better than anybody,” she said. “I’ve known you since I was a kid, and I know you are good and kind and—”

  “I’m not.” He drew a deep, shuddering breath. She stroked his hair. “You do things for me, DeeDee. You protect me. And you don’t even know why.”

  “Errol Ludlow was blackmailing you. He deserved it.”

  “DeeDee . . .”

  “You hired him to find Lula Belle. You hired Brenna Spector, too, and you asked me to keep an eye on them, keep one step ahead of them, just like I did with RJ Tannenbaum.”

  “But you don’t know why.”

  She took her hand from him.

  He sat up, looked at her. “You don’t know why I want to find Lula Belle.”

  “Well, you were secretly managing her Web site.”

  “Yes, I was. But that isn’t the reason.”

  He wrapped his arms around her waist, rested his head in her lap again. Again, she stroked his hair. She could have said more, because she knew a little more than that. But that would ruin this moment, wouldn’t it? Make her less trustworthy . . . She said, “Do you want to tell me the reason?”

  “I do,” he said. And then, he told.

  Three years ago, when Diandra was still waiting tables at Barney’s Beanery, she’d seen Mr. Freeman come in. He hadn’t recognized her as his former client—not until she walked up and introduced herself—which spoke volumes as to how successfully she’d grown out of her awkward phase. Mr. Freeman was sad about his finances, and he couldn’t tell his wife, who happened to be out of town with his three daughters. And so, that night, he wound up doing two things he hadn’t done in twenty years—drinking being the first. The second happened after Diandra had driven him home and taken off his shoes and unbuttoned his collar.

  In the middle, he had called her Clea. She wished that was her name.

  It had been the most meaningful experience of Diandra’s life—Mr. Freeman giving himself to her like that, Mr. Freeman, whom she respected and adored and who had never before been unfaithful and never since. But this—this telling. This meant even more. “You’re the only person I’ve ever told,” he kept saying. “You’re the only one who knows.”

  And Diandra held him and listened and loved him anyway. “I will do anything for you,” she said. She meant it.

  Chapter 20

  “I can’t believe you’re going to Happy Endings without me,” Trent said to Brenna over the phone as she walked up Twenty-fifth Street, looking for the right address. “It’s like you’re going t
o a Justin Bieber concert at Disney World without taking Maya.”

  “Trent? You’re recovering from a drug overdose.”

  “Big deal. So are half the people at Happy Endings, probably.”

  “And anyway, Maya’s over Bieber.”

  “His new stuff is pretty good.”

  Brenna peered at the numbers across the street until she found the address 140 West Twenty-fifth . . .

  “So, are we there yet?”

  “Uh . . . I think so.” If this was the right building, if Charlie Frankel hadn’t somehow given her the wrong address in his e-mail, then Happy Endings was the biggest architectural closet case Brenna had ever seen. The building was dull and dingy and completely unremarkable—the type of place that may have been a parking garage at one point, before the most minimal amount of work was done on it to make it hospitable to human life. “Okay, so just so you know there are no hard feelings, I ran a credit check on Robin Tannenbaum.”

  Brenna stopped. “How were you able to do that?”

  “Hello? Mrs. Tannenbaum gave us his social.”

  Brenna sighed. “I didn’t mean how do you run a credit check,” she said. “I meant, how did you do it in the hospital?”

  “Ohhh . . . Annette brought me my laptop.”

  No more Mrs. Shelby, huh? Brenna thought. But she didn’t mention it. She had enough trouble trying to figure out her own personal life these days, let alone Trent’s. “So, what did the report turn up?”

  “He’s in debt up to his nose hairs.”

  “Well, we figured on that.”

  “Yeah, but here’s the kind of interesting thing. I have a contact at the card where he did most of his spending, and so I found out what he was spending on . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Film equipment.”

  “Why is that strange? He went to film school.”

  “For three months. He never had a job in film production—just the porn stuff. That Mac Pro was loaded with everything he needed to be a top-notch editor, and guess what? It was registered to Happy Endings. Nice perk.”

  “I’m still not following.”