Into the Dark

by Alison Gaylin

  “Do it,” he said. “Please.”

  She closed her eyes, her stomach churning. Such sadness crossed his face. It grabbed at her. It felt familiar. Keep it together. Stay here.

  He said, “Is DeeDee dead?”

  “Who?”

  “Diandra.”

  “No. She’s with the police.”

  His face fell. “She’ll tell everyone. My wife . . . God, my wife and kids will be humiliated. I’ve let so many people down.”

  She stared at him, Diandra’s voice in her ears. Poor Diandra, who had thrown out her whole life for this shell of a man. “Mr. Freeman loves me more than anyone.”

  “Gary,” Brenna said. “I need to know about the Murder Mile.”

  “Oh God.”

  She inhaled sharply. “You said it yourself. Everyone is going to know. Why not tell the one person it means something to.”

  “I closed that door.”

  “Look into my eyes, Gary.”

  “God.”

  “I have a daughter who looks just like her. Will she ever see Clea face-to-face?”

  “Stop.”

  “Look at my eyes,” she said. “She used to call me weirdo. She tried making pancakes for breakfast one time when she was ten and burned them and set off the smoke alarm. The first time she kissed a boy, she told me it was like sucking the inside of an overripe tomato.”

  He averted his eyes. “You loved her.”

  “I still do,” she said. “Did you kill her, Gary?”

  He drew a long, shaking breath. “The Murder Mile was Route 666 in Utah. I’d picked your sister up hitchhiking a week earlier, in Portsmouth, Virginia. She told me she’d been on the road, alone for a month. She’d ditched the guy she’d been traveling with. She said she didn’t like him anymore.”

  I’ve been with him for three weeks and I don’t like him anymore. He keeps looking at my neck like he wants to bite it, and sometimes I could swear he’s got fangs. . . .

  Brenna looked at him. “You went to Louisville, Kentucky next.”

  “Yes. And then Nashville and then Cleveland and then Pine City, Utah.”

  “Lula Belle’s PO boxes.”

  “Yes. I remember them all. They went in reverse of our trip—Clea’s trip. I didn’t . . . I didn’t tell you Utah because I didn’t want to remember Utah.”

  “It’s where your trip ended.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “It was an accident.”

  “Is she dead?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  She stared at him, some of the anger returning. “How can you not know?”

  “Clea and I were young. We loved to party. One night, I got us a whole bunch of black beauties. Did you ever know what those were?”

  “Speed.”

  “Yes. We were drinking Jack Daniel’s and I took about six black beauties. Clea took the same and . . . well, she was a lot smaller than me. She started . . . she had some kind of seizure.”

  “Did you call the hospital?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  He grabbed the hand that held the knife. His grip was surprisingly strong. “I was starting classes at School of the Moving Image, and I had an internship at William Morris, he said. “I . . . I couldn’t . . . l was scared. I was young and selfish and scared.”

  “Did you do anything? Drop her off somewhere or—”

  “I left her in our motel room. I paid in cash. I drove away.” He started to sob. “It was her eighteenth birthday.” Brenna stared at him, her anger building.

  “I only cared about myself. Not her. She was . . . She kept twitching and she went pale and she passed out and . . .”

  “You left.”

  “She wasn’t breathing.”

  “You left her for dead.”

  “I called the motel from the road. They checked the room. It was empty. I don’t know what that means,” he said. “I don’t know if someone . . . got rid of her or . . . or if she left by herself.”

  “Is Clea Lula Belle?”

  “I kept her diary,” he said. “I kept it with me to remind me to be good. To remind me to use that second chance.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I married Jill and I was good to her and I never drank, never drank for twenty years. I lived a good life.”

  “You left my sister for dead, that isn’t a good life!” Hate coursed through Brenna’s veins, her skin growing rigid with it. Gary’s grip grew tighter around her wrist. “No,” she said. “Tell me whether Lula Belle was Clea. At least give me that.”

  Gary stared into her eyes, his grip going lax. “I didn’t know who Lula Belle was, but I hoped she was Clea.” He said it in his old voice, his kind voice . . . “Man, Brenna. You should have seen my face when I got that first download. It was like . . . like being with an angel.”

  He smiled, and then his grip tightened. She tried to pull away, but he was stronger, drawing the blade across his own throat. So much blood and there it was, done in an instant, the human body so frail, so fragile. Just as her sister had been.

  “You don’t deserve this,” Brenna shouted. She grabbed her phone, called 911. “Suicide attempt!” she yelled into it, but he was gurgling and twitching, leaving her even as she spoke. By the time she’d given them the address and hung up the phone, he was no longer breathing. She put her hands over the slit throat. She tried CPR. Nothing.

  First Clea. Now me. You left us both.

  She heard sirens outside. The second set of the evening. Brenna didn’t move. She stared down at Gary Freeman. At his eyes, wrenched open. She didn’t try to close them.

  Epilogue

  One week later

  “So why didn’t you call me?” Morasco said, as he pulled up to the curb on City Island, just in front of the post office.

  It was the eighth time he had asked Brenna that in about as many days. She was tired of answering him, but it still made her smile.

  “I’m in a knife fight, I don’t think, Hey, I should invite Nick Morasco,” she said. “Anyway, you’d probably show up wearing the entirely wrong thing and embarrass me.”

  “Not fair.”

  “Yes, fair. Tweed and stilettos do not mix—and I’m not talking about the heels, though that’s pretty much a glamour-don’t, too . . .”

  “Don’t you even know the rules?” He got out of the car, went around to her side, and opened her door before she could get her hand on it.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The rules, Brenna. You’re the lady PI. I’m the cop boyfriend. I’m supposed to save you in the end.”

  She grinned at him. “You just said you were my boyfriend.”

  “Okay, okay.” He sighed. “This is going nowhere.”

  They were on their way into the post office for a reason, which—like the manila envelope Morasco had handed her yesterday—was something they’d chosen not to talk about.

  “Here’s the thing,” he had told her, yesterday morning, in bed. “I don’t want to keep secrets from you. But I don’t want to force them down your throat, either.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  Morasco had slipped out of the bed, gone into his top dresser drawer, and pulled out the envelope, that ache in his eyes, that pity she’d come to hate . . . “This is from Grady Carlson.”

  “Oh . . . God . . .”

  “He gave this to me a week ago. He died yesterday.”

  “What is it?”

  “A secret.” He looked at her. “Your secret. Do what you want with it.”

  Last night at her apartment, Brenna had cracked open the envelope. She’d seen police papers. She’d seen her father’s name. And she’d ended it there, closing the envelope. Slipping it into her desk drawer and moving away from it, like a bad memory. Some other time, she had thought. Not now. There was too much going on now. And though she knew—she knew deep down where she’d inherited her gift for destruction, felt it in the awful rush of blood to
her skin with every Lula Belle viewing (She knows. She knows it all . . .)—she couldn’t turn over that rock and look at it. She wasn’t ready for the confirmation . . .

  “Daddy took his gun, and he put the barrel of it right there at his temple, and he pulled the trigger and his whole head exploded . . .”

  Brenna shut her eyes tight. Not now.

  Morasco raced to the post office door, opened it for her.

  “If you don’t stop being such a gentleman,” Brenna said, “I’m going to stop having sex with you.”

  He let go of the door, fast.

  “That’s better.”

  City Island always triggered memories for Brenna—and it didn’t help that it was essentially unchanged in twenty-five years, a sleepy sea community with the same fake fishing net restaurants, the same quaint little homes and narrow streets leading right up to private beaches on the bay, the same maritime museum and the same library and so many of the same people as had been here, living life, when Brenna was growing up here and her sister’s disappearance was the talk of the town.

  The sight of the elementary school—which went all the way through eighth grade, still—had been enough to set Brenna to remembering that first school assembly with Clea missing, September 7, 1981—and it had only been Morasco, making some joke about the lobster place across the street, that had brought her back.

  It was good to have him here, she decided. Because for all his jokes about rescuing “the lady PI,” she needed him now, and not for knife fights. She needed him to rescue her from her memory, from her past . . .

  The post office brought back memories, too, of course, but for now, the present was more important. Morasco made for the large mailboxes against the wall as she clutched it in her hand—the key Hildy had given her. Morasco had been the one to come up with the idea, based on the final details Diandra had provided this week while confessing to the murder of Shane Smith, which were as follows:

  Gary had never known about Shane stealing and copying Clea’s journal. But Diandra had. As soon as she learned, via Gary, of the Lula Belle videos, she knew Shane was behind them—and she was livid. She longed for a day when she could get back at her ex-boyfriend for exploiting The Most Gifted Man She Had Ever Known, just because he was jealous she had slept with him.

  When Gary had received the phone calls from RJ and begged Diandra to stop him from going public with his knowledge, she saw her opportunity—and readily agreed. Back in contact with Shane, she convinced him to hack Lula Belle’s private e-mail, lure RJ into meeting him, and kill him in order to preserve the “great art” he’d been creating with the mystery woman he’d replaced her with. She’d wanted him to kill Lula Belle, too—lest she spill the beans to Brenna —but though they tracked both Lula Belle and Brenna up to Canada in late October, they couldn’t find Lula. And Shane chickened out—refusing to give Diandra Lula Belle’s real name.

  Diandra had let her anger get the best of her. He didn’t deserve to die, she told officers. Though Hildy Tannenbaum clearly had reason to feel differently.

  At any rate, over dinner at his place last night, Morasco had said to Brenna, “If Lula Belle knew her e-mail was compromised,” he said, “what’s the safest way she could have gotten ahold of RJ?”

  Brenna had replied, “His PO box.”

  And that’s why they were here. “Hey,” Morasco said. He was standing in front of a mailbox. RJ’s mailbox. Number 35.

  Brenna made her way over to it, her hands shaking, sweating around the key.

  She unlocked the mailbox.

  There was a package inside, addressed from Montreal, postmarked October 20. No name on the return address. Brenna’s heart pounded.

  Lula Belle, are you my sister?

  She opened it—pulled out a stack of Xeroxed handwritten pages. She recognized the handwriting. Clea’s handwriting. “Oh my God,” whispered Brenna. She held her breath, hoping.

  “There’s a note,” Morasco said.

  He spread it out in front of them, and they both read:

  Dear RJ:

  I hope this finds you well. I’m sorry we never got a chance to hook up for this interview. I remain disillusioned with Shane and his “art”—and I think your project is worthy and important. But I’m sorry to tell you, I must leave town. It’s for happy reasons, actually—I got a role on a soap in Montreal. I don’t know if you know this, but I speak fluent French, so the part is perfect for me. Plus, I will get a regular paycheck, I don’t have to hide my face, and I no longer have to keep anyone’s secrets.

  At any rate, good luck with your documentary. I’m sure it will be really great. Again, I’m sorry we never got to meet up in person, but I hope the enclosed is of help.

  All best,

  Lula Belle . . . aka Mallory Chastain

  “Mallory Chastain,” Brenna whispered, her heart sinking a little.

  “Not Clea.”

  She shook her head. “I know her.”

  “How?”

  “I saw her in one of Shane Smith’s films . . . Well, her eye anyway.”

  He sighed. “All those people, thinking she’d gone up to Canada to talk to you. But actually, she’d just gotten a soap opera part.”

  “Irony,” Brenna said. But she really wasn’t thinking about it. She was too busy reading the first paragraph of her sister’s journal:

  I just finished reading the Diary of Anne Frank. My mom thinks diaries are lame. She thinks they reveal too much about you, but I don’t think so at all. I think they can keep you company when everyone else lets you down. I think they can hold your memories for you while you’re off making new ones. I think they are a way of living forever—which probably explains why Mom hates them so much.

  Anyway, Anne named her diary Kitty, and I want a Kitty, too. But since that name is taken, I’m going to call you something else. Something pretty.

  I’m going to name you Lula Belle.

  About the Author

  ALISON GAYLIN is the author of And She Was, the Edgar®-nominated thriller Hide Your Eyes, as well as its sequel, You Kill Me, and two stand-alone novels, Trashed and Heartless. A graduate of Northwestern University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Alison lives with herhusband and daughter in upstate New York.

  www.alisongaylin.com

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  By Alison Gaylin

  Into the Dark

  And She Was

  Heartless

  Trashed

  Hide Your Eyes

  You Kill Me

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  INTO THE DARK. Copyright © 2013 by Alison Gaylin. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780062238740

  Print Edition ISBN: 9780061878251

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