Comes the Dark

by Celia Ashley

  He slammed the drawer shut. He couldn’t begin doubting her again. The vicious circle he would create for himself would suck him down like a whirlpool. He trusted her. He had just proven how much with that silly little tale.

  Turning around, he studied his empty bed, neatly made and sterile. Had it ever truly appealed to him, this semi-bachelor existence?

  The door squeaked open behind him. “I’m sorry. I should have knocked.”

  “Did I wake you up?”

  “Not deliberately. It was your absence.” She stood in the doorway dressed in flannel pajama bottoms and a long-sleeved cotton shirt, holding the soup bag from the nightstand. At least she hadn’t suffered any broken bones, but the blue bruising beneath the shaved portion of her head was more evident in the light of the desk lamp than it had been in the hospital. Her gray eyes looked huge.

  “You remind me of a picture my grandmother used to have hanging in her hallway,” he said. “They were popular back in the nineteen-sixties. Big eyes. Very waif-like.”

  Her lips curved into a crooked smile. “I’m going to bring this down to the kitchen for the trash and get a glass of water. Do you want anything?”

  “I’ll do it. I’d rather you stayed away from the stairs for a while.”

  He grabbed the paper sack from her hand as he passed and trotted down the steps. On sock feet, he skated into the dark kitchen. Although the rain had stopped some time ago, the night remained overcast, confining the light of the streetlamp outside to a small and feeble circle. Fine hairs lifting on his nape, Dan leaned over the sink and looked out, expecting to see again the translucent figure. The sidewalk, the patch of grass, the street were all empty. With a small laugh of relief, he reached for a tumbler from the drain board. A gloved hand slammed down across his wrist.

  Adrenaline exploded through Dan’s heart. He acted without conscious thought, stepping into the attack and tossing the man to the floor. The intruder rolled upright to his feet before Dan fully regained his.

  The intruder lunged at him again in a feint, but turned instead and darted toward the front door. He managed to yank it open and run out into the night before Dan reached him. Dan gave chase but lost him quickly when the man disappeared behind the next row of townhouses. Dan pursued anyway on the chance his attacker hadn’t vanished entirely but was lurking beneath a deck or behind a screen of bushes. By the time Dan returned home, socks soaked and limping from a bruised arch, sirens wailed in the near distance.

  Charging up the stairs despite his injury, he shouted Maris’s name before he burst through the unlocked bedroom door. He circled around the room in a wide arc, trying to rid himself of the picture in his head of Maris and the stranger in confrontation. But except for Maris, the room was empty. No one had doubled back and gone after her. “You’re all right?”

  She nodded. Only then did he notice what she held in her two hands. Seeing where his gaze had gone, she lowered the glass quart bottle filled with coins to the floor.

  “You could have done some damage with that.”

  “I meant to,” she said.

  Dan sat abruptly on the bed. He whipped off his sodden socks. Maris took them to the bathroom and returned. “I called the police. Two cars are outside. What do you want me to do? Where do you want me to go?”

  Dan shook his head. “Sit here. You’re not supposed to be stressed. I’m not hiding you, Maris. Fuck the department.”

  “Dan…”

  “I know. I don’t mean that. I just—” Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Dan rose to meet the officer coming in the door. He stopped at sight of Maris. Dan issued instructions for an immediate search of the area and turned to slip his damp feet into a pair of sneakers. He looked back at Maris. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes. Why did someone break into your house? They must have known you were here.”

  Dan paused in the doorway beside the officer issuing commands through the radio on his shoulder. He took a deep breath. “I don’t think he broke in, Maris. I think he’s been here since before I came home tonight.”

  * * * *

  “Why would you think that?” Jamie asked when Dan expressed the same suspicion to him.

  “He had to unlock the door to get out. Almost didn’t do it with his gloves on, but he managed. Besides, these guys have checked every inch of the house. No sign of a break-in.”

  “So what are you saying? You think that girlfriend of yours let him in?”

  Dan’s chest tightened. “I do not. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Sorry for the confusion. Just seemed to me you were leading up to that. I mean, she was here, you weren’t, some guy ends up in your house without forced entry…Have you actually asked her?”

  “Why would I? You ask her. For all I know, I might have left to come to the station without locking up, and he walked right in.” Dan could barely get the words out. Damn Jamie and his insinuation.

  “To what purpose? Why would some random guy walk in? Is anything missing?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed.” Dan glanced around the living room, anger seething behind his eyes and making it difficult to see. And yet he knew Jamie was right to ask these questions. It was too coincidental for somebody to show up at the hospital and then here in Dan’s house. But that didn’t mean Maris had invited him in or had any knowledge of the intruder whatsoever. She’d been sound asleep when Dan went into the guestroom after his dinner with Jamie. There’d been no faking that.

  But how long had he been in his room getting ready for bed before she came to the door? Had there been enough time for her to go downstairs and—?

  “Enough.”

  Jamie frowned beside him. “I’m only asking the type of questions you’d ask yourself if your head wasn’t locked in a rather uncomfortable position inside your own anatomy.”

  “Fuck. I know. I know.”

  “It seems too damned fluky to me. Maybe…maybe Maris isn’t involved. But if it’s that guy from the hospital, the one you believe ran into her with his car, why would he come here into your home? Isn’t it more likely she knows your attacker personally?”

  Dan said nothing.

  “She might have killed her aunt, Dan. Three million’s a lot of reason. And she might have had someone help her. And that someone might have been here in your house this evening.”

  Dan sat on the end of the sofa cushion. He dropped his head onto his palms, pushed his fingers through his hair. Jamie was a methodical man. His arguments usually made sense. They made sense now, but Dan couldn’t believe the scenario he was suggesting. The flipside, however, was equally as bad because it meant that Maris had been unprotected while some asshole, with only God knew what on his mind, took his time in Dan’s house. Whether he could remember locking the door or not when he left, Dan knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he’d locked it when he came home. He’d locked the guy in with them.

  “When do you think Maris might be feeling up to questioning?”

  Glancing up, Dan shook his head. “Not right now. You’d have to clear it with her doctor. You could bring the albums by tomorrow, after you and I are done with work.”

  Jamie studied him for a long moment. “You still want to believe it’s somebody else, don’t you? Doesn’t it usually boil down to family? And she’s it, I’ll bet on it. She said there’s no one else and, about that at least, I’d say she’s not lying.”

  Dan ground his molars together. The remnants of dinner churned in his stomach. Jamie was determined to prove him wrong. Did Jamie think to get his job if Dan failed to find the truth? Of course, Dan had been successfully blocked from the investigation, so finding out anything wasn’t likely. Probably much of the Chief’s decision to ban him had been based on Jamie’s voiced opinions.

  Dan shook his head. He and Jamie had been friends, still were. Maris was right. He was too suspicious. “As soon as Maris is up to it,” Dan said, “I’ll bring her in. I’ll question her myself, if necessary—”


  “No. You won’t. It’s not your case, and with good reason.”

  Did he need that reminder? Dan dropped his hands between his knees, staring toward the kitchen where he’d been fumbling around in the dark with a prowler inches away from him. Where the hell had the guy been hiding when Dan came in? The powder room? The coat closet? Where?

  Jamie dropped a hand on his shoulder and shook it. “I think we’re through here. Try to get some rest. Where…where is she sleeping?”

  “The guestroom.”

  “Good. Lock your door.”

  “Oh, fuck you, Rogers.”

  Jamie straightened. “I’d be pleased as punch to be proven wrong, Dan. You know that. I just don’t think it’s gonna happen.”

  Dan didn’t get up to see him to the door. He kept his gaze glued on the carpet between his feet as Jamie herded the last two officers outside. They had collected mud from fibers in the rug, although that likely had come from right outside Dan’s house. He’d watched one of them measure and photograph the impression of a boot print on the kitchen floor. Other than that, nothing.

  For ten minutes, Dan sat on the couch, unmoving. The small mantel clock began to strike the hour with a whirring of gears and the tiny ring of a brass bell. At the eleventh chime, he stood. By the twelfth, he was heading up the stairs, leaving the lights on below. By the time he’d reached his bedroom door, he had made up his mind.

  But when he opened it and saw Maris asleep on his bed, all sound reason fled.

  Chapter 18

  Maris studied the pearly sheen on Dan’s skin, the mingling of perspiration and incandescent light from outside the window that had formed a glaze over the musculature of his chest and arms. She wanted to reach out and run a finger along any one of the shadows between his ribs, but she had learned a handful of minutes ago how ticklish he was.

  “You’re beautiful,” she whispered.

  “Hush. Don’t ruin it with talking.” In the silver light, his lips curved, deepening the creases on either side of his mouth. The converse shape of his closed lids hid his eyes, lashes lying in narrow spikes against his skin. “You know your doctor wouldn’t approve of what we just did.”

  “Unless you’ve got him hidden under the bed, I don’t think he’s going to find out.” At the reminder of the recent intruder, Maris sucked a breath in through her teeth.

  Dan moved his hand in blind search across the sheets until he found hers. He squeezed her fingers. “I checked. Jamie stationed one of the officers in a blatant position outside the house. That guy’s not coming back tonight.”

  Maris turned her study to the shape of their fingers together, knots of flesh and bone like lovers in miniature. “What do you think he wanted?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you have any idea who he might be?”

  Dan released her hand and rolled to a sitting position, feet on the floor. He planted his elbows on his thighs, dropping his head into the grip of his outstretched fingers. He pushed both hands through his hair and rose, his naked body barred by light. “Jamie thinks you might know who it is.”

  “What?” Maris pulled herself up against the headboard, yanking the sheet to cover herself. “Why on earth would he think that?”

  “It can’t all be chance, Maris. There’s a puzzle here in pieces I can’t get to fit together. Jamie thinks he has it, though, the picture in its entirety. He thinks you let the guy in, that he’s your accomplice in the murder of your aunt. And yes,” he added before she could say a word, “I could get fired for what I’ve told you. What Jamie says makes sense. It fits, makes the puzzle pieces fall into logical position. Something is missing, though. There’s a black, gaping hole he’s ignoring and I can’t define. Someday soon you’re going to be called in for questioning by someone who’s not me. Prior to that, Jamie is going to ask you to look through photo albums he took from Alva’s attic to try to identify other family members that he might be able to track down. He’s giving you a very small benefit of the doubt. If there’s another relative who benefited from Alva’s Will—”

  Maris stretched an arm to the bedside lamp and turned it on. Dan blinked in the flare of light.

  “Alva’s Will? What are you talking about?”

  Dan sat back down on the edge of the mattress. He pulled an edge of the sheet to cover his thigh and groin. “I can’t say anything else. If there is a case to be made here, I would be compromising it.”

  Maris’s gaze followed the sweep of Dan’s tousled hair, the cowlick stiff with the earlier application of his plowing fingers. “Did they determine what type of poison?”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t been told.”

  “What about how—”

  “I don’t know that either. And even if I did, I…I can’t now. I shouldn’t. Maris, I know I asked this before, but I’m going to ask again. Did you kill Alva Mabry?”

  Maris folded her arms over her breasts, tucking the sheet tightly into the hollow of her armpits. “You would have sex with someone you believed capable of murder?”

  “Don’t answer a question with a question. God, Maris, please give me a straight answer, in full, with words that speak of innocence, not evasion.”

  “Or guilt?” she said with undeniable sarcasm.

  “Maris!”

  She flinched. “I didn’t kill Aunt Alva, Dan. I want to know who did. Whatever you need from me, I’ll do.”

  He was still, all of him, as if he’d been converted to stone. He gazed at a place between them without blinking, a trick of the room’s illumination giving his eyes the hue and transparency of bottle glass. Abruptly, he stood. “Good.” He grabbed his shorts, slipped them on. “Good. We’ll figure this out, I promise you.” He headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I need a drink. You?”

  Maris drew her knees up to her chest. “What are we talking? Vodka? Gin?”

  He cocked his head at her. “Are you serious? You’re not supposed—”

  “No.” She lifted the corners of her mouth in a slow smile. “Water would be nice, though, thank you.”

  He stepped out, leaving the door ajar. She heard the sound of his bare feet whispering on the carpeted steps and then a soft curse as he bumped into an impediment in the dark, a mild expletive only, nothing alarming in content or volume. Maris relaxed against the headboard.

  Who was the intruder in Dan’s house? She could understand the speculation about her involvement. Jamie was a practical man, and his theory made sense. Dan was such a man, too, except when it came to her. She would be his undoing, no doubt about that. She didn’t want to be. Yet her fate and his were as bound together as the twisted strands of a rope, and the darkness clinging to him bore her imprint.

  She pressed her face into her hands, whispering Dan’s name, longing for answers to the confusion.

  “Are you all right, Maris?”

  Her head jerked upright. Dan pressed a tumbler of water into her hand. He sat on the bed beside her, drinking his own.

  “I’m just thinking about us and how very bad I am for you,” she said.

  “Why would you say that?”

  She sipped the cold water. “Because it’s true.” Sensing the weight of his gaze, she glanced up from her contemplation of the rippling liquid in the glass. “I am. How many poor decisions have you made since I walked into your life?”

  “Believe me, I made plenty of poor decisions before you ever showed up.”

  “But you’re going against your most basic instincts now because of…of what you feel for me.”

  “My most basic instinct is what I feel for you. The rest of it is just a riddle, a challenge that needs sorting out, that’s all.”

  Maris set the water aside. Pulling the covers along with her, she climbed into his lap and burrowed her head against his chest. His heart thumped beneath her ear in steady rhythm. She curled her fingers around the taut muscles in his forearm. “Did you e
ver have an imaginary friend when you were a kid?”

  He pressed his chin against her head. “I think I remember having one, yeah. Don’t all kids?”

  She toyed with the fine blond hairs on his arm, pulling them up and twisting them between thumb and forefinger. “Probably. They’re the friend who is the most constant, who doesn’t ridicule or run away. It would make sense to want a companion like that.”

  He kissed her hair. She perceived the curl of his lips across her scalp. “Yes. And…?”

  “My imaginary friend had your eyes. Isn’t it strange that I should meet a man after all these years with those eyes and fall in love with him, only to be his ruination?”

  Dan tightened his embrace. “You’re not my ruination, Maris. In fact, I think you’ve rescued me from myself.”

  * * * *

  Two days later, seated across the interview table from Jamie Rogers, Maris still experienced a thrill of pure joy at the remembered words. They weren’t true, of course, but Dan believed them to be, and that was what mattered.

  “You understand why your boyfriend can’t be in here with us.”

  Maris nodded.

  “Unfortunately,” Jamie added, “he doesn’t.”

  Maris said nothing. Dan had wanted to be present while she looked through the photo albums, but when Jamie refused, Dan had stalked off down the hall to his office. Jamie had opted not to bring the albums to the house, as Dan had suggested, but have her review them at the station prior to further interview.

  He slid them across the table to her. He flipped one open. “I thought that was you until I noticed the dress. Even you don’t wear something like that.”

  Maris ignored the “even you” and leaned closer to examine the photo beneath his fingertip. “That’s my aunt. That’s Alva Mabry. She was about twenty in that photo, I’d guess. My grandmother was still a child then. There was a difference of about ten or twelve years between them.”

  “Where is she now, your grandmother?”