Comes the Dark

by Celia Ashley

  Dan smacked the steering wheel with his open palm, the impact stinging rounded flesh. “Fucking bullshit. Goddamn it all to hell.” He pulled into his driveway, got out of the car, and waited dutifully by the closed door until Jamie had exited his.

  “Here’s your phone back.”

  Dan slipped the cell into his pocket. “That was a suck-ass thing to do.”

  “You would have called her. You wouldn’t have been able to help yourself.”

  Dan said nothing. Jamie was right. At the front door, he inserted the key and pushed the door wide. As soon as he stepped over the threshold, he understood one thing.

  Maris was gone.

  Chapter 23

  Maris squeezed her eyes shut. Closed or open, it was the same. The darkness had come to claim her again, to drag her down into suffering and despair. Lifting her lids, she stared hard, trying to make out outlines, the smallest trace of gray in the blackness, but there was nothing. With a whimper that shamed her, echoing in her head and all around, she rolled onto her side and pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. The floor drummed beneath her body with a constant, pounding rhythm.

  Aunt Alva, come take me. Please. I never belonged in this world. I never will.

  * * * *

  “Are you telling me you didn’t notice her car wasn’t at the curb?”

  “Did you?” Dan shot back. But he had noticed. In his subconscious, Dan had to have been aware of the vehicle’s absence. Otherwise, the hollowness he had experienced upon opening the door would have been strange to him. Instead, he had simply known the truth about the state of things inside.

  “If I find out you had anything to do with—”

  “Don’t even go there. Just do your job.”

  Jamie arched away as if he’d been backhanded. “I am doing my job. Too bad you weren’t doing yours.”

  Dan turned his back on him, going to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. He stopped in front of the refrigerator, fingers around the handle, and leaned his forehead against chilled steel. His insides felt as if they were being whipped by a blender at high speed.

  “This her laptop?”

  Dan jerked around, looking where Jamie pointed. “Yes.”

  “Odd that she left that behind.”

  Yes, it was. Dan didn’t understand why she’d bothered to bring it with her. Occasionally, he saw her working on it, but not often. She always made sure she knew where it was, though. Yet she’d taken her bag, all her clothes, her purse, her sleeping pills, the toothbrush she’d set beside his own in the bathroom holder.

  “We’re confiscating it. Green, snag that will you?”

  Dan took a step forward. “She wouldn’t leave that here. I know she wouldn’t.”

  “Are you implying she didn’t walk out of here voluntarily?” Jamie signaled to Jonathan Green to bag the laptop. “You might want to sit down, Stauffer. You’re not looking too good.”

  “I’m fine.”

  But he wasn’t. The implication here was that she’d run, exactly as he’d tried to will her to do. If so, he hoped she’d gotten far away, but if she really hadn’t left until he threw the thought at her, she would have been caught before she reached the corner of the next block. So she left earlier with every intention of slipping the knot before it tightened. A sign of guilt if there ever was one.

  Where would she go? He pulled the phone out of his pocket and dialed Maris’s cell. The call went straight to voice mail. Next, he tried Felicia, using the number Maris had provided him the day he’d dropped her off.

  “Felicia, it’s Dan. Dan Stauffer. Is Maris there?” From across the room, Jamie watched him in open speculation.

  “I haven’t seen her since the other day. Is she not at your house? I thought she wasn’t supposed to drive yet.”

  “She’s not.” Dan closed his eyes. “Would you have her give me a call if you see her?”

  “Sure. And Dan?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t close your heart. Now is not the time.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I can tell you’re worried, and I hope there’s no reason to be. Don’t shut down. I know you don’t care much for heartache, but you can’t always avoid it.”

  “Thanks.” He hung up without saying goodbye.

  “Who was that?” Jamie asked.

  “Felicia Woodward. Says she hasn’t seen her since the other day. If I had Maris’s mother’s number—”

  “I already called it. Got the woman. She hasn’t seen or heard from Maris.”

  Dan nodded. He went back for the water he’d forgotten, drank a full glass down, and then set the tumbler into the sink. Felicia was right about the heartache. He didn’t like it and had spent a long time avoiding one. The ache in his heart now, though, wasn’t as easily defined as what he’d gone through when he and his ex-wife were in the death throes of their marriage. Perhaps if he could make up his mind that Maris had betrayed him, the pain would be confined into a familiar cage. But somehow, he knew she had not. She hadn’t left him. She’d left the situation…or was he deceiving himself again? Jamie would certainly say he was. He’d tell Dan he was an idiot, a sucker, a fool. He’d tell him Maris’s flight was proof of her guilt. He’d tell him all the things Dan would have advised another man in his place.

  Dan turned on his heel. “I’m going outside.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m going to sit on the step out front until you’re done. Okay?”

  Jamie waved him off. Dan strode past and out the front door, which no one had bothered to close. He lowered himself onto the porch’s concrete edge and stretched his legs out before him. Across the street, down the block, the neighbors were milling about, watching. He ignored them, staring at the laces on his boots. The right one had come untied.

  Maris, where are you? Did she need him? Need his help? Was she frightened? Was she thinking, as Jamie suggested, that she’d finished with him, using him while necessary and washing her hands of him? Had she killed her aunt? Was she guilty of cold-blooded murder for the sake of three million dollars? He knew a lot of people who might be tempted, but he didn’t think her capable, especially now that he knew her. But how well did he know her? She’d never mentioned her time in the psychiatric hospital. Maybe she would have one day, but it seemed an important piece of information to gloss over when asked about her past, even at this early stage.

  “Fuck.”

  He didn’t say the word loudly, but somehow it carried across the street. The woman who lived there covered her child’s ears in a dramatic display, like some sitcom out of the fifties. Dan lifted his chin in her direction. “Maybe if you weren’t so nosy, you wouldn’t be standing close enough with your kid to have heard that.”

  She huffed away, but only far enough to talk about him in a stage whisper with another neighbor.

  “Don’t piss off the neighbors. You may need them to alibi you,” Jamie said from the doorway. He came forward and sat next to him on the step. “What’s this?”

  Dan glanced aside at what Jamie held. He stiffened. Don’t touch that card again. Hadn’t that been Maris’s instruction to him? He should have returned it that first night. Shit.

  He released a short breath. “I took it from the scene when I responded to the call from Green and Whitley. To be honest, I didn’t mean to, but I located it in my pocket when I was driving to the station and realized I’d made a serious error.”

  Jamie turned the Priestess card back and forth in the evidence bag. “I think you’re lying to cover for Maris.”

  Dan threw up his hands and rose. “Think what you want. I’m done with explanations. But when you process that card, I can lay odds you won’t find her prints on it. But you’ll find mine, and plenty of them.”

  Jamie shrugged. “We’ll see. Where are you going now?”

  “To use the bathroom. Am I allowed to do that yet?”

  “Be my guest
.”

  He waited until Dan was on the threshold before speaking again. “Do you think she left with her accomplice?”

  Dan loosened the hands he’d clenched against his thighs. “The intruder was not with her, he was after her. Instinct, no more, but that’s what I think.”

  “Too much coincidence, Stauffer. That guy in your house was here because of her. She moved way too quickly with you. She was using you. He’s the real man in her life. You know it. We all know it.”

  “Who, exactly, is ‘all’?” When Jamie didn’t answer, Dan went on. “You’re missing a big piece to this puzzle. We both are.” Dan stalked away and up the stairs into his bathroom. He locked the door and sat on the shut toilet lid, lowering his head into his hands.

  * * * *

  Maris had stopped shivering. Not a good sign. She needed to move, force circulation of blood to her limbs. She didn’t want to die. Not really. She hadn’t all those years ago, either. The incident that had landed her in the psych ward had been more a matter of opportunity, rather than deliberate intent. She wouldn’t have harmed herself, she really wouldn’t have, but it hadn’t looked that way to her parents when they found her. Back then, she had reached the point of not caring. About anything. But she cared now.

  With the idea of running in place to get her heart pumping, Maris released her cramped limbs, rolled over, and rose. Her head struck the ceiling before she’d stretched her legs out straight. Skull ringing with the impact, Maris stood with her back arched, running her hands over the wet stone above her. She didn’t know where she was, no memory of how she’d gotten here. She remembered sitting in someone’s living room reading a magazine that wasn’t hers. And then her head hurt. Yes, the same as it was now. There was a reason for the pain in her head, the confusion, but the answer wouldn’t formulate in her mind, not enough for her to hold onto it.

  She started shuffling across an uneven floor, hands extended before her, looking for…for what? A way out, she supposed. Had she truly come here to die? What an extraordinary choice.

  Attempts at remembering anything before the article in the magazine were futile. But the story had been about…prison life. Yes, that was it. The piece had frightened her. Why? Sudden nausea caused her to drop painfully to her knees. She clutched her stomach, fighting the urge to vomit. Terminology entered her mind, a male voice discussing dissociative occurrences, fugue states. The words echoed from a distance of time rather than physical location. Childhood?

  She lost her battle against the urge to disgorge the contents of her stomach. Wiping her hand across her mouth, she skirted the bile on the floor and continued her search. If she wanted to live, she had to get out. A simple plan, but impossible, because when she reached the walls and followed them around, she could locate no opening. She sat on the uneven stone, pulling her knees up to her chin. She’d begun shivering again, could feel the cold. For the time being, she’d stopped the process of death. But perhaps she didn’t want to, since her only other option in a place from which she could not escape was inexorable starvation. She’d heard that wasn’t a pleasant way to go at all.

  Chapter 24

  Help her.

  Dan bolted upright. He stared wide-eyed around the darkened room. After a moment, he scrambled off the bed and ran to the bedroom door, yanking it open. “Hello?” He slammed the door shut and strode to the window, leaning against his once organized desk, strewn now with the contents. No one had bothered to put anything back. Neither had he.

  He pushed a hand through his hair, rubbed his neck, dragged his fingers down his shirt. He’d fallen asleep without changing out of his clothes. He hadn’t expected to sleep at all.

  Spreading the slats of the blinds, Dan peered down to the street below. An unmarked unit was hunkered against the curb opposite his townhouse waiting for Maris’s return for reasons contradictory to his own. Not that anyone expected her to come back, but there was always a chance. Maybe it was parked there to see if he ran, too. Dan shrugged in dismissal and turned away. Abruptly, he spun back. The translucent silhouette had appeared beneath the streetlight. Was it Alva Mabry…or this crone Maris spoke of?

  “Who are you? What the hell do you want from me?”

  Help her.

  This time the words were so loud in his head, he staggered back from them. Not a dream, then. Holy Mother, not a dream.

  “I don’t know how! I don’t know where she is.”

  The apparition faded, drifting away like mist in the wind. At the same time, Dan’s cell rang. Dan scrambled in search of it, slapping across the various surfaces in the room. Locating the phone wedged beneath his crumpled pillow, he pulled it out and answered. “Stauffer.”

  “Dan, it’s me,” said Jamie. “I know it’s late, but I need you at the station. Now.”

  * * * *

  Bleary-eyed, Dan made his way down the corridor to Jamie’s office. He hadn’t bothered with anything but a shot of mouthwash to rinse his mouth before heading outside and climbing into his car. The officer in the unmarked unit—Wainwright, Dan thought—must have received word of his imminent departure because he hadn’t so much as turned his head.

  Outside Jamie’s office, Dan rapped a knuckle against the open door. The overheads were off. Jamie sat in a puddle of light from the desk lamp, papers spread across his desk. Dan didn’t wait for an invitation. He was sick of being treated like a guest in his own house. He took the chair and pulled it closer before sitting in it. “What’s going on?”

  Recalled from someplace in his head, Jamie looked up, almost as if he hadn’t realized Dan was there. “You were right.”

  “About what?”

  “The Tarot card. Maris’s prints weren’t on it. Just yours and Mabry’s and one other.”

  Dan waited.

  “A thumbprint. I ran it through AFIS. Got a hit fairly quickly.”

  “And?”

  “I’ll get to that in a minute.”

  Dan lurched forward. “Shit, don’t do that. Just—”

  “I looked through Maris’s computer myself. Her password was ‘password.’ One of those. Too trusting.”

  Yeah, Dan thought, most definitely.

  “I didn’t find anything obvious in her internet history, like a query about poisons. She writes stories. Short stories. Quite the gift with words. Tales her dad told her, and a lot of others I think are based on her experiences. Jumps back and forth between past and present but skilled enough to pull it off. She mentions a diary in one of them. Did she keep a diary, Dan?”

  Dan thought a moment. “I have no idea.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She hadn’t written about the murder on the computer. Not that I thought she would, but you never know. Something as intimate as a physical diary, however…”

  Dan remained silent.

  “Anyway, I’m going to remind you now that she said she had no other living blood relatives. But there’s a cousin who’s been in jail nearly the entirety of her life.”

  Dan reached into his shirt pocket, pulling out three pictures. “I thought there must be someone else, but since I wasn’t allowed to assist I was having difficulty checking. I took these from the albums last time I was in. Maris’s uncles have both died. As has Maris’s father. Even though I was off the case, I did some online research and found obits. Maris told me she thought these images all included her father, but that’s not accurate, is it?” He shoved the pictures across the desk to Jamie who picked them up, holding the photographs closer to the bulb.

  “What makes you think this isn’t Maris’s father?”

  Dan pointed. “Look at the dress Alva is wearing. It’s the same as in this other photo with all three of the Granger boys. They seem to have been taken the same day, if you check the background details. The child standing alone with Alva in the first two I handed you is not one of them, but a younger child. I don’t believe Maris knew about another boy, if we’re right and there really was one.”

  “If we are r
ight? We weren’t working together. You were off in some strange fantasy world.” Jamie lowered the pictures to the desk. “But there was another. Robert Mabry.”

  Dan frowned. “Mabry?”

  “Yeah, Alva’s son. Her illegitimate son. She ended up sending him away to be raised elsewhere. Think of the timeframe. She had him at the end of the fifties without benefit of marriage, and apparently he was a handful. Troubled and in trouble, all the time. His name was never changed, though. He went into prison thirty years ago for manslaughter and served his time. He was released three months ago.”

  Crossing his arms, Dan sat back. “How’d you find all of that out?”

  “Had a talk with a fellow at the FBI.”

  “So that’s his thumbprint on the Priestess card.”

  “Yep.”

  “Anything else?”

  “There were traces of digoxin on the card.”

  “Digitalis? The drug used for treatment of heart disorders?”

  “Exactly. It can be absorbed through the skin, causing various types of reactions. Alva Mabry, however, was taking the drug for congestive heart failure. She really wasn’t doing well at the time she died.”

  “So, are you saying Alva died of natural causes?” Dan doubted it. After everything that had happened, it couldn’t be a case of error on Rankin’s part.

  Jamie shuffled the photographs into a pile and set them on the desk. “I’m not. It was an overdose of the drug that killed her. Probably over the course of several days. That’s what Rankin thinks anyway. Administered topically and absorbed through the raw skin on the old woman’s fingertips. Probably applied to the cards themselves. Rankin’s running some tests on the others. It wasn’t injected. That would have been quick. Rankin doesn’t know what that hole was about. The point is, the woman was murdered, and now we know how.”