A Map of the Dark

by Karen Ellis

  Greenberg obliges, and she watches the man reverse back into the driver’s seat and step out and reverse back in and step back out. Then he walks ten paces across the parking lot, speed-walks ten paces backward, and proceeds slow-motion until he disappears under the eaves of one of the warehouse buildings.

  “You,” Lex tells Greenberg, “are an artist with that thing.”

  “Yeah, well, back in the day I wanted to be a TV editor. Lived in the city for two years, but the work didn’t come, so here I am. Sign should read Greenberg and Son, as I’m the son.”

  “Father still around?”

  “Nah. I’m the son and the father and the holy ghost, if you must know—”

  Elsa interrupts. “Keep going until he’s back on camera.”

  The man reappears, heading toward the office. She squints, trying to read the man’s face, body language, anything to clue her in to this tickle of recognition. But the harder she tries, the faster the feeling dissipates.

  “You know him?” Lex asks.

  She looks at her temporary partner, directly into his eyes: hazel like her father’s, with a dizzying complexity between the greens and browns. Answers, “No.”

  Greenberg fast-forwards to the scene of the man leaving: he passively watches his lumber loaded in, hoists himself back into the van, drives away. And then the license plate, New York State, with the number clear as a bell.

  While Lex drives Elsa’s car, she works her laptop, dipping in and out of Internet on the mountainous roads. Each time she picks up a network, she abruptly loses it, but finally she manages enough of a connection to land somewhere useful.

  “‘Ishmael Edward Locke,’” she reads from the Bureau’s central database, “no criminal record, lives at two hundred Jess Maxon Road in Petersburgh.”

  “New York?”

  “Yup. Just across the Vermont border.” She plugs the address into her phone’s GPS, sways as Lex turns the car around, redirecting. Something twists inside Elsa: the sickened, energized feeling of a hunt when it really begins. “He has the credit card she carries with her, Lex.”

  “Maybe she dropped it somewhere. Maybe he found it.”

  “When? We know she used it during her shift at Queens Beans—ordered in a falafel and paid with her card.”

  “But Elsa, if he has her, why would he risk using her card?”

  “Stupidity. Error. Greed.”

  “Twenty-one dollars and sixty-seven cents’ worth of greed?”

  “Right. Probably not that. Using her card would have been a mistake. He could have put it next to his, pulled out the wrong one, some idiot move like that.”

  “Did you find out how long to Albany?”

  “About thirty miles from Locke’s address.” She’s already alerted the FBI’s upstate lab that they’ve got a high-priority forensics job coming their way in regard to a missing child: the white cardboard coffee cup Locke threw away in Greenberg’s parking lot. The sour smell of someone else’s old coffee still lingers in her nose; she’d leaned into the garbage, plucked the cup off a splayed banana peel fresh enough to still be partially yellow.

  By the time Elsa and Lex turn off the main road, Marco is working on an emergency search-and-seizure warrant in case they need it.

  The pavement devolves into a rutted single lane barely wide enough for an average car. Tucked into a clearing of hardened earth crusted with dead grass is Locke’s land; on it, what appears to be a handmade cabin, a one-room structure somewhere between rickety and charming. A dusty black sedan is parked off to the side.

  Elsa mutters, “Interesting.”

  “So he has two cars,” Lex says. “Or maybe the van was rented.”

  “Take a closer look.”

  Lex’s gaze lingers on the car before he turns to Elsa. “I don’t see it.”

  “It’s an S plate—part of the Sam Unit. State PD Special Investigations.”

  At the sound of their car doors crashing shut, someone appears from around the side of the house: a portly man with a ring of salty hair, his eyes dark slices in a potato-mash face.

  “Help you folks?” He isn’t wearing a uniform, but the cop edge to his tone is unmistakable.

  “Special Agent Myers and Detective Cole.” They show their IDs.

  “Ah, welcome.” He offers a hand, and they shake. “Detective Sang McCracken. You can call me Sang or you can call me Mick, but don’t call me Cracker.”

  Lex outright laughs, a large, full laugh that makes Elsa smile.

  McCracken says, “I heard the feds came up from the city.”

  “Heard how?” Elsa asks.

  “You put out an APB on one of our landowners. Plus, we got a leaky border with Vermont—two small counties pressed together, you can just imagine.”

  “In other words,” Lex says, “Greenberg told you.”

  “Yup. Thought we could help you out. How was your drive?”

  “Easy,” Elsa says. “Find anything?”

  “No visible evidence Mr. Locke had any girl here lately.”

  Walking up the four stairs onto the slip of a front porch, Elsa notices the soft bulge of rot. She steps carefully. Behind her, Lex tests each plank before lowering his weight. They follow McCracken inside.

  “Guy isn’t much of a decorator,” McCracken observes.

  To say the least. The interior is constructed of rough-hewn boards. The floor whines and squeaks when Elsa walks inside, as if it’s been built on nothing. The few pieces of furniture exactly match the unfinished quality of the walls: bumpy and raw, shaped by force but not smooth or refined. There’s a small table and a single chair, a couch with no cushions, and a double bed with a thin mattress covered by a moth-eaten wool blanket. A wooden chest sits at the foot of the bed. Small shelves built into the walls hold partially burned candles in glass lanterns. An old gas refrigerator stands in the corner in a makeshift kitchen that includes a wooden sink with a hand pump for water.

  Elsa has to cock the squealing handle four times to draw the first drop. “This hasn’t been used in a while—strange, if he was just here.”

  Lex opens the freezer. “Stinks.” He slams it shut.

  Elsa catches a whiff of the rotten-egg smell and holds her breath until it passes. She opens a drawer under the counter: a few mismatched utensils, a flashlight, extra batteries, several candles, and a box of utility matches. A large breadbox sits on the counter; she opens it. Crammed inside are a bag of potato chips, a jar of peanuts, and a sleeve of crackers. In a cupboard beneath the sink she finds half a dozen gallons of bottled water.

  They wander the room, which takes all of five minutes. She uses her foot to open a chest at the base of the bed. Moths flutter out, dozens of them. The blanket folded inside is crawling with larvae.

  She says, “I don’t think he’s opened this lately.”

  “Summer squatter,” McCracken says. “Looks like the cabin’s been sitting all winter.”

  Elsa kicks shut the infested chest. As she crosses toward the door, the floor’s hollow whine reminds her: “I wonder if there’s a crawl space under the cabin—let’s take a look.”

  They all go outside and inspect the perimeter of the house, which sits cheek by jowl with the rutted earth, joined by a narrow seam of concrete—built without a foundation, just plunked down on the earth.

  “No sign of the lumber and nails he bought this morning,” Lex notes.

  She turns and gazes into the woods, which seem to grow denser, quieter, the longer she looks at them. “How deep does it go?”

  “Hundreds of miles, cut through by roads, but there are some deep pockets of forest in there,” McCracken says. “I’ve got people in there searching. Seemed wise not to wait, considering. We’re also canvassing rest areas from here to the city, see if he made any stops, if he had anyone with him. We’re looking for him, and so is every neighboring state. If he’s out there, we’ll bring him in, let him tell his side of things.”

  “Well,” Elsa says, “you know how to reach us. We’ve got to boo
k it to Albany, little gift for the lab—picked up his takeout cup at Greenberg’s.”

  McCracken’s eyebrows dart up. “I can have someone run it over for you, if that would help.”

  “That would be great,” Lex responds before Elsa has a chance to demur. She doesn’t like this, the way he took charge, and the old feeling that the best way to get things done right and fast is to do it herself rears up. But before she can offer a plausible reason for them to make the trip themselves, Lex is in her car, fetching the evidence bag, sealed at the top with red tape stamped DO NOT OPEN * EVIDENCE * TO BE OPENED BY AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. He hands it to the upstate detective, telling him, “Thanks, that’s a big help.”

  They return to their respective cars with promises to keep each other posted.

  The temperature up here is cooler than in the city, and Elsa and Lex keep their windows down, allowing in soft breezes and the musical sawing of grasshoppers. She consults her watch, sees that it’s late afternoon, and wonders where the day went.

  The construction workers will have left the house on Whitelaw Street already. By the time she and Lex reach Manhattan, it will be dark. She feels a tremor of anticipation at the thought that she could go back, if she wants to, that she doesn’t have to keep fighting the urge.

  Lex’s voice abruptly returns her to the moment. “Head to the city?”

  Through the windshield, a verdant mass of trees. She has a sudden sense that it’s already too late for Ruby, but she doesn’t want to say that. Not yet. She turns the car around and pulls away from Locke’s cabin.

  11

  Lex asks, “Didn’t you say your dad’s hospital is in Sleepy Hollow?”

  “Did I?” Elsa’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel. She glances at the passenger seat, at Lex, whose attention is fixed on the green exit sign hurtling closer as they drive south. Without intending to, she decelerates.

  “You did. We can take a detour if you want.”

  An image of Roy, ill, fading, materializes in Elsa’s mind followed by a sharp tug toward him. Of course she wants to stop; any opportunity to see him now shouldn’t be wasted.

  Adept at self-denial, she says, “We probably shouldn’t take the time.”

  “Elsa, we’re doing everything we possibly can and we’re far from the only ones looking for Ruby,” he argues. “We can spare twenty minutes.”

  “You’re right.” She veers onto the exit so suddenly that Lex sways to the side, and she surprises herself with a feeling of satisfaction at having literally moved him.

  As soon as they’re on the local roads, he asks, “What kind of cancer does he have?”

  She takes a long, conscious breath. “Mind if we don’t talk about it?” Grinding her jaw, she turns into the hospital parking lot.

  “Not at all.” His tone soft with regret or embarrassment, something that tells her he wishes he hadn’t asked.

  She turns off the engine, killing the air-conditioning, and the car immediately heats up. “There’s a café in the lobby where you can wait for me, if you want,” she suggests.

  “Good idea.”

  He follows her into the revolving doors that land them in a high-ceilinged atrium, linoleum floors buffed to a hard shine. He makes his way to the café while she heads alone to the elevator.

  Riding up to the fifth floor, she tries to ignore the turned-cheese smell that she associates with embalming fluids, formaldehyde, and methanol—hospital smell. Someone must have cleaned in here recently, leaving behind that unctuous chemical odor. Since her father’s ordeal began, he’s been in and out of the hospital twice in two weeks—first after the drama of his diagnosis, now for what one doctor called a “readjustment”; in expectations, apparently—and she’s found that every visit here resonates with something new, a sensation that clings to her.

  Oncology reception is unmanned; the hallway quiet.

  She turns into her father’s room and finds Roy sound asleep. The bathroom door gapes open, spilling shadows that evoke visceral recollections of last night: her fingernails scratching at the blazing scars, almost feeling relief until shame crept on top of it; her folded-together knife watching from the sink like a discarded old friend, waiting to be included; Elsa resisting and stopping and getting dressed and walking away, tossing the betrayed knife into her bag. She won’t look at the bathroom now and instead fixes on Tara, sitting at their father’s bedside, pecking away at her phone. Solitaire, probably, as she’s practically a champion.

  “Winning?”

  “Shhh.” Tara rests her phone on her lap and smiles at her sister. Then she looks past Elsa as if expecting someone else.

  “Mel’s at home. Don’t worry, she’s fine,” Elsa whispers. “Has he been sleeping long?”

  Tara seesaws her hand side to side: yes and no. A nonanswer that leaves Elsa without any sense of when he might wake up. The morphine button is loose in his hand, suggesting that he sent himself off into oblivion, and those journeys tend to last hours.

  The sisters decamp to the hallway where they can talk. Elsa asks, “How is he?”

  “Same, but he sleeps a lot now that he has that button.”

  “Can’t blame him.”

  “That’s another reason I want to get him back to Atria”—his assisted-living home—“and into hospice. Don’t you think he should experience the end of his life?”

  “Maybe, but I wouldn’t mind some morphine right about now.”

  “Tough day?”

  “Yup, and it isn’t over.” She says nothing about Mel showing up at the Haverstock house that morning, which would only upset Tara. “My partner’s waiting downstairs. We’re on our way back from Vermont.”

  “Vermont?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “You’re right, I don’t.” It’s long been understood that Tara can’t bear any mention of the travails suffered by “your kids,” as she once referred to the victims Elsa devotes herself to rescuing. Tara’s aversion to speaking of it, as if that could bring disaster on her own family, has created a habitual silence between the sisters whenever the subject comes up.

  “So,” Tara says, “I guess you have to leave.”

  “Probably should. Tell Dad I was here. I’ll come back tomorrow if I can.”

  “Okay.”

  They kiss good-bye as the rhythmic slap of footsteps comes down the hall, a gait that surprises Elsa with its familiarity. Hard leather on linoleum, not the more typical squish of a hospital worker’s rubbery shoe.

  Cowboy boots.

  An uneasy feeling jitters through her and there is Lex, carrying a round glass vase sprouting a colorful arrangement of orange African daisies and magenta snapdragons—hopeful, summery Get well soon flowers, not I’m so sorry flowers in autumn hues of a defeated season.

  “I hope this is okay,” he says. “I have a soft spot for people in hospitals.”

  “They call that Munchausen by proxy,” Elsa snaps when what she really wants is to remind him of the barrier she thought she’d erected between them earlier, establishing her need for privacy. She can’t imagine what he’s thinking, coming up here with a gift.

  “That’s when you make someone sick, not visit them,” Tara corrects her. Then, turning to Lex with a smile, she says, “You must be the partner. I’m the sister. Thanks for the flowers. They’re beautiful.”

  “It’s not a bad gift shop down there,” he says.

  Elsa takes the vase from him. “Dad’s out cold; we shouldn’t have bothered coming. I’ll bring this in and then we can go.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Thank you.”

  She senses his gaze following her into her father’s room as if he’s disappointed that he wasn’t invited to join her. It was a mistake, this detour. Roy’s slow breaths in and slower breaths out suggest that his sleep has only deepened. She places the bouquet on a shelf within his view. When she kisses his warm forehead, his papery skin seems to hold the form of her lips a moment after she pulls away.

&nb
sp; “I love you, Dad,” she whispers.

  As she’s watching him, his breathing seems to grow even more lethargic, but she isn’t sure; his eyelids quiver, or maybe they don’t. He seems alive and he seems dead and the contradiction of it makes her dizzy with sadness.

  Back in the hall, she tells Lex, “It’s time to go.”

  Lex says, “Nice to meet you, Tara,” and follows Elsa out. The elevator smell is more complicated now, someone’s incontinence having added itself to the mix. They don’t look at each other and don’t speak until they’re back in the parking lot.

  “I guess I should thank you for the flowers,” she says.

  “You already did.”

  “I didn’t mean it.”

  “Do you mean it now?”

  “Not really.”

  “Elsa, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I encroached on your privacy and I shouldn’t have.”

  “Forget it.” With the key fob, she unlocks the car doors with a pair of bleeps. “Let’s just get back to work.”

  “Want me to drive?” he offers.

  His compassion feels suffocating, but she is tired. “Sure. Thanks.”

  As soon as they’re on the highway, Lex at the wheel, she leans back and nurses the sensation that she might just fall asleep if she doesn’t talk to him or allow herself to think of the day’s failures. Of how, for the half a day they’ve spent on Ishmael Locke, they aren’t any closer to finding Ruby. Of how even her visit to the hospital amounted to nothing but wasted time. Of how if she does return to Whitelaw Street tonight, creeping in under cover of darkness like a burglar, it will probably end only with more disappointment.

  The car whizzes south. She leans her head back and parses her strong reaction to Lex’s interest in her life, how the slightest hint of curiosity stirred her defenses. How hypocritical it is of her to have cornered him yesterday about where he went to college when he clearly didn’t want to tell her, and now, when he wants to know about her, she slaps him down.

  But she doesn’t know how to talk about the hovering loss of Roy. From the moment his terminal illness was announced, her thoughts have spun enough on their own without the interference of people’s inquiries, which only add velocity to the sensation that she’s about to exit her known orbit. Only lately has she begun to realize how the pact of silence she’s shared with her father all these years has somehow kept her grounded. He’s been someone to talk to about everything, she realizes now. And when he’s gone, you’ll be sealed alone in your echo chamber, locked in your dark closet forever.