Try Darkness

by James Scott Bell

  “And then we’ll go to a place where all three of us live, and you can stay there with us.”

  I gave a quick look to Father Bob and Sister Mary. Both had Wait till Sister Hildegarde hears about this looks on their faces.

  Kylie said, “Will the man find me?”

  “No,” I said. “We won’t let him find you. The police will catch him.”

  That was going to be the thing now, keeping Kylie safe and calm until we could decide what to do.

  After we ate I sent Sister Mary back to St. Monica’s with Father Bob. She said she’d get a room ready for Kylie.

  Then I drove Kylie to Central Division on Sixth Street, parking in front.

  “Is this where the police live?” Kylie asked.

  “Some of them,” I said.

  She held my hand as we walked in.

  35

  DETECTIVE BROSIA WAS accommodating. He didn’t fight me about being with Kylie during the interview.

  She sat on my lap in the interview room. Had her arms around my neck and held on to me. I put her little pink backpack on the table.

  “A couple of things,” I said, “before you start.”

  “Go,” Brosia said.

  “If she gets tired, we end the interview.”

  “Fine.”

  “You need to know some things. I was at the Lindbrook last Friday. The victim was a tenant and they weren’t going to let her stay. It’s illegal, and I called them on it. They put me in touch with their lawyer. His name’s Al Bradshaw, works for Gunther, McDonough & Longyear. Now she’s dead.”

  “You saying there’s a connection?”

  “I’m saying that’s what happened. You can follow up.”

  “Thanks. Anything else?”

  I asked Kylie if she needed anything to drink. She said she would like some orange juice, please.

  Detective Brosia brought her a Styrofoam cup with orange juice in it, and a cup of coffee for me. He sat at the table.

  “Kylie,” he said, “can I ask you some questions now?”

  She nodded tentatively.

  “You don’t have to be scared. Your friend Mr. Buchanan is here. Okay?”

  Nodded again.

  “I’m a policeman and I have to try to find the person who did the terrible thing to your mommy, okay?”

  Nod.

  “Can you help me?”

  Nod.

  “Can I look in your backpack?”

  Nod.

  Brosia took the backpack, opened it. Poured out the contents. Some crayons and paper fell out. “Is that all?” he asked.

  Kylie nodded once more.

  Brosia put the things back in the pack and said, “All right. Were you in your room when your mommy got . . . hurt?”

  Nod.

  “Where were you?”

  Kylie thought a moment, then whispered in my ear, “The closet.”

  “She says she was in the closet,” I said.

  “Can she talk to me?”

  Kylie shook her head.

  “I think I’d better translate,” I said.

  Brosia frowned. “Now that’s a new one on me. Doesn’t that present a hearsay problem?”

  “Not for investigatory purposes,” I said. “It’ll be all right. I’ll swear to everything on the statement.”

  Brosia shrugged. “We’ll go with it, then. So Kylie, you were in the closet?”

  Kylie nodded.

  “Why were you in the closet?”

  She whispered to me. I said, “She plays and sleeps in the closet. It’s like her room.”

  “Did you see what happened to your mommy?”

  Kylie whispered that she saw a man. I told Detective Brosia. It continued that way, with me as the go-between.

  “How did you see the man?”

  “There’s a crack in the door.”

  “You mean the closet door has a crack down the middle because it folds, right?”

  Kylie nodded.

  “Was it dark in the room?”

  “Mommy had lights on.”

  “So you could see what was going on?”

  “Some.”

  “Do you know how this man got inside the room? Did he walk in or knock on the door?”

  “Mommy let him in.”

  “So your mommy knew him?”

  She shrugged.

  “Had you seen this man before?”

  She shook her head.

  “Can you describe this man?”

  Kylie looked at me, confused.

  “Can you tell me what he looked like?” Brosia said.

  At this point Kylie drew some strength and faced Brosia. She answered him directly now. “I only saw his back. He had black clothes and a rainbow hat.”

  “A rainbow hat?” Brosia said. “Can you tell me anything else about the hat?”

  Kylie shrugged. “Rainbowy.”

  “Lots of colors on it?”

  Kylie nodded.

  “Anything else?”

  She shook her head. Brosia seemed frustrated.

  Then Kylie said, “I can draw it.”

  Brosia scratched his chin. “That’s not a bad idea. Do you want to use your crayons, Kylie?”

  “I’m tired,” Kylie said.

  “You’re doing great,” I said. “A real champ.”

  36

  KYLIE TOOK HER crayons and drew a pretty good rendition of a man in a hat. She drew green and red and yellow rings on the hat.

  “It looks like one of those Rasta hats,” Brosia said. “I think we have one in the evidence locker. Hold on another minute.”

  He left again.

  Kylie sighed.

  “Almost done,” I said. “Then we’ll go to a place where you can see the mountains and the sky for miles.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “Is it a hiding place?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “It’s not a place a lot of people know about. It’s where I’m staying right now.”

  “I want to stay with you.”

  “Then that’s how it’ll be.”

  Brosia came back in holding a knit Rasta hat with the distinctive color rings.

  “That’s it!” Kylie said, surprised and a little scared. “Is the man here?”

  “No,” Brosia said softly. “This isn’t the same hat. But this is like the one the man in the room wore?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s pretty distinctive,” I said. “Somebody at the hotel should have noticed that. Somebody sitting in the lobby, or the desk clerk.”

  Brosia said, “What color skin did the man have?”

  Kylie thought about it. “I stopped looking.”

  “I think she’s about through,” I said.

  “Just a few more questions.” Brosia leaned forward. “Did you see the man hurt your mommy?”

  Kylie shook her head.

  “Could you hear what was happening? Was there an argument or a fight?”

  “There was talking but I couldn’t hear.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “There wasn’t talking for a long time. I went to sleep.”

  “How long did you sleep?”

  Kylie shrugged.

  “When you woke up, what did you do?”

  “I came out and saw Mommy on the bed. I said her name. But she didn’t wake up. I ran to Mr. Hoover.”

  “Mr. Hoover who lives across from you,” Brosia said.

  “Uh-huh. And he came in and he said Mommy was dead and he went to get the police.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I got scared and I went to Candyland and I hid.”

  “Candyland?”

  “It’s the lower-floor room,” I said. “With a candy machine. She had a little hideout there. That’s where I found her.”

  “How’d you know she’d be there?” Brosia said.

  The question was a little too pointed for my taste. “I figured it out,” I said.

  “We’ll have to talk about that,” he said. The
n to Kylie, “Did your mommy have many men friends who came to visit?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did your mommy and you ever talk about men coming to see her?”

  Kylie shook her head.

  “How long were you living in the hotel?”

  “I don’t know.” She had started whispering the answers for me to repeat again.

  “Was it longer than a year?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How old are you, Kylie?”

  “Six.”

  “Did you have a birthday party when you turned six?”

  “My mommy gave me some cake with a candle in it.”

  “Just your mommy?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Were you living in the hotel when your mommy gave you that cake?”

  Kylie nodded.

  “What’s your last name, Kylie?”

  She shrugged.

  “What was your mommy’s whole name?”

  “Just Mommy.”

  “She didn’t have a last name?”

  “She said we could just be Mommy and Kylie.”

  Brosia frowned, wrote something down. “What about your daddy?”

  Kylie whispered to me, “I’m tired.”

  “That’s it for now,” I told Brosia. “She needs some sleep.”

  “I’m not finished yet,” he said.

  “Kylie is,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  He paused, then nodded. “See that you are. What about notifying Family Services?”

  I shook my head. “I’m her counsel and guardian-in-fact. Last thing she needs is county services.”

  “Can’t argue with you there,” Brosia said.

  “You wouldn’t want to,” I said.

  37

  OUTSIDE THE STATION, just before we got in the car, Kylie tapped my leg. She motioned with her finger for me to bend down.

  “I didn’t tell him about the picture,” she said.

  “What picture?”

  “Of Mommy. I didn’t want him to take it away. Am I bad?”

  “Show me the picture,” I said.

  Kylie took her backpack and unzipped a pocket. Pulled out a photograph. It was a little wrinkled around the edges.

  Showed a smiling, attractive woman.

  “Your mommy?”

  Kylie nodded. “Can I keep it?”

  “Sure you can,” I said. I’d make a copy of it and send it to Brosia. It didn’t have any evidentiary value that I could see. “But can I keep it for you for a little while?”

  “Okay,” Kylie said. “If you promise to give it back.”

  “I promise.”

  She started crying then, into my hip. In her little muffled voice she kept saying she wanted her mommy. I knelt down and let her cry it out for a while, then wiped her tears away with my thumb.

  “You did real good today,” I told her. “You’re brave, did you know that?”

  She sniffed and shook her head.

  “Well you are,” I said. “You need to know that.”

  38

  I DROVE HER back to St. Monica’s. She fell asleep on the way. I carried her onto the grounds and found Sister Mary in the office.

  Sister Mary said she had a cot in her room. “It’s better if someone’s around when she wakes up,” she said.

  I agreed and carried Kylie to Sister Mary’s small room and put her on the cot, then covered her with a blanket.

  “What’s going to happen now?” Sister Mary said.

  “I start making trouble for some very rich people.”

  39

  I GOT TO the Starbucks in Westwood Village at ten the next morning.

  They were playing “L.A. Woman,” by the Doors. I hadn’t grown up with the Doors and knew about Jim Morrison only by watching that movie Val Kilmer was in. Didn’t much care for the gastric squeal of “mojo risin’” over and over. I would have preferred shoving pencils in my ear.

  Al came in about ten-fifteen. All smiles.

  “This is more like it, bud,” he said. “Just like old times. Glad you called.”

  “I figured I’d buy you a foamy frothy white chocolate froufrou,” I said. “That was your drink, wasn’t it?”

  “Triple venti white chocolate mocha.”

  “What’s that do to your heart?”

  “Makes me know I’m alive. When I’m at home I’m not so sure.”

  “And how is the lovely wife these days?”

  “Same old.”

  “Still not the Norman Rockwell type, are you?”

  He shrugged. “Norman Rockwell was probably a serial killer. You never know.”

  I got him his drink and refilled my regular and paid the ransom. At least by this time the Doors were gone and some good jazz was going.

  “So I was sorry to hear about the death of that woman,” Al said.

  “The murder, you mean.”

  “Sorry to hear about it. Really.”

  “Sure.”

  “Sorry because she was your client, bud. And a human being.”

  “She was a human being that had to live like a rat. In a hellhole your client owns. Only you don’t let the rats stay in the hole a full thirty days, and that makes it illegal.”

  “There are several issues to that—”

  “Don’t start getting all lawyerly on me, Al. I was always better at it than you anyway. There’s issues when you don’t want to do what’s right. When everything’s on your side, the law and the facts, suddenly the issues go away. That’s the way the game is played.”

  Al bit down gently on his lower lip, like an amateur poker player hoping to fill a straight. It was the slightest tic but enough to give me a sense of well-being. Truth was, I didn’t mind playing a little hold-’em with Al, just to see him sweat.

  “What did you call me down here for?” he finally said. “Lecture me about the law? Way I see it, anything we had to say to each other is now moot. You had a client and that client is, unfortunately, dead. Yes, she was a tenant at the Lindbrook, and you could have filed something, but now that’s gone.”

  “Convenient, isn’t it?” I said. “If I were of an Oliver Stone bent, I might even say your client had an interest in making the problem go away.”

  “Tyler, my friend, don’t do this. Don’t go getting yourself into a lunatic state of mind. This is the big city—stuff happens. It happens a lot to people like that woman, out there on the streets. We wish it wouldn’t but it does.”

  “She has a little girl,” I said.

  Al frowned. “Did I know that?”

  “You should have.”

  “How old’s the girl?”

  “Six.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I’ve got her.”

  “You? What are you going to do?”

  “Protect her. And her rights.”

  “She’s your client?”

  “I’m guardian ad litem.” That’s a fancy Latin phrase for someone who stands in for an infant or child in a legal matter.

  “Well that’s just great, Ty.” Al picked up his drink as if he were making a toast. “You are a good man, taking care of the little ones. Where’s she living? With you?”

  “Her permanent residence is the Lindbrook.”

  Al froze with his cup halfway to his face.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t the law great? She can assert her right, by way of yours truly, to continue to occupy room 414 at the Lindbrook Hotel. The law is wonderful.” I toasted him with my cup.

  “You are not serious.”

  “Do I look like Adam Sandler to you?”

  Al’s hand was actually shaking a little when he put his cup down. “Don’t do that,” he said. “You don’t need to do that. We can work out a settlement right now. You and me. You can get a nice chunk for the girl. Think about that. Better than—”

  “Who’s behind all this, Al?”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to a lot of trouble to protect somebody. And you’re worried what’ll ha
ppen if I find out. You’re worried that this Lindbrook thing is going to blow up in somebody’s face, and maybe you’ll get singed yourself. Is that about it?”

  He shook his head. “You were a lot easier to work with when you weren’t so sold on yourself.”

  “Maybe I’m just not for sale,” I said. I wanted to believe that.

  Al tapped his cup lid with his index finger. “What’s with all this nickel-and-diming now? There’s no future in that, not for you.”

  “And you know what’s for me, is that it?”

  “We’ve known each other a long time,” Al said. “We’ve worked together before.”

  “Yeah. Remember the Morocco suit?”

  “Sure,” Al beamed, as if he was proud of it.

  The Morocco case was a lawsuit fueled by two monstrous egos with enough money to thump their chests like twin Kongs. Arn Bunting, the billionaire oil man from Texas who had made inroads as a Hollywood producer. And Duane Dollinger, the best-selling author on whose novel the movie Morocco was based.

  The movie’s budget ballooned to a staggering $170 million. The critics massacred it. On opening weekend it took in a mere $18 million, finishing third behind the latest Pixar animation and a Will Ferrell comedy. The movie never got legs, even though it had two A-list stars for the leads.

  Dollinger threw a fit and blamed Bunting for the loss, which hurt Dollinger’s hope for a franchise based on his series character. Bunting shot back that Dollinger had abused his right of approval over the script. Seven writers had worked on it at one time or another, and Dollinger had hated them all.

  Our firm represented Dollinger, a sixty-five-year-old fireplug who told us he would keep on throwing money at us until he had cut off the two things that Bunting, as a man, would rather keep.

  “What I remember about that,” I said, “was the week Dollinger testified. Here was a guy who was living large in Arizona, had a loyal following, who messed up his own movie and was now spending his time in a spite fight. He wouldn’t settle. He wanted to get to a jury, tell his story. His greatest story ever, starring himself. And he had the money to do it and we gladly took it, didn’t we?”

  “And why not?”

  “I thought, as I watched this guy, what would it be like if he was just some average doofus who really got ripped off? He’d never be able to be here, to get the representation we could give him. Even if he was in the right. It galled me then but I pushed that aside. I wasn’t supposed to think about it. Well, I’ve been thinking about it. Money shouldn’t be the only thing that talks.”