Darker Than Night

by John Lutz

  “Milford—Mr. Sand—wait a minute!” Luther now, talking to his back. “Let me explain how this happened. Maybe you’ll understand. Honest, I’m not trying to make excuses, but this was something Cara and I didn’t do on purpose. It just happened! It was nobody’s fault!”

  Young, so young. Milford smiled grimly. Not going to get any older.

  He reached up on the closet shelf and found his box of shells. Then he turned and faced his wife and her lover as he broke down the double-barreled twelve-gauge and began loading it.

  “No, no, Milford!” Cara retreated to the headboard and curled in the fetal position against it, as if shielding herself from an approaching tornado. Luther, the other nude figure in the disgusting scene, stood up from the bed and held out a palm in a signal for Milford to halt what he was doing.

  “Give this some thought, Milford. Don’t do this, please!”

  He seemed afraid now, but not in the slightest embarrassed. Milford thought that was odd, thinking how devastated he’d feel in Luther’s place. How wrong.

  Well, Milford had read about Luther’s background. What had the filthy animal learned during his time on the streets?

  And taught Cara!

  Milford finished slipping the shells into their chambers and deftly locked the shotgun closed. It made a cold metallic clucking sound—so efficient, a hard, impersonal substance forged precisely to its purpose, not like flesh.

  He could smell their sex now, the heat and wetness of it. It made him more sure of what he was about to do. He thumbed off the safety.

  “You can’t do this, Milford!” Luther said. He was hurriedly getting dressed, already had his pants half on and was buttoning his shirt.

  “Scum,” Milford said calmly. “Street scum that doesn’t deserve to breathe.”

  Cara remained curled on the bed, wrapping her bare arms about her head and whimpering.

  Luther was imploring but not giving ground, as if he had a few bargaining chips left to play and might yet be persuasive. “Think about this, Milford! I mean, like, really think about it!”

  “I am thinking about it. Are you?”

  “Yes. And I’m sorry! I apologize for this. And I really mean it! Will you give me a chance to leave? Will you promise not to hurt Cara? That’s all I’m asking!”

  “No and no.” Milford raised the shotgun to his shoulder and sighted down its long twin barrels to the end of everything.

  Luther was hobbling toward the door now, carrying his shoes in one hand and fumbling to button his jeans with the other.

  “I’ve been a fool!” Milford screamed at him. “And you betrayed me! You betrayed me! Scum! Street scum!”

  Milford squeezed the trigger for the left barrel. The right barrel was for Cara. The reload was going to be for him.

  The hammer clicked on the shell, but the gun didn’t fire.

  Luther continued his flight out the door, not looking back, an absurd figure dressing and hopping and ducking simultaneously. Astonished, Milford squeezed the trigger for the right barrel.

  Nothing. Another misfire.

  The shells must have been on the closet shelf too long. They were too old, Milford figured.

  Milford screamed and hurled the shotgun at the door Luther had slammed shut behind him.

  He heard Milford’s scream and what sounded like the heavy shotgun clatter off the door and drop to the floor. But Luther didn’t slow down. He kept running through the house, down the stairs and toward the front door, bumping into things, brushing furniture aside. Something fell and broke behind him. Like his life.

  Then he was outside, across the wood porch and down the steps and into the warm night.

  Away!

  Life on the streets had taught Luther some hard lessons, and when he came across the shotgun several weeks ago, he made sure it was unloaded, then left it where he’d found it in the back of the closet. The half-dozen shells in the box on the closet shelf he didn’t leave exactly as he had found them. He removed all their pellets and powder, then replaced them in their box and made sure nothing looked as if it had been disturbed.

  It was a precaution that saved his life.

  But now what was he going to do? It was just past dusk, and the darkening, tree-lined street was deserted and quiet, but for the ongoing scream of crickets. A car’s headlights passed a block down at the intersection, but that was the only movement. Luther was sure no one had seen him leave the house, or heard the disturbance inside.

  His heart was hammering and he was perspiring. Sweat stung his eyes, making it difficult to see. He dabbed at his eyes with his shirtsleeve, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, tasting Cara. Cara!

  Should he go back and do what he could to protect her?

  No, that might only make things worse. After dealing with the shotgun, Luther had searched the rest of the house to make sure there were no more guns. Milford wasn’t armed and wouldn’t shoot her. And whatever else he might do, with a knife or his bare hands…well, it would already have been done.

  A dog began barking far away, as if to remind Luther of a wider world beyond the dark street. He noticed the smell of recently mowed grass.

  The best thing he could do was get farther away from the house and neighborhood and stay away. He’d phone later, though, and make sure Cara was all right. He wouldn’t give up on her. He wouldn’t!

  But what would he do now?

  Where would he go?

  What would happen to him?

  It wasn’t the first time in his young life he’d asked himself those same questions he couldn’t answer.

  Each time, the terror and loneliness were worse.

  What will happen to me?

  Luther awoke, slumped low on the seat of Tom Wilde’s rusty pickup truck, and knuckled sleep from his eyes. The morning light flooding through the cracked windshield was blinding.

  He squinted at his watch. Past ten o’clock. Unable to think of where else to go last night, he’d finally walked to Wilde’s closed painting and decorating company and found a place to sleep in the cab of the old truck parked on the back corner of the lot. In the morning he’d go to work and try to figure out what he might do on a more long-term basis. As long as he had a job, he’d have some money and some options—if the state didn’t send a caseworker to find him.

  He thought there was a good chance Milford wouldn’t bother notifying the state for a while. He’d probably prefer that Luther find his way to another part of the country. Then he could cook up some phony story as to why Luther had left, rather than admit his wife had slept with their foster child. That admission would stop the money they were receiving from the agency in exchange for their temporary care of kids adrift like Luther.

  Luther looked at himself in the dirty rearview mirror and smoothed back his hair. His eyes were bloodshot and there was a look to them he hadn’t seen since Kansas City. Eyes of the lost and desperate.

  The afraid.

  He tucked his hair back behind his ears, then opened the rusty old door and climbed down out of the truck. Tom Wilde had driven the van home yesterday, but now it was parked at the curb; Wilde would be inside the building, probably wondering where his apprentice Luther was this fine, bright morning.

  There was a sharp pain in the small of Luther’s back, and one of his legs was stiff. He’d only been able to get comfortable enough to sleep in short stretches on the hard, cracked vinyl of the pickup’s seat.

  He clenched his fists, put them behind his neck, and leaned back at the waist. Something popped in his spine, and his back felt better. He felt awake and strong enough to work today, to lug five-gallon buckets of paint and scamper up ladders. Or he was sure he’d be able to work as soon as he limbered up.

  As he limped stiffly to the front of the building and its entrance, he tried not to think about what happened last night. But that was impossible.

  He’d have to tell Tom Wilde, because Wilde would eventually find out about it. And before leaving for their painting job, Luthe
r wanted to phone Cara, even if it meant he’d be talking to Milford. He wanted to make sure Cara was all right, that Milford hadn’t hurt her.

  If Milford had done something to her…

  Luther decided not to think about that.

  When he pushed open the door and stepped into the storeroom and office, there was Wilde sitting on the high stool at his workbench. He wasn’t dressed for work. Instead of his paint-spattered coveralls, he was wearing faded jeans and a dark blue pullover sweater that would be way too hot in another hour. His shoulders were rounded, his head bowed as if it were too heavy for his neck to support.

  “Tom?”

  “Morning, Luther.” But he hadn’t yet looked at Luther.

  When Wilde did raise his head to look, the light showed bruises on his face, and an eye that was rapidly turning dark.

  “What happened?” Luther asked.

  “Milford was here.”

  “This morning?”

  “Early. He was waiting for me to show up.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “That you were finished working here, and I didn’t have any choice in the matter. He used his fists on me to make sure I understood. That was his excuse, anyway.”

  “What’d he have against you?”

  “I was handy. He’d rather have been beating on you. What happened, Luther? What the hell’d you do?”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “No. He was too busy pounding on me.”

  Luther decided to let Milford keep his embarrassing secret. And there was no reason to spread the story that Cara had slept with Luther. That would be the worst thing for Cara. So if Milford wanted to protect his reputation and wound up protecting Cara’s, too, that was okay with Luther.

  “We had an argument, was all. He lost his temper. Who’d have thought a worm like Milford would have a temper like that? I called him some things, said some stuff I shouldn’t have.”

  “You must have,” Wilde said. “I can tell you there won’t be any making up. Not with a man like Milford. I warned you he’s more dangerous than he seems.” He lowered his eyes again, staring at the floor, then looked up and met Luther’s gaze. “It’s not just that Milford’s capable of hurting people real bad; he’s also got a lot of weight in this town. The folks that know him are scared to cross him, and he can make my work and my life impossible if I side with you. I’ve gotta do what he says, Luther. I have to let you go. I don’t want to, but I have to.”

  “I understand,” Luther said. “You been good to me, Tom, and I don’t wanna cause you any more harm.”

  “Milford was looking for you, Luther. He won’t give up till he finds you. Where’d you spend the night?”

  “Here. In the cab of the pickup.”

  “Jesus! You were here when Milford was!”

  “I guess. I musta slept through it.”

  “Lucky for you.” Wilde dug in his jeans pocket and came up with a wad of bills. “Here’s what I owe you, plus a little extra. It’s all I can do for you, Luther.”

  Luther accepted the money and thanked Wilde.

  “Where you going now?” Wilde asked.

  “I don’t know. I can’t hang around here.”

  “No, I guess you can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay, Tom. None of it’s your fault.” Luther moved toward the door. “See you.”

  “You be careful.” Wilde got down off the stool and came over and shook Luther’s hand, then gave him a powerful, awkward hug. “You watch out. Maybe take a bus outta here, but keep watching out the corner of your eye till you clear the town limits.”

  “I might do that, Tom. Thank you. You been good to me.”

  Luther eased out the door and walked away, not looking back. The sun was hot on his back, as if urging him on.

  But he wasn’t going to the bus station. He wasn’t going to leave town, because that would mean leaving Cara.

  Confident that Milford would be working in his office at the mine, Luther wandered around town for a while, trying to figure out where to go. If he got a motel room, Milford would eventually find him. And maybe not so eventually. Life on the streets in a place the size of Hiram was impossible. The homeless were made to move on or were arrested for vagrancy. The sheriff’s department would pick him up the first day.

  Luther had no idea where to go, what to do.

  What now? What will happen to me now?

  He found himself only a block from the Sands’ big Victorian house. Maybe Cara would be there alone. He might talk to her, be sure she was all right before leaving. She might have some ideas.

  He couldn’t be absolutely sure Milford wasn’t home. His pulse quickened as he approached the house and went up the steps to the wide front porch. He looked up and down the block. Unless someone was peeking out a window, he hadn’t been seen. The only unnatural sound was a car alarm beeping insistently blocks away. A bee droned out from the branches of a nearby sweet-smelling honeysuckle and circled Luther as if sizing him up, getting up the nerve.

  A few seconds after he’d rung the doorbell, Cara opened the door and stared out at him in surprise.

  She looked fine, unmarked. Maybe Milford had taken it all out on Wilde.

  “Cara…you okay?”

  “I am.” He saw now she’d been crying. Fresh tears glittered in her eyes. “Milford went to see Tom Wilde,” she said.

  “I know. I just came from there. Wilde had to fire me. Milford beat him up and didn’t leave him any choice. I don’t know what to do now, where to go. Listen, Milford isn’t…?”

  “He’s not here. After coming back from Wilde’s, he went to work. To his office at the mine, where he’s spent most of his time the past ten years.”

  She opened the door wider and touched Luther’s arm lightly with the tips of two fingers, drawing him inside with only the slightest pressure, as if by some magnetic force that bound them with the slightest contact.

  “I needed to come here and see you,” Luther said. His breath caught in his throat.

  He would have said more, but Cara suddenly clung to him and was kissing him hard on the mouth, grinding her lips against his. She moaned and began to tremble, digging her fingers into his back and turning their bodies so they moved back and were away from the lace-curtained window in the door and no one might notice them from outside.

  When they separated, she gazed into his eyes as if at worship and said, “You came to the right place, Luther. Here’s where you finally belong.”

  He believed her. Whatever name was on a mortgage or a marriage license, he was the one who belonged here, with Cara.

  With Cara he was home.

  27

  New York, 2004.

  He knew when she was due home from work, and he’d be watching out the window. Even from twelve stories up, he’d recognize her. He’d seen her leave for work, followed her and observed her eating lunch at an upscale restaurant on Central Park West. She was wearing a light gray dress and carrying a red purse and a folded black umbrella in case of rain. He’d know her by her clothes and by her long dark hair and by her walk, proud and erect, back slightly arched, head held high, her pace slightly faster than those around her. Almost as if she were on parade and could feel the gaze of someone watching her closely, focusing on only her out of the throngs of passing people.

  Maybe she senses it already. Maybe she knows.

  In the end, when destiny and time meet, they all seem to know, seem to understand that they knew all along and were betraying me. They understand the meaning and the justice and that they must pay. They’re struck by the meanings of life and of death simultaneously and see that there is no difference. A blink, a missed heartbeat, a final exhalation, nothing…the buzzing…color the length of light, nothing more. Their final wisdom is the lesson and the gift.

  He glanced at his watch, then went to the window and raised the blind. Pressing his forehead against the glass to gain a better angle, he looked down. Blue distance.

  And there she was!<
br />
  He gasped at the beauty.

  Mary Navarre strode along the sidewalk toward her West End apartment, veering slightly now and then to navigate the flow of pedestrian traffic and pass slower walkers. She was wearing the leather strap of her red purse diagonally across her torso as a precaution against snatch-and-run thieves, and she was wielding her folded umbrella in her right hand almost like a weapon with each stride. She might have intimidated those walking toward her, were it not for her smile.

  She used the keypad to enter the lobby, then checked for mail in the brass box with her apartment number above it.

  Nothing but advertising circulars and a notice urging residents to attend a neighborhood meeting to discuss increasing block security against the threat of terrorism.

  Maybe Donald could attend, Mary thought as she relocked the box, then used her key on the door to the inner lobby and elevators.

  As she pressed the up button, she saw that one of the elevators was on the twelfth floor, the other on the fifth. The arrow pointing to twelve didn’t move, but the one resting on five immediately began to descend. It stopped briefly on three, then continued down to lobby level.

  When the door slid open, a heavyset woman Mary had seen before nodded to her and left the elevator in a swirl of navy blue material, trailing a long scarlet scarf. Trying to look thinner. Mary wondered why overweight people so often tried to hide their bulk beneath tentlike clothing that only accentuated their size. Then she remembered stepping on the bathroom scale this morning, and tried not to think about the five pounds she’d somehow gained during the past month. She and Donald, himself getting thicker through the middle, had been enjoying too many rich meals in too many good restaurants lately.

  It has to stop….

  As she took possession of the elevator and pressed the button for the twelfth floor, Mary swore to herself again that she was going on a diet. Maybe try the Atkins. Her favorite meal was steak with a salad, rolls, and a baked potato, all washed down with a strong martini. She should be able to give up the potato, maybe a roll.

  On twelve, the elevator slowed and stopped, then settled slightly as it found its proper level, and the door slid open.