The Thief of All Light

by Bernard Schaffer

  Molly had come through the beaded curtain first, followed by two other teenagers, a puff of marijuana smoke billowing out toward the fluorescent lighting. Carrie had pointed at the old man crossing the street and said, “Do any of you know that creep? He just came in here and said some crazy shit to me.”

  Molly had squinted as she’d lowered her head to look. “That’s just Old Man Krissing. He stops in every few weeks to see if we have any new posters. What’s he wearing, a Bieber shirt? Last time I saw him he had a Wiggles T-shirt on.”

  “The kids’ group?” Carrie had asked.

  “Yeah. He’s so cute. He must have grandkids who love music.”

  “He’s not cute, Molly. He’s an asshole.”

  “Okay. What did he say to you?”

  None of them looked concerned, or even interested. “It was nothing,” Carrie had said. “Just forget it.”

  “Well, I think he’s cute.”

  The group filtered back through the curtain separating the store from the large room in the rear, their voices replaced by the gurgling of a water bong and subsequent fits of coughing. “Carrie, come get in on this before it’s gone!” Molly had shouted.

  She’d watched the old man get into a small, green VW Bug and drive away. She’d looked over her shoulder and said, “I’m good, thanks.”

  Two little girls had been reported missing. One of them from twenty miles away, in the southern end of the county, and another from New Jersey. Just two of the thousands who were reported missing that year, but these two were different.

  In the years to come, the newspapers would label them the first Krissing girls.

  Bill Waylon’s office had a framed photograph with portraits of ten smiling, perfect little angels. Some of them wore braces, some wore large, thick glasses. Some were awkward, and some were so beautiful they looked destined to be supermodels. Each of them smiled at the camera, full of life and youth, unware that their flames were about to be snuffed out by the darkest of people in the darkest of ways. Words were inscribed under the portraits: We Will Never Forget You. Your Light Will Shine Forever.

  Beneath that was a framed, yellowed newspaper article that showed Waylon in a suit, looking much younger and fitter, without the bulging pot belly that threatened to bust through his white uniform shirt, standing next to another detective. The headline read DETECTIVES QUESTIONED ABOUT KRISSING ARREST MUTILATION.

  She’d read that newspaper article when it was first printed, the same way she’d read every article when the investigation first came to light. Somehow, it was different than reading about the Manson Family murders, or any of the serial killers Robert Ressler talked about profiling. She’d come face-to-face with Krissing, and he wasn’t grandiose or seductive or powerful at all. He was just some dirty pervert wearing a ridiculous T-shirt with ridiculous sunglasses and hair. Just a son of a bitch who ruined the lives of multiple families that lived within ten miles of her house.

  That same day, Carrie had surprised everyone she knew by removing all the jewelry from her face. She’d thrown the letter from Charles Manson in the trash the same morning she’d taken her first community college class in criminal justice.

  Her phone buzzed again, and she looked down to see a new text from Molly: Joke’s on u bitch I found a boyfriend!

  “Great,” Carrie said, tossing her phone onto the passenger seat.

  It buzzed again. He’s got these awesome friends, they want to take me to a party. OMG they said it’s the best party ever!

  Carrie slowed to a stop at the next light and picked up her phone, typing, What the hell are you talking about?

  A new text appeared before she could send it. BTW never ever never get a margarita at Tailfeathers. They suck. They taste like medicine or something.

  Carrie jabbed the call button with her thumb and pressed the phone to her ear, starting to drive again. It rang as she drove, mentally instructing Molly to pick up. She heard thumping music in the background and Nubs’s sweet giggle, saying, “Mommy can’t come to the phone right now. Leave a message!”

  “Pick up the phone, you asshole,” Carrie said, then hung up.

  An incoming picture appeared on her screen. Molly was slumped forward, grinning stupidly at the camera. Her eyes were half-lidded, heavy with too much mascara that ran dripping from their corners. Her frosted blond hair was a tangled mess, and one of the men surrounding her was pulling it back, like he was holding a dog by a leash.

  The picture was crowded with men surrounding Molly, staring at Carrie through the phone’s screen. The one pulling her hair wore a red hooded sweatshirt with a Greek fraternity symbol emblazoned across the chest. He was leering down at Molly, hungry for her.

  Carrie yanked the wheel right, making the tires squeal, and jammed the gas pedal to the floor, heading for the distant lights of Old Town.

  * * *

  Tailfeathers’ parking lot lights were already turned off by the time she arrived, a message to people trying to get there before last call that it was too late. The bartenders weren’t making enough money and they were closing early. The neon beer advertisements flickered in the front windows, washing the entrance in fluorescent yellows and greens. Carrie’s headlights panned a tinted-out SUV as it backed out of a parking space near the front door, the driver looking at Carrie’s car with annoyance as she turned on her high beams to see who was inside. There were figures in the back, hidden behind the car’s darkened windows. She caught a glimpse of a red sweatshirt in the front passenger seat and threw her car into park, jumping out to block their way. “Stop the car!” she commanded, pointing at the driver.

  She heard Red Sweatshirt say, “What the fuck?” through the open car window as she wrenched her gun from the holster on her hip and raised it, leveling it at the driver’s suddenly wide eyes. “Police department. Stop. The. Mother. Fucking. Car. You heard me that time?” she said.

  The driver slammed the transmission forward and held up his hands, saying, “What’s going on?”

  “Who else is in the car?” Carrie said.

  “What?” he cried. “What are you talking about?”

  Carrie circled around to the driver’s side, trying to peer through the darkened rear windows. “Where is she?”

  “Where’s who?” the driver spat.

  “The girl from inside! The girl you told about the party!” She turned the gun on Red Sweatshirt and shouted, “Don’t sit there looking at me like I didn’t see you all standing around her five minutes ago!”

  “Officer, there’s a misunderstanding,” the driver said. “That was just—”

  Carrie grabbed the rear door and pulled it open. The SUV’s interior light came on, revealing the two other men who were in the picture holding a case of Budweiser on the seat between them. Both of them waved their hands in the air, crying out, “We didn’t do anything!”

  She tried looking in the seats behind them, unable to see down on the floor, where Molly would be lying curled up, passed out, or maybe even covered by a blanket so no one could see her being driven away by these bastards to their party. “Open the rear.”

  “What?”

  Carrie reached through the window and grabbed the driver by the shirt, twisting it and snarling, “Open the goddamn rear gate.”

  He looked down at her grip on his shirt and said, “Get your hands off me, lady! You have no idea what you’re doing!”

  “I know that I’ll be blowing your motherfucking brains out all over your boyfriend here if you don’t open the trunk!”

  “Stop pointing a gun at us! There’s nothing in there!” Red Sweatshirt screamed, his voice breaking with terror.

  “Open the rear gate!” Carrie shouted back.

  “There’s nothing back there!” the driver cried out. “Just let me go. Please, please let me go!”

  With that, the bar’s front door opened and Molly burst through it, laughing aloud, needing to press her hand against the outside wall to steady herself. She turned her head and her eyes widened at the sig
ht of Carrie pressing a gun to someone’s forehead. “What are you waving that thing around for, you maniac?”

  Carrie looked at the driver. Tears were streaming down his face. Snot dripped across the top of Red Sweatshirt’s quivering upper lip.

  “You made it sound like you were about to be gang raped by these assholes!” Carrie shouted.

  “You mean the picture?” Molly said. “Jesus, that was a joke, Carrie! I was just trying to give you shit for not coming to hang out with me!” She looked at the men in the car, both of them overcome with fright, and rolled her eyes, “Look what you did. Go sit in your car.”

  When Carrie didn’t move, Molly snapped, “Now, so I can fix this!”

  Carrie slammed her gun back in its holster and turned around, grabbing her car door and pulling it open and shut as hard as she could. The slam echoed all around them. She grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, feeling anger bubbling up inside of her.

  When your chief finds out about this, there is going to be major shit, she told herself. Pointing at gun at unarmed civilians, off-duty, out of your jurisdiction. For no reason. Major, major shit.

  She watched Molly lean against the driver’s door, talking to the men inside. Saw them looking from Molly, to her, and back again. Molly reached in and touched the driver’s face, wiping it for him and then cupping the side of his cheek with her hand. She waved as they sped off.

  Molly shuffled toward Carrie sheepishly, her hands stuffed in the back pockets of her tiny shorts. “You okay?” she said, leaning against Carrie’s door.

  “I’m going to get fired.”

  “No, you’re not. You’ll be fine. God, chill out.”

  “How would you know?” Carrie shot back at her. “You got fired from your last job three weeks ago!”

  “I didn’t get fired. Technically, I got laid off.”

  “Well, in my job you don’t get laid off, Molly. I get fired, and no one will ever hire me again. Christ, I could even get arrested over this.”

  “You’re not going to get fired, okay?” Molly snapped. “I made a deal.”

  Carrie looked at her suspiciously. “What kind of deal?”

  “I told them if they kept their mouths shut and just went home, I wouldn’t tell you they were all snorting crystal in the bathroom.”

  “Were they?” Carrie said.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Were you?”

  Molly folded her arms and glared at her. “Seriously?”

  “That picture you sent me was a dick move, Molly. A really dick move.”

  “It was a joke, Carrie. Honest to God, I thought you’d know I was just messing with you.” Molly covered her mouth with the back of her hand to try to stifle a laugh. “I cannot believe you came in here, guns blazing like that! Holy shit, that was the most badass thing I ever seen in my life.” Molly punched her lightly in the arm. “You made those dudes piss their pants.”

  Carrie looked away, fighting the urge to smile. “I’m still mad at you.”

  “Yeah, but you love me,” Molly said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have come here ready to shoot up the place trying to rescue me.”

  “Just get in the car. I’m taking you home.”

  Molly pointed across the parking lot. “I have my car here.”

  “Get in. I can smell alcohol on you. You’re not driving.”

  “Can’t you just follow me home to make sure I get there okay?” Molly whined.

  “Yeah, so I can witness you swerve into a telephone pole? That’s a great idea. You can get your car tomorrow. Get in.”

  Molly went around to the passenger side and got in. “I’m only listening to you because you have a gun and now I know how much you like threatening people with it.”

  Carrie went to put the car in drive, stopped, and looked at Molly. “Seat belt.”

  “Seriously? We’re only going a few blocks!”

  “Seat. Belt.”

  “Oh my God, you’re such a cop bitch!” Molly grabbed the seat belt and yanked it across her body. “There, are you happy now?”

  “Not even close,” Carrie said, starting to drive.

  “What did you think of the guy in the red sweatshirt?” Molly said as they pulled out of the parking lot.

  “The one with snot coming out of his nose?”

  “That was just from the meth. He’s not like that all the time, probably.”

  “If you say so. Why do you ask?”

  “He gave me his number.”

  Carrie glared at her. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Mama has needs, hon. Mama has needs.”

  “Mama needs to stay away from strange men she meets in bars is what Mama needs.”

  “See? Right there. That’s why you’re single,” Molly said. “You’re too picky.”

  3

  MORNING WEEKDAY SHIFTS WERE NORMALLY QUIET. THEY’D HAVE an occasional wreck, where someone took a sharp turn too fast and wiped out a length of chicken wire fence. Mainly, mornings consisted of phone calls to the station complaining about cars parked where they shouldn’t be. Normally, the owner of the car sobered up enough by ten A.M. to come retrieve it. No police response necessary, as Carrie wrote on most of her reports.

  She spread out her newspaper across the ancient, unsteady table in the locker room, picking at the jagged pieces of contact paper that had long covered it, preferring the unfinished wood beneath.

  She sipped her coffee as she flipped through the paper, looking for the local news section. It was three pages long, tucked behind the national news. This was irredeemably stupid, in her opinion. Nobody was reading the local newspaper for yesterday’s global events. The Internet had real-time updates from all corners of the earth, free of charge, but every backwoods news rag wanted to pretend it was still the 1950s and act like they were the ones informing the public.

  What local papers could do was report on things the Internet didn’t care about. They should have had reporters at every police station and township meeting, digging up all the drama that people scurried to cover up like cat droppings in a litter box. Maybe then citizens wouldn’t be so quick to say, “Well, it’s not like cops do anything around here anyway” or insist the police treat every barking dog complaint like the crime of the century.

  She scanned the news and saw a few articles about local high school sports teams, a seniors group raising money for the troops, and what the weather was going to do. She closed the paper in disgust and got up, realizing that the familiar weight around her hips was missing. She laughed at herself as she walked over to her locker and spun the dial to open it. She’d never even put on her gun belt that morning.

  Bill Waylon arrived precisely at eight A.M. His white shirt gleamed, and the sleeves were creased sharp enough to cut anyone walking past him too closely. His black leather shoes were polished to reflective surfaces, and the brim of his chief’s hat shined with bright yellow braids. His silver hair was brushed back, the same color as his fine, thick mustache. In a way, he looked like some kind of sheriff from the Old West. The kind who walked into saloons alone and let the wanted men have one last whiskey before deciding to go quietly or die where they stood.

  “You know what the best thing about being chief is, Carrie?” he’d once asked. “There’s not some pain in the behind being chief over you.”

  He was good to her, if overbearingly stuffy. From the start he’d been protective, making it known far and wide that the first cop who so much as said “Hello” to her in a harassing way was going to find their ass in a sling. The way Bill protected was awkward and overdone but well intentioned, the way an aunt introduced you to all your cousin’s friends on the football team, as if saying, “I know she’s pretty, but none of you can have her.”

  He glared at anyone who cursed in the station around her and tried to set a good example himself. She caught him struggling to come up with replacements for what he meant to say, forcing awkward phrases like, “That mother slick-talker” and “Goddarn son of a b . . . biscuit
-eater,” and it always left her laughing.

  “You need to stop, Chief. I hear worse all the time. Shit, I say worse all the time,” she’d told him.

  He’d get red in the face and say, “You’re just a little bit older than my girls, Carrie. I wouldn’t want anybody talking dirty in front of them if they were here.”

  Waylon had been with the Coyote Township Police Department just a few years longer than she had, but he’d brought a wealth of experience and connections from his previous job as a Vieira County Detective. His office walls were decorated with awards from every federal agency and multiple photographs with various politicians, including then vice president Joe Biden. “I don’t vote for their kind, of course,” Waylon explained whenever someone saw the picture, “but he’s from Delaware and his wife’s from just outside Philadelphia, so they took interest in the Krissing case. When the vice president asks you to be somewhere, you be somewhere, I don’t care what party you are. They almost threw me out of the council meeting over that one, though, that’s for sure.”

  She’d heard him say it a half-dozen times before taking him aside and saying, “I’m a Democrat. Why do you keep saying ‘their kind,’ like it’s something bad?”

  “You’ll grow out of that,” he’d said, waving his hand dismissively. “A few more years on the job and you’ll be as Republican as they come.”

  “I’ll grow out of a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body?” She’d looked him up and down and said, “I don’t think I like the way this conversation is going, Chief.”

  His mustache had twitched as he looked at her, caught between smiling and having a slight panic attack. It was as if all the man’s fears about having a female in the station house had come true and he was the one all the women’s liberation groups and EEOC attack dogs were going to come gunning for. He stuttered a little and said, “I-I didn’t mean anything by it, Carrie. Of course you have that right.”

  She’d squinted at him and leaned forward, “Hey, boss?”

  “What?”

  Her hand snapped out, cracking him in the belt buckle, making him flinch and protect his groin with both hands. “I’m fucking with you,” she’d said. “Lighten up.”