Hello, Darkness

by Sandra Brown

  Curtis left briefly to get them fresh coffees. When he returned, Paris told him excitedly, “I think I’ve found it. We don’t have a date-and-time stamp like we would on the Vox Pro, but it’s on a cassette of recordings made about that time. He was especially morose that night, but I aired this call anyway. His statements provoked follow-up calls that kept my phone lines busy for hours.”

  Curtis resumed his seat. “You made him a celebrity for the evening.”

  “Unwittingly, I assure you. Ready?” She started the tape.

  Women are unfaithful, Paris. Why is that? You’re a woman. When you’ve got a man practically eating out of your hand, why would you want another? Isn’t quality better than quantity?

  I’m sorry you’re unhappy tonight, Valentino.

  I’m not unhappy, I’m angry.

  Not every woman is unfaithful.

  That’s been my experience.

  You just haven’t found the right woman yet. Would you like to hear a special song tonight?

  Like what?

  Barbra Streisand sings a wonderful rendition of “Cry Me a River.” It’s a cliché, but what goes around comes around.

  Play the song, Paris. But even if she gets dumped the way she dumped me, it won’t be the retribution she should receive.

  Paris stopped the cassette and looked across at Curtis, who was thoughtfully twirling his ring around his finger again. He said, “I guess the retribution he felt she deserved was to choke her to death and bury her body in a goddamn cow pasture. Excuse my French.”

  Paris lowered her head into her hands and massaged her temples. “I never would have gathered from what he said that he was plotting to kill her.”

  “Hey, don’t beat yourself up over this. You’re not a mind reader.”

  “I didn’t detect a real threat in what he said.”

  “No one would have. And anyway, we’re still guessing. Valentino may have no connection whatsoever to Maddie Robinson.”

  She lowered her hands and looked at him. “But you think they’re connected, don’t you?”

  Before he could answer, John Rondeau pushed open the door. He smiled brightly at Paris. “Good morning.”

  “Hi, John.”

  He seemed pleased that she remembered his name. “Making progress?”

  “We think so.”

  “So am I.” He looked at Curtis. “Can I see you outside for a minute?”

  Curtis got up. “Back in a sec.”

  “I’ll see if I can find any other calls from Valentino.”

  The detective left with the younger man and was gone much longer than a sec. By the time he returned, she had scored again. “This call is on the same cassette, which means they couldn’t have come in more than a few days apart.

  “He’s a totally different Valentino. Very upbeat. He claims that the unfaithful lover is ‘out of his life’ and he stresses the word ‘forever.’ You’ll hear on the tape the difference in his mood.” Sensing that Curtis was only half-listening and seemed distracted, she paused to ask, “Is something wrong?”

  “Maybe. I hate to think this might be bad, but . . .” He ran his hand around the back of his thick neck as though it had suddenly begun to ache. “I suppose you know that Malloy has a son.”

  “Gavin.”

  “You know him?”

  “I knew him as a little boy. I haven’t seen him since he was ten.” Curtis’s anxiety was evident. She felt a stab of fear for Dean. “Why, Sergeant? What about Gavin? What’s happened?”

  chapter 18

  “Gavin?”

  “Yeah?”

  Dean pushed open his son’s bedroom door and went in. “Boot up your computer.”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me.”

  Gavin was lying on his bed watching ESPN. He should have something more constructive to do than watch a replay of a soccer game between two European teams. Why wasn’t he up and dressed, doing something rather than lazing in bed?

  Because I haven’t made him, Dean thought.

  He had a lazy son because he’d been a lazy parent. Trying to make Gavin get off his butt hadn’t been worth the quarrels that invariably followed. Lately, to avoid a hassle, he’d let a lot of things go. He shouldn’t have. He wasn’t trying to win a popularity contest with Gavin. He wasn’t his buddy, his pastor, or his therapist. He was his father. It was past time for him to start exercising stricter parental authority.

  He snatched the remote control from Gavin’s hand and switched off the television set. “Boot up your computer,” he repeated.

  Gavin sat up. “What for?”

  “I think you know.”

  “No I don’t.”

  The disrespectful tone and insolent expression stoked Dean’s temper. He felt it smoldering like a nugget of coal inside his chest. But he wouldn’t yield to it. He would not.

  He said tightly, “We can go straight to the police station, where they’re waiting to interrogate you about Janey Kemp’s disappearance, or you can boot up your goddamn computer so at least I’ll know what we’re up against when I get you down there. Either way, your days of jerking me around are over.”

  He had stayed home this morning to organize and type his notes on a suspect he had interviewed several days ago. The detective overseeing that case was growing impatient with the delay.

  He knew that if he went to his office, he couldn’t have concentrated on anything except Paris and the case in which she was involved. He couldn’t have kept himself out of the CIB, where he knew she and Curtis would be listening to her tapes.

  So he’d called Ms. Lester, told her he would be working at home, and forced himself to tackle the overdue report. He had just finished it when Robert Curtis called and gave him what could be life-altering news.

  “The police want to question me?” Gavin asked. “How come?”

  Dean had been clinging to a thread of hope that John Rondeau had made a grave error, but Gavin’s worried expression was a dead giveaway that the information was correct.

  “You lied to me, Gavin. You’re an active member of the Sex Club. You’ve exchanged numerous email letters with Janey Kemp, and, based on what you two wrote back and forth, you know her a hell of a lot better than you led me to believe. Do you dispute any of this?”

  Gavin was now seated on the edge of his mattress, his head hanging between hunched shoulders. “No.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “The night she disappeared.”

  “What time?”

  “Early. Eight or so. It was still light.”

  “Where?”

  “At the lake. She’s always there.”

  “Had you arranged to meet her there that night?”

  “No. She’d been giving me the leper treatment for the last few weeks.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s like that. Gets you to like her and then, you know, you’re history. I heard she’s been seeing this other guy.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Don’t know. Nobody does. Rumor is he’s older.”

  “How old?”

  “I don’t know,” Gavin whined, becoming impatient with all the questions. “Thirty-something, maybe.”

  “So what happened the other night?”

  “I went up to her and we started talking.”

  “You were mad at her.” Gavin looked up at him, silently asking how he knew that. “In your last email to her, you called her a bitch. And worse.”

  Gavin swallowed hard and dropped his head again. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Well, that’s not how the police are going to see it. Especially since she’s been missing since that night.”

  “I don’t know what happened to her. Swear to God I don’t. Don’t you believe me?”

  Dean desperately wanted to, but he resisted the urge to go easy on him. Now wasn’t the time to turn soft. Gavin needed him to be tough, not Mr. Nice Guy. “We’ll get to the part about believing you later. Boot up your
computer. I need to see how bad it is.”

  Reluctantly Gavin moved to his desk. Dean noticed that he typed in a user name and a password to get in, which would’ve been unnecessary if he had nothing to hide.

  The home page of the Sex Club had been designed by amateurs. It was the cyberspace-age version of restroom wall graffiti. Dean motioned Gavin aside. He sat down in the desk chair and reached for the mouse.

  “Dad,” Gavin groaned.

  But Dean ignored him and went straight to the message board. Curtis had given him the names Gavin and Janey had used: blade and pussinboots, respectively. For ten minutes, he scrolled through the messages, stopping to read the ones written by his son and the judge’s daughter. It was difficult reading.

  The last message Gavin had emailed her was crude, insulting, and, now, incriminating. Sick at heart, Dean closed the website and turned off the computer. For several moments he stared into the blank monitor screen, trying to link the writer of what he’d just read with the little boy he had taught to use a baseball glove, the kid with the gap-toothed smile and sprinkling of freckles across his nose, the youngster whose biggest problem used to be foot odor.

  Dean couldn’t afford the time to indulge in his personal despair now. He must save it for later. More imperative was clearing his son of all suspicion.

  “This is one time you had better come clean with me, Gavin. I want to help you, and I will. But if you lie to me, I’ll be hamstrung and unable to help you. So no matter how bad it is, is there anything else I should know?”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything about Janey and you. Did you actually ever have sex with her?” He nodded toward the computer. “Or was this only talk?”

  Gavin looked away. “We did it once.”

  “When?”

  “Month ago, six weeks,” he said, raising his shoulders. “Not long after I met her. But we’d already been exchanging emails. I was the new kid in town. I think that’s the only reason she was interested in me.”

  “Where did this take place?”

  “A whole bunch of us met at some park. I can’t remember the name of it. She and I broke away from the group, got in my car.” Resentfully, he added, “Didn’t you ever do it in the backseat of a car?”

  He was trying to pick a fight. The transference of guilt was a classic distraction tactic that Dean recognized and refused to buy in to. “Did you use a rubber?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. Jeez.”

  “And you were with her only that one time?”

  Gavin rolled his shoulders, pushed back a hank of hair that had fallen over his forehead, looked everywhere except at Dean.

  “Gavin?”

  He sighed theatrically. “Okay, one other time. She went down on me.”

  “Same questions.”

  “Where did it happen? Behind some club on Sixth Street.”

  “In public?”

  “Yeah, sorta, I guess. I mean, we were out in the open, but nobody else was around.”

  He had a flash image of himself calling Pat and telling her that her baby boy was in jail for public lewdness. Where were you, Dean? she would have asked. Where had he been while his son was composing smutty letters and getting blow jobs in alleyways?

  The self-accusations had to be shelved until later, too. “Those two times? That’s it?”

  “Yeah, she cooled it, dumped me.”

  “But you weren’t ready to be dumped.”

  Gavin looked at him as if he was crazy. “Hell, no. She’s hot.”

  “To say the least,” Dean said in an undertone. “If there’s anything else, you’d better tell me. I don’t want any more ugly surprises, something the cops have discovered that you haven’t told me.”

  Gavin wrestled with indecision for at least half a minute before he said, “She, uh . . .” He opened a desk drawer, removed a paperback copy of The Lord of the Rings, and took out a photograph that had been secreted between the pages. “She gave me this the other night.”

  Dean reached for the photograph. He didn’t know which astonished him more, the girl’s graphic pose or her shameless smile. He slipped the picture into his shirt pocket. “Get showered and dressed.”

  “Dad—”

  “Hurry. I’ve been instructed to have you there by noon. A lawyer is meeting us there.”

  Finally, the gravity of his predicament seemed to have penetrated layers of adolescent insolence. “I don’t need a lawyer.”

  “I’m afraid you do, Gavin.”

  “I didn’t do anything to Janey. Don’t you believe me, Dad?”

  His sullenness had dissolved. He looked young and scared, and Dean experienced that same twinge in his heart that he had felt the night before when he watched him sleep.

  He wanted to embrace him and assure him that everything would be all right. But he couldn’t promise that because he didn’t know it to be true. He wanted to tell him that he believed him implicitly, but, unfortunately, he didn’t. Gavin had betrayed his trust too many times.

  He wanted to tell him he loved him, but he didn’t say that either. He was afraid that Gavin would rebuke him for it being too little too late.

  • • •

  Paris had been pacing the hallway for more than an hour, waiting. Nevertheless, she reacted with a start when Dean emerged through the double doors of the CIB, where he, Gavin, and an attorney had met with Curtis and Rondeau in an interrogation room.

  He looked surprised to see her. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  “I couldn’t leave until I knew that Gavin was all right.”

  “So you know?”

  “I was with Curtis listening to the tapes when . . .” She stopped, unsure of what she should say.

  “When my son became a suspect?”

  “As far as we know, no crime has been committed and Janey is with a friend.”

  “Sure. That’s why Curtis is putting Gavin through the wringer.”

  She pushed him toward a bench and made him sit down. It was an ugly, sad-looking piece, a cheap metal frame supporting a blue vinyl cushion with the stuffing poking up through numerous cracks. Probably it had been mindlessly picked at by the restless hands of witnesses, suspects, and victims who had occupied this same bench while despairing over their fate or that of someone they loved. They wouldn’t have been in this place unless their lives had been upended, perhaps permanently.

  “How is Gavin handling it?” she asked softly.

  “He’s subdued. Not giving off any attitude, thank God. I think it’s finally sunk in that he’s in deep shit.”

  “Only because he exchanged sexually explicit emails with Janey. So did a lot of others.”

  “Yeah, but Gavin has demonstrated a real creative flare,” he said with a bitter laugh. “Did they show you any of the stuff he’d written?”

  “No. But even if I’d read it, it wouldn’t have changed my opinion of him. He was a terrific little boy, and he’ll be a fine young man.”

  “Two days ago I thought breaking curfew was a major offense. Now . . . this. Jesus.” Sighing, he propped his elbows on his knees and covered his face with his hands.

  Paris placed her hand on his shoulder. It was instinctive. He needed to be touched, and she needed to touch him. “Have you called Pat?”

  “No. Why upset her if it turns out to be nothing except some dirty emails?”

  “Which I’m sure is exactly what it’ll turn out to be.”

  “I hope. Twice he talked us through his actions that night. The accounts didn’t vary.”

  “Then he’s probably telling the truth.”

  “Or his lie has been well rehearsed.”

  Staring straight ahead, toward the open staircase across the hall, he tapped his clasped fingers against his lips. “I talk to liars every day, Paris. Most people lie to one degree or another. Some don’t even realize they’re lying. They’ve said or believed something for so long that it becomes their truth. It’s my
job to filter out their bullshit until I get to the real truth.”

  When he paused, Paris remained silent, giving him an opportunity to organize his thoughts. The warmth of his skin radiated up through his shirt and into her palm where it still rested on his shoulder.

  “Gavin admits to driving home drunk,” he said. “He admits to stopping along the way to barf in someone’s yard and to disobeying me by leaving the house in the first place.

  “He owns up to liking Janey, or at least liking what they did together. He says he talked to her that night and tried to persuade her to go somewhere with him. She shot him down cold.

  “He got mad, said things, some of which I can’t believe came out of my son’s mouth. He confesses to being furious when he left her, but he insists that he did. He says he joined a group of guys and remained with them, drinking tequila, until he left for home. He didn’t see Janey again.”

  Turning his head, he locked gazes with her. “I believe him, Paris.”

  “Good.”

  “Am I being naive? Is that wishful thinking?”

  “No. I think you believe him because he’s telling the truth.” She gave his shoulder a light squeeze of reassurance. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Have dinner with us tonight. Gavin and me.”

  Not expecting that, she quickly removed her hand from his shoulder and looked away. “I work at night, remember?”

  “There’s plenty of time to have dinner before you go to the station. We’ll start early.”

  She shook her head. “I have something to do this afternoon that can’t be postponed. Besides, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “Because of what happened last night?”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  Vexed by his perception, she said, “Okay, yes.”

  “Because you know that if we’re together it’s going to happen again.”

  “No it won’t.”

  “It will, Paris. You know it will. Furthermore, you want it to just as much as I do.”

  “I—”

  “Dean?”

  Upon hearing his name, they sprang apart. A woman had just alighted from one of the elevators and was coming toward them. There was only one word to describe her: stunning.