Hello, Darkness

by Sandra Brown

  It took him half an hour to finish his whiskey. He set the empty glass on the coffee table, stared at it for several seconds, then said, “I should go.”

  But she couldn’t let him leave without offering some consolation. “You did everything you could, Dean.”

  “That’s what everybody tells me.”

  “Because it’s true. You did your best.”

  “It wasn’t good enough, though, was it? Two people died.”

  “But three lived. If not for you, he probably would have killed the children, too.”

  He nodded, but without conviction. She stood up when he did and followed him to the door, where he turned to face her. “Thanks for the drink.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Several seconds ticked by before he said, “I caught your story on the six o’clock news.”

  “You did?”

  “It was good.”

  “Trite.”

  “No, really. It was good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Holding her with a stare, his eyes seemed to implore her in a way that she knew her own must mirror. Emotions that she couldn’t deny, but had held in rigid check for months, erupted inside her. By the time Dean reached for her, she was already opening her lips to receive his kiss.

  Later, when she relived it and was able to be brutally honest with herself, she realized that she had wanted him to kiss her, and that if he hadn’t initiated it, she would have.

  She had to touch him or die. The need for him was that essential.

  Dean must have felt the same. His mouth mated with hers possessively and hungrily. Pretense and politeness were shattered. The constraints of conscience snapped. Tension that had been building for months was given vent.

  She threaded her fingers up through his hair. He unknotted the tie belt of her robe and when he slid his hands inside, she didn’t protest but rose up on tiptoes to bring their bodies flush against each other. They fit. And the perfection of it brought a temporary end to the kissing and they just held each other, tightly.

  Paris’s mind spun with sensual overload. The cold metal of his belt buckle against her belly. The texture of his trousers against her bare thighs. The fine cotton of his shirt against her breasts. His body heat seeping into her skin.

  Then his lips sought hers again. As they kissed, his hand moved to her breast. His thumb brushed her distended nipple, then he bent his head to take it into his mouth, sucking it with urgency. Gasping his name, she clutched his head against her.

  As he lowered her to the floor, she undid the buttons on his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders, but that’s as far as it got before he was kissing her again. Between her thighs she felt him grappling with his belt and zipper.

  The tip of his penis nuzzled her pubic hair, probed, and then was inside her.

  His fullness stretched and filled her. He settled his weight onto her and she absorbed it gladly, squeezing his hips between her thighs. The pressure was incredibly sweet. The sounds that rose up from her chest were a joyous mix of laughter and weeping.

  He kissed away the tears that leaked from the corners of her eyes, then clasped her head between his strong hands and laid his forehead against hers, rolling it gently back and forth as they exchanged the air they breathed and the ultimate intimacy.

  “God help me, Paris,” he said raspily, “I just had to be inside you.”

  She slid her hands beneath his clothing and pressed his buttocks with her palms, drawing him even deeper into her. He hissed a swift intake of air and began to move. With each smooth thrust, the intensity of the pleasure increased. And so did the meaningfulness. Cradling her chin in one hand, he tilted her face up for a kiss.

  He was still kissing her when she came, so that her soft cries were released into his mouth. Within seconds he followed her. And still, they clung to each other.

  Their separation was gradual and reluctant. As the physical ecstasy began to recede, the moral significance of what they had done encroached. She tried to stave it off. She wanted to rail at the unfairness of it. But it was inexorable.

  “Oh, Lord,” she moaned, and, turning onto her side, faced away from him.

  “I know.” He placed his arm across her waist and drew her back against his chest. He kissed her neck lightly and brushed strands of hair off her damp cheeks.

  But his hand froze in the act when her telephone rang.

  Earlier she had set her answering machine to pick up, so she could monitor calls. Now Jack’s voice blared from the speaker, making him a third presence in the room.

  “Hi, babe. Just calling to check on you, see how you’re faring. If you’re asleep, never mind calling me back. But if you’re up and want to talk, you know I’m willing to listen. I’m worried about you. Dean, too. I’ve been calling him all evening, but he’s not answering any of his phones. You know how he is. He’ll be thinking it was his fault that the standoff turned out the way it did. I’m sure he could use a friend tonight, so I’ll keep trying to reach him. Anyway, love you. Rest well. ’Bye.”

  For the longest time, neither of them moved. Then Paris disentangled herself from Dean and crawled as far as the coffee table, where she pressed her head against the wood, hard enough to hurt.

  “Paris—”

  “Just go, Dean.”

  “I feel as badly as you do.”

  She looked at him over her shoulder. It was bare; she had dragged her robe along behind her like a bridal train. Frantically she tugged up the sleeve to cover the exposed slope of her breast. “You couldn’t possibly feel as badly as I do. Please leave.”

  “I feel bad for Jack, yes. But I’m damned if I regret making love to you. It was destined to happen, Paris. I knew it the minute I met you, and so did you.”

  “No, no I didn’t.”

  “You’re lying,” he said quietly.

  She snuffled a laugh. “A minor offense compared to fucking my fiancé’s best man.”

  “You know that’s not what this was. It would be much easier for us if that’s all it was.”

  That was true. Behind the shame, her heart was breaking from the despair of knowing that it would never happen again. Perhaps she could have forgiven herself a simple tumble, a hormonal rush, a temporary fall from grace. But it had been far too meaningful to dismiss and forgive.

  “Just leave, Dean,” she sobbed. “Please. Go.”

  She laid her head on the table again and closed her eyes. Scalding tears rolled down her cheeks as she listened to the rustle of his clothing, the jangle of his belt buckle, the rasp of his zipper, and his muffled footfalls on the carpet as he walked to the door. She endured a purgatorial silence until she heard the door open, then close quietly behind him.

  • • •

  “Paris?”

  With a start, she looked behind her, toward the studio door. Dean was standing there, as though he had materialized from out of her memory.

  She’d been so lost in thought, it took several seconds for her to process that this was the here and now, not an extension of her reverie. She swallowed thickly and motioned him in. “It’s okay. My mike’s not on.”

  “Crenshaw said I could come in if I didn’t make any noise.”

  He sat on the stool beside hers, and for one insane moment, she felt like throwing herself at him, taking up where they had left off in her recollection. His scruff that night had left whisker burns on her skin. Within a few days they had faded. But the sensual imprints made on her mind had never gone away. Last night’s kiss had revealed how vivid and accurate they were.

  “Nothing yet from Valentino?”

  She shook her head to answer him, but also to clear it of the persistent sensual tweaks. “Did you get Gavin home all right?”

  “With orders that he’s not to leave, and I don’t think he’ll disobey me tonight. It shook him up to be questioned at the police station today. He was certainly on his best behavior tonight. Of course, he was trying to impress you.”
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  “Well, he succeeded because I was impressed. He’s great, Dean.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah.”

  She watched him for a moment, noticing the worry line that had formed between his eyebrows. “But?”

  He brought her into focus. “But he’s lying to me.”

  chapter 24

  Sergeant Robert Curtis was working overtime. He was ensconced in his cubicle inside the CIB, where only one other detective was burning the midnight oil, on a robbery case.

  The radio on Curtis’s desk was tuned to FM 101.3. He was listening to Paris Gibson’s voice while reading the information he’d gleaned about her suspended television career and departure from Houston. His friends in the HPD had been thorough, faxing him everything that had ever been printed about Paris, Jack Donner, and Dean Malloy. It was interesting stuff.

  The search of Lancy Ray Fisher’s, aka Marvin Patterson, apartment had yielded some surprises, too, specifically, a box of cassette tapes, all of Paris Gibson’s radio program.

  Now, why, the detective asked himself, would a con cum janitor have such a burning interest in Paris that he would collect recordings of past programs when he could listen to her live every night?

  Lancy’s mother hadn’t provided any insight.

  An intelligence officer, having weeded through miles of red tape and reams of records, had located her. Currently she lived in a mobile-home park in San Marcos, a town south of Austin.

  Curtis himself had made the thirty-minute drive there. He could have dispatched another detective to conduct the interview, but he’d wanted to hear firsthand why Mrs. Fisher’s son, Lancy, living under the alias Marvin Patterson, was seemingly obsessed with Paris Gibson.

  The interior of Mrs. Fisher’s domicile was even worse than the exterior portended, and she was as untidy and inhospitable as her home. When Curtis showed her his ID, she was at first suspicious, then belligerent, and, finally, abusive.

  “Why don’t you take your sorry ass outta here? I got nothing to say to no goddamn cop.”

  “Has Lancy been to see you recently?”

  “No.”

  Curtis knew she was lying, but he got the impression that there was no love lost between mother and son and that she would welcome a chance to air her complaints. Rather than challenge the truthfulness of her reply, he remained quiet and tried to pick the cat hair off his trousers while she sucked on a cigarette and he waited until she decided to unload.

  “Lancy’s been a thorn in my side since he was born,” she began. “The less he comes around me, the better I like it. He lives his life and I live mine. Besides, he’s gone and got uppity.”

  “Uppity?”

  “His clothes and such. Drives a new car. Thinks he’s better’n me.”

  Which wouldn’t be saying much, Curtis thought. “What make and model is his car?”

  She snorted. “I can’t tell one Jap car from another.”

  “Did you know he was working at a radio station?”

  “Sweeping up is what he told me. He had to take that job after getting fired from his other one on account of stealing. That was a good job and he went and blowed it. He’s dumb as well as no’count.”

  “Did you know he used an assumed name?”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me what that boy did. Not after he was a cokehead and all.” Leaning forward, she wheezed in an undertone, “You know, that’s why he did them dirty movies. To get dope.”

  “Dirty movies?”

  “My neighbor lady? Two rows over? She come running over here one night not long ago, says she’s seen my boy, Lancy, wagging his thing in some nasty movie she rented at the video place. I called her a fuckin’ liar, but she said, ‘Come see for your ownself.’ ”

  She sat up straighter, striking the righteous pose of a recent convert with only contempt for the unshriven. “Sure enough, there he was, nekkid as a jaybird, doing such as I ain’t never saw did before. I’s embarrassed to death.”

  Curtis feigned sympathy for a mother whose son had gone astray. “Does he still work in the, uh, film industry?”

  “Naw. Don’t do drugs no more either. Leastways he says he don’t. It was a long time ago. He was just a kid. But still.” She lit another cigarette. Curtis would leave there feeling and smelling like he had smoked three packs himself.

  “What name did he use when he made the movies?”

  “Don’t remember.”

  “What were the titles of the movies he was in?”

  “Don’t remember and don’t want to know. Guess you could ask my neighbor. And how come an old lady like her is watching trash like that anyway? She ought to be ashamed of herself.”

  “Does Lancy have a lot of girlfriends?”

  “You don’t listen too good, do you? He don’t tell me nuthin’. How would I know anything about girlfriends?”

  “Has he ever mentioned Paris Gibson?”

  “Who? That a boy or a girl?” Her puzzled reaction was too genuine to have been faked.

  “Doesn’t matter.” He stood up. “You know, Mrs. Fisher, that aiding and abetting is a felony.”

  “I ain’t aided or abetted nobody. I done told you Lancy ain’t been here.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I look around.”

  “You got a warrant?”

  “No.”

  She blew a gust of smoke up at him. “Oh, what the hell. Go ahead.”

  It wasn’t a large place, so except for having to avoid hissing cats and their droppings, his walk through it didn’t take long. Nor did it take him long to determine that someone had slept in the spare bedroom. The narrow bed had been left unmade and there was a pair of socks on the floor beside it. When he knelt down to pick up one of the socks, he noticed the loose floor tile beneath the bed. It came right up with a little nudge of his pocketknife.

  Replacing what he found there exactly as he’d found it, he rejoined Mrs. Fisher in what passed for the living room. He asked who the socks belonged to.

  “Lancy must’ve left them last time he was here. Long time ago. He never did pick up after hisself.”

  Another lie, but he’d be wasting his time to dispute it. She would continue lying. “Do you know if Lancy has a computer?”

  “He thinks I don’t know about it, but I do.”

  “What about a cassette recorder?”

  “Don’t know about that, but all them modern contraptions are a waste of good money, if you ask me.”

  “I’m going to leave you my card, Mrs. Fisher. If Lancy comes here, will you call me?”

  “What’s he done?”

  “Avoided questioning.”

  “’Bout what? Can’t be anything good.”

  “I’d just like to talk to him. If you hear from him, you’d be doing him a favor to notify me.”

  She took his business card and laid it on the cluttered TV tray beside her reclining chair. He didn’t quite catch what she muttered around the cigarette dangling from her lips, but it didn’t sound like a promise to do as he asked.

  He was anxious to get into the fresh air and away from the potential of being blown to smithereens when her oxygen tank exploded, but at the door he paused to ask one further question. “You said that Lancy got fired from a good job for stealing.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Where was he working?”

  “The telephone company.”

  As soon as he got into his car, Curtis contacted the San Marcos PD, explained the situation, and asked them to keep surveillance on Mrs. Fisher’s mobile home. He then got another detective in his own unit busy running down Lancy Ray Fisher’s employment record at the telephone company.

  Traffic on northbound Interstate 35 was reduced to a crawl because of road work, so by the time he reached headquarters, the information he’d sought was already available. Fisher’s employment records at Southwestern Bell were in his real name. He’d been an excellent employee until he’d gotten caught stealing equipment.

  “High-tech stuff at the time,�
� the detective reported. “More or less obsolete now because the technology changes so quickly.”

  “But still useable?”

  “According to the expert, yeah.”

  Armed with that information, Curtis bumped Lancy Ray Fisher up to the viable suspect list and turned his attention to the materials he’d been faxed from Houston.

  Included were copies of newspaper articles, transcriptions of TV news coverage, and materials printed off the Internet. They told a tragic story and filled in some of the gaps that Malloy had been averse to filling.

  For instance, Curtis now understood why Paris Gibson wore sunglasses. She had suffered an injury to her eyes in the same auto accident that had robbed Jack Donner of his life—except for a beating heart and minimal brain function.

  Paris had been riding on the passenger side of the front seat, with her seat belt buckled. When the car struck the bridge abutment at a high rate of speed, air bags deployed. But they weren’t any help against flying glass from the windshield, which was supposed to have been shatterproof, but wasn’t, especially not when the 185-pound driver of the vehicle was catapulted through it.

  Jack Donner was not wearing his seat belt. The air bag retarded his ejection from the car, but didn’t prevent it. He sustained severe head trauma. The damage was irreparable and extensive. He was rendered physically helpless for the remainder of his life.

  His mental capacity was limited to reacting to visual, tactile, and auditory stimulation. The responses were feeble, on the level of a newborn, but enough to prevent him from being classified as brain dead. No one could pull the plug.

  Reportedly, his friend Dr. Dean Malloy of the HPD had been first on the scene. He had been following Mr. Donner in his own car, had witnessed the accident, and had made the 911 call from his cell phone. By all accounts, he was a caring and self-sacrificial friend, who for days following the accident kept vigil outside Ms. Gibson’s hospital room and Mr. Donner’s ICU.

  The last follow-up story on Jack Donner’s tragic fate reported that Paris Gibson had recovered from her minor injuries and, having resigned from her position at the TV station, was moving Donner to a private nursing facility.