Journey Into Darkness

by S. J. Harris

  I punched in the number for Mt. Washington Volunteer Fire Department. The black guy answered, and I could tell by his voice he’d been sleeping.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “This is Kim Journey. I was the flight nurse on the call out there earlier. I was wondering if you could give me that address. Did you happen to see the dog again?”

  He gave me the Bullitt County address. “I don’t know what happened to the dog,” he said. “We never saw him again. I’m sure he’ll come back to the house eventually. Of course, there’s no one there to take care of him now.”

  “Thanks for your help,” I said. “Sorry I woke you.”

  I sat there for a few minutes, trying to think of what to do next. I thought it likely that the dog would return to the house, bewildered that his master was gone. He would lie on the porch waiting for Elmer to return, waiting faithfully for something that could never happen.

  My Ops phone vibrated and the message read LAUNCH STAT.

  Time for me to fly.

  3

  Sunday morning I checked out with the Flight Operations Director and, instead of going straight home and to bed like a good little girl, took I-65 south to the Mt. Washington exit and proceeded to get hopelessly lost. The two-lane blacktop stretched through hundreds of acres of corn and soybean fields, through curves shaded by pines, sycamores and maples, through trailer parks with clothes hung out to dry in the front yards. I had gotten the address to Elmer Barrow’s farmhouse from the volunteer fireman and foolishly assumed I’d be able to drive around and find the right street. After thirty or so miles of wandering, I found an open gas station and went inside to ask directions.

  “You going over to Barrow’s place this early on a Sunday?” The man behind the counter shot me a toothless grin. “He’s most likely still in bed. Sleeping it off.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Thanks.” I didn’t bother telling him that Elmer was, in fact, sleeping it off till Kingdom Come.

  I followed the directions and turned left on a dirt road that supposedly led to the farmhouse. My Mustang suffered a generous mud bath on the rain-soaked, pitted trail, my kidneys a good jarring. Before I made it to Elmer’s address, I spied my quarry on a roadside drainage culvert. The brown and white mutt lay dead near a mailbox marked Jackson.

  I stopped my car, killed the engine, got out and looked him over. A tire tread imprint striped his left rear leg and back. The fur on his belly had been spiked by dried mud, and his left ear was completely gone. Several flies buzzed around the open wound. I wondered if some psycho jerk had gotten a kick out of intentionally running him down. I felt sorry for the poor critter.

  I looked around, saw nobody. On one side of the road were tobacco fields, young leafy plants set in perfect rows. On the other side were driveways, each separated by perhaps two-hundred feet of dense brush. I couldn’t see the houses, but I knew they were back there somewhere. The air had been washed clean by last night’s rains, and I caught the scent of honeysuckle on the light breeze. I guessed most of the townspeople had either made it to church already or were sleeping their own Saturday nights off.

  Maybe because I was weary from working twenty-four hours straight and my judgment wasn’t quite up to par, or, maybe because I knew it was my only chance to retrieve evidence of what I’d seen last night, I decided to do a little field autopsy.

  I took my goody bag (a black nylon satchel that’s more or less a souped-up first-aid kit with supplies pilfered from some of the finest medical institutions in the country) from the back seat of my car and ferreted for a scalpel. When my digging proved fruitless, I inverted the case and agitated its contents to the passenger side floorboard. I took inventory: Band-aids, Nitrile gloves, an assortment of pens advertising the latest miracle drugs, isolation masks, plastic zip-lock specimen bags, a pad of Post-Its, a pen light, alcohol swabs, peroxide, a suture kit, a bottle of nitroglycerine tablets, some individually-wrapped Tylenols and aspirins, a Swiss army knife, some four-by-four gauze pads and Kerlix gauze wrap, my copy of Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms I’d picked up at a used book store, a variety of syringes and IV catheters and a few rolls of surgical tape. No scalpel.

  The Swiss army knife, dull and awkward and absolutely not the right tool for the job, would have to do.

  The dog was already stiff with rigor. I held him steady on his back with my right hand and, with my left, sawed through his skin and viscera with the dull knife. The incision was jagged and generally not very aesthetically pleasing.

  My knowledge of canine anatomy was about as keen as the blade, but I got lucky and found the stomach. I cut through the pouch, spread it open. Empty. No food. No finger.

  I shined the penlight in for a better view. On the stomach lining I saw a cluster of purple flecks, adhering there like gnats on a watermelon rind. I tried forceps from the suture kit, but the slimy lacquer chips eluded the steel’s pinch.

  I thought about excising the entire stomach, then got a better idea.

  I peeled off one of the Post-Its and pressed the sticky side flush with the stomach wall. Success. Miniscule purple dots covered the Post-It glue strip. I folded the yellow paper, zipped it into a specimen bag. I repeated the process, gathering all the evidence I could. I neatly rolled the two plastic speci-bags and tossed them into my satchel.

  Preparing for the inevitable stench, I donned an isolation mask and proceeded to dissect the bowel. Either the finger had been completely digested or had been purged with the last bowel movement. I found no trace of it.

  I thought about taking the dog somewhere for a proper...what? Funeral? Disposal was more like it. I saw buzzards circling overhead, remembered a Clint Eastwood line from one of those old spaghetti westerns. I decided to let nature take care of business.

  I heard the crunch of gravel under tires, looked up and saw a red Chevy Blazer backing out of the driveway just beyond the mailbox. The driver (Mrs. Jackson, I presumed from the mailbox heading) glanced my way, saw a bleary-eyed, sinister surgeon at work, bloody knife in hand and butchered doggie at foot. Mrs. Jackson, all dolled-up in a summery floral print dress and probably running a little late for Sunday services somewhere, went for her cell phone. She nervously punched in some digits, put the phone to her ear.

  “I can explain,” I shouted. I walked toward the SUV, heard the automatic door locks click. She sprayed me with driveway rock as her tires spun forward and back toward her residence.

  I sat in my car and waited for the police to come.

  4

  A few minutes later three Bullitt county cruisers, lights flashing but no sirens, surrounded my Mustang. It must have been a slow day for crime in Mt. Washington. Did they think I robbed a bank or something?

  I waited in my car until one of the officers came to talk to me. The other two walked to the culvert and looked at the dog. One of them had a camera.

  “Step out of the vehicle please.” The nametag over his badge read Sgt. J. Butterfield. Mirrored sunglasses rested on the bridge of a nose that looked to have been broken at least once. Tobacco tar coated an otherwise nice set of teeth, and I could only imagine what his forty-something year-old lungs must look like.

  I opened the door and climbed out. “I can explain this,” I said.

  “License, registration, proof of insurance.”

  I produced the documents. He told me to turn around and put my hands behind my back, and then he slapped a pair of cuffs on my wrists.

  “Am I being arrested?”

  “At the moment you’re being held on probable cause. An eye witness reported an animal mutilation and, yes, ma’am, that’s against the law.”

  “I told you I can explain.”

  He didn’t say anything. He carried my license, registration and proof of insurance to his cruiser, climbed in and shut the door.

  The other two officers stood near the dog. They were talking to each other, too low for me to hear. The one with the camera took some photographs from a variety of angles. I stood there for about ten min
utes until officer J. Butterfield returned.

  “You’re being charged with misdemeanor malicious killing and mutilation of an animal,” he said. He read me my rights.

  “I didn’t kill the dog. The dog was dead already. Can I please explain.”

  “We’ll talk about it at the station.”

  The three county cops guided me to J. Butterfield’s car. One of them put his hand on my head as I folded myself into the back seat. I didn’t like that.

  “What about my car?” I said.

  “Tow truck’s on the way,” said Butterfield.

  ***

  The Bullitt County police station, jail and courthouse were all in the same three-story brick building. One-stop shopping for crooks. Butterfield escorted me inside, where I was “processed.” They photographed me, front and both profiles, fingerprinted me, typed my personal information into a computer and then left me alone in a small room with one table and three chairs and no windows. I waited there until Butterfield and a man wearing a white dress shirt with a yellow tie came and sat in the other two chairs.

  “This is Detective Schubert,” Butterfield said. “He has some questions for you.”

  Detective Schubert’s blonde hair had been shaped into an old-fashioned flat-top, and I noticed an occasional spasm on his left lower eyelid. He sipped coffee from a mug that read “I (picture of a red heart) MY GOLDEN RETRIEVER.” I was doomed.

  “Tell me what happened this morning,” he said.

  I was tired and grouchy and on the verge of tears and resented being treated like a thug. All I wanted to do was sleep, and I really didn’t care if it was on my own bed or a jailhouse cot.

  “I need to speak with my attorney,” I said.

  Schubert was doing all the talking: “You certainly have that right, but we might be able to clear this up and release you if you’ll just tell us why you were cutting a dog open on this fine Sunday morning. Have you ever heard of The Black Eclipse? It’s a--”

  “I’ve heard of it,” I said. Christ. They thought I was part of a Satanic cult, bent on animal sacrifice and organ retrieval. I had nothing more to say to these fools except, “I need to speak with my attorney.”

  “Let her make a call and then put her in lockup,” Schubert said. “I don’t have time for this shit.”

  I fly to a lot of accident scenes and meet a lot of crummy lawyers that way. I had several business cards in my purse and picked the slimiest of the bunch, a legal leech named B.J. Roth. It cost me a five-thousand dollar retainer, but he had me out of custody and my car out of impound in less than two hours. I was released on my own recognizance with a court date set for August 17.

  Since the dog’s value was deemed to be less than one-hundred dollars, I was charged with misdemeanor malicious killing and mutilation of an animal. If Fido had been, say, a Labrador or some other expensive breed, I would have faced a felony charge.

  I drove home.

  ***

  My apartment, the third story of a Victorian divided into rentals, had ten-foot ceilings, hardwood floors, two fireplaces and an avocado-green refrigerator that I’d wanted to throw out the window since day one. I opened the anachronism, extracted a bottle of Dos Equis and sat on the sofa, too tire to go to bed.

  I had booked my next assignment in New York City and reserved tickets for the upcoming U.S. Open tennis tournament. But now I had some work to do. I had to clear myself of criminal charges, and the only way to do that was to somehow prove that I had cut the dog open with good intentions, with intentions of finding evidence for what I perceived to be an unreported accident or even a brutal crime. I didn’t know where to start. I was too weary to think about where to start.

  I clicked on the apartment’s complimentary thirteen-inch color TV which, equipped with rabbit ears, clearly received exactly one channel. The choir from a protestant service sang, “He Could Have Called Ten-Thousand Angels.” I remembered thinking, as a little girl, that Jesus should have called those ten-thousand angels and that He and the angels should have kicked the Romans’ asses all the way to Hell.

  Now that would have been a story.

  I stopped going to church when I was fourteen because I was mad at God, angry with Him for allowing some dragon to steal Jenny. I became a nurse to help people in trouble, ease their pains, guide them back to health. I abandoned prayer and religion in favor of action. I travel, post copies of Jenny’s photo hoping that someone will recognize her and give me a call. So far no one has, but I cling to the hope.

  I finished my beer, still thinking He should have called those angels.

  I walked to the bathroom, took one look in the mirror and realized one of the reasons Mrs. Jackson had been so frightened. I looked horrible. Dark circles under my eyes, hair greasy and a mess, cheeks pale and haggard. I needed sleep.

  I showered, toweled off, went to bed naked and closed my eyes. Somewhere in semiconscious twilight I heard the William Tell Overture. My cell phone was ringing.

  “Hello.” My voice crackled as if I’d swallowed some of the gravel slung on me back at the Jackson place.

  “Kimberly?”

  Only one person on the planet calls me Kimberly.

  “Yeah Mom, it’s me,” I slurred. Fatigue and one beer had me sounding something like a stroke victim.

  “You sound awful. You aren’t sick, are you?”

  “Tired. I just got home from a twenty-four. I just now went to bed.” She didn’t need to know about my extracurricular adventures.

  “I’m sorry. I wanted to make sure you made it to New York okay.”

  “I’m still in Louisville. I don’t go to New York till next week.”

  “We prayed for you in church today,” she said. “I had the pastor say a special prayer for you. I worry about you gallivanting all over the country and flying in those helicopters. I wish you’d move back home and find a job here.”

  “You know why I travel, Mom.”

  Silence.

  “She’s gone, Kimberly. Jenny’s gone. You have to face it, darling. Jenny’s in Heaven with Jesus. We’ll see her when we get there.”

  I hung up on her. Every time we talk she tries to convince me that Jen’s dead. Fuck it. She is not. I won’t believe it until there’s proof. Yes, it’s been sixteen years since she disappeared, and the police and the FBI and the private investigator we hired never came up with any solid leads, and the case went cold many years ago but, damn it, I refuse to give up. Mom can’t make me give up.

  I turned off my phone, closed my eyes, went spinning into a dream, the dream I have often of the day Jenny was abducted.

  My dream is high resolution, living color, crisp as burnt toast.

  I am talking to my friend Sara. Sara Goldstein. I am eleven years old. My parents don’t usually allow me to talk a long time on the phone, especially to Sara, fearful that some of her Judaism might rub off. But my parents aren’t home. They have gone to K-Mart. I am in charge of watching Jenny while they’re gone. Sara and I are talking about boys and other general crap. It is Saturday. Hot outside. I hear the familiar melody of the ice cream truck. Over and over it plays, fading eventually as the truck moves away from our house. Jenny runs into the kitchen where I’m talking on the phone, her bare feet flapping against the yellow and white rubber tiles. She is carrying Sha-Shu, the terry cloth cat our mother made for her when she was three. The cat is wearing a homemade hospital ID bracelet from when “they” had their tonsils taken out. “Ice cream man,” Jenny screams. “I want a ice cream. Please, Kim, please.” She’s tugging on my arm, getting on my nerves like only a little sister can. I tell Sara Goldstein to hold on for a minute. I take a dollar from the brown crockery cookie jar on the counter, hand it to Jenny and tell her to go on out and get her ice cream. “All by myself?” she asks. I tell her she’s a big girl and I’ll be off the phone in a minute and to come straight home after she gets her ice cream. But I’m not off the phone in a minute. More like ten. I finally say goodbye to Sara Goldstein and walk outside, furious be
cause Jenny didn’t come straight home like I told her to. I walk around the neighborhood shouting her name. She comes running up to me with vanilla ice cream and little crushed peanuts on her mouth and hugs me and tells me she was scared out there by herself all that time.

  My dream is a lie. She never came running back. I never got that hug. I never smelled her hair, sweet and fresh, glimmering hot in the summer sun.

  My dream is a lie.

  5

  The doorbell woke me.

  I wrapped myself in the top sheet, stumbled to the living room and looked through the peephole.

  Holy smokes.

  Jim Higgins stood outside my door holding a long-stemmed red rose. He was wearing khaki chinos and a silky black t-shirt, nice leather shoes and matching belt with a cell phone and pager clipped to the hip. I opened the door.

  “Jim. I’m so sorry. I overslept. I must have forgotten to set my alarm. Is it eight o’clock already?”

  “Five past,” he said. He handed me the rose. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “I’ll be ready,” I said.

  At the stairwell he turned and smiled. What a smile. “You look great with that on,” he said.

  “See you in an hour.”

  I felt like such an idiot. I did a quick job of putting myself together, half expecting Jim not to come back. He arrived promptly at nine, this time with a bottle of Champagne.

  “You look wonderful,” he said. “I liked your other outfit better, though.”

  He handed me the wine.

  “Dom Perignon? Wow. Is there some special occasion? Did you win the lottery or something?”

  “It’s June twelfth. Our first date,” he said.

  I had a feeling it wouldn’t be our last.

  The closest thing I had to Champagne glasses were some clear plastic party cups from the supermarket. Jim followed me to the kitchen, uncorked the bottle and poured two glasses full. We clicked a toast.

  “I made reservations at the Seelbach,” he said. “But we kind of missed the window on that. You mind if we eat dinner here?”