A Field of Darkness

by Cornelia Read

  I mean, first of all, why the hell would he show me the pictures if he’d stolen them? Why would he keep the file at the Weekly? It made no sense.

  I slogged my feet toward the jukebox, punched in Kenny’s B-17. There was a martial little snare drum, then sappy trumpets, then Ray’s rasp over some organ chords that would have made a perfectly serviceable roller-rink background tune. All-skate music.

  I shuffled back over to the bar and climbed back up on the stool. “I don’t get it.”

  Kenny set up a couple of Rock ’n’ Ryes for the guys down the bar. “What’s not to get?”

  “Well, Simon’s file . . . it’s supposedly copies of all the police photos from the crime scene. He said they came from a friend of his, the evidence room guy—that he got to make prints from all the negatives.”

  “So maybe he’s lying.”

  “Well, yeah, but then why would he show me everything? Because he’s some gloating sociopath daring me to catch him? I mean, especially since he let me take the whole file out of the morgue. He never does that. He’s like a total maniac about allowing anything out of that room. If he’s not there, it’s double-locked, with bars over the windows. No one else has keys.”

  “So it’s already completely out of character for him to let you take his precious eight-by-ten glossies on a field trip?”

  I thought about that.

  “And if this ‘evidence guy’ knew Simon had copies,” continued Kenny, “why didn’t he ask for them back? Cover his tracks when the shit turned up missing?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

  “Doesn’t add up.”

  “Doesn’t point us in any plausible direction, either.”

  “Never does,” he said. “You just go over the shit until something comes up wonky. Then you hustle and dig until you can play connect the dots.”

  “Well, you’re the cop . . . hustle and dig where?”

  “Where I’d start?” he said. “I’d try finding out whether Simon had any dough.”

  “He works at a second-rate newspaper, Kenny. None of us can afford soft toilet paper, for God’s sake.”

  “So find out how much he makes . . . does he get any outside work like weddings or something . . . maybe some inheritance—you want to know how he’s set for cash and how he spends it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because somebody’s paying off Schneider, Maddie. Somebody put him in that damn catbird seat with the snowmobiles and all. And when you find out who that somebody is, you’ve probably fingered your killer. You wanna know why I don’t like your cousin? It’s not because he acts like a homo—I could give a shit if he wears sequined lavender jumpsuits and walks around singing show tunes with five gerbils shoved up his ass.”

  “Now there’s an image,” I said.

  Kenny wrapped a hand around mine and squeezed. Hard. “I’m not messing around here, Maddie. You’re in danger, and you’re in danger from somebody with ready cash. If that doesn’t sound like Little Lappy Loafers, I don’t know what does.”

  “Let go of me,” I said.

  He didn’t.

  “Okay, so if I’m in so much danger, how come I’m not dead?”

  He dropped my hand.

  “Look, Kenny, I’m a complete chickenshit and I don’t have a death wish—but think about it. If whoever killed Sembles was scared of me, they’d have stuck around his house and finished the job when I showed up, not left me a cheery little personalized note on the front door and taken off.”

  He looked down and started wiping the bar again.

  “Let’s say it was Lapthorne,” I said, “even though there’s no way he could have driven the six hours from New York and back in between those two phone calls, and even though he spent the night with Ellis—why not off me if he’s worried I’ll nail him?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Why kill Sembles at all?” I said. “The guy hadn’t talked in twenty years, and he wasn’t about to start. All he wanted to do if he even thought about it was shoot up and nod out. So why not just get to the point and kill me? Lapthorne knows where I live, and so does Simon. For chrissake, Schneider probably does, if he’s connected to either of them.”

  “Must be,” Kenny said slowly, “that keeping you alive means you’ll be doing somebody a favor.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that whatever you’re digging up is something the killer wants to know.”

  My turn to stand there, all “no comment.”

  “When you’ve turned that last shovel of dirt,” he said, “when you see the little glint at your feet . . . seems to me you’ll find yourself in one of those shoot-the-messenger type of situations. And given everything else that’s gone on with this damn program, they’ll find your body all dressed up like Little Bo got-damn Peep.”

  He leaned back and crossed his meaty arms across his chest. “So unless you’d like to meet your maker in a hoopskirt, frilly pantaloons, and a big poke bonnet, I’d suggest you watch your back.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Hoopskirts never having been a look for me—much less, you know, being dead—I left the Crown shaken. It was starting to get cold. I put the Red Sox cap on my head, shoved my fists in my pockets, and stalked down the sidewalk toward work. Kenny’s parting words had chilled me enough that my shoulders went tight and my weight shifted to the balls of my feet every time I heard a car coming up behind me.

  Simon was the key. He might not be the killer—in fact I couldn’t picture him in that role at all—but what with this new crap about missing photos, he was, at the very least, central to finding out who was.

  And Kenny was right. I had to see if I could follow the money from Schneider toward whoever was willing to pay him for shutting up and walking off his steady job all those years ago. I couldn’t blame my bartender friend for thinking that cash automatically meant Lapthorne, but it didn’t have to be him, either.

  I mean, how much could it possibly cost to keep somebody in snowmobiles and Genny Cream Ale down near the Rez? We weren’t talking a lifetime of polo with constant bumpers of Veuve Clicquot all around, for God’s sake.

  In upstate dollars, the Schneider lifestyle was costing somebody maybe twenty grand a year, tops. Not the kind of cash I had lying around, but not an amount that really ruled anybody out as the asshole’s benefactor. In fact, that kind of money might even leave Ted or Wilt or Simon himself wide open.

  I didn’t make shit for pay, but I was a flunky peon. Those guys had been on the staff for tons longer. Maybe they cleaned up.

  It all joggled around in my head like a couple of dozen Super Balls—bouncing everywhere, no tracking a single one, no cohesion. I couldn’t imagine where I’d start once I got upstairs, so I just stopped on the sidewalk for a second, eyes clenched and head down, in front of the door to the office.

  It swung open and almost hit me, but the hydraulic noise of the auto-close arm along the top made me jump back. Someone clomped out, moving so fast they didn’t even see me. It was a woman in big sunglasses, unsteady in cheap, white, and stupidly tall high heels that looked especially nasty against a pair of “suntan” pantyhose.

  Vomit Girl.

  I watched her from behind as she toddled toward the parking lot, her Moby Dick of a purse—tsk-tsk, white after Labor Day—swinging across a patchwork rabbit fur jacket to hit her squarish and stretch-acid-washed-denim miniskirted butt. Her red hair was still permed to a frizzle, the short pieces up top shellacked into a mall-goers’ coxcomb that didn’t move despite her haste.

  As she turned to unlock her car, brussel-sprout-sized fake pearl earrings bobbled and pulled at her lobes, while her jaws smacked wetly over a defenseless wad of gum.

  No rest for the tacky.

  My view of the old sedan’s passenger seat was blocked by another car, so it wasn’t until she started talking that I realized she hadn’t come alone.

  “Said he didn’t have it,” she said, before a hand grabbed her forearm and
dragged her inside the car.

  Vomit Girl grimaced as she went down, but tried to compose herself on the seat, taking off her sunglasses to reveal a fat shiner. She shut the door behind her, then flinched toward it as though being yelled at.

  My disdain for her fashion sense turned to dirt in my mouth. I couldn’t stand it. The darkened pale skin swollen around the delicate frame of her eye, the way her face scrunched up like a little kid’s who’d just taken a bad fall but was too stunned to make a sound, the way she cowered against the inside of her door, like it could help her somehow, that tiny amount of distance.

  She started the car, grinding the gears before she reversed out of her spot, then peeled out of the lot. She turned right and I got a brief glimpse of the passenger side. There was a little redheaded girl in the back seat. Had to be Tiffy.

  Up front, the window framed an oleaginous pompadour, a too-carefully trimmed beard, a grim and utter absence of lips—Schneider.

  Just before they turned the corner, his eyes flicked over me.

  I hunched my shoulders and exhaled as though I’d just taken a punch to the gut.

  Had to go inside, couldn’t have wanted to get off that sidewalk any more than if it were being strafed by Jap Zeros as I stood there, but I just lacked the ability to make my feet move.

  Had he seen me? Could he tell who it was in the bulky jacket and the baseball cap? Yes and yes.

  Move, goddamnit.

  I ducked inside and into a recessed corner of the vestibule, a foot from the doorframe. Would they come back? I turned off the stairwell lights, knowing that in the glare of the overcast day they wouldn’t be able to see in the glass, while I could eyeball a good slice of the street from behind the reflection. I stood there, heart chattering, for a solid five minutes.

  Only one car came past, turning into the lot. Wilt’s Gremlin, the interior blue with smoke, and out of it he telescoped, with Ted spilling from the other side. So it hadn’t been either of them Vomit Girl talked to.

  I took the stairs two at a time and screeched to a halt in front of the reception desk. The new chick was there, Amy from Utica.

  “Did a woman just come up here?” I asked. “I wanted to catch her before she left . . . big hair? Furry jacket?”

  “Didn’t see one,” she said. “Only people in so far are Marion and Beth and Lorraine. And the advertising guys, but they had an early meeting. You okay? You’re shaking.”

  “Exercise,” I said. “Crap just doesn’t agree with me.”

  She nodded.

  “Simon down in the morgue?” I asked.

  “As always,” she said, feeding a classified form into her typewriter. “Came up for coffee about an hour ago—I’ve routed a couple of calls down to him. Guy should get some sun while there’s still a little left, you know?”

  “You bet. Thanks . . .” I started walking toward Editorial, legs not working quite right.

  “You wanna watch that exercise,” she called after me. “Stuff’ll kill ya.”

  So, Vomit Girl must have been here to see Simon. He was the only person in the building you didn’t have to walk past Amy to get to, the only one downstairs—and I couldn’t believe Amy’d have missed seeing her.

  Said he didn’t have it . . . what had she meant by that? What did Schneider want from him? The photos? More money? Like I had a clue.

  I thought about everything Kenny had said, both the night before and that morning. And, yes, despite my lame excuses to him, at the minimal privacy of my desk I could admit that I was scared.

  I thought about calling that detective in Bridgeport back, telling him everything I knew and hoping he could deflect any danger from me, from everybody else.

  But even Kenny had said I was right not to go to the cops, that he couldn’t tell who was on the level, and if he couldn’t tell, what the hell hope did I have of navigating the morass without making it all worse?

  The one thing I could focus on was Kenny having told me to figure out whether or not Ted, Wilt, and Simon had alibis for the time of Sembles’s death.

  Ted wandered in just then, his eyes redder than his hair, a self-satisfied lizardy grin playing across his lips. He stopped about ten feet away from me and crossed his skinny forearms, tapping an index finger against his wrist.

  “Well,” he said, looking me up and down, “if it isn’t Little Nellie Bly, star reporter. Guess you screwed up that interview pretty well, huh? Didn’t they teach you in Journalism 101 not to get your sources knocked off?”

  Prick.

  When I offered no answer, he made a hugely unattractive lip noise and stalked away, slamming his office door behind him.

  Wilt loped in and came right over to my chair, putting a big hand on my shoulder. “How you holding up? I was worried about you last night.”

  He pulled up a chair next to me and pushed the too-long bangs from his eyes, looking all worried and freaked. He was wearing the same rumpled suit as yesterday—different shirt on underneath, but there was a small white feather tucked through the weave of his jacket’s shoulder.

  “You sleep in this?” I asked, pulling on the little quill to get it out.

  “Oh, man. What sleep I did get. I’ve been sitting up with Ted every night since Saturday. Wife left him and the dude’s a goddamn mess. Won’t go home. All he does is mutter and pace.”

  “My heart bleeds,” I said, but I was thinking that the two of them could then cover for each other, alibi-wise, leaving Simon the only one of the three who might have been free the night of Sembles’s death.

  “Trying to get him to talk it out,” Wilt continued. “I’m afraid he’s not . . . uh . . . acting too rational with members of the fairer sex. I mean, don’t take it personally if he’s acting hostile—you dig?”

  “Like that would be so markedly different from normal.”

  “You shouldn’t think that. He’s got a real soft spot for you, actually.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said. The only difference in Ted’s treatment of me now was that now he wasn’t as careful about avoiding witnesses.

  “So what was she pissed about, the wife—money? I mean, that’s pretty common. I don’t know what you guys make. More than me, I figure, but enough?”

  “This year Ted’ll get about forty grand. Told her it wasn’t enough to have kids on. She thought it was.”

  Forty grand? And my W-2 had read a neat $6,382 gross for a year of full-time work, no benefits. Fuck Ted.

  “Simon pulls down the most, actually,” Wilt said. “And he’s the biggest tightwad I’ve ever met. Dude’s wiggy. You’d think it would kill him to pick up a bar tab, and he packs his own lunch every day. Lives in the tiniest apartment I’ve ever seen. Beyond ‘efficiency.’ I dunno—maybe he gives it all to Save the Children.”

  A single guy packing his own lunch in Syracuse and living in a studio, even on forty grand, could bank about thirty of it—and that was with two-pound lobsters and drawn butter for dinner every night.

  “Huh,” I said. “No shit.”

  CHAPTER 40

  With Lapthorne out of the equation and Ted and Wilt covering each other, Simon was the only one with foreknowledge of my interview whose opportunity hadn’t been ruled out for the night Sembles was killed. Kenny’d said to look for something wonky, and Simon was looking wonky as a heifer for Uncle Weasel.

  Wilt looked up over my shoulder, giving out a cheery “Simon!”

  I flinched so hard my chair squealed back across the floor, banging straight into the object of my speculation’s shins.

  He yelped and I jumped to my feet.

  “Sorry! Jesus, Simon!” I said, my heart going so fast I could feel it in my throat, and he was apologizing at the same time so everything was all garbled, but he wouldn’t look me in the face even after we’d both shut up.

  I just stared. The man was a mere shadow of his former mere shadow—his round little face literally a whiter shade of pale—eyes raw-looking above purple-green bruises of sleeplessness so profound that they were dent
s rather than bags.

  His arms clasped across his middle as though to guard his little belly, and all the dark curls edging his baldness were rubbed into a lopsided halo of frizz. The man was a veritable New Yorker cartoon of nerves.

  “Hey, man,” Wilt said to him, “you all right? Look like hell.”

  “Oh, all right. I’m all right. Sure,” said Simon.

  His vision was focused on some obscure distance between Wilt and me, and a little arched muscle just above his left eye started to tic. He wove his fingers together and pumped his now-facing palms in and out like a tiny bellows, worrying the knuckles of each hand with the fingertips of the other.

  Wilt touched his shoulder. “No, I’m serious, man. Never seen you like this. . . . You should sit down.”

  “Hmm?” Simon tilted his head back to look up at Wilt’s face, as though noticing for the first time that he wasn’t alone in the room.

  Wilt turned my chair toward him, face limned with concern. “Sit.”

  Simon looked down at his hands and complied. The weird dance of his fingers seemed to fascinate him, but after a glance at Wilt he pulled them apart and shoved a fist under each thigh.

  That worked to keep him still for a few seconds, until the heel of one shoe started jitterbugging against the floor.

  “Hell’s wrong with you, man?” asked Wilt gently, squatting down next to him protectively. “Everything okay?”

  It seemed like the very solicitude in Wilt’s tone made Simon snap. The little man jumped to his feet, a flood of red suffusing his face, even the shiny crown of his head.

  “I don’t have to take this!” he rasped, shaking a short thick finger down into Wilt’s face. “You just lay off me, you sonofabitch!”

  Simon pushed out of the chair and stomped away, hands bunched in chubby fists.

  Wilt and I gawped in his wake.

  So Simon had a temper—surprise, surprise.

  “Jeez, man, you know?” said Wilt, placing his hands on his thighs before rising, with a resounding click from each kneecap. “What the hell’s eating the little dude?”

  Oh, I dunno—guilt?

  I shrugged. “Doesn’t look like he’s been getting a whole lot of sleep.”