Good Morning, Darkness

by Ruth Francisco

  “No, I don’t know. Can I ask what this is all about?”

  “Ms. Costanza left her hotel without checking out. We’d like to talk to her. Does Scott have any personal friends you know of?”

  “His best friend is Peter Flynn. Works at Bank of America. A loan officer.”

  “Do you have his number?”

  “No. But you could ask Amy, the receptionist. She has copies of all incoming messages on her message pad. He calls Scott all the time. Great guy.”

  “I found your card in her hotel room.” Reggie handed him the card. “Is that your home phone on the back?”

  Harrison laughed uncomfortably. “Yes.” Fuchsia crept over his bald pate like a sunrise over the desert. “She’s my type of woman. Quite a dish.”

  A dish? Did people really talk like that anymore? Did they ever? If Audrey heard him refer to any woman as a dish he’d be sleeping in the tree house for a month. “Did you meet her outside of this office?”

  Harrison frowned. “No. I never saw her again. I didn’t have a chance, you know. Not with a girl like her. But you can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  Reggie had to ask it. “Where were you last Wednesday between the end of work and Thursday morning?”

  Harrison’s eyes got big and scared. “I worked until around eight, then went over to a friend’s house for poker. I got home around two.”

  “Can anyone account for your getting home at two?”

  Harrison turned red again. “Yeah, my mother, I live with my mother”—he said this as if he were admitting a juvenile arrest record—“and my neighbor. I kicked over a trash can going up the stairs, and my neighbor yelled at me. Are you asking me for an alibi?”

  Reggie smiled. “I may need to call them, if you could write down their numbers.”

  “Well, sure,” Harrison said, scribbling down the numbers on a Bay City Realty pad. His fingers were shaking. He tore off the top sheet and handed it to Reggie.

  Reggie got Peter Flynn’s number from the receptionist, then left. As he got into his car, he felt the first drops of rain.

  * * *

  The next morning, Mike Morrison called Reggie at ten minutes after nine. “You still interested in the arms case?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “There’s a guy here, a private investigator down from Portland. I think you might want to talk to him.”

  “I’ll be right there.” When Reggie told the desk sergeant he was stepping out for an hour, he saw Velma shoot him a dirty look.

  As Reggie drove up Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu, it began to rain hard. The blacktop steamed, and the air smelled of hot wet dirt.

  Traffic slowed, bumper to bumper. Reggie’s mind began to wander. He thought of something Father John had said that morning. They met once a week now at the Rose Café in Venice. They took their coffee down to the beach and chatted as they walked on the hard sand toward Santa Monica Pier.

  “When I was a monk, we stopped work seven times during the day, to gather and to pray, to center ourselves, to reach out to divine love.” Father John was looking out at the ocean. A school of dolphins swam north beyond the breakers. “Life should be a continual thanksgiving, Reggie. You don’t have to be a monk to stop and pray.”

  As the traffic ground to a stop, Reggie smiled to himself. That’s a cop’s life, he thought, working and praying you don’t get killed at work.

  At the Malibu/Lost Hills station, Reggie ambled past the detective desks and saw Morrison standing in an interview room, stuffing down a muffin. Beside him sat a large man flipping through a blue murder book, rocking his short neck back and forth like a grizzly bear sniffing huckleberries.

  “Hey, Reggie. This is Private Investigator Harry Gribble.”

  When Gribble stood, the table screeched across the floor and the aluminum chair fell over. He was huge, his muscles wrapped in fat like a beaver-fur coat. He wore a red plaid flannel shirt, black sweatpants, and logging boots. He looked less like a private investigator than a North Woods hermit who’d just stepped out from his log cabin to use the outhouse.

  After straightening the table and righting the chair, Morrison rolled in another chair, and everyone sat down. Gribble told his story.

  “I’m down from Portland looking for a young woman, a runaway, Stacy Savage, nineteen, white. She’s been missing since last year. Her parents hired me to find her. Looks like she was into the rave scene—ecstasy, crack cocaine. She must’ve run into some trouble, ’cause she checked in at the Harley House in Hollywood. That’s how I tracked her to Los Angeles.” The Harley House, Reggie knew, was a refuge for runaways and child prostitutes. “She left a few months ago. One of the kids there said he’d heard she’d moved into a group house in Venice. I checked the café bulletin boards for rooms available, made some calls, and traced her to a group house on Brooks in Venice. She was off drugs and enrolled at Santa Monica College. Looked like she was trying to clean up her act. One of her housemates says she disappeared around the middle of April.”

  Reggie made a sharp glance at Mike, who nodded and raised his eyebrows: Keep listening.

  “Her housemate said last month they boxed up her stuff and rented the room again. He let me look at the box. Not much there, but it didn’t look like she’d packed up and left, either. Her tooth brush, nail polish, cosmetics were all there. Her housemate says she was dating a guy named Kevin who works in a camera shop in Santa Monica. I talked to him. He seems pretty straight. Says he hasn’t seen her since April. So I go downtown to see what you’ve got for Jane Does for April and May. I look over a dozen or so when I come across the arms case. Then I came out to see Mike here.”

  “Apart from the time frame, what makes you think the arms might be hers?” asked Reggie.

  Gribble flipped to an autopsy photo in a plastic sheath. “Same blood type, for one: A positive. And see this scar on her elbow? Her mother said she got a scar like that when she was ten years old, falling off her bike.”

  “You think her mother could identify the arms?”

  “Nah. And I wouldn’t put her through that until we’re real sure.”

  “You got a fingerprint for Stacy?”

  “Nothing on file. The police tried pulling latents from her room at home, but they didn’t get a clear print.

  “What about the ring she was wearing?”

  “The mother didn’t know about any ring. Neither did her boyfriend.”

  “Did Detective Morrison tell you how valuable the ring was?”

  “Amazing, huh. She probably stole it. She was picked up several times for shoplifting in Portland. Never got charged, though. Too, bad, ’cause then we’ve have prints.”

  Reggie turned to Morrison. “You think it’s enough to go for a DNA test?”

  “Good enough for me.”

  “The family’s already got a DNA test for Stacy,” said Gribble. “Did one for a body-dump in Washington that turned out not to be her. Her mother is overnighting a copy to me.”

  “Can you guys get a rush on the DNA?” Reggie asked Morrison.

  “I’ll see what kind of favors I can pull in. I hear they’re testing a new gadget down at Parker Center that’s instant and ninety-nine percent accurate. I’ll see if I can’t sneak it through. Otherwise, well, you know . . .”

  “Weeks?” asked Gribble.

  “Weeks on a rush.”

  Satisfied that he wouldn’t get immediate results, Gribble promised to drop off a copy of Stacy Savage’s DNA test results before he returned to Portland.

  After Gribble lumbered out, Morrison turned to Reggie. “So, what do you think?”

  “Based on a blood type and a small scar—I’d say it’s a stretch,” Reggie said.

  Morrison frowned. “I agree, but what else do we have to go on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Right. Nothing.”

  Reggie wasn’t ready to give up anything on Laura. He realized that at some point, Morrison would learn he’d held out on him. He felt bad, but there was nothing he
could do about it now. McBride had been clear.

  Reggie felt ambivalent about this turn of events. If the arms turned out not to be Laura’s, that meant Laura could be alive. Surely there was no truth to Scott’s ever-changing stories, but where was she? And what about the millions stolen from Thompson & Thompson, which disappeared from Johnson’s account the same day she did? And if the arms were Stacy Savage’s, how and why did Stacy Savage have Scott’s grandmother’s ring?

  * * *

  Six-thirty a.m. Reggie was in his backyard practicing kendo wearing nothing but gym shorts, his body laboring, dripping with sweat, jabbing, kicking, pivoting. He swung the sword over his head, then down in a Z, slicing off the heads of his enemies.

  He tried not to think about work, about Laura, but he found himself increasingly agitated, his balance off, his movements clumsy.

  Frustrated, he jabbed the sword into the ground, and caught his breath. The world spun around him. He imagined Laura in her kitchen, looking out over the bougainvillea, smiling. He sensed an achy tension in his shoulders, a building anger that felt like betrayal. After all this work, maybe she was still alive.

  As he wiped his face with a towel, he thought of the pile of towels and other clothes overflowing the laundry basket, and that he’d have to figure out how to run the washing machine pretty soon. He noticed the line of purple iris and snapdragons edging the lawn. After that big storm, at least he didn’t have to water.

  Damn, he missed his wife. She did so much around the house he’d never noticed before. As he looked around the yard—at the herbs she’d planted close to the kitchen door and the roses she’d trained to climb the back wall—something Father John said came to him: Whatever aspect of the soul we neglect will become the source of pain. Reggie felt weak-kneed with regret and longing. He wanted his family.

  Reggie stomped into the house, poured himself a glass of orange juice, and picked up the phone. He had no idea what to expect. He was nervous about it, as if calling a girl for a first date.

  The maid answered. Then Audrey got on the line. She sounded cheerful and rested. Reggie let her voice reverberate through his body; it tingled up his spine and made his pores constrict, as if chilled. “Hello?” she repeated.

  “Hey,” said Reggie.

  “Hey.” Her voice grew husky, as if her throat were coated in creamy hot chocolate.

  “You get the hot sauces?”

  “Yeah. Ring of Fire. You remembered.”

  “Sure . . . sure I remembered. I miss you.”

  She hesitated, the kind of hesitation where you hear someone doing an emotional inventory.

  “How are the boys?” he asked.

  “Fabulous. They adore sailing. They each have a Sunfish. They race every day. You wouldn’t believe their tans. They’re brown as Hershey Kisses.”

  “I don’t suppose that pleases your parents much.”

  “They’re not as bad as you think.” She paused. “We’re having fun, Reggie. The kids love it here.”

  She paused again, long enough for Reggie to wonder if she meant she planned to stay.

  Then she broke the silence. “I think we make things harder than they need to be.”

  “Maybe.”

  “The kids adore their grandparents and the rest of the family. People are so nice here.”

  Was she baiting him? Wanting him to say it wasn’t his fault she’d cut them off from her family, but her own protracted adolescent rebellion. He didn’t want to argue. That was the last thing he wanted. “I wish you were next to me right now.”

  “Stop it, Reggie.”

  “What are you wearing?”

  “Reggie!”

  “When are you coming home?”

  “You can’t do this to me, Reggie. We’ve got to talk.”

  “We are talking.”

  “I’m talking. You’ve got your hand on your dick.”

  Reggie laughed. “I miss you, babe.”

  “I’ve got to go, Reggie. Mom’s making us all play croquet out on the lawn.”

  “I’ll call you later. I love you.”

  “Okay.”

  That was the best he was going to get? Okay? Well, at least she didn’t hang up on him.

  * * *

  Before heading to the station, Reggie noticed the FBI tape that he’d promised to view for Velma. He’d been too tired to watch it the night before. He popped it in the VCR while he finished eating his English muffin and drinking his coffee.

  Of course, the FBI didn’t say where on the tape they thought they’d seen Li’l Richie, so Reggie had to sit through twenty minutes of people coming and going, dragging suitcases, arguing, making him dopey, wondering how in the world the people who watched these tapes for a living didn’t go brain dead.

  Then he saw her.

  He jumped from his chair, spilling coffee down his pants. He rewound ten seconds of tape, then punched the play button. It was her! Laura! Walking up to the Lufthansa ticket counter.

  Reggie shrieked, punching the air with his fists. But wait. It couldn’t be her, could it? No. Did this mean the arms belonged to Stacy Savage? Could Laura possibly be alive?

  Excited, he made a copy of the tape on his dubbing deck while he changed his pants—a not so clean pair—then dashed to the station. He ordered the tape enhanced, then called Lufthansa to check the date and time for a ticket sold to a Laura Finnegan. They found no such sale. Had she used another name?

  He played the tape on the VCR in his office, needing to see her again. Could it really be her?

  His exhilaration soon fizzled. After the fourth and fifth viewing, he had doubts; after the sixth, he knew it wasn’t her.

  Goddammit! He was letting her make him crazy. Pretty soon he’d be following women down the street thinking they were Laura. Hadn’t he already caught himself believing he’d seen her driving on the freeway, only to accelerate by a woman totally unlike her?

  He had to get control of himself.

  * * *

  Scott woke with the thought of Samantha. He forgot the dream immediately; only her irritating, needling voice lingered. He jumped out of bed and pulled on a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt. He poured himself a glass of orange juice, then laced up his running shoes. Why should he worry about Sammy? He knew she’d only go so far. When they’d fought as kids, she always stopped before she left marks.

  He went for a quick jog down Montana and bought a paper. He was almost disappointed not to find it on the front page; he had to dig all the way down to the Metro Section. A small article without pictures. Construction workers found an unidentified body in the Venice canals. How long would it take them to identify her? Weeks, he supposed, if no one reported her missing right away. But somebody would eventually.

  Would the police come to him? No one knew he’d seen her that day except his mother. She wouldn’t tell them. Besides, he had an alibi: he was showing a house in Venice.

  Unworried, he moved through his routine of showering and shaving. He put in another call to Peter. Why wasn’t his buddy answering his calls? It didn’t take that long to find out how to open a Swiss bank account.

  As he was dressing, the telephone rang, and he jumped for it. At this hour, it was either Peter or the police. “Hello?”

  “Aren’t you up early? Here I hoped to wake you up.”

  “What do you want, Sammy?” Scott did not want to talk to her.

  “The ring is fake.”

  The fucking ring again. He’d almost forgotten about it. “I heard how you wheedled it out of Connie. That wasn’t nice.”

  “Fake, fake, fake, fake,” she sang as if counting out Monopoly money. “What’d you do with the real one?”

  “It certainly is not fake. The diamond is real. The gold is real.”

  “It’s not Grandma’s.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I’m not stupid, Scott.”

  “So I lost the ring. What in hell does it matter? You wanted a ring so people will think you’re engaged. Yo
u got a ring.”

  “Oma’s was worth a fortune.”

  Scott drew in a shallow, noiseless breath and held it. That was what the cop had said. “What makes you think that?”

  “She told me.”

  Scott remembered Oma’s words: You carry with you all the riches you’ll ever need. No. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. His grandmother loved him. “If it were worth a fortune, Oma would’ve told me. Besides, I had it appraised at a few thousand. To Oma, that probably was a fortune.”

  “I guess she didn’t trust you not to run out and sell it. Imagine that. She told me they sold everything they had in Germany—three businesses, two houses, farm land, furniture, everything—and used the money to buy the ring in Switzerland. She wanted the ring passed down through the family, to remind us of what we suffered under the Nazis.”

  “Aren’t you being a tad sentimental, Sammy? That’s not like you. Anyhow, what does it matter? It’s not like our family is some kind of royal dynasty. It’d be better for the gene pool if we all died out.”

  “How can you say such a thing?”

  “Admit it, Sammy. We all hate each other. Why should we pretend we’re some kind of happy family? We ought to do the world a favor and terminate it. We have a good start. I’m not having kids, you’re a dike, Martha’s been trying to get pregnant for ten years, and Mother made sure to get Pat on the pill at thirteen.”

  “What makes you so spiteful?”

  “I’m not spiteful, I’m a realist. Why don’t you just pretend the ring you’ve got has all that glorious history? It’s just a thing. You can attribute any myth to it you want.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “Bye, Sammy.”

  “What happened to the real ring? I bet you sold it. Or gave to Laura. And what happened to Laura, anyhow? You’re getting yourself in deep shit, bro. Don’t count on us to help get you out of it.”

  “I’ve never counted on you for anything.” Scott slammed down the phone, shaking, shocked by the venom spewing out of him. Where did that come from? But now that he’d said it, it felt like the truth. What in hell did he need his family for? Family values, ha! Just a way for people to get off on controlling others. It was nothing more than slavery sanctioned by church and state. Just because he happened to share a similar gene map, he was obligated to feel something for them? Bullshit! He felt more empathy for a complete stranger or a dog, even. He wasn’t buying in to this family shit. There was nothing in it for him; his mother made it clear he’d get no family money until she died. She thought she could control him that way? Fuck her. Fuck her millions. Soon he’d have plenty of his own.