Fear the Darkness: A Thriller

by Becky Masterman

  “No it’s not, Timothy. It’s death. There’s nothing more simple than death. The real question is whether you had the balls or whatever it would take to kill your stepson and try to kill me so I wouldn’t find out.”

  He was crying now, and denying knowing anything at all.

  “Timothy, look at me.”

  He looked at me.

  “I know you got the report. You got the tox report from the medical examiner and you didn’t bother sharing it with Jacquie. I have to ask why. Why would you not tell Jacquie you got the report and that Joe had alcohol in his system? Why wouldn’t you want her to know that? Because you gave it to him?”

  He took a deep breath, looked away, and when his eyes came back to my face they were washed of hope.

  “I’ll tell you why. Because she already knew. Jacquie was the one who got him started drinking. A couple beers when he turned thirteen, and then whenever they watched movies together. She thought he was so cute when he was a little drunk. The kid is dead.”

  “I have to tell you I already told her this.”

  “About the tox report? Oh shit, what did she say?”

  “She doesn’t know you got the report. But she called Mallory and accused her of getting Joe drunk when he was there reading to Owen.”

  Timothy shook his head in disbelief even though he had to know it was the truth and now there was no stopping it. “Denial, right? She was turning her son into an alcoholic and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop them. She used alcohol to bind him to her. When I spoke up they banded together closer and I felt even more on the outside. But even then, I loved Jacquie enough to keep from her that she was at least partly responsible for Joe’s death. The kid was already dead and nothing was going to bring him back. There was no good reason for her to know he’d been drinking. I wanted to protect her from blaming herself. I never thought she would blame his death on me.

  “You’re right, it is simple.” He held up his thumb. “See, I loved Jacquie.” He held out his index finger so it looked like a gun. “She loves Joe.” He held the finger to his head in the classic pantomime of a shot to the temple. “Even dead, the little mother fucker wins.”

  Why did he love her? Maybe the better question was, who did he used to love? The her before Joey died? Before her first husband left her? Maybe that’s the woman Tim could see, someone vibrant and full of life. Somebody who would go to a party dressed like Harpo Marx. Someone who was a good mother—until she became only a mother and when the motherhood was taken away had nothing left to live for.

  I said, “This is what you didn’t want me to find out.”

  “That’s right. But I wouldn’t hurt you. I wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  I thought about my appointment with him, and the ease with which he jumped to the possibility of depression, and from there to Parkinson’s. Doctors always think of depression, especially in women. “What made you think of Parkinson’s?” I asked.

  “Mallory—when she called to make the appointment and they asked her what it was for, she said she didn’t know what was wrong, but something about you walking strangely, and your handwriting being off when you signed the check at a restaurant. She didn’t know what she was seeing, but those are both signs. Then I saw the way your hand jumped, and I put it together.”

  There was one other thing to check. I walked into the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator. There were three bottles of Sam Adams spring ale chilling on the shelf in the door. I remembered visiting Jacquie around midmorning and smelling the beer on her. I quickly went through the cabinets and found the one with bottles of Tanqueray, Johnnie Walker Red Label, Jose Cuervo, Grey Goose. They were all at least three-quarters gone. Then I believed Tim. He had the sound of truth in him this time.

  When I turned back to the couch where Tim sat, his head was hanging over clasped hands, and he talked more to himself than to me now. “She was always so funny, so much fun. I could never match her, what she wanted. So she was molding Joe to be that.”

  I looked at the ceramic fruit busted on the tile in front of the fireplace. Tim had lied by not coming clean with me right at the start, and I wasn’t sorry for what I had done, but I still gestured at the mess. “Can I help you clean up?”

  “No,” he said.

  “What will you tell Jacquie about the broken ceramic?”

  He gave a humorless snort. “I’ll make up something. We both know I’m good at that, right?”

  I stared at him and he shouted at me. “Just get out of here. Don’t ever come back. Leave us in peace.”

  “Do you keep a gun in the house?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  Forty–eight

  I sat down at the table where I had left Gemma-Kate. She was still reading Forensic Toxicology. Neuroscience of Handwriting draped over another chair, and Pathology of Drug Abuse served as a paperweight for some printer paper. She didn’t look up when she said, “Carlo left with Elias to get the car. I promised I wouldn’t do anything bad until you got home.”

  “I still don’t know if Timothy Neilsen is telling the whole truth. He’s trying to protect himself and his marriage,” I said.

  “I read up more on antidepressant overdoses.”

  I said, “I wonder what Sam Humphries will say if I ask him about Neilsen getting arrested for child abuse. Nobody mentioned that until now, not even Jacquie. Maybe she was hoping I’d discover it on my own.”

  Gemma-Kate said, “This stuff is so interesting. I’ve been reading about Caravaggio. Ever hear of him?”

  I decided to pay attention to her since she wasn’t paying attention to me. “No.”

  “Renaissance. Master of chiaroscuro but I guess also something of a dick. It says someone tried to poison him with mercury but they got the dose wrong and it ended up curing his syphilis instead. Good example of why they say the dose makes the poison.”

  “Could we get back to me for just a second? Can’t you look up antidotes?”

  “I tried, nothing. It just has to work itself out. How bad are you feeling?”

  I took a moment to assess my state. I thought I heard the male Pug snocking by the refrigerator, but it couldn’t be because he was still at the vet’s and the female was sleeping on my lap at the dining room table. I didn’t mention that I heard it. “It comes and goes. I’m not feeling like I want to kill you right now.”

  Gemma-Kate went on. “It says here if you take a solution of activated charcoal it can help keep poisons from being metabolized. I read another thing about a professor who drank activated charcoal followed by a dose of strychnine in front of his class to show how it works. It only works if you drink it in solution immediately before or immediately after ingesting the poison. But forget that for a second. It might be useful if you can focus on this instead.”

  She pulled the papers out from under the book and displayed a kind of flow chart that she had hand-drawn and -lettered. Her lettering was unnaturally neat. She took a moment to gather her thoughts and words, then lectured me like I was a rookie.

  “I remember when Dad was studying to become a detective he would tell me what he was learning. I couldn’t forget the three words, motive, means, opportunity. I was thinking what if we were right, that someone is trying to hurt you, or at least slow you down, and they were using drugs as the means. There’s no way to know the motive at this point so I figured I’d concentrate on opportunity next. I’ve tried mapping your activities since the time you first started to feel sick. The funny thing is, in order to get enough of the drug into you, I couldn’t think of anyone except me or Uncle Carlo who could do it. Here’s what I came up with.” She held the paper so I could see it. The lines and words seem to float and make sudden little lurches across the page, but I was able to follow pretty well as she took me over my recent life. There were gaps, and she had a pen ready to fill them in.

  “See, here’s where I arrive. You’re feeling perfectly fine then, we have dinner with Carlo and your friend Mallory
. Same over the next several days. You go to that fund-raiser—”

  “That’s the day you poisoned my dog,” I added. I was interested to see where she was going, but wary just the same.

  “—I asked Carlo, and at the fund-raiser you were with your priest from the church and his wife, and the doctor and his wife.”

  “Right, the Manwarings and Neilsens.”

  “We should probably differentiate between husband and wife in case you saw either of them apart from the other.”

  “Elias and Lulu Manwaring. Timothy and Jacquie Neilsen.”

  Gemma-Kate wrote down the names. “You eat and drink there.”

  “Maybe a piece of rumaki or two. And wine.”

  “Are you sick yet?”

  “No. I’m fine. The dog is sick.”

  “Day two.”

  “That’s when I went over to the Neilsens.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “First you had coffee. I made the coffee that morning. You have to remember everything, Aunt Brigid. Even if it incriminates me.”

  “But Carlo drank it, too.”

  “The thing is, maybe we’re not talking something that could take effect with one dose. Antidepressants have a cumulative effect, and Carlo might have had some without having any reaction. Now. You visit the Neilsens and agree to investigate the death of their son, Joe. Do you have anything to eat or drink there?”

  I was sort of fascinated watching her mind work and played along. “Yes, I had a cup of coffee. One of those Keurig single serves.”

  “Who fixed it?”

  “Tim Neilsen, I think. Yes, Tim Neilsen. Wait, Jacquie fixed me the first one, then Tim Neilsen gave me another one.” I closed my eyes, imagining the scene. “I turned around at one point and he was opening a pill container on the counter. I thought it was to see if Jacquie had taken her drugs, and I turned back, not wanting to seem nosy.”

  She made a note of that. “Something could have been added to the coffee either after it came through the machine, or injected into the little plastic container with a syringe beforehand. After the Neilsens’ what do you do?”

  “I call … called Mallory and stopped by her house. I complained about you.”

  “Do you eat there?”

  “Gemma-Kate, this is absurd.”

  “Humor me.”

  “I did. The health care aide brought us both some soup.”

  “What’s the aide’s name?”

  “Annette.”

  She wrote that down. “What kind of soup?”

  “Something with beef broth and kale and beans and Parmesan cheese grated on top. We both ate it on TV trays in Owen’s room. And coffee.”

  “Are you sick yet?”

  “No. It wasn’t until the middle of the night I started to get nauseated. I might have thrown up. That was after your meat loaf with the sauerkraut and Swiss cheese.”

  “I lose the thread here. Next day?”

  “I was with a lot of people that day. I visited the detective who had investigated Joe Neilsen’s death, such as it was, went to the vet to visit the Pug, maybe I went to the gym to work out and talked to my trainer … maybe not.” I struggled to remember, feeling some for all the people I’d interviewed this same way.

  “What do you eat and drink that day?”

  “Coffee at Starbucks and a plain bagel. That’s about it. I was feeling sick to my stomach, so I didn’t eat much except a few crackers here.”

  “All right, next day.”

  “I forced myself to take a walk, thinking the fresh air and activity might help. That was when I found the toad you used to poison my dog.”

  “But you weren’t with anyone else that morning.”

  “I tried to talk to Carlo about you, but he wasn’t listening. Men are nice, but they don’t always see things the way we do. So I met Mallory for lunch.” I filled in before Gemma-Kate could ask, “I had a salad, and some wine.” I paused. “And some blue cheese with garlic. We both ate the same thing. I was anxious at that point and she offered me a Valium but I turned it down. Then I went over to her place, and they gave me a lavender drape.”

  “You mean that rabbit thing you had on?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Who’s ‘they’ specifically?”

  “Annette. Annette got it for me and nuked it in the microwave.”

  Gemma-Kate carefully noted Annette’s name on her timeline for that day and wrote the number two next to her name. “Where is it now?”

  “What?”

  “The rabbit thing.”

  “I threw it over a chair in the bedroom.”

  Gemma-Kate disappeared for a moment and came back with the boneless rabbit. She sniffed it suspiciously, shook her head, and draped it over the edge of the table like Exhibit A.

  Seeing it made me shudder. “I was on the road that day and had my first hallucination. But I can’t remember when it happened.”

  “What happened when you were driving?”

  “Carlo turned into a skeleton,” I whispered. It was real, dammit, it was real.

  “Carlo,” Gemma-Kate said.

  “He walked in front of my car. Then his flesh fell off. I jammed on my brake and watched him melt into the pavement.”

  “Did you have anything there?”

  “No. Owen had a crisis, they stabilized him, gave me the lavender drape, and told me I should take it home. Then I came back here. You cooked dinner again. You’ve been cooking every night except last.”

  “Incorrect. You brought takeout Chinese one night…” She scanned the chart, thinking.

  “See, it’s not so easy.”

  “Still sick then?” she asked.

  “I can’t remember. I think so. It’s all sort of running together, and my brain isn’t helping. I was sick enough to keep an appointment next day with Timothy Neilsen. He gave me a prescription for an antidepressant.”

  Gemma-Kate wrote down that information. “How much?”

  “Twenty milligrams of Rextal. Before that I was on two milligrams of antianxiety meds up to twice a day and ten-milligram sleeping pills for when I had trouble sleeping. The doctor told me to stop taking those.”

  Gemma-Kate nodded. “It’s called polypharmacy. Combinations of drugs that are fine by themselves but taken together can really mess you up.” She rifled through the pages of the book on the table while I got up and got a refill of coffee, carrying the Pug gently so I wouldn’t disturb her. The coffee was cold, but at least I was beginning to think Gemma-Kate might not have added anything to it.

  When I came back I said, “I forgot to say I went down to the police station to talk to the death investigator on the Neilsen case. He gave me a cup of coffee.”

  She wrote that down and then tapped on one of the books opened on the table. “The drugs you had been taking are really low doses. But I couldn’t find what if all three were taken in combination, so maybe your doctor is correct.”

  “I didn’t take them in combination,” I said.

  She wrote that down. “Do you remember how you were feeling at the police department?”

  I remembered the blood on the folder, that I was so nervous I’d been biting my cuticles without noticing. “Anxious. Real anxious. Like my esophagus was rigid as wood and my heart was trying to crawl out of it. And I was having these brain farts where I’d zone out.”

  Gemma-Kate wrote that down. “What next?”

  “I can’t remember. Oh wait. The appointment with Neilsen was the day after I met with the detective.” I pointed at the date on her chart and she erased what she had and wrote that in correctly. “And right after Neilsen I met Mallory at Ramone’s bar, it’s in the Westin on Ina, and had a vodka martini. Olives. Blue cheese olives. The bartender’s name was William.”

  “What night did you have that episode?”

  “Episode?” I was being coy, I know, but I still hated to even think about that night.

  “When you wandered into the backyard like a crazy woma
n. That was when I started getting curious and noting your symptoms. That was when I ordered the books.”

  “You were observing me all that time?”

  “Uh-huh. So back to your first major hallucination.”

  “I … I think it was the very night I started taking what Neilsen prescribed. Maybe I let Neilsen off the hook too soon. Maybe it’s a conspiracy with the pharmacist.”

  “Whoa, not so fast. We’re not done. Keep going.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “You stayed home until we all went to church.”

  “The antifreeze,” I said.

  “That’s right, but not you.”

  “Not for lack of trying. You gave me a cup of coffee. And a doughnut.”

  Gemma-Kate looked at me sharply.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing.” She wrote down the coffee and the doughnut. “What next?”

  “Next day I went to see Elias Manwaring. At the church. Did I have coffee?”

  “You really need to back off the caffeine, but that’s beside the point.”

  “Nothing at the church. Wait, he gave me a glass of water and I drank half of it. No, I didn’t see where he got the water. We talked for a while, then we went over to the rectory and I saw Lulu and their son, Ken. I was dizzy and had to sit down or lean against the wall. That was when I found out about the Choking Game.”

  “Off point. Did you have anything at the house?”

  “Lulu offered, water I think, but no. I didn’t eat or drink anything there. Found Frank Ganim’s body.”

  “That’s okay. What about the next day?”

  “It’s amazing how you lose chunks of your life when you have to spell it out. Shows you how mundane it all is. I went to see the sergeant in charge of detectives, Tony Salazar. My initial plan was to find out if Peter was responsible for Joey’s death—”

  “Peter! You think he had something to do with Joseph Neilsen’s drowning?”

  I said, “But the meeting turned into a cat-and-mouse thing about Frank Ganim, and I think I was the mouse. They questioned me about finding his body, gave me a little information but wanted more. You fixed dinner. I had toast in the morning. Nothing more until brunch at Mallory’s the next day.”