DARK KILLS a gripping detective thriller full of suspense

by BREARTON, T. J.

  “I’m just going to meet with Hamill. Go over things. Find out what he learned from one of the suspects, if anything.” She looked off for a moment, unable to meet his gaze. “I lost a whole day in here.”

  He pulled away and said no more. He rallied the girls, who came to her and peppered more kisses on her cheek. Ria climbed up onto the bed and stuck her lips out like a fish. Dana put an arm around her shoulders. Ria was so small; her bones felt light as a bird’s. Then her family headed out.

  Hamill showed up just as they were leaving. He smiled and hugged all the girls, and shook Shawn’s hand. Shawn didn’t smile back. He glanced in one last time at Dana, and winked. The wink didn’t mask the pain she saw in her husband’s eyes. It was almost too much to look at. Pain, but something else. Something that was missing, or had been put away.

  “Get me out of here,” Dana said to her partner.

  * * *

  In half an hour they were belly up to the bar. She’d removed two of her facial bandages herself before leaving the hospital, but then stuck them back on. The ointments made her cuts too vivid. She drank a beer with Hamill sitting beside her, stirring a gin rickey.

  “Are you cleared to drive?” Hamill asked. He’d chauffeured them to the bar.

  “They advised against it until the surgery, but no one’s suspended my license.” Dana tipped back the bottle.

  Hamill nodded. They’d discussed Lambert in the car. Lambert had a rock-solid alibi; he was clocked in with employers that could verify his whereabouts for both deaths. He’d had nothing to report about the girls and the house he maintained for Maybelle Spruce, besides that they were much better tenants than boys. Spruce had sworn off boys a few years ago, because they were generally filthy, in her words. Occasionally the girls plugged a toilet with a tampon, and it seemed to be their favorite place to drop their cellphones, but otherwise they were decent, respectful renters. Lambert had made minor repairs on the house over the past year, kept the pantry stocked with light bulbs, unclogged a drain.

  The kid who’d thrown the remote was Bladen McCasland, thirteen years old, with a deadbeat dad and a scarcely present mother. He stated clearly and for the record that he’d thought Dana’s presence at the door was a prank, that it was two of his friends pretending to be the police. He hadn’t expected the remote to break the glass, but it was single-paned, already featuring hairline cracks, and had given easily. There had been tense talk, Hamill said, between the state police and the local code enforcement officer for Clinton County, as well as the owner of the project housing where Lambert lived. “Oh Jesus,” she said. “A frigging law suit?”

  Bladen McCasland was returned to his mother after being charged for possession of marijuana — he’d had less than a gram on him and was granted an ACD. Dana didn’t want to press the assault charges, but it was possible the state police would go ahead anyway.

  “CSI went through Perry Brady’s house,” Hamill said.

  “Good.”

  Hamill had interviewed Brady while Dana had recuperated. “Yep. Jacket and wallet and book with the names in it. Just like we found, nothing more. But Brady is sticking hard to his story.” Hamill sighed, pulled at his nose. “Claims Sonia Taylor came over to his house Friday morning. They were going to walk to class together — the social psych class which Kimball teaches. Only Brady . . .” Hamill smacked his forehead for emphasis, “. . . forgets he’d told Sonia to come over. Forgets his girlfriend, or whatever, is stopping by to walk with him to class, and guess what?”

  “He’s busy entertaining. Maggie Lange.”

  “Bingo, tell the lady what she’s won. Yup, Maggie Lange is there and the two of them are in some state of undress. And, in her haste to leave, Sonia drops the jacket. She takes off. Last she’s seen. Maggie Lange said to me, last night, that she thinks maybe Sonia was acting strange.”

  Dana raised her eyebrows at her partner. “Because she found her boyfriend in bed with another girl?”

  “I don’t know. Maggie acted pretty casual about that, like there was no exclusivity arrangement. She just said Sonia didn’t look too good. Don’t know. Maybe she was heartbroken anyway."

  It almost sounded like Hamill admitting the possibility of suicide.

  He headed her off before she could make mention if it. “I still like Brady for this the most, okay?”

  She nodded, she could accept that. Coming to terms with the alibis for Brady and Lambert was one thing, accepting this other theory was something else. And she already had her own doubts.

  “Still doesn’t account for her being in Hazleton if she’s pulling a Juliet,” Dana said.

  “Exactly.”

  “But, remember, Brady doesn’t live in Hazleton either. Takes him even further out of our crosshairs.”

  “Maybe,” Hamill said. “He’s from Clifton Park. Family there, three older brothers, one went here to school, one went into the family business — dairy farming — and the other is out west, working a grain elevator in Montana, or something. Brady is swearing up and down that the names in the book, they were just stupid. He wrote down the girls’ names as a challenge to himself. But, come on.”

  “No one else in on it? No one to impress?”

  “He says no. Just him.”

  Dana tipped back her beer. It was her third, and she had started to feel the pleasant numbness of the alcohol wash over her. Mixing alcohol with antibiotics was not a good idea, but she needed this. She thought of how she’d drunk her first beers with her brother.

  The detectives shifted to reviewing the notes from their meeting with the parents. They still need to talk to the teachers and other classmates of the girls, but they were nowhere with their main persons of interest.

  “We missed something. What did we miss?”

  She felt something dribble down her cheek, and realized her tear duct was leaking. She grabbed the cocktail napkins to blot the moisture, hoping Hamill wouldn’t notice.

  She took a look around, blinking, willing her eyes to focus. The place bore little resemblance to O’Sullivan’s. The music was low in the background, even the pool balls seemed to clack more softly. This was a bar for cops and firemen and construction workers. No college students here.

  “Where did the book come from?”

  “Where did it come from? I dunno. Well, we didn’t get a chance.”

  “What do you mean you didn’t get a chance?” Dana said.

  “I mean Brady’s parents heard he’d been taken in for questioning. I don’t know who told them. Probably Lange. We had a lawyer show up.” Hamill tongued the ice cubes in the bottom of his glass as he drained the rest of the liquor. He set the glass down hard, catching the attention of the bartender, who started over. “Captain kicked him loose.”

  Dana let it all sink in. Hamill wasn’t giving up on Brady as the killer, but the law had outplayed them, the alibis were strong, and that was that. It didn’t seem to bother him as much as she thought it might. Wasn’t really rattling her cage either. Maybe the alcohol and the pain meds had something to do with that. She ordered another beer when the bartender arrived.

  The two detectives drank in silence. She put something together in her mind.

  Finally Dana said, “Why did you ask me if I still went to church?”

  “I did?”

  Yeah, the other day. You asked me if I still went.”

  “Huh,” Hamill said. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

  “You think any of these girls are religious?”

  Hamill raised an eyebrow. “You serious?”

  “Why not? It’s funny, you know, it didn’t even come up. We talked to the parents for an hour each. Never asked about religious beliefs.”

  “I think it would have stood out on its own. If they were . . . I don’t know, if anyone was Baptist or Catholic or something, we would have heard Jesus mentioned here or there.”

  “You think?”

  “Probably.”

  Dana played with the bottle in front of her. “It’
s funny.”

  “It’s a riot.”

  “No. How things change. This country,” she waved an arm, “it all comes from religion, right? I mean I’m not talking government, separation of church and state, In God We Trust, or any of that. But people. Everyday life. Puritans and their religious stuff and the Lutherans in the Midwest, the Amish in Pennsylvania. Religion used to be the cornerstone of every community.”

  “Still is some places, but in the old days, yeah, it was everywhere. No TV, no Walking Dead, no cell phones. The dating pool was a fifty mile radius, at best. You met your wife at church. That’s how my grandfather . . .” He suddenly snapped his fingers. “You’re right. I did ask you. We went by the graveyard. Paps is buried there.”

  “Today’s fastest growing religion is, I don’t know.”

  Hamill took a drink, looked thoughtful for a second, and said, “I don’t know.”

  Dana finished the rest of her beer. “Forget it.” She set the empty bottle down loudly on the wood. The bartender didn’t look over this time.

  “No,” Hamill said, “let’s have it.”

  Dana looked into his eyes. “Maybe it means something.”

  “Maybe it means what? Means our girls are just as nondescript in the religion department as a growing portion of society?”

  “Yarrow talks about psychopathology. That’s what he was dumping on me in the hallway. And you know, yeah, maybe some people have some fucked-up wiring. But, maybe some people, maybe it’s not just messed up wiring. Maybe it’s societal.”

  “Oh come on . . .”

  “We’re out there dealing with this shit every day, Rob. Used to be maybe the good guys and the bad guys? Okay. Guy’s crazy, he’s ruthless. I don’t know. I mean, maybe people used to fear something. Like judgment.”

  “Our worst serial killers have been religious nutbags. ‘God told me to do it.’ ‘My dog told me to do it.’” Hamill gave her a look that was too close to pity for comfort. “Partner, you got knocked on the head.”

  “Hey,” Dana called to the bartender. “Another?” The bartender looked annoyed, but then came down the bar, eyes lingering on Dana’s bandages. He pulled up two beers from a cooler beneath the bar and dropped them in front of Dana. She stared back, took one and brought it to her lips. Before she could drink it, Hamill grabbed her wrist. Dana gave him a harsh look.

  “Hey, easy,” Hamill said.

  Dana got herself under control. She set the beer down and looked at the bottle. Then she tapped the bar. “Before you got to the hospital, I was on my phone. I downloaded the book and did a little reading.”

  “The book? The Bible?” Hamill was being facetious. He knew she was talking about the book from Perry Brady’s room.

  “You really liked Brady for this, right?”

  “Liked him?” Hamill widened his eyes. “I loved him for it.”

  “Okay. But that book, where it came from, that doesn’t factor in?”

  “What is it with you? It was just some book he wrote the names in. Could’ve been Winnie the Pooh.”

  Dana let that pass. She didn’t want to get agitated. Hamill had been almost civilized for an hour or so.

  “The author is named Rakesh Lata. I googled him.”

  “Alright, listen,” Hamill said, “we got the warrant for Brady’s house. CSI got proper documentation on everything. You gotta stop worrying about this shit. Even if that book was just a cheat sheet to remember their damn names before he screwed them and killed them, we’ve got our people stuck to those other girls like glue. Okay? Lange, Stender, nothing is going to happen to them.”

  “I’m going to email the author, see what he has to say,” Dana said. “And I’m going to finish reading that book. There’s more to it than just a place for Perry Brady to store his wish list.”

  Hamill bobbed his head. “Right, fine. Give it a look. I’ll do police work, you catch up on your reading.”

  “Because we’ve got nothing right now,” Dana said.

  “Not true.”

  “We got nothing. So you can indulge me this shit, whether I got hit on the head or not.”

  The two cops stared at each other. It was on the tip of her lips to tell him about the drawing, the tear, but it would just sound like more nonsense to him. Hamill was her friend, but he’d turn around and have her written up and say it was for her own good.

  She picked up the bottle and took a long pull, killing half of it, feeling her partner’s eyes on her the whole time.

  * * *

  They drove through the night, back to Hazleton, the headlights cleaving through a low fog. The temperature had warmed up and the snow was mostly melted. But the cold would return.

  Dana gazed out the window, her mind woolly after the multiple beers. Hamill claimed he was good to drive; Dana had lost track of her partner’s intake. Her thoughts wandered. She kept thinking about religion, about belief systems.

  “It’s the case getting to you,” Hamill said. His comment was so in-line with her thoughts that Dana felt gooseflesh stipple her arms. It seemed to be happening a lot lately.

  Hamill glanced over. “You’re getting a little unhinged, baby, but that’s okay.”

  They reached Hazleton and Hamill slowed the Corsica to a stop at a blinking red light. It was going on eleven o’clock at night, and the town was sleeping.

  Hamill looked at Dana. “You gonna be alright?”

  “Knock it off.”

  Normally that would have been enough, and Hamill would have let it go with another smart remark or two. But he stayed looking at her. They held each other’s gaze, just breathing, the engine running. He seemed to search her face, noting the cuts and bandages. Then he leaned towards her, and pressed his lips to hers.

  For a moment, she didn’t move.

  Her thoughts split into several directions at once. It had been so long since she had felt what she felt in Hamill. The desire. She pushed him back and moved away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  It was like the air in the car grew thicker. The beers were spinning her vision.

  Dana looked out into the night. She closed her eyes, took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Hamill got the car rolling. Her mind jumped through the responses, and she landed on the best one she could muster at the moment. “I know you are,” she said.

  Within a couple minutes, they were parking in Dana’s driveway.

  He tried to apologize again. “D, listen . . .”

  “Be back and pick me up in the morning. Get some sleep, Rob.”

  She got out of the car and looked up at her house. There was one light on in the kitchen, but the upstairs loft was dark. She watched as Hamill backed the Corsica down the driveway and drove off into the night. Then she walked around the house and entered through the back, as she did most nights.

  * * *

  Sarah was still awake in her room, watching something on her tablet. She looked up at Dana.

  “Hi, Mom,” she whispered.

  “Hi,” Dana said.

  She stayed in the doorway for a moment. Sarah’s eyes lingered over her bandages, just as Hamill’s had.

  Dana gazed back at her daughter. “Everything alright?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  Sarah returned her attention to the screen and Dana left the room.

  In her office, she booted up the computer. She couldn’t believe the shit Hamill had just pulled. What was he thinking? She told herself that tomorrow was a new day. Maybe the captain would let her stay on, keep working. If she just had something, something good. She stared at the screen as it went through the start-up process. But the exhaustion came over her suddenly, profoundly, and it was all she could do to make her way up the stairs to the loft and fall into bed next to Shawn. She was asleep almost immediately and her sleep was, mercifully, dreamless.

  DAY EIGHT (FIVE DAYS LATER)

  CHAPTER NINETEEN / The End of the Fourth Sun

  Dana ate her granola and stared out into the bright afternoon. Snow had c
ome with a vengeance overnight, and was piled high in the yard, reflecting the winter sun. The weather people predicted that this was just a preface to a big Nor’easter.

  She looked at the calendar hanging on the kitchen wall. It was mid-November and next Monday was the last day of classes at Plattsburgh College before the holiday break. She had been placed on leave, ordered to take a week’s rest from the case, whether she liked it or not.

  She had lost her place in family life. The girls barely responded to her, looking to Shawn for direction. She was out of step with nearly every domestic routine, from dinner to laundry. She took out the trash only to realize there was no bin at the end of the driveway; Shawn hauled it to the dump himself. She put dishes away in the wrong cabinets; she’d caught Sarah secretly switching them. It didn’t help that she’d remained utterly preoccupied with the case. Any time she hadn’t been attempting to fit in, she’d been reading. Studying.

  She stared at the calendar, refreshing the case timeline in her mind as she did every day. Friday, November 6, Holly Arbruster had expired, give or take half a day. She was not reported missing right away. Dana had come to accept Hamill’s theory about that; if a student wasn’t around over the course of a weekend, friends assumed they’d gone home. Parents figured their child was on campus.

  Friday, November 13, a week after Holly’s death, Sonia Taylor expired and was found in the Clair River by two elementary school boys that afternoon.

  Dana traced her finger along the path of the week. Halfway in between those two dates was Veteran’s Day. That same day was also Diwali, or, the Hindu Festival of Lights — though this wasn’t on the calendar. But Dana now knew it was the end of Muharram, which was the first month of the Islamic calendar, and considered the most important of four sacred months of the year. Muharram meant forbidden, or sinful. She’d read all about it in Rakesh Lata’s book, Unraveling the Ancient Wisdom.

  For Americans, the holiday following Veteran’s Day was, of course, Thanksgiving. Shawn’s family was close, just a few miles away, in Saranac Lake. Shawn’s parents helped out a lot with the girls. Dana’s parents had left the North Country and retired to Florida, her sisters were far flung. She didn’t speak to them much.