Doctors of Darkness Boxed Set

by Ellery A Kane

  Even after that last day, when I watched her suck in one last rattling breath, anger—pure rage, really—is the only thing I’ve got left for my mother. I guard it like a precious stone, hot and hard, rooted at the center of me. That’s what fuels my walk toward the girl. “Well, I’m here,” I say. “I’m Evie.”

  Her eyebrows lift just a little, like she can’t be bothered. Up close, her face is ashen and mottled with scabs. “Bitch, I don’t care who you are. This is my spot. Get your own.”

  I stare at her, absorbing the words—their meaning—the way a fighter takes a punch. Silent. Stoic. Unwavering. “I’m not competition. I was supposed to meet someone here.” I lower my voice and take another step toward her. “Maybe you?”

  She snorts. “You a cop?”

  “Of course not.” Though shrink isn’t much better, and I know it. “What happens in this house is nobody’s business.” That had been my mom’s warning when the school told her I should see the counselor once a week. “Keep your mouth shut. That uppity broad doesn’t know shit about our family.” But that’s what happens when the teacher finds a clump of your hair—black and balled and dusty, like some kind of vermin—under your desk. “Did you leave me a note? At my office?”

  “Lady, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. And you’re cramping my style, okay?” I follow her dead gaze across the street where a car sits idling, a man watching from the window, eyes fixed and hungry as a wolf.

  “I’ll leave. If you tell me why I’m here.”

  Her sigh is heavy, beleaguered. Like I’m too dense to bother with. “I told you I have no fucking clue who you are. But I’ve gotta get paid.”

  “I’ve gotta get paid, baby.” My mother again, on the nights I’d beg her to stay. Once I’d emptied my pockets onto the table, the few dollars I’d earned cleaning rooms at the Blue Bird, and she’d laughed at me. “That’s sweet, Evelyn. But your mama needs real money.” I’d shut myself in the bathroom until she left. When I’d finally summoned the courage to peek out, the table was bare.

  “Here,” I say, handing the girl a twenty. She snatches it up, so eager I can’t meet her eyes.

  “You’ll leave then, right? If I tell you what I know.” She stands and straightens herself. Through the thin fabric of her sweater, I see a lipstick-red bra and a snake tattoo above her breast. The tail of it loops upward across her collarbone. There’s a bruise there in the shape of a thumb. It makes me think of Danny with his hands on me. Of Cassie too.

  I nod at her, feeling like I might be sick. “If anybody told you to meet up here, it was probably Violet. She was stupid like that, always thinking she was better than the rest of us.”

  “Violet?”

  “Yep.”

  “Is she around?”

  “Ha!” The noise comes out sharp like the cry of an animal, and I feel my heart race. “Only if you believe in ghosts. She went and got herself whacked Friday night by some freak. Had it comin’, if you ask me. This ain’t no place for a teenager. Especially one like Vi. Too big for her britches, you know? I tried to tell Trey she was gonna get herself…”

  She stops herself there—she’s already said too much—and stubs out her cigarette on the sidewalk while I struggle to swallow. Like there’s something alive in my throat, scratching its way out.

  “Trey Waters?” Saying it out loud casts a spell, and I wait for him to materialize in a plume of smoke and fire. To press the blade of my father’s knife against my cheek. Sink those devil claws into my arm. To whisper to me. “You look just like your mama. Real purdy.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Nothing.” I step away, suddenly scared to turn my back to her. “Thanks for your help.”

  I hurry to the car and lock myself inside it, cracking the window an inch. Just enough so I can hear the man call to her. “Hey, Ruby. You wanna take a ride?”

  ****

  Somehow, I manage the drive back up into the Hills. Until a deer darts out just before the last turn of the road—bounding across two lanes and disappearing into the brush—and I realize I’ve been somewhere else all along. Trapped in the past like a fly caught in amber. Only my body had been driving.

  The house is all lit up, and there’s a black sedan parked in front. A cop car. There’s no doubt. I picture Maggie tending to the officers, plying them with coffee and cookies and stories about me. “Evie always was a good liar. Probably runs in the genes. I don’t know what my son saw in her.” But if I know Maggie, she’s thinking those things. Not saying them. She’d never sully the Maddox name.

  I feel numb, and I move like I’m in last night’s dream, plodding through the cold fog toward the front door, turning my key in the lock. I half-expect it not to open, but it does. And the sound of it jars me, like I’ve unlocked the portal to another universe.

  “Well, there she is. I told you she’d be back soon.” Maggie’s eyes glare at me from the sofa, her teeth bared in a forced smile. “Would you like more coffee, Detective? Another madeleine, perhaps?”

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Maddox. But, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to speak with your daughter-in-law alone.”

  “Absolutely. I understand.” She gives me a pointed look before she disappears into the kitchen, leaving me alone with Detective Munroe. Seeing her here, among Maggie’s things—a delicate vase, a coffee-table book of Richard Misrach photos, her leather slippers—I realize how imposing she is with her broad shoulders and wide hips. Just a hint of a smirk that makes me think she knows something about me. But then, she wipes a trail of cookie crumbs from the corner of her mouth, and I feel less afraid.

  “Did you catch him?” I ask, hurrying to speak first. Before I lose my nerve.

  “Still looking. We’ve got a name though. Danny Dunaway. Ring any bells?” I shake my head, seeing his shadowy face inches from my own. Smelling his hot tobacco breath. He’d told me his real name. Which meant he hadn’t planned on letting me go. Not alive anyway. “I’m sure it won’t surprise you to learn he’s a registered sex offender. He did five years on a rape case, and he’s had about twenty charges for soliciting since then. Hasn’t checked in with his PO in over a month. And we had a tip about a black jeep. Somebody spotted one over by your office later that night.”

  “So, is he a suspect in that murder?”

  “We’re not ruling anything out. He wasn’t a client of yours, was he? Maybe a while back? Someone you might’ve forgotten?”

  “I wouldn’t forget.” I silently cackle at the irony. “Not that.”

  “Okay. But that’s not why I’m here.” She pauses, and I forget to breathe, suspended for a moment in complete uncertainty. “Ever heard the name Violet Kurchell?”

  For the second time that night, I take the blow like a champ. A little woozy, but I don’t show it. I don’t even think before I lie. “Uh, no.” Like mother, like daughter indeed. “Should I know her?”

  “When you came to see me on Saturday you’d asked about what had happened outside your office. Why?”

  Because of Cassie. Because I watched her die right there. Because I can’t remember. “I guess I thought that it might have had something to do with Danny. Or even one of my group members. The whole thing seemed like a strange coincidence.”

  “I agree.” Again, she waits for me to fill the silence. I know this trick. I’ve used this trick. And I want to tell her everything. “We identified the victim. Her name was Violet Kurchell. A fifteen-year-old girl who’d been in and out of the system. She had your address in her pocket. We think she may have stopped by your office the night she was killed.”

  “My office? Why?”

  “I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on that. You and Violet have something in common, don’t you?” I see the crack in the kitchen door, Maggie’s shadow just inside it. She’s not moving. She’s listening. And the room starts to shrink around me. “Trey Waters. H
e knew your mother, right?”

  I’m not in Maggie’s house anymore. I’m back at the Blue Bird motel, hiding out in the bathroom, on the day my mother died. It was Saturday, but she’d told Trey I was at school so he wouldn’t bother me. I couldn’t decide who was more pathetic—my mom for saying it or Trey for believing it.

  I’d cracked the door just enough to see the sofa. It was a hideous, urine-colored yellow (that Mom had called happy) with a huge tear in the cushion. She’d found it in a dumpster and lugged it back to the room with Peggy—like it was some kind of prize, a beast she’d hunted and shot herself. Never mind that the manager didn’t allow it. Who brings their own furniture to a motel? And secondhand furniture at that? Arlene Allcott apparently.

  Shirtless, Trey had loomed over her. And I’d stared at his back—a disgusting canvas of acne, hair, and ink. My mother was perched on the edge of the sofa, pointing at him, the muscles in her neck tensing in anger. She’d taken off the ring he’d given her, the one that turned her finger green, and chucked it in his direction.

  Trey was yelling at her, and she was yelling back, saying the words I’d been waiting on for years. Like waiting for the cicadas to tunnel back to the surface, to begin their short lives above ground. The way I’d seen it, my mother was just like those cicadas. And her life above ground lasted just under five minutes.

  “I’m done, Trey. Do you hear me? Done. I’ve got a girl her age, you know.” Her being Brandy. Trey’s newest recruit. “What’s next? You gonna put Evie to work too?”

  “Like mother, like daughter. Ain’t that what they say? Besides, the young ones, that’s what the johns like anyhow.”

  He stalked around her, and my stomach clenched. I should have closed the door right then, but I couldn’t turn away. “You see this sofa you drug back here? It used to be real nice, real fancy. Sittin’ in some gal’s livin’ room. Then she got a little careless. Spilled her wine on the cushion. Her kid puked his guts up on it. And the dog pissed right there in the corner. A few times. Now it’s all used up. Just like you. Ain’t good for nothin’ no more.”

  “Fuck you. I’m through tricking. I’ve been saving my money. And I’m gonna make something of myself. Get my own damn sofa. My own dog. And a house. Maybe up in the Hills somewhere. Get off this junk. For real this time.”

  He kicked at the cushions with his boot, upending one, and my mother tensed. “You can get all the sofas you can carry, bitch, but you owe me that money. It ain’t yours to keep.”

  “Like hell it’s not.”

  Just then, Trey’s head swiveled toward the bathroom, and his eyes were like two black holes. Like tiny graves dug deep in the earth. I wasn’t sure if he’d seen me, but I’d shut the door fast. Turned the cheap lock, though it was useless against someone like him, and climbed into the bathtub. It was still damp, but I was too scared to care. Like hell it’s not. I’d repeated it to myself, indignant, not knowing then those were my mother’s last words.

  Evie

  May 4, 1994

  Nine days until my birthday

  I stood at the board, listening to Bobby Pierce giggle at me from the front row.

  “Evil Evie,” he hissed, just quiet enough that the teacher couldn’t hear him. “You’ve got something on your pants. Looks like blood.” The girls seated around him snickered. As if multiplying fractions in front of the class wasn’t bad enough, I had to contend with period humor now.

  I tried to focus on the numbers, to hold the nub of white chalk steady in my hand, but I couldn’t keep my mind straight.

  Cassie was missing. I hadn’t seen her since Sunday night when Trey had all but kidnapped me and driven me to the Blue Bird in his hooptie. God, I loved it when Butch had called it that. To his face! And even more when he’d stomped Trey’s weaselly little hand. I only wish I’d had the guts to do it myself. But I’d only ever had the nerve to hurt Trey in my daydreams. I’d sunk a knife into his shriveled heart, tiny as a raisin; punched him until his head floated off like a runaway balloon; and my personal favorite, the gators halved him with one sickening, glorious chomp. But now, Cassie was missing—she hadn’t been at Willow Court for two nights straight—and I had a sick feeling it had to do with Trey. Because everything awful in my life began and ended with him.

  “Evelyn, do you have the answer? The class is waiting.” Mrs. Hildebrandt tapped her watch and raised her caterpillar brows at me expectantly.

  “Yes, ma’am.” My whole body got hot in an instant. Like I’d swallowed a burning coal. I knew the answer, but I couldn’t make myself write it. And the room started to shrink around me until it was the exact size of the Blue Bird bathroom. I watched the chalk drop from my hand and splinter against the floor, sending a poof of white powder into the air. Bobby’s cackle sounded like a scream, and I grabbed my backpack and took off running. Out the door. Down the hallway. Past Principal Masterson’s office. I didn’t stop until I reached the edge of the lawn that separated Burton Junior High from the rest of the world.

  I’d never played hooky before, much less sprinted off school grounds, and I could hear them calling me. “Evelyn Allcott, get back here!”

  I dipped one toe onto the street, then the other, and I felt a rush. Like zipping down the highway in Calder’s Barracuda with the wind in my hair and him singing Sinatra. All my life, I’d wanted to be that free—to fly away from it all like a bird catching the breeze—but I’d never realized until that very moment, I was the only one who’d kept me tethered to the ground.

  I didn’t waste another second. I took off running and didn’t look back.

  ****

  At three o’clock, Willow Court was still deserted. No Cassie in sight. So I packed up my books—only I would do homework on a skip day—and began the trek back to the Port. I’d hoped Cherice was there. The school surely had called them, but at least she’d go easy on me.

  The buzz of freedom had worn off, and I walked slower than usual, dreading tonight’s lecture. And the teasing tomorrow. I’m cursed, I thought. Evil Evie is cursed. The sun was brutal and my armpits started to sweat through my T-shirt. By the time I’d reached the gas station, I was so desperate for a Slurpee, I could taste that first shot of sweetness at the back of my throat. But as I pushed the door open, the cold air hitting me like a slap, the taste turned bitter. Sour as death.

  “Cassie?”

  “Hey. What’s up?” As if she hadn’t disappeared. As if she didn’t look like an entirely different person. Clean, for starters. And all dolled up in a yellow sundress, her fingernails glossy red, and her hair as shiny as a horse’s mane.

  “Where have you been?”

  She shrugged. “Around. You weren’t worried, were you? Trey said you wouldn’t be worried.”

  “Trey?” My eyes darted. “Where?”

  Cassie grabbed my hand and tugged me to the back of the store, whispering. “He’s nothing like you said, Evie. He got me all this.” She did a little twirl, flashing a lipstick smile. “He said I looked like a model.”

  Purdy. “I’m sure he did. Is he here?”

  “I’m supposed to meet him outside in twenty minutes. He had some business to take care of.”

  Business. I rolled my eyes. Trey was a regular Edward Lewis. Not. He’d never pull off Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. “Are you staying with him?”

  “No! Don’t be silly. He put me up in a motel in Oakland for a few nights. The Blue…something or other.”

  “Blue Bird?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. Just so I could shower and have a nice bed to sleep in. And he told me that once he’s saved up enough money, he’s gonna get me a bus ticket to Houston so I can find my dad.”

  “You can’t honestly believe that. After everything I told you about him.” But she did. I knew she did.

  “He said your mom was sick, Evie. That she liked being with those guys. He loved her, you know. He even cried about
it.”

  She spun around, away from me, and headed for the Slurpee machine. Stunned, I followed—dragging my legs like lead anchors—and grabbed her wrist. I let myself think it, the thing I never thought of, the thing I couldn’t bury deep enough. Me huddled in the bathtub. Trey pounding on the door until I came out, slowly. Like I’d been asleep a thousand years, and the world had gone on without me. Your mama finally did it. That was all he had to say before he left us there. One dead with a needle in her arm, one wishing to be.

  “Cassie. He killed her. I never said that to anybody. I don’t know how, and I can’t prove it. But I know he did. Whatever he does for you, it has a price. And you’re going to have to pay it.”

  Her body stiffened, but she didn’t look at me. Just filled up her Double Gulp like nothing, spearing the cup with a bright-blue straw. “You’re wrong. Plus, it’s not like I’ve got any better offers. I can’t stay at Willow Court forever.”

  “Come back with me. They’ll let you stay.”

  She didn’t answer, and for a moment, I believed I’d convinced her somehow. But then, I caught her eyes looking past me and out the window. “He’s here,” she said.

  I ducked behind the shelf of potato chips and rifled through my backpack, scrawling the number for the Port on the first sheet of paper I could find—my notes from third-period science. The process of photosynthesis. “Here. Just in case it doesn’t turn out the way you hope.”

  She took it in her hand, stared at it. “I wish you could just be happy for me. Trey warned me you’d be jealous.” Then she pointed to the heart I’d doodled in the corner during class. “Who’s Calder?”

  I hated her then. “My boyfriend. And he can kick Trey’s ass.”