Daddy Darkest

by Ellery Kane

  “That guy . . . the one whose tires I cut . . . he molested me.” Clare felt the wetness on her cheeks before she recognized the tears as her own.

  “I know.”

  “It’s almost 10:30,” she mouthed in Cullen’s ear, inhaling the crisp, clean scent of his hair. How did this happen again? But she knew. She’d made it happen. It was her curse to want something like this. Something rotten, something wrong. She’d become Rodney Taylor, rubbing up against the nearest forbidden thing just because she could. If a line existed—and it always did—she drew another one a little farther. Until she crossed it. At least we haven’t gone all the way, she thought. And didn’t Rodney himself tell her it’s not wrong if you don’t go all the way? But the thing about lines—eventually they lead you somewhere. Raping your daughter’s fifteen-year-old friend in the front seat of your red BMW. Carrying your dead baby into Muir Woods. Staring down the tracks, playing chicken with a train. And that train had a name and piercing blue eyes and lips on fire.

  “You can run over, right? Five more minutes.” His hands were everywhere. That’s the way it felt. That’s the way she wanted it.

  “I have a new client. I should—” I should. I should. But it felt too good to stop. And she couldn’t tell where his mouth ended and hers began, so she stayed straddled across his lap, leaving it to him and his lips to sort out.

  “Whoa! ’Scuse me. I’ll come back.” At first, Clare thought the voice came from the hallway. A universe away, a dull, drab universe, walled off from her own by the door she thought she locked herself. It wasn’t until Cullen released his hands from her waist, stopped kissing her, and sprang to his feet, virtually dropping her to the floor, that she realized she was wrong. Dead wrong. How could she have been so careless? A man stood in the doorway. Of her universe. Theirs.

  “Tony Perez. I’m here to see Dr. Keely. Uh, the door was open—but if it’s a bad time . . . ”

  “No. No, it’s fine. Come in.” Clare expected to die right there. To literally fall to the ground, struck down by lightning. Or shame. She imagined they felt the same—burning from the inside out, splitting atoms in two, stopping her heart like a clock someone forgot to wind. But her heart kept beating fast and hard. Her hands smoothed her blouse, the silk hot and moist under her armpits. Her fingers buttoned the ones Cullen had undone. Her legs held her up, barely. And her eyes—oh, her eyes—they could see only one thing. Three inked letters on the neck of her new client: EME.

  21

  HEADS OR TAILS

  My chest burned. Partly from the running, partly from the crying that started halfway back to the parking lot, tears that came out of nowhere and wouldn’t stop. Statue Samantha unfroze and started melting. Levi didn’t ask if I was okay, but he told me we could slow down if I needed. I shook my head, worried speaking would only make it worse.

  We’d just reached the rental car when we heard the first wail of a police siren. Still faint, it splintered the quiet with the brutality of an axe. “Maybe we should wait and flag them down,” I told Levi, my breath still coming in staccato wet gasps I tried to control.

  “Sam.” Not the first time he sounded like my mother. But I felt his hand rub the center of my back, and it settled me. “You know we can’t. I can’t.”

  “What do you think is going to happen, Levi? At the end of all of this? Do you think you’re just going to shoot the bad guy and walk off into the sunset?”

  “That sounds like a Western.” His laugh smacked of bitterness, and it made me sad all over again. “I guess I didn’t think that far ahead.”

  “You brought zip ties and a stun gun, so I find that hard to believe.”

  “Yeah, well I had a plan. But it got blown to hell by . . . ”

  “By me? You can say it. It’s fine. I won’t be offended. Just remember who followed who.”

  “I was going to say the EME. Now that stun gun is gathering dust in an evidence room somewhere. And a skin-and-bones crackhead is wearing my zip ties.”

  That got a half-smile from me at least. “So what’s Plan B?”

  “Get in,” he said. He opened the car door and tossed the duffel bag in the back. “We’re too exposed out here. They might see us.” I couldn’t be sure if they meant the police or Cullen and my mother. Levi didn’t trust Clare Keely, but I didn’t want to ask because I couldn’t admit the truth out loud: I didn’t either.

  Inside the car, the cold went right through me. My shirt, clammy with sweat, stuck against my skin, and I shivered. As soon as Levi started the engine, I cranked up the heater and rubbed my hands together in the stream of hot air.

  “Do you think the police found Ginny yet?”

  “Probably.” I couldn’t tell if he was lying. “She’ll be okay. It’ll take some time, but wounds heal. All kinds of wounds.”

  I nodded because I knew the kind he meant. “Now what?”

  He rested his head against the seat and sighed. “I’m not exactly sure.”

  “What? I thought you knew where they were going.”

  “My sister had found out about the cabin. When he escaped, I figured he’d try to go there. Past that, well . . . ” He shrugged, and all the hopes I’d pinned on him came undone and fell away. I would’ve cried if I’d had any tears left.

  “How did your sister find that place? It’s pretty remote.”

  “Turns out Cutthroat is a bit of a mama’s boy. The phone records from San Quentin showed them talking almost every day. So we tracked her down, and Katie did a little snooping while she slept. Unfortunately, she’s a light sleeper.”

  “What did you find exactly?”

  “Not much besides this cabin. Cullen spent time here as a kid.”

  I tried to imagine it, him—those ice-blue eyes—as a child. A boy’s small frame, slight and wiry, playing in the woods, but the face had no features. It was blank. I couldn’t picture it. “Why?”

  “His father lived here in the sixties, apparently. Off and on. Before he ended up in prison for rape. It was a commune back then.” A second siren sliced through, closer this time, and I jumped, kicking the ammo can at my feet. “Let’s get out of here,” Levi said. “I’ll head toward the freeway.”

  “Which direction? Where would you go if you escaped from prison?”

  I watched his lips curled into a slow smile as he plucked a penny from his pocket. “Heads, Mexico. Tails, Canada.”

  “Sam, wake up.” Levi nudged me with his elbow, and I groaned. The clock on the dashboard told me I’d only been sleeping for minutes. Just a blink that felt like hours. But it was dark. So dark I wondered if my eyes were open at all. Long-fingered branches scratched against the window. Pinecones crunched like bones under the wheels. I recognized this place.

  “Where are we?” I asked anyway.

  “We’re here.”

  The fine hairs on my neck bristled. “Here?” I pressed my face to the window. A bird lay dead on the ground, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle. Beyond it, another and another. A line of small bodies leading to a mound of fresh dirt and a woman shoveling. I couldn’t make her out, but I knew her anyway. As well as I knew myself. She turned as slow as a jewelry box dancer, in her hands a metal box. “What is this place?” I asked.

  “Your grave.” And that’s when I saw the knife in his hand, the blade so new, so shiny, it would mirror his face back to him. Cullen’s face. My father.

  I jolted awake, my heart battering my chest like a Bellwether hailstorm. “Are you okay?” Levi asked, pulling off to the shoulder.

  I nodded fast, not entirely sure. “I had a dream, I guess.” I wrapped my arms around myself, noticing my goosebumps. “Scratch that. A nightmare.”

  “We haven’t been driving that long. Tails, Canada. Remember?”

  “I remember.” With newfound purpose, I picked up the ammo can and brought it to my lap. “But first I think we should look inside.”

  “Didn’t you already . . . ”

  “Maybe there’s something I missed. You’re an officer of th
e law, right?”

  “At this point, I think that’s debatable.”

  “Humor me.”

  He flipped open the lid and examined the passports, holding them up to the interior light. “Kevin and Anna Johnson?” he asked, incredulous, and I shrugged.

  “Did your mom tell you what these were for? They’re legit looking. Professional.”

  “I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but I’m pretty sure she’d planned to help him escape.”

  “I think you’re on to something, Detective.” Levi smirked, then sobered seeing my face. He set the cash on the console and picked up the scribbled note. “This is pretty twisted. Typical Cutthroat. Is that all?”

  “Well, there was the gun, of course. And the cash. That’s it.”

  I reached for the stack of well-worn hundreds and rolled my thumb along the edges, listening to the soft whir of the paper. “Should we count it? It’s a lot of money.”

  I began ticking off each hundred, then thousand—one thousand, two thousand, three thousand—until mid-way through, the rubber band popped, and the bills spread across my lap.

  “Hey, what’s that?” Levi asked. I followed his eyes to the floorboard, where a business card dropped from the stack. It looked ordinary enough—like any puzzle piece—meaningless on its own. Crisp white with chartreuse lettering, a little bent at the edges, but when I picked it up, examined it more closely, it became essential.

  “I know that name,” I said. “McKinnon asked my mother about him.” I passed the card to Levi, and he read it aloud.

  “Green River Trucking. Rodney Taylor, Owner. Serving California since 1983.”

  Levi tapped the address with his thumb—75th Street, Oakland. He reached across my lap and popped the glove compartment, pointing to the map inside. Then he put the car in drive and pulled back onto the highway. “I say tails, Rodney Taylor.”

  22

  OAK TREE

  “Are you sure your mom never mentioned this guy?” Levi asked, eyeing the business card propped in the cup holder.

  I tried not to glare at him. “There’s a lot she didn’t mention. Obviously.”

  “Sorry.” The way he squeezed my knee—gentle but firm—I forgave him. And I wanted to pretend it all made sense. Me and Levi in a rental car, halfway to Oakland. Ginny’s blood, drying on my blue jeans. My mother somewhere with my father. My real father. “What did she say about your dad?”

  I catalogued what I knew—“Neal Barrington, psychologist, died in a plane crash the year I was born”—which was not much at all. “And he gave her that ruby ring she wears.”

  “But what did she say about him?”

  I sighed. “She hardly ever talked about him. Once, she compared him to a tree.”

  Levi frowned. “A tree?”

  “An oak tree to be exact.” I’d come in late from stargazing with Tobey. When she saw my face, flushed and giddy, she sat me down. Find a boy more like your father, she’d said. “Sturdy and reliable like an oak.”

  “Interesting,” he said, side-eyeing me. I couldn’t decide if Levi was an oak or not. “He sounds a lot different than Cullen.”

  “If he’s even real. She probably made him up like everything else.” I leaned back against the seat so Levi couldn’t see my eyes. “My father killed people.” I tried out the words in my head, but they sounded worse out loud.

  “So did mine,” Levi said.

  “But do you know why? That’s important, right? The why.”

  “Is it?” he asked, and I knew I wasn’t meant to answer. Not that I had an answer anyway. “There’s one thing I know for sure about my dad.” Levi waited until I looked at him, blinking back tears again, and smiled. “He wasn’t an oak tree. And I can’t even blame Cullen for that.”

  “Hey, is that . . . ?” I pointed out the window to the blaring lights just past the exit sign.

  “Yep. San Quentin. The prison by the Bay. The place where all this started.” By this, I knew exactly who he meant. I tried to picture my mother driving this road, making that turn toward those gates, those high fences. Muted by the darkness, it might’ve been a luxury hotel. A luxury hotel with a high-priced view. The highest price.

  “Did you ever visit your dad there?”

  “Once, but I don’t remember it. My parents—my adopted parents—showed me a picture of me and my dad in front of this mural. The one in the visiting room. Snip said I was really shy, that I wouldn’t even let go of my mom until it was time to leave. I guess I was scared she’d disappear too. I followed her around like a puppy.”

  “Uh, Levi?” I fixed my stare on the side mirror, my stomach clenched. “There’s a cop behind us.”

  “I know.” He didn’t gasp or flinch or tighten his grip on the steering wheel. I might as well have told him there was an ironing board in the rearview.

  “How long has it been there?” I asked, trying to mimic his even timbre.

  “A minute or so. Since we got on the San Rafael Bridge.” Levi gestured out the window to the Bay. I squinted to make out the water from the sky, searching for the places where the black waves moved slow and fluid like a moccasin in the grass.

  “They’re probably looking for this car by now, don’t you think?” I asked.

  “Definitely. But no lights, no problem, right?”

  I exhaled. No lights, no problem. Still, it was just us and him. Two dots separated by the blank canvas of the early morning highway. Surely no coincidence. And that’s when I saw it. A kaleidoscope of blue and red staining the dash. I sucked in a gulp of air. “Lights. Problem.”

  Levi cursed under his breath, slowing the car to a crawl until we reached the section of bridge with a narrow shoulder. “If we don’t get out of this, just say it was my idea. All of it.” He lowered the window, and the cold crept inside until I felt it crawl under my skin.

  “It was your idea.” Outside, a door closed with a soft thud. A simple sound—ordinary—but in the absence of any others, it took on its own life, critical and foreboding.

  “And I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Sam.”

  “Wait—what?” Boots struck the ground with the kind of authority no one questioned. And Levi’s fingers drummed on the wheel. The air hummed electric between us, fraying my already ragged nerves, and I sat still waiting for the lightning strike.

  “Step out of the vehicle. Both of you.” It was the sort of voice I expected from a police officer. I didn’t turn to see his face, but I imagined it anyway. The hard set of his jaw. The ice in his eyes, a thin layer of cold to cover his fear. He would shoot me—small-town girl—if it came to that.

  “Go ahead,” Levi urged. “Do what he says.”

  “What’re you going to do?” I asked, knowing he wouldn’t answer. Fearing he might. One step, then another, and the pavement, wet with dew, shimmered under my feet.

  The officer addressed me, but I couldn’t look up. “Put your hands on the side of the vehicle, ma’am, where I can see them. I wished for my letterman jacket to remind me of who I was. I couldn’t remember Samantha Bronwyn anymore. I’d left her behind somewhere.

  “Sir, step out of the vehicle. Now.” Levi’s fingers kept drumming. He didn’t seem afraid, even when the man raised his gun, but I wondered if his tap-tap-tapping marked the frenetic beat of his heart.

  “Levi . . . please . . . ”

  Three things happened then. Not one—two—three—like a line of dominoes cascading. But all at once. Onetwothree. I couldn’t say which came first. Levi spinning his tires, wheels shrieking as he put his foot to the gas, leaving burnt rubber marks on the road and me standing alone, exposed. Another engine revving like thunder building over the horizon. Or a spray of bullets . . . and the one that found a mark.

  Next came the scream. Different than Ginny’s. Unforgettable. The scream of a grown man who had known ordinary fear, but never this. The kind of animal scream you’d imagine would come if death himself could lock eyes with you before sucking out your soul. The officer’s legs folded beneath him as I watched. His
mouth contorted in surprise, then pain. It wasn’t the face I’d imagined at all—stoic and chiseled in ice. His cheeks were full, doughy, rough with acne scars. And his eyes were fawn brown.

  A bullet buzzed in the air in front of me, and I ducked. Sprinted to the police car and took cover alongside it. Another shot pinged off the door, and I winced as if it had gone through my flesh. I stared at the clean wound in the sheet metal no different than the hole in the officer’s chest. And I gagged on the warm, bitter bile rising in my throat.

  “Sam! Get in!” Until I heard Levi’s voice, I’d been convinced he wanted me dead. Those bullets were his. They were meant for me. Meant to end me as he sped down the freeway toward his revenge. And that’s why he’d been sorry.

  My mother’s rental car steamrolled toward me in reverse, Levi yelling out the window. “C’mon!” I willed my legs to run, to dodge bullets. Where were they coming from? I willed my hand to open the door and fling myself inside, curling against the seat like a snail in a shell. I willed myself to turn my head over my shoulder, to glimpse through the shattered rear glass. “EME,” Levi said, shifting into drive and screeching away. “Are you hit?”

  Hit. That word took its time. Was I? Hit? My hand bled. I saw that now. Cut by a shard of glass from the exploded windshield. But as far as I could tell, the rest of me remained intact. “No,” I answered, flinching with each pop-pop-pop.

  With no instruction, Levi passed me his gun. Like it was a basketball, and I’d know exactly what to do with it. I’d only ever shot at a paper target. Never point your weapon at anything you’re not willing to destroy. That’s what I remembered as I stuck my arm out the window and pulled the trigger. That’s when I knew Samantha Bronwyn was dead. A self, my whole self, shed like an old skin.

  23

  WHAT’S ALREADY GONE