Daddy Darkest

by Ellery Kane

  The last time I threw up I’d just run liners in Bellwether’s gymnasium in the dead heat of August. Cheerios and scrambled eggs all over my brand new Nikes. After that, I stopped eating before practice.

  Damn granola bar. It was the only thing in my stomach. Well, not anymore. I drew in a shaky breath and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “It’s okay,” Levi told me, rubbing my back. “You don’t have to look.” But it felt impossible not to.

  The swarm of flies directed me to a puddle of orangey liquid, spilled in haste from a plastic bottle. Past that, the body. It slumped against the wall, the head tilted to one side, as if he’d fallen asleep. His mouth slackened. His eyes closed, thank God. Thin gray hair matted against his forehead. Blood pooled on either side of him from a gaping wound at his neck. One hand stayed clutched toward his throat, frozen in a futile effort to defend himself. Neither Levi nor I said it aloud, but I figured we were both thinking it. Cutthroat. Cut. Throat.

  Levi approached the body, and the flies scattered in all directions. I imagined their sticky little legs landing on my arm, skittering across my forehead, leaving tiny prints of orange juice mixed with a dead man’s blood. I fought the urge to vomit again.

  He covered his hands with Snip’s work gloves and reached inside the man’s pockets until he produced a wallet and a cell phone. “It’s him,” he said, returning the wallet to rest inside the blood-soaked khakis. He scrolled through the phone, the furrow in his brows deepening.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A text. Unknown number at 4 a.m. Has she been in touch with you?”

  “That’s it?”

  “Not exactly.” He flashed the screen toward me. “Another one at 5:30.” You don’t want to know what happens to people who don’t answer me.

  “I suppose you think the she is my mother? That somebody knew she would come here?”

  Levi busied himself with the file cabinet—meaning yes—searching drawer by empty drawer until he arrived at the last one. Locked.

  “Can you pick it?” I asked.

  “No need.” Levi jingled Rodney’s belt, a set of keys affixed to it. “It’s probably right here.”

  I walked to the spot where Levi crouched, trying the keys until he found the one that fit. I felt numb, like a pretend person, but the locked drawer drew me like a magnet, a vortex that sucked me right in.

  “Unbelievable,” Levi announced with an ironic laugh. He tossed a batch of magazines on the desk.

  “Barely Legal?” I read the first title aloud.

  “Porn.”

  “Really? What gave it away?” I averted my eyes from a bare-chested girl my own age, a cheerleading skirt on her bottom half.

  Levi rifled through a stack of them to the bottom. “There’s something else.” A large business envelope. He undid the metal tabs and let the contents slide onto the desk. He’d already made sense of it, cursing under his breath, before I stopped gaping.

  Rodney Taylor collected photographs. Polaroids. In the ones I could see, the girls were clothed, some of them barely. All blonde, all young. Teenage-ish. Their bodies posed, pursing their lips like Ginny did in her selfies. But the eyes bothered me most. Desperate, confused, haunted. “He’s definitely got a type,” Levi muttered as he flipped through the pictures, revealing names on the back he read out loud, drawing a breath after each one.

  “Margot.”

  “Suzie.”

  “Madison.”

  “Amber.”

  “Beth.”

  The rhythm broke, and his face looked pained.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Levi held the last photo out to me, but kept his fingers latched tight to the corners. Like he hadn’t made his mind up yet. “Is this . . . ?” And then he let go.

  25

  ON THE PREMISES

  Levi inspected the key box while I studied the photograph, unable to take my eyes from it. At home, my mother had no pictures of herself. She’d told me a house fire had destroyed them when she turned sixteen. So I couldn’t be sure that girl was her—blonde wispy hair, freckles, eyes blue as the crayon—but it seemed likely. The photo looked to be the oldest of the bunch—I could tell by the faded color, the filmy coating—and his favorite. It had the worn edges of an object well-loved. The name on the back left even less room for doubt. Clare.

  “What do you think?” Levi asked. “Is it her?”

  I nodded. “Do you think . . . I mean . . . why did he have it?” I already figured, of course. I wasn’t that naïve. But I needed Levi to say it, because I couldn’t.

  He looked away. And I wondered if he would say it after all. “Victims, I’m guessing. Sexual abuse.” I felt grateful when he kept talking. It meant I could hide my face a little longer. “But that’s not the question. The question is, why would your mom have his card?”

  Of course, I couldn’t answer, and the silence stretched like a rubber band. So tense it threatened to snap. That’s how I felt inside. Pulled taut between the two Clares. Still, I felt sorry for both of them. Clare Keely for having to abandon her entire self, leaving her like an unwanted puppy on the side of the road. And Clare Bronwyn for going along with it. An accessory after the fact. “Did you figure out which truck is missing?” I asked finally.

  “Yep. 009.” He pointed to the number above the empty key ring. “Easiest mystery yet. Even for a delinquent cop.” I knew he wanted me to laugh, but I could only manage a sad smile. “But that’s not the best part. I think we can figure out where they are.” I saw what he had in mind. A sticker affixed inside the key box that read Truck Tracker: Never lose sleep over your fleet! Track ’em with Truck Tracker. 1-800-A-TRUCK.

  “It’s worth a shot.”

  Levi dialed the number on Rodney Taylor’s rotary phone. “Uh, yes. This is Rodney Taylor. Green River Trucking. I need to track one of my trucks.” I’ll admit Levi saying that with a straight face got me feeling a little lighter. “The password? Just give me a sec. I know I wrote it down here somewhere.” He looked at me expectantly. Like I would know it. “Is it, password? How about, Green River? I’m sorry. I seem to have misplaced . . . ”

  “Probably Clare,” I muttered.

  “Is it, Clare?”

  “Okay, yes. Truck 009. I’ll hold.” Levi avoided my eyes again, and I didn’t blame him. Odds were he’d never met anybody whose family was more screwed up than his. And to think, a few days ago, I thought my mom and I were mind-numbingly normal. “Are you sure? Because it’s not . . . I don’t see . . . Alright. Yes, ma’am. Thank you for your help.”

  Before he returned the receiver to its cradle, Levi put his finger on his lips and reached for his gun in a way—fast and deliberate—that made me shudder. “She said 009 is still on the premises,” he whispered.

  December 21, 1996

  Clare had considered ending it all before. Doing the dutch like James Dumas. But it had been a while. Over a decade. So long, she’d forgotten that feeling. The complete abhorrence of being in her own skin. The paralyzing disgust. She lay in the half-filled bathtub, motionless and heavy, a beached whale waiting in vain for the sea to draw her back home.

  The last time she did this—bathtub, razor—she’d returned from Muir Woods, dirt and blood under her fingernails, intent on her own annihilation. But her mom had come stumbling in through the door, half-drunk, half broken-hearted. I’m back, baby. He dumped me. Where are you? By that time, Clare had already made a small incision, a barely there slice in the milky-white skin on her wrist. She hated her own cowardice. Hated that this was harder somehow, harder than murder. Clare? Honey?

  Dripping wet, Clare slid the blade to the back of the medicine chest, on the shelf with the things her mother never used. Rubbing alcohol. Cold medicine. A dusty thermometer. And away from the other things. Valium. Nail polish. Condoms. She stuck an adhesive bandage on the cut and promised herself she wouldn’t try again. If for no other reason than to deny her mother the satisfaction of calling herself a victim for the rest of her life.<
br />
  But now, her mom was gone. And she’d come this far. Softening a store-bought razor with a lighter. Plucking out the blade with surgical precision. She held it between her fingers and marveled at its sharp edge. Sharp enough to cut through all her self-hatred.

  Clare wasn’t sure how she’d made it through the rest of yesterday. The long, shaky walk back to her office. I need you to set a trap for a rat. The afternoon spent dodging Fitzpatrick, inventing an excuse to get out of dinner with Briggs. I need to set a trap for a rat. She collapsed on the sofa, sat there staring at the wall until the room got dark. I have to set a trap for a rat.

  It came to her suddenly—a burst of light and energy—and she’d driven at 1 a.m. to the all-night drugstore for a new package of razor blades and a Bic lighter. Because she couldn’t set a trap for someone she . . . loved. She tried out the word, and it fit in a strange, uncomfortable way like playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes. Of all the things Mr. Taylor took from her, she couldn’t forgive him for that one. Love got all mixed up, a grimy stew of shame and lust and loathing she wanted to gorge herself on.

  Clare ran her finger across the underside of her wrist, feeling the sinewy rope of her radial artery pulsing with life. She knew enough to know she’d done it wrong before. Lengthwise, not across. That was the trick. She held the blade and counted the reasons to die. A long list that started on the day she let Mr. Taylor touch her—no, scratch that, on the first day she liked it—and ended with her letting Dumas down.

  Mid-list of miseries, the telephone rang. Clare had no intention of answering, which made its blaring more obnoxious than usual. A 2 a.m. call could never be good. But she had no family left, meaning no possibility of an untimely death notification. She figured it was Briggs, hard up for what Lizzie would refer to as a booty call. Or it was Lizzie, herself, with another fake apology. Maybe even Neal, though she doubted it. She’d burned that bridge one too many times. Regardless, she sank further into the tub, letting the water pool around her jaw as the machine picked up.

  “Um, hello. This is Eliza. Eliza Dumas. Are you there? I know it’s late, and I haven’t exactly been . . . friendly.” Clare popped out of the water so fast a small wave gushed over the side of the tub, taking the razor blade with it. She didn’t even bother with a towel. “I need to talk to you. Just please call—”

  “Hello? Eliza? Don’t hang up.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s me. It’s Clare. I’m so glad you called.”

  Eliza laughed softly. She had a nice laugh, Clare thought. Disarming. “I should apologize for ignoring your calls. I’ve just been out of sorts, you know? And they told me you were negligent.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “The Lieutenant that came to see me right after James died. Brunner? Banner?”

  “Bonner.”

  “Yes, that was it. Bonner. Anyway, after you called last time, I got a letter in the mail. From James. Apparently, the prison kept it back for the investigation.”

  Water puddling beneath her, Clare fought back tears. “What did it say?”

  “Not much of anything really. It wasn’t so much what it said, just the way he said it. Like he was okay again. Looking forward to things. To the baby.” A sob caught in Clare’s throat. It felt immense, like all the pain in the world pressing up against a dam inside her. “I remembered what you said about trying to find out what happened to him. That Lieutenant doesn’t care. To him, it’s ancient history. Case closed. That’s what he told me this morning.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “I had to after what I’d read. You met Snip, right?”

  Clare remembered, of course. Dumas’ wiry roommate with the charming smile and silly nickname. “Yes, Eddie Bailey. He was in the infirmary when James . . . ” It still hurt to say it, but Eliza sounded too preoccupied to notice her discomfort.

  “That’s him. He put me on his visiting list on account of him being real close with James. Or at least that’s what I thought. Then he tells me he’d heard some talk on the yard about some funny business that day.”

  “What did he hear exactly?”

  “Can I call you Clare?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Clare, can I trust you? Can I trust you to help me get some answers?”

  Clare didn’t hesitate. “Of course.” She thought of the razor blade. The one she would find on the bathroom floor later and hide in the medicine chest near the things she never used. “I’ll help you however I can.”

  In the long pause that followed, Clare imagined Eliza curled on the sofa, her son sleeping in a crib nearby, a photo of James on her lap. “Snip told me the guards switched duty that afternoon. There was a new guy in charge of West Block. Never been there before. Hasn’t been there since. Some puffed up Sergeant with a Semper Fi tattoo. That can’t be a coincidence, right?”

  December 22, 1996

  Clare slid into the booth at the back of the diner and pretended to study the Sunday brunch menu. She kept one eye on the door, waiting for Briggs. She certainly wasn’t hungry, her stomach filled to the brim with butterflies. The poisonous kind. In fact, she couldn’t remember when she’d eaten last. Toast yesterday morning? Maybe. It tasted like cardboard, so thick and bland in her mouth, she’d chased it down with a shot of whiskey. Because that’s what you do when you decide not to take a razor blade to your wrists.

  She’d taken extra care getting ready this morning. Dressed like she’d come from church in a pale-blue shift dress that matched her eyes. She let her hair down and kept the makeup simple, understated. The good little Catholic girl. Briggs would gobble that right up. When he sauntered in, she flagged him down with an eager wave.

  “Hey, good-looking,” she teased.

  His smile seemed stiff, a little nervous. “This is for you,” he said. “Merry Christmas.”

  Clare looked at the thing on the table. An army-green metal box wrapped with a clumsy red bow of yarn she could tell Briggs tied himself. She’d never seen anything like it before. “What is it?”

  He chuckled as he squeezed his hulking frame into the booth next to her. Clare would’ve preferred he sit across from her, where she could keep her eyes on his. “I messed up. I forgot to ask for a box.” His whisper close to her ear, conspiratorial. “So I used this old thing. It’s an ammo can. Indestructible like me.” He pushed it toward her, still laughing. “Open it.”

  “I didn’t know we were doing presents,” Clare said, almost feeling sorry for him. She hadn’t even considered it.

  “It’s okay. I already got what I wanted.” Clare wondered if he meant her or the sex or both, but it wasn’t the sort of question you could ask. She fiddled with the bow, hoping whatever was inside was returnable. Cracking the lid of the canister, she saw something red and silky. She reached in past the lingerie to the bottom and withdrew a wooden nameplate for her desk engraved Dr. Clare Keely.

  “One for work. One for play,” Briggs explained, blushing more than she would’ve expected. She kissed his cheek, sucking in a gulp of Aqua Velva.

  “Thank you, J. D. It’s incredibly thoughtful of you.”

  Beaming, he opened a menu. “So shall we eat?”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Briggs said, between heaping bites of a maple-syrup-drowned short stack. “The other day . . . when we . . . uh . . . you know . . . ”

  She nodded, grateful he hadn’t tried to articulate the exact nature of the you know that went down in the control booth.

  “Did you happen to see a set of keys laying around? Or could they have fallen in your purse maybe by accident?”

  Don’t oversell it, Clare. “No. Why?” The most believable denial is a straightforward one.

  “Some keys turned up missing. And Bonner’s got his panties in a wad.”

  “Which keys?”

  “Kitchen and pantry. Probably one of those dump trucks who can’t get enough mystery meat in the chow hall.”

  “Dump truck?” she asked.

  He put his arm
around her and squeezed her too tight. “I keep forgetting how green you are, Clarie. Dump truck is prison speak for a slob. Fat. Lazy. Good for nothing.” Clare plastered a smile, stuck on that nickname. No one had called her Clarie since Rodney. She sipped her orange juice, buying time to compose herself.

  “Speaking of work, did you ever hear anything more about Dumas?”

  Briggs groaned from deep in his belly. “Geez. Not that again.”

  “It’s just that I heard you were assigned to West Block that afternoon. You hadn’t mentioned it.”

  “What—are you checking up on me?” He loosened his suffocating embrace, and she wriggled free, but his words clamped down just as hard.

  “No, of course not, I just—”

  “Because I don’t appreciate that. You hear a lot of things going around the yard. Doesn’t mean they’re true. Does it?”

  Clare knew a loaded gun when she saw one. And she wasn’t about to touch it. “I didn’t mean to offend you. Really. I’m just so worried about this board investigation. It’s my job, J. D.” She pointed to the nameplate he’d positioned opposite her on the table. “My job’s on the line.”

  His face softened like she’d hoped it would, and he leaned in toward her. “I’ll talk to Bonner. Maybe he can get this whole thing cleared up for you.” She felt his hand slide up her leg, and she fought the urge to grimace. “I can’t wait to see you in that little red number.”

  Instead, she went with it. Upped the ante. “Don’t you mean you can’t wait to see me out of it?”