Gathering Dark

by Candice Fox

  I reeled away, pressing my fingers into my eye sockets.

  ‘Oh, Jesus. Oh, god!’ I cried.

  ‘Help!’ A man’s voice cut through my blindness. ‘Help me, please. Please! This bitch is crazy!’

  The human head was talking. The man from the video was buried up to his neck in desert sand. It was Dimitri Lincoln. His tightly cropped crown of tight black curls was covered in dust, and his mouth was crusted with sand and blood. Sweat was running in stark lines through the dust on his face, rivers cutting paths towards the ground. The absurd, decapitated head turned and looked around him, took in the sight of Sneak and me standing casting shadows over his situation.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘My name is Dimitri Lincoln. I’ve been kidnapped. I—’

  ‘We know who you are,’ Sneak said.

  ‘Dimitri has been trying to figure out what all this is about for six hours now,’ Ada said. She sat on the bucket and put a boot up against Dimitri’s temple, pushed his head at a painful angle. ‘He’s got some very interesting guesses. He owes a lot of money to some pretty heavy gangs. He’s fucked a lot of connected women, the wives of some important people. Cops. Drug dealers. This isn’t a very surprising scenario for you, is it, Dimitri? You’ve been expecting something like this for a while.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Dimitri snapped, wiggling his head and neck madly in the sand. ‘You bitches are looking at twenty to life for this. This is kidnapping. Conspiracy. Assault.’

  ‘Cut the lawyer bullshit,’ Sneak said. She yanked her phone out of her pocket and showed him the page for the video of him and Dayly. ‘See her?’

  Dimitri squinted in the sun. ‘I see her.’

  ‘That’s my daughter.’

  ‘Sounds about right.’ Dimitri looked Sneak up and down, which was an interesting move from his position. ‘She said her momma was a junkie whore.’

  ‘She’s missing,’ Sneak said. The veins in her neck were standing out. She was edging closer to Dimitri’s head, and I could see her thighs tensing as though she might deliver a fatal kick. I grabbed her arm to hold her in place. ‘Tell me where she is or I’ll back that big fucking car over your fat, stupid head.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her in weeks.’

  ‘This video was posted’—Sneak checked the screen—‘eleven days ago.’

  ‘Yeah, I posted it. Dayly cheated on me, and I had the video. I needed cash. So what, huh? She took off, and the video was just one thing she left behind. Too bad. I made good money from it on the site.’

  ‘I don’t like that,’ Ada said, her lips twisted in distaste. ‘Revenge porn, they call it. I don’t like it.’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck what you like, bitch,’ Dimitri scoffed.

  ‘Well, you better start, baby.’ Ada’s voice was soft, terrifying. ‘You better start real quick.’

  ‘Did Dayly know you took the video of her?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Ada said.

  ‘She did.’ Dimitri turned with difficulty and looked at Ada. ‘Maybe she would have been into selling it, too, if I’d asked her. She liked getting freaky. She was playing with fire, that girl. When I met her she was uptight. Wouldn’t say “dick” if you paid her. Then suddenly she wants to know about drugs, wants to go out and party. She was a fairy princess. Wanted to come over to the dark side. I was happy to show her. I introduced that bitch to a bunch of things. She had one of the tightest asses I ever—’

  Ada shot out her foot and kicked Dimitri in the mouth. His head snapped sideways.

  ‘Fuck!’ Some of Dimitri’s bravado drained away. I saw the sand around him expanding as he drew long breaths. ‘I’m gonna kill you, woman. You hear me? I’m going to come back from this and kill you slow. I’ll film that, too.’

  ‘Do you know what happened to her?’ I asked. ‘Tell us what else you know so we can end this, for god’s sake.’

  ‘Fuck you.’ Dimitri spat blood on the sand.

  ‘Dimitri, come on,’ I said.

  ‘Nah. Fuck all y’all,’ he sneered. ‘You want to kill me, go ahead and kill me. I’d love to be the reason you didn’t find her. I hope she’s dead out here somewhere with her bones baking in the sun like fucking breadsticks.’

  Ada stood and I cried out for her not to strike or kick Dimitri again, but instead she went to her Porsche and brought out a small black backpack. From it she extracted a bottle then walked back to Dimitri’s head. I watched in quiet horror as she squeezed a syrupy liquid all over him. I smelled honey on the wind.

  ‘Stop! Stop! What the fuck is wrong with you!’ Dimitri tried to tilt his head out of the stream. The honey gathered in folds and slopped over his ears, making thick brown beads on the sand.

  ‘You know what kind of ants they got out in the desert?’ Ada said to me. She scooped the excess honey off the side of the squeeze bottle and licked it off her finger. ‘You’re the smart one. You might be interested. I was googling them while I was sitting in the car waiting for you slowpokes to arrive. They got about fifty different types of ant around here. There’s the harvester ant. The carpenter ant. I guess those are the working ants. The guys who get shit done. But then there’s the fire ants. They just fuck shit up. There’s the regular fire ant and the red imported fire ant. They’re the ones that inject venom into you. By the time anyone finds this guy, his head will be the size of a beach ball.’

  ‘Ada,’ I sighed.

  ‘You know what eats ants?’ She bent and looked Dimitri in the face. ‘Tarantulas. You know what eats Tarantulas? Rattlesnakes.’

  ‘She was seeing some cop,’ Dimitri said. ‘That’s all I know.’

  Sneak and I glanced at each other.

  ‘She was having an affair?’ I asked.

  ‘I caught her with a second phone. She tried to deny it. Say it was a friend’s.’

  ‘This cop,’ I said. ‘Was his name Al Tasik?’

  ‘I don’t fucking know, man,’ Dimitri whined. ‘I never knew his name. I saw him with her once. He had a stupid-ass military cut, like a flat-top.’

  ‘Blond hair? Fifties?’

  ‘No, brown hair. Young. Like twenties.’

  ‘How’d you know he was a cop?’ Ada leaned on the bonnet of her car.

  ‘I’m from the hood – I know a goddamn cop when I see one. He walked like he had a stick up his ass. And one time I caught her on my laptop looking up a police station. San Chinto. I figured that’s where he worked.’

  I beckoned Ada and Sneak to our car. Ada slid into the driver’s seat, which didn’t surprise me. The air was stifling inside the vehicle. I wound down my window and tried to suck air in from outside.

  ‘Who the fuck is Al Tasik?’ Ada asked, watching me in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘A cop in West LA. He’s been very interested in me since I came in asking about Dayly. I don’t know why.’

  ‘You got another cop on the inside who can tell you why?’ Ada asked. ‘A cop might be useful in all this. Track the guy with the flat-top. Tell you where the investigation lies, if there is one.’

  I said nothing. My stomach was stirring.

  ‘You said Dimitri is gang-affiliated.’ Sneak turned to Ada. ‘He might have found out about the affair and had some of his friends come after Dayly. We should question him about that next.’

  ‘I don’t think we should question him about another goddamn thing,’ I said. ‘We need him out of that hole before he gets heat stroke, or a collapsed lung from the pressure of the sand on his ribcage.’

  ‘Your tone sounds a little like you think I’ve done the wrong thing this morning.’ Ada’s eyes in the mirror were like fireballs. ‘I came out here and laboured in the sun for hours to help you.’

  ‘You dug that hole yourself? I thought it must have been your goons.’ Sneak glanced out into the desert, looking for them.

  ‘Girl, you think I can’t dig my own fucking hole?’ Ada shifted in her seat to take Sneak in. ‘What the hell you think I was doing before I was rich enough to ha
ve goons do that for me? This is my bread and butter. I love this shit. I don’t need Mike and Fred coming out here kicking heads for me, ruining my fun. Why the hell do you think I’m here? Because of you shitbirds? I’ll take any excuse to make a fool scream for his life.’

  ‘That aside,’ I said, ‘your tactics, while much appreciated, are a bit aggressive for our taste.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Sneak said. ‘I say we rev the engine a little. Make him shit his pants.’

  ‘He’s not wearing pants.’ Ada smiled.

  ‘We need to check out the San Chinto lead,’ I said. ‘Find the guy with the flat-top. See what he knows. San Chinto is the same place on the front of the parachuting pamphlet. It’s not a coincidence.’

  ‘Where the fuck is San Chinto?’ Sneak asked.

  I was scrolling on my phone, looking at maps. ‘East. Miles from anywhere. Another day. Right now we pull Dimitri out of that hole,’ I said.

  ‘You two idiots get out of here,’ Ada said. She was leaning forwards, smiling at him through the windscreen. ‘I’ll get him out in a few minutes. I think I can see a big ol’ ant headed his way.’

  Dear Dayly,

  In your last letter, you were talking about my reasons for killing all those people in the Inglewood heist. You said, ‘I don’t think that translates into an excuse for panicking during a bank heist and killing a bunch of people.’ By that you meant having a crappy childhood, feeling abandoned. But that’s just the thing – I didn’t panic. I’d already cut away, the way you’re imagining doing. It might sound scary to be out there, floating around, without all the things that tie people down – consequences, guilt, fear, panic. But if no one teaches you those things, if no one ever instils in you a sense of guilt, then there’s nothing riding on your shoulders, telling you to be a good person. The first sense of guilt you get is from your parents, for disappointing them. If you never get that, you never get the rest.

  I killed all those people because it was the smartest way to get out of the situation I was in. That’s it. The cops showed up. A couple of hostages inside the bank got confident, started getting fresh with me, so I did what I had to do.

  I knew an inmate who had a cell next to Manson’s in protective segregation at Corcoran. Pretty self-obsessed man, but very convincing, so I heard. A few times guards got shifted out of there because they got sucked into his teachings. A gifted bullshit artist both inside and outside of prison, it seems. I don’t know why everyone’s so obsessed with the guy. He wasn’t even there the night of the murders. Who organises a party and then doesn’t go?

  It sounds to me like you’re slipping, Dayly. You’re asking what it’s all about. I’m not the kind of guy people should take advice from, not in my current situation (although if I’m really your father maybe you should take it – maybe it’s fatherly wisdom). But I wouldn’t fight it. See where it takes you. If you packed a bag and just left, ‘broke free’, as you said, you might end up somewhere great. It doesn’t take worldliness and a car and all that bullshit to do it. Those things will come when you need them. But breaking free can be something different entirely. It’s like an experiment. Just say ‘fuck it’.

  The first time I ever said ‘Fuck it!’, I was about ten years old, I think. Me and a couple of boys from school were out riding our bikes and we headed up to the school, which was closed because it was a Sunday. This is in Utah, where I grew up. We found a dumpster full of shredded paper and cardboard, and I wanted to light it up, because I always carried a fuel lighter around and was always tinkering with it, lighting things. One of the boys with us gave a big speech about crime and badness, and the other two kids who were with us went along with it, so I got argued out. But I was dying to light that thing. I could feel it in my bones, the hunger. So I went back after we’d finished riding around and lit it up. The smoke was black and thick, almost like liquid rising up. I bolted right away, and after ten minutes I could see the smoke from the front door of my house.

  The next day at school I heard some teachers talking about the fire, and they said there’d been a homeless man at the bottom of the dumpster who was using the cardboard and paper to stay warm, kind of like a nest. Another kid might have been horrified by that, but I was different. I figured I’d made a choice to try something, and sure, maybe it turned out bad, but I’d tried. I’d done something spectacular with that fire, something that could be seen from suburbs over, and making a decision like that when you’re just a little kid is kind of crazy. Maybe grand. In here, I hear the guards talking about their kids – it’s all they can think to do while they’re sitting around watching us, now and then getting off their fat asses to stop us passing notes up and down the row. Their kids sound like pussies. Their faces are buried in computer screens all day long. They don’t know the smell of free air, let alone the taste of smoke drifting on it. If I had a small kid these days I’d give them a fuel lighter and send them on their way. Once you light a fire, you’ve committed to something, good or bad. I think kids need that.

  You might think the guards are going to be angry at what I’ve said when they read this letter, but they know what I think. I’ve told them before. And as for the homeless guy, they could never pin that on me. The lawyers would put it down to jailhouse bragging. I’ve said it to journalists before. But it’s true, I did do that, and I’ve had to live with it all these years. If you’re worried about it, don’t be. The fact that he was hanging around the school should tell you something about the kind of guy he probably was, and the smoke would have got to him well before the fire anyway.

  How’s your gopher? Surely you wouldn’t leave him behind when you went on your adventure. More pictures would be great, if you’ve got any – of you, not the gopher. I promise I’m not selling them around the block, though I probably could and get a good price. A guard said yesterday that you have my lips, but he’s an idiot.

  Take care,

  John

  P.S. I’ve had one marriage proposal since I’ve been here. Maybe it’s my face! I have found that those kinds of ladies, the ones who fall in love with killers, tend to go for the more ‘traditional’ serial killers – the rapists and abductors. I’m someone who’s only ever killed out of necessity (or accident), so I guess I don’t have the mean streak they’re looking for. If there was more money of mine out there, it would be stupid to tell a prospective love interest where it was. She’d just run off with it. What would be the fun in that? Whoever I tell, or whoever I would tell if indeed there is any money, would have to be someone I’d be happy to see fly away like a bird into a new life with it and never look back. Hey – sounds a little bit like you.

  BLAIR

  Sasha and Jamie were at my apartment. I recognised them standing on the lawn under the bright-orange streetlight, Sasha bent over her phone, Jamie kicking at the unmown grass. One of the men in long shirts who patrolled the street on a BMX bike was circling at the nearest intersection, probably made curious by the unfamiliar sight of Sasha’s Prius and now fascinated by the sight of my pimped-up Chrysler. Sneak and I exited the car to the familiar chorus of pit bulls behind chain-link fences and Chicano rap that heralded the fall of night.

  Sasha took one look at us and her mouth fell open. We were desert-dusted and slightly sunburned, and Sneak had been picking at her amputated earlobe on the ride home, as much as I warned her not to. The wound had dribbled blood in a thin line down the front of her white tank top. Sneak had also ingested something from her handbag of mysteries as we reached the city limits and was nodding, her eyelids drooping unevenly.

  ‘My god,’ Sasha breathed, a hand to her chest, like a Southern belle startled in her parlour room by an unannounced visitor.

  ‘This is Sn— Emily, my friend. She’s fine, she just . . .’ My face was burning with horror, embarrassment. ‘She was mugged yesterday, that’s all. She’s also on medication.’

  ‘Mugged?’ Sasha looked at Sneak then me. ‘You were robbed and she was mugged . . . in the same week?’


  ‘Go inside,’ I told Sneak, giving her my keys. Jamie was wide-eyed with excitement at my side, watching her walk away. ‘What are you guys doing here?’ I asked.

  ‘We brought you cookies.’ Sasha gestured to Jamie, who held up a bag. ‘I made a batch of Captain Americas that were supposed to go to a bake sale and didn’t. And I brought you this.’ She thrust a wad of papers at me. ‘This is a little collection of materials I compiled on my neighbour five doors down, Roger Wardel. He’s an MIT graduate. Works in stocks. He’s looking for a housekeeper. Please tell me that’s not your new car.’

  ‘It’s Sneak’s car,’ I lied.

  ‘Sneak?’

  ‘Emily.’

  ‘My god,’ Sasha breathed again, shook her head. ‘Blair, honestly.’

  ‘You want to come in? I can make you a coff—’

  ‘I want to go in!’ Jamie announced. ‘I want to see the blood again. Mom, can I?’

  ‘No, Jamie, you can’t,’ Sasha said. She glanced at the man on the bike, who had been joined by a friend on another lowrider. ‘It’s not safe around here.’

  ‘He’s safe in my apartment,’ I said. ‘He’s safe in my street. He’s safe anywhere I am.’ I put a hand on Jamie’s shoulder and guided him towards the apartment block. ‘You can come or you can stay out here, Sasha.’

  My son had been to my apartment before, so knew about the box of chocolates on the shelf by the door. He went for them, but I grabbed his hand. ‘Come with me. I want to show you something I think you’ll like.’

  We went to the kitchen. Sneak had left a pile of bloody clothes in the hall – Jamie ogled them as we went by – and I heard the shower running. The ice cream container was where I had left it on the counter. I pried it open. A whiff of animal smell met me, the dry, husky scent of the birdseed and grass Sneak had bought for the gopher to eat. The creature was propped up on its hind legs, looking expectantly up at me with oil-drop black eyes. I swallowed the prickling fear that rose in my throat and scooped the gopher into my palm.