No Woods So Dark as These Read online

  Ed’s posture collapsed a little more. As he reached for his wallet, he said, “I was on my way home after this game. I don’t know what she’s so worried about.”

  Flores said nothing. Kept her eyes locked on him as he leaned over the table and opened his wallet underneath the hanging light. He fingered a couple of ones, started to lift them free, then cast a glance at Flores, and took out a ten instead. He held it out to her. “I barely got enough left to pay my bar bill.”

  She snatched it from his hand. “A man who won’t take care of his family doesn’t deserve to be alive,” she said.

  She turned away, took one long stride toward the door. Then the man at the other end of the table threw his cue onto the felt, stepped toward her and said, “Hey, Officer.” She stopped, tensed, and looked up at him. “Give them this too,” he said, slid a hand into his pocket, and brought out several folded bills. He thumbed through the ones and fives, found a twenty at the bottom, peeled it away and handed it to her.

  She took it in her left hand. “Thank you,” she said, and felt something like a soft blow to her chest, what she always felt from an unexpected kindness. He nodded, turned away and crossed to the bar.

  Outside, she climbed into the SUV and started the engine but did not feel ready to drive just yet. Sat there with her hands quivering as the adrenaline drained away, and tried to hang on to the anger that, she knew, was her only fuel.

  You did well, Matson had told her. And Sergeant DeMarco had smiled. She had comported herself well. She was a Pennsylvania State policewoman, damn it. Not a server in a greasy spoon diner anymore. She was all grown up now, wasn’t she? Dynamite Dani, they had called her at the academy. Fuse burning and ready to blow.

  Some of the men had used it as a compliment, some only to mock her. She didn’t care either way. She had thirty dollars in her hand and now LaDonna would get her cookies, her cupcakes, whatever her mother would bake. Flores would hand the money to LaDonna’s mother and say, And if he so much as lays a finger on you or your girl, you call me. I’ll lock his ass up so fast it will make his head spin.

  And she would, too. She would do it and enjoy doing it.

  Good, the anger was still there. It would always be there. She looked into the rearview mirror, stared at those brown eyes she hated. Shook the thirty dollars at them. So what do you think of this, Daddy? You lowlife son of a bitch. What do you think of me now?

  II

  I am in blood

  Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,

  Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

  —William Shakespeare, Macbeth

  Thirty-Two

  They made one slow pass of Reddick’s driveway, with DeMarco looking for a place to turn. Then his cell phone sounded: a text message from Boyd. Jayme lifted the phone from the cup holder and read the text aloud. “‘Reddick owns all property forty yards south of driveway, sixty-three yards north.’”

  “Great,” DeMarco said. “So it will have to be across the road from the driveway.” He pulled into the next driveway and made a turn.

  The house directly across the road from Reddick’s driveway was set upon a knoll at least forty yards back from Linn Tyro Road. The name stenciled on the mailbox was Shaner. DeMarco pulled into the mouth of the driveway but sat with his foot on the brake. “Nobody was home yesterday,” he said. “Looks the same today.”

  “Maybe the car’s in the garage,” Jayme said.

  He drove forward up the sloping drive. This driveway, unlike most others in the area, was blacktopped, the edges neatly trimmed, the yard immaculate and mostly empty, with only two dwarf cherry trees halfway up the yard and spaced widely apart.

  Everything about the Craftsman-style house was neat and well maintained. No clutter in the yard and only a metal-frame glider on the porch. Halfway up the driveway DeMarco lost sight of the porch, with the front yard rising higher on his right, so that he parked directly facing the basement door in an area cut out from the hill. Through the glass panel in the basement door, a yellow light burned.

  They climbed out. DeMarco pressed the doorbell. The man who opened the door to them was of medium height and slight build, his thin gray hair parted at the side and combed back over his head. He was dressed in moccasins, olive-green khakis and a white short-sleeved shirt.

  DeMarco introduced himself and Jayme.

  “Fred Shaner,” the man said, and took the card Jayme held out to him.

  She said, “You might have heard that we were visiting the neighborhood yesterday.”

  “I’ve been visiting my grandkids in Arizona,” he answered. “Got back just this morning. What’s going on?”

  DeMarco had brought along a headshot of the dead black man. “This individual and two other bodies were found in the woods a couple of miles away.”

  The man scowled and shook his head. “Drugs, I take it.”

  Jayme said, “Why do you say that, sir?”

  He motioned them inside. “This neighborhood used to be a nice place to live. I’d move if my wife’s grave wasn’t up the road a piece. But where can you go to get away from it? For three nights out in Flagstaff I laid awake listening to police sirens. I finally couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “Have you seen this individual around?” DeMarco asked.

  “I pretty much keep to myself. Keep the curtains drawn up front. I don’t want any part of any of it.”

  “Here’s the thing, sir,” Jayme said. “We need to do surveillance of the road in this area. And we need an inconspicuous place to hang a camera or two.”

  “Stick them up wherever you want,” he said.

  They went upstairs so that DeMarco could check the view from the front of the house. He parted the living room curtains far enough to look out. A straight shot down across the yard to Reddick’s driveway. “How far is it from here to the road?” he asked.

  “A hundred and thirty feet, give or take a few inches.”

  Game camera detection range topped off at under fifty feet. DeMarco said, “Excuse me while I make a call.”

  Trooper Boyd answered on the second ring.

  “Problem,” DeMarco told him. “We have a prime vantage point for a camera, but it’s a hundred and thirty feet from the top of the target area.”

  Boyd thought for a moment. “Our IR cameras can pick out a license plate number from three hundred feet, day or night.”

  By the end of the conversation, Boyd had agreed to meet with the homeowner at a restaurant in town within the hour. Boyd would come dressed in civvies, driving his own car. In the parking lot he would place the camera in Fred Shaner’s car with instructions on how to mount it on the front porch.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Shaner told DeMarco. “I’m an electrical engineer. Retired.” He walked them back downstairs to the basement door. “I take it you want the camera on that fella who lives down that gravel driveway,” he said.

  “A view of that part of Linn Tyro will be fine,” Jayme said.

  “Young lady,” the man said with a smile. “I’m not an idiot. You want to see who’s coming and going from that place. How long is that camera good for?”

  DeMarco said, “We’ll review the footage every forty-eight hours, if that’s okay with you.”

  “You can sit in my living room and review it minute by minute, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Jayme asked, “Are you familiar with the gentleman who lives down that driveway?”

  “I’ve never spoken a word to him. But I will tell you this. There are some things you notice without even wanting to. Like when I’m out working in the yard, which I do a lot of these days. And what I notice is a lot of cars coming and going. They’re either the friendliest people in the world living down that road, or something funny’s going on.”

  “They?” Jayme said. “How many people live there?”

  “That
I do not know.”

  “Is there a particular vehicle you see most frequently?” DeMarco asked.

  “Black Ford Explorer. Tinted windows all around. It comes out to the end of the driveway every afternoon to pick up the mail. There’s either a big bald fella driving it, or a woman.”

  “Can you describe the woman?”

  “Better than I can describe him. She gets out of the car to get the mail. Her arm’s not long enough to reach the box, I guess. It’s hard to say exactly how tall she is, but a mailbox is supposed to be no more than forty-five inches off the ground, and that one comes to about her throat.”

  “So,” Jayme said, “five four to five six?”

  “Sounds about right. Fairly stocky. Forties, I’d say. Blond hair. Bleached.”

  “How do you know it’s bleached?” she asked.

  “You know how a woman’s hair gets after it’s been bleached too many times? So thin you can almost see through it. Especially when the sun shines down on it. Looks like yellow cotton candy then.”

  Jayme smiled. “We really appreciate your help with this, Mr. Shaner. We’ll let you get to your dinner now.”

  He glanced at his wristwatch. “I should say so. Early-bird prices only last till five. Are you going to write me a ticket if I pass you on the way back to town?”

  “We have no authority to issue tickets, sir.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear.”

  Thirty-Three

  “How you build it is up to you,” DeMarco told her, and handed Jayme a deep enameled bowl.

  She considered the ingredients they had prepared, some still on the stove, others in bowls and saucers and bottles on the table. Yellow rice, grilled and chopped chicken breasts red with creole seasoning, chopped spinach, chopped sweet onions, steamed corn, chopped romaine lettuce, chopped sweet peppers, chopped jalapeños, salsa verde, pico de gallo, soy sauce, sriracha sauce, kalamata olives, and pickled banana pepper rings.

  She followed DeMarco, adding layer after layer to her bowl. “What do you call this mess?” she asked.

  “Rice bowl,” he said.

  “How about United Nations rice bowl?”

  “Whatever floats your boat, my love.”

  Buddy watched from beneath the table, his chin on the floor. In the living room, Van Morrison was singing about being caught up on Cypress Avenue. The back door was open, the last warmth of the day streaming in with the rose-tinted light.

  She wondered why food they cooked together always tasted better than restaurant food or anything she cooked alone. Maybe there was something real to the notion of cooking with love. Maybe love was an additive as real as salt and pepper and the other spices.

  “It was a productive day,” she said, and topped off her bowl with some pico de gallo.

  “If you like this dish, we can make it with pulled pork sometime. Or grilled salmon. Or seared tuna.”

  She asked. “Coffee table or dining room?”

  “Dining room okay?”

  “I’m right behind you.”

  In the dining room they sat across from each other at the oval table, each with an empty seat beside them, and ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Jayme said, “I hear he’s kind of a jerk.” When DeMarco looked up, she nodded toward the living room, where Van Morrison was now singing “Ballerina.”

  “We geniuses often are,” he said.

  “It must be tough living among the rest of us.”

  “You have no idea.”

  No one else could look at her the way he did. Hit her with a sarcastic insult yet a devilish smile that warmed her entire body, made her almost want to cry.

  She said, “We should fill in our assistant. Get him busy on Choo Choo and Reddick. He’s working at Goodwill right now.”

  DeMarco nodded. “Make him earn his kingly wages.”

  “I’ll call him after dinner.”

  Again the conversation faded. She studied his face for a while. Could tell by his smile that he knew she was watching him eat.

  “Why do you do this work?” she asked. “State police. Private detective.”

  “Why do you?”

  “I wanted the challenge, I guess. Physical as well as mental. Plus I wanted to help people. Now you. You told me about how you saw Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive and all, but I want to know the real reason. In your heart of hearts.”

  He shrugged. “I wanted to be a better person.”

  “And did joining the state police do that for you?”

  “Some, I guess. But being a father did more. And you… I think you’ve done the most.”

  She knew he meant it, could read the truth in his eyes. And yet…what she had felt in those few weeks when she had been alone with her secret, the life in her womb, guarding it, even hoarding it…how to describe that love? When you know you are not alone, you are two. Two in one. It was a different, deeper connection than anything she had ever felt. Missing it made her entire body ache.

  She rubbed her foot over Buddy’s hip, concentrated on the softness there, the warmth. When she felt it was safe to talk again, she softly cleared her throat, then asked, “Which is your favorite song?”

  “Favorite Van Morrison song? Tough question. Probably either ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ or ‘When the Leaves Come Falling Down.’ Which is yours?”

  “Gotta be ‘Tupelo Honey.’”

  “That’s a good one too. Do you know what it’s about?”

  “About a girl who’s as sweet as Tupelo honey, right? Though I have always wondered why it has to be honey from Tupelo, Mississippi. Unless that’s where the girl is from too.”

  He smiled. Returned to his rice bowl.

  She said, “I’m wrong, aren’t I?”

  “It’s a natural mistake.” He took another bite.

  “Tell me!”

  “Tupelo honey comes from the nectar of the tupelo tree blossoms. It’s a very light honey that doesn’t granulate. Mainly from the wetlands of Georgia and Florida.”

  “God, you disgust me sometimes. But okay,” she said, “so I got the state wrong.”

  Again he smiled into his rice bowl.

  “I hate you,” she said. “Tell me what else I got wrong.”

  “The song is about freedom. The first verse alludes to the American Revolution, the second verse to the Irish battle for independence. And the chorus is about his wife, Janet, who gives him the sweet freedom to be the best artist he can be.”

  “Ah, that’s beautiful, babe. Do I give you that freedom?”

  “You make me better than I am. Which makes you a whole lot sweeter than tupelo honey.”

  She blinked back the dampness pooling in her eye. Nothing was sweeter than one of his compliments. Though she wished she could control her emotions better. Why must every kind word sting?

  Dog at my feet, she thought, and felt the warmth against her naked toes. My man across from me. What more could she want? It was almost perfect.

  But for two empty seats at the table.

  Thirty-Four

  Alone again, Flores told herself. Naturally.

  It was her first thought upon awakening in the dark room. Every time she had that thought, and it happened frequently, she heard the first two words in a resigned deadpan, and the third word sung to the tune of Gilbert O’Sullivan’s suicide song. She knew all the words to that song by heart, had memorized them when she was only thirteen.

  The romance novel she had been reading had fallen shut; she would have to search through the pages tomorrow night to find her place again. At some point she had turned off the table lamp and curled up on the little sofa, though she could remember doing neither. Now she lay there with her head on the armrest and listened to the sounds through the large windows overlooking the street. She had chosen this apartment because of those windows. And because the rent was so cheap. And because
the hardware store on the first floor closed at five every weekday, at two every Saturday afternoon, promising silence beneath her.

  She had imagined that the windows would provide a perfect vantage point for viewing the night sky, since the nearest streetlight was two blocks away. She had not counted on how far its glow would spread at night, or on the lights from the Sheetz station three buildings away, or on the cigarette smoke that somehow seeped in from the kids who liked to hang out below. She had acted impetuously, three days before her first day with Troop D. Had believed, naively, that now everything would change.

  The routine of her days changed but little else did. And now she would have to drag herself up off the sofa and into the bathroom. Have to undress and brush her teeth and shake out the twisted sheets on the bed so that she could climb between them again. And then lie awake for another hour or two probably, her mind playing back every moment of the day. It had been a good day but her churlish mind would not remember it that way. Would say you should have done this, you should have said this. And if an older moment happened to pop into consciousness, one of those festering grievances, she would rehash it again and again until her eyeballs felt swollen from the escalating blood pressure.

  Sometimes she would repeat the Lord’s Prayer, as her mother had taught her to do when she was still tiny and afraid, only four or five years old. Our father who art in heaven, hollowed be thy name… She had been eight when her mother caught the mistake and corrected it.

  Hallowed, baby. Not hollowed.

  Like in Halloween, you mean?

  No no no. I don’t think so, anyway.

  What does it mean then?

  Hallowed? Made holy, I think.

  And now every time she thought hallowed be thy name, a quick not hollowed followed, destroying any soothing, mantric possibilities. But it was the only prayer she’d ever learned. Not that she expected anything from it now other than a soporific numbing, the white noise of her own voice. Her mother had filled their apartment with candles and crucifixes and plaster figurines and what good had it done either of them?