No Woods So Dark as These Read online

“Hey,” Jayme said after popping open the passenger door. She climbed in and asked, “Who were you dreaming about?”

  “Peace and quiet,” he said. “How would you feel about checking out Wyoming or Montana when this case is wrapped up?”

  “Another road trip? Sure; why not?” She pulled her seat belt and harness on. “By the way, I had a text from Dr. Lisa a while back. Rambo pulled through and is ready to come home. Do you think he’ll be mad at us?”

  “I would be. And since when did he become Rambo?”

  “Since I thought of it last night.”

  “You dream of Sylvester Stallone often?”

  “Depends on what you call often,” she said with a smile.

  He drove out to the road, checked to his right, then made a left.

  She said, “I didn’t hear from you out there today, so I guess you and Flores struck out too?”

  “A couple of suspicious characters, but that’s it.”

  “That’s what she said. Same here. She and Boyd will run them through the databases and get back to us tomorrow. Which leaves what for us to do?”

  “Tonight? Pick up Harvey, grab some chow, hit the sack.”

  “He’s not a Harvey, babe.”

  “He’s not a Rambo either.”

  Neither of them spoke for a while. When he glanced her way again and saw her head turned, her gaze going miles and miles away out the side window, he knew that they had been lost in the same fantasy, imagining a child playing with the dog. The only difference was that the child in his fantasy was a boy, and in hers a little girl.

  Nineteen

  Forty minutes later they returned home with a pepperoni and mushroom pizza and a morose puppy of undefined breed, the pizza in a cardboard box, the dog in a metal crate loaned by Dr. Lisa. They carried both into the house, set the pizza box on the kitchen counter, set the crate on the living room floor. Jayme opened the crate and reached inside but she could not coax Rambo to crawl out. He lay there with his chin on the floor of the crate, his sad eyes on Jayme.

  “I feel so bad,” she said as she stroked his head. “We’re awful parents, aren’t we?”

  The remark stung DeMarco more than it should have, so that he turned away, went back to the kitchen for the pizza and napkins. From there he said, “Should I make a salad?”

  “Whatever you want. I don’t know if I can eat anything or not.”

  “She said to expect him to be a little blasé for a while.”

  “He knows what we did to him. I can see it in his eyes.”

  DeMarco put four slices of pizza on a plate and carried it to the living room, placed it on the coffee table. Jayme was sitting cross-legged in front of the crate now, with the dog’s head resting over her foot. She told DeMarco, “Go ahead and eat. Don’t wait for me.”

  He sat on the sofa but did not reach for the pizza. Watched Jayme and the dog for a while. Definitely a Harvey, he thought. Rambo wouldn’t pout. He would rip our throats out.

  DeMarco leaned back and rested his neck against the cushion, slowly rolled his head back and forth. When he sat erect again he noticed the red light blinking on the landline phone. “We have a message,” he said, stood and crossed to the phone, looked down at the readout. “Unknown.”

  “Maybe it’s from one of the people we talked to today.”

  He punched the Play button but kept his fingertip poised above Delete.

  “Greetings!” a young male voice said. “Hey, guys, it’s Chase Miller here, your biggest fan. Just wondering how you felt about the piece I did. I hope I didn’t get anything wrong. I pride myself on accuracy! Anyway, I hope you don’t mind my calling you at this number. It’s in the book, so, you know…public information and all that. So anyway, the actual reason I called was to offer a proposal. I mean, you’ve probably researched me by now as much as I’ve researched you, so I’m sure you know that this stringer gig is just for the experience and to help pay the bills. What I’d really love is to maybe hook up with you guys in a learning capacity, you know? I’m a whiz at research! I can dig up anything about anybody. And for the honor of working with you two, I’d do it all for peanuts. Expenses, that’s it. The only thing I’d ask in return is the right to tell the story. In print, of course. Like maybe for GQ, Playboy, any of the big glossies. Some place where I can maybe get some recognition. Like Sebastian Junger, you know? The Perfect Storm? Or Jon Krakauer. Even Norman Mailer, The Executioner’s Song. I’m not saying I’m as good as any of those guys but I think maybe I can be, you know, with the right kind of tutelage. And who better to learn from than the two most famous PIs in the tristate area?”

  Miller paused for a breath. DeMarco rolled his eyes at Jayme; she smiled and stroked the dog’s head.

  “Anyway,” Miller continued, “I believe I can actually make a contribution. And please don’t tell me to take some classes. Classes are bullshit. I’ve had a couple and I know. How many writing classes did Hemingway take? And Norman Mailer. Yeah, he studied at Harvard and the Sorbonne a little but where did he actually earn his chops? On the job! There’s no other way to really and truly learn anything. And I know you agree with me, Sergeant DeMarco. I know you do. And that’s why I’m asking you now…that’s why I’m begging you…please let me contribute. When am I ever going to get another chance like this? Never! Not in this nowhere land.”

  There was another brief pause, then Miller continued, his voice softer now and more than a little plaintive. “So that’s it, I guess. That’s my pitch. I hope it wasn’t for nothing. I’m at your mercy here.” He ended with his cell phone number, and the promise, “Just give me a shot, that’s all I’m asking. I swear you won’t regret it.”

  When the recorded voice on the landline said, “End of message,” DeMarco raised his hand to hit Delete. But Jayme said, “Wait!”

  He cocked his head and looked at her sideways. “No way,” he said.

  “What’s it going to hurt?”

  “What’s it going to hurt? We already have one puppy to babysit. We don’t need another one.”

  “And we’ve already cut off one pair of balls today. Do you really want to cut off another pair?”

  Twenty

  She could not convince DeMarco to commit to giving Miller the chance he sought, but he did agree to “look into it.” They would do the research Miller expected they already had; they would check out his background, his history. And then make a decision.

  DeMarco did not fail to notice how the prospect of helping a young man launch his career buoyed Jayme’s spirits and brought back her appetite. She warmed up the pizza in the microwave and opened a bottle of merlot rosé. She and DeMarco sat together on the sofa, with the twice-named dog asleep at Jayme’s feet, and watched the movie Turistas.

  Not long after the first hour of the movie, Jayme was asleep too, now with her head in DeMarco’s lap, her long legs folded up close. He kept his eyes open until the movie was nearly over, then drifted off until after midnight. When he woke and saw the time in blue numbers on the cable box, he whispered to her until she awoke and looked at him.

  “Let’s go to bed, baby,” he said, and she groaned “Okay” and slid her feet to the floor and started, wobbly, toward the stairs. He carried Harvey out through the back door and set him on the grass. At first the dog did not seem to know what to do, only stood there looking either drunk or suicidal until DeMarco told him, “Pee now or hold it until morning.”

  Finally Harvey turned away and, like an old drunk locked out of his favorite saloon, wobbled over to the corner of the porch, where he lifted his leg and urinated against the wood.

  Finished after little more than a trickle, he turned at the neck to look back. “Good enough,” DeMarco said.

  Inside, cradling the dog in his arms, he hurried through his routine of checking the lock on the back door, checking that the coffee maker and oven were turned off, checking the front doo
r, and turning off all the lights as he moved through the house.

  The whole process took only a minute and a half, but by the time he reached the bedroom, Jayme was asleep with her clothes in a pile beside the bed. Why not, he thought, and laid the dog on the floor. He took off everything but his boxers and T-shirt and, skipping the usual brush and gargle, slid in beside her. Within minutes he was asleep too.

  The dream was brief and vivid and startling. Two gray aliens leaning over him as he lay on his back, paralyzed beside a soundly sleeping Jayme. The taller of the two aliens used what looked like a crystal knife to slice him open from his neck to his penis, then pulled back the layers of skin and fat to peer inside. DeMarco felt no pain, only shock and fear. But he could not move, could not speak. The only thing that kept him from screaming inside his head was the knowledge that the tall gray was his father and the smaller one was Ryan Jr. They looked nothing like those two, had pear-shaped heads and huge black eyes, spindly bodies and elongated fingers, but he knew them all the same. Both grays had their fingers inside him now, probing, and he could hear their thoughts.

  I can’t find it anywhere, the small one said.

  Neither can I.

  I don’t think he has one.

  Probably never did.

  We’re wasting our time here.

  Should we close him up?

  Why bother? He’s empty.

  Just as he knew that the grays were his father and Ryan Jr., DeMarco knew they were talking about his soul. He didn’t have one. Probably never did.

  He awoke with a strangled scream in his throat and his body hot with fear.

  Twenty-One

  Shaken by his dream, DeMarco reached for his cell phone on the bed table, crept out of bed and into the hallway, where he sat against the wall and telephoned Dr. Hoyle in Kentucky. Hoyle answered with a sleepy, “It is 3:23 a.m. where you are, is it not, Sergeant?”

  “I guess so,” DeMarco said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because it is 2:23 a.m. here.”

  “Oh. Right. I’m sorry if I woke you.”

  “I will assume a good reason. Which is?”

  “I wanted to get your take on something.”

  “Proceed,” Hoyle said.

  “Because you’re a scientist,” DeMarco said, “but also because you’ve said other things that imply, or make me think that maybe you’re not locked into that particular way of, I don’t know—”

  “Sir,” Hoyle interrupted. “I was in the middle of a wholly comfortable slumber, to which I would prefer to return while that possibility remains. So if you please…”

  “Do you believe in the soul?” DeMarco asked. “Do you believe that we have one?”

  So much silence passed that DeMarco began to suspect that the call had dropped. Then Hoyle said, “Have you ever seen frog eggs, Sergeant?”

  “As a boy I did. Several times. But, uh…”

  “Unfertilized frog eggs are round, simple, undifferentiated things. But the moment the egg is fertilized—the very moment, Sergeant—the egg begins to produce an electromagnetic field. And as the egg develops, the electromagnetic field adheres precisely to the developing spine.”

  “Well,” DeMarco said, “that’s interesting, I guess. Are you saying that the electromagnetic field is the soul?”

  “Are you familiar with the word kundalini?”

  “It has something to do with yoga, doesn’t it?”

  “Kundalini is the life force. The chi, the prana, the Great Mother who gives birth to all that is.”

  “Life force being equivalent to soul?”

  “The caduceus of Hermes,” Hoyle said. “Adopted by some as the emblem of the medical profession. But is in fact an ancient Greek alchemical symbol denoting the spine, with the pine cone–shaped top representing the pineal gland, and the two serpents, the life force, entwined around the staff, which represents the spine.”

  “So…like with the frogs? The life force entwined around the spine?”

  “The chi rests in the first chakra at the base of the spine. If awakened, it moves up the spine and into the pineal gland. The awakening of kundalini is the awakening of the self to the knower. To the knowledge that the true self is the knower.”

  “In other words,” DeMarco said, becoming confused, “you believe that the soul is real. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “I have sliced open human brains,” Hoyle told him. “Examined them under the microscope. I understand neurons, brain chemicals, synapses. I have seen them. I understand how they behave. But do you know what I do not understand, nor does anyone else?”

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “Consciousness, young man. Nobody understands consciousness. It is clear that the physical brain is somehow related to consciousness, is perhaps a kind of receiver, but there is not a speck of evidence that the brain is capable of producing consciousness.”

  “And this is related to…?”

  “Everything,” Hoyle said. “To every question that has haunted you ever since you were a boy. And to the questions that haunt you now.”

  DeMarco found himself short of breath. He did not fully comprehend what Hoyle was saying in his disjointed, cryptic way, but some part of it had stolen his breath, had bent him over his knees in the darkness, his left hand against his chest as he spoke into the phone. “Thank you, Dr. Hoyle. I, uh…I’m sorry I called so late.”

  “Melatonin,” Hoyle told him. “Five milligrams to start. And now I have a question for you, if I may.”

  “Of course. Go ahead.”

  “There is no one in Pennsylvania with whom you can discuss matters such as these?”

  “I called you because you might be the smartest man I know.”

  “Might be?” Hoyle said.

  “May be?”

  “I wasn’t questioning your grammar, sir. Good night.”

  And the line went dead.

  Twenty-Two

  At breakfast Jayme sensed a disquietude in DeMarco, suggested by his relative silence and slower-than-usual movements. Most mornings he was a bundle of energy, ready to take on the world. She had made coffee and a large bowl of sliced strawberries, mango, and melon chunks in vanilla Greek yogurt, and he now sat at the table staring down into his bowl, using the tip of his spoon to push around a chunk of melon as if it were an unexpected specimen in a petri dish. Rambo lay on the floor between them, Jayme’s stockinged feet against the dog’s spine, DeMarco’s against the belly.

  “A dollar for your thoughts,” she said.

  He lifted his eyes to her and smiled. “The price has gone up.”

  “Inflation.”

  Again he smiled. But said nothing.

  “Control to Sergeant Ryan,” she said.

  “Sorry.” He released his spoon, leaned back in his chair. “I had a restless night. Dreamed a couple of aliens had cut me open and were looking for my soul. They couldn’t find one.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “And then what?”

  “And then I woke up or…I think I did. Went out in the hall and called Hoyle. Asked if he believed in the existence of the soul.”

  “You didn’t. What time was it?”

  “Almost three thirty here.”

  “Seriously? And what did he say?”

  “Yes, I think. Though it took him a long time to say it. I’m hoping I only dreamed I called him.”

  “Check your phone.”

  For a few seconds he made no move to do so, then, almost fearfully, reached into his pocket, pulled out the phone and opened his call log. “Shoot,” he said. “I didn’t dream it.”

  She tried to hold back a laugh but in doing so made a quick snorting sound. When he raised his eyebrows, she sobered up and said, “You know dreams never mean what they seem to mean. They’re always symbolic of something else.”

  “T
he aliens were my dad and Ryan Jr.”

  “Ooh, that’s interesting, isn’t it? They were obviously trying to tell you something. Did you ask Dr. Hoyle about it?”

  “About my dream? He already thought I was an idiot. I wasn’t about to confirm it for him.”

  Again she laughed. “I’m sorry, babe. I can tell it’s bothering you but… Trust me, you have a soul. A big, beautiful, healthy one.”

  “That’s not what the aliens said.” But he had to smile too. And she recognized that sheepish look of embarrassment. Time to change the subject.

  She said, “I was thinking we should invite Dr. Lisa and her partner over for dinner some night. How would you feel about that?”

  “Me and three females sitting around the table together?”

  “You could invite Joe Loughner to keep you company.”

  “I don’t know about that. It’s an hour down here from Erie. Long way to drive home, especially if you’d be serving wine with dinner.”

  “You could suggest that he bring a date.”

  “And what if he doesn’t? Or what if he does and she drinks even more than he does?”

  “Ugh. I hadn’t considered that.”

  “We could invite Ben and Vee,” he said.

  “Oh, I would like that. How about Mason and Daniella too?”

  “He’ll think we’re trying to set them up together.”

  “How do you know he would be against that?”

  “Do you know something I don’t?”

  She smiled. “He was very complimentary of her yesterday. I sensed something there.”

  DeMarco thought about it, wagged his head a little. “Tricky situation,” he said. “We invite two troopers but not the rest of them?”

  “Right again,” she said with a frown.

  “Look,” he told her. “I know you hit it off with Dr. Lisa. And I want you to have friends. So maybe you could invite her and, what’s her wife’s name? Susan? Maybe you could take Lisa and Susan to lunch someday.”

  “That’ll work,” she said.