Chasing Darkness (10 page)

Pulling
himself out of the bathtub, Gerry wiped at a wet spot on his sweats caused by a
leak in the old faucet. He’d tried the floor the first night, but there was a
worse leak from the wall pipe that had soaked his blankets. At least the tub’s
leak was a slow, steady drip instead of the small fountain that sprang from the
back of the toilet.

He
looked around the apartment. A hot plate, an ancient refrigerator, and a
rust-coated sink were his kitchen. A single bed now covered with broken glass
was his bed. He had sixty-seven dollars to his name.

At
least in jail he had a warm meal and a clean bed—most of the time. And he had
learned to cope there.

“What’re
you in for?” one of them would ask.

Gerry
would turn around and look the man in the eyes. It was always the big men, too.
Big, meaty men with red hair and necks and goatees, tattoos, and buck teeth and
ten-gallon bellies who pumped iron to pass the time because they’d never
learned to read.

“Tax
fraud,” he’d said the first time.

The
meaty man had eyed him top to bottom. “IRS?”

He
had nodded quickly—too quickly, it turned out.

“That’s
federal. You in a state pen.” The convict leaned over and shoved out his chest
and a tattoo with the words “dead meat” in uneven blue writing.

“Gerry
beat the rap on that one,” Wally, the librarian, cut in. “Ended up in here for
assault in the process.”

The
man looked at Wally and then back to him for confirmation.

He
nodded—less quickly this time.

“What
weapon?”

A
1040? “A bat. I had a bat.”

“You
beat someone up with a bat?” the beefy man continued.

Wally
nodded him along.

“Yep.
My lady. I beat her with a bat.” His mind started to roll. “Was her who turned
me in.”

The
beefy man nodded and gave him a smile that looked more like a shark about to
attack. “Me, too. ’Course I killed my old lady.” He looked around and added
with a smile, “I still say not guilty, though. She had it coming, know what I
mean?”

Gerry
nodded without comment.

The
beefy man left, and Wally closed the space between them. “I’m going to tell you
a story a guy told me when I got here.”

He
focused his attention and nodded.

“Was
a guy here from N.A.M.B.L.A.,” Wally began. “You know them?”

He
shook his head.

Wally
lowered his voice. “The Northern American Man Boy Love Association. Their
slogan is ‘sex by eight.” ’

He
furrowed his brow. “Eight?”

“Years
old.”

Gerry
frowned. “Oh.”

“Not
an especially popular group. They don’t get caught, most of them. They’ve got
the most extensive underground system of any of the associations. But this guy,
he got caught.”

He
nodded, waiting.

“They
brought him here,” Wally continued. “He refused to lie about the group he
belonged to.”

There
was a short silence. “And?”

“Guards
found him two days later sitting on a broom handle.”

“Sitting
on it?” Gerry asked.

“It
was shoved so far up, it was coming out his mouth.”

He
grimaced.

Wally
looked around. “Don’t you tell them what you did—ever. They’ll kill you. You
look guilty, too. Best learn how to lie. Make it violent. Little guy like you—make
’em think you’re crazy. Keeps them away.”

“Crazy?”

Turning
his back, Wally started shaking and howling as he headed out of the room. He
got strange looks, true—but they all stayed away from him.

Every
day he’d pictured that broom handle and worried about someone finding him out,
learning about all the bad things he had done. Eight years he’d lived with the
fear, submitting to guard cruelty and politics, even kissing up, spit-shining
shoes and pressing shirts to keep it quiet. Did the guards even know? He wasn’t
sure. They’d always acted like they had inside information, but really they
seemed no more informed than most of the inmates—only crueler and more violent.

He
couldn’t forget the lady cop who had arrested him that last time, the time he
finally got sent to jail—Sam Chase. The invincible Sam Chase. She’d been small
and beautiful for an adult. Freckles sprinkled across her cheeks and nose, she
almost looked like a kid to him. A perfect little kid name, too. He wished
they’d had guards like her in prison. Of course she’d been real mad at him when
she caught him in the playground with the kids, but he liked her anyway. She
was his only friend out here. And now at least he could see her. He was going
to get her attention now. He had the perfect plan.

And
maybe she would help him get back to prison. He could convince her to send him
back.

Gerry
made his way into the main room and opened the refrigerator. There was almost
nothing left to eat. He found a Pop-Tart and sat down on the floor, out of view
of the window, to eat it. Leaning back against the far wall, he put on his
headphones and closed his eyes. But even with his headphones on, he could hear
them outside. There was no peace.

Three
days ago, he’d passed through this same room and a bullet missed his head by
inches. He’d called the cops. Citizens were supposed to report these things.
They came, of course. But he knew they didn’t care. No one cared. Sure, he’d
had problems. And urges. But he wasn’t doing anything wrong now. He was just
trying to live.

The
police had come and told him that they’d arrested the man who’d fired the shot.
He knew that guy would be out of jail in no time. And the police hadn’t been
able to do anything about the picketers.

“They
got rights, too,” the redneck officer had told him. The look in his eyes said
he might just as well have fired the shot. Gerry knew that with Megan’s law,
people had the right to know who lived in their neighborhood and to picket if
they didn’t like it.

At
least Gerry had learned to stay clear of the windows. They wanted to lynch him.
He could still hear them in his head.

Get
out of our town, sicko.

Stay
away from our children, pervert.

You
should be dead. You don’t deserve to live. Die. Die.

He
thought about Sam Chase again. She’d never told him that he deserved to die.
She’d sent him to prison and he’d been safe there. He felt sad, but he took
another bite of the Pop-Tart and thought about getting back to prison. Soon
now. He’d be back there soon.

Sam
inched her way toward the driveway at the Department of Justice building,
cursing the tourist buses that had already begun to circle the block at
Fisherman’s Wharf. She imagined some tour company charging fifty bucks a head
to come and tour a four-block area by bus. Each bus seemed to do it a hundred
times a day.

The
tourists out on the street this morning wore oversized San Francisco
sweatshirts in bright colors—kelly green, scarlet, royal blue. Designs of the
Golden Gate Bridge and cable cars decorated the space between the San and the
Francisco. There was a gold mine in the sweatshirt-making business. Tourists
came from the humid summers in the East and South and believed that it would be
equally warm in California. Wrong.

When
she finally reached the driveway, Sam pulled her government Caprice in and
pressed the white call button.

“Yes.”

“Chase
here.”

The
heavy grilled gate rose, and Sam drove down a short ramp into the lot. The
forest green of her Caprice and the absence of roof lights created the
impression that it was a civilian car. But it still had all the bells and
whistles—police sirens she could control with her feet, a radio hidden in the
center armrest. And the trunk was full of gear—her Kevlar vest and raid gear,
and rape, first aid, and evidence-collection kits.

Some
of the gear had remained unused in the eight years she’d been at D.O.J. But
there’d been more than one time when she was glad to have one of the things
loaded into her trunk.

In
technical terms, she was a special agent for the State of California Department
of Justice, Division of Law Enforcement, Bureau of Investigation. The running
joke was that the D.O.J had the longest names in law enforcement. Unlike Nick,
whose position was with the county, Sam was employed by the state.

In
many ways, the job was a lot like that of an FBI agent, except that Sam worked
for California only. There were divisions within the department and she focused
on the Child Abuse Unit, which maintained a central file on child abuse
investigations completed by other agencies, like police, sheriff, and welfare
offices. Nick liked to joke that the D.O.J. were the paper-pushers and the real
action was in the sheriff’s department, but Sam participated in her share of
raids and made arrests. Nick was right, though. It was slower in some ways.
Maybe not slower, but more manageable. On the nights when Sam did have a
stakeout or a raid, she got coverage for Derek and Rob, but for the most part,
she was there for them, which was where she needed to be.

She
pushed eject on the tape she’d been playing and stretched her neck. She’d been
listening to John Irving’s
Cider House Rules
and had arrived in San
Francisco in the mind of a child at St. Clouds orphanage rather than a special
agent for the Department of Justice. Her mind was filled with Dr. Wilbur Larch
and Homer Wells as she got out of her car, holstered her Glock, and retrieved
her bag from the trunk.

She
went up the cement stairs and entered the main building, then took the elevator
to the third floor. Using her key card, she passed through the secured door and
headed for her office. It was quiet this morning. She was in early, determined
not to let the missing case file get to her. She had locked her office last
night, something she’d never bothered with in the past.

Her
key stuck slightly, but it turned and the door clicked open. She bent down and
examined the keyhole, noting the small scratch marks around the lock. Were
those new?

Pushing
the door open, she flipped the light switch and studied the room carefully
before going in. Dread pooled in her gut like motor oil, and she longed to turn
around, get in her car, and go home. Forcing herself to enter the room, she
closed the door and dropped her bag by her desk. Nothing looked out of order.
Maybe the marks were old.

She
settled in at her desk and picked up the stack of message slips from yesterday.

Aaron
came in to drop the day’s mail in her in box. “I see you found that file,” he
said.

Sam
looked up at him as he pulled the missing Hofstadt file from among the papers
in her in box. She took it from his hand. It hadn’t been there yesterday. She
was sure she had checked her entire desk.

“Should
I send an E-mail letting people know you’ve got it?”

Sam
nodded. “Thanks,” she murmured.

Aaron
left the room and Sam exhaled, exhausted. She opened the file and was skimming
through the contents when she saw the picture. Letting out a gasp, she froze.
The shot was only of her face and shoulders. A snapshot, not a posed photo. A
small red circle had been painted in the center of her forehead with a tiny
drip that spread down her cheek like blood from a bullet wound.

She
felt the same prickle of fear that she had felt as a child when she heard that
certain tone in her father’s voice. “Samantha Jean,” he used to call out to
her. Clenching her fists hard, Sam fought it off. Samantha Jean was dead.

She
started to reach for the photo and stopped herself. Whoever he was, he wasn’t
going to get away with it. She’d have someone’s goddamn job for this. She’d get
the prints on it and the note from yesterday and find out who was screwing with
her.

She
dreaded the idea of asking Nick. It was personal, and it felt like a weakness.
And she didn’t like the idea of sharing it with anyone, especially not Nick.

It
was a dumb thought. Nick was the closest thing she had to a friend. If she was
smart, she would make something of that. No, if she was unafraid, she would
make something of it. But she wasn’t. She was terrified. And she had no idea
even where to begin with her fear.

She
pushed it aside and looked down at the picture again. Nick would do it for her.
She trusted him. And she knew he would keep her confidence. In fact, he was the
only one she would trust to check the prints and keep it quiet.

She
pulled a tissue from the box on her desk, the box that saw use only when
someone else was in her office. Sam neither cried nor got sick. Ever.

She
hated photos. It was another of the things she was glad to leave behind in
Mississippi. As a child, formal family photos were snapped four times a year:
Easter, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Her mother would scrub
them all down, shove the girls into pink dresses and her brother, Jimmy, into
khakis and a tie, and get all dolled up herself. “Smile for the camera!” The
quarterly photo was supposed to be a testament to the happy family life.

The
picture in her hand seemed to stare back at her. The collared shirt she was
wearing was new, but it wasn’t one she wore to work. He had taken pictures of
her at home, with her family. “Damn you.”

Using
the tissue, she took the picture out of the file, slid it into a manila folder,
and dropped it into her bag, wondering if they would pick up any prints. She
had dusting powder in the back of her car, and she was tempted to go downstairs
and dust it now.

Her
phone rang. Closing her bag, she reached over the desk and answered it.

“It’s
Corona. You got a minute?”

Why
did Corona want to see her? “Sure, but—”

“Come
on down.”

Before
she could respond, he hung up. Grabbing a clean notebook and a pen, she told
Aaron where she was going and headed to the director’s office.