The Darkest Place Read online

  “Wait a second.”

  At first she thought maybe he had heard something, a noise downstairs. She could tell that he was straining to listen to something.

  “What is it?” Her voice was a whisper still, but there was an edge of urgency in it now.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “On the scanner.”

  “No.”

  They both listened now. Neither moved or even breathed. His head was lifted off the pillow, and he was looking in the direction of the door.

  Then came a soft squawk, followed by a burst of murmured words. She could barely make them out.

  “What?” she asked.

  “He said something about a body.”

  “What?”

  “Hang on.”

  They listened together. After a moment there was another soft squawk, followed by more chatter she couldn’t understand.

  “It’s a patrol car calling in,” he told her.

  “What’s he saying?”

  “They found another body.”

  “Another?”

  Miller nodded. He was sitting up now. She was leaning on one elbow. They were both naked under his blankets.

  “You mean another one of those boys?” she said.

  One morning eight weeks ago a fisherman had found a body adrift in Mecox Bay. A month after that another body was found in Peconic Bay, this time by an old man as he took his early morning swim. Both victims were young men, the older of the two only twenty. The coroner had, in both cases, listed drowning as the cause of death, and the police had first considered these deaths suicides, finally ruling them as accidents. Miller, among others, wasn’t so convinced of that.

  Abby knew of the dead young men—boys, really. Both deaths had made the local papers, and for days after each body was discovered, no one in town seemed to want to talk about anything else. Everyone who came into the deli had a theory, to believe that something other than what the cops were saying was actually going on. One of her regular customers, an old German professor who claimed to have known Einstein as a youth and smelled always of garlic, was convinced that this was the work of, as he put it, “dark forces.” Such talk made her uneasy. Though she had a roommate, she was often alone at night, and the idea of something sinister roaming the quiet streets of her town disturbed her deeply, kept her from sleeping, and made her wish for someone, anyone, to be in bed beside her.

  Miller was sitting on the edge of the mattress now. He was a big guy, had once played football, had once been bound for the University of Michigan on an athletic scholarship. But his knee went, or, rather, was taken from him, and that all changed. Abby sat up, the blanket falling away, exposing her breasts to the cold air. She could barely see Miller in the outside light filtered deep blue by the frosted windows. But she could sense that he was listening now even more intently than before. She waited for whatever was coming next.

  A moment more, and then a final squawk and murmur of words. She heard some of them this time. Shinnecock Bay. Reservation. The instant the transmission ended, Miller was standing, searching for his clothes.

  “Where are you going?” she said.

  “I have to check something out.”

  He found his jeans, then his shirt, and finally his boots. He dressed beside the bed, quickly. She felt threatened by his abruptness but fought hard not to let this trigger her old insecurities.

  “How long will you be?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry. You can wait here, though. I mean, I’ll be back eventually.”

  “Do you want me to wait here?”

  “Yeah. I’ll have my cell phone. You can call me if there’s a problem.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I just need to check this out.”

  “Why?”

  “I won’t be long. I promise. An hour, tops. If I’m going to be any longer than that, I’ll call.”

  She nodded despite her uncertainty about this. Her car was back in town, parked in the lot behind the deli, a mile or so away. Walking distance in the summer but not in this weather, not with her uneasiness about things that lurked, both imagined and real.

  “You can watch TV if you want. And I have food downstairs. I’m sorry about this.” The words echoed in his head. He would be saying this again soon, if things got that far.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Just hurry back.”

  He was dressed now, tucking in his shirt, tightening his belt. His army field jacket and down vest he wore beneath were downstairs, by her coat. They had begun in his kitchen, kissing as they had walked through the door. It seemed at the time that throwing themselves at each other before they sobered up was the thing to do. It had seemed she needed that as much as he had. For both of them it was nothing short of a leap into darkness.

  He left her in his bed, in the cold room, and, as best as his bad knee would allow him, hurried down the stairs. He grabbed his vest and coat and gloves. He was zippering up the field jacket as he hurried out the back door, his muscles flexing against the harsh, cold air. He paused to make sure the door was locked, then rushed to his pickup.

  He sat behind the wheel a moment, allowing the engine a few seconds to warm up, then shifted into gear and pulled out of his driveway. At the end of Moses Lane he turned right, heading west on Hill Street. He wondered as he drove down the empty two-lane road if he had been maybe a little too eager to get out of there. Had he jumped at the chance to get away? He needed to do this, to find out what he could. But he was also feeling grateful for the diversion from conversation. The more things they talked about, the more small talk they used up, the sooner there would be nothing left for him to say but to tell her the things he had once done.

  His breath was a white mist that burst from his nostrils and mouth. Steady, long bursts. He could smell her on him, taste her still. He thought about her, the warmth of her beside him. In the distance were police sirens. He was moving toward them.

  Miller’s hope was to arrive before the cops were able to get organized. Moses Lane wasn’t more than a few minutes’ drive from the reservation, even at the posted speed limit, so there was a good chance of making it before the scene could be secured. Miller made the sharp left-hand turn from Hill Street onto Little Beach Road not much more than a minute after leaving his house, but once he did, he was forced to ease back on the accelerator. The roads that ran through the reservation were narrow and unlit, not at all well tended or even marked. His pickup, though one of the smaller trucks of its line, wasn’t designed for high speeds, certainly not high speeds through this kind of environment. So he forced himself to drive more cautiously despite the excitement building in his gut, mounting like a storm inside him. He needed to keep his emotions in check, to govern himself better; he’d been told that several times before by the man from whom he wanted to get more work. Miller wanted to show that he could learn, that he could change, that in fact he had changed. The last thing he needed was to roll his truck over on a turn and not even reach the scene. That would hardly be impressive, he thought, hardly serve to help make his case for being worthy of full-time employment by the only PI in town.

  Miller made a second left turn onto Church Street and was approaching Cemetery Road when he caught sight of something up ahead. Bright lights flickering in the darkness. He continued on toward the end of Church Street even though he knew by these lights that he was already too late. It was only a few seconds later that the first patrol car came into view. Then another, and then a third. They were parked together in a cluster, their red and blue bubble lights blinking, each one out of sync with the other and illuminating with a kind of unrelenting chaos the tops of the bare trees that lined this back road.

  Two of the cars were parked nose to nose across Cemetery Road, blocking it to traffic. The third car was directly beyond these two, facing toward the bay, its headlights lighting the way down the empty road. A uniformed cop with a flashlight standing at the corner of Cemetery and Church waved Mi
ller off, making it clear that he wanted Miller to turn left onto Cemetery and not right as Miller had indicated with his turn signal. But Miller didn’t make the left, just stopped at the end of Church and sat there, waiting. The cop quickly approached Miller’s truck, showing his impatience in the way he moved.

  Miller didn’t know the man. Half of the force now was made up of recruits who had been hired after Miller’s father had been killed five years earlier. Those who remained on the force, who had once been blindly loyal to Miller’s father, were too worried about their jobs these days to ever be of much help to Miller those few times when he could have used it. The police chief the town had brought in to replace Miller’s father was as against corruption as a man could get, easily as against it as Miller’s father had been for it, a part of it, at the head of it for most of his career.

  This cop was wearing a fur-lined leather jacket and a cap with earflaps. It wasn’t anywhere close to being enough against this cold. But nothing short of a parka and full-face mask would have been enough tonight. As the cop approached, Miller rolled down his window and felt a blast of cold air rush into his truck. It all but shoved into him with the force of a crowd.

  “Road’s closed,” the cop said. He spoke quickly. It wasn’t a conversation opener. It was the conversation, as far as he was concerned.

  But not as Miller was concerned. “What’s going on?” he said.

  “Do you live down this road?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m going to need you to turn around.”

  “What happened?”

  “You’re going to need to turn around and leave.”

  “Was there an accident or something?”

  “Please turn your vehicle around. This is a crime scene, closed to the public.”

  The cop backed away, giving Miller room to turn. He kept his eyes focused on Miller. Miller nodded and rolled the window up, then made a U-turn, heading east along Cemetery. The next street over was Old Point Road. He turned onto it and pulled over again. Through the woods that separated these two streets, Miller couldn’t see the cop cars, just their light show in the trees a block over. Of course this meant they couldn’t see him, either. He shut off his motor and killed his headlights and stepped out into the cold.

  It grabbed at him right away, hard. The wind was coming from the south. He looked into it, his eyes quickly drying. He tilted his head down, tucking his chin against his chest, and walked into the wind, cutting through the small woods that stood between him and the bay. He always carried a small penlight in the pocket of his jacket. He used it now to find his way. The larger flashlight he kept under the front seat of his truck would have certainly made the going easier, but it also would have attracted attention, which of course he didn’t want. After a minute of trudging through the woods, he lifted his head and could see the bay. He wasn’t far from it now, just a few yards. The dark water shimmered under the black sky. There was nothing else to see. To his right he could hear cops, their voices but not what was being said. By the way they spoke he could tell that they were talking into their radios, reporting in. He heard the same squawking sounds he had heard back in the warmth of his bedroom, the same cross-chatter.

  The woods gave way and he was in the open finally, standing on the edge of the bay. The beach was narrow, only a few feet wide. The sand was filled with rocks and bits of broken shells that crunched beneath his boots. He looked to his right and saw two cops, or the shape of two cops, anyway, standing together. They were looking out over the water, shining their flashlights into it. Miller tried to follow their line of vision but couldn’t make out anything but chop. The water was black, except for where it was touched by the flashlights, and then it looked like tarnished silver. So far the cops hadn’t seen Miller. He was a good hundred feet from them. But he needed to know what they knew. He needed to know something, anything. He needed specific information to report. And he wasn’t going to get it standing where he was. He turned off his penlight and started toward the cops. He didn’t want to have come out in the cold for nothing.

  Miller closed about half the distance between where he had exited the woods and where the cops stood. But he still couldn’t see what they were looking at. Another cop joined them, and then another still. After about a dozen steps along the sand, Miller stopped. The last cop to arrive had what looked to be a handheld floodlight. He shook it several times, then whacked it with the heel of his palm, once, then again. The other cops gathered around him, and it was then that the light finally came on, casting a clear circle of bright white at their feet. The other cops stepped back, opening a clear run to the water, and then the light swung very quickly down the beach, the wide beam cast finally out over the bay.

  Miller could see it then, see what it was they were all looking at. A body was floating facedown. It was about fifty feet from the shore, maybe less. The tide was low, and the body wasn’t moving. Miller figured that its feet must have dragged along the bottom as it drifted into shallow water. He imagined the toes acting as anchors. The body probably wouldn’t be coming closer, or going out any farther, for that matter, not till the tide shifted and the water got higher.

  Of course who it was floating in the freezing-cold bay Miller didn’t know. Nor did he know if it was a male or a female, and that mattered, that much he would need to report. He wanted to show himself to be helpful, someone not to overlook, and the news that someone had been found floating in the bay wasn’t going to do that. Anyone with a scanner would know that much. Anything more than that the police would sit on for as long as they could, but not out of courtesy to the victim’s loved ones. There was a bigger agenda in play here.

  Miller waited, watching. He was shivering, his teeth starting to chatter, but he wasn’t going to leave now. He was close enough finally to hear not only voices but words. He heard one cop wonder if they should call the fire department to help retrieve the body. Another asked if the town had a diver on call, someone with a dry suit who could just wade out. Then a third cop pointed out that half the kids enrolled at the college were marine biology majors. They’d have wet suits, and the college was less than a mile away. Another cop, the one who had brought the floodlight, said that Roffman, the chief of police, was on his way, and that policy was to contact the coast guard, which had already been done. There was a station just across the bay. Someone would be there in fifteen minutes.

  A short while went by and nothing much else happened. The cops waited, stomping their feet against the cold, their hands in the pockets of their coats, their shoulders held up as far as was possible. No one said much of anything, and all the radios were now silent. Miller wondered if the cops had been able to determine from where they were standing if the dead body was that of a man or a woman. Young or old? Maybe the clothes, maybe the hair would give it away, something. After a moment Miller decided that it was probable that at least one of those cops knew him, had in the past worked for his father. Certainly if Miller walked up to them and was recognized, he would be taken away, but not without first learning more, if he was lucky. He decided that it was worth the shot, easily a better thing to do than just standing around in the freezing cold, too far away to see anything but the floating body and five bored cops.

  Miller started walking toward them. They were facing the water, standing in a cluster, but it didn’t take long for one of them to turn his head. Maybe he had heard Miller, or caught sight of him from the corner of his eye, or maybe just sensed him out there in the dark, sensed his motion. For whatever reason, the cop turned suddenly.

  “Hold it,” he said. There was anger in his voice. Not authority but anger. Miller knew then, coming out of the dark as he was, that he had startled the cop, caught him off guard. The man’s anger was a reaction to the fear that had cut through him like a shot. Miller had seen that a hundred times in his life, seen cops covering up their emotions in that exact way.

  The other cops turned too. Several flashlights cut into Miller’s eyes at once. Miller jus
t stood there with his hands held out from his side. He didn’t take another step.

  “Anything wrong?” he said. He made sure the tone of his voice was even and calm. He wanted to appear as innocent as possible. It was necessary despite the fact that he was innocent, more or less. Just a man out for a stroll, nothing to worry about. What’s all the fuss? No, I love this cold, are you kidding?

  But the cops weren’t swayed by his act. Miller had snuck up on them, had strayed into a crime scene, and not just any crime scene. They acted quickly, three of them moving toward Miller. Without hesitating they led him away from the water’s edge. There wasn’t any woods here to climb through, just an open parking lot, empty except for patrol cars. Miller turned his head to look over his shoulder as they escorted him away, trying to see what he could, but there was no light on the body now. He could barely see the shape of it in the water. Once they reached the parking lot, the cops led him to the nearest patrol car. None of these men was someone Miller knew all that well, certainly not well enough to expect anything close to favorable treatment. None of these men had worked for his father, had come to the Miller home for meals, had been there to congratulate Miller when he won his scholarship to Michigan.

  At the patrol car Miller was questioned. He understood that the cops’ first reaction would be to assume that Miller had something to do with the body floating in the bay. Maybe he was returning to the scene of the crime, feigning innocence, just to mock the police. Their need for a break in this case would lead them to such a wild hope. The cop who asked the most questions was in his thirties, not that much older than Miller himself. His name was Spadaro, and he had been hired three or four years ago. It was hard for Miller to keep track, though he tried to, tried to keep all the players and their stats straight in his head. It seemed important to him, worth the effort required.

  Spadaro pressed Miller to explain what he was doing out here, at this time of the night, in this weather. Did Miller live around here? Miller calmly replied that he took this walk every night. He didn’t live far, and he liked this beach, liked that it was secluded. The Shinnecock didn’t seem to mind that Miller came here. As for the cold, he didn’t much mind it, and anyway there wasn’t much he could do about it, was there? He needed his walks, they cleared his head. He thought about mentioning something about doctor’s orders but stopped himself. Keep it simple, don’t say too much.