Darkness Falling Read online

  They walked out and secured the studio door.

  "I think we need to go out, take a look," Rick said, watching his brother flop onto the sofa. "Could be somebody's hurt."

  "Uh uh. I'll call Eddie at the station. Let them go." He blew out smoke and adjusted himself, fought back a yawn. "You say it was on the forest road?"

  Rick nodded.

  "Mm hmm, could be they're even nearer than we are." He reached over to the desk and lifted the phone, keying in the number with his other hand.

  "Many calls?"

  Geoff shook his head, listening to the brrrt brrrt in the earpiece. "Never are this time, after two, two-thirty. Folks are all curled up doing what they should be doing–"

  "Or what they shouldn't be doing!" Rick added with a big smile.

  "And it's a big amen to that one," Geoff said returning the grin. "Leastwise, they ain't wanting to talk to folks over at the radio station, and that's a fact."

  Rick leaned against Geoff's desk and scanned the walls, taking in the posters and the Vargas calendar months – there were twenty-seven of them, some of them more than thirty years old. He smiled and shook his head. "Mel never say anything about those?"

  "The Vargas girls?"

  "Uh huh."

  "Why would she say anything?"

  Rick gave a little shrug. "Like maybe she thinks they're a little tacky."

  "Tacky!" Geoff snorted. "They're art. Ain't nobody ever drew a woman like Vargas." He slammed the phone down on the cradle and picked it up again, re-keyed the numbers.

  "Busy?"

  Geoff shook his head and slouched back against the cushions, the phone at his ear again. "No answer."

  "Who's on tonight?"

  "Eddie – Eddie for sure – Shirley maybe? Don… Troy?"

  "Didn't Barbara deliver yet?"

  Geoff shrugged.

  "I think she did. A girl, as I recall. Janey told me, over at the deli? It's my guess Troy will be home nights for a couple weeks."

  "Well, maybe." Geoff stubbed his butt out in a saucer on the sofa's arm. "Still should be somebody picking up calls, though."

  "Geoff, I think we should maybe go out there ourselves. Right now."

  Geoff put the phone back on the cradle. He frowned up at his younger brother. He tried to see himself in Rick's face but couldn't. Rick was taller – at six-two, a good three inches – with dark almost black hair and a swarthy complexion. Geoff, meanwhile, was light-skinned – always a problem in the height of summer – and maybe a little on the stocky side.

  "What about Mel?" he asked. "Leaving her here all alone?"

  Rick waved his arms expansively. "I'll wake Johnny."

  Geoff snorted. "He'll be so thrilled."

  "Has to be done."

  "You enjoy making him pissed. You know that, don't you?"

  "Like I say, has to be done."

  "But you do enjoy it."

  Rick nodded and smiled. "OK, OK, I enjoy it."

  As Rick left the sound booth, chuckling, Geoff's own laughter died away and he glanced in at his wife. And then at the telephone.

  "You wanna die, right?" Johnny spoke without opening his eyes, his head almost completely buried face down in his pillow. "Whoever you are, you got bored with life and decided you wanted to try dying."

  Rick removed his hand from John Meshtik's bare shoulder and sat gently on the side of the bed. "Johnny, you have to get up."

  "Who says?" Still no movement.

  "I say, Geoff says."

  Johnny smacked his lips again and turned around. He shielded his eyes with his hands and looked up at Rick, squinting at the light from the hallway over his shoulder. "And why is that?"

  "There's been an accident, out on the forest road, and we're–"

  "What kind of accident?"

  Rick shrugged and pushed the door closed, returning the room to gloom.

  Johnny turned around and opened his eyes so they were slits. "Ah, thanks – that's better. What kind of accident?"

  "Don't know till we get over there. Truck maybe, on fire."

  "You call the Sheriff's office?"

  Rick nodded. "Geoff did. No answer."

  "No answer?" Johnny sat up in bed and lifted his watch from the side table. "It's after 3.30 in the damned morning. What could they be doing down there at this time?"

  "Lines could be down," Rick said and then realized that that couldn't be true. He had heard the phone ringing when Geoff had dialed.

  "And why would the lines be down?"

  "Jesus Christ, Johnny, just get out of the fucking bed. We're going down to see if someone needs help."

  "OK, OK." Johnny pulled the sheets back and swung his legs out, yawning. "But why would the lines be down? There a storm?"

  "Uh uh." Rick got up and opened the door again. "There was some kind of… some kind of light. Just before the truck crashed. It if is a truck… and if it did crash."

  "If it didn't crash, why is it on fire?" Rick glared and Johnny sniggered, holding his hands up. "I'm getting out of bed, see? This is me–" he got to his feet and adjusted the waistband of his shorts"–getting out of bed, OK?"

  "OK."

  He pulled a pair of jogging pants from the bureau behind the door and stepped into them. Then he slipped an already buttoned creased shirt over his head and gave a mock bow. "Johnny is ready."

  "I'm pleased."

  They walked out into the hallway and made for the stairs down to the studio floor and the outside doors.

  "You said there was a light?"

  "Yeah, like a flash – lightning. Everything went white for a few seconds, then came back to normal."

  "Sounds like we're gonna get a bitch of a storm." Johnny took hold of the handle into the studio and stopped. "You guys take it easy out there."

  Rick nodded. "Look after Mel."

  Johnny's eyes opened wide. "Hey, that's right. It's just me and the Lady Melvin… maybe she needs me to look after her, keep her warm against the nasty storm."

  "Yeah, in your dreams."

  When Rick stepped outside, his brother was already pulling the Dodge around the front of the building. Rick looked across the sweep of the valley to the forest road and saw the smoke. It didn't look as bad as it had done before, but maybe that was because the first rays of the sun were showing behind the hills, turning everything lighter, making everything seem less hostile, less mysterious.

  Geoff leaned over and flicked up the door catch. "Get in," he said.

  They drove in silence.

  The sky behind the hills was lightening up all the time and by the time they had reached the vehicle – a flatbed pickup they knew was owned by Jerry Borgesson – shadows were already showing themselves.

  "Jerry's truck," Geoff said as they pulled in behind it. Rick didn't say anything.

  The truck was plowed into the bushes at the right hand side of the road. If it had drifted to the left, it would have gone over the side and straight down the steep wooded incline to the valley bottom. Rick looked across at Honeydew Mountain and saw the radio station straddling the flat middle section below the horned crown, tried to imagine Melanie speaking in husky tones into the mic, holding her early morning audience in raptures.

  Geoff had moved around to the driver's door and his voice interrupted Rick's reverie. "He's not here," Geoff shouted. "Nobody's inside."

  The fire had not done much damage although smoke was still fuming out from the buckled sides of the hood. Geoff reached in and switched off the ignition and the thin, watery headlights disappeared. Rick walked around the other side of the truck and looked inside the cab. It was empty, as Geoff had said. He opened the door and climbed inside.

  "Can't get this side open," Geoff said through clenched teeth as he pulled at the handle. "Must've been damaged in the crash."

  "There's nothing in here," Rick said. He was looking specifically for blood or damaged dashboard or windshield to indicate Jerry Borgesson's bulk or head slamming into it. But the interior looked as good as new – or, at
least, as good as fifteen years old would allow. There was a creased Polaroid of Jerry's wife, Shirley, slotted behind the rear mirror fixing plate, a half-eaten pack of mints lying on the plastic shelf housing the speedo, and a confusion of crumpled paper bags, breadcrumbs and apple and pear cores around the pedals. All pretty much the way Jerry's truck should be. Except for the fact that there was no Jerry.

  Geoff moved back from the door, hands on hips, and turned around. He shouted Jerry's name and waited.

  "You think he's hurt? Crawled off somewhere, maybe, to get away from the fire?"

  "Something like that," came the reply. Geoff shouted again.

  Silence reigned.

  "Hey, Rick? You notice anything?"

  Rick moved across to the driver's seat and rolled down the window. Leaning on the sill, he said, "Like what?"

  Geoff turned around and glanced at him and then glanced quickly away, as though what he was thinking was too preposterous even to verbalize it. "There's no sound," he said.

  Rick leaned further out of the window and listened. Geoff was right. The entire valley was as still and as silent as a grave. No bird sounds. He sat back and shuffled around in the seat so that he was facing forward. He took hold of the steering wheel gingerly, allowing his hands to acclimatize themselves around the worn leather and the smoothed finger sections, fighting back the images of the young man and woman whose faces had stared at him as he ran them down. It was almost six months ago now but it still felt like yesterday.

  He had sold the DeSoto to a dealer over in Carlisle, and though Geoff had reasoned with Rick that it wasn't Rick's fault and that it was just an accident – could happen to anybody – Rick wasn't having any of it. Now, all this time later, the feelings were not getting any better – if anything, they were getting worse, with the dream coming to him every night now instead of every few nights the way it had done immediately after the accident.

  Rick looked across at the passenger door. "Geoff?"

  "Yeah? You found something?" Geoff was kicking through the undergrowth at the side of the road above the incline.

  "I just realized something."

  "Yeah? What?"

  "I opened the door." He turned to look at Geoff. "I opened the door to get inside here."

  "And?"

  "Well, if Jerry was hurt – or even just dazed – why would he close the door after him?" Rick pretended to stagger out of the cab and then turned to close the door. "Why would he do that?"

  Geoff shrugged. "Truck-proud? Hey, I don't know."

  "Doesn't make any sense. Doesn't make any sense him not turning off the ignition, either… particularly with the engine on fire." Rick removed his hands from the steering wheel and rubbed them down his trousers. They were clammy.

  "He's probably lying somewhere out in the bushes," Geoff suggested, though the suggestion didn't sound all that convincing. "Or maybe–" he turned around with a big smile on his face "–maybe he walked into town! Yeah, that's it. That's what he's done. He's walked into town." He clapped his hands together. "He's walked into town because there's nothing else for him to do at four o'clock in the morning. Come on, let's drive on."

  Getting out of the cab of Jerry's flatbed pickup was a huge relief for Rick though he didn't know whether that relief was simply a throwback to memories of the accident or something else. Something else entirely.

  (5)

  Virgil had heard – or maybe seen – something in his head, too. But what was it? He came awake and listened. Had he heard something? Was that what had awoken him? Or had he been dreaming?

  The television was showing one of those teen comedies that were simply not funny, and Virgil pressed the mute button, cocking his head on one side. Was it somebody at the door? He got up from the sofa and turned to the kitchen.

  The bandaged and gauze-wrapped body of Suze Neihardt lay exactly where he had left it. But the brown-taped old woman was nowhere to be seen.

  Damn! That was what he must have heard – the old bird sneaking out of the house, like to call the cops. Not stopping to wonder why she hadn't called them from in the house itself, Virgil ran to the kitchen, taking care to check around corners, keeping his head down. How had she got loose? But there was no time to answer – or even ask – such questions. She was loose, certainly. Of that there was no doubt.

  Now in the kitchen, Virgil checked over towards the back door – it was closed. Surely she would not have had the presence of mind to steal away into the night, closing the kitchen door gently behind her? That just seemed too ridiculous.

  But Virgil was beginning to feel that an even more ridiculous solution to the problem was uncoiling itself in his mind.

  He turned to the floor, frowning.

  There was no tape, scrumpled up in sticky wedges – as, of course, it would have been immediately on her escape.

  He looked across at the body of the girl.

  And would she have left the girl, that old woman? Virgil did not think so. He wasn't sure of the relationship between the two but he was sure that there was a bond between them.

  "No," he told the disinterested kitchen, "something isn't right here."

  But hold on there a minute, hoss. The girl is dead, long gone, kaput. Why risk your freedom to start messing around with a taped-up corpse, particularly when the guy who taped her up is sitting right there, in your living room, snoozing on your sofa.

  No," he told the silence. And he said it again – "No!" – emphatically, this time. Something smelled in Denmark.

  Virgil went to the kitchen drawers, pulling them open one by one: bread knives, steak knives, carving knives, skewers, forks, carving forks.

  He slammed the last drawer closed and stopped right where he was standing, and he listened.

  But he couldn't hear anything.

  He was about to move again but then he froze. And concentrated. He had been right before: he couldn't hear anything. But it was more than that: he actually could not hear even the slightest noise, even from way off in the distance.

  He had a sudden mental image of police cars parked up and blocking the street in both directions, stopping traffic and passers-by. But how could they know he was here? And how could they–

  The old broad, that's how they could know. The cunt had gotten out and blown the whistle. And any minute now – any second now – there would be a knock on the door or a ring on the bell, and a deep voice that took no bullshit from any jumped-up little assholes like Virgil Banders would say, Police, spreading that word into two, "poe" and "lease", and then "Open the goddam door, kid!" maybe shouting through a loudhailer. Then maybe there would be tear gas, like on the old prison movies starring Jimmy Cagney and George Raft. Did they still use tear gas? Virgil guessed they did.

  He lifted his right hand to his mouth and chewed on his thumbnail.

  But hold on now, how come the old fart had closed the door after her? No, that didn't make any sense at all. If she'd gotten the door open then she'd have hared off down the path to the sidewalk, hollering for all she was worth, and he would have heard her. That and maybe there'd be a bunch of people standing out there on the step.

  He checked his watch. Coming up to 5.30.

  No, there wouldn't be any bunches of people at 5.30 in the morning.

  He looked again at the back door and this time saw that the key was turned in the lock. He walked to the front door, saw the deadbolt pushed across. OK, OK, this was looking better.

  So the woman had somehow gotten herself untied, and–

  Virgil shook his head. No, that just wasn't right. And he said so, looking down at the still and bandaged body of Suze.

  "There's no way she could have undone that stuff," he announced. "And if there was, she would have left the scrunched-up tape. But even if she was so clean and tidy that she put the tape into a pocket or something, there was no way she would disappear." Virgil shook his head. What she would have done in that situation would have been either get the hell out or introduce her intruder to a kitchen knife or
a skillet.

  He glanced across at the stairs.

  Maybe she was up there. He moved closer to the foot of the stairs and bent his head so that he could see right up into the darkness at the head of the stairs. He couldn't hear anything.

  He moved back from the staircase, checking behind him for the old fart suddenly–

  Boo! Try this carving knife in your kidneys, sucker!

  –appearing from around back of the sofa or the curtains.