The Darkness

32

Paulina didn’t move. Her entire upper body trembled as she looked from Jack to me and back again. Then she stared at me long and hard, without taking her eyes away.

I couldn’t understand why at first, but then I realized that she trusted me more than she trusted Jack.

Paulina was hoping I would tell her that none of this was true.

Instead I walked up to Paulina, and I’ll be damned if

I know why I did this, but I took the woman’s hand in mine and held it.

“It’s true,” I said. “We haven’t spoken to Pam or Abigail yet.”

“Why not?” she said.

Jack replied, “Because you’re Abigail’s mother. And you’re a reporter, too. Because this part of the story needs to be reported by you.”

“How can I…” Paulina said, trailing off. “My daughter, she’ll be…”

“She’ll hate you,” I said, “for a while. But eventually she’ll know the truth. And she’ll respect you for it.”

Paulina laughed bitterly. “My daughter hasn’t respected me in a long time.”

“Well, if she doesn’t respect you,” I said, “she’ll sure as hell love you for it.”

“What about you two? What happens next?”

Jack said, “We’ll be waiting for your call. Your promise to Henry still stands. We did our part and will continue to.”

Paulina nodded. Then she looked at her watch.

“I can be there in a few hours,” she said.

“So go,” I said.

“Yeah. Right.” She looked at her hand, still held in mine, and pulled it back. Then she ran it through her hair, and straightened her jacket. “I’ll call you once it’s done.”

As Paulina turned to walk away, Jack called, “Don’t we get a thank-you?”

She turned back, glared at Jack. “I’ll thank you once that blond bastard is either behind bars or in the ground.”

Then Paulina Cole walked away.

“I think that’s the closest she’s ever come to a real thank-you,” Jack said. “I had a wager with myself, fiftyfifty odds that she slapped me before she left.”

“You might have just saved her daughter’s life,” I said.

“I think that’s at least enough to avoid a slap.”

“Eh, women like Paulina don’t always need a reason.

Especially when they feel like they’ve lost some sense of power or authority, they get it back by lashing out. It’s a gimmick for sure. In a way, I respect her more for that.

She’s so confident, she didn’t even feel the need to slap me.”

“If you’re disappointed, I can take her place. I have a mean right hook.”

“I think I’ll pass,” Jack said, “though at least you wouldn’t have nails. Those things leave scars.”

As we watched Paulina leave, my cell phone began to vibrate. Jack heard it, too, said, “Your lady friend?”

I checked the ID, recognized it as Curt Sheffield.

“Hey, Curt,” I said. “How’s my favorite boy in blue?”

“Been better,” he said.

“Dunkin’ decided to discontinue their donuts?”

“That’s a terrible stereotype perpetuated by the media, just like you.”

“My bad, man. What’s up?”

“It’s been a hell of a day,” he said. “I’ll give you the heads-up because I didn’t know about Paulina’s story until too late…but it’s true.”

“What’s true?” I asked, feeling my heart begin to beat a little faster. It was a strange sensation. The excitement of another thread unspooling mixed with the dread that came with Curt’s apprehension.

“Homicide down in Chelsea,” Curt said. “Gruesome stuff. I just left the scene, and…it’s bad, man. Real bad.”

“What happened?”

Jack’s composure from talking to Paulina was gone, as he watched the conversation, trying to decipher my reaction. I tried to keep a straight face, but when Curt told me the details I felt my whole body drain of blood.

“We got the call about an hour ago,” he said. “A tenant on the floor above. A girl comes home to find her husband passed out on the floor. He’d been laid off a month ago, and took every spare cent they had and spent it on drugs.

When she found out, she told him she was going to leave him, then divorce him and take all their savings. And that’s when he took a knife from the kitchen and sliced her head nearly clean off.”

“That’s horrible,” I said. “Who’d you hear this from?”

“The killer himself,” Curt said. “The guy confessed to everything, right before his brain nearly short-circuited.

He’d spent every cent they had around the house on what he said was some new drug, something called Darkness he said. Said it was the best high he’d ever had, and he wasn’t going to give that up for anything, including his bitch of a wife.”

“So Paulina’s story was true,” I said.

“We’ve had half a dozen calls today, from robbery to assault to this, and all of them have one thing in common.

All the perpetrators ingested these little black rocks.”

“That’ll be all over the news tomorrow,” I said. “Not just the Dispatch, but we’ll have to cover it, too.”

“Best publicity you can get,” Curt said. “But man, I hope Paulina’s wrong about one thing, because if this drug blows up we’re gonna have major problems in this city.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hell, the NYPD’s lost a thousand jobs since last year.

The narcotics division is strapped thin as it is, and our men and women on the street haven’t caught a wink of this thing. If the Darkness is being sold, it’s not being sold through traditional dealers.”

I heard a siren in the distance, and I lost my focus.

Then I heard Curt’s voice again.

“Henry, Henry, you there, man?”

“Yeah, sorry, Curt. Just thinking about all of this.”

“Yeah, us, too. But listen, Henry, the main reason I called, I wanted to tell you about one more thing.”

“What, this stuff isn’t enough? I got enough material here for a week’s worth of stories.”

“Yeah, well, try this on for size and tell me if you want to drop it. I think I found your man. The blond guy who kidnapped Paulina.”

“No shit,” I said. “Who is he?”

“I haven’t told anyone else yet because, hell, after what you told me and Paulina’s story quoting nonexistent members of the department, I’m officially a member of the church of paranoia.”

“I’ve belonged there for a while,” I said. “So what did you find?”

I heard Curt take a deep breath and say, “You gotta swear to me this doesn’t come back with my name on it until you figured out what the hell is going on. ’Cause this stuff is scaring even me.”

“You know you have my word.”

“I think you’re going to want to sit down for this one.”

And when he told me who and what this man was, I felt my knees go weak. Jack came over and we both sat down on a bench in Rockefeller Plaza. I thought I was through with stories like this, stories where the fire was so close it could burn me. I looked at Jack, wondered how many times he’d been through the kind of hell I’d gone through.

And knowing it all, feeling the scars beneath my clothing,

I knew there was a chance it could get bloody again.

“What is it, Henry?” Jack said.

The fact that he didn’t call me sport or kiddo or any one of those nicknames scared me even more.

“Curt,” I said. “He found our man.”

“Who is it?” Jack asked.

“You know how Paulina wrote, in that article, about how close this city was to burning down twenty years ago?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, his voice soft, monotone. “I lived through it.”

“Well, I think someone’s turned the gas tank back on and is getting ready to light this place up all over again.”