Lisa Unger - Darkness My Old Friend

But as a free agent, Jones didn’t have any of those concerns. And though he wouldn’t have said the Marla Holt case bothered him, now that the questions were being asked again, he wanted some answers. He was starting to remember the uneasy feeling he’d had while investigating. Like a rotting smell of unknown origin, something that couldn’t be cleaned or aired out, something that lingered. But the younger Jones Cooper didn’t always follow his instincts.

He got out of his car and walked up the drive. In his pocket his phone started to vibrate. He took it out to see Paula Carr’s number flashing on the screen. He hit the “ignore” button. He had some feelers out for Cole Carr’s mother but hadn’t heard anything back. He couldn’t talk to Paula Carr and focus on what he was doing now. He wasn’t a multitasker and didn’t know how people ever concentrated on anything with something always beeping and ringing in their pockets-e-mail, text messages, that idiotic Spacebook or MyFace or whatever it was that Ricky seemed to like so much. Dad, you and Mom need a page. It’s a great way to stay in touch… How about we just talk on the phone, son?

His son’s generation seemed to think that everyone needed to know what you were doing, thinking, feeling, every single second. He couldn’t figure out if it was narcissism or fear-the idea that everyone wanted to know you were on your way to the mall or the idea that if you are alone in your own head with your own thoughts and plans that you are somehow invisible, dispensable. If you are not part of the wild, rushing current of information, then you are swallowed by it whole, you disappear. When Jones was a kid, there was none of this. There wasn’t even a cordless phone in his house, growing up. If he’d wanted privacy, he stretched the long cord from the phone to the headset and stood in the pantry. Even then sometimes he could hear his mother quietly pick up the extension in her bedroom. Abigail could never let him have an inch of space to himself.

As he walked up the driveway, he thought about how he could have called before he left the house to reschedule that appointment. But he didn’t. There was a mean, stubborn place inside him that wouldn’t allow it. He would reschedule-when he was good and goddamn ready.

He lifted his hand to knock on the Holt door and found it ajar; it drifted open with a creak under his hand.

“Hello? I’m looking for Michael Holt.”

He steadied the door with one hand and knocked with the other. Still, when he let it go, the door swung open until a hallway, lined with stacks of newspapers, lay ahead of him. He found himself reaching to rest his hand on the gun he wasn’t carrying. It was his training to do this when entering a building where an unknown threat might be lurking. But he didn’t carry his gun every day anymore, as he had when he was on the job.

Ricky would have been proud of his old man. Jones had Googled Michael Holt last night, interested in what Henry Ivy had said. Jones had found an elaborate website, designed by Holt himself, detailing various mine locations, histories, lots of photographs of tunnels and abandoned entrances. The site offered Michael as a tour guide, a guest speaker, and a “consultant for filmmakers, novelists, and television producers.” Everybody wanted to be a star these days; it was never enough merely to be good at what you did. But maybe that was just Jones being a cynic, although on this point Maggie agreed with him. You couldn’t simply have an interest in mines, do the work you loved, and try to make a good living. You had to have your own reality television show. Kids badly behaved? Need a new house, want to be a rock star, a supermodel, want to protect the whales? They’ll make a show about you, and people will watch.

Michael Holt had dedicated the site to his mother: Mom, we’re still waiting for you to come home .

“Hello?”

Jones could hear banging deep inside the house, and although he had no business entering, that’s what he did. He followed the sound down the hallway; the space had been reduced to a narrow tunnel; Jones’s shoulders touched on both sides as he made his way through. He was about halfway down the hall when the stench hit him, some stultifying combination of rotting food and urine. It stopped him like a concrete wall. There was a closed door at the end of the hallway, light shining through the bottom and sides.

“Hello?”

The banging stopped abruptly. Suddenly he felt like he was in another space and time. The light from outside seemed not to have followed him in. The place was dank and dark, and the air seemed to grow thin. Then the door opened and a huge form dominated the space. Jones found himself taking a step back.

“Who’s there?” the form asked.

But Jones couldn’t find his voice. Something-the dust in the air, maybe-had coated his throat. He started to cough and couldn’t stop as the form approached. He turned and walked to the foyer, stepped outside into the cool air. When Michael Holt stepped out after him, Jones saw earnest apology on his face.

“I’m sorry. I’m in the middle of fixing up the kitchen, kicking up some dust, I guess,” said Michael. “Can I get you some water?”

Jones held up a hand. Through the coughing he managed to get out, “I’m okay.”

“Are you interested in the house?”

Jones glanced over at the sign on the lawn, which flapped lightly in the wind like a sad wave good-bye.

“No,” he said. He’d found his voice. “I’m Jones Cooper. I was the original investigator on your mother’s disappearance back in 1987. I’m doing some consulting for the police department, going over my old files.”

“Are they reopening her case?” Holt asked. He looked so young, so nakedly hopeful, that Jones felt ashamed for a minute, though he couldn’t have said why.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“I think I remember you,” said Holt. His eyes were no less startling than they had been. Jones remembered that the kid had been tall for his age, but as an adult Holt seemed huge, was massive about the shoulders. He’d let his hair grow long. It hung wild around his face. He had a smear of dirt on his cheek, presumably from whatever project had him banging away in the kitchen. There was something weird about him, a kind of boyishness in spite of his size. Not in a cute way.

“I just had a few questions.” Jones forced a single hard cough to clear his throat once and for all. “Do you have the time?”

It looked to Jones as if Michael Holt had nothing but time.

Michael led him through the filth to the sitting room, an oasis in a sea of garbage. He offered Jones something to drink, and when Jones declined, Holt squeezed himself into one of the small chintz chairs, motioning Jones over to the couch.

“I’m sorry for the condition of the place. My father was a hoarder, I guess.”

There was a show about that on television, too, wasn’t there? People who collected and stored things, buried themselves alive in garbage? It was a condition, a mental illness or something. Jones had seen pictures of Holt climbing through tunnels and squeezing himself into narrow passages. Now he imagined Holt spelunking through mounds of garbage, sifting through the debris in his father’s house. Hard hat, headlamp, waders.

“I’ve been going over my notes from back then. You were at a sleepover the night your mother left, as I remember,” said Jones.

“That’s right,” Michael said. Jones noticed a sheen of sweat on the other man’s brow. Michael wiped it with his sleeve.

“But you came home about ten. Rode your bike from the neighbor’s place. Is that how you remember it?”

Michael looked out the window, up at the ceiling. Anyplace, apparently, but at Jones. When Jones had first arrived, Michael, in spite of the striking nature of his physical appearance, seemed open, engaged. In this room, in that chair, surrounded by his mother’s things, Michael seemed to be drifting, closing off.