Lisa Unger - Black Out

In the meantime he had the biggest case of his career to occupy his attention, the one he’d decided would be his redemption as a police officer. Two grisly homicides connected by one woman who was lying about her identity. Of course, that was the part he had to keep to himself, as per his arrangement with Gray. So Harrison was working overtime to find another connection between Simon Briggs and Paul Brown. He knew he’d find it. He was a dog with a bone.

And then I died. When he heard the news and was called to investigate the scene of the diving accident, he enjoyed a secret smile inside. Not that he’d hated me or wished me ill-quite the opposite. In spite of everything, he’d liked me quite a bit. Even so, Detective Harrison didn’t grieve for me as he investigated my suspicious death. Somehow he knew better.

Like the good cop he wanted to be, he walked the grid around the sinkhole, searched my belongings and my car. But when he found the envelope I’d taken from Briggs’s car, he never entered it into evidence. He shoved it inside his jacket and then hid it beneath the seat of his own car without anyone seeing.

He dutifully interviewed my bereft family and friends.

“I don’t know why she would do it,” Ella wept to him at her kitchen table. “She was terrified of the water. I wish I’d tried to stop her. I was trying to be supportive.”

Detective Harrison offered her a comforting pat on the shoulder, thinking that, even upset, she was a very attractive woman.

“She was my friend, you know. My friend. That means something in this awful world. It means a lot.”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Singer. I really am.”

“Do you think they’ll find her body?” she asked, wiping her eyes. She was having trouble speaking between shuddering breaths. “I couldn’t stand it if they never found her.”

“I don’t know, ma’am. It’s hard to say with those caves. The divers haven’t found anything yet.”

“Doesn’t it seem like there’s nothing to it but pain and disappointment?” she asked him. “Sometimes doesn’t it seem that way?”

“What do you mean?” he asked gently, thinking she was too beautiful and rich to be so unhappy.

“I mean life, Detective. Sometimes it’s all too hard.”

She lost it then, folded her arms across the table and laid her head upon them and sobbed. My poor, dear friend. He sat with her, a hand on her back. He’d been there before so many, many times. He didn’t feel awkward or uncomfortable. He empathized, and he stayed until she was better.

Ella’s grief, her self-blame, the pain she was in-these were all palpable, completely sincere in his estimation. My husband, on the other hand, was not as convincing, though he looked drawn and tired when Detective Harrison paid him a visit in the days after my car was found.

“Why would she dive like that if she was so afraid of the water?” the detective asked Gray. “Everyone-her friend, even her instructor-says how afraid she was of the water. Scuba diving seems like an odd choice of hobby for someone who wasn’t even comfortable in the pool.”

Gray shook his head. “Annie was a stubborn woman. She got it into her head that she wanted to conquer her fear of the water, for Victory. She didn’t want Victory to see her giving in to her fear. When she got something into her head, there was no getting it out.”

The detective nodded. The whole interview was a charade, of course, both of them knowing that Harrison’s hands were tied by what had passed between them. This went unspoken, each of them playing his role.

Harrison looked around the house just to say he did, poking through the dark, empty rooms with Gray right behind him. What he was looking for, he wasn’t sure.

“Where’s your daughter?” Harrison asked as he was leaving.

Gray issued a sigh and rubbed his eyes. “I sent her away with her grandparents. They’re on a cruise to the Caribbean. I don’t want her to be touched by this yet. I don’t know how to tell her.”

It seemed like a reasonable thing to do. But Detective Harrison knew a liar when he saw one. Gray Powers was a man with a lot to hide, and the strain on him was obvious. But he was not a man grieving the loss of a wife. The death of a loved one hollows people out, leaves them with an empty, dazed look that’s hard to fake. People mourning a loss might weep inconsolably like Ella, or rage and scream, or they might sink into themselves, go blank. As their minds are scrambling to process the meaning of death, they act in all kinds of crazy and unpredictable ways. But in Detective Harrison’s opinion, Gray didn’t have that confused, unhinged quality he’d seen so many times before.

“Wasn’t there a maid?” asked the detective as he stepped out the front door.

“I gave her some time off while Victory is away.”

“I’d like to talk to her.”

“Of course,” said Gray. He disappeared for a minute, then returned with a number and address scribbled on a sticky note. “She’s staying with her sister.”

In the doorway the two men faced each other.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Powers,” the detective said with a half smile, just the lightest hint of sarcasm in his voice. But if Gray registered the detective’s expression or tone, he didn’t acknowledge it at all.

“Thank you,” Gray said with a nod, and closed the door.

“Where’d you go, Ophelia? Who are you running from?” Harrison said aloud to himself as he drove through the gated community where I used to live, admiring the houses he could never dream of affording. He watched the neighborhood kids riding on their expensive bikes. He noted the gleaming bodies of the late-model Benzes and Beemers. He felt a tiny itch he wouldn’t dare acknowledge. He focused instead on the matter at hand, the fact that he had not for one second believed I was dead. He was certain I was still alive. If he were still a betting man, he’d have staked his life on it.

I am pain. I am nothing but the agony of my body and mind. I don’t know how long I’ve been alternating between total darkness and blinding white light, silence and the booming voice asking questions I can’t answer. I might have been here for hours or days. It’s dark now, and I take comfort in it, though my body is numb from the inch of freezing water in which I lie. I am shivering uncontrollably, my jaw clenched.

A rectangle of light opens in the wall and a man, small and lean, walks through a doorway I didn’t know was there. His footfalls echo off the metal surfaces, and he comes to a stop about an inch from my body. I can’t see his face. The lights come up then, less harsh than before, but still I have to close my eyes, open them to slits, then close them again. I do this several times before I am acclimated to the light.

His face is distantly familiar, angular and deeply lined. His eyes are small and watery, his lips dry and pulled tight. But he’s not Marlowe.

“This can end. It can be over for you,” he says to the wall. He doesn’t want to look at me, out of either pity or disgust. I struggle to stand, and I feel a wave of light-headedness so severe I almost black out.

“Just tell me where he is, Ophelia,” he says, his voice reasonable and tired.

I am confused, disoriented. I don’t know why he thinks I know where Marlowe Geary is. But I can’t say any of this. I just can’t make the words come out. He stands there for I don’t know how long, looking at the wall. I think he’ll move to hurt me, to kick me where I lie. But he doesn’t. He just stands there.

“I don’t know,” I finally manage. “I swear to you. I don’t know where he is.” My voice is little more than a desperate croak.