William Bernhardt - Dark Eye

“So… is your dad home?”

“He’s in his study.” No movement.

“Can I talk to him?”

And the kid disappeared. Didn’t say yes, no, or go to hell-just turned around and dived back into the house.

So what was I supposed to do? I decided that I’d been invited in, so I stepped into the foyer and closed the door behind me.

And nothing happened. After a minute or so of waiting, I escorted myself down the front hallway in the direction I’d seen the boy go.

I found O’Bannon’s study. It was a gorgeous room, with walls of dark wood paneling and hundreds if not thousands of books. Two of the walls were completely covered with bookshelves stuffed to capacity. Beautiful books, leather-bound editions with gilt-embossed lettering on the spines. Some of them were police-related-criminology texts and such. But most were fiction, literature I was supposed to read in college but never did: Wuthering Heights , In Search of Lost Time, Ivanhoe, Bleak House, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Chief O’Bannon sat in a plush recliner, obviously designed to be a reading chair. The spine of his book faced me. He was perusing Jane Eyre. Yes, you heard me correctly. My tough-guy supercop boss was reading Jane Eyre.

And he was drinking. There was a crystal snifter on the table beside him, and an open decanter of brandy beside that.

I could smell it, even across the room. It smelled good.

The kid who had opened the door was sprawled across the carpet. He was reading something, too.

I guess this room was far enough back that O’Bannon was insulated from the noise at the front of the house. Neither of them appeared to have heard me approach. Neither realized that I was standing in the doorway staring at them.

“Chief?” I said quietly.

He jumped, actually jumped, out of his chair, slamming his book shut. His elbow knocked over the brandy snifter. It spilled onto the table and soaked some papers. One of them caught my eye. It was a photocopy of a page torn from a spiral-bound notebook, filled with block lettering and symbols.

“Damn it.” O’Bannon tried to wipe the mess up with his sleeve. Fortunately, there had not been much left in the snifter. Once he had the mess contained, he focused his attention on me. “What are you doing here?”

I pointed. “Your son let me in.”

He looked down at the kid, frowned, nodded. “Well, what do you want?”

“You know what I want.”

“It isn’t going to happen.”

“Just listen to me for a moment.”

“No.”

“Come on. We can help each other.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I need work.”

“And that’s why you came here?”

“I want to help.”

“I don’t need help. I need peace and quiet.”

“Chief, listen to me!”

“Go home.”

“A-A-Are you guys fighting?”

It was the kid, still lying on the floor, but now twisted around and watching us like a spectator at a tennis match.

“No,” O’Bannon snapped. “We are not fighting.”

“ ’Cause it sounds like you’re fighting. Do you need to go to time out?”

“Darcy…”

The boy looked at me. “Do you know that if you make him mad, you will have to go to time out? Or maybe military school.”

“Darcy!” O’Bannon barked. “We are not fighting!”

The kid’s eyes widened. He ran the tips of his fingers through his hair, as if he were washing it with invisible shampoo. He made a strange, excited noise, over and over again, something between a snort and hysterical giggling.

“Hey, it’s okay.” I don’t know why, but I walked over to him and tried to lower his hands. “Your dad and I work together. We always talk like this. It doesn’t mean anything.”

His arms were stiff and resistant. “S-S-S-Sometimes my dad talks like that, and it means he’s mad.”

“Well, it doesn’t now. Your daddy adores me and I know it. Even when he tries to hide it.”

Apparently O’Bannon’d had enough of this fun. “Susan, you’re wasting your breath. The only reason I’m tolerating this intrusion is out of respect for your father. But that respect can only go so far.”

“Look,” I said, “I know you’ve got a weird homicide on your hands. I know the victim was buried alive. Obviously, you’ve got a seriously twisted killer. My specialty. You need me.”

“Like hell. I assigned the case to Granger.”

“Right, Granger-hawkshaw extraordinaire. Give me a break, Chief. Granger doesn’t know squat about aberrant psychology. Except maybe what he picks up when he looks in the mirror.”

“We’ll catch the killer, Susan. Without your invaluable assistance.”

I pointed to the photocopy on the table, the one with all the gibberish. “Is that part of the case?”

He shrugged. “We found that inside the girl’s coffin. But we can’t make heads or tails of-” He stopped short. “You are not getting involved, Susan. Give it up. Go home.”

Why was everything so difficult? Everyone kept babbling about how they wanted to help me, but every time I needed help, no one could deliver. “Chief, I need my job back. If I don’t get work, I’m going to lose Rachel.”

“That ship has already sailed.”

I was so frustrated, so furious, my hands tightened into fists.

“Are you going to spank my dad?” the kid-Darcy, I guess-asked.

If I thought it would help… “No. I told you, we talk like this-”

“Because whenever Unca Donald gets mad like that, he gets a switch and chases after his nephews and spanks them.”

There was something so strange about this young man, something so childlike and yet not, something unnerving because it was so ineffable. But I kept my attention focused on his father.

“Is this because of that jerk’s rich family?” I said. “Because if you’re doing this because you’re afraid of a lawsuit-”

“There isn’t going to be a lawsuit.”

This about-face caught me off guard. “Excuse me? This afternoon, you said-”

“No lawsuit.”

“Someone pulled some strings?”

“For you? Hell, no. You just got lucky.”

“What happened?”

“At the hospital today, some helpful RN knocked over a table where the frat boy had laid the pants he was wearing when you worked him over. And guess what fell out of his pocket? A little baggie filled with crystal meth.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Like I said, you got lucky. Of course, there’s no evidence that he was using on the night in question. But it would certainly explain his aggressive and violent behavior.”

“Did he have aggressive and violent behavior?”

“Sure. That’s how the fight started, right? You had to defend yourself.”

“To tell the truth, I’m a little fuzzy on the details…”

“At any rate, that’s going to be our story, and it persuaded the guy’s family to entertain second thoughts. Even if they managed to overcome this brilliant defense at trial, the whole world would know their son was a drug user. Possible dealer. They didn’t think it was worth it.”

“That’s fabulous.”

“That’s dumb luck, which does not in any way excuse or justify what you did. I can’t use a cop I can’t trust, Susan. I can’t use a cop who might lose it at any moment. I can’t use a cop who might be sneaking drinks on the side.”

“Chief, that’s all behind me.”

“So you’re all cured now, huh?”

“Well… yeah, I’m over it.”

“Fit as a fiddle. One hundred percent. Ready to carry a gun again. Ready to be some other cop’s partner. Ready to have someone count on you, depend on you. Ready to have someone put their life in your hands.”

I didn’t bother answering.