Mike Omer - In the Darkness

He touched the spot of the tattoo. “Henrietta Ross. That was the girl from Boston. Kinda stupid, huh? You do the dumbest things when you’re in love. Now I’m stuck with her name, and everyone asks me who that is.” He frowned at the beer coaster he peeled.

Zoe had the feeling that if Andrea had been there, she would have managed to say something funny and turn the conversation around. She tried to think of something. She considered, You could tell them it stands for Human Resources , but was pretty sure it was as lame a joke as could be. She could start with, Hey, at least her initials weren’t . . . but she couldn’t think of a punch line.

She’d figure out something funny to say eventually. Three days from now, when she’d be trying to sleep.

“I don’t think it’s stupid,” she ended up saying, feeling lame. “I think you loved someone and made a nice gesture.”

He blinked. “Thanks, Zoe. That’s a sweet thing to say.”

Maybe humor was overrated after all.

Silence settled between them. It wasn’t the comfortable silence of people who knew each other well. It was that tense silence, electric and sharp, almost tangible. As if there were an imaginary conversation ball they tossed to each other, and one of them had just fumbled, letting the ball drop.

He cleared his throat. “So who are the most important people in your life?”

It was a jarring question, unrelated to their conversation earlier, but Zoe could see it for what it was—the means to resuscitate the conversation, get it back on track. She was fine with that. “I have a sister. She lives with me.”

“Really? Isn’t that difficult? Living with your sister?”

“Maybe for her,” she said lightly. “I love having her around.”

“What about your parents?”

“My dad died a few years ago. And my mother can be a bit difficult.” Her mother, always a controlling, passive-aggressive woman, had become almost impossible to bear in the last few years. “What about you?”

“I don’t have any siblings, and my dad left Texas a few years ago, so it’s only me and my mom. But we’re very close.”

“I bet she was happy when you came back.”

“She was thrilled,” he said. “Never wanted me to leave in the first place.”

They talked a bit about Boston. Then the conversation veered left and right, with Joseph steering it and Zoe content to take the passenger’s seat. He told her about his hobby of restoring old furniture for a bit, and Zoe did her best to act sufficiently impressed when he described the restoration of an ancient dresser. Her own experience of furniture building, constructing three chairs bought from IKEA, was not included in the conversation. Then they compared some favorite movies. Joseph asked for a wineglass for himself. After a while Zoe found that she was lowering her guard with him, words flowing more easily. When had she last just sat down with someone, talking with him about inconsequential matters, enjoying the company?

Long after the bartender took away her mostly empty plates and the wine’s last drops had been sipped, Joseph asked, “What are your plans for the rest of the evening?”

Zoe tensed. It was nearly midnight. While she enjoyed Joseph’s company, she didn’t want the evening to continue. She still didn’t know enough about him, except for the fact that he was very large and pretty charming. Then again, she knew of other charming men. Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Richard Ramirez, Rod Glover. The list went on and on. For someone who dealt with psychopaths all day, charm became nothing more than dangerous camouflage.

“I think I need to sleep,” she said. “I have an important day tomorrow.”

“A day of consulting, huh?”

“That’s right.” She tried to smile but wasn’t sure it came out right.

“Can you drive?” He glanced at her wineglass.

He didn’t need to know that she had a room nearby. “I’ll get a taxi.”

He fished a business card out of his wallet. “If you feel like having another nice dinner tomorrow, give me a call.”

She thanked him. He gave her another final smile that seemed to be a bit confused and left.

“Can I get the bill?” she asked.

“He already paid for everything earlier, when you were in the bathroom,” the bartender said. “A real gentleman.”

“Yeah,” Zoe echoed. “A real gentleman.”

Delia was folding the clean laundry, matching socks, when the home phone rang. All of Frank’s socks were either gray or black, which meant she had to compare their length and fabric to make an actual pair. Sometimes she wouldn’t bother, making pairs of short socks with long socks, woolly socks with paper-thin socks. That usually resulted in a litany of complaints, so right now she tried to do it right. For the life of her, she couldn’t find the pair of the sock she held.

The phone’s ring made her jump, her head turning left and right like a hunted animal. It wasn’t only that she’d been deep in thought—it was that this phone almost never rang. Both she and Frank used their mobile phones, and everyone knew that was the way to reach them. In fact, the main reason they hadn’t disconnected the phone line long ago was that Frank’s mother, Gerta, would always call that number. Gerta had been an old woman, her memory dissipating, and Frank despaired of trying to make her call him by his new number. The president had a red phone to talk to Russia, and the Howe family had a beige phone to talk to Gerta.

Except Gerta had been dead for over seven months. Delia nestled her aching hand, her mind fuzzy with physical pain. It was a wrong number or a survey or a salesman with a deal she couldn’t refuse. Regardless, it was an annoyance. She decided to ignore it, waited for the ringing to end.

It didn’t. It kept ringing and ringing maddeningly loudly. Those old-fashioned phones had been designed to ring as loud as possible so you’d hear them no matter where you were in the house.

Finally, impatient with the noise, Delia got up and picked up the phone.

“Hello?” Her tone was sharp, angry. Meant to clarify that she was not someone who wanted her time wasted.

Silence on the other end, and something soft, a hint of breath.

No, not breathing. Sobbing.

“Hello?” she asked, her voice softer, scared. And then, ever so faintly, “Maribel?”

For a second the person on the other line just kept sobbing. But then she called out, her voice broken and terrified. “Mommy . . .”

“Maribel? Where are you? Are you all right? Hello?” She waited for a second after each question, but Maribel only cried harder, apparently unable to answer. “Maribel!”

“Mommy!”

“Where are you? I’ll come and get you—just tell me where you are.”

“Get me out of here!” Maribel screamed. “Please!”

“Out of where? Where are you?”

The line went dead.

Delia stared at it in disbelief. And then, letting the phone drop, she rushed for her mobile phone, where she kept the phone number of Detective Lyons.

Tatum was a few minutes late to the morning meeting and got an admonishing stare from Jensen, which he ignored with practiced ease.

“Right.” Jensen clapped his hands. “Where’s Lyons? I want to start.”

“She’ll probably be here in a moment,” Foster said.

“Well, we can’t wait for her. Where are we with the case? Detective Foster?”

Foster flipped through his notebook. “We talked to all the friends who were with Medina the night she disappeared. Between their testimonies and the red light camera footage, we feel safe saying she was dropped off in front of her house at one fifteen. All the neighbors were sleeping. The mother woke up at six thirty, saw Nicole never got home, reported Nicole missing at seven thirty-five after calling everyone she could think of. We’re talking to eyewitnesses at the party and some of Nicole’s other friends, but so far nothing stands out.”