Mike Omer - In the Darkness

“That’s not what I mean. Yeah, sure, notifying parents about a violent death is terrible, but it’s even worse when we don’t know it’s her for sure.”

“Oh, right.” Zoe knew what Lyons meant. They would tell Debra’s parents that they found her body . . . but then they’d ask if there was anything to assist in verifying it was her, because of the body’s decomposed state. And then, as predictable as the sun in the morning, hope showed its ugly head. Maybe it’s not her , the parent would point out. You could be wrong. Suddenly, they saw a lifesaver they could cling to in this terrible storm of grief and loss. They’d refuse to entertain the almost certain outcome that no, it wasn’t a pickpocket who had stolen their daughter’s purse and then gotten killed. It was their daughter all along.

Which only meant they’d end up being notified twice. The first time when the body was found and the second when its identity was confirmed.

They parked next to a house painted in a cheerful white and yellow, a nice green picket fence surrounding the yard. But as they got out of the car and walked to the front door, Zoe noticed signs of neglect everywhere. Wilting flowers in the garden, surrounded by weeds. Grimy windows. Peeling wall paint. She could hear the faint buzz of flies all around her.

Lyons knocked on the door, then knocked again.

“Just a minute,” a man said from inside.

They waited for what seemed like much more than a minute, and just when Lyons was about to knock again, the door opened. The man who opened it was bald, his face crinkled and weary. He wore a stained white shirt. On first glance, Zoe guessed his age to be around eighty, and then she realized he was younger than that. Probably not much more than sixty. But he seemed like a man whose life had worn him down.

“Mr. Miller?” Lyons said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m Detective Lyons. Can we come in?”

His shoulders slumped. “Is this about Debra?”

“It’s better if we discuss this inside.”

He folded his arms. “How much trouble is she in?”

Lyons hesitated. “Sir . . . it might be best if you sit down for this.”

His eyes widened. “Is she . . . hurt?”

Lyons sighed, clearly deciding they weren’t about to be invited inside. “Mr. Miller, I’m afraid that Debra is dead.”

“Dead?” The word came out as a whisper.

“We believe so. Yes, sir.”

“You . . . believe ?” There it was. Hope. “You aren’t sure?”

“We’re reasonably sure. We found a body with your daughter’s driver’s license in its purse.”

“Does she look like my daughter?”

Lyons swallowed. “The body is in a bad shape. We believe she was murdered four months ago.”

“Four months ago?” The hope seemed to evaporate. “That’s quite accurate.”

“When was the last time you saw your daughter?” Lyons asked.

Mr. Miller took a shuddering breath. “Well . . . last time was around the beginning of May.”

Zoe and Lyons exchanged looks. The gas station had been broken into on May 6.

Mr. Miller turned around and scuffled inside, leaving the door open. Zoe and Lyons followed him.

The house had a cold and abandoned feeling to it. Dust and dirt were everywhere. The lights were turned mostly off, the curtains drawn, leaving just enough light to walk without stumbling into something. Miller shuffled to the kitchen and turned on a neon lamp that hummed noisily, glowing with a white hostile light. He slumped onto a chair by a small, peeling wooden table. There were two other chairs, and Zoe sat in one, letting Lyons take the other.

“You say she was murdered. Who did it? How?” he asked, his voice raspy, his eyes gleaming wet.

“We don’t know the exact details yet,” Lyons said.

“What do you know?”

“Four months ago you saw your daughter, and you haven’t talked to her since,” Zoe said softly, ignoring the question. “Why didn’t you report her missing?”

“We thought she just left.” He shook his head. “She was always disappearing for months at a time. Showing up unannounced, looking like hell. We knew she was using. Sometimes she had a black eye or a swollen lip, but she always said she was fine, refused to give us any details. Sometimes she’d call from jail. I went to bail her out three times.”

He let out a long, hopeless groan. A tear materialized and ran down his cheek.

“She’d been the sweetest, happiest kid when she was at school. So popular, surrounded by friends. When school ended, she just got . . . lost. She started working a minimum wage job at the nearby cinema, didn’t want to go to college, began smoking. We didn’t know what to do. Then she announced she was going to California, that she found a marvelous job opportunity there. We were so relieved. But she stopped calling after a while, and when she showed up next, it was easy to see that a good job was the furthest thing from her life.”

He looked at the wall, his eyes white, empty, and quivering, tears rolling from them steadily, following each other in the grooves of this face. “The men in her life were the ones who destroyed her—I’m sure of it. They say a girl learns how a man behaves from her father, but I never laid a hand on her. I swear.”

“Some women find the wrong men despite their parents,” Zoe said. She wasn’t trying to comfort him, just pointing out a flaw in his reasoning, but he smiled at her sadly.

“Was it one of them who did it?” he asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Lyons said. “Do you have any names?”

“None. She always said she was done with them. I’d ask who gave her that bruise or broke her finger, and she’d say it didn’t matter, that she was done with him for good. I don’t know if she always returned to the same guy or if she really ditched them every time, finding others just as bad.”

“And what happened the last time you saw her?” Lyons asked.

“She showed up a day before. Looking worse than ever. Thin. Broken. Do you ladies have children?”

They both shook their heads.

“You have no idea how it feels to have your child show up like that. And Martha and I decided that this time, she wasn’t going to just disappear with some money in her hand. No, we were going to save her.” He snorted, then hid his face in his palms, shaking.

A clock hung on the wall of the kitchen, and it ticked. Zoe could almost swear the seconds were slowing down, each longer than the last.

Finally, he removed his hands. His face was a mess. “We told her she had to stay. That we were taking her to rehab. To therapy. We were going to help her get better. She said she didn’t need that. She shouted at us, that she didn’t need our help, that she was leaving forever this time. I . . . I said some things I shouldn’t have. Oh god, the things I told her. If you ever have children, never show them your disappointment in how they turned out.”

Zoe wished Tatum were there. He always seemed to know what to say to make people feel better.

“She left. And we didn’t hear from her again. We thought she’d return, like she always did, but she didn’t. And then Martha died, a month ago. She just . . . died. Her heart stopped working. It broke, I guess.”

He folded his arms. “And that’s it.”

Lyons asked him questions, tried to get a better idea of where she’d gone, if she’d had any friends she’d get in touch with, anything at all. But Debra’s father’s answers became shorter and shorter all the way to monosyllabic words and then nothing at all.

Finally, after Lyons ascertained he didn’t need any help, he gave her the name of Debra’s dentist, who could probably assist in verifying it really was her body. And then he shut down completely, like a toy that had run out of batteries.