Darkness My Old Friend

they had back then. Your visions are vague at best. We move on, like you said. There are other people waiting who maybe we could help.”

It had been raining since the early afternoon. It was coming down harder now. On the news they’d said it wouldn’t let up for the next three days. She rose from the couch and went to the hall closet, with Ray and Oliver following behind. She put on her hideous yellow slicker and matching rain boots.

“Good,” said Ray.

The only thing that was motivating her to do this was the hope that it would be their last involvement in the case. Marla Holt had asked her to let it go, and she wanted to do that. She didn’t want to tell Ray what Marla had said about Michael. She didn’t know why. But if there was one thing she’d learned in her old age, it was to follow her instincts.

chapter twenty-four

Jones walked into his house and closed the door. He felt a heaviness settle on him, a low-grade despair. The Hollows PD was probably reopening the Marla Holt case, on his advice, and that left him where? He didn’t know. Chuck hadn’t said, Okay, I’ll call you and let you know what we find. He’d said, Thanks for doing this, Cooper. Stop by and we’ll get you a paycheck. Jones knew that it was nothing personal. Budgets had been slashed. They could afford a few hours from him, but probably not much more. Still. He was itching to get up to that dig site, had half expected to be invited.

He hung his coat in the closet, heard Maggie making lunch in the kitchen. This had been their habit for many years, even when he was on the job. They met in the kitchen for lunch, if they could. Unless one of them was busy with work. Or unless Maggie was mad at him. He hadn’t expected her to be waiting for him today. But there she was.

He walked into the kitchen. When she didn’t look up at him from the soup she was stirring on the stove, he went to the pile of mail on the counter, starting sorting. Bills, catalogs, advertisement postcards. Was there ever anything good in the mail anymore? Seemed like everything important or timely came over the phone or by e-mail. No one wanted to wait days for letters to be delivered anymore. Everything was now, now, now.

He walked over to his wife and wrapped his arms around her, kissed her cheek. “Still mad at me?” he asked.

He felt her body soften against him. In the glass of the microwave oven door, he could see her reflection, the reluctant smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“Yes,” she said.

“I’m sorry I lied to you,” he said. “I’m struggling with this, Mags.” He held her tighter.

“I know you are,” she said. She still stirred the soup. “I’ll try to be more patient.”

He breathed onto her neck; she’d always loved that. “I rescheduled my appointment with the doctor.”

She put down the spoon in her hand and turned in to his embrace, wrapped her arms around his neck.

“I’m so glad,” she said. It sounded like she might cry. “Thank you.”

But when she pulled back to look at him, she was smiling. It was that smile, warm and proud, which had always motivated him to be a better man. It was the gold medal, the mark of highest personal achievement. When they were younger and first in love, he saw it every time she looked at him. She could see something in him then that he hadn’t seen in himself. And he strove every day to be that man. In the years they’d shared, he hadn’t always succeeded. Sometimes he’d failed miserably.

He made the salad while she finished the sandwiches and poured the soup into red stoneware bowls. Then they sat at the kitchen table as the rain tapped at the window beside them. Over lunch he told her about everything that had transpired that day, even how he was feeling about it.

“So go up there,” she said when he was done.

“They didn’t ask me,” he said.

“So? You’re the one Bill Grove trusts. He asked you to make sure they respect the land. It’s your responsibility to make sure they do. If you’re going to be doing this kind of work here in The Hollows, people need to trust your word.”

He loved his wife. “Good point,” he said. “You’re right.”

She gave a quick, self-satisfied nod and got up to clear the table.

“So do you think you might hang out a shingle?” she said from the sink.

“What? Like a private-detective kind of thing?”

He came up behind her with the glasses, put them in the sink.

“Yes, something like that.”

He gave a little chuckle. “It’s a small town. I’m not sure how much call there would be for my services.”

“You’d be surprised.”

He thought about Paula Carr then and the call he’d seen on his phone. When he’d checked his messages, he found that she hadn’t left a voice mail. His old buddy at the credit bureau hadn’t gotten back to him yet. Hands down, that was the fastest way to locate someone. If you had the right contacts, you could find out someone’s last charge and where. In a culture where people used their cards for virtually everything, it was almost impossible to hide unless you went off the grid-lost your cell phone, switched to cash.

“Anyway,” said Maggie, “part-time wouldn’t be bad.”

“I’ll think about it.” He was trying for nonchalant, but he kind of liked the idea, and he could tell that Maggie knew he did, too. She gave him a fast kiss on the cheek, a light squeeze around the middle.

“I have a patient,” she said.

And then she was gone, slipped through the door that took her to her other life. Dr. Cooper. He used to have another life, too. Detective Cooper, local cop, former jock, hometown boy. He’d been those things for so long he didn’t know how to be just Jones Cooper, husband, father, retired (not by choice). He thought about what Maggie had said earlier. What you were before, what we were, it’s gone. We have to find a new way forward together, as the people we are now. He was starting to understand what she meant.

There was a list of phone messages on the counter: The plumber apparently hadn’t been paid; the Andersons were going out of town, so could Jones feed their cats? And then another, which gave him pause. Kevin Carr had called. Paula’s husband. Could Jones please call him back?

Jones took out his cell phone and scrolled through the numbers to find Paula’s, then quickly hit “send.” He’d get in touch with her first before he called her husband.

“Hello?” It was a male voice, presumably Kevin Carr. Jones toyed with the idea of hanging up. But with caller ID there wasn’t much point in doing that anymore. Jones stayed silent.

“Is this Jones Cooper?” The voice on the other line was edgy, nervous.

“It is,” Jones said reluctantly. “Who’s this?”

“This is Kevin Carr. I saw your name and number on my wife’s cell phone bill. Has she been talking to you?”

What was he going to do, lie?

“That’s right,” he said. He put on his cop voice-distant, almost, but not quite to the point of rudeness. “What can I do for you, Mr. Carr?”

“I want to know what you’ve been talking to my wife about.”

Jones didn’t like the sound of the other man’s voice. He heard insolence and anger in Carr’s tone. He remembered what Paula had said: Kevin cares about what he cares about, and that’s it.

Jones kept his voice light and level. “I think that’s something you should discuss with her, Mr. Carr.”

There was a long pause on the line. “My wife’s gone,” Carr said finally.

“Gone?” Jones felt his blood pressure go up a bit.

“She left me yesterday,” he said. Carr could barely contain the heat of his rage; Jones could feel it. “She assaulted me. Then she took my two youngest children and left. She kidnapped my children.”

Jones couldn’t imagine Paula Carr assaulting anyone-unless she had no choice. He