[Darkthorn 01.0] Pond Scum Read online

  I climb the mercifully rickety steps back up to my apartment, hopefully to the dismay of Jenny Lewis, my downstairs neighbor. Jenny hates me, and I love her for it. Odin greets me at the door, and evidently I’ve shed enough of my tearful façade on my way back that he suspects nothing wrong; he wags his tail and looks at me beseechingly, eyeing his leash hanging on the wall with every other pant.

  “Sorry, bud, not today,” I say. “I need people to think I’m grieving, so I need to pretend to be sad for a few days.” He doesn’t understand my words, but he understands my sympathetic apology, and resigns himself to resting his head on my lap after I heat up some curry and sit on the couch.

  I open my laptop on the coffee table and boot a proxy browser, thus hiding my true IP address to anyone who searches the website’s traffic history. I load the local news page, and as I hoped, they’ve already written and published an article about good ol’ dad. I recognize the photograph that they used for the article as one of him about to carve the Thanksgiving turkey in 1994. Everyone was smiling, half of them through half-inch-thick spectacles that, by today’s standards, would make them look like an almost-humanoid alien species with overdeveloped eyes.

  What isn’t in that photo is when he slipped and cut his finger, mistook a gasp for a laugh, and threw the knife at my sister, gashing her upper arm. I don’t know who penned the phrase ‘The camera never lies,’ but that’s the biggest load of shit I’ve ever heard in my life. Cameras do nothing but. And those who wield the cameras are so sure that they’re an asset to the community, documenting truth and preserving memories, when in reality, without context, we struggle more to assign that photograph to a memory worth reliving than would actually be worth it in the first place.

  His smiling face on my laptop screen rips me back to the present, an unholy assembly of pixels with which no news site should be plagued.

  I shudder.

  I suppose he looks relatively normal, if you don’t know his dark side; handsome, with a defined jaw line and black hair; even his corpse that is no doubt being assessed by the medical examiner right now doesn’t have a trace of gray hair on it. He actually looks wildly similar to present-day me, in that photo. Same strong hands, same smile, same sleek build. The most striking common feature we had, however, is our eyes.

  This bothers me more than it should. My eyes are a point of pride with me. I can make them hard, intimidating, cold, distant, and unreachable. And in the same minute, I can make them warm, welcoming, sympathetic, and understanding. The corners above my eyelids, maybe forty degrees up from my pupils, slant downward in a way that makes me seem trustworthy, even naïve. This is an invaluable gift, one that Beth Connors would kill for. I don’t think she could use it well anyway, but whenever I mention that to her, she punches me. We’re cute like that.

  The article is short; either the author didn’t know him at all or he knew him very well. Either way, there’s not much good to say about him, and as it’s still so early in the investigation, there isn’t much of anything to go on. Even ‘witnesses’ at the scene were useless. Just the way I like it. I close my laptop and lean back on the couch, resting my head on its back and closing my eyes.

  I check the time that Beth texted me (and subtract five minutes for gratuity’s sake), and compare it to the time that I left the park. The route that I took had a detour and was a slower route to boot, and I completed it in about half an hour, so I feel like there’s a good chance that whoever found the body didn’t see a five-foot-ten subtly handsome man in his late twenties crouching over the body and then disappearing into the woods.

  Anonymity is an art, and I am Van Gogh. Despite my reasonably muscular build, I slip through crowds easily and without recognition. The trick is to be boring, even repulsive, to look at. Wear a blank expression. Tilt your head downward slightly. In bleeding a mysterious sense of pity, you repel onlookers’ gazes both by being pitiable and by being mysterious. Humans despise two things: the unknown and when those whom they view as inferior attempt to present themselves as equals. It doesn’t hurt to dress in shabby clothes, too, but so much planning isn’t often an option.

  Without being mysterious enough as to cause curiosity, this concoction of self-presentation gets me to wherever I need to be, undetected. The ninjas of feudal Japan thought that their warriors needed to be 135 pounds or less to be of optimal effectiveness, so as to traverse rooftops without detection. What they really needed was a bunch of trained martial artists not running around dressed in black; being unseen is much easier when you’re actually being seen by many.

  With great effort, I lift myself from my couch and walk to the adjacent kitchen, surprised at how tired I am. I mean, I wasn’t expecting my dad to bleed espresso, but I had pictured his death being a little more … invigorating? Perhaps the adrenaline has run its course and left me now to stew.

  I make myself a pastrami sandwich and spend the rest of the day plotting phase two.

  Two

  Phase two needs to be executed with as much care and precision as phase one. I pull out a shoe box and remove its lid, revealing my collection of clear, plastic bags in various sizes, each containing an item that will be crucial to phase two. This trove of treasures has taken around a year to accumulate, and is about to pay dividends. Now I have to plan which to use, when, and how. I flip through them, hoping that inspiration strikes: a pen, a hair comb, a map of Riverdell with Dad’s stumbling route from his bar to his house traced carefully in red marker. A wallet.

  The wallet, along with almost everything else, belonged to Detective Jeremy Keroth, of Portland Metro. Dad’s old friend. The proud recipient of 30 percent of my dad’s ‘earnings,’ and my next target. I put on a pair of gloves and flip through the wallet a couple more times. His neat, blazing red hair, smiling smugly at me through the little plastic screen over his driver’s license opens doorways into memories that I neither visit nor acknowledge. I am aware that they’re there, but to the best of my capacity, I do not validate them; I do not give them the stage of my consciousness.

  I suppose that, ever since my first kill (a serial killer who targeted pregnant women, but only after they were eight months along), my dad was on the list. In some deep, previously undiscovered part of my mind, he’s always been on the list, the same way that you keep reminding yourself that you’re out of ketchup before you actually get around to writing a grocery list.

  Now, in phase two, I need to use my carefully acquired ammunition in a way that maximizes its usefulness, one that will deliver the judgment of our great justice system to him in a massive, mind-rending blow. One that will leave any jury without doubt that Detective Jeremy Keroth murdered Donald Thorn.

  Just as the last of the sun’s rays burn out over the eastern side of the valley, and I’m about ready to call it quits anyway, I receive two texts from Beth. The first: “How you holdin’ up?” The second: “Something’s weird here. When you’re up for it, I need you at the station for an interview.” At first, my heart sinks and panic threatens to dominate my consciousness. But I quickly remember that family is always brought in for questioning on murder cases, and that there is plenty that is ‘weird’ about the case. From my perspective, sure, and exponentially more so from theirs.

  After recovering from my near anxiety attack, I quickly compose a reply: “I’ll be in tomorrow. Will you want your coffee?”

  A reply from Beth, almost instantly: “Nah, I’ll grab it on my way in, thanks. Just look sharp, yeah?” She even includes a smiley face. Either I’m in the clear or I’m in deep shit.

  “You know me.”

  I fall into a fitful sleep, and dream of hunting a wolf in a dense forest. Through whatever sense imbued in me by my dream, I feel the freshness of the tracks, and know that the distance between me and my quarry is closing rapidly. Just on the other side of that tree, then down that drop near the river. He’ll be there. That’s where I’ll get him.

  As I close in, the ping on my sensory radar becomes a beacon, then spreads t
o all directions. There’s more than one. This is a trap, and suddenly I’m the hunted. Daring to look back for only a second, I see a pair of yellow eyes glaring at me from the darkness; they already have me surrounded. Within seconds, more and more pairs of the predatory yellow eyes flick into visibility, stars lighting the black night canvas of my surroundings, creating constellations of demonic intent. They blink in unison, and at once, they attack.

  Snarls and growls and howls fill the air to capacity like a hot air balloon about to lift off. I feel sharp teeth pierce my calf, my forearm, my hand. Dark figures swim through the surrounding gloom, masters of the darkness and creatures of the element. A lighter figure steps in from the darkness and others make way for him: the alpha.

  The gnashing and ripping stop, and for what seems like several minutes, I stand, bleeding and aching, but holding the magnificent white wolf’s gaze. He sits only feet in front of me, sitting upright and proud, like a trained show dog awaiting its human’s orders. Then, without warning, it leaps toward me, lightning fast.

  I wake up with the image of a beautiful white wolf’s jaw about to close around my throat. Before reality has fully pulled my mind back to the safety of consciousness, I cup my throat with my hand, sweat on sweat, and verify that it hasn’t been ripped out by an elegant but savage beast of the night. It hasn’t.

  Small details of my bedroom take shape as my eyes sift their way through the shadows of my domain. Everything is as it should be, but something feels … off. I pull a bat out from under my bed and stand at my doorway, listening, like any good compulsively paranoid dirty cop would.

  Nothing.

  Eventually satisfied with the nothingness, I stow the bat back underneath my bed and bury my face in my hands.

  Despite the obvious emotional implications of murdering my father, I thought that, given the circumstances, I would be … exempt? Perhaps the nightmare is a side effect of any sort of intense emotional event, and not necessarily a product of fear, guilt, sadness, or anger? Or maybe it is indeed fashioned from the ever-strong fibers of anger, a grudge woven so tightly and carefully over the years that now, given full form, I find it ready to encase its object completely, never to visit despair on another human again.

  Or maybe I’m just due for a nightmare.

  I look at the dim display on my bedside clock: three o’clock. Beth won’t be to the station until after six, and I want to show up pitiably late, so as to minimize the risk of suspicion; too eager to interview can be indicative of a guilty conscience.

  At last, I identify the thing that has been bothering me: if it was a routine witness interview, and not a suspect interview, they’d be more likely to come to my place to chat, rather than asking me to the station. In an interview room, there are video cameras, and they can deliver a legal caution, making anything I say admissible in court. These are circumstances that one doesn’t arrange for a normal witness or family interview.

  However, if I’m to maintain my façade of innocence and naïveté, I must convince them of my cluelessness.

  I double-check that my alarm is set for seven o’clock and clamber under the covers, then spend the remainder of the night alternating between too hot and too cold, until finally the sun shines through the small holes in the slats of my blinds. My alarm will go off any second. Rather than wait for it, I sit up and disable it manually, to save myself the headache of its blaring cacophony.

  Showering and dressing feel surreal; I’ve spent so much time and energy over the past few months lining up my sights that now, with the trigger pulled, thin, wispy smoke coiling from the barrel, I don’t know what to do with myself. My hands feel empty and useless without my figurative rifle, and without that motivating purpose in my life, I feel like a spectator, controlling a robot controlling a robot controlling my body. To feel this far removed from one’s own reality is an intriguing feeling, but surely one that I don’t want sticking around if I’m to be on my game in the coming weeks, as I need to be.

  I find my mind reflecting on the feeling that surfaced after I dropped my dad’s corpse; the mild pang of guilt that eroded my teeth before I manually dismissed it. Was it guilt? And if so, am I legitimately remorseful, or is it happening as a result of what society would expect of someone who offed his father?

  That can’t be it; until now, I haven’t felt the least bit sorry for the people I’ve ‘put away.’ At any rate, I’m only a few minutes from the station now, and can’t afford to dwell on this thought anymore. Time to get my game face on, but by ‘game’ I mean ‘devastated, broken, but trying to keep it together.’

  I’m amused almost to the point that disgusts me at the contrast between today and yesterday. Yesterday, I was following up on some leads for cold cases, being that they were the only department with anything resembling a workload.

  The office offers the familiar buzz of routine and paperwork, but with a fresh murder on their hands, the pace is noticeably faster than usual. If the station had a heart, it would be pumping double time, and I remind myself that the amount of coffee dispensed from the shitty machine here would reflect that. I’m sure that, from above, the bullpen would look a lot like amoebas flitting around a Petri dish, but seen from ground level, it looks more like a throng of feral cats trying to get laid.

  I resist the pull of familiarity which would guide me to my desk, and instead make a beeline for Beth’s desk, actively avoiding eye contact and giving the small, appropriate nods and half-smiles when the odd floater would assure me that, “We’ll get this asshole, Thorn, don’t worry.” They’d better hope not; ‘this asshole’ is me. I have another target in mind for them.

  I cross the threshold into the interview hallway. It’s fitted with three interview rooms, each designed for a specific type of witness or suspect. Beth is waiting for me, leaning against the wall, coffee in hand. She smiles at me with a little less sympathy than yesterday, but affectionately still.

  “Thanks for coming in,” she says. “I know I said I didn’t want you on the case, and as far as policy and procedure go, it’s a huge no-no, but we need your mind for this. So, unofficially, can I bounce some ideas off of you? The squad can’t make heads or tails of it.”

  Oh good. I’m not a suspect. Probably.

  “The preliminary postmortem came in fast. Not much traffic for Murdock these days.” Murdock is our medical examiner. Aside from perhaps me, he has the sickest appetite for his grisly work. I love him.

  Beth continues, in her briefing voice, “The corp—your dad was found facedown on the bank of the pond by a passerby at approximately seven o’clock yesterday morning. He called it in and we had uniforms there by ten after, followed by murder and forensics ten minutes later. Murdock got there right after you did. Some fucker slashed his throat.” Oops.

  She watches for my reaction, and I give her my winning contortion of facial muscles that I’ve learned makes my eyes water. I shake my head and take a deep breath, looking her in the eye and nodding once, urging her to continue.

  “The weird part is that there was almost no blood. Some slight bruising on each wrist, and some surface redness, indicating that the v … your dad had his wrists held or bound at the time of his death. But if he had been bound or held for long before he died, the bruising would have been more prevalent. According to Murdock, the bank where we found him should have been a pool of blood. The body was still warm when we got there, Remy.” She almost never calls me by my first name. I decide to throw her a bone.

  “Has the water been tested for blood?” I ask. Her face goes confused, then enlightened. I continue: “There are boats for public use on the north side of the pond. Maybe dust that area for prints and see what else you can find there. Have the lab boys run a Kastle-Meyer on the pond water. If it was as much blood as Murdock says, it should show up; it’s a small pond.”

  The Kastle-Meyer test is used to detect the presence of blood, and can detect traces as small as one hundred parts per million.

  “You’re a fucking genius,” sh
e says, before hugging me. Careful not to seem too overjoyed, because my dad got murdered and that’s supposed to put a damper on my mood, I return a slight smile and her hug.

  It’s true, I did kill daddy on a boat. But they wouldn’t find any trace of it there. Not of me, at least. Suddenly I’m elated that I had the foresight to leave Keroth’s lighter, prints and all, underneath one of the benches of the small rowboat at the eastern side of the fleet. The ball is rolling, and I have all of the tools I need to keep it that way. More than a little pleased with myself, I stroll through the bullpen, entirely unnoticed this time because Beth has everyone’s attention by the balls in the vortex of her sudden ‘epiphany.’

  While word travels much more quickly these days than a courier on a horse and Riverdell is a small town, I’m nonetheless able to make it back to the park in time to see chunks of the squad detach from the main scene to go tape off the northern banks where the boats rest. The fact that it was my dad must have thrown Beth off, too; normally she’d never miss something like that. I guess I didn’t take into account that some of the squad would be shaken once the body was identified.

  “Wait!” I hear behind me. It’s Beth. “We still need an interview. Formalities and such. You understand.”

  I nod. I consider faking an emotional meltdown; this is not a game that I want to play right now, and that would allow me more time to solidify my alibi and select the wording with which to fabricate a convincingly bright history with my dad.

  Beth leads me into an older interview room, where both chairs are wobbly and the cheap table is stained with coffee and something with a vague greenish hue. This is the one we use for suspects that we’re positive are about to crack. I take a seat and the unsteadiness of the chair seeps into me. Beth turns on the camera and cautions me.