In the Dark (9 page)

old houses were being torn down and replaced by castles and condos. Anything on waterfront anywhere was gold. He liked it better when he and Cindy had first moved out here, when people wondered why anyone would want to live in the eye of the Superior storms. Stride wasn’t always sure himself, except that the lake was so vast that he sometimes felt as if he were staring at eternity.

 

Serena sat cross-legged on the bed, watching him. The lights were off. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he expected that he would open them again and see Cindy sitting there, in the same pose, a crooked smile on her face. As if all the time that had passed had been in his imagination. He wasn’t really closing in on fifty years old. He wasn’t really bruised by death and loss. He was a teenager. A new cop. A young husband. Everything that was going to be lay ahead, not behind.

 

“You know what I remember about that night?” he told her. “Other than me and Cindy, I mean. I remember the bat.”

 

Serena didn’t say anything. He could see it like a video clip on a loop that played over and over in his head. Close up. That bat going around and around.

 

“It was Peter’s bat. One of those aluminum ones. Bright silver. He never let anyone else use it. I remember him taking practice swings at home plate and hearing the whoosh of the bat. I can still see that bat in his hands. All I can think about is that, not long after, someone used that same bat to beat an innocent girl to death. A girl who would have been my sister-in-law. Someone hit her and just kept swinging and swinging.”

 

“If it was Peter’s bat, how did it get into someone else’s hands?” Serena asked. She spoke so softly that she was almost whispering.

 

“You’re assuming it did.”

 

“Well, you said someone else’s fingerprints were on it.”

 

“Yes, that’s true,” he admitted. “Someone else had it. Someone who killed Laura. That was the only explanation that made sense to me all these years.”

 

“How did the bat wind up at the murder scene?”

 

Stride remembered. He saw the bat again in his mind. Close up. In the field.

 

“The rain came,” he said. “We all went running. The storm was severe. Everything turned black. It sounded like a train, the way a tornado does. I
went to the woods to find Cindy and Laura down by the lake. Peter was on second base, and he took off as the storm hit. As I ran for the trail, I saw Peter’s bat lying in the weeds. He must have forgotten all about it. So anyone could have picked it up. There were a lot of guys with us in the field.”

 

“But?” Serena asked, hearing him hesitate.

 

“But I remember thinking that Peter was going to come back for that bat.”

 

 

 

 

Stride was distracted, watching Cindy and Laura go. He was anxious for the game to be over. He could still taste her lips, which always tasted the same way, like a cherry Popsicle. When they kissed, they were connected, electricity passing between them. He had an erection, thinking about what they would do later. If they really did it. If she really meant it. He could tell she was nervous. He wondered if she had brought Laura with her as a shield, so that she had an excuse not to go all the way. As the two girls disappeared into the trees, though, he saw Cindy look back at him, and her face told him that nothing had changed. She wanted him. She was waiting for him.

 

He glanced at the black sky. Time was short. He hit the pocket of his mitt impatiently. Dave McGill was at the plate, and he kept tipping foul balls that dribbled to the edge of the field, where Raymond Anderson, who was the catcher, had to retrieve them. Stride thought they should call the game right now. He could taste rain, and he already felt the sky leaking drops onto his face. No one else paid any attention.

 

McGill finally struck out. Peter Stanhope took his place, swinging his silver bat theatrically, sporting an arrogant grin. Stride didn’t really know Peter, other than by reputation. They weren’t friends. They didn’t hang out together. The only thing they had in common was baseball. The longest conversation he could remember having with Peter was about Rod Carew.

 

Peter swung violently and missed. Strike one.

 

Stride saw a bright flash and imagined Peter’s bat, held high over his head, attracting the current like a lightning rod. Less than five seconds later, thunder washed across the field in a drum roll.

 

Peter swung again. Strike two. His face contorted in effort and frustration. His jaw worked his gum furiously. He was a good hitter, but overeager, always looking for the home run on every pitch. He struck out as often as he connected.
On the third pitch, though, his aluminum bat swatted the ball with a loud ting, and the ball lofted over Stride’s head into the outfield, where it dropped for an easy single. Peter loped to the base. He bent down and picked up a half-full bottle of Grain Belt and swigged it empty, then tossed the bottle toward the weeds. He wiped his mouth with the bottom of his red tank top.

 

“So it’s you and Cindy Starr, huh, Stride?” he said.

 

“That’s right.”

 

“You know, her sister is the real prize.”

 

Stride didn’t reply.

 

“Laura’s the one with the tits,” Peter continued. “Half the guys here got boners when she walked by. Why aren’t you going after her?”

 

“Because I like Cindy.”

 

“Yeah? What’s she like?”

 

“Why do you care?” Stride asked.

 

“I’m not hot for her, if that’s what you think. I just wondered if the princess act runs in the family.”

 

“What the hell does that mean?”

 

“I mean that Laura walks around like some kind of ice queen,” Peter replied. “Somebody needs to thaw her out.”

 

“Shut up,” Stride said.

 

“So how about Cindy? Is she a frigid queer like her sister?”

 

Stride threw off his baseball glove and shoved both bare hands against Peter’s chest. Peter stumbled backward, lost his footing in the damp grass, and landed on his ass in the mud. Stride stood over him, fists clenched and cocked, ready to fight. He heard shouts from some of the other boys in the field. The pitcher dropped the ball; the batter threw the bat away; they all began to converge on Stride.

 

Peter laughed and got up, brushing dirt from his skin. He waved them away. “Hey, it’s okay, I had it coming.”

 

Stride watched carefully, expecting a sucker punch.

 

“Don’t sweat it,” Peter said. “I like to see how far I can push people before they push back. It’s a little lesson I learned from my dad.”

 

“Apologize,” Stride told him.

 

“Yeah, all right. I’m sorry. That do it for you? You need to lighten up, Stride.”

 

Stride ignored him. The game continued. The batter at the plate struck out, and another took his place. One inning to go, and it was over. He could barely
make out the action on the field, as the night drew closer and the dark clouds massed.

 

“You seen
The Deep
yet?” Peter asked.

 

Stride grunted. He and Cindy had seen it the previous weekend.

 

“Saw it three times,” Peter said. “Fuck, Jackie Bisset in that T-shirt? Holy shit. I wish porn actresses looked like her. I saw
Teenage Sex Kitten
downtown last week. What a bunch of losers. Pimples and no tits.”

 

At the plate, Gunnar Borg punched a ground ball past the pitcher that took a jagged leap as it bounced off a half-buried rock in the field. Stride bounded to his right and scooped up the ball. He yanked it out of his glove and prepared to toss it to Nick Parucci at second for the out. Then he saw stars. Peter Stanhope ran over him, slamming Stride’s body into the dirt with his right shoulder and jarring the ball out of his hands. Stride recovered quickly and grabbed the ball out of the grass again, but by then, Peter was standing on second base, grinning, and the other runner was at first.

 

Stride’s right side was black with dirt. He felt as if someone had hit him with a shovel.

 

“Don’t mess with me, Stride,” Peter called.

 

Stride fired the ball back to the pitcher, turned on his heel, and marched back to first base. Gunnar Borg laughed.

 

At that moment, the sky finally opened up.

 

The wind blew in, and with it, the rain bucketed down. The pelting drops felt like needles. Lightning came, like flashbulbs popping, and the boys sprinted for the cars parked haphazardly in the weeds. Stride ran, too, but in the opposite direction, toward the woods and the lake. Toward Cindy. The field was already sodden, a river of mud. Stride saw beer bottles, a fallen baseball glove, and empty bags of chips. Peter Stanhope’s aluminum bat lay where he had thrown it as he ran for first base. Stride heard shouting a hundred yards away and then the roar of car engines. Headlights streaked across the field. Horns honked.

 

The downpour followed him into the forest. Rain beat down on a million leaves. His long hair was plastered against his skin. He ran, but it was too dark to see where he was going on the path, and he put a foot wrong and stumbled, cutting his knee. It stung, but the rain washed away the blood. He wiped moisture out of his eyes and pushed through the branches where a bent tree hung over the trail. The spindly twigs slapped back and scraped his face.

 

He smelled scorched wood and thought that part of the woods close by might be
on fire. When the next flash of lightning struck, he could see the orange streak reflect on the surface of the water and see the silvery curtain of rainfall beyond the trees. The lake wasn’t far. He hurried.

 

Then Stride heard something strange.

 

Whistling.

 

It was so close that someone had to be standing almost at his shoulder. He turned and pushed his way through the brush lining the path and broke through into a tiny clearing. A campfire had been built there. A few warm embers remained, throwing up smoke where the rain had doused them. That was the burning smell he had noticed. He didn’t see anyone in the clearing, but then a shadow large enough to be a bear detached itself from one of the birch trees and approached the dying fire. Instinctively, Stride retreated. The man didn’t see him at first. He was a huge black man, at least six foot five, with dreadlocks down to his shoulders and an oddly colorful beret of red, green, and gold. His limbs were as thick as some of the larger tree trunks, with well-defined muscles. He wore a white T-shirt and loose-fitting black pants that had the same tricolored stripe as his hat.

 

Stride recognized him. They called him Dada. He was one of the vagrants who hung out near the railroad tracks during the warmer months. Dada was whistling, not like a nervous man in a cemetery, but like a cardinal at winter’s end. Free. Loud. Stride backed up silently, but Dada saw him. Their eyes met. The music from his mouth stopped. Stride saw the man’s lips curl into a smile, revealing white teeth against his coal skin. Dada didn’t look afraid or surprised. He laughed as Stride made his way back to the trail without saying a word. His laughter lingered in Stride’s ears, growing fainter as the storm drowned it out.

 

He continued toward the lake, making his way by feel as he slogged through the trees. Water streamed down his face. Mosquitoes harassed him, and he squashed them with his fingers. He didn’t know how many minutes passed before the path opened onto the sandy clearing and his eyes could see what was ahead of him.

 

He found Laura first. She had taken cover under one of the older pine trees, its outstretched branches forming a green roof over her head. Her clothes were soaked. She clutched her backpack against her chest and gazed across the dimpled water. In the inch of skin between her shirt and her jeans, he could see the colors of her butterfly tattoo. She looked bottled up and anxious. When he touched her shoulder, she screamed, then clapped her mouth shut.

 

“It’s just me,” he said.

 

“You scared me to death.”

 

“Where’s Cindy?” he asked.

 

Laura pointed. He looked out onto the beach, and there she was. She had taken off her shorts and was in her bikini, dancing in the rain. That was Cindy. A water sprite. A free spirit.

 

“Hey,” Stride shouted.

 

Cindy stopped when she saw him and bounded up the beach in her bare feet. “Hey, you.” She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. Her skin was wet and soft. Her long hair fell across his face.

 

“Do you want to go home?” he asked her. “We weren’t counting on a storm.”

 

“No, no, let’s stay,” she insisted.

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“Yes. Really. I want to, Jonny.”

 

Laura slung her backpack over her shoulder and put her thumbs in the pockets of her jeans. She gave the two of them a strange smile. “You guys be good, okay? I’m going to go.”

 

Cindy looked torn. She bit her lower lip. “No, you better not, Laura. Not by yourself.”

 

“I’m fine, little sister.”

 

“Stay with us. It’s okay.”

 

“You two don’t need a chaperone. Not tonight. I told you I’d leave when Jon got here.”

 

“We’ll go with you,” Stride said. “All of us.”

 

“Yes, we’ll all go,” Cindy said.

 

Laura hugged Cindy hard. “You two stay. Don’t worry about me.”

 

“No way. How will you get home? You can’t get a ride now. I’m sure everyone left when the storm hit.”

 

“I can hike up to the highway and catch a bus.”

 

“No, no, no, that’s crazy. Come on, we’re all going.”

 

Laura detached herself from her sister and put a hand on Cindy’s chest. “Look, I’m not being noble. I love you, but I have to go.”

 

“Not alone,” Cindy repeated. “I won’t let you go alone.”