This Present Darkness (57 page)

“Maybe that call came in today. There’s no record of that here.”

“It must be on the tape that’s on the machine now. Those calls haven’t been logged yet.”

Marshall wound the tape back, put the machine into play, flipped on the speaker switch, and set the volume down low.

Conversations began to unfold from the recording, a lot of everyday, innocuous stuff. Brummel’s voice was in a lot of them, talking business. Marshall ran the tape ahead on Fast Forward a few times, skipping over several conversations. Suddenly he recognized a voice.
His own.

“You already ran once, remember?” came his recorded voice. “As long as you’re alive, Eldon, you’re going to be living with this and they’re going to know it …”

“Eldon Strachan and I,” he told Bernice.

It was scary hearing his very words coming out of the machine, words that could tell the Network anything and everything.

Marshall skipped forward some more.

“Man, this whole thing is crazy,” came a voice.

Bernice brightened. “That’s him! That’s Weed!”

Marshall wound the tape back and flipped it to Play again. There was a gap, then the abrupt start of a conversation.

“Yeah, hello?” said Weed.

“Kevin, this is Susan.”

Bernice and Marshall listened intently.

Weed replied, “Yeah, I’m listening, man. What can I do?”

Susan’s voice was tense and her words hurried. “Kevin, I’m getting out, one way or another, and I’m doing it tonight. Can you meet me at The Evergreen tomorrow night?”

“Yeah … yeah.”

“See if you can bring Bernice Krueger with you. I have materials to show her, everything she needs to know.”

“Man, this whole thing is crazy. You ought to see my place. Somebody came in here and tore it all up. You be careful!”

“We’re
all
in great danger, Kevin. Kaseph’s moving to Ashton to take over everything. But I can’t talk now. Meet me at The Evergreen at 8. I’ll try to get there somehow. If not I’ll call you.”

“Okay, okay.”

“I have to go. Good-bye, and thanks.”

Click. The conversation was over.

“Yeah,” said Bernice, “he called to tell me about this.”

“It wasn’t much,” said Marshall, “but it was enough. Now the only question is, did she manage to get away?”

A key rattled in the front door. Bernice and Marshall never moved so fast. She replaced all the files, and Marshall slid the machine back inside the cabinet. They closed the cabinet doors.

The front door opened. The lobby lights came on.

They ducked behind Brummel’s big desk. Bernice’s eyes were full of one question: What do we do now? Marshall gestured to her to keep cool, then he made fists to show her they might have to fight their way out.

Another key worked at Brummel’s office door, and then it opened. Suddenly the room was flooded with light. They heard someone going to the cabinets, opening the doors, sliding out the machine. Marshall figured the person’s back had to be toward them. He raised his head to take a quick peek.

It was Carmen. She was winding the tape back to the beginning and preparing to make more entries in the record.

Bernice took a look also, and both of them felt the same rage and indignation.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” Marshall asked Carmen right out loud. That startled Bernice and she jumped a little. It startled Carmen and she jumped a lot, dropped her papers, and gave a short little scream. She spun around.

“What!” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”

Marshall and Bernice both stood up. From their battered and dark-clothed appearance, this looked like anything but a nonchalant, cordial visit.

“I might ask you the same thing,” Marshall said. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Carmen looked them both over, and she was speechless.

Marshall could certainly think of some things to say. “You’re a spy, aren’t you? You were a spy in our office, you wiretapped our phones, and now you’ve run off with all our investigation materials.”

“I don’t know—”

“—what I’m talking about. Right! So I suppose you do this every night too, go over all the recorded phone conversations and log them, listen for anything the big boys might want to know.”

“I wasn’t—”

“And what about all the
Clarion
’s business records? Let’s take care of that first.”

She suddenly broke down crying, saying, “Ohhh … you don’t understand …” She went out into the reception area.

Marshall was right on her heels, not about to let her out of his
sight. He took her by the arm and spun her around.

“Easy, girl! We have some real business to take care of here.”

“Ooohhh!” Carmen wailed, and then she threw her arms around Marshall as if she were a frightened child and sobbed into his chest. “I thought you were some burglar … I’m glad it was you. I need help, Marshall!”

“And we want answers,” Marshall snapped back, unaffected by her tears. He sat her down in Sara’s old chair. “Have a seat and save your tears for some soap opera.”

She looked up at both of them, her mascara running down her cheeks. “Don’t you understand? Don’t you have any heart? I came here for help! I’ve just had a terrible experience!” She built up the strength to say it, and then burst out in a fit of tears, “I’ve been raped!”

She collapsed to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably.

Marshall looked at Bernice, and Bernice looked at Marshall.

“Yeah,” said Marshall unsympathetically, “there seems to be a lot of that going around these days, especially among the people your bosses want out of the way. So who was it this time?”

All she did was lie there on the floor and cry.

Bernice had something boiling inside her. “How do you like my looks tonight, Carmen? I think it’s interesting that you were the only one who knew I’d be going out to visit Kevin Weed. Did you tip off the thug who beat me up?”

She still lay there on the floor crying, not saying a word.

Marshall went into Brummel’s office and returned with some of the files, including the notes Carmen had written that very night.

“It’s all in your handwriting, Carmen, my dear. You’ve been nothing but a spy from the very beginning. Am I right or am I right?”

She kept crying. Marshall took hold of her, lifting her from the floor. “C’mon, get up!”

It was just as he saw her hand come off the silent alarm button in the floor that the front door burst open and he heard a voice holler, “Freeze! Police!”

Carmen was no longer crying. As a matter of fact, she was smirking. Marshall put his hands up, and so did Bernice. Carmen ran behind the two uniformed police who had just come in. Their guns were trained right on the two burglars.

“Friends of yours?” Marshall asked Carmen.

She only smiled an evil smile.

Just then Alf Brummel himself came into the building, fresh out of bed and in his bathrobe.

“What’s going on here?” he asked, and then he saw Marshall. “What …? Well, well, who do we have here?” Then he actually chuckled a bit. He walked up to Marshall, shaking his head and showing those big teeth. “I don’t believe this! I just can’t believe it!” He looked at Bernice. “Bernice Krueger! Is that you?”

Bernice had nothing to say, and Brummel was too far away to spit on.

Oh no. Now they had a full house. Juleen Langstrat, also in a bathrobe, walked in the door! She sidled up to Brummel, and the two of them stood there looking proudly at Marshall and Bernice, as if they were trophies.

“Sorry for disturbing all of you like this,” said Marshall.

Langstrat smiled lusciously and said, “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”

Brummel kept on grinning with those big teeth and told the policemen, “Read them their rights and take them into custody.”

The opportunity was too good to pass up. There stood the two cops trying to do their job, and there were Brummel and Langstrat, standing just a little in front of them. The situation was perfect, and it had been building up inside Marshall for a long time. Instantly, with all his weight, he dove into Brummel’s stomach and toppled Brummel and Langstrat backward into the two cops.

“Run, Bernie, run!” he shouted.

She ran. She didn’t stop to consider if she had the courage or the will or even the speed. She just ran for all she was worth, down the long hallway, past all the office doors, straight for the exit at the end. The door had a crash bar. She crashed into it, it opened, and she stumbled out into the cool night air.

Marshall was in the middle of a tangle of arms, hands, bodies, and shouts, hanging on to as many of them as he could. He was almost enjoying it, and he didn’t try that hard to get away. He wanted to keep them all busy.

One cop recovered and ran after Bernice, bursting out through that
back door. He was close enough on her trail to pick up the sound of footsteps heading up the back alley, and away he went in hot pursuit.

Here was Bernice’s chance to find out what kind of shape she was in, cracked rib and all. She chugged down the alley, taking long strides, making her way through the blurry dark; she longed for her glasses, or at least a little more light. She heard the cop hollering at her to stop. Any moment he would fire that warning shot. She made a sharp left through a yard and a dog started barking. There was a space of light between two low-hanging fruit trees. She headed for that and encountered a fence. Two garbage cans helped her over with a clatter that told the cop where she was.

Bernice stomped through a freshly tilled garden, flattening several unseen bean poles. She ran onto a lawn, turned back toward the alley, knocked over some more cans, clambered over a fence, and kept running. The cop seemed to be fading back a little.

She was getting desperately tired and could only hope that he was, too. She couldn’t keep this up much longer. Every panting breath brought a sharp pain from that cracked rib. She couldn’t breathe.

She whipped around one house and doubled back through a few more yards, raising a tumult of barking from tattletale dogs, then crossed a street, and dove into some woods. The branches lashed at her and entangled her, but she plowed through them until she reached another fence bordering a service station. She ran along the fence, found an old dumpster just on the other side, went just a little further—and then her eyes were attracted by a fragment of street light filtering through the leaves and illuminating a pile of rubbish some litterbug had dumped. She grabbed the first thing her hand found, an old bottle, then dropped to the ground, trying not to breathe too loudly, trying not to cry from the pain.

The cop was moving rather slowly through the woods, groping his way along in the dark, snapping twigs under his feet, huffing and puffing. She lay there silently, waiting for him to pause to listen. Finally he did stop and fall silent. He was listening. She pitched the bottle over the fence. It bounced off the top of the dumpster and shattered on the pavement behind the service station. The cop came crashing through the woods and up to the fence. He climbed over and stood still behind the station.

Bernice could not see him from where she was, but she listened very intently. So did he. Then she heard him walk slowly along the back of the station and stop. A moment passed, and then he walked away at a normal pace. He had lost her.

Bernice remained where she was, trying to calm the pounding of her heart and the rushing of blood in her ears, trying to calm her nerves and her panic, and wishing the pain would go away. All she wanted to do was gasp deep breaths of air; she couldn’t seem to get enough.

Oh, Marshall, Marshall, what are they doing to you?

MARSHALL WAS FACEDOWN
on the floor, his pockets emptied, his hands cuffed behind him. He was being very cooperative with the cop who stood over him with his gun drawn. Carmen, Brummel, and Langstrat were in Brummel’s office going over the tape that Marshall and Bernice had listened to.

“Yes,” said Carmen, “here’s my notation of the tape counter. I thought the tape hadn’t run very far for such a long period of surveillance. The recordings continue after this stopping point. They wound the tape back.”

Brummel stepped out of his office and stood over Marshall. “So what did you and Bernice listen to?”

“Big band jazz, I think,” Marshall answered. That response brought Brummel’s heel down on Marshall’s neck. “Aaauu!”

Brummel had another question. “So who gave you the keys to this place? Did Sara?”

“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.”

Brummel muttered, “I’ll have to put out an APB on her too!”

“Don’t bother,” Langstrat said from the office. “She’s gone now and she’s nothing. Don’t bring trouble back once you’re rid of it. Just concentrate on Krueger.”

Brummel told the cop who was guarding Marshall, “Ed, go out and see if you can help John. Krueger’s the one we really need to round up.”

But just then John came back in through the door at the end of the hall, and he did not have Bernice in tow.

“Well?” Brummel demanded.

John only gave a timid shrug. “She ran like a scared rabbit, and it’s dark out there!”

“Aw, terrific!” Brummel moaned.

Marshall thought it really was terrific.

Langstrat’s voice came from the office. “Alf, come listen to this.”

Brummel went into his office, and Marshall could hear the conversation between Weed and Susan being replayed.

Langstrat said, “So they’ve heard this conversation. We picked it up from Susan’s end today.” The dialogue between Susan and Weed came to an end. “Unless I miss my guess, Krueger could very well be headed for The Evergreen Tavern in Baker to meet Susan—” She broke into laughter.

“I’ll have it staked out, then,” said Brummel.

“Get a stakeout on her apartment also. She’ll want to get to her car.”

“Good idea.”

Brummel and Langstrat came out of the office and stood over Marshall like vultures over a carcass.

“Marshall,” Brummel gloated, “you’re in for quite a downhill slide, I’m afraid. I’ve enough against you to put you away for good. You should have gotten out of this thing while you had the chance.”