Hello, Darkness (9 page)

Paris arrived home exhausted. This was normally the time of day she was getting up. Customarily she ate breakfast when everyone else was having lunch. Today she was off her schedule. If she didn’t sleep a few hours this afternoon, she would be a zombie by sign-off time tonight.

But after her unexpected reunion with Dean, sleep was unlikely.

She made herself a peanut butter sandwich she didn’t really want and sat at the kitchen table, a napkin in her lap, pretending it was an actual meal. As she ate, she sorted her mail.

When she came to the pale blue, letter-sized envelope with the familiar logo in the upper-left-hand corner, she stopped her methodic chewing. She washed down the bite of sandwich with a whole glass of milk, as though fortifying herself for the contents of the envelope.

The three-paragraph letter was from the director of Meadowview Hospital. Politely but firmly, in language that could not be misunderstood, he requested that she retrieve the personal belongings of former patient the late Mr. Jack Donner.

“Since you haven’t responded to my numerous attempts to reach you by telephone,” the letter read, “I can only assume that you never received those messages. Therefore, let this letter serve to notify you that Mr. Donner’s belongings will be removed from the facility if you do not collect them.”

Her deadline to comply was tomorrow. Tomorrow. And he meant it. The date was underlined.

While Jack was a patient at Meadowview, Paris had been on a first-name basis with everyone on staff, from the director to the custodian. This read like a letter to a stranger. He’d reached the limit of his patience with her, no doubt because she had ignored his telephone messages.

She hadn’t been back to the private nursing facility since the day Jack died inside room 203. In the six months since then, she hadn’t had the wherewithal to return, not even to pick up his personal belongings. With very few exceptions, she’d gone to the hospital every day for seven years, but after leaving it that final day, she’d been unable to make herself return.

Her reluctance to do so wasn’t entirely selfish. She didn’t want to dishonor Jack by remembering him lying in that hospital bed, his limbs withering even though they were exercised every day by Meadowview’s capable staff of physical therapists. He’d been no more self-sufficient than a baby, unable to speak anything except gibberish, unable to feed himself, unable to do anything except take up space and rely on dedicated health care professionals to tend to even his most personal needs.

That was the condition in which he’d lived—existed—the last seven years of his life. He deserved better than to be remembered like that.

She folded her arms on the table and laid her head on them. Closing her eyes, she envisioned Jack Donner as he’d been when she met him. Strong, handsome, vital, self-confident Jack…

“So you’re the new one who’s causing such a sensation.”

He had spoken from behind her. When she faced him, her first impression was of the cockiness of his grin. Her assigned cubicle in the news room was barely large enough to turn around in. It was crammed with boxes that she was in the process of unpacking. Jack had pretended not to notice that he was contributing to the crowded conditions.

Coolly she repeated, “‘New
one.
’”

“You’re being talked about in the front offices. Don’t force me to repeat what I’ve heard and risk a sexual harassment charge.”

“I’ve just joined the news team, if that’s what you mean.”

“The ‘award-winning’ news team,” he corrected, his grin stretching wider. “Don’t you pay attention to our station’s promos?”

“Are you in the promotions department?”

“No, I head the official host committee. In fact, I
am
the official host committee. It’s my job to welcome all newcomers.”

“Thank you. I consider myself welcomed. Now, if you’ll—”

“Actually I’m in sales. Jack Donner.” He stuck out his hand. They shook.

“Paris Gibson.”

“Good name. Stage or yours for real?”

“Mine for real.”

“You want to go to lunch?”

His audacity didn’t give offense. Instead it made her laugh.

“No. I’m busy.” She raised her arms to indicate the boxes surrounding her. “It’ll take me all afternoon to get this stuff organized. Besides, we just met.”

“Oh, right.” As he mulled over that dilemma, he gnawed on his lower lip in a manner he probably knew was cute and endearing. Then he brightened. “Dinner?”

She didn’t go to dinner with him that night. Or the next three times he asked. In the ensuing weeks she worked her tail off, covering as many stories as the assignments editor would give her. She vied for as much airtime as she could get, knowing that exposure was the only way to build audience recognition of her name, voice, and face.

She was aiming for the evening anchor spot. It might take her a year or two to get there. She had a lot to learn and much to prove, but she saw no reason to set her sights on anything lower than the top. So she was way too busy getting herself established in the Houston television market to accept dates.

And Jack Donner was way too confident that she would ultimately submit to his charm. He was all-American-boy handsome. His personality was engaging, his humor infectious. Every woman in the building, from the college interns to the grandmother who ran the accounting department, had a crush on him. Surprisingly, men liked him, too. He’d held the top sales record for several consecutive years, and it was no secret that he was being groomed for management.

“Upper management,” he confided in her. “I want to be GM and then, who knows? One day I might own my own station.”

He certainly had the ambition and charisma to achieve whatever he set out to do, and getting a date with her was his primary short-term goal. Finally he wore her down and she accepted.

On their first date, he took her to a Chinese restaurant. The food was dreadful and the service even worse, but he kept her laughing throughout the meal by creating histories for each of the dour wait staff. The more rice wine he drank, the funnier the stories became.

When he opened his fortune cookie, he whistled. “Wow, listen to this.” He pretended to read. “Congratulations. After months of trying to seduce a certain lady, tonight you get lucky.”

Paris broke open her cookie and pulled out the fortune. “Mine says, ‘Disregard previous fortune.’”

“You won’t sleep with me?”

She laughed at his crestfallen expression. “No, Jack, I won’t sleep with you.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

But after four months of dating, she did. After six months, everyone at the TV station acknowledged them as a couple. By Christmas Jack had asked her to marry him, and by New Year’s Day she had accepted.

In February it snowed. Houston, where snow was as infrequent as the Hale-Bopp comet, ground to a halt, which meant that the news teams worked overtime to cover all the weather-related stories, from school closings, to shelter for the homeless, to the myriad hazards of icy roadways. Paris worked for sixteen hours straight, going in and out of the weather, riding in a drafty news van, drinking lukewarm coffee, meeting deadlines.

When she finally got home, Jack was in her kitchen stirring a pot of homemade soup. “If I never loved you before,” she said, lifting the lid on the pot and taking a deep whiff, “I do now.”

“I’d cook for you every night if you’d move in with me.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“We’ve been over this at least a thousand times, Jack,” she said wearily as she pulled off soggy boots.

He knelt down to massage her frozen toes. “Let’s go over it again. I keep forgetting your lame excuses. As you know, my dick is longer than my attention span. And aren’t you glad?”

She withdrew her foot from between his warm hands. The massage felt entirely too good to be getting while they were having this oft-repeated argument.

“Until we’re married, I’m maintaining my independence.” Seeing that he was about to press his argument, she added, “And if you keep bugging me about it, I’ll postpone the wedding for another six months.”

“You’re a hard woman, Paris Gibson soon-to-be Donner.”

They ate their soup and finished the bottle of wine Jack had opened before her arrival. He didn’t even suggest that he spend the night, and she was grateful for his sensitivity to her exhaustion.

As she bade him good night at her door, she noticed that the inch and a half of snow that had immobilized the city was already beginning to melt. All that ass-busting news coverage was made history by a few degrees on the thermometer.

“Thank God tomorrow is Saturday,” she said with a sigh as she leaned against the doorjamb. “I’m going to sleep all day.”

“Just wake up in time for tomorrow night.”

“What’s tomorrow night?”

“You’re meeting my best man.”

Recently he’d told her that his best friend from college was moving back to Houston after getting an advanced degree in something, from an out-of-state university somewhere that right now she couldn’t remember. She knew only that Jack was very excited to have his friend returning to the area and couldn’t wait to introduce them.

“How’s he liking the Houston PD?” she asked around a wide yawn.

“Still too early to tell, he says, but he thinks he’s going to like it. We’re gonna try to scare up a game of basketball at the gym while you’re snoozing the day away. We’ll pick you up around seven tomorrow evening.”

“I’ll be ready.” She was about to close the door when she called after him, “I’m sorry, Jack, what’s his name again?”

“Dean. Dean Malloy.”

Paris sat up, gasping.

She was in her own kitchen, but it took her a moment to orient herself. Revery had given way to dreaming. She’d been in a deep sleep. The angle of the sunlight coming through the window had changed. Her arms were tingling from the lack of circulation that lying on them had caused. Shaking them only heightened the prickling sensation. With a numb hand, she reached for the ringing telephone—the cause of her waking up so abruptly.

Out of habit, she said, “This is Paris.”

Chapter Eight

“W
hen was the last time you saw a dentist, Amy?”

“I don’t remember. A few years maybe.”

Dr. Brad Armstrong gave his patient a stern frown. “That’s much too long between checkups.”

“I’m scared of dentists.”

“Then you haven’t been to the right one.” He winked at her.

“Until now.”

She giggled.

“You’re lucky I’ve found only one cavity. It’s small, but it needs to be filled.”

“Will it hurt?”

“Hurt? I’ll have you know that in this office, pain is a four-letter word.” He patted her shoulder. “My job is to fix your tooth. Your job is to lie back and relax while I’m doing it.”

“The Valium sure helps. I’m already getting sleepy.”

“It doesn’t take long.”

His staff had cleared it with Amy’s mother before giving her a low-dosage tranquilizer to relieve her anxiety and make the procedure less stressful for both patient and doctor. Her mother was coming back in a while to drive her home. In the meantime, he was free to look his fill as she drifted into la-la land.

According to her chart she was fifteen, but she was well formed. She had good legs. Her short skirt revealed smooth, tan thighs and muscled calves.

He loved summer. Summer meant skin. Already he dreaded the onset of fall and winter when women gave up sandals for boots, and bare legs for opaque tights. Skirts got longer, and shoulders bared in the summer by halters and narrow straps were covered with sweaters. The only good thing about sweaters was that sometimes they clung, and the suggestion of what was underneath could be wonderfully enticing.

His patient took a deep breath that shifted the paper bib to one side of her chest. He was tempted to lift it and look at her breasts. If she protested, he could always say he was returning the bib to its proper place, nothing more.

But he restrained himself. His nurse might come in, and, unlike his patient, she wasn’t loopy on Valium.

He surveyed the girl’s legs again. Relaxation had caused them to roll outward, leaving several inches of space between her knees. The stretchy fabric of her skirt fit like a second skin. It molded to the dip between her thighs and delineated the vee. Was she wearing panties? he wondered. The possibility that she wasn’t inflamed him.

He also wondered if she was a virgin. Beyond the age of fourteen, few were. Statistically, the odds were good that she had been with a man. She would know what to expect from a man who was aroused. She wouldn’t be that shocked if—

“Dr. Armstrong?” His assistant appeared, interrupting the daydream. “Is she ready for the deadening?”

He never let his patients even hear the word “shot.”

He came off the low stool on which he’d been sitting, pretending to study the patient’s X rays. “Yes. Go ahead. Let’s give it ten minutes.”

“I’ll have everything ready.”

He disposed of his latex gloves and went into his private office, closing the door behind him. His skin was feverish. His heartbeat was accelerated. If not for his lab coat, his assistant would have seen his erection. If not for her timely interruption, he might have made a dreadful mistake. And he couldn’t afford to make another.

That last time, though—now, that had
not
been his fault.

That girl had been in his chair three times within two months, and with each visit she had become a little friendlier. Friendlier, hell, she’d flirted with him outright. She had known exactly what she was doing. The way she smiled up at him provocatively whenever she was reclined in his chair—hadn’t that practically been an invitation to fondle her?

Then when he did, she had raised such a hue and cry it had brought his partners, all the hygienists, and most of the patients running down the hallway and into the treatment room where she stood screaming accusations at him.

If she had been the twenty-five-year-old she appeared to be, instead of the minor she was, those accusations would have been dismissed. As it was, they’d been believed, and he’d been invited to leave the practice. The following morning when he arrived at the office, his partners had met him at the door with a severance agreement that included a check amounting to three months’ earnings. Under the circumstances, they considered that fair. Good-bye and good luck.

Sanctimonious pricks.

But the repercussions hadn’t stopped there. The girl’s parents, incensed that a normal, heterosexual male had responded to the inviting signals transmitted by their sexpot of a daughter, had filed charges of indecency with a child. As if she was a child. As if she hadn’t asked for it. As if she hadn’t liked having his hand slide between her thighs.

He was dragged into court like a criminal and, on the advice of his inept attorney, forced to apologize to the conniving little bitch. He’d pled guilty to the humiliating allegations in order to receive a “light sentence” of mandatory counseling and probation.

The judge’s ruling was much lighter than Toni’s, however. “This is the last time, Brad,” she’d warned.

Since he had dodged incarceration, wouldn’t you assume a celebration was in order? Oh, no. His wife had other plans, which included beating the subject of his “addiction” to death.

“I can’t go through another ordeal like this,” she told him. Then for hours she’d harped on his “destructive pattern of behavior.”

Okay, there had been a few other incidents, like the one at the clinic where he’d first practiced. He had shown a dental hygienist some photographs. It was a joke, for godsake! How was he to know she was a Bible beater who probably thought babies should be born with fig leafs attached to their belly buttons. She had spread such vicious gossip about him, he’d left of his own accord. But Toni still held him responsible.

Finally she had concluded by saying, “Let me make this even clearer, Brad. I
won’t
suffer through another ordeal like this. I won’t allow our children to suffer through it. I love you,” she declared tearfully. “I don’t want to divorce you. I don’t want to break up our home and family. But I will leave you if you don’t get help and control your addiction.”

Addiction. So what if he had a strong sex drive? Was that an
addiction?
She’d made him sound like a pervert.

He wasn’t a complete fool, though. He knew he had to adapt to the world in which he lived. If society was going to be puritanical, then he must adjust to the accepted rules. He must walk the straight and narrow as defined by church and state, and they were in league on this issue. One misstep beyond their silly boundaries of so-called decency, and you were not only a sinner but an outlaw.

Even the mildest flirtation with another patient could cost him his career. It had taken him eight months to land this job in Austin, long after the severance check had been spent and the savings accounts depleted.

This clinic wasn’t as prosperous as the previous one. His current partners weren’t as specialized and renowned as his former associates. But the job paid the mortgage. And his family liked Austin, where no one knew the reason for their move here.

For weeks after that courtroom nightmare, Toni had flinched each time he touched her. She had continued sharing a bed with him, although he figured that pretense had been for the kids’ benefit.

Eventually she had allowed him to hold her and kiss her, and then, after his group therapy leader had given him a gold star for the progress he’d made toward “healing,” she had resumed having sex. She had seemed reasonably content…until a few nights ago when he’d been careless enough to stay out all night.

He’d devised a plausible story, and she might have continued believing it if he hadn’t been so late getting home last night. The story about the tax seminar didn’t fly. He had gone to the seminar and signed in, so there would be a record of his attendance. But he had never intended to stay and had left after the first boring hour.

He’d caught hell for it this morning. Toni shooed the kids from the breakfast table and sent them upstairs to do chores. Then, without any warning, she demanded, “Where were you last night, Brad?”

No lead-in, just that angry, surprise attack that immediately pissed him off. “You know where I was.”

“I was up until after two o’clock this morning and you weren’t home yet. No tax seminar lasts that long.”

“It didn’t. It was over around eleven. I met a few guys there. We went out for a beer. Realized we were hungry. Ordered food.”

“What guys?”

“I don’t know. Guys. We exchanged first names. Joe, I think it was, is an executive at Motorola. Grant or Greg, something like that, owns three paint and body shops. The other one—”

“You’re lying,” she exclaimed.

“Well, thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt.”

“You haven’t earned it, Brad. I tried to go into your office last night. The door was locked.”

He stood up, pushing his chair away from the table so angrily it scraped loudly against the floor. “Big deal. The door was locked. I didn’t lock it. One of the kids must have. But why were you going in there in the first place? To see what you could find to hold against me? To snoop? To spy?”

“Yes.”

“At least you admit it.” He expelled a long breath, as though taking time out to get a grip. “Toni, what’s wrong with you lately? Every time I leave the house, you put me through a royal grilling.”

“Because you’re leaving the house more often and you stay away for long periods of time that you can’t, or won’t, account for.”

“Account for? What, I’m not an adult? I’m not allowed to come and go of my own free will? I have to check in with you if I decide to stop for a beer? When I need to take a piss, shall I call you first and ask permission?”

“It won’t work, Brad,” she’d said with maddening composure. “I’m not going to let you turn the tables and make me feel bad for asking why you were out until early this morning. Go to work. You’re going to be late.” That had been her exit line. She had stalked from the kitchen, her spine as straight as if she had a girder up her ass.

He’d let her go. He knew her. Once she reached that stage of righteous indignation, he could grovel for hours and nothing he said or did would appease her. She would stay frosty for days. Eventually she would thaw, but in the meantime…

Jesus! Was it any wonder that he wasn’t eager to go home tonight? Who wanted to cozy up to a Popsicle? If he erred tonight, Toni was to blame, not him.

Thankfully he had discovered a new outlet for his “addiction.” Sex in all its variations was his for the taking. Thinking about what was now available to him, he smiled.

Reaching beneath his lab coat, he stroked himself. He liked to stay semierect, so throughout the day he took sneak peeks at the photographs he kept locked in his credenza drawer, or, if he felt safe from intrusion, he visited favorite websites. Only a minute or two would do the trick. Some people drank coffee for a quick pick-me-up. He’d discovered something a hell of a lot more stimulating than caffeine.

It would be a long afternoon, but the anticipation alone was delicious.

Hurry, nightfall.

Chapter Nine

W
hen Paris entered the room where they were waiting for her, Dean and the other two men stood up. They had convened in a small meeting room within the CIB that was ordinarily used to interview witnesses or question suspects. It was cramped quarters but confidentiality was assured.

Curtis pulled a chair from beneath the table for Paris. She nodded her thanks to him and sat down. She was still wearing sunglasses. Dean could barely detect her eyes behind the dark gray lenses. He hated to speculate as to why she never removed them.

“I hope it wasn’t too inconvenient for you to come back downtown,” Curtis said to her.

“I got here as quickly as I could.”

In unison they all looked at the wall clock. It was coming up on twoP .M. None needed to be reminded that twelve hours of Valentino’s deadline had already expired.

The detective motioned to the third man in the room. “This is John Rondeau. John, Paris Gibson.”

She leaned forward and extended her hand across the table. “Mr. Rondeau.”

As they shook hands, he said, “A pleasure, Ms. Gibson. I’m a huge fan.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“I listen to you all the time. It’s a real honor to meet you.”

Dean drew a bead on the officer, whom he had met only minutes before Paris’s arrival. Rondeau was young, trim, and good looking. A weight lifter, from the looks of his biceps. His face was lit up like a Christmas tree as he gazed at Paris. Plainly, like the rookie Griggs, Rondeau was instantly infatuated with her.