The Darkness to Come (6 page)

It was half past twelve. Joshua climbed inside his Ford Explorer, pulled up the company’s number on his Blackberry and called them.

Fifteen minutes later, he hung up. Dazed.

They had hired him to do the corporate identity package. Their deal with another design firm had fallen through that same morning, and they had been wading through a slew of proposals and been on the verge of contacting a different designer—when Joshua had called. Joshua’s timing couldn’t have been better, they said. He must’ve been psychic, to know exactly when to call. It was downright uncanny.

Sure is
, Joshua thought, marveling over his wonderful, mysterious wife.
Uncanny.

Chapter 5

Late that afternoon, Dexter disembarked a CTA bus that put him within four blocks of his mom’s house, in the old South side neighborhood where he’d grown up.

He’d cleaned the rest of the blood from the Chevy’s interior, wiped it down to remove his prints, and left it sitting in a strip mall parking lot in Harvey, a South Chicago suburb with a serious crime problem. Leaving the doors unlocked and the key not-so-discreetly tucked underneath the sun visor, he was positive some petty hoodlum would boost the car in a matter of a few hours, and by the time the snow melted and the cops found Cecil’s body, his vehicle would have been dismantled through a chop shop and all but untraceable.

In spite of the cold weather—it was in the mid-twenties and the infamous hawk was out in full force—people were hanging out on street corners. They were all of them young brothers, in their late teens or twenties, clad in parkas and skully caps, talking shit and looking hard at everyone driving or walking past. They reminded Dexter of inmates milling in the yard: grown men who had nothing productive to do with their time. The jagged skyline of downtown was visible in the hazy distance, but the skyscrapers and the business that took place within them were as meaningless to these men as constellations in the night sky, light years’ distant.

Dexter strutted down the sidewalk, duffel bag swinging from his shoulders. As he approached a knot of the youths, all of them glanced at him, threateningly, but while the others looked away, one of them, a tall, muscled youngster with a big forehead, continued to glare, as if Dexter had invaded his territory. The kid didn’t recognize him, and an unfamiliar man was easy prey on these mean streets.

He met the kid’s glare with one of his own.

Don’t even think about it, young buck. I’m not in the mood.

The kid lowered his gaze, backing down.

Although the players on these streets were different from the ones he’d known in his youth, some things never changed. There were Alpha males, the leaders of the pack, and then there were Betas, the meek followers who bowed their heads when an Alpha strode past. In every environment of his life—these streets, college, law school, the corporate law firm, prison—Dexter had been an Alpha. Dominance ran in his blood.

His mother lived in a modest, one-story brick home with dark shutters that stood on a square island of crusty snow; all of the houses in the neighborhood were located so close to one another that if you stuck your arm out the side window, you could touch the wall of your neighbor’s home. Warm light glowed at the front windows of his mom’s place, and twinkling Christmas decorations adorned the shrubbery and window frames.

While driving from Peoria, he’d stopped at a pay phone, called his mother, told her he’d been released and was coming home that day. She had squealed with joy. If his expectations held true, she was busy preparing a royal feast in his honor.

He rang the doorbell, waited.

He heard shuffling footsteps, and felt himself being examined through the fisheye lens in the door. Then the door flew open and his mother shrieked.

“Dex, baby! Oh, my Lord!”

“Hey, Mom.”

She pulled him inside and into her arms. In her early seventies now, his mother was a short, delicate woman with hair gone almost completely white, and big, sad brown eyes. She’d had much to be melancholy in her life. Her husband, Dexter’s father, had died of lung cancer seven years ago, Dexter had served time in prison, and Dexter’s little brother Leon had never been worth a damn. It was enough to batter a woman’s spirit.

Of course, Dexter had long understood that women were the weaker sex anyway. His father had taught him all about that, had told him how he’d molded Mom from a sassy young siren into the deferential matron who accepted that her proper role was serving the men in her life. Dexter had aimed to impart the same lessons to his own wife—until his prison stint had interrupted her schooling.

But soon, class would resume.

“Look at my baby.” Teary-eyed, sniffling, Mom stood back and examined him from head to toe. “You look
good
.”

This was the first time she’d seen him in four years. He hadn’t allowed her to visit him in the joint. He couldn’t bear the thought of her seeing him led around in shackles and wearing that ugly orange jumpsuit.

“How’ve you been feeling?” He held one of her bony, wrinkled hands. “You look too frail, Mom.”

“I been gettin’ by, with the Lord’s grace.” She sighed heavily, and he sensed that there was something she wasn’t telling him. But she only laughed. “Set down that bag and take off that coat, baby. You at mama’s now.”

He was happy to comply. After the bitter coldness of outdoors, the house felt almost tropical. Delicious aromas wafted through the warm air, making him salivate.

“Something sure smells good,” he said.

“I fixed a big, welcome-home dinner for you. I know you probably didn’t eat too well in there.”

When his mother spoke of the penitentiary, she never referred to it directly. She would always say,
in there
, or
in that place
. As if to call prison what it was would be an acknowledgement of a reality too terrible to contemplate.

“Can I take my things into my old bedroom?” he asked.

Her eyes darkened. “Well, your baby brother’s been staying here . . .”

“Has he?” He understood why his mother looked sickly. Leon had been making her life miserable.

“Now that you home, maybe you could talk to him,” Mom said. “He always looked up to you, Dex.”

“Is he here?”

She nodded. “Tell him dinner’s ready.”

Swinging his bag over his shoulder, he went down the hallway. The house hadn’t changed at all. The same old upholstered sofas and chairs wrapped in crinkly plastic. The same décor—ceramic figurines of Jesus and angels, holy hands and crucifixes. The same photographs on the tables and walls: his jazz musician father, posing with his saxophone; childhood shots of Dexter and Leon; pictures of their extended family; a photo taken at Dexter’s law school graduation; and on the hallway wall, a picture of Dexter and his wife on their wedding day.

Dexter stopped.

Unlike many inmates who decorated their cells with photos of their women and their children, Dexter hadn’t kept photos of anyone. He’d purposefully left behind pictures of his wife. Being forced to look at her every day would have driven him into a murderous rage and resulted in time being added to his sentence. He had his memories of her—since childhood, he’d had an almost photographic memory—and that was punishment enough.

He ripped the photo off the wall.

Tapping it against his thigh, he walked to the bedroom.

* * *

His brother Leon was curled in fetal position on the full-size bed. He hadn’t stirred when Dexter entered. Dexter took one whiff of the sour air and realized why: his brother was nursing a hangover.

Leon was three years Dexter’s junior, and they looked a lot alike, just like their father. But Leon had a messy Afro whereas Dexter’s hair was shaved close to the scalp, and he was much thinner than Dexter, which led Dexter to believe that Leon was still on drugs, too.

And he had moved into their mother’s house in his condition. Leon never would have dared to do such a thing when Dexter was free. Dexter wouldn’t have allowed it, would’ve kicked his ass at the mere suggestion.

Dexter dropped his duffel bag and jacket onto the floor. He walked to the bed, raised the glass-framed photo high, and brought it down hard against his brother’s skull.

Glass shattered. Leon came awake with a yelp, putting his hands to his head. “Oww! What the fuck?”

“Get out the bed, you sorry-ass Negro. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon.”

Rubbing his head, Leon sat up. He blinked at Dexter and laughed, uneasily. “Oh, hey Dex. You-you got out?”

He was on drugs on all right. That high-pitched, staccato, stuttering voice was a dead giveaway.

“I got out this morning. What the fuck are you doing living here with Mom?”

“I-I ain’t living here.” Leon scratched his ashy, rail-thin arms with long fingernails caked with grime. “Who-who told you that?”

“She did.”

Leon chuckled, but he wouldn’t meet Dexter’s gaze. He scratched at his chin furiously, as if trying to scrub away invisible dirt.

“You’re on that shit again, too, aren’t you?” Dexter asked.

“What-what?” Leon laughed. “Nah, nah, man. I-I don’t touch that shit no more.”

“You lying motherfucker, you think I came down with the last drop of rain? You got crack fiend written all over you.”

“Nah, nah, brah.” Leon shook his head. “I-I mean, sometimes, yeah—“

“I don’t want to hear it. Get the fuck out of here and go eat—dinner’s ready. You look like the goddamn Crypt Keeper.”

Muttering under his breath, Leon climbed out of bed and shuffled out of the room, scratching at various parts of his body. Leon was an embarrassment to the family, always had been. It was a wonder that they were blood brothers.

Dexter sat on the bed and studied the wedding picture. Hitting his brother with it had shattered the frame. He shook the glass shards out onto the nightstand, pulled out the photograph.

Seven years, two months, seventeen days.

Dexter knew, to the precise day, how long he had been married. During his incarceration, he would mentally tally the days, just as most other inmates kept track of the number of days until their parole arrived.

The duration of his marriage was a sacred thing, not to be taken for granted. These days, few people understood the real meaning of commitment; most people paid lip service to the holy charge,
till death do us part,
filing for divorce whenever the marriage became a tad bit too inconvenient or difficult.

Not Dexter. He and his wife had exchanged vows before God, and he intended to honor them.

He folded the photograph and put it in his wallet.

Shutting the door, he grabbed the foot of the bed frame and pulled, dragging it away from the wall. He braced the bed against the door.

A threadbare area rug covered the floor. Kneeling, Dexter peeled away the corner of the rug, exposing the weathered hardwood underneath.

One of the floorboards was a lighter shade of brown than the others. He slid a penny into the top groove of the board, jiggled it. The plank popped free.

Although he and Leon had shared this bedroom for much of their youth, Leon didn’t know about the hidey-hole. Dexter had created it to store valuable items—knives, mostly—and kept it secret from everyone.

He lifted the first plank, and removed four others, creating a cavity that was about two feet wide, and almost as long. Frosty air sifted from the crawlspace below, like freed spirits.

He stuck his hand inside. His fingers brushed against the cold handle of a molded aluminum briefcase. He pulled it out and set it on the floor beside the hole. The silver satin exterior finish shone in the lamplight.

He thumbed in the three-digit combination and raised the lid.

Ten thousand dollars lay inside, in rubber-banded denominations of twenties and fifties.

In his downtown apartment, he’d kept this money in a fireproof wall safe; his father had taught him that a black man always had to have some cash on reserve, because you never knew when you might need to make a quick move. When the police had begun searching for him to bring him into custody, he’d removed the money from the safe and hidden it here, in anticipation of his eventual release. Ten large was not an enormous sum, but it was sufficient for his purposes.

There were two black velvet, drawstring sacks stored beneath the cash, one large, one small. He opened the small one and dumped out the single item it contained.

It was his platinum wedding band. It glimmered in the light like a talisman with magical properties.

Seven years, two months, seventeen days.

He slid the band onto his ring finger. It fit snugly, as if he’d never taken it off.

He opened the other, larger sack.

It contained a strap of thick black leather, twenty inches long, with a dozen loops, like some warrior’s utility belt. Each loop held a sheathed or folded knife: daggers, drop point knives, gut hook knives, Bowie knives, a Scimitar blade, switchblades . . . prized, mint-condition pieces from his beloved cutlery collection.

Some men were gun nuts. He’d always been partial to blades. There was a flesh-to-flesh intimacy about a knife that a firearm could never match.

He traced his fingers across the lethal instruments. Eyes closed, he imagined carving lovely lacerations in his wife’s soft, smooth skin, releasing fat rivulets of bright, warm blood . . . .

A knock at the door shattered the fantasy.

“Dex, baby?” Mom asked. “You coming to eat? We ‘bout to say grace.”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” he said thickly, like a man awakened from a nap.

He started to move the bed away from the door. Then, remembering his crack-head brother and how a crack addict would rob his own mother blind to get cash for the next hit, he stopped and stored the briefcase in the hidey-hole again.

He would leave the items there until tomorrow morning, when he would go buy a car.

To track down his wife, he needed decent transportation.

Chapter 6