The Thief of All Light Read online

  “None taken,” she said.

  “I guess all that credit and glory they got after finding Krissing didn’t amount to much. But at least Bill has a job. Rein’s lucky they didn’t keep him in prison for the rest of his life. Bill said I just assisted them?” he muttered. “Tell you what, if you want to see who was really pulling their weight on the Krissing job and who was just in it for show, all you need to do is see how the players involved turned out. The goddamn truth is sitting in this car next to you.”

  * * *

  They were the last ones back to the meeting spot, a gravel driveway set behind the rotting frame of an old barn. It was midnight, and the woods around them croaked with life. The autumn moon hung low in the sky, close enough to reveal its craggy face, the air surprisingly cold for so early in the season. Harv cut their headlights as they pulled up to the group, a half-dozen older detectives in flannel shirts and tactical pants that had too many pockets up and down the sides of their legs. As Carrie got out, she heard one of the men say, “Aw shit, I bet she’s pregnant.”

  Harv heard them too, and when he thought Carrie wasn’t looking, he pretended to zip up his fly. The group laughed, except the officer running the operation. Sergeant Dave Kenderdine quieted the others and said, “Thanks for finally showing up, you two. Get anything?”

  “Nothing we can’t take a pill to fix,” Harv said, winking. “There’s just trees and deer out here tonight.”

  “Same for everybody else.” Kenderdine made a few quick notes on his legal pad and then looked back up at Carrie. “Well, sorry your first time wasn’t more eventful. Unfortunately, this is the majority of what we do. You sit around for hours and hours, and when something does happen, it’s over in a few seconds. It’s a lot of monotonous work, but the payoff is worth it, I promise. I’m sure Harv told you that already, though.”

  “He told me a lot of stuff,” Carrie said.

  Sgt. Kenderdine looked at Harv. “You make her sit through that stupid ghost story?”

  The rest of the guys groaned, and one of them covered his mouth and said, “I bet that’s not all she sat on.”

  A burst of laughter followed. It stopped when Kenderdine’s head snapped around, flashing disapproval. The men looked at Carrie, waiting for her reaction. Was she a cop, who knew how things went? Or was she a member of the protected class, just waiting for a chance to sue them? “Sarge, I have a question about gear,” she said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Harv told me I’m gonna need kneepads if I plan on sticking around here. Do you supply them, or should I?”

  The cops in front of her gaped, too stunned to respond. It was Harv who laughed first, and loudest, and the others followed after. He clapped her on the back and said, “I love this kid. I told you guys we had nothing to worry about.”

  * * *

  She was the first female police officer in the history of Coyote Township, Vieira County, out in the western part of Pennsylvania that people from big cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh called Pennsyltucky. Bill Waylon swore he’d hired her on the spot because he saw something in her, some kind of spark, but she knew it was to avoid any problems with the EEOC. Women just didn’t apply for police jobs that far out in the country. The smart ones went to college and moved the hell out. The pretty ones too lazy to move away married local business owners. The rest got jobs at Walmart.

  Older cops treated her like some kind of glorified secretary. Younger cops spoke about her in hushed tones that ceased when she approached. She’d heard all the rumors. There were at least fifteen police officers she’d allegedly slept with during the short span of her career. Actually, fifteen was a soft number. It probably went higher, she thought.

  Bill Waylon was a good boss, very old-fashioned, and he didn’t tolerate anyone hassling her. Still, she kept her mouth shut any time she wanted to punch someone in the soft spot between their nose and upper lip. He made a big-enough deal about it that she never had to. That was not her favorite thing about him, though. Waylon backed up his people when they did their job, and he wasn’t afraid to tell locals to go fuck themselves when they complained about cops who were in the right. She knew this was a celebratory quality in a chief. Just like patrolmen who didn’t wear their uniforms off-duty to get free food from all the local restaurants, chiefs who stood up for their cops were rare.

  There were fifteen similar small police departments in Vieira County, most of them places where Barney Fife had long been the community standard for cops. The townships and boroughs they patrolled were recently developed communities that only a decade prior had run off well water and received only AM radio. It was coal country, years after all the coal mines had shut down, leaving behind nothing but cheap housing and unemployed hillbillies. New people had flooded the area, buying up land for cheap, turning fields into housing developments and shopping centers. Chain stores like Starbucks and Regal Cinema began sprouting up, taking the place of abandoned gas stations and cement lots. People complained about the local towns losing their character.

  The residents took pride that their towns could not be compared to big-city cesspools. They lived in a place where they could call the cops to complain their neighbors weren’t mowing their grass or bitch about trash trucks coming through too early in the morning. They could get ordinances passed and speed bumps installed on public roads, and enforce a thousand other arbitrary needs, so long as they complained loud enough and long enough.

  These were communities where the Pennsylvania State Police went on call overnight and took two hours to respond, if at all. No one minded, because it kept the taxes down. The thing most often said—like a mantra when it came time to ask for an increase in police salaries, or equipment, or manpower, and as an excuse when their houses were burglarized and they hadn’t bothered to lock the door—was, “Nothing ever happens out here anyway.”

  * * *

  Carrie parked her car in front of the station and unlocked the front door. She flicked on the light in the front office and cleared aside a stack of unsorted papers and dirty Styrofoam cups to make space on the desk. A typewriter took up most of it, a bulky thing made of solid metal. Bill Waylon had complained to the township council that it was starting to cost more per year to order typewriter ribbon from specialty distributors than it would to outfit the entire building with brand-new computers in every room.

  When the council agreed to buy them computers, the older officers filed a grievance, saying it was a change in working conditions. They threatened to file an age discrimination lawsuit, claiming computers were something for young people and forcing them to learn how to use one was just a sneaky way of driving them off the force.

  Waylon took the money and spent it on typewriter ribbon, whiteout, and a used mobile data terminal laptop for one of their two police cars. Most of the times, the laptop stayed locked up in the station.

  The station had just one jail cell, outfitted with a concrete bed and aluminum toilet. The cell was occupied by sleeping cops more often than it was by criminals, and Carrie had gotten so used to the guys pissing in them that when she walked past, she called out, “Your wife been cooking asparagus? Jesus, that stinks” or “You might want to get your prostate checked, that sounds a little weak to me.”

  She wrote out her overtime chit, making sure to circle the words Task Force so the pencil-pusher geeks knew she wasn’t costing the local taxpayers any money. She punched in Waylon’s phone number and let it ring.

  “Chief Waylon speaking,” he said, sounding official for a man who’d just woken up.

  “It’s Carrie, boss,” she said. “I’m all done.”

  “Oh, good,” he grumbled. “How did it go?”

  “Kind of slow. We didn’t see anything. They told me that’s normal.”

  “How was Harv? He get grabby with you?”

  “You think I’d let that happen? I just rode with him, to get it out of the way. He told me a bunch of stories, that’s all.”

  “Let me guess. He’s t
he unsung hero of this whole county.”

  She could not help but laugh. “Something like that.”

  “I bet.”

  “Well, apparently, he had a lot more to do with the Krissing investigation than people realize,” Carrie said.

  “Someday, if you ever get sick of sleeping at night, I’ll tell you a little bit about what that old son of a so-and-so was doing to those little girls. For Harv to say he had anything to do with it, that’s just a sin. I ought to punch him in the mouth next time I see him.”

  “Maybe I misunderstood,” Carrie said. “I don’t want to cause any trouble on this unit, or for you.”

  “Knowing Harv, you understood him perfectly. Six little girls are still walking the earth because of what Rein did. I know it because I’m the only person who was with him, so I’ll be hog-tied if I let people forget that. I’m sure as heck not going to let some dimwit like Harv Bender run around taking credit for it.”

  She whistled into the phone. “Son of a so-and-so? Dimwit? Geez, Bill, that’s mighty strong language coming from you. You feeling okay? I didn’t get you all riled up, now did I?”

  Waylon grunted, “I’m fine. Listen, go get some sleep. It’s dark and foggy out, so be careful driving home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She flicked off the lights and locked up the station, glad to be going home. The chief’s rule was that she could work the local Anti-Crime Task Force as long as it never interfered with her patrol duties. She didn’t care if she had to pull an all-nighter doing surveillance, she was going to make sure she showed up on time and in uniform, just to not let him down. Anyhow, there was a cot in the back office, even if it did permanently reek of stale alcohol from all the times the older guys had showed up for work hungover and had to sleep it off.

  She felt her cell phone vibrate in her pocket as she walked to her car. She pulled it out to look at the screen. It was past midnight. “Hello?”

  “Where you at, bitch?” a female voice barked into the phone. “I got my mom to watch Nubs for a few hours an’ you ain’t here!”

  Loud jukebox music in the background played pop country, and billiard balls cracked against one another like gunshots. Tailfeathers, she thought, knowing it must be ladies-drink-for-a-dollar night if Molly was there. “Sweetie, I can’t. I’m exhausted. We just got done, and I have to be in tomorrow at seven.”

  “Just go in late.”

  “My job’s not like that,” Carrie said. “I can’t just go in late.”

  “Blah, blah, blah. You’re no fun, you know that? Zero fun. I got a kid, and I ain’t got no man, and I ain’t got no money, but look at me. I still have fun. Know why? Because that’s how I do, bitch.”

  Carrie wedged the phone against her ear with her shoulder as she started her car and said, “I’m hoping you walked there. Do you need a ride home?”

  “No, sir, I ain’t drunk, officer, sir,” Molly said.

  “I can tell you’re drinking,” Carrie said. “You only talk gangsta when you’re drunk.”

  “Excuse me for not using proper English, my good lady. Perhaps this suits your delicate ears more sensibly?” Molly let out a long, slow burp that made them both laugh. “Can’t you please just come have fun with your friend and stop being so lame?”

  “Listen, it’s not like you’re not busy too. Whenever I’m free, you have Nubs.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, is my child interfering with your social life, officer?”

  “No, it’s not like that. I just meant—”

  “God, you’re so stuck up now. When those cops you hang out with get tired of trying to feel you up, don’t come crying to me.”

  Carrie held her tongue, trying to figure out what to say, but then it stopped mattering, because the line went dead. She knew better than to try to call back. They were like sisters, and nothing would ever change that, but things were different now, somehow.

  After high school, most of their friends went off to college, and they both stayed in town. Molly’s life became a nonstop party, filled with men, booze, a little smoke from time to time. When she got knocked up, it was no surprise. When the baby’s father didn’t stick around, that was no surprise, either. People who knew her never expected her to have the baby.

  But Molly blossomed as a mom. She took it seriously and cleaned up her act. Nubs was born six years ago, and even when Molly was too broke to put gas in her car, that little girl still had clean clothes, brushed hair, and a packed lunch. If Molly wanted to go blow off steam, who could blame her, Carrie thought. In the morning, she’d get a text apologizing for the argument, filled with hearts and smiley emoticons. They’d make plans to get together and never speak of the matter again.

  Actually, that wasn’t true, Carrie told herself. The text wouldn’t come in the morning. Probably midafternoon, after the pounding in Molly’s head stopped.

  No one who knew Carrie growing up would have suspected she’d become a cop. Hell, most of them would have bet real money on her having a kid even earlier than Molly did. It was always a shock when she ran into someone she knew while on duty. Crazy Carrie, they used to call her. Smoking in the bathroom, painting her fingernails black, using safety pins for earrings. Wearing T-shirts of long-defunct punk bands like Minor Threat and Black Flag, but actually listening to the music, too.

  The last thing any young person wants to be labeled as is inauthentic, and soon she acquired an expanding interest in the culture referenced by the goth scene. Rock star suicides. Obscure foreign horror films. Infamous acts of extreme cruelty and violence throughout history. Government-sponsored medical experiments on prisoners. Serial killers.

  She’d devoured books by Robert Ressler, a legendary FBI profiler who dealt with most of the famous ones firsthand, and then began obsessing over the Manson Family murders. In one particular moment of insanity, she’d written a letter to Manson, sending it to him at Corcoran State Prison, telling him she was learning all she could about his life. She enclosed a picture in the envelope that showed her making devil horns with her fingers and wearing a cut-off T-shirt with “Helter Skelter” printed across the front.

  Two weeks later, she’d gotten a letter back. Her fingers trembled as she opened the flap and pulled out the folded paper tucked inside. There, in blue ink, was a response from one of America’s most notorious psychopaths:

  Hey pretty little thing. If you want to learn about me, come on out here. I could use the company.

  It was signed across the bottom in Manson’s swirling script, with strange designs scribbled on the paper like Nordic runes.

  She’d stuffed the letter under her mattress and never told anyone about it. For months she’d been terrified that the police would come arrest her for having contacted a psychotic killer. It was one thing to fantasize about evil, to reach into the darkness and play with it a little. It was something different when it knew your name and called you Pretty Little Thing.

  At fifteen years old, both she and Molly got jobs at the local record shop, True Vinyl. She was the last of the mixtape generation, one of the earnest teenagers who spent hours crafting the perfect collection of songs, then cutting out pictures from magazines to create a customized cover. There was an art to the entire process, and when she gave a mixtape to someone as a gift, it was her way of saying, this is me, all of me, at this exact moment in time.

  By that summer, she was the proud owner of seven piercings. Four of them you could see, in her ears, nose, and lip. The other three were just for the lucky ones.

  She’d smoked weed and done pills but never stuck anything up her nose or in her arm. A few of the locals were into crystal meth, and she’d seen it around enough times to know that sooner or later, she was going to tweak.

  On a Friday, early in the afternoon, an old man had walked into the store. Liver spots covered his arms and neck, and a shock of bleached-blond hair stuck straight up from the top of his head. He wore purple sunglasses that covered most of his face, and he kept his head low as he moved throughout the store, ign
oring the records and checking the walls instead. It was unusual enough to see someone older than forty inside the store, but when Carrie had looked up from behind the register, she saw something that made her eyes widen. The faces of the boy band NSYNC emblazoned across the old guy’s bright blue T-shirt and the words “CELEBRITY TOUR” printed below it.

  He saw Carrie looking at the shirt and said, “Do you carry posters?”

  She looked up from the shirt, confused by his question, then said, “I think in the back corner we have a few.”

  “Of who?”

  “Nothing you’ve heard of, probably.”

  He looked annoyed and said, “How about Britney Spears? Aaron Carter. Justin Timberlake, obviously. I’ll even take Lil’ Romeo if you don’t have anything else.”

  Carrie had smirked at the old man rattling off the pop acts as if he actually knew who they were, trying to decide if he was a weirdo or just some overly enthusiastic grandparent shopping for the kids in his life. “Sorry. That’s not really what we carry here. You might want to try the mall or something.”

  “I already have everything they carry.” He’d lowered his sunglasses to inspect her more carefully. “How old are you?”

  “Old enough. Why?”

  He’d twirled his finger in a circle, tracing the outline of the heavy makeup around her eyes, and said, “You should go a little easier on the goth look. I bet you were a lot prettier when you were younger. You should take that piercing out of your lip, too. Boys are probably afraid it will catch on their peckers when you suck them off.”

  The old man had left the store, the heavy brass bells rattling the glass door as it closed behind him. Carrie turned her head and shouted, “Hey! Can you guys come up here for a second?”