Gathering Dark

awkwardly at the question, punched by the sudden severity of it. The kid couldn’t know all that his question entailed. The years of work she’d put in to answer it completely.
“Yeah.” Jessica craned her neck and tried to see the house the boy belonged to, looking for parents to interrupt the neighborly interrogation. “She was killed.”
“Murdered?”
“Yes.”
“He told me she died but he wouldn’t say how.”
“It’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“I’m not worried.”
“Okay, good.” Jessica laughed again, bemused.
“Sometimes, people who kill other people—it’s, like, an accident, you know?” the boy said. “That happens sometimes. It’s not on purpose and they’re really sorry afterward.”
Not in this case, Jessica thought, but said, “Sure.”
“My mom killed someone.”
Jessica reeled. She put a hand up against the daylight and saw the boy watching her carefully for a reaction.
“Jesus. That’s … That’s sad,” she offered. “Is that something you tell a lot of people?”
“Sometimes.”
“Right.”
“It was an accident, but she went to jail anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“She wasn’t supposed to go to jail. It was a mistake. The police made a mistake.”
Jessica felt something twist in her stomach. Her cigarette suddenly tasted like bile in her mouth. She dropped it on the wet grass, stubbing it out carefully. She remembered the shooting three streets over. The pregnant woman with the long face and sad, wild eyes reflecting the blue lights of the cruisers. It had been Jessica who’d cuffed her. You never forget people like that, the ones you escort from their everyday lives into their personal hell. She was afraid to ask her next question, even as the words left her lips.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Jamie Harbour.” The boy smiled.
“Oh, fuck my life,” Jessica sighed.

BLAIR
At the Denny’s on Crenshaw Boulevard I took a booth far from the front doors and any windows, close to the bathrooms so that I could duck in there if I saw anyone who remotely looked like they worked in law enforcement. I wore sunglasses, used the menu as a shield, and kept one eye on the patrons around me. Sneak was drawing looks in her skimpy tank top and skirt as she perused the menu.
“It’s too big,” she said finally, slapping the menu down. “I’m not used to this kind of choice. There are fifteen types of pancakes. I can’t do it.”
“Just get the Grand Slam and a coffee,” I said.
“You look more suspicious acting like that than you would if you just sat there like a normal person, you know.” She picked her teeth with a folded straw. “If a parole officer or someone catches us together, you just offer them something.”
“Offer them what?”
“Money, idiot.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“A blow job, then.”
“Jesus, Sneak.” I shook my head. “Let’s try to focus, here. Last night: You get the call from Dayly. It gets cut off. You ask some people what they know. Then you reported her missing, right?”
Sneak fiddled with a napkin, didn’t answer.
“Are you telling me you didn’t go to the police?” I shifted in my seat. “Okay, we need to go there right now. That’s the first step.”
“We don’t have to. The housemate will do it. You heard her. They were going to call nine-one-one.”
“But you have to go in and tell them what you know.” I settled back in the booth. “Tell them about the phone call.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You know, I knew a guy once who robbed a Denny’s,” she said, looking at the menu. “It was like that scene from Pulp Fiction. He swung a gun around, yelled and threatened everybody, had all the customers put their wallets in a trash bag.”
“Sneak.”
“He even went into the back and started hitting up all the chefs for their wallets and jewelry and stuff.” Sneak sniffed. “But this fry cook got so scared she dropped a big bucket of cheese sauce on the floor and the guy slipped in it. Fell right on his ass. Dropped the gun and the bag and everything. That was the moment to grab him and make a citizen’s arrest. But the guy kept trying to get up on his own and slipping over in the sauce again. It was so funny everybody started laughing. They let him go. He ran out the back door covered in cheese sauce. Left the gun and the bag of goodies behind.”
“Sneak, are you avoiding going to the police about Dayly because you’re wanted?” I asked.
Sneak laughed, smoothing back her greasy, tired curls. “Wanted. You make me sound like Jesse fucking James.”
“They can help us. This is your daughter we’re talking about here.”
“I could be wanted,” Sneak said. She gave a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. I heard they were looking at me for some stolen goods that may or may not have been found in a storage container with my name on it.”
I held my head. “You’re just a barrel of problems, you know that?”
The waitress came and we ordered. Sneak wrung her hands on the tabletop.
“I can’t go in. If I get locked up now, I won’t be able to find my kid,” she reasoned. “The cops know me. They’ll pin whatever they can on me. Then it’ll be all up to you.”
“Me?” I scoffed. “Why me?”
“Because you’re the only person I’ve got on this,” she said. She watched me carefully. “You are with me on this, right?”
“Look.” I chose my words carefully. “I’m … I’m not sure what we have here yet. I’m willing to bounce ideas around about where Dayly might be. But I’ve got my own kid, you know. I can’t risk getting taken away from him again.”
Sneak watched me silently weighing up my options.
“I owe you,” I admitted.
“You sure do,” she said. “I was waiting for you to get to that.”
“You dragged me up out of a pretty dark hole in the Valley.”
“I didn’t just come to you because you owe me,” she said. “You’re tough. You’re good in a tight squeeze. You used to be a big important surgeon, and that makes you the smartest person I know. So now’s the time to