Gathering Dark

you back to earth, I’ll do it.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
She leaned in closer. “Here’s what you need to understand,” she said. “We’re all sad in here. We’re all angry. You think you’re the only one who’s ever had to give up a baby in this place? There was a crazy woman in here last summer who had to sleep with a doll. Not just sleep with it but carry it around everywhere, pretending to go off and breastfeed it, talking to it and changing its diapers. You think you’re the only one who’s ever had to stare down the barrel of a decade or more in this shithole? You’re trippin’. We’re all in this together, and you lying there cracking up is going to start making other people wonder if they shouldn’t be doing the same. We all get through it or none of us get through it, you understand? Weren’t you a doctor? Didn’t I hear that?”
“Yeah,” I muttered.
“So you’re supposed to be all about helping everyone else,” she said. “Snap to it, bitch.”
I thought about Sneak’s words as I led my son into the police station.
“What are we doing?” Jamie asked as we entered the dull brick building. “Is this where you went to jail?”
I hushed him. It was, in fact, the police station I had been escorted to on the night of the murder. But it was the only station I knew, and while I had Karen’s car I had to act.
“We’re just making a quick report.”
The boy looked around excitedly at the framed pictures of police, collections of badges, and the polished brass trophies from police sporting events in a big cabinet before the brick wall. The smell of the place was the same as the night I had been brought here. Leather, gun oil, trouble, pride.
The thin male officer behind the front desk was clicking idly at a computer. “Yep,” he said by way of address.
“Hi.” I put my sweaty hands on the counter. “I’m here to report a stolen car.”
The officer sighed and began leafing through sheets of paper on a shelf below the counter. He set a form in front of me.
“Fill that out.”
I filled out the form. The officer took it, signed it, and slipped it behind the desk, somewhere I couldn’t see, probably onto an enormous pile.
“I’m also … uh.” I stared at my hands on the counter, thinking, deciding. “Yeah. I’m here to see if a missing person report has been filed.”
“You’re here to file a missing person report?” He frowned.
“No.” I swallowed. “I’m here to see if one has been filed. I … I’m trying to find out … If one hasn’t been filed, you see, I may want to file one. Or have someone come here and file one. If that’s okay. The girl … I’m hoping her roommate might have, uh…”
The officer stared at me. His badge said McAuley.
“Could you please just see if a missing person report has been filed for Dayly Lawlor?” I said. Sweat was rolling down my ribs. I flapped my shirt away from my skin. “L-a-w-l-o-r. I don’t know if it’s ‘Daily’ like every day, or otherwise.”
McAuley looked over my shoulder at Jamie and then back at me. There was a deadness in his eyes that didn’t lift as he turned to the computer and started typing. He ran a finger down a list of names that was laminated and taped to the desk, then picked up a phone and dialed. The officer said “Front desk,” and then replaced the receiver.
I stood, hoping whoever was being called to the front desk had nothing to do with me. That McAuley would return to the computer, check for Dayly, confirm that she wasn’t my problem, and let me go. But a man in plain clothes appeared through a door beside the counter and looked right at me.
He glanced at Jamie then beckoned me sharply with one hand. “You can leave the boy where he is.”
Hallways, corners, sudden vast offices full of cubicles, eyes, posters, racks of uniform hats. I was tracing steps that I had taken ten years earlier, each one taking me further and further away from my child. I was inside. An interview room door was shutting behind us. An air-sucking sound.
I realized I hadn’t looked at the man before me. Like the well-trained inmate that I had once been, I’d focused only on his shoes. Brown leather boots, worn, scuffed, under jeans. I caught a glimpse of a neat blond buzz cut and a questioning look. Heavy, stubbled jaw. I turned away.
“Sit.” He gestured to a chair. There was no table in the room to hide behind. I sat, clasped my hands, and he sunk into the other chair.
“What’s wrong with you?” he began.
“What? Nothing.”
He stared at me.
“Nothing.” I straightened. “I was just here to check on a report.”
“You’re nervous.”
“Police stations make everybody nervous.”
“Your name,” he said. It wasn’t a request, it was a statement.
“Blair Harbour.”
The man took out his phone and started typing. I was in too deep. Trying to regulate my breathing, avoid drowning. I struggled in the silence.
“And yours?” I asked, just to break it.
“Detective Al Tasik.”
A detective. I gripped my chair. “What division are you in?” I asked.
More silence. He was in control, an elbow on the arm of his chair, chewing a nail as he surfed the internet or looked at his texts or whatever the hell he was doing. The calm of a person in a doctor’s waiting room. Casual.
“You’re lying,” he said finally.
“What?” I said again, laughed stupidly. “No, I—”
“You’re Blair Harbour. Killer. Convict. Parolee.” He showed me the phone screen, a second-long flash of my own face. “But you sit down in front of me just now and the first thing you say is you’re nervous because everybody gets nervous in police stations. That’s a lie by omission. When were you going to tell me you’re a convicted criminal?”
“Look.” I took a deep breath, swiped a stray hair out of my face before it stuck to