Gathering Dark

reflecting off the stucco walls of the houses around her, dancing through diamond wire onto bare yards. No dogs barking. Wallert’s hand on her shoulder was like a hammer swinging down.
“You’re going to take the house, aren’t you?” He turned her too roughly. “Is it just like that? They just give you the keys?”
“Get your fucking hands off me, Wally.” Jessica shoved him in the chest. “I’ve had one phone call about this mess. One. I know as much as you do. I’ve got to meet with the executor of the guy’s will and see what it’s all about. This could all be a stupid goddamn mistake, you know that? You’re treating me like I’ve taken the inheritance and moved to Brentwood already, and all I’ve got so far is—”
“Every house in Brentwood has a pool,” Vizchen said. He was leaning against the car, his arms folded. “Place has got a pool, right?”
“If there was any justice”—Wallert poked her in the chest—“you’d split the house with me. It’s only fair. I was on that case, too.”
“You didn’t work it! You—”
“I don’t see any goddamn prowler.” Wallert stormed back toward the car and flung a hand at the surrounding neighborhood. “It’s a false alarm. Let’s get out of here. I need a proper drink.” He leaned on the car rather than getting in, big hands spread on the roof, his round belly pressed against the window. He looked at Vizchen. “Even if she gave me a quarter of what it’s worth, I’d be set for life.”
“Set for life,” Vizchen agreed, nodding, smiling at Jessica in the dark like an asshole.
Jessica heard the whimper.
She thought it was Wallert crying and was about to blast him for a day’s covert drinking ending in a mewling, slobbering, pitiful mess. But some instinct told her it was a sound carried on the wind, something distant, half-heard. Sound bounces around the poorer neighborhoods. All the concrete. She looked right, toward the silhouette of the mountains.
“Doesn’t Harrison Ford live over there?” Vizchen wondered aloud. “I know Arnie does.”
“Did you guys hear that?”
“She got on pretty damn well with the guy. The father. Beauvoir,” Wallert grumbled to Vizchen. “I mean, if you’d seen them together. She spent hours at his place. Just ‘talking about the case,’ about the dead daughter. Yeah, right. Now we know the truth.”
“Shut the fuck up, both of you.” Jessica flipped her flashlight on. “I heard something. That way. We gotta go. We gotta check this out.”
“You check it out.” Vizchen jutted his chin at her. “You’re the hero cop.”
The sound returned, faintly this time, no more than a whisper on the breeze. Vizchen smirked at her as Wallert fished in the car for his cup.
Jessica headed east along the curve of the road, waiting for the sound to come again. Between the houses she caught a slice of gold light. Movement. Rather than continuing to follow the road around, she walked down the side of a quiet house, brushed past wet palm fronds as she found the gate leading into the yard. She vaulted it, jogged across the earth in case of dogs, vaulted the next fence. The house in Brentwood and Wallert’s rage were forgotten now. She could feel the heat. The danger. Like electricity in the air. She hit the ground and grabbed her radio as she headed for the garage of a large brick home.
A body. She knew the instant her boot made contact with it in the driveway, the sag of weight forward with the impact and then back against the front of her foot. It was still warm. Damp. She bent down and felt around in the shadows of a sprawling aloe vera bush that was growing over the low front fence. Belly, chest. Ragged, wet throat. No pulse. Jessica’s heart was hammering as she grabbed her radio.
“Wally, I’ve got a code two here,” she said. “Repeat. Code two at 4699 Lonscote Place.”
A sound in the garage ahead of her, up the driveway. The roller door was raised a foot or so, and from its blindingly bright interior she heard the whimper come again. A thump. A growl.
“Wallert, are you there? Vizchen?” she whispered into her radio.
Nothing.
“Wallert, Vizchen, respond!” She squeezed the receiver so that the plastic squeaked and crackled in her hand. Static. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
Jessica pulled her gun and headed for the garage. Stopped at the corner of the building to radio command.
“Detective Jessica Sanchez, badge 260719. I’ve got a 10–54 and code three at 4699 Lonscote Place, Baldwin Village. Repeat, code three.”
There was a flash in her mind of Wallert and Vizchen laughing. Another officer might have wondered about the two of them, why they weren’t responding. If they were in danger. But not Jessica, not today. She’d heard Vizchen’s words, knew she would hear them again in the coming weeks, from her brethren at the station. You’re the hero cop. No one was coming to help her. She’d betrayed them all with the Brentwood inheritance. She’d marked herself as a traitor.
She sank to the ground, flattened, and rolled under the garage door, rose and held the gun on him. He was a big man, even crouching as he was, a heaving lump of flesh, bent back straining. At first she thought the old woman and the young man were kissing on the ground. Intimate. Mouth to throat. But then she saw the blood on his hands, all over his face, her neck. Jessica thought of vampires and zombies, of magical, impossible things, and had to steady herself against a pool table. Her mind split as the full force of terror hit it, half of it wailing and screaming at her to flee. The other half assessing what this was. A vicious assault in progress. Assailant likely under the influence of drugs. Bath salts—they’d been hitting the streets hard in the past few weeks, making kids do crazy things: gouge their own eyes out, kill animals, ride their bikes off cliffs. She was watching a