Page 82 of Call Off the Dark

“Yeah, of course,” he finally said.

So she went to his apartment, and when he answered the door, she put her hands on him. They didn’t talk. They just kissed and grappled with each other as they walked backward into the room, falling onto the couch.

She didn’t come that night, but later, when she was home alone, she touched herself as she thought about how she’d made him come. Even if she was dead inside, she could still make others feel alive, and that had to count for something.

Three blocks from the courthouse, there was a small alley with no security cameras, a bunch of crates stacked up, and two large dumpsters. Helen turned in a slow circle, taking in the dark passage. One side was the back of a laundromat, the other the back of a restaurant. The few windows were small and high, with bars on them. So as long as nobody took a smoke break, she’d be fine.

The masked man’s arraignment was in three days. Helen could park her car farther away in the neighborhood and walk to this spot. Here, she could stash her coat and swap it out for a second one she’d carry in a plastic grocery bag. Change her shoes too. That way, if security cameras on the street caught her going to or from her car, “the shooter” would appear to be a different woman from the one who walked from the neighborhood. Should she change her gait between her two personas? Maybe she should limp slightly from her car to and from the alley. She’d obviously be running as fast as she could from the courthouse after the shooting.

Helen was going to wear sunglasses and a gray flannel neck gaiter pulled over her nose and mouth. She’d keep her hood over her head. She hoped it would be drizzling on the day, because from her car she planned to carry an umbrella to further obscure her from security cameras. She’d stash the umbrella here with her coat before she proceeded to the courthouse. Her goal was to grab the items on her escape back to her car. If she couldn’t do that, she’d be at risk of the police finding them before she could come back to retrieve them. But she figured if she’d made it three blocks without capture, she’d probably already outrun them in the first place. She used to be fast, but since Tyler’s death she hadn’t been working out. The night before, she had put on her running shoes and gone for a test run. She’d sprinted down the sidewalk, and too quickly she’d felt the burning in her lungs and the lactic acid pooling in her thighs. Most cops were out of shape these days though, and she’d have adrenaline on her side.

It seemed like a good plan. Not foolproof. But better than some of that shit she’d seen the idiots do on Dateline and 48 Hours Mystery.

The only problem was, if they caught her, there would be no way she could plead second degree. This was, without a doubt, going to be a first-degree murder.

Chapter Thirty-One

Present day

After Helen’s morning bath, she rummaged through a small plastic bin under the sink that contained toiletries and medications. It didn’t take her long to find the prescription bottle she wanted.

A little later, when she stepped outside in a fresh dress, clean hair swirling past her shoulders, the pill bottle was tucked in her dress pocket. It was a crisp but warm morning, and the sun felt good.

Isaac was near the garden using a shovel to dig a hole.

As she approached him, she saw the dead raven lying on the ground near the small grave she’d dug. The bird was partially decomposed now, and the grave had been disturbed. She’d given the bird a premature burial of sorts.

“I guess I dug that too shallow,” she said. “Did an animal get into it?”

“Looks like it,” he said.

Helen peered into the new grave Isaac was digging. It was much larger, much deeper. Maybe three feet long, two feet wide, three feet deep.

“That seems excessively large for a bird,” she said.

Isaac looked down into the grave and laughed lightly, and Helen couldn’t help but smile.

“Yeah, it is,” he said. “I needed to work off some steam, so I kept digging. I’ll fill it back in when I’m done.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Just a little worried about Wade.”

“Where is he?”

Isaac gestured toward the forest. “He went out that way. I tried to talk to him this morning. He won’t even acknowledge me.”

“Sometimes he does that.”

“Maybe I should just leave.”

“No,” Helen said, too quickly, too firmly. Her fast response felt transparent, so she amended her tone with a lighter one. “I mean, it’d be nice if you could stay a little while longer. I’ll try to talk to him.”

Isaac nodded faintly, and then his gaze moved from her face to her hair and back to her eyes, so swiftly it was barely discernible.

Helen found Wade sitting on a log near a small pond in a clearing of trees. Not far from this spot, she had found the beaver dam, the one she’d wanted to show Agnes.

“Hey,” Helen said as she sat down beside Wade.