Into the Dark Read online

  Into the Dark

  A Novel of Suspense

  Alison Gaylin

  Dedication

  For Mike and Marissa

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  By Alison Gaylin

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to my great agent, Deborah Schneider, as well as everyone at HarperCollins—most especially the brilliant Lyssa Keusch, Amanda Bergeron, and Lauren Cook. I’d also like to express my gratitude to the always helpful police/high-tech expert Josh Moulin and automotive genius John Voelcker, as well as dear friends and sharp readers James Conrad, Chas Cerulli, Paul Leone, Anthony Marcello, Abigail Thomas (and the rest of the writing group, whom I miss very much, darn it), Jamie and Doug Barthell—and the many others who have helped me and put up with my meshugas. I’d also like to thank Marilyn and Sheldon Gaylin (at whose lovely home much of this book was written); my terrific mom, Beverly Sloane; and as seen in the dedication, my husband, Mike; and daughter, Marissa, without whom none of my books would ever be written.

  Prologue

  “You are a handsome man,” RJ said. “Women are drawn to you.”

  He was sitting in his parked van in front of the studio���the studio—and talking to his reflection in the rearview. Truth be told, RJ felt like kind of a jackass complimenting his own looks like this—especially since he’d never been what anybody would consider lady bait. But RJ believed in the power of positive affirmation, no joke. Since the mid-eighties, he’d been reading Louise Hay. In fact, he still owned his original copy of You Can Heal Your Life, and sure, Louise had let him down a whole bunch of times since then, but who was he to doubt her now, when all the good energy he’d sent into the universe was finally coming home to roost?

  Just this morning after he’d packed up his equipment and printed out the note for his mother, RJ had stood in front of the full-length mirror affixed to the inside of his closet door. He’d taken in his new clothes—the black T-shirt, the slightly worn brown leather jacket, the baggy jeans and the Los Angeles Dodgers cap he’d found online, the bright blue Nikes he’d bought last night from Foot Locker. He’d looked himself up and down and compared it all with the picture he’d printed out from X17 and taped by the mirror for inspiration: Spielberg, wearing the exact same outfit. He’d eyed the bag next to the door and tried not to wince at what was inside: a Canon EOS 5D Mark II he’d maxed out his credit card and then some to buy (the “then some” part being the most troubling . . . ) But as Louise might have told him herself, In order to do the best work, you need the best tools.

  RJ had put all his doubts and fears aside and breathed in healing light and then, only then, had he allowed himself to say it out loud—the most important positive affirmation of his forty-five years on this planet: “I am a director.”

  God, RJ felt great right now. A beautiful camera in his car and a beautiful actress waiting for him, inside the studio—the studio. This was what he wanted. This was all he’d ever wanted. Once this thing hit—and it would hit hard, he knew it—RJ would be famous, rich. He would pay back his creditors in no time. Free himself of stress. Focus on his art.

  He had more than a dozen fully fleshed-out stories in his head—a thriller about a blind cop with telekinetic powers; a coming-of-age piece set in 1940s London; the heartwarming tale of a failed magician and the rescue dog who saves his life . . . the list went on and on. They’d been slamming around in there for years, these movie stories, begging to be let out—and now, at last, he could give them the attention they deserved. His Breakthrough Project was nearing completion. It was the beginning of the beginning.

  RJ threw open the back of his van. He didn’t need to unload all his equipment now. He could come back for that with his crew. But he took the Canon with him for two reasons: (1) He wanted it with him when he met everyone, and (2) He was worried that if he left it in the van, the camera would be stolen.

  The studio, as it turned out, was in one of the crappier areas of Mount Temple—and that was saying something. RJ was a native New Yorker, and in the course of his life, he’d seen even the sleepiest, slowest towns in Westchester County get fattened and buffed to a fine glow. But somehow Mount Temple had missed out. Neglected by the nineties bubble and abused by the current recession, Mount Temple was the poor relation to Scarsdale and Bronxville and Tarry Ridge, the frumpy uncle who never could catch a break. In a way, the town was like RJ—well, the old RJ, anyway—and so it was fitting that the studio would be located here, near the corner of Columbus and 102nd, an abandoned-looking building between two other abandoned-looking buildings, a tiny auto body shop three doors down practically the only lit-up thing on the street.

  “Hey! Hey there, sir!”

  RJ turned as he was crossing the street to see a homeless man, sitting in front of a chain-link fence, waving at him. The man looked like an upended dirty laundry basket with a head on top, his face and hair so grimy you couldn’t tell what color he was.

  “Mr. Steven Spielberg! Love your movies, man.”

  Had the homeless guy really just said that—or was it a trick of the mind? Regardless, RJ wondered what his film school pals would say if they saw him now—strutting around in his Dodgers cap, Canon EOS 5D Mark II slung over his shoulder like The Man himself . . .

  RJ snorted. Even in the privacy of his own mind, that was quite a phrase for him to use—film school pals. After all, he’d flunked out of film school after just three months, and he sure as hell hadn’t left any pals behind. Bunch of snooty, affected turds, they all were. Trust fund brats who gassed off about French expressionism and Fassbinder and called Spielberg banal—Christ, they didn’t even like Schindler’s List—and looked down on RJ just because he wasn’t rich or young or full of noxious gas like they were.

  The professors were even worse. And the one guy who pretended to be a friend . . . Shane. Man. More toxic than all the trust fund brats and full-of-shit professors put together.

  Truth was, film school sucked. RJ had learned more editing pornos than he would have picked up in twenty years at that place, and that wasn’t sour grapes. He knew it for a fact. He thought back to the letter of resignation he’d e-mailed Charlie, his boss at Happy Endings, last night, and hoped it sounded grateful enough. Charlie had to understand, though. RJ was on the verge of a huge breakthrough. Lula Belle, the Lula Belle, would soon be in front of his lens—and then, in front of the world. His ship had finally come in.

  As he pushed open the door to the studio building, RJ realized he was smiling. “My life is working,” he whispered, an affirmation. He believed it.

  There was no reception desk in the building that housed the studio—not even a directory. But RJ was too happy to think much about that. With this bare-bones lobby and this crappy address, the studio itself had to be awesome. It was kind of a rule. Once, RJ had gone to a party at an abandoned warehouse on the Lower East Side. One of the porno directors had lived there—nice guy by the name of Byron Ryder—and the lobby was such a c
raphole, RJ had thought he might catch a disease from it. But then he’d gone up to Ryder’s floor-through condo and practically passed out from shock.

  It had reminded RJ of that chick’s apartment in Flashdance—that’s how implausibly lush the place was. Giant hot tub made out of real marble. Flat screen that filled an entire wall. High ceilings with nineteenth-century moldings that made your eyes well up, they were so gorgeous. What you save on building safety, Ryder had told RJ, you make up for in personal luxury.

  RJ hit the button on the elevator, and when it opened, he hardly even noticed the piss smell, or the graffiti, or the dried blood on the back wall, probably from a ten-year-old fistfight. RJ’s heart pounded. His palms started to sweat. He felt like a kid on his first date. The seventh floor couldn’t happen soon enough, yet still he was so nervous. That was beyond the whole starting-his-directing-career thing, too, the nervousness. Within moments, RJ realized, he’d see the face of Lula Belle. He’d look into her eyes. How many men could say that?

  The thought made his stomach tighten. How would she look at him—with respect? Gratitude?

  Disappointment?

  RJ pushed the thought out of his mind. Instead, he imagined Spielberg, seeing Kate Capshaw for the first time on the set of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. How had she looked at him, this glowing blonde creature—a star in the true sense of the word, a woman who could twinkle and burst into bright light?

  RJ had made some dumb decisions in his life, yes. He’d trusted the wrong people, he’d let others down. His learning curve had been slow and dull. But did that matter? No one was perfect—not even Spielberg. Not even Louise Hay. Maybe all those times that RJ had screwed up were like plot points in a movie, each one building on the next and propelling him forward until he got here. Face-to-face with a bona fide star, his Breakthrough Project soon to be completed. All at the same time, all helped by the same events . . . the synchronicity. That alone was proof that everything had been for the best.

  “I’ll do right by you, Lula Belle,” he said to the steel doors as the elevator pulled him up, up, up . . . “I promise.”

  There must be some mistake. That was RJ’s first thought once the elevator doors opened on the seventh floor. His second: Where the hell is everybody? The floor looked gutted—clumps of piled-up debris on the cement ground, graffiti creeping all over the walls. RJ knew the building had electricity—how else would he have been able to come up here in the elevator?—but you wouldn’t know it from the looks of this floor, the only light struggling in from the narrow windows on the far side of the space.

  “Lula Belle?” he called out.

  RJ heard muffled voices coming from way down to the right, and so he followed them, his new Nikes scuffing the concrete. He saw a pile of glass shards against a wall, next to something else—something dark and rank he couldn’t look at without gagging . . . This is not a studio. This will never be a studio.

  “Lula Belle?”

  “RJ? Is that you?” A woman’s voice. The kind that curls up your back and down your legs and into your heart and haunts you forever. Lula Belle.

  “It’s me!” he said, his heart beating harder.

  “We’re right down here!” the voice said. “Did you pick up the check at the post office?”

  He cringed. He hadn’t expected it to arrive this early, hadn’t even brought the key with him. “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

  “That’s okay, baby.”

  Baby. He whispered the word, his heart soaring at the sound of it. “You’re not mad.”

  “I could never be mad at you.”

  Once he got to the open door, which in truth wasn’t an open door at all but a missing door, RJ took a deep breath. He reached up to smooth his hair but remembered the cap, straightening that instead. He felt the tug of the camera bag at his shoulder and closed his eyes. My work allows me to express my creativity freely, he told himself, Louise speaking through him. I earn good money doing things I love.

  He walked through the doorhole.

  The room was crumbling, the walls rashy with mold. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the sight of her, standing in the middle of the room, her robe dropped and pooling at her feet. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

  “My God, you’re beautiful.”

  “Are you ready?” she said, his Lula, his star.

  RJ was about to answer, As ready as I’ve ever been.

  But then someone else said, “Just a sec.” A voice RJ knew, and when he turned around, he saw him, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt that fit him a lot better than RJ’s did. He’d managed to grow a thick beard in the years they’d spent apart, and the beard, too, looked better than RJ’s.

  She brought Shane Smith?

  “Hi RJ,” Shane said. “It’s good to see you.”

  How strange life was. Last time RJ had seen Shane, that prick had pretended like he didn’t even know him—this after ruining his life and his film school career and even getting him thrown into jail. In the past three years, RJ must have played it over and over in his head a million times—what he’d say to Shane Smith if he ever ran into him. And yet now, in the same room together and with a flood of water under the bridge—Lula Belle looking on, no less—RJ could only smile back. After all, if it weren’t for Shane, RJ’s Breakthrough Project never would have happened.

  The synchronicity.

  Shane got up from the floor and embraced him, and RJ hugged him just as tight. I’m bringing healing light into my life. Forgiving another person does not make me weak. Everything always works out for the best. “It’s been too long, man,” RJ said, only vaguely aware of Lula Belle putting the robe back on . . . and of the nod she exchanged with his old friend.

  “Too long,” Shane said. “We won’t let this happen again.”

  Chapter 1

  She wants to die.

  The memory flew at Brenna Spector like words on a passing billboard—there for just an instant but solid, real. Brenna had been staring at the image on her assistant Trent LaSalle’s computer screen—their latest missing person, if you could call what they were looking at a person. She was more a shadow, standing behind a scrim, backlit into anonymity—all limbs and curves and fluffy hair, but no detail, no color. No face. She looked as though she was naked, but you couldn’t even be sure of that. But then she tapped her lower lip, the shadow-woman on the screen, she tapped it three times, triggering a memory from less than two months prior . . . She looks into the girl’s eyes with the chill wind biting their faces and icy water everywhere, so cold it burns. Brenna stares at her—poor, pretty mess of a girl. Then at her boyfriend standing behind her, his hand on her shoulder, the fingertips white from the tightness of the clutch. She looks back at the girl’s face, at the mascara streaks on her cheeks, looking so awful for the wear—worse than Maya and me put together—and then, into the eyes . . . such fathomless sadness as she meets Brenna’s gaze, her boyfriend oblivious, smiling a little. She doesn’t want to be here. None of us do, but this girl . . .

  The girl taps her lip three times like a Morse signal.

  She wants to die.

  “She’s so freakin’ hot,” Trent said.

  Brenna came back from the memory, fixed her gaze on the screen. “Uh, Trent? She’s a silhouette.”

  “Hey, so are those chicks on truck mud flaps.”

  Brenna rolled her eyes.

  “You’ll get it when you see more.”

  As if on cue, the shadow-woman began stretching her body into a series of suggestive yoga poses—a slow backbend, followed by the sharp V of the downward-facing dog, a seamless shift to standing, after which she reached down, grasped her right ankle, and pulled the leg straight out and then up, until the knee touched the side of her head.

  “See?” Trent said.

  With shocking ease, she yanked the leg, stolelike, around her shoulder. Her voice was a soft Southern accent, drifting out of the speakers like steam. “I’ll bend any way you want me to.”

  Tre
nt nearly fell off his chair.

  “I get it, I get it.” Brenna grabbed the mouse and hit pause. “Who is she?”

  “Lula Belle.” He said it the way a nun might say the name of a saint. “She’s an artist.”

  Brenna looked at her assistant. He was wearing a black muscle tee with a deep V-neck, the Ed Hardy logo emblazoned on the front in glittery red letters. His hair was spiked and gelled to the point where it could probably scrape paint off the side of a bus, and, Brenna now noticed for the first time, he was sporting a new tattoo: a bright red lipstick print, hovering just above the left pec. Trent’s definition of an artist was, to say the least, dubious.

  “A performance artist,” he said, as if he’d been reading her mind. “She’s on the Web. You can download her, uh, performances.”

  “She’s a webcam girl.”

  “No,” Trent pointed to the screen. “Lula Belle isn’t about porn. I mean, you can get off to her for sure, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Here—I’ll show you.” Trent moved the cursor, fast-forwarding the screen image. Brenna watched the shadow twist and bend, watched her drop into the splits and pivot, throw her pelvis over her head and somersault backward to standing, watched her pull up a stool and straddle it, legs spread wide as a Fosse dancer, watched her produce an old-fashioned Coke bottle from somewhere off camera, tilt her shadow-head back, touch her shadow-tongue to the tip, and then take the bottle down her throat all the way to the base, all this inside of twenty seconds.

  Brenna said, “Well, I guess you could call that an art.”

  “No. Wait.” When Trent hit play, Lula Belle was on the stool, legs crossed, fingers twisting in her hair. “Listen.”

  “ ‘ . . . and you know that little soft part of your head, Lula Belle? Right next to your eyebrow? That’s called your temple. Daddy took his gun, and he put the barrel of it right there at his temple, and he pulled the trigger and his whole head exploded.’ That’s how my mama told me. I was twelve years old. ‘Do you understand, Lula Belle?’ she asked me, and my heart felt like someone had taken a torch to it, melted it down to liquid right there in my chest. But I knew I couldn’t cry. I wasn’t allowed to cry. Mama didn’t . . . she didn’t take kindly to tears . . .”