Into the Dark

Into the Dark

A Novel of Suspense

Alison Gaylin

Dedication

For Mike and Marissa

Contents

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

“Y
ou 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.

T
here
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 craphole, 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.”

T
here 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.”