The Darkness Knows (3 page)

“H-hello?” she said, her voice a barely audible squeak. There was no movement, no sound except for the quiet mumbling of the radio. The announcer's voice registered somewhere in her mind, saying with gusto, “Miracle Whip is America's favorite salad dressing, the favorite of millions of men and women…”

Vivian gathered her courage, tiptoed slowly around the side of the table, and froze.

The woman was lying on her stomach with her face turned toward Vivian, her gray eyes fixed and staring. There was a trickle of blood drying at the corner of her mouth, and a sticky mess of it covered the side of her head.

It was Marjorie Fox, and she was dead.

Vivian opened her eyes, and Graham's face came into focus above her, his brow furrowed with concern.

“There's my girl,” he said, straightening up with an unconvincing smile. “Feeling better?”

Vivian glanced around and was surprised to find herself lying on the leather sofa in Mr. Hart's office, shoes off, stockinged feet perched atop two pillows. The only source of light was the green-shaded lamp on the desk, and there was the faint smell of smoke in the air. Vivian squinted into the dimness and spotted the remains of something smoldering in the ornate crystal ashtray. She wrinkled her nose at the acrid tang in the air.

“I'm… Well, I'm not sure how I am. What happened?” she asked, rubbing her forehead with the tips of her fingers.

“You fainted.”

“Fainted?” She sat up in alarm.

“You've been out quite a while,” Graham assured her. “You gave us a good scare. It's a good thing Angelo was there to catch you when you fainted; otherwise, you might have a nasty bump on your head as well.”

Angelo
, she thought.
I fainted, and Angelo caught me.

“I did?” She started to replay the evening's events in her mind. She remembered having coffee with Graham, riding in the elevator, going to fetch her umbrella… Then everything caught up to her in a rush: the blank stare, the blood.

She gasped, covering her mouth with her hands. “Marjorie!”

Graham sat down next to her and coiled his arm around her shoulders.

“Now just relax, Vivian.” Mr. Hart walked into the room with a small glass of amber-colored liquid. He leaned down and tried to put the glass to her lips, but Vivian snatched it from his hands. She was in shock, but she wasn't an invalid.

Mr. Hart shrugged and pulled one of the matching leather armchairs that had been facing his desk closer to the couch and took a seat. He watched her sip at the brandy for a few seconds. Then, in complete silence, he took off his wire-rimmed spectacles and cleaned each lens slowly and carefully with a handkerchief pulled from the inside breast pocket of his jacket. His hands were shaking.

Mr. Hart was just shy of sixty, but he looked significantly younger—quite a handsome man for his age, Vivian had always thought. He'd aged gracefully, kept a trim figure. His hair was completely gray, but it suited him. It lent him an air of distinction. In the two years she'd worked as his secretary, he'd made at least two dozen passes at her. She'd politely deflected all of them. In secretarial school they'd warned her about the propensity for an employer's attentions to become amorous, after all.

Despite the fact that she'd turned him down repeatedly, gossip about them had still made the rounds at the station. She hadn't done anything untoward, yet everyone believed she had. So it was strange, uncomfortably intimate somehow, to be here with him now—in his office at night—even though Graham sat right beside her.

At the same time, she was glad Mr. Hart was here. If anyone could handle an awful situation like this, it would be him.

“The police are here,” Mr. Hart said. “They're…taking care of things.” The slight quaver in his voice was anything but reassuring.

“The police are here?” Graham stood up. “They'll want to question us.”

“Vivian, at least.”

Graham rubbed his hands on the front of his trousers and glanced at the closed door. “I think I'll go see if I can be of help,” he said. He sprang for the door, reaching it in two long strides. As he grasped the doorknob, he turned back to Vivian. “You'll be all right here with Mr. Hart,” he said. Before she could protest, he was gone.

Vivian shook her head and watched the door close behind him. She could see where she ranked in the grand scheme of things as far as Graham was concerned—somewhere below Harvey Diamond and the entire Chicago Police Department.

Mr. Hart had also gotten up from his seat and was pacing back and forth between his desk and the floor-to-ceiling windows on the opposite wall. All they afforded him was a view of the mammoth brick structure of the Morrison directly across the street. Silhouettes flitted across the Roman shades in some of the hotel windows.

“This is horrible,” he said in a low voice, shifting his gaze to the street below. “Just horrible. It's all gone wrong.”

Vivian made a vague noise of agreement in her throat. A dead woman in the lounge—something had gone horribly wrong indeed. She straightened her skirt, smoothing it over her knees. She slipped her feet back into her shoes, wondering which man had taken them off.

“I'm feeling much better, Mr. Hart,” she said, anxious to remove herself from this awkward situation. Mr. Hart was clearly not himself. “I think I'll just—”

He turned sharply and fixed her with such a bewildered expression that she paused midsentence.

“—walk around a bit,” she finished in a faltering voice. “Clear my head.”

“No, no,” he said, looking down at the polished leather of his shoes. “This won't do at all… The police will want to question you first thing.” He glanced out the window and then back to Vivian.

“Of course,” she said, confused.

She sat for a minute in silence as Mr. Hart continued wearing a path in the carpet: from the desk to the windows, the windows to the desk.

“Were you here when it…it happened? Did you see anything—the person that could have done this?” Vivian glanced at the ashtray on his desk where the remnants of something still smoldered. That wasn't cigar smoke in the air.

“I was working late, but I didn't notice anything unusual.” He turned from the window briefly to glance at her, then turned back before adding, “Until I heard you scream, that is.”

Vivian felt the color drain from her face as the image of Marjorie's dead body popped into her mind. She didn't remember screaming.

“Do you need anything?” she asked. She had been the one who fainted, but Mr. Hart seemed to be the one who needed support. “A drink?” When he didn't answer, she continued in a small voice, “I'll just go out and see if I can be of help to the police then, shall I?”

Mr. Hart grunted. “Yes, yes, go see what you can do.” He turned to look at her and attempted a smile.

Vivian took another sip of the brandy and then set it on the side table. She left Mr. Hart staring silently out of the window at the lights of the city.

• • •

The whole floor was abuzz with activity. Vivian walked a wide berth around the scene of the crime. The lounge was taped off, but she could see that the “Closed for Cleaning” sign remained on the door and was now hanging slantwise from one corner. She wondered if Marjorie was still in there, if her eyes were still open.

Vivian poked her head tentatively into Studio K, which seemed to be the hub of police activity, and heard Graham before she saw him.

“So you're saying this most definitely wasn't any sort of accident?” he said, voice booming in the perfect acoustics of the studio.

Vivian locked eyes with Graham over the top of the head of the policeman he'd been addressing. She couldn't hear the policeman's response, but Graham replied with a grave “I see” as he motioned Vivian over with a quick flick of his fingers.

As she approached, another man came into view. He was standing to Graham's right, saying something to the group that she couldn't make out. He stood an inch or so taller than Graham, and his golden-brown hair was smoothed back from his forehead in two sharp waves. There was something slightly unfinished about his features—the nose too sharp, the brow too prominent. They didn't work separately, but in combination they made him look rugged, Vivian thought, and maybe a little dangerous. His tie was loosened, his shirt wrinkled, and stubble shadowed his jaw. He also looked, Vivian decided, like she felt—like this was not quite the end of a very long day.

The man's eyes flicked over to meet hers, and she felt herself flush instantly under his gaze. His face was hard, his mouth drawn into a scowl. He looked her up and down, then, without a change of expression, returned his attention to what the detective was saying.

“Viv,” Graham said as she stepped forward. “This is Sergeant Trask.” He motioned to the shorter man, and she nodded politely.

“Miss Witchell.” The policeman acknowledged her with a slight nod of his head, and she shook the officer's hand.

There was an awkward pause before Vivian thrust her hand out to the taller man and said, more forcefully than she'd intended, “Vivian Witchell.”

The strange man hesitated a moment before enveloping her hand in his. He stared into her eyes, and Vivian felt her knees weaken a little. This was real intensity, she thought, not the fake Harvey Diamond kind.

“Charlie Haverman,” he replied.

He wasn't wearing a uniform, and Vivian had never seen him around the studio before. “Viv plays my sidekick on
The Darkness Knows
,” Graham said. “Lorna Lafferty.”

“Is that right?” Mr. Haverman's mouth curved up on one side.

“She's the
new
Lorna,” Graham clarified. “Just started last week to replace Edie, who went and got herself married.” Graham clucked in bewildered amusement at the idea.

Vivian glared at Graham.

“And Chick here,” he continued, pointing at Mr. Haverman with his index finger and thumb at a right angle like a gun, “is the special consultant to the show.”

“Special consultant to the show…
Our
show?” She hadn't been aware they even had a special consultant.

Graham opened his mouth to explain, but Sergeant Trask jumped in.

“Miss Witchell,” he began. “You discovered the deceased?”

Vivian reluctantly turned her attention to the policeman, his pencil poised at the ready. “Yes,” she answered quietly.

“Can you tell me exactly what happened, please?”

“Detective,” Graham said. “Does Viv really have to go through all of this right now? She's been through a hell of a shock. You've already heard what happened.” He placed his hand protectively on her shoulder.

“I'd like to hear Miss Witchell's version.”

Vivian nodded to Graham and took a deep breath.

“Well,” she began, “Graham and I had grabbed a cup of coffee across the street between shows. Graham walked me back to the station, as he's probably already said.”

“Did you see anyone in the building when you arrived?”

“Just the security guard,” she said slowly. “And Angelo. He operates the elevator.”

The policeman nodded, and his eyes darted to the far corner of the room as he wrote. Angelo sat next to the security guard. Morty Nickerson, the show's engineer, was slumped in a chair beside them, nervously biting his fingernails and staring at the floor. She glanced around the room and noted others from
The Darkness Knows
production staff. There seemed to be someone missing, but her muddled mind couldn't place who.

“I…I left Graham on the eleventh floor and took the elevator up to the twelfth to retrieve my umbrella. He had mentioned that it might rain.” Vivian took a deep breath and steadied herself. “The twelfth floor was deserted…or at least it seemed deserted. I didn't see or hear anyone. The lounge door was closed when I reached it, and there was a sign on it that said ‘Closed for Cleaning'…which was odd.”

“Odd how?” the policeman asked.

“Well, I couldn't tell you the last time the lounge was cleaned. It's a pigsty,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Anyway, I opened the door, and all the lights were off, but the radio was on in the corner.”

She paused. She'd meant to glance at Graham for some encouragement, but she caught the special consultant's eye instead. He nodded soberly at her. Vivian took another deep breath and focused back on the sergeant.

“I turned the lights on,” she continued, unable to keep her voice from shaking. “And I didn't see anything out of the ordinary at first. I walked into the room and reached for what I thought was my umbrella under the table near the sink, and instead, I…” Vivian shivered. “Well, then I saw her. Marjorie was lying in a pool of blood. Then I don't know what happened.” Vivian shrugged. Graham squeezed her shoulder, and Vivian leaned into him.

Sergeant Trask smoothly noted the end of her story with the last strokes of his pencil.

“Apparently, you screamed and ran into the hallway, where the elevator operator caught you as you fell,” the policeman said, succinctly completing her story.

Vivian felt her face grow warm with embarrassment as she glanced over at Angelo. He was fidgeting in his chair, probably uncomfortable with all the attention and anxious to get back to work.

“So what killed her?” Graham asked.

Vivian winced at his lack of tact.

Sergeant Trask looked up at Graham with narrowed eyes. “A blow to the back of the head with a heavy glass bottle,” he answered matter-of-factly. Then he turned to Vivian. “Canadian Club. There are shards of glass all over the floor. I'm not sure how you didn't notice that when you walked into the lounge, Miss Witchell.”

Vivian exchanged glances with Graham. Everyone at the station had known about Marjorie's closet drinking. She was no doubt in the process of making her coffee “Irish” when she'd been struck over the head with her own whiskey bottle. Her manner of death was so fitting that it was almost laughable.

Almost.

“You're positive you didn't see anyone suspicious around the station at all tonight, Miss Witchell?” the sergeant asked.

Vivian shook her head, afraid that if she opened her mouth she might start laughing out of hysteria.

“Well, it seems that Miss Fox had something of an enthusiastic fan.” The policeman grimaced slightly.

“Enthusiastic?” Graham said.

The policeman nodded before adding in a near-whisper, “There was a threatening letter from this fan found with her body.”