Darkness First (2 page)

7:47
P.M.
, Friday, August 21, 2009

Machiasport, Maine

A
t 7:47 on a Friday evening in August, Dr Emily Kaplan's office was still open, as it was every Friday night, for the convenience of those who found it difficult to come in at any other time.

She was finishing with her last patient of the day and, for that matter, of the week, a lobsterman named Daniel Cauley who was seated on the other side of the battered antique farm table that had served as Emily's desk ever since she had opened her solo practice, Machiasport Family Medicine, four years earlier come September.

As she handed Cauley a prescription for the cholesterol-lowering drug she wanted him to take, she glanced out the window and caught sight of a young woman standing in the shadows at the end of the driveway staring at the house. Who, she wondered, could be standing and watching so intently at this hour? A late patient waiting for Em to finish with the one she was with now? Or perhaps someone waiting for Cauley. A daughter? Possibly a granddaughter?

‘Think these'll help?' Cauley's question brought her back to the moment.

‘They will,' she said. ‘Even more if you follow the diet I gave you last year. And maybe try getting a little more exercise.'

Cauley nodded. Said he'd try. She doubted he would.

It was five after eight and the office was technically closed by the time Cauley left. Emily walked out to the porch with him, curious to see if the woman was still there. Still watching the house. She was.

She made no move to join Dan when he climbed in his truck. As he put the vehicle in gear and executed a tight three-point turn, the beams of his headlights briefly illuminated her. She looked young with a slender figure and shoulder-length dark hair tied back in a ponytail. She also had what looked to Emily like a black eye and other bruises on her face. The truck pulled out. The headlights disappeared. The woman became, once again, more shadow than shape.

As the sound of the truck faded in the distance, she emerged from the edge of the woods, walked a dozen or so steps toward the office and then stopped as if she couldn't make up her mind. Was she trying to summon up the courage to approach? Or had she seen the tall doctor peering at her from the porch and been put off ? She gave no sign of either. Just stood in the driveway studying the century-old two-story colonial with its peeling yellow paint and black shutters as if trying to memorize its form and structure.

The house Emily grew up in had served as her office ever since she'd come back to Washington County four years earlier with her husband Sam to set up her solo practice. A year later she and Sam divorced and the house once again became her home. A small but pretty colonial farmhouse set at the end of a country road on the outermost edges of the village of Machiasport. A good quarter mile from its nearest neighbor, the property was surrounded on one side by dense evergreen woods and on the other by a blueberry field. It was, she liked telling the few friends from med school who bothered to visit, the global headquarters of Machiasport Family Medicine. They would smile at her small joke and tell her how much they admired her decision to work here, among the people of the poorest and most underserved county in a poor and underserved state. A few told her they were sometimes tempted to do the same sort of thing. But, as far as she knew, none ever had. Her classmates had richer fields to till.

Deciding there was no point in waiting for the young woman to start moving, Emily descended the porch steps and approached her visitor to see how badly she was injured. As she drew closer, Emily guessed she was no more than twenty-one or twenty-two with what, under the bruises, seemed a strikingly pretty face. It might even have been called beautiful if it wasn't so messed up. But, at the moment, her left eye was black and swollen shut. She had a bent and possibly broken nose. A scab had formed over a cut in her upper lip. Emily wondered what other damage she'd find in the examination room. ‘Hi,' she said. ‘I'm Doctor Kaplan. Who're you?'

The girl didn't respond. Just shook her head.

Emily needed to know who she was dealing with, but it seemed more important to check out her injuries first. She could always ask questions later. She put one hand on the woman's shoulder and began steering her toward the office. ‘Okay, come in and let's have a look at you. By the way, how'd you get here?' she asked. ‘Somebody drop you off ?'

‘No. I drove.'

‘Really? Where'd you leave your car?'

‘Down by the state park. I walked back up.'

Emily wondered why she'd done that. The park was over a mile away. As the two women climbed the porch steps in the fading light of a late-summer evening, a pair of headlights lit them up. Both of them turned and looked. A car had pulled into the driveway but was now backing out again as if it had just been using the driveway as a convenient turn-around. Nothing unusual. Cars did that all the time once the drivers realized there was nothing down this road other than this small medical office.

Her new patient watched the car go, then stood staring into the darkness at the now empty space. Emily realized that, in spite of the warmth of the evening, the young woman was trembling. Either she was in shock or something was scaring the hell out of her.

‘Come on in,' Emily urged. ‘Let's have a look at your face.'

She held the door open. The woman went inside. Emily followed. The wooden screen door banged shut.

Em led her still nameless patient into the lone examination room and flicked on the fluorescents. Under the harsh lights her face looked even more battered than it had outside. Definitely in her early twenties, Emily decided. Around five-foot-four with a trim figure, and pale skin. She wore designer jeans, tapered at the ankle, and white sandals with silver studs adorning the cross-straps. Around her neck Em noticed a slender gold chain with a starfish pendant that had a diamond, or perhaps zirconium, stud in the center. A black t-shirt with the words
The Killers
emblazoned across the front completed her outfit. Below the words were red silhouetted images of four musicians holding instruments. Emily wasn't sure who The Killers were. Some obscure rock band she supposed. Or maybe not so obscure. Em wouldn't know one way or the other. She mostly listened to Mozart and Beethoven.

The girl carried a small green backpack. Emily told her to toss the pack on to a chair and hop up on the table.

‘Was there an accident?' Em asked as she began probing the girl's face, gently feeling for possible fractures. ‘Is anyone else hurt? Anyone else who needs help?'

The bony areas around the eye, cheek and forehead all seemed intact. So did the jaw. To be sure, she'd order an x-ray.

‘No,' the girl said in a quiet, but firm voice. ‘It wasn't an accident. And no one's hurt. At least not in the way you mean.'

The girl winced as Emily opened her swollen left eyelid and peered in with an opthalmoscope. There was some bleeding on both the white of the eye and the inner areas of the lid but there didn't appear to be any serious damage. Emily daubed her split and swollen upper lip with antiseptic and then looked in her mouth.

‘All right then, what happened? Who did this to you?'

‘It doesn't matter.'

Emily frowned. ‘Of course it matters.' She wiggled a front tooth that was loose. ‘You'd better have a dentist look at this. It'll be coming out any time now. Do you know a dentist?'

‘No.'

‘I'll give you some names and numbers before you leave. Now I need you to tell me who beat you up.'

‘I told you it doesn't matter. It's not why I'm here.'

Emily frowned. ‘Really? Then why
are
you here?'

The girl took a deep breath. ‘Because I'm pregnant and I need to get rid of the baby as soon as I can.'

Emily looked at her curiously. ‘I don't do abortions, if that's what you're after.'

‘I know that. What I was told … what my …' The girl paused as if deciding on an appropriate descriptor. ‘… my
friend
told me was … you could give me some pills that would cause, I don't know, a spontaneous miscarriage.'

Emily cocked her head. ‘Really? And who exactly was the
friend
who told you that?'

‘Just a friend.'

Emily sighed. This was going nowhere. ‘Okay. What makes you think you're pregnant?'

‘I'm late. I've never been late before. Usually, I'm regular as hell.'

‘Did you take a home pregnancy test?'

‘Yes. It came up positive.'

Emily glanced at the young woman's tummy. If she was pregnant it had to be early. Maybe that's why she'd been beaten up. A boyfriend unhappy learning he was about to become a father.

‘What's your name?' Emily asked. ‘Where do you live?'

‘I told you. It doesn't matter.'

‘And I told you it does. You're in my office. You want me to treat you. I need to know your name and where you're from.'

‘If it's getting paid you're worried about, I can give you money.'

The girl reached over and grabbed her backpack. She unzipped it, rummaged around inside and pulled out a wad of bills nearly an inch thick. She thrust the bills at Emily. ‘Take it,' she said. ‘It's a lot of money. I can get more if that's not enough.'

The top bill was a fifty. If the rest were all fifties there had to be at least three or four thousand dollars in the wad. Where in hell did a twenty-something kid in Washington County get that kind of loot?

‘Put your money away,' Emily said.

The girl sighed. ‘Okay. Then what
do
you want?'

‘Your name for starters. Where you live. Who told you to come to me. I'd also like to know who beat you up.'

‘I'm sorry. I can't tell you any of that.'

‘Can't or won't?'

‘Both. Either.'

‘But you still want my help?'

‘Yes. I need to get rid of this baby. As soon as I can. It's important.'

As she spoke, Emily ran her fingers along either side of the girl's nose. A fairly minor break. ‘Hold on,' she said. ‘This is going to hurt a little.'

Without waiting for a response she inserted an instrument called a Boies elevator into one nostril. There was a slight tensing of the girl's body as Emily pushed with her thumb against the break and popped the nose back into alignment. A painful procedure she'd experienced more than once when she was still boxing competitively. Still, there was no crying out.

‘You're a pretty tough kid, aren't you?' said Emily.

The girl smiled bitterly. ‘Not tough enough.'

‘How old are you?'

‘Twenty-two.'

Emily checked the girl's temperature. 98.5°. She wrapped a blood pressure cuff around the girl's arm and pumped it up. One twenty over eighty. Temp and BP both normal and healthy.

‘Who's the guy?' she asked as she drew three small vials of blood.

‘What do you mean?'

‘You know. The guy whose child you're carrying.'

‘Trust me, you don't want to know.'

‘As a matter of fact, I do.' Emily labeled and dated the vials and put them in a tray. She'd write in a name later if she ever got the girl to give her one. ‘Is he the one who likes beating you up?'

‘Look, doc. No more questions, all right? I'm a big girl. I wasn't a virgin. I wasn't raped. I just need to get rid of this fucker's baby so I can get the hell out of town.'

Emily sighed. ‘If you want my help, I'm going to need some answers. I'm going to need the truth.'

‘The truth? Look, Doctor Kaplan,' the girl said in quietly angry tones, ‘I'm sure you're a nice woman and I'm sure you mean well. But I really can't tell you anything more about this than I already have.'

‘Why not?'

The young woman slid off the table and looked straight at Emily with her one uninjured brown eye. ‘Because if I told you or anyone else what you call the truth, the guy who did this,' she said pointing at her face, ‘would do a hell of a lot more than just beat me up. He'd probably kill me. No. I take that back. Not probably. Definitely. And get his rocks off doing it. And if he found out I told you anything about him, he'd kill you as well.'

‘Kill?'

‘Yes, kill. First me. Then you.'

I
n spite of a natural streak of Yankee skepticism, Emily found herself believing what she heard. One crime and possibly two had already been committed. Assault for sure. Maybe rape. A third crime, murder, seemed to have been threatened. And where had all that money come from? These were things Emily was obligated to report. Aside from anything else, she could lose her license if she failed to do so. But what could she report if the girl wouldn't tell her who she was or where she'd come from or who the guy was who'd beaten her up? If Emily refused to treat her she'd simply disappear into the night.

‘All right,' Emily finally said, deciding on a course of action, ‘I'll help you with the pregnancy if I can.'

‘Thank you.'

‘When did you have your last period?'

‘Beginning of July. Started around the fifth. Stopped five days later.'

‘No period in August?'

‘Not yet.'

August was almost over.

While Emily had never performed an abortion, she had on a few occasions prescribed Mifepristone and Misoprostol, drugs that when used sequentially cause spontaneous miscarriages in pregnancies of less than eight weeks. If the girl was pregnant and if she was right about the dates of her last period she was just within the window where the drugs would work.

‘All right, first let's make sure you really are pregnant. Then we'll figure out what we can do about it.' She pointed at the bathroom. ‘Go in there and pee into one of the little bottles. When you're finished, take off all your clothes and put this on.' She tossed the girl a johnny. ‘Then come back in here, lie down on the table and wait for me. I may be a few minutes so you'll need to be patient. I have to get some things I need to check you out.'

‘What sort of things?'

‘Some instruments that'll help me figure out if I can safely give you these drugs,' Emily lied, ‘and if they'll do the job.'

The girl threw Emily a hard, mistrustful stare, slid off the table and went into the bathroom. It was only when the bathroom door was firmly closed and she was about to leave the room that Emily noticed the backpack, still on the chair.

Looking inside a patient's belongings was a serious breach of professional ethics. If she was caught and if the kid complained it could cost her her license. Her career. On the other hand, this girl had been threatened with death. Emily unzipped the bag.

Under the wad of bills she found a fancy-looking cell phone and under that a wallet. Inside, a Maine driver's license issued to Tiffany Stoddard. An Eastport address. Date of birth April 26, 1987. She memorized the information. Glanced at a photo of a smiling Tiffany Stoddard standing behind a chubby little girl with glasses who looked to be about ten years old. Returning the wallet, she noticed a clear ziplock bag lying at the bottom of the pack. Inside were small greenish tablets. At least a hundred. Maybe more. Emily looked closer and recognized them. Oxycontin 80s. Canadian manufacture. Sometimes it seemed like half the population of the county was addicted to the damned things. But this kid couldn't be just an addict. She had to be a dealer. Judging by the number of pills, a fairly major one.

Emily re-zipped the bag, put it back where she found it and hurried to the outer office. She closed the door and picked up the phone. Because at 8:30 on a Friday night the Washington County Sheriff's office would already be closed, she tapped in Sheriff John Savage's home number. No need to look it up. John's daughter Maggie was Emily's closest friend and Em had spent a significant portion of her childhood hanging out at the Savage household. Even now, with Maggie down in Portland working as a detective with the Portland PD, her mother dead and John remarried, Emily occasionally dropped by to share a glass of wine and sometimes have dinner and listen to the gossip. John and Maggie had even given her shelter on the awful night three years earlier when Emily finally walked out on her abusive and unfaithful ex-husband Sam.

Em turned and faced the window to minimize any chance of being overheard. The phone rang once. Twice. Three times.

‘C'mon, John, pick up,' she muttered to herself.

But it was the voice of John's second wife, Anya, that came on. ‘You've reached the Savages, please leave a message.'

Shit. ‘John, this is Emily. Please call me back. ASAP. It's urgent. I'll try your cell.'

‘Who's John?'

Emily turned.

‘Who are you calling?'

The girl stood in the open door of the examination room still dressed in her jeans and t-shirt. She was holding the backpack by its straps in one hand. She held a urine-filled sample bottle in the other. She walked across the room to the farmhouse table where Emily stood, holding the phone.

‘Who's John?' the girl asked, her voice tight and angry. ‘Who are you calling? It was the cops, wasn't it? You've been poking around in my bag too. Don't lie. I looked. Stuff wasn't how I left it.'

Emily sighed and nodded. ‘Yes, Tiffany, I looked in your bag. I saw the drugs. I know your name. I was calling someone who can help you,' she said in an even voice.

‘You stupid bitch,' the girl said, her voice barely more than an angry whisper. ‘You really are going to get me killed.'

Emily didn't respond.

‘Is John one of the locals?' she asked. ‘Or maybe a pal of yours with the state police? Hell, half the troopers in the county are probably on their way here right now, aren't they? All hot to catch the druggie with her stash before she gets away. Lady, you have no fucking idea what you just did.' She put the urine sample on the table. ‘Here. I think you wanted this.'

The girl left. The screen door banged shut. Emily's first irrational thought was that she had to fix the door to stop it banging like that. She went out on to the porch. The door banged again. She watched her now former patient half-walk, half-jog down the darkened driveway to the road. She turned left toward the state park.

Emily heard a series of electronic beeps and realized she was still holding the cordless phone. ‘If you'd like to make a call please hang up and try again,' said a computer voice. She hit the off button. Hit talk and punched in Savage's cell number. Five rings and another message request kicked in. ‘John, Emily. Get here as soon as you can. It's urgent.'

As a last resort Emily thought about calling 911. But on a summer night in Washington County it could take forever for a cop to arrive. She figured the hell with it. She'd have to handle Tiffany Stoddard herself. Em left the phone on the porch and jogged out to the road. She peered in the direction the girl had gone.

At first she saw nothing. Just black tarmac stretching out before her in the growing darkness. No cars. No Stoddard. Nothing moving at all. Weird. The kid had only left a couple of minutes earlier. Even a world-class miler couldn't be out of sight yet. So where was she?

Seconds later the girl emerged from an opening in the woods a few hundred yards ahead, hoisted the pack on to her back and started walking again toward the park. Then she broke into a jog.

Emily started down the road after her. When she reached the opening in the woods, she stopped and wondered if the girl might have hidden the pills in there. They were the only proof Em had of what had happened tonight. She decided she needed to find them and give them to Savage before the girl came back and got them herself.

A
s Emily pushed into the darkness of the woods, a little more than a mile away in Machias State Park, hidden behind Tiff Stoddard's rusty green Taurus, a man waited, patiently picking his nails with the tip of a long, thin-bladed knife.