Into the Night Read online

  I slip into a dream I've been having for the last six months. It's the same dream every time. The world around me is clouded in darkness, like I'm looking through a microscope but tiny tendrils of darkness cross my vision. I'm looking down at the dirt path of a woods, which is shaded in pebbles, rocks, and tree branches. I pick my head up and gaze forward into the woods. Just a long, unending path. But my feet are stuck, and I don't want to move. I just want to stand there. I just want to ... what? What do I want to do? Just stand there in the darkness? Something wants me to move though, I just can't bring myself to do it. If I can ever actually move, the dream might finally end and I can move onto another one.

  I jump when I wake up inside the apartment. The shades, wide open, offer only darkness. The sun has already begun its descend behind the horizon. I stand up and look out the window at the blue-yellow faded skies of a sunset.

  "Ben?" I ask aloud. But no one answers me. Just emptiness. Just silence. Well, except for the talking heads of the CNN broadcast. I walk around the apartment just to make sure he's not here. And yes, I want to make sure no one else is here either. I have to be extra careful. Surviving a few murders makes you extra weary of people breaking into your home.

  I check his bedroom, I check the kitchen, the living room, the balcony, even the entry way. Nothing. No one. Just me all alone. Strange that he hadn't returned home yet. I walk over and pick up my phone, which is on the small table next to the catch. A trio of texts from Ben, one right after the other. Heart emojis, smiley faces, and, yes, the unfortunate message that he got delayed in BWI and he won't be home for a few hours. Of course. Just when I want to see him most he doesn't come home.

  I let my phone fall on the couch and stretch my arms wide. I hear my back crack. I really need to go on my run.

  I guess a nighttime run wouldn't be so bad. My stomach won't cramp up anymore. Sure, it might be a little cold -- it's mid-January and the temperatures hovers around 0 to 30 on any given day. But whatever. My back aches, my legs need to stretch, and my stomach has added a little jelly to it in recent days. Let's do this.

  I slip on tight Nike leggings that fit just right. If I had eaten before this, I would have a tougher time having them climb over the hill of my belly. I slip on a lime green Nike sports bra, and then a long sleeve silver shirt that's just loose enough to be comfortable. I tie up a pair of gray Nikes, and then slip on a gray Nike hoodie. I know. So much Nike attire. But let's be real -- checks over stripes.

  I slip out of the apartment and stuff the apartment key under my foot in my shoe. The feel of the key bothers me for a second until I begin walking down the hallway. I lose touch with it.

  I ride the elevator down to the lobby. Bernie, the broad-shouldered apartment doorman, nods with a short wave as I stroll past him. I smile at him. We have a semi-decent relationship. I nod, he smiles. He waves, I nod. That sort of thing. He knows who I am and I know him. That's good enough for both of us.

  I start my run down the main road. One of the numbered streets close to the Capitol side of the city. The streets are nearly empty thanks to the shutdown. There would probably be packs of political wolves swerving through the city streets during the normal time of the year. Traffic would be backed up with cars from Uber, Lyft, all of those ride-sharing companies. But there are barely any cars at the light that's perpendicular to me as I cross the street. It actually wouldn't be a bad time to drive through this street.

  I stuff my AirPods -- yeah, I know, I'm that girl -- into my ears and begin to jog down the streets. My mind disappears to the grungy and smoky voice of the artist Halsey. She's just the right artist for a night like tonight. Empowering, strong, rough. Good for a run through the city. Plus, she's dishing out some sweet songs right now, so it gives me peace as I continue my jog.

  The air is thick with chill, digging through my skin. The light breeze carves my bones with an icy knife, writing its name along my bones. Snot drips from my nose and my face flushes red, all the heat rushing to my face to keep my warm. I throw my hood onto of my head to shield myself from the chill. Probably should have brought a hat.

  Sliding around the next corner, I gaze down the road and see the outline of the White House just past the North Garden. A line of police officers stand straight along Pennsylvania Ave. A short barrier blocks the road off just enough where it'd be impossible to head toward the White House. They must be protecting him from something tonight, or waiting for him to return home.

  My legs guide me down another road, and then another, and soon I'm running through the thickness of Washington, D.C. The streets remain bare and empty, but it makes it easy for running and some exercise. I stop at a crosswalk and look to my left. The Washington Monument towers over all. Like the founding father wants to keep an eye on all of us, making sure that we're following his plan.

  Seeing the monument inspires me to go run by the national mall. I hadn't really explored the tourist sights since I first got here a few months back. It was fun to see all these places again. You'd be surprise how few Washington, D.C., residents go sightseeing on a daily basis. Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Guess I can't say.

  I slip around a corner and follow another path that brings me down a side street, passing the Department of Agriculture building. I slip down one more street, bypassing a detour, and then return to a crosswalk. I wait and suck air for a few minutes before dipping across the road.

  The Lincoln Memorial stares at me from across the road. A smile illuminates on my face like the lights beneath the tourist spot.

  When I'm standing at the bottom of the stairs, all I can do is stare upward at the wide white marble columns. I know president Lincoln sits inside, waiting to be seen and praised. So I pay him his due, hurrying up the stairs. The quick run up the marble steps burn my thighs, and that's the point of a run, isn't it? Let the pain help you gain.

  Once I'm finally staring at Lincoln, my jaw nearly drops from seeing the massive size of the statue. I forgot how big the monument was before I returned to D.C., and even now I'm surprised to see it again. One of, if not the best, presidents of our time. And now his legacy has been carved into this statue.

  Not all of us get statues. Only a handful receive statutes and monuments. So it's important to honor those you see.

  I drag myself back down the steps. Little mounds of snow lay scattered upon the steps, so I do my best to avoid them. Last thing I need is to slip down the steps and land on my face. That would be just horrific.

  When I reach the bottom, I gaze outward toward the Washington Monument. The ice-covered national mall pool unravels before my very eyes. The gray-blue icy shines from the glow of the moonlight. I wonder what it would be like to taste that water -- to fall into the pool and swim in it. Not now, of course, but maybe down the road. It would be way too cold to do it now. I'd freeze to death probably. How deep is that pool anyway? They never tell you important--

  A scream pierces the air, slicing the silent night like an eruption. My ears crawl backward and chills run up my back. A lightning bolt zigzags through my body, and I'm frozen in place. A rustling sound follows, and then another small scream.

  I move closer to the edge of walkway and see beneath me, at the end of the national pool, a scuffle. Two people in the middle of the water, wrestling with each other, moving about, grabbing each other and shoving each other. They must be punks.

  A sharp scream runs through the air again. And it come from the skirmish. My eyes adjust to the night and that's when the shapes make themselves out -- a tall, lanky man and a woman, wrestling with each other. The man reaches down and wraps his hands on the shoulders of the woman. She shouts no no no. And he acts, yes, yes, yes. The lanky man shoves her underwater -- her entire body disappears among the ice, which already broken apart like a collection of broken plates. She disappears under the water and waves her hands around frantically, searching for a solution. But he holds her there, right underwater.

  Suddenly it all comes back to me -- my senses, my mind, my need
to survive. I'm watching someone be drowned underneath the water of the national pool. I can't let that happen.

  "Hey!" I shout.

  My words echo through the night. The tall lanky man's head jerks towards me. He releases the neck of the woman underwater. And then he darts through the water, taking long strides through the icy pool. He climbs up onto the walkway of the mall and then disappears down the stretching path between the end of the pool and the Washington Monument.

  I'm frozen where I stand. My eyes drift toward the pool, afraid of what I might see. But I know I'll see it. These moments are too familiar. They always end the same. It always happens this way. No one survives attacks like these. Even if we want to. But I was too late. I was too casual about handling all of this.

  I fall to my knees and begin to weep, as the body of a woman I've never know, floats among the shattered pieces of ice, like a buoy in the ocean, face down. She'll freeze soon in the night. I pull out my phone and dial 9-1-1-. Tell them that I found a woman laying dead in the pool. Someone will be over to meet me soon. They'll take care of everything.

  I throw my phone to the ground. I don't care what happens. Phones mean so little when you witness another person's life end right before your eyes.

  As the police cars swerve toward the monument, I realize what this means. Another murder right before me. Another attack I had to witness.

  I'm back in the game.

  And now I'm suddenly regretting ever going on this run.

  Chapter 3: The Talk

  The lights from the police cars that arrive on the scene shine against the icy pool. They flicker and spin, sucking attention from passersby and anyone in the sky. Medical professionals are already working down by pool to pull the body from the water.

  I sit on the ground, a blanket draped over my back. My eyes fixate on the pool. It's as if I expect things to change. Like I expect to see the dead woman rise up and claim her life. I want to see the darkness turn to light so badly. But I know it won't. All I can do is wait.

  When the cops arrived on scene, I told them the truth. I didn't fudge the facts. I didn't pretend to be less involved than I was. Always tell the truth when you're talking to police. The truth eventually comes out anyway, so you have to be careful with what you say.

  I told them that I was on a run and came to look out at the water when I noticed lanky man drowning the woman right there in the water. Officer Don Bailey took notes. His face remained still. The guy probably played poker a lot because I don't reed him. He took his notes and told me to hang around for a bit. He suggested I call a friend to come pick me up if I wanted to get out of the cold sooner rather than later.

  Footsteps beside me snap my attention away from the water. As I turn, I see Ben jogging toward me in a pair of brown slacks and a black winter jacket. Breaths escape his mouth in plumes of smoke. He hurries over to me, so I stand up to meet him. We hug tightly there in the middle of night. Suddenly I'm aware of my tiredness. It's like seeing him again killed my energy.

  "You alright, babe?" He runs his hand down my shoulders, arms and face, as though he was searching for cuts or marks. But I assure him that I'm fine and that no one attacked me. "Well, I just want to be safe."

  "You're fine," I say. "Thanks for coming to pick me up. They said I should call a friend if I have one so I obviously called you."

  "I'm such a good friend."

  I kiss him on the cheek. "More than that by far."

  "So can you leave? I'm dying to get home. Sorry it took me so long."

  "Yeah, what happened to you?"

  "Baltimore is the absolute worst. They landed us there. And a lot of us wanted to leave and grab the Metro. But they wouldn't let us get our bags off of the plane, so we literally hung around there for an hour. It was just so miserable."

  "That must have been the worst," she says.

  "More than you know."

  "So did you go back to the apartment yet?"

  "Yeah, I dropped off my bag. I was just about to start changing when I got your call."

  "Okay, well, I don't feel totally bad then."

  "So can we leave?"

  I open my mouth to answer, but the hard stomps of Officer Bailey snag my attention toward the other direction. The portly officers waddles over to me. His face is firm and untouched. A thick mustache shields his lips, another way he keeps himself hidden.

  "This your ride?

  "You bet."

  "Okay," he says. "You can head home tonight fi you want to."

  "Wait, really?"

  "Nothing more to see here," he said. "You gave us your statement so we can take that and look it over as we get more information. We can call you when we need more. We certainly will need more once we identify the body."

  "Any idea what happened?" I ask. I'm the one who saw anything so I'm not sure why I decided that would be the question to ask.

  "Not good. She died in that water. Just plain out dead. Looks like a drowning. But what do I know? I'm just a mall cop."

  "No, you're more than that," I say, and then I realize the slight pun he sent my way. So I smile. "Hilarious."

  "Thank you," he said. "I'll be here all week."

  I let out a deep sigh and stare out at the mall pool ahead of me. I don't want to be here. This is the last place I want to be right now. And for good reason. I thought I had escaped this. I thought my life wouldn't garble me up into the drama of murder and intrigue. I had evaded for long enough that I thought I was past it.

  But here I am, all of these days later, talking to the police about murder -- about what I saw.

  The good news is that tonight isn't like my other nights. Killers usually chase me. They want to murder me and leave me dead somewhere in the middle of the woods. They don't care what happens to me.

  But now I'm on the other side. I'm the one who witnessed the murder. Flashes of that moment weave through my mind with each blink. They're thoughts I want to forget, but I'll always remember them. They make my stomach queazy with nerves. They make my hands shake. I don't want to see those memories. I wish the moment never happened.

  Ben sits with me on the steps of the national mall as the flashing lights of the police vehicles spin around us. Officer Bailey approaches again with a little notepad in his hand, along with a pen. He taps the pen against the pad, biting the bottom right side of his bottom lip. It's the look of someone who has some bad news to deliver.

  "Can I help you?" I ask.

  "Well, there's good news and bad news with these sort of things. I hope you're aware of that," he said. "But I'm guessing, based on who you are and what you've been through in your life, you're pretty familiar with these things so you know the drill."

  I am annoyed and tired. I don't want to be here, and I don't want to be talking about murder so late in the night.

  "We need you come down to the station," he says. "That's the bad news."

  "And the good news?"

  "You're not a suspect."

  "Wow. You're already telling me that? That's nice of you."

  "Like I said, all you've been through. I'd cut you a deal. I've read about the college murders. I know that couldn't have been easy, at all. So I wanted to help you out as best I could."

  "So why am I not a suspect?"

  "Your feet."

  "My feet?"

  Bailey points up toward the monument and then back toward the pool. He points his pen directly at my feet and then at my face.

  "Multiple footprints tell the story. There's enough snow here to show us the prints. Your shoes came in from the far side of the area and up to the monument. Then they came down and stopped, well, right here. Another set lead to the pool."

  I glance past Bailey toward the water, which is a sheet of ice, except for the broken bits just by our end. I can't see the footprints from here.

  "And where did those prints come from?"

  "Look, I let one slide by telling you that you're not a suspect. But that information is confidential."

  "Com
e on. I'm a reporter. You can help me with this."

  "You're not a crime beat reporter, that's for sure. I'll talk to my other guy, not you. Sorry for that."

  "So I still need to go down to the station and talk about this stuff?"

  "Yes. We can give your a ride unless your boyfriend here wants to."

  Ben and I look at each other. He doesn't answer immediately, which tells me he doesn't feel like extending his night any later. He's tired from his trip into Washington. He was probably up working with the senator late anyway. She's pretty demanding.

  Just as he's about to answer, his phone buzzes loudly. He reaches into his pocket and pulls it out. I briefly glance at the screen, glowing in the middle of the night, and see the senator's name written across it. He raises his phone and shrugs, in that way that tells me he doesn't want to answer it but does anyway.

  He walks away from Bailey and I, chatting away on the phone to the senator. Part of me wants to listen in but eavesdropping like that can be a pain in the ass.

  Plus, Officer Bailey leans in closer.

  "So tell me something. Is it true what they say about the Minnesota stuff?"

  "What have you read?"

  "The woman who lived up there in her house. The one you were trapped with. Is she really crazy? I heard she got sent to the looney-bin after it was all over."

  I smile, remembering that awful nightmare of a night in Minnesota. Stuck in a house built deep in the woods. Trying my best to keep an insane woman sane, all the while waiting for a police officer to arrive to save me. And then when the police officer turned out to be the woman's sister, oh man, it was just a horrible night.

  Since that night, I hadn't kept up with what happened with Marie and McKay. Apparently Marie was admitted to a mental hospital. She was happy about it since she could finally put her worries over her family at rest. McKay was fired from the police force and still going through the court process. Spending so much time on the road kept me away from reading the headline for what happened on that side of the country.