The Widow's Son

It was a dark and stormy night, he assumed– he’d taken the cheapest office to rent in the building, which meant the one nearest to the bathrooms with no windows, no natural light. Just as well. Jack worked better in the dark, in the dank, in the disgusting. It was more real, more honest. Whether or not it was truly dark and stormy was irrelevant.

It was night though. Of that, Jack could be sure, and he took a long drag of a cigarette as if to prove it. The realtor across the hall had this secretary that swore up and down that she was allergic to smoke when she was around during the day. As if the broad could smell anything but her own cheap, probably carcinogenic perfume. It clung to her, to the worn carpet in the hall, and, most days, to the realtor. Jack would have been surprised if the realtor’s wife hadn’t noticed, but, seeing that the rings around her eyes were more impressive than the ring on her finger, she was probably too exhausted to even care.

That was the problem with marriage, Jack thought, and he laid his cigarette down in the tray on his desk without putting it out. So many promises made– of affection, of fealty, of love– and so few kept. He was glad he’d opted out of the whole courting and marriage scene. Why buy the cow, as they say.

Sometimes, though, it would be nice if there was another pocket to dip from. Jack spent more time in his office than his apartment, despite not having many clients, and a predominant reason why was that he’d never cleaned out his fridge when the motor had fritzed a week or so ago. Just as well. He’d been doing just fine living out of vending machines. The smoke still lingered in the air, and Jack breathed it in. He’d lived in second-hand smoke his whole life– this was home.

Jack saw the shadows of feet presumably attached to legs before the rapping started, so whoever his visitor was only had the opportunity to knock twice before he interrupted them.

“Can’t you see how late it is? Go away, come back in the morning.” His one-man agency had loose hours from ten to eight and this was well beyond that.

“Are you Detective Marlowe?” The voice was shrill, piping, and made Jack glad his hangover had finally worn off. The woman’s feet shuffled outside the door with a nervous energy he did not care to deal with.

“I am,” he called back, “and I still will be at ten when we open.”

“I need to speak with you. Please. It’s urgent.”

Jack rolled his eyes and held his tongue. Of course it was. Very few people went looking for a detective for a lackadaisical matter, a whimsy that could be taken care of whenever. “I don’t care.”

“Please! I’ll pay whatever you want, please!”

It wasn’t the desperation in her tone that made Jack get up and open the door– everyone was desperate these days, what was new about that? Instead, it was the crisp hundred dollar bill that she slid under the door. If this was what she was willing to spend just to get him to open the door– well, a new fridge motor would be nothing. Hell, he could probably get a brand new fridge.

The woman who quickly rushed in through the door wore a long, pale coat with broad shoulders that hid her form. Her hair was dry– so much for the storm theory– and Jack could tell that if it were brushed, it would shine like gold. Instead, it stuck with sweat to the back of her neck. Typically, that would be an instant turn-off, but the way she stood, with such desperation and determination at once intrigued him. Her nervous energy had evaporated. She wore no ring on her left hand, and Jack found why when she thrust a loose heap of cash and jewelry across his desk. She took off her coat and draped it over her arm, revealing a body that, despite being clad in a drab, shapeless dress, was still unmistakably all-woman.

“I need you to find my son,” she said, which was not a real introduction.

Jack scrutinized her. She was a pretty little thing, even if she were a mother, and the hard glint in her iridescent beetle green eyes drew him in.

“Like I said, we’re closed,” he said, somewhat of a test. She’d barged in here with no problem but who knew if she could take the heat.

The woman huffed and her eyes flashed with an irritation that immediately faded into a soft, fawning smile as she looked at Jack. Oh, this dame was good. “Everything in the pile is yours if you come now. I need your help.”

Taking his time, Jack looked at the pile. The jewelry looked real, the cash legit. He inspected a ring with an emerald that looked as if it would have fit on her finger quite nicely– the inside of the band read ‘18K’. “Your husband okay with you giving me all this, Mrs…”

“My husband is dead,” she said bluntly, not answering his implicit question. “The jewelry doesn’t matter, the cash doesn’t matter. It’s yours, I don’t need it. Just find my son.”

Jack picked his cigarette and looked at her. She looked him in the eye firmly– far firmer than any woman should, in his opinion– and repeated herself. “Find my son.”

“How did you know I’d be here?” he asked.

“Cheryl, my neighbor. Says you work across from her husband, that you never seem to leave. She said you’d probably be around and she was right.”

Damn the realtor’s dead-eyed wife. Jack reached below his desk and drew out a bottle of whiskey and two shot glasses. The woman didn’t flinch when he poured hers, nor when he indicated for her to drink it, and although she grimaced as she shot it, she drank it fully all the same.

Jack leaned forward over the desk. Either something about her was genuinely fascinating to him, or he was just bored. Either way, he could certainly use the money. He took his own shot and drew the pile towards him.

“Alright. You’ve got yourself a deal.”

He expected a sigh of relief, or for her to burst into tears. Instead, the woman nodded, as if she knew he was going to agree all along. “Thank you.”

Jack drew his notebook out of his workcoat pocket and flipped it to the first blank page. “Describe your son to me, ma’am. How old, where you last saw him. The works.”

The woman hesitated before answering. “His name is Danny. He’s… well, he’s eight. He’s blond, like me, but has brown eyes, like his father.” Her eyes grew a little misty– the loss must have been recent. “He’s, he’s short for his age, and he’s skittish, he doesn’t react well to loud noises.”

“And how long has he been missing?”

“A day and a half.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “A day and a half? Ma’am, are you sure your boy didn’t just… run away, or go to a friend’s house, or maybe got picked up by a relative? A day and a half is a little short to be spending this much money on a detective.”

“He didn’t,” the woman said firmly. “He is missing. I need you to go and find him.”

“Alright, alright.” Whatever. It was her waste. “Where did you last see him?”

“At our house, just yesterday morning.”

“And anything else you can tell me?” Jack finished his quick sketch of the woman in front of him to show his poker buddies Thursday but kept the notebook open.

The woman hesitated again, but then seemed to steel her resolve and meet his eyes. “The junkyard… you know the one by the train tracks? He used to play there sometimes with the older neighborhood boys. It’s the only place I didn’t check myself– it’d be dangerous for a woman like me at night, and I work twelve hours during the day. Times have been a bit tough since, since his father…” The woman bit her lip and Jack hoped she wouldn’t start crying. Dames were always doing that, weeping and making a scene. He slammed another shot of whiskey.

“Alright. I’ll start my search there then,” he said, and he thought that’d be the end of it. The woman, however, didn’t move. “Is there anything else?”

“I want you to go look now.”

Jack scoffed. “Now? It’s eleven at night.”

“Sure you have a flashlight? A gun? I will not have my little boy be unsafe any longer than he has to.”

“Look, lady, there’s no way,” Jack started, although he stopped when, in seeming desperation, the woman slammed her hands down on the desk and leaned towards him, far enough that he could see that her shapeless dress hid a temptation Jack couldn’t have fully resisted at high noon and sober, much less now.

“Please? You can have everything on this desk.” She leaned even further, pressing her abdomen to the edge. “Everything.”

Jack wasn’t stupid. He was, however, a man. “Fine, I’ll go tonight.”

The woman stood back up and slipped on her coat. “Thank you. You’re too kind.”

Jack hadn’t been expecting the woman to come with him to the junkyard, but the woman had followed him anyway. She wasn’t chatty, but did glance over at him frequently with narrow, striking eyes. Jack picked up the pace. He’d elected to leave his gun behind, but had brought his flashlight– for most that would be skulking around a junkyard at night, that’d be enough.

He had wondered, at first, why the woman hadn’t gone to the police, although he supposed they were less desperate, less easy to bribe for a young widow. She didn’t look like she came from money. Plus, they would probably, as he had, assume the kid had just run away for a day or two and not bother to search. The cold permeated Jack’s thin, worn coat and he shivered despite himself. The woman, on the other hand, showed no signs of being cold despite her legs being bare. Maybe it was a mother’s will, he mused, that kept her going. He’d never seen the point in having kids. The realtor and his wife had three little girls, and while they were fairly well behaved, they were still loud, screechy, distracting. A summer ago, the realtor’s wife had brought them in every day, claiming they were too scared to stay at home. There’d been a wild animal in the neighborhood, she’d said when Jack had gone to complain. It’d mauled one of the neighbor kids to death.

Something about that memory pricked at the back of Jack’s mind. Something he should remember.

Jack shook his head and drew his flashlight out of his pocket as they drew farther from the streetlamps and towards the junkyard. Probably just the whiskey making him paranoid, making him believe in conspiracies. He wished he’d brought a cigarette– the smell of the junkyard was certainly unpleasant.

“Just a little farther,” the woman said, and Jack realized he had slowed down. “They used to play up here.”

Jack followed her with his flashlight begrudgingly. It didn’t do to be led around at night by a broad, even one with legs like hers. If she was so comfortable walking here, why did he even have to come?

They finally stopped in a clearing, and Jack started to look around. It certainly seemed like a place that young boys would mess around– there were lots of things to throw, lots of materials to build with.

“Danny!” the woman suddenly shouted, and Jack jumped. “Danny! Are you here, Danny? It’s me! It’s Mommy!”

Jack certainly hoped she wouldn’t expect him to yell too, but when she finished, she didn’t turn to him. The junkyard sat still and silent, her voice echoing over the metal. Wherever her kid was, he certainly didn’t seem to be here.

A noise from directly behind Jack caused him to spin around, point his flashlight towards a metal plate on the ground that had fallen. Probably a rat, he figured.

“Danny?” the woman said hopefully. Jack rolled his eyes. Women could be so gullible. Another smaller clatter made him wind his flashlight across the debris. Surely a rat. All junkyards had rats.

They stood in the clearing a short while longer, the woman intermittently calling for her boy and Jack trying to find this damned rat, which seemed to be circling them, clanging and clashing always right behind him and gone when he spun. He was about to give up, to tell the woman to come home with him, that he’d come back in the daytime when he had a chance to search with actual light, when the woman’s tone changed.

“Danny! My baby!”

Jack turned to see where she was looking. He squinted– there was a figure there, somewhat little-boy shaped certainly, but whether or not it was blond with brown eyes and a short stature was impossible to tell. It could’ve been a dope fiend for all he knew.

The woman was certainly sure, though. “Come here, Danny! I have something for you!”

The figure moved forward and Jack shone the light onto him. He regretted it immediately. Blond hair. Brown eyes. Short, sure. However, the Danny he had been picturing hadn’t had a face slitted with dark scars, gnashing teeth as long as a doberman’s, or long claws that glinted in the harsh light.

Jack took a step back, then another. This was a joke, a prank, a ruse. But the woman’s tone didn’t change. “It’s for you, Danny! Come on, baby, I know you’re hungry.”

Before Jack could even turn to run, Danny was there, faster than he should’ve been faster than Jack could blink, and those long claws were even faster. They stabbed into Jack’s chest, his stomach, his neck, and the scream he’d been building towards choked in his throat. Danny leaned down to bite him when the woman suddenly rushed over.

“Oops, one second, sweetheart.”

Danny stopped immediately and let his mother kneel by Jack’s side and fish around in his pockets. Jack whimpered, and she gave him a lopsided smile as she drew out his keys.

“Nothing personal. I just knew nobody would be waiting up.”

Once she fully stood up, she patted Danny on the head. “Alright, Danny, he’s all yours.”

Jack didn’t have time to try and whimper again.