Available Darkness Season 1

and well on its way to ice.
    After darting his eyes around the cabin to make sure no one was watching, Caleb slipped his hand into his jacket, retrieved a bottle of Oxycontin, popped three in his mouth, and peered inside the bottle.
    Five left. Fuck.
    Caleb perked his ears toward the back of the truck, trying to untangle the sounds, separating the various agents, each on the phone with their sources, trying to mine nuggets of information from a barren shaft. He’d already spent five hours on the phone blistering the ears of every local agency in a vain attempt to light fires under their asses.
    The murderer’s face shot across the network feeds on the monitors like some kind of A merica’s Most Wanted version of dominos. Caleb squeezed his eyes and fished in his other pocket for his personal cell phone. Eyes still closed, his fingers danced across the keys in a well-rehearsed routine they’d performed several times a day for the past three years.
    He held the phone at his ear, waited for the mechanized direction, then hit ’one,’ then ’one’ again and waited.
    Same as always, the first note of her voice sent an ice slick sliding down his spine.
    “Hi, honey, I’m running late. Carol and I stopped for coffee. Let me know if you want me to bring you anything. Oh, who am I kidding, you’re probably still at work. I love you. See you around eight ― if you’re home. Bye.”
    His heart shattered at the tiny laugh right before she added, “If you’re home,” same as always.
    Such a routine message, one of hundreds over the movement of their marriage which were routinely listened to, sometimes fast forwarded through, then deleted. As hard as it was for Caleb to believe, this message was the sole survivor — the only recording he had of a voice that would never vibrate again.
    He’d never thought to shoot video of Julia, or even the two of them together, despite having two video cameras and a drawer of unwrapped cassettes. This, and the copies he’d since made, were all that he had left to remind him of her beautiful voice.
    With the bottomless sorrow that follows regret, Caleb thought of the countless messages, vanished to vapor like the call of a bird who has flown to another sky. He would gladly swap his soul for a scattering of messages to meander through again; something beyond the endless loop of her final voicemail.
    He had seen her the night of those final words, but he had come home too late. She was already asleep. His mind burned at the memories of all the times he’d ignored her, putting her second to work. How he wished he could turn back time and go home to spend just a few more hours with her.
    Two days later, she would be dead.
    His heavy eyelids still draped the pupils that would have been wet if he’d had any tears left to cry. Sadness had eroded to numbness over time. Nowadays, he didn’t feel much of anything.
    He turned his phone off, put it back in his pocket, and was about to reach for the pills again when he heard someone coming — Agent Luis Alvarez.
    “Cops in Westchester found the car,” Alvarez said.
    Caleb shot to attention, and instantly saw that Alvarez had the look of a man about to bear bad news.
    “What?” Caleb asked.
    “Cop on the scene broke protocol,” he said. “He approached the car on his own. And then shit hit the fan.”
    Caleb’s eyes narrowed to two even slits, his voice a harsh whisper, “What the fuck?!”

    * * * *

CHAPTER 7 — John

    6:42 p.m.
    A half hour earlier…

    John rose from his sleep to the smell of soap and the bottled sound of television. On the other bed, Abigail sat, knees folded to her chest, hair wet, wearing one of the dead woman’s black long sleeve shirts.
    Silent, Abigail pointed to the television.
    His image was plastered on the screen over the word “SUSPECT.” Beside it, a photograph of the girl with the word “MISSING” in bold letters, sheet white.
    “They think you took me,” she said.
    He could only stare.
    The inevitable was unfolding. His eyes followed the reporter, running his hand through his hair as the reporter broadcast the make and model of their vehicle, with the license plate number as the cherry on the top. “… requesting that anyone with information call 1-800-93…”
    The car!
    John leaped from bed and ran to the drawn curtains before stopping himself.
    “Is it still light out?” he asked the girl.
    “Yeah,” she said, “I just looked outside to see if any cops were here.”
    He glanced