The Dark Between Strangers

Chapter 1: The Overnight

The machines never stopped.

That was the first thing anyone noticed about Lone Star Linen Services—the noise. The industrial pressers hissed and clamped like mechanical jaws, the dryers tumbled with a low thunder that vibrated through the concrete floor, and the conveyor belts squealed on their rollers in a pitch that could set your teeth on edge if you let it. After a few months on the overnight shift, you stopped letting it. The noise became a kind of weather, something you lived inside.

Roberta Lemoine had been living inside it for four years.

She stood at the folding station with her back to the loading dock, her hands moving through the familiar choreography—snap, fold, fold, stack—without any conscious direction from her brain. Hotel king sheets, bleached to a white so aggressive it almost glowed under the fluorescent tubes. She could fold sixty an hour. She knew this because the shift supervisor, a man named Gil Buckner who smelled permanently of menthol and fried okra, had timed her once with a stopwatch and told her she was "adequate." That had been the closest thing to a compliment she'd received in her time at the facility.

The plant sat on a feeder road off Highway 90, about twenty minutes southwest of downtown Houston, in a stretch of commercial wasteland that included a tire retreading shop, a self-storage complex with a broken gate, and a taqueria that was only open from eleven at night until four in the morning, which made it the overnight crew's de facto cafeteria. The building itself was a corrugated steel box the color of dirty dishwater, with a flat roof that collected rainwater in pools deep enough to breed mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds. The parking lot had exactly nine working lights out of twenty-two. Roberta had counted.

She was forty-three years old, five-foot-six, with broad shoulders and hands that had gone rough and red from years of industrial detergent. She wore her hair in tight braids pulled back under a bandana, and she had a face that people described as "serious," which was a polite way of saying she didn't smile much. She didn't smile much because there wasn't much to smile about. She had a teenage son named Darren who was smart enough to get into trouble and not quite smart enough to get out of it, a two-bedroom apartment in Alief with a window unit that wheezed like an emphysema patient, and a car payment she was three months behind on. The overnight shift paid eleven dollars and sixty cents an hour, which came out to roughly twenty-three thousand a year before taxes, which came out to roughly not enough.

But the overnight shift had one advantage the day shift didn't: the company of Cindy Marquez and Sonya Feld.

Sonya was already at the sorting table when Roberta glanced over, her thin frame bent over a pile of hospital gowns that needed to be separated by size. She was the youngest of the three, thirty-one, with a narrow face and dark circles under her eyes that never quite went away. She'd been a paralegal once, at a firm in Montrose that handled immigration cases, until the firm's senior partner got disbarred for commingling client funds and the whole operation folded like a bad hand of poker. That had been three years ago. She'd been folding linens ever since, which she said was "basically the same job, except the linens don't cry."

Sonya looked up and caught Roberta's eye. She mimed hanging herself with an invisible rope. Roberta snorted.

"How many more hours?" Sonya called over the noise.

"Five and a half."

"God is dead."

"He's not dead. He just works the day shift."

This was the texture of their friendship—dry, dark, and essential. They'd found each other the way people do in places like this, through proximity and the slow recognition that the other person was also barely holding it together. Roberta had been the first to offer Sonya a cigarette during a break, back when Sonya was new and looked like she might bolt. Cindy had joined them a week later, pulling up a milk crate and saying, "Either of you got a light, or do I have to set myself on fire the old-fashioned way?" That had been two years ago. They'd been inseparable on the overnight shift since.

Cindy was late tonight.

This wasn't unusual. Cindy ran late the way water ran downhill—naturally and without apology. She was thirty-six, compact and quick, with a laugh that could cut through the machine noise and a temper that could match it. She'd grown up in Pasadena, the refinery-choked suburb east of Houston that locals called Stinkadena, and she carried that hardscrabble energy like a second skin. She handled the accounts receivable for the facility, which meant she spent half her shift at a desk in the back office entering invoices and the other half on the floor helping with whatever needed doing. She was the only person on the overnight crew who understood the billing system, which made her technically indispensable, which meant Gil Buckner tolerated her lateness with a resigned sigh instead of a write-up.

Roberta checked the clock on the wall. Twelve-forty. Cindy's shift started at midnight.

She went back to folding. Snap, fold, fold, stack. The sheets smelled like chlorine and nothing else. Sometimes she dreamed about that smell, and in the dreams the whiteness of the sheets expanded until it swallowed everything—her apartment, her son, the highway, the whole city—and she'd wake up gasping, her hands still making the folding motions in the dark.

At twelve-fifty, the side door banged open.

Roberta looked up. Everyone on the floor looked up. The side door was the one that led from the employee parking lot, and it was supposed to be opened with a keycard, not slammed, and certainly not at a volume that competed with the pressers.

Cindy stood in the doorway.

For a moment, Roberta's brain couldn't process what she was seeing. Cindy was wearing a gray T-shirt and jeans, which was normal. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, which was unusual—she always tied it back for work. Her hands were at her sides, and her fingers were curled into fists, and she was shaking. Not trembling. Shaking. Like someone had grabbed her by the spine and was rattling her.

And she was covered in blood.

It was on her shirt, a wide dark stain that started at the collar and spread down across her chest like a bib. It was on her jeans, her forearms, her hands. There was a smear of it across her left cheek, as if she'd tried to wipe her face and only made it worse. The fluorescent light turned the blood a strange, almost purple color, and for one surreal second Roberta thought Cindy had spilled something at home—paint, maybe, or wine—and then her brain caught up with her eyes and she dropped the sheet she was holding.

"Cindy."

Sonya had already crossed the floor. She reached Cindy first, grabbing her by the shoulders, and Cindy flinched so hard she nearly fell.

"Don't touch me," Cindy said. Her voice was flat and strange, like she was reading from a script she didn't understand. "Don't—I need to—"

"What happened?" Sonya's voice was low and controlled, the paralegal in her surfacing through the panic. "Cindy. What happened to you?"

Gil Buckner was coming down the aisle between the folding stations, his face scrunched up like he'd smelled something worse than usual. Two other workers—a kid named Luis and an older woman everyone called Big Jean—had stopped their machines and were staring.

Roberta moved fast. She stepped between Cindy and the rest of the floor, blocking the sight line. "She cut herself," she said loudly, to no one in particular. "Cooking accident. It looks worse than it is."

"That's a lot of blood for a cooking accident," Gil said, craning his neck.

"She was making carnitas," Roberta said, which was absurd, but she said it with enough authority that Gil paused. "I'm taking her to the bathroom to clean up. Sonya, grab the first aid kit."

She didn't wait for permission. She took Cindy by the elbow—gently, but firmly—and steered her down the hallway that led past the break room to the women's restroom. Sonya followed, pulling the door shut behind them.

The restroom was small and grim, two stalls and a sink with a cracked mirror. The light buzzed and flickered. Roberta locked the door.

Cindy stood in the middle of the room, still shaking. Up close, the blood was worse. It was in her hair. Under her fingernails. The smell of it—copper and salt and something animal—filled the small space.

"Cindy," Roberta said. "Talk to me."

Cindy opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"I killed him," she said.

The fluorescent light buzzed.

"Mickey," Cindy said. "He broke in. I was—I'd just gotten home from the store, I was putting groceries away, and he came through the bedroom window. He must have—the lock's been broken for months, I told the landlord—" She stopped. Swallowed. "He was on me before I could even turn around. He had his hands on my throat. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't—"

Her voice cracked, and for a moment she wasn't talking anymore, she was just making a sound, a thin keening that bounced off the tile walls.

Sonya stepped forward and put her arms around her. Cindy went rigid, then collapsed into it, and the keening became sobbing, deep and ragged and ugly.

Roberta stood with her back against the locked door and watched. Her heart was hammering, but her face was still. She'd learned a long time ago that panic was a luxury she couldn't afford.

Mickey Padilla. She knew the name. Everyone who knew Cindy knew the name. He was Cindy's ex-boyfriend, a wiry, mean-eyed man who'd spent two years making Cindy's life a rolling disaster of screaming fights, broken dishes, and midnight phone calls that left her hollow-eyed at work. He'd put her in the emergency room once—a cracked rib and a bruise on her jaw that she'd tried to cover with foundation and failed. She'd finally left him eight months ago, moved to a new apartment, changed her number. He'd shown up twice since then, once outside her building and once at a gas station where she was filling up. Both times he'd just watched her, smiling, from across the parking lot. The police had been useless. Cindy had filed for a protective order, and the judge had denied it for insufficient evidence of imminent threat.

"I got the knife," Cindy said, her face still pressed against Sonya's shoulder. "From the counter. The big one, the one I use for—I just grabbed it. And he was still coming at me, and I—"

She pulled back from Sonya. Her eyes were red and wild.

"I stabbed him. In the chest. And he went down, and I—I stabbed him again. And again. I don't know how many times. I couldn't stop. I couldn't—"

"Okay," Roberta said. "Okay. Stop."

"He's dead, Roberta. He's on my kitchen floor and he's dead."

"Did anyone see? Did anyone hear?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. The apartment next to mine is empty, the guy moved out last month, and the one across the hall—Mrs. Phan—she's deaf, she doesn't—"

"Okay. We need to call the police."

"No."

The word came out sharp and immediate, and Cindy's eyes locked onto Roberta's with a ferocity that stopped her cold.

"No police," Cindy said. "You know what happens if I call the police. Mickey's got friends in the department. His cousin is a sergeant in the East End. And I have a record—that shoplifting thing from when I was twenty-two, they'll pull it up, they'll use it—"

"Cindy, that was fourteen years ago—"

"It doesn't matter. You know it doesn't matter. I'm a Latina with a prior who stabbed a man to death in her kitchen. In Texas. You want to tell me how that trial goes?"

Roberta opened her mouth to argue, but the words died. Because Cindy wasn't wrong. Not entirely. The system didn't bend toward women like them. It never had.

Sonya was quiet. She'd stepped back from Cindy and was leaning against the sink, her arms crossed, her face unreadable. Roberta knew that look. It was the look Sonya got when she was thinking three steps ahead.

"What are you asking us to do?" Sonya said.

Cindy looked at her. Then at Roberta. The shaking had subsided, replaced by something harder and more desperate.

"Help me," she said. "Please. I don't have anyone else."

The fluorescent light buzzed and flickered. Somewhere on the other side of the door, a presser hissed and clamped.

Roberta looked at Sonya. Sonya looked at Roberta.

There are moments in a life that function as hinges—points where everything that comes after swings in a different direction. Most of the time, you don't recognize them until years later, when you're lying awake at three in the morning replaying the conversation, the decision, the single word that changed everything. But sometimes you know. Sometimes you can feel the hinge turning under your feet, and you step through anyway, because the person on the other side of the door is your friend, and she's covered in blood, and she's asking for help, and you don't know how to say no.

"Okay," Roberta said. "Tell us everything."