THIRTEEN
I hate them all so much! Hate them hate them hate them hate them!!!! I’m going to kill them all! And I’m going to enjoy it!
ELIZABETH, THE PRESENT
The door to the bowling alley opened and a man walked in. Young, not too tall, fair skinned with light brown hair. Someone I recognized immediately. I barely got out the words ‘It’s him!’ before he lifted an assault rifle and began to fire.
And he was firing at us. We all hit the floor. Everything felt like it was in slo-mo. Like a Quentin Tarantino movie. Except these bullets were real. Alicia was the last one down. On her back – dead. Blood all over her face. I started screaming and couldn’t stop. Megan, on the other side of Alicia, got up to run to me and got hit, falling to the floor. Lotta, next to me, grabbed for Megan, but Megan said, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK.’ Her right hand was pressed against the wound, blood oozing between her fingers.
Alicia dead, Megan wounded – I looked up and saw the bikers heading toward my stalker. ‘Get him!’ I said. ‘Kill him!’ I wanted them to smash his head in, pulverize him. I wanted to personally stomp on his exposed lungs! But he turned the rifle on them and then seven or eight handguns came out and everyone started firing. Lotta grabbed me to pull me down, pushing me to the floor on the other side of her, just as the stalker lunged for me. He grabbed Lotta instead and dragged her out the door, firing his weapon as he went, and mostly hitting the ceiling.
When he was gone, the waitress in the little café said, ‘The cops are on their way.’ She ran to Alicia and felt for a pulse. ‘She’s alive,’ she said.
The biker chick who’d been with the big Hulk Hogan-mustache guy rushed over to check on Alicia and Megan.
I just stood there, staring at all the blood, knowing neither Alicia nor Megan would be hurt now if not for me. And Lotta – I couldn’t think about it. It was truly all my fault. Every bit of it. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, then realized I’d been saying it for a long time.
‘You guys OK?’ Megan asked the biker chick.
‘Yeah, couple of wing shots like you, honey, but the fucker couldn’t shoot worth shit.’
‘That’s good,’ Megan said.
‘Damn skippy,’ the biker chick said.
That’s when the first police officer arrived and, with him, the first ambulance.
When I got through with my part of the story, Mom said, ‘Well thank God Alicia’s OK. And Meggy,’ she said, pulling my sister to her and making Megan say ‘ouch!’ I hadn’t heard Mom call Megan ‘Meggy’ in a hundred years. It sounded nice.
Everyone looked at Lotta, who was still firmly in Graham’s arms. ‘He just dragged me to his car . . .’
‘What was the make and model?’ Mrs Luna asked.
‘It was a Toyota Celica, newish, dark blue with a gray cloth interior,’ she said as Mrs Luna wrote furiously. ‘But I don’t think it was his,’ Lotta continued. ‘There was a baby seat in the back. I think maybe he stole it.’
‘OK,’ Mrs Luna said. ‘What happened after he put you in the car?’
‘He drove toward Black Cat Ridge, but then he stopped at the bridge over the river and yanked me out. He tried to shove me over the bridge, but I kicked him in the balls and started running. I heard him start the car up, but when I turned to look, he was going over the bridge the other way so I stopped running.’ Looking over her shoulder, her gaze landed on this really cute policeman. ‘Then Officer Martinez came by and picked me up,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘And the rest, as they say, is history.’
I think Graham wasn’t sure whether to thank Officer Martinez or slug him, although I think thanking him would be the safer route.
‘Did he say anything to you in the car?’ Mrs Luna asked.
‘Not to me, really. He just kept saying, “I’ll kill them, I’ll kill them” over and over. It was really scary,’ Lotta said.
Mom went up to her and got between Lotta and Graham and hugged her. ‘I’m so sorry this happened to you,’ she said. Then slapped Lotta’s hand. ‘But that’s what you get for taking the girls out in that low-rider!’
‘Hey, it wasn’t my idea!’ Lotta said, pointing at me.
My mom turned to look at me. ‘It seemed to be a good idea at the time,’ I said.
Mom stared at me for a full half-minute, then started laughing. She hugged me and said, ‘You are soooooooooooo grounded.’
E.J., THE PRESENT
The upshot of the whole thing was three bikers got arrested for possession of unlicensed concealed weapons and discharging firearms within the city limits, and just being butt-ugly I think, while the real criminal, Elizabeth’s stalker, got away yet again.
I took the girls to Vera’s house while Graham took his boys home then was going to take Lotta home and explain to her parents what happened. I should have gone with him, but I had someone else to notify.
I went with Luna in her car back to Black Cat Ridge to notify Alicia’s foster parents that she was in the hospital.
The house where Alicia lived was just outside Black Cat Ridge. The houses inside Black Cat Ridge are all homogenized builders’ homes, each little village inside the ‘city’ a certain price range. Each little village having its own pool and rec center. This way the kids at the high school just had to ask each other which village they lived in to find out whether or not the other was good enough to befriend. OK, I had some problems with the set-up.
The foster home was in the country outside the city limits of Black Cat Ridge. When we found the right dirt road to go down, it took a while at night to find the right mailbox. I knew the name of the foster parents was ‘Rampy,’ George and Inez, which helped us find the mailbox, which stood next to a rutted drive between clumps of brush and trees. Luna turned into the drive and within seconds we could see the house, all lit up like a Christmas tree, but not nearly as merry.
There were several vehicles in the drive, on the grass, and further out in the acreage. We could hear someone cursing and banging on what sounded like yet another vehicle behind the house. Most of the vehicles we saw appeared to be non-working.
The house itself was very large, three stories, and leaned haphazardly to the left. The front porch, which ran the length of the house, listed to the right. The wooden steps leading to the porch numbered four, but only two of them weren’t broken through. Since the house was so lit up one could readily tell that what paint had once been on this house was so far gone the color was unknown.
Luna knocked on the door and we waited. Finally it was opened and a child stood there staring at us. He was about five, maybe six years old, hair sticking out every which way, nose running. He had on only underwear shorts, so old and dingy they looked gray.
‘Is your mother home?’ Luna asked the child.
‘Huh?’ he said.
‘Are either Mr or Mrs Rampy home?’ she asked again.
‘Huh?’ he said.
Then we heard a woman’s voice. ‘Don’t be stupid, Jarred!’ The boy was roughly pushed away from the door and then a woman was standing in front of us.
‘What?’ she demanded. She was maybe in her forties, with bleached blond hair, wearing lots of make-up and a halter-top that was failing to hold up enormous breasts. A muffin top of extreme proportions was exposed between the halter-top and the short-shorts, themselves exposing thighs like beef hindquarters. ‘Who are you?’
Luna showed her badge and identified herself. Then said, ‘Are you the legal guardian of Alicia Donnelly?’
The woman, Inez Rampy one could only assume, seemed to think about it for a moment, then said, ‘Yeah. What’s she done?’
‘She was hurt this evening at the bowling alley in Codderville,’ Luna said.
The woman took a stance, one hand on her hip, the other hip sticking out, a frown on her face. ‘What in the hell was she doing in Codderville?’ she demanded. ‘She was supposed to be over at some friend’s house in Black Cat.’
‘Do you know what friend she was visiting?’ Luna asked, her hand pressing against me as I’d started to answer.
The woman shrugged. ‘I dunno. Some kid from school. She’s over there all the time. Who can keep up?’ As she said that a child about three ran up and hugged her leg. Inez Rampy shook the child off and yelled, ‘Gretchen! Get your ass down here and take this brat upstairs like I tole you!’ To Luna she said, ‘God, kids! Whatja gonna do? Law says you can’t kill ’em!’ She laughed.
I already had a grip on Luna’s waistband, which got tighter as the woman spoke. I couldn’t help it. I whispered, ‘Luna!’
She elbowed me in the gut.
‘So what’s Alicia gotten herself into?’ Inez Rampy asked.
‘Like I said, she’s been hurt,’ Luna said, speaking slowly, her words clipped. ‘As her legal guardian I thought you should be notified.’
‘Well, I ain’t paying for it! Shit, they don’t pay me enough to do that! You need to contact Children’s Services,’ she said. ‘They’ll take care of the hospital bill.’
‘Don’t you want to know what happened to her?’ I demanded. ‘Don’t you want to go visit her?’
For the first time the woman looked at me. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
‘That doesn’t matter,’ Luna said. ‘You might want to contact the hospital and see when you’ll be able to bring her home.’
‘Well now, somebody’s gonna have to bring her back here. I don’t got a car in the daytime, my man has to work, ya know. And if she’s gonna need special care, they’re gonna have to put her someplace else. I don’t have time to be taking care of a special needs kid, know what I mean? I got four kids in diapers here and then five others. Who’s got the time for changing bandages and shit?’
‘Thank you for your time, ma’am,’ Luna said, and pushed me down the broken steps and over to her car.
As we drove back down the dirt road, I said, ‘Boy, Willis is going to be surprised when he gets home to find another girl living there.’
BLACK CAT RIDGE, TEXAS, 1999
There were three bodies inside the trailer, those of two men and a woman. One had been identified as Billy Dave Petrie, the other two were man and wife, and they’d all been dead for several days.
After Luna answered the questions of the Washington County sheriff’s department personnel, we headed home, Luna dropping us off at our house where we gathered the kittens and their paraphernalia, packed a suitcase for ourselves, and dropped the kittens off at the nearest boarding facility. Then Luna took us to a motel on the outskirts of town.
‘I’m getting sick and tired of unsolved cases,’ she said, once we were safely inside our ‘no-tell-motel’ room. ‘We’re at a standstill. Larry took us to Clyde who took us to Billy Dave, who, frankly, ain’t taking us nowhere no how. And this isn’t even my only whodunnit.’
‘You’re working on another case?’ I asked, stretching out on the bed.
‘Yeah. Remember that school counselor, Mrs Olson, who died in the car wreck last week?’
‘Yeah, I read about it in the paper,’ I said, almost too tired to make my mouth move with the words.
‘Turns out it wasn’t an accident. Somebody cut her brake line.’ She shook herself and stood up from the bed. ‘I gotta get out of here before I take your lead, Pugh, and fall asleep.’
‘I’m not asleep,’ I said, at least I thought I did.
I heard the TV go on. ‘Pugh, wake up. You have a husband right here,’ Luna said, ‘and they got that special TV here! Bye, y’all.’ And she was out the door.
Willis pulled me down on the bed. ‘You sleepy?’
We cuddled while we watched the picture on the TV. It was entirely too bizarre even to try to describe. Willis turned his head sideways, staring at the screen. Then the other way. Finally, he nibbled my ear. ‘You wanna try that?’
I pulled at his T-shirt. ‘Is our Blue Cross paid up?’
We were half undressed and pursuing a rather unusual line of foreplay when I sat bolt upright in the bed, knocking Willis to the floor.
‘What the hell?’ he said, rubbing his head.
‘Mrs Olson!’ I said loudly. Willis turned off the TV. ‘She was Monique’s sponsor in the PAL program!’
‘The what?’ he asked, crawling back up on the bed where he began nibbling on parts of me.
I pushed him away. ‘Peer Assistance and Leadership! At the high school! The juniors and seniors counseled the freshmen and sophomores!’
‘OK,’ Willis said. ‘Now the big question: So?’
‘So . . . I don’t know! But there’s got to be a connection. We thought all this time somebody was after Roy! But don’t you see? It didn’t have to be Roy. It could have been Terry, or Aldon . . . or Monique! Monique is murdered and then her counselor is murdered! That’s a coincidence?’
Willis shrugged as he leaned towards my neck, his tongue searching out that particular spot. ‘Could be . . .’
I jumped off the bed and pulled the sheet up to cover my body. It’s not what it used to be, but Willis still seems to have a one-track mind when it’s bared to him.
Willis moaned. ‘Jeez, Eeg! Enough! We’re in a motel room. The kids are fifty miles away – safe. We’ve got a dirty movie on the TV. Relax, damn it!’
I picked up the phone and dialed Luna’s home number, giving her the information I’d given Willis.
‘Hum,’ she said.
‘Hum? Hum? That’s all you’ve got to say?’
‘What? OK, it’s a coincidence!’
‘It can’t be!’ I yelled. I took a deep breath and plunged ahead. ‘All I’m saying is we may have been looking in the wrong place. It doesn’t have to have been Roy who was the target. It could have been Monique.’
‘Monique and Mrs Olson were running drugs through the school? Jesus, E.J.’
‘No! Luna, listen to me! Something they had in common – something to do with the PAL program.’
Luna sighed. ‘Fourteen-year-old kids griping because their mothers make them take out the garbage? I’ve got one of those. Believe me, it’s not worth killing over.’
‘Check the school!’ I insisted.
‘I’ve checked the school! Fifty times! Everybody loved Mrs Olson. Nobody wanted to off her.’
‘But you said somebody did!’ I insisted.
There was a long silence on the line. ‘E.J., go screw your husband,’ she said, and hung up on me.
With nothing better to do, I took her advice.
GRAHAM, THE PRESENT
Didn’t do things exactly as my mother had ordered me to. We drove Lotta home first. I did go inside, but Manny said Lotta’s parents were both asleep, so I left without having my big discussion with them. Her mother would have just started crying and her father would have taken out his gun and shot me, and I thought there’d been enough of that already. I kissed her goodbye then went back outside to the Valiant where my buds awaited.
And then we headed in search of the stalker. Lotta said he’d gone over the bridge into Black Cat after he’d tried to dump her in the river, but I knew there was no place for him to hide in Black Cat. All there is here are people’s homes, and lots of them. But there was a lot of country around Black Cat and he could be hidden out in a cabin, like when he first took Liz back in April, or just laying low in the trees like a homeless person. I still wasn’t exactly sure what he looked like, but I knew what he didn’t look like – a homeless person. I was going to find him, and then, well, it wasn’t going to be pretty.
ELIZABETH, APRIL, 2009
‘Let me out!’ Elizabeth yelled for what felt like the millionth time. She was on the floor of the back seat of Grandma’s old Valiant, her hands and feet bound with duct tape. He hadn’t taped her mouth, and she was glad for that. She never saw his face. He’d shoved Megan down and grabbed Elizabeth’s head, burying it in the seat, and holding it there as he got in the driver’s seat and spun out of the Pizza Garden parking lot. They were several miles down the road before he stopped the car and bound her hands and feet with the duct tape and threw her in the back of the car, the entire time keeping her face turned away from him. He also hadn’t said a word.
He was driving moderately, probably the speed limit, Elizabeth thought, not wanting to draw the attention of the police. If she’d been in the trunk, she thought, she could kick out one of the tail lights like she saw on ‘Oprah’ that time, and get the police to stop them. But lying on the floor of the back seat, she had no options.
Finally she decided to try some finesse. ‘Aldon?’ He didn’t answer. ‘Why are you doing this?’ Still no answer. ‘I want to see you. I want to talk to you about what’s happening. I don’t understand why you’ve thrown me back here! I’m your sister!’
It was as if the car was driving itself. There was no sound, no movement from the front seat. Elizabeth tried again. ‘Is it because I brought Megan with me? I’m sorry about that, but I don’t drive. She had to drive me here. Is that what you’re mad about?’ Still only silence met her words. ‘She doesn’t know, if that’s what you’re worried about. She thinks I was meeting a boy. I mean, you know, like a boyfriend. I didn’t say a word about you, Aldon! You told me not to. And I’ve always done what you told me to do, haven’t I, big brother?’
Softly, from the front seat, he said, ‘You were a good baby sister.’
Elizabeth felt her skin crawl. Was it better having him answer her? At this point she wasn’t sure. ‘And you were a good big brother,’ she said.
‘I tried,’ he said. ‘I saved you that night.’
Mama E.J. had told her that her real mother, Terry, had fallen on her when she was shot, keeping her safe with her dead body. She said Aldon had been found on the stairs, trying to run away. ‘Yes, I know,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I always knew it was you who saved me.’
‘I’ve changed, Bessie,’ he said. ‘Physically and emotionally. I’m not the same Aldon you knew.’
‘How could you be?’ Elizabeth said. ‘After what you’ve been through.’
‘I’ve had work done to hide my appearance,’ he said. ‘That picture I sent you on email was taken right before I had everything done.’
‘Oh,’ she said. And she knew in that moment, although she’d thought she’d known all along, at this point she really knew: This was not Aldon. Aldon had been dead for the past ten years, just as she’d always been told. Tears sprang to her eyes as the half-hope left her. She really hadn’t known which to hope for – that her brother Aldon was alive and that her adoptive mother and father were evil, or that her world was just as she’d always thought it was, and still without Aldon.
Something in her tone must have alerted the driver. He said, ‘You don’t believe me.’
Trying to control her thoughts and tears, Elizabeth said, ‘Of course I do, Aldon.’
There was a laugh from the front seat. ‘No you don’t. But that’s OK. I don’t really care. You ever see Aliens?’ he asked. ‘The second one. Where that Marine gets scared and he yells, “Game over, man, game over.” You ever see that?’
‘Yes, I saw that,’ Elizabeth said, remembering parts of that movie that had scared her so badly she had nightmares.
‘Well, Bessie,’ he said, pulling Grandma’s Valiant to a stop. ‘Game over.’
ELIZABETH, THE PRESENT
Mom called earlier in the evening and said she’d pick us up in the morning to take us to Codderville Memorial Hospital, where Alicia was. I was too . . . everything, I guess, to go to sleep. I just paced the room that Megan and I shared at Grandma’s and worried. Everything was my fault. Everything. Even the guy stalking me in the first place was my fault. I don’t know what I did to him, but I did something that started this whole thing. And now look what had happened. Alicia had been shot, Megan had been shot, Lotta had been kidnapped, Mom had almost been arrested, and Myra Morris – oh, yeah, don’t forget Myra Morris! – was dead. D-E-A-D dead. Like, she wasn’t coming back. Like her whole life was ahead of her and now it was no more. Gone. Fini!
I’m not being melodramatic. I’m just telling it like it is: It was all my fault. Maybe my birth parents dying was my fault, too! Who knew? I know I was only four, but four-year-olds are people, too, ya know? I had to do something! Fix something! But the only thing I could think to do at this moment was go to the hospital and see Alicia. My mother had been up there, said Alicia had been given a pain pill and was resting. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t just go up there and sit beside her. Yes, I know. There were rules, like visiting hours, and crap like that, but under the current circumstances who could possible argue my point? And if someone tried to, well, then, I’d just sneak in there and hide.
I got dressed while Megan slept, ready to quietly sneak out of the house.
E.J., THE PRESENT
Luna and I sat in my living room with a bottle of wine. I needed it. I was glad we didn’t have scotch in the house, or bourbon, or heroin. Just kidding. It had been a rough evening. I left the girls at Vera’s where I knew they’d be safe. Vera had so many dogs that there wasn’t much of a chance anybody could sneak in.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ I said to Luna.
‘Always a bad sign,’ she said, helping herself liberally to my $9.95 bottle of white.
‘No. Really. We’ve been assuming all along that this stalker is some stranger who fixated on Bessie for some unknown reason. What if he’s not? What if it’s someone she knows? Or someone we – the family – know?’
‘Happens,’ Luna said.
‘Of course it happens!’ I snapped. I mean, really. ‘But who? Have you thought about that?’ I said, accusingly this time.
‘Yes, as a matter of fact I have. I talked to Elizabeth about any boys who’ve been bothering her at school, or boys who just look at her funny—’
‘This isn’t a boy at school. He’s too old,’ I interjected.
‘We didn’t know this in April when I talked to her about it!’ All right, now she was getting testy.
I apologized in an unconvincing manner and she went on. ‘You don’t have any youngish men in your circle of friends that I’m aware of . . .’
She looked at me. ‘No, we don’t,’ I answered.
‘How about at church? I asked Elizabeth that but she couldn’t think of anybody,’ Luna said.
‘At church? The youth group director is a guy, but he’s like six-four, so he’s not the one. There are a few eighteen-year-olds in the youth group, but they’re girls.’ Then I thought about someone. It made me feel horrible to think of him, but I did. ‘Ah, there might be someone,’ I said.
‘Who?’
My shoulders slumped and I felt like crying. I didn’t want to accuse him, to sic the cops on this young man, but . . . ‘There is a young man at church. He’s mildly retarded. He used to come with his elderly mother every Sunday, but she passed away recently.’
‘When?’ Luna demanded.
‘Let me think. March? Yes, I believe her service was right after St Patrick’s Day because there were still some green decorations in the Sunday school wing when I went to her service.’
‘The stressor!’ Luna declared.
‘The huh?’ I asked.
‘The stressor. His mom dies in March, Bessie is kidnapped in April. Where is he living now?’
‘I think he’s still in his mom’s house. He’s only mildly retarded, but very shy—’
‘Has he been around the girls? How tall is he? Does he have the smarts to do the computer crap?’
‘Whoa,’ I said. ‘Give me a minute. Oh, God! Yes, he knows computers! That’s how he earns his living! I remember Mrs Marsh told me when he got this job – working from home with his computer! She was thrilled.’
‘That’s his mother?’ Luna asked. I nodded. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Thomas Marsh. They live in Sherwood Forest,’ I said, naming the most expensive village in Black Cat Ridge. ‘I mean, he lives there.’
‘Has he been around the girls?’ she asked.
‘Only when I would speak to his mother after church. Oh, and now I speak to him and the girls are usually with me.’
‘How tall is he?’ Luna asked.
‘Shorter than me by a few inches.’ I felt slightly sick as I said it. ‘Just about the right height.’
‘We’ll ask Elizabeth in the morning. She said she recognized the stalker when he came in shooting, so she’ll know if it was this Thomas character or not.’
‘You’re right. She did recognize him. Which means it can’t be Thomas because she knows him.’
‘We’ll ask,’ Luna repeated.
BLACK CAT RIDGE, TEXAS, 1999
The next morning we went to LaGrange to pick up the kids. I was eating some of Aunt Louise’s wonderful baked goods and she was in the middle of a story about a friend of hers whose son was murdered by a guy wielding a hacksaw. It took a while but the guy obviously got the job done. I was half-listening, the other part of my mind was thinking about how much Monique would have loved the story. Pretty, tiny Monique with her penchant for Freddy Krueger movies and heavy metal music. Monique, at sixteen a senior, was such a dichotomy of the teenager: silly and serious, childlike and grown-up. Would Megan and Bessie be like that when they were sixteen? Would they apply their mascara remembering exactly how Barbie dressed for the ‘big date?’ Would they switch from MTV to the Disney Channel with such abandon? Would they hide their secrets with grown-up next-door-neighbors?
I sat up straight on the horsehair sofa. My God, I thought. Oh my God!
‘What is it?’ Willis asked.
‘We have to go home.’
‘Honey, we can’t go home—’
I stood up. ‘Willis! We have to go home now!’
I ran for the front door, turning to Aunt Louise. ‘You’ll keep the kids?’
She was standing, her short, pudgy body all aquiver from the excitement she knew was there but didn’t understand. ‘Of course!’
In my mind, as I ran for the car, I could hear Aunt Louise say, ‘Run! Run like the wind!’
I did.