“I CAN’T STOP thinking about it.”
“Last night?” He had that ‘I’m just teasing, but reassure me anyway’ thing going on that guys sometimes get.
“Well, that goes without saying, but I was multi-tasking, ya know, kind of like you were last night, only not quite as much skill, or quite as fun, but the best I can do in my current state.”
“Current state?”
“Hungover.”
“Hungover? Cara, you don’t even really drink. How could you be hungover?”
“Not on alcohol. On you!”
I love it when he blushes. “Oh!”
“What I was thinking about is minutia.”
“Okay.”
“The whole thing with Jerkface.”
“Okay.”
“My mom used to tell us all the time that it’s just plain stupid to tell a lie because no matter what you do the truth of it will rise to the top. That the more cunning you’re trying to be, the more likely you are to reveal yourself.”
“Okay.”
“When Jerkface was talking to me, way back when all this started, he said that Louis was just sure that every crime could be solved with enough inspection of the related minutia. It had a ring of truth to it. It meant something.”
“Okay.”
“What if that’s actually what happened? What if Louis was slogging through the minutia and what he found was information that pointed at Jerkface?”
“Doesn’t that sound just as convenient as the theory going the other direction? The theory Steph and Carmine proposed and you and Teagan got so upset about?”
“Pretty much, except that my theory feels right.”
“That’s scientific.”
“Don’t be like that.”
“I’m just telling you what the reaction is likely to be.”
“Then I need to find evidence to prove my theory.”
“Hold on. First, you’re supposed to stay out of this whole thing and let the professionals deal with it. Remember? We agreed.”
“But if they’re right, the bad guys are already in jail, if it really is Jerkface and his sister. Or he’s dead, if it was Louis. Either way there isn’t any real threat to me anymore. If the professionals are wrong, then the bad guys were either never in jail, or will be out of jail soon enough, and then when I’m not paying attention because I think everything is just spiffy, it is all gonna sneak up on me and bite me in the butt.”
“We wouldn’t want that. It’s such a cute butt.”
“If Jerkface and his sister convince the world at large that Louis was the killer and they were just trying to cover it up after Louis’s unfortunate accident so that the money that was legitimately left to the place where Jerkface’s sister worked would not be hosed up, then they are gonna be in trouble, but not serial murderer trouble.”
“You know, that never really made sense to me anyway…”
“Doesn’t make sense to me either, but that’s pretty much what Steph told us.”
“I’m pretty sure Steph knows a bunch more than she is telling us.”
“That’s another thing. Why is Steph in on all of this anyway? Seems like it would be a cop thing, not a lawyer thing.”
“I agree.”
“When you think of a lawyer involved in any process, you think she is there to protect the interests of her client. If I’m not her client, and we’re pretty sure I’m not — Teagan thinks that Steph approached her, not the other way around — so if Steph had some other interest in this, what is her interest? Who is she protecting? Jerkface and his sister hadn’t even come into the picture yet, and Louis was already dead.”
“Good question.”
“And, what is the connection? There has to be one. If Jerkface is the killer, why did they arrest his sister? And if she is the killer, why did they arrest Jerkface? And if they killed together, where does Louis fit in? And if Louis is the killer, then where do Jerkface and his sister fit in? And if it was Louis and Jerkface’s sister, what the hell is that and what about Jerkface?”
“Those are all really good questions, and I don’t have an answer to any of them.”
“Well, I’m gonna find an answer to all of them.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“The answer is in the minutia.”
“Great. I liked it better when we’d decided that it was all over but the court appearance.”
“Your grandmother told me to stop acting like a ninny, and she was right. I’ve been sitting back and letting life happen to me. That isn’t the O’Flynn way. That isn’t my way. I make my life what it is by the actions I take. Life is cause and effect. Choose your cliché. I’m getting my reality back.”
“Where do we start?”
“You go to work. I’m pretty sure that I’m perfectly safe. No matter who the bad guy is, he isn’t going to want to bring attention to himself, so he isn’t going to do anything to hurt me. I’m going to snoop around on the Internet for a while, think for a while, and then call Jovana to see if there is anything I can do to help with the cleanup at the ballroom or somehow pay back her or the girls from the bar for all they have done for me and my family. Then I’m going to check on Adeline. Then I’m going to the mall and finding a completely inappropriate and unbelievably sheer fabulous something to wear tonight. I’m going grocery shopping. Then I am going to meet you back here, with a wonderful dinner prepared, and me, in said unbelievably sheer fabulous outfit, doing my very best to get all of your attention back to more pleasant things.”
“Well, I won’t be going outside for a few minutes. I’ll put the kettle on so you can have a cup of tea.”
Good thing we have an automatic shut-off on the kettle.
Good thing A.J. makes his own hours.
I’m just sayin’.
My mom called before I could put my plans for the day into action. “Hello, love.”
“Hi, Mom, what’s up?”
“Your brother and his new bride have asked that I give the family a call. They would like to get together here for dinner tomorrow tonight, along with a few members of Morgan’s family, to eat some of that leftover food from the wedding and open their gifts.”
“Oh, crap.”
“Excuse me?”
“I special ordered their gift, and I don’t think it’ll be done.”
“I’m sure they will understand, love.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t make it better. I’ll give the guy a call.”
“Will we see you here for dinner then?”
“Of course. Can I bring anything?”
“I was hoping you would ask. Morgan invited A.J.’s grandmother. She has accepted the invitation. Can you pick her up? And, of course, A.J. is more than welcome.”
“I can do that. Remind me to thank Morgan.”
“You’re a grown woman, Cara. I’m sure you can remember such a basic thing on your own.”
“You would think so, but I seem to be having problems remembering anything these days.”
“’Tis all the stress from the situation you find yourself in. It will get better in time.”
“I hope so. I’m beginning to worry about myself. I’ve always flipped from one subject to another, but it used to make some sense. There used to be a thread to it. Now I’m just all over the place.”
“Often you don’t see the connection between two things until you have the luxury of looking back at them. If you are having problems, love, perhaps you should change your vantage point.”
“Good idea, but I think the only thing I haven’t tried is standing on my head.”
“Then I’ll leave you to it.”
With that she was gone.
I texted A.J. and extended the invitation. He said he’d already gotten word from Jovana; she would be there as well. He was very touched that his grandmother had been invited. I reminded him that he’s part of a family now, caught myself before I said ‘for better or worse,’ and that if it hadn’t been for him, Morgan would have had to walk down the aisle naked. His “damn, wouldn’t have minded seeing that” made me laugh; too bad he wasn’t close enough to smack.
Jovana had A.J. pass along the message that there was no need to help clean up the ballroom. Morgan’s father had paid for a crew to take care of it. Yay!
Next I called A.J.’s grandmother and told her that A.J. and I would pick her up and that my parents’ house is three steps beyond casual for these things.
I called my engraver guy; he said he could have the gift done by tomorrow afternoon. Yay again.
I called Adeline and offered to go over and fix lunch and visit. She said that she was spending the whole day painting and that she’d see me soon.
Most of the day to myself. A.J. usually works a short day on weekends. Today, a shoot with a mom and dad and a bunch of little ones, might take longer than usual. He said he’d be back in time for dinner. Grocery shopping and the mall could wait; I felt a solution to my mysteries coming on.
Logging on to the Internet, I had no idea where to start. That’s one of the nice things about the Internet; you can start just about anywhere.
I started out with the obvious and figured I’d branch out from there. I typed Jerkface’s sister in the search engine and hit return. I got a hundred ninety-three thousand results in point two six seconds. Great. I typed in a plus sign and added Jerkface’s name; that cut it down to just a hundred eighty-seven thousand.
I puttered around the Internet for a while, very hit or miss, and happened onto a site that offered to find Jerkface and his sister for me for just under twenty dollars. I was tempted. I decided to look to see if there were any sites that would give me such information for free, and although I didn’t find that, what I did find was a site that listed Jerkface and a handful of people in his life. My guess is the intention was to sort out the person you are looking for from everyone else with the same name.
The right basic geographical area and his sister’s name were there for Jerkface.
The right geographical area and her brother’s name were there for Jerkface’s sister.
They both had two other matching names. I assumed one to be their father and one to be their mother, or stepparent or whatever.
I jumped up and celebrated that minor victory with a cup of tea and a happy dance in the kitchen while it brewed.
Once I had my cup of tea beside me for its magical powers, mostly of caffeine, I tried to find information on the parents.
First I tried the sex offender registration stuff. I figured if Jerkface’s father was a perv years ago, he’s probably still a perv. There is no cure for evil, and sexual abuse on a child isn’t acting out. It is evil. Couldn’t find him.
I spent the better part of my whole cup of tea searching anything that came to mind with no luck.
Frustrated, I typed ‘how to find a person for free on the Internet’ and everything I needed appeared before me. I love the Internet.
I printed out some articles and some step-by-step instructions. How to look people up through everything from social networks to military records, from reverse email directories to professional organizations and yearbooks. I even found a way to look up a person’s family tree that was helpful.
More tea.
I know that I should have opened tabs or extra windows or whatever, but I just can’t do that, so my printer was pretty busy for a while.
I took all the printed material, highlighted what I thought might match, then went back to the computer and searched on that information, printed it out, and highlighted some more.
By the time it was time for more tea, I had every horizontal surface in my apartment covered with paper, had a really good feeling about finally getting to the bottom of all this, and was secure in the knowledge that if Teagan was available to help me, I’d get it done in half the time.
“Hey.”
“Hi, you busy?”
“Not really. Jessie has a meeting.”
“Today?”
“Yep. What about you?”
“A.J.’s working.”
“And you questioned Jessie having a meeting?”
“Okay, stupid response, can you come over?”
“Sure. Why?”
“I think I’m onto something with the whole Jerkface thing.”
“Four minutes, put on the kettle.”
It took us about four hours, but we had a solid case, documents to back it up, and were mostly convinced we were right.
“Now what?”
“We could call Steph.”
“Do we trust her?”
“Cara, I don’t trust anybody about this. This is scary to be looking at proof that you have found a serial killer. And, I’m not even sure what the ramifications for all of this are going to be. What if it rains back down on the family?”
“Oh, it’s gonna rain.”
“We can’t do nothing.”
“Teagan, if we found it, then the professionals can find it.”
“If they want to, but I’m beginning to think they don’t want to.”
“Why?”
“I have no clue.”
“So what do we do?”
“Since it is the family that will pay the price, I think we should talk to Mom and Dad.”
“Agreed.”
“Do we go to them or ask them to come to us?”
“We always go to them, but this is something profoundly different. I think they should come here.”
“Agreed. I’ll call Mom and see when they can come.”
Teagan called Jessie to let him know she would be late. I called Mom and told her I needed to talk to her and needed her to come to my apartment. It was a rare request. She said she and Daddy would be here in less than thirty minutes.
I looked around and saw the mess that is my home. The first time my parents have been over since A.J. moved in, and I didn’t even bother to straighten up. Another rare event.
When Mom and Daddy were settled on the couch with a cup of tea, Teagan and I did a tag team approach to fill them in on as many details as we had and how we got there.
Teagan started. “We’re going to present this to you just like we would present it to a lawyer or the cops, and we need you to be completely honest about what you hear. If we’re crazy, or wrong, or should just back away, we need you to tell us. If we need to go to the cops, or the FBI, or whatever, we need to know that, too. Some of this stuff you probably already know, and I apologize if we are repeating something, but we’re going to go from top to bottom.”
All she got was a nod of agreement. My parents were in listening to something important mode. They’re really good at that. Probably comes from all those doctor’s reports when my sister was sick. My parents can take it all in, process it, and then ask really intelligent, cogent, and relevant questions.
We explained all the background stuff. About Billy getting hoodwinked into having me work on Louis’s condo. About Louis’s car accident, the first time I went to the condo, and meeting Joe-the-cop, Louis’s one time partner, who was now christened Jerkface. I told them about Jerkface showing up at the condo and then showing up at my apartment after I’d found the journals. I admitted to my parents that Jerkface sat on the couch they were now sitting on to read the journals with me.
I looked over at Teagan. She gave me a look to continue.
“Almost the minute I brought the journals back to this apartment to read, things started getting strange, but I didn’t know that at the time. The journals were ugly, but they didn’t tell me anything at the time. I’m not sure of the exact order things happened, I wasn’t writing it down, but as close as Teagan and I can come to it, this is what happened.”
Teagan handed me the papers we’d been working on.
“Jerkface started lying to me right from the start, but I didn’t know enough to know it was lies, and me, being me, I just took it at face value. First it was the journals. Then he said that he had a warrant, and he used flattery, saying that my brilliant detective skills helped to figure out that Louis, Bernie, and another lady that doesn’t matter for this discussion all had the same three letters in their car tags and that he talked to other cops and that they thought I might be onto something. Since then, I contacted a friend of mine that knows about math, and he said that the chances of there being any connection between those three because of the tag numbers was basically the same as a random event. Jerkface is a cop and would have known that, so from the very beginning he was just playing me for a fool, and I kind of thought he was, but since he was a cop and everything, I ignored my instincts.”
Teagan said gently, “We need to stay on track.”
“True. Sorry. So, anyway, Jerkface just started showing up at the apartment and at Louis’s condo. Seems like where I went, he went. When Teagan beat him up at the condo, he later said that his black eyes were caused by hitting the counter, but that doesn’t make much sense. Who trips in spit?”
My father’s eyebrows went up, but he didn’t say a word.
“Anyway, so, Jerkface is showing up at the condo unexpectedly, or we caught him there by accident, and then he shows up at your house, and at the time, I thought he was at the cemetery, but now I’m thinking it really was his sister.”
Teagan was getting frustrated. “You want me to do this?”
“I told you to do it from the beginning.”
“Fine. We split this whole problem into pieces. First piece is Louis. We aren’t sure how Cara ended up cleaning out his condo, but it seems that Billy was hoodwinked into contacting Cara, and she was hoodwinked into cleaning the condo.”
“I already said that.”
She gave me a look. I decided to let her do it her way. “Louis was a good guy. The ladies we talked to at the condo complex all agreed he was a good guy. He went out of his way to help them. He went out of his way to help the physical therapist who was trying to get him back in shape to get back to work. He was even nice to her brother. He donated a bunch of picnic tables to a group home. Cara went back through his bills this afternoon, and he made regular donations to worthy charities. He’d just renewed his life insurance for ten years. That doesn’t sound like a serial murderer to us, so we kept looking for more pieces.”
Teagan flipped to the next page.
“Then we have Jerkface. He seemed scary from the beginning. When he met Cara at the condo, he tried to intimidate her from the start. He showed up at this apartment uninvited. He probably ran her plates the first time he saw her at the condo, or since he’s the one that hoodwinked Billy, he might have already known where she lived. Either way, it’s obvious he’s okay with bending the rules when he wants something and just plain ignoring them when it works for him. Thinking back on it, he pushed and pushed Cara. At first so that she would become more involved, then so she would back off. According to Steph, his fingerprints were not in the places they should have been at Louis’s. He claimed that he was working on an undercover police thing, but there’s no way. He got mad at Cara’s neighbor and started waving his gun around, the cops showed up, but he was back on the street fast enough to break in and get run off by her neighbor again. He’s driving a Mini Cooper, which is expensive on a cop’s salary. He’s threatened Cara several times. At first he was subtle, but he got more and more aggressive, and it all got more and more frequent. And before you get mad, Cara did try to get help from the very beginning. That first time that Jerkface showed up at her apartment she called dispatch, and they told her that Jerkface was a well-respected cop. It’s not like she was a total idiot.”
You know what they say, with friends like Teagan…
She continued, “So, Jerkface had our attention. Cara and I were able to find a little bit about him on the Internet. Seems there’s a blog or a social network page or a website for just about everything these days. You just have to know where to look and be willing to see it. Jerkface has a few people mad at him out there. Mostly for things that pretty much tiptoe on the edge of something that would get him in trouble, but he never really jumped in the pool. Things like having a guy’s car towed. The guy claims that he was in an argument with his girlfriend and that Jerkface threatened to arrest him, but instead towed his prized show-quality car. Another guy said that Jerkface is known for harassing people in Old Town. A woman said that she rebuffed Jerkface, her words not mine, and she’s been getting tickets for all kinds of stuff ever since. We couldn’t find anything that would stick as abuse of power, but certainly a show of power.
Mom leaned forward and poured herself and Daddy more tea.
Teagan continued, “Jerkface’s sister is a problem. Her name is Kirsten Branden Gagnon. We heard on the news that she was taken out of Jerkface’s home when he was twelve and she was ten. We really couldn’t find anything about that; family court is usually confidential. We were able to find her high school stuff, but other than a couple of comments by people from back then saying that they missed her for a few months here and there, nothing huge. She popped up on the radar again when she was about eighteen. She did a car commercial. We found a bunch of more recent stuff, all of it getting darker and darker. A poem she wrote for some contest. Entries on people’s social network pages. Nothing huge.”
I think we were starting to lose Daddy. His eyes were starting to glaze over.
“Then we found a picture of her in the newspaper from years ago. She was a bridesmaid at some girl’s wedding. That picture listed the name of the girl getting married. We started looking up anything we could find on the bride. We found the bride’s mother, who had a different last name. We searched for information on the bride’s mother and found a picture of Jerkface’s sister with the bride’s mother and her own mother. That caption told us that Jerkface’s sister and her mother do not have the same last name. So then we did searches for Jerkface’s last name, and Kirsten’s last name, and her mother’s last name, and any and every combination we could come up with using all of them. We found it when we searched for Kirsten, a ‘B’ for Branden, and her mother’s last name, Usha. My God, Mom, look at this.”
Teagan handed my parents copies of what we’d found.
“The trail is so convoluted, no wonder the cops didn’t find it. What do you think?”
“Well, love, this might be the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen.”
Mom handed the pictures to Daddy.
“You can tell some of those pictures are altered. She put the face of one person on the body of someone else. Not sure who or why. She has articles about some of the dead girls, but they would never show up in a search because she has blanked out their names or strategically placed something over them so you can’t read it. It looks like an art project done for shock value. If we didn’t know there was a connection between her and those girls, if we hadn’t followed every twist and turn, we would have just written it off like the rest of the world did, just another angst ridden person throwing negative dregs of delusion onto the World Wide Web.”
“Love, tell me, if this girl is as unwell as these papers suggest her to be, why would she leave this up on the Internet?”
“We wondered the same thing. The only thing we can come up with is that she’s either so mentally damaged that she is unaware or that she figured that no one would put her together with her dead mother. Oh, I forgot that part. Her mother has been dead since she was about twenty.”
“Still, it would seem a girl that has gotten away with so much evil for so long would be more care-filled.”
“Well, we looked that up too. According to some professionals there comes a time that most murderers either feel confident because they have been successful for so long that they think they’ll never get caught or on some level they actually want to get caught.”
I floated my theory, “I think everything was going along just peachy keen, and then Louis started to do research on the murders because he just couldn’t stand to be away from police work. I think that it was an innocent random event, just like the matching letters on the car tags. I think it happens all the time, and people just don’t notice because most random events never turn into something worth noticing. They’ve written books and movies about it, but until you experience serendipity, the power of random circumstances, you don’t really pay attention, and even if you happen to notice, you figure it’s a onetime thing and never watch out for it again.”
“I can agree with you there, love.”
“I think that there are girls in the journals that are unidentified, but that doesn’t mean that the police wouldn’t know about them, another stupid assumption I made because I don’t know what I’m talking about and don’t know all the terms. I think Louis either was getting too close, or he confronted her, or maybe he confronted Jerkface, and it cost him his life.”
My father asked, “So where does that leave the two of you?”
“Nowhere. Cara and I have lots of theories, and they even make sense, and we can even kind of back them up, but we don’t have any real proof. We don’t know how to get proof, and we don’t know who to trust once we have it.”
“You can always trust family, love. Perhaps it is time to call your brother. He is a police officer.”
“We thought about that, too. But while we were looking for things online, we found a whole bunch of issues with cops in this state, and we’re afraid that if he makes waves, then one night when he needs someone to back him up, they’re going to think about his idiot sisters, the ones that made trouble for Jerkface and anyone that has covered for him. They don’t even have to be bad guys. We aren’t bad guys, and we helped the whackos. So some cop could have been doing the right thing, not knowing he was being used for the wrong thing, and the next thing he knows, his career is toast. Then where does that leave Rory? Backup-less.”
“Love, I do not believe for a moment that the whole of the police department is corrupt. If there are even a few bad seeds, I would be surprised.”
“Mom, it only takes one. Even if the chances are only one in a hundred million, I buy lottery tickets with odds worse than that, and I fully expect to win. I can’t do that. I can’t take that chance. If something happened because of me, I don’t know what I would do.”
“Firstly, it is not because of you. You’ve done nothing wrong. Secondly, at the minute, we have no better option. Next, your brother is a full-grown man; you’ve no right to make his decisions, professional or otherwise. We should present this information to him. He has more knowledge than we; allow him the respect of making the decision for himself.”
“That sounds completely reasonable. Mature even. When did this become policy?”
“I keep telling you, love, you are not children anymore. Your father and I have done our job, and we’ve done it well. We trust each of you to do what is best.”
A.J. called to say he was on his way home. When I explained what was going on, he said he was going to call Jessie and invite him out for a beer.
My brother showed up a short time later.
My mother gave him a very succinct version of all that we’d rambled on about.
He thought about it over a cup of tea.
Having made his decision, he called someone else from the department and invited him over.
Since that guy is not a member of the family, it was only polite to have something for him to nibble on.
Teagan and I were about to make a quick trip down to the store on Benita and Benigno when I smacked full into my neighbor while I was running toward my car. He’d noticed the parade of people into my apartment and wanted to make sure everything was okay. We told him we had to go to the store, but he was welcome to join us in the car, and we’d explain everything. Or when we got back, he could come on over to hear my brother explain everything to some guy he had coming over.
I figure, after he’d been playing bodyguard all this time, it was the least I could do.
He decided to join us in the car. He locked his apartment door and smooshed himself into my backseat, even though Teagan offered to climb back there since she is a whole bunch smaller than he is.
We went through the whole thing again, without visual aids, and waited for my neighbor to punch holes in our theory. All he did was shake his head, let out a little whistle, and say he’d like to see the pictures.
By the time we got back to the apartment, Mom had set up a proper tea at the dining room table, and Daddy and Rory had collated all the papers we had produced throughout the day.
A rather large older gentleman joined us. Rory explained that Erik Nylund was his training officer and that he trusted him one hundred percent. We then sat at the table and explained everything from the moment that Louis entered my awareness. We shared all of our ideas, theories, the facts as we knew them, and the fears that we were putting Rory in a terrible situation.
A.J. and Jessie showed up about halfway through, leaned on furniture, and listened.
Erik listened without so much as a question. When we were done, he took a very deep breath, leaned back, drank some tea, and rubbed his chin.
We all sat in limbo, waiting.
“I need to get this in front of the right person, and I’ll tell ya why. It’s pretty clear you’ve done a great job of building your case, but the unfortunate part is this.” He pointed at the picture of Jerkface’s sister’s mother.
I was completely perplexed. “I don’t understand.”
“I can’t be positive, but I’m almost there. There is a big-shot lawyer in town. Lawyer by the name of Peter Magnar.”
“Is he the Magnar of Magnar, Wyatt and Strong?”
“That would be him. If I’m not mistaken, and I’m pretty sure I’m not, your murder suspect is the niece of Peter Magnar. I went to school with the SOB. That whole family is a piece of work.”
“I’m confused. I thought her last name was Gagnon, or Branden, or Usha. Where does Magnar come from?”
“When we were kids, their last name was Usha, but then the family broke up, and Magnar went one way, and his brother went another. Magnar took his stepfather’s name. Happens all the time these days.”
“Well, crap. That would explain why Steph, who works for that firm, showed up. And why they were involved. And why the police seemed to be secondary.”
Teagan was incensed. “Oh, it’s worse than that. You asked me what to do with the journals, I called Steph, and I handed them over, and I handed over the memory cards, too.”
“Then we are just screwed, and all of this is going to get blamed on Louis, and Jerkface and his sister are going to get in trouble for some small part of a cover-up, but with a really big legal firm like Magnar and whoever, they’ll come up smelling like a rose, and it’s my fault for being stupid, and at some point they are going to come after me and mine. God, I can’t believe I was so stupid.”
My father spoke in a very stern voice, which is unusual for him. “You aren’t stupid.”
“Okay, it is my fault for being trusting and naive.”
A.J. pushed away from the wall. “Promise not to get mad.”
“What?”
“Cara, I’m a photographer. I had those memory cards in the safe at my studio. I couldn’t help it. I backed them up. It’s just what I do.”
Erik brightened. “You have professionally made and maintained copies in a secured environment?”
“I do. I made backups. I didn’t want Jovana mistakenly showing them to a client, so I sealed the thumb drive in an envelope and wrote my name across the seal. I know it was stupid, but I figured if the cards were sensitive enough to put in a safe, then they were sensitive enough to protect. I also left the copy I’d uploaded on my computer and put it in a hidden file, ‘cause I figured if there really was a bad guy out to get them, hiding them in plain sight was the smart thing to do.”
“Oh. My. God.”
A.J. looked at the floor. “Wait, it gets worse.”
“Worse?”
“Remember when I took the journals and you thought they were missing, and I told you they were just in my room and I forgot to put them back? That wasn’t the whole truth.”
“What’s the whole truth?”
“Digital images don’t cost anything, Cara. Once you have the equipment, doesn’t matter if you shoot one image or a thousand. I’d just bought a new light box for a series of brochures I was contracted to do. I wanted to make sure I could create the image exactly as I wanted with the proper depth of field and shadow control and contrast. Anyway, I set it up in my room, and the journals were right there. The writing was beautiful; the curve of the page was a challenge. I wanted to make sure I could get the image without distortion. I shot a few pages, then a few more. All I had to do was flip and shoot. It really didn’t take any time once I had it set up. I wanted to check for consistency among the different pages, the different colors of ink, the different books. I have it all.”
Before I could do a happy dance, Teagan blurted, “We’ll never get that into court. They’ll just say that we faked it or altered it or something.”
Erik smiled. “It’s enough to get us in front of a judge. I know exactly the shark to get us there. I’m going to make a call.”
By the time everybody left, I was exhausted, unsure of exactly what had happened, and elated that soon this would be all over.
Erik had a meeting with his shark first thing in the morning. A.J. was going to go to the studio and turn everything over to Erik. Erik and his shark intended to have everything in front of a judge by the end of the day and promised to be in touch.
The good news is that the real professionals are now working on it. The bad news is that while they are working on it, we’re pretty much in the dark.
I didn’t even get to the mall to buy my super sheer fabulous something.
I showered first. By the time A.J. was out of the shower, I’m sure I was snoring. Figuratively. I would never snore literally. Well, unless I had a really bad cold.
I think it’s pretty much a law of nature that when people that actually know what they’re doing start doing what needs to be done, things move a whole lot faster.
Erik called to let us know that the department’s finest was now working with the DA’s office. They didn’t have all the facts yet, but things were looking good.
Jerkface and his sister were lawyered up, we all knew that, and when you have a lawyer they aren’t supposed to ask you any questions without your lawyer present, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t pay attention to what you say. Turns out the whole jail is pretty much on tape. The city has the lawsuits to prove it. But this time it worked out to their advantage. I’m not sure if the cops set it up, and I doubt we’ll ever know the whole story, but Kirsten was on a special ward, mostly at the behest of her lawyers, and they were also making sure she didn’t commit suicide. One of the regular guards there could pass for Kirsten’s mother. Granted, it’s a bit of a stretch. Kirsten’s mother died pretty young, but if she’d lived long enough to put on some weight and grow in some gray hairs, she would have looked a lot like that guard. She would have looked a lot like half the women in the mall, but Kirsten was already stressed, so it didn’t take all that much.
Kirsten flipped a nut. Somewhere in all the ranting was a confession or three.
Erik has already warned us that all the facts will have to be checked. That just her confession is not enough, and that Jessie, Teagan, A.J., and I will probably have to testify at some point, so he can’t tell me everything, but he can tell us what is likely to end up in the paper.
Jerkface’s father married again shortly after his wife took off with some guy she met in a bar. That’s when Jerkface and his sister were introduced. They rapidly became inseparable. Looking back, it may have been for survival, but at the time it wasn’t seen that way.
After a couple of years, inappropriate sexual contact was reported, and before charges were brought, Kirsten and her mother moved out of the house. Times were different then, and because the sexual contact was between a young man and an older woman and she had vacated, nothing ever became of it.
A very large part of me wanted to point out that a twelve-year-old, for the purposes of this type of conversation, is not a young man, but I let it go.
Kirsten’s mom then married the big-shot lawyer’s brother, an equally horrific example of humankind. There is some discussion of which adult was more damaging to Kirsten. From the age of twelve through seventeen, Kirsten was passed back and forth between her mother, her stepfather, and other people in their social circle.
It is believed that Jerkface knew about this, but was powerless to do anything to help.
None of the dead girls looked like each other. None of them looked like Kirsten. All of them looked like a young version of Kirsten’s mother. The theory is that Kirsten kept killing her mother. Over and over and over again. It is also theorized that she killed her actual mother as well, but that is still being investigated.
Kirsten is on the psych ward sedated. Her lawyers seem less inclined to work with her now that the family secrets are out. Turns out that the big-shot lawyer had pretty high-level political aspirations, and this particular family skeleton could not be spun into something positive, no matter how good the spinner.
Kirsten’s stepfather cannot be found. Although the statute of limitations is over in the strict sense, he might still be held accountable if they can find him.
So far they have been unable to find any evidence that would lead to the conclusion that Jerkface or his sister killed Louis.
The journals, the images from the memory cards, and a surfeit of other evidence is being reviewed by people who know what they are looking at and looking for.
Jerkface is under suicide watch.
So far, our family name has been kept out of it. It could be a long time before we have any involvement at all. Perhaps years.
For now, the investigation continues, but they are quite certain that the serial murderer is Kirsten and that Jerkface was simply trying to protect his crazy sister. From what they can piece together, Jerkface didn’t know anything about the murders until well after they had been committed, although it isn’t clear just how long he had been involved, and being involved at all is a crime.
I was completely ooked out, but I also had a bunch of stuff I had to do.
First I called Teagan, then my mom, and filled them both in. They in turn would fill in the others. When you have a big family, a well-organized phone tree is a given.
I ran over to the engraver guy and picked up my gift. It turned out so well I gave him a big hug, which is strange because I am not a hugger, and promised to send lots of business his way.
I dropped by Adeline’s house. She looked a little tired, but I figured the wedding was a big outing for someone who didn’t get out much. I fixed her some food and visited. We chatted about the wedding. I guess she and Nana Jo and Nana are going to get together for lunch sometime this week. I was excited for all of them.
I left Adeline to her painting. She was hot on a project. A new project is always a good thing.
I went over to the studio and helped Jovana set up a shoot. The cutest damn thing I’d ever seen. She had a toddler-sized white claw-foot bathtub. In that she had plastic Christmas ornaments that looked like huge bubbles. She had a great big yellow rubber duckie with a shower cap on. We sat that on a big area rug that had different colored fishies on it. She set up all her lights and a couple of different backgrounds so that when the kids showed up the transition would be quick.
The kids arrived in a mood. All three of them, fit to be tied. Twin girls and their slightly older sister. All cute as they could be.
Jovana had them changed into thick white terry bathrobes and sitting on the floor playing before the parents knew what to do with themselves. I kept them busy in the farthest reaches of the studio so that the kids couldn’t see them, but we could watch on a monitor.
I think the best shot will turn out to be one that couldn’t have been planned. While Jovana turned to grab a toy to get the kids’ attention, the older sister scampered around the back of the tub and held a bubble in her right hand. As she did that, one of the twins pulled herself up, holding onto the rim of the tub, on her very tiptoes, peering at the rubber duckie. While those two were busy with the tub, the second twin burst out in a giggle and threw her hands up and out with a look of joy turning to surprise as she just started to tip over.
More pictures with the tub, some without the tub, some with a shower curtain backdrop, some with a plain color, some on big building blocks, then my next favorite.
Jovana pulled out a flapper-looking dress that wasn’t adult-sized, but was much too large for the girls. The oldest sister put that on. Then two little girl’s sailor suits, the ones with the white pleated skirt and blue square collar that ties in the front at the chest. Complete with bloomers and Mary Janes. Again, they were not adult-sized, but much too big for the girls.
Next she pulled out a big chest full of gloves and hats and boas. Positioned it a few feet from the girls, and let nature take its course.
She got pictures of them being coy, and curious, and dressing each other in their treasures. She got a picture of the two little girls sitting on the floor beside the chest as the older sister checked herself out in a huge ornate mirror.
The pictures would be stunning, they weren’t the least bit traumatic on the kids or their parents, and it took very little time to break down all the props once the clients had gone home.
Jovana released me for the day.
I asked if there was anything I could ferry to my parents’ house, food-wise; she said she had a van for just that purpose. I told her I’d see her there and headed off.
Back at my apartment, I felt better than I had in a long time. No more worries about Jerkface and Kirsten, although I’m tremendously sad for them both. There is no excuse for the things they did, but perhaps there is a reason. Not reason enough to be excused, but reason enough to be understood.
I had a little while before I was supposed to be at my parents’ house, so I took my time wrapping the gift. Signed both our names to it, just as A.J. had for the teapot.
I was just about to take a shower and change clothes, when A.J. walked in and my plans were changed for the better.
All I’m sayin’ is some of that hungover, half-dazed afterglow darn well better rub off before I show up in front of my whole family.
To that end, a quick shower, a good strong cup of tea, three Oreo cookies, some tinted moisturizer and mascara, and a little Light Blue, and I was good to go.
A.J. was dragging, but he started it!
I promised not to say that in front of my mom.
The evening at my parents’ was uneventful, thank you God. Jordan was in fine form. There was discussion about a honeymoon, but Liam and Morgan have decided that they’d just like to enjoy being married for a while. They’ll save their honeymoon for their first anniversary. Lovely thought.
We enjoyed some really great leftovers.
Teagan sat down with her laptop and took notes as Morgan and Liam, with the help of Jordan every now and then, opened their gifts.
They got some beautiful stuff.
Our gift was a hit. I was pleased. I explained that the three clocks were set at the time that Morgan was born, the time that Liam was born, and the moment they kissed the first time as husband and wife.
I pointed out that I’d also recorded the time they each recited their vows, the time they had their first dance, and the time that Jordan was born, should they want to commemorate any of those times instead.
Liam read the vows to Morgan yet again:
By the power that Christ brought from heaven, mayst thou love me. As the sun follows its course, mayst thou follow me. As light to the eye, as bread to the hungry, as joy to the heart, may thy presence be with me, oh one that I love, ‘til death comes to part us asunder.
I thought that Maeve’s gift was rather different. She gave them swing dance lessons.
Having celebrated the happy couple well married and married well, A.J. and I headed for home.