It was a lovely evening. A warm, balmy dusk witnessed a darkness slowly pooling beneath the trees, and the slow rise of a yellow moon that was no longer full. I remember sitting before my open window, watching that moon, transfixed by its ancient mysteries.
I tried to read The Hound of the Baskervilles, but found Doyle’s stilted 19th Century dialogue and shopworn formulae a bit tedious for such a night. After all, I’d just witnessed a confusing mix of emotions. The girl I’d known as both surrogate elder sister and latter day sex goddess was dead. It was Norma Jean Baker and Marilyn Monroe found dead in the nude on her bathroom floor. It was all the wonders of life and beauty stripped bare and laid low. No matter how I tried to process that, I came up with questions I couldn’t answer.
On top of all that, my parents were fighting about things that didn’t seem to make sense.
I put on a pair of jeans and went downstairs. My dad would be out all night. If his shift ended on time, which it rarely did, he’d be coming home about the time I was waking up for breakfast. So the house was quiet as I went downstairs. I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water and drank it in the moonlight that filtered through the windows.
Only then did I hear my mother sobbing.
It was faint, but it was definitely her.
I walked down the main hallway, past the hall closet where we’d taken shelter the night of the storm, and reached the doorway to my parents’ bedroom.
My mom was sitting on the edge of the bed, head bent low, chest hitching now and then with her sobbing.
“Mom, you okay?”
She swallowed as she looked up. She’d been crying a while, I could tell. Her face was red and puffy, her eyes bloodshot.
She raised her arms up and clutched her hands together in a come here I need a hug motion.
I went to her.
With her arms around me she said: “I can’t believe she’s dead.”
“Me either.”
“Are you okay?”
“I…” I started to say: Sure, I’m fine; even though I knew I wasn’t. It was only then that I realized she wasn’t really asking if I was okay, but if we were okay, if we could endure this together, she and I. “It hurts, Mom,” I said. “I miss her.”
“I know. I feel so ashamed.”
“Ashamed?”
“That Hannett girl. She lived, but Heather died. I can’t believe I wanted them to trade places. God, I feel so ashamed.”
There was a survivor?
This was the first I’d heard of it. Clearly Dad had told her more than I’d overheard.
“Me too,” I said.
My mom tightened her grip around me, and as she held me I could feel her body spasm and hitch with the flow of her tears. I endured it, though I was already focused in a different direction.
I’d remembered that huge accordion file Detective Travis had passed to my dad. He wouldn’t have it with him tonight. He’d know better than that. His work on a Friday night was constant. He’d spend more time out of his vehicle, looking for some piece of crap burglar or wife beater who had just run from some young go-getter officer, than studying the slightly foreign notes of a partner police agency.
But I had the time.
And I had the file.
To my mom I said: “This has got me all turned around. I’m gonna go to bed. Are you gonna be okay?”
She nodded right before she let me go.
Then she said: “This is one of those dreadful moments you remember your whole life.”
I had thought I’d be the one to walk away, but she left me then, standing there stunned by the awful truth of what she’d just said.
* * *
I went into my dad’s office and looked around on his desk. He liked to smoke cigars, and occasionally I’d sneak a few from his humidor. That humidor was on the corner of the desk, next to a legal pad of notes for the midyear performance evaluations he was going to have to do on his troops–his “guys,” as he called them.
But the file Detective Travis had given him wasn’t there.
The drawers were noisy when opened, which is why I usually didn’t go through his desk when one of my parents was home. But I really wanted that file, so I held my breath and, working very slowly, pulled one drawer after another open. I found it in the bottom right drawer, which in hindsight is where I should have looked at the start. It was the drawer I went to most often when I had the house to myself, for it was in that drawer that my dad kept his June 1980 issue of Playboy, featuring the first of many pictorials of Ola Ray, who would, a few years later, go on to become Michael Jackson’s unsuspecting date in the “Thriller” video. I remember my first encounter with this magazine. I happened upon Ola Ray’s centerfold–turned right to it would be another way of putting it–and found myself immediately struck by both the innocent and vulnerable beauty in her eyes and the exotically wonderful strangeness of her black skin. This being my first opportunity to look long and contemplatively upon the divine design of the naked, mature female form, I stared and studied in rapt fascination. I was smitten enough by her beauty to show the magazine to Jeff one day, and was rather taken aback by his comment: “Dude, your dad likes the dark meat.”
This took what I had intended as a cool moment of sharing something awesome with my best friend to the first indication that perhaps we weren’t to be lifetime friends. That distressed me, even if it didn’t exactly anger me.
At the moment I had other fish to fry. I tossed the Ola Ray debut issue aside and took out the accordion file Detective Ward had left for my dad.
Who was this Hannett girl my mom was so ashamed of having wished dead?
I pulled out the file, which contained a large number of typewritten pages and even a few Polaroids of a girl in a party dress who had been ripped to shreds, and set it on the desk.
Then I started reading.
* * *
Rebecca–who preferred to be called Becca–Hannett had gone out that night with her friends, Heather Crawford and Jennifer Cowls. All three were high school friends home for the summer from the University of Texas at Austin, a school that Playboy magazine had once described as “not having an ugly girl on campus.” I thought that a conspicuous instance of hyperbole when I read it in the aforementioned Ola Ray debut issue, but at the same time I had most sincerely hoped that it was true…for I planned to be there in just a few short years. And even the Becca Hannett portrayed in the Polaroids spread out before me, disheveled and dirty and tattered and seemingly vacant behind her two-thousand-yard stare that she was, was still obviously a good-looking girl. Long brown hair; a slender, almond-shaped face; perfect teeth: she was the kind of girl one followed with the eyes when she passed by, just to see if the backside was as good as the front.
It only took a few words of her statement to put those thoughts out of my mind, though. The girl, it was plain, had been through hell.
This is what I read of her interview with Detective Gene Travis:
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Hi, Rebecca. I’m Detective Travis with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. Had a pretty bad scare tonight, huh?
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Rebecca?
REBECCA HANNETT: I…I go by Becca.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Okay, Becca. That’s good. Can we talk for a little bit about what happened tonight?
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Becca, I see you nodding your head. But can you say the words for me, please? Is it okay if we talk about what happened?
REBECCA HANNETT: Yes.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: I see you’re dressed up. You were going out tonight?
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Becca, please, don’t just nod. I need you to answer me.
REBECCA HANNETT: Yes.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Okay, good. You were with some friends, weren’t you?
REBECCA HANNETT: Yes.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Who were they?
REBECCA HANNETT: Heather Crawford and Jennifer Cowls.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Friends of yours from school?
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Becca, don’t just nod. Were these girls friends of yours from school?
REBECCA HANNETT: Yes.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: How long have you known them?
REBECCA HANNETT: Since we were kids. I don’t know, 2nd grade maybe. We go to UT Austin now. I’m sorry. We…oh god.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Becca, I know this is hard. This won’t take long. Tell me please what happened tonight.
REBECCA TRAVIS: This is our summer vacation. Heather was supposed to be getting a job and my parents wanted me to do the same. We figured we had a week or two at most to hang out and party. We wanted to go dancing, you know, up in the gay bars in Westheimer?
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Yes. Who was driving?
REBECCA HANNETT: I was. I picked up Jennifer–she had crabbed a bottle of vodka from her mom’s liquor cabinet–and then we went over to pick up Heather.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Had Jennifer opened the vodka?
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Becca, don’t just shake your head please.
REBECCA HANNETT: No.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Okay, so the two of you have driven from her house over to Heather Crawford’s house. What happened next?
REBECCA HANNETT: He killed them.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Who did? Who killed who?
REBECCA HANNETT: That gross guy. That hairy guy.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Hairy, what do you mean?
REBECCA HANNETT: He was all hairy. I don’t know. He was gross.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Becca, tell me what you mean. How was he all hairy?
REBECCA HANNETT: I don’t know. He had…a big beard and hair that was all over the place. He had hair on his chest and on his arms and he…he was naked. He was gross. God, and he growled…oh god, he sounded like a mean dog or something. Oh god.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Tell me what happened, Becca? You guys have just gone to pick up Heather…
REBECCA HANNETT: Yes. We were walking back to the car. I was standing on the driver’s side, trying to get the keys in the door lock. It was dark and I was having trouble. Heather and Jennifer were laughing, they were talking about this guy Jennifer knew back at school who…
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Becca, you okay?
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Becca, I can see you shaking your head. I know this hard. But if we’re going to catch this guy, I need you to be strong. Now, you’re standing next to your car, it’s dark, what then?
REBECCA HANNETT: He killed them.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Okay. Tell me about that.
REBECCA HANNETT: I was trying to get my keys in the lock. Heather and Jennifer were talking. And then we heard him in the shrubs at the edge of Heather’s front yard.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Heard him?
REBECCA HANNETT: Yeah. We heard a noise. We’d all heard about that shrimp boat and the guys who’d been eaten on it, and when we heard the noise in the shrubs it sort of made us all go quiet. We were scared, you know?
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: I know. Tell me what happened?
REBECCA HANNETT: Well, we didn’t know what it was, you know, in the shrubs. We just…well, I heard it, and I went kind of numb, you know? Do you know that feeling? When all of the sudden you just go numb inside?
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Yes, I know it. You’re scared. Something’s not right?
REBECCA HANNETT: Exactly. I heard that noise and I looked up from the lock and Jennifer and Heather were both looking toward the shrubs. And then he charged us. He came tearing out of the shrubs all growly and mean…and then he killed them.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: He? You mean the hairy man you told me about earlier?
REBECCA HANNETT: Yes, the hairy man.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Tell me what he did.
REBECCA HANNETT: He came running across the lawn, but not really…not really…
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Becca, what? Not really what?
REBECCA HANNETT: Not really running. It was like he was on all fours, you know? Kind of bounding across the lawn, like a dog or something.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: He was running at you on all fours?
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Becca, answer me with your words.
REBECCA HANNETT: Yes.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: And what happened next?
REBECCA HANNETT: He killed Heather. He grabbed her by her hair and pulled her down to the ground and bit a big chunk out of her neck. She never even had a chance to cry out.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: And Jennifer?
REBECCA HANNETT: He got on top of her and clawed at her face with his hands. I saw blood go all over the place.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: And then?
REBECCA HANNETT: I ran.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: What happened? Did he come after you?
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Becca, I can see you nodding? Did he come after you?
REBECCA HANNETT: Yes.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: But you got away.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Becca, how did you get away?
REBECCA HANNETT: I got as far as the other side of the street. He caught me and knocked me down and started tearing the clothes off my back.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: What did you do, Becca?
REBECCA HANNETT: I put my hands over my head and prayed for it to stop.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: And what happened then?
REBECCA HANNETT: It did.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: He stopped?
REBECCA HANNETT: Yes. He leaned down and I felt his breath on my face. He smelled like something had died inside him, all rotten, you know? And then he sniffed me.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: He sniffed you?
REBECCA HANNETT: He smelled me, like he was, I don’t know, trying to mark my scent or something. I was scared.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: But he stopped tearing at your clothes?
REBECCA HANNETT: I don’t know. I guess. I just remember the shot. The guy who lives across the street from Heather came out in his bathrobe and he fired off a shot. The hairy man took off after that.
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: And what did you do?
DETECTIVE TRAVIS: Becca? What did you do then?
REBECCA HANNETT: I just dropped my face in the grass and cried.