by Ronald Malfi
“And if it wasn’t de Campo,” Eric said, “then it was probably one of Carol’s boyfriends.”
“Was she dating anyone in particular at the time?”
Tara’s mouth opened but no words came out. She glanced at her husband then back at me. I couldn’t interpret the expression on her face.
“What?” I said.
“She was kind of, like, dating around a lot,” Tara said, then looked instantly ashamed. “Like, a lot.”
“Does anyone in particular stand out? Maybe someone who would have left Woodvine soon after her murder?”
“We were high-school seniors by then. Half of us left once school was out. Most everyone wanted to get out of here.”
“You think some boyfriend killed her?” Eric said. He’d set his wine glass on the table and was sitting forward in his chair again. He looked interested.
“Allison thought it might have been someone she’d gone to school with. Someone you all went to school with.”
“I’m getting chills,” Tara said.
“If it was someone we went to school with,” Eric said, “then why do you think he would have left Woodvine soon after the murder? What makes you think the guy didn’t hang around? Maybe he’s still here.”
“Because I think he killed someone in Virginia two years later,” I said. “And I think he’s been relocating ever since.”
They both stared at me—Tara with a look of unmasked fear, Eric like someone who’d been told a joke and was still puzzling out the punchline. Maybe I’d said too much.
“A serial killer,” Tara said, leaning far away from me in her chair. She hugged herself as if suddenly cold.
“Looks that way,” I said.
Eric laughed. “Shit,” he said. “Right.” He looked at Tara. “He’s joking, babe.”
To me, she said, “Are you?”
I considered my options. Ultimately, I said, “Yeah. Just a joke. Sorry. It was distasteful.”
“Goddamn,” Eric said, grinning. “But can you imagine?”
“You didn’t know Carol like I did,” Tara said to him. “It isn’t funny.”
“I didn’t say it was funny. Come on, T. Chill out.”
“I would, maybe, if you’d let me have some wine.”
“Tara…”
“A sip won’t hurt the baby. Even the doctor said so.”
There was only about that much left in Eric’s glass. He handed it to Tara, who studied the dark crimson puddle at the bottom of the glass with mixed emotions. She looked up at me from over the rim of the glass, a smile suddenly brightening her face.
“I don’t think a sip would hurt either,” I agreed. “Although I’m no doctor.”
“See that?” Eric said. “You’ve got permission from a guy who’s hunting serial killers.” He laughed, then turned to me. “I’m just joking.”
I smiled, nodded. I was suddenly very tired. Moreover, I wasn’t sure where to go next, Allison. When I discovered Peter Sloane’s photo in the yearbook, I thought I’d uncovered some truth. But in actuality, what did it mean? Sloane’s photo in the yearbook was not a smoking gun. It was not a confession or DNA evidence. Furthermore, I found it increasingly difficult to reconcile the old guy with a heart condition to be a serial killer traveling up and down the east coast while running what appeared to be a modestly successful bar and grill. I was at a loss, Allison. I had come this far only to fail you.
Tara shot the last of her husband’s wine, then smacked her lips and made a show of how delicious it was. I laughed.
“Christ,” Eric said, taking back his empty glass. “I can’t believe you drank it. You were doing so good.”
“What I really want is an ice-cream sundae,” Tara said.
“With pickles on top, right?” said Eric.
“Gross.” She wrinkled her nose. “But maybe…”
I helped Eric clear the table while Tara lit a propane heater on the porch. The night had grown cold and dark; each time I glanced beyond the screened porch, I felt like I was staring off into space.
“Toddy Jenkins,” Eric said to his wife as we shuttled plates and glassware from the porch to the kitchen. “Remember that guy? Talk about a serial killer in training.”
“Yuck,” Tara said. She stuck her tongue out between her teeth.
“Who’s Toddy Jenkins?” I asked.
“Big slob we went to high school with,” Eric said. “He got kicked out of Elk Head for hiding in the girls’ bathroom. He used to watch chicks take a squirt through a hole he’d drilled in the stall.”
“Swell guy,” I said.
“He used to wet his pants, too,” Tara added. “Remember, Eric?”
“Just once,” Eric said, as if this onetime foible was forgivable of a high-school student.
“Ooh,” Tara said, clapping her hands. “And Donald Freese!”
Eric laughed. He snatched up our napkins from the table in one beefy, hairless hand, held them above his head, and peered up at them with a lecherous gleam in his eye. “He used to hide under the bleachers and look up girls’ skirts.”
“Lovely,” I said.
“Go on and finish the wine, Aaron,” Eric told me.
“Give me a hand,” I said, and poured what remained into my glass and his. When he went back into the kitchen, Tara rushed over, took a healthy swallow from both her husband’s and my glass, then held up one finger in front of her lips in a shhh gesture. “My lips are sealed,” I told her, “but your teeth are purple.”
“Hey,” Eric said, coming back out onto the porch. “Speaking of creeps, do you remember old Glenn what’s-his-name? Everyone called him Glenn the Friend?”
“Lord,” Tara said, covering her purple teeth with one hand. “He was a creep, all right.”
“He was everybody’s buddy until he caught you doing something wrong,” Eric told me. “Glenn the Friend. What an asshole that guy was.”
“Remember, Eric, that time he caught us fooling around in your dad’s car?”
“He caught us more than once, T.”
“No, he didn’t. Just that once.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I’m not, Eric. If you got caught fooling around in a car by Glenn the Friend more than once, it was with some other chick.”
“This guy,” Eric said, ignoring his wife and looking at me. “He was a real piece of work. I’m like seventeen and trying to get some action in the backseat of my old man’s Buick, and this numb fuck rolls up like he’s state police.”
I laughed.
“I mean, the guy was a real grade-A asshole,” Eric said, picking up his own wineglass from the table. “In fact, he worked with de Campo on the janitorial staff at the high school. He used to drive this big ugly car with a police light on the door.”
I looked up from my wineglass, the blood-colored surface of which had been lulling me into a state of semi-catatonia, and said, “What’s that?”
“He’d have the headlights off and drive around behind the school at night, where all the kids were fooling around,” Eric continued. “Then he’d turn on the headlights and shine that big spotlight on everyone.”
“Childress,” Tara said, snapping her fingers. “That was his name. Glenn Childress.”
“You said this guy was a janitor at your school?” I asked.
Eric nodded.
“Oh, he was so gross,” Tara said. “I was walking home one night from the 7-Eleven and he pulled up right alongside me. Next thing I know he’s got that spotlight shining in my face. Scared the shit out of me. He wanted to give me a ride home but I refused. He got, like, mad at me, and drove behind me the whole way until I reached my house. I still remember it like it was yesterday. Gives me the creeps just thinking about it.”
“This town is full of crazies,” Eric told me. “One of the reasons we’d like to get out.”
“Whatever happened to this guy?” I asked. Despite the chill out on the porch, a fine sweat had begun to exude from my pores.
“Glenn the Friend?”
Eric shrugged. “Beats me. He’s been gone for years.”
“Maybe Gas Head got him,” Tara said. She went over and wrapped her arms around her husband.
“Maybe he is Gas Head,” said Eric. He blew in his wife’s face and she bit his shoulder.
3
It was a quarter to nine when I got back in my car and headed down Cane Road toward the highway. What fatigue that the wine had brought on over dinner had been replaced by a steady thumping in the center of my brain. When I reached the Elk Head River bridge, I pulled onto the shoulder of the road and turned on the car’s interior light. My satchel was in the foot well of the passenger seat; I yanked it onto the seat, opened it, and dug out your high-school yearbook. There was an index at the back of the book where all the names were listed alphabetically. I ran my finger down one column until I located the name CHILDRESS, GLENN.
It was the same page where James de Campo’s dark, furtive grimace leered out at me. De Campo, the head custodian. Beside him was a younger fellow, perhaps only in his mid-twenties in the photograph. The caption below this photo identified him as Glenn Childress. Unlike de Campo, he wasn’t attempting to affect a smile. He had his lips drawn so tightly they looked like wires. Small eyes spaced a bit too far apart, their stare not precisely at the camera, but at something off in the distance. A prematurely receding hairline that formed an unruly black mullet down to his shoulders. His surname was embroidered on his work shirt.
My blood went cold. Not because I realized I was finally looking at the man who had murdered your sister as well as those other girls, but because I realized that I knew him. I had met him before. I had spoken to him and been in his company. I had shaken his hand.
I closed the yearbook, slid it back into my satchel, then pulled back out onto the road. The Sube thumped along the uneven concrete of the bridge. I kept my eyes trained on the shaft of darkness ahead of me, too frightened—and too certain—that I might see ghosts if I averted my gaze over the side of the bridge.
When I hit the highway, I motored past the motel where I had stayed the night before. My exhaustion had been replaced with an urgency that powered my body like an electrical current. I drove the four hours back to Annapolis, stopping only once to purchase a large cup of coffee and to pump gas into the Sube.
It was after one in the morning when I turned into Harbor Village. I eased into our driveway, crept into the house, and climbed our stairs while my body trembled from a combination of caffeine and sleep deprivation. Our closet light was flashing on and off, on and off, on and off.
I emptied myself onto our bed and slept for about a million hours, until daylight came screeching through the bedroom windows. I got up, showered, dressed, and was halfway down the stairs before I turned around and re-entered our bedroom. The closet was dark now; when I flicked the switch, nothing happened. All that flashing throughout the night must have burned out the bulb.
In the semi-dark, I knelt down, opened your hope chest, and shoved a heap of your sweaters to one side. I felt the cold metal of the revolver at the bottom of the chest, along with the box of ammunition. I took the gun and the ammo with me, toeing closed the lid of the chest with my foot. Then I paused, reopened the chest, and removed your armless doll from its plastic body bag. I took that with me, too.
In the car, I stashed the ammo and the gun in a duffel bag, which I had filled with random articles of clothing. Beside me, I propped your mutilated doll in the passenger seat. Then I called Peter Sloane. He answered after the first ring. I told him everything I knew—who the man was, and where he was located. Sloane listened, and when I was done talking, a long silence fell between us as we both digested everything I had said.
“Okay, listen to me, Aaron,” Sloane said. “I know you think you’ve got this guy, but do you remember what I said back at my place? That you might just be following Allison’s logic and not necessarily a trail of evidence leading you to the killer? Do you remember?”
“Peter, this has to be the guy.”
“Hear me out. There is no evidence that links this man to any of the murders.”
“The car with the spotlight on it,” I said. “His face in my wife’s yearbook. And that story the Whitneys told me back in Woodvine. It all adds up, Peter. He’s the guy.”
“Aaron, listen to me. Your wife heard a story about a guy who reminded her of someone she knew from her hometown. That’s the guy you’ve tracked down. But that doesn’t mean he’s the killer. He’s just who your wife thought was the killer. Do you see the difference?”
“I understand what you’re saying, Peter. But my gut is telling me something different. Allison was right about this. I can feel it.”
“Then let’s take everything you have to the police. I can find a sympathetic ear.”
“I’ve tried that before, Peter. Besides, you just said it yourself—there’s no actual evidence connecting this guy to any of the murders. What good will going to the police do?”
“They can research it, track his movements. In other words, conduct an actual investigation. Things you can’t do.”
“And if they come up empty? If they’re unable to tie this guy to the murders because they can’t find any evidence? Then what, Peter? The guy just walks? He just gets away with it? And not only that, but then we’ve tipped him off.”
“It’s the only thing left to do,” Sloane said.
“It’s not the only thing,” I told him.
Sloane exhaled audibly on the other end of the line. “Aaron, what are you talking about?”
“I’m going to go there and see if I can find evidence.”
“Like what?” Sloane said. “What sort of evidence do you think you’ll find out there?”
“The car,” I said.
“Even if you found that car, Aaron, it wouldn’t be proof of anything. It’s just confirming what we already know. We know this guy Childress owned a car like that. It doesn’t tie him to the murders.”
“We know he owned it fifteen years ago. But if I can show he still owns it, that’d be more than a coincidence, right? That’d be something.”
A heartbeat of silence on the other end of the line. “If he still owned the car, that might be something. Maybe not probable cause for a warrant, but something. We’d still have to get the police involved.”
“So let me get down there and see what I can find. Let’s make this case as strong as we can. I have to do this, Peter. I have to be sure.”
“You just watch yourself, Aaron. Be careful.”
“I’ll be in touch,” I said, and disconnected the line.
I started up the Sube, and your music spilled out of the speakers. This time, instead of shutting it off, I cranked the volume. No simple eighties tune this time: the Sonics serenaded me with “Strychnine” as I careened out of Harbor Village, down past the plaza where you had been murdered, and hit the highway at nearly ninety miles an hour.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
1
The Valentine Motel shone like a lighted train car against the backdrop of a darkening sky. Its neon VACANCY sign sizzled in the oncoming darkness above the trees, pink lights mirrored on the surface of puddles that seemed to be placed at strategic intervals across the parking lot. Dusk had settled over the landscape as I’d driven up the side of the mountain, ribbons of red, orange, yellow, and violet stacked on the western horizon and radiating through the forest; with the sunlight quickly draining from the sky, I could feel the evening’s frigid embrace in the marrow of my bones.
I steered the Sube into the motel’s parking lot, tires crunching over chunks of gravel. The lot was empty, with no other vehicles in sight. Beneath the motel sign, the plate-glass windows of the motel’s office discharged a dull, milk-colored light that simmered in the early evening. The windows were slightly concave, giving the whole office the appearance of a large fishbowl. From my car, I could make out the wood-paneled walls on the interior, the fishing trophies and photos behind the front desk. I could see no one inside the place.
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br /> All twelve of the motel rooms that spanned the length of the parking lot were dark. Their windows looked like portals to other dimensions.
I parked in the lot, turned off the car, let the engine cool. Tick, tick, tick. Switched off the headlights and watched your palm print dissipate from the windshield. Tick, tick, tick.
Other-Aaron was looking at me from the passenger seat, your mutilated doll in his lap.
“What?” I said.
—Good question, he responded. What, exactly.
I took a deep breath then got out of the car. Cold mountain air stung my face. I crossed the parking lot toward the motel’s lobby, the joints of my bones strapped together by an intricate if unreliable system of loose wires, pipe cleaners, and stretched-out rubber bands. Other-Aaron kept pace with me, but gone was his sage advice and his air of prim confidence; I’d dumped him quite unceremoniously into the deep end of illogic, where he was struggling to keep afloat.
—What exactly do you think you’re going to accomplish here? he asked. Just like Peter Sloane said, even if you find the car, what does that really mean? Sloane is right—you’ve followed Allison’s train of thought and that led you to this man. You did not follow a logical pattern of clues tying him to any of the murders.
I willed other-Aaron out of my head. Now was not the time to start second-guessing things.
The lobby’s interior was warm and scented with lavender and pine. There was no one behind the desk, no one in the darkened little alcove beyond where two cane-backed chairs stood before a dark TV screen. There were fresh vacuum tracks on the rose-colored carpet. I scanned the wall of photographs behind the desk, the fishing trophies and prized catches, a first aid kit bolted to the wall, and the little velvet board on the desk with its rows of colorful flies affixed to it—all the things I’d noticed before, when I had been here under wholly different pretenses. Back when I’d been a different man, you might say, Allison. Back when you’d been a different woman, too, I suppose. In my eyes, anyway.
