The young officer’s walkie-talkie squawked, and he picked it up. “Yeah. All clear so far. I will, I will.”
25
THE wooden door swung open as Jade rang the bell, and he felt a sudden rush of humidity on his face. The air was thick with the scent and feel of food, like a heavy stew.
A pleasant-looking man with graying hair stood, barely visible in the darkness of the house. Jade knew from his research that he was in his early sixties, but he appeared much younger.
“Like to keep the lights off when it gets hot out. Keeps the house cooler,” he said, smiling. His lips were full, and Jade noticed the distinctive curve of his Cupid’s bow. It matched Allander’s exactly.
The man had on a well-worn apron that proclaimed, “Freeman & Jobbers Real Estate. We put the OWN in HOMEOWNER.” The “OWN” in “HOMEOWNER” was colored red, in case the puzzle proved too much for some people.
The man looked down at Jade’s white buttoned-up shirt. “I hope you’re not selling any of those study books because our little one’s already gone and moved out.”
Jade covered his smile by scratching his nose. “No, sir. No, I’m not. But I did actually want to talk to you about your ‘little one.’”
The man’s face darkened. “Goddamnit, I told you hounds to keep away. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
The door started to swing shut, but Jade caught the handle and pushed. The man stumbled back, his eyebrows raised in surprise.
“Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to stay for a while.” Jade pulled his badge from his back pocket. “Jade Marlow, FBI.”
The concern on the man’s face lessened. “Oh. Thought you were one of those fellows from A Current Affair or Hard Copy. They’ve been calling all morning.”
“I can imagine,” Jade said. “I just need a few minutes of your time.”
“Well, I suppose I should invite you in. I’m Thomas Atlasia. You like soup?”
“You keep the lights off to keep the house cool and then you cook soup?”
The man laughed. “If you eat hot, your body cools.”
Jade nodded politely at his logic, or lack thereof. “I see. But I think I’d better pass.”
Thomas showed Jade to the living room. Brown furniture and thick brown carpeting made the room darker than it should have been; it seemed to devour all the light let in by the windows.
The fireplace was composed of large white-and-beige rocks that stuck out at strange angles to form an uneven surface. A Haydn symphony played in the background, the roll of a drum momentarily filling the air.
Jade sat in a large brown chair, sinking in until he felt as if his knees were touching his chin. Mr. Atlasia sat down on the hearth. Apparently, he wasn’t bothered by the jagged edges of the rocks.
“Now,” he said, then paused as if summoning his courage before turning his mind to the subject. “My son. I would like to reiterate that my son has not tried to contact me. I haven’t visited him or spoken to him in over eleven years, nor has my wife.”
“Deborah?” Jade asked, just to break up the rehearsed speech.
“Yes. Darby. She just went to the store. She’ll be back soon. What exactly can I do for you?”
“Mr. Atlasia—”
“Please. Call me Thomas.”
“Okay. Thomas. What was he like before his childhood incident?”
Mr. Atlasia paused and cast the line of his memory back, disturbing still waters. Jade watched his face to see if he told everything that was dredged up.
“I’d like to say that he was a normal boy. Well-adjusted.”
“You’d like to or you are?”
“I’d like to. You see, he was always extremely sensitive. We used to joke that he was trouble from the first because he was a C-section delivery. Made him more … fragile, I guess. One foot still in the womb, so to speak.”
He raised his head and smiled. “I remember when he was in kindergarten, one of the beefy kids called him ‘The Salamander.’ He used to come home crying even though he didn’t know what it meant.”
Allander the Salamander. Kids’ true brilliance shows in how effectively they hurt each other, Jade thought.
Thomas laughed a sad, hollow laugh. “I still don’t know what the hell it means. But anyway, Mr. Marlow, he would react to everything. He was very fragile and very alive.”
Jade was impressed that Thomas had remembered his name from the informal and rude introduction he had forced at the door.
Thomas continued. “You see, we’re simple people, Mr. Marlow. We believe firmly in education and hard work. We had that boy reading from the day he could stand up. By kindergarten he was at the reading level of a sixth-grader. And what a voracious reader he was. He used to go to the library every other day and stack the books right up to his chin.”
His eyes sparkled fondly at the memory. “The librarians used to tease him that he would have read everything in there by the time he finished high school.”
He paused for a moment reflectively, then chuckled. “Well, he never finished normal high school, but I’ll be damned if he didn’t read every book in that library by the time he was sixteen. That was before … before he left, you see.”
“We got hold of some of Allander’s IQ tests from before he was committed,” Jade said.
He noticed Thomas tense up as Allander’s name was said aloud. It was as if Jade had released it into the stagnant air of the house for the first time in years. So far, Thomas had used only euphemisms for his son’s name.
Jade continued with his question. “Was he always so bright?”
Mr. Atlasia smiled, the side of his mouth twitching slightly. “He takes after his mother’s father. That’s whom he was named for. Allan Darby, God rest his soul. He was a kind man, a brilliant man. He taught English literature at the state college here for a number of years. His students loved him passionately. He died the week before Allander was born. Heart attack.”
He shook his head slowly. “So young. Such a wonderful man. He was the youngest professor ever to get tenure there. I recall one of his colleagues said at his funeral that he was the only man he knew who could recite Paradise Lost beginning to end.”
Jade shuddered. “A dubious distinction.” He was testing Thomas, but even this jab didn’t draw an angry response—only a disapproving stare. Very level man, very controlled, he thought.
Mr. Atlasia squinted over at him, his voice becoming serious. “That’s the kind of man he was. He was fascinated by everything. He beheld life through the eyes of a child. Reminded me of that picture of Einstein on a bike.”
Jade cleared his throat. “I’d like to see Allander’s room if that’s all right with you.”
“Please, Mr. Marlow. This isn’t Great Expectations. We weren’t exactly going to keep a boy’s room untouched in our house to remind us. Memories can be painful. We cleaned out his things years ago.”
Jade leaned forward, placing his thumbs under his chin. He stared intently at Thomas and the small yellow ring in his green eyes seemed to glow with anticipation.
Thomas, obviously intimidated by Jade’s glare, braced himself for the next question.
“How do you feel about your son, Mr. Atlasia?”
The door from the garage banged open. “Hello, honey, I’m back. You should’ve seen the look the kid at the counter gave me when I went through the whole line just to buy a single carrot.” A pocket-book banged down on the kitchen table and then some keys. “Thought I was some kind of pervert or somethi—”
Mrs. Atlasia came around the corner into the living room, and upon seeing Jade, stopped mid-sentence. She blushed, covering her mouth with her hand.
Although she was in her sixties, Deborah Atlasia was an extremely attractive woman. Her smile radiated charm and grace, and she had a becoming self-assurance. She could fill an empty room with her smile. Her warmth carried over to her eyes. Jade recognized her eyes—they were Allander’s down to the crow’s-feet that wrinkled from the sides.<
br />
It was eerie looking at those eyes, Jade thought, wondering how Thomas Atlasia could look into them every night and not see his son’s reflection. Maybe he did.
Jade struggled to rise from the plush seat.
“I am dreadfully sorry. And rather embarrassed, too, now that I think about it. I’m Deborah, but you can call me Darby.” She extended a hand and several elegant silver bracelets jingled around her wrist.
“Jade. Jade Marlow. You go by your maiden name, Mrs. Atlasia?”
Again, Jade was unsuccessful in his attempts to stand. She walked over and gently pushed him back into the chair, placing her hand on his shoulder and applying pressure.
“Please. Not Mrs. Atlasia. It makes me want to look for Tom’s mom.” She laughed an elegant, womanly laugh. “And believe me, I’d rather not.”
Thomas tilted his head and gave her a look of mock warning.
“Just kidding, hon.” She smiled at her husband.
Pushing her light brown hair behind her ear with a cupped hand, she looked at Jade as if for the first time. “So what do you do, Mr. Marlow? I mean, why are you here?” She stopped. “Oh no. That sounds atrocious, I don’t mean that.” She smiled again. “I mean, what allows us to be graced with your presence?”
“Nice recovery,” Jade said, smiling and still trying to stand up.
“Thanks. I thought you wouldn’t notice.”
“FBI. Sorry—I notice everything.”
She widened her eyes and pulled her head back a little. “Well, I must say that caught me a bit by surprise.” The room was silent for a moment. “Your mother know what you do?”
“No. She thinks I’m a pimp.”
Darby laughed uproariously and slapped her husband on the shoulder. Mr. Atlasia was in a more solemn mood than his wife, but he smiled nonetheless.
“Well, I suppose she’ll be elated to learn of your shift in vocational emphasis.” Her smile finally faded. “I must admit your name did sound familiar,” she continued. “As much as we try to block it out, the media still manages to creep its way in here—the radio, the television, on our doorstep. So we’ve heard of you. You’re the one they call ‘The Tracker.’”
Jade cleared his throat and thumbed his silver chain absentmindedly as he considered how to make the transition back to Allander.
“A necklace, Mr. Marlow? I wouldn’t expect a man like you to wear jewelry.”
“It’s a chain. My mother gave it to me.” And I’ll never forget what she said when she handed it to me, he thought to himself. He could see it draped over her outstretched hand, his brother’s medical tags swaying beneath her fist. “Something like a parting gift,” he added.
“Oh. You’re not close?”
“No. We don’t … no.” Jade cleared his throat a second time and was immediately angry at himself for doing it. Relax, he told himself. You sound nervous. “Well, I’m—”
“I know. You’re here to ‘ask some questions,’” she said, mimicking a businesslike voice and moving her head up and down as she imagined men did when filled with a false sense of importance.
“Just a few. I’ll try to make them as painless as possible.”
“That could be difficult, Mr. Marlow. You are hunting my child.” She said it softly, yet sharply, and it stung a little. She wasn’t angry, merely stating a fact. Clearly, she was used to hard facts, although after all that Allander had done over the years, Jade hadn’t expected to find her quite so defensive.
Thomas began to trace the rocks on the fireplace mindlessly. He hadn’t spoken a word since his wife had arrived, but Jade could sense they had a warm relationship.
“Well, obviously it’s about your son.”
“Obviously,” she said, her smile returning. “Of course no one would want to ask questions about us.”
She disappeared into the kitchen for a moment to retrieve makeup from her pocketbook. As Jade asked questions, she put on lipstick and blush, facing away from the men into a round mirror on the wall.
Darby’s mood, like her husband’s, was oddly giddy, Jade thought. They were all over the map emotionally, still trying to process the feelings moving through them.
“Have you been worried since he broke out?” Jade asked.
“Well, I suppose worried isn’t quite the word for it. Concerned. Concerned is a better word.”
“For yourself and your husband?”
“And for him,” Thomas said, finally breaking his silence. He repeated himself as if explaining something to a child. “She’s concerned for him as well.”
“So you still feel close to him?”
“No,” Darby answered. “But it is our blood running in his veins. We raised him, and he was a sweet, sensitive boy. He was always a little vulnerable, but he was so uncorrupted.” She put her makeup back into her purse and turned around. “So pure.”
Still she did not sit, but crossed the room and played with little trinkets on the mantel. She seemed to be trying to avoid eye contact, especially with her husband. “It’s hard to let go of that. You understand, Mr. Marlow?”
“No. But I hear you.”
“Fair enough.”
Jade shifted in his chair to face Thomas again. “How about you, Thomas? How do you feel about your son?”
Thomas didn’t look up from his fingers, which still roamed over the curves of the fireplace rocks. He hunched over and grabbed his ankles, looking up at Jade.
“Son … I just don’t know. Years of therapy haven’t helped me figure that out, and I sure as hell can’t give you a three-sentence answer now. But I do know that when … that when your child does a thing, a thing like he did—”
“I think that’s enough, dear,” Darby said, cutting him off, her voice maintaining its sweet tone.
Jade sensed something in the brief exchange. The couple wasn’t in agreement about Allander. Darby had looked away when she spoke of him, as if she were ashamed for still having motherly feelings toward him. Showing this kind of guilt before her husband seemed strange, especially in light of the closeness Jade sensed between the two of them.
And now she had interrupted her husband—not rudely, but as if she were worried about what he might say. What was “the thing” that Thomas said Allander did?
“We don’t need to get into all that right now,” Darby continued. “I’m sure Mr. Marlow can read between the lines. Anything else, Mr. Marlow?”
Jade noticed that her tone had changed. Though she was still polite, her warmth had departed.
He had a lot more digging to do; he hadn’t even touched the tip of the iceberg. The Atlasias seemed pretty disturbed just by the mention of Allander’s name, however, so Jade decided to wait and give them some time to adjust to talking about their son again. He would come back, though, and he would get them to talk, however painful it might be. That was his job.
Jade leaned forward and, with great effort, pulled himself free of the chair. He took a card from his wallet and wrote his home phone number on it.
As he handed it to Darby, he took her gently by the wrist. “Your husband said he doesn’t think Allander will try to contact you. Do you agree?”
The name unnerved her, as it had her husband, and her hand shook ever so slightly.
“We haven’t spoken to him in years. I can’t imagine what he would want from us now.”
She paused, looking at Jade for a moment. “You know, Mr. Marlow, we’ve done a lot to move on, to integrate ourselves back into the community. A lot of charity work, social service—that was our road back to sanity. People don’t forget things easily. So you’ll have to forgive us if we’re less than enthusiastic at the prospect of opening some of these doors again.”
“Yeah.” Jade nodded once. He ran his hand over the back of his neck. “If you need anything, please call me. Anything. Any hour.” He glanced over at Thomas, who was studying the carpet. “Thank you both for your time.”
Thomas looked up at Jade and his eyes were strikingly empty. “Good-bye.” He snapped his h
ead down again. “Good-bye, Mr. Marlow.”
26
AFTER Leah slid her hand into the noose of the tape so that it gathered around her wrist, she worked it back and forth for what seemed like hours. Robbie whimpered as the tape chafed his skin.
Finally, it had stretched enough to allow Leah to slide her sweat-lubricated hand through, freeing it. She ripped the tape from around her eyes and left it dangling from her hair. After yanking on the remaining tape around her waist, she pulled out her other arm. Once she had both arms free, she kicked off her shoes and slid out of her pants rather than trying to extricate them from the coils of tape. She stood, feeling pins and needles through her legs, and pulled the tape from around Robbie’s head.
His blue eyes watered as he squinted in the light.
“Before I untie you all the way, I’m gonna go get help, okay?”
Robbie was too weary to scream that he wanted to go with her, so he bit his lip and nodded as the tears began to spill down his cheeks.
Clad only in her shirt and underwear, Leah tiptoed down the carpeted hallway. As she rounded the corner to the living room, she screamed and sank to the floor, landing on her rear. Immediately, her legs began churning, backing her to the wall, away from the horror that lay in front of her.
The corpses of her parents lay grotesquely intertwined. The empty holes of their eye sockets gazed blankly at her like those of the skeletons she had seen on the pirate ride at Disneyland. Her mother’s stomach had been cut open, and there was blood splattered everywhere—all over the walls, on the white blinds, on the fireplace and mantel, seeping into the carpet.
Smeared across the window overlooking the beach were the letters “SNE.” The blood had crusted already, and was beginning to flake.
Leah ran back down the hallway to her room screaming, “DON’T LOOK, ROBBIE! DON’T LOOK AT IT! DON’T LOOK?”
The dam of Robbie’s emotions broke when he heard the panic in his sister’s voice, and fear overwhelmed him. He sobbed with complete abandon, twisting on the bed, his face swollen and red.
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