Girls on Film

by Gregg Olsen

  Did duct tape at the hardware store take her back to a Leanne memory.

  I suspect all those things are possible. And more. More than I can imagine because until that moment I had no idea the role Leanne Delmont played in Mom’s survival.

  And my own.

  The words come out in a cough at first. Like she’s choking them out of someplace dark and deep in her memory. Each word is coated in a strange combination of regret and appreciation for the girl who posed so prettily on the log on the beach at Point Defiance.

  She tells me how she and Leanne waited in the darkness for hours for Alex Rader to return. Some of the emotion has left her now. As she resumes her story, she somehow switches her tone to a detached, almost rote, manner, which I know is for my benefit. Her way of checking herself is to ensure that the reality of what transpired is communicated to me, but is done so in a way that maintains some distance. I don’t tell her that I met the families of the girls and how the tragedy of losing their daughters has changed their lives forever. She knows that. It has changed my life too.

  “We made a pact,” she says. “We knew there were two of us and one of him, but Leanne was physically weak. She’d been there for days and she . . . .

  Mom stops for a beat and I squeeze her hand. I need to know exactly what they did. I need to figure out how the hell we’re going to get out of here. I already know that Leanne didn’t make it, but I don’t know why and I don’t know how she really died.

  “She was exhausted,” I say.

  “Yes. Weakened by what he did. Tired. Hungry. She was scared as hell that she didn’t have the strength to overpower him. I told her that she did. I promised that we’d get out. Together. Rylee, it was a lie. It was a terrible, terrible lie. Seeing her injuries, I just didn’t . . . I didn’t think she could make it”

  “I know you wanted her to survive, Mom,” I say.

  She cries and I ask her to continue. I’m gentle in my request. But I’m also more pragmatic. I must know. I need to get us out of here. I’m stronger than she is. And I’m not leaving her behind.

  “What was the plan?” I ask as she stops for a moment and we both listen to the nothingness of the prison in which we are held by the monster that is my father.

  I will kill him in part for what he did to my mother, but also for what he did to Leanne. I expect Shannon and Megan faced the same fate in the darkness, but I don’t know for sure. I only know what I’m hearing from my mom.

  The victim who got away.

  “We knew he’d go to her first,” she continues. “She’d been there longer and she was certain of his routine. He’d change out the battery, unzip his pants and begin by saying the ugliest things a man can say to a girl”

  I am grateful that she doesn’t repeat those things now. I don’t want disgust and anger in the way of my rage.

  “We found one rock,” she says, stopping again to listen, as if he is coming. Or maybe in her mind right now she is remembering the sound of his footsteps on the crushed rock outside the door.

  “The rock we found was the only one that was large enough to do the job, but small enough that I could lift it. And we waited”

  Now Mom starts to cry again. She’s dehydrated because I told her not to drink the ice tea and I wonder how she can even manage to expel another tear.

  “This part is really hard,” she says. “It’s really hard, Rylee”

  “I know,” I answer.

  But I really don’t.

  “We knew he would abuse her first. Then he’d come to me. I bound her wrists again”

  She stops. Takes a breath.

  “Go on, Mom,” I say, softly but with conviction. “We have to get out of here”

  She nods.

  “I bound her wrists. She did her best to help me appear as though I was still taped up, by putting the old, broken duct tape around my wrists and ankles. We, Rylee, we . . . we got back on our mattresses and waited. I had the stone. Leanne told me to wait until he was on top of her. Abusing her. Stealing every bit of life from her. She told me to count to one hundred . . . have you ever counted to one hundred in your head? Have you ever counted to one hundred when a man is raping a girl next to you and you are free enough to try to stop it?.

  She knew I hadn’t. Her tears are a silent torrent now. I hold her and she finishes what happened next.

  “When I got to about fifty I couldn’t take it. She’d been crying and screaming out and he was telling her over and over that she was a worthless piece of garbage and that no man would ever want her. That her life was pointless and she lived only to serve him. I got up and crawled as quietly as I could and struck him as hard as I could on the head with the stone. He fell on top of her. I thought I had killed him. I pushed him off and tugged at Leanne. She’d been badly beaten again. I pulled the key from his pocket and we started for the door”

  Mom stops and looks over at the door.

  “That door. That one”

  I nod and hold her tighter. She whispers the rest of what happened in my ear as though saying it any louder will make it more concrete, more real than it already is.

  “She was right behind me,” Mom says. “I unlocked the door and we started out. We were both crying and . . . when I turned around, Leanne wasn’t there. Alex had grabbed her by the ankle and tackled her. He yelled at me to come back and I started to. I needed to get Leanne away from him. But she screamed at me to keep going. All of a sudden she stopped screaming. I thought he’d killed her. He called to me that he’d kill me, my parents, and my sister”

  The next question I ask is not meant to hurt her. She’s been through all of that. I cannot believe that my mother left Leanne behind.

  “Do you blame yourself?” I ask.

  I know I would never have left Leanne.

  She takes a breath and speaks without a whisper this time.

  “Every moment of the day,” she says.

  Good, I think. I want to turn her rage about what Alex Rader has done into something useful.

  “Then let’s finish what you tried to do. For Leanne, Shannon, Megan, and for us, Mom. Let’s make sure he’s dead this time”

  AS WE GO TO SLEEP in the darkness Hayden comes to mind. I wonder how he’s doing and if he’s worried. I think about Caleb too and I imagine that he’s at school, though I don’t know what time of day it is. Everything is black. I think about Leanne’s mother in that big house overlooking the bay and how I want her to know that Leanne sacrificed herself to save my mom. That I’m grateful and sorry at the same time. I want Mrs. Delmont to know that if she had ever thought her daughter was selfish and self-absorbed she was wrong. When the moment of truth came, Leanne chose to help someone else.

  Her spirit is with me right now.

  Help someone else. Someone who needs it. I think of Selma at the rest stop. I remember her face. The license plate. I don’t know that she’s in trouble. But I wish now that I’d been more like Leanne when I had the chance, and found out for sure if anything was wrong. As strong as I think I am, I was weak at a time when I should have shown fortitude. I vow that I never will be that person again.

  My mother and I are wrapped around each other and her heartbeat and breathing bring me comfort. I move my hand over the smelly mattress and I hit something sharp. I don’t cry out, but it hurts like hell.

  Instead, I smile.

  I’ve got a weapon after all.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cash: None.

  Food: None.

  Shelter: Cave.

  Weapons: Rocks, bedspring.

  Plan: Kill the MF.

  THE GENERATOR KICKS ON AND we know that he’s back. My father enters our prison with a gun pointed at me. I recognize it as my gun. I know this is his idea of taunting me, showing me his superiority.

  “Daddy’s home,” he says.

  “Leave her alone,” Mom tells him as she pulls her arm tighter around my shoulder.

  “Courtney, honey. You must not think much of me,” he says. “I’d nev
er rape my own daughter. Not now that I’ve found her”

  I want to laugh out loud. He thinks he’s funny, ironic. I know he’s a pig, a scumbag. Worse than anything I’d scrape off my shoe.

  “I found you,” I finally say. “It wasn’t hard”

  “I wasn’t the one in hiding,” he says. “I never have been”

  He emerges from the shadows. I see his face properly for the first time. I keep my emotions in check, but I am completely stunned.

  He looks exactly like my brother.

  I catch Mom’s gaze and she telegraphs to me what I think I know.

  Alex Rader has found us at least once before in my lifetime.

  I am reminded of the time we talked about the members of the Donner Party, a group of pioneers who’d been trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains during a blizzard and how they’d resorted to cannibalism in order to survive.

  “You can’t imagine what people will do to survive”

  “Cannibalism? That’s gross,” I said.

  “I’ve done worse,” Mom answered.

  Something told me back then not to ask what was worse than eating another person. I really didn’t want to know.

  Now I know.

  MY FATHER LOOKS AT ME. He is so average that I would not ever have picked him out as a creeper or anything. He’s got sandy hair that is thinning slightly at the temples. His eyes are like Hayden’s. His hands, gripping the gun, are slender, like mine.

  “The police will find you,” I say.

  “I am the police,” he says, pointing the gun at Mom. “I’m also the judge”

  And the executioner too.

  “Let her go,” Mom says.

  “Not happening. We’re a family, Courtney”

  “We’re not,” she shouts back.

  It’s a tit-for-tat kind of exchange that I know won’t get us anywhere. I know Mom has had the conversation with him before and that he has a hold on her in a way that I can’t fully understand.

  Is it guilt over Leanne.

  “What do you want from me?” I ask, inserting myself into the conversation.

  The air in the space around us is still enough that I can feel his breath even at a distance. I don’t want to be any closer, but I doubt I will have much say in that.

  “Still deciding,” he says.

  “Please, Alex,” Mom says. “I’ll do anything you want me to do”

  He looks at her with a leer. “You always do, babe”

  His words are acid on my face.

  You can’t imagine what people will do to survive.

  “I hate you, Mom,” I say to her, my voice like ice. “You lied to me!.

  Mom mutters something about being sorry, but I don’t allow her to say anything else. I am about to put on the biggest hissy fit that the world has ever seen. I don’t mean any of the words that spew from my lips, but I say them with such conviction I don’t think my mother believes I’m faking anything.

  She so doesn’t know what I’m capable of. Whatever she did to survive was her choice. To run was to acknowledge that Alex Rader was more powerful than she. I’m not going to let him get away. I’m not going to let him live. I don’t care—and this is the truth—if I’m the last one standing.

  I go on. “You are as big a freak as this piece of shit here,” I say, looking at my bio dad. His Hayden eyes blink. A smile curls on his lips. He’s liking my rage. He likes a fighter. I’ll give him one. I can be as cold as he can be. I can be just as ruthless.

  “You’re pathetic, Mom,” I yell at her. “I don’t know why I bothered to find you. You made my life a living hell. You took me away from everyone and everything I ever loved. I’m not even sure that I can love any more. I might not be any better than Psycho Dad”

  That’s the biggest lie I ever told. I do love Mom. I loved Rolland. I love Hayden. I even have feelings for Caleb that fall somewhere beyond that gray area between crush and love. I don’t know.

  But I’m not done with my phony recriminations. Not yet.

  “To think I actually felt sorry for you. You dragged us around like we were nomads and I thought that you were running from an old boyfriend. Then I find out he’s a goddamn serial killer and that you have been with him again. Hayden! Hayden’s his little boy, isn’t he?.

  “He’s not his,” she says. Her eyes are blistering at me. “Don’t say it!.

  “I’ll say whatever I goddamn want. You have no say any more how I live or what I do. Your days of scurrying around trying to avoid the light of truth are over. You make me sick. You have betrayed me and, honestly Mom, I’m so sick of every lie that spews out of your mouth. At least Fuckface Dad here is honest”

  I’m pleased with that last line. I’ve never said the F word in front of Mom before. It felt a little liberating, which is ironic as we are both doomed by the man that killed at least four others.

  “You left Leanne!” I continue ranting, while Mom just sits there like a stunned bump. “You are such a bitch!.

  I’m pleased again with that line too and I stop. I evaluate. Dear old Serial Killer Dad looks like he’s enjoying the tirade. He might even think he has an ally. I doubt he’s going to rape me. Even for a serial killer that might be too low.

  “I did it for you,” Mom finally says.

  “Bullshit,” I shoot back. “You didn’t even know you were pregnant with that asshole’s baby when you left Leanne to die.” I pause and go for the jugular. “You only thought to save yourself. That’s what this whole thing is about. Isn’t it, Mom?.

  She’s crying now. She’s slumped on the edge of the makeshift bed and is sobbing like a baby. I hit her in the truth spot and I hit her hard. In a second, I’m on top of her trying to comfort her.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m scared. I didn’t mean it”

  Now her face is pressed against the mattress and I can’t hear her response.

  “You two knock it off,” Alex says.

  I turn to him. “She’s a bitch, but she’s my mom”

  He comes closer and tugs me roughly by the shoulder, hurting me.

  “She’s my bitch,” he says.

  “And you’re mine,” I say, as I take the straightened coil from the mattress and shove it in his left eye. Hard as I can. He screams so loudly dust falls from the ceiling, but his pain only fuels me. I scream as loud as I can and I twist the heavy metal wire like a corkscrew and pull.

  Alex Rader only has one eye now. The other is hanging from a thread. His hands go up to his face and the gun falls to the mattress. I don’t even think. There isn’t time for that. I grab the gun and before he can take half a breath, pin its barrel to his forehead.

  He looks at me with his good eye. Blood gushes down his face and into his mouth. His hand looks like he’s wearing a shiny red glove. As I get ready to do what I know I have to do, he speaks.

  “Look what you’ve done. You’ve hurt me bad. You don’t know shit about me,” he says, his voice a low croak.

  My hand shakes a little and I tighten the sore muscles in my aching shoulder. I press the gun harder against his forehead and he winces.

  “I don’t care to know,” I say.

  The truth is, part of me would like to know. Part of me would like to understand the toxic DNA that we both share. I’ve done things in the last few days that I didn’t know I could do.

  Didn’t want to do.

  “You think I’m a monster,” he says, his voice croaking more.

  Emotion? Self-pity? Or is it that he knows he’s going to die.

  “But I’m only half of one,” he goes on. “There’s part of me that’s sorry. I did what I had to do. I had no choice”

  If I had any food in my stomach I would like to vomit on him just then. He is repulsive. A liar. A blamer. He is going to give me some kind of bogus reason why he murders and rapes young women. Something that indicates it isn’t his fault. That his DNA was coiled around a virus. That his mother bottle-fed him. That his father whipped him with the buckle end of a belt.

  None
of that will explain the evil he’s done.

  There’s really no way of explaining that kind of nasty.

  “You didn’t have to do anything,” I say.

  “Do it,” Mom calls out from behind me. “Rylee, kill him!.

  Her voice is pleading and demanding at the same time. She’s counting on me. She wants me to fix what she couldn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “Please help me”

  He releases his hand and his eye drops lower, swinging like a pendulum.

  “I need a doctor. I’m begging you. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I promise. I’m good at following orders. I just don’t want to die”

  I feel the shaking of the gun in my hand, but I know that it isn’t my hand that’s causing the vibration. It’s him. That bloody aberration that is my biological father is quaking in fear.

  When I release the trigger, in my head I’m thinking four words.

  This is for Leanne.

  He falls to the floor. Without hesitating a beat, I plunge myself on top of him. I can’t stop. It’s like I’m not even me—the me that I pretended to be all my life. I’m the girl that I really am.

  I fire a shot into his chest.

  This is for Shannon.

  And finally, I go lower. I unzip his pants, pull down his pale blue boxers and expose his penis. I’ve never seen a grown man’s penis in person before and wonder if this is the source of his rage. It’s small, shriveled and pathetic.

  I blow it off the face of the earth with two shots.

  One for Megan and one for Mom.

  Chapter Twenty

  Cash: None.

  Food: None.

  Shelter: None.

  Weapons: Two bullets, a gun, and my hands.