by Debra Webb
Anticipation has me stretching over his desk as he digs through a drawer. He pulls out a sketchpad and flips it open to a page.
“This is the last one I did. I was thinking of her when Fanning was released last month.”
I stare at the young girl’s face. She looks vaguely familiar. I mentally run down the list of Fanning’s victims. She doesn’t look like any of them. “Can I keep this for a while?”
He nods. “If it will help, yes.”
I meet his gaze and consider for a long moment if I really want to know the answer to my next question. “This is important. I need a straight answer. How did you know Dr. Newhouse?”
He lets out a long, low breath. “Just before the trial he talked to me after school one day. I thought he was just another of the doctors the police insisted I see, but he said no. He came to speak to me about something different.” Sanchez stares at his hands for a moment. “He told me if I stuck with my story and never told anyone about the girl that he would pay for me to go to college anywhere I wanted to go.” He laughs. “I thought he was bullshitting me, but he wasn’t. Even before I graduated high school he had already made all the financial arrangements. Even sent a letter of recommendation for me. He did exactly what he said he’d do. The funny thing is, he didn’t have to. I would never have told anyone about her anyway. I made a promise and I intended to keep it.”
The realization hits me then, shakes me to the very core of my being. I draw in a hard breath. Swallow back the denial burgeoning in my throat. “Did Newhouse mention why he wanted to protect this girl? Was she a patient of his?”
Sanchez shakes his head. “I have no idea. Looking back, I guess that’s the only reasonable explanation. I learned later that Newhouse was a major donor to a number of organizations that help children who are victims of abuse. I guess maybe it was personal somehow for him.”
“You never heard from him again?” My pulse is tripping. I can’t find my footing with the theory swelling in my brain.
Sanchez looks away for a moment before he answers. “I hadn’t heard from him in all those years until he contacted me back in January. He said we needed to talk about a couple of things. First, he warned me that Fanning’s release date was coming up and that I should beware. Dr. Newhouse feared the bastard would try to seek revenge. But I figured Fanning was just a sad old man incapable of hurting anyone anymore. Just in case, I had a new security system installed at my house and sent my wife to her mother’s in Memphis while I was gone to Mexico.”
Whatever else Fanning said to Newhouse, this confirms the doc had reason to suspect the bastard might reach out to some of his victims. “What was the other thing he wanted to talk to you about?”
His gaze searched mine for a long moment. “He wanted to make sure our deal remained in effect. He said he’d heard I was having a kid. He set up a college fund for my unborn child.” New tears bloom in his eyes. “I know Dr. Newhouse is dead but I feel like I am betraying him now. He was good to me. I kept my promise to him until this moment. Do you see why we can never tell anyone?”
I nod. “I think I do.” I push my weary body from the chair. “I’ll get this back to you, Mr. Sanchez.”
I say goodbye to his wife and walk out of the house. All that he told me—the face he has drawn—whirl in my head. As I reach my Tahoe my cell vibrates against my side. I climb behind the wheel as I answer it. I hope it’s Liv and that she had a better night last night. I called her before I came to meet with Sanchez but her cell went straight to voicemail. I need to see her. To talk to her…this idea expanding in my mind can’t be right.
Can’t be. Can’t be.
“Hey, Detective, it’s Reynolds.”
It might be Sunday but cops don’t have the luxury of being off duty just because it’s the Lord’s Sabbath.
“Hey, Reynolds. You get that other report?”
I start the engine but don’t move. We’ve been waiting on the DNA results on the second blood type found in Fanning’s duplex. I’m assuming that’s why Reynolds has called. I’m praying it will take this damn theory nagging at me in a whole different direction.
I need it to go a different way.
“Sure did and you are not going to believe what the lab report says. I’m thinking they got this one mixed up with that case a couple years back when all those cops got injured by that strung-out perp. You might not remember but we had to separate out all the blood types, perform DNA tests, it was a real mess.”
My heart sinks.
“Anyway,” Reynolds goes on, “I’m standing here staring at the lab report on that second blood type from your crime scene and I’m certain this can’t be right. There has to be a mix-up. Some kind of wacky mistake.”
But I know it’s not a mistake.
Detective Olivia Newhouse
I woke in my childhood room. The pain was gone but so was a part of me that I fear I will never get back.
I crawled from the bed, across the plush carpet and picked up the photo album. There, on every page, are my memories. Each memory of my life burned into my brain came from these photos…from the stories my parents told me.
But none of it ever happened…to me.
A halting breath shudders through my chest as I lay the album aside, get to my feet and do next what I know I must.
I walk out of the house and keep going until I stand before the barn that once housed beautiful horses. Dr. Lewis Newhouse told me about all the graceful creatures that once grazed in the pastures surrounding his home. His wife, Corrine, was an internationally famous equestrian in American dressage. Once upon a time her trophies lined the walls of their home. But it was their child, their beautiful, sweet daughter, they hoped to groom for Olympic competition.
I draw in a heavy breath. There once was a child named Olivia Newhouse. Her parents protected her so carefully from the ugliness of the world that her prestigious and lettered father experienced in his work every day. She had private tutors, never once attended school outside her home. Everywhere Olivia went her mother or a cautiously chosen and carefully vetted Nanny was sure to go. And still Olivia, at the tender young age of eleven, encountered her first taste of drugs. For the next two years she sneaked behind her loving parents’ backs and found a way to fulfill this new need that throbbed relentlessly inside her.
But then her parents discovered her dark secret and the real trouble began. Olivia was under house arrest, not allowed to see or to communicate with anyone. One night she decided she no longer wanted to live that way so Olivia swallowed a whole bottle of her mother’s secret stash of sleeping pills.
When she was found, unresponsive and barely breathing, she was rushed to the hospital. But the damage was done. Olivia’s heart continued to beat with assistance but her brain was already dead. In time, Dr. and Mrs. Newhouse took their beloved brain dead child home and made her as comfortable as possible. No matter that a machine was required to keep her breathing and that Dr. Newhouse was well versed in the science of what had occurred, they hoped and prayed that the specialists were wrong and that one day she would open her beautiful blue eyes and come back to them.
But she never did.
Each day for two long years Corrine drew more deeply into herself. The beautiful horses were neglected and eventually sold. Dr. Newhouse gave up his practice. They sat in the quiet house day in and day out, listening to the wheeze of the machine keeping their daughter alive and waiting for a miracle that was not going to come.
Dr. Newhouse decided he had to do something or he would lose his precious Corrine as well. He thought of all the young girls who lived on the streets of the city. The ones whose parents had forsaken them…the ones whom society had let down. He began searching the streets until he found exactly the girl he was looking for. A girl with the blond hair and blue eyes of his precious Olivia. A girl the right height who could, with the proper grooming and education, become his sweet Olivia and fulfill the life she had been destined to live. But this child had been damaged by another
man—a monster—and it took time for Dr. Newhouse to convince her to trust him. Finally, she did. She climbed into his car and allowed him to take her to the farm he had told her all about…to the woman waiting to be her new mother.
That was the day I, the Child who once belonged to a monster, became Olivia Newhouse.
My new father took the it Joseph Fanning had created and polished her into the perfect daughter. I stare toward the woods and the grave I opened last night. The real Olivia Newhouse was buried there once the machine keeping her body alive was turned off. My new father waited until my transition was complete, then he told me that it was time for the child in the bed to have peace. I remember thinking she was like Sleeping Beauty except no prince was coming to wake her. Her brain was dead and no force on this earth could bring her back.
But she could be replaced.
By then I hardly remembered my former life. During those long months of grooming and educating, I didn’t understand that I was being reprogrammed. Though my father meant well and certainly saved me from a life on the streets and perhaps a horrible death, what he did was ultimately brainwashing. Using hypnosis and other techniques, he slowly replaced my bad memories with good ones—with Olivia’s memories. I can tell you everything about her and her parents…about this place and the lives they lived here. The vacations they took…everything.
But I do not know my real name. I don’t remember my biological parents.
Until one month ago the name Joseph Fanning meant nothing to me. I saw his face on the news during his highly publicized release from prison, but the name and image of the man barely registered in my brain. My new father did a very good job of scrubbing him from my memory.
I now know that one week ago my subconscious started trying to recreate those awful memories in an effort to prompt me to protect myself. I had no idea I was being watched by pure evil. But my most basic instincts recognized that danger hovered close by. Fanning was watching me. I saw him more than once, but he had disguised himself and the recognition didn’t click. The human mind is a very complex thing. It hides the details that one cannot bear to face. Denial is one of the strongest human emotions that exist. I saw what I wanted to see and ignored all the rest.
But those deeply entrenched survival instincts from my early childhood combined with the enhanced protective hormones of pregnancy ultimately proved stronger than my denial. They kicked in and the child I once was emerged. All those times in the past week that I crashed into the blackness of an intense migraine, went utterly unconscious into what felt like a black hole, the child I used to be resurfaced…did what had to be done. Even in my dreams, sometimes the memories seeped through. But each time I awoke, the carefully programmed adult me took over and denial did the rest.
Then, a few days ago during the aura—those awful minutes before a debilitating migraine kicks in—the memories came crashing back in spurts of ugly images and awful words and this time some of them lingered. The denial was fighting a losing battle. This very minute, more are filtering through the carefully constructed membrane of protection the only real father I have ever known helped to put in place in my damaged mind. I assume these memories are of actual events but I can’t be certain. So much is still unclear.
I don’t remember my name but I am the child Joseph Fanning raped and abused for eight long years. I am the it whose universe was filled only by him and what he wanted. Of this much I am certain.
I open the barn door and step inside. Even after all these years it still smells of hay and horses. My heart quickens. I’ve had flashes of memories about him being chained and, after discovering the bones I dug up, more snippets of memory seeped into my head. Images of me torturing him. I shudder.
I find the switch for the lights, flip it and then move deeper into the enormous structure. The tack room is on the right. My mother’s trophies and ribbons as well as those of the child who’s buried in the woods are neck deep in that room. All the horse gear was sold along with the horses.
At the end of the row, in the very last stall, I find him. He is chained to the far wall, to the ring meant for a horse’s reins. The smell of feces and urine and death fill my lungs. My first impulse is to go to him and see if he’s still alive, but I resist. I will not go near him. I hope he’s dead.
Whispers of words, flickers of images sift through my mind. Finding the note he left on the windshield of my car while I was in the house going through my father’s papers. I’m waiting in the barn. Me walking toward the barn, agony spearing through my brain with every step I made. Bringing water to him and even food on one occasion. I haven’t tended his wound, that’s obvious, but I haven’t killed him either. Perhaps my dedication to the oath I took prevented me from crossing that line.
The calmness I feel surprises me. I’m not sure what I should be feeling but I’m certain this is not it. As an officer of the law it’s my duty to serve and protect, yet I cannot bring myself to do either for him.
His eyes open and the corners of his split lips lift upward. “I didn’t think you were coming back this time.”
“How did you get here?” I steel my spine and force my brain to shift into cop mode. I might not know the name I was given at birth but I am still a cop. On the floor between us is the balled up piece of paper—his note. I should pick it up; it’s evidence. But that would mean moving closer to him. I can’t be certain of his restraint.
He laughs, the sound dry and rotten as if his throat is ripping apart. “Why you brought me here at gunpoint, don’t you remember?”
My head moves from side to side. “No. You brought yourself here.” I’m hoping like hell I can trick him into telling me what actually happened. I have no idea beyond the vague memory of finding that note, but every instinct I possess screams in denial of what he suggests.
Yet, I know denial all too well.
Perhaps I have become the monster. Perhaps there wasn’t a note. I glance at the wadded up paper again. But there it is.
“Well maybe you did and maybe you didn’t,” he says on a wheeze, drawing my attention back to him, “but what do you think your friends in the police department are going to think? You wouldn’t be the first cop to crack, particularly under the circumstances. If you tell them the sad, sad story of your life, maybe they’ll feel sorry for you and send you to one of those cushy mental hospitals instead of to prison. Either way, you’re going down, girl.”
I refuse to fear him or anything he can do to me. The image of a baby being taken from me arrows into my head, rips through my heart. I flinch. I push that memory away and consider that his words suggest that he wants the police to think I’m responsible for all this. More evidence that he is behind the whole set up.
He laughs again. “Newhouse took you and turned you into something you could never really be. I told him that deep down you were still mine. I branded you at seven years old. He couldn’t wash that away.”
I can imagine how the man who raised me—the only father who ever really loved me—felt at hearing those foul words. “You were wrong.”
“If you’re so changed, what am I doing here dying like this?”
“You don’t sound as if you’re dying.”
“Oh I’m dying all right. But I’m taking you to hell with me.”
“Obviously you aren’t clever enough to make that happen.” The longer we talk, the more convinced I become of one thing: I know this piece of shit. If I goad him hard enough, he will spill his guts. “You never were very bright.”
“It was so easy.” He grins at me like the devil he is. “I saw you and that cowboy partner of yours on the news. I recognized you instantly, and I knew despite all the polish and highfalutin education that deep down you’re still my little girl. My heart pounded so hard I lost my breath, got hard just thinking about you. Right then and there, I called my attorney. Made sense he wouldn’t want nothing to do with me unless there was something in it for him so I told him my plan. Let’s just say he was intrigued. All he had to do was dig
up everything he could find on Lewis and Corrine Newhouse and their lovely daughter, Olivia.”
I want to vomit. To scream. But I need him to keep talking, to explain what the hell he means. I have to know what happened during all those blackouts I experienced this week. “You see,” I taunt, “I knew you weren’t smart enough to plot all this on your own.”
He attempted to laugh but coughed instead. “Oh, but after he gave me the lowdown, I figured out all the rest from there. Planned every last detail, and I knew that once we spent some time together you would want to hurt me. All I had to do was set things in motion.”
I lift my chin and stare directly into his beady eyes. “I guess you weren’t expecting that I’d forgotten all about you and the life we shared. Until just now, I didn’t even know you were here.”
Another of those dry laughs ripped from his throat. “Yeah, right. You’re lying just like he did. Newhouse told me you weren’t that child anymore, that you didn’t remember anything from the past. He begged me to let you go. He was so sincere, so worried that I would hurt you again that he just kept upping the ante. So I took the money he offered for my silence. He turned it over to my attorney and I put him right to work on part two of my plan. By the time Dr. Newhouse came back to the prison for a final meeting I knew all his secrets. I knew his wife was dead and that you weren’t this Olivia you were strutting around claiming to be. I guess that chat kind of tore him up ‘cause he dropped dead of that heart attack a few days later.”
I roar with outrage, rush toward him determined to finish off what is left of his pathetic, shitty life.
He just laughs and laughs until he can’t breathe and then he coughs and coughs. “The minute I got out,” he clears his throat, “I started watching you. Went through your trash. That’s how I got your blood. That night you cut yourself—you really should close the blinds in that swanky house—I watched you take the mess out to the trash. I took it, not sure exactly what I’d do with it, but a plan was coming together.”
