by Chaz McGee
Otis Parker was absolutely confident that freedom was days away. His competency hearing had been fast-tracked and would be held by the end of the week.
I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone more.
The party did not last long. By late afternoon on the day that Parker’s hearing was supposed to take place, word reached Holloway that it had been postponed. The hearing had not been able to go forward because Parker’s lawyer hadn’t shown up with the necessary paperwork and no one had been able to reach him.
‘Looks like you’ve been stood up,’ the orderly with the braided beard told Parker, pleased at bringing him bad news. The orderly’s tiny bells tinkled and his gold teeth twinkled merrily when he smiled.
Parker had been pacing the hallways, waiting to be transported to his hearing where, I am sure, he fully expected the next step in his plan to go smoothly. He stopped at this news and squared off with the orderly, certain that he was lying.
‘Man, I’m telling you the truth,’ the orderly said cheerfully. ‘Your lawyer did not show and he is now MIA. Did you have him bumped off, too?’
Parker’s temper lived in him like an animal that came to life when it did not get its way. It rose in him now, even changing the color of his eyes from dark green to nearly black. His shoulders twitched and his hands jerked as if he longed to rip something, anything, apart – be it a table or a human being.
A small group of inmates had gathered to watch the confrontation, but they scurried away with the unerring instinct of rats as they sensed Parker’s mood swing.
‘Steady there, Parker,’ the orderly warned. ‘Two more points and it’s solitary for a week.’
This pronouncement had an immediate effect on Parker. As quickly as the anger had flared, it subsided and was replaced with an eerie calm. ‘He’ll show,’ Parker predicted. ‘He’s getting paid too much to back out now.’
‘Maybe he’s afraid?’ the orderly suggested. There was a taunt in his voice. ‘Odd, isn’t it, how people around you keep showing up dead? Maybe your lawyer man decided he’d rather not be the next one?’
‘He’ll show,’ Parker predicted with a confident smile. ‘With what he’s being paid, believe me, he’ll turn up.’
I wished I could be as sure. But people close to Otis Parker did have an odd way of ending up dead.
I went in search of Parker’s lawyer.
I’d known a lot of lawyers in my time and I figured that Parker was probably right: with that much money on the line, there was a good chance his lawyer would show up in front of the hearing panel sooner or later, pleading for Parker’s release. He was probably there right now, apologizing for being late, proper paperwork in hand, ready to bullshit his way into a hearing the next day.
I was wrong.
I found Parker’s lawyer sitting on a bench by the large pond that anchors the center of the park beside the courthouse and municipal offices. The day had turned cold and cloudy in that capricious way of spring and he was staring out over the gray waters of the pond. His briefcase was tucked between his legs and I wondered how long he had been sitting there. There was something about his posture that made me wonder if I had misjudged him. I wondered if he had tried to go to the hearing, been unable to follow through and wandered instead to this bench, where he had sought refuge from his own conscience . . . and then been too paralysed to leave his refuge behind.
Surely he had to know how angry Otis Parker would be at him for not showing up at the hearing. Surely he knew of the role Parker had played in the psychiatrist’s death.
Yes, I could feel anxiousness and fear radiating off the lawyer as he contemplated Parker’s wrath. But beneath this fear, I felt an undercurrent of something even darker – hopelessness perhaps. He was torn between duty and conscience.
He did not want to be representing Otis Parker; the death of the psychiatrist had shaken him badly. Whatever rationale he had come up with in order to take Parker’s money, however badly he may have needed that money, whatever internal illusions he had created to convince himself that Parker was innocent – those reasons were all gone now. He was trapped between what he had once believed, what he had tried to convince himself he believed in and what he now knew in his heart to be true: Otis Parker was a monster.
His despair was absolute. Maybe Parker’s lawyer had once believed in justice. Maybe he had once believed that in representing the criminally insane, he was making sure that everyone had their day in court. But now? I could feel terror and disillusionment beating in his chest, fueling an insurmountable uncertainty over what he should do next. He could not defend Parker – at least not with good conscience – nor help him seek release. But neither could he drop his client; he’d never get a client to trust him again, at least not one with enough money to choose his own lawyer.
It was a terrible dilemma. The best he had been able to do was dress, get as close to the hearing room as the park and then sit on a bench, frozen with indecision, watching the wind ripple across the water.
That was when I realized that Otis Parker lived to destroy people. Some, he destroyed with exuberant violence. Others, like his lawyer, were destroyed moment by moment just by being in Parker’s proximity. Miranda had been right when she turned down the chance to be Parker’s therapist: just being close to evil changed you. It was a law of physics, not morality. Otis Parker was proof.
I tried to reach the lawyer somehow, I even tried to access his memories, hoping to give him solace or strength. But fear had made him impenetrable. He would have to struggle with his decision alone.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I returned to Holloway to find its acres of lawn deserted. Holloway had become a ghost town. The irony was not lost on me
The short-term unit had been converted into a staging area for the detectives poring over patient and employee records, trying to find someone who connected the victims. It looked as if the entire force was involved in one way or the other, although Maggie and Calvano were nowhere to be seen.
Next door in the long-term unit, the remaining patients were being carefully watched by extra staff. This new layer of precaution had triggered the paranoid tendencies of many, Harold Babbitt among them. He was marching up and down his hallway chanting, ‘Harold Babbitt does not appreciate Her Majesty’s secret spies who move among us in their gaudy plumage like jesters hoping for the chance to dance for the once and future King. Yeah, baby. Yeah, baby. Yeah.’ His marching was more frantic than usual and I feared it would not be long before he launched himself at a wall with such ferocity that not even his protective helmet could stave off the damage.
My imaginary family was falling to pieces. Olivia sat in a near catatonic state in the common room, oblivious to everything around her. As for Lily, she was nowhere to be seen.
Only the maximum security unit still operated in a semblance of normalcy. The violent and the insane patients housed within its walls fed on the chaos caused by the murders. They seemed as giddy with anticipation as spectators at a gladiator match who, having tasted blood, were now in the mood for death.
Extra guards had been brought in from the prison a county over, allowing most of the inmates to be let outside to exercise in an effort to calm them. Otis Parker was among them. But while the other inmates played basketball, jostling and shoving each other, Parker stood at the far end of the exercise yard, staring out over the valley spread below the hospital. He was calculating something, but I could not pinpoint what – the incline? Escape? Or was he waiting for someone other than his lawyer to arrive?
Reassured that Parker was still safely imprisoned, I returned to the long-term unit and discovered that Olivia had actually been waiting, filled with anxiety, to talk to her new therapist. She was sitting in a private room with my son’s therapist, Miranda, listening to her explain in an infinitely sympathetic way how very glad she was to have been given the chance to get to know Olivia, how she had seen her often when visiting Holloway and wondered why she was there.
Miranda knew, o
f course, why Olivia was there. But she wanted to hear Olivia’s version. I felt Olivia’s responding to her. There was something about Miranda that invited others to open up and share the secrets that burdened their hearts. I had seen it happen to suspects at the station, and with my son Michael here at Holloway, and I saw it happen again that afternoon from my hidden spot in a corner of the room.
What I saw was a miracle.
There, in the midst of murder and madness, while detectives swarmed Holloway and criminals played basketball nearby, and the town below was busy double-checking the locks on their windows and doors, my lovely, lost Olivia found her way to salvation.
Under Miranda’s gentle probing, she revealed her terrible secret: she had lost her husband and child in a car accident after insisting that her husband take the child out for a drive to calm her. Trapped in a too small apartment by thunderstorms and darkness, Olivia had found she could not endure the crying any longer and begged her husband to take the child away.
‘She was just starting to get her teeth, you see,’ she explained to Miranda as she laced her fingers together, then unlaced them, and laced them together again. ‘She had two little teeth on the bottom just starting to poke out. They were like tiny pearls. They were so beautiful.’ Her voice broke and she could not go on.
Miranda had said little, but she knew more than Olivia herself did about that night. ‘You lived with your husband and daughter in that apartment?’ Miranda asked her softly. ‘Is that right? I read in your file that you lived on the first floor, near a garden area. Your neighbor said you loved to work in the garden.’
Olivia nodded. ‘Yes. Emily liked to sit next to me and jab her plastic shovel into the dirt. Everything I did, she watched. She liked to pretend she was me.’
‘Are you aware that your neighbor could hear much of what was said in your apartment?’ Miranda asked. I wondered where she was going with this knowledge.
Olivia nodded again. ‘It was embarrassing sometimes. When Jeff and I fought, I always felt like we were fighting in front of an audience.’
‘She gave a statement the night of the accident,’ Miranda explained, tapping her finger on the folder that held Olivia’s patient information. ‘There’s a copy of the police report in your patient files.’
‘Why is that important?’ Olivia asked anxiously. In her world, news was never good.
‘It’s important because she says, very clearly, that it was your husband’s idea to take your daughter for a ride that night,’ Miranda explained. ‘She says that he insisted a car ride would soothe your daughter, but that you were afraid the bad weather made the trip too dangerous. You wanted him to stay. He protested, insisting that your daughter loved the sound of the rain on the car roof and that he knew a quiet road where there would be no other traffic to fear. He said that you needed a break and that he would bring you ice cream when he returned. Your neighbor was quite clear about what was said. Apparently, your conversation took place right outside her door. And they did find a carton of ice cream in the front seat of your husband’s car. The police asked you about it. Do you remember any of that?’
Olivia did not answer. She was seeing that evening in a different way for the first time since it had happened. I could feel something in Olivia coalesce and crumble as she clung to the proof of that carton of ice cream. Something heavy and dark inside her broke into infinitesimal pieces and fell away.
Miranda waited out her silence.
‘What do you mean?’ Olivia finally asked. She sounded fearful of the answer.
‘I mean that it wasn’t your fault,’ Miranda explained gently. ‘It was your husband’s choice to take your daughter for a drive that night.’
‘But I remember it so clearly,’ Olivia said. ‘I practically threw him out of the house.’
Miranda shook her head. ‘I know that’s what you think happened,’ she said. ‘But your neighbor is very specific. The important thing is that you probably remember it the way you do for a reason, and we need to find out what that reason is. If we can figure out why it is that you feel so guilty about Emily’s death, then . . .’ She smiled. ‘Well, it would be a start.’
Olivia could not take it all in. She was unable to respond. But I felt a light inside her start to grow, erasing the darkness she had carried around for so long. Miranda was right. It was a beginning of sorts – and it meant that something good, however small, had come out of what was happening at Holloway.
The psychiatrist’s death had brought Miranda and Olivia together, and because of that, there was a chance that Olivia could escape the prison her mind had imposed upon her.
From darkness shall come the light.
It seemed to me a kind of miracle, the kind that made me believe there was a purpose to my still being here on this earthly plane. Something bigger than me, bigger even than Otis Parker, was guiding us toward the light and, in the end, making the terrible things that human beings could do to one another better. Not perfect but, somehow, better.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I wanted to see my real family. In the weeks following my death, I had often stood across the street from my old house wondering if they mourned me – or if they secretly felt a sense of relief. Eventually I had wearied of self-torture and moved on.
This time was different. This time it wasn’t about me. I had seen Connie march my son out of Holloway, I had felt Otis Parker’s power, and I needed to know that they were safe.
They were gathered around the dining-room table, celebrating Michael’s return home. It had been several months since I had seen my youngest son, Sean. He was starkly older, as if my passing had released him to grow up. Sean’s disposition had come from Connie; he would never suffer the dark bouts that I had passed on to Michael. But despite our differences in temperament, Sean looked remarkably like me physically. He was now nearly as tall as his older brother, but lanky and healthy, an athlete full of energy and life as he sat at the kitchen table with his mother and brother, making it clear through his jokes that he loved Michael and welcomed him home.
I was surprised to see a fourth face at the table: Michael’s friend, Adam Mullins, who had been such a stalwart friend while my son was at Holloway. Adam teased both my sons so expertly, it was clear that he was considered by all to be part of their family.
Connie had made veal chops and the smell of my once favorite dish was irresistible. I perched on a rickety antique chair passed down from Connie’s great-grandmother and took in the sounds and smells of my family breaking bread together. I had been banned from the chair while alive for fear I would reduce it to matchsticks, and enjoyed the joke I now played on my wife. There’s not much else to enjoy when you’re dead.
Michael seemed brighter somehow, as if his spirit had been tarnished and now glowed with a new shine. His stay at Holloway, although cut short, had still done him a world of good. He had the promise of future therapy sessions with Miranda to get him through any dark days that might come and I could feel a determination in him to stay strong. He was giddy at being home and had a new appreciation for the care that Connie gave him after hearing the horror stories of the other kids on his ward. The smile he gave his mother, so rarely bestowed in the past year, made it plain that he was not the same boy who had entered Holloway ten days before.
I wonder how much having a friend like Adam had to do with Michael’s recovery. I had not had many friends while growing up. My own father had been too violent and unpredictable to risk bringing someone else into the secret life of our broken family. Yet Adam Mullins was growing up in a similar situation and he had found a way to be a good friend to my son.
They, of course, talked of nothing but the murders at dinner, despite Connie’s best attempts at introducing new topics. The mention of Darcy’s name triggered the same ritual each time: either Michael or his friend Adam would say softly, as if to himself, ‘Man, I can’t believe she’s really gone,’ and the other would nod their solemn agreement. But, like the kids they were, they also sought
refuge from their sadness in enthusiastic speculation about who the killer – or his next victims – might be.
My youngest son Sean wanted to dwell on the possibility that his future stepfather, Cal, might be next in the unknown killer’s sights. Connie looked scandalized and frightened each time he brought it up, and Michael finally kicked his brother under the table, inspiring Sean to return to the safer topic of the murder of strangers. Connie did not want to talk about such things at all; she wanted to forget the uncertainties that existed outside the safe home she had created for our sons. But the world was not going to let her forget. Just after dessert, the insistent buzz of the doorbell signaled that the world was coming to them.
Connie knew at once that the news was not good.
She folded her napkin and, without a word to the boys, walked to the foyer and looked out the front door. Maggie and Calvano stood on the doorstep, my doorstep, their faces frozen in that expressionless way every detective I have ever known had been taught to adopt when trying not to give anything away.
My spirits faltered. Was Michael involved in this somehow? Why else would Maggie and Calvano be here personally when there was so much else for them to be doing?
Connie had not been a cop’s daughter, and then a cop’s wife, without learning something about cops. She suspected the same things I did. She opened the door slowly, her mouth set in a determined line that signaled to Maggie and Calvano that they had better have a full grasp of Michael’s constitutional rights before they even thought about setting a big toe inside her house.
Maggie recognized Connie as someone not to tangle with and, I like to think, wanted to show her respect as my widow. ‘We’re here to talk to Adam Mullins,’ Maggie said quickly. ‘His father said he would be here.’
‘You can’t talk to him without a parent present,’ Connie shot back. ‘He’s a minor.’
‘His father has signed a waiver,’ Maggie explained. ‘He’s agreed to let us bring him in for questioning.’
