Victim 14

by KJ Kalis

  The pure joy of a new day wasn’t part of his life anymore. Hadn’t been for years. It had been nine years since Libby left him. It had happened as suddenly as a slap in the face. Ollie had been at work one day and had come home, expecting to find Libby in the kitchen and the girls watching television. They were in kindergarten that year, five years old. Instead of the normal noise of a full house when he came in from working at the machine shop, there was silence.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, Ollie remembered that day. He walked into the kitchen looking around, his eye catching on something shiny on the kitchen table. It was Libby’s wedding ring, a scrawled note underneath. “Ollie,” the note started, “I’ve left with the girls. I’m sorry, I fell out of love with you a long time ago but have been trying to stay to keep us together as a family. It isn’t working. I found someone else and have taken the girls with me so you don’t have to worry about childcare. I’ll be in touch to arrange for you to see them.”

  At the time, Ollie remembered how the words drained the life out of his body. He slumped into one of the kitchen chairs, staring at the words on the page as they blurred in front of him. Questions flew through his mind about how this had happened. When had Libby decided she didn’t love him anymore? What about the girls? When would he see them again?

  Curling and uncurling his toes on the floor as he sat on the edge of the bed reliving that day, Ollie realized Libby leaving had set off a cascade of events he was no longer in control of. Libby had promised to let him see the girls, but it had only happened one time two months after she left, as she and her new fiancé were getting ready to move to Edmonton, Canada. Now the girls were fourteen and Ollie wasn’t sure he’d even recognize them.

  Thinking back to the last time he saw Libby and the girls, it seemed like it was part of a dream. Ollie had met Libby and the girls at a gas station on the outskirts of town. The car they were driving was packed to the gills, boxes and suitcases pressing up against the back windows of the minivan. Ollie didn’t recognize the car. It must have belonged to Libby’s lover. Ollie’s interaction with Libby and the girls didn’t last more than a couple of minutes. He’d tried in the couple months she’d left to get her to talk to him, to get Libby to come home and start their life again. She wasn’t having any of it, “I’m sorry Ollie but I just don’t love you anymore. It’s not fair to you or to the girls for me to be unhappy.” Libby said it in a way that was so matter of fact it didn’t seem any more emotional than her telling him what they were going to have for dinner that night.

  Standing outside of their minivan, all Ollie wanted to do was grab his girls and run, but they were strapped in tight, bags of snacks and drinks between the two of them. Libby’s fiancé at least had the sense to go into the gas station store and pretend to buy some things while Ollie and Libby stood outside with their broken family. Though Ollie tried to remember what Libby said to him, the words escaped his memory. The only thing he had left were the blurry views of his girls and Libby, a broad smile painted on her face. He’d never seen her so happy.

  A couple of minutes after the new fiancé walked into the gas station store, he came back out, baseball hat on his head, walking toward the minivan. Libby introduced them, “Ollie, this is my fiancé, Ned.”

  Ned wasn’t as big as Ollie, but he was neatly dressed. In addition to the baseball hat, he had on a pair of nice jeans, work boots and a short-sleeved plaid shirt. “Nice to meet you. Sorry, it’s under these circumstances,” he said.

  Ollie fought every urge he had to pick the smaller man up and hurl him through the plate glass window of the gas station store. He knew it wouldn’t get him any closer to Libby or his girls if he was sitting in jail for the rest of his life. The best he could do was manage a nod, so that’s what he did.

  An awkward silence fell across the threesome, the only noise the rattle of a chip bag being opened in the back seat by one of the girls. After a minute, Libby looked at her watch. “Well, we’d best be going. It’s a long drive into Canada. I’ll send along our new contact information when we get there. We’ll be staying with Ned’s family while he gets settled in his new job.”

  As Ollie took a couple of steps back from the minivan, watching Ned and Libby get settled inside, he felt a tearing in his soul watching his family drive away without him. Edmonton was nearly the other side of the world as far as he was concerned, at least from Louisiana. The odds of him seeing Libby or his girls anytime soon shrunk as every second passed. He remembered standing in the gas station parking lot, his hands limp, feeling defeated, the face of Libby’s new fiancé, Ned, burned in his mind.

  Ollie pushed the thoughts back into a corner of his mind and stood up from the edge of the bed, leaving it unmade. He spent just a few minutes in the bathroom and got ready for work. Taking the steps downstairs slowly, waiting for the ache in his body to subside from working at the machine shop hunched over all day, he picked up his keys and wallet from the kitchen table and walked outside.

  The new day had dawned pleasant, though still a little dark, hot and humid, not that the dampness in the air ever left Louisiana. The nearly constant humidity was a gift from living on the Gulf Coast. But, unlike the coastal areas, Tifton didn’t get much of a breeze. As usual, the heavy air hung around Ollie and he swatted at a bug as he walked to the old work van parked in the driveway. It was white, with black lettering on the back that said: “New and Used Windows” with a phone number that wasn’t Ollie’s. He’d bought it secondhand from someone on the other side of town whose name he couldn’t remember. He’d never taken the time to remove the lettering. It didn’t matter. It was just him. Alone.

  Starting the engine, Ollie pulled out of his little driveway and drove down the road. There were no other houses in the area, not for a couple of miles. Once he got to the first paved street, he turned right and drove south. The urge for him to visit his next target was more than he could stand.

  As he drove, he could feel the pain inside of him building, memories of Willow and Sage in his mind. He hadn’t heard from Libby in a while, but as far as Ollie knew, she was still living in Edmonton with Ned. His mind turned and focused on Sage, her long brown hair grown almost to her waist, her little round cheeks and bright smile pressed through his memory. The more he thought about her, the more he hurt. Since they’d been gone, he’d only found one way to relieve the pain, at least temporarily. Though he didn’t want to punish other people for the loss of his twins, the ache he felt inside of him was worse than the action he needed to take to relieve it. He gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. It was time to focus on Sage. What he needed to do might temporarily relieve the pain of losing her, but then the ache of losing Willow would come back. He knew it was a strange way to honor his girls each year, sacrificing a life for each of them, but it was the only way he could dull the pain. Memories of the girls cycled through his mind, tormenting him with their absence.

  The headlights of the van cut through the dusky morning. Ollie didn’t have a lot of time, just enough for a drive-by before work. The house he was looking for was small and white, perched up on posts in case of flooding. Pressure started to build inside Ollie’s chest as he turned down the street, his heart beating a little faster. He noticed the street sign read Camelot Way. Kind of a strange name for a street in Louisiana, he thought to himself.

  He’d spotted the little girl a month before at the drug store with her parents. They were standing at the pharmacy, a young woman helping them. “Prescription for Lexi Cooper?” the woman called. Ollie noticed the little girl, her beautiful blonde hair cascading down her back, just like Sage’s did. It was at that moment he knew. He’d been waiting for the right time and it was almost here…

  The dusk hanging over Tifton had caused the people living in the little white house to flip on two bright front porch lights. As Ollie pulled down the street, he noticed them right away, and that the garage door was open. Standing down by the street was a man and a little girl. She had her hair in pigtails with a
pink backpack strapped over her shoulders. Ollie didn’t realize that school had started. He’d lost track of school days and holidays without the girls. Ollie stopped the van a few houses down, watching. The little girl bounced around, twirling, her father laughing and smiling even at the early hour of the morning. Ollie licked his lips, leaning forward, practically resting his chest on the steering wheel. He remembered when Willow and Sage were that age. When Libby had taken them, the girls had barely started kindergarten. “Sage had a backpack like that,” he whispered to no one in particular. He knew he couldn’t trust his memory, but he thought that Sage had a pink backpack and Willow had a purple one for their first year of school. All the pinks and purples had left his house when Willow and Sage moved away with their mom. Everything that was left in Ollie's life was drab and gray.

  Headlights in Ollie’s rearview mirror startled him, and he sat straight upright in his seat, wondering who was coming down the road. To anyone else, it would look like he was just a repair man waiting to start a job somewhere on that street that morning, but Ollie knew better. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he saw the headlights were higher than usual, ones from a school bus. Sighing, Ollie leaned back in the chair, watching as the father smiled at the little girl and hugged her, nearly following her onto the school bus as she carried the backpack that was almost as big as she was. With a wave, the dad stepped back from the bus, the louvered doors closing. He stayed in his spot as it pulled away, blowing a kiss to his daughter.

  The fury and pain built inside of Ollie. He watched the man walk back up the driveway and go into his house. The garage door and front lights stayed on. A few minutes later, a car backed out of the garage slowly, the man behind the wheel. Ollie squinted at him, wondering where he was going. Work would be the logical guess. As the car idled in the driveway, the man looked down, his face illuminated by the glow from a cell phone screen. A second later, the front door opened, the figure of a woman silhouetted by the bright lights left on next to the front door. She was wearing running shorts and a tank top, her hair pulled up in a high ponytail. She had a striking resemblance to the little girl who left just a few minutes before. In her hand, she had something. It was too far away to see what it was. Barefoot, she ran down the front walk to the car. The man rolled down the window, a smile on his face. The woman handed whatever she had found for him into the car, leaning over and kissing him on the mouth before he left. Walking quickly, the woman passed across the front of the house, pausing for a minute at the bottom of the steps to wave at the man who was pulling out of the driveway, the garage door sliding closed. The woman went up the steps, her hips swaying, the door to the house closing behind her and the front lights going dark.

  There was nothing else to see. Ollie leaned back in the driver’s seat for a moment, waiting for the pain in his body to subside. The pain from losing his girls was like a knife cutting him over and over again, knowing that somewhere, they were living a new life with their mother and Ned. Fury rose inside of him. His family used to be like the one he’d just seen — the excitement of kids going off to school, smiles from the parents, evening dinners talking about how everyone’s day went. That wasn’t his life anymore. Thinking about it made Ollie’s whole body ache in a nearly indescribable way. Over the years, the pain that started in his heart had become visceral, his muscles tight as if fighting against the life he was living.

  Ollie turned the key in the ignition of the van, putting it into gear and slowly creeping away. There was no reason to alert any of the neighbors of his presence, though there weren’t many houses on the street that anyone would even notice. Putting his foot on the gas, he gave the van a little goose, letting it slide slowly down the road and away before the sun was fully up.

  * * *

  The rest of the day went as could be expected. Frustrated from work, Ollie drove home exhausted. As he walked in the back door, the musty smell of a house that needed to be cleaned filled his nostrils. He went to the cabinet and pulled out a can of soup, pouring it in a pot to heat. He stood by the stove watching it, waiting for tiny bubbles to form at the edge before taking it off the burner. Leaning over, Ollie pulled the spoon out of a drawer next to the stove, used a potholder to pick up the pan and set it down on the table. He ate right out of the pot, the lukewarm soup filling a little of the hole in his stomach. He didn’t even bother to take off his work boots.

  As soon as he finished eating, Ollie ran water in the pot and left it in the sink. He had other things that were more important to do than worry about dishes.

  The house he lived in didn’t have a long hallway, just a stumpy corridor at the intersection of where the family room, kitchen and the stairwell met. The door to the cellar was at one end, locked, a heavy phalange and padlock preventing anyone from going down or coming up. From his pocket, Ollie pulled out a ring of keys. It was the same keyring that had his van keys and house keys on it. He never left the cellar key at home. It was always with him, a reminder of the secrets he had. Fumbling with the key for a minute, Ollie finally jammed it in the lock, his hands shaking. Without giving it much more thought, he pulled the padlock off the door and reached for the first string that lit the bulb at the top of the steps, the rough wood creaking under his feet as he went downstairs. Pulling the string for the bulb at the bottom of the stairs, it cast a dim, murky light over the cellar.

  Ollie stood at the bottom of the steps for a minute, taking heavy breaths. His chest felt like his heart might explode. The pain was so intense he wondered if he was having a heart attack. Walking over to the workbench, he ran his fingers over the tools assembled on the surface. His mind and body began to calm, just the touch of the hunting knife and saws helping him to remember the solution to all of his problems. Ollie leaned over the workbench, carefully picking up each one of the implements and setting them in order. From underneath the top of the bench, he reached for a dirty rag and a bottle of oil. From working in a machine shop, he knew that keeping his tools clean and sharp was the best way to get his project done efficiently. Ollie took the rag in his square hand and wiped each one carefully, checking to make sure that each tool was in good working order. The last thing he wanted to do was be in the middle of his project and have to stop and repair a tool. That very thing had happened a few years before, the blade on one of his saws breaking in the middle of removing a leg. He had to go upstairs and out to the garage to get a new blade. By the time he went back downstairs, it was as if the magic of the moment had disappeared. He finished his project as usual, but it wasn’t the same. It didn’t remove the pain. Remembering what’d happened before, he always checked his tools and made sure he had extra parts handy just in case he needed them without having to leave the cellar. It all had to happen there. To stay there in the dark and the damp. That was the only way to relieve the pain and remember his girls.

  After wiping each tool carefully, a dull shine from the oil glowing in the dim light, Ollie sat down in the tattered green chair, wiping his hands on the dirty rag. He rested his hands on his knees and stared forward, his eyes darting between the tool bench, the chair bolted in the corner and the calendar on the wall. The time was coming, he could feel it in his chest. “This is for you, Sage…” he whispered.

  6

  Emily was just about done packing when Mike came up to her room. “Okay for me to come in?” Emily nodded.

  “What’s up?” she said, zipping her black duffle bag closed. Inside, she had a few basic changes of clothes, clean jeans and shirts, fresh pairs of socks and her toiletries. She even included a couple of pairs of shorts in case she needed them, though she usually only wore them when she was heading back from a case.

  “I know me and Flynn, we kind of pushed you on this case. Sorry about that. I thought about it and I know it’s not my place.”

  Emily raised her eyebrows. After the issues she and Mike had on their last case — Mike accusing her of being disloyal, stealing Miner and taking him to his off-the-grid cabin — the trust between them was almost
repaired. Almost. The fact that Mike was coming to her with something of an apology told her the therapy was helping. Having a girlfriend probably didn’t hurt either, Emily thought. “It’s okay. I don’t know how many more of these cases I’m going to do, but there’s nothing wrong with looking at a new way to approach them.” She stood up, walking into the bathroom, checking to make sure she’d packed everything and then came back out, Mike still leaning in the doorway. “What you and Flynn said was correct. There are lots of cases out there that need justice, but there aren’t many people who know I’m available to help.” Emily picked up her duffel bag and slung it over her shoulder. She turned towards Mike, “Like I said, I don’t know how many more cases I’m going to do, but if I am, I need to be open to doing them in more than one way.”

  Mike stared at her for a second, “Thanks for that, I think.”

  “What does that mean?” Emily said, starting for the door, passing him as she walked down the steps to the first floor.

  “Well, I didn’t expect you to be so flexible. Thanks.”

  Emily shook her head and smiled. “Listen, you aren’t the only one who has to learn some new things. I do, too.” Miner met the two of them at the bottom of the steps, his round eyes staring at them, the tip of his pink tongue sticking out.