Live to Tell

by Lisa Gardner

  “A learning opportunity,” Lightfoot had informed her. “No one heals overnight. For every step forward, there are steps backwards.”

  She decided the man loved his one-liners. And she decided that overwhelmed, stressed-out mothers must devour his words hook, line, and sinker. A televangelist for the alternative-medicine set.

  “I think Lightfoot believes in what he does,” D.D. told Alex. “And … I think his kind of charisma combined with his kind of looks is a pretty dangerous combo. Strong man. Weak parents. My bullshit meter hit an all-time high.”

  Alex cut off another piece of fudge. “Why?”

  “Are you kidding me? Interplanes, spiritual healings, angel hugs. These kids have violent impulses. They bludgeon fathers, shoot mothers, stab siblings. I think they might need more than deep-breathing exercises.”

  “What’s the more?” Alex asked with a shrug. “Remember nurse Danielle from the psych ward? Modern medicine doesn’t know what to do with these kids either. Not enough available medicines, too many side effects. I don’t know. I’ve never meditated a day in my life, but if I had a kid going crazy and the docs told me they were out of options … Sure, I’d give Lightfoot a call. Meditating isn’t gonna hurt a child. Nor is vegetable broth or organic fruits or nighttime visits to the interplanes. You can’t blame the parents for trying.”

  “Exactly the danger,” D.D. said flatly.

  Alex regarded her steadily. “You don’t buy any of it? What about his spiel on negative and positive personalities? I gotta say, my Aunt Jeanine could drive the president of the Optimist Club to suicide. That woman’s the walking, talking personification of a downer. I can believe she’s sending negative energy out into the universe.”

  “Big leap from naturally happy or sad people to nighttime surfing of the spiritual superhighway.”

  “I think cops know woo-woo,” Alex continued. “At least the good ones.”

  “Instinct is instinct, not woo-woo,” D.D. said.

  “Ah no. A lot of people would argue instinct is exactly woo-woo.”

  “And they would be wrong. Instinct is evolutionary in nature. Darwinism one-oh-one. Those who can pick out the bad guys first live longer. And eventually produce generations of fine policing talent.”

  Alex leaned forward, wiped a spot of peanut butter from the corner of her mouth with his fingertip. “Shaman boy got to you,” he repeated.

  “Oh, shut up,” D.D. snapped. But shaman boy had gotten to her. Because if getting in touch with one’s inner love child was the secret to happiness, then she was well and truly screwed.

  “Let’s pretend to be cops,” she declared three minutes later. “We have, oh”—she glanced at her watch, “about four hours before the evening news broadcasts that a second family was murdered last night, making it two households in forty-eight hours. If we’re lucky, given the differences in geography and socioeconomics, the reporters will assume it’s a tragic coincidence, and run sidebars on getting better social services for stressed families during these tough economic times. If we’re not lucky, some talking head will link the crimes, declare a serial killer loose in the greater Boston area, and there will be a run on handguns, possibly leading to a spike in accidental shootings of small children. Would you care to place your bet?”

  “I think that’s negative energy,” Alex told her.

  “What can I tell you? I’m playing to my strengths.”

  Alex opened his mouth, looked like he might refute that, but then closed it again. The moment came and went. D.D. wished she understood the interlude better, but she didn’t.

  “Opportunity,” Alex said tersely, and wrapped up his remaining fudge. “Lightfoot worked with the Harrington family over the past year and was obviously trusted by them. If he knocked on the front door during dinner, they would’ve let him in.”

  “But his work with them was mostly done. Ozzie had ‘made great strides,’ the whole family was ‘making better choices,’ succeeding in their ‘learning opportunities,’ and … what was that last thing?”

  “‘Listening to their inner truths.’”

  “Exactly. Nothing says ‘happy family’ like listening to your inner truths.” D.D. paused, pushed away half a grilled cheese but didn’t touch the fudge. “We should download Lightfoot’s photo from the Internet and take it to the neighbors. See if they agree he hadn’t been around in a while. After all, can’t forget AndrewLightfoot.com.”

  “Can’t forget,” Alex agreed. “So he has opportunity. What about motivation?”

  “Hell if I know. Pick your poison. Had an affair with the wife …”

  “Can’t picture him and Denise.”

  “Had an affair with the daughter.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Parents found out. Seducing underaged girls definitely not good PR for an enlightened being. Lightfoot has to do something about it and, knowing Ozzie’s history, goes with family annihilation.”

  “Except he didn’t frame Ozzie. He framed Patrick.”

  “All right. Lightfoot’s obviously a master manipulator….”

  “‘Obviously’?”

  D.D. ignored him. “So he went to work on Patrick. Here’s a father who’s financially stressed and emotionally strained. Troubled kid is a lot of work. House is a lot of work. Now he finds out his ‘good daughter’ is dirty dancing with the local healer. Patrick confronts Andrew. Andrew twists it all around and convinces Patrick that all the ‘negative energies’ are winning, and Patrick should give up the fight.”

  “Drives the man into killing his entire family?”

  “Why not? We close the case, Lifetime makes the movie, I finally get sex.” D.D. stopped. Probably shouldn’t have said that last part out loud.

  “Does the sex part involve Lightfoot or me?” Alex asked.

  “In that scenario, Lightfoot’s gone to prison, so it doesn’t involve him.”

  “Perfect. Let’s make the arrest.”

  “Only after you solve the next problem: the Laraquette-Solis crime scene.”

  Alex nodded, serious again. “Lightfoot claimed not to know them, and I gotta say, I don’t see them as the shaman type.”

  “Though they do know their herbs.” D.D. shrugged, trying out different scenarios in her mind, not making much progress. She started to pack up her fudge. “Grilled cheese?” she asked Alex, gesturing to the remaining half a sandwich. He considered the matter, then helped himself to a few bites. The gesture struck D.D. as intimate. Look at them, sitting forearm to forearm at this tiny little table in this cute little fudge shop in this gorgeous little town, sharing a sandwich.

  She felt discomfited again. Torn between the life she had and the life she wished she had. Or, more accurately, torn between the person she was and the person she wished she could be.

  “All set?” Alex asked after finishing the grilled cheese. D.D. nodded, and he graciously carried her tray to the trash. She replaced her fudge in the plastic bag, adding Alex’s box on top. They waved goodbye to the proprietor, then stepped out onto the sun-drenched street, having to pick their way through the throng of summer tourists.

  “Next stop?” Alex asked, angling automatically toward the ocean. At the end of the street, they could just make out a slice of blue water. It was tempting to walk toward it.

  “Don’t know,” D.D. said, staring at the distant water, listening to the gulls.

  “Dig deeper into Lightfoot?”

  “Probably.” But her heart really wasn’t in it.

  “It might just be two coincidental crimes,” Alex said, as if sensing her apathy.

  “I don’t know that the crimes are linked,” she admitted. “I feel it, but I don’t know it.”

  Beside her, Alex blinked. It took her another second to get it.

  “Crap, I sound just like him!”

  “Cops know woo-woo.”

  “That’s it, I want to go home and shower.”

  “Works for me,” he said.

  She shook her head and headed for the c
ar. “We’re going to HQ.”

  “No shower?”

  “Nope. I’m getting out a whiteboard, we’re poring through the reports, and we’re gonna overanalyze every single detail of this case until we goddamn well know something. Screw woo-woo. You know what makes the world a better place? Good, old-fashioned hard work.”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  DANIELLE

  “So how are things at the PECB?” Dr. Frank asked.

  He sat in a dark green wingback chair flecked with tiny gold stars. I sat across from him, not on the proverbial couch, but in a second star-dusted deep-green wingback. Between us was a cherry table with a tape recorder and two china cups: tea for him, coffee for me. We could be a set piece at a theater: prominent shrink interviewing prominent patient.

  I picked up the fine rose-patterned china cup and took a sip before answering. Work was Dr. Frank’s standard warm-up question. I only saw him a couple of times a year, so each occasion called for some sort of icebreaker, and he’d long ago realized I’d rather talk about other children’s problems than my own.

  “I have a new charge,” I said now, setting down the coffee. It was decaf, really terrible. I didn’t know why I still accepted a cup, after all these years. You’d think I’d know better.

  “Yes?” he said encouragingly, his gaze eternally patient.

  “Her name’s Lucy. She’s a primal child. Fascinating, really. She soothes herself by taking on the persona of a house cat. Plays with her food, grooms herself, naps in sunbeams. As a cat, she’s fairly workable. Lose the persona, however, she’s aggressive, violent, wild….” I lifted my hair to reveal a giant scratch alongside my neck, as well as an assortment of dark purple bruises. “That was from an encounter last night.”

  Dr. Frank didn’t say anything. Talking is my half of the relationship.

  “We’d assumed she was completely nonverbal,” I continued. “But last night she spoke to me. Also, I’ve caught her listening a few times when the staff was speaking. The look in her eyes … I think there’s a lot going on in her head we don’t know about yet. In fact, I think she might be much more capable than we’ve assumed.”

  “You said she’s your charge?”

  “Yeah. Well, I’ve been on the unit a lot these days, and if I’m on duty, I generally work with the nonverbals. My specialty.”

  “I see.” Another standard Dr. Frank line. Sometimes, I felt like I could script these sessions before I ever arrived, which was probably why I didn’t visit so much anymore. I’d quit altogether if not for Aunt Helen. She seemed to need for me to have a therapist, so Dr. Frank and I humored her.

  Now Dr. Frank was eyeing me steadily. I knew what he was building toward, but I made him work for it. After all, asking was his half of the relationship.

  “When did you get off work?” he questioned now.

  “I got home around three in the morning.”

  He glanced at his watch. It was ten a.m. Ten a.m. on a beautiful Saturday morning. I should be hanging out in the parks along the Charles River, not sitting here.

  “What time did you get up this morning?”

  “What?”

  “What time did you rise?”

  My knee was starting to bounce. I forced it to stop. “Don’t know. Didn’t pay attention.”

  “Breakfast?”

  “Sure.”

  “What did you eat?”

  “I don’t know. Bagel. What does it matter?”

  He eyed me, going in for the kill. “You tell me, Danielle. Why does it matter?”

  Both of my knees were jiggling now. Traitors. “Fine,” I huffed out. “So I’m not sleeping much. No surprise there, right? And okay, I skipped breakfast, and oh yeah, now that you mention it, dinner last night.” Not that it’ll stop me from pounding a few drinks later on. No surprise there either.

  I glared at him, daring him to tell me I don’t have the right to self-destruct.

  “Dreams?” he asked steadily.

  “Same fucking ones.”

  “Do you get out of your parents’ house?”

  “Nope. Nothing new there either.”

  “Have you tried any sleep aids?”

  “If you can believe such a thing, they make me crankier.”

  “All right.” He picked up his own china cup, took a delicate sip of tea, then gently returned the cup to its saucer. “So you have how many days to go?”

  I continued to glare at him. He knew the anniversary date as well as I did, the asshole.

  He remained unflappable, blue eyes direct, white beard neatly trimmed, light gray suit dignified, so I finally bit out, “Two.”

  “Two days,” he repeated. “And thus far, your coping strategy involves overworking, undersleeping, overdrinking, and undereating. Does that about cover it?”

  “Don’t forget the annual pilgrimage to the graves with Aunt Helen. Can’t forget that.”

  “Do you want to go, Danielle?”

  I didn’t answer, so he pressed button number two: “Do you want to get better? Do you wonder about your own capabilities, or does it remain easier to focus on one of your charges, such as Lucy?”

  I refused to answer, so he went for the trifecta, lever number three: “Let’s talk about your love life.”

  “Oh, shut up,” I said.

  So he did. It was my session after all. I called the shots. I could lie as much as I wanted. I could deny as much as I wanted. I could hide as much as I wanted. Both of my knees were bouncing again and I wondered why I came. I should’ve stayed home. I should never leave my apartment again.

  Because as of Monday it would be exactly twenty-five years. Twenty-five years to the day since my mother died, my siblings died, my father died, and I lived to tell the tale.

  Except I had nothing to say. A quarter of a century later, I was not magically wiser. I didn’t know why my mom and Natalie and Johnny had to die. I didn’t know why my first life had to end, and I didn’t know why this second life was still so hard for me.

  “Did you read about that case in the paper?” I heard myself ask. “The family killed Thursday night in Dorchester?”

  Dr. Frank nodded.

  “Yesterday, two detectives came to our unit to ask questions about it. One of our kids was involved. His parents discharged him last year against our advice. Turns out we might have been right about that one.”

  Dr. Frank was accustomed to my sarcasm.

  I couldn’t sit anymore. I was too edgy, agitated. I’d dreamed again last night. My fucking father standing outside my fucking room with a fucking handgun pointed at his fucking head. Fucking coward.

  “This morning, they were talking about another family, too. In Jamaica Plains. Though maybe that was a drug deal gone bad. Nobody seems to know. Four kids, baby through teenager. Gone, just like that. If it was a rival drug dealer, why the infant? A baby can’t be a witness, a baby can’t rat anyone out. You’d think the shooter could’ve left the baby alone.

  “Then again,” I heard myself ramble, “maybe the baby didn’t want to be left alone. Maybe the baby heard the shots and started to cry. Maybe the baby knew already that her mother and siblings were dead. Maybe the baby wanted to go with them.”

  “What about the baby’s father?”

  “Fuck him.”

  “The baby didn’t miss her father?”

  “Nope,” I answered, though his attempt to turn the baby into me is so Psych 101 I should laugh at Dr. Frank instead.

  “There are no survivors,” I said. “Do you think they’re happier that way? Maybe there’s a Heaven. Maybe the mother and her children get to be together there. And maybe, in Heaven, children don’t have to listen to voices in their heads and parents don’t have to scream to make themselves heard. Maybe, in Heaven, they can finally enjoy one another. I don’t think it was fair of my father to deny me that.”

  “Do you want to join your family?” Dr. Frank asked me steadily.

  I couldn’t look at him. “No. I don’t. And that suck
s even more, because I hate my father for killing my family, then I have to turn around and be grateful to him for sparing me.”

  “You don’t have to be grateful,” Dr. Frank said.

  “Yes I do.”

  “You have a right to live, Danielle. You have a right to be happy and to fall in love and to find enjoyment in life. Your father didn’t grant this to you and you don’t owe him anything for it.”

  “But he did.”

  “Maybe your mother did,” Dr. Frank offered.

  I scowled at him. “My mother? What does she have to do with this?”

  “Or maybe it was your brother,” Dr. Frank said.

  I stared at him in confusion.

  “Or maybe your sister, Natalie, or Sheriff Wayne, or your Aunt Helen.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m just saying, there are many key people in your life, yet you hand all the power to your father. Why do you think you do that?”

  “He took life. He granted life. He acted God-like, so I guess I make him God.”

  “God doesn’t drink a fifth of whiskey, Danielle. Least I hope not.”

  I didn’t have anything to add to that, so for a moment, we both fell silent. Dr. Frank sipped more tea. I prowled in front of his second-story window overlooking Beacon Street. It was busy outside. The streets swarmed with happy tourists buzzing about. Maybe they’d go for a walk through the gardens, indulge in a Swan Boat ride or a duck tour. So many things to do on a sunny August morning.

  These families always seemed cheerful to me. I wondered if, twenty-five years ago, the neighbors thought the same about us.

  “Do you think that if you’re joyful, your father wins?” Dr. Frank asked now. “You’ll be indebted toward him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. Which meant, of course, that I did.

  “You want to know why your father didn’t shoot you,” Dr. Frank said, steadily. “Twenty-five years later, it still comes down to that. Why didn’t your father kill you, too?”

  “Yes.” I turned, less certain now, and stared at Dr. Frank. It wasn’t like him to cut so quickly to the heart of my mixed-up, fucked-up life. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.