After the Woods

by Kim Savage

  “I know you have to go on air soon.”

  “I have time for you! Make yourself comfortable,” she says, waving me into a white wing chair studded with nailheads as she rises, sitting on the edge of her desk. She’s wearing Ugg slippers over black hose, and she holds them up, flexing her ankles playfully. “Another one of my maxims: Never wear heels unless you absolutely have to. Can I get you anything? Sparkling water, Coke? Something warm, perhaps?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Dorotea!”

  “Please, no!” I shout. “Really. I’m all set. You’re probably wondering why I’m here.”

  “I know it’s one of two things. Either you have something you want to tell me, or you just want to spend time with a friend who understands you. Honestly, I’m hoping it’s the latter.” She smooths her hair back with her hands, and her face looks young and sad. “You could say I’m a little burned out on this case.”

  “Burned out? How come?”

  “Don’t worry. I haven’t given up on bringing justice to your case, believe me. I’m just hitting roadblocks. Confirming Ana and Donald’s relationship before my big interview with the parole board chief on Thursday.”

  It finally occurs to me, in flashing neon, that she thinks my reason for coming is to relay the conversation with Kellan’s father that I didn’t have. I scan the room, desperate for a notable item on which to comment and change the subject. “Your son was so cute!” I choke, pointing to a photo of an olive-skinned baby in a silver frame.

  “Oh no. That’s the Agarwal baby. Do you remember the story? He was abducted by his father in 2010. His mother gave me this as a token of gratitude.” She lifts the picture to her lap. “She claims my reporting just after the abduction helped find him. Baby Sam would be living somewhere in Saudi Arabia by now, convinced his mother abandoned him.”

  “They must be really grateful.”

  Paula gazes at the picture. “My work is everything to me. If my reporting isn’t making positive change in the world, I may as well not do it.”

  Silence settles between us. Somewhere, a TV buzzes, a drone interspersed with applause like a crashing wave.

  “You said once, in the woods, that if there was anything you could do for me, you would,” I say.

  Paula folds her hands in her lap earnestly. “That hasn’t changed.”

  “Something’s not right with my friend Liv. The other girl…”

  Paula stops me with a smile.

  “Right. You know who Liv is. Sorry.” I shift in my chair. “Liv was in the hospital for ketoacidosis, though her mother and she both lied and told everyone she had mono.”

  She runs a finger over her chin. “Remind me what ketoacidosis is.”

  “It’s when your body is so starved of sugar it begins eating its own reserve of fat, causing a metabolic chemical reaction.”

  “I see.” She grabs her phone off her desk and jabs at it. When she’s done, she looks up. “And she’s not diabetic?”

  I shake my head.

  “Okay. Is that it?” Paula asks.

  My face contorts. “Not really, no.”

  Suddenly the details of how I found the sketches in Liv’s room sound silly, and paint me as a straight-up snooper besides. And sitting there surrounded by Paula’s sophisticated ether, mentioning Liv’s bad-boy hook-up would make me sound like I think I’m starring in a soft-focused women’s movie. What’s she going to do anyway, besides tell me to call an abused women’s hotline? No, best to stick with the flat-out mystery. “I mean, yes. I need you to look into what’s going on with Liv. Maybe her mother, too. Inside their house.”

  “You think something’s off?”

  “Let’s just say everyone wants me to be content with what they’re telling me.”

  Paula slips off the desk and settles deep in the wing chair opposite me, pumping her shin, fleece slipper rising and falling like a metronome counting the beats until I crack. I grow conscious of new tics. The way my knee jitters. The eyelid twitch that feels visible. The compulsion to flex my own ankle every few seconds.

  Finally, she breaks the spell. “We’re a lot alike, you and me, aren’t we?”

  “We are?”

  “Information is our oxygen.” She rises and closes the door. “If I do this for you, can you do something for me?”

  “I can’t ask Kellan to ask his father about Ana Alvarez.”

  “Then this.” She grabs an index card from her desk and scribbles a note, folding it once. “There’s someone I haven’t been able to get through to.” She presses it into my hand. “But she might talk to you.”

  I squint as I unfold the paper. On it is the address of a house I know. Windows fogged with filth. Car on the lawn. An only son, sleeping under its roof no longer.

  My palm falls open as if singed, and the card drops to the floor. “You want me to talk to Donald Jessup’s mother?”

  “I know it sounds crazy. But it might bring you closure. It’s not as unusual as you might think, speaking with the relatives, especially the parents, of your perpetrator. Particularly when the perpetrator can no longer harm you.”

  I look at the note, white-hot on the dark paneled floor, nearly flashing. Paula sees only me. “Yvonne Jessup would never talk to me,” I say.

  “I’m only asking that you try. One question, and then you can hightail it out of there.”

  “You mean I have to go inside?”

  “Yvonne Jessup is something of a shut-in. Honestly, Julia, if there was anyone else I thought she would talk to, I wouldn’t ask you. She has no love for the press. Heck, she has no love for me. I simply need you to ask if she ever met or saw Donald’s parole officer. I believe that the police may have created a false record of visitations,” Paula says.

  I envision a muddled, ancient woman dressed in fatigues in a room teeming with cats and trash. “What if she doesn’t remember things exactly as they happened?”

  “It’s only anecdotal evidence I’m looking for. Something that will strengthen my hunch and confirm taking my investigation in that direction.”

  “I do this, and you’ll use all of your resources to help me figure out what’s going on with Liv?” I ask.

  “I promise. There’s another thing.” Paula drags the wing chair closer to mine and sits. “I need you to let me interview you afterward. An exclusive. You speaking to the mother of your attacker is a human interest story. Every worthwhile story contains tension between victims and perpetrators. Part of my job is to frame that conflict properly. I wouldn’t be doing my job as a reporter if I didn’t.”

  I bite my lip, staring at the piece of paper.

  She leans over her knees. “There’s no guarantee we’d even use the interview.”

  “Tell me how you’ll look into Liv.”

  “I’ll start at the hospital, for one. I have sources inside. Let’s see where that gets me first.” She plucks the note from the floor with two fingers and holds it in the air. “Just promise me one thing: if you do speak with Yvonne Jessup, call me first and let me know. As a matter of personal safety.”

  “Thanks,” I say, taking the folded slip of paper, “for looking out for me.”

  She covers my hand with hers, cool and light. “You have no idea how important you are to me.”

  She holds my eyes, then checks her watch and rises, changing slippers for pumps. I take that as my sign to go. Anything I say now will be awkward anyway. I leave, closing the door softly behind me, and am enveloped in darkness. It seems Dorotea has drawn the heavy striped silk drapes and turned off the glass chandelier. Somewhere, a clock ticks heavily. The rose centerpiece forms a massive shadow in the center of the table. I lean over to smell one, but it smells like just the faintest whiff of grass.

  “Get with it, Julie. Roses don’t smell anymore. The smell got bred out so they can be grown farther away, be bought cheaper, and last longer.”

  I spin around and stagger. Hudson leans against the wall near the light switch, his arms crossed.

  �
�Jack off,” I say, my voice shaky, rushing past him and making for the door.

  He calls after me, “There’s always a price.”

  TEN

  363 Days After the Woods

  Alice drops her sleeve, nibbling long and hard on her bottom lip. I hum the Jeopardy! theme music.

  “Jesus would tell you to help thy friend,” I say.

  She shakes her head, knocking her headband over her eyes and jamming it back up miserably. “Please stop! I won’t even think about going. Besides, I have to work at the rectory.”

  “You yourself said Father Carl lets you leave and come back all the time, no questions.”

  “Not to drop in on the mother of a murderer.” Alice scans the emptying hall. “You’re making me late for my bus.”

  “Paula says it’s not unusual for victims to meet the parents of the person who committed a crime against them. Yvonne Jessup might not even be surprised.”

  “And how does Paula know it’s safe? His sickness was probably inherited! Mother Jessup could be a psychopath herself!”

  I can’t tell Alice that, according to my research, no one knows exactly what causes someone to become a sociopath. While some contend it’s due to a genetic disposition in families—i.e., if one parent has it, you’re more likely to have it—others believe it’s caused by an emotional detachment in early life, resulting in a disconnection with society.

  On the other hand, it could be a combo deal.

  “Sociopath. Donald Jessup was a sociopath. Specifically, an amoral sociopath: the kind that doesn’t understand pain, and likes to torture animals, and has a vivid fantasy life where he is in control.”

  “I don’t care if he was a sociologist! You’re not getting me in that house of horrors.” Alice swings her backpack over her shoulder and strides toward the lobby.

  I chase her down the hall and block her way. “I need you, Alice. I can’t go alone.”

  “You can’t go, period! I’ll call your mother and tell her what you’re planning.”

  I grab her arm. “You would never do that.”

  She shakes her arm loose and slips her hand up her coat sleeve.

  “Please, Alice. You said you prayed for me. If you care at all, help me do this. This is the last time I’m asking.”

  Alice blows hard through her teeth. “All right, I’ll go. But you have to promise me something. We talk to her from outside. I’m not stepping foot off her porch, or front step, or yard, whatever.”

  I latch on to her arm and walk toward her waiting bus. The driver yells something unintelligible. I stop a few feet before the stairs. “She probably won’t even invite us in,” I reassure her.

  “We won’t drink anything if she offers.”

  “We’ll say we drank before we came.”

  “We won’t eat, either,” she says.

  “Clearly. That scone could be a shrunken head.”

  “We should tell someone where we’re going.”

  “That’s already taken care of.” It sure is. My call this morning alerting Paula was worth it, I tell myself. Quid pro quo. I can’t expect Paula to just give without getting something in return. Asking Yvonne one tiny question about visits made by Donald’s parole officer isn’t a huge deal. Paula promised a quick, painless interview that she probably wouldn’t use, would probably just be for her own “deep background.” And did my mother consent? Of course. We’re a progressive family, as you know, Paula. Concerned with justice, for all.

  I won’t let myself be bothered by Paula’s suspicious number of probablys or my own blatant lies. Eyes on the prize.

  “I’ll tell my little brother just in case too. As a backup,” Alice says.

  “You will not tell your brother,” I say firmly. “You will be with me, and we will be fine. I’ll see you in two hours.”

  Alice turns and faces the bus. “It’ll be hard not to say anything to anyone.”

  “Friends do things for each other. I’ll owe you. Quid pro quo.”

  She dips her chin and looks deeply into my eyes. “It’s not like that. You don’t owe me.” She rubs my arm awkwardly. “You’re my friend,” she says, and skips off toward the bus without looking back.

  I spend the next two hours weaving a four-part lie that will keep Mom off my trail. It involves the Y, a mall visit, a stop at the deli, and bringing Alice dinner at the rectory, the sum of which would take at least three hours. That’s plenty of time for a visit—quick (as promised to Alice), and fruitful (as promised to Paula).

  If Paula’s word is good, my reward comes later.

  Donald Jessup’s house is six blocks away from Saint Theresa’s, a squat brown house on busy Washington Street with two doors in the front. Lawn chairs, the kind with fabric straps that fray, dot the front yard, along with a picnic table with a frosted plastic top and thumbprint dents; a wheel-less wheelbarrow, a cracked terra-cotta pot, and a faded plastic Santa holding a lantern. There is no backyard. Instead, the house backs up to another house. Alice parks her beat-up sedan on the street and we pick our way across patches of dead crabgrass.

  “All this time he was right there,” Alice murmurs, fingering the zipper of her pink down coat. “Which door?”

  “I’d go for that one.” I point to the one next to a lift-top mailbox stuffed with yellowed mail. We climb a few steps to stand on a rotting porch in front of a molded number 277 like black metal turds. Above the knocker, a sign written in red grease pencil reads: NO SOLICITERS & NO PRESS!

  “We’re neither,” I remind a fidgeting Alice as I ring the doorbell. I listen, hear nothing, and ring again. We wait a minute. I pull off my glove and knock on the door.

  “She’d have a car, right? Well, the driveway’s empty. That means she’s not home.”

  “Shh!”

  “I’m outtie.” Alice steps down from the porch as the door creaks open.

  “Mrs. Jessup?” I ask.

  Behind the screen stands a woman no taller than five feet. She wears an orchid-and-green calico housecoat with a yoke collar and snap front, and Keds sneakers, baby toes pushing through holes on the sides. Her pink forehead is smooth, exposed by a shock of white hair combed straight back, and her mouth is tucked and lined. Enormous glasses magnify low-set blue eyes.

  “Girls, is it? I wouldn’t have answered if it was boys.” Her voice is crusty from underuse. “What do you want? Money for soccer? Softball? What?”

  “We’re not here to sell you anything. My name is Julia.” I clear my throat. “Julia Spunk. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  She looks me up and down, rubbing her gums together. “Am I supposed to know you?”

  My plan to tell her I knew Donald from work might not pass muster, because she seems sharp. I go with the truth.

  “I’m one of the girls from the woods.”

  Alice catches her breath. Yvonne can’t hear it, but she heard me, because her eyes grow enormous and she backs into the house.

  “What do you want from me?” she cries, her hand feeling for a metal walker I didn’t see before.

  “Nothing!” I say in a rush. “I’m not here for anything bad. Your son … your son didn’t hurt me. Not really.”

  Her head starts shaking, a loose-necked bobble, and I wonder if this is a mistake.

  “I wanted to say I’m sorry for your loss,” I blurt.

  She sputters. “You’d be the only one who said it.”

  Alice touches my arm. “We should go.”

  “You live here alone, don’t you?” I say. “I mean, since Donald passed?”

  “I have a big dog and a panic button linked to 911 right in my pocket!” She pats her coat pocket. I have stumbled onto her list of things intruders say to figure out if you’re home alone before they burglarize/rape/murder you. I’ll chew on the irony that Yvonne Jessup should be concerned about such things another time.

  She moves to slam the door.

  “Wait!” I shout. “What I meant is, it must be very lonely, with just your memories. I was hoping you
could share some of those memories with me. My therapist says that viewing Donald as a human being will help with my recovery. But I don’t know anything about him besides what the press says. That he was a terrible monster who attacked women, and may have killed one.”

  Yvonne’s eyes flare behind her glasses. “My Donny wasn’t capable of killing anyone. He had his demons. But he would never kill anyone. I will go to my grave saying that.”

  “We should leave,” Alice whimpers.

  “That witch Paula Papa-whatever!” Yvonne shouts. “Made him out to be a murderer when the police said he didn’t kill that girl, she fell into a hole and got stuck! The evidence was right there!”

  I hear a noise and turn slightly. A group of boys in striped shirts walking from the soccer field next door nudge each other and stare. I look back at Yvonne. “May we come in, Mrs. Jessup?”

  “No, Julia,” Alice whispers.

  Yvonne crosses her short arms and rests them on her belly. “Tell me why I should let you in here?”

  My belly roils, the black thing pokes. How dare you, old woman?

  “Because it’s the right thing to do,” I say, looking hard at her.

  She stares at us for a minute, gumming silently. Finally, she throws her walker in front of her, its feet sliding on tennis balls, and shuffles into a dark living room.

  I follow while Alice stays on the porch. “Alice!”

  She bends her knees inward and bounces, like she needs to pee. I grab her by the arm and drag her inside, past center stairs rigged with an electronic moving chair. We follow the creak-drag sound into a living room. The smell is antiseptic with an herbal, Tiger Balm tinge. The living room has heavy mauve drapes over dingy yellow sheers, and it’s dark but for lamps in the corners, which Yvonne doesn’t bother to turn on. At some point, someone made it possible for all of Yvonne’s most basic needs to be met in here, including a tiny, humming refrigerator set on the fireplace hearth, and a toilet, which Alice stands next to looking like she might die.