Shame

by Alan Russell

  In the front of the room, behind a lectern with a microphone, stood Sheriff Campbell. He was flanked by Sergeant Hardy on one side and Lieutenant Borman on the other. They all looked somber, funereal.

  “A warrant has been issued for the arrest of Gray Caleb Parker,” the sheriff said, “aka Caleb Parker, aka Cal Parker. He is wanted for questioning in the murders of Lita Jennings, Teresa Sanders, and Brandy Wein.”

  The shouting match started: “Sheriff!”

  Campbell held up a hand. “I ask that each of you refrain from asking questions until we’ve all had a chance to finish our briefing.”

  Elizabeth looked around the room, tried to take down details like a courtroom sketch artist. Flushed faces, she wrote, people unconsciously hugging themselves. Around me a shifting of bodies and heads. The reaction in here couldn’t be much more extreme had the sheriff announced that Jack the Ripper was alive and well and relocated in San Diego.

  It was the mythology of Shame at work, she thought. For whatever reasons, Gray Parker had found his way into the modern psyche. His bloodstains had been harder to scrub out than most.

  Elizabeth was glad that helping Anna Parker hadn’t made her persona non grata at the Sheriff’s Department, even if she no longer had special privileges. Earlier that morning, press credentials had been issued to her, but her request to go behind the scenes had been politely refused. Now that the secret was out, she no longer had leverage.

  She sat through the short briefing and heard nothing new. The media were apparently going to get only the sketchiest of details. Elizabeth resisted an urge to leave, her curiosity piqued by the two shrouded easels to the right of the lectern. A sheriff’s deputy had been positioned in front of the easels, his presence prohibiting any peeking.

  Elizabeth didn’t have to wait long for the unveiling. Campbell did the honors, pulling back the coverings and revealing two blown-up black-and-white photos. Gray Parker’s face still found its way into enough public forums to be recognizable. A stir passed through the room.

  The sheriff patted one of the photos with his left hand. “Gray Parker Senior,” he said, paused a moment, then patted the other photo with his right hand, “and Gray Parker Junior.”

  In her pad Elizabeth wrote, “The response by the Fourth Estate would have pleased a lynching mob. Did I condemn as easily? The sheriff’s presentation feels like a magic act. Only it isn’t a woman being sawed in half and put on display, but Caleb Parker.”

  “Questions?” asked the sheriff.

  “Is apprehension imminent?” a reporter asked.

  “We are confident of an early capture,” the sheriff said.

  “Was the word shame written on all the San Diego victims?”

  “We will not be commenting on the crime scene or answering any inquiries addressing the demise of the victims.”

  The magic act was over, she thought, though the sheriff tried to give the impression that there was still something up his sleeve. As the questions heated up, the sheriff quickly proved to be generous about handing off inquiries, especially the sticky ones, to his subordinates.

  Elizabeth found her attention divided between what was going on in front of the room and what was going on in the back. Cell phones had been pulled out, and stations and papers were being called.

  “That’s what I said, Shame’s son...”

  “Big story? No shit, Sherlock...”

  “Serial murders, three linked so far...”

  “Parker, spelled P-A-R...”

  An Asian American woman finished her call and dropped her phone into her handbag. She wore a lot of makeup, the better for the television camera. She was young but tried to appear older, had a face too serious for her years. The woman looked at Elizabeth, dismissed her, and then after a long moment came back to her again. Her expression asked, Where do I know you from? Elizabeth looked away, pretending interest in the press conference. The woman approached anyway.

  “Excuse me.”

  Elizabeth was forced to look up. Their eyes met.

  “Lisa Wong, KGSI-TV. I wonder if we might talk.”

  The reporter spoke very quietly, but her expression said, Gotcha. It was apparent she didn’t want to announce Elizabeth’s name in front of anyone else for fear of others recognizing her find.

  “Later, perhaps,” Elizabeth said, pantomiming interest in the news conference.

  The tactic didn’t work. Lisa took a seat next to her.

  “I still don’t understand,” asked a reporter, “how the suspect was in custody and then released.”

  “As I’ve already stated,” said the sheriff, “the suspect came in voluntarily while we were still in the process of gathering evidence. As for particulars, Lieutenant Borman might better answer those....”

  “Can we set a time?” Lisa whispered. “And I’d like to make this an exclusive interview.”

  Shoe on the other foot, thought Elizabeth. Now she was the one who wanted to duck the spotlight. “Let’s talk outside for a minute,” she said.

  Lisa signaled to her cameraman that she’d be back, then walked out of the room with Elizabeth. With no one around to overhear, she asked, “You are Elizabeth Line, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “The same thing you are.”

  Lisa didn’t buy it. “But you’re not from around here, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Then you had to have some foreknowledge of the story. You knew something was going on.”

  “Like you,” said Elizabeth, “I don’t know nearly as much as I’d like to.”

  “Are you working with the Sheriff’s Department?”

  Not anymore. “Only to the degree that you are.”

  “Are you writing another book?”

  “There’s always that possibility.”

  “How long have you been in town?”

  “Not long.”

  “Which means what?”

  “Which means that what’s going on in the press conference is the story. I’m not.”

  “But you knew his father better than anyone.”

  “This story isn’t about his father.”

  “Of course it is. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? And that’s the beauty of this piece. It’s almost like a plot for a horror novel, with the evil passing on from one generation to another.”

  “Try as I might,” Elizabeth said, “I don’t see that beauty. If you’ll excuse me.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” said Lisa, talking quickly. “But you can’t pretend the father-son twist isn’t going to make for good play. That’s why I need to talk with you on camera. It will just take a minute of your time. I only need a few of your impressions. A déjà vu thing.”

  “I have to go,” said Elizabeth, walking away from the meeting room and the reporter.

  “Can I have your number at least? I’d like to give you a call later.”

  Elizabeth kept walking. The reporter called out one last question. “What are you hiding?”

  She’d learn, Elizabeth thought. Ambush journalism worked only when a camera was running. Instead of alienating Elizabeth, the reporter should have followed after her and pressed a business card with her home number into her hand. That’s how Elizabeth did it. And it worked. People often called her later just to talk.

  But while it might be true that Lisa Wong had a lot to learn as a news journalist, there was nothing wrong with her instincts. Her last question trailed Elizabeth back to her hotel. What are you hiding? Elizabeth wasn’t sure that was something she was ready to answer, even to herself.

  If they ever resurrected the show This Is Your Life, Elizabeth thought, her segment would be played out in a hotel room. The dimensions changed, along with the interior design, but mostly there was a sameness to all such rooms. She’d spent the better part of her adult life in anonymous rooms like this one, a prison of her own making. Take away the turndown mint, and add some bars, and her sentence would
be complete.

  Six large boxes filled Elizabeth’s cell, boxes her assistant had retrieved from storage and overnighted to her hotel. Facing them, Elizabeth remembered that she had still another promise to keep. Caleb Parker had asked her to look through her old Shame files, had asked her to flag anything that stood out and could possibly have a connection with the present-day murders, but just hours after making his request Brandy Wein had been murdered and he had disappeared.

  There were fewer boxes than she remembered. While working on Shame Elizabeth had been naive enough to think that no book had ever been so thoroughly researched. The boxes showed the passage of time, the cardboard blanched and slightly brittle. In some places the masking tape had frayed. The past wanted to spill out.

  This is what a book is, she thought, lots of pieces and threads and gathered memories. There was nothing neat and tidy about the process at all, especially with a true-crime book. The pain was all there, just waiting. Pandora’s boxes. Unbidden, she heard the echo of Gray Parker’s words: “If you do this book right, you’ll fall in love with me.”

  I didn’t do the book right, Elizabeth thought, as if to satisfy a point of honor. The book had made her reputation—and a lot of money—but she had never been satisfied with it. There had been too many unanswered questions.

  Elizabeth took a knife and sliced through some masking tape. She had packed everything up the day after Gray Parker’s execution, had symbolically tied up all the loose ends. Her manuscript had been all but completed, and her publisher was waiting to rush it into print. Only the ending, those last few pages, needed to be written. Her editor had flown into town to babysit her through them. At the time, Elizabeth had no idea how extraordinary that treatment was.

  She tentatively reached inside the box, felt around without looking, then pulled out a picture of Virginia Clayton. Virginia had been one of the later victims. Number fourteen, Elizabeth thought. No, fifteen. An only child. She remembered Virginia’s parents, a mother who never seemed to stop crying and a father who had responded to the news of his daughter’s death by setting his face in stone and never offering another expression to the world.

  I’m looking for a needle in a haystack, she thought, a needle that probably doesn’t even exist. So why was she so afraid of getting pricked?

  Elizabeth removed a pile of notebooks, and then opened one. Over the years the highlighting had faded. She still used the same method, jotting down impressions, musing, and afterward highlighting what might be useful. Reading her old notes embarrassed her. The thinking seemed so sophomoric, right out of Psychology 101. Even the highlighted parts. Especially those.

  Shame. Think of all the expressions employing the word. For shame. I thought I’d die of shame. Shame on you. I blushed for shame. It’s a shame. Sense of shame. Overwhelmed by shame.

  It’s a word with its roots in guilt, false pride, and embarrassment. It’s the opposite of doing what’s right. Shame makes us avert our eyes. Shame makes us shrink. When we feel shame we’ve usually violated some rule or standard, or fallen short somehow.

  The book of Genesis, the springboard of the Bible, is imbued with shame. Exposure before God, the metaphor of Adam and Eve ashamed of their nakedness. Our Judeo-Christian culture starts on that note of guilt. Maybe I should play up original sin and Gray Parker.

  Elizabeth had talked with a number of mental health professionals, had asked them about the emotion of shame and why Gray Parker might have written that word on his victims. They hadn’t run short on theories.

  Men often respond aggressively to shame, Dr. Levy said. Rather than confront their shame, they’re more likely to lash out against it. He theorized the murders could have been a response to that anger, and the writing Gray’s contrition after the act. Shame is an emotion that often lingers, he said. One of the most common symptoms of shame is depression, often severe. Shame can debilitate, causing mental and physical breakdowns. Patients will often do anything to avoid confronting their shame, Dr. Levy said. They’d rather live with the consequences than focus on the shame itself. For them, that’s the easier way out.

  Elizabeth reread the last three sentences. A sense of unease came over her. She couldn’t help but wonder about her own easier ways out.

  Dr. Levy said I should offer myself as Gray’s confessor. He explained that when shame is confessed, people feel better. Sometimes they even feel redeemed.

  Confessor. Elizabeth almost laughed. She had been more Gray’s toy than savior.

  Elizabeth continued flipping through the notebook. The name Sheila Vickers kept appearing, another psychologist she had consulted.

  Sheila said I should make a study of whatever Gray says he doesn’t remember. She said that therein I might find the roots of his shame. Sheila also suggested that I be aware of any patterns of avoidance.

  Elizabeth had tried that for a time, had taken copious notes about everything, until Gray had complained.

  “You make me feel like a laboratory animal,” he had told her. “All you do is scratch, scratch, scratch on that pad. Ever stop to think with all that scratching we’re not doing much real talking?”

  Maybe it was her own avoidance she should have been taking note of. She’d always felt uneasy about the book, as if by writing it she had made a deal with the devil, or come as close to that as humanly possible. But Gray hadn’t been the only one doing the using and manipulating. A Johnson needs his Boswell.

  Elizabeth had known that liking him wasn’t right. It was stupid and irresponsible and wrong. It betrayed the memory of her friends and double-crossed all those intimacies afforded her by the families of the victims. She had always had nothing but scorn for those women who had married prisoners. “Outmates,” she called them, women who’d become outcasts by marrying inmates. Fools. She saw them lined up on visiting days, even got to know their stories and their grand illusions. In many cases they’d thrown away everything for misguided love: money, family, self-respect.

  Idiots.

  But was she raging at them or herself? Maybe she’d never really been very different from them. Maybe she was an outmate.

  Let it out, Elizabeth told herself. Tell your anger.

  “Damn you, Gray Parker,” she whispered. “You died with secrets. You held out this carrot in front of my nose and you led me in circles, and I don’t know whether I knew you any better in the end than I did in the beginning.”

  Her voice grew incrementally louder. “Damn you, Gray Parker, for bringing your namesake into this world, and for all but willing that boy to follow in your footsteps.”

  More, she thought. There was so much more. “Damn you, Gray Parker, for causing pain and misery and heartbreak wherever you went. You could have been anything, but you chose to be worse than evil.

  “Damn you, Gray Parker, for murdering innocent women and murdering innocence and ultimately murdering yourself. If you were in such a hurry to die, why didn’t you just kill yourself?”

  A quick, deep breath, but she wasn’t done, not even close. “Damn you, Gray Parker, for doing everything you could to win me over. I suppose I was one last game for you. One last person to hurt.

  “Damn you, Gray Parker, for always being so nice and thoughtful to me, for showing me only your best, most considerate side and leaving me to wonder if all the kindnesses you offered me were only manipulation.”

  Her voice became shriller. “Damn you, Gray Parker, for your last words. Leave it to you to cloud my mind even at the end. You had no right to tell me that you loved me, no right at all.”

  He’d made his offer of love in the face of death. They’d been his parting words to her. He had known that the next time she saw him he’d be strapped into the electric chair.

  Elizabeth found herself shaking uncontrollably. Unwanted tears fell. There were so many things twisted up in the Gray Parker story, so many elements that should never have merged in the same breath: murder and love; gentleness and brutality; intelligence and sickness.

  “Damn you, Gray P
arker,” she said, her last curse the most vehement, “for even suggesting that I could fall in love with you. I wasn’t willing to love you then, and I’m not willing to love you now.”

  Elizabeth took a few deep breaths and wiped away her tears. Then she started digging through the boxes again, on the hunt for answers past and present.

  19

  THE WOMAN WAS out taking an early-morning walk by herself. A power walk. Her strides were purposeful and measured, her body and mind intent on getting the proper workout. She carried hand weights and pumped her arms back and forth. Every so often she consulted her watch to make sure her heart and pulse rates were at their desired levels. She never stopped to smell the flowers—indeed, took little notice of anything but her regimen.

  That made it easy for the predator to move in on her unnoticed.

  Caleb matched her pace, but his legs were longer. Almost imperceptibly, he closed the distance between them. The woman wore her brown hair short, and that accentuated her long neck. He focused on that. She wore form-fitting workout clothes that hugged her shapely figure like a second skin.

  He narrowed the gap from twenty yards to fifteen to ten. There was no need for him to muffle his footsteps. Like him, the woman was wearing earbuds that tuned out the world. But she wasn’t listening to the same recording he was. If she had been, he was sure, the woman would have been more aware of her surroundings. In Caleb’s ears, a voice buzzed, and in his mind’s eye he watched another woman being stalked. He was a witness to his father’s moving in for the kill....

  Gasping for breath, Caleb pulled up. Ahead of him, the woman kept walking. He yanked out the earbuds, then turned around. He felt dirty, felt as if he desperately needed a shower, even though he hadn’t yet broken into a sweat.