Ada Unraveled

by Barbara Sullivan

  “Jam. He’d given her a sandwich while waiting for the aunts to arrive. Mary told us.”

  I searched for courage deep inside, found an excuse.

  “He shot me.” It sounded like another delayed memory, exposing my fear.

  “We know, hon. No one blames you for shooting back.”

  But she didn’t know what I’d been thinking about him while I was prowling around his neighborhood. That maybe he was a child molester. She didn’t know that that was one of the reasons I’d driven up the mountain to meddle again.

  Hannah continued trying to calm me.

  “Anyway, what Eddie told Mary when he called her was that he was afraid to call the police because they’d been mean to him when they were searching his home for clues to his mother’s death. So he wanted Mary and the other aunts to come get the child, and for them to take her to the police.”

  “No, wait, start from the beginning. How did he end up with her?”

  “Right. Okay. Eddie called early in the morning and told Mary that he was hearing bad noises next door. Mary said that was a little after four in the morning. She knew this because the sisters take turns with the early morning work at the bakery, and although it wasn’t her day to get things started, she’d still woken up early, and it had annoyed her.

  “So, the first time Eddie contacted her was just after four, to report he was hearing bad noises,” I said.

  “Right, Mary said she didn’t know anything about an Amber Alert at that time. She remembers thinking she couldn’t call her oldest sister Martha about Eddie’s concerns because she’d already left her apartment for the bakery. So she called Anne—that was around four-fifteen—to ask her to help her out if she had to go over and see Eddie. Anne didn’t know there was an Amber Alert out then, either.”

  Matt shifted his listening position.

  Hannah continued, “My guess is that the parents hadn’t even found out that their child was missing from her bedroom yet, because the first public announcement about the Amber Alert wasn’t until around nine, if you recall.”

  I did recall. I recalled it had electrified me and sent me up the mountain in search of the weird man, Eddie Stowall.

  I said, “What exactly did Eddie say he heard happening next door?”

  “Well, that first time Eddie called Mary, she told him maybe it was just a television blaring and he hung up, saying he would check and see.

  “Then he called her back the second time about thirty minutes later. So, still before five. He said the noises were definitely not from a television, that the noises were really bad. She asked him what kind of bad noises during that second phone call, and he told her it sounded like a child crying and carrying on, and that the sound was traveling around the upper floor of the house next door, so it was definitely not a television program.

  “Eddie also told her there were no kids living next door, that it was a boarding house of some sort. Mary says she stalled, tried to calm him for a few more minutes, because she didn’t want to involve the authorities unnecessarily.

  “Finally, I guess he just couldn’t stand talking to her anymore, so he hung up on her after saying he was going ‘over there to see what all the shouting was about.’”

  “When? What time was that?” I was still dealing with my earlier assumptions about Eddie. I wanted to know if he’d had the girl long enough to…hurt her.

  “Mary thought that second call had ended about five or five-fifteen, because then she called Anne and told her the bad news that they would have to go over and help the poor guy out. She admits she still thought Eddie was just having some kind of running nightmare or something. She says he’s still very confused about things, and really very anxious, the poor dear. Mary’s words, not mine.”

  “So did Anne and Mary go over?”

  “No. Anne wasn’t dressed, so she told her sister to call her back if he called a third time. Neither of them was really taking Eddie’s complaint that seriously. Until Mary turned on her television—after showering and dressing and beginning her breakfast--and she heard the Amber Alert. That wasn’t until later in the morning. So she quickly called Eddie back, but now there wasn’t any answer.”

  “Nine. The first alert was nine,” Matt said.

  “Oh, hi Matt. Then about two hours later—I guess that would bring it up to around ten-thirty or eleven, he called her back and told her he had the child with him. He told her the little girl was really upset by the time he got her away from the boarder.”

  “Wait! What boarder?”

  “Eddie said there was a man there, running around the upstairs in little more than his underwear. He had a really bad time trying to calm the bas…sorry, guy down. The little girl was terrified of him.”

  I said, “A man lived in the adjacent house? This was the house right next door to the Stowall house, right?”

  I thought there’d only been a woman living there. But now I remembered, I also couldn’t tell if we were seeing a silhouette of a woman or a man, up in that second story window. The night I’d lost my shoe--in the stink hole.

  “Yes, that’s the house. Eddie said that all he’d found when he went next door was this nearly naked man. Anyway, he wanted Mary to come and get the little girl. He was afraid the police would make him leave his house. Make him go down to the station. But by now Anne was working her shift at the bakery with Martha, and Mary didn’t want to go over alone.

  “She admits she stalled for time again, wanting to wait until the Saturday waitress came on and Martha could take a break for lunch—usually around one. I think Mary may be in some serious trouble over this stalling. The authorities were searching all over for this missing child, and by my calculations Mary knew where the child was for at least two hours before she and Martha left the bakery and went over to help Eddie. What do you think?”

  Matt said, “I didn’t hear that.”

  Hannah paused. Then added, “Right. Me neither.”

  They made me smile. Sometimes my hubby could be bad. He was telling her not to get involved. Let the police find out who knew what, when, and then decide what they didn’t like.

  Hannah continued. “Did you know he’s agoraphobic? He barely leaves his house at all now. Mary said it seems to be getting worse instead of better. She said, in a way, she’s glad this whole thing happened, because at least now he’s out of that house. The girls hate that house.”

  “But, how exactly did he rescue the child?” Single-minded me.

  “I asked Mary that, but she didn’t seem to know. By the time they got over there, you were lying on the ground outside with the ambulance attendants bandaging your ear, and the sheriff’s department was handcuffing a wounded Eddie and reading him his rights. One of them climbed into the ambulance to accompany him to the hospital. The little girl had already been transferred.”

  I was calmer now, over my crying fit—the one that hit me after Matt returned from working the county job and I took one look at his face. He can have that effect on me.

  I did some calculations. “How does Eddie explain the hours between his second conversation with his aunt and the final time he called her?”

  “I don’t know. I hear the authorities are all over the two houses right now, scouring them for clues, so I’m sure we’ll know what went on pretty soon. I’m just so relieved you made it home from Cleveland hospital okay. I wish you would have let me drive you home.”

  I wished I knew why Eddie shot me.

  “It wasn’t necessary. I was fairly calm after they patched me up, grilled me for two hours, and then sent me packing. I didn’t fall apart until Matt came home a few minutes ago. I was actually preparing dinner just before that.”

  For some inexplicable reason, that comment sent me into another emotional tailspin and I signaled Matt to take over the conversation while I retreated into the bathroom to wrestle with my new demon—uncontrollable emotions.

  “How’s your mom?” Matt’s gruff voice chased me. He was angry. Still looking at me like I wa
s a stranger. We would have a talk. I would remind him he’d fed me a relative of heroin for several days.

  Or maybe I wouldn’t. That wasn’t his fault.

  I already knew the answer to Matt’s question anyway. Ruth was still resting in her soup of medicines.

  I washed my face and put a fresh bandage on my nicked ear. Tears were flowing from my eyes again. Like a faucet with a bad gasket. Like the rain running down our windows as if we lived in a rainforest.

  I worried that neither would ever stop.

  Chapter 50: Tortured Souls

  Sunday, October 19

  I sat on the hard, wooden pew pondering my fate, Eddie’s fate, Martha, Ann and Mary’s fates, and I was sorting out the killers after a day full of discoveries.

  Luke killed Mark, Ada, and the three luckless women who’d met him in his final days. And probably Jake. The final ruling on that was still out.

  The empty blow gun syringes found on Luke’s bed—placed there by Eddie--were being tested now. But it seemed a safe bet that they contained rattlesnake venom, and that was what Jake had died of. Snakebite.

  The evidence not only pointed overwhelmingly at Luke, there wasn’t anyone else to consider. And the motive was clear. Both Mark and Luke were forced to handle snakes when they were children. They were witnesses to the sterilization of their sisters. They were products of an extremely dysfunctional family. And Mark was dead.

  And now Eddie shook uncontrollably whenever he was forced to leave his home.

  Eddie killed Luke; he’d said so, at the hospital. And the gun associated with that crime had been found next to Luke’s body. It had been tested for prints and Luke’s had been found on it, along with a few as yet unidentified. Eddie had been dead for most of his life, so he had no fingerprints on file. Until now. I was betting those other prints were his.

  According to Tom, Eddie had exclaimed upon hearing that Luke’s prints were on the gun, that Luke must have been the one to leave the gun on his bureau. Tom also told his sister it wasn’t unusual for serial killers to have a death-wish--to lay the trap that would help stop them in the end. And Luke had morphed into a serial killer by the time Eddie shot him.

  Matt found out from one of his connections up on Cleveland plateau that charges haven’t been brought against Eddie yet. Rumors are that the Cleveland DA is reluctant to prosecute Eddie for Luke’s death. The DA knows there are justifications for Eddie’s behavior. And as a tortured soul, Eddie would probably never be found guilty by a jury.

  I’d almost killed that tortured soul. If I’d gotten the gun out of my pocket, I would have. This morning I threw out my ancient trench coat. And now I was looking at my gun differently, too. It would have been a terrible mistake if I’d killed him.

  The only answer I had found to the question of why Eddie shot at me was that he’d thought I was a bad person. Something that Martha had said. No one would clarify this for me. Other questions simmered in my mind, as well. White truck questions. Strange men standing at the top of driveways and late night phone calls questions. Ruth questions.

  They might just be unrelated. Only time would tell.

  The little girl found with Eddie had finally begun communicating with her parents. Late last night Gloria called to tell Matt and me about the little girl. It was nice of her. I’d been worrying that our relationship had been dinged.

  I looked around at the high, stained-glass windows and inhaled the remnants of incense from this morning’s mass. I was here to thank Him for letting me live. I was here to make sense of it all.

  Matt told me that Eddie was saying Martha was the crazy one, that she was the one who’d probably driven the white truck, maybe with Anne.

  I thought Eddie was making it up. None of the witnesses mentioned two women. And the fool truck was jacked up several feet off the ground. I didn’t think those two older women could get in a truck like that, let alone drive it. But I thought a lot of things and my memory of that horrible accident on Highway 78 was no clearer today than yesterday. Or the day before.

  Maybe I should thank Him for that, too: traumatic amnesia.

  I looked around Saint Anne’s. It was a beautiful message, from a loving God, through his adoring people. I tried to let it in and some of it entered. But so did more doubts. What kind of God would create us? In His image.

  So what, God was a murderer? God was a torturer? God was a simpleton?

  An echo from the front of the church reminded me I was not completely alone. The daily masses had long ago ended, but laypeople were still tidying up. I’d come to find answers in a vacant building.

  I’d never really belonged here, had I? I’d never really been able to absorb the culture of my adopted religion, though I’d tried repeatedly. And I did love it. I just didn’t seem to fit here.

  I rose from the hard pew and walked back out into the rain to stand under my black umbrella and wait for Matt. I was thinking He could at least let the sun shine again. And then He did. Sending chills up my spine.

  Chapter 51: The Sisters

  When I got home, I sat in my kitchen stroking Wisdom’s silky coat and wondering where all the gray had come from. Turning away from the inevitable decline of my pet, I decided to try the Stowall daughters again.

  I’d called before, on and off, all through my investigation. But phone-ID capabilities had kept me from getting through to them—made it possible for them to hide. Listening to endless ringing on the other end of a line that didn’t even go to a message machine was the height of frustration.

  The daughters were masters of avoidance.

  But the need to wrap up the sterilization issue pushed me to try again. And I knew I needed to include Matt this time, let him listen in. Of course, I cautioned him not to make a sound. If I was going to get anything out of these women it would have to be a seemingly private conversation.

  Matt agreed, and we sat together in our office, the phone on speaker. It was Matt’s idea to record the conversation.

  This time, I began with the middle one of the three sterilized girls, Anne, and I finally connected.

  The swiftness of her answer caught me by surprise and I was momentarily at a loss for words. Anne’s first words told me she was ready to share.

  “Thank you for freeing Eddie from his terrible past, Rachel. Now maybe he can begin anew. And I understand that the other quilters want to hear why Eddie was treated the way he was.”

  Why. Yes. We all needed to hear why. And how. And when.

  Not just who. Not just that it was Luke and his damaged mother Ada.

  “Martha was the first to be sterilized. The oldest girl. She’d gone to the shed out behind our house before anyone.”

  A simple declarative. There were no words I could speak, so I just breathed, slowly.

  “And she blames herself, Rachel, for what happened to Mary and me, and eventually to Sarah. She blames herself for not being able to stop Jake as he fell further under the influence of a quack physician.”

  Marcus Borman.

  Anne continued. “I read about Svengali once--looking for explanations why anyone would fall prey to an essentially evil person. It helped, but not completely. Only my dad could have explained it to me. He never did.

  “What I know about my father, Jake Stowall, is that he loved his children intensely. We were the proudest thing he had done with his pitiful, handyman’s life.”

  “I can see that,” I finally managed. Anne had some sort of speech defect. Her voice kept stopping and starting, and she made a strange noise to fill the gaps. She sounded a bit like an owl.

  Maybe that was another reason why she didn’t answer my phone calls.

  “Yes. But, who-who…he loved us badly, too. You need to understand, Rachel, my parents had mostly done a good job of raising us—because of my mom. She’s very strong. But then came—who-who John. I hear you’ve read his autobiography.”

  It was a family biography. There was very little in the book about John and his sufferings. I nodded to the phone
. I worried that she’d realize I had her on speaker if I said too much. She continued.

  “Martha says she remembers the new baby coming--who-who--home from the hospital a long time after his birth. She was almost eleven then. The worry. The tears. She remembers the hushed conversations that she tiptoed around—because even as a young person you know when something terrible is happening.

  “Martha said she saw the baby bleed--mostly inside, as a bruise, but sometimes even breaking the skin. At the slightest injury. She says they were terrified of the new baby--who-who. I don’t remember any of this. I was maybe six or seven, Mary just five, but I’ve lost a lot of my childhood memories. Probably a defense mechanism. I’ve studied psychology, too. In an effort to understand. Read a lot of books.”

  I wrestled with whether to voice my reservations about the nature of John’s ‘illness.’ But didn’t want to interrupt the flow of her thoughts. Later I would share with Hannah and Gerry that there was no real proof of any hereditary condition in that branch of the family, in case they were concerned for their own families.

  “Anyway, Martha says that these early memories of John as a baby are the reason she still has nightmares. She says she knows now that she probably would never have had children anyway, after seeing John bleed. It’s how--who-who--Martha copes. Avoidance.”

  Anne stopped. Her stuttering, gentle voice stilled by the truths that were as much betrayals. I waited. I wanted to tell her I wouldn’t reveal her confidences carelessly.

  But I couldn’t promise that I wouldn’t tell the others. If I felt a great need to understand this family better, having now been touched by them so deeply, then Hannah, Gerry, Andrea, and Elixchel’s needs could only be greater. So I would share what I learned from Anne with the others no matter how painful.

  Anne began again. This time it was as if the need to share in her had finally found an outlet and there was no stopping her.

  “Yes. We know this now. But for us, knowing this doesn’t make anything better. John’s birth changed our—who-who--innocent little family, with the weak father and the strong mother, into something hideous. Martha says it didn’t happen overnight. A few months after John’s birth, our dad began to talk about some doctor he’d met. The doctor was proposing…something terrible.