Serpents Rising

by David A. Poulsen

  This wasn’t feeling quite right. I was sitting in a comfortable home, having a pleasant conversation with the man who had molested my wife and maybe murdered her. I set the cookie down and nodded to indicate that it was time to get on with discussing the yearbook project.

  “There are two or three companies we’re looking at and I wondered if I could ask you a couple of things about yours.”

  He smiled and held out his hands, palms up. “By all means. Ask away.”

  “How … uh … how long has School Daze been in the yearbook business?”

  “We’re relatively new, just going into our fourth year, but we have been growing every year. Right now there’s just the two of us,” he nodded in the direction of the kitchen, “but if we get much bigger we’ll be looking at taking on a couple of new employees.”

  “I see,” I said. “And how does the process work? Say our student committee decides to go with School Daze, would you be coming into the school to meet with us, that sort of thing?”

  “There are a couple of options. Teachers and students tend to be very busy so it’s often more convenient for me to stop in, collect the files as they are ready prior to our printing them. Of course, we can also do a lot of this online. It’s really up to the school to determine what way they prefer to work.”

  “Right … That makes sense.”

  “And now, Mr. Maxwell, I have a couple of questions as well.”

  I shrugged and tried to smile. “Sure.”

  “First of all, is Maxwell your real name?”

  I sat up straight, stared. “What?”

  “You see, I did check our database. And there is an Oceanside School but it’s on the island, somewhere around Parksville. So you’re not who you say you are and perhaps you better tell me what it is you want, Mr. —”

  “Cullen. Adam Cullen. But I doubt the name will mean anything to you. It’s my wife you’d be familiar with. She was one of your students at Northern Horizon Academy. One of your … victims.”

  He’d caught me off guard but I was okay now. A thousand interviews, some with people who didn’t like me and didn’t want to talk with me had prepared me for moments like these.

  Appleton stood up and left the room, heading for the kitchen. I heard quiet voices. He came in buttoning a sweater he had pulled on while he was out of the room. “I find it a bit chilly. I apologize if it’s uncomfortable. I turned up the thermostat.”

  He sat back down and looked at me with a mix of curiosity and apprehension. Curiosity, not malice. Apprehension, not fear.

  “There are a number of things I could try to say but I’m not sure any of them would be appropriate, Mr. Cullen. Of course, I knew some of the family members of the young women I was accused of —”

  “Accused?” My voice rose and he glanced at the doorway leading to the kitchen. I leaned forward. “If you want me to keep my voice down to protect whatever charade you’ve got going with your wife, then don’t insult my intelligence and don’t, for a second, think about denying what you did with those girls.”

  A few seconds went by before he nodded. “I was merely going to say that this is the first time I have met a husband of any of those young women.”

  “Well, now you can add that to your list of memorable moments.”

  I could feel the anger bubbling over and I was close to losing control. I dug my hands into the arms of the chair.

  “What do you want from me, Mr. Cullen?”

  “I don’t know. I want to come over there and hit you in the face. I want you to feel something … something inside that tears you apart the way it tears me apart. I want you to hurt as much as those girls hurt. I want …”

  “I paid my debt to society, Mr. Cullen.”

  “Bullshit.” My voice was a hiss. “Don’t give me that cliché crap. What debt did you pay to those women?” I flung my arm in a half circle. “Things don’t look too bad for the Appletons. Comfy little home in a nice middle-class neighbourhood. Bet the neighbours think you’re just a nice man who mows his lawn every Saturday morning and sells yearbooks to schools.”

  “I don’t blame you for your venom toward me. You have every right —”

  “Shut up. It’s better when you don’t talk. No, no, I do have one question. How have you managed to operate a business that lets you go into the very places where you preyed on young girls? How did you pull that off?”

  “My wife does all the work in the schools. Some of them run police checks so, of course, I can’t have any contact with the schools.”

  “So they know.”

  “No. The only ones who have suspected that I am the man they read about or heard about don’t do business with us. For obvious reasons. Some schools have only asked for the police check for Kathleen. Some don’t do much checking.”

  “Convenient.”

  “Have you wondered why I let you in my house when I knew you weren’t who you said you were? When I suspected you might be someone from … the past?”

  “Why was that, Appleton? An opportunity to look into the eyes of one of your peripheral victims, check out the collateral damage?”

  “Kathleen and I agreed when I got out of prison that if any of the people I harmed in the past were to come here that we would see them, that even in situations that might be dangerous I would meet my accusers, my … victims and their families and say to their faces how sorry I am for what I did.”

  “A noble fucking attitude.”

  “Not noble Mr. Cullen, not noble at all. It is as much for me as for them. I realize that what I did cannot be forgiven but I want to say … I need to say that I am so terribly sorry.” His voice caught on the last word and he looked down.

  I watched him with as much loathing as I’ve ever felt for anyone. “You haven’t even asked her name.”

  He looked up at me, eyes moist. He shook his head. “I haven’t, I’m sorry … again. I should have.”

  “But you already know it, don’t you?”

  He looked puzzled, shook his head. “There were six girls in all, and I know that that is far too many. Six too many.” He paused and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know your wife’s name but they … the young women were not anonymous to me. I knew them. I knew their names. I remember their names. I will know your wife’s name when you tell it to me, I promise you.”

  “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “No … no, I just wanted you to be aware …” he trailed off, didn’t finish the sentence.

  Through clenched teeth, I said, “Donna. Leybrand.”

  There was silence in the room but for a ticking clock in the corner. No sounds from the kitchen. Appleton took a breath, let it out, looked over my shoulder, out the window.

  He turned his head just enough to look at me. “Donna was … a very special person. She was one of my favourite —”

  He didn’t finish because I was out of the chair and had hold of him, my fist drawn back, wanting to hit him, to smash his face over and over until it was unrecognizable.

  “Let him go. Now!” Kathleen Appleton stood in the doorway, a cell phone in her hand. “I will call the police if you don’t let him go and get out of this house.”

  I was close enough to smell Appleton’s cologne. The bastard did it again. The words crescendoed in my head. Every part of me wanted to ignore his wife’s threat and make this man pay. Donna was a very special person. The bastard did it again. Words. Terrible words.

  I pushed down on his chest and stood up, tears blurring my vision, my chest heaving as I tried to gulp in air.

  “It wasn’t enough for your pig of a husband to molest young girls …” I looked at Appleton who was pulling himself up straight in the chair. “Does she know about the rest of it? What you did after?”

  “I want you to leave.” She started hitting buttons on the phone.

  “What was it Appleton? Revenge? Donna was the one who spoke out first, got the others to go to the police, to testify in court. Was that your justification for
killing her?” My voice had risen to where I wasn’t sure the words were making sense and I didn’t care.

  But they understood the words. Kathleen Appleton stopped punching numbers. Appleton leaned forward. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me, you pathetic bastard. You killed my wife.” I wanted to yell it but it came out as barely more than a whisper.

  “I …” he looked at his wife, then back at me. “I didn’t know Donna was dead. I swear I … what happened to her?”

  “She died in the fire you set —”

  “My God, that’s two of those girls … I can’t … you have to believe me, I —”

  He didn’t finish. Kathleen Appleton, her arms above her head, came at me with a scream that was part rage and part wounded animal. I saw the movement out of the corner of my eye and was able to duck but I was off balance and the force of her attack and the fact that it was so unexpected knocked me down. She stood over me, screaming, trying to hit me or kick at me. She was unsuccessful only because Appleton had leaped from his chair and had both arms around her, dragging her back, talking to try to calm her.

  Her screams drowned him out. “You make me sick, all of you. You’re as bad as those filthy high school sluts with their skirts up to their asses and their tits all over the place wanting men like my husband and then trying to ruin our lives after they got exactly what they wanted, what they begged for.”

  Her last words were barely understandable as her hate and anger had made her something inhuman, something I’d never seen. She paused to take a breath, to swallow some of the saliva that was bubbling out of her mouth as she screamed at me. But still her arms churned as she tried to get free of her husband in order to get at me.

  I got to my feet, stumbled back. I could hear Appleton now, his voice steady as he continued to restrain her, trying to talk her back to sanity.

  I knew I had to get out of there. Somehow everything had changed and I had to get away, to try to take away all of what had happened in there. But not yet. What had Appleton said? There were two of them. Had he meant two girls dead?

  But Kathleen Appleton’s fury had not diminished. She was merely resting, gathering strength for another attack. Both Appleton and I knew it. And it came.

  “You can all go straight to hell, you Goddamn scum of the earth! Those slut teenage whores and you too! I’m glad she’s dead. I can’t wait until they’re all dead and gone to hell where they belong.”

  She spat at me but I was too far away and her spittle landed on the carpet at my feet.

  Appleton was able to turn his head partly toward me. “Go … now.”

  “You said —”

  “I said go now. Please.”

  It was a plea. I turned and left the house without looking back. The hate-filled words of Kathleen Appleton followed me out the door.

  “Don’t come back! You or your sluts. I want you all to die!”

  And Appleton’s voice. “Kathleen, don’t. Kathleen, listen to me.”

  I drove a few blocks in the Impala and pulled into a parking area for a city park. I was shaking — violently. Part of it was my own anger, the loathing I felt for everything about Richard Appleton. And part of it was knowing I had lost control, that I had done exactly what Cobb and Kelly Nolan had warned me not to do.

  But the biggest part of what I was feeling had more to do with Kathleen Appleton than it did with me or what I’d done.

  I’d had lots of confrontations with unpleasant interviewees over the years, some of them women. But I’d never encountered the kind of hate, the near insanity that was Kathleen Appleton in those minutes. Maybe some of it was a protective reaction to my going after her husband. But there was something more.

  Someone appears to be attacking someone you care about, you do what you have to do to prevent it from happening. This went well beyond that — this was hatred in its pure, uncut form, not just for me but for the young women her husband had victimized.

  I leaned my head back on the seat of the car, closed my eyes, and took several deep breaths, trying to get my heart rate back to something near normal and to ease the throbbing inside my skull.

  I’m not sure how long I sat, not moving. But eventually I sat up, forced my eyes to focus on the park. I realized the car was still running. I shut it off, pocketed the key, and stepped out into what had become a wet Vancouver day. Not rain exactly but a steady mist-drizzle.

  I started forward, into a small neighbourhood park that was populated by trees with very wide trunks and a kids’ play area that sat almost in the middle of the trees. As I moved under the protective umbrella of the trees, I felt my body relax. And I tried to think, to make some kind of sense of what had taken place on West 14th Street.

  Was I any closer to finding my wife’s killer? I wasn’t sure. Appleton’s reaction to my accusing him of starting the fire seemed to be genuine surprise, maybe even shock. Could he not have known about the fire? Maybe. If he hadn’t known Donna’s married name, and there was no reason why he should have known it, then he could even have read about the fire and not realized that the person who died there had been one of his victims.

  So, maybe. But this was a man whose performances had broken down the defenses of six high school girls.

  I stood staring at a long, twisting slide that seemed to be the centrepiece of the old-fashioned playground. It was metal, a throwback. This play area even had monkey bars, my own favourite when I was growing up.

  I thought about the simplicity of life as a kid and wondered if Donna had spent as much time in parks like this one as I had. So much I didn’t know about her, and never would.

  “My wife is not a crazy person.”

  The voice came from behind me and I spun around to see Richard Appleton, without either coat or hat, standing in the rain looking at me. He was holding a paper bag. My first thought was gun and I knew without looking around that Appleton and I were the only people in the park, maybe the only people outdoors for blocks. If it was Appleton’s intention to shoot me, I’d made it easy for him.

  “I was hoping I might be able to catch you so I set off as soon as I was able to settle Kathleen. I figured it was a longshot, but when I saw the Impala parked on the street …” he gestured over his shoulder, “I’d watched you pull up to the house so I knew what you were driving.”

  I nodded, not sure what I was supposed to say.

  He spoke again. “She is damaged but she is not crazy. As horrible as what those girls must have gone through because of me, Kathleen’s suffering has been every bit as awful. I guess believing that the girls were somehow at fault, blaming the victims, is her way of coping with something that is unimaginable to her.”

  I took a step toward him. “If you’re looking for me to sympathize or to forgive you, Appleton, you’re wasting your time. You’re the worst of scum and I don’t give a shit that you caused your wife great pain. I care only about my wife and the pain you caused her.”

  “I’m not looking for sympathy or forgiveness.”

  “Good, that’ll save us both some time.”

  “You said Donna died. In a fire.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “And you believe I may have set that fire.”

  “Did you?”

  Shake of the head, slow at first, then more emphatic. “I did not. I realize you have absolutely no reason to believe me but I did not murder your wife. What possible reason could I have for doing that?”

  “I can think of a couple of possibilities. Revenge, for one. Donna was the one who got the others to join her in exposing you. Maybe your wife’s not the only one who blames the victims. Or maybe you didn’t want to kill her — just teach her a lesson, get back at her for what she did to you. It’s interesting that the fire was set after you got out of prison. Means, motive, opportunity, Appleton. Check, check, and check.”

  He shook his head. “I could not seek revenge on someone for doing what was the right thing to do — even if it was to my detriment.”

  “
Words. The basic tools of the seducer, the molester, and maybe, in this case, the killer too.”

  “You’re wrong, Mr. Cullen. I did not set fire to your home. I did not kill your wife.”

  “And then, of course, there’s your wife. Seems to me, based on what I saw at your house, that she would be more than capable of exacting revenge on … let me see if I can get this right … ‘those slut teenage whores.’ And I think the other phrase was ‘I can’t wait until they’re all dead.’ Sounds like someone who would at the very least celebrate something terrible happening to those girls and at worst could make that something terrible happen.”

  Appleton, for the first time, became animated — even agitated. “What you saw back there was a woman who has been under enormous stress for a long time. I did that to her and it’s one more thing I will never forgive myself for. But Kathleen is not capable of the kind of violence you’re talking about.”

  I watched him for several seconds. “What do you think would have happened if you hadn’t held your wife back? She looked to me like a woman who was very much capable of violence in the right set of circumstances.”

  “She was coming to my defence.”

  I nodded. I had, after all, come close to smashing Appleton’s face to a pulp.

  “Maybe that’s what it was. The question then is what was she protecting you from … the truth coming out? Seeing her husband go back to jail, this time as an arsonist and a murderer?”

  “I swear to you that neither Kathleen nor I murdered your wife.” There was a tremor in his voice. Emotion maybe — or the actor again.

  I wiped rain from my eyes. “The other girl who died … who was she?”

  “Her name was Elaine Yu. She was living in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, at the time and I’m not sure but I think she was killed in a car accident. I never heard the details.”

  I watched the rain, hard now, running through his drenched hair and down his face.

  “Appleton, I want you to know this: I’m going to keep searching and digging if it takes me the rest of my life. If I find out that you, or your wife, started that fire, I’ll be back. And nothing and no one will stop me.”