by Lee Thompson
“Reeves here,” the detective said over the phone.
“This is Richard Stark.”
“Mr. Stark? What can I do for you?”
“Tell me something. What do you have?”
“On your daughter’s case?”
“Yes, what the hell else would I be calling about?”
“I told you I’d call when—”
“When is that when going to come? How long do you expect us to wait?”
“We’re doing all we can—”
“That’s not good enough,” Richard said, his voice growing thicker, meaner, “how about some goddamn progress? How about you get out there and work this case, Robin’s case, until you’ve found her?”
The line grew quiet for a moment when he’d finished speaking and he could hear only his own angry and desperate breaths, the thrum of his heart, the grinding of his own teeth. He couldn’t keep his eyes locked on any one thing in the dim garage.
He said, “We need you to do something. Soon. Please.”
“I have the number of a grief counselor here, Mr. Stark. Do you have a pen?”
“I don’t want that number, not until you find her…”
…body, he thought, and the tears came easier now and they choked him up and he wanted to stop for fear Nina and Patricia and his wife might overhear him, but the dam inside had broken and was well beyond his control.
“Find her,” he spat out, quietly, shaking. Then he hung up and he heard his wife singing to the girls in the kitchen. She had a tuneless voice but one that he still heard honesty and effort in. It made him smile a little, released a little of the pressure he felt, because she did that for him sometimes—sang to him when she wanted to make him smile since she knew she had no talent for it and for some reason her display of not caring helped him to not take life so seriously sometimes.
And Loretta would dance, he imagined her doing so now, shaking her rump as she cooked for Nina, timing the sway of her hips to her vocals, yet the two never quite on the same beat. His smile grew a little wider and he walked back into the house wanting to hold her and to hold the girls and to be held by all of them until Reeves called him back and said he had Robin’s abductor in custody, that his daughter was there with Reeves, drinking hot cocoa, wide-eyed at the decency of strangers.
4
Caitlain Reno had worked through the majority of the night and into the early morning of Saturday. She’d ignored the phone, although it had rung several times throughout the evening, and into dawn. Her mind was completely locked onto the book that would drag her from the local paper and propel her to national fame.
She was a realist in many ways, always cautious to keep both her emotions and her imagination in check, and gathering facts helped with that; facts to Caitlain offered something to put her faith in; facts shone a light on the hidden underpinnings of animals sporting human guises.
She was also very drunk that morning, having consumed a half bottle of Vodka, and it had left her head clouded and her lips numb and her stomach full of heat. She took one last look at the files—both on her computer screen before closing the laptop’s lid, and the hardcopy that was growing week by week into a massive behemoth crowding the corner of her desk. They were full of interviews with investigating officers and the parents of the abused and discarded children, and witness testimonies who hardly ever offered anything useful in identifying either the abductor or his vehicle. It was disheartening work sometimes, as much as it was rewarding.
She sat on her sofa, sipped lukewarm coffee and tried to get her thoughts in order. She wanted to work more on the book, which she planned to title A Savage Autumn, but she resisted the urge since she knew better than to overtax herself any more than she already had.
She muttered, “It can wait, I have all weekend.”
Her calico cat, Button, climbed on the arm of the sofa and nuzzled her wet nose against Caitlain’s left wrist. She stroked the cat’s head, rubbed her neck, smiled, enjoyed the sound of Button’s purring, all the while unable to imagine what a boring life a cat lived. It took considerable effort to envision such a simple and unimposing existence, yet she knew people who were like cousins to Button; people simply looking for a home, someone to feed them, pet them, and then leave them alone. She pitied those people in a way since she saw them as barely living creatures. Many of her family had lived without any excitement or passion and she had no idea at what point those men and women lost what they’d once possessed as children. And thinking of children, as she stared at her reflection in the blank television screen, propping one of her feet on the coffee table, an image of Nina rose in her mind’s eye.
Caitlain thought the young girl was unique, much like she had been as a child, though Caitlain had never been as trusting or as optimistic as Nina. She hated to admit it to herself but she sometimes dreamt of having a daughter, and in many of those dreams her offspring was much like the young, curious Kunis girl. And those dreams sometimes frightened her, although they also filled her with a strange excitement and a longing that she had always successfully pushed away until its ugly head rose again from her subconscious.
She looked from her foot to the television to Button. The calico, satisfied with the attention she’d received, jumped from the arm of the couch to the floor and pranced around the backside. Caitlain closed her eyes for a second, her head spinning from the alcohol, a sense of loss—for the savaged little girls, and for their families, and for the terrors that had recently happened in New York City, to her own heart in constant conflict with itself—fearing that she would have the writing career she wanted in the next five years but she would never have a family. At least not a true one.
She thought, There’s something about being the old cat lady one day which doesn’t appeal to me all that much…
Though truth be told, if she had to choose between settling down or pursuing her creative passion, her writing and the search for answers, and for truth, would win out every time.
But it didn’t hurt to dream.
And she thought she could lounge there with her eyes closed into the afternoon, in a way mimicking Button and all of the people she failed to understand, but no, the book wouldn’t leave her alone; it was as if the children’s ghosts were whispering to her, urging her to finish the project, to immortalize them, while there was still time. It grew like a fire in her chest, spreading out into each limb, and she opened her eyes, said, “Okay, there has to be something I can do on the project even if I am lit.”
She pulled her foot off the coffee table and a sense of dread like she had never felt before swept over her, and at first Caitlain thought it was because she could sense the forsaken little girls there with her, on their knees around the sofa, pleading for her to hurry…
But no, that wasn’t it.
The dread froze her body and stole her breath, and for a second she stared at her reflection in the television screen again, and in that reflection she saw someone else standing behind the sofa.
She responded on an instinctual level, opting for flight instead of fight, and she lunged forward, intending to jump over the coffee table as she fled, but the man behind her grabbed a fistful of her hair and jerked her head back.
She screamed and clawed at his fingers, felt the gloves he wore, which were made of a soft and supple leather, and her scalp felt as if he was peeling it back from her skull.
Caitlain tried to scream again but terror had as solid a hold on her throat as the man did on her hair. She tried to avoid looking at the television as well, but her breath was trapped in her throat and her eyes rose to the dull, opaque reflection and she saw the gleaming knife he held in his free hand as he lifted it above the back of the couch.
Her spine ached as she tried to twist around and face him and possibly deflect his attack…
Yet as she was still thinking, still caught in that ferocious grip, he slid the knife under her chin. And she hoped that he would only rape her—she would let him, she wouldn’t fight back—because,
she thought, I have to live! God, I have to live. I have so much to…
He pressed the blade to her throat and the steel was cold against her flesh, and he pulled it across her neck and then a horrible gasp escaped her, only it had not come from her mouth, and blood spurted over her breasts, her thighs, and he pushed her forward, onto the floor.
Caitlain tried to crawl for the phone but the front of her shirt was saturated and her hands were hot and slippery beneath her and she lost her strength and collapsed onto her side.
He walked around the couch, his boots heavy on the hardwood floor.
She tried to look up at him but could only see up to his waist, the two gallon gas can he held so casually that she almost believed she wasn’t there in her living room, bleeding to death, but on some lonely country road, standing by her car as a good Samaritan stopped and pulled a gas can from the back of his pickup… yet she imagined that as he approached he would become the faceless monster in her book…
He doused her with the can and she pressed her palms to her neck, her vision growing fuzzy, darker, as he carried the gasoline to her computer desk and splashed it over her laptop, her hardcopy, the curtains.
She closed her eyes but she cried more in those last ten seconds of her life than she had in the last three decades combined. So it surprised her, as the darkness closed in and the warmth bled out of her, when a sudden peace descended and seemed to fill her as if she were a vessel.
She dreamed of a world beyond this world of constant struggle, this world of so much joy and laughter and yet so much desperation and sorrow; and in the other world she would be all she’d ever wanted to be: a loving mother to a beautiful little girl, a writer of great renown…
A whoosh, like a powerful wind rushing down a long tunnel filled her ears, and she saw through her closed eyelids the light everyone spoke of, the light of heaven and rest, and she wanted to open her eyes to see it clearly but it grew brighter and brighter until it consumed her.
5
Patricia drove an older Honda Accord with a cracked windshield and she’d plastered the rear of the car with dozens of bumper stickers displaying the names of her favorite bands. Nina sat in the passenger seat, shifting her feet among heaped McDonald’s bags and empty Powerade bottles. For some reason she couldn’t put her finger on she couldn’t look at her sister as she drove, so she spent the ten minute ride glancing out the passenger window.
The road was shadowed by the canopies of large trees, and small, older houses around the perimeter of Lee University gave way to the complex and its grounds. The school’s buildings were mostly vacant, their walkways and thoroughfares only holding a pocket of college students here and there, the majority of them hanging out in small knots and laughing loudly.
Patricia said, “They’ll catch the guy who did it.”
Nina felt tears prick her eyes, and here she had been enjoying the distractions out the window, and now she had a hollow pang echoing in her stomach.
She said, “No, they won’t. I’ve seen him.”
“What?” Patricia said as she pulled into a parking lot in front of a dorm hall fashioned from old red brick, its white trim gleaming in the sunlight. “You saw him where?”
“He sat across from me at Waffle House, and he was following me as I walked home.” She shivered. “Somehow he got way ahead of me. Or he just walked in and shot them while they were eating a late dinner.”
“You need to tell the cops,” her sister said, parking now, one hand on the steering wheel, steering with just the tips of her fingers and her other hand hovering over the gear shift. Her mouth hung open slightly for a second before she added, “Seriously, Nee. Like immediately.”
“I just want to lie down again.”
Her sister studied her face for a moment and Nina knew Patricia was processing it all—the incredible stress Nina had gone through both in finding their mother and Rick’s corpses, and also the stress she must have felt as she hid from their killer outside of the only safe haven she had ever known as that murderer turned out the lights and walked by her on the porch in the near-darkness.
Finally, Patricia said, “Okay, lie down and get some sleep for a while, but when you get up you need to contact that detective and tell him everything you remember about this guy.”
“His name is Sebastian.” She watched her sister pull the keys from the ignition and drop them in her purse. “How are you taking Mom’s death so well?”
“I’m not taking it well,” Patricia said. “It just hasn’t sunk in yet.” Her voice grew husky as she looked into the distance. “It’s going to sink in when I see her in a casket.”
“I don’t want to even think about that, but now I am and I wish you wouldn’t have brought it up.” She pushed the empty fast food wrappers around with her feet. The air in the Honda felt stifling. “She was a good person and I don’t understand why he killed her.”
“The police said your bedroom was trashed but he hadn’t destroyed any other part of the house. I don’t think it was about Mom or Rick at all.”
“It was about me? What did I do to him or anyone else? And he’s still out there, God knows where…”
Her sister nodded and then frowned. She tapped her fingers on her knee quickly as she thought through something. Nina was thinking too, trying to remember Sebastian’s face so that she could describe him to the detective, but she couldn’t remember any of his features. She also struggled to remember what he’d said to her at the Waffle House. The only thing that had stuck in her memory was a fragment she’d heard in church and read for herself in the Bible, the scripture Jesus had spoken about how it would be better for a person to have a millstone tied around their neck and be tossed in the sea than to face the consequences of corrupting and destroying the innocent, helpless and impressionable.
She thought for some strange reason Sebastian wanted to hurt her like he had hurt all those little girls for the last decade. And she wasn’t sure if he was trying to save them, and her, in some small way only his diseased mind could understand.
Yet she doubted there was a sliver of mercy in a man, or demon, like him. No, what she truly suspected was that he did it because he was challenging God, daring the Almighty to punish him—maybe even wanting to be punished if it proved to Sebastian that there was a higher power who dealt justice in defense of the weak.
She shook her head, entwined her fingers and rested her hands in her lap. She still wore her seatbelt and the windshield visor blocked most the sunlight they’d parked facing. She said, “Where am I going to go?” She glanced at her sister, but Patricia looked away. “Where? I don’t know any of Rick’s family and we don’t have any but each other. You’re responsible for me now, aren’t you?”
Patricia said, still looking away, “I’ll have to call Dad.”
“I knew you’d say that, even though it makes me want to scream and puke.”
Patricia pulled her purse onto her thigh and frowned. “Do you want to end up in a foster home? You can’t stay at the dorm with me for more than a couple nights, Nee.”
“But won’t you get the house? Why can’t you just live there? It’s only ten blocks from this stupid school.”
“I like living here,” Patricia said, pointing at the dorm. “And Mom and Rick owe a lot of money on the house. I can’t afford it. I can barely afford to eat.”
“You’re selfish,” Nina said. “And you’re a bitch.”
“Do you want me to call Dad or not?”
“Won’t the police call him for me? Don’t bother.”
“Don’t pout, Nee.”
Nina wanted to slap her, she just didn’t have the energy and she was too hurt, so she stomped her feet, and though it didn’t make her feel better, there was a little satisfaction when her soles thumped against the floorboard.
She noticed Patricia glaring at her and Nina said, “What? You don’t think I have a right to be mad when my sister should be looking out for me but all she does is show me what I already know to be true abou
t her? I don’t think you even love me. I think you’re a lot more like Dad than you are Mom.”
“You’re annoying,” Patricia said, “and you’re testing my patience. You’re not going through this alone. I’m experiencing it too. Get out of my car.”
“Sure thing,” she said, fighting her tears, ready to just walk away from her sister and never speak to her again. She opened the door and said, “I need you more than I’ll probably ever need you and you’re telling me to get lost?”
“No, I’m telling you to get out and follow me inside the dorm, dumbass.” Patricia checked her make up in the rearview and once she seemed satisfied with it, she said, “But I do have to call Dad, Nee. Like you said, the police have probably already contacted him. He might have already called here. I’ll check my messages once we’re inside.”
“He’s not going to want me.”
“Of course he will. You’re his daughter too.”
“Not like you,” she said. “I’m jealous. I wish Dad loved me.”
“You’ve always been jealous. So what? I can’t change anything for you, so grow up. And you’re a hypocrite because Mom has never cared much for me, but does that bother you? Don’t think you’re all alone in wanting one of our parents to show you some sign you exist. Mom’s always loved you more than me.”
“Not anymore.”
She got out and walked up to the building and it felt cooler in the shade and she welcomed it, and thought, How am I ever going to survive when the only people who loved me are dead and the man who killed them is going to find me eventually?
Inside the building, Patricia led her through an open vestibule with barely any furnishings except for two tables on either side of a sofa against one wall to their right, below a mirror. Nina caught her reflection in the mirror as they passed it, and she saw a pale, frail ghost just drifting pointlessly from point A to point B. Only the points, she knew, were an illusion.
