Wolfhunter River

by Caine, Rachel

  “That’s my legal name.” I’ve had it changed, officially, as well as the names of my children. Gina Royal no longer exists. She barely existed in the first place, looking back on it.

  “Of course. So, Gwen, just to make sure our viewing audience is caught up on this incredible tale . . . when Melvin Royal was initially caught several years ago with a young woman’s body still in the house you shared with him, you were also accused of helping him in his abductions. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I was acquitted.”

  “So you were!” He sounds smoothly approving. “But after that you went on the run, changing your name and location multiple times. Why do that if you were innocent?”

  I have a vibe now, and I don’t like it. Something’s off. I sense this isn’t going to be the softball interview I was promised. “I am innocent, but there were death threats being delivered to me and my kids on a daily basis. Internet harassment and threats of rape and violence constantly. I did what was necessary to protect my family.” I don’t mention that Melvin kept finding us too. Sending letters. That’s a can of vipers I don’t want to open.

  “Didn’t you go to the police?”

  “The police are always reluctant to act on anonymous threats, which is an issue those with stalkers know all too well. I chose to take actions to be sure my kids were safe.”

  “I see. But why keep on moving, then?”

  “Because one thing internet trolls are really good at doing is working together to find people and victimize them all over again. It’s a game for many of them. I didn’t realize it in the beginning, but my harassment was a highly organized effort. It still is, I’m certain.”

  “Then why are you here taking that risk?”

  I pause. I want to get this right. “Because it happens every day. Not just to celebrities, or people like me who’ve drawn attention; it happens to ordinary people. Even to children. And our laws, and our law enforcement, haven’t adjusted to deal with this problem at all. But I’m not here to save the world. Just my kids.”

  “From what, exactly?”

  “Misinformation,” I say. “Lies that take hold and gin up more outrage, more harassment. So I want to tell my story.” Even saying that makes me shake inside. I’ve spent so much time running. This is, in many ways, the hardest thing I’ve done, being so . . . vulnerable.

  “The floor is yours,” Howie says. “That’s why we’ve given you this time.”

  So I do. I tell him about marrying my ex, about our early life when I had no clue that the demands he placed on me in the home, in our bedroom, were anything but normal. I was too young and too sheltered to know better. I’d been told to be sweet, be accommodating, be what my husband expected from me. And once the kids came, it was too late to listen to my instincts. I was too afraid to look at the truth.

  Until the truth crashed into Melvin’s workshop—the one he never let me enter—in the form of a drunk driver. That was the day Melvin’s gruesome, cruel handiwork first saw the light of day.

  When I go silent there, remembering that moment and fighting that memory, Hamlin leans forward. “Gwen, let’s get right to the point here. You had to know, didn’t you? How could he bring these young women into your home and you not know?”

  I try to explain about his locked workshop, his night-owl hours. Hamlin pretends to listen, but I can see he’s just waiting for me to finish. When I do, he says, “You understand why many, many people doubt your story, don’t you? They simply can’t imagine that you slept side by side with a killer and never had a clue.”

  “Ask Ted Bundy’s girlfriend,” I say. “Ask Gary Ridgway’s wife. Ask Dennis Rader’s entire family. There might have been signs, but I couldn’t recognize them for what they were. I never imagined he was doing these things, or I would have tried to stop him.”

  “Tried?” Hamlin repeats.

  “He’d have killed me,” I say. “And he’d have had our children to do with as he pleased. I can’t even imagine what that would have been, and I don’t want to. I survived, Mr. Hamlin. I did that for my children, and I will keep doing it, no matter what comes.”

  I’m fairly happy with the way I’ve phrased it, but I’m on guard now; why is he pushing me? This isn’t what we agreed on. He’s supposed to be helping me, not interrogating me.

  “Let’s go back to your husband, Melvin Royal. He continued to pursue you even while he was behind bars, that was your claim, wasn’t it? Part of your harassment? Surely that part had nothing to do with faceless strangers on the internet.”

  Claim. I nearly snap at him. I feel like a prisoner in this chair, and I hate the feeling. I can’t glance at the camera, but I know it’s staring; the red ON AIR light is a smear in my peripheral vision. I try to focus on Hamlin’s face, but it’s a blur. I keep seeing people moving around me, and I hate it, hate it. I don’t like people sneaking up on me.

  “Gwen?”

  I realize that I’m staring at him with a blank expression, and I try to remember the question. Melvin. He’s talking about Melvin. “My husband sent me letters,” I tell him. “Someone inside the prison smuggled them out for him; we now think he’s scattered them all over the country for people to send, even posthumously. There’s still an investigation underway into that, as far as I know.”

  “And did you keep these letters? Show them to prison officials? The police?”

  “The first ones,” I say. My throat feels dry. My fingers twitch. “But he was already on death row. There wasn’t a lot they could do to punish him.”

  “Hmm.” He draws it out, and he’s assumed a thoughtful expression. “And you have records of all of these internet threats you say you received?”

  Why is he doubting me? What the hell is going on here? “Of course I do, including police and FBI records of the harassment. Look, there’s no point in continuing this if you’re—”

  “Your contention is that it started out coming from the families of Melvin Royal’s victims?”

  I’m in the act of rising to walk away, but now I sit down again. I hadn’t wanted to go there. In fact, I’d told the producer I wouldn’t answer questions about the victims or their families. I need to head this off. “I don’t want to talk about the victims’ families.”

  “Why not? They were the original people who were angry with you, weren’t they?”

  I do not want to blame the families. I can’t leave that as the impression. “I don’t blame people who were dealing with an impossible load of grief and anger. I blame the complete strangers who piled on to satisfy their own needs.”

  “Did you bring any examples of this harassment we can show our audience? For the purpose of establishing your case, of course.”

  I feel color burning my cheeks and chin. My case? Am I on trial here? “No,” I say. I try to keep it calm and level. “I didn’t. And I wouldn’t. They’re vile.”

  “I believe our producer did ask you to bring some to share, isn’t that correct?”

  I’d tried. I’d opened up the file drawer where I kept those awful things, tried to find one that wasn’t so personal and horrific that it brought bile to my throat, but I couldn’t. Anything less they’d have dismissed as She’s blowing it out of proportion. Anything that was truly horrible they’d have said was unsuitable for the air.

  “I decided to protect my children,” I say. “Many of those messages are about them, and I refuse to make those public. I’m not making their torment into public entertainment. I’m here to tell the truth, not publicize the lies.”

  I feel a brief, shining moment of calm as I say it; I’m in the right, I know I am, and I think the audience knows it too.

  But then he turns on me.

  “Gwen . . .” He slides a bit forward in his chair, angles toward me, a confessional in the making. “Are you aware of the documentary?”

  I feel like the chair is melting underneath me, sinking me into the center of the earth. “What documentary?” I’m aware of the edge I’ve put on the word. I can
’t stop myself. “What are you talking about?”

  It’s subtle, but I see a little flicker of enthusiasm flash in his eyes. “We’ll get to that in just a moment. But first, there was a video that briefly surfaced that seemed to confirm that you were involved in your ex-husband’s case—”

  What fucking documentary? I take a deep breath to calm myself, and say, “The video was an expert fake, and the FBI has confirmed that fact; you can look up the press release. The fact that there’s even a question about this at all just points up the continuing harassment I have to face every day, as do my kids.” I’m still trying to turn this disaster around. I can’t think what else to do.

  “Well, let’s talk about that. Melvin Royal seems to have a significant and growing number of defenders assembling online who believe that either he had no real guilt in this entire crime spree, or that you share equal blame. Don’t you think those people have a right to express their opinions?”

  I want to smash my fist into his face. I want to scream. I want to run so badly my legs shake with the urge. “If their opinions include saying that I should be flayed alive and my children murdered in front of me, then no. I don’t.” My voice has the force of fury. I swallow a burn in the back of my throat. Taste bile. “What documentary are you talking about?”

  “Yes, that’s a perfect opportunity to introduce our other guest today. Mrs. Tidewell? Would you please join us?”

  I realize that the people I’d been aware of moving in the background were the bearded microphone handler and the floor director, and as I turn slightly, I see someone new stepping up onto the riser. I know her, and it feels like I’m plunging off the edge of the world.

  Miranda Tidewell. Rich, connected, and terminally angry. She’s got reason to be; her daughter, Vivian, was my husband’s second victim. But since the beginning she’s believed that I shared the blame, that I should have known and stopped him, or that I did it right alongside him. She’s been a knife in my back from the moment Melvin was arrested. It was principally her advocacy that made sure I was arrested, too, and tried, though the evidence was slim at best, and based on a cracked foundation of perjury by a neighbor.

  Miranda wanted me on death row alongside Melvin. And from the look she gives me as she steps up to take the third chair, the chair I’d been wondering about . . . she still does.

  The contrast between us is stark. While we’re both white women, my hair’s dark, my clothes plain and serviceable. She has upswept hair the color of pale gold, expensive jewelry, and she’s wearing a designer business suit. She looks television-ready, down to her pitch-perfect makeup.

  She doesn’t even look at me, though I’m staring at her. She accepts Howie Hamlin’s handshake and sits down in the chair with elegance and ease. “Thank you for inviting me to be on this morning, Mr. Hamlin,” she says. “And for hearing our side. The families of the victims of Melvin and Gina Royal appreciate your outreach.”

  I need to get up and walk away.

  She doesn’t acknowledge my presence in the slightest. I don’t have any idea how to ignore hers. The whole world has taken on an eerie, whispering unreality, as if I’ve sunk deep into the ocean.

  “Of course. And the group you represent is called . . .”

  “The Lost Angels,” she says. “After the children, sisters, mothers, and more-distant relatives and friends that were taken from us.”

  “I understand that the Lost Angels have come up with the funding to launch the filming of a full documentary that you say will fully explain this case. But with Melvin Royal dead, and Ms. Proctor completely exonerated, what benefit do you see coming from this expense?”

  I want to scream, throw something, get the hell off this stage, but I can’t. I need to listen. Howie Hamlin, whether he intends to or not, is doing me a huge favor by alerting me that the Lost Angels—a group I haven’t heard from in a long time—is active and working. I’d really thought they’d had enough, had moved on with their grief and their lives. But apparently not.

  “Well, obviously we’re not interested in a new criminal trial; Mrs. Royal was acquitted by a jury of her peers,” Miranda says. “What we do believe in is the court of public opinion, which has been so incredibly effective in other miscarriages of justice when the guilty go unpunished. We will be laying out our full case for the public, in the form of this new, in-depth documentary that goes deep into the life of Gina Royal.”

  “Is this documentary finished?”

  “It’s just beginning,” Miranda says, and turns her attention suddenly on me. The hatred in her eyes is just exactly the same intensity it was on the day she sat in the courtroom as I was acquitted and released. I haven’t seen her since then, but it’s like no time has passed at all.

  This is all so monstrous that for a moment I can’t even quite believe what I’ve heard. I can’t move. I can’t think. I just stare at this woman, who seems otherwise so normal, and I can’t fathom how someone could be this . . . obsessed. For years. “You can’t do this,” I say. “You can’t tear my life, the lives of my children, apart like this. Again.”

  “I’m not,” Miranda says. “I’m simply funding a documentary, which will be released to the internet and film festivals all over the world when we’re done. It’s . . . a labor of love, if you will. To honor your husband’s victims. Our children. And I look forward to hearing your opinion, Mrs. Royal. I think you’ll quite like the actress we have playing you in the dramatic re-creations.”

  She wants a scene. She’s here to provoke one. To make me lose my shit and choke her right here on this stage, with Howie Hamlin and half the state of Tennessee as the horrified witnesses. I need to play this game, and play it well.

  So I sit back. “I’ll look forward to it,” I say. “And I’ll be glad for the chance to put out my own statements correcting any inaccuracies. And as you probably know, not all the family members are on your side.”

  “No,” Miranda agrees. “I’m afraid some of them believe in your particular brand of victimhood. It’s too bad, really.” She’s probably talking about Sam, but she’s being careful; the last thing she wants is to attempt to smear him right now. It would make her look a lot less legitimate, and a lot more vindictive.

  “It’s too bad that you haven’t been able to find a positive way out of your own grief, Mrs. Tidewell,” I say, and I mean it. “I’m sorry for what happened to your daughter, and I wish you could find peace with the justice that was already served. Her killer is dead.”

  “One of them,” she snaps. “One to go.” She recognizes that she’s stepped on the line, if not over it, and she makes a conscious effort to put tears in her eyes, and put a hand over her mouth. A perfectly overwhelmed grieving mother, if you’re not watching closely. “Forgive me, Mr. Hamlin. This is harder than I thought.”

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Tidewell?” Howie asks, as if he cares; he has tissues at the ready, and she dabs lightly at her eyes, careful not to smudge. “If this is too hard for you, we can take a break.”

  “What if it’s too hard for me?” I ask him. I’m aware I’m angry, but I can’t out-delicate Miranda Tidewell; she was born to manipulate, and I’ve never mastered that particular skill. “This woman spearheaded a movement to put my life and the lives of my children at risk from forces she has no hope of controlling, and she’s threatening to do it again!”

  “I’m not threatening anything,” Miranda says. Her voice is even trembling.

  What a brave woman, people at home will be thinking. While I look like an angry, coldly vindictive bitch.

  “I’m just stating that we’re making a documentary about our lost loved ones, and investigating the full scope of the case.”

  “Please bear in mind, ladies, that I’m not taking a side,” Howie says, and his tone reminds me of a greasy tub of used lard my grandmother used to keep on the stove.

  I can’t help it. I snap.

  “I don’t have a side! I have the truth!” I half shout it at him. I can’t keep it together anym
ore. “You brought me on this program to talk about the harassment of my family, and instead, you’ve given time and space to a woman who will do anything to destroy me and my kids. No, you don’t get to pretend that’s a side. That’s not why I came here.”

  “Ms. Proctor—”

  “No!” I stand up, unclip the microphone, yank it down my shirt, and throw the thing into the chair. I want to throw it in his face. “I’m done.”

  The camera tracks me as I charge off the riser and out of the glare of the lights. I want to shove the computer-driven machine out of my way, but I’m sure that would mean fines or charges, so I dodge it and head straight for the greenroom. I slam the door open and look at my two kids—my two beautiful, wonderful children, who are staring at me openmouthed. There are three other people in the greenroom now too: an African American man and woman and a white woman, all dressed for camera appearances. The black couple looks distraught and not sure what to make of what just happened. Behind me, Howie Hamlin is apologizing to viewers, and promising to continue the interview as soon as Mrs. Tidewell feels able. He cuts to a commercial, leans back to peruse some notes, and says, “Awesome. Mrs. Tidewell, I’ll keep you for two more minutes; then we’ll go to the Whites. Erin, have them ready.”

  The Whites. I remember his introduction at the beginning. These, then, must be the parents of Ellie White, the missing six-year-old. It’s been days since she disappeared, driven off by a fake chauffeur in what was evidently a well-planned and professional abduction.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell them, and then wonder if they want anything from me, even sympathy. After that horror show, maybe not. They don’t answer. I don’t even know if they hear me, really.

  “What the hell happened?” Lanny finally blurts. Her eyes are huge, her face pale even under the too-pale makeup she still favors. “Mom? Is that woman one of the mothers of . . . ?”

  “It’s all right, baby,” I tell her. “Let’s go. Right now.”

  Connor hasn’t made a sound, but he comes to me and puts his arm around me. He’s had a growth spurt in the past few months, and he comes up to my shoulder now. Lanny’s still taller than he is, but not by that much.