And Then There Was One

by Patricia Gussin

  Shit, he’d missed his turnoff. Now he’d have to wait another hour for a decent place to eat. He was sick and tired of McDonald’s and all those chains that lined the interstate. Give him an honest to goodness truck stop any time. He shifted his attention from food when some jerk in a Porsche tried to pass him on the right. “No you don’t,” Spanky said, cutting abruptly into the right lane. He laughed at the panic on the rich lady’s face. One day a driver wasn’t going to see him in time. Oh well, he was bigger than them. Trucking firms had insurance. Maybe that’d be his signal to retire. Hang up the keys to eighteen wheelers. Maybe do odd jobs in his pickup around his hometown until he had enough moola to move to Alaska. Now that was a dream worth savin’ for.

  His stomach kept on growling, made worse by the Dorito commercial on the radio. He changed stations, looking for a local twelve o’clock news and weather channel. Weather was important in his business and since he didn’t read newspapers, how else was he supposed to keep up to date?

  The lead story was the missing triplets. He figured that something bad musta happened to those kids. He was curious, and yes, he had to admit, turned on. He’d followed the story. His opinion: it was all about money, but why no ransom demand? Maybe it was one of those perverts who the mom sent to the joint? That’s what the cops thought. Like it was payback. Vindictive. Retribution. Mentally he slapped himself on the back. Ma would be proud of him using such big words. Just because he was a truck driver didn’t mean he was ignorant. No sirree.

  Shooting the breeze with the truckers last night, he’d had a few too many beers. “Pervert got those girls,” he’d said. “Shit they were grabbed out of a mall. That’s where those guys hang out. Rape ’em. Kill ’em. Toss ’em where nobody’s gonna find ’em.” When the guys around the bar just stared at him, he’d known he’d gone too far. The assholes were all staring at him.

  He’d shrugged his shoulders. “Hey, man, just tellin’ it how it is.”

  The big ape on the end of the bar got up and stomped over to him. Got his ugly white face so close Spanky could smell the stink of booze mixed with smokes. Spanky had flexed his muscles for a fight, but the asshole just said, “Sir, shut your fuckin’ mouth. You can think whatever the fuck you want, but you’re in the South ’n we don’ talk about women like that.”

  “Amen, brother,” the others said, slumping over to lift their drinks.

  Spanky hadn’t been too drunk to know he’d best get the hell out of that bar.

  What did those fuckers know about human nature? Spanky figured that he knew about perverts. Perverts had something sick wrong with them. Spanky, he had morals. Sure, he liked little girls. He could admit that to himself, but why would he have to kill them? That just didn’t make sense. As long as he could scare them enough so they wouldn’t tell. He’d found that little girls were easy to scare. Most, anyway. If he thought one acted too tough, he’d just let her go. There would always be another, like Kiki last night.

  Spanky had taken his mind off the news report long enough to finger Kiki’s panties. “Oh, yes,” he purred. This was followed by “Fuckin’ A,” when reconnecting to the news, he heard how some skinheads got arrested in Gainesville for writing shit on a barn wall. Disgusting how Florida was so fucking redneck. He ought to know, driving fourteen hundred miles up and down I-75 three times a month.

  “Yeah, man,” he snarled, hearing that the shitheads were members of the Klan. “Fucking assholes think they’re better than any other asshole. Throw them in the joint, that’ll teach them who to fuck with.”

  When Spanky was a kid he’d wanted to be a cop. His mom used to buy him all those toy guns and badges, but that was before she married that pansy jerk-off. Evan may have taken away the toy guns, but now Spanky had the real deal. Yes siree.

  Driving on, Spanky had to piss. His stomach growled louder, and he felt a surge of heartburn, so he grabbed a swig of Mylanta. “What the hell, a Denny’s. Good enough.” He pulled off the next exit. He’d call Ma from there. Let her know that he’d be home tomorrow. She’d been bitching about needing a new car. Tomorrow was Friday. He’d scout one out for her. Take her out on Saturday, her day off.

  Spanky parked the rig off to the side, but as he walked toward the men’s room, he saw the lady in the Porche crawl out of her car. Too bad he couldn’t get one of those for Ma. He laughed so loud that the woman veered off to avoid him. Now, that was a picture, his Ma crawling out of one of those hot little cars. As a joke maybe he’d take her for a test drive in one this weekend.

  He emerged from the men’s room to a buzz among the customers at the counter in Denny’s.

  Monica Monroe, one of his idols, had offered a fucking hundred thousand bucks for two of those triplet girls. The thought made Spanky salivate. What he wouldn’t give for that kind of money. What he wouldn’t give to have those two little girls.

  CHAPTER 26

  Yankees Play the Nationals at Home: Time Out to Pray for the Safe

  Return of Scott Monroe’s Daughters Planned.

  — New York Daily News, June 18

  Scott and Katie hovered over Jackie as she lay perfectly still on the small gurney in the emergency room of Detroit Children’s Hospital. She’d been seen by the neurosurgery team, neurology, and, of course, pediatrics. She’d had an electroencephalogram, skull X-rays, an MRI, and a CAT scan. All were normal. No skull fractures, no bleeding inside the skull, no swelling of the brain, no sign of brain injury. Her vital signs were stable. Her blood chemistries and her complete blood count were in normal range. But she had not regained consciousness. Her body lay supine and limp, her chest rising and falling as if she were merely asleep. All of her reflexes were normal, and they could identify no neurological focus to account for her being unconscious. The blow to her head, stumbling off only two stairs, should not have been severe enough to cause prolonged loss of consciousness. But it had now been five hours. The doctors admitted her.

  The media had followed the ambulance into the inner city hospital and were doing everything in their collective effort to find out what medical calamity had struck the remaining triplet. The ensuing chaos had stalled Lucy’s arrival at the hospital, and it was only after her mother and sister joined them that Katie accepted a modicum of consolation and stopped repeating all my fault.

  Scott couldn’t understand what was happening to Katie. Why did she keep rambling about her fault. Wasn’t it enough that two of their daughters had been missing for four days and the third was in a coma that the doctors could not understand?

  And what was wrong with Jackie? He’d heard the doctors huddled outside her hospital room discuss psychiatric syndromes where kids under stress just shut down. Shut down? What did that mean? Katie, with all her psychiatric training should know, but Katie seemed helpless. She just stood by Jackie’s bed, staring at nothing, saying nothing.

  Finally, when Lucy accompanied Katie to the restroom, Scott pulled Sharon to the far corner of the room and asked, “What’s wrong with Katie?”

  “She’s under too much stress, Scott. I can’t imagine anything more devastating to a family. I keep putting myself in her place, you know. I don’t think that any parent can predict how they will react to something like this. It’s like every time you think about Alex or Sammie, not knowing, it’s like they’re dying over and over. You just don’t know. You and Katie just have to do what you can to get by, minute by minute. Jackie’s been under that stress, too.”

  Scott rubbed his eyes. “My own emotions are all over the place. I can’t seem to focus. And this morning I feel so groggy that I don’t know if I’m capable of processing information. The news that the main suspect was gunned down last night — I just can’t imagine —”

  “The stress is just too intense, Scott. I don’t know what to advise. Stay here at the hospital, go to Mom’s for some rest, spend time with the FBI agents? I just don’t know.”

  When Katie and Lucy returned, Scott and Sharon stepped apart, and Scott went to Katie’s side, putting an arm a
round her waist. They stood silent until there was a knock on the door.

  An attractive, dark-skinned woman in her sixties stepped inside. She carried a patient chart, but she was dressed in a turquoise silk dress and matching jacket, not a white coat.

  “Dr. Monroe, I’m Dr. Susan Reynolds, chair of child psychiatry at Children’s Hospital,” she said, approaching Katie. “I’m a friend of your sister, Stacy, and I’m here to see your daughter.” Dr. Reynolds turned toward Scott, “And I feel like I know you, Mr. Monroe. I’m a baseball fan, the Tigers, naturally, not much of a Yankee fan, I’m afraid. Tigers are in first place in their division. Yankees are a couple of games out in the east, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Scott simply nodded. Baseball, nothing more than a remote memory. Pensive a moment, he shook his head, failing in an attempt to remember the name associated with that curly haired blond guy that lingered on the fringe of his consciousness. He needed to focus. He needed to be here for Jackie. He needed to be downtown, helping the FBI find Alex and Sammie.

  Katie turned to face Dr. Reynolds, but said nothing.

  Dr. Reynolds introduced herself to Sharon and Lucy and expressed her prayerful wishes that Alex and Sammie would return safely and quickly. Then she turned to Jackie.

  “I’m sure pediatrics told you that they can find no physical basis for your daughter’s prolonged depressed level of consciousness,” she said. “The child’s been under so much stress that naturally we have to look for psychiatric causes. Do you agree, Dr. Monroe?”

  “I guess so,” Katie said, sounding lost and helpless.

  Lucy spoke, “Dr. Reynolds, what do you need. How can we help you?”

  “I’ll need to examine Jackie,” she said. “And I’d like to ask the parents some questions.”

  Katie just nodded.

  “Anything, Dr. Reynolds,” Scott said.

  “I’d prefer that you call me Susan,” the psychiatrist said.

  “Please, Susan. Katie and Scott,” Scott said.

  “Stacy will be in later tonight,” Lucy said. “She’ll be so glad to see you. I just wish Dr. Nelson was here, too. I know you two were close. Same medical school class, if I recall.”

  “I’m glad Stacy’s coming. Speaking of Laura, how is your father, Scott?”

  “Recovering from heart valve surgery at the Mayo Clinic, and devastated, of course.”

  Scott had planned to fly to Rochester, Minnesota, this week to visit his father after his surgery. Was that a lifetime ago?

  “Of course,” Susan said, stepping around Katie and Scott to begin her examination of Jackie. The child had not opened her eyes or made any movement that seemed purposeful.

  No one spoke as Susan performed a series of neurological tests aimed at evaluating neurological versus psychological dysfunction.

  When she was finished, she suggested that Katie and Scott sit in the chairs arranged in a semicircle around Jackie’s bed. Sharon and Lucy excused themselves and Susan began. “What we have here is a conversion disorder. A reaction to extreme stress. Layer on layer of stress. Perhaps influenced by the survivor syndrome, why was she saved, and her sisters were taken? Perhaps overlain with guilt, blaming herself that they did not all stick together.”

  “What can we do?” For the first time, Katie’s voice joined as one with Scott’s.

  “I’m admitting Jackie to the psych floor. The rooms are comforting there, conducive to recovery. Serenity is key. No contention. Just loving acceptance. I’ll have them put in two cots so there will always be loved ones there. I know you two may have to spend time with the FBI, so if Mrs. Jones, Stacy, Rachel, Sharon, and perhaps some of your relatives, Scott, could stay with her around the clock, that would be good. But whoever is with her must maintain a serene, supportive, atmosphere. Jackie’s room is a sanctuary. It is not the place to discuss her sisters. Whoever can’t commit to these ground rules should not be included in Jackie’s inner circle.

  “Naturally, our staff psychiatrists and house staff will oversee her treatment, as will I, personally. So we’ll be in and out. But a family member needs to be by her side at all times. In the event she wakes up, we’ll instruct you what to do. And if you have any information about her sisters, tell me immediately so we can discuss options of how to handle this with Jackie.” Susan hesitated. “She’s most vulnerable right now, but she will get through this, if we handle this right. Katie, as a child psych professional, as well as a mother, are you okay with this?”

  “Yes,” Katie answered, “And thank you, Susan.”

  Scott felt his heart lighten at the tone of sincerity in Katie’s voice. She sounded rational. As Susan made arrangements to transfer Jackie to the psych unit, he longed for a moment alone with Katie, just the two of them. He needed to reassure her and to be reassured by her. They’d been sinking into a dark bottomless hole. They were both crumbling. They needed a touchstone. They needed each other.

  An orderly, flanked by security, had just arrived to transfer Jackie to the fifth floor when an FBI agent squeezed by the stretcher to announce, “Mr. Monroe, there’s an urgent call for you at the desk.”

  For an instant, Scott froze, his heart standing still, then Katie touched his arm and said, “Take the call, I’ll stay with Jackie.”

  Scott picked up the phone at the nurses’ station, his shoulders hunched forward, supporting himself with one hand on the plastic partition.

  “Mr. Monroe, this is Agent Streeter. I am sorry to interrupt you at the hospital. I can’t tell you how distraught we all are about Jackie. She’ll be okay?”

  “I don’t know,” Scott said, and he didn’t know. Dr. Reynolds had said she was catatonic.

  “I’m back in Detroit. Matter of fact, I’m on my way to Children’s. I have something to go over with you and Katie.”

  “Yes, of course, but they’re just getting ready to take Jackie to the fifth floor,” Scott said. He couldn’t bring himself to say psychiatric floor.

  Scott and Katie accompanied Jackie up to her room. On the way they passed rooms with cribs and small beds. At the end of a corridor Scott almost walked into a treatment room full of crying kids. Katie had been a pediatric resident before going into psychiatry, and Scott wondered how anyone could cope with the chaos of bawling babies and crazed parents.

  Streeter waited for the Monroes near the nursing station. Scott arrived first, saying that Katie would be along in a moment. As they waited, Scott asked to be briefed on the status of Keith Franklin.

  Streeter told him that Katie’s former boyfriend had been held for questioning well into Wednesday morning. They’d determined that the ex-con had been paroled for acceptable behavior, having served nine of a fifteen year sentence for drug trafficking. He had a string of odd jobs before landing a position with the Detroit Department of Sanitation. For nine years he’d ridden a garbage truck and had recently moved up the pecking order to driver. His parole record and his employment record had been adequate. If one was grading his report card, he’d be a C minus.

  “What did he say about Katie?” Scott asked.

  Streeter relayed that Franklin admitted that he carried a torch for her. He confirmed that Katie — that is, his infatuation with Katie — had driven a wedge into his marriage. He and Penny had been married for twelve years and they had three sons.”

  “Happily married?” Scott asked.

  “‘Hell no,’ were his exact words. Described his wife as a bitch. Nothing ever good enough for her. Her spending has him on the edge of bankruptcy, that sort of thing.”

  “So he needs money?” Scott asked.

  “That may be true,” Streeter said. “Franklin admitted that he’d never stopped fantasizing about Katie. About how their life together might still be.”

  “Shit,” Scott said, “like that would ever happen.”

  “I’m just telling you what he told us,” Streeter said. “Delusional for sure. He said that he was sure that she still had feelings for him. The guy did not hold back. He put it all on the line.”r />
  “Great,” Scott said.

  “First, he sent her that e-mail. Then he managed to siphon a hundred bucks from the stack of bills he owed and he’d bought a ticket for your sister’s concert. He’d learned from his mother that Katie would be there without you. He’d expected her to sit up front, and had gotten a glimpse of her when she entered with the triplets and her mother. He’d waved, but he didn’t think that she’d seen him. After the concert, he waited outside, meaning to walk up next to her and strike up a conversation. But she didn’t come out through the main entrance. Katie had left by the back door and stepped directly into Monica’s limo. After that, he went off to his local bar and stayed until closing. All those details have been confirmed.”

  “So you believe this guy?”

  “On Sunday,” Streeter continued, “Franklin took the family to the Detroit zoo. And that, too, was confirmed. We had no grounds on which to hold him, and he was allowed to return home.”

  “So nothing.”

  “He did tell us something. He admitted to an affair. An affair with a white woman. Woman by the name of Jane Wise. Mean anything?”

  “White woman?” Scott’s heart started to race. Had Franklin sent his girlfriend to take the girls out of the mall? “Could it be the woman that the witness saw in the mall?”

  “Franklin had her picture in his wallet.” Streeter showed him a photo of a middle-aged white woman, plump, pale in complexion, brown eyes with too much makeup, and what was probably bleached blonde hair in an old-fashioned pageboy cut.

  “Recognize her?”

  “I don’t know this woman.”

  “We’re showing her picture around, but she has an airtight alibi for Sunday, at a family affair with her husband. She’s fifty years old. Works in the automotive industry, no criminal record, seems like a nice lady. Don’t know what she saw in Franklin. He even told her about Katie. Go figure what women put up with.”