by Becky Durfee
Jenny couldn’t help but think about how the magic had all but disappeared from their relationship.
He finished up and flushed, once again looking at her picture. “That’s really good. You have an amazing talent.” He left the bathroom without washing his hands.
She stood still for a moment, digesting what had just happened. He was momentarily lazy, unkempt and gross, but he had paid her a compliment. Shaking her head rapidly, she decided that most men probably had the ability to be gross behind closed doors; she would focus on the compliment, which is something she never got from her first husband. In that regard, this was an improvement.
With a sigh of determination, she sat back down and put the finishing touches on her painting. Once she was satisfied, she snapped a picture of it, sending it with a note to Amy. She hoped that soon she would be getting a definite answer as to whom this man had been.
Her wish was granted almost instantly; she received a quick phone call from Amy. “Hello?”
“Wow,” Amy replied. “I got your picture.”
“And…?”
“That wasn’t Jacqueline’s husband.” She paused for a moment before adding, “It was mine.”
“He was your husband?”
“Uh-huh.” Amy’s voice was shaky. “My God, I cannot believe this.”
Jenny was unsure of what to say. “Do you have any idea why he would do that?”
“Yes,” she said definitively. “Jackie was coming to visit me. I guarantee I was the intended target.”
“You think your husband would have tried to kill you?”
“There’s not a doubt in my mind.”
Jenny remained silent, inviting Amy to continue.
“I had left him just a few months before that and moved back in with my parents. The reason why I left was because he was too controlling—this is exactly the kind of thing he would have done if I defied him.” Her voice once again reflected overwhelming remorse. “He killed all those people because of me.”
“No, I wouldn’t say that,” Jenny replied reassuringly.
“I would. I had so many warning signs. I should have been able to see this coming. My entire family warned me not to marry him, but I did anyway. I was eighteen and as stubborn as they come. And look what ended up happening.”
“You couldn’t have predicted this.”
“My family did. They all told me it would come to this, but I thought I knew better. God, I was so stupid. I actually found his jealousy to be endearing at first, if you’ll believe that. I thought, wow, this guy cares about me so much that it destroys him when I’m not around. Everybody around me tried to tell me that it wasn’t healthy—that it was psychotic, not charming. Even I started to get a little wary of it when we were engaged, but I figured that once we got married and I came home to him every night, the jealousy would subside. He would see that I loved him and there wasn’t anything to be jealous about.” She let out a loud breath, clearly frustrated with herself. “But it turns out my family was right. Things only got worse after we were married. I couldn’t even talk to another man without him getting upset about it. It got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore, so I left.”
“I don’t imagine he took the news very well.”
“No, not at all.” Anger permeated her voice. “He stalked me, even though the word stalking wasn’t a term back then. He was everywhere I went. He followed me, showed up at my door at all hours of the day and night—and when I went to the police about it, they said it wasn’t against the law for him to ring my doorbell.”
Jenny nodded slightly. “This was before all the stalking laws were put into place.”
“Exactly, so I was stuck. But one day, he seemed to disappear. It was completely out of the blue, so I was skeptical of it at first, but he really did stop harassing me after that. I figured that he’d found another woman to obsess over.” Her voice became quiet. “This was a few weeks before the train explosion.”
Jenny’s shoulders sank. “I guess he hadn’t found somebody else.”
Amy sounded as if she had started to cry. “I guess not.”
“Would he have even been capable of making a bomb?” Jenny asked. “That can’t be an easy thing to do.”
“He was pursuing a degree in chemistry; he was more than capable. I just never would have associated him with my sister’s train exploding. He must have driven all the way down to South Carolina to give her the bomb to give to me. It didn’t even cross my mind that he would have done such a thing, although now that you say it, it seems perfectly reasonable.”
“He knew your sister was coming to see you?”
“He knew everything about me. I don’t know how he did it, but he always seemed to know where I was going to be, and when.”
“Stalkers find their ways,” Jenny said.
“I guess so.” Another heavy sigh. “I just feel positively awful that all of those people died because my ex-husband wanted to get back at me. My God, I should have listened and never gotten involved with him in the first place. What a fool I was.”
“Listen,” Jenny said compassionately, “I chose the wrong guy the first time, too, and looking back, I can recognize that I overlooked a ton of warning signs in the process. A lot of us do it. I was just lucky in the sense that my husband didn’t hurt anybody when I left him. But that’s what it was—luck. It could just as easily be me in your shoes right now…but that’s not a reflection on you. It’s one-hundred percent him.”
Amy’s voice was little more than a whisper. “He killed my sister.”
And so begins the guilt, Jenny thought. Had the bomb detonated when it was supposed to, Amy would have been the victim, but due to a crazy twist of fate, Jacqueline and ten others paid the price. That notion was sure to haunt Amy for the rest of her life. What could Jenny possibly have said at that moment to help alleviate Amy’s guilt? Nothing…so she simply changed the subject. “Did he come back to bother you any more after that?”
“No…I never saw or heard from him again. It’s like he dropped off the face of the earth.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“If there’s any justice in this world, he’s either dead or in jail.”
Jenny cleared her throat. “Well, I know a man who is very good at finding people. I bet he can track your ex-husband down, wherever he is.”
“Good,” Amy said. “If he is still alive, I want to see him rot in jail for what he did, provided he’s not there already.”
“Well, I can get Kyle working on this right away. The only things I’ll need to know are his name and his birthdate, and then he can get this process started.”
“Fabulous. He was born on May fifteenth, 1941, and his name is Roger Hillerman.”
Chapter 22
“I’m still stunned,” Jenny announced after she’d recounted the story to Zack. “I can’t believe Jove was responsible for blowing up that train.” She made finger quotes as she said Roger Hillerman’s fictitious name.
“It is crazy,” Zack agreed, “but it fits, if you think about it. Amy was married to a smart but very controlling man. Jove was a smart but very controlling man.”
Jenny looked at him with a sideways smile. “I believe the phrase you are looking for is intelligent delinquent.”
“Okay, he was an intelligent delinquent. Either way, it makes sense that they were the same person.”
“I agree it makes sense, but the odds that the cases were related are just so slim.”
“Stranger things have happened.”
Jenny blew out a breath. “I guess. Anyway, Kyle is working on finding out where he is buried. I would ask Delilah, but I don’t want to talk to her about that yet.”
“Do you plan to tell her what he did?”
Shrugging and shaking her head, Jenny said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure what I want to do about that. I just got through telling her that I cleared her great-uncle Roger’s name. Do I really want to go back and announce that I discovered he was guilty
of something else?”
“That’s a tough one. I think you’re right about not saying anything yet. You can always tell her later, but you can’t un-tell her once you’ve said it.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.” She sat back against the pillows on the bed, looking at the picture she had painted of the man who went on to be Jove. “It’s just so messed up, you know?”
Her phone signaled a call was coming from Kyle. She put the phone to her ear and simply said, “That was quick.”
“Hey, Jenny,” he replied with a laugh. “Yeah, the information you were looking for wasn’t too hard to find. Again, though, I’m sorry I didn’t make the connection earlier. I saw Amy LaRusso had been married before, but I didn’t recognize that name as one of the people from Eden…which is sad considering I had just researched him not too long before that. I’m getting old, I guess.”
“It’s no problem, really,” Jenny said. “They were two separate cases; I wouldn’t have expected you to be looking for a connection.”
“Well, I’m glad you discovered it. You picked up my slack. Anyway, I have discovered that Roger Hillerman is buried in a place called Ridgewater cemetery, not too far from where Eden was located. I can text you the specific address.”
“Thanks, Kyle.”
“No problem. Can I help you with anything else?”
“Can you carry this baby for me? She’s getting huge and I’m about done with this.”
He let out a chuckle. “I’m not sure the wife would let me. Besides, I’m carrying enough extra weight around the middle; I don’t need any more.”
“Oh, well, I tried,” Jenny said with a smile. They hung up the phone, and seconds later she received the address of the cemetery. She jotted the information down on the hotel’s notepad before dialing Kayla’s number.
“Hi, Jenny,” Kayla said. “What’s new?”
“Well, I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I think we might be able to get rid of Matthew once and for all…is there any way you and Devon can come down to Georgia?”
Kayla’s voice immediately became determined. “Let me get my purse.”
Zack took Devon out to a playground while Jenny and Kayla stayed back at the hotel room. Jenny was using the only chair in the room while Kayla sat nervously on the edge of the bed. “It’s a bit complicated, but I think I finally have the whole picture,” Jenny began.
“I’m ready,” Kayla said. “Let me hear it.”
“It’s all about a man named Roger Hillerman. Having looked into his history a little bit, he was born in Georgia in 1941. He was a rather unremarkable, middle-class kid, but he was very smart; he ultimately went to Sherman College in Pennsylvania to study chemistry. Shortly after he moved there, he met a local girl named Amy Mills and quickly became obsessed with her. He was extremely jealous and possessive, but unfortunately, Amy was only about seventeen at the time, and she mistook that behavior for love.”
Kayla closed her eyes and nodded.
“They got married a short time later, but it didn’t last. His controlling ways became too much for her, and she moved back in with her parents. As you can imagine, that didn’t sit very well with Roger. He began to stalk her, but back then stalking wasn’t a term. She went to the police to report his harassment, but they told her that he wasn’t doing anything illegal. Then, one day, the stalking stopped—out of the blue. She didn’t believe it at first, but after enough time went by, she figured he must have met someone else. She never heard from him again.
“However, the stalking hadn’t really stopped; it had just changed in nature. It seems he went from following her to trying to kill her. We believe that when he stopped following her, he started making the bomb that was designed to kill her.”
Upon hearing the word bomb, Kayla hung her head. For the first time, it appeared she was able to make the connection between Roger Hillerman and Matthew Ingram.
Jenny continued, “He apparently caught wind of the fact that Amy’s sister, Jacqueline, was going to take a train from South Carolina to Pennsylvania to visit her. He must have driven all the way to South Carolina, disguising the bomb as a present and giving it to Jacqueline on the train platform. I saw that scene in one of my visions, and it makes perfect sense now. Jacqueline didn’t look happy to see Roger at all, and she was reluctant to take the gift from him, but she ultimately agreed. I’m sure he told her it was a present for Amy, and it must have been designed to go off when she opened it. Unfortunately for Matthew and the others on board the train that day, it apparently went off prematurely, causing an explosion on the train.
“After that incident, Roger went into hiding. He and a group of friends took up residence at the farmhouse his family owned, and they started living off the grid. He became the leader of this little commune, which they called Eden, and could probably be described better as a cult than a community. Roger changed his name to Jove and insisted the other members change their identities as well. One of the other rules was that all residents cut ties with their families, which I originally thought was to ensure the members never left the cult. In hindsight, though, it may have had more to do with the fact that Roger didn’t want anyone to connect him to the train explosion. If investigators figured out it was him, his name and face may have been plastered all over the news. However, if he went by Jove and nobody around him had contact with the outside world, he would have been safe.”
Kayla’s eyes were wide. “Isn’t that the other case you were working on?”
“It is. Can you believe it?”
“I can believe anything these days.”
Jenny imagined that was the truth. “Well, Roger’s cult grew to be forty-seven strong, consisting mostly of hippies and draft-dodgers. They lived off the land, using bartering as a means of exchange instead of money. Their drug supplier, Paul Thomas, used to give them LSD in exchange for the cult’s marijuana, mushrooms and sexual favors.”
“Oh, my.”
“Indeed. Except one day, a cult member named Sabrina refused to sleep with him when it was her turn. She was in love with another cult member and carrying his child, so she didn’t want to have anything to do with Paul Thomas…at least, not in that way. To retaliate, a couple of weeks later, Paul put Nembutal in their water supply, resulting in the deaths of everyone who lived there. Ironically, Sabrina—the one who refused to sleep with him—had left the cult with her boyfriend just before the poisoning. Once again, a lot of other people paid the price, while the intended target walked away unscathed.
“Strangely enough, Roger Hillerman was accused of masterminding that overdose. It was ruled a mass suicide, and, being the cult’s leader, he was considered the brains behind the operation. For decades, Roger Hillerman’s name has been mud. Just recently, Paul Thomas has confessed to that crime, and Hillerman’s name was cleared…for about a day. Now, as you know, we realize he actually was a murderer, just in a different way than we had suspected.”
“But the man is dead,” Kayla said as more of a statement than a question.
“Yes, he’s dead.” Jenny smiled and raised her eyebrows. “He was murdered.”
“So, do you think if we tell Matthew this, he will go away?”
“I’m hoping so. I have even found the place where he is buried. With your permission, I’d like to take Devon there and actually show him the grave site. My hope is that it will provide enough closure for Matthew to move on.”
“Well, let’s do it, then.” Kayla stood up off the bed. “I am about done with this whole thing.”
“Why are we here?” Devon asked from the back seat.
“We’re going to show you something,” Jenny replied as she navigated the car through the cemetery’s narrow, one-way streets.
“Are these dead people?”
Jenny glanced back at him in the rear view mirror. “Yes, but they’re at peace. All but one, maybe.”
He didn’t reply. He simply rocked back and forth as much as the seatbelt and booster seat would allow.
Zack and Jenny had found the headstone earlier in the day and marked it with a bright-colored flag, so she knew right where to park. She turned the car off and looked at the wide-eyed little boy in the back, fighting the nervousness that coursed through her veins. “Devon, honey, I have a picture I’d like to show you, if that’s okay.”
He continued to sway. “What’s it of?”
Without answering, she removed the towel that had kept the painting covered and simply held it up so he could see. The fidgeting suddenly stopped; Devon studied the picture with scrutiny. “That’s the man,” he ultimately said.
“What man?” Jenny asked.
“The man with the present. He gave it to the yellow-haired lady.”
“What present?”
“The present that went click. It started the fire.”
Nobody in the car said anything for a long time.
Devon broke the silence. “Do you know who he is?”
“His name is Roger Hillerman,” Jenny explained, “and the present was actually supposed to go to his wife. He was angry at his wife, and he wanted to hurt her. The woman with the yellow hair was the wife’s sister, and she was supposed to pass it along. Unfortunately, the present started the fire earlier than it was supposed to, and that’s why you all got hurt.”
“Did he get punished?”
Jenny smiled. “Yes, honey, he got punished. And, in fact, his grave is right over there. Do you want to see it?”
Devon only nodded.
They all got out of the car; Kayla immediately took Devon’s hand, walking him silently over to the marked grave. “Is that it?” he asked. “The one with the flag?”
“That’s it,” Kayla said.
Devon let go of his mother’s grasp and took a few steps closer to the headstone. He squatted down to get a closer look at it, staying in that position for what seemed like an eternity. Eventually, he looked over his shoulder to the nervous adults behind him and stated, “He ruined everything.”
