by J W Becton
Despite being situated in a large, bustling neighborhood, my father’s house stood as a bastion of loneliness, a brick prison he’d built around himself years ago. The porch light burned through the dimness of the early winter evening as I stood on the stoop, hesitating.
I rarely allowed myself to come here, and in the past, I had never given much consideration as to why.
At first, after Tricia’s rape, I’d been so angry with my father for abandoning my mother, sister, and me, leaving us to cope with my sister’s pain and alcoholism on our own, that I didn’t even want to think about him, much less pay him a visit. For a long time, I couldn’t bear to see him and know how little he seemed to care about the rest of the family he had created.
But as I stood there in front of the black, wooden door that separated us, I knew I had been wrong about him.
For years, I’d thought he didn’t care about us, but that wasn’t true. My father simply was not capable of staying. He could not handle Tricia’s crying jags, my mother’s incessant denial, or my need to fix it all. He did care, and he was there for us, but always on the periphery, removed from the intense emotion of every situation. When we needed him, he would step in, handle the problem, and then hide himself away again, just as he had when he cleaned up my house after that awful shooting last summer.
My father was a good man, but isolation had become his way of life.
I feared that on some level I was like my father. I always told myself that I was different from my family, that I was looking for practical solutions, but in reality, maybe I was no better than any of them. After all, I was still looking back too.
I took a deep breath and rang the doorbell, finding it slightly strange that I was required to do so at my own father’s house and even odder that I’d had to summon the courage to do it.
After a few moments, the door swung open to reveal my father, his gray hair slicked down and his gaze steely, as if he had expected to confront a street thug on his porch or hear word of impending apocalypse. He wore his daily uniform of business casual khakis, but his long-sleeved button-down was loose at the neck, cuffs unbuttoned and floating around his wrists.
His gaze flickered between pleasure at seeing me and concern over what news I might have.
How pathetic was that?
But knowing what I planned to tell him, maybe apocalyptic news wasn’t such an inaccurate description.
Still, I didn’t want to open with doom, so I gave my father a cheerful smile.
“Hi, Daddy.”
“Hey, girl,” he said, opening the door a bit wider and moving stiffly aside. “Come on in. I wasn’t expecting anyone this evening.”
He gave me a quick hug and then let me pass into the dimly lit interior.
“Come on in,” he said again, gesturing for me to lead the way into the front room, where I found a microwave dinner cooling and a beer warming on a tray table in front of his recliner. The TV was tuned to what looked like a rerun of a church service, headed up by a Plasticine preacher wearing a hideous double-breasted suit and carrying a Bible the size of Kansas.
I seriously doubted this was my father’s choice of viewing material. Probably he’d just landed there when I rang the doorbell.
He pointed to the couch, and I sat dutifully.
“Something wrong with Tricia?” he asked.
“No, believe it or not, Tricia’s fine. Doing great, in fact. Healing, not drinking,” I said, watching my father as he sat in his recliner and retrieved his beer.
“Drink?” he asked without the barest hint of irony, waving the can at me.
“No, thanks,” I said, refusing to allow myself to grimace at the prospect. “I’m just here for a minute.”
He waited for me get to the reason I’d come. Our visits were never just visits with chitchat and sweet family stories. It was always business between us.
“I don’t know how else to say this,” I began, “so I’m just going to say it plain. I think I found the man who hurt Tricia.”
“You found him?” he repeated, staring at the beer he held with a blank expression. “The man who raped her.”
“Yes,” I said. “The police haven’t made an arrest, but he has been located. I—I came to tell you first. I thought you’d want to know before, well, before I tell Mom and Tricia. If he’s prosecuted—”
“What do you mean ‘if he’s prosecuted’?” he asked, his gaze still unfocused.
“Well, we have to make sure we have the right suspect, and then it will be up to Tricia and the state to decide how to proceed,” I concluded.
My father finally raised his eyes from the beer can and looked at me, and the emotion there surprised me.
“There should be no ‘if,’” he said softly.
I got the feeling that he was speaking mostly to himself, so I didn’t respond.
“He should be tried and punished for what he did to my baby. Tricia deserves justice.”
He ran a hand through his hair, mussing it, and then raised himself from the recliner with such abruptness that he bumped the tray table and nearly upset his beer
“But,” he said quietly, his hands clenching into fists, “a trial is too good for him. He should have his ass nailed to the wall.”
I sat back so that I could look up at my father, and my inner child seemed to take hold of my psyche. The memories of watching him from this perspective—a child looking up at her father—sucked me in. Some part of me felt small, powerless in the face of his confusion.
But as an adult, I understood him. The same war waged in me. I said I wanted justice, but some primal, inner voice called for vengeance, and it scared me to think of how easy it would be to give in to that urge.
“I just wanted you to know. Tricia and Mom….” I said, trying to find the right words and keep my voice level. “Well, I don’t know how they’re going to take it. It’s been a long time.”
My father paced across the room and then turned back to me. When he spoke again, his voice was stronger but also colder.
“Time doesn’t matter. He needs to pay.”
“But time does matter,” I said, trying to remain logical. “The statute of limitations expired two years ago, Dad. You know that as well as I do. If the state didn’t have an exception for DNA evidence, it would already be too late.”
“But we do have DNA.”
“Yes,” I said. “And unless Tricia and the DA choose not to press charges, there will be a trial.”
My father’s head lifted.
“But I still hate the thought of what it will do to Mom and Tricia,” I continued. “You know they aren’t going to take it well. I wish they didn’t have to go through it.”
He tilted his face to mine, and his expression was torn between wide-eyed fear and low-browed anger.
“This needs to end,” he said. “You think you are doing your sister and mother a favor by sparing them the difficulties of a trial, but if the bastard who attacked her doesn’t go to jail, this will never truly be over. It will never end. None of us will ever be free.”
He spoke the last sentence slowly and with such coldness that I shivered. And the scariest part was that I understood him. I had felt the same fear. If Tricia did not face her attacker in court, then our family would be doomed to our current existence, where we were all floating in limbo. Waiting for something that might never happen.
My father and I stood in silence for long moments. His eyes, which had previously expressed so much confusion and fear, had shifted, and now they seemed harder as if his decision was made, and his course had been set.
Finally, I nodded at him, although I wasn’t sure if I was truly agreeing with him or not. The cold certainty of his final words and the determined expression in his eyes frightened me.
As I left the house, I wondered if my father had moved from searching for justice to seeking vengeance.
Fourteen
Lacarova hoped the boss’s hit-and-run idea would just blow over, that she would realize how fo
ol-headed a plan she had concocted and tell him to forget about it.
But that didn’t happen.
Instead, the boss showed up at the garage just as the place was shutting down for the day.
“A word, son,” she said, crooking a finger at him.
Like some obedient dog, he followed her to the private office, but he didn’t shut the door behind him in case he needed to make a fast escape.
“I don’t like how we left things between us last night,” she said softly. “We’ve always had a good relationship.”
As if he gave a crap about their relationship.
“You’ve always been such a good boy.”
Scowling back at her, he crossed his arms. “What is this about?”
“You know why I’m here.”
He shrugged.
“I’ve got some things you’ll need to know in order to carry out your job.”
“Yeah,” he said. “What?”
She offered him a piece of paper, and he snatched it from her long, red fingernails.
God, he wanted to break off those nasty talons and make her eat them.
Instead, he glanced at the paper to find a date, a time, and a typewritten address in a fancy Mercer neighborhood.
“What’s this?”
“Doctor Keller’s address, and the most likely time the little girl will be an easy target. She goes to Airington Academy, as do most of the brats in that neighborhood, and its winter break, so that means the kiddies are all out of school. He’ll probably have to hire someone to watch the kid.”
“How do you know this?” he asked, wadding the paper and putting it in his pocket.
“I pay attention, son, and it would be best if you learned to do the same.”
She nodded at the pocket where he stowed the paper.
“There’s a park across the street from their house. Lots of cars around. You can blend there. Watch for your opportunity.”
“You’ve got this all planned,” he said. “Why don’t you just do it yourself?”
“You know how I work,” she said, taking a step closer. “I prefer to look at the bigger picture, the one you can’t see. It’s up to my employees to handle the everyday details.”
She gave him a ripe, red smile.
How typical of the bitch to see murdering a child as an everyday detail.
“I’ll expect it to be done by the end of the week. And remember,” she warned. “My mercy only extends so far.”
If she showed him any mercy at all, which he did not expect.
Fifteen
I looked like crap on a stick. Felt that way too after I’d been blindsided by my father’s reaction to the news that we had located Tricia’s rapist.
Though I knew he was detached and lonely, I had always viewed my father as the most stable member of our family, believing that he would take the news well, give me good advice, help me through what would come next. But I was sure wrong about that.
When his shock had subsided, he had become so cold and determined, and I spent most of the night trying to make sense of it. The best I could come up with was that Mom, Tricia, and I had dealt with our pain in various ways, but my father had always seemed to be able to ignore his emotions, stuff them somewhere inside him. Maybe the years had caused his unacknowledged pain to develop into a hardened scab, and maybe I had just ripped open the wound.
That disturbing thought had lingered on the edges of my mind all night, invading my dreams, and when I’d awakened that morning, I was exhausted. I couldn’t even muster the energy to cover my black eye before going to my appointment at the Accident Care Clinic. I reasoned that makeup would be counterproductive, anyway.
Wasn’t the whole point to let them view the full extent of my injuries and then see how they responded?
Besides, I felt so conflicted about my visit with my father that I didn’t really care, not even when I got odd looks from anyone who saw me en route to the clinic.
But upon my arrival, the odd looks ceased.
Everyone in the waiting room was sporting an injury or a brace. I fit right in.
The clinic looked normal to me: sign-in sheet, copious forms to fill out, thorough examination of my insurance coverage, canned music, and a long wait in a room that smelled like antiseptic.
Pretty standard as far as doctor’s visits went.
After an hour and forty-five minutes in the waiting room, during which I seriously weighed the value of my time versus the potential benefit to the investigation, a nurse in bright pink scrubs finally called Janet Aliff’s name.
“How are we feeling today, Ms. Aliff?” the nurse asked as she escorted me into the bowels of the medical facility.
“We’ve been better,” I said, emphasizing the plural pronoun out of irritation. “We’ve been waiting almost two hours.”
“Oh, bless your heart,” she said with saccharine sweetness. “We do apologize for any inconvenience. Our doctor had a family emergency, and we’ve either had to reschedule his patients or work them in with the nurse practitioner instead. As a result, we’ve been backed up.”
Keller’s decision to take my advice and stay away from the clinic pleased me on two levels. First, Dr. Keller was nervous, paranoid, and that meant he was prone to making mistakes. If someone were watching him, he could inadvertently reveal too many details of our investigation. And second, I could more freely investigate him and the internal workings of his clinic without him here.
The nurse began with an attempted assault on my self-esteem. She deposited me on the scale, and I watched as she tinkered with the counterweights.
“Oh, well,” she said, sounding disappointed that she couldn’t chide me, “you’re in the normal range for your height.”
Next, she dropped me into a chair and strapped a blood pressure cuff on my arm.
She wasn’t disappointed by a normal reading this time.
“Your blood pressure is a bit higher than we’d like, Ms. Aliff,” she said, marking down the numbers with delight.
“Oh, dear,” I said.
Oh, for God’s sake, I thought. So my BP was high. No surprise there. I was irritated at having to wait nearly two hours to see a doctor in a medical facility that was then going to commit fraud using my insurance claim.
The only thing keeping me at the clinic now was my suspicion of Dr. Keller. Well, that and the fact that I had another suspect to investigate: Mary Fallsworthy. Perhaps she was keeping tabs on the doctor, or maybe she was even responsible for orchestrating the entire ring.
At this point, anything was possible.
The nurse finally deposited me in a small examination room, and I plunked myself on the paper-covered table to wait again.
Fortunately, the door opened five minutes later, and a woman in a white lab coat and dark trousers entered.
“Janet Aliff?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m Mary. I’ll be your nurse practitioner for the duration of your treatment here at the Accident Care Clinic.”
We shook hands, and I cocked my head to the side, looking her over. This suspect was probably about my height or a little shorter; I couldn’t be certain from my vantage point on the table. Her mahogany hair was pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, her skin had an artificially orange glow, and her makeup looked as if she hadn’t taken the time to blend it that morning. Dark blotches of eye shadow colored her lids, and her cheeks were slashes of fuchsia. She could in no way be described as a natural girl.
Suddenly, I felt a little better about my own makeup situation.
“You aren’t a doctor?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“No, but I’m fully qualified to act as your primary health-care provider. I have an advanced degree and am able to diagnose illnesses and injuries and prescribe physical therapies and medications. Same as any doctor,” Mary said as she opened my file. “So I understand you were in a car accident.”
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“Black eye,” she said, st
ill keeping her eyes on my paperwork.
“Obviously,” I said with a wry laugh. “My shiner is my most noticeable accessory.”
Mary did not laugh. Running her finger down my chart, she said, “Your BP was a bit high, but otherwise your weight and temperature are just fine.”
She shut the folder and finally looked at me.
“I’ll begin by examining the head injury.”
“Head injury?” I repeated. “It’s just a black eye.”
“Car accidents can cause subtle head trauma,” she explained as she used a light to check my eyes and then felt along my skull with her fingertips.
Her diagnosis sounded like a foregone conclusion.
“Are you experiencing any headaches, blurred vision, trouble sleeping, accident-related stress?” she asked, her voice ticking off the symptoms in rapid succession.
“No headaches or vision problems,” I said. “I guess it’s been taking me a few extra minutes to fall asleep, but I think it’s because of the hassle of getting my car fixed.”
“So some stress, then,” Mary said as she stepped away, reopened the folder, and made a note on my chart. “And sleep issues.”
I gave her a questioning look.
“Is that really a symptom?”
“Here at the Accident Care Clinic, we treat the whole person: body, mind, and spirit. Trauma occurs outside of the flesh and blood, you know. We take the holistic approach to healing.”
“Okay,” I said, waiting for the New Age music to begin playing in the background.
“The spine is another common area for trauma in accident victims, so I’d like to examine your back, check for signs of injury,” Mary said, smoothing the paper on the exam surface. “Lie on your stomach, please.”
I complied and waited while she examined my spine, poking and prodding as I lay quietly.
“Are you experiencing any back pain? Neck pain? Cramping? Soreness? Stiffness in the morning?”
“Well, I’m stiff in the morning sometimes, especially if my cat hogs the bed.”
“Ah,” Mary said, stepping away from the table to make more notes.
I sat up to find her attention diverted to my file again.
