The 7th Victim

by Alan Jacobson

  “Ma,” Vail said, “we’ve talked about the divorce. Don’t you remember?”

  Emma’s face flickered for a moment, then she turned to Robby. “Oh, I’ve been a terrible hostess. I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Emma Vail.”

  Robby forced a smile. “Robby Hernandez.”

  “Are you a friend of Kari’s?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Ma’am?” She waved a hand. “Oh, please. Call me Emma.” She turned to Vail, whose eyes were tearing. “What’s wrong, Kari?”

  “Nothing, Mom. Nothing.” She stood and took Robby’s hand. “I’m going to show Robby around, okay?”

  “Whatever you’d like, dear,” Emma said.

  Vail flipped on the large backyard spots and low-voltage path lights. “I knew this day was coming, I just hoped it’d be later rather than sooner. I figured she had a few years before it got this bad.” She took a deep breath of the pine-scented air, then swung her head around and looked inside to see her mother still sitting on the couch, just as they had left her. “I need to get her some help, or move her out. I don’t know what would be best.”

  Robby took her hand and led her through the wooded yard. While the house was small—cozy, Emma had once called it—the land was not: two full acres of mature pines. They walked for a moment in silence.

  “I remember the brown needles crunching under my sneakers when I was a teenager. I used to come back here to clear my mind. Sometimes I’d find a bed of needles and take a nap. If they weren’t so damp, I’d lie down right now and fall asleep. Dream of happier times.” She bent down and scooped up a handful. “My mom taught me to appreciate the beauty of nature. She once told me you never knew when life would deal you an unplanned twist of fate. Enjoy things while you can, she said, because you just never knew.” She sighed. “Little did I know she was talking about herself.”

  Robby took a deep breath. “It’s beautiful here. A private forest.”

  “When Jonathan turned eight, I brought him here to visit. He went shopping with grandma and I spent an entire day out here, whittling away with my knife, making a walking stick. It was as close to a perfect day as I can remember. I wanted to seal the image away in my mind forever. But it wilted real fast once I got back to the office and started staring at grisly crime scene photos. Looking at things like that, the beauty of nature seems to fade pretty damn quickly. You find yourself knee deep in the blood and guts, and the crunch of pine needles beneath your feet is a million miles away.”

  They started walking again. “Didn’t help that the day after I got back I caught a new case, one of the first I profiled on my own. Vic’s body was dumped on a forest floor just like this one. Kind of killed the image for me. Haven’t been able to look at pine trees the same way since.” She opened her hand and let the needles fall to the ground.

  Robby reached into his pocket and produced a Swiss Army knife, then bent down and chose a short, thick branch. Vail reluctantly took the knife and immediately began clearing the nubs from the stick.

  “I didn’t know you liked to carve.”

  “Since I was about ten. See these?” She lifted her left hand and showed him several thin, short, barely visible scars on her fingers. “Cut myself lots of times. My father even took me to the ER for stitches once. It was a nasty bleeder.”

  “I take it your father passed on.”

  “Long time ago. I was twelve. Came home from school and my mom told me he’d had a heart attack. Died in the ambulance.” She stopped carving and stared at the dark landscape ahead of her. “I wonder how Jonathan is.”

  “Want to call the hospital?”

  She shook her head. “I gave them my cell number. I told them, anything happens, I want to know.” She tossed the stick to the ground and closed the knife, handed it to Robby. “Let’s go in.”

  They got back to the house and found Emma seated in front of the television, watching the blank screen intently. Vail took her by the hand. “Come on, Ma. Let’s go make dinner.”

  THE KITCHEN APPLIANCES were the same ones installed when the house had been built. With the exception of the countertop microwave, they were all from the aluminum and Bakelite era. An old pink Frigidaire hummed against the far wall.

  Vail found a large pot in the cabinet, where her mom had always kept it. She placed it in the sink and turned on the faucet. “Do you still see Aunt Faye?”

  “Yes, of course. She comes by and we have tea.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Oh, it’s been a while, I guess. You know how it is with three kids. She’s busy, busy, busy.”

  Vail figured she would call her aunt after dinner, see about making temporary arrangements to have Emma stay with her until she could get her mother situated in an assisted care facility. Faye was her father’s sister, but the two women had remained close even after he had passed away.

  The shifting in and out of lucidity was frustrating, and Vail felt an urgency to ask important questions while her mother was able to answer them. But under pressure, nothing came to mind.

  Dinner was a conglomeration of spaghetti with Ragu sauce doctored with whatever Emma had in her pantry . . . which wasn’t much: stewed tomatoes, canned mushrooms, and a dash of garlic salt. After eating, Vail took Robby on a tour of the house. “Things are pretty much unchanged, if you can believe that,” she said. They walked into a small room on the second floor.

  “Let me guess. Your room.”

  A large, horizontal glass-faced cabinet was mounted on the far side of the room, which sported sunflower-yellow walls with pink trim.

  “Obviously,” Robby said, surveying the dolls behind the glass, “you’re a collector.”

  “I can tell you where I got each one.” She walked over to the cabinet and let her eyes roam over them—they ranged from tall to petite, porcelain to plastic—with the world’s ethnicities well represented. “Figured I’d give them to my daughter one day.”

  “Until your girl came out a boy.”

  A smile flitted across her lips. “Didn’t think Jonathan would appreciate them.”

  Robby laughed. “I think you’re right.”

  Vail slid the wall closet door aside and found a rolled poster on the top shelf. “It’s still here,” she said. She pulled off the rubber band and unfurled the yellow-aged paper across her bed. “You’ll never believe who my teen heartthrob was.”

  Robby looked at the large smiling face staring back at him. “Kind of looks familiar.”

  “Shaun Cassidy. Every girl I knew fell for him.” She noticed the reference was lost on him. “The Hardy Boys.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  She let go of the poster and it rolled back on itself. Robby pointed to the white dresser with gold trim. “Anything left in the drawers?”

  “Doubt it.” She pulled one open and peered inside. “Hmm. Must be stuff my mom put in here.” She removed a box, which contained a photo album. They sat on the bed together and thumbed through the photos. “I don’t remember ever seeing these.”

  “Who are these people?”

  “Haven’t the slightest. Relatives and friends, I guess.” The black-and-white snapshots were held in place on dark paper with scalloped corner mounts. She turned a page and pointed to one of the photos. “Oh. That’s Aunt Faye with my dad. I guess I’m the little one on his lap.” Robby bent forward to get a close look. “You were cute. You were, what, a year old there?”

  Vail nodded. “About.” Turned the page. “Here’s my mom again.”

  “She was beautiful,” he said, studying the photo. “Who’s that next to her?”

  “I don’t know. Kind of looks like Mom, though, doesn’t it?” She carefully pulled the picture out of the corner mounts and turned it over. Written in scripted pen were the words, “Me and Nellie.”

  “Obviously,” Robby said, “that’s Nellie.”

  Vail nudged a shoulder into his. “Guess that’s why you’re the detective, Detective.”

  “Your room i
s just as you left it.” Emma was standing in the doorway, a knit shawl draped around her shoulders.

  “Except for this,” Vail said, holding up the album. “Found it in my dresser drawer.”

  Emma smiled. “Haven’t seen that in years. I’d forgotten where I put it.”

  “Who are these people?” She opened the album to the first page and handed the book to Emma.

  “That’s Uncle Charlie—my Uncle Charlie—and his father, Nate. Nate was from Ireland. Nate O’Toole. Half the people on his side had red hair. Probably where you got yours from.” She pointed to another photo. “And that’s Mary Ellen, she used to live next door to us in Brooklyn, before Gramps moved us all out here.”

  A teapot whistled in the distance. “Oh. Do either of you want some tea?”

  Robby nodded. “Sure.”

  “I’ll go tend to it, then.” She handed the album back to Vail, then disappeared down the hall.

  “She’s very sweet,” Robby said.

  “She was a good mother.” Vail studied the photo she still held in her hand. “When she loses her memory completely, she’ll take a good part of our family history with her.”

  “I’ve got a buddy I work with, an investigator who’s been with VPD for fifteen years. He’s got this software to make your own family tree. Works on it every day. Traced his roots all the way back to the Native Americans who lived in Virginia. Pretty cool. Maybe you should do one. Before it’s too late.”

  “I hardly know anything about my family. Would’ve been good to get all this info together before they started dying off.” Vail suddenly became aware of the teapot’s building whistle. She looked at Robby. “She should’ve poured the tea by now, don’t you think?”

  They headed downstairs and found Emma sitting in the living room on the edge of the easy chair, staring at the blank television.

  “I’ll get it,” Robby said above the shrill noise.

  “Ma,” Vail said, kneeling beside Emma. “Ma, what are you doing? You went to pour us some tea.”

  Emma’s face turned hard. “You’re always yelling at me. Why can’t you just leave me alone!”

  “Ma, I’m not yelling at you.” But she knew that trying to reason with a person afflicted with Alzheimer’s was futile. “I’m sorry,” Vail said. “I won’t yell anymore.”

  “I can’t find my glasses,” Emma said. She grabbed the arms of the chair. “I can’t find my glasses.” She looked at Vail, then reached out to touch her face. “Nellie, is that you?” She smiled. “Can you help me find my glasses?”

  Tears pooled in Vail’s eyes as she looked at Emma. She set the old photo on the coffee table, knelt at Emma’s feet, and took her hand in hers. She had been so wrapped up with her own affairs the past year she hardly had any quality contact with her mother. Now, as she looked at Emma’s wrinkled face and felt her knobbed, arthritic hand, guilt crept into her thoughts. After so many years of dealing with victims’ families, the phrase “I should have” was ingrained in her brain like acid on stone. Now she felt herself uttering the same words. I should’ve spent more time with her. I should’ve made her move closer to me. I should’ve brought Jonathan here more often.

  “Did you find Papa’s watch? He’s going to be angry with us if we lost it,” Emma said. She took her daughter’s cheeks in her hands and looked at Vail’s face as if she hadn’t seen it in years, studying every square inch.

  Then, as if someone had waved a wand over her head, Emma’s eyes changed. Vail struggled to define what had happened. A narrowing, maybe, or perhaps it was something more. The sharpness had returned. “Ma?”

  “What’s wrong?” Emma asked. “Why are you kneeling in front of me, Kari? Did I faint?”

  “Ma, who’s Nellie?”

  Emma’s gaze rose above Vail’s shoulder. Vail thought she had lost her again, but Emma spoke: “Nellie?”

  “You were just talking about her. And I found this.” She reached beside her and scooped up the old picture. “It says ‘Me and Nellie’ on the back. She looks a lot like you.”

  Robby appeared in the doorway. Vail’s gaze met his and told him not to come any closer. He set the tea cups down and hovered in the background.

  “Ma, is Nellie a relative of ours?”

  Emma’s eyes teared. “My sister.”

  Vail waited for her to elaborate, but she remained silent. Emma pulled her hand from Vail’s and interlocked her fingers in her lap.

  “Ma, you don’t have a sister.”

  Emma’s eyes met Vail’s. “I don’t feel like talking about it.”

  Vail leaned forward. She felt pressured to elicit the story before her mother drifted back into another Alzheimer-induced fog. “Please, tell me. About Nellie.”

  Emma must have sensed Robby’s presence, because she turned suddenly, rose from her chair, and pointed an arthritic finger. “Who are you! What are you doing in my house?”

  Robby looked at Vail, who wore a look of chagrin.

  “Ma, calm down, that’s my friend Robby. You met him before. He’s a detective, a police officer.” She helped Emma sit back in her seat.

  Robby reached into his shirt pocket and handed Vail a pair of glasses. “They were in the freezer, in the ice cube tray.”

  Vail handed them to Emma. “Look, Ma, Robby found your glasses.”

  “I told you the police would find them.” She looked up at Robby. “Thank you, Officer.”

  He smiled. “Just call me Robby.”

  Then Emma’s eyes teared up and she held a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Vail sat on the adjacent couch and rested a reassuring hand on her mother’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Ma. I understand.” She knew this was not a good time to press the issue, but as had always been the case, she had a difficult time controlling her curiosity. “Ma,” she said softly, “you were going to tell me about Nellie.”

  “Nellie? Your mother?”

  Vail’s brow furrowed. She picked up the photo she had dropped on the floor and showed Emma. “No. Nellie, your sister. I want to know about Nellie.”

  Emma’s eyes again dropped to her lap. Her hands rolled into a fist and she shook one at Vail. “How could you do that to me? You asked me to watch her for a couple of hours! What kind of a mother abandons her baby?”

  Vail stared at Emma, trying to understand what she was talking about. She looked up at Robby, as if he could provide some answers. He sat down slowly beside Vail on the couch.

  “She thinks I’m Nellie,” she whispered to him.

  “You can’t just show up now and expect to take her back,” Emma said, her voice firm. “Ward and I raised her, she’s ours.”

  Vail’s hand slid off Emma’s shoulder. She was silent for a moment, staring at Emma’s reddened face.

  “Talk to her as if you’re Nellie,” Robby said softly by Vail’s ear.

  “Emma,” Vail said, “I’m not here to take her from you. I’d never do that. I just came by to see you. I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you too, Nell.” She reached out and gently touched Vail’s face.

  “Oh, my god,” Vail whispered. She swallowed hard, then turned away from Emma and found Robby’s eyes. “Emma is my aunt. Nellie is my mother.” Vail shook her head, as if this was a bad dream and denying it would make it go away. “No. This is just an Alzheimer’s fantasy. She’s confused—”

  “Karen . . . Emma is still your mother. She raised you, just like my aunt raised me.”

  “But my biological mother is Nellie.” Vail turned to Emma, who was crying silently, a hand draped across her eyes. Vail pulled her close, letting Emma cry on her shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry, Kari,” she said.

  “It’s okay, Ma,” Vail said, then felt her own tears trickle down her cheek. “It’s okay.”

  thirty-one

  He was in a rhythm, words tumbling from his mind like rocks in a landslide. He couldn’t type as fast as he was thinking, which made it frustrating. But he continued,
nevertheless, figuring he’d go back and fix the typos when he was done, before he’d send these sections off for “publication.”

  My needs are outgrwing my home. I can do jsut so much with a space barely larger than a tiny closet. And as I’ve gotten older and taller, the space has gotten even smller. I even took in a pet. A mouse I call Charlie. He dosn’t take up much space, other than a little cage. I take him out while I’m in there, let him roam around. He’s my only friend.