Child of Mine: a psychological thriller

by Chambers, V. J.

  She shrugs. “Oh, well. I guess you won’t have any time to go chase down girls and take pictures of them, then.”

  He stuck out his chin in defiance. But he didn’t say anything. He just went back into his room and slammed the door.

  “And you’re still grounded,” she called after him.

  The bus schedule would help keep Simon in line. But it wasn’t the reason that she had decided to allow him to go to chess club. No, the reason for that was that she realized she could follow him again. She’d had no luck following Simon to the library with Jordan, but chess club was an unknown entity. It was in Woodbury, where the pictures of all the girls had been taken. And where all the girls had disappeared from. There was also the fact that the girl on the phone from chess club had described Simon as social and outgoing. Lorelei felt as if she had to see this.

  So, she waited until after Simon had set out to the bus stop. And then she got in the car and drove there herself. She followed the bus all the way to Woodbury, keeping a distance of at least four cars that all times. Belatedly, she realized she probably could’ve just driven straight there, because the bus took a bit of a meandering route so that it could pick up people at all the stops. However, it eased her mind to be sure that Simon hadn’t gotten off the bus somewhere and gone off to do heaven knows what.

  She arrived at the place where the chess club met. It was a basement of a Methodist church. That was when she realized her problem. How was she supposed to witness this chess club meeting? It was down in the basement. She couldn’t just go down there and sit down and watch. She was trying to fly under the radar.

  She circled the building, trying to think. In the back, there was a playground for children. It had a set of swings and a slide. The slide was the kind that twirled around the post. It was also the kind that was made of the kind of plastic that makes a person’s hair stand on end whenever anyone went down it. She remembered that when Simon was a child he hated slides like that. The static electricity bothered him intensely.

  She turned back to the building. That was when she noticed that one of the windows to the basement was open. She smiled to herself.

  She crept closer and closer still. When she finally reached the window, she crouched down next to it and peered inside. She had a perfect overview of the chess club meeting area. Right then, the chess club teacher was clapping his hands and shouting for quiet.

  To her surprise, she saw that Simon was in the middle of a group of girls and boys, and that he was talking animatedly. She was too far away to pick out what he was saying, but he looked like a completely different child. There was none of his typical posture or gestures. He carried himself differently, and when he spoke expressions were animated and… normal.

  Well, she didn’t like to think that about her son. Of course, her son was not abnormal.

  Watching him like that, as if he never had Asperger’s at all, it made something in her ache. How many times when he was young had she secretly wished that Simon was different? She had ever really admitted it, but part of her thought that life would be so much easier, if only.

  She even blamed herself. She hadn’t done much drinking when she was pregnant, but there had been a bit, before she knew about the baby. She worried that her alcoholism had caused problems for Simon.

  Now, staring at him alive and excited, it was like a dream come true.

  But then the next thought was one of confusion. Why was he behaving that way? Was this an act? Was it something like the way that Simon had appropriated for emotions of actors on movies or was this a sign of psychopathy? Pyschopaths were extremely good at mimicking emotions that they didn’t necessarily feel. Was that what Simon was doing?

  She didn’t have much more of a chance to observe, because the teacher succeeded in calming down all of the students. They paired up over chess boards and they began to play. For what it was worth, Simon seem to keep that same upbeat, animated demeanor throughout the game. He didn’t seem like himself. He waved at people when they walked by, instead of being so intent on his own activity that he ignored the world. He laughed along with the person he was playing chess with instead of staring ahead blankly and not acknowledging the mirth, the way he often did when Lorelei told jokes.

  In fact, the way he smiled at the person playing chess with him. It reminded her of…

  But no.

  No.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  He called her on the phone. That was how she first met him. It was back when she was still working for the FBI. She was working on the profile for the Undertaker case, and her phone rang. She picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Hi there,” he said. “I own a landscaping company. Barker’s Landscaping?” That was how he’d introduced himself to her. The first time she heard his voice, over that phone she hadn’t thought anything of it. Of course, she still hadn’t seen his smile or the suave expression on his face. But even if she had, everything seemed innocuous at first. Annoying, but innocuous. “I hear that you’re the person trying to figure out what kind of guy is burying bodies under my trees.”

  “How did you get this number?” she said. It was highly irregular for her to have many conversations with witnesses for a murder. She mostly read transcripts of police interrogations. She didn’t do a lot of field work. She did most of her work behind a desk looking at documents. It was the way that she worked best. She wasn’t exactly what you might call a people person.

  It was kind of ironic now, she thought, that she had become a bartender, and she worked with the public. (Well, it was if she was right about what “ironic” meant.) But being a bartender meant that her word was law in the bar, and that made it easier for her.

  “Oh, it wasn’t easy to get this number, let me tell you,” he said. “I had to do a lot of work to get in touch with you. And listen, I know maybe it’s not typical for me to talk to someone like you. But we’re talking my livelihood here. And not even that. I can’t handle it. I can’t dig up another tree and see another dead girl looking up at me. It’s giving me nightmares.”

  Maybe it was the bit about the nightmares. Her own nightmares had recently started. She had them mostly under control, or so she’d told herself. She wasn’t sure.

  Maybe it was how deeply saddened he seemed to be about the bodies. “I just can’t stop thinking about their families,” he’d said, on the verge of tears. His emotion moved her. She’d never met a man so comfortable with showing how he felt. Which was funny, of course, because he was faking it all. He was playing her.

  And whatever it was that got her to stay on the phone with him, it didn’t take long until he had her. She was eating out of the palm of his hand.

  He claimed that he was calling because he wanted to know about her profile so that he could make sure that none of the men worked for him fit it. He wanted to clear his employees. Even if he couldn’t clear anyone, he wanted to be able to be on the lookout for this guy, so he said.

  In retrospect, she was stupid to have fallen for it. She knew that killers were notorious for trying to insert themselves into an investigation. And the fact he was asking for information on the profile was so blatant. But that was Barker for you. He was sure of himself. Arrogant. Positive he could fix everything.

  All this time, he’d been burying bodies and using his company as a cover for the entire operation. It had been working so well, until one of the bodies was found. And even that hadn’t been so bad. One body, one tree. It could’ve been a coincidence. But when another body was uncovered, well, that was when he had to get ahead of the investigation.

  Calling her and acting as if he wanted to help? It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. She was convinced that he was one of the good guys. She had no idea she was chatting with the killer.

  Eventually, he convinced her to meet face to face. He was charming, glib, smooth, all the things a serial killer usually is. But she didn’t notice. She looked into his smiling face, and she was completely taken in.

  She still remembered h
ow genuine he’d seem. “I really do appreciate all the time you’re taking to help me out,” he’d say. “I know you’re a busy woman.” And then he’d flash that smile.

  Oh, that smile.

  The devil couldn’t have crafted a more convincing smile.

  * * *

  “What would you do if your kid really was a murderer?” Lorelei said. She was sitting out on the veranda with Mia. It was late afternoon. The kids had just come back from school. They were upstairs studying together for their math class. The two women were sitting together, but they weren’t drinking wine this time. It was too early for wine for Lorelei. Not until after nine. She didn’t drink early, because once she started drinking, it was hard to stop. If she started later, sheer exhaustion tended to stop her.

  Mia gave her a funny look. “You’re still thinking about that? You can’t still be thinking about it. Didn’t I tell you that there can’t be anything to it?”

  “No, I know that. Just as a thought experiment, though. Think of Jordan. If it turned out that Jordan was a murderer, what would you do?”

  Mia shrugged it off. “There’s no point in thinking of something like that. Because Jordan isn’t a murderer. I didn’t raise a murderer. There’s no way that she could kill someone.”

  Lorelei sighed. “Well, I don’t know what I would do.” The question wasn’t really a thought experiment for her. She couldn’t be sure what the truth was when it came to Simon, because too many strange things had started cropping up. He was secretive. He was different. She was beginning to realize that what she knew might not be all there was to know about her son.

  “Simon isn’t a murderer either, you know. You didn’t raise a murderer. He’s not capable of hurting anyone,” said Mia.

  Lorelei mused, tapping her finger against her bottom lip. “I remember a case once. There was a suspect, and there was a lot of evidence pointing to him. DNA, airtight kind of thing. But they couldn’t find him. No one knew where he was. Until his mother called.”

  “Called who?”

  “Called the police, that’s who. There was a tip line for this guy. Everyone was looking for him. They had a line for people to call if they thought they’d seen him and things like that.”

  “So, his mother called the tip line?”

  “Well, because he was with her. She said that he had come home, and that she had made his favorite food, but she drugged it, and that he was sleeping it off in the bedroom, and that they should come in and get him before he woke up.”

  Mia raised her eyebrows. “Wow.”

  Lorelei nodded. “Exactly. I couldn’t have done something like that. I wouldn’t do anything like that. I mean, sure this guy had done it. There was no getting around that. But still, he was her son. How could she turn him over to the police?”

  Mia shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe he had been awful to her. Maybe he hurt her in some way. Maybe he was really an awful person, and he’d been an awful son.”

  Lorelei dismissed this, waving it away with one hand. “It doesn’t matter if he was an awful person. Come on, you’re a mother, Mia. You know that if your kid misbehaves, you don’t blame your kid. You blame yourself. You’re the mother, you are the one who should have tamed him.” She sat back in her chair, considering. “No, I think the mother must’ve been off some way too. Maybe she was a bit of a narcissist. That was why the killer turned out the way he did in the first place.”

  Mia laughed. “You’re doing it too. Blaming the mother. I wonder why we do that. Everyone does it. All through society. No matter what children do, we always think that it must be a problem with the mother.”

  Lorelei sighed. “Maybe she was just doing what she thought was the right thing.”

  “I think she felt responsible,” said Mia.

  “Responsible for his behavior?” said Lorelei. “I still don’t see why that would make her call the police.”

  “Well, she needed to remove him from the situation. He kept killing people, and she probably felt as if it was partly her fault. So she had to get him locked up. It’s like when you go to a play date, and your kid keeps stealing the other kid’s toys. You feel like you have to go in there and give the toys back to the other kid. If it’s too bad, you take your kid out of that situation. Save the other person’s kid. She had to save the people her son was going to kill. That’s why she had to turn him in.”

  Lorelei nodded. “Right. I get that kind of responsibility.”

  “Yeah. I mean there’s the other kind of responsibility too. Where you think, ‘Oh my parenting needs to change so my child won’t try to steal other people’s toys.’ But in the moment, you can’t go back and redo all your discipline. Besides how do you even prepare for that? We both have only children. Who are they even supposed to practice sharing with?”

  Lorelei nodded. “And by the time your kid is all grown up and turned into a serial killer, well, there’s not much parenting you can really do anymore.”

  “Not really, no.” Mia laughed.

  The screen door burst open.

  Mia and Lorelei both turned toward the sound.

  Simon and Jordan stumbled out, both wide eyed and panicked.

  Lorelei stood up. “What? What’s happening?”

  Simon gestured at her, but he seemed too worked up to speak.

  “We saw it through the window,” said Jordan. “It’s the police. Four or five cars.”

  “What?” said Mia.

  “They’re at our house,” Simon choked out.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lorelei stopped short at the door of her apartment, which was wide open. She hadn’t bothered to lock it, because she was only walking across the grounds to Mia’s place. Mia and the kids stopped behind her. She could feel them peering over her shoulder.

  Inside, it was like one of those TV shows, all the police officers going through her house, opening drawers and overturning them on the floor, flipping up couch cushions.

  She stepped inside. “E-excuse me?” she said.

  Jeremy appeared out of Simon’s room at the sound of her voice. He saw her and grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “Got a warrant to search your place, Lorelei,” he said.

  Her pulse was picking up speed, accelerating with no signs of slowing. “I want to see it.”

  He grinned even wider, if that was possible. “Sure thing.”

  And then the piece of paper was in her hands, which were trembling, and her pulse was racing, and she could barely make out the words on the paper.

  “You’re such an ass, Jeremy,” Mia was saying. She walked over to the man, hands on her hips. “Why can’t you let this go, huh?”

  “This is police business, Ms. Dawson,” said Jeremy, barely looking at her. “I’m only doing my job.”

  “Oh, bullshit you are,” said Mia. “This is about Lorelei. Why haven’t you moved on? Can’t find any other woman in the universe willing to have sex with you again?”

  Jeremy’s jaw twitched, but he didn’t respond.

  “You know that what Lorelei did, she had every right to do.”

  “No,” said Jeremy, suddenly turning to her. “No, she did not. Maybe it was legal for her to do it, but she did not have the right. What she did was wrong. Plain and simple. Ask any pastor or reverend, he’ll tell you the same.”

  “Exactly, because they’re all men,” said Mia. “They don’t understand.”

  Lorelei shook her head at her friend. She didn’t want to dredge this up. Jeremy was an ass, though. Why was she attracted to awful men? Of all her past experience, only Isaac seemed to stand out to her as half-decent. Even in high school, she’d wanted the boys who sold marijuana under the bleachers.

  “You’ve got nothing on Simon,” said Mia. “How’d you manage to get any judge to issue a warrant?”

  “We’ve got a hell of a lot more than nothing,” said Jeremy. “I’ve got some questions for you, Simon. I guess you’ll be wanting your mother present?”

  Simon looked at her, and there was terror in
his eyes.

  Instinctively, Lorelei reached out and grabbed her son’s hand. She squeezed it.

  He didn’t let go. He looked at her with round eyes, and she could see the little boy inside him. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and promise him it would all be okay, but she wasn’t sure that it would be.

  Jeremy was still talking. “We just want to know where the pictures are.”

  Lorelei stiffened.

  Jeremy noticed. “You know about the pictures? You’ve seen them, haven’t you? You’ve known all along what this monster is capable of and you’ve been covering for him.”

  “He’s not a monster, he is a child,” said Mia. “How dare you? What do some pictures matter anyway?”

  “You know about the pictures?” said Jeremy.

  Mia blinked. “No, I guess. I don’t really know what you’re talking about, but I’m sure that Simon hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  Jeremy gave her a nasty smile. “We talked to some of Brittany’s friends who say that Simon here convinced Brittany to pose for him nude.”

  “What?” Lorelei’s jaw dropped. “That’s not true. That’s a lie.”

  Jeremy sneered at her.

  “No,” said Simon. “No way, she had clothes on.”

  “Simon!” Lorelei cringed. Did he even realize what he’d admitted to?

  Jeremy turned to him. “What was that?”

  “I didn’t want anything bad to happen to any of them,” said Simon. “I only took pictures. I didn’t hurt them. I wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  “Them?” said Jeremy. “What do you mean, them?”

  “Simon, please stop talking,” Lorelei said, her grip on his hand like a vise.

  Simon shot her another terrified look. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mom.”

  Jeremy grabbed Simon by the arm, tearing him away from Lorelei. “Come with me, kid. And before you ask, yes, you’re being detained.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “I think they’re going to arrest him,” Lorelei whispered into the phone. She watched as Jeremy was putting Simon into the back of the police car. The police had also taken all manner of things out of Simon’s room. His phone. His laptop. His notebooks for school. His camera.