by Julia Derek
I jerked, snapping back to the here and now when Mom pulled out the other chair and took a seat at the table. She placed a tray loaded with coffee, tea, and muffins between us at the same time as the couple right next to us left their table.
“Here you go,” she said and smiled at me. The smile on her lips soon shrank and she frowned at me instead. “What’s wrong, honey?”
I showed her the newspaper and pointed at the article I had just finished reading. She scanned through it quickly, the furrow between her eyebrows deepening.
“That’s not good,” she stated casually and put the paper down on the table beside the tray. She had a sip of her coffee, not appearing particularly perturbed. I glared at her. What was wrong with her? How could she appear so calm when we were back to square one, everyone thinking I was the killer again?
“Not good?” I repeated incredulously. I leaned toward her and hissed, “Mom, the police think I killed Dr. Wilkins!”
She hushed me, glaring back at me now. “Don’t talk so loud. There are other people in here. Do you want them to hear what you’re saying?” She tossed a few glances left and right, checking out the other patrons. Fortunately, I hadn’t spoken that loudly and the nearest person, a girl with purple hair and piercings, wore big headphones, so she had likely not heard a word. She seemed deeply immersed in something on her phone.
“What are we gonna do?” I whispered to Mom, the terror growing inside me. The police thought I had killed Dr. Wilkins. That meant I was going to jail, didn’t it? I didn’t want to go to jail!
Mom patted my hand. “We’re going to tell them it’s ridiculous. You couldn’t have killed him. You were at home and sleeping deeply in your bed the night he was murdered.”
“Yeah, I know, but they still think I did it,” I pointed out, stabbing my index finger at the story in question.
She rubbed my arm and whispered, “Honey, calm down. They’re only saying that because they’re embarrassed and have to say something. They have no other leads.”
I just stared at her. How could she remain so calm when it was so obvious how screwed we were? It said that I was the focus of the police investigation. Did she miss that part or what?
“We both know you didn’t do it, right?” she continued, unfazed by my reaction.
I banged the table with my fist like a pissed three-year-old. “Yeah, so? They don’t know that. And I don’t want to go to jail!”
“Calm down, Shane. I promise you that you’re not going to jail. All this means is that we’ll have to remain hidden for a while longer. Until they find the killer. And we may have to help them with that, just like we’ve already concluded. That’s why we came back. Don’t worry, it’ll all work itself out. You’ll see.”
“No, it won’t. They seem convinced that I’m the killer, Mom. More than ever!”
She squeezed my arm hard then, so hard it hurt. “Shane,” she hissed, looking at me sternly. “Please pull yourself together. We’re in a public place. There’s a reason I’m so certain they won’t put you in jail.”
“Really? And what’s that? Because you really killed him and would take the blame for me?” That had been meant as a joke and I had spoken the words as quietly as I could manage.
“Yes. That is exactly the reason why,” Mom responded calmly.
I stared at her, not entirely sure I had heard her correctly. Did she just confess to me that she had killed Dr. Wilkins, and that she would take the blame for his death was I to get arrested?
“Yes, Shane, I’m the one who did it,” she repeated as though she could see straight into my frazzled mind. “I did it to save you. You know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to ensure that you’re safe, don’t you?” This time she grabbed my hand with both of hers instead of squeezing my arm firmly.
I kept staring at her, trying to process what she had just told me. Wait, so she had killed Dr. Wilkins? I blinked a couple of times to be sure this wasn’t some extremely freaky dream. It clearly wasn’t. When I had established that, I waited for her to tell me she was pulling my leg. She had to be pulling my leg. My mom, eccentric or not, wasn’t capable of cold-bloodedly killing another person. For any reason. The thought was inconceivable. But she kept holding my gaze, her expression steady. She was not about to tell me she was pulling my leg.
Instead she tossed another glance over her shoulder, then whispered, “I had no choice, honey. I knew he would go to the police about what I had told him. I couldn’t have that. I had to do something.”
“So you—you killed him?” This conversation felt so unreal, like I had been drugged and was just imagining it.
She nodded. “I did it for you. I’d do anything for you, Shane. I love you. You’re my son.”
She smiled at me, but instead of making me happy she had done what she claimed to have done, all I could feel was a cold dread.
My mother was a murderer.
37
Let’s leave,” she said suddenly. “We can eat this later. We need to talk. I want you to understand why this is all going to work itself out. I don’t want you to worry. Let me get a paper bag we can put it in.”
Without waiting for me to respond, she got to her feet and left the table, heading for the counter. I watched her as she spoke to the girl behind it, and then how the girl nodded and turned around. When she faced Mom again, there was a brown paper bag in her hands that she gave Mom. Mom returned to the table and calmly began placing the muffins in the bag.
“You can carry your tea, right?” she asked, pointing at the paper cup before me that was full of ginger tea.
I nodded mechanically and put on my coat that I had hung over the chair back. I grabbed my tea cup and walked out of the coffee shop with Mom. It was drizzling outside, but it was no longer windy.
“Where are we going?” I asked her.
“Let’s head back to the room,” she replied, using the newspaper to shield herself from the rain. I had pulled my coat’s hoodie over my head. It did a good job covering both my hair and half of my face, it was so big. I could definitely use the cover now, I mused bitterly.
We hurried back to the shady building and entered. Two men and a woman sat on the wicker chairs, talking amongst each other. One of the men was smoking a cigarette and the other drinking a beer directly from the can. They looked like the kind of people you wanted to stay away from. The kind of people my mom would tell me to avoid. Under normal circumstances, that is. Now she seemed like she couldn’t care less as we walked by them toward the stairs. It was surreal, though no way near as surreal as her being Dr. Wilkins’s killer all along.
I guess she’d taken the cabs to get to his place then. It fit perfectly.
In silence, we hurried up the long, steep stairs to the second floor and walked over to our room. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the security camera in the hallway ceiling. Mom unlocked the door and we walked inside. She tossed the paper bag on the unmade bed and removed her coat.
“Brrr,” she said and rubbed her arms. “It’s cold in here.” She squatted next to her backpack and pulled out a sweater that she put on.
Quietly, I removed the hoodie from my head and also removed the jacket. Then I took a seat on the bed, draping the covers around me. It was pretty freezing in the room. I waited for Mom to finish rooting around her backpack and sit down somewhere and tell me why she hadn’t told me she had killed Dr. Wilkins all along. I had to know.
Finally, she did take a seat beside me.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had killed him right away?” I blurted out before I could think twice about it.
“I didn’t want to scare you,” she said and grabbed the paper bag from where she had thrown it at the edge of the bed. She opened it and pulled out one of the muffins that she offered me. I flicked a hand no; the last thing I could think of was eating something right now. Not that I had been all that hungry when we’d first headed to breakfast.
“Scare me?” I repeated.
She took a bite of the muffin a
nd started to chew. She held up an index finger, signaling that she would soon tell me more. It felt like she was chewing forever. When she swallowed, she grabbed a bottle of water and had a large gulp from it.
Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she said, “Yes. I didn’t want to scare you. I can tell that you’re scared right now. Imagine if I would’ve told you right away what I had done? I don’t think you would have been able to handle it. No, I thought it was much better if I kept quiet. To tell you the truth, I hoped that I would never have to tell you at all. I was counting on someone being arrested fairly rapidly and then remaining arrested. A long-practicing psychologist like Dr. Wilkins usually has lots of people who want to hurt him or her. Like after a week or so I expected someone to be arrested. That way you would never have had to find out the truth. It would have been so much better.” She reached out a hand and ran a knuckle over my cheek, gazing at me tenderly like she so often did. “Trust me, I never wanted to let you know the truth. I knew it would be very upsetting for you.”
“So what was your plan? For us to be on the lam forever? I mean, if you’re the killer, they’ll never find the killer. Or they’ll keep thinking I’m the killer, which they seem to be doing now. Did you use our Crate & Barrel knife to kill him?”
“No, I used one of his knives. I took it from his kitchen. I’m not so stupid I’d use one of our knives, honey!” She chuckled and had another bite of the muffin. I just looked at her, not feeling like laughing at all. I couldn’t believe how she could be so laid-back about the fact that she had stabbed a man to death. How she could just sit there and eat a blueberry muffin.
“And obviously we wouldn’t be on the lam forever,” she continued. “Only until they caught the killer.”
What was she talking about? She was the killer.
“The man I had set up to be the killer, that is,” she added, placing a hand on my arm. “I have this all planned out, you see. I have the perfect guy to take the blame for Wilkins’s death. The perfect fall guy.”
“Really? And who’s that?”
Her face darkened and she gazed beyond me, out the window, at the rain beating the pane. “A really, really bad person.”
“A really bad person?”
“Yes.” She faced me again. “One of his patients. A man who brutally raped and killed a woman. His ex-wife. I figured I might as well kill two birds with one stone. I used the same size shoes that man wears when I went to Wilkins’s house, and I also left a watch that belongs to him in the house.” She frowned lightly. “It’s surprising the police haven’t found him yet. I was sure it was him they had arrested when we found out that someone had been caught.” She shook her head forlornly. “Too bad it was someone else. But that’s okay. We’ll leave an anonymous tip for the cops so they can get the man finally. By tomorrow they’ll have arrested him for sure. Forget about you being their number one suspect and so dangerous. Like I said, that’s just something the cops made up so they can look tough and on top of things.”
“Really?”
She smiled. “Yes, really. I told you you have a lot to learn about life. Cops do dirty things like that all the time.”
“Huh. But why didn’t we do that right away? I mean, why didn’t you tell the cops about him? Why did we run away, so the cops got all suspicious, thinking I killed Wilkins?”
She glanced at me for a long silent moment. “One day I hope I can tell you why. I don’t think it’s a good idea to do it now. Trust me, it was all to protect you. Everything I do is to keep you safe. Please trust me on that one. You do, don’t you, honey?”
I nodded automatically.
She ruffled my hair. “That’s good. How about we meditate now?”
“Um, okay. Just please answer this question first: How did you even find out that this man raped and killed his ex-wife?”
Much to my surprise, Mom suddenly blushed and she averted her gaze.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
Reluctantly, she met my eyes. “I really wish I didn’t have to tell you this, but I don’t see how else I can explain why I know the truth about this man. You see, Dr. Wilkins and I were more than patient and therapist, honey. We were lovers too. One day he told me about this man in his thirties he had just started treating who had confessed his horrible crime to him. And how horrible it was for him that he wasn’t allowed to tell the police about it.”
This was just getting weirder and weirder. Mom had been sleeping with Dr. Wilkins? When did that start? “You mean because he’s not allowed to?”
“Exactly. So you see this man deserves to be set up for this crime. He’s a bad person who should not be able to get away with what he’s done.”
38
A few hours later, I told Mom that I was going to go out for some fresh air. She would remain in the room and rest for a while.
I didn’t need fresh air as much as I needed some time on my own. Some time to think away from Mom. The more time I spent with her, the more uncomfortable I got. Something was wrong with her. Seriously wrong. It was like she was going crazy. Crazy with a capital C and an exclamation mark. Her eyes were bulging and she hardly blinked. She was talking fast and seemed agitated despite us having meditated. Well, at least she had meditated. I had just been sitting there beside her on the bed, counting the seconds until we were supposed to be done. There was no way I’d be able to relax next to her now. Not after all that she had confessed to me.
She had friggin’ killed Dr. Wilkins—whom she’d apparently been dating in secret. I was still having a hard time imagining her with the balding man with the double-chin and weird glasses who I had seen in several pictures online and on TV. It just didn’t fit. And that story she had told me about setting up his rapist/ex-wife killer patient had sounded so bizarre. Boy, had that sounded nutty! And this was even weirder: I thought the reason she had felt she absolutely had to kill Dr. Wilkins was because she had been sure he’d tell the cops about me, have them arrest me for killing Alice because of the pics in my phone. (Which I’ve now deleted, obviously. I should never have taken them in the first place.)
But if Dr. Wilkins could tell about me, why couldn’t he also tell the cops about the rapist/murderer? That didn’t make sense at all. Plus, if she had been sleeping with Dr. Wilkins, why would he be so mean and run to the police about her son? You’d think he’d cut her some slack if he wanted to keep sleeping with her. My mom, before she cut all her hair and dyed it black and started wearing those ugly fake glasses, was very pretty. Guys often checked her out. She was a catch for a dude like Dr. Wilkins. Even I, who was only thirteen, knew getting your girl’s son in trouble was not a smart move if you wanted to keep her happy.
I shook my head and tsk-tsked. Nothing made sense here. I picked up my pace and pulled the hoodie farther down my face. I didn’t feel like being recognized by some money-hungry individual. In the article from this morning, it had said that you would get a big reward if you helped the cops arrest me. I remembered that very clearly.
I sighed heavily. This was such a shit show. I needed to fix it somehow. It didn’t look like Mom had the situation under control at all.
It was a regular weekday in December, which meant the public library should be open. There were lots of branches in the city; if I kept walking downtown, I should bump into one soon. I would be able to do some research at the public library. For example, I was dying to find out if my hunch was right. A psychologist had to be able to report a rapist and a murderer, right? I looked left and right in search of a library I could use.
It took me about twenty minutes before I found one, about thirty blocks away from the whorehouse. Thankfully, it was open. I hurried inside and found a free computer instantly. Opening a browser, I typed in the search phrases “professional secrecy” and “psychologist”. Several options appeared on the screen. I clicked on a few of the links and read through the corresponding articles. Hmm. It appeared my hunch had been wrong, which meant Mom had been correct, which was a relief in a way
. Her story made more sense now. Apparently, a psychologist was not allowed to break his professional secrecy if his or her patient confessed to a crime such as murder and rape—as long as the crime had taken place in the past and there was no reason to fear the perpetrator would do it again.
Mom must have told Dr. Wilkins that she thought I was a danger to society. Based on what she had told me, that’s what it had sounded like anyway. I nodded to myself; it had definitely sounded like that. No wonder she had been so worried Dr. Wilkins would tell the cops about me. So worried that she had seen no other option but to kill him. She must have totally panicked, not been able to think clearly.
All of a sudden, I remembered what she had said about the teen the NYPD had arrested yesterday. How she had been convinced it had been the rapist/ex-wife killer: “It’s surprising the police haven’t found him yet. I was sure it was him they had arrested when we found out that someone had been caught.”
But the man she had referred to had not only been married, but he had also been in his thirties, according to Mom. How could she have been so sure it was him the cops had arrested? They had clearly stated they had arrested a teenager, not a man. She must have lied about that then. Why did she lie about that?
Obviously, they wouldn’t think the rapist/murderer guy was the killer just because she had used the same size shoes as he wore and left his watch at Dr. Wilkins’s place. I couldn’t remember having read anything about the cops having found a strange watch or mentioning the killer’s shoe size. By the way, how the heck did she even know what size shoes that dude wore, and how the heck had she gotten her hands on his watch? Had she dated him too or what? I laughed that seemed so ridiculous.
I swallowed hard and chewed on my thumbnail. This was so not good. Nothing made sense.
