Born Evil

by Julia Derek

  A door suddenly opened and a man and a woman in regular clothes entered the lobby.

  “That’s Shane Hanson?” the man asked one of the officers.

  “Yes,” the woman answered.

  “Good job. Cuff him and bring him into interrogation room two.”

  I heard the sound of metal clinking as the male officer removed his cuffs from his belt, and then I felt cold metal wrap around my wrists. He pulled the cuffs so tightly my skin hurt, and then I heard a clicking sound as they locked.

  What the hell is going on here?

  I looked at the female officer, who had remained by my side, silent and immobile.

  “What—what are you doing?” I asked her, the panic growing inside me. “Why are you putting handcuffs on me? I think you’re misunderstanding. I’m not the bad guy. It’s my mom who’s the killer. I know the NYPD thinks I killed Dr. Wilkins, but I didn’t. I promise. She did. She told me so this morning. And just now she pushed a librarian who was trying to help me down the stairs to her death. I can show you where the body is. I stopped you on the road so you could help me stop her. Why are—”

  The male officer brusquely pushed me toward the door the plain-clothed man was holding. I had no choice but to walk in that direction. Or stumble was more like it.

  What the hell was going on? What were they doing to me? Why was I wearing handcuffs like some friggin’ criminal? I wasn’t the killer. My mom was the killer, the bad person. Well, at least the crazy person. The crazy killer person. Why were they treating me like I was one, too? Oh God, they must think I helped her…

  They were pushing me through a long hallway and then into a room with a gray table and a few steel chairs. Another man in regular clothes was there, as well as… Mom.

  As we stopped in the middle of the room, I stared at Mom, who was seated beside that man. I was unable to get a word out, I was so stunned. I noticed then that her face was swollen and her eyes red like she had been crying. Wait, she was still crying. She wiped at her face with some tissue.

  Okay, what the hell was going on? Why was she here and crying? And why wasn’t she wearing handcuffs?

  “Is that him?” the man beside her asked. He had big sideburns and a handlebar mustache.

  “Yes…” she stuttered. “That’s him. Oh God…” An onslaught of tears overcame her, and she buried her face in fresh tissues that she got from the Kleenex box in her lap.

  The man beside her helped her up to her feet, and then she and Mustache Man left the room. She avoided meeting my gaze.

  I was taken to the seat behind the table and forced to sit down there.

  The man and the woman in the regular clothes took a seat on the chairs on the other side of the table.

  The man leaned toward me and said, “My name is Detective Lou Pedersen. This is my colleague, Detective Eve Cruz. Do you know why you’re here?”

  “No!” I exclaimed, terrified now. Something was really, really wrong here, and it felt like it was about to get worse. Much worse. “Why are you doing this to me? You’re supposed to put the handcuffs on my mom. She’s the crazy one. Not me.”

  “Calm down, Shane,” Detective Pedersen ordered me sternly. “You can’t play us, so give it a rest. Your manipulative ways won’t work here. We know all about what you’ve done. How many people you’ve killed in your short life. What you’re up to. See, we’re used to little bastards like you. Psychopathic monsters. Though, I have to say, you’re the best one I’ve met so far.” He stroked his square chin and studied me for a moment. “You do come across as a perfectly normal kid. A nice one even.”

  I stared at him, feeling like throwing up. We know all about what you’ve done. How many people you’ve killed in your short life. What you’re up to. See, we’re used to little bastards like you. Psychopathic monsters. What was happening here? Why was he saying all these nasty things to me? The cops were supposed to help me! My eyes filled with angry tears that crawled down my face. Why was this happening to me? It had to be a bad dream. But I didn’t think it was. It seemed much too real.

  The two detectives contemplated me in silence for several seconds during which I felt increasingly sick and dizzy. These detectives had somehow gotten the idea that I was the one who’d killed Wilkins and maybe even Betty, too. I suddenly remembered how Mom had thrown a glance over her shoulder in the hallway, then quickly shoved the old woman down the stairs. I remembered how she had cried and cried, glaring at me like it was my fault she had pushed Betty down the stairs. But why would she do that? It wasn’t my fault that she had decided to push Betty, then broken her neck. Why was she blaming me?

  A woman entered the room and placed a Coke can on the table, then left again.

  “Are you thirsty, Shane?” Detective Cruz asked me and opened the can.

  I was extremely thirsty I realized then. “Yes,” I mumbled.

  She gave the other detective a nod, who got to his feet and came up behind me. He unlocked the cuffs. Leaving one of the cuffs around my wrist, he placed the other around the table leg and clicked it shut.

  Detective Cruz shoved the Coke toward me. “Drink.”

  I used my free hand and chugged the can’s contents as quickly as I could, then put the empty can back on the table.

  “Why is Mom not here with me?” I asked her. I had a vague feeling that the parents had to be with minors like me if they got in trouble with the police. I had seen it on TV many times. So why had Mom just left me here? She was supposed to protect me, wasn’t she?

  “She told us we have her permission to ask you anything we want without her presence,” Detective Cruz replied calmly. “She’s terrified of you and has finally accepted the fact that you don’t belong among regular folks. You need to be kept away from them. And we will help her achieve that.”

  41

  I don’t know what came over me, but I suddenly started laughing. This situation was so incredibly preposterous that I didn’t know what to say or do any longer. Mom was scared of me?

  How could she be scared of me? She was the crazy one! How had she managed to convince the police I was crazy when she was? This was insane!

  Well, when they heard my story, they would understand what was going on. They would understand that she, for some inexplicable reason, was determined to have me take the blame for what she had done. All that she had done. She must have been drunk or something. It was the only thing that made sense now. The alcohol had made her snap.

  “You think this is funny, don’t you?” Detective Cruz commented sarcastically. She glanced over at her colleague. “Why am I not surprised, Lou?”

  “Why did you decide to kill Dr. Jonathan Wilkins?” Detective Pedersen asked me, leaning toward me.

  I was so stunned that they thought I had killed that guy that I didn’t know what to say. I just looked at them, from one to the other. Didn’t they see how crazy Mom was? How could they not? It was so obvious.

  “Why did you decide to kill Dr. Wilkins?” Detective Pedersen repeated, glaring at me, demanding an answer.

  “I didn’t kill him,” I muttered, glancing down at my hands now. “Mom killed him. She told me so this morning. She did it to protect me. She loves me and will do anything to protect me. Ask her yourself. Later. She must be drunk or something right now. Something has made her go crazy. That’s why she told me we had to leave the city. Because the cops had somehow gotten the idea that I had killed Dr. Wilkins. I didn’t. She did. To protect me.”

  “Really?” Detective Cruz said and crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Well, I guess that part is true. That she wanted to protect you at every cost in the beginning. We did read the letter she sent Detective Ivan Morales. She was very worried about your mental health. At the time, she did want to protect you because she thought you were innocent.” She gave me a dry smile that looked more like a smirk. “You had her fooled, didn’t you? Just like you had everyone else in your life fooled. Except for Dr. Wilkins. You knew he was too smart, that he would see through your chara
des. You knew he was going to go to the cops and tell them what a threat to society you are. How you needed to be taken off the streets before you could kill more people like your dad and your friend Alice. That poor old woman. But you decided to put a stop to that before he could do any harm. And when I say put a stop, I mean put a stop.”

  I stared at her, amazed at the words that were coming out of her mouth. Wait, Mom had sent the letter to Detective Morales? So what was that other letter, with the empty sheet, all about then?

  “You borrowed your mom’s credit card and took a cab from your house in Queens to the Upper East Side building where Dr. Wilkins lived,” Detective Pedersen continued, smoothly transitioning his colleague’s accusations. “You didn’t realize that her credit card statements would show not only that you had used the card for cab rides, but also which day, even time.” He chuckled and shook his head. “For a brilliant psychopath, you are pretty stupid, I have to say. Why the hell would you use a knife from your own house to stab the psychologist? Who does something like that?” He sent Detective Cruz a glance. “You were really lucky that Dr. Wilkins was in the habit of not locking his front door at night, weren’t you? I doubt you would have gotten inside otherwise. Because you’re not all that bright after all, are you?”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but Detective Cruz cut me off before anything could come out.

  “Or maybe you’re just a reckless person who likes to play things by ear,” she said. “Go with the flow, see what happens. Maybe you hadn’t really planned on killing Dr. Wilkins that night, but then it turned out that his effing front door had been left open, so how could you not? It was like a sign from heaven, a sign that you had to go through with what you had planned to do. So you did. Too bad someone saw you leave the building after you had stabbed poor Dr. Wilkins to death.” She gave another smirk. “Too bad you left the knife behind with all your fingerprints on it. I have to ask, why did you do that? Did you want us to know you were the killer all along? You did, didn’t you? Because you thought that, even if we had the murder weapon with all your fingerprints on it, we wouldn’t be able to arrest you. We wouldn’t be able to get to you. Well, you were wrong, weren’t you?”

  I was literally speechless, not to mention about to throw up. It was slowly dawning on me that Mom was behind all of this. She must have changed her mind at the last second and decided that she didn’t want to take the blame after all. Better the cops thought I was the killer all along.

  Detective Cruz took a seat at the edge of the table. “What I don’t understand is why you had to kill that sweet old lady, Betty McLaren. What had she done to you to deserve such an end? Why did you have to push her down all those stairs? Huh?”

  “I didn’t push her,” I muttered. “Mom pushed her, then she broke her neck when she saw she wasn’t dead after all.”

  The two detectives exchanged a glance. “Wow,” Detective Cruz said. “Just, wow. You’re still gonna blame Mom after all she’s done for you, trying to help you? After having killed her husband? You know that she’ll be punished for taking you away, don’t you? She was harboring a fugitive. She could do up to five years in prison for that. Don’t you think it’s time to cut your mom some slack now?” She cocked a brow at me.

  “Mom gave me an hourglass that I think is Dr. Wilkins’s,” I said, having suddenly remembered that I had it in my pocket. And that there had been video cameras in both our room and in the whorehouse’s hallways. If the cops saw what was on the tapes, they would see that the hourglass had been in Mom’s tote bag all along, not to mention how Mom had been the one to push and kill Betty. “You should be able to see it falling out of her bag in our room at the… brothel.” I really didn’t know what else to call it. “There were cameras there. And there were cameras outside in the hallway too. In the lobby area too. You can check them and then you’ll know I’m telling the truth. I didn’t kill Dr. Wilkins or Betty. She did. She told me. Check the cameras.”

  “We were told there are cameras in the building where you were,” Detective Pedersen stated, holding my gaze. “Very old ones. Unfortunately, someone had cut the cords behind the ones in your room and in the hallway the morning after you got there, rendering those cameras useless. You know anything about that?”

  42

  TEN MONTHS LATER

  It all went much smoother than I could ever have imagined it going. Shane would go to juvenile prison where he’d be totally fucked up by the time they’d let him get out. That is, if they ever let him out. I really doubted he’d last very long in such a rough environment. At the very least, as pretty as he was, he’d be someone’s bitch, take it in the ass every night. I couldn’t help but wonder if whoever claimed him would be disappointed when they realized Shane wasn’t a virgin. Peter had already taken care of that. I had watched him take our son using various objects with my own eyes more than once. (He had even tried to use his dick, but that had been much too big for Shane to handle.) Not that the kid had ever seen me, having his face buried in a pillow all the while.

  My heart clenched with pain when I thought of Peter, and how our bastard son had killed him in cold blood. I knew it had been on purpose all along. Of course it had been on purpose. Too bad it was too hard to make anyone buy that without also having to admit that Peter had played with Shane, making Shane hate him. So I had pretended like it had been an accident instead. It was safer. I knew I’d get my revenge eventually anyway. I was anything but impatient. For years I had been waiting for the right time, the right opportunity to build on. Finally, when I found the pics of dead Alice in his phone, I knew I had found it.

  I smiled to myself as I watched myself in the bathroom mirror in our house. For a thirty-nine-year-old woman, soon to be forty, I thought I looked pretty good, even though my blond hair was still on the short side. I still had no wrinkles around my eyes—well, only when I laughed hard, but that didn’t count, did it? Everybody got crow’s feet then. Nor did I have any bags under my nice green eyes. I could hardly wait until I was able to grow out my hair all the way and I would look like myself again. I had great hair. The men would all ogle me then. I was far from over the hill yet. I made a point to stay out of the sun, which bought me more time. More time to be pretty. Looking good was an advantage. During our years killing people together, Peter and I had made good use of the fact that we were both attractive, wholesome-looking people. No one ever suspected us of anything iffy despite that we had a dozen murders under our belts before Shane was even born. The cops didn’t even suspect that I had been involved in my own brother’s murder, even though I had been at the bar the night Peter had beaten him to death. Yes, I had been the “girlfriend” my asshole pervert of a brother had bothered.

  Well, he sure got what he deserved in the end, didn’t he? He sure did. As often as I could, I went to his grave and pissed on it. That didn’t happen nearly as often as I would have liked, sadly. Only a few times a year.

  People could be such idiots. Yet again, I had proven this to myself. I had managed to get my son in jail, most likely for forever. As I already told you, I really doubted he would get out at eighteen. The judge had given him the option to get out then, if he showed enough progress. See, they had given him a therapist to work with him while he was in juvy. If he seemed like he had improved enough to be around regular people by age eighteen, they would let him out.

  If he didn’t kill himself at some point—I was almost one hundred percent certain he would kill himself—I would make sure to break him down myself during my visits. I knew just what to do to make that happen. I’d pay some other imprisoned bastard to help me make that happen if need be. There was no way my son would ever get out of prison. He would rot in prison. Rot like Peter had been doing in his grave.

  Maybe the best part of this whole experience was the fact that I’d be able to make a lot of money on my story. I had already been on several talk shows during which I had been discussing my son and the fact that he was a bonafide psychopath. It didn’t take long
until I was offered a million dollars by a Hollywood movie company for the rights to my script that I’d been working on. When I was interviewed on TV, I made sure to tell the hosts that I had been using writing as therapy, writing about my experiences with my son.

  Writing was the only thing that kept me sane these days, I claimed with tears in my eyes.

  It wasn’t therapy at all. I knew all along that it would make a great story, a great movie, a great marketable movie after I had been on a few talk shows. So I’d started writing the screenplay as soon as Shane had been arrested. It took me only a week to complete it. I’d written day and night, like a maniac. I barely slept at all. I named it Born Evil. Great title, huh?

  The movie execs said they think they’ll have Scarlett Johansen playing me. I’m not sure about that. She wasn’t pretty enough and she had a big ass, too. I’d much rather have someone like Gwyneth Paltrow playing me. A much younger version, obviously.

  You didn’t buy that my son had things wrong with his brain, did you? He doesn’t. Well, not as far as I know at least. Maybe he does. Peter and I never had his brain checked. But I added that to this story because it would sound so much better. It was the only way it’d be believable that I would feel I had no choice but to take him away, hide him to protect him from more trauma in his life.

  Thankfully, the cops never demanded to see the PET scans; they just took my word for it. I have to admit that I was a little nervous about that part. Not that I wouldn’t have come up with a way to explain it away, of course. I always did, one way or another.

  Was I convincing as Shane’s caring mom in my story? I hope I was. I really went all into my role. You know, method acting, the kind I learned at the Lee Strasberg Institute. I used method acting to become sweet Jennifer, who had devoted her life to her fucked-up son. Most of the time, I truly was this annoying Jennifer. Man, did I hate myself!