I set out to make a big breakfast.
First I cracked two eggs into a bowl; beating them smooth along with a dab of milk, some salt and pepper. Then I added a teaspoon of salted butter to the pan. With the butter fully melted, I added the blended eggs into the pan, cooking the mixture slowly over a medium flame.
When the eggs were lightly cooked some two minutes later, I slid them out of the pan onto a white dinner plate. In the fridge I dug out some Green Mountain salsa and some grated Munster. Using my fingers I spread some of the cheese onto the steaming eggs. Last but not least, a big glass of OJ on ice. I was so famished that I ate the food right there, standing inside the kitchen.
I was setting the dishes into the sink when the buzzer sounded. It wasn’t unusual for the maintenance crew to be making inspections of one kind or another, especially on a Monday morning. But instead of buzzing the person in, I made the cautious decision to make my way out my front apartment door and up the steps to the door of my building. Through the glass I spotted a man wearing a FedEx uniform, behind him the still running, orange-on-white FedEx van. The man held a clipboard in one hand and a small package in the other.
The package was a standard eight and one-half by eleven envelope. I couldn’t imagine what anyone wanted to send me that was so important it had to arrive via FedEx. But I signed for it anyway, and took the package with me back inside the apartment.
In the kitchen, I tore the envelope open and peered inside. There was a photograph that was paper-clipped to a letter. Pulling the letter out, I could see that it was a handwritten note from Detective Harris. The attached photo was the black and white shot of Molly and me; the same one to be further examined by print specialists in Albany. The note was a simple one.
It said,
Dear Rebecca,
Whalen’s prints were nowhere to be found on this picture. Neither are Francis Scaramuzzi’s. Still awaiting results from Albany regarding bone samples taken from woods around Mount Desolation.
Take care of yourself,
Harris
So that was it then.
Neither Whalen nor Franny had been in possession of the photo after all. I could only guess as to how it had gotten on the front porch of my parents’ house. If Whalen or Franny hadn’t placed it there, then who did?
Exhaling a breath, I pulled a magnet from off the fridge and set the photo under it. It was the only photograph that occupied the fridge. Tossing the FedEx envelope away, I grabbed my new cell phone, bringing it with me into the bathroom where I set it down onto the sink. I started the shower, letting the water warm up and the bathroom fill with steam. Although I had no definite plans, I would start the day by paying a visit to Robyn. As poorly as she was feeling, I knew that a little visit was always good for cheering her up.
Inside the bedroom, I took my pajamas off.
Standing before the Ikea body-length mirror, I stared at my stomach. Maybe I was only a little more than a couple of weeks along, but I swear I was beginning to show the first signs of a belly. It made me feel good to know that the baby was inside me, growing. Soon I wouldn’t be alone. Soon I would have all the companionship I needed. It would come in the form of a small bundle of boy-joy.
Stepping out of the bedroom, I made my way back into the kitchen where I placed a plastic shopping bag over my cast-covered right hand and secured it with a rubber band from out of the junk drawer. In the bathroom, I pulled back the curtain and carefully stepped into the hot shower. It was the first shower I’d taken inside my own bathroom in what felt like ages. I felt the good, hot water seep into my skin. I felt it seep into the flesh under my skin. I felt it heal the many wounds I’d received up on that mountain and down inside the stone basement of that house in the woods.
The house that no longer existed.
I let the water pour over my hair and onto my face. I felt the good feel of the hot sting. I poured shampoo onto my hair, kneaded it in with my good hand. The thick foam ran down my face. When a little got into my eyes I felt the sting, but I didn’t mind. I actually started to laugh as though getting soap in your eyes was the funniest thing in the world. But I’m sure it all had something to do with being alive, being pregnant with a child I really wanted and really looked forward to loving. It would be my most purist work of art.
Placing my face directly below the nozzle I let the water spray directly into my eyes until the sting started to go away. I made sure to keep my eyes closed tight while I rinsed my hair. When the cell phone chimed I automatically whispered, “Crap.” Of course someone had to be calling me while I took a shower; while I was blinded by soap in my eyes. Reaching outside the shower curtain I picked the cell phone up off the sink, opened it to see that a new text had been delivered. Immediately I thought of Robyn as the water dripped onto the electronic readout.
Thumbing the Send button I opened the message
Cry, cry, cry, little kitten.
The shower curtain flew open. The cell fell into the tub. A hand wrapped itself around my mouth. The hand squeezed my mouth and nostrils tight. I couldn’t breathe. An arm wrapped itself around my waist. The shower curtain began to tear away from the rod, one ring at a time. The pop-popping noise of the breaking plastic filled the bathroom along with shower spray; along with my muted gasps, along with Whalen’s high-pitched strains.
He released his right hand, producing a knife. He pressed the blade of the knife up against the underside of my neck, then quickly pulled the knife back just an inch or two, cutting into the skin. The pain was searing. It shot up and down my spine. I wanted to scream, but the hand was covering my mouth.
My vision escaped me. I saw blackness lit up with stars, neurons exploding in my brain.
He pressed the knife up against the underside of my ribcage. He pressed the sharp blade up against the skin, flicked the knife back quick.
More burning pain.
Legs went wobbly. Blood poured down my ribs and belly.
Then an explosion. A gunshot.
The hand that covered my mouth released and fell away. The knife dropped into the tub. I looked down, saw the blood circling the drain, circling the thin knife and my shattered cell phone. I heard Whalen’s body hit the tile floor. I heard footsteps. Out the corner of my eyes I saw the blurry image of Detective Harris. In his right hand he held an automatic. He grabbed the towel from the rack, put it into my hands.
I was too shocked, too frightened to speak, to cry, to do anything.
“How bad are you hurt?” he demanded.
I managed to shake my head.
He reached down with his right hand, pressed two fingers against Whalen’s jugular.
“He’s gone.”
My back pressed up against the water-slick ceramic wall, I sank down into the tub, the water spray shooting down onto my head, onto my now exposed cast.
Whalen was gone.
I shivered and was suddenly overcome with the urge to cry.
Cry, cry, cry…
It’s exactly what I did.
Chapter 83
More police came. So did the state troopers who blocked off the entrance to the apartment complex with their blue and yellow cruisers.
The EMTs came. The press showed up. TV and print.
Caroline and Franny rushed to the scene when they got wind of it on the radio.
I sat in the back seat of Harris’s Jeep. He’d sent one of the uniformed officers out for tea and I now held a steaming cup in my trembling hands. The EMTs had already looked me over, examined the wounds to my neck and chest. The surface cuts required no stitches. Only butterfly bandages. Still, they insisted I be transported immediately to the hospital for further tests and observations. Given the condition of my healing heart along with the early stage pregnancy, there was no telling what I might suffer in the short term.
I flat out refused.
I’d just been released from the hospital two weeks before. Tests proved there had been no permanent damage to my heart after having suffered the mild heart att
ack up on Mount Desolation. The EMTs looked at me with skeptical frowns. They asked me to signature a waiver of release absolving them of any and all responsibility should I drop dead on the spot. I did it.
Then they left me alone.
As soon as Whalen’s body was bagged and lifted into the back of a big, black SUV with tinted windows, Harris joined me in the Jeep. He sat behind the wheel, an identical Styrofoam cup in his hand, the only difference being his held black coffee.
He asked me if I was all right. I sipped my tea, running the exposed fingers on my damp, cast-covered right hand through still wet hair and breathed.
“Just a little shaken up is all.”
He sipped his coffee.
“You know now that without question, that Whalen is out of your life forever,” he consoled. “Without… question.”
“The future is bright,” I smiled, then stared down into my tea. “How did you know he’d be here?”
“I didn’t really. Late last night I got a call from forensics in Albany telling me the bones found on Mount Desolation didn’t belong to a male meeting Whalen’s criteria for a man of approximately sixty years of age. In fact, the bones probably belonged to a female who passed away decades ago. More than likely, one of Whalen’s early abduction victims.
“Our theory now is that he buried the women outside his home in the woods and periodically interred them, laying them to rest in different areas in and around Mount Desolation. That is, until finally laying them to rest down inside that basement after he was released from prison. That would explain why we never uncovered remains inside his house all those years ago. It’s not that he was always one step ahead of us. It’s just that we just didn’t have the technology we have at our disposal nowadays.
“All morning long I thought about it. If the bones didn’t belong to Whalen, there was a good chance he’d survived the damage inflicted to his head by Francis. Which meant he might still be out there, waiting to strike again.”
“What about the black and white photo you returned to me along with a note?”
He shook his head, vehemently.
“That’s just it. I jumped the gun when I sent that out yesterday afternoon. It dawned on me that Whalen’s prints didn’t have to be on that photograph for it to have been in his recent possession. The man spent thirty years in prison. It’s not difficult to scrape away the prints on your fingers given the time. Anyone can do it with a common household disposable razor blade. Or even if he had left prints, it’s not impossible for him to dissolve them from the picture’s face before planting it on your folk’s porch floor.”
“And the jimmied window? That was Whalen’s handiwork?”
“I can only imagine that he wanted to get a personal feel for your childhood home. You know, step into the footsteps of his beloved Molly and Rebecca; his two little kittens. I now believe he broke into the home many times over the past six months. He scoured the place and came up with the photo. On the day you went out to Brunswick to have a face to face with Caroline Scaramuzzi, Whalen followed you, planted the pic in a spot you were likely to find it. Call it his way of playing with your head on top of those cryptic text messages.”
“But how did Franny paint that exact image of us back in the seventies if he never had access to the photo?”
“That’s just it,” Harris said. “He did have access to it. In fact, dozens of people did.”
I didn’t quite understand what he was getting at, until he reached into the Jeep’s glove box, pulled something out. “Caroline gave this to me yesterday after I’d already FedEx’d the original to you.”
He handed it to me.
It was a Christmas card. A postcard-sized Christmas card with a reproduction of that same black and white photo of Molly and me printed beside the words “Happy Holidays.” Written in my mother’s unmistakable ballpoint, “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Underhills.” It was dated December 3, 1976.
That was the reason Franny was able to paint Molly and me all those years ago.
“But how did you know Whalen was coming back for me here at my apartment? How did you know he was going to do it tonight?”
“Intuition, plus a little help from your friends, the Scaramuzzis.”
I shook my head as if I didn’t comprehend him.
“Caroline called me on my cell as soon as you left her house last evening. She didn’t want you to know that she called me. But she felt it would be the prudent thing to do, considering Whalen hadn’t been officially declared dead yet and this was the first night you’d be alone since the incident on the mountain.
“I acted on a hunch. Instead of going home last night, I parked outside your apartment. I was just about to leave this morning when I noticed a FedEx truck pull up to your building. At the same time, I also noticed a strange looking individual walking around the back toward your terrace door. He was dressed in blue overalls like a maintenance man. I didn’t like the looks of it. I followed him, right into the apartment.” He took another sip of coffee. “The rest you know.”
I sat back, felt my hands, warm around the cup of tea.
“I never knew,” I exhaled. “Never had a clue you were out there.”
“I guess I’ve still got the touch.” He grinned. “Maybe I’ll go private when retirement kicks in.”
“By the looks of it, you’re only a few X’s away.”
It was over. Finally. No more Whalen. Still, I didn’t feel as relieved as I should have felt. Maybe relief would come when the events of the morning finally settled in. Who knew how long that would take?
Harris was about to turn away when I stopped him.
“Detective,” I said out the open window. “What about the cell phones? Had Whalen been stealing them from the Hollywood Carwash like we thought?”
He nodded. “Stealing them, but not enough of them to make it seem suspicious. From what the manager told me, four or five phones were reported missing by various customers over a period of about six months. When you consider that the manager gets calls on a daily basis about a missing this or a missing that, he never would have suspected a pattern.”
“Until you pointed it out to him.”
“Exactly. In any case, it certainly explains how Whalen texted you without having to acquire his own cell phone account.”
I took in a breath.
“Thank you, Detective.” I smiled.
Harris left me alone again.
I sat in the backseat, stared out onto the apartment parking lot and all the people that had gathered there. I looked on the scene until the people began to disperse along with the police and the EMTs. I stared until all that was left were Franny and Caroline amidst a backdrop of ivy-covered brick buildings.
When Harris came back to the Jeep, he told me he had to get back downtown. I slipped on out, gave him a hug.
“Thank you again.”
“Thank you for being strong,” he said. “For all these years.”
I looked into his eyes.
“You never told me that you knew my father,” I added.
He cocked his head.
“I knew all about what your dad discovered in that house in the woods back in ’63. I figured if he never told you, and you had never found out about it on your own, then why should I be the one to do it. By the looks of it, your father didn’t want you to know. He wanted to protect you, Rebecca. You and Molly. He wanted to protect you from Whalen’s evil.”
He told me that he would be in touch. That he would need to question me further later on in the week. But for now my statement on the incident inside my apartment bathroom would do nicely. After all, he’d been there to witness the event himself.
With a smile on his face, he got back into the Jeep and took off.
I could only assume that for a man on the verge of retirement, he too had realized some serious closure this morning with Whalen’s death-with having personally put a bullet in the monster; the devil. I know I did. But then why did I feel so sad about the a
pparent source of all those texts? Had I ever really believed that they’d somehow come from Molly? Was it possible I could believe in something heaven sent? It was all a question of faith.
Standing in the parking lot I faced my friends.
“You guys want to come in?” I asked. “Get out of the cold?”
Franny smiled. It was a rare event to see him smile. It made me feel good to see it.
“We’ll go inside your apartment,” Caroline exclaimed. “It’s a crime scene now. We’ll pack up your things and move them back to the farm. My farm.”
I took a look back around at the apartment building. I pictured the torn away shower curtain, the blood stains, the yellow police ribbon that blocked off access to the bathroom. I would help Caroline pack my things. But I would never return to the place again.
Like Whalen, and that now burned down house in the woods, it was all a part of the past. All that remained was to move on.
“Have you eaten?” Caroline asked.
“I had breakfast,” I said, setting my hand on my stomach. “I’m not sure where I’m getting my appetite, but I could definitely eat again.”
“Pancakes,” Franny said, that smile still illuminating his round face. “Pancakes and blueberries and syrup.”
I laughed.
Caroline laughed.
“Pancakes it is, Franny,” I said. “I know a great little diner right around the corner.”
Together the three of us made our way for Caroline’s truck.
It seemed strange in a way, a little more than an hour before I was about to be killed by a homicidal maniac. Now I was going out for pancakes. I recalled one of my mother’s cherished sayings, God works in mysterious ways.
I looked up at the blue sky, smiled at Molly. I saw a patch of clouds and I swear I saw her face. In the clouds I made out Molly’s face as though she were looking down at me and smiling. I might have been the only one to recognize the face. But it was there all the same. You just had to know how to look for it. Molly was in heaven, and she was watching out for me, for my life. Just as she always had.
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