by Alex Dolan
Morton set up a portable laboratory in a guest bedroom. Jeffrey secluded himself in his private office. That left Lisa Kim and me together at the dining table, which we converted into a workstation. She had ample elbow room, but set up her computer right across the table from mine; I can only assume, to make me uncomfortable. Every few seconds, she peeped up above the horizon of her laptop screen to see what I was doing. She struck me as someone with OCD, because she fidgeted more than Jeffrey’s daughters. Every few seconds she made some extraneous movement: checking her cell phone, loudly slurping her coffee, dinking the side of her water glass with a fingernail. She even flicked her hollow cheek in a way that sounded like raindrops. As it turned out, she was trying to draw my attention. Finally, she said, “I know who you are, Kali. Pamela Wonnacott.” It sounded like an accusation. “Jeffrey talks about you.” I hoped for a compliment, but no such luck. “I expected something different.”
“What did you expect?”
“I expected Joan of Arc, to be honest. Some freaking superhero. But you’re a kid.” She spoke in rushed bursts, reminding me of how a tetra darts about in an aquarium.
“You can’t be more than two years older than me, “ I said.
“I’m thirty-eight, but I look young.”
Law school had trained her not to deviate from her own line of argument. “You’re prettier than I thought you’d be, I’ll give you that. Everyone always talks about your muscles. I thought you’d be one of those women who looks like a man with a wig, but you’re normal enough.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“Maybe a little. I expected big, snaky tattoos. Do you even have a piercing?”
I stood and lifted my shirt to show her the navel ring, hoping my playfulness would soften her up. “Indeedy.”
Kim navel-stared until she was satisfied. “Turquoise?”
“Yes.”
“You get it at Bonaroo or something?”
“I’ve never been.”
“I know what happened to your family.” With this she blindsided me in a cross-examination. “Lots of press on that story.”
When people found out about my family history, about my stepdad Gordon Ostrowski, about the fire, most people offered something apologetic. Even if they stumbled through an awkward sentiment, I appreciated the attempt to communicate empathy. Lisa Kim made no such effort.
“You’re a visible woman, Pamela Wonnacott. Is that why you don’t use your real name?”
“You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who would recognize my name.”
“So, why the alias? I know other people in the Friends network. They don’t use fake names.”
“Maybe I’m just more careful.”
She gesticulated to our laptops, reminding me that we were all here trying to cleanse my colossal error in judgment. “Clearly not.”
I gritted my teeth. “Maybe I just like the name.”
“You want to be someone else, that it? Pamela Wonnacott was a victim. Kali is someone new, someone who doesn’t have to live with that legacy.”
I noticed my clenched fists, then remembered that I was there because Jeffrey had been kind enough to grant me sanctuary in his home. For his sake, I pressed my palms flat on the table to keep them from balling up.
“I understand how you got to where you are, you know. I could describe the life cycle of Pamela Wonnacott since you were a tadpole.”
“Shouldn’t we be researching Leland Mumm?”
“I checked—there is no Leland Mumm. It’s a fake name,” she said dismissively, momentarily glancing at her monitor at whatever she had looked up to confirm this for herself. Then she continued on the subject of me. “First your dad died, then all this stuff with Gordon Ostrowski happened. You felt weak. You packed on the muscle so no one could push you around. You gravitated to a profession that requires strength—one that even allows you to save people.”
I felt an eyelid twitch.
She kept going. “Lots of firefighters end up becoming EMTs because they go on medical calls.” Her nails pattered on the table. “Not many become paramedics. You need extra training for that.”
“I like to study,” I said flatly.
“Not hard enough to become a nurse or a doctor though. Your transcripts could get you into medical school, but you didn’t go.”
“You’ve seen my school transcripts, then.”
“Remember—I’m the pig who finds the fungus.” Her dexterous fingers tap-danced. I willed myself not to reach out and snap them. “No medical school,” she confirmed.
“Maybe I couldn’t afford it,” I fumed.
“Charity case like you? Dead parents, daughter of a Hollywood composer? Admissions would cream.” She folded her laptop shut and leaned on her elbows. “You didn’t go to medical school because you don’t have your act together. Work like this—Jeffrey’s work—draws its share of the misguided.”
“And yet you tolerate them so well.”
“Most of them don’t bungle this badly.” Lisa flicked a raindrop noise from her cheek. Such a strange woman. “Jeffrey likes you. I used to think it was because you two had a thing going, but now that I’m here, and I can see you two in the same room, I know there’s nothing sordid going on. Someone less enlightened might take a look at you and assume you’re a lesbian, but you don’t like girls. You’re neutered. Declawed. You can’t find the pleasure in life.”
My nostrils flared, and I couldn’t help clenching my fists again, so tight this time that my fingernails dug sharply into my palms. “I date.”
“Not much. Your most recent fling lasted two months. A boy from another firehouse who you met at a softball game.”
I shot daggers at her, and my reaction confirmed everything she said.
She pointed at herself. “Pig.” Then at me. “Fungus.” She swigged her water and swallowed far too audibly for a woman without dentures. “Jeffrey likes you because he has a soft spot for suffering. But this isn’t a place to work out your problems. If you come here for therapy, you’re just another client, and the rest of us are forced to be your caregivers.”
“I don’t want to be taken care of.” If I were anywhere else, this table would have been lifted out of the way, and this woman would have been bent into a pretzel.
“And yet that’s exactly what’s happened. We’re all taking care of you. That’s why we’re here. I flew halfway across the country to be here. I live in Dallas. Now, I hate it in Texas. It’s not like I don’t jump at the chance to get out of town when I can, but it’s still not convenient for me to do it. I came here to do a job. My job is to protect Jeffrey, and in doing so protect the larger movement we represent. So my role here is to minimize the damage you’ve done. In the short-term, that means figuring out what just happened to you and neutralizing the threat. In the long-term, it means neutralizing you.” She opened up her laptop so the screen pointed at me. “Here’s your woman.”
In a few minutes, Lisa Kim had uncovered a slew of articles from a sensational court case involving Helena Mumm. The trial earned far more coverage than Gordon Ostrowski’s ever had. Lisa Kim watched my reaction as I pored over the press.
Almost twenty years ago, Helena Mumm worked for the postal service in Livermore. In a blotchy photograph, Helena’s figure was a similar shape two decades ago, but without as much breadth. She’d told me she’d been skinny once, but either she’d lied, or her skinny days were over long before this photo had been shot.
At the time, she lived with a man named Walter Gretsch—according to the photos, in an innocuous-looking single-story stucco dwelling where dirt collected under the siding lips.
The couple wanted children but could not have them. So they created a family. Helena and Walter abducted three children and held them captive for two years. They killed one who tried to escape. They mutilated another to prevent her from escaping. Eventually, they broke the will of those who survived. The two remaining kids—neither of whom were named in the articles—began to refer to themselves
as the children of Walter and Helena. They became docile enough that Walter Gretsch even took them on errands. This apparently lasted some time, until one of the children alerted the authorities at, of all places, a post office.
Walter Gretsch did what he could to seem unfit for trial. He spewed Bible verses, even sang Christmas carols to convey how crazy he was. Walter’s defense argued the PTSD from his own father’s abuse led to crystal meth, making him incapable of controlling his sexual urges. Those urges led him to abduct the children. He had deluded himself and Helena Mumm into believing they were making an honest attempt to build a family.
The law didn’t buy any of it. A court-ordered psychiatrist labeled Walter Gretsch a drug user and sexual deviant, but competent—competent enough. He was sentenced to life without parole, narrowly avoiding the death penalty. Currently he resided in San Sebastián, the same prison as my stepfather.
Helena Mumm got a lighter sentence for testifying against Walter, but it didn’t save her. She spent thirteen years in prison for abduction and conspiracy to commit murder, but the parole board took mercy on her and let her out last year. She was terminal, and with a few months left to live, she won over the parole board with her “warm spirit and contrition,” according to the news. They released her so she could die outside the confines of prison.
Lisa Kim had pulled Helena’s sex offender profile. It featured a chinless photo and the address in the Excelsior, an old family house she’d inherited and let decompose on its foundation.
Helena Mumm was also Walter Gretsch’s sister.
Lisa reveled in how my face sunk. “You dropped us in a steaming heap, didn’t you?”
I couldn’t make sense of all of this, not all at once. Jeffrey’s general counsel might have been baiting me, but she was right. I didn’t understand how this might impact the Gifts of Deliverance organization, but I knew this made our situation very serious. I searched for more articles on my laptop, and the two of us read quietly for some time. I scanned old photos for a face that looked like Leland’s, only twenty years younger. I didn’t find anything.
When Stacy and Jess got home from school, they invited me to race in the woods. I went without hesitation. I needed something to clear my head from everything I’d been reading and some distance from Lisa Kim. With a little fresh air, maybe I could figure out how it all connected. The lawyer scowled at me when I left the table, but she was ready to judge me no matter what I did.
They picked a trail behind the house. Down and back, down and back, we weaved around the trees on either side of the trail to make it interesting. Between the roots and the incline, it was harder than I thought. The exertion helped—while I was huffing cool air, I momentarily forgot how much trouble I’d gotten us into. Jeffrey hadn’t said as much, but he must have been worried about his daughters as much as anyone in our professional network. They only had one parent now, and if he went to prison, they would be orphans like me. Running around back there, I could tell they had no awareness of the danger that threatened them. And because they were so carefree, I let myself relax with them, trying to put out of my mind the fact that I might be the person who would destroy their lives.
The stillness helped slow down my brain. Redwood forests aren’t like regular woods. They’re tidier, because of how straight the trees grow. The forest floor had its share of needles, but no scrambling brush to scrape your shins. The soil odor was hearty, and a woodpecker jackhammered bark with a cathedral’s reverberation.
Stacy was old enough to control her strides, but Jess didn’t know what to do with her arms when she ran. Her limbs flopped around, and when she lost a relay, Jess complained that her older sister was cheating. I jogged behind them both so they could win. Sometimes I pretended I was chasing them, and they squealed. We hauled down a few hundred yards, caught our breaths, and scurried back down the decline. So long as we kept moving, they didn’t ask me questions.
After a few runs, Lisa Kim appeared between the trees. She’d thrown on a citrus yellow running outfit that probably cost as much as a business suit. Speaking to the children the way crazy cat people talk to their pets, she twittered, “Girls, could you go in the house?”
The kids clammed up immediately. As if magnetically repulsed by their father’s attorney, they stepped away from both the adults and walked back to the house with their heads down. Lisa waited until the front door latched, and we were alone in the woods. “The girls like to race up here. When you’re confined to a place in the middle of nowhere, you find ways to amuse yourself.” She braced a thick trunk and pulled one foot to her butt to stretch out the quad. “You all raced out?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“It’s either that or girl talk.” She wasn’t going to leave me alone. Weighing my options, I considered that the more effort I poured into physical exertion, the less tempted I might be to punch this woman.
So we ran. I bolted, then Lisa Kim charged after me.
What initially started as a race quickly began to feel like a chase. While we ran, she shouted questions and comments, just to remind me how close she was to my heels. “Jeffrey’s cabin is a good place to get some clarity. Not so many distractions out here. It helped me get a handle on your situation.”
I didn’t talk when I ran. It’s not like I was winded, but exercise was one of the few times when I could extinguish all my extraneous thoughts. So I said nothing, and without my responses to dam it up, her prattle flowed like the Yangtze.
“You know how bad it’s going to look if they bust us? It’s going to be bad. I mean, national news bad. They’ll call us a death cult. You’ll be our Squeaky Fromme.”
I sped up. With longer legs it shouldn’t have taken much effort to outpace her, but she was fast. She trotted alongside me like a hunting terrier. “How long do you think I’ve known Jeffrey?”
She gave me an open-ended question. I couldn’t just grunt an answer. “A long time.”
“Eleven years. A lot of us have been around longer. Much longer. Remind me, how long have you known Jeffrey?”
The faster pace was getting to me. Cold wind ran up my nose, and I had to gulp air to speak. “You know the answer.”
“Four years.”
Since I couldn’t outrun her, I tried to avoid her. I rounded a redwood trunk, but Lisa Kim found me on the other side. “You’d think that was a long time, but in the grand scheme of things, not so much. A ton of us are more vested in this organization.”
I was tempted to run off trail but didn’t want to get lost. I sped up, but Lisa picked up her pace too. Light on her feet, her legs a blur.
This time, when I turned to round another trunk, my foot caught on a root. I spilled hard, and rolled out in the dirt. The ground was soft, so I didn’t scrape up the way I would have on the pavement, but dried needles and blood freckled my palms. Because I braced the fall with my hands, my wrists stung beneath the bandages. My chest heaved harder once I stopped running.
Despite her size, when Lisa Kim towered over me she seemed formidable. Hands on her hips. Unlike me, she showed few signs of exertion. “You need to leave. I’m good at assessing risk, and it’s riskier having you here than not.”
I puffed. “How do you figure?”
“This guy’s going to find you. It’ll be better if he doesn’t find you here.”
She was right. I hated her for saying it without empathy, but my carelessness might have doomed the whole network. Coming here had only heightened the danger.
She turned and walked back toward the house. “I’ll give you the night.”
Inside, the kids watched TV in the living room. Jess was lost in her cartoons but Stacy waved. The dining table had been cleared for dinner except for the laptop Jeffrey had loaned me. A Post-it stuck to the screen. In bubbly cursive, Lisa Kim had written: Cindy Coates. Victim. I peeled it off and tucked it inside the envelope with my emergency money. I’d look this up later.
As I powered down the computer, Morton emerged from his bedroom laborator
y, using the singsong voice of a carnival tarot reader. “Come with me and have all your questions answered.”
In the bedroom, Morton’s microscope, centrifuge, and computers sat across two folding tables. Soft lights cast the equipment in a vintage glow. All the adults clustered around the monitors, and Jeffrey looked disappointed that I was late. He said, “We’ve been waiting for you.” Behind him, Lisa Kim beamed at my expense.
Morton was so excited, his body jiggled. “It’s a drug. And I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not heroin, or any kind of heroin derivative.”
Jeffrey squinted at onscreen charts and tables. “Not a poison?”
“You could kill someone if you used enough of it, but it’s not a poison. It’s largely used recreationally.”
“You’re going to make us guess?” Lisa asked.
His cheeks flushed—he was too excited to hold it in. “There’s a drug used by shamans in the Amazon. It’s a very strong hallucinogen, stronger than LSD. They call it ayahuasca. They use it for,” he tried to find the right words, “spiritual journeys.”
Lisa had heard of it. “Rich white folks also use it to find themselves. You’re supposed to shit and puke your guts out. I hear it feels like dying.”
Jeffrey peered over his glasses at his attorney. “I’ve done it.”
I was pleased to see Lisa’s derision blow up in her face.
“Sorry, Jeffrey.”
“I was in the Amazon with a real shaman—and with a lot of other rich white folks. It felt like I died and I was reborn, several times.” He turned to Morton. “What I had was cooked. It’s organic. What’s this in the needle?”
Morton awed at the findings on his monitor. “A synthetic version. They call it pharmahuasca. What cocaine is to coca leaves. The experience is much more intense—so I’m told.”
“I can’t imagine something more intense than what I went through,” Jeffrey thought aloud.
