by Alex Dolan
Leland brought back two beers and a glass of red wine for his wife. Somewhere in the house, a shower hissed. This reminded me of Leland showering off his FlyNap when I was chained to the ranch house bed, pissing myself while he lorded over me. I tried to put it out of my head.
“We’re going to have a drink, and we’re going to talk.” He gestured to both guns in the room. “Unless you do something stupid, we’re not going to shoot you.”
“Are you going to arrest me?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But you’re still in our home, and we could shoot you as a robber fair and square.”
“You think your son would be okay with that?”
Tesmer warned, “He’d get over it.”
I cautiously sipped my beer, sniffing the mist at the bottle’s mouth to detect narcotics. As if I could. I tilted the bottle and dipped my tongue in the suds. Bitter. Too hoppy. I asked Tesmer Moon, “Are you FBI too?”
“I’m an attorney.”
Even the smallest sip of beer made me brave. Not that the alcohol had hit my blood, but the action of pulling lips off the bottle brought back a cowboy cockiness that served me well at the firehouse. I even forgot that I had just been weeping in front of these people minutes ago. “Not corporate. Not with that hair.”
“Prosecutor.”
“So you two form a little assembly line of legal justice. Good for you.” There went that combative urge that my therapist used to warn me about. I swigged. Might as well get drunk at this point.
“It’s worked for us so far,” she said.
With half the beer gone, I draped an arm over the back of the chair. I saw clearly now. A lawyer and a federal agent were taking revenge on the woman who took their son. Kidnapping me as their instrument. Not a crime of passion, but punctiliously staged. Frigid even. If this ever saw a courtroom, a jury might even sympathize with them, but the case would forever tarnish them and destroy their careers, even if they avoided prison.
In an abandoned ranch house on the ass-end of Mount Diablo, Leland Moon might have been able to kill me and dispose of me in secret, but not here in Berkeley. Even if they killed me without a gunshot, one of their neighbors, wheeling out the weekly compost, would catch them hauling me out, feet flopping out of one end of a coiled carpet.
“You honestly think both of you have less to lose than me right now?”
Leland sucked on his own beer, and then leaned toward me. It was as close as our faces had come since we’d grappled in Clayton. For the first time, I noticed the micro-wrinkles around his eyes. “It’s all out in the open. We have our story, you’ve got yours. Gordon Ostrowski was a real scumbag.” Christ, he was trying to bond with me. This was a good sign—he was on the defensive.
“Did you know about him before you lured me to Clayton?”
He admitted, “I only knew you by Kali. I didn’t know your real name until we met, so I didn’t know about your family. It wasn’t too hard to find out afterward. It was a big case.”
Right he was. On morose days I could Google myself and still dig up all sorts of archive articles about the Ostrowski case. Now that Cindy Coates had the correct spelling of my name, I wondered if she’d looked all of it up too. To torture myself, I sometimes found images of Gordon’s smug profile at the defense table, contemplating his 257-year sentence as if deciding which appetizer to order.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that. I’m sorry your mother had to go through that.” He sounded sincere.
“The spider package was a cheap shot.”
“That was my idea,” Tesmer admitted. “We were working with a limited window of time. We had to motivate you, and quickly. And we didn’t want anyone else involved. We wanted to keep Holt out of it.”
Leland added, “We have no present plans to go after Jeffrey Holt. That might change, depending on you, but we have no present plans.” Now he went back to threatening me by putting the Holt family in jeopardy.
“How did you track me up there? I burned my clothes and wrecked my car. Was there a tracking device on the syringe?”
“When I put you to sleep in Clayton, I put something on your body.” I should have known. I had way too much adrenaline pulsing through me to pass out on my own.
“Where?”
“Your navel ring.” Fuck me. I lifted my shirt and examined my stomach. That tiny turquoise nub I’d worn for so long it seemed as much a part of me as a fingernail. Never thought to check it. Sure enough, when I felt the underside, the tiniest of bumps rose from the surface of the ball bearing.
Leland could boast about outsmarting me, but he didn’t seem proud of himself for duping me, nor did he wish to belittle me for having been duped. He brought us back to my stepfather. “Did you ever want something bad to happen to Gordon?”
“Today and every day.”
“Then you can understand where we’re coming from. I’ve been acting as that boy’s father here, not a federal officer. Justice was not served for Helena Mumm. You saw the softer side of Helena when you met her. She’s been worn down by disease. That’s what the parole board saw and that’s why they let her out. She gets all smiley and people think she’s a saint. The reality’s much different. She’s a psychopath, just like Walter. Just like Gordon. She destroyed children, and the families of those children.”
“Their crimes are unimaginably horrible,” I said.
Tesmer said, “You meant that.”
“I do mean that.”
“Then help us.” Tesmer said.
“You can’t be serious.” Empathy was one thing, but they were flip-flopping between bullies and buddies. My head spun.
Morbidly serious, Leland said, “We’re trying to be nice here. We could still shoot you. I could arrest you. You’re still a registered sex offender. There are any number of ways things could go bad. Then there’s Jeffrey Holt—the entire Holt family. What’s going to happen to them? And once Holt goes down, there goes the movement with it. All because of you.”
He’d made those threats before, and I hadn’t numbed to them.
Tesmer cautioned, “Leland, don’t.” Tesmer was going to be the nice one. I wondered if they’d practiced this yin-yang style of coercion. “Let’s just talk for a while.”
I wasn’t eager to help anyone in that family. Threatening me and the Holt network didn’t help their cause. I had stamina, and I hoped the talking would wear them down. “What exactly does my sex offender profile claim I’ve done?”
Leland explained, “You were a babysitter, and you molested a few of your neighbors’ kids. Mostly kissing, but some touching as well.”
“You fucking prick.”
He assured, “That can all go away.”
The sound of running water from the bathroom stopped, which brought back thoughts of Veda. “Your son doesn’t want this.”
“Our son doesn’t know what he wants. You saw him. For God’s sake, he just wet himself. You don’t have kids—you don’t know. Sometimes you have to make decisions without them.”
In my esteem as a nonparent, this was a hot fudge sundae of bullshit. I’d rescued my share of injured children, where their negligent moms and dads excused themselves with, “You don’t have kids, do you?” Gordon Ostrowski had married into my family and told others he was my father. “In my experience, not every parent makes the right choices. Not everyone deserves to be a parent.”
“Let’s try this out a different way,” urged Tesmer, tapping her skills in argument construction. “Kali, why do you do what you do?”
“She means, why do you kill people?” Leland clarified.
I’d already thought through this plenty. I wouldn’t have committed to this work without knowing why I was doing it. “I remove suffering.”
“You’re obviously not a Buddhist,” said Leland. “The Dalai Lama himself would argue that suffering is inevitable. Part of the challenge of life is coping with that suffering.”
Christ on a crumpet. They were going to beat me down with logic.
“Th
en the D.L. and I have a divergence of opinions. I never said I speak for everyone. Just myself and the people who want to end their suffering.”
“You’re comfortable with the idea that death is inevitable.”
“Of course I am. You’d have to be delusional not to be.”
Tesmer argued, “If we’re going to die anyway, and you’re comfortable ending lives, how much of a stretch is it to extend this to someone who deserves to die, thereby easing the suffering of the families involved?” She was trying to corner me. I could see how she’d make a good attorney.
“It’s the difference between mercy killing and vigilantism. My clients ask for it.”
Leland weighed in. “Do you believe that some people deserve to die?” Like a professional wrestling duo, the Moons played off each other well. In my imagination I outfitted them both with colorful Lucha Libre masks.
“Yes, but I’m not the person to give it to them.”
“What about Gordon Ostrowski?”
I puckered. “Even him.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would make me as awful as him. It’s the difference between compassion and execution. If you can’t see that, you really don’t understand what I do.” I finished my beer and squint-eyed through the bottleneck as if it were a telescope.
Leland stood. “Let me show you something.” He walked toward the kitchen.
Tesmer took a hold of the gun, but didn’t point it at me. “Come on,” she said. This was not a suggestion.
Overly bright lights weren’t kind to the kitchen. The fixtures needed updating and the linoleum blistered. Across the room, a door led to a dark descending staircase.
Leland noted, “It’s rare to have a basement in Berkeley. Not unicorn rare, but pretty uncommon.”
“There’s no way I’m going down to that basement with you.”
Tesmer switched the lights onto a carpeted floor. Not as foreboding as cracked concrete, but not inviting either. “There’s nothing bad down there.” She saw I was afraid. “We’re not monsters. We’re not Helena and Walter.”
Leland corrected. “We may decide to destroy you. But if we did, we wouldn’t do it like this.”
I walked downstairs with the Moons following me. If not aimed at my back, Tesmer’s gun was pointed vaguely in my direction from behind. The wood moaned with weight. I involuntarily shivered.
At one point, the Moon’s basement had been refinished as a family room. A couch and bookcases abutted shabby oak veneer walls. Its current state looked as if angry robots had gone wild. Holes ripped through the walls. The paneling had been punched by something toothy, possibly a hammer claw, exposing the studs. Dust settled on the furniture, and scraps of drywall and insulation scattered across the rug. Mildew spores clogged the air.
Up in the kitchen, dog toenails skittered across the linoleum. Apparently bored with Veda, Emmanuel ran to join us. He appeared at the top of the staircase, but he wouldn’t come down. Possibly it didn’t feel safe to him.
Leland gestured to the debris. “When Veda first went missing, we didn’t know what happened. He didn’t come home, and we thought he’d been hurt—maybe he’d wandered out with friends and there was an accident. But when enough time went by, we knew someone took him. I thought it was revenge. There had been someone I’d arrested, or someone Tesmer put away, and this was plain old vendetta. But if that were true, someone would have rubbed our faces in it. There was no ‘I gotcha’ note, no ransom demand. No contact of any kind. And that’s when we really started to worry.”
Tesmer picked up where her husband left off. “This was still early into the abduction. A couple of months in, our neighbors started looking at us funny. Our minister thought it would be a good idea if we took some time off from services.” She touched her husband’s arm. “Leland had problems at work.”
“Let’s not go there,” he said.
“No,” Tesmer corrected. “Let’s tell her everything. He had problems at work. Colleagues wondered about him—about both of us. Same with me. Friends stopped being friends.”
Leland said, “The agency eventually found a suspect. Guy in his early twenties who was a dog walker. He was sketchy, but he wasn’t the guy. When I got him alone, I was a little hard on him.” Knowing Leland, I guessed this was an understatement. At his most docile, I imagined a smashed nose, possibly a few bent fingers. “They didn’t let me alone with suspects for a while—any suspects, on any cases. I ended up taking a little time off. Paid time off, but humiliating just the same.”
Tesmer drove the message home. “We had a lot of time at home. Time we avoided going out. And we started wondering more seriously if we should be looking for a body. We knew other cases where they’d found the child’s body right in the house. So we started down here. Ripped the hell out of it. Take a good look.” Now I was compelled to peek into the walls to see how far they’d gotten. “When a child gets taken, the whole family goes down.”
I walked around the basement to observe how their shame and frustration had manifested in the destruction of their own home. Veda had been back for a long time. They could have cleaned this up, but they lacked either the desire or the money. They’d even painted the outside to keep up appearances, but vaulted the basement away. They didn’t even change all the lights. I counted two burned-out bulbs. They’d sealed off the place tight as the tombs in Luxor.
“I’d like to trade,” said Leland.
“I’m not killing Helena Mumm for you.” Down there in an intimate cluster with two armed adversaries, I felt threatened. But more than the threat, the pervading energy down there was death. Even if no body had been recovered, the room reeked with mortal corrosion. That repulsion from death made me defiant.
“This is a new trade.”
“Does it involve killing anyone?”
Tesmer shook her head, and Leland said, “It does not. If you make this trade, all will be forgiven. You can walk out of our lives with no recourse.”
“All will be forgiven,” Tesmer agreed. This implied that the Moons would pardon me, but that they had done nothing that might need forgiveness themselves. Kidnapping, torture, stalking, or threatening Jeffrey apparently did not necessitate forgiveness.
“This is a good deal for you,” Leland offered. “That sex offender record? Wiped clean.”
“I’m not a sex offender,” I reminded. “I don’t have a record.”
“Whatever,” he dismissed. “It will all be gone. You’ll be free.”
By now I’d gotten used to the dim lights down there. My boxing gym had the same shadowy corners. I didn’t want to be there, but I didn’t want to seem intimidated. I sauntered to the couch with the ripped cushions and sat down. “Whatever this is, it isn’t noble. You’re still extorting another human being for your own gain.”
Tesmer urged, “Take the trade. You won’t have a criminal record. You won’t go to jail.”
They had no clue how much this dehumanized me. So I decided to inflame them by trying out another argument. “Are you protecting yourselves by trying to use me, or is it that you just can’t do the job yourselves?”
This got to both of them. Leland said, “You think I lack the capacity?”
“Maybe the FBI’s not all it’s cracked up to be if you need to outsource.”
With hands on hips, Leland shook his head in irritation. “You think you have what it takes to get into my club? Do you know what the bureau requires?”
Tesmer tried to calm down her husband. “She’s trying to rile you.”
Too late. I kept pushing him. “The bureau requires high moral standards. Bunch of goody two-shoes.”
“We’re not as good as you think,” he said.
“Clearly. But you do have moral standards to live up to. And that means you can’t do whatever it is you want me to do to Helena Mumm.” For once, Leland had no response. Husband and wife traded frustrated looks. I’d stalemated them. “That also means that you weren’t supposed to handcuff me to your bed and torture
me for a day.” That sounded ugly. Tesmer shot him a dirty glance—he probably hadn’t divulged the full details of what took place in Clayton. I would use that to pit them against each other.
“I didn’t torture you.”
“You pepper sprayed me.”
“You attacked me!” he steamed. Upstairs, boards creaked where Veda shifted his weight. Their son was listening to us.
“When you sent me to kill Helena Mumm, you talked about us reaching a détente. I think you said we’d be bonded together by mutually assured destruction, because we’d be equally culpable for the same crime.”
“But that crime never happened,” he said.
“But other crimes happened.” I flashed him my wrists. “I go into the bureau and shoot off my mouth, you’ll lose as much as me. Aside from the kidnapping—”
“Detainment—”
“You endangered me by sending me unarmed into the home of a convicted murderer, telling me she was your sister.”
For some reason he laughed. “How did you think that woman was my sister, anyway? That’s racist as hell! Do you really think we look anything alike? You put us together side by side, and we make the number ten.”
I refused to let him steer me off course. “If this goes any further, you’ll lose as much as me.”
“Not as much,” Tesmer said.
“Quite right,” Leland said. “Only one of the three of us would ever see the inside of prison. And for you, those are murder charges. Serious business. And if you press us, be sure we’ll press back. Because the two of us are as vengeful as the Old Testament.”
I thought back to how I felt chained to that bed. They had a point. Maybe my cockiness was unfounded. They weren’t going to let me walk out of there. Not without giving them something.
“I’m not killing Helena for you.”
“That’s not the trade. It wouldn’t involve killing anyone.” He and Tesmer traded a sidelong glance, appreciating each other. Knowing they had my ear. “Here’s the trade. Show me your world, and I’ll show you mine.”
“I don’t get it.”
“That’s the trade. We understand each other.”
“I still don’t get it. What do you want me to do?”
