Carved in Stone

by Julia Shupe

  I could see two personalities warring within the same man. It was intensely intimate. It made my skin crawl. Smith was out there, a living, breathing man, but a piece of his spirit had stayed with Carlton Tubbs, and over the years, had become something more: a man who was larger than life. It was interesting and almost too far-fetched for me to believe. But in a way, it made perfect sense. I considered the relationships I’d had as a child. I’d kept in touch some, and left others behind. There were those I had hurt, and those who’d hurt me. But time, I realized, had nothing to do with it. Some of my life’s most influential relationships were with people I’d known for a very short time. Smith had affected Carlton on a deep and personal level. He’d connected with him; Smith made him feel special. And because of the power he had handed to Smith, he found himself in a dangerous position. Smith exploited Carlton’s broken heart. He fractured a psyche that was already fragile. He played with Carlton’s anger and pain, stoked the fires of revenge, which created the perfect apprentice. For people, I had learned, are best rebuilt when first they are broken.

  Smith real.

  Tubbs Innocent.

  CPD 1 is Laurie Tubbs. Killed while Tubbs still in prison.

  We’re three minutes out, Ness. Hold him steady.

  Jacob’s text had been simple and devastating. I tried my best to keep Tubbs calm. Jacob was right. I needed to hold him steady. We needed him alive. We couldn’t lose him. He was our only link to Smith, albeit a weak one. Without Tubbs, we had no place to start. Where would a large-scale investigation like that begin?

  I wasn’t sure I had played my cards right; bringing up his mother may have just made a bad situation worse. I was losing him. I needed to change tactics. I needed to gain control of the situation.

  “Carlton,” I said, edging closer to the mounds of dirt. “Forget about Smith. Let me help you. Smith’s been torturing you for long enough. You’re an innocent man. It’s time to forgive yourself.”

  “Innocent?” he scoffed, as he rounded on me. Spit was glistening from the corners of his mouth. “You think I’m innocent?”

  Well, no. Not innocent. Just innocent of this.

  But I wasn’t about to say that out loud. I wouldn’t bring Meghan Newton into this. I’d go with something tamer. “You’ve made mistakes, Carlton. We all know that. But you’ve paid your dues. It’s time to let go.”

  Bending forward, he burst out laughing, and dropping the gun, leaned over the hole. He began to comb the dirt with a three-pronged garden rake. Like a mad dog, digging for bones, he tossed the dirt over his shoulder as he worked.

  “Stop,” Gil said, dropping into a crouch. “Carlton, stop right now. We’re taking you to the station to talk.” I could see Gil struggling to find sympathy for this attacker of women. I felt the same way, but I’d deal with that later.

  “You’re nothing like Smith,” I lied. “Trust me. We just want to talk. We need your help. Help us find Angela.”

  I was staring at Carlton’s gun, just inches from his right foot. For the moment, he seemed to have forgotten it was there.

  “You think I’m innocent?” he repeated, looking up. “You think I’m so different than Smith? You’re wrong! Would an innocent man have done this?”

  With a lurching motion, he lifted an object into the air.

  It was an arm, mottled and decomposed, attached to a very dead body.

  Gil bounded to his feet.

  I tensed.

  The smell of death wafted on the breeze.

  The skin was pale and veined with blue. It was an arm, a woman’s arm, the nails long and shapely. The skin had rotted and the nails had yellowed. “This,” he spat, “is who I am. This is all I’ll ever be. I’m a monster. And,” he drooled. “I like who I am. This is who I was meant to be.” He laced his fingers with the dead woman’s hand, a sickening act that brought bile to my tongue. I forced myself to focus on his face. Gone was the tortured child and the broken man. I was talking to Smith now—not the man, but the ghost.

  Gil didn’t miss a beat. “Carlton Tubbs, you’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can—and will—be held against you in a court of law.”

  “A court of law,” Carlton muttered. “Fuck that.”

  He reached down, grasped the gun, put it to his head and pulled the trigger.

  He was gone.

  Chapter 47

  My parka was covered with blood and bits of brain. I took it off and laid it on the ground. It looked as bad as I felt.

  Almost.

  “I fucked up, Jake. Now we’ll never find Angela. I shouldn’t have told him about his mother.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself,” he objected. “What more could you do? What more could you say?”

  “Exactly. I said too much. That’s the problem. I’ve always had diarrhea of the mouth. I shouldn’t have told him about his mother. My mistake. Will Angela ultimately pay the price? I’m so damned stupid. He was cracking in two, right in front of my eyes. I should have known I was pushing him too far.”

  Shaking his head, Jacob reached for my hands. “Carlton Tubbs was cracked long before you got here. There are three women buried in his backyard—all recent kills, from what I can determine.”

  “So he tried,” I said stubbornly.

  “Tried what? What do you mean?”

  I stared at the low, gray clouds in the sky, and tried to keep myself from bursting into tears. “It was just like he said: he tried to be a better man. He tried to overcome his demons, but he failed.”

  “Failed is the understatement of the year. The man was completely insane.”

  Jacob pulled me into his arms, and for once, I didn’t resist. I laid my head on his shoulder. “We’re doomed,” I said, as the clouds spit rain.

  “That’s terribly morbid—even for you.”

  “I mean it, Jake. We’re all doomed. Can we never overcome what we suffered as children? Without Laurie Tubbs, what would Carlton have become? Carlton Tubbs wasn’t born a serial killer. Terrible circumstances made him that way.”

  “So you’re a nurture girl.”

  “No. I don’t know what I am. Ted Bundy had an excellent childhood. Carlton didn’t. Both men turned into monsters. What does it mean? Nurture? Nature? It’s probably both. I don’t know the right answer. You didn’t see what I saw.”

  “What did you see?”

  “A man who wanted—no needed—to be better. A man who tried his best but failed. It’s depressing, Jake. It’s disheartening as hell. He’d been out of jail for what—twenty-five years? And for twenty or so, he kept his nose clean. But the demons caught up. He couldn’t escape them. In the end, our demons always win. We’re doomed.”

  “Are you saying you feel sorry for a serial killer?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “That’s not what I’m saying. I don’t have a soft spot for serial killers, Jake. It’s empathy for humans in general, I think. We’re doomed to repeat the same patterns in life. I’m wondering if we ever really learn from our mistakes. Rehabilitation is horseshit. Carlton Tubbs was a cold-blooded killer. He was sick. You saw those women. All three of them were skinned from the knee to the ankle, and their feet were buried five yards from their bodies. It’s not that I feel sorry for Tubbs, per se. I feel sorry for the human psyche in general, and for the simple fact that we can’t rise above it. We’re victims of our thoughts and beliefs. I wonder if people can ever master their compulsions.”

  Jacob smoothed my hair and rubbed my back. “You’re tired. You need to go home and get some rest. You’ve just been through a traumatic experience. Go home. See Danny. I’ll finish up here. We’ll get Gil’s statement. You can give yours tomorrow.”

  With Jacob at my side, I watched the paramedics wheel away the first dead woman. Carlton had shot himself one minute before the cavalry arrived. And after they secured the scene, I walked it, in a daze. Jacob was right about Carlton Tubbs; he had cracked in two long before I intervened, long before he discovered
the truth out about Smith, and long before I blabbed about his mother. His home was evidence enough; it was deplorable. And there weren’t piles of dirty dishes in every corner of every room; there weren’t any dishes at all. Carlton rarely cooked himself a meal. He was clearly a fast food junky. Bags of old food littered the kitchen, and his refrigerator was full of nothing but condiments. Well, I corrected myself: condiments and beer.

  His bedroom, like his kitchen, was Spartan. A mattress and box spring dominated the room, and a single sheet was wadded in the middle. The mattress showed evidence of a bed bug infestation, with rust-colored stains and pearly eggs along the seams. A small folding table served as a makeshift nightstand, which was decorated ‘Coors-style’, along with everything else. Cans covered every surface of the room. Carlton Tubbs was a severe alcoholic. He was suffering a slow and agonizing death; he’d been killing himself for years.

  I looked at my sad surroundings and suddenly wanted to run the other way. I needed a shower. I needed to feel clean.

  “You’re right,” I conceded, squeezing Jacob’s hand. “I’m getting out of here. I need to go home.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Jacobs’s advice had been the very thing I needed. Seeing Danny, cooking him noodles, tending to normal daily tasks was calming. When I walked through the door, he was sprawled on the carpet, building a tiny replica of our house out of Legos. I made him a milkshake after he ate his broccoli, then set him in front of Transformers, the movie. The sun was setting, and I was drinking a glass of wine, but Angela Harlow was out there somewhere, suffering, probably dying.

  Life was shit.

  “You should be proud of yourself,” Linda said quietly. I was surprised—again—by how run-down she looked.

  Tucking my stocking feet beneath me, I said: “It just doesn’t feel like a win to me, Lin. The perp is dead, but we didn’t get the girl. And what’s more, the real perp is out there, laughing.”

  “But it’s not your fault. You caught a serial killer. You prevented more deaths. Yes, maybe he wasn’t the killer you were hoping to catch, but he was a killer. You can’t deny that. Stop tearing yourself apart. Take the win. Loosen up. You’ll wake up tomorrow and start again. It’s what you do.”

  “You’re right,” I allowed, admiring her wisdom. “But I can’t stop thinking about Angela. She’s out there somewhere, while I’m in here. I’m cozied up, sipping wine, eating Bon Bons, while Angela’s suffering God knows what.”

  “You can’t think of things in those terms. Follow the evidence, Ness. That’s what you always say. Let the evidence do the talking, and something will eventually break. Something will lead you to this guy.” She sipped from her glass, and I made a mental note: this time, I knew it wasn’t juice. I kept my big mouth shut for once. I had enough to worry about. I’d delve into that later. “What’s the guy’s name anyway?” she asked, swirling her glass. “The killer, I mean? Do you at least have a name?”

  My laugh was wry. “Yeah. Smith, of all things. Can you stand it? A serial killer named Smith.” I dropped my head to the cushions and closed my eyes. “It’s definitely original. I’ll give him that. And he’s smart. He thinks of everything. He’s the Stephen Hawking of serial killers.”

  When I glanced at Linda, I noticed she wasn’t smiling. “So the two of them knew each other, then. What are the odds?”

  “They met when they were young boys, just adolescents.”

  “And Tubbs has been obsessed with him for all these years?”

  I thought for a moment about the Dorothy Foust case, about the man who’d run her over with his truck. She’d said she hadn’t seen him since high school, but she’d clearly made a lasting impression. He never recovered from the feelings she engendered. He was obsessed with her. He was probably in love; the lines between both, I had learned, were often blurred.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Carlton was obsessed—so obsessed he created a fantasy in his head. Smith was the first person to ever pay attention to him, to take him under his wing, so to speak.” I set my glass on the table, my feet on the floor. “But obsession is usually a one-way street. This was somehow different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  My hands were suddenly tense at my sides. “One person is usually obsessed with another, but in this case, the obsession seemed to run both ways. Think about it, Lin. Look at the specifics. Smith—based on his actions—was as obsessed with Carlton as Carlton was with him.”

  “How so?”

  Standing awkwardly, I began to pace the room. “Smith’s first victim was Carlton’s mother. He took the revenge that Carlton couldn’t. He gave Carlton closure when Carlton couldn’t get it for himself. Then,” I added, my heart beating faster. “He followed Carlton around for what? Thirty years? Stayed close to his home, adopted his MO, frequented the same coffee shops and retail stores. Who the hell is Smith without his Carlton Tubbs mask? The two are so damn similar, Carlton’s prison psychologist actually thought they were the same person.”

  For a moment, Linda was silent. There was something in the details I was missing, something big, and when next she spoke, it all came together. “Where did their obsessions first develop?” she asked. “I mean, where did the two of them meet when they were boys?”

  I grabbed my phone, my body suddenly on fire. Jacob answered on the very first ring. I was breathless.

  “Jake, I know where she is.”

  Chapter 48

  Where the hell was he? She was so damn thirsty she thought she would die. Hours ago, her willpower had waned; she’d guzzled that last inch of dirty water in the bottom of the glass.

  It hadn’t helped. It hadn’t been enough.

  She shivered. Her fever was raging out of control. The cut on her leg was a throbbing heartbeat. And it smelled. If he didn’t tend it soon, she would die. She fingered her jutting bones and the letters on the floor. The shapes of the words were her only real comfort, and for the hundredth time, she imagined the other women. Had they been brave? Obstinate? Headstrong? How many days had they lasted in this hole? Where were they now?

  Where had he buried them?

  Curling into a tiny ball, she pushed that thought to the back of her head. It wasn’t helping. It wouldn’t get her anywhere. And besides, she wasn’t ready to die just yet. There was a breaking point that she knew would come, a point at which dying would sound more appealing than living, but it hadn’t come yet. She hadn’t given up.

  Trying her best to keep her teeth from rattling out of her skull, she remembered the time her sister fell from a tree. She’d broken her leg, a compound fracture. She remembered the name of the devastating injury. She’d been left in charge while their mother drove to the store. It was the 4th of July, and they were having a family barbeque. They’d been alone for barely fifteen minutes. Angela had always been the stronger of the two, but her sister had shown immeasurable strength that day. The wound was the worst thing Angela had ever seen. She often wondered how Stephanie had braved it.

  Well, she thought. Until now.

  It was hard to imagine such horrific situations, until a person is suddenly thrust into one. And when that happens, there’s a simple choice to make. A person can drown or suffocate, or he can do his best to keep his head above water. He can curl into a ball and wait to die, or fight for his life, battle to the end. Angela was doing that now. She was trying to keep her head above water. She was concentrating on each and every breath, every beat of her heart. She was keeping her thoughts focused on family and friends.

  What she wouldn’t give to see her sister’s scar again, hear Janet’s belly laugh, or her father’s terrible singing voice.

  A dog barked in the distance. She smiled. From time to time, she heard such noises, the sounds of life prattling on without her. It was comforting to know how close people were. They’d never find her, but at least she wasn’t alone.

  The dog barked again, closer this time. Very close, she thought, lifting her head. A sound like the shuffling of feet came from above her cell.
She tried to scream but failed, letting her head fall to the floor with a thump. She had no voice, no breath, no energy. Besides, she thought, it was only him. He had finally come to finish her off. Was she ready for that? She searched inside herself, allowing each individual ache and pain to rise to the surface. Her ankle was twisted in an unnatural angle, and her knee was swollen beyond recognition. The cuts had worsened, become more infected. She was sick, couldn’t breath. She was hungry, couldn’t sleep. Maybe it was time to let go. She was helpless in here. Perhaps death would be a blessing. She would make him angrier than usual, she thought. She’d beg for her life, for her freedom, for her daddy. He hated that. He abhorred weakness and vulnerability.

  Angela’s father had always been a source of strength. He was an amazing father, both compassionate and tough, her rock when her mother had died. There was that time when her date had ditched her for the prom, and her father had stroked her hair and held her. He’d baked her favorite chocolate-chip brownies. He was the calmest voice in the fiercest thunderstorm. She remembered the day he taught her to drive a manual transmission. She would always release the clutch too soon. She’d stalled ten times, and he’d laughed every one. He’d been patient, good-natured, and kind.

  Thoughts of her family brought tears to her eyes, and she scolded herself for her weak resolve. She wasn’t ready to die. There was too much to do, experience, love. She peered around the cell at her hopeless situation, found strength in her core, and then forced herself up. Shifting her body, she nestled herself between two large stones, the long-fingered tentacles of moss soft and wet against her skin. She thought she heard voices and cocked her head. What, she wondered, would he do to her this time? What bone would he break? An arm? A leg? Would he rape her? She cringed. Rape was one torment she couldn’t suffer again.