“They’re here,” he whispered.
“No, they aren’t. Baby, listen.”
“Quiet!” He squeezed her face harder. “We can’t let them take us.”
“Get off of me!” She kicked the floor and beat her fists against his thighs. He bore down on her, squeezing harder, whispering that they couldn’t be taken alive. She bit his hand. She felt the fat skin on his palm give way beneath her front teeth and the warm gush of blood in her mouth.
He cried out and slapped her across the back of the head to get her to let go. She spun on the floor and punched him square in the face, her knuckles cracking him just beneath his nose and just above his teeth.
He covered his face with both hands and she scurried across the floor to get away. She waited, crouched in the darkness, ready to run. She called his name, asking if he could hear her.
Jerry looked up at her in confusion. Blood dripped from his fingers onto the floor. “Why did you hit me?”
* * *
The commanding officer waited for her to finish speaking. “Linda, do you still love your husband?”
“Of course, I do, sir.”
“Do you honor your commitment to him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you have to be there for him during this difficult time. I’ve been married thirty years, and my wife will be the first one to tell you that it hasn’t always been easy. When I came back from my first deployment, she told me she couldn’t do it. The stress of not knowing if I was alive or dead from day to day was too much for her. Jerry’s on his, what, his second combat deployment?”
“Third, sir. It’s his second since we’ve been together.”
“What you’re feeling is totally understandable. Tell you what. When Jerry gets home, I’m going to arrange something special for the two of you. Everything is going to be just fine.”
* * *
She opened her right eye. The left was swollen shut. It ached when she touched it. It felt obscenely large and strange against her fingers. Other parts of her ached too. The monitor to her right beeped steadily, measuring her pulse and respiration.
The military policeman standing in the corner of her room came forward, holding his hat between his hands. “Specialist Shelley,” he said.
She sat up and cringed at the pain in her ribs. It forced her to lie back down. She was out of breath and had to steady herself. “Where’s Jerry?”
“Ma’am, I’m supposed to ask you a few questions when you feel up to it. Are you up to it?”
“Where is my husband?”
“Lieutenant Shelley is in custody, ma’am.”
“I need to see him. This wasn’t his fault.”
“Ma’am, I’m supposed to ask you some questions.”
She sat up. The room was spinning. “This wasn’t his fault!”
He pulled a notepad out of his uniform’s breast pocket. “Just a few questions. Okay. Let’s see. How many times did he hit you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you remember how it started?”
“I’m not sure. I’m not feeling good. Can you get the nurse?”
“Just a few more questions. How did it start?”
“I don’t know! He just got back. We were celebrating. Everything was fine until we got home.”
“What happened when you got home?”
“Nothing happened. He just went crazy.”
“Well, did you say something to make him upset?”
* * *
She sat straight-backed in the chair with her knees together. Her camouflage hat was folded in her right hand and both of her hands were resting on her knees and her uniform shirt and pants were ironed so that there were sharp creases along both arms. Her nails were short and clean and unbitten. She looked at them while she waited.
“How is my friend Tim Williams?” Dr. Shorn asked without looking up.
“Major Williams is good, ma’am. He sends his regards.”
“Tim and I went to high school together.”
“Yes, ma’am. He told me.”
Dr. Shorn pushed her glasses up the length of her long nose as she looked over the stack of paperwork assembled on her desk. The papers were tabulated and ordered and bound together by color-coded fasteners. “I’m sure you’re aware, your high school transcript does not meet our traditional standards for admittance.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Linda said.
“You never even took the SATs.”
“No, ma’am.”
“And you work in Food Services?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why did you pick that career path?”
“That’s what they had available for me, going in, based on how I did on my ASVAB.”
“I see.” Dr. Shorn folded her hands on top of the paperwork. “However, I can also see that you’ve been applying yourself. The major tells me you’ve been taking whatever training classes the army offers. He seems to think you’d be a good fit for our school.”
“I’d do my best, ma’am.”
“And you’re still on active duty?”
“I separate in two months. It’s my intention to use the GI Bill to pursue a degree in psychology, ma’am. I’d prefer to do so at this university, ma’am.”
“Can I ask why?”
“Your psychology program has a fine reputation, ma’am.”
“I know that. What I meant was, why are you interested in it? Most military people who come here pursue criminal justice degrees. However, with your training in the kitchen, you could get a degree in the culinary arts in half the time and be a real chef. They’re both good careers. You’d make money doing either.”
“Thank you, ma’am, but I intend to study psychology.”
“And I asked why.”
Linda looked up, unsure of how to answer.
“Let me just cut to the chase here. To become a licensed psychologist in Pennsylvania, first you need your bachelor’s degree. That’s four years. Then your master’s. That’s another two. Then you move on to get your Ph.D., and before you graduate, you have to log two thousand hours of supervised practice. Do you understand what I’m saying? It will take you ten years of full-time, non-stop, unwavering commitment to pursue this. You barely graduated high school.”
“Yes, ma’am. I understand.”
“Work ten years as a cop instead and you’ll be almost halfway to retirement.”
“I appreciate your suggestion, ma’am. No, thank you.”
“Let’s cut the ma’am shit for a second. You want me to help you get into a school that kids apply to from all around the country. You want me to use my resources and connections to get you in here. So, I want to know why. I’ve made psychology my life’s pursuit. What makes you think you want to make it yours? And don’t bullshit me. I’ll know.”
“Ma’am,” Linda began, then stopped. “I suppose it’s just an area I’m interested in.”
Dr. Shorn gathered up the stack of papers. “Thank you for your time, Sergeant. I’m sure someone from Admissions will be in touch with you soon. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
“Wait,” Linda said. She took a deep breath. It was hard for her to speak. “Please.”
The professor set the papers down and leaned back in her chair. “Take your time.”
“I’m hoping that it will help me understand.”
“Understand what?”
It was hard and it took a while, but Linda eventually got it all out. About her mother’s boyfriend, and her cousin. About Jerry. Things she’d never told anyone. The tightrope of living with someone who was packed like a pipe bomb. The craving to be a part of something, and the panic of having it taken away. Everything.
Dr. Shorn listened. She passed a box of tissues across the desk. And when Linda was finished, Dr. Shorn got up and put her arm around her and said, “Come on. We’re going down to Admissions to get you enrolled.”
* * *
It was dark out and she’d only been home long enough to set down her s
choolbag and kick off her shoes when someone knocked on her apartment door. Panic seized her body like she’d stepped on a live power wire. It ran up from her feet up into her legs. It travelled down her arms to the tips of her fingers and locked all of her muscles in place.
There was a second of silence and then they knocked again. She forced herself to move close enough to the keyhole to peek through it. She saw it wasn’t Jerry and so much air escaped from her chest, it left her light-headed.
Tim Williams looked older than the last time she’d seen him. He was the only man she knew who had a full head of hair and still shaved it so short, it looked like little more than a shadow. He was wearing his dress uniform. The dark green jacket and olive green shirt and dark tie one. His hat was tucked under his left arm.
She undid the chain and turned the latch and opened the door. “Tim, how are you?” She hesitated, unsure if she was supposed to salute or not. She did anyway.
He saluted her back. “I’m sorry to barge in on you like this, Linda. Can I come in?”
“Of course,” she said. She stepped back to let him in, then closed it and locked it behind him. She’d lived there a year and there were still boxes stacked next to the couch that she hadn’t unpacked. There were textbooks and photocopied newspaper articles and rough drafts of term papers stacked everywhere. “I’m sorry about the mess.”
He looked around the living room and kitchen area. There were two windows high up on the wall with blades of grass sticking up over the bottom frame. “It must stay cool down here in the summer, being beneath the ground,” he said.
“It’s not bad. It’s cheap.”
“No hassle of worrying about anything breaking down, though. I wish I could just call the landlord when my roof starts leaking.”
“Do you want some coffee or anything?”
“No, I’m fine. I’m actually here on official business.”
“Is that why you got all dressed up?” She sat down on the couch and curled her legs up under herself. “I’m not re-enlisting, if that’s what you’re about to ask.”
He sat down on the couch next to her. “I came to talk to you about Jerry.”
“No. My answer is no, and that’s final. The papers are already signed, Tim. I’m not backing down this time.”
“Hang on.”
“No, you hang on. That man put me through hell. I stood by his side and begged him to get help, but what did he do instead? He went back over there for another combat tour. You people won’t be satisfied until I’m dead. Is that what you want?”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Jerry was killed in action this morning.”
She stopped moving.
Tim ran his hand across the top of his head, giving her time to process it.
“How?” she asked.
“He was searching a house for a high-value target and the bad guy was hiding in the back. Jerry got hit in the chest and didn’t make it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Linda said.
“Are you all right?”
“He died doing what he loved.”
“Okay,” Tim said. “Listen, since you’re still technically married, there’s some paperwork that needs to be filled out. There’s money too, since he was killed in action.”
“Send it to his mother. I don’t want to be involved with any of it.”
“You’re his legal next of kin, Linda.”
“I already signed the divorce papers.”
“Well, it isn’t through the court yet, so it doesn’t mean shit.” He brushed his pants leg and looked at the stack of textbooks on the table. “It’s a hundred grand. Tax-free.”
“So what?”
“So take the money. Use it to pay for grad school. Be smart.”
“You honestly think I want one single penny from his death?”
“I honestly think he’d want you to have it and finish what you started. He loved you. He really sucked at it, but he did love you. If death gives us the chance to examine our lives free of all the, I don’t know, whatever the hell he had wrong with his mind, then yeah. He’d want you to have it.” Tim fit his hat on his head before standing up. “The paperwork will come in the mail. If you need any help filling it out, just call me.”
“I will. Thanks for coming over. I know you could have sent someone else.”
“I mean it. Anytime.”
“I know.”
After he left she leaned her head back on the couch and looked up at the ceiling. She rubbed the inside of her ring finger with the pad of her thumb. It still felt bare to the touch. She hadn’t grown used to there not being a band of warm metal wrapped there. The ring itself was sitting at the bottom of an old water jug in the corner of her bedroom under a year’s worth of spare change.
* * *
“Okay, a quick disclaimer before we show you the next slide. These are the crime scene photos from Anton Ola’s first victim. They’ve been edited to cover up anything too sensitive, but there is still a fair amount of blood in the background.” The FBI agent looked around the class, waiting for permission to go on.
Dr. Shorn held up her hand and said, “Anyone who thinks they can’t deal with this, please avert your eyes. Self-care is the first step to providing care for others.”
The agent clicked the remote and the screen behind his head lit up with the image of a young white woman. There was a black bar over her eyes to conceal her identity. A large black square covered most of her torso. She was lying on a kitchen floor. The linoleum around her was smeared with blood. It looked like she’d rolled around in it before rolling over on her side and dying.
“This was in a row home in Northeast Philadelphia. For whatever reason, historically there aren’t many serial killers on the East Coast, if you don’t count Florida. I do not count Florida. If you told me I had to find a serial killer somewhere in the United States, and I had absolutely no other information to go on, I’d tell you that it’s most likely going to be in Florida and it’s happening near a Walmart. That’s some FBI humor, if you couldn’t guess. Still pretty true though.”
He clicked the remote to take them to the next photograph. There were audible gasps from the students sitting near her. Whoever had placed the black square had not aligned it properly. This woman was flat on her back with her legs splayed open. The flaps of her stomach were on either side of her waist like a dissected frog pinned to a foam board in some high school biology class.
“This is the second Blue Worm homicide. This was an alleyway in Kensington. For anyone who doesn’t know, that’s a real bad part of the city. Lots of drug murders and shootings. Not usually anything like this, though.”
Linda raised her hand. “Were both women prostitutes?”
“The first one wasn’t. She was a housewife. This one was a crackhead. I’m sure she prostituted herself, but that was just one of the thousand things a crackhead will do to get money. Not your typical prostitute victim of this kind of crime, if that’s what you mean, though. No.”
Linda made several quick notes and raised her hand again. “Why were they called the Blue Worm homicides?”
“Did I say that?” He tapped himself on the forehead with the remote. “My apologies. Disregard that.” He clicked the remote. “This is Anton Ola’s third victim.” He looked at the class with one eyebrow raised. “See any differences?”
The victim was dead in the street, her body twisted and broken. Behind her, a station wagon with a crumpled front end and blood smeared across its white hood. It looked like an accident scene with fire truck and ambulances in the background. There were police officers in the photograph dressed in black uniforms, not Philly blue.
“This is Norristown, PA,” the agent said. “Markley Street, to be exact. Norristown is no stranger to murders. That place is a dumpster fire, to be honest. But for all intents and purposes, this looked like nothing more than a regular struck pedestrian.” He stepped away from the screen and used the remote’s
laser pointer to aim at the victim’s stomach. He drew a neon line up and down the curvature of her stomach and said, “Except for one thing. She’s pregnant.”
He clicked back to the second victim and said, “So was she.”
He clicked back to the third one and said, “And so was she.”
The next screen showed Anton Ola, a bald, scared-looking man, being stuffed into a police car in front of a field of news cameras and reporters. Surrounding Ola were special agents in suits, detectives in windbreakers that said HOMICIDE, Pennsylvania State Police troopers in wide-brimmed Smokey Bear hats, and the mayor.
He admired the picture of Ola’s arrest, then glanced back at the class. “You see all those people in the picture from all those agencies? Not one person there had anything to do with figuring out who the killer was. Nobody from any of those units, even. It all came down to one regular detective in the city, assigned to the Northeast division. He wasn’t from Homicide, he wasn’t from the district attorney’s office, he wasn’t even from any of the task forces. Just a regular detective who worked cases for his district, and he figured it the hell out.”
Linda raised her hand again. “How?”
“It wasn’t public knowledge that the first two victims were pregnant. Norristown PD had no reason to suspect their victim was related to the other two, so when a pregnant woman got killed by a car, it was just chalked up to a local tragedy. This detective took it upon himself to drive out to Montgomery County and canvas the neighborhood where it happened, just talking to people sitting on their stoops. An old lady said she saw the victim being chased down the street. She lost sight of them in the alleyway, but she heard the car crash on Markley, and saw him come running back out of the alley and jump into a purple van.”
“Did she get the tag?”
“She got the first two digits,” the agent said. “That’s all it took. Anton Ola was in custody before he could ever hurt anyone ever again.”
“Our main focus is to try and understand the mind of someone like Mr. Ola, maybe not so much the mechanics of how he was captured,” Dr. Shorn said. “Can we move forward into the study of him that was done by Cambridge?”
“Sure,” he said, clicking through several more slides.
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