by S. E. Green
My brother is at one of those forks in the road and he’s choosing the wrong prong. I always thought Justin was more like me, but in this moment, he’s more like Daisy. This is exactly what she would have done. She would have been mean to someone just to belong and would have defaced property just to appear cool.
Back when she was this age, I didn’t care. She did her thing, and I did mine.
Well, I’m not making that mistake again. I will not allow a gap to form between me and Justin.
“Is this why you’re suddenly interested in football, too?”
He shrugs. “Maybe.”
Sabrina runs around the side of the classroom building and skids to a halt. Her gaze goes from me to Justin, to the skull graffiti, down to the spray paint can, and over to the ski mask that I ripped off his head.
“Um… you’re just a kid.” She points at Justin. “He’s just a kid.”
For a brief second, I debate not telling her Justin is my brother, but if I don’t, she’ll haul him off to campus security.
I take a few steps away, nodding her over for privacy, and when we’re out of earshot, I lower my voice. “His name is Justin, and he’s my brother. Without going into a lot of detail, my family has not had the easiest of times lately. Can you please let me handle this at home?”
Folding her arms, she glances through the shadows back to where Justin stands looking at the ground. “I suppose we can make something up. Or for that matter, as long as the vandalizing stops, the whole thing will eventually be forgotten.” She looks back at me. “Okay, it’ll be our secret.”
Great. Now I’m sharing secrets with Sabrina.
22
Sabrina took me and Justin home. I woke Victor up and while Justin sulked, I told my stepdad the whole thing. I slept in my old room, and in the morning I find Victor packing for a trip.
“What’s going on?” I ask, stepping into the master bedroom.
He glances up as he zips up a duffel bag. “I’m taking Daisy and Justin away for a few days. I’ve already called both of their schools to tell them. We need family time. You’re welcome to come, but you have classes you can’t skip. And, of course, Patch and Paw.” He shrugs. “Up to you.”
I try not to show him how excited this news makes me. I’ll have the whole place to myself for several uninterrupted days.
But I do give him my best bummed expression. “Yeah, unfortunately, I can’t. My Jeep will be ready later today. I have work and classes I definitely can’t skip. Especially chemistry.”
“All good, but please get caught up on your sleep. I worry about you.”
“I will.”
Carrying his duffel bag, he scoots past me, and if I knew how to do an Irish jig, I’d do one right now. This is going to be awesome. I fully intend on making the most of their trip without me.
Several minutes later, I stand outside, waving goodbye to the three of them and ignoring Justin’s scowl from the back seat of the SUV. Hopefully, he’ll return as the brother he used to be.
Instead, I focus on Daisy’s stoic expression as she stares at me from the passenger side. I’ve had that look. She’s pulling away from me. I miscalculated. She’s not ready to know more.
All I can do is give her space and not lie when she comes back to me. All Mom did was lie to me and I will not do that to Daisy.
I give her a slight smile to let her know I love her, and when the SUV cruises through the neighborhood and out of sight, I go back inside.
First order of business—Tommy. He still hasn’t called me and it’s beyond time we spoke. Then I’ll rifle through the files in the basement.
As I walk back inside, I dial his number. He picks up on the first ring. “I was wondering when you would call me.”
“And I was wondering when you would call me. So what’s up with you and the biker gang?” I do like to get right to the point.
“I hate that you saw me.”
“Why?”
“Because…because…” He sighs.
I need to put him out of his misery. “I know all about the BDAP, and if you’re part of that, then that’s cool. You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
A long pause follows, and I use the time to make a cup of coffee.
Finally, he says, “So now you know my secret.”
“I do.”
“Bad people come in all shapes and sizes, and sometimes they’re the very people we’re supposed to trust. Like social workers.”
And parents. “Is that who you were there for, a social worker?” Of course, I already know the answer to this, but he doesn’t know that.
“Yes. And what were you doing out there?” he asks.
I knew this was coming and so I’m ready. “I was lost. My lab partner lives out there and I couldn’t find his place.”
“Oh.”
He doesn’t believe me, but I’m sticking to it.
Another long pause follows, and I use the time to make oatmeal.
“What about you, Lane? What’s a secret you’re keeping?”
Yeah, I’m not going there with Tommy. Not now, at least.
He continues, “I want to know more of what’s going on inside of you.”
No, he doesn’t. But he won’t be satisfied unless I tell him something and so I say, “Zach is back.”
Another long pause and I use the time to load the dishwasher. Maybe that information wasn’t what Tommy wanted.
Finally, he says, “Okay, and?”
“And nothing. Just thought you should know, seeing as how you’re my boyfriend and you also know my history with Zach and his older brother.”
More of the awkward pausing, and I use the time to eat the oatmeal I made. I’m not used to this from Tommy. Is he jealous? Is he leery that I know his BDAP secret?
“Your voice is different when you talk about Zach and his brother.”
Hm, I didn’t realize. I suppose so, though. “There’s nothing to be jealous about.”
“I didn’t say I was.”
But he is.
Yet more silence stretches between us, and I finish my oatmeal, rinse the bowl, and put it into the dishwasher. “What’s up with all the awkward pauses? Don’t make me fill in your thoughts.”
“I don’t know. You never quite say the things I think you’re going to say. That’s all.”
“Well, snap out of it. This isn’t you and me. We talk. Just say what you want to say.”
“You’re doing something to me, and I don’t know what it is. I thought I could keep my feelings for you at this slow sort of hum, like background noise. But the more I’m around you, the more my feelings become dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“As in you could ruin me,” he softly admits.
I pause in my kitchen chores. “Tommy… I don’t know how to respond to that. I would never intentionally hurt you. You know that, right?”
Another stretch of silence, but this time I don’t move, I wait. And wait. And wait. Jesus Christ, he’s killing me with these pauses. “Tommy?”
“That’s just it, I see you eventually hurting me and not realizing it. You wouldn’t mean to. You wouldn’t have intent. But it would just happen. I’m more invested in this than you, and it scares me.”
Somewhere deep in my gut, nerves squirm. Is he breaking up with me before we’ve even really started? That is the last thing I want, and frankly, I didn’t know he felt this deeply for me. I thought we were on the same go-as-it-flows page.
But I want Tommy in my life. I do care if he ends things. I’m not indifferent. Clearly, I need to show this. Speaking the words isn’t enough. He needs to know that Zach being back means just that—Zach is back. I’m not confused. I want to be with Tommy.
“Are you free tonight?” I ask.
“I am.”
“Let’s hang out. Yes? I’ll come to you.”
“Okay.” With that, he clicks off. No goodbye. No see ya later. Nothing.
He didn’t even sound excited.
My
phone buzzes with a text and I quickly look at the screen, hoping it’s Tommy. Zach’s name pops up instead. HEY, THINKING OF YOU AND WANTED TO SAY HI.
I stare at that message long and hard, probably too long. Had it come in before my conversation with Tommy, I’d likely think nothing of it. Now, though, I give it entirely too much thought.
In my head I compose several texts back:
HI BACK.
CLASSES GOING OKAY?
I NEED A RIDE TO PICK UP MY JEEP.
But in the end, I don’t reply and instead, I turn the phone over so I can’t see the screen. Tommy is my boyfriend. I care for him. I won’t screw that up. I’m not sure what that means when it comes to Zach, but right now it means I’m not responding to his text.
23
I use the few available hours I have to dive into the degraded DNA and my thoughts that the suicides might, in fact, be murders.
The first place I go to is Victor’s office, but unlike Mom, he doesn’t leave things accessible. He rarely if ever brings work home.
Still, though, I search his work area, coming up with the same thing I had before from his briefcase.
Next, I head to the basement where we moved Mom’s boxes. I grab the first one labeled OFFICE and dive in. Most of this I’ve already picked through, looking for anything on Mom’s alter ego, The Decapitator, my real father, and Aunt Marji. I pulled a few things, but Mom did a good job of keeping her extra-curricular activities off the radar.
Yes, the last time I looked through these files, I wasn’t searching for information on suicides being linked to a possible serial murderer. I do remember that newspaper clipping though…
It takes me thirty minutes and twenty or so files to find it. It’s in a folder labeled GHOSTS and I assume that means things that haunt her, or cases never solved, or personal interests not brought before the FBI.
Personal interests. Much like my journals of research on serial killers.
The thick folder contains photos, police reports, newspaper clippings, and memo pads with her personal views. From what I can tell, it covers a variety of killers, or rather ghosts to be solved.
I don’t see anything on suicides, though.
An eight-by-ten white envelope sits tucked in with everything else. Opening the clasp, I pour the contents out onto the carpet, and, bingo—I find exactly what I’m looking for: information on suicides tracing back through the years. Hangings, slit wrists, overdose, gunshot, and various other methods.
Mom suspected something, too.
I find several spreadsheets where she’s analyzed things by hand, cross-checking by type of suicide, time of year, location, the victim, and miscellaneous other things. Faded pencil marks are visible where she’s circled and erased, probably thinking there was a pattern, then deciding not.
At first inspection, I don’t see one either.
I can almost visualize her meticulously marking these sheets, and as I study them I recall all the times she used to tape things to her office walls.
“Why do you do that?” I asked.
“Because I like to stand back and see my thoughts from different angles.”
Remembering that conversation has me getting up off the floor. I find scotch tape in one of her office boxes and tape the spreadsheets on the basement wall. I stand back several paces, carefully scrutinizing the multiple rows and columns. I begin to see it—the tiny penciled dots she placed in certain squares of the spreadsheet.
My gaze moves vertically, then horizontally, and as I do the other places on the sheets fade to only the squares with the tiny dots.
I grab a yellow legal pad and a pencil and notate:
A sense of black wonder drifts through me that this killer has successfully been pulling this off—year after year after year.
On and on it goes. Every year in November, the exact same pattern, each time in a new city. No repeats, which means the Suicide Killer has a traveling job. A truck driver? A salesman? Self-employed? Online work?
Hard to say. There are a lot of remote jobs now.
No repeated cities until now. Why?
Going with the pattern November 10, 13, 15 means tonight (November 13) there will be a suicide by overdose of a single mom found by her child.
Where, though? And does this possibly connect to Mom’s degraded DNA?
For some reason the killer has come back to Northern Virginia, specifically Alexandria. If I can just figure out where tonight’s overdose will occur, then maybe I can stop this from happening and even better, catch the son of a bitch.
I kneel down on the carpet and thumb through the GHOSTS file. There are no personal notations of Mom’s. Only facts. She kept her feelings to herself. If she is connected to this, she didn’t want anyone knowing it.
Finding the old article of the house with the bled out woman, I lay that aside. I sift through the other materials, looking for anything else forty years ago in Alexandria, and I find an obituary of a young woman who overdosed. Body found in a car in an Alexandria park.
Though which park it doesn’t say. If I can just figure out which one…
I glance back up to the wall with the taped spreadsheets and something powerful shifts in me, like pieces of a puzzle clicking into place. I’m close to figuring this out, and I will. Between the overdose that will occur tonight and the hanging two days from now, I will figure this out.
Mom couldn’t. She was either too close to the case, she wasn’t able to forecast this killer’s movements, or there’s some other reason. He’s back in this area, which according to her notes, she didn’t predict either. But I now have the advantage of knowing.
I keep staring at the sheets. Why are you so successful? How do you get the single mother to do it, or how do you make it look like she did it? How is it the child is the one who finds her? Why doesn’t the child know a murder has occurred? Why the pattern of a woman bled out, one overdose, and the last a hanging? How is this personally connected to you, the Suicide Killer?
I glance back down to the reports and photos, again looking for anything in Alexandria forty years ago. A penciled sketch catches my attention and I slide it out. It’s a woman hanging from a tree.
Mom wasn’t a artist and so this had to have been done by an actual sketch artist, though I’m not sure where this would have come from. Perhaps a reporter on the scene? Either way, in the bottom corner Mom has scrawled a few notes:
November 15, hanging, off of Parkway
Meaning the G. W. Parkway that runs along the Potomac. I study the sketch, trying to gauge the surroundings. There’s a boat in the background, tied up to a dock. An old marina perhaps? The water behind it spans deep and wide with land on the other side.
But this is a forty-year-old sketch and who knows what it looks like now.
It's Alexandria, though, and so that narrows things.
But let’s focus on the overdose tonight. Grabbing my phone, I type in a few searches on the obituary and get back nothing of significance. I do find one mention of the child who forty years ago found his mom. An eight-year-old boy named Frederick Thurmont. He'd be 48 years old now.
I do a search on Frederick Thurmont, Alexandria, Virginia and get back two hits. One a history teacher and the other a manager of a grocery store, both on Facebook. I have no clue if the Frederick Thurmont I’m looking for still lives in Alexandria, but it’s the best I’ve got. I pull up their public profiles. Given the timeline of him being 48 now, that matches the grocery store manager.
It’s Safeway Grocery on U.S. 1 and I dial the number. As it connects I put Mom’s things back in order.
“Safeway Grocery, may I help you?”
I clear my throat. “Yes, I’m looking for Frederick Thurmont.”
“Hold please.”
Musak comes on as I un-tape the spreadsheets from the wall.
“This is Mr. Thurmont, may I help you?”
I hadn’t quite thought of what to say, but I go with whatever pops into my head. “Yes, hello, my name is Maggie
Cain and I’m with the Division of Electronic Media and Census Bureau out of New York.” I have no clue if that even exists, but it sounds good. “I’m tracking suicide rates over the last fifty years and I have here your mother committed suicide forty years ago in Alexandria, Virginia. She overdosed?”
Silence.
“Hello, Mr. Thurmont?”
“Yes,” he quietly says. “That’s correct.”
“This is a sensitive subject and I do apologize. I’ll be quick. If you could just tell me where this occurred?”
He clears his throat. “Fort Hunt.”
“And you were the one who found her?”
He sighs. “Yes.”
“And where were you at the time?”
“In the car. Asleep in the back. I woke up and—well, found her.”
I hate I’m causing this man pain, but I have to if I’m going to stop this. “Again, I do apologize. Just one last question. Do you remember anything before that?”
“What do you mean?”
I want to ask if there was another person present but I don’t want to set off any alarms. “How did you come to be in the car?”
“I don’t know. It was late. I was in bed for the night. Mom probably put me in the car. It was a long time ago and not something I want to recall, so I’m hoping you’re satisfied with your answers?”
“Oh, yes, thank you. You have been most helpful.”
We click off and I sit for a minute thinking. Asleep in the car. Woke up and found her. That matches the one from a few days ago. The child woke from a nap and found her.
I go back to the file I was just organizing and quickly sift through the notes. Child was sleeping in the next room. Daughter woke the next morning. Son slumbering right beside her.
Does he drug the kids? Most likely. That would explain how the children never see or hear the actual killing, but wake to find the aftermath.
Assuming the Suicide Killer was in his twenties forty years ago, he’d be in his sixties now, maybe seventies.
