by Jenna Kernan
“The ones covered with your victims’ blood.”
“Well, I couldn’t do it. Then there would have been blood on the outside of the bags, too.”
“I didn’t put them in a second bag.”
They faced off a moment. Nadine waited for Arleen to lose control, but her mother surprised her.
“Well, no difference now,” she said.
“Why me? You could have done it then or any other time afterward. You could have asked Arlo or dumped them on the way home.”
“In my underwear?”
“A woman who remembers to bring a knife and rope could have packed extra clothing.”
Their eyes locked. Nadine ground her teeth and Arleen lifted her chin, taking a defiant pose.
“It wasn’t some sick attempt to make me be like you. Was it?”
Arleen’s smile was chilling.
“Was the ring around their finger symbolic of the wedding band, the vows they had forsaken?”
Arleen lowered the bag. “‘Forsaken’? Shit, Dee-Dee. Hauling out the ten-dollar words.”
“The cuts to the ring finger, why?”
“Make sure they didn’t take off that ring again.” She grinned. Bits of food clung to her teeth.
“What about the marks on the women’s backsides?”
“What about them?”
“Why did you make them and what is their meaning?”
Arleen snorted and crumpled the bag in one strong fist.
“You hear from Arlo?” she asked, changing the subject without answering.
“We aren’t in touch,” Nadine lied.
“Well, he’s working with dogs up there. Ones for the blind, and shit. Sounds really into it.”
“Are you going to tell me about those marks?”
“Nope.”
Nadine changed tack. If Arleen wouldn’t say what those marks meant, she could at least ascertain if she was working with anyone on the outside.
“Are you in contact with anyone from the Gulf Coast?” Nadine did not want to mention the exact city where she worked.
Arleen scrunched up her face, amplifying the wrinkles. “Maybe. I get letters from lots of folks. Get ’em every day. Some come to see me here. Some just send crap. Pages and pages.”
Nadine shifted on the hard-plastic stool. Was one of those correspondences from their unsub?
“Maybe I could see those letters.”
“Don’t keep ’em. I read ’em, some anyway, and toss ’em.” The smile that curled her mother’s lips said otherwise.
Nadine decided to see the warden about gaining access to her mother’s correspondence.
Arleen waved a hand in disgust. “It’s not just letters. They come in here or talk to me over the computer from their fancy offices, sitting in front of a wall of books. Oh, I’m so impressed. Make me look at smiley faces and ask how I’m feeling. Shit, how would you feel smelling bleach and cunt all day?”
Nadine blinked in astonishment at the vulgar language. It had been some time since she’d been exposed to Arleen’s coarseness.
“I’ve been thinking about our last visit. All them questions and you taking an interest.” She grinned, as if her daughter had finally made her proud.
Nadine couldn’t suppress the shiver that slithered between her shoulder blades.
“You could write them down for me. Then I could tell you all about them.”
And then Arleen could relive her fantasy at the same time she planted all those horrors in Nadine’s mind. No, thank you. Nadine’s longing for a relationship stopped at her mother.
“I’m not here to write your story.”
Arleen glared and then tucked away the expression so fast that Nadine questioned whether she had seen it.
“I’m so glad to see you, Dee-Dee. I want you to keep coming up here a couple times a month. It’s the best thing to happen in years, us getting back together again.”
Was Nadine supposed to feel guilty that all she could think about was getting out of here and never coming back?
“I want to ask you about a woman who was here. Her name is Dr. Margery Crean. She visited as part of a research project?”
“Hell, experts line up round the block to talk to me. Research! Shit! You’d think I was the cure for cancer.”
“She would have given you a brief survey,” said Nadine.
“She the one had a test that they give to the male serial killers?”
“That’s right. The Hare Psychopathy Checklist.”
“Doctor, is it? Sure, I remember that one. Bottle blonde, big honker, stuck-up snot, she was. Pretending she wasn’t all into it. But she was here, wasn’t she?”
“Did you tell her about the cuts on the victims’ ring fingers?”
“Nope.”
“The marks on the women’s buttocks?”
Arleen smiled and closed her eyes, as if reliving some fond memory.
“Arleen? Did you tell her?”
“I didn’t tell that bottle blonde nothin’.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yeah. Just did her little survey. That’s it.” Arleen pressed a fist under her chin and rested her elbow on the table.
If she hadn’t told, then a person associated with the investigation had leaked that detail.
“You must have told someone.”
Arleen was all business now as she leaned across the cafeteria table.
“How you figure?”
Nadine considered telling her about the copycat and rejected the notion.
“How about I get you an ice-cream sandwich and you think of everyone you told about what you did to the victims’ bodies?”
Arleen waved her hand dismissively. Nadine headed to the vending machines for a frozen snack, passing it to her mother on her return.
“Well? Did you tell anyone about the cuts on the victims’ fingers?”
“How’d you find out about that, Dee-Dee? Didn’t come up at trial. Not sure why, it was some of my best work. But I’m wondering, how you found out?”
Nadine looked her mother straight in the eye and lied again.
“Arlo told me,” she said, confirming her mother’s suspicion that she and her brother were in contact.
“Yeah, I figured.”
Inside, she groaned. Arlo could have told any number of people. Had her brother helped their mother move the bodies?
“So. Who else knows?” asked Nadine.
“I might have mentioned it to some of the inmates and Guy, of course.”
“What guy?”
“My kid brother, Guy.”
“He’s been to visit?”
She snorted. “I told him when it happened.”
Nadine forced away the look of disgust, but not quickly enough. Her mother’s eyes narrowed.
“Did he help you move the bodies of the couples?”
“I didn’t need no help.”
“But you told me he helped with one, the guy who owed you money.”
“’Cause it rattled me. Didn’t plan that one. For them others, I had things laid out.”
“No one helped you?”
Arleen’s temper flared. “You think I needed help? That I couldn’t do that myself? Well, I don’t need help from nobody!”
Nadine did not know if this was the truth, and she had no way to verify anything her mother said. The futility of this visit struck her hard, but she continued on, trying her best.
“Where does Uncle Guy live again?”
“Damned if I know.”
Her mother sat back, arms folded, and flashed Nadine another chilling smile. The expression vanished instantly. Nadine recognized that look, had studied it in school. It even had a name—Duping Delight.
It was the satisfaction derived from deceiving someone. Arleen was pulling one over on her. She suspected that her mother knew exactly where to find Guy.
She made a mental note to ask Demko if he’d found anything on her uncle. Her own memories of him were vague and disturbing.
�
�What about your other victims. Did you also cut their fingers?”
Arleen narrowed her eyes. “I don’t talk about them.”
“You told me about them last time,” she said.
“You’re my daughter. I trust you.”
“Even though I testified against you at your trial?”
Her mother gave her a long look as the corner of her mouth turned up in a sneer. “Everyone has a right to protect themselves, Dee-Dee. Don’t you forget that. It’s rule one.”
Nadine rubbed her tired eyes. Seemed Arleen had spoken to everyone except the law enforcement professionals who could close a cold case. She’d told so many people it might be impossible to use this information to catch their killer.
“Anyone else?”
“Yeah. I told Constance, for sure, but they executed her in 2009, so she ain’t talking, at least not to anyone who can hear her up here.” Her mother laughed at her grim joke. Nadine did not join her, and Arleen cast her a disgruntled look.
“Any guards?”
“I don’t talk to guards! ’Cept maybe to tell them to go fuck themselves.”
Arleen peeled open her ice-cream sandwich and began licking the melting edges before taking several bites. Watching her eat, Nadine wondered, not for the first time, about Arleen’s upbringing. She thought back to what she knew about Arleen’s father.
Once in a drunken rage, Arleen had told them that she wasn’t the best mother, but at least she hadn’t raped them like her father had done to his kids. Nadine remembered asking Arlo later how a man raped another man. Arlo said it was possible.
Nadine’s maternal grandfather, Lewis Owen, served eighteen years for the murder of his boss before dying in prison. Arleen said that her dad’s conviction was the best thing that ever happened to them.
Both her mother’s parents had been dysfunctional. She knew from Arlo that their maternal grandmother had been mentally ill, possibly schizophrenic, long before she went to a nursing home. She had visited her grandmother Idell there, but Nadine was too young to recall anything but the stink of the place and how scary the old people had seemed. Both her mother’s parents were gone now, leaving Arleen with only the scars. Her sole living relatives were her kids and possibly her younger brother, Guy.
Arleen noticed Nadine watching her and extended the half-consumed treat.
She waved off the offer.
Arleen wolfed the last bite and then wadded up the sandwich wrapper, shooting it like a basketball toward the open garbage can and missed. Then she turned back to Nadine.
“What did you think about my idea?” she asked.
Nadine gave her mother a confused look.
“In my letters, about picking me a name, something catchy, like the Boston Strangler or BTK Strangler. If I got a name, I could get some attention. Hell, I killed more than that guy out in California. Just because I didn’t eat any of them or hide under their beds and shit. That just made me smarter. You know there isn’t one single book written about me? It’s criminal.”
Nadine thought that might be her cue to leave.
“You sound angry,” she said, falling back on one of her go-to therapy techniques. Verbalize the emotion clients display. But Nadine didn’t ask Arleen to explore that emotion because she didn’t want to hear more on this topic.
“‘Angry’?” Arleen blew a breath out between her teeth as color rose into her cheeks.
If Nadine were eight, this would be her signal to get lost or to stay and get slapped.
“Not even a news interview. Twenty/Twenty. Dateline. Forty-Eight Hours. They should be beating a path to my cell. It’s bullshit. Men get all the jobs, all the media coverage.”
“‘Jobs’?” Nadine asked, picking out the one item on her mother’s list that didn’t quite fit.
“Yeah. You know how many chances a man gets? A hundred. No, a thousand. You know what they give me?” She held up a finger. Her jaw was sticking out and there was fury in her gaze. The blood vessels in her mother’s eyes grew red.
“Fucking foremen, supervisors, assholes, all of them. I hope they all…” Her gaze cut to one of the guards who had moved to stand at their table. “Settle down, Lupe. I’m just talking.”
“No shouting.” The corrections officer pointed to her name badge. “And it’s Officer Funez.”
“I wasn’t!” She thought better of whatever she was about to say and locked her jaw. Her chin remained up and out, a display of anger from the now-silent killer.
“Thank you, Officer Funez,” Nadine said, and Funez cast her a look as if Nadine was something unwelcome that she had just discovered on the bottom of her shoe.
The corrections officer moved on.
“She’s such a bitch,” said Arleen. “You just know she’ll be the one making me squat when I leave here.”
Nadine grimaced at the mental image.
Arleen tore open a bag of nacho chips with more force than necessary and stuffed several in her mouth, crushing them between her molars as she watched the guard retreat. Finally she turned back to Nadine.
“Like I was saying, it’s all about the name. One that scares the piss out of people. Without it, I’m nothin’. And I need someone to tell my story.” She lifted her thin brows at her daughter. “You’ve got a college degree, right? Took English and shit. I know you can write, ’cause I read your master’s thingy.”
“Thesis?” Nadine’s face contracted as her neck muscles tightened. Was that possible?
“Yeah! You could write a book for me.”
Back to this again. Nadine stared across the table at her mother. The idea came half formed.
“You going to tell me about all the murders? Not just the ones you copped to?”
Arleen twisted her mouth up before answering. “Maybe.”
Negotiations had begun.
These unsolved murders were her mother’s only bargaining chips, her capital to avoid the state carrying out her sentence. They were also a vehicle to achieve fame and status. Unfortunately, one thwarted the other. For Nadine, they were a means to see if her copycat killer knew everything.
The cheese dust had turned her mother’s fingertips orange. Arleen continued to root about in the bag, retrieving progressively smaller and smaller bits of nachos.
“I’ll think about it.” Nadine stood.
“What’s your hurry?”
“Got a long drive.”
Arleen set aside the empty package; interest piqued. “How long? Tampa, right? Got someone waiting for you?”
Nadine smiled and Arleen scowled. She was not giving her mother any details about her life. The fact that Arleen had read Nadine’s thesis was horrifying enough to keep her up for hours.
She leaned forward, pressing her hands to the table. “Thanks for the chat.”
When Nadine straightened, she left a twenty-dollar bill folded neatly beside the empty chip bag. Arleen swiped her hand over the money, making it disappear.
“See you next week, then,” Arleen said.
Her mother waited for confirmation that Nadine did not give. She left Arleen with a wave and hurried into the late-afternoon sunshine. Huge white-domed clouds billowed thousands of feet into the blue sky. One had already formed an anvil head. Building thunderclouds, she knew.
She nearly made it home before the gray sheets of rain overwhelmed her wiper blades, forcing her to pull over. The cloudburst extended her drive from three hours to four. At the hotel, Nadine made a list of all the known contacts whom Arleen had told about the unreleased marks on the bodies and avoided the letters she had written. She found nothing on her uncle via her web search and hoped Demko had fared better.
At midnight, she tucked away her laptop, ceased checking her phone and went to bed. In the morning, she ate breakfast in the hotel dining area with her laptop for company, before continuing to read the court transcripts, trying to glean any useful information for her subject-based profile and for her geo-profile, a predictive map of the probable area of this offender’s activities. But wit
h only three data points, the map was less than useless. This included the kill site for the first couple. The point of discovery for their remains and the body dump for their latest female victim. So, Nadine made another, one that included all her mother’s known victims. The software generated likely areas for activity and illustrated a region for unsubs’ work and home. Nadine studied the results, surprised at the accuracy of this second profile.
Demko’s call came late in the day on Sunday.
“We have an ID for the Manatee Jane Doe.”
Nadine’s mouth went dry. Were they already too late to save the other man?
“She’s Hope Kerr,” said Demko. “Resident of St. Pete, Florida. Disappeared sometime Sunday. Married for the second time. She’s got one kid, a boy from the first marriage. I sat in on the interview with the husband up there. He came in voluntarily. He appears distraught. He also has a solid alibi. He was in Miami with his mother and sisters the weekend of his wife’s murder. Cell phone records, receipts and ATM withdrawals confirm his location.”
“Not a suspect?”
“No.”
“Where is her boy?” she asked.
“Sleepaway camp. I checked.”
Nadine found she could again breathe past the pain in her heart.
“Why didn’t he report his wife missing?”
“He did, when he came back on Tuesday, to police in St. Petersburg, where he thought she was. But they asked him to wait seventy-two hours.”
“Three days.”
“Right.”
“What about the affair? Is she sleeping with someone?”
“I’m getting her phone records. See if anything pops. But her husband says no. Adamant about it. Actually, he threatened to punch me in the nose.”
“He wouldn’t know.”
“True, but from what her sister says, Hope was devoted to her husband and son. Worked as a wedding photographer, hobby was photographing wildlife. She says no other men in Hope’s life.”
“The ex have visitation rights?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
She paused waiting for him to figure it out.
“Okay. I’ll ask the sheriff to go speak to her ex.”
“Any missing persons? Caucasian male in the right age range.”
“Zippo.”
Nadine pursed her lips. “It doesn’t make sense. Why kill her, why carve the ring and initials, if she wasn’t unfaithful?”