-With My Deepest Love, Your Mother
Clay III opened the diary to a random page.
The first time I passed over I was hung by the neck until dead in the year 1622. Because you are ‘half-ghost’—the offspring of a ghost and of the living—you must never attempt to have a child…
The more Clay III read, the more engrossed he became.
“Hot damn!” Clay III said aloud. He’d been right all along, and now he had the proof. Onyx Webb was a—
“Hello, Clayton,” a voice said.
Clay III stood and saw Onyx standing at the top of the metal staircase. His breath caught, and his mouth opened and closed, like a fish too long out of water. What he was seeing was beyond belief. Beyond his comprehension.
The woman standing before him was young. And beautiful. So, so beautiful—with flawless skin, blue eyes and raven-black hair flowing to her shoulders.
“I don’t understand,” Clay III said. “I thought you were—”
“That I was what? Old? Wrinkled? Covered with horrible burn scars?” Onyx said, taking a step forward.
Clay III took a step back. “Stay away from me, Onyx.”
“Why, Clayton?” Onyx said. “What are you afraid of? Are you afraid I’ll kill you like I did your grandfather?”
“So you did kill him,” Clay III said.
“Yes, but it’s not what you think,” Onyx said. “He came to me because he was sick. He was dying. He asked me to take him, and I did. Out of kindness.”
Onyx took another step forward.
Clay III fumbled for his gun, pulling it from his holster and pointing it at Onyx. “I said to stay back!”
“What, Clayton? Are you going to shoot me? You have to know you can’t hurt me—I’m already dead.”
Onyx took another step forward, and Clay III pulled the trigger—the bullet ripping a hole in the front of Onyx’s dress.
Onyx looked down and shook her head.
“Your father figured it out, too,” Onyx said.
“You shot him, didn’t you?” Clay III asked.
Onyx shook her head. “I don’t shoot people, Clayton. Besides, why would I shoot your father? Your father and I had the same understanding I had with your grandfather—leave me alone, and I will do the same. But you? All along, you seem to have had it out for me. Why is that?”
Onyx took another step forward.
“I don’t have it out for you, Onyx,” Clay III said, the fear evident in his voice.
Onyx glanced down at the hole in her dress. “Well, I beg to differ.”
Onyx took another step forward.
“Stay back, Onyx. If you come any closer, I’ll—”
“You’ll what, Clayton? Shoot me again?”
Onyx took two quick steps forward and Clay III staggered back, holding up his hands, trying to keep her away from him.
“No, no…”
Clay III knew he was in trouble when the back of his legs hit the base of the open window. A moment later, he found himself looking up at the sky.
It took exactly 3.1 seconds for Clay III’s body to travel the 103-foot distance from the top of the lighthouse to the ground below, his watch stopping at the precise moment of impact to mark the time of death—11:59:47—thirteen seconds before his fiftieth birthday ended.
It seemed to Onyx that allowing Clay III’s dead body to be found at the base of the lighthouse was a bad idea. Too many questions. Questions she couldn’t answer. Or didn’t want to answer.
Besides, if it were found here, the authorities would want to come inside the lighthouse. And that was out of the question. No, the body would need to be moved to where it could be discovered without any suggestion she was involved. Or buried so it would not be found at all.
Burying the body came with its own set of problems. Search parties, with hundreds of volunteers scouring the woods. And there would still be questions: When was the last time you saw the sheriff? Where were you on the night of July 4? Is it okay if we come inside and take a look around?
There was only one logical option.
The cliffs.
It was obvious that Clay III was drunk. Onyx had seen the empty beer cans near her father’s grave earlier. Certainly there would still be alcohol in his system.
Onyx retrieved the wheelbarrow from the shed, grabbed the empty beer cans from the ground next to her father’s grave, and rolled it to where Clay III’s body was.
Onyx knew picking up the man and putting him in the wheelbarrow was impossible—he was far too heavy. So she tipped the wheelbarrow on its side and tried to roll him in.
She couldn’t get enough leverage.
Onyx went back to the shed and located a shovel and a rake. Using them she was able to—gradually, foot by foot—roll the man’s body on its side and up against the wheelbarrow. Then, using all the strength she could muster, she was finally able to right the wheelbarrow with Clay III in it.
It took Onyx thirty minutes to roll Clay III’s body to the edge of the cliffs, stopping every few minutes to rest. Then it took mere seconds to dump the body over the edge.
Onyx dropped several of the empty beer cans near the edge of the cliff. She felt confident that when the body was found, the assumption would be that Clay III had come to watch the fireworks, got drunk, and went over.
Clay III was now the second Daniels man Onyx had dispatched to the rocks below. The first, Hell Daniels, had asked her to do it. Clay III hadn’t.
Onyx was responsible for many deaths in and around the cove over the past fifty-six years. But not this one.
This was Clay III’s own fault.
He’d brought it upon himself.
Quote
“There is no such thing as a lifetime—only a series of moments strung together that matter to us that we call a lifetime. To miss these moments is to miss your life.
The 31 Immutable Matters
of Life & Death
Chapter Thirty-Two
Episode 18: Journey Into Loll
COLLEGE STATION, PENNSYLVANIA
AUGUST 6, 1996
Sixteen months had passed since Pipi Esperanza and Newt changed their flight so Pipi could visit a friend in Oklahoma City.
“I’ll be less than thirty minutes,” Pipi said as she parked the rental car to the curb on NW Seventh Street, two blocks from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on NW Fifth Street. “Are you sure you don’t want to come in?”
“No, I’m good,” Newt said, preferring to sit in the car and read FBI case files over going inside and being forced to engage in small talk with strangers. Pipi closed the car door, smiled at Newt, and walked off.
It was the last time Newt would see her alive.
At 9:02 a.m., the northern third side of the nine-story structure was gone, replaced with a thirty-foot-wide, eight-foot-deep crater—168 confirmed dead.
Newt was in the car when the bomb went off. Had he been looking out the car window, he’d have seen bomber Timothy McVeigh walk past on his way to his escape vehicle parked several blocks away.
Since that day, Newt’s life had been turned upside down. Gone were his days working with Pipi Esperanza. Gone was his access to FBI data on serial murderers and their victims. In fact, the FBI pretended to not even know who Newt was, as if he’d never existed.
Newt’s father suggested he turn his attention to mathematics—a far more lucrative area in which he could make a living—not to mention a better use of his unique intelligence.
The only good thing that came from the bombing—as if such a thing were possible—was the result of a newspaper clipping featuring Timothy McVeigh pinned to Newt’s bedroom wall. It turned out that the visual stimulus of the photo being in plain sight kept Newt from slipping into a frozen state.
It took a while for the members of the Drystad family to get used to having pictures of Charles Albright, David Berkowitz, Richard Ramirez, John Wayne Gacy, and others pinned in every room of the house. But everyone agreed—if it kept Newt focused and alert, it
was worth it.
Newt was extremely unhappy when his father insisted he come to the college with him for the day. “You can’t stay home by yourself, and that’s final,” his father said.
“Nothing’s going to happen, Dad,” Newt said.
“Oh, really? Can you spell Oklahoma City?” Newt’s father asked. It was a rhetorical question that meant Newt was going with him whether he liked it or not.
When they arrived on campus, Newt asked if he could visit his father’s math professor friend over in the McAllister Building. Newt was dropped off—a picture of Hillside Strangler Kenneth Bianchi in hand in case he needed it.
Newt had no sooner than walked through the door when the professor tossed him a Rubik’s Cube from the other side of his desk. “What’s your best time now?”
“Seven seconds,” Newt said.
“Seven seconds? Blindfolded?”
Newt shrugged. “What’s that?” Newt asked, pointing at a piece of paper taped to the wall behind the man’s desk.
“It’s a game called Catch the Spider,” the math professor said. “You ever play Battleship?”
“Yeah, a few times.”
“It’s the same concept, only with spiders,” the math professor said. “You want to see something interesting? Take a look at these.”
The math professor spun his chair around and began typing on the computer keyboard behind his desk. A few seconds later, two different pictures of spider webs came up on the screen. One of the webs was perfectly spun, a symmetrical work of art. The other looked like it had been spun by a drunken sailor.
“What is that?” Newt asked.
“The web on the left was spun by a garden spider,” the math professor said. “And this? This is a web spun by the same spider the next night, only this time the spider was on drugs.”
“Drugs?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a friend who works at NASA,” the math professor said. “They do all kinds of experiments like this—testing the effects of drugs on animals and insects—to see how they might affect an astronaut’s performance in space.”
“What kind of drugs?” Newt asked.
“All kinds. LSD, marijuana, Benzedrine, ketamine,” the math professor said. “And legal compounds, too, like caffeine and alcohol.”
Newt gazed at the pictures on the computer screen, fixating on the web that was woven by the dysfunctional spider. It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t figure out exactly what.
“Newt? You okay?”
“Uh, yeah,” Newt said finally.
“I was afraid you’d slipped into one of your states,” the math professor said.
“No, I’m—could you get me a copy of the research?” Newt asked.
“I’ll do you one better,” the math professor said. “You got a computer at home?”
Newt shook his head. His eyes were still glued to the picture of the spider web on the computer screen.
“Okay, well how about if I set you up on the World Wide Web, and you can access whatever you want on my computer?”
“You’d do that for me?” Newt asked.
“Sure. But you’re going to need a PIN.”
“A pin?”
“A personal identification number, so you can log on by yourself. It’s got to be at least four digits long. Make it something easy to remember, but don’t use your birthday or your street address.”
The math professor hit a few more keys, then moved his chair aside. “Here, just type in the number you want to use, and you’re ready to go.”
Newt came around behind the desk, hesitated for a moment, and then typed in:
5-9-9-8-1
That should be easy enough to remember, Newt thought. Who could forget the tenth, one hundredth, one thousandth, ten thousandth, and hundred thousandth numbers of Pi?
Chapter Thirty-Three
CRIMSON COVE, OREGON
SEPTEMBER 1, 2001
Abigale Dietz watched the image on the wall of the projection room, trying to wrap her brain around what the woman was saying.
The film had been delivered to the theater by someone from the sheriff’s office an hour earlier. “They found it on a shelf in a storage room when they were cleaning out the place,” the man said. “Sheriff Daniels sent me to find out if you wanted it. If not, I’m supposed to toss it.”
Curious, Abigale took the silver film canister to the projection room and dug an old 35 mm projector from the closet. She threaded the film and started the machine.
A woman appeared on the screen. She looked to be in her early- to mid-forties—attractive, yet weary—like someone who’d once been a knockout but hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in years.
A voice offscreen said, “Today is June 28, 1953. My name is George Dietz, and I am filming testimony of a firsthand account of the possible murder of Sheriff Hell Daniels.”
Abigale’s heart skipped a beat. Her father was the person behind the camera. And did he say something about a murder?
“State your full name,” Dietz continued offscreen.
“Claudia Jeanne Spilatro,” the woman said.
“Spell that, please?”
“C-l-a-u-d-i-a. J-e-a-n-n-e. S-p-i-l-a-t-r-o,” the woman recited. “Okay? When do we start?”
“Whenever you’re ready,” Dietz said.
Two hours later, Abigale and her brother, Aaron, sat and watched the film together. The siblings had taken over The Night Owl Theater from their father, George, in the late 1970s, who’d bought the theater from the Spilatro family thirty years before that.
Sadly, the theater itself never made much money. But the annual Crimson Cove Film Festival—an event that attracted thousands of people to the coast for ten days of classic horror movies—was a cash cow. The popcorn receipts alone had been enough to put both Dietz kids through college.
When the film ended, Abigale turned on the lights. “Well?”
“That’s crazy,” Aaron said. “What did Dad say about it?”
“I haven’t talked to him yet,” Abigale said. “I wanted to show it to you first.”
“Where in God’s name did you get this?” George Dietz asked when his son and daughter came over with the film canister.
“The sheriff’s department brought it to the theater. They were going to throw it out,” Abigale said.
“So you know what it is?” Aaron said.
“Of course I do. I shot it,” George said. “You want me to tell you the story?”
Abigale and Aaron sat on the sofa while George took them through the entire Onyx Webb saga—starting from the day Onyx killed her husband by setting him on fire to the night he’d caught Onyx on film in the cemetery, right up to the moment Claudia Spilatro walked into the theater claiming she’d watched Onyx murder Hell Daniels and toss his body over the cliffs.
“I even testified at her trial,” George said. “Trial of the century—well, up until OJ, that is.”
“How come you never told us any of this?” Abigale asked.
“Why would I? It was all ancient history by the time the two of you were born,” George said. “That and maybe I got a bit tired of people treating me like I was the town fool. Though I probably deserved it. I did go out of my way to make a spectacle of myself.”
“Is this the Onyx Webb out in the lighthouse?” Aaron asked.
“One in the same,” George said. “Got to be over a hundred by now.”
“You know, I made a whole movie about this. In fact, that’s what helped launch the film festival,” George Dietz said. “I’ll show it to you, if you’d like.”
The following morning, Abigale Dietz went to her brother with a plan. “What if we did a special sixtieth anniversary of the Onyx Webb trial film festival? Featuring original footage by legendary local filmmaker George Dietz.”
“When did Dad say the trial was?”
“January 1942,” Abigale said.
“If we do this, we’ve got to do it right,” Aaron said. “Banners, flyers, bag inserts—”
&n
bsp; “No, we go even bigger,” Abigale said.
“Bigger how?”
“A national advertising campaign. I’m talking full-page ads in newspapers, magazines, maybe even some thirty-second spots on network and cable TV shows with our target demo,” Abigale said.
“Do we have that kind of money?”
“Dad always said we could use the equity in the house if we ever came up with the right idea,” Abigale said. “And this is a no-brainer.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
OCTOBER 17, 2010
The limousine carrying Gerylyn Stoller—and her nephew, Reginald—arrived at the Mulvaney mansion just before five in the evening and was met by Stormy Boyd.
Even with their billions, the Mulvaneys had never engaged the services of a formal butler. And while it was not Stormy’s responsibility, he insisted on helping Gerylyn and Reginald with their bags. After all, it was the polite, Southern thing to do. It also provided the opportunity to size-up anyone staying overnight in the mansion.
“I can take my bags from here,” Gerylyn said when they reached her room on the second floor.
“Very well. Dinner will be at seven,” Stormy said. “And if you’ll come with me, Reggie, your room is—”
“Reggie?” Reginald was quick to respond. “My name isn’t Reggie. It’s Reginald.”
“Mind your manners, Reginald,” Gerylyn snapped. “I’m quite certain Mr. Boyd meant no disrespect.”
“Of course not, and I apologize,” Stormy said. “Come with me, Reginald. I’m sure you’ll find your room quite satisfactory.”
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