She cocks her head to one side, and I try to hold her gaze steady.
My mind tracks back to one of my piecemeal memories salvaged by Dr. Koftura.
The free lunch form.
Is that what this all goes back to? My growling stomach embarrassing me in front of the kids whose faces I don’t remember? To lumpy mashed potatoes and canned corn and chicken nuggets?
“Can’t you just picture her selling it? Marlene had many faults—many—but she knew how to sell things. The mix had Fentanyl in it, of course, and he overdosed. The next day I found him in the bathroom at home with a needle in his arm.” She picks up the gun from her lap and waves it in the air with a sharp jab of her arm. “Correction—I didn’t find him. Our daughter, who was three years old at the time, did.
“She felt terrible—oh so terrible.” Dr. Koftura whips her eyes to the lifeless body on the floor. “Your mother, that is. And she had all sorts of plans for how to make it up to me. But then she ended up in prison.” Sarcasm invades Dr. Koftura’s voice. “She must have really felt awful, because after she got out of prison she found me again. Marlene had this bright idea to use me as a front for fake painkiller prescriptions. Make me a ton of money, she said. But I was already using Jawinder’s old prescription pad to write fake scripts to help cover the debts he left when he died. So no, I didn’t want to follow Marlene’s plan. I had a better one. I just didn’t tell her that.”
Dr. Koftura tilts her head back and blinks rapidly. There’s no way she’s going to cry in front of me, I think. But then she does.
“My husband was ill, and she took advantage of him. She ruined my life!” She shouts it out into the room, and the crying has made her voice deeper. She stands up quickly and rushes over to my mother’s body. With her right leg, she kicks into the stomach of my dead mother.
“You ruined my life!” she shouts into the dense air of the room. Her foot makes a soft thudding sound, and I turn my head away from the wretchedness of it all.
I let out a sob; only part of it is forced.
“So I was left with no husband, no income to maintain our lifestyle, and two young children. What would you have done?” She’s not asking me. Not really.
“Your mother—your family—needed to pay. It was easy, becoming your doctor. Right place, right time. And your amnesia was so very convenient. Plus I knew all the tricks to keep it there, to hard-set it in your brain as it healed itself. By the time I was done with you, you couldn’t remember your mother’s face, your brother’s existence, or what the car looked like when it hit you.”
She comes down, her face level with mine. I flinch. “I’m a fantastic doctor.”
Her breath is minty and fresh. The gun smells like rain on asphalt.
“So then came the waiting. What I wanted to do would take years. Partly because your mother was going to be in prison for a long time—all those new drug laws requiring extended sentences for dealing—and partly because I needed both you and your brother to grow up.”
Dr. Koftura has the gun slung low at her side as she paces back and forth across the floorboards, careful not to step in my mother’s blood.
“Finally, this past summer I got my chance. I’d known all along that I would get Justin to go along with hurting you, because he’d never forgiven you for causing him to be separated from your mother. Getting hit by that car—” She turns her gaze back on me, and our eyes lock. “My car—was the final stroke that set your family, such as it was, scattering to foster care, group homes, and prison. I encouraged Justin, through my work with him, to reach out to Marlene. She was the only woman he ever really loved. Now, I don’t pretend to understand their relationship, but it was clear that he would do anything to make her happy. So that left Marlene—sure, she was angry about what had happened to your family and to her drug business, but Marlene was still a mother. Can you believe that? She still cared about you?”
My mother’s face flashes up in front of me, her mouth forming those two words just before she lunged at Dr. Koftura. “I’m sorry.”
“And then, the final piece came together for me. A gift, from you. You wrote that op-ed for the Plain Dealer, and you described your ‘resilience’—God, such a cliché word—and about how you managed to survive foster care and the system by working hard, studying, staying off drugs, blah blah blah. You’re a walking inspiration. And you could have left it at that, you know. But no, you had to include a little piece of extra information, and I’m going to paraphrase here.” She clears her throat. “‘And if I can do this without a mother or father caring for me, just imagine what children can do if they are given long-term caregivers through the child welfare system.’”
She points a finger at me, the one not holding the gun. “And it was that sentence that made Marlene realize you weren’t pining for Mommy dearest. That you hadn’t given any credit to her for your life. Not an ounce. She actually still thought of herself as your mother.” She turns her head towards Marlene’s lifeless and stiffening body. “At least, until I read that article to her.”
She goes on. “And that article helped as well, because it included all your contact information. Who knew Twitter could be such a great research tool?”
My mind is thrown off. I’d been following along, but Twitter? I don’t understand, and I let it show across my face.
“You look so confused? Such a millennial. Here, let me explain.” Dr. Koftura puts her hands together, gun between them, as if she’s talking to a small child. “We couldn’t risk you not falling for Justin, so he became the perfect boyfriend. We studied all your posts and figured out exactly what you wanted. He was just playing at being your ideal man. The boy had a gift.”
A tinge of wistfulness colors Dr. Koftura’s voice as she says that last part. My stomach goes rigid as she adds one more betrayal to Justin’s collection.
I’m having trouble focusing my eyes. The blood along my temple is hardening into a thick crust as shock sets in. My body is betraying me as it starts to shut down. I have to stifle a yawn.
Of course, Dr. Koftura notices.
“Listen to me jabbering on.” She glances at her watch. “We’ve got no time to lose. We need to make sure the rigor between you and your mother is relatively close in timing. I’ll be right back.” And she actually winks again as she heads to the kitchen.
An unexpected surge of humiliation, shame, and radioactive anger all mix together inside me at once, counter to my body’s attempt to heal itself, and threatens to suffocate me in the best way possible. Revived for the moment, I set to what I do best—surviving.
Keep her talking.
“Did you tell Justin to list you in his phone as ‘Mom’?” I ask.
This makes Dr. Koftura pause and come back over to me.
“That was a little bit I’m rather proud of. When he and I were finalizing our plans—that afternoon where you were searching out Justin for lunch, you remember? And he wouldn’t tell you where he was? I had him give his phone to me for a minute, supposedly because I wanted to make sure that the three of us—Justin, Marlene, and I—were all synced up, and while I had it I simply changed the label on the contact to my burner phone.”
I think back to that afternoon, where I was frantically searching for Justin and convincing myself that he was lying about something, and my fear that I was regressing into some paranoid delusion.
She goes on, “I also added the Find Your Friends app, so I could follow you in the car the entire time from the comfort of my living room couch and let him know exactly where to pull off. Except, I called when you were both going up the mountain with plenty of drop-offs, which was not where we’d originally planned. And, as I’m sure you can guess by now, Justin always listened to his mother.”
Next question.
“Was it your idea to have Justin unbuckle his seat belt? Just before the crash?”
Dr. Koftura shrugs her shoulders. “He was supposed to unbuckle yours. I don’t know why he did what he did. Men are weak.” And I imagine
her picturing her addict husband between us, because her face softens for a moment. But then she’s back. “Even psychopaths feel guilt sometimes.”
“Do you?” I’m getting reckless. Twitchy. Hold on, Morgan, I tell myself.
She gives me a withering stare. “I’m not complaining. Having him dead makes less work for me in the end. Besides, he’d left everything behind that I needed him to. Those messages between him and Annie were the perfect link to tie everything together. All it took was a suggestion from me, a few fake accounts set up by Justin, and a pic of Annie snatched off her Facebook page.”
My chest spasms like I’ve been punched. For a few moments, I can’t breathe. I picture Annie, bleeding on my bedroom floor, and despair threatens to swallow me whole.
If those messages were fake, then Annie was on my side this entire time.
But wait, I remember, what about the photo of her and Justin together? Something catches inside my head.
“Did you tell Justin to go visit Annie?” I ask.
Koftura lets out a long sigh. She’s getting bored. “Yes, I did. A little back-up ammunition, you know, to help sever your ties to anyone who might care about you.”
Annie. Poor Annie.
I want to rip at Dr. Koftura with my teeth, call her a bitch and tell her to go fuck herself, but I have to stay calm.
Then a wave of nausea hits me with the force of an avalanche. My head lolls onto my chin for a second, but I fight my body’s pull to oblivion.
I manage to compose another question, hoping this one might settle Dr. Koftura back into gazing at her own brilliance.
“Why have Marlene text those messages to me from Justin’s phone? Why not send them yourself?”
But the question doesn’t have my intended effect. The change in Dr. Koftura’s face is immediate.
“What do you mean?” For the first time, her voice betrays something she hadn’t anticipated me saying.
She’s surprised.
A fresh surge of adrenaline pumps through my battered body.
“Marlene was texting me from Justin’s phone, saying she could help me. I thought that was part of your plan.”
“Where is it?” she starts to scramble around, searching the pockets of Marlene’s body, her gloves getting covered in the viscous blood that has cooled over the floorboards. “Where’s his phone? That fucking bitch!” she yells.
Her hands come up empty.
Which means my phone isn’t on Marlene, either.
But Dr. Koftura doesn’t notice. Instead, she stands up, gun still in her hand, and runs into the kitchen, shuffling through what sounds like a bag. I hear her talking to herself. “I thought it was destroyed in the crash. I didn’t think to look. Stupid. Stupid.”
And this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. I throw my shoulder blades against the brittle wicker of the chair, and a satisfying crack emanates from the backboard. My hands are free and I quickly undo the ropes around my wrists. I don’t have time to untie my legs, and so I settle on snapping the wicker seat down the middle in order to pull my legs individually out of the rope ties. My heart throttles against my chest and I feel dizzy. I almost tip over, and have to remind myself, as my thoughts simultaneously race along at warp speed and slow down to the point of incoherence, that I have a fucking head wound.
I stand up, and just as I gain my balance, she is there, her face only inches from mine. Hard metal presses into my chest, the round nib of the gun’s muzzle denting the flesh underneath my collarbone. Where my heart is tapping out its final message.
Checkmate.
I’ve lost.
I rush to move away from her, but Dr. Koftura grips my hair and jerks my head back so far that I can’t keep my balance. I start to fall backwards, but she stops me just before I pitch over. Her arms are stronger than I’d think, considering her small frame.
“Lie down,” she says, her voice like an icy stream running over me.
I lie down, her gloved hand still on my head. She twists the knot of hair at the base of my skull to the left, so the side of my temple that Marlene struck is exposed.
“Close your eyes,” she says.
All her body weight is on me now, her legs straddling my waist. Justin’s phone forgotten for the time being, one glance at her face shows how emboldened she is now that her plan, twenty years in the making, is finally coming to its conclusion. She is jacked up and glittering with anticipation. But, in her excitement, she’s made one significant mistake.
My arms are free.
I close my eyes and feel the muzzle of the gun lift from my chest for a moment, and then the pressure of its metal aperture is pressed to my temple. Even with all I’ve already been through, even knowing what I’m about to do, the connection of metal to my bare skin makes me tremble.
I am docile as a child, my breath coming in quick bursts. She reaches for my right hand—
just like I’m expecting her to—and puts all her weight on my shoulder joint to limit my mobility.
“This won’t hurt a bit,” she says into my ear, but her voice falters on the last word. Uncertainty echoes through the room. Maybe there’s a tinge of regret. Her hands loosen on my mine, only for a second. But a second is all that I need.
I swing my left arm over her body and onto the back of her neck, making a swift survey of her vertebrae and jamming my fingers into the soft place between spine and skull. I know it will disorient her, because it’s the same pressure point I learned to use in those self-defense classes Patty and Dave signed me up for all those years ago. But jabbing is not enough to knock her unconscious. Only enough to distract her.
She flinches from the discomfort caused by my fingers sliding into the pressure point, and her weight on my shoulder is relieved just enough for me to wrap my right arm around her neck to marry with my left arm. I grab her throat, and with every ounce of strength left in me, I throw her off me. Her small body comes crashing down next to Marlene’s, her stomach flat on the ground, and the right side of her shirt is immersed in the pool of blood.
I am on top of her now. I grab her head in the proper hold, my knee braced against her shoulder, and a small portion of time passes until her body goes limp underneath me. I allow myself to take a deep breath. And then another.
Just as I am stepping away towards the kitchen, hoping to find my mother’s phone or some other way to call for help, I hear another voice shout from the door.
“Police! Hands where I can see them!”
I don’t know where the gun has gone.
41
In the dim light, I stand with my arms above my head, waiting for the police officers to appear. My mind is trying to understand how they found us, why they are here, and what this whole rotting mess must look like to them.
I stay perfectly still, hands in the air.
And then from the kitchen, I see a black leather sleeve emerge with strong hands level to the ground, gun drawn. As the figure moves forward further, it’s the familiar face of Detective Miller that appears. Behind her is Detective Ormoran, also with her gun drawn. I watch as they take in the scene in front of them. When our eyes finally meet, Miller’s are cool and glassy, but Ormoran’s—the best word I can think to describe the way she looks at me is shattered. Utterly shattered.
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Ormoran says, her body tense as she steps into the room. “What happened here, Morgan?” No “Dr. Kalson” when there are two bodies in the room.
Her gaze travels over the body of Marlene, and then rests on Dr. Koftura’s. From the distance she’s at, I know it’s not likely she’ll be able to see the doctor’s chest moving up and down.
I start to explain that Dr. Koftura is just unconscious, but there is a sudden scramble from the floor and the three of us watch as Dr. Koftura stands. For the detectives, I imagine it’s as though she’s rising from the dead.
Even in the gauzy light trickling through the makeshift curtains, it’s clear she has the gun in her hand. It must have fallen undern
eath her when I forced her to the ground, and a shock of shame runs through me for not having checked the most obvious place.
I am still standing with my hands held high when Ormoran takes control. “Jana, put the gun down. Let’s talk about this.”
Dr. Koftura’s arm shakes, but her face is carved from stone. “I don’t want to talk about anything.” She swings the gun in the air, and then rests it behind her head with her arms pulled back, like she’s trying to catch her breath after a long and intense sprint.
Ormoran and Miller follow her hands with their own guns.
Miller echoes Ormoran’s demands, shouting for Dr. Koftura to put the gun down. “Or I’ll have to shoot you,” she adds.
“What does it matter?” Dr. Koftura says, her voice hoarse between sobs that are now wracking her body. “There’s nothing you can do for me. You can’t bring him back. Nothing will bring him back.”
Dr. Koftura puts her hands out in front of her, as though she is about to let go of her hold on the gun. Ormoran and Miller start to ease up, the tension in their shoulders shrugging off slightly.
“I failed. I’m a failure,” Dr. Koftura says quietly.
She looks at me.
“It was always you,” she says, the hatred in her eyes burning my skin.
I want to scream out to her that I was just a little girl. A growing, desperate, lonely little girl. That I was starving, inside and out.
But I don’t get the chance.
In a burst of movement, Dr. Koftura swings the gun back up, a grimace of pain traveling across her face as she tries to raise her arm and train the barrel on me. There is a sudden and violent crack that echoes through the room, and then a split second later a second burst of sound. A biting sting races across my shoulder, where the bullet from Dr. Koftura’s gun grazes me.
It Was Always You Page 22