by J. D. Barker
“You’re all set, sir,” Suzy said, back behind the cash register. “That will be five hundred twenty-three dollars and eighty-seven cents.”
I stood, pulled out my money clip, and peeled off seven crisp hundred-dollar bills. “Please divide what’s left over among the people who worked on the car.”
Suzy’s grin widened. “Thank you! Come back soon.”
A heavy yawn rolled over me and I realized I hadn’t slept in nearly a full day. I’d need some rest for what was to come.
I pulled out of Devil in the Detail and made a right on Alameda heading toward the freeway, resisting the urge to wave at the growing number of law enforcement officers across the street.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Dobbs
Hey, Gimble? What do you make of this?”
The shout came from Special Agent Vela inside the storage unit.
Dobbs and Gimble found Vela in the back corner. “How old was Kepler when he was adopted?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” Dobbs said. “We put in a warrant for the records this morning, but the judge kicked it back. Cited relevance. Why?”
“This box, it’s packed full of old uniforms for an orphanage called Windham Hall. Got everything from toddler sizes all the way up to adult size pants. I’ve got three problems with all this. The first is why would Kepler have any of them? Orphanages recycle clothing—something doesn’t fit, it goes to someone else. You don’t keep old uniforms. And two, I got the impression he was adopted at a young age. Why would he have these large sizes?”
Gimble looked up at Dobbs. “Did he mention a place called Windham Hall to you?”
Dobbs shook his head.
She turned back to Vela. “You said three problems. What’s number three?”
Vela reached into the box with his gloved hands and pulled out a pair of pants. The material was in tatters, nearly shredded. “I think someone cut these up. A few are in this condition, shirts too.”
Gimble knelt down beside him to get a closer look. “Do you think they belong to victims?”
“I’ll have them tested, but I see no outward signs of human trauma, no blood, no staining of any kind. Just the cutting.”
Wilkins tapped Dobbs on the shoulder. “I just got a call on a car fire down at the fish market—a blue Ford Escort. Sounds like Kepler’s attorney’s car. There’s a body.”
Chapter Thirty
Written Statement,
Megan Fitzgerald
I’m not proud of this, Jessica, but I think you’ll understand—you freaked me out. Who wouldn’t be freaked out? This happened before I got to know you, realized what a kind and generous person you are. Your sense of fashion may need a little work, but that’s neither here nor there. I was more concerned with protecting my brother and my own butt at this point. Can’t fault a girl for that, right?
My phone rang twice while I was still in Dr. Bart’s office, one more time while I was making my way back through the house, carefully avoiding Ms. Neace and her roving vacuum, a stack of patient files in my hands.
California number.
Not the number belonging to Michael’s new phone.
The third time my phone rang, the caller finally left a message rather than hanging up.
Inside my room, I set the files on my bed, quickly closed the door, and listened to the voice mail.
“Megan Fitzgerald, my name is Special Agent Jessica Gimble. I’m with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and I need you to call me back immediately at this number regarding your brother.”
I deleted the message.
(Sorry, Jessica!)
Michael was right. They knew my phone number. If they knew my phone number, they could use my phone records to get Michael’s number. Burner phone or not, they could probably trace his phone once they had the number.
I started keying in a text, then thought better of it. They’d see that, right? Cops in the movies always find stuff like that.
I deleted the text and called Michael instead.
Got his voice mail and left a quick message.
Wait. Would they be able to get the voice mail? I was getting nervous and sloppy. Live calls only!
I dropped the phone on my bed and went back to the files. I’d used a letter opener from Dr. Bart’s desk to open the lock on his file cabinet. The older metal bent a little bit, but nobody would be able to tell I’d jimmied it. The damage could easily have come from years of wear and tear.
Dr. Bart had hundreds of files. No way I could take them all.
Nothing for Roland Eads or the fake name the man had used, Philip Wardwell.
He did have a file on Alyssa Tepper. Not very thick. Not much more information than he had in my file. I pulled out both and set them on the desk. Dr. Bart had two files on Michael; one was labeled Michael Kepler/Fitzgerald and the second said M. Kepler. I took both of those too.
I set Michael’s files down on the desk beside my own and Alyssa’s. The names lined up and that’s when I noticed that each was marked with a small blue dot, barely a smudge. I quickly thumbed my way through the rest of the drawer, pulling every file with a blue dot. Eleven in total, counting mine, Alyssa’s, and Michael’s.
I started with Alyssa’s.
Alyssa Rena Tepper, court-ordered to seek therapy after a series of shoplifting incidents back in 2008. She was fifteen. She’d taken clothing, mostly, from a few high-end boutiques in New York City.
Rookie. If you’re gonna steal clothes, everyone knows you hit a big department store.
Dr. Bart’s notes were vague. Alyssa had seen him half a dozen times, completing the court order. He attributed her thefts to her recently broken home—her parents had divorced a year earlier. She was acting out. Wanted attention. Blah-blah. So predictable.
Three pages of notes, and that included his standard patient record sheet filled with useless data.
I dropped Alyssa’s file and grabbed another.
Cassandra Shatley.
Boring.
Nineteen, suffering from depression and anxiety issues. You and every other sophomore. Cry me a river, Cassie. Four pages of notes, nothing but broad-stroke clinical analysis. No real opinion. Just a recap of each session. Boyfriend problems, self-esteem issues. A photo was clipped to the inside of the folder—pretty girl, with dark, curly hair, hazel eyes, nice smile. According to the notes, Dr. Bart saw her five times in total over a two-month period back in 2009.
Nicole Milligan, nineteen, date-raped at a frat party. Disgusting, but common. I’ve been to my share of frat parties. She’d filed charges. Good for her. Dr. Bart had encouraged her to move on with her life, put the incident in her past, not let it rule what she could become. Eight sessions in 2010, then nothing.
Darcey Haas.
Issac Dorrough.
Selena Hennis.
Jeffery Longtin.
Katrina Nickols.
All more of the same. Typical problems, sparse notes, dating back nearly a decade.
My file was even worse. No notes at all, only a copy of my adoption records. No secrets there—Dr. Bart had given me a copy when I was nine.
Like mine, the Kepler/Fitzgerald folder had nothing but a copy of Michael’s adoption records (which Dr. Bart had given to Michael and which Michael had shared with me), no notes. The M. Kepler file was a duplicate.
Fuck. Either Dr. Bart took shitty notes or he purposely left stuff out and just wrote enough to get by. Double fuck. I’d just risked God knows what to get these, and there wasn’t a single bit of useful information in any of them!
My phone rang. I snatched it up.
It was you again, but my only thought was FBI! FBI! Oh, shit, FBI!
I clicked on Decline, then bounced through the call menu and selected Block This Caller.
Double fuck.
My MacBook was on my nightstand. I grabbed it, opened the lid, and waited a moment for the computer to come to life. From the launchpad at the bottom of the screen, I clicked on the calculator icon, which loade
d my Tor browser. Most people use Safari or Chrome. Smart people use Tor. The Tor browser hides your identity with something called onion routing, encrypting traffic and randomly bouncing communication through relays around the globe. According to the information box in the right corner of my screen, I was currently in Munich, Germany.
Dr. Rose scrolled through my browser history the way some people scroll through Facebook, so I used Chrome and Safari for school and communication with friends and used Tor, hidden safely behind the calculator icon, for anything I didn’t want her to see. I wasn’t building bombs or anything, but a girl’s got her secrets and a right to privacy.
I keyed Alyssa Tepper into the search box.
The screen filled with about a dozen stories, all rehashed pieces of what Michael had told me. Photos of her apartment building. A photo of Michael under the headline “Escape from LAPD?” Nothing new there.
I typed in Nicole Milligan, the girl Dr. Bart had treated after her rape. Over a million results came up. The first few were typical—Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter—because it was such a common name. On the image tab, there were hundreds of pictures, so many different girls. Hopeless.
I flipped through Dr. Bart’s files and pulled out Cassandra Shatley’s. Her file had a photograph. Her name also brought up a zillion results. This time, I went straight to the image tab and scrolled through the pictures—I found her on page 3. Not the same photograph, but the same girl, older by at least ten years. A woman now. There was no mistaking her sharp nose and hazel eyes and curly hair, although she wore it a little shorter than she had in college.
I clicked on the picture.
CASSANDRA SHATLEY, TWENTY-SEVEN, FOUND SUFFOCATED IN HER WILLIAMS, ARIZONA, HOME
The story was a little over a year old.
Shatley was discovered by her boyfriend of three years in the kitchen of their two-bedroom apartment in the Canton District, her hands and feet bound with strips of a towel, a plastic garbage bag over her head and twisted tight at her neck. The boyfriend, Russel Logan, 36, was quickly ruled out as a suspect; several employees and patrons of Hooligan’s Bar and Grill, where Logan works as a bartender, confirmed his whereabouts for six hours leading up to the estimated time of death.
The story went on to say the police had no leads. There were several follow-up stories over the next month, then nothing.
I had less trouble finding Darcey Haas, more of a unique name. My throat tightened as I read through the first of many links. Repeatedly thrown down the stairs until her neck broke.
My God.
Selena Hennis.
Issac Dorrough.
Both dead too. Both murdered.
When Ms. Neace knocked on my door, I nearly fell off my bed. “What?” The single word came out harsher than I’d meant it to. “Sorry, just changing clothes. What do you need?”
“I’ve got to get in there to clean,” Ms. Neace said, her voice muffled by the door.
“Give me a second.” I made a list of all the names on the files with blue dots, then gathered up the folders and hid them in a box at the back of my closet under my high-school yearbooks.
I grabbed my MacBook and called for an Uber as I passed our housekeeper and went down the stairs.
“You can clean now! Sorry, gotta go!” I called out behind me.
I’d finish this downtown.
I needed to buy a new cell.
Then I needed to get my pain-in-the-ass brother on the phone.
Chapter Thirty-One
Michael
It might have been the lines on the road racing past me at seventy-two miles an hour. I didn’t remember leaving the I-10 for I-15 North. I barely remembered leaving Los Angeles two hours earlier. Hell, even getting dressed back at my storage unit, I hadn’t been thinking; at first I’d put my watch on my right wrist rather than my left.
The car swerved for the third time, rolling over the rumble strips along the shoulder and slapping me awake.
Shortly after that, I pulled into a rest stop just past the I-40 East interchange, parked in the far back corner, killed the motor, and closed my eyes.
My eyes didn’t open again for another two hours, not until the deep bellow of a tractor trailer’s horn yanked me from my dreamless sleep. I got out of the car and went into the building, used the toilet, splashed water on my face, and returned to the car.
Alyssa Tepper, the police, all the events of the past twenty-four hours seemed like some distant memory or a nightmare.
On the seat beside me sat Roland Eads’s driver’s license and my cell phone; I’d missed three calls from Megan and had no service.
Next to the phone was the cassette tape I’d found in Eads’s briefcase.
Dark room—M. Kepler—August 12, 1996.
Dr. Bart’s handwriting.
His voice was on that tape, waiting to talk to me from beyond the grave. This man I so wanted out of my life—his fingers were in the doorjamb, prying it open.
I started the Porsche and got back on I-40.
With my speed hovering in the low seventies and Needles, California, less than two hours away, I finally reached for that tape and slipped it into the Porsche’s cassette player, knowing if I didn’t do it right then, I never would.
The tape hissed.
Static.
The crackle of someone moving the recorder?
His voice then, deep. The Porsche speakers rumbled. “This is Dr. Barton Fitzgerald. The date is August 12, 1996. Initial patient therapy session with Michael Ryan Kepler, age four. Although placed due to recent traumatic events in the custody of Windham Hall, he has been remanded by the courts to my personal care and transported by me and my wife, a practicing clinical psychologist, from Windham to our home yesterday afternoon. Although he answered questions—none regarding the incident—he made no effort to communicate unless prompted. He does smile when joked with, but he appears to do so out of politeness rather than a genuine response to humor. The boy is clearly intelligent. Not only was he able to name the current president, but he performed simple math—addition, subtraction, and even multiplication—with relative ease. He understood the concept of division but struggled to answer the several problems we put forth. Still, rather astounding for his age and challenged upbringing.
“Upon arriving at our home, he was shown to his room and permitted to rest until dinner at six, at which time he joined my wife and myself for probably the first balanced meal of his life—yogurt-marinated chicken with mushrooms and sweet potatoes and chocolate mousse for dessert. He devoured all as if he’d gone unfed for months. Following dinner, he was bathed and returned to his room, where I observed him periodically via a closed-circuit video system installed for this purpose. He remained awake until approximately four in the morning, at which time he finally drifted off into a fitful sleep.
“On the surface, Kepler appears relatively unscathed, willing and able to go through the motions of life. Today’s session will mark my first with Kepler regarding his mother, Janel Kepler, and her boyfriend, one Maxwell Pullen. I’ve decided to conduct this discussion in the dark room in an effort to minimize outside stimuli and mitigate any apprehension he may harbor when speaking with an adult or authority figure.”
Dr. Bart cleared his throat, then continued. “As per my agreement with the New York State Police, Cortland County law enforcement, and the Department of Child Services, copies of all records related to the treatment of Kepler will be sealed. At my discretion, and taking into consideration all aspects of doctor/patient confidentiality upon drafting, summary reports will be provided to Judge Henry Larson of the Twelfth Circuit. Unless ordered by an appropriate court, copies of these reports may be provided to the aforementioned parties only if deemed necessary to the open investigation by Judge Larson and cleared by my office. As both his doctor and legal guardian, I restate here for the record: Kepler is a minor placed in my care by the courts. Sharing of information related to his care without my express written consent is a criminal offense, and I will not h
esitate to prosecute anyone who violates that sanctity.”
There was an audible click followed by a pop as Dr. Bart either paused the tape or stopped and restarted the recorder.
The next voice I heard was my own—thin, quiet, and distant. An unsure child.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and remembered to breathe as I turned up the volume.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Michael
Why do we have to sit in the dark?”
“Do you like the dark?”
“Sometimes.”
“I like the dark,” Dr. Bart said. Although still the voice I knew so well, the hard edge had dropped away, as so often happens when an adult speaks to a child. “I find it easier to talk in the dark. Only your voice and my voice. Nothing else. Two grown-ups having a conversation.”
“The dark is scary.”
“It can be,” Dr. Bart agreed. “But it can also be comforting, like a thick, warm blanket. What we can’t see can’t hurt us.”
“That’s not true.”
“This room is the safest place in the world. I promise you that. You have nothing to fear here. Whatever you say here, in this place, will remain between us. And I want you to understand that you can ask me anything and tell me anything. Think of me as your best friend. Someone you can trust.”
“You’re a shrink. Mama said never to talk to shrinks.”
“She did, did she?”
“She said shrinks want to take me away from her, and if they ask me questions, I’m not supposed to answer.”
Dr. Bart sighed. “Well, if you don’t answer, it will be hard for you and I to get to know each other.”
“I don’t want to get to know you.”
“I’d like to know you.”
“I want my mama. Where is Mama?”
“She’s gone, son.”