Girls on Film

by Gregg Olsen

  Think. Think.

  “You only have three chances and if you don’t get it right we’ll need to arrange for the bank manager to create you a new one. He’s a real stickler for security around here”

  I know I’ll like the bank manager even less than Unibrow, who by the way, is now in my personal top five of all annoying people. Number one is Miley Cyrus.

  I punch in my brother’s birthday. Again, nothing. Don’t parents routinely use their kids’ birthdays for such things? We don’t have a dog, so using an animal’s name isn’t going to be it.

  “Let’s go see the manager,” he says. A slight smile on his face indicates that he’s happy that I can’t remember the code. He must want to go on a smoke break, because he smells like an ashtray to me.

  Then it comes to me. My mind flashes to the day that my mom and dad set up the router for our internet connection. The password they used was the same one they used on everything— whenever anything required some kind of security code.

  “Wait!” I say. “I have it”

  My finger goes to the keypad and I hit the following letters and numbers LY4E1234.

  Love you forever and a digit for each member of our family.

  Stupid me. Mom told me over and over that our family password for our router, security system, even internet shopping account was always the same.

  A green light flickers on the keypad display. I let out a very quiet sigh of relief.

  Unibrow looks me over and inserts his passkey. And he leads me inside. It’s a surprisingly large space with row upon row of shiny brass-fronted drawers. A table fills the center space.

  Three beams of light fall on its glossy black surface.

  He looks in my direction but I pay no attention.

  Instead, my eyes scan for Box 2443, the number on the key. I insert the little brass key and the box is released from the wall. I’m not really sure what’s inside it, but my parents have told me that everything I need is there.

  “All righty then,” Unibrow says. “I’ll leave you to your box. Buzz me when you want to get out of our little prison”

  He says the words with a smile and I know it is supposed to be a joke that he uses all the time. But I don’t return his attempt at humor with a smile or anything that resembles a lighthearted response. Instead, my eyes stick like a magnet to steel on an envelope—the first of many filling the box.

  On the outside of the large white envelope is an inscription in my mother’s handwriting.

  For my daughter’s eyes only.

  I quickly notice that there is a second envelope with another recipient in mind.

  For my son’s eyes only.

  I wonder if this is in case I’m taken or killed. It sends a current of uneasiness through my body. I know without any uncertainty that my mom and my stepdad had considered I might be a casualty of their choices, their lives. I open the first envelope, the one marked for me—and my eyes only. I’ll save Hayden’s for another time. I can barely breathe. My stomach is the nest of snakes in the bottom of that pit in the old Indiana Jones DVD that Hayden made me watch at least eight hundred times. Dad is dead. Murdered. Mom is missing. And for some reason I’m expecting to find answers—and comfort—in the contents of a letter.

  Inside is yet another envelope, imprinted with a warning.

  Do not read this in front of the bank employees. There is a camera in the corner of the room. Turn your back to the camera before you read any more.

  I know my mother very, very well. She doesn’t want anyone to see my reaction. She wants me to protect myself. I slowly turn away from the steady red light of the camera. For the first time, I notice how cold the air is in that hermetically sealed room. I shiver as I find my fingertips under the flap of the envelope. I tear it open.

  Honey.

  If you are reading the letter then I am gone. As I write this I don’t know what exactly that might really mean. It is one of two possibilities. He has captured me or he has killed me. I know you will want to find out where I am, if I’m alive. I know that I cannot stop you from doing so. I am sorry that there is very little here to tell you where I might be. I have put some information into some other envelopes. I want you to take those along with this when you leave. Do not show any of it to anyone. If you do, not only will I die, you probably will too. Please sit down. There is a chair on the other side of this room.

  I stop reading and drag the black leather chair closer to the gleaming black table with the open safe deposit box. One wheel is stuck and the chair refuses to go in a straight line. My knees feel a little weak and I’m grateful for the chair as I slide into its icy cushions. I feel that shiver once more and I shake it off. I want to thank Mom, as though her letter is part of a conversation. But it isn’t. It is a message, a request. Maybe an edict. I won’t know unless I read on. I don’t want to, though. It’s like I’m in a car, driving past the worst, bloodiest car accident ever. I know that what I’ll see will freak me out, shock me forever.

  My mother doesn’t disappoint.

  Honey, I have lied to you. I didn’t mean for my lies to spin out of control and frame so much of our lives. You have to believe me when I say that being a liar isn’t what I set out to be. I lied because it was the only course of action to save you, save me, save Hayden. I used to think that by ignoring the truth just maybe a little of my nightmare would go away. Pay attention to my words and remember the need for forgiveness. It is real. It is the only way to salvation.

  The man who we have been running from our entire lives was not a jilted boyfriend. Not a stalker. At least not the kind of stalker that you—or I—could ever imagine. I felt as though you only needed to know a part of the story. You were so young when I started telling you the story, that I knew you would believe it. Two words here. Forgiveness and strength. For you to survive you must embrace both.

  MY MIND RACES BACK TO a conversation my mother and I had when I was around eleven. Maybe twelve. We were sitting outside on the back patio watching fireflies as they zipped through the lowest hanging branches of a big oak that spread over our entire backyard like it was protecting us. I loved that tree so much. When we moved that time, I vowed I’d live in a place again someday with a tree that had branches that functioned like caring arms. That afternoon a news story came on TV talking about a gun battle between members of a cult and law enforcement authorities. It stayed on my mind well past dinner.

  “Sometimes I feel like those kids on TV,” I said.

  Mom looked at me, the light from the flame of a small citronella candle playing off her beautiful, even features.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “The cult kids,” I said a little tentatively. Not because I felt tentative about what I was saying, but because I felt like I was lighting a fuse. “They are born into something. Their parents wanted to be a part of something. They didn’t have a choice”

  She looked at me with those penetrating eyes of hers, and then returned her attention to the fireflies and our beloved oak tree.

  “Honey, you feel that way too?” she asked. There was remorse in her voice, but not too much. Just a hint of regret. In some ways that was all I ever wanted from her. I wanted her to tell me that she was sorry our lives had been so screwed up. That she shouldered some of the blame. Even if she didn’t, really.

  “Sometimes,” I lied. I felt that way all the time. My mother’s choices had dragged me into a life that left me without any history of my own. I tried not to resent her, because I loved her so much. Yet, there were times when I just hated her for what she’d done to me, and to Hayden. As I grew older, I sometimes allowed myself to see her side of things. The reasons why she did what she did. My mother’s story was flimsy, but since she told it with such evasive conviction, I never really questioned it.

  WHILE THOSE MEMORIES ATTACK MY brain with the ferocity of a thousand ice picks, I try to focus. I shake my head as if to free myself from a firestorm of nerves and questions. I need to concentrate on the letter. My h
eart rate is going faster. I look down on the paper and a tear drops on it. It leaves a shiny pool on the letter that I notice for the first time is written in pencil. I’m almost afraid to read on. I’m worried that her words will break my heart, that the betrayal she’s hinting at will be too great.

  We’ve been running our whole lives from your father. It makes me ill to put those words to paper, but that’s the truth.

  My father? My father was dead. He was an army enlistee who died in Iraq. I have carried his picture in my wallet for as long as I’ve had one. I have another reminder. I press my fingertips against the dog tags that hang around my neck on a silver, braided chain that I’d saved up to buy from the Macy’s jewelry counter in Minneapolis.

  The first tag has his name, enlistment number, and blood type.

  Walters, William J

  FG123456Z

  A Neg

  On the second one was the next of kin:

  Ginger Walters

  1337 Maple Lane

  Tacoma, W.

  For a moment anger and confusion well up as my emotions battle for some kind of strange supremacy. I have no idea where this is going, so I read on. I take in the last words in big, oxygen-free gulps.

  What I have to tell you does not define who you are. Not at all. You are my beautiful daughter. I have done everything I can to spare you the reality of your conception. But you are here reading this and you deserve to know the truth. You also can decide if you want to help me. If you don’t, I will die loving you anyway. If you don’t, please take care of your brother. Take him to my sister Ginger Rhodes’ place in Wallace, Idaho, and leave him there until after you are sure I am safe or dead. Your birth father will never harm him.

  This is too much. Sister? Ginger—the name on the dog tags? I’m reeling now. We had no family. We never did. Mom said that her parents and siblings died in a car crash when she was a little girl. Seven, I think. Though now I am beginning to question everything I thought I knew. And as I do, my eyes take in a sentence that no one should have to read.

  Your father is Alex Richard Rader. He is a serial killer. I was the victim who got away.

  I want to scream, but I don’t. Tears stream down my face and I half-glance at the bank’s camera trained right at me. I feel scared, paranoid and very, very angry. The words feel toxic. Serial killer? Victim? Got away? Each syllable comes at me like bullets to my temple. I almost wish they were bullets. All of a sudden my skin feels dirty and itchy. My hands are shaking. I am feeling such loathing for my mother. She could have told me. She should have told me. She made our vagabond lives utter hell. Why didn’t she just go to the police? She had always said that her stalker was an ex-boyfriend, a man who had come into her life after my father—who now I know wasn’t my father at all—died in Iraq. She’d been kind to him and he just wouldn’t let up. We were living in military housing in Fort Lewis, south of Tacoma, back then. I was barely out of diapers. She said that the military police refused to do anything to help her, that her stalker hadn’t broken any laws. And yet she felt so threatened that she thought that being on the run was the only solution for our safety. I want to laugh out loud now about the absurdity of her story, but she’d been so unbelievably convincing. Every time a freak would stalk and kill someone when a restraining order had been put in place, she would point to it as an example of the world we lived in—and the danger of living life out in the open.

  “No one can help a victim until it is too late. It’s a chance we’re never going to take,” she’d said on those occasions.

  I bought into it. I guess the drumming of the same thing over and over ensured my complete acceptance. Like those cult kids we had seen on TV years ago. They had no other frame of reference for the world. They believed everything their leaders told them. Even when the stories were stretched to the breaking point, they still believed.

  I know what I know, honey. So please give me that. I know that Alex has killed three girls and those cases were never truthfully solved. I also know why. I know that his friends on the police force tampered with evidence. I know all of this because he told me when he held me captive when I was sixteen. I could draw you a picture about what happened during those dark days, but I don’t think I need to. You were conceived in the worst horror imaginable. But I would never want to live without you. I don’t see him when I look into your eyes. I see the face of the daughter that I will always love.

  If you decide to try to find me alive—I know I can’t stop you— you will need to follow his trail. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know where I am. But I do know two things. I have seven days. He killed each girl after holding them for seven days. A week. Look into the victims’ pasts to find me.

  I look down at the pages and I see photographs cut from various newspapers. Though the images have yellowed with age, any one of them could have been a ringer for my mother. Shannon Blume, sixteen; Megan Moriarty, sixteen; Leanne Delmont, sixteen. All were from the Seattle-Tacoma area. All of these murder cases were attributed to different men. All cases were closed. According to the newspaper clippings, none of the names who killed any of the girls was Alex Rader.

  What was my mother talking about.

  I don’t get it. I don’t really get any of this. I gather everything up. Most of the envelopes are flat, a few contain some bulges. I feel one of them and the bulge has shape that I instantly know. I take my fingers off as though they’ve been burned. My brain creates a picture of what I felt and adrenaline nearly causes me to pass out. A shockwave of fear runs through me.

  I stuff all the envelopes and loose papers into the purse I stole from the Lost and Found office at the ferry terminal on Colman Dock. I take a deep, calming breath. My brain is cycling over and over. Trying to pull my thoughts together is harder than anything I’ve ever done. I’m on information overload and I know it.

  You can do this. Who your parents are doesn’t define you, I lie to myself.

  I push the button.

  A moment later, the locks tumble and Unibrow enters the now utterly airless room.

  “Finished?” he asks as if my standing there ready to go isn’t enough of a clue.

  “I think so,” I mutter as I move my purse closer to my body, holding it tight. Never letting it go, even though its contents frighten me in every way imaginable.

  He looks down at the empty safe deposit box. “Are you closing out the account?.

  For a nanosecond, I’m unsure exactly what he said. My mind is elsewhere. “No. Not at all”

  I watch him put it back into the one gaping hole in the wall of boxes and I sign the document he’s set on the black table with my mother’s name.

  A minute later, I’m in the lobby retrieving Hayden from the black leather chair that had held him like a playpen.

  “Hey,” he says. “What was in there?.

  I don’t look at him.

  “Nothing. A big zero”

  He knows that I’ve been crying, but he doesn’t say a thing about it.

  “Where are we going now? To the police?.

  I take his hand, which now feels so very small, and I pull him toward the sunlight of the street. “No. We’re going to our aunt’s in Idaho”

  He looks at me with those eyes of his. “What aunt?.

  So much has been crammed into my head, a mass of loose ends that feel like they’ve coagulated inside my throat, that I really can’t speak. Instead, I jerk him down the street. Into a crowd of people hurrying to things that they know. A lunch date with a friend, a business meeting, a store in which they will shop.

  My brother and I are hurrying into a very dark unknown.

  And in one of the envelopes I have a gun.

  THE KING STREET STATION IS just south of Pioneer Square, the city’s eclectic historic district with homeless and runaway teens fighting for corner space. I fit in there, I know. But I don’t intend to stay. And while I’m not sure about what I am going to do, I know of only one place to go.

  “Two tickets to Wallace, Idaho
,” I say to the clerk behind the glass partition at the railroad station’s ticket window.

  “The line goes as far as Spokane. You will have to transfer to a bus for Wallace”

  I pay for the tickets, leaving us only a few dollars. I’ll need to do something about that. Hayden has been bugging me nonstop for information about what was in the safe deposit box. I tell him only bits and pieces. I don’t tell him how much of a liar our mother was. I don’t tell him that I’m so hurt and angry that I only want to find her so that I can yell at her.

  “We have relatives in Idaho. We’re going there to stay. We’ll be safe”

  “Idaho? What relatives?” he asks excitedly, seemingly missing the point that up to that moment our parents have fed us a pack of lies.

  “Mom has a sister. Apparently”

  We take a seat in the back of the second car. I let Hayden have the window. He’s tired and I’m hoping the monotonous beat of a rolling train will lull him to sleep. A woman in front of us is looking at the newspaper and I pray that it isn’t the same one we saw on the ferry that morning. The rhythm and rumble of the wheels against the track do precisely what I knew they’d do. Hayden’s asleep.

  I pull out the envelopes and papers from the safe deposit box and consume the information on each page as if I were a human scanner. I am, sort of. I’ve always had the ability to remember things. I know that I possess a photographic memory. I never say so aloud. It sounds too conceited, but I do. And yeah, maybe sometimes, I guess I am a little conceited too. While I’m taking everything inside, while I’m feeling the gun in its paper wrapper, I’m thinking. I’m thinking over and over about what is happening to Mom. I am so mad at her for the lies she’s told me. I feel foolish too. I imagined the father I never knew, the soldier, and how he’d fought for our country. He was a hero. When I was little I used to pretend that I was talking to him on the phone all the way across the world. He was dodging bullets, bombs. He was facing death inside some burned-out village in the Middle East, but he stopped everything to talk to me. I saw my father as a kind of superhero worthy of respect, love, and a movie. All of that was a figment of my imagination.