Fear of Our Father

by Stacey Kananen

  I said, “Fine, we’ll go to the store.” I picked my keys up and we went back out to the driveway to get in my truck. I was trying to think while I drove, but he kept talking, saying things like, “You know, Susan’s going to be involved in this, if we don’t kill ourselves. They’re going to come and get Susan.”

  He went on and on and on, and all I could think was, “God, what has he done? There’s a body in Mom’s garage, and obviously it’s not her, or he would have told me.” I asked, “Why are they going to come after Susan if the body’s in that garage?” I still wasn’t putting pieces together. He ignored my question, because we had just arrived at Wal-Mart.

  He went inside while I waited in the truck, feeling my entire life collapse down on top of me. It felt like all those years of hell were finally coming to a head and it was finally time to end it. There was nothing left to do but die. There was no escape. The police let him loose. He lived in my house. If I didn’t do this with him, who’s to say he wouldn’t kill me or Susan in our sleep? He had already killed two people. What’s two more?

  I had no one to turn to. The police surely wouldn’t help, and Cheryl had turned against me. If I left him there at Wal-Mart, what was he going to do when he had to find his own way home—kick my ass, or worse? I literally had no options. I couldn’t stop a shopper there in the parking lot and ask for help. How do you approach someone walking by with their shopping cart full of Diet Pepsi and Cheese Nips, and say, “Excuse me, but my brother killed our parents and now wants me to commit suicide with him. Will you help me?” I wasn’t a kidnapped child who could run for help; I was a grown woman and this wasn’t a sudden, urgent emergency situation that the police could help with. In fact, the police had helped to cause it.

  So I did what I always did, growing up. You just go with the flow, take the abuse, and move on. It hurts a lot less if you just allow it to happen and it ends more quickly. Frankly, with all of this in my head, I was sort of looking forward to it ending. I just couldn’t take one more iota of pain.

  Rickie finally came out of the store with a couple of bags, threw them in the back of the truck, and said, “Let’s go for a drive.” He directed me to turn here and there, and we got to a large, industrial storage unit that he had rented. Then he turned to me and said, “By the way, I drew them a picture where to find Mom’s body, in your backyard.”

  That took my breath away, like a sledgehammer to the chest. I said, “You know what? Let’s just go ahead and die. You’re right. You’ve drug Susan into some fucking mess she’s got no business being in, you asshole. You son of a bitch.”

  I don’t think I said much to him after that. I just thought, “Fine, we’re gonna do this.” I couldn’t let Susan be guilty of something she didn’t even know was going on. It wasn’t her fault my family was so fucked up. I finally gave up. That was the first time in my whole life that I wanted to stop trying. All those years ago, when Cheryl and I struggled to make it to shore at Lake Hebron, what was that even for? I didn’t want to swim anymore. Just didn’t want to.

  He opened the big garage door to the storage unit, and I drove the truck inside. It was a very large unit, with a little bathroom at the back; the kind that some companies actually run businesses out of. My truck fit inside easily. I got out to use the bathroom, and when I came back, Rickie had already closed the overhead door and rigged the truck with a dryer vent hose attached to the exhaust pipe and run it into the truck window. He handed me a bottle of NyQuil, and I understood what he had in mind. Drink this to fall asleep, and never wake up.

  We got settled in, in the truck cab, and after starting the engine I downed more than half a bottle of NyQuil, while he took some sleeping pills, washing them down with a Diet Pepsi. I told him, “I have to call Susan to tell her there’s gonna be police officers all over our house, because you put a body there.”

  I knew I’d get her voice mail because she was at work, and I said, very calmly, “When the police get there please be calm and let them do what they need to do, and they will explain everything.” I hung up then because I couldn’t figure out how to tell her on a cell phone that they’re going to find a body in our backyard. I thought, no, I’ll let them deal with that.

  I was starting to get a little woozy, when Rickie suggested that we write suicide notes. I took the notepad that he handed me and wrote a letter to Susan:

  I love you with all my heart. You are very precious to me. Please know that I did this because of everything in my life. I want you to have a chance at a future and me being with you will not allow that. Please know that when I called you about the cops that Rick and I knew it was over for us. We had a part in Mother’s leaving. Please let the police do whatever they must at the house. I have sold off my Disney stocks to have a check sent to the house. They would only send it in my name. Maybe you could deposit it. It will give you an extra fifteen hundred dollars to live on. The next mortgage payment is due March first. Please give the bag of sweatshirts in the car back to Angela. They were hers when we were carpooling. Please make sure that I am cremated and that you have no service for me. I am certain because of the events that the Brackens will not want to see you for Christmas.

  I Love You,

  Stacey

  Rickie took the pad and wrote notes of his own, which I didn’t see at the time. I was becoming very sleepy and it was hard to stay awake. He wrote, on another page in that notebook:

  In September 88 my Mother came over to my house and asked me to come over. I did. Our Father was killed by Stacey, I begged my Mother to call the police, she refused. She had bought a freezer and later decided to bury him in the garage. In September 03 Mother told Stacey and me that she was going to use Grandpa’s money and take Cheryl’s kids away. She helped destroy three lives she could not destroy more. She is in the ground by the shed. Please read Grandpa’s will it needs to be done right.

  Richard Kananen

  I found out later that he wrote to Cheryl on another notebook page:

  I have always loved you I am sorry for this, please get help for you and the kids and Chris. There is nothing I can say. She was going to use Grandpa’s money.

  That notebook page, with the note to Cheryl, also had a note that had my signature, but I don’t recall writing it:

  Cheryl—I love you and the kids with all my heart. Please believe me when I say we couldn’t let Mother take the kids away from you. I have always loved you and the kids.

  Stacey

  I felt a sense of peace as I started to drift off—knowing it was finally going to be over—mixed with brief spurts of terror because it was getting hard to breathe. The air reeked of thick exhaust fumes, and I could feel my body panicking, rebelling against inhaling. I heard Rickie say, “Here, drink some more,” but I waved him off. Then another wave of sleep would hit me and I’d drift deeper, and it would be okay. Back and forth it went like that, peace and terror, and I wished that it would just end already. Just as I was about to go down for the last time, I rested my head against the steering wheel and a voice told me to turn on the air conditioner, so I flipped the switch on. I gratefully gasped in some cool, fresh air and closed my eyes …

  … and woke up to someone pounding on the window, shouting, “Unlock the door! Now!” I was way too groggy to have any idea what was going on, or even where I was, but the urgency in that voice shook me into action. I fumbled around, trying to figure out how to unlock the thing they were calling a door. The world spun as I turned my head and saw the same scenario taking place on the other side of the truck.

  Rickie had his door open, and an officer flipped the unlock switch on that side, so my door was now open. I felt myself being dragged from the truck and laid down on something flat. I looked up and saw a giant camera lens in my face, and heard a voice saying, “Get that camera out of here!” I was being wheeled into an ambulance, handcuffed to the gurney.

  As they were carrying me out I saw Detective Ruggiero, and he was saying, “Stay with us, stay with us, we need to talk
to you, stay with us.” I went out several times, as he was talking to me. I’d be in midsentence and … zonk. I was on advanced life support in the ambulance. I realized that it was Detective Ruggiero’s voice, telling the news photographer to leave me alone. He didn’t have to do that, but he had enough respect for me to treat me like a human being that day. I’ve always appreciated that. He was a good man.

  He told me, in the ambulance, that the reason I lived was because the AC was on, that’s what saved my life. This might sound weird, but I’ve always had a feeling that it was my grandpa’s voice telling me to turn it on. I wasn’t supposed to die in that truck that day.

  CHAPTER 26

  Led Away in Cuffs

  I woke up in the emergency room, with Detectives Russell and Ruggiero standing over me. A nurse was trying to work around them. Detective Russell dove right in. “We want to talk to you about what happened. Let’s go back eighteen years ago. Your dad was a pretty violent guy, huh?”

  I felt enough strength to answer, “Yes.”

  He was encouraged by the spark of life and asked, “What happened to your dad that put an end to the violence?”

  “He left.”

  “No, he didn’t leave,” he argued, “your brother’s saying that you put an end to him hurting the rest of the family.”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s what we’re trying to get straightened out. He says that you were the one that hurt your dad.”

  It was too hard to talk. All I could say was, “No.”

  He kept asking me questions about the night my father disappeared. Was he drunk? Was he violent that night? I didn’t remember. He said, “We’re at your mom’s house now with a search warrant. We know that your dad’s buried there. We know your mom’s buried there.”

  I felt a jolt of heartache and groaned, “Oh God.”

  “Your brother has admitted killing your mom.”

  “Oh God.”

  “And burying her in the backyard. But he says that you killed your dad.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  I didn’t have it in me to argue this again, but he kept pushing, “We don’t think so, either, but you have to tell us what happened that night.”

  It was so long ago, and I wasn’t there when he was killed. And, honestly, I didn’t care who killed him. Good riddance! I told the officers, “I remember Rickie telling me he knew that he wouldn’t hurt anybody anymore.”

  Russell said, “He’s dumping everything on you and you’re saying he’s not telling you anything.”

  “When he told me to drive to the storage unit …” I began.

  “There we go,” Russell encouraged.

  “… he told me that he killed my mother. I … I freaked out. He told me something about she was gonna take my sister’s kids. He didn’t want my mother to do anything to the kids. I guess he thought my mother was the reason things happened to us. She was a good mother.”

  “He blamed her?”

  “I guess he did,” I said. “I didn’t know any of this until today.”

  “Where did he tell you that he buried your mother?” Russell asked.

  “… something about my backyard …”

  “We have the note to your girlfriend,” he insisted. “And you put in there that the cops are onto us.”

  I tried again to explain. “When he directed me to the storage unit he told me that because he put Mother in the yard, you would never believe that I didn’t have anything to do with it. I didn’t want to die. All I wanted was my mother to come home.”

  Russell said, “You’re not gonna die, but here’s your chance to show some remorse for what happened. I know you were scared. Did he tell you how he killed her?”

  “No, he did not.”

  “Did he tell you how your dad died?”

  “No, he did not.”

  Detective Ruggiero asked, “Did you read the note he left?”

  “No, I did not.” I had no idea that he wrote that I killed our father, but Ruggiero knew that’s what the note said. Detective Russell just went on and on, trying to trip me up, but I told the truth, just like I had that morning. I said, “All I wanted was my mother to come home.”

  “Well, that’s not gonna happen,” he taunted, “but you know what? I want to be able to lay her to rest. I want to be able to sit down with your sister and your girlfriend and say, when the time came for her to tell us everything she knew, she told us the truth.”

  I started crying. I just wanted him to leave me alone. “I’m telling you everything I know.”

  He kept at it. “Well, I don’t think you’re telling me everything. I think you’re telling a little bit, but I don’t think you’re telling everything. If you want to be remorseful and you want to help us recover her body you have to tell us everything. So, after he killed your mother, how did he take her over to where he took her? Did he put her in the truck?”

  “I don’t know!”

  On and on it went, more accusations, more denials. He just wouldn’t believe me. Finally Detective Ruggiero said, “You know that we recorded your conversation with your brother this morning, right? You kept telling him to be quiet. You knew we were listening.”

  I said, “He kept trying to tell me that it was over and I didn’t know what he was saying and I just kept telling him be quiet. I didn’t want to know. And then he kept saying something about SunTrust. I didn’t know what he was talking about.”

  Russell asked, “If you could say anything to your sister right now, what would you tell her? What would you have us tell her?”

  I replied, “I love my mother with all my heart. And I love my sister and her kids. I never dreamed he would do this and I’m very sorry he did this.”

  “How come you didn’t come forward before today, before we called you in and tell us?”

  God, this man was dense! “I didn’t know,” I insisted.

  He insisted back, “You did know!”

  “I swear to God I didn’t know he did anything to my mother or my father. I was just happy my father wasn’t there beating my mother anymore.”

  Russell kept hammering away, until finally Ruggiero said, “We’ve been over this.”

  Russell asked, “Anything else you want to say to us before we go?”

  “I can’t think of anything,” I said. “I’m just really sorry for my mother. I loved her so much. I moved so close to her so we could have time together.”

  My heart was breaking and all he could do was say, “Alright. Go off tape at this time,” and he walked away.

  I don’t know if they were playing good cop, bad cop, but again I have to say that Detective Ruggiero was kindhearted, at least as much as he was allowed to be. When Hussey showed up, his demeanor changed. While Hussey was talking to my brother, Ruggiero came to me and said, “Look, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I don’t think you need to be involved in this, but you are in over your head and I can’t help you. But I’m telling you, keep telling the truth.”

  I told him, “That’s all I’ve been doing.” He said, “I know, but you need to keep telling the truth. Don’t let them twist you up when you’re screwed up right now.” A doctor heard him say that, and when Hussey came out to talk to me, the doctor said, “I just Baker Acted her. I’ve signed the papers. You can’t talk to her for three days.”

  In another section of the ER, when the two detectives interviewed Rickie, he told them where Mom’s body was. It was the first question they asked him, and he said, “By the shed.” He told them she was wrapped in plastic and five feet down. But he still kept insisting that I killed our father. He told them, “I didn’t do it. All I know is him laying on the concrete floor. He was already dead. My sister and my mother were there.”

  “Why would she tell us that she didn’t know anything about it until today?” Russell asked. “I mean if she’s not involved, Rick, now’s the time to tell the truth and there’s no use her taking the fall for this if she wasn’t involved in it.”

  He was grogg
y, but he managed to say, “She signed a note. It’s in the car.”

  “Well, we’ve got the note, but I’m just telling you, if she’s got involvement in this, then you need to tell us. But if she doesn’t then you need to tell us.” At least he was being fair, even if it wasn’t in my presence.

  “Already dead when I got over there,” Rickie said.

  “What happened with you and your mom?”

  “She was gonna take my sister’s kids away from her.”

  They talked for a few minutes about the whole Cheryl situation, and Russell asked, “How’d your mom die?”

  “I don’t even know.”

  “Is there gonna be gunshot wounds in her? Stab wounds? Were you guys physically fighting? Were you choking her?”

  “No,” Rickie said.

  Detective Ruggiero asked, “Well, how did she die?”

  “I don’t really remember.”

  Russell said, “I read the note and if you weren’t remorseful you wouldn’t do what you tried to do. You just would’ve taken off on the run.”

  Rickie responded, “No, I don’t run away no more. I run away all those years.”

  “Tell us,” Russell said, “what happened with your dad.”

  “I have no idea. I wasn’t there.”

  “Well, I mean you show up, your dad is dead, and your mother goes and rents the saw for you to dig a hole in the garage and bury him. At any time did you say, ‘Mom, what happened?’ You just said, ‘Okay Mom, I’m gonna go get a saw and bury dad in the garage’?”

  “I didn’t get the saw.” Rickie said, “She did. I wanted to take him somewhere else, but she wanted him there.”

  “Rick,” Russell continued, “I don’t think you meant to kill your mom. Because when we sat in that room today and I asked you did you kill your mom, you got teary eyed, man, and you told me you loved your mom. Well, I want to tell your sister what happened that night. And I don’t believe that you don’t know what happened that night. I think you know what happened.”

  “I really don’t remember,” Rickie said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember.”