by Steven James
She didn’t need to elaborate; I knew she was a strong believer, a woman unashamed of her faith and her Lord, and from the very beginning of our relationship, she’d wanted us to remain, as she put it, “chaste.” I’d respected her convictions, although it hadn’t made for an easy couple of months.
“In any case”—she’d stopped hiking now and was looking at the way the trail curved to the east—“I took a long time to decide. But finally, I made an appointment at the clinic: 10:00 a.m. and I even arrived early.”
She was staring past me, toward a horizon that lay hidden and out of sight beyond the trees.
“While I was waiting, I started paging through the magazines that were piled on the table between the chairs and as I flipped through them, I started noticing all these ads for laundry detergent and Kool-Aid and vacations at Disneyland. And every ad seemed to have a child in it: holding up a dirty sock, drinking from a Dixie cup, riding down a water slide, but they didn’t seem like advertisements for those things anymore. They seemed like ads for kids.”
I listened quietly. Took her hand. She curled her fingers around mine.
“I started thinking about all the things a mom deals with—the diapers and the colic and the sleepless nights, the loneliness and the sacrifices. But then, the other things too: seeing my baby walk for the first time, birthday parties, dropping her off on the first day of school, helping her pick out a prom dress.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “We can talk about this some other time.”
A tear formed in her eye, and she smoothed it away. “I couldn’t do it, Pat. I couldn’t go through with it. I went back to my apartment—I took that magazine with me. And then, since I was due in the fall, I canceled my college enrollment and started working fulltime to earn enough money to have the baby.” She paused. “It was always just . . . We never had a lot.”
“I know.”
Christie had never finished college, never owned a home, always worked two jobs. By her tone of voice I could tell she wasn’t complaining, but I could also tell how profoundly her choice to have Tessa had changed the entire course of her life. “You gave up a lot,” I said softly.
“That’s what I thought too,” she said. “Until the first time I held Tessa in my arms.”
By the time we found the trail twenty minutes later, I’d decided that I would ask Christie Rose Ellis to marry me as soon as I’d picked out a ring.
As a young woman she’d been scared and alone and desperate but had still found the resolve to give up her dreams and pour them into someone else. And she’d done it for fifteen years, even though it had never been easy. A woman who would do that was a woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
As it turned out, though, we only had a few more months together.
Yet, even when she was dying she never told me the name of Tessa’s father. She just told me that he was no longer a part of their lives. “You have to trust me on this, Pat, please. It’s best for everyone if he just remains a part of the past.”
That was all.
And up until fifteen minutes ago when Tessa showed me Paul’s letter, that had been enough.
But now, it no longer seemed like it was.
86
Tessa lay on her bed, curled on her side.
She’d stopped crying for the moment, but the pain inside of her was as sharp and real as ever. She couldn’t stop thinking about her mom’s decision to abort her and she couldn’t stop thinking about what happens in abortions. She wished she could just think about it all in the safe, innocuous terms people use: of “terminating a pregnancy” by “having a procedure” to “remove a fetus.” But when you know what happens, what really happens, you can’t help but hurt, can’t help but feel.
Especially when you find out those things were going to happen to you.
For a long, teetering moment she wrestled with the urge to get out a razor blade and slice at the emotions pulsing just beneath her skin, but finally, she pulled out her notebook instead, and as soon as her pen touched the paper, the words spilled out.
i float in stillness—
the black before-life life.
somewhere, a heartbeat comforts me;
and i sleep
in the sweet, promising riddle of time.
but silence and sirens
wrap their arms around me,
whispers of knives and needles
seep into my skin;
and in the end,
nothing remains except the echoes,
of a fledgling soul dropping alone
into the belly of the day.
Tessa looked at the words, scratched a few out, tinkered with a couple of the lines, and it felt good to write. Good to get the harsh images out of her mind.
But even that didn’t make the pain go away.
She set the notebook aside and picked up the diary. Stared at it.
OK. So her mom had eventually changed her mind and had her baby. Great. Wonderful. But she hadn’t wanted to deliver her, that was the point, and Tessa just couldn’t deal with the thought of reading even one more word about how much her mom hated the idea of having her in her life.
She targeted the trash can on the other side of the room and launched the diary into it, where it bounced to the bottom with a thick, angry thud.
Then she pulled out the razor blade she kept hidden in her purse. She hadn’t self-inflicted in a long time, but it always seemed to help. At least a little.
She rolled up her sleeve, revealing the row of thin, two-inch-long scars on her forearm. She placed the blade against her arm, just below the lowest scar.
Stared at it.
She knew that cutting was just a way of exchanging one pain for another, of course she knew that, but at least it would get her mind off the diary, at least it was something she could do.
And so she did.
87
“Patrick,” my mother said. “You really need to leave for your flight.”
Over the last few minutes as I’d thought about Christie, I’d managed to put the case out of my mind, but when my mother said those words, it all came back: the whispering voices, Basque’s trial and all the blood and all the bodies.
“Patrick,” she said again.
“I know.”
My flight left in less than an hour.
I put a call through to United Airlines but found out that all the flights for the rest of the day were already overbooked. Even with my FBI clearance they weren’t able to get me a seat.
My mother watched me hang up the phone. “Tessa needs me here,” I said. “I’m not going to leave her.”
“I’ll take care of her. It might be better, considering . . . I just mean that since I’m a woman, she might feel more comfortable . . .”
“I understand, but—”
“It’s OK.” It was Tessa’s voice, at the bottom of the stairs. “You can go, Patrick. I’m fine.”
I looked over and saw her standing with one foot on the bottom step and one on the floor.
“Tessa, are you all right?”
She nodded.
“Giving you the diary. I thought it would help.”
“It’s not that. It’s not you. It’s Mom.”
Even though I understood where she was coming from, it hurt to hear her say those words. “I’m sorry all this has happened.”
“It’s not your fault.” She toed at the carpet for a moment, then looked at me again. “This killer, this guy on trial, you told me that he did terrible things to people, right? To women?”
I remembered the conversation I’d had with her on Friday morning. “Yes.”
“And that he made you question the amount of evil we’re capable of doing to each other? And that it frightened you?” I wondered if the graphic descriptions of abortions she’d given me twenty minutes earlier were affecting the emotional intensity I heard in every one of her words.
“Yes.”
“Then don’t let him hurt any more women,” she said. “
Don’t worry about me. I’ll be OK here with Martha and the two cops outside who so cleverly switched cars to disguise themselves.”
Great.
“Are you sure? Because—”
“Get going already, before you miss your flight.”
She’d convinced me. I kissed her on the forehead and told her that I’d be back as soon as I could, by six tomorrow—unless things didn’t go as planned—and that I loved her.
“You too,” she said softly.
Then I thanked my mother for letting Tessa stay with her, and she told me of course and not to worry, and then I grabbed my suitcase and computer bag, climbed into my car, and drove through the gray Colorado day to the airport.
Just as the first snowflakes began to fall.
3:48 p.m.
225,341 hits.
That’s how many Amy Lynn had gotten since posting the article three hours earlier.
She was almost giddy.
The whole idea of a murderer basing his ten crimes on an ancient book gave her the perfect angle for a series of online articles—and for the true crime book she’d already started outlining. And coming up with the moniker “The Day Four Killer” was nothing short of brilliant.
The cable news networks had picked up on it and the entire Denver metroplex was bracing for what one cable anchorman called “The next troubling saga of unimaginable evil.”
And Amy Lynn loved every minute of it.
Ever since Ari called her, she’d been doing what she did best, poking around and digging up facts that she wasn’t supposed to find out about.
And if she could just track down a little more background about some of the victims, she could have the second article ready to post by tomorrow morning.
She was online, fact-checking the times of the murders, when her phone vibrated. Reggie.
“Hey, dear,” she said, playing the role of the loving wife.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” His voice was dark and accusatory. “You posted that article? Tell me the truth.”
“What article?”
“The one on the Internet. The one everyone is talking about. About the homicides.”
“Of course not, no. Rhodes told me not to write about the killings.” And she found that it wasn’t difficult to say the words. Eventually, after she found a publisher, she could straighten things out with Reggie. Smooth things over, but for now, she needed some space. “Besides, I’ve been busy on this baseball piece.” She’d turned that in yesterday, but it seemed like a reasonable thing to say.
Silence.
“I swear, Reggie.”
Still no reply.
“I wouldn’t lie to you. You know that.”
Finally, he sighed softly. “OK, you’re right. It’s just, I don’t want you involved with any of this.”
“I know.”
“You know how much I love you. How much I want to protect you.”
Good grief.
“I know.”
“It’s just, I keep thinking I should be the one to protect you and Jayson, instead of some feds.” He didn’t bother hiding his contempt for the FBI. And then, he set about once again trying to convince her that she didn’t need to stay in protective custody. “I could take a few days off. I can take care of you—”
“I know you can.”
“How about this: I’ll take off work tomorrow. We’ll all go home. We’ll spend the day together as a family.”
She mulled over his proposal and was surprised to find herself actually considering it.
Yes, she’d enjoyed the privacy of being able to work in solitude at the safe house today, but tomorrow she would probably need to get out, follow some leads, do some interviews . . .
“Reggie, I think it’d be great to be with you, but I don’t want us to be bothered with all these cops and agents following us around—”
“I can take care of that.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“I’ll leave as long as it’s only you.”
“Great, that’s great. I get off at six tonight. I can pick you up then.”
“No. My car is here, remember? I’ll meet you at home.”
A slight pause. “Yes. OK. It’s going to be better this way. You’ll see.”
They said good-bye and ended the call.
So, this might be just what she needed.
Even if the feds did send some agents to follow her home, once Reggie got there he could get rid of them. She’d make sure that he did. And then, tomorrow when it was only Reggie with her, she would find a way to slip away. He and Jayson could have a Daddy Day.
Oh yes. This was going to work out very well.
She ignored Jayson’s whining in the other room and began to edit her next article.
88
Tessa’s arm hurt.
She hadn’t been cutting as much recently, and she’d pressed the blade a little too hard. The blood totally weirded her out, and it seemed like there was more than there should have been, and in the end, she’d had to bandage the cut.
But at least Patrick and Martha didn’t know. They would have probably been mad, or worse, disappointed.
And the bummer thing was, it hadn’t really helped.
Not really.
Half an hour ago, after Patrick left for the airport, she’d driven to her house with Martha to pick up her schoolbooks and clothes. The undercover cops followed them the whole way, ever so stealthily.
How nice.
From past experience, she knew that when Patrick testified at a trial he was sometimes called back to the stand several days in a row, so she wasn’t exactly convinced he was going to make it home by Monday afternoon. She threw a couple extra changes of clothes into an overnight bag just in case. Then she grabbed her jewelry box and the Rubik’s Cube.
On the drive back to Martha’s, she was glad her step-grandmother didn’t give her any trite advice on how to deal with everything, because it wouldn’t have helped. Instead, Martha just drove quietly beside her, and it seemed to Tessa that maybe that was exactly what she needed.
But maybe it wasn’t, because all the junk was still there inside her.
The twisted, angry feelings weren’t going away. Not at all.
By the time they made it to Martha’s house, Tessa had realized she definitely needed a way to keep herself from thinking about her arm and her mom and her dad and the pot of basil and everything that had happened in the last couple days.
Writing didn’t seem to do it. Cutting hadn’t really helped.
She needed something else to think about.
Yesterday, she’d promised Dora that she would read the story of Pandora’s Box this week.
That should do it.
She surfed to an online version and pulled it up.
It didn’t take her long at all to read four different versions of the story of Prometheus and Pandora, and in the end she found that Dora had been right—the story did have a surprise ending. She’d expected that the last thing out of the box might have been disease or famine or death, but it wasn’t.
No, actually it was the opposite—
“Is there anything you need, Tessa?” Martha called up the stairs.
“No, I’m good.”
As she slid her laptop aside, she noticed her stack of textbooks staring at her, and she remembered her exams coming up in the morning. Normally, she could pretty much ace her tests without studying, but maybe that was just what she needed to do to get her mind off everything.
So Tessa pulled out her trig book and tried to disappear into the numbers and equations, but her thoughts kept drifting back to Paul, the man who’d written to her mother and begged to be a part of her life. And as she thought of him, she realized that her arm was no longer the part of her that hurt the most.
5:02 p.m.
It was starting to look like I wouldn’t be leaving Denver tonight.
Already our flight had been delayed for nearly an hour because of the late-seaso
n snowstorm rolling down the Rockies, and the gate agent kept reassuring us that we would still be taking off, but with the amount of snow falling on the tarmac I had my doubts.
At first as I’d waited, I called to check on Tessa. My mother assured me that she’d spoken with her only a few minutes earlier and that she was fine and reading in her bedroom.
Then, since it looked like I’d be using Tessa’s phone at least until tomorrow evening, if not longer, I logged in to my federal account and synched her cell with my address book so I would have access to all of my contacts.
When I hung up, I saw I’d missed a call from Cheyenne, so I gave her a shout, and she informed me that she’d just left Jake’s second briefing and that it had been “just as informative and productive as the first.”
“Too bad I missed it. Any word on Bryant?”
“Here’s the thing: when he left the Denver News building, Benjamin Rhodes was with him.”
“Rhodes? Amy Lynn’s boss?”
“Yes. They stopped for a late lunch at a Mexican place near DU and then went to Bryant’s house. I just spoke with one of the officers assigned to watch them. He told me that both men are still there.”
Interesting.
Then Cheyenne told me that she would call me as soon as she knew more, and after we ended the call, I decided to follow up on Dr. Bryant. I typed in the IP address I’d gotten from his computer when we were at his house and remotely logged on to his system.
He wasn’t online at the moment, but I was able to access his browser’s Internet history.
And that’s where I found the porn sites.
More than a hundred of them—all hardcore S & M sites that exclusively featured men.
I thought about my conversation with Bryant, the pot of cof- fee he’d brewed, his dinner meeting with Rhodes, his interest in homosexual porn . . .
So, Rhodes and Bryant . . . ?
All loose threads. Nothing solid. But enough to pique my interest.