by James Halpin
“That place is straight out of a horror movie,” Lauren said.
“I promise no one is going to ax murder us there.”
“If anyone from school sees me going there, they might as well.”
CHAPTER 11
Friday, March 30, 2018
4:08 p.m.
The Mountain Motor Lodge sat along Tunkhannock Highway, nestled between tall oak and pine trees along a desolate curve in the road, at least a quarter mile from its nearest neighbor. The motel consisted of ten rooms in a line, doors and windows looking out over a vast gravel parking lot toward the highway. At night, the peeling paint on the walls assumed a tinge of blue as neon lights announced vacancy — always vacancy — at the establishment. At one time, the motor lodge had served travelers commuting along the highway, but that legitimate business had mostly evaporated. Now the motel served mostly to accommodate illicit trysts between lovers who couldn’t take their partners home. More often than not, the guests now parked their cars in the rear lot.
In room eight, Daly and Lauren were getting settled into their new accommodations. The hotel was certainly a far cry from the watery resort Lauren had hoped for, but despite its dated decor and worn exterior the motel rooms were kept clean and neat. And though the owners prided themselves on a priest-like confidentiality when it came to who was sharing rooms with whom, they did not tolerate parties or drugs. Daly was sure it would be a safe place for Lauren to stay.
The room came with two twin beds, and Lauren promptly laid claim to the one closest to the window. She dropped the two handfuls of shopping bags that she had accumulated at the Wyoming Valley Mall onto the faded and frayed flower-print comforter and sat down next to them. The loss of just about everything they owned was a tough pill to swallow, but Lauren was learning there could be an upside. She now had every reason to get new clothes at the mall — and Daly couldn’t say no.
The day at the mall had taken their minds off the terror of the fire and the depressing reality that they had no home. Daly had watched with a smile as Lauren put on her own fashion show, trying on a seemingly endless combination of jeans, skirts, and sweaters. Lauren rolled her eyes in boredom as Daly haggled with the sales representative about getting a replacement cellphone, and then spent the next forty-five minutes talking to Joe Reed and then an insurance agent about the fire. They laughed over ice cream at the food court, and on a whim, they’d decided to catch a movie at the downtown theater – a comedy, they agreed.
It had been the first time in a long time they spent a full day together, laughing and talking. Life was always so busy that they often forgot to make time for each other. It had taken a fire that destroyed everything and nearly claimed their lives for them to realize what they had been missing.
Content after a day spent together, they decided to lay low for the night. For dinner, Daly ordered a pizza with the works to the room and Lauren clicked the remote to turn on the antiquated tube television resting on top of a faded and scratched dresser.
* * *
The dream had changed.
Ed and Barbara Thompson were still down by the motel pool sipping cocktails, and music was coming from the same crackling speakers, but this time it was “Redemption Song” by Bob Marley. Daly was with Jessica and Lauren in their motel room, but Lauren the little girl had been replaced by Lauren the seventeen-year-old high school senior. Something was wrong, but Daly couldn’t tell what.
His head pounding, Daly made his way to the bathroom and threw some cold water on his face. As he stepped out into the bedroom, the towel in his hand disappeared.
In its place was the .38 Special. A slight wisp of white smoke still drifted up from the barrel. Suddenly, terror gripped Daly. Something terrible had happened, something that he already regretted and could never take back.
When he raised his gaze to the bed, he saw the white comforter had turned crimson. Jessica was laying back with the same playful expression she always had in the dream. But to Daly’s everlasting horror, Lauren was laying motionless right beside her.
The room was eerily silent.
Where is Kelly? Daly wondered.
This time, there was no can of gasoline sitting inside the doorway. Instead on the desk sat a box of Hornady .38 Special hollow-point rounds. Looking at the bullets lying on the desktop, Daly decided there would be no visit to the pool this time. Daly pushed his thumb on the cylinder release and dumped the spent casings, sending them tumbling silently to the carpeted floor.
One by one, Daly slid fresh rounds into the cylinder, feeling each one find home with a satisfying click. With six more shots loaded up, Daly slapped the cylinder back into the revolver and sat down on the edge of the bed, between Lauren and Jessica. Their blood soaked into the seat of his pants, but he barely registered the warm liquid against his skin.
He cried.
Between hysterical sobs and gasps for breath, Daly muttered in disbelief, “I murdered my family!” Then he clicked the hammer back and put the revolver’s barrel to his temple. As he tried to build up the nerve to pull the trigger, Daly’s face contorted into a horrifying grimace, tears streaming down his cheeks with his teeth clenched tight.
The last thing he heard was a thunderous bang.
* * *
In the darkness of the hotel room, Lauren could hear her father’s breathing intensifying and his sheets rustling as he tossed. The movement grew more frantic, and soon Daly was muttering the nonsensical ramblings of a man talking in his sleep. Lauren sat up in her bed, wondering whether to wake him. As she listened to her father’s restlessness, she thought she could make something out, and what she heard sent a chill down her spine.
“I murdered my family,” Daly whispered.
Lauren grew uneasy. Of course, it was just a dream, but it was an unsettling thing to hear from her father.
She rose out of bed and crept to her father’s bedside, placing a hand gently on his shoulder and shaking softly.
“Daddy,” she whispered. “Daddy, you’re having a bad dream. It’s just a dream.”
In his bed, Daly continued to twist, muttering. His head was damp with perspiration, and his fingers were clenched into tight fists. Lauren tried to rouse him once more.
“Daddy,” she said more forcefully, shaking him a little harder. “Wake up.”
Daly’s eyes shot open, scanning the dark room with a wild look. After a second, his gaze came to rest on Lauren. He stared, uncomprehending, for a moment before realizing where he was. Then he sat up and wrapped both arms around his daughter, squeezing her tight around the shoulders.
“Hey, baby girl,” he said. “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It sounded like you were having a pretty bad dream.”
“Yeah, it was my nightmare again,” Daly said, letting go of Lauren and swinging his legs to the side of the bed. He began rubbing his temples. “I’m sorry you had to hear that.”
“What happened?” Lauren asked. “In the dream.”
“It’s just a scary dream I have. That’s all.”
“You said you murdered your family,” Lauren said, raising her eyebrows. “I want to know what happened.”
In the darkness, Daly exhaled and looked at his daughter. She knew a little bit about the dream, but Daly had kept the most disturbing parts to himself. As far as Lauren knew, the dream was simply about her mother’s death. Until now, she had heard no hint that Daly was the person who caused it. From the imploring look in Lauren’s eyes, Daly could tell he wasn’t going to simply wave off her questions this time. If he had spoken in his sleep before, Lauren hadn’t heard it. This time, she knew there was more to the story.
Clearing his throat, Daly began to describe the dream – the original dream – and how he found Jessica dead on the bed with a gun in his hand. He described the fire and the insane nonchalance of everyone around him when his wif
e had so clearly been murdered.
He left out the new twist where he killed Lauren and then himself. It was just a dream, something beyond his ability to control or navigate, but Daly felt it would be too hard for Lauren to take. How could a daughter ever look at her father the same way again after he told her he had dreamed about murdering her?
When he was done with the abridged version, Daly hung his head and began rubbing his eyes. Lauren slid closer to him on the bed, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and squeezing. They sat together in silence for a moment, neither one knowing what to say next. Then Lauren told her father what she always did after the dream.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said.
It was a familiar refrain that Daly had heard often before. Friends, police, a counselor and even Daly’s father-in-law had at times tried to comfort him with those words, which Daly knew made sense. He hadn’t put a gun to Jessica’s head, nor had he pulled the trigger.
He didn’t do it.
It was logical, accurate, and reasonable. But no matter how many times he told himself, it never seemed to set his mind at ease.
The dream always returned.
CHAPTER 12
Monday, April 2, 2018
10:12 a.m.
The newsroom was still quiet even at mid-morning the day after Easter. Occasionally, the scanner in the corner of the room squawked to life and dispatchers directed police and firefighters to minor calls. Around the holidays, it seemed, even the criminals liked to take a break. For a crime beat reporter pulling holiday duty at the Observer, coverage was guaranteed to consist of the same feel-good narrative that gets repeated every year. Only the names and dates changed.
The newsroom flat screen was tuned to CNN, with a muted anchor still covering a breaking story that no one seemed to care much about. At the editor’s desk, John Richardson had his legs crossed as he thumbed through a copy of the Other Paper to see if there was anything that needed chasing. As Daly walked past, Richardson dog-eared a corner of the paper and lowered it, raising an eyebrow.
“I wasn’t expecting you here today,” he said.
“I know. But I’ve got Lauren in a safe place and we’re just waiting on the insurance before we can move on a new house. I need something to do besides sitting at the hotel,” Daly said.
“All right. I can’t say we don’t need the help,” Richardson said. Cutbacks had made times harder for everyone at the paper. More with less, he thought. Always more with less.
“I want to go to Emma Nguyen’s house and see if her parents will talk,” Daly said. “Then I need to make another run at Kim Foster’s parents.”
Richardson folded the paper in half and dropped it to his desk with a dull thud.
“I don’t know if that’s such a great idea,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Well, we don’t know who firebombed your house, but we do know that it happened in the middle of you asking questions about this case. It might be better for you to hold off,” Richardson said.
“I’m not going to be intimidated,” Daly said. “We can’t just fold over and stop writing about it.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Richardson said. “You’re too close to the case. If the attack does turn out to be related to the kids’ deaths, that makes you a victim along with the kids. You’re going to be conflicted out.”
That possibility hadn’t yet dawned on Daly. He’d been focused on trying to find out who attacked his house, and whether it was related to his stories. Now he felt a burning rage surge through his veins at the thought that whoever was pulling the strings behind the scenes had also just stolen his story.
“Hold on,” Daly said. “We don’t know who started the fire — or why. I’ve written thousands of stories here. It could be connected to any one of them. You can’t pull me off the story just based on speculation.”
Richardson turned to the television, shaking his head. Daly was a strong reporter and this was a big story. Daly had also done the leg work to get the Observer out front of a story that other media outlets were only beginning to pick up. By rights, the story was his, and Richardson didn’t want to strip it from him if he didn’t have to.
“Okay, look,” Richardson said. “You can keep working the story – for now. Get with the families and see if you can develop any other connections between these kids. But listen: If it comes back that the fire is in any way connected to this case, you’re off the story. We can’t have the appearance of a conflict of interest in our coverage, especially with the other outlets starting to pick it up.”
Daly went to his desk and put down his Styrofoam coffee cup, clicking the mouse to wake his computer. He pulled up Google Chrome and looked up Vu and Linh Nguyen in the White Pages. The address came back to a small side street off the main strip in a well-maintained part of Plains. Daly gulped down his coffee, grabbed his coat and hit the door.
* * *
The Nguyens lived in a brown foursquare-style house with white trim that sat a stone’s toss from the road, a narrow strip of yellowing grass doing its best to pass for a front lawn. The paint on the house appeared fresh and the hedge that ran along the front porch was trimmed neatly. Daly noticed there was a single vehicle in the driveway, a Toyota Camry, and was thankful he wouldn’t be trying to approach an entire family with his prying questions. He climbed the steps to the door and pushed the bell, listening as chimes jingled inside. A Pembroke Welsh Corgi began yapping to announce his presence.
Trying to appear casual, Daly looked down the street until he noticed the flutter of a curtain at the window and the vague outline of a person behind it. The figure hesitated a moment, apparently sizing Daly up, before moving toward the door.
“Who is it?” a woman’s voice called from inside.
“I’m Erik Daly. I’m a reporter with the Observer.”
For a moment, there was only silence. Then Daly heard the scraping metal sound of a lock being unfastened. The door opened up to reveal an attractive Asian woman in her mid-forties wearing her jet-black hair pulled back in a bun. She wore a white sweater and blue jeans and had piercing brown eyes that looked tired and sad. If she had been crying, there was no hint of it in her face now.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I’m working on a story about Emma. Was she your daughter?” Daly asked.
“Yes. But I don’t want to talk about it,” the woman said, turning her shoulder.
“Hold on,” Daly implored. “Please.”
The woman stopped in her tracks and turned her head back to Daly, giving him a moment to make his case. Daly noted that she didn’t turn her shoulders back toward him.
“What I’m working on, it’s not only about your daughter,” Daly said. “We’ve had a bunch of teenage suicides recently. Some of them left the same message that Emma did in her Facebook post, and the police think there could be a connection.”
Daly felt a little dirty at having to play up that angle. It was true, sure, and this woman probably already knew about it. But Daly knew that grieving parents are often loathe to believe their children would have made a choice that led to their own deaths. It’s easier to believe someone else pushed her to take that fatal shot of heroin, or that a bully goaded her into suicide, or that someone must have dared her into getting behind the wheel while drunk, than it is to believe that years of lecturing had simply failed. Years of life lessons imparted a few words at a time, in teachable moments and during punishments, were not enough to save their child from her own free will.
As a parent, Daly understood all this, yet he was reluctant to play on it. Whatever grief this woman was feeling would not go away if she put the blame for Emma’s death on someone else. All that would accomplish would be to add hate to her grief.
Reservations aside, Daly needed to get this woman talking. There was clearly a connection between the victims, an
d Emma’s family was one of only three in the world that might hold the answer. It wasn’t just a matter of getting the story – although, Daly conceded, that wouldn’t hurt. No, the cold facts were that kids were dying, and without finding out why, it was highly likely that they would continue to be snuffed out like flames fluttering in a window’s draft.
“They told me they were looking into her note,” the woman said. “They said they don’t know if it’s related.”
“That’s true, they’re looking into it. But I think they’re pretty sure the cases are related,” Daly said, noticing a flash of interest in the woman’s eyes. “Did you hear about the reporter whose house caught fire over the weekend? It was me. And the fire wasn’t an accident.”
Linh Nguyen was sold. She introduced herself as Emma’s mother and invited Daly inside. The living room of the home was small and furnished with white leather couches that dominated the room. Drew Carey was smiling out from a flat-screen television sitting opposite the couches as a contestant spun the wheel on “The Price is Right.” The starchy smell of steaming rice drifted from the kitchen. Daly could tell the game show had simply been background noise. A woman who only just recently became painfully aware that she was a little more alone in the world had wanted some company in her lonely house.
They sat down on the oversized couches and Daly told Linh Nguyen what he knew about the previous deaths — and what happened to his house. For her, he gave the unabridged version. He wanted Linh to be honest and forthcoming with him, so he gave her everything he knew about the firebombing.
Once he’d established a rapport, Daly began to ask about Emma. He learned she was just a few weeks shy of turning seventeen, and that the family had hoped for her to go to Penn State and then on to medical school. Of the family’s three children, Emma was the oldest. She had been considered the smart one. From an early age, she got started playing chess with her father, and she gravitated toward projects like the school science fair rather than sports and music. When the other kids in her class began vaping in the school bathrooms or hanging out at the mall, she remained focused on her studies.