Possession

by Rene Gutteridge

Conner came out of the bathroom, standing by its door, clinging to the frame.

  “Get back over here,” Erin said.

  Conner obeyed. “Can I have some chicken, Mom?”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  Lindy looked back at Erin, trying to decide if this woman had enough tact to not discuss all this in front of Conner.

  “Conner,” Erin said, “get over on this other bed. I’ll turn on some cartoons. You like cartoons, don’t you?”

  Conner slid onto the bed, a chicken strip in his fist. Erin turned the TV on. It was already on a cartoon channel, which Lindy guessed was by design. He’d been without a TV for so long, Lindy wondered if that was a vulnerability for him. He didn’t even look over to see if it was okay.

  But soon he was engrossed in SpongeBob, and Lindy was thankful. She turned her attention to Erin, who’d moved back to the chair.

  “This,” she said, “is what Vance held over my head for many, many years. In one sense, he saved me. I could’ve been fired over this. But then he got all self-righteous about it.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “He discovered this one night when he was monitoring security footage during the sniper attacks. He was put in charge of watching the camera footage in a four-block radius. It was about four in the morning when he came across this and knew it was me.” Erin stood and took another chicken strip. She went to the Walmart bag and grabbed a water bottle, opened it, and took a swig. The lines on her face were so hard. Every crease seemed to deepen by the hour. “So he did me a favor. He erased that portion of the security footage. He was protecting me.”

  She sat back down and bent forward, trying to get Lindy to look her in the eye. “That’s what partners do. They protect each other. I protected him. And he protected me.” She leaned back in her chair and took two bites, slowly chewing, seeming to contemplate something. “But he took something and he shouldn’t have. Before he erased the disc, he burned a copy for himself. And he threatened me with it.”

  “What do you mean threatened?”

  “Let’s just say it wasn’t a free gift. He told me if he ever caught me drinking again, he’d turn the footage over to the captain. So I had a lot of pressure, as you can imagine.”

  “Is that why you moved to Chicago?”

  “I moved to Chicago for a fresh start, much like you were doing. Everyone needs a fresh start, don’t they? My father lives there, in a suburb. Besides, Vance had grown cold toward me. Maybe it was the superiority complex he got from moving inside, getting that detective title. Or maybe it was because you kept harping on him to keep his distance from me. I’m still not sure. Whatever the case, he forgot what he owed me.”

  “Yeah. You never did quite get over that savior complex, did you?”

  Erin’s eyes narrowed. “You know, I lost everything that mattered to me when I left Maryland. And he never got that. He said it was a good thing, that I could make a good life for myself.” She took another long drink of water. “I needed him to understand how it felt to have one’s life completely disrupted. Like mine was.”

  Lindy’s heart continued to quiver, but she tried not to show it. “Erin, you had a drinking problem. I don’t know what that disc’s about. As I’m sure you know, I had no idea it existed. But I can only imagine that Vance was trying to help you.”

  “Hmm.” Erin rose and stood next to Lindy. She bent down to whisper in her ear. “I saved that man’s life, and he discarded me like a cigarette. He stomped on me to put me out.” She walked to the computer and started the footage again. “Watch carefully.”

  Lindy watched, but she’d seen it over and over. She wasn’t sure why she was being told to watch it again.

  “Don’t you see it?”

  “I don’t know what I’m looking for. All I see is you, the wreck.”

  “Watch again.”

  She played it again and Lindy tried to look for details.

  Then Erin paused the video and pointed to the top of the screen. “See that?” Her finger was on the corner of a dark sedan, speeding out of view of the camera. It had just passed by the accident.

  “I see a dark car.”

  “You want to know what I see? I see something that is going to cost him dearly. He’s tried to hide it for years, and he is going to pay for it. If not criminally, then with his reputation. And you know how much he loves his reputation.”

  A cold shiver raced over Lindy’s skin. She looked at Conner. He stared mindlessly at the TV, and she guessed he hadn’t been paying attention.

  But then she looked at his hands. They were clasped together, white at the knuckles. He’d heard every single word. And he was fighting the best way he knew how.

  * * *

  Vance managed to rest, though fitfully. He lay on top of his bunk, expecting to be joined by another prisoner, but no one ever came. His lawyer said he was being arraigned at 1 p.m. He’d been served breakfast, but nothing else.

  He dreamed of Lindy and Conner playing at the ocean. They’d not yet made it there as a family. They’d been too busy dealing with the mess that had become their life.

  The clanging of metal startled him to his feet. An officer entered, and before he knew it, he was being led to the visitor’s center again. Which was strange, since Biggs had told him he would see him again that day in court.

  His lawyer had listened to everything he’d said, taken fastidious notes, and seemed completely drawn in by Vance’s account of what happened.

  But then he ordered a psych consult. Said they probably wouldn’t get it in before the arraignment. Instructed him to enter a not-guilty plea. Then said he was headed to IHOP.

  This time the visitor’s room was more crowded. Vance looked around, trying to find Conrad Biggs. Didn’t spot him. He was guided to a table near the center.

  Then he saw her.

  Vance shot her a cold look as they secured him to the table. “Where is my family?”

  Erin gave him a coy shrug, but her eyes were as cold as a deep freeze. She waited for the officers to leave before leaning forward and smiling.

  “We’re having a grand old time. That kid of yours. Cute as can be. Except how he pees himself.”

  “Why are you here? What do you want?”

  “Does your life feel disrupted, Vance? Because that’s what I really want. I want you to feel how I felt when I had my life pulled out from underneath me.”

  “You’re the one with the drinking problem.”

  “And you appointed yourself judge, didn’t you? Well, now I get to play judge.” She traced an imaginary line on the table. “I have to tell you, this was unexpected. I wasn’t counting on you being framed for that lady’s murder.”

  “I figured you were in control of it all.”

  “You know me. I roll with it. I thought you’d be hunting me down, and I had a plan for that. But this . . . well, this makes things a lot easier.” She looked casually around the room as she spoke. “I’ve been one step ahead of you the whole time, but there were some kinks in the hose. I didn’t count on Joe double-crossing me.”

  “He disappeared from your radar, took my things, and was going to keep the ransom for himself.”

  “He and his little whore of a girlfriend, who gave me a good fight, I’ll tell you that, even with a hole in her chest.” She sighed and gestured toward him. “But I have to say, this is not nearly as fun. I mean, I thought we’d play some hide-and-seek, you know? I’d outmaneuver you, make you feel like you were chasing ghosts. We’d spar. Have that thing going we always had. That chemistry. But this is lame. Here you sit, shackled to a table, unable to do anything at all. You can’t save your wife and kid. You can’t do anything.”

  “I will do what you want. Just don’t hurt them.”

  “Funny how you’re worried about people getting hurt. You weren’t always like that, were you, Vance? I mean, you weren’t worried about me.”

  Vance steadied his breathing. “That’s not true.”

  This caused an angry, s
tartled expression to pass across Erin’s face. “You’re trying to tell me that you cared about me?”

  “You never saw it as caring, but what I did was for your own good. You were ruining your life with alcohol. Yeah, I’ll admit it—I made a mistake with the disc. A grave mistake. I was scared. Scared of where your life was going. Scared of the mistake I’d made by missing the sniper’s car. I’ve lived with guilt for years because of it.”

  “So you just stop talking to me or returning my phone calls?”

  “Erin, you know as well as I do how complicated that was. I needed to restore my marriage. I needed to show Lindy I was committed. I had to let go of some things, and you were one of them.” Vance clenched his jaw as he tried to deliver the lie. “And I regretted it.” It made him sick to even say it, because the truth was, it was the best thing he ever did.

  Erin sneered. “Yeah. I bet you regret it now, don’t you? Just like Joe regrets ever double-crossing me.”

  “What’d you do with the truck and the body?”

  Erin locked her gaze on him, her blue eyes more intense than he’d ever seen them. “I am going to get everything from you, Vance. I am going to take everything you have. Your things. Your wife. Your kid. And lastly, your money.”

  “I know something happened in Chicago.”

  Surprise lit up her eyes. “Wow. Good detective work, Graegan. So yeah, I’m going to need a new start. I’m going to have to leave the country for a very long time. I’ve murdered two people, and by the time I’m done, it’s going to be . . . more.”

  Vance’s eyes stung with tears. Anger flushed his cheeks. “You’re going to kill Lindy and Conner. That’s what you’re telling me?” He couldn’t believe it had come to this. He couldn’t believe what she had turned into.

  “You always told me everything works out in the end. You were right.” She shrugged. “I mean, it’s not perfect. I was never a fan of Mexico. But it’s all going to work out for me. Not so much for you, but for me, yeah.”

  She stood.

  “Erin, don’t do this.”

  She spoke softly. “I like to see the desperation in your eyes. I’m sorry you were never able to see it in mine.” She walked out the door and disappeared.

  Vance looked at his hands. They were squeezed together, knuckles white. He prayed. He had no other recourse. He screamed a prayer out in his soul and begged a God he’d rarely talked to, to have mercy on him.

  The officers returned and led him from the room.

  As he walked back to his cell, he realized Erin had made her first mistake.

  By coming to see him, she revealed that she was nearby. And if that was true, he’d be able to find her. But first he had to get out of this place. So he prayed for that, too.

  26

  They’d been left alone again. Erin had unplugged the clocks, but it seemed like afternoon. They watched cartoons and that put Conner at ease. Lindy tried for a while to get the handcuffs loose or find a way around the bed railing, but to no avail.

  She prayed. It was uncomfortable, but it was a release. She kind of wanted to ask Conner if she was doing it right, but then she figured there was really no wrong way. She’d watched her little boy pray all kinds of different ways, in all kinds of different places. She’d been embarrassed by it, wondered if he was suffering from some disorder, had been discouraged when the doctor told her not to worry about it.

  Yet she was amazed at how often his little prayers were answered. His bike would suddenly start working again. The rain would clear up when he wanted to go to the park. And once, he’d accidentally left his Etch A Sketch on a mall bench. He prayed for its return. And when they went back, it was sitting just where he’d left it. But there was a maturity when he didn’t get his way, too. He’d ask and, most of the time, accept the answer, whatever that was.

  Maybe it wasn’t his faith that made her uncomfortable. Maybe it was the lack of her own.

  She drew a great deal of comfort from knowing for certain that Vance was looking for them. And he was good at looking for things. She wondered if he knew it was Erin. Maybe it wouldn’t take him long to figure that out.

  Strangely, she also longed for her mother. As tumultuous as the relationship was, as cold and distant as her mother was, she still longed for her. That longing always gave her peace in her own mothering journey. It made her sure that Conner would always love her, even if he couldn’t show it.

  Conner suddenly giggled a little at the cartoon, forgetting he was cuffed to a bed. Kids were amazing.

  Her mind wandered to the video that was now forged in her mind. She could see it clearly when she closed her eyes. Vance had covered up something very big, for the sake of Erin, and that caused doubt to rattle the cage of her heart. She thought she knew everything about him, but she hadn’t known this, and it felt like a betrayal.

  Yet there was something that her heart kept returning to, and it was the knowledge that this man loved her. And maybe she knew why he hadn’t told her. Erin had always been a tough topic for them to tackle. They could never get past the anger and resentment. Lindy hated that she felt like she had to compete against another woman. Vance hated that she ever thought she was in competition.

  And things got more complicated from there.

  But looking back, the resentment now seemed trivial. Handcuffed to a bed, being threatened by a murdering lunatic, she wished their time had been spent more wisely.

  Her gaze traced the line of her arm up to her hand, which was flat against the wooden post of the bed. It reminded her of one of Conner’s drawings, after he’d watched the Sunday morning preacher. He’d drawn Jesus on the cross. It was out of proportion, as any six-year-old draws, with the arms too long. But it seemed to perfectly depict the strain of a man trying to hold his body weight up by nails through his hands. She remembered carefully studying the crayon drawing of Jesus with red droplets of blood pouring out of each hand. Big, tearlike, out of proportion again, but strangely accurate.

  He drew Jesus smiling, but with blood gushing out of every part of his body. She’d asked him why Jesus was smiling if he was dying so miserably. And Conner said, “He was thinking of me.”

  She stared across the grimy motel room at her little boy, so innocent, so full of faith. Why couldn’t she just believe? Why was it so hard for her to ask God for help? To consider Him a friend like Conner did? To consider herself likable enough to be loved so much that Someone would die for her?

  She supposed it was because she didn’t like herself very much. She was a critical person, and she’d been far too critical of Vance. He’d gone through a horrible tragedy, and she never tried hard enough to understand where he was coming from. She only criticized. Questioned. Berated. All because she felt her needs weren’t being met the way she thought they should be.

  If only she’d taken the time to let him work things out.

  He was sick. She knew he was sick. He was visiting dead detectives. But she still loved him, with everything in her, and if she got a second chance, she would do anything to help him. Anything.

  Her second chance was looking less likely. Tears spilled onto her cheeks as helplessness engulfed her. There was nothing she could do for her husband. There was nothing she could do for her child. It was simply hopeless.

  Except.

  On the other side of that crayon drawing had been another Jesus, this time standing in a bright blue robe, with yellow sunbursts popping out from all sides of him. Conner had written RIZEN in orange. He’d boasted with a big grin, “He’s a powerful dude, Mom. He’s like all superheroish and stuff, except better, because He can come back from the dead, and superheroes can’t. They can crush metal and stop bullets, but once they’re dead, they’re dead.”

  Dead was pretty hopeless. The way things looked, she was halfway there.

  But maybe there was hope, drawn clearly in crayon.

  ***

  In another small concrete room, Vance waited in handcuffs. Conrad Biggs stood next to him quietly. Vance smelle
d aftershave, the kind his grandfather used to wear. And syrup. A large, securitylike camera hung from the ceiling. Eye-level to Vance was another camera, which he would speak into when he talked to the judge.

  “The judge will ask you how you plead, and you say, ‘Not guilty,’” Biggs said as if needing to fill in the silence. “Respectfully.”

  Vance sighed. “I know the drill. Not this particular drill, but I’ve been in court a time or two.” The monitor to his right was gray, indicating the judge hadn’t arrived yet. “I used to testify against people like me. I’d raise my right hand, take the oath, do everything I could to put them away.”

  Biggs stared forward. “Did you ever wonder if you put an innocent man away?”

  “No. I figured that was for the court to decide. I just presented the evidence.”

  “The evidence against you looks pretty bad.”

  Vance acknowledged this with a nod.

  “You and Lindy had a rocky relationship. That’s never a good sign when a wife and child disappear.”

  Vance kept his eyes on the monitor.

  “One of the victims’ blood was all over you. The other victim, who you claimed would link the murders together and show evidence that you didn’t kill either, is apparently nonexistent.”

  Vance glanced at him. “You’re starting to sound like a prosecutor.”

  Biggs grinned. “You gotta think like a prosecutor to beat one.”

  “Do you believe me? That I didn’t kill Karen and that my family was kidnapped?”

  “Too early to say.”

  “Why would you take me on as your client, then?”

  “The money’s good. Real good.”

  “By law, I am pretty sure you have to tell me who hired you.”

  “Doubtful,” he said. “But your next option is a chain-smoking, drunk, burned-out, court-appointed attorney who will most likely lose the case.”

  “How do I know that you’re not going to deliberately lose my case?”

  He smiled. “Because there’s not enough money in the world for a lawyer to purposefully allow himself to look stupid in front of his colleagues and a judge.”