“When’s the last time you saw Steph?” Ken asks his wife, and before she can answer he’s standing in the hall, calling up the stairs. “Stephanie, can you come down here a minute? Stephie?”
He turns to us, shrugging.
“I just feel more comfortable when I can see her,” he says.
Cheryl and the Chihuahua stare at me while a door opens upstairs and Stephanie comes slouching down, holding onto the banister, then pads into the room.
She doesn’t check her sightlines, she doesn’t look behind the door, she’s got no shoes on if she needs to run. Her face is soft with baby fat, her skin is so pale it hurts my eyes, and she’s gotten her braces removed and dyed her hair as black as her lipstick. Black T-shirt, black jeans, she’s a tiny dark star in the middle of this clean, white, contemporary living room.
“Hey,” Stephanie says, and then her mouth opens in the same O of surprise her father’s face made outside. “Oh my God, you’re—”
I see her tongue hit the back of her top teeth to make an L and I stand up and launch myself at her, reaching around her back, slamming into her chest, dragging her against my body, pressing her to me, just like her mom.
“You’re safe now, Stephanie,” I say. “I’m Dr. Newbury. I work with Dr. Carol Elliott. I’ve come to talk to your parents about your safety.”
She pulls back.
“Why?” she asks. “What happened?”
“Nothing, sweetie,” Ken says, putting one big, calming dad hand on her shoulder. “You’re absolutely one hundred percent safe here.”
“Your father is trying to reassure you,” I say, making eye contact, my hand on her other shoulder. “In reality, you could be murdered at any moment by a deranged lunatic who’s killing final girls.”
“I’m a final girl?” she says in a high voice.
“You’re not a final girl,” her mother says.
“Yes,” I say. “You are a final girl.”
Stephanie walks slowly to the sofa where I sat and sinks down.
“Someone else wants to kill me?” she asks, shrinking into herself. “Why? What did I do?”
Her mother and father start talking immediately, filling the room with reassuring noises, comforting sounds, saying things that aren’t true to make her lower her guard. I sit next to her. I meet her eyes. I speak only to her.
“That’s how your life is now,” I say. “That’s who you are. It didn’t happen for a reason, you haven’t earned it, you don’t deserve it, but you need to handle it or you’re going to die.”
“Look,” Ken says, cutting through Cheryl’s noise. “I don’t care for you traumatizing our daughter like this. It’s not productive.”
“You know what’s not productive, Ken?” I ask, not taking my eyes off Stephanie. “Getting your daughter murdered because you didn’t take this threat seriously enough even though one of the number one trauma therapists in the world is sitting right here warning you.”
“What’s Dr. Elliott’s cell number?” Ken asks.
“We need to focus on Stephanie,” I say. “I can keep her safe if you will let her go with me for the next three days. I can guarantee she will survive.”
Cheryl hugs her Chihuahua to her with both hands.
“Where will you take her?” Ken asks.
“I can’t tell you,” I say confidently. “But—”
The doorbell rings.
“To be continued,” Ken says, walking past me into the hall.
The front door opens and a voice says:
“I’m sorry to bother you so late, but I’m Dr. Carol Elliott, and I’m concerned your daughter might be in danger from one of my patients.”
“Honey?” Ken calls from the hall, and she practically bolts past me, leaving the Chihuahua behind.
“Stephanie—” I start, looking into her eyes.
“You’re Lynnette Tarkington,” Stephanie says, and she almost cracks up.
“You need to trust me,” I say, fast and urgent. “That woman out there wants you dead. I want to keep you safe.”
“What?” she asks.
I hear urgent discussion in the hall. I can’t make out the words, but any second they’re going to come back into the living room.
“We’re final girls,” I say. “We understand each other. If you want to survive the next three days, come with me right now.”
I get up and walk into the hall leading to the back of the house. My heart opens like a flower when I feel Stephanie fall into step behind me.
“Lynnette?!” I hear Dr. Carol shout behind us.
I think about reversing course, running at her fast, unzipping my fanny pack, pressing my gun to her forehead and squeezing the trigger three times, but then I’ll go to prison and she can’t be working alone and there will be no way to protect Stephanie from her partners.
“Hey!” Ken shouts.
“Stop!” Dr. Carol cries.
“Stephanie!” Cheryl yells, voice cracked with hysteria.
I reach back, grab Stephanie’s wrist, and yank her after me. We crash through the kitchen, out the sucking side door, around the side of the house. Stupidly they follow us rather than cutting us off in the front yard. I hear Stephanie’s bare feet meat-slapping the walkway behind me, quieter as we cross the grass, then louder again as we pound across the asphalt to Garrett’s Caddy.
I open the driver’s-side door, shove Stephanie across the bench seat, and then I’m sliding in, stabbing the key into the ignition, twisting. The big tank rumbles to life just as Dr. Carol runs across their front yard. She’s wearing a white blouse. She stopped and did her hair and makeup. That’s how confident she is. She didn’t count on me getting to Stephanie first.
“Is that—?” Stephanie begins as I hit the gas and the big car surges forward.
I twist the wheel to swerve around Dr. Carol.
“It’s the woman who’s trying to kill us,” I say. “One of them. There are more. A lot more. Sit on the floor and stay out of sight. I’ve got to do some tactical thinking. Once we’re out of L.A., I’ll tell you what’s happening.”
She slides to the floor without protest and shuts down. Good girl. Smart girl. Final girl.
—notes left on the front porch of the Shipman family home, November 1980
THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP XV:
Dream Warriors
We get on the 10, heading for the 405. They’re less likely to shut down a freeway than surface streets, but there are still so many ways they can stop us: Amber Alerts, highway patrol, traffic cameras, GPS tracking, outreach to radio stations. Garrett’s Cadillac is the kind of car everyone remembers after it passes. I might as well be driving a neon sign.
Stephanie’s phone starts playing a pop song.
“It’s my mom,” she says, showing me the screen from the passenger-side floor.
The car takes a lot of brute force to keep it in its lane at this speed. I keep my eyes on the road.
“Tell her you’re okay,” I say. “Tell her not to call the police. Tell her I’m not kidnapping you, I’m keeping you safe.”
“They’re going to think you’re making me say that,” she says as the pop song keeps drilling into my teeth. “They’re going to think you have a gun.”
“I do,” I tell her, then reconsider. “Don’t tell them that.”
“Mom,” she says, pressing the phone to the side of her face. “I’m—”
They don’t let her speak until I’m getting on the 405 North.
“She can protect me,” she finally says, then pauses to listen. “Yes, I—I, yes, I know exactly who she is.” Pause. “No, she’s not crazy. I don’t care what her doctor says. Mom?” Pause. “Mom?” Pause. “Mom!”
I reach over and already we have a rapport because she puts her phone right in my hand. Even over the Cadillac’s roar I can hear Cheryl’s voice s
quawking in panic. I press it to the side of my face.
“Cheryl,” I say, then again louder. “Cheryl!”
“You’d better pull over right now and let my daughter out of that car!” she shouts.
“I will keep her safe for three days,” I say. “She will not get hurt.”
She’s not listening. Between the engine rumble, keeping us in our lane, and the speaker distorting, I only catch the occasional word. I hear “lunatic,” I hear “prison,” I hear “psycho.” That one hurts. Then quiet. The next voice cuts through all the static inside my head.
“Lynnette, it’s not too late,” Dr. Carol says. “Pull over and let the girl out of the car.”
“She’s staying with me until this is over,” I say. “I’m going to protect her.”
“From yourself?” she asks.
“We both know who I’m protecting her from,” I say.
“Right now, what I know is that you’re endangering a young girl’s life,” she says loudly, playing to Stephanie’s parents, and I realize the mistake I’ve made.
I’ve left her behind to be the truth-teller, the explainer who puts all the blame on her unbalanced patient. I’ve given her all the leverage.
“Put me on speaker,” I say.
“Lynnette, I’m not—”
“PUT ME ON SPEAKER OR THIS PHONE GOES DEAD!”
There’s thumping. Then I hear echoes.
“Ken, Cheryl? Are you there?” I ask.
“My baby . . .” I hear Cheryl sob before she becomes incoherent.
“I want you all to hear me clearly,” I shout into the phone. I want every word to be branded into their brains, directly from my lips, not filtered through Dr. Carol. “You know I’m armed. You put out a bulletin on a bright red Cadillac, you report Stephanie missing, you have this car pulled over by the police, you do anything to slow us down, and I’ll kill her.” I sense Stephanie go very still. “The minute a cop pulls this Caddy over, I’ll put a bullet through her brain. She has an iPhone. We get the Amber Alerts. I’d better not see one.”
I let it sink in for a second.
“Stephanie will call you every five hours so you know she’s still alive. She’ll turn her phone off in between, so don’t try to track it. That’s the deal. You shut up, sit tight, and you’ll hear from your daughter every five hours until three days are up and you see her again.”
Then I hang up and hold the phone out to Stephanie. She doesn’t take it.
“They’ll still call the police,” I tell her. “But they’ll argue about it for a couple of hours first. That’s all I need.”
She still doesn’t take her phone.
“I’m not going to kill you,” I say. “I’m trying to save your life. Text your mom and dad. Tell them you’ll call in five hours. That’ll buy us the time we need.”
She takes the phone and gets busy while I get us to Westside Auto Recycling. They’re in the middle of closing but I convince them to stay open. It takes a lot of money. Stephanie comes with me but she walks slow and drugged, like she’s being forced at gunpoint. Like I’m holding her hostage.
We buy four used Chevy wheels and tires and I pay cash, then she helps me roll/bounce them back out to the Caddy. Two fit in the trunk, two fit in the back seat. We head toward Burbank, the car reeking of vulcanized rubber.
I can tell Stephanie wants to ask questions when I pull into the Burbank parking garage and drive up to level three, but she keeps quiet. Good girl. She checks the time when I ask. It’s only been fifty minutes. I figure we have another forty left on our head start.
There’s an empty space next to my Chevy Lumina with its four flats. I pull in and shut off the engine. The Caddy ticks to itself while I check my sightlines. Stephanie cranes around in her seat, trying to see what I’m looking at. No one’s there. Whatever conspiracy this is, they’re stretched to the limit. They can’t spare the personnel to watch an escape route they thought they’d closed last week.
I get the jack out of the trunk and Stephanie watches while I jack up the Lumina and start loosening lugs.
“I don’t like being out here,” she says.
“The faster we change these tires the faster we’re on the road,” I tell her as I work. “Change the last two yourself. I have to make some calls.”
“I’ve never changed a tire before,” she says.
“You just saw me do two,” I say. “Learn by doing.”
She starts working on the next tire and I walk away and fish my burner out of my go bag and turn it on. None of these calls are going to be much fun.
“Leave me alone!” Marilyn screams so loud I have to hold the phone away from my ear.
I told her housekeeper I was Dr. Carol so she’d transfer my call to her bedroom. She’s not happy it’s me. There’s a thump and a scuffle and I worry that someone’s attacking her, and then her voice is ugly and close in my ear again.
“ ‘A Texas debutante who never got told “no” by her father,’ ” she reads. “ ‘When they rebooted her franchise, Marilyn Torres’s descent into alcoholism was heartbreaking.’ Alcoholism?!”
“No one was supposed to see that,” I explain. “Someone stole it and sent it out to discredit me.”
“It worked,” she says.
I’ve thought hard about how to frame the next part.
“I know you hate me but you need to be careful,” I say. “Don’t leave the house. Don’t let anyone visit. You’re safe there.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she says. “You, of all people, don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“Don’t trust anyone,” I say. “Not even Dr. Carol.”
“Don’t talk to me about who to trust,” she says, and her speech is a little thicker, a little slurred. “I don’t trust you.”
“How’re Julia and Heather?” I ask.
“I’m hanging up,” Marilyn says. “I don’t want you calling me back or coming around. I don’t even want to look you in the eye because I think I’d spit.”
“You have to listen to me,” I say, and I explain why for a full minute before I realize she’s hung up.
When I call back, her housekeeper won’t put me through.
I call Dani knowing she won’t answer but needing to leave a message just in case.
“What?” she asks.
“You got out,” I say, genuinely surprised.
“Bail,” she says. “Pending trial. I’m under house arrest.”
“Stay home,” I tell her. “Lock down. Don’t let anyone on your property.”
There’s a long silence, and when she speaks her voice is measured and dead.
“They found my wife’s corpse in the public park where you dumped her,” she says.
“We wanted to take her home,” I explain. “But she didn’t know the way.”
“What do you want, Lynnette?” she asks.
“You can’t trust anyone,” I tell her. “Not Dr. Carol. Not the police. No one.”
“They told me you’d say that,” she says. “Good-bye.”
“Wait!” I shout. “Who told you?”
But she’s hung up. When I call back, a recorded voice tells me that this customer hasn’t set up her voicemail.
I try Julia, but get no answer. I try Heather but that AT&T customer’s number is no longer in service. My skin feels too tight. I need them to listen but they won’t even let me speak. When I get back to Stephanie she’s taking off the Caddy’s license plates and dropping them in the garbage. I’m glad to see her taking some initiative.
We pull out. After driving Garrett’s tank, the Lumina handles like a soda can. We get on the freeway. It’s a struggle to keep the speedometer under eighty miles an hour and the car drives rough with junkyard tires. I’m so focused on the road I’m genuinely surprised when I glance at Stephanie and see lights reflecting off
her wet cheeks.
“I’m not actually going to shoot you,” I say.
“I know,” she says, dully.
“Then don’t cry,” I say. “Do you see me crying?”
“I don’t even know what’s going on,” she says, and her voice hitches.
So I tell her. It takes us until the other side of Death Valley before I’m finished. I look at the clock. It’s going on two in the morning. After I get to the part about kicking Garrett P. Cannon in the balls and stealing his car, I stop, and there’s quiet for a long time.
Then Stephanie begins to choke, and shake, and I think she’s crying again and all that was for nothing, and I feel my chest flash hot, and then I realize she’s laughing. She laughs hard, and it quickly edges over into hysteria. She gasps out high-pitched peals of laughter, dissolves into hiccups, pounds on the dashboard with her heels. I let it run its course.
She just saw her friends murdered. Now someone’s trying to kill her. She’s bound to dissociate. I remember when this happened to me. Laughing when I should be crying, crying when I should be laughing, and at some point I got my emotions so mixed up I couldn’t remember how I was supposed to be acting anymore.
“Is all that true?” she finally asks, breathless, trying to recover from her laughing jag.
“Why would I lie?” I say.
Before we go any further I need to ask a question of my own that’s been tickling at the base of my brain.
“Why were you so quick to come?” I ask. “You don’t know me.”
Silent seconds slide by.
“I know who you are,” she says, serious now. “I know that what’s happened to me happened to you. I trust you.”
“I’m not even a little bit convinced,” I say.
Beyond the spill of our headlights, the desert is dark. A wire fence unscrolls on our right.
“You remind me of Alana,” she says in the dark. “Like, exactly. She was my best friend at camp. If she got to grow up she’d be you. Whenever she said anything I knew she meant it. In my head, I’m pretending you’re her.”
The Final Girl Support Group Page 18