by Gregg Olsen
What would it be like to have a sister-daughter?
Leann had to struggle with that.
And now she was dead.
Thinking of Jim Truitt connecting to his spirits takes me back to the ride to Marrowstone Island with Ronnie that morning. I was so focused on my dislike for the Bohlebers that I wanted them to be the prime suspects. Truitt said Steve was the father of Leann’s child. But the similarity between the man in the gold locket and Jim Truitt keeps nudging me in another direction. The worst. The baby is his. I didn’t see it immediately, but Ronnie did. I have to hand it to her.
I think about Marie Rader and the last time I saw her. She was the wife of Alex Rader, my biological father, which made Marie my stepmother – a disgusting thought. I committed parricide, the killing of parents. Technically it wasn’t, though. I killed my father, which was patricide, and my stepmother. That would be considered tyrannicide, the killing of a tyrant.
If only there were such a thing.
I had a session with Dr. Albright where I told her about how I killed Marie Rader.
I get up and find the tape of that session. I’ve listened to it once and marked it. I put it in the cassette player and hit “play.”
My gun is still in my hand as I listen.
I remember perfectly clearly being in her office. Dr. Albright is sitting there with her eyes softening. She sees the passion and confusion in my eyes.
Dr. A: You’ve mentioned Marie. I know something terrible happened with her… and you.
Me: It wasn’t terrible. It was what it needed to be.
Dr. A: Fine. Tell me. I’m here.
I can hear the anger and anxiety in my voice.
Me: I tell her she’s like a Venus flytrap. So pure and tragic in her wheelchair, with no feeling at all below the waist. Marie was paralyzed in a car accident that was her husband’s fault. She never lets him forget it. She hates any woman that was more attractive, more desirable, than her. She plays out her anger by using her husband.
I tell her the truth: that she is just sitting in her chair, consumed with bitterness, waiting for the next girl to come by so she can entrap her. She tries to tell me that it isn’t like that, but she calls me Rylee. She knows my real name. The name I’m using. She’s holding a knife and her face is hard again. I can tell she hates me for reminding her. For knowing what I know. Not about him. But about how pathetic she is.
Dr. A: What did she say to you?
Me: “I should have killed you when I had the chance. I should have tattooed you like the others and then slit your little throat. I know what you are to him.” It figures that she was the tattoo artist. The tail of a koi carp peeks out from under the bulging upper sleeve of her light pink T-shirt. Just then she starts coming toward me. She is turning the wheels of her chair with one arm. In her hand is the knife. She is quite the tattoo artist. She’s the one that has tattooed all the victims of her and her husband. A small heart on the shoulder.
She is strong. She comes flying at me across the kitchen. I have a gun. I fire but miss. I remember thinking, “Shit!” I have only one bullet left. I fire again, striking her in the kneecap. As if that would give me any hope of retreat. Blood flows from her dead limb and she doesn’t even acknowledge it. She can’t feel anything. The wheels of the chair spin faster. I take a step back, thinking what to do. How I will stop her. I have no bullets. I drop the gun to the floor, regretting doing so instantly. I should have used it to bash in her skull.
“Alex isn’t much,” she cries at me. Now her eyes are narrow and full of sorrow, but she’s a fraud and I know it. “He’s pathetic. But he’s mine. He does what he’s told. He goddamn owes me.”
I think back to what my freak father said before I obliterated him: “I did what I had to do. I had no choice.”
“You pulled the strings, Marie!” I scream at her. “You’re the pathetic one!’ The knife sends a triangle of reflected light into my eyes, and I blink.
“Guilt was Alex’s motivator. Revenge on all the pretty girls was mine,” she says as she lunges with the blade pointed at me. “Now you’ve ruined everything.”
In a flash she’s nearly on me, and I do the only thing I can think of. I plant my foot between her legs and catch the base of the chair. It is fast and decisive. The knife falls to the floor. Marie Rader goes flying backward through the plate glass slider that leads to her patio.
The tape goes quiet. Dr. Albright is waiting. There is a look of concern and support on her face.
Me: Oddly, she doesn’t scream. She starts coming toward me again. I don’t know exactly how I accomplish it, but I manage to plant my hands on her chair as she flails about. With all the strength that’s somehow still inside of me, I push her through the glittery shards of glass on the patio toward her massive koi pond. The one she bragged about while she was poisoning me with her iced tea. The water surges over her head as she starts to sink down beneath the surface. Instinctively, I return for the knife. I stand by the water’s edge as Marie flails around. She’s coughing and choking, but she grabs hold of the cement edge of the pond. I see her rise up. Those arms of hers. They are like a pair of pine trees. They undulate with muscle tissue. I see the veins in her forearms press upward like a mass of worms under her skin.
“Goddamn you!” she says. Her eyes are wild. She starts to pull herself up and I do what I know I have to do. And partly because I want to do it. I can’t stop myself. I take the knife and slam its glinting edge through her fingers, and she screams. Yet she hangs on. I stomp on her other hand with my shoe like I’m crushing the life out of a scorpion. Which she is, and at the same time she’s an insult to the creature. Her severed fingers are lying there on the edge of the cement and the water is turning to blood. She goes under again. The koi are drawn to her. I wish they were piranhas. I wish the pond were a vat of hydrochloric acid. No matter. I am done. So is Marie.
Dr. A: Were the police called?
I notice Dr. Albright hasn’t asked directly if I called the police. I answer her question as best I can.
Me: Marie and I made a lot of noise and I’m hoping no one else heard or cared enough to call the police. Since Alex Rader was a cop, my respect for the cops has nose-dived. Rolland once said that the police are limited in what they can do, but I know that there was at least one among them—and maybe more—who did what they wanted, no matter the price. Go to the police? Mom went there for help and look how it turned out for her. It is one thing of two that I know she and I agree on. The other is that Hayden must never know what I know to be true. Like Mom, I carry that burden now. I love my little brother too much to have him live a life knowing that his heart circulates poisoned blood. Like mine.
Dr. A: So what do you remember?
Me: The koi pond is red with Marie’s blood, and I feel sorry that the fish have to swim in the filth of her body. Even so, I kick her fingers into the water with the tip of my shoe. Under the surface I see her face. Her eyes are open and so is her mouth, in a permanent scream. She was handicapped but she put up more of a fight than her husband, the worthless pig. I start for the living room, and though I scan it with speed, I still see everything and capture it in my memory forever. Like a camera with my finger on the shutter. Click. Click. Click. The scene, the furnishings. Everything is mundane. A TV sits across from a sofa. A recliner points toward the set, and a basket containing needlework sits at the end of the carpet ruts left by Marie’s chair. I grab the wedding photo of Alex and Marie, smash the glass, and pull the photo from the frame. Folded, it goes in my pocket. The ruts. My eyes trace the worn parallel lines in the carpet throughout the house. They stop at the only place Marie cannot go. The door that leads upstairs. If Alex Rader wanted to keep a souvenir from the prying eyes of his wife, then it would be where she could not follow. He wouldn’t have to lock it up. I turn on the light and head up the steps.
The tape goes silent again. I’m replaying in my mind the scene before I speak again.
Me: Up top is one large room with the dormers looking out
toward the street. Alex Rader had set it up as his office. It is like no office I could have imagined. Yes, I’ve seen porn. Never on purpose. Not really. There have been times when I’ve gone online and clicked the wrong link and in an instant I’m in a world of naked bodies moving and emoting in ways that indicate great pleasure but frequently make little sense. One time I saw something so strange I still don’t know what they were doing. Or how many were doing it. And, truthfully, I don’t want to know. The room is paneled in dark oak. Using the seams in the paneling as a guide, Alex Rader has taped up photo after vile photo. These are scenes so sickening that I have to steady myself as I try to take them in without vomiting. I wouldn’t mind vomiting right now. But I don’t have the time. I move closer to a section of the wall that holds a familiar face. Megan Moriarty does the splits in her cheerleading uniform from Kentridge High School. It is one of the images of her that I saw online. Next is Shannon Blume’s picture, the same pretty but sad-eyed photo that appeared in the newspaper—the one that her parents held in their arms as they called out to the world for help in finding their daughter. Leanne is there too. But this photo is not familiar. It was candidly snapped when she was caught down by the marina, unaware. She was being stalked.
I hit the “stop” button. Is it a coincidence that one of Rader’s victims was named Leanne? Or is this destiny’s way of reminding me of what I’m supposed to do? Rader is dead. Marie, his helper, his leader, is dead.
The picture of Rader’s Leanne was candidly snapped. Down by the marina. She was being stalked. I believe my victim—and I think of Leann as my victim now—was being stalked too.
I hit “play” again, resuming the tape.
Me: I hear the thumping, louder this time, and I turn around. Using her one good hand and the stump that I made for her with the kitchen knife, soaking-wet Marie has heaved herself up the stairs. She slithers. She can barely speak, but she is as mad as hell and she won’t be denied.
“To get out of here,” Marie spits out, “you have to get by me.” She has the knife in her hand. I see by looking past her that she used it like a rock climber to hoist herself up the stairway. A trail of water and blood follows her like a snail’s trail. Except, she’s no snail. Marie is fast. Faster than anyone can imagine. I have been upstairs only a few minutes and she’s managed to track me. She pulls herself toward me. Her hair is wet and soaked with blood.
“Do you realize what you’ve done?” I ask, as though someone so vile could even fathom it. “Do you realize how many lives you ruined?”
“Try being in a wheelchair,” she says. “See how that ruins your life.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Am I supposed to think that your playtime photo sessions were the result of some deep-seated anger you hold at the world because your spinal cord was cut? Get real, Marie.”
I stop and gather my thoughts. I know what comes next, but I have to hear it one more time. It’s a compulsion I can’t abate.
Me: “You’re not getting out of here alive,” she says. The blade has been dulled by its use as a stair climber, but it can still inflict fatal damage if I give her the chance. Which I won’t. I take the desk chair and I spin it hard and fast in her direction. Marie lifts her torso from the floor with those powerful arms—arms that were mighty when she was a swimmer, when she could hold her breath for a long time. She balances herself with her stump and tries to lunge at me. I throw my body on the chair and it smashes into her, sending her screaming backwards down the stairwell. When she lands, I see the tip of the knife. During her loud tumble, the blade found its way behind her, entering her neck and protruding through her mouth like a carbide tongue as she fell back. I can barely breathe. I stand there for a beat, watching as red oozes from Marie’s gaping mouth.
I don’t have to stop the tape. I picture Leann Truitt’s body laid out in a staged pose, neck broken, tortured, raped.
Me: Her light pink shirt is now a bloody red tie-dye. I hear sirens and I know I have to get out of there right away. I gather photos from the floor and skirt past Marie’s slumped body, her withered legs, her tree-trunk, arms and that pie-cutting knife protruding from her mouth. By the door I see my mom-style purse. I grab it, stuff the photos inside, and run out of the door and through the hedge to the street. I know my fingerprints are all over the house, but I’ve never been arrested and there’s no trace of me in anyone’s system. At least, not yet.
I put my gun in the safe. My tongue still smarts. I take the bottle of Scotch and the used plastic tumbler out of the desk drawer and pour a little, then a little more.
Before I listen to any of the other tapes, I click on my email and scroll downward.
Wallace has written another message.
My heart sinks. It’s like a sleeping snake and I don’t want to disturb it.
But I do.
It’s brief.
I doubt you know what it’s like to be hurt so deeply you’ve lost a part of yourself. I know what it feels like. Soon, Rylee, you will too.
My head spins. It’s not the alcohol, of course. Although it could be. It’s the sentiment. It’s the hate. Someone out there knows my secrets. Someone out there wants me to be made to suffer.
Twenty-Two
I slot in another tape, rewind a little and hit play. My voice comes over the tiny speaker in the player.
Me: Courtney is my mom’s real name. She hid that from me as well as everything else. Aunt Ginger said my mom was scrunched up in the hospital bed after she delivered me and didn’t look at me right away. Mom said she was glad I was a girl. My aunt Ginger said to my mom that she was hoping for that too. She told Mom to look at me. She said I was beautiful. My mom wouldn’t look. She was afraid to look. Afraid that if she looked she would see him.
Dr. A: Him?
I fast-forward the tape a little.
Me: So much of what happened in my life was orchestrated turmoil. Orchestrated by my mother to cover the tracks of one lie with another lie and another and another. I remember one time when we were watching an episode of Teen Mom on TV and the girl who’d just had a baby was talking about giving it up for adoption.
Dr. A: Your mom considered giving you up.
Me: Yeah. I guess she did. Of course, Aunt Ginger said it was to protect me from him. She pretended to be hidden from him for so long that he didn’t know she was pregnant. It was all a lie. While we watched that show, my mom and me, I told her that I could never do that. Never give a baby up like that. She said if it was what was best for the child, it might be what’s best for me. She said she knew people who had considered it because it was the only right thing to do.
The tape is quiet for a few moments.
Me: Ditching your kid—how could that ever be right? I mean, they shouldn’t have got pregnant in the first place. My mom just said mistakes happen sometimes. Sometimes pregnancies are anything but planned. I knew my mom was young when she had me. She said she was eighteen but now I know she was sixteen. I thought she’d been married to my father. The one that died fighting for his country, a war hero. That was all lies too.
The tape hisses and ends. I eject it and turn it over, insert it, and think of the case. Leann Truitt had given her baby up. My mother had almost given me up. I wonder now where I fell on the spectrum my mother had laid bare.
Had she regretted keeping me? Had I ruined her life?
I hit “play” and wait for the blank portion of the tape to catch up.
Me: Aunt Ginger told my mother that I look just like her. She told my mother that I was her baby and not his. A nurse heard her say that and remarked that it was none of her business, but sometimes it’s good to have a man around. For child support if nothing else. My aunt said that would never happen with this man.
Aunt Ginger was right. This man, my biological father, was a monster. As a dad and as a person. Maybe Leann Truitt’s kid was lucky to get far away from Jim Truitt. Maybe my mom was right about a baby sometimes being better off…
Dr. A: Your mother came to
accept you.
Me: I don’t know if she ever accepted me. Aunt Ginger said Mom never filled out the paperwork to give me up for adoption. I don’t know if that was on purpose or if she had other reasons for keeping me. She always doted on Hayden, my brother. She expected me to be her replacement when she wasn’t there. Maybe she always planned on abandoning us and thought I would take her place.
Silence.
Me: Aunt Ginger said my mom held me and told me she loved me and would never let anyone hurt me. Another lie. Aunt Ginger was sitting and was about to get up, but I stopped her. I didn’t need to know that Mom was going to give me up but changed her mind. I wanted to know how my biological father, Alex Rader, knew that my mother was having a baby. Me. I wanted to know why he thought I belonged to him. I told her that I’d spent my whole life thinking I was alone. I had no relatives but Mom and Dad and Hayden. I told her I needed to know everything so I can find my mom. And my stepfather’s killer.
Dr. A: Go on.
Me: Aunt Ginger is holding something back. Something big. But I also feel that she cares about me. That’s why she told me that right after my mom had me, a policeman came into the room with flowers.
I don’t need to hear the rest. Leann was lied to just like I had been. Where was her mother during all of this? Someone who got his daughter pregnant is not a one-time offender. He may have been, probably was, molesting her for her whole life. Did her mom know? Was she so money hungry that she turned a blind eye?