by J. R. Rain
“ He’s a good kid,” he said.
I stepped closer to the table, ignoring the rain, ignoring the bright headlights. “You’ve spent your entire life protecting him, haven’t you?”
He hadn’t stopped shaking his head. “He’s a good kid.”
“ Your son is a killer, and as far as I’m concerned, so are you.”
Beyond the surreal light, the geese stopped honking. I heard the lapping of water along the sandy shore. The jostling of boats tied together. The wind in branches, and another sound, too.
Whimpering. Coming from the old man.
“ You’ve bailed your son out of so much trouble, he probably thinks he’s bulletproof. Immune. A god among men. He could take what he wants, when he wants, and dear ol’ dad will always get him off. Always.”
“ No, no. You’re wrong,” he said, and his voice sounded strangled, and I saw that he was weeping now. He covered his face with his hands.
“ He’s a killer, and you’re his accomplice.”
I heard the noise behind me, coming up from the lake. As I spun toward it, a nearby voice said, “Drop the gun, Knighthorse.”
Chapter Fifty
Under different circumstances, I probably wouldn’t have dropped the gun. I would have started firing and kept on firing until all of us were dead.
Instead, I tossed my gun aside and there, silhouetted in the headlights of my van, was a figure I had come to recognize.
Gary Tomlinson.
He stepped forward through the short grass, his facial features hidden in shadow. He was holding what appeared to be shotgun. Pointed directly at my chest.
“ Get on the ground,” he said.
“ Go fuck yourself.”
He stepped closer, and the closer her got, the more I could make him out. His nose was still a little swollen. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up to his elbows. He was a few inches shorter than me, but he didn’t look it. There was a lot of muscle around his shoulders, and his forearms rippled as he gripped the shotgun tightly.
“ Then put your hands up.”
“ Go fuck yourself. Again.”
Gary was now standing near his father, who was still sitting at the table, holding his head in his hands. The old man looked traumatized, bewildered, and I realized now that this whole nighttime set-up had been Gary’s idea, not his father’s.
Gary glanced at his father. “You believe this guy, Dad? You would think he was the one holding the gun.”
Dad didn’t say anything. He just continued to hold his head in his hands. The picture of denial.
“ I swept the area. Twice. We’re all alone. Park’s closed. No rangers, no campers. Nothing.” Now he looked at me. “You’re not in a very good position.”
“ I’m always in a good position.”
Gary shook his head and walked carefully around the table. He kept the weapon loosely trained on me. That was a good decision on his part.
“ Doesn’t matter,” he said. “This ends now, anyway.”
“ For some of us.”
Gary looked at me curiously from above his still-swollen nose. Curiously, because I wasn’t acting the part of a scared and cornered victim. He shrugged. “So you found me, Knighthorse. After twenty years. Funny how I always knew you would. So how did you find me?”
“ I Googled ‘murderous scumbags.’”
Gary tilted his head slightly. “I’m not as murderous as you think, Knighthorse. Sure, there was your mother and another woman who shall remain nameless. But that’s it. Just the two of them. You see, killing is more troublesome than it’s worth. There’s the cleaning and the hiding and the worrying. Not to mention I happen to like my current lifestyle…although things can get a little boring.”
“ So you mix things up with a little rape and murder?”
“ Actually, yes, although I’ve discovered other…outlets.”
“ Spoken like a true psychopath.” I didn’t want to know about his other outlets.
He shrugged, then nodded toward me. “You wired?”
“ No.”
“ Prove it.”
I needed him to believe I wasn’t wired. So I made a show of irritably pulling up my shirt and turning around. He seemed satisfied.
“ You’re a big boy, Knighthorse.”
I dropped the shirt, ignored him. “So why my mother?” I asked.
“ Why not?” he said. “Before your mother, there had been another girl-”
“ The girl you raped.”
He shrugged. Rape. Murder. It was all the same to him. “Anyway, I had found that experience…unfulfilling.”
“ So you wanted to rape and murder.”
“ Not in so many words…but I wanted to take things…further, if you will.”
“ But why my mother?” I asked again.
He shrugged. His gun shrugged with him. It was all I could not to lunge at him. I knew lunging at him would probably not end up very well for me.
He said, “She seemed…vulnerable. She was cute. She was an older woman. I was, what, nineteen or twenty? Her hubby, your dad, I guess, didn’t seem too interested. Sure, they were holding hands, but she seemed to be trying twice as hard as he was. I thought I would…satisfy her.”
“ So you followed them home.”
“ Not at first, but something odd happened. As they were leaving, I was leaving, too. And we all just sort of headed out to the same area. And when they exited just a few streets from my own…it was like…destiny.”
He trailed off. I waited.
“ So I circled around the street a few times. It was a quiet street. A quiet time of day.”
“ And then my father and I left.”
He nodded. “And then you left…and she was alone.” As Gary spoke, he did so in an emotionless monotone, a strong indication of psychopathy. That his words might have an effect on me, did not occur to him. Or, if it did, he didn’t care. “I knocked on the door and she answered. I told her my car had broken down and asked if I could use her phone. She said sure without thinking. Stupid of her to let me in.”
I briefly closed my eyes. That sounded like my mother. So trusting.
I nearly told him to stop, but I needed his confession on tape. Gary Tomlinson went on in agonizing detail. Once or twice he paused when he saw me wince or take in some air, and he looked at me curiously. Lacking real emotions himself, he would find my own display as something strange, something to be studied and processed.
He described her running from him through the house, of her nearly tearing his eyes out as she fought back. And as he described raping and killing her, I let my mind go somewhere else. Where it went, I don’t know, but I could only barely hear his droll monotone. When he was done talking, I came back.
“ Since then, there were a few other incidents, and, like I said, one other killing.”
“ And who was that?” I asked.
“ A girlfriend in Anaheim. I was tired of her.” He shrugged like, what are you gonna do? “So that’s it. Just two killings. Hardly a serial killer.” He took a step toward me. “When I described raping your mother, when I described killing her and leaving her to die, how did you feel?”
“ Fuck you.”
“ I can see you’re upset, Knighthorse. Angry. Horrified.” He frowned, seemed to have a thought, raised the shotgun toward his father and fired. His father, whose face had been buried in his hands, never saw it coming. The shot blasted the back of his head clean off. Bert Tomlinson convulsed, then fell backward where he landed on his back, eyes wide open.
“ You see,” said Gary. “Nothing. My own father. He protected me all these years. Shielded me. Permitted me to get away with some heinous shit, all because he said he loved me. All because he said he knew I was a good boy. Look at him now. Dead. Stupid man. He should have put me away. It’s his own fucking fault.” He turned back to me. I was, admittedly, too shocked to do much else other than to stare. “You see, Knighthorse, if I don’t give a fuck about my
own dad, why the hell do you think I would give a fuck about your own slutty mother? I saw the way she looked at me. She was practically begging me to rape her. The bitch.”
He was still too far away for me to lunge at. Any lunging would result in his whipping his rifle around and blasting the top of my own head off.
“ I guess I was wrong, Knighthorse. That’s three. With you, that’ll be four. I guess I really am an honest-to-God fucking serial killer. How cool is that?”
I said nothing. The stench of fresh blood filled the air. It was all I could do to breathe normally.
“ And here you are, Knighthorse. Big, bad fucking Knighthorse. Football hero. Private fucking detective.” He gently stroked his swollen nose. “You thought you were pretty cute the other day, didn’t you?”
“ Cute is rarely used to describe me,” I said.
But he wasn’t listening to me. “So what did you hope to accomplish tonight? Maybe talk my dad into turning me in? Maybe get some answers? Get some closure, as they say?”
I said, “Tonight’s about one thing only.”
He began to bring his shotgun up toward me. “And what’s that, Knighthorse?”
“ It’s about killing you.”
He paused at that, but only briefly. The shotgun continued up, and he would have fired it a split second later, if I hadn’t raised my own hand.
As soon as I did, I heard a muffled sound, followed by a red hole that appeared in his forehead just above his right eye. Gary Tomlinson looked briefly confused, and then he looked dead as he collapsed to the ground.
I stood above him, staring down, as my father appeared from the brush wearing his sniper’s gilly suit. Camouflage. His face was painted black and his eyes were wide and empty as he came over and looked down at the man laying dead at my feet.
“ Over the right eye,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m losing my touch.”
Chapter Fifty-one
I was sitting with Jack.
It was late, nearly eleven p.m., and the golden arches was about to close for the night. Sometimes they would let us stay after hours, as they cleaned and polished and mopped. I think the manager took a liking to Jack. It was hard not to like Jack.
We were both drinking decaf coffee.
Jack had listened quietly while I summarized the other night, about the two deaths, about the tape recorder that had captured it all, about how the police had all the evidence they needed to close my mother’s case, and the case of the murdered girlfriend in Anaheim.
I finished with something that had been on my mind since the incident at Irvine Lake. “I smelled my mother’s perfume,” I said. “It was like she was with me that night.”
Jack gripped his steaming coffee with both hands. There was a smudge of dirt on his chin, and his fingernails seemed especially dirty. But he didn’t seem to care about the dirt. And since he didn’t care, I sure as hell didn’t care. He looked at me for a good twenty seconds before speaking.
“ She was with you that night, Jim, as she’s with you every night and every day. She’s with you every time you think of her and often when you don’t.”
“ You mean in my heart.”
“ Not exactly, Jim. I mean, she stands with you, or sits next to you. Often she hugs you or holds your hand.”
I took in a deep, shuddering breath. A deep, deep breath. Talk about an emotional few months…and now this. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“ She’s with you in spirit, Jim.”
I shook my head. This wasn’t making sense. “She’s here now?”
“ She’s been with you every time you’ve sat with me.”
“ But I don’t see her.”
Jack smiled gently. “She’s sitting in the chair next to you, watching you, listening to you, laughing with you, and always sending you her love.”
“ I don’t know, Jack…”
“ You smelled her perfume, Jim.”
“ I was in the woods, for crissakes. There’re flowers everywhere.”
“ Flowers that smell like your mother’s perfume?”
Behind Jack, the McDonald’s staff was going about their various closing routines. The lights in the rear of the dining room turned off. The lights directly above us were still on.
“ You can see her,” I said.
Jack held my gaze. “Yes, Jim.”
“ Because you’re God.”
“ No, Jim. Because Mary’s sitting next to you.”
I looked at the seat in question. It was empty, of course. No shimmering mommy-shaped glow. No hovering ball of light. Just a yellow, metallic swivel chair with a smear of ketchup.
“ The seat’s empty.”
“ Do you feel her, Jim?”
“ I don’t know. We were talking about her. She’s in my thoughts…I don’t know.”
“ Close your eyes, Jim, and feel her.”
“ Do I have to?”
“ Just try it.”
I did as I was told, and with eyes now closed, I was acutely aware that I was sitting across from a bum in McDonald’s at closing time, looking like a fool. Beyond us, I could hear the sounds of trays being stacked, faucets running, orders being given to clean this or that. I smelled the golden hint of fries, the grease of burgers, and even ketchup.
“ Do you feel her, Jim?”
“ No.”
“ Keep your eyes closed.”
I kept them closed, feeling both ridiculous and oddly calm. It had been a helluva week. A helluva past few months. A helluva past two decades.
“ Good, Jim.”
“ But I don’t feel anything.”
“ Now look at your forearm, Jim.”
I looked, coming out of a semi-meditative state. My arm, I saw, was covered in gooseflesh. Just like the other night at the lake “What about it?” I said.
“ Do you feel anything, Jim?”
I thought about that. “A tingling in my arm.”
“ What do you think’s causing the tingling?”
“ A heart attack?”
Jack chuckled lightly. “Try again.”
“ My mother?”
The older man nodded. “Remember this feeling, Jim. Remember this sensation, and you will always know she is around, with you, touching you, loving you, remembering you.”
I took in a lot of air. My lungs ached with the effort. I closed my eyes again and couldn’t help but notice that the tingling along my arm had risen up to my shoulders and around my neck.
“ I think she’s…” But I couldn’t finish my sentence. It was too improbable, too crazy.
Crazier than talking to God at McDonald’s?
Jack said, “You think she’s what, Jim?”
Ah, screw it, I thought.
“ I think, well…I think she’s hugging me.”
“ She is, Jim.”
“ And you can see her?”
“ I can see her.”
“ And you’re not messing with me?”
He smiled. “How do you feel, Jim?”
The hair on my neck stood on end. Same with the hair on my forearms. A sweet tingling coursed through my upper body.
“ I feel great,” I said.
Jack nodded, pleased. He paused, then said, “She wants to tell you something.”
I blinked. “Tell me what?”
Jack cocked his head slightly as if listening. “She wants you to know that she loves you more than you can know. She also wants to thank you for keeping her memory alive. She knows that not a day goes by that you don’t think of her.”
Now the tingling around my neck turned into something warm, something loving. The tingling, in fact, now came to me in waves. Warm and loving waves. I think some of the hair on my head was standing on end.
Jack went on, and as he spoke, I closed my eyes. “She says she’s happy. She says she’s in a good place, a peaceful place. She says it’s time for you to be happy, too, Jim. It’s time. No more sadness for her. She says you’re her little angel, who isn’t so little anymore. She
says it’s time to move forward, Jim. It’s time to move on. She says it saddens her to see you so sad.”
I covered my eyes with one hand. I fought to control myself, but I couldn’t, and the warmth I was feeling was too real, too pure, too loving. After a moment, I let go, and wept into my hand, and now the warmth and tingling moved from my shoulders and surrounded my entire body, and Jack’s voice seemed to reach me from far, far away.
“ She says she loves you, Jim. And you will always be her little angel, no matter how damn big you’ve gotten.”
I laughed a little, and so did Jack.
“ She has quite a sense of humor, your mother. She also says she wants a grandchild.”
I laughed again, but still couldn’t speak.
“ She says she’s not in pain anymore, and she’s happy. Very, very happy. But mostly she says she’s proud of you, Jim. So very proud of you.”
I wept quietly into my hands, feeling the loving tingle spread along my arms and neck and shoulders. I sat like that for a long, long time. And after a while, as the tingling began to fade, I finally said what I’d never been given a chance to say before.
I said, “Goodbye, Ma.”
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