by Pamela Crane
The whole way home I worried the dad was tailing me, every few seconds checking my rearview for headlights while taking a circuitous route through various neighborhoods to throw him off. When I felt sure I hadn’t been followed, I headed home, feeling ashamed the whole way for getting sloppy and probably scaring the shit out of that poor family. Until today I felt certain this was my calling, the perfect fit for me. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for investigative work like I’d thought.
After pulling into my apartment complex’s parking lot, I sat in the dark, my cell phone in hand. I could call Tina right now, get it over with, reunite my best friend with her long-lost daughter. I could bring her baby back from the dead. Offer Tina one blessing out of all the pain that she’d been through.
But was it a blessing, really, to take Giana from her home? Or to heap the burden of parenthood on an ill-equipped young adult whose life was in shambles?
As my fingertip hovered over her contact icon in my phone, I couldn’t make the call. Tina, an eighteen-year-old jobless nomad with suicidal tendencies. Fit to be a mom? I don’t think so. Giana was clearly with the better family—wealthy, adoring, stable, loving. She even had a baby sister to grow up with. Clothing that didn’t have that secondhand store warehouse stink. Home-cooked food and a gourmet kitchen with stainless steel appliances to cook those all-organic meals in. Maybe even a housekeeper to clean up after her.
Was it really the right thing to tear this darling child from the only life, the only parents she knew? If what was fair to Tina wasn’t fair to Giana, how was I to choose?
There was one person I could talk to. He wasn’t the most reliable source of advice, but he would at least understand. At least I hoped he would.
Chapter 15
A target never knows it is a target. At least that’s when it’s most fun for the one choosing a victim. When the prey knows its predator is coming, well, that simply ruins it all. At least for someone like me. Burt Wilburn, however, was the exception to the rule. I wanted to watch him squirm.
Some men didn’t deserve a quick death. Men like Burt, who preyed on the innocent year after year, their own families becoming victims, had earned a special place in hell.
I didn’t take pleasure in the kill like others did. Some people got off on it—watching fear contort the face. The eyes drain into lifeless black pools. The blood oozing and seeping. Psychopaths savored it like sinking your teeth into a tender prime rib. Not me. I was no psychopath. The gruesome details did nothing for me. For me it was a job, like a gardener ripping out weeds or an exterminator removing pests. I relished the final outcome—ridding the earth of one more monster.
A monster hunter. That’s what I was. One of the good guys.
Fortunately for me, there were plenty of job opportunities. Plenty of villains who needed to be exterminated. Burt Wilburn being one of them.
He hadn’t gotten on my radar until after the newspapers linked him to Marla Rivers, a child murder cold case I had remembered reading about years ago, but a little digging told me all I needed to know to seal his fate. Living in the information age had its rewards. Burt’s entire life drama spanning the past twenty years all at my greedy fingertips. His youngest daughter, Carli, was killed in a hit-and-run. His oldest, Ari, was mired in the government-run child welfare system. Clearly a horrible father. I knew all about that. Even if that was the worst of his sins, Carli’s death was too suspicious to leave him blameless. I had a feeling his own daughter’s death was tied back to dear old Dad, and I’d give him a chance to confess right before I killed him.
Routines were everything when planning a kill. It required patience and timing, knowing the predictable behavior patterns of the target. Such as how every night Winnie Wilburn topped off her wine glass before heading upstairs for a bath while Burt lingered behind with his book and coffee, socked feet propped up on the living room sofa. An hour later Burt would check the door locks, tidy up the pillows, then head upstairs to join his wife in the bedroom. I never cared what happened next, as it was the in-between dinner and bedtime minutes that mattered most to me.
From outside their living room window I watched as Winnie, careful not to spill her brimming glass of merlot, teetered up the stairs, her index finger and thumb elegantly holding the stem like she was sipping afternoon tea from her grandmother’s china teacup. Up she marched, her ramrod straight back, then legs, and at last slippered feet disappearing from my line of sight as she ascended. One story below, Burt shuffled around the living room collecting things—a newspaper, hardcover book, reading glasses, then lastly his mug of coffee. As Burt sat in a floral upholstered chair, propping his feet on a matching ottoman, I was close enough to see he drank his coffee black—black like the state of his soul. The soul I would today purge.
The great expanse of evening hid me behind a pane of glass, a thin shield between Burt and his bleak future. If I could have, I would have thanked his daughter for her assistance with my plan. Her secret entrance into the house had not gone unnoticed, making my job of breaking in much easier. Dressed in black sweatpants and a black hooded shirt that felt a bit too stifling for this balmy evening, I headed to the backyard, then cracked open the basement window I had watched Ari use.
Funny how people didn’t feel the need to double-check their windows and doors in the suburbs. Some people even left their windows wide open to welcome the nighttime breeze ... along with criminals looking for an easy entrance. Didn’t they realize nowhere was safe anymore? Didn’t they know that children were stolen from their very beds with a simple slice with a pocketknife through a window screen? It was baffling to me.
Though the bigger mystery was Ari Wilburn. I admit I had been surprised when I found out who she was. Their own daughter sneaking into her parents’ house doing God-knows-what inside. I couldn’t imagine why she was there slinking around the upstairs, but it prompted a deeper dig ... and some questions that only confirmed my suspicions about Burt’s character.
Slipping through the window, my feet touched concrete and I worked my way through the darkness toward the stairs. Tiptoeing upward, I turned the doorknob, cracked open the door, and peeked out. Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” blared from Burt’s top-of-the-line Bose music system. Only the best for the bastard who helped imprison and kill children. I was surprised at his good taste, thinking Burt an uncultured clod. The exhilarating music stirred my blood, providing the perfect soundtrack for my mission.
The interior was as nice as it appeared from my outside vantage point. The scent of a vanilla candle burning wafted to where I stood, back pressed against the wall. From the linens to the matching furniture, everything felt clean and polished, like they were compensating for their sins with mops and dusters, wiping away the dirt from their lives. Maybe I was the only one who saw the stains and the ghosts of Burt’s victims.
I rounded the corner that led from the dining room to the living room, watching Burt’s eyes study the Lincoln biography he was reading. He looked like a history buff with his glasses perched on his beak-like nose, a student of lives past. I couldn’t see the cover from the way the book lay on his lap. Nor did I care. The particulars of Burt’s personal library were of no significance; what mattered was stealth and execution. I couldn’t risk his wife hearing the noise of our scuffle—I wasn’t here for her, she hadn’t made it on my list, despite her delinquent mother status—so I needed something to draw him in.
Heading into the kitchen where the granite countertops gleamed and the washed pots and pans sat tidily in the drying rack, I turned the kettle on to boil, then hid in the corner of the hallway that led to the back porch. When the kettle began to whistle, shrieking over Wagner’s rousing trombones, Burt’s footsteps rumbled down the hallway.
“What the—?” Burt muttered as he turned off the kettle. “And she says I’m the forgetful one. The woman can’t remember where her head is half the time,” he continued grumbling.
As Burt turned to head back to the living room, I stepped out from
the shadows behind him, threw my arms around his chest, one gloved hand holding a dishrag, which I shoved firmly into his mouth to stifle him while the other held a knife to his throat. He shook his head in small panicked gasps, wriggling to break free. But I had the advantage, old man.
Pulling him into me, I whispered into his ear, “This is for Marla Rivers.” I raked a shallow inch or two of neck flesh just to make a point, but not enough to do damage. I wanted him to hear the rest of what I had to say, to know why he was chosen, to feel the final thrust that would kill him. The squirming stopped, but the sobs only intensified.
“And this is for all the other girls you’ve victimized. When you meet the devil at his door today, remember why you’re there.”
I wanted him to look me in the eyes and know that I saw the fiend inside of him, that Burt Wilburn could no longer hide behind his professionally whitened smile, or his six-figure income. There would always be a reckoning. Circling around him to meet him eye to eye, I held the blade firmly against his throat, but my movements were not swift enough. Beside me his weight shifted, then he dropped suddenly, throwing his arm out to push me away. I leaned forward while he backed away, screaming, and managed to thrust a short jab into his gut. He fell to the floor in a thump of blood and whimpers.
“Burt, what’s all that racket about?” Winnie called from upstairs.
“Winnie!” he cried out. The Valkyries’ ride was building to a crescendo. “Help me!”
As I debated whether to finish the job or run, the floorboards above me creaked as she hurried toward the stairs. It was likely I hit a vital organ; with any luck, he’d probably be dead by nightfall.
“Burt? Turn down the music, won’t you? I can’t hear what you’re saying.” Her voice was getting closer. I couldn’t wait to ensure Burt’s death—not without getting caught or making an innocent woman my next victim.
“See you in hell,” I whispered as I fled out the back door, hearing Winnie’s screams of terror echo behind me.
Chapter 16 Ari
Red lights flashed outside my parents’ house when I got there. As my car crawled up the driveway, a gurney passed me in a rush. An oxygen mask covering a face. The thick body of a man. Salt-and-pepper hair. Dad. Two EMTs were wheeling my father into an ambulance as I clumsily stopped the car, jumped out, and ran after them.
“What’s happened?” I yelled to anyone who would answer, but no one did. My voice got buried beneath the din of chaos. Uniformed officers taking statements. Nosy neighbors collecting on the sidewalk. CSIs taping off the front door. I tailed one of the EMTs guiding my father, hovering over his motionless body where blood soaked his clothes and bandages stuck to his bare chest. “He’s my father. Is he okay?”
“He’s been stabbed, ma’am. We’re taking him to the hospital,” the woman said without looking at me. “Stand aside, please.”
I stood there in dumb shock. My father—dead. Gone forever. No last goodbye. I wasn’t ready for it. The EMTs hefted the gurney up onto the ambulance platform, then signaled for my mother, who stood a few feet away sobbing into the shoulder of a young cop writing out a police report, her eyes bloodshot, her hair in disarray.
“Mom, what’s going on? Was Dad attacked?”
Mom shook her head at me, climbing into the ambulance with the help of the officer.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, Ari. I found him on the kitchen floor—stabbed.”
“What hospital are you going to? I’ll meet you there.”
Mom looked at me with painful indecision, then cast her eyes somewhere far away.
“Please, Mom. He’s my father. I need to be there.”
She returned my plea with a nod. “Duke Regional.”
I stepped back as the EMTs shut the door behind her, securing her next to my father for what could be his final breaths. The ambulance siren screamed as the vehicle lurched down the road, a heartbreakingly familiar sight. One of the last memories I’d had of home so long ago. The day Carli was taken away after the accident, only to end up dead. And now here was my father in the same horrific circumstances—heading toward an unknown fate caused by some unknown killer out to take him down.
Only this time I wasn’t a naïve, helpless child watching it all play out like a movie script. I could do something about it this time; I could rewrite the outcome. I was a woman ready to fight back, ready to fight for my father and my family.
**
Dad had lost a lot of blood, my mother had told me when we found each other in the emergency room waiting area shortly after Dad arrived in the ambulance, being wheeled through a riptide of scrubs. While the surgeons operated on him, Mom and I sat in stiff silence in the austere waiting room, a stilted camaraderie between us. I hated the pale blue walls, the scuffed white tile, the swish of glass doors opening every few minutes to admit another patient.
And now I hated the dreaded walk to my father’s post-operative room in intensive care. A nurse had informed us Dad was out of surgery but was comatose. We were given permission to see him, briefly. Mom went first; I stayed behind to collect my thoughts, promising to come in a few minutes. What I was really doing was stalling. Everything about hospitals made my skin crawl.
Mom sat by his side, holding his limp hand, when I opened the heavy door. It slammed shut behind me, startling her.
“Oh, hi, dear,” she said when she turned and realized it was me.
“How’s he doing?”
She shook her head sadly. “Still in a coma. They don’t know if or when he’ll come out of it. All we can do is hope and pray he’ll recover.”
“And find the bastard who did this,” I added.
“Language, please.” But she was too exhausted to add any sternness to the words. “I’ve talked to the police. It was probably a random break-in; it’s been happening more often these days. You know your dad—never one to back down from confrontation.”
“A break-in? Do you really think that it was some punk trying to steal your flat-screen and jewels?”
Her frail shoulders slumped with weariness. “I don’t know what to think, Ari. Who else would want to hurt your father?”
I could name at least one person off the top of my head. I was sure Battan was itching to send a message to my father or to tie up loose ends. With the police questioning the tip connecting them to Marla’s murder, this could have been a threat to keep quiet.
Then I remembered the letter. I had forgotten about the note left on my father’s front porch. Whoever it was had to be the same one behind the attack—the person outside their house the night I found the ledger. If only I had left the damn letter where I’d found it, my father would have known someone was after him and been prepared. This was my fault. My father barely alive, my distraught mother putting on a brave face, a homicidal maniac still loose ... it was all on me.
The decade-old childhood blame of my sister’s fatality hit me like an electric shock. The self-loathing, the torrent of guilt, the endless “if only I had” scenarios that ground into my head like an auger. It all came back, falling on me like a mudslide.
I fell to my knees, sobbing, hands covering my face. When I felt a warmth blanket me, I looked up to find my mother’s arm circling my side, a touch I hadn’t felt in years but never forgot.
“Hey, baby, it’s okay. He’ll be alright.” She kissed my tears, making me cry even more.
“It’s not that, Mom. I think it’s my fault Dad got attacked.”
“No, you hush now. It’s not your fault,” she soothed.
“You don’t understand.” I glanced up at her, afraid to see the disappointment in her face again after these small strides we’d made together today as we clung to each other for hope. But I had to tell the truth, no matter how she viewed me after this. “I did something ...” I paused to sniffle, afraid to tell her. “I’m so sorry.” My voice quavered as the apology fell apart.
I never got the words out as she shushed me with her finger against my lips.
“Honey, I don’
t know what you’ve done, and I don’t care. There’s a lot you don’t know—nothing that you’ve ever done wrong. I’m sorry I heaped that on you with Carli, but I’m not going to do it again this time. This happened because of choices your father has made.”
I turned away, out of shame or embarrassment, I didn’t know. I just felt so vulnerable.
She tilted my chin upward, forcing our eyes to meet. “Hey,” she said, “I love you. I love you so much. I’m indescribably sorry for what I’ve done to you. I can’t even put into words how awful I feel, how horrible a mother I was, doing something as unforgiveable as giving you up, but I wasn’t well back then. Things were ... just so messed up. But we can fix it now. Can you forgive me?”
“Of course,” I said without missing a beat, burying my face in her shoulder.
I felt a freedom like flying, soaring carefree amongst the clouds. I didn’t have to take the blame for everything wrong in my life anymore. It wasn’t my burden to bear. This was on Dad. He’d made himself a target.
Would things have been any better if I stayed out of it and not taken that note? Dad would have gone on the run, making himself a primary suspect in Marla’s murder. Either way, he would have had a killer after him, or the cops. Or both. It was a no-win situation for him, but I couldn’t shrug off the nagging feeling that I had made his problems worse by hiding that threat from him. And from the cops. Why hadn’t I shown it to Tristan? Why was I so friggin’ stubborn that I felt I could take on the world?
I knew Tristan would ask these same questions when I told him about the note later today. I had called him from the hospital waiting room, asking him to come, and now I almost regretted it, because I knew he’d give me shit as soon as I told him everything.