by Nic Joseph
“Some of them are talking, and some aren’t,” he said. “But we’ve got enough to keep them here for a while. At least three women have already confirmed the ceremonies you told us about. They say they stopped years ago, but these sick motherfuckers were killing male babies once a year to make sure they didn’t ‘ruin the community with their innate aggression.’ In other words, Frank Davies, and now his son, wanted to make sure that there weren’t too many men for them to compete with.”
“Amanda said the ceremonies took place every year on June 2,” I said. “Anyone give any clues as to why?”
“Yeah,” Derrick said. “Apparently, the going story is that Frank Davies accidentally smothered a baby boy who wouldn’t stop crying on that day, and something snapped in him. Maybe he realized how easy it was or how it could help him to have one fewer male in the complex. All I know is he was one sick bastard.” He turned, rifled through the photos, and pulled a couple out.
“We found this symbol all over the house,” he said.
My stomach clenched.
“That’s the symbol we saw Emily—I mean, the woman from the hospital—that’s what she drew on her body,” Gayla said. “Know what it is?”
“Yeah, they say the cross symbolizes the female and the tornado her strength. Frank Davies promoted it as further justification for his sick practices of killing little boys.”
I cleared my throat, staring at the photo. “So Ellis Davies is the man who was pretending to be Dan Lindsey.”
“Yeah,” Derrick said. “Speaking of Dan Lindsey, we finally found him. He took a road trip to Las Vegas with some friends. He and Emily got in a huge fight the week before his trip, and they hadn’t been talking to each other or even sleeping in the same room. He thought she was just giving him the silent treatment while he was away.”
“Poor guy,” Gayla said. “To come back to this. What about the woman from the hospital?”
“Her name is Matilda. Ellis sure has some sort of hold over her. They’re in rooms 3 and 4. Neither of them have said a word.”
“What about the guy who pushed me down the stairs?” I said. “Did you get him?”
“Yeah. His name is Bill Boyd. He’s in 7.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“I figured you would.”
Derrick led me to the back of the station, and I walked inside room 7. The man sitting there looked up at me and narrowed his eyes.
“Why were you following me?” I asked. “Why were you in my wife’s—my ex-wife’s house?”
He balled his fists on the table but didn’t say anything.
“Mr. Boyd?”
“I want a lawyer,” he said.
“That’s fine,” I said. “And you can have one. But it might be a good idea for you to clear some of these things up for me first. It might actually help your case.”
He took a deep breath. “I wanted you to let Matilda go. You were holding her hostage at the hospital, pretending like you were worried about her safety—”
“We were worried about Emily Lindsey’s safety,” I corrected him.
“Even so, she needed to get home,” he said. “Matilda is an integral part of our community and a very…special woman. Ellis had me watching that Emily woman for a while. He always has me learn about the families, lifestyles, and backgrounds of the women who want to join our family. I saw through her right away.”
“That’s how Ellis knew so much about Emily,” I said.
“She was going to destroy our family,” Bill said angrily. “I only followed you because I wanted to get Matilda back. I wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t really know what to say. ‘You’ve got the wrong woman’ didn’t seem quite accurate.”
“You got that right,” I said. “Tell me about your home. I was told by a source that you lived in a much bigger commune. She said it was a building, eight floors or so.”
He smiled softly. “We did, a long time ago. But after the children escaped, Frank had us move. We were getting noticed too much, too many people stopping by or trying to get in touch with Frank. We couldn’t take the chance that one of those kids would say too much, endanger our family. We had to move.”
“What about—”
“Detective,” he said, raising a hand to stop me. “My lawyer?”
I sighed and stepped out to find Gayla waiting in the hallway.
“I got nothing from them,” she said, gesturing to rooms 3 and 4.
“Let me try,” I said.
I opened the door to room 3 and stepped inside.
The woman, who I now knew was named Matilda, looked up at me, but she didn’t say anything.
“Hi, Matilda,” I said. “Do you remember me from the hospital?”
She didn’t respond.
“Did you know a woman named Emily?” I asked, and I saw her flinch. “Emily Lindsey?”
She still didn’t say anything.
“We’re going to find out what happened,” I said. “We’re going to find out why you killed her.” I scooted my chair closer to the table. “The man in the other room. Ellis Davies. Did he put you up to it? Did he make you do it?”
“No!” she said angrily. “Ellis would never do that. He’s gentle. He ignores his nature. He’s not like most men.”
“Like most men?” I asked, but she cut me off.
“He protects me. He needed to get back, back to our family, but he stayed with me in that horrible hospital. He’s always protected me.”
“By killing innocent children?” I asked. “By convincing you to kill Emily?”
“No!” she said. “That wasn’t why I did it. I did it to protect our family. Don’t you understand? I killed Emily because…”
“Because what?” I asked.
She blinked a few times and swallowed. “I loved her. I thought she understood me, that she needed my help. But she just wanted to ruin my family. Don’t you understand? My family is all I have.”
I heard a noise behind me, and I turned around to see Gayla standing in the doorway next to a woman.
Amanda Pearson. She was standing there, shaking, her eyes trained on the woman sitting in the chair next to me.
“Lill?” she said quietly, and I saw Matilda stare at the woman for a moment before pushing her chair back in shock.
“No…” Matilda said.
I stood up. “I’ll give you two a moment.”
“That’s okay, Detective,” Amanda said quietly, turning to me. “You can stay. I talked to Max Smith, the other person who Emily was planning on getting in touch with besides you. Turns out I knew Max, too. But not by that name. When I knew him, we called him Jack.”
She turned to Matilda as she said this, and the woman’s eyes widened.
“He’s okay, Lill,” she said. “He lives in California. He has a wife and a four-year-old. He told me that he talks to Perry, too, every now and then. They’re okay.”
I watched as Matilda slumped over the table, the sobs erupting from her body. I couldn’t tell if she was happy or sad.
“Really,” I said. “I’ll give you two some time.”
“No, Detective,” Amanda said, turning to me, her eyes trained on mine. “Remember, I told you there were five of us who tried to escape that day. But Lill stayed behind. Instead, she sent up a baby from downstairs with a note that told us if we ever told anyone about Friends of Frank, they’d kill her. I know Ellis made you write that,” she said, glaring at Matilda.
“No…” the woman said, wiping the tears from her face.
“Yes, he did,” Amanda said. “But that little boy, I never knew what happened to him.”
“What did?” I asked. “Did Max Smith—or Jack Smith, whatever his name is—tell you? Did he know?”
“He did,” she said softly, looking back and forth between Matilda and me. “And, Detective, there’s a reas
on Emily Lindsey had your name in her pocket. I think you should sit down for this part.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Here’s the thing about finding out you were born in a murderous cult and that the teenage girl who’d sacrificed herself for you more than thirty years ago had grown up to become a murderer herself:
It changes shit.
After I left Matilda and Amanda at the station that night, I went home and explained the whole thing to a horrified Mike and Nell. I didn’t leave out a single detail, and we cried together over the phone. The next morning, I called Mary and Brick, and by the afternoon, I’d completed the paperwork for my official leave of absence.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Brick had said, and I saw the first ever crack in his stony demeanor. “We’ll miss you, but we’ll see you back here soon.”
Gayla and I had gone out for lunch a couple of days later, and in typical Gayla fashion, she talked about everything else under the sun before getting down to the matter at hand.
“Whoever Brick assigns as my partner while you’re out had better dream about something interesting. Otherwise, what are we going to have to talk about?” she asked, and then she paused, shaking her head. “Sorry. Bad joke. Um, so…are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said with a small smile. “It’s different now that I know there’s a reason for all of it, for the nightmares, the visions… It changes things, you know?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I bet. So what are you going to do?”
“Well, I’m starting therapy again,” I said. “I’ve tried it before but never really stuck with it. And I’m actually going to start going to Amanda Pearson’s weekly sessions at the church.”
“Oh, wow, really?”
“Yeah, I went last night. It wasn’t so bad.”
Amanda hadn’t seemed at all surprised when I showed up the night before—in fact, she’d raced into my arms and given me a long hug before stepping back. “I’m glad you’re here,” she had said.
I had settled into a seat as she began to speak in front of the small group.
“Thank you all for coming,” she had said. “This is an open forum, and I invite you all to talk as little or as much as you want. I’ll start by telling you a little about someone very close to me. My sister, Gloria. We called her Gumball, because she used to always chew gum as a kid,” she said with a smile.
Amanda had cleared her throat and continued. “She was a wonderful woman and a wonderful sister. I lost her a couple of years ago, and trust me, I still have a lot of questions about what I could have done differently. I know that some of you in this room are caretakers, and you might be feeling the same way. The goal here for everyone is to make sure you understand that you’re not alone and you don’t have to hide anymore. Because believe me, hiding your pain is the hardest part.”
She had paused for a moment, and our eyes connected before she looked away.
“So,” she had said. “Who wants to start?”
I told Gayla about the session during our lunch, and she smiled. “So were you the one to start?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “But maybe next time.”
As we stood up to leave, Gayla put a hand on my arm. “Hey, if you ever want me to come with you to those sessions or to anything else, you’ll let me know, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, giving her a hug. “I will.”
“What are you doing later tonight?” she asked suddenly, and I could tell that she was still worried. “Want to come over for dinner? Kevin is making his famous steak and potatoes, and we can eat out on the patio, have some wine—”
“Can we do it next week?” I asked. She frowned, and I followed up quickly. “I’m not putting you off,” I said. “I just have something to do tonight.”
“On a Sunday night?”
I nodded. “Next week, though, okay? I mean it.”
She bit her bottom lip and nodded as we walked out of the restaurant.
Late that afternoon, I did have something to do. I stood outside of Kit’s school and watched as families filtered in through the front door for the play.
It was already five thirty, and the play started at six. I knew that Kit and Lara were probably already inside somewhere. I waited near the bottom of the stairs. A few minutes later, just as I expected, I saw Greg hurrying across the street and heading in my direction. He stopped in his tracks when he saw me, a look of exhaustion on his face.
“Really, man—” he started.
But I cut him off. “I’m not here to cause any problems,” I said. “I just want you to give something to Kit.”
Greg frowned and stepped closer.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small black-and-white race car that I’d taken from my nightstand that morning. “He used to love this growing up,” I said, shrugging. “He’s really nervous about his performance today. I just thought it might calm him down a little.”
He didn’t move, and I reached out farther, pushing the car closer to him. “Please, man. Just say you found it in the house somewhere. You don’t have to tell him I was here.”
“So you’re not coming in?”
“No,” I said. “And I’ll lay off for a while. Lara doesn’t want me around right now, and I have to respect that. And you’re right: Kit will be okay, for now. He has her, and…he has you.”
Greg’s jaw tightened, and he took a deep breath. He reached out his hand and took the car. “I’ll give it to him,” he said. “Where’s this sudden change of heart coming from?”
“Not a change of heart,” I said. “Just figuring some things out.”
“About the visions?”
I tensed up and took a step back. “That’s not your place, man.”
He raised both hands, the race car still in one of them. “You’re right, it’s not. But you do know that it’s Lara’s place, right?”
I narrowed my eyes but didn’t say anything.
He sighed. “All I’m saying is that you should talk to her. I know you think she left you because of the nightmares and stuff, but it wasn’t that.”
I froze. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “Of course it was—”
“No,” he said. “Lara left because you weren’t willing to get help. You let her feel like you were letting her in by telling her about it right away—then you never wanted to talk about it again. Never wanted to actually address it. Every time she tried to talk about it, you’d either get upset or make a joke about it. You were scared and defensive, and she couldn’t get through to you. You loved her because she made you feel like everything was okay, but everything wasn’t okay. That’s why she left. She could deal with the nightmares, Steve. She couldn’t deal with the fact that you couldn’t.”
“How do you know all of this?” I whispered, and I cursed myself for being so weak in front of him.
“How do you think?” he asked. “Because she’s told me. She talks about it all the time. It eats her up, this thing with you and Kit. But if she knew that you were actually trying to get help, actually working on it, maybe she’d change her mind about you coming around.”
I swallowed. “Would you…any chance you could talk—”
“Yeah, I’ll talk to her. Just keep trying to figure out your shit. Nobody said it was easy.” He lifted the car. “I’ll go give this to him.”
I nodded. “Thanks,” I said before turning to head to my car.
I’d gotten halfway across the street when he stopped me.
“Hey,” he said, and I turned back. He was spinning the car quickly in his hands. “Look, Lara likes to sit in the first or second row on the right side of the stage. I don’t know why the right side. She thinks it’s the better view.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “So what?”
“I’m just saying, it’s a pretty big auditorium.”
I blinked, u
nsure I’d heard him correctly. “You mean—”
“I mean, I know how important this is to you.” He stared me straight in the eye and stopped spinning the car. “If someone were sitting in the back on the same side… All I’m saying is, I doubt she’d see them.” With that, he turned and walked up the steps into the school.
I stood there for a moment watching his back, and for some idiotic reason, tears welled up in my eyes. It wasn’t the first time I’d almost cried in front of green thumb Greg, and it took me a few moments to pull myself together.
Finally, I took a deep breath.
“Levisy tay-glees,” I muttered to myself before darting up the steps behind him and slipping through the school’s front door.
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Reading Group Guide
1. Why does Steve try to hide the nightmares and visions from everyone he loves?
2. How does hiding them both help and hurt him?
3. What rhetoric did Frank use to justify the annual sacrifice to the other adults? What was his real reason for the sacrifices?
4. Jack, Brat, Gumball, Shy Perry, and Lill all have very different personalities. How do the children each show leadership in their own way?
5. What was each child’s biggest weakness?
6. What role does Carmen Street Confessions play in Emily’s life?
7. Why was Lill drawn to Emily? Why was she so disappointed when she learned Emily’s true intentions?
8. Why does Emily continue to pursue the story about Friends of Frank, even when it becomes dangerous?
9. Steve is finally working to address his nightmares. Do you think Lara will change her mind about his involvement in Kit’s life?
Read on for an excerpt from Nic Joseph’s
My brother drowned in a bathtub that was less than one foot longer than he was tall. It was a typical vintage, roll-rim, claw-foot tub with chipped paint, slippery sides, and an air of undeserved elegance.