by Alan Russell
“The state intervened, declaring her an unfit mother. They took away the boy and determined that he should be put up for adoption. Van Doren didn’t attend any of the proceedings and never contested losing her child.
“The boy was adopted by an older, wealthy couple, Thomas and Dorothy Farrell. They never discussed the adoption with John. He grew up thinking they were his biological parents. Apparently he didn’t learn differently until he was fifteen.”
“He must have been incredibly angry,” Caleb said.
“Yes.”
“Did they tell him about his mother?” asked Caleb.
“I doubt the Farrells were even aware of her history,” Elizabeth said. “That’s something I’m researching, but so far there’s been nothing to indicate they knew anything about her past, and it’s unlikely they were informed of her death. Van Doren died at the age of thirty-three of a drug overdose that might very well have been a suicide.”
“What kind of a child was he?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “I’m still finding out. Now that he’s notorious, lots of people are saying that Farrell was always bent.”
“That’s what they lined up to say about me.”
“I know that. That’s why I’ll need to apply my hindsight filter. That’s my euphemism for a bullshit detector. But one thing people seem to agree on was that Farrell was undeniably bright.”
“Why did he hate us so much?” asked Caleb.
“I don’t know,” said Elizabeth. “Right now I only have a few half-baked theories. That’s all I might ever have.”
Caleb knew that before Elizabeth was through she’d have more than that, but he was also only too aware that sometimes even Elizabeth Line didn’t unearth all the secrets.
“I think you were a target because he was insanely jealous of you,” Elizabeth said. “He hated you because you were the chosen child.”
“Chosen? That’s a laugh.”
“You got your father’s name, Caleb.”
“It wasn’t something I wanted.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“But Farrell wasn’t even my biological brother.”
“He could have been. He was brought into the world with the name of Gray, but even that was taken away from him. Perhaps your choosing to lose the name Gray added insult to his injury. He didn’t have that choice.”
“I never did anything to him.”
“That doesn’t matter. This certainly wasn’t the first time you were targeted for the sins of your father.”
“Sins? For once my father did the right thing. He didn’t have a child by this woman. He wasn’t the father.”
“Try a logic jump,” said Elizabeth, “albeit a convoluted logic jump. By withholding his seed from Van Doren, your father also denied Farrell. He never gave him a chance to be his son.”
“That’s crazy.”
“It’s a theory. But I’m sure there were any number of factors that entered into Farrell’s equation of hate. By his thinking, your father betrayed the love of Van Doren. He humiliated her and made it clear that she wasn’t worthy of carrying his child. Maybe Farrell decided your father drove her into the arms of other men and made her what she was. And because Gray contrived with me to reveal Van Doren’s deception to the world, because he helped make her a laughingstock, Farrell might have decided he had to take up that gauntlet and avenge the death that he perceived we drove her to.”
“Why? It wasn’t as if Van Doren was the Mother of the Year. She abandoned him.”
“As you know only too well, you don’t get to choose your family. And for all her shortcomings, Van Doren was still his mother.”
“It still seems crazy.”
“I’m not ruling that out either. Farrell was fascinated with the criminal mind. He studied capital punishment at length and was attracted to notorious felons, especially those who exhibited a certain bravado. In many ways his curiosity was self-fulfilling. He was looking at his own pathology.
“Farrell was methodical if nothing else. He studied you very closely because he wanted to learn what would hurt you the most. He knew you were gentle, kind, and good, and he knew he was none of those things. He probably hated you all the more for that.”
Gentle, kind, and good. The words echoed around Caleb’s red ears. He felt embarrassed, unworthy.
“He was interested in how you had run away from your past, and he knew the biggest hell of all would be for the sins of your father to catch up with you.
“As for me,” Elizabeth said, “I was the messenger, and he didn’t like my message. I’m the one who told the world about his mother.”
Caleb could hear regret in her voice.
“Maybe this will turn out to be another book where I’m short of the answers to the biggest questions. Maybe your take on Farrell, that figure in the fog, will ultimately prove to be the most accurate of all. But I’m going to do my best to remove that shroud.”
Caleb reached for his coffee cup but didn’t drink from it. He only looked at it. Murky. Like his insides. Over the past few days he had been learning how to be honest. The process was a scary one. He considered the implications of what he might do, of what he could and should do, and was terrified. His heart was pounding so much that it hurt him. He knew that he didn’t have to say anything, and that his life would be easier if he didn’t, but he felt compelled to at least broach the subject.
“I’m not comfortable with how you’ve been portraying me,” he said.
Elizabeth sipped her coffee before answering. “How have I made you uncomfortable?”
“You’re making me out to be a hero.”
“Was it easier being a villain?”
“No,” he said, but then he thought about it for a moment and reconsidered. “Maybe it was. I know it felt more right. But I guess the truth of the matter is that I can do without being either.”
“In my mind,” she said, “you are a hero. I’d be dead if it weren’t for you and Lola. And you saved that girl in the sorority.”
“I was trying to save myself.”
“I don’t believe that’s all there was to it.”
“You’re right. I wanted to kill Farrell.”
“You’ve taken so many slings in your time. Is it so hard for you to take a few bouquets?”
“Don’t make me noble,” he said, his voice stretched tight. “Don’t make me out to be more than I am.”
“Your father said much the same thing to me.”
“Maybe we’re the same.”
Caleb opened his mouth to say more, then closed it. He shook his head and moved his arms and hands. His body was doing a lot of speaking, but he still couldn’t find the words.
“You’ve been telling me this whole time,” said Elizabeth, “that you are not your father’s son.”
“Wishful thinking.”
She heard the desperation in his voice. “What do you mean?”
Here it was, Caleb knew. It was so ugly he didn’t want to look at it. It was in him, like a terminal tumor or a bomb. And he was going to explode it. He really was.
“The rest of the story,” he said.
“Go on.”
“My polygraph...”
“Yes.”
“...was accurate.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You said it yourself: writing about my father’s life was the hardest thing you ever did. And you said you felt there were so many unanswered questions.”
“There always are.” Elizabeth’s response gave Caleb an out, a chance to escape. But he didn’t take it.
“I murdered my father.”
“What are you saying?”
“You heard me.”
“How could that be possible?”
“Little Mister Mimic. That’s what my mother used to call me. I wonder if Lola suspected. She came up with the idea to save you. ‘Use Elizabeth’s voice,’ she said. She heard me talking when I was delirious, heard me using your voice. And I don’t think that’s all she he
ard. I think she discovered my deception. She heard me use my father’s voice. I suspect I relived the event. Lord knows, I’ve thought about it enough. I was good at mimicking dear old dad. Since he wasn’t around much, it was my way of keeping him near. I could bring him out when I wanted to, conjure him up. I hated him, but I loved him.”
“You were the one...?”
“You said how it always bothered you. How you knew he died with secrets. I was his big secret. I was the one who called up the Concho County Sheriff’s Office and identified myself as Gray Parker. I even knew to make myself sound a little liquored up. I was a precocious little bastard.
“There was a storm that night, a bad storm. I rode it out sitting in a huge pecan tree in our backyard. The wind blew, and the rain poured down, but I stayed up in that tree. No one knew I was there. I heard so much up there: my parents making love, and then their arguing, and then their fighting. I heard him strike my mother. I heard her cry out in pain, and I hated him almost as much as when I had heard her cry out in pleasure.
“But for once, I could get back at him. I’d heard something up in my tree, something I knew was big. Small pitchers have wide ears. I knew who Shame was. Everyone did. He was the Bogeyman of my school. Mother never came out directly and announced that my father was Shame, but I knew from what she said that night. His guilt didn’t matter to her. She loved him and tried to talk with him, tried to get him to stay in Eden, but he wouldn’t think of it. He all but admitted who he was, and he taunted her with that knowledge and told her that he didn’t love her, that she was only convenient. He killed her in a thousand little ways.
“Later that night, when both of them were asleep, I came down from the pecan tree. The two of them hadn’t even noticed my absence, had never checked on me. I’d had time to do a lot of thinking up in my tree. And practicing. I talked back to the storm, but I didn’t use my own voice. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I called the Sheriff’s Office, and I made my confession in my grown-up voice, my father’s voice. ‘Come and get me,’ I told them. ‘I’ll be sleeping off a little booze.’
“I was the only one awake when the authorities surrounded the house. I could hear their footsteps. I knew they were taking up their positions. And then all of a sudden everything happened. Doors got thrown open and windows were broken and people were shouting, and three men were grabbing my father, and I was watching the whole thing.
“No one took any notice of me—except my father.
“As they were throwing the handcuffs on him, amid all the craziness of the moment, he looked at me. Our eyes met, and it was like we were the only people in the room.
“I heard the officers asking him about it. ‘Why’d you confess, Shame? Why’d you call us up?’ And he answered while looking at me. ‘Because it was time to give it up.’”
Elizabeth reached out a hand, touched his wet cheek.
“Bastard,” said Caleb. “Bastard.”
She wasn’t sure if he was talking about his father or himself.
“No one ever suspected,” Caleb said. “Not even my mother. That night I probably would have told the officers what I’d done, except for that moment that had passed between us, and the understanding that had come with it. His eyes had warned me, had told me I could never tell. Being the son of Shame, he knew, would be bad enough. But it would be even worse to be known as the boy who engineered his father’s death. Who betrayed him. He spared me that stigma. The son of a bitch protected me. And what was worse, he never held it against me that I betrayed him. The last time we talked, he even told me he was proud of me.”
Caleb reached for his coffee cup, tried raising it up, but couldn’t. He covered his eyes with his shaking hands. Between hiccups, he said, “How—could—a—fuck—ing—ser—i—al—mur—der—er—act—so—no—ble?”
So that’s it, thought Elizabeth. And now she was crying as well. For so long it hadn’t made sense. Gray had been protecting his son. He had been given a role to play, the killer who wanted to die, and he had never deviated from it.
No more ghosts, Gray, she thought. No more ghosts.
“You didn’t kill him,” said Elizabeth, “you saved him. You offered him his only chance for redemption. Before you made that call, his life was already over. And it was wasted, so wasted. He knew what a terrible person and a terrible father he’d been, but you gave him an opportunity to do the right thing. It was his way of showing you that he cared. I know it’s hard for you to see it, Caleb, but what you did was the best possible thing for him. It saved him from killing again, and it was a chance for him to do right by you, his only chance.”
“I killed him.”
“He killed himself.”
“I don’t think you understand, Elizabeth. Maybe you better get your tape recorder out, or bring out your pen so you can take some good notes.”
“Why?”
“For the rest of the story. The kind of twist your readers are going to eat up.”
“I think you should go home to your family, Caleb.” Again, she offered him an out.
“Are you telling me you’d walk away now? You, the Queen of True Crime?”
“You’re distraught.”
“That doesn’t make what I’m saying any less true. All this time I’ve been telling you that I was nothing like my father. Well, that’s not true. The biggest sin of all wasn’t my calling up the Sheriff’s Office and posing as my father. No, that’s not even close. My sin was that I enjoyed the whole thing. I got a thrill out of knowing I was responsible for his death. Even as a boy, I sensed how addictive that power could be. I knew how I could get pleasure from taking another life. So when it comes right down to it, I’m not much different from my father.”
He expected her to react with horror, but instead she reached for his hands.
“Oh, Caleb,” she said. “You look like your father, but you’re nothing like him. Just because you wanted to see your father dead doesn’t make you some depraved criminal. What child at some time doesn’t feel that way? You’re not an evil person, Caleb. You were glad when your father was removed from your life, but that became your secret shame. You took some pleasure in his death, and that became your shame as well, because you learned that your father cared about you. But that doesn’t make you a killer, Caleb. It only makes you human.”
“You don’t know some of my thoughts....”
“And you don’t know some of mine.”
“I’ve wondered how it would be to kill.”
“So have I.”
“But I’m sure not like...” He stopped, confused. “When I listened to your recording, there were times I was attracted to the violence.”
“It might have seemed seductive to you, Caleb, but I know the reality wouldn’t have been.”
“But there have been times in my life when I’ve been so angry, and so afraid of what I might do.”
“People get angry, Caleb. Everybody does. But you’re not Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“I’m still afraid of what I might be.”
“Helen Keller said, ‘Life is a daring adventure, or it’s nothing.’ I think your life, your adventure, is about to begin.”
“Whether I’m ready or not.” Then he surprised himself with a good memory and a little smile. “Lola said that the murderer really outed me. She was right.”
“How does it feel now?”
“I don’t know. In some way my secrets were my life. They dictated how I acted. I guess I’m still getting used to my freedom.”
“You were a prisoner for too long, and you started thinking like one. You forgot that the bars were holding you in, not holding you up.”
Caleb nodded. He still wasn’t sure whether he believed her. Maybe he would always feel tainted, one of Harry Harlow’s monkeys. Or maybe, just maybe, having experienced the bad in life he could now appreciate the good.
Their coffee was cold, and the sun was setting, but neither made a move to leave. Caleb sat with a calm he could not remember ever having felt b
efore. He felt so light.
Elizabeth didn’t share his relief. She was fiddling with her spoon and napkin. She wanted to get up and leave but was afraid Caleb would take it personally. But staying, she knew, was dangerous. She knew about playing with fire and getting burned. This whole Shame thing was risky for her. She felt off balance, but most of all, she felt ashamed. She knew she had tried to dissuade Caleb from telling his story, had given him all sorts of chances to keep his secrets buried, but she hadn’t done it for him. She had been afraid to hear what he had to say, afraid of what it might do to her. Honesty brings out its own madness.
“There’s evidence that Farrell was writing a book,” she said. She tried to sound casual, but her voice was much higher pitched than usual. “His title for it was Cain’s Children. It was going to be about the children of serial murderers. His private detective—Coleman—had done anonymous background checks on some children of serial murderers.
“It’s an interesting premise for a book. Maybe it’s a topic I might write about someday. But some books are better in concept than they are in print. I once tried to write a book called The Club. It was about smart women who made dumb decisions because they fell in love. These were women who involved themselves in terrible schemes that violated their own ethics and morals. In some cases these women ended up murdering family and friends, all in the name of love. Afterward, they wondered how they could have done such things. Some of them did their wondering in prison. Others in prisons of their own making. They looked at their emptied bank accounts and emptied lives. ‘It wasn’t me,’ they all wanted to say. ‘It couldn’t have been me.’”
Just because Caleb had gone and made his confession to her, Elizabeth told herself, didn’t mean she had to feel obliged to do the same thing. This didn’t have to be quid pro quo. But her mouth kept moving, and the words kept coming out.
“I set out to write that book,” said Elizabeth, “because I felt I was a club member in good standing. Some parts of the book were going to be autobiographical.”
One part. One large part. The book was supposed to be her big catharsis. She had felt this need to tell, but when confronted with what she had done, she couldn’t do it. Elizabeth had thought there would be safety in numbers and that she could hide behind the shield of being blinded by love, but it had proved to be too personal. The telling was never done and the book never written. She had tried to mitigate and forget, and worst of all, she had tried to lie to herself.