I look behind him, already starting to hyperventilate with the shock, and see a shape there, a shape with a gun of its own, and I collapse to the floor, unable to take it anymore, unable to take any of it . . .
And then the shape is over me, above me, and I can hear the familiar, comforting sounds of Ben Taylor’s voice as he tells me, “It’s alright now. Just relax. It’s alright now. Nobody can hurt you now.”
And I believe him, at last I have found someone I can believe, and then my eyes close and I pass out completely.
EPILOGUE
1
The red moon is low on the horizon as I approach my farm; I am scared by what I will find, but – as I get to the fields – I see that there is nobody there.
No half-dead girl.
Nobody jumping out at me, attacking me.
Nobody at all.
There are just my horses, and I watch as they trot toward me, as they merge into one single body before they get to me, one single animal that is Beauty; for a moment, I am scared, but he is not rearing up anymore, there is no blood dripping from his mouth, there is no violence in him at all.
He is at peace.
I stroke his head as we meet, kiss his nose, then move past him to the house.
I open the door, and see a man waiting for me in my kitchen.
It is my dead brother, Jack; dead no more.
He is no longer the gaunt, drug-addled man who killed himself by jumping out of an apartment window, but his younger self, fitter and happier.
He comes to greet me, and we embrace, hold one another tight.
It has been a long time.
Eventually, Jack moves me away, looks into my eyes. “You did it, Jess,” he says with a smile. “You did it.”
“Hey,” the soothing voice says, near my ear. “It’s okay. It’s over. It’s over.”
But is it?
My eyes flash open, I see Ben Taylor by my bedside – my hospital bedside – and I grab my cellphone from the cabinet next to me.
“It’s not been ringing,” Ben says, but I don’t care about that, I only care about what day it is, what’s the date, what’s the date?
And then I see it, and I have been waiting for this for so long that I don’t even know how to react to the information anymore.
It is October 8th.
The day after yesterday.
At last, the real tomorrow.
The chain has been broken, and I am free at last.
“Her real name was Darlene Williams,” Ben Taylor tells me.
I am still in a hospital bed – just precautionary, the doctors say – and it is now October 10th. I still wake every morning in a cold sweat, desperate to know the day, but – so far at least – they have been running like normal, one following the other, just as they should.
I guess I’ll never know how that clock ended up at Artie’s house. Maybe Larraine brought it around for him, gave it to him as a present? It might have even been a gift for the party, although I don’t suppose it really matters anymore.
Ben has been coming in regularly, giving me what updates he can. Most of it is “off the record”, but – given what I’ve been through – he’s been pretty good at letting me know the details of the rapidly-expanding case.
I already know that Larraine Harrigan – or Darlene Williams, apparently – is dead, killed by the bullet I fired when she was strangling me.
There are calls for charges to be made in some quarters, but my father has already been here and squared it all away; it was self-defense, and it looks like the possibility of charges being put forward is becoming less and less likely. Knowing what I now know about my past, what Dr. Kelly told me, I even managed to speak to him this time, realizing that perhaps he is not the complete monster that I always thought he was. He was still more concerned over his job than his family, of course, but I now understand that some of his actions were to protect me, he was only doing what he thought was best for me.
Paul has tried to see me too, but I’ve asked Ben to make sure he stays away; after his attack in my kitchen, I want him as far away from me as possible. He might not be a serial killer, but he is a dangerous man, in his own way. To his credit, Ben put him on a plane home to New York, and warned him not to come back.
Ben also helped me out with another problem too, namely getting Lynette Hyams on that flight to Florida. I explained that Larraine had told me that Lynette was going to be her next victim, and – after learning about the girl – I wanted to help her leave the life she had here. Ben didn’t pretend to understand my reasons, but he did what I asked – picked her up, put her on the flight, gave her the money – and he even arrested Dennis Hobson for assault, for good measure.
I’d taken care of sending a bouquet of flowers to Amy at Alaskan Equine Rescue myself, though. It was the least I could do, although I know she will have no idea why I’ve sent them; the help she gave me was in another time, another reality. But still, I am grateful.
I’ve learned that Richard Harrigan, the eldest son, died instantly from the bullet to the head fired by Ben. I don’t know how he is dealing with the guilt of killing a boy; maybe it’s the same way I am dealing with killing the boy’s mother – I’m not thinking about it. And because I’m thinking nothing, I feel nothing.
It won’t last, I know; but it will do, for now.
I remember only vaguely the things that happened in that basement now, and I am immensely grateful; now that this whole thing is over, perhaps I do not need the memories anymore, perhaps whatever power caused all of this has taken pity on me, drove those things from my mind that might otherwise cause me too much pain.
I know that things did happen to me there, but no longer recall the details, I only know that I do not wish to remember them, hope that – with time – they will fade away forever.
After all, it didn’t happen in this reality; maybe I will ultimately forget everything that happened outside of this particular time-frame? The only thing I would miss, I guess, would be the time I’d spent with Ben.
But Ben is here with me now at least, although I know he no longer knows me as I know him; but maybe my memories of him will fade too, like an old photograph exposed to the sun.
Ben tells me that the younger brother, Adam, is still alive, and is being held in custody at Palmer PD; although as of yesterday, he’d not given the cops much to go on. He’d attacked a police officer with a knife back at the house, but he had been easily overpowered and arrested; after all, the boy was not even twelve years old.
“So is he talking now?” I ask Ben, who nods.
“Yes,” he says uneasily. “Finally. Although I have to tell you, I kind of wish he wasn’t. The things he says . . . well, they’re kind of hard to take, if you know what I mean.”
I do know, more than Ben can ever understand.
But I need to know more.
I need to know the details.
And so I breathe out slowly, readying myself for the tale, hoping that – finally – I will learn the truth.
2
“So, who was Darlene Williams?” I ask.
“A convicted sex offender from Oklahoma,” Ben says. “Took the name Larraine Harrigan when she moved here. Now we know, we’ve pulled her case history from Tulsa PD. Pretty messed up life,” he says, shaking his head. “Not that it makes any difference, excuses what she’s done, but . . . pretty messed up, all the same.”
I listen, learn that she was born into a poor household, her father absconding with another woman when she was only young. Her mother apparently then had a string of boyfriends, many of them abusive, and they moved around the country until she remarried. Darlene’s new step-father sexually assaulted her, finally raping her when she was thirteen and making her pregnant. Her mother refused to believe it was her husband’s, and allegedly kicked the girl out of the house for being a “slut”. She came to live at a home for unwed mothers, where she suffered still more abuse, the baby also being taken from her.
She had a seri
es of odd-jobs – and there is the possibility that she worked for a time as a prostitute herself – but then she became a psychologist, just as she’d claimed when we’d spoken at the party; only the real story was that she’d forged all of her documents, had hardly studied a day in her life. She started to work with children, but was arrested just over a year later, after several accusations of molestation, involving girls ranging in age from twelve to fifteen.
She served a couple of years, and met her future husband not long after she got out; and it was then that her life did seem to get turned around, at least for a short while. She got married, had children, and started – as far as the record shows – to live some semblance of a normal life. Until, that is, she found her husband cheating on her. He moved away with his new girlfriend, leaving her with two young babies and a lot of anger – maybe the same sort of anger that had made her do those terrible things earlier in her life.
“Her husband died in mysterious circumstances soon after,” Ben adds with a knowing look, “and even though they were separated, she still got a big payout, as they were still legally married, there’d been no divorce – and it was then she disappeared, moved with the money to Alaska, set up a new identity, a new life.”
I wonder if she had anything to do with her husband’s death, think that it’s more than a little likely, but that we’ll probably never know. I think back to her own description of her situation, back in the upstairs bedroom, next to the ticking clock. So I filed for divorce, got the kids, a big pay-out, and moved out here with them. Some of it was true, at least.
“And when did she move here?” I ask. “About the same time those first bodies were discovered outside of Anchorage?”
Those early killings were nothing I wouldn’t know; everything had been in the papers yesterday, since the press got wind of rumors circulating about a female serial killer. They were having a field-day with it.
Ben nods his head. “We can only speculate about a connection at this stage,” he says, “but yeah.”
“You know, I also read about some bodies found up in Chugach Park, were they . . .”
Ben nods. “We think Williams killed them, yeah. Sexually assaulted them, then killed them, dumped the bodies in the park.”
“How many?” I ask.
“We don’t know. Adam – well, Jared is the name he was born with actually, Jared Williams – says . . . well, he says that he and his brother – Dayton Williams – used to ride around in her car with her, she’d sometimes pull girls over, she’d offer them a lift, that sort of thing, then she’d ‘make them sleep’, we think it must have been chloroform, something like that, then she’d drive them up into the woods, the mountains, leave the kids in the car and . . . well, if you read about those bodies, then you know.”
“Yes,” I say, “I know.”
“He’s vague, but he remembers it being a regular occurrence anyway, probably once a month, or every six weeks or so. And it turns out that – later, when the boys were a little older – she started getting them more involved in her activities. Forced them to help her.” He shakes his head, and I know he can’t believe any of it. I know how he feels; it is hard to accept, almost impossible to believe. “She got a job at the shelter, used it as a place to identify and pick up victims. Nobody ever suspected her of course, a woman – a nice woman – with two kids by her side. The perfect disguise, I guess.”
“Yeah,” I say. “She fooled us all.”
Ben nods sadly. “Yeah. Anyway, she stopped dumping bodies in Chugach when we started finding them, decided to bring the girls home with her instead. Gave her and the boys more time with them, more time to . . .” Ben’s voice trails off, eyes closing in pain as he can’t help but think about it. Finally, he looks up again. “There was another room down there,” he says, “closed off from the rest of the house, accessed through a secret door hidden behind a section of shelving. All soundproofed in there, the whole works – yesterday, Adam showed us how to get inside.”
His voice sounds drained, disturbed and horrified, and I know why the police didn’t find anything in that basement when they looked; they didn’t really suspect the Harrigans, weren’t looking for any hidden rooms.
“We found bodies buried there,” Ben says, his voice shaking, no more than a whisper.
I almost don’t want to ask. “How many?”
Ben sighs. “Seven so far,” he says, “most of them just skeletons now. The guys are still digging it up, a lot of the graves were concreted over, probably to hide the smell.”
A shudder runs through me as I consider how many people met their fates in that horrible dungeon, what happened to them before they died; it is a thought too terrible to consider.
I remember Doug Menders’ journal, his numbered codes for the people he saw, and I wonder if Lynette – ab3-9 – would have been the ninth victim, the ninth person to be raped, tortured and buried underneath that evil house?
The thought makes me shiver, especially as I could have been – was, in one reality or another – victim nine. Is my dead body, tongue bitten off, lying somewhere, buried under concrete, in a reality that I will never see again?
I turn off the thought as soon as I have it, determined never to think it again.
“What would make anyone do that?” I ask, although I know there is no real answer.
“Best we can figure – from what her son’s told us in his first interviews, at least – is that she was just filled with hate, pure hate, for those girls. She thought they were promiscuous, loose women, sluts – not even human maybe, not worth bothering with. Why did she think that? Well, her background offers some clues, I guess, but some people go through worse and don’t end up doing . . . well, what she did. I can only think that her brain was wired up differently from ours, you know?”
Hate, Larraine had answered when I’d asked her about what motivated such killers, and I remember that the answer had come almost immediately. What else can it be? This guy, he hates women. Why? Who knows? Maybe his mother beat him as a little kid, maybe his wife cheated on him, maybe the girls laughed at him at school, saw him in the changing room, you know the sort of thing. Hell, maybe all of that and more. But I think anyone who kills women – and from the press reports of those earlier crimes, they all seem to be a part of the same sort of group, teenage girls, young women, on the streets – well, I think anyone who targets that group must hate women, for whatever reason.
A chill goes through me as I realize she was talking about herself.
I remember how easy she’d been to talk to, how I’d gone to her for advice, how I’d confided in her; that psychology degree might have been fake, but she knew how to talk to people. It is no surprise that she was able to get her victims to go with her; they would all have trusted her, would have gone anywhere she asked.
I guess that – during their talks at the shelter – she was probably able to find out all about them too, including which ones would be missed, and which ones wouldn’t be.
She was in a position to select the perfect victims, the poor unfortunates who wouldn’t have anyone to ask after them, young women on who she could release her incredible anger, an anger hidden from the world, hidden from everyone except those poor girls.
And, I remind myself, her own children.
“And the kids?” I ask, almost not wanting to hear the answer.
“Forced to do it at first,” Ben says with disgust, “at least that’s what Adam is saying, and the ABI psychologists are tending to agree with him. First, she just rode with them in the car, used them as decoys, to lure the girls inside. Then they graduated to helping with the abuse – first burning the girls with cigarettes, then using a knife to cut them, basically everything went from there. She gave them beer, vodka, whatever – plenty of alcohol to help numb them, to make them more able to turn themselves off to what they were doing. The older boy was involved sexually from the age of twelve, Adam was invited to ‘try’ it just a few months ago, not long after he turned eleven.
Soon as he was able, really; by that stage, he was so enmeshed in that life, he says he wanted to do it. Is it his fault he felt that way?” Ben shrugs, even the thought of it an enormous burden on the soul. “Who knows?”
“But why involve them at all?” I say, still not really able to comprehend what has happened, even though I know the horror of what they have done better than anyone else alive.
“Anger,” Ben says, “hate, yet again. Seems to have seen them as an unpleasant reminder of her husband, of everything that’s wrong with men, decided to punish them. The doctors examined them; no signs of abuse themselves, but they’ve both had various STDs already; their mother wouldn’t let them use protection when they raped those girls. Adam has herpes and pubic lice, Richard had gonorrhea, herpes and lice. According to Adam, his mother said that it served them right; she treated them with medications she stole from the shelter, but obviously wouldn’t let them be checked out by a proper doctor. Said that this is why those girls needed to be killed – ‘punished and destroyed’, she called it – because they were spreading disease, and she used her own children as proof that she was doing the right thing. Sick, right?”
“You’re not wrong,” I say, still not quite able to come to terms with it. At the mention of sexually transmitted diseases, I had felt horrible, a new fear to be confronted, and decided that I would get checked out as soon as possible, before I realized that my attack had never happened, not in this world, at least, not in this reality.
Red Moon Rising Page 32