by Paula McLain
The first door off the hall to the left is Caleb’s. I was last here as a teenager, lying on the brown shag carpet and eating peanut butter crackers while Caleb talked about famous shipwrecks or other obscure facts. The room is the same, feels almost time-stopped, as if Caleb never really finished growing up in this house, because Jenny couldn’t either. The checked bedspread is navy and maroon, boyish. Two walls are lined with stuffed bookshelves. Over his desk and all along one wall are dozens of photographs of girls, all adolescents with long dark hair, brown or black, all beautiful, all targets or objects of obsession. Prey.
Shannan is here in three portraits side by side, looking painfully strung out, her eyes numb and haunted, as if the series is a triptych of her spiral into nothingness. And then I see Cameron, both in color and black and white. There are also pencil sketches of her face and shoulders, her neck and wrists, every nuance and fragment painstakingly captured with layered strokes and shading. Tenderly attentive and meticulously controlled.
I continue to scan the room, feeling more and more on edge. It’s as if I’m standing not in a bedroom, but in a laboratory. This—all of this—is the inside of Caleb’s mind. How he thinks. What he wants. What’s been driving him these last months, if not years. I have to believe there are probably other victims, too, in the places he’s lived before, even the Persian Gulf. That he’s been doing this a long time. That he’ll never stop if we don’t catch him.
* * *
—
When Cameron’s out of surgery and comfortable in her private room, Will and I begin to interview her, slowly and with care. One of the hardest things about earning her trust is that we’re part of the problem, making her think about things she wants desperately to forget. We have an obligation to find and stop Caleb. Otherwise, she might never be safe again. But more than this I know that if she can find a way to speak even a portion of her tragedy, reconstruct some of these memories, they might begin to leave her body, and make more room inside, so she can slowly reclaim herself.
It’s a complicated process, and not just because of her shaky physical state. The trauma of her ordeal has affected her memory and her ability to focus. One moment might seem clear in the telling, while the next splinters apart. She repeats certain details, but changes others. Sometimes she can’t talk at all, only cry. Other times she seems almost emotionless, blinking in her hospital bed, as if we’re complete strangers. She never says his name. But every once in a while, I see something come through the grief and numbness. A fierceness, small but present. What can’t be broken.
* * *
—
The time line of the last few months is one of the trickiest things to cobble together, but little by little we begin to see, in small, sometimes-fractured pieces, how Caleb managed to reach Cameron in the first place. In early August, she’d seen his ad on the message board for an artist’s model. She was with Gray that day, just grabbing a snack at the café after some time at the beach, but when she tore off the number and slipped it in her pocket, she did it secretly. She phoned him in private, too, from her room one afternoon when her mom was out, setting up a first meeting at the Mendocino visitors’ center on Main Street.
“A public place,” I remark, listening to her. It was a key move on his part, meant to build trust. The location was a smart choice, too, filled with tourists, not locals. They most likely wouldn’t be spotted by anyone who knew them, and if so, they were only talking outside at one of the picnic tables in the shade, a nice day at the tail end of summer. “You felt safe to go alone.”
“Yeah.” She nods. “I guess that was stupid.”
“Not at all. He could have been completely legitimate.”
“But he wasn’t.”
“You didn’t know that.”
She looks up with eyes still deeply shadowed from her ordeal, her body painfully thin. “He looked normal.”
“What did you talk about that day?” Will asks. “Do you remember?”
“He wanted to see my modeling portfolio, but I didn’t have one. I was embarrassed I didn’t even think of it before.”
“Is that when you asked Gray to take those pictures in the grove, Cameron? You wanted to bring back something professional looking.”
She nods. “When we met again, I showed him the photos. He said they were nice but not quite right for him. He was going to be doing sketches and wanted someone who looked really natural. I guess I was wearing too much makeup or something.”
“Then what happened?” Will presses gently.
“He told me he would think about it and get back to me, but that if it worked out, he had a lot of contacts in the art world, in fashion, too. I guess I fell for it all.” Her eyes flit away as shame drops down.
“If you did it’s because he manipulated you,” I tell her, wishing I could carry some of this for her. Her impossible burden. “He drew you in, catching you with your guard down. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I should have told my mom or Gray. Someone.”
“You just wanted something for yourself. That makes so much sense given how stressful things were at home.”
“I guess so.” She doesn’t sound convinced.
“The things that are really important to us, Cameron, a lot of the time we don’t tell anyone because we can’t. What you did was natural. And you’re only fifteen, you know.”
In her silence, I hold her eyes with mine. Try to speak to her without words. You fought for yourself. That’s why you’re still here.
* * *
—
Over the coming hours and days, we learn more. How by early September, Cameron began going to Caleb’s garage studio to sit for him once or twice a week, after school. He didn’t ask her to pose nude for him, or do anything that would have set off alarm bells. At every turn, he had behaved almost passively, which ironically increased his power with her. In other words, all his snares had worked.
Maybe things had escalated quickly between them because other things had already transpired, things that no one could have predicted. Cameron had gone to the free clinic and been confronted with all of that buried trauma. She’d also picked up the phone one Saturday to find Troy’s assistant on the other end, calling to drop a bomb on her family. It’s hard to say what might have happened without those factors, but soon she was sneaking out to meet Caleb, either because she had grown to trust him more and more, believing that she could have this dream of being a model if she worked hard enough for it, or because her desperation had built up to the point that she wasn’t thinking clearly at all. Either way, Cameron obviously didn’t have any idea of what she was really inside of, until it was too late. Until the night she went out to meet him and didn’t come back.
“Why that night?” I ask.
“He said he had an art friend from LA who I should meet. He was only going to be in town for a few hours.”
“So you waited for your mom to go to bed, and deactivated the alarm. Had you done that before?”
“A few times. I thought it would be fine. I believed him. But when I got to his truck where he was waiting for me, something was different.”
“He seemed agitated?” I guess. “Not himself?”
“Yeah. He was nervous, and talking to himself. Like, whispering. It was really weird.”
“Did you ask him to take you home?”
“I didn’t know what to do. Then we came to the stoplight heading into town, and he went the other way. He wasn’t going to the studio at all. There was no friend.”
“And then what happened?” I ask her as gently as I can.
“I tried to get out of the car. I was going to jump out. I was really scared.” Pulling up her blanket, she clutches at her arms beneath her cotton gown. I can see goose bumps under her hands. “He slammed on his brakes and screamed at me. He started to choke me and slammed me against the side of the window.
I think I passed out.”
“And that’s when he took you to the shelter?”
“No, he took me someplace else first. A small dark room, sort of mildewy smelling. My hands were tied. I thought he was going to kill me right away, but he didn’t.” She turns toward the window, her body clenched as a fist. “He told me he loved me.”
There’s a long, charged silence. We bring her water. I ask one of the nurses for another blanket for her, a heated one, and notice my own hands are freezing in sympathy. My chest aches.
“How long were you there?” I ask, wondering why I hadn’t heard her the day I hiked near the Pomo shelter, why she hadn’t heard me.
“A week maybe? He kept giving me some sort of pill to put me to sleep.”
I glance at Will and our eyes catch. The forensics specialists have found traces of blood with luminol in the storage room at the Art Center, but none of the samples are large enough to match and type. They’ve collected more unidentified bits of evidence, too—nail shards, miscellaneous fibers. Some of the hair samples appear to match Cameron’s, but there are others that don’t.
“Did you see any signs that he’d kept anyone else either in the room or at the shelter before you?” Will asks Cameron.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Did you ever see another model with him?” he goes on. “We’ve found a lot of photographs of other girls. One is Shannan Russo, a seventeen-year-old who was murdered earlier this summer, but most we haven’t been able to identify yet. It appears he’s been doing this a long time.”
From Cameron’s expression, I can see she understands what we’re saying. That she’s lucky to be alive.
“How did you finally get away?” I ask.
She blinks slowly, heavily. “I’d been in the shelter for a long time, mostly alone. He’d come back every few days to feed me and…” She swallows the rest of the sentence, unable to even think about what came next, let alone say it. Clutching her blanket like a shield, she says, “I hadn’t seen him in a while. I started to think he was going to let me starve, but then he came back and that was worse.”
“What was different?” I ask.
“He seemed freaked out about something. He was tearing around grabbing stuff, talking to himself, really unhinged. He had a knife in his hand, and I thought for sure it was all over.” Her voice falters and sticks.
“And then what happened?”
“He cut my hands free and I don’t know. I had this thought that I didn’t have a choice except to fight. That it was my last chance.”
“Had you ever fought him before?”
“Not really. He’s so much bigger than I am. The knife was right there, but I didn’t think I could try for it. Instead, I just started throwing things, whatever I could grab. He got off-balance and fell against the wall and then things started crashing. I made it to the door and kicked it open, and then I heard something. He heard it, too. Someone was coming.”
“And that’s when you ran?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any idea where he might have gone?” Will asks. “Did he ever mention other places, wanting to get away?”
“I don’t think so. He likes it here, likes the ocean. I don’t think he’ll go very far.”
“The ocean?” I ask. “What about it?”
“Everything. He told me about diving for pearls in Iran.” She lifts her gaze to meet mine. Her eyes seem very clear suddenly. Sad but clear. “He didn’t always sound crazy.”
No, he didn’t, I think. And then we let her rest.
(sixty-seven)
On Halloween, though I don’t feel remotely celebratory, I stand in front of Patterson’s and watch neighborhood kids trick-or-treating up and down Lansing Street, ducking into the businesses that all have their doors open and their lights blazing long past closing time. There’s an inflatable bouncy house in Rotary Park, and a table set up in front of Mendosa’s where kids can get silly face tattoos. But all I can think as I see ghouls and witches and superheroes stream by, parents just behind them at a respectable distance, is that everyone—the whole town—should be home with their doors shut tight.
Wanda comes out from behind her post at the bar to talk for a while. She’s dressed as Pippi Longstocking, with wire hangers suspending vivid yarn braids out over her shoulders. She’s got a big stainless-steel bowl of mini–candy bars in her arms—Three Musketeers and Crunch and Special Dark. “How’s Cameron doing?” she asks as she reaches down to lavish her usual affection on Cricket, balancing the bowl on her hip.
“Better every day. She went home last week.”
“That’s wonderful.” She’s only half listening as she rubs Cricket’s face and ears, the two of them having a moment.
Just then I spot Will and his kids round the corner onto Ukiah Street, Beth nowhere in sight. As I watch them, two preteen girls stop in front of us, saying hi to Cricket while Wanda drops an entire handful of candy into each of their orange plastic jack-o’-lantern buckets. They grin as if they’ve won the lottery, both dressed like Little Red Riding Hood.
When they’ve walked off, capes waving like flags behind them, I say to Wanda, “If it were up to me, I’d keep her in the hospital until we find Caleb. It’s safer, I think. Easier to monitor than her home.”
Her usually unruffled stance calibrates as she listens to me. “Are you okay, Anna? You wanna come in and have something to eat? The soup is good tonight.”
“Thanks. I’ll be all right, I guess. I just wish these kids would get off the streets. You know?”
She follows my eyes with her own. So much innocence on parade. So much fragile human life. “I see where you’re coming from, but I also think it’s sort of brave to be out trick-or-treating tonight. Not just for the kids, I mean, but the parents as well. As if they’re saying, You can’t take this, too.”
Cricket leans against my leg as if she agrees with Wanda’s point, but I don’t.
“He could if he wanted to, though, Wanda. He could take it all.”
* * *
—
After a while, I decide the best place for me is home, and head out from town with Cricket in the back seat, along the pitch-black juddering road. In my current mind state, the forest seems to distort beyond my headlights, single trees jumping out like hooked black shadows. I keep spinning on how many victims Caleb might have had over the years, how many targets of obsession. In the dozens of photographs in his room, at least, the girls all bear a striking resemblance to one another. Same long dark hair and gently rounded face shape. They also suggest more than a passing physical connection to Jenny, as if Caleb has been searching for variations of his own sister.
It’s a disturbing thought, but one I can’t help mulling over as I pull into my own shadowy driveway and kill the engine. The night is chilly and utterly silent here in the woods. No owl sound, no coyotes, no moon to light my way. Cricket trots ahead of me and up onto the porch, stopping once to mark her territory. I unlock the door, my thoughts still on Jenny and her tie to all this. With serial violent offenders, who they come to target is a crucial piece of understanding why. For Caleb, the complex series of triggers in his past have to include his sister’s violent murder. But his relationship with Jenny would have been heightened long before by other factors, his mother’s abandonment, his father’s neglect and alcoholism. Losing a sister doesn’t turn everyone into a killer, obviously. Something had already begun to twist Caleb at the root so that Jenny’s death had done more than plunge him into grief—it had broken him.
Whatever the specificity of his wounds—and I can only hazard educated guesses just now—at some point they became too pressing and too loud for him not to act on them. He started to hunt girls—not grown women. Girls that resemble the sister he lost. Taking them means he finally has some control over the story, over how life has shortchanged him. One
victim at a time, he can overthrow the helplessness he felt as a boy, and exert a sense of power.
I’m deep in the swirl of all of this, utterly preoccupied, when I reach for the lights. They flutter on, dispelling shadows. And then my breath seizes. Caleb is here in the cabin, sitting in the middle of my couch.
Adrenaline kicks through me. I can taste it, cold and acidic, at the base of my tongue.
He’s wearing all black, as if he means to disappear. His face above his dark collar seems to hover. “Don’t try to run,” he says with an eerie calm. His hand reaches out for the back of Cricket’s neck. She’s standing beside him just as calmly. They’ve already met, after all.
The unease I felt in town and on the drive home has turned instantly into violent, electric fear. It overwhelms me with such force I wonder for a moment if I can speak or move. On the coffee table in front of Caleb, there’s a hunting knife with a serrated blade, seven or eight inches long. Somewhere in my mind, I’ve stored the knowledge that could help me now…how much damage a weapon like this could do, depending on where he plunged it into my body, with how much power, and how many times.
He’s twice my size, easily. I’d need my gun to fight back, the one I’ve hidden under the mattress in my bedroom, on the other side of where Caleb is sitting. I’d have to get around him to make it. Impossible.
As if Caleb can sense my thoughts, he stands up, grabs the knife, and moves in front of the door to the bedroom. His expression is chilly and flat, as if he’s thinking instead of feeling every move he makes. Floating above himself.
My diaphragm contracts with dread, my whole body stiffened to wire. I glance at Cricket. She’s so smart and even more intuitive. I can see that she senses something’s off in the way she keeps her eyes on me. Her position hasn’t changed. She’s still sitting by the coffee table, but her gaze is fixed and alert. She’s telling me she’s on duty. That I’m not alone.