by Jason Parent
Sam pulled out Tessa’s file. Leaving nothing to chance, she fingered through the remaining M names and found two more sets of matching initials. She grabbed both, tucked all four files beneath her arm, and carried them over to the desk. She opened each one and photographed every page with her cellphone. She would have a techie blow up the pictures once she got back to the precinct.
As she finished taking her last photographs, a man’s whistle came from down the hall. She hastily jammed the files back into the cabinet as close to alphabetically as she could and slid the drawer shut. After locking it, she tossed the keys back into the top desk drawer.
Principal Alves walked in a moment later. Sam made a show of looking through emails on her phone, trying to appear as though she had ended her search and been waiting for his return.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.
“Let’s hope so.” She shook his hand again. “Thank you, Principal Alves. I’ll see myself out.”
For the first time since Michael had prophesied her death, Sam felt something just shy of joy. Finally, she had a promising lead. Tessa Masterson was somehow involved with the guidance counselor’s death. Sam was certain of it.
Speeding away from the school, Sam couldn’t wait to tell Michael what she had learned and how he’d helped her. Maybe the news would cheer him up. She was well aware that she was not supposed to share details of an ongoing investigation with a civilian, but Michael was more than that. And he was shaping up to be quite the little detective.
Besides, what’s anyone going to do about it? I’ll be dead soon enough, and it’s kind of hard to punish a corpse. But at least I’ll have solved one more case before I go. With that thought, the certainty of her impending death—and her helplessness to prevent it—finally set in. All Michael knew was that she would be stabbed. She couldn’t help but notice the similarity her death would share with that of her most recent murder victim.
As much as she wanted to see Michael, Sam feared that any delay could lead to her death and a murderer going free. She needed to corroborate the evidence she had discovered, to ensure that even if she didn’t solve the case before her own demise, she would leave enough breadcrumbs for someone to follow through with what she had started.
She shrugged. Half the drug dealers, muggers, and rapists in Fall River carried knives. Her death could be at the hands of any number of potential deviants. She doubted she would have any chance of seeing it coming. Maybe it’s better that way.
Sam had lived more lives than a dozen cats. Just as she had a precarious knack for getting into life-threatening situations, she had an equal knack for getting out of them. Her years on the force had pitted her against killers and madmen, and not the quirky-funny kind. Her arrests earned her many enemies. Her aptitude and strength earned her many more within her own male-dominated profession. Each experience helped define what she had become: cynical and untrusting, cautious but wise. Those qualities made her a better detective but had dismantled her personal relationships. Sometimes, she wondered if she had such a hard exterior to prevent others from cracking it and seeing how empty she was inside.
Without knowing when or where her end would come—or even who would cause it—Sam felt powerless. That was the part she hated most. In the next few days, she was sure she would jump at dog barks and car horns and constantly be looking over her shoulder. She wondered what it would feel like when the blade entered her. Will there be a lot of pain? Will I die quickly?
In the meantime, she had a case to solve and the determination to solve it, no matter the cost.
Chapter 16
Tessa celebrated her Thanksgiving in her room, thankful for every moment Father stayed out of it. Unlike most families who were gorging themselves on turkey legs, cornbread, and sweet potato pie, as she had done back when Mother was still alive, Tessa hadn’t eaten a thing. The thought of food turned her stomach. It brought with it the smell of blood, the taste of her own vomit, and the sounds of torment—the begging, the whimpering, the suffering—of a dying woman.
A woman who had died because of her.
Distractions were hard to come by at home. Surprisingly, school on Monday and Tuesday, then the half day on Wednesday, had been a blessing. It had allowed her to be out of the house and away from Father, and the work kept her mind at least partially occupied. But while all the other kids were cheering as they hopped onto their buses to go home, Tessa was thinking of ways to get after-school detention. She had even flipped off a teacher, but the woman let her off with a warning, and Tessa hadn’t found the courage to do it again.
In the end, she had missed the bus on purpose and walked home the long way. She crept upstairs, put on her headphones, and tried to sleep. But she could reach only that in-between stage where objects seen through barely open eyes blurred and formed Rorschach-like shadows. In those shadows, she saw Ms. Jackson and the cookie guy and even some others Father hadn’t killed but might have just as easily, like the pretty woman in line at the supermarket. In those shadows, she also saw her mother.
Screaming.
She jolted awake just as Father entered the room. She bet other girls’ parents knocked, but she would never dare to ask Father for some privacy.
“Are you going to sleep all day?” he asked. “Don’t think that just because it’s Thanksgiving you have a day off from your chores.”
“Thanksgiving?” How long was I asleep?
Father either didn’t notice or didn’t care about her confusion. “Were you asked about her?”
Tessa knew exactly who “her” was. He’d asked the same question every day this week. “No. I didn’t see one cop at school either.” She gulped. “Maybe they haven’t, you know, found her yet.”
“Are you wearing headphones?” He raised his hand. “Take those damn things off when I’m talking to you.”
She was slow to act, her hands already trembling as they removed the speakers from her ears. She turned to place them on her nightstand.
Whap!
The slap was hard enough to bring a metallic taste into her mouth. She shrank back against the headboard, squeezing the life out of a pillow.
“And if they do come around asking?” he snapped. “What do you say?”
“Sh-Sh-She never came here. I know nothing.”
He smiled. “That’s right. Good. You’re just a dumb kid who knows nothing.”
He leaned closer. Tessa hid behind the pillow, averting her eyes. She could feel his breath on her ear.
“You and I have been together a long time, Tessa.” All the anger had left his voice, yet the low, calm whisper was somehow worse. “It would be a shame if you didn’t show me the proper respect. Your mother—God rest her soul—she didn’t show me the proper respect. I can’t help but think that maybe if she had been a more respectful person, a more dutiful wife… well, maybe things might have turned out different.”
Father sat down on the bed beside her. “You’re not your mother, are you, Tessa?”
He ran his fingers through her hair, and she started, her whole body shivering as she shied as far away from his hand as she could. She ducked her head. The pillow folded in the middle as she pulled it against her.
Father leaped to his feet and tore the pillow from her hands. “Answer me!”
Tessa scurried back to the farthest corner of the bed.
He leaned over and gripped her jaw. “Well?”
Terror had taken her voice away. She wagged her head back and forth.
After she stopped, he wiggled her head for her. “No.” He laughed. “You are not your mother. You will respect me. You will obey, like a daughter is supposed to.”
A knock came to the front door.
“Who in the world…?” Father glared at Tessa, then his expression went blank. She knew that blank face, the one he wore for strangers. “You’ll stay in here if you know what’s
good for you. And you’d better pray this has nothing to do with that guidance counselor. She had no right meddling in the affairs of a family. No goddamn right.”
His mask started to slip. He let out a breath and said flatly, “No one does.” He stormed out of the room, leaving her bedroom door open.
Tessa remained on her bed. For some reason, she thought of that boy, the one who claimed to see stuff. What did you see, Michael? She smirked through her tears. He had probably seen the day Father went beyond bruises, burns, and breaks—the day Father would finally kill her.
A day her pain and suffering would be over.
A day that couldn’t come soon enough.
Chapter 17
Back at the precinct, Sam reviewed Tessa’s file. If Ms. Jackson had made any significant observations pertaining to the girl, she hadn’t placed them in the folder. A woman as organized as Gloria Jackson would likely have stored her notes in the file. Unless her life was cut short before she could.
In fact, Tessa’s file lacked anything of significance. Whatever the guidance counselor’s thoughts were, she took them to her premature grave. But the file did have one useful piece of information: an address. Though that would have been easy enough for Sam to look up, its inclusion within the file saved her the bother.
Tessa lived at 78 Winchester Street in what Fall River folk called the Highlands. The Highlands were the Ritz-Carlton section of the city. But being the wealthiest part of Fall River was like being the cleanest chicken in the coop, still full of shit. The houses in that area were mostly single-story ranches. Modest homes at fair prices, the kind where a single father might try to give his daughter a quality upbringing, even if that daughter wanted him dead.
But why the guidance counselor? Sam evaluated every possible answer to that question. Revenge was always a possible motive, by far the most common. Since a high school guidance counselor had taken an interest in Tessa, Sam suspected that either abuse was the impetus behind the girl’s murderous intent, or Tessa was simply a disturbed teenage misfit.
The abuser seemed obvious. With no other relatives in Massachusetts and living alone with her father, Tessa had only one likely abuser: the lowest kind. Daddy issues like those had no cure.
Sam needed to summon up her commitment to the law and remember that Christopher Masterson was the victim, at least in Michael’s vision. Murder is murder, no matter what the reason for it. In truth, she believed some men deserved to die. Sam would try to gauge if Masterson was one of them.
But Masterson’s death was a crime not yet committed, so it would have to take a backseat to Gloria Jackson’s. Besides, she figured her presence at the Masterson residence might already be altering the course of future events. Then again, the counselor’s death would have led Sam to Masterson’s house with or without Michael’s vision. The only difference was that she had a more definite suspicion to go on. Only one question remained: would that knowledge make things better or worse?
Sam had never met Tessa, but she knew there weren’t many teenage girls who could move a one-hundred-eighty-five-pound body by herself. Still, she believed Michael’s vision and that the girl would murder her father at some point. But Tessa hadn’t necessarily murdered Gloria Jackson, Sam reminded herself. Even if the girl was responsible and the Masterson house had truly been Ms. Jackson’s final stop, Tessa would have needed help cleaning up her mess. Her father eclipsed all other potential candidates. Regardless, Sam made sure her gun was loaded.
With only her gut feeling, a teenage boy’s psychic vision, and a notation in a day planner, Sam lacked the evidence she needed for probable cause and a search warrant. Other cops might have held off on questioning Masterson or his daughter until they had more to go on, but Sam’s initial instincts were usually right.
So after letting several coworkers know where she was going, Sam drove to the Masterson home. There’s no law against talking to people. Maybe he’ll even invite me in.
As she got out of the car, Sam scanned the front of the house and the yard. She could tell a lot about a person by the way he maintained his property. Masterson’s house screamed “perfectionist.” It was something to be admired, not because of its grandeur, but because of the attention to detail its owner obviously showed it. She looked to the left of the steps then to the right. Sam bet if she drew a line down the middle of the house, the two halves would be strikingly similar.
No. They’re identical. The house was more bisymmetrical than a human face and sort of looked like one, too. Windows on each side of the front door served as its eyes, gazing upon the outside world while their shutter-lids kept the outside from looking in. The door was its long, flat nose, the stairs its clenched teeth. Not a face. A skull.
What at first glance was almost poetic symmetry became somehow perverse and unnerving upon further inspection. Sam couldn’t find a single flaw, not so much as a run in the cold gray paint. The steps and walkway looked as though they had been vacuumed and power-washed then scrubbed free of blemishes with toothbrush precision. Neither a single leaf nor a smudge of dirt invaded the pathway up to the structure. Like a still life, the house seemed trapped in time, unaffected by wind and weather.
The landscaping exhibited the same kind of anal-retentive maintenance. Hedges of identical height and shape, trimmed flat across their tops, jutted from dual rock gardens bordered by ornate brick. Even each of the hundreds of white rocks seemed equivalent to its neighbor in size, shape, and gradation. Every blade of grass, still thriving despite the onset of winter, stood erect and cut to precisely the same fairway height.
Everything was perfect, too perfect to be real. Yet somehow it was. If it weren’t for one glaring difference, Sam would have thought mirrors or special effects were deceiving her. On the left was a statue of Jesus, set within a break in the row of bushes. On the right, in a similar break, the Virgin Mary stood in what resembled a bathtub cut in half, a popular lawn ornament among the local Portuguese. Masterson wasn’t a typical Portuguese name, so the decor seemed odd.
She didn’t like that house, but she couldn’t think of a specific reason why. She frowned. If the home was the crime scene, she doubted she would find anything of use. The person living there didn’t seem the type to leave evidence behind. Sam could almost smell the bleach already.
Feeling mischievous, she stomped her size-seven boot into the grass and twisted her foot. Her heel dug out a small divot, while her sole flattened a small area of grass. Her willful vandalism provoked a chuckle. She walked up the front steps and knocked on the door.
As she waited for someone to answer, she did an about face and studied the neighborhood. It was eerily quiet, the type of street where she imagined everyone kept to themselves.
“May I help you?”
Startled, Sam turned to see a man no taller than her standing in the doorway. With tightly cropped hair, mostly gray, and black-rimmed glasses, he wouldn’t have stood out in a crowd. Sam hadn’t even heard the door open, yet there he was. Had he caught her juvenile act? Part of her hoped so. “Mr. Masterson?” she asked, putting on her professional face.
“Yes?”
“I’m Detective Samantha Reilly of the Fall River Police Department. I’m sorry to bother you on Thanksgiving, but if I may just have a moment of your time…”
“What about?”
“Your daughter.” Sam spoke the truth, even if what she said was only a part of the whole.
Masterson glanced over his shoulder. Sam leaned to the side, hoping to get a look at Tessa, maybe even have a chat with her. With younger kids, it was sometimes that easy, but Sam wasn’t holding her breath. Teenagers were inherently wary of authority.
Masterson’s mouth formed a flat line across his face. He opened the door and waved for Sam to enter. To her amazement, the interior was more orderly than the exterior. The living room was like an optical illusion, with every object arranged at right angles to the wall and
each other. Nothing appeared out of place. Sam found its museum-like rigidity austere and uninviting, a reflection of its owner. She felt as though alarms would blare if she touched anything. She wondered how anyone could live there. The house did not look lived in at all.
“Please,” Masterson said, “make yourself at home.”
He pointed toward a sofa that, together with two chairs and a television set, formed a rectangle. Sam chose the chair at the far end. It gave her the best view of the room, its exit into the kitchen and dining room, and the staircase leading to the second floor. Masterson sat across from her, his back to the staircase.
“These chairs are comfy,” Sam said. Her words were meant to draw his attention to her bouncing, which displaced the cushion just enough to annoy an obsessive personality. She then slid the chair about an inch to the left, purposely drawing it out of sync with the rest of the decor. She watched Masterson closely to see if the mistreatment of his chair bothered him.
He stared back with a placid expression. If her actions bothered him, he revealed no sign of it. “So, Ms. Reilly, what sort of trouble has my darling daughter gotten herself into this time?” His tone held a hint of disappointment, as if a police visit wasn’t the least bit strange. But Sam had checked both of their records and found no past dealings with law enforcement for either.
Sam put on a surprised expression. “I wasn’t under the impression that Tessa had been in trouble before.”
“Does a cow shit in a pasture? Tessa is like a magnet for trouble; she attracts it everywhere we go. It’s never been anything major, but we’ve moved a few times with the false hope that a fresh start and some new scenery would do her some good. I love my daughter, but sometimes I wonder if all I do for her is worth the effort. It would be a shame to think of her as a lost cause.”