Kaley looked at Zoey. "She watched him for about half a year before he started first grade."
"We were too poor back then for kindergarten or daycare," Kami explained.
Kaley looked at Kevin. "Kevin, what was the name of the salesman when Dad bought the station wagon?"
"Jerry Hansen," Kevin replied immediately.
Kami leaned in. "How much did Dad pay and what was the monthly payment?"
Kevin looked up for a second before he looked at his sister. "Sales price was $10,348 with taxes included and the monthly payment was $142."
Kaley looked at Zoey. "He was two and a half when he went with Dad to buy the car."
Zoey looked astounded as she looked back and forth at his sisters and she started to comprehend. "If he can remember all that, why doesn't he remember the babysitter?"
"Exactly!" Kami yelled that, but she didn't seem to care.
"What do you think happened?" Kevin asked.
"Something that could happen to any kid," Kaley said.
"And something that's more likely to happen with a beautiful boy." Zoey's voice was quivery and that went with the wetness in her eyes.
"You really think she molested me?" Kevin seemed to have a hard time believing that.
"I remember overhearing Mom and Dad talk about it," Kaley said.
"I saw things Brother." Kami was sniffling and crying. "Not the bad things, but things that should've clued me into the bad things." She had to pause to cry. "If only I was smart enough to see the signs. Read the clues."
Kaley pulled Kami into a hug as she looked at Kevin. "I found the paperwork going through Dad's things. They reported it to the police. It was investigated, but that bitch—"
Kevin saw both of his sisters' heads turn as they glared at the mobile home in the distance. He saw Zoey glaring at it the same way.
"She walked free Kevin. She walked free." Kaley wasn't crying. Her voice was calm, but there was a coldness to it that was chilling.
"Maybe they investigated and didn't think she did it," Kevin said.
"We're sure Mom and Dad were sure she did it." Kami's voice had no coldness. It was fired with passionate anger.
Kaley turned and looked at Kevin. "She did it to another little boy. Took a plea deal and only served a few years."
Kevin slid off the car. He put his hands up and lifted Zoey off. He put his hand over his eyes to see better in the distance. "I think we need to avoid impulse killings."
"It's no impulse Brother, I saw that piece of shit in the mall last month," Kami said.
"We've been talking about it and thinking about it all month long," Kaley said.
"You were both thinking about killing, before we started killing?" He got his answer with their nodding heads. He rubbed his face with his hands like he did when he woke up in the morning. "Do you have a plan?"
"We have a plan," his sisters answered in nearly perfect unison.
****
Kevin and Zoey waited outside the mobile home for his sisters to talk their way inside. It was about fifteen minutes later when Kami opened the trailer screen door and waved them inside.
Kevin's face contorted with disgust and displeasure over the smells that hit him when he stepped inside until his innate curiosity helped him get past that.
Kami pointed at a slight old woman sitting at a small table in the small kitchen. "That's Ruth."
Kevin wasn't a good judge of age, but he guessed the woman was in her late seventies or early eighties. The fact she looked pleasant in spite of the strangers taking over her trailer made him surer than a guess she had dementia. He asked about that, "Are you sure she won't remember us?"
Kami nodded. "Super sure." She took Kevin's hand and walked him over to the living room that was dark during the day from the windows that had been covered with foil. "Relax, we did our homework."
"Now it's time to teach the lesson." Kaley leaned over from her seat on an old ragged couch and turned on a light. "This is Nonie."
The woman on the couch wasn't that old. Maybe ten years older than Kevin. She looked a little hard to him. Maybe hard from a hard life more than hard from a hard nature. He felt her face looked familiar, but that was it. He felt the eyes of his girlfriend and his sisters on him. He knew they were looking for a reaction. He was smart enough to know that no matter how he reacted, they would still kill the woman. He spoke to answer the question they were anxiously waiting to be answered, "A little familiar, but that's it."
"He doesn't remember me, so maybe I didn't mess him up that bad." Nonie's eyes, face, and entire body seemed to plead with Kaley.
Kaley slapped Nonie so hard it knocked her head back into the cheap fake wood paneling behind the old couch.
"Kaley!" Kami pointed. "Marks on the bitch and marks on the wall."
Kevin felt Zoey's arm around him. He knew why. He felt himself trembling. He knew why he was trembling too. His babysitter's face didn't trigger anything, but the sound of her voice did. He exercised his mind to exorcise the frightened feeling away. He noticed both of his sisters wore thin gloves on their hands. He noticed Kami's kit she used to give manicures. Something she learned to do and do well. She'd even talked about that as a career choice along with doing hair, and makeup. She talked many times about going to beauty school. That line of future talk always struck him as kind of funny when he was younger. Why would a young woman so beautiful need to go to a beauty school? He put the clues together. That's how they talked their way inside. They offered a free manicure and probably other beauty treatments to appeal to the woman who was probably desperately into trying to be beautifully appealing.
Kaley took in several deep breaths she let out slowly. "Alright, I'm chill now." She grabbed Nonie by the hair and pulled her face down to her knees. She pulled up the wrists that were in handcuffs behind her back. "Check it out."
The first thing Kevin noticed was how his sisters had put felt on the handcuffs, so they wouldn't leave marks. Then, he noticed the marks on the woman's wrists. "She's a cutter."
"On the legs and thigh too," Kami said with a smile.
Kaley pushed Nonie back so her back hit the back of the couch, but her head didn't hit the wall that time. She picked up the knife. "Cuts on a cutter won't stand out so much." She held the knife in front of the woman's face.
Nonie looked at the knife before she looked at Kevin. "I was young and stupid. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Kaley had the knife to Nonie's throat in a flash.
"The plan, Number One." Kami got a firm grip on Kaley's knife hand. "The plan."
"Sorry, Number Two," Kaley said.
Zoey giggled. "Number One and Number Two."
Kevin was about to giggle at the potty joke his girlfriend got out of their crime names, but the looks on the faces of his sisters who were killers made him think twice about that.
Zoey had her palms up. "Sorry, that was so juvenile." She leaned over and picked up a pair of gloves on the table. She put the gloves on and looked at the other girls. "Number Three at your service."
Kevin leaned over, got the last pair of gloves, put them on, and looked at each of his sisters. "Number Four is here for after-crime consultation, but—"
Kaley and Kami gave each other knowing looks.
Kami gave Kevin a loving look. "Go keep Ruth occupied."
"To keep your mind occupied." Kaley gave him the same look.
****
Kevin walked to the table and sat down next to the sweet senile old woman. Ruth watched him as she slurped her coffee.
Kevin smiled the perfunctory smile his father trained him to smile when he first encountered a stranger. He pulled over the laptop computer that didn't slide easily on the sticky table. He needed something to occupy his mind while he occupied the woman with dementia and the young women in his life were occupied with killing the woman who abused him when he was a child. He thought of how he strung that thought together and realized that although it was long, it wasn't as long as the longest thoughts he strung
together. Particularly, when something upset him.
Ruth leaned over and patted Kevin's hand with an old hand that was spotted and wrinkled. "No matter how tired you get after work, George, you still have enough steam to work on your play."
Kevin smiled a sweet smile at Ruth who was having a sweet memory. He looked up when he heard Kaley speaking in her cold chilling voice she found when she found out she was a killer.
"It goes down this way, Nonie." Kaley had the tip of the knife running down from Nonie's throat to her chest. "You drink the orange juice to help you get down the economy sized bottle of acetaminophen, and I don't cut off little pieces of you, piece by piece."
"No, please ... No—" Nonie pleaded.
Kevin opened his mouth to say something but thought better of it. He looked on the computer and guessed it belonged to Ruth. Something she used before she lost her mind. He typed in the password 'George' and wasn't surprised when that got him in.
"Listen," Zoey said, "I want to take that knife myself and gouge your eyes out before I slow down and take my time, so it's the easy way or the hard way."
"But, either way, you die today," Kami said with some control in the angry voice she voiced when she was in killing mode.
Kevin thought on the killers he knew so well and loved so much. He witnessed the aftermath of Kaley's first killing, but how he imagined it, almost matched his eye-witness viewing of her second kill in progress. She was mostly crazed by an impulsive rage, somewhat reachable with reason, and a little funny. His pretty sister's killing character was different. It surprised him that the mutilation of the motorcyclist's face and the finishing off Kami did when she shoved the long knife blade up into the biker's brain, wasn't fueled with the fiery anger he'd witnessed lately. It was odd how that was inverted. Kaley was cool before the killing, but uncool with the impulsive homicidal rage that spilled out when she killed. On the other hand, Kami was angry before she killed, but efficient and unemotional during the killing that seemed deliberate and planned even when it wasn't. Zoey? He thought she was somewhere in between. He remembered the angst she had for a few moments after she killed Rob.
"I die today—" Nonie repeated through tears. After Zoey wiped her eyes and nose with a tissue she gave up the futile effort to plead for her life and pled for less pain, "Promise it won't hurt, please?"
"I promise it won't hurt," Kaley said.
Those words hit Kevin harder than Rob's hit to the stomach. "I think ... No, I know!" He explained when all the women looked at him. "I can hear her voice saying, 'I promise it won't hurt' to me."
There was no denial from the babysitter accused of saying that.
Kevin listened and looked for any acting on an impulse, and he thought of one word when he didn't hear or see any action. Restraint.
"Open wide," Kaley said to prompt the woman to open her mouth for the first handful of the pills.
He felt the dark shroud covering the dark memories rising like a dark curtain on a dark stage. He forced himself to think of something else that happened that fateful day. He remembered walking into the kitchen and hearing his mother say to his father, 'That was a first edition novel, Jeff, it might be worth something someday' and seeing his father shrug before he said, 'But today is his first day with the new sitter and they can sit and read everything about every dinosaur that ever walked, stomped, soared, and terrorized Mother Earth.' He could see his father acting like a T-Rex and coming after him when he spotted him. He remembered the thick dinosaur book his father traded his collectable book for. His Dad catered to his arcane interests. He was like the drug dealer who hooked him up with whatever his strange mind was currently hooked on. It was hard to have a bad memory if it touched on any memory of Jeff Riley. He felt the natural smile on his face and knew that was one smile he could never fake.
"One more round—" Kaley said.
"To grow on—" Kami said before she giggled and got Zoey giggling along with her.
Kevin had to keep the memories coming to keep his mind off the words from his past that invaded his present. He thought back on Zoey's killing. He realized he was thinking of her in a setting, like any boyfriend would over a new girlfriend. The only difference was his girlfriend was a killer and so was he. He thought of Rob and grinned briefly at the joke he told himself in his head. Zoey was a robber who robbed Rob of his life. He thought back to how quickly she got over the killing and was completely fine with what she did. Her killing was to save him from a beating. Still, she enjoyed it after the fact. He realized the reason he thought through the killing state of mind of all of them was because he was mindful of how they were conducting themselves in this killing. They were struggling for restraint but managing to restrain themselves. He thought that went back to what he said on the car ride here. They were following his lead. It made him a little uncomfortable, but he was enjoying being a leader. He felt another pat on his hand.
"George, I know things are hard for us now, but it has to get better," Ruth said.
"It will get better." Kevin gave her a quick smile before he looked into the living room from the sounds.
Kami had her hand on Nonie's mouth to fight the gag reflex from the latest handful of pills.
"Pinch her nostrils Zoey," Kaley directed, "but not hard enough to leave a sign."
Kevin felt the hand on him again.
"It won't get better if you leave me, George." Tears rolled slowly down Ruth's face.
"I'm not going anywhere." Kevin noticed Zoey had watched that while Nonie was getting the pills down. He shared a quick smile with her.
"I'll be dead soon." Nonie had to clear her throat. "Can I at least say something?"
The sound of her voice and what she might say worried Kevin. He got busy on the laptop as he heard one of his women giving the woman they were killing a drink of juice. He clicked on the spread sheet and got a sense of what it was in an instant. He minimized that and opened up the document saved to the PC Desk Top. He scanned that and got a sense of what that was right away. He remembered seeing a stack of papers behind his chair on top of a cabinet. He reached over and got the paperwork and went through it.
"I did the best I could with what little we have," Ruth said before she used an old used tissue to wipe her tears.
"I know that, Dear," Kevin replied.
"Your brother was the first boy I did that to," Nonie said.
Kevin could tell Nonie was close to being unconscious. "She's fading, and you need to get more in her. Fast!" He was ready to hear some indignant remarks from his sisters, but glad he didn't. He saw them making her take another mouthful. Somehow, he knew they had to get at least half of that big bottle in her to shut her kidneys down. He didn't remember how he knew that. That was one of the few facts he knew that he couldn't remember where he learned it. That was nothing to worry about. He learned and stored so many minute trivial things, there had to be a few that he couldn't remember the details of how he learned them. Those minute memory lapses paled in comparison to the half a year the woman being forced to kill herself watched over him. He watched the living room for a moment. Some of that was coming back to him and he didn't like that. Not one bit.
"Won't lie—" Nonie's words were slurred. "Doing that ... On my mind before him ... But him? ... Look at him."
Kevin couldn't miss the bobbing head of the woman that was a nod at him.
"He's—" A gurgling sound preceding throwing up was handled with Zoey's plastic gloved hand to Nonie's mouth, before Nonie recovered and finished the thought with a rasp to her voice, "Too beautiful."
Kevin pulled in a breath. He knew the tension in the other room had to be massive if he could sense it like he did. He was prepared for any one of his women to do something impulsive from hearing that. He was already trying to clear his mind of the encroaching memories the woman brought, so he was clear-headed enough to handle another impulse killing. He marveled again at their restraint.
"One more for the road," Kaley said in a casual conversational way.
Zoey gave Nonie another drink.
Nonie slipped into unconsciousness.
"How much of the bottle is gone?" Kevin asked.
"Two-thirds," Kami answered.
"Almost three-fourths," Zoey said.
Kevin looked around the kitchen. He noticed all the different varieties of fast food wrappers and packaging. He noticed the many empty wine and beer bottles. He thought if the woman could handle such large amounts of poor quality food and drink, she could possibly handle more acetaminophen. "Give her just a little more." He smiled at something his father used to say before he said it, "For good measure."
Kaley got the handcuffs off.
Zoey got Nonie on her back on the couch.
Kami got more pills in Nonie's mouth and put her hand over the mouth as Zoey pinched the nostrils to get her to swallow the pills.
Kevin saw how tired Ruth looked. "Nap time?"
Ruth nodded and took Kevin's hand to help her get up.
Kevin walked Ruth into the living room.
"We need to wait for it." Kevin took a good look at Nonie. "It won't be a long wait."
"You have that idea look, Kevin." Zoey seemed to be watching his face eagerly to see if her intuition was confirmed.
Kevin noticed that look. He noticed his sisters looking at him eagerly too. "Nonie took out a loan on this place. Drained the bank account too."
"I know we're low on money, George." Ruth gripped Kevin's hand.
"But, we're not low on love, honey." Kevin patted Ruth's hand with his free hand. He looked at the girls and spoke softly and swiftly, "Nonie has a web site for babysitting. Under a different name, of course."
"Of course," Kami said with the fiery anger amping up what she said.
"Her site has form mail on it. One of you can drive me over to the old library we used to go to." He couldn't hide a smile from that. His Dad would take him there and let him spend the whole day there. He was thinking about his Dad a lot that day. That was good. If he kept thinking those thoughts, he might keep more memories he blocked from becoming unblocked. "One of the library computers is around the corner. No camera covering it. I can pull up an anonymous browser and send her a message anonymously."
The Killing Rileys- First Love, First Kills Page 8