[Special Agent Tess Winnett 01.0] Dawn Girl

by Leslie Wolfe

  She was back. That was all that mattered.

  3

  A Letter

  The recipe for pasta primavera can be tricky for those who don’t spend enough time in the kitchen. Laura Watson didn’t aim for culinary perfection; she just wanted a quick meal for Adrian and herself, something to be a little different from the monotonous sandwiches grilled in the toaster oven, or the long list of microwave dinners gulped down in front of the TV.

  Typical youngsters, the two of them shared an apartment that reflected Laura’s financial well-being, but also her chosen profession. At least twice the usual number of lamps and light fixtures adorned the place, every single one of them bearing the WatWel Lighting logo.

  A particular wall sconce in the shape of a stylized seashell held special meanings. Laura had designed that lamp when she was fifteen, and her adoptive father/business partner had built the prototype. A year later, that particular model sold like hot cakes to hotels and resorts on both coasts. On her apartment wall, seemingly out of place, the prototype wall sconce was rarely turned off. Looking at the lamp’s gentle light reminded Laura of her family legacy, the company her biological father had started with her now adoptive parent, Bradley Welsh.

  Brad held a special place in her heart; he’d been a terrific adoptive father, who’d broken all the rules and had not placed her legacy in a trust; rather, he’d involved her in decisions at a very young age; he’d been there to kindle her interest for the light fixture manufacturing processes, teaching her how to lead, letting her sit in high-level meetings and big-dollar client negotiations. Together, the two of them had become media darlings.

  There were pictures of them on the apartment walls, the oldest going back to when she was seven or eight years old, and he took her to the inauguration of the new manufacturing facility. She’d cut the ribbon herself, struggling with the huge scissors, but knowing she had him by her side. On a special place above the fireplace was the only photo of her long-lost family, five happy faces that shared one of many moments of closeness together, hiking in Yosemite. On the opposing wall, there was another cherished photo, of her father and Brad Welsh, taken the day they’d incorporated WatWel Lighting.

  That’s why, following the family tradition, she’d chosen a degree in electrical engineering, a difficult specialty that suited her future role with WatWel Lighting. She’d raced through the curriculum in a hurry, and she was bound to finish her degree early by several months. Yet following a simple pasta recipe posed issues for her.

  Laura read the instructions again, and groaned. The recipe was marked “easy” or “beginner” on two of the most popular online recipe sites, yet she didn’t have the necessary patience to execute all the things that needed to be done to achieve the colorful bowl of pasta. She let out another frustrated groan and decided to cut corners, the corners she had the most issues with. Zucchinis? She didn’t have those and wasn’t about to leave the house and go shopping. Adrian wouldn’t know the difference anyway. The surviving red pepper in her fridge had endured in there for a long time and was mushy in places; definitely a candidate for the trash can, not her glamorous Saturday lunch.

  She checked the time, throwing a worried glance at the digital clock hanging on the dining room wall, and decided not to waste any more of it. A little nervous, she ran her fingers through her long, sleek hair, tugging a few rebel strands behind her ears. Adrian’s workshop was about to be over, and she wanted to be done with the meal. Okay… she was going to cut a lot of corners.

  She drained the pasta, mumbling something unintelligible as a few rogue farfalle made it past the drainer and plunged down into the garbage disposal. She put the drained pasta into a large pan just as the phone chimed. She shot a quick glance at the phone’s screen and saw a message from Adrian, saying, “On my way, be there in ten.” Then she opened a small pack of frozen, mixed vegetables, and poured it on top of the pasta. She added olive oil without measuring it and turned on the stove.

  Laura loved gizmos of any kind; maybe a trait inherited from her father’s technical brain, or an acquired preference, she wasn’t sure. Her apartment held an entire collection of small appliances and electrical tools of various kinds. Her best friend and adoptive sister, Amanda, teased her by saying that everything in her apartment had to have a power cord, or it didn’t belong. For the task that most people endure without thinking, the part of the recipe that reads, “Cook on the stove, stirring constantly,” she had a new device, an automated stirring machine that clamped on top of the pan and did the stirring for her. At least that helped a little.

  She cleaned the table quickly and set the placemats, then plugged in a small electric grater and threw in a chunk of fresh Parmesan cheese. She was about done, when she heard the key in the lock.

  “Hey, baby,” Adrian greeted her with a smile, then pecked her on the lips. “Mmm… smells good in here!”

  Boo, their tabby cat, circled his legs with his tail straight up, like a banner.

  She chuckled lightly. All the cut corners were going to remain her secret; Adrian wouldn’t know. He was an orphan, a kid who’d lost his parents to drugs and various prison systems, then grew up in street gangs and juvenile crime until someone took him in. A stranger… a neighbor who was willing to put up with the troubled teenager and had brought him to his senses before he could completely ruin his life.

  They had that in common, the two of them, losing their parents early in their lives. Laura had the better deal though. She hadn’t seen one day of street living, of poverty, or of foster care at the hands of the state. Her father’s business partner and his family had been there from the moment her parents were so tragically taken from her, when she was only five years old. She had been the fortunate one in that respect, having grown up with the love and care of a family that left nothing to be desired.

  Adrian, on the other hand, still had that ruggedness, that fierceness of the street survivor, of the boy who was forced to grow up overnight and fend for himself, when others his age still wrote letters to Santa. His heart was in a good place, but he could become overbearing and too protective at times, his fears and inner monsters fed by who knows what nightmarish experiences he had lived through. It drove her crazy.

  That’s why Laura averted her eyes as much as she could that day; she couldn’t bring herself to tell him she was pregnant. She’d confirmed it earlier that morning. She’d waited for him to leave for school, then rushed to the corner drugstore to get a test, and came running back home. She’d only been a few days late, and she still had hope. She was taking her birth control pills every morning like clockwork, so she expected to see one line on the test, the one line that would put her fears at ease.

  She saw two. She didn’t believe it; couldn’t. She waited for another hour, then ran another test. The same two lines that confirmed the unwanted truth: she was pregnant. In shock, she rushed to her laptop and typed exactly what she was feeling. She searched, “On birth control and pregnant. How is it possible?” Then added several question marks after her search phrase, not for any rational reason; only so she could refrain from breaking things.

  The search results returned various possible causes that didn’t quite match her case, but the fourth one on the list sent shivers down her spine. Apparently, if you take antibiotics when you’re on the pill, it could reduce the pill’s effectiveness. Then she recalled the strep throat she’d had three or four weeks earlier, and the full regimen of antibiotics she had taken. Someone should have told her!

  Swallowing her tears, she weighed her options. She wasn’t ready to start a family, to get busy with diapers and everything. She wanted to get her bachelor’s degree, followed by her master’s, then join her adoptive father at the helm of WatWel Lighting and open the new line of digital, LED fixtures. There was no room for a baby in her life plans. And Adrian? Probably not the best father material. Not the worst either, but someone so overbearing can drive a kid, and its mother, completely nuts. Still, abortion was not an option; sh
e couldn’t even bear the thought.

  By mid-morning, it had become simply too hard to swallow her tears, and she just let the floodgates open. She cried herself out, then decided to cook a special meal, just so she could have something different to prevent Adrian from seeing something was, in fact, different about her. A decoy, a culinary smokescreen. As for her pregnancy, she needed to think and decide what to do. She suddenly missed her mother, her real one, the one she could barely remember. She wished she could run to her and ask her what to do, and cry some more, curled up in her lap.

  She touched, in passing, the antiquated voicemail system on the counter, a system that worked with cassettes. She held on to it, because it was one of the very few relics she had from her real parents. They had touched that very machine, some fifteen years ago. She swallowed with difficulty, then turned around and faced Adrian.

  “How was school?”

  He scoffed. “You know… some of these folks can be so damn arrogant, it takes away from the material. I keep daydreaming about kicking their asses back into reality.”

  She smiled, a crooked smile filled with tenderness. That was her Adrian. Two parts engineer, two parts teddy bear, one part mule, and one part street thug.

  “Simpson, huh?” she asked, referring to the electromagnetic fields professor.

  “Uh-huh,” he said, then sneaked his hand into the pasta pot and stole a couple of farfalle covered in fresh-grated Parmesan. She slapped him across the buttock.

  He still held on to a bunch of mail with his other hand. No way had he washed his hands before touching the food.

  “Ouch!”

  “Hands off,” she said, “it’s not ready yet. And wash your hands.”

  “Looks ready to me,” he replied, then dropped the pile of mail on the table.

  “Take that away, I just cleaned the table. Anything interesting?”

  “Just this,” he replied, sorting through the mail above the trash can that ended up receiving most of the mail items, unopened.

  He handed her a white envelope that bore her name and address in handwritten, cursive letters. She wiped her hands against her jeans and took the envelope, studying it on both sides before opening it. The letter was postmarked locally, in Miami. She opened it and took out a one-page typed letter.

  She read the first few lines, then had to sit down, overwhelmed by a wave of emotion. She leaned her forehead into her hand.

  “What’s wrong, baby?”

  She struggled to speak. She took a deep breath and cleared her throat a little.

  “Um, it’s a letter from a Dr. Austin Jacobs, a neuroscientist. She’s conducting some studies in memory, um… here goes, ‘cognitive memory recovery and memory distortion in childhood trauma,’ and she’d like to speak with me.”

  “Why the hell would she want to do that?”

  “She says I make a great candidate for her study. She says she could help me remember. I will call her on Monday.”

  “The hell you will,” Adrian snapped and stood up abruptly. “It’s over, baby, that part of your life is over. Let it go.”

  She bit her lip, swallowing the biting response to his outburst. She didn’t like it when he tried to run her life like that.

  “I will call her on Monday, Adrian. It’s my only chance to remember. I want to remember… I need to.”

  They both fell quiet, each deeply immersed in their own internal turmoil and too troubled to want to speak. The silence between them felt heavy, uneasy, like a foreboding.

  Laura folded the letter and stuffed it in her jeans back pocket, then stood and put the bowl of pasta on the table. Then she continued setting the table, adding plates, cutlery, and glasses.

  “I’m not hungry anymore,” Adrian said, pouting and gloomy. Sometimes he behaved like a spoiled child.

  “Don’t be silly,” she replied calmly, yet firmly. “Whether you eat or not, I am calling Dr. Jacobs on Monday morning.”

  4

  Reflections: First Kill

  I remember the night of my first kill as if it were yesterday. I remember preparing for it in detail, getting ready for it, from both a tactical point of view, but also emotionally. They say killing is hard; it can break a man. It can destroy him forever.

  It liberated me.

  But let’s not get ahead of my story. The first thing that happened was the need to kill. You see, with me it wasn’t an urge; not at first, anyway. Or, maybe, to be completely honest, I’d felt the urge to kill before, but I didn’t understand it. It felt like waves of restlessness, of suffocating anger without a precise, well-determined object, that I didn’t act on because I simply didn’t understand what I needed to do. Not until that first kill.

  Yes, so I had the dire need to kill Allen Watson. The reasons were many, too many, yet irrelevant to what I want to share with you. But, please, believe me when I say I tried everything I could to avoid having to kill him. He didn’t give me much choice. I was backed into a corner, with no other alternative but to end the bastard’s sorry life.

  Once I understood I had no other choice, I started to think about how I should do it. You see, going to prison wasn’t—and still isn’t—an option for me. I kept thinking, looking for a solution that wouldn’t land me in a cell. As I was tossing and turning for nights in a row trying to create the perfect murder, something happened. Fate intervened and opened a door for me.

  A serial killer, dubbed by the media with the ridiculous name of The Family Man, had murdered a family of four, just miles away from Watson’s neighborhood. I learned about it on the news. I saw everyone on TV fretting about the killings, calling it a gruesome repeat of some other murders, done in about the same way, in about the same area, that I’d somehow missed hearing.

  What an opportunity!

  I remember sleeping like a baby for the rest of that night. The next morning, refreshed, I started researching everything there was to know about that serial killer. I was careful not to leave a trail. That’s what libraries are for, to research things anonymously, protected by a hoodie and some thick-rimmed glasses, and looking so grimy my own mother wouldn’t recognize me. If I knew who invented the hoodie, I’d send them a check. On second thought, no… I’d be leaving a paper trail; big mistake. I’d send them cash instead.

  Soon I knew everything there was to learn about The Family Man from the media and the Internet. Of course, police probably had held on to some details, to prevent perfect copycats from happening, but I didn’t care. Maybe police had even lied about some of the details they released; I still didn’t care. Copycatting The Family Man was still my best shot. I studied his handiwork and noted all the factors, taking them at face value: how he killed his victims, how he gained access to their properties, what kind of gun he used, what caliber and what brand, how he went about doing it. Every little thing.

  There was only one problem with copycatting The Family Man: I had to kill Allen Watson’s entire family. Oh, well… That was going to be on him, not on me. He’s the one who pushed me to do it anyway.

  Getting the right gun was tricky. I needed to buy a Beretta 9 mil, unregistered, of course, and from a reliable street vendor. Getting to the right street corner near Liberty Square proved more challenging than acquiring the actual gun. I couldn’t drive my own car. Cabs have cameras onboard these days, so there I was, using public transportation for the first time in years, with my phone turned off and my hoodie zipped up, despite an early heat wave. I kept my face hidden behind a newspaper the whole time, and once I was in the neighborhood, I chose to walk the last leg of my trip.

  The first person I asked about a gun sent me to hell. He was a well-built black man, who took my question personally and assumed immediately it was because of his race that I was asking him about contraband weapons. Honestly, it was, but I didn’t admit that to him; I just apologized profusely and didn’t stop until he said, “Whatever, man,” and moved on. I’d learned a lesson.

  I walked around Liberty Square for a while longer, then approached
another young man, a white guy this time; well, at least the skin under his tattoos had been white at some point. He made these quick, twitchy movements with his entire body; he was probably a meth head. But he knew someone, and for a twenty he said he’d point me in the right direction.

  He did, and a minute later, a third man approached us and led me to a car, whose trunk held a variety of firearms. He had the exact pistol I was looking for, and swore it hadn’t been used for anything nasty before. Sure, like I was going to believe that… or maybe he spoke the truth, who knows?

  He asked for two hundred. Unfamiliar with the street rate of illegal weapons, I’d come prepared to pay two thousand, and suddenly there I was, struggling to extract the two Benjamins he wanted, without them noticing how thick my roll of cash really was. Delighted I didn’t bargain, he offered two boxes of 9-mil ammo, and I made a mental note to wipe the prints clean off each and every bullet. One can never be too careful.

  I was ready, and I couldn’t delay anymore. Allen Watson wasn’t going to go away or learn to shut up; he was becoming a big liability for me. I went there and parked on the street parallel to his cul-de-sac, hidden behind a bush. I waited patiently for him to come home from the office, and then waited some more for dusk to set in. Then I made my move.

  He let me in, just as I’d expected, and I didn’t even let him finish his question. There wasn’t any point to it. The time for conversations had come and gone. I pulled the trigger twice and watched him collapse against the wall, leaving a thick smudge of blood against the caramel wood paneling.

  The thrill of the kill hit me like a shot of heroin to my vein, going straight to my brain and reverberating into every cell in my body. Whew! What a rush! I remember inhaling the metallic scent of fresh blood with flaring, lusting nostrils, and feeling the exhilaration of the adrenaline surge turn me into something else, a superhuman, a predator set on the scent of blood. You see, I’d expected to feel sick after killing Watson, because that’s what I heard others feel; I’d even brought along a plastic bag to barf in, just in case I needed to. But no, that wasn’t my case.