by J P Tompkins
“They think I did it,” Paul says, as we step aside so the Thorpes can back out.
The words don’t register at first. Not clearly, anyway. I think he’s talking about Erin’s parents blaming him for putting her in the position of moving out, coming to stay with me, being vulnerable to the attack that took place. “He said that?”
“He said they don’t believe me.”
We both watch as the Thorpes drive away, rounding the corner out of the hotel parking lot, on their way to get Erin.
“Believe you about what?”
“He asked me where I really was that night. So I told him. I told him how I was home. And then he says they don’t believe me.”
Erin’s parents have bought into Hogle’s and Roark’s theory.
“That’s what the shouting was about?”
Paul nods, closes his eyes, runs his hands through his hair. “Jesus Christ, Kate. I didn’t do it.”
“I know.”
It’s strange, I think, how all of this is unfolding. As long as I’ve had a negative view of Paul and with all he did to deserve it, here I am, his one and only defender.
He looks at me and I see a mixture of surprise and relief on his face.
I’m about to explain how the killer got her, how Erin fought him off and how Hogle and Roark and anyone else who thinks otherwise is wrong, but my phone rings, drawing my attention away from Paul. It’s a work number, the main number, and when I pick it up, it’s Lisa, the receptionist.
“I took a message for you just a few minutes ago,” she says. “The girl said it was important, but not urgent, whatever that means.”
“Who was it?”
“Beth Callahan. She left a number.”
Chapter 27
Fifteen minutes later, I pull into the parking lot of Beth Callahan’s apartment complex.
When I called Beth, she gave me directions, but I’ve been here before. Just like I had gone to the other crime scenes, only this was different. This place, unlike the others, was still occupied by the victim. A victim who was likely to be on alert, one who would notice the odd sound—the crunch of a stick breaking underfoot, the rustle of leaves, the rattle of a gate.
So when I came here, just the one time, I spent a lot of time watching the place. I found a good view in the woods and I watched her arrive home. I watched the lights come on. I watched her check the locks on the back door and the windows. I watched as she turned on the floodlights in the backyard, came out of the house with a flashlight and a dog. I wondered if she had that dog the night of the attack and, if so, what the dog was doing while it happened.
I park and walk up the steps to the second floor of her building. She answers before I can knock.
“I saw you pull up,” she says. “Hope it wasn’t too hard to find.”
I don’t tell Beth I’ve been here before, in the woods behind her place. I just smile, friendly, easy-going, putting her at ease because she looks nervous. “Not at all.”
“Come on in,” she says.
She looks different than her pictures. Her hair is shorter, darker. Her face is free of make-up. Her eyes are puffy. She’s been crying.
“I’m glad you called,” I say. “Thanks for inviting me over.”
“We can sit in here.” She gestures toward the living room.
I hear the dog bark, followed by a deep growl.
“Don’t worry, he’s locked up in my room while you’re here. He’s actually my parents’ dog. They have two. They insisted I take him when I came back here.”
That solves that mystery.
“Good idea,” I say.
“Maybe. Maybe not. He’s used to having a big yard where he can run and play. Now all we have is this small patch of yard in the back.”
I nod, knowing exactly what the yard looks like and how it’s not quite big enough for a dog that size, but I don’t give myself away.
“I just took him to humor them,” she says. “Maybe for a few weeks. That was the plan. But I kind of got attached. Sorry about the mess.”
There’s a pizza box on the coffee table, along with some empty Chinese food takeout containers. Pillows and a comforter cover the couch.
“I’ve been sleeping out here. Just feels safer, for some reason.” She gathers the comforter and pillows, throws them on the floor. “But I had to get back here, you know?”
“I understand.”
“Have a seat.” She points to the end of the couch. I sit down.
She asks me if I’d like something to drink, I decline, and she sits in a wooden rocking chair on the other side of the table.
“I got your voicemails back when…back when it happened. I just wasn’t ready to talk. Sorry I didn’t at least tell you that much.”
“No need to apologize,” I say.
“I’ve been reading your articles, though. And I’m really sorry about your friend.”
“Thank you.”
“I was at the vigil that night. Or rally. The Take Back the Night thing. Whatever they’re calling it. That’s when I started thinking about talking, but I still wasn’t ready. Then I saw you on TV last night and like I said, I’ve been reading your articles so I kind of felt like I knew you in a way, sort of. That might sound weird. But anyway, then I saw you on TV last night and I just feel like it’s time. I’m ready to tell my story. I don’t want to keep it to myself anymore.”
I have my small notebook and a pen in my pocket, but I don’t reach for it. I don’t even bother asking her if she minds if I take notes. She’s opening up now and I want her to keep going.
She tells me how it happened: She wakes up and she sees him, he’s just a silhouette, standing there in her room, looming over the bed, he’s holding a flashlight, shining it right in her eyes, she doesn’t recall any sounds he makes, any noises, just suddenly he puts his knee on the bed, leaning toward her, and she screams…
“Nobody would have heard me anyway,” she says. “These walls are thick, which is good, but wasn’t so good that night. And what’s weird is, I know I screamed but I couldn’t hear it. I could feel it, though. I can’t really explain it.”
She talks about how her bed moved, the mattress sinking under his weight, her gasping and screaming, the strength of the attacker and how he was able to wrap one arm around her midsection and lift her and turn her over, and electrical cord, the sound of it and the burn of it as he tightened it around her wrists, and how no matter how hard she fought it just wasn’t enough…
“I don’t want to talk about what happened next,” she says.
“No need. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
“When it was over…that’s when he said that thing to me.”
She doesn’t say it, but I know it. Everyone who has been following this story knows it.
There’s a long silence between us. I’m thinking it. She’s thinking it, I can tell.
The killer told her: I’m gonna let you live so you can tell everyone what’s coming.
“That’s part of why I didn’t want to talk publicly,” she says. “I just felt like, if I went public with what happened, it was like I was following his orders or something. And I just didn’t want to give him that. But that night, at the vigil, I just…I left there angry. It gave me strength somehow. Not telling my story is also letting him control me, in a way. And then I saw you last night.”
I say nothing, giving her all the space she needs, all the time she wants, all the freedom to gather her thoughts and continue. I want to hear what she wants to tell me and I want to hear it her way.
“They kept asking me to talk,” she says. “Other reporters. They would come right up to my door and knock. When I was at my parents’ house, that happened once, and then my dad threatened to press charges so they stayed away. Out on the street. But just for a few days and then they all went away.”
I want to remind her that I didn’t do that. I reached out, yes, but I didn’t hound her. But I remain silent, just listening, no need to insert some kind of self-serving pitch here. I
’m already in her home. She’s speaking to me freely because she wants to.
“And then I get back here.” She smiles. “I was happy to be back in my place, you know? It wasn’t easy. Still isn’t, obviously.” She grabs one of the pillows on the couch where she’s been sleeping, holds it up for a second, drops it. “And then one of the TV reporters showed up here. Not even from one of the local stations. But she rings the bell, I answer, and there she is with her cameraman right behind her. He was holding the camera down and it wasn’t on. I should have closed the door, but I didn’t, for some reason. She tried to talk me into doing an interview. You know how I got her to go away?”
“How?”
Beth grins. There’s a look of pride on her face. “I told her to come back when she understands what it’s like to need an escape plan every single night before you go to bed in your own fucking house. That’s exactly what I said to her. Nobody knows what that’s like.” She looks at me intently. “But I guess you know now, right?”
I do know the feeling, although I have no such plan because I don’t think I need one.
“Thanks for trusting me,” I tell her.
The dog barks. Probably hears my voice. He’s been quiet the entire time I’ve been here, going on twenty minutes now, and I guess he’s ready to be set free from that bedroom.
Beth is quiet, so I take the opportunity to ask something that’s been on my mind since I arrived.
“There was nothing in the report about him cutting your hair—”
“He did,” she says, before I can finish. She raises her hand to her head. “I’ve always had long hair. But not anymore. He cut off a big chunk of it here.” She puts her palm on the left side of her head. “I got the rest of it cut off a few days later.” She shrugs. “I kind of like it short. Never really tried it, but it’s not bad.”
“I think it looks great on you.”
“Thank you.”
What I’m really thinking is that she likes her hair long, but she’s rationalizing this new short haircut. She can’t have it long, right now, so she’s decided to like it. That, or she’s decided, for now, to keep it short because to have it long again would remind her of what it was like the night he came into this house. Maybe she even prefers to see herself in the mirror now and not see the same reflection she saw the night he came into this house.
“There’s something else I want to ask you,” I say.
The dog barks louder.
Beth gets up. “Sorry, just a second.”
She walks down the hall. I hear her open the door and sweet-talk the dog for a few seconds, letting him know she’s okay. She comes back into the room. “Okay, sorry about that. He wants to go out but it can wait. What did you want to ask me?”
“Do you have a gym membership?”
Here it comes. The answer. I watch her face as she listens to the question. I know she’s going to say yes, yes she did have one or does have one, and it’s going to be the same gym Kristi Stroup and Janelle Morris went to.
She looks at me, brows furrowed, and then tells me she doesn’t. “Why?”
I should have felt something when she said no. Probably something along the lines of a sinking feeling in my chest or stomach, some kind of physical reaction, the air being sucked right out of me, deflated. But I feel nothing. I’m numb. My theory just got weaker. Maybe destroyed. Maybe I’ve been wrong all along.
“Just something I was looking into,” I say, doing my best not to show the defeat I’m feeling. “Might be nothing.” I give her a smile. A weak one, but a smile.
“Oh. No, wait.” Her eyes widen and her mouth stays open a second or two even though no words come out, the memory coming back to her. “I don’t have a membership there, but I was going to a gym for a few months. Not the actual gym part. They have a physical therapy office on the second floor. It’s part of the gym, but you can go there if you’re not a member.”
I feel my pulse in my throat. Lott’s Gym has a physical therapy office on the second floor.
Say it, I think. Say the name of the gym.
She puts her hand to her forehead, shakes her head. “I was in a car accident right after Christmas. Wasn’t bad, but messed up my knee pretty good. Luckily, I didn’t need surgery.”
I know it’s the same gym and it’s a struggle not to say the name of it myself, not to prompt her. I don’t want to do that. I want her to say it. No leading questions, no blurting out the name myself. So I watch her as she talks, I’m pressing my lips together, the tip of my tongue sliding between my teeth, and I bite down lightly. Her facial muscles, the ones that move when she talks, appear to be moving beneath the skin in slow motion. The anticipation is making me see things. Maybe.
Say it, Beth. Say the fucking name.
“So I had to go to physical therapy for, like, eight weeks. Maybe nine? I can’t remember.”
Say it. Say it. Say it.
“Anyway, it was Lott’s Gym,” she says. “You know that one?”
Chapter 28
“It’s the gym. It’s the fucking gym. I’ve been right all along.”
“Hold on,” Neil says. “Take a deep breath, slow down. What’s going on?”
I tell him where I’ve been, who I’ve just talked to, and what she told me. “I’m still sitting outside her house in my car.”
When I left Beth’s place, I walked quickly to my car, moving faster with each step, eager to make this phone call. I hadn’t realized that in the rush, caught up in the excitement of what I’d just uncovered, I had been holding my breath as I made my way back to my car. It was only after I opened the door and sat down that my body revolted. My chest tightened, then released, and I gasped for a breath. I turned on the car, then the AC, on the coldest setting, full-blast, and let it wash over my face. But just for a few seconds. Then I called Neil.
“The cops never asked her about that?” Neil says.
“No. I asked her.”
“Is she sure they didn’t? It might be easy to forget something like that, considering what she’s been through.”
“I asked her if she was sure,” I say. “And she said definitely, that she would have remembered telling them about the gym. And I was sitting right there when she remembered it. I saw it on her face. She really had forgotten about going there at all. There’s no way Hogle and Roark followed up with her about that.”
“The problem is, this is a story that needs to be told but can’t be written.”
He’s right, of course. To write this story is to put the spotlight on the gym. And while I’m sure that’s what needs to be done, I also know there’s just not enough evidence to go on. Right now, it’s all circumstantial, just conjecture, solid as it may be. Not enough to put it in the paper, but plenty to continue what I’ve been doing for almost a year. And now I have some new evidence. A new thread to pull on.
“I told her why it was important and that she should get in touch with Hogle and Roark to let them know.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she would. She’s ready to get involved, which is why I was over there in the first place.”
“Go write it up,” Neil says. “Get it to me ASAP.”
◆◆◆
I rush home to write up the story. The closer I get to my driveway, I realize something is missing. The memorial. Gone are the balloons, the flowers, the candles, and the notes. All except for one white flower that I spot when I stop the car and get out to check. I realize I never thought about these things before, what happens to them. People bring things, leave them, and then what? Does the family take them? Keep some of the more special ones? It never occurred to me.
Then I notice the curb is wet and I know what happened to all the stuff. The street-sweeper truck comes on this day every week. That’s why all the stuff is gone, all except this one mangled flower that I’ve picked up. I drop it on the ground and go inside.
Halfway through writing up the story, I have an idea, so I call Neil and run it by him. He gives me the okay
and twenty minutes later I send him the final version, then call Cole.
“I talked to Beth Callahan.”
“She’s talking?”
“To me, yeah,” I say, opening the refrigerator, suddenly overcome with hunger, realizing I haven’t eaten all day. “She had physical therapy after a car accident earlier this year and guess where she went.”
“Where?”
“Lott’s.”
“Huh.”
“I know.” I can feel the adrenaline spiking in my body, rushing through my veins.
The only thing I have in the refrigerator is three bottles of Mountain Dew, some butter, and two kinds of salad dressing. Everything else here is Erin’s. I begin throwing it all in the garbage can.
“They do physical therapy there?” Cole asks. “Why didn’t I know that? Did you mention it to me?”
“I knew it was there, but I didn’t think anything of it. So I doubt I mentioned it.”
I open the freezer. It’s mostly Erin’s stuff. But there’s a bag of microwavable stir-fry that I know is mine. I remember buying it and using some of it one night, even though it was many months ago. Apparently I didn’t seal up the bag, though, because when I pick it up I can feel ice crystals breaking beneath my fingers. Freezer burn. I put the bag in the microwave anyway. It won’t be good, but it’s food.
“So what’s in the story? Anything about the gym?” Cole asks.
“At first, it was going to be nothing. But then I realized a way we could put it in without accusing the gym or anyone associated with it. It’s part of Beth’s story—she had just gone through all of that, she was nearing the end of her recovery when she was attacked. There’s one line in there about her going to Lott’s Gym for physical therapy and how Kristi and Payton were members there. That’s it. I called Neil and he gave me the go-ahead.”
“Puts pressure on Hogle.”
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
“I like it.”
I liked it, too. I just wish I could have written it more directly. Maybe the way it is will be enough for the paper. I’ll have to settle for that.