by Gregg Olsen
Oliver stayed glued to the screen. Leatherface was in love. He was willing, ready and able to do whatever he needed to do go get the girl. Oliver wasn’t violent like that at all. Not really. Even so he admired the character central to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a tormented figure who was willing to do anything to get the girl.
He wanted to think of himself just like that. Without the power saw, of course. Oliver Angstrom wanted nothing more than to possess Emma Rose. He wanted nothing more than to take her out on a date. Kiss her. Tell her that she understood him like no other. The only problem with all that he’d planned was that she’d said no. She’d said she already had a boyfriend.
He doubted that and that hurt him as much as her answer. She didn’t even think that he’d be able to find out that there was no boyfriend. It was like he was nothing to her. Not even worthy of the truth. He’d never rejected anyone before, but if he did, he’d never lie. The only good thing about the fact that she’d lied was that there was no boyfriend. There was no one else in the way.
The only thing about him that didn’t interest her seemed to be . . . him. But he could change. He could make her love him if only he knew just what in the world that was. He took another draw on the joint he was smoking, held it, and then blew the smoke out the open window. He took a seat on the sofa and plotted just how he’d make her fall in love with him.
“What are you doing down there?” his mother called from the upstairs doorway.
“Nothing! Leave me alone, Mom.”
“There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”
“Who’s that?”
“The police. That’s who!”
Oliver jumped up from the ratty old sofa and prayed to God that he didn’t smell like a grow operation just then. The police? That can’t be good.
CHAPTER 17
Grace Alexander and Paul Bateman were standing in the Angstroms’ living room when Oliver emerged from his basement lair, rubbing his eyes a little and hoping against hope that the police didn’t think they were too red.
Shana Angstrom, a large woman with room-filling hair and a rope of gold around her neck, introduced her son, while Clark Angstrom, a stump of a man with twitchy eyes, just stood mute.
“Ollie,” she said, in her nails-on-chalkboard voice, “there might be some trouble and you can help out.”
Oliver blinked hard. “I don’t know anything about Emma.”
Grace nodded, a little surprised that the young man standing in front of her in a T-shirt and jeans and smelling of bong water had immediately invoked the missing girl’s name.
“What do you know about her?” Paul asked.
Clark Angstrom seemed to fade into the background while his wife directed the group to the living room, where they could talk “more comfortably.”
“Clark,” she said, “be helpful, will you? Offer them a drink.”
“No,” Paul said. “We’re fine. Thank you.”
“Ollie,” Shanna Angstrom said, “sit up and answer their questions. These are busy people and they wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t of some importance. Right, Detectives?”
Oliver Angstrom, it seemed, didn’t have it easy.
“Work called and told me Emma’s missing. That’s all I know.”
“Really? You don’t know where she is?” Paul asked.
He shook his head and slumped low in to the sofa next to his father. “I don’t know her that well,” he said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I asked her out, but we just didn’t click that way.”
“What way is that, Oliver?” Grace asked.
Oliver glanced at his parents, his mother, now seated on his other side. “Hook up,” he said, sheepishly. “We didn’t hook up. She was cool and all, but we just didn’t, you know, hook up like . . .”
“Like what?” Paul asked. “Like how you wanted to?”
Oliver didn’t say anything.
Shana got up and started for the kitchen. “Would you like a beer?”
“No,” Paul said. “No thanks. We’re working.”
“I’ll take a water,” Grace said, more to be polite than anything. “Let me help you.”
She followed her into the kitchen and Shana fished a couple of glasses from the cupboard.
“Your son seems like a nice boy,” Grace said.
Oliver’s mother smiled nervously. “Oh, he is. I mean, I wish he’d get a real job. Trying to make video games all day and night.”
“Really? That’s cool,” Grace said, almost choking on the word “cool.” She considered video games the scourge of a generation of young people. Sure, they had stellar reflexes from working the controls with faster than lightning speed, but many were almost handicapped—incapable of dealing with humans. Oliver, she noted, almost never made direct eye contact.
“Is he working on a new game now?”
“I think so. He’s always hanging around in the basement. Maybe he’ll show you around. Probably a pigsty, but that’s the way kids are. No respect for what their parents do for them day in and day out.”
Grace took the water and returned to the living room.
“Oliver, your mom was telling me about the video games you’re producing. I’d love to see what you’re working on. I’ve always loved video games. I think of them as the art form of a generation.”
Oliver brightened slightly. At least he seemed to.
“Me, too.”
Grace set down her glass. “Do you mind showing me where you work on your latest? I have a nephew who wants to be a game developer. He’s just a kid, but I think I’d earn some cred if I said I saw what someone with his same dreams was actually doing.”
“Sure. Messy down there, but I’ll show you.”
Grace followed Oliver down the stairs, while Paul remained with his parents.
The basement was dark and smelly. The couch in front of the TV was a thrift market reject.
“This is a great space. Really private,” she said.
“Thanks.” Oliver looked over at the door to his grow room. Grace followed his gaze.
“Mom’s doll collection’s in there. Off limits to all,” he said.
Grace nodded and backed off. “When did you last see Emma?”
“At work,” he said.
“Right. Did you leave together? See where she went?”
Oliver shook his head and fiddled with the controls next to his TV.
“Not really. I had to clean up.”
The TV went on and he started to demo his game, Babe Hunter.
Grace watched for a moment, but something else caught her eye. On the coffee table in front of the TV was a picture of Emma.
Oliver stopped what he was doing. “Oh, that? I found it. Just kept it. She could get another.”
“Get another?”
“Yeah, it was her mall photo ID. No biggie. Just kind of wanted to keep it. You don’t think that’s weird, do you?”
Grace did, but she shook her head no.
“No,” she said. “Not at all.”
After a few more moments watching Oliver Angstrom play the world’s worst video game, she thanked him for his time.
“We’ll be in touch,” she said.
“Do you want me to burn a disk of my game for your nephew?”
“That would be great, but no thanks. He’s too young for your game. Looks kind of adult for his age.”
Oliver nodded and went back to the screen.
The detectives waited until they got back into the car before saying anything. It had been one of those kinds of interviews.
“What did you find out downstairs in the creepy kid’s crash pad?”
“He had a picture of Emma. Said he found it. Seems like he might be a stalker or something. Maybe obsessed with her. Wouldn’t let me go in one of the rooms. He said his mom had a doll collection that was off limits. You? Anything with the parents?”
“Mr. Angstrom said about two words, maybe three. Mrs. Angstrom went on and on about what a disappointment her boy was and ho
w she wants to kick him out. She actually said she wished he was a suspect in Emma’s disappearance because that would mean he’d made a move on a girl. Think about it. Domineering mother, creepy basement, if there was a dead dog and wet bed we’d have the address of a serial killer.”
Grace smiled, but it was a grim smile. “Oliver’s no serial killer. He’s a dope. I’m kind of with his mother,” she said. “Even with all that, I’m kind of curious about what’s behind that basement door. Doll collection? That really would be the topper.”
“Agreed,” Paul said as he turned the ignition.
“You mind dropping me off at my mom’s?” Grace said.
“Wednesday night, is it?”
“Yeah. Love my mom, you know I do. But since Dad died I made a promise. Every Wednesday is our night.”
“At least you’ll have lots to talk about,” he said.
She nodded. “That we will.”
CHAPTER 18
Sissy O’Hare was an exceedingly attractive woman, the kind who didn’t think old age was an excuse to fall apart and give in to the inevitable ravages of time. She didn’t chase after youth with facelifts, exotic oils, or clothing that wasn’t appropriate for her age. Sissy changed her hairstyle with the times—refusing to be one of those women who looked like a sorry depiction of their high school yearbook photo. She ate right and exercised. In a nod to her favorite fashion icon, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Sissy O’Hare wore a strand of favorite pearls when she was gardening.
She let friends call her Sissy O.
Grace adored her mother, even when she resented the circumstances of her birth. There had certainly been hard times between them, bouts where they hadn’t spoken for days on end. Most of that dissipated when Grace left home for college. It was around that time that she’d really gotten to know her mother and what made her do all that she did. Grace didn’t have children of her own, but through Sissy, she imagined she understood just how powerful the love for a child really could be.
Since her father’s death, Grace and her mother talked almost daily. At least once a week she and Shane would have her over to dinner or take her out. Wednesdays were a mother/daughter day, a date carved in stone. The conversations were no longer about when Grace and Shane were going to have a baby, though that sometimes slipped through in veiled ways.
“I saw the cutest baby clothes yesterday at Nordstrom,” Sissy said one time, knowing full well what she was doing.
“I’m sure you did, Mom,” Grace said, refusing to take the bait.
“Can you believe that Octomom woman? All those children! Wouldn’t you be happy with just one?”
“Yes, Mom. One day, one would be nice.”
“I didn’t mean now,” she said, not too gracefully, trying to step back a little.
“I know.”
That all was then. Water under the bridge. Done and gone. Their relationship was on solid ground, and though neither woman said so out loud, both were grateful for that.
Sissy liked to eat at 6:30 on the dot, a holdover from her days when Conner would come home dog tired, belt down a Manhattan, and slide himself into a chair at the dinner table. The table. As Grace picked at her mother’s eggplant parmesan casserole—a specialty that had always been her “company’s coming” dish when she was a girl—Grace couldn’t help but be transported back to that time and place. Her mother in the kitchen, wearing a strand of pearls, stirring the marinara as it simmered over the blue flame of the stove and soaking the eggplant in a light, acidulated brine. On the refrigerator was the usual cavalcade of children’s artwork—a tracing of a hand made to look like a turkey, a self-portrait of a little girl with pigtails, a cat lumbering along the top of a fence.
All were drawings that had been made by Tricia, the sister she’d never known.
Grace couldn’t remember, all those years later, if she’d ever asked her mother or father about why they insisted on keeping those relics front and center. It wasn’t that she didn’t command some display space, because she did. While Tricia’s artwork was on the front of the refrigerator door, hers was relegated to the side of the appliance.
One time when her mother must have noticed the disappointment on Grace’s face, she’d remarked on it.
“Honey, your drawings would only get faded. There’s less light where I put up your lovely work.”
Grace hadn’t bought the excuse. Yet by then it had been clear that there was no competing with the memory of a dead, murdered girl. Never could be.
Her mom served Grace a plate and watched for her approval.
“Delicious, as always.”
“Glad you like it, honey.”
“Company’s coming, Mom,” she said.
Sissy grinned, her teeth as white as they had been when she was young. Teeth, she liked to boast, that were all her own. “You remember!”
“I remember everything, Mom,” Grace said, leaving the “everything” to mean whatever her mother wanted it to be. It didn’t have to be anything about Tricia.
And yet that was why she was there. As the investigation of the Tacoma girls went on, the subject at hand was driven by Grace’s need to talk about the cases. Not specifics, really. And not really about the cases at all.
“Mom, I know I’m supposed to understand what motivates these killers, but it is beyond me.”
Sissy wiped her mouth with the corner of a chambray blue cloth napkin. “It is beyond everyone, honey.” She placed the napkin back in her lap and smoothed out the wrinkles. “It riles me that there are complete morons on TV every single day talking about the evil that men do to young, unsuspecting girls.”
One helmet-headed blonde was particularly irksome.
“Oh that ninny!” she went on. “She always talks with complete authority. Who but Jonathan Edwards can get into the heads of others, let alone a sociopath’s? Sure, these idiots have their degrees—” She stopped, realizing that her daughter held such a degree. “No offense,” she added quickly.
“None taken,” Grace said. Her mother was venting and that was a good thing. Her mother had always been the kind to hold things deep inside, and then, when she could no longer do so, explode. “Who do you think knows the motivation, then?” she asked, knowing full well what her mother was going to say.
“Only another monster knows. Only they can understand their own kind.”
“I thought so. That’s why I’m here, Mom. There’s a monster out there and we have to stop him.”
“Understood,” Sissy said, offering some extra cheese that she’d grated before dinner.
Grace shook her head. “What did Ted tell you?”
“I knew that was coming,” Sissy said, setting down her fork and searching her daughter’s eyes. “I knew you were going to ask me.”
“I’m sorry, Mom, but maybe you can help. You faced him.”
Sissy nodded. “Yes, I did. A lot of good it did, but yes, I did.”
After dinner, Grace and her mother went downstairs to the basement where the O’Hares had kept a war room for the sole purpose of finding out who had taken Tricia. In more than three decades, it had barely changed. On one wall was a whiteboard, the kind that uses erasable markers. It had long since been wiped clean, though in the light coming in from the window wells, the faint tracings of letters emerged. Wiped off, but not removed.
Suspects.... Location . . . Detective in charge ...
Standing there against the whiteboard and the collection of Rubbermaid tubs labeled with a Sharpie pen. Some indicated newspaper clippings, some held photos, still more had the clunky video technology that had long since disappeared—VHS tapes. As her mother moved toward a stack of the plastic boxes, Grace was clear on at least two things. There was no way she could have grown up in that house and become anything other than a police officer. Trying to catch Tricia’s killer was a family obsession. The other certainty was that her parents had never ever been able to move on from their search for justice.
Conner O’Hare’s last words on his deathbed
were incontrovertible proof of that.
“When I’m in heaven, I will finally be able to ask Tricia who killed her,” he’d said.
Grace watched her mother pick up a medium-sized box and slide it on top of the pool table that Conner had covered with a sheet of wood so they could use it as a meeting table for the victims’ families meetings.
No one played pool in the house after Tricia vanished, anyway. She and her father had loved the game. Grace had learned never to acknowledge that the table had once had a function other than being a place for the grieving and angry to meet once a week.
On the top and sides of the plastic box, Sissy had written, in block lettering, TED.
In the family they’d always been known as the Ted Letters. They were a collection of missives written by Ted Bundy while he was on death row in Florida. Grace had been led to believe that it was some kind of cat-and-mouse game that her mother employed to get Ted to tell her if he, in fact, had killed her daughter. There were other potential Bundy Girls and she would have liked to have closed the case on any of them. She wrote to Ted more than fifty times over a two-year period. He never failed to answer. And while she loathed Theodore Robert Bundy over any other human being in the world, she never told him so. Ted might have thought they were friends. On the morning after Ted’s execution, a prison chaplain called her with a message from Ted.
“He wanted me to tell you thank you for the correspondence over the years. He also said that he wished he could have helped you find out who killed your daughter.”
“He didn’t say anything about Tricia? The other girls?”
The chaplain sucked in more air. He wasn’t being impatient, just resigned to the fact that the monster that he had tried to lead toward salvation had done nothing to ease the minds of those who needed it the most. “No. Just that he wanted to wish you well. To wish you peace.”
“Nothing?” she asked, pressing the question to the chaplain one more time.
“No, sorry. Ted said nothing specific.”