by Brad Parks
“I see you, Ms. Barrick,” he said one last time. “And to be perfectly honest, it scares me to death.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Mr. Honeywell, wait.”
But he was already limping away.
THIRTY-ONE
There were four vehicles in the convoy pointed toward Warren Plotz’s residence: three Fords bearing the mustard-yellow-and-brown insignia of the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office; and a Subaru that was unmarked, save for the Coexist sticker on the back bumper.
They made for a strange quartet, though that was fitting. This was not a normal occasion for Amy Kaye, the driver of the Subaru. Arrests were something she usually only experienced on paper.
But she wasn’t going to miss this one. This was three years and an enormous pile of personal hours in the making.
The deputies, who might normally have balked at having a lawyer watching over them while they did their jobs, didn’t protest when Amy said she wanted to join them.
This was her bust. Even if she wasn’t going to be the one laying the cuffs on Plotz, they all knew she had earned this.
Beyond the self-satisfaction she was savoring as they turned into Plotz’s neighborhood, there was also a heaping measure of retribution she felt on behalf of the victims. She had met with nearly every one of them, many of them more than once. She had seen the pain in their eyes as they recounted the most harrowing experience of their lives.
She wanted to be able to share this moment with all of them: What, exactly, their tormentor had looked like when he realized that he had been caught; that he was never going to spend another moment of his life as a free man; that one of his victims had bested him.
Amy hoped he cried or blubbered or begged for forgiveness. After all the tears the women had spilled because of him, that would be poetic justice.
Plotz’s house was in a new subdivision, a place where the landscaping was twiggy and the driveways weren’t yet cracked. People there weren’t used to seeing a phalanx of sheriff’s cars making quick time through the quiet streets. The deputies pulled into Plotz’s driveway, blocking in a Dodge Ram 2500 whose presence suggested the owner was at home, perhaps even watching from inside.
It was no matter. They weren’t going for stealth here. They wanted a show of force.
There were six deputies, each wearing a bulletproof vest. Records indicated Plotz had a concealed-carry permit. They weren’t taking chances.
Two deputies went around back, in case Plotz tried to run. The other four came up the front steps. Amy wasn’t very far behind. She felt like she carried the emotional authority of the victims with her.
The deputies did not bother knocking. Plotz had certainly never extended such courtesy to his victims. They took down his front door with a small battering ram.
A sergeant led the way inside. “Police! Warren Plotz, this is the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office, and we have a warrant for your arrest!” he shouted. “Do not try to resist. We have you surrounded.”
With their service weapons raised, the other deputies poured in behind him, then fanned out across the first floor, going room by room with smooth efficiency.
He wasn’t there. The deputies reassembled at the bottom of the carpeted steps and moved quietly up them. The sergeant again led the way.
Pausing at the door to the master bedroom, he made eye contact with each of his subordinates, making sure they were ready. It was possible Plotz, now aware of their presence, was holed up in his bedroom, ready to make his last stand.
All four deputies now had their guns unholstered. It wouldn’t last long if Plotz tried to resist. But was this how Plotz wanted to go out? Suicide by cop?
Amy retreated down the stairs by two treads, but was still peering around the corner. The sergeant mouthed a “one . . . two . . .” then opened the door on three.
The room was tomb dark, unnaturally so for three o’clock on a sunny March afternoon. From what little light made it in from the hallway, Amy could see a shade that entirely wrapped the window it enclosed, blocking any attempt by the sun to penetrate the room. The deputies had seemingly disappeared into the gloom.
Then: “Warren Plotz, do not move, you are under arrest.”
It was the sergeant. One of the deputies flipped on a light switch.
Amy could now see one of the deputies had a gun aimed at Plotz, who was sitting up on a king-size bed in the middle of the room, appropriately astonished at having been woken up by four armed men. His upper half was bare. His lower half was still wrapped in a tangle of blankets.
“What the—?” Plotz began, then finished the phrase with a vulgar intransitive verb.
Amy walked into the room as Plotz clawed at his ears and removed two hunks of wax from them. Earplugs. He had been wearing earplugs. That’s why he hadn’t heard the officers breaking down the front door or coming in. He was a man who slept most of the day, exhausted as he was from his nocturnal activities.
The moment Plotz saw Amy, he recoiled a little.
“Oh, what the—?” he said again, ending with the same curse. “Is this because of that bitch Melanie Barrick? What did that cunt say about me? Whatever she said, it was a lie. She’s a lying bitch.”
“Mr. Plotz, turn around and lie on your stomach,” the sergeant ordered.
But Plotz wasn’t hearing it. He was pointing at Amy, his sleep-lined face red with rage.
“Melanie Barrick is a lying bitch. She’s a lying bitch. She’s had it out for me for a long time. I fired her last week for being a scumbag drug dealer. She’s nothing more than a disgruntled ex-employee. Anything she says about me is a lie. If you arrest me, I’ll sue you. I’ll sue the crap out of all of you.”
“Shut up, Plotz,” the sergeant said. “Turn over and lie on your stomach now, or we’re going to do this the hard way.”
Plotz offered a few more choice opinions about Melanie Barrick before complying with the order. The sergeant brought Plotz’s wrists together, then clamped on a set of black handcuffs.
“There we go,” the sergeant said. “Let’s get this asshole out of here.”
* * *
• • •
If the wait for fingerprint results was slow before, it was now interminable.
This time, the delay was more human than technical. Plotz had to be brought before the magistrate, then processed. The bureaucracy would not be rushed.
At some point, Plotz must have been allowed to use a phone. His wife, father, and lawyer were now down at the Sheriff’s Office, filling the reception area with their anxious energy.
Maybe they knew, or suspected. Especially the woman. Plotz was a patient hunter who scoped out his victims thoroughly before he pounced. It was no accident the women he attacked had been alone. How could the wife not at least wonder where her husband disappeared to night after night?
Still, Amy felt sympathy for them. They were about to become two more of Warren Plotz’s victims, their lives inalterably changed by their association with the worst serial rapist the Shenandoah valley had ever known. They would forever be known as the wife of, the father of.
Once she retreated from the dispatcher’s area, Amy was mostly making a conscious effort not to pester Deputy Justin Herzog for the fingerprint results. Everything would happen in due time.
Amy hoped to have a confession by dinner. She wondered if he’d start with Lilly Pritchett and then slowly admit to the rest of them after they confronted him with DNA matches, or if he’d give up the whole thing right away.
One thing was for sure: She planned to start notifying the victims that night. Lilly first, then Daphne Hasper. Then maybe Melanie Barrick. It would be a shorter conversation, perhaps. But drug charges or no, Barrick deserved the same care and concern as the other women.
Amy hoped to reach all of them, if possible. She was only going to be able to stall Aaron Dansby’s incredible u
rge to “leak” this to the media for so long. She wanted each victim to hear it from her first, not read about it in the paper.
That was about as far as her thinking had advanced when she finally got the call from Herzog. The kickboxing maestro of the fingerprint matching system was ready for her.
Her calves felt turbocharged as she churned down the hallway toward that noxious-smelling room. Her nerves jangled.
“Hey,” she said as she entered.
Herzog looked up from the screen. She walked around behind him. He had positioned the two prints side by side on the screen.
“Okay, so this is the partial for Person B,” the deputy said, pointing to the one on the right. Then he shifted his finger left. “And this is the guy you just brought in.”
Amy narrowed her eyes at the images. There was something off about them, but she couldn’t quite place it. While she had seen a lot of fingerprint results in her time, she couldn’t read them quickly.
Herzog could.
And he already had.
“These are two different people,” he said. “Sorry.”
Amy could practically feel the blood draining from her face. It took a moment for her to even summon words.
“Are you . . . are you sure you didn’t . . . I don’t know, mix them up, or—”
“Sorry,” he said again.
She stared at them a little harder and, sure enough, there was a distinctive whorl in Person B that simply wasn’t present in Warren Plotz.
They weren’t a match.
Warren Plotz wasn’t the whispering rapist. Amy had to acknowledge two painful truths.
One, she had arrested the wrong man.
And two, she was back to where she had been two weeks ago.
Nowhere.
THIRTY-TWO
The baby liked to face out.
That’s all there was to it. That was the whole trick. That, by God, was everything.
Try to cuddle the little guy against your chest or shoulder, and you might as well have been thrusting him against hot coals. He’d wail himself crimson, squirming and bucking the whole time.
But then turn him around, and it was like flipping a switch. Instant calm.
Happy baby.
Happy foster mother.
And yes, it took her about five days to discover this—five hellishly long days, during which time she seriously considered suicide, gouging her eardrums with a screwdriver, and myriad other solutions that felt like they would be less painful than listening to the kid cry any more.
Now? He was as contented as any baby could be. Sure, he had needs. He cried some. He fussed when he was tired.
But for the most part, all she had to do was feed him, change him, and give him a nice view until he fell asleep again.
“You just want to see the world, that’s all,” she told him. “I bet you’re going to be a traveler when you grow up.”
They took walks around the neighborhood, because she discovered facing him outward and being outside made the baby even happier.
At one point, one of the neighbors had asked to hold him. And of course, the moment he was turned inward—like people did when they held a baby—he started howling. It was almost comical. Or at least it was now that she knew the secret.
“Oh,” she explained, “he’s an outward-facing baby.”
After that simple epiphany, order was restored to the household. She was able to get some basic cleaning done—as long as she did it with one hand, and held the baby in a way that allowed him to see what was going on.
She could even vacuum. The boy seemed fascinated by the machine.
So it was a relatively calm, relatively clean, relatively stable household when her husband returned from work one night.
He walked in to find his wife dancing around the room with the baby, whose back was against her front in a BabyBjörn, allowing him to enjoy the scenery as she spun slowly around.
“You two certainly seem to be getting along well,” he said, smiling warmly.
She stopped in mid-twirl. “You know, I’ve been thinking. Should we change his name?”
“To what?”
“I don’t know. I just . . . I think he should be named after his daddy, don’t you think?”
The man smiled even more broadly.
“Let’s do it tomorrow,” she said. “I downloaded some boilerplate name-change documents online while he was napping. We can go down to the courthouse and file the papers.”
“Slow down,” the man said. “We need the adoption to go through first.”
“I know, but . . . you said that was just a matter of time.”
“It is. It is.”
“You keep saying that. But what if . . . what if Melanie’s rights aren’t terminated?”
Melanie. Always, that’s how the baby’s mother was referred to in the household. Melanie. As if they knew her. As if they were the best of friends.
“I just . . . ,” the woman continued, then her voice faltered. “I mean, I can’t even bear the thought of losing him.”
She wrapped her arms around the baby and kissed him protectively on top of the head.
“That’s not going to happen,” the man said firmly. “I keep telling you: I’m on it.”
THIRTY-THREE
Mindful of Judge Stone’s order to get a job—and of my fast-emptying bank account—I started looking for employment first thing Wednesday morning.
I set my expectations low, aware of my obvious liabilities. I didn’t bother with anything white collar. The people who hired at those kind of places read newspapers and did Google searches.
My first stop was Starbucks. Had Marcus still been the manager, becoming reemployed there would have been as easy as asking him to fill my name in on the schedule. But it turned out Marcus was now two managers removed from the current one and had basically been erased from the institutional memory of the Staunton Starbucks. I didn’t know any of the people who were working the counter when I went in.
The new manager curtly told me they weren’t hiring at the moment. He took my number in case things changed, but we both knew he’d lose it as soon as I was out the door.
This set me off on a long and frustrating tour through Staunton. The manager at Chili’s stared at me hard enough that I could tell she recognized me from the newspaper. Firehouse Subs was adding to its management team but required a background check.
Walmart wasn’t hiring. Neither was Staples. Nor anything at the down-on-its-luck Staunton Mall. Lowe’s wanted to know if I had any home-improvement experience and didn’t seem to act as if painting my living room qualified. The rest of the big-box stores I drove past were, likewise, busts.
Martin’s, one of the local grocery stores, was looking for a produce manager and the woman there seemed interested when I described my experience on the other end of the supply chain and my detailed knowledge about spoilage rates. Then she asked if she could call Diamond Trucking for a reference.
And on it went. There were at least ten different places that had me fill out applications, but I received only vague promises about whether or when I’d hear back.
My second-to-last stop was Mattress Marketplace. Maybe they’d be trying to fill Ben’s position. As I drove there, I tried to fend off the strong sense of loss gripping me by thinking how this could be a sign the universe had some sense of fairness: Ben had run out at the lowest point in my life, and it hurt like hell, but at least he would also be leaving me his job.
The manager smiled at me nicely, then said he was sorry, but they had already found someone.
It was getting late in the workday at that point, and I might have broken down on him a little bit. In his attempts to console me, he told me he heard Waffle House was hiring.
I slid into the place around four o’clock in the afternoon, well after the lunch rush b
ut before dinner got going. The woman at the counter directed me to the back, where I discovered a harried-looking manager in a dreary, grease-stained office. She looked at me like she had given up on pretty much everything long ago, and that she was surprised to still be here—“here” being not just the restaurant but the planet.
Her first question was whether I had any service experience. I told her about my two years at Starbucks. She asked if I was okay not having a regular shift—they had holes in the schedule all over the place. I said that was fine. Until I got Alex back, I could work whenever she needed me.
The job paid $2.13 an hour, plus tips, which I had to report down to the penny. If, at the end of a pay cycle, my tips didn’t add up to at least $7.25 an hour (Virginia’s sad concept of a minimum wage), Waffle House would make up the difference.
I asked the manager how often that would happen. “I guess you’ll find out, honey,” was her answer. “You want to work or not?”
Judge Stone said I had to get a job. He didn’t say it had to be a good one.
THIRTY-FOUR
Amy Kaye had two headaches that Thursday morning.
The first could be attributed to Warren Plotz.
She had spent most of the day Wednesday cleaning up that mess. The heir of the Diamond Trucking empire wasn’t some scared kid who was just grateful to be cut loose. He had his indignation, and he wielded it with a heavy hand, taking the minor flesh wound that was being wrongly accused of a crime for a few hours and turning it into a gaping psychological hemorrhage.
He eventually agreed to be placated by a letter of apology from the commonwealth’s attorney. But even that turned into a fecal tempest, with the election-minded commonwealth’s attorney refusing to sign anything that might be “leaked” to the media.
In the end, Plotz grudgingly accepted a letter signed by Chief Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Amy Kaye, accompanied by an in-person apology.