by Nick Pirog
The officer cocked his head back towards the house and said, “There’s a young cop here who claims he’s your brother.”
“Conner’s here?”
“Yeah, that’s his name.” He paused, then added, “Uh, he has an important call for you.”
Caitlin eyed him and said, “Well tell him to take a message and I’ll call them back. Can’t you see that I’m busy? That I’m trying to find the guy who chopped the girl in that house into thirty fricking pieces.”
Even in the twilight it was evident the officer blushed. He went to turn on his heel, then seemed to get a second wind of courage. “It’s just that if the guy really is your brother, then he’s probably telling the truth about the other thing.”
The entire group took a collective step forward and I asked, “What other thing?”
“The guy on the phone—” The officer’s features slowly climbed into a wry smile. “Tristen Grayer.”
The five of us did a steady trot up the beach front, up the stairs, through the house, and out the front door. There were about seven cop cars littering the football field expanse of front yard and the officer pointed to a gentlemen standing at the edge of the crime scene tape cordoning off the area. The young man looked to be in his early twenties, had broad shoulders, and short, almost buzzed blond hair. He was handsome if you like the tall, good looking type, and even from a distance of fifty feet I could distinguish he shared two traits with his sister, azure eyes and a zero patience.
He bulled over the thin cop attempting to restrain him and ambled towards our approaching group. The thin cop was in the process of going for his cuffs when Caitlin cut him off, “It’s okay. He’s my brother—and he’s a cop.”
Caitlin turned to Conner and asked, “Why are you in civilian clothes?”
He said, “I was on my way to the station when I got the call.”
All eight eyes trained on the cell phone Conner was holding in his right hand; the face pressed hard against his thigh. Caitlin asked awkwardly, “Did he ask for me personally?”
“He called the station and asked to be transferred to you but they accidentally put him through to me.”
Gregory asked, “What else did he say?”
“Nothing. He said he had a message for Detective Caitlin Dodds and that I track her down. I told him to go to hell and that’s when he told me who he was. I don’t even know if he’s still on the line.”
Caitlin took a deep breath—as did the rest of us—and took the phone from Conner. She said, “Dr. Dodds. With whom am I speaking?”
She began walking in a small semi-circle and I was only able to hear snatches of the conversation, “How do I know it’s really you? . . . Okay, okay, that’s enough . . . Stop! Please . . . About an hour ago . . . Thank you for being so thoughtful . . . Rot in hell you piece of shi—”
Gregory slipped the phone from Caitlin’s grasp and stated perfunctorily, “Todd Gregory, Special Agent in Charge.” Gregory whipped out a small booklet, which I can only imagine was titled Serial Killer Phone Call Procedure Booklet, and said, “Would you like to turn yourself in?”
I mentally gagged, then made eye contact with Caitlin. I walked over to her and asked, “You okay?”
She nodded and I asked, “What did he say?”
“He didn’t think that we’d found Ginny yet. He was calling to tell us where to find her. Then he started telling me what he did to her. How she begged him to stop. How he got on top of her—” She shook her head silently and soon had her head buried in my chest. She caught herself, straightening, and stated, “We should really go listen in.”
As we made our way back to the group, Gregory rifled through four or five pages of his booklet, then read, “We can help you. What do you want from us?”
I’d had enough. I wrestled the phone from Gregory’s runway model grip and pressed End. Gregory stammered, “What did you do that for? There are certain steps that need to be taken. I was following procedure—Federal procedure.”
I said calmly, “He’ll call back.”
Gregory plunged his face into his hands, then glared at me incredulously. “No, he won’t call back. This isn’t a movie you idiot. This is real life, and in real life when you hang up a serial killer he doesn’t call ba—”
Gregory’s tantrum was interrupted by the distinct ring of a cell phone. I noticed Caitlin forcing a smile down as I depressed Send and put the phone to my ear. I cleared my throat and said, “Jack ‘n the Box.”
I looked at Gregory, who appeared to be in the middle of a deep breathing exercise, trying to find his chi. Or maybe it was his nine millimeter.
Tristen did not find this amusing. “Who is this?”
“Can you hold on a sec I have another call?” I pulled my ringing cell phone from my pant pocket and answered it. It was Lacy. She wanted to know if I could take her to the doctor in the morning. I told her of course I would and hung up. I coughed into my hand then returned to my buddy Tristen. “Sorry about that. You were saying.”
He said the words slowly, “Who is this?”
“Thomas Prescott. But you can address me as King Tom, Thomas the Magnificent, or The-Man-Who-is-Going-to-Cut-Off-Your-Dick-and-Shove-it-Down-Your-Throat.”
I could hear him breathing heavily on the line, then he said, “Thomas Prescott. I saw your name in the paper. Mr. Big Shot serial killer hunter.” He paused, then added, “So what do you think of my work so far?”
“I’ve seen better.” For the record, I had not.
“I’m just getting warmed up.”
I took a second to digest this, which oddly enough, felt like indigestion. I said, “Can I ask you a question?” I didn’t wait for a response, “Why her? Why Ginny Farth?”
“She needed to suffer.”
“Why? Why did she need to suffer?”
He said solemnly, “So he would suffer.”
He? “Who’s he you piece of shit?”
He didn’t reply and I prodded, “Tristen? You there? Tristy?”
I looked at Gregory, Gleason, and Caitlin, then shrugged. I handed the phone to Gregory and said, “What does it say in your little manual to do when a serial killer hangs up on you?”
Chapter 8
It was closing in on nine when Lacy finally authorized an acceptable hanging locale for her resplendent painting. (The locale, if you must know, was the wall directly across from her bed. She wanted it to be the first image she saw when her sight came back. My idea.) As for the painting, it was exquisite. Lacy had a unique style, capturing the essence and mood of, well, Lacy. She painted the picture in her head; that was her signature. Even when she had her sight, she painted the image etched on her eyelids.
After Lacy and I finishing hanging her painting I called Caitlin. After a somewhat cordial conversation the two of us agreed on a dinner date for later that night. The restaurant was Austin’s, an upscale place with great seafood and a decent steak, which just happened to be located in Hampden, smack-dab in the middle of point A, my house in Surry Woods, and point B, Caitlin’s apartment in Bangor.
I pulled into Austin’s parking lot ten minutes late. It was a Sunday night and I’d expected a full lot, but there were only two other cars. Oh, how the seasons are a changing. I parked next to Caitlin’s red Pathfinder and couldn’t help wondering how I’d managed this far without the assistance of alcohol.
Every restaurant in Maine smells the same, like they use lobster shit for insulation. Austin’s differentiated itself from the competition by keeping its lights low and its wine list high. I bypassed the hostess and walked into the dining arena. The last time I’d eaten here it’d looked like a Def Leppard concert, now it looked like a deaf leper colony. The only people there were an old couple in a back corner booth who looked like they’d just finished having a legion fight and Caitlin at a table sipping a glass of lemon water.
If I thought I looked good, Caitlin looked gooder. She was wearing a teeny-weeny black dress that didn’t leave much to the imagination. Her hair was up, a couple strands
of dirty blonde dangling past her shivering blue eyes. She stood up when I approached. After a couple unpolished seconds we decided to embrace, or someone did, and I gave her a quick peck on the cheek.
She held my waist for a beat too long of the slow rhythmic brass, neither of us knowing how to proceed. With her heels on she was only an inch shorter than me, and I didn’t trust myself so close to her blues. The two of us parted and we both sat. Meeting someone for the first time at a restaurant is awkward, meeting someone you’ve loved, and possibly still love, is about three tiers above awkward. It’s uncouth.
I mean, Caitlin and I have separate lives, we came in separate cars, and we would probably get separate checks. The key word here was separate, and as Caitlin stared at me from across the table, it hit me, I wanted us to be unseparate. Deep huh?
Caitlin started, “You look good, Thomas.”
I dittoed, then added, “Sorry I dropped off the face of the Earth. I’m not used to staying friends with women after the relationship has absolved itself.”
“The relationship didn’t absolve itself, you broke up with me.” She scoffed, “Absolved itself. I’ll absolve you.”
I laughed, and she laughed, and the black tension cloud hanging over us went searching for other prey. (Within minutes we would invariably hear the elderly couple begin quibbling over the missing Geritol tablet.)
The wine came. The food came. And the wine came again. Caitlin and I were clicking and no one, me, the waitress, or Miss Cleo herself, would have suspected the two of us had come in separate cars. I’d just finished telling her about finding Baxter on my lap that afternoon when the conversation inevitably turned to us.
Caitlin broached the subject, “Are you having as miserable a time as I am?”
I nodded. “I think we could be friends after all.” It was a fishing comment, but I wasn’t certain what exactly I was fishing for.
Either Caitlin liked the bait or she wanted out of the water altogether. She said, “I don’t want to be friends. I want—”
She stopped and I could see tears start to form in her eyes. I knew I had the words to fix everything, for her, for me, and possibly forever, but I kept them to myself. She dabbed at her leaking eyes with her napkin and I said, “Caitlin, I still have feelings for you. I know how badly I hurt you and I couldn’t live with myself if I did that to you again. But events are going to transpire in the next couple days and I don’t think it would be fair to either of us if we started things up right now.”
“What events? Not this crap again. This is why you broke up with me in the first place. Because I didn’t back you and your theory. If you felt betrayed because I gave my side of the story to Alex Tooms, I’m not sorry. This is your baggage, not mine. It was a terrible time, but I chose to get over it just like everyone else.”
My systolic pressure rose ten points. “Caitlin, there are only two people who know what really happened that night. One of them is me and the other one is not you.”
“Yes, but the other person is dead.”
“No, someone is dead. The person I’m talking about may or may not be dead. I survived, he could have too.”
Caitlin’s frustration was evident in the lines on her face. “Thomas, you almost died. Hell, no one knows how you didn’t. Two gunshot wounds, a tumble down the side of cliff, and drowning for twenty minutes in the Atlantic usually gets the job done.”
This was like déjà vu, we’d had the same conversation the first time I’d ended things.
I stated, “The only issue I have is the one person that should believe me, doesn’t. The body that was found was not the man I shot.”
She took a deep breath. “I did the autopsy Thomas. There was no bullet wound. Cause of death was brain trauma from falling off the cliff. The skin they found underneath your fingernails was a perfect DNA match to Tristen’s. Forensic science doesn’t lie.”
She did have a case, but it dissolved quickly under cross-examination. First, I’d shot my attacker in the knee, although this was a bit fuzzy seeing as I’d just woken up from a four-hundred and thirty hour nap, when this revelation first dawned on me. As for the skin underneath my fingernails, they never found a scratch on John Doe. There was only one explanation that could justify this and it was so far-fetched I hadn’t tried it on anyone, least of all Caitlin right now. She’d storm out of the restaurant after four words.
Caitlin decided it was in her best interest to change the subject, and I visualized her turning a huge topic dial from Ridiculous Theory to Uncomfortable Silence to Sustained Uncomfortable Silence and finally back to Us.
Yippee, my favorite.
Her eyes penetrated deep into mine, like she was trying to count my rods and cones, then in a calm, controlled whisper, she said, “Will you accompany me to Lacy’s MS benefit?”
Lacy was hosting a gallery opening for young painters, including herself, with all the proceeds going to the Multiple Sclerosis Society. It was next Friday and I wasn’t sure walking in on the arm of Caitlin Dodds was in my best interest. But I rarely did anything in my best interest, so I said, “I’d love to.”
Caitlin reached across the table and grabbed my hand, then turned the knob to a point somewhere between Tristen Grayer and Us. She said, “I don’t know what you think is going to happen tomorrow, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up. Nothing is going to happen, and when it doesn’t, I want you to get on with your life and I want to be part of it.”
She stood, kissed me on the forehead, and exited Austin’s. I guess we weren’t getting separate checks after all.
Chapter 9
The book signing was at the Borders in Bangor at noon. I exited the highway at the Bangor exit and after a couple streets came to a large stretch of retail stores. At the end of two blocks was an immense gray brick Borders store. A banner on the side of the building notified people to, “Come get your copy of Eight in October signed by author Alex Tooms, October 1st, 12:00 P.M.–3:00 P.M.”
I checked my watch, it was two minutes after twelve and there was already a line wrapped halfway around the building. I was in the process of parking when I realized I’d left my copy of Eight in October on the kitchen table. I decided against the forty minute round trip to retrieve the book and expunged my wallet from the glove compartment. Let’s see, how much had I spent on this insipid book? Four times twenty-seven equals—carry the one—one hundred and eight dollars.
Hell, if I kept this up, Eight in October would be the number one selling book of all time. Look out The Bible.
As I made my way to the end of the line, I couldn’t help notice the number of men far outweighed the number of women. Then I thought about it, women didn’t read true-crime genre, they read Danielle Steel and those Nicholas peeter-puffers.
Inside the store, there were about a hundred or so people filing through a series of switchback rows. I stood on my tiptoes, trying to catch a glimpse of the guest of honor, but my view was blocked by a table stacked high with copies of Eight in October. The guy in front of me turned and asked, “Did you get a look at the pictures? Pretty gnarly shit, huh?”
“What pictures?” I inquired benignly.
He pulled a magazine from his back pocket. It was last November’s issue of Time with the caption “The Maine Event” plastered on the front cover. On the left side of the cover was a picture of Tristen Grayer’s disfigured corpse. Splitting the cover were the letter’s “Vs.” And the right half was a blown up picture of yours truly in my University of Washington hoody.
I held my breath. The man bypassed the cover and began rifling through the magazine’s pages. Unconsciously he must have noticed something and ultimately made his way back to the front cover. He glanced from me to the cover. Then did the act one more time for good measure, before asking, “That you?”
I assured him it was not moi.
He said, “Same face. Same sweatshirt. I think this is you.”
“Well it’s not.” I edged myself as far away as possible without losing my place
in line.
The man whispered something to the guy in front of him, which was overheard by the people in front of them, and within a short two minute span, everyone was craning their necks to get a look at the famed Thomas Prescott. A couple brave souls approached me and asked if I would sign their copy of Eight in October. I politely told them I would if I had a pen. They kept supplying me with pens but they kept snapping in half, it was weird. After the third pen, people stopped asking.
The line moved steadily and by one-thirty I was ten people from the front of the line. The stack of books was much smaller now, but they still obstructed any view of Alex Tooms. The anticipation was killing me, I wanted to see what this jerk looked like. He couldn’t possibly be an attractive guy, could he? My brain had concocted an image of a half human, half Jaba-the-Hut-type thing. That’s probably why they had the book wall erected, to hide the beast.
When it was finally my turn, I walked past the book curtain, took in a deep breath, and mentally shit my pants. Alex Tooms was a woman.
Alex, or make that Alexandria, had her eyes glued to the book she was writing in, yet I could still make out the majority of her features. She looked to be in her late twenties, a compact 5’6”, mocha brown hair held back in a ponytail, and sleek olive skin. She was wearing faded blue jeans with a simple red tank top, and I wasn’t sure if she had three older brothers or four. She sensed my presence and without looking up from her present endeavor, said, “Do you need to buy a book?”
I heard myself say, “Yes, I need a book.”
She pushed her project aside, grabbed a fresh copy, all the while with her head down mind you, and said, “Who do you want it made out to?”
For as much as I was dreading this moment, it couldn’t have played out any better. I licked my chops and said, “Thomas Prescott.”
It was as if she was tied down on train tracks and each syllable of my name made up the train barreling towards her. The last “T”, the caboose, came to a screeching halt inches from her frail body. She dropped her pen and looked up.