by Lisa Gardner
Sal had taken a leave of absence from work. Kimberly had called him twice. He never returned those calls. She heard through the grapevine that he was spending a great deal of time with his mother. The initial public outcry had been so great, with sensational details of the murder spree screaming across every headline, he and his mother had had to go into seclusion.
According to the rumor mill, Sal had filed papers requiring DNA testing of Ginny’s baby. If the child was Dinchara’s, Sal and his mother planned on asking for sole custody.
Kimberly wondered if it would be enough for them, or if they would simply lie awake, night after night, waiting for something terrible to happen down the hall.
Life went on. Harold recovered from his wound, returned to work with a medal from the governor and enormous fanfare. When Kimberly’s ERT presented him with his very own pair of custom-fit Limmer boots, he blushed like a schoolboy. And Rachel hugged him so hard the betting pool was already taking odds on a wedding date.
While Kimberly grew fat. Enormously, couldn’t-see-her-toes fat. True to her prediction, Mac had to tie her shoes for her. Which didn’t happen so much anymore, as she was officially on a leave of absence. With two weeks until her due date, she had to set up a nursery in their apartment in Savannah while Mac worked long hours in his new position, trying to get up to speed before the baby was born.
So Kimberly fussed over gingham ruffles and teddy bear stencils and all the stuff a woman like her had once sworn was foolish, but now had become the center of her entire being. She ironed curtains, dusted the ceiling fans, and washed the top of the refrigerator. Then she purchased a medicine cabinet and demanded Mac install it that very night, because there was no way she was giving birth with their minor collection of pharmaceuticals still housed in a baby-accessible bathroom drawer.
Sometimes, when she was not nesting with the frantic compulsiveness of a nine-months-pregnant woman, random thoughts would pop into her head. She might discover a garden spider and spend the next hour thinking of Dinchara, the boy he had once been and the man he had become. And she would remember Aaron and that last look on his face before he pulled the trigger.
Aaron turned out to be Randy Cooper. He had been kidnapped walking home from school in Decatur ten years earlier. His family had claimed his body, his twenty-two-year-old sister, Sarah, now at Harvard Law, returning for the funeral. Sarah had thanked the small gathering of neighbors and law enforcement officers on behalf of her family. They were grateful for the closure the funeral allowed. They understood they were fortunate to have this moment, as so many families didn’t. And they would choose today, and all days, to remember Randy as the laughing, happy boy they had known, and not the victim he had become.
Kimberly wondered if Sal was struggling to make the same choice. Each day, every day. How best to know his brother.
Kimberly installed additional locks on every bedroom window. She ordered a home security system complete with a panic alarm. She purchased a video baby monitor so she could see at all times what was happening in her baby’s room.
And maybe it was panicky and neurotic. But maybe this was what a woman who worked in crime and had already buried two members of her family needed to do. Mac didn’t question her. He let her do what she did, and when she could bring herself to speak, of both her consuming fear and her tentative hope, he made the time to listen.
One week before her due date, Kimberly went into labor. With Mac by her side, and Rainie and Quincy flying in, she gave birth to a little girl, Elizabeth Amanda McCormack.
Three days later, she and Mac brought their little girl home. Mac took a couple of weeks off from work and they happily spent their time changing impossibly small diapers and marveling over ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes. After much debate, they determined that little Eliza had Mac’s dark hair, but Kimberly’s pointed face. Obviously she possessed her mother’s intelligence, as well as her father’s strength. As for the temper tantrums, they both considered the other one guilty of providing that DNA.
Mac returned to work. Kimberly stayed at home and discovered … she was okay. Nursing and tending and fussing was not the death sentence she had feared, but rather a new set of challenges to explore. She could handle it for a bit. Six months, she thought. Maybe a year. That sounded about right.
So she took her time. She held her daughter close. She took her for walks to the park. She got up every three hours and rocked her baby girl in the middle of the night.
And during those months, little Eliza snuggled against her breast, Kimberly thought that while life may not be perfect, at least it offered moments that were perfect enough.
“I love you, Eliza,” she promised and smiled as she listened to her infant daughter snore.
Strawberry is my favorite flavor of ice cream.
My mom told me as she dished it up for me the first night I came home. I nodded as if I remembered, then ate the whole bowl, wishing it were chocolate.
Life will return to normal. That’s what everyone says. I’m lucky. I’m a survivor. Something bad happened, but now, Life Will Return to Normal.
I’m like Pinocchio, waiting to wake up one morning and discover I’m a real boy.
In the meantime, I pretend to sleep on top of my bed, instead of huddled underneath, where I can see people enter my room without anyone seeing me. I pretend I don’t notice that my parents never leave me alone with my little sister. I pretend I don’t hear my mother crying every night down the hall.
Life Will Return to Normal.
But I don’t think I ever will.
Some days, when it’s really bad, my dad drives me the two hours to Rita’s house. I chop wood, pull weeds, mow her lawn. She can’t move too well due to her hip, so she can always use the help. Better yet, she never asks me anything. She gives me chores, barks at me to move. Rita is always Rita and maybe she isn’t normal, either, and I like that.
Sometimes, when I’m whacking away at dandelions, I find that I am talking, things are pouring out. So I work harder and talk faster and Rita hands me more lemonade and it’s okay when Rita’s there. When Rita’s there, I feel safe.
Sometimes, my dad returns while I’m still ranting. So he’ll chop wood and pull weeds and paint spindles and I daresay Rita has the best-looking house on the block. It’s the least she deserves, you know. I wish I could stay with her always.
But sooner or later, gotta go home. Life Will Return to Normal.
I don’t sleep. I see things behind my closed eyelids I don’t think other boys see. I know things I don’t think other boys know. Can’t imagine going to school. Can’t imagine hanging out with my old friends.
I play dolls with my baby sister. I do whatever she tells me to do. I think of it as practice. Sooner or later, I’ll know how to be a six-year-old girl. Seems a lot better idea than being me.
My mom takes me to a therapist. I draw pictures of rainbows and flowers and he gazes at me with deep disappointment. So I draw birdies and kittycats. Goldfish and unicorns. I tell Rita about it later and she laughs, but I can tell she’s concerned.
Sometimes, on the really bad days, we simply rock on the front porch and she holds my hand.
“You are strong, child,” she tells me. “You’re tough and smart and capable. Don’t let him take that from you. Don’t give him that.”
I promise Rita I won’t and we both forgive the lie.
Rita lived to be ninety-five years old. She died in January. I came over that Saturday and found her sitting in the front parlor, one arm in her mother’s old coat. Joseph was sitting beside her. It was the first time I ever saw him. Moment I opened the door, he looked up at me, smiled, and disappeared.
I didn’t cry at the funeral. Rita’s was a good death. Peaceful. It gave me my first glimmer of hope. Someday, I want to die like that, sitting on my sofa, just waiting to get out the door.
I like to think Rita is running around with Joseph now, looping around the old apple tree. I like to think she’s watching over me.
I didn’t make it in public school. I tried to be a real boy, but you know, I’m not. ’Nother kid started picking on me. Called me a faggot. Told everyone I liked sucking dick. Then made slurping sounds every time I walked down the halls.
Kid was big and brawny. I’m too small to take on someone his size and he knew it.
I told my father about it. He raised holy hell. The kid was suspended. That bought me five days of peace from one kid, and a pack of trouble from a whole lot more. Soon the entire school was making sucking sounds every time I entered the cafeteria.
Kids don’t like me. I know that. They look at me, they wonder what happened. They wonder if it will happen to them.
I frighten them and no adult is ever gonna change that.
I go to a private school now. Small class size. Lots of authority figures around to keep us all in line. I don’t bother to make friends. I just get through the day. That’s the one thing I’m good at, getting through.
My sister loves me. She’s the only person in the world who hugs me without pausing first, wondering if she should. She throws her arms right around me. “Joshi,” she’ll cry, “Joshi’s home,” and some days, I think I survived everything just to hear her say that.
I get moments. Not a lot of them, but still. There are times it’s almost okay to be me. So I cling to that, ’cause I gotta cling to something. I gotta try to be something, or Rita’s right: He’s won. Even from beyond the grave, he’s taken me from me. I won’t have that. I won’t.
I killed him once. I’ll be damned if he doesn’t stay dead.
Then one night, I had a revelation. I couldn’t sleep. My head was crazy with blood. I hated my clothes, my room, the feel of carpet against my skin. I hated the walls of the house and the window that stared at me like a blind eye.
I hated my mom and my dad, who kept studying me and studying me like at any time now, I oughtta be fixed, when if they’d done their job right I never would’ve gotten broken.
So I went to the kitchen for matches. Except halfway there, in the middle of the living room, I saw it. The computer.
I remembered things. Things I’d never told the police.
I took a seat.
It didn’t take long for me to find them. Or really, to make them think they had found me. I sat at the keyboard for three hours, walking the walk, talking the talk. I know how these men think.
At five a.m., I heard my father get up to pee, so I turned off the computer, crept back to my room, and crashed on top of my bed. When I woke up again, I knew what I was going to do.
I took a couple of classes. Did a little research and that took care of the rest.
I go on three nights a week now, always after midnight.
And I go hunting.
Special Agent Salvatore Martignetti. He’s back with the GBI now, working some drug task force. I can find quotes of him discussing latest arrests, moments of triumph. I can find his picture, dark face, sunken eyes. Sometimes, if the pose is just right, he looks so much like Dinchara, I want to put my fist through the computer screen. But I don’t.
Special Agent Kimberly Quincy. She’s back to work, though her assignments are harder to track, the FBI being savvier about these things. So I found her daughter instead. Little Eliza Quincy McCormack, enrolled in the local Montessori preschool. The entire school roster is available online. The page is marked parents only, but it only took me three tries to guess the password—the initials of the head schoolmistress. Amazing how many organizations think they’re being “safe” when really they’re just amusing guys like me.
Ginny Jones. She’s at the state prison, serving the last of her twelve-year sentence. Jurors are suckers for young, pregnant victims and only found her guilty on accessory to kidnapping. I don’t know where the baby went, but give me some time, I’ll figure it out. In the meantime, Ginny’s been sleeping with enough prison guards to earn herself computer privileges. So I set myself up as her latest e-mail buddy. She can’t wait to meet me one day. Trust me, the feeling’s mutual.
I’m patient, careful, observant.
Just a spider on the wall, you know, slowly spinning my web.
After checking on my past associates, I move on to the evening’s real event. I hit the sites, the blogs, the chat rooms. I make new “friends” and I tell these men everything I know how to do. I promise them action. I promise them live footage. All I need is a little info first. And once I have it, I strike.
I empty their bank accounts. I max out their credit cards, then take out new ones in their names. I set up second mortgages on e-banks and issue lines of credit. I become them, cyber identity theft. And I transfer all their money to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars. I take everything; it’s the least they deserve.
They could complain, of course. All they’d have to do is turn over their financial records—including their online activities—to their wives, their business partners, the police.
I wonder what it feels like, when they finally realize what’s going on. That those credit card charges are not a mistake. That those e-mails from their PayPal accounts warning them of unusual activity aren’t phishing. That their checking account really is empty, and that new line of credit, already maxed out.
I wonder what it feels like when they realize there is nothing they can do. That their home is going to be foreclosed on, their brand-new car seized. That their bank accounts are frozen, their credit cards capped, and their online activities … hey, nobody’s gonna let a broke schmuck download kiddy porn.
I wonder what it feels like when they realize that they are finished, washed up, done. When they realize they are going to live the rest of their lives a specimen in the collection.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It takes a lot of people to write a book. First, there is my cute and adorable daughter. She helped inspire the book, mostly by becoming obsessed with spiders. Her newfound interest was kindled by neighbors Pam and Glenda, who gave her a set of fun-colored spider lights, then stoked by Paul and Lynda, who presented her with a tarantula roughly the size of a terrier. My daughter immediately declared the tarantula to be the mommy spider and set her up in our formal living room.
Once you’ve started living with a dog-size tarantula, a suspense novel is bound to follow.
Then there is fellow writer Sheila Connolly, who, upon hearing that I was working on a book involving spiders, offered her husband, an entomologist, to assist. Dave Williams is the kind of guy who once kept a black widow as a pet, so he was extraordinarily helpful. He not only sent me photos of brown recluse spider bites, but helped me track down an excellent article on body decomposition in outdoor hanging cases. Not everyone appreciates these things, but I learned a lot. Thanks, Dave!
Then there is my dear friend Don Taylor, who was so taken with my daughter’s hobby that he sent her several books on arachnids. We both loved the novels, though after reading Doreen Cronin’s Diary of a Spider, my daughter is also now into flies and worms. Thanks, Don!
Next up is dear friend Lisa Mac. I was bogged down one night trying to research on the Internet unusual ways to hide bodies (note to readers: search term “good ways to dispose of bodies” leads to some scary chat rooms). When I called Lisa to let her know I was running late, she literally screeched into the phone, “Stop, I have the perfect idea. I’ll be right there.” You know what, Lisa? You were right.
Then I must thank longtime friend and associate Dr. Greg Moffatt. When I mentioned I needed to come to Georgia to research a novel, he and his family rolled out the welcome mat. Now, most hosts will show you around town, but how many will take you crime scene shopping on Blood Mountain? Once again, Greg, you went above and beyond the call of duty. Thank you for a wonderful, if slightly different, Georgia tour.
I must also thank Supervisory Special Agent Stephen Emmett of the Atlanta FBI for helping me understand the Atlanta field office; Special Agent Paul Delacourt,
who updated me on the post-9/11 bureau, and better yet, mentioned that the ERTs would be a perfect extracurricular for Kimberly; and finally Special Agent Roslyn B. Harris, senior team leader of the Atlanta Division Evidence Response Team, and Supervisory Special Agent Rob Coble who then graciously agreed to answer my multitude of questions regarding ERTs and the use of the Total Station. Of course all mistakes are mine and mine alone.
Forensic anthropologist Lee Jantz, from the University of Tennessee’s famed Body Farm, kindly walked me through the basics of an outdoor search and body recovery. Thank you also, Lee, for your research into fabric decomp and other little tidbits that I hope created one really creepy scene. Again, all mistakes—and fictional license!—are mine and mine alone.
Under care and feeding of authors: Thank you to my brilliant editor, Kate Miciak, and the entire Bantam publishing team, who make the real magic happen; to Meg Ruley and the entire Jane Rotrosen Agency team, who understand neurotic authors and, through their hard work, actually allow us to be slightly less neurotic; to Michael Carr, my first reader whose laserlike analytics shredded the original draft, left me cranky beyond words, and, of course, helped create a better novel (in return, I’m taking his wife to a spa and leaving him alone with four kids, hah!); to Kevin Breenky and the other nice folks at Jif for the care packages, kind notes, and shared smiles. To John and Genn from the J-Town Deli, whose daily supply of raspberry yum-yums kept me cranking through the late afternoons; to Larry and Leslie of the Thompson House Eatery, who graciously opened up their home for the book jacket photo shoot and, even better, fed us lunch. And to Brandi and Sarah for all the reasons they know best.
Finally, I owe a huge thanks to my husband. For years, I have praised the rich, chocolaty confections he has showered upon me during the final crush of deadline. This time, my husband went one better: He got me an out-of-the-house office. I told him he was nuts. Work is work, doesn’t matter where you do it. I am happy to report that in this case, the office made all the difference. So here you go, love, the three words all husbands would like to see in print: You were right!