Within These Walls

by Ania Ahlborn

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  It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but retire a little from sight and afterwards return again. Nothing is dead. People feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand, looking out the window, sound and well in some new disguise.

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  THE LETTER

  Jeffrey C. Halcomb / I-881978

  Lambert Correctional Facility, Rainier Unit

  Lambert, Washington 99372

  Mr. Lucas Graham,

  I will spare us both the embarrassment of a formal introduction. You’re an intrepid fellow, and as such, have likely already deduced by both postmark and return address who I am and where I currently reside. But as you are a writer and I’m a lover of literature, I’ll do us the favor of setting the scene. Picture a seven-by-ten cell, bare walls, a springless mattress flattened thin, and your book, Bloodthirsty Times, resting askew atop a gray wool blanket. The first time I read your book, I did so with pleasure. The second time, I did so with intent.

  You see, Mr. Graham—Lucas, Lou—I’ve been sitting in this concrete box since 1983. A true-crime writer of your caliber knows the date and the facts; but as you know, facts and details aren’t one and the same. The media relayed the story, but what they fail to acknowledge is that this story, my story, is one that has yet to be told. Because how do you tell a story when the key players are missing? How do you tell it when I, the protagonist, have refused to speak?

  Oh, there have been attempts to retrace the footsteps of my past, of my family, of the crime I’ve been accused of committing. But they were all clumsy, halfhearted attempts at an unknown truth that I refused to share.

  I’ve kept my silence well, Lou. But silence can be weary. I’ve grown tired of it. And since I’ve taken a liking to your method, your style, your ability to bring the past to life—to resurrect it, if you will—I’m inspired. It’s time to tell my story, the real story of what happened the day my freedom came to an end, and I want you to tell it, Lou. Honestly, I’m a fan of yours, and the pleasure would be mine.

  Therefore, my terms: I will grant you however many interviews you wish, but all communication will have to be done in person. I will break my vow of silence in exchange for a single insistence: you take up residence at 101 Montlake Road in Pier Pointe, Washington. Surely you know the address? The scene of the crime? It’s for rent, Lou, and I doubt there are many clamoring for the key. You want my story, you live in my house.

  One other thing: you need to do all of this within four weeks of the postmark on the envelope you now hold. I won’t reveal the significance of the date or deadline, so please don’t ask. If you are willing to accommodate me, you can phone the prison and let them know you’d like to chat. I’ll arrange the rest.

  I’m looking forward to meeting you, Lou, and anxious to ­finally tell my story the way it has yet to be told. I’m sure the details of that day will suit your career well.

  The clock is ticking. Are you quick enough to outrace time?

  Ever a fan,

  Jeffrey C. Halcomb

  CONGRESSMAN SNOW’S DAUGHTER DEAD

  Murdered In Ritualistic Fashion

  By Jefferson Boone, The Seattle Times staff reporter

  March 15, 1983—Audra Snow, the daughter of Washington State congressman Terrance “Terry” Snow, was found dead in her Pier Pointe, Washington, home yesterday. Police walked in on what Officer Nathan Gilcrest of the Pier Pointe Police Department described as “something out of a horror movie, like nothing I’ve ever seen.” Ms. Snow’s assailant, who has yet to be named, was apprehended at the scene. Police say that the killing appeared ritualistic in nature. Cult activity is strongly suspected, but an official report has yet to be made.

  Ten Dead, One Caught

  Ms. Snow was not the only victim at the scene. The bodies of eight other individuals were found, arranged in a circle with Ms. Snow at the center. Ms. Snow’s unborn child was also not spared. Police suspect suicide on the part of the eight currently unidentified victims, but are awaiting autopsy and toxicology reports. Ms. Snow was living in her father’s Pier Pointe home on a permanent basis. When questioned about the identity of Ms. Snow’s assailant, the congressman insisted his daughter lived alone and did not mention anyone that fit the assailant’s description. When asked if Ms. Snow was involved in any cult activity, Congressman Snow declined to comment.

  Unspeakable Magnitude

  Police report that they walked in on what they believe was an in-process ritual killing. The assailant—a dark-haired man in his late twenties or early thirties—had Ms. Snow draped over one knee. A large kitchen knife was found near Ms. Snow’s body. “We didn’t realize she was pregnant until we saw what [the assailant] was holding,” Officer Gilcrest recalls. “When we discovered it was a baby, that’s when the magnitude of it really hit home.” Ms. Snow’s child—a girl—was not breathing when officers arrived. Pier Pointe coroner Samuel Rays reports that the infant was full-term at the time of its passing.

  A Search For Answers

  “We’ve questioned the assailant about his identity and the nature of Ms. Snow’s death, but he isn’t talking,” says Gilcrest. “We’re pretty sure this is linked to some sort of satanic activity.” The hunt for the identities of each victim will be a long one, but Pier Pointe officials are hopeful some concrete answers to the nature of the crime will come to light soon. “Things like this don’t happen in Pier Pointe,” says Belinda Reinard, a nearby and lifetime resident. “We’re a quiet town. We live here to keep away from things like this.”

  This, however, is not the first time the small community of Pier Pointe has been rocked by tragedy. Just last July, the bodies of Washington lawyer Richard Stephenson and his wife, Claire Stephenson, were discovered in their upscale ocean-view home. Mr. Stephenson had multiple stab wounds while Mrs. Stephenson had her throat cut. Both victims’ injuries were caused by a kitchen knife. The Stephenson case has yet to be solved. “We think there may be a link,” says Gilcrest. “We’ve got our work cut out for us. I’ve been on the force for nearly twenty-five years, and to my knowledge, Pier Pointe has never seen a crime like this before.” Police say they will keep the media abreast of any new developments.

  1

  * * *

  YOU’VE GOT TO be kidding.”

  Caroline Graham pivoted on the soles of her feet, coffeepot in hand, and for the briefest of moments, Lucas saw his wife’s intentions reflected in the blue of her eyes. He imagined her arm pistoning away from her, freshly brewed coffee splashing out of the carafe in a caramel-colored wave. Delicate ripples of steam would dance ghostlike through the air before spraying across his face and neck, scalding him, because Caroline had no more words. This was it. He had pushed her too far.

  “No,” she said, calm as she set the coffeepot on the kitchen counter, but it was nothing more than a momentary suppression of outrage. Caroline was the master of the slow burn, and no matter how hard she tried to hide it, he knew he’d just lit her fuse. He saw it in the way her fresh manicure gripped the edge of the sink. She stood with her back to him, and while he couldn’t see her face, he was sure of her expression—lips tight, teeth clamped, the space between her eyebrows puckered into an angry ridge. It was Caroline’s go-to
face when it came to fury and outrage. Lately, it felt as though it was the only expression she wore.

  “No, this is crazy, just crazy. Goddammit. Of all the times, Lou . . .”

  It was a wonder she still called him by his nickname. Lucas was keeping a mental tally of his full name in ratio to the shortened one, and the scales had definitely tipped toward the formal Lucas rather than the more affectionate Lou. When they had first met, Caroline had a penchant for calling him Louie, but that was a name that had altogether disappeared, and from the look of it, it was only a matter of time before Lou suffered the same fate. How she referred to him was his measuring stick, some quantifiable way of determining the health of their unhealthy relationship. For years, disenchantment and marital grievances had plagued their once-happy union. Now, that thing they called a marriage was on life support and Caroline’s hand seemed to be constantly itching to pull the plug. Less of a nihilist than his wife, Lucas was awaiting a miraculous recovery. He was holding his breath, his fingers crossed that he’d get the chance to rediscover the dark-­humored girl he’d fallen for nearly twenty years before.

  “So, you just want to uproot us?” Caroline turned and fixed her eyes on his. “Uproot Jeanie? Force her to give up all of her friends, her school?”

  The loser of his wife’s staring contest, Lucas looked away first, peered down at his hands, swallowed. The hard wood of the kitchen bar stool was making his butt numb. The overhead lights struck him as too bright, spontaneously blazing hot like dying stars. Suddenly, all he wanted to do was walk out of the kitchen and forget he ever made the suggestion, but it was too late to pretend he could make things better by wishful thinking alone. Couldn’t Caroline see that? He was trying to fix things, not just for himself, but for the three of them as a whole. As a family. As something they used to be. Something he hoped they could be again.

  “And what about me, huh?” He could hear the glare in her tone. What about her? He could still remember her as the once-upon-a-time girl who had stolen his heart, the girl who no longer dyed her hair black. They had once had things in common—a lifestyle of clubs and candles and incense smoke curling through dimly lit rooms. Now, pressed to compare the Caroline of before to the Caroline of now, he’d hardly recognize her at all. Blond. Proper. The owner of more than a couple of business suits and over a dozen pairs of high heels. And then there was her most severe transgression, the one he never had the balls to mention. “What about my job?” she asked, snapping his attention back to her. “It doesn’t matter that I’ve busted my ass to get to where I am?”

  Lucas considered cutting her off, contemplated finally laying it all out and bringing up the always-dashing-and-never-ordinary Kurt Murphy. Oh really? Busting your ass? he thought. Or climbing up the ladder while lying on your back? No, he didn’t dare.

  “Of course it matters.” He kept his head bowed and his eyes averted. Making eye contact with Caroline while she was in the throes of aggravation never made things better. That, and he didn’t want her to see it in his face—the fact that he knew about Kurt, that he’d known for a long time.

  The last few weeks had made him certain; the way she came home late, always blaming the trains when a quick online confirmation proved they were running just fine. The way she avoided being in the same room as him for longer than a few seconds, as though afraid that occupying the same space would force them to interact with one another, would possibly coerce them into conversation or, God forbid, some sort of truce. The smell of a cologne he didn’t own, most likely too expensive for him to afford.

  “Well, it obviously doesn’t matter much,” she countered. He peeked up at her, caught her narrowing her eyes at the granite counter. She shook her head as if suddenly overcome by a fresh bout of frustration. “You have some nerve.” Her eyes flashed, imploring him to give her one good reason, one good excuse as to why he’d throw them into such turmoil. “It’s always about you, isn’t it? It’s always about you.”

  “It’s about us. About getting back to where we once were.” It was as close as he could come to saying what he meant.

  Caroline went silent. Her expression became an odd mix of vulnerability and indignation. She shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other. The overhead light cast shadows that veiled her eyes. For a flash of a second, she looked like that once-upon-a-time girl, the one he so desperately missed. The floodlights caught the strawberry hue of her blond hair, the faint smattering of freckles God had sprinkled across her cheeks like cosmic constellations. He couldn’t maintain eye contact, not when she was glowering at him like that. Lucas turned his attention away.

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  It meant everything; where they used to be financially before things went belly-up, and also as a couple, loving and laughing and happy rather than the way they were now—stray cats hissing and swatting at each other if one got too close. And then there was Kurt. But the way Caroline was standing right then, her arms crossed over her chest, peering down her nose, it made Lucas wonder if what used to be could ever be again. Sometimes people change, she’d once told him. There’s no going back. They’re different forever, a doppelgänger of their former self.

  “I talked to John about it,” he said. “He thinks it’s a good idea.” Except that was a lie. Lucas’s literary agent, John Cormick, had stared out at him from across a manuscript-cluttered desk with a blank expression on his face. When Lucas opened his messenger bag and dug out the letter he’d received from Washington State’s maximum-security prison, John’s blank stare bloomed into disbelief. He’d snatched the letter out of Lucas’s hand and read it once, twice, three times for good measure while Lucas looked on with crushing anticipation. He could already see his agent’s reaction in his head; John would look up with eyes blazing, his face awash with a stunning sense of revelation. My God! he’d say. It’s like you’ve won the lottery, Lou. It’s like someone found Willy Wonka’s golden ticket and dropped it into your lap. But all John responded with was trepidation. Because the notorious Jeffrey Halcomb didn’t talk to reporters. And he certainly didn’t talk to two-bit crime writers who hadn’t had a hit in over a decade.

  “Yeah, sure. John thinks everything is a good idea,” Caroline said. Her words were clipped, impatient. “You could tell him you’re thinking about writing a book on suicide, tell him you’re going to jump off a cliff for research, and John Cormick will say, ‘Wow, Lucas, that’s a great idea! Why don’t you do that and we’ll set up a call for next week, see how it all pans out.’ ”

  “You could at least lend a little support,” he muttered.

  Caroline’s blue eyes blazed. Her freckles faded beneath the flush of her cheeks. She shoved piecey strands of hair behind her ears and gave him an incredulous stare. “Really?” She exhaled a harsh laugh, the kind that made the hair on the back of his neck bristle, assuring him he had said the most unacceptably offensive thing. “Because I haven’t backed you up for long enough, right, Lucas?” Lucas, not Lou. “I haven’t spent the last decade telling you that everything will work out? Or maybe I haven’t killed myself with overtime; I couldn’t even spend last Thanksgiving with my parents because I had to haul myself back into the office to meet a deadline.”

  A deadline? Maybe. A holiday screw against a high-rise office window? Most likely.

  “Which part of that was me not lending a little support? Because I guess I’m just too damn stupid to figure it out.”

  She was a liar. An adulteress. A provocateur. For a flash of a second, he wanted to slam his hands against the counter and scream every ugly accusation to let her know he wasn’t that stupid. He knew. He’d known all along. And yet, he still loved her despite her betrayal, still wanted things to go back to the way they had once been despite her false heart.

  The last ten years had been tough on them both. He and John would have the same conversation every six months: It isn’t you, bud, it’s the genre. We’re in a slump, but th
ings will pick up. True crime didn’t sell the way it used to—certainly not the way it had the year Virginia was born, when Lucas was so busy juggling a new baby girl and a state-by-state book tour that he had to gasp for breath between radio interviews and morning talk shows.

  Good Morning America.

  Today.

  Good Day LA.

  Now Jeanie was pushing thirteen, Caroline was barely keeping them afloat as a joint venture broker, and Lucas was still a writer. The difference was that he was no longer sitting on the New York Times bestseller list and he was afraid to look at his royalty statements. He blindly deleted them from his inbox, because staring at numbers with a sense of dread and disappointment didn’t make them grow. He’d learned that the hard way, while packing up boxes and selling the house in Port Washington to move to Queens.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “You’re right. One hundred percent. You’ve been my biggest advocate, my rock.”

  She flicked her gaze up at him, giving him a cut the bullshit look. “So what, then? I should just roll over again, right? Give in, tell you that this is all okay, that you suggesting we up and move clear across the country and leave everything behind is a fair request because I’m your rock.” Another bitter, eye-rolling laugh.

  “You know I feel like shit about this, right?” He peered at his hands while his stomach churned beneath the drawstring band of his pajama pants, as if trying to digest his unpalatable apprehension. “The overtime, the holidays . . .” The other man. “It makes me feel like a grade-A loser, like I had this amazing opportunity and I . . .” He hesitated, searched for the right word. “. . . I squandered it.”

  She kept quiet, grabbed the abandoned coffeepot by its handle, and splashed fresh brew into two mugs—black for her, half-skim for him. Marriage did strange things to people. It could have been World War III in that kitchen, but if there was coffee, two mugs would always be served.