by Rick Mofina
Lois Jensen left her chair, knelt before Angela, and put her arms around her. “Go ahead and let it out, sweetheart. It’s all right.”
Lois knew the hurt. Two years ago, her thirteen-year-old son Allan was shot in the head while riding his bike through the park near their home. Lois was the one who found him. She knew the hurt.
Dr. Kate Martin made a note on her clipboard. Her group was progressing. Manifestations of empathy, comfort, and compassion were now common. Not long ago, Lois, who was married to a lawyer in Marin County, would refuse to open up as each of the others articulated their grief. Now, through Angela, Lois was healing. Death, the great equalizer, had taken a child from each woman. Now, like shipwrecked survivors, they were holding fast to each other, enduring.
Dr. Kate Martin had endured. Barely.
While writing, she tugged at her blazer’s cuffs, hiding the scars across her wrists. She watched Angela cherishing her take-out bag. For Kate, it was leaves, saved from each visit to her parents’ grave.
Kate was eight when her mother and father were late returning home from a movie. Waiting and playing cards with their neighbor, Mrs. Cook. A police car arrived at the house. The old woman put an age-spotted hand to her mouth, Kate stood in her robe, barefoot, alone in the hall. Mrs. Cook talked in hushed tones with the young officer at the door, holding his hat in his hand. Something was wrong. Mrs. Cook hurried to her, crushing her against her bosom, with a smell of moth balls, telling her there had been a horrible, awful car accident.
“You are all alone now, child.”
Kate was sent to live with her mother’s sister Ellen, her husband, Miles, and their three sons on their pig farm in Oregon.
She hated it.
They were strangers who treated her as the dark child who had brought the pall of human death into their home. She was given her own room and everyone avoided her. Her only happiness came once a year, when, only for her sake they reminded her, they’d stop work and pile into the family wagon to drive to California to visit the cemetery where her parents were.
Uncle Miles loathed it. “It costs too damn much money and serves no purpose, Ellen,” he complained during their final trip together.
Throughout the drive the older boys taunted Kate.
“You never smile. Why don’t you stay in San Francisco. You piss us off.” Quentin, the oldest, was fifteen and loved killing pigs.
“Yeah. Why don’t you go and live in the stupid graveyard, you like it there so much? Huh?” Lewis, Quentin’s sidekick, was thirteen.
Aunt Ellen told the boys to stop. At the cemetery, after Kate visited her parents’ headstone and gathered leaves, they started back to the car. The boys fell behind Kate and started up again.
“We’re going to leave you here.” Quentin grinned. His eye spotted the dark earth of a freshly dug grave nearby. He nodded to his brothers. In an instant they picked her up. Quentin held her ankles, his brother had her arms. “No Quentin, please!” Her leaves floated to the ground. The boys carried her to the open grave.
They dropped her into the grave and looked down on her from its mouth, laughing and showering her with dirt. “Welcome home, Kate.” She lay on the cool earth, watching them. Dead silent. Aunt Ellen screamed and screamed as Uncle Miles lifted her out.
“You are all alone now, child.”
Uncle Miles had laughed it off. A joke, Kate, only a joke. She was ten. Aunt Ellen studied the horizon. When they got back, Kate took her aunt’s sewing shears into the bathroom and sliced them across her wrists. She ached for her mother and father, wanted to be with them. She closed her eyes and lay in the tub, remembering the cold grave.
Quentin, who liked watching her through the bathroom keyhole, found her. Just in time. Aunt Ellen knew Kate had to be rescued. So for the next four years, Dr. Brendan Blake had helped Kate climb out of hell. And at fourteen, she decided to become a beacon to those bereaved of light. There was enough money in her parents’ estate for her to attend Berkeley.
Now at thirty-five, Kate Martin was a tenured professor at San Francisco Metropolitan University’s Department of Psychiatry, where she was the focus of a small academic sensation. It was rumored that her research into the impact on parents bereaved of their children through unnatural death could lead to a university bereavement studies center.
For nearly a year, fifteen volunteers, all parents of children who had been killed, met on campus every other Saturday to discuss their private torment. The corporeal and psychological toll of each child’s death was also measured in journals the parents kept.
Kate looked fondly at Angela Donner. The study was born with the murder of her-two-old daughter, Tanita Marie. Police had told Kate about a non-profit support group that was working with Angela Donner. Kate offered counseling, to help her cope with Tanita’s murder. Then she became convinced more in-depth empirical studies were needed on the impact of children who had died unnaturally.
She submitted a proposal for a research project, but the university’s bureaucracy moved at a glacial pace. Despite cutbacks, she knew funding existed. She lobbied the research committee. Eventually the committee members threw up their hands and found her some money--a fraction of what she’d requested--but enough for one year. Through the police, victims’ groups, personal ads, and notices posted around the campus, she found volunteer subjects for the project.
Now, with less than eight weeks remaining, when the study was beginning to bear fruit, the plug was going to be pulled. Kate was concerned. Patterns were emerging. She’d observed three, possibly four, distinct cycles, and in one case, an extremely unusually phenomenon that exceeded guilt. She was on the verge of understanding it and needed another year. But she would not get another cent from the university. Despite accolades from some colleagues, her request for more funding was denied and her work deemed redundant.
“Previous studies have clearly shown us the cycles you claim to have found, Katie.” Dr. Joel Levine, the dean of psychiatry, advised her to wrap up her research, as he cleaned his glasses with his tie. “You can’t perpetuate this artificial healing process for your group. It’s not fair to them. Some in the department believe you’re using your subjects as a cornerstone for a bereavement center. Write your paper, or a book, then move on. Go out on a date. You know, you’re far more attractive than you allow yourself to be.”
Kate’s face reddened with fury, the same way it did at the faculty Christmas party, when the eminent Dr. Levine, married father of four children, groped her breasts and suggested they slip away to have sex like “a rabid mink” in the back seat of her Volvo.“Go to hell,” she hissed before slamming his office door, startling an undergraduate in the hall who dropped his books.
As today’s session ended, Kate steepled her fingers under her chin and informed the group that she had written to The San Francisco Star about the project with the hope that a sensitive article would give them positive exposure, and perhaps inspire the additional funding they needed to continue. She had violated university policy, but she didn’t give a damn. It was a matter of survival.
That night, alone in her Russian Hill apartment, taking in her view of the Golden Gate, Kate agonized over her decision. Had she done the right thing? Or was she reacting to Levine’s insult? She sipped a glass of white wine and continued reading files. She worried about each member. Most were healing, but she feared for those who might not recover. Ending the study now would mean irreparable damage. Anniversaries and birthdays were approaching. These were the most difficult times. It was coming up on one year since Angela’s daughter was stolen and killed. She was going to have a rough time. Then there was Edward Keller, her most unusual case.
She opened his file. An anniversary was coming up for him. She flipped through her notes, handwritten on yellow legal pads, biting her lip. So many deaths in one incident. He was the most withdrawn group member. The others were referrals from police or victims’ groups, Keller was a walk-in. He came to her office after seeing a newspaper ad. A somber man
with a whispering voice, he embodied pain.
His three children had drowned together in a boating accident. He nearly drowned trying to save them. He believed their deaths were his fault. So did his wife, who left him six months later. His grief went beyond guilt and remorse. Kate worried about him. Privately, she advised him to get independent therapy. He was consumed with their deaths, even though they had died so many years ago. It might as well been yesterday. His was an abnormal case of sustained grief reaction. He relived the tragedy over and over, condemning himself, begging for another chance. She came to one page that reminded her vividly of the night he stunned the group. She had written his words verbatim: “On certain nights, an energy flows through me, it’s hard to describe, it’s extremely powerful, but I sometimes believe I can bring them back, that it really is possible.” Flagging the note with an asterisk, she’d jotted “Delusional” next to it. She flipped back to the beginning of Keller’s file and checked the anniversary date of his children’s deaths. It was coming up. How was he going to survive?
Kate yawned, set her work aside, and switched on the late night TV news. The top story was the kidnapping of Danny Raphael Becker. Next came footage of a helicopter hovering over the area, police officers searching the neighborhood, some with dogs, Inspector Somebody saying that the police have no leads, frightened parents vowing to keep their children indoors. A picture of Danny Becker was shown for several seconds, and later a picture of Tanita, the reporter saying the police cannot rule out the possibility of a link between today’s case and Tanita’s murder, which remained unsolved. Kate feared for Angela. There was also some background about the controversy over the Sunday school teacher who proclaimed his innocence, then committed suicide after he was named as a suspect in Tanita’s murder. There was file footage of the man’s widow slapping the reporter who wrote the article for The San Francisco Star. Kate groaned. She had forgotten about the scandal over Tanita’s case. What was she thinking? Why didn’t she write the Chronicle or Examiner? What had she gotten herself into?
As the news droned, she thought of Danny’s parents, Angela Donner, and the people in her group. She switched off the TV, stared out at San Francisco’s skyline. More victims. Always more victims. Suffer the little children to come unto me, the malevolent deity.
She smelled mothballs and fresh, cold earth.
You are alone now, child.
I can bring them back.
NINE
Tom Reed was ninety minutes away from deadline when he returned to the Star’s newsroom.
Bruce Duggan, the weekend night editor, leaned back in his chair, entwining his fingers behind his head. His glasses rested atop his forehead, which had encroached upon his hairline. His black eyes peered from a wrinkled face that had settled into a permanent frown after twenty-five years in news. “Anybody else get the father, Reed?”
“No. It’s our exclusive. Cops sealed the house. The family is holding a press conference tomorrow.”
Duggan thought, “Put the father up high. The art is strong. It’s going A-1. Wilson filed a sider on Donner and some background for you. I’ll ship it to you. Work on the Donner murder. Is there a link?”
“Nothing official yet.”
Duggan replaced his glasses and resumed working at his computer. “I’ll need it fast to make first edition.”
At his desk Reed entered his personal code and his terminal came to life, requesting a story. He typed “KIDNAPPED.” A black, blinking cursor appeared, ticking off seconds on a blank screen.
Several floors below in the paper’s basement, a crew of pressmen readied the Star’s Metroliner presses. Less than an hour after they started rolling, sixty circulation trucks would rumble from the loading docks into the night, delivering a pound of information to three hundred thousand homes in the Greater Bay Area.
Reed’s story would be on the front page, above the fold.
The third paragraph of the story described police combing the area, that an expanded full-scale search for Danny and his abductor was to resume Sunday at sunrise. Reed studied his notes for the strongest quotes from Nathan Becker, flagging the exclusivity of the interview:
“It happened so fast. I had only taken my eyes from him for a few seconds,” Nathan Becker, 35, told The San Francisco Star minutes after he stopped his southbound BART train to chase the man who kidnapped his son...
Reed brought in Sydowski, identifying him as the primary detective in the Donner case, who was now helping on Danny Becker’s abduction, and disclosing that Sydowski had refused to link the two cases.
Reed glanced at his watch, typed a few commands, and captured the background written by Wilson. It began:
Last year two-year-old Tanita Marie Donner’s body was stuffed into a garbage bag hidden under a tire deep in a secluded wooded area of Gold Gate Park. Her killer remains free.
“Excuse me?”
Tad Chambers, an eighteen-year-old copy runner, stood before Reed, tapping a pen on his palm. “I’ve got this woman on hold who really wants to talk to you. Asked for you specifically.”
“Take her name and number.”
“She won’t leave her name, says it’s about the Donner murder.”
The Donner murder? Probably a crank. He’d received dozens of nut calls last year when the story broke. Today’s news of the Becker kidnapping was exciting the crazies. He should talk to her, just in case. That’s how he had gotten the Wallace tip.
“Okay, put her through.”
Tad disappeared across the newsroom. Then Reed’s line rang.
“Reed.”
“You wrote about the girl murdered last year, Tanita Donner?”
“Look, I’m on deadline. Please give me your name and number and I’ll call you right back.”
“I don’t want my name in the paper.”
“Listen ma’am--”
“What I have to tell you, I have to say now, while I’m up to it.”
“I won’t talk to you unless you tell me who you are. You know how people accuse us of making things up.”
She gave it some thought: “Florence.”
“Got a last name, Florence?”
“Just Florence.” She sounded grandmotherly, early sixties, working class, probably watched soaps and game shows all day.
“Why are you calling, Florence?”
“You know about that little boy who was kidnapped today, how they’re saying it’s just like that little baby girl who got murdered last year, but they don’t know who did it?”
“Go ahead.”
“I know who killed her.”
Sure you do, dear. “What’s the killer’s name?”
“I don’t know his real name.”
“Look, I’m really--how do you know this guy’s the killer?”
“I heard him confess. He said he did it and no one knows.”
“Really? Did you tell the police?”
“I called them. They said they needed more specific information from me. But they never came around. Never talked to me. So when that little boy got kidnapped today, I decided to call you.”
She continued. “I love crime stories. I read all the papers. Yours are the best, except for that mistake you made about the Sunday school teacher being the killer.”
“The Sunday school teacher didn’t kill Tanita Donner?”
“Well, not by the way the real killer talks. I wanted you to know what I heard, but don’t put my name in the paper. He scares me.”
“Do you think the killer also kidnapped Danny Becker?”
“What do you think? You’re a smart fella.”
“How did you come to hear Tanita Donner’s killer confess?”
A moment passed and Florence did not answer.
“Are you clairvoyant, Florence?”
“A psychic? Who… no, I’m a Roman Catholic. I sing in the choir at Our Lady Queen of Tearful Sorrows.”
“That’s lovely, Florence. Listen, I’m really sorry but unless you can be more specific--”
/> “I heard him tell God he did it.”
Under R, religious nut: bingo!
Suddenly Duggan loomed over him.
“Fifteen minutes.” Duggan tapped his watch.
Again, he asked for her full name and number. She refused.
“I’ve got to go, Florence.” Just a lonely old woman. Reed hung up, finished the story, read it, then sent it to Duggan through the computer system.
In the washroom, Reed bent over a sink, and ran the cold water. His tip on Wallace had come the same way, but the guy who called offered something concrete he could check: Wallace’s conviction in Virginia. Reed confirmed it and Sydowski confirmed Wallace was the suspect. Didn’t he? That Wallace tip had to have come from a cop, the voice sounded like an old source, yet Reed couldn’t put a name or face to it. This Florence person was a nut. “I heard him tell God.” Sure. But if Wallace killed Donner, why was the file still open? Did the killer call Reed to set up Wallace? That was Sydowski’s thinking, but Reed couldn’t accept it. For it meant the real killer was still out there. And now, with another child abduction, and in Balboa, it meant another child may be murdered and that he may have truly contributed to the death of an innocent man.
He splashed his face until he washed the fear from his mind.
The few strands of gray invading the temples of his short brown hair were multiplying. He was thirty-three. Thirty-three and he had nothing. Nothing that mattered. Nothing but his job, self-doubt, and an increasing affection for Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Sipping Whiskey. When Ann left, she opened the door to a dark truth, showing him exactly what he was. On the way back to his desk, Reed saw Molly Wilson reading the memos posted on the newsroom bulletin board.
“Hey, Tomster, finish the story?”
“Why haven’t you gone home yet?”
“Didn’t feel like it. Feel like a beer?”
“I’m tired. It’s been a long day. Can I take a rain check?”