by Lia Kane
“Okay. I’m listening.”
“I couldn’t tell you until now because I was scared you were involved with Victor. It seemed like the two of your got very close in a short period of time. I knew he got to Kelly and used her like a puppet, so I thought that the same thing was happening with you. When Hope House burned down, I knew Victor was behind it. I just didn’t know if you were one of us, or one of the bad guys. But now I know. I can trust you.”
“Of course you can trust me,” I reassured her, but didn’t waste any time asking her my next question. “How did you know that Victor was behind everything that happened?”
“Because I saw him kill Alyssa,” she whispered tearfully. “She was my friend, Jerrika. I saw her die with my own eyes.”
I felt my stomach drop. “Oh my God Lucy, how…?”
“Remember I told you how Alyssa and I became friends? She was in the hospital around the clock with Victor, and I was his nurse while he was recovering from the accident. It wasn’t a normal recovery, though. He had lost a lot of blood. He had to have a transfusion.”
“Let me guess. That’s how he got VAM.”
Lucy nodded. “After the initial transfusion, his labs kept showing that his red blood cell count was way too low. So they transfused him again. And again, and again, and his body devoured the blood every time. Just a few days into his recovery, they suspected VAM and tested him for it. He was positive. So yes, Victor got his VAM from the least likely source of transmission – a blood transfusion. Seven years ago when all of this it happened, VAM was not yet on to the mandated list of infectious diseases that we screen for when a donor gives blood.”
“Unbelievable.”
“I know. And for a while, I felt sorry for him. In addition to recovering from the wreck and his surgery, Victor was having to learn how to live with his newly acquired VAM infection. It was a lot to handle all at once, but truth be told, it was far more stressful for Alyssa than it was on him.”
“Did he pass the disease on to her?”
“Not at first. Once they found out that he would be a blood feeder for the rest of his days, it was a no-brainer. Alyssa’s new job in life was to stay uninfected and be her husband’s familiar donor. For a few weeks after he returned home, things seemed to be okay. Victor was rebuilding his strength, and Alyssa was adjusting to daily blood draws. They both got right back to wearing their mayor and mayor’s wife masks, always smiling and happy on the outside. They kept Victor’s VAM-positive status quiet and didn’t release the news. As healthcare professionals, we’re all bound to keep that kind of information confidential anyway, but because Victor was such a high-profile patient, the hospital administrators called everyone in for a sit-down and gave us copies of the hospital policy about HIPAA – that’s the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which is heavy on protecting patient confidentiality. They scared the daylights out of that small group of us who knew that Victor had contracted VAM, so we’ve all kept our mouths shut about it over the years, fearful that we’d lose our jobs if we didn’t. Blue Sky had a newly infected VAMP mayor and no one, other than that small group of us, ever knew about it.”
I let the information sink in. “You said that things were good between Victor and Alyssa for few weeks after he came home, right? What changed that?”
“Alyssa got sick,” Lucy said, instinctively lowering her voice a notch. “She came to me one day, hysterical and in tears. She said that Victor was getting ‘rough’ with her. He was wanting more and more blood each day and was becoming forceful about getting it. She was tired all the time, and couldn’t keep any food down. Alyssa was scared she might have contracted VAM from her husband, but didn’t know how it could have been possible. She said they’d never had any kind of contact involving body fluids since he had been infected. Not even so much as a kiss. I drew blood from her took it to a friend in the lab for a full workup. She didn’t have VAM.” Lucy reached for another cigarette, but stopped herself, wiping tears from her face. “She was going to have a baby.”
I gasped. “She got pregnant before the wreck.”
“Yeah,” said Lucy, as she resumed her original mission and plucked a new cigarette from the dwindling pack. “The ultrasound showed that she was about 12 weeks along. You see the problem here, don’t you? You can’t be pregnant and be a familiar donor. There’s no way to pull a pint of blood out of your body every day when a baby growing inside you needs it.”
“Oh… poor Alyssa…”
“I’ve never seen a person cry so hard. They had been trying for ages to conceive, and once it finally happened, the timing could not have been worse. She had to figure out what to do, and fast. Even if there hadn’t been a baby in the picture, she was worried about her future with Victor. The more she talked about what was going on at home, the clearer it became to me that he was being abusive. He was restraining her if she tried to leave the house while he was hungry, and was forcing her to draw her blood more than once a day. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. It’s like he was addicted to her blood and would do whatever he had to do to get it out of her. Maybe he was getting some kind of rush out of the pregnancy hormones… ugh.” Lucy winced with disgust. “I guess it would make sense. Blood is the essence life, you know? A newly conceived baby is life in its purest form. Maybe that’s what had him so strung out.”
Listening to her describe Victor’s behavior, I felt sick inside. This didn’t sound like the charming, passionate man that I had so quickly fallen for. Then again, it did sound a lot like a man who could torch down a house full of innocent children and not bat an eyelash. I felt anger and hatred surge through my body, quickly filling the empty space in my heart that once trusted – and almost loved him.
“What did Alyssa do?” I asked.
“She decided that day that she had to leave him,” Lucy explained. “It’s not like she had a choice. She had to protect herself and her baby, and she knew there would be no way to reason with Victor about it. He was hell-bent on keeping his VAM status private, which left him completely dependent on Alyssa’s blood. Since she couldn’t give it up any longer, she had to run to save herself and her child.”
“So she left?”
“That night, she did. Alyssa went home and pretended like everything was normal. She waited until he was asleep and packed her bags with a couple of weeks’ worth of clothes and toiletries. She called me and I drove to their neighborhood, parked and waited at the end of the street for her to come out. She made it as far as the door when he woke up and saw her leaving. That’s when I heard her screaming. I had brought a gun with me just in case, so I grabbed it and ran to the front door of their house. I banged on it, and the screaming stopped. A few seconds later, Victor opened the door. I pointed the gun at him and told him to let Alyssa go. So he stood aside and let Alyssa walk out, while I let the air out of the tires on their vehicles so he couldn’t follow us. He told her she was wasting her time, and that he’d find her.”
I shuddered.
“I took her to stay in my father’s house – a little mountainside cottage, about an hour to the north and west of Blue Sky. He was in a nursing home at the time, and I was tending to his property until he passed away. We got there late that night, and as we were unpacking, I was horrified to see that Alyssa had a wound on her neck.”
“He bit her,” I said with disgust.
“He did it as she was trying to fight her way out the door. He infected her with VAM.”
“Why would he do that? Didn’t he realize that by infecting her, he’d be cutting off his own food supply?”
“By that point, he wasn’t thinking at all. He was out of control, and couldn’t be satisfied. Like I told you, he was addicted to her blood, and clearly would do whatever it took to get it,” Lucy said. “Anyway, Alyssa was newly infected with VAM, but at least she had broken free from her abuser. I got her settled in at my father’s house and we both felt like she was far enough away from Victor that she was safe. I went back into Blue Sky
and played dumb when I heard about her disappearance. A few days passed and everything seemed to be going so smoothly, until I came home one day and found Victor waiting for me inside after breaking into my house. He wanted to know where Alyssa was. I told him that he would never find out. He had found my own gun and turned it on me, but quickly put it away after I told him that Alyssa had prepared a written statement about everything that had happened – how he had contracted VAM and had become abusive toward her, and she’d had no choice but to flee for her life. I told him that the letter was secured in a safe deposit box. Should anything happen to either of us, the box would be opened, and his dirty little secrets would be out – that he was a VAMP and an abusive husband. And if he didn’t want that, then he needed to leave us both the hell alone.”
“Did Alyssa really write such a letter?”
“No,” said Lucy. “I’m just a fast thinker and a good liar. It was enough to scare him away for a while. He was so vain, so afraid of the town finding out that he had VAM, he very quickly concocted a cover up. Victor went to the police and filed a missing persons report on Alyssa. He had a press conference later that day and blamed Alyssa’s disappearance on her supposed post-traumatic stress from their wreck. He held up a framed picture of her and cried like a baby for the cameras. The whole town rallied around him, sending search parties into the woods, holding candlelight vigils, the whole nine yards. The sympathy factor was running high, and of course, he was re-elected mayor of Blue Sky shortly after that.”
“That scumbag!” I blurted out loud. “That lying, shady, manipulative prick…”
“I know, I know,” Lucy interrupted. “He really is. Or was. He’s dead now and can rot in hell.”
“What about Alyssa? How did he find her? When did he kill her?”
“I’m getting there,” Lucy promised. “It happened almost a year after she left Victor. I kept my eye on him that entire time, and thought he had moved on and forgotten about her. It was obvious he had found another familiar donor, as he was looking as healthy as ever, and there was still no public leak of his VAM status. Alyssa stayed put in my father’s house all that time, and I grabbed a pint or two of blood on the sly from my patients at the hospital to keep her fed.”
“And what about the baby?”
Lucy smiled. “It was a boy, and she named him Jonathan.” She blinked, and tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Jonathan. You mean… our Jonathan?”
She nodded.
I was speechless.
“Alyssa called me when she went into labor,” Lucy continued. “I went to my father’s house to help her deliver him. Jonathan arrived VAM-positive, but otherwise healthy. Alyssa bounced back quickly from the pregnancy and had a few happy months with her baby before Victor finally killed her.”
“How did he find her?”
“He had been watching me the whole time. I always tried to look behind me and make sure I wasn’t being followed by another vehicle when I went to see Alyssa, but after a whole year, I had gotten comfortable with thinking that we were safe. He waited until I let my guard down. I got this bad feeling one day when I made the turn to the cottage, and when I looked into the rearview mirror, I saw a vehicle that I knew I had seen before, more than once. I tried to tell myself that it was nothing, that I was just overreacting. But when I came back the following day, the front door had been kicked in, and Alyssa was gone. Jonathan was still there, screaming in his crib.”
I shook my head with disbelief. “He took Alyssa and killed her, but left his own son behind?”
“He never knew about Jonathan. Remember, I told you that I saw it all happen. It was caught on videotape.” Lucy paused to finish one more cigarette. “When Alyssa first moved in, she was stir-crazy with boredom. There was no one else to talk to, no television, no Internet, nothing to do but lay low and stay out of sight. She went through some storage boxes of my Dad’s belongings, searching for books or puzzles or anything else she could find to help her pass the time. She found an old video camera and some empty VCR cassettes, so she decided to make a video diary for her baby while he was growing in her womb. She set up the camera in the living room, and recorded daily entries of herself talking to Jonathan. She filled up six cassettes throughout her pregnancy, and kept on going after he was born. She had just started recording a daily entry when Victor kicked the door down.”
I felt my heart stop for a hot second. “You have her murder on tape.”
She nodded. “Victor grabbed her and tried to drag her out the door. He was shouting the whole time how much he loved her; that he was still her husband and she belonged at home with him. She fought back, but wasn’t strong enough to defend herself. In the scuffle, he bashed her head into the wall, then cried like a baby when he realized he had killed her. He carried her body out the door, and then it was over. He was so crazed that he never even noticed the baby bottle full of blood on the end table; never saw the baby blanket and the blue teddy bear on the sofa. Jonathan was asleep in a crib in the back of the cottage when it happened, so Victor left without even so much as a clue that he was a father.”
“Thank God. Did you give a copy of the tape to the police?”
Lucy shook her head. “I got a call from Victor the next day. He told me that he knew that I had lied; that there were no safe deposit boxes at any bank in Blue Sky in my name or Alyssa’s. He said that his wife was back home where she belonged, and if I spoke to the police or anyone else about it, he would come for me next.”
“But you had evidence of the murder on tape. Why didn’t you do anything with it?”
“Anyone who would have looked at the tape – whether it was the police or Victor himself – would have seen all of those things in the video that I told you about. The bottle, the teddy bear… they would have realized that there had been a baby in the cottage. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let anyone find out that Jonathan was Victor’s flesh and blood, because that would have given Victor the opportunity to hurt him. So to protect him –”
“You took him to the orphanage and said that he had been left in the drop box.”
Lucy closed her eyes and rested her face in her hands. “I had no other choice. I’ve lived my life in fear ever since the day Alyssa was murdered. Not that Victor would harm me, but that he would find out he had a son. So yes, I lied and said that Jonathan was abandoned at the drop box. It was the only way I could protect him. ”
“I know.” I rested my hand on her arm. “And you’ve done that. You’ve kept him safe all these years. Now that Victor is gone, you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
“I don’t want him to ever know that Victor was his father.”
“So don’t tell him.”
“I won’t. But I want him to know all about Alyssa. He deserves to know the truth about his mother; that she was a good woman, and she loved him very much.” Lucy exhaled with a deep sigh. “I’ve got more than 30 solid hours of her telling him so on tape. With your permission, I want to let Jonathan see them.”
“You don’t need my permission,” I said. “Just turn in the tape with the murder to the police so they’ll have the complete picture of what happened. It’s the right thing to do. The rest of the tapes rest rightfully belong to Jonathan, and I think it would help him to see them.”
Lucy embraced me, then called Jonathan over to the table again. I stepped away and watched from a distance as Lucy told him all about his mother.
• • •
The Holiday Inn staff managed to find an old VCR in their conference center equipment closet, which they delivered to our room and connected to the TV.
Lucy sat next to Jonathan on the sofa. “Are you sure you’re ready, sweetheart?”
“Yes. I’m ready.”
My hands trembled as I slid the video cassette marked “My Diary For Jonathan - #1” into the VCR. Bands of static rolled up the TV screen. Then the face of a young woman appeared.
“Hello, sweetheart,” said Alyssa Drake. “I wou
ld call you by your name, but I don’t even know what it is yet.” She stood and brought her midsection into view, rubbing her hand in a circle around her belly. “This is where you are right now. You’re about the size of a peanut. Can you believe that?”
She settled back into her seat, her face framed by the TV screen again. She was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed natural beauty. In spite of her sunken cheeks and the dark circles that rimmed her eyelids, there was still a brightness to her face; a light in her eyes. She was beautiful.
“I have so much to tell you,” she began. “I hope and pray, little baby, that one day I can tell you everything myself, when you’re old enough to understand. But just in case I can’t, I’m leaving this video diary for you.”
She paused and looked down for a moment, deep in thought. Then her eyes flicked toward the video camera again. “I’m different, baby. Different from others. You’re going to be different, too. People fear what they don’t understand; sometimes fear makes people hate what they don’t understand. And that makes it dangerous to be different. I wish I could change that, but I can’t.” Her eyes watered.
“You’ll understand what I’m talking about all too soon. When the world is cruel to you, I want you to be strong. If there is ever a time when you feel like no one loves you or cares about you, I want you to know that I love you and always will. Even if something happens to me, even if I’m not around when you watch this tape, I will always, always love you. Love is stronger than hate, my baby, and it is stronger than death. Never forget that.”
For a moment, all I could do was stare at Jonathan, who watched the television screen in wide-eyed wonder. Then I backed out of the room as I felt like it was a moment in time that belonged to just the three of them - Jonathan, the mother of his past, and the mother of his present and future.
I hovered just outside of the doorway, wanting to hear the rest of what Alyssa Drake had to say. It was a bizarre and beautiful thing to witness a mother who had been dead for almost seven years tell her child for the very first time that she loved him.