Can't Find My Way Home

by Carlene Thompson

  ‘You haven’t killed us so we’re obviously waiting for something,’ Brynn said, her own voice raspy from the screaming. ‘I’m guessing it’s your life story.’

  Garrett called Brynn. When there was no answer, he got in contact with the patrolman posted at the front of Cassie’s house. ‘I can’t get Brynn. Is she home?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sheriff,’ the young man said. ‘I took her to Doctor Ellis’s house, waited for her, then brought her home. She went in the front door. I could tell when she came out of the Ellis house that something had shaken her up, but she said she was OK. I brought her home and she said she was going to make some coffee for me. When she hadn’t come back with the coffee after twenty minutes, I got worried,’ he went on. ‘No one came to the door. I called the house. No answer. I headed toward the back of the house and found our guy Simpson unconscious. The EMS just picked him up and I called headquarters. You’ll be hearing it on the radio any minute. I asked for back-up. Someone might have been in the house. More likely, though, someone got in the house while Miss Wilder was at Ellis’s and I was waiting for her. They took her out the back door.’

  ‘Dammit!’ Garrett almost shouted.

  ‘Sorry, Sheriff, but everything looked fine from out front. A back window’s been broken out, so I’d say whoever took Miss Wilder knocked out Simpson before entering the house.’

  ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘Don’t know yet. Like I said, EMS just left with him. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. Is Cassie home?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Don’t let her enter the house until we’ve had a chance to go over it.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You said Brynn seemed upset when she came out of Edmund Ellis’s house?’

  ‘Yes, sir. And an ambulance came for him.’

  Edmund told me something about Tessa. That’s what Brynn had said when she’d called earlier and the battery in his cell phone was dying. What had Doctor Ellis told her? Did it have anything to do with someone taking her when she got back to Cassie’s?

  Garrett called Savannah’s cell phone again. Voicemail. Garrett cursed a few times. Then he said, ‘We’re going to the Cavanaughs’ house.’

  ‘How much did your father love you, Brynn?’ Tessa asked. ‘Enough to have sex with you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘How about Mark? Did he prefer a young, fresh guy, preferably his son?’

  ‘That’s sickening,’ Brynn spat.

  ‘No, no, it isn’t.’ Tessa spoke in a sweet, crooning voice. ‘It’s smart. For one thing, your father, who gives you a roof over your head, food on the table, nice clothes and even cars if you want them, deserves to have sexual partners who are quality. He needs partners who are young and clean, unsullied by other people, preferably of his own blood. It’s a fair exchange. Our father taught us this.’ She sounded as if she were repeating a memorized part. ‘I suppose Stone Jonah was too uptight to even discuss sex. He probably rarely had sex with your mother. I mean, she was beautiful and sweet and acted like she adored him, but after she’d given him two children, she had nothing left to give.’ She opened her hands, turned the palms upward and lifted them wide. ‘It only makes sense, Brynn. She’d done her job. But your father probably continued to have sex with her. He didn’t give her the rest she deserved after having two children. Our father was different. Considerate. He would have been even if our mother hadn’t gotten sick. Your father wasn’t. If he really loved your mother, he would have turned to Mark and you for his sexual needs.’

  ‘Tessa, do you have to go on like that in front of Savannah?’ Brynn asked quietly, although she seethed inside.

  ‘Yes. Savannah’s of age. Her father isn’t even married. He should turn to her for the satisfaction a man needs.’ She paused. ‘He may have already.’

  Savannah moaned.

  ‘Oh, I see that he has,’ Tessa said, pleased.

  ‘My dad would never touch me that way!’ Savannah suddenly shouted. ‘I hate you for saying he did!’

  ‘I didn’t say he did. I just said he may have. Pay attention, Savannah. I’m the director, as I am in the play. You must listen to me closely, not insult me by twisting my words or not listening carefully. Understand?’

  Savannah nodded pitifully. Brynn felt as if something was squeezing her heart.

  ‘My mother had a difficult pregnancy with Nathan,’ Tessa went on in a flat, narrative voice. ‘Almost immediately, she became pregnant again. She lost that fetus. A little over two years later, I was born. My father went through such misery, with my mother being pregnant twice in so short a time. I believe he saw other women during those years. Not prostitutes or sluts.’ Tessa stroked her wig hair, showing a crystal dragonfly-shaped ring on her middle left finger. ‘Women like your mother, Brynn. In fact, I think he was involved with your mother for a short time, particularly during and after Mother’s second pregnancy.’

  Brynn was so furious she went silent. Then she said unsteadily, ‘That is a lie.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure.’ Tessa stroked her hair again. ‘Just look at our resemblance.’

  Brynn tried to stare at Tessa with no expression in her eyes – no anger, no desire to fight, absolutely no feeling whatsoever. Tessa gazed at her closely and Brynn felt triumph at the disappointment on Tessa’s face.

  ‘My father started turning to Nathan for sexual satisfaction when Nate was five. Nathan didn’t like it. My father told me. Nathan began to fight Father when he was eight. By then, Father was spending part of his time with me. He said I was more docile, more appreciative.’

  ‘More appreciative?’ Brynn echoed.

  Tessa tilted her head. ‘I don’t remember those years very well, but I assume I fought less and I wasn’t as strong. Father didn’t ignore Nathan, though. He had sex with Nathan until he was in his early teens. He told me Nathan wasn’t always cooperative, particularly as he got older. Father would tie Nathan’s hands to that wooden post. That very rough wooden post over there. If you fought, it would make you bleed. Finally, Nathan fought too hard and Father kicked him. Nathan made an awful fuss, but Father couldn’t take him to the hospital because he was afraid Nathan would say how he’d been injured and Father knew that people at the hospital wouldn’t understand. He recovered but the injury caused another problem – Nathan was impotent.’

  ‘Tessa!’ Nathan barked. ‘They don’t need to know everything!’

  ‘Well, you were. You are. And very angry. Livid. But you didn’t dare take out your anger at home. You took it out on other people. Kids. No one could really blame you,’ Tessa said sweetly to Nathan. ‘I understood.’

  After a short silence, Nathan said in a lifeless voice, ‘I killed a five-year-old boy when I was fourteen. He was my first.’

  ‘He was fascinated by serial killers,’ Tessa went on as if Nathan wasn’t in the room. ‘He read about them and copied some of their techniques and learned all about DNA. He would keep the kid a prisoner for a while. Then he’d kill it, scrub it with bleach, and leave it someplace where it would be easily found.’

  Brynn noticed that Tessa referred to the victim as it. Didn’t she want to think of Nathan’s victims as people? Or did she simply have no empathy for them?

  ‘I never hurt them before I killed them,’ Nathan said defensively. ‘I just drugged them to keep them still. Then I told them my troubles – I couldn’t tell my friends. When I’d told them all there was to tell, I had to do away with them so they’d never tell my secrets.’

  Brynn’s thoughts spun. She remembered that the victims of GPK had no signs of torture or sexual molestation. Now she knew the reason they hadn’t been sexually abused.

  ‘You didn’t really keep them alive just to talk to them, did you, Nathan?’ Brynn asked. ‘You had another reason.’

  Nathan finally stood up and sauntered toward her. Even under these lights and these conditions, he was handsome. No wonder some of the kids went with him, especially the girls when he flashed that devastati
ng grin. ‘Whenever someone went missing, everybody talked about it. It was all over the news – parents crying, saying the kid’s name over and over to “humanize” the victim, begging. There was all this talk about the monster out there, roaming the streets.’ Nathan laughed. ‘You would have thought Jack the Ripper was on the loose. And here I was, just a fourteen-year-old kid. God, what a rush that gave me!’

  And you didn’t feel helpless anymore, Brynn thought. Your father had terrorized you, beaten you, resulting in an injury that left you feeling less than a man. But you showed that you were a man, didn’t you? When you took those kids, you held all the cards.

  Savannah had begun to cry again, silently, her body shaking. Brynn slid her tied hands up the support post, seeking the girl’s hands again. This time the stocking holding her hand to the post had caught on something. She rubbed her hands up and down slightly so she wouldn’t be seen. And that’s when she realized what she’d found …

  A screw that stuck out of the post at least two inches – a screw with threads sharp enough to tear nylon.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘Where are we?’ Brynn asked.

  ‘Where no one will ever find you,’ Tessa replied.

  ‘The place where Nathan kept his prisoners?’ Brynn persisted. ‘Have you stashed us in that same place?’

  ‘No.’ Nathan’s voice was sharp as a knife. ‘That place doesn’t exist anymore. I’m using a different place for you. You drove us to it, Brynn. If Mark hadn’t come here and you’d stayed in Miami and minded your own business, none of this would be happening. Tessa said she could scare you off with phone calls and returning some of your old stuff she’d stolen, but I knew she was just having fun. She shouldn’t have made that first phone call to Miami, dammit! That’s what got you stirred up. That’s what made you come here!’

  ‘My brother told me he was coming to Genessa Point. Then he disappeared. I would have come here phone call or no phone call.’ Nathan glared at Brynn, then at his sister, who ignored him. Brynn had a feeling she needed to keep talking, though. Nathan had looked at his watch four times. He was waiting for something or he had a plan for a certain time. She wanted to distract him as much as possible.

  ‘My father’s knife,’ she said suddenly. ‘How did you get hold of my father’s knife and why did you use it?’

  Nathan turned and began restlessly walking around the room. ‘Your father never liked me.’

  ‘That’s not true. You were friends with Mark.’

  ‘When we were young. When we hit our teens, the friendship started falling apart.’ Nathan stopped suddenly and looked at her. ‘I don’t like being watched and your father had his eyes on me all the time. Him and that friend of his, Doctor Ellis.’

  That devil. Brynn recalled Doctor Ellis’s words. Had he been talking about Nathan? ‘You mean he was suspicious of you?’

  Nathan began walking again. Everyone’s gaze followed him so Brynn started rubbing the cloth over the threads of the screw. ‘I didn’t know why they kept looking at me at first.’ He laughed. ‘Hell, for a while I thought your dad was gay and I was his type. Or … that he was like my father.’

  ‘You think what your father did to you was a result of being gay?’ Brynn burst out.

  ‘It was!’

  ‘He was guilty of sexual assault! That has nothing to do with being homosexual!’

  ‘Where did you read that, Brynn? Some book published by homosexuals?’

  ‘It’s common sense, Nathan. I’m always hearing about how smart you are. Couldn’t you figure that out when your father wanted Tessa just like he’d wanted you?’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Nathan said dismissively. ‘You didn’t live my life. But I endured it. And then, I began to enjoy the benefits of it. Dad let me do just about whatever I wanted, gave me plenty of money to spend and never nosed in my business, even though I think he might have guessed I was the infamous Genessa Point Killer. Tessa was such a sneak, following me all the time, she found out, but she adored me. She’d never have told the police. Anyway, I was doing just fine until I was almost sixteen and your father caught me with that coach. He was giving me copies of tests. That’s all. There wasn’t anything sexual between us. I didn’t even like the guy.’

  ‘But he liked you or he wouldn’t have given you copies of the tests.’

  Nathan shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And maybe you took advantage of his feelings for you so you could get hold of those tests.’

  ‘Yeah, but big deal. A few lousy tests and your father throws a hissy fit and gets the guy fired and me a suspension! Everyone thought the coach and I … well, you know.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know,’ Brynn said with a touch of drama that enabled her to move, to slide the nylon bond on her wrists back and forth across the screw threads. ‘I remember.’

  Nathan winced. ‘I had to get him back. I never went to your house again, although Mark and I were still sort of friends, but Tessa took a few more piano lessons. She was always quick on her feet, stealthy, good at stealing.’

  Tessa beamed as if Nathan were complimenting her beauty and intelligence.

  ‘Mark had told me about the knife he got your father, about carving the initials. I told Tessa it would be in his tackle box, where he kept it, and to get it. When your mother went outside for a few minutes during the lesson, Tessa swiped the knife and hid it under her clothes. I intended to use it on the next kills and finally kill your father with it to pay him back for what he’d done to me.’

  ‘Except that you didn’t pay him back. That’s not why I killed him, anyway,’ Tessa taunted Nathan, then turned to Brynn, as if they were good friends sharing gossip. ‘Nathan wouldn’t believe me that Stone Jonah was suspicious of him. I saw it in Jonah’s eyes. He was getting too close. So the day when Nathan was on that school trip to Baltimore, I came to your house and did what needed to be done. I’d been there with my camera a couple of times before so it didn’t seem as if I’d just turned up out of the blue. That day I insisted on taking a couple of pictures of Jonah. Then I tripped over his tackle box and went into a flurry of picking up everything and replacing it – except his knife. He didn’t notice. I went into the woods with two knives. The knife I used on Stone Jonah was the knife Mark gave him. I dropped Jonah’s knife in the knot hole of a tree. I didn’t go near your house and the woods to retrieve the knife for over almost a year. I was careful.’

  ‘You used the knot hole in a tree as a hiding place? Inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird, were you, Tessa?’ Brynn asked with a disconcerting smile. Her desire was to keep Tessa and Nathan at least semi-surprised.

  Tessa looked at Brynn searchingly for a moment, then leaned back her head and laughed. ‘It was a deeper knot hole than the one in the novel, but I’m surprised you actually know literature! You’d never know it by reading your books.’

  ‘You’ve hurt my feelings, Tessa.’ Brynn had noticed that Savannah stopped crying when Brynn traded insults with Tessa, as though Brynn was so strong she felt no fear, no intimidation. Actually, she’d never been so frightened in her life. ‘Why don’t you like my books, Tessa?’

  ‘I only read the biographies of women I admire.’

  ‘Such as Lizzie Borden?’

  Tessa laughed, low and husky. ‘Oh, Brynn, you’re on a roll, aren’t you? Well, have fun now, dear, because your good times won’t last for long.’

  Garrett pulled up to the large Cape Cod home belonging to the Cavanaughs. ‘I used to think this was the grandest house I’d ever seen.’

  ‘It’s impressive,’ Carder said.

  ‘From the outside. I have a feeling things aren’t so impressive inside.’ Garrett opened his door and let out Henry. If Tessa was home, he thought, she’d probably faint if he managed to talk his way in and brought Henry with him.

  Garrett rang the doorbell. They waited a minute and he rang again. Another minute went by. This time he knocked loudly on the door. He noticed Carder standing back and scanning all t
he front windows and knew he was looking for the movement of a drapery. Garrett knocked again. Finally he abandoned the door. ‘If someone’s home, they don’t want company.’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone at a window,’ Carder said. ‘Seems if Tessa was sick, she’d be home. Maybe she wouldn’t come to the door, but her brother would.’

  ‘If he’s home tending to his sick sister like a good brother should. Wish we could go inside and look, but we don’t have a warrant and no probable cause to get one. Let’s take a walk around the property. I think it’s about three acres.’ Garrett looked down. ‘Henry, keep your nose to the ground.’

  They saw well-tended, brilliant-colored beds of marigolds, impatiens, petunias, pansies, and zennias arranged in artful designs. ‘Sure are pretty flowers, Sheriff.’

  ‘Tessa won the Good Gardener Award from the garden club last year,’ Garrett told him, thinking about how Tessa had almost cried over winning the award. And now she had her petunias like the ones her father had destroyed in a fit of temper.

  ‘The Good Gardener Award?’ Carder repeated. ‘I never heard of it.’

  ‘I don’t think a lot of people have, but Tessa was proud of it.’ He sighed. ‘I guess she was trying to create something beautiful outside because I have a feeling the atmosphere in that house wasn’t so beautiful.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘I’m just going on a feeling,’ Garrett said. ‘I was friends with Nate for years, but I only set foot in that house one time. Nate’s dad descended on me like I was a thief sneaking around. He actually scared me. After living with my father, I didn’t think anyone could scare me, but Earl Cavanaugh did. Later, Nate told me his father was just really overprotective of his wife because she had cancer and was in a lot of pain and easily disturbed and blah, blah, blah. I didn’t believe it. Oh, Mrs Cavanaugh had cancer, but that wasn’t the reason Earl didn’t want outsiders in his home.’