by David Beers
A fresh start.
That’s what he needed.
* * *
Seven months had passed since John sat in The Grill with his mother and was told he needed to fly across the world.
Now he looked at his room, a world that he started creating at ten years old. Six years of world building, and he had to decide what to take and what to leave.
The school year went by too fast. He hadn’t thought it would; next August had felt like a lifetime away. But now, next month, school started and he would be in another country, away from everyone he ever knew.
It’s for the best, he told himself.
And he knew that to be true, though he didn’t want it to be. He wished that he could say his mother and father didn’t love him and they were sending him away because they didn’t want to be around him anymore. None of that was true, though.
If he stayed, something would happen. Something really, really bad. Even now, he wasn’t sure putting an ocean between him and whatever this was could stop it. But, staying, especially with Vondi in the picture, wasn’t an option anymore. John felt like he might break—and soon.
He didn’t know if his mother understood the seriousness, how close he was each day to doing something irrevocable. The only thing keeping him from it was the thought of leaving.
And now, the day was almost upon him. He had one more week in the States and then he—and all his possessions—would be put on a plane to London.
Get started, he thought.
And so he did, picking through his clothes and putting them in suitcases. He wondered what kind of outfits they wore in England, if his wardrobe would be laughed at. Packing was good. It took his mind off the real reason for leaving, letting him imagine what life might be like if he quit contemplating murder.
20
Present Day
The first thing Alan noticed was that the room didn’t smell like bleach. Which wasn’t a good sign, at least not for his main investigation.
“So they’re going to go ahead and classify this as a murder?” Susan said.
“Yeah, that’s the plan.”
“No one has seen the priest? What’s his name again?” she asked.
“Charles Rapport.”
“When did he go missing?”
“First report was two days ago,” Alan said.
They both stood in the doorway to the priest’s office, not entering yet. Alan didn’t want to go in until Susan asked her questions, because when he went inside he would be focused. She would be, too, as long as she was able to ask whatever she wanted first.
“What have the crime scene techs taken so far?”
“Blood samples. Hair fibers. Fingerprints,” he said.
“So pretty much everything. You just want to take a look at the room?”
“Yeah, I’d like to lay my eyes on it before they clean everything.”
“And nothing else on the priest?” Susan asked. “No leads as to where he is.”
“Nada.”
“Alright,” she said. “Let’s go.”
She walked in first and Alan followed. The blood spatters were completely different than the ones Hilt usually caused.
“It wasn’t done with a gun,” he said as he knelt in front of the bar. Susan remained quiet, walking around the priest’s desk. He looked at the wall behind the bar, seeing that it was scuffed and dented some. “The perp must have shoved him into this, then cut him.”
Susan was quiet besides the sounds she made opening the desk drawers.
Alan stood up and walked back to the door, careful to step over any bloodstains. He looked out into the hallway where two uniformed police stood about fifteen feet further down. “Hey, can I get a look at the church member names? You have the list around here?”
“Sure,” the policeman on the right said. The man turned toward Alan and he saw the folder. Alan met him midway and the cop handed it to him. “We’ve been cross-checking the list for priors, so far nothing has shown up.”
“Thanks,” Alan said, not really listening to him, but flipping the pages quickly, looking for the letter H. He flipped one more page and found what he wanted. “Fucking-A!” he shouted, elation running through him.
He didn’t bother saying anything else to the two policemen, but jogged back to the priest’s office.
“Hey,” he said. “Guess who’s a member of this church?”
“You’re kidding,” Susan said, standing up from the bar.
“On page eight, John Hilt.”
“Holy Christ,” she said. “That’s three people.”
“I know,” Alan said, smiling. “Still think I’m off the mark with this guy?”
Susan walked to the doorway, pulling the rubber gloves off her hands. “It’s unbelievable. Do you think we can get a warrant?”
“I think we’ve got a good chance at it. This many people don't die around a single person. No one’s luck is that bad.”
“We can’t tie anything with physical evidence, though,” she said.
“Oh, I bet we can with this one. No bleach. His DNA is all over this office.”
“He’ll say he came in often for spiritual counseling,” Susan said.
“Probably. But the DNA combined with the other two murders connected to him? We’ll get a warrant. Then once he’s in jail, we’ll find the priest’s body then investigate London. It’s game over for him.”
* * *
Scott opened his eyes. He stared at the coffee table in front of him, and blinked a few times.
He didn’t remember falling asleep, not on the couch or anywhere else for that matter, but here he was, waking up.
He looked at the piles of paper on the coffee table and immediately a surge of adrenaline shot into his body. He fell asleep after reading all the files. That’s what happened. He hadn’t been able to hold his eyes open anymore.
Scott groaned as he pulled himself up from the couch, his body aching more than slightly. He was too old, but apparently not too foolish, to be sleeping on the couch. He sat up and looked at the papers scattered across the coffee table. Yes, he remembered the end of last night and was actually shocked that he fell asleep given what he’d found.
“Most likely nothing will come from it,” he said, his voice sounding full of sleep, though his mind was already racing.
Most likely, nothing would, but he didn’t have any other places to look. The further he dug in the notebooks last night, the more he believed something was wrong with John. Not like Lori had said at the end of her life, but the shrink was certainly worried about him.
His notes, though, were too sparse to tell the whole story. Scott was beginning to think he wouldn’t find anything with substance, and then he saw a bill.
For a psychiatrist.
Dr. Trevor Brighton.
And who had signed the bill?
Dr. Gerald Vondi.
* * *
Alicia looked at her phone.
For the first time in her life, she didn’t want to answer her father's call.
She didn’t know why he was calling, but he normally didn’t. Usually, he relied on the kids to call him, and that’s how it had always worked. Except this time. And what else could he call about but John?
Alicia sighed.
She reached for the phone and put it to her ear.
“Hey, Dad,” she said.
“You don’t like it when I call?” he said, smiling through the phone.
“It’s just that you never call, and I have a feeling this might be about John.”
“An old man can’t call his own daughter anymore without an ulterior motive?”
“Well, is it something other than John?” Alicia said.
“No, sweetheart,” he said and all the levity in his voice left like air from a popped balloon.
She sighed. “I figured. What’s up?”
“Well, I’m not really sure why I’m asking you this, or what it has to do with anything, but … do you remember the psychiatrist that your mot
her and brother used to see?”
Alicia didn’t say anything for a few seconds. She never thought about Dr. Vondi. In fact, she made a conscious effort to avoid him or anything about him. “Why?” she said.
A pause from her father then, because she never responded like that to him. She usually answered his every question, and did it happily.
“You wanted me to worry about John, and I am. I don’t want to talk about it all right now, but I know that the guy died, yet nothing stands out to me about it, so I was wondering if you remembered anything at all?”
* * *
Alicia didn’t want to remember what her father asked. Indeed, she wished she didn’t know the answer to his question.
She had been twenty or twenty-one, John around eighteen. She hadn’t seen him for some time, as he only returned from Europe for school vacations, but he finally came back, graduated with his diploma.
How long had he been back before Dr. Vondi died? Lord, time took away so many memories; she truly didn’t know. Six months? A year? She didn’t feel it had been longer than that—or not by much, at least.
The death would have stuck in her mind no matter what, as her family’s psychologist had died, but not like this. A place she refused to venture to.
The college semester was about to begin, for both her and John. She must have been a junior and he going into his freshman year. The summer was on the tail end of it’s life, getting ready to die so that autumn might live, and both she and John were laying at the pool. Normally, Alicia would have had a friend over, but for some reason she didn’t that day. John never invited anyone to the pool, and when he came by himself, he usually chatted with her and her friends, but mainly read or listened to music through his walkman.
That day, though, only the two of them occupied the pool, warm sun tanning both of their skins. John usually gave Alicia and her friends space, sitting at the other end, presumably so that they could gossip as needed without worrying what he might hear. Again, that day was different. He sat on one of the pool chairs beside her, letting the back down so that he could tan.
She turned her head, surprised to see him sitting so close, but she didn’t say anything. She closed her eyes and went back to feeling the sun’s warmth.
Maybe thirty minutes passed and Alicia turned, lying on her stomach.
“Mom told you about Vondi?” John asked.
“Huh?” Alicia said, reaching up to pull one of her headphones out of her ear.
“Vondi. Did Mom tell you what happened to him?”
“She said he passed away. That was it.” Alicia opened her eyes and looked across the chair to her brother. She was quiet, waiting to see what he had to say. Nothing, though, apparently, and after an awkward, lengthy pause, she said, “Why?”
“I don’t think she told anyone how,” John said. “Just that he died.”
“Should she have gone into more detail?”
John didn’t move at all, just sat with his sunglasses on staring up into the sky. “I don’t know. I just feel like I have to talk to someone about it, but she doesn’t want to. She won’t.”
“Why not? Was she closer to him than you were?”
“Oh, yeah. Without a doubt.”
“Are you okay? I mean, you can talk to me about it if you want, John. That’s fine.”
“I’m not sure I can,” he said and Alicia felt something—hope, maybe?—drop inside her. John never confided in her, and she, even if subconsciously, liked the idea that he might. Especially about something so large.
“You can, John. I won’t judge no matter what you say. You can’t keep things like that inside; it’s not healthy.”
Another long pause, which to Alicia, stretched on for an hour. Perhaps she was excited about her brother opening up, or maybe she just desperately wanted to know how the man died, but it seemed as if that pause would never end.
And when it did, she wished that it had gone on forever.
“Someone cut him. He was walking down the street and they cut him.”
“He was killed?” she said.
John nodded. Alicia’s mouth hung open but he lay still, calm.
“They said someone almost hacked his head off with a butcher’s knife. I heard they just left it lodged in his neck, while he lay on the street bleeding everywhere.”
“Oh, John, stop it,” Alicia said and closed her eyes, trying to block out the vision of a man’s slit throat, life emptying onto the road around him. “How do you know all that?”
The next silence seemed to hold an abhorrent pregnancy, as if whatever Alicia just asked was something John never wanted to tell anyone—but with the question in the air, something tugged at him to answer it.
“John?” she said, opening her eyes again.
He looked over to her, his sunglasses hiding whatever emotion his eyes held.
“John, how do you know?”
“I saw it in the paper,” he said, laying his head back down and looking up into the sky.
She stared for another five or ten minutes. Something didn’t feel right about that answer. If he could tell she looked at him, he didn’t show it.
“John, is that the truth?”
“How else would I know?” he said.
Alicia looked on for a few more minutes before getting up, drying the sweat off her, and heading back into the house.
She didn’t bring up the subject again, not with John or anyone else. That last question was something she didn’t want to know the answer to. John said it like … what other possible way would I know? But another way existed, and while it made no sense whatsoever, something in that conversation made her think he might have seen it himself.
* * *
“I spoke to John about it once,” Alicia said, hating each syllable that left her mouth.
“What did he say?” Scott asked.
“Dad, why are you doing this? I don’t want to talk about any of it.”
“You’re worried about John, aren’t you?”
“I was,” she said, “but we talked the other day and I think he’s okay. I think he’s under a lot of stress and it’s making him act weird. He’s not drinking, though.”
“Have you ever seen John drink?” Scott said, his voice quick—like a whip slapping across a bull’s back.
Alicia was stunned into a brief silence. She hadn’t heard her father speak like that before, not to her or anyone else. The normal kindness replaced with a seriousness that she didn’t understand … not from her father.
“What?” she said finally.
“Have you ever seen John drink? You said he wasn’t drinking, well I’m wondering if you’ve ever seen him? As a teenager? What about in his twenties?”
But she knew the answer.
The answer lay in those cold, sober eyes that she saw on that street years ago.
The story consisted of: John was an alcoholic, and the dark times sprang from when he picked up the bottle. Yet, somehow, he always did it in private. No one saw him actually falling down, unable to hold himself up or keep his balance. No one ever saw the hangovers or heard the slurred words. No, the symptoms of alcoholism were expressed somewhere else, always.
“Me either,” Scott said into her silence. “And yes, I’m worried, and now that you don’t want to tell me what you know about this doctor, it makes me worry more. I need to know, Alicia.”
“What are you trying to do? What does it matter? That was, like, almost twenty years ago, Dad. What could it possibly matter now?”
“It matters. Maybe I was wrong and there is something going on, and maybe it’s been going on for a long time. If so, I want to know, because I’ve ignored it my whole life. So, please, Alicia, tell me what you know about the doctor.”
Alicia told him.
* * *
“John, you’re a goddamn idiot,” the voice said.
“I told you not to answer,” Harry said.
John turned away from him, facing the restaurant’s window. The phone number had come up
as private when John looked at it, standing in line for a sandwich, Harry told him to leave it be. Curiosity, though, grabbed hold of him tight, and he answered.
John stepped out of line.
“What are you talking about?” he said, trying to keep his voice low. He didn’t need to ask who was on the other side of the phone; John dreamed about this voice, only instead of calling him a goddamn idiot, it always said you’re under arrest.
“You killed your priest?” Tremock said. “Seriously, man, how fucked up are you?”
John didn’t glance around for Harry, but walked out of the sandwich shop and onto the sidewalk. He looked around and then walked to the side of the building, wanting to get out of the high traffic area.
“Father Charles?” he said.
“Charles Rapport, but don’t ask like it’s a question. You killed him, didn’t you?”
“He’s dead?” John said.
“You tell me. Where is he?”
“Look, I need you to shoot straight with me. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is my priest okay?”
The detective laughed and John understood with finality that he would never convince this man. That if, in court, both blood and fingerprint evidence exonerated him, and convicted someone else, Tremock wouldn’t care. He knew that John did it and nothing could change his mind.
“You know he’s not okay, you sick fuck. I’m just curious, why him? It seems like everyone else was random. Those people in Europe. The people around you here. I mean, besides my partner. She wasn’t random. But everyone else, you didn’t know them, so why did you kill your priest?”
“You’re delusional,” John said, his voice no longer portraying confusion, but taking on the sound a lizard might take, if the lizard needed to explain to a cricket its lunch plans.
“Out of us two, I don’t think I’m the one with mental issues,” Tremock said. “I’m going to catch you. You know that right? I’m not worried about it. You want to know what keeps me up at night, though? I can’t decide if I’m going to kill you or bring you in.”