by Dima Zales
I guess, now I think about it, I did have a picture in my mind: someone in a sharp suit, a cold, steely glint in her eye and maybe one of those ridiculous aluminum briefcases on the table next to her. That’s what I get for watching “L.A. Law,” I suppose. It’s pretty stupid of me, especially since I’m asking for her help.
They chat for a couple of minutes before John gets around to mentioning me and my reason for coming. She shakes my hand and introduces herself as Natalie. “I’m Sara. Nice to meet you!” She smiles, she makes eye contact, just like a regular person. She really does come across as a legitimately nice human being. I smile back at her.
“John says you need some legal advice? I don’t know what he told you, but I’m only in my second year, so I don’t know how much I can help you. But I’ll give it a try. What’s going on?”
I sit down across from her. “It’s not really advice exactly,” I say. “I just need to know if there’s any way to look at someone’s divorce papers.” John stares at me, and it doesn’t take a mind reader to guess what he’s thinking: something along the lines of “her boyfriend’s a freshman, how could he possibly be divorced already!” On the other hand Natalie doesn’t seem surprised – and why should she? She doesn’t know me at all; I might have a perfectly good reason to want to know.
I didn’t think it was possible, but her smile actually gets brighter. “That’s easy! I can definitely help you with that. Divorces are in the public record. You can request the papers yourself. All you have to do is go down to the county courthouse. You fill out a form – very straightforward, it should take five minutes. Then you just pay the fee – if I remember right, for Cuyahoga County it’s fifteen dollars and then a dollar a page.” She pauses. “Unless they’re sealed. In that case…”
“They wouldn’t be,” I say quickly. I hope they’re not.
“Well, then it’s like I said. Just go to the courthouse, pay the fee, you’re all set.”
That does sound easy. “Great!” I say. But I can see a potential snag. “How do I know which courthouse to go to?”
Her smile fades a bit. “Most likely it should be the county they lived in. But if you don’t know where that is – that would be a problem.” She thinks for a minute. “Maybe – no, I’m not sure where you’d go from there.”
That doesn’t sound quite as promising. Still, at least she gave me a place to start. The house where Dr. Walters lived is definitely in Cuyahoga County – you have to go way out past the suburbs to be in the next county. And there’s no reason to think he would have gotten divorced somewhere else. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.
I thank her. “It’s no problem,” she says. John asks me if I want to wait for him to take care of his business with Natalie so we can walk home together. That’s very gentlemanly of him.
“Sure,” I say. There’s no reason to tempt fate by walking back alone in the dark and the cold. It’s not like I expect Dr. Walters to be prowling the streets right outside waiting to snatch me, but you never know what else could happen.
I leave them to their work. I go hunt down a phone book, find the address of the county courthouse and write it down. Brian or Beth or I will have to find the time to go tomorrow, I guess.
Once that’s done I don’t have to wait too much longer; I guess whatever John’s helping Natalie with isn’t that difficult. I watch them as they finish up; she makes a point of sitting a little closer to him than she absolutely has to, and she keeps touching his arm while they work. He doesn’t seem to notice.
I wonder if it’s because now he’s seeing Diana and not paying attention to what any other woman does, or if it just doesn’t occur to him that a woman three years older than him might be interested in him? Why wouldn’t it occur to him? Why would he think a woman couldn’t be interested in someone younger than her? Look at Brian and me!
I take a deep breath. I’m getting offended at a thought that I’m imagining John might possibly be thinking, even though I don’t have the slightest reason to think he is. That doesn’t seem rational, does it?
I guess I’m just looking for anything to think about other than Dr. Walters. I keep doing that all the way home. We don’t talk much, mainly because it’s too cold to do anything besides just walk as quickly as we can manage. But I’m thinking about him and Natalie, debating whether I should just ask him whether he knows that she’s obviously interested in him. In the end, I decide not to; he seems happy enough with Diana, and I don’t need to go stirring up trouble where there isn’t any.
It’s eight-thirty when I get back to my room. Brian and Beth are both there, going over the notes he took down last night. He comes over to the door when I walk in, and he kisses me before I can even take my coat off. That’s just fine with me.
After – well, I’m not sure how long, honestly – Beth clears her throat and he lets me go. “Did you find anything out?” she asks.
“I hope so. If he got divorced here, we can get the records from the courthouse downtown.” If. And if not – better to not think about that unless we have to.
“I’ll go tomorrow,” Brian volunteers. “I’ve only got one class, in the morning.” That’s settled, then. My Tuesdays are pretty filled; I’ve got a class at nine-thirty, twelve-thirty and then three-thirty. There’s not enough time in between any of them to make it downtown and back.
“Perfect,” I say with more enthusiasm than I feel. I hate him having to go by himself, and I’m worried both that he won’t find anything when he gets there, and that he will. “So,” I say, hanging up my coat, “were you guys talking about me the whole time?”
It’s such a bad joke that neither of them respond.
We go over and over the notes. There are no big revelations, unfortunately. There’s nothing in the bedroom to indicate where the house it’s in might be located. We all assume that the watch reading three o’clock must mean that’s when he’s going to – to – I can’t even bring myself to think it.
“You know what,” I say, as the thought just now comes to me. “When I had the nightmare this morning, I had this feeling, this urge. I had to go to the window and look out. I don’t know why I felt that.”
Beth looks – I’m not sure why – impressed. “You were trying – it’s called lucid dreaming. You can learn to shape your dreams, have some conscious control over them. You were trying to see a street sign or maybe the address from the house across the street!”
It seems so obvious when she says it. That has to be what I was thinking. “But I didn’t – I got to the window,” I say, and I try to concentrate. Did I see anything? Trees. “There’s a big branch, it looks like it could support me. I think it’s just about out of reach if I opened the window and leaned out. The house across the way,” I can almost see it. “Red brick. There’s a big window down on the first floor looking into the living room.” I try to focus on the front door. The house number is right there, next to it. I close my eyes. “I think the first number of the address – I think it’s a seven,” I say, and out of nowhere I’ve got a blinding headache. I feel Brian’s arms around me, he’s supporting me, otherwise I’d just keel over.
It’s nearly midnight. Brian just left and I’m more than ready for bed. I’ve still got the headache, but it’s finally starting to hurt a little less. That’s not much comfort though – I’m sure it will come back full force when I have another nightmare tonight.
Beth is giving me my instructions. “You tell yourself, ‘I will look out the window,’ and you keep saying it to yourself until you fall asleep. OK? Over and over.”
I manage a weak smile and a thumbs-up, but I can’t quite produce any words. Beth pronounces that “good, great,” and she turns off the light, climbs into her bed. “’night, Sara.”
I don’t answer her. I’m trying to do what she says. Look out the window. Out the window. Out the window…
…Sara’s in a room, a bedroom. She’s been here before, and she knows there’s something she’s got to do. Something important. Ther
e’s somewhere she needs to look, somewhere specific. She racks her brain, knowing that she doesn’t have much time, not knowing why that is or how she knows it.
She sees the window, and she remembers – that’s where she has to look. She goes over, peers outside, not sure exactly what she’s supposed to be looking for. She tries to commit every detail she sees to memory, but the sound of footsteps, and then the door being thrown open, cut her short. She turns to see who’s coming in, and she screams…
A tree stump. A big tree stump. Four numbers, a seven and a two and I couldn’t make out the rest. A sign, but it was too far away to read the words.
What is all that? Why is it in my head? Why is it important? I have to write it down. I stumble out of bed, over to the desk, and there’s a notebook, it’s already open. I jot down everything that I’m thinking of, even though I don’t know what it means.
And then I do.
I catch myself from shouting – I did it! I made myself look out the window, and I saw, and I remembered – not everything, but a lot more than the last time. Then the rest of it comes back, all in a rush of images. My legs give out, and it’s only dumb luck that I fall right into my desk chair.
The sound doesn’t rouse Beth. I’ve never been as jealous of her the whole time we’ve known each other as I am right this minute. I would give absolutely anything for these nightmares to be over, to be able to sleep as peacefully as she is right now.
My first class today is at nine-thirty, and it turns out that Brian’s one class today is as well. It’s even in the same building as mine, so we’re walking over together. The sky is a dark, foreboding gray – darker and more foreboding than usual – and we need a new word past “bitterly” to describe how cold it is. My eyes are the only parts of my body that are exposed, and it feels like they’re going to freeze solid.
We walk pressed up against each other, and it’s very slow going. His presence does warm my heart somewhat, but the warmth doesn’t make it as far as my hands or feet.
We finally arrive, and when I pull off my gloves, I expect my fingers to be blue or maybe even purple. But they’re not; it only feels like frostbite was setting in. Once our faces are uncovered, we share a quick kiss and then Brian goes upstairs to his Materials Science class and I go downstairs to the big lecture hall for Physics.
I’ve got a second semester of it – electricity and magnetism this term. I have to have it for the pre-med program, and I’ve been telling myself that it can’t possibly be as bad as last semester. I hope.
After the first hour and fifteen minutes, I’m undecided. Nearly everything made sense to me immediately. The few things that didn’t became clear after rereading the text a couple of times. But I felt that way last semester, too, until a week or so after the first exam. So we’ll see.
When Brian comes out of his class, he looks shell-shocked. “My advisor said it was a little advanced for freshman year, but he thought I could handle it,” he says. “I’m not sure about that – it’s going to be rough.”
I throw my arms around his neck and kiss him. “Does that help at all?”
“I’m not sure,” he says with a straight face. “Give it another try?”
I do, and he can’t keep a smile off his face this time. “Much better, right?”
We get all our winter gear back on and head out into the Arctic. We talked about the plan over breakfast. I walk him to the bus stop on Euclid Avenue – that will take him downtown, and it’s closer than the train. He’s got the address for the courthouse, he’s got enough cash, he knows exactly what to do. I wait with him for the bus, even though every nerve in my body is crying out for me to get somewhere warm.
I guess it’s just one of those things you have to do for love
I don’t get back to the dorm until after five o’clock. I have no idea if Brian was successful or not. Right now my body is recovering from the walk back, and my brain is still going over everything I learned in Chemical Aspects of Living Systems. It’s going to be even better than I thought.
I lie down on my bed and it occurs to me that in some ways everything that’s happening now is sort of like how things will be in medical school and residency. Long hours and sleepless nights. Trying to solve difficult problems that don’t make any sense, without nearly enough information.
Facing death.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
I didn’t even hear Beth come in. “I’m not sure they’re worth that much right now,” I answer.
“No word yet?”
“Nope,” and just as I say that the phone rings. I pick it up. “Brian?”
It’s him. He can barely speak, though. I wonder if it’s possible for your vocal cords to freeze solid? If I understand him, he’s saying that he got the records. I’m going to just assume I’m right about that. “You’re fantastic!” I say, which would be true even if I’m wrong about what he said. “Why don’t we all go over to dinner, and we can look at everything afterwards?”
He makes a sound that I take as agreement, and I’m right about that at least because he’s looking out the window in the lobby of Allen House waiting for us when we head over to Lardner five minutes later.
“There’s no address! I can’t believe there’s no address!”
Beth actually punches the desk as she says it, and she’s not the only one who’s frustrated. We’ve been looking at Dr. Walters’ divorce papers, and there’s a lot there. But on the very front page, where the names and addresses of both parties ought to be, there’s only a post office box listed for him.
And for his ex-wife as well. So much for trying to find her and see what we could learn.
We do know quite a bit more about Dr. Walters now, though. He was married for four years, to a woman named Donna Francis. Donna had a daughter, Stephanie, who was born in November of 1971, which makes her eighteen now.
The cause listed for the divorce was “irreconcilable differences,” but there’s also a list of specific incidents, several of which involve the stepdaughter. In December of 1987, there was an altercation – it doesn’t say who started it or what it was about – that ended up with Dr. Walters requiring twenty stitches for a wound on his face. And that explains how he got his scar.
There was another “altercation” a year later, December 3rd, 1988 to be exact. It looks like that was the final straw for the wife. Again there’s no explanation of exactly what happened or whose fault it was, but it does mention that the stepdaughter got her arm broken. Donna filed for divorce ten days later, December 13th.
“Those are the dates of the murders,” Brian whispers, holding up the notebook where he’d written all the dates down with a shaking hand.
There’s more. The divorce was final in June of 1989. There was no alimony, but part of the settlement was that the house had to be sold, and Donna got two thirds of the proceeds. She also got a car – specifically a tan 1985 Cadillac Seville.
I don’t remember the exact model of the car in my nightmares, but it was a Cadillac, and it was tan.
“He wants things back the way they were,” Beth says, eyes wide. “He wants his house back, he wants his car back, he wants his face without a scar on it.”
Brian looks disgusted. “He thinks he can get it back by killing girls who…”
I cut him off. “Girls who are the same age as the one who he probably blames for everything. I bet if we knew what Stephanie looked like, she’d look like the two girls he’s – well, those two girls.”
We know a lot more, and we have an explanation – at least, a theory – for why he’s doing it. But we still don’t have any idea where he lives, and without that, I don’t know how we can stop him before Sunday.
“Jackie!” Beth says out of nowhere.
“What about her?” I don’t – oh! I dreamed about – he dreamed about her.
“He was going to go after her. Why?”
Jackie’s from around here. “You think she went to school with the stepdaughter?” It makes sense. She wo
uld have been in high school this time last year. That’s exactly what Beth thinks.
Five minutes later, I know she’s right. “Yeah, Stephanie Francis. I remember her,” Jackie says. “Last I saw her was right before Christmas last year. She came to school, I guess a day or two before Christmas vacation, had a broken arm.”
“What do you mean that was the last you saw her?” I ask, trying to keep very nasty thoughts out of my mind.
“I guess her and her Mom moved over Christmas. My father told me about it.”
I give her a blank look. “He’s a policeman. Somebody else in his office investigated – you know, a kid gets hurt like that, they always question the parents. Her Mom didn’t press charges, I guess, but she was splitting up with her husband. That’s the last I heard of it, and I never saw Stephanie again.”
I’m standing in her doorway, holding on to the door frame and hoping I don’t look as freaked out as I feel. But I guess I do, because Jackie calls me on it. “Are you OK? How do you even know Stephanie – wait! This has something to do with Christmas Eve, doesn’t it?”
I tell her no, of course not, but she doesn’t believe me.
“All right. I’ll tell you,” I say, hoping I can make this sound believable. “It really doesn’t have to do with Christmas. But we’re pretty sure that the guy who hurt Stephanie – he was a professor here. He was Beth’s advisor, actually. He just quit at the end of last semester, he’s gone now, and there’s all kinds of gossip, and it came out he had a stepdaughter.” That’s not even a lie, though it feels like one. “We were talking about it, and we guessed you might have gone to high school with her. That’s it, honestly.”