A Twist of the Knife

  From the first shot I could hear Larry barking in the hallway. Now he threw his body against the bedroom door, trying to get to his mistress.

  “I won’t,” Laura said again, and fired.

  Alison dropped to the floor.

  But the blood I was expecting, from one taken through the heart, did not come. My eyes slipped over her form and found that she’d taken it in the shin, probably shattering the bone, and her forward motion tumbled her over. She lay on her side, writhing with pain, clutching her improbably bent leg while Larry whimpered and whined and barked beyond the door.

  Laura had already slid down the wall and was sitting with her knees up, holding the gun in two hands but not exactly aiming it at Alison. That looked good to me, and I slid wearily down, too, feeling my back against the door, feeling the bumps as Larry hit it on the other side with his body. Laura didn’t bother to speak to me. I didn’t bother to tell her I was sorry to doubt her.

  I didn’t hear Todd and Delgado drive up, but I heard them in the hallway comforting Larry, who just sounded sad and uncertain at this point. Then I moved my butt away from the door so they could come in. Delgado secured Alison and called an ambulance while Todd went into the bathroom. “You can call the ME and a meat wagon, too,” he said to Delgado when he came out.

  Delgado looked at Laura, who still sat holding the gun. “Thank you, Agent Coleman,” he said.

  Not being able to resist one little snark, I said, “For solving the Creighton case, you mean.” I was watching Todd as I said it.

  You didn’t say anything about Laura to Delgado.

  No.

  When the ambulance arrived, I finally got up off the floor and walked out next to Alison’s gurney. Delgado went to stop me, but I pressed Marcus Creighton’s letter to Kirsten into her hand.

  “You go real easy on her,” I said to Delgado. “I’m going to find out if you don’t.”

  “I’m going to have to make something up here.”

  “People like us are good at that.”

  “I’m serious. With SWAT we could have saved Erroll,” he said.

  “No you couldn’t. You would have just lost Alison, too,” I said. “And maybe Laura or me. I think we got a good deal on that.”

  Alison was understandably ungrateful. She called out to me. “Brigid! What about Larry?”

  “Laura will take care of Larry,” I called back.

  Laura had followed me out, and I felt her flinch beside me, but she had the good sense not to say anything. I turned to her as Delgado pulled away. “It’ll be good for you, force you to be a little less compulsive,” I said. “Plus you get a guard dog.”

  “You’re bleeding,” she said, pointing out a trickle that ran down my forearm to my wrist. “You should get a tetanus shot.”

  That was pretty much all that was said of the evening’s events at that point.

  Forty-seven

  Early the morning after her arrest I visited Alison in jail, where she was being held in hospital lockdown without bond. I had to give up my cell phone while I was visiting her, so the call from Mom went to voice mail.

  When I sat down next to Alison’s bed, with a guard stationed discreetly just outside the door, she first asked how Larry was doing, and I told her he was getting along well with Laura. I didn’t mention that he had eaten the couch, and Laura was going to have to get used to not having her house quite as tidy as she had been accustomed.

  Alison asked about Laura, too, said she was sorry for trying to force her hand that way. I told her Laura was going to be fine. It was part of Alison’s innate kindness, to be thinking of Laura.

  Then I asked her to tell me about her and her father, what really happened that night.

  She ignored that. She started to lift her hand in my direction before she remembered she was cuffed to the side of the bed. “Do you want to know where I was the night my mother and brother and sister were murdered? I had run away. How pathetic is that? If I’d been home that night, I know I might not have been able to save my mother, but if I’d done what my father told me to do, gone to the sleepover, Sara and Devon wouldn’t have died. I’ve always known this.”

  “You were only fourteen,” I said. I pleaded with Alison, Kirsten, savior, killer.

  As she told her story I saw them all:

  It started with a fight the night of the killings. Kirsten had come into her parents’ bathroom to ask her mother about dinner. Her mother had already started on her first glass of wine. Kirsten’s father was gone for a brief out-of-town trip, who knew where, and would be back in a few days. Before he left, he said Kirsten was in charge. That was the only acknowledgment he ever made of the family being in ruins. She was to take Sara and Devon to a community sleepover that night.

  “I’m not going,” Kirsten said to her mother.

  “Your father told you to do it. You’re supposed to stay there with them. They’re too little to be left alone overnight.”

  “Oh, like you care about any of us,” Kirsten said, looking at her mother’s back and at the reflection of them both in the bathroom mirror. Seeing herself seemed to encourage the drama. “Look at you. You’re a mess, Mom. You didn’t even get dressed today.”

  “I get dressed,” Kathleen said, as if, already beaten by the familiar argument to come, this was at least one point she could verify.

  “You slept in those yoga pants and T-shirt, Mommy,” Kirsten said. “And you could wash your hair once a week.” She turned to leave. “I’m outta here.”

  “You better not be going to that boy’s house,” Mom said, in an effort not to appear totally out of control of the situation.

  “What difference does it make where I go?”

  “He won’t respect you.”

  “Where’d you get that line, out of the Middle Ages? You’re talking about sex, right? Well, get this. I don’t want his respect. Why don’t you at least be honest and admit you don’t give a fuck who I sleep with? I know all you’re worried about is whether I take the twins out tonight so you don’t have to be their mother.”

  Mom leaned back on the counter as if the words had struck her. Kirsten saw her sober on the instant, her eyes narrowed. Mom said, “You think you’re so grown up, that you know everything there is to know. Well, then, get this, Kirsten. Your father is fucking somebody else.”

  Kirsten had turned to go, but this stopped her. Or rather it felt as if she had stopped but all the blood in her body had kept going and now she was drained of everything. It was a lie; her mother was just trying to be vicious. And yet, a child is really no match for an adult. All Kirsten could think of to say was, “He is not.”

  “He is.”

  “You’re nuts, Mom. You’re just drunk and talking.”

  “I know her. Her name is Shayna Murry. She thinks she’s an ar-teest.” Mom tried to look all cool and uncaring when she took a sip of her wine, but Kirsten saw her hand shake.

  “I saw them,” Mom said.

  Kirsten wanted to cover her eyes and ears like at the worst part of a horror movie, but couldn’t bear not to see what was in the basement. Like an accusation more than a question, she said, “When?”

  “Long time ago. He doesn’t know I saw. They were in the bar at Harrison’s. They were turned toward each other on their stools. Their knees were interlocked, one of his between hers—”

  “No.”

  “And the inside of her other leg tucked against the outside of his leg. Like this.” Kathleen bent her fingers and interlaced the knuckles of her right hand with the left. She rubbed the fingers slowly together and apart.

  “No.”

  “He swiveled his stool back and forth real slowly. His knee rubbed the insides of her legs.”

  Kirsten didn’t say anything.

  “She picked up her wine from the bar without taking her eyes off his, and she took a tiny sip. She didn’t swallow. Then she put her index finger on his jaw and ran it down his neck until it hooked into his shirt under this little depression at the bottom of
his throat where the first button of his shirt was buttoned.”

  Kirsten didn’t say anything.

  “Then she pulled him to her so his knee pressed against her crotch, and her knee against his. Then she kissed him. She must have tasted like wine. When they pulled away I saw his tongue pull out of her mouth. Then she swallowed.” Kathleen stopped to see the effect she had had. “I bet you understand what she was promising.”

  It was true, Kirsten was old enough and had enough personal experience to understand what she was being told. She didn’t realize that she wasn’t old enough yet to judge the ugliness of a mother telling her child these things, let alone about her own father. She couldn’t sympathize at the time that there was too much pain built up in one person, so much pain it spilled over this way. It would take years for her to come to this understanding of her mother, and by that time it would be too late.

  On that afternoon Kirsten reeled a bit, dizzy without knowing why.

  Adults always know when they’ve won. With a mixture of satisfaction and a dash of some remaining regret in her voice, Mom said, “Yeah. You’re a real big girl now, aren’t you?” She turned on the faucet in the bathroom sink. “Go ahead and go. I think I’ll wash my hair.”

  Kirsten walked into the living room and then into the family room, turning off a rerun of South Park. “Don’t you guys watch Dora the Explorer anymore?” she asked. The twins looked up expectantly. Kirsten felt the warmth of love wash through her that she had been feeling more and more no matter what she told her mother. She expected this happened when little ones turned that needy look on you.

  “What’s for dinner?” Sara asked, ever hopeful, because very often there was dinner.

  Kirsten put on a smile and knew they couldn’t tell it was fake, because they were already used to this pretend life, and they wouldn’t notice the wet sheen coming up over her eyes. “It’s Raisin Bran night,” she said.

  Sara and Devon both brightened. Raisin Bran night was one of their favorites.

  There was actually a chance that Mom would get her act together enough to fix a bag of frozen P. F. Chang’s for the kids, but just in case, Kirsten went into the kitchen and took the cereal box and two bowls down from the cupboards because she knew they couldn’t reach them. They could get to the milk all right, and maybe this time they wouldn’t dump it on the table.

  Kirsten went into the garage to get her bike.

  She pedaled over to her friend Adam’s house on John’s Island. The Lupitskys were in the Caribbean for spring break and she had the key for their poolhouse. She had had it with being a mom. Didn’t she deserve to be a kid? Life was supposed to be happy, fun. Let her parents stew over where she was when she didn’t come home for a couple of nights.

  She took one call from her Dad, on the cell phone she took from her mom’s purse.

  I remembered what Gutierrez told me about that phone call. Now I knew who Creighton was talking to. “He called to remind you to take your brother and sister to the sleepover, didn’t he? He said, ‘Let them go.’”

  Alison looked surprised. “How did you know that?”

  I shrugged. “What did you say back to him?”

  “I told him I’d take them. But I didn’t.”

  That night she stayed in the Lupitsky poolhouse, on the couch. It was no big deal; she had done this before, stayed out all night. Once she’d slept on the beach. Word had gotten around school that she was a slut. Maybe she was.

  But not her dad. He was a good husband and father. He hadn’t done the things her mom said he did. He called again, but she didn’t answer.

  She fell asleep watching TV on the couch, and the news woke her up in the morning. As she came awake, she saw on the television screen what looked like her house in the early-morning light. It was her house. Then she saw the front door open and her father led out with his hands cuffed behind him. The reporters swarmed in but were kept from asking any questions by attending policemen. One of them opened the back door of the police car parked in the driveway and helped her father inside.

  Alison said, “They reported everything that we now know. Mistress. Blown alibi. Taken in for questioning regarding the murder of his wife and family.”

  As she watched the broadcast, Kirsten was at first just dazed. Murder. Mistress. Her father was screwing around after all. This was a true story, and the rest of the story he lied about. He knew Kirsten had run off again, and he took Sara and Devon somewhere. He took them somewhere. Kirsten’s imagination circled around that thought but didn’t dare go any further. Her father couldn’t be her father. Her father wouldn’t …

  He knew she wasn’t dead. Yet. If he got out, he’d be looking for her. She had to run.

  Alison made that circular motion with her finger at the side of her head. “Nutso, huh?”

  “Obviously. You were traumatized,” I said.

  What were her other choices now? Go home to an empty house? Turn herself in to child protective services? Or just head out.

  Alison said, “I was just like the rest of the children who run off or get lured. Angry, lonely, and frightened. I rode my bike to I-95 and hitched a ride with a trucker heading south. By the time I got to Miami, Kirsten Creighton had been wiped out of existence.”

  * * *

  Years later Kirsten Creighton would think back about how it’s done, this running away, about how easy it all is and how to a child it seems the only option. Kirsten would make it her business to know the numbers she was a part of. All those tens of thousands of children who run away every year, and one in seven ending up in the sex trade.

  “That was the worst time,” Alison said, closing her eyes to block out some particular memory. “Then somehow I got my act together. In my late teens I escaped the life, cleaned up, went to school and got a degree in social work.

  “Then I got started working for the Haven. Last year I found an old porn photo of a child I was convinced was my brother. He looked to be about ten years old when the photo was taken. I started to think that maybe they weren’t dead, that they had been exploited somehow. After all, that’s what happened to me, and I was still alive. Oh, Dad and I were a pair, all right, feeding each other’s denial. But that’s not how it was at first. I took the photo to Dad, to get him to admit what he had done.”

  “And you didn’t tell him who you were…”

  “I gave him every chance to recognize his own daughter. But he didn’t, and I hated him the more for it.”

  “He did recognize you.”

  “I only know that now. He let me stay Alison Samuels because he thought it was best for me. The bastard.”

  “You had to realize, if he was there that night, he had to know you weren’t.”

  “I didn’t think he was actually there. I ultimately thought Dad contracted Mom’s death. I figured that’s why he was forcing me to get the kids out of the house that night. I didn’t. I’m the one to blame that they died. I might as well just say I’m guilty and be done with it all.”

  I’d be damned if I let that happen, I thought, damned if I’d allow her to be lost again, even if I had to get involved myself. “You killed Shayna Murry before we found out that Erroll Murry had killed the family. Did you think she knew?”

  “I didn’t.” Alison confirmed most of what I had already conjectured when I was laying out the possible scenarios for Todd. That she heard about the fur from Henry Aggrawal, and knew her father couldn’t have gone near the tarp. That she remembered Will Hench claiming during the TV interview that a witness had perjured herself.

  “I was convinced Shayna Murry had to know something, and I kept zapping her. Even then she wouldn’t betray her brother. Then I heard on the police radio that they were looking for Erroll Murry.”

  When she was all talked out, I started to leave and then thought of one last question. “How the hell did you manage to taser yourself in the back?” I asked.

  “Easy. I took the cartridge off that has the prongs in it and pressed the gun to my upper back jus
t to make sure I duplicated any physiological effects the jolt might produce. Hurt like hell.”

  “You’re quite a good actress,” I said.

  “Thanks. Besides being able to tolerate pain, I learned how to pretend when I was very young,” Alison said.

  Forty-eight

  I got my tote bag back from prison security and checked my cell phone. I swear that’s the first thing I did. There was a call from Mom; it sounded like she had started to leave a message and then just sat there silently. She forgot to disconnect, so I couldn’t call back. No one answered the phone in Dad’s room.

  I was near collapse myself, reeling with fatigue, but I hightailed it to the hospital. Rather than sitting upright in a chair by his bed, I found her waiting at the door to Dad’s room, more like a guard.

  “How is he?” I asked.

  “Everything is fine,” she said.

  “You called and didn’t leave a message.”

  “You knew it was me?”

  “Yeah, you can tell who’s calling.”

  She nodded like she’d just learned something new. Rather than going back into the room, she took my arm, which I never remembered her doing before, and suggested we sit someplace else, that nice visitor area at the end of the hall, she said.

  She chose one of the unforgiving chairs that faced down the hallway we had come from. She patted the seat next to her, even more gentle than when we had talked the afternoon I called her from this same spot. She put her hand over mine, glancing at her watch as she did so. I couldn’t remember her touching me like that since I was a very little girl, when she would sit on my bed at bedtime and grasp my foot through the covers and give it a playful shake. I couldn’t remember when she stopped.

  “What’s up, Mom?” Feeling ever more weary, trying to focus a vision that was a little blurry. “Is there something wrong?”

  “I want to tell you a story,” she said.

  “Why here? Is it something you don’t want Dad to hear?”

  She smiled as if I’d meant to be amusing. “Oh no, Dad knows.” Then she turned her head to the side and waved her hand as if warding off a stinging insect.