by Alex Dolan
I asked, “Why would Leland want to give this to Helena Mumm?”
Lisa added, “What would this do that poison wouldn’t?”
We all looked at Jeffrey.
“Torture.” He shrugged. “It would torture the patient. What I went through was administered during a ceremony, with someone who could guide you through the process. And it was still the most terrifying experience I’ve had in my life. The visions seemed as real as anything I’m touching now.” He prodded the centrifuge. “I saw myself crucified nine centuries ago. I saw my life begin and end across several lifetimes. The pain was agonizing. I’m trying to imagine what that would be like without a ceremony, when I wasn’t prepared for it. Honestly, I can’t imagine anything worse. It would make death seem easy.”
I didn’t talk much at dinner. The kids asked me questions, but that night I wasn’t as responsive. They ended up gravitating toward Morton, who made faces at Jess and joked with them. Lisa glared at me throughout the meal, until I excused myself and brought Jeffrey’s laptop into my bedroom. There I searched for more information on Helena Mumm, Walter Gretsch, and pharmahuasca until I finally fell asleep.
The next morning I ambled into the kitchen for water. I bent the blinds to look outside, and a soft beltway of mist lingered on the trees, tinged red from the first hint of sun over the valley.
A laptop glowed on the dining table, even though no one manned it. Maybe Lisa Kim beat me out there, set it up, and went for a jog in her hornet outfit. Another Post-it stuck to the screen, left for my benefit. It read, “Time to go.”
The onscreen browser had two open tabs. Lisa Kim had called up nuggets of information for me to look at before she sent me off. The first browser tab showed Cindy Coates’s home page. The woman had written a book about her captivity with Walter Gretsch and Helena Mumm, and customers could purchase it directly from the site. The home page footer contained an info@ e-mail address. I jotted down the URL.
The second tab was about me. An old article with crime scene photos. The images felt fresh, because I remembered them daily. Often they flickered in dreams. But I hadn’t looked at the photographs themselves in years.
The first showed a house on fire. Flames belched out the windows and rose from the roof like a wild surf of light and smoke. Helmeted men in the foreground fought in a blur to douse it.
The second in the series had been snapped twenty minutes later. Same scene, but the beams had collapsed and now firefighters were just watering down the ruins. One of the men had removed his helmet and was breaking the news to someone over a radio while mopping his head with a rag.
The third and final in the series showed paramedics in yellow lifting the sides of a stretcher like pallbearers. The woman’s hair had burned to the roots. Her scalp, and the skin visible around her oxygen mask, was either black or the color of raw salmon.
A toilet flushed, and Lisa Kim emerged in flannel pajamas decorated with pink toads. She froze when she saw me. Lisa had wanted me to find what she’d left on the monitor, but not at that precise moment. Possibly, she thought I’d wake up later or that I would see the computer and let myself out without disturbing anyone. I’d surprised her, and she flinched in a flutter of blinks, like someone coming out of a cave into noonday sun. With the rest of the house asleep, we were alone. I guess I could have resisted for Jeffrey’s sake. Instead, I walked slowly toward her so she wouldn’t run. When I got close enough, I hit her so hard in the cheek I knocked her off her feet. She bounced against the wall and dented the plaster.
That woke everyone up.
When Jeffrey assessed the situation, he let us both have it. I’d never heard him raise his voice, and now he ranted like a rush hour cabbie. “Jesus Christ, Lisa, show some discretion!” He thrust a finger at me. “And show some goddamned restraint!” To Stacy and Jess, who stood openmouthed at the kitchen door, he lowered his voice and said, “Pretend you didn’t hear that.”
I can’t say I regretted that punch, but it made this very uncomfortable retreat all the more awkward and reminded me that I had violated the generosity of my host. Lisa Kim might have been right on one account. Right now they were taking care of me, and I was being a difficult client. “I’ll pay for the wall.”
Jeffrey said, “You think?” Stacy and Jess had probably never seen a fight in their home. When I tried to look at them, their gazes danced away. The big muscly woman in their house had gone and socked the ice princess. Morton sat on the couch the whole time, eyes to the ceiling, possibly hoping a UFO tractor beam might come along and vacuum him up.
Lisa pressed a sandwich bag of ice to her face while she paced on the other side of the room. Sitting down would have been a show of weakness.
Jeffrey called to his daughters, “Stacy and Jess, could you leave us for a moment?”
“Why?” Jess asked.
“Because I want to say bad things to our guests, and I don’t want you to hear them.”
They disappeared.
Without his kids in the room, Jeffrey vented behind a scarlet face. “You know we’re trying to save your ass, right?”
I nodded.
He turned to Lisa. “You know why I brought you here, correct?”
She nodded.
“Do either of you realize how close we are to the precipice? I invited you into my home. Both of you. Our goal, and it’s sad I have to remind you both of this, is to protect our family. I have two. Those girls in the next room and this organization.”
Not one to be deterred by someone’s rage, Lisa Kim interjected, “Jeffrey, I am looking out for both. This woman is a liability. She can’t be here—she’ll ruin us.”
“So you antagonize her by throwing photos of her mother in her face? That’s how you’ve decided to help? We’ve discovered tiny bits of information. Instead of making sense of it, you’re both adding to the chaos by picking at each other like caged rats.”
“I wanted her to leave on her own, because I know you’re loyal to her.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. I’m loyal to you too. Remember that the next time you think about being a sadist. That’s not who we are.”
Lisa’s shoulders rolled forward, an attempt to make herself seem smaller. Her voice lost a little of its confidence. “I apologize.”
“Goddamned right.” He addressed the only other beard in the room. “Morton, what do you think of all this?”
“I just want to get back to the lab, Dr. Holt.”
“Too bad, Morton. Like it or not, you’re a part of this too. Please come here. All of you.”
Morton looked like he’d had a glass of bad milk, but he rose from the sofa and joined us.
Jeffrey motioned all of us closer, until we made a circle around him. I was close enough to feel Lisa Kim’s warmth. Jeffrey leaned into our faces like a coach, never so terrifying as when he spoke so softly, issuing warm breath into our faces. “Would you all say I’ve done something for you?”
That I said “of course” came as no surprise. But Morton and Lisa Kim sheepishly nodded too, reminded that, at one point, Jeffrey Holt had helped them as well.
“Have I ever asked anything of any of you in return?”
We all agreed that he had not.
“Then figure it the fuck out. You’re here to save my ass too.”
Jeffrey Holt dropped the f-bomb. My insides curdled.
He composed himself. “Stacy! Jess!” he called.
The girls came out of hiding. “Let’s go.” Our mentor strode to the front door holding his daughters’ hands.
Lisa called after him. “Where are you going?”
“To get some air.”
He flung open the door, but didn’t walk through it. Jeffrey stood rooted in the threshold, fixed on something none of us could see, something on the doormat. Slowly, he turned back to us, face ashen.
A package sat on the welcome mat. The size of a brick, wrapped in brown butcher paper. We all approached the doorway to look at it. My mouth opened but I didn’t br
eathe.
Jess was the first to speak. “We don’t get mail here.”
“No we don’t, sweetie. No we don’t.” Jeffrey motioned to his lab technician. “Morton, could you take the girls out the back? Far out the back.”
Morton picked up Jess by the waist and escorted Stacy by the hand. The kids must have sensed the urgency in their father’s voice, because they went along without protest. In seconds, they hustled out through the rear entrance by the kitchen. Jeffrey’s hand ran along his hip where he’d been shot four years ago.
I imagined we all thought the same thing: that this package was a plainly wrapped brick of explosives. The right bomb this size could create an explosion that would raze the house and any number of trees within a wide disc of incineration.
“Please leave,” I said. “Everyone should leave. Jeffrey, follow your family.”
The three of us checked the trees to see who might be out there watching us, but I only found a red-crested woodpecker clinging to a trunk. In a flash of panic, I considered who might be waiting in the woods behind the house for Morton and the kids, but we hadn’t heard any noise, and I hoped they were safe. “Jeffrey, please go.” I stepped between him and the doorway and crouched by the package, wishful that my body might shield him from the blast.
“What are you doing?”
“Someone’s got to see what this is.” I spoke stiffly, and I’m sure others could tell I was petrified. Still, I didn’t see another solution. “What are we going to do, call in the bomb squad?”
Lisa Kim had likely played out the same scenarios. She started retreating along the same path that Morton and the children had taken. She implored, “Jeffrey, come with us.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“We can’t call in the police. Because when they come, I’ll be here.”
Lisa said, “She’s right. Jeffrey, we’ve got to get you somewhere safe.”
“This is my home,” he said.
“The beauty of stuff, right? Someone’s always making more of it,” I reminded him.
“You’re not stuff,” he said. “You’re not the bomb squad either. What are you thinking, you’ll just tear this open and cut the blue wire?” Honestly, I was planning on waiting for them to reach a safe distance, and then pick up the package, expecting that it might discharge the moment I touched it.
“Jeffrey, you need to go,” Lisa insisted. Her footsteps scuttled to the rear door. Then the door slid shut and only Jeffrey Holt and I remained.
“Be with your daughters,” I insisted.
“So you can be blown up by a bomb that was meant for me?”
“You’re assuming it’s meant for you.”
“If this is for you, then it’s still ultimately for me. I brought you into this,” he said.
We examined the package for a long time. Long enough to ensure that Stacy, Jess, Morton, and even Lisa Kim had reached what we considered would be a safe distance. I wondered what kind of bomb this might be. I’d heard cell phones could detonate IEDs now, in which case someone could dial their phone any second and a sphere of fire would engulf us.
“We have to open it.” I said.
Jeffrey nodded, businesslike. He masked his anxiety well, but his face tightened. I briskly walked to the kitchen, and for a moment Jeffrey might have thought I was hustling for the rear entrance, but I found the knife I had used the night before to chop carrots. Crouching by the package again, I shivered, then stretched my fingers.
“We can’t just drop it in the trash,” I said to convince both Jeffrey and myself.
Jeffrey nodded, blinking furiously behind his glasses.
I felt like I was reaching out to touch a rabid animal. I pressed the paper lightly. I didn’t know what exactly triggered an explosion, how hard you would need to press before it went off. Or if I would feel anything if it burst in my face. My fingers shook a bit from the force of my own pulse.
I wanted it to be heavy. The package was the right size for a brick, and I wanted it to be a brick. Something harmless. But the box was light. Hollow. I didn’t know if an airy box was better or worse than heavy. I got onto my knees and cradled it in my palm.
“Last chance.”
Jeffrey shook his head. “Let’s open it together.”
We hunched over it like battlefield surgeons. He squeezed my arm for luck. I thought about my father and sitting in on those recording sessions, the orchestra playing while the films showed behind them on the big screen. Colton Wonnacott didn’t have a beard like Jeffrey. He was handsome in an unconventional way, with a crooked nose and a long face. But they both showed a lot of teeth when they smiled. And when they smiled, I didn’t want to disappoint them.
I slid the blade under the tape. The box had been wrapped tightly, which was a promising sign, because whoever had dropped this here wasn’t shy about pressing down when they sealed it. The flap sprung free. I gently rotated and sliced down the seam.
Peeling off the paper, I uncovered a white pastry box. Not heavy enough to contain pastries though. I couldn’t resist giving a gentle shake. Something was in there. Maybe a small muffin. Jeffrey’s mouth twitched. He didn’t want to open this package any more than I did. But I went ahead and unsealed the side.
It opened. I should have been relieved the whole thing didn’t combust in our faces, but I wasn’t. Both of us screamed at the same moment. Jeffrey howled the f-bomb again. My voice sounded as shrill as it ever had. I worried it would change the way Jeffrey thought about me—especially because I couldn’t stop screaming. Not even when he held me to his chest for support. The box dropped out of my hand. An expired tarantula tumbled out, furry legs curled in on itself.
Chapter 7
We bugged out, in the army sense of the phrase. Lisa and Morton drove back to the airport. I would have driven out of Oregon immediately if I still had the rental car, but I was stranded. Jeffrey called someone, presumably another member of the network, and arranged to borrow a used cobalt sedan. It was waiting for me on Shallot’s Main Street within a few hours. In the meantime, the Holts hastily packed the minivan, and Jeffrey went into hiding with his kids. He wouldn’t tell me where. We didn’t exchange many words, and he further deflated my spirits by leaving me without a hug or a handshake.
Inside the trunk of the borrowed sedan I found an envelope with cash, a laptop, and a cell phone. I couldn’t use my credit cards or access my bank accounts without giving up a location, so Jeffrey had made sure I could support myself while this blew over, whenever that might be. He’d promised to call me on the burner phone, but I couldn’t count on when.
The car fumed petroleum, and its springs creaked under my seat. Its lawnmower engine chugged all the way back down to California. I looked at the car mirrors more than the highway, convinced someone must me following me. Without the temporary sanctuary of Jeffrey’s home, I was alone again and everything felt unsafe.
At a highway motel in Santa Rosa, I drew the shades and hunted around the Internet for Helena Mumm, Walter Gretsch, and the man who held me captive in Clayton. With spotty Wi-Fi, the hunt went slowly. Subsisting on chocolate and chips from the vending machine, I did pushups and body-weight squats next to the bed. Occasionally, I peeked through the shade to try and spot cars in the parking lot with men in them. I didn’t find any, but I couldn’t help but feel exposed, even as a motel shut-in. Law & Order reruns without the volume provided the illusion that someone else was in the room with me. The local news didn’t say anything about me, so if the police were searching, they weren’t public about it.
Since Leland had assuredly dropped off that spider package on Jeffrey’s welcome mat, I assumed that he was conducting his own manhunt. I looked for him first. I didn’t find much. Even though Lisa Kim had assured me the man wasn’t using his real name, for due diligence, I scoured the web for Leland Mumm. No shocker—I didn’t come up with anything. His police badge had looked real enough, so I looked for photographs and interviews with police in Alameda County and any of the t
owns included within Alameda County. Fruitless.
There was plenty to dig up online about Walter and Helena. Handwritten love poems, some in pentameter, had been scanned and posted, making it clear that Helena worshipped her brother. Walter Gretsch was her romantic grail. He might have loved her back, but I couldn’t find similar notes or quotes from him.
The box with the dead tarantula had also stirred up memories of Gordon Ostrowski and cemented connections between my stepfather and Walter Gretsch, despite that Leland was the one who had left me the spider. In the same way Jeffrey Holt shared traits with Colton Wonnacott, Gretsch had much in common with Gordon, not the least of which was that those two psychopaths were both housed in the same prison. Helena Mumm even had similarities to my mother, much as I hated to admit it. My mom’s inexplicable crush on my stepdad was easier to explain than Helena falling for her brother, but both women had been drawn to monsters.
Walter and Gordon diverged physically. Gordon had been manufactured with clean, waspy features. He was both handsome and plastic in a Ken doll kind of way.
Walter had been a skeletal teen. With freckles and hazel eyes inherited from a white father, his skin was a few shades lighter than his sister’s. His hair frizzed into stubby tentacles, and his cheeks caved in behind fish lips. T-shirts hung off him. The photo garnering the most media attention showed a skinny kid swimming in an XXL Oakland Athletics jersey. His look changed over time. On trial and in prison, Walter added muscle and fat under his orange jumper. In an interview conducted only a few years ago, his cheeks puffed out into the face of an exhausted fugu.
Walter and Helena had different fathers, so I suppose I should clarify, they were half-siblings. This explained the different last names, and made their relationship only slightly less repellant. Walter’s dad was a white, unstable German aviation mechanic named Bodo Gretsch. He hanged himself when Walter was seven months old.
Gracie Mumm had been a burlesque performer and pinup model with fleshy thighs popular during the era. I recognized her from the poster Helena kept on her wall. She stood over six feet tall and had devilish cheekbones. Between the money from her career and a modest inheritance from Bodo Gretsch, she purchased a small home in the Excelsior District. Helena Mumm was born soon after from a nameless boyfriend.