The Never List

by Zan, Koethi

  I pulled out a slip of paper from the top. A notice that Sylvia’s mail was being held at the post office going forward. I dug in a little bit farther but found only more junk mail. No letters from Jack, which suggested to me that maybe he knew where she was. Or at least where she wasn’t.

  “Okay, go!” I practically shouted to Tracy as I got back in the car.

  “Is someone after us again?” she said. I couldn’t tell if she was teasing me or not.

  “No, but I need to get away from here. That place creeps me out.”

  Tracy obligingly sped away, and we made our way to visit Val and Ray on the other side of town. I’d arranged for us to have dinner with them, and as we pulled into the driveway of their tidy bungalow, I told Tracy that while we were here, her name would be Lily. She made a face at the name and asked if she could pick it next time.

  Ray was waiting for us in the rocking chair on their front porch. He waved us in. Their house was cheerful and bright, decorated in a soothing palette of soft colors. A pot of stew must have been cooking somewhere in the house, its delicious aroma reminding us we hadn’t eaten anything since the pathetic boxed lunch on the plane.

  I introduced Tracy as Lily, relieved when she didn’t dispute it. Ray made a little joke about how her piercings must have hurt, and she nodded and smiled indulgently. She was on her best behavior at least, I thought, as Val joined us.

  “It was good to hear from you, Caroline,” Val began. I started at the name my body still rejected. She shook hands with Tracy. “And how long have you been working as Caroline’s researcher?”

  When she was sure no one was looking, Tracy rolled her eyes at me and muttered a pointed “not long” under her breath.

  “And I’m delighted that you can stay for dinner,” continued Val, barely stopping for a beat. “Ray has some things he’d like to show you afterward.”

  After dessert Ray excused himself and returned a few minutes later with a large photograph album in hand. He set it down in front of us with an air of triumph.

  Val giggled. “Oh, he’s wanted to show this to someone for so long. I won’t have anything to do with it. Usually I won’t let him share it with anyone else, in case they think he’s a real weirdo. But we figured you’d be interested.”

  Tracy reached over to the album and flipped it open to the first page. Instead of photos, though, it was filled with carefully preserved newspaper clippings. Next to each one was an index card covered in a fine handwriting that slanted hard to the left.

  “My notes,” said Ray, noticing where our attention had gone. “I took notes based on the TV news reports and then added my own thoughts on the story. I always believed there was more to it. You know, the press only found out so much.”

  I looked over at Tracy. She was transfixed. I had known at the time that the press was covering our story, but I hadn’t seen any reports, mostly because I hadn’t been allowed to read the newspapers or watch television then. My parents had me cocooned at home, sheltered from the media frenzy. All I remember from those days was eating myself sick with the endless plates of food my mother made or that the neighbors brought over in steaming casserole dishes.

  Looking back, I realized I had been almost a prisoner at my parents’ house, patiently lying still on the couch as they stared at me in delighted disbelief for hours on end, offering to get me anything I wanted. New slippers, a cup of lemon ginger tea, any and all my favorite childhood desserts.

  But my favorites weren’t my favorites anymore. My very taste buds had been transformed from the experience. In fact, I began to wonder if my mother suspected I wasn’t really her daughter at all afterward, I was so changed. She wanted to know everything that had happened to us, but I told her only the most carefully edited bits and pieces. I doled it out in small measured doses, hoping never to let her feel the full impact of the truth. I believed that only I could gauge how much she could take, and I needed to protect her from what I knew she would be unable to live with.

  When I returned, the whole world seemed hazy and bright and unreal. I had been living only in my own head for so long, pushing everything else out, that I found it hard to be present. So despite my mother’s best efforts, we were still separated.

  It was a gap I would never figure out how to bridge. My mother’s deepest sadness was that I could hardly bear to have her cradle me in her arms, when all she wanted to do was hold me. But for me, all my circuits were cut. I had lost all connections except to a dead girl in the ground somewhere in Oregon.

  My mother was sad, of course, about Jennifer, but her happiness to have me alive and with her again dwarfed her grief for this other lost child. I thought—I knew—that Jennifer deserved more. She deserved a real grief, all her own, and even then I felt I was the only one who could adequately provide it.

  We were still in high school when Jennifer had finally stopped speaking to her father, and he never made much of an attempt to connect with her again. He left that part out when he spoke to the press about his deep and abiding loss, of course. I watched him warily when he came to visit me, and I saw behind his eyes that all he really wanted was attention. To me, his tears didn’t really count.

  So here I was, in this comfortable kitchen in Keeler, with the smell of our after-dinner coffee lingering in the air, poring over the press clippings of another lifetime. I looked them over, reading a few paragraphs here and there, noticing the shift in tone as the story developed, day by day. I detected in those words the familiar aura of professional excitement, this time from the journalists realizing the thrill factor of the unfolding story.

  Then I noticed that the byline on most of the articles was the same: Scott Weber. That must be the journalist David Stiller had mentioned, the one who had been mooning away over Adele. I wondered aloud to Tracy whether we should meet with him, and she replied, “Definitely,” without looking up from the articles. Her eyes glistened. Even for her this was hard. Even for her.

  “Ray,” asked Tracy, without looking up from the pages, “why did you take such an interest in this particular case?”

  Ray smiled broadly. “Oh, not just this particular case, though this was definitely one of the more dramatic stories. And then when Sylvia moved to the area, it did become a bit of an obsession.”

  I looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, girls, come with me.” We followed him down the hall to a door at the rear of the house. I hung back, suddenly feeling closed in, too close to other people’s bodies. I didn’t like going down narrow hallways, even in cheerful homes like this one.

  I was a couple of steps behind them as we went into Ray’s small study, and I gasped when I turned the corner. The walls were covered in sheets of newsprint, filled with headlines and photographs of the most gruesome crimes. Framed copies of historic documents, all relating to famous murders, were set up on the desk, balanced against the wall. He’d obviously gone to great lengths creating this elaborate and macabre gallery of horrors, dug deep into the past to accumulate an archive of the ways human beings make other human beings suffer.

  A long shelf along one wall was filled with photo albums, nearly identical to the one he’d shown us, each labeled with a different proper name. I didn’t know if they were those of the victims or the perpetrators, though, I thought bitterly, usually it was the perpetrators’ names everyone remembered.

  I looked back at Ray and saw him beaming with pride. He felt no shame about his obsession. And why should he? These were just stories to him. Did he even think of the victims as real people? Did he understand the tragedy, the horror those volumes contained? People’s lives destroyed forever, and here it was, his hobby. Like stamp collecting.

  I could sense without looking at her that Tracy too was repelled. Neither of us could even speak. I was unable to comprehend how someone could be so drawn to the things I was trying so hard to shut out. Ray looked at our astonished faces and started to try to explain.

  “I know what you’re thinking. That this is
a bit, well, strange. Please don’t misunderstand me. For a long time I wondered whether there was something wrong with me. But I think … I think … I just want to understand. I want to understand why people do these things, how it happens.

  “So many times people get carried away by passion, do things they never thought they’d do, and their whole lives change in an instant. Sometimes people are simply insane—mentally ill—and it isn’t their fault. But occasionally, just occasionally, there seems to be evil at work. Real evil. Like Jack Derber.”

  “You don’t think he is mentally ill, Ray?” Tracy perked up. She suddenly seemed interested. For the first time it occurred to me she was still looking for answers. I thought she had it all neatly analyzed and had moved past it. She always seemed to know everything, but maybe she still had her questions, her doubts. Just like me.

  “No, I don’t think he was ill. He—he was so calculating. Everything he did required such careful planning, such controlled action. I asked Sylvia about him.”

  He paused. I didn’t think he was going to continue. He looked away.

  “Please, go on,” I said. “It would … it would help us understand.”

  “Well, she only talked about him that once, when I asked. And afterward she begged me—begged me, I’m telling you—not to let anyone know she had spoken about him. I can’t betray that poor girl. I could never let her see her words in a book.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, squinting his eyes shut, possibly to push away tears.

  “I won’t … I promise I won’t put anything in the book. But it might help us find her.”

  Tracy jumped in. “Yes, Ray. Maybe, without realizing it, you know something that could make a difference.”

  “Really? You think something she said so long ago could be useful? I do worry about where she is.”

  “Please, Ray. We just want to help her too.”

  Ray looked thoughtfully out the window and sat down in a recliner in the corner. We sat down on a small sofa along the opposite wall, shoving aside a pile of recent newspaper clippings about another missing girl.

  “Sylvia told me Jack was a genius. That’s why she married him. Because according to her, he had a vision of how the world could be something special and rare. Something only a few could understand, those who would let themselves be open to the true possibilities of experience. But it was more than what she said—it was the way she seemed at once so joyful and so terrified by it. I have never seen an expression like that before. Her face seemed … illuminated.”

  I looked at Tracy, trying to get a read on her. She was thinking hard, I could see. I wondered if, like me, she thought this didn’t sound like someone who had been entirely reformed. Someone who just wanted to get out of prison and live a quiet, ordinary life on a quiet, ordinary street. This sounded like a man with a mission. A terrible mission.

  As Tracy drove us back to the hotel that evening, she switched off the radio, her constant emotional cover, and we sat in silence for a moment.

  “So what do you think, Miss Rational Mind?” she finally asked.

  “About what? Kind of a lot to digest in there.”

  “I guess I mean the big question. Is Jack mentally ill? Or is he evil?”

  “What mental illness could he have?”

  “Well, at a minimum, the DSM-IV would tell you he is a ‘sociopath with narcissistic personality disorder.’ But what that means in terms of moral responsibility, I don’t know. Is he ill? Someone to be pitied, not feared? I think it makes a difference. A critical difference. In terms of, you know, ‘moving on,’ as they say.”

  “Moving on?” I didn’t even know what those words meant. And I wasn’t ready to explain to Tracy that the whole purpose of this journey was to find that out.

  “Yes, moving on. Not feeling those feelings anymore. Not being hardwired with whatever it was he did to us in there. Living a normal life. That kind of moving on.”

  She paused and glanced over at me quickly before shifting her eyes back to the road. We sat in silence for a few moments.

  Then she began again, more hesitantly this time, “Don’t you feel as if we have … almost an obligation … to understand this? To work through it? If we don’t, he’s still here, you know. Still in us. Still in control.”

  The conversation was hitting a little close to home. I felt myself shutting down, just like I had with Dr. Simmons. I didn’t want to get into this.

  “I guess I don’t have many expectations in that regard. And I don’t really see how what I think about Jack matters to that equation.”

  Tracy shook her head. “You are really not even out of the gate.”

  She pressed her foot harder on the pedal, and as the car surged forward on the deserted road, she switched the radio back on and fiddled with the dial until she found something hard and fast and loud. We rode the rest of the way like that, the silence between us more deafening than the punk rock blasting from the speakers.

  CHAPTER 25

  The next day I decided to show up at the offices of the Portland Sun, in search of Scott Weber. I had put Tracy in touch with Adele, and they were going to meet later that day. I was hoping they might speak the same language, or at least be capable of translating each other’s academic jargon, and Tracy would learn something I couldn’t.

  When I arrived at the newspaper offices, a chipper young man in his early twenties stopped me at the security checkpoint.

  “Can I help you?” he said brightly, but with enough edge to make it plain I wasn’t getting through that gate without someone authorizing it.

  “I’d like to see Scott Weber.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Not per se. But I—I have some information that might be interesting to him,” I said, hitting upon a sudden inspiration.

  “Really. Hmm … well, unfortunately, he’s not here.” Then he winked at me. “But I will tell you that he just left the building about three seconds ago.” I guess I looked innocent enough.

  I all but sprinted out of the building, and sure enough, a man with sandy blond hair and a ruddy complexion was crossing the parking lot. He looked about the right age and was disheveled, as if he’d been up all night to meet a deadline.

  I followed him. “Excuse me, Mr. Weber?”

  He turned at his name. We met in the middle of the lot. “Yes, that’s me. Can I help you?”

  “Hi, my name is Caroline Morrow.” Again that name, though I managed to say it without grimacing this time. I was getting better. He looked at me expectantly. “I’m in the sociology department over at the University of Oregon, and I’m writing a dissertation on Jack Derber. I thought you would be a great resource for …”

  Scott starting walking away, his hand held up as if to ward me off. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you with that.”

  I pulled out what I hoped would be my trump card. A little white lie that might help me get his attention.

  “One of my advisers, Adele Hinton, sent me. Said she knew you.” He stopped dead in his tracks but didn’t turn around. I wondered how far Adele’s name was going to get me, or if it was a mistake trying to fake it. I waited to see if he would turn around, counting to myself, one, two, three …

  On seven, he turned around.

  “Adele Hinton?” he seemed surprised. “Adele Hinton sent you to me?”

  “Yes, remember her? Derber’s teaching assistant? You wrote a profile of her.”

  He stood still, looking puzzled. “Yes, yes, of course, I remember her. Adele.” He looked down at his watch. “Why don’t we take a walk?”

  He motioned toward a park directly across the road and pulled out his cell phone. Holding up a finger indicating for me to wait, he walked a few steps away and made a call. I could just make out that he was rescheduling another meeting. Adele was a bigger draw than I’d expected. He must’ve had it bad.

  We walked along a neatly tended path over to an area with a half-dozen picnic tables. Scott sat down at one across from me. He seemed nervous.r />
  “So, Adele. How is she? I haven’t heard from her in quite some time.”

  “Oh, she’s great. Just great. You know she got tenure, right?”

  “Yes, I heard that.” He blushed at his admission. So he kept tabs on her. “I guess she’s had a change of heart?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, about the Jack Derber situation. At first she seemed to like the attention it brought her, but then it became more or less forbidden territory. But that was a long time ago. I guess by now it’s all water under the bridge.”

  This was getting interesting.

  “‘At first’? So you had an ongoing relationship with her back then?”

  He blushed again and seemed agitated. “She didn’t mention that?”

  “No, she didn’t.” He looked disappointed. “Yes, we, um, dated for a bit. After that piece I wrote. Just a few months, but, well, she is quite an extraordinary woman.”

  Yes, quite extraordinary, I was thinking. I wondered if Adele had had some ulterior motive with this relationship. She was becoming more fascinating by the minute.

  “So that must have been a strange dynamic. You writing about it, and she being such a part of the story.”

  He shook his head. “What can I say? It was my beat. But once he was convicted, we were just running background stories anyway—you know, scraping the barrel for ancillary material to keep it alive. Interviewing his junior high school teachers, profiling the architect of his house, looking at his conference papers, that kind of thing. Just to keep it going. Portrait-of-the-villain-type stories.”

  “His papers?”

  “Yes, the last thing I was working on was a piece about his academic research.” He paused, looking uncomfortable.

  “I don’t remember that one. Did it ever run?” I pressed, sensing he was hiding something.

  “N-no. But it wasn’t a big deal. Not front page or anything.”

  “It caused some trouble with Adele maybe?”