She tucked the folder under her arm and exited the records room. There was no one in the hallway, but any minute someone could see her. Across the hall was an office, dark, save for the blue light radiating from a small aquarium. There was just enough light that Shelly could see a newspaper laid out on a desk corner. She darted in and grabbed the paper, tucked the folder inside, and then walked nonchalantly down the hall and through the front entrance.
Jake had the van running and waiting for her in the circle drive. She tried to remain calm, but soon found herself half skipping, half trotting her way to the van. Looking back on it now, Shelly realized that she must have looked ridiculous, but Jake had said nothing of it.
* * *
She had read through the file at least ten times when she had first gotten it, but eventually the fascination wore off and she had tucked it away in her desk. However, when she first heard the killer was drawing strawberries in blood, the enigma that was Robert Doe surged in her again.
The file had once more become her favorite reading material.
She poured herself a glass of chardonnay and took the file into her bathroom. After turning the faucets on the bath, she lit a few candles and removed her clothes. When the tub filled to the height that she liked, she stepped into it, letting the warm water caress her legs. She sat slowly into the tub, giving each part of her body a chance to feel the water. Leaning back in the tub, waterline even with her breasts, she took a sip of wine and began going through the file.
She lingered on his photo, still haunted by the smile, and frightened by the eyes.
The first pages were of Robert's days at Lincoln when Lyst had become his primary doctor. They were mostly just scribbled notes and a few transcriptions from their interactions. Robert had barely spoken to Lyst. From the notes, Shelly could tell that Robert had made no connection with him, and was only saying what the old doctor wanted to hear.
However, beyond those initial pages lay the bulk of the file, and reading that was far more provocative. Robert's first doctor had been Emmanuel Willis. Dr. Willis' time with Robert actually read more like fiction than reality, though Sylvia believed what Willis had written. She could feel the doctor's concern for Robert, and Robert responded like a child to a father. Dr. Willis kept copious notes, many written as if they were short stories from Robert's life
Throughout the file, names, locations, and dates were redacted, though with research and diligence she was able to put together a rough version of how Robert had come to the hospital. She had obtained financial records through legal, and not so legal, channels that detailed an anonymous donation of ten thousand dollars each year since Robert had been committed in 1988. Seemingly, the money was to keep him committed, as well as to keep the family name a secret. A man such as Robert could disappear in a place like Lincoln if a few palms were greased.
The payments had stopped the year prior to Robert's release.
Using details from Dr. Willis' notes, she was able to find where he had come from, Pleasure, Wisconsin. Once she had that location, it was a lesser feat to find the names of Franklin and Louise Kirkman, who had their son committed the same year as Robert. They had done their best to cover their tracks, but the internet held everyone's secrets.
Robert Kirkman.
She had found him, at least temporarily. When she had tried to track him down shortly after his release, she had come up empty. He had not gone back to Pleasure, and despite a condition of his release to check in each week with his doctor, he had simply vanished. Getting information out of the parents proved harder than siphoning water from a brick wall.
She took another sip of her wine. The warm water of the tub, mixed with the alcohol, was tranquilizing. She set the majority of the file aside, keeping only one section. Other than the photo, it was her favorite part of the file, and she had read it many times. She no longer had to read the words. Just holding the paper in her hands brought back the story they contained. It was written in the rigid cadence of a doctor, but she filled in details and prose, letting it play out like a movie in her mind.
It was the story of Robert Kirkman as a boy and a game that slaughtered a small town's innocence.
SIXTEEN
Pleasure was arranged in a classic grid system, as was common in small town America. The roads that ran from north to south were all named after trees, another staple of the country. What town didn't have a Pecan or Maple street? The streets that ran from west to east, however, were named after different kinds of candy. The council had attempted to start a full-scale reinvention of their town, and as part of that transformation, they elected to allow the children to pick the new theme for their streets, which were previously just numbered. After rejecting names of pro wrestlers or rock stars, the council had agreed to the candy theme, and now some residents found themselves living on Butterscotch Avenue or Cotton Candy Lane.
Next on the council's agenda was to put an end to a tradition that had emerged over the years with the town children. It was called the dot game for as long as anyone could remember, and nobody really knew who started it. Many would claim invention of the game, but none were believed. The adults considered it a plague, but to the kids of Pleasure, it was pure, rebellious fun.
It began with a single white dot spray painted on a tree outside of the Thompson family home one summer. The dot appeared on the same night that the Thompson's entire home was covered in toilet paper.
John Thompson had removed the toilet paper and washed the white dot away with a good spray from a garden hose. The incident drew little attention until three nights later when the same thing occurred; this time with more toilet paper and a bigger dot. Mr. Thompson was annoyed, but still didn't put much thought into the vandalism. Kids will be kids, after all.
A week went by with nothing happening but the chirping of the birds.
The third time the house was hit, John Thompson removed the toilet paper, but just as he was about to spray the dot away again, he thought better and left the blemish where it was.
Several nights later, the Thompson house was spared, but the neighbor's house suffered instead, and the rules of the games had been made clear.
Leave the dot, and no further harm would come to you.
From that point, a toilet paper tsunami swept through the town. Those who defied the rules of the game only did so once before they submitted to their fate. It was becoming difficult to find a tree without a spot, and those without a suitable tree had the spots painted on their curbs.
Parents interrogated their children. Police patrolled the streets; to no avail. The adults didn't realize how deep the organization went. It wasn't one or two children; it was nearly all of them. If one child was grounded, another would take their place. Parents convinced themselves that their child couldn't be involved.
The local stores refused to keep toilet paper on the shelves. Instead, it had to be asked for at the checkout counter. No one was allowed more than one four pack at a time. Older kids with vehicles who could drive out of town solved this problem. The paraphernalia was kept in the barn of Chester Long, who had been around when the dot game began, and who had the most valid claim when it came to the founding of it.
At the end of the summer, autumn rains would wash away the paint, and everything would return to normal until the following year. Eventually, the game got more involved. Yellow dots appeared below the white ones when cars had been egged in their driveways. Flaming bags of dog shit earned a blue dot because brown didn't show up well. Words like fart or butt were written in lawns with weed killer, and coincided with a green dot on the tree trunk.
The green dots were the most malicious, and the children themselves decided against using them further. The game was all about pulling one over on the adults, not about doing any real harm. The dots were badges of honor. There wasn't a kid in town that didn't know where each of his own dots resided.
In the spring of '88, a new family had moved into the house that old Miss Wickersham once owned. The Kirkm
ans were a kind and giving family, and they soon fit in with the rest of the town folk. Franklin was a lawyer, and though there weren't major cases to be found in Pleasure, the town was in need of someone for the smaller disputes that arose. This suited Franklin just fine, as he had grown tired of the big city law firms.
Louise was primarily a stay at home wife and mother, but it didn't take her long to become a major part of the PTA and church.
The two had one teenage son, Robert, and though he was quiet, the other children didn't give him much hassle. They hesitated to include him, but found no reason to dislike him, other than the fact that he was weirdly observant.
The remainder of the school year went by as it always had, and the first white dots appeared the day after classes had ended. As the weeks went by, the dots built up. The town no longer did much to try to stop the game; the game had just become part of life in Pleasure.
That was until the red dot appeared on the large maple in Jed Stimple's front yard.
Jed was the town's sheriff and had never married. His only companion was an old bloodhound by the name of Samson. Jed never went anywhere without Samson in tow. Most referred to the dog as Deputy Samson, or just plain Deputy.
On the morning Jed discovered the red dot, he had gone out for his paper. He unfolded it there in the driveway like he always had, coffee mug in one hand, spilling a few drops down to the pavement. He looked up from the front page headline and saw the dot. It had been placed just below the white and yellow ones that he had already received. He then looked around his front yard, but couldn't find anything out of the ordinary.
Sitting in his rocker on the back porch moments later, he realized that Samson wasn't at his feet. The old dog knew Jed's routine as well as he did, and he couldn't remember a time when Samson wasn't laying right there.
Jed abandoned his paper and coffee and called for his dog. When his beckoning went unnoticed, he began to get nervous. Samson had gotten rather old, but Jed wasn't ready for him to go just yet. He started to call out a second time, when he saw something that immediately halted his breath.
Samson hung from a rope looped over a branch of one of Jed's pear trees.
As he approached, Jed forced back his tears and crossed his arms in an attempt to keep them from shaking. As he got closer to the tree and could see the blood, it became harder for him to keep his legs moving. By the time that he got close enough to see that his companion had been sliced open, Jed Stimple, hardened law man, was crying.
A full investigation was mounted. The game stopped. The children interrogated their own, trying to find the killer. Fingers were pointed for days, but a suspect was never found.
Though no other colored dots appeared on the trees, red ones still did. Each time, a beloved household pet turned up dead. Some of them were stabbed, and some had been split open, as Samson had been. Still others were drowned or burned. Sometimes the animals were found blocks or even miles away from their homes. As in previous years, the adults of Pleasure were back on the streets at night, hunting for the dot's maker.
One evening, when Franklin Kirkman walked the streets with several other parents who were on patrol duty that night, he caught sight of someone in a small field behind Ms. Galloway's. Worried about what he thought he saw, he broke from the pack and doubled back to investigate. As he got closer, his hand went to his mouth to stop a terrified yelp from escaping.
Robert had somehow gotten Ms. Galloway's parakeets, all eight of them, and was skewering them onto a piece of rebar. Franklin could do nothing but sneak his son back home, leaving the birds for another to find.
The rest of the summer, no more red dots appeared. In fact, no other dots were ever painted in Pleasure again. Life slowly returned to normal, but the dot game had come to an end.
The Kirkmans continued to be a valuable part of the community, but no one asked about Robert until months had passed. The kid hadn't made any friends, after all, so when someone did finally inquire about him, it was a simple thing to tell them that he had gone off to boarding school.
Robert had been like a ghost in Pleasure. Nobody ever considered him a suspect for the red dots, because nobody considered him at all. Eventually, no one remembered he ever existed, and the Kirkman's never reminded them.
“I seemed to remember you had a son, but I must surely be mistaken,” they would say.
“No not us. You must be thinking of someone else,” the Kirkmans would reply. “Definitely someone else.”
SEVENTEEN
Strawberries was on the front page of the paper as usual, but this time he had made the entertainment section as well. Two different movies based on the killer were in pre-production. The production houses were in a race to get their movie out first, and with the bigger star.
The front-page story was about how Strawberries was allegedly connected to a cult in Nevada. Skimming the article, Sylvia could not actually see how Strawberries had anything to do with the cult. She wasn't even sure if it was a cult at all, or just a few people hanging out in the desert. Media hype made her blood pressure rise.
Yet she had bought the paper hadn't she? And, there had only been two copies left in the bin when she grabbed it. She then made a decision not to buy the paper again for as long as the story continued.
Melissa had given her the prestigious task of planning her surprise going away party. Sylvia didn't argue with her friend on the definition of surprise. Logic wasn't something that Melissa had much use for.
She had spent the morning acquiring a venue for the party, and ensuring that there would be an abundance of booze and narcotics. It would be held at a bar owned by a friend of Melissa's that Sylvia had met a few times. Sylvia paid him up front to close the bar to the public. Now all that was left were decorations. Melissa would expect fanfare and plenty of things that sparkled.
The impending loss of Melissa from her life was becoming real for Sylvia. Consequently, she wanted to make sure that Melissa knew how much she mattered to her, and given that she was never great with sentiment, the shiniest of streamers would make her point instead.
She ransacked the party store's aisles, packing her cart to an overflowing heap of purchasable cheer.
The cashier had a face full of metal, hair the color of bubblegum, and was probably not old enough to buy alcohol. She had on an orange colored apron with the logo of the store printed on the front. Her name tag said Lucy. The apron covered the majority of the girls' shirt, but Sylvia could see the unmistakable edges of a strawberry beneath the orange straps.
“Say, Lucy,” Sylvia began. “I've been seeing a lot of those shirts and some other things. Let me ask you, what's the appeal?
The girl eyed her suspiciously, as if she were worried a trick was being played.
“It's OK. I'm only curious,” Sylvia assured her.
“I don't know lady. Strawberries is just cool. It's awesome that nobody knows his identity, but his symbol is everywhere.”
“But that symbol is only everywhere because people, such as yourself, have made it that way. The more symbols there are, the more there will be.”
The girl let out a small sigh, but Sylvia couldn't tell if it was because of her questions or the immense task of scanning so much crap.
“It's just something to rally behind, ya know,” Lucy said. “If you think about it, it's kind of beautiful how the strawberry is uniting us. It must have been the same with the crucifix. I mean, at one point in time, only a couple of people had crosses right, but that shit spread.” The girl finished checking Sylvia's items and was bagging them. She was smiling now, instead of the dead-to-the-world stare she had before.
“Are you saying that Strawberries is just like Jesus?”
“Nah man, I'm just saying that he's just as popular.”
Sylvia handed a stack of cash to Lucy, got her change, and turned to leave. Before she took two steps, the girl called out to her, “Hey lady, take this with you.”
Lucy reached behind her apron and a moment later brought
forth a strawberry button. She placed it into Sylvia's palm, and then using both her hands, closed Sylvia's fingers around the button. She held for a moment, as if to emphasize the gesture. “You never know,” she said, then began checking out the next person in line.
Outside, Sylvia paused for a moment before going to her car. She knew that the Strawberries fad had not yet reached biblical proportions, and that Lucy the cashier was still in the minority, but there was no denying that the hype was growing. Just standing where she was now, she could see two bumper stickers and an antenna topper sporting strawberries.
She knew that everyone would forget the whole thing once the killer was caught, but as much as she hated to admit it, the girl had a point. How long does something have to grow and simmer in the public mind before it remains there forever?
She stomped the ground. It was something she did when her mind was adrift and she wanted to get quickly back to her reality. She had to focus. She reached in her pocket, grabbed a couple of pills, and swallowed them. She needed to get the decorating over with in a hurry.
She had to work tonight.
EIGHTEEN
It had been two days since the unfortunate motel clerk's life had come to an abrupt and bloody end, and Harry had spent that time doing little more than twiddling his thumbs. Jasper called twice a day, and each of the calls had mirrored the last.
“How's the case going Harry? Any big leads?”
“Hi, Jasper. Yeah, I have a few things I'm following up on,” Harry would lie.
“That's good, Harry. Everyone here knows you'll get results soon. And I'm pulling for you.”
“Thank you. Any day now, we'll get him, I'm sure.”
Another lie.
Then Jasper would finish with something similar to, “In all seriousness, though Harry, sooner is better than later.”
Seriousness? As if everything that had been spoken in the past weeks was mere jest.
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