by Sean Platt
He thanked everyone for coming, then waited for their collective goodbyes and promises to return soon.
Before they left, Jon reached into his pocket and said, “One more thing. I grabbed your phone from the hotel room. I couldn’t find your laptop, though. Maybe it’s in the car, which is at the tow yard.”
Jon handed the phone to Houser. Houser glanced at the screen: 25 messages and a nearly dead battery. “Can you get my charger when you think about it? It’s back at the hotel.”
“One step ahead of you, and I already thought about it,” Houser said, pulling the charger from his pocket. “Though if I were two steps ahead, I would have charged it. Hold up a second.”
Jon found an outlet behind Houser’s bed, then plugged in the cell and set it on his bedside table. “There you go. Need anything else before I leave?”
He was trying to think of something clever to say, but nodded off mid-thought.
As Houser slept, he dreamed of Liz Heller.
She had given him something before he left her house. Something important. Something she seemed almost afraid to give him. Something small. Something which he could not lose. Something that . . .
And though she’d not said it, a voice in his mind filled in the blank . . . something worth killing for.
* * * *
CHAPTER 3 — Liz Heller
12:57 a.m.
Wednesday…
Liz couldn’t sleep.
Tomorrow, she was burying her husband’s ashes. Ashes because someone at the funeral home screwed up and cremated her husband, despite her specifically ticking the box marked “burial” on the forms she was forced to fill out, and double checking her work like everything else she did.
Liz was livid at the screw up, and had cried for an hour straight after slamming the phone in its cradle.
While Roger had consistently said, in more conversations than she could count, that he didn’t care what happened to him after he died, Liz wanted him buried beside her — bodies, not ashes. She couldn’t help but feel that even though Roger was dead, some part of him suffered during the cremation process.
The cremation also meant that she never got the closure she was seeking in seeing his body.
She never had the chance to make an identification, since the medical examiner’s office determined that her husband’s head was too destroyed to make a positive visual ID. She wasn’t sure how they verified that it was her husband who shot up the school and then himself, but positive identification had definitely been made.
It wasn’t that Liz doubted her husband was dead. Too many people had seen what happened for her to believe otherwise. The act was probably caught on video, given the number of cameras in the school, even though she’d not heard anything from anyone about a video of the event. She was sure it was just a matter of time before someone would leak it, and her husband’s final acts would be streaming from any number of disgusting websites which reveled in showing the latest in disturbing video so anonymous cowards could make stupid jokes and condemn him for years to come.
Still, some part of her needed to see and touch him, to find that sense of closure.
Until then, Liz couldn’t help but believe that there was a chance he might walk through the door any day, as irrational as the thought so obviously was.
As 1:11 a.m. drew closer on the clock, Liz found herself tuned into the baby monitor, listening carefully.
It had been a few nights since she’d seen Roger . . . or thought she had. She found herself waiting up each night to see if he’d return. Each time he didn’t, the more likely it seemed that Liz was only imagining things the other night. She wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the combination of stress and exhaustion was finally taking its toll on her sanity.
She wasn’t sure which would be more of a relief — that she were losing her mind, or if she’d seen Roger’s ghost. She was worried not only for herself, but her daughter’s safety. If Liz lost her mind, who would take care of Aubrey? And if Roger was a ghost, was he dangerous?
What the hell? I’m seriously contemplating the existence of ghosts?! I should just go to bed. Right now. The more I stay up, the more likely I am to see things.
1:08 a.m.
She turned up the baby monitor’s volume, listening to the whir of Aubrey’s fan whispering through the speaker. No sign of Aubrey waking yet.
No other voices.
Liz thought about getting up and going into Aubrey’s room, which was what she’d done the night before, but thought better of it. Perhaps if Roger’s ghost saw her, he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, show. Liz debated the rules of ghost travel in her head, waiting for the clock to bleed another minute.
1:09 a.m.
Her heart pounded with anticipation. Liz picked up the monitor and set it beside her pillow, watching the row of unlit lights, indicating noise, and the green light glowing at the top to prove it was on.
1:10 a.m.
Something banged in Aubrey’s room and the row of lights lit from the bottom blue to the top orange, then back to dead as the room fell silent of every sound except for the fan.
What was that?
Liz forced herself to relax. She often heard noises just like that, at times that weren’t around 1:11; sounds of the house settling or something falling in another room. Surely the din was somehow amplified by the monitor in Aubrey’s room.
Liz sat in bed, one foot on the floor, waiting to burst from the room.
The clock’s digits changed.
1:11 a.m.
Liz heard a faint whisper — something she couldn’t quite make out.
Then two words, this time clear and audible over the speaker.
Roger’s voice: “Hi, sweetie.”
A chill iced her entire body.
I am not imagining this.
I heard it!
Liz leapt from her bed, then ran to her door, throwing it open, and burst into Aubrey’s room. As the door swung open on its hinge, Liz saw Roger standing in the center of the room, holding his daughter, lightly swaying back and forth humming “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”
Only now he wasn’t a ghost. Roger wasn’t half there. He was all there — in the flesh, looking exactly like he had the last time Liz had kissed him goodbye.
Her mouth hung open. A loud gasp fell from the opening and into the room, teetering at the edge of a scream.
Roger shook his head, turning to Liz as he whispered, “Shhh, you’ll wake her.”
“H-h-how?” she stammered as Roger held his daughter close, stroking the wispy hair at the back of her head.
“I wasn’t done,” he said. “I had to come back.”
She stared at Roger, unable to believe what she was seeing.
How can he be here?
How is this possible?
Wasn’t done with what?
Liz inched closer, trying to get a closer look at her dead husband, clearly breathing on the other side of the room. He looked perfectly healthy, no sign of injury. Yet, there was something off in his eyes, and looking more wrong with every inch.
His eyes narrowed, then turned angry as he took a step back. “Stay away,” he growled.
“It’s me, Roger. It’s Liz,” she cried, not sure why he was turning her away.
A miracle meant he had somehow survived. Why was he rejecting her? He seemed almost afraid of her. She inched closer, despite his warning.
Pressing Aubrey against his left shoulder with his left hand, Roger reached behind him with his right, pulling a pistol from nowhere and aiming it at Liz.
“I said, stay the fuck back!” he snapped, backing his body toward the window.
“What are you doing?” Liz cried, confused, suddenly terrified for her baby. “Please, Roger, put Aubrey down. Let’s talk.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Talk. So you can trick me. What then? You gonna turn me over to them? Are you one of them, Liz?”
“One of what?” she cried.
“One of them!” he screamed.
Aubrey woke and started crying.
“Don’t you fucking lie!” Roger screamed, the barrel of his gun shaking between her eyes.
Liz was paralyzed with fear. If she said the wrong thing, he would kill her.
God knew what he’d do with Aubrey.
“Please,” she cried. “Please, Roger, I love you.”
Aubrey screamed, turning to Liz, eyes wide and wanting her mommy.
“Shut up!” Roger screamed not at Liz, but at Aubrey. “Shut the fuck up!”
How can he scream at a baby?!
Roger turned the gun from Liz, then put it to the back of Aubrey’s head, his face twisted in rage as he screamed, “Shut the fuck up, you little cunt!”
Liz screamed, reaching out to stop Roger.
But she was too late.
He pulled the trigger.
Liz screamed as her heart shattered.
* *
Liz woke up screaming, “No!!” and wailing, “Oh God!”
“Mom, are you okay?” Alex said, shaking her awake. “Mom?”
Liz opened her eyes to the stark daylight soaking her room. Alex was sitting on the bed beside her, holding Aubrey, who was very much alive and drooling.
Liz broke down sobbing, hugging both her children close to her body, thanking God that she’d only been dreaming.
* * * *
CHAPTER 4 — Milo Anderson Part 1
Wednesday morning…
Milo aimed the remote in front of him, trying to give a shit about anything on any one of the nine billion fucking channels on the TV.
His dad was upstairs, probably trying to decide between the red tie with the black stripes, or the black tie with the red stripes. He had to look good for work. He could dress for his son’s misery in sweats, but that would have to wait until sometime at night when his dad got home — assuming Milo was still awake.
Milo wasn’t bitter, though his credit in the Bullshit He Had a Right to be Pissed About department was damned high.
Someone at work was riding his dad. His father’s stupid phone had rung three times just that morning. Not the phone from AT&T. It was the new one, the one that looked like a glass credit card. The one his dad always had to answer, no matter what.
Milo wasn’t pissed that his dad had to go into work, and wasn’t even pissed that he’d taken every crooked road around an actual conversation since first visiting him in the hospital. Milo was pissed, however, that no matter how many times he stared into the mirror, the kid staring back was living a life that had been shattered by a half-clip’s worth of bullets and a Big Bang’s worth of downright impossible.
Beatrice was still in the hospital. She would make it, sort of. All of her was working, except for most of her brain. That part didn’t seem to be working right at all.
Conway Medical had an amazing psych ward. As good as anything in Seattle, at least according to his dad. Milo wondered what came first, the chicken or the egg. From Mrs. Lindley to Mr. Carney, and all the island oddballs in between, Hamilton had more than its share of folks who not only seemed slightly off, but were.
Was there more weirdoes because there were so many doctors, or so many doctors because of the excess of weirdoes?
Milo’s mother had been treated for her mental problems at Conway Medical years earlier, and maybe even by the same doctors working on Beatrice. Maybe that was just coincidence, but the part of Milo that wrote stories with Alex didn’t like the coincidence a bit. It smelled like the dumpsters at The Fish Tail.
Milo didn’t wonder if his father knew more than he was saying, he only wondered how much more he knew. His dad was the obvious common denominator between Milo’s mom and Beatrice. And he knew his dad well enough to know when he was keeping shit to himself, being evasive, or hiding his eyes to bury truth.
The psych ward: like prison for your brain.
Milo wondered if his mother would have eventually found herself in Conway Medical’s psych ward if she hadn’t disappeared.
Milo’s father cleared his throat and stepped in front of the TV, obscuring the face of a man talking about how Bible stories could easily be interpreted as descriptions of ancient aliens. It was the first thing that actually grabbed Milo’s interest, so of course his father would pick that moment to step in front of the TV.
“I have to go to work,” his dad said. ”I’m sorry.”
Milo shrugged. “No big deal, Dad. I get it.” Milo looked past his dad and toward the TV. “I think he’s gonna start talking about Peru next. Do you mind?”
Stephen frowned, then turned toward the TV and flipped it to off. He turned back to Milo. “I really am sorry, Milo. This has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with me and bullshit at work.”
“So you’re allowed to swear?” Milo almost smiled.
“When appropriate.” Stephen almost smiled back. “I’m asking Dani to come by and stay with you.”
“What? Why?” Milo said. “I don’t need anything. Or anyone.”
“She has to clean anyway. I promise, it’s not just because of you. There’s plenty for her to do, especially with Bea gone. Dani can stock the fridge, or handle anything we need her to do. So don’t be proud. It’s not one of your best qualities. I swear, you must get it from your father.”
Stephen smiled awkwardly, then squeezed Milo’s shoulder and said, “I’ll be home when I can, okay, Milo? Let Dani know what you want for dinner. It can be anything. If she can cook it, great. If not, have her find a place that will. I love you.” He kissed Milo on the forehead, said, “I’ll be home a little after five,” then walked toward the front door, pulling the glass card-sized phone from his pocket, checking for messages on the way.
He turned back toward Milo, gave him one last half-smile, then stepped from the house, closing the door behind him.
Milo didn’t feel alone, even though he thought he probably should. He wondered how long it would take for the loneliness to creep in, but didn’t get a chance to find out since his phone buzzed with Katie’s face smiling from her side of the glass.
“Hey,” Milo said, looking into the phone, absentmindedly scratching his left arm through the gauze wrap that covered the stitched lacerations. Both arms were cut, but his left one was particularly itchy.
“Hey. How are you doing?” Katie’s face didn’t look nearly as pretty once set to motion. Her eyes were red and cheeks thin. And not the beginning of summer thin. Sad thin.
“OK, just a few bumps and bruises.”
“I’m glad you’re okay. And sorry to hear about Bea.”
“Yeah,” Milo said, not having much to say about Other-Mom.
Katie paused for a moment and then said, “You know Alex’s dad is being buried at one.”
“Good.”
“I know, Milo. I get it. I do.” She swallowed, then said, “But you might regret it if you don’t go.”
“I doubt it.”
Katie waited a few seconds, then said, “You’re smarter than that, Milo. And yeah, you can hate Alex right now. I understand that. But I know you, and you won’t hate Alex forever. And when you’re not hating him anymore, and some of your hurt has settled down, you’re going to wish that you went and were there for your best friend.”
“Wished I went to a murderer’s funeral? Sorry, Katie, not sure I can ever see living to regret that.”
Katie shook her head. “Milo, I can’t even say that’s not fair because it is. What Mr. Heller did was horrible. The most horrible thing that’s ever happened, to me or to anyone I know. And we will probably never understand why he did what he did. But that doesn’t change the Mr. Heller you knew before the shooting. It doesn’t change him being a totally dorky but pretty awesome history teacher, or the fact that he was Alex’s dad, and was always cool to all of us every time we saw him. Obviously something happened to Mr. Heller. He snapped or something. You should get it more than anyone.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Milo asked, pissed. “My mom didn’t try to kill people!”
Katie sighed. “I’m not saying she did. But sometimes things happen to people we love and we’re left picking up the pieces. Just like Alex is right now. I’m not sure what else to say, Milo. I just think you should come.”
Milo said nothing.
“Please?” Her eyes were wide and wet. “Just say that you’ll think about it?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Promise and mean it?”
Milo thought about it, then nodded. “I promise and mean it. But I want to hang up now.”
Katie smiled. “Thanks, Milo. Really. And I’m sorry about all of this. Things will settle down, get back to normal. I’m sure of it.”
Milo said, “I’m sure we’ll all be friends someday, Katie. But I don’t think there’s such thing as ‘normal’ after this. See ya’ when I see ya’.” He severed the line, then slowly turned the phone in his hand, waiting.
Milo could have easily traded miseries with Katie for another hour, but he didn’t want to be on the other line if Cody called. The call that wouldn’t come, even though Milo had been waiting for it since Jordy’s booked their unexpected remodel.
From the second Cody informed him that Manny was dead, Milo had developed an itch in his brain that hadn’t gone anywhere near fading. How could Cody have known about Manny as fast as he had? And who in the hell were his sources?
Milo wasn’t sure what bothered him more, the mystery behind Cody’s sources, or the way he said, “They got him.” Though even that might have been better than, “They have their ways.”
Cody had warned Milo to get out of town, and that he’d be in touch later that night. Of course, Milo had boarded Bea’s train to CrazyTown, so he never had the opportunity to ignore Cody’s advice.
He hadn’t heard from Cody since.
Milo was starting to think that Cody — or whatever his name really was — was full of shit. Just some asshole messing with him simply because he could. Milo didn’t think it was Jesus, couldn’t even imagine that Manny’s brother would do something like that. It could have been any one of Jesus’s asshole friends. There were certainly plenty. And while Milo couldn’t see anyone thinking that sort of prank was even remotely funny, Milo had been surprised by Jesus’s asshole friends before.