Mary, Mary (7 page)
BUT THAT WASN’T EXACTLY
the way it happened, the Storyteller knew.
Of course, he wasn’t going to tell the
L.A. Times
and the police everything, only what he needed them to know, only what was in the story he wanted them to help authenticate.
It was such a good story, a helluva story if he didn’t say so himself. Mary Smith! Jesus. A classic horror tale if ever there was one.
Speaking of stories, he’d heard a good one the other day—the “psychopath’s test.” It was supposed to tell you if you had the mind of a psycho. If you got it right, you did. The story went like this. At her mother’s funeral, a woman met this guy and fell instantly in love. But she never got his name, number, or anything about him. A few days later, the woman killed her sister.
Now . . . the test! Why did she kill the sister? If you answer correctly, then you think like a psychopath.
The Storyteller did, of course. He figured it out immediately. This woman killed her sister . . . because she was hoping the guy she liked would appear at the funeral.
Anyway, after he killed Marti Lowenstein-Bell, he was high as a kite, but he knew he had to stay in control, more or less anyway. He had to keep up appearances.
So he hustled on back to work.
He roamed the halls of the office building in Pasadena and talked to half a dozen coworkers about things that bored the living shit out of him, especially today. He wanted to tell every one of them what had just happened—about his secret life, about how none of them
got
him at all, about how smart and clever he was, and about what an incredible planner, schemer, and killer he was.
Jesus, how they loved to toss that word around—so and so was a
killer,
this one had a
killer
smile, a
killer
act, but it was all such incredible bullshit.
All of these people were wimps. They didn’t know what real killing was all about. But he sure did.
And he knew something else—he liked it a lot, even more than he thought he would. And he was good at it.
He had this sudden urge to pull his gun at the office and start shooting everything that moved, squeaked, or squealed.
But hell, that was just a fantasy, a little harmless daydreaming. It would never measure up to the real story, his story,
Mary’s
story, which was so much better.
“ALEX, YOUR OFFICE AT THE FBI
called so many times, I had to stop answering the phone. Good Lord, what is
wrong
with those people?” My great aunt Tia was holding forth at the kitchen table at home, admiring the colorful scarf we had brought her as thanks for house-sitting while we were in California. Nana sat next to Tia, sorting through a thick stack of mail.
Our cat, Rosie, was in the kitchen, and looked a bit heavier if I wasn’t mistaken. She rubbed hard up against my legs, as if to say,
I’m mad you left, but I’m glad you’re back. Tia sure is a fine cook.
I was glad to be back, too. I think we all were. Christine’s taking Alex away to Seattle had more or less ended our vacation, at least the joy in it. My one conversation with her had been tense and also sad. She and I were both so controlled, so intent on not losing our temper, that we ended up with almost nothing to say.
But Christine worried me—the ups and downs, the inconsistencies I saw all the time these days. I wondered what she was like with Little Alex when I wasn’t around the two of them. Alex never complained, but kids usually won’t.
Now I was back in my kitchen in D.C., feeling almost as if I hadn’t had any time off at all. Today was Thursday. I had until Monday morning to not think about work—a resolution that lasted a whole five minutes.
Almost by habit, I wandered up to my office in the attic. I threw my fat pile of mail on the desk and, without thinking about it, pressed Play on the answering machine.
Big mistake. Nearly fatal.
Nine new messages were waiting for me.
The first was from Tony Woods at the Bureau.
“Hello, Alex. I’ve tried paging you a few more times but haven’t had any luck. Please call me at Director Burns’s office as soon as you can. And please apologize to your house sitter for me. I suspect she thinks I’m stalking you. Possibly because I am. Call me.”
I smiled thinly at Tony’s dry humor and delivery as a
second
message from him began.
“Alex, Tony Woods again. Please call in as soon as you can. There’s been another incident with the murder case in California. Things are most definitely running out of control there. There’s a lot of hysteria in L.A. The
L.A. Times
has finally broken the story about Mary Smith’s e-mails. Call me. It’s important, Alex.”
Tony knew enough not to leave too many specific details on my home phone. He may also have been hoping to hook my curiosity with his vagueness.
He did.
I WAS FAIRLY CERTAIN
the latest victim would have to be another Hollywood mother, but I couldn’t help wondering if Mary Smith’s methods had continued to evolve. And how about the e-mails to the
Times
? The TV news and the Web would only give me half the story, at best.
If I wanted to know more, I would have to call in.
No, I reminded myself. No work until Monday. No murder cases. No Mary Smith.
The machine beeped again, and Ron Burns came on. He was brief and to the point, as he almost always is.
“Alex, I’ve been in touch with Fred Van Allsburg in L.A. Don’t worry about him, but I do need to ask you a few questions. It’s important. And welcome back to Washington, welcome home.”
And then another call from Ron Burns, his voice still carefully modulated.
“Alex, we’ve got a phone conference next week, and I don’t want you coming in cold. Call me at home over the weekend if you have to. I’d also like you to speak with Detective Galletta in L.A. She knows something you need to hear. If you don’t have her phone numbers, Tony can get them for you.”
The implication was clear already. Ron Burns wasn’t asking me to stay on this case.
He was telling me
. God, I was tired of this—the murders, the horrific cases, one after another. According to estimates at the Bureau, there were more than three hundred pattern killers currently operating in the United States. Hell, was I supposed to catch all of them?
I clicked Pause on the machine to take a second and decide how I felt about what was going on here. My thoughts went straight back to Mary Smith. I had let her into my head again. She’d caught my interest, my curiosity, probably my ego. A female serial killer—could it be? Killing other women? Mothers?
But why? Would a woman do that? I didn’t think so. I just couldn’t imagine it happening, which didn’t mean that it hadn’t.
I also wondered if there had been another e-mail to Arnold Griner. What part did Griner, or the
L.A. Times,
play in all this? Did Mary Smith already have the
next
victim in her sights? What was her motivation?
That was the line of thought that finally got to me. Some unsuspecting woman, a mother, was going to lose her life in L.A. soon. A husband, and probably children, would be left behind. It hit too close to home for me, and I think Burns knew that when he called. Of course he did.
Several years before, my own wife, Maria, had been gunned down in a drive-by shooting. Maria had died in my arms. No one was ever convicted, or even arrested. My biggest case, and I’d failed on it. It was all so unspeakably senseless. And now this terrible case in L.A. I didn’t need my PhD in psych to know that Mary Smith was pushing all my buttons, both personally and professionally.
Maybe I would just check in, I thought. Besides, Burns was right—I didn’t want to show up behind the ball on Monday morning.
Damn it, Alex, you’re weakening
.
When I picked up the phone, though, I was surprised to hear Damon’s voice already on the line.
“Yeah, I missed you, too. I was thinking about you. I swear I was, all the time.”
Then an adolescent girl’s laughter. “Did you bring me anything from California, Day? Mouse ears? Somethin’, somethin’?”
I forced myself to hang up, quietly.
Yeah, I missed you, too?
Who was this girl? And since when was Day keeping secrets? I had fooled myself into thinking that if a girlfriend came along, he’d want to tell me about it. That suddenly seemed like a silly delusion on my part. I’d been thirteen before, too. What was I thinking?
One teenage moment down. About two million to go. I’d give him five minutes and then tell him it was time to hang up. Meanwhile, I went back to the answering machine—where another message was waiting.
A real mindblower.
“ALEX, IT’S BEN ABAJIAN
calling on Thursday, one-thirty my time in Seattle. Listen, I have bad news I’m afraid.
“It seems that Christine’s attorney has filed a motion to move up the final custody hearing date out here. I’m not sure I’ll be able to block it, or even that we should. There’s more, but I’d rather not go into it until we speak. Please give me a call as soon as possible.”
My heart picked up its pace. Ben Abajian was my lawyer in Seattle. I had hired him soon after Christine brought Little Alex to live there. We’d talked a couple dozen times since then—on my dime, of course.
He was an excellent attorney, a good guy, too, but his message was a bad sign. My guess was that Christine had taken her own interpretation of what had happened in California and run with it, straight to her counsel.
With the time difference out west, I was able to catch Ben Abajian still in the office. He tried to emphasize the positive for me, but his tone was all bad.
“Alex, this is only temporary, but they’ve also filed an ex parte motion asking for sole physical custody of Alex Junior until the final hearing is over. The judge went for it. I’m sorry to have to tell you that.”
I squeezed the phone tight in my hand. It was hard to respond, or even take in what Ben was telling me. Christine had never gotten this aggressive before. Now she seemed to be trying to keep me from even seeing Little Alex. In fact, she’d just succeeded, at least temporarily.
“Alex, are you there?”
“Yeah, Ben, I’m here. Sorry. Just give me a second.”
I put down the phone and took a deep breath. It would do me no good to spiral down right now. Or to blow up over the phone. None of this was Ben’s fault.
I put the phone back to my ear. “What was the basis for the claim?” I asked. Not that I didn’t already know, or at least suspect.
“Concern for Alex’s safety. The motion cited the dangerous police work you were doing while you were in California with him. The fact that you supposedly abused your privileges while he was in your care at Disneyland.”
“Ben, that’s bullshit. It’s a complete rearrangement of the facts. I consulted on a case with LAPD.”
“I’m assuming as much,” he told me. “Anne Billingsley’s her attorney. It’s not beyond her to do a little grandstanding, even at this phase. Don’t let it get to you, okay?”
Ben went on, “Besides, there’s some good news here, believe it or not. An earlier trial date means they have less time for Christine to establish a status quo under the new arrangement. The judge isn’t supposed to take these temporary orders into account, but it’s like unringing a bell. So the sooner the better, really. We were actually lucky to get on the calendar this early.”
“Great,” I said. “Lucky us.”
Ben told me to write an account of exactly what happened in California. I had been keeping a diary on his advice ever since I’d hired him. It included time spent with Alex, things I noticed about his development, family photos, and, maybe most important, any concerns I had about Christine. The fact that she had whisked our son away from me two days early certainly qualified. Those ups and downs of hers were a concern, deeply troubling. Was this latest development one of them?
“There’s one other thing,” Ben told me. “You might not like it a whole lot.”
“Listen, you find something for me to like about all this and I’ll double your fee.”
“Well, one of your strongest arguments is going to be Alex’s relationship to his siblings.”
“Jannie and Damon aren’t going on the witness stand,” I said flatly. “That’s a no, Ben; I won’t allow it.”
How many times had I seen capable adult witnesses eviscerated in a courtroom? Too many to even consider putting my kids up there.
“No, no, no,” Ben assured me. “Definitely not. But it would have a positive impact if they could be present for the hearing. You want Alex back, don’t you? That’s our goal, right? If I’m wrong about that, then I don’t want to spend time on your case.”
I looked around my office, as if for some kind of magic answer. “I’m going to have to think about it,” I finally said. “I’ll get back to you.”
“Remember the big picture, Alex. This isn’t going to be pleasant, far from it, but it will be worth it in the long run. We can win this thing. We will win.”
He was so calm and collected. Not that I expected him to get emotional—I just wasn’t in the mood for a rational conversation with my attorney.
“Can we talk first thing tomorrow?” I asked.
“Sure. But listen, you can’t give up hope. When we get in front of a judge, you need to know in your heart that you’re the best parent for your son. That doesn’t mean we have to trash Christine Johnson, but you can’t come in looking, seeming, or even feeling defeated. Okay?”
“I’m not defeated. Not even close to it. I can’t lose my son, Ben. I won’t lose Alex.”
“I’ll do everything I can to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Call me at work or at home. You have my cell?”
“I have it.”
I don’t know if I said good-bye to Ben or even hung up before I threw the phone across the room.
“WHAT’S GOING ON UP THERE?”
Nana called from below. “Alex? Are you okay? What happened?”
I looked at the smashed phone on the floor and felt unhinged. “It’s all right,” I called back. “I just dropped something. Everything’s fine.”
Even the little lie didn’t sit well with me, but I couldn’t face anyone right now. Not even Nana Mama. I pushed back from my desk and put my head down between my knees. Goddamn Christine. What was wrong with her? It just wasn’t right, and she had to know that.
She couldn’t have chosen a worse way of going about this, either. She was the one who decided to leave, who said she was unfit to be Alex’s mom. She told me that. She used the word—unfit. And she was the one who kept changing her mind. Nothing had ever changed for me. I wanted Alex from the moment I set eyes on him, and I wanted him even more now.
I could see his face, his shy little smile, a cute wink he’d developed lately. I could hear his voice inside my head. I wanted to give him a big hug that wouldn’t stop.
It felt so unfair, so completely wrongheaded. All I had in me was anger and even a little hatred for Christine, which only made me feel worse. I’d give her a fight if that’s what she wanted, but it was insane that she did.
Breathe,
I told myself.
I was supposed to be good at staying calm in a bad situation. But I couldn’t help feeling that I was being punished for doing my job, for being a cop.
I don’t know how long I sat up there, but when I finally left the attic, the house was dark and still. Jannie and Damon were asleep in their rooms. I went in and kissed them good night anyway. I took Jannie’s mouse ears off and put them on the bedside table.
Then I went out to the back porch. I flipped the lid on the piano and sat down to play. Therapy for one.
Usually, the music took hold of me, helped me work through or forget whatever was bothering me.
Tonight, the blues just came out angry and all wrong. I switched to Brahms, something more soothing, but it didn’t help in the least. My pianissimo sounded forte, and my arpeggios were like boots clomping up and down stairs.
I finally stopped midphrase, hands over the keys.
In the silence, I heard the sharp intake of my own breath, an involuntary gulp of air.
What if I lose Little Alex?