My Lost Daughter (48 page)

In the den was a large, glass-enclosed gun case. He tried to open it but it was locked. Finding a towel in the laundry room, he wrapped it around his hand and broke the glass, reaching in and removing a pistol. In the bottom of the gun cabinet, he found the ammo clip and shoved it into place. No one was going to take Jennifer away from him. He would not allow anyone to murder their baby.

Moving like a cat through the dark room, he opened doors and looked inside. He found a room with a white bedspread and several stuffed animals on top of it and knew it had to be Jennifer's because she was an only child. The bed was made, though, and Jennifer was nowhere to be found.

He sat down on the edge of her bed and brought her pillow to his face. They were so much alike. Before he'd met her, he had felt totally alone, separated from the world because of his differences. In her arms in the small twin bed at the hospital, he had finally tasted happiness and a sense of belonging. In a black nightmare of pain, he had somehow found paradise. Now it was gone. They had taken it away from him, robbed him of the only good thing he had ever had. Consumed with anger, his fingers locked on the gun.

Dropping the pillow on the floor, he walked toward the bedroom where her parents were sleeping, his rage unchecked and his body rigid. He stood over their bed and wailed like a wounded animal, the sound coming from somewhere deep inside his body. “Jennifer . . .”

“Oh my God, Fred!” the woman shouted in total terror, bolting upright in the bed. “It's him! It's that boy from the hospital. He's got a gun. He's going to kill us.”

Adam leapt onto the bed on top of the man, shoving the barrel of the gun into his gaping mouth. “Where is she? What have you done with her?”

“Don't hurt him,” the woman begged. “Please don't hurt him. Jennifer isn't here. She ran away. She said she was going to Oakland. That's where we used to live. Please leave my husband alone. He has a heart condition. Help us!” she shrieked, her eyes darting around the room. “Someone call the police. He's going to kill us.”

Adam fled the house and escaped into the night before the neighbors heard Jennifer's parents' terrified screams. Back in his mother's car, he found the freeway and headed toward Oakland.

Once he arrived in the city, he drove all day without stopping, searching the streets, the cheap hotels, the shelters, stopping at phone booths to call the local hospitals to see if Jennifer had been admitted. If her parents hadn't forced her to abort their baby, it would be almost time for her to give birth.

When night fell and he became too exhausted to drive, he parked in a shopping center and slept in the car. The next morning he awoke at dawn and started his search again. His stomach rumbled with hunger, but he refused to stop to eat or drink.

Then he saw her.

She was walking down the street, alone, carrying a small suitcase, her blond hair stringy and limp, her eyes dazed and her face ashen. He stomped on the brakes and put
the car in park, jumping out and grabbing her. Sweeping her up in his arms, he carried her to the passenger side of the car and fastened her seat belt. Through her clothes, he could feel her rib cage and her skin was cold and clammy. “What happened to our baby, Jennifer?”

“It came out,” she told him. “Then I killed it. It was a little girl. I wrapped my sweater around its face and held it tight until it stopped crying. I left it in the trash can.”

He seized her thin shoulders and shook her. “How could you? I could have taken care of you and the baby. The hospital released me yesterday. I can get a job and make money. We could have had a life. Why? Why? Why did you kill our baby?”

Jennifer dropped her head and then slowly raised her eyes. “It wouldn't stop crying. I couldn't stand it. The noise made my head hurt.”

Adam drove to a nearby motel and rented a room using Nadine's credit card. He placed his arm around Jennifer's waist as they climbed the stairs to the room. Once inside, she sat on the edge of the bed and he fell to his knees in front of her, placing his head in her lap. They sat there in silence for a long time, neither attempting to move.

Thoughts were racing inside his head. There was no place for people like them in the outside world. They were defective, mistakes of the universe. He thought of the freaks in the circus, people with two heads or a third leg. Even they were better off than he and Jennifer. People would pay to see them, laugh at them, point at their deformities, but even the freaks had a place of their own and freedom to come and go whenever they wanted, something he and Jennifer would never have. All they had was a cold, indifferent institution that refused to allow them to be together. No matter what they were, they deserved to experience love.

Jennifer's soul was locked inside her tortured mind. The court would commit her again once they found out what she had done. And he would have to go back as well because he'd broken into her parents' home and pointed a gun at them. He lifted his head and captured her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him.

“Listen to me,” he said, his voice high-pitched and agitated. “We have to start over, die. It's the only way. If we die together at exactly the same time, we'll be together forever in paradise. We'll force the universe to give us another chance. Can't you see? It's all meant to be this way. We'll be together with our baby girl.”

“We'll all be together.” A glimmer of hope appeared in her dull eyes. “I'll never have to go back to the hospital?”

“No, you'll never have to go back.” Tears were streaming down Adam's face. She was so beautiful, so perfect. She was eighteen, but her body was as fragile as a twelve-year-old's.
White was her favorite color. She was wearing a white dress today, but it was dirty and stained with blood. She had killed their child. How could they go on?

He pushed himself to his feet and removed the pistol from his back pocket. On the drive to Oakland, he had inserted the clip into the gun, afraid that Nadine or the police might track him down and try to stop him.

“You promise, Adam?” Jennifer said. “We'll all be together?”

“I promise, Jennifer. We'll all be together on the other side. There has to be another world, another lifetime. The doctors are always giving us drugs that make us sleep. Death is just like going to sleep except you wake up in another world, a better world than this one. Everyone is happy and people who love each other are together forever.”

She folded her small hands in her lap, and then tilted her head slightly as if she was posing for a photograph. She even tried to smile, but the edges of her lips were trembling. “I'm ready. Do it now.”

He bent down and embraced her, then released her and stepped back. His body was shaking so hard the gun was jumping up and down in his hands. She looked into his eyes and sat up straight, raising her chin with pride.

“Do it, Adam.”

He was sobbing, choking, mucus dripping from his nose. “I love you, Jennifer. When you get to the other side, just count to ten and I'll be there.”

He fired.

The explosion was deafening. The bullet struck almost squarely between her eyes, propelling her frail body backward with tremendous force. Fresh blood stained her white dress and spilled out on the bedspread. He held the gun to his head as he stared down at her lifeless body. “I'm coming.”

When the police broke down the door, Adam was rocking her body in his arms and sobbing hysterically. “I couldn't do it,” he told the officers. “Oh God, I promised her. Shoot me, please, I'm begging you. I want to die. I want to die.”

Adam saw the gun on the bed and lunged for it, hoping the officers would open fire. But one of the officers grabbed him from behind just as his fingertips touched the gun and wrestled him to the floor.

One year later, Adam Pounder, wearing an expensive suit his mother had bought him, was standing in the courtroom with the best defense attorney money could buy at his side. Except for the tortured look in his eyes, Adam resembled a clean-cut college student.

Adam stood, glancing over at Nadine and then back to the jury foreman. “On the
charge of murder in the first degree, we find the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity.”

Nadine jumped up and embraced him. “I told you, darling,” she whispered in his ear. “They can't send you to prison. You were sick when that awful girl made you shoot her.”

The judge shot a stern look at Nadine and she sat back down in her chair. “Mr. Pounder, you are hereby committed to the California state hospital for the criminally insane at Vacaville where you will be held until you are no longer a threat to society.” The gavel came down and Adam was removed from the courtroom.

Two years later, he was released.

“Mr. Pounder is an extremely intelligent and industrious young man,” the report from Vacaville stated. “During the time he has been at this institution, he has exhibited no abnormal or violent behavior, has participated willingly in therapy, and has been working actively toward obtaining his college diploma. Mr. Pounder has a supportive family structure, an excellent chance for employment and continued education, and no longer appears to pose a threat to the community.”

The case was closed, and the court was relieved of the responsibility of releasing a potentially dangerous individual back into the community. Vacaville, like most of the California prisons, was enormously overcrowded. A young man like Adam Pounder, with a family to support him and the possibility of contributing to society, was a calculated risk but one both the institution and the court had no choice but to take.

Adam walked out of the courtroom a free man exactly twenty-four months and three days after he shot and killed Jennifer Rondini. It was the second occasion where he had been convicted and released after committing an act of violence.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 22
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

Lee knocked on the door at two o'clock that afternoon. “Open the door, Shana. I have to know that you're okay.”

Shana's muscles were strained from staying in bed so it was a relief to move. She removed the chair she had used to block the door. “I'm fine. I just don't want anyone to sneak in here and kill me.”

“Relax. No one is going to hurt you. Everyone went to the gym to play basketball. You can walk around now if you want, stretch your legs.”

Shana was hesitant but decided to take her up on her offer. Depending on which flight Lily had managed to get on, she might not arrive until late that night. Staying in the room so long was making her paranoid, the last thing she needed right now. “Is Alex still at the hospital or did he leave?”

“I haven't seen him,” Lee told her. “That doesn't mean he won't be back. One time he left for a week.”

She walked to the door and cracked it, peering out into the great room to make sure it was empty. Lee walked to the door separating the isolation section from the great room and unlocked it. Placing the keys back in the pocket of her sweater, she slowly
raised her eyes to Shana. “Thanks for not telling them I cut the restraints.”

Shana hugged her. “No one else would have helped me, Lee. You're an angel.”

In the great room, Shana saw the police had posted a notice on the door to Norman's room that identified it as a crime scene. She went two doors down and snuck into Alex's room. Closing the door, she flipped on the light switch. The bed was neatly made and she didn't see any personal items on top of the end table or chest. Even the computer was gone, so it could be Alex was gone for good this time. When she looked into the closet, though, it was crammed full of Alex's clothes. She couldn't believe he had so many things here, and then remembered that Lee was convinced Alex could come and go whenever he wished. If she was right, he used Whitehall like a hotel room with great drugs and excellent security.

She was about to close the closet door when she saw what appeared to be a loose tile on the floor. Dropping to her knees, she used her fingernails to try to dislodge it. She was about to give up when she saw a ballpoint pen on the end table. She poked around the edges of the loose tile with the pen until it finally popped out. Underneath the tile, someone had chipped a hole in the concrete. Seeing a glint of something metallic, she reached in and pulled it out.

“Hot damn!” she exclaimed, holding a microcassette player in her hands. She depressed the play button and was startled by what she heard. Wheezing, combined with the sounds of a bed squeaking, then followed by a period of heavy breathing. These were the only noises she had ever heard Michaela Henderson make and they were all contained on this one recording. Had she been sleeping next to a corpse?

The hairs on the back of her neck pricked. What kind of devious charade had been going on? No, she told herself, Michaela had been alive. A corpse didn't get up and walk to the bathroom. She recalled the day she had seen Michaela get out of bed. All she had really seen was a large shadowy image swaddled in a thick bathrobe. There was
only one explanation for the tape. Alex must have hidden in her room disguised as her roommate. If she wasn't mistaken, the night she had seen Michaela get out of bed had been the night she had dreamed she was making love to Brett.

Had her sexually explicit dreams been real?

Shana was horrified. Stuffing the tape recorder into the back pocket of her jeans, she started to leave and then decided to look inside his drawers. Inside the top drawer of the chest, she found Alex's wallet hidden underneath a stack of jockey shorts. She flipped it open and scanned the credit cards in the plastic slots. There were other papers inside the side compartments in the wallet. She pulled them out and started reading them. Most of the papers were credit card receipts and business cards. One of the receipts caught her eye and she slipped it into her pocket.