I overheard my dad say the words serial stalker. I thought he meant cereal, and imagined a Lucky Charms leprechaun in our bushes.
Two days later, my uncle the reverend drove all the little girls who received a surprise doll to a small frame house on the edge of town. It turned out that an elderly woman in the Baptist church with an extensive doll collection had just wanted to do something nice for the little girls in town before she died.
She poured us grape Kool-Aid in paper cups and gave us each four stale vanilla wafers. We sat in a circle in her living room while my uncle “calmed” us down. He informed us that demons don’t waste their time attaching themselves to dolls with pigtails. They’re too busy using people.
I took away two things from that circle.
Vanilla wafers tasted like cardboard.
The devil was watching me.
To hell with my uncle and his sermons. To hell with my father and his secrets. This necklace, usually so cold, is now a ring of fire. I rip off the chain, roll down the window, and let it fly into the night.
My phone has lit up at least ten times since I tore out of the Branson place, leaving Rusty in the dust. I ease the patrol car behind my pickup, still nudged off the side of the park road under a grove of trees.
A jogger out for an early morning run tosses me a hesitant wave on his journey through the early gray of the Twilight Zone. I return a tight smile, locking the patrol car and walking over to my truck. People will never learn that alone with the sun out is more dangerous than together at night. Stick with your partner is a kindergarten rule that should hold for life.
I adjust the rearview mirror, eyeing the jogger, hoping he sticks to the main roads. I shift the car into gear. It’s early, but not too early to show up at a house with a hungry infant.
I’m still aching. Still conflicted. Not ready to call him back. If I tell Rusty about Angel, will he help me save her or turn her into collateral damage? If I lay out everything I know and feel about Wyatt, will he open his mind or nail it shut? If I hand over my scrapbook of glitter and blood, will he understand me better or never look at me the same?
With Rusty, it could go either way.
On one of our first cases together, a math teacher in town was accused of sleeping with a sixteen-year-old student. The boy’s mother had found a package of condoms under his mattress and a selfie with his nail-bitten fingers cupping one of his teacher’s breasts.
The teacher was a tearful witness. She told us that the boy raped her in the kitchen of the school cafeteria after hours. The picture was a threat the boy held over her in case she told. She claimed he pressed a butcher knife to her stomach while he forced her to smile.
There was not a single piece of evidence to suggest that was true. She’d slept around on her husband before, and this incident triggered him to file for divorce. Her phone dump revealed six more images, all texted to her by the boy, who had her personal cell number memorized. The background, an unhelpful blur.
It was Rusty who decided to bring the boy in and have one more go at him. He laid down an 8x10 print of the two of them naked. It took everything in me not to flip it over.
“Can’t see it here, but there’s a rumor your teacher’s got a tattoo on her backside,” Rusty said to him. “They say it’s a horse. Tell me, is it a horse? My mother raised me to believe that a tattoo is always the sign of a slut. Marry a girl with a tattoo and she’ll eventually cheat and break your heart. But for messing around? Tattooed girls are great.”
The boy had grinned, lapping it up. “Yeah, it’s a horse. For sure. Mothers get all worked up, you get that. It’s my mom who’s got a problem with this situation. Not me.”
“What about your dad? Doesn’t he raise horses?”
“Yeah, he does. Mostly Paints. A few Arabians.”
“So you know your horses versus your mythological creatures.”
“Myth a what?”
“Here’s the thing, son,” Rusty said. “That tattoo is a unicorn, not a horse. Purple, with a big horn on its head. When I make love, I pay attention to the details. I’m a little worried you don’t. Should I be worried? I can’t protect you if you lie.”
“But you just said it was a horse.”
“I think you said that. Didn’t he, Odette?”
Twenty more minutes of this, and the boy copped to waiting for his teacher at the vending machine. He knew she bought a bag of cheese crackers and a Diet Coke between 4:15 and 4:30 every Wednesday afternoon between tutoring sessions.
He stuffed her mouth with his dirty athletic sock. The knife, left out on a cafeteria counter, was an opportunity he picked up while he dragged her to a pantry where he’d already pushed aside a big box of cheese to make room. He was absolutely certain that she enjoyed every minute of it.
It was a skin-crawling path to a confession, with a piece of rape porn lying on the table.
It turns out, there wasn’t a single tattoo on that teacher’s body.
It doesn’t matter that I abhorred his methods. Rusty saw the truth when I couldn’t.
The first hammers of the day are starting to pound as I pull my truck in front of Maggie’s. House skeletons are rising double-time in every direction, tucked close, no room to breathe.
Maggie’s secret life is soon going to be much harder to maintain. New neighbors will note the repair vans she calls, the little girl of hers with a primitive back yard habit, the succession of strangers who walk out the door at all hours with wounds taped and new clothes on their backs.
For a second, I bathe myself in the sleepy domestic picture behind Maggie’s door. The baby’s mouth tugging at her breast. Angel and Lola, curled up, cartoons jittering.
My partner has little innocents at home, too.
I make up my mind.
I’ll call Rusty back so he knows I’m OK. I’ll start by telling him I parked the patrol car back at the lake.
I thumb through every missed call.
Not a single one is from Rusty.
There are twelve in a frantic row, all from the same number.
33
“I got a DNA hit off the girl’s water bottle.”
Dr. Camila Perez, all business, doesn’t bother with hello when she picks up on the first ring. “The sample you gave me was pristine. It popped in the database as a match to a man named Christopher Coco. I can tell you with an extremely high degree of certainty the DNA you provided belongs to his daughter.”
My brain, processing. Camila found Angel’s father.
“He’s not a good guy, Odette,” she continues grimly. “Convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He was sent to Big Mac.”
“Big Mac,” I repeat.
“The Oklahoma pen. Where they cage the worst of the worst. But that was a few years back. He was released three weeks ago. I’m sorry to call so early, but that’s why I didn’t wait. I thought it was too much of a coincidence—that you handed me the DNA of a killer’s daughter right as he’s getting out of prison.”
Twenty steps away, Maggie’s front door is pulsing.
The colors in the sweet picture I painted behind that door, running red. The hammers on the rooftops, clicking like manic heels.
“Odette, did you hear what I said? There’s a lot of background noise. Like you’re in a hailstorm.”