Abandoned: A Thriller (34 page)

“Really?”

The self-pitying sound in his voice makes me want to say ugly things, to hurt him in his weakness.
Poor baby
, I want to say.
Is life
unfair for poor widdle you?
I slam down the window on these thoughts and continue to wear my own mask.

“Really. Just hang in there, and don’t close any doors you might need to open later, okay?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Thanks.” He raises his gaze to mine and I witness naked gratefulness. Who knows if it’s real or calculated?

“You’re welcome. Let’s talk about this man, this Dali. Are you willing to do that?”

“Why not? He’s the reason I’m here.”

“That’s exactly right,” I say. “You don’t owe him anything.”

He seems to take courage from this idea. He sits up straighter and nods to himself a few times. “Yeah. Yeah. Fuck him. Okay. What do you want to know?”

“When you talked, did he ever explain what his name meant?”

“Dali?”

“Yes.”

“I never asked. He wasn’t the kind of man you question a lot.”

“Fair enough. What else can you tell me?”

Hollister frowns, thinking. “He was very careful about giving me any details. I never spoke with him face-to-face, only by cell phone and email, and those numbers changed regularly. He was always the one to initiate contact. I had no way of reaching out to him.”

“How about his voice? Was there anything distinctive about it? High-pitched, low-pitched, rough, smooth, anything?”

“Sorry. He used some kind of voice scrambler. It made him sound like a robot when he talked.”

I bite my lip, frustrated. “How long were you posting and chatting on that website before he first contacted you?”

“On beamanagain.com?”

“Yes.”

He considers it. “Not long. A week and a half? I think that’s right.”

“What kind of things were you saying just before he contacted you?”

Hollister gives me an appraising look. I glimpse the first return of shrewdness. “Why?”

“Just trying to get a full picture.”

The barest smirk ghosts his fetid lips. I prefer the beaten-down Douglas to the man I see returning to himself now. Sometimes the mask slips.
“It was pretty specifically after I said something along the lines of
I wish I had the guts to just make her go away.”

“You said it that openly?”

“Sure. I was just one of a bunch of other guys venting. I didn’t feel like I was risking anything.”

“That’s when he contacted you for a private chat?”

“Right.”

It makes some sense, I think. No reason to tiptoe around something like this. When you’re selling kidnapping, torture, and murder, you have to be aggressive. Dali would watch for the indicators of more than mere discontentment and then he’d approach and be blunt about it. Most of the time, I bet, he gets turned down. The majority of the human race is all bluster when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of harm. It’s one thing to say to your wife, “I wish you were dead,” and another thing entirely to bury an ax in her skull and dump her body in a lake. The distinction might seem a hop and a jump to the uninitiated, but in reality the difference is a distance from here to the sun.

“Then what happened?”

“Exactly what I said when the black man was interviewing me. Dali told me he could make my problem disappear. He offered proof and he warned me that if I breathed a word, he’d kill Avery and Dylan.”

“Why’d you agree to go ahead? What was the tipping point?” I ask the question without really thinking about it. It’s the common need, the most visceral one: a desire to understand why. We need why; it helps us sleep at night. Too many times, there is no why, there’s just madness.

Hollister seems to have a need to understand it himself or perhaps to make me understand. He leans back in his chair and ponders my question. The silence in the room settles in as I watch him struggle to unravel his own reasoning.

“I just … I guess I just didn’t see any other way out. Divorce meant giving her my house and my sons and half my money for God knows how long. This was a way for me to get the happiness I deserved.” He points to his chest and the expression on his face is hurt, bewildered, petulant. “I deserved to be happy too.”

I think I hate the ones like him the most. The serial killer is a simpler, more honest monster. Ask them why they did it, and their answers boil down, in the end, to the same thing:
because it makes me feel so very, very good.

Douglas Hollister and his ilk live in a world of mirrors that reflect their own rightness and rationalizations back to them. They’re worse, in some ways, because they’re too close to the rest of us. They lack the elegance of the serial killer’s mandate. Why’d he do it? For money. For a house. Because he is a spoiled, failed, psychotic child.

“Did Dana know, Douglas? Was she in on this with you?”

His face falls, and his eyes grow hostile. “No. Fuck you for asking.”

So she was another victim of your narcissism, in the end.

“Thanks for your time.” I stand up and head toward the door.

“That’s it?”

I turn to him. “Just one more question, Douglas. Are you happy now?”

I’m pleased by the rage that profuses his face. I’ve grown crueler, and I question it less and less. Should I be worried?

I reach my car without an answer. By the time I hit the highway, I’ve forgotten the question.

“I knew it,” Bonnie says to me.

Tommy and I look at her, then at each other. “You did?” I ask.

We’re sitting at the dinner table. Dinner has long since been enjoyed, the dishes washed and put away. I’d told Tommy about my revelation of our marriage when I arrived home, and his happiness gave me the certainty that I’d done the right thing. He’d pulled me into his arms and held me there.

“Thank you,” he’d said. “I hated having to hide something I’m so proud of.”

I haven’t dropped the pregnancy bomb on him yet. I am reserving that for, well—now. Or shortly. First we have to finish our sheepish confession to Bonnie.

She smiles and reaches out, taking one of Tommy’s hands and one of mine. “Of course I knew. You guys aren’t good at hiding when you’re really happy. I thought about the Hawaii trip and put it all together.”

“Smart girl,” I say, my voice wry. “So?”

“So what?”

“So what do you think? How do you feel about it?”

“Oh.” She grins. “I think it’s about time.” Sometimes it gets to be that easy.

I pull my hand away and clear my throat. “Well, uh, I have some other news too.”

I suddenly feel as though I’m naked on a stage, with a spotlight blinding me. My throat feels rough, and my heart is pounding in my chest.

“Smoky?” Tommy asks. “What is it?”

“Well, you see …” I clear my throat again, and now I’m getting angry at myself. “Oh, for God’s sake. Look, I’ll just say it, okay?” I take a deep breath in, then: “I’m pregnant.”

Neither of them reacts, not at first.

“What’s that?” Tommy asks. He seems dumbfounded.

“I said, I’m pregnant. We’re having a baby. Your baby.” I sound defensive. I hate it when I sound defensive. It’s fear, not fight. Fight is better.

They both fall into silence. I grind my teeth. I’m starting to get pissed off and more afraid at the same time.

“Well? Don’t either of you have anything to say?”

Tommy sits back. His jaw is slack. “I’m going to be a father?”

There is wonder in his voice, only wonder, and I know then that it’s all going to be okay. Terror flees, replaced by a relief that exhausts me, the bottom of the adrenal bell curve. Bonnie stands up and comes over to me. She hugs me, wordless. She clings to me, not letting go, and I worry for a moment what it means. Is she scared? Jealous? Sad?

She pulls away and wipes tears from her face.

“What is it, honey?” I ask.

“That’s just … so
cool,”
she says, choking a little. I laugh and she laughs as well, and then I’m crying too, so now we’re both crying and laughing, as Tommy watches and repeats: “I’m going to be a father? Holy
shit.”
We stare at him in shock.

“Tommy,” I say. “Did you just use profanity?”

His eyes swim toward me, here yet not here, happy and disbelieving at the same time. “Did I?” he asks. He stands up, the chair sliding back on the wood floor. He walks over to us and he takes us both in his arms, Bonnie and me, equally.

“I love you both very much.” His voice is rough, like unsanded
wood. He hugs us to him with certainty and tenderness, that mix of sorrowful strength all good men seem to carry around with them.

“This is great news.”

Tommy, my man of few words. Sometimes shorter is not just better. Sometimes it’s the best of all.

“Listen to me, honey,” I tell Bonnie. “This is important.”

“Okay.”

“The first thing you need to know is, the moment you stop really listening to me, the moment you put your attention on automatic or start acting like you know everything or get impatient with my direction in the slightest way, we pack up and leave. Got that?”

“Yes.”

Bonnie and I are at the shooting range. Raymond, Kirby’s undertaker friend, sits outside in the parking lot, watching and waiting. He reminds me of a frog. Perched, quiet and harmless, until a fly buzzes by, then the fly is consumed and quiet harmlessness resumes.

We’d gotten past our tears and happiness. Well, maybe not past the happiness, but at least the giddy side of it. Tommy is at home, searching the Internet for a book on pregnancy and childbirth. I considered trying to dissuade him but gave it up in the end because, in truth, I like that he’s doing it. This isn’t going to be the walk in the park it was when I was in my twenties. The thought of Tommy boning up on the subject brings me comfort.

Bonnie and I had already made our appointment for the range tonight, and there’s no way I’m breaking it because of my announcement. I’ve never had to juggle two kids, but something tells me it would be a bad precedent to set.

I’ve been shooting at this range in the Valley since I can remember. Its owner, Jazz, is an ex-marine sniper with eyes that are warm up front but cold in the back. He doesn’t have to let me bring Bonnie here, but he’s made no bones about it. I guess he approves of her teething on gunmetal.

Bonnie has big hands for her age, and they’re strong, so I’ve decided to start her with a 9mm. We’ll work our way down from there as needed. Jazz rents guns at his range, and I chose the Sig Sauer P226 for her to begin with. It’s a 9mm that’s somehow always felt light and
comfortable to me, and it’s an accurate weapon. I prefer the Glock, but mostly because it’s the gun that found me first. Jazz set us up with a ten-round-capacity mag, one hundred rounds of ammunition, some paper targets, and our eye protection and earmuffs.

“Earmuffs go on before we enter the range,” I continue. “They never come off while we’re on the range. You could go deaf, no joke. Protective lenses stay on at all times while you’re on the range, without exception.”

She nods, and I’m mollified by the rapt seriousness on her face. It’s apropos. I pick up the gun.

“This is a double-action weapon. What that means is that you don’t have to pull back the hammer prior to firing. Just pulling the trigger will cause it to fire. Not only for that reason but especially because of it, you are never—and I mean never—to have the weapon pointed anywhere but down the firing range when it is loaded. You are never—and I mean never—to point the weapon at anyone, including your own foot, regardless of whether you think it’s loaded or not. Do you understand so far?”

“Yes.”

“You are to eject the mag and place the weapon down each time you finish firing.”

“How do I put in and eject the mag?”

I look at Jazz and raise my eyebrows, asking permission. It’s a firm rule that you never walk off the range with a mag in your weapon. I was here when someone forgot this rule, and I watched as Jazz held a .357 on them and asked them to lie down on the floor. No one got shot, but it made an impression on me.

“Go ahead,” he says, watching it all with a passive interest.

I show her, sliding the empty mag home and then releasing it. “Got it?”

“Can I try?”

I hand her the weapon and watch as she examines it carefully, along with the mag. She takes her time, not putting on a show of pretending to understand how it all works. “What’s this?” she asks, pointing at the decocking lever.

“Kind of like a safety.”

“No,” Jazz says. “It’s a decocking lever. Not a safety. Apples and oranges.”

He’s right, of course. I’d been trying to dumb it down for Bonnie, to keep it simple, but the old rule is always the best rule when it comes to guns: If you’re not smart enough to understand your weapon, you’re not smart enough to use it safely.

“Many handguns have what’s called a safety, honey, that you can put on manually. The P226 has a decocking lever, which lowers the hammer of the gun safely. That way, when you travel, you don’t have to worry about the hammer coming down by accident for any reason. But,” I continue, emphasizing this last, “it also means that this gun is basically always ready to fire.”