And Then There Was One (17 page)

“Yes, but I wasn’t much help —” Yesterday had been a literal parade of players he’d worked with over the past twenty-odd years. The slide show started to click in his head, then stopped on a guy. Yankee uniform. A hefty guy with thick, blond hair, very curly. What was his name? What was there about him?

Fourth Day and Monroe Triplets Still Missing — FBI Stumped.
— National News, Thursday, June 18

At first Jackie had thought that maybe, just maybe, her sisters were goofing off. Playing a trick on Mom and Dad. Sometimes Sammie yelled at Mom that she treated them like babies. “We’re
nine
years old, not kindergartners,” had been her usual line. And on this, Jackie had always agreed with Sam. But on Monday morning when she woke up and Alex and Sam were not home, Jackie had changed her mind. Something very bad was happening to them, and it was all her fault. If only she and Danielle would have given in and gone with them to see
Night at the Museum.

Jackie had tried to figure out if Alex and Sammie were dead like some of the television people were suggesting. She knew that Dad didn’t think they were, but she wasn’t sure about Mom. Mom had had a dream right before she promised to get her a puppy. What did that mean?Everybody kept asking Jackie if she was
okay
. No, she was not
okay
, and if they didn’t find her sisters she could never be
okay
.

At first, Jackie had tried to stay close by her dad. He’d always understood her the best. But now he was not acting like her dad anymore. She’d heard him yelling at that nice Agent Camry. She’d heard him say two bad words,
ass
and
bastard
. Dad never talked like that even though he was an athlete and everybody knew how bad they talked. “Trash talk” they called it.

And sitting at the top of the stairs, waiting for Grandma to take a shower, she’d listened to the grown-ups talk. A bad man in Tampa had been killed. And he had two little boys, Mom had said. That made
her think of Tina, the nice girl she’d met at the FBI. Something bad had happened to her dad, too.

When Agent Camry left, Dad came up to get dressed.

“Dad,” she’d said, “I heard Agent Camry say that you have to go to the FBI today. Do I have to go, too? Can I stay with Grandma or go to Aunt Sharon’s?”

“Afraid not. Aunt Sharon has to take Grandma to a doctor’s appointment.”

“But, Dad —”

“I’m in a hurry, Jackie, I have to jump in the shower.” She started to follow him into the bathroom, but he shut the door in her face.

Tears trickling down her cheeks, Jackie sat down on a step. She didn’t want anyone to see her cry, so she waited. She heard her Aunt Sharon arrive and go into the kitchen with Mom. Jackie inched down a couple of steps so that she could listen to what they were saying.

Sharon asked Mom all kinds of questions and Jackie was surprised at how calm Mom sounded as she explained about what Agents Streeter and Camry were doing, about how Aunt Monica was giving a lot of money for Alex and Sam.

“Katie, are you going to be okay,” Aunt Sharon asked.

“Yesterday, I had what I think was a hallucination.” Jackie wondered what that was. “Alex and Sammie spoke to me. At first I thought that meant they were, you know,
dead
.”

“Like a dream?” Aunt Sharon asked.

“Yes, just a dream, but when I tried to tell Scott, he wouldn’t even listen. I am so worried about him. Last night I crushed up a Valium and put it in his drink. He did sleep better, but he was awake by the time the FBI agent got here this morning.”

“You did?” Aunt Sharon sounded surprised. “You know how Scott feels about drugs. That guy won’t even take a Tylenol.” Jackie did know how her dad felt about drugs, he was always volunteering for antidrug programs. She wondered what Valium was. Would it make Dad a drug addict?

“I had to do it. Scott is falling apart. I don’t know how else to say it. You know how he’s always been so strong, so steady. Throughout everything. Even when he got hurt and had to drop out of baseball.
Throughout all the stresses we’ve had to face as a couple. Well, you know what I’m saying.”

Jackie kept listening. “Yes. We’ve often said, both of us Jones girls married stalwart men. Men with inner strength, strong values, ‘selfactualized’ men. Isn’t that what you called Scott and my Fred?”

“Yes,” Mom said.

“But with what you two are going through —”

Jackie felt a little guilty, knowing that eavesdropping was not polite, but she just had to know what Mom was thinking. About
her
. So far Mom had not mentioned
her
.

“Each day that passes,” Mom told her aunt, “I keep thinking that it’ll be
today
. That Sammie and Alex will come skipping into Mom’s house. I just can’t let myself sink into hopelessness.”

“I sure agree with that,” Aunt Sharon said. “But what about Jackie? How’s she holding up?”

Jackie almost leapt off her step to join her mom and her aunt, but she held back. What would Mom say. About
her
?

But Mom said nothing. That is, nothing about Jackie.

“More coffee?” Aunt Sharon asked.

“Sharon, I’m convinced that they are with a woman, not a man. That belief is the only thing that keeps me sane.”

What about me, Mom. Don’t I matter to you?

“Katie, I just don’t know if you’re being —”

“I’ve had enough coffee. And where is Scott? We have to get downtown. But, Sharon, I feel it in here, in my heart. My Alex and Sammie are okay. They’re off on an adventure. Making a joke out of leaving Jackie behind. Jackie’s always plotting to be an individual, deep down, she resents being a triplet. That’s why the girls split up at the movie, squabbling over which movie to see, Jackie wanting her own way.”

Jackie stayed riveted to her seat on the stairs. Now she
knew
that Mom — and Dad, too — blamed her. Whatever had happened to her sisters
had
been her fault.

“We have to think positive thoughts,” Mom told Aunt Sharon. “That’s what I tell my patients,” she said. “Negative thoughts are just that, negative.”

“No suspects, only a ransom note,” Aunt Sharon said. “What about Keith Franklin, Katie, anything new there?”

“Jackie, what are you doing sitting there?” Grandma tapped on her shoulder. “Come on, let’s go downstairs.”

Jackie felt her body begin to shake all over. She hoped that Grandma wouldn’t notice when she took her hand, and together they went down the rest of the steps.

Mom didn’t even look up as they walked into the breakfast nook, but Aunt Sharon did. Jackie heard her whisper to Mom, “Look at Jackie. You didn’t give
her
any drugs?”

“Of course not,” Mom said, blinking her eyes like she did when she was mad.

“Katie,” Aunt Sharon said, “let me take Jackie with me today. After Mom’s appointment, she can swim in the pool; I’ll take her to the club for tennis. Her Monroe uncles can keep her busy with baseball. She’d be distracted with constant activities.”

Aunt Sharon had gotten up and she put her hands on Jackie’s shoulder. “Look, I’ll get her away from all those reporters out there.”

“You may be right,” Mom said, but then she stopped. “But they need Scott downtown, and I can’t let him go alone and if Jackie —”

“I think it’s a good idea, Katie,” Grandma said.

But Jackie didn’t really care what happened.
Her parents hated her.

Pulling her hand out of Grandma’s, Jackie took a step back, squirming out of the hold that Mom and Aunt Sharon had on her shoulders. “My sisters are dead,” she said in a normal tone of voice. “And it’s all my fault, Mom said so.
It is all my fault.”

Jackie stepped farther back as her mother came toward her with her eyes blinking very fast. “That’s not true, Jackie,” Katie said. “I did not say that!”

Jackie backed up two more steps onto the landing of the stairs. “I heard you, Mom!” Her voice so loud now that she sounded like her sister, Sammie, challenging Mom.

Mom reached to grab her shoulders, but Jackie took a step backward. “Jackie, please, I never, ever meant that. Come here, sweetie.”

“I heard you tell Aunt Sharon. You don’t want me any more. Do you?”

Katie stopped. “That’s not what I meant,” she said with such a strange look in her eyes. Jackie couldn’t tell if she was angry or scared or what, because her face looked so twisted. “Jackie, you’re everything —”

For an instant, Jackie wanted to step forward, into her mom’s arms, but when she heard footsteps from the top of the stairs she turned to see who it was, then she took a step back, lost her balance, and fell backward off the two-step landing.

Jackie’s head hit the hardwood floor with a thud. Katie gasped, seemingly frozen as Sharon rushed to the child. Just as she did, Scott came bounding down the steps.

“What was that noise?” he asked, almost stumbling over Jackie’s body on the floor, curled in the shape of a comma.

“Katie, what happened?” he shouted, now on his knees, a hand over Jackie’s chest, his hazel eyes wide with dread.

“Don’t move her,” Katie managed, still standing, unable to move, unable to breathe. “Her neck —”

Not sure she wanted to take another breath, ever, Katie remained frozen.
What have I done
? “My fault,” she mumbled. “My fault.”

Lucy was at the phone, dialing 9-1-1.

“Katie, you’re a doctor,” Scott’s voice came out as a croak. “Get over here.”

On the 9-1-1 call, Lucy asked them to contact Agent Camry at the FBI. Within minutes an emergency team had arrived, and Camry called to say that she’d meet them at Children’s Hospital.

Alex and Sammie’s voices warning reverberated through Katie’s head.
Take care of Jackie
.

Monica Monroe Offers One Hundred Thousand Dollar
Reward for Return of Nieces.
—
National News, Thursday, June 18

Spanky’s rig jostled over the rough spots on I-75. Radio blasting seventies tunes, static interfering. He’d be fifty in two years, but he was still a teenager at heart. Stuck in adolescence some shrink had once told him. His stomach growled and he decided to pull over at the next stop for a burger and fries.

He knew the truck stops on the Detroit-Miami run like the back of his hand. Could tick them off in order of his chances to score a little pussy. The one ahead near Knoxville had promise, but not at noon. Besides, his needs had been satisfied last night down in Valdosta. A real Georgia peach. Said her name was Kiki. Now what kind of a name was that? Hawaiian? Her skin was kind of brown. Not black like an African American, more like Mexican or Indian or one of those stinkin’ Middle East countries. Kiki’d been hanging by the vending machine. He’d bought her a candy bar and promised to show her a nest of baby birds. He hadn’t hurt her. He never did hurt them. He just rubbed his willy all over those soft spots. Well, he
had
licked. But nothing that hurt or left a mark. And he was careful not to let his cum get on her clothes. When he was done, he’d given her the usual warning not to tell mommy or daddy, and he’d kept her panties. White nylon. He’d been hoping for something more sexy for number twenty. Oh, well. He couldn’t wait to ceremoniously add it to his collection.

Shit, he’d missed his turnoff. Now he’d have to wait another hour for a decent place to eat. He was sick and tired of McDonald’s and all those chains that lined the interstate. Give him an honest to goodness
truck stop any time. He shifted his attention from food when some jerk in a Porsche tried to pass him on the right. “No you don’t,” Spanky said, cutting abruptly into the right lane. He laughed at the panic on the rich lady’s face. One day a driver wasn’t going to see him in time. Oh well, he was bigger than them. Trucking firms had insurance. Maybe that’d be his signal to retire. Hang up the keys to eighteen wheelers. Maybe do odd jobs in his pickup around his hometown until he had enough moola to move to Alaska. Now that was a dream worth savin’ for.

His stomach kept on growling, made worse by the Dorito commercial on the radio. He changed stations, looking for a local twelve o’clock news and weather channel. Weather was important in his business and since he didn’t read newspapers, how else was he supposed to keep up to date?

The lead story was the missing triplets. He figured that something bad musta happened to those kids. He was curious, and yes, he had to admit, turned on. He’d followed the story. His opinion: it was all about money, but why no ransom demand? Maybe it was one of those perverts who the mom sent to the joint? That’s what the cops thought. Like it was payback. Vindictive. Retribution. Mentally he slapped himself on the back. Ma would be proud of him using such big words. Just because he was a truck driver didn’t mean he was ignorant. No sirree.

Shooting the breeze with the truckers last night, he’d had a few too many beers. “Pervert got those girls,” he’d said. “Shit they were grabbed out of a mall. That’s where those guys hang out. Rape ’em. Kill ’em. Toss ’em where nobody’s gonna find ’em.” When the guys around the bar just stared at him, he’d known he’d gone too far. The assholes were all staring at him.

He’d shrugged his shoulders. “Hey, man, just tellin’ it how it is.”

The big ape on the end of the bar got up and stomped over to him. Got his ugly white face so close Spanky could smell the stink of booze mixed with smokes. Spanky had flexed his muscles for a fight, but the asshole just said, “Sir, shut your fuckin’ mouth. You can think whatever the fuck you want, but you’re in the South ’n we don’ talk about women like that.”

“Amen, brother,” the others said, slumping over to lift their drinks.

Spanky hadn’t been too drunk to know he’d best get the hell out of that bar.

What did those fuckers know about human nature? Spanky figured that he knew about perverts. Perverts had something sick wrong with them. Spanky, he had morals. Sure, he liked little girls. He could admit that to himself, but why would he have to kill them? That just didn’t make sense. As long as he could scare them enough so they wouldn’t tell. He’d found that little girls were easy to scare. Most, anyway. If he thought one acted too tough, he’d just let her go. There would always be another, like Kiki last night.