Blackout (24 page)

Betty had an impulse to lie, to deny everything. She’d been delirious, imagining things. But didn’t he have a right to know? If,
when
, he found out later, he’d be mad at her for not being honest with him.

“Let’s sit down,” she said, buying time, going to the small table in a corner of the room. She took his hand in hers and said as gently as she could, “Someone may have tried to hurt Lettie.”

“But why?” His eyes widened, and he jerked his hand away from hers. “Who?”

“I don’t know who. I don’t know why, either.” She folded her hands tightly together as if that action could keep her from flying apart. “All I know is there seems to be a pattern in the last three deaths at Merry Hills. A sign.”

“My God,” Thomas said, standing up abruptly, banging his knee sharply on the table edge. “What’s being done about this? What do you mean, a pattern? Why didn’t you inform the families?” He practically shouted at her.

“Thomas, please, this is very difficult for me. I was the only one who believed what I’m telling you now. Katherine was skeptical, and the police thought I was nuts.” She paused and watched helplessly as Thomas paced the small kitchen.

“Go on, I’m listening.”

She told him about the other two deaths, the way the arms were folded, how she tried to get the police to check it out. And how, finally, she found an ally in Maxwell. She felt bad her suspicions of Thomas had not completely disappeared.

When she finished, Thomas stopped pacing and stood facing her across the table. “Why didn’t you go to Maxwell sooner? The place should have been closed down. It needs to be shut down now!”

“Thomas, listen. There’s nowhere else to put that many residents. Most of them have relatives in town who visit. Shut it down, the killer goes somewhere else and it starts all over again. What have you accomplished? The more I think about it, the more I think we have a chance of finding this monster. If we close, he might never get caught because he might never be detected again. You don’t evacuate a town because you discover a serial murderer. He’d go somewhere else.”

“I don’t know,” Thomas said. He finally sat down again, slumping into the chair, appearing totally defeated. Betty felt sorry for him. It was bad enough his wife had died. Now he’d found out she might have been murdered.

Betty reached for Thomas’s hand again. He let her hold it awhile.

“What might help,” she finally said with some hesitation, “is if you let them do an autopsy.”

“What?” He jerked his hand away. “Never.” He stood up and leaned over her. “I’ll never let them mutilate her, do you hear?” he shouted.

Betty cringed a moment, then stood up, too. “They don’t mutilate, Thomas. It’s like an operation.” She deliberately kept her tone soft, her inflection flat. “You want to help catch the person responsible—”

“We don’t need to have that done to catch them. What would they learn? That she’d been smothered? You already believe that. It wouldn’t help.”

“They might also find drugs or something else useful.”

He sank back down into his chair and put his head in his hands. “I don’t believe this. My Lettie. Why? Why would anyone…”

Betty sat down, too, but this time she didn’t touch him. “I don’t know, Thomas. I wish I did.” She couldn’t say any more around the lump in her throat.

Finally, he looked up at her, eyes bleak and bloodshot. “No autopsy, Betty. I couldn’t.”

She shrugged. She knew she wouldn’t be able to change his mind. People who were against it wouldn’t allow their loved ones to be cut up. And the police didn’t believe her, so they wouldn’t order one.

Then the small doubt crept into her mind again
. He wouldn’t want an autopsy if he’d been the one…

Alice sat on the chair in Lettie’s living room, wondering vaguely what Mr. Black and Betty were talking about for such a long time in the kitchen. She heard Mr. Black raise his voice a couple of times, but couldn’t make out what he said.

Ever since she’d remembered her mother’s death, Alice had tried to stop thinking about it. She felt she had to give herself time to absorb the situation, to deal with everything. But her mind’s eye wouldn’t stop seeing what had happened, enacting it over and over again so she felt she might go crazy. Only a few days ago, she’d wanted to remember.

Now she wished she could forget again.

Memories flooded back. Her grandmother’s abuse. Her grandfather’s coldness. Friends at school. The animals on the farm. Teachers, neighbors, church. Her dad coming home from prison.

At first she’d hung back from him, but the hunger for affection had been so strong. She hadn’t been hugged since he’d left. He’d always been warm and gentle with her. That much she’d remembered. But she hadn’t known why he left—it had been blotted out of her mind. She hadn’t realized why he’d gone to prison until she’d remembered her mother’s death.

Now she understood the memory fragment when he told her, “I didn’t kill her, Lissy.” He meant he hadn’t killed her mother.

But he’d been convicted of murdering her.

The guilt overwhelmed her when she now realized her first attack of amnesia when she was eight had prevented her from saving her father from prison. The guilt felt like a horrible stomachache. Alice held her arms across her stomach, rocking back and forth in the chair, moaning softly.

When the spasm finally passed, she took a sip of the lukewarm tea and tried to think, to put all the pieces of the puzzle together in order to make the picture clear. And to decide what to do next.

She remembered again how her grandmother had killed her mother.
And Nana and Grandpa let Daddy take the blame,
she thought,
to save themselves.
Just before he got out of prison I had the pictures developed. When the clerk asked me about them, I lied and told him they were actors in a play. They helped me remember the… the rape and murder. I showed them to Daddy and he shot Nana right after Grandpa died of a heart attack. Daddy and I ran. Ran until we saw his picture in the paper, then ran faster until we crashed into the tree.
She almost put her hands over her head when she recalled tumbling down a hill. Then she had walked to a different road where Donald picked her up.

What had happened to her father? She had to find him. He probably thought she was dead. If he himself were still alive.

Then a final memory came, a memory that could help her find him.

“If we ever get separated, Lissy,” he’d said, “remember to call Aunt Ginny. 555-587-2221. Remember fe, fi, fo fum, first, then 87, then three twos and a one. Now repeat it.” As if she was still eight years old instead of seventeen. But she repeated it for him, over and over again.

Aunt Ginny, her mother’s sister, had stopped visiting the farm after the murder. Alice remembered her as an older version of her mother. Short, pretty, with black hair and bright blue eyes. The sisters had the same laugh, soft and musical.

Abruptly, Alice stood up. She wanted to call her aunt right away. Her father said she should call collect. She glanced around the living room but didn’t see a telephone anywhere. Hesitating about leaving the room, Alice stood a moment, debating with herself. The doorbell pealed, making her start.

She stood in the living room doorway as Betty and Thomas came down the hall from the back of the house. Thomas opened the door to a woman who looked like him with longer hair. The lady threw herself into Thomas’s arms and cried, “My poor boy. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry. Lettie was a wonderful wife to you.”

Alice felt tears come to her eyes as she watched brother and sister hug for a long moment. They finally broke apart and Thomas introduced everyone. He went to get his sister some tea while the women and Alice went into the living room and sat down.

The others talked, but Alice didn’t listen. Impatient to leave and call her aunt, she couldn’t concentrate on what they said. Instead, she imagined what might happen when she phoned Aunt Ginny.

What if she’d moved? Or died? What if she didn’t know where her father had gone? Maybe they’d caught him and put him in jail again. He might still be hiding, and Aunt Ginny wouldn’t know where he was.

At last the other three stood up. Automatically, Alice got up, too. Murmuring good-byes, Alice and Betty left brother and sister waving from the doorway.

Exhaustion settled over Alice as she climbed into the car, and she hardly had the strength to buckle her seat belt. Both she and Betty remained silent on the short ride to Betty’s house.

In the guest bath, Alice took a long, hot shower, using up time until she felt she could go to the kitchen and use the phone. Betty only had that one and another in her own bedroom. Alice had decided to wait forty-five minutes before calling. She would keep her vow not to share anything more she remembered with Betty. The minutes dragged on as she stared at the clock, afraid when she finally called, Aunt Ginny wouldn’t be home.

It was midnight when Alice made her way on bare feet to the kitchen. She turned on the light, the florescent gleam making her squint. Opening the refrigerator, she took out a pitcher of orange juice and poured herself a glass. That would be her excuse if Betty came into the room.

She felt short of breath as she picked up the phone and carefully dialed the operator. Her heart pounded painfully in her chest while her sweaty hand grasped the receiver.

She gave the woman who answered the number for the collect call, then counted the rings.
Three. Four. Please, please answer. Five, six. Someone pick up. Oh, please. Seven, eight. There’s no one there; they would have answered by now. Nine, ten.
The rings seemed to echo hollowly over the line. The operator said, “No one’s answering.”
I know that,
Alice thought, but she wouldn’t give up. Not yet. “Keep trying, please,” she said. At fifteen rings, she almost put the instrument down. No, she’d wait five more.

After twenty rings, Alice slowly replaced the receiver and put her head in her hands.
I won’t cry
, she told herself.
I won’t
.

She raised her head and saw the glass of orange juice. As she sipped it, she suddenly wondered if she’d given the operator the right number.

Hands shaking, she dialed zero again. This time she only let it ring ten times before giving up.

Alice finished the juice in one swallow, washed and dried the glass, and went wearily to bed. There, she tossed and turned for half an hour before falling into a fitful sleep.

Betty went to her office on Tuesday morning and sat down at her desk with relief. The ride into work had been uncomfortable with Alice sitting silently beside her. For once in her life, Betty had been at a loss for words. Alice frightened her with her dark secrets and her vulnerability. Betty feared saying something wrong, something hurtful to the girl, so she remained as silent as Alice.

After she checked her messages, she walked to her mother’s room and told the sitter to step out for a while. She dreaded telling Ma about Lettie, but she knew if she didn’t break it gently, someone else would, perhaps with less care. Not at all rested from last night’s sleep, Betty wished she could go home and sit in her atrium with Ma and Charlie and vegetate with her plants for a week or two.

“You seem beat, daughter,” Betty Senior said, concern in her voice.

“I know,” Betty replied. “I avoided looking in the mirror this morning.” She paused a moment, then took her mother’s hand in her own, even though she knew Ma wouldn’t be able to feel the touch. “I have bad news.”

“Again?” Betty Senior asked. “This month we seem to be getting all the bad stuff over with for the rest of our lives.”

Betty laughed without mirth. “Seems like it, doesn’t it?” Betty took a deep breath. “It’s Lettie.”

“She died,” Betty Senior said.

Betty, not surprised her mother guessed, closed her eyes and held on tight to Betty Senior’s hand. “Yes. She’s gone.” She fought the unwelcome tears. She wished her ma could put her arms around her and hold her. Never again would there be such comfort. Abruptly, Betty let go of her mother’s hand and stood up. She fidgeted with the items on the nightstand while she told her mother all that had happened the evening before.

“It’s a shame,” Betty Senior said when Betty finally wound down. “But Thomas Black refused to let them do an autopsy?”

“Yes, and there’s still no proof Lettie or the others were attacked. Sure, Lettie said something about a pillow, but I know the police won’t do anything. They don’t want to believe any of this is happening.” Betty sank back down into the visitor’s chair as a feeling of helplessness overcame her. She didn’t like it. She wasn’t used to feeling this way.

“But you’re absolutely sure, yourself?” Betty Senior asked.

“Yes. I’m positive.”

“Well, who are the most likely suspects?”

“Good question. Thomas, of course. Alice. Nancy. Margaret.” She wouldn’t mention her suspicions of Dr. Henderson. She couldn’t worry her ma about her own doctor.

“Whoa, whoa, why Alice? I understand the other three. But why would you think of Alice?” Betty Senior’s eyebrows puckered into a frown.

“She came here to be interviewed the day Ida Perkins died. She found Mrs. Lacy. There’s a family history of violence. But of course there are lots of other people who work or visit, or even live here, who could be doing it.”

Betty Senior sighed. “I know. And I’m so sorry about Lettie. I’ll miss her.”

Betty nodded and kissed her mother’s cheek. Promising to return later, she left and went by the rotunda to tell Rita about Lettie. When she saw Brenda, she stopped to talk to her. “Lettie passed last night. Will you tell any residents you think might need some extra support after hearing the news? I’m sure the word will get out, but it would be good for our most vulnerable folks to hear it directly from you in a gentle way.”

Brenda put on her Social Services face and nodded. “That’s so sad. Lettie will be missed. And of course I’ll make a special point to tell everyone I think was particularly close to her.”

Betty sighed with relief. Better Brenda than her. She said thanks and walked to her office.

Maxwell was late. Very late. Betty filled the time by doing paperwork, seeing residents, and checking on Ma about every hour. She also called her nephew several times. He was always busy.