Crusader (55 page)

"No. No one has altered this tape. This is real."

I finally turned around. I showed him my hair, pulled back
and clipped, like my mother's hair in the video. I showed him my blue vinyl smock, my mother's own smock. And I showed him my face, the face that I had worked on so long in the bathroom.

It was my modeling face.

It was my mother's face.

He stared at me in horror for ten seconds, like he had just looked into hell. Then he started to melt down. Like a candle. Like a Candlewycke candle in the shape of a man, he began to melt down. He babbled two words, "Mary Ann."

I answered him, ghostlike, "Seven years ago tonight."

"My god. Mary Ann."

"Seven years of life ago."

"Please, god! Stop this. Please!" He slid completely off the couch. He curled into a ball on the floor and cried uncontrollably. I sat down on the edge of the couch and waited him out.

It took several minutes, but he finally stopped. He regained enough composure to uncurl himself, and then to crawl a few feet away from me. He reached the wall, turned, and sat up with his back against it. He managed to say to me, like a dying man, with his last breath, "Roberta, what are you doing to me?"

The tape was still running. Now it was into the long section, the section where nothing was happening onscreen, the section where my mother was bleeding to death outside. I asked him, "Do you want to see it again from the beginning?" I pointed at the TV screen.

He begged, "Please! Please, no!"

"Then tell me the truth. Do not dishonor my mother's memory with one more lie."

I leaned toward him to hear the truth. To finally hear the truth.

He started to blabber, with stuff coming out his nose and eyes, like it had so long ago: "Okay, Roberta. This guy ... This
awful, this big guy, he was gonna kill me. And not just me. He said he would go after Mommy and you, too. He said the next thing that would happen to me would be I would go to drive my family to the beach one day and my car would explode. I swear that's what he told me. And he meant it. He meant it! 1 had to do it. I don't know why Mommy fought with that punk. That wasn't like her."

"I'll tell you why. She fought with him for me. So that I could go to college. She wanted to use her money for me, for college—not for you, for drugs."

He struggled up to his knees, breathing hard, trying to regain control. He protested, "Listen to me, Roberta! I did what I had to do. Your mother did not. Your mother
had
to give up that bag of money to that punk. That's what she had to do. The insurance would have covered it. Instead she grabbed him, and ... I swear to god, Roberta, I never in a million years thought your mother would do that. She wouldn't even raise a hand to spank you. I never in a million years thought she would go after a robber."

I asked him coldly, "So it was all Mom's fault?"

He screamed, "Of course not! It was all my fault. I'm just saying it should have turned out different. Honey, the night before Mommy's funeral, this man, he caught me outside our apartment. He took a baseball bat. He took a bat and he cracked open my kneecap. Just broke my leg! Just like that! Like I was some kind of cockroach. I told him we had insurance money coming, but he didn't care. Do you see the kind of man I was dealing with?"

"So it was this bad man's fault?"

"Yes!"

"This bad man, did he come up to you one day and say, 'Take my money and buy drugs with it'?"

"What?"

"Or did you go to him?"

He understood the question. And he understood that he was beaten. He admitted, "Ahh ... I went to him. You know the answer to that. I went to him." He buried his face in his hands. Then he wiped his eyes and said, "Roberta, don't you think this has been killing me? Honey, I haven't even been able to look at you lately. You've gotten so big—I can't stand to see her face in you. Don't you think this has been killing me? All these years?"

I told him, "No. I don't think so. I don't think you're like that. I think it's all about you. You and only you."

He started to answer that, but I held up my hand and stopped him. I was going to do the rest of the talking: "First of all, you're not to call me honey or anything like that ever again."

I reached into my right pocket and pulled out the cemetery form. I threw it at him. "Second, you're going to give my mother a decent burial. I know the manager at Eternal Rest. I'm going to call him on Friday. If you haven't placed this order by noon on Friday, then I will call Detective Griffin and tell him that I've solved Mary Ann Ritter's murder.

"Third, we're not going to be part of each other's lives. Don't you ever show up asking me for money. I don't care if somebody is about to chop your head off. Don't you ever contact me again. Anywhere. Ever.

"I will mail you whatever papers you need to sign, and you will sign them, like always. You will mail them back to me immediately. If at any time I feel you are not cooperating, I will go to the police and have you arrested for murder. Do you understand?"

I think he did, although he looked too stunned to show it. He eventually whispered, "Roberta, what about the videotape? What will happen to that?"

I answered, "It'll stay with me, for as long as I need it."

We heard the kitchen door open. Suzie came in. She stopped still and beheld the eerie scene. The video was running without sound. My father was on the floor, in a helpless state. And I was sitting on the couch, made up like a model.

She spoke to me. "What's going on, Roberta? Why are you dressed like that? Is that your Halloween costume?"

I didn't bother to look at her, but I answered, "Here is all you need to know: You're not part of my life anymore. Not in any way. My father is leaving with you now. For good. You're getting him, but I doubt very much that you're getting a boat. So I guess that means you're only getting half of everything you always wanted."

Suzie looked at her broken fiancé. "Bob, what's going on here?"

He struggled to his feet. He moved stiffly toward the door, like an old man. "Let's just go. I'll tell you in the car. Let's go."

They left immediately. I wondered, for a moment, what he would tell her in the car. Then I forgot all about them.

I laid my head back on top of the couch. The video played on, its lightning flashes illuminating the room as they had the Family Arcade seven Halloweens ago.

I snapped forward, though, when the phone rang. I picked it up, but I wasn't able to speak. I heard, "Roberta? It's Griffin. Are you all right?"

I managed to whisper, "Yes."

"You don't sound all right."

"Give me a minute." I set the phone down, stretched my arms straight out, and shook my head. I got back on and told him, "I'm all right. Really. What do you want?"

"I have some news for you. Stephen Cross, the TV preacher guy, wandered into the station today and confessed to your mother's murder."

"I know. I talked to him."

Griffin got upset. "You know? How could you know before—" But then he stopped himself. He changed his tone. "Damn. I told you, Roberta, I wouldn't be surprised by you. And I'm not going to be."

I cut in, "So what do we do now?"

"I want to reopen the case, but I need that video. Tonight."

"I'm sorry. I threw it away."

He shouted, "You what? Where?"

"In a garbage can at the food court. A week ago. It's somewhere in the county landfill now. Like Sonny Santos."

"Roberta—"

"Why is the tape important if the killer came in and confessed?"

"Why? Because we're talking about the recollection of a junkie from seven years ago. A recollection he never had until he saw a certain videotape. By the way, Roberta, he saw the videotape on Monday. That was not a week ago. It was a day ago."

"Yeah. That's what I meant."

Griffin stopped talking. I could hear what he was thinking:
She's lying. But what can I do about it? Pursue the lies, like a good detective? Or let them go?

He let them go.

He told me, calmly, "I called you because the case suddenly had potential. But if the tape is gone, the potential is gone, too. If evidence has been lost, then the case is a dog. The state's attorney doesn't like dogs."

He cleared his throat before asking me, "So ... Did Cross tell you who sent him in there?"

"Yes."

"Bob Ritter?"

Yes, sir.

Griffin let me sweat about that for a minute. Then he said,
"Is there any chance of Bob Ritter coming down here and confessing, too?"

"No, sir. He doesn't have it in him to do that. He'll deny it all the way."

"Then all we have is Cross saying he saw a video that you're saying no longer exists."

"Correct."

"You see? There's no way we're gonna prosecute that. It's a dog with fleas." Griffin changed tones once more. "Roberta? Why don't you want to get Cross? You know what he did. Hell, you saw him do it."

"I asked myself,
What would my mother want me to do?
And this is it."

"What? Let a killer walk free?"

"He's not a killer anymore. He has changed. I truly believe that. Stephen Cross is not who he used to be."

"And what about Bob Ritter?"

Now it was Griffin's turn to wait. I finally said, "I talked to my mother about him, and she told me what to do. Let's just say I'm taking care of his punishment."

Griffin whistled like he thought I was crazy.

I changed the subject. "So what'll happen to you when they find out about the videotape? Will you get fired?"

He answered quickly, "No. They might catch some flak down at the County Services building. It makes the department look bad, losing evidence. The state's attorney does not like his department to look bad."

I heard some commotion in the background. He told me, "Listen, Roberta, I gotta go. You have my number if I can ever help you or any member of your family."

I said, "Okay," and he hung up.

At around nine o'clock, some trick-or-treaters came to the door. That's never happened in Sawgrass Estates, not since I've
lived here. Too many psychos. I listened to them knock, waiting for them to give up and go away. And that's what they finally did.

No one else followed.

That's how Halloween night ended. It ended with me losing my father. It ended with me sitting alone, thinking about my lost mother. I fell asleep right there—wearing my mother's makeup and hair, wearing my mother's smock, frozen in the video snow.

The
Angela Live
broadcast from the West End Mall was more than two weeks ago. It has taken all this time for me to sort out its effects. They seemed to change every day. I have felt like both a hero and a fool, sometimes in the same day.

Philip Knowlton managed to contain the local damage very well. Mr. Lyons was treated by the local media as a victim of a dirty political trick. The TV news shows even ran companion pieces demonstrating how easy it was to alter a videotape, to make anybody look like he or she had said anything, anywhere, at any time.

But beyond the local outlets, the damage was not so easily contained. The video quickly surfaced on news broadcasts all over the state, and then all over the country. Mr. Lyons, his comments, and how I had stitched them together became a topic for magazine writers, TV commentators, and stand-up comics. No matter where it was discussed, or who was discussing it, one line was always picked up, verbatim—the one about the Depends undergarments. Ray Lyons became a national figure, but not in the way he had hoped.

The Philip Knowlton damage-control team made a great show of presenting a check to Mr. Lombardo and Sam. It was a gigantic prop check from SunBelt Savings, measuring six feet long and four feet tall. It said, on the lower left,
FOR THE RECAPITALIZATION OF THE WEST END MALL.

Mr. Lombardo and Sam insisted on posing for the check photo beneath a Toby the Turtle banner. Philip Knowlton was furious, but he had to keep his big mouth shut. Knowlton did succeed in dragging some of the elderly power-walkers into the photo. Then Mr. Lyons posed over a shovel and broke ground for the next phase of Century Towers. All the while, Ray Lyons hammered home the message: That he has always been for the poor and the elderly, that he was the victim of a dirty trick.

Philip Knowlton even went so far as to post a "fact sheet" about me on the Ray Lyons for State Senate website. He called me "a disturbed teen, with gender confusion, who had recently been tested for drug abuse." He forgot to add that I kicked my dog.

But none of it did them any good. People had caught a glimpse of the real Ray Lyons, uncontrolled and unmanaged, for a few pirated seconds. They did not forget what they saw, or what they heard. The election was two days ago, and Mr. Lyons lost. He lost big. "The old people got him," as Mrs. Weiss would have said.

There is other news, too, but there is no more mall newsletter to report it in. People still tell me things as I walk through the mall, and I still observe things on my own, so here are some items. I'll call them my People Pieces for November. It's already been a busy month:

PEOPLE PIECES

My mom's reinterment took place last week. The ceremony was very nice. Family and friends from the mall gathered before the mausoleum wall. They were all astonished when the minister arrived. I know that teary-eyed undertaker, for one, was very impressed to meet Stephen Cross. The Reverend Cross said some beautiful and heartfelt prayers and then delivered a stirring eulogy. Afterward, he kept thanking me, over and over again, for "having mercy." My father didn't show up, but I didn't
expect him to. He had followed his instructions. That was all he needed to do. That is all he ever needs to do from now on.

Karl was released from the Positive Place this morning. I wanted to visit him there, but they only let immediate family in. My aunt Ingrid, uncle Frank, and Kristin saw him for every minute of every visiting period. They said he was doing much better this time around. I hope to see him tonight, or as soon as he is ready.