Hallowed (7 page)

“This is bullshit!” she proclaimed.

Here I was figuring that our mothers would have given us either a yes or no answer.  What I failed to appreciate was the fact that when our mothers conspire together in the same room, two minds became a single twisted super-mind, one that can warp reality and create scenarios hitherto unforeseen.

What they had decided was that it was too late for us to go somewhere we had never been before with the knowledge that we would have to drive home at night, but that we could go tomorrow with them, as a group.

“Tell them the truth, you said,” she complained.  “That was a brilliant idea.”

“I don’t lie to my mother, Claudia.”

Claudia shot me a condescending look and sighed heavily.  We were finishing up the last of the yard display.  When I say “we,” what I mean is that I was stapling a string of lights up along the border of the roof and Claudia was pacing around my ladder.  (Of course, the significance of her walking beneath the ladder was not lost to me.  Claudia took a sort of dark pleasure from deliberately tempting fate.)

“That crime scene will be wiped completely clean by then.”

“Claudia, if you actually found something where a trained forensics team has already been, you should apply to the FBI as soon as possible.”

She stopped under the ladder and gave it a shake.  I seized it with both hands and glared down at her.  She shot an evil smile up at me and whispered, “I’ve got a wild idea.  Why don’t we just go anyway?  We can just tell them that we’re going to a movie or something.”

She had unwittingly stumbled upon an alibi that I had been using for months now.

I glanced inside the kitchen window that was just outside and looked down at Claudia with a stern look.  She glanced up at the window and shook her head.  We could hear distant laughter coming from the somewhere deeper in the house.  They weren’t in the kitchen.

I leapt down to the ground and faced her.  “Here’s the deal.  I’ve been telling them that I’ve been going to the movies every Saturday lately, so I wouldn’t have to tell them what I was really doing.”

Claudia got this surprised look on her face.  “What have you been doing?” she asked with interest.

“I’ve been going to vigil mass.”

She gave me this blank look, then burst out laughing.  She actually had to take a few steps away from me to get back some semblance of control.

I moved the ladder further down the side of the house, grabbed another set of lights and started up the ladder.

“Okay, first: what happened to ‘I don’t lie to my mother,’ and second: are you telling me that the worst you could come up with to do with a good lie is to go to church?  You really are priceless, Graves!”

“Well, I really don’t care what you think.”

“What?  Are you trying to pick up girls there?”

Ignoring her, I continued with my work.  The pile of orange and purple lights on the ground had become tangled and I tried shaking it loose from atop the ladder.  “I figured you wouldn’t understand,” I murmured under my breath.

Indifferently, Claudia picked up the string of lights and began untangling them.

“Personally, I think the Christian religion and especially the Catholic Church is very closed-minded.  I find their belief-system very restrictive.”

“Restrictive in what way?”

“Communication with the dead, for one.”

I stopped attaching the lights and glanced down at her.  “Okay, back up and try and pretend I’m not one of the DFW elite.”

“It’s called Spiritualism and it’s a bona fide religion, okay, so don’t even think about ridiculing it.”

“I’m just trying to understand.  Do these people believe in a God?”

“Yes, of course.  They also believe that you can get in contact with the spirits of those that have died, and since the dead are on a higher plane of existence than you and me, they know things we don’t and can help us.”

It definitely sounded like she’d done her research, though I was sure her enthusiasm was blinding her to a few inherent dangers.  “Aren’t they the ones that worship nature?”

“No, you’re thinking of Paganism.  Spiritualists share a lot in common with orthodox Christians.  A moral based value system, for one, and a belief in a Judeo-Christian God, for another.  We just are more open to outside spiritual influences.”

This conversation was starting to creep me out, and suddenly, out of nowhere I got the compulsion to ask her to come with me to mass, even though it might require driving her to Abner as a bribe and lying to my parents.  Somehow despite all that, it seemed like the right thing to suggest.  “How long have you been into this?”

“Since last summer.  Gordie, one of those DFW elite,” she added with a dark glare in my direction, “talked to a nineteenth century sailor, who told him that there was a bad storm coming.  A few weeks later”—she slapped her hands together—“Katrina.”

“Were you there in the room when he did?”

“No,” Claudia said with a dark scowl at me, then loud enough for Mrs. Wicke and Mom to hear through the open screen door on the front porch (had they been anywhere in the vicinity) she barked, “Mom never lets me go anywhere!”

I’d had just about enough of the spoiled brat routine.  “I don’t know anything about séances.  All I know is that I’m not wasting my gas going to Abner to look at an empty ditch,” I said, as I dropped from the ladder into the grass as close to Claudia as I could without it actually landing on her.  She hopped back a step and gave me an indignant look.  “I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

“Oh like what?”  Claudia got in my face.  “I guess you’re such the Mr. Popular around Haven that you’d go to church on a Saturday night.”

In spite of the control I thought I had over my emotions, I could still feel my blood starting to boil.  It was on the tip of my tongue to respond with something smart and cutting, but instead I kept silent.  I turned away from her and started collecting my tools.

“I go to church because I’m looking for answers,” I caught her eyes and held them for a second.  “Same as you.  The difference is I don’t belittle you.”

When I looked up next, Claudia was stomping off down our driveway.

When I went into the kitchen to get breakfast on Sunday morning, I heard Dad speaking in hushed tones on the phone.  He had pulled the cord around the corner and into the living room, where he sat in his recliner.

Silenced were the typical sounds of cursing and country music from the AM station out of Austin that normally filled the garage.  Instead, he had the radio tuned to a morning talk radio show.  Some lady was talking about the “sanctity of human life.”  I didn’t think twice about the subject.  Sounded like your typical morning talk show fodder to me.

Then I saw the newspaper on the kitchen table.

It was open to an article about the disappearance of another girl in San Marcos, who had been gone for over two weeks now.  The article was an interview with her parents who talked about her high grade point average, her active participation in the community and church.  Not a typical candidate to “up and run away.”

This sort of thing had suddenly become news because the remains of the girl found in the ravine had been identified as belonging to eighteen year old, Grace Fischer, who had disappeared from Renton over three months ago.

Little detail was given on Grace, though it clicked right away that I knew her family, as I read her biographical information.  In fact, her cousin Martin was second chair cornet in our band.  I was second chair trumpet, so we were associated through our respective inability to reach that topmost position reserved for overachievers like Brent Jacobs and Nathan Graham, who between the two of them must have been on every team or club available to a teen at Haven High.  I remembered Grace because she would sometimes come with Martin’s aunt and uncle to the varsity games and sit next to us in the bleachers.

As I was finishing up the article, Dad hung up the phone.  I looked up at him framed in the doorway, and for a moment, his reddened eyes almost gave me the impression that he’d been crying, if I didn’t know him any better.  Stress just caused him to blink less.

“What’s going on?” I asked, my wavering voice sounding as if it had emerged from the mouth of a five-year-old child.

“That was Vernon Fischer.  I just wanted to find out how Grace’s mother was doing since the news.”  Mr. Fischer was Grace’s uncle and ran a dry-cleaning business just outside of town on Farmroad 321.

“She okay?”

“Vernon says that she still believes that there’s been some kind of mistake.  That’s a typical reaction.”  Dad turned his back to me to refill his cup at the coffeemaker.  “The funeral’s on Tuesday,” he grunted.

I stared down at the shivering hand holding the newspage.  I willed it to stop.

“Dad, what do you think about this other girl, the one that disappeared?”

“People disappear and reappear all the time, especially headstrong teenagers.”

“Claudia thinks this girl Grace is the first of a series.”

Dad stopped sipping his coffee and cocked a brow at me.  “Paul, you’re going to start hearing a lot of things in the newspaper, on TV, and from your friends at school.  Everyone is going to have an opinion.  But until they have the facts to back them up, that’s all they are.  Opinions.”  Dad took a seat at the table.  “As for Claudia, well, she’s always been on the melodramatic side.”  He fixed me with a look and fished through the bulk of newsprint until he’d found what he was looking for, the sports section.

“Paul, you might want to watch what you say around school.  This is the sort of thing that when emotion takes over, folks stop listening to reason.”

I nodded.  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask, “What if this thing
does
turn out to be true and we have some degenerate strangling teenage girls?”  But just before I was about to utter the words, it occurred to me that it was the same sort of panicky speculation that he had just railed against.  So I let it go.

It was already after noon when I gathered up the main section of the newspaper and walked it over to Claudia’s house.  Mrs. Wicke answered the door.  Her eyes looked sleep-deprived.

“I just wanted to drop the Herald by in case you guys haven’t already seen it.”

“We have a copy.”  She gave me a look and sighed.  “She’s still sleeping.”

“Did she have another late night?”

“No, she went to bed around eight last night.”  Mrs. Wicke gave me a look of concern.  “Paul, I don’t think you should encourage this… this whole runaway teenager thing.  In a couple of weeks, when this Nayar girl comes back home on her own, this’ll all blow over and everything will return to normal.”

I lowered my head.  “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“I’ll tell her you stopped by.  Okay?”

Figuring that was my cue, I took my leave.

Monday at band practice, Martin entered the hall accompanied by four or five people.  He politely excused himself and retrieved his case from the slot next to mine.

“Looks like you’ve become popular,” I observed.

“Yeah,” he grunted.  “A lot of morbid dudes at this school.”

I went about the rituals of putting my horn together, then asked, “You’re okay, right?”

“Me? Yeah.  I’m fine.”

Figured I should change the subject.  “You gonna take another run at Brent Jacobs after school?”  Brent was first chair cornet.  Good grades.  Student council president.  You know the type. Born to overachieve.

“That’s today, huh?”  He closed his locker and waited for me to walk out onto the field with him.  “Nah, I better get straight home.  The funeral’s tomorrow and then we have to go to my aunt’s and sit shiva.”

“Do what?”

“Sorry, it’s a Jewish thing.  Sit shiva.  It’s the seven days of mourning after the funeral.  Friends and relatives just sorta hang out at the house, y’know, just to keep everyone company.”

“I didn’t know you were Jewish, Martin?”

“We are and my aunt is, but Grace didn’t practice.  Not since she left home six months ago.  She was into all kinds of things, just not Judaism.”

Funny, how I’d kinda assumed everyone was Christian, like my family.  It occurred to me how little I really knew about the world outside my little bubble.

During marching practice, I kept checking the bleachers for Claudia.  She never showed.  I looked for her during the day, but didn’t see her in the hall once.  I was starting to wonder if she’d even gone to school that day.

During the course of the day, I began to feel bad about the things I had said to Claudia and regretted letting her walk away Saturday evening.  When the final bell rang, I passed by the counselor’s office to see Mrs. Wicke on the way out to my car.  I was planning on going in and asking if Claudia had stayed home sick, when I saw Claudia herself leaning against the counter in the inner office, staring out into the hallway.  I raised a hand as I passed.  Not only did she ignore me, but she turned her back on me.

That evening instead of going straight home I went to the library.  If I got home too early, I got sucked into whatever recipe Dad was experimenting with that Monday.  Since he’d been retired, Dad had volunteered to cook every night.  After a couple of weeks of chili and grilled steak, Mom let him off the hook, though she still gave him Monday as his day to go nuts.

So far, if his success ratio of good to bad was a major league batting average, he would been sent back to the minors.

When I was done with my geometry and American History homework, I looked up “serial killers” in their system, just for kicks. I figured I should educate myself just in case Grace Fischer’s death was indeed murder and not just Claudia’s paranoia.  In response to my query, I got “See
Abnormal Psychology
.”  The ones I found were essentially textbooks, as dry and clinical as rubbing alcohol.  So, I resigned myself to trying the Internet.

When I got over to the pair of ancient computers with internet access, I found Claudia’s dark shape slumped over the first keyboard, her head propped up atop the heels of both hands and eyes cemented to the glowing screen not five inches in front of her.  Since there were only two computers, I pulled out the chair next to her.

“Let me guess.  You’re avoiding your mother again?”

She stiffened but refused to look up.

“This library has absolutely nothing on serial killers.”

She cocked her head at me and scoffed.  “Of course not.  That’s why I’ve had to build my own collection.”  She sat up and stretched her back out.  “But you didn’t come here to do research, because that would be a waste of time... and gas, right?”

“I came here to do homework,” I said, ignoring her snipe.  To make my point, I sat my backpack down on the floor with a thump.  “Just curious about this whole serial killer thing, s’all.”

Continuing to face the monitor, Claudia asked with indifference, “What do you want to know?”

“I just want to know the basics, like what constitutes a serial killer to begin with.”

“That’s easy.  Three or more victims with a cooling off period between the murders.”

“Then we’ve got no serial killer.”  I dropped into the seat next to her.  “There’s been only one body.  Grace Fischer.”

Claudia slowly turned her head and shot me a glare so intense I had to look away.  I smoothly covered up by turning to the screen and logging into the system.

“Yes, granted they’ve only found the one body so far.  That doesn’t mean there won’t be any more.  We’ve had disappearances.  A record number historically for this area.”  She turned back to the screen.  “I’m trying to stay ahead of the curve, y’see, and for your information, Sadie Nayar was one of the five I already knew about, so that article in the paper was not news to me.”

“So, give me the basics on serial killers. Boil it down for me.”

“Okay, here’s some something general you should know.  Serial killers come in two flavors: psychopaths and psychotics.  A good contrast would be Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz.”  Claudia stepped around behind me and typed a subject into the search engine over my shoulder. 

“Berkowitz?” I murmured, turning my head so that our noses were only centimeters apart.  I could smell something vanilla-ey.  I imagined it must be her hair.

“Yes, the Son of Sam.  Try and focus, please.”

I turned briskly back to the monitor.

“Bundy was considered to be a psychopath.”  A page popped up on the screen in front of us and Claudia read:  “Psychopaths are often characterized as lacking empathy for others and manipulative.”

“So we’re talking about you essentially,” I quipped.

Ignoring me, she continued: “Other traits include impulsiveness, irresponsibleness, overinflated self-worth, selfishness, and promiscuity.  There’s this psychologist named Robert Hare who has a checklist of twenty traits.”  She stopped reading and glanced at me to see if she still had my attention.  “Psychopaths can be pretty charming and cold blooded, essentially doing whatever it takes to get what they want without caring who they hurt in the process.  But keep in mind that they’re not always violent.”

As I glanced back at her again, I could see that familiar spark in her eye beginning to turn to a flame.  “Ted Bundy was very educated, very charming.  He used the art of pity to lure women away from crowds by using an arm cast to give the illusion that he was injured and needed their help.  When he got them alone.  Whack!  He used the cast as a weapon.  He’d drag them away and rape and kill them later, by either bludgeoning them or strangling them.  Sometimes he’d take the corpses and...”

“Okay, okay, okay.  I got the picture.”

My mind had flashed to those crime-scene photos in Claudia’s books.  I felt a little sick.  It was one thing to see this kind of stuff in movies knowing it was all make-up and Hollywood special effects, but faced with the reality of a living, breathing human being offering to help an injured stranger then repaid with death for their kindness.  The basic immorality of the concept seemed almost more monstrous than the graphic reality of the pictures.

Oblivious to my discomfort, Claudia continued her dissertation, resting her chin on my shoulder.  “Psychosis on the other hand is essentially a ‘break with reality’ and is different from psychopathy, because psychotics have difficulty with day to day activities, especially social contact, unlike psychopaths like Bundy, who seem quite normal and hold down regular jobs.  He actually worked for a suicide crisis center with Ann Rule.”

“Should I know who Ann Rule is?”

“Crime author, but that’s not important.  Okay, let’s take Berkowitz for instance,” she continued, pulling away and taking the chair opposite me again, leaning forward with obvious excitement.  “They believe he was psychotic.  Unlike Bundy, he was socially out-of-place and couldn’t hold down a steady job.  As a child, he was a bully and liked to start fires, which by the way is one of the three MacDonald triad.  Starting fires, that is.  Not bullying.”

“Right, the McDonald triad: Big Mac, fries and apple pie,” I mumbled under my breath, but since Claudia was on a roll now, she wouldn’t have heard even if I’d have shouted it.

“Also, Berkowitz believed that his neighbor’s dog was possessed and had commanded him to murder.  ‘See Spot?  See Spot Kill?’”

The only thing that I could “see” was that Claudia really knew her stuff--not just the sensational things that drew morbid fascination from people who enjoyed watching the kinds of movies where the villain succeeds in killing the good guy at the end.  Claudia knew the psychology at the core of these caricatures.  She’d done her research.

Claudia gave me a frown.  “Why are you doing that?”

I shook my head.  “What?”

“Humming.”

Until Claudia said it, I hadn’t realized.  Oddly enough, I’d been humming unconsciously for the last few minutes of our conversation.

About an hour later, I dropped Claudia off at home, saving Mrs. Wicke a trip.  Claudia told me to come upstairs and if I were still interested, she would lend me a couple of books from her “collection.”

“Here’s the thing,” I told her.  “When I came by with the newspaper article about the disappearance of the girl, your mom told me to back off.”

Claudia threw a minor conniption fit.  “She did
what
?”

“I mean, I understand where she’s coming from.  She’s just trying to protect…”

She made an exasperated growling sound and started up the steps.  “Fine, I’ll bring a couple of books for you to lunch tomorrow then.  Meet me in the bleachers.”

And just like that, my education in amateur serial killer profiling was about to begin.