The Euthanist (15 page)

Morton looked like he’d had a glass of bad milk, but he rose from the sofa and joined us.

Jeffrey motioned all of us closer, until we made a circle around him. I was close enough to feel Lisa Kim’s warmth. Jeffrey leaned into our faces like a coach, never so terrifying as when he spoke so softly, issuing warm breath into our faces. “Would you all say I’ve done something for you?”

That I said “of course” came as no surprise. But Morton and Lisa Kim sheepishly nodded too, reminded that, at one point, Jeffrey Holt had helped them as well.

“Have I ever asked anything of any of you in return?”

We all agreed that he had not.

“Then figure it the fuck out. You’re here to save my ass too.”

Jeffrey Holt dropped the f-bomb. My insides curdled.

He composed himself. “Stacy! Jess!” he called.

The girls came out of hiding. “Let’s go.” Our mentor strode to the front door holding his daughters’ hands.

Lisa called after him. “Where are you going?”

“To get some air.”

He flung open the door, but didn’t walk through it. Jeffrey stood rooted in the threshold, fixed on something none of us could see, something on the doormat. Slowly, he turned back to us, face ashen.

A package sat on the welcome mat. The size of a brick, wrapped in brown butcher paper. We all approached the doorway to look at it. My mouth opened but I didn’t breathe.

Jess was the first to speak. “We don’t get mail here.”

“No we don’t, sweetie. No we don’t.” Jeffrey motioned to his lab technician. “Morton, could you take the girls out the back? Far out the back.”

Morton picked up Jess by the waist and escorted Stacy by the hand. The kids must have sensed the urgency in their father’s voice, because they went along without protest. In seconds, they hustled out through the rear entrance by the kitchen. Jeffrey’s hand ran along his hip where he’d been shot four years ago.

I imagined we all thought the same thing: that this package was a plainly wrapped brick of explosives. The right bomb this size could create an explosion that would raze the house and any number of trees within a wide disc of incineration.

“Please leave,” I said. “Everyone should leave. Jeffrey, follow your family.”

The three of us checked the trees to see who might be out there watching us, but I only found a red-crested woodpecker clinging to a trunk. In a flash of panic, I considered who might be waiting in the woods behind the house for Morton and the kids, but we hadn’t heard any noise, and I hoped they were safe. “Jeffrey, please go.” I stepped between him and the doorway and crouched by the package, wishful that my body might shield him from the blast.

“What are you doing?”

“Someone’s got to see what this is.” I spoke stiffly, and I’m sure others could tell I was petrified. Still, I didn’t see another solution. “What are we going to do, call in the bomb squad?”

Lisa Kim had likely played out the same scenarios. She started retreating along the same path that Morton and the children had taken. She implored, “Jeffrey, come with us.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“We can’t call in the police. Because when they come, I’ll be here.”

Lisa said, “She’s right. Jeffrey, we’ve got to get you somewhere safe.”

“This is my home,” he said.

“The beauty of stuff, right? Someone’s always making more of it,” I reminded him.

“You’re not stuff,” he said. “You’re not the bomb squad either. What are you thinking, you’ll just tear this open and cut the blue wire?” Honestly, I was planning on waiting for them to reach a safe distance, and then pick up the package, expecting that it might discharge the moment I touched it.

“Jeffrey, you need to go,” Lisa insisted. Her footsteps scuttled to the rear door. Then the door slid shut and only Jeffrey Holt and I remained.

“Be with your daughters,” I insisted.

“So you can be blown up by a bomb that was meant for me?”

“You’re assuming it’s meant for you.”

“If this is for you, then it’s still ultimately for me. I brought you into this,” he said.

We examined the package for a long time. Long enough to ensure that Stacy, Jess, Morton, and even Lisa Kim had reached what we considered would be a safe distance. I wondered what kind of bomb this might be. I’d heard cell phones could detonate IEDs now, in which case someone could dial their phone any second and a sphere of fire would engulf us.

“We have to open it.” I said.

Jeffrey nodded, businesslike. He masked his anxiety well, but his face tightened. I briskly walked to the kitchen, and for a moment Jeffrey might have thought I was hustling for the rear entrance, but I found the knife I had used the night before to chop carrots. Crouching by the package again, I shivered, then stretched my fingers.

“We can’t just drop it in the trash,” I said to convince both Jeffrey and myself.

Jeffrey nodded, blinking furiously behind his glasses.

I felt like I was reaching out to touch a rabid animal. I pressed the paper lightly. I didn’t know what exactly triggered an explosion, how hard you would need to press before it went off. Or if I would feel anything if it burst in my face. My fingers shook a bit from the force of my own pulse.

I wanted it to be heavy. The package was the right size for a brick, and I wanted it to be a brick. Something harmless. But the box was light. Hollow. I didn’t know if an airy box was better or worse than heavy. I got onto my knees and cradled it in my palm.

“Last chance.”

Jeffrey shook his head. “Let’s open it together.”

We hunched over it like battlefield surgeons. He squeezed my arm for luck. I thought about my father and sitting in on those recording sessions, the orchestra playing while the films showed behind them on the big screen. Colton Wonnacott didn’t have a beard like Jeffrey. He was handsome in an unconventional way, with a crooked nose and a long face. But they both showed a lot of teeth when they smiled. And when they smiled, I didn’t want to disappoint them.

I slid the blade under the tape. The box had been wrapped tightly, which was a promising sign, because whoever had dropped this here wasn’t shy about pressing down when they sealed it. The flap sprung free. I gently rotated and sliced down the seam.

Peeling off the paper, I uncovered a white pastry box. Not heavy enough to contain pastries though. I couldn’t resist giving a gentle shake. Something was in there. Maybe a small muffin. Jeffrey’s mouth twitched. He didn’t want to open this package any more than I did. But I went ahead and unsealed the side.

It opened. I should have been relieved the whole thing didn’t combust in our faces, but I wasn’t. Both of us screamed at the same moment. Jeffrey howled the f-bomb again. My voice sounded as shrill as it ever had. I worried it would change the way Jeffrey thought about me—especially because I couldn’t stop screaming. Not even when he held me to his chest for support. The box dropped out of my hand. An expired tarantula tumbled out, furry legs curled in on itself.

Chapter 7

We bugged out, in the army sense of the phrase. Lisa and Morton drove back to the airport. I would have driven out of Oregon immediately if I still had the rental car, but I was stranded. Jeffrey called someone, presumably another member of the network, and arranged to borrow a used cobalt sedan. It was waiting for me on Shallot’s Main Street within a few hours. In the meantime, the Holts hastily packed the minivan, and Jeffrey went into hiding with his kids. He wouldn’t tell me where. We didn’t exchange many words, and he further deflated my spirits by leaving me without a hug or a handshake.

Inside the trunk of the borrowed sedan I found an envelope with cash, a laptop, and a cell phone. I couldn’t use my credit cards or access my bank accounts without giving up a location, so Jeffrey had made sure I could support myself while this blew over, whenever that might be. He’d promised to call me on the burner phone, but I couldn’t count on when.

The car fumed petroleum, and its springs creaked under my seat. Its lawnmower engine chugged all the way back down to California. I looked at the car mirrors more than the highway, convinced someone must me following me. Without the temporary sanctuary of Jeffrey’s home, I was alone again and everything felt unsafe.

At a highway motel in Santa Rosa, I drew the shades and hunted around the Internet for Helena Mumm, Walter Gretsch, and the man who held me captive in Clayton. With spotty Wi-Fi, the hunt went slowly. Subsisting on chocolate and chips from the vending machine, I did pushups and body-weight squats next to the bed. Occasionally, I peeked through the shade to try and spot cars in the parking lot with men in them. I didn’t find any, but I couldn’t help but feel exposed, even as a motel shut-in.
Law & Order
reruns without the volume provided the illusion that someone else was in the room with me. The local news didn’t say anything about me, so if the police were searching, they weren’t public about it.

Since Leland had assuredly dropped off that spider package on Jeffrey’s welcome mat, I assumed that he was conducting his own manhunt. I looked for him first. I didn’t find much. Even though Lisa Kim had assured me the man wasn’t using his real name, for due diligence, I scoured the web for Leland Mumm. No shocker—I didn’t come up with anything. His police badge had looked real enough, so I looked for photographs and interviews with police in Alameda County and any of the towns included within Alameda County. Fruitless.

There was plenty to dig up online about Walter and Helena. Handwritten love poems, some in pentameter, had been scanned and posted, making it clear that Helena worshipped her brother. Walter Gretsch was her romantic grail. He might have loved her back, but I couldn’t find similar notes or quotes from him.

The box with the dead tarantula had also stirred up memories of Gordon Ostrowski and cemented connections between my stepfather and Walter Gretsch, despite that Leland was the one who had left me the spider. In the same way Jeffrey Holt shared traits with Colton Wonnacott, Gretsch had much in common with Gordon, not the least of which was that those two psychopaths were both housed in the same prison. Helena Mumm even had similarities to my mother, much as I hated to admit it. My mom’s inexplicable crush on my stepdad was easier to explain than Helena falling for her brother, but both women had been drawn to monsters.

Walter and Gordon diverged physically. Gordon had been manufactured with clean, waspy features. He was both handsome and plastic in a Ken doll kind of way.

Walter had been a skeletal teen. With freckles and hazel eyes inherited from a white father, his skin was a few shades lighter than his sister’s. His hair frizzed into stubby tentacles, and his cheeks caved in behind fish lips. T-shirts hung off him. The photo garnering the most media attention showed a skinny kid swimming in an XXL Oakland Athletics jersey. His look changed over time. On trial and in prison, Walter added muscle and fat under his orange jumper. In an interview conducted only a few years ago, his cheeks puffed out into the face of an exhausted fugu.

Walter and Helena had different fathers, so I suppose I should clarify, they were half-siblings. This explained the different last names, and made their relationship only slightly less repellant. Walter’s dad was a white, unstable German aviation mechanic named Bodo Gretsch. He hanged himself when Walter was seven months old.

Gracie Mumm had been a burlesque performer and pinup model with fleshy thighs popular during the era. I recognized her from the poster Helena kept on her wall. She stood over six feet tall and had devilish cheekbones. Between the money from her career and a modest inheritance from Bodo Gretsch, she purchased a small home in the Excelsior District. Helena Mumm was born soon after from a nameless boyfriend.

Gracie favored corporal punishment, both in and out of her blackouts. Specifically, when she wanted to discipline her children, Gracie stabbed them with kitchen forks. Neglect, abuse, and little contact with anyone other than Mom, and
voila
—you got two kids who loathed humanity.

Polaroids chronicled their time together. Walter wasn’t much taller than Helena. There was something frighteningly confident in the way he glared at the camera. Unlike his sister, who simpered in her photos, Walter didn’t smile. He defied the camera. For each photographer, from his parents to prison, he tucked his chin the way a wolf might look at a snowshoe hare before the lunge.

I wondered how Helena Mumm could have disregarded one of society’s biggest taboos. I suppose they would have clung to each other when the rest of the world shut them out. Maybe his tortured fish face brought out her nurturing urges. Plenty of bullies find spineless mates—Gordon and my mom were examples—but Helena didn’t strike me as that kind of dummy when I met her. Remarkably, she’d stayed with him when things escalated—when the children came into the picture. She might have been like the frog in a pot that didn’t have the sense to jump out as the water slowly boiled. That would be the kindest way to see her. Regardless, she most definitely loved Walter. I didn’t need the press clips to convince me, not after hearing her pine away in the Excelsior.

After a while, the articles on Walter and Helena just retold the same story, and what I knew of them didn’t give me any stronger a sense of how they connected to Leland. And Leland was the one who was after me. The only real lead that I had was Cindy Coates, one of the victims of Mumm and Gretsch. I went to the website Lisa Kim had found for me, the one that promoted her book account of Cindy Coates’s abduction. The site didn’t say much. Out of desperation, I e-mailed her with a fake story about being a recently released abductee. This was nowhere near my proudest moment.