The Euthanist (18 page)

Search results for Pamela Wonnacott had led her to a registry. Specifically, an online sex offender database, the kind parents would use when they wanted to make sure their neighborhoods were safe. A profile on that sex offender registry showed my name, as well as my address in Bernal Heights. Some basic stats on me too—they even got my height right, down to the inch. The headshot accompanying this profile was the angry camera-phone pic Leland had snapped back in Clayton, welts and all.

Chapter 8

At my new motel in Hayward, I Googled everything I could remember from my conversation with Cindy Coates. After 800 milligrams of ibuprofen, my head eventually stopped throbbing. Cindy got me pretty good with that running blade. Served me right. When Lisa Kim threw my childhood trauma in my face, I reacted with a punch. I couldn’t begrudge Cindy Coates for pummeling me after I’d made her relive her thirteen months with Walter Gretsch and Helena Mumm.

First on the list, I looked up my sex offender profile. I’m no hacker, so there was no way I could pull it down. If I tried to contact the site manager, I’d probably only succeed in alerting Leland. Once notified, Lord only knew what he would do. He’d caught up to me in Clayton and could have killed me, but he didn’t. The sex offender profile was just another way to wound me. If he wanted me dead, this might turn into a death-by-a-thousand-cuts scenario. Or his shadow might suddenly fall over me, and he might end me quickly with that semiautomatic he carried. I tried to convince myself that all he wanted was for Kali to go back and stick a hypodermic into Helena Mumm, but I honestly didn’t believe it was that simple anymore, or that I could save myself that easily.

The next day, my scalp started to heal. Under a curly black wig in a warm afternoon, it itched like poison oak.

I was walking in Berkeley. Cindy had given me the name Veda Moon, and once I had the name, it didn’t take much to locate the place. Frankly, there weren’t too many Veda Moons out there. Public records pointed me to an address.

The Moon family lived in a midsized craftsman on a quiet street lined with knotty oaks. A wooden swing dangled within the covered porch, and a fresh-ish paint job made the trim glow white. What might have been a small front lawn had been manicured into a flower garden, accessed by a rustic wooden gate. Betty Crocker quaint.

Cindy Coates would probably have called Veda by now. She would have told her that some predator stalked her to a café. She would describe a lanky woman in loose sweats and a hoodie, so I costumed myself to look radically different. Kali dressed in a navy blue A-line dress, purchased at a thrift shop for the cost of a gourmet sandwich. I chose an outfit that would attract minimal attention. Even in something this simple, my legs stuck out like stilts and drew a few looks. But the wig was unruly and gave me the look of someone who didn’t believe in unnecessary bathing. Tortoiseshell reading glasses cast me as a bookish Cal postgrad, someone who’d turned off the plumbing downstairs until she finished her degree.

The most important prop was the dog. A six-month-old puppy named Emmanuel trotted beside me on the sidewalk. He was a mutt, but between his black and white coat and amphibious eyes, I guessed he had some Boston terrier in him. Emmanuel chomped at the fresh air. Unsure what direction he was supposed to go, he lurched at the leash and jumped up on my calves. Plush-toy adorable, he was. The local animal shelter let the public take dogs for walks—play with a dog long enough, you might get attached and want to keep him. We promoted this shelter at the firehouse, and it’s where we got our mascot. Most of us wanted a Dalmatian, but they didn’t have Dalmatians, and the captain ended up bringing back an ancient Chihuahua with a walleye.

Emmanuel was an important distraction. The dog gave me an excuse to patrol Veda Moon’s neighborhood. Now, I was just a girl walking her puppy. Passersby stooped to let Emmanuel jump all over them and barely paid attention to me. A police cruiser slowed down, and I stiffened until one of the guys rolled down his window and asked for the dog’s name. In a crackly murmur I told him Emmanuel, like in the Bible. He didn’t try to chat me up.

With the dog in tow, I made several passes by the Moon house. Whatever qualms I had about reaching out to the victims of Walter Gretsch and Helena Mumm, those vanished when I found myself on the sex offender registry. Survivors learn to scavenge. I’d obviously traumatized Cindy Coates, but I was prepared to do it again with Veda Moon. I’d feel worse this time because I knew more about how they’d suffered.

Apparently, Veda was a runner like Cindy Coates. Her name popped up a few times in Internet race results. She’d completed a few half marathons and clocked the San Francisco marathon at 3:17. Not bad. She was twenty-two years old now and still lived at home. That alone said something.

If I found her, I would need to trick Veda into talking to me. I’d hoped to run into her outside. I’d recognize her by her age. In my scenario, Veda would stoop to play with the puppy. Kali could be charming. If I could get her to play with the dog, we could strike up a conversation. I would be new to the neighborhood, full of questions. “Could you give me some advice on restaurants?” I might ask. “What about dog parks?” If I got her talking, Veda might open up. Clients confided in Kali. If she could confide in me, maybe I’d learn something about the man who was chasing me.

Round and round I went in a long loop, past the Moons’ house then up to a bakery on Shattuck and back again. Dinner was a cronut—half doughnut, half croissant.

The shelter closed at six, but I didn’t return the dog. They’d be pissed, but I’d drop him off in the morning.

During my laps I made small talk with every woman in her early twenties. Like I said, people liked talking to Kali. All of them gave me their names, and none of them were Veda Moon. By eight, the block darkened and everyone who was coming home had come home. I thought about going home, but in my last lap, the front windows were lit, and a silver Volkswagen was parked in the driveway.

The Moon craftsman was designed in a cluster of rooms, so that a peek through any of the windows gave the peeping tom—me—a good sense of the overall layout. Through the front windows, I spied a woman all the way in the back, standing at a kitchen counter. Her arm jiggled in a way to suggest she was chopping vegetables. She had her back to me, and was dressed in a gray business suit with an updo. She had coiled hair and wide hips, and when she turned to the side, light skin. I was too far away to tell how old she was, but the woman was too old to be Veda.

I could only see more if I ventured closer. The wooden gate swung with a subdued whine, and I tromped through the garden to the window. I tugged Emmanuel to follow. Rose bushes grew along the building perimeter, and when I pushed branches out of my face, the thorns felt like unhitched safety pins. The crown of my head rising above the windowsill, I watched the woman work.

The dog found a patch of dirt to pee, but soon got bored and pulled at his tether. He yowled grumpily—not loud, but loud enough. The woman snapped her head toward my window. Maybe she caught a little motion as I dropped below the windowsill. Maybe the reflection off the glass was too strong, and she didn’t see anything. I crouched and waited. But I couldn’t be there long. Out in front of the house, I felt exposed. The neighborhood was quiet, but if someone walked by they wouldn’t miss me.

I worked my way around the side of the building, following the brambly rose hedge. The house was longer than wide. After I passed the living room windows, I edged past the dining room windows, inching toward the kitchen and the back steps. Emmanuel caught his leash in the bushes, and we cracked a few twigs, but nothing to rouse anyone. The dog thought we were playing the whole time. When I ducked my head to keep it out of sight, he took it as a cue to try and lick my face.

I raised my head cautiously into the kitchen window. Just a broomstick reach away, the woman stood in profile, slicing onions with her sleeves rolled up. Deep frown lines carved into her face, and she wore generous slicks of eye shadow. She seemed consumed with worry.

The dog abruptly snorted through its nostrils, so I ducked. It would have been so easy to blame it on Emmanuel, and I’d like to say that the dog gave us away. But in the end, it was me. The grass grew spotty on this side of the house, and when I slid down under the window, I lost my balance and slipped in the damp sod. I reached out for a branch, and my hand closed around thorns. I squealed.

Ducked below the meridian, I couldn’t see her, but she must have heard me. Branches surrounded me, and on the shadowy side of the house, webs laced the thorny shrubs. Silken spider threads caught in my mouth.
Not now
. I rubbed my face frantically and swatted at whatever might be crawling on me. The dog saw me paw at my face and barked at me.

Heavy-heeled shoes clunked toward the window. Coiled into a catcher’s crouch, I stroked Emmanuel, aiming to placate him into silence. She approached the window and cast her silhouette, boxed within a long rectangle of light in the garden. The dog smelled something on my fingers tasty enough to lick, and that kept him too busy to make noise. After a few breaths, a descending shade eclipsed the light. Heels clicked away from us, and a long blade drummed on a cutting board. A skillet quietly sizzled.

I realized I wasn’t closer to meeting Veda Moon while I was scrunched in a rose bush. I couldn’t just knock on the door and talk to this women either, because if she was Veda Moon’s mother, chances were that Cindy Coates had already alerted her. I needed to leave and regroup. But Emmanuel became impatient. His licking turned into teething. He was probably hungry—I hadn’t fed him since we’d shared part of my cronut. He yapped. Loud. I was astounded by the amount of noise that could come from an animal that size. Inside, a knife clattered on a counter. The sound outside was too loud to be a neighbor or a passerby. Her heavy shoes hammered back toward me.

I rushed to a hiding place, to the garbage pails by the back stairs. Three of them aligned in a row—green for compost, gray for recyclables, and brown for regular old trash. Flat on my ass with Emmanuel cradled in my arms, I shushed him, then let him lick my face—anything so he wouldn’t make noise. The faint bouquet of rotting foods attracted his interest, and he sniffed like crazy to take it all in. If only I could have duct-taped his snout. Cruel, yes. But just for a few minutes.

The back door opened.

I couldn’t see her, but sensed her. The woman scanned the yard, along the side of the house to the street. I should have just bolted, but I didn’t. Dumbass that I was, I pretended to be tiny behind the trash barrels. It was absurd. Too little too late, I dug out a tiny hot dog treat for the Emmanuel, but even when he ate he wasn’t quiet, and slurped it down. The door stayed open. From where I was, I couldn’t see her shadow cast into the yard. She might have stayed on the stoop, or she might have gone back inside. I didn’t hear heels, but maybe she slipped off her shoes so she could tiptoe. Aside from the dog’s chewing, I only heard the ambient noise from distant cars, and I hoped those noises might be enough to cover up the sound of a small dog eating a fake wiener.

When I stood up, the woman was two feet away, on the other side of the barrels. She pointed a handgun at my face and assured me, “If you run, I’ll shoot you.”

• • •

The woman led me back inside and sat me down on a white sofa in the living room. She drew the shades in case other voyeurs were gendering through the front windows. I kept my hands on my knees. Emmanuel squirmed in my lap.

This had to be Mama Moon. Tesmer Moon—her name was on the title of this place. In my myopic search for Veda Moon, I hadn’t bothered to find out if the father lived there too, but I only found one name through the public records. My research had been expedient—I learned enough to find the place and had rushed there on impulse.

This woman was in her early fifties, with some muscle but a diving suit’s worth of padding that augmented her curves. Her ancestors came from the Fertile Crescent, but I couldn’t place her heritage more specifically than that.

So far, I hadn’t seen a trace of her daughter. Around the living room they had plenty of photos, but each one featured a clump of people, and I couldn’t get a good look to decide who might be related to whom. The Moons knew a lot of people. Modern day hippies too—Cindy was dead on about that. The coffee table displayed a book titled
Tropical Hallucinogens and the Shaman’s Way
. I would have leafed through it if I weren’t scared of getting shot.

Tesmer dialed someone on her cell. In the briefest of conversations, she asked, “Where are you?” A few seconds later, she added, “Get here faster,” and hung up.

Visibly nervous, she handled the gun like she knew how to hold it, but not like it was second nature, the way we carry our cell phones. The barrel wandered—toward the floor, the kitchen, me—and after holding it up for a few minutes, her hand wavered from the weight. At the windows, she peeled back the shade to double-check the street. “Did you come here alone?” I hesitated, listening to the spitting oil of the skillet in the kitchen. “You can talk now,” she said.

“I was just walking my dog.”

“I know who you are.” She circled the sofa and yanked off my curly wig, tearing at my real hair and scratching the welt Cindy Coates gave me the day before. I didn’t try to defend myself. With her free hand, she found the lump on my scalp and pressed as if it were a doorbell. “Cindy called. Told me she gave you that.” My stomach sank. When Tesmer circled back around to face me, I’m sure I wore some pitiful expression. Emmanuel and I were posed as the most pathetic Pietà in history.