CRIMINAL CHRISTMAS: A Set of 8 Holiday Suspense Stories, page 69
So he felt the connection too. I definitely felt it and relief flooded me that I wasn’t alone. I wondered if he would seriously stop our interviews if I spoke to Scanlon again, but I didn’t want to risk it. The thought of not seeing Eisenbrey caused an unexpected wave of anguish in me. I nodded weakly. Then we both sat down, and I started the recorder.
I studied his face. It looked like he had about two or three days of razor stubble this time. Some guys just seemed sloppy when they didn’t shave, but it made Tom look sexy. He sat on his bed with both feet on the floor and leaned forward in a relaxed manner, elbows on his knees.
I started asking him the questions I had prepared, but at some point I must have started spacing out. Focused solely on his appearance and what it did to me, I lost track of what I had planned to ask.
He ran his fingers through his dark wavy hair, pushing it away from his forehead, and leaned his back against the wall. Like a work of art by Michelangelo, so magnificent, so unattainable. Frustration dug its pointy little fingernails into the back of my neck and raked downward as I pined for what I could not have. My pet, my beloved pet, secure in his cage, where no other women could ever touch him, unable to run away from me. My precious pet that I will never be allowed to pet.
His lips parted, one side of his mouth curling into a half-smile, and his eyes narrowed again. I sensed the wheels turning inside that beautiful head of his. He rubbed his jaw. I watched him and wondered, are his whiskers rough like sandpaper? I wanted to know. In spite of my fear, I felt the desire to touch him, to feel his skin. I couldn’t help myself—I started to visualize Tom in my bedroom, lying down on my bed. He had captured me with his cerulean eyes and I felt mesmerized. Bewitched almost as if he had lassoed me with an invisible rope, he pulled me toward him. The silent, unspoken, irresistible draw of Thomas Eisenbrey.
His effect on me overwhelming, I worried about the power this gave him because he would only abuse it. He had already proven he was the kind of man who victimized others again and again in the most terrible ways, reveling in the joy it brought him. He wore a serious expression, and I realized he must have said something to me.
“Hmm?”
“What planet were you visiting? Am I boring you?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I must be a little tired,” I said.
“You weren’t sleepy. You were daydreaming about being in bed with me.”
He already knew me too well. And of course he was right, so I let that go without commenting. Then I noticed an open envelope on his table and a small photograph lying next to it. Curiosity got the better of me. “Is that a letter?”
He rested his elbow on the table and chuckled. “Yes, it’s a letter from a woman, and a photo. Would you like to see?”
“Sure,” I said. He stood and held the photo up close to the bars. I leaned forward to get a good look. The young woman was tall and had long, blonde hair. She was wearing a cowboy hat, boots and a G-string. I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes. “She’s very pretty.”
“Yes, she is. Some of them are. I only answer the good-looking ones.” He placed the photo on his table again and sat on his bed.
“You have women writing to you? Are these women that you knew prior to being incarcerated?”
He leaned back, hands clasped behind his head, and regarded me with mild amusement. “No. It’s just fan mail, but it can be entertaining, especially when they send nude photos.”
“Really?” I suppose that shouldn’t have surprised me. I had heard of women becoming obsessed with other serial killers, and he was infamous. But what kind of sick woman would want to communicate with a man who she probably knew nothing about except for the fact that he loved to kill and sat on death row? Perhaps I should be asking myself that question. And why did this new information make me feel so…irritated? No, I did not like it.
“My, what an interesting expression you have on your face,” he commented. “You’re jealous, aren’t you?” That knowing look had returned, and it infuriated me.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You don’t like me talking to other women. Do you consider me your territory that you have to defend? Hmm. I’ve hit a nerve. You’re ticked off.” He was right.
“Okay. Would you like to know how I feel? It really pisses me off that I can’t interview you without having to listen to a bunch of desperate, delusional horseshit about how my panties get wet every time I come to see you. It’s getting old and tired.”
I must have said that louder than I had intended. Jones shouted up the hallway, “What’s the matter over there? Trouble in paradise?”
My subject leaned forward in his chair, his expression cold and hardened. “All right, Rebecca, if that’s how you want it, that’s how you’ll get it. Fire away with your next question.”
And I did, but it felt as though the rest of the interview was a waste of my time. He became distant and businesslike and I didn’t get anything more of value from our time together. The real Thomas Eisenbrey had withdrawn.
Chapter 15
Upon returning to the car, my first order of business was to grope around under the driver’s seat to find my flask and dump the remaining whiskey down my throat. The light-weighted feel of the container in my hand depressed me. It hadn’t been nearly enough.
I checked my cellphone and saw that I had two voicemails. The first was from Kat, a simple message consisting of two words, “Call me.” In fact, this was the second message from her this week. I needed to return her call. Kat was an understanding woman. She would allow me to vent, then she might tell me off for getting involved in this, but Kat would care, and that went a long way.
The next message was from Andrea. I played it. “Right. You haven’t answered my emails yet so, apparently, it’s time for me to proceed to the annoying message phase of our relationship. You were supposed to send me your initial chapters two days ago, yet here I sit with nothing to read. Hello! And, need I remind you, I used to be employed as an editor, so I’m going to help you with some preliminary editing. Just send me what you’ve got so far. I don’t care if it’s rough. I—look, Rebecca, I want this project to work out for us. Just call me when you get this message.”
Andrea seemed a bit frazzled. I knew she worried about what my finished product might look like. The most recent sample of my writing she’d seen, book number three, had been a disaster. She also had her suspicions that I might be drinking enough to impede my progress on the book, evident in some of the comments she made in her emails to me. She was right. I’d been stalling and we were past the day I’d promised to email something to her.
My thoughts wandered back to Eisenbrey. He had gotten under my skin, turning frigid on me after my remark about his ‘desperate, delusional horseshit’. In retrospect, that had been the wrong approach to take with him. I should have flirted with the man a little, appease him, so he would keep telling me what I needed for my book. What I had accomplished instead, with that insult, was to effectively shut him down and blow a good-bye kiss to any cooperation I would have otherwise gotten from him.
I felt overwhelmed. Perhaps I had been the wrong choice for this project. Perhaps I didn’t have the right type of personality to be able to deal with Eisenbrey. How was I going to get him to warm up to me again? I felt like giving up.
And the option of giving up waved in the air in front of me, an almost palpable temptation. I needed to remind myself why I had taken the project in the first place. I reflected on that for a moment and came up with several reasons: Because Andrea was wonderful. Andrea had believed in me at a time when no one else did, not even me. She’d given me my start as a writer. As far as my career was concerned, I owed her everything. I didn’t want to let her down. And of course, I considered her a good friend, probably my best friend. Yes, there were a lot of reasons. Good reasons. And another, much darker, reason loomed—if I quit now, I would never see Tom again. Of course I had to finish this.
That night when I laid my head to rest on my puffy pillow and closed my eyes, I dreaded the thoughts that would come. This was my worst time. Loneliness enveloped me and the darkness seemed oppressive. It was the time of day when I felt so sure and so unsure. And it was the time when I obsessed the most about Thomas Eisenbrey. He was nearly all I thought about before falling asleep, and with increasing regularity he also was in my dreams. I realized that until that ceased to be true, I was screwed.
I knew myself well enough to know I would be up the entire night fretting about him, in spite of the three helpings of vodka and orange juice I had slammed down to help me sleep. I didn’t want him to be angry with me. At my age, I was familiar with the feeling that one gets after you’ve just had a big fight with the one you care for. I’d been through the drill on many occasions. I felt anxious, twitchy, and restless.
Something had infiltrated the emotional part of my brain. I’d always been sensible, in control of my behavior, making decisions that were in my best interest even after several drinks. But this new feeling was unfamiliar. It was going to make me do something stupid. It was behind the wheel. It frightened me.
Part of me hated it, but another part felt awake and stimulated and enjoyed the new sensation—of being out of control. As disturbing as it sounds, this feeling was better than anything else I had ever experienced. I wasn’t prepared to let go of it yet.
Chapter 16
November 6th, 2012
I decided to call Kat. Forget about the fact that I had not sent the promised chapters to Andrea. A visit with Katherine was long overdue. I needed some girl talk first before tackling anything else. My mental health was at stake.
She answered on my first attempt and told me to meet her at the mall after she got off work. I found her in front of Nordstrom’s. For the first thirty minutes we managed to talk exclusively about her as we shopped. I kept firing questions at her to deflect attention from myself, but after a while she noticed what I was doing and called bullshit on me.
“Why haven’t I heard from you for a month? You didn’t return my calls. Were you avoiding me?”
“I’ve just been really busy. I started working on a new book.”
“Oh, thank goodness! I was hoping that you would get it back.” We both understood that when she said ‘it’ she referred to my underhanded, backstabbing, abandoning little muse that I depended on so heavily to maintain my sanity. She seemed chipper as she asked, “What’s the storyline?”
“This one is not a fiction book; it’s actually a biography.” I paused, wondering how long it would take her to notice the truth of my affliction. That would surely cause her to rip into me. “My subject is the serial killer, Thomas Eisenbrey.”
“Ew! How awful!” Her look of displeasure about him was so opposite of the way I felt. It seemed wise to keep that to myself. “Are you going to have to meet him in person?”
“I’ve already met him. I’ve had four visits with him at the prison over in Walla Walla.”
“You’ve seen him four times and you’re only just now telling me? What took you so long to call me?” She looked very shocked and appalled by my lack of communication about such an exciting new development in my life.
“I’m sorry. I’ve just been really busy with this. I drive out there twice a week to interview him, I’ve spoken twice with the detective that led the investigation, and the rest of my time disappears reading news articles, police reports, etc. and typing up the information I collect.” It was all true.
“Detective?” She quickly honed in on that tidbit. “Is he hot?”
“Well…yes he is.” Another truth; although I spent much more time thinking about Eisenbrey. “We went out on a dinner date a few nights ago.”
“Jeez, Rebecca, you had a date and you didn’t call me about that either? There’s something wrong with you.” She shook her head. “How long does it take to dial a phone number?”
“A few seconds, but our conversations are never short. You know I always have to block out at least an hour if I’m going to call you.”
Kat ignored my insinuation that she was long-winded, and forged on with exaggerated brevity. “Details,” she demanded, making a give-me gesture with her hand. “Now.”
We stopped at a coffee stand and placed our orders. As we waited for our lattes, I filled her in on my meeting with Scanlon and the date we had, including the close call in the car, and then told her most of what had taken place with Eisenbrey. I left out any mention of his letters from women, our argument, and that disturbing and arousing dream that I had experienced the other night. That would stay in my private store of memories.
We sat down at a table in the food court to have our drinks. “What does he look like?” she asked.
I took my cellphone from the pocket of my jeans and pulled up the photo of Eisenbrey peering through the bars, then I held it up for her to see. Even in such a small image you could easily discern the vivid cerulean-blue of his eyes.
“Wow,” Kat remarked, eyebrows raised. “I was asking about the detective. You have a picture of the killer in your phone.”
For a moment there I had thought she’d say something about his smoldering good looks, but she didn’t. Here it comes, I thought, squaring my shoulders. I slipped my phone back into my jeans pocket without mentioning that I had way more than one pic of him in there.
“So you have a thing for this guy?”
I let out a heavy breath and rolled my eyes, exasperated. I had been very careful not to include any indication that I lusted after the man, yet she had seen it. I remained silent and took a sip of my latte.
“Oh, come on, Rebecca. I know you,” she said. “Don’t try to deny it. I can’t blame you; he’s a good-looking guy.” She shrugged her shoulders.
“Okay. He’s easy on the eyes. Whatever.”
“And there’s definitely more to it than that,” she persisted. “What else is it that draws you to him?”
“I don’t know what it is yet.” Her expression was dubious, so I added, “Honestly, I’m not sure.”
“Interesting.” Kat’s eyes wandered over to the entrance of one of the department stores, and she stared at it without really seeing. When she spoke again her voice sounded detached and unemotional. “What’s he like when he talks with you? Is he nice?”
“Well, yes I suppose, except when he’s busy insulting me. We didn’t hit it off very well at the beginning, but then I started to feel like I had a good rapport with him. He was starting to open up to me and share some things that were personal. Then at the end of our visit yesterday we had an argument and it all went to hell.”
Kat’s eyes returned to me, her gaze keen, piercing. “What did the two of you argue about?”
I hadn’t originally intended to tell Kat, but I decided to let her in a little more. “He accused me of being jealous about a letter that he received from some woman.”
“Were you jealous?”
“That’s beside the point,” I snapped.
“So you were jealous. What happened next?”
“I lost my temper with him. He accused me of being territorial. I told him he was delusional.”
“But he wasn’t delusional; he had just picked up on the fact that you were feeling jealous, and that made you angry.”
“I guess so. I just hate it when he gets like that. He keeps telling me that I’m having dreams and fantasies about him. I feel like slapping that smug, self-satisfied expression right off of his face when he does that. It’s infuriating!”
“Interesting,” she said again as she sipped her coffee and mulled that over.
“Yes, it’s interesting that I’m getting that same urge to smack someone right now while I’m talking with you,” I said, glaring at her. “Do you think you could try to sound a little less like a headshrinker?”
“Hmm. He’s got you all worked up in a tizzy. I wonder how he managed that. Do you flirt with him?”
“No. And I’m not sure what to say to him when I see him next. He’s liable to still be mad at me.”
She nodded, and said. “You need to reopen the dialogue now—get what you need for your book.”
“No shit,” I breathed.
“You might consider apologizing to him for what you said. Apologies can go a long way, and I would suspect that hearing you say you’re sorry is exactly what he wants.”
“He doesn’t deserve an apology. I’m way nicer to him than he is to me.”
“This is not about equity. Try not to let your emotions into the equation. Your goal is to get him talking to you again.” She made it all sound so simple.
“You’re probably right,” I admitted. “I could give it a shot.”
“Rebecca, there’s something else—you haven’t mentioned your parents at all today. I would have thought that working with someone like him would bring up all kinds of bad memories for you. How are you holding up?”
I swallowed and managed to push back the tears that threatened to show themselves. “I’m okay. That happened a long time ago. I don’t really associate him with what happened to Mom and Dad.”
“That’s great,” she said, resting her hand on my arm. “But if you need to talk about anything don’t hesitate to call me. You’ll remember that, won’t you? I don’t want you to talk yourself out of it if it happens to be two in the morning.”
I nodded.
Her expression changed as though another thought had just come to her. “There isn’t any chance that Eisenbrey could get released, is there? I mean, he’s on death row, right?”
And then I buried my face in my hands and began to sob, and Kat wrapped her arms around me.
Chapter 17
November 7th, 2012
The next day I was a mess. My depression returned in full force, and even though I drank a load of caffeine, went for a long walk in the sun, and tried to dwell on everything that had gone right in my life of late, it didn’t waver. By 2:00 p.m. I broke out the liquor. Unfortunately, the item at the top of my happy list, which dwarfed everything under it, that sick bastard out in Walla Walla, had left me feeling bleak and empty about my future. It was surprising how much a little disapproval from Eisenbrey could squash me like a bug.
