The Hallows, page 24
I rose and tucked the phone into my pocket. All I could do now was wait for the cops to do their jobs and snag him somewhere along the way to his sister’s or uncle’s place and for Will to get a warrant to search his home.
I decided I couldn’t just wait in the office for the police to call me, so I went to Adam’s house.
I knocked and opened the door. No one inside. I went up to the bedroom, and Adam was fast asleep. No pills or booze around, so hopefully it was just a nap and he wasn’t blacked out.
As I went down the stairs, I stretched my neck from side to side. Tension had built itself up in me and came out of my head in intense, throbbing headaches. No migraines yet, but I was sure they weren’t far away.
I searched the medicine cabinets in the bathroom and didn’t see any ibuprofen. I went into my dad’s office and glanced around. I remembered he used to keep medicine he used only for himself in his desk.
One of the lower drawers was locked—Adam never locked anything. I looked around the room for keys. Back upstairs, I wriggled his keys out of the pocket of his pants, which were lying on the back of a chair, and went downstairs.
I tried each key in the lock. The sixth or seventh one finally worked, and the drawer popped open.
Inside were letters and a couple of medals from his days in the army. A bottle of ibuprofen was tucked in the back. I grabbed it and was about to close the drawer when the name on one of the letters caught my eye. It was addressed to my father in my mother’s handwriting.
I flipped through the letters. At least five of them were from my mother, though the return address wasn’t anywhere I recognized. I took out my phone and googled the address. It was the state hospital in Saint George.
I read a couple of them. They were mostly my mother telling my father about her day, though I couldn’t remember a time when my mother had been away long enough to write him. I looked at the dates . . . I would’ve been nine, a year before she died in the car accident.
The third letter made my heart stop. It read:
People here are treating me well. They look at me different. I guess being in a place like this people just think you’re crazy, but they’re kind. I met another woman in here who tried to take her own life, too. We’ve been talking a lot about it, and it helps. I’m hoping I will be out of here soon. Please, please, please don’t tell Tatum about any of this. You know how he worries about me. Just tell him I’m visiting my mother and will be home soon. And hug him and tell him his mother loves him very much.
I skimmed through the remaining letters from my mother, my heartbeat starting to thump in my ears. More descriptions about her days and how the people in the hospital were treating her. Then I turned to the letters at the bottom of the stack.
Three letters, all from women, all written to my father. Several of them mentioned weekends together and how they felt about him. One thanked him for the trip to Mexico and hoped she would get to see him again soon.
I took out the drawer and dumped the contents onto the floor. Tons of papers, bills, receipts. One particular envelope looked old and worn. I picked it up. All it said on the front was “To Adam.”
Inside was a single sheet of paper containing my mother’s handwriting:
Dear Adam,
I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say. I know there’re no words that will comfort you. The pain you will feel can’t be fixed. I don’t know what else to do. I feel like I’m on an airplane that’s crashing, and I can either jump out or crash with it, but the ending will be the same. You’re going to blame yourself because of the other women, and I blamed you for a long time, too. But in the end I don’t think that was it. I think this is how it was always supposed to end.
I don’t know what you should tell Tatum. He’s my heart. I wish I could get him to understand that he was the only reason I stayed as long as I did. Don’t tell him about this. Tell him something else. I don’t know what. But I don’t want him to feel this. To think his mom didn’t love him enough to stay. He won’t understand it now. Maybe when he’s older, you can tell him the truth.
I’m not going to do it in the house, I don’t want you to have that memory there. I’ll call the ambulance first and tell them where I’m going to be so you can have a funeral, if it helps. If it doesn’t, please just save the money and have me cremated.
Goodbye, Adam. I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for.
Marilyn Rose
I threw the letters as hard as I could at Adam’s face. He groaned and rolled over and looked at me, his eyes bloodshot.
“What the hell do you want?” he said, still groggy.
“You disgusting bastard.”
“What?”
“I read these damn letters, Adam. How many were there? Huh? I counted three women here, but there’s no way that was it. Those are just the ones that wrote you.”
“What the hell are you doin’ goin’ through my private things!”
“She . . .” My voice choked and I couldn’t get the words out. I had to swallow and stared at him as his eyes lowered to the floor. He sat up in bed. “She killed herself, didn’t she?”
He nodded slowly but wouldn’t look at me.
“And you never told me?”
“What good would that have done?”
“What good? What good? You don’t think I had the right to know my mother killed herself? You had me think it was a car accident!”
“What’s the difference? Other than it causing you pain you didn’t need. I was protecting you. She was protecting you.”
“She killed herself because she loved you and was loyal and you were out nailing anything that moved.”
“Hey, watch your mouth.”
“I mean, Mexico? You took one of your women to Mexico? For my entire childhood I don’t remember you taking Mom and me out to dinner, and you took someone to Mexico?” I got close to him. “How many, Adam? How many women?”
“That’s none of your business. I was a vibrant, healthy man. I had needs.”
“Needs? What about her needs? What about the needs of the woman that cooked for you, and cleaned for you, and took care of you when you were sick, or when you’d get home so drunk you could barely stand? What about her needs?”
“You don’t know what it’s like to be married to a woman like her. She was depressed all the time. Cryin’ all the time. Most days she couldn’t get outa bed except to see you to school. She was living for you, not for me. You didn’t see that side of her, she hid that from you.”
“She wasn’t supposed to be living for either of us. She should’ve had her own life.”
“She didn’t want anything. All she wanted was to take her medications and lie in bed and die. That’s what it was like being married to her. You wanna get real? Your mother and I didn’t have sex for eight years. Eight years! Can you go eight years without sex, Tatum?”
“Who gives a shit about sex! She was the love of your life.”
He chuckled. “Boy, you really do live in a fantasy land, don’t you? No one has a love of their life. That’s why people are miserable. They think they’re gonna find their soul mate, and they toss whatever good they do have waiting for one, and when one doesn’t come, it leaves ’em empty.”
“Thanks for your pontificating, Socrates. Now how about we discuss how you killed my mother.”
He climbed out of bed, rage in his eyes. “I,” he said slowly, “did everything I could for that woman. I worked my fingers to the bone to make sure she never had to work, I gave up trips and cars and everything I ever wanted to make sure we had enough money for her medications. For years I went without affection or intimacy because I wanted to stay loyal to her. But there’s only so much a man can take. I was lonely.”
“Everyone’s lonely, Adam.” I folded my arms. “Did you go after her? Did you even try to stop her?”
“Stop her? What the hell you talkin’ about? I didn’t even know until I got a call at work that they’d found her body.”
“How . . .” The words choked me, and I had to stay silent a second before I could speak. “How did she do it?”
Adam rubbed his chin and looked down to the floor. “She, um . . . she went up to the Hallows with some pills. When they got there, she’d been dead awhile. There was nothing they could do.”
My eyes grew wet, and it felt like my throat was closing up. I had to swallow to make sure I still could. “She . . . killed herself at the Hallows?” I said quietly.
He nodded and looked at me. “Yeah.”
In a flash, the pain, as it sometimes did, turned to anger. And all that anger was directed at the man standing in front of me. The man whom I blamed, whether fairly or unfairly, for the death of my mother.
“How many women?”
“What does it matter?”
“How many? How many did she know about?”
“None of your damn business.”
“How many?”
He tried to push past me, but I wouldn’t let him. “How many did she know about?”
“Get outa my way.”
“No! How many?”
“Get outa my way. I’m not going to ask again.”
“No. How many!”
He reached back and slapped me across the face.
The room turned silent, even the sound of our breathing muted. We stared at each other, and I saw the rage in his eyes start to dissipate. I took a step back and then left the house.
70
I drove to a small park in the middle of town. I used to come here as a kid. My mom would bring me when Adam was at work. A golf course was nearby, and sometimes I’d gather a few golf balls and try to sell them back to the golfers. She’d let me take the money I’d earned and buy candy at the gas station.
I got a text from Will. All it said was Better get down to Roscoe’s house.
I sighed and stared awhile longer at the ducks drifting lazily in the pond. What a life they had. Eating, sleeping, and lying around in the sun.
Give me ten minutes, I texted back.
When I arrived at Roscoe’s house, two units from the sheriff’s office were already there. Will was speaking to them outside. When he saw me, he came over.
“Talked to a neighbor that says he left in a real hurry and had his car packed to the brim.” He looked up at the house. “Guess we know who the man was with Anderson that night. It explains why Lyle didn’t identify Steven at the lineup. Poor kid was protecting his dad. Can’t imagine that was easy for him to lie to everybody.”
We walked inside the home. A one-story rambler. The furniture seemed untouched, but some of the cupboards in the kitchen were open along with a few drawers. It looked like someone had been searching for something. In the bedroom, clothes were everywhere. On the nightstand was a photo of Roscoe and Lyle holding the head of a buck that had been killed.
“There’s something else,” Will said. “There’s a gun safe in the hall closet. It’s empty.”
“Great, the psycho’s armed, too. Can anything else go wrong with this case? Would you like to arrest me as well and just put me out of my misery?”
“Hey, I’m just telling you what I found, boss. Take it easy.”
I exhaled and sat down on the bed. “I know. It’s not your fault. Look, there’s nothing we can do here. Just keep one unit stationed outside in case he shows up.”
“Should I modify the BOLO to armed and very dangerous?”
“Cops have itchy trigger fingers as it is. You do that, and Lyle might get caught in the cross fire. We need to get Roscoe when he’s not paying attention.” I rose and paced around the bedroom, kicking aside some clothes on the floor. “So if I was a murdering psychopath, where would I go and hide with my son?”
Will glanced into the closet. “Relatives are the best bet. Still checking out that sister and uncle.”
“I agree, but it’s also the most obvious bet. He might realize that and go somewhere less obvious.”
“Mexico?”
“Maybe. Let border security know and send them down a photo. And shoot one up to the Canadian border, too, just in case.”
“Cool. Anything else?”
“Yeah, I’ll be at the bar if you need me.”
I sat at a bar near Benson’s and sipped a beer. Despite the early hour, there were a few people there, older men with dark circles under their eyes. One woman sat in a corner and drank by herself, absently staring out the window. The entire place reeked of mold and rot that wafted up from underneath the floorboards.
Adam would come here almost every night after work while I was growing up, and I couldn’t imagine why.
Gates walked in and sat down at the bar next to me.
She looked at the bartender. “Diet Coke, please.” She waited until she got her drink before turning to me and saying, “It’s not your fault. We’ll find him.”
I shook my head, staring down at the white froth at the bottom of my glass. “That’s not what I’m thinking about.”
“What then?”
I inhaled deeply and looked at her. “My mother didn’t die in a car accident.”
She glanced away and couldn’t look at me.
“Holy shit, you knew.”
“Tatum—”
“You knew, didn’t you?”
She kept staring down at the bar top. “I heard my father talking with Adam after it happened. Adam said he wasn’t going to tell you, and my father said that was a bad idea. That you might hear it from someone at school if it got out, and then you wouldn’t trust him again.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want it . . . I don’t know. No one else was going to tell you, so I figured I shouldn’t. It wasn’t my place.”
“Yeah, okay, when I’m nine, maybe. How about when I was seventeen? You didn’t think that might be something I’d want to know?”
“I don’t . . . no. No, I didn’t think that’d be something you’d want to know. Why would you? What good would it have possibly done for you?”
“It was the truth.”
She scoffed. “Look who’s lecturing about the truth. And by the way, maybe I would’ve eventually told you if you hadn’t run away while I was in a hospital bed, unsure if I was going to wake up again each time I fell asleep.”
I stared at her a second and then threw a fifty on the bar.
“Tatum—”
“No, don’t.”
I left the bar and didn’t look back.
71
I stopped at a pharmacy and picked up some antacids. I popped two of them and drank them down with a Sprite in my car. The parking lot was empty, and I sat and listened to an eighties station for a while. My Tesla needed a charge, and the nearest station was over thirty miles away, so I grabbed an energy drink and guzzled half before driving out there.
The station was at a Starbucks in a little town called Hurricane. I waited inside at one of the tables. My head was pounding again, and I stretched my neck from side to side. I wondered what Sarah was doing right now in South Beach. I wouldn’t say I missed her—missed wasn’t the right word—but there was some emotion that I couldn’t quite explain.
I picked up the phone and dialed the first few numbers and then stopped and put the phone down. That wasn’t my world anymore. Neither was this. I felt like I was drifting above the ground with nowhere to settle.
Once the car was charged, I headed back to River Falls. The trial was continued until the day after tomorrow, so I had about a day and a half to figure out how to best destroy Steven’s testimony. We still had the ME, a blood expert, a forensic tech, Cecily, and another officer to go before we rested. And I’d be recalling Steven to dismantle what he’d caught me off guard with. There was still a chance. Assuming of course we could find Lyle. Without the kid, I didn’t think we had enough to convict Anderson of anything.
Back at the office, I sat in the conference room. The office of the previous prosecutor had been cleared out, but it didn’t have any windows and only two bright lights that looked like they belonged in a supermarket. I grabbed the tennis ball I had left on the table and bounced it against the wall.
Jia came in a while later and folded her arms but didn’t say anything.
“More bad news? Did the ME disappear, too?”
“I . . . um . . . wanted to talk to you about something. I know it’s not the right time, but I need to do it now.” She sat down. “Something kinda fell in my lap.”
“Don’t say it.”
“My friend referred me to a firm, and I did an interview a couple days ago. It’s a big firm in Salt Lake. It’s double the salary, and I’d be learning civil litigation as well as some criminal, which they said I could head up since they don’t have anybody there specializing in it. It’s a good opportunity.”
“Civil litigation is two people yelling at each other about money for years until one of them caves or a jury decides who’s a little more right than the other guy. Does that sound interesting to you? And we’re in the middle of a freaking murder trial. I need you.”
She nodded. “I know. But . . . they want me to start on Monday. Hit the ground running and all that. I’m sorry. I let Gates know, and I thought I should tell you in person.” She rose. “I really enjoyed working with you. I hope you win this case. I really do.”
I thought about trying to convince her, about berating her and saying she was abandoning Patty, that she was betraying her duty . . . whatever. But I didn’t. Truth was, I was the one who probably put it into her head that she should be in a big city.
Just like that, she walked out, and I sat there with the ball in my hand. I tossed it hard against the wall, and it bounced back and hit me in the chest.
It wasn’t long before I couldn’t handle being in the office anymore. Everything seemed to be unraveling. I decided the best course of action would be to rent a dune buggy, go out into the desert like I used to do when I was sixteen, and ride in the sands until the world’s problems melted away.
The ATV rental place wasn’t far from the City and County Building, so I walked over. On the way there, I saw Pritcher standing outside Benson’s with his two associates. He was wearing a tracksuit and sneakers.
