Denny hands both Mary and me a small device that looks like your basic key fob for a car remote, only it contains a single red button. “Push the button for an emergency,” he says. “We’ll all get it immediately.”
An emergency. The gesture is intended to reassure us, but the implication does just the opposite. We’ll only need the emergency button if Winston Graham has somehow, some way, against all odds, managed to call on us.
A hush falls over the room.
And then a chime goes off, a loud rattle, a shifting of mechanical gears. Denny spins around. Agent Getty draws his weapon. My heart leaping, I rush for Mary and embrace her.
Meanwhile, perched on the wall, a door opens on a small clock. A bird pops out and says, “Cuckoo!” before disappearing again inside.
It is 4:00 a.m.
“Jesus,” says Getty, holstering his weapon. Everyone takes a breath. The bird is no threat. Presumably, it has an alibi for the murders.
But it’s a reminder of how jangled our nerves are, that no matter how much we reassure ourselves of our safety, nobody is completely convinced.
105
I WAKE from the dream, from the nightmare plunge toward the window to escape the flames rippling across my bed. I wipe the thick lather of sweat from my forehead and sit up in bed. Coffee. I smell good coffee.
I walk out of my room and pass Mary’s door. The door is closed most of the way but not shut completely. I see a glimpse of her sitting up, so I knock on her door, pushing the door open in the process.
On the nightstand beside her bed, a number of pill bottles are lined up, medication prescribed by her doctor. Understanding that she might be forced into seclusion for a considerable amount of time, the doctors gave her extra medication to last her a few months. She has pills for pain, pills for anxiety, and pills for sleep.
She is seated on the bed against her propped-up pillows, on top of her covers, with her legs out in front of her and something resting between them. Something she is bent over, staring at—at least until she sees me.
She straightens up when she sees me. Her face is at least as swollen as yesterday, perhaps more so, and still discolored.
“I didn’t mean to bar—” My eyes move to the object, and then I see what it is, long and cylindrical. It isn’t any of the pills prescribed to her. It’s alcohol. Specifically, a bottle of Grey Goose vodka.
“I didn’t drink it,” she says quickly.
“But you’re thinking about it.”
She doesn’t answer for a long time, looking away from me. After a time, I think she’s going to just wait for me to leave.
“I just—don’t know if I can do this,” she says. “I don’t even want to open my eyes and face the day. I’ve overcome so much and I’ve been so proud of myself for doing it. But this. This?” She shakes her head absently. “I really cared about him,” she says. “I know that sounds ridiculous but—”
“It’s not ridiculous, Mary—”
“So now I lose the first guy I thought was decent and honorable, and on top of that, I have to live in fear of being maimed and tortured, and with the knowledge that I’m so stupid that I actually let this guy into my life and didn’t see him for what—”
“Mary, don’t—”
“And you know what?” She shows me the bottle. “I drink this bottle and I don’t have to think about any of that. Not any of it.”
I come over and sit across from her on the bed.
“I’m such a freak!” she cries. “How do you fall in love with a serial killer?” She covers her face with her hands.
I put my hand on her arm and let her get it out. After a short time, she takes a deep breath and lets out a moan.
“Y’know, my whole life, I’ve kind of felt like a freak,” I say. “My sister, Marta? She was my twin. But she was so much prettier than I was. She looked like my mother. Prettier, more fun, popular. I was the tall, gangly bookworm who memorized square roots and took up causes like the environment and animal cruelty while she was on the cheerleading squad and making the Homecoming Court. I always thought of myself as a mistake. Like a piece of bad fruit you toss out.”
Mary peeks at me, then drops her hands. “You don’t seem like a freak to me. And I don’t think Agent Bookman thinks you’re a freak, either.”
“Well.” I throw up my hands. “I’m fine. I learned to deal with it. But I was always so damn jealous of Marta. And she was so nice to me. That’s the real insane part. She loved me like crazy. She’d do anything for me. All I did back was resent her. And now I’d do anything…” I shake my head and take a breath. “My point is, freak is in the eye of the beholder, Mary. You’re no freak. You’ve overcome incredible obstacles. You’ll overcome this one, too.”
She looks at me, a hint of gratitude on her face. Behind that athletic body she has honed over years of exercise is a lonely woman who overcame adversity with her head held high but hasn’t been able to find love. She thought she’d found it with Winston Graham, only to learn the absolute worst about him. Can she recover from that, like she overcame alcoholism?
“Come with me.” I put out my hand. “Let’s get some coffee and go out on the porch. It looks like a beautiful day. That bottle will still be there, if you want it, afterward.”
She takes my hand and we get off the bed. As she gets up, a white teddy bear falls off the bed.
“Who’s your friend?” I ask.
“Oh, that was already here,” she says. “But I had a white teddy bear growing up. Took it with me everywhere for years. You know what I called it? White Bear.”
“Very creative,” I say.
She laughs, which is nice, a start. “Then I left it at the grocery store one day in a shopping cart. Never saw it again. I was inconsolable for days. For years afterward, every time I’d go to a supermarket, I’d look for White Bear. I’d make my dad ask the store manager if anybody had found it. I made up a whole story in my mind, that some nice little girl found it and gave it a good home.”
“That’s a real tale of tragedy.” I lock arms with her. “Well, I’m no White Bear, but I’ll be a friend forever.”
“Do you mean that?” she says, caution in her voice.
“I promise,” I say. “One freak to another.”
106
I FRY some eggs in a pan and pop in some toast while Mary sits outside on the porch, drinking coffee with Denny Sasser. I can’t hear what they’re saying but I can see them, and Mary looks more upbeat, more animated. I think I even see her laugh.
Denny’s good for that, the comforting grandfather figure. He’s also a shrewd investigator with decades of experience whom all of us, at various times, have grossly underestimated. If it weren’t for Denny, we wouldn’t have looked at Pennsylvania as a possible location for our subject. Denny thumbed his nose at my precious data, applied some common sense, and led us to a huge break in the case.
I grab a cup and join them out on the porch. “Breakfast is ready when you want it,” I say.
“Excellent!” Denny says. He’s a little too high on life a little too early in the morning for me.
Mary’s hair is still mussed from sleep. She’s wearing a running outfit, matching top and shorts, though she isn’t going running any time soon. But all in all, she looks a heck of a lot better than she did a half hour ago. That’s the life of an addict, I suppose, always on the roller coaster, always living one step from the brink.
I sit down in a cushy chair next to them, the breeze on my face, while they continue their conversation.
“So, homeschooled,” says Denny. He turns to me. “Mary was homeschooled.”
“It’s true,” she says. “My dad was really strict about that sort of thing.”
“Was he in education?”
“Oh, gosh, no,” she says, waving a hand. “He worked the overnight shift for a meat-processing plant. Not a lot of heavy thinking going on there.” She nods. “But he was very interested in my having a good education, and he didn’t like our school system in
Allentown. So he got a bunch of books and schooled me himself during the day.”
Allentown makes me think of the Billy Joel song of the same name, about a Pennsylvania town struggling with a devastated economy, the loss of blue-collar factory jobs and, along with them, hope.
“Your mother wasn’t around?” Denny asks.
“No, she died in childbirth.”
“God, Mary, I’m sorry,” I say.
“Yeah.” She shrugs. “It’s kind of weird to suffer a loss like that and not even realize it. I mean, I literally never met her. It was always just me and Dad. We did okay. No pity parties for me.”
A tough life, by any measure. A single parent, not planning to raise the child alone, suddenly being forced to. And then homeschooling as well. Nothing traditional about her upbringing. Then, of course, the alcoholism, which sidetracked any career she had planned, hopefully not forever. And now she has to live in fear, and with the realization that she fell in love with a serial killer.
“Are you still in touch with your father?” Denny asks.
“No, no. He passed away in two thousand eleven. Heart attack. Died immediately.” She sucks in her lips. “Oh, I’m sure a shrink would say that I was looking for a strong male figure to fill the void. Right? Leave it to me to find a serial killer instead. I sure know how to pick ’em, don’t I? A reallll good judge of character, I am.”
She puts down her mug of coffee and looks out over the mountains toward the Pacific. A change of subject is in order, before she starts down that road again.
“Mary, I need your help on something.”
Mary’s eyes move back to me. “Sure. Anything.”
I tell her for the first time about the Graham Sessions, how Winston Graham recounted his thoughts and many of his killings over the last two months. She reacts with horror, especially when she hears that she was prominently featured in the diary.
“You want me to…read them?”
“I do,” I say. “Because I think there’s a lie in there. Some misdirection. And you might be the only person to spot it.”
Mary nods. “I’ll do it,” she says. “Of course I’ll do it.”
My cell phone buzzes. A text message from Sophie Talamas: urgent private.
“Denny and I need to make a phone call,” I say to Mary. “I’ll be back in a minute and we’ll start working on those transcripts.”
“You guys stay here. I’ll go. I need to wash up and change my bandage.” She pushes herself out of the chair and touches my arm. “Sorry about earlier,” she says. “I’m fine. Really. You have enough to think about without worrying about me.”
She’s probably right. She’s a strong woman, I’ll give her that. When she’s gone, I punch up the speakerphone on my smartphone and dial Sophie back.
“Hey,” Sophie says.
“It’s me and Denny. You have big news?”
“I do,” she says. “Winston Graham is dead.”
I look at Denny, relief coursing through me. Did she really just say that?
“Hate to say it,” I say, “but thank God.”
“Don’t thank God just yet,” she says. “Winston Graham died over a year ago.”
107
A HALF HOUR later, Mary returns to the porch, her hair hanging wet.
“What happened?” she asks, surveying the surroundings, the looks on our faces.
I give her the Reader’s Digest version. After the raid on Winston Graham’s house in Elk County, they found his DNA from a strand of hair on a comb in his bathroom and ran it through the database. There was a positive match on a John Doe who washed ashore off the Atlantic Ocean in October 2011. Given the condition of the body when it washed ashore, the best estimate is that it was in the water for a month, at least. Which means that before our subject began his murder spree in Atlantic Beach, Florida, on September 8, 2011, he dumped Winston Graham into the ocean.
“He took over Winston Graham’s life,” I say. “Graham was a recluse, and a wealthy one, so he was the perfect target. Our subject killed Graham, probably after gaining access to his bank accounts and the like, and then used Graham’s house as his base of operations. If anybody ever saw his Internet searches, they’d be searches on Graham’s computer. If anybody ever traced his car—which we did, of course—they’d trace it to Graham.”
“That’s why he recorded those Graham Sessions,” says Denny. “Just in case we ever got close, he wanted to make sure that we believed that Graham was our man. That was the big lie. The lie was that the killer isn’t Winston Graham.”
“But I…I’ve been to his house,” says Mary, not thinking clearly. “I had dinner with him. I felt…I felt…”
“Whoever he was, he was an impostor,” I say. “He took over Graham’s life and made you believe he was Graham. Why wouldn’t you believe it? You had no reason not to.”
Mary takes a seat and places a hand on her chest. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Nothing’s changed,” says Denny. “There’s still a guy out there, and we’re still going to catch him. And you’re still going to be safe. The only thing that’s different is his name.”
He’s right, technically.
But however we spin it, we’ve been thrown for yet another loop. “Winston Graham” wasn’t Winston Graham at all. We have no idea who our subject is.
Once again, he’s demonstrated that he’s several steps ahead of us. Up is down, left is right, black is white. We are chasing our tails all over again.
And for some reason not grounded in logic, not based on empirical data that has always been my lifeblood, I can’t shake the chill in my bones, the sense that we are less safe than we think up here in this secluded cabin.
108
EIGHT O’CLOCK at night. The sun has gone down, leaving across the sky a dazzling array of pink and green and orange, a delicious sorbet of color.
And then the sky turns to ash, and up here in our remote hideaway, beyond the exterior lights that illuminate the property, it is suddenly consuming blackness again. With darkness comes a heightened sense of dread, for me, anyway, our first full night up here. And our first night realizing that Winston Graham isn’t really Winston Graham.
I’m pacing the bedroom, finishing up a call with Sophie (Books has chosen not to participate, continuing to shut me out). “Okay,” I say. “So we have Visa and AmEx charges in Pittsburgh and surrounding suburbs. We have a couple of restaurants and bars, and one of them in particular, he seemed to frequent every Sunday in the fall of two thousand ten. Drinking beers and watching football, I assume.”
“And with the amount of money he spent, he must have had company,” says Sophie. “A drinking buddy. Maybe this is where Graham first met our subject. Where our subject gained Graham’s trust, got close to him.”
“Keep on it,” I say. “Call me with any news.” It’s coming up on eleven o’clock at night in Pennsylvania, so I doubt there will be anything new from her tonight.
“Mary, I’m going to take a quick shower,” I call out.
“Okay, no problem!”
I throw off my clothes and place my emergency key fob with the red button on the vanity. I hate to spend even one minute away from Mary, though the truth is, she has four guards outside, and I wouldn’t be any help fighting off our subject anyway.
The cabin has good water pressure and one of those fancy rainfall showerheads. It feels good to lose myself, to escape all of this, to let the massaging water pound my neck and shoulders, to close my eyes and turn my face upward into the torrent of water.
But then it’s over, and my nerves return, the gnawing in my stomach. I dry off quickly, throw on my kick-around clothes, and grab the key fob off the vanity. I head down the hall to the living room. From the hallway, I see the stack of paper that constitutes the Graham Sessions, but no sign of Mary. Where could she—
“Hey there,” Mary says, startling me. She’s in the kitchen, pouring boiling milk into a paper cup.
The flutter of panic subsides. I m
ust have rushed right past her. I didn’t even look in the kitchen. What did I think—she’d be kidnapped in the ten minutes I spent in the shower? I need to get a grip. I’m becoming paranoid.
I blow out a sigh.
Then, suddenly, a chime goes off, the mechanical rustling of gears, and the damn cuckoo bird blurts out at me from his wooden perch on the wall before disappearing for another hour.
It must be nine o’clock.
“Shit,” I say.
Get a grip, Emmy. Mary’s safe. We’re in a remote spot, unknown to just about anybody, and surrounded by armed, well-trained officers. Mary’s safe.
“I made some hot chocolate for everyone,” Mary says. “I figured it’s the least I could do for them, after what they’ve done for me.”
She places four paper cups of hot cocoa on a large plate.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m taking the cocoa out to them.”
“No, you’re not. You don’t leave this house.”
Mary frowns at me. “I can’t even walk out to deliver some cocoa?”
“Nope. I’ll do it.” I take the plate away from her. “Be right back.”
“You think he’s coming for me, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. I can feel it. I can read it all over you.”
“Mary, I’ll be right back.”
I walk gingerly with the plate into the cool evening air and deliver two cups to the U.S. marshals sitting in the car on the gravel parkway. “Two cups of hot cocoa,” I say. “Courtesy of Mary.”
“That’s very nice,” says the driver, a guy named McCloud. “Smells great.”
“Thanks for all you’re doing,” I say.
Now only holding two cups, I leave the plate on the hood of their car and head, double-fisted, down the driveway to its base.
When I get down there, there are three people, not two, standing next to the vehicle.
109