Jar of Hearts

  See, Dad? Told you beauty school would come in handy.

  It’s almost lunchtime before she gets a break, but she’s stopped by a corrections officer as she’s heading toward the chow hall. Shawna Lyle.

  “Shaw,” the CO snaps. The woman is only five-two, and the tight fit of her uniform showcases the rolls around her midsection and the expanse of her thighs. But her physical softness is deceiving; she’s nobody to be trifled with. “You have a visitor.”

  “Who is it?” Geo’s stomach is growling. She heard they were serving chili today, which is one of the things the kitchen staff cooks that actually tastes like it’s supposed to.

  “I’m not your fucking social secretary.” If looks could kill, Geo would have been pushed through a meat grinder. “You want to see him or not?”

  It’s probably her father, but he usually visits on Sundays. Geo’s in no mood to socialize, but she follows the guard down the hallway toward the visitor’s lounge, an open area with a dozen tables and chairs and a row of vending machines across the side wall. There’s even a play area for the kids and a nice view of the gardens behind the prison.

  “Not in there,” the CO says. “There.” She points toward one of the private visitor’s rooms. Much less comfortable, but inside there’s complete privacy. No guards watching, no cameras, just a small table with four chairs and a door that closes. Usually these rooms are saved for lawyer visits, but fancy Daniel Attenbaum isn’t needed anymore, now that Calvin’s trial is over.

  Confused, she pushes open the door. Kaiser Brody is leaning against the edge of the table, checking his phone.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks, silently wondering if she somehow conjured him by losing herself in the past earlier.

  Kaiser looks her over, at her hair, her clothes. She finds herself feeling self-conscious under his scrutiny. Prison scrubs are far from flattering, and she’s not wearing makeup. She looked much better the last time they saw each other. But then again, so did he. The detective’s eyes are bloodshot, and they’re cradled in deep, dark circles. A patchy three-day beard covers the lower half of his face.

  “You okay?” Kaiser asks.

  “Yeah,” Geo says. “Are you?”

  “Shut the door.” She does as he asks. He puts his phone away and straightens up. “I’m going to ask you straight out. Have you been in touch with Calvin James since you’ve been in here?”

  “Of course I haven’t,” she says, her breath quickening. “He’s in prison, too. Inmates aren’t allowed to contact other inmates. Besides, he’d have no reason to. We’re not connected by anything anymore.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She thinks of the letter she received earlier that day, the blue paper in the blue envelope with an unfamiliar name and return address, then pushes it out of her mind. “Yes, I’m sure.”

  Kaiser’s eyes search her face. “What did he give you that day in court? And don’t say ‘nothing,’ because I know he gave you something. It was a piece of paper, yellow, small, torn from his notepad. What was written on it?”

  “Nothing—”

  “Stop,” he says, raising a hand. “Just fucking stop. Don’t lie to me. I know he gave you something. I saw it. And I need to know what it was, so don’t fucking play me, Georgina. Was it a phone number? Some way to contact him? What did he give you?”

  The last five words come out a shout. Kaiser’s spittle lands on her nose and cheeks. Shocked at his fury, she wipes it away, backing up all the way to the closed door.

  “It was a note. I don’t remember what it said. He drew a heart on it.” It’s half a lie. She remembers exactly what it said. You’re welcome. But she can’t tell Kaiser this, because then she’ll have to explain what it means. And she can’t do that. She’ll never do that.

  “It wasn’t an address of some kind? Or a phone number?” Kaiser’s jaw is tense. Both his hands are curled up into fists, so tightly that the knuckles are white. He’s about to lose it, and suddenly she’s afraid he might hit her. She looks up at the ceiling. No cameras in here.

  “Nothing like that,” she says again, hoping she sounds more convincing. “It was a silly note. What I remember is the heart. There was no contact information on it, I promise you. Why is this important?”

  “Because he escaped from prison,” Kaiser says, and just like that, Geo’s heart stops. “Three days ago. He had help on the inside. A prison guard and his counselor. Both female. Both are now dead.”

  Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out. She snaps it shut, then opens it again, then still can’t think of what to say. She shuts it again.

  “Okay, so you didn’t know.” Kaiser seems satisfied with her reaction. He lets out a long breath and leans back against the table again. “I believe you.”

  “Of course I didn’t know,” Geo says, finally finding her voice. “But why are you telling me? Look where I am. Obviously I can’t help you find him.”

  “I thought you’d want to know,” Kaiser says. “Because at some point you’ll be out of here. And I don’t want you to think I didn’t warn you.”

  “Warn me about what?”

  Kaiser reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded piece of yellow-pad paper. It’s the same piece of paper that Calvin had been doodling on the day she’d testified in court. A piece was torn off from the bottom.

  The piece he’d handed to her. The piece she’d swallowed.

  She takes it from Kaiser and unfolds it. The outer edges are a mess of scribbles, doodles, pictures, and random words. But right in the center, Calvin drew a large heart. And inside the heart he’d written two initials in flowing cursive.

  GS.

  Her heart stops for a full second, then starts beating again triple time. She works hard to not let her reaction show.

  “I feel strongly that he’s going to try and contact you,” Kaiser says, rubbing his face. He looks exhausted. “I don’t know how, but when he does, I need you to tell me.”

  The blue letter flits through her mind again, then flits out.

  Geo hands the paper back to him. “He won’t,” she says, so defiantly and authoritatively that she almost believes it herself. “He has no reason to. Now I have to go.” If she doesn’t leave now, he’ll see right through her. She turns away and opens the door.

  “Georgina,” Kaiser says. “Take care of yourself in here.”

  She pauses, then turns to her old friend one last time. With the badge on his hip, the worn leather jacket, the scruffy face … he looks like a stranger. Maybe he loved her once, when they were kids, but that was a long time ago, when she was worthy of love. Everything’s different now. It hurts to look at him.

  He reminds her of the person she used to be.

  “I don’t want to see you anymore, Kai,” Geo says softly. “Please don’t come here again.”

  PART TWO

  ANGER

  “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

  ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

  6

  The soft ping of his email app wakes Kaiser Brody, and he reaches for his iPhone on the nightstand to check it. It’s only 5:30 A.M. and not yet light outside. Beside him, Kim murmurs softly. She doesn’t move. Her blond hair fans out in messy strands over the pillow, and he watches her sleep for a moment, feeling that strange mix of emotions he always does whenever they do this. He’ll have to wake her up at six so she has enough time to get back home before her husband—scheduled for night shifts this week—realizes she’s been gone all night.

  Or maybe he won’t wake her. See what happens, what excuses she’ll make, both to her husband for being out all night, and to him, when she tells him later on that they’ll need to lie low for a few days until things at home “settle back down.”

  He sighs and clicks on the new email.

  It’s from the prison guard at Hazelwood Correctional Institute, the one he pays to send him a monthly report on inmate number 110214, also known as Georgina Maria Shaw.
It only costs him a hundred bucks, sent anonymously via PayPal, which isn’t much. But over five years, every month, that shit adds up. Their arrangement is over as of today though, as Georgina is scheduled for release next week.

  Five fucking years. In some ways it feels like the time went by fast, and yet in other ways, it seems like nothing has changed at all.

  The PDF report contains a lot of information that doesn’t say much. There’s a detailed log of her incoming and outgoing phone calls, her incoming and outgoing mail, and a list of everybody who’s visited her over the past month. Other than her attorney and Kaiser himself, the only other person who’s ever gone to see Georgina in prison is her father. Her ex-fiancé, that snooty CEO with the soft paunch and thinning hair, never went to see her once.

  Her phone records tend to show a bit more depth. She had her usual phone call with a man named Raymond Yoo, who, according to his website, is an “independent financial planner specializing in unique and outside-the-box investment opportunities.” Kaiser can only assume this means the man’s a pro in laundering money. And once a year, on the same day, Georgina makes a long distance phone call to a ninety-year-old woman named Lucilla Gallardo in Toronto. Her maternal grandmother.

  There’s also detailed information about medical visits (only one in the past six months, for a rash on her shoulder), her work assignment (in the prison hair salon), volunteer efforts (she tutors fellow inmates working toward their GED), and even what she purchased in commissary (tampons, moisturizer, chocolate). If she filed any complaints or received any disciplinary actions, those would appear in the report as well. In five years, she never has.

  Which doesn’t mean they haven’t happened.

  Kaiser peruses these reports every month, telling himself he’s keeping an eye out for any contact between Georgina and her ex-boyfriend, Calvin James. But if he’s being honest with himself (and why the fuck would he want to do that?), he knows it’s simply because he wants to know how she’s doing. The last time he saw her, she expressly told him not to visit her. So he hasn’t. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care.

  Not that he feels guilty for arresting her. He doesn’t, not really. But he can’t say he ever felt good about it, either.

  Accompanying every report is a paragraph personally written by the corrections officer, giving him tidbits on Georgina’s life over the past month. This is really what he pays the hundred bucks for—the things that aren’t in the report. Who her friends are, who she’s argued with, who she’s fucking, what contraband the CO suspects she’s hiding, her overall morale.

  Georgina’s been doing well. Her closest friends are a woman named Cat Bonaducci (a woman who killed someone while driving drunk and was sentenced to fifteen years) and Ella Frank.

  The Ella Frank. Wife of James Frank, the drug kingpin, currently incarcerated for life in the Washington State Penitentiary. Georgina formed a friendship with her early in her stay, and the CO has noted several times that she might be involved somehow in Ella Frank’s drug business. Kaiser doesn’t give a shit. Far as he can tell, the Franks haven’t had any contact with Calvin James, a.k.a. the Sweetbay Strangler, and that’s the only thing that matters to him.

  What Georgina does to survive in prison is her business.

  “Everything okay?” Kim’s face is mushed into the pillow, her voice muffled. The room is dark, illuminated only by the glow of Kaiser’s phone.

  “Go back to sleep,” he says to her, and she does.

  On the one hand, he likes that Kim’s here, because it’s nice lying bedside someone who understands him, understands his work, and who doesn’t expect or want anything more than what he can give. But on the other hand, he hates that she’s here, because she’s married and he knows it’s wrong.

  They’ve never discussed where this would go. The affair—an ugly word, but he’s always believed in calling a spade a spade—started more than a year ago. Kim’s husband, Dave, is also a cop, working out of a different precinct, and his hours are crazy. Their schedules rarely mesh. They were supposed to start trying for a family, but first Kim put it off, and now Dave’s putting it off. She’s lonely, hungry for attention and validation, and she needs a warm body next to her just as much as Kaiser does.

  But this can’t go on indefinitely. It’s already gone on way too long, and he’s starting to get sick of the sneaking around, having to hide it from everybody at work. It isn’t worth it, especially since he doesn’t—nor will he ever—love Kim. Kaiser’s not sure he’s capable of really loving anyone anymore.

  It makes him the ideal cop. Nobody to apologize to for working long hours, no kids to worry about, no family plans to fuck up. Nobody to take care of, not even a plant or a goldfish. He can work the hours he wants, sleep when he wants, eat when he wants. He only really feels “single”—which is a dumbass word, a label designed to make people feel like losers, because people are just people—at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and sometimes, not even then.

  He was married once, to a nurse he met in the ER while getting stitched up after breaking up a bar fight shortly after he graduated from the police academy. It lasted a tumultuous eighteen months, ending just as decisively as it began. He never blamed her; he’d become unbearable to live with, consumed with work, never putting her first. She left him for a guy she met on the internet, and when the ink was dry on the divorce papers, he swore he’d never get married again.

  He leans back on the pillow and brushes a strand of Kim’s hair away from her cheek. You’d think after a year of this her husband would catch on that his wife isn’t sleeping at home when he’s working. But so far, he hasn’t, and maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to know. Kaiser met Dave once, a few months back, at the precinct’s annual family barbecue. Had shaken the man’s hand. If the other cop suspected anything, he didn’t show it. The smile had been warm to match the handshake, and they’d spent a few minutes talking about sports, which is what men do when they’re new to each other and have nothing else to talk about.

  Kim stirs again, opens one eye, peers up at him. “What time is it?”

  “Don’t worry,” he says. He knows the drill. “I’ll wake you at six.”

  She smiles at him, pulls the covers up to her chin, and falls back asleep.

  He checks through the report again, hungry for details that aren’t there. Is Georgina happy? Is she lonely? Is she excited to get out, or is she dreading rejoining civilized society after what she did? The discovery of Angela Wong’s remains fourteen long years after the teenager went missing rocked Seattle because everybody remembered that case. There was wild speculation about what could have happened to her. Mike Bennett, the quarterback of the St. Martin’s High School football team and her on-and-off-again boyfriend, was questioned extensively in her disappearance, leading some to believe he might have killed her. It could have ruined Mike’s life, and yet Georgina had said nothing.

  The one thing he never asked her, the day he arrested her, was why. Why had she done it? And why had she kept it a secret? Deep down, though, Kaiser knew the answer. He didn’t ask because he didn’t want her to lie to him again. He remembers how she was with Calvin James. The profound effect Calvin had on her. She acted differently around him. Spoke differently around him. Moved differently around him. It was like Calvin tapped into a part of her control panel that nobody else could reach, turning on a switch that nobody else realized was even there. Not even Georgina herself.

  Calvin James changed her life. He had changed all their lives … for the worse. He’d pulled off the prison escape of the decade, killing a prison guard and a counselor in the process. The three men who’d escaped with him had all been found dead in the months to follow. Not Calvin James, though. He’s still out there somewhere.

  Kaiser still remembers the conversation he had with the serial killer at the precinct shortly after his arrest. The Sweetbay Strangler sat easily in the interrogation room, hands resting on the table, his wrists cuffed together, relaxed. Jeans, T-shirt, no jewelry
except for a watch with a leather band on his right wrist, which Kaiser always thought was strange, as Calvin was right-handed. He looked completely unconcerned, as if he just assumed the world would fall into line with whatever it was he wanted.

  Which it always did in the end, didn’t it? The arrogant sonofabitch.

  “You know why you’re here, don’t you?” Kaiser asked.

  Calvin nodded. “You think I killed someone.”

  His lawyer leaned over. “I strongly suggest that you don’t say anything, Mr. James. Let me speak for you.”

  Calvin shrugged. Again, unconcerned.

  He’d been assigned a public defender, a thin, scraggly man named Aaron Rooney, whom Kaiser had met only once before. Rooney graduated from law school eight months earlier and was scratching out a living working for the state, which was about the worst job a lawyer starting out could have, with the worst clients. There was zero glory in being a public defender. Some trial experience, maybe, but the majority of cases were pled out and never saw the inside of a courtroom. Rooney was dressed in a baggy brown suit, his beard five days old, his hair flattened down with too much gel.

  “We’ve been looking for you for a long time,” Kaiser said. “Three victims over the past nine years, buried in shallow graves. I’m sure there are more, but we just haven’t found them yet. Took us a while to ID you. Since we didn’t know your name, we’ve been calling you the Sweetbay Strangler.”

  “I like it,” Calvin said.

  “Want to know how we finally found you?”

  “Why don’t you just tell us?” the lawyer said.

  “The first girl you killed all those years ago finally turned up, which now brings your murder count to four.” Kaiser watched Calvin’s face. The man’s expression was neutral, with only a slight etching of polite interest. Bright eyes. Handsome motherfucker. Might have been a movie star had he gone a different way with his life, but men like Calvin James—men who raped and murdered women—never went another way. Their urges always got the better of them. “You remember your first one, right? You buried her body in the woods, after you chopped her up. She was a high school junior, a cheerleader.”