It is only one case. For now. I worry that it’s not a lone murder. Tomorrow I’ll attend the autopsy. Dr. Andrade will be expecting me. Depending on how late Crime Scene works tonight, I don’t expect her fingerprints to be run through the local and national database before late morning. If that doesn’t give me an identification, I’ll just have to continue poring over missing person reports. There are an average of about three hundred murders each year in Washington. Unless I can spotlight this case, the sheriff’s request for expedited DNA analysis will go to the back of the line or not see daylight at all, and she will just be a Jane Doe.
I shut off the engine and head up the walk to the historic Victorian. Historic usually equals quaint, but there’s nothing quaint about this place. It’s a big house divided into two units. At the moment I’m the sole tenant and I like it that way. The other unit is currently, and probably always will be, unoccupied. The last renter gave up because of unreliable heat in the winter and sweltering heat in the summer. The ancient wood floors are dangerously uneven, causing me to trip some nights on my way to the bathroom.
I drop my purse and keys on the table by the leaded glass door to my bedroom, the only part of the house that has any style from the bygone era. I expect someday the place will be razed and the door will end up in some fancy home in Seattle. I have a little office area tucked in one corner and a gun safe in the closet. I lock my gun in the safe and sit at my desk, staring at the blank screen of my laptop.
I think about the dead woman. The nameless woman. The woman who was tortured, probably raped, chained up somewhere like a dog, then dumped on a beach to be found.
I get up and take down a box from the top of my closet. The box contains dozens of mini-cassette tapes of my sessions with Dr. Karen Albright, my psychologist. I place the box on the desk. It’s heavy. Who knew words could weigh so much? I sit down, pick out a tape, and put it in the little recorder. I get up and go to the fridge to get a glass of wine and bring the box and a plastic tumbler from an Idaho motel back to the desk. I twist the knob on the wine box and white zinfandel fills the tumbler.
Sipping wine, I think about how Dr. Albright brought me back from the precipice that had been my world since I was born.
I recollect how her blue eyes scared me at first. Such a pale blue. Almost otherworldly. How her office smelled of microwave popcorn. How much I grew to trust her. I was twenty when I first saw her. Defensive. Closed off like a street barricade. I had never let anyone inside, but I was smart enough to know that everything inside of me—from my experiences to the bloodline of my birth—had to be exorcized somehow. I’d been traumatized, and while I couldn’t see it in the mirror, others did. Night terrors in a college dorm are traumatic and uniquely embarrassing. You don’t know what you said, if anything. You don’t know if anyone heard your screams.
I open the windows and drink the wine. The box is calling me.
“You’ll want these someday,” Dr. Albright said.
I refused the gift at first. “I can’t see that happening.”
She smiled, a warm calming smile. “Trust me. You will. The day will come and listening to the tapes will make you even stronger.” She put her arms around me. We both cried. We held each other for a long time. I knew it wasn’t goodbye forever, but it was the end of therapy that had spanned a year and a half. At that time I was graduating from college with a degree in criminology and had plans for the police academy in suburban Seattle.
I draw a breath and peer inside. A boxful of cassettes, each numbered with the dates on which they were recorded. I switch to Scotch. I’ve taken to keeping a bottle of Cutty Sark in a drawer in the desk. It’s cheap but fair. I used to buy a more expensive single malt. One of the “Glens”: Glenfiddich, Glenmorangie, Glenlivet. Then I discovered that after the first drink it all tasted the same. I order the real stuff only when I’m in public.
I know I’m stalling. I was drawn to listen to the tapes of my sessions with Dr. Albright, but this case brought the anguish from the past back with a vengeance. Still, I’m curious. I turn on the player.
I hear a short hiss while the audio begins.
Karen Albright starts off with a reminder that I’m not alone on the journey. She tells me I’m strong. This is the path to healing. I remember I wanted to believe that, but my gut told me it was complete and utter bullshit. Deep inside, I knew beyond any doubt, I’d never heal.
Dr. A: Close your eyes, Rylee. Tell me about meeting Aunt Ginger.
She calls me by the only name she knew. Her voice is full of concern and sincerity. I know, or I feel, that she is a good person. She believes she can help. I didn’t want to close my eyes, but I did.
And I close them now. Thinking about the tortured body of the woman who is now a piece of evidence on the stainless steel table. Being dissected by a pathologist after being bound and beaten, abused, like an animal. Her life was taken, but, worse, her dignity and worth as a human being was stripped away by force. Helpless, becoming hollow, drawing into the mind to escape the horror of what was and what was to come. I think of my mother and how she lived this nightmare.
I stop the tape. I punch the “play” button and force myself to concentrate on the words. I can hear myself take a deep breath.
Me: There was no air in the room. I let out a gasp and Aunt Ginger is all over me. I don’t need CPR. I push her away. I understand what she said but I feel like the room is spinning and I’m unable to grab ahold of the meaning of her words.
I think about the autopsy tomorrow. I push it down deep and listen to my words.
Me: Aunt Ginger asks me, “Honey are you all right? Put your head between your knees.” Of course I’m not all right. In the last twenty-four hours I’ve lost my mom, pulled a knife from my dead stepfather’s chest, found out that my biological dad is a serial killer. And not only did he want my mom, he wants me. Upset doesn’t cover it.
Dr. A: You’re safe here, Rylee.
Me: Am I? Am I really ever safe anywhere?
I can hear myself let out a breath. I’m calming down. I don’t know this woman, Ginger, the sister of my mom, the aunt I never knew I had, but I knew she meant well. I remember she had lines around her eyes that underscored the anxiety she’s held inside since her sister, my mom, disappeared.
Dr. A: What did you mean when you said your biological father wanted you?
Me: He found out my mom was pregnant. He kidnapped her, held her like a toy, raped and tortured her, but she escaped. And she had me. My aunt said he’d made it known that he felt I belonged to him. That my mom still belonged to him. I felt a rush of bile. I could never belong to that rapist. That monster. I belonged to the dad that raised me. The dad that creep of a bio father murdered. My hands were shaking, and my aunt looked me right in the eyes and said, “Rylee, I was there when he came for her . . . and for you.”
Dr. A: Go on. What happened?
Me: I asked my aunt what she meant. Was she there when I was born? I was a little angry that she knew me and I didn’t know about her. Aunt Ginger said I was born in the hospital there in Idaho. She had volunteered to be Mom’s birthing coach. Mom was just sixteen when I was born. The same age I was when I found out all of this. My mom didn’t want to look at me, then she said she was glad she had a girl. I found out she said that because if it—if I—had been a boy, she was afraid she’d see her kidnapper’s likeness. Aunt Ginger told her I didn’t look like him. I wondered how Aunt Ginger could know that, but she told me later that a policeman had showed up at the hospital and brought flowers. He was my biological dad. The serial killer. A cop.