Even In Darkness--An American Murder Mystery Thriller (5 page)

Caroline now. She knows how to make a room work. She doesn't see what's actually in a room. She sees what a room can be. Did I mention that she makes buttermilk pancakes from scratch? In spite of all the health stuff and organics, she's still a lot of fun.

I feel talky all of a sudden.

‘I'm sure you know that Caroline Miller is my daughter-in-law. I call her my DIL. She is an artist when it comes to decorating. After all this time, all these years and the things we have been through, would you believe she still calls me Mrs Miller?' I blink at Agent Woods and Agent Jones, and Deputy Sheriff Collins, all of whom are watching me like I'm their favorite soap opera. ‘It's a southern thing. She has excellent manners. I often wonder if she said “pardon me” the day she shot Joey. Excuse me, that's just a little mother-of-the-dead-son humor.' I look at them. They seem appalled. ‘Tell me what happened, please?' I stand up. ‘What happened to Caro and Andee? Damn it, you tell me right now.'

I'm not quite sure what to do next, so I sit back down.

‘They're missing,' Mavis Jones says. Quickly. She sounds apprehensive, and I hear how out of control I sound. I'd be apprehensive too.

‘Missing?' I say. It's a question. ‘Missing? Not
dead
?'

‘Did you expect them to be dead?' Agent Mavis Jones sounds sympathetic, but off kilter, in the way of wily cops.

‘A nine-one-one call came in from their neighbor at eleven eleven p.m., Central Standard Time, tonight, the neighbor reporting that he'd seen an intruder entering your daughter-in-law's house.' Agent Woods leans toward me as he talks, and the matter-of-fact quality in his voice makes me feel better. Like everything is normal and under control even though I know it's not. ‘The dispatch operator instructed him to stay on the line while they sent officers out to the scene.'

So it becomes a scene, I think, what once was a house.

‘A few minutes later the operator heard shots fired, and was unable to get the neighbor back on the phone.'

Because he was dead, I think, because he was dead. ‘He was dead?'

Agent Woods nods.

‘Was it Burton Stafford? He and his wife live behind Caroline. They're her landlords, she rents her house from them. They look after Andee in the afternoons after she gets home from school, until Caro gets back from the bank.'

Woods hesitated. ‘We can't confirm that pending notification of next of kin, but yes, unofficially, that is who it was.'

No yes, I think. No yes.

‘Your granddaughter and your daughter-in-law were not in the house. There were clear signs of forced entry, but there was no blood. Nightclothes were found on both beds, the mother's and the child's. It looks like they were forced to dress. There were muddy footprints up and down the staircase. All the windows were open. So were the front and back doors. A large dog, identified by other neighbors as the Miller dog, Ruby, was found wandering in the backyard. She had glass in her paw, and it looks as if she was wandering back and forth between the Miller house and the Stafford house which sits directly behind. The storm door was broken at the Stafford house, we think by a bullet that went through the door and into the victim. Burton Stafford was shot twice, and his body was found by officers in the kitchen of his home when they arrived on the scene. There was meat, cheese, that kind of thing, out on the kitchen counters and a beer that was open but full. It looks like Mr Stafford was up making himself a sandwich, looked out the back door and happened to see an intruder going into your daughter-in-law's home. We think the intruder saw Mr Stafford standing at his back door. The porch light was on and he shot Mr Stafford twice and also shot out the porch light.'

‘No witnesses,' I say, thinking what that means for Caro and Andee.

‘Exactly. Mrs Stafford heard the shots, heard her husband cry out, but did not see the perpetrator. She's evidently wheelchair bound—'

‘Degenerative arthritis,' I say. ‘Just getting in and out of the chair is hard for her.' I think what it must have been like for Mary Stafford, lying in that bed, unable to walk. ‘She didn't see anything?'

‘No. But she heard. She heard her husband up and on the phone, and she called out to him. He came into the hall, very agitated, and told her he'd seen a man going into your daughter-in-law's house. She can't remember exactly what her husband said, but she got the impression the man was skinny, very tall, dressed in black. He either had dark hair or wore a watch cap. She wasn't sure.'

I am thinking that I would like to talk to her. And that her description of this man sounds familiar to me. He does have dark hair. He is tall. And slender, very slender. The Dark Man that I know.

Agent Woods clears his throat. He looks at Agent Jones and she looks back at him and shrugs, and a flurry of unspoken communication is passing between them.

Agent Jones cocks her head at me. She is perched on the edge of the couch and the way she is wiggling her toes in her shoes makes me think her feet ache and she's had a long day. I see from the pane of windows next to the front door that the sun is rising. It's probably around six thirty. On normal days, I might be waking up, or I might be lying still in my bed, never having slept. Or I might be sleeping hard, having been up all night but having finally dropped off, the way I often do, around a quarter to five.

Jones turns her knees in to face me. ‘The Fort Smith Police Department does have someone in custody, a Sanderson Davis, but they expect to release him later today.'

‘Sanderson Davis? He's Caro's boyfriend. He owns a restaurant in Fayetteville; sometimes he drives down after work and spends the night. He's not your guy.'

‘No, we don't think so either. Evidently Caroline had left him several messages on his cell phone, but his restaurant, Cloud Nine Bistro, was slammed last night, and he didn't get off until late. He got to your daughter-in-law's house around midnight, about the time the local police were trying to get things sorted. Being the boyfriend put him in the spotlight, but it looks like he'll check out. He did mention a message Caroline left him about something upsetting happening that day, and that she needed to talk.'

‘Yes,' I say.

‘Mrs Miller, the Fort Smith PD found an envelope full of newspaper clippings that had evidently arrived in the mail,' Agent Jones looks at her watch, ‘yesterday, actually. The clippings concern—'

‘I know about them. They're about Caroline's trial, when she killed my son in self defense seven years ago. Seven years ago exactly as of yesterday, if you didn't know the date.'

‘Yes.' She looks intelligent and speculative and not at all sympathetic. And I suddenly see what they've been thinking.

‘I didn't have anything to do with it. With Caroline's disappearance? Is that what you think?'

Woods turns his hand to one side, as if asking me to be reasonable. ‘She did kill your son. And there's a note with that package of newspaper clippings she got. Did you know there was a note?'

‘Yes. Caroline read it to me. Something about retribution, I don't remember the exact words.' I frown trying to remember, then look up. ‘And if you read the articles or check it out you'll see that I testified on her behalf at the trial. Ask the local prosecutor. He'll tell you that I'm the main reason she got off.'

Deputy Collins shifts on the couch. I realize that they are bracketing me, Collins on one side, Woods and Jones on the other.

Collins clears his throat. ‘I've brought Agents Woods and Jones up to date on what happened to your son, Mrs Miller.'

‘Of course you have.'

‘Including what was pretty common knowledge at the time – that you had some sort of breakdown, after the trial, and that pretty soon after that you quit your cable television show, and retired from your job.'

‘What has that got to do with anything?'

The deputy won't meet my eyes.

Agent Jones doesn't have that problem. ‘Mrs Miller, did you have second thoughts after you testified at your daughter-in-law's trial?'

‘No.'

‘You're sure that's not the reason you broke down afterward? And that ever since you've lived almost as a recluse?'

‘It would make sense. I mean, it would be understandable. For you to feel that way.' Deputy Collins seems apologetic too, but I'm wary of sympathetic law enforcement officers. Those are the ones who get confessions.

Agent Woods is giving Collins a hard look and I have the feeling that he's not supposed to speak. But what he said makes a certain sense. And was it that far from the truth? The truth is complicated. Fluid.

‘I did the right thing,' I say. ‘It wasn't an easy thing, taking her side, but it was the right thing. I never regretted it, and I don't harbor any resentment toward my daughter-in-law for what happened. But don't take my word for it. Check the phone records. I called Caroline from here about an hour before the nine-one-one call. It's a fourteen hour drive from Lexington to Fort Smith. Even if I hadn't called her, I couldn't have been there tonight and made it back by the time you guys arrived on my doorstep.'

‘We know that, ma'am,' Woods says.

‘So what, you think I hired it done?'

‘It would make sense,' Woods says. ‘Seven years to the day.'

‘Maybe. Except Caroline wasn't the only one who got a package in the mail yesterday.'

They perk up like hound dogs.

‘Let me show you what came in the mail for me.'

I
know things the FBI does not. I know what the Dark Man wants – redemption, grace, atonement. He did not tell me this in so many words. No. More convincingly, he told me by what he did; specifically by what he did not. The verse of scripture on the back of Jimmy Mahan's picture is not as obscure as it seems. It's one of many well worn, ill-used passages – summoned, perversely, by Calvinists on the weary old subject of predetermination. As if God decided who would and would not be saved. As if free will is just another myth.

It lets me know that the Dark Man has not found what he looks for.

I am not impressed by the folklore that surrounds serial killers – the opinions of forensic wise men, the FBI experts at Quantico. By the posturing novels, movies, television shows. By the average guy on the street, infected by all the above. Their pronouncements strike me as the simplistic renderings of narrow minds.

The popular notion that sociopaths are a form of being with no conscience and no regret begs the issue, which is that these beings are suffering. I don't hold with the opinion that the labyrinth of sadistic, violent acts they commit are the enactment of fantasies, like a child making mud pies in a ditch during the rain. That they do it because they can. I believe that sociopaths would have you think this. I believe it to be bravado and a con.

I base my opinion on the men and women I have counseled over the years, some of them sociopaths themselves, some of them living with one, some of them in the ministry. Religion is honey to evil. Normally cautious people let their guard down for the clergy. And, of course, my convictions are based on my dealings with the Dark Man, who could have killed me, but did not.

The explanation that someone so twisted does not suffer because they do not have a conscience makes no sense. It is the conscience that provides the conduit to the perversities of their pleasure. A feeding trough for their evil. If they didn't know they were bad, it wouldn't be any fun. More to the point, it would not serve the purpose – protection. The question, the true question, involves remorse. And so often it looks as if there isn't any. But I think the lack of remorse functions like armor, that it builds the walls of self defense. To feel remorse would destroy that defense and the being inside as well. Some sociopaths, like the Dark Man, suffer for the choices they make, but inside them is a knowledge that if they make other choices, better ones, they will collapse and disintegrate, like the Wicked Witch of the West in
The Wizard of Oz
, oozing into a puddle of misery when Dorothy douses her with water. ‘I am melting,' the witch wails. To those on the outside, like Dorothy, mouth open in shock, it is a revelation that the evil is a prop that becomes surprisingly fragile under the right conditions. Sociopaths are vulnerable creatures, trapped in a maze of impulse and pain, and every perverse pleasure is a twist in the heart. Pity them if you can, but fear them always. They suffer. They'll make you suffer too.

Right now the FBI forms its new task force to find Caroline and Andee, and enmeshes itself in the infighting that will rise as the new task force competes with the old. One looking for the kidnapper of my daughter-in-law and her child. The other trying to solve the brutal murder of three evangelists who happen to be classmates of mine. The connection intrigues them. Worries them. I am under suspicion. I have hired an attorney, Smitty Madison, who defended Caroline when she was on trial. Who got her off.

There will be great minds working. Much energy and many tax dollars will be expended. The personally ambitious and the genuine heroes will sweat blood and shed internal tears. No doubt the experts in Quantico will be consulted, as well as their pet forensic psychologists, and they will all look into the sociopath crystal ball, and scour the habitat of the sociopath. And while they do all of that, and I wish them well, I will go where a tortured man seeking redemption might logically have gone, fourteen years ago, when he made the decision to alter his path. A goal in which he has spectacularly failed.

I am thirty-five miles from my home, literally at the gates of the Abbey of Gethsemani, home to Thomas Merton, the great monk. It is beautiful here. A place to start a new life, or reflect on the old one until it too becomes new. The grounds are lush, the unreal fodder of postcards to anyone who has not learned to take the countryside of central Kentucky for granted. Not an auto parts supplier in sight, although there is a Toyota plant around somewhere.