In The Falling Light (36 page)

The King smirked. “It’s all about the
preparation, my friend,” and went into his tale. When he was done,
Linus James was sweating and wanting to spend some time alone in
his cell.

“You one sick motherfucker, King.”

“Better believe it, son.”

Carla kept her life simple. It was the best
way she’d found to hold it together. She kept to routines; grocery
shopping at the same store, the same day of the week; oil change
for her Nissan on the 3
^rd
of every month; apartment
cleaned room by room in the same order; closets neat and organized,
with hangers one finger’s width apart; running every day,
regardless of the weather. Some would have labeled her behavior
OCD, but that just wasn’t so. It was how she pushed back the images
which wouldn’t fade, the grief which chewed at her soul day after
day.

At first, though, there was nothing but
helplessness, a raging sadness which threatened to sweep her away
in a storm of bitter anguish, a great hollow left in her heart
which she knew would never be filled. Her doctor, with the best of
intentions, prescribed sleeping pills, and although she had the
temptation to simply swallow the bottle and chase it with vodka,
she resisted, and got hooked instead. It led to four months of
barely leaving her bed, and shuffling like a confused zombie when
she did. Yet something – she liked to think it was Anita – talked
her back into the world, and she kicked the pills.

Her marriage wasn’t so successful, and
within six months of Anita’s death – the discovery of her remains,
actually – she and Emilio were finished. The counselor Carla was
seeing in order to deal with it all was compassionate, and gently
told her that divorce was extremely common within a year of losing
a child, under any circumstances. There was simply too much guilt,
blame and second-guessing of one another that few could survive it
with an intact relationship. The counselor went on to say that
parents with other, surviving children fared better at staying
together, statistically anyway, and in some cases because they
threw new energy into their other kids, the death sparking a
renewed appreciation for their family, and one another. This was
rare, she pointed out. Frequently the grieving parents became so
wrapped up in the loss and feeding off one another that it was the
surviving children who suffered, moving through the house and their
lives like ghosts, unnoticed and forgotten by their mothers and
fathers, often ending up resentful towards the lost sibling who had
not only died, but taken their parents with her.

Anita was an only child, so there had never
really been much of a chance for their marriage.

Carla stayed in the house for another year,
quietly losing touch with her family and friends. She’d lost her
job months earlier when her supervisors, although sympathetic,
could no longer tolerate her long absences. Once her savings ran
out, it was time to find new employment, but she had no desire to
return to the retail jobs she’d held her whole life. All that time
alone, all the thinking, eventually convinced her that a complete
change of life was in order, including a career which could mean
something. She landed a job which required a move, and had no
regrets as she left behind a town she had come to despise, a house
where happy memories turned black, a tomb which she haunted all by
herself.

Kelvin Finch was fifty-three, and had been
incarcerated at Deacon Valley for nearly ten years. He’d taken the
first of his eight victims almost twenty years earlier, and the
idea they had about him that he had suddenly decided at age
thirty-three to abduct, sexually torture and murder young girls was
laughable. They were supposed to be so smart, these clinicians and
psychologists and profilers. The cops were a different story,
suspicious to the bone and not believing it for a second. Eight
indeed. Kelvin’s real number was nineteen.

He’d been twelve when he took the first one,
a six year old in a city park who’d wandered away from a
babysitter. Kelvin had been fantasizing about this for as long as
he could remember, and that afternoon he’d seen his chance and
lured her into a cinderblock restroom building. When he was
finished, he’d held her face in a toilet until she drowned, then
slipped out and ran home. No one ever suspected him.

The following ten were spread out over the
next twenty years, both in his home town and then out of state once
he was older. Some he left where he’d killed them, but most were
deeply buried, and he became very skilled at not only hunting, but
avoiding leaving behind evidence and artfully disposing of the
bodies where no one would ever find them. What was significant
about the eight was that was the time when he’d started sending
letters and photos to the families.

Kelvin was a very intelligent man, and he
knew why he’d done that. Some of it came from a need for attention.
The bigger reason, he knew, was that after so many he’d begun to
grow bored with the actual acts themselves. Taunting the families
gave him a thrill he hadn’t felt in a long time. It aroused him to
imagine the expressions and reactions of the parents when they
opened the anonymous letters and read his calm description of what
he had done, along with an admonishment that, had mommy or daddy
kept a better eye on their little angel, none of this would have
happened. Sometimes the photo was an action shot, or a
carefully-crafted scene involving restraints. The panicked eyes
were key in those. Sometimes he led the parents to believe their
daughter was still alive. A few times he sent them a picture of the
child crumpled in their grave hole, about to be filled in.

It was the letters – none of them signed –
which made him so famous, as well as making him the most hunted man
in the western U.S.

Only seven of the girls prompted letters. He
never got the chance to write to mommy and daddy about number
eight. Three days after he’d snatched her from a crowded flea
market, she was dead and wrapped in plastic in the trunk of his
Taurus, and he was on his way to a remote, pre-dug hole. Driving
carefully and obeying the speed limit and all traffic rules hadn’t
prevented an Oklahoma trooper from pulling him over, though. Kelvin
methodically checked out his vehicles before traveling with a body,
in order to avoid the stupid mistakes which got most serial killers
caught. Bad luck found him that night, though, for his right tail
light went out while he was driving, and he didn’t know it. The
trooper hadn’t suspected a thing as Kelvin handed over his driver’s
license, registration and insurance card – all spotless, of course
– but the cop had still asked to look in the trunk.

Had he seen Kelvin swallow hard, noticed the
bob of his Adam’s apple? At that moment Kelvin knew it was all
over. He didn’t carry a gun in the car, and even if he did, he
would probably have come out on the losing end of a gunfight with a
trained officer who was already on edge from making an after-dark
stop on a lonely road. Kelvin popped the trunk, and that was that.
Years later, he found the whole thing comical. Oklahoma had a
serious problem with people trafficking methamphetamine along that
stretch of highway, and the state troopers had been instructed to
ask to see inside the trunk on every traffic stop, regardless of
how the drivers appeared. Refusing the trooper just earned you
cuffs in the back seat while he investigated, impounded the vehicle
and searched it anyway.

It was just bad luck. Kelvin wasn’t bitter.
It just meant that his life was different now.

Carla moved through the days, through the
years. She did well at work and was promoted to supervisor. Her
running made her exceptionally fit, and she could have easily
competed in any number of marathons, but she only ran alone. She
didn’t socialize, and politely avoided her neighbors, made excuses
not to attend workplace get-togethers and annual Christmas parties.
She didn’t date, not because she had no desire for male
companionship – there were nights when her desires and loneliness
threatened to overwhelm her – but because it felt like a betrayal.
The idea of going out and having fun, of having a relationship to
satisfy her own selfish needs while her daughter vanished into the
earth, and her killer kept drawing breath, was offensive. She
wouldn’t do that to Anita.

She did, however, eventually give in to a
repeated dinner invitation from Dean Frye, another supervisor at
work. Carla told herself it was only to get him to stop asking,
that it was just a work-friends thing, just a meal with a
colleague. She didn’t want to think about how much she liked being
around him, finding him funny and confident, a down-to-earth man.
She told herself she wasn’t attracted to him, and hadn’t
entertained thoughts of sharing her bed with him. No, she was just
being nice to someone she had to see every day. They kept it
simple, and went to an Outback.

Dean Frye was the same age as Carla, had
been married briefly, and let his work fill his life in much the
same way she did. He’d come to the job after her, and they had been
working together for over eight years. He still knew little more
about her than the day he started. She was divorced and she didn’t
get involved in work gatherings. He didn’t know where she was
originally from. Carla was a private person and Dean respected
that, and he believed the reason she kept to herself was hurtful to
her. He suspected she had been deeply injured in the past, probably
by a man.

Despite her outer coolness, Dean enjoyed
being around her. She had a clever wit, was talented and capable at
her job, and genuinely cared about the people who worked for her.
He didn’t want to be pushy, wasn’t looking to save her from
whatever pain she lived with, he just wanted to get to know her
better. Behind all those rationalizations he admitted that he was
also in love with her.

Dinner was a disaster, and it was Dean’s
fault.

The evening had been going well; the food
was good and the conversation safe and pleasant, about work for the
most part. She had laughed a few times – music to him - and he was
happy inside, aware that she liked him too. She’d even opened up a
bit, talking a little about her childhood and telling a funny story
from high school. He’d learned she was from Tulsa. The plates had
been cleared, he was having a beer and she had a Diet Coke. He
didn’t know why he asked the question.

“Do you and your ex have any kids?”

The muscles in her neck tensed visibly, and
he didn’t see it. “What?”

“Do you have any kids?”

There was a long silence, and the hardening
of her eyes immediately told Dean he had screwed up.

“No. Let’s get the check.”

They hadn’t gone out again, and although she
continued to be polite at work, that relaxed feeling between them
was gone. He tried to apologize, to draw her out, but a curtain had
fallen between them which he knew would never open again. Dean
would forever have to be satisfied with a “just friends”
relationship, and that did little to comfort his broken heart. It
hurt worse that he was the reason it was broken.

For her part, Carla went home that night,
changed into sweats and athletic shoes, and went running. She cried
as she ran, at first because Dean was stupid, then because she was
stupid for letting him in. As her feet slammed the pavement she
wept because she knew there would be nothing between them, that the
light of any hope she might have had for a future had been blown
out, leaving her in the darkness. She pushed her body, running
through the late night streets faster and faster with tears
streaking back across her face. Her legs and lungs burned, but she
didn’t notice. She was thinking about the lengthy
questionnaire.

Have you ever been the victim of a violent
crime?

No.

Do you know anyone who has been the victim
of a violent crime?

No.

Have you ever gone by a different name?

No.

Do you know, or are you related to anyone
incarcerated in a correctional facility?

No.

Have you ever abused prescription or
non-prescription drugs?

No.

Have you ever been convicted of a felony or
misdemeanor? If so, explain.

No.

Carla wasn’t in the darkness alone. She had
Kelvin Finch for company, and she had her rage. It was something
she had come to understand quite well. Hatred is a difficult
emotion to sustain, and if one doesn’t really work at it, it will
slip away a bit at a time, unnoticed. If a person does manage to
hold onto it, they eventually learn that it is an animal, eternally
hungry and all-consuming, devouring happiness, hope and physical
well-being. As it eats, it leaves behind a hollow shell, a person
so drained and weary that they just don’t have the energy to hold
onto the animal anymore.

Unless a person really applies themselves
and nurtures it, feeds it. Carla Mendez had been feeding her hatred
animal for eleven years. It was a ravenous beast, and only one
thing would satisfy it. Kelvin Finch had a reckoning coming.

And she had a plan.

Trent Whitsome sat in the warden’s office
with a thick clasping file on his knees. The man behind the desk in
front of him was paunchy, in his late fifties and balding. The
expression on his face was one of sour contempt.

“I’ll tell you up front I don’t like any of
this, Mr. Whitsome. I said as much to your superiors, and I said it
to the governor.”

Trent nodded. “But the governor
did
support it, Warden Epps.” The older man’s face flushed, and Trent
hurried on. “Sir, I’m not here to make anyone look bad, and I’m not
here to turn Kelvin Finch into some kind of hero.”

“That’s precisely what you’ve done already,
Mr. Whitsome.”

Trent shook his head. “I know what he is,
and I’ll be certain our viewers know what he is.”