My Lost Daughter (54 page)

It was sad, really. In trying to correct the problem, the court had bypassed the obvious: even though they might know their actions were wrong, these tortured souls couldn't stop themselves. How would she feel if someone she loved was seriously mentally ill? Was a person like that really the same? An individual who committed a crime in the throes of madness versus a sociopath committing an intentional act of violence? Should they stand side by side in a state or federal prison, no distinction between them? Was there any resolution to this horrendous problem?

But that didn't matter at this point, Shana told herself. Only one thing mattered right now and it filled her with abstract terror. And she knew it was true. What she had seen had convinced her.

Alex was alive and in Ventura.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 26
VENTURA, CALIFORNIA

Alex was certainly busy for a dead man. Karen had gone to his funeral, and people just didn't make those kinds of mistakes.

In her bedroom with the door shut, Shana dialed the number she had for Karen. “Thank God, I got you,” she said when the woman answered. “I need to ask you something.”

“Sure.”

“You told me you went to Alex's funeral, right?”

“Right.”

“Was it an open or closed casket?”

“Closed. Shana, what's this about?”

“And Alex's family was there? You saw them and talked to them?”

“I spoke to his mother, Nadine,” Karen told her. “She's the one who told me about the aneurysm. I didn't speak to his father because I'd never met him.”

Shana let her mind run free. Alex had told her he was in trouble with the IRS, then said it was a lie. He had access to money, which could buy almost anything, even a coffin loaded with rocks. Alex also knew doctors such as Morrow who were outright whores and
might produce a phony death certificate for the right amount of money. What else did he need? It was perfect. Alex made the police look like a bunch of baboons. It was all part of his enormous ego, a more dangerous and exciting way to play the game.

“I'm certain I've seen Alex here in Ventura, Karen, just yesterday to be precise. You should see the newspaper article I have on him. Please trust me on this. I think his real name is Adam Pounder, not Alex Purcell. Who knows how many people he's killed over the years?”

“I don't agree with you,” Karen said. “Alex was a good man. He would never physically hurt anyone. I think your mind is playing tricks on you, Shana. Everyone knew you guys were in love. That's why you can't accept that he's dead.”

“I was in love with Alex for about three hours, and I'm certain he put Ecstasy or acid in my drink. I would be perfectly fine accepting his death if he didn't keep popping up all over town.”

“Be rational, Shana. A lot of men resemble Alex. In most cases you wouldn't notice these look-alikes, but right now you're in a hyper state of awareness. You're seeing Alex because you long to see him. You're in denial, plain and simple.”

Shana liked Karen but she refused to listen to her psychobabble. “I better go. I'll let you know if anything else happens.”

“Please do.”

The next person Shana called was Detective Lindstrom. She told him what she had found out about Alex, and asked him to check if Whitehall had ever admitted a patient named Adam Pounder. She hesitated telling him everything. Her story was implausible and too complex, especially since the detective had only a few minutes to give her.

“I'm not saying I'm not going to help you,” he told her. “But you've hit me with a shitload of speculation. To prove this man faked his death, you'll have to get a court order to exhume the body. I assume he's buried here in California, but I need the address of the cemetery. I can make an attempt to get the authorities in that area
interested, but you have to give me something solid. Do you have any fingerprints or DNA on this Pounder person?”

“I don't carry ink pads in my purse,” Shana tossed back. “Why would I have his fingerprints?” She thought of something and added, “Wait. I may actually have his prints. He gave me this plastic case for my makeup.” She'd left the clothes Alex had given her at Whitehall, but she still had the plastic makeup case and the telephone calling card. Her mind began clocking at lightning speeds. “I'm going to put what I have together and mail it to you. Give me your address and I'll send it FedEx so it won't get lost.”

Shana then told him about the substance she'd scraped off the window in Alex's room, and Lindstrom appeared to be genuinely interested, asking her to send it along with the other things she had collected. The only problem was once she handed off what she perceived as valuable evidence, it could end up buried on top of someone's desk or in the trash can. She was beginning to think like a lawyer, which was cool. At least one thing positive had come out of her experience at Whitehall.

Ending her call with the detective, Shana decided to make copies of the newspaper article and the calling card. As to the substance she thought was dried blood, she would divide it equally and send Lindstrom his share.

She began digging through all her things. The telephone calling card showed up in one of her bathroom drawers. Seizing a pair of tweezers, she picked it up and carried it to the bed.

She yelled for Lily but she didn't answer. She found her in the bedroom, stretched out on the recliner, an open law book in her lap. “I'm going to FedEx. I thought you'd want to go with me. That way, if I see Alex, you'll see him. Then you'll know I'm not hallucinating. I assume you have a plastic baggie in the kitchen.”

“I keep them in the drawer next to the dishwasher,” Lily told her, placing the book on the nightstand and getting up. “I don't think you're hallucinating, Shana. Is what you're sending some type of evidence?”

“I'll tell you in the car.” When Lily gave her another questioning glance, Shana ignored her and rushed to her room with the baggie. Her mother followed her and watched as she placed the makeup case and calling card inside one baggie, then separated the contents of a plastic makeup case and put them in another baggie.

“These are some things Alex touched. I'm sending them to Detective Lindstrom to see if he can get his fingerprints.”

“I have a friend who's an FBI agent,” Lily said. “I had lunch with her the other day and told her about Alex and Whitehall. She's in the process of checking them out. I also notified the attorney general's office, but I haven't heard back from them yet. Why don't you send whatever you have to my friend, Special Agent Mary Stevens? I spoke to Lindstrom, remember? He told me he was resigning next month, that he had a less stressful job lined up or something along those lines. Listen to me, Shana, Lindstrom doesn't care. They never do if they're leaving. Mary will work twenty-four/seven for you. She's the one who saved my life last year. If you send this stuff to Lindstrom, you might as well throw it away.”

“Alex isn't dead,” Shana said. “I tried to tell you guys that last night. But I agree with you about Lindstrom. I could tell he didn't give a shit when he interviewed me. Do you have Agent Stevens's address with you?”

“Yes, it's in my iPhone.” Lily cleared her throat. “I realize what happened to you was horrible. It was enough to make anyone paranoid. But you—”

“Listen to me carefully, because I'm only going to tell you this one time,” Shana said firmly. “If I am right and the Alex that I knew at Whitehall is Adam Pounder, then this man threw acid in a young girl's face. He shot and killed another girl and he may have stabbed the man at Whitehall. He knows where we live. He knows what kind of cars we drive. He has a blueprint for our entire lives. You think about it, okay? I'm trying to do something to stop him.”

 

He was dozing in a rented blue Chrysler parked behind the guard shack when the white Volvo sped past him.

An older man in a navy blue blazer and khaki pants walked up to the car window. “You can start tomorrow night,” the man said, handing Alex an identical blazer. “Shift starts at midnight. Don't be late. And bring those employment forms with you.”

“Thanks, buddy. See you tomorrow.”

As soon as the man walked away, Alex slipped back down in the seat and closed his eyes. Inside his head was a whirring, jarring noise that never went away. Sometimes the sound became low, similar to the brush of a broom across a floor, but since Shana had left, it had turned into the roar of a jet screaming inside the skies of his mind, crashing from one side to another and scattering wreckage and debris in fireballs throughout his brain.

His mother always said he was gifted. This became the stock answer to every question he had about his life or his bizarre behavior. He recalled stabbing his goldfish with a fork and lining them up on his desk while he was studying. Nadine would flush them down the toilet and the next day, the tank would be filled with more goldfish from the pet store on the corner. He'd never been in the pet store, never saw a movie, never went to a sporting event, and never had a friend. “You're not like the other children,” Nadine would tell him. “Other children play because they have nothing better to do. They're not smart enough to study physics or read Nietzsche.”

Nadine was far from a genius or child prodigy, something she told him on a daily basis, emphasizing how grateful he should be for his “gift.” Both of her parents were university professors and renowned scholars, completely submerged in the egomaniacal waters of academia. They believed a child was a product to display, a combination of their superior gene pools. But as many hours as Nadine spent studying, she remained a borderline student, hanging on with a steely, desperate grip. Then she gave birth to a baby boy and her parents reveled in his brilliance. They analyzed and computed his potential until his mother realized her son could take her where she had never been able to go, and win her the respect she craved.

That's when Alex began imagining his mother in the little red wagon he pulled behind him wherever he went, loaded down with puzzles and books. Even as a young child, he knew he must pull more than just his own wagon. He had to pull Nadine as well. As time went on, he realized that Nadine not only wanted him to pull her in his now symbolic red wagon, she expected him to pull the entire family.

When he was eight, he began suffering from migraine headaches, headaches so severe he felt as if someone had lopped off the top of his head and filled it with piranhas that furiously fed on the gray matter of his brain. The headaches, according to Nadine, were the result of his “gift.” When he had to remain in a dark room for days at a time, she refused to allow him to be medicated. Medication, Nadine believed, would dull his mind.

Normal children were repelled by him, while the teachers in the exclusive private school he attended found him brilliant, although obnoxious and undisciplined. Report after report recommended that Nadine's son be sent for a psychological evaluation for his aggressive and antisocial tendencies.

All he recalled about his first major act of violence was that the girl who had been assigned to be his lab partner was slow and clumsy. The court understood about the frustrations of genius. What they didn't understand, the former judge Nadine had hired to represent him was more than willing to explain. The court offered a stint in a mental hospital in lieu of a jail sentence and a felony conviction. Nadine told her son it would be like a vacation.

He was committed to a state hospital, a filthy, inhuman hole where the defectives of the earth were herded and watched like animals. He was drugged, poked, and probed, as well as forced to endure a seemingly endless battery of tests. He was also sodomized on two separate occasions and stabbed in the leg by another patient. He stopped speaking and spun out of control in the hurricane of his mind. For one three-month period, he wore disposable diapers.

Then he met Jennifer and experienced his first taste of happiness. They met at the weekly dance during one of his lucid
periods. Jennifer was wearing a beautiful white dress, identical to the one he had purchased for Shana.

His mind was still awash with memories of Jennifer when a hand reached through the window of the car and shook his shoulder. His dark eyes sprang open and he grabbed the hand in an iron grip.

“Let go of my hand,” the guard said, yanking his arm back and rubbing it. “You've got to move your car. You can't sleep here on the grounds.”

The noise was screaming inside his head, piercing his eardrums. He brought forth the imagery of the pond, the only constructive thing he'd learned from a lifetime of therapy, and tried to find the stillness. Under water, there was no noise. “Sorry, Ralph,” he told the guard. “I've been traveling. I haven't been able to find a place yet. I'll move my car right now.”

After driving around in the area for thirty minutes, he finally found a phone booth and stopped to call Nadine. He never carried a cell phone as he knew cell phones could be traced. Pay phones were disappearing, though, so he knew he would have to find another way to communicate. He had given thought to developing a system that would allow a person the option of blocking their whereabouts while still being able to use the various functions of their cell phone. People deserved privacy.

“Where are you?” Nadine said. “My god, what's happened? God help us. God help us.”

The hot sun had turned the phone booth into a sauna and he was perspiring. He leaned his forehead against the cool glass. “Nadine, I'm surprised at you. You told me there was no God when I was five. I think He was insulted, so I doubt if He'll help you now.”

“You have to come home,” Nadine told him, ignoring his sarcasm. “We're all here. The movers delivered the furniture yesterday and the house is unpacked. I even found a local doctor. He'll prescribe some of those new pills you like so much. Your brother is checking into a hospital here in case you ever need one. We'll set it up just like before. Everything will be foolproof just like you like it. Please, darling, come home.”