The Girl I Used to Be (2 page)

 

CHAPTER 3

TWISTED LOVE

The room is spinning. I close my eyes. When everyone thought my dad had killed my mom, it made sense that he hadn't killed me. I was his daughter, his own blood.

“But why not?” I manage to ask. “If the killer had already murdered my parents, why didn't he kill me?”

The detective straightens up. “You just said ‘he.'” He and the chaplain watch me closely.

“Yeah? So?”

“Does that mean you remember that the killer was a man? The police down in Medford want to know if you have any memories of what happened. Especially in light of this new evidence.”

“I don't remember anything. It just seems likely it was a man, that's all. What woman would stab another woman nineteen times?” I can't imagine even stabbing someone once. In biology class last year, we had to cut an earthworm in half and then sew it back together. I'll never forget the way the worm's skin resisted and finally gave way with a pop.

Detective Campbell shrugs. “You'd be surprised. It could have been a woman. Maybe not a stranger, not that many times, but a woman who knew your mom and hated her. Or who panicked and felt like she had to make sure your mom was dead.” The chaplain pulls a face at the bluntness, but the detective doesn't stop. “You're right, though. In cases like this, it's more than likely a male perpetrator. As to why he—or maybe she—didn't kill you, he probably figured you were too young to say what you had seen. Or he knew you, and that held him back. Or he felt wrong killing a child. Some killers target specific victims but would never hurt someone who doesn't meet that profile.”

“Could it have been a stranger?” I ask. “Some crazy guy they just met in the woods?”

“There are two reasons to kill someone you don't know,” Detective Campbell says. “The primary one is because they have something you want, and you do what you need to do to take it from them. Even murder.” His voice is matter-of-fact.

I can't imagine being that cold. “So someone might have killed my parents so they could steal from them?”

“But there's one problem with that scenario. What would they have stolen?” He lifts his empty hands. “From what the Medford police told us, your parents didn't have much money. And the killer didn't do it for your dad's truck, because it was left at the airport. And they didn't do it for you, because they left you at the Walmart. So stealing as a motive doesn't seem likely.”

I nod, my thoughts still spinning.

“But some people kill because they like killing. And in those cases, the murder isn't something that just happens. It's what you want in the first place. It's what you live for.”

The way he says
you
creeps me out, as if he thinks any of us could be a person with twisted desires.

“Was my mom alive the whole time?” I've wondered that for years.

“There was some decomposition”—Chaplain Farben clears his throat as if warning Detective Campbell not to get too graphic, but he continues—“so they couldn't say for sure. She could have been dead for some of it. They do know she fought back. Some of those wounds were defensive cuts to her forearms and hands.” He raises his hands over his head as if trying to shield himself. “And who knows? There's nothing to say the killer didn't stab your father to death, too. We don't have enough of his body to know.”

His answer just raises another question. “Then why didn't animals get my mom?”

“The killer wrapped her in a tarp.”

I shiver. “Why would they do that?”

“It's not uncommon for the killer to cover the victim afterward. They feel guilty about what they've done. That's one reason the Medford police thought your dad did it. That and the overkill.”

“Overkill?”

“If your goal is to kill someone, you don't need to stab them so many times. Nineteen times tells me there was some type of passion involved. Either extreme anger or someone who loved to kill or who felt some kind of twisted love for your mom. The Medford police weren't wrong to think it was your dad. The first person I would have looked at would be a boyfriend or a husband. A lover.”

I shiver. It's crazy to think someone you once loved, who once loved you, could stab you and stab you and keep stabbing you. Even after you were dead.

 

CHAPTER 4

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES

The cops finally leave.

I don't have any pictures of my parents. When you're in the system, you don't have much that's yours. Instead of a suitcase, it's a garbage bag or a cardboard box. Every time you get taken to a new place, things get lost or stolen.

But I know where I can see my mom and dad.

I open my laptop and go to YouTube. Nearly fourteen years ago, my family was featured three times on
America's Most Wanted
. Since then, people have sliced and diced the old shows and put the segments on YouTube. Sometimes it's just an off-center video by someone who filmed their TV set.

The first is from about a week after my family went missing. I've seen the host, John Walsh, on TV. Now he has gray hair, but in this video, it's shiny black. Looking serious, he talks fast.

“Southern Oregon's Cascade Range is a place where people go to get away from it all. This peaceful mountain setting is also the last known destination for a missing family who went looking for a Christmas tree and never came back.”

When this episode aired, I had already been found and was in foster care. No one realized that a missing family was related to one little girl found three hours away, one who answered questions with a blank stare.

“On December sixth,” Walsh says, “Terry Weeks and Naomi Benson told friends they planned to take their three-year-old daughter, Ariel, to look for a Christmas tree. They have not been seen since, and it's unknown if they even made it to their planned destination. Their vehicle has not been located by Forest Service personnel or by a helicopter Terry Weeks's father hired.”

Next on-screen is Jack Weeks. My grandfather. When I was eleven, my caseworker told me he had died. Since I didn't have any memories of him, it didn't mean much. He may have loved his son enough to hire a helicopter, but that love hadn't extended to giving me a home when I was all alone.

On YouTube he looks rugged and tanned, like he'll live forever. He says, “If they made it to the woods, why haven't we found Terry's truck? Terry's an experienced outdoorsman. He and Naomi have a child with them. They wouldn't have gone far from a road. Something must have happened before they even got there.”

The camera cuts back to Walsh in the studio. “Terry Weeks is twenty-one. Naomi Benson is twenty. And little Ariel Benson is just three. Look closely at their photos and that of this Dodge truck, which is similar to the truck Terry Weeks drove.”

The screen shows an orange pickup with the license plate blurred out. And then there's a photo of the three of us.

I hit Pause. We are at the beach, on what must have been one of those rare warm days at the Oregon coast. I'm on my mom's lap. I don't remember being blond, but I used to be. My mom's wavy brown hair falls past her shoulders. She has high cheekbones, dark eyebrows, and eyes that slant down at the corners. If my computer was a mirror, I'd see something similar, only my nose doesn't turn up. It's long and straight, like my dad's, and I have his strong chin.

My dad's dark blond hair is a little too long. Shirtless, he sits on the blanket next to my mom, with one arm slung around her waist. The fingers of his other hand curl around my small shoulder.

When I first found this photo online, it made me shudder. My father's hands looked possessive, like he could dictate anything, including whether we lived or died.

The photo hasn't changed, but I have. My chest hurts.

Now I see nothing but love, or an attempt at love, in the way he touches us. He was trying to do the right things: act like a family, pose for a vacation photo, search for a Christmas tree in a forest. I don't know if he did it for me, my mom, or himself, but still, he tried. I do know he was raised by his dad after his mom died, just like my mom was raised by her mom after her parents divorced. Neither of them really knowing how to make a whole family.

I look at their faces and wonder: Did one of them have to watch the other die? My head fills with water.

I click to resume the clip. Walsh says, “Family members say it's totally out of character for Weeks and Benson to just disappear. So please, if you know anything, call 1-800-CRIMETV.”

A day after the show aired, the foster mom took me to a doctor for a scratch on my face that had become infected. The nurse thought I looked familiar. The police asked my grandmother to drive up, and she identified me.

Which is about the point where the second
America's Most Wanted
picks up.

Walsh says, “When we showed you the photo of Terry Weeks, Naomi Benson, and their daughter, Ariel, you helped us locate the missing little girl. She was found at a Walmart three hours north of where authorities were looking for her family. Little Ariel was hungry and dirty, and her face was scratched. And her parents were nowhere to be found.” He raises his eyebrows. “For now, Ariel is living with her grandmother.”

The camera cuts away to a face I do remember: Grandma. Wearing a purple sweatshirt, she says to the camera, “When I walked into the room, Ariel held her arms out and said ‘Grandma' and ran to me. I've had her ever since.”

“Ever since” turned out to be four years. Then Grandma had a heart attack and died. And I went back into foster care, more or less for good.

“Ariel used to be such a lively little thing, but now she doesn't seem happy.” Grandma's fingers twist together. “We've tried asking her where Naomi and Terry are, but all she's ever said is, ‘Mommy's dancing.'”

On the screen, a three-year-old me holds out a stuffed purple frog to a framed photo of my mom. Grandma tells Walsh that I like to share things with my mom.

Although I don't remember being filmed, sometimes I think maybe I do have some memories of my parents. I don't know if they're real. They've been handled and stretched and frayed until now; they're memories of memories of memories. A man peeling me an apple. And my mother brushing my hair while we watched
SpongeBob SquarePants
. At least I think it was her. Just the sensation of it. So soothing. Feeling loved and safe and cared for.

I haven't felt like that since Grandma died.

On my computer, Grandma sighs. “I think Ariel knows something. She's withdrawn. Her personality definitely isn't the same.”

The final episode was filmed after my mom's body was found, three weeks after my parents disappeared. There are quick shots of snowy woods, sniffing bloodhounds, a man waving a metal detector over the snow. Walsh speaks as the screen cuts to men carrying a long, black-wrapped bundle to an ambulance waiting with its lights off.

“This week, some of the questions surrounding the little girl mysteriously abandoned at a Walmart were tragically answered when grouse hunters found the body of her mother, Naomi Benson, in the Oregon forest. She had been stabbed to death. Terry Weeks and his truck have not been located. While there are rumors the two had a rocky relationship, for now Naomi's death and Terry's disappearance remain a mystery, a secret held close by the wilderness. Once again, America, we need your help.”

It would be several more weeks before my dad's truck was found hundreds of miles away, in the Portland airport's long-term parking lot.

Walsh's voice is a mix of optimism and determination. “There's not much to go on, but together we can solve this case. The crucial time is December sixth. If you were in the southern Oregon Cascades that day, or at the Salem Walmart, or if you saw any of these people or this truck, the police need to know. Naomi Benson deserves justice. You could be the one to bring it to her.”

But it wasn't just my mother who needed justice. My dad did, too. Someone murdered both of them and left their families to wonder and worry. In my dad's case, for years.

I uncurl my fists. My fingernails have left red half-moons in my palms.

On the
Medford Mail Tribune
website, I skim the main story, headlined “Formerly Thought Killer, Man Now Considered Victim.”

… Medford Chief of Police Stephen Spaulding said, “I remember that case well. I was a search-and-rescue volunteer, and after Naomi was found, we searched those woods for evidence, but we didn't find anything useful.” He added that he hoped the discovery of Terry Weeks's remains will help jump-start the case, although the passage of time and the lack of evidence might make it difficult to solve.

What about evidence in people's memories, the way Walsh talked about? Someone has to know—or have guessed—what happened that day.

“For the past fourteen years, a cloud has hung over my brother,” said Terry Weeks's sister, Carly Weeks-Tailor. “I know everyone thought that Terry was a killer, that he was living in another country, that he just abandoned his daughter. I wish our dad were alive to know the truth.”

Weeks's sister said a service is planned for 2
PM
on Saturday at the Perl Funeral Home, and she urges anyone with memories or photos of Weeks to bring them to share. “At least now we can finally grieve,” she said.

I don't have to work on Saturday. I could drive down.

But it would be stupid to go. It's not like my dad will be there. Chances are, even his jawbone won't be. It's probably still police property.

 

CHAPTER 5

JUST TRYING TO GET HOME

“Regular fill, please,” I tell the gas station guy. How much is it going to cost to drive there and back, plus get a hotel? Maybe I'll just come home after the funeral. If I get too tired, I can lock my doors and sleep in a rest area.