Waking Hours (47 page)
She drove to the clinic the next day, where she talked about what had happened until she was tired of talking about it, and in doing so created her own narrative, which she could revisit or avoid according to her own free will. The counselors explained to her how it was common for policemen and firefighters and first responders to feel they were immune to the things normal people would be traumatized by, that part of their job was to suppress their feelings and do the difficult work and not let it get to them. One of her counselors had been one of the first American military personnel to visit the compound in Jonestown, Guyana, where 918 members of The People’s Temple had committed mass suicide at the behest of a madman named Jim Jones.
“My job was to collect the remains,” the counselor said, “bodies of men and women and children, bloated by the sun . . . and I told myself I’d been trained for it, but nobody can be trained to handle something like that. Nobody’s that tough, so don’t try to be tough, Danielle, because tough doesn’t work.”
She explored the supernatural elements of the case with her counselors, who told her that survivors of trauma often feel superstitious, pawns in a larger game, or blessed with extremely good luck. “People think,
Why me? Why did I survive?
Some think,
I’ve been blessed—nothing can hurt me—I’m charmed
. It’s completely normal to feel the way you do.”
They were good, Dani thought. They helped her. She talked, and she listened, and she talked about her parents, and about Tommy, and then one night she was able to sleep. She slept the next night too. She felt back on track.
She’d decided not to return any e-mails while she was in Maryland, but did respond to a text message from Tommy, who asked her how she was doing and when she’d be back.
I
WILL CALL YOU ON
F
RIDAY
–
FLYING INTO
W
HITE
P
LAINS MIDMORNING
.
43
.
Dani had called and agreed to meet him for lunch, driving straight from the airport. In the week that she had been gone, a windstorm had blown all the leaves from the trees; their branches were bare and stark against a dark gray sky. While he waited for Dani at the Miss Salem Diner, Tommy stared out the window at the pouring rain, the kind of hard, steady autumn rain that knocked the leaves to the ground and beat them to pieces where they lay.
The old cook was at the grill with his spatula and tongs, his apron tied behind his back. His daughter was at the cash register, trying to read a number in the phone book by holding it at arm’s length.
Tommy had once considered buying the diner and putting a sign in the window that said Now Clean. Business would triple overnight.
He wondered if Halloween was going to be rained out. The diner was decorated with artificial cobwebs and masks and pumpkins. Kids enjoyed being scared. If they only knew what there was to be frightened of, he was pretty sure they wouldn’t enjoy it quite so much.
He saw Dani park her black BMW in the lot. She was wearing an orange North Face waterproof shell over an Irish cable sweater, jeans, and a pair of red rubber rain boots. Her hair was in a ponytail that stuck out the back of her Mets cap. She walked quickly from her car with her head down, splashing in the puddles. The waitress arrived at the booth the same time she did.
Dani ordered a cheeseburger, a chocolate shake, and a side salad as she hung her coat from a hook at the end of the booth. Tommy ordered a bacon cheeseburger, onion rings, and a Diet Coke. They both ordered coffee.
“It’s good that you’re watching what you eat,” Tommy said. “You’ve got the empty calories from the shake, and then the salad—balanced diet. Something healthy, something not. You look great, by the way.”
“Great? I don’t think so,” she said. She sounded subdued, or maybe just tired. “But thank you. You’ll be pleased to know I started running again when I was in Maryland. I won’t be able to keep up with you, but it’s a start.”
“If you want to go running together, I don’t mind a slow pace,” Tommy said.
“We go off daylight savings next weekend, right?” she asked. “Spring forward, fall back. I never liked ‘fall back.’ It gets dark so early.”
“I think of the song ‘What a Wonderful World,’” Tommy said. “Bright precious day, dark sacred night . . .”
“That’s a good way to look at it,” Dani agreed.
“So this is check-in,” Tommy said. “How’re you doing?”
“Better,” she said, stirring her coffee slowly. “I’m glad I took the time off.”
“What did you talk about? I mean, I know what you talked about, but how did you talk about it?” he asked. “And tell me if I’m being too nosy.”
She smiled. “They help you define your narrative until you take possession of it,” she told him. “Sorry if that sounds like psychobabble. It’s interesting how far we’ve come. Soldiers coming home from World War I with what the army called ‘shell shock’ were told not to think about the things that traumatized them, not to ever talk about it. They sent them to nursing homes and told them to paint pretty pictures of flowers. Now it’s the opposite. You talk about it until you can’t stand to talk about it anymore, and when you’re done you have a narrative that contains the trauma. A story you can choose to either tell or not tell. That oversimplifies it a little, but that’s the gist. How about you? Have you thought about it?”
“I have,” Tommy said. “I met with Carl a couple of times. I know what you’re saying. But for me, it’s not like it was with Dwight Sykes.”
“How is it different?” Dani asked.
That had been the first question Carl had asked him. He’d given it a great deal of thought. He’d felt guilty, beyond terrible, for the macho posturing he’d done on the field after knocking the life out of Dwight Sykes. He’d been at a loss to explain why it had happened.
“How do you feel about killing Amos?” Carl had asked.
“Not good,” Tommy said. “But not terrible, frankly. He was going to kill Dani. He had to be stopped.”
Carl had agreed.
“With Dwight, I wondered why it happened,” Tommy told Dani. “It didn’t make any sense. But with Amos, I don’t have any doubts. I don’t feel any remorse. And I don’t think I should. Actually, the thing with Dwight helped me understand Amos. Did I ever tell you what happened? After the accident?”
“How you walked away?” she said.
“No,” Tommy said. “After that. I went to Dwight Sykes’s funeral in Oakland. His mom and dad invited me to their home afterward. I was afraid they’d hate me, but they told me they knew it was an accident. That I was just playing the game as hard as I could, which was the same way Dwight played. But his mother said, ‘Tommy Gunderson, I want you to do good. Because Dwight wanted to do good things with his life. So now you have to do all the good things he would have done.’ I wasn’t sure what that meant, but now I think this is what it meant. This is why I was the one who got up and walked away. Because I was meant to do this. I know it was the right thing to do. Amos was going to hurt you. He was evil. I don’t know how you feel about evil, but that’s the way I saw it.”
“For the record,” Dani said, “I’m totally against evil.”
“Great minds think alike,” Tommy said. “You don’t feel so bad when you know you did the right thing.”
Dani sipped her shake.
“In a way, I don’t think of Amos as evil,” she said. “I mean, he became evil. He chose evil. He allowed evil in. After the things I saw in Africa, I started really questioning the things I’d been taught about faith. But the Amos you . . . stopped was evil. I know that. I guess I can’t help thinking about who Amos was before he turned evil. The evil that was done to him. I think about the scared little boy in Russia, running from his father . . .”
“I know,” Tommy said.
“Did you know,” Dani said, “there was a second syringe in his kit? The first one had the same cocktail he gave Julie. The second one was full of pentobarbital.”
“Isn’t that what they use to euthanize pets?”
“Yup.”
“Maybe that’s what he was going to use to kill you,” Tommy suggested.
“Instead of the meat cleaver?” she asked.
“Then why—”
“To kill himself,” Dani said. “He was on a suicide mission. He wasn’t trying to hide his fingerprints or cover his tracks with a fake surveillance video. He knew he wasn’t going to get away with it. Pentobarbital is fast-acting. Almost instantaneous. He must have figured he had one last thing to do and then he was going to take himself out.”
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Tommy said. “Case closed, right?”
“Is it?” Dani asked.
“Meaning what?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “There’s a part that just doesn’t fit. Why was Julie Leonard chosen to be the victim? It wasn’t just because she was available. When serial killers choose victims, it’s almost never entirely random. They may be sitting on a park bench, waiting for someone to come along, but they’re not waiting for just anybody to come along. They’re waiting for the first person who fits their fantasy. If the mother who abused them was a redhead and wore a blue hat, they’re waiting for the first redhead wearing a blue hat to walk by to trigger them, even if they don’t consciously know that’s what they’re waiting for. So how did Julie fit Amos’s fantasy?”
“I thought you said she reminded him of his mother,” Tommy said.
“I was wrong. Julie was a peer,” Dani said. “If Amos was looking for mother figures, he would have fixated on older women. The other pieces of the puzzle fit together perfectly. Here’s the crime, here’s who did it, here’s the story about his poor life in an orphanage that explains it, case closed, wrapped up in a bow. But why did he pick Julie? I can’t quite see the logic.”
“Maybe looking for a logical answer is looking in the wrong place,” Tommy said.
“What are you saying?” Dani asked. “You’re still thinking it has something to do with the death of the firstborn?”
“Maybe,” Tommy said. “But I was also thinking—what do we know about Julie? What’s unusual about her? Or illogical?”
“Her medical history,” Dani said. “Or lack thereof. What are you getting at?”
“It’s just too odd not to mean something,” Tommy said. “And in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a 900-pound gorilla sitting in the booth with us. The dreams. The signs. You’re looking for logical answers—”
“Tommy,” Dani said. “That’s what psychiatrists do. That’s what doctors do. Cause and effect. You assess the situation, note the symptoms, perform the tests you think are necessary, eliminate what you can, make a diagnosis, and arrive at a logical treatment.”
“But what if the answer is beyond logical?” Tommy asked her. “When have logical answers ever explained things that are paranormal or supernatural? They can’t. By definition. This isn’t logical. What qualifies as supernatural about this case?”
“Amos’s psychic abilities?”
“Possibly,” Tommy said. “But that could just be cheap parlor tricks. Set that aside. What else?”
“Willis Danes,” Dani said.
“What about Willis Danes?”
“I can’t tell you without violating doctor-patient confidentiality. But trust me.”
“Okay,” Tommy said. “What else?”
“The deer in the wires?”
“The deer in the wires was just a deer in the wires,” Tommy said. “Think.”
“Abbie Gardener,” Dani said.
“Abbie’s elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top floor anymore,” Tommy said. “I’m not even sure it can get out of the basement. But suppose for a second she wasn’t raving. What was she trying to warn us about?”
“Satan?”
“Yes,” Tommy said. “So let’s assume for one second that Abigail Gardener isn’t completely off her rocker. What’s Satan’s chief distinguishing characteristic? Satan, the great . . . ?”
“Deceiver,” Dani said.
“Right,” Tommy said. “And it’s not like he’s some Las Vegas lounge magician pulling quarters out of people’s ears. He’s not in it just to fool people. He wants to destroy God’s work. To destroy souls. To destroy everything. God gives us free will, but Satan actively tricks and lies and manipulates. He wants us to destroy ourselves. So suppose we’ve been deceived by the master of all deceivers, who wants us to destroy ourselves. We think the case is closed. Amos did it. Here’s how he did it. Here’s why he did it. Pretty convincing, don’t you think?”
