DoubleDown V Page 5

  Beside him was a stack of printed paper. She flipped through it, shocked to see dozens of transcripts, each one with him talking to a young girl. They all seemed to end with him asking to meet her.

  She took the papers, and shoved them in a manila file folder, and carried them with her as she left.

  “Gonna stop you, pervert.”

  She wanted to slap the guy—or worse—but she thought it would suffice to mail the printouts to the police and let them take care of things. Alexander Michaels would wonder how his precious papers disappeared, but he’d soon enough find them waved in front of his face.

  When Karen was outside, she stopped, realizing that this was the first time she’d done anything while time was frozen that would significantly affect somebody’s life.

  “Feels pretty good.”

  She walked to the next house. A woman was in the bathroom scrubbing a toilet with a toothbrush. Presumably not her own.

  Karen didn’t recognize her. She was in her twenties, skinny, dressed in floppy gray jogging pants and a matching sweater.

  The bedroom was messy here, too, and a framed photo of the girl and a man, both smiling brightly at the camera, lay on the floor. The glass was cracked.

  Karen left, not feeling good about things. She couldn’t do anything to help the girl.

  Why would that matter? I’ve never helped anybody before.

  She walked past several houses, wondering why the hell she should start caring about the people she spied on. All she’d ever wanted to do was learn what they hid and add to her Secrets Journal.

  She had a lot of entries now, including her priest, who she watched reading pornography online; several people who took illegal drugs when nobody was watching; thieves; liars; adulterers; and many others. Her little town was full of the seven deadly sins … and more.

  If she believed the Bible (and really, some days, she didn’t pretend to believe it, even to herself), all her friends and neighbors were doomed to rot in hell.

  She sat on a bench beside a bus stop and thought about her family. She missed her dad, and her mom didn’t have any secrets that Karen had ever found. She might be the one exception to ascend to heaven one day.

  Tina?

  Karen’s older sister was just dumb. One day she would realize that giving blow jobs and probably screwing her boyfriend wasn’t going to help her accomplish anything. One day Jimmy Berenstein would see some other girl and dump Tina without a minute’s thought.

  That morning, Tina had been getting ready for school with Karen, but there was something different. She was too happy, too perky, and Karen realized now that she hadn’t seen Tina at school after all.

  She knew where Jimmy lived and walked in that direction. It wasn’t far from Karen’s home, which Tina thought convenient.

  The house was a dump, a duplex, where Jimmy lived in one half with his dad. Karen had no idea where his mom was, since she was never mentioned.

  Jimmy’s car was parked in front of the house, and Karen wasn’t surprised that the front door wasn’t locked. She walked in as if it were her own home and looked around. The living room stank of stale smoke, with several half-empty glasses on the coffee table. A big stain covered much of the rug. Four bottles of Miller Genuine Draft were discarded in the middle of the stain.

  She looked around but didn’t see anybody on the main level, so she climbed the stairs. The master bedroom was empty, as was the bathroom, but Karen found what she was looking for in the other bedroom.

  Tina sat on a bench and Jimmy sat behind her. They were both naked. He had an erection.

  In his hand, he held a razor blade, and he was using it to slice lines into Tina’s back.

  There were dozens of other cuts in various stages of healing, left over from previous sessions.

  Tina’s face was full of tears, and she looked like she wanted to scream, but Karen imagined that that was the very last thing she would do.

  She knew that Tina would do anything for Jimmy, but this was worse than Karen could have imagined.

  She stared at them, anger rushing through her. Even though she wasn’t on the best of terms with Tina, she was her sister, and she wanted to protect her.

  Karen didn’t hesitate.

  She grabbed the razor blade from Jimmy and sliced into his penis lengthwise, like gutting a trout. Of course, nothing changed, but when time started, he’d never again hurt her sister. All he’d care about would be getting to the emergency ward and making sure they stitched him up.

  * * *

  That night, after time started again and Karen had listened to the last of Mrs. Frey lecturing on metaphors, she waited for Tina to come home.

  Tina was quiet and declined dinner. She went to her room, claiming she was tired from not sleeping well the night before.

  Karen followed Tina.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Tina frowned. “Why would you care?”

  Karen kneeled in front of her sister and looked into her eyes. “It’s okay. He won’t hurt you again.”

  Tina opened her mouth but nothing came out. She looked to the side, not able to meet Karen’s gaze.

  “It’s okay,” Karen said. “I know what he does to you. But it’s over now, right?”

  For a moment the room was silent and neither girl moved. It was almost like time stopping, but Karen could hear background noise, including her own breathing, so she knew she was in normal time.

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw.”

  Tina didn’t ask how or when or why or any of the questions Karen expected. She just hugged Karen and started to cry.

  Chapter 7

  Three months went by without time stopping for Karen. There were days when she felt normal, as if there was nothing different between her and Tina or any of Karen’s friends.

  She worried about Bobby and whether he would find her and hurt her, if she’d be in the middle of laughing with her mom over some funny scene on Modern Family and suddenly double over in pain from whatever Bobby might inflict upon her.

  More often, though, he didn’t cross her mind.

  What did cross her mind was a blur of wants and desires and regrets, most of which skirted the edges of her consciousness. She thought of her dad and the secrets he had hidden in the closet, of the knowing smile on Mrs. Montgomery’s face as she faked to the world how happy she was, of her sister’s gaze that she sometimes felt trained on but when she looked was aimed somewhere else, of the guilt conjoined with pleasure when she remembered slicing Tina’s boyfriend’s cock. Most of all, she pushed the image away that refused to leave: the time she visited Bonnie MacDonald in her bedroom. None of her other silent visits struck her as strongly or as frequently.

  Mid-April. L.A. didn’t really have four seasons, but in Karen’s mind, spring was in the air. She sat on a picnic table in Munson Park, about two blocks from school. It was a Saturday, and she was reading an old science-fiction novel, Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke.

  Dad’s favorite book.

  Halfway through, she put the book away and lay down on the picnic table with her eyes closed. It was just over eighty degrees, and a slight breeze made it the perfect spring day for Karen.

  She had almost drifted off when she heard, “Hi, Karen. Sleeping?”

  For a second, she thought she was just daydreaming, but the voice was too real. She blinked and sat up.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Bonnie MacDonald smiled but did not seem to know what to say next.

  “Wanna sit with me?” asked Karen.

  “Sure.”

  Bonnie sat beside her, and they stared toward a distant baseball diamond, where a bunch of little leaguers excitedly ran through their paces.

  “You know … ,” started Bonnie. Her voice trailed off into silence.

  Karen felt fear rush through her. She wanted to be anywhere but here. She knows. She’s going to tell me to stop looking at her out of the corner of my eye. She’s going to tell me to piss
off and that if I want to have freakish fantasies, to leave her out of them.

  Bonnie tried again. “I sometimes feel like I’m different than other people.”

  Karen swallowed, trying to slow down her mind so she could understand what she was hearing.

  “Really? What do you mean?”

  Bonnie turned to her and stared into Karen’s eyes.

  “I think you know. I think we’re a lot alike.”

  Karen didn’t know what to say. A sense of relief flooded her, but at the same time she felt guarded. She’d never admitted anything to anybody, barely even to herself. She tried to nod, but it only looked like her face was shaking in the breeze.

  Bonnie touched her hand, and after a few seconds Karen returned the grasp. She smiled.

  * * *

  Two weeks later, Karen brought Bonnie home when both Mom and Tina were out. She’d never hinted about her secrets to anybody … until now. She led the way to Mom and Dad’s bedroom. She could never stop referring to it as her father’s room, even though he’d been dead for close to two years.

  Karen was nineteen now.

  She held Bonnie’s hand as they snuck into the room. The closet was a walk-in, with a shelf near the top. The four boxes were still there. She went to the bathroom to grab a small stool and climbed up.

  “I’m sure Mom hasn’t looked at these. There’s a bit of dust on them from them sitting here.”

  “Pretty freaky. You sure had balls, looking in here in the first place. I’d never be able to do that.”

  “You’d be surprised what you can find courage for when you know you won’t be caught.”

  “Well, there’s always a chance.”

  Karen laughed. “Well, I’m sure most people would agree with you.”

  She lifted one lid. “Here are the report cards I told you about. And these,” she said as she moved the first box aside, “are the porn magazines.”

  “God, that must have totally been yucky.”

  Karen nodded and pulled down the third box. She opened it and took out the gun, holding it carefully, not wanting to scare Bonnie.

  “Whoa … that’s … well, I’m not exactly sure what it is.”

  Bonnie laughed, and Karen soaked in the sound. She moved to Bonnie and kissed her on the mouth. It was an act she was getting used to, but she liked it better every time. Bonnie put her hand through Karen’s hair and then hugged her.

  “You know, we’re all alone … we could be doing something else with our time,” said Bonnie.

  She smiled, and Karen’s heart jumped. She’d wanted to hear Bonnie say something like that since their conversation in the park.

  It took all of Karen’s willpower to say, “I really want that, but I need to show you the last box. I’ve never been able to talk to anybody about it until now.”

  Not even Bobby.

  The box looked the same as the other three: off-white, formerly used to hold five hundred standard-sized envelopes. The top fit snugly, and Karen had to pry it open.

  She pulled out a newspaper article and then a small notebook.

  “That’s her,” she whispered.

  Bonnie took the newspaper carefully. It was more than twenty-five years old, discolored to a sickly yellow-brown.

  Local Girl Found Dead

  The article described how the body of eight-year-old Tammy Preston had been found in a small park near her home.

  The girl grinned from the newspaper. A couple of her teeth were missing, and she looked like she was full of joy and hadn’t a care in the world. Although the photo was black and white, Karen knew that her copper-colored hair fell past her shoulders and that her eyes were blue.

  The article said that she had been shot by a .45 caliber revolver and that the police were combing the area. So far there were no suspects.

  “Such a pretty girl,” said Bonnie. She turned to Karen. “You’re sure?”

  Karen nodded and handed Bonnie the notebook. It contained only a few pages of handwritten notes.

  “That’s Dad’s handwriting. It’s dated at the top, and he would have been thirty-two when he wrote it. I was eight—the same age Tammy Preston was when she was killed.

  Bonnie read the notes:

  It’s been fifteen years now, and there’s rarely a day I don’t think about Tammy. I never knew her until that night, but since then, she’s been part of me, like a conjoined twin, locked together forever. I killed her, and now she haunts me. Maybe that’s a fair trade.

  I’ve never told anybody, never written it down, never asked God or any other entity for either forgiveness or understanding. How could I? I haven’t forgiven myself yet, and I sure as hell don’t understand why I killed her.

  It just felt like something I wanted to do. And when I did it, I enjoyed it. I liked pulling the trigger and watching her life seep out of her.

  Even today I feel the same rush of joy I experienced that day. I feel the pleasure, and I know how easy it would have been to kill others after her.

  But … even at seventeen, I knew I was lucky to have gotten away with it. I didn’t live nearby, and my gun wasn’t registered or anything, so there wasn’t any obvious way to track me down. If I left fingerprints, there was nothing to compare them to, since I’ve never been arrested or joined the military.

  Nobody saw me, nobody heard her screams, and if anybody did have any suspicions, they were always about the drunken fool who lived two doors down from Tammy. I read the news stories and heard the gossip, and there was never anything I needed to worry about.

  But I always have worried.

  I worry that I might feel that urge again and need to follow it. I’ve got two girls now, and they depend on me. I can’t end up in jail.

  I know it’s wrong but I’m writing this for my own benefit. I wish I could say I’m sorry, but when I face myself in the mirror, would I really believe my own lies?

  “Holy shit,” said Bonnie. She’d read only the first couple of pages and flipped through to see how many more there were.

  “The rest just talks about the same stuff. You’ve read the important pages.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  Bonnie leaned over and hugged Karen.

  “It’s okay,” Karen said. “I don’t know what to say, either.”

  “Did your Dad seem crazy or anything?”

  Karen shook her head. “Strict and a bit condescending, but pretty normal.”

  “You should tell your mom.”

  “I can’t. She thinks he was a wonderful person. What good would it do to tell her the truth? I thought maybe one day she’d stumble across this stuff herself, but so far she hasn’t. Or maybe she has and just doesn’t want to deal with it.”

  Karen put the box back in its secret place and took Bonnie’s hand.

  “Let’s go for a walk. Fresh air will help.”

  Bonnie smiled and gave Karen a quick kiss. “Kay!”

  * * *

  The next day, time stopped for Karen. It’d been a while, and it took her by surprise.

  She was an intern at the Mayberry Care Center, which mostly meant that she spent time reading books or talking to terminally ill patients.

  “My Lord, girl, you never know what pain is like until you’re being called home to God.”

  It was Mrs. Thompson talking to her. The old woman was wheezy and took a long time to finish her thoughts. She had liver cancer and was hooked to a morphine IV drip, which was the only thing that stopped her from screaming in pain. Most of her white hair was gone, and wrinkles scratched across her face. She looked like a child’s vision of the wicked witch in Hansel and Gretel.

  But she was kind. She tried to smile for Karen and did her best not to show the pain that wracked her body. She never had visitors, so when Karen came to see her, it was like the sun shining after a terrible hurricane.

  “I wish I could help you,” said Karen, holding the old woman’s hand.

  “I know that you—”

  Time stopped.


  Mrs. Thompson’s face froze, and Karen could see the pain in her eyes trying to squeeze out. Silence dropped around her. Karen hadn’t realized how much sound there was in the clinic ward until it stopped.

  “I’ll be back,” she said.

  She left and walked down Maple Street. There weren’t any maple trees around, and she wondered if the street was named to make the Mayberry Care Center feel more welcoming. It was a short street and led only to the center.

  As she looked for houses that she wanted to walk through, she realized she hadn’t worried recently about Bobby Jersey, and she wondered what he was up to. She no longer thought about him hurting her when she was frozen and he was free to do as he liked. It’d been too long. If he wanted to do something, he’d have done it already.

  A sickening truth came to her: she missed talking to him.

  He was still the only other person she’d ever met who lived the same life she did. As much as she loved Bonnie, she could never tell her about what she thought of as her real life. Her free life.

  She’d think I’m fucking nuts.

  Bobby’s the only person who understands.

  There was one other reason she felt safer from Bobby. She knew exactly where to find him, and if he ever messed with her, she’d mess back, only a whole lot worse.

  * * *

  Karen worked her way down the street, wandering inside the homes that looked the most interesting. Her Secrets Journal was now crammed full of things that nobody imagined would ever see the light.

  She knew of dozens of men who were cheating on their wives or girlfriends, and an equal number of women doing the same.

  She had seen every possible sex act, between every combination of a man and a woman, and sometimes with three or more people involved.

  She watched people hurt themselves and those they loved, over and over.

  She saw most of the Ten Commandments broken without much thought by the sinners, and she saw people treating other people horribly, while in public smiling as if they were the nicest people in the world.