DoubleDown V Page 7

  Karen loved her work at the care center. She loved being able to soothe her patients, but when they had that special look in their eyes, she could help them with that too.

  Carlene Jameson was the first, but there’d been many after her. Karen knew in her heart that she was truly helping them. They suffered and had no chance of recovery. Waiting in pain to die is something few people were equipped to do gracefully. Karen only helped when time stopped for her, so there was no way to tie the murders to her. As far as she knew, nobody ever really suspected anything unusual had happened. Terminal patients die. No surprise there.

  Only one area of her life nagged at Karen. She sometimes woke late at night and thought of her father. She remembered the four boxes he’d squirrelled away in the closet and the words in his confession, written so many years later: I wish I could say I’m sorry, but when I face myself in the mirror, would I really believe my own lies?

  Part of her tried to forgive him, to say that she was just as much a murderer as he was, but that didn’t hold water for her. She was killing to help people. He took the life of an eight-year-old girl who had her whole future ahead of her.

  Tammy Preston had been dead in her grave for close to thirty years. She would have been in the prime of her life right now. No punishment could be doled out to her father anymore, but there was still one thing that Karen had struggled with since finding her father’s secrets nine years earlier.

  “Hey, Mom,” Karen called when she walked into the house. Even though she hadn’t lived there for years, it still felt like home to her.

  Her mom was in the kitchen, baking bread. It was a hobby she’d picked up in the past few years, when she found a cooking group organized at her local supermarket. She smiled when Karen walked in, and they hugged.

  “How’s things?”

  “I’m good,” said Karen. “We’re both doing great. One piece of news for you—we’re looking into adoption. It’ll take a long time, but you always told me good things come to those who wait.”

  “That’d be so wonderful! It’s been a long time since I’ve heard little footsteps padding around this place.”

  After a pause, Karen said, “Mom, I need to show you something. It’s kind of a big deal.”

  She took her mom by the hand and started up the stairs to the master bedroom.

  “What is it?”

  Karen sat on the bed with her mom beside her. Both of them could feel tension in the air.

  “A long time ago, I found some things that Dad had been hiding away in the closet.”

  Her mom stared at her, clearly surprised Karen had snuck into their bedroom closet.

  “I know I shouldn’t have gone in there, but I did. I think you need to see what he was hiding. You need to know because you have a view of Dad that you may have to modify. I’ve been haunted by the boxes in the closet for years, and I just need you to know they’re there.”

  Karen went to retrieve the boxes and placed them on the bed beside her mom. She suggested they be opened in the same sequence she originally had opened them: the report cards, the magazines, the gun, and the note.

  Karen hugged her mom, who just looked confused. Then she smiled and said, “I’ll be down in the living room. I’ll make us coffee for whenever you’re done.”

  She bit her tongue as she left, wondering if she’d done the right thing.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later, Karen’s mom came down and sat with her, smiled as if resigned to the truth found upstairs and gave Karen a long hug. They never spoke of the boxes again.

  The last of Karen’s stress points melted away, and she smiled as she thought of her future.

  Chapter 10

  Two years passed. Karen and Bonnie had the perfect life. They loved each other, they enjoyed their jobs, they enjoyed their home, and they found time to travel a little bit each year.

  They hoped to adopt but so far that hadn’t worked out. That was okay; they were patient. They knew it would happen one day.

  Karen was twenty-seven. She had helped a dozen terminally ill patients find the peace they wanted so badly, and she’d made the final days of a hundred others easier by reading to them, listening to them talk about the events that shaped their lives, or just smiling and holding their hand while they watched television.

  Even that part of Karen’s life felt perfect to her.

  * * *

  Bonnie came up with the idea.

  “Hey, let’s go to the Halloween party at the Micimac this year.”

  “Really?” The Micimac was a pub a couple of blocks from their home. They dropped in from time to time, but Karen had never thought of joining the regulars there. “Like get dressed up and everything?”

  “And everything! Of course!”

  Karen wasn’t sure, but Bonnie hugged her and said she knew Karen would love it.

  They dressed up as characters from a recent movie, both men, both wearing fake beards and army gear. To her surprise, Karen loved the party.

  At midnight, they were dancing with a dozen other couples. Karen would always remember the D.J. was playing “Mermaid” by Train.

  All of a sudden Bonnie let go of Karen and grabbed her throat. She started to choke.

  Karen felt like time had stopped, but this time it hadn’t. She was frozen with fear and confusion as she looked at Bonnie.

  Blood gushed between Bonnie’s fingers, spurting over the dance floor. Her face was white with shock and her mouth opened and closed, but Karen couldn’t hear any words. The noise of the music drowned anything she might have gasped.

  When Bonnie sank to the floor, somebody screamed. The music stopped suddenly and the lights all came on. Somebody yelled, “Call 911!”

  Bonnie looked at Karen, who was still frozen, her mind unable to comprehend what was happening to the woman she loved.

  Finally, Bonnie rolled onto her side and that broke the trance. Karen dropped beside her to see what was happening. Bonnie’s hands fell away, and Karen saw more blood dripping from her neck. There was a thin slash line cut horizontally through Bonnie’s throat.

  “No! No, don’t take her from me, Bobby!”

  Karen looked around and saw a woman dressed as a genie. She grabbed one of her scarves and placed it around Bonnie’s neck, hoping to stop the bleeding; she was afraid to pull it too tight, though, for fear of choking her.

  It seemed forever before the ambulance arrived. Two men pushed her aside to work on Bonnie. They put her on a stretcher and took her away. Karen ran after them, and they let her ride in the ambulance to the hospital.

  The paramedic kept her away. “Don’t get too close. She needs air.”

  His eyes told a different story, though. Somebody sliced her throat. If it was you, you’re not getting close enough to finish the job.

  Karen waited three hours while they performed emergency surgery. In that time, she was interviewed by a female cop, who looked at her with disbelief in her eyes when Karen said she had no idea what happened.

  “You say you were dancing with her, though. She was holding you and facing you. How could anybody have sliced her throat without you seeing it?”

  Because time was stopped for him.

  “I don’t know.”

  She knew she sounded like she was hiding something, because she was. It never crossed her mind to tell the truth about what had happened.

  The cop told Karen to go to the police station the next day and sign her statement. She warned her there would be further questions.

  * * *

  They let her see Bonnie a little after three a.m. She was unconscious, and the surgeon gave Karen the news.

  “She has severe brain damage from lack of oxygen. The flow of blood to her brain was stopped for quite some time.”

  “Will she recover?” Karen knew the answer even as she asked the question, but she had to be sure.

  The doctor sighed. “Miracles do happen from time to time.”

  Karen felt tears running down both cheeks. She took
Bonnie’s hand and held it, not letting go until the sun came up.

  * * *

  The next two weeks were the hardest of Karen’s life. She spent most of her time at the hospital, talking to Bonnie, wanting her to hear her voice and know she was there. Sometimes Karen didn’t know what to say, and she started reading to Bonnie, the way she’d done for so many patients.

  Every day it seemed less and less likely that Bonnie would recover. The doctors weren’t sure how much to tell her, because she had no legal standing. They weren’t married, they weren’t related, and there was little legal recourse from them living together, regardless of how committed Karen said their relationship was. Bonnie had never filled in any paperwork that would identify Karen as her next of kin.

  Eventually Karen found out the truth: Bonnie was brain-dead. There was no chance of recovery. Her body was breathing because of the machinery forcing air into her lungs, but otherwise she was just a lifeless husk. The woman Karen loved more than life itself was gone and would never return.

  After those two weeks, Karen finally turned her attention to Bobby Jersey.

  “You fucking bastard,” she said to her empty living room. “I’m going to kill you for taking her from me.”

  Karen had never understood why Bobby did the things he did and she hadn’t much cared. Now she realized that she should have done something to stop him earlier, but the things he did had never directly affected her and she couldn’t bring herself to interfere. Now she’d give anything to be able to go back in time and stop him before he’d had the opportunity to take Bonnie from her.

  She knew his address.

  It was a Saturday when time stopped for her. She knew exactly where to go. Electronics didn’t work when time was stopped, but she could still ride a bicycle. She hopped on her bike and cranked it as hard as she could. Bobby currently lived about three miles from her, and although she hadn’t been to the house, she’d studied the maps, knowing one day she might need to go.

  When she arrived, she dropped the bicycle and strode into the house.

  Sitting in the living room was a middle-aged woman, watching some mindless television. A balding, skinny man was in the kitchen making a tuna sandwich. She ignored them and searched the rest of the house. There was only the master bedroom and one other. It had been converted to a reading room, with a couple of armchairs and a set of wall-to-wall bookcases.

  “Shit,” she said. He doesn’t live here.

  The address Bobby had allowed her to find was fake.

  She felt empty, unwilling to believe that she couldn’t find him, that she’d never have the satisfaction of revenge for what he’d done.

  She rode her bike slowly home, winding around town, looking uselessly for any hint of Bobby. She headed down to the beach in case he was there, but no dice.

  And then the calling came to her and she had to ride back home.

  Two days later, Karen had checked everything she could think of. There was no entry for anybody with a last name of Jersey in Laguna Beach in any online directory, no new address or hint of anything from his Facebook account (in fact she found a recent entry with the fake address she’d previously seen), and it slowly dawned on her that he’d lied to her from the first day they met. Bobby Jersey likely wasn’t even his real name.

  She continued to go see Bonnie every minute she could. The love she felt never diminished, and she sometimes wished she could crawl into the hospital bed with her, holding her like she would have in their own bed.

  Karen had finished reading several novels to Bonnie and was close to the end of another when she went to visit one night.

  Bonnie’s room was empty.

  Karen panicked and ran to the nurse’s station. As usual it was hard to get information, but the distress written on her face was enough to convince the nurse to tell her, “They’ve moved her to a long-term care facility.”

  “Where?”

  The nurse looked around. She knew the life Karen shared with Bonnie, but rules were rules. She hesitated and then whispered, “This never happened.” She scribbled the name of Bonnie’s new home onto a Post-It note and handed it to Karen. The nurse turned her back and walked away.

  Bonnie’s quarters were nice but more crowded than in the hospital. Six patients were crammed into one small room. Karen knew that Bonnie didn’t care, but she cared. She wanted Bonnie to have the best. Unfortunately there wasn’t much she could do to help.

  She held Bonnie’s hand, kissed her cheek, and pulled out the book to continue reading while a machine forced air into Bonnie’s lungs.

  * * *

  That night, Karen woke up at a little after 2:00 a.m. with a sense of purpose and inspiration. She went to her computer and pulled up the website for the Los Angeles Times and searched for unexplained deaths caused by slit throats—Bobby’s normal method. She had no reason to think he’d do something different.

  There were three stories in the past few months, all about mysterious injuries to throats that seemed to be caused by box cutters or something similar. None of the victims had been connected to the others. She mapped out where they occurred and found them centralized near Union Street and Casper Avenue, nowhere near where he’d led her to believe he lived.

  Time stopped a week later, and she spent a few subjective hours searching the area. Finally she found him. He was using the computer in a small back apartment. The room was a mess, with plates of rotting food scattered around. Posters of recent science-fiction movies were stuck on a couple of walls, and a large flat-screen TV dominated the room.

  Bobby was hunched over his keyboard, typing something into Google, but he’d only gotten as far as “How do—?” before she’d arrived.

  He looked the same as the last time she saw him. Tall, handsome, trustworthy.

  She wanted to kill him right then, but that wouldn’t be enough. She left, went home, and thought about her options.

  When time started again, she knew what she had to do.

  * * *

  The next day Karen called in sick. She went to a park nearby and sat on a bench, watching the birds as they chirped and pecked at food tossed to them by other visitors. She enjoyed the feel of the sunshine on her face and smiled as little children played hopscotch and tag.

  She walked through her neighborhood and said hi to some of the people she knew. It occurred to her that she hadn’t had a vanilla milkshake in years, and she ducked in to the Dairy Queen to order one. Karen tried not to think about anything except what was in front of her eyes at any particular minute.

  The day went by. She tried her best to enjoy it. As the sun fell, she walked to Bobby’s house. By the time she got there, the sun was gone and only hints of scattered light paved the way.

  She knocked and waited. After a minute, Bobby opened the door, staring at her like she was a ghost.

  “Hi,” she said. “Aren’t you going to invite me in, Bobby Jersey? Or should I say Bobby Jameson?”

  He stepped back. Karen walked into his house without giving him a chance to change his mind.

  “You found me.”

  She looked around the room like it was the first time she’d been there.

  “Robert Peter Jameson. Born in Newark, New Jersey, liberating the name of your home state as part of your new persona.” She looked around at the computer. “In reality, of course, you’re just a pathetic loser, a murderer, and a freak.”

  Bobby had recovered enough to say, “Good to see you, too. You can leave now.”

  Karen looked at him and shook her head. She wanted to cry, but she forced herself to concentrate on the business at hand.

  “You killed the wrong person.”

  Bobby shrugged. “I hear she’s not dead.”

  “That’s a technicality and you know it.”

  In spite of herself, a tear dropped down her cheek. “You fucking loser,” she whispered. “Why did you do it? Why the fuck did you do it?”

  His face hardened, but a small smile lifted the corners of his mouth.


  “Why? Because I met you more than a decade ago, when you were just as pathetic and freakish as me.” He looked like he wanted to spit at her. “But you changed and left me behind. That bitch changed you. She made you happy, and you didn’t want anything to do with me. You were too damned good for me. I was back to being a freak.”

  “You slit her throat because I loved her … .”

  “Damned right.”

  Karen felt drained, guilt rushing through her.

  Concentrate, she told herself.

  She opened her purse, pretending to look for a tissue, but she pulled out a knife instead and didn’t hesitate. She rushed to Bobby and buried the knife in his chest, pushing him to the wall.

  He screamed, but that just hardened her resolve and she pushed the knife harder. The blade slid against ribs as it punctured the lung behind them. She had no idea if anybody had heard him scream, but the sound didn’t last long. He stared at her and moved his mouth but no noise came out.

  “No more secrets, Bobby. I wanted you to see me,” she said. “Doing it when time was stopped wasn’t right.”

  He reached to her but had no strength in his arms. He started to slide to the floor.

  Karen watched the life ebb from him but felt no real satisfaction. It was a job, a job long overdue, but one that was finally finished.

  When she was sure he was dead, she left the apartment and closed the door behind her. She didn’t bother taking her purse with her.

  The walk away seemed to take forever. She half-expected a police car to come screaming toward her and armed officers to take her into custody, but nothing happened. She just walked and walked, and eventually found herself at the care center where Bonnie was housed.