“Why do you always ask about Dad?” Rose snapped when they were alone.
“Just curious.”
“If you’re so curious, why don’t you call him yourself?”
“Rose – ”
“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why I said that. You know what? I don’t even know why I’m here,” she lamented. “To be honest, Mom, I don’t know why you want me here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m seeing a therapist,” Rose said.
“Really? That’s great.”
“She says I have a lot of mommy issues.”
“Like what?”
“Like, you left us.”
“Rose, I never – ”
“Hold on,” Rose insisted, “please. Let me finish. Then you can talk, OK? You left. You handed custody over to Dad and you were gone. Do you have any idea how that destroyed me?”
“I have some idea – ”
“No, you don’t. I was like, super popular before that whole thing went down. Then, practically overnight, I’m the girl everyone has to stay away from. People teased me. Called me a murderer because my mom let off a killer. And I certainly couldn’t talk to you, my own mother. I needed you back then. I really did, but you practically abandoned me right then and there. You refused to talk to me, refused to talk about the case. Do you realize that everything I knew about you from that time, I learned from the papers?”
“Rose – ”
“And of course, there was no money,” Rose laughed with a flip of her hand. “We were broke after you lost your job. You never thought about that, did you? You went from a star attorney to a cop. Great move, Mom.”
“I had to do that,” Avery snapped back.
“We had nothing,” Rose insisted. “You can’t just start a new career over in the middle of your life. We had to move. Did you ever think about that? About how it would affect us?”
Avery sat back.
“Is this why you came here? To yell at me?”
“Why did you want to come here, Mom?”
“I wanted to reconnect, to see how you were, to talk to try and work things out.”
“Well, none of that is going to happen unless we get over this first, and I’m not over it. I’m just not.”
Rose shook her head and looked to the ceiling.
“You know? For years I thought you were a superstar. Incredible personality, big job, we lived in a great house, and it was like – wow – my mom is amazing. But then it all fell apart, and everything went along with it, the house, the job and you– most of all, you.”
“My whole life collapsed,” Avery said. “I was devastated.”
“I was your daughter,” Rose complained. “I was there too. You ignored me.”
“I’m here now,” Avery swore, “I’m here right now.”
The waiter came back.
“OK, ladies! Do we know what we want?”
Simultaneously, Avery and Rose yelled: “Not yet!”
“Whoa, OK. Why don’t you just flag me down when you’re ready.”
No one answered.
The waiter backed away and left.
Rose rubbed her face.
“It’s too soon,” she realized. “I’m sorry, Mom. But it’s too soon. You asked why I wanted to come here? Because I thought I was ready. I’m not.”
She edged out of her seat and stood up.
“Rose, please. Sit down. We just got here. I miss you. I want to talk.”
“It’s not about you, Mom. It was never just about you. Don’t you get that?”
“Give me another chance,” Avery said. “Let’s start over.”
Rose shook her head.
“I’m not ready yet. I’m sorry. I thought I was, but I’m not.”
She walked out.
“Rose! Rose!?”
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
For a long time, Avery remained in the diner booth, alone. She ordered eggs and toast, a small salad, and a cup of coffee and just sat there, going over everything that had been said.
My daughter hates me, she realized.
More depressed than she’d been in years, she wanted to crawl in a hole and die. Instead, she paid the check and walked out.
Sunlight made her cringe.
Why can’t it be a rainy day? she wondered.
People on the street seemed to race by. Cars whizzed past her view. She stood alone among the activity like a spirit, not yet dead, not truly alive.
This is what the killer wants, she thought. He’s in your head. He’s laughing at you. Just like Howard. Just like Howard.
Avery went back to her car and drove.
Without any conscious thought to a destination, she found herself headed south – toward the prison. The bodies of all three girls kept flashing in her mind, and the killer and the car and the routes and some house, a house she imaged he might live in: small, hidden by trees with an unkempt lawn, because he had better things to do than mow a lawn. Her suspects were discarded, every one of them.
She needed a fresh start. A new perspective.
The prison parking lot was as she remembered. The walk inside was the same. Guards whispered behind her back and pointed. The woman behind the gates chided her for no appointment.
“He said he knew you’d back,” a guard laughed. “What are you, in love now? I guess I should believe everything I read in the papers.”
There was no real reason to go back. She didn’t actually believe he would help her, or could help her, not after the disastrous turn at Art for Life. He just liked to play games, she understood. But Avery was in the mood for games. She had nothing left to hide, nowhere else to go, and for some strange reason – at that moment in time – Howard Randall seemed like the only real friend she had in the world.
Howard sat in the basement meeting room as he had before, only this time, the smile was gone, he appeared concerned.
“You don’t look quite yourself today, Avery. Are you all right?”
Avery laughed.
If she had a cigarette, she might have taken it out and begun to smoke. She hadn’t smoked since she was a kid, but that’s how she felt: reckless, untouchable.
She took seat and placed her elbows on the table.
“Your last tip was bullshit,” she said. “An artist? Did you mean John Lang?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit!”
She aggressively smiled.
“You played me,” she said. “Nice move. Was that all so we could take a trip down memory lane and you could watch me break down in tears?”
“I take no comfort in your pain,” he said in earnest.
“Fuck you!” she yelled. “You’re playing games with me right now. You told me he was an artist. You practically handed him to me on a platter.”
“Your killer is an artist,” he said. “A true artist.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He takes great pride in his work. He’s no random killer. He’s no butcher. There is a purpose to his cause. These girls mean something to him. He knows them, personally, and in exchange for their lives he gives them immortality, in art.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
Howard leaned forward.
“You never asked me how I chose my victims,” he replied, “or why they were positioned in such ways.”
As Howard’s defense attorney, Avery had covered every possible avenue to get him acquitted. One of those avenues had involved understanding the killer’s mind and why he had committed such heinous acts, so that she could effectively distance Howard from the murders based on his own personal history.
“It was a statement on people that act dead in real life,” she said. “You picked your best students and charged them with some crime against humanity, and then you dismembered them and placed their parts on the ground to look like multiple people trying to escape from the underworld.”