Tessa was toying with her spoon. “I found it in the dresser.”
“Found what?”
“Mom’s perfume. It’s OK, isn’t it? That I’m wearing it, I mean?” For a moment she almost looked shy. A shy raven.
“Yeah. Of course. I’m glad you’re wearing it. Really.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s cool.”
“Cool?” she said with a slight grimace. “Did you just say cool?” “Is that OK? Is it still cool to say cool?”
“I guess,” she said. “It just sorta surprised me…”
I picked up the jug of milk and a jet of pain shot through my shoulder. I flinched and set the jug down again.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’re lying. Don’t lie to me.”
“You’re right.” My back was throbbing. “OK, honestly, I hurt my shoulder pretty bad yesterday.”
“Doing what?”
“Someone tried to blow me up.”
“Really?” She sipped her coffee.
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
I stirred some honey into my tea. “I’m not certain, but I’m reasonably sure it was the serial killer.”
“Oh,” she said, and then, “How many people has he killed so far?”
“At least six. Maybe more. Probably more.”
“So, not up to the average of eight victims yet? I mean, for North American serial killers?”
I hesitated. “You know, in some families this kind of conversation would seem a little odd.”
“Not in this one,” she said.
I blew on my tea. “Not quite up to eight yet. As far as we know.”
We ate our cereal.
“So, why do they do it?” she asked after a few minutes.
I gave her my stock answer. “Well, I try not to ask why. You get sidetracked doing that.”
She scoffed. “Yeah, right. That’s a cop-out if I ever heard one. I know you wonder. You have to. You’re too curious about stuff not to.”
My cup of tea trembled in my fingers. Her words struck home. “Well, I guess maybe I have, but in the end I think the why is easy: killers want the same things out of life everyone wants-fulfillment, accomplishment, a sense of worth, acceptance, power-”
“Love.”
I fumbled for what to say. “Yeah. That too. But they don’t know the right way to get it.”
Neither do you.
“No one does,” she said. “Not all the time, at least.”
I couldn’t tell if she was saying that as a simple observation, or as something more personal. After a moment she added, “So then what makes us different from them?”
I was about to say something trite, cliched, stupid. But the truth is, there’s only a fine line that separates us from them, and sometimes it wavers back and forth like a snake in the sand. Sometimes we step over it, all of us do. Curiosity, maybe. Desire. Anger. Who knows. But the ones who step over with both feet are still just as human as we are. All of them are: those people in Jonestown, the killers I track. They’re searching for hope, looking for love, trying to figure things out. Just like us. In so many ways they’re just like us. That’s the scariest truth of all.
“Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference,” I said. “I guess a lot of it boils down to the choices we make.” Then I remembered a quote I heard once. “I think it was Goethe who said that all of us have within us the potential to commit any crime.”
“Something like that.” She sipped at her coffee.
“What do you mean?”
“Goethe wrote, ‘There is no crime of which I do not deem myself capable.’ At least that’s the most popular translation.”
I took a long look at her. “How do you know that? How do you know all this stuff?”
“The Internet,” she said, as if that explained everything.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I’ve heard of that.” I waited to see her reaction.
“And I like to read too. I read a lot.” She took a bite of her cereal. “I read your books.”
“You did? What did you think?”
She shrugged. “They’re OK, I guess. Kinda boring.”
Well, then.
I reached into my pocket. I wasn’t sure if now was a good time, but I couldn’t think of a better one. “Hey. I got you a birthday present. Sorry it’s late.”
She eyed me. “What is it?”
“I’m not telling. It’d take away the surprise.” I set the small rectangular box on the table. She looked at the present but didn’t reach for it. I slid it to her. “You’ll have to open it.”
She picked it up abruptly, tore the gold foil wrapping paper away, flipped open the fuzzy gray box, and then stopped. She didn’t even remove the necklace.
“It’s got your birthstone,” I said.
“Tourmaline.”
“Yeah. They had other colors, but I thought you’d like black the best.”
She set the box back onto the table.
“Do you like it?”
Tessa shoved her cereal bowl to the side and blinked, letting her eyelids rise very slowly. “So that’s what this is all about.”
“What?”
She looked around the room. “This. All this.”
“What are you talking about?”
Her eyes became razors. “Why didn’t you ask me if I wanted to move to Denver?”
“What do you mean?”
“After Mom died. We just picked up and moved. Why didn’t you ask me if I wanted to move?”
“Well, I just thought it might be best for both of us to get some space-”
“For both of us?”
“Yeah.”
“And how did you come to know what would be best for me?” “Tessa,I-"
“We’re supposed to be a family. Families make choices together about what’s best for everyone, not just for the one in charge.”
Her words seared the air between us. I had no idea what to say. “Listen, I-”
“You took me away from all my friends.” Her lips quivered for a moment, and then the dam broke. “My mom dies, and you make me leave everyone I know and move across the country, and all I ever wanted was a family like Cherise has-a mom and a dad-and when Mom met you, I thought maybe it would happen, just maybe I’d finally have someone to teach me the things dads are supposed to teach their daughters-I don’t know, like about life or guys or whatever and maybe come to my volleyball games and make me do my homework when I don’t want to and tell me I’m pretty sometimes and give me a hard time about my boyfriends and take a picture of me in my prom dress and then stand by my side one day when I get married…”
My heart was breaking, wrenching in half, but I felt powerless. “I never knew-”
By then tears were rolling down her cheeks. “You never asked!” Her voice was ripe with pain.
“I’m so sorry, Tessa, I-”
She grabbed the necklace box and threw it at my chest. The tourmaline necklace clattered to the floor. “You can keep your stupid necklace, Patrick!” She rose from the table. “You can’t buy my love!”
Tessa swept out of the room, and I sat there, stunned, suspended in time. A cold silence swallowed the room.
Go to her. Tell her you’re sorry. Do something!
I stood up and started for her room. Stopped with one foot in the hallway.
Wait. You need to give her some space. Right now that’s what she needs… remember? Reach out to her slowly… That way she knows you’re not going to hurt her.
Maybe I could drive over to the federal building, retrieve the rest of my things, and then come back to straighten things out. I didn’t want to push her, pressure her. I wanted to respect her, show her I really did care.
I slipped into the master bedroom, grabbed my wallet, and then plugged Ralph’s cell phone in so that when he picked it up later it would be charged. As I passed Officers Muncey and Stilton on my way through the dining room, Patricia Muncey asked what was up. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I mumbled, preferring not to explain what was really up.
The black cat nearly tripped me as it jumped out of the way when I threw open the front door. Once outside, I had to turn my collar up against the freezing rain that had begun to splinter through the dark morning clouds.