An image of Balinda seated under a stack of clipped newspapers filled Jennifer’s mind and she shivered.
Kevin sighed and changed tenses again. “She never held me. She hardly even touched me unless it was by mistake. Sometimes I went without food for days. Once a whole week. Sometimes we couldn’t wear clothes if we did unreal things. She deprived us both of anything she thought might feed our minds. Mostly me, because Bob was retarded and he didn’t do as many things that weren’t real. No school. No games. Sometimes no talking for days. Sometimes she made me stay in bed all day. Other times she made me sit in the bathtub in cold water so I couldn’t sleep all night. I could never ask her why, because that wasn’t real. Princess was real, and if she decided to do something, anything else was unreal and couldn’t be talked about. So we couldn’t ask questions. Even questions about real things, because that would question their reality, which was unreal.”
Jennifer filled in the blanks. The abuse wasn’t primarily physical, not necessarily even emotional, although there was some of both of those. It was primarily psychological. She watched Kevin’s chest rise and fall. She desperately wanted to reach out to him. She could see the boy, sitting alone in a bathtub of cold water, shivering in the dark, wondering how to make sense of his horrible world that he’d been brainwashed to think was good.
She fought back tears. Kevin, dear Kevin, I’m so sorry!She reached out her hand and put it on his arm. Who could do such terrible things to a little boy? There was more, details, stories that could undoubtedly fill a book to be studied by universities across the country. But she didn’t want to hear more. If she could only make it all go away. She might be able to stop Slater, but Kevin would live with this past until the day he died.
A brief absurd image of her lying down beside him and holding him gently in her arms ran through her mind.
Kevin suddenly groaned and then chuckled. “She’s a twisted, demented lunatic.”
Jennifer cleared her throat. “Agreed.”
“But you know what?”
“What?”
“Telling you about it makes me feel . . . good. I’ve never told anyone.”
“Not even Samantha?”
“No.”
“Sometimes talking about abuse helps us deal with it. Our tendency is to hide it, and that’s understandable. I’m glad you’re telling me. None of it was your fault, Kevin. It’s not your sin.”
He pushed himself up. His eyes were clearer. “You’re right. That old goat did everything in her power to hold me back.”
“When did you first realize that Balinda’s world wasn’t the only one?”
“When I met Samantha. She came to my window one night and helped me sneak out. But I was trapped, you know. I mean mentally. For a long time I couldn’t accept that Balinda was anything but a loving princess. When Samantha left to study law, she begged me to go with her. Or at least somewhere away from Balinda, but I couldn’t leave. I was twenty-three before I finally worked up the courage to leave. Balinda went ballistic.”
“And you’ve done all this in five years?”
He nodded and grinned softly. “Turns out that I was fairly intelligent. It only took me a year to get my general education papers, and four years to graduate from college.”
It occurred to Jennifer that she was treating him like a patient with these short, probing questions, but he seemed to want it now.
“Which is when you decided to become a minister,” she said.
“That’s a long story. I suppose because of my strange rearing the subject of good and evil held unusual fascination for me. Naturally I gravitated toward the church. Morality became somewhat of an obsession, I guess. I figured the least I could do was spend my life showing some small corner of the real world the way to true goodness.”
“As opposed to what?”
“As opposed to the false reality we all create for ourselves. Mine was extreme, but it didn’t take me long to see that most people live in their own worlds of delusion. Not so different from Balinda’s, really.”
“Observant.” She smiled. “Sometimes I wonder what my delusions are. Is your faith personal?”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure. The church is a system, a vehicle for me. I wouldn’t say that I know God personally, no. But my faith in a God is real enough. Without an absolute, moral God, there can be no true morality. It’s the most obvious argument for the existence of God.”
“I grew up Catholic,” she said. “Went through all the forms, never did quite understand it all.”
“Well, don’t tell Father Bill Strong, but I can’t say I do either.”
Sitting next to him now, just a few minutes since his confession, Jennifer had difficulty placing Kevin in the context of his youth. He seemed so normal.
He shook his head. “This is incredible. I still can’t believe I just told you all that.”
“You just needed the right person,” she said.
The sound of feet running on the pavement sounded behind them. Jennifer twisted around. It was Galager.
“Jennifer!”
She stood and brushed her skirt.
“We have another riddle!” Galager said. He held a sheet of notebook paper in his hand. “Mickales just found this on the windshield of Kevin’s car. It’s Slater.”
“My car?” Kevin jumped to his feet.
Jennifer took the note. Yellow pad. The scrawling was black, familiar. The milk jug from Kevin’s refrigerator. She read the note quickly.
3+3 = 6.
Four down, two to go. You know how I like threes, Kevin. Time’s running out. Shame, shame, shame. A simple confession would do, but you force my hand.
Who escapes their prison but is captive still?
I’ll give you a hint: It isn’t you.
6 A.M.
Kevin gripped his hair and turned away.
“Okay,” Jennifer said, turning for the street. “Let’s get moving.”
20
SAMANTHA WAS TIRED. The Pakistani had insisted they meet at a Mexican restaurant five miles out of town. The light was too low, the music was too loud, and the place smelled of stale cigarettes. She stared the witness directly in the eye. Chris had sworn that Salman would cooperate and he had. But what he had to say wasn’t exactly what Sam wanted to hear.
“How do you know it was a dagger if you never saw it?”
“He told me it was. I have the tattoo on my back, and he said he had one like it on his forehead.”
“Did you see any scarring or discoloration that might indicate he had the tattoo removed?”
“Perhaps. He wore his hair over his forehead. Didn’t matter—he said he had it removed and I believed him.”
They’d been over all of this at least once; he’d already described the tattooed man with remarkable detail. Salman was a tailor. Tailors notice these things, he said.
“And this was while you were in New York, four months ago. And you saw him five or six times at a bar named Cougars over the course of about a month?”
“That is what I have said. Yes. You may check with the bar owner; he may remember the man as well.”
“So according to you, this man who had a dagger tattoo and who called himself Slater was in New York while the Riddle Killer was killing victims in Sacramento.”