Paradox (FBI Thriller 22)

I was in for a big surprise. I met and married Landry Sparrow. For the first time since my family died, I actually started to enjoy life. My Sparrow in-laws welcomed me. I hadn’t known them long when they died needlessly in the auto accident, but Landry, Eric, and I had one another, so our life continued. And the crematorium became as much mine as theirs. I will admit I never in my wildest imaginings dreamed I’d be cremating people for a living. But life can’t be predicted, can it? I already knew for certain everything could change in the blink of an eye. As it did again when you found the belt buckle in Lake Massey.

Five and a half years ago, one month after Landry and I married, I found a white envelope in the mailbox with only my name printed on it and a single sheet enclosed. It was written in black ink, block printing, no address, no signature. The writer said he recognized me, he knew who I was because he had my photo. He was sorry he hadn’t found me on that magical day fifteen years ago today, even though he’d searched for me. But here I had turned up, right under his nose. He loved Fate, he wrote. And irony. Didn’t I find it amusing the police still wanted me for questioning, that some still believed I’d killed my family?

I guess you could say my heart stopped. I thanked heaven I was alone at the time so Landry wouldn’t see me with the letter. The monster had found me, not the other way around. And he’d recognized me? My hair wasn’t blond now. It was nearly black, and I wore brown contact lenses. He said he was thinking about calling the police himself to see if they’d haul me in and put me on trial for murdering my family in Willicott so long ago, but didn’t I know? There was no expiration date on murder?

I could see him laughing when he suggested I take his letter to Chief Masters. He couldn’t wait to see how the chief and the fine people of Haggersville greeted my terrible accusation. And against whom? Some imaginary ghost? He suggested the chief would think I’d written the letter myself. And what would I do then? Of course, he was right. I couldn’t take his note to the police because it would bring who I really am, Albie Pierson, into the open, ruin my name and my marriage, possibly even end with my being tried for murdering my own family.

He wrote that he’d waited too long to kill me but now he wouldn’t have to wait much longer. I’d never know when he would come for me. I knew he was laughing when he wrote that, so pleased with himself that he could terrify me again.

And he had. How could I protect myself? I had no idea who he was. I felt the terror of that long-ago day again when he was searching the house for me, when he was only a thin wall away. And then I realized his recognizing me, his taunting me, was the best thing that could have happened. I was no longer that innocent teenager, hadn’t been Albie Pierson hiding beneath those stairs for years. I realized I had no intention of showing the note to Chief Masters or telling anyone, but not for the reasons he believed. I wasn’t going to let him kill me. I was going to find him and kill him exactly as he’d killed them. I was going to avenge my family.

How did I find him? I knew after his letter he had to live in town, in Haggersville, the very town I’d moved to. Otherwise how could he have seen me, recognized me? I realize, now, it was he who murdered all of those people whose bones you found in Lake Massey. He was completely insane. I made a list of all the older men in town who’d lived here a long time. I bought a handgun, but I still had no good plan.

I wondered, since he was taking such pleasure in taunting me, torturing me, would he become careless? So I ignored his letter. I knew he’d see me, see if I was upset or find out I was planning to leave. I showed no response. I went about my business as if nothing had happened. He’d left the first letter in my mailbox on a day he knew I’d be the first one home so Landry wouldn’t see it. I set up a video camera looking out over the mailbox in case he left another. A week later he wrote another letter, this one shorter, describing most everything I’d done the day before, most all of my movements. The second letter he left at the crematorium after hours, just inside the front door, again with only my name on the envelope. What he didn’t know, of course, was that I’d set up a camera there, too. And there he was, clear as day, leaving that envelope, walking away with a jaunty step. It was Mr. Henry LaRoque.

He was on my list of possible suspects, but needless to say, I was still shocked.

I confess to killing Mr. Henry LaRoque five years ago. I broke into his house late at night, surprised him, and tied his hands and feet. Then I stood over him and stabbed him wherever I wished, for well over an hour. At first he couldn’t believe I’d actually found out who he was, that I’d actually had the guts to come for him. Soon he was begging to tell me everything I wanted to know if I’d end it. I told him I would if he told me why he’d done it.

Between his screams on that very fine night, the last night of his miserable life, he gasped out that my family were his first victims, said they showed him what joy there was in killing, helped him lay out his plans for all the pleasant golden years ahead of him, and he loved them for it. It was magical for him, killing the new family at Gatewood exactly where another family had been butchered.

Then that evil old man told me things I never expected to hear, things that hardly seemed possible, yet I wasn’t surprised. He told me he kept a journal, detailing exactly what he’d done and to whom and when, and he told me about his box of treasures, each tagged so he’d always remember the day, the victim. He kept it all in his study, hidden behind some old theological tomes no one ever looked at. He admitted he’d taken off my father’s belt before he’d thrown him into Lake Massey. He didn’t know I’d seen him do it. That Star of David belt buckle given to my father by an Israeli colonel years ago, his thanks for saving his daughter from a suicide bomber in a café in Jerusalem. LaRoque said it was his favorite, his reminder of that day, the first day of his journey when he’d stripped that belt off my father’s body, wrapped it around his hand, and put it in his jacket pocket to keep it from getting more blood on it. By this time he was delirious with pain, nearly insane with it, begging me to end it. I knew he was dying now, but I didn’t give him a final stab in the heart and end it. No, I left him there to think about how I’d killed him, the teenager he hadn’t managed to find.

Your much-beloved Mr. Henry LaRoque was a serial killer, and he was proud of it. He basked in it to the end. That old man, that monster, claimed he’d butchered people for years and thrown their bodies into Lake Massey. Fifty-one people, he said. He was proud of how easily he’d fooled everyone in town. He was Mr. Henry to them all, so popular he never had to pay for his own coffee.

I have never had a single regret about killing him. I think he couldn’t help writing me that note when he realized who I was. After all, I was the girl who got away, the only person who’d seen what he’d done, the only person who could appreciate who and what he was, what he’d accomplished. Would he have tried to kill me? Or would he have taken more pleasure from my knowing he might?

When his ruined corpse was delivered to the crematorium, I unwrapped him, gloried in what he looked like now, in death. I took my father’s belt and put it around his pants, replaced his body with another’s due to be cremated. I drove Mr. Henry and his precious treasure to the lake and dumped him where he’d dumped my family, off the end of the dock at Gatewood. I’d finally avenged them. Perhaps now they could rest in peace. Against all odds, I’d kept my promise and I’d killed him.

I was the one who struck down Gunny—Leigh Saks—with a brick, a spur-of-the-moment reaction to being terrified of what she w

ould tell the FBI hotline about that belt buckle. What could she possibly have said? I didn’t know what he’d told her that long-ago day. But I’d heard she’d seen Mr. Henry with that belt buckle, and I knew it might lead them directly to me. I didn’t have time to question Leigh myself. I acted. Now, of course, I realize she didn’t know anything that would have implicated me. All she did was watch that profane old man polishing and fondling my father’s belt buckle.

I am grateful Leigh survived. I am grateful that whatever it was in her brain that had made her simple miraculously corrected itself. I have no understanding of how that happened. But I wish her the best in her new life. Perhaps one day she will consider I did her a favor.

I hope you are alone in my house, that neither Landry nor Eric is there with you. I’ve written to them separately. The pain it will bring Landry makes me want a magic wand, to wish away that any of this ever happened, that I ever came to Haggersville. But I did. He will have to face it, deal with it, as I will.

Again, my husband and my brother-in-law have no idea what I have done or who I really am. They are innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever.

Yet again I have to leave my home.

I predict the two of you will prosper.

She’d printed out her name, then signed it

Albie Pierson, aka Susan Pierson Hadden Sparrow

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