I now realized I'd locked away memories of a happy childhood, but I wasn't sure if they were real memories or the inventions of a miserable, abused child. I had to face my past, which meant facing my biological parents. Or at least the one who'd reached out.
First, though, I needed to know exactly what they'd done. No more nightmares based on half-remembered stories. I needed facts. I got ready, then realized the library wouldn't be open yet. I couldn't stomach the thought of breakfast, so I just lay on the bed for another hour, haunted by my dreams, worried about my future.
When I opened my apartment door, I halted. Then I tried to figure out what had stopped me. A sound? A smell? A flicker of movement?
I looked down the hall. Three closed apartment doors, plus the stairwell. I inhaled. Just the faint smell of pine cleaner. I listened. Nothing. Really nothing--that church hush I'd noticed yesterday still enveloped the corridor. It was strange, actually, the silence and the peace, when I was so accustomed to the usual assault on my senses. While I still noticed smells and sounds, they didn't seem to have the same effect on me here in Cainsville. I could say it was like the other day in Chicago, when I'd been too shocked to notice anything, but this felt different. Like stepping off a busy street into a library. Maybe it was just the difference of small town life.
But something had caught my attention out here. I stood there, feet on the lintel, unable to step into the hall.
I looked down. There was something on the floor, just outside my doorway. Some kind of dark gray powder, almost hidden on the hardwood. I bent. Scattered powder.
No, not scattered. It seemed to form lines. A pattern?
I rubbed the back of my neck. Then, after a glance down the hall, to be sure no one was watching, I hunkered down with my face almost to the floor, trying to get a better look. It might be lines. It might even be a pattern. Or I might be an idiot, prostrate on the floor, staring at dropped cigarette ash.
The more I stared, the more certain I became that it was ash. I could even detect a faint smoky smell.
I shook my head, went back into the apartment, and grabbed my brand-new dustpan and broom. I swept up the ash, dumped it, and headed off to the library.
The Internet confirmed that the Larsens had killed four couples. One was dating, two were engaged, one married. All were in their early twenties.
The Larsens themselves were only twenty-six when they'd been arrested. They'd been born on the same date, in the same Chicago hospital, delivered by the same obstetrician. The media had made much of that coincidence. I don't know why. It only meant that their mothers had met in the maternity ward and become friends, so Pamela and Todd grew up together. To hear the tabloids tell it, though, you'd think some nurse had injected them with Serial Killer Serum in their cribs. Or practiced satanic rites on them while their mothers slept.
Speaking of satanic rites...
Normally, when couples kill, it's about sex. Brady and Hindley, the Gallegos, the Bernardos ... Torture and rape and murder as a cure for the common sex life. But none of the Larsens' victims had been sexually assaulted. All the indignities committed on the bodies had occurred postmortem. Eventually, the experts came to realize these weren't sex murders. They were ritual sacrifices. What kind of ritual? Well, that had been a little less clear. It still was.
There were five elements of the murders identified as ritualistic. An unknown symbol carved into each thigh. Another symbol painted on the stomach with woad, a plant-based blue dye. A twig of mistletoe piercing the symbol on the women's stomachs. A stone in the mouths. And a section of skin removed from each back--which was the part I'd vaguely remembered hearing about and had mentally exaggerated into the flayed corpses of my nightmares.
There. I had the facts. Cold facts. My parents had brutally murdered eight people. And now, knowing that, I was going to see them.
I couldn't face the Larsens. Not wouldn't. Couldn't. There was, apparently, no way to get near either of them. Not right now.
At the library, I'd researched the prisons where they were being held according to old articles. Then I looked up the phone numbers, returned to the apartment, made the calls, and got the news. Three months ago, Todd Larsen had been transferred to an undisclosed prison for an undisclosed security reason. I told the officials I was his daughter. The bored clerk on the other end replied that I was welcome to fill out the required forms to establish that, and if approved, they'd tell me where he was being held. Then I'd need to contact that prison, fill out more forms, complete a background check, wait another month or two, and maybe, just maybe, be allowed to see him. When the clerk asked where to send the forms, I told her not to bother.
Then I called the facility holding Pamela Larsen to ask about visiting her and discovered that her visitation privileges had been revoked temporarily. When I asked how long that would last, I couldn't get a straight answer. The only contact she was allowed was with her lawyer--and apparently she hadn't hired one since firing Gabriel Walsh.
I decided to make breakfast. Then I realized I'd bought coffee and bread, but had no coffeemaker and nothing to put on toast. Back to the diner to eat, then.
When I reached the first floor, Grace was in the hall, lawn chair on her arm. Without a word, she handed it to me and marched ahead. Outside, I handed it back. She sniffed, clearly put out that I wasn't going to set it up for her. I softened the blow by saying, "I'm heading to the diner. Can I grab you a scone?"
"You ever go to the diner and don't get me one, you'll be looking for lodgings elsewhere, girl. I want a coffee, too. Cream and sugar. Bring the cream on the side or it'll make the coffee cold."
"The scone is my treat. The coffee I'm willing to get but not on my dime."
She muttered and rooted around in her pocket, then dropped coins into my palm.
Mick and Margie
Margie was not having a good morning. Margie had not had a good morning--or a good day--since 1993. That was the year she graduated from elementary school and left Cainsville. It'd been only temporary, hopping onto the bus for high school each morning and returning before dinner, but it had been enough.
At the time, she'd have said she changed for the better. Last week, she'd come across a stack of old yearbooks in her mother's attic, and she'd cringed as she leafed through the pages, seeing her thin face and sunken eyes. Worse was her expression. A defiant smirk. And the messages her "friends" wrote? None that she'd want her young nieces and nephews to read.
Margie--rechristened Mick in high school--had been voted most likely to end up dead. Her best friend, Nathalie--rechristened Nate--was "most likely to end up in jail." Their schoolmates got the prophecies right; they'd just mixed them up. By twenty, Nathalie was dead of an overdose. A year later, Margie was in jail.
She got fifteen years for knifing the girl who'd sold Nathalie the drugs. It sounded good--avenging a friend. Eventually that helped her get parole from a sympathetic board. The truth, one she only admitted to herself, was that she hadn't knifed the bitch for Nathalie. She'd just wanted free dope.
She'd been out for two years now. Clean for nine. But life hadn't rewarded her turnaround. She supposed she still hadn't earned it. After eighteen months of trying to make it in Chicago, she'd come home to Cainsville at the insistence of her family. A new guy owned the diner. An ex-con. He would cut her some slack and give her a job. And she'd be home.