Secrets to the Grave (22 page)

There was very little literature to draw from on the subject of childhood memory, particularly childhood memory of traumatic events. Did children’s memories function in the same way as adults’? Or were the memories of children more influenced or distorted by emotional responses? Nobody really knew. There was even less information available on how best to pull those memories out and help the child cope with them.

Anne had called her professor for advice. His suggestions had been to tread very carefully, not to ask leading questions, and to go with her gut.

“I’m sure we’ll have a lot more data on the subject after this mess down in Manhattan Beach is over,” he said. “But for now you’ve got good instincts, Anne. Use them.”

Everyone in the field of child psychology, as well as those on the front lines protecting children from abuse, were watching the developing McMartin preschool sex-abuse case in Manhattan Beach, south of Los Angeles, where staff of the preschool had been accused of horrific crimes against the children in their charge.

It was a case that immediately struck a nerve with everyone who cared about children. People were outraged at the very suggestion of sexual abuse. The allegations had been made in ’83. The pretrial investigation was still ongoing three years later. But rumors about how the children involved were being interviewed were bringing more than a little doubt about the veracity of the testimony being elicited—at least among psychologists.

Improper suggestive interviewing techniques could easily mislead and confuse small children, rendering their testimony unreliable—to say nothing of potentially causing psychological damage to the children.

Maybe she knew more about this than she realized, Anne thought. But she still felt like she was working without a net.

Haley had colored a page of chickens all red. Was that because of all the blood she must have seen the night she and her mother were attacked? Or did she just like the color red? Or had there been red chickens at her home out in the country?

“Why are your chickens red?” she asked.

Haley just shrugged and turned the page to a picture of kittens.

“I have kitties,” she said. “At my house.”

“You do?”

“When can I go home?”

“You’re going to come and stay with Vince and me for a while.”

“My mommy will miss me. Can my kitties come and stay too?”

“Hmmm ... I don’t know,” Anne said. “We’ll have to see about that.”

“When Mommy says that she means no.”

Anne smiled and stroked a hand over the little girl’s unruly mop of curls.

“Hey, would you draw a picture for me?” Anne asked, reaching for the tablet of blank paper. “Would you draw me a picture of your house and your kitties?”

“Okay. I like to draw.”

She chose a brown crayon and started her rendition of a mamma cat and her babies. In the background she drew her house. Far off to one side of the page she drew a large black figure with red eyes.

“Who is that?” Anne asked, holding her breath for the answer.

Haley shrugged and colored the grass yellow.

“Is this a person?” Anne asked, tapping a finger below the imposing character looming off to the side.

Haley nodded.

“Does this person have a name?”

“Bad Monster,” she said, and then looked up at Anne. “Are there kids at your house?”

“No. Do you have other kids for friends?”

“Sometimes Wendy comes. She’s eleven. That’s more than four. That’s more than seven. When I’m seven I’m gonna ride a bike.”

“Good for you.”

“Big kids ride bikes.”

“Does your friend Wendy ride a bike?”

“Uh-huh. Her mommy is Sara.”

“Sara Morgan?” Anne asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“I know Wendy,” Anne said. “Does Bad Monster have a name?”

“
Bad Monster
,” Haley repeated impatiently. “Can Wendy come and play with me?”

“Maybe,” Anne said. “We’ll see.”

“Uh-oh.”

Anne chuckled.

Haley paused in her coloring to take a drink from the crazy purple bendable straw Franny had brought.

“It feels funny,” she complained, frowning, tears welling up seemingly out of nowhere.

Anne rubbed her back. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”

“No! No!” she cried, curling her fingers against her throat as if she were trying to pull something away.

Anne could see the hysteria building. She knew exactly how it felt—like an avalanche coming down, like a tsunami wave crashing.

“You’re okay, Haley. I’m right here. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you,” she said as the little girl fell against her, sobbing. “It’s okay. You’re okay, sweetheart. You’re safe.”

Anne didn’t tell her not to cry. She knew that sometimes crying was like opening the valve on a pressure cooker, and once the steam was released the worst of the panic passed with it. She did what she would have wanted someone to do for her: She was a rock, an anchor, a sponge to absorb the tears and wring them out until they were spent.

After a few minutes she felt Haley’s body relax against her. Asleep.

Without moving the sleeping girl, Anne looked at the drawing she had left on the bedside tray and studied Bad Monster. Was Bad Monster black or had Bad Monster worn black clothing? Or was the color associated with fear? Maybe Bad Monster
was
the fear she felt metastasized into an entity, something she could isolate and push away from her sense of self.

The answers were only easy after you had them, Anne thought. Until then there were only puzzle pieces.

35

Dennis was angry. Miss Navarre hadn’t shown up all day. He had waited for her, looked for her, asked the stupid nurses where she was and when she was coming. And she never showed up or called or anything.

He had even done his stupid reading assignment and everything. How could she just not show up?

Maybe she was dead. Maybe she was in a car accident and ran her car into the back of a tractor-trailer and cut her stupid head off. That would be funny. He could picture her decapitated head still lecturing him as it lay on the pavement.

That made him laugh.

She would have asked him why he thought that was funny.

He imagined running up and kicking her head like a soccer ball, and her head flying through the air. He wouldn’t have to listen to her then.

He laughed harder, but held his pillow up to cover his face so no one would hear him.

The hospital was quiet now. All the crazies were drugged and in bed asleep instead of babbling to themselves in the halls and in the common rooms. The lights in the rooms were off. The lights in the halls were low.

Dennis liked this time of night. He knew what time the nurse would come by. Sometimes he would pretend to be asleep, then a few minutes later he would sneak out of his room and roam around in the dark. He liked the idea that just about everyone else was asleep and he could pretend he had the place to himself and could do anything he wanted.

Sometimes he would sneak into other people’s rooms and just stand there watching them sleep, imagining the things he could do to them if he still had his knife.

Sometimes he would hide in the lounge near the nurses’ station, waiting. Arlene, the skinny head nurse on the night shift, smoked, and she would go outside to do it because smoking wasn’t allowed in the building. The short, fat nurse, Betty, would go with her, and then no one was at the desk.

They were never gone for more than ten minutes, but in ten minutes Dennis could sneak behind the desk and steal stuff. He never took big things. He would steal a pen or some paperclips or candy the nurses kept stashed. Or he would go into the trash and steal a newspaper someone had already thrown away.

He had never been a very good reader, but now it was the only way he could find out what was going on in the world outside the hospital—other than his preferred method of eavesdropping. He always looked for articles about Peter Crane or the Dodgers.

Nowadays the stories with Crane in them were about the trial that would happen sometime soon. There had been all kinds of delays already, and pretrial motions—which Dennis really didn’t understand. But there would always be a paragraph about Dr. Crane and what he had
all-ed-ged-ly
done to Miss Navarre, and how he was suspected in those murders where the women had their eyes and mouths glued shut. That was the part Dennis liked to read about.

He imagined now what it would be like to glue Miss Navarre’s eyes and mouth shut so she couldn’t look at him or tell him what he shouldn’t do. That would be cool.

Nurse Betty walked past his door without looking in.

Dennis slipped out of his bed. He counted under his breath to a hundred, then cracked the door open and stuck his head out to see if the coast was clear. The hall was empty.

He went out into the hall in his stocking feet because that way he didn’t make any noise at all, and he could run and slide on the slippery floor. He scurried from shadowed doorway to shadowed doorway to the intersection of hallways where the nurses’ station was.

The two nurses were at the desk yakking away while Arlene dug in her purse for her cigarettes. Then they were on the way down the hall away from Dennis, going for the front door.

Dennis slipped behind the counter, eyes scanning the lower counter for good stuff. He grabbed some Jolly Ranchers from a candy dish and stuck them in a pocket of his pajama bottoms. He pulled the front page of the newspaper out of the trash and scanned it, his heart jumping at the big black headline: GRUESOME MURDER ROCKS RURAL OAK KNOLL.

Dennis got so excited he thought he might pee his pants. A murder! A
gruesome
murder! Maybe someone had murdered Miss Navarre.

He folded up the paper and tucked it under his arm. He was about to beat it out of there with his treasures when he spotted Arlene’s purse sitting open on the desk.

The bag was huge and full of all kinds of junk that looked like it had just been thrown into it like it was a garbage bag. Her wallet was on top. Dennis glanced down the hall. No sign of the nurses coming back.

Very carefully, he opened the wallet. There was a lot of cash. Maybe a hundred dollars. He wanted to take it all, but then she would know she’d been robbed. Better to take what she wouldn’t miss right away. He pulled out a twenty from a bunch of twenties, and one ten out of four, and a couple of ones, and stuffed the money in his other pocket.

He was about to put the wallet back when his eye caught on something deeper in the bag. A yellow Bic lighter. It must have been her spare. Now
that
was a prize.

Dennis lifted the lighter and hurried out of the nurses’ station. He made his way back to his room the same way he had come, ducking from recessed doorway to doorway. He was halfway to his room when he heard the nurses coming back. The soles of their shoes squeaked against the floor every few steps.

Dennis held still where he was for what seemed like forever, waiting for one of them to come down the hall and catch him. But they stopped at the nurses’ station and Nurse Betty said, “Jeez, Arlene, you left your purse sitting open. You should stick it in a drawer. One of the crazies will make off with it.”

Dennis snickered to himself and shot down to the next doorway and the next doorway to his room.

He flicked the lighter a couple of times, just to watch the flame burn, excited at the prospects of what he might do with it. Burn this fucking place to the ground.

But not tonight.

Tonight he stashed all his new treasures in his special hiding place under the mattress, and climbed in bed to sleep over the top of them and dream dreams of bright orange flames ... and freedom.

36

Gina had considered three different choices. She had made the wrong one.

How stupid.

Now she was going to die. Not in the same way Marissa had died, thank God. There was a gun to her back. At least it would be fast.

She should have let bad enough alone. She should have packed her things and left or at least kept her mouth shut or called the sheriff’s tip line. Twenty-five thousand was a lot of money.

She was crying. She didn’t want to die. Her feet felt like lead weights. She could hardly move them forward.

She begged. She promised. She pleaded.

She was told to shut up and cracked across the back of the head with the gun. Instantly dizzy, she stumbled and went down on her knees in the dirt.

She was told to get up. Hard to do with her hands taped behind her back. Why not just die here, on this spot? What was the difference? Dead was dead.

But her killer had other ideas.

She was yanked upward by one arm from behind. She got her feet under her and moved forward.

There was no light but moonlight and the headlights behind them. There was no road but the fire road. There would be no other traffic.

No one would save her, and no one would find her. Coyotes would eat her body.

She was turned roughly and marched off the path a few feet. The skeletons of a couple of long-abandoned buildings were like modern sculptures in the near distance. On the ground in front of her were what looked like old storm cellar doors.

She hadn’t thought of it in years, but now she had the clearest memory of the storm cellar doors at her grandmother’s house back East. She had been nine years old. She remembered her brother opening the doors and daring her to go down into the dark, dank cellar. She hadn’t wanted to, but he dared her, and she walked down the stone steps only to have him close the doors behind her.

Her killer stepped in front of her, still holding the gun on her, and reached down to open one side of the door, revealing a large hole in the ground.

There was no such thing as a storm cellar in California.

Her killer turned to open the other door.