Shades of Eva (2 page)

The hair on Amelia’s neck stood up as it
always seemed to when someone was about to draw on her. Greer’s
right arm tensed, but in an instant Amelia had the sites of her M9
aimed directly at Greer’s forehead.

Greer moved for his weapon.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Amelia
called out, freezing Greer where he stood. “This thing makes a hell
of a mess! Now, put your hands out to your sides where I can see
them.”

Greer did as he was told.

“Turn around and face away from me!”

He complied.

Amelia lifted his shirttail. She removed a
pistol from his waistband and took a step back to examine it. It
was a Ruger SR9…another 9 mm. She recognized it by its distinctive
D-shaped magazine release. She punched it and its clip dropped into
her hand. It appeared to be fully loaded. She put the Ruger and its
clip into a side pocket of her camos and ordered Greer to turn back
around.

Greer turned to face her. With a pretentious
grin he asked, “You’re that chick from River Bluff, aren’t
you?”

Amelia backed to the Nissan’s front fender
and took in a deep breath. His words reeked of disrespect, yet this
was she thought she’d encounter if she ever found this murderer,
ever got to finally speak to the monster who ruined everything.

“I suppose I am that chick!” Amelia replied,
sweeping the M9 in a sideways gesture toward the Z’s driver side
door. “Now get in!”

Greer turned his head right and then left,
hoping there might be someone on the block to witness this. There
wasn’t. There wasn’t even a dog within eyesight to alarm. The
neighborhood seemed as empty as deep space. Greer thought
momentarily of screaming, or running, but for some reason he
didn’t. If he had done either, it might have saved his life.

“What did I do?” he asked, trying to stall
things, knowing full well what he did.

Amelia only stared at him and gestured him
again to proceed into the car.

Greer took one last look around, cursing the
neighborhood for its age and inactivity. Any other time he’d come
out to taste the air of his homeland, there were ten cars and twice
as many people milling around. But this wasn’t his land, and it
wasn’t his home. There was nothing there to offer him distraction.
No friends. No fellow gang members to intervene. Even his aunt
Ester, who seldom left the premises, wasn’t home to call on. There
was no one. The last time he saw this chick from River Bluff she
was laying in the street, screaming and helpless. He should have
finished the job back then, he was thinking, for look what mercy
had gotten him.

He reluctantly moved to the Z’s driver’s
side door, cursing himself, this time, for what he thought was
softness, and got into the Z.

Amelia moved to the passenger side and
opened its door, pulled its seat forward, and got into the back
seat with Greer’s Pontiac still idling in front of them.

“I can’t leave my car like—”

“Put your seat belt on, Jackson. Aunt
Ester’s car will be okay.”

Greer’s eyes grew wide with fury. Amelia
only stared at him with an emotionless grin. It was then when he
realized that this wasn’t the typical widow. She was going to kill
him for what he did. He knew then he should have turned himself
into police for what he’d done.

He put his seatbelt on as Amelia had
instructed him to, and reluctantly, he settled the Nissan into its
fated, southern course.

***

The
sun had set on River Bluff that night, enveloping time and
everything that happened that day in a blanket of blazing secrecy.
Amelia rode that secrecy to the river house and drove the driveway
back to her rental home’s front porch. She doused the Nissan’s
lights and sat idling quietly in the driveway, allowing the cool
flow of air-conditioned air to flow across her pallid face.

She looked down at the backs of her hands,
and then turned them palms up. There were still faint speckles of
blood on her fingers, but at least they weren’t shaking anymore.
She coiled them into fists and then looked to the ring on her left
hand, her wedding ring, itself tinged with a small dot of blood.
Joe had worked so hard to pay for that ring. She eyed its modest
Princess cut solitary diamond and twisted her hand to see its
slight sparkle in the moonlight, and then slid the ring and its
hinged clasp off and over her fingertip.

She opened the hinge wrap that held the
band, then withdrew the solitaire, wiped it gently on the tail of
her shirt, then closed a fist around it and began to cry.

Midnight came.

The moon was high overhead; the flow of the
St. Joseph, serene. It blended into a cacophony of singing locusts
and crickets that made Amelia smile, if not relax for just a
minute. The river gave the air around Eva’s old house an arid
sweetness to go along with its gentle song. It, too, stilled Amelia
for a moment.

Amelia had rented the old McGinnis
place a week ago from a man named Armstrong, who forty years ago
had purchased it from Eva’s mother. Driving by, Amelia had noticed
a For Rent sign posted in its front yard with the landowner’s phone
number written on it. It was an opportunity that seemed more like
fate than coincidence, for Amelia’s mother had asked her, just two
weeks ago from her deathbed, to look into Eva’s past.

Amelia could not say no to such a request.
What daughter could? And what could better represent a little
girl’s past than the home where that little girl grew up…or at
least grew to the age of fourteen.

Eva McGinnis was fourteen years old when she
was committed to Coastal State, the same 1950s-era mental
institution where Amelia’s late aunt Emily had been committed.

Eva had borne two sons. One’s name was
Elmer. He was born inside the Asylum in 1954. He would survive less
than three weeks there before he was taken and presumably killed.
The other son’s name was Mitchell. He was born twenty-nine years
ago. Mitchell was the lumberjack, a.k.a. Mark Engram, whom Sophia
had located for Amelia that day in Washington.

Amelia had interest in finding both sons,
but it was Mitchell who had become her primary target. He was the
one alive. This was his mother Eva’s former home. It was his mother
who had gotten raped in this place and sent to an insane asylum in
the wake of that rape. It was Mitchell who had run away from it
all.

Elmer never had a chance!

Amelia, still staring at the pines, heard
her phone ring. It was Christian, again. “Talk to me!”

“—
I’m still in Lansing,”
Christian
said.
“—Think I’ll get a place here for the night.”

“I’m at the rental,” Amelia said. “I think
I’ll stay here.”

Christian gave an audible laugh. Amelia had
yet to spend a night in the place since renting it.
“—That house
has no electricity,”
Christian bellowed.

“I know. Not yet. But I still want to stay a
night here. I need to. I need to try and get a better sense of this
place.”

“—
Alright. Have you talked to Sophia
yet?”

“No, not yet. Why?”

“—
She doesn’t like Neah Bay. It’s trees
and bars, and she doesn’t care for either one.”

Amelia giggled. “That desert rat! I’ll give
her a call before I go to sleep.” Amelia had crossed the yard and
had ascended the creaking steps of the home’s front porch.

“—
So are you okay?”
Christian
said.

Amelia wasn’t okay, but she said otherwise
so as not to alarm her friend. “I feel okay today,” she offered,
trying to sound comforting. She put a key in the entry door’s lock
and turned the knob.

Christian asked,
“—Did you hear anything
from the police about Greer?”

Amelia cleared her throat. “They checked the
address. He wasn’t there.”

Christian fell into an acceptant
silence.

Amelia stepped into the house and shut the
door behind her. “Sure is dark in here,” she said.

“—
Are you sure you want to stay
there?”
Christian replied.
“—Do you even have a bag?”
He
was referring to a sleeping bag.

“I don’t need a bag,” Amelia replied. “Don’t
worry about me. I’ll be okay.” Amelia withdrew a flashlight and
swept it about the floor. A few spiders scurried their ways to the
nearest walls. Amelia turned to her left and started up the
stairway.

“—
What did you find in that attic, by the
way? You never said why you sent Sophia to find Mitchell in
Washington.”

“I think I know who killed Eva’s firstborn
son, Elmer. It was the same guy who raped her. His name’s Fred
Levantle. He was a neighbor. And he had help—from Eva’s brother, no
less.”

Breeching the upper landing, Amelia shined
her light in what used to be Ully’s bedroom.

“—
Eva’s brother?”
Christian
asked.

“Yes, Ulysses. I’ve done a little recon on
the both of them: Ully and this rapist friend of his. Ully’s a real
estate agent in Gary, Indiana, but Levantle’s MIA—literally. He was
active duty Military in 1954, home on leave when Eva pointed a
finger at him. He was AWOL within hours. It’s all in her diary.
He’s been off the grid ever since.”

“—
Army?”

“Yes. Korea. He has a brother down in South
Bend, though. Name’s Ben. He’s a psychologist.”

“—
Think Ben might know where his brother
is?”

“Ben and Ully might be the best chance we
have at locating this pig, although I doubt either one knows where
he is.”

“—
So what’s Mitchell’s role in this? Why
are you bothering with him? Your mom wanted you to investigate Eva,
not her son.”

“This is Mitchell’s family. I need to see
how much he knows, anyway. He needs to be a part of this. It’s his
family who was slaughtered.”

“—
I suppose he should, but what if he
won’t come back with you?”

“Then I’ll shoot him in the head!”

Amelia and Christian shared a laugh at
Mitchell’s expense, but internally, Amelia wasn’t laughing. Any
good son would want to come home knowing what Amelia knew.

“Christian, listen! I need you to meet me
over in Gary tomorrow.”

“—
You said that’s where Eva’s brother
is?”

“Right. I need to do some background work on
him.”

“—
Rattle a cage, huh?”

“Yes, rattle a cage.”

Christian agreed. The two said their
goodbyes and hung up.

***

Amelia was standing in the middle
of Eva’s old bedroom. She
crossed to look out a hazy window toward the moon over the river.
She turned her flashlight off and stood in the moonlight, staring
dreamily out into the darkness overlooking more pines fronting the
water.

There was a single bed frame in the room
with a set of boxed springs set into it, but no mattress. There was
an old chest of drawers tucked into a corner. Amelia opened the top
drawer of the chest and withdrew her wedding ring from her pocket.
She folded it into a piece of a newspaper from inside the chest,
tucked it far back into the drawer, and closed it.

She walked over and sat down on the boxed
springs and looked toward the closet door where all the monsters in
Eva’s diaries used to live. “I’m sorry, Joe,” Amelia spoke, eying
her now empty ring finger. “I’m sorry for what I’ve become.”

A tear made its way to the edge of Amelia’s
chin, a ticklish sensation that took Amelia by surprise. She hadn’t
realized she’d been crying again, and that misrecognition alarmed
her just a bit.

She threw her legs onto the bed, and laid
back.

The room was sweltering. The air was stale
and dry, not ideal for sleep, and the boxed springs were hard and
uneven. Better than the desert floor. Amelia told herself,
reluctantly closing her eyes.

Sleep was a commodity hard to come by in
recent years. Sleep was a land of nightmares, headaches and
flashbacks. It was hard to sleep with explosions going off every
five to ten minutes inside your head. The springs hurt her back;
they seemed to be digging into her scars, and the nerves in her
back seemed to be tightening up again. They felt like piano strings
being pulled taut from each end. She squirmed to settle into the
least uncomfortable position.

Before drifting into a restless sleep,
Amelia whispered, “If he doesn’t come back, I’m going to shoot him
in the head.”

***

Shadow
Journal entry

August 12, 1995

I had yet to meet Jake Meade, but I saw
him a couple times at work in the groves. He struck me as a
carefree, overgrown little kid who most lumberjacks would have put
in his place sooner had it not been for his size. He was WWF big
and proud of it, and he was fearless. Just about everything I
wasn’t. Maybe that’s why I hated him the way I did. Maybe that’s
why I almost killed him. I’m not sure if he had an angel looking
out for him that night, or if that angel was there for me. That
angel wasn’t sure, either. She despised the both of us. ~Mitchell
Rennix
 

Mitchell Rennix

The winter of 1995 gave way to an explosive
spring. On the 19th of April that year, two things happened: I met
Amelia Hawkins, and the nation met Timothy McVeigh. Technically the
nation wouldn’t meet McVeigh for two days, but on the morning of
the 19th we found his introduction.

Posing as Robert Kling, McVeigh—and an
accomplice or two—parked a Ryder truck packed with a couple tons of
ammonium nitrate and nitromethane outside the Murrah Federal
Building in Oklahoma City and blew it up. They killed 168 people.
500-plus were injured in the blast, and the nation has never been
the same.

Though I was hundreds of miles away from OKC
that morning, and hadn’t a friend or relative affected in that
tragedy, my heart went out to the victims and the families
affected. Sixteen children would perish in the incident, and it was
a crying shame. In fact, the blast brought back some old,
whiskey-laden memories. I rode the rails through Oklahoma City
quite a few times in my twenty-nine years on the planet, and had
spent two days and nights there in 1990 when KISS was performing at
the Myriad Convention Center. My hobo roots were only then
beginning to tap the earth.