Let Her Lie, page 5
Ten months ago, after abducting Barbara Yost, the ghostlike Halo Killer had slipped up after seeing a mysterious woman walking on the beach. He was captured and incarcerated, and Yost was rescued from a dingy cabin in the marshland bordering Delaware and Maryland.
And his words filled my head:
Miracle.
Not what, but who.
Could that baby, a local legend with a shocking tie to the Halo Killer, have something to do with his capture? The perfect emotional counterpoint to Jasper’s madness. Storytelling gold! I fought the urge to plot the rest of the story, fictionalize it. That wasn’t my job. I played in facts. Truth.
Why bring Miracle up at all? Could Jasper feel remorse? As he faced death, could he be regretting what he’d done? Could Miracle represent the pinnacle of that guilt? Maybe he needed to see her. Talk to her. Apologize for killing her mother.
As I sat in the car, my brain started to frame the shot. Jasper sitting behind the Plexiglas shield, his expression vacant and cold. Then, a door opens. Miracle appears, a grown woman. Jasper sees her. And in that instant, humanity slips into the eyes of the worst murderer in recent history. A generation of viewers raised on Disney movies melt in front of their smart televisions.
“That’s Beauty and the Beast shit,” I whispered.
As if in answer, my phone went off. It was a text from Zora.
Are you there? Martino just texted me.
I glanced at the time. Twenty minutes had passed. Instead of texting her back, I rushed out of the car and across the parking lot. I threw the door open and scanned the tables as I approached the host.
“Hi, I’m looking for—”
“Martino,” the man said, a huge smile of his face. “He told me you’d be here. I … I just want to say, I loved The Basement. It was amazing.”
“Thanks,” I said, looking away.
As I moved in behind him, I saw Martino for the first time. He sat in a shadowed booth in the far corner of the mostly empty dining room. Bright-blue eyes looked out from a tan face. His expression was flat, but more from Botox than from lack of emotion. When he stood to greet me, he moved with a youthful grace that made me feel older, though I knew he had to be close to twice my age.
“Theo, it’s so great to meet you,” he said.
“Hey … Hi …” I wanted to use his name as he’d used mine, but I still wasn’t sure if it was his first or his last. “Thanks for meeting with me.”
“My pleasure. Sit, sit.” He smiled at the host. “Thanks, Stephen.”
Stephen blushed and stammered something before walking away. I took a seat, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Martino. The perfectly trimmed silver hair. The long fingers, like a musician’s. The androgynous quality of his mannerisms. He caught me staring.
“He’s got you under a spell, I see.”
“What? Who?”
“Jasper. Don’t worry, I don’t blame you. He is a very complicated man.”
“Yeah,” I said, taking a slow breath. “I’m … yeah. Hey, is your name …? Should I …?”
“Martino,” he said, his smile showing shining capped teeth. “Just Martino.”
As I nodded, a server passed the table. She almost bowed to the man as she passed. I stared at her, then turned back to him.
“I’m not famous,” he said, laughing. “Not like you. Or like Jasper.”
“Oh, I …”
“I own three restaurants. And I understand that I’m considered a nice boss. They all want to work for me, that’s all.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing at my face. “It was a long drive.”
Martino squinted. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s great. I really wanted to meet you. And … yeah … he has gotten under my skin. Just a little, I guess.”
“He’s always been like that,” Martino said.
That’s when I noticed the sadness in his eyes. It made me think of a parent who has lost a child.
“Where would you like me to start?” he asked.
“Wherever you want,” I said.
“There’s so much to say, I guess. I don’t want to take your entire evening.”
I laughed. “I’ll listen to everything you want to say. Everything you can remember.” I paused. “What was he like?”
Martino’s eyes grew distant before he answered. “I don’t think anyone really knew.”
* * *
ACT ONE/SCENE 10
EXT. BEACH RESORT MAIN STREET—DAY
MARTINO struts down the sidewalk, past kite shops and colorful eateries. His feathered, shoulder-length hair bounces as he nods and chats with nearly everyone. The bronze Adonis carries a bottle of champagne under his arm, and the most carefree smile imaginable, as he hurries to a party, one hosted by the parents of a killer.
Martino rushed down Rehoboth Avenue, the heart of Delaware’s most popular beach resort. The town was big enough that not everyone knew each other, but everyone certainly knew him. He was a fixture at local parties, along with the Ross-Johnsons. That was where he headed, across Silverlake to the edge of Carpenter’s Beach. To Franklin’s sprawling beachfront home with its crystalline windows and salt-touched breezes. He would be early, but that was okay. Clara wouldn’t mind the help getting everything ready.
When he reached the house, he opened the front door without announcing his presence. He heard voices from the hallway but turned instead to the bar in the great room. Humming to himself, he fixed a dry martini and plopped two pearl onions in before swirling it around.
“Hello,” he called out.
No one answered. So, he moved toward the bedrooms, walking slowly, a warm smile lifting his sun-bronzed cheeks. His lips parted, about to call out again, when Clara’s voice rose up, shrill and near manic.
“Get over here!”
Martino froze. His smile faded. He loved Clara. She was his favorite type, unpredictably fabulous. But as he stood there, overhearing, he thought for the thousandth time that she should never have been a mother. It didn’t suit her. Nor did it suit the boy.
“Hold still.”
Martino disliked the tone. On the balls of his feet, he inched past Jasper’s room. The door was open. Despite himself, he peeked within. It was just a flash, but he saw Clara kneeling, one hand gripping the frail child’s shoulder so tightly that her knuckles whitened. With her other hand, she racked a fingernail across the sharp edge of his collarbone, cutting into the skin. Blood beaded and Jasper flinched.
Martino turned his head, slipping past. His pace quickened as he headed to Franklin’s room in the back. But he was not fast enough to avoid hearing Clara’s venom.
“Really? Really! What? Are you a little baby? Are you? You’re just like your father,” she hissed. “Just like him.”
CHAPTER
6
“IT HAPPENED THAT night,” Martino told me, his bright eyes distant.
“What happened?”
He looked out a darkened window. “You have to understand. Clara knew everything. They had an understanding, even before the marriage. She had no interest in a husband. She just needed a partner. And Franklin being Franklin, he liked the show of it all. The look of confusion. He was a trickster.” Martino laughed, lovingly. “As was often the case, I stayed the night in his room. Once again, everyone knew. Except … the boy. He must have heard something. I don’t know.”
Martino paused. I waited, admittedly impatient.
“I don’t understand.”
“He must have heard something. That’s all I can think. It was late. Franklin had this charming slit of a window above his bedroom door. I remember seeing the boy’s face in it. Like a ghost, really. I had a second to wonder how he got up that high. Then the crash.
“We rushed out into the hallway immediately, but Clara was already there. The boy was crumpled on the hardwood. He wasn’t moving … He must have climbed all the way up there, then slipped. Fell to the floor. She grabbed him … picked him up. And he was so limp. I … I thought he was dead.”
He stopped again. A single tear left a track on his right cheek.
“She kept shaking him. Screaming at him …” Martino’s voice rose. “ ‘Be a man! Be a man!’ ”
I flinched. Everyone in the place stared at us. At the same time, I was enthralled.
“But he was out cold,” Martino said. “Poor little boy.”
“Are you saying he had a head injury?”
Martino squinted at me. “I believe so, yes. But she kept screaming at him. She shook him and shook him. Slapped his face. His eyes never opened.”
He covered his mouth with a hand. I had questions, but I stopped myself.
“I’m sorry,” Martino continued. “But it was horrible. I truly thought the boy lost his life. She took him away while he was still unconscious. That’s when I saw the stepladder. He must have climbed up to peek through the window. At us.”
The lines of his shining face sagged. It was as if a light had flickered out inside the man. But I couldn’t stop myself. As he faltered, my excitement grew.
“He had a brain injury. Are you sure about that?”
He nodded. Maybe my humanity should have outweighed the need I felt. But I reached out and touched the top of his hand that rested on the tabletop between us.
“You blame yourself, don’t you?”
Martino closed his eyes and nodded. “He was never the same after that. Something inside him broke. Like a lightbulb shattered in his soul.”
A lightbulb in his soul? That might have been the corniest thing I had ever heard. I imagined it coming out of some overly dramatic soap opera script. But I hid my reaction, instead focusing on the interview.
“Listen, I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve met so many people like Jasper. And I’ve learned one thing for certain. It is no one’s fault. Sometimes”—my voice lowered to a whisper—“I’m not even sure it’s their fault. But a head injury? I’ve never seen that mentioned in any of the articles about Jasper. That can be a factor. There was a study not too long ago, a highly respected one, that found a correlation between brain trauma and acquired sociopathy.”
Martino shook his head. “The boy was always a little strange. But …”
“Strange and murderer are surprisingly far apart on the spectrum of human behavior. It takes something for a person to cross that line, to stop seeing people as equals and start seeing them as something different. Experiments, toys, dolls, voices—there are so many different variants. So many different patterns to these cases. It’s true that their choice in victims tends to show something about their past. Abuse, isolation, fear—those things can influence the whos and the hows. But they don’t create a killer. Something else does. Something more … biological.”
I watched Martino for a moment before continuing. I could tell he didn’t really buy what I was saying. I could see how deeply responsible he felt for what Jasper had done. For the people he had hurt.
“Trust me. You didn’t have anything to do with it. I promise. Not to be too personal, but his victims were women, Martino. If that night had any true influence on Jasper, he’d have killed men. I’m …”
“Or boys,” Martino interrupted.
“What?” I asked.
“Boys,” Martino repeated.
“None of Jasper’s victims were male.”
His head shook slowly. “I don’t know about that.”
I leaned forward. “What do you know?”
“There was a boy once. His name was … Danny. And a book. An awful, awful book.”
* * *
ACT ONE/SCENE 13
EXT. FRONT PORCH OF RESTAURANT—DAY
Martino holds court at a café table just off the sidewalk, surrounded by smiling faces. His eye wanders and he catches sight of YOUNG JASPER. His blood chills.
After that night, Martino felt a heightened sense of responsibility for the boy. He kept his eyes open. His restaurant sat like a hub at the center of the community. Once fall hit and the season ended, however, it became an enclave. Locals wandered onto the porch or into the bar, depending on the weather. He would sit among them, holding court, each and every day, one eye on the conversation, the other on the street, watching everyone that passed.
It had been years since Jasper’s injury, and the stories filtering back to him grew more and more troubling. Odd behaviors turned strange. Strange turned dark. Dark seemed to be heading toward dangerous.
That day, as he sat at a six-top, surrounded by friends and two of his bartenders, he was almost lost in the moment, enjoying the warm September air against his taut skin. The conversation flowed easier than the cocktails. He was in his element.
Then one of the bartenders facing north craned his neck. “Isn’t that Frankie’s kid?”
His stomach jittered as he spun around. He saw Jasper immediately. Something had changed about the way he moved. His thin arms bent at smooth but odd angles as he walked, almost mantis-like. The boy with him, small for his age, dwarfed Franklin’s son. That one had wide, slopping shoulders and a massive tuft of jet-black hair atop his narrow head.
“Who’s that with him?” Martino asked.
His friend who owned the three arcades on the boardwalk answered. “That’s Danny.”
“Danny?”
“I have no idea who his parents are. Never seen them. Someone mentioned that his mom might live in Seaford. But no one even knows how he gets into town every day. But he’s always there. Spends most of the day at my place. Begs quarters from the changemakers. They like the kid, though. He’s sweet, but dull. I think there’s something wrong upstairs.”
“Huh,” Martino said.
He stared as the two boys passed the porch. Though Jasper didn’t look at the bigger boy, his head tilted closer. And Jasper’s thin lips moving constantly, almost hypnotically. For his part, Danny stared straight ahead, never blinking, nodding over and over again.
“That might be trouble,” Martino muttered.
“What?” his friend said.
At the same moment, a waiter joined the table, carrying a large silver tray loaded with fresh drinks. Martino helped spread them among the crowd. Their conversation lifted over the clank of glass on the metal tabletop, and he turned his attention back to his friends.
* * *
Less than a half hour later, Jasper returned. When Martino saw the boy turn off the boardwalk, alone, he sprang up from his seat.
“Where are you going, boss?” a bartender asked.
Martino put a hand up. “I’ll be right back.”
He raced off the porch toward the boy. Jasper never looked up. He carried a book that seemed half his size, open between his two small hands. His nose nearly touched the pages as he headed straight for Martino, oblivious that anyone was in his path.
“Hello there, son.”
Jasper startled. He slammed the book closed but recovered almost instantly.
“Hello, uncle,” he said in a monotone.
“What do you have there?” Martino asked.
Jasper appeared to consider bolting. Instead, he blinked once, then handed the black-covered book to Martino, who turned it over, looking at the cover picture. It showed the corner of a dingy room with what looked like blood splattered over every surface. Martino read the title aloud, the words slowing as he realized what he held.
“Blood Stain Evidence.”
“It’s mine,” Jasper said. He blinked again. “I found it.”
“This isn’t for you, kiddo,” Martino said, forcing a smile.
“Can I have it back, please?” the boy asked.
“I’m sorry. No.”
Jasper stood looking up at him, stricken, his disappointment palpable.
“Run along home. And tell your father I said hello.”
The boy remained frozen. With a shake of the head, Martino turned and headed back to his porch. He climbed the three plank steps but stopped at the top, wrapping a hand around one of the whitewashed posts as he turned. Jasper still hadn’t moved. The two stared at each other for a moment longer until the boy finally walked away, heading back toward Carpenter’s Beach.
“You coming back?” someone called from the table behind him.
Martino shook his head. “In a minute.”
Shielding the cover of the book from his friends, Martino headed back down the stairs. Walking quickly, he hit the boardwalk and then turned onto Rehoboth Avenue. Two blocks west, he pushed the door of the bookstore open and marched up to the counter.
“Hello, Jan,” he said.
“Hi, Martino,” the owner of the shop said from behind the register. She looked at him over the reading glasses she wore halfway down the bridge of her nose. “What do you have there?”
“I just ran into Franklin’s boy. Did he buy this from you?”
Martino passed the book across the counter. Jan lifted it, giving it a calm once-over.
“No, he didn’t,” she said. “He was wandering around the store on Wednesday, but I haven’t seen him since.”
“Then how’d he get it?” he asked.
Jan clucked her tongue off the roof of her mouth. “That other boy just bought it. Danny, I think his name is.”
CHAPTER
7
SITTING ACROSS FROM me in that dim, peaceful restaurant, I could feel Martino’s sadness thickening the air between us.
“That boy went missing,” he said, his eyes closed. “Not long after that day.”
“You said his mother had it hard. Maybe something happened. Maybe she had to leave town. Maybe child services found out.”
When his eyes reopened, I saw guilt and loss entwined within his expression.
“I never said anything.”
“Why?” I whispered.
“Because I loved him,” Martino said.
“Jasper?”
A dark laugh burst out between his impossibly white teeth. “God, no. His father.”
We sat in silence for a while. When I finally glanced at the time, it was later than I expected.
“I’m sorry,” Martino said. “I didn’t mean to go on as long as I did.”
