Let Her Lie, page 7
“Like Bender’s sister?”
I recoiled despite my best effort. It was Bender’s sister who’d led me down the rabbit hole. I blamed her for the scandal, 100 percent. Our affair was common knowledge, but nothing else. As far as the reports went, It had been an anonymous source that I had failed to vet. One that led me to conclude that Bender had been falsely accused. Which led to the defamation suit by the sheriff’s department in Tulsa. The Twitter exchange between me and the producer. None of that mattered, though. What hit me was that he shouldn’t have known that.
I took a breath, steadying my nerves. “Jasper, we don’t have time to go into that. All I’m saying is that you were much younger when you … for your first victim. Thirteen or fourteen. Correct?”
“Danny was no victim,” Jasper spat back at me.
“What would you call him?”
“A horrible mistake.”
“How so?” I asked.
“How so? Are you serious?”
I just nodded and waited, trying to regain my composure. Jasper’s eyes nearly cut right through mine. But I held my ground. I let him make the next move.
Jasper shook his head slowly. Then he looked past me. Maybe at the camera; I couldn’t be sure.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen. But I had read some books and looked up a number of articles. I just assumed that it would be boys. Because of my father, maybe. I just overthought it. When it happened—when I … chose … Danny—I knew it wasn’t right. It was all wrong. I felt no relief. No, the voice just got angry. It yelled at me. Like she did.
“So, Danny isn’t real. He’s not part of this, Theodore. You need to understand that, or you won’t understand anything else. She was the first one. I knew it the minute I saw her on the beach.” His head shook slowly. “And none of my preparations mattered. Not that time.”
When he mentioned seeing her on the beach, my heart thumped against my chest. I grabbed the edge of the table between us.
“Are you talking about the woman on the beach, from that first story you told me?”
“No,” Jasper said, frustrated. “Please, listen to me. I’m talking about the first one.”
My thoughts spun. “She was on the beach too. Jane Doe—or, I mean, Abbie Henshaw? The Miracle Baby’s mother?”
“Yes! Precisely. I believe that was her name. Can I continue? It happened right after I learned my father had passed.”
* * *
ACT ONE/SCENE 17
INT. DOCTOR’S OFFICE—DAY
We see an entirely new side of the Halo Killer. As Dr. Jasper Ross-Johnson, he sits behind an immaculately clean desk. Over his perfectly pressed shirt and tie, he wears the white coat of a doctor, a healer. The light from his lamp sparkles off his frighteningly smooth skin. The phone rings. It is a call from his mother.
As he sat behind his desk, waiting for his first patient of the day, Jasper had no idea it would begin later that night. He had been busy, perfecting his trade. Recording his practice. But he did not feel ready. In his studies, he still left faint traces of evidence behind, particularly on fabric surfaces. Such things would get him caught. Thrown behind bars. And Jasper knew he could never abide captivity.
In the moment, he wasn’t even thinking about it. Not directly, at least. The hunger was always there, but at work he could keep it below the surface and focus his attention on the necessary skills: Lift the corners of your mouth into a smile. Don’t forget your brows. Make eye contact for three seconds, no more. Laugh and glance out the window. Comment on the weather.
Jarringly, his phone rang. He snatched it up.
“Yes.”
“Dr. Ross-Johnson,” the nurse/receptionist said, her tone nervous. “Um, there’s a woman on the phone. She says she’s your mother?”
His eyes widened when he heard that. The movement was minute, barely perceptible. Yet his reaction made him angry, for it was unpracticed.
“Put her through, please. Thank you,” he said, with purposeful inflection.
The line clicked. He let out a silent breath before she spoke.
“Hello, Jasper.”
“Mother,” he said, looking out the window at a cardinal sitting on the branch of a pine tree.
“I’m fine,” she snapped. “Thanks so much for asking.”
“How are you?” he asked, his eyes unblinking.
She laughed. It was a bitter sound, one he had not heard in a wonderfully long time.
“Your father is dead.”
She dropped the news like the strike of a weapon. Jasper did not flinch. Nor did he respond.
“Did you hear me?”
“I did,” he said.
“The funeral is on Sunday. At the church on Rehoboth Avenue … of course.”
“Are you attending?” he asked.
“Of course not.”
“I can buy you a plane ticket.”
She laughed again. “No, thank you.”
“Okay.”
The line remained silent for a few seconds. Jasper could hear his mother’s breathing. In it, he also heard her unspoken words. BE A MAN, Jasper!
“Will you be going?” she asked, as if she could not care less.
“No,” he said.
“No? Are you serious? Whatever he was, he’s your father. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” She left space for him to answer. When he didn’t, she continued, “I assume I can expect the same from you. I don’t really care, Jasper. You need to understand that.”
“I do, Mother.”
“I do, Mother,” she mocked. “Do you? Do you have any idea what it’s been like? Your father’s … behaviors … were bad enough. But you … Whatever! It doesn’t matter. I felt compelled to tell you. Now I have. Enjoy your life, Dr. Ross-Johnson. You pathetic little …”
Her voice trailed off, muffled by the sound of her hanging up the phone. Jasper laid his receiver gently in the cradle and continued to stare at the blood-red cardinal until it flew off. When it did, his hand seemed to move without permission. Two fingers pinched together where his eyebrows used to be.
* * *
Late that night, Jasper moved along the empty beach. The surf ran up the sand to his left, hissing to a stop a few feet from his path before retreating once again. Though he stared straight ahead, south along the coast, he felt utterly alone. As if all the people throughout the world had simply ceased to exist. There was Jasper. And there was this place. Nothing else.
Eventually, he saw the first twinkle of light coming from the windows of a dozen homes that sat atop the dune, overlooking the ocean as if they owned it. At one time, this had been his home. Jasper kept moving as names listed in his head. D’Angelo, Frantz, Cheever, the past owners of each fabulous home. Maybe they were gone, the houses sold to the nouveau riche. Maybe not. In a way, it didn’t matter to Jasper. He wasn’t walking in the present anymore. Since his mother’s phone call, he had slipped through time. Somehow trapped in a past he had no desire to revisit.
He stopped in front of his childhood home. Standing just where the dune slowly rose, he stared up at the behemoth and felt nothing but an icy finger tracing the line of his spine. Then a flash of movement in the shadowed night caught his eyes.
Jasper’s body tensed as he made out the figure of a person, wispy and frail, as it rose from the ground. His hands balled into tight fists as he watched her move. There was something off. Something wounded about her gait. His predatory instinct locked on.
A gull shrieked overhead. He did not flinch. He leaned forward. His lips parted. His mouth watered. And Jasper took that first, silent step. The base of his brain, that part that had remained unchanged throughout the evolution of his species, took control. It evened his breathing. It tensed and loosened his muscles. It drew in every stimulus through his focused senses, every sight, every sound, every smell. Even the feel of the sand under his shoes. It calculated distance. Risk. And most of all, reward.
Closer … closer.…
A part of him remained. A sliver of humanity in the frontal lobe. The truth is, however, even that part of him did not ponder morals or ethics. Love, kindness, empathy—none of that factored into the silent, almost one-sided struggle inside Jasper that night. Instead, his intelligence tried to slow the near unstoppable momentum of his instincts.
“I’m not prepared,” he whispered. “I don’t have the latex. I didn’t shower and lotion. I only shaved once today.”
But his pace did not slow. Instead, he heeded the stronger call. Jasper inched closer and closer to her.
“Patience, practice, purpose.”
Closer … closer!
That drive drowned out all the rest. Time skipped jarringly forward, and it was over. He was panting, looking down at what he had done. At the limbs bent at marionette angles as if playing among the jagged rocks. At the neon-yellow headset hovering like a halo above perfectly lifeless eyes. He was no longer Jasper Ross-Johnson. Instead, he was something else. Something entirely different. And it would be that reality, more than anything else, that he craved more and more, for a very long time. For, on that dark night, the Halo Killer was born.
CHAPTER
9
I WAS LOST IN his words when my eye caught sight of the guard on his side of the glass. He moved toward Jasper and my hand came up, like I might stop him. Force him to give us more time.
“There was an outhouse?” I blurted out, interrupting him.
Jasper stopped midsentence. His head tilted as he stared at me. The guard seemed to inch closer in slow motion.
“What did you say?”
“There was an outhouse. And the baby. Did you know about that?”
Jasper’s eyes narrowed. He stood, one palm against the glass. Inching closer, the corner of his mouth lifted in a primal sneer.
“You stay away from her,” he hissed.
I lurched back, my own hand coming up defensively. “What? Who?”
“I’m warning you, Theodore.” Right before my eyes, Jasper Ross-Johnson transformed into the Halo Killer. “You think it’s safe, don’t you? That I’m locked away in this abomination. Not everything is at it appears.”
His mouth gaped into a pantomime smile. When his teeth clicked together again, he hissed a final, mortal warning at me.
“Stay away from that girl, or you’ll regret it.”
PART TWO
MIRACLE JONES
CHAPTER
1
MIRACLE JONES—IT WAS so hard to understand her, how she fit into the story. Jasper’s warning lit the fuse. A need flared inside me. I had to find her. Know her. But there was something more to it too. Some deeper connection.
I should have reached out to Zora, asked her for help. Instead, as I left the prison, I searched the internet for an address and phone number. When I found it, I didn’t call first. Despite not sleeping a minute the night before, I drove almost two hours and pulled into a neighborhood, counting the houses until I reached number twelve. It was a nice little cottage with a view of the bay between the two homes across the street.
As I stepped out of the rental, I looked around. She’d grown up in that neighborhood. Lived in that house. Jasper’s warning turned to dust. I didn’t even think about how amazing the footage I’d taken the night before would look on the screen. Instead, I felt alive with an uncanny excitement, though I couldn’t explain why.
I stepped up to the door and knocked. No one answered, so I tried again, leaning close to see if I could hear anyone inside. It was quiet, so I turned to leave. That’s when I saw the woman standing in the middle of the street, staring at me. She looked like someone’s great-aunt.
“Can I help you?” she asked, clearly suspicious.
“Oh, hi,” I said, moving closer. “My name is Theo Snyder.”
Not even a hint of recognition crossed her face. I thought that might be for the better.
“I’m looking for someone,” I continued. “Miracle … um … Jones.”
The woman squinted. “Are you from the Daily Whale?”
“What? No,” I said, having no idea that she meant the local paper. “I’m a documentarian. I made the movie The Basement.”
Her eyes brightened. “The one on Netflix?”
“Yes.”
“That was so scary. I’ve watched it three times. In fact, we acted out one of the scenes in my drama class.”
I forced a smile. “That’s great.”
“Are you making a movie about Miracle?”
I paused for only a second. “I am. Do you know her well?”
The woman approached quickly. “I’ve known her since she was a baby. My name is Virginia Harris, but you can call me Ginny. Do you want to come over? I can get you some orangeade. The stories I could tell you.”
I smiled. “That sounds delicious.”
I followed Ginny Harris inside her house. She spoke to me for an hour, telling me secondhand stories of Miracle’s childhood.
“Meg told me the story of how little Miracle learned about her abandonment,” Ginny began. “In the sixth grade, if I remember right. She had just bought those fancy new shoes she loved so much …”
As she spoke, my mind shot the footage. Another scene slapped into place on the sprawling storyboard in my head.
* * *
ACT TWO/SCENE 1
INT. GROCERY STORE—DAY
A YOUNG MIRACLE JONES stands beside her stalwart mother in the produce section. The nine-year-old girl is small for her age, and the woman speaking with her mom looks her up and down, as if the little girl’s very existence defies reality.
When she was young, Miracle loved her name. Her mom, Meg Jones, would take her to the grocery store on Coastal Highway during the off-season, after all the tourists had left. They’d run into neighbors, business owners, the guy behind the deli counter with the amazingly bushy gray eyebrows—everyone in town, really. They would all make a big fuss, talk about how big she’d gotten. How good she looked. What a smart little girl she was. And they all pronounced her name as if it belonged to a queen or a movie star.
By the age of nine, when the comments did not slow, Miracle felt the first gnawings of suspicion. On the surface, she remained that happy-go-lucky kid who smiled and spoke to every adult who passed. Her maturing mind, however, plucked certain words from the comments—big, good, smart. Something about them clung. Why shouldn’t she get bigger? Every kid did. Why would they comment on how a kid looked, right in front of her? When they said smart, they always sounded a little surprised.
Then there were the semiannual doctor’s appointments—the way her height and weight were charted with agonizing care, the questions about her appetite and her general thoughts concerning food. For a time, Miracle considered this normal. The more she played with other children, however, the more she wondered. She sensed the differences. At times she would glance over her shoulder, as if the shadows of her past were ready to pounce.
At the same time, she would not let herself believe that her parents held the answers. Miracle never noticed her mother’s furtive glances, her near-hidden grimaces. The way she swept her small daughter away from certain conversations before they moved too close. Before they homed in on the truth. Because Miracle’s infamy hung over all of them like a threat. One that her mother and father knew they had to address but couldn’t figure out how, or when.
* * *
With middle school fast approaching, she and her mom took a mother-daughter trip all the way north of the canal to the Christiana Mall. Miracle walked through the vast building with her eyes wide and her hand clutching her mother’s.
“Are those trees real?” she asked.
Her mother, Meg, laughed. “They are.”
“This is amazing!” Miracle said with every ounce of her beautiful innocence. Her sheltered naïveté.
“It is,” Meg said, smiling.
Their day could not have been more perfect. Miracle moved among the racks of clothes, in awe but restrained. Often her mother had to talk her into purchases, especially if she noticed the price tag beforehand. When they entered one of the shoe stores, though, her manners could barely slow her reaction to seeing the platform flip-flops that had been all the rage among some of her classmates over the summer.
“Oh, Mom,” she said. “I …”
“You like those,” her mother said.
“I do.”
The shoes were expensive. Meg hesitated.
“It’s okay,” Miracle said. “I don’t need them.”
Her head down, she moved away from the shoes. She didn’t pout, nor did she act the martyr. Even when she was a small child, Miracle had never seemed to ask anything of anyone. Instead, she tended to spread her smile and joy freely, without a thought toward compensation.
Meg’s hand rose, as if to stop her from walking away. Miracle turned back, the lines of her face set. Later, her mother would tell the story over and over again. How, in that moment, she thought of her daughter’s birth. Her amazing story. Strangely, it was in that instant, over a pair of shoes Miracle would outgrow in a matter of months, that Meg saw the resolve and understood how her daughter had survived.
“I’ll pay for them,” Miracle said.
“You don’t have any money.”
“Mrs. Harris asked me if I could weed her flower bed. She said her back hurt.”
Meg laughed. “Did she?”
“Yeah,” Miracle said. “I already said I’d do it. She said she’d pay me.”
“You don’t—” Meg tried to protest.
“I will,” Miracle said, her face as serious as stone.
* * *
Her first day of middle school, Miracle came down the stairs, her new clothes perfect, her shoes a treasure. She laughed and spoke quickly, filled with a nervous energy that would last until later that day. The day the mouth of a preteen preempted all her parents’ planning.
It started with a question, but Miracle didn’t ask it. No, the question came from someone else. Her name was Madison. She was probably more popular than Miracle. Miracle thought she was prettier. But none of that really mattered. In truth, she was just the first one—the student with the weakest filter, really. Or the most insecurities.
