Murderabilia Read online

  When I finished, my wife sighed and hooked blonde strands behind her ears. She said, “It’s not like we haven’t expected this.”

  “But I don’t have a brother.”

  Jill’s eyes widened. How could I be sure?

  “No journalist has even hinted at it,” I said.

  “Then who could this be?” When I raised my shoulders in a shrug, Jill slammed her hand on the table. “You must have some idea.”

  I thought about the websites: The Art of the Preying Hands, A Walking Tour through the Preying Hands’ Photos, He Killed His Own Sister. My father had been fourteen when his sixteen-year-old sister, Magnolia, disappeared. “I won’t say I didn’t do it,” he said to the prison psychologists. An uncountable number of death hags, basement dwellers, and night crawlers idolized him for that. No one had ever found her body.

  “Hopefully the reporters won’t get wind of it,” Polly said.

  “Are you kidding me?” Jill said. “Is that what you’re worried about?”

  She didn’t understand how miserable the press could make our lives. They’d ask if she’d been afraid to marry the son of the Preying Hands. And that would be just the starter question. I still remembered the hacks aiming cameras through cracks in our doublewide’s curtains. Headlines leaped out from every newspaper. Then the fans, the crazies, who drove and hitchhiked from other states to kneel in the yard outside our trailer.

  My career was a whole other issue. “Son of a serial killer” wasn’t in the job description of a private banker. And this bank could fire me “at will.” Our savings might last three months.

  “Look, I came into this family with my eyes open,” Jill said. “I won’t let some bastard harass us.”

  How could I not squeeze her hand? Jill had seen her share of darkness. Before we married, she’d helped street kids in Colombia. If you ever want to see my wife turn into a warrior, threaten a child.

  “We fight this jerk,” she said. “Tomorrow we go to the police.”

  Polly walked around the table to hug her. “William, you are so lucky to have this woman.”

  I stared down at my wife’s hand. The simple, delicate face of her watch looked up at me from the inside of her wrist. The wives in my business made entrances draped in fistfuls of gems. I loved Jill’s watch and its weathered leather band. She wore it practically, so she could read to her third-grade class and gauge the time she had left.

  “Kogan only attacked women who abused children,” Polly said. “That’s what his art was all about.”

  “Is that supposed to reassure me?” Jill said.

  After dinner, Polly and I stood beside the orange tree outside my front door. For a moment we both took in the perfect San Diego temperature and starry September sky. Even the starved grass gave off a delicious smell.

  Her bracelets jingled and she put her hand on my shoulder. “Is it possible we’re overreacting?”

  I thought of the wacko who’d sponsored an internet contest: “A Hunt for Kogan’s Kids.” Then, the “Pyramid Power” woman who, twenty years before that, had concluded she was my father’s soul mate. Hoping it would reach us, she told the Chicago Sun-Times that “I want to be your sister and stepmother.”

  “You know as well as I do that we’re not overreacting,” I said.

  We walked to her pickup in the driveway. A passing car’s headlight beams raked the honeysuckle hedge and lit us up. Polly clasped my arm, her tight grip like an extension of her gaze. “You know, I can’t ever remember our father comforting me. Even his hugs didn’t seem natural.”

  We both avoided saying his name. Saying his name made him real again. “Mama wasn’t a hugger either,” I said.

  “Mama’s a whole other story.”

  I looked up the street at the silhouettes of bikes and balls on the lawns, at the driveways with shadowy basketball hoops or boats. Would those children still play with Garth and Frieda? Maybe not after their parents learned about our past and the kinds of fans that our history attracted. Or, worse, perhaps those kids would never stop asking our children about their grandfather.

  “Could our father have had another lover?” I asked. “Maybe we have a brother. Mama would know if it’s even possible.”

  “He kept bigger secrets than that from her,” Polly said.

  Thirteen secrets. That number hid behind everyone’s lips in Blue Meadow, Illinois. Maybe Mama could have been unaware of one or two or even five victims, but thirteen? Even Polly at thirteen years old, and I at eight, should have noticed something. When the local kids burned 666 into our lawn on Halloween, we had to kill the grass around the number to erase it. Mama drove to another town to buy groceries at ten o’clock at night. School was the worst. None of the other kids talked or looked at us. It was as if we were caked with stink. I used my fists to make them feel me. Even before the fights started, I wept with rage. Once, three sixth graders held me down until Polly swooped in to pull them off. The school wanted to send me to a psychologist, but Mama refused. She thought that psychologists and psychiatrists peddled the kind of thinking that only took you farther away from God.

  Beside me, Polly glanced at her left arm, at the blue dolphin tattoo with a halo that peeked through her bracelets. The tattoo covered the patch of skin she’d started cutting three months after our father was arrested.

  “No matter how hard we try, we can’t stop remembering, can we?” Polly said.

  I pulled her close. She threw her arms around me and squeezed. More cars passed, mothers and fathers grinding home after late nights at work.

  Polly said, “I’m a grown woman now. I’ll survive. Even reliving it.”

  I didn’t think even she was sure of that. I wasn’t.

  She set the play pirate hat on the passenger seat of the truck. Her hand dug into her pocket for her Wonder Woman key ring; my sister never carried a purse.

  “I’ll follow you home,” I said.

  “Like hell you will. I’m not letting this cocksucker change a single thing in my life.”

  She was the only gay woman—maybe the only woman—I knew who called people that. “Just be careful,” I said.

  Her ropy, elfin body climbed into the pickup and she roared off. The truck flashed red under a streetlight. I couldn’t imagine anyone hurting Polly. It had taken her thirty-one years, but she was indomitable.

  And if anyone tried, I’d tear him apart.

  3

  That night, lying in bed next to Jill, I remembered my father. I could still see those unblinking amber eyes as he gripped a hotdog in each hand. Then he rose to his giant height above the dinner table. The trailer door slammed. I could feel him even now. He was a darkness that hovered over our house.

  My home office stood on a hallway of bedrooms off our open kitchen and living room. It was where I retreated when Harvey Dean Kogan kept me awake. I unlocked the bottom desk drawer, but not the metal strong-box inside. A bottle of bourbon, a vape pen, and a silicone ball sat next to the box. I opened the ball and dabbed marijuana extract, like maple syrup, into the open cavity of the vape pen. The pen’s coils heated up. I breathed in the marijuana and expelled the gray-white mist. Jill didn’t know about my medication. Nor the thoughts I was blotting out. Some nights it was the only way I could sleep.

  I turned on my laptop and pulled out the bottle of bourbon. First I looked at emails from work, then sports pages and other news. A half hour later I moved on to the websites devoted to the Preying Hands. It had been thirty-one years since we’d changed our name and moved to California, but his fans were still searching for us. Tonight there was no mention of Harvey Dean Kogan’s family. Whoever had traced us to San Diego didn’t boast on the internet.

  I took a shot of bourbon. Then another.

  At midnight the computer pinged with a message that contained no subject line. I didn’t recognize the sender. My finger stayed poised over the mouse. N
o words, only an internet address: www.preying

  hands.com.

  I clicked on the link. A black screen contained a single prompt that asked for my first name. I entered it and the blackness transformed into a text screen surrounded by charcoal sketches of hands: long fingers and jagged lines on the palms, blackened and manicured nails. Two hands were folded in prayer like the Dürer drawing. Text glowed red underneath.

  Do you really think he isn’t inside you? Your mama can pretend that’s true, but you know better. Your daddy also couldn’t sleep at night. Even your photography is like his. Right, Tex? Imagine what an art show I could put on for your neighbors.

  I jumped up from the chair. I rushed to the kitchen and its window. All was black in the yard outside. I hurried to the living room and its full-length windows. Nothing was visible, not even the outline of our garden or the orange tree. But I could feel him out there in the dark. He knew my fears. Even the horrible photos that I’d shot all those years before. And he was laughing.

  My breath still coming hard, I paced back to my office. The message still lit up the screen.

  Don’t you know I’m just having fun teasing you, little brother? With a simple conversation, all this will go away. A few words won’t hurt you. Go to Kate Sessions Park at 12:30 tonight. Jill, Garth, and Frieda will be sleeping like kittens in their little beds. I’ll be waiting at the end of the road by the turnabout. Don’t be late. This is just between you and me and our father. No one else.

  Kittens. In prison my father had said that he’d started killing cats as a teenager. It was practice for women. My hand struck the mouse. The site disappeared.

  Gradually my thoughts came into focus. There was no reason to panic. I could persuade this deluded fan to leave us alone. One way or another.

  I clicked on the link again. But the server informed me that I wasn’t authorized to enter the website.

  I’d tried most of my life to escape Harvey Dean Kogan’s legacy. All I wanted was to live normally and savor the small joys of raising children. My family had been so careful. And still someone had found us.

  It was 12:08. If I called the police, what could they do? Threatening to reveal someone’s true identity wasn’t a crime. By the time the police showed up, no one would be at the park.

  I had to handle this myself. Right away. The alcohol and marijuana only strengthened my resolve. I’d confront the harasser. Force him to understand that my children’s lives could not be corrupted. I’d do anything to stop that. Anything.

  Ten years earlier, when the internet crank had offered a reward to find us, I’d purchased a Colt .45 handgun. Now I took down the lockbox from the closet, dialed the combination, and slid out the pistol. The edges of the stippled black rubber grip pressed coldly into my hand. The magazine could hold seven rounds and the chamber one. I put in the shells, one by one. I’d never been to a gun range or even shot the pistol. But I wouldn’t need to. It was just a prop.

  I set the alarm and locked the doors.

  4

  Kate Sessions Park sat on the eastern edge of Pacific Beach, up in the hills near Highway 5. The gate stood open but the unlit park seemed deserted. The dark expanses of picnic grass bordering the left side of the road were clear. But anyone could hide in the cement restroom on the right.

  I squeezed the wheel of my Camry and stared beyond my headlight beams. There was no sign of a car or an SUV. No one walked outside. The only sound was the growl of the car’s engine and the hiss of my breath. After a turnabout, I emerged onto another short road. A hundred yards farther on, Cyprus and eucalyptus trees abutted another turnabout.

  He’d written that he’d be waiting at the end of the road. Where the hell was he?

  I parked and turned off the lights. Clutched the revolver. Perhaps he wanted me to stand on the road. But the land sloped down into dense brush and trees where he could be waiting to jump out with a knife or a gun. Maybe with a drug that would incapacitate me more quickly than the Preying Hands’ chloroform. The houses bordering the park were too far away for my shouts to reach them.

  I opened the window and listened for the sounds of footsteps stirring the underbrush. Nothing but the drone of crickets. Overhead an incomprehensible swarm of stars.

  The flashlight was in the dashboard compartment. I aimed the beam into the brush.

  No one.

  Nothing.

  I wiped the sweat from my hands onto my pants and looked at my watch. 12:45. He’d ordered me not to be late. But it was after midnight when I’d read the message. It was possible he’d already shown up and left.

  Maybe he wanted me out of the house. Maybe he wanted my family alone.

  I yanked out my phone and started to dial 911. And stopped. What if police cars roared up, their sirens screaming, and no one but my family was inside our house? I set the phone on the seat. My Camry would get there much faster than the police.

  The wheels squealed on the blacktop. Roaring down the road, the Camry hit a pothole and the headlight beams jerked and shuddered. I reached the highway and peeled east beside San Diego’s shadowy hills, then down deserted residential streets.

  I saw our house. The lights were still off but something looked different. Our garage door was open. I was sure it had been closed when I left.

  Pulling into the driveway would make too much noise. I parked a few houses away, behind the boat trailer bearing our neighbor’s Boston Whaler. Pistol in hand, I ran silently over the lawn. At the side of the orange tree, I caught my breath and took in our front door and full-length windows. Why hadn’t I let my children get a dog, a mutt that barked like crazy?

  Something white hung from the door. I crept forward, swiveling my head to take in the yard around me. An envelope with Tex typed on the front was taped to the door. I tore it open, reached inside. A photo. My flashlight beam revealed a close-up of a dish drainer in a kitchen. A woman’s severed head sat inside the rack.

  I gasped. Then recognized the blonde hair woven into maiden braids. It was Leslie Miller, the Preying Hands’ last victim.

  Jill was also blonde.

  I started to jab my key into the door lock. But bursting in was what he’d expect. And if he lurked inside, hovering over Jill with a knife …

  A fence with a backyard gate separated our property from the neighbor’s. I unlocked the gate and slipped along the side of the house. Peered through each window. No lights or shadows moved inside.

  In the back yard, I crept past the swing set and stepped over the toys strewn about the grass. Each of my shoes eased onto the deck. The sliding door to the kitchen was locked. I stuck in my key and slowly pushed it open.

  The alarm pad blinked, still armed. I set the flashlight on the table. The gun stayed in my right hand as my left punched in the code.

  I tried to slow my breathing, tried to silence my own fear. If he’d somehow demobilized the alarm, he could walk around freely. But then he couldn’t re-set it, could he?

  The grandfather clock clicked in front of me in the dark open living room. The refrigerator thrummed beside me. I inhaled the basil from the pesto sauce Jill had made that evening. My eyes now could pick shadow from shadow.

  I skirted the table and tiptoed to the hallway on the right that led to my office and the bedrooms. The door on the left to Frieda’s room stood open. When I’d left, it was closed.

  I covered the space in two huge steps. Crouched in the doorway, I pointed the gun with two hands into the room. All was darkness. My flashlight still lay on the kitchen table. I slid open her closet door and turned on the light inside. The house shifted. I whirled. I was pointing a pistol at my youngest child.

  Frieda lay on the bed. I listened to the slow breaths of my five-year-old’s heavy sleep. She cuddled her Micky Marvin bear under the “Girl Power” coverlet. Her dolls stared out from the bookshelves. From a picture, Frieda and Polly smiled in Halloween witch cos
tumes with Garth beside them as a warlock. My child’s innocence could be shredded with a single shot.

  Perhaps Jill had woken up and looked in on her. I padded to the hallway and along the wood floor to our bedroom at the end. Jill softly snored.

  I turned on the hallway light and made my way back to Garth’s room on the other side of Frieda’s. His breathing rippled out from his superhero comforter. He still wet the bed, but tonight his pull-up was dry. On the carpet, toy soldiers stood in the same battle lines beside a block castle and rolling train. From the poster on the wall, Hulk Hogan flexed in all his 1990s glory.

  My family was safe. I blew out air. Forced my heart to slow.

  Only the garage was left. I crept back to the kitchen and through the side door. Turned on the light. No one hid behind the boxes and bags. No one was by the driveway or slinking across our neighbors’ yards. My tormentor might have opened the garage door, but he didn’t turn off the alarm. There wasn’t any conceivable way he’d been inside.

  My rage ignited. I kicked a Goodwill bag, punched it, and kicked again. The bag split and clothes spilled over the floor. With the light on, the neighbors could see me melting down. He could be out there laughing.

  I closed the garage door and banged in the keypad code to re-set the alarm on the door to the house. Back inside, still trembling, I made sure every window and door was locked. But I knew that nothing would ever seal my house from this man. The Preying Hands’ fans didn’t listen to reason. I leaned against the hallway wall and took in my wife’s calming snore. Neither of my children made a sound. Somehow my family hadn’t heard me. And if this freak had really opened the garage door and wandered outside our house? They hadn’t awakened to that horror either.

  Back in my office, I circled the carpet and swore. I sat down and unlocked the bottom desk drawer. My legs were jiggling. My body needed the vape pen and the bourbon. But for my family’s sake, both stayed in the drawer.