had one of my worst migraines ever, the pain so bad I vomited and then had to lie down with a wet cloth over my eyes. He followed me, stood over me, berating and accusing the whole time. Does he really think I have migraines on purpose just to annoy him? I cant make him understand. I dont think he wants to understand.
Tamara scanned through a dozen similar entries. Woman’d had plenty to complain about, all right, but complain was all she’d done. Why? Why hadn’t she walked out on the bastard, asked her sister or somebody for help?
Why did J have to die and leave me alone? I was happy with him, we had a wonderful life together; HE loved me as much as I loved him. If hed lived I would never have met B and sometimes now I wish I hadnt.
Well, there was the answer. Couldn’t stand to be alone. Weak, dependent, and so beaten down and disillusioned all she could do was throw pity parties for herself.
A mid-February passage caught Tamara’s attention:
B brought his new assistant home for dinner last night. He thinks the world of him, says he has a brilliant mind, and oh hes personable enough but there is something about him that puts me off. Im not sure what it is, other than a sly toadying quality and his physical appearance. Foolish to judge someone by his looks I suppose but you cant help an instinctive reaction. What kind of name is Drax anyway? Eastern European? It reminds me of Dracula. He reminds me of Dracula, the movie image, with his sharp teeth and odd eyes and leathery skin. I can imagine him in a swirling cape, his mouth all red with blood, and the image gives me chills. I haven’t said anything to B about this, I dont dare, but I hope he wont invite him to the house again.
No more mention of Drax the vampire after that. The rest of the disc was the usual dull litany of books read and films watched on TV and doctors’ and dentists’ appointments and whines about B and one small desperate expression of hope on a morning after he decided it was time he got laid again.
The next entries that jumped out were on the last disc. First of these was dated August 23:
Yesterday
Yesterday I
Oh God I cant write about it I can barely think about it.
Its so its just too I just cant
Gap of two days. Then:
I told B last night. He has never shown his emotions but I could tell he was very very upset. I cried and told him how much I loved him and how sorry I was and he held me, so tender and loving the way he was in the beginning. It was all I could have hoped for.
The following week:
I was wrong, he doesnt give a damn about me! He didn’t come to Ds yesterday as he promised, he made me go through it alone. His excuse was an important meeting he couldnt get out of. Important! A fucking meeting! What about me, I said, arent I important? Of course of course, he said, but he didnt mean it. He doesnt care. He never cared. I dont know what Im going to do.
The entries got shorter and shorter after that, with less information about what was going on in the woman’s life. She got up, ate, took naps, watched TV, read, went to bed; B was there, B wasn’t there. Flat, empty words that had to’ve come out of deep depression.
Then this one, five days before her death:
I cant go on alone. I could call C but I cant seem to bring myself to. God help me I still need B. I hate myself for needing him when I know now how he really feels about me and what a fool Ive been but I cant help myself. If I have to Ill go to M, Ill do something drastic to force B to be there for me. I CANT be alone now.
And two days before:
Another ugly fight with B last night. Another terrible headache, so bad I vomited and barely slept. Hes so cold, so unfeeling. He terrifies me when hes like that. His eyes, the way they look through me, it gives me chills. I think, no Im sure now, hes actually capable of doing me physical harm.
The final entry had been made on the day of her death. It was the shortest of any, just the date and time and two words in capital letters: WHY ADHERE?
Tamara had been making notes all along; she made another, with a big question mark after it, then sat back and read through the list of direct quotes and her comments. Not too much there, no real motive for Brandon the asshole to want to off his wife. But there sure were a lot of questions.
What had Nancy done that she couldn’t write about, then confessed to him two days later?
What was it she’d had to go through without him at D’s?
Did “D” stand for Drax the vampire?
Why was she so desperate those last couple of weeks?
Who was M and what was the “something drastic”?
What did that weird final entry mean?
Tamara stared at those last two words. WHY ADHERE? Why adhere to what? Her marriage? Life itself? Couldn’t be a suicide note, could it? No, no way. Woman wanted to off herself, she’d swallow a bottle of pills or slash her wrists in the tub. One thing she’d never do is throw herself down a flight of stairs on the slim chance she’d break her neck.
Well, there was no use speculating without more facts. Bill had pounded that into her head enough times.
He terrifies me when hes like that… I think, no Im sure now, hes actually capable of doing me physical harm.
Yeah. Enough meat here to justify an investigation. The hit she’d gotten from that entry and the others on the last disc was pretty strong. Call it intuition or whatever, something had been wrong, bad wrong, in the woman’s life, and her death sure could’ve been more than just a simple accident.
The laptop clock read 8:50. Not too late to call Bill and fill him in. If he didn’t want to handle the investigation, she’d take it on herself.
9
JAKE RUNYON
The girl’s voice on the phone was shrill, quivery. “He’s gone! Jerry’s gone!”
“Calm down; take a deep breath.” Runyon waited for her to do that. “All right. What happened?”
“I don’t know. I drove out here this morning, like we talked about, and he’s not here. He didn’t leave me a note or anything; he just… he’s gone.”
“He didn’t say anything to you yesterday about going someplace else?”
“No, no. I don’t understand why he’d leave here. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Where are you?”
“At the camp. I’m on my cell.”
“What camp?”
“Oh, right, you don’t know. Old migrant workers’ camp on the Hammond farm. It hasn’t been used for years.”
“How do I get there?”
“It’s about three miles from town. More east than south.” She gave him directions, complicated enough so that he had to write them down.
“Stay there and wait for me. I’ll make it as quick as I can.”
Almost ten by his watch. He’d been up and dressed for three hours, sitting in the motel room for the last hour waiting for Sandra Parnell to call. There was enough of the headache left for him to be aware of it, but none of the aftereffects Dr. Yeng had warned him about. The swelling was down on his ear, and when he put on a new bandage from his first-aid kit the stitched wound on his temple hadn’t shown any signs of infection. His appetite had been good this morning, even if the coffee shop food wasn’t. He was ready to be out and on the move again.
It took him nearly half an hour to find the migrant workers’ camp. Well out in the country, off a hardpan side road, surrounded by orchards and cattle graze, all flatland except for a couple of rocky hillocks in one of the fields, and no farm buildings in sight. Ghost camp. Dozen or so crumbling wood and cinder-block shacks, the single-room
