Never Knowing

Evan spun me around in my chair to face him. “You okay?”

“He found our wedding Web site. I’d told him I didn’t know the date. He sounded really mad.”

“Did he threaten you?”

“No, it was just … his voice.”

“I’ll put a password on the site right away. You should call Bill.”

“This is bad, Evan.”

“It’ll be okay. He’s not going to kill anyone over a Web site.” He was already signing on to his computer.

That night I tossed and turned while Evan slumbered beside me — or tried to. When I rolled into him for the hundredth time he murmured, “Go to sleep, Sara.” I forced my body to be still, but my mind spun in dizzying circles, sending horrific snapshots of John ripping a woman’s clothes off, his hands tight around her throat, her scream rending through the air as he forced himself into her.

As soon as Evan left in the morning, I met Billy and Sandy at the station. Hungover from lack of sleep, I clutched a coffee in my hand while talking a mile a minute. I finally started to calm down when Billy said I’d handled the call with John perfectly, that you have to “know when to fight and when not to fight.” Sandy smiled and nodded, but I got the distinct feeling she was pissed off. I wasn’t feeling too happy myself. I’d been hoping John’s using the same phone might help us somehow, but they told me he was using a prepaid cell, which he’d bought for cash. No one at the store remembered what he looked like. All he had to do from now on was buy a SIM card to top up his minutes.

The call came from near Vanderhoof, so he was heading east again, which meant he might be making his way back to the junction at Prince George. My first thought was that he could be coming to the island — if he drove all night he could be in Vancouver already. I asked them if I was in danger and Billy said they didn’t think so, but to be on the safe side they’d have an officer patrol by our house several times a day.

Even with those reassurances and Billy texting later to say, Hang in there, you’re doing great, it took hours before I stopped jumping at every sound. When John still hadn’t called by Tuesday night, I started hoping he was gone for good. But I couldn’t shake the feeling he was just warming up.

After I dropped Ally off at school yesterday, I came home and let Moose into the backyard. Feeling more settled than I had in a while, I decided to burn off some steam in my shop before our session that afternoon. I got totally caught up in refinishing a cherry table and before I knew it a couple of hours had flown by. Then I remembered Moose was still out in the backyard. I expected him to be waiting at the sliding glass door, wet nose marks smeared all across the glass, but he wasn’t there. I opened the door and whistled. Nothing.

“Moose?” When he still didn’t come running, I walked out to the backyard. Was the little bugger stuck in the woodpile again? But when I checked he wasn’t there.

Maybe he was messing around in the compost. I followed the stepping-stones around the side of the house. He wasn’t there either. I walked closer to the gate and checked it out. It wasn’t latched.

I ran into the driveway yelling, “Moose!” at the top of my lungs. A dog barked, and I held my breath. It barked again — too deep to be Moose. I ran all the way to the end of the driveway where our mailbox is. Please, oh, please, be here. But he wasn’t.

He wasn’t at any of my neighbors’ houses either. That’s why I had to cancel our session. After I phoned you I spent the afternoon calling the pound, the SPCA, the vet’s—everyone. No one has seen him. I called Evan in near-hysteria — totally flipping out and accusing him of leaving the gate unlatched when he’d cleaned up the backyard. He just kept raising his voice and repeating, “Sara, calm down for a minute. Sara, stop!” until I shut up long enough for him to tell me he was positive he’d closed it.

After we got off the phone I called Billy, sure John had taken Moose in retaliation. Right away Billy checked with the patrol car that was keeping an eye on my place. The officer said he didn’t see anything suspicious when he drove by that morning, but Billy still came over and checked around the house. Not that there was much to see. The gate would be hard to open from the outside, but if you were tall enough you could reach over and do it.

When Billy finished looking around, he made me sit and write out a list of who to call next, where to put up signs, what Web sites to post on. At first I balked, wanting to just get out and start searching, but Billy said it would save time and that “running around like a chicken with its head cut off” wasn’t doing Moose any favors. Finally I just grabbed a pad of paper and started the list. My heart rate slowed with each new item I added.

Billy suggested I try to call John to see if he was on the island. We didn’t know if he was using the same phone anymore, but I gave it a shot. I just got a “this customer is out of range” recording. Billy said if John had taken Moose, he’d probably call soon. The police were going to park a car on the road until we found out if John was on the island. After Billy went back to the station I called Lauren. She rushed over and we made signs, then posted them everywhere. But no one’s called.

When it was time to pick up Ally from school, I didn’t know what to say. I try not to lie to her, but the one other time we lost Moose, at a park, she freaked out and bit Evan when he tried to stop her from running across the road after him. I was hoping against hope I’d find Moose this time before I had to tell her the truth. If he doesn’t come home … I can’t allow myself to even go down that path. I don’t know if I did the right thing — I never know if I’ve done the right thing — but I told Ally that Moose had to get a checkup and was staying over at the vet’s. She wanted to visit him, but I talked her out of it and distracted her with movies and games all evening.

Ally fell right to sleep, but I stayed awake for hours worrying about where Moose could be, terrified of who might have him. And why.

SESSION NINE

I’m so depressed today, but I’m hoping talking to you will help. Other than Evan or Billy, you’re the only person I can talk to these days, at least about anything that’s really going on. I’ve been sitting around my house all morning waiting for our appointment. Time on my hands is not a good thing.

I can’t stop going to that Web site about John and looking at all the pictures of his victims and their families. Afterward I think about them, wondering what their lives were like, what they could’ve been. I fixate on little details, like the shell necklace one girl wore that was never recovered. I wonder if John has it. Her boyfriend, whom John shot in the back of the head, had just gotten a new dirt bike for graduation. The kid could fix anything, loved restoring old cars. His dad still has the one he’d been working on when he was murdered. The dad refuses to finish it and it sits in the garage, all the tools still around it where he left them. I cried and cried at that image, of a car up on blocks and a family that will never be put back together.

I think about the moment their families were told the news. Then I torture myself with thoughts of something horrible happening to Evan or Ally. I’m sure the pain would kill me. How do the parents of these victims get out of bed every morning? How do they keep on living?

Everywhere I go I see death — a side effect of reading nonstop about serial killers. But the thing that haunts me the most is how quickly it happened to these people. I don’t mean just John’s victims. I mean all the murdered people I’ve been reading about. They were just going about their lives, sleeping, driving, jogging, or maybe just stopping to help a stranger, then just like that their life was over. But sometimes it wasn’t, sometimes they lived for days. Some of the things these killers did … I can’t stop thinking about their victims’ last moments. How terrified they must have been, how much pain they endured.

I used to enjoy true crime shows. “It was a hot summer day in the Rockies when the young blond reporter