Abandoned

“Yeah,” he says. “Thanks.” He raises his gaze to mine and I witness naked gratefulness. Who knows if it’s real or calculated?

“You’re welcome. Let’s talk about this man, this Dali. Are you willing to do that?”

“Why not? He’s the reason I’m here.”

“That’s exactly right,” I say. “You don’t owe him anything.”

He seems to take courage from this idea. He sits up straighter and nods to himself a few times. “Yeah. Yeah. Fuck him. Okay. What do you want to know?”

“When you talked, did he ever explain what his name meant?”

“Dali?”

“Yes.”

“I never asked. He wasn’t the kind of man you question a lot.”

“Fair enough. What else can you tell me?”

Hollister frowns, thinking. “He was very careful about giving me any details. I never spoke with him face-to- face, only by cell phone and email, and those numbers changed regularly. He was always the one to initiate contact. I had no way of reaching out to him.”

“How about his voice? Was there anything distinctive about it? High-pitched, low-pitched, rough, smooth, anything?”

“Sorry. He used some kind of voice scrambler. It made him sound like a robot when he talked.”

I bite my lip, frustrated. “How long were you posting and chatting on that website before he first contacted you?”

“On beamanagain.com?”

“Yes.”

He considers it. “Not long. A week and a half? I think that’s right.”

“What kind of things were you saying just before he contacted you?”

Hollister gives me an appraising look. I glimpse the first return of shrewdness. “Why?”

“Just trying to get a full picture.”

The barest smirk ghosts his fetid lips. I prefer the beaten-down Douglas to the man I see returning to himself now. Sometimes the mask slips. “It was pretty specifically after I said something along the lines of I wish I had the guts to just make her go away.”

“You said it that openly?”

“Sure. I was just one of a bunch of other guys venting. I didn’t feel like I was risking anything.”

“That’s when he contacted you for a private chat?”

“Right.”

It makes some sense, I think. No reason to tiptoe around something like this. When you’re selling kidnapping, torture, and murder, you have to be aggressive. Dali would watch for the indicators of more than mere discontentment and then he’d approach and be blunt about it. Most of the time, I bet, he gets turned down. The majority of the human race is all bluster when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of harm. It’s one thing to say to your wife, “I wish you were dead,” and another thing entirely to bury an ax in her skull and dump her body in a lake. The distinction might seem a hop and a jump to the uninitiated, but in reality the difference is a distance from here to the sun.

“Then what happened?”

“Exactly what I said when the black man was interviewing me. Dali told me he could make my problem disappear. He offered proof and he warned me that if I breathed a word, he’d kill Avery and Dylan.”

“Why’d you agree to go ahead? What was the tipping point?” I ask the question without really thinking about it. It’s the common need, the most visceral one: a desire to understand why. We need why; it helps us sleep at night. Too many times, there is no why, there’s just madness.

Hollister seems to have a need to understand it himself or perhaps to make me understand. He leans back in his chair and ponders my question. The silence in the room settles in as I watch him struggle to unravel his own reasoning.

“I just … I guess I just didn’t see any other way out. Divorce meant giving her my house and my sons and half my money for God knows how long. This was a way for me to get the happiness I deserved.” He points to his chest and the expression on his face is hurt, bewildered, petulant. “I deserved to be happy too.”

I think I hate the ones like him the most. The serial killer is a simpler, more honest monster. Ask them why they did it, and their answers boil down, in the end, to the same thing: because it makes me feel so very, very good.

Douglas Hollister and his ilk live in a world of mirrors that reflect their own rightness and rationalizations back to them. They’re worse, in some ways, because they’re too close to the rest of us. They lack the elegance of the serial killer’s mandate. Why’d he do it? For money. For a house. Because he is a spoiled, failed, psychotic child.

“Did Dana know, Douglas? Was she in on this with you?”

His face falls, and his eyes grow hostile. “No. Fuck you for asking.”

So she was another victim of your narcissism, in the end.

“Thanks for your time.” I stand up and head toward the door.

“That’s it?”

I turn to him. “Just one more question, Douglas. Are you happy now?”

I’m pleased by the rage that profuses his face. I’ve grown crueler, and I question it less and less. Should I be worried?

I reach my car without an answer. By the time I hit the highway, I’ve forgotten the question.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“I knew it,” Bonnie says to me.

Tommy and I look at her, then at each other. “You did?” I ask.

We’re sitting at the dinner table. Dinner has long since been enjoyed, the dishes washed and put away. I’d told Tommy about my revelation of our marriage when I arrived home, and his happiness gave me the certainty that I’d done the right thing. He’d pulled me into his arms and held me there.

“Thank you,” he’d said. “I hated having to hide something I’m so proud of.”

I haven’t dropped the pregnancy bomb on him yet. I am reserving that for, well—now. Or shortly. First we have to finish our sheepish confession to Bonnie.

She smiles and reaches out, taking one of Tommy’s hands and one of mine. “Of course I knew. You guys aren’t good at hiding when you’re really happy. I thought about the Hawaii trip and put it all together.”

“Smart girl,” I say, my voice wry. “So?”

“So what?”

“So what do you think? How do you feel about it?”

“Oh.” She grins. “I think it’s about time.” Sometimes it gets to be that easy.

I pull my hand away and clear my throat. “Well, uh, I have some other news too.”

I suddenly feel as though I’m naked on a stage, with a spotlight blinding me. My throat feels rough, and my heart is pounding in my chest.

“Smoky?” Tommy asks. “What is it?”

“Well, you see …” I clear my throat again, and now I’m getting angry at myself. “Oh, for God’s sake. Look, I’ll just say it, okay?” I take a deep breath in, then: “I’m pregnant.”

Neither of them reacts, not at first.

“What’s that?” Tommy asks. He seems dumbfounded.

“I said, I’m pregnant. We’re having a baby. Your baby.” I sound defensive. I hate it when I sound defensive. It’s fear, not fight. Fight is better.

They both fall into silence. I grind my teeth. I’m starting to get pissed off and more afraid at the same time.

“Well? Don’t either of you have anything to say?”