From the restless way he was crossing and recrossing his legs Maya knew he was
growing agitated. She didn’t want to reenergize his true reason for visiting, so she asked him a personal question, her language and voice friendly and causal as though they were two friends chatting.
“You know when I was a child, actually throughout my childhood and adolescence,” she
amended her statement, “I was always treated as though I were an inconvenience, as though my mere presence was repugnant to my foster mother.”
As she started speaking, the honesty of her words caught him, and he eased back into his
chair, all signs of agitation evaporating as though it never were. His attention remained raptly on her.
“I never felt as though I fit in. I was always lonely and set apart from my peers. I had the responsibility of raising my foster sister.”
Although Maya referred to Allison, she knew she couldn’t say her name and keep it
together in front of the man who’d killed her. “I never knew what it was like to be an average kid. I cooked, cleaned, and cared for my sister and there wasn’t much room for anything else.
My dad was black and my mother was white. My foster mother would say all types of hateful
things about my dual heritage. She would call me names an animal shouldn’t be called, let alone a child. It was beyond hateful.”
“I grew up with my Aunt Meg.” Eyes straight ahead, with no discernible expression,
Jaime related to Maya his childhood, a childhood fraught with neglect, humiliation, and abuse. “I was small because I didn’t eat the healthy amount of food as a child. The doctors said I was malnourished. I just knew I was hungry all the time,” he told her in a voice devoid of emotion.
“It didn’t help that my aunt spent as little money on me as possible. She’d get my clothes
from thrift stores, church basements, wherever she could get them. Sometimes they were clothes for boys, and sometimes not. She didn’t care. The kids at school would call me fag, queer,
whatever, because I was so small, and because of the clothes I wore.”
“Sometimes children can be as hurtful as any adult. Or worst.”
“Yes,” he agreed simply, “they can. Like you, I was a product of a racial mix.” He made
eye contact with her at this point, a small sad smile playing around his mouth.
“My father was Hispanic, and my mother was white. He didn’t claim me. According to
Aunt Meg, he didn’t believe I was his. He was a prominent man in the community, with a family of his own, and would ‘visit’ my mother occasionally. When she told him she was pregnant, he refused to believe I was his, since he wasn’t her only ‘visitor.’”
“Is that why you killed them, Jaime?”
“Those men? Those men who wanted to get their rocks off and leave? Without a care in
the world about a life they were destroying? Those fucking pillars of society?” His voice rose, becoming more and more strident with each question.
Standing up he nearly toppled the chair over and advanced toward Maya before coming
to a halt. He moved quickly across to the other end of the room.
Once he’d gotten himself back under control, visibly taking deep breaths, he squint his
eyes and pursed his lips looking steadily at Maya, as he lightly stroked his chin with his thumb and forefinger.
Under his unerring gaze she kept herself still, displaying none of the fear and uncertainty churning in her belly. She knew he was teetering on the edge of full mental breakdown, and one false move from her, could push him completely over edge.
“Partly. I guess that was part of the reason why I made them pay,” he finally agreed after
taking deep breaths.
“Aunt Meg followed in her big sister’s footsteps in her ‘career choice’ so to speak. She
also shared my mother’s lousy taste in men. My first sexual experience was performed at the hands of Aunt Meg’s sometimes live in boyfriend Rick. I was only fourteen and it wasn’t
consensual,” he said with blunt honesty, and a far-away look in his eyes.
“Rick decided it was time for me to earn my keep, and he turned me out. He thought it
was funny. Always making jokes about keeping it all in the family. Aunt Meg was too damn
weak to break away even though she knew what was going on.”
Maya was horrified by Jaime’s story. Unable to stop the tears from falling, she made no
attempt to wipe them away as he told her of his subsequent rape by a schoolmate.
“That was the last time. That was the last time anyone, especially a man, hurt or
humiliated me. I started taking control. I left Meg as soon as I finished high school. And I took classes in law enforcement. I also took self-defense and martial arts. No one was going to hurt me again. No one damn it,” he said fiercely, no longer looking at her. His eyes focused on some long ago image, his face looking tortured as tears streamed, unnoticed.
“I applied to the police academy. I worked long and hard, and made rank. I did well. But
I could never quite forget. Images would appear in my mind and I couldn’t get them to leave.”
He placed his hands over his eyes, and began to rub at them stringently, as though he were trying to scrub the images away.
“Eventually I knew what I had to do. I had to make them pay. That was the only way to
make the faces go away, it was the only way I could get peace.” He reached inside his jacket and withdrew the small, pearl handled .22 and lifted it. He leisurely caressed the polished, gleaming chrome plate.
He looked at Maya with a smile on his face, before turning his attention back to the gun.
“Isn’t she beautiful? So small yet so deadly.” With a low manic chuckle,
