Endings by Linda Richards (portable ebook reader .TXT) 📗

had kept alive for days. I’d been keeping track of the numbers the talking heads had thrown around when endless newscasters talked about each of the children. One of the things that had been estimated with many of them was how long between capture and time of death. Time of addition to the garden. The estimates had varied widely. And what would have determined the variation? What would have been the contributing factors? I realized that some of it might even have been a bit random. By comparison, I thought about me taking a crack at his skull with that mallet while he was in the trunk of my rental car. A light and calculated crack, to be sure. But still, any one of those could have killed him. An inch to the left. A few pounds more pressure. Anything a little different and he could have been dead. I reason that it’s been like that with his victims, as well. In the course of the type of torture he would have subjected them to, some would have expired before others. It all makes a sort of terrible sense.

Even while I think it through, I try not to observe too closely. There is a world of guilt in those thoughts. There had been an opportunity. Several, really. What if it was something that my inside knowledge could have helped control? And on the tail of that thought comes another: I had the opportunity and did not take it. It would have been so easy to stop him there in the campground. Stop him forever and right in his tracks. And then all of this would have been over. This latest missing child? This is my fault, that is clear.

I had felt compassion for the parents of lost children, not for him. It was my sympathy for the parents that had stopped me from killing him right there. And I had let him live. And now? Now yet another child would pay the price. It is hard to think about.

The dog sits on my feet while I’m at my desk trying to book a flight. My feet are warm, but the flight booking is unsuccessful. I want to leave right now—this instant!—but I will be unable to book anything that will get me there in under two days. Two days is too many. I know that driving there will not in the end offer much of a time saving, but it will at least get me on the road. Plus, of course, I have a new consideration. Bringing the dog with me is ridiculous, but I feel I don’t really have a choice. I want action and I need it now.

Within the hour, I am back out the door, but first I water the baby plants and pack up some water, dog food, and dishes for the consumption of both. A small part of me is acting like a mom again. I am uncertain about how that makes me feel.

Once again, and even on this longer trip, the dog is a good traveler. I fashion an old blanket into a little bed on the back seat and he settles into it quite nicely. I barely hear any peeps from him at all.

I spend my time on the road trying to cool my brain. Not an easy task. I try to remember the traveling games I played as a child and then later with my own child, but it seems those times of innocence are so far behind me, there are only vestiges left. Little wisps of colorful memories, but distant and faded, as though viewed through a sepia filter. Something about colors: a purple car, a purple roof, a purple jacket on a child crossing the street. Something about Volkswagens—and why that particular brand?—and then punching someone in the arm. I see one and punch myself in the thigh and with enough force that it will leave a bruise. The dog jumps when I do it, but otherwise the punch does not have the desired effect, whatever that was. I give up on the road games. They aren’t meant to be played alone in any case. Or even with a dog.

In my twelfth hour on the road, I pull off the freeway and into a Walmart parking lot. I stash my car between a couple of RVs, not unlike the one I had purchased recently, then left behind.

I kill the motor and, after I empty the dog, I sit in the car and lock the doors, but I can’t rest my brain as easily. I know my body needs downtime, but I can’t turn it off and I sit there counting the stitches on the steering wheel and the slats in the air vents until finally I give up, go into the store, buy an energy drink, a box of Milk-Bones, and a bag of cheese puffs from a bleary-eyed cashier. Then we get back on the road.

It is another six-hour drive to my destination. Not that I know the exact location of my destination. But my research into Atwater had paid out before. I’ve turned into the most deadly kind of stalker: a potential author. Maybe my big inside knowledge will pay out again.

Before I get to San Pasado, I pull into a diner to think and recharge. I park in the deep shade of an ancient oak. The dog seems unbothered by all this activity. I take him on a quick tour of the parking lot where he takes care of some business of his own. When I open the back door of the car, he jumps in and settles happily back onto his blanket. I have a little pang at this ease of transition on the dog’s behalf. I think again of the shock of hair; the questioning eyes. It’s possible, I reason quickly, that the life of the dog has been improved. His position is better now. Ivy League financial guys spend long hours at the office.