“PTSD,” Hudson mumbled to me. “I’ve seen it enough.”
“I have an idea,” I said. “Not textbook exactly. I have to go upstairs. Please talk to him.”
I ran to my bedroom, flipping on lights as I went. I spilled everything out of my backpack until I found what I wanted. Downstairs, I could hear Hudson speaking quietly.
Then I was back on my knees in front of Jack, forcing the piece of paper from Idabel, Oklahoma, into his hands.
“Are these the men, Jack? This picture has been sitting in Jennifer Coogan’s police file in Idabel. Jack, do you remember Jennifer?”
Do you remember where you really are? Come on, Jack, snap back.
Something in his eyes flickered.
“These two men were strangers in the area at the time of her death. No one ever tracked them down.”
“I drew that heart tattoo,” he said softly, pointing to the giant’s shoulder. “I went through boxes of crayons. They took all my crayons away.”
I felt a rush of anger that he’d been forced to leave those pictures inside his head.
That adults-caretakers-felt the need for such destructive control.
I placed my hand on his knee.
“Jack, your family’s murders, Jennifer’s murder… were six years apart. A thousand miles away from each other. But they’re connected. Can you help me, Jack?”
CHAPTER 30
Single blow psychic trauma.
A profound violent act that, when witnessed by someone so young, can lead to structural abnormalities in a developing brain.
Drugs and therapy, even if started the day after little Jack watched his father die, might not have rewired his head. Healed him. And now? Now it would be like stitching up a wound with a thread of hair.
I walked Jack to the bathroom and pulled out a clean towel and washcloth. I dug in the drawer for a new toothbrush and a comb. His blue Polo was soaked with sweat stains and smelled like old cheese. I found one of Daddy’s shirts in the back of his closet and hung it on a hook on the bathroom door.
Then I closed the door for him, and waited.
Jack emerged with bloodshot eyes, slicked-back hair. Embarrassed.
“I’m sorry about that in there.” He gestured toward the living room. “That’s never happened before.”
I didn’t believe him.
“OK,” I said. “Hudson’s making coffee.”
He shrugged. The wall was up.
Hudson planted three steaming mugs in front of us at the kitchen table. I ran my finger in circles around a white imprint on the wood where Granny used to set her glass of iced tea every afternoon at three.
“You are madddog. You emailed me that slide show. You spread rumors about my mother to some very bad people.” You put everyone I loved in danger.
“I thought you deserved a little clarity. I wanted to piss off your father and find out the truth about who killed my family. Anthony Marchetti wasn’t there that night. But he confessed.” Blunt, unrepentant. No longer a child.
“Clarity? I have no clarity! Why didn’t you just tell somebody what you saw?”
Hudson nudged my foot under the table. But I knew what I was doing.
“Who believes a distraught four-year-old?” he shot back. “I read the psychiatrist’s report on me. She wrote that I was putting everything in the context of a fairy tale to make it more bearable. I invented the Hobbit. It represented me, blaming myself for my brother’s death. The tattoo was my broken heart. A bunch of psychobabble shit. I’m sure you’re familiar.”
He looked beat-up, exhausted. Skin bone-white. Dark smudges under his eyes. I wondered how far to push this outside the safety net of a clinic.
“My life has sucked since they pulled me from that cabinet and carried me out in a body bag,” he said. “They buried my family a week later. Five coffins. Mine was for show. Filled with a bag of sand, topped with a little headstone. They changed my name and stuck me in foster care instead of witness protection. None of my extended family wanted to take me. Too dangerous.”
“You said you were a reporter,” I said, steering him away. “That you went to Princeton.”
“I did go to Princeton. Scored 1590 on the SAT. Tragic childhood produces overachiever. How can you say I’m not a reporter? This is my story, Tommie. You are my story.”
He leaned in with a bitter grin.
“So many years and so many dead ends. Until I had a piece of luck a few months ago. Someone in the Stateville prison system told me that Marchetti had a special interest in some girl on the outside. Someone had sent photos of you. For years.”
The first thought that rushed at me: Would Mama do that? Send pictures of me while I was growing up, to a killer?
“I’m out of here,” Jack said suddenly.
“Don’t go yet,” I pleaded. “Talk to my… to Marchetti… I can get you help.”
“Are you not listening? After my last visit to your father, he sent those redneck freelancers to the garage to tell me to back off. I don’t need your help. I finally have their faces. Proof of the Hobbit and the Giant. It’s the first time in years I’ve been absolutely certain they weren’t a figment of my imagination. That I wasn’t crazy. That might be enough.”
Before I could react to this, the kitchen phone, the landline, began to ring on the wall by the refrigerator.
Once.
Twice.
Three times. The three of us sat there, no one making a move, the tension in the room holding us in place like dolls arranged for a tea party. The answering machine picked up with my father’s rough voice, like he’d been here listening all along. And then, another voice. Irritated.
“Tommie? Pick up. Are you there? Is this the right number? This is James. You know, the guy you FedExed a finger to?”
That broke the spell. I jumped from the chair, knocking it to the floor, and ran to grab the receiver.
“It’s me. I’m here.” I slid down the wall to a sitting position, holding one hand over my ear to hear better, to shut out Jack and Hudson, although the only sound in the room was the hum of the refrigerator.
“Want to know about your baby finger, the finger I put ahead of six other cases that I’m actually getting paid for?” James, a fellow UT grad who thought he should be curing cancer instead of figuring out the DNA tree of rich people’s dogs, was pretty much annoyed at the world all the time.
“Tell me,” I said. “Please.”
“It contains a high concentration of calcium sulfate hemihydrate. Or let me put it in layman’s terms. Your finger is plaster of Paris.”
I hung up the phone, my face hot and perspiring.
“A friend,” I said awkwardly.
Jack stretched and stood. Hudson gathered up the coffee cups and put them in the sink. We both followed Jack to the front door, Hudson casually holding his gun.
This couldn’t be over.
“Where’s your car?” I asked Jack suddenly.
“I parked it at the pond.” I wondered if he had considered driving it into the water, sinking away with everything inside it.
Jack turned at the door, a pitying look on his face.
“You and me,” he said, “we’re the same now.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll never feel safe again.”
And then he was gone, striding toward the fields, melting into the trees.
It is a cancerous myth, that children are resilient.
For the next twenty-one hours, I slept.
I woke to the air conditioner thumping on, whispering a breeze across the half of my body uncovered by the sheets.
I glanced at the clock radio by the bed: 6:08 a.m.
Hudson was a long lump lying several feet away in Sadie’s twin bed, breathing in and out in a steady rhythm.