“Turned state’s evidence! It was more like a sting operation, a setup, in a North Miami park, where I had no choice but to turn him in. The cops even sent my brother down from Oregon—awarded him a plaque of honor for bringing me to them. They told me my family was in danger, Sharon… that the best thing to do, for him and for me, was to tell them where he was. And those people saved my life! He was so crazed he would have eventually killed me, Sharon. If they hadn’t helped me get away, I’d be dead right now. He made a mistake—one he’d been so careful not to make. He never hit me in front of anyone before, and he messed up when he beat me in front of those people. People who cared about me and weren’t afraid of him!” My anger burns again as I recall the day of my liberation from John. I force the familiar pent-up rage back down. A fiery ball of fury, as great as the scorching sun, is the burden I’ve carried with me since I last saw him.
Sharon shifts her fork and spoon nervously around the table. A thin line of perspiration on her upper lip glistens from the light’s reflection as she swallows a hard gulp of air. “I know he went looking for you when he got out.” She finally opens up. Her brow is damp with sweat. “And I thought, well, since I hadn’t heard from him after I stopped going to see him in jail and I hadn’t heard from you… that… maybe he found you again.”
“No. Ha! He didn’t find me. It turns out, right after those people helped me to a safe house, my father, who out of the blue was maybe thirty miles away, read about John’s arrest in Miami and came and got me.”
Sharon’s gaze drifts past me again, and her eyes cast shadows as if her memory plays a scene from the past. “I’ll never forgive him,” she says gravely after a long pause. Then, staring me straight in the eye, she continues, “He crossed the ultimate line with me.” Shadows dance wildly in her stare. “I’m a nurse. I’ve devoted my life to healing. I am a nurturer. I can do nothing else and feel there is no other way than to have the greatest respect for human life.” Her eyes lock fiercely with mine. “He came to me that night of the murders—to the house.” Her lips curl in disgust. “He was covered in blood, gray matter—brains and bone…” She clears her throat loudly. “At first, I thought it was his… that he had been in an accident. He was crying… like he was hurt. He asked me to draw him a bath… I should have known… the bathtub… his favorite confessional!”
I don’t blink, clinging onto her every word. I picture myself in the bathroom in Sharon’s place, watching him, waiting for him to speak first, as she did the many times I saw her interact with him in the past. A nurturer. I visualize her letter to me after my attempted suicide.
“You must promise me you will never repeat this!” she insists, leaning in to me. Her tongue thrusts out as if to wipe a bad taste from her mouth as her expression falls. Replaying the repulsive scene in her head, she presses on. “He said they were scum. That they deserved it; that they were lowlifes and didn’t deserve to live!” Her face goes pale, and she pauses again.
“What did you say to him, Sharon?” I breathe.
“I asked him, ‘who?’ Who was he talking about and what did he mean, ‘didn’t deserve to live’? That’s when he told me Eddie had sent his thugs to the house on Wonderland. He said Eddie had his black book and that he threatened to kill everyone in it, including you… me… his mother, Mary! He said that it was either them… or him and everyone he loved. He said they were dirt… to screw them!”
She swallows hard and lowers her head. “I told him, ‘But they were your friends, John. How could you?’ I told him to get out! Get out and never come back! How dare he expose me to such filth?”
Shifting uncomfortably in the booth, I ask no more questions. As I mull over her revelation to me, it fits like a missing piece of a puzzle I’ve almost given up on completing. Sharon is shaking, visibly unnerved at the recollection of the horror of that morning. I sense that this is the first and only time she has ever told anyone—ever gotten it off her chest—and that somehow, in doing so, she can find some peace from the memory of such betrayal. But I also sense she has more to reveal.
“Do you think that maybe he really was trying to protect us, Sharon?”
“Maybe,” she answers. “And himself, of course.”
I nod. “Well, that explains why he showed up at the motel cleaned up then.” I purposely avoid mentioning the Valium he took to sleep that night.
“Uh-huh. He took his bloody clothes rolled up in a paper sack when he left at dawn, and later, he told me he dropped them in different Dumpsters along Glendale and Hollywood on his way to pick up the car that got left near his answering service.”
My mind pictures him slinking in the early morning hours through the streets of Hollywood, frantically trying to cover his tracks. I stop… and let the image fade to black. Too much, I think, allowing my brain to rest unfocused for a short time. “He told me you said yes,” I blurt before I can understand why. “Yes, that you would go into the Witness Protection Program with us. That you were just going to close up the house and meet us… later… when it was safe. He kept on telling me that… the whole time we were running… all the way to Florida!”
Sharon’s eyes grow large with disbelief. “I told him no! I told him again, how dare he ask me to leave my family… for him! I said I would stay undercover in downtown LA while he turned over evidence to the police, but after that… well, he was on his own!”
My gut twists, knots in a ball. So… that was a lie too, I think, stunned for a moment. Wow… ha… amazing. That’s one I still believed.
“I believed him, Sharon,” I tell her flatly.
Sharon shakes her head slowly. I can see in her face that she’s picturing me waiting for her all that time. “I… I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”
“Yeah. Ha. I can understand that!” I feel like a fool.
Sharon appears anxious, her mind seemingly triggered by something even more disturbing. Her eyes dart wildly about the restaurant. From the main door to the lobster tank, from the waitress station to the bathroom exit. Perspiration glistens on her forehead, and her hair is damp as if she has stepped out of a steamy bath. She wipes her palms dry on her navy pants. “All right, Dawn. I’m going to tell you something now that I have not repeated to anyone since July of 1981 when it happened. After I tell you, I never want to talk about it again. You can take it how you want, but I don’t ever want you to breathe another word. Am I clear?”
“Okay. I understand.” My hands are curled into fists of tension; my body is tight, immobile. I prepare myself to hear what Sharon has to say next, as if I’m about to be pounced on by a lion.
“Okay. Good. Well… here it goes.” She clears her throat and continues. “That night when you and John left and we said good-bye in the Safeway parking lot… well… I went home to finish packing up the house. Not to meet up with you and John, but to close everything up. I knew it wasn’t safe there anymore… because of John and Eddie and, well, how John lied to the police. I was going to Oxnard to stay with my parents. Anyway, I was in the bathroom, finishing my bath and packing. The dogs were in there with me. They had been boarded for three days and didn’t want to leave my side… you know.” Sharon’s mouth is parched; I can hear her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth. She takes a long drink of her iced tea. “Well… I was just stepping out of the bathroom, into the doorway of the kitchen… you know… when he grabbed me.”
“Grabbed you? Oh my God. Who?”
“One of Eddie’s thugs… who knows… a bad man? He was wearing a black ski mask, so I couldn’t tell. He grabbed me around my waist and pinned my arms to my side so I couldn’t move. He put a knife to my throat and told me to keep quiet.”