The Row(27)

Then I hear a click and he’s gone. I stare at the phone without seeing. My brain is a tumbling mass of confusion and excitement.

This news is what we’ve always wanted. A reason to cast doubt on Daddy’s entire case. Finally, it’s something to make people start questioning everything they accepted as truth more than ten years ago.

This is it. But it comes the week after Daddy tells me he is guilty. Does this mean that what I’d hoped is true, and he only said what he did because he’d given up? I blink and breathe and just keep thinking. What I want to do more than anything is drive to the scene of this new murder right now. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I feel it pulling me all the same. Half of this need I’m feeling comes from the hope that I could possibly find answers to the truth there. The other half is something more like morbid curiosity. I’ve always believed Daddy was innocent, so I’ve always wondered about the person who had really committed these crimes. If they caught him, will he still be there? Handcuffed in the back of some police car? What kind of monster could he be? Does he look like a killer or does he keep all that darkness locked up inside?

The murderer had been tricky in the past, but now he’s out of practice. After all, twelve years is a pretty long break. It was more likely someone could catch him now than ever before. But seeing if they’d finally caught the real murderer isn’t my only reason. I’ve seen so many awful things over the years in pictures in a courtroom that the scenarios have felt like a TV show. This is the chance to see what they’ve been holding over Daddy’s head for most of my life—in person—and as sick as it seems, it’s also more morbidly tempting than I can even try to explain.

And I could be there in twenty minutes.

While I was considering, I threw on a pair of jeans, a striped T-shirt, and a baseball cap without even thinking about it. My body seems to have decided for me.

So I decide not to argue. I pick up my keys and run out the door.

*

I drive through the streets like the devil himself is hot on my heels. When I arrive at the intersection Mr. Masters mentioned, the actual crime scene is easy to find. Everything looks exactly as I expected. Yellow police tape blocks off the entire parking lot in front of the pharmacy on the corner, as well as the entrance to the alley behind the building. I park a block away and run toward the crowd gathering at the edge of the yellow tape. The first news van has arrived, and I have to dodge around it to get closer. As I pass, the words of the reporter drift over me. She raises the same questions that have been plaguing me.

“Sources have told us that this murder seems to mimic those of the East End Murders from over a decade ago. This is especially shocking because the convicted perpetrator of those crimes, David Beckett, is currently on death row. Mr. Beckett lost his final appeal last week, and is scheduled to be executed at the end of this month. The police now have a big question to answer and a limited window in which to do it. Do we have a copycat killer on our hands? Or has the district attorney kept an innocent man in prison for the last eleven years?”

At least I’m not the only one asking these questions anymore.

I slip in and out between people until I’m at the front of the growing crowd, my stomach pressed against the police tape. I try to get a peek, leaning to one side, then another, but I can’t see anything from way out here, and there is an officer only five feet in front of me to make sure I don’t think about getting any closer.

I give him a tentative smile and he looks surprised, but then smiles back. His badge reads Officer Romero. He’s short but has a very muscular build. I’m not sure if he could catch me if I tried to run past him, but he would absolutely squash me if he did. Obviously, I need a different tactic.

“So, what happened?” I ask, playing dumb.

Romero shakes his head, and his black mustache grows much wider when he frowns. “This is a murder scene.” He looks down at the way the tape is pressed against my stomach as I try to see past him again. “Which is why you really need to stay back.”

I take one step away and smile again. He watches me closer now than before, and his smile doesn’t reach his eyes. I walk back a bit and then slide to the area where the police tape attaches to the wall of the building. It’s a different officer on this side. He’s drinking a coffee and has his back to me. Maybe I can find a way through here …

Before I get a chance to try it, there is some motion in the alley. I hold my breath, hoping they bring someone past in handcuffs. Someone I can hate from a distance as the city apologizes and releases Daddy from Polunsky. Instead, a couple of officers roll out a big black bag on a stretcher toward the waiting Houston City Coroner truck only fifteen feet away from me.

My blood turns cold and I feel nauseous. It’s a body bag. Nothing about this feels like TV and I can’t believe I’d wanted it to feel real. There’s a murdered woman in that bag who was probably alive just last night. My knees buckle and only the brick wall next to me keeps me from losing my balance. How could I have been excited about coming here? How could this be a thing that had made me feel hopeful?

What kind of freak had my life turned me into?

At the same time, at the back of my mind I keep wondering if somehow that bag holds the answers we need. The officers who brought it out turn and go back into the alley. The only person guarding the body bag is in black scrubs and banging stuff around inside the coroner’s truck.