Novels 11 Adam Read online

  “He was terrified to go to work the first day,” Jessica recalled, seated with one leg swinging over the other in the lounge at UCLA. Her eyes had a far-off look as she pulled the details from her memory. “Not that he was afraid of work—he’d done plenty of that. It was the thought of working with people that got to him.

  He was afraid he’d have to work with a woman. He never did have much luck talking to women.”

  As it turned out, the kitchen had an all-male staff, and as a dishwasher, he didn’t have much interaction with the waitresses. A week later, Father Seymour found a job for Jessica cleaning offices at night.

  And as promised, Father Seymour set them up with a correspondence course that would give them a GED within two years if they passed the General Education Development test, which Alex felt supremely confident of doing.

  Now nineteen and eighteen respectively, Alex and Jessica were well on their way to making a healthy transition into a well-adjusted life just two years after their escape from captivity. Or so it appeared to those blind to the full extent of the abuse they’d suffered in Oklahoma.

  The furnished apartment the siblings would call home for the next nine years had a basic kitchen with pale yellow countertops, a refrigerator, a stove, and a white ceramic sink. The furniture consisted of eleven inventoried pieces: one kitchen table with four chairs, one brown couch, one oak coffee table, two beds (one in each bedroom), and two nightstands. Beyond that, they were on their own.

  The bedrooms, one with a window and one without, were on opposite sides of the living room. Sleeping had always presented a problem for both of them, particularly sleeping in the dark, which was all but impossible. When they finally did fall asleep, nightmares frequently woke them. According to Jessica, a lights-out policy was the main reason Alex had refused to spend much time at the shelter. He would much rather find a streetlight to fall asleep under.

  Each of the rooms had an overhead incandescent bulb, but they couldn’t afford to keep these on all night, or so they reasoned. There was no way Alex could sleep in the room without the window. For that matter, Jessica wasn’t sure she could sleep in her room alone.

  Alex came up with a solution im-mediately: They would both sleep in the living room, she on his mattress, which he pulled from the bed in the windowless room, and he on the couch. They would keep their clothes and private things in their respective bedrooms, but until they figured things out, they would just have to sleep in the living room. With the kitchen light on.

  Slowly the apartment began to take shape. “Alex dragged all kinds of things home,” Jessica recalls. “I mean, if it wasn’t an old beat-up desk he claimed the church gave him, or a lamp from someone’s Dumpster, it was some other piece of furniture or trinket. I brought some stuff home too.”

  Among these trinkets were a variety of framed pictures. The pictures didn’t matter; they both favored the ornate frames over the pictures anyway. Soon the apartment’s decor began to take shape. They filled it with candles, and anything made from stained glass, and colored rugs to cover the brown carpet.

  And crosses. Two or three for each room. Alex had an obsession with crosses, something he’d picked up from Alice, Mother God. “Except he insisted they be hung right side up,”

  Jessica said. “We always thought the long part was the top, but all the churches had them the other way, and we learned to do it right.”

  From the day they first moved into the apartment, Jessica made it clear they would do nothing the way it had been done in their old home. Alex needed no encouragement.

  “I don’t blame those who don’t believe in Evil; I pity them. The inhabitants of this planet also once thought the earth was flat. It was their lack of experience that failed to inform them of the truth, not any lack of intelligence.”

  —Father Robert Seymour Dance of the Dead

  “That first year, living at Holly Street, was the happiest year of my life,” she later said. “We were both working, we both were studying, often together. We both were so free and hopeful. Not to say we didn’t have our problems, but compared to what we’d lived through with Alice, we were practically in heaven.”

  And Jessica was right. In retrospect, 1984 appears to have been the best year they shared. The problems Jessica speaks of were relatively minor compared to what would come.

  Father Seymour summarized his take on the pair that year: “I knew they had issues that could only have been explained by a dark past that neither wanted to relive, but Alex in particular was making progress by leaps and bounds. He seemed adamant about putting the past behind and forging a new life. Both proved to be exemplary students.”

  What kinds of issues? For starters, the nightmares continued. In fact, unknown to Father Seymour, Alex was suffering them with increasing intensity. He slept less, became more irritable, and struggled with depression. Small incidents could set him off, like the time his boss hired a woman to work in the kitchen. “He came home and threw one of the chairs against the wall,” Jessica recalled. “Then he locked himself in his room for several hours to cool off. Luckily the girl quit the next day. I think it might have been something he said to her, although he wouldn’t tell me what.”

  There were other issues: Alex’s sudden dislike for overhead lights, which ended in his bringing home seven or eight old lamps and setting them in all the corners. He became more sensitive about his personal space. When Jessica suggested they might consider moving into their respective rooms, he wouldn’t hear of it. Instead, he wanted her to keep her side of the living room spotless. Everything had its place, and he became more sensitive about where those places were.

  If he couldn’t control the mess unraveling in his mind, he could compensate by controlling his environment.

  Although Alex refused to move his bed into his room, he began to use the space as his personal sanctuary, a place to which he would withdraw to escape the demons that haunted him. Still he plowed on, putting on a facade of well-being that kept even Jessica in the dark.

  Meanwhile, Jessica made a more seamless transition to a normal life, steadily gaining confidence in her ability to merge with society. She suffered from an understandable nervousness around men and preferred disappearing into a book over spending time with anyone who might be considered a friend, but she found herself laughing more and even began to enjoy her work cleaning offices.

  Neither made what could be considered more than acquaintances, and certainly not with members of the opposite sex. At the same time, Alex was fiercely protective of Jessica and she of him. And Alex would have it no other way.

  On January 17, 1986, Alex and Jessica took the General Education Development test under the supervision of Father Seymour. Both passed with ease. It was a time for celebration, and celebrate they did, by going out to a restaurant together for the first time in their lives.

  Alex ordered a bottle of wine, and they each had two glasses, though neither was a wine drinker. It just seemed to be the right thing to do. Jessica was now twenty-one and Alex twenty-two. They were legal, had jobs, an education, and held the world by the tail.

  A little dizzy from the wine, they returned to the apartment at about ten and fell asleep, he on the couch, she on her mattress in the corner, as always. Just past midnight, by the old grandfather clock Alex had hauled in from somewhere, Jessica woke to the sound of screaming. Fearful that the whole apartment complex would wake, she rushed over to the couch and woke Alex from his nightmare.

  He retreated to his sanctuary and locked the door. The next morning he emerged with dark circles under his eyes and issued a new rule. Under no circumstances was Jessica ever to enter his room again. When she asked why, he said he needed the space to heal. And he had to do the healing alone. Then he headed off to work, taking the key to the bedroom with him.

  Jessica came home from cleaning at ten that Wednesday night and found Alex already sleeping, exhausted from wakefulness the night before and a long day at work.

  Two hours later, she once again wok
e to terrible screaming. Again she hurried over to him and woke him before he disturbed the neighbors. Again he retreated to his sanctuary.

  When a similar set of circumstances repeated themselves Thursday night, Jessica started to grow genuinely concerned. Nightmares of Alice were nothing new to them, but she suffered them with less intensity while Alex was becoming overwhelmed.

  “I suggested he talk to Father Seymour about the nightmares, but he said he’d tape his mouth shut before he’d lay all his garbage at ‘that pimp’s’ feet. Those are exactly the words he used, ‘that pimp.’ It was the first time I’d heard him talking about the father like that. I figured he was just tired.”

  That night Alex made good on his promise. When Jessica came home, she saw that he’d strapped duct tape across his mouth before falling asleep.

  As crazy as it seemed to her, the tape worked. Unable to open his mouth, his screams were muffled and woke him before she heard. The nightmares didn’t subside, but at least he wasn’t waking the neighbors. He would retreat to his room, lock the door, and spend the rest of the night alone, often without falling back to sleep. Jessica couldn’t recall ever again seeing Alex fall asleep without gray duct tape covering his mouth.

  Six months passed without any major incident. But without studies to occupy Alex’s mind, he spent more and more time alone in his room, sinking into a depression that no amount of encouragement from Jessica could shake. He forced himself to face life each morning with a courage that made her heart break.

  The first significant shift in their relationship occurred on a Saturday in late August of 1986. Both of them had the night off, and Jessica suggested that they go out on the town, maybe drink another bottle of wine. With a little twisting of Alex’s arm, she persuaded him.

  They walked to Colorado Boulevard and strolled down the street, which was bustling with nightlife. But whenever Jessica suggested they go into one of the bars or restaurants, Alex refused. By this time in her life, Jessica had started taking more interest in men—not so far as to enter into a relationship, but she couldn’t help notice the way most looked at her with interest. The attention was beginning to lift her confidence.

  Alex, on the other hand, not only steered completely clear of women but was noticeably bothered by the fact that Jessica seemed more comfortable around men. Colorado Boulevard was filled with both men and women on the prowl that Saturday night, as on any Saturday night.

  Just past midnight, as they passed by an alley next to Sister’s Bar at the quiet end of the street, a group of four young women who’d obviously had too much to drink snickered as Alex and Jessica passed.

  “They were just young girls, maybe eighteen or nineteen,” Jessica recalled. “Just having fun, that’s all.”

  One of them made a passing comment under her breath, suggesting that Alex “dump that whore for some real fun.”

  “Alex stopped and turned to them. I told him to keep walking. That it was okay, just keep walking. And he did until they started to laugh. That’s when it went bad.”

  Infuriated by the insult to his sister, Alex walked up to the nearest girl and demanded that she apologize. When she rolled her eyes, Alex hit her in the mouth. She staggered, stunned.

  The other three screamed their outrage, hurling insults not only at him but at Jessica. “It was what they said about me that got to him,” Jessica said. “He couldn’t care less what they said about him, but he had this thing about protecting me.”

  Overtaken by anger, Alex hit another woman in the head with enough force to knock her out. But he didn’t stop there. He went after the others in a blind fury, delivering sharp blows to each in rapid succession.

  It all happened so fast and with such ferocity that Jessica didn’t acquire the presence of mind to cry out, much less try to stop him. Not that she could have. The beating was over in ten seconds, and Alex stood over four collapsed figures, panting.

  Someone down the street yelled, and Alex snapped out of it. He grabbed Jessica’s hand and pulled her down the alley. They didn’t stop running until they reached the apartment.

  “By then a siren was blaring, and I knew it was for those poor girls,” Jessica recalled. “I insisted we call the police and tell them what had happened, but he told me we couldn’t. He just paced, crying, telling me they would throw him in jail and he couldn’t go to jail. If those whores were really hurt, he’d tell Father Seymour the whole thing in the morning.”

  She finally agreed. And when they learned in the morning that apart from two broken noses, none of the girls had been seriously hurt, Alex persuaded her not to turn him in.

  “He cried and expressed real remorse that night,” Jessica said. “Part of me thought it might actually be a turning point, because for the first time in months, Alex slept the whole night on the couch. He wasn’t awakened by a nightmare.”

  But the nightmares returned the next night, and within a couple of weeks, Alex had fallen into an even deeper depression. It was then that he began to do small things that reminded Jessica of Alice. “Mostly the way he spoke,” she said. “Alice used to tell us how lucky we were, and Alex started telling me how lucky I was to have him protecting me. But he said it just like she would.”

  Other things Alex said bothered Jessica. He became picky about food and started to call any food he didn’t find acceptable “slop,” using the same intonation Alice had. The police became “pigs.” None of it was enough to spark any real concern from Jessica, but the change in him began to gnaw at her.

  They’d made a vow never to speak of Alice again, but when Jessica came home one afternoon and saw that Alex had turned one of the crosses upside down, she could hold back her irritation no longer.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she demanded. “You’re starting to turn into Alice!”

  She knew with one look at his white face that she’d said the wrong thing. Alex stood still for a long time, eyes wide and glossy. Jessica immediately began to apologize, swearing she hadn’t meant it and vowing never to say it again. Without speaking a word, Alex grabbed his jacket and walked out of the apartment.

  As the night grew late, Jessica became worried. He didn’t like staying out late because of his fear of the dark. She couldn’t remember the last time he was gone so late by himself. Midnight came and passed.

  She was finally slipping into an exhausted sleep at 4:00 a.m. when the door opened, waking her. Alex stood in the doorway for a while before stepping in and locking the door behind him. His face was smeared with dust, and Jessica could tell he’d been crying.

  “I asked him if he was okay, and he started to cry.” Alex rushed over to Jessica, fell to his knees, and began to kiss her hands, begging her forgiveness.

  “My heart broke for him. We were both crying, just holding each other and sobbing.” Months and years of pain flooded from Alex and Jessica as they clung to each other in the early morning. Jessica swore never to bring up Alice again, and

  Alex tried to hush her, insisting that it was his fault. She was right, now that he thought about it, she was right. He didn’t know what was happening to him.

  There was more Alex said that night. He kept apologizing, saying he didn’t mean to do it. He was so profuse that Jessica wondered if he was speaking about more than her comment about Alice. She asked him where he’d gone, but he never did tell her.

  Alex finally fell asleep, curled in a ball next to her mattress. He wasn’t disturbed by a nightmare that night.

  TWELVE

  EVE’S SIXTEENTH EVE lay naked on the stainless-steel guttered table, white under the blazing overhead lights. Lori Ames bent over the body, dressed in a white surgical gown and gloves.

  She glanced back at Daniel as the door squeaked shut behind him, then returned to her work without a word.

  Daniel glanced around the familiar room of the dead. An eerie disquiet settled over him. But for Lori’s unreasonable efforts to bring him back, she might well be examining his body at the moment. In this very room.

 
The tools of the trade sat in their racks: saws, scalpels, chisels, drills. Bodies were disassembled here, not fixed. Thoughts of his own smothering fears eased. Nowhere was the hunt for critical evidence so visceral as on the steel table, under the pathologist’s blade.

  The victim’s clothes sat on a side table, awaiting meticulous examination by the evidence response team. Other preliminaries had already been completed: fingerprints taken for an AFIS identity check. Blood sample for the lab tests—toxicology, viral, bacteriological.

  Lori glanced back again. “Take a look?”

  Daniel took a coat off the rack to his right, pulled on a pair of gloves, and approached the table. The victim’s skin was translucent and badly bruised, similar to the other victims Eve had left behind. Unlike the others, Eve sixteen had been put on ice soon enough to arrest decomposition.

  Lori pulled a suspended microphone down and flipped a switch to engage the recording. Two cameras recorded the autopsy from opposing angles. She picked up a chart and read her findings thus far for the recorder.

  “FBI forensic pathologist, Lori Ames. I am examining federal case 62-88730, body as of yet unidentified. A female Caucasian in her midtwenties, blonde hair, brown eyes. Body weight, ninety-eight pounds, four ounces. Sixty-four inches in length.”

  Lori set the chart on a roll-away table and began to examine the body with her gloved hands, issuing her conclusions with practiced ease.

  “External examination of the body shows rigor mortis present in the extremities. There appear to be systemic contusions spread through both forearms. Petechial rash appears to be present on the lower trunk and upper thighs. Pervasive bruising on the torso and extremities. Possible presenting symptom of meningitis.”

  Daniel looked on, struck by his fascination with watching Lori. She seemed to be in a world uniquely her own, just as he was while studying behavior patterns.

  “There appear to be no puncture wounds, no intravenous injections. The only perforations are pierced earlobes.”