John Betancourt - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006

Now she’s at the hair shop, Kut & Kurl, in a small strip mall just outside of a town that boasts a pretty downtown and a prep school that is famous around the world for its age and its teaching. Not that Patti has anything against the prep school, but she’s sure that the faculty and students there go someplace further up the food chain than Kut & Kurl for their hair needs. And nothing against the ladies who run this place, but good God, let’s try for some originality at least, right? How many Kut & Kurls are there in the country? Dozens? Hundreds? She had even worked at a Kut & Kurl near Venice Beach, California, and that had been a blessing for two years — working in such a magical place, with the wide beaches and sunsets and the winters that weren’t even winters. A special time, until that awful day, when she had to pack up and move East.

This particular Kut & Kurl is busy this morning, with the old ladies lumbering in, dropped off by sons or daughters or grandchildren. Most of the poor dears didn’t have enough hair left to fuss over, but they came to the salon as regular as church. It was a chance to gossip and talk and get out of the house and the painless drone of the televisions. Patti is envious of their steady lives.

The morning goes by fairly fast, with three regular appointments and one walk-in, all male, and she talks just a bit as she works, not overwhelming the men, whom she knows mostly wanted to get a good haircut and then get the hell out. They didn’t tip as well as the women, but then again, they didn’t need nor demand much, so she is able to churn more of them through than women.

After the walk-in leaves, she goes out for a break as well, just to get out of the salon and the chatter and the soft rock station playing in the background and the smells of the hairspray and chemicals. She sits on a concrete planter, stretches out her legs, and lets the May sun warm her face. As much as possible, she wonders if this was what it meant to be at peace with oneself.

Peace.

Such a wonderful concept.

She looks across the parking lot to the street, and beyond the street, to a small pond rimmed with park benches where she likes to spend her lunch break in warmer weather. She wonders if this will be one of those days, if the sun gets high enough and those clouds don’t move in and—

A car comes into the parking lot. A dented light blue Ford Escort.

A young woman steps out, hesitant at first. She is in her mid twenties, it looks like, with long, dark brown hair down her back. She has on pressed jeans and a short leather jacket. A camera is slung over her shoulder. She holds a notebook in her hand.

Something heavy starts to press against Patti’s chest.

The woman comes over, a shy smile on her face.

The weight gets heavier.

Patti wants to stand up and run, but she can’t.

God help her, it’s time again.

And her feelings for Ted were mixed, right after he got arrested, as she remembered telling a police detective working on the case.

At first, of course, she believed in his innocence, had to believe in his innocence. The detective had nodded politely and had taken notes in his cluttered office, and she had gone on saying, you don’t understand, and when he just grunted a reply, she had kept quiet. For it was hard to say that she had to believe in Ted’s innocence in order to believe in herself. For how could it have been otherwise? How could a woman be so dumb and dopey to live with a man who was accused of being one of the worst serial killers in the United States? Who had supposedly started his dark arts back in Washington State?

So she had kept the faith.

Even when the newspapers started reporting stories about what Ted did in Seattle.

Even when the newspapers started reporting stories about what Ted was suspected to have done in Colorado and Utah.

And even when she appeared at a court hearing, crowded up front along with the other spectators, she wanted to let Ted know that she was there, that she supported him, and that she wanted to talk to him. But it never happened. Not once. His lawyer refused to let her see him, and even after he had interviewed her, over and over again — trying to set up alibis for Ted, she was no dummy — she never got a chance again to talk to Ted face to face.

Only once did she ever catch his eye.

At one of the court hearings, when it was clear that the evidence against Ted was mounting, Ted looked back from his conference table with his lawyer, to look at the crowd of spectators look upon him, and she caught his eye. Patti and Ted. Looking at each other. His look was... it was cold. Unyielding. Emotionless. And then he looked away.

She had stumbled out of the courtroom and puked in the hallway outside, knowing that for a fair number of women, that expression on that man’s face had been the last thing they had ever seen.

So in New Hampshire, the young lady is now upon her. She looks over at the hair salon and then at Patti, and she says, “Excuse me?”

“Yes?” Patti is amazed at how hard it is to hear her own voice.

“This... this is where Patti Barnes works, am I right?”

What to do, what to do, what to do. Deny all you want, she thinks, and this young girl — yes, Patti knows it’s not PC but she can’t help herself, she is just a girl — will keep on sniffing around and around. By now she knows reporters, knows how they work. Knows how tireless and ruthless they can be when they feel like they’re being snowed. Better to end it now, she feels.

“Yes,” she says. “And I’m Patti Barnes.”

A quick, nervous nod. “My name is Beth Hanley. I’m a reporter for the Sentinel . I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

She tries a smile, knows it’s not much of a smile. “Questions? About what?”

The reporter looks down to her open notebook, like she’s embarrassed to look Patti in the face. “I’d like to do a story about you.”

“Me? Why?”

The face is still down. “I... I understand that years ago, you used to date Ted Bundy. The serial killer. Is that true?”

The heavy sensation in her chest increases.

“Yes,” Patti finally says. “Yes, it’s true.”

Reporters.

When they were finished interviewing detectives, police officers, district attorneys, the judge, neighbors, and everybody else, they fell upon her, like a horde of locusts descending upon a solitary cornstalk. They followed her from her apartment to the police station, from her apartment to the courthouse, from her apartment to anywhere else.

At the very first, because it felt like the polite thing to do, she did talk to the reporters, but they were insatiable. Over and over again, the very same questions:

What was Ted like?

Did you ever suspect he was a killer?

Were you ever afraid?

And most of the reporters were men, tall men, short men, bearded and clean-shaven men. Some dressed in suits, others in jeans and dress shirts with neckties. All with their little notebooks or cameras, or tape recorders and microphones, all pushing and prodding and trying to drag out one little bit of information that no one else had gotten yet. It was as if they were incessant suitors, demanding to know if any previous suitor had gotten to “first base,” and couldn’t she go just a little bit further this time, please, please, Miss Barnes. We’ll never tell anyone; your secret will be safe with us.

There were always the unasked questions from the men, as well, questions she knew that they wanted to know:

How was Ted in bed?

Why did you think he hooked up with you?

And...

Honey, no offense, but why didn’t he rape and murder you as well?

Well?

Well?

So just before Ted was going to trial, it had proven to be too much, so she had fled home to Mom, back to the same trailer in the same park, the same wind whipping down from the mountains. Mom had put on thirty pounds since she had last seen her, had picked up another pack of Marlboro Lights in her daily habit, and after Patti settled back in, Mom came right out and said it: there was a lawyer friend of hers, a nice fellow who had helped probate Dad’s will and who had come to her with a powerful suggestion: there was money to be made, good money, if she just came out and told the real story behind the story. Now was the time, when the interest was there, and—