J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

I fell asleep waiting for their return.

Wake up, Tammy said.

She was on top of me, straddling my chest, her knees cinching the blanket over me in an inescapable cocoon. I thrashed a little, which only made her laugh. Then she leaned down very close to me in the dark, close enough that her hair brushed my cheek.

Now, she said. You’re gonna tell me where Moody went, do you understand? I know he tells you everything, so either you tell me or else.

Or else what?

Or else this. She took a fistful of my hair and started to squeeze, pushing down into the pillow with all her strength. My head caught fire and I tried to kick free, but she was too heavy for me to move. I clenched my teeth, tried to take the pain, but the tears welled up regardless. Don’t cry, you little baby, just tell me. If she’d known about waterboarding, I might have cracked, but that night I discovered a reserve inside me, a tank of fortitude lined with rage. Sensing this, she let go of my hair. She sat back, still trapping me, taking a moment to catch her breath. Then she grabbed the pillow, tore it out from under my head, and held it above me just an inch or two. If you don’t say something, I’m gonna smother you.

I did say something, but it was not to her liking. She gave me a slap on the cheek and said, You want me to tell Mama so she can wash your mouth out with soap? If suffocation was my other option, then yes, I would have taken the soap. But I kept my mouth shut this time. Okay, then. You’re forcing me to do it.

She didn’t press hard enough at first. I turned my face to catch a pocket of air, and I remember thinking I could hold out forever, that nothing she could do would break me. Then she readjusted her grip, getting a good seal over my nose and mouth. After a few seconds I really panicked, bucking so hard that Tammy came off the bed and cracked her lip on the toy chest next to the dresser. I scrambled out of bed, but with her on the floor between me and the door, I didn’t know where to go.

Tammy got to her feet and touched her fingers to her lip to check for blood. Then she saw me crouched for action in my underwear and started to laugh. Never mind. We’re even now. If you wanna take it out on anybody, it’s Moody’s fault for running away. She came over and tried to ruffle my hair, pretending like she was one of the adults. I would have popped her right there, only the braves don’t hurt women, and I was still scared of her, too.

None of this is on her website, of course. Her account of Moody’s disappearance omits me entirely-not that I’d have it any other way. She writes in her best approximation of a journalistic tone, citing the time when her parents left, their return, the initial call to the police station. Teenage runaways not being a departmental priority at that time, my uncle rousted a sergeant he knew out of bed, which resulted in the arrival of a single squad car. Some men from the neighborhood organized a search, driving in two cars from our house all the way to Heights Boulevard, but no one spotted Moody. Maybe he’d run away, but more likely he was at a friend’s house or even with a girl. That’s what they told themselves to justify getting to bed.

Throughout her account, Tammy refers to other victims of Dean Corll, noting the similarities in police response. Like so many of their parents, it never occurred to Moody’s that he’d been abducted for purposes of torture and murder by a local sex deviant and his teenage accomplices. Even my uncle, with his policeman’s knowledge of the world, didn’t imagine anything like that.

But Tammy says otherwise. In her version, she had heard rumors in the neighborhood. She had noted the strange epidemic of runaways, boys her brother’s age and younger who were among us one day and gone the next. She knew from the beginning that her brother had been taken, and was tireless in searching for him. For the past thirty-six years she has thought of nothing else. Or so she claims.

In fact, the assumption was always that Moody had run off. He’d been working at the gun shop one day a week-a fact that made me as jealous as the ten-speed did-and after he left, so did a nickel-plated Smith amp; Wesson Model 66. The bike was never seen again, either, though I recall my uncle joking that he wouldn’t get very far on that. I could have told him what happened to the bike, but I didn’t, not for many years.

Why Moody had run off was a topic of speculation early on. Not knowing left each of his parents free to shoulder the blame. My aunt upped her intake of bourbon and lowered her Sunday attendance, letting the rest of us off the hook entirely. My uncle bottled up the frustration and didn’t let it out until three years later when with my own eyes I saw him shoot a man down. A black man with an unloaded shotgun who’d walked into the gun store by mistake, not realizing the jewelry store was one door down. My uncle got the drop on him and could have let him run. But he didn’t.

Only Tammy remained unscathed. The one true thing in her online account is this: I remember right away that she insisted on Moody’s being dead. At dinner one night (before we stopped having dinner together as a family), she suggested that we have a big funeral for him, volunteering to organize everything and to sing during the ceremony. Her mother went pale and got up from the table. Her father dabbed his lips with a handkerchief, looking at us both with a hangdog expression, then followed after her to the bedroom.

“Roland,” Charlotte says. “What are you doing?”

She stands in the doorway, silhouetted from behind, then moves closer when she sees what’s on the screen. Leaning over my shoulder, her necklace gracing my skin, she scrolls down the page, making a clucking sound with her tongue.

“What in the world are you reading this for?”

“Research.”

She kisses me on the temple. “Well, don’t research too long.”

She leaves a trace of scent on the air behind her, and I feel almost blessed to have this woman in my life. Almost as if in marrying her I’ve ducked a terrible destiny, though not entirely. Perhaps it’s just that in Charlotte, despite our problems, I have someone to share the pain with, a partner in suffering.

Before closing the laptop, I skim through my email inbox, deleting the junk and the forwards and the solicitations for porn. My finger hits the key automatically, the messages disappearing as I read them. The name in one address catches my eye, then vanishes.

SIMONE_WALKER

I open the trash folder to make sure I read that right. The address is real. The message title sends a chill through me: THE RUMORS OF MY DEATH. .

I open the message.

HI DETECTIVE,

GUESS WHAT HAPPENED. IM DEAD THATS WHAT.

THE RUMORS WERE NOT EXAGGERATED ONE BIT.

DO YOU LIKE MY NAKED BODY. I CAUGHT YOU LOOKING.

MAN THAT WAS COLD. SEE YOU SOON.

LOVE, SIMONE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12–12:22 A.M.

The car pulls up on the curb outside and through the blinds I see two men getting out. Eric Castro, my go-to source when I want special favors from the crime scene unit, and a squat, curly-haired guy in an inside-out T-shirt who looks like he’s about to wake up any minute. I open the door before Castro can knock.

“Shh,” I say. “My wife’s asleep upstairs.”

After creeping into the office on tiptoes and shutting the French doors behind us, Castro introduces me to Quincy Hanford, dubbing him a computer genius. I shake hands with the genius and motion him into my chair. The email is still on-screen.

“I want to know two things,” I say. “First, is this legit? Anybody can make up an email address, and the victim’s name has been all over the papers. Second, if it is legit, I want to know if we can trace it back to the source.”