Gregg Olsen - Fear Collector

“No one blames you,” Grace said.

Daphne laughed, but it was forced and as fake as the fur trim on the coat that hung on the hook in the kitchen.

“They do,” she said. “You’re a cop. You know better, but deep down you probably do, too. It’s always been about when the killings happened. The date always comes back to me. Authors and TV people have speculated over the years that a broken heart might have been the trigger for his madness, or whatever it was.”

“When you broke up with him,” Grace said.

“That’s been completely overstated, Detective.”

“Grace, please.”

Daphne nodded and swallowed her coffee. “Right, Grace. Just so you know-and no one seems to listen to me on this-the breakup with Ted was less dramatic. He was immature. He needed growing up, you know, to find his own way. When we parted he didn’t seem upset. He just vanished. Later, when I tried to reconnect-after he’d started law school and become a bigwig in the Republican Party, he acted like we’d never met. Some traumatic breakup.”

Grace looked around the kitchen. Daphne had planted an herb garden in the window. The smell of mint and oregano perfumed the tidy space.

“All right, fair enough. But tell me, what was Ted really like?”

“Exactly why are you here? I mean, really. Missing girl in Tacoma? I read the papers.”

Grace thought for a moment. The answer was more complicated than any one case. It was her sister’s, the others, the life that her parents fashioned for her when she was growing up. She had a need to know people who knew Ted.

“Yes, the Tacoma case. But also,” she said, “my sister’s case. Tell me about him, please.”

Daphne rummaged in a cupboard for a package of Lorna Doones.

“The only connection that exists from my time with Ted is our fondness for shortbread. His favorite. I stopped eating them for ten years, maybe longer. I started buying it again a few years ago. Funny how innocent things can sometimes feel evil for a time.”

She put them on a plate and inched them over to Grace. She took one for herself and watched as Grace, her stomach still rumbling from the mini-mart snack, declined.

“Tell me about him,” she asked. “I need to understand him from someone who knew him.”

Daphne set down a cookie. “All right. There were two Teds. Maybe more. There was the Ted who could charm the socks off of anyone. He just could. He was quick. Funny. He had the kind of charisma that made people feel they were close to him even if they weren’t.”

“Like you?” Grace asked.

Daphne hesitated. “Yes, like me.”

The look on her face spoke volumes. It was clear that even though none of it was her fault, even though she knew in her heart of hearts that Ted had been a monster before she ever met him, she felt that twinge that comes with responsibility-no matter how off-base.

“You say there were two Teds. What was the other? How did that other personality differ?”

Daphne indicated the coffeepot and Grace shook her head.

“The other was the Ted that killed your sister,” she said. “The monster, the man without a conscience. The one who told me that he’d break my neck because I confronted him one time about stealing a TV. I knew he didn’t buy it. I wasn’t stupid. He was a thief. He stole other things, too; skis come to mind. I was pretty sure of it. After I saw that look in his eyes when I asked him where he got the goods, I knew I was never, ever going to push him again.”

Grace was in full detective mode just then. “Was he violent?”

“That’s the thing. Not violent in the way abusers are. Ted’s rage was always under the surface, his anger poking through just enough so that you would take two steps backwards just to save yourself from the possibility.”

“Please, go on. What else did you observe?”

Daphne picked at the necklace of stars that shifted and shimmered when she moved and thought for a second before answering. “You mean in the way he acted?”

“Either. Both.”

“All right,” Daphne said. “Weird stuff. Stuff that he shouldn’t have or didn’t have a real reason to have.”

“Like what?

“You’ll know the second I say it, but back then I didn’t know what it meant. If it meant anything at all. I saw medical stuff around the house. Plaster of Paris, crutches. It was strange, but I didn’t really say anything. Later, you know, after everything came out, I knew that those things were items he used to set his trap for those girls.”

Weak Ted. Weak Ted was really strong, clever Ted.

“What else?”

“Oh and he had surgical gloves, too. Why did he need those?”

Both women knew the answer.

“I didn’t ask him, you know,” Daphne said, on a roll. “I just looked at the knives, the meat cleaver, the ropes and stuff he kept in his car and just accepted it. He even had a bag of women’s clothes. I just accepted his excuse that he was gathering things up to give to St. Vincent’s. I didn’t even think about whose clothing it might have been. It wasn’t mine. Oh, yes, he also had a wrench that he’d fashioned with a better handle for gripping. Today, of course, I probably would have looked for blood on it, but that was back then. Before CSI. Before serial killers, really.” She stopped herself and considered the obvious, her audience. “Ted changed a lot of things, didn’t he?”

There was undeniable truth in what she said. Ted had altered the way people looked at a man in need. In the Seattle Summer of Ted, he’d changed how safe a young woman felt walking in her own neighborhood. In the days before Ted, the only kind of footsteps that sent chills down a young woman’s spine belonged to a man who looked scary-a bum, a hoodlum.

Not a handsome young man in a suit jacket and wingtips.

“Were you ever afraid of him?” Grace asked.

Daphne turned away, her eyes welling with tears, though none fell. It was as if that one real break in emotion could be stemmed.

“One night we were in bed,” she began, her eyes still looking out the window. “You know, just saying that makes my stomach sick. Just the idea that I was in bed with a man who would rather have sex with a dead girl, a girl that he kills, makes me want to throw up. What was I to him? Just a placeholder? Nothing at all?”

Grace wanted the rest of the story. She’d talked to crime victims before. Hundreds of times. She knew that each word was like spitting out razor blades, but getting to the essence of truth wasn’t ever an easy endeavor.

“What happened, Daphne? Tell me,” she said.

Daphne nodded. “Right. We were in bed, as I said. It was late. I just woke up. It was like some kind of a strange feeling came over me and my eyes just opened. Ted was under the covers with a flashlight, Detective. He was under the covers looking at my body with a goddamn flashlight. And you know what I did about it? I mean, I was so mortified, do you know what I said to him?”

Grace shook her head.

“Nothing. I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say. I pretended that I hadn’t caught him, but the rest of the night I just laid there wondering why I stayed with someone like Ted. I thought maybe there was something more wrong with me than with him. There had to be, because what kind of a woman just looks the other way?”

There were millions of reasons, of course. She was in love. She was trapped in a relationship that she was unable to escape. She was like a lot of women back then, unsure of her own worth and whether her life was somehow diminished if she was a single woman. Grace offered none of those. Instead, she changed the subject, trying to give Daphne Middleton a break from her moment of realization that Ted had literally inhabited her nightmares, both awake and asleep.