J. Gonzalez - They

“My God, I am so sorry.” Tom Hoffman looked devastated at this news, as if he were partially responsible.

“I was never very close to my mother,” Vince continued. He turned away from the cop, looking out the window into the back yard. “The last time I was really close to her was a long time ago. She… changed a lot when we moved to New York. And then we hopped around so much after that, it seemed that she changed into a different person every time we moved. By the time I was fourteen she was a completely different person than the woman who raised me. Hell, I barely remember that other woman. And she became downright loony the last few years I was home.” He managed a slight smile and chuckled. “Shit, she got worse in the years after I left home.”

Tom Hoffman stood quiet and listened.

“Anyway,” Vince seemed to be groping for the right words. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that… I’ve been through a lot the last nine months. I think I’m just now beginning to get over my wife’s death, even though I know I will never— ever —be completely over it. And to hear that my mother had been murdered… didn’t really strike a dent in me.” He looked at Tom. “Do you know what I mean?”

Tom nodded.

“I’ve talked about this already with a good friend of mine back home. I just… I don’t know… I’ve been so numbed by Laura’s death that I guess the news of Mom’s passing just hasn’t hit me yet. And to hear your theory is just… mind boggling, I guess.”

Tom laid a gentle hand on Vince’s shoulder. “I know it’s tough to understand. Hell, I don’t even understand how somebody could do something like this.” Tom Hoffman’s voice was low, gentle and soothing. “But if you need me during the next few days, you know where to find me.”

Vince nodded. He looked away from the bloodstained hardwood floor at Tom Hoffman’s weathered face. “Yeah.”

“Good.” Tom motioned toward the room. “I’ve got a team of detectives from Lancaster coming today to question some of the neighbors and perform another sweep of the property. If you’d like, come back later this afternoon and I’ll give you a key. You can collect what you need then.”

“Thanks.” He turned and walked out of the bedroom. Tom Hoffman followed him. He really wanted to spend time in the house and poke around, look to see what she’d been up to. Find out about her. For the first time since his childhood, he realized he really didn’t know very much about his mother or her family. Why is that ? He thought. Every time I tried to bring the subject up as a kid she would find some way to avoid it. She refused to talk about it. I stopped asking as I grew up . But now that he was an adult he realized it was the one enigma about his life that he always knew was beckoning: who am I? Where did I come from? Who are my people?

“Listen, I’ve got to get back to the station.” Tom Hoffman glanced at his watch. “The local PTA wants to meet with me to discuss the fall school semester’s extracurricular activities. And since I’m on the local PTA board, well, that sorta lends to my duties as well.”

Vince and Tom Hoffman walked outside together. Tom locked the front door, and as they walked to their cars Vince asked him one last question, one that had been in the back of his mind since he heard about the grisly circumstances of his mother’s death. “Mr. Hoffman, did my mother or any of her friends talk about anything… well, anything about their past to you?”

“Their past?” Tom Hoffman stopped at his cruiser and eyed Vince curiously. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know, the way people make offhand remarks about their pasts. Reminiscing. That sort of thing.”

Tom Hoffman shook his head. “I’m afraid not. At least not to me. Your mother and her bunch were quiet. Kept to themselves mostly. Despite the fact that they’re church going folks, I imagine everybody has a past. Why?”

Figments of the dream drifted in his mind, like tendrils of fog along a dark moor. “Oh… just something I’ve been wondering about.”

IT WAS ANOTHER five hours before he could get back into the house again. This time alone.

He’d spent the rest of the day driving his rented Toyota around Lititz and the surrounding countryside. Remembering. How he and his mother, Lillian Withers and some of the others from Mom’s congregation had moved out here from Toronto, Canada where they’d spent the previous eight years. He’d been sixteen going on seventeen then, and the move had been especially hard on him. He’d been taken out of the middle of the semester, away from his friends, and driven across the snowy country to the Pennsylvania Dutch Country with no conveniences of the modern city life he had grown accustomed to in Toronto. He’d been dating a pretty cheerleader when they moved, and his sixteen-year old heart had especially ached over that. For a while, he thought his relationship with Anna was the reason for the sudden move. Mom became increasingly angry with Vince during the last year or so of their residence in Toronto. He’d started on the rocky road to adolescence and wasn’t going to church with her as often—he claimed his paper route duties kept him from worship, and in turn, mother began spending more time away from home. When Vince came home from school he usually sat down to supper in an empty house. To fill in the emotional gaps, he began inviting his friends over after school for water-bong parties. When he had his first girlfriend, a cute brunette named Marion, they lost their virginity to each other on a night his mother was at a church service.

He always wondered if his mother was praying for his soul that night.

He drove around Lancaster County, remembering the year-and-a-half he lived there. He drove by the local high school. He drove by the homes of the friends he’d made in the year or so he lived in the area, wondering where they were now, or what became of them. He almost stopped at the house of a friend he’d hung out with, a guy named Judd Campbell, when he saw that the Campbell family vehicle was parked in the driveway. The vehicle was a beat-up Ford station wagon that had seen better days in the 1970s. Judd had called it the Campbell hearse because his grandmother was the prime driver of the vehicle and she was eighty-seven years old. Grandma was probably dead now.

Vince pulled the Toyota over to the side of the road and looked at the Campbell house. There were two other cars parked in the driveway beside the wagon, a Jeep Cherokee and a Subaru. He could make out movement in the house, but couldn’t tell who it was. The temptation to walk to the front door, knock and ask for Judd was great, but in the end he suppressed it. Today was not the day to go chasing after nostalgia.

He spent the rest of the day at his motel room where he napped for an hour. Then after a quick lunch at Nino’s Pizza, he headed over to the Lititz Borough Police Station. Tom Hoffman had told him to come to his office at three for the keys to his mother’s place. He picked up the keys and headed to the house.

He let himself in and stood in the dark living room, listening to the silence. Then he turned on the lights. The curtains were drawn and he moved to the kitchen, wondering where to begin.

He went to the bedroom and turned on the lights. The wall and floor were bloodstained with the remnants of death.

Something drawn on the wall in blood, on the other side of the bed, made him gasp.

Tom Hoffman told him about the atrocities performed on his mother but on his earlier trip, in the dim light, he hadn’t noticed this drawing. It was set apart from the other scribbles on the opposite wall where the bed’s headboard had rested against.