Page 2 of Haven't Killed in Years
I lifted the newspaper and revealed my gift, a man’s left arm—hairy, colorless, severed right below the elbow. Wedged between the thumb and forefinger of his stiff hand was a tiny note card, the kind that comes with a bouquet of flowers, which simply readHi, Marin.
I threw the newspaper back on top of the arm and lunged into my apartment with it, slamming the door behind me and pivoting directly into my iron entryway table. Same exact toe.
Two
There was no wayit was a coincidence. Of all the days for a severed limb to show up on my doorstep, it had to be the same day my mother was released from prison.Hi, Marin. That was the real kicker. Someone knew the truth of who I was, and that person was keen on letting me know.
I stared at the box for almost an hour. I had to get rid of it. One would normally contact the authorities, but this was not a normal situation. I grabbed a brown paper grocery bag from under the sink and placed the box inside. Then I hooked the handles around my wrist and slid over to the drawer next to the fridge. After fumbling through a bunch of utensils, I found the salad tongs and threw them in the bag with the box.
The rational parts of my brain told me to destroy it—dissolve it in acid, feed it to wild animals, burn it in a barrel—but I was desperate to know who the arm belonged to. I didn’t have a convenient friend at a DNA lab or within the FBI, so I would have to plant the arm somewhere and let the cops figure it out for me.
I drove my car to a side street half a mile from the Wellington train station and folded my hair up under a baseball hat. I considered throwing my hood over the hat, but honestly, if you were looking for someone suspicious, a dark-hooded night prowler would fit the bill.
I took the train eleven stops to Mass Ave. It was the kind of area where you knew to stay out of other people’s business. After walking a bit, I came across an alley that looked secluded enough. I did a quick scan for banks or convenience stores—anywhere that might have a surveillance system. With nothing to give me pause, I crouched next to a dumpster in the alley and opened the bag, using the salad tongs to remove the arm from the box and place it behind the dumpster. When the garbage truck came, someone would see it. That was the point.
—
The train ride back to Wellington station took about half an hour. I wanted very badly to go home and pretend everything was normal—make dinner, read, and fall asleep on the couch. The problem was, everything had changed. Somebody knew who I was, and said person had killed or at least severely maimed a man. More troubling, though, was that it was not something I had merely stumbled upon; I was being provoked.
- - - - -
I was born MarinMarie Haggerty, but that wasn’t a name I heard anymore. I was Gwen Tanner at the doctor’s office and to telemarketers (the only people who ever used my full name) and Gwen to everyone else. I worked for a financial services company as an assistant in recruiting—a stable entry-level job that I was probably stuck in for the long haul. I had never been in a serious relationship but dated enough so as to not raise any flags. I wore colorful clothes from stores like the J.Crew outlet so that I didn’t look dark and deranged. At anygiven time, I was overtired and slightly dehydrated, but from the outside, I looked like your standard almost-too-basic law-abiding woman approaching thirty. On the inside? Eh, not so much.
When I was nine years old, my father, Abel Haggerty, was convicted on eight counts of first-degree murder and I was ripped from my home without warning. He’d also had a good job and worn nice clothes; it was the easiest way to hide in plain sight.
There’s no death penalty in the state of Massachusetts, and Abel Haggerty was currently serving a life sentence at Edgar Valley Prison in Barker, Massachusetts. On a map, he was close, but in reality, he might as well have been two thousand miles away.
My mother, on the other hand, had only been convicted of aiding and abetting. Her lawyer argued that my father had brainwashed and abused her, garnering Reanne Haggerty a reduced sentence and the chance for parole. The last time I’d seen my mother I was also nine, and I had planned on keeping it that way. Unfortunately for me, a human forearm had been delivered to my doorstep and my dear mother was the only lead I had.
Three
Of course, I hadbeen keeping tabs. Reanne Haggerty had been granted a divorce from my father while in prison, and years later had married a sad sack named Gustus Trent—prison-wedding style. No gold foil save-the-date for me.
I drove thirty-five minutes to the town of Saugus and parked outside Gustus’s house. It needed a paint job and a deep clean—maybe one of those exterminator tents. I waited in my car for two hours before I saw my mother emerge, her long, frizzy hair half-auburn, half-gray. She looked old, a lot older than fifty-two—beauty credit to the Massachusetts Department of Correction. She held a cigarette between her chapped lips and followed her husband into an old Ford sedan under the carport.
I trailed them to the nearby Stop & Shop, where he parked crooked in a handicap spot. I parked like a decent human being farther down the same row and hustled into the store after them.
I waited until Reanne was alone, a couple of aisles in, staring at the section full of Hamburger Helper and Rice-A-Roni type things—delicious chemicals with the ability to turn from powder to paste. The options must have been overwhelming compared to what she’d had to pick from twenty years ago.
“Hi, Mom,” I said.
She released a box and spun toward me. She took in my face, then examined the aisle around us, concerned she was hallucinating. “Marin?”
Marin. It was unsettling hearing that name. More so than I’d ever considered. I nodded.That’s me, I guess.
“Your hair’s so dark,” she said.
“I dye it.”
“You look different. You’re real grown up. As tall as me.”
I wasn’t looking to list all the changes that can happen to a person from ages nine to twenty-nine, so I cut to the chase. “Can you tell me if you’ve been talking to anyone about me?”
“What do ya mean?”
“I need to know. No one is supposed to know who I am or where I live.”
“Idon’t know where you live, and honestly, I don’t know if I could have even picked you out of a lineup.”
