Page 20 of Haven't Killed in Years
“They found a severed arm in the mail in Jamaica Plain and then a couple days ago they found another one near Northeastern. The second one was James Calhoun. Do you know who that is?”
“No.”
He turned his laptop to show me a twenty-year-old picture of James from some newspaper article covering the arrest of my father. “He was the detective who caught Abel Haggerty.” He waited for my reaction, but I wasn’t ready to say anything.
“I know, it doesn’t mean anything. This guy worked on hundreds of cases, but get this…” He turned the computer back around. “The other arm belongs to a man named Oswald Shields.”
“And there’s a connection?” My ignorance was easily digestible; Dominic was hungry to flex his knowledge of the situation.
“There is, but no one seems to have figured it out. Other than me, I mean.” He grinned. “Oswald Shields was a lawyer—well, he used to be. He was disbarred around 2009 for falsifying some documents. Anyway, I went to Abel after they identified James Calhoun’s arm and asked him if he’d ever heard of Oswald Shields and guess what? Oswald Shields had visited him while he was awaiting trial.”
“Why?”
“Turns out Abel was working with James Calhoun to hide the kid, and Oswald was the lawyer Calhoun involved.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember I told you Abel and Reanne had a daughter? Marin? From the picture?”
“I remember.”
“Abel wanted her buried.” He shook his head “That was a poor choice of words. He didn’t want the kid to be labeled a freak, you know, the daughter of notorious serial killers. So he begged Calhounto help. Abel and Reanne signed away their parental rights. There’s been no mention of Marin Haggerty since. They changed her name.”
“To what?” I managed to ask without screaming.
“No idea. Calhoun refused to tell Abel. That was part of the deal. Abel tried a few times over the years to write to Oswald Shields, knowing he was a piece of shit who’d probably tell him, but the guy never responded.”
Was this possible? I’d never thought much about the logistics. At the time I was nine. I did what I was told. I was keeping enough secrets; I couldn’t worry about if other people were too. Would my father sign away his rights so easily? I’d always assumed he didn’t have a choice. I guess Iwasa witness. I knew everything. Was it love or liability or some combination of both?
“And he just told you all of this?” I pressed Dominic.
“His entire gospel is his ability to read a person, and he knows he can trust me.”
Ugh, hisgospel. That’s a way to put it. He never saidGod. Any ties to organized religion would dilute my father’s perceived power. He liked to saybeings, which was ridiculous; it sounded like aliens. That was why my father had to kill. He was told to kill those people, because way worse things would happen if he didn’t. He insisted the signs would come to me too someday, but I had to be careful because I could be tricked.
In his mind, after the Abbingtons, he was proven right. That was where theX’s came in, carved down my side. They were small but deep, and somewhere in his twisted brain they would prevent impostors from getting into my head again. An insane logic from an insane man and I think just an excuse to permanently label my body as his, as if having his genes wasn’t enough.
I knew what my father was doing with Dominic. He was tellinghim that he was the one Dominic was supposed to communicate with, only him, and that probably made Dominic rock-hard and dangerously loyal. If my father was orchestrating this business with the arms and the bloody messages, Dominic would be the one whose strings were being pulled.
“What about the police? Have they made the connection?” I asked.
“Far as I can tell, no. I mean, they assume two severed arms are connected, but I haven’t seen anything that shows they’ve put it together. There’s no obvious connection between Abel and Oswald Shields. You’d have to really know what you’re looking for. The name wouldn’t be in Abel’s file—maybe the kid’s, but those records are sealed. Don’t tell me you think I should tell them. I can’t do it. I swore to Abel.”
“I don’t think you should tell them. What’s the fun in that?” I smiled, playing into his fantasies, motivated by self-preservation. The longer it took for the police and the media to focus in on my father, the better.
“Do you want to know what I think?” He paused rhetorically; I wasn’t supposed to guess. It was for suspense. “I think Marin Haggerty is back.”
Twelve
Marin Haggertywasback.Technically, Marin hadn’t gone anywhere; she was just hiding behind Gwen Tanner. The problem wasn’t Marin. The problem was someone else, and if it wasn’t my father and/or Dominic, I had a pretty good idea who it was.
The next morning, I went straight to Somerville and parked outside the massive big-box home improvement store. I walked through the automatic sliding doors and was confronted by a seemingly endless supply of building materials I had no use for. I rejected three employees who asked me if I needed help before I made it into the garden center. It was a different vibe in there—natural light, bright colors, a wetness in the air.
I saw her emerge from behind a tall rack of hanging plants with names I could never hope to pronounce correctly. She pushed a cart loaded with—I took a guess—geraniums? Elyse’s strawberry blonde hair was contained in a loose bun, but her eyeliner remained thick and off-putting. I turned my back to her and stared at a shelf of cacti.I counted the first row over and over until I heard the wheels on her cart getting close.
“Can I help you find something?”
“Um…” I rotated to look at her. “Oh, hey…Elyse, right?”What are the odds?!
