Page 38 of Zen's Crash

He reaches out, puts his hands on my shoulders, and draws me closer. “Look, you’re a really sweet person, and you don’t deserve any of the horrible shit that’s happened to you over your lifetime.”

That’s a lovely but odd thing to come out with first thing in the morning. “I don’t understand. What are you trying to tell me, Zen?”

He takes a few minutes to order his thoughts before giving it another try. “You know how you said that you thought your life was one thing growing up, and come to find out your father was nothing like what you thought he was?”

“Yes. It’s really weird. I’ve been thinking about that. Was any of our life real? Did he just go through the motions of spending time with me while his mind was on this side gig he took up, making himself some kind of self-appointed vigilante? When I try to sort it out in my mind, I realize he spent a lot of time wrapped up in his own thoughts, doing his own thing.”

“Let’s take that thought one step further,” he says calmly. “Is it remotely possible that your father was the serial killer and the man we thought was chasing him was the vigilante?”

I shove back so fast I almost fall off the bed. Shock rolls through me. “What? No. Of course not! How can you even think that?”

Zen climbs out of bed naked, still with his phone in his hand. I watch as he picks up his pants and slides them on. Normally, seeing him naked would attract my attention. Not anymore. Now, he’s just another swinging dick who thinks he knows more about my life than I do. White-hot fury pools in my gut as I prepare for the fight I know is coming about this issue.

Zen’s really freaked out. I can tell because he starts pacing back and forth, still gripping his phone like it’s the one thing tethering him to reality. He starts talking, but it’s more like mumbling to himself than trying to convince me of anything. It throws me for a loop.

“Maybe he saw his wife getting attacked and it flipped a switch, causing him to become interested in that dynamic—fascinated by it even? He can’t very well kill his wife because he needs her to raise his kid, so he thinks about it, becomes obsessed with the idea, and eventually kills the co-ed. It would be all too easy to convince his wife to leave because there is danger about or even pretend her one-off attack by some douchebag was part of a larger danger.”

My hands fly to my mouth, and shock whips through my entire body like an electrical current. Because what he’s saying makes some kind of sense. Only that can’t be right because it’s my dad. My dad can’t be the killer who finally got his comeuppance. That’s not possible because he’s my dad, and I would have noticed something that fucked up. Then again, I didn’t realize any of the shit we found on the flash drive was going on at the time, so why is this such a gigantic stretch? It’sbecause he was my dad. If he’s a monster, what does that make me?

Zen is still pacing and mumbling to himself. “What if the man who killed him wasn’t a vigilante but his partner? Maybe they’d been killing people for years, and things got sticky when his partner targeted his wife? That means there could be two serial killers instead of one.”

I yell, “Stop pacing and tell me what changed. Where did all this come from? Yesterday, you thought my dad was some kind of noble vigilante. Today you think he’s a monster. What happened?”

Zen stops in his tracks and stands there staring at me with an expression of pity on his face. Then he slowly lifts his cell phone, using his thumb to turn it on. All I see is a photograph of a dirty bag with items laid out in the grass beside it. Taking a step closer, I take his phone and zoom in on the items. Everyone who has ever watched a psychological thriller or crime show would recognize what that bag is by the items pulled out, there’s duct tape, zip ties, gloves, wire, a knife. It’s all there, everything you need to abduct and murder a woman, right down to big black trash bags.

As I stare at the image, I hear Zen say, “It’s a kill bag, Lexi.”

I’m silent as I wait for him to continue.

“My club brothers guarding your family home discovered an area in the backyard where the grass wasn’t growing fully. They dug down a couple of feet and found this. If your father isn’t a serial killer, why did he stash a kill bag on his property?”

In a moment of clarity, I reject the whole idea of my old man being a serial killer who preyed on women. My brain is already scrambling for some reasonable justification for them finding something like that on our property. “Maybe whoever killed him planted it there?”

“We don’t know how long it’s been there for. Could he have realized whoever was tracking him had found him and decided it was time to ditch the evidence?”

“That means the real killer could have been the one who put it there to frame my father,” I fling back.

This new friend of mine is stubborn. “I still like my idea better.”

“Look, I don’t care what you found buried on our property. My father was not a killer.”

Zen tells me quietly, “I’m sorry, Lexi, but that kill bag throws everything into a new light. We can’t just pretend like we never found it.”

“Why not?” I ask. “Especially if it was planted. Why let that pull the investigation in the wrong direction?”

He shakes his head, his voice resigned. “My club brothers handed the bag over to our contact from the Las Salinas Police Department so their crime lab can take a crack at it. They found some pieces of jewelry in a side pocket.”

When I give him a confused look, he explains, “Serial killers often take trophies from their victims. What are you gonna do if your father’s fingerprints are found inside the bag or on those pieces of jewelry?”

My emotions totally shut down. This is not happening. My father is not the killer. I turn around and start gathering up my stuff because I can’t stay here any longer.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Zen says, his voice deep and worried.

I ignore him, because I’m not even entertaining the idea that my dad’s a serial killer. That’s a bridge too far. Now, I feel terrible about telling him my father beat up our wife-beating neighbor all those years ago. I put everything in my bag and pull out my phone to call a rideshare. Since I didn’t bring my car, I need a lift out of here. I shoulder my bag and begin walking downstairs as I wait for the app to connect.

I can hear Zen yelling after me, but I don’t care. I feel like I’m suffocating. I need to go home, lock myself in my safe room, and finish my computer build. I’m about to walk out the back door when a big hand clamps down on my arm. Zen jerks me back and raises his voice, “I asked you where the hell you think you’re going?”

“Somewhere that’s not here,” I tell him in a clipped voice. I pull my arm from his grasp and turn to leave.

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