Page 40 of Bad Mother

Another chapter of my life had thankfully ended. Mr.Patches went missing. No one knew where he’d gone when he’d left school that cold winter day. Mother drove his car into our detached garage and covered it with a tarp, brushing her hands and humming as we walked away. The tune was familiar and haunting.Doo-dah! Doo-dah!Oh! Doo-dah day!Despite Mother’s sweet, melodic voice, I shivered. “How about ice cream for dinner tonight, Danny Boy?” she asked. “I’d say we deserve it, don’t you? Mint chip?”

Mrs.Patches went on the news, her eyes red, voice quavering, as she spoke into the microphone about what a kind and gentle man her husband was, a lover of learning, pillar of the community, and all that stuff people sometimes say before they learn their loved one is—orwasin Mr.Patches’s case—actually a demon in disguise. There was a solemn-eyed little girl standing next to her mother at the podium, and I wondered if he’d violated her, too, or if he preferred boys and had a special affinity for the fatherless ones like me who had little protection. But when the police stumbledupon a large stash of child pornography on his home computer, the investigation stalled. Whether that was due to a lack of leads or because the police quietly decided the world was better off if hestayedmissing, I didn’t know. All I cared about was that my “tutoring” sessions had ended. On a side note, I still feel queasy when I hear the mention of the periodic table of elements, as that’s the page the science book Mr.Patches had brought to my home was open to the first time he violated me. Thankfully, conversations that might bring to mind the table don’t come up that often, and maybe you’d be surprised they do at all. But they do. Oh, I should know. They do.

“Oh, look at that sunset. It’s pure gold.”

“Spinach is so good for you! It’s full of calcium.”

You get the picture.

Anyway, moving on. I’d been averse to being touched before Mr.Patches, but now, even though a couple of years had gone by, I still recoiled at human contact. The problem was that I wanted to like it. I noticed the girls in my school. My mouth went dry at the sight of bare legs and tight shirts. I liked it when they walked past me close enough so that I could smell the scent of their hair, but not so close they brushed against me. So when the girl in my English class who sat next to me, the one who I’d first started calling Smiles not only because she did it often but because she turned them in my direction, began chatting with me before and after class, I was happy and filled with the hope that maybe I could be normal in at least some way.

Maybe my father hadn’t ruined me completely. Maybe Mr.Patches hadn’t either.

No one had to know what was in my past. I’d hide it. Mother would have no reason to hurt or kill anyone on my behalf. The things she’d done could stay hidden, only between her and me. I trusted Mother implicitly. Plus, I was bigger and stronger now—no one was going to victimize me again. No one was going to threaten or trick me.

Smiles asked if I wanted to go see a movie that had been adapted from a book we’d read in English class. I didn’t know if she was asking me on a date or if she just wanted to go as friends. And I wasn’t sure which one I hoped for. No, that’s a lie, and I’m trying my best not to lie. Are we always aware of our lies? I wonder. Don’t we all lie constantly, whether meaning to or not? Whether acknowledging it or not? I seemein a certain light, and so, even here, even now, I’m presenting myself to you as the person I perceive myself to be. But perhaps that perception is inaccurate. Perhaps your perception of me would not be the same? Is a false perception the same as a lie? I think not. What if you hold tight to that false perception because the truth would be unbearable? These are questions I’d have liked to explore with someone. Perhaps it would have mattered. Perhaps it would have changed things.

But I digress.

I hoped Smiles liked me as more than a friend. I was just incredibly nervous. How would I know what to do? How would I know what to say? I’d never had a man in my life to teach me the things I needed toknow. And I couldn’t ask Mother. Boys didn’t ask their mothers about such things.

The year before, I had gotten a job stocking shelves at a local grocery store, so I had my own money to spend. When the day of our movie date arrived, I met Smiles outside the theater, sporting a new pair of jeans and a crisply ironed shirt. Smiles told me I looked nice and accepted when I offered popcorn and a drink. She chatted easily, and I thought I nodded in all the right places. When we took our seats in the darkened theater, I was more relaxed. Hopeful. As the movie commenced, Smiles drew closer to me, so close that our shoulders touched and then our knees. My breath quickened, my nerves strung tight in a new way that was both pleasure and pain. She reached out and took my hand, the cool touch of her fingers startling me so that I almost jumped out of my chair, and she gave a soft giggle, squeezing my hand in hers. We sat like that for many long minutes that felt like centuries. Eons.

I was hyperaware of every breath, every movement, every soft gurgle of my stomach. I swore I could feel the molecules of my body rearranging themselves into the new person I might be knowing a girl like this wanted to hold my hand and rest her sweet-smelling head on my shoulder. I felt myself growing hard, the zipper of my new jeans pressing painfully into my swollen penis. It reminded me of the terrible pain and the confusing pleasure I’d felt in that region before.No, no, no, no.I tried desperately to dispel my thoughts but was unsuccessful. It reminded me of Mr.Patches, and I began to sweat, a buzzing sound taking up in my head. I didn’t want to think of Mr.Patches.Oh God. I didn’t want to think of him ever again, but especially nothere, with Smiles’s curls tickling against my cheek and her smooth fingers laced in mine.

I didn’t want to feel dirty. I didn’t want to draw away. But my body was hot and cold, and I could feel my hands growing clammy, my erection swelling in my pants despite me trying my best to will it away. The more upset I became—the more revolted with myself—the more turned on my body got. It was misery. My heart was slamming in my chest, my balls were aching for relief, and the images in my head kept flashing, fast and furious. Nauseating. The wood grain of the table right below my face. The colored squares of the periodic table.Nickel. Cobalt. Magnesium.The popcorn rolled in my stomach. And so when Smiles turned her head, placing her soft, hot mouth on my neck and kissing me there, her hand wandering to my tented crotch, I ejaculated in a literal flood of pleasure and shame, a cry of confusion and disgust breaking the relative silence of the movie theater.

Smiles’s head lifted swiftly and her hand drew away just as quickly, and I could feel her stare on the side of my face that was already burning with humiliation.

I heard the rustle of other heads turning, felt their shocked stares, and I stood, kicking over the half-full popcorn that had been on the floor and tripping over people’s feet as I squeezed through the aisle, racing for the exit. I ran all the way home before unlocking the door and darting inside. Only then did I allow the tears to fall. Only then did I seek out Mother.

She took me in her arms and she comforted me. “There, there, my darling,” she said. “Every boy needs his mother sometimes. You never have to be alone.”

Smiles was still nice to me after that, but in a distant way. She greeted me cordially in class and even chatted a bit here and there. But as soon as the bell rang, she grabbed her things and rushed for the door. One day at the end of our senior year, I saw her sitting on a bench near the gymnasium. I approached tentatively, gathering my courage, forming the apology—the explanation—I knew she was long overdue. But when I stood in front of her, and she looked up at me with patient interest, the words scrambled into incoherence in my mind, and without a single utterance, I left her where she sat.

Cat got your tongue, Danny Boy?I thought, remembering Mother’s old joke as I rushed away. Yes, apparently, he’d taken that too. What else was I lacking that I’d only discover in time? What else had been stolen from me that I’d never get back? And where had it really all begun?

Kat’s desk chair squeaked as she sat back, waiting for Sienna to finish reading. For a moment they both were quiet before Kat said, “It’s obviously purposeful that a body and this note”—she tapped the photocopy on her desk in front of her—“were left in that particular house. So now,” she went on, “it’s not just that our guy found out the name of one of the detectives working the case—you—and added your name to something he wanted the police to have. This time, he either looked into your background. Or he looked into Decker’s. Or you’re both involved in his twisted little game somehow. Either way, he’s making it far more personal now.”

Sienna let out a soft breath. She agreed with the assessment. She just didn’t know how he would have found out that she or Gavin had rented the house eleven years before. But if hehadpulled Gavin into this,why? Did that simply point back to her as well? She bent her neck from side to side, working out a sudden kink. “What sort of public records would contain old rental information?”

Kat shrugged. “Some of those ‘people search’ websites list all known addresses going back years. If you even signed a lease, it might be there. We’ll check it out, see how easy or difficult it might have been to attain that address as it connected to you.” She paused, and Sienna saw her assessing her from her peripheral vision. “Try not to be worried, okay? These psychos like to have a personal connection with the police. It makes them feel important.”

“No, I know. I’m not worried.”Mostly.She carried a weapon and was good with it. She could protect herself. It was more...eeriethan anything to know that this person she’d come to know in an odd sense through his letters might be watching her.

Kat twirled her pen. “I have our new intern looking into who owns the house and any recent occupants.”

“Okay, great.” Considering the staff shortage they were currently dealing with, they were lucky to have had an intern answer their request from the local college’s criminal-justice program. His background check had just come through, so now the young man was helping them follow up on leads and other information that could be obtained through computer searches—both classified and not—so Kat and Sienna could be out in the field.

Regardless, they still didn’t have enough hands on deck, and crimes continued to roll in, unrelated to this killer, that still needed the attention of law enforcement. Sienna remembered what Ingrid had said about the choice to approve her transfer being made easier by the staffing shortage, but she hadn’t realized the extent of the department’s desperation. Well, at least she was needed, if not initially wanted.

As if her thoughts had summoned him, the young intern, Xavier, came hurrying in. “I might have something here,” he said, “about the teacher you wanted me to look up? One who might have gone missing and it was later found had child porn on his computer?”

“Yeah? What have you got?” Sienna asked, a trill of hopefulness reverberating. The last installment had been decidedly... sad? Was that the right word? Could, or more to the point,shouldone be sad for a killer who commits brutal murders?Probably not.But, well, that was a moral quandary to ponder at a later date. Right now, they just needed to catch this guy so he wouldn’t hurt anyone else.

He handed her a couple of computer printouts. “Okay, so Sheldon Biel, a science teacher at Copper Canyon High School, went missing twenty years ago.”

Kat came up beside Sienna and perched herself on the edge of the desk. “Twenty years?”

---