Shadow Man (54 page)

“That was an exciting time. I felt free. Like life had gone my way. I had a handsome man who wanted to marry me, I’d escaped the dead end that I’d been born to, I was young and headed toward the future.”

Her voice drops to a monotone. “It took us five days to get to California. We got married two days later. And the night of our honeymoon is when I found out that the future I had headed into was a place made in hell.”

Her face has gone expressionless. “It was like the opposite of Halloween. Instead of being a human wearing a monster mask, Keith was a monster wearing a human mask.” She shivers. “I was a virgin when I married him. He stayed sweet, right up to the point he carried me across the threshold of that cheap hotel room. Once the door closed, the mask came off.

“I’ll never forget that smile. Hitler might have smiled like that when he thought about Jews dying in one of his horrible camps. Keith smiled and then he backhanded me across the face. Hard. It spun me around; blood flew out of my nose. I landed facedown on the bed. I was seeing stars and was still trying to convince myself that I was dreaming.” She purses her lips, grim. “No dream. A nightmare, maybe. ‘Let’s get a few things straight,’ he said to me while he started tearing my clothes off.

‘You’re my property. A breeder. That’s all you are to me.’ I think it was his voice, more than what he was doing, that scared me. It was calm and flat and—normal. It didn’t fit with what he was doing, not at all. He put me on my knees and . . . you couldn’t say he had sex with me. No. I don’t care that we were husband and wife. He raped me. Tied a gag around my mouth to cover up my screams while he raped me.

“The whole time, he kept talking in that calm voice. ‘We’re going to spend a few days in here teaching you your place, breeder. You’re going to learn to do what I say without hesitation or question. The penalty for disobedience, no matter how minor, is going to be more pain than you can bear.’ ”

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She is quiet for a long time. We wait out her silence, respecting it. I’m in no immediate rush. There’s no longer any doubt she’s leading us toward what we need to know.

When she begins to speak again, her voice is almost a whisper.

“It took him three days to break me. He cut on me. Burned me with cigarettes. Beat me. By the end of it, I would do anything he said, no matter how disgusting or degrading.” Her mouth twists in selfloathing. “Then, the final lie was exposed. He took me from that hotel room to this house.” She nods. “That’s right. He had this home all along. He hadn’t lived in Texas. He’d been out hunting. Hunting for someone to bear him a child.”

“Peter.” I say it as a statement.

“Yes,” she says. “My sweet little boy.” She gives the “sweet” a sardonic twang. “Keith kept me tied up at night to keep me from running away from him. Beat me, used me. Made me do things. Then I got pregnant. That was the only peaceful time I had. While I was pregnant he didn’t lay a hand on me. I was important to him, I was carrying his child.” She puts a hand to her forehead. “I used to thank God it wasn’t a daughter. He would have killed her at birth. Now I know that having a son was just as bad, in its own way.”

She takes a moment to compose herself before continuing. “He made me have the baby at home, of course. Delivered it himself. Gave me a rag to clean up with while he marveled and cooed at little Peter. Once I was cleaned up and had slept a little, he handed Peter back to me. And that’s when he gave me his ultimatum.” She rubs her hands together, an unconscious gesture of nervousness. “He told me that he would give me a choice. He could kill me now and raise Peter himself, or I could stay and raise Peter with him. He said that if I stayed, he would never raise a hand against me again. He’d even sleep in a separate bed. But if I did stay, and I ran . . . he said he would hunt me down and that it would take me weeks to die.” Her hands have a death grip on each other. “I believed him. I should have said yes and killed myself and Peter right then and there. I still had hope then. I still thought things would change.” Her eyes, her face, her mouth, all are bitter.

“So I agreed. He was good to his word. He never hit me again. He slept in his own room, I in mine. Of course, Peter slept in a room with
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him. Just to ensure that I wouldn’t steal him away at night. He was devious and careful like that. Peter started to grow, and by the time he was five, I had almost begun to make myself believe that things were better. Life was normal. Not wonderful, but livable. What a silly girl I was then. Things became bad again soon enough. And even though he wasn’t abusing me anymore, what he did start doing was much, much worse.”

She pauses now. She gives me a weak smile. “I’m sorry, but I need a cup of coffee before I go on. Are you sure none of you wants a cup?”

I sense that this would make her more comfortable. “I’d love one,” I say to her, smiling.

Jenny and Don concur, while Alan asks for a glass of water. Only James abstains.

“You believe all this?” Alan whispers to me while Patricia is in the kitchen.

“I think so,” I say after a moment. I look at him. “Yeah. I do.”

She comes back in with our drinks on a tray and passes them out. She sits back down and looks at Alan. “I heard what you said.”

He looks surprised and flustered. Either one is a rarity for Alan. “I’m sorry, Ms. Connolly. I didn’t mean any offense.”

She smiles at him. “None taken, Mr. Washington. One thing you get from living your life with an evil man, and that’s the ability to spot a good one. You’re a good man. Besides, it’s a fair question.” She turns around in her chair so that her side is facing us. “Do you mind pulling the zipper on the back of my dress down, Agent Barrett? Just halfway should do it.”

Brows knitted, I stand up. I am hesitant.

“It’s all right. Go ahead.”

I pull the zipper down. I have to close my eyes, for a moment, at what I see.

“Quite a sight, isn’t it?” Patricia asks. “Go on, pull it open, let them see.”

The area of Patricia’s back that is revealed is a mass of ancient scar tissue. The part of me that is not horrified, that is clinical, observes that these scars were made in different ways, at different times. Most likely over a period of years. Some are circular burn scars, made by cigarettes. Some are long and thin. Cuts. I can guess that many are whip marks.
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Everyone looks; no one lingers. This provides proof of her story, gives it three dimensions. It is a terrible sight. I pull her dress closed and zip her back up.

The silence that follows is somber and uncomfortable. It’s Alan who breaks it.

“I’m sorry for what happened to you,” he says. “And sorry I questioned your story.”

Patricia Connolly smiles at him. It is a smile that hints at the girl she used to be. “I appreciate your kindness, Mr. Washington.” She folds her hands in her lap. Takes a moment to gather herself.

“You need to understand that I didn’t know what he was doing until later. By then it was too late. Keith started to spend hours at night in the basement with Peter. He’d always keep it locked. At first, Peter would come back upstairs looking as though he’d been crying. Within a year, he’d come back up smiling. A year after that, he had no expression, no expression at all. Just a look in his eyes. He looked arrogant. By the time he was ten, the arrogance went away. He seemed like any normal ten-year-old boy. Bright, funny. He could make you laugh.”

She shakes her head.

“I see all of this in retrospect, of course. At the time, those changes he went through, they didn’t quite register. They settled in the back of my mind and festered there.

“Through all of these years, Keith kept his word. He didn’t touch me. Didn’t try and sleep with me. It was as if I didn’t exist for him. Which was fine with me. Except—except—”

The emotion that grips her has arrived with the suddenness of a summer thunderstorm. Tears begin to run down her face.

“Except that was selfish, so, so very selfish. He’d left me alone, sure. But that was because he was busy with Peter. And me, I never questioned or pried, or tried to do anything. I just gave my son over to him.”

Her voice is filled with self-loathing. “What kind of a mother was I?”

The storm passes. She wipes her eyes with the back of a hand.

“Because when I look back, I saw the changes in my son. I saw his father’s smile, that smile he’d given me years back in that hotel room on our honeymoon night. I sensed that coldness in him.” She is silent for a long time once again. Heaves a deep sigh. “When he was fifteen, it happened.” Her eyes grow distant again.
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“So many years of not being beaten or raped. Years where I had time to look inside myself, think without distraction. In some ways, it was like being trapped in a tower. But that isolation began to bring me back to myself. So I decided. Then I began to plan. I was determined that it was time for me and my son to be free. At some point, the sorrow inside me had begun to change to anger. I started to plan Keith’s murder.”

Her face grows blank. “I decided to keep it simple. I would invite him to my bed. Something he wouldn’t expect. I’d let him do what he wanted with me. And then I’d use the knife under my pillow. I would kill him, and then my son and I would leave this place and go home to Texas. Have a real life.” She looks at me, sad. “I suppose there are those who are good at killing, and those who aren’t. Or maybe it’s not that I was bad at killing. Maybe it’s just that he was so very, very good at it. I didn’t know that at the time, of course, but I’d learn soon.”

She fingers a small gold chain around her neck.

“He was surprised, that much was true. I told him I missed him being in my bed. I saw the lust light up in his eyes like a fire. I was prepared for him to be rough with me; that’s the only way he could enjoy it. He almost ripped my clothes off my body when he took me into my bedroom.” She continues to finger the gold chain. “I let him go on for a good, long time. It was as terrible as it had ever been, but what was a last few hours of that if I had a chance to end it forever?” She nods. “I wanted him good and tired. By the time he was done, one of my eyes was black. I had a fat lip and a bloody nose. He rolled his sweaty body off mine, onto his back, and closed his eyes while he sighed in satisfaction.” Her eyes grow wide as she relates what happened next. “Who would have known a human being could move that fast? Then again, perhaps he wasn’t truly a human being. The moment his eyes closed, my hand went under the pillow and came out with the knife. It couldn’t have been more than a second that passed before I had the point racing toward his throat.” She shakes her head again, in disbelief.

“He caught my wrist an inch before that knife would have plunged into him. Caught it and stopped it dead. He was always so strong, stronger than anyone I’d ever known.

“He held my wrist there, and smiled that smile, and shook his head at me. ‘Bad idea, Patricia,’ he said to me. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to go.’ ” Her hands tremble a little. “I was so afraid. He took the knife
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away and then he beat me. He beat me good and long and hard. Knocked out some teeth. Broke my nose and my jaw. I could hardly keep conscious. I was going to pass out when he leaned forward and whispered in my ear, ‘Get ready to die now, breeder.’ And then everything went black.”

She grows silent. I am mesmerized by the motion of that gold chain as she twists it back and forth.

“I woke up in the hospital. I hurt so much. But I didn’t care, because I knew one thing: If I was still alive, that meant he was dead. I looked over and Peter was sitting next to my bed. When he saw I was awake, he reached over and took my hand. We just sat there for an hour, not saying anything.

“The sheriff told me what had happened a few hours later.” Tears come to her eyes. “It was Peter. He had heard my screams. He burst into the room just as Keith was about to cut my throat. He killed him. He killed his father to save me.”

She hugs herself, looks lost. “Do you have any idea of the kinds of emotions that go through you at something like that? After all those years and what I’d been through? The relief was almost unbearable. And then to find out that my son was my son, that in the end he chose me over his father.” Tears continue to run down her cheeks. “I was certain I had lost him forever. Excuse me for a moment.”

She stands up and totters over to a shelf where a box of tissues sit. She brings the box over, extracting one to wipe her eyes with as she sits back down.

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t be,” I say to her. I mean it. What this woman went through, it’s unimaginable. Some would look at her with contempt for putting up with that abuse over so many years. For not being strong. I like to think I’m wiser than they are. Patricia dabs her eyes with the tissue and pulls herself together.

“I healed up, and we came home. It was a good time. Peter doted on me. Dinner was no longer an hour of silence, where no one spoke. We were . . .” Her voice trails off. “We were a family.” Her face falls, the grimness and bitterness seeping back in like a black mask. “It didn’t last long.”

Her hand goes back to the gold chain again. Twisting, turning. “He
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still went down into the basement every night. He’d spend hours down there. I’d never been allowed inside, didn’t know what he did in there. But I was scared. It was something he had done with his father, and part of me knew nothing good could result from it.

“Months went by with me worrying about that basement. But I didn’t do anything about it. I was—what is that term for ignoring a truth you don’t want to be true?”

“I think you mean denial,” James says.

“That’s it. I was in denial. Can you blame me? Keith, my longtime living nightmare, was dead. I had my son back. Life was good.” She rubs her forehead with a hand. “But I suppose that something inside me had toughened up somewhere along the way. Too much time went by, too many nights where I couldn’t get that basement out of my head. One day when he was at school, I decided it was time to go down and look.