Authors: Unknown Author
Having an alcohol-addicted father shined a harsh light into who Jesse was, but that knowledge gave her nothing close to an answer. She gave up on his E-mail and went into Microsoft Word. His files were as meticulously organized as he’d kept his own desk. Each of his four courses was assigned its own folder and a quick check revealed first and second drafts of papers.
A fifth file was titled “Journal.” A diary? Her breath caught at the thought, but when she clicked on it she was greeted with twelve files, all bearing other people’s names. It couldn’t be possible. Was this a cold chronicle of Jesse’s sexual conquests? Why else would Lauren Raines’ name be close to the top of the list? She let out a disgusted breath, feeling no triumph in having the worse things she had suspected about the guy laid out on the monitor before her.
She opened Lauren’s file before she could lose her nerve.
10-2 I knew Shifty Eyes was holding a clamped lid down on something that was about to burst. Today in class, she read a story about a girl who gets fucked by her uncle. How stupid does she think we are? She read it with such forced solemnity that it was obviously true, and it was also obvious that she enjoyed doing it with him. Of course there was lots of head-nodding when I talked to her about it after class. Turns out she’s an engineering major. Fitting. Designing bridges, control.
Kathryn was quietly horrified, but what struck her above all else was the evident anger in Jesse’s words. He was riled by the idea that Lauren would try to pull one over on the class masquerading fact as fiction. She forced herself to keep reading, finding more dated entries. More brutal dissections of Lauren’s superficial behaviors, and Jesse’s attempt to read psychological motivations into them. By the time she came to the final entry and read what Jesse had done to Lauren for the big finish, she fell against the back of the chair, her face tightening into a grimace.
This
is what Lauren wouldn’t tell? No wonder.
She gathered her composure and browsed files bearing names of people she didn’t know-all of them Jesse’s sexual prey. Jesse took pride in getting a girl to abandon her feminist film theory analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s
Vertigo
even as he went down on her. A lacrosse player had needed only a few beers before he was asking Jesse to call him his bitch. There were even fewer laws involved in Jesse’s games than she had imagined. But
bisexual
was a term she was hesitant to apply to him. Jesse used his body to force someone into exposing her, or his, innermost secrets. What better target than a closet homosexual? (But where did Randall fit in?)
“Make sure they aren’t afraid to ask for what they want, at the same time you’re making them feel as good as you can. You’ll be shocked what you find out.” Those had been his parting woods to her after the only conversation they’d ever had alone.
As she continued to read, she realized none of his other conquests inspired the same anger and determination as Lauren Raines. Her secret had gotten to him the most of all, and there was pure venom in what he had done and how he had described it.
Her powers of analysis were clouded by her visceral reaction to Jesse’s conquests laid bare. Jesse’s life at Atherton was a barren, lonely place, sparsely populated by the secret sexual desires of strangers. His diary was a fitting addition to the portrait of a guy who rarely left his room, who had led a pathetic and empty existence amid throngs of freshmen embracing their new independence. How much of her own imagination had transformed Jesse into a monster?
Of course, there was one file she hadn’t read yet. Unlike the others, it bore only a first name.
Randall.
These entries weren’t dated. With his roommate, Jesse didn’t seem to follow a ticking clock that wound down to an eventual bedding. The entries were also longer.
His art history professor gives him a hard on. (Eberling? Edmund?) This is probably the first honest thing he’s said to me since we moved in together. Should I feel honored? For the first three weeks, the guy could barely look my way, afraid he’d get wood, and now he’s telling me he wants to sleep with a married guy? I wonder what the chipmunk across the hall would think if she found out.
Weird. Last week his parents lived on Park Avenue. Last
,
night they moved to Soho.
Tried to get him to talk about his parents last night. Same ol’ shit. They’re rich, they're assholes. Wah wah wah, Poor Randall! It’s like he’s rehearsed this stuff. And how many times does he have to mention his mother’s drinking? He’s never even told me her full name, but I know she’s always about to “drown in a bathtub of Glenlivet.” Cute? What novel did he steal that from? He’s just trying to get me to stop asking.
Kathryn felt hollow. Jesse was right.
The details of Randall’s home life did always seem woefully thin and rehearsed, and moreover, sharpened in such a way as to throw down a roadblock. She recalled their conversation in the men’s bathroom, when her flip comment about his parents’ wealth had resulted in a monologue from Randall about escaping their evil influence. He’d sidelined her inquiry about their trip to Boston with a comment about how his mother had hit the sauce when his father went out of town on business.
Last night he was banging away at the computer. I asked him if he decided to actually start doing some work. He said he was working on something for Kathryn. I didn’t bother asking what, since I knew he wouldn’t tell me, just waited until he went to the bathroom and checked his most recently viewed files. Are these two morons writing stories to each other?
Tonight. Found Randall passed out in front of our dorm. He’d been at one of those gay and lesbian alliance dances and was totally plastered. I had to carry him up to the room. He was babbling like he was in the midst of some kind of fever dream. Kept bitching about how hot he was. Fire this, fire that. Finally, I realized he wanted me to take his clothes off. That’s when I thought maybe the whole thing was just a big ploy... Well, shit! Fire is right. The guy’s got like second degree burns over both his legs. But I’ve got a pretty good guess where he got them.
Drywater, Texas.
Kathryn stopped to breathe, guarding herself as best she could before she leaned forward again toward the screen.
Found the article today. Kathryn came up to me in the library right after and I thought about showing her. But I think I’m going to sit on this one until the time comes. What this guy has done is fucking awe-inspiring! Running away is one thing. Reinventing yourself is another. He had to have gotten some help along the way. I can only dream . . . and ask him once the time comes.
Kathryn stared at the monitor for a second before she tried to page down.
That was it.
She rubbed the heel of one hand against her forehead, trying to force blood back to her brain.
Found the article today.
She scanned the journal folder again; it didn’t reveal anything close to an article. She closed Word and opened a full file search of the entire computer. Trying to numb herself as best as she could, she brought her fingers to the keyboard and typed “Texas” She hesitated before adding “article,” and then finally “train derailment.”
The search turned up an .html file. She clicked on it.
DEATH TOLL AT 40, ONE MISSING AFTER FIERY TRAIN DERAILMENT
The headline ran above a black-and-white photograph, an aerial view of railroad tracks, flame-devoured train cars, and scorched earth. Part of the train was still intact, each car leaning more than the last before they disappeared into a blackened nightmare of metal marking the fiery eruption that had spread outward from the tracks, turning trees into spindly skeletons and reducing trailers to their charred roofs.
Alongside this photograph was an even more striking one, shot at night from a great distance and obviously not long after the derailment. Even though it was black-and-white, fire lit up the night sky on the open Texas plain with an almost heavenly glow.
Jesse had found an archived edition of the
Dallas Morning News
and this article had been on the front page on July 17, 1997.
Melinda Cruz is still trying to find the words to describe the catastrophic derailment of the Dallas-bound Southern Union train that unleashed a burning tide of diesel fuel and propane, reduced her home to smoldering rubble and killed her neighbors. Cruz, 51, her husband, Marvin, and her two young daughters are the only surviving residents of the Valley Vista Mobile Home Park, five miles outside the small town of Credence. “We’re used to the sound of the trains going by,” Cruz said. “But that night it was just like this roar that kept getting louder and louder, and then suddenly the bedroom window just went orange.”
A week after the accident, there is still no word from the National Transportation Safety Board on the cause of the disaster that left the Cruz family homeless and spread sorrow throughout Henrick County. Red Cross workers spent the last seven days combing through rubble and identifying the dead. Most victims were asleep in their beds when the train came off its track at a little past one in the morning. All the victims have been accounted for except for fifteen-year-old Benjamin Collins. The body of his father, William, was recovered earlier this week from the ruins of the mobile home he shared with his only son. Investigations have been careful to point out that at some locations close to the tracks, fire burned at temperatures hot enough to reduce steel to gas.
Some locals believe that Valley Vista Mobile Home Park has been cursed from the time of its beginnings. Certainly the community of modest dwellings has been no stranger to tragedy. For years, Credence city planners refused to grant residential zoning to the tract of land the development occupies because it was located next to an unmarked intersection of highway and railroad track where eight auto fatalities had occurred. In what now seems like bitter irony for Melinda Cruz and the relatives of the victims of Valley Vista, the last auto fatality—which resulted in the installation of warning lights and crossbars and in the subsequent residential zoning of the adjacent tract of land—claimed the life of Mary Anne Collins, the twenty-eight-year-old mother of the boy whose body has yet to be recovered from Valley Vista’s ruins.
Before memory devolved into nightmare, the flames chased him through scrub. Pure fear propelled him past the trailers, their windows reflecting the advancing fire. But there was no time to stop and warn, no time to do anything other than run from the roar that was collapsing into a symphony of metal shrieking against metal. The singing of his own joints was not a result of exertion. His legs were on fire. He was fifteen again, running stupidly from the fire he carried with him.
But in a moment of dreaming self-awareness, Randall could tell that the flames, were too high, that they chased him with nightmare speed. Now, the hushed voices conversing above him pulled him back to consciousness, along with the cold weight pressing against his forehead.
“Did you or didn’t you see a car?”
“No car. I pulled out of the locker and I saw the gate to the facility had been opened, but I just kept driving. We had broken in. It’s not like I was going to wait around for the fire department.”
“A puddle of kerosene. Doesn’t sound like you guys are being tailed by a trained assassin.”
He opened his eyes and saw Tim sitting on the bed beside him. When he saw Randall’s eyes open, he removed the wet rag and either grinned or grimaced at him, or both.
Randall’s eyes went to the window: an unfamiliar view of sloping rooftops and the black water of the bay beyond. Overstuffed bookshelves lined the walls. Then he saw the man in the doorway, his wiry, gray hair haphazardly brushed back from a high forehead, his pinpoint eyes behind glasses over the bridge of a prominent nose. He held a steaming cup of coffee close to his chest and examined the young man lying on his bed without alarm or surprise.
Randall knew exactly who he was. Richard Miller, the reporter. He reared up off the bed in anger. Tim pushed him back with the heel of his palm. “Where the hell else was I supposed to go, Randall? You were out cold and I was driving a dead woman’s van,” Tim pleaded.
“I’ll let you two handle this." The reedy voice belonged to the reporter, who left the doorway and pushed the door shut behind him. Randall rolled over onto one side away from Tim. “I told you not until I was ready,” Randall managed, breath weak.
“Eric Eberman tried to kill us tonight. And you’re still not ready?” Tim stood up.
“Is that what you told him? That Eric followed us down there and tried to burn us alive?”
Tim’s answer was his silence. Randall rolled over onto his back. Tim stood at the window,, back to him. “Who else?” Tim asked.
Mitchell Seaver
,
Randall thought, but there was no way in hell he was going to tell Tim now that Tim had brought him to a reporter’s apartment against his will. “You wanted to prove whether or not Eric was a murderer. Well, guess what—tonight he tried to murder the two of us. How much more proof do you need?”
“Bullshit, Tim! If he didn’t know about the goddamn storage facility, how the hell could he have followed us there?”
“He knows we have the bottle. He attacked you, threw you out of the house. Maybe he’s been following you since then. Seeing how close you are to the truth.”
“What’s the truth? That he killed his wife because of a
house
?”
“Pettier things have led to murder.”
“Give me a break. She
saw
something. She
knew
something.”
Tim struggled for a response and failed to find one. His face fell with a mixture of fatigue and disappointment. “Right. Your cult. I forgot. Give me a break. How much longer are you going to ignore the obvious just because no matter how much you try you can’t bring yourself to face the fact that Eric killed his wife?”