Seconds Away

CHAPTER 29

Occam’s Razor.

My father had often repeated that one to me. Occam’s Razor states the following: “Other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one.” Put more succinctly, the simplest answer was usually the best one.

So why hadn’t I even considered the simple possibility that Bat Lady’s photograph was merely Photoshopped?

As I walked to Rachel’s house, my mind traveled between rage at Bat Lady and rage at myself-mostly at myself. How could I be so gullible? In this day and age when any idiot with a computer can alter an image, why had I jumped to the conclusion that a Nazi from World War II hadn’t aged a day in nearly seventy years and now worked as a San Diego paramedic?

What kind of naïve dope am I?

The sandy-blond paramedic with the green eyes was not the Butcher of Lodz. He was not ninety years old. He was not the same man who had tortured and killed scores in 1940s Poland, including Lizzy Sobek’s father. Ema had simply Photoshopped the guy’s face onto a modern photograph to send out to San Diego, right? Why couldn’t someone do the opposite-take a picture of a guy in his thirties and superimpose it on an old black-and-white?

Someone-the Bat Lady or Shaved Head, I guessed-had fooled me with simple digital photography.

Why? And what could I do about it?

It would have to wait. Right now, I had to concentrate on Rachel. When I approached her house, I saw a police car pulling out. I ducked behind a tree. Chief Taylor was in the driver’s seat. No one was with him. As he drove past, he looked distracted and… scared?

I didn’t know what to make of that. I waited until the police car was out of sight before making my approach. The gate at the entrance to Rachel’s driveway had closed after Chief Taylor drove out. I pressed an intercom button and looked up into the camera. Rachel said, “I’ll buzz you in.” She was waiting for me at the front door. Other than the bandage on the side of her head, you would never guess that she’d been shot. Of course, the bullet hadn’t entered her skin, just skimming the scalp, but somehow that made it all the more poignant. Probably half an inch, no more, was the difference between minor injuries and death.

The thought made me want to hug her, but it didn’t feel right.

“I’m so glad to see you’re okay,” I said.

Rachel gave me a tight smile and kissed my cheek. She wore a short-sleeved shirt so that the burn mark was visible. I had always wanted to ask her how that had happened because it still looked painful, but of course, now was not the time. The red in her eyes told me that she’d been crying recently and probably a lot.

“I’m so sorry about your mom.”

“Thank you.”

“Did I just see Chief Taylor drive out?”

Rachel nodded and frowned.

“What did he want?” I asked.

“I don’t know. He’s been talking to my father a lot. Every time I come near them, they tell me it’s nothing. Oh, and Chief Taylor keeps asking me what I remember.”

He had done that at the hospital too. “I guess that’s normal. Him investigating what happened and all.”

“I guess,” Rachel said. But she didn’t seem convinced. “It’s just weird.”

“Weird how?”

“He seems on edge or something.”

Rachel shrugged and led me down the hall. We stopped at an open doorway with yellow crime-scene tape across it. This, I could see, was clearly where it had happened. There was still blood on the floor. I moved closer to Rachel. She began to shake. I put my arm around her and pulled her toward me.

“Why don’t we go somewhere else?” I said as gently as I could.

“No, it’s okay. I wanted to show this to you.”

The house was silent.

“Who’s home with you?” I asked.

“No one.”

That surprised me. “Where are your father and stepmother?”

“My stepmother needed a vacation-thankfully. She’s at a spa in Arizona. My father is at work.” When she saw the concerned look on my face, she waved it away. “Believe me, it’s better.”

For a moment we both just stared at the blood on the floor. Rachel’s eyes flooded with tears again. Not sure what to say, I went with, “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“I got my mother killed,” Rachel said. “It’s as simple as that.”

Now I really wasn’t sure what to say. When I spoke again, I did so slowly and carefully. “I don’t see how that could be true.”

“I got her to come here. I put my mother right in the crossfire.”

“What crossfire?”

Rachel shook her head. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Of course it does. Someone tried to kill you-and last night…” I stopped.

“Last night what?”

“Last night, someone tried to kill me.”

Her body stiffened. “What are you talking about?”

I told her about the Butcher and the fire at Bat Lady’s house. Rachel stood there, stunned. “Is she okay?”

“Bat Lady? I don’t know. I never saw her.”

“I don’t understand this,” Rachel said.

We both looked back toward the room.

“Tell me what happened,” I said.

“I don’t remember all of it.”

“Tell me what you do remember.”

I turned toward Rachel. The lights were low, casting a shadow on her lovely face. I wanted so badly to reach out and touch her cheek and pull her close. I didn’t. I stood and waited.

“I have to go back a little,” Rachel said. “I have to explain why my mom was here in the first place.”

“Okay. No rush.”

“Well, yeah, there is.” She almost smiled. “Don’t you have tryouts?”

“There’s time.”

Rachel stared down at the bloodstain on the carpet. “I was angry at my mother for a very long time. I thought she abandoned me.”

I looked down at the blood too.

“My mother left us when I was ten. My father told me she still loved me, but that she needed to”-Rachel made quote marks with her fingers-“rest. I didn’t know what that meant. I mean, in some ways I still don’t. I just knew that she’d abandoned me. My parents got divorced, and I didn’t see my mother for three years.”

“Three years? Wow.”

“I didn’t even know where she was.”

I thought about that. “The other day, you told me that your mother lived in Florida.”

“That wasn’t exactly true. I mean, she was in Florida, at least part of the time…” Rachel stopped and shook her head. “I’m telling this all wrong.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Take your time.”

“Okay, so where was I? The divorce. The next time I saw my mother, I was thirteen years old. She just showed up after school one day. I mean, it was so surreal, you know? Mom was just standing there with the other mothers, smiling like… well, a crazy person. She looked horrible. She had too much bright red lipstick on, and her hair was all over the place. She wanted to drive me home, but I was actually scared of her. I called my dad. When he showed up, there was this big horrible scene. My mother went berserk. She started screaming at him, about how he had locked her up, how she knew the truth about him.”

The temperature in the room felt like it dropped ten degrees.

“So what happened next?” I asked.

“My father got really quiet. He just stood there and let her rant, until the police came. It was so horrible. Her lipstick was all smeared, her eyes were wide… it was like she couldn’t even see me. Later, after she was gone, my father explained to me that my mom hadn’t just run off-she’d had a nervous breakdown. He said that she’d always had mental health issues, but when I turned ten, she became manic and even dangerous. He said that she had been in and out of hospitals for the past three years.”

“When you say dangerous…?”

“I don’t know what he meant,” Rachel said too quickly. “Dad said she was out of control. He said he had to get a court order to get her treatment. I was so confused. I was angry and scared and sad. I mean, it made sense, in a way…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I just thought, well, my mother is crazy. My father, he tries, I guess, but he’s distant. It didn’t matter. I had my friends and school.”

Rachel finally looked away from the bloodstain.

“Two weeks ago, my mom was let out again. By this time there were all kinds of court orders against her to stay away from us. She couldn’t visit me without a social worker present, stuff like that. But I wanted to see her. So when she called, we met up in secret. I didn’t tell my dad. I didn’t tell anyone.” Rachel looked up and a small smile came to her lips. “When we first met up, Mom hugged me and, I don’t know, this will sound weird, but I flashed back to being a happy kid again. Do you know what I mean?”

I thought about the way my own mother hugged me. “Yes.”

“I realized something-no one hugged me anymore. Isn’t that weird? My dad, well, it got awkward as I got older, and boys never just wanted to hug like that, if you know what I mean.”

I wished that I didn’t. I nodded, feeling a lump in my throat. I thought about Troy Taylor and realized how incredibly selfish that was, so I made myself stop.

“So it was nice,” I said, “seeing your mother.”

“For a few days, it was great. And then something went wrong.”

“What?”

“Mom started ranting again, saying what an evil man my father was, how he lied about her and poisoned her and told everyone she was crazy just to protect himself. She became paranoid and started asking me if Dad knew that we were meeting. I tried to reassure her, but she just kept saying he’d kill her if he found out.”

Silence.

“What did you do?”

Rachel shrugged. “I tried to calm her down. I asked about her meds. In a way, I mean, I wasn’t surprised. I had seen her like this before. Maybe I blamed myself too.”

“Why?”

“It’s like, if I had been a better daughter, maybe-”

“You know that isn’t the case.”

“I do know. I mean, my dad explained it to me a hundred times. She was sick. It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t his fault-and it wasn’t her fault. Like Cynthia Cooper’s mother has cancer, my mom had a disease that attacked the brain. She couldn’t help it.”

I thought about my own mother, in a rehab clinic. They told me the same thing, about how her drug addiction was an illness. It wasn’t a question of willpower and I shouldn’t take it personally, the experts said, but still, no matter how much you told yourself that, no matter how much I still loved her and was sympathetic to what had happened to her, a part of me always felt that in the end my mother chose drugs over her son.

“So I’m looking at this woman who had raised me, the last person to show me genuine warmth, and suddenly I started to wonder something strange-something I hadn’t really considered before.”

“What?” I asked.

Rachel turned and suddenly her eyes were dry and clear. “What if my mother wasn’t crazy? What if she was telling the truth?”

I said nothing.

“What if my dad did do something to her?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. She kept going on about how she knew something bad about him. What if she was telling the truth? I mean, my father didn’t just get her committed to a mental hospital-he also divorced her and remarried. He explained it to me-how they had fallen out of love years ago and how he deserved his own happiness and all that. But still. Did he really have to lock her up? Couldn’t he have found another way? This was my mother-the only woman who ever loved me. Shouldn’t I give her at least a little benefit of the doubt? If I don’t believe her, who else will?”

“So what did you do?”

Now a tear escaped her eye. “I started looking a little harder at my father.”

“What do you mean?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“What?”

“The police say it was an intruder-maybe two of them. Burglars or something. See, my father was supposed to be away for the night, so I had my mom stay at the house with me. He would have been furious if he knew. I was in my bedroom. Mom was down here, watching television. It was late. I was on the phone with you when I heard voices. I thought maybe my father had come home. So I came down the stairs. I turned the corner…”

“And then?”

Rachel shrugged. “I don’t remember anything else. I woke up in the hospital.”

“You said you heard voices?”

“Yes.”

“As in, more than one?”

“Yes.”

“Male, female?”

“Both. One was my mother.”

“And the others?”

“I told the police that I didn’t recognize them.”

“But?”

“I don’t know. I thought maybe one of them… it may have been my father.”

Silence.

“But your father would never shoot you,” I said.

She didn’t reply.

“Rachel?”

“Of course he wouldn’t.”

“You said you started to check into your father-to see if your mother might be telling the truth. Did you find something?”

“That doesn’t matter. The police say it was an intruder. I probably just imagined my father’s voice.”

But I could hear the evasiveness now in her tone. “Hold up a second. At the hospital, why did Chief Taylor say not to say anything to Investigator Dunleavy?”

“I don’t know.”

I started to press her. “And why was that butterfly on the door?”

“Why do you think?”

I just looked at her. “You’re working for Abeona.”

She said nothing.

“How could I have been so stupid?” I almost slapped myself in the head. “You didn’t just happen to be the one to help Ashley-you knew why she was hiding in our school, didn’t you?”

Again she didn’t answer.

“Rachel, after all we’ve been through, you still don’t trust me?”

“I trust you,” she said with a sharp edge, “like you trust me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Are you going to tell me that you’ve told me everything? Are you going to claim that you trust me as much as you trust Ema?”

“Ema? What does she have to do with it?”

“Who do you trust more, Mickey? Me or Ema?”

“It’s not a contest.”

“Sure,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Right.” Rachel shook her head. “Talk about being stupid. I shouldn’t have told you anything.”

“Rachel, listen to me.” I put my hands on her shoulders and turned her to face me. “I want to help you.”

“I don’t want your help.”

She pulled away.

“But-”

“What’s going on here?”

I looked over my shoulder. A man in a business suit stood there, his fist clenched.

Rachel said, “Dad?”

As I turned toward him to introduce myself, Rachel’s father reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun. He aimed it straight at my chest.

Whoa.

“Who are you?”

My knees went rubbery. I put my hands up. Rachel slid in front of me and said, “What are you doing? He’s a friend of mine!”

“Who is he?”

“I told you. He’s a friend. Put that away!”

Her father and that gun stared me down. I didn’t know what to do. I stood there with my hands in the air and tried not to shake. Rachel was right in front of me, blocking my path. Through all the panic, I felt cowardly. I wanted to move her out of the way, but I was also worried about making any sudden moves.

Finally Mr. Caldwell lowered the gun. “Sorry, I… I guess I’m still on edge.”

“Since when do you carry a gun?” Rachel asked.

“Since my daughter and ex-wife got shot in my own home.” Mr. Caldwell looked at me. “I’m sorry…” He stopped as though searching for my name.

“Mickey,” I said. “Mickey Bolitar.”

“Rachel, I don’t remember you mentioning anyone named Mickey.”

“He’s a new friend,” Rachel said, and I thought I heard an edge in her tone. Mr. Caldwell heard it too. I thought that maybe he wanted to ask something more, but he turned back to me instead.

“Mickey, I’m really sorry about the gun. As Rachel may have told you, we had something of an incident here.”

He waited for me to respond, but I gave him nothing. Was Rachel supposed to tell me? I didn’t know, so I neither confirmed nor denied that I knew about the murder.

“Someone broke into our home and shot my daughter and her mother,” he said. “Rachel was just released from the hospital, and I specifically told her not to let anyone in the house, so when I saw you two arguing…”

“I understand,” I said, not sure whether I did or I didn’t. The man was carrying a gun. He had whipped it out and aimed it at me. I was having trouble gathering my thoughts.

“You should probably leave now,” Rachel said to me. “I know you have basketball.”

I nodded, but I didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone with her… her dad? I searched her face, but she turned away and started for the door. As I passed Mr. Caldwell, he reached out his hand. I shook it. His grip was firm.

“Nice to meet you, Mickey.”

Yeah, I thought, nothing like pulling a gun on someone during your first encounter. Some “nice to meet you.”

“You too,” I said.

Rachel opened the door. She didn’t say good-bye. She didn’t say we’d talk later. She closed the door behind me, leaving her alone inside with her father.

I had started down the road, lost in my thoughts, when I heard a souped-up car slow as it approached me. I looked up and saw two scary-looking guys staring daggers at me. The guy in the passenger seat wore a bandana and had a long scar running down his right cheek. The driver had aviator sunglasses hiding his eyes. Talk about a danger vibe. I swallowed and hurried my step. The car picked up speed and kept pace with me.

I was about to veer off the sidewalk when the guy with the scar rolled down his window.

“That the Caldwell house?” he asked.

He pointed at it. I didn’t know what to say, but I figured that it would be okay to say yes because there was a security gate. I nodded.

The guy with the scar didn’t bother saying thanks. The souped-up car drove up to the gate. I stood and watched, but then Scarface turned around and glared at me again. “What are you looking at?”

I started to walk away. They wouldn’t get past the gate anyway.

I risked a look behind me and saw the gate open. Scarface and his friend drove through it.

I didn’t like this. I didn’t like it all.

The car stopped and the two men got out of the car. I had my phone out, ready to dial 911 or at least call Rachel. Warn her. But warn her about what exactly? The two men moved toward the door. Without conscious thought, I started running toward her house, but then the front door opened, and I saw Mr. Caldwell step outside. He smiled and greeted the men. They all clearly knew each other. There were lots of smiles and backslaps.

Then I saw Mr. Caldwell get into the car, and they all drove off together.