The naked edge

6

Waking slowly, Cavanaugh felt as exhausted as when he'd gone to sleep with Jamie next to him. He reached to put his arm around her, discovered that she wasn't there, and opened his eyes, focusing on where she sat at the cigarette-burned table in their seedy motel room's corner. She wore a T-shirt and boxer shorts, her brunette hair hanging over her shoulders. She didn't notice that he'd wakened, too preoccupied re-reading the documents Rutherford had given them.

"You talked in your sleep," she said.

So I'm wrong, he thought. She did notice I was awake.

"Oh? What did I say?"

"'How much wood could a woodchuck chuck?'"

"Well, that's a relief. For a second, I was afraid I said another woman's name."

"You did mumble something about 'Ramona'."

"My third-grade math teacher." Cavanaugh pointed toward the documents. "Have you learned anything?"

"Didn't you tell me Carl's father died from alcoholism? Liver disease?"

"That's what Carl said in a phone call to me when I was still living at home."

"According to this police report, his father stumbled while he was drunk, fell on a knife in the kitchen, and bled to death in the middle of the night."

Numbed, Cavanaugh didn't react for a moment. He got out of bed, ignored the cold air on his bare legs, and went over to her. She indicated the bottom of a page.

Cavanaugh read the passage and felt colder. "The police report says Carl found the body in the morning. Since he knew for certain how his father died, why did he tell me it was liver failure?"

Jamie looked up. "You think Carl finally got tired of his father picking on him? He might have told you the cause of death was liver disease because that was an easy explanation. But bleeding to death from a knife wound… Knowing Carl's obsession with knives, you might have started wondering. How old were you when he made that phone call?"

"I was still in high school. My senior year."

"Young to start to be a killer."

"If his father was his first," Cavanaugh said.

The room became silent.

"What do you mean?"

"Thinking about those days, I suddenly remember things. But I'm seeing them in an entirely different way."

"What things?"

"Our neighbor had an Irish setter named Toby. My stepfather was too buttoned down to allow a pet in the house, but the neighbor didn't mind if I played with Toby, so I sort of had a dog. The summer before my senior year, the dog ran away. The neighbor phoned the pet shelter. No sign of the dog. Nobody ever found him. A couple of neighborhood cats ran away that summer, also."

"Didn't anybody think there might be a pattern?"

"If anybody did, I never heard about it. Anyway, there was a lot going on that summer. Carl's dad was fired. In August, the family needed to move. Meanwhile, I was excited about beginning my senior year at West High, and to tell the truth, Carl demanded I spend so much time with him that I was relieved to see him go."

"So he practiced killing animals before he graduated to killing his father?"

"Or maybe…"

"What are you thinking?" Jamie asked.

"Do you suppose Carl killed other people before he mustered enough rage to go after his father?"