I BURIED MY SISTER NEXT TO OUR SIBLINGS, baby Rosalind and baby Carter Grant. They don’t have large tombstones; just flat granite slabs, the best my aunt could afford for the two babies she buried twenty years ago, and the best I can afford for my sister now. But they are together, a sad trio, laid to rest with their grandparents in the two-hundred-year-old J-Town cemetery. Two plots remain. One for my aunt and one, when the time comes, for me.
Detective Warren found a private blog in my sister’s computer. She’d titled it, “Hello, My name is Abigail,” and within its long, creepy entries, she detailed the murders of my best friends, as well as her countless hours prowling the Internet, hunting down predators, seeking to aid kids in need.
She’d been right in the end. She saw monsters everywhere. And they overwhelmed her as a dark tide, which no amount of stalking and killing could keep at bay. It turned out, she’d shot and killed more than thirty-three suspected pedophiles, from Boston, to New York, to LA. The last three had been close together, only because the approaching January 21 anniversary date had forced her to restrict her hunting grounds to Boston. Until then, she’d been more careful to spread out the carnage. She was a cop, after all, and she used her knowledge wisely.
My friends Randi and Jackie never saw their own deaths coming. Randi opened her door to a female cop and discussed her ex-husband’s dealings over mugs of tea before the insulin finally kicked in and she lost consciousness. Jackie met a beautiful woman at a bar. Different story, same approach.
In the end, they probably never thought of me, had any idea that being my friend had signed their death warrants.
Should such a thing make me feel better or worse?
One of those questions I’ll never be able to answer.
Detective Warren ordered a DNA test on my mother’s remains, confirming once and for all the identity of the unclaimed body in Colorado. I didn’t fly out once the results were known. Christine Grant’s body can remain in some city morgue or potter’s field for all I care. I’m not claiming her, and I’m sure as hell not burying her next to Abigail, Rosalind, and Carter. Maybe that makes me harsh. Mental illness is a disease, probably deserving of some compassion.
Don’t know, don’t care. The police have closed their files. I don’t feel a need to open up any of my own.
Detective Warren also found my Taurus. 22 sitting on my sister’s nightstand. As it was legally registered to me, she returned it to the appropriate owner. Best I can tell, she had no grounds for conducting a ballistics test, which was why no one has ever matched my. 22 to slugs recovered from the apartment of another homicide victim, Stan Miller.
Should such a thing make me feel better or worse?
One of those questions I’ll never be able to answer.
My landlady, Frances, spent two weeks in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound to the shoulder. Interestingly enough, her long-lost niece appeared during that time, and after a bit of debate, decided to move in to help Frances during her convalescence. Apparently, my landlady is an alcoholic, who’d taken up drinking to cope with the death of her husband and four-year-old son in an auto accident thirty years ago. She’d burned numerous family bridges, caused significant collateral damage. Some of the things she never told me during the conversations we never had.
But mortality is a great wake-up call. Fran had been willing to forgive and forget for years, and now, at last, so was her niece.
I know all about such things, having finally had that long overdue heart-to-heart with my aunt, as I spent six weeks bedside in her hospital room. My aunt took two to the shoulder. First week was touch and go. Gave me plenty of time to hold her hand, and sort through my own tangled emotions.
My aunt saved me by sacrificing my sister. The first few days, I couldn’t move beyond that thought. I wanted to be grateful, but I was also angry. How could Aunt Nancy have left her own niece, a young girl, with a woman who’d already killed two babies, let alone tortured her other niece? It seemed too cold, too cruel.