“There is evidence,” he had said. “You know that. You’ve seen it.”
She sighed, the kitchen chair screeching as she pulled it back and took a seat herself.
“But you think that’s enough for … death? I mean, we’re talking the death penalty, Theo. That’s irreversible. They can’t be sure, beyond a reasonable doubt—”
“We’re talking six murdered girls, Mona. Six. Physical evidence found inside your home, eyewitness testimony confirming that Dick had been in contact with at least half of ’em in the days prior to their disappearance. And there are stories now, Mona. I’m sure you’ve heard them. About Lena not being the first one.”
“Those stories are total speculation,” she said. “There is no evidence to suggest that he was responsible for that other girl.”
“That other girl has a name,” he spat. “You should say it out loud. Tara King.”
“Tara King,” I had whispered, curious as to how it would feel on my lips. I had never heard of a Tara King before. Cooper’s hand shot out to the side, slapping my arm.
“Chloe.” My name hissed through his teeth. “Shut up.”
The kitchen was silent—my brother and I held our breath, waiting for my mother to appear at the base of the stairs. But instead, she kept talking. She must not have heard.
“Tara King was a runaway,” she said at last. “She told her parents she was leaving. She left a note almost a year before any of this started. It doesn’t fit the pattern.”
“That doesn’t matter, Mona. She’s still missing. Nobody has heard from her, and the jury is seething. They’re thinking with their emotions on this one.”
She was silent, refusing to respond. I couldn’t see into the room, but I could picture it—her, sitting there, her arms crossed tightly. Her gaze somewhere far away, and getting farther. We were losing my mother, and we were losing her fast.
“It’s tough, you know. With a case this sensationalized,” Theo said. “His face already plastered across the television. People have made up their minds, no matter what we argue.”
“So you want him to give up.”
“No, I want him to live. Plead guilty, and the death penalty is off the table. It’s our only option.”
The house was quiet—so quiet, I started to worry that they would be able to hear our breath, low and slow, as we sat just out of sight.
“Unless you have anything else I can work with,” he added. “Anything at all you haven’t told me.”
I held my breath again, straining to hear against the deafening silence. My heart pulsing in my forehead, my eyes.
“No,” she said at last, defeat in her voice. “No, I don’t. You know everything.”
“Right,” Theo said, sighing. “That’s what I thought. And Mona—”
I pictured my mother staring up at him then, tears in her eyes. All her fight gone.
“As a part of the deal, he’s agreed to take the police to the bodies.”
The silence returned again, but this time, we were all left speechless. Because when Theodore Gates walked out of our house that day, in an instant, everything changed. My father was no longer presumed guilty; he was guilty. He was admitting it, not only to the jury, but also to us. And slowly, my mother stopped trying. Stopped caring. The days went by and her eyes turned dull, like they had morphed into glass. She stopped leaving the house, then her room, then her bed, and Cooper and I were left pressing our own noses to the screen. He pled guilty, and when his sentencing finally aired, we watched the entire thing.
“Why did you do it, Mr. Davis? Why did you kill those girls?”
I watched my father look down at his lap, away from the judge. The room was silent, a collective held breath hanging heavy in the air. He seemed to be considering the question, really thinking about it, chewing it over in his mind as if it were the first time he had ever really stopped to consider the word why.
“I have a darkness inside of me,” he said at last. “A darkness that comes out at night.”
I looked at Coop, searching his face for some kind of explanation, but he just kept staring at the TV, mesmerized. I turned back.
“What kind of darkness?” the judge asked.
My father shook his head, letting a single tear erupt from his eye and drip down his cheek. The room was so quiet, I could have sworn I heard the flick as it landed on the table.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I don’t know. It’s so strong, I couldn’t fight it. I tried, for a long time. A long, long time. But I couldn’t fight it anymore.”
“And you’re telling me that this darkness is what forced you to kill those girls?”
“Yes.” He nodded. Tears were streaming down his face then, snot dripping from his nostrils. “Yes, it did. It’s like a shadow. A giant shadow always hovering in the corner of the room. Every room. I tried to stay out of it, I tried to stay in the light, but I couldn’t do it anymore. It drew me in, it swallowed me whole. Sometimes I think it might be the devil himself.”
I realized in that moment that I had never seen my father cry before. In my twelve years spent living under his roof, never once had he shed a tear in my presence. Watching your parents cry should be a painful experience, uncomfortable even. One time, after my aunt had passed away, I had barged into my parent’s bedroom and caught my mother crying in bed. When she lifted her head, there was the imprint of a face on her pillow, her tears, snot and spit marking the very spots where her features had been, like some kind of funhouse smiley face stained into the fabric. It was a jarring scene—otherworldly, almost, her splotchy skin and her reddened nose and the self-conscious way she tried to push back the wet hair stuck to the side of her cheek and smile at me, pretending that everything was okay. I remember standing in the doorframe, stunned, before slowly backing up and shutting it closed without uttering a single word. But watching my father sob on national television—watching his tears pool in the crease above his lip before staining the notepad positioned on the table below him—I felt nothing but disgust.
His emotion seemed authentic, I thought, but his explanation felt forced, scripted. Like he was reading from a screenplay, acting out the role of the serial killer confessing to his sins. He was looking for sympathy, I realized. He was casting the fault in every direction but his own. He wasn’t sorry for what he had done; he was sorry he got caught. And the fact that he was blaming this fictional thing for his actions—this devil that lurked in the corners, forcing his hands to squeeze their necks—sent a shot of inexplicable anger through my body. I remember balling my hands into fists, my fingernails drawing blood from my palms.
“Fucking coward,” I spit. Cooper looked at me, shocked at my language, my rage.