But even three years after her narrow escape, Sandy insists Jeffrey Halcomb had the best intentions for those he referred to as his family. “Jeff never wanted to hurt anyone,” she says. “He had some strange ideals, some weird points of view, but he wasn’t dangerous. I’m telling you, he loved everyone who put their trust in him. Sometimes I think that maybe I was wrong in running away. I think that maybe I misjudged him. I reacted that way because he hurt me. I wanted him to love me more than he loved the others, and that was wrong of me. Jeffrey loved everyone equally. My jealousy ruined that.” And of the various crimes the media has tried to pin on Halcomb and his group, specifically the brutal double murder of Richard and Claire Stephenson of Pier Pointe, Washington, Sandy refutes the possibility of Jeffrey being involved. “At times, we had to do things we weren’t proud of to get by,” she tells me. “Yeah, sometimes it involved stealing. But we never went into houses when people were there. Jeff never intentionally hurt anyone.”
Except that in the end, that was exactly what Jeffrey Halcomb did. Sandy, however, is not swayed by his conviction. “I admit, I miss the camaraderie,” she says. “When it was good, those were the best couple of years of my life.” When asked if she has attempted to contact Jeffrey Halcomb in Lambert Correctional Facility, where he is serving a life sentence for two counts of first-degree murder and eight counts of aiding and abetting, Sandy shakes her head and shrugs her shoulders with a girlish smile. “I’ve thought about it,” she confesses. “But I’m too embarrassed. I left in such a frenzy. I made a fool of myself.” When the waitress stops by our table, Sandy orders another cappuccino. She fidgets with a pack of Virginia Slims as I sip my water, watching her, wondering if she realizes just how close she came to being Jeffrey Halcomb’s personal acolyte.
8
* * *
LUCAS AND JEANIE spent their first night on an air mattress he had gotten out of the truck and tossed into the center of the living room. It had been easier than trying to single-handedly wrangle his king-sized mattress out of the truck in the midst of a downpour. But Lucas couldn’t help staring into the shadows while Jeanie slept beside him. He was waiting for something to shift in the darkness, remembering that strange figure he’d seen in the corner of the kitchen, waiting for something to move.
When it became clear that sleeping wasn’t going to happen, he spent the evening hooking up the Wi-Fi before perching on one of the stairs and basking in the pale blue glow of his laptop. He reread articles about Halcomb that he’d read a half-dozen times before, searching for details he may have missed. At first light he ducked into the room he had decided would be his office, closed the door as to not wake Jeanie, and called Lambert Correctional to set up a meeting between Halcomb and himself. “I’m on the list,” he told the woman on the line, assuring her that he wasn’t some weird fanatic wanting to chat up a cult leader for kicks. “Jeff Halcomb requested the visitation.” Thankfully, the receptionist had no trouble locating Lucas on the preapproved list of names.
“It says here you’re with the media?” she asked.
“I’m a writer,” he told her. It felt good to say that for the first time in years.
Before Jeanie woke up, Lucas had already emptied half the moving truck’s haul onto the damp driveway. A cross-country auto transport would deliver his Nissan Maxima to Seattle later that day, and that had come out cheaper than hiring someone to drive a moving van. He’d pick up the car while dropping off the U-Haul truck, and then both he and Jeanie would stop in at Mark and Selma’s for dinner—an invitation Lucas had accepted after calling Mark about their early arrival.
Lucas had met Mark Godin on their first day of high school. It had been one of those instantaneous friendships, the kind that felt like it had been fated from the start. Lucas and Mark shared the same sense of humor—dark; liked the same bands and movies—The Cult, Echo & the Bunnymen, Friday the 13th, and Hellraiser. They pined over the same girls—Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice, sometimes girls at school that reminded them of Ally Sheedy’s character in The Breakfast Club. They smoked the same brand of cigarettes, oftentimes together behind the gym after school. Eventually, their interests had diverged. Mark drifted toward computers while Lucas stuck with writing. But their relationship had remained steadfast, strong enough, that, without Lucas asking, Mark offered to drive the seventy miles it took to get from Seattle to Pier Pointe to help Lucas and Jeanie move into their new home.
While struggling with a floor-model mattress he had scored at a going-out-of-business sale for forty bucks, Lucas watched Mark pull up in a blue Honda Fit.
“What the hell, dude?” Mark said, sliding out of the car with a wry smile. “I thought you said you were moving to Pier Pointe, not the goddamn enchanted forest.” Without so much as a proper hello, he crunched across the gravel driveway, caught the opposite end of the mattress, and helped Lucas wrestle it through the front door. Once inside, Mark inspected the interior of the house with slow-growing amusement. “Wow. This is hilarious. You know this is hilarious, right, Lou? It’s like I’ve walked into an episode of Mad Men.”
Lucas tensed at the mere mention of that show.
“What’s Mad Men about, anyway?” Jeanie descended the stairs two risers at a time. She gave their newcomer a faint smile but avoided her father’s gaze. She and Lucas hadn’t spoken since his outburst the night before. He had tried to apologize, but she’d given him the cold shoulder. Eventually, she’d rolled onto her side on the air mattress and gone to sleep.
“Hey, whoa.” Mark gave Jeanie a dubious glance. “What happened to you? You’ve got, like, this distinct Blondie vibe going on.”
“I wouldn’t say Blondie,” Lucas countered, trying to lighten Jeanie’s mood. “More like Siouxsie Sioux, but her mother won’t budge on the black hair dye.”
Mark raised an eyebrow. “Funny,” he said, “since I distinctly recall Caroline dying her hair black on a regular basis.”
Right, Lucas thought. Except all that black hair dye was nothing but a ruse. It was hard not to feel like a fool for trusting her. Sure, it was Kurt Murphy now, but how many beaux had Caroline had in the past? How many affairs had he not caught onto?
Mark squinted at the preteen before him. “So, you turning into a little goth freak, Miss Virginia?”
Jeanie shrugged.
“This isn’t goth,” Lucas said. “What do you call it, Jeanie? Emo?”
“Christ,” Mark muttered. “Did we look like this?”
“No,” Lucas said. “We looked way worse.”