The Proviso:
VIGNETTES & OUTTAKES
by
Moriah Jovan
* * * * *
So you read The Proviso and you’re slightly curious
as to what might have happened off page?
Sebastian and Eilis’s wedding?
The murder of Tom Parley?
The reading of Fen’s will?
The Jep Industries takeover?
You got it.
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
B10 Mediaworx on Smashwords
9754 N Ash Avenue, #204
Kansas City, MO 64157
b10mediaworx.com * theproviso.com * moriahjovan.com
The Proviso: Vignettes & Outtakes
Copyright © 2009 by Moriah Jovan
Cover photography, Petticoat Lane, KCMO
Copyright © 2007 by Eric Bowers of Madness Matrix Photography
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
* * * * *
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Elder Kenard
Bryce’s conflicted sexuality manifests early.
Jordache Jeans
Giselle, Sebastian, and Knox as teenagers at church.
Atlas Shrugged
Sebastian’s mother and father have at it about money. Again.
25 to Life
Knox’s innocence vanishes the night he turns to vigilante justice—and puts himself on the road to madness.
John 3:16
What Knox did to Leah
The Stone Was Rolled Away
Why would Leah go back to Knox?
July 14, 2001
The fires.
The Law of Unintended Consequences
The dismantling of Jep Industries.
Miss Cox & Professor Hilliard
Giselle and Knox can’t help indulging their public personae.
Cinderella
Fen and Sebastian have a bonding moment after Giselle flees the art gallery, Bryce hot on her heels.
The Long Goodbye
The day Knox was “forced” to hire Justice.
Tired Of Being Me
The blackest day of Knox’s life.
Sexual Harassment
Knox and Justice finally find a way to settle their knock-down-drag-outs.
Beltane
Sebastian and Eilis get married.
Missa Solemnis
The reading of Fen Hilliard’s will.
* * * * *
ELDER KENARD
January 1985
San Diego, California
“Good luck, Elder Kenard.”
“Thank you, President,” Bryce mumbled. He was a missionary now, off to the Missionary Training Center in Provo. He’d been ordained and his father would be disappointed in him if he did something so worldly as calling him “Dad” instead of “President.”
Bryce was on the Lord’s time now and part of that time would be spent in airports waiting on planes. Like today.
He shook his father’s hand, firm, and looked him in the eye as he’d been taught. President Kenard’s shock of bright orange hair was losing its battle against the white and Bryce vaguely wondered if it’d be all white by the time he returned from his mission in eighteen months.
“Now, if you want, I’ll see about getting you an extension to two years, Elder,” his father said. “I don’t much care for these eighteen-month missions. When I went on my mission, it was almost three years.”
“William,” his mother said, tapping him on the arm. “Don’t scare the boy. Goodness, who wants to be out longer than they have to be?”
Thank you, Mom.
“I’ll think about it, Da— President.” He had no intention of staying out one minute past his five-hundred-and-fortieth day. He wouldn’t do this at all if he’d had his ‘druthers, but he’d never had his ‘druthers, so thinking about it was useless. He’d go, he’d do a good job, he’d come home and get on with his life—
—which would include finding a nice girl to marry in the temple, getting an education, having kids, finding a good job, and getting on the fast track to bishop, then stake president, like his dad.
Oh, yes, his whole life had been scripted, and long before he was born.
He caught sight of a woman, one he knew from San Diego Mesa where he’d gone for summer and fall semesters after graduating from high school, a teacher, actually. He hadn’t taken any of her classes, but he’d noticed her.
Oh, yes, he’d noticed her.
It was hard not to considering she’d twirled a ten-inch sacrificial knife in her fingers while strutting down the hall to her office in the anthropology department. Whistling.
Short skirt, double-breasted suit jacket, high heels.
Long straight black hair to her waist.
A scent that teased his nose and made him breathe deeply.
Half Japanese, half Chicana.
She’d sought him out a few days later and plopped herself down in a chair at the table in the library where he usually studied. She struck up a conversation with him, but it didn’t take very long before he knew he had to get away from her.
Fast.
“Bryce!”
He suppressed a groan when she strutted toward him (she didn’t walk any other way), a mischievous smile on her face that his body responded to oh, so very inappropriately.
Please, no. Not this. Not now.
“How are you?” she enthused and took his hand in both of hers, caressing his palm with a fingertip. He managed not to suck in a sharp breath.
“I’m fine, Ms. Yoshida. You?”
“That’s Elder Kenard now, Miss,” his father interjected with a bland smile.
Not in the least bit slow, she cocked an eyebrow at Bryce’s father and said, “Ah, I see. Mormon missionary, very good. I get it. You must be Dad.”
“Yes, I am and we prefer the term Latter-day Saints,” said President Kenard with a trace of disapproval and laying his hand over the knot comprised of her two hands and Bryce’s one. The grip broke and Bryce felt the brush of cool air on his skin where hers had been and missed it.
“I know,” she returned. “I say tomato, you say tomahto.” She turned back to Bryce, dismissing Bryce’s father as if he were nothing more than a lazy student. Amazing. Bryce had never seen anyone simply dismiss him out of hand. “Whereya headed?”
“Scotland,” Bryce muttered.
Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, really! I’d spend more time there but shit, it’s cold and wet, especially up there in the highlands. No place for a San Diegan—at least not without a naked body to snuggle up with at night. Can you request a reassignment?”
“Ah, no.”
His father cleared his throat, which prompted her to glance back at him. The corner of her mouth tucked in and up when she saw the lowering of the bushy orange-and-white eyebrows. She looked back at Bryce, reached out and took him by the lapels, straightened them a bit.
“Don’t forget what we talked about, ‘kay?”
Bryce gulped and she laughed before vanishing in a whirl of energy. He tracked her until she was out of sight.
“What did you talk about with her, Elder?”
“An English lit assignment,” he replied vaguely, feeling both his parents watch him carefully. Feeling guilty because he’d lied. And why.
President Kenard harrumphed his disbelief, but said nothing more about it, for which Bryce was eternally grateful. Finally his boarding time was called. His mother hugged him and his father shook his hand.
“Remember to call on Mother’s Day, Bryce,” she called after him.
“I will, Mom,” he called back, surprised at his sudden melancholy at leaving his mother, who never seemed to be disappointed in him at all. He’d never noticed that until right that moment.
Once he settled in his seat at the window, his brain began to whirl.
“Now, Son, don’t be upset, but your mother and I won’t be taking you to the MTC ourselves. We think it’s best you go alone and begin to lean on the Lord for your strength.”
“Oh, I think I’ll be all right, Dad.”
Yes, more than all right, thanks.
“Bryce, I saw the way you looked at me the other day. You’re not my student and you aren’t likely to be, so why don’t you and I have dinner together?”
“Ms. Yoshida, I really don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“You’re right and I agree. Let’s skip dinner and get straight to the fucking. Here’s my address and bring condoms. You’re twice as big as I am, Bryce, and you are a beautiful, beautiful man. I can only imagine what you could do to me in bed.”
Bryce couldn’t breathe. “I’m only eighteen.”
“Oh, even better! I’m thirty.”
“Ms. Yoshida, I’m LDS. I don’t—”
“Oh, a Mormon! Can I translate that to virgin? Please say yes.”
“Uhm, well—”
“Oh, hallelujah and glory be. Initiation of a virgin. Don’t tell me you’re saving yourself for some little twit who didn’t have the good sense to go get laid before saying I do—”
Bryce remained silent.
“Ah, okay. Huh. Interesting.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Yoshida.”
You have no idea how sorry.
“Is there nothing I can say to get you to my house tonight? Or any night? Or day? Or my office?”
He paused. “Erm, no.”
“Well, shit.”
He flinched.
“I apologize. You don’t like cursing, do you?”
“No.”
“Oooh, I just want to take you home and eat you up. Okay, Bryce. You win.”
He could smell her perfume when she arose from her chair, then swung one elegant hip around the corner of the table. Two steps and she was at his side, one hand on the back of his chair, one braced on the tabletop, her mouth brushing his ear.
“You’ve got a raging hard-on, Bryce,” she whispered. “You want to fuck me so badly you can feel it and I do mean fuck. Like, hard. Up against a wall. Rocking the bed. I hope your God can give you whatever it is you’re looking for and fast, so you can get on with what you were made to do. It’d be a damn shame for you to wake up one day and realize you’d spent your best years chasing a myth.”
He sucked in a deep breath, drowning in a strange combination of lust and guilt. She pushed away from him, chuckling, then strutted back out of the library.
“Get thee behind me, Satan,” he whispered halfheartedly as he watched the elegant sway of her hips.
“Get thee behind me, Satan,” he whispered wholeheartedly, willing himself to put it out of his mind with the same discipline he’d practiced since before he knew what that was.
* * * * *
JORDACHE JEANS
January 1985
Independence, Missouri
Giselle sat in the back of the room in a corner, her arms crossed over her chest. The Young Women’s president droned on about their goals, getting them approved, accomplishing them. For what? A medallion necklace she didn’t even like?
Susan Mendenhall had set a goal of reading a two-hundred-page book. That was a goal? Giselle had two-hundred-page books for breakfast with a little left over for lunch if she stopped reading at just the right spot.
Now, lose sixty pounds? That was a goal. Not that she would ever make her dreams and desires known to the perky, the popular, the pretty girls who surrounded her on Sundays and looked at her with a slight curl to their carefully glossed lips.
“Today’s lesson is on chastity,” said Sister Bremmer with a brightness that Giselle supposed had to have come from having obeyed all the rules, having never messed up. Nobody could be that happy if they’d ever done so much as swiped a peanut from the bin at Milgram’s.
As for Giselle, well, it was too late for that, what with her midnight forays with Sebastian.
“ . . . necking and petting . . . “
What did that mean, necking and petting? Was that what she and Knox did? Just yesterday he’d slid his tongue in her mouth and touched hers. That felt so good—and in such a different way—she knew it had to be bad and it gave her leftover shivers when she thought about it.
She raised her hand. “Sister Bremmer?”
“Yes, Giselle?”
“What is necking and petting? I mean, what happens?”
“Well, uhm . . . “
The other girls burst out in knowledgeable titters. Sister Bremmer stumbled over her words and blushed. Giselle thought she might just like to melt into the floor. She looked down at the carpet and blinked tears back when Susan cast her a contemptuous glance.
“If you don’t know,” she murmured under the laughter, “then Knox isn’t a real boyfriend, is he?” The titters turned into peals and shrieks of laughter.
Sister Bremmer calmed the class, but never actually answered Giselle’s question. If she’d caught Susan’s remark, she didn’t betray it in any way.
Not that she would’ve reprimanded her for it if she had.
Giselle picked at her hand-me-down dress, the dull brown of it making her feel as dowdy as her classmates did when she stood next to them in their pretty clothes and perfect hair that Giselle didn’t know how to mimic.
Class didn’t let out for another agonizing thirty minutes and Giselle tuned out most of the lesson. Meaningless words to her. If she couldn’t visualize it, she couldn’t avoid doing it. If no one would tell her what was what, how did she know when the line—what line? where?—had been crossed?
About the only thing she really knew was bad was when the boy put his penis in the girl’s vagina.
Yeah, that was bad. Her mother had lectured her on that over and over again, so she understood the basic concept. Why anybody would want to get that close remained a mystery to Giselle and, furthermore, what happened when the boy’s penis was in the girl’s vagina? Romance novels were no help; the love scenes weren’t actually described using any language Giselle knew. Even sneaking her Aunt Dianne’s copy of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) did nothing to enlighten her.
She now knew a whole lot about a whole lot of sexual things, but absolutely nothing about the mechanics, logistics, or what it felt like. Still. And she’d never seen an uglier word than “orgasm” in her life. It didn’t sound any better than it looked.
Chastity must have some other components, but it definitely meant refraining from putting tab A into slot B. Then she decided that if it wasn’t important enough to be explained in Young Women’s, it must not be bad.
“ . . . self-abuse . . . “
Yeah, and that was another one. The only thing Giselle could visualize was a person slugging himself in the face with his fist and surely it didn’t mean that . . . ? If it had been mentioned in any book she’d ever read, it hadn’t been called “self-abuse,” that was for sure.
Giselle waited until the other girls left the room, dawdling over the task of gathering her things.
“Giselle.”
She looked up, startled at the hand on her shoulder and she pulled away.
Giselle, you fat little pig. Don’t touch me; I don’t want to catch your fat.
Giselle figured if Aunt Trudy could get fat from her, then everybody else could, too. Sister Bremmer sat beside her, careful not to touch her again, which confirmed her feelings about that.
“Giselle, has your mother talked to you about—about, uhm, chastity?”
“Yes,” Giselle drawled warily, wondering again what chastity actually meant to Sister Bremmer and if her mother really had told her everything. “She said making love was only between a man and a woman who are married and who love each other.”
“And?”
“And . . . “ Giselle trailed off, not understanding what else Sister Bremmer expected of her, “ . . . that it was to make babies.”
Her teacher smiled then. “Right. And that’s all it’s for.”
Well. Her mother hadn’t gone so far as all that, but Giselle could appreciate her teacher’s need to put the brakes on the conversation.
“I still don’t understand what necking and petting are. And self-abuse?”
She cleared her throat. “You need to ask your mother.”
No, thanks. The minute Giselle got curious and started asking questions, Knox would have to go live with Sebastian.
“Okay.”
It didn’t brighten her day any to walk down the hall toward the chapel for sacrament meeting and see the same PerkyPopularPretty girls gathered like groupies around Sebastian and Knox. Susan flirted shamelessly with a miserable-looking Knox until he saw Giselle and broke away from the crowd to meet her halfway.
“Save me,” he quipped, dropping his arm around her shoulder. “Not a brain cell amongst them.”
Well, Giselle didn’t know if that was true or not, but at that moment, she preened when she felt the nastiness rippling her way. She did have one thing the other girls did not, that they wanted, that they hated her for having:
Knox Hilliard.
Not to mention her access to Sebastian Taight. Any girl who wanted Sebastian’s time or attention had to get it through Giselle, but Giselle had stopped granting that particular favor a year ago.
“Giz, they’re using you to get to me and then they ridicule you behind your back. Stop feeding them. You’re too good, too smart, too savvy to play their games.”
Giselle remained silent.
“I know you want friends at church, Giz,” he said finally, sighing. “But you’re not going to get them that way. As long as you have something they want, they’ll hate you for it.”
“What do I have? I’m not pretty, I’m fat, I have ugly clothes and frizzy hair. I don’t play the piano, I don’t sing or dance. I go to East High School, Sebastian. Not Ray South. Not Truman. Not Raytown. East High School. Tell me what I have.”
“Well, for a thirteen-year-old, you have a helluva bank account. You could get yourself some decent clothes.”
She swallowed and looked away. “I don’t know where to go or what to buy.”
“Call Victoria. She’ll help you.”
Well, that was an idea. It wasn’t as if she lacked for cousins. The trick was finding one who could drive who had time to help her.
“Okay, so I get new clothes, big deal.”
Sebastian shot her a look. “You really don’t know, do you?”
She stared at him until he looked down at what she held in her lap. She followed his gaze and saw the nine-millimeter in her hand.
“Power, Giz. That’s what you’ve got. They can feel it but they don’t know what it is and apparently, you’re as ignorant as they are. If you want girlfriends, wait ‘til you get to college, ‘cuz those girls at church? Not worth having. Now, are you ready?”
Giselle got out of the truck, stuffed her gun in her waistband, and fished a flashlight out of the glove compartment. Sebastian checked his own gun and stuffed it in the back of his jeans.
“If I could fit into a pair of Jordache jeans, they’d be my friends.”
“Yeah, and that’s the problem, right there,” Sebastian muttered as he retrieved his baseball bat from the bed of the truck.
“Oh, hey. Mom has to be up at four to get to work.”
“Shit. Well, we can’t be in a hurry, so if she catches you, too bad. We got money to make and I hear these fuckers have an ambush waiting for us. Whatever you do, don’t aim higher than the belt buckle.”
Lost in her thoughts and approaching the gauntlet of PerkyPopularPretty, she ignored whatever Knox rambled on about and concentrated on how best to navigate it.
But Knox stopped abruptly just in front of the door to the chapel’s overflow annex, his ear cocked toward it. He eased closer, nudging her with his body.
“ . . . home with us for dinner?”
“Did you ask him?” Giselle’s mother’s voice, razor sharp, even through the wooden door.
“Yes, but he said he had to eat with his family on Sunday.”
“Then why are you asking me?”
“I thought if he had your permission to miss . . . “
Long silence, then Giselle heard her mother sigh. “Barbara, why do you think Knox would be interested in Susan? It’s not as if he can’t make up his own mind and his mind’s set on Giselle.”
“Well, quite frankly, Lilly,” Susan’s mother returned, an edge of what Giselle might think was hatefulness coming from anybody else. “That girl of yours is terrifying.”
“And yours isn’t. See a correlation?”
Giselle didn’t feel terrifying at church and Susan seemed plenty terrifying to Giselle.
The door burst open, nearly slamming Giselle and Knox in their faces. Her mother stood in front of them, her expression ferocious—almost as ferocious as the time she’d come home early from work and caught Giselle and Knox kissing.
“Knox,” she barked. “Do you or do you not want to go to Sister Mendenhall’s house for dinner today?”
Knox squirmed under her mother’s stern gaze, under the expectant stare of Sister Mendenhall. “Uh, not really,” he finally croaked.
“Are you at all interested in asking Susan Mendenhall out?”
Giselle glanced up at him. Susan was gorgeous. Giselle was not. In Giselle’s mind, it was an easy choice and she prepared herself for the blow.
“No,” he said with a gulp, staring at Giselle’s mother, never looking at Sister Mendenhall or Susan, who had sidled up beside her mother.
“All right. Go on into the chapel.”
Knox jerked Giselle’s hand and made his way to the chapel doors as if stung, pulling her two steps before she found her feet—
—then lost them again when Susan stuck her foot out and tripped her.
Down she went, on her face, the back of her dress flying up to her waist, her bottom, covered by panties and pantyhose, exposed.
She heard her mother’s gasp, felt her hands smooth her dress down to cover her and make her modest again.
“You bitch,” Knox snarled, and gasps rose into the air like a fog and lingered near the ceiling before dissipating. Giselle felt his arms around her, lifting her to her knees, helping her to her feet.
Giselle wanted nothing more than to run away, hide, cry. Away from her mother, Knox, Sebastian, Aunt Dianne and Uncle Charlie, her family.
Oh, lovely. Sebastian had seen the whole thing, if his murderous expression was any indicator.
She hated feeling—being—weak in front of her family and that only happened at church where the cult of PerkyPopularPretty reigned supreme. Her family knew it and it humiliated her that she became a completely different girl here at church where all she wanted was the acceptance she should have been able to expect.
“Well,” Sebastian finally said. “If that’s an example of Christ’s teachings, I sure as shit don’t want to see an example of Satan’s.”
“Dianne!” Sister Mendenhall gasped.
Giselle’s mother, her hand caressing Giselle’s cheek, glared at Sister Mendenhall, catching Giselle’s tears with the pad of her thumb before they spilled.
Giselle’s aunt ignored Sister Mendenhall’s outrage, rubbing Giselle’s back, between her shoulder blades the way she liked.
Giselle’s uncle stalked away to catch Brother Mendenhall to give him a piece of his mind.
Giselle’s cousin folded his arms across his chest as he stared at Susan until she squirmed.
Giselle’s boyfriend since before she could remember wrapped her in his arms.
“C’mon, Giselle,” Knox murmured. “Let’s go home.”
She got stuffed in the cab of Sebastian’s truck, squeezed between the two of them, the gear shift between her knees. With the ease of a long partnership, she shifted when Sebastian clutched. None of them said a word, but Knox draped his arm across her shoulder and pulled her to him, kissing her temple.
“I hate girls,” she whispered. “Power, my ass.”
Sebastian patted her knee.
And she still didn’t know what necking and petting were.
* * * * *
ATLAS SHRUGGED
January, 1985
Kansas City, Missouri
“I will not have that book in my house!”
“But, Dad—”
“I gave it to him, Charles,” came the stern voice of Sebastian’s mother, who emerged from the kitchen to find out what had set Sebastian’s father off on one of his weird kicks. He had a lot of those. “He needs to know something other than—” She gestured around at the immaculate but broken down living room. “This.”
“Oh, don’t you start with me, Dianne.”
“Don’t you start with me,” she shot back. “I want something better for my son. I want him to understand that living in poverty is not a virtue.”
Sebastian sighed and looked down at the thick paperback his father had pitched across the room. Old, dog-eared, highlighted, marked, written on, the edges with tiny teeth marks where mice had nibbled. He could go get it; his father wouldn’t slug him or anything. But there was that underlying respect there that made him hesitate.
“Having something while other people have less isn’t a virtue, either.”
“We have to take care of ourselves first!”
Sebastian didn’t know whether he was expected to stick around and hear this argument for the four hundredth time, but he certainly didn’t want to. He wondered if it was too soon to slip out of the room without being noticed or if he’d have to wait another five minutes.
“Taking care of ourselves means taking care of others.”
“The people you ‘take care of’ bleed us dry, Charles. They’re moochers. I don’t know if you’re overly generous or just a mark, but there is no value in sending good money in to chase after bad. We have to eat. We have to have a good roof over our heads. We have to have dependable transportation. Giving everything away doesn’t help us.”
“That’s not what Christ taught!”
Sebastian rolled his eyes . . . There it was. The last bastion of an indefensible stance his father knew was indefensible somewhere deep down in his soul. It always got pulled out early in the argument because he had no other support for his feelings.
“Christ didn’t teach poverty for poverty’s sake. He didn’t teach that we should give everything away to the detriment of our own lives.”
The fight turned again, as always, into a loudly-voiced theological survey of the value of having money versus not having money. His mother would win intellectually, but would lose practically and, as his mother blocked the threshold of the stairs and his father blocked the door to the outside, Sebastian plopped himself down on the couch to wait out the storm and lost himself in thought.
About what had happened to Giz Sunday at church.
The girl needed some female support, that was for sure. All the Vogue and Cosmopolitan and Harper’s Bazaar in the world wouldn’t help her get where she wanted to go. Neither would her mother, who was as ignorant of fashion as she was and, worse, ridiculed it. Sebastian’s mother would be no help; she’d chastise Giselle for wanting to spend her money on anything but citrus futures.
On the other hand, once Giselle had evolved from duckling to swan, she wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of fending off the predators who’d take advantage of her naïveté and willingness to trust.
Just like the girls at church.
Giselle was good with a gun, good with the street crowd, good at school. Confident, poised, with just enough humor to keep situations from exploding. She made friends of her enemies and drew people to her. Give her a straight-on fight and she’d win every time—but allow the back door of her psyche to creak open and let in the mists and shadows of deception and coquetry and flattery, the hopes of acceptance and the stirrings of hormones to be used as weapons against her and she had no chance.
In Sebastian’s opinion, it was best she stay ugly for a while, her sexual discovery carefully shepherded by the boy who was as invested in staying chaste until marriage as she.
“There are no poor general authorities!”
That snapped Sebastian out of his musings. That was new, fresh, and different—and he was disappointed in his mother for using it.
His mother ranted on, twisting the knife. “Tell me something, Charlie. If poverty is such a virtue, why doesn’t the Lord call poor men to be general authorities? Or stake presidents? Or bishops? Poor men don’t get leadership positions in the church, Charlie. Tell me why that is.”
Sebastian knew why. Poor men didn’t have the financial resources or the types of jobs that would allow them to fulfill such demanding positions in the church. Being a bishop was a full-time job in and of itself. No man who wasn’t at least middle management could pull that off and still pay the mortgage.
He’d heard once that other protestant religions paid their clergy and their musicians and their secretaries and most every other position they had to fill to make their churches run, which Sebastian found utterly inconceivable. Getting paid to serve the Lord?
Ridiculous.
“ . . . bad example, Charlie! You want to be bishop? Quit giving everything we have away. Keep some of it, invest it, make more, be smart about making more, not work so hard for so little reward. How can anyone who can’t manage to pay his bills be an example to others?”
“We pay our bills,” Sebastian’s father growled, hurt, furious, that she’d used his greatest disappointment against him. Sebastian almost flinched.
“Barely!”
Well, in practice, “barely” was a lie, but his father didn’t know that, didn’t need to know it. For the purposes of the argument and his father’s reality, it was the absolute truth and had always been.
“We’re not in debt.”
“Barely!”
Again, a lie, but his mother fought with weapons of greatest effect and didn’t give away her secrets to be used against her.
His father said nothing for a long while, his barrel chest heaving. Finally, “I don’t want him reading trash like that.”
“Trash” that Sebastian had already read. Several times, which he hadn’t had a chance to tell his mother before his father had intervened.
“There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“It goes against everything the church teaches.”
Mmmm, not really. It was just a different spin on the parable of the—
“Oh, hey,” his mother said, in a falsely bright tone that irked his father to no end. “Let’s re-read the parable of the talents, shall we?”
His father’s color dropped. Ah, so he’d forgotten—intentionally or not—Christ’s financial commentary.
“Answer the question, Charlie. Why are there no poor general authorities?”
Charlie Taight coveted a bishopric; he always had and he would’ve been good at it. Sebastian certainly didn’t want to be a bishop’s son, but he didn’t have to worry about it as long as his father refused to own more than anyone else in the neighborhood.
Sebastian sighed and arose from the couch. No matter what, he was getting out of here. He had debts to collect tonight and he couldn’t stand that the only thing his parents ever fought about was having versus having not.
* * * * *
25 TO LIFE
June 8, 1994
Chouteau City, Missouri
“On the first count of murder in the first degree, how does the jury find?”
“Not guilty.”
I stared at the table, my vision too fuzzy to read the words on the paper in front of me. I could feel my heart pound in my chest so hard and fast I wondered if I was having a heart attack.
At twenty-five.
“ . . . second count of murder in the first degree, how does the jury find?”
“Not guilty.”
My stomach heaved, like the mass of people in the gallery behind me who stood and screamed and roared.
Rage.
Me.
Them.
All of us.
The pounding of the gavel echoed in the courtroom, echoed in my head. I felt a big hand on my shoulder. It squeezed comfort, but it wasn’t enough.
“ORDER IN THE COURT! BAILIFF!”
Still I sat as the crowd surged toward the man at the table across the imaginary aisle from me. I didn’t dare look at him because I knew what I’d see: Smug arrogance.
My vision focused enough for me to read one line of the list I couldn’t stop staring at.
LaVon Whittaker
One of the defendant’s lovers.
Simone Whittaker.
LaVon’s thirteen-year-old daughter.
I suspected LaVon knew more about the defendant’s hobby than she’d admitted to, but it wouldn’t matter to him; it never did. He’d killed them when he was done with them, every last one. LaVon Whittaker wouldn’t die tonight, but someone on this list would. Just as soon as the next seventeen verdicts were read and the defendant was released.
“CLEAR THE COURTROOM!”
I vaguely wondered if Nocek had fixed this case behind my back somehow. Sheriff Raines. He might have done it, taken the evidence, but I wasn’t sure he was that smart. I also wasn’t sure if Nocek was stupid enough to sabotage a case that, if won, would reflect well on him enough that he wouldn’t have to stuff so many ballot boxes. I really couldn’t be sure, but I would have preferred to believe Nocek had sabotaged me than to believe . . . a mistake.
Just a small, stupid mistake.
And not mine.
That big hand left my shoulder as the people in the gallery were herded outside like cows to slaughter, protesting all the way. A small, soft hand grazed across my back and then that, too, left me. No, Sebastian, Giselle! Don’t go, please don’t go! I need you with me.
The courtroom doors thudded closed.
Other than the jury and the bailiffs, there were only four people in the room: the judge, the defendant, the defendant’s lawyer, and . . . me.
Alone.
Having failed to get justice for the nineteen women and girls who had spent the last year crawling out of their graves into my nightmares—if I had the audacity to sleep—to beg me to give it to them.
Having failed to keep another slew of people safe.
One of the women or girls on the list in front of me would die tonight. The rest would follow her, one by one, until he was stopped.
Again.
And it would be my fault.
“ . . . third count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Jamie McElroy.
“ . . . fourth count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Anita Sterling
“ . . . fifth count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Susanna Chase.
“ . . . sixth count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Valerie Nottingham.
“ . . . seventh count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Penny Hendricks.
“ . . . eighth count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Christy Madison.
“ . . . ninth count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Sharon Gentry.
“ . . . tenth count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Charlene Lawrence.
“ . . . eleventh count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Allison Martino.
“ . . . twelfth count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Cindy Trusdale.
“ . . . thirteenth count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Gabriela Jorge.
“ . . . fourteenth count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Sandra Jenson.
“ . . . fifteenth count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Justina Phillips.
“ . . . sixteenth count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Octavia Mitchell.
“ . . . seventeenth count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Patty Davis.
“ . . . eighteenth count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Loretta Jones.
“ . . . nineteenth count . . . ”
“Not guilty.”
Maureen Givens.
I still sat, numb, thinking about those nineteen women, two of whom were girls who hadn’t even reached puberty and four more not even eighteen.
“All right, Mr. Parley,” Judge Wilson intoned, his voice weary. “You’re free to go. I’d like to thank the members of the jury for their service.”
CLAP!
Judge Wilson heaved himself out of his seat and trudged to his chambers, his shoulders slumped, his head bowed.
The jury box emptied under armed supervision, as those people would need armed escorts to get out of the courthouse, past the reporters, and home safely.
I couldn’t even react when the defendant, after clasping his attorney in a jolly bear hug, walked by me and gave me a hearty clap on the back.
“Ya did a good job, son,” he said, his voice full of the merriment and charm that convinced women he was a decent man. “Just not good enough.”
I swallowed. Hard.
He laughed his way down the aisle to the courtroom doors where armed deputies would escort him off the courthouse property to his car and see that he made it home alive, to keep him from the mob that wanted to lynch him, like it was 1840 or something.
The courtroom was empty.
I couldn’t move.
The crime scene photographs flashed across my mind.
“Knox?”
I closed my eyes at the sound of that voice and breathed a sigh of almost-relief. I could barely hear her footsteps, but then she was there, that familiar perfume in my nose. She ran her fingers through my hair and I took a deep breath, the way she’d taught me. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
Focus.
Visualize.
“How can I help you?” she murmured.
Make love with me.
My eyes popped open. It was the first time I’d ever really thought it and meant it. I’d said it before, naturally, then laughed. Made her laugh. As a joke. Because, even though we slept together occasionally, the thought was just so . . . strange.
So impossible.
Where had it come from?
“Giselle,” I whispered, unable to speak any louder; I simply wasn’t capable of it. I’d spent my voice doing what prosecutors do. “What would you do if you were the one sitting here?”
Her hand stilled, then slowly fisted in my hair, her knuckles hard against my scalp.
She slid the list of names out from under my hand and picked it up.
“LaVon Whittaker,” she read in a tone I’d never heard for myself, and I shuddered. The answer was right there, in her voice. “She’s still alive, right?”
I nodded.
“Evie Winslow. Samantha Rodriguez. Donna Franklin . . . ” And on and on and on she went until the last name faded into the silence of the darkening courtroom. Then she flipped the piece of paper back onto the table, retrieved her other hand from my hair, and said, “Well. I guess I’ll get going.”
“No.”
She stopped. “No?”
“No.”
I looked up at her then, into those ice blue eyes just like mine, into that pale chubby face I knew so well, surrounded by all that strawberry blonde frizz she’d never been able to tame. She pursed her lips. Took a deep breath through her nose. Held it. Stared at the table. Released it through her mouth.
“I take it you aren’t going to Dallas in September after all, then?”
My chest caved in.
Dallas.
The temple.
To take out my endowment, like I should’ve done when I was nineteen.
She knew.
She was the only one who could have known, would’ve been able to see it in my face, the idea taking root the instant that irreparable hole had been shot through the heart of my case—
“I guess not.”
She cleared her throat. “Do you . . . want some . . . uh, company?”
“No.”
She squatted awkwardly beside my chair. “You don’t have to do this, Knox,” she whispered.
“What would you do?” I repeated, returning her look, not backing down.
“Okay, but you don’t have to do it alone. Let me help you.”
“What. Would. You. Do.”
She bit her lip.
Looked away.
“There’s a— Um.” She cleared her throat again. “There’s a man I know. At the barbershop on the corner of Belmont and Truman. He’s expecting you.”
I grasped her to me tight and she began to cry.
I only wished I could.
* * * * *
Neither of us spoke.
When I dug in my pocket for money, the barber waved it away and flashed a sign at me. I didn’t know if that meant he had already been paid or if he didn’t want to be paid. It was one of those things I probably would never know and didn’t need to anyway.
He let me out the back door of his shop as silently as he had let me in and I walked up the alley and the six half-blocks to 17th Street, where I’d parked in the rec center lot. The merchandise hung heavy in my pocket and I realized just how long it had been since I’d owned something like it.
Held one.
Used one.
I was so out of practice.
Empty your mind.
I emptied my mind.
Then think about the pictures.
I dug a Polaroid out of my pocket, swiped from my case file long ago, when I had used it as a locus as I prayed for guidance while I prepared for trial.
Please, Heavenly Father, guide me so I can get a conviction. Please let me get justice for these people.
I looked at that poor woman, laid out bare, bloody, broken.
I choked.
Put it back in my pocket. Not now.
I’d failed her.
Recite the victims’ names.
Jamie McElroy Anita Sterling Susanna Chase Valerie Nottingham Penny Hendricks Christy Madison Sharon Gentry Charlene Lawrence Allison Martino Cindy Trusdale Gabriela Jorge Sandra Jenson Justina Phillips Octavia Mitchell Patty Davis Loretta Jones Maureen Givens
Think about your weapon.
Glock nine-millimeter.
Visualize it.
Matte black.
Feel it in your hand with your mind.
My hands gripped the steering wheel as I drove west, then north across the Broadway Bridge, up the Broadway Extension, I-29, past KCI.
Remember, there’s no safety on a Glock like on a revolver or a rifle. The trigger will catch about a third of the way through the pull. You have to pull through that all the way the first time. Do it fast and don’t hesitate.
I pulled off I-29 in Chouteau City, like it was daylight, like I was going to work.
Like I’d go to work in a few hours, as if nothing had happened.
There’ll be a round in the chamber, so whatever you do, don’t draw the slide or you’ll jam it.
I felt it in my jacket pocket, still heavy against my hip.
Don’t get fancy. Don’t get arrogant. Don’t go for a long-drawn-out vengeance or try to get some Scooby-Doo confession. Just do the job and leave.
The light turned green and I drove slowly into the trailer park, past the Whittaker trailer where his car was parked, though not for long, I was sure. I didn’t really know how long I had, but I went back to the courthouse and parked in my usual spot.
Nothing unusual about that; I’d been pulling late nights and overnights for the last year.
I shook out my keys, unlocked the courthouse doors, gave my usual salute to the usual half-asleep deputy, and jogged up the stairs as usual—
—and promptly stole through Nocek’s office to his back staircase and sneaked out the back way, keeping to the shadows and attempting not to let the world know how loudly I breathed.
I ran all the way back to the trailer park, where his car sat empty, waiting for him to leave his lover’s house.
It was an old junker, a yacht. Its locks didn’t work. I slipped in the back seat and hunkered down on the floor, covering myself up with the blanket I knew he’d have there.
Because I knew his habits.
Don’t let your anger get the better of you. Keep it cold. You’re just doing your job.
One way or another.
Breathe in your nose and out your mouth. Slowly. Relax.
I must have relaxed myself right into a doze because the next thing I knew, the yacht was shaking slightly, the car door squeaked open, and low chuckles came my while when he got in and shoved the key in the ignition.
“Stupid cunt,” he muttered.
Track where you go in your mind.
I’d expected him to go straight home, but he stopped to get gas—
—and was damn near assaulted by the good citizens of Chouteau City who might have done my job for me had there not been a couple of state troopers in the parking lot, on break.
Screams, obscenities, shouts, and threats.
Apparently, the troopers waded into the melee to break it up, but it seemed to me a half-hearted attempt on their part.
“Get lost, asshole,” one of them growled low. “We’re watching you.”
He laughed heartily, as if the trooper had told a good joke, but he drove off without getting gas and then he hissed, “Shit” to no one.
And then we turned toward his home, down a long country gravel road, then left onto an equally long gravel driveway. I knew that because I knew everything about him.
I hope you’ve thought this through.
No.
For once.
Because if I had, I wouldn’t be here right now.
The yacht shook and shuddered as first the rusty door creaked open and then he struggled to get out of the seat and then he slammed the door closed behind him, muttering all the way about his plans for the night being interrupted.
I had him.
It was possible there were others out in the woods with the same intention, but that only meant I’d know who not to charge in the morning.
He turned when I opened the car door; I don’t know if he saw who I was or not, but I felt his smug arrogance turning into . . . something else.
Fear.
“Who’re you?” he barked before he could see my face in the intermittent moonlight.
Empty your mind. Focus.
I bored the barrel of my Glock into his forehead and said, “Get on your knees.”
He caught me off guard when he did exactly what I told him to do, when he began to blubber like a little kid caught stealing candy from QuikTrip.
No theatrics. You’re there to get the job done.
“Look, Hilliard, I’m sorry, you know— I didn’t mean to get all up in your face today in court, really—”
“Do you think that’s why I’m here?” I asked, feeling rage swell up in me, a killing rage, a rage I had never known.
Don’t let your anger get the better of you. Anger destroys your focus and makes you do stupid shit. Just get the job done.
I couldn’t help it.
“Do you want to live?”
“Yes. Yes! I got grandkids, yanno?”
“So did half the women you killed.”
“Look, I’ll move away. Anything, just— Put the gun down now, son. You know what’ll happen to you. You’ll go to prison and won’t they just love you, all young and pretty, big blond boy that you are.”
Don’t let him speak. He’ll rattle you. Just get the job done and get out. One shot.
“Beg.”
He paused a beat. Changed his tactic. “Ah, son, now look. If you ain’t shot me yet, you ain’t gonna.”
I shot him in the left thigh.
He howled. The gunshot echoed around the woods and rang back at me.
I shot him in the right thigh.
He fell to the ground and rolled, curled up in a ball and began to cry.
“Get. Back. On. Your. Knees.”
“Don’t kill me,” he sobbed as he struggled to his knees. “Please don’t kill me. It ain’t my time yet and I cain’t—” He struggled more, the hole in his thigh gushing. “I cain’t—”
“Put your hands behind your head.”
“Hilliard, boy, I—”
“On your knees. Hands behind your head.”
He struggled. I allowed him to struggle, to cry like a little girl.
Then he was on his knees, barely, and his hands were locked behind his head, sort of, and he looked up at me, his face filled with desperation and lit by the moon as the clouds moved, as if it had been perfectly timed for my little stage drama here.
“Don’t kill me, don’t kill me, don’t kill me,” he panted and cried, terrified.
Empty your mind. Pull the trigger all the way through the catch. Fast, firm, once. Don’t stop.
It’s a different thing to know that a shooter will end up with his victim’s blood on him than to feel the warmth and smell the copper and hear the ringing in your ears yourself.
I had never felt so cold in my life as I did looking down at Tom Parley’s body, the back of his head blown off, but his eyes open, his expression frozen in supplication for mercy.
Don’t think about it. Empty your mind. Keep the gun and get away as fast as you can.
I dropped the gun back in my jacket pocket, grabbed the blanket I had hidden in, then turned and jogged back up the long driveway to the country road. I stopped short when I saw a car on the side of the road, dark, quiet, looking for all the world as if it had been abandoned.
The engine came to life. The door swung open, the interior glow the only light other than the moon.
She said nothing, but held her hand out for the blanket and helped me smooth it over her car seat that she’d already wrapped in plastic.
I got in.
Closed the door.
She remained silent as she zipped down the road in the dark, headlights off, then west with the lights on, away from town and only a mile to Kansas.
By the time we crossed the state line, I was freezing. My teeth were beginning to chatter and I drew the blanket around me. She turned off the air conditioning and rolled down the windows. In June in Missouri—well, Kansas—it was hot and humid enough that it should have warmed me up, but I knew I was going into shock.
She knew it, too.
I could never have done this on my own and I was stupid for thinking I could.
She caught I-435 south and carefully eased off the accelerator, being very careful not to attract any attention by speeding. She had her radar detector on and it seemed a very, very long time before we got to I-70 and headed back east into Missouri, then into downtown Kansas City.
She parked at the freight dock of her bookstore and got out, came around to my side, helped me out. I was still freezing, shaking.
What have I done?
“Shhh.”
She helped me to the concrete stairs where there was a railing I could hold onto to climb them.
I murdered a man.
“Shut up.”
I have no hope now.
“Let the Lord worry about that. Watch my hands. Concentrate on what I’m doing. Don’t think about anything else.”
I did that.
She shoved a key into the lock over the freight elevator buttons, pulled it up, then shoved another key into the button pad. The elevator whirred to life. She used a third key to open the gate, then pulled on the strap of the doors. She maneuvered me into the elevator, kept her foot on the door, closed and locked the button pad. She closed and locked the gate, then closed the elevator doors. The floor shifted, jerked, protested as it pulled us up through the shaft.
I still shivered and she wrapped her arms around me.
Riding Giselle’s freight elevator had never seemed such an arduous and painstaking and long process before, and I pondered that a while. It was a good thing to ponder: Did it need repairs? Did it need replaced? I couldn’t imagine why she wouldn’t have taken care of the elevator the way she took care of everything else at Decadence. Surely Maisy or Coco would have noticed how slow and decrepit it was . . . ?
I don’t know or remember how I got to the bathroom, all stark white with yellow tile accents, yellow towels, yellow flowers, yellow candles and I realized—
“Yellow. Your favorite color is yellow.” Shouldn’t I have known that?
She thunked me down hard on the toilet lid and turned to start the shower.
“Giselle, I think I’m going to hell.”
“We don’t believe in hell,” she said shortly as she knelt at my feet and took off my Nikes.
“Well, not that burning lake of fire thing, but still—”
“Knox, be quiet. You’re in shock. I’ll be right back. Stay right where you are. Don’t get up, don’t move, don’t fall over.”
Silly girl.
Don’t fall over while sitting on a toilet seat.
Ow! Shit!
“Knox!”
She helped me back up onto the toilet seat and shoved a half gallon jug of orange juice in my hand. “Oh, thank you!”
“Have you eaten today at all?”
I shook my head as I gulped. I’d forgotten to.
“All hopped up on adrenaline. Your blood sugar’s in the tank, to boot.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” I quipped, but she slapped me upside the head and started taking the blanket away from me. “I’m cold, Giselle.” I knew I was whining and I didn’t care. I was cold, dammit.
“Knox, we have to get this off of you. You’re soaked in blood. C’mon, please,” she said, pleading. “Drink your OJ and let me get this stuff taken care of.”
I looked at her then, really looked. “Your face is wet.”
She sniffled and ran the back of her hand across her nose. “Yeah, I know.”
“Okay. Weird.”
She seemed so . . . sad . . . and I couldn’t figure out why. I had to think about that a while because it wasn’t like her to not tell me why she was sad, but I figured if it would make her happy to see me shiver, then that’s what I’d have to do.
’Cause it was my job to make her happy.
She stuffed the blanket in a heavy black trash bag, then threw my shoes in there after them.
“Hey, those are almost brand new.”
“Buy another pair.”
“Giselle, are you mad at me?”
“No! I’m not mad at you, Knox. Stand up for a minute.”
I stood up, but when she went to unbutton my fly, I panicked and pushed her away. “Giselle! What are you trying to do? I’m going to the temple in September, remember?”
She stopped, stared at me, eyes wide and mouth open. “Fuck!” Then she pursed her lips and ripped my fly open, had me half naked before I could stop her.
“Giselle—”
“Shut up,” she snapped. “Shut the fuck up and drink your juice before you end up in the emergency room. You know you’re not supposed to go that long without eating, you shithead.”
Oh, she really was mad and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why.
She put my clothes in the same bag as the blanket and the shoes, and left with it. I just sat there on the toilet, buck naked, shivering, chugging orange juice until she came back, although if she thought she could seduce me, she had another think coming.
But she still had her clothes on. I bet she was plenty warm enough.
“Can you stand up for more than thirty seconds without falling over?”
I looked up at her, all mad and pretty. Pretty mad, anyway.
“Yes, Mother,” I sneered.
“Then get in the shower. Scrub until you don’t have any skin left.”
That took a while because the stupid skin just would not come off. But I did feel better and not cold anymore and besides, there wasn’t any more hot water.
I found Giselle’s yellow bathrobe and put it on— “Oh, fuck you, too,” I said to my smirking reflection. —walked through Giselle’s bedroom to her living room-kitchenette, and stopped short when I saw Sebastian pacing frantically, running his hands through his hair.
Giselle was sitting on the floor in front of the dishwasher, her head back, her eyes closed, her hands limp on either side of her. Her whole body shook with her sobbing.
“Knox!” Sebastian barked. I looked at him, confused. “Do you remember what happened tonight?”
“Yeah, I—” I stopped. Thought about that a minute. No, what had happened tonight? Why was I at Giselle’s? And on a work night. I looked at Sebastian. The room started to turn a bit. “I think—” Shit, now I was dizzy. I really should’ve eaten something. “I think there’s something wrong with me.”
* * * * *
I woke up in Giselle’s bed.
I knew that was where I was because of the perfume and because her mattress was softer than mine. I kept begging to buy it from her, but she kept refusing.
I started to get a weird feeling about it all when I saw sunlight on the floor. I never slept past sunrise, even in the summer; it was a habit since I’d started surfing because I needed to be on my board paddling out by sunrise to get the best waves. I jerked over and looked at the clock.
“Shit.”
Nocek was going to tear my head off, and not figuratively, either. It was eleven o’clock in the morning—Thursday morning—and here I was, still sleeping. In River Market, a good twenty-five miles from Chouteau City.
I tried to clear my head, to start from the beginning, to figure out why I was where I was and when—
Empty your mind.
I barely made it to the bathroom before I puked.
I don’t know how long I sat there on the freshly bleached bathroom floor in front of the toilet, just in case, toothbrush in my hand, before Giselle appeared in the doorway. She looked at me, then at the toilet and murmured,
“I guess you remembered.”
I nodded.
“Everything?”
I nodded.
“Nocek’s looking for you.”
I nodded.
She sighed. “I don’t know what to do, Knox. Let you hide out here or make you go back to work like nothing happened. Thing is, if you stay here, people will think you cracked up after the verdict yesterday—not that anybody’d blame you. But if you go back to work, you might actually crack up and say something you shouldn’t.”
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