Total Victim Theory Read Online Free Page B
Author: Ian Ballard
rub my temples with my fingertips. It's crazy—just yesterday I was back home at a bar in Pampa doing Jaeger Bombs with old friends and trying to count the calories in a basket of chili cheese fries.
What a difference a day makes.
I glance around me at the room. It used to be Betsy’s before she moved in with her boyfriend. She's my pathologically peppy cousin. The photos of her beaming smile all around me on the walls seem out of place at the present moment. The room's like a time capsule of her senior year of high school. A pair of red pom poms rests on her bureau. Beside that, a purple retainer case, openjust enough to give a glimpse of the metal skeleton that's still inside. Over the bed, a poster board collage of her life. A gleeful barrage of pep rallies and slumber parties, along with images of an oversized orange cat named Roger, who I just saw asleep on the dining room table.
The police brought me here about an hour ago. Here being a suburb of Denver called Thornton. My aunt and I aren't super close, but she’s my only relative in Colorado and they had to take me somewhere. Obviously my apartment wasn't an option. A Mickey Mouse clock on the wall says 10:32 p.m. It's been sixteen hours since I found Jessica. Since I opened that bathroom door and saw her there.
God, Jessica . . . where are you now? Are you looking down on me from some angelic ledge? Or is it all just black? It's hard to wrap your head around it. So many little things that will never happen again. Laying out by the pool with you. Splitting a frozen pizza. Sharing a hangover on a Sunday morning. And I was a bitch to you sometimes. For stupid stuff like playing your dubstep too loud or for eating my food out of the refrigerator when you had the munchies. I'm sorry I was like that, Jessica.
Two tears fall on the pink bedspread, and the spots darken into red. I wipe away the tears and pull my hair back and put it in a scrunchie. I'd forgotten what these first stunned hours are like.
It's been a while.
I talked to six detectives today. And a psychiatrist and a portrait artist and a doctor and a pair of forensic CSI lab guys. And I’m still supposed to meet an FBI profiler tomorrow morning. The two Boulder cops are staying here overnight, one by the front door, one by the back. Guarding against the risk that something bad will happen. That the guy will come back.
I’m just going to call him Chris, whatever his real name turns out to be. He could be a Chris. Chris is kind of an open-ended name. They can be good or evil. And I can’t just call him “the killer” or “the Handyman” the way the police do. That only works when someone’s a complete stranger. Not when you’ve spent five or ten minutes nose to nose with him. Close enough to touch him, to smell him.
I realize now that rusty smell on him was her blood. It makes me sick. Maybe his pants were drenched with it and I was toodrowsy and out of it from the drive for it to register. Or maybe the scent was wafting off her hands—they must have been right there in his backpack. I picture them. Blue and clammy and with purple fingernails and wrapped up in toilet paper. Were the fingertips shriveled up like prunes from all that time he kept her in the water?
Suddenly I've made myself afraid. And not in a vague way, like
the universe is a scary place
. And not in a sad way, like
for Jessica
, but in a here and now way, like
I'm shivering
. I walk over to the window, crack the blinds, and peek out into the yard. I can’t see anything except the light from my room reflected in the glass. The fact is he's out there—maybe somewhere not far away—and there's nothing between him and me but empty space, a couple of sleepy cops and a flimsy pane of glass. There's a narrow gap around the edge of the blinds that shows a little sliver of the window on one side. It's big enough that someone could peek in, if they had binoculars. Or if they were standing right outside. I pull the blinds slightly to
What a difference a day makes.
I glance around me at the room. It used to be Betsy’s before she moved in with her boyfriend. She's my pathologically peppy cousin. The photos of her beaming smile all around me on the walls seem out of place at the present moment. The room's like a time capsule of her senior year of high school. A pair of red pom poms rests on her bureau. Beside that, a purple retainer case, openjust enough to give a glimpse of the metal skeleton that's still inside. Over the bed, a poster board collage of her life. A gleeful barrage of pep rallies and slumber parties, along with images of an oversized orange cat named Roger, who I just saw asleep on the dining room table.
The police brought me here about an hour ago. Here being a suburb of Denver called Thornton. My aunt and I aren't super close, but she’s my only relative in Colorado and they had to take me somewhere. Obviously my apartment wasn't an option. A Mickey Mouse clock on the wall says 10:32 p.m. It's been sixteen hours since I found Jessica. Since I opened that bathroom door and saw her there.
God, Jessica . . . where are you now? Are you looking down on me from some angelic ledge? Or is it all just black? It's hard to wrap your head around it. So many little things that will never happen again. Laying out by the pool with you. Splitting a frozen pizza. Sharing a hangover on a Sunday morning. And I was a bitch to you sometimes. For stupid stuff like playing your dubstep too loud or for eating my food out of the refrigerator when you had the munchies. I'm sorry I was like that, Jessica.
Two tears fall on the pink bedspread, and the spots darken into red. I wipe away the tears and pull my hair back and put it in a scrunchie. I'd forgotten what these first stunned hours are like.
It's been a while.
I talked to six detectives today. And a psychiatrist and a portrait artist and a doctor and a pair of forensic CSI lab guys. And I’m still supposed to meet an FBI profiler tomorrow morning. The two Boulder cops are staying here overnight, one by the front door, one by the back. Guarding against the risk that something bad will happen. That the guy will come back.
I’m just going to call him Chris, whatever his real name turns out to be. He could be a Chris. Chris is kind of an open-ended name. They can be good or evil. And I can’t just call him “the killer” or “the Handyman” the way the police do. That only works when someone’s a complete stranger. Not when you’ve spent five or ten minutes nose to nose with him. Close enough to touch him, to smell him.
I realize now that rusty smell on him was her blood. It makes me sick. Maybe his pants were drenched with it and I was toodrowsy and out of it from the drive for it to register. Or maybe the scent was wafting off her hands—they must have been right there in his backpack. I picture them. Blue and clammy and with purple fingernails and wrapped up in toilet paper. Were the fingertips shriveled up like prunes from all that time he kept her in the water?
Suddenly I've made myself afraid. And not in a vague way, like
the universe is a scary place
. And not in a sad way, like
for Jessica
, but in a here and now way, like
I'm shivering
. I walk over to the window, crack the blinds, and peek out into the yard. I can’t see anything except the light from my room reflected in the glass. The fact is he's out there—maybe somewhere not far away—and there's nothing between him and me but empty space, a couple of sleepy cops and a flimsy pane of glass. There's a narrow gap around the edge of the blinds that shows a little sliver of the window on one side. It's big enough that someone could peek in, if they had binoculars. Or if they were standing right outside. I pull the blinds slightly to
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