My Lost Daughter (53 page)

Both her mother and Chris looked perplexed. “What you're telling us doesn't make sense,” Lily said. “How do you know this man is dead?”

“A friend of mine from the hospital went to his funeral.”

Chris said, “Dead men don't send flowers.”

“Apparently this dead guy does. Maybe he ordered them last week before he died. Once a year on her birthday an unknown person sends flowers to Marilyn Monroe's grave.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “I'm going to my room to study. I'm not hungry, so forget dinner. We'll probably find out tomorrow that the flowers belong to the next-door neighbor. Damn it, they're only flowers. Someone didn't send us a dead chicken. Why are you making such a big deal about it?”

In her room, Shana tried to study but she couldn't stop thinking about Alex and the night they'd made love. When she turned off the lights and tried to sleep, she felt a strange presence all around her and became convinced it was Alex's spirit. “Where are you?” she whispered, peering into the shadows.

He had said they were destined to be together, that they could step off the edge of the universe and find paradise. Was he alone when he died? Death left behind so many unanswered questions.

As the clock ticked and she still couldn't sleep, Shana whispered again, “I'm sorry, Alex.” Almost as soon as the words left her mouth, her eyelids closed and sleep finally found her.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 24
VENTURA, CALIFORNIA

Only a few feet away, on a bus bench, sat Alex!

Shana had taken Lily's car to go to the drugstore and pick up some shampoo and mascara. She slammed on the brakes with both feet. Cars honked behind her. She craned her neck around, but Alex was gone. Only one person was sitting on the bench now, a disheveled man who appeared to be in his mid to late fifties. From the looks of the sacks and blankets he carried, he was homeless, more than likely dumped on the street by a state mental facility. “Did you see a man?” she yelled out the car window. “He was sitting next to you just a second ago?”

The man hugged his dirty blankets to his chest as he mumbled something under his breath. Shana grabbed her purse and jumped out, opening her wallet and handing him whatever cash she had. He stared at the bills in his hand as she got back in the car and drove off.

Tears of self-pity and confusion spilled from her eyes. It might be her one day sitting on a bus bench with nowhere to go and no one who cared about her. Alex was dead. She had just seen a dead man. Only lunatics saw dead people.

At dinner that night, Shana was quiet, speaking only a few words. She spent the rest of the evening on the balcony, staring out at the ocean. Lily came out with a sweater, but otherwise left her alone.

At midnight, when Chris and Lily had gone to their room for the night, Shana finally headed to bed. She had just managed to fall asleep when her cell phone started ringing. The illuminated dial on the nightstand read 3:15. She seized the phone, not wanting to wake up her mother and Chris.

“Hello?” All she heard was heavy breathing. “Is anyone there?”

Through the silence, Shana felt a presence reaching out for her. She sat up on the edge of the bed and groped for the light switch. “Alex,” she said, “is that you?” There was no answer even though the line remained open. “If it's you, Alex, please talk to me.” She heard a click and knew he had hung up.

Shana stayed in bed until two o'clock the following day, ignoring the phone when it rang and burying her head under the covers. If she told anyone what was happening, she might end up back where she started, maybe not at Whitehall but somewhere similar. Was she hallucinating or had she really seen Alex?

She got up and put her clothes on, not wanting Lily to come in and find her still in bed. Before they'd left San Francisco, they had gone to her apartment and picked up some of her things. She removed her laptop from the carrying case and set it up on the small desk that also served as a vanity. She went to the homepage for the
San Francisco Chronicle
and searched through the archives. As soon as the article popped up, she stared at the girl's picture, the image far better than what she'd seen on the crinkled piece of paper she'd found in Alex's wallet. The girl looked so young and fragile. She started to read through the text when she saw another photo at the bottom of the page, the picture of a young man with thick dark hair standing beside what appeared to be a detective. The younger man's head was down and he was obscuring his face with his hand. She zoomed in, but it was impossible to make out the man's facial features. Was it Alex? She couldn't tell.

The first part of the article she had already read. She jumped down several paragraphs and began reading.

 

Eighteen-year-old Adam Pounder was arrested at a local hotel after police responded to a call of shots fired. Pounder was found holding Ms. Rondini's body with the murder weapon a few feet away. “I couldn't do it,” he allegedly told officers. “I promised her, but I couldn't do it.”

 

Shana leaned back in her chair. “Adam,” she said, noting how similar it was to Alex. She'd seen a police show once where they had said that people who assume fictitious names frequently incorporate elements of their real names. Both names began with the letter “A” and consisted of four letters. She continued to read.

 

Pounder and Rondini met while institutionalized at Camarillo State Mental Hospital, and from what Pounder told authorities, they entered into a suicide pact after Rondini gave birth and left the newborn child to die in the restroom of the Greyhound bus terminal. Pounder allegedly failed to follow through on his end of the pact after he shot and killed Rondini.

Police advise the suspect had been placed at Camarillo State on an order of the court following an incident where he threw acid in a female student's face while in a high school chemistry lab. Pounder was found not guilty by reason of insanity on these earlier charges and committed to the state facility. Three months later, Pounder was released. The injured girl, a minor, has asked to remain anonymous; however, when contacted, her parents stated they were shocked and outraged that Pounder had been released so quickly after the horrendous damage that was inflicted on their daughter. “It's a sorry state of affairs,” the girl's father stated, “when a person as dangerous as Adam Pounder is released back to the community after only a brief period of hospitalization. My precious daughter is scarred for life. You call that justice? I don't, but at least my daughter is alive. Now he's gone and killed someone.”

When asked if he placed the blame on the legal system for releasing Pounder to commit another violent act, the victim's father stated, “Damn right I do. They should lock him up and throw away the key. How many people does he have to maim and kill before they stop him?”

 

Shana felt trapped inside the house and took off in her mother's Volvo. She glanced at the faces of people in the cars that passed her. Any one of them could be dangerous. Criminals generally looked like criminals. Not so with the mentally ill, and Alex was the perfect example. He had seemed so normal, so sane. She would have never suspected he might be dangerous. People like Alex had jobs and families, but they were ticking time bombs, ready to explode and point a shotgun out the window and kill an innocent person, slaughter their entire family, or hack the head off their neighbor with an axe.

Could Adam Pounder and Alex Purcell, the name she had seen on the telephone calling card, be one and the same? Pounder had met Jennifer Rondini in a mental hospital, exactly how Alex had met Shana. It was a chilling thought to say the least, but Alex was dead, so he couldn't hurt anyone now. Was it the pressure of the world we lived in that caused things like this to happen, people to just crack? Were they too flawed and fragile to cope with the fractured economy, the corrupt politicians, or the skyrocketing unemployment? Things were coming apart at the seams, the very seams that were necessary to maintain society.

Was it the chemicals in the food they ate, the toxic dumping, or the polluted environment? The light changed, but Shana was lost in her thoughts. The car behind her started honking and she stepped on the gas, her eyes darting to the rearview mirror. She expected the man behind her to stick a gun out the window or ram her with his car.

Was Alex really dead?

Shana had seen him on the bus bench and then there were the white flowers as well as the phone call. She began hyperventilating. Was he still out there? Had Karen made a mistake?

When she turned onto her street, she saw Chris's Volkswagen
parked in front of the house with one wheel up over the curb. Then she saw Lily pacing back and forth on the sidewalk. As soon as she saw the Volvo turning the corner, her mother started running toward her.

Shana pulled into the driveway and parked, wondering what had happened. Lily flung the car door open. “Where have you been? My God, I've been calling all the hospitals. I thought you'd had an accident. I was out of my mind with worry.”

“I'm fine, Mother,” she snapped, resenting being treated like she was incapable of driving two blocks down the street. Climbing out of the car and closing the door, she glared at her mother. “In case you've forgotten, I've been driving since I was sixteen. You know what happened at Whitehall. Why are you acting like I'm crazy and have to be watched every second of the day?”

“Shana, please,” Lily said, “no one thinks you're crazy. You should have asked to take the car, told me where you were going. The hospital gave you a lot of drugs. How do we know they're out of your system? Chris and I are just concerned for your safety.”

“I tried to find you to ask you if I could take the car. When I couldn't, I decided you must have taken a walk on the beach, so I left and drove around. I just needed to get out of the house.”

“I did take a walk,” Lily said, somewhat embarrassed. “In the future, just let me know where you're going so I won't worry. I contacted the flower shop and they don't know who sent the flowers, but it wasn't a mistake. Whoever it was gave them our address. They said an attractive, dark-haired man walked into their store in Santa Barbara two days ago and paid cash. I'm afraid of this man Alex. Maybe he's not dead, Shana. You told me he was obsessed with you. Could you have misunderstood this girl who told you he was dead? She was a patient, so perhaps she's delusional. Or maybe Alex made her call you and tell you he was dead to gain your sympathy, or to make you feel bad that you didn't care for him. I'm just speculating. You knew the man.”

Shana couldn't believe it. They were taking her life away. They might as well dig a hole and bury her. “Karen has Tourette's
syndrome. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with her mind. She even has a degree in electrical engineering. The only reason she was at Whitehall was she lost her allotment of medication and it's hard for her to hold down a job or be around people who don't understand her condition. The man you're so scared of wasn't someone off the street. He was a successful businessman and inventor. Karen said he paid for a year's worth of her medicine. Because of Alex, she was able to leave the hospital and get a job at Raytheon.”

Lily reached over and hugged her. “Forgive me, honey. I was wrong to get so upset. Have you been able to get in touch with any of your friends here?”

“What friends?” Shana said, looking down at her feet. “I've been at Stanford forever. And since I stayed there twelve months a year, whatever people I knew in Ventura have either moved or gotten married. I'm trying to connect with some of my high school friends on Facebook and MySpace, but I haven't had any luck.”

Chris stepped in. “Let's go inside and relax. I left work early so we can go to a movie if you ladies are interested.”

“That sounds great,” Lily said, smiling. “I'll go see what's showing, shower, and be ready in thirty minutes.” She paused and then added, “Maybe you should pick the movie, Shana.”

“No problem,” Shana said, willing to do anything to get out of the house, especially to someplace where her mother couldn't talk. She remembered the substance she had scraped off Alex's window and decided to call Detective Lindstrom tomorrow and see if they had checked the fingerprints in Alex's room. She would also offer to send him what she was certain was dried blood, as well as tell him how he could retrieve the newspaper article.

They went to see a movie called
My One and Only
starring Renée Zellweger. It was good, but it didn't hold Shana's attention. She stared out into the dark theater, angry and confused. She couldn't accept that she was hallucinating, not after all she had been through.

If Alex Purcell was Adam Pounder and he was alive, why in God's name was he back on the street? Could a person really throw acid in
a young girl's face, shoot and kill a second girl, and then, after managing to become a successful businessman, possibly stab another helpless individual in the throat and still manage to remain free? It was mind-boggling.

Shana sighed, her eyes glued to the screen but still trapped inside her thoughts. Law school and having a judge for a mother had taught her a lot. A person might have gotten off with an insanity defense in the past, but not today. She thought of John Hinckley, the man who'd attempted to assassinate Reagan. He would never get out of his mental institution. Alex even reminded her of Hinckley, the strong family background, the wealth. But Hinckley hadn't been a successful person in his own right like Alex claimed to be. Only in the United States, she thought, the land of opportunity, opportunity to kill and kill again.

Under the new laws, a person could be found sane under absolutely any circumstance, even if they were as crazy as a loon. The new criteria made it impossible for a person to plead not guilty by reason of insanity and avoid imprisonment. All they had to prove was the person was aware their actions constituted a criminal act. A person would have to be brain dead to think sticking a knife in someone's throat or shooting them wasn't illegal and wrong, so that eliminated almost everyone. And if a person was actively psychotic at the time of the court proceedings, they were simply sent away until they were competent to stand trial. The pendulum had swung in the opposite direction.