Chapter Twenty-Three #2
It felt like Christmas—the big tree so beautifully decorated, the fire snapping, the mantel decked in greenery and white candles. White roses with red berries adorned the table in the entrance hall.
They’d host no holiday party this year. With his business trip, Paul’s death, Dustin’s release, they’d had no time or energy for it. But they’d decked the house in Christmas, and it lifted his spirits.
“It looks wonderful, Adele. Has Mrs. Lester arrived yet?”
“No, sir.” The housekeeper took Wyatt’s coat. “We haven’t heard from her.”
“I see. I’m sure she’ll be here soon.”
But as the day wore on to evening, she didn’t come. He had a bite to eat, a brief nap. Then annoyance gave way to worry.
He called the spa she used most often and found she’d never booked a stay. Worry edged toward anxiety.
He had one of the staff try several other spas, and by nine that evening realized he had no idea where his wife could be.
Though he felt foolish, he contacted the Columbus police.
He paced. He made himself a whiskey and soda, and paced some more. He contacted her friends, one by one. And waited.
At eleven-twenty, the housekeeper knocked on his sitting room door.
“Mr. Lester, the police are here. They want to speak with you.”
And with those words, Wyatt felt his entire world shatter under his feet.
In the early hours of Christmas Eve while Dustin ate Fritos and watched Bad Santa in his motel room near Norfolk, Nebraska, Wyatt Lester identified his wife’s body.
On the two-hour drive from Cleveland, he’d tried his best to convince himself there’d been a mistake. But he’d known. He’d known.
Yet knowing didn’t reach the shock, the horror, the grief, the fury of seeing.
Bruises marred her face, and beneath them that lovely face was colorless. Not white like the sheet that covered her body, but without color. Without life.
“He did this. He killed her. She loved him. She did everything she could to help him, to support him, and he killed her. Her own son.”
“We’re sorry for your loss, Mr. Lester,” Detective Venmar began. “And we know this is a very difficult time—”
“You know?” He rounded on Venmar. “You know nothing!”
“Then help us know.” Brill spoke quietly. “Help us find him.”
He went with them—what else could he do? He sat with them in a room at the police station, agreed to allow the interview to be recorded.
“Dustin’s father … Paul was a hard man, a demanding man, a casually cruel man.
Though he was abusive, Theresa stayed in the marriage until Dustin was a teenager, as she felt she served as a buffer between him and Paul.
Her duty as a mother. When she finally left Paul, Dustin blamed her, only her.
She stayed too long, she should never have left, she broke their family, she didn’t love him enough.
Whatever stone he decided to fling at her at the time. ”
After rubbing his eyes, Wyatt stared straight ahead.
“He’s very much like his father, only a hundred times worse. I met Theresa nearly two years after the divorce, and I loved her. This kind, generous, wounded woman. I tried to forge some kind of bond with her son, and for a time attributed his behavior, his rudeness, to his age. Teenage.”
Pausing, Wyatt shook his head. “But I began to see what she couldn’t. Dustin was simply made that way. And still, he was her son, so I tried. When Theresa and I married, Dustin called her a whore. I never forgave him for that. I buried it because she needed me to, but I don’t forgive.
“Theresa felt she’d failed him. Nothing I could do or say changed that. She indulged him far too much. If we conflicted about anything, we conflicted there.”
“Was he physically abusive to his mother?” Brill asked.
“No. I … Let me qualify. Not to my knowledge. That would have changed things. I would never have allowed it.”
He took a moment, drank some of the terrible coffee they gave him. “In her first marriage, Paul required her to account for every minute of her day. She was expected to do as she was told, to submit, to be perfect—by his standards.”
Letting out a sigh, he stared down at his hands. “Paul accused her of adultery if she so much as smiled at another man, while he had blatant affairs. In his world, men did as they liked, when and how they liked. Women were, well, to be plucked like fruit from a tree.
“Theresa and I had a partnership. And while I couldn’t and didn’t approve of her indulgence with Dustin, I didn’t take a hard line.
She’d had enough of that. I didn’t take a hard line until he was arrested for assaulting the woman, the writer here in Columbus.
The lawyer, of course, we would arrange for the lawyer.
But no more. He wanted Theresa to go to the woman, to her family, plead his case, pay them off if necessary. ”
Venmar glanced at Brill before he spoke. “Did she attempt that?”
“No. Not only because we’d agreed no more, but because she was sickened by what he’d done, and desperate to get him the help she felt—knew—he needed. I agreed with her there. We were united on that.”
He closed his eyes. “The last five years? A relief. Honestly a kind of freedom. She visited him regularly. I went myself twice.”
“And how did that go?” Brill wondered.
“He apologized to me for all the trouble he’d caused. So sincerely.”
Wyatt’s face went to stone. “I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t want to believe him. I didn’t forgive him, though for her sake I said I did.”
“She helped arrange his early release,” Brill pointed out.
“Yes. She’d bought the house. There were times she simply needed to stay overnight, or for a day or two, and it seemed the thing to do. A small house, a good neighborhood, somewhere when he got out, to start fresh. Then Paul got sick, terminal cancer. She forgave. Because that’s who she is.”
His eyes filled, but he forced the tears back. What he shed, he’d shed in private.
“I suppose death can bring regrets. Paul wanted to see his son before he died, wanted to spend time with him. To somehow make up for the cold, the cruel, the neglect. It was only a matter of months, and there would be conditions.
“She was so happy, so hopeful. I had to be in London, but we talked, texted every day. She was so happy Dustin and his father reconciled, that she had this time with her son. When Paul died, she gave his wife and young daughter all her support, and told me how proud she was that Dustin did the same. I thought…”
He had to pause, pull out all his strength to get through the next.
“When she texted, after the funeral, that she needed quiet, needed to rest, I could only think what an emotional toll those days had taken. She’d take Dustin to the spa, they’d turn off the phones, the electronics.
Just a few days away from the world. He’d lost the father he’d just made peace with.
And on the twenty-third, I’d be home and so would she. ”
“This was by text?” Venmar asked. “You and your wife didn’t actually speak? Could we see the texts?”
“Yes.” He took out his phone, brought them up. “She didn’t send it, did she?” The tears got through now; he couldn’t stop them. “He did this, too. He knew I’d believe it, I’d want her to take the time she needed. Was she already dead?”
“It’s possible. Mr. Lester,” Brill continued. “We’ll need to keep your phone for now.”
“It doesn’t matter. I would … I would like Theresa’s wedding ring.”
“She wasn’t wearing it. She wasn’t wearing any jewelry, nor was any found on scene.”
For a moment, Wyatt only stared. Then the tears dried up, burned away in fury. And a disgust that outpaced even that.
“He took her wedding ring. He murdered her, then he robbed her. He’s a monster. God, I always knew it. How could a woman so good give birth to a monster?”
If the detectives had thoughts on that, they didn’t offer them.
“He took her car,” Venmar told him. “Where would he go?”
“I have no idea. He has no friends, not even other monsters. Now he has no family. If you think he’d come to me, contact me, that I would help him in any way, I can assure you he wouldn’t, and I’d see him in hell before I’d lend a hand.
“And that’s where I want him. I want him in hell.”
Gideon took the call at his desk. He listened, made notes, asked questions.
“He got a good jump on us,” Brill told him. “TOD on the mother’s the evening of the seventeenth, which corresponds with the last text Lester received from her phone.”
“She didn’t send it.”
“Doubtful. He took everything of value, including her car.”
Gideon noted down the make, model, year, color, plate.
“We think he switched plates. Venmar did some digging. We’ve got a report of stolen plates, replaced with the ones off the victim’s from long-term parking at the airport in Columbus. That report came in last night—routine traffic stop.”
“If he’s smart enough to try that, he’ll do it again if he stays on the road.”
“Agreed. He didn’t take her credit cards, and doesn’t have any of his own, as far as we know. But he’s got access to a shitpile of money. He’s been funneling it out since his release. We’re working on tracing it, but.”
“Yeah. A smart guy would’ve used some of that for some new ID, and used that to get out of the country. I’d say he’s smart enough for the first, but too dug in for the second.”
“Right now, we’ve got nothing that points him toward Arden. And I add another but.”
“She thinks he’s lost interest in her by now, and can’t find her anyway. Here I add a third but.”
“I’d have contacted her, but felt it might go down easier coming from you.”
“Nothing easy about it. Killing his mother wasn’t impulse—just a matter of timing. He got what he needed from her, took the rest. This may or may not be his first kill, but he sure as hell won’t stop there.”
When he finished the call, he contacted the state police.
He got coffee before he sat again, did some mapping, some calculations.
Then he went out and broke the cheery Christmas Eve mood.