Page 74 of Jar of Hearts
“Yes, ma’am. I’m deeply sorry.”
“Lord help me,” the woman whispers. Her lip quivers, and for a moment Kaiser thinks she’s going to cry. But she doesn’t. The quiver passes, and she straightens up again, fixing him with those sharp eyes. “Do Emily’s parents know?”
“I was just with them.”
“Sasha didn’t have a relationship with Emily,” Mrs. Robinson says, her forehead creasing. “I wanted her to when Emily was older, but Sasha thought it was a bad idea. She didn’t want her baby to know who she was. She wanted a better life for her. What were they even doing together?”
“I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure it out.”
The woman looks at him closely. “I can spot a liar from a hundredfeet, Detective. Comes with living with drug addicts my whole life. What aren’t you telling me? You’re deliberately leaving something out, and I would very much like to know what it is.”
If it were appropriate, Kaiser would smile, but it isn’t. “Sasha was… we found her body dismembered, ma’am. It likely happened after her death,” he adds, as if that makes it better. “There was a similar murder not long ago. A woman and her biological child were killed and buried the same way.”
“Lord help me,” the old woman says again. Her coffee cup shakes, and she sets it down on top of a coaster made of cork. She cries for a few moments, and Kaiser looks away in an effort to give her some privacy. Then she pulls a handkerchief from her dress pocket and dabs her eyes, calming herself. “I’ve been through a lot, but this takes the cake. Someone cut my baby girl up? Why?”
“I don’t know, ma’am,” he says, and it’s the truth. “I’m so sorry.”
It’s the one piece he hasn’t figured out yet. Other than Angela, none of Calvin James’s other victims were dismembered, and Kaiser’s best guess is that the Sweetbay Strangler is somehow trying to recapture how it felt that first time with Angela Wong.
“You said this is similar to another crime. Is it a serial killer?”
“We have a theory that it might be, yes,” he says.
Caroline Robinson lets out a long breath. “I’ve expected someone like you to show up for years now to tell me Sasha was dead, but not quite like this.” She speaks plainly. “My granddaughter’s been an addict since she was fourteen, treated her body like a garbage can. Started by smoking weed in the woods behind the trailer park with the other kids. Almost an impossible thing to prevent, when it’s the parents’ stashes they’re helping themselves to. Eventually she graduated to painkillers—mine, mostly—and when she ran out of those, she started on heroin. That was the beginning of the end. In and out of drug treatment for three years. She was living here when she got pregnant, and I actually thought it might have been the best thing that happened to her, because it forced her to get clean. I didn’t even have to ask her. When she got the positive pregnancy test, she just stopped, cold turkey. And I said to myself, thank the lord. Maybe the dark days are over. I assumed she was keeping the baby, and that we’d raise the child together.”
Kaiser nods.
“Three months into her pregnancy, it hit her what she was in for. She asked me what I thought about adoption, and I told her I’d support whatever she wanted to do. She went back and forth for a bit.” The crease between the woman’s brows deepens, and she looks away, remembering. “One day she wanted it, the next day she didn’t. She was terrified the baby would grow up to be like her. Despite my best efforts, Sasha had very little self-esteem. Her mother—my daughter—was a junkie, too, got stabbed in the neck fighting with another junkie when Sasha was only two. She never knew her father. He died of an overdose the year she was born. Sasha never finished high school, but she was far from stupid. She recognized the pattern, knew that if she raised her baby here, the chances that the same thing that happened to her parents and to her would happen to her little girl. She wanted better for her baby.”
Kaiser offered a small smile. “You seem to be doing well.”
“I don’t have the gene,” Mrs. Robinson said flatly. “Whatever thing it is that makes a person an addict, I don’t have it. My father was a raging alcoholic, but my mother never touched a drop. Oh, I tried it once. Took a shot of my father’s whiskey when he wasn’t looking, found it disgusting. Smoked once, too, and felt physically ill for a whole day after. They say addiction’s genetic, and I believe it. I grew up surrounded by it my whole life and was never tempted.”
Kaiser nods again, and they sip their coffee in silence for a moment. Then, “Did Sasha tell you anything about Emily’s father?”
“Not much. It didn’t last long, and she mentioned he was a bit transient, always moving from place to place. I met him once. I didn’t like that he was older, but he seemed nice enough.”
“You met him?” Kaiser says, surprised.
“He dropped her off one evening while I was taking the garbage out. Forced him to talk to me.” A small smile. “He got out of the car. Handsome.”
“Can I show you a photo?” When she nods, Kaiser pulls out his phone. “Is this the father?”
Caroline Robinson puts her glasses on, the seashells around her neck dangling. “Yes,” she says after a few seconds, peering at thescreen. The photo was Calvin James’s mug shot. “He looked a lot different when we met, but that’s him. I think his name was Kevin. Wait, no, that’s not right. It wasCalvin. Like the comic stripCalvin and Hobbes.”
Kaiser lets out a breath. “I know this was four years ago, but do you remember anything distinctive about him? Was his hair dark like in this picture?”
“No, it was a lighter brown, longer, a bit shaggy. He had a scruffy beard and glasses. I also remember he had a tattoo on his wrist. Here, on the inside,” she says, tapping the spot two inches below her palm.
Calvin James had not had a single tattoo when Kaiser arrested him, so he’d have to have gotten inked in prison, or soon after he escaped. “What did it look like?”
“It was a heart,” Mrs. Robinson says. “Red. But just the outline. I think there were initials inside, but I don’t remember what they were. I only caught a glimpse of it when he shook my hand.”
Kaiser has a pretty good guess what the initials are. He thinks back to the sheet of paper Calvin doodled on during the trial. He’d drawn a heart. And inside it,GS. For Georgina Shaw.
“Do you remember the car he was driving?”
She shakes her head. “Oh, lord, I don’t know much about cars. It was nice, though, like a muscle car. American.”
