In part two of this episodic psychological thriller, Nicole Jeffords. convinced that healer, Victor Goodlove, who disappeared ten years earlier is buried under her studio, continues her search for him, contacting old patients all over Austin and dis...
As I said, I drove home from the scene of Roy's death in a kind of fugue state. My mind was a blank, I wouldn't allow myself to think of what had happened, what I'd just seen, that body sprawled peacefully on the front seat of the car, a dim smile on the waxy white face. Every time my mind veered in that direction, it was like an electric shock going through my brain. When I got home, I got sick, puked violently in the toilet, then slid into bed, shaking beneath the sheets. I fell into a deep sleep, waking a few hours later, staring into the dark, trying to piece things together. Roy's death had obviously been a murder. What had the note clenched in his hand said? Sixty-two, tired of hiding, can't stand it anymore. Roy was sixty-four, not sixty-two. Had the killer mistaken Roy for Victor? The note was in Roy's handwriting – why would he have written such a thing? None of it made sense. I began to drift back to sleep, fuzzy images in my head, among them Victor with a demented smile on his face. Had Victor been the killer, I wondered. He and Roy had never gotten along. Had Victor sneaked back into his old house, "tired of hiding," and devised a scheme to kill his brother?
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The next two days were like that, a constant, deadening preoccupation with Roy's murder and Cecily Rose's kidnapping, two separate events that were clearly yoked together. I couldn't focus on anything. I desperately wanted to call Alicia to see what was going on, but didn't want to bother her. In my misery, I went into my studio and attempted to work, but the shocking events of the past few days seemed to have drained my talent. I put a blank canvas on my easel and here's what I came up with:
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Detail of Hooded Figure (Nicole Jeffords, Oil on Canvas, 14×11, 2017)
I wasn't in the mood for self-analysis – clearly, I was depressed and angry. It occurred to me to go see my therapist, but what good would she have done? Instead I went to an AA meeting, where the slogans and the chart with the twelve steps on the wall calmed me. Admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable. That was the first step. Over the years, I'd come to realize I could apply the steps to most situations, even those that didn't involve alcohol like this one. I mused on that word powerless. Cops, kidnappers, murder, dead bodies – I was currently living in a world of crime and ugliness, but I didn't have to be powerless over it and my life didn't have to go back to unmanageability as it had years ago, when I was an active alcoholic. At the end of the meeting, I stood along with everyone else and held hands. Then I hightailed it out of the church, got in my car and drove to Alicia's house. It was one in the afternoon, and Cecily Rose had been gone for seven days. I didn't care about bothering Alicia anymore. I wanted to know what was going on.
