Shame

Mystery.
    “I’ll miss her,” he said, and nodded several times. “I’ll miss her.”
    He put down the microphone. No one else took it up. The minister didn’t have to announce that the memorial service was over. Everyone knew.
    There was a lot of spontaneous hugging. An impromptu line formed, people waiting to commiserate with Caleb. Lola’s father was dead, and her mother had chosen not to attend the funeral. With no relatives there, Caleb had become Lola’s family. Maybe that was the secret, he thought. If you’re born into the wrong family, form a new one.
    Michelle Donnelly gave Caleb a bear hug. She had the arms to do that. “Lola wouldn’t have wanted anyone to be down,” Michelle whispered.
    “I know.”
    “We’re going to get together at Randi’s tonight, going to have the kind of party that Lola would have wanted. It’s going to be an after-hours thing, starting at one.”
    “I’ll be there.”
    The line started moving through, with just about everyone offering a word to Caleb. He didn’t know why he was the object of their sympathy, but he was glad for it.
    Anna joined him at his side. “Are you all right?” she asked. The question came with a hug.
    “I’ve gotten more hugs today than I have in my entire life,” Caleb said. “Suddenly I’m a huggable sort.”
    “You always were,” said Anna.
    Maybe he could believe that now. He returned Anna’s hug. They’d been talking almost nonstop for the last three days. There was still a lot more talking for them to do, but now they both knew there was time. And there were still so many things he wanted to say to her.
    “I was thinking of taking the kids home,” Anna said, “before James decides to hitch a ride on one of those hang gliders.”
    “Good idea.”
    Another hug, and then a kiss for each of his children. Caleb and Anna had driven in separate cars, both knowing he would need to stay longer.
    Reporters started calling questions out to Caleb. For days they had been dogging him, and he’d been polite but mostly monosyllabic. The full story, he had told them, was being given to Elizabeth Line, and she would be releasing the information as she saw fit.
    Like father, like son, Caleb thought. He had picked the same confidante. She came forward to shield him now, to be the diplomat, but a woman stepped in front of her, another mourner who wanted to give Caleb a hug. Caleb wasn’t sure whether he was hugging a biological woman or not, but it no longer mattered to him.
    A hug was a hug.

37

    “W ILL YOU BE going back to work soon?” Elizabeth asked.
    “I’m not sure,” Caleb said.
    The two of them had taken an outdoor table at the Pannikin, La Jolla’s answer to good coffee, and they were sitting in the very back corner to get the privacy they wanted and needed.
    “For the past couple of days,” he said, “it seems as if everyone in San Diego’s been calling to have their trees trimmed.”
    “Everyone loves a winner.”
    “Or a sideshow act. There’s no shortage of people who want a piece of me. The media. Movie types. Publishers. They’re waving lots of money.”
    “It’s time you talked to one of those business managers I recommended.”
    “Maybe. Or maybe I’ll just tell everyone to go away. What do they really want from me anyway?”
    “The same thing they want from me: a firsthand account of the devil. They’re curious about John Farrell. They want to hear about the new Shame versus the old Shame. They want our impressions, our feelings.”
    “For me,” said Caleb, “Farrell will always be a figure shrouded in fog.”
    “I need to see him more clearly than that. I’ve devoted the last few days to learning all I can about him. There’s a lot there. He’s going to keep me busy for a long time. The ironic thing is that I interviewed Farrell a few months ago. His girlfriend was originally thought to be one of the Cave Man’s victims. Now it’s evident that Farrell was the one who killed her.
    “The Cave Man—Ron McNeill—was charged with the murders of eight Colorado women. He originally confessed to all the killings, but when I talked to him he partially recanted, saying he was responsible for only six of the deaths. McNeill liked the notoriety of having killed more women than he really had, but the fifth and sixth victims were both blondes, a hair color he isn’t partial to. McNeill decided he couldn’t take credit for those two victims because they weren’t good enough to be in his ‘trophy