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Jack swatted the strange thought away as she held out a legal form he’d found in one of the folders. “Interesting…” he said.
It was the front page of divorce papers. Near the bottom were two signatures: James Dickerson and Pamela Dickerson. The documents had been signed and notarized two years ago. Before she even bothered looking through the rest of the folders, Rachel said,“We need to get an address for Pamela. She may not be a doctor, but if he’ feeling jilted and angry…”
As Jack made that call, Rachel turned her attention to the other documents and papers within the folders. She saw more papers related to the divorce, as well as deeds for the house and a variety of insurance materials. And it was there that she came across all of the medical information.
She made quick work of it, reading through it all as if it were literally telling her a story. So long as there were no missing bills or documents in the thick folder, it seemed that Dickerson had first learned about it is tumor two and a half years ago. There were gaps in the information here and there, but she could see where referrals had been suggested to specialists and treatment centers. And right there, at the bottom of one of the first documents pertaining to the tumor, was Dr. Leery’s name.
She quickly flipped through page after page and could tell that Dickerson had apparently refused any sort of treatment. And it just so happened that she saw these notes on records dated around two years ago—at just about the same time the divorce occurred. It made her wonder if Pamela had not taken James’ refusal of treatment particularly well and had chosen a drastic path to deal with it.
After putting the larger story together, Rachel skipped ahead. She wanted to find the most recent document to find out when Dickerson had last been seen. As she did, she also noticed that there were several bills clipped into some of the documents. And a lot of them were markedUnpaid orOverdue.
The most recent bit of paperwork she could find came from seven weeks ago. Apparently, he had seen a specialist about pain management solutions. From what she could tell, it had been approved, but after some additional involvement from insurance companies. Though as much as she looked, she did not see Dr. Matthews’ or Dr. Leery’s names anywhere on the material.
She didn’t realize that Jack had gotten off the phone until his phone she heard it ringing. She’d been so wrapped up in trying to pull a story out of the documents on the bed that she’d nearly forgotten he’d even been on the phone at all.
“Yeah, this is Rivers,” he answered. “Yeah? Okay, I see. Yeah, that’s pretty much what we need. Okay… what is it?” He reached out and nudged her, and when she turned to face him, he slowly mouthed:“criminal record.”He then nodded along to whatever he heard on the other end and wrapped the call with “Okay, thanks.”
“So he’s got a record?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah. It’s small, but relevant. There’s only one ding on his record, but it just happens to have come from when he was pulled over for speeding a few months ago. He went ballistic when the cop gave him a ticket. He wasn’t arrested, but there’s a note on the citation that says he got borderline aggressive, but the officer let him go because he apparently looked very sick.”
“This is the guy,” Rachel said.
“Yeah, it looks like it is. But I can’t call in forensics to look over those bloody clothes. And we can’t very well take these records out just yet, now can we?”
“No… no, we can’ttakethem,” Rachel said, pulling out her phone. She hurried back through the documents and print-outs she thought were the most important and took pictures, focusing on the dates and the names of the people on the forms. She even snapped a few photos of the names of insurance and admin reps in regard to the overdue bills.
“Okay, we should get out of here,” Jack said. “If we do get a hit on his license plate, I’d really rather not be here, in his house… which we technically shouldn’t be in.”
“It might be his house,” Rachel said, “but I don’t think he’s lived here in a while.”
“I wonder why.”
“Maybe this is where he lived with his wife,” Rachel said as they put the boxes and folders back in the top of the closet. “Maybe he just comes here to clean up. Or maybe he’s just so sick now that he doesn’t care what the house looks like.”
And even in that, she was sickened to realize she felt some sympathy for him. It was a thought that escorted her back out of the house, back into the car. And with nowhere,in particular, to go for the moment, Jack simply drove away from the house, once again on the phone to officially put out an APB on a man by the name of James Dickerson.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Jack had come up with the idea of just taking a few minutes to re-center themselves while they waited for a bit of luck in finding James Dickerson’s car. And for Jack, this typically meant making a pass by a fast-food drive-through window. That's exactly what they did. Rachel wasn't feeling hungry but knew that she needed to eat. She ordered a salad (something she firmly believed had no business on a drive-thru menu), and when Jack parked at the edge of the lot, Rachel opened the passenger side door almost at once.
“What are you doing?” Jack asked.
“Just getting out for a bit. Stretching my legs.”
“Oh…okay. You’re sure you’re okay?
“Yeah. I just… I need to think. Give me a second, would you?”
Jack nodded and asked no more questions. She knew she needed to think like this killer. She needed to see the world through his eyes. And the fact that they shared a fairly large burden was troubling her. In fact, it made her feel a little uncertain of herself.
So she took her sad little salad and her fountain drink to the curb. With the drink tucked between her elbow and ribs, she poked at the salad but barely ate any of it. As she thought of a man with homicidal urges, perhaps being pushed and persuaded by the foreign mass inside of his head, she was surprised to feel something like sympathy.
The last thing Rachel wanted was to get overly poetic about the task of trying to get inside the killer's head. If James Dickerson was, in fact, their killer, that meant the two of them shared the same affliction. She was sure there were a few medical differences here and there—small, minute things about the size and shape of their tumors—but it was the same thing when it was all boiled down. They both had a glioblastoma in their brains, a tumor that was crowding the space and taking over, an intruder that would grow and conquer until they were dead.
Rachel thought back to that first doctor's appointment. She recalled the morning perfectly. In her mind’s eye, she could envision the obstacle course she had been rushing through. The echoes of her footsteps in the singing of morning birds up in the trees were so real that she thought she could even smell the dirt and edge of forests alongside the course—dirt and fir trees, grass and slightly damp foliage. The flashes of light, the waning vision, and this sudden realization that everything was wrong. It was all right there, as vivid as ever as if the memories knew that they might be used for good someday.
When she thought about that first visit and discovered there was a tumor, she didn't remember feeling angry. Looking back on it now, it was a bit easier to dissect the moment. It had taken several seconds for the weight of the news to fully register, and when it did, there had been a sensation of being kicked in the stomach. All the wind had gone rushing out of her, and there was an overwhelming sense that she may never breathe normally again.
