Letting Go (Chapter-29)

Edmond

“So, you’re saying he’s a maniac.” Edmond’s mother sat up taller in her chair when she spoke. For a moment she looked like the tallest one there, even though she was clearly the shortest by at least a foot. Alternatively, Edmond, who had recently experienced a growth spurt, was sinking so low in his seat that he was losing an inch with every passing minute.

“No,” the psychiatrist pushed his glasses closer to his face, “a pyromaniac. It is a term we use to describe people who suffer from pyromania - an impulse control disorder in which the individual,” he motioned to Edmond, who was sitting to the left of his mother, “fails to resist an urge to start fires.”

Edmond closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands. He had been burning for five years, only within the confines of his home, but after being suspended from school for starting a fire his mother decided it was time to see a specialist. He thought he’d feel better, maybe even less alone, with a diagnosis. But he was wrong. Edmond felt worse to be categorized as the “mentally ill;” it was easier being ‘crazy’ in his own unique way before he was affiliated with people locked up in asylums.

It was when Edmond opened his eyes and looked back up at the psychiatrist that it started - the sudden apprehension that he didn’t understand, but knew well enough to recognize. He tried to veer his mind away from the tightness in his chest and the heavy pulse of his heart by focusing on the psychiatrist as he spoke. Edmond leaned forward, staring intently at the man, but a ringing in his ears made it difficult for him to hear the words coming from the doctor’s mouth. He started to panic, feeling his anxiety escalate. I need to burn something. Now.

Edmond gripped the edges of the chair to steady himself. Why now, he thought, God, why does it have to be now? He prayed for a moment with no success; his heart continued to race, and the ringing in his ears seemed to be getting louder. Edmond shut his eyes tighter and turned to another - more appropriate - celestial being for help.

Satan, please make it go away. Please. Make it go away, Satan, make it go --

“EDMOND!”

The harsh sound of his mother’s voice caused Edmond to jump out of his trance. He blinked his eyes open and released his grip on the chair. The tension in his chest had disappeared. His breaths were now slow, even, and steady. The ringing in his ears had subsided.

“Edmond, you respond to the doctor when he speaks to you. See, this is what he does,” she turned to the doctor, “daydreams. Constantly. Then minutes later my kitchen’s on fire.”

“Edmond, is this true?”

He looked at the psychiatrist, at his mother, then back to the psychiatrist.

“Yes,” he said quietly, “it’s true.”

Edmond didn’t pay attention to what was said between the doctor and his mother after that moment. He was too overcome by how abruptly he had been pulled out of his compulsion to burn at the sound of his mother’s voice - it was as though his body had reacted to her scream in the same way it would from the shock of an electrical current. Edmond looked back at his mother, whose face had turned a darker shade of red, and smiled. My mother, he thought, remembering the prayers he had said moments before, is Satan.

Edmond jumped at the rumbling of a car engine outside his bedroom window. He lay in his bed and didn’t make an attempt to move, even when he heard Vera rustling in her room down the hall. Since Serena’s case had been reopened, he found himself thinking more and more about his childhood, which fueled his hatred for her. He pushed himself from the bed, opened the drawer of his bedside table, and eyed a lighter that lay beside the slip of paper he had written on the night before. He pulled out the lighter, rubbed it with his thumb, and clicked it, watching the flame appear before him until his pulse steadied.

Edmond placed back the lighter, lifted the paper, and looked down at what he had written: Patrick Tryniski, Kelli Rice-work, Agent Nancy Keene, Funeral-Friday. He’d have to go back to a library. A different library.

“Rick!” The feeble screech of Vera’s high-pitched voice erupted from across the condo.

“Damn it,” Edmond said under his breath. He pushed himself from the bed, pulled on a pair of jeans lying on the floor, stuffed the slip of paper and lighter in his pocket, and walked sluggishly down the hall. When he turned into the dining room Vera was sitting in her spot at the head of the table, looking more decrepit than usual as she hunched over an open book.

“I don’t know where my glasses are,” she said, turning her head in Edmond’s direction, “I didn’t realize until I sat down.” She turned her head back to her book and lifted it closer to her face, “Without those darn things I’m as blind as a bat!”

Edmond turned with a sigh, “Don’t worry,” he replied, hiding the irritation in his voice, “I’m sure they’re in the bedroom.”

As expected, the glasses were on the small bureau beside Vera’s bed. He picked them up and, moving swiftly and quietly, walked into the small bathroom connected to her room. They’ve got to be here, Edmond thought as he opened the medicine cabinet. Though it had been a while since he’d snuck one of the pills into her morning oatmeal, he was able to spot the bottle of Ambien tablets within seconds. He lightly tapped the bottle and gripped two oval-shaped sleeping pills in his hand before making his way out of the room and down the hallway.

“Here you are,” Edmond spoke loudly as he entered the dining room and placed the glasses in Vera’s outstretched hand.

“Oh, thank you, Rick,” Vera put the glasses on and watched Edmond as he made his way to the stove, “More cinnamon in the oatmeal if you don’t mind. It was a bit bland yesterday.”

Edmond rolled his eyes as he poured water into a tea kettle on the stove. “Of course,” he looked down and smiled at the pills resting on his left palm, “Maybe some honey, too, Vera? That’ll help the oatmeal go down nice and smooth.”

Vera was asleep with drool dripping down her chin 30 minutes later. Edmond lifted her frail body out of the chair and carried her to the couch in the living room, assured that two tablets would keep her asleep for at least eight hours. He left the condo and drove to the Westwood Branch Library, which was an extra 15 minutes farther than the library he had visited the night before. He was grateful to find the library was well occupied; groups of children and parents filled the Fiction Section, while teenagers wandered up and down the wall of magazines.

Edmond sat at a computer in the nonfiction section in the back of the building. He pulled the slip of paper from his pocket. “Kelli Rice-work,” he said under his breath as he typed the name into the search bar.

Damn, he thought, there are so many of them. There were at least thirty “Kelli Rice’s” that came up, so Edmond typed in “Kelli Rice Los Angeles.” This search narrowed his results down significantly; there were many women named “Kelly” spelled with a “Y” at the end, but only two with an “I.” He clicked on the first, which led him to a Facebook profile of a college-aged brunette standing in a group of girls with bright pink shirts that read “Alpha Chi Omega.” Edmond clicked back to his initial search and scrolled to the second Kelli Rice in Los Angeles.

This directed him to a Linkedin account with the picture of a middle-aged woman with the job description: “Los Angeles Daily Newspaper, Calendar Items/Editorial Assistant” printed below. Edmond opened a second tab and typed in “Los Angeles Daily Newspaper Staff,” and within seconds was skimming through a seemingly endless list of columnists on the LA Daily News contact page.

He stopped scrolling when he saw the name “Serena M.” printed below the Entertainment Segment. Edmond leaned closer to the screen. It has to be her, he thought, It has to be. Edmond scrolled to the bottom of the contact page and wrote down the address of the LA Daily Headquarters. He glanced at what else he had written the night before - Patrick Tryniski, Agent Nancy Keene, and Funeral-Friday - then at the time on the computer.

“Eleven-twenty,” he said to himself, “lunchtime.” If he drove to the headquarters now, there would be a chance he’d see her either leaving or coming back from lunch. There was, of course, the possibility that Serena wasn’t working that day. Or that “Serena M.” was not Serena Moore; that he was completely wrong in his assumption and that the searching he’d done that morning had been a waste. But something deep inside Edmond’s gut was telling him to log off of the computer, drive to 21860 Burbank Boulevard, and wait patiently in the parking lot of the LA Daily Headquarters. So that’s exactly what he did.