Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 82651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 413(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 413(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
It was a chance I was taking coming here…being recognized. The most I could do was put my glasses on, and hoped that no Cold Fury fans worked in this prison, or even a die-hard fan who knew many of the league’s players.
The process to meet a prisoner isn’t overly complicated, but it takes time. I check in, go through two metal detectors and a pat down. I’m led to a waiting room, where about ten other people sit, waiting for their visit with a loved one. I’d learned that some prisoners could meet in an open room with limited contact. Other prisoners—the more dangerous ones—were kept behind a glass partition and we had to communicate via phones.
Arco was in this category.
“First time?” a man says beside me where we perch on flimsy plastic chairs.
I turn to look at him warily, but he’s wearing nothing but the pleasantly bland smile of someone making conversation.
“Yeah,” I admit.
“This place is the pits,” he says. “My son is in here for armed robbery. I try to get to see him at least once a month and it kills me. This place is sucking the life right out of him.”
“I can imagine,” I mutter, not really wanting to talk about it.
“Who are you visiting?” the guy asks genially.
“A friend,” I tell him, but Arco is no friend of mine.
“What’s he in for—” the man starts to ask, but a door opens.
A security guard calls out my name. “Grant VanBuskirk.”
I’m thankful they didn’t use my current identity, and I probably owe thanks to the warden for that, however he annotated Arco’s file.
Standing up, I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans. The man calls out, “Good luck,” but I don’t acknowledge him. My stomach is churning as I walk toward the guard, trying to prepare myself to face my father for the first time in two decades.
—
Arco VanBuskirk was born and raised in the D.C. area. He was a handsome man. Smart, outgoing, and the life of any party. He sold insurance and was quite good at it. He married Miriam when he was almost thirty and she was twenty. She used to tell me it was true love at first sight, but I’m pretty sure Arco manipulated her into falling in love with him. They had me within nine months.
I have no idea if Arco was raping and murdering women when he married my mom, but he was arrested for five murders when I was just seven years old. I was eight when he was convicted and I was in court for his sentencing. Because my father was tried in the summer, my mom made me attend every day of the trial, as she resolutely refused to believe her husband could do something so heinous. She felt we needed to present a united front. She did not care that her third-grade son had to hear the horrific details of what his father was accused of doing. I had nightmares for years, but I still loved my mother.
When Arco was convicted and received his sentence, he bragged to the court there were many others they’d never find. I remember how proud of himself he seemed.
My mom killed herself three days later, unable to accept she had been so wrong about him.
Arco’s sister, Etta Turner, was four years older than him and recently divorced. She knew her brother was a sociopath, just like the court shrinks did. Luckily, his insanity defense fell on deaf ears with the jury, but Etta would always tell me, “Your father is just batshit crazy.”
Temporary custody was granted to Etta, who also was still in the D.C. area but had little to no contact with her brother. She once admitted to me when I got older that he killed her cat right in front of her when they were kids, and that’s when she knew his mental health was corroded beyond repair.
But Etta swooped in and became my savior. It didn’t take her long to realize we couldn’t stay in the area. School had become intolerable to me, as I’d become an easy target for bullies. If I wasn’t getting my ass kicked because my father was a serial killer, I was being patently ignored by everyone else, including my teachers. My grades plummeted, and that was when I started the long but permanent withdrawal inward.
Etta had seen enough of this after only three months. Her divorce left her well off, so she spent a shit pot full of money petitioning the court to terminate Arco’s parental rights. The only good thing he ever did for me was to not fight the petition, and after I was awarded full and sole custody to Etta, she fled with me across the country.
We settled in Redding, California, and before I reached my ninth birthday my name was Van Turner and Etta was my mother for all intents and purposes.