Author's Note: You are, of course, not getting the whole of "The Night of April 10." Merely those excerpts that prompt some thought, some reaction, in Daria. The breaks will be set off by ellipses.
Disclaimer: Daria and her family are the creations of Glenn Eichler. Faith is the creation of Joss Whedon. Willard Jay Harbaugh and the story were created by me.
X X X X X
Earlier:
Chapter XXIV
The Night of April 10
We know that Willard Jay Harbaugh woke up in Highland's King's Court Motel from his own account and later eyewitness testimony, but what he did between the time he woke up and 8:45 PM that evening -- the time neighbors remember hearing thumps from the direction of the Morgendorffer house -- remains a mystery. He could have spent the time oiling his gun, or he could have played miniature golf. It's ultimately irrelevant.
The only important detail to be gained from an account of Harbaugh's April 10 would be what led him to choose my sister and her family as his next victims. He himself has always claimed that, once he picked out a neighborhood, the actual home he hit was random chance. He could have hardly chosen a home with less readily available to steal if he'd tried. Most of the valuables were packed up, leaving out only a few necklaces Helen wore to work, a few miscellaneous necessary items, and the larger furniture, which Harbaugh can hardly expect to have been able to carry off anyway.
(In his frustration, he apparently threw my sister's law books -- one shelf of which contained the only unpacked books in the house outside of Daria's room -- onto the floor of Helen and Jake's bedroom. Why he took his anger out there rather than elsewhere in the house is a minor mystery.)
They say you can't put a monetary value on human life. In this case, the lives of Helen, Jake and Quinn Morgendorffer were worth four necklaces, two wedding rings, and $450 in cash.
Mary and Duke Crockett -- the couple who lived two doors down from my sister -- remember the thumps. They swore later that they thought "it was just one of the girls, caught outside without her key." They felt horribly guilty that they didn't call the police, but it's hard to blame them, and I don't. Distant thumps may be vaguely suspicious, but if people called the police any time they heard distant thumps the police departments of the country would be overwhelmed. The police and I reassured them repeatedly that they had nothing to feel guilty about.
Why they didn't hear the gunshots was simple: They'd put in their video of The Godfather.
Harbaugh's account of the crime is disjointed and contradicts itself, fitting his failed attempts to paint himself as legally insane.
Fortunately, Harbaugh's own account isn't nearly all we have to go on. We also have the forensic evidence.
So the best reconstruction of what happened once Harbaugh kicked down the front door is this:
X X X X X
Daria stopped for a second. So far, this hadn't triggered anything other than sadness and anger. No memories came flooding back and she had no urges to begin talking in a thick Boston accent or to begin dropping the ends of her "ing" words.
Carefully, she listened to what was happening outside the cell door. She didn't hear anything --
Wait. She could. Somewhere in the distance, off to her left, she could hear two of the other inmates. Were they fighting or --
No. Definitely not fighting. Blushing slightly, Daria did her best to tune out the distant noises.
She couldn't remember her hearing ever being this good. Faith had said that her eyesight had improved when she became a Slayer, though not to the 20/15 it seemed to be now. Apparently her hearing had improved as well.
She hoped like hell what was happening in that distant cell was genuinely consensual, and was fervently grateful to whoever had arranged that Faith got a cell to herself.
Anyway, the important thing she'd figured out from her super-hearing was that there were no guards about to wander by. She had no idea whether she'd get in trouble for lying on her bunk and reading, but had no desire whatsoever to find out.
Daria concentrated. Nothing. No flashes, no recovered memories.
She was going to have to read further.
X X X X X
. . . but forensics and blood spatter shows that Harbaugh shot my brother-in law when he was on the couch, rather than shooting him while he was lying on the floor, as he stated, and then propping him up. He may have moved him slightly, but that's about it.
Why Harbaugh lied on such an easily verifiable matter is open to speculation. My best guess is that he felt claiming to have propped up the body would make his claims of insanity seem more accurate.
Whether Quinn could see what had happened from her position on the floor is unknown, but I hope like hell she didn't. Harbaugh claims he told Helen and Quinn to lie face down on the floor while he "took care of the old man."
All indications are that Quinn Morgendorffer died within minutes of her father's death anyway. She was killed where she was found, lying on the dining room floor. The blood spatter and other forensic evidence indicate that my sister was lying right next to her when that happened.
I can't possibly imagine what that felt like for Helen. I don't want to imagine what it was like for Quinn. As for what it was like for Willard Harbaugh, he informed us in detail at the trial of the glee he felt in shooting out the back of my niece's skull. I am not going to be repeating that here.
If you actually have an interest in those details, and you are not either studying criminal psychology or forensics, then you are a twisted human being and -- on the chance you like this book -- I do not want you writing to me. In fact, once you're done with the book, I want you to sell it or give it away, because I'd just as soon not be informed of your existence.
The one crumb of "good" to be gotten from all of this -- and it's a small, dubious, almost worthless crumb -- is that Jake and Quinn Morgendorffer both died very quickly. This is the same "blessing" Harbaugh extended to all of his victims. If one is a relative of any of the thirteen dead in Harbaugh's rampage, one must be grateful that Harbaugh's desire to prove his "insanity" didn't extend to the use of physical torture.
Mental torture is a different matter altogether. Kendall Severance and Everett Odom told tales of horror about how Willard Harbaugh killed their families in front of them, and chose to let them live only through some childish game.
Kendall Severance lived while her son was shot in front of her after Harbaugh flipped a coin to determine whether she or her son would live.
Everett Odom watched his mother and father get killed after Harbaugh did, of all things, "Eenie-meenie-miny-mo."
Willard Harbaugh says he never encountered my niece Daria; didn't kill her, didn't kidnap her, didn't make her watch him shoot my sister, brother-in-law, and Quinn.
That he didn't kidnap her has been well-documented. The witness who saw her board that bus to Nashville was unimpeachable.
The former, I'm not so sure of. There is no concrete evidence that they were in the house at the same time. Blood-soaked clothes she was wearing were found in the house, and bootprints in the pool of blood surrounding Quinn testify to that.
But it's still possible. And it might explain why Daria disappeared. Kendall Severance and Everett Odom still suffer from severe post-traumatic stress disorder to this day. Even though they consciously realize that there was nothing they could have done, survivor guilt still overwhelms them both.
Almost certainly, as Harbaugh intended. It is a testament to their mental strength that they were able to give as a good a description of Harbaugh as they did.
One can only wonder what method Harbaugh might have used with my niece. Odds and evens? Drawing straws? Rock, paper, scissors?
X X X X X
"Rock beats scissors," Daria said to herself.
Wait a minute. Where did that come from?
A flash of memory came back to her:
She was holding out a closed fist. Her mother was holding out the sign for "scissors."
A voice with a thick Boston accent said "Rock beats scissors."
And then --
And then --
Nothing.
But that was a memory.
And it explained where Faith had gotten her accent from.
It infuriated her. It upset her. It made her want to cry, punch her fist into the wall, or both.
It did not change her into Faith.
Dammit.
Dammit on both counts.
She kept reading.
X X X X X
. . . Daria could not have entered the house before 9:30 PM, unless she'd run the whole way. And my niece, while not out of shape, was not overly given to exercise. It would have been about a fifteen-minute walk.
Harbaugh said he killed Helen Morgendorffer and left the residence by 9:25.
I truly hope, in this instance, that he's telling the truth.
If he's not -- if Daria had to go through what Kendall Severance and Everett Odom did -- if she had to watch, hear, feel, smell her mother's head being blown off -- if she had to suffer that, suffer Harbaugh's gloating, his petty attempts to seem crazy to get away with multiple murders and a spree of what was, in the end, comparatively petty thievery -- then it's no wonder she fled. There are very few people on Earth who can imagine what that was like.
Kendall Severance and Everett Odom, unfortunately, don't need to imagine. I have already detailed what their lives are like; the pain they go through daily, the jumping at shadows. And all of this despite their concrete knowledge that they did nothing wrong. Proof positive that, no matter how intelligent and intellectual we may be, that there is a core to us that does not behave rationally.
It is times like these I wish I believed in an afterlife, so I could be assured that Harbaugh's actions on Earth would lead to an eternity of punishment in hell. Unfortunately, I don't, and I can't whistle up the belief on a moment's notice just to make myself feel better.
X X X X X
Neither could Daria -- although she understood what her aunt meant by "core."
In her, that core was named "Faith."
Faith was the expression of the raw emotions, the almost childlike, raging emotions, buried deep within her subconscious.
An incident like this would have brought out the rage buried inside Gandhi.
What it was not bringing out was any more memories.
She concentrated.
"It's okay, sweetie."
Her mother had said that to her right after rock, paper, scissors. And right before she'd been killed.
Daria couldn't remember the gunshot. Couldn't remember Dad's body on the sofa, or Quinn's sprawled out on the dining room floor. Couldn't remember coming into the house; hell, she couldn't even remember the damn Shakespeare dramatic reading assignment she'd supposedly gotten that day.
But, wildly, she remembered how her leather jacket didn't get any blood on it.
Even after all of this, Faith wasn't back.
Anger, depression, sadness, all blossoming, roiling, within her.
No Faith.
She read on.
X X X X X
. . . and now the story diverges again.
The path my niece Daria took is unknown. The grainy image on the security tapes at the Highland bus station are the last time anyone has proof that she was alive.
She was on the bus by 11 PM that night.
From Nashville, she could have gone to half a hundred other cities, by plane, train, or bus. There are only three things we're sure of:
She did not remain in Highland.
She did not travel to Lawndale, Maryland.
And she didn't stay in Nashville. Thorough police searches in all three locations prove that.
The police's idea as to why Daria boarded the bus to Nashville makes sense to me -- it was the first bus to leave the Highland bus station after she got there. Ten minutes earlier and she would have been headed for El Paso. Eight minutes later, New Orleans.
But she did go somewhere.
She's still alive. I'm sure of it.
As for Willard Harbaugh . . .
X X X X X
And the rest of the chapter dealt with the immediate aftermath for Willard Harbaugh, none of which triggered anything in Daria at all.
Why the hell hadn't it worked? Where was Faith?
It was light outside and the other inmates were starting to wake up.
Reading the chapter had triggered more than a few scattered memories. It had triggered emotions -- emotions she very rarely gave full voice to. Emotions she couldn't control. Usually, when Daria was angry, worried, or upset, it came out in whispers. Hints.
Not now.
She got out of the bed and threw the book against the wall and screamed a wordless scream of pure fury.
"Goddammit!" She yelled. "Why didn't it work? Why am I still her?"
She slammed her fist into the wall.
If anything, this made her anger worse.
She repeated herself and struck the wall again.
She never knew she had such rage in her.