“What do you think you will gain out of this?” the Diana-thing said, cocking its head to one side. “Just put the gun down.”
Cindy squeezed her eyes shut. Oh why did I do this, why oh why, what the fuck is happening and why can’t I just shoot her!
And through it all Cindy noticed one curious thing. The noise from the confrontation hadn’t elicited a response from the dog or her children.
It was just the two of them.
Where are they? Even if the dog was locked in the basement he’d be barking. And the kids, especially the little one, would have cried out or something. But there’s nothing, no other sounds, just the two of us and
I’m just going to let my dog fuck her.
With a renewed burst of energy and anger Cindy opened her eyes and surged forward, screaming, “You bitch!” She squeezed the trigger and the sound of the gunshots weren’t as loud as she thought they’d be. The sudden pain she felt shooting through her chest, digging deep within her, eclipsed them. She almost blacked out and for a brief moment she thought she was falling, but then her last remnants of consciousness was the image of Diana’s shimmering, melting visage standing in front of her, grinning. She felt the pain in her chest explode and as she looked down she saw Diana’s arm sunk into her ribcage. Diana grinned, blood and saliva dribbling down her chin. The shock raced forward and her last though before she died was Mary!
PART TWO
Conflicts
TEN
THE PHONE CALL that came the following morning was nothing short of heart breaking. Elizabeth took it in the kitchen as her mom dished out scrambled eggs and sausages for Gregg and the kids, and the minute she heard her father’s tone of voice she felt a vice squeeze her heart. “Honey, I have some bad news. It’s...it’s Cindy...”
Oh my God, she’s finally done it, Elizabeth thought, feeling the sadness come. She’s finally gotten herself killed in a drunk driving accident or OD’d or something.
She headed toward the front of the house towards the stairs so the rest of the family wouldn’t see her expression. “What happened?”
“The police are still trying to sort it out,” her dad said. He sounded incredibly aged; it was probably the shock. “She broke into Ronnie’s house last night and tried to kill Diana and the kids.”
“What?”
“She must have been high on something,” Jerry continued. “Diana said she was hallucinating. She tried to talk Cindy out of it, and then Cindy just collapsed and stopped breathing. Diana tried CPR and Rick called 911 but it was too late. They...they think it was a heart attack.”
The laughter of the kids in the kitchen brought the sadness to the surface and Elizabeth felt the tears come, but not so much for Cindy; she’d grieve for her ex sister-in-law later. The sadness she felt was for her niece, Mary.
“Is your mother there?” Jerry said, his voice soft. “I should talk to her.”
“Just a minute,” Elizabeth said. She set the phone down and sat down on the steps, fighting hard to compose herself. Stop thinking about her, just stop thinking about Cindy for a minute. Pull yourself together. Get mom over here, build up some strength for Mary because she’s going to need it. Then maybe later you can cry your heart out.
She felt the calmness settle over her and took a deep breath. Then she called her mother to the phone.
THE NEXT WEEK passed in a blur. Elizabeth found it hard to concentrate at work. It was a good thing she taught at the high school level; the kids she worked with were good kids, independent and smart, and she re-arranged her lesson plans to give them as much study time as possible, shoving her lecture and workshop time to the following week. She needed the quiet time the kids would spend reading or writing papers so she could think about what happened. During breaks and lunch, she talked to mom on her cellular phone, catching up with the latest news and helping out with the funeral plans.
It was Laura who told Mary her mother was dead. After she’d gotten off the phone with Jerry, she and Elizabeth had stood in the entry hall hugging each other, crying, and Gregg had sensed something was wrong. Elizabeth had told him they’d be right back and Eric immediately sensed from the tone in her voice that everything was not all right. Mom had said, “I’ll tell her.” Then she’d gone to the kitchen and taken Mary’s hand and led her to the family room where she’d sat down with her on the sofa and told her granddaughter that her mother had died.
Everybody had cried at the house that day. Even Gregg, who had been the first to show intolerance toward Cindy’s lifestyle and abusive drug and alcohol use, had gotten teary-eyed. Understandably, Mary had taken it very hard.
She’d wanted her daddy.
They’d all gone to the house. Jerry was there, looking glum. The police had still been at Ronnie’s house, and later that afternoon Ronnie and Diana showed up with Rick and Lily. Ronnie’s face was puffy from lack of sleep; his blonde hair was tousled and he hadn’t shaved. The weight he had put on in the years following Mary’s birth had dropped from his frame in the past few months, and Elizabeth thought the weight loss made him look unhealthy. Elizabeth had given her brother a hug and he’d held her tightly. “I didn’t...” he began, stammering, and she could tell he was fighting hard to keep his emotions in. “I didn’t want her to...d-d-d-die!”
“I know,” Elizabeth had whispered, and she allowed her brother to weep onto her shoulder.
The story slowly emerged that week, told in several conversations starting that Sunday afternoon when Ronnie and Diana came over and Diana related the experience in a still-shocked tone and continuing as they learned more through the investigation and the autopsy. The more Elizabeth tried to process the information, the more the events that were being chronicled and filed in all the official reports bothered her.
On the evening of Saturday, October 23, Cindy had driven a vehicle owned by her latest boyfriend, Scott Anderson, to Ronnie’s neighborhood and parked at the curb. A few neighbors reported seeing the vehicle. Diana reported not being aware Cindy was watching the house. She’d stayed up till one-thirty, and then went to bed. Ronnie had been due to come home from work at two-thirty or three a.m. Before she’d gone to bed, Diana had put Himmler in the basement because lately he’d been soiling the carpets in the living room at night. That explained why the dog hadn’t woken the household up when Cindy broke in.
Diana was in bed no more than thirty minutes when she heard the sliding glass door opening. She’d known instinctively it wasn’t Ronnie returning home—he always used the front door. She’d gotten out of bed and was about to head into the living room when she ran into Cindy Baker.
“She had a gun,” Diana said, recalling the incident with a shaky tone, her hands clutching a can of Diet Pepsi that she sipped intermittently during the narrative. “And she was wearing gloves and had a ski mask pulled over her face, but I knew who it was. I turned on the light and she jumped and pulled the trigger. The shot blasted a hole in the wall. I started talking to her, tried to tell her she didn’t want to hurt anybody, and by then the kids were up. Lily was crying and Rick looked shocked. I didn’t want her to hurt the kids, so I kept trying to calm her down.”
According to the preliminary autopsy report, Cindy’s bloodstream contained traces of marijuana and opium, and there was enough in it to suggest intoxication. Elizabeth didn’t realize people still smoked opium—she knew heroin and morphine were derived from opiates and she knew they could produce hallucinations. The lead detective surmised that Cindy was as high as a kite when she broke into the house. Her ex-boyfriend, Ray Clark, stuck by his story that Diana had still been making threatening phone calls to their apartment in the days prior to their split, a charge Diana vehemently denied. A check with the phone company and further follow-ups on the boyfriend’s story strongly suggested that the phone harassment in the month preceding this had incident never occurred. True, Diana had admitted that Cindy called the house a few times in the early months of her moving in with Ronnie, and that she had gotten carried away an
d called her back to engage in some mean-spirited verbal cat-fighting, but she never called Cindy unless she had to. The phone records proved this, but Ray stuck by his story that Diana had still been harassing Cindy. When asked if Cindy was drinking or using drugs during this time, Ray had waffled. “She had a few drinks and smoked a little, yeah. So what?”
This dovetailed with Cindy’s behavior at the house. Diana stated to the police and the family in the following week that Cindy appeared to be on something. “She was saying crazy things,” Diana said. “She didn’t actually threaten to kill us, but...she was just being so weird, saying things that didn’t make sense. She took the ski mask off at one point and I could see her pupils were dilated, her skin was pale. She was definitely tripping on something.”
Diana had continued trying to talk Cindy into putting the gun down when she’d suddenly fallen to the floor and gone into convulsions. Diana had kicked the gun away and screamed at her son to call 911. She’d dropped to the floor and tried to stabilize Cindy, who appeared to be having some kind of seizure. “I tried CPR but I didn’t know if I was doing it right,” she’d said, her brown eyes reflecting a sense of sadness, something Elizabeth had never seen before in Diana. By the time the EMTs arrived, Cindy was dead.
The official cause of Cindy’s death was cardiac arrest. Ronnie and Diana were questioned repeatedly by Lancaster County detectives, and when all the factors were considered—Ronnie’s divorce from Cindy and subsequent winning full custody of Mary; Cindy’s continuing slide into alcohol and drug abuse; her further broken relationships with other men, including her bearing another child with Gary Swanson and their break-up; her spotty employment record; her reputation at the Cocalico tavern as a brawler; comments from friends and family that she always turned on the women Ronnie dated; and her continued feelings of resentment and anger toward Ronnie and Diana the results were clear that she’d been heading to an early grave for a long time. Her actions the evening of her death were attributed to a final episode of desperation fueled by drugs and coupled by their hallucinatory effects. The strain had a final catastrophic effect on her heart and she’d collapsed. When the EMTs arrived they’d found Diana bent over Cindy desperately trying to revive her, but it was too late.
Cindy’s family, of course, was devastated. Her brothers had been trying to get Cindy help for years now, to no avail. In the days following Cindy’s death, Mary sought refuge at her maternal grandmother’s house, probably in an attempt to be closer to her mother. She’d been teary and crying all that Sunday, and while she’d wanted her daddy she’d also cried to Laura that, “She didn’t want to spend the night at my house.” So she’d stayed with Andrea, Cindy’s mother, and was shuttled back and forth from there to Jerry and Laura’s while funeral arrangements were made.
Elizabeth helped out her parents and Andrea Shull with funeral arrangements, and on Thursday morning, October 28, four days after her passing, Cindy was eulogized at the Stouffer’s Funeral Home and Chapel in Mountville. The service was attended by Cindy’s immediate family, Jerry and Laura, Elizabeth and Gregg, Ronnie and Diana, several of Cindy’s ex-boyfriends, as well as Gary Swanson and he and Cindy’s son Jason. Mary did well during the service. Some of Cindy’s friends showed up, leather and denim clad biker-types with long hair and tattoos, standing forlorn and silent through the service. Ronnie and Gary Swanson had exchanged quiet words together at the rear of the chapel, commiserating the loss of a woman they had taken up with and loved, then left due to her psychological imbalance. Some of the other guys that were there appeared nervous, out of place. A brief viewing followed the non-denominational service and Mary had cried as she stood in front of her mother’s casket. Elizabeth felt herself collapse emotionally as the little girl cried, “Mommy!”
Laura had gently escorted Mary away from the casket and sat with her in the front pew of the chapel, holding her as she cried.
And when Elizabeth stepped up to Cindy’s open casket and gazed down at her, noting her calm, almost peaceful visage, she suddenly felt that something wasn’t right.
You weren’t supposed to die, Elizabeth thought gazing down at her ex sister-in-law. I mean...God forgive me...we always thought you’d kill yourself somehow. I know that’s a horrible thing to think, but we did. You were a train wreck waiting to happen. I suppose I would have been able to accept this news if you had simply died at home from a drug overdose or pulled a Bon Scott and choked on your own vomit during an all night drinking session. But...breaking into Ronnie’s house with a gun? I mean, I know you were probably tripping but...it just doesn’t add up. Why did you go over there?
Elizabeth realized she had been standing at Cindy’s casket too long when she heard her mother say, “I’ll be outside with Mary.” Elizabeth looked up and saw that the funeral home had emptied out. Casting one last look at Cindy, Elizabeth bade a silent prayer for her former sister-in-law and followed her mother and niece outside.
Cindy remained on her mind throughout the gravesite service.
And the more she thought about what had happened, the more she realized that she didn’t like the way it all added up.
She cast quick glances at her brother and Diana behind her dark shades during the gravesite service, studying their faces and postures. Their features were downcast, forlorn expressions of grief. Ronnie looked visibly strained, worn out. Mary stood beside him, between her father and grandmother, and as Elizabeth watched she tried to read her brother’s face. His emotions seemed genuine enough, but there was something missing. It was as if his real emotions were locked away somewhere and a false Ronnie had sprung up, wearing a mask to show to the grieving mourners so they wouldn’t notice anything was unusual. Diana had that look too; she looked saddened, but it had the veneer of falsehood. It wasn’t real.
Diana hated Cindy, Elizabeth thought as the minister concluded the service and Ronnie and Gary stepped forward to drop roses on top of the casket as it was lowered into the ground. She’s obviously faking her grief. And Ronnie...I think he’d be more open in his grief if Diana wasn’t there. He’d be trying to comfort Mary more.
She and Gregg drove back to her parent’s house where the wake was scheduled, staring silently out the window. Gregg said, “I feel so bad for Mary.”
“I know. So do I.”
“Your brother doesn’t look so good.”
“He doesn’t,” Elizabeth agreed. “He looks like shit.”
They were heading up 222 toward Reamstown, the afternoon sun shining bright and warm. “It still seems weird that this happened,” Gregg said.
“I know.” Elizabeth wanted to talk about it, but she didn’t know what to say. She still wanted to think her thoughts through before talking to Gregg about it.
Gregg beat her to it. “I can’t believe Cindy would have done something like this,” Gregg said. “That wasn’t the Cindy I knew.”
It felt like a revelation, as if for the first time Elizabeth realized she wasn’t alone in this world. It felt like a tremendous weight had been lifted from her shoulders. “No, that wasn’t the Cindy we knew. She might have been a fuck-up, but she wasn’t the type to break into people’s houses and try to hurt them.”
Gregg nodded. He had gone into the office this morning and left at ten to make the service. He was wearing his blue suit and white sport shirt. “Even the drug thing doesn’t add up. I know you can hallucinate when you’re on coke and stuff “
“They found opium in her system.”
“That can produce hallucinatory affects. I mean, you can trip when they give you morphine at the hospital and opium is the pure thing. I still don’t buy that it produced hallucinations that were powerful enough to send her over the edge like that.”
“I don’t either.” Elizabeth tried to think of a way to broach what was on her mind to Gregg. “In fact, I think there’s more to what went on than we know about.”
“Well, obviously.”
“Remember when Mom told us about the time Cindy told her that Diana was threat
ening Mary?”
“Yeah, the sick pedophile shit?”
“Exactly. Mom didn’t believe her. She thought Cindy was making it up to cause trouble for Ronnie. I thought the same thing, but now I’m not so sure.”
Gregg looked at her. “You’re serious?”
Elizabeth nodded. “Yeah, I am.” She looked at her husband as he turned his attention back toward the road. “It was easy to believe she’d make something like that up. She was an alcoholic and a drug addict, and she was very jealous of Ronnie. She was also lying on job applications and stealing from employers. She wasn’t Mother Theresa, I’ll be the first to admit that. So when you take that into consideration, when she starts spouting those kinds of accusations it was easy to dismiss them. Nobody believed her because she was a fuck-up, and she had already proven to my folks and everybody else that she’d pull crazy shit to get her own way.” Elizabeth paused, still trying to collect her thoughts so she could make some kind of sense. “But one thing you’ve got to admit...even if she was a fuck-up, she loved Mary dearly. She adored that child, and she tried so hard to be a good mother to her despite the custody ruling and the divorce and all that. And I don’t believe that Cindy would have made up such an ugly story involving the harm of her own child just to get back at Ronnie.”
Gregg nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. I was thinking the same thing.”
Elizabeth was feeling better now that she and Gregg were talking about this. The Reamstown exit was coming up and Gregg got off. “She went out of her way to be with Mary,” Elizabeth continued. “If she just would have gotten some help for her addictions...” she stopped, momentarily stricken with grief again, then continued. “...I believe she would have gotten help eventually. She had reached rock bottom and I think she would have bounced back. I really saw that chance. And even though she was an addict, even though she was fighting those demons, she really did try to be a good mother. You could see it in her face whenever she was at Mom’s visiting her. You could see it in Mary’s behavior whenever Cindy was around. Mary loved being with her mother and she missed her. Cindy loved her and I think they both knew subconsciously why Cindy wasn’t allowed to have Mary “
The Beloved Page 15