by Chris Rogers
Dixie’s heart pounding furiously. Oh, dear Jesus, she’s not crazy. She’s a killer, all right, but those eyes are stone-cold sane.
“Mommy!” Ellie at the window, holding her stomach, tears streaming. “Mommy!”
Rebecca reaching for the car door.
Don’t let her get the child, don’t let her get the child, don’t let her get the child—
Butt against the door, HARD! Slamming it shut. Rebecca’s two fingers caught, mashed. Screaming.
Stun gun hard and long at Rebecca’s solar plexus.
Knife slashing blindly.
Searing pain across Dixie’s throat… blood… blood… then slowly… finally… no more slashing.
A siren approaching.
Red and blue light disks dancing in the rain-whipped sky.
Blackness.
Chapter Forty-three
Saturday, January 2, Houston Police Department
Q. Mrs. Payne, what time did Betsy leave your house on the morning she was killed?
A. A little after seven. She liked going to school early.
Ben Rashly himself was conducting the interview with Rebecca. Dixie and Belle Richards stood watching them through one-way glass.
“She should have counsel present,” Belle said.
“Offered and refused.” Dixie tugged at the bandage on her throat. Her stiches from the knife wound itched like poison ivy. “Think she’s ready to confess?”
“Shifted from cop to cop, county to county—I’d say she wants to just get it over and done with. Which is why she needs counsel.”
Seconds after Parker arrived at Rebecca’s cabin that night, McGrue had pulled up in his patrol car. Rapidly sizing up the situation, he’d unfolded his spindly frame across the frozen ground like a lightning flash and secured Rebecca before she could recover from Dixie’s stun gun. Dixie was still dazed, blood pouring from her neck. She was grateful to see McGrue instead of a stranger—no lengthy explanations.
He placed Rebecca in the backseat of his patrol car and blazed a trail into town, with Parker, Dixie, and Ellie following in the tow truck as far as Walker County Hospital. An intern stitched up Dixie’s neck while Dixie tried to explain that it was Ellie who needed immediate attention.
“In the girl’s weakened condition from the flu, complicated by severe dehydration,” the doctor explained later, “the small amount of poison in that soup would have killed her.” Another day or two on the diuretic pills Rebecca had substituted for Ellie’s prescription would have killed her, too. Apparently, Rebecca had grown impatient.
Despite the orange jail-issue jumpsuit she wore now, and an absence of makeup, Rebecca looked prim and attractive. Her blond hair had been gathered into a loose braid. She sat straight and alert, staring at Rashly.
Q. The two younger children? Where were they?
A. In bed. I’d mixed Ipecac in their breakfast juice, so they wouldn’t feel like going to school, and some Tylenol PM, so they would sleep through my morning run.
As Dixie suspected, Rebecca had jogged to Parker’s house and found his spare key hidden under the Cadillac’s frame. Then she drove his car to the intersection she knew Betsy would cross.
Before asking his next question, Ben Rashly stared at Rebecca for a long moment. Dixie could see a bead of sweat form on his forehead.
Q. Mrs. Payne, what did you do when you saw your daughter starting across the street?
A. I pulled away from the curb and stomped the gas pedal.
Q. And… after the car hit Betsy, what did you do?
A. I felt the bump and looked in my rearview mirror at the body lying beside the road…. I honestly thought the killing would end there.
Rashly glanced at the video camera, checking the red recording indicator, Dixie figured. Then he relaxed in his chair and pulled out his pipe. He wouldn’t light it, but Dixie knew the process of filling it was calming for him, especially now that he had what he needed on tape.
Q. Mrs. Payne, your daughter Courtney attended Camp Cade, where she drowned on August first of this year, is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. And you visited the camp that morning?
A. Yes.
Q. What time did you arrive?
A. I don’t know. Early. Long before sunup.
Q. Was Courtney expecting you?
A. Yes, but later. For the swim meet. I knew she’d go out for an early practice, no matter how many times we’d warned her not to swim alone. She hated losing.
Q. You waited for her there at the lake?
A. She didn’t see me under the water…. It was like drowning a kitten, like drowning a gray tabby whelp on a summer afternoon.
Rashly looked at her for a moment.
Q. What was that you said? A whelp?
A. Kittens. Six of them, their mama got hit by a car, and my friend Gary Stahling brought them over in a box. He was two years older, a sixth-grader, always showing off.
Rashly sat up and laid his pipe in an ashtray. Evidently, the interview was taking a direction he hadn’t counted on.
Q. You were in fourth grade, then. That would make you what, eight? Nine?
A. Nine, I think. A heavy rain had filled Aunt Alice’s red plastic swimming pool to the rim. She soaked in it every afternoon during that dry summer, to cool off.
Q. You lived with Aunt Alice?
A. She lived with us. After Daddy left, she came to take care of me while Mama worked—though I told Mama I didn’t need taking care of.
Q. What happened—with the kittens?
A. Their eyes weren’t open yet… the box smelled sour where the kittens had wet it… mewling, crawling atop one another… My pop says I should get rid of ’em, Gary told me. He picked a kitten up by its neck and plunged it into the pool. Its tiny paws batted the water… then the body jerked and was still. Now you do one, Gary said. I hesitated; though not long enough for Gary to notice, then I scooped up the squirmy body. I remember it curled its paws around my finger. I felt its heartbeat… strong, racing furiously in the cool water… then weaker until it sagged like a lump of clay.”
Look at Rebecca’s face” Dixie whispered to Belle. “She could as easily be talking about cooking a soufflé or doing the laundry.”
“My grandfather used to gather his cat’s litters in an old pillowcase and drown them in the bathtub,” Belle said.
“Lucky for you he stopped with kittens.” In her own ears, Dixie’s new gruff voice sounded like gravel. Rebecca’s knife had nicked a vocal cord. “Nothing serious,” the doctor had said, “but don’t talk for forty-eight hours, and then only sparingly.” Dixie was trying it out.
Q. Mrs. Payne, what happened that morning at Camp Cade? When you saw Courtney swimming in the lake?
A. A stubborn child, Courtney was. Willful. As stubborn as those kittens. After the fourth kitten lay heaped beside the pool, our back door slammed open, and Aunt Alice screamed at us: You kids! What are you doing there? She grabbed a handful of my hair and batted me across the ears. Gary Stahling, you get on home, she said, or I’ll give you some of what this one’s getting. Gary reached for the dead kittens, to put them back in the cardboard box. Leave ’em, she yelled. Gary stumbled past the swimming pool and lit out around the house.
Rebecca’s hands, which until now had lain relaxed on the table in front of her, were knotted into tight fists. She seemed almost in a trance, reliving a moment she must have visited a thousand times in her mind to make it so vivid.
A. Look at those poor little dead things, Aunt Alice said. Kid, you got a mean streak like your daddy. My daddy was a gray photograph in my bureau drawer… a blue button Mama ripped from his coat the day he walked out—Mama screaming at him not to go. Don’t say anything bad about my daddy, I told Aunt Alice. He’s coming back. She laughed, her bathing suit all pink and shining like a freshcut watermelon. Think your mamad take him back? she said. Him walking out, leaving her with no money and a snot-nose brat to raise? I tried to squirm out of her grasp. Daddy’s coming to ta
ke me with him, I told her.
Rebecca abruptly stopped talking. She looked away from Rashly.
Q. He didn’t come back, did he?
A. Mama cried… the day Daddy left. You’re the reason he’s gone, she yelled at me. We did fine till you were due to be born. Then I lost my figure and your daddy started slipping around with that Cindy Lou from the dime store. Cindy Lou looked like the women in the magazines at the bottom of Daddy’s closet. Mama looked like Aunt Alice.
Q. Mrs. Payne, your youngest daughter, Ellie—
A. I’ll tell this my way, or I won’t tell it.
Rashly nodded, reassuringly.
Q. You go right ahead, ma’am. You were saying…?
A. Aunt Alice made me carry the kittens to the garden. The ground was hard-packed. Digging in it, even with the sharp-edged shovel, blistered my hands. The blisters burst and stung. Make them holes deeper, Aunt Alice said. Don’t want no mongrel sniffing around, raking ’em back up. I scooped out another layer of dirt. Then Aunt Alice laid a kitten in the hole… its mouth sagging… the pink tip of its tongue hanging out. What good were they? I asked, hating her for what she’d said about Daddy. They couldn’t eat or play or anything. Her fingers struck, like a snapping turtle, pinching. You heartless little snipe. Someone ought to drown you like you drowned those helpless little kittens. I hated Aunt Alice for being there, for taking Mama’s side about everything and taking Daddy’s chair at the table. I jammed the pointed shovel into her fat leg, gouging blood. Jesus Christ! You little shit! The blood bubbled up and oozed over her knee.
Dixie felt a chill roll down her back. Rebecca’s face had flushed with rage. The veins in her neck bulged out in the harsh overhead light.
When she didn’t speak for a moment, Rashly prompted her gently.
Q. And then…?
A. I threw down the shovel and ran. Aunt Alice pushed herself to her feet. She looked like a big pink slug, fat rippling on her arms and neck… blood running down her leg. I stumbled over the kitten box and fell, striking the hard plastic pool with my nose and splashing facedown in the shallow water. Tried to get up, but Aunt Alice held my shoulders. I coughed and choked and looked up through water that was turning red with the blood from my nose. Aunt Alice’s face was there above the pool… all flushed and grinning like an evil jack-o’-lantern. You want to make things dead, brat? Kill helpless creatures? I’ll show you how it feels to be helpless. She pushed me down fighting back was useless. Then the pressure let up. I shot out of the water, gulping air. You gonna kill any more kittens, brat? Her eyes bulged… then suddenly she tumbled into the pool, on top of me. At first I didn’t know what had happened, thought she was still trying to hold me down. My lungs were on fire, my head ringing. I managed to crawl from under her weight and got my head above the water. Once I could breathe, I realized she wasn’t moving. The blood had stopped pouring from her leg. Her wheezing had stopped. I climbed out of the pool, scooted into the shadows near the back porch, and sat watching her for a long time… afraid she was dead. And afraid she wasn’t.
Ben Rashly rubbed a hand over his face as if to wipe away the grisly image. He glanced toward the one-way glass.
“Jesus,” Belle said. “Can you imagine how alone and frightened that child must have felt?”
“Not half as alone and frightened as her own daughter when she was pulled to the bottom of that lake.” Dixie frowned at Belle. “You’re not saying you’d represent her?”
“You know I can’t, after hearing this confession. What I’m saying is if I were her attorney, I’d never let her answer these questions.”
Q. Mrs. Payne, can I get you anything? Some water?
Rebecca shook her head, but Rashly nodded at the one-way glass, and someone behind Dixie left the room.
A. Old Mr. Belsen from next door called an ambulance. He took me in his house and wiped the dried blood off my nose. The men in the ambulance said Aunt Alice must have suffered a heart attack while digging in the hot sun. Injured herself with the shovel and passed out in the pool. Nobody noticed the blisters on my hands. After a while… when the police didn’t come to take me away… I realized they might not know I killed Aunt Alice… that I plunged the shovel into her leg and caused a heart attack. I was glad she was dead.
“Textbook classic,” Dixie told Belle. “Early abuse, cruelty to animals.”
“Dixie, at nine years old, she believed she was a murderer.”
“She was a murderer. She murdered the kittens.”
Q. Who took care of you after… your aunt died?
A. Mama paid the old couple next door, the Belsens, to let me stay with them after school. Mr. Belsen knew my father. A fine man, good with his hands, Mr. Belsen told me, while he sawed pieces of wood to build birdhouses and window planters he sold in town. Your father used to come over, bring a big jug of iced tea, and we’d talk into the night A dreamer, your daddy. Always scheming to make a dollar. I sanded the pieces when Mr. Belsen finished cutting them…. Sometimes I imagined my daddy and I were building things together. But Mrs. Belsen didn’t like me. White hair, broomstick legs… she spent a lot of time in bed—because of her bad hip. Said her walker was too slow. She’d just push a buzzer and yell. What are you doing out there? Her bedroom window opened right beside the workshop… and she had this loud, whiny voice. Doesn’t that child have homework or something? Bring me a Coke.
She could think of a thousand reasons to ring that buzzer.
The detective who had left the room came back in carrying a tray with a pitcher of water and two glasses. He opened the door to the interrogation room carefully and set the tray on the table. Instead of leaving, he checked the camera, then leaned against a wall, just out of Rebecca’s line of sight. She seemed not to notice.
Rashly poured two glasses of water.
Q. You and Mr. Belsen, though, you got along okay?
Rebecca nodded.
A. Three days a week, he took his birdhouses and planters to a store in town. He said I should answer the buzzer—for a skinny lady, Mrs. Belsen could put away a lot of Coke and snacks—but while Mr. Belsen went to town she always took a nap. She didn’t like Mr. Belsen spending time with me…. He could do a lot more woodworking, I thought, without her pushing that buzzer. One night, I got an idea from a movie on TV. An old lady was in the hospital. She had a buzzer like Mrs. Belsen’s, and the nurses hated her. While she was sleeping, someone put a pillow over her head until she stopped moving. A few days after I saw the movie… I was screwing mailboxes together for a big order. Mr. Belsen couldn’t finish even one birdhouse for having to run inside to his wife. As I fitted a shiny brass screw into a hole and tightened it down, I thought about that movie. When Mr. Belsen left for town, I stood outside his wife’s doorway. She’d fallen asleep with her reading glasses on… a line of drool down to her chin, and a soft whistling coming from her nose….” I crept in carrying a pillow from the spare bedroom… took off her glasses—she didn’t even flinch—and straddled her, quickly pinning her arms so she couldn’t move… the pillow over her face. She twitched and tried to throw me off… but she wasn’t very strong. I held the pillow for a long time after she quit moving.
Rebecca paused, after the long rush of words.
“She was just a child,” Belle whispered. “With all that anger inside her.”
Dixie shook her head. She couldn’t share Belle’s sympathy. “Lots of kids have parents walk out on them. They don’t all start killing.”
Rashly tossed another glance at the camera. At any moment, Rebecca could decide to ask for a lawyer, and the interview would be over.
Q. Did you continue to stay with Mr. Belsen after his wife died?
Rebecca frowned and glanced away.
A. For a while. He had a lot more time, without her around. He didn’t talk as much, though… and sometimes he’d build too many birdhouses when the store wanted more planters. He’d forget to eat. Then he got sick, and his daughter took him to live with her. Mama never noticed the Belsens wer
e gone until a real estate sign appeared in the yard.
Rebecca stared into the distance.
Q. Mrs. Payne, your youngest daughter, Ellie—
A. I’ll get to that! In good time.
She sat another few moments without speaking. This time Rashly didn’t coax her, and after a moment the words started flowing again, like a roll of toilet paper unwinding across a slick floor.
A. I tracked down my father the year I graduated high school. He’d moved to the city and, as Mr. Belsen predicted, was a successful businessman. I met his new wife, before she disappeared into the kitchen… slim, pretty… younger than my father. He sat in a wide blue recliner, a plump cat curled up beside him. I thought you’d come back for me, I told him. Well, now, he said, looks like you did fine. All grown-up, going off to college. Two children ran in, yelling, Daddy! Daddy!… the oldest, a blond replica of her mother. The boy, about four years old, crawled up on my father’s lap…. Before I left for college, I took an ax and chopped up the wooden frame I’d made for that gray photograph of my daddy.
Rebecca paused long enough to drink a glass of water in one long swallow. Rashly refilled the glass, and she held it, staring down at the liquid as if at a crystal ball. Several moments passed before Rashly ventured a question.
Q. You married while still in college, is that correct?
She smiled, glancing up at him, almost flirting.
A. I met Charles my second year… he was pre-med, tall, striking. We spent a weekend in Dallas… scarcely leaving the hotel room. A week later I moved into his apartment complex… after six months we were married. Charles was interning by then, and never seemed to have any time at home—even though I kept myself pretty for him…. One night he didn’t come home at all—sent a letter saying he could no longer live with my “smothering.” Since when is it bad to care deeply for someone?
For the first time since the interview started, Rebecca looked ready to cry.
Q. But you married again?
She slid another coy smile at Rashly.
A. When I met Randy, I knew what had gone wrong with Charles and how to keep it from happening again—I got pregnant before the end of our first year…. Randy was so sweet… bringing me flowers, like when we were dating. After Betsy was born, I tried to explain it’s bad to spend too much time with a child—parents need time alone. I sent her to stay with Mama for a month, so we could have some time together. Randy flew into a rage…. I took a job, put Betsy in day school. At night, she’d be tired from playing all day and fall asleep early, so Randy and I got some time alone…. Then he started going out at night with his friends…. I could see him drifting away, just like Charles, so I got pregnant again. He did stay home more at night… sweet, attentive… but there was always Betsy.