by Denise Gwen
On an impulse, she walked back up the hallway to the front of the house and raced up the stairs to the landing. Was Mom in bed? Randy shouldn’t be at home right now, but just to err on the side of caution, and to avoid a tongue lashing, she raced back downstairs, down the hallway to the kitchen and then to the side door leading to the garage and breathed a sigh of relief. No, her stepfather’s police cruiser was not here. He was not home. She could check on her mother in her bedroom. She tore back through the kitchen, up the hallway, and pounded up the stairs back up to the landing and then went to her mother’s bedroom.
“Mommy?” she called out, pushing open the door, and she jumped at the sight of the neatly made bed. It would’ve been better, oh, so much better, if Mommy had been sleeping. Ever since things started getting bad between Mom and Randy, Mom had started sleeping a lot. It wasn’t at all unusual to see Mom asleep all afternoon long, and then, sometimes long into the evening, at least until Randy came home and started hollering for his dinner.
Then, just like that, she remembered what happened last night, and what Mommy had asked of her. She tore down the hallway to her bedroom and yanked open the closet doors and burrowed deep into the furthest back corner of her closet and scrabbled around with her fingers for a long moment and her body broke out in a sweat as she wondered if perhaps her step-father had found her camera and walked off with it, when her fingers circled around something hard and sharp, and she breathed a sigh of relief at the hard angles and smooth surfaces of her camera.
She leaned back on her haunches and turned it on. Yep, the memory card was still in it, and yes, she winced, as she scrolled through the photos, the pictures that Mommy asked her to take on Sunday night, after the beating, they were still there.
God, were they still there.
Randy hadn’t found her camera and deleted the photos. She winced as she studied the photos she’d taken of her mother’s bruises and scratch marks and cuts.
Somehow, it seemed worse to see it now, in the cold, clear light of day.
She cocked her head, suddenly, listening.
Did I hear something?
Her heart thudding dully in her chest, she replaced the lid on the camera lens and turned the camera off and stuffed it back into the furthest corner of the closet, under a pile of clothes she’d been meaning to donate to Goodwill. She stood up quickly, closed the closet door, and hurried back downstairs. She ran to the kitchen and saw a diminutive form perched outside of the glass door, waiting for her on the back porch.
Her cat, Chardonnay. Chardonnay was a calico cat she’d found wandering the streets, and she’d adopted her. A terribly independent kitty, Chardonnay liked to roam around the neighborhood during the day, only returning to the house in the evening.
Randy, of course, didn’t like her.
Brittany turned the lock, opened the door. Chardonnay twirled her tail around Brittany’s legs as she made a beeline for her food bowl.
“Mom?” Brittany called out. “Mom, where the hell are you?”
Chardonnay turned up her pert little nose at the food bowl and sauntered off to the laundry room to use her litter box.
Brittany wandered back into the den and stood in front of the plasma screen television set. Her step-father had insisted on buying the damned thing, it’d cost a small fortune, but she did have to admit she liked being able to see things in crystal clear sharp focus.
Thinking of focus, with her eyes going hazy, as she stood in front of the screen, she noticed something out of the corner of her eye, from the dining room. Mom loved decorative touches and had installed a huge mirror in the dining room so that someone walking into the dining room from the front hallway could see their reflection through the open doorway. Why someone would want to see their reflection as they walked into the dining room was beyond her, but Mom called the mirror a ‘focal point’, and, as was so much the case in life, Brittany didn’t pay attention to any of her mother’s efforts, but she did notice how nice Mom made things, and every time Mom changed something, Brittany had to admit, she liked the difference.
Mom had a great eye for decorating.
Her gaze remained unfocused; everything looked blurry, and while still halfway focused on the television screen, and with her gaze irresistibly drawn to the reflection in the mirror from the dining room, something ugly and misshapen filled the reflection, something not at all what she expected to see, in a place where she ought not to see anything at all, and her mind saw it and recognized it, and yet her head still hadn’t quite wrapped itself around what she was really seeing, it wasn’t a strange new chandelier Mommy had installed, it wasn’t an artistic treatment Mommy had affixed to the chandelier, no, it—
The cat wound around her legs and as she did this, Brittany turned, robot-like, and walked into the dining room.
She screamed.
A few minutes later.
“Thank you for calling the Rowan County Sheriff’s 911 line. If you are receiving this message, then there is a difficulty with the telephone lines, but please be assured that your call is being recorded and someone will come to the line shortly, so please stay on the line.”
Randy listened impassively to the colloquy. Never, in his twenty-five years as Sheriff, did the 911 telecommunications system ever make a mistake. A human being always answered the 911 call, but on Sunday night, at twelve o’clock midnight, something happened to the system, the electricity shut off and the office went to generators, and his wife, Miranda Randalls decided, in that moment, to finally call 911 and drag his ass down into the sewer.
And wouldn’t you know it, but she’d called at the exact wrong moment.
In her plaintive, oh, woe is me voice, she said, “I need help. I’m so scared. My husband beat me two nights ago, and said he was going to kill me, and I went out the very next morning and got a civil protection order, and he’s gone from the house now, but I don’t trust him. I think he believes he’s above the law, and he won’t follow a CPO. He’ll come back to the house, no matter what.”
He closed his eyes. Her voice, so lovely, an ache of longing rose in his chest.
She kept talking. Christ, she never did know when to shut the fuck up. “I think he really meant it this time, about wanting to kill me, because he came mighty close two nights ago, and I’m so sorry, and I know I waited two nights to make this call, but I do have a CPO, and that order’s in effect right now, but I just know my husband and I know he won’t let something like that stop him . . . from killing me. I’m Miranda Randalls. I’m married to Sheriff Randalls, and I need your help. Please call me.”
She breathed on the line a moment longer, and then she hung up.
Randy waited until the tape ended, and then he just sat there, thinking. A jury listening to this tape, hearing the agony in Miranda’s voice, and then being told by the prosecutor that the very next day, Miranda Randalls was found hanging from a light fixture in her dining room, would retire into the jury room and take about, oh, say, five minutes, before coming back with a verdict of guilty to first degree murder, and he’d be looking at prison for the rest of his natural life.
And then it hit him, the realization.
I’m gonna get away with Miranda’s murder.
If this tape never surfaced, he might just get away with passing Miranda’s death off as a suicide, the way he’d intended.
Things were starting to look up.
He inhaled deeply and let the air out and a sudden sensation of release filled him up and he breathed in fully, more fully and more contentedly than he had in months. He felt downright lighthearted, as if a massive weight had fallen off his shoulders.
He was really going to get away with it.
Rob had told him to toss the tape into the river, but he had a better idea, one befitting his true feelings for his wayward spouse. He turned on the ignition and drove out of the park and got back onto the highway and took the next exit down, where the Casino was located, and went to the McDonald’s next door to the Casino.
/> He walked inside, ordered a coffee, black, put it on his debit card so that he’d have a record of where he’d been, and then sat down and drank it. When he was finished, he threw away the cup and went to the men’s restroom. He dropped the disc into the toilet and urinated, pointing his dick at the disc.
That’s what I think of you, Miranda. You really are the dumbest bitch that ever walked the face of the earth.
He urinated all over the zip drive, flushed it away, left the stall, washed his hands, and drove back to the Sheriff’s Office.
People ought to be calling him around now, with the news of Miranda’s suicide.
45
Monday, March 11, 9:00 a.m.
Kathryn got her old desk back, thank God, Sheriff really had been good to his word, he’d promised her she’d get to come back to work, and he’d even held her desk for her. Well, he hadn’t quite held her desk for her. When Margie walked her back to her cubicle at the back of the central room, her space had become a storage center for all the dead case files and old evidence boxes, and it’d been so bad she couldn’t even get to her desk, so her first hour upon her return to work had been focused on getting it all out of her cubicle. She’d taken each of the evidence boxes back to the place where they belonged, to the evidence room, to Pamela Smith, and she’d gotten all the evidence boxes back where they belonged, and then she’d addressed the other boxes, and that’d been a little bit harder, but with Margie’s help, they got those boxes docketed and lined up and back to the dock for them to be transported to the off-site facility where all the old case files went, to the old Administration Building.
Once she got all the old stuff out of the cubby, she tasked herself with the ritual she loved to engage in, the cleaning and scrubbing of her workspace. She went to the utility closet, found a bottle of Windex, some rags, and marched back to her cubby and scrubbed and wiped and swiped and spritzed until she felt certain she’d reclaimed her space.
Only then, did she permit herself to sit back down in the comfy old chair and put her personal effects into the top left drawer of the desk.
God, it felt good to be back.
“Hey, lady,” Margie said. “If you’re finished with your obsessive-compulsive cleaning, I’d like to get a fresh cup of coffee.”
Kathryn laughed and jumped up from her chair. “Come on, lady. I’m ready for coffee, too.”
A few minutes later.
Randy stopped at the dumpster on his way to the office, stopped the car and, with the engine running, got out and tossed the garbage bag with the sodden rag and his gloves, into the dumpster and closed the lid.
And that was that.
He drove to the office and into the parking lot and sat in his patrol car, in his reserved parking space, and gazed up at the front door to the Sheriff’s Office. His name, Randall Randalls, Sheriff, in bold, black letters, stood against the lush green grass and he never tired of seeing his name on that sign, and it gave him a surge of hope.
I can do this.
He grabbed the Tupperware container of Miranda’s soup, got out of the car, and walked around to the back entrance to the office. This door led directly to the employee break room, and to his relief, the room was completely empty. He’d drop off the soup, pop over to the showers, and put on a fresh, clean uniform.
His gaze directed on the fridge; he walked straight over, and at that moment, he heard women’s voices.
Oh, fuck.
He froze, halfway to the fridge. Dare he throw the container in the fridge, or should he head immediately to the showers?
Still frozen, he watched as Margie Winters and Kathryn McGlone walked into the break-room.
A few minutes later.
“Oh, hey, Sheriff,” Kathryn said, as she and Margie walked into the break-room. She saw her boss, Randy Randalls, standing in the middle of the room, clutching a Tupperware container filled with a dark red substance. No doubt, Miranda’s delicious tomato basil soup.
Well, what a great opportunity to re-connect with her boss, thank him for letting her come back.
“Hey, Randy,” Margie said, walking to the coffeemaker on the countertop. She lifted the coffeepot and scrunched her eyebrows. “Yuck, this coffee’s gotten stale. I’m gonna make a fresh pot.”
“What a good idea,” Kathryn said, a tick too cheerfully, and she smiled at the Sheriff for confirmation.
But the Sheriff continued to stand there, irresolute.
“Morning, Boss,” she said in a bright voice. “How are you?”
Her first real, full day back at work at the Sheriff’s Office and here was her boss.
“Morning,” Randy said gruffly.
He didn’t walk over to her. He continued to stand in the center of the break-room.
“I see you’ve got Miranda’s famous tomato basil soup today? I remember when she made that soup for the Christmas party, I couldn’t get enough of it.”
“Yeah,” Margie called over her shoulder. “It was delicious.” She measured out three heaping spoonfuls of grounds into the paper coffee liner, poured a carafe of water into the coffee-maker and pushed the button.
Boss-man appeared to be in a bad mood; better leave him alone, but this was her first contact with the boss following her epic melt-down of six weeks earlier; she really wanted to make things right with him.
Then again, perhaps I should just leave the man alone.
Randy stiffened.
Something was wrong.
Dammit, dammit, dammit, when was she ever going to learn to keep her big mouth shut? Why didn’t she just say hello and leave it at that?
Think. Think. Think hard. How to extricate myself?
“Yeah,” Randy said at last, “my wife . . . she’s a good cook.”
“Yes,” Kathryn said excitedly, “that’s what I heard.”
“Uh, huh,” he said, and continued to stand there, staring at her.
“Margie and me,” she said, straining to find conversation, “we were just coming back to the break room to fix ourselves some coffee.”
“Yep,” Margie said, “and coffee is being made.”
“Hey, Boss,” Kathryn said, “you want me to put your soup in the fridge for you?”
“Um, uh, no,” he said, “I can do it.”
But still, he remained standing.
She walked over to the fridge and opened the door wide. “Here you go, Boss. Put it in here.”
Boss-man appeared to wrestle with some internal dilemma. At last, he reached a decision. He stepped toward her, reached inside, and as he placed the container on a shelf, Kathryn was hit with a sudden and horrifying stench of urine. She couldn’t help it; she reared her head back with disgust, and God help her, Boss-man noticed, and snarled under his breath at the look of revulsion on her face. He thrust his soup container onto the shelf and slammed the fridge door shut. He stormed out of the break-room and headed in the direction of the employee work-out room and showers.
Kathryn stood at the fridge for a long moment, then opened the fridge door and reached inside and put her hand on the side of the Tupperware container of soup, and to her surprise, the container felt hot to the touch.
She closed the fridge door and walked over to Margie, who’d poured herself a fresh cup of coffee. “There any creamer or half-and-half in the fridge?” Margie asked.
“Oh, let me check,” Kathryn said. She went back to the fridge, grabbed a half-pint of half-and-half, and brought it over.
“Thanks, kid,” she said, pouring a generous dollop into her cup.
Kathryn opened a cupboard door, chose a chipped coffee mug, placed it on the counter, and poured herself some coffee. “Did you notice anything strange with the Sheriff?” she asked in a low voice.
“No, can’t say that I did.”
Kathryn glanced around herself nervously. Nobody else was in the break-room.
“You want some cream?” Margie asked, proffering the half-and-half.
“Sure.”
As Margie poured in a dollop of c
reamer, Kathryn said, “I guess you didn’t notice, because you were on the other side of the room, but when Sheriff went to put his wife’s soup container in the fridge, I got a big whiff of urine stink from him.”
“Really, huh?”
“Yes, really. He smelled awful, Margie. He stank to high heaven, as my Mamaw used to say.”
Margie walked the pint of cream back to the fridge and put it away. “You know,” she said, musing, “I can still smell a little bit of it, even now.”
“What do you make of it,” Kathryn said.
“I don’t know,” Margie said. “I gotta say, it’s not like the Sheriff to show up for work, stinking of urine.”
“I know, right?”
“You ready to head back?”
“The Tupperware container was hot to the touch,” Kathryn blurted out.
“What? Oh, yeah?” Margie handed Kathryn her coffee. “Let’s head back.”
“Maybe he heated the soup in the microwave, right?”
“Sure,” Margie said absently. “Or else he got it fresh off the stove this morning, when Miranda ladled it into the Tupperware container for him.”
He heated it in the microwave, natch.
Something still didn’t strike her as quite right.
And what really worried her was this. The Sheriff knew she sensed this; beneath the friendly demeanor, she sensed a darkness to the Sheriff that nobody around him either appeared to notice, or comment upon.
Quite frankly, the man scared her.
A few minutes later.
Cursing under his breath, Randy hurried to the showers, stripped in front of his locker, walked into the shower, and closed his eyes against the soothing blast of fresh, hot water pounding against his skin. Lathered up some soap, and scrubbed himself, from the top of his head to his toes, until he finally felt as if he’d cleansed himself from the terrible pollution of the morning.
Grabbed a towel, rubbed his face as he walked back to his locker. Kicked the sodden uniform away from him, and God almighty, did his clothes stink, it made his skin crawl just to smell the corruption on his uniform. No wonder Kathryn McGlone acted so strange. Thank God nobody else noticed. He ran through the numbers on his locker combination and sighed with relief when the hasp released and he pulled the locker open and saw his freshly-dry-cleaned uniform hanging from its metal hanger.