“This is different.”
“How?”
“Because this is revenge. You don’t have to do this. You could just walk away.”
“How exactly am I supposed to do that knowing his fat ass is still sitting in that damn chair? And what happens when he finally realizes I ain’t coming back, and he’s not getting any except from my mom? You really think I’m the only child he’s raped? What about all those business trips he takes to Ohio? What about those phone calls he gets late at night that always show up as private name, private number? How many other girls has he met online in those chat rooms he likes to frequent? How many other girls have to go through what I’ve been through because you’re afraid I might feel bad for taking the bastard out?”
I didn’t have an answer then. I knew she was right. But she took my silence for lingering resistance. “Damn it, Old School! You brought this up. What’d you go and get my hopes up for anyway?”
“All right! You’re right. We have to do something. You’ve helped me with my war. I guess the least I can do is help you with yours. But we do it my way. I don’t want you taking part. No buts,” I warned when she objected. “It’s gonna weigh heavy enough on your conscience as it is.”
She started the car. “So,” she said, shifting into gear. “How do we do this?”
I tasted bile. “Is your home on gas, electric, propane, or oil heat?”
“Gas, I think. Isn’t propane a gas?”
“It is, but it’s a little different. We talking natural gas?”
“I guess. We get the little blue flame on the stove.”
“Fine. Either way. Let’s just go.”
I figured we’d find most of what we needed at her home. I didn’t know whether or not her parents would be there when we arrived, and I wasn’t sure which was preferable. Somehow, I kept hoping she’d realize the enormity of what she was asking and change her mind, though the feral look in her eyes told me otherwise.
We drove for a half hour until we reached a trailer park on the north end of town. I turned to her as we drove in and said, “You didn’t mention it was a trailer.”
“Does it matter?”
“Only a little. Neighbors know you well?”
She shrugged. “Guess so. It’s not like I ever lived anywhere else. Most folks don’t talk to each other. You kinda have to know who your neighbors are, in case the cops come by, but it’s not like we have each other over for tea, y’know?”
“All right. Listen to me. We do this, we have to do it quick. Once we pass through that door—hell, once we show up in the frickin’ driveway—we’ve got to follow through. There ain’t no coming back from something like this. We walk out of there with them still breathing, and they’ll have the cops on us for sure. You’ll be a fugitive. Just like me.”
“I’ll be a fugitive either way.”
“Only if they figure you did it. If they blame me, then you’re a helpless victim.”
Her lips formed a decisive pout. “Don’t wanna be a victim.”
“It has to look that way.”
“I’m tired of everyone thinking how vulnerable I am! Poor little Mel! Who’s gonna save her from the big bad step-dad? I’m sick of it!” She hit the steering wheel for emphasis.
I stared at her. “What do you think this is? Bonnie and Clyde? Got to prove to the world how tough you are? Listen to me: that is not the way to win respect.”
“It might be for me. For me, that’s why I’m doing this. You understand?”
“Damn it, Mel, I’m trying to protect—”
“I don’t want your damn protection! I want your help. Y’know? Show me what to do. Help me pull it off. That kind of thing. Just quit worrying about me like I’m some kind of lost puppy.”
After a moment, I shook my head. “Fine. I won’t protect. But there is such a thing as covering your trail. Making sure we get away clean. That all right with you?”
She nodded as we pulled into the space before the mobile home and parked the car. She turned off the ignition, and we sat there a moment staring up at the single porch light glowing above the door. I could see she was trembling.
“It’s not too late,” I said.
A quick intake of breath from her and I glanced at the door. Someone had pulled the curtain back and was peering at us from inside.
“It is now.” She got out of the car, reaching into the backseat for the shot gun before I could stop her. I felt the hard steel of the .38 still pressing into my back, not that it’d do me any good now.
“Shh!” I hissed. “Wait.”
I hurried to the front of the car to block the view from the front porch even as she straightened with shot gun in her hands. The front door opened, and a woman’s voice said, “Mel? That you?”
“Hey Mom,” she said, coming up beside me.
The woman held the door open, frowning in my direction. “Who the hell is this?”
I smiled weakly. Mel moved passed me and climbed the steps. “This is my new friend. He’s helping me out with something.”
“Hi,” I said.
The woman ignored me, following Melissa as she passed through the front door. “What’ve you got there? Is that a gun?”
From inside, I heard Melissa say, “Come on in, Gerrold.”
I mounted the steps and passed by the bewildered Mrs. Cooper.
Chapter 29
The trailer felt cramped. The mess in its interior reminded me of just about every other trailer I’d ever been in. A kitchen was on the right, with a sink below the window at front of the trailer, and a fridge and stove grouped between cheap, pressed board cabinets. A dividing counter separated the kitchen from the living area, and at the far left corner of the room, a narrow hallway led to the bathroom and three bedrooms. Somewhere in the hall I expected I’d find a panel box, with the furnace in the wall behind it. Probably next to the closet with the washer and dryer.
Clutter filled the interior, with a load of half-folded laundry sitting on the couch and some of it spilling out onto the armrests and back. Empty cans of Budweiser and an ash tray with a cigarette still smoldering in it occupied the low table beside the couch. A half-empty bag of Funions lay forgotten on the floor below the table. Dirty dishes and leftover pots of uneaten food took up the kitchen sink and stove top.
The television was tuned to some hospital drama about young interns trying to have sex with the doctors they studied under. I’d seen the show myself once or twice. Everyone on it was far more beautiful and rich than people are in real life. Pure escapist fantasy. From what I could see of her life, Mrs. Cooper needed it.
Mrs. Cooper barely glanced at me. Her eyes were transfixed on the shot gun Mel carried. Melissa had dropped onto the couch and sat cradling the gun on her lap.
“Why have you brought a gun in my house?”
“Is Robert home?”
“You know he’s not. This is his bowling night.”
“Gerrold, would you like a beer?”
I pressed my lips into a thin smile. “I’m all set. Thanks.”
Mrs. Cooper looked at me now, clearly annoyed at my presence, but unsure whether or not to address me directly. “Melissa Jane Cooper, I demand to know who this man is, and why you’ve brought that—that thing into my house!”
Mel checked her watch. “He’ll probably be about an hour,” she said, smiling apologetically at me.
So much for in and out, I thought. “Maybe I will have that beer.”
“Should be a case under the sink.”
I slipped into the kitchen and opened the cabinet, readily finding the red cardboard case with the beer inside. I pulled one out, and after a moment, thought, drinking age be damned. I grabbed a second one for the girl. I also spied some tools that looked immediately useful. I drew them out and contemplated them. We might have to wait a while, I realized, but the longer we waited with Melissa’s Mom demanding answers, the more difficult this would get. I closed the cabinet and stood. This had to be done now.
In th
e living area, Mrs. Cooper had broken whatever spell had kept her rooted to the floor and was leaning toward Melissa, haranguing the girl. “What in the hell is going on?!”
I slipped up behind her, and before she could turn around I struck her in the back of the head with the pipe wrench I’d found under the sink. She crumpled to the floor as Mel screeched at the violence. I tossed the beer cans into Mel’s lap then took the duct tape I’d grabbed from the cabinet and secured Mrs. Cooper’s wrists behind her back, followed by her feet. This done, I snagged a pair of underwear from the laundry on the couch and stuffed it into her mouth, and then wound the tape around her head before tearing it free.
Mel stared at us on the floor. Her mouth hung open, and all the color had drained from her face. I rose from her mother’s body and sat next to the girl on the couch. After taking one of the beers out of her lap and popping the top, I handed it to her and took the second one for myself.
“S-she’s—”
“No.” I cut her off. “Just unconscious, I think.”
“The b-blood!”
I caught my breath, studying the crimson that oozed from the back of her mother’s head. I’d hit her on the base of her neck, and the impact had opened a nasty gash, but it wasn’t bleeding profusely.
“Could be worse. You okay?”
After a second, she lifted the beer to her lips and took a long swallow. I tipped it away from her face. “Easy.”
Her hands fumbled with the can. “I-I’m okay. I just—I’m okay.”
“It ain’t gonna get any easier.”
When she didn’t respond, I stood and grabbed one of the pillows from the couch. Gun in hand, I pressed the pillow over the back of her mother’s head, jabbed the gun into the center and cocked the hammer. I looked at Mel.
“Will it hurt?” she said.
“She won’t feel a thing.”
Mel nodded.
In some ways, this was the hardest kill I’ve ever made. It wasn’t done in the heat of the moment, like the bailiff or the judge, and it wasn’t a dumb accident like the farmer. And it was utterly unlike anything I’d ever done in service to my country.
This was cold-blooded, premeditated murder.
The gun made a muffled pop when I squeezed the trigger, no louder than a plate breaking on the floor. The pillow absorbed the muzzle flash and most of the sound. If I’d been using a semi-automatic pistol, it might’ve been even quieter. Despite this, Mel jumped when the gun went off.
After a minute, I put two fingers against the woman’s neck, checking for a pulse. She was dead. I left the pillow where it lay, obscuring her face, and returned to the couch. Mel was still trembling, but she managed to tear her eyes off her mother’s body and look at me.
“That’s it?” she said.
I nodded slowly. “That’s it.”
“I thought it’d be harder.”
“It’s plenty hard enough,” I growled, sipping my beer. A second later, Mel doubled over, vomiting on the floor. I held her hair away from her face with one hand until the heaving stopped. “Told ya.”
“Oh God,” she moaned, still spitting bile, “I’ve made a mess.”
“No problem. I don’t think she’ll mind.”
She straightened, still staring at the corpse, looking like a deer caught in the headlights. “Do we have to just leave her there?”
“We can put a blanket over her if it’ll make you feel better.”
She nodded quickly. “Yeah. I think it might.”
After a moment, I said, “Why don’t you go fetch one?”
She rose and hurried to the back bedroom. I watched her scurry down the hall, and then picked up the shotgun and carried it into the kitchen. I put the gun on the table and started rummaging through the kitchen. It didn’t take long to find the matches, along with a box of corn meal and an unused mason jar. From the smoke detector I pulled down the battery and tore out the leads, and then retrieved her step-father’s hacksaw from the tool box under the sink.
Melissa came back in the room still carrying the blanket, staring quizzically at me. “What are you doing?”
“Making a detonator. You wanted to burn the place, right? Easiest way to do that is to crank the gas and light it. We can’t be here when that goes off, though.”
“Corn meal?”
I smiled thinly. “Trust me. And bring me a light bulb—an incandescent, not one of those Chinese spiral jobbies,” I added when she took the blanket into the living room and covered her Mom. She returned a moment later bulb in hand, and took a seat facing away from the body in the next room.
“How much longer till your step-dad gets home?” I said as I stripped the filament from the light bulb.
She glanced at the clock above the sink behind me. “Thirty minutes.”
She watched, fascinated, as I worked. I built the fuse from the matchstick and the filament, and then created a switch from a pair of wires I ran through the lid of the Mason jar. I took apart a mousetrap and cut the base down to size, then wrapped it in aluminum foil to create the rest of the switch. Lastly, I attached the matchstick fuse and battery to the top of the lid with a bit of tape and set it aside.
“So how does it work?”
I picked up the corn meal and poured it into the jar, filling one third of it. “When we’re ready to go, we crank the gas with the pilot lights out here and in the back. Break the lines if we have to. Then we fill the jar with water to about here.” I put my finger on the two-thirds mark. “Cap it off with our fuse and leave.”
“And then what?”
“Corn meal absorbs the water. Pushes the float up to the battery leads. Once it makes contact, it lights the filament, ignites the match.”
“And blows up the house.”
“Yep.”
She traced a finger along the jar. “How’d you learn to do this?”
“Corps. We learned to do a lot with stuff you find around the house. Things that’d put MacGyver to shame.”
“Who?”
I laughed. “Forget it. It was before your time.”
She rose and opened one of the cabinets, pulling out a bottle of bourbon and a pack of cigarettes.
“What are you doing?”
She set the bottle on the counter. “I think I’m entitled.”
“All right.” I pulled a pair of glasses from the drying rack and set them on the counter. “Just one. Then you gotta get your stuff together and get ready to go.”
“I’m gonna need more than one,” she said, lighting the cigarette. I snagged one from the pack and stuck it between my lips.
“Not till we’re done. We’ll take the bottle with us.”
I poured a pair of stiff shots and spun the tumbler over to her before capping the bottle. We clicked glasses before downing the bourbon. I felt it warm my throat all the way down.
“One more,” she said, pushing her glass to me. I smiled, took her glass from her, and put it in the sink.
“Later.”
In her eyes, I saw a brief glimpse of the raw fear that cowered behind the brave façade she wore—then it was gone again, lost behind a lopsided grin and a cloud of exhaled smoke. I’d wanted to believe I could save her, somehow rescue her innocence from those who’d betrayed it, but in that moment I knew that Melissa would never be a child again.
I should’ve known better than to harbor such an illusion.
The lights of a car flared briefly in the window outside the trailer, and we heard the sound of the vehicle come to a stop next to Melissa’s Civic. The engine stopped and a moment later, the door slammed shut.
I crushed out my cigarette and put my hand on the shotgun even as Melissa’s palm closed around it. The expression in her eyes was one of pure hatred.
“Not this.” I shook my head. “It makes too much noise.” I set my pistol in front of her and picked up the pipe wrench. “I’ll wait behind the door. You need to be the second thing he sees when he comes in.”
“I want him to know it was me.”
> I heard him coming up the steps. There was no time to argue. I gritted my teeth and hid behind the door.
The knob turned more slowly than I thought possible. It felt like we were caught in epoxy, the moment hardening around us, immobilizing us. Abruptly, the door swung open and a large man slipped into the room. His bowling bag dropped heavy to the floor as he stared at the blanketed form on the carpet. He hadn’t quite cleared the door, and I dared not move.
That’s when I heard the second set of footsteps on the stairs.
Chapter 30
“Hey Bob, whassup?” said a voice behind the man who’d come through the door. I turned to Mel, both our eyes wide. She hadn’t moved since her step-dad walked in. I’d left the shot gun on the table—too far away to reach now—and if the girl tried to pick it up she risked drawing attention to herself.
The door beside me opened further, pressing me back to the wall as Bob’s partner stepped into the trailer.
“What the hell is this?” the man said. His boots made a heavy noise when he came inside. “Dude, that’s your wife.” He swore. “She’s dead, man. We gotta call the cops. Somebody killed her!”
Mel clicked the hammer back on the .38, and for the first time since entering the home, Bob moved. I could hear him breathing from the other side of the door.
“You,” he said. “What did you do?”
“G-get down on your knees!”
He took a step toward her. “You dumb bitch! What did you do?”
I hit the door with my shoulder, shoving it closed and swinging overhand with the pipe wrench. The man knelt over Mrs. Cooper, staring first at Mel and then at me as I bore down on him. I barely had time to correct my swing. The wrench caught him on the crown of his head. He crumpled hard to the ground, eyes rolling into the back of his head as he hit the floor. I felt a heavy grip on my shoulder, yanking me backward. I spun and saw Bob’s eyes wide in fury. He grabbed the wrench from my hand, balling his other fist and swinging at my face. A loud pop filled the room, and his punch faltered. His expression changed from fury to confusion. He dropped the wrench, his hand going to his ribs. Blood pooled along the side of his shirt.
Spilled Milk, no. 1 Page 17