A Long December

by Richard Chizmar

  I steered onto a gravel road that paralleled the creek for some distance and followed it until it turned into rutted, frozen dirt. Once I reached an enormous dead tree that looked like it had been struck by lightning, its bark blackened and peeling, I pulled over onto the grass and turned off the car.

  I had come to this spot with Jimmy several times, when we were both in the mood to cast a line but didn’t feel like driving very far. I remembered that we had used corn and cheese balls for bait, hoping for a fat cat or carp. Mostly, we had just talked and laughed and enjoyed the breeze and each other’s company.

  I sat there and ate my lunch and, despite the ninety minute interview I had just completed, it felt like this was the first time I’d had to take a deep breath and really think about my friend and the things he had been accused of.

  Jimmy a murderer? A serial killer?! How was that even possible? This was a man I considered a part of my own family; a man I had seen almost every day for the past eight years. Wouldn’t I have known…something?

  I finished eating and made a mental note to throw away the trash before I got home and Katy saw it. The last thing I needed right now was another lecture about my cholesterol. I took a last look at the slow-moving water and started the car. As I backed up onto the dirt road and pulled away, I realized that I’d forgotten to mention this particular fishing spot to the detective.

  “The detective said they could either come tonight or tomorrow night. I said tomorrow.”

  “They?”

  Katy was in the kitchen, making a salad at the big granite island she liked so much. The entire house smelled of her homemade tomato sauce.

  “Her and her partner, she said. I felt like I was in an episode of CSI or something.”

  “That’s what this morning at the station felt like. Like I was in a bad movie.”

  Sensing my exhaustion, Katy came over and hugged me, resting her head against my chest. “You should’ve heard Grant when I told him. He was so upset. He said he’s going to call you tomorrow morning.”

  “I keep thinking about some of the questions she asked. Did Jimmy travel a lot? Did I ever see anything suspicious? Did I ever see him sneaking around?”

  “You poor baby.” She gave me a good squeeze and returned to her salad. “I’m not looking forward to tomorrow night.”

  “It’ll be okay, I’ll be with you.” She smiled and quickly looked away, and I could tell there was something else on her mind. “What are you thinking?”

  Her hands started working faster, and I realized she was nervous. “Honey?”

  She stopped and looked at me. “It’s nothing, really.”

  “Tell me.”

  Deep breath. “I know how you feel about Jimmy…how we all feel about him.”

  “But?”

  “No buts, nothing like that. It’s just…when you said that, about the questions the detective asked you…”

  “Which one?”

  She glanced down at her hands for a moment, then met my eyes. “About if you had ever seen him sneaking around.”

  I pushed off the counter where I was leaning and walked closer. “Did you?”

  “Just…once.”

  “Jesus, honey, what did you see?”

  “It’s probably nothing.” She shrugged, but I could see the tension in her face. “I was raking leaves in the back yard and the rake broke.”

  “I remember. Last fall”

  “Well, I went next door to ask Jimmy if I could borrow his rake to finish the job, and his garage door was open. I guess I was kinda quiet about it because he didn’t hear me walking up. He was down on his knees, stretching to reach something behind his work bench. I coughed to get his attention, and when he turned and saw me…”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was…just the look on his face, Bobby. He looked so angry and…mean. It was like he was someone else for a second or two, and then it was gone, and he was Jimmy again.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yeah, I told you it was probably nothing…but it was weird. It felt weird.”

  It was my turn to shrug my shoulders. “Could’ve been any number of things. A shitty day, or probably you just scared him.”

  She started to answer, and the phone rang. She grabbed the cordless from the counter behind her. “Hello? Hello?” She clicked it off. “No one there.”

  The conversation broken, she went back to finishing the salad, and I went back to salivating over her homemade pasta and sauce.

  Three hours later, fat and sleepy, I laid in bed waiting for the eleven o’clock news to come on, and pretended I could understand what Katy was saying as she tried to talk and brush her teeth at the same time.

  “Yes, dear. You’re right, honey.”

  She rinsed her mouth and spit into the sink. “Oh, hush it. You don’t even know what I just said.”

  I smiled. It was a nightly game we played, and it felt like a nice, warm, safety blanket after all that had happened recently in our world.

  Katy turned off the light in the bathroom and settled into the bed next to me, taking her book from the nightstand. She had just enough time to finish a couple pages before the news came on.

  Jimmy, of course, was the lead story.

  As the Channel 11 anchor, a skinny, blonde with the unlikely name of Jessica Jones, did her best to sound intelligent, a photograph flashed on the screen behind her. It was a photo I had never seen before, most likely from a college faculty picnic: Jimmy, dressed casually in shorts and a t-shirt, captured in mid-throw, a Frisbee in his right hand. His arms looked strong and muscular, his face tan and intense, and I knew that was why the station had selected the picture.

  Jessica Jones smoothly threw coverage to her reporter on the street, and a tall, black man with a microphone in his hand took over. I resisted the urge to look out the window and watch it live.

  “Police, today, are reporting that evidence found inside James Wilkinson’s house now indicate that there are at least three victims. That’s right, three. Police officials refused to say whether this new discovery stemmed from human remains or any additional forensic findings, but…”

  “Jesus,” I whispered, and Katy reached for my hand.

  “Earlier this afternoon,” the reporter continued, “I talked to one of James Wilkinson’s colleagues at Washington College.”

  The screen flashed to a daytime shot with the college administration building framed in the background. The reporter towered over a middle-aged, bald man dressed in a tan sport coat.

  “I’m standing here with Professor Jeremiah Robbins, head of the Washington College history department. Professor, I guess this has all come as a huge shock to you and your department…”

  The Professor shook his head to demonstrate the severity of his disapproval. “That would be an understatement, to say the least. We are shocked and outraged at these findings.”

  Reporter: “And before this, how was Mr. Wilkinson viewed by his fellow teachers and students?”

  Robbins: “I think it’s very important to remember that James Wilkinson was merely a part-time employee of this institution. He did not carry a full class load and was actually only here on campus three days each week…”

  Katy sat up in bed. “Those bastards are scrambling to distance themselves in any way they can.”

  “It’s gonna get worse,” I said.

  Jessica Jones was back on the screen now: “After a quick commercial break, we will talk to one of James Wilkinson’s neighbors about the latest findings…”

  “Ugh, turn it off, Bobby. I bet you anything it’s that bitch, Frannie Ellis. She must’ve called me five times today. I don’t know who’s worse, her or her perv of a husband.”

  I grabbed the remote control—and the telephone rang.

  “Speak of the devil,” Katy sighed. “I bet she’s calling to tell us”—mimicking a high-pitched, annoying voice—“she’s going to be on television.”

  I laughed at my wife’s antics and muted the television. I
picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  No response.

  “Hello?”

  No one there.

  “Last time. Hello?”

  I hung up.

  “Thank God for small blessings,” Katy said.

  And then Frannie Ellis’s chubby face was filling our television screen, eyes as big as quarters, mouth moving with superhuman speed.

  “Ugh,” Katy groaned, and rolled over to go to sleep.

  Thursday, Dec 5

  The number of reporters in front of the house was down by at least half, and I made it to work the next morning with little trouble.

  For the first half of the day, I distracted myself with catch-up phone calls and purchase orders, and it worked just fine. Co-workers interrupted a few times to ask questions—“Don’t you live on Hanson Road, Bob? How well did you know the guy?”—but they were easy enough to blow off.

  Grant called during his lunch break, and I talked him out of coming home early. Finish your exams and then come home, I told him. We’ll catch up then.

  But, by lunchtime, I found myself glancing out the second floor window at the park below, daydreaming about Jimmy. And, as the afternoon passed, I found myself surfing the internet in an attempt to answer the questions I had bouncing around inside my head.

  I clicked the mouse and studied their faces carefully.

  Jeffrey Dahmer.

  Click.

  Ted Bundy.

  Click.

  Arthur Shawcross.

  Click.

  John Wayne Gacy.

  Click.

  Dozens of victims. Murdered. Tortured. Butchered. Sometimes even eaten.

  And the killers all looked so normal.

  I found none of the answers I was searching for, and when four o’clock rolled around, I couldn’t sign offline and get out of there fast enough.

  As I was pulling out of the parking lot, a news teaser came on the car radio, promising another update on the hour about “the James Wilkinson Murders”—“more victim information and an alleged Wilkinson sighting in Virginia”—and I switched it off and drove in silence.

  At a stoplight, I glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed a blue car behind me. I saw it again ten minutes later on the interstate. I wondered if it was following me.

  Christ, it’s getting to you, I thought. Making you paranoid.

  I exited the interstate and drove the several miles home checking the rearview. I didn’t see the blue car again.

  “I understand that you’re often at home during the day, Mrs. Howard. Have you ever noticed any strange or unusual comings or goings next door?”

  The four of us were seated in the den. Katy and I side by side on the sofa. Detective Anderson and her partner, Detective Hynd, on matching chairs centered in front of the fireplace. Detective Hynd looked like he’d just walked off a television cop show: tall, stocky, crew cut, with a first class poker face. The guy made me nervous.

  Katy had poured a cup of coffee for each of us. I had gone through mine in the first five minutes. Katy sipped at hers as she answered their questions. Neither detective had touched theirs.

  Katy shook her head. “No, I really didn’t. Jimmy was a creature of habit. I used to tease him about it all the time. I knew the days he worked at the college, and when he left the house on other days, I usually noticed his return within a couple hours.”

  “He never said anything inappropriate to you,” Detective Anderson asked. “Even joking?”

  “Never. Not once.”

  Detective Hynd this time: “Did he ever have any visitors that perhaps your husband didn’t know about because he was at work?”

  “Not that I saw, no. I mean, it’s possible, I guess. But pretty unlikely.”

  “I asked your husband to take his time and really think about this next question, and I’m asking the same of you, Mrs. Howard. In all the time that James Wilkinson was your next door neighbor, did you ever witness anything at all out of the ordinary, anything unsettling or suspicious?”

  Katy glanced away from the detectives, toward the large bay window that looked out over our front yard, body language I recognized as “leave me alone for a second, let me think.”

  When Katy finally looked back at Detective Anderson, she surprised me with her answer. “No. I can’t think of anything. I’m sorry.”

  I felt her leg press against mine with the slightest of pressure.

  “Well, that’s all we really have,” Detective Anderson said, getting to her feet. Detective Hynd followed suit, and I could feel him towering over me, even after Katy and I both stood up from the sofa.

  “We appreciate your help, especially at this hour and in your home.” Detective Anderson switched off her mini tape recorder and stuffed it into her jacket pocket.

  “You’re very welcome,” Katy said, and walked the two detectives to the front door.

  I kept waiting for Katy to tell me why she hadn’t told the police about what she’d seen in Jimmy’s garage, but I’d waited too long, and now she was sound asleep beside me.

  I watched her snore for a while, then rolled over on my side, trying to get comfortable. Sleep felt a long way off for me.

  My brain wouldn’t stop thinking. Why hadn’t she told the detectives? On one hand, I was glad she hadn’t told her story. It was probably nothing worth giving attention to. On the other hand, it bothered me—

  —because I had remembered something, too. A moment in time that I’d completely forgotten, a moment that perhaps never even registered in the first place…until I listened to Katy’s story about Jimmy in his garage…and then it all came back to me tonight.

  Jimmy and I had been sitting in the center field bleachers at Camden Yards watching the Orioles play the Red Sox. It had been a cloudless Sunday afternoon, and the O’s had been up by three runs in the top of the eighth inning. Six more outs and it went in the Win column.

  The only blemish on an otherwise perfect day had been the pair of redneck drunks sitting behind us. We had tolerated their loud, slurred voices and cursing; we had put up with their catcalls and x-rated harassment of the Red Sox centerfielder; and we’d even turned the other cheek to a spilled beer that had soaked the game program I’d carelessly left on the ground at my feet.

  But when one of them had spilled a full beer down the back of Jimmy’s shirt and reacted with laughter instead of an apology, we’d had enough. I’d shot to my feet and started to turn around, but before I could say a word, Jimmy was standing next to me, his face a mask of barely contained rage, the drunk’s neck grasped in Jimmy’s right hand.

  Before anything else could happen, two ushers were there to break it up and escort the drunks out of their seats. I remembered that the Orioles ended up blowing the lead, but won it in extra innings, and Jimmy and I had stopped at Chilis on the way home and stuffed ourselves sick with barbeque ribs.

  It’s funny the things you remember—and forget.

  Friday, Dec 6

  The sky was nothing but slate gray clouds, and it was starting to flurry as I drove out of my garage the next morning.

  I stopped at the bottom of the driveway and took the newspaper from the paper box. It was safe to do now; most of the press was gone at this early hour. The television crews would be back later this evening to report live from in front of Jimmy’s house, but when the around-the-clock police presence diminished so did the news vultures, as Katy now referred to them.

  I glanced at the newspaper on the way in and wished I hadn’t. Most of the front page was taken up by “the James Wilkinson murders” and the boldest headline read:

  KILLER STILL AT LARGE:

  POLICE PREDICT MORE VICTIMS

  I tossed the paper in the back seat. At least I had a busy day ahead of me at work. More than anything, I needed to redirect my brain away from images of Jimmy hiding something in his garage or losing his shit at an Orioles game. Both of which most likely meant nothing.

  I pulled into the office lot twenty minutes early and parked in my
usual spot. Only a handful of other vehicles had arrived ahead of me. I grabbed my briefcase and got out of the car—and nearly slipped on my ass.

  A thin coating of snow had already accumulated on the grassy surfaces, and was just now starting to stick to the pavement. I looked around to see if anyone had witnessed my near acrobatics, but I was alone in the parking lot. It was almost a peaceful sight with the falling snow and the hush of early morning stillness.

  Already thinking about my morning conference calls, I grabbed my briefcase from where I had dropped it and started to walk toward the entrance doors—

  —when a hand grabbed my shoulder from behind.

  “Bob.”

  I nearly screamed and did a cartwheel, my feet pinwheeling beneath me. Spinning around, I held out my briefcase protectively in front of me.

  “Hey, hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to spook you.”

  It was a man I had never seen before. My height. Curly hair. Glasses. Wearing an old Army jacket and holding a mini tape recorder.

  “My name is John Cavanaugh. From the Baltimore Sun. I just have some—”

  “No,” I said, unable to say more, trying to breathe again.

  “It’ll only take a minute, I promise.”

  I shook my head and started walking away from him.

  “According to neighbors, you were Wilkinson’s closest friend,” he said from behind me, hurrying to catch up. “I just want to know what he was like. The person inside the monster.”

  I stopped and turned on him. “The person inside the monster? Jesus. Leave me alone.”

  I started walking again, faster now.

  “Are you cooperating with the police, Mr. Howard? I understand they brought you in for questioning.”

  Questioning?

  I kept walking.

  “Your neighbors said you two were as thick as thieves. Is that true?”

  I reached the entrance to my building and walked inside, praying he wouldn’t follow. He didn’t, but just as the front door was swinging shut, I heard his final question: “Why are you protecting him?”