We're in Trouble

by Christopher Coake

  [We’re looking at the graffiti wall, see photos.]

  But by this time Jenny would have been . . . she would have been screaming, so we know Wayne didn’t catch the rest of them unawares. Jenny might have called out that Daddy was home before Wayne shot her; hell, this place is in the middle of nowhere, and it was nighttime, so they all knew a car had pulled up. What I’m saying is, I’m guessing there was a lot of confusion at this juncture, a lot of shouting. There’s a bullet hole at waist height on the wall opposite the front door. My best guess is that Danny ran to the door and was in front of it when Wayne opened it. He could have been looking into the kitchen, at his . . . at his mother, or at the door. I think Wayne took a shot at him from the doorway and missed. Danny ran into the living room, and since Mrs. Murray hadn’t tried to struggle to her feet, Wayne shot her next. He took one shot and hit her. Then he shot Danny. Danny was behind the Christmas tree; he probably ran there to hide. Wayne took three shots into the tree, and one of them, or I guess Danny’s struggles, knocked it sideways off its base. But he got Danny, shot his own boy in the head just over his left ear.

  [Were looking through a door off the dining room; inside is a small room maybe ten by nine, see photos.]

  This was a playroom. Mr. Murray and Alex, the two-year-old, were in it. Mr. Murray reacted pretty quick to the shots, for a guy his age—but he was a vet, and he hunted, so he probably would have been moving at the sound of the first gunshot. He opened that window—

  [A boarded window on the rear of the house, see photos.]

  —which, ah, used to look out behind the garage, and he dropped Alex through it into the snowdrift beneath. Then he got himself through. Though not without some trouble. The autopsy showed he had a broken wrist, which we figure he broke getting out. But it’s still a remarkable thing. I hope you write that. Mr. Murray tried his best to save Alex.

  [I’ll certainly note it. Wayne’s parents also mentioned him.]

  Well, good. Good.

  Sam and Alex got about fifty yards away, toward the woods. Wayne probably went to the doorway of the playroom and saw the window open. He ran back outside, around the west corner of the house, and shot Sam in the back right about where the garden was. There wasn’t a lot of light, but the house lights were all on, and if I remember right the bodies were just about at the limit of what you could see from that corner. So Sam almost made it out of range. But I don’t know if he could have got very far once he was in the trees. He was strong for a guy his age, but it was snowy, and neither he or the boy had coats, and it was about ten degrees out that night. Plus Wayne meant to kill everybody, and I think he would have tracked them.

  Sam died instantly. Wayne got him in the heart. He fell and the boy didn’t go any farther. Wayne walked about fifty feet out and fired a few shots, and one of them got Alex through the neck. Wayne never went any closer. Either he knew he’d killed them both, or he figured the cold would finish the job for him if he hadn’t. Maybe he couldn’t look. I don’t know.

  [We’re in the living room again, at the foot of the stairs.]

  He went back inside and shut the door behind him. I think he was confronted by the dog, Kodiak, on the stairs, there on the landing. He shot the dog, probably from where you’re standing. Then—

  [We’re looking into the kitchen again.]

  —Wayne went to the kitchen and shot—he shot Jenny a second time. The killing shot. We found her facedown. Wayne stood over her and fired from a distance of less than an inch. The bullet went in the back of her head just above the neck. He held her down with his boot on her shoulder. We know because she was wearing a white sweater and he left a bloodstain on it that held the imprint of his boot sole.

  He called my house at 9:16. You’ve seen the transcript.

  [How did he sound? On the phone?]

  Oh, Jesus. I’d say upset, but not hysterical. Like he was out of breath, I guess.

  [Will you tell me again what he said?]

  Hell. Do you really need me to repeat it?

  [If you can.]

  Well . . . he said, Larry, it’s Wayne. I said, Hey Wayne, Merry Christmas, or something like that. And then he said, No time, Larry, this is a business call. And I said, What’s wrong? And he said, Larry, I killed Jenny and the kids and my in-laws, and as soon as I hang up, I’m going to kill myself. And I said something like, Are you joking? And then he hung up. That’s it. I got in the cruiser and drove up here as fast as I could.

  [You were first on the scene?]

  Yeah. Yeah, I was. I called it in on the way, it took me a while to—to remember. I saw blood through the front windows, and I called for backup as soon as I did. I went inside. I looked around . . . and saw . . . everyone but Sam and Alex. It took me . . .

  [Sheriff?]

  No, it’s all right. I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t in great shape, which I guess you can imagine, but after a couple of minutes I found the window open in the playroom. I was out with—with Sam and Alex when the deputies arrived.

  [But you found Wayne first?]

  Right, yes. I looked for him right off. For all I knew he was still alive.

  [Where was he?]

  Down in here.

  [We’re looking into a door opening off the kitchen; it looks like—the basement?]

  Yeah. Wayne killed himself in his workroom. That was his favorite place, where he went for privacy. We used to drink down there, play darts. He sat in a corner and shot himself with a small handgun, which he purchased along with the rifle. It was the only shot he fired from it. He’d shut the basement door behind him.

  . . . You want to see down there?

  THEY SAT for a while in the cruiser, afterward. Thompkins had brought a thermos of coffee, which touched Patricia; the coffee was terrible, but at least it was warm. She held the cup in her hands in front of the dashboard vents. Thompkins chewed his thumbnail and looked at the house.

  Why did he do it? she asked him.

  Hmm?

  Why did Wayne do it?

  I don’t know.

  You don’t have any theories?

  No.

  He said it quickly, an obvious lie. Patricia watched his face and said, I called around after talking with his parents. Wayne was way behind on his loan payments. If he hadn’t worked at the bank already, this place would have been repossessed.

  Maybe, Thompkins said, and sipped his coffee. But half the farms you see out here are in the hole, and no one’s slaughtered their entire family over it.

  Patricia watched him while he said this. Thompkins kept his big face neutral, but he didn’t look at her. His ears were pink with cold.

  Wayne’s mother, she said, told me she thought that Jenny might have had affairs.

  Yeah. I heard that, too.

  Any truth to it?

  Adultery’s not against the law. So I don’t concern myself with it.

  But surely you’ve heard something.

  Well, Ms. Pike, I have the same answer as before. People have been sleeping around on each other out here for a lot longer than I’ve had this job, and no one ever killed their family over it.

  Thompkins put on his seat belt.

  Besides, he said, if you were a man who’d slept with Jenny Sullivan, would you say anything about it? You wouldn’t, not now. So no, I don’t know for sure. And frankly, I wouldn’t tell you if I did.

  Why?

  Because I knew Jenny, and she was a good woman. She was my prom date, for Christ’s sake. I stood up at her and Wayne’s wedding. Jenny was always straight, and she was smart. If she had an affair, that was her business. But it’s not mine now, and it’s not yours.

  It would be motive, Patricia said softly.

  I took the bodies out of that house, Thompkins said, putting the cruiser into reverse. I took my friends out. I felt their necks to see if they were alive. I saw what Wayne did. There’s no reason good enough. No one could have wronged him enough to make him do what he did. I don’t care what it was.

  He turned the cruise
r around; the trees rushed by, and Patricia gripped her coffee with both hands to keep it from spilling. She’d heard speeches like this before. Someone’s brains get opened up, and there’s always some backcountry cop who puts his hand to his heart and pretends the poor soul still has any privacy.

  There’s always a reason, she said.

  Thompkins smirked without humor; the cruiser bounced up and down.

  Then I’m sure you’ll come up with something, he said.

  December 25, 1975

  In the evening, just past sundown, Larry went out to the Sullivan house again. He and the staties had finished with the scene earlier in the day—there hadn’t been much to investigate, really; Wayne had confessed in his phone call, yet Larry had told his deputies to take pictures anyway, to collect what evidence they could. And then all day reporters had come out for pictures, and some of the townspeople had stopped by to gawk, or to ask if anything needed doing, so Larry decided to keep the house under guard. Truth be told, he and the men needed something to do; watching the house was better than fielding questions in town.

  When Larry pulled up in front of the house, his deputy, Troy Bowen, was sitting behind the wheel of his cruiser by the garage, reading a paperback. Larry flashed his lights, and Bowen got out and ambled over to Larry’s car, hands in his armpits.

  Hey Larry, he said. What’s up?

  Slow night, Larry said—which was true enough. He said, Go get dinner. I’ll cover until Albie gets here.

  That’s not till midnight, Bowen said, but his face was open and grateful.

  I might as well be out here. It’s all I’m thinking about anyway.

  Yeah, that’s what I thought. But I don’t mind saying it gives me the willies. You’re welcome to it.

  When Bowen’s cruiser was gone, Larry stood for a moment on the front stoop, hands in his pockets. Crime-scene tape was strung over the doorway, in a big haphazard X; Bowen had done it after the bodies were removed, sniffling and red-eyed. It had been his first murder scene. The electricity was still on; the little fake lantern hanging over the door was shining. Larry took a couple of breaths and then fumbled out a copy of the house key. He unlocked the door, ducked under the caution tape, and went inside.

  He turned on the living-room light and there everything was, as he’d left it this afternoon. His heart thumped. What else had he expected? That it would all be gone? That it hadn’t really happened? It had. Here were the outlines. The bloodstains on the living-room carpet, and on the landing. The light from the living room just shone into the kitchen; he could see the dark swirls on the linoleum, too. Already a smell was in the air. The furnace was still on, and the blood and the smaller pieces of remains were starting to turn. The place would go bad if Wayne’s folks didn’t have the house cleaned up soon. Larry didn’t want to have that talk with them, but he’d call them tomorrow—he knew a service in Indianapolis that took care of things like this. All the same he turned off the thermostat.

  He asked himself why he cared. Surely no one would ever live in this place again. What did it matter?

  But it did, somehow.

  He walked into the family room. The tree was canted sideways, knocked partway out of its base. He went to the wall behind it, stepping over stains, careful not to disturb anything. The lights on the tree were still plugged into the wall outlet. He squatted, straddling a collapsing pile of presents, then leaned forward and pulled the cord. The tree might go up, especially with its trunk out of water.

  Larry looked up at the wall and put his hand over his mouth; he’d been trying to avoid looking right at anything, but he’d done it now. Just a few inches in front of him, on the wall, was the spot where Danny had been shot. The bullet had gone right through his head. He’d given Danny a couple of rides in the cruiser, and now here the boy was: matted blood, strands of hair—

  He breathed through his fingers and looked down at the presents. He’d seen blood before, he’d seen all kinds of deaths, mostly on the sides of highways, but twice because of bullets to the head. He told himself to pretend it was no different. He tried to focus, made himself pick out words on the presents’ tags.

  No help there. Wayne had bought gifts for them all. To Danny, From Daddy. To Mommy, From Daddy. All written in Wayne’s blocky letters. Jesus H.

  Larry knew he should go, just go out and sit in his cruiser until midnight, but he couldn’t help himself. He picked up one of Jenny’s presents, a small one that had slid almost completely under the couch, and sat down in the dining room with the box on his lap. He shouldn’t do this, it was wrong, but really—who was left to know that a present was missing? Larry wasn’t family, but he was close enough—he had some rights here. Who, besides him, would ever unwrap them? The presents belonged to Wayne’s parents now. Would they want to see what their son had bought for the family he’d butchered? Not if they had any sense at all.

  Larry went into the kitchen, looking down only to step where the rusty smears weren’t. Under the sink he found garbage bags; he took one and shook it open.

  He sat back down in the dining room. The gift was only a few inches square, wrapped in gold foil paper. Larry slid a finger under a taped seam, then carefully tore the paper away. Inside was a small, light cardboard box, also taped. He could see Wayne’s fingerprint caught in the tape glue. He slit the tape with his thumbnail, then held the lid lightly between his palms and shook out the container onto his lap.

  Wayne had bought Jenny lingerie. A silk camisole and matching panty, in red, folded small.

  Jenny liked red. Her skin took to it, somehow; she was always a little pink. The bust of the camisole was transparent, lacy. She would look impossible in it. That was Jenny, though. She could slip on a T-shirt and look like your best pal. Or she could put on a little lipstick and do her hair and wear a dress, and she’d look like she ought to be up on a movie screen someplace. Larry ran his fingers over the silk. He wondered if Wayne had touched the lingerie this way, too, and what he might have been thinking when he did. Did he know, when he bought it? When had he found out?

  Don’t be coy with me, Wayne had said, on the phone. He’d called Larry at his house; Emily would have picked up if her hands weren’t soapy with dishwater. Larry watched her scrub at the roast pan while he listened. I know, Wayne said. I followed you to the motel. I just shot her, Larry. I shot her in the head.

  Larry dumped the lingerie and the wrappings into the garbage bag.

  He took the bag upstairs with him, turning off the living-room light behind him and turning on the one in the stairwell. He had to cling tight to the banister to get past the spot where Wayne had shot the dog—a big husky named Kodiak, rheumy-eyed and arthritic. Kodiak didn’t care much for the children, who tried to uncurl his tail, so most of the time he slept in a giant basket in the sewing room upstairs. He must have jumped awake at the sound of gunshots. He would have smelled what was wrong right away. Jenny had gotten him as a puppy during high school—Larry had been dating her then; he remembered sitting on the kitchen floor with her at her parents’ house, the dog skidding happily back and forth between them. Kodiak had grown old loving Jenny. He must have stood on the landing and growled and barked at Wayne, before Wayne shot him. Larry had seen dogs driven vicious by bloodshed; it turned on switches in their heads. He hoped Kodiak had at least made a lunge for Wayne, before getting shot.

  Larry walked into Wayne and Jenny’s bedroom. He’d been in it before. Just once. Wayne had gone to Chicago on business, and the kids were at a friend’s, and Jenny called Larry—at the station. She told dispatch she thought she saw someone in the woods, maybe a hunter, and would the sheriff swing by and run him off? That was smart of her. That way Larry could go in broad daylight and smoke in the living room and drink a cup of coffee, and no one would say boo.

  And, as it turned out, Jenny could set his coffee down on the dining-room table, and then waggle her fingers at him from the foot of the stairs. And he could get hard just at the sight of her doing it, Jenny Sullivan smiling
at him in sweatpants and an old T-shirt.

  And upstairs she could say, Not the bed.

  They’d stood together in front of the mirror over the low bureau, Jenny bent forward, both of them with their pants pulled down mid-thigh, and Larry gritting his teeth just to last a few minutes. Halfway through he took his hat from the bureau top—he’d brought it upstairs with them and couldn’t remember why—and set it on her head, and she’d looked up and met his eyes in the mirror, and both of them were laughing when they started to come. Jenny’s laugh turned into something like a shriek. He said, I never heard you sound like that before, and Jenny said, I’ve never sounded like that before. Not in this room. She said, This house has never heard anything like it. And when she said it, it was like the house was Wayne, like somehow he’d walked in. They both turned serious and sheepish—Jenny’s mouth got small and grim—and they’d separated, pulled their clothes up, pulled themselves together.

  Now Larry went through the drawers of the bureau, trying to remember what Jenny wore that day. The blue sweatpants. The Butler Bulldogs shirt. Bright pink socks—he remembered her feet, going up the stairs ahead of him. He found a pair that seemed right, rolled tight together. Silk panties, robin’s-egg blue. He found a fluffy red thing that she used to keep her ponytail together. Little fake-ruby earrings in a ceramic seashell. He smelled through the perfumes next to her vanity and found one he liked and remembered, and sprayed it on the clothes, heavily . . . it would fade over time, and if it was too strong now, in ten years it wouldn’t be.

  He packed all of it into the plastic bag from the kitchen.

  Then he sat at the foot of the bed, eyes closed, for a long few minutes. He could hear his own breath. His eyes stung. He looked at the backs of his hands and concentrated on keeping steady. He thought about the sound of Wayne’s voice when he called. I left her sexy for you, Larry.