Myles swung the Panzer-sized cruiser onto the macadam lane behind the Mercury and accelerated.
The patrol car smashed into the Mercury’s rear end, its left taillight shattering. David’s car fishtailed, its roof shiny in the moonlight. Before it got traction Myles rammed it again, this time sending its right side careening onto the sloping shoulder. The gravel gave way under the Mercury’s weight. Myles watched as David’s car tumbled end over end, rested at the foot of the decline.
He pulled the cruiser over.
Knowing the lynch mob would be driving back this way to return to town, Myles hustled down the slope, moved around the side of the Mercury, which sat upside down against a tree. David lay unconscious inside the smoking hull, his blood staining the spiderwebbed glass.
Myles forced open the passenger’s door, took care not to upset the balance of the car, which teetered as he climbed inside. His brother’s forehead was a bloody mess, a deep scarlet gash running from his nose to his hairline. Myles put a finger to David’s neck, felt a pulse, very faint.
Then, he put his hands over his brother’s mouth and nose, waited until the breathing ceased.
Reaching into David’s pocket, he retrieved a silver lighter. Climbing out, he flicked the lighter, held it over the exposed chassis, which glimmered in the starshine. Leaning closer, he saw a flicker and took off up the slope. The fire spread over the side of the car, engulfing it within seconds.
As he stepped toward the cruiser he perceived headlamps growing from the direction of the quarry. Multiple sets of them. Myles climbed into the police car, started it up. In the rearview he beheld a pair of brights less than a hundred yards away. He stomped on the gas, worked the wheel to give the patrol car some traction. Behind him, the oncoming lights reached out, sought his rear bumper. He got the car under control, sped off down the country road, putting distance between him and the car behind him. Then, he saw a flash of light, heard the Mercury explode. The cars behind him stopped to see what was happening.
Soon, Myles rolled to a stop outside Watermere. Its brick façade had never looked so good.
He expected to find Annabel in the master suite, but she wasn’t there. He searched the library for her but it was empty. The den, the kitchen. Then he was outside again, the August heat baking his skin, and for the third time that night, he saw flames.
Near the wood’s edge, in the back corner of the yard, stood Annabel, naked. Myles moved toward her, ready to tell her she belonged to him now, to rape her if necessary.
Tall, thin, she watched the flames. Her golden hair flowed over her shoulders, down her smooth pale back. He stared at her over the fire, her blond pubis shimmering in the heat, her nipples red and hard.
Myles said, “I killed him.”
She smiled drowsily. “I know.”
“I mean I killed David. I killed your husband.”
“I know.”
He stared at her, wondering at her tone of voice. But she was always a mystery to him. “You knew I would kill David tonight?”
“I knew you’d make it happen eventually.”
In his throat was a thickness. He swallowed it.
“And how do you feel about that?” he asked her.
“Does it matter?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but her nakedness, her long curving body, silenced him. He had to avert his eyes, so he stared at the circle of flames between them, the little ring no wider than a washtub.
“You going tell me what you’re burning?”
“Things,” she said.
“Whose things?”
“David’s.”
“Because he’s dead now?”
“Because they had blood on them that wouldn’t come out.”
He stopped, bit his lip. “McCabe’s dead too.”
Annabel stood silent.
“It’s just as well,” he went on. “There won’t be a bunch of damn children playing on our porch now while we entertain.”
“Oh no?” she asked.
“People will feel safe to leave their kids with sitters now that McCabe’s dead.”
“McCabe didn’t hurt anyone.”
Myles gazed at her, her shimmering smile.
“Say that again?”
Annabel watched him over the flames.
He asked, “Why did David’s clothes have blood on them?”
“I think you know the answer to that.” Her eyes lowering to the smoldering clothes, the scorched handle of the hunting knife.
“David would never do that. He’d never murder a child.”
“He would for me.”
Myles felt the tightening in his throat, fought it back. He strode around the circle of flame and belted her with the back of his hand. She dropped down laughing and lay in a bed of grass.
“Shut up,” he said, but she went on.
“Shut up,” he said, louder this time. Annabel only hugged herself, her mouth bloody.
“God damn you.”
He pounced on her, splayed her apart. He rammed her as she lay beneath him laughing and when he was spent he rolled over, stared with shiny eyes at the moon and hated her and still she laughed.
Later, as they lay in bed in the early dawn light, he went down on her, made her writhe and cry out. Shortly after that, there was a knock at the door and a shouting. Myles put on his boxer shorts to answer it.
Sheriff Ledford stood on the porch, fists clenched.
“Help you, Sheriff?” Myles asked and leaned in the doorway.
“Wipe that sorry ass grin off your face and get in the car.”
Myles nodded toward the cruiser, in which sat one of Ledford’s deputies. The other one was pulling away in the car they’d ridden up in.
“See you got your car back.”
“I told you to wipe that shit-eatin’ grin off your face.” Ledford fingered the butt of his holstered revolver. “Listen, Carver. You’re gonna burn for what you did to your brother. We all know what happened out there.”
“Funny you mention burning, Sheriff. Seems to me we’ve both killed tonight, haven’t we?” Myles scratched his belly, yawned. “Only difference I can see, there’re witnesses to yours. Mine, well, it might have just been an accident. Careless driving.”
“I’m not letting you off,” Ledford said. His sullen face was unusually animated.
“Oh you’re not? You’re going to tell a judge how I got to be in your car, how you got to be out at McCabe’s? You really want them snooping around his shack, find his body, the bullet you put in his brain?”
Ledford stepped toward him, jaw trembling. “Why you son of a bitch.”
“I’m not the one killed a man tonight, Sheriff. I’m just a grieving loved one whose brother passed on.”
“You son of a bitch,” Ledford repeated.
“’Night, Sheriff,” Myles said and nodded at Ledford. Then he shut the door and went up to Annabel’s room, where they made love on David’s side of the bed.
The End
Paul set the final page upside down on the stack. He’d not numbered the pages, but he was sure the tale was novel-length. And even as he fought off the nausea the narrative brought on, he wondered whether it were publishable.
For one thing there wasn’t a single likeable character in the whole story. He felt sorry for McCabe, but that didn’t make the gardener someone an audience could hang its hat on. Myles and David were scumbags, lechers and murderers.
Annabel was another story.
She was awful, inexorable. But she fascinated him too. He wished his uncle hadn’t destroyed all evidence of her. Paul wanted to see her, see this woman who led others to murder and betrayal. A woman like that, she had to be a goddess, primal beauty and infinite evil in equal parts.
Paul left the den. It felt good to get out of there, to escape the curdled semen smell and breathe other air. Though he’d done his best to clean up the vomit, the room still reeked of it.
When he got to the library he stopped, listened. The scrabbling sounds we
re furious, louder than they’d ever been. His eyes darted nervously to the wall, expecting at any moment a pair of claws to scratch through, a floodgate opening and a tide of great black rats spilling out, a brood of rats tumbling onto the hardwood floor, the ragged hole in the wall broadening like a vagina giving birth.
Shivering, he continued on down the hall. The story pursued him. It was terrible, but did that make it unmarketable? And if the events chronicled in The Monkey Killer were true, did that change anything?
He thought of the gravestone then, the scarring and the blood-red spray paint. WHORE. DEVIL. BURN IN HELL. Those epithets could only be intended for one person. If that grave belonged to Annabel, if the things he’d written last night were true, she deserved to be called those things and worse. Though Maria was the only person she’d physically murdered, she was responsible for seven others: the five children, McCabe, her own husband. And since she was alive at novel’s end, who else had she gone on to kill?
She was the true villain, and if The Monkey Killer revealed that to the world, who would protest? She was dead, her remaining relatives would not claim her, and who could blame them? For the first time Paul understood why his family never spoke of Myles, David, or the woman who’d married them both.
He’d make copies of the manuscript, send them out, and if they were rejected, what had he lost? But if some editor liked it, at least some good would come out of the tragedies. His bank account would get fatter, and everyone back home would know he was a published author. He thought of throwing the hardback version of The Monkey Killer at his father’s feet and laughing in his condescending face.
In the ballroom he poured himself a vodka to take the edge off. As the liquid slid down, a question wormed its way through his headache.
But he didn’t care to speculate about where his inspiration had come from or what had guided his hand, so he capped the vodka bottle, plucked his keys from the kitchen table and drove to town to research markets for his novel.
Chapter Fourteen
February, 1982
Cold as hell outside and stuck in here with his brother-in-law. Sam Barlow wondered why he bothered to visit Addie at all. His little sister spent all her time breastfeeding her twin boys, so he had to sit in the basement listening to his brother-in-law’s stories. The guy was insufferable. Sam couldn’t decide which of Raymond’s two habits were worse, his answering his own questions or his insistence on talking about the hell he’d raised as a younger man. As a state trooper Sam had precious few vacation days. Why he wasted them sitting in a basement with a blowhard jackass, he’d never know.
“Were we drunker’n shit?” his brother-in-law was asking. “You bet your ass!” Guffawing like driving drunk down Shadeland’s main drag was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “Me and Fogerty, we were so shit-faced we couldn’t see ten feet in front of us, but we still made it to the tavern.”
Sam regarded Raymond sourly, wishing he’d give it a rest but knowing the asshole was just getting started. Raymond stared back at him, smiling with his mouth, his eyes daring Sam to say something, to judge him. What a creep, Sam thought. Not even noon yet, the guy already half soused. His poor wife upstairs with a baby on each teat, her sack of shit husband telling stories about the laws he’d broken, the women he’d screwed. Sam looked at the guy’s weak chin, his receding hairline, wondered how he’d ever talked girls into sleeping with him.
“So I says to this redhead—and believe me, Sammy Boy, she was a true redhead—‘You wanna have a little party? You, me, an’ Fogerty here?’”
Sam rubbed his eyes, wished Addie would get done nursing so he could spend some time with her. Raymond prattling on about pulling a three-way with the redhead, all the time calling him Sammy Boy. The guy never stopped talking, only paused occasionally to break violent, reeking wind. Raymond had gotten to the part where he was riding the lady doggy style, slapping the redhead’s ass while she gave Fogerty a blowjob, and Sam knew he had to get out of there.
He stood. “I’m heading into town.”
“Great,” Raymond said, standing. “I’d like to see what’s shaking down at Redman’s Bar. Shoot me some pool.”
Sam thought of telling him no, he was going to the library instead, knowing that would put the guy off, but then he thought of Raymond here alone with Addie and the twins, drunker than drunk and telling his stories to her. How did she ever get mixed up with a guy like this?
“Alright,” he said. “But leave the rest of that six-pack here.”
Raymond slapped him on the back. “What’s the matter, Sammy Boy? That badge makin’ you feel uptight? I ain’t gonna get us arrested.”
Sam drove them to town in Raymond’s rusted out Ford. The heater barely worked, and Sam could see the road below them through holes in the floorboard. His brother-in-law told him about a time he and Fogerty had set off cherry bombs outside the police station, daring Sam with his eyes to say something about it, tell him what a crazy guy he was. Instead, he held his tongue until they got to the bar, Raymond switching gears, telling dead baby jokes as they went inside.
Sam saw her the moment he walked in.
Long dark hair, cheekbones like an Indian princess. She stood there at the bar looking uncomfortable, not seeing him yet. Raymond was asking how many dead babies it took to feed an alligator, but Sam no longer heard. The bartender offered the girl a cigarette, hitting on her. She shook her head, stared at the slice of lemon on the napkin beside her glass of water. A million pick-up lines raced through Sam’s head as he approached. Dismissing them all he wondered what she was doing here, in this dive, in the middle of a weekday. She looked like she should be in the movies, not sitting at a bar alone in this little burg. The jukebox played Merle Haggard, a song Sam didn’t like. Raymond was droning on behind him. Back to his heyday again.
“Did we give a shit there were pigs sitting two tables over? Hell no we didn’t! Fogerty says to the faggot waiter, you’ll bring us another pitcher or I’ll shove this empty one up your ass. One of the cops, he gives me a look, but I just stare back at him like ‘what the fuck you gonna do about it?’ Waiter, he goes off an—”
“Shut your mouth for a second, Raymond,” Sam said and stared his brother-in-law down. He was a full six inches taller, so that as he talked, his breath made the remaining hairs on Raymond’s forehead wiggle.
“I’ve put up with your bullshit stories for two days. Your jokes about babies in blenders and how many colored guys does it take to screw in a lightbulb—”
“Now listen,” Raymond said, hiking up his jeans.
“No, you listen, you stupid sack of shit. You’re my sister’s husband and I’ve got to be nice to you. Why she married your dumb ass I’ll never know, but now you two have children, so I guess I’m stuck with you.”
Raymond took a step forward, breathed beer fumes up at him. “What makes you think you can talk to me like that? That fuckin’ badge in your wallet?”
Sam stayed put, stayed on top of his cresting anger. “You know what your problem is Raymond? No, you don’t. You’ll never know so there’s no point in me breaking you in half.” Sam poked him once in the chest, hard, lowered his voice so no one would hear. “But if you ever—and I mean ever—lay hands on Addie or the boys, I swear to God I’ll rip out your liver and feed it to you. You hear me?”
Raymond’s eyes shined, and he no longer smiled. He seemed about to say something, changed his mind and trudged over to the pool tables where two old men were playing eight ball.
When Sam turned, the girl was staring at him. He’d forgotten about her, so seeing her there at the bar was a surprise. She had the most striking green eyes, glittering jade ovals that reminded him of jungle creatures, jaguars or panthers maybe.
“You sitting with anyone?” he managed to say.
“Not at the moment.”
“Someone’s meeting you here.”
“My ride’s picking me up in a few minutes.”
“You mind if I sit with you until your r
ide comes?”
Her eyes were very large. “As long as you don’t rip out my liver and feed it to me.”
He scratched his chin. “You heard that?”
She moved a thumb up and down her glass of water. “You talk to all your relatives that way?”
He smiled, sat on the stool beside her. “Uh-uh. Only Raymond. He’s the only one brings it out of me.”
They peered across the bar at him. Raymond had lit a cigarette, sat on a stool with a pool cue poised on his knees. A waitress swaggered up to him, took his order. Raymond stared at her ass as she moved away.
“He’s quite a catch,” the girl said.
“Oh, we really lucked out when Addie chose him,” Sam agreed.
“So you’re a policeman?”
“Yeah. I’m a state trooper.” He motioned to the bartender, who looked at him blandly. “Budweiser, please. This isn’t my territory, though,” he went on. “I’m here on vacation.”
“Great choice.”
“It’s the new Jamaica,” he said and she smiled at him.
There was a pause.
“Sam Barlow,” he said and offered his hand.
“Barbara Merrow.”
He took the beer from the bartender, paid and told him to keep the change.
“Where is your territory?” she asked.
“North of here. What about you?” he asked. “What brings you to Shadeland?”
“I just graduated from nursing school. There was a job opportunity here, so I took it.”
He sipped his beer, watched her dark skin in the neon glow coming from a royal blue Michelob sign. “What kind of opportunity?”
“An individual who requires a lot of care.”
“You only have one patient?”
“Yes.”
“Who is she?” he asked, then added, “Sorry. That’s probably confidential, huh?”
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