Broken Angels

by Неизвестный

  “We’re going to talk.” Kris stepped back to the sofa, picked up the shotgun, and tucked the stock loosely under her left arm. It was old and heavy; the name of the manufacturer, engraved on both barrels in an old style of lettering, wasn’t English.

  “You shot her with this.” Kris lifted the barrels slightly.

  Alvilde had transferred the bowl to her other hand and was looking at the drop of blood, turning her hand in the light. She glanced up, looked at the shotgun and then at Kris.

  “That was my grandfather’s. I brought it back from Denmark after he passed away and gave it to Loren. It hasn’t been used in years. Never in this country.”

  “Then you won’t mind if Barrett takes a look at it. And he’ll want to see the Italian shoe you had repaired; the one you broke the heel off of when you were climbing out of the creek. He’ll also be interested in the blue woolen suit you were wearing that day, to see if the fibers he found on the bushes match it. And I have the money you gave Vern and the card you wrote your number on. Barrett’ll get those too.”

  “Do as you wish, child. May I put my dish in the sink without being attacked?” she asked. She stepped out of her heels.

  Kris moved toward her, the gun under her arm, the knife still in her right hand, frustrated at Alvilde’s cool.

  “I know why you killed her,” she said. “Loren raped her. Your husband raped my mother, and you didn’t want anybody to know. It’s kind of tough being on the board of this and the board of that when you’re married to a rapist.” Kris lifted the knife and pressed it gently under Alvilde’s chin.

  Alvilde looked down at her, her eyes clear. “Puts you in an awkward position, doesn’t it Kris?”

  Kris had no warning.

  Alvilde dropped the dish and with both hands grabbed the barrel of the shotgun, wrenching it out from under Kris’s arm. Without pausing, she stepped back, swinging the heavy gun over her shoulder, and then down at Kris. Kris, stalled for an instant in surprise, ducked to her right. The stock glanced off her shoulder and slammed into the side of her head. She stumbled across the floor, stunned. Alvilde swung again and hit her in the back, crashing her into a wall. Kris fell, rolled, tried to push herself up but her shoulder gave out and she collapsed on the floor, gasping for air.

  Alvilde raced up the stairs, her stocking feet padding noiselessly. Kris panted, dragged herself to her hands and knees, fumbled on the floor for the knife, and picked herself up. The blood drained from her head and her vision clouded. She fell against the wall, breathing hard, then pushed herself off, her vision clearing as she moved to the stairway. She looked up; light from an open door lit the ceiling of the upstairs hall. Grasping the railing, she pulled herself up the stairs, ran down the hall and into the lighted room at the back of the house.

  Alvilde was standing by a wooden desk. A box of shotgun shells was dumped on the desktop. In one hand, she held the gun, open at the breech, and with the other, she slid two cartridges into the barrels, snapped the gun shut, and turned smoothly to face Kris.

  Kris stopped, her brain still reeling from the blow, and stared at the gun barrels leveled at her.

  “Come in,” Alvilde said, her breathing already under control. She pointed the gun to the center of the room.

  Kris walked in. Against the far wall was a twin bed set under a narrow window, at its foot a clothes drawer. It was her bedroom, Kris realized, and she slept alone, Lambale wouldn’t have fit in the bed. Kris looked back at the gun, the shells on the desk, and then back at Alvilde.

  “Pretty cocky keeping all that in the house,” she said.

  “No one would suspect me,” Alvilde said. “You were very clever to work it out.” She held the gun in both hands, the stock resting on her hip; the barrels steady. “It wasn’t Loren’s fault when he attacked your mother. He was young. They were drunk, the others pushed him on.”

  “It was his dick,” Kris said. “No one made him put it anywhere he didn’t want it to go.”

  Alvilde waited for her to finish. “It was a long time ago, and Loren has spent most of our married life helping poor women like you. Those new rooms at the AWARE shelter are only there because of him.”

  “Made him famous; he’s the big man in town,” Kris said.

  Alvilde looked at her levelly. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. He has done more than any normal man would have done to atone for it.”

  Kris snorted.

  Alvilde ignored her. “Then your mother came, out of nowhere, after all these years, because she saw his picture in the paper. She wanted money, from me, because she knew Loren would have confessed, publicly. That thing he did, it rotted in his soul. And I gave her money—”

  “It was Vern wanting the money. It wasn’t Evie.”

  “Of course not,” Alvilde said. “She wasn’t competent to do it herself. But Vern couldn’t do it without her, she was his only evidence, and I wasn’t going to let a drunk destroy my family. The rape just wasn’t that important.”

  “She was my mother,” Kris said.

  “And who are you?” Alvilde asked without malice. “An uneducated girl working for Mexicans? Be reasonable, Kris, you are nothing.”

  Alvilde straightened and lifted the gun. “I will claim self defense,” she said. “You broke into my house and attacked me. You should have gone home; there was nothing you could have done here.”

  Kris looked at Alvilde’s finger on the triggers, then into Alvilde’s eyes—there was no doubt or hesitation in them.

  “Shooting me with the same gun that shot Evie’s going to be difficult to explain.”

  “You brought it into the house. I don’t know where you found it.” Alvilde’s eyes narrowed slightly as her finger tightened on the triggers.

  Up on the road, a car door slammed and feet pounded on the wooden stairs. Alvilde tilted her head slightly to listen. Kris threw herself to the side, out the line of fire, bounced off the wall, pushing hard, and hurtled back at Alvilde.

  Alvilde whipped the gun around and fired.

  __________

  Barrett was ten steps down the staircase when he heard the shotgun blast.

  “Shit.” He spun around and ran back up the stairs, shoving Justin against the railing as he passed him. “Back here with me,” he shouted. He pitched open the car door and grabbed the radio mike.

  “Barrett. 10-69. Shotgun fire from private residence. Casualties unknown.” He gave the Lambale address.

  Barrett rehooked the mike. Backup was minutes away. He wasn’t going to wait. He flipped off the safety on his revolver, the .38 he’d used before buying the automatic, and glanced through the windshield looking for Justin. The stairs down to the house were directly in front of him.

  They were empty.

  __________

  The barrel exploded; the powder blast scorched her cheek and shot sliced through her jacket sleeve. Deafened, ears thundering, Kris lunged past the shotgun and into Alvilde, crashing her into the desk. She wrapped her arms around Alvilde’s waist, her head pressed against the silk smoothness of Alvilde’s blouse, and hung on. Her right eye burned; she squeezed both shut. The blast roared inside her head, her breath burned like acid in her throat; she clutched Alvilde desperately, trying to recover.

  She was hit. The force of it stunned her. Alvilde stretched again and contracted convulsively, driving the shotgun’s stock into Kris’s back. Again. Kris shuddered; pain exploded in her upper back, an arm went numb. She heaved, lifting Alvilde, spun and threw her across the room. Kris forced her eyes open, the one blurred and weeping, and saw Alvilde hop, and stagger across the floor trying to stay upright in her tight skirt. It ripped to her waist, and a pale stockinged leg thrust out struggling for balance; it missed, and Alvilde sprawled violently on the floor, her head snapping back as she hit, the shotgun tight in her hands.

  Kris, still deafened, half-blinded, ran toward her. From the floor, Alvilde snapped the gun up and aimed. Kris dove to the floor, rolling hard. The gun tracked her. She hit the wall
and struggled frantically to her feet. The door—she wasn’t going to make it.

  “Kris!”

  Holy shit, Justin.

  “Kris!” It came from the ocean side of the house, the glass doors.

  Kris froze against the wall, five feet from the door. The barrels steadied.

  “Up here,” she yelled, fear and relief shaking her voice.

  “It’s Justin,” she said, turning to Alvilde. “He knows, too. He knows about the shoes and the rape, he’s the one who found the money.” Kris gulped air. Don’t sound desperate.

  Lithe and controlled, Alvilde climbed to her feet.

  Justin’s feet sounded on the stairs.

  “Shoot me, and you still get nailed for Evie.” Kris struggled to keep her voice even.

  Feet ran down the hall. Justin burst through the door and stood there, chest heaving, and stared at Alvilde.

  “Drop it, Alvilde,” he said. “There’s nowhere for you—.”

  Alvilde turned, lifted the barrels, and pulled the second trigger.

  The gun fired again, and Justin disappeared as if he were plucked from the room.

  The door was empty. Kris stared, stunned. The blast reverberated in her ears. A foot in a white Nike slid slowly back through the door and into the room. It didn’t twitch.

  Alvilde was back at the desk, the gun open, pulling out the spent shells and ramming fresh cartridges into the barrels. She didn’t have a chance.

  Kris charged across the room and wrenched the gun from her hands and hurled it under the bed. She grabbed the belt of Alvilde’s skirt, pitched her around, and tripped her. Alvilde landed on her back, rolled, and Kris fell on her, pinning her face-down on the floor. Unable to move, Alvilde went limp.

  Kris let her breathing slow, then locked her fingers in Alvilde’s hair, and pulled her head back. She pressed her elbow into the joint of Alvilde’s jaw and levered her weight into her forearm, forcing Alvilde’s face into the carpet. Alvilde’s mouth puckered open like a fish’s and her breath whistled faintly between her teeth.

  Leaning on her arm, Kris looked down at her. Alvilde’s eyes stared forward along the line of the floor toward the far wall. They blinked when they needed to blink; there was no fear in them. A line of saliva hung from her lower lip. Kris looked at the whiteness of her scalp through her yellow hair and then at her ear with the small gold earring hanging from the lobe and the tiny hairs in the ear hole. The ear hole was clean. Under the skin on her neck a vein pulsed. Slow, steady, rhythmic.

  Kris reached down and pulled the paring knife from her back pocket and traced its steel point along the soft rise of the beating vein.

  What did she want? Justice? Vengeance?

  Alvilde lay quietly, waiting.

  What was this woman to her? So certain, so superior. Who had killed Evie and Justin. She pressed the steel into Alvilde’s neck and then released it, watching the pocked skin smooth out. She had killed to protect her family, her kids, like Ben’s old grizzly sow, the one he had to shoot to…

  Ben.

  Kris went cold, as if ice water had surged into her chest. He knew.

  Alvilde heaved, tore her head out from under Kris’s forearm, and, twisting her body, tried to bring her hands up. Shocked back to awareness, Kris pushed the knife against Alvilde’s throat. A line of blood rolled down the white skin and dripped onto the floor. Defeated, Alvilde went limp again.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Kris said quietly. “Just mark you.” Without pressure, she drew a line with the tip of the knife from her eye down to her jaw, then lifted the blade, and crossed it with a second line. “When people see these scars, they will know you for what you are, a murderer married to a rapist.”

  Alvilde’s eyes shifted, and she blinked fast, once. Kris lowered her head in front of Alvilde’s face and looked into her eyes, but Alvilde focused into the distance, ignoring her, and Kris knew that Alvilde would never acknowledge her.

  From the first floor, she heard the glass door slide in its track. Startled, she caught her breath and listened. It was quiet, but she could feel someone else in the house.

  Moving fast, Kris shifted her elbow above Alvilde’s ear and, extending her forefinger along the spine of the knife, pressed it hard into the skin below the corner of Alvilde’s eye. Alvilde stiffened, but stayed quiet as Kris drew the knife down her cheek. The skin parted easily and blood welled up and flowed from the line of the cut and onto her nose. The flare of her nostril dammed the flow for a moment before it spilled over and ran down her upper lip.

  She started the second cut –

  The Nike twitched.

  Adrenaline jolted into her; she jerked the blade from Alvilde’s cheek and stared at the foot. It twitched again. Then Justin whimpered, faintly and full of pain.

  Savagely, Kris finished the cut, slicing the skin from jaw to cheek bone. Kris felt a tremor. Alvilde gasped once, sucking blood into her mouth. Her lips stayed open; blood and saliva ran onto the carpet. Kris rolled off her and ran softly across the room to the door, stepping over Justin’s leg into the hallway. He was sprawled across the floor, head and shoulders half propped against the opposite wall. Bone, filmed by blood, glistened in the light from Alvilde’s room. His right shoulder looked like it’d been chewed by dogs; blood trickled down his jacket and soaked into the carpet. She stepped on it and the carpet squished.

  “Justin,” she whispered, kneeling at his side and putting her lips to his ear. “Who’s in the house?”

  His face was dirty white, like glacier snow, and his breath caught on shit in his chest. “Barrett,” he breathed.

  Kris could barely hear him.

  “How the fuck did you get in front of him?” Suddenly she was furious; as angry as she’d ever been at anybody in her life.

  He turned his head, grimaced, his eyes not focusing. “Get you.”

  “Bullshit.” She struggled to keep her anger, felt it drain, then surge away, like spring floodwaters blowing through an ice dam.

  He closed his eyes, moaned. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

  “You want to get laid that bad?” Kris said, her sarcasm empty, not able to hide the concern in her voice.

  “I guess.” The corner of his mouth tightened.

  “Shit, Justin,” she said.

  He took a breath. “’S OK. I can work a computer with one hand.”

  She touched it, the fingers sickly warm and lifeless.

  “Not bra hooks,” she said.

  “Don’t be too easy.”

  A stair squeaked. Kris tensed, looking down the hall.

  “Got to go?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” She mouthed the words and let go of his hand. Leaning into his ear, she whispered, “I’ll be there when you wake up.” Crawling carefully over his legs, she hurried back into the bedroom. Alvilde was sitting up, leaning on an arm propped against the floor, her stockinged legs splayed to her side, the ripped skirt bunched up underneath her.

  Kris squatted in front of her. Blood ran out of the cuts and dripped off her jaw and onto her blouse. Alvilde looked at her now, but her eyes were blank. “Barrett’s coming up the stairs,” she whispered. “He knows, too. Leave Justin alone.” She hesitated. Had Ben shielded Alvilde because he thought she was protecting her kids? Was that Ben’s law? The law of nature—whatever it takes to stay alive. It was one Kris understood. Or was Ben protecting the kids—to stop the pain from spreading, like a disease, outward from Evie?

  Or was there something else?

  Kris didn’t know, but she had no anger left. She lifted her hand and touched Alvilde’s bloody cheek. “She was my mother,” she said, gently.

  Kris heard another creak on the stairs and looked up in alarm. Justin moaned. Was he giving her time? Quickly, she crossed the room to the bed, dropped the knife onto the white covering, and climbed onto it to reach the window. It was tall and narrow and opened sideways like a door. She wiped the blood on her hands on the curtain and then pulled the window open. There was a bug screen across it
; she found the fasteners, popped them, and pitched the screen into the night. Kris sat on the sill, stuck both feet through the window and flipped around, supporting herself with her arms, facing back into the room. Alvilde, still sitting on the floor, lifted her eyes and looked at her. She was crying silently, her face expressionless, the tears on her left cheek turning watery red as they mixed with blood. Through the door, Kris saw Justin, slumped against the hall wall, his skin chalky gray, watching her. She nodded.

  Kris slid down the outside of the house, but it was set deeply into the mountainside and her feet touched ground before her head dropped below the bottom edge of the window. In the distance, she heard sirens. She turned and looked again into the room. Alvilde was on her hands and knees crawling across the floor. Except for Justin, the doorway was empty. The sirens wailed closer. Alvilde crawled behind the bed, out of sight, and Kris waited for her to re-emerge. When she did, she stood, rising slowly, the shotgun in her hand.

  Kris opened her mouth to scream a warning to Barrett, but Alvilde, her short hair wild, her blouse ripped at the throat and pulled out of the waist of her skirt, turned away from the open door and walked to the desk, lifted the chair, which had been knocked over, and set it on its feet. The chair faced into the room. She sat in it, moving slowly, as if her arms and legs were stiff and heavy. She planted the gun on the floor between her knees, shuffling the butt a little farther out from the chair, bent at the waist, and rested her chin on the barrels. Her hand fell blindly down the gun to the triggers.

  Alvilde’s eyes shifted, focused.

  Kris followed them and saw Barrett standing in the door, a pistol in his hand dropping slowly to his side, his mouth opening.

  Alvilde pulled the triggers.

  __________

  Kris staggered away from the window. Alvilde’s head—Kris slipped on the wet grass, fell to her hands and knees—had exploded.

  The sirens were screaming above her now. Up on the road cars pulled off braking hard, doors slammed and the sirens died, their howls winding down into the night’s background clutter. Trees stood massive and shadowy on the mountainside behind the house. Kris scrambled into them and crouched behind a trunk, clinging with both hands to the deeply-ridged bark as feet thundered down the wooden steps. Between the trees, she saw legs flash by the knee-high lights that lit the stairway. A voice barked orders.