When the Day of Evil Comes

by Melanie Wells

  “Dylan Foster,” I said. “I’d like to talk to you about the Vendome hotel.”

  He hesitated.

  “And I brought some tapioca pudding.”

  “You talked to Pearl, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir, I did. May I come in?”

  “Only if you bring a spoon.”

  I went back to the nurse’s station and rustled up a spoon, popping the top on the tapioca as I sat down opposite Charles McMillan.

  He took a bite, which seemed to pacify him considerably.

  “What do you want?” he said, without looking up.

  “I want to ask you about a day in 1972,” I said. “The day the little boy fell off the balcony.”

  He looked up, his denim-blue eyes seeming to focus on me at last.

  “Joey Zocci,” he said to me.

  “Yes. You remember.”

  “Course I remember. Kid went flying off a balcony in my hotel. While I was on duty. I felt responsible. You have no idea.”

  I did, actually.

  “Who are you?” he snapped.

  “I’m a psychologist. His brother was a patient of mine. He jumped off a twelfth-floor balcony at the Vendome three weeks ago.”

  He swore and put his pudding down.

  “Do you remember the room number?” I asked him.

  “1220,” he said, without hesitating.

  I felt a chill start at my scalp and race down my spine.

  “How do you remember the number so clearly?” I asked. “Just because it was such a traumatic event?”

  “Fool family stayed in that room for twenty more years after that. The rest of the time I was at the Vendome. Probably still do.” He gestured with his spoon. “Not all the time. They didn’t live there, mind you. Some people do. After Joe Zocci made his money, they had some big estate in the country. But every time they came to the Vendome they stayed there. Same room.”

  “Why do you think they did that?” I asked.

  “Joe Zocci, that’s why.” He stabbed at the pudding.

  “Meaning?”

  “Man’s a tyrant. He did it to punish her. That’s what I think. That’s what I’ve always thought.”

  Her? My puzzle was falling apart. I wanted to blame Joe.

  “Punish whom?”

  “His wife. That Mariann.”

  “For what?”

  He kept his eyes on his pudding and continued stabbing at it.

  “No one has ever asked about this. And I’ve never talked about it. Never said a word to anyone.”

  He got up and shuffled around the room in his slippers, an arthritic version of pacing. “You see everything in the hotel business. Every little quirk these people have. They ask for raspberry Jell-O at 4:00 a.m. They need down pillows or feather pillows or those dang hypo allergy ones. They drink too much whiskey and throw up on the floor or leave their dirty underwear behind or watch smut on that dang cable they would never watch in their own homes.”

  He sat back down. “People do things when they’re away from home they don’t want anyone to know about. They are their worst selves. Absolutely their worst selves. And you don’t talk about it. You never say a word about any of it to anyone. You just don’t.” He jabbed his spoon in my direction. “No one has ever asked me about this.”

  “Asked what? About Mariann? Did she kill the little boy?”

  “No one knows what happened to that little boy,” he snapped.

  “Punish her for what then? Was she supposed to be watching him? Did he blame her for the accident?”

  “Have you met Joe Zocci?” He was almost shouting now.

  “Yes,” I said. “He’s a cruel man.”

  “Where was he on October 2, 1972? You ever ask him that?”

  “I assumed he was there. At the Vendome.”

  “Man’s a war hero.”

  And then it dawned on me. I’d read it in the newspaper articles in the Zoccis’ library that evening. Zocci had been shot down in Vietnam. In 1971. He’d spent the next two years chained to a wall in a prison in Hanoi.

  “He wasn’t at the Vendome that day, was he?”

  “No.”

  “Was Mariann alone?”

  “No.”

  “Was she with another man?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Mr. McMillan?”

  “I’ve never talked about it.”

  So that was it. Mariann Zocci had checked into the Vendome in 1972 with another man. While her husband was in prison in Vietnam. Their son had died that day. And Joseph Zocci had punished her for it for the rest of her life.

  “Who was it?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Mr. McMillan?”

  “Garret,” he said finally. “Name’s Garret.”

  30

  MARIANN HAD CHECKED into the Vendome alone, but had spent that weekend in 1972 with a man named Sheldon Garret, a New York businessman who had made his fortune in men’s clothing. That was all he knew, McMillan told me. He had neither seen nor heard from Garret since the day the little boy died.

  Garret’s name had never appeared on the hotel’s register. As far as McMillan knew, the police had not even known of his existence. No mention of him had ever appeared in the media.

  Mariann had never been accused of killing the boy. Or of neglect leading to his death. The investigation had wrapped up quickly, the death ruled an accident.

  Apparently, neither Mariann nor Garret had noticed Joey Zocci wander out onto the hotel balcony. The toddler had squeezed himself through the bars of the railing to retrieve a toy car that had rolled past the railing, and had then fallen twelve floors to his death.

  The Vendome had replaced all its balcony railings after the accident, closing the gap in the wrought iron to four inches from six.

  I thanked Mr. McMillan for his time and honesty and said my good-byes.

  “Next time bring whiskey,” was all he said to me as I left.

  I had no time to look for Sheldon Garret. But I had a hunch that if I tracked down Garret Industries, I would find him. I drove straight for the airport, surrendered my car, and then endured a marathon of security check-in procedures before falling asleep in the waiting area at my gate.

  The loudspeaker woke me up as they called my flight. I prayed for a safe return home as I boarded.

  The late run to Dallas from Chicago was surprisingly full, populated with hapless travelers like myself who would rather be anywhere but on a plane at 12:15 in the morning.

  I found myself in a middle seat—no doubt a consequence of my late ticket purchase—squeezed between a snoring teenager with truly astonishing body odor and a man at least twice my body weight He made no pretense of cramming himself into his own seat. He shoved the armrest up and lapped over onto me, his seatbelt popping off each time he tried to latch it. I got not so much as an “excuse me” out of the jerk for the entire two-and-a-half-hour flight. He just sat there taking up my space, daring me to say something.

  How could Jesus stand us, I wondered? We were an obnoxious lot.

  I’d fought enough battles for the time being, so I conceded wordlessly to the man, squeezing my elbows to my side and scooting over into about two-thirds of my seat in order to reclaim my thigh from his. I spent the flight reading the research that Cynthia, the reference librarian at SMU, had done on Garret Industries, which I hadn’t looked at until now. I discovered that many pieces of the puzzle had been in my possession the entire time I just hadn’t known what I was looking for.

  Garret Industries, Inc., was founded in 1968, the year Joe and Mariann had married, a joint venture between MAZco, Incorporated, and Sheldon Garret. MAZco, I was guessing, was owned by Joseph Zocci and, I suspected, named after Mariann Zocci. Which meant Joe Zocci had named his company after his wife, who had later, while he was in prison in Vietnam, had an affair with his business partner.

  The two men seemed to have a knack for sniffing out potential for profit and then going in for the kill. Garret Industries ha
d a number of interests, all seemingly unrelated to one another. It owned a fleet of cattle trucks in New Mexico and Colorado, hotels in Hawaii, and lumber mills in the Pacific Northwest, as well as a chain of clothing stores in the Midwest.

  Garret Industries had most recently, it seemed, developed an interest in drilling for oil in the Gulf states and in the Gulf of Mexico. That branch of Garret’s business had begun seven years ago, I gathered around the time Andy Zocci started his company.

  I flipped through the file, fascinated with the strange politics of the Zocci marriage. How had Mariann tolerated her husband’s staying in business with Sheldon Garret? It must have been a constant, daily reminder of her sin and of the terrible loss of her boy. The two men had obviously been business partners, perhaps even friends, before Zocci left for Vietnam. Had Mariann and Garret been involved in a prolonged affair? Had it ended the day Joey died? Did Joe Zocci ever find out that Garret was with her at the Vendome that day?

  My mind reeled with questions. But the questions would have to wait, because the plane was landing at last. I could not wait to get to my clean little house, throw myself into the tub, and then burrow under my high-thread-count sheets and my quilt. I’d probably be too excited to sleep.

  At the gate, the man next to me heaved himself out of the seat and walked away without a glance in my direction. I grabbed my carry-ons and made my way up the jetway, out of the airport, and back to my truck, which was waiting for me, all rusty and rumbly and familiar. The door opened silently, a welcome little surprise—I’d forgotten about the WD-40—and I drove through the Dallas night to my house, nodding with exhaustion as I went.

  My porch light was off. I couldn’t see a thing as I hauled my bags out of the truck and dropped them onto the porch. I stubbed my toe on something heavy and immovable as I unlocked the front door, swinging the door open and gasping, repulsed.

  The smell that greeted me was beyond foul. It was deviled eggs times ten thousand. Rotten deviled eggs. And old shoes. And the BO from the kid on the plane.

  Something buzzed past me as I flipped on the light. I didn’t need to get a look at it to know what it was.

  I covered my mouth and stepped into the house, leaving my bags on the porch and turning lights on as I went. Flies dotted the walls; a strange, pulsing, buzzing wallpaper, an occasional scout taking flight and humming through the nasty air around me. Their corpses were scattered over every surface. My normally spotless floors, table tops, counters were all covered with little pepper-black flecks, their nasty wings to the ground, hairy little insect-legs pointed at the ceiling.

  Peter Terry had thrown a temper tantrum.

  I walked through my trashed house, doing a quick inventory and determining that nothing was missing, though the glass on every picture of my mother or myself had been broken. I unlocked the buffet in the front room and found my mother’s ring, still in its little velvet pouch. The necklace had been in Chicago with me.

  Nothing was out of place. Not a single thing.

  Except my peace of mind. I wasn’t at peace in my own home. Peter Terry had seen to that.

  I couldn’t see him, but I could sense his presence everywhere. It was as palpable as the smell. I could feel him watching me, feel him enjoy my revulsion, almost hear his laughter.

  I was beginning to know him. Peter Terry was impulsive, rageful, mischievous. And cruelly calculating and deceitful. He had the whacked-out emotional capacity of a two-year-old on acid and the predatory mind of a serial killer. He had lied to my mother, seducing her into believing that he was just a fellow traveler, someone who would listen to her and who needed her advice. And he had lied to Erik Zocci, convincing the poor boy he was worthless. Nothing. That his life had no value. Now he was lying to Gavin. And he had set out, for some reason I might never understand, to destroy me.

  But he was absolutely not going to succeed. Not tonight. Not on my turf. I remembered Tony DeStefano’s words once again. As a child of the King, I was entitled to protection.

  I was exhausted, but there was no sleeping now. I couldn’t sleep in the house like this, and I had nowhere to go at nearly 2:00 a.m. I ran around the house, tossing out prayers as I went, throwing open all the doors and windows, airing the place out.

  I vacuumed and swept and mopped and dusted until I had rid my home of every last dead fly. I emptied two cans of bug spray killing flies. I broke my flyswatter, I swatted so many. I turned all my ceiling fans onto helicopter speed, creating a wind tunnel in that house that made it impossible for anything but a jet airplane to alight in there.

  By the time I was finished, the sun was coming up. The egg smell was almost gone, replaced by Pine-Sol and Windex and Lemon Pledge. The washing machine was humming with the third load of sheets. I had decided to wash everything in the house. I’d be doing laundry for days, probably.

  I was consecrating my home. Setting it apart for myself. Taking it back from the demon. He couldn’t have it. It was mine.

  I fixed myself a cup of tea, took a few aspirin, and settled down on my porch swing to rest. My eyes fell on the boxes my dad had shipped to me. My mother’s estate records, which had almost broken my toe in the dark six hours earlier. I hauled the boxes inside and stacked them in the corner of my dining room. I’d go through them this afternoon if I had the energy. I’d told my dad I’d call him about them before the weekend.

  All the fight went out of me as I sat back down on the porch swing and set my cup of tea on the porch railing beside me. The birds were singing their morning song, the sun heating up the day, and I was wilting. Not in defeat, but from fatigue.

  I laid myself down on the swing, my back flat on the wooden slats and my foot on the porch, rocking myself.

  I must have slept, and slept hard, because when I woke up, my face was sunburned and the sun was two hours higher in the sky It had to be at least nine o’clock. I went back inside and washed my teacup in the sink.

  All the flies were gone, as was the smell. And I had the feeling they would not be back. Maybe taking a stand against Peter Terry had liberated me. Maybe God had just decided to win the battle for me, as long as I was willing to show up and fight. I wasn’t sure. But my radar was quiet. Peter Terry wasn’t around. I was positive. He’d packed up and gone somewhere else.

  Even with all my pending legal problems, with my job hanging by a frayed piece of thread, my professional reputation on the line, and facing prosecution in the state of Illinois, I felt safe for the first time in days. Something had happened that had granted me, for however long, a thorough sense of peace.

  Once I realized I could stop moving for now, I discovered how truly exhausted I was. I felt like I could sleep for a week. I took a bath, fixed myself a peanut butter sandwich, and then snuggled myself into bed. With the drapes pulled tight, it was dark enough in my bedroom to sleep even in midday.

  I made it four hours. The phone woke me up at two o’clock in the afternoon.

  It was Liz Zocci.

  “Did I wake you?” she asked.

  “It’s okay. I was up all night.”

  “I’m sorry. I have some bad news.”

  I thought I’d won a reprieve from bad news.

  “What is it?”

  “Mariann is dead.”

  I was wide awake now.

  “Oh, Liz. What happened?”

  “She was dead in her hotel room this morning. In her bed. She had a plastic bag tied over her head.”

  “Liz, I’m so sorry.”

  I listened as she choked back tears. “She had a hard life,” she said at last.

  “I know.”

  She pulled herself back together. “Mariann called the police after you left last night. Detective Thornton. Who seems like a really good guy. He’ll probably be calling you today.”

  “Okay.”

  “She told him everything. She told him about all the years of abuse from Joe. How he’d beaten her and the kids. She gave him Erik’s journal. I guess you’d given it to her.”

  �
�Yeah. I found it in his dorm room.”

  “She read it. I think it made an impression on her. I think that’s what motivated her to call the detective. To stand up to Joe at last. Erik’s words. From the grave, I guess.”

  “You talked to Thornton, then?”

  “I spent the morning with him. I was the one who found her.”

  I pictured Liz walking into the room and finding her mother-in-law, still bruised from that beating, blue-faced underneath a collapsed plastic bag.

  “Was her pill bottle still beside her bed?” I asked.

  “Yes. It was about half full. I told him you had seen it there the night before.”

  “It had at least twenty pills in it when I left. Maybe she took them to get up the nerve to …” I let my voice trail off.

  “Thornton doesn’t think it’s suicide,” Liz said.

  “What else could it be?”

  “Joe’s been arrested.”

  “They think Joe killed her?”

  “And maybe Erik too.”

  I was too stunned to respond.

  “You’d asked me about Erik’s autopsy,” Liz was saying. “No one in the family ever saw it, it turns out. Maybe Joe had it suppressed or something. He’s so powerful. Who knows? But it was inconclusive. Erik died of trauma to the head and massive internal injuries. They never determined whether the head injuries were a result of his fall. Now they’re thinking Joe might have hit him. And then tossed him over the rail to cover it up. Thornton told me he thinks that could be why Joe was trying to blame Erik’s death on you.”

  “But why?”

  “In a scuffle, maybe. Joe is a violent man. Maybe Erik confronted him. Everyone else was afraid to.”

  My mind went back to the journal, to Erik’s agony over his mother’s passivity His musings that he might eventually need to do what she would not.

  Liz continued. “Since the police didn’t know about Joe’s history they never suspected foul play. But with Mariann telling her story to Thornton last night, and then turning up dead, he arrested Joe and charged him with her assault. They haven’t charged him yet with murder. And Erik’s case has been reopened.”

  “Wow.”