by Ray Garton
They go on talking until she becomes distracted and quiet. He says nothing for a while and lets her masturbate.
I have to look away. Horror and rage and guilt mix badly in my stomach, like three kinds of cheap liquor. I am not supposed to see what’s on the screen. I don’t want to see it. But there she is, for all the world to watch. I clutch the small plastic armrests of the chair, squeeze and pull them so hard they creak. My fingers become numb, wrists hurt, but it keeps me from crying out. From throwing up.
They’re talking again. I turn my head slowly toward the screen—not all the way, though—eyes narrowed down to razor-thin slits, hand ready to cover them. The way I used to watch scary movies as a kid.
“You look like you’re really into that,” he says.
She turns on her side with a shrill squeal, presses her legs together. Says something into the cushion.
“What?”
“I said I forgot you were there.”
“Well, don’t stop now. Looked like you were getting close.”
She sits up, tries to continue, but is overtaken by giggles.
The camera wobbles as he approaches her. “You just need something to take your mind off the camera,” he says.
“Like that big bulge in your pants?” she asks with a laugh, pointing at his crotch.
He turns the camera down so we can see his erection pressing against denim.
“Well, you said you like doing it, Tiffany.”
“I do.” As she leans forward, she looks up at the camera with a naughty, teasing smile. It’s a face I have never seen before. A face I was never meant to see.
She unfastens his jeans easily, pulls them down, and when his penis springs free, she takes it in her mouth.
My jaws burn from clenching my teeth. I turn away again and stand, walk around the desk. My voice is hoarse and unsteady as I say, “I can’t watch any more of this.”
“He shows himself pretty soon,” Wylie says. He stands against the wall next to the window, behind the chair I was sitting in a moment earlier.
It is his office, his computer. With the exception of shopping for Christmas presents, I have managed to stay away from the Internet. I waste enough of my time as it is; I don’t need a new distraction. But over the last year or so, he had become an Internet junkie.
Wylie lives with his wife, Nadine, and their two teenage daughters, Erica and Cherine, across the street from us. “Us” being my wife, Renee, our daughter, Melinda, and myself. He is an officer of the Redding Police Department. Gregarious, generous, always asking us over for drinks or a barbecue. Sometimes we go, sometimes not. Wylie can be moody, temperamental, quick to anger. This is sometimes, but not always, connected to alcohol. He’s fine as long as he sticks to beer, but as soon as he switches to Jack Daniel’s, it’s time to leave, or at least lay low. Sometimes something will set him off while he’s sober as a judge. But for the most part, we enjoy his company, and Renee and Nadine are good friends. But if Wylie and I were kids, he’d be the kind of kid I would avoid, knowing that sooner or later, there would be trouble, whether we got into it or Wylie caused it. Trouble just seems to be a part of Wylie Keene, like the smell of his cologne.
Wylie called me over earlier, said he wanted to show me something. He kept smiling. An odd smile, not friendly in the least. The smile of a crocodile.
“This isn’t going to be easy to watch,” Wylie said as he clicked his mouse a few times. He stood and told me to take the chair.
Wylie was right.
“Can’t you fast-forward it, or something?” I ask, pressing fingertips into my temples.
“Nope. Can’t fast-forward the Real Player.”
“Then just tell me who it is, Wylie. I’m assuming you know, right?”
“Yeah, I know. But it’s important you see it.”
“Why? See what?”
“In a minute. Okay, here it is. Come on.” He beckoned me impatiently and I returned to the chair.
The camera apparently is mounted on a tripod now. Naked, the man kneels in front of her and puts his face between her thighs. She makes breathy sounds of pleasure. He is small, lean, and wiry, pale as milk. His back is covered with freckles, moles, and a patch of acne between the shoulder blades. He has rusty hair, pulled back tight in a ponytail.
I don’t need to see his face. I recognize him immediately. The name of the man having sex on the Internet with my sixteen-year-old daughter Melinda is Teklenburg. Charles Teklenburg, but he likes everyone to call him Chick. For short. Maybe forty-five, a bit of a relic with his long hair, ponytail, and hippy clothes. He even drives an old Volkswagen van from the late sixties. He lives alone with his two chows. Just down the street, at the very end. People sometimes use his driveway to turn around when they realize Gyldcrest goes nowhere. They never see the sign.
I stand so suddenly, the chair wheels away and Wylie catches it before it hits the wall. “My God, Wylie, why aren’t you doing something about this?” Tears burn my throat and eyes, and my crippled voice is all over the scale.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re a cop! Why is that son of a bitch still living comfortably in his house at the end of the street? Why are you coming to me, for Christ’s sake, you’re a cop. Why haven’t you—”
He puts his hands on my shoulders, squeezes them hard. “Whoa, hold it down, okay? I haven’t told Deeny about this yet. Cherine’s on the website, too, Clark. So are other girls from the neighborhood. Our neighbors’ daughters.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Yeah, I’m a cop, and yeah, we’re gonna do something about this, that’s why you had to see it. But the two don’t have anything to do with each other, okay?”
“What . . . what do you mean?”
“I mean, we’re gonna kill the bastard.”
2
There will be no sleep until we talk, but I get into bed anyway in my T-shirt and boxers.
I was unable to concentrate enough to hold a conversation at dinner, and Renee noticed. I snapped at her, she snapped back. A couple of martinis before dinner probably didn’t help, something I normally do only on weekends. On top of that, Renee tried Deeny’s recipe for spinach-stuffed chicken breasts tonight and thought I hated it because I only took a couple bites. I did not eat it because I could not eat.
“I can’t tell you what to do,” Wylie said that afternoon in his office. “But I think telling Renee’d be a bad idea. I’m not telling Deeny. Not till we’re done. Then I’ll tell her and we’ll deal with Cherine. I wouldn’t tell Melinda, either, I was you. Keep her the hell away from Teklenburg, but wait till we’re done with him before you sit her down. Like I said, it’s up to you. But I wouldn’t. Women just can’t keep their damned mouths shut.”
I know Wylie is right—about keeping it to myself, anyway—but I don’t know how I can keep it from Renee. And how can I not confront Melinda? I want to shout at her and vent my rage, my confusion. I want to hold her tight in my arms and never let her out of the house again.
Doesn’t she feel any kind of repulsion at the idea of having sex on the Internet with a man almost three times her age? In front of the whole world? That’s not the girl we raised.
I punch my pillows a little too hard as I try to get comfortable in bed.
Could Melinda be taking drugs? That would help explain it. But how could I miss that? How could Renee and I not notice something like that? We know what the warning signs are, but we have not seen any of them.
Fortunately, Melinda ate dinner in her bedroom, where she spent the entire evening. Summer vacation ends in a few weeks. She will go back to school, and I will go back to work teaching English at Shasta College. But those weeks will be an eternity if I do not deal with her soon. First, I have to tell Renee.
People usually laugh when I say I tell my wife everything, but it’s true. Renee does the same with me. Not as a duty, but because we want to. We married a few years out of college, each with two lovers under our belts, and have been faithful to our
vows for almost twenty years (more than twenty-three if you count the years we lived in sin before marrying). Adulterous opportunities have arisen for both of us, and we have turned them down. Not as a duty, but because we wanted to. We always tell each other about them later and laugh together. I was taking my problems to her even before we started dating. Renee is smart—a lot smarter than I—and level-headed. She approaches problems with confidence, fully intending to best them. She almost always does.
But I’m not sure how she will approach this problem. We already lost one child—our first, at the age of four, before Melinda was born—and I know if she sees the video I watched at Wylie’s, she will fall apart as completely as if she’s lost another. That cannot happen. I have to tell her, and now. It seems I’ve had this bottled up inside me for weeks, months, not just a matter of hours.
Renee comes to her side of the bed and stands there in her lavender robe, arms interlocked over her breasts. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
I smile, pat her side of the bed. “Yes, I promise. Come to bed.” My lips won’t stop trembling as I smile, so I stop, bite my lower lip.
Renee does not fall apart at the news as I expected. I thought there would be tears, sobbing. Instead, her response is one of ferocious anger. I have never seen her so enraged. Her eyes become dark and her chin juts, lower teeth visible between her lips. Rigid cords of muscle stood out in her neck and her voice becomes a low growl.
“How long have you known about this?” she asks. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I told you, I just found out this afternoon, and I—”
“And you’re telling me now?”
This is going to be more difficult than I anticipated.
When she was a little girl, Renee was sexually molested by her father. She sometimes jokes about killing him, and sometimes I wonder how serious she might be. I did not consider this before telling her about Melinda and Teklenburg. I should have. She is seeing this not only from the viewpoint of a mother, but from that of a cruelly abused child. I wonder if now, along with her father, she wants to kill Chick Teklenburg, too.
I hold her close and she shivers in my arms as I tell her the rest. About Cherine, and that other young girls in the neighborhood are on Teklenburg’s website. Other daughters.
Renee bounds from the bed and paces the floor, fists clenched at her sides. “I want to kill him,” she says, voice low but trembling. She stops pacing at the foot of the bed and faces me. “Give me your gun. I want to kill him now. Right now, tonight.”
I get out of bed and go to her. “Wylie feels the same way. And he wants me to help.”
“He’s a cop. Why does he need your help? He should take care of this himself, right away, Goddammit. Why hasn’t he already, why hasn’t—”
“He wants us to kill this guy, Renee.”
She looks at me for several seconds, teeth clenched and eyes wide. “Then do it. No jury in the world would convict you.” She is very serious.
I shake my head. “Honey, that’s premeditated murder. The reason behind it won’t make much difference, if any at all.”
“He’s a cop,” she says again. “Do you think he’s going to let you two get caught? Don’t you think he knows what he’s doing?”
Yes, I do think he knows what he’s doing. That makes it all the more appealing. I want to kill Chick Teklenburg. I want to dismember him with my bare hands. But it would mean life in prison, maybe the death penalty, if we’re caught. Who better to keep that from happening than a friendly, like-minded cop?
I stroke Renee’s hair as I hold her. “We can’t say anything about this to Mel yet.”
“Are you out of your mind? I’d like to go to her room right now and—”
“She might warn Captain Video that we know what he’s up to,” I whisper.
She pulls away and frowns at me. “Do you really think she’d do that?”
“Did you think she’d do this?”
I pull Renee close again. She trembles rigidly in my arms, as if feverish. Her tears fall on my neck, but she is not really crying, not screwing up her face and sobbing. She’s too angry for that. I can hear her anger boiling just beneath the smooth surface of her low, level voice.
“I want to help you,” she says against my shoulder.
“What? Help me—”
“I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll cut him up into tiny pieces for you. I’ll even kill him, if you want. I think it should be something slow. And painful.”
The even, serious tone of her voice chills my blood. I tell myself she’s just not taking this well, that’s all; she’ll feel differently once it sinks in. But I’m not so sure. Without comment, I lead her slowly back to the bed. I am exhausted and want to sleep, but I know I won’t until Renee calms down.
She takes a Xanax and we go back to bed. Renee talks in whispers, partly to me, but mostly to herself, I think. About torturing Teklenburg, killing him. I stroke her neck and make small sounds of acknowledgment in my throat as she talks, and try not to visualize the things she is saying. Her whispers fade, words become garbled and farther apart. I am relieved to hear her quiet, purring snore. But sleep does not come as easily for me, and I spend most of the night staring into the bedroom’s darkness. Watching that stringy old hippy fuck my daughter.
3
Chick Teklenburg moved into the house at the end of Gyldcrest just short of a year ago. Like the family of strict Jehovah’s Witnesses who lived there before him, he keeps to himself. He’s friendly enough if you meet him on the sidewalk, even calls hello from across the street. But he makes no effort to get to know anyone in the neighborhood. He put up no decorations last Christmas, which pissed a lot of people off because it probably cost Gyldcrest a special color photo spread in the Christmas Day edition of the Redding Record Searchlight. Gyldcrest won that honor four Christmases in a row—but then the Jehovah’s Witnesses moved in. Chick was the only one on the street who did not participate in this year’s Gyldcrest Spring Yard Sale, an event that grew bigger and drew more attention from around the state each year. Those who gave him a pass at Christmas were not so charitable about the big yard sale weekend.
If everyone on the street were to find out about this . . . I’m not sure what they would do. But it would not be good for Chick Teklenburg.
Minutes after Renee leaves for work this morning, Wylie calls. Says he wants me to meet a friend of his. Deeny and the girls went shopping, so I should just let myself in the front door. So I do.
His friend is a nervous little guy he introduces only as Ricky. A colleague, he says. He looks more like one of those guys who washes your windshield without asking at a red light and then expects a tip for it. He wears a dirty white T-shirt beneath an open blue chambray shirt, torn jeans, dilapidated sneakers. He looks in his mid-thirties, but that stubble on his face might add a couple years.
“Nice to meet you,” I say as I sit on the sofa.
Ricky sits hunched forward on an ottoman and Wylie wanders around the living room with a tall glass of orange juice.
“See, I own Ricky,” Wylie says, then laughs. “I’ve owned Ricky since 1993. Ain’t that right, Ricky?”
Ricky shrugs a shoulder and smirks, but it is not a pleasant smirk.
“Ricky’s my snitch. When he’s not in jail, of course. He’s a pyro. A firebug. I got a couple things on Ricky, here, could send him away for a long time. But I look the other way as long as he keeps his eyes and ears open for me. And helps me out if I happen to need it every once in a while. Like today. He’s gonna help us out.”
A few of my internal alarms go off, and with a jerk of my head, I silently ask Wylie to accompany me to the kitchen.
“Something wrong?” he asks. He gulps the rest of his orange juice, puts the glass on the counter. I can smell no alcohol on him, so I guess the juice was nothing more than juice. I hope.
“Look, Wylie, I haven’t exactly said I’m going to do this.”
He grins. “Well, y’gotta
do it now, Clark.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because you know I’m doin’ it. If you don’t do it, then I gotta kill you.”
Before I can stir up enough saliva in my suddenly dry mouth to respond, Wylie slaps me on the back and roars with laughter.
“You got any plans for dinner this evening?” he asks, still chuckling.
“Just the usual. Eating.”
“Don’t make any. I’m throwing a little barbecue for our flower child down the street. Think Renee would mind making her potato salad? She makes the best damned potato salad.”
“She’s working today. I doubt she’ll have time.”
“Too bad. Which do you like better, chicken, or burgers and dogs?”
“I always prefer burgers and dogs,” I say, patting my softening belly.
“Burgers and dogs it is. Let’s go.” He puts his arm around me and leads me back into the living room. Says to Ricky, “You ready?”
Ricky stands, nods.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“We’re gonna walk down to Teklenburg’s house,” Wylie says.
“To invite him to the barbecue?”
“Yeah. Just making a friendly visit. Give Ricky a chance to look the place over, see what he’s working with. Just go along with whatever I say, Clark.”
“What are you going to say?”
“I don’t know.”
Dread constricts my throat. “Look, Wylie, I’m no good at this kind of thing, okay? I’m a lousy liar, I can’t—”
“What’s to be good at? Just smile and be friendly, Clark, that’s all. You can do that—I’ve seen you!” More laughter.
An unfamiliar Volkswagen Jetta is parked at the curb in front of Chick Teklenburg’s house. His old van is in front of the closed garage. Loud music plays inside.
On the front porch, Wylie knocks hard on the door. Several seconds pass before he pounds harder, longer, then says, “He can’t hear us. Let’s stroll around to the backyard.”
I quickly say, “Wait, do you think that’s a good idea?”
“Sure, we’re neighbors, aren’t we? Why?” Wylie lowers his voice. “You don’t think good ol’ Chick’s doing somethin’ back there he’d be ashamed of, do you?” He laughs as he goes back down the steps and crosses the lawn.