The Midnight Hour

by Karen Robards

  He got a bunch of towels from the linen closet, wrapped a couple around his mom’s head—on second thought, maybe she did look better with only half a face—and then wrapped trash bags around that. He’d already discovered how handy trash bags were for streamlining the handling of a dead body. He had wrapped Caroline in trash bags before he’d stashed her in the basement freezer of a neighboring family that had gone on vacation—he would retrieve her tonight, and leave her in the house with the rest of them. Caroline had frozen up real good, kind of like hamburger. He’d checked on her a couple of times, and she didn’t even stink.

  Killing his mom first had kind of upset his schedule, though. He’d meant to off the judge lady and her daughter first, and then come home and do his mom and dad and Donny while they slept. But his mom had really pissed him off. He was fucking tired of being called fat.

  Bundling the body in more garbage bags, then wrapping duct tape around it in strategic areas so the bags wouldn’t separate, he pondered what difference this slight change would make in his plans. Finally, as he wiped up the blood on the floor and on the walls with his mom’s best towels—boy, would that piss her off if she knew—he concluded that, like everything else that had happened, killing his mom first had probably been for the best.

  Still, what if the cops were too damned dumb to connect the murdered mother and daughter in Bexley with his own murdered family in Upper Arlington? After watching them screw around with his modest little forays into the judge lady’s house over the last few weeks, and then try to solve the mystery of Caroline’s disappearance, he wasn’t too impressed with their intelligence. It was, he thought, entirely possible that they might miss the connection.

  But not if he left his mom’s body in the judge lady’s house as a calling card.

  Smiling, he picked his mom up—the fat pig weighed like lead—slung her over his shoulder, and carried her out to her car, which was parked in the attached garage. It was a new car, a Maxima, and his mom loved it. She would never let him drive it, though she loaned it to Donny every time he asked.

  He would drive it tonight, and she would ride in the backseat, dead.

  He went back into the house to stuff pillows under the covers on her side of the bed so that it would look, to anyone like Donny who might casually check, as though their mom was asleep in bed. Then he took the keys to the Maxima from her purse, grabbed a couple of dollars in case he ran low on gas, got the gun, and picked up the bag he had already stocked with the other items he needed for tonight.

  Finally he got in the car and drove away. He’d had to bend his mom’s legs to make her fit in the backseat. Too bad she was dead. He liked to think about how uncomfortable she would be.

  At the judge lady’s house, instead of parking a few blocks away as he usually did with his motorcycle, he parked on the next street over so that he’d just have to go through the front and rear yards of the house that backed up to hers before climbing over the fence into her yard. By now, he knew the lay-out around here as well as he knew his own neighborhood. He felt a pang of regret as he reflected that this was the last time he’d have reason to visit the judge lady’s house. It had been almost a year since he had discovered her identity with the help of an Internet search group dedicated to reuniting adoptees with their biological parents. In that period of time, watching her and her kid had almost turned into his hobby, or something. Oh, well, all good things must come to an end, he thought.

  Getting out of the car, he glanced through the windows and realized that his mom’s body was too easy to see on the backseat. All anyone had to do was peer in—even wrapped in garbage bags, the bundle looked odd enough that it might prompt a call to police.

  He hadn’t realized that the streetlight on the corner provided so much illumination. For a moment he considered moving the car. Then he decided he’d just take his mom with him. He’d meant to come back for her anyway, so he’d just be lugging the body to the house a little earlier than he’d planned.

  Man, she was heavy. He stuck the gun into his jacket pocket—well, Donny’s jacket pocket—and hoisted her onto his shoulder, after first making sure that there was no one around. In just a few minutes he was safe in the dark, out of reach of the street lamp’s illumination, just him and the moon and the stars and the rustling leaves underfoot and the creaking branches overhead.

  Bexley was really a lovely community, he thought. Almost as nice as Upper Arlington.

  Somewhere not too far away, a dog began to bark. The little yappy dog he’d heard almost every time he’d visited the judge lady’s house.

  Tonight he might do the universe a favor and off the dog, too.

  When he got to the fence around the judge lady’s backyard, he lowered his mom to the ground on the other side—he was afraid that just dropping her might split the plastic bags open and leave him with another mess to clean up—and then climbed it himself.

  Most of the windows in the judge lady’s house were lighted up. He wondered what she and Jessica were doing in there. Well, he’d know pretty soon.

  His plan was simple. The security system they’d installed meant nothing to him; changing the locks wasn’t even going to slow him down. And the judge lady’s cop boyfriend? Piece of cake.

  They didn’t turn the security system on until bedtime. He knew because he’d been watching through the windows ever since they’d gotten it put in.

  And he wouldn’t need a key, because he was going to do the one thing they’d never expect.

  Knock on the door. And when they answered it—which one of them would, because people everywhere always answered their doors just like there was a law that they had to or something—were they ever going to get a surprise.

  Knock, knock. You’re dead.

  He smiled at the thought.

  Chapter

  46

  “HE’S REALLY NICE, MOM. I think he’s going to ask me out. If he does, can I go? Please?”

  Grace looked at her daughter, who was wiping off the table while she herself loaded the dishwasher. Jessica was wearing jeans and a black sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up past her elbow, and her eyes were wide with entreaty.

  Was fifteen really old enough to date? Intellectually Grace knew it was, but in her heart and mind Jessica was still a little girl. But, as Tony would say, time to let the little girl grow up.

  “We’ll see,” Grace temporized. Tony or no, there was no point in crossing that bridge until they actually came to it. But when it came right down to it, she guessed she would let Jessica go.

  “Mom! . . .”

  A frantic scratching sounded at the back door. Jessica turned to open it, and Chewie bounded in. While Grace and Jessica both watched with amazement, the pup scuttled across the kitchen toward the stairs like a grizzly bear was after him, ears flat and tail between his legs.

  “What on earth? . . .” Mother and daughter exchanged bemused glances. Closing the door, Jessica hurried after her dog.

  “Chewie! Chewie! Here, Chewie!”

  Jessica vanished into the hall, and seconds later Grace heard her footsteps pounding up the stairs.

  Frowning, she closed the dishwasher, then headed toward the kitchen door. Tony was in the backyard. . ..

  The door opened before she had taken more than three steps. For an instant, Grace felt relief, thinking that Tony was coming in. Then she froze as she realized that the person who stood there was not Tony.

  He was a young man of perhaps seventeen, wearing a Chicago Bulls baseball cap, a black nylon jacket with some kind of school insignia on it, and jeans. Stocky in build, he was about five-ten, with short black hair and a square pale face with acne on his chin.

  He was carrying a gun, a gleaming silver pistol, the mouth of which was pointed straight at her heart.

  Grace knew who he was, knew it instantly. Her blood froze, her heart contracted, and though she tried to draw in air her lungs refused to expand.

  “S-son,” she croaked. One hand covered her mouth as the othe
r reached out to him in instinctive entreaty.

  The horror of the moment, the hideous perfection of a fate that brought her abandoned son back to her armed with a gun, was something she had subconsciously expected since she had seen those circled horoscopes, Grace realized. Or maybe even longer than that, perhaps from the very moment when she had given birth to him and then given him away, on that long-ago January 21st.

  Retribution at last.

  He smiled, a slow taunting smile, and stepped on into the kitchen, closing the door softly behind him.

  “Hi, there, Mommy,” he said, his voice low and husky. Her son’s voice, she thought dazedly. She was hearing her son’s voice for the first time. She was looking at her son, hearing his voice, and he was going to kill her.

  That’s what he had come to do, she knew instinctively. And she deserved it, for what she had done. She wouldn’t even try to run away.

  He came toward her, the gun leveled at her middle. “Mommy, Daddy’s out there in the backyard with his skull split open. The family dog, too, what a shame!”

  Tony. Oh, no. Tony didn’t deserve to die for this. This was her sin alone, no one else’s. Only she deserved to pay. . ..

  He reached her then, roughly grabbing her shoulder with the hand that wasn’t holding the gun, his short, blunt fingers digging into her flesh in a way that would have hurt if she had been capable of feeling physical pain. But she was beyond that. Her body was numb with shock.

  She looked up into his face and saw, as she had expected, that his eyes were blue.

  “Where’s little sis?”

  Jessica. Jessica. He had come for Jessica, too. No. No. . ..

  “No!” she screamed. Galvanized by terror for her daughter, she shoved him with all her might. Caught by surprise, he stumbled backward, almost falling on the slippery wood. Whirling, she ran for her daughter’s life.

  “Mom?” Jessica called from the top of the stairs. Jess was already on her way down, Grace saw, as she darted into the hall.

  “Run, Jess, run!” Grace cried, flying up the stairs. Her terror was instantly communicated to her daughter. Jessica’s face changed, and then she was running, too, leaping for the upstairs hall while Grace bounded after her. Just as Grace reached the top of the stairs, she heard him behind her. Glancing down, she saw her son in the hall, the gun he held pointed straight at her back.

  “Mom! Mom!” Jessica was inside her room, holding onto the edge of the door, waiting for her. . ..

  He fired. As she lunged toward Jessica, Grace felt the bullet whiz by her ear. It hit the wall with a sound like a hand smacking flesh. The echo of the explosion rang in her ears.

  Jessica screamed. There was another scream, and Grace realized that she was screaming, too.

  She leaped through Jessica’s door, and her daughter slammed it shut and locked it.

  It would hold him off for only a moment, Grace knew.

  Chapter

  47

  RAINDROPS FROM HEAVEN. That was the first conscious thought that ran through Tony’s mind as icy-cold droplets sprinkled over his face. His eyes blinked open, and immediately a blinding pain made him close them again. The whole right side of his head felt as if it were on fire. Just opening his eyes made his head hurt so badly that he almost passed out.

  More freezing raindrops splattered on his skin. Tony gritted his teeth and opened his eyes again. It was night, a moonlit, clear night with nary a cloud in the sky. Warm, too, with no more than a gentle breeze stirring the leaves that lay on the ground. How, then, was cold rain falling on his head?

  He looked up, straight up past the dark, shadowy eave of the garage roof, into the tangled branches of a nearly leafless oak tree overhead. The droplets appeared to be blowing down from the tree.

  But there had been no rain for the last few days, so how could that be? And why were they landing just on and around him, as though he had his own personal rain cloud, although there was no such thing that he could see.

  It hurt to think. His eyes closed again, and he sank back toward oblivion with a feeling of relief.

  A muffled sound, like a car backfiring or a firecracker going off some distance away, broke into his slide into unconsciousness. It spoke to him urgently, and he struggled to make sense of it despite the overriding pain in his head.

  A gunshot. From somewhere in the mists of memory, identification sprang.

  Right on its heels came terror.

  Terror was a tangible thing, cold like steel, sharp as a knife sliding through flesh, he discovered. He felt it lodge in his heart.

  My girls. The phrase popped into his brain. Blurry images, a woman and a girl. The first pair were a young, pretty brunette and a black-haired toddler with huge, haunted eyes. They were swallowed up by darkness, and he was conscious of an aching sense of loss. The second pair, another woman, with short blond-streaked hair and worried blue eyes, and a rail-thin teenage girl who looked like the woman, stayed in his mind’s eye. He got the feeling that the darkness threatened them, too.

  My girls. A gunshot.

  Abruptly Tony remembered. Grace’s son. The dead hamster. The cake. The mirror. The teddy bear. He’d screwed up, thinking the kid was harmless. The kid was here, now, this moment, in the house with Grace and Jessica, and meaning to kill.

  Tony moved, and pain exploded inside his skull. He kept moving, rolling onto his side, knowing that it was urgent that he get into the house and stop what was happening before it was too late, before Grace and Jessica were swallowed up by the same darkness that had stolen Rachel from him.

  Rachel. He could almost see her. For a moment her image was so real that she seemed to be flesh and blood again, standing there in the darkness beside him, looking down at him. She was rendered in exquisite detail, her delicate, fine-boned face pale with illness, her wide mouth smiling a little, lips together, the ends of her long black hair stirring in the breeze. She was wearing the white smocked dress she’d been buried in. Her eyes locked with his, and she seemed to extend a hand to him as though she would help pull him to his feet.

  “Rachel?” he choked out. But of course she didn’t answer, because of course she wasn’t really there. She couldn’t be.

  Tony never knew afterward how he got upright, but he did, compelled by the image standing before him. Once on his feet, he staggered sideways until his shoulder hit the garage wall, gaping at his daughter as a thousand and one agony-spewing grenades seemed to go off inside his head. The pain was hideous, unbearable almost, but he scarcely noticed because Rachel was there. His vision blurred, from pain or tears he didn’t know, and when he could see again she was gone, vanished as though she had never been there at all. Which of course she hadn’t been. He knew that, but still, for just a moment, he could have sworn . . .

  He had no time to dwell on it, though, no time to look for Rachel, or to mourn her loss. He had to get into the house. That was the one driving thought that kept him from passing out again. Grace’s life was at stake, Grace’s and Jessica’s. He knew it as surely as if someone had shouted the warning into his ear.

  He did not think he could bear to lose another person that he loved.

  Pushing off from the garage wall like a swimmer from the side of a pool, he staggered toward the house, passing Kramer whose poor limp body lay near the passageway. His eyes touched on the dog, a brown-and-white fur rug sprawled on his side in the grass, but he could not stop to check whether or not Kramer still lived. As he neared the door, he reached for the gun that he always stashed in the back waistband of his jeans and was both surprised and not surprised to discover that it was not there. The kid had taken it.

  Grace’s son.

  She would not want him to kill her son.

  He might have to.

  God, he couldn’t even walk straight. Whatever the kid had hit him with, he was hurt bad. He could feel blood pouring down his face, warm and sticky, with a noxious sweetish smell that he recognized.

  Three doorknobs instead of one. Concentrating, Tony grabb
ed for the one in the middle. Bingo.

  The effort of taming the knob was so great that he broke out in a cold sweat.

  But he turned the knob, and the door opened, and he was inside the kitchen, watching the fat red drops of his blood splatter onto the hardwood floor almost abstractedly, as though it wasn’t his blood at all. From upstairs, he heard a rhythmic jarring thud, almost like the beat of a giant drum. Thud—pause, one two three—thud—pause one two three—thud—

  The kid was trying to break in a door. Grace and Jessica must have locked themselves in a bedroom. Good for them. That gave him a little extra time.

  He was too broken, too weak, to bound up the stairs and take down the sniveling little turd like he wanted to do. He could barely walk, barely see, and his blood was splashing down all around him like rain.

  The dining room. In the closet was the security system with its panic button feature that would call the cavalry, and Grace’s gun. The bullets were on top of the china cabinet. He had put them there himself.

  Now if he could just stay conscious long enough to reach the dining room . . .

  Everything was spinning around him. Floor and wall were tilting crazily, and he felt like he was caught up in that old Fred Astaire dance scene where Fred tapped merrily across the walls and ceiling as well as the floor.

  Gritting his teeth—God, it hurt to do that!—and concentrating fiercely, Tony lurched from the kitchen through the door that led into the dining room. Grabbing the table for support as his knees threatened to buckle, he took a deep breath. Pain like a knife stabbing through his lungs told him that he probably had a few broken ribs. The kid must have worked him over good. . ..

  Fool, he called himself bitterly for not having been more careful. He lurched toward the closet in the corner.

  The rhythmic thudding continued upstairs.

  His hand was slippery with blood, he discovered with surprise as he tried to grip the closet doorknob. Swiping his palm over his jeans, he tried again. The knob turned, the door came open, and he almost fell on the wall that held the keypad. A thin plastic cover protected the panic button. Leaning heavily against the wall, he clawed at it. It came open.