by Mark Lukens
“I was called out here because there’s a couple who won’t leave this property,” the cop said, staring right at Lou and Edna. “Is that you?”
“No,” Scott snapped before Lou or Edna could answer. “Like I said, these two are welcome here. They’re doing some work around the house for us.”
The cop seemed to doubt that.
“It was just a big misunderstanding,” Scott said. Usually he was a charmer (had he charmed Suzie into sleeping with him?), and he was trying his best to pour on that charm right now. But it wasn’t working. Paula didn’t know if it was because of the pain meds or because he was scared out of his mind, but this cop wasn’t buying any of Scott’s bullshit.
“You know it’s against the law to file a fake police report,” the cop finally said after staring Scott down for a full minute.
“I didn’t file . . .” Scott sighed, taking a deep breath and starting over. “I thought I needed the police here, and now I’ve changed my mind. That’s all.”
“Why do you want these two off your property?” the cop asked.
“I don’t want them off my property,” Scott yelled.
The cop stared at Scott again for a long time. Then he looked at Lou and Edna, then over at their RV parked outside the fence near the woods.
“That’s their vehicle,” Scott said. “It’s on our property, and we’re okay with that.”
The cop stared at the RV for a long, drawn-out moment. Paula was afraid he was going to demand to search it. Instead, he looked back at Lou and Edna. “You two mind if I talk to you alone?”
The old couple managed to look nervous, even scared. God, they made Paula sick. “Of course not, officer,” Edna answered with just the right amount of quivering in her voice.
The cop walked with the old couple over to his squad car and spoke with them for five minutes. They didn’t seem to be arguing, and the old couple smiled nervously the whole time and nodded a lot.
“What do you think they’re saying?” Scott whispered to Paula.
Paula glared at her husband and didn’t answer him. She had some questions of her own she wanted answers to.
All three of them walked back, and the cop finally looked satisfied, but still perturbed. He looked right at Scott. “If I have to come out here again for another . . . mistake, then I’m bringing you in on charges. Got that?”
Scott nodded numbly.
“Good day,” the cop said and then sauntered back to his car.
They all watched the cop’s car back down the driveway and then back out into the dirt road, kicking up a large cloud of dust as it sped away.
Scott stared at the old couple with a ferocious look in the one eye he had left. “What did you say to him?”
That strange expression was back on their faces . . . an expression of threat that actually frightened Paula a little. They didn’t answer Scott.
“What do you want?” Scott practically whined as he leaned on his crutches.
“We just want to be appreciated for our work,” Edna said.
*
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Scott asked when they got back inside the house. He was agitated and fidgety. Paula knew he wanted to pace—he usually paced when he was angry—but he couldn’t pace because of his leg. “Appreciated,” he spat out. “Appreciated for what? For practically burning our house down? For destroying our fence? For destroying my leg? My eye?”
Our dog, Paula thought.
Scott struggled up to his feet and leaned on his crutches.
“Where are you going?” Paula asked him.
“To get the phone.”
“Sit down,” she told him. “I’ll get it.”
Paula got the cordless phone and brought it back to Scott. He grabbed it from her and punched in some numbers.
“Who are you calling?”
Scott held up a finger, signaling for her to wait a moment.
She watched him. She wanted to ask him some questions now. Questions about the IRS, and questions about this woman named Suzie.
“Hey, Carl,” Scott said into the phone, managing a smile. “It’s Scott Evans.”
Their lawyer—Scott was calling their lawyer. She should’ve figured that.
Scott explained what had happened on the phone for a few minutes. Then he was silent for a few more minutes as he listened to Carl. The blood was draining out of his face again, and he hung the phone up without a goodbye.
“What did he say?”
Scott cleared his throat. He stared across the room with his one eye. “He said . . . uh, he said he can’t represent us anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
Scott looked right at her with one wide eye. “He knows them somehow. He won’t say how, but he knows Lou and Edna. He’s afraid of them. He said there’s nothing we can do.”
Paula shook her head no. She didn’t want to believe this. “How can he know them?”
“He wouldn’t say,” Scott whispered.
Paula thought of the Cragers’ home and the fire damage. She thought of the old lady who had told her about Ronnie being burned half to death . . . mutilated. She had looked up the story on her computer when she’d gotten home and read the gruesome details of the fire. And Paula knew the fire hadn’t been an accident. She knew the fire hadn’t been caused by bad electrical wiring as it was officially listed; she knew the fire had been set purposely. She knew that Lou and Edna had done it; they had hurt Diana and Ronnie. And she knew that she and her husband were in danger now.
*
Paula couldn’t help it, she argued with Scott. She didn’t want to fight with him in his condition, but she needed to know what was going on with his IRS problems. And with Suzie.
After they yelled at each other, it turned out that they didn’t have IRS problems, at least not yet. But he had done some rather risky things, he told her, and if someone were to know about it and call the IRS, wellll . . .
“How can they know all of that?” Paula asked Scott.
Scott just shrugged and sipped a mixed drink, something he was not supposed to be doing with his pain meds. He even accused Paula of pushing him towards the drinking tonight.
Suzie was a different matter than the IRS problem. At first Scott tried to lie about it, but when he saw Paula staring at the front windows as if she could see through the walls to Lou and Edna’s RV, he knew all she had to do was go out there and they would tell her everything. He broke down crying and admitted that he had slept with this woman a few times. But it hadn’t meant anything to him, and he had already broken it off with her. He begged Paula not to leave him. He would never cheat on her again. Besides, what woman would want him now?
Paula wasn’t so sure she even wanted him anymore.
*
Paula couldn’t sleep that night. She lay awake in bed beside Scott who had begged her to sleep in the same bed with him. She gave in to him like she always did. Then he was out, knocked unconscious by his cocktail of alcohol, pain meds, and sleep aids. He was sleeping so deeply he almost sounded like he wasn’t breathing. His bandage and patch over his right eye practically glowed in the darkness.
A creak sounded from the hallway. Someone was out there.
Paula tensed. She knew who it was . . . Lou.
Moments later she saw Lou’s white face and bald head illuminated in the doorway much like Scott’s white bandage was. But Lou’s head was bent forward slightly, like he was looking down at her, and that kept his eyes hooded under his heavy brows hidden in shadows.
Lou stood there for the longest time, just breathing heavily, just watching. And then he left.
Paula felt like she could breathe again. She was scared, but she was also angry.
*
The next morning Paula marched right up to Lou and slapped his face. Both Lou and Edna looked shocked; this wasn’t the kind of appreciation they had been looking for.
“Stay the hell out of my house,” Paula told Lou. “Stay the hell out of my bedroom!” She turn
ed and started to walk away, but Lou’s words stopped her in her tracks.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
Paula thought about turning around and . . . and what? Slap him again? Scold him again? It wasn’t only his threat that had made her blood run cold, it was his voice—it sounded like the growl of a mean dog. She didn’t turn around; she kept on walking towards the house. She saw Ronnie Crager’s burned and mutilated body in her mind as she walked. She saw Diana quickly putting her house up for sale, throwing a few bags and boxes into their car, peeling out of the driveway, escaping Lou and Edna while they had the chance.
*
Five days later Scott got a letter from the IRS. He still hadn’t gone back to work. He didn’t want to go to work anymore; he didn’t seem to care about work anymore, or much else. Scott’s doctor told Paula on their last visit that there was major nerve damage in Scott’s leg from the break, and that’s what was causing him so much pain. The doctor didn’t know if it could be fixed; all they could do was wait to see if it would heal on its own.
And keep popping pain pills, Paula thought.
And popping pills Scott was. He was popping them every few hours when the fog of relief began to wear off a little.
Paula watched Scott open up the letter from the IRS with trembling hands. She watched him read it. She didn’t need to ask him what the letter was about. She could tell by the expression on his face that it was bad.
They did it, Paula thought. They said they weren’t going to, but they had called the IRS. They were probably going to call them anyway, but Paula couldn’t help thinking that they had called because she had slapped Lou.
You shouldn’t have done that, he’d told her.
And now they were being punished because of her.
*
Two weeks later Scott and Paula attended the IRS audit with a new lawyer Scott found. Scott had called around to friends and business associates for a recommended lawyer, but no one would return his call. It was like they were pariahs now. Paula found this lawyer on an internet listing.
The audit didn’t go well. Scott hadn’t been very careful about covering his tracks. He’d probably been too busy concentrating on Suzie.
The meeting with their new lawyer after the audit went worse. Scott and Paula really didn’t have much of a choice but to dissolve his company, sell their home, and then claim bankruptcy to pay off the IRS.
“You’re lucky you’re not facing jail time,” their new lawyer told Scott. He seemed proud of himself, like he was taking credit for this leniency afforded to them by the IRS.
Lucky, Paula thought. Yeah, we’re lucky all right. At least if they’d gone to jail they would be away from Lou and Edna Kravitz. Just in the last two weeks the couple had destroyed half of the front lawn, stained part of the driveway with something that resembled rusty water, gotten the front gates stuck open somehow, clogged up the pool, and broke the shed door and one of the downstairs windows. The air conditioner wasn’t working now which Paula was sure was their fault. The A/C tech came out and fixed the air conditioner, but it stopped working again yesterday. Now the house was like an oven. There were plagues of mosquitoes and flies all around their house that Paula had never noticed before. She blamed the plague of insects on Lou and Edna . . . that’s exactly what those two were like, a biblical plague.
Paula drove home as Scott leaned against the passenger door with the only eye he had left closed. He looked so pale, and it looked like he had lost at least twenty pounds in the last few weeks.
Their GMC Denali was making some kind of clicking noise, and she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Lou and Edna had “tinkered” with their vehicle to “help” them out.
Paula looked at Scott again. He was slumped over even more now, and he hadn’t put his seatbelt on. She wanted to tell him to put it on and to stop leaning against the door. She had a bad feeling that something was about to happen. But before she could say anything, before she could even move, the door made a loud clicking sound, and the passenger door flew open.
“Scott!” Paula screamed as her husband tumbled out of the vehicle. He was a pale blur, and then he was gone.
Paula slammed on the brakes and prayed that she hadn’t run him over with the back tire somehow. She looked at the rearview mirror and saw a big pickup truck that had been tailgating them screeching to a halt right behind her.
Had the pickup truck run Scott over?
Paula slammed the shifter into park and got out of the Denali. She ran towards the back of the vehicle.
Please, God, let him be okay . . .
She found Scott crumpled up into a ball, moaning in pain, his leg—his good leg—was bent at a strange angle. She fell down beside him, sobbing.
“You okay, lady?” the big redneck driver of the pickup truck asked.
“No, I’m not fucking okay!” Paula screamed at the man. He backed up a step with wide eyes. “Call a fucking ambulance!” she told him.
*
Scott had twisted his knee and broken his collar bone in the fall out of the Denali. He spent the night in the hospital and then was dismissed the next day. Paula had to find a wheelchair for Scott—he was going to be spending the next few weeks in one.
As she drove Scott home, a depression blanketed her, a gloom like she’d never known before. Morbid thoughts of killing the old couple entered her mind. She needed to get a gun and then put a bullet in each of their foreheads . . . she needed to end all of this suffering and misery. But then she would go to prison. Probably get the death penalty. Or maybe they would find her insane. Yeah, insane. That’s kind of what she felt like right now.
So, okay, killing them wasn’t the answer. At least not killing them outright. Maybe an accident. God knew Lou and Edna were the masters of accidents—they would probably see an accident coming a mile away.
They needed to escape those two. They needed to run. Hadn’t that been what Diana and Ronnie had done? Hadn’t Diana gotten her burnt and mutilated husband into their car and escaped before that old couple could hurt them anymore?
Paula drove through their gates that were stuck open and pulled up to the garage door. It was halfway up and bent at a strange angle like it had somehow come off the track. She was sure Lou and Edna would have a reasonable explanation for how they had broken the garage door, and then she would get to hear their promises to fix it.
But it wasn’t the garage door that had shocked her into stillness for a moment. No, it was Lou and Edna that had shocked her. They stood there beside each other in front of the broken garage door holding hands, both of them smiling like they were proud of something they had done. Then they moved out of the way to reveal what they had built inside the garage.
Paula couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She had wondered how she was going to get Scott up the few steps of the garage door and into the house. But Lou and Edna had taken care of that problem—they had built a wooden ramp to the door so she could wheel him up there. The wood looked warped, the job looked amateurish, but she figured it would be easier than trying to wheel him up the steps.
It was like they knew he would need this ramp. Like they knew he was going to fall out of the Denali and hurt himself worse. Like they had planned it.
The old couple came over to assist Paula with Scott as she struggled to get him into the wheelchair. Scott could stand and hobble just a little, just enough to help her, but he was still in pain even though he was trapped in a fog of pain meds. The painkillers didn’t seem to be helping much anymore for whatever reason, but he was still getting addicted to them already. He looked miserable. He had lost one of his front teeth in the tumble out of their truck, and the skin on one side of his face and down one arm was rubbed raw from the pavement. His left arm was immobilized in a cast and sling, a useless appendage now.
“How can we help?” Edna asked with that stupid, sickly-sweet voice.
“Stay away from me,” Paula growled through clenched teeth. “I’ve got it.”
“I think you’ve helped enough,” she said as she wheeled her husband underneath the crooked and stuck garage door to the ramp they had built.
I have to get away from them, she thought.
And then the answer hit her.
*
Paula got Scott settled on the couch downstairs. She was hurrying because she wanted to get to the phone. The answer seemed so simple now; it had been staring her in the face for so long now. Why hadn’t she seen it before?
She made sure Scott took his pills. She got him a cold drink, turned the TV on for him, and flipped the switch for the ceiling fan since the air conditioner still wasn’t working. He turned his head to the side, his skin shiny with sweat. He moaned. He always seemed to be moaning now.
Paula left Scott alone, letting him twitch in a fitful sleep. She went into the kitchen and grabbed the cordless phone. Of course Diana and Ronnie had escaped Lou and Edna—they had packed up their things and put their house up for sale. They had jumped into their car and escaped. But not before passing Lou and Edna off to her.
Paula felt a sudden stabbing hatred for Diana—she’d known the misery that Lou and Edna were going to cause, yet she had recommended them anyway.
But Diana hadn’t had a choice, had she? How much longer could Diana and Roger have put up with Lou and Edna before they killed her and her husband in some kind of accident or drove them insane?
And Paula didn’t have much of a choice right now, either.
Who to call? Which friends of hers needed the most help around their house? And then she thought of Patty.
*
Patty met the old couple at her front gate. They drove a beat-up RV, and for a moment she was a little skeptical of their cleaning and renovation skills based on the condition of their vehicle. But then she pushed that thought away. Lou and Edna Kravitz had come highly recommended by Scott and Paula Evans—and she could trust them.