Black Widows

by Cate Quinn

  Carlson nods to me.

  “Mrs. Nelson here is trying to convince me she didn’t know nothing about the video on that phone. I was thinkin’ that doesn’t sound very likely in a home that’s maybe sixty feet square. Everyone sleeping up in the hayloft. Bedrooms divided up by a single sheet of plasterboard you could punch a hole through with your finger.”

  Brewer looks at me, her amber eyes sympathetic. We share a moment. Like we are both dealing with this jerk.

  “Mrs. Nelson, are you saying you weren’t aware your husband had certain…tastes?” she asks.

  I have an awful queasy feeling. The rush of my past life coming back to haunt me. How would I even know what’s normal and what isn’t?

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I whisper.

  Compartmentalize. To keep you safe.

  Brewer looks uneasy. Carlson shoots her a look like I told you.

  Brewer blows out air, causing a puff of shiny dark hair to dance momentarily above her tanned forehead.

  “You’re aware of the damage to your husband’s body,” she says. “Frenzied injuries to the groin.”

  Tan-color sand changing to yellow. Boulders the color of cinder toffee, honey-hued with brown edges like they’d been burned in the pan. Men are carrying me. Blood dripping.

  A hospital bed, my legs in stirrups. She’s doing something to me, and it hurts. I’m sweaty, feverish.

  “You’re not going to try and run away again, are you?” says the blond lady, looking up. “I can’t help you if you do.”

  Brewer is still speaking.

  “Ring finger and wedding band hacked off,” she says. “It sure seems to me the kind of wounds a wife might leave. From what I’ve heard about Mr. Nelson, I might even agree that he deserved it.”

  I don’t answer that. How can I?

  “Mrs. Nelson, we’re going to ask you to watch something from the phone we found,” says Brewer. “I’m going to warn you, you may find what you see distressing.” She’s watching my face keenly. “Assuming you’ve not seen this before.”

  “You want me to look at pictures?”

  “There’s…video content,” she says. “Involving your husband.”

  “Blake and I never made home movies,” I say a little too quickly.

  Brewer is turning a laptop screen toward me. Something about the grim look on her face puts the absolute fear of God into me. I don’t know what I’m expecting to see. But in actual fact, I’m relieved when it’s nothing more than a frozen image of Blake, from above. I catch a set of pink fingernails and realize Tina must be holding the phone, filming.

  I look closer, and trepidation rises again.

  Blake is lying on a bed with a look on his face I’ve never seen before. Expectant, frightened…excited. A coiled belt lies on the pillow next to him.

  “What is this?” I demand, sickened.

  Brewer leans across to press Play. “I think you should just watch.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Tina, Sister-Wife

  Carlson stubs out his cigarette. “Forget about motive for a moment. Let’s just figure between us the facts, ’kay? No harm in that, right?”

  I nod.

  “Forensics can’t be too specific about time of death. They place it between late evening and early morning.” He pauses. “You wives were all too mad with one another to stay in the house in the first part of the evening, right?”

  “It’s a small place.” I give him a little smile. “’Specially when you’re crammed in with three women who hate each other. Um. Lemme see. Emily went for a walk at one point. Rachel went out to do something with the storehouse.”

  “So,” says Carlson, “Emily Martinelli went out on her lonesome around the time Blake went out fishing?”

  “Yeah. Right after Blake drove her back from the hospital. But you’ve seen Emily, right? She’s, like, sixty pounds soakin’ wet. Not to mention, she’s so squeamish she won’t even shape hamburger patties. I mean, come on? Emily, hack a man’s finger off?”

  I shake my head at the thought. Emily’s face crosses my mind. The expression she had sometimes when she thought Blake couldn’t see her.

  “What about Rachel? You’re certain she was in the storehouse the whole time?”

  “Well, that’s what she told us.”

  “But you couldn’t be sure?”

  “Well, Detective, Rachel doesn’t lie, you see. Part of her religion. So if she said she was goin’ out to the storehouse, you can more or less take her word that’s where she went.”

  “But you couldn’t see her? Hear her?”

  “Well, you could hear the canning machine a mile off. But the storehouse is a little farther out from the house. Once someone is inside, you can’t see what they’re doin’.”

  “How long was she out there for?”

  I frown, tryin’ to remember. “We didn’t have clocks or phones or stuff like that. It’s hard to pinpoint time. All I can say was she came back before it got dark.”

  “Was she out there longer than usual in your opinion? I mean to say, what does Rachel generally do in that storehouse?”

  I sigh. “Detective Carlson, I figured you for smart. So I know you searched that storehouse and likely found, oh I don’t know, maybe a big old canning machine and a lotta jars of canned produce. Right?”

  Carlson ignores my sarcasm. “’Bout enough food for end of days,” he says, shifting on his chair. “All neatly stored and labeled. So she’d be out there for what? Hours?”

  “There wasn’t really a usual amount of time. It depended on the harvest.”

  A really uncomfortable feeling prickles at me. Like I’ve made a betrayal.

  “Did you or Emily ever go out to that storehouse?”

  “No. That was Rachel’s domain.”

  “She didn’t like anyone else out there?”

  “No. I don’t happen to have a great interest in picklin’ carrots.” I shrug. “We’re all different, I guess. Not to mention Emily and I were both scared of that canner. It was old factory equipment that Blake hillbilly-fixed. Rattled like it was fixing to go into orbit.”

  Carlson considers this. “Did Rachel like to go out to her storehouse at night, Miss Keidis?”

  I hesitate.

  “Only we found evidence someone was in there the night Blake died. Your electricity supplier reported a surge of usage around midnight. From what we could see, the only equipment at the ranch to command that kind of energy was a big old canning machine out in the storehouse. That’s maybe a five-minute walk to the river.”

  He pauses for this to sink in.

  “Little unusual, right?” Carlson adds. “That someone would go for some late-night canning?” He leans forward. “Does it sound likely to you that someone might have gone there to wash up? A canning machine is essentially a hot-water bath, right? Could be used to rinse out bloody clothes.”

  I picture Rachel’s battered Survive Well. The outsized 41-liter pressure canner, which looks a little like a bomb-disposal unit—all inch-thick steel and lots of little black gaskets on the top. It runs off the generator and consumes around a third of our total electricity. I saw it in action one time, shaking all over the floor with steam hissing angrily about. Like it had all Rachel’s grudges and angry feelings locked inside, ready to blow.

  Carlson’s right though. Squirt of bleach, and I think you could use that canner to wash clothes. Hell, all that pressure might even work better than a washing machine. It ran loud though. I wonder if I could have slept through that. Maybe.

  “I’m not a freakin’ laundry worker,” I say, suddenly agitated. “So I wouldn’t know, would I? You know what? I’m done talking. This feels like a setup.”

  Carlson meets my eye.

  “Your call,” he says. “I’m sure you’ve realized by now that whoever murdered Blake would
have been covered all over in blood. If that had been me, I might have thought to take off my clothes and wash them.”

  We both look up as Brewer enters the room.

  A nasty ache is slidin’ around my guts. Like there’s something real bad about to happen.

  “Well, you sure make some interesting points, Miss Keidis,” says Brewer, sliding into her seat.

  Shit. She was listening?

  “And you have, of course, confirmed,” she continues, “a few highly relevant things. First, that you yourself are not as convinced as Mrs. Nelson that you’ll be joining your spiritual husband on the other side of the veil.”

  Her amber eyes flash.

  “Second, that no one was watching you at the time Blake Nelson could have been killed.”

  I turn in horror to Carlson. “You fucking jerk,” I spit at him. “You set me up?”

  He shakes his head. Shoots a dirty look at Brewer. “You’ll be happy to know we’re letting you go, Miss Keidis. Though you may be called to give further evidence at trial.”

  “What?”

  I feel as though the rug has been pulled from under me.

  “You found the killer?” I say, not sure how I feel about what this could mean. “You found Blake’s killer?”

  Carlson pauses for the longest time, like he’s choosing how to answer. Eventually he says:

  “Your sister-wife has confessed.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Emily, Sister-Wife

  “So let me get this right.” Brewer’s amber eyes are trained on me, like she’s trying to catch me in a lie. “You followed your husband out to the little stream where he fishes?”

  “That’s correct.”

  I’m pleased with myself. I sound exactly like someone on TV.

  “You used a belt to strangle him. Then attacked him with a gardening tool? That right?”

  “Yes siree.”

  “Right.” She can’t quite look at me.

  “A little groundbreaking ax,” I explain. “Sorta curved. For breaking up hard soil.”

  “Well, that would certainly fit with the wounds on the body. What doesn’t fit is where you tell us you disposed of the weapons.”

  She looks at me. I wait for her to continue.

  “When we looked over the ranch, we found a blood trail—your husband’s—leading to an outside storehouse. What can you tell us about that?”

  “Um, well, like I told you. I don’t remember much.”

  “Right. You were in emotional distress,” says Brewer flatly.

  “Emotional distress,” I agree. “I just kinda wandered around, I think. I mean, I couldn’t believe it was all happening. I think I went up to the storehouse and then back down to the river afterward. Threw everything into the stream.”

  “You think?”

  “It’s all a blur.”

  “You realize it’s very unlikely that at least one of those items wouldn’t have washed up somewhere?”

  “God moves in mysterious ways.”

  Brewer wears an expression I’ve seen before. On my teachers at school, when they couldn’t explain something they thought was very simple.

  “Please don’t do this,” she says.

  “That’s the point,” I tell her. “I did do it.”

  “Emily,” she says gently, “what can you tell us about the other wives? Were they good to you?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say, nodding. “They’re real good wives. Especially Rachel.” I see my eyes, round and earnest in that reflective mirror opposite. “She volunteers and whatnot. Cans all our food. We got enough for end of days in the storeroom out back.”

  “You know they’ve left you here to take the blame?”

  I don’t answer that.

  “What about you?” asks Brewer. “Are you a good wife?”

  I look down at my fingers. The tiny wedding ring that Blake had to have specially made, on account of the ones in the store not fitting right. He was mad about that, as I recall. Fifty bucks.

  “No,” I say. “I’m not.”

  There’s a long silence. I don’t know if Brewer expects me to say anything. She kinda sighs. “After you threw the belt and the ax in the river, you went back to the ranch and got into bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t, for example, go to the storehouse. ’Cause someone went there that night. We’ve taken a good look in the place and can’t really ascertain a link to the crime. My thoughts are, the killer would have had a lotta blood on their clothes. Maybe used some equipment there to clean themselves up.”

  “I don’t remember that part so well.”

  “What about the missing fingers?”

  I have a horrible lurching feeling. A memory, actually. About those fingers.

  In the car coming back from my wedding, when I looked across at the wheel and noticed for the first time that Blake had red hair on his knuckles. I had been telling him how my momma was saying it wasn’t a legal wedding, and polygamy was illegal and I was going to jail and then hell. I was even laughing a little. But Blake said, “A temple sealing is legal marriage in God’s eyes. I told you, honey, we’re outlaws, living God’s word.”

  I couldn’t answer. I mean, I was just straight-out shocked. I had thought the outlaw thing was just Blake being colorful. Not to mention I’d spent the last five hours saying these weird vows and promising I’d gut myself with a blunt knife if I broke them, and he was now telling me it wasn’t even a legal wedding.

  I just came right out and asked how the temple even allowed that if it was so holy and all? And Blake said the temple didn’t care to check in great detail who had already been sealed to whom.

  I had looked back at his hands on the wheel, with that scatter of red hair, and thought it looked just like something I once saw on National Geographic about some endangered orange monkeys.

  “What about the fingers?” I ask Brewer.

  “Your husband’s ring finger was missing,” says Brewer. “Hacked away from the hand. We never did find the digit, or his wedding band either.”

  “I must have thrown it in the stream,” I tell her. “With the belt and the ax. Like I say, I wasn’t…”

  “You weren’t thinking straight. You said that already.”

  Officer Brewer seemed all small-town cop, but now she’s gone into a real interrogation. She fixes me with her funny-colored eyes.

  “How tall are you, Miss Martinelli?”

  “Five two, maybe.”

  She nods. “Forensics estimated the height of your husband’s attacker based on the angle of the blow to his head, assuming he was sitting in his fishing chair at the time. They give about ten-to-one odds it was a woman who killed him, but I still think you’d be a little on the small side to pull it off. Your late husband was what? Six feet tall? Physically fit?”

  Brewer rubs her tanned forehead. “You somehow hauled him by the neck to that little juniper tree and hanged him from it?” She shakes her head. “I just don’t see it.”

  “Well, that’s how it happened.”

  “Miss Martinelli, are you aware that if you confess to this crime, you risk the death sentence?”

  “It’s different in the afterlife,” I tell her. “No pain, no suffering. Any problems Blake and I had, God would work them out.”

  Brewer has this real exhausted look on her face. “Here’s what I’m struggling with, Miss Martinelli. I don’t believe a word of your confession. But our officers have been over the ranch.”

  She pauses.

  “The strangest thing is, your story might be whack, but some pretty key parts more or less fit,” she says. “So either you really did kill your husband. Or you’ve a pretty good idea of who did.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Rachel, First Wife

  I walk out of the police station in a da
ze.

  The two realities are fighting it out in my brain. The things Tina did to my husband. What Emily was capable of. I lived with them both, cooked for them, cared for them.

  Turns out I never knew either of them at all.

  It feels very much like when the Homestead was raided. Like everything I ever knew or depended upon, gone, poof, in a puff of hot air. As though the ground beneath my feet might drop away at any moment.

  Did I not see? Or was I not looking?

  Officer Brewer’s words float back to me.

  It seems your husband picked vulnerable women.

  Emily and I had our differences. But after Tina came along, I’d honestly thought it got easier. We even had conversations about God and whatnot. Prayed together. All along, she must have had this hatred of Blake brewing.

  I guess she musta seen the same thing I saw on Blake’s phone. She always was the most terrible snoop. Maybe it made her mad. Everything she’d gone through. Blake acting all cock of the walk, telling us we weren’t good enough. When all the while behind closed doors, he was letting Tina beat up on him.

  This is what confuses me most. Because surely if Tina used to… What? Choke him half to death? I can’t get this clear at all. Why did the police let Tina go? Maybe she batted her lashes at Detective Carlson and he decided she was innocent. Men are like that, outside the Homestead. You can’t trust them.

  I’m overwhelmed with this. I try to push it away, close the lid. Only now it’s like my boxes are splitting at the sides. Seeing that video of Blake… It’s done something. Pulled a crank, pushed a lever. Set something tumbling into motion that is firing thoughts I haven’t had in a long while.

  Pictures roll in from somewhere else.

  I see Emily in a blind fury. Something she could hardly control. Like she’s been a good girl for all this time, and something needs to get out. To scream and shout.

  A strange dark feeling comes. Like an old knowledge.

  I guess Emily must have walked out to where he was fishing. Blake took waders to fish. His regular clothes would have been neatly folded in a pile, back from the stream. The belt would have been coiled on top in a perfect circle.