Helen: I’m sorry, babe. I know you like your murderers nice and obvious. But if every serial killer were a creepy loner, they’d never find any victims.
Julia: Bad guys should totally wear name tags.
CHAPTER
13
FOUR MONTHS OLD, and Grace still woke at least once a night. I heard her stir on the baby monitor and opened my eyes just enough to check the time, two hours past midnight and three since her last feeding. I’d perfected the art of sleepwalking down the hall, nursing her in the glider, and returning her to her crib without fully waking up myself. When I rolled out of bed, I realized it was empty. Michael must still be out with Brady.
But it was a weekend, and they’d been drinking. Lena was out of town, and I hadn’t felt like tagging along with Grace to watch sports and not drink beer.
He’d probably be in the bed by the time I got back.
I scooped up Grace’s little body with its flailing arms and settled into the chair, tucking a pillow underneath her for support. Grace nursed quickly, her eyes never opening, one hand clenching and unclenching next to her cheek. When she let go with a brief sigh, I raised her to my shoulder, patting her back firmly without jarring her. If I returned her to the crib without burping her, she’d be restless or even awake. But if I did everything right, I might get three or even four more blissful hours of sleep.
My cheek rested against her soft head and my own eyes were closing when I heard her expel a bubble of air and then another. I kissed her fuzzy hair and took a last inhale, gathering myself for a smooth transfer from my shoulder to her crib.
But then, in an instant, I knew we were not alone. A sharp scent cut through the sweet smell of infant and the haze of sleep deprivation and mind-drugging love. The smell of sweat. And I heard panting, harsh and rough.
Every nerve in my body flared to life with a single impulse—flight, flight, flight.
The door to the nursery flew open, but it was only Michael standing there, illuminated by the glow of Grace’s night-light and the baby monitor. His eyes were wide, unfocused, his face so pale it was almost green. His shirt was streaked with dark stains like he’d been working in the garden. He scanned the room, but not methodically as if checking to make sure everything was safe. His gaze darted from corner to corner as if he might surprise a danger lurking there, waiting to attack when he looked away.
“What’s wrong?” I shrank back, clutching Grace to my chest.
But he shook his head and raised a finger to his lips.
“But—” I tried again, and he shook his head fiercely.
He held up a hand—wait—and left the room.
The tiny bundle in my arms was so warm, the little arms limp and the face slack, satiated with milk. Not even the tension hardening my muscles, not even the way I scooted back as if I could find extra protection against the window, made Grace stir. If something, someone, was in the house, I wouldn’t follow Michael, not while I was holding my baby like my naked heart in front of me.
I glanced around the room. Everything seemed so unprotected. I was the first thing you’d see if the door opened, and the crib was the second. Carefully, I lifted Grace, not sure if I would hide her on the floor of the closet or under the crib, but the door opened and Michael was back. This time he had a pad of paper in his hand and a pen, silver and glittery.
He bent and unplugged the night-light and the monitor with a single movement. As my eyes blinked, trying to adjust to the dark, he pulled me into the closet.
My heart pounded against Grace, snug and oblivious between us.
Michael pulled out his phone, and in its dim light I read, Say nothing. No lights. I’m not sure who’s listening or watching.
I reached for the phone, but he shook his head, mouthing, Not safe.
Suddenly, even in the enclosed center of my home, I felt completely exposed. And Michael looked wild, his eyes wide, his hands shaking. I reached up to touch his forehead, thinking maybe he has a fever, maybe he’s on drugs, and he closed his eyes, leaned into my touch with a ragged breath that was almost a sob.
I shifted Grace to one arm and took the pen, my writing awkward and wobbly as I scrawled, What’s going on?
He slipped the cell phone back into his pocket, but in the dark I could hear the pen moving over the paper. He pressed the pad back into my hand and raised the cell phone. I read: He might be watching, but we have to get to the car. Danger! Trust me!!
The last three words were underlined so hard that the pen had torn through the page and there was a dark smudge on the paper beneath them.
Grace gave a little cry, and I realized my grip had been tightening. “Okay,” I whispered. What else could I say? If there wasn’t any danger, humoring Michael wouldn’t hurt. If he was high or sick, I’d have to get him into the car anyway to get him to the hospital. And if there was danger and I didn’t listen to him, whatever happened next would be my fault.
He nodded curtly; then the closet went dark, and the sound of writing came back. But I could guess what he was worried about. If he really thought someone might see us inside the house, he’d definitely be worried about someone seeing us leave. And we couldn’t just sneak through the darkened rooms in silence, slip into the garage, and then go driving away to safety.
My car wasn’t safely in the garage like usual. I’d parked on the driveway. Stupid. His car was blocked in, and mine was right under the spotlight of a streetlamp. As one of us opened the driver’s side and the other one tried to get Grace in the car seat, we’d be lit like actors on a stage.
The faster my pulse raced, the more I wanted to retreat with Grace, keep her safe, curl my body around hers.
In the dark, Michael was a shadowy form like the literal embodiment of the monster in the closet. If he was sane, if he was still the Michael I knew, then I also knew what he was doing. He was scribbling down a plan on the pad. The thrum of danger, waiting, and not-knowing was worse than anything. I put my hand over his. “Just—” I started to say, but he shook me off and put his fingers over my mouth hard. I felt the paper notepad pressed into my hands, and I had to bite back the words.
He held up the phone again, the light quavering in his shaking hand.
We have to go. It’s Brady. Don’t let him see. Go fast to the driver’s side. I’ll take Grace.
And then underneath: No talking. I love you.
Those last three words scared me most of all. They were tacked on the end like a “just in case” postscript. This was the moment when all those vows on our wedding day would be put to the test. You think you will love and honor someone, but how do you really know until the chips are down? Grace’s small body radiated warmth as I raised her up and kissed her.
The light was out again; the closet was pitch-black, but backlit by my memory, I could still see Michael all our years together. When the world believed Aimee’s lies, his faith in me had been absolute, and I’d never known why I deserved it or how I could repay it. I’d said something about that once, and he’d told me, “In marriage, it’s not a question of repaying. Where you go, I go. We’re a team.”
I took another deep breath of Grace’s head and lifted her onto Michael’s shoulder.
Once her comforting weight was gone, I felt chilled, unmoored. But Michael’s hand found mine. He pressed the car keys into my hand, and with a finger he tapped out one, two, three.
We ran, fast and silent, flattening ourselves against the wall, past the open maw of the hall bathroom, then into the expanse of the kitchen. Shouldn’t we set off the alarm system to bring help? Shouldn’t we call the police? Each internal question triggered another burst of adrenaline, but I had committed. Follow Michael. Follow Grace. Our house had never seemed so big, each window a point of exposure, each light fixture a potential camera.
Michael hadn’t hesitated, opening the door single-handedly and sprinting to the car, and my panic drove my feet faster until I was light-headed. Driver’s side. He’d said to go to the driver’s side.
I’d been clenching the keys so tightly that it hurt to loosen my grip, and when I tried to find the car key, my nerveless fingers fumbled and almost dropped them, but I hit the lock.
Michael opened the passenger side and hissed, “Let’s go!”
And I was in the driver’s seat, starting the engine as he slammed the door shut, backing up before he was fully seated, driving away from our house, its windows dark, its front door open, while Michael still clutched Grace against his chest.
As the house retreated behind us, he twisted around, maneuvering her into her car seat.
Gently, I wanted to tell him. Be careful. It wasn’t safe, hanging over the headrest, driving with Grace unsecured, any of this. But nothing was safe anymore.
Grace’s belt clicked, and Michael dropped back into the seat beside me.
As I glanced at him, the car bumped up against the curb, and I wrenched the wheel, bringing us back onto the road. It was all I could do to control the car, to keep us moving straight, away from the danger. We were out of the neighborhood before I could draw a deep breath, still clenching the wheel so hard my hands hurt.
“Where are we going? What happened?” I looked at Michael, his face pale and almost gaunt, as if he’d lost twenty pounds in an evening. Like me, he’d left his seat belt unbuckled, the first time I’d ever seen him without one, and that was almost the scariest thing.
“The police station.” His voice was heavy, and he reached out with one hand to touch my knee, as if for reassurance.
And then he started to cry.
I’d never seen Michael cry, not really. He’d gotten quiet, or choked up, or hunched over—but racking sobs, the kind that stole your breath and made it stutter, never. I kept driving, my heart pounding and the wheel in a death grip.
What could have happened?
“Please, please tell me what’s wrong.”
But his fingers only tightened on my knee as he fought to choke back the tears.
When we arrived, the world around the parking lot was dark, but the building glowed like the warm windows of a lighthouse. I was drawn to this antidote to the fear and darkness, and I parked directly in front of the building, underneath an arching security light.
I turned off the engine and put my hand on top of Michael’s, the way I’d longed to. He was silent now. “You want to go in?”
Whatever he’d witnessed, whatever had happened, it couldn’t be worse than this fog of ignorance. Every horrible thing I’d seen in a movie or news program scrolled through my mind, but it was all locked inside Michael’s head, and he still wanted to protect me. That’s the way he was. He thought we were in danger—Grace and me—and he’d taken us to safety, but now he’d have to tell us why, and he was afraid. Not just of what had happened but of what it might do to me.
“I’m okay.” I squeezed his hand. “We’re okay.”
And with a shuddering sigh, he nodded and opened his car door.
The dome light came on, and when I reached automatically to unbuckle the seat belt I wasn’t wearing, I saw it. My hand, smeared with something dark; more on the knee of my gray sweatpants. I rubbed my fingers together, my breath coming short with horror. Viscid, wanting to stick to itself, to bind my fingers together, transferred from Michael’s hands to mine.
Blood.
He hadn’t just seen something; he’d done something. I shouldn’t have driven my husband here, delivered him up to the police when he was covered in blood. If he turned himself in, I’d lose him.
But Michael was already opening the door of the station, and as I flung my car door open, a mewling sound from the back seat reminded me. Grace was there.
Shit.
Shaking, I wiped my hands on my pants, scrubbing hard, but they still didn’t feel clean. I opened the car door, some part of my mind chittering, You’re transferring DNA; you’re contaminating evidence; you’ll get blood on the baby; you’re a bad wife, a bad mother.
I wouldn’t lift her out of the car seat and carry her, vulnerable and exposed. I’d take the whole carrier out of the base. She’d be cozy in her little bucket, with an awning I could pull down to keep her hidden and sturdy plastic sides protecting her.
And the blood on my hands wouldn’t get anywhere near her body.
Unhooking the car seat was agony, my fingers fumbling across the release, but finally it popped free and I slid it out of the car. I had to set it down for a second to get the handle into position, and by that time both her eyes had fluttered open and she was staring at me intently.
“Everything’s okay,” I said softly. Please, please go back to sleep. Don’t cry, don’t want to nurse. Just please, please, go back to sleep.
Her brow furrowed. I couldn’t even convince a baby.
Instead, I pulled the awning as far forward as it would go, hefted the weight of the seat, and followed Michael into the station.
Inside, the officer behind the glass, a slight woman with a neat brown bun, looked at us, at Michael and at me, clutching the handle of Grace’s car seat. “Can I help you?”
I could almost see the thoughts behind her assessing gaze: Domestic abuse? No visible trauma. Robbery? They would have called 911.
“Michael?” I asked.
His face was fixed and grim. “I need to report a murder.”
CHAPTER
14
WHILE I WAS still trying to draw breath, to ask a single question, they took Michael into some other room. Scrambling to follow him, I dropped Grace’s carrier on the floor with a thump, but she cried out, and in the seconds it took for me to look down at her, my husband was gone.
We waited. First in the waiting room, where the air conditioning blew too cold and the fluorescent lights were harsh and impersonal. Behind the glassed-in desk, the officer bent back to her work, not glancing up at us. Outside the world was dark, still sleeping, only a few sporadic cars on the road, a set of headlights punctuated by darkness again.
And I didn’t know what Michael had seen, what he had done, who was dead. Was it Brady? Persistent tendrils of fear were choking me, slowing my heart, so that I struggled to breathe.
The chill and silence of the front room were oppressive. A police station in downtown Houston might be hopping at all hours, but early in the morning in this suburban corner of Sugar Land, all the scary things were tucked out of sight.
I couldn’t sit down; my body wouldn’t stay still. I paced around the chairs, arranged in formation to face the glass-fronted window where the front-desk officer sat, and past a display case featuring historical memorabilia, medals and ribbons, and contemporary awards, gleaming chunks of glass and polished wooden plaques. Two years ago I would have been reassured by the sight of a police car, but now that Aimee had framed me, I knew I’d be flagged as “troubled.” Any good policeman, one worthy of an award-winning department, would think twice before trusting me.
Grace wasn’t sleeping, but she wasn’t fussing anymore either. She watched me stride past her again. I approached the desk, and the officer looked up. Squinting, I read D. Navarro on her name badge. She was only a little older than me, her face all rounded curves of cheek and chin, a friendly face. She had seen my husband with his bloody hands, but I wanted to promise her that he wouldn’t, couldn’t have done anything wrong. There was no scenario on earth that I could imagine in which Michael had hurt anyone.
“Please.” I searched her face. “Please, can someone tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m sorry.” She actually sounded sorry, but there was firmness in the set of her lips that left no room for negotiation.
“How long will I have to wait?”
“I can’t say.” She glanced at her computer, ready to get back to whatever she’d been doing before I interrupted.
I’d bet she could say, but she wouldn’t. She had all the answers and I had nothing. Michael didn’t need her faux friendliness right now. He was still in danger, being interrogated in the bowels of this building. And someone was dead, the thought as dangerous as a
downed power line. If I got too close, if I started to wonder who or how, to think about that blood, I’d be overwhelmed. Grace and Michael needed me, so I shoved those thoughts away, the unknown victim flickering at the edge of my consciousness, stripping my nerves raw.
For all I knew, they’d blame him, my Michael, who’d been so terrified, so determined to protect me and Grace. The next time I saw him could be through bars. It was up to me to keep that from happening. He needed a lawyer, and there was only one I knew personally. Why hadn’t I taken two seconds to grab my cell phone?
“Is there a phone I can use?” I wanted to keep talking, to persuade Officer Navarro, to make her like me, but I shut my mouth tight after the question. Nothing I said could help me or Michael, not when I was completely in the dark.
“Sure.” Maybe it was my imagination, but she looked relieved to give me an affirmative answer. She pointed to the hallway just past the display case, and I saw an alcove I hadn’t noticed. My brain was so tired, so stressed, so stupid. What else had I missed?
I nodded my thanks and turned, saying over my shoulder, “I’m just going to get something from the car.” For a second I wondered, if I picked Grace up, would it look like I might flee? But no one had asked me any questions or seemed to care what I did.
I lugged the baby carrier to the passenger side of the car and set it down. The black sky that arched over the electric lights of the city had bleached gray. Dawn was only a couple minutes away.
In the glove compartment I found it, the Bluebonnet Women’s Club directory, just where Elizabeth had told me to keep it. “You’ll be driving to book club or craft group or a fund raiser meeting and you’ll need to check an address,” she’d said, “or you’ll be out and you’ll want to meet up with people, and you’ll be glad it’s there. I’m never at home when I need mine.”
But I didn’t flip through it by the dome light. I had my back to Grace for only a second before I seized the book and got out of the car. I didn’t even want to blink for fear something might attack us. I hauled her back into the station, all the way to the courtesy phone, and only then did I flip through the book for the home number I needed. I knew I would wake Alondra, but I dialed anyway.
You Can Never Tell Page 12