As Long as We Both Shall Live

by JoAnn Chaney

  So he’d come home, the cops said it was all good, he just needed to keep his mouth shut, but that seemed wrong. There was something about the silence that was deafening. The calm before the storm. Or maybe he was just paranoid. Maybe he shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, he should be happy they’d actually believed him. He could remember feeling this same way twenty years before and it’d all turned out fine that time, hadn’t it?

  And it wasn’t as if he’d lied—well, most of it was true. Part of being a good salesman was being ready for any eventuality, any question or problem that came up, and he was the best. Always had been. But he hadn’t accounted for this particular situation, had he? He hadn’t even seen it coming. Blindsided was a good word for it. He’d been blindsided by his wife. Or you could say he’d been completely strung up by the balls and left to dangle helplessly.

  Either one worked.

  He swung his feet over the side of the bed and sat up. His back hurt from lying down all night, so the walk down the stairs was slow. One stiff step after another, gripping the banister all the way down so he wouldn’t slip and fall. Once he was in the kitchen he grabbed a mug from the cabinet and poured a cup of coffee. It tasted burnt, even though it was a thousand-dollar machine. Matt dumped in a dollop of cream to cut the taste, and a half a teaspoon of sugar, and when he was done he went to put the spoon in the sink. There was nothing that bothered him more than a dirty spoon lying on the counter, something that Marie had always done, it didn’t matter that the goddamn sink was right—

  He hadn’t started the coffee maker, he hadn’t been home for days, and this coffee was fresh. Hot. It was a process he hated—rinsing out the carafe, pouring fresh water into the reservoir, tipping grounds into the new filter. Too much work, and if he had to get it all ready himself he’d end up at Starbucks. It was Marie who didn’t mind getting the coffee ready, and there was almost always a fresh pot when he woke up or got home from the gym.

  But if he hadn’t started the coffee maker, who had?

  What about my wife? he’d asked the cop, who’d shrugged again. She’s still out there.

  There was a creak above his head, like someone was walking the second floor. It’s an old house, it could just be the sound of settling, but he doesn’t think so. He’s lived here long enough.

  “Hello?” he called. His voice sounded too loud in the empty house, and for the first time he wished they had a dog. They’d had the cat for a while, Mr. Mittens, and that’d turned out badly. Something furry and warm and alive pushed up against his leg would’ve been a comfort. “Is someone there?”

  Another footstep, rasping its way across the floor above.

  “Hello?” he shouted, coming out of the kitchen and taking a small step toward the staircase. Half a dozen would get him close enough to see up the steep slope to the landing. “Is there someone there?”

  There was a long pause. The ice maker on the fridge groaned and spit out another cube, and a car drove past on the street. The sounds of life. A dog outside barked and he jerked in surprise, dropped his coffee. The mug hit the ground and shattered like a bomb, showering his bare legs with hot liquid and shards of porcelain, but he barely felt any of it. He was scared, more so than he’d ever been in his entire life.

  What about my wife? he’d asked, but the cops hadn’t seemed worried. He’d called Detective Spengler’s cell phone when he got home, asked the same thing. But first he’d made sure all the windows were shut, the doors locked. What about Marie? Have you found her yet?

  We’re working on it, Spengler had said. But she’s probably in Mexico by now, don’t you think? Relaxing on a beach and drinking a margarita. Stop being paranoid, get some rest.

  Paranoid, that’s what he was. But what if he wasn’t? Marie had planned all of this and he hadn’t had a clue—what else did she have up her sleeve? Being married to Marie had been a little like turning the handle on a jack-in-the-box and waiting for the clown to pop out. You knew it was going to happen and scare you, but you never knew when.

  There, again. A creak above his head.

  It was like those horror stories kids told each other about a babysitter getting a call from a man—but the man was in the house. They’d lived in this same house for going on fifteen years, and it was suddenly full of sounds and creaks and groans he didn’t recognize, but maybe they’d always been there and he had never noticed. He grabbed a knife from the butcher block in the kitchen and went through the entire house, looked in every room, every closet and cabinet. Behind every shower curtain and under every bed. Because you never knew. It was only when he was sure he was alone in the house, positive that Marie wasn’t waiting to creep up behind him, that he went back to the kitchen and carefully started picking up the shattered remains of his mug, piling the pieces up in a kitchen towel so he wouldn’t cut himself. He must’ve set the coffee maker himself before falling asleep, he thought. And then he’d forgotten he’d done it.

  He told himself that same thing all day, but still didn’t quite believe it.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  September 12, 2018

  “What if she doesn’t show up?” Spengler asked. “Then what’ll we do?”

  Loren snorted, fiddled with the binoculars in his lap.

  “She’ll be here,” he said. “Women like Marie Evans—you heard her husband. They always want the last word. That’s how just about all women are. Always wanting to be right.”

  Spengler turned to stare at him mutely. They were in his car, the ol’ LeBaron, parked across the street from the Evans home, hidden deep in the shadows thrown by the homes and trees, far from the circles thrown down by the lampposts standing at intervals. They waited, and watched and watched some more. Evans had been released the day before and there’d been someone outside the whole time, keeping an eye on the place. In case Marie decided to come home, in case Evans decided to run. And now Loren and Spengler were there, taking the next shift. Five A.M. until dinnertime.

  “No offense,” Loren said. “But you know what I mean. With those kind of women.”

  “No, I don’t know what you mean,” Spengler said. She blinked, wide eyed. “Why don’t you explain it to me?”

  He rolled his eyes and looked toward the house. It was all quiet, no movement. Not that they could tell all that much from here—the house’s blinds were pulled, the drapes shut. The entire neighborhood was silent. It was still early enough that the only movement had been the station wagon creeping down the street thirty minutes before, its driver tossing newspapers onto front stoops.

  “I haven’t seen Ortiz hanging around lately,” Spengler said, looking out the window instead of at Loren. “You heard from him?”

  “Last I heard he’d gone back to Springfield.”

  “Oh? How do you know that?”

  “He left a nasty note on my door.”

  “How mature.”

  “Yeah. I guess I’m off the hook.”

  Spengler made a small noise of disbelief through her nose.

  “Just like that?” she asked. “That easy?”

  “Sometimes that’s how things go,” Loren said. “Easy as pie. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. Easy as a whore looking to turn a trick to pay her rent.”

  “You had me until the last one,” she said drily. “I’m not so sure you’re capable of having a normal conversation without dropping in something offensive.”

  “Gallo’s wife used to say the same thing,” Loren said. “Constance, that was her name.”

  “I saw that in the file.”

  “But I always called her Connie. Did Ortiz tell you that?”

  Spengler shook her head.

  “Yep,” he said. He was looking at the house but running his fingers along the underside of the steering wheel, round and round. “She was Connie to me, Constance to everyone else. Even her own husband. But sometimes I used to wonder what he called her when he was pounding her face into a bloody pulp. I never knew, I was never around when he did it. I just saw it afterward. The blac
k eyes and the broken noses and the bruised ribs. He almost killed her once.”

  His voice caught. He took a tissue from the box sitting on the dashboard and coughed into it, then blew his nose. Spengler kept her eyes on the Evans house. He knew she was being kind by not looking at him, giving him a bit of privacy even as she was listening, and he liked her for it.

  “He almost killed her once, and she showed up at my place with her baby, begged me to take her in. To help her. She didn’t want to go to the hospital, so I patched her up. Put her and the baby to sleep in my bed and went to the store to get her medicine. Stood in the drugstore and stared at the shelves, wondering what could possibly help a woman who had a face beaten bad enough it looked like an old, spoiled apple.” He laughed, but there was no pleasure in it. “The only thing I could get my hands on was aspirin, can you believe that? Nowadays you can get a prescription for just about anything, anytime, if you know the right doctor, and if you can’t get it at the drugstore you can buy it off any crackhead walking the street. But back then all I could get was a lousy bottle of aspirin.”

  Shut yer yap, his father said. You really gonna tell her all this shit, just unloose it on her? What if she decides she can’t keep it to herself? Then what?

  Loren laughed, because he didn’t give two shits if Spengler knew the truth anymore. He could remember walking into the house, the aspirin in the plastic bag from the store dangling from his fingers, and hearing the baby’s scream. It was the kind of cry that sounds weary and put out, as if the baby had been crying for a while and was confused about why it’d been left alone for so long. For one terrible minute, Loren had thought that Connie might’ve died, that maybe she’d been bleeding internally and had passed in her sleep, that it’d been a mistake not to take her to the ER despite her protests. But when he hustled into the bedroom the baby was alone in the middle of the bed, its tiny red fists waving angrily in the air. And Connie was gone. On her way out she hadn’t forgotten to surround the baby with pillows so it couldn’t roll off the bed, she’d still wanted to protect her kid even when she’d left it behind.

  But she’d made sure to take one thing: the gun Loren used for work. He always left it on top of his dresser when he was off duty, and it was gone.

  “I knew where she’d gone,” Loren said. “Home, to Gallo. So I wrapped the baby up in a bathroom towel and laid it on the front seat of my car and drove over to their place. One hand on the wheel, one hand on the baby to keep it from rolling onto the floor. Moving in a hurry, because I thought I might be able to get there in time to stop anything bad from happening.” He took a quick sip from the water bottle nestled between his thighs. His mouth was dry, his voice cracking. “But when I got there it was already done. Connie had shot Gallo right through the head, and when I walked in she begged me to help her cover it up. Got right down on her hands and knees and begged, crying, snot dripping outta her nose, mixed in with all that blood. She didn’t want to go to jail and have the baby put in a home. It wasn’t fair, she said. He deserved what he got, she said.”

  “So what did you do?” Spengler asked. For the first time since he’d started talking she’d turned to look at him, but there wasn’t any judgment in her gaze. Only curiosity.

  “What was I supposed to do?” Loren demanded angrily. He slammed his fist down on his thigh. Later there’ll be a bruise there, purplish-black and tender. “Of course I helped her. Because I was in love with her and she knew it. And he did deserve it. It was the best ending for a piece of shit like him. I loaded Gallo’s body up in my car and drove out to the Mad River and buried him. Then I came back and cleaned up that place as best I knew how. Wiped away all the blood and bone and brains and shit that’d splattered everywhere, and then I helped Connie pack up all her stuff and drove her eighty miles south, down to Cincinnati. Put her and the baby up in a motel and came back. Acted like I had no idea what was going on.”

  “What happened?” Spengler asked. She was so calm they might’ve been discussing the weather.

  “Nothing,” Loren said. “People figured Gallo had skipped town. No one missed that bastard except Ortiz, who’d just about crawled up my ass and wanted to live there. But I still managed to sneak away every so often and drive down to see Connie and the baby, bring money and buy them food, make sure they were fine. But Connie, she started acting funny.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She started saying things like if anyone ever found Gallo’s body, they’d be able to tell that the bullet had come from my gun. She’d seen something like that on TV, and I ignored it. But the next visit, she said the same thing. And said that if someone found out about Gallo, they’d assume I’d killed him. No one would ever think she’d done it. And she was right, of course. If you saw her back then, so small and sweet, face like an angel, you would’ve thought the same thing. There’s no way this woman was capable of murder.”

  “What did she want from you?”

  “I don’t know,” Loren said, shrugging. He drank off the last of the water in the bottle and put the bottle in the bag in the backseat. “But I was spooked. There was something about her eyes. Trouble brewing. There’s nothing scarier than a woman with a plan, and I figured it’d be best to get gone. I never went back to see Connie. I transferred to Florida, didn’t leave a forwarding address. Disappeared. Maybe she didn’t want anything at all. Maybe she said those things because she was scared and didn’t know how else to act. But my wind was up. I was in love with her, but I knew that if I stayed, if we were together, she’d always have that hanging over my head. And if she got mad enough one day, she might turn me in. Or kill me, just like she had Gallo. It reminds me of this whole mess.” Loren waved his hand at the Evans house. As they watched, the burning lights flanking either side of the front door turned off. A new day had started. “How often did these two idiots talk about what they’d done?”

  “It takes two to tango.”

  “A truer thing was never said.” Loren ran a hand down his face wearily. “I made the decision to bury Gallo out there, went along with it of my own free will and made myself an accessory to murder. Connie didn’t hold a gun to my head, she didn’t threaten me. If I hadn’t wanted to do it, I could’ve turned and walked. Turned her over to the feds and let her take the heat and never looked back. But I didn’t. I was a willing participant until the water got too hot, and then I bailed. But what if I would’ve stayed? What if I’d stayed and married Connie? How would that have been, to spend the rest of my life with a woman reminding me of how she could destroy me?”

  “Do you think Marie was doing that to Evans?”

  “Or it was the other way around.” He paused. Considered. “Or maybe they’re both just fucked-up people.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “I left the state to get away from Connie, to keep the secret we had safe,” Loren said. He shifted in his seat, the leather squealing under his weight. “But these two had a secret and then stayed together. Twenty years is a long time to hang on to resentment and hold shit over your partner’s head. They both might’ve been held hostage by that.”

  “Evans does like to play the victim card,” Spengler said thoughtfully. “It’s easy enough to make anyone seem like a villain when they’re not around to defend themselves. You know, those PTA women who told me about Marie made her out to be ruthless and crazy.”

  Loren laughed a little.

  “You know, I’ve noticed that men can be ruthless and power hungry and people will up and applaud them. But women—boy oh boy, you come across a woman who acts like that, she’s automatically a bitch. I’ve heard you called that a few times, actually.”

  “Fuck off,” Spengler said, but she laughed, too. Shook her head. “So you told Ortiz all this about Connie?”

  Loren’s father laughed in his head. Loud.

  He didn’t hesitate with the lie. Forty years as a cop, more time spent undercover than he’d like to admit, and one good thing had come from it: he could fib his sweet ass off. He could m
ake a person believe he was a goddamn penguin if he needed to, he could sell ice to an Eskimo.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I told Ortiz everything, and he was satisfied. Went home to Springfield, is gonna check it all out. I’m sure I’ll have to go back and give a statement sometime, I might still be in some hot water, but at least they know the truth of it.”

  Oh, the lies. Why had Ortiz gone back to Springfield? Loren didn’t know, only that he was gone as suddenly as he’d appeared. People said no news was good news, but Loren knew from experience that was mostly bullshit. Quiet time was prep time. No news usually meant things were gearing up to explode right in your face, splat shit all over the walls and cover you in it. He didn’t know when it would happen, or where, but it felt like there was a storm coming.

  They kept watching. Two days passed, then three. They were watching the Evanses’ bank accounts, their credit cards. They sat outside the house and drank gallons of coffee, ate old ham sandwiches from the refrigerator case at the gas station—made with the kind of ham that always has a gristly, chewy part right in the center that squeaks in your teeth when you take a bite. They were monitoring phone lines and emails and everything they could think of, but there’d been nothing. Evans had hardly set foot outside his house and hadn’t attempted to contact anyone for a week. He was crouching low, keeping his head down, hoping to let the storm pass. Just like he had twenty years before, when he’d waited for the storm of his first wife’s murder to pass him by. They’d coddled and soothed him, made him believe they’d bought his entire story of innocence.

  Still, nothing. Silence is called golden, but that’s another crock of shit for you. Silence is damning, silence is awkward, silence is anything but gold. Loren and Spengler waited, Evans waited. The people of Denver waited. Most everyone thought Marie Evans was dead from an accidental fall off a cliff, and the police didn’t issue a statement to correct those assumptions.