It beats mink farming, she thought.
Bizarrely, that was the backbone of the economy in Peoa, where minks outnumbered humans more than two to one. This fun tidbit did little to improve her opinion of the weird small town. Why Paul had chosen Peoa as the location for their dream home was beyond her. When she’d asked him the first time he showed her a photo of the plot, he’d simply said, “It was available, and the woods and river there are lovely.” But he hadn’t looked her in the eyes as he said it, and she’d fought the impulse to accuse him of lying. He was right about the beauty at least, but weren’t there woods and rivers in places that already had large houses? They were sorely out-of-place in Peoa, and although everyone seemed polite enough about them moving in, she couldn’t call their reception with the neighbors “warm.” They were probably all thinking the same thing she was: What on earth were she and Paul doing here?
She made a routine phone call to Dorma Taylor (“Yes,” Dorma had assured her, “Dorma is a real name.”) The call could, in theory, take about twenty-five seconds: Hi, Dorma, is everything ready for our speaker tomorrow? Why, yes, Jen, it is. Okay, good, bye-bye, Dorma! Goodbye, Jen! But Jen knew when you called Dorma, you were, by virtue of dialing her number, requesting an update on her family, which included herself, her husband, her two boys and three girls, and her fourteen grandchildren.
“Hiya, Jen!” Dorma said as she picked up.
“Hi, Dorma. I was just calling about tomorrow. Do we—”
“I’m glad you called! I know you’d like to hear this. You remember how my Jeffery started at the Police Academy last month—”
“Uh-huh. I do remember that. I was just going to ask if—”
“Well, his first day. His first day! The instructor tried to tell him he didn’t have the height to be a good cop. Can you believe that? Height?”
Jen sighed. “That’s pretty rude.”
“It’s not just rude. It’s probably illegal! Or it should be. There are enough ridiculous laws out there, what harm is one more going to do if it protects short guys like my boy from getting discriminated against?
“Uh-huh.”
“Anyway, so Jeffery told him…”
Jen didn’t have the energy to fight the woman, and it wasn’t like she was getting a lot of human interaction at home, so she let her talk. While Dorma moved from obscene outrage to obscene outrage, Jen’s mind wandered. Paul seemed oblivious to the boundary he’d built between them and the other people in their town by erecting such an extravagant home. If she hadn’t read (and loved) his books for herself, she would never have believed a man so introverted and out-of-touch could write them.
“He’s got a little girl at home! And I don’t think Jeffery was built for college, in the brains department, I mean. Not like my Thomas. I don’t mean he’s dumb, I just think that different things work for different people. ‘We all have our place,’ I told him. ‘We all have a job only we can do the best.’ He said…”
The characters Paul created were deep, real, and dynamic, so he must understand something about the human psyche, but in real life he could barely keep polite small talk going for more than thirty seconds with anyone except a good friend.
“I know that little girls always worship their daddies, but Jeffery’s little Deb has got to be the worst about that kind of thing. She doesn’t want a dolly for her birthday this year, oh no, she wants a cap gun, just like Jeffery will have on the job! Can you imagine a—Oop! Hang on, Jen.” Jen could hear someone talking to Dorma on the other end, but couldn’t make out what was said.
“Uh-huh,” Jen said, but couldn’t help but smile.
Dorma came back on the line, “I’m sorry, Jen, we’re going to have to finish this another time. I’ve got a situation here. You know how it is, there’s always something!” and without even waiting for a goodbye, Dorma was gone. Jen hadn’t gotten an answer to her question, but she had time to realize how rich and full Dorma’s life really was, despite all her complaints. Her family was everything to her. Imagine the legacy left behind by this one kind chatterbox and her husband. A legacy she wondered if she and Paul would ever share.
2
Sean Roberts came in her office around 4:30, as he usually did before heading home. Sean was a tall, well-built man with a crooked nosed. She wondered if he had been born with that nose, or if he’d had some kind of accident. He pushed his blonde hair off his forehead in a familiar and practiced manner and said, “Today was a killer! At least tonight you can go home to your writer man and snuggle up with a good book.”
Sean had started working there only a few days before Jen, but he acted like an old friend with just about everybody. This was more true for Jen, though, than anyone else.
“I’m not headed home yet, I have a dozen phone calls to make.”
“Everyone will be gone by five. Do it tomorrow.” He pretended to check his phone.
“I’ll leave messages, Sean. Tomorrow I’m meeting with the DS Work Group, and while I appreciate your concern, I don’t need you to tell me when to go home.” She hadn’t meant to be rude, but she was getting tired of office personnel bringing up her long hours.
Sean sighed and stepped into her office, closing the door behind him. “If this has anything to do with your husband, you can tell me. I understand.”
They had known each other since she had started working there a couple months ago, but she didn’t feel the same bond of closeness Sean seemed to think he had with everyone. Even though she was technically his superior, Sean was always mildly patronizing. “Everything’s fine,” she said, wondering if she could ask him to open the door without sounding even more impolite. “When I came into this department it was kind of a mess. There’s a lot I need to put into place. When things slow down a little, I will too.”
He looked down, smiled and shook his head; his hair—perhaps his strangest feature—fell in his face again. He had his hair cut as if he were auditioning for a James Dean lookalike competition. He swept it back with the same practiced gesture. His expression read, Poor Jen, someday she’ll learn, but he said, “Okay. Just remember, the Holy Ghost goes to bed at midnight,” and laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world.
She had no idea what the Holy Ghost had to do with long hours but gave him a courtesy chuckle and turned back to her monitor.
He said, “See ya,” as he left.
She got up and closed the door behind him. At her desk, she looked into the small mirror she kept in the drawer. This was not an egocentric habit—though she knew an on-looker might think so—it was how she talked to herself. It was an embarrassing hang-on habit from her early college days, back when homesickness was a big problem for her. She said, “Sean’s an idiot, but he may have a point. Why are you staying so late every day?”
“I have to get this department in order,” she told herself quietly, careful to keep her voice confined to the room.
“You will, you have been, that doesn’t mean you need to pull nine- or ten-hour days on a regular basis.”
“Paul needs his time to write.” The heat kicked on, and Jen listened to its low, welcome hush for a moment.
She looked back at the mirror and said, “In the last two months he’s hardly written a word and you know it. What do you think he does all day? Does he stay in the house? Does he go to Salt Lake? You don’t know.”
And Jen realized she really didn’t.
3
Paul was somewhere between Peoa and Smith-and-Morehouse Reservoir when the sun began to dip behind the Oquirrh mountains. Like many highways in the area, 183 ran parallel to a small river. He was joyriding, burning gas like it was free. His new book was almost a hundred pages long now, and he felt like he’d just gotten started. He was driving east, away from the sun, as if trying to catch the long shadow his car made in front of him on the road. He was excited about what he’d been writing. Or maybe, more accurately, that he’d been writing. He kept his mind off the specifics of the text.
Deeny began to sl
it the man’s throat. Limp hands reached for the blade, as though the man thought he could fight Deeny. Halfway through pulling the razor across his neck, Deeny changed his mind and plunged it through, shattering the spinal column, stilling the man’s busy fingers. Deeny giggled.
One thing was certain—he’d never written anything like it.
Eventually Paul pulled off the deserted street and stepped through the scrub oak and sawtooth maple to sit by the river and contemplate his marriage. As a writer, he knew it was best to avoid overly contemplative characters. A novel needed protagonists of action and decisiveness. He sometimes wished he could be more like the people in his stories. Over the last two nights he and Jen had said almost nothing to one another. There was no open hostility, just a helpless sense of drifting apart. Paul knew if he did not do something soon they may drift so far that they would no longer be able to find one another. He’d never been a vastly romantic man, but now he began to wonder if he should have been. Divorce was so common, but thinking about it as part of his own future seemed suddenly more than he could bear. The fading light of sunset seemed a mirror to his own life.
He ran his fingers through his soft, sandy hair and closed his eyes.
When he opened them the world was fully dark, true night had come. Stars twinkled above him. The moon shone down like a warning beacon. He had a moment of raw alarm before deciding he must have simply drifted off, sitting in the leaves by the water. He was breathing fast, panicky, as he had upon waking from the nightmare. Strange.
This is more than just strange, Paul, he thought. You must see that. He did see it. What he didn’t see was a good way to respond to whatever was happening. He glanced at his watch and saw it was just past eight. What if Jen had come home already? She didn’t normally get done with work quite this early, but it was not impossible.
“It would not even be as unlikely as my falling asleep like this, randomly, mid-thought,” he said to himself aloud.
The cold of late evening rested on him like a cloak. His pants were damp on the seat, and he realized he must have sat in mud. Finally his eyes adjusted to the moonlight and he could faintly see his breath puffing out in front of him. During a normal, colder winter he knew all this would already be buried in snow.
He was startled by something behind him as the leaves of a nearby tree rattled. It sounded like someone had grabbed a branch and shook it. Paul stood, feeling the stiffness in his legs from staying cross-legged for over an hour. He turned toward the sound and said, “Hello?”
Someone’s throat was cleared.
Paul scrambled to his feet and said, “Is anybody there? Hello?”
Silence.
Paul took a step back toward the road and slipped on a patch of wet leaves. “Ugh!” he grunted and went down in a confused sprawl, sliding slowly toward the water, mud smearing across his black sweater. Had the ground been wet when he walked down here from the road? Maybe he hadn’t noticed, but he didn’t think so.
He forced his body to stand, but instantly his foot sunk into the earth, enclosed in thick, deep mud. He grunted loudly again with the impact. He flailed, trying to get up, but each time fell back into the ground. He was sliding down into the river, but it was not deep or fast enough to be dangerous.
The branch shook again and Paul tried to sound casual, “Hey, if there is somebody there, I wouldn’t mind some help.” He added a laugh to show the situation was a little embarrassing, “I can’t seem to get up.” The world seemed very dark, despite the moonlight.
His next attempt to stand almost succeeded, but he ended up face-first in a huge pile of mud and leaves he had also apparently not noticed earlier. Organic gunk filled his eyes so he could see nothing but the faint glow of the moon seeping through.
Through his gasping, Paul heard someone slowly approach.
A male voice, uncommonly high-pitched, said, “Are you going to fight him or are you going to give in? He needs an answer as soon as possible.”
It wasn’t just Paul’s foot that was sinking into the wet ground now; his body was slowly being enveloped in the earth.
“Tell me,” the man said.
But Paul couldn’t speak; his mouth was filled with the leaves, dirt and mud. He started coughing, trying to get a full breath. He sputtered out something that might have been, “Help me.” He wasn’t even sure what he was trying to vocalize.
The man continued as if Paul’s silence was rude, but expected. He said, “He likes to have fun, as I’m sure you are finding out, but he also has work to do. He can’t play with you forever, Writer.” The owner of the voice was much closer now, but all his features were obscured by mud that Paul could not seem to wipe away. He had the feeling he was close enough to lunge out at the voice if he wanted to. Had he, of course, not been randomly floundering about like a lunatic.
The man said, “Why resist? You cannot stop what you will become. And why would you want to? The rush, the thrill of the kill… you too can join in on that. If only we all could be so lucky, but our minds are too weak.”
Paul’s legs and waist were buried under the earth. He fought to free himself.
“You will not die.” The man sighed. “As much as he hates to admit it, he does need you now. I’ll just leave you with this: he is hoping the relationship can be symbiotic, but it doesn’t have to be. Really, it’s up to you.” The footsteps faded back into the trees between the road and the river.
It took a moment for Paul to realize he was no longer stuck in the mud once the voice was gone, although he was still covered in it. He stood with only little trouble and ran toward the road, hoping to catch the man. He rushed back through the trees, not noticing the branches scratching him.
In the gravel pull-off from the road Paul saw a cop car parked next to the ILX. Someone was inside, but he saw nothing else. He tapped the window and a rather scrawny officer unrolled the window.
“Can I help you?” The cop said. His high-pitched voice revealed him as the man from the river. Paul had a bad moment where he thought his legs would betray him and make him run, or just give out from underneath, but he stood his ground. Mostly because he wanted answers.
“Yes, um,” Paul said, “what was it you were saying by the river?”
The cop gave him a quick up-and-down assessment. Perhaps noticing the expensive-looking—albeit mud stained—clothes. “I’m sorry?” he said.
“You know, you said he wouldn’t wait for my answer. You wouldn’t help me out of the mud.”
“Perhaps you saw someone else, sir. I’ve been—”
“No!” Paul cut him off, knowing there was no point, but not being able to stop himself. “It was you. You wouldn’t help me up!”
Paul believed the look he saw on the man’s face. The look said he really—truly—did not know what Paul was talking about. The upside of the sobriety test Paul then had to take was it gave the mud on him time to dry, so when he got back into his car it didn’t get all over the seats.
He’d apologized to the officer after calming down. He’d agreed, Yes, yes, it must have been someone else, and, No, no, of course it wasn’t a police officer. Eventually the cop seemed convinced that it had been some kind of misunderstanding, and he left.
Paul lowered himself into the seat and slammed the door. His muscles were already starting to ache from the flailing and fighting against the mud, but he knew he’d really be feeling it in the morning. Seeing nothing to gain from this unfortunate highway pit stop, Paul, too, drove off toward home.
4
He was relieved and unsettled to find the house empty. Relieved because he had time to clean up and take care of his filthy clothes before Jen got home. Unsettled because it was almost ten o’clock and Jen still hadn’t returned.
He stowed his muddy clothes in a seldom-used duffle bag and crammed it in the back of his office closet. When he had more time, he’d run them through the wash. He sat at the desk and cradled his head between his hands, his elbows propped up on the surface like a kid.
&n
bsp; Jen might be upset that he hadn’t called to see where she was. He fished his cell out of his khaki pockets, and dialed 1. His thumb hovered over the green CALL button, but he didn’t press it. He didn’t know what to say or ask. Even without the weirdness of the river, he felt he wouldn’t even know how to begin. But he wanted to reach out. He needed her strength. The comfort she could give.
The words Paul Kenner doesn’t know how to talk to his wife rumbled in his head. He shut the screen off and set the phone facedown on the desktop. He couldn’t move. He was powerless, helpless, impotent. Perhaps if he just pretended to have fallen asleep here he could pull off some surprise when she got home. Maybe he could laugh and say, “Wow! I can’t believe I fell asleep at my desk! Haha, I’m just glad you got home safe!” Then maybe he could say, “Oh by the way don’t forget, I love you and need you and I’m scared.” Then maybe he could start crying, and he could scream something like, “Actually, I’m terrified! If I don’t change I think we’re going to get divorced, and I have no idea what to do about it! And—get a load of this—I also seem to be losing my mind!”
Or maybe he could just go to bed now and trust that she wouldn’t have anything to say to him when she got back.
5
Jen was late because of Sean. He’d tricked her into talking about Paul, and the pressure in her burst like a water main. She disgusted herself by crying in front of him, but she couldn’t help it. She wasn’t close enough to her mother or sister to talk about her marriage issues with them, and the few friends she’d made back in Armour Square were really just acquaintances. She was alone save for Paul. He might be a creature of solitude, but she wasn’t. She needed human interaction. Sean was annoying—a little inappropriately close even—but he was also ready to listen, and for the first time since she started working in the department, Jen was ready to talk.
Tomorrow I Will Kill Again Page 4