The Bad Lady (Novel)

by Meany, John

  Apparently, one of Nancy’s neighbors had witnessed the vicious hit and run, and had given the authorities my mother’s license plate number as well as a description of her car. The nameless neighbor had also reported that, inside the blue Toyota Corolla, they had seen what they believed to be a small male child, sitting in the backseat.

  I knew this would happen.

  I knew there was no way that goddamn bad lady could purposely, in broad daylight, run down Nancy Sutcliffe, and get away with it. This wasn’t the movies; you can’t get away with something like that in real life. People who commit horrendous crimes like this always get busted. Always!

  Now sadly, because of Mary Kate’s homicidal actions, my mom, who, from my point of view, had always been an upstanding member of society, would be the one who would have to ultimately pay the price. Now, I had been thinking, my mom would be thrown in jail for the rest of her life. The realization made me numb.

  When the police started to bombard her with questions regarding the matter (already more or less accusing my mother of committing the heinous crime), she denied everything.

  “Miss hall, if you’re referring to Nancy Sutcliffe, I repeat, she was killed today. Nancy Sutcliffe was struck down by a hit and run driver. And in light of what our witness has said, we have reason to believe that you’re the primary suspect.”

  “Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” my mom tells the cops, while standing on the front porch.

  About twenty minutes before the officers had rung the bell; I suspect that my mother had been in the bathroom again administering her alleged diabetic medication. (The heroin) I emphasize that because when she had come out of there, seeming spaced out and lost, I noticed that, like before, she had her syringe and bandanna wrapped loosely in the same hand towel. I think she stored the drug paraphernalia in one of her bedroom drawers, presumably tucked underneath a mountain of folded clothes.

  “So then Miss Hall,” the Deputy Sheriff conducting the formal interview says authoritatively, “you’re telling us that, this afternoon, you weren’t on South Street?” Partially bald with pepper-gray hair, a face as hard as granite, and broad shoulders, I would estimate that the Sheriff’s Deputy had to be the oldest cop in the group. In my opinion, he might have been in his mid to upper fifties. The other four uniformed officers, who stood on the lawn near the steps to the porch, appeared, to me, to be in their twenties or thirties.

  “Was I on South Street today? No. Certainly not.”

  “Hmn. I see.” The Deputy Sherriff measured my mother’s eyes, which were glaringly bloodshot, probably from the melting mascara. She had not washed the theatrical white makeup off her face. In fact, she now looked a little like the Joker from Batman, except meaner. Judging by their befuddled expressions, it was rather apparent that the officers were mystified by her Gothic appearance.

  “What would I be doing on South Street?”

  “Ma’am, if you don’t mind, I‘m asking the questions.”

  “I’m sorry. I apologize.”

  “There‘s no need to apologize,” the Sheriff’s Deputy assured her. “What I’m doing right now is trying to determine whether or not you have an alibi. In a little while, Miss Hall, you‘ll also be visited by homicide detectives. Just letting you know. Okay? And even though we already have what, so far, we consider to be a credible witness; the Hampton Police Department is also urging anyone in the public with information regarding the hit-and-run to contact Crime Stoppers hotline.”

  “Huh. Isn‘t that interesting.” Flustered, my mom ran the back of her sweaty hand across her forehead, now smudging the make up to the point where it almost became reminiscent of wet paint. It was still fairly humid out. Although at this waning juncture of the day, the setting sun, which sent tree-shaped shadows creeping across the lawn, resembled a dwindling ball of orange fire. Crickets, anticipating evening, had begun to chirp. “I don’t know anyone who lives on South Street.”

  “No one at all?”

  “No sir.” She shook her head, and forced herself to smile. “I’ve been home all day. I write greeting cards for a living. As a matter of fact, you police officers have probably bought a Hallmark card that I had written the verse for, and gave it to either your wives or girlfriends for their birthdays. Or maybe for Christmas.”

  The cops all gazed at one another, dumbfounded. I got the distinct impression that they doubted my mom made a living writing greeting cards.

  “We might have bought one,” the Deputy Sheriff utters matter-of-factly. “You never know. Anything is possible.”

  “All right,” my mother adds, pretending to laugh. “I’ll admit some of my verses appear in cards that you can find at the Dollar store. I don’t exclusively write for Hallmark. Although I wish I did, there would be a lot more money in it for me. You know bigger royalty checks.” Undoubtedly, this was her way of trying to get on the cop’s good side, by employing a smidgen of humor to the discussion.

  But it did not work. The officers wanted answers regarding the hit and run. They did not come here to chitchat about holiday or special occasion cards.

  “So Miss hall, you’re claiming that haven’t left your house at all today? Is that correct?”

  “That‘s right, officer.” Nervously she used a match to put flame to a cigarette. Then, while guiding a loose lock of hair away from her eyes, she took a long pull off the Salem Light, and then indifferently exhaled a stream of menthol-scented smoke up toward the eave. “I had planned to go food shopping earlier, to get a few things, like laundry detergent, orange juice, and possibly some frozen pizza for dinner. Except I never got around to it.”

  “That a fact?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. It is a fact?”

  “That your son, ma‘am?” The Deputy Sheriff aimed his thumb in my direction.

  “Yes it is.”

  “What’s the boy’s name, if you don‘t mind me asking?”

  “Billy.”

  “Hi there.” The officer carrying out the interrogation bent down and courteously shook my hand. He had a firm, clammy grip. “How you doing, sport?”

  “I’m fine,” I whispered, shaking all over. Due to the severe degree of paranoia I felt, I nearly swallowed my Adam’s apple. Gulp!

  “So sport, is it true, that you and your mother here weren’t out driving today?” Why did he have to bring me into this? The Sheriff’s Deputy could not get the grownup to spill the beans, so he decides to go to the kid. It seemed like a cheap tactic.

  That’s when I glanced up at my mom, frightened beyond belief, because I did not know how I should respond to the officer’s inquiry. But she was no longer there. Yet again, my mom had vanished and the bad lady had assumed her identity, as if Mary Kate felt that she needed to be the one to deal with the authorities.

  “We didn’t go anywhere today,” the bad lady said to me. “Isn’t that right, Billy?” She continued to smoke the cigarette.

  The cops stared at me, intently awaiting my reply.

  “No,” I at last speak up. “Me and my mom didn’t drive around today at all.”

  “Are you sure about that, sport?”

  I nodded. “Uh huh.”

  “Tell the nice officer what we did today, Billy.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Tell him about how we had lunch in the backyard, at the picnic table.”

  “We did, mister, we had roast beef sandwiches and soda.”

  “And what time was that?” The cop doing the questioning quickly swung his attention back to the bad lady.

  Her eyes now appeared wraithlike. “Oh, I don’t know,” she says, checking her Timex digital watch. “I’d say in between two and four o’clock.”

  “Two and four o’clock. Okay.” The Deputy Sheriff, stepped down off shady the porch, and then walked over to the driveway.

  “This your car?” he asks, pointing to the Toyota Corolla.

  “Yes, it is officer.”


  “Front-end looks pretty banged up,” another cop says, while bending down near the bumper. “She definitely hit something. There’s quite a dent here.”

  Another officer marched over. “Wait Mitch. Looks like there’s some blood splattered on the bumper as well.”

  “Oh. That,” the bad lady says indifferently. She also strolled over to the car. “That’s nothing. I hit an animal yesterday. A deer.”

  It did not take being a genius to know that the Sheriff’s Deputy clearly did not buy that. “A deer you say, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where did you hit a deer, m‘am?”

  “On Route 64. It came running out of the woods and before I had time to slam on the breaks, I wound up hitting the poor thing. Listen officers, I realize I probably should have reported the incident, but I don’t know, I guess I wasn’t thinking. I never hit an animal before. So I really wasn’t sure what to do.”

  The Deputy turned toward me. “Is that true son, you and your mother struck a deer yesterday?”

  I froze, not sure what to say.

  “Billy wasn’t there,” Mary Kate promptly intervened.

  Surprisingly the Deputy Sheriff did not solicit where I was. The cops, I believe, had already made up their minds that my mother was guilty. A dented bumper with blood on it, an eyewitness description of the car and her license plate number, with the witness having observed me in the backseat.

  How could they not think my mom was guilty?

  Although it seemed that, before the cops would slap the cuffs on her, they had to continue to go through this nerve-racking formality of asking her certain questions until they determined, without a shadow of a doubt, that she was the person that they were looking for.

  Just then, the Good Humor truck, with its hypnotic carnival music jingling, came around the block and started to drive down the street, headed toward the house. (I know. I could not believe it either. It was like seeing a mirage.)

  Right away, Mary Kate spotted the white, box-shaped vehicle, as did the cops. The officers seemed to fall into a state of awe, as if they had suddenly been put under the influence of a powerful sorcerer’s spell.

  For about ten second, as the Good Humor truck gradually approached, with someone merrily shouting the cheerful words ‘ice cream’, none of the Hampton, Ohio cops could either speak or look away. The whole situation, to me, seemed to take place in slow motion. I could not speak or look away either.

  “God understands why I must do away with that sleaze,” the bad lady utters cryptically, in a haunting voice. “He has no room in heaven for scum like Nancy Sutcliffe. And I won’t allow that woman near my child again.”

  “Pardon me, ma’am?” the Deputy Sheriff asks.

  “Yeah,” one of the other puzzled cops follows up. “What did she just say?”

  “I said that God has spoken.”

  “God has what?”

  “Never mind. You pigs are in my way.” All of a sudden, Mary Kate, with a head full of steam, lunged at the unsuspecting Deputy Sheriff and somehow managed to snatch his service revolver from his holster.

  Then, howling like a psycho, she ran toward the road and began to open fire on the windshield of the Good Humor truck, peppering it with a raging flurry of artillery. The sporadic gunshots sounded like the Fourth of July, like firecrackers exploding.

  “What the-” one of the cops squeals, tongue-tied.

  “How dare you molest my only child!” the bad lady shouted irately at the Good Humor truck. “I thought I killed you, whore!” She fired another blast. The bullet bounced off the steel vehicle, causing the projectile to ricochet. “Nancy Sutcliffe, may your soul burn in hell forever, sinner . . . Die pedophile. Die!”

  With their weapons drawn, the alarmed police officers, now crouched down on their knees, immediately took position behind their patrol cars.

  Overwhelmed by the gunshots, the Good Humor truck crashed awkwardly into a telephone pole. Once the square-shaped vehicle had come to a screeching halt, with a somewhat substantial amount of black smoke rising from the smashed front end, I saw someone slumped over the steering wheel- a heavy-set man with glasses.

  My mom‘s alter ego, Mary Kate, with the service revolver held at her side, rushed over to finish the job. There was no doubt in my mind that she planned to put a slug in the ice cream truck driver’s head.

  Then the unthinkable happened, one of the cops screamed as loud as he possibly could, “Stop it! Stop! Put the gun down!” When the bad lady did not obey the command, the officer shot her, pointblank, in the back. My mom collapsed in the street, face down. Not far from the ice cream truck.

  Shocked, I instinctively ran to her side, rolled her over, and then held her. I held my mom, thinking that if she died, I would have no one. She had been the only family I had ever known. I had never known my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. If my mother died, there would be no one left to care for me. And that frightened me. That scared me more than I can possibly explain.

  Even if she went to prison, which if she lived I now knew my mother definitely would, I would have gladly taken that over her dying. At least, from time to time, I would be able to go visit her, occasionally talk on the phone, and we could always correspond through letters.

  She lay, on her side, in the middle of the street, with her legs bent in opposite directions, the way people often appear after a sudden fall. Blood leaked from the corners of her mouth, making my mom look more like a vampire than she already did. I wondered if she might have bitten her tongue. Warm blood, from the gunshot injury, also oozed onto the residential road, forming a horrific puddle. I could smell it too, an almost unfamiliar metallic scent.

  The sights of the blood made me wince, and compelled me to have to turn away momentarily.

  My mother’s eye sockets were so murky and submerged into her skull, I could scarcely see her pupils. Chillingly, her ponytail had also begun to turn crimson. If I glanced at the back of her head, I suspected that it would be soaked as well. Damn! It was soaked. You could have probably rung the blood out of her hair the way you can ring water from a sponge.

  “Billy,” she whispers hoarsely, while struggling, with her hand, to caress my panic-stricken face. “My son, my precious little boy.” Her sorrowful eyes, which were only partially open, seemed to stare straight up at the angels.

  “Mom, is that you?”

  She did not say anything.

  “Are you still Mary Kate?” I asked.

  “What happened?” she whispered, clearly in a fog, and unaware of her surroundings.

  “Mary Kate ran Nancy Sutcliffe over today, and killed her.”

  It took a few seconds for her to respond. I was certain that I was speaking to my mother‘s normal personality, for I could distinguish her compassionate, relaxed tone anywhere.

  “That’s horrible,” she says, fading in and out of consciousness. “How did you learn Mary Kate’s name?”

  “She told me, today.”

  My mother fell silent again, battled to remain responsive. “What happened to me, Billy? Why can’t I move and where am I?”

  “You’re lying in the street, in front of our house. A cop shot you in the back.”

  “Shot me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” She appeared to be utterly mortified.

  “Because-”

  “Please Billy; tell me why did I get shot?”

  I did not know how to put it, so I just came right out with it. “The Good Humor truck came around the corner.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s because you weren’t there. When Mary Kate spotted the ice cream truck, she went nuts. She grabbed one of the cop’s guns from their belt and ran down the street shooting at the guy.”

  “Shooting at what guy?”

  “She was shooting at the guy who was driving the ice cream truck. The bad lady thought it was Nancy Sutcliffe, even though she already killed her.” I beg
an to blubber hysterically. “Mom, are you gonna be all right?”

  Three of the officers stood nearby, which included the Deputy Sheriff, allowing us to talk. I could see their elongated shadows. I had heard that an ambulance was on the way, as well as firefighters. The other two cops had gone to assist the driver of the Good Humor truck. The driver was okay, a bullet had not struck him. The man had just been a little shaken up. More black, gas-flavored smoke ascended from the crashed vehicle, and now the hot hellish flames coming from the front end were thoroughly visible. I think a bullet must have hit the engine, or something. I had no clue whether or not the ice cream truck would blow up. To tell you truth, I did not care. I was too worried about my mother dying.

  “Just please understand, Billy,” she resumed weakly, as more blood and saliva dripped from her mouth, “It has never been easy for me to give you a happy childhood.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said, moaning with grief. “I’ve been happy.”

  “Not as happy as you could have been.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” And I did not either. I did not want to hear her speak of regrets.

  “And please don’t blame your father either.”

  “Why would I blame him for anything, I don’t know a thing about my father. Why would I even want to think about him, especially now? You said he never cared about us.”

  “Billy, there’s something you need to know.”

  “What?”

  She no longer had the strength to keep stroking my sad, agonized face. Her hand abruptly fell, flopped against the hard street. Her energy appeared to be deteriorating rapidly. “You’re father-” She gagged; spit some of the blood from her mouth.

  “What about my father?”

  “I lied.”

  “You lied. About what?”

  She had to battle like hell to get the words out. “Billy, your daddy doesn’t even know you exist.”

  Stunned disbelief swiftly walloped me in the head. That was the last thing that I expected her to say. “But, but how is that possible, how does he not know I exist?”

  “Because.” She needed another moment, this time to catch her breath. “I never . . . I never told him about you. He never knew that I was pregnant.”