Beautiful Bad

by Annie Ward

  “Correctamundo. This is where it would be,” Wayne answers, starting to open the door.

  It’s locked.

  “That’s weird,” I say. “I didn’t think it would be locked. I don’t come down here much.”

  Wayne goes, “Hmphh,” while he puts his hands on his hips and contemplates this new impediment with his bottom lip stuck out. Then he stands on tiptoe, reaches above the door frame and retrieves a key that is hidden there. Wayne looks pleased with himself. “It’s something us guys do.”

  “Well, thank God for you.”

  The key works in the door and Wayne opens it. The bad part of the basement is dark. Wayne finds the light switch and then we can see.

  The sump pump is at the back in the middle of the concrete floor. It’s actually a little flooded, but fine. Two feet to the left of the sump pump is a black hefty bag. Falling out of the black mouth of the gaping bag are a dozen empty half-gallon Stolichnaya vodka bottles. Wayne looks at me to see if I have seen what he has seen; to see if I understand what this means. I stare back. My eyes are so wide that I can feel my scar stretching and pulling my skin.

  “J-j-just before Ian left,” Wayne stammers, spitting all over the place, “he came over to help me cut down that honey locust and he told me...” Wayne chokes up. “He told me that he had stopped drinking vodka a year ago. That he wanted to be a better dad.”

  I look at the pile of bottles. I cover my face with my hands to hide my shame.

  “Maddie,” he says, aghast.

  “He told me the same thing, Wayne.”

  I raise my beseeching eyes but he’s not looking at me. He is sidestepping fearfully around me to see something on the far wall of the bad part of the basement, his jaw hanging open, pointing with a knotty finger.

  I look up, and there’s the wall of water and the barrels of doomsday food. Ian’s weapons are artfully hung behind the shelving: knives, swords from around the world, an axe and a pick. Three gas masks. One is child-sized. To the other side is a massive double-doored gun cabinet. Lying on his worktable are three bows and hundreds of arrows. It’s truly a sinister display.

  Wayne wheels on me. He’s shocked to the core. “Maddie,” he exclaims again, and this time it’s an accusation as well as a question. “What in God’s name? We have to do something about this! He’s out of control! You’re not safe! And Charlie! What about Charlie?”

  “Oh my God,” I manage, struggling to hold back the tears. “Tell me! What should I do? Help me! Please!”

  Please, Wayne. Please.

  Wayne puts one skinny arm around my shoulders and pulls me close. I can smell lawn fertilizer and chewing tobacco and that indescribable something that seems to emanate from the elderly—a whiff of mortality. The faintest scent of stale breath and our impending death.

  DAY OF THE KILLING

  Diane sounded nothing like herself. Again she yelled toward the disheveled shadow in the doorway, this time more urgently. “Put the weapon down!” The baseball bat remained raised, poised to strike. Diane’s grip tightened on her pistol, her finger just starting to squeeze the trigger. “Put it down! Now!”

  The figure took another step closer. It was a woman. One side of her face was a disjointed mess like a jigsaw puzzle made of pieces that barely fit. The effect was ghastly. It was a walking corpse.

  And then Diane saw the fear in the woman’s good eye. Fear and exhaustion and relief. The woman dropped the bat and fell to her knees.

  “Thank God,” she said in a trembling voice. “We knew you were here. We heard the doorbell but we were afraid to come out. We were hiding but then I had to go find Charlie. He ran off. Do you know where Charlie is?”

  Charlie, Diane thought. I never asked him his name. Charlie was a good name for him. Charlie with the chocolate eyes. Diane said gently, “Are you Charlie’s mom?”

  “Yes. I’m Maddie.”

  “Charlie’s good, Maddie. He’s safe. He’s with one of our officers.”

  The woman laced her hands together as if in prayer and mumbled into them.

  At that moment Shipps appeared in the bedroom door, gun drawn.

  “It’s okay, Shipps.”

  He switched on the light in the bedroom and took in the wild-eyed, injured women with alarm. He lowered his gun and said, “Sweet Jesus.”

  “We need to get medical attention for her,” Diane said, gesturing at the woman who was still cowering in the corner.

  Maddie, the one with the sickening eye, said, “That’s my friend Joanna.”

  Diane’s mouth dropped open. “This is your friend?” she asked. “This is the friend that you ‘had over when Daddy came home’?”

  Shipps saw Diane’s expression of confusion. He said to Maddie, “There’s a man in the basement. His driver’s license says he’s Ian Wilson. Is that your husband?”

  Maddie tried to speak.

  “Is Ian Wilson your husband?” Shipps asked again.

  “Y-yes,” she stammered. “Is he? Is he...” It was not clear if she was pleading with him or just petrified.

  “No longer a threat,” Shipps answered, doing a grim scan of the room.

  “What happened?” Diane asked, turning to Maddie.

  “My husband went crazy. He—he—” Maddie couldn’t continue. The tears streamed down her face. She tried again. “He—he—” She could only gasp for breath repeatedly.

  The woman was in shock. Diane supposed the answer to her own question was fairly obvious. “Try to calm down. We’ll get to the bottom of all this shortly.” She addressed Joanna. “Are you able to walk? We can call the medics to come get you, but it’s much better when we don’t have people stomping around the scene.”

  Jo winced and nodded. Then she reached up a hand for assistance.

  As Diane helped Joanna down the stairs, Shipps’s cell phone rang. “It’s the coroner. You go ahead.”

  Diane, Maddie and Joanna exited the front of the house to pandemonium. The whole neighborhood was lit up like the carnival rides at the county fair. Two additional police cars had arrived and were parked, flashers on, just down the street. The new officers on the scene were walking around the perimeter of the residence, keeping up a constant chatter on their phones and radios. An ambulance, its own red top light sweeping in great arcs around the street, was parked in the drive.

  As Diane escorted Maddie and Joanna to the ambulance, she noticed that in the back of Bill’s squad car there was an elderly man in a John Deere baseball cap staring out the window toward the Wilson home with blatant apprehension. She met his eyes briefly and recognized him as the runner in the backyard.

  Maddie didn’t see him. She was busy looking for Charlie. She found him in the back of the ambulance and stumbled trying to climb in to reach him. He jumped at her so hard he nearly knocked her over. “Baby!” she said, hugging him. “You’re okay! Oh my God. You’re okay. We’re going to be okay.” She kissed the top of his head and held him tight. His arms encircled her waist.

  One of the medics smiled. “You’ve got a nice kid there.” He patted a blue padded fold-out bench. “You want to come back here and have a seat so I can check you out?”

  “Yes,” she said, extricating herself from Charlie and moving into the back of the vehicle. “But I’m fine. He threw me down and I hit my head, but I’m not hurt. My friend’s the one who got the worst of it.”

  Diane helped Joanna into the ambulance, and the second young male medic motioned her to a reclining seat.

  Maddie said, “Charlie, there’s room over here. Come sit next to me.” She darted a quick glance at the medic making notes. “Is that all right?”

  “It’s fine,” he answered.

  Charlie joined his mom and leaned into her body, head down. Maddie’s fingers went straight to his curly mop of hair and started combing through it. Diane saw that she, like Joanna, painted her nails an unu
sual color. They were the same icy gray as her eyes but they were incredibly short, cut down past the tips of her fingers.

  “Would it be okay for me to take some photos?” Diane asked, climbing in across from Maddie. “Did I hear you say you were thrown down?”

  Maddie nodded.

  “Could you pull your hair back? Maddie? You said your name is Maddie upstairs, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she answered, pulling her hair back to reveal her eye and the scar.

  Diane cleared her throat. “I’d actually like to see the other side. You’ll probably have a nasty bruise there tomorrow. I take it that’s where you hit the floor?”

  Another tear slipped down Maddie’s face as she tucked the hair behind her ear on the good side of her face. Charlie said, “Don’t cry, Mommy,” and that made Maddie’s shoulders heave in silence with the effort to stop. Everyone was being so nice.

  “Officer?” the medic with the beard said. “Can I have a quick word?”

  Diane joined him. He nodded toward Joanna and said softly, “She has three broken nails. Probably defensive wounds.”

  “Right.” Into her mic Diane said, “Detective Shipps? You’ll want to bring an evidence kit to the ambulance. We need a nail scrape when you get a minute.”

  “Also,” the medic went on, “the capillaries in her eyes have burst. Her neck is bad already, but the bruising won’t get colorful until tomorrow. The red marks are consistent with strangulation.”

  She sure can scream, though, thought Diane, remembering with a shiver the moment the woman had opened those fiery eyes and lunged for her hand. “Thanks. I’ll take over for a sec now, if you don’t mind.”

  Diane gave Jo a sympathetic smile. “Upstairs Maddie said that you’re her friend Joanna.”

  Jo tried to nod and cringed.

  “I’m not going to ask you any questions right now. Rest your voice. Let me just get some pictures, okay?”

  Jo’s eyes stayed fixed on the ceiling of the ambulance. Her lower lip trembled as Diane photographed her neck and her eyes. When Diane asked her to lift her hair up so she could photograph behind her ears, Jo let out a sharp cry with the pain of lowering her chin.

  “I’m sorry,” Diane said. “That’s enough for now. I’ll need more tomorrow once the bruising sets in.”

  “Are we going to the hospital?” Maddie asked. “Or the police station?”

  “Both. I’m afraid we’ll need to separate you. First you’ll see a doctor, and then a bit later once we’re done here, you’ll see my boss, Detective Shipps. There’s a certain way it needs to be done. Joanna, being the more badly hurt, will go with these nice young men to the county Med Center.” The EMTs both grinned. “You and your son will be driven over by one of the other officers behind the ambulance.”

  “Not you?” Maddie said, looking up with something like disappointment.

  Diane felt strangely flattered. “Probably not. I was the first responder, so I’ll likely be asked to stay until crime lab arrives. The detective, who is very nice also, by the way, will ask you some questions back at the station.”

  “And then do we come back here?”

  “Not right away. First we have to do our job and have a look at everything. Detective Shipps will determine when he feels the house has been sufficiently processed. Sometimes it’s a couple of days. Sometimes it can be weeks, but I wouldn’t be too worried about that. I have a feeling they’ll clear the house soon. And then when that’s done...” Diane glanced at Charlie, tucked under Maddie’s arm. His eyes were closed. Diane lowered her voice. “You’ll need to arrange to have things cleaned up. One of the officers here probably has a card for a service you can use. I’ll ask around. You won’t want him to come home to—” she searched for another way to put it but couldn’t come up with anything more compassionate “—a mess.”

  Maddie breathed in sharply and wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve. “I have two little dogs. Skopie and Sophie. Sophie gets nervous and scratches at the door whenever Ian yells, so I let them out when he started getting angry. I never let them back in.”

  “I saw them. They’re fine, but I’m afraid we can’t let two dogs have the run of a crime scene.”

  Maddie nodded helplessly and hugged Charlie closer. “I’ll call my mom and dad to come get them.”

  “I’m sorry,” Diane said, and she was.

  Shipps showed up at the back of the ambulance. “I believe I’ve got a nail scrape to do?”

  It took no time at all. Once Shipps had bagged his wooden stick and Q-tip, he said to the medics, “I’m done. How about you guys?”

  They both nodded.

  “All right then. Can I escort one of you into the house to get an official declaration?”

  The medic with the bushy beard said, “Absolutely, sir,” and jumped down to the pavement.

  Shipps leaned in to speak with Diane. “You stay with the ladies until I’m done, and then we’ll all meet just there on the lawn.”

  Shipps and the medic disappeared through the front door. A few minutes later CJ and Bill, the short, muscular, baby-faced cop who had tackled the intruder in the backyard, joined Diane at the back of the ambulance.

  CJ whistled. “Every man and his dog came out for the show tonight, right?”

  Bill nodded. “And Shipps said the chief is on his way.”

  “Well, not to cuss us out for once, I hope,” Diane said. “I think tonight could’ve gone worse.”

  Shipps and the medic returned from the house. “Okay,” Shipps said, motioning the officers to huddle around him a few yards from the ambulance. “The medic declared type black at—” he checked his watch “—twenty-two fifty hours. Bill, bring us up to speed on the party in your vehicle?”

  Bill took a small notebook out of his pocket. “Wayne Randall, white male, five foot eleven, approximately 165 pounds, born on—”

  Shipps interrupted. “I appreciate your attention to detail but it’s late and there’s lots to do, so let’s cut to the chase.”

  Bill closed his notebook. “He’s the neighbor across the street. Claims he saw Diane arrive. He was worried because he’s always thought that the husband was a jerk who might be a threat to his wife and child. He came over to see if he could help, saw the gate to the backyard was open and then decided to peek in the back window.”

  Shipps crossed his arms over his chest. “Why’d he run?”

  Bill laughed and then caught himself. He became very serious again. “He’s got a number of unpaid traffic tickets.”

  “You’re kidding,” Diane said. “He could’ve gotten shot!”

  Shipps pointed at Bill. “Did you put him through the system?”

  “Yes. It’s true,” Bill answered. “He’s not lying about the tickets.”

  “Hold on,” Shipps said. “Stay right here.”

  He walked over to the ambulance. After a second, he helped Maddie out. He gestured toward Bill’s police car. The old man in the John Deere cap was easy to see, his face bathed in flashing light. After a second, Shipps returned to the officers. “She confirmed it’s the neighbor. Says he had nothing to do with what happened in the house. Bill, you’re still going to take him in for questioning.”

  “So,” Diane said, “what’s the final story? I know the wife said the husband went crazy. He threw her down. He choked her friend. Then what?”

  Shipps clapped his hands together and said, “Right. Let me go find out. I’m leaving for the station to prepare for the interviews. Bill, you take the neighbor with the very poor judgment to the station. CJ, you take the wife and kid and follow the ambulance with the injured lady to county Med. Diane, I’d like you to wait for crime lab. Take some photos for us, too.”

  As her colleagues scattered in different directions Diane shivered in the night wind even though it was warm and humid. One by one the vehicles pulled away, off to thei
r various destinations. The officer who’d been assigned crime scene duty had not yet arrived, and Diane’s car was dark. The house looked almost the same as it had when she’d arrived. Safe. She even heard a cricket start to chirp. Or was it a toad? She wasn’t sure. But she knew about fireflies, and there they were, returning after having been scared away, many cheerful little sparks in the night.

  The vocal of the two dogs in the backyard suddenly resumed its outraged barking. A page had been turned.

  Life went on.

  DAY OF THE KILLING

  Diane went to her squad car to retrieve a pair of latex gloves. She took a deep breath as she entered the house for the third time that night, steeling herself for the photos and videos she now had to take. She could handle it. She had not had to find the worst; the thing she had feared the most after seeing the water table and sandbox. Someone was dead, yes. But not a child.

  She decided she would start in the basement.

  As she started down, there hung on the wall a beautiful red-and-yellow African batik, with a black canopy tree like an elegant umbrella over a landscape of elephants and giraffes. One just like it had hung in the living room of her childhood home. Her dad had brought it home from Liberia when she was little. This house brought back memories. The African mask on the first floor and the tall military combat boots by the front door. Soldiers liked their souvenirs. The batik painting made her miss her dad. She was now fairly sure that this was a soldier’s home.

  The basement stairs, similar to the ones leading to the upper floor of the house, were winding and carpeted. The bloody handprints looked like something out of a Halloween haunted house. She photographed them and continued to follow the blood, feeling increasingly nervous. There was no valid reason for it. The assailant was dead. No, she thought, correcting herself. The man was dead. He may have been an assailant, but he was also quite obviously a victim. She reminded herself that she still didn’t know what had happened.

  She saw his legs first and felt her heart flutter with sympathy. He was sitting up, and for an electric second Diane thought perhaps he was not dead at all. It looked as if he had slid down to a sitting position to rest his head in the corner. His back was against the wall, his legs straight out and splayed, and there was blood pooled in the carpet underneath him. One arm had fallen to the side, and there was a broken unlit cigarette between his fingers.