Beautiful Bad

by Annie Ward

  He wore a short-sleeved T-shirt, and his arms were attractively muscled and tan. They were, however, covered in a thorny bramble of red scratch marks. Defensive wounds inflicted by his victim. His face, too, looked as if it had been scratched. Long slivers had been carved from his cheeks.

  Diane took a video and a number of photos and noticed that the menacing man had bitten his fingernails like a nervous schoolboy, evenly and to the quick. Diane imagined him taking the cigarette out, realizing he had no lighter and failing to finish that last intuitive action when his life ebbed away.

  Diane finished photographing him and began her inspection of the basement. A few feet from the man’s body was a desk, a swivel chair and two computers. On one computer screen there were rows of brightly colored candy. At some point earlier on the day that he died, someone had been playing Candy Crush. On the other computer, a screen saver cycled through photos. The man holding Charlie. The man lying on the couch and laughing while the two Boston terriers licked his face. The man and Maddie dressed as Vikings, wearing giant horned hats, maybe on Halloween.

  Diane turned back to him. He simply appeared to have chosen a bad place to fall asleep. She leaned closer to get a better look at his face and allowed that he was more handsome than what you usually find around Meadowlark; attractively carved features and very frank, dark, sad eyes. The boy’s eyes. He was a big man. Not just big, but powerful. Solid. Diane supposed that he could be very intimidating. However, as the whimsical whistling Candy Crush song played softly in the background of his death, he did not look like the bad guy.

  Suddenly the door upstairs slammed, and Diane’s stomach flipped. It’s okay, she thought. It’s Seth. Seth the indie rocker from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab. She’d only run into him a couple of times at crime scenes, but if she ever went to The Crooked Crow on a sunny Sunday afternoon he was certainly there, wearing a Beck or Sonic Youth T-shirt, drinking a pint of beer on the patio.

  Instead of going up to greet Seth, she decided to stay down in the basement just a little longer. The nervousness had passed, and she rather liked the quiet. A momentary restful respite from the police banter and her daily dose of little disappointments. Though the blood was revolting, she found that in the man’s dusky vault it was not so hard to just look away. Look beyond. Maybe even close her eyes to it all. There was something about the privacy and the security of the man cave that was soothing and reassuring. She wished suddenly and wholeheartedly that this house had been a safe one for this man and his family.

  But, no. Not a vault. A crypt.

  Diane followed the direction of Ian’s last gaze. The partially open door to a secluded part of the basement leaked a thin trail of light out into the otherwise darkened room. She adjusted the flash on her camera and went to have a look.

  * * *

  The time ticked by, and Seth, unrecognizable in his coveralls, face mask, gloves and booties, moved quietly around the Wilson home. Diane had finished taking her photos. She’d even taken some more videos and walked around the house a third and fourth time. She’d gone outside and spent some time talking to Mark Harrison, the patrol officer who’d finally arrived on crime scene duty. He would be spending the night at the house. Someone would be required to stay there continually until Shipps had decided that all the evidence had been collected and the family was free to return.

  The coroner had stayed only a few minutes. He was an unpleasant man, and Diane was relieved that he didn’t engage her in conversation. Once he left, she knew it wouldn’t be long before “the crew” arrived. They would go into the house, bag the body, tag it, take photos and carry it out to their van. Then the man now slumped against the wall in the basement would officially cease to exist. He would never come home again.

  Diane yawned and realized that she was famished, drained and very sad. She wasn’t needed here anymore. It was time to go home. The main floor was dotted with little numbered placards, and Seth paced restlessly with his enormous camera and massive flash. She walked up next to him and said, “How’s it going?”

  He pulled off his mask. “Good, thanks.” He was scrawny with ridiculously unkempt patches of scraggly facial hair, but he had nice green eyes, a button nose and ears that looked a bit like an elf’s.

  “I’m about to take off,” she said.

  “Yeah. That’s fine.” He gestured around the house. “I haven’t even finished the ground floor. I’ll be here another four or five hours.”

  “That’s a long night,” she said.

  He grinned. “I do longer nights when I’m not working.”

  She laughed. “I bet you do. Anything you might be able to tell me now?”

  “Yeah, for sure. But you know, I’m the evidence tech and Matt’s the lab tech, so officially I just collect and he analyzes. But if you want to know my opinion, that’s cool.”

  “Yes,” Diane. “That would be great.”

  Seth seemed legitimately excited to share his thoughts. Though he was obviously intelligent, he expressed himself like a teenage skateboarder. Which, Diane thought, is probably exactly what he had been about ten years previous.

  She smiled at him as he waved her over enthusiastically and started pointing things out. “So here we have a big, bloody knife. That’s the one that did the nasty. And over here, what do we have? A clean little baby knife. Big bloody’s little bro. I can’t see anything on it, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything there. Underneath the fridge? We have a cut-off ballpoint pen with the ink removed. People use those to sniff all kinds of dope, everything from OxyContin to coke, so we’ll have that tested and see what sort of freaky party was going down. There were lots of adult beverages being had, and glasses being broken and what have you. Looks like there was certainly a pretty big brawl. I’m no blood guy, but I can tell you that our dude was killed here in the kitchen, and then Mr. Drippy walked over to the middle of the living room where he fell down in his own blood and then he was like, ‘Oh no, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!’ He kind of squirmed around like a beetle on its back for a while. But then he did get up because he continued on drippy-dripping over to the basement stairs. That’s where I’ll be hanging out next. The bloody basement.” He winked and gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Well, okay then,” Diane said, nodding and amused. “Very helpful.” She supposed that one might need an odd sense of humor in his line of work. “Thank you so much. Good night, Seth.”

  “Good night, Diane. Hope to see you at The Crooked Crow some weekend.”

  “Me, too,” she called pleasantly as she walked out.

  The sky was gray at the east and feathery with the first morning clouds as Diane pulled into her apartment parking lot. Inside, she filled a water bottle, took off her clothes and slipped into bed. Before turning out the light, she made a quick call to Shipps.

  “You home yet?” she asked.

  “Just now.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “Madeline Wilson’s parents’ house. Farm out on Ridgeview Road.”

  “And so how were the interviews?”

  Shipps laughed and said, “Oh my goodness. Interesting, to say the least. Joanna Jasinski was apparently a sailor in a previous life. I kind of wanted to say, ‘You kiss your momma with that mouth?’ but then I thought, you know, she doesn’t seem the type to kiss her momma at all.”

  “What’s the upshot?”

  “They both said that they were a hundred percent certain Mr. Wilson was going to kill Ms. Jasinski.”

  “So we’ve got Jasinski claiming she killed Wilson in self-defense.”

  “Nope! What we have is Madeline Wilson stabbing her husband to save her friend.”

  “What?” Diane nearly dropped the phone. “You’re shitting me. She looked like a quivering fawn in the headlights of a freight train.”

  “I know. I was shocked myself.”

  “Granted, I di
dn’t get to speak with the ladies as long as I wanted between the uncontrollable tears, the boy being present and the need for medical attention. I can tell you, though, I didn’t see that coming.”

  “Yeah. The interviews are, I cringe to say, pretty entertaining. You spoke with the women more at the scene than I did. Can you watch the interviews and let me know if you see anything that rubs you the wrong way? Keep an eye out for discrepancies?”

  “Of course, Shipps.”

  “But now go to bed.”

  “Okay. You, too.”

  “Get a few hours, Di.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Instead of going to sleep, Diane got up, pulled on a robe and walked into her little living room. She opened up her Facebook account and did a search for Madeline Wilson. She was in luck, and Madeline’s account was public. The profile picture was a sweet one of Maddie kissing Charlie on the cheek, and the banner was Maddie and Ian in hiking gear, standing atop a mountain with their arms raised in triumph. Both photos were pre-scar.

  She scrolled down and saw that the most recent post was six days earlier. It was a selfie of Maddie and Joanna. It looked like it had been taken outside the Kansas City Airport. The women were both wearing big sunglasses obscured by tons of tangled, brown, windswept hair. Their smiles were huge and happy. One of Maddie’s hands was hooked over Joanna’s shoulder squeezing, long pointed gray nails like talons. The caption said, “Look who’s come to visit! The woman who speaks eight languages and doesn’t know how to say no in any of them! Let the wild rumpus start!”

  Diane wondered about these women and their past. It made her uneasy. She scrolled down, and the next photo was from a couple of months earlier. It was Ian at sunset, kneeling on a rock with one arm around Charlie and the other pointing up at the constellations that were just barely visible in the lavender sky. Charlie was looking up with innocent, wide-mouthed wonder, and Ian’s arm was wrapped around him so protectively that Diane suddenly felt like she was a horrible voyeur, attempting to find something morbid in what appeared to be intensely beautiful.

  * * *

  She slept too long, and when she woke the sun was already up, the day sure to be uncomfortably hot. She was disastrously late to work, and then she remembered. Today wasn’t like the others. A man had died. His wife had killed him.

  DAY OF THE KILLING

  Sweet Water Creek was on Diane’s way from her apartment back to the police station. She turned into the subdivision and was surprised to find it fairly lively. A young lady was out pushing a stroller, a few construction workers were gathered around a hole in the ground and a man in a track suit was running with his German shepherd. She drove past Ian and Maddie’s house and checked to make sure the yellow police tape she’d stretched across the front door was intact. She waved at Lacey Freemont, Meadowlark’s only other female officer. She had replaced the night officer and was now sitting outside the Wilson house in her car. Lacey didn’t wave back. She was staring intently at her phone.

  Diane pulled up in Wayne Randall’s driveway. Before she could even unlock her door to get out, she could see him trotting toward her from his side yard on his spindly legs.

  She stood up next to her squad car and gave him her friendliest smile. “Hello there!”

  Wayne was out of breath by the time he reached her, and his face was covered in grayish dust. He was holding a hand trowel, and the knees of his jeans were muddy. He must have been weeding. “What happened to them?” he demanded. “Nobody told me nothing. What happened?”

  Diane nodded reassuringly. “I’ll be happy to bring you up to speed, Mr. Randall. It’s Randall, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Wayne Randall. I live here.” He took a quick sip of air and cleared his throat. “Is she all right? And Charlie?” His face scrunched up in a little knot when he said the boy’s name. A tiny snort of emotion escaped. “And Charlie?”

  “Madeline and Charlie Wilson are both okay.”

  Wayne looked up, his old eyes watery and red. “I saw them come out last night, so I knew he didn’t kill them. I just wanted to know what he’d done to them in there.”

  “Is that why you were in their backyard? Because you wanted to know what had happened?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I was worried about her and the boy.”

  Diane studied Wayne carefully. “Did you think Ian Wilson was a dangerous man? Someone who might hurt his family?”

  “Have you been in the back of that basement?”

  “Yes.”

  “That man has an arsenal down there.”

  “There are a lot of apoca-people around.”

  “The vodka? What about all those bottles of vodka? You should have seen her face. I was with her when she found it.”

  “It doesn’t look good. You’re right. But drinking a lot and being lazy about taking out the trash in and of itself is not a crime.”

  “Well, a crime has been committed, hasn’t it? For you to be here all night and again today. What’s he done?” Wayne stomped his foot on the ground. Some strands of gray hair came loose from his comb-over and started dancing crazily in the breeze. “Huh? Well? He told me...more importantly he told her. He said that he was done with the vodka. Poor Charlie! What did he do to them? Tell me! What did that good-for-nothing son of a bitch do?”

  * * *

  A half hour later, Diane was standing in front of the refrigerated soft drink aisle at the gas station, staring at the selection. Her hands were in her pockets, and she rocked back and forth from heel to toe, toe to heel. Eventually the teenaged cashier walked over and said, “Hey, Officer.”

  Diane snapped out of it. “Oh hey there, Emily.”

  “A lot to choose from. I like Dr Pepper myself.”

  “What?” Diane had not even been seeing the drinks. She had been somewhere else, thinking about that photo of Maddie and Joanna that had been posted on Facebook. It was nagging at her, and she couldn’t figure out why. “Oh right,” she said, laughing. “God. I barely slept. How long have I been standing here?”

  “Kind of a long time.”

  Diane smiled at the girl and said, “And you know what’s the worst part? I came in for a candy bar!”

  Back at the station, Diane sat down at her desk in front of her computer. She’d accessed the shared file with the videos and had Shipps’s interview with Maddie up and ready to go. She broke off half of a KitKat bar and pressed Play. Shipps was cautioning Maddie. “This interview is being recorded. You have the right to—” Diane pressed Pause.

  The camera was mounted in the upper right corner of the tiny interrogation room, so Diane found herself looking at Maddie and Shipps from above. She could see their faces, but only in partials, and it was hard to read their expressions. She fast-forwarded ahead a few minutes and pressed Play.

  Maddie was giving Shipps her personal information. “Madeline Elaine Wilson, maiden name Brandt. My date of birth is December first—”

  Diane fast-forwarded again. Maddie was still talking. “...dad was in the air force but became a CPA. My mom sold residential real estate. They’re both retired—”

  Diane searched ahead again. The next time she stopped, it looked like Maddie was crying. Diane broke off another piece of KitKat and turned the volume up.

  Shipps said, “It’s okay. You’re doing fine.”

  Maddie wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “So, Joanna got here last weekend. Yesterday, I guess that was Friday, I got a call from Ian’s cell phone asking what I was doing, which was weird because usually we Skype. We’d been to the swimming pool earlier, I remember. But when he called, Jo and I had taken Charlie and the dogs to the dog run at Heritage Park. I didn’t tell him I was with Jo or that she was visiting or anything. I just told him where I was and that I would be heading home soon. Also he seemed, like, unusually happy? And excited? And he said to me, ‘Hurry home, babe, and Skype me,’ because he had a su
rprise.” Maddie hunched over in her fold-out chair. She mumbled, “Oh my God.”

  “You’re all right,” Shipps said. “Take a deep breath.”

  Maddie sat back up and gnawed on the side of her thumb. “And umm. When we got to the house, he was there. He was home. That was the surprise. I was like, fuck! This is bad. Well, so, he and Jo were very shocked to see each other. Obviously. Very shocked. It was tense and so uncomfortable, and I was worried.”

  “What was your primary concern?” Shipps asked.

  “Just the two of them. Together. Their history.”

  “What history?”

  Maddie spoke very quietly. “They don’t like each other.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know if there’s a reasonable explanation,” Maddie said with a futile wave of the hand. “Some people just don’t get on.”

  “Okay. What happened next?”

  “Ian made small talk with us and played with Charlie for about twenty minutes, and then he went down into the basement. You know, the basement. Where he goes. So.”

  Shipps wrote something down. “What’s in the basement?”

  “His stuff. His computers and stuff.”

  “Look, Maddie,” Shipps said. “I’ve been in that basement.”

  “Well, then you know what I was dealing with!” she answered, in a voice more shrill than Diane would have expected.

  “What was he preparing for?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t answer that question. I’m not sure what he was doing. I’m not even sure I know who he was anymore.”

  “And what did you and Ms. Jasinski do while he was in the basement?”