“Is this the crystal picture frame you said you hit him with? I’m going to take this with me to check for traces of blood.”
“Go ahead. Take anything that will give you clues.” She pulled her hair to one side, trying to keep her face hidden, staring at a loose board in the floor. Completely aware of his stillness across the room, she felt his eyes on her, his long gaze penetrating the back of her neck. Frozen to that very spot, she was grateful that she met Jack, grateful for feeling safe with him which was surprising in itself.
“I’ll just be downstairs,” he said, leaving the room.
Julie sat down on her bed as though she were shackled to it—the crying itself her jailer.
Chapter 41
Two weeks earlier . . . .
Bruce had managed to get out of work an hour early. Northbound, he was sitting in traffic at a red light on Pearl Road at the Fulton Bridge intersection. He heard tires screeching and horns blowing that seemed to be coming from the new Kroger’s grocery store. It must have been opening day for the store. There were banners on every corner and more traffic today than usual. The wind blew the last of the falling leaves across the road and onto the curb, and sifted snow over his rusted Ford Mercury.
He was on his way home from where he worked rotating shifts at Cambridge Nut & Bolt on weekdays. He substituted as a game warden on weekends when no one else wanted to, which was fine with him. No one would get in his way. His wife worked nights at The Crimson Bar. Between the two of them, they made just enough to pay the bills, and once in a while, to buy cocaine. One way or the other, there were only two hours in the day when their paths would cross. Maybe today, because he was coming home early, maybe today he would find out who she was cheating with.
Waiting for a break in the oncoming traffic for his chance to make a right turn on red, he saw cars starting to slow down which meant that the light was going to change. A westbound Pontiac Bonneville sped up—it must have just made the green light. A white cargo van sped up—it must have just made the yellow light. The light turned green in Bruce’s lane. He accelerated, as did the cars behind him.
But a Chevy Cavalier was coming fast, definitely against the red light. Bruce slammed on his brakes. The driver behind him slammed on his brakes and the driver after that. A procession of cars hit—bumpers, fenders, bumpers, fenders. All except his car. The Cavalier careened through the intersection against the light. A car across the street swerved off the road and hit a mailbox. Bruce accelerated again, watching the chaos he was leaving behind from his rear view mirror. He couldn’t see the westbound maniacs anymore because he was going north.
The midday traffic hadn’t kept him from getting home early. Bruce parked on the road in front of his cluster home and saw that his wife, Dee, was still home. Her Malibu was in the driveway. The garage door was open. He went inside the garage, opened his tool chest, and hid the hunting knife that he’d covered up in his coat. Just then he heard the garage phone ring, and quietly picked it up. He heard Dee say ‘Hello’.
He heard a man’s voice say, “I need to see you tonight. Julie’s really done it this time. She’s going around teasing perfect strangers in the grocery store now. She’s just asking for trouble, flaunting herself in public like she’s a hooker or something. Some poor bastard was going to take her up on it this time. She even conned my neighbor into sneaking over to this guy’s house and getting his address, for crying out loud. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s going to get herself raped. I lost it this time,” the voice on the other end of the phone said.
“How can you stand it?” Dee answered.
Bruce clenched his teeth, holding the receiver away so no one could hear how heavily he was breathing. He’d known for days that his wife had been cheating on him. Seething in revenge, Bruce had kept it to himself. All he could think of was killing the bastard who was screwing his wife. Hell-bent on finding out whose voice it was, Bruce knew that if he listened long enough, he was bound to hear something useful—a name, a place. Even a street would be enough for him to see where she might have been parking her car.
“She’s got me so upset I can’t think straight. It turns out that the man who was following her lives right down the road from us in Brentwood Pines on Jaycox. I even went over there.
“How did you know which house was his?” Dee asked.
“Julie had it written down. It was a blue house, the only one on the whole street. I knocked on his door, and it’s a good thing he didn’t answer it. I was so mad I could have beat him senseless.”
“For god’s sake! I can’t believe you went to his house. He could have had you arrested.”
“Meet me tonight. I’ve got to see you,” Kyle said. “The place we always go.”
“Wait. Kyle. I’ve got a lot to tell you. I’m leaving Bruce today before he comes home. My car is all packed. I’m moving in with my mother. Once I’m out of here, you can tell Julie about us. We can finally be together.”
Bruce couldn’t take it anymore. He hung up the phone. He barged inside. “Where are you?” he yelled, slamming the door. Searching the kitchen, the bathroom, throwing everything within his reach along the way, he found her in the bedroom. He pulled the quilt off the bed and then the sheets, throwing them to the floor. “Do you think I’m stupid?” The mattress was next; he threw it against the wall, hoisting up the end of it. The diary was laying on the box springs. He threw it at her. “You whoring piece of shit,” he yelled. “You want to leave? Then get the hell out.” He twisted her arm, dragging her. She screamed, clamoring to get away. His arms imprisoned her as she tried to kick him. He jerked her fast and slapped her hard. Finally dragging her out to her Malibu parked in the driveway. “What did you think? I wouldn’t know?”
Dee whimpered, holding her arm as if it were broken, sprawled out on the cement, up against the car. The neighbor next door stopped washing his car and turned off the water. He stepped up to the property border without saying a word, acting like he would jump in to defend her.
“Are you fucking her, too?” Bruce yelled to the neighbor. “This narcissist ungrateful bitch?”
The neighbor took a step back. “I don’t want no trouble Bruce. Don’t make me call the cops.”
Bruce’s eyes on Dee, he backed away. “Don’t ever come back here,” he said, “or I’ll . . . .” He stopped himself from saying more.
Dee pulled herself up. She opened her car door, her bracelets jangling. Watching him all along, she picked up a small cylinder of pepper spray from inside the driver’s door. “You broke the deal,” she said. “You said you’d have your own band by now. You kicked Ken out of the group. He was your best drummer.”
“Shut up.”
“Then you kicked Adam out. You just couldn’t stand to have someone better at the guitar than you.” She got inside her car. “You should have known this was going to happen. You said I was going to sing. You broke the deal.”
“I said shut up. Leave already. I can’t stand to look at you,” Bruce said, his voice monotone. Dee backed the car out of the driveway and drove away.
Bruce stormed back to the bedroom and threw her entire collection of ceramic rabbits at the bedroom mirror, cursing, swearing he was going to kill her. He pulled out the drawers, threw them against the walls, and ripped apart the clothes she’d left behind. He flipped the mattress again landing it halfway on the floor and halfway on the box springs. There he sat with his face in his hands and cried. After a while he wiped his nose in the palm of his hand and on a pillow, and looked around the room at what he’d done. But as he started to leave the room, he saw the diary still on the floor, and picked it up. Flipping through the pages, he saw Kyle’s name over and over again, but he couldn’t see a last name anywhere. He flipped a page and saw a name. “Julie,” he said the name out loud. Then something else in the diary caught his eye.
‘. . . Brentwood Pines, down the road from Kyle.’
He stared at the words, ‘Brentwood Pines.’ It was that place, that dev
elopment on Adams Road, an hour’s drive. He remembered what he’d heard when he was listening to Dee on the phone. “Jaycox,” he said out loud. “Blue house.”
Bruce went to the garage and sharpened his hunting knife. He scavenged the drawers for a nail file.
“I’ll fix him. I’ll fix him good.”
Chapter 42
Debra didn’t want to be alone that night, not after that man had tried to break in. But Greg was going to leave anyway. The Co-Stan Homeowners Association was considering his bid to remodel their recreational center, and they only met once a month, which happened to be tonight. Greg had already installed deadbolt locks on the kitchen door and on the front door. And he had boarded up the broken windows upstairs.
Julie wouldn’t be company either, seeing as Greg had installed deadbolt locks at her house, too. She would be home, cleaning up, and waiting for the telephone company to reconnect her telephone wires.
Putting dinner on the table, Debra tried to console herself by repeating what she had told Julie; someone would have to break through four panes of glass, the wood in between, a screen, and plastic in order to get in.
Greg seemed to be in a playful mood, whirling a kitchen towel, cowboy-like. Debra had bent down, her hands in oven mitts, gripping a hot tray. “That was nice of you to install new locks for Julie.” She took a tray of baked chicken out of the oven.
He snapped the towel on her fanny.
“Stop,” she said, standing straight up, shooting him a dirty look.
“Can I do this?” He tweaked her nose.
Debra let the tray drop on the stovetop, too late to smack his hand. “I hate it when you do that,” she said, her voice stern, her expression harsh. “Why do you do that?”
“Cause you’re so cute.” He scooped her up in a bear hug, kissing her nose. Her hands were pinned at her sides.
“Let go!” she yelled, digging her fingers into the part of his arm she could reach, overwhelmed by anger, beyond aggravation.
Greg let go, looking stunned. “Why did you do that? That hurt.” He rubbed his arm. “I was just playing with you. Look what you did.”
She took a gander at his arm, at the purplish fingernail marks she’d made. She wouldn’t feel bad. At least, she wouldn’t let on that she did. “Wow, so this is what happens when you stop biting your nails,” she said, saccharin sweet. “I’ve never had fingernails before. Let’s see if I can do that again.”
Greg whirled the towel.
“Don’t.”
“I have to leave pretty soon. You’re not worried about me being gone, are you? I shouldn’t be long.”
How could she answer that and be convincing? He needed this job. They needed this job. She said, “No.”
“Why don’t you come with me?” He draped the towel over her shoulder.
“I’ll be fine . . . really. I need to vacuum anyway,” she said, letting him pick at a chicken breast with his fingers. “I finally got brave enough to bring the vacuum cleaner inside and clean it out. I’m telling you though, if one ant had crawled out of that bag . . . .”
Debra tuned the radio to station, 104.5. Tina Turner’s Private Dancer was playing. One of her favorite songs to clean by. Singing along, caught up in the rhythm, she sprayed Lemon Pledge on the coffee table, soaking up enough in a rag to dust the end tables, too.
She moved on to the bookcase, and she heard the water pump come on in the basement. This particular noise had taken some time to get used to. Likened to that of a tractor engine, it strained passed the point of humming. It was hard to say how old it was, but the Griswold Pump Company had stopped making this model in 1959. The pump only turned on when someone was using water, but because of a slow leak, it would turn on in short intervals. She listened for it to shut off like it usually did.
Close to the basement stairs, plugging in the vacuum cleaner, she heard the hot water heater come on, too. Not thinking about it, she vacuumed, watching the Hoover make patterns in the area rug. She got as far as the dining room chairs and turned off the vacuum to move the chairs out of the way. The water pump and the hot water heater should have turned off by now, but she could still hear them.
She turned off the radio and stood still, listening, trying to figure out what to do, and ended up by the basement door. At the top of the basement stairs in the opened doorway, she looked down into the darkness to where the light bulb’s pull-chain couldn’t be seen—thinking all along that a light switch on top of the stairs would have been nice.
Greg had showed her how to reset the pump so the motor wouldn’t burn up. Why did this have to happen now? Going into the basement was bad enough during the day. She’d never gone there at night. Never enter the dungeon after dark . . . that was her crimson rule. The basement door creaked its familiar squawk as she opened it. Steam rose from the bowels of the basement—an odd occurrence. She stepped down into the darkness, commanding herself . . . breathe in . . . breathe out . . . breathe in . . . . Feeling each step beneath her foot in the dark, she knew not to touch the quarry-stone walls. At the bottom of the stairs, in the dark, she pulled the chain to turn on the light. Something was hissing. Now she could see it, an eruption, a fountain. A hole in the hot water tank.
Six feet high and three feet wide, the tank hummed, nonstop, burning oil. Fuel oil was four hundred dollars every delivery. She’d have to cut off the water to conserve fuel oil, and to conserve water from their shallow well. Something smelled like burnt rubber, probably the pump’s motor. Without knowing which valve, she turned the one on the bottom of the hot water tank. Cold water splashed on her feet. She let out a yelp. The pump churned louder. She undid the turn. There were four valves and knobs, and any one of them might turn off the pilot light, or increase the pressure, or heaven only knows what. She decided to leave them alone, that the main water source would be the best way to go. Greg had showed her where that was, a valve under the steps along the wall, all by itself.
Her feet wet, her socks sloshing in her shoes amid the roaring motors, she crept under the darkened staircase, a place where webs were barely visible. She felt them brush against her face and arms, clinging, crawling, newly hatched spiders, hundreds of them. She screamed, smacking them out of her hair, off her face, running in place, running upstairs; she scrambled for a towel; and swiped them off. Back in the dungeon she flicked the towel across the webs while a continuous stream of water flowed across the basement floor to the natural drain.
Debra took a firm hold on the main water valve and tried to turn it, even just a little. It wouldn’t budge. She squatted down, trying with everything that she had. She even tried to turn it the other way. It still wouldn’t move. Frustration turned to anger, her face burning, anger turned to rage.
“You stupid son of a bitch” She screamed, she stomped her foot, punched the air, and took hold of it again. “Turn!” she yelled down on her knees, still trying to force it. “I hate this. I hate this damn . . .” She belted out a soul-cleansing gut-wrenching scream.
Standing there, all screamed out, she tried to think of someone to call. By the time Greg would get home, the motor would have burned up. The fuel oil would have diminished. And the shallow well would have been pumped dry. Maybe Julie would know what to do.
It hadn’t been long when Julie showed up with a vice grip and a hammer.
“I’m curious to see how you’re going to do this,” Debra said, guiding her toward the basement. Opening the basement door, the hinges creaked their usual anti-song.
Julie nudged Debra on the way down the steps amid the misty fog, amid that earthworm and burnt rubber smell. “You should spray WD-40 on those hinges.”
“I’ll try anything that’ll stop that noise.”
“This is so creepy,” Julie said, edging past the web-meshed quarry-stone walls. When they reached the bottom, Debra circled behind the steps, and flicked the towel again where the webs had been, shining a flashlight to see the rest. “I haven’t cleaned down here in a while, and hardly ever behind these steps
. The valve is right there.”
Julie stooped behind the steps into a bog-like haze, and wedged the vice grip on the valve and hit it with the hammer. The valve snapped free and turned off the water. Debra shined the flashlight on the new circuit breaker box—there were twenty-four switches where fuses had been. “Which one do you think it is?” She switched the first one. The light went out. The pump was still running. “Not that one.” She switched it back.
“Let me see.” Julie mouthed numbers, counting down from the top with her finger. “This one.” She flicked a switch. Nothing happened. She flicked it back. “Let’s try this one.” She flicked another switch and the pump shut off. Then the hot water heater shut off by itself.
The sound of trickling water, pooling in the low places of the uneven floor, formulated its own kind of quiet.
“I’ll help you sweep the water to the drain. Do you have an extra broom?”
“Broom? Oh . . . yeah, broom . . . . No, Julie, you don’t have to do that.”
“Get the broom. I’m not leaving you down here alone.”
Debra handed over her broom and took the mop that she’d brought down earlier. Encompassed by wet quarry-stone walls, a dripping ceiling, the steam whirled with every movement.
“I wouldn’t want to do my laundry down here. Why don’t you tell Greg to bring your washer and dryer upstairs?”
“The only other place to put them is the utility room. But it’s not heated. The water lines will freeze out there.”
“Oh. I didn’t tell you, Lieutenant Barger called today.”
“What did he say?”
“The handwriting matched. The man in the white van did write those letters. But he wasn’t married like he said he was. He didn’t even have kids. He made it all up. Probably so I would think he was harmless.”
“Do you think he lied about being in the lounge, too? Did ‘he’ follow us to the car that night?”
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