Holy Hell

by Elizabeth Sims

  Mrs. Creighter twisted her mouth contemptuously. "I said, what do you want?"

  "I don't know whatcher talking about. You want to call the police and have me arrested for trespassing?"

  Mrs. Creighter stalked over to me. She put her chubby hand on my shoulder and stuck the gun barrel up under the soft part of my jaw. Thrusting it upward so that my head jerked back, she said, "Talk to me."

  "OK," I gurgled. She released me and my knees buckled. I vomited all over the coffee table.

  "You dirty pig!" I heard her say as I finished coughing. I picked up a doily that had escaped the flow and wiped my mouth with it, then dropped it on the carpet.

  She emitted incoherent cries of disgust. "Aogh! Aogh!"

  "I know it," I said. I eased backward and sat on the couch. Snapshots crowded under the glass of the coffee table: picnics, birthday parties. "I'm an asshole, actually, and I was poking around here because I'm investigating Iris Macklin's murder."

  Her eyes never left the mess on the table. I could tell she was dying to go get a towel to clean it up. "Yes, well," she said.

  "I know you've got her car in your garage."

  Her eyes flew wide open. She muttered something under her breath. I waited.

  She stared again at the coffee table. She pointed the gun at the mess as if to shoot it.

  She turned her face upward, as if searching for something on the ceiling, then remembered she ought to keep her eyes on me. She locked her eyes into mine and started up a conversation with somebody who wasn't me.

  "Yes, but," she said, "I'm perfectly capable of understanding—" She appeared to listen, her head cocking slowly off to one side. "You don't have to spell it out for me. I'm just—" Pause. "Yes." Pause. "Yes." Pause. "No, never. Glory isn't what counts: I know that. The prideful find no rest." Pause. "Your glory, my goodness!"

  I realized she was talking to God.

  Finally, she said, "We'll go upstairs." I climbed the carpeted stairs, my back feeling the tiny black maw of the gun.

  "In there," she said, giving me a shove. She snapped on an overhead light. We were in a small bare room, a rag rug on the floor, shade pulled down over a little window, no furniture at all except another small file cabinet.

  "So you think you're pretty smart," she said. "Did you think I didn't see you?"

  "That's what I thought," I responded politely.

  "Well, I didn't actually see you, but I knew you were there. I knew somebody was there."

  "Yep." I had nothing to do but watch her and the door, which was growing smaller by the second, behind her. It occurred to me to make a grab for the gun, but I was afraid. I didn't know how to do it with any measure of safety. As she was taking a breath to speak again, we heard something downstairs.

  "That's Bonnie!" Mrs. Creighter said, her eyes sparking. "Bonnie!" she called. "Come here!"

  "Ma, wait," Bonnie's voice came irritably up the stairs. "I'm bringing some stuff in. Ugh! What the—what happened! Who got sick all over the—"

  "Right now, right now, right now," Mrs. Creighter bellowed. Bonnie thundered up the stairs.

  You should have seen her face when she barged in.

  "You!" Then turning to her mother, "What, what, what?"

  Mrs. Creighter said, "She was sneaking around. She was hiding. I've got to calm down." She took a big breath, stopped, and let it out slowly. "My heart. I've got to calm down. I don't want to have another H.A."

  "You're not gonna have another heart attack! What's going on?"

  Mrs. Creighter handed her the gun (which Bonnie instinctively aimed at me), then put her right index finger on her left wrist and felt the pulse. Evidently satisfied, she patted her wrist, retrieved the gun, and said, "I could tell someone was watching me in the kitchen. So I pretended to go get cigarettes. I left, but I parked down the street and walked back, and I caught her!" She threw back her head as if she were a big game hunter and I a runty trophy animal at her feet.

  I took the opportunity to ask, "How did you know I was going to go back around to the rear of the house?"

  "Because you would have. You did." She projected a curious blend of overexcitement and deep cunning.

  To her daughter she said, "She saw the car. She saw your music person's car. But I caught her. She was the one you were talking about. She was"—her volume increased again—"she was the one who called on the phone today! Remember I told you about the life insurance!" Amazement and pure pleasure flooded her countenance. She poked the gun in my direction as if touching me with a ten-foot pole. "You called me today, didn't you?"

  I couldn't believe the situation I'd gotten myself into. "Go to hell," I muttered.

  "You know what I mean!" she screamed.

  She approached me and again shoved the gun under my jaw. "She threw up before when I did this. Now. Talk Scandinavian." An evil smile stretched her lips tight. Her teeth were like Bonnie's: smallish and rounded with spaces in between.

  Her expression was echoed in Bonnie's face, hanging over her shoulder.

  I jerked my head away. "Go to hell."

  "Ma, hold on," Bonnie said. A moment of silence filled the air between the three of us. Mother and daughter locked eyes. A quietness came over them.

  Only then did my heart begin to understand terror. For they appeared to come out of themselves in a way, and communicate silently with each other. Their bodies relaxed, their shoulders, formerly high with tension, dropped. Their faces relaxed too, the savage muscles of rage and excitement falling into repose.

  Across the two calm faces spread genuine smiles, light and confident. Their eyes shone. Mother and daughter nodded to each other and sighed lightly, as people do in anticipation of a pleasant, satisfying meal. Simultaneously they turned toward me.

  Chapter 17

  These, obviously, weren't first-timers: they were experienced terror artists. I didn't catch them; they'd caught me, and they intended to kill me.

  As I stood there I thought of the Midnight Five, the string of missing women in the Detroit area over the past couple of years. If they were murdered, they were all killed expertly and without a trace of evidence. I felt I was about to join the victim club unless I did something drastic pretty soon.

  Mrs. Creighter murmured, " 'And the king's servants said unto the kind, Behold, thy servants are ready to do whatever my Lord the king shall appoint.' "

  Bonnie nodded thoughtfully.

  Her mother said, "Should we stay here or go over to the place?"

  Bonnie put a finger to her lips and blew on it, as if deciding how thin to roll a piecrust, and finally said firmly, "We'll stay here. We'd have to wait too long. It's not even, what, twelve-thirty yet. Do you want to wait that long until after closing? Sandra'll close up. Plus we'd have to get her over there. It's too risky."

  Mrs. Creighter agreed. "We've got enough of everything here anyway."

  "Yeah, Ma, will you go get the rope? Gimme that," Bonnie said, taking the gun. "Let's just get her tied up. I'll feel better." Mrs. Creighter exited, patting her heart.

  Bonnie held the gun and her gaze on my stomach. "Lillian," she said, licking her lips. I hadn't known until now whether she even knew my name.

  "Thought you were pretty hot shit there for a while, didn't you?" she said. I didn't reply. I decided that as soon as Mrs. Creighter came back with the rope and one of them got close to me, I'd shove her into the other and bolt. I'd blown tons of chances to run earlier.

  "So you saw the car in the garage," Bonnie went on, excited and angry. "What, did Ma forget to lock it again? I can't believe her. What else did you see? Open up those file cabinets? Get an eyeful? Or no?"

  I didn't answer.

  "Well, you know what?" she said. "You are rather exceptional. Have you been thinking about me?"

  "Yes."

  Licking her lips once more, she got that horrible dreamy look again. She lifted her free hand to the amulet around her neck, the shield-shaped pendant made of wood and shell, and fondled it. She took a breath to speak again
when Mrs. Creighter returned empty-handed. "I couldn't find it."

  "Oh, Ma! You didn't look. Hey, 'seek and ye shall find,' you know? There's some right by the canned stuff, still in the wrapper. Ugh! You couldn't find your butt with both hands."

  Mrs. Creighter ignored this insult.

  "I have to do everything," Bonnie said.

  "Shouldn't we ask for guidance together first?"

  "Guidance! We don't need any more goddamn guidance! This one's a no-brainer, Ma!"

  "Cancel that blasphemy. Let us pray."

  "Later, Ma."

  Bonnie looked back to me with sudden suspicion, and I must have shown a break-and-run light in my eyes.

  "Hell," she said, and I could see the gears of her mind working briefly, making a judgment. "You got the key to this door anyway?"

  "Yeah."

  "Gimme."

  Mrs. Creighter rumbled down the stairs and back up again. She held out her giant key clump by one key. Bonnie, jabbing in my direction with the gun, herded her mother out, backing out behind her. The key turned in the lock and I saw the bolt slide into the doorjamb.

  "Just stay here and keep this pointed at the door," I heard her say. Then, louder, she said, "Shoot through it if the knob even rattles." She took off down the stairs, and I turned instantly to the window. It was small, yes, but wide enough for me.

  I snapped up the window shade, flipped the latch, and gave the sash a shove upward. It didn't budge. I looked closer and saw that the frame was painted shut. I yanked out a drawer of the file cabinet, thinking to smash through the glass with it. It rolled out heavily, jammed full of papers and photographs. The photos were all Polaroids, stacked in a few packs bound with rubber bands. Women—my eyes flashed over them too quickly to notice much except that.

  The papers looked familiar. They were pages of bleached newsprint torn from a periodical of some kind—there was something I sort of recognized about them. But I was almost blind with panic and didn't have time to make sense of them.

  I pulled, but somehow the drawer was latched into the cabinet and wouldn't come out, so I took another try on the sash. I squatted deeply and braced my arms. For the sake of my young life, I thought Up! and called forth my mightiest burst of strength. The window frame gave out a sharp crack and flew open. At the same moment I grunted, involuntarily, loudly, from the pit of my stomach.

  Mrs. Creighter's panicked voice came from the other side of the door. "Bonnie! Hurry! She's getting out!" As I suspected, she didn't want to shoot because of all the open windows in the neighborhood. A single shot for my execution, muffled with a pillow, would escape notice, but not a fusillade into a wooden door. Especially now that I'd gotten the window open.

  I pushed at the screen, but my arms were like rubber, rebounding from the effort of breaking the paint. I pulled out my pocketknife and ripped a slit in the screen, then tore it the rest of the way with my hands. Bonnie's footsteps pounded up the stairs, shaking the floor. I boosted myself up and got my left leg and upper body through the window. Outside—wow, no sill, no porch roof, nothing. I was at the front of the house, facing the warm silence of the neighborhood.

  I saw Bonnie's Fiero in the driveway, the trunk and driver's door open. I remembered she said she'd been bringing something in. She'd forgotten about the car. I looked down. It was about sixteen feet—a clear, sharp drop. Below, shadows; I couldn't tell whether I was going to hit grass, bushes, lawn furniture, bayonets.

  Keys jingled frantically on the other side of the door; Bonnie and her mother were jabbering like giant chipmunks. I scrabbled to get both feet on the window frame, crouched tightly, then with the cries of the damned raging closer, jumped.

  Chapter 18

  I closed my eyes on impact. Something prickly flew up my nose: a twig from the low yew shrub I landed on. I felt the jolt in my spine, but it wasn't too bad. Then I was up, untangling my feet from the low branches, running.

  Be smart, be smart, said my head, and my legs propelled me over the lawn toward Bonnie's car. Mrs. Creighter stuck her head out the window and said in a low terrible voice as I took off, "You are mine." The keys, thank God, were in the trunk lock. I slammed it down, jumped in and started the thing up.

  As the engine caught and I rammed it into reverse, the front door of the house flew open and Bonnie rocketed out. I floored it, watching only Bonnie, until I judged I was in the street, then threw it into drive. As in a nightmare, the car didn't seem to have any pickup. Bonnie's face, a mask of desperate purpose, zoomed closer.

  But unlike in a nightmare, where the monster actually rips the car door off and grabs your throat and you wake up screaming, Bonnie fell away by one car length, then two. I didn't even glance back as I steered the tiny car down Salem to Seven Mile.

  My heart clapped in my neck; all I could think of was getting to an expressway and putting some miles between me and the Creighters. But don't get stopped for speeding. Mrs. Creighter's car had to be at least a block away from the house.

  I headed for the concrete canyon of the Southfield expressway and ate up a few miles. The little sports car felt odd and insubstantial compared to my stolid Caprice with its heavy-duty police suspension. I switched over to the Jeffries, then merged onto the Fisher downtown and continued south. It took only moments to fly across the Rouge River overpass beyond the city limits, then down past the Detroiter truck stop in Woodhaven.

  I drove in a trancelike state for a while—that's the only way I can describe it. The kind of state you drive in when you realize you've had too much to drink but you need to get home. You concentrate on the road and other drivers and, being careful, check the rearview mirror every five seconds.

  Eventually I came to my senses and looked at my watch: one-thirty. A lot more time had passed than should have. Ciesla needed to know about Iris's car in the Creighters' garage right away.

  I turned around outside of Toledo and headed back north. My I.D. and money were back in my car. As I drove I rummaged in the console and dash for change. I found a quarter, five dimes, and a penny in the bottom of the console. I kept driving into the city, made the swerve onto the Lodge, and pushed it until I figured I was within the Eagle phone zone again so that I'd have enough change for the two calls I needed to make.

  I exited at Caniff and found a phone under a streetlight at a gas station. Ciesla's home number had easily stuck in my memory; it was just two digits different from mine. He answered on the second ring.

  "Tom!" I yelled.

  "What." He was sleepy and guarded.

  "Bonnie Creighter and her mother have Iris Macklin's car in their garage," I said rapidly. "They killed her—they practically said so—and they've got file cabinets with pictures of women in them—their victims. It's all in their house."

  "How do you know?"

  "Well, um—" I took a great big breath, "I was there tonight, just a little while ago—OK, I snooped. I know I shouldn't have, but I did. It was only because I'm doing this story for the Journal, I swear to God." I was talking as fast as my mouth could move, to forestall his groan, or tirade, or whatever was coming.

  "I swear to God, Tom, I know I told you I was gonna let you guys do the work, but—but it's not that I lied at the moment, but it turned out not to be the truth—I know. They caught me, and they were going to kill me, but I escaped. Bonnie's after me, they're after me. You gotta get over there or send somebody over there, to find the car. Plus there's other stuff in the house, probably other evidence, too, God almighty!"

  I heard a dry sound through the receiver, the sound of a hand rubbing a stubbly face. "Where are you now?"

  "Someplace on Caniff at a phone booth. You gotta lock 'em up! You gotta apprehend 'em! I'm in danger," I added unnecessarily. I left out the fact that I'd stolen Bonnie's car.

  "Lillian, I can't believe you. We were going to bring in Bonnie tomorrow morning for more questioning. If you're telling me the truth, you could have just fucked us right up the ass. How are we gonna get a search warrant on the basis of
what you've told me? On the basis of a B&E?"

  "Well, I didn't exactly B, but I E'd."

  "Did you see the license plate or the VIN."

  "No."

  "Then how do you know it's the right car?"

  "Oh, come on, Tom. They said—they admitted it was."

  "What time were you there, exactly?"

  "Ah, well, about midnight. 'Bout twelve-thirty. I'm on the lam, man, they're after me. I know I should have gotten to a phone earlier, but I was terrified and just kept driving."

  "It's almost two. Right now they're probably getting rid of that evidence faster than you can say jack shit. If it is evidence. That car's halfway out of state or in Canada by now. If it is that car. Shit."

  Anyone watching would have seen an underweight dyke fidgeting around under the streetlight, tethered by the head to the phone pole, like a moth on amphetamines.

  "No!" My heart quaked anew. "They've got to still be there! You've got to go over and catch them." Can you believe how ignorant I was? Can you believe it?

  "Lillian, listen." Ciesla's voice remained steady. "I'm not going over anywhere. OK? I'm not going anywhere. As long as you're all right. Go home and stay home. Porrocks and I'll go over to the house in the morning." He hung up in my face.

  I could absofuckinglutely not believe it. This was not how it was supposed to work.

  "Hunh, whoa," I said into the dead phone. Ignorance of police procedure was no excuse. Now, what the hell.

  I dropped the phone and scurried back to the Fiero. I wound around the neighborhoods until I found myself on Warren, a street lined with gray little businesses, careworn neighborhoods stretching away on either side. I ducked down a side street, then turned into a back alley, and parked the Fiero in a shadow.

  Stepping carefully in case a rat was lurking ready to sink its fangs into my ankle, I wiped off practically the whole car with the hem of my T-shirt: the steering wheel, shift lever, console, headlight knob and door handles, plus the top of the trunk, as I knew smart people did in the movies. Surely when the car was found the cops wouldn't bother dusting for fingerprints, but extra care couldn't hurt.