What will happen to your children when you are in prison?
“Now the other wrist. It’ll make it quicker.”
We both hear the noise. The door at the top of the stairs opens and shuts. Click-click. Sharon switches off the flashlight. Pitch-black again.
“Lucy?” Amanda says.
I thrust my hips up with every ounce of my strength. It moves the cot, enough to make the metal legs scrape against the concrete floor.
“Lucy?”
Sharon pushes down on the cot with her free hand. Her weight is sufficient. I can’t move it.
“Lucy?”
“It’s Sharon. I’m here with Lucy. Would you mind, honey? We need to be alone. We’re having a private conversation.”
“Sure, no prob.” It is a problem, but she’s only twelve, and she doesn’t have a reply.
A wet tongue is licking my ear. Bobo. Floppy mutt.
“Amanda, call Bobo,” Sharon says.
“Bobo, come on up.”
Bobo’s head is on my lap. She whines at the smell of my blood. She senses something is wrong.
“Bobo! Come Bobo.”
“Bobo, shoo,” Sharon says. “Amanda, call her again.”
“Here, Bobo.”
The flashlight goes on again. Sharon pulls the blanket over me, hiding me from Amanda.
“Call her, Amanda.”
Sharon grabs Bobo’s collar and drags her away from me, the blanket falls off.
“Go, Bobo. Go to Amanda.”
Bobo whines. She senses something is wrong. Sharon aims the flashlight on Amanda. She is revealed in a spotlight, like an actress making an entrance. She is wearing sneakers, torn jeans, and a T-shirt. She blinks in the powerful beam of the flashlight, raises her hand to her eyes, trying to block out some of the beam, trying to see who’s behind it.
“Lucy?”
“Leave us alone, Amanda.”
“Sharon?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s Lucy?”
“She’s not feeling well, honey. I’m just sitting with her. Will you go away and take Bobo with you, please? Do not make me ask you again.”
Sharon uses a stern, commanding voice. It is a threatening one. Amanda has heard worse.
“Lucy? You okay?”
“For the last time, go away, Amanda.”
Amanda doesn’t move.
“I want to talk to Lucy.”
“If you don’t leave, I will have to hurt you. I don’t want to, but I will.”
Sharon releases her grip on the cot. I shake and scrape the legs on the floor. Now Sharon has to deal with the flashlight in one hand, the knife in the other, and still try to prevent me from jerking my body and causing the cot’s legs to scrape the floor.
“Lucy, why aren’t you answering me?”
I can see the reflection of the knife blade. She wouldn’t kill a child.
Sharon stands. She moves the flashlight to the knife. Holds it up for Amanda to see. Amanda backs up the stairs.
Good girl, there’s distance between you and the knife. Get out of here, get help.
Amanda switches on the light at the top of the stairs. Light floods the basement.
What does Amanda see?
She sees Sharon standing at the side of the cot. I’m lying on it, a swatch of duct tape across my mouth, my wrists in plastic restraints, and my blood dripping out of one of them, staining the sheets. She sees Bobo next to me, unwilling to leave, yet wanting to obey her. The dog is torn between us.
Blood on the floor. Mine.
Then: another voice. Phyllis.
“What is going on here?”
What does Phyllis see?
Me on the cot. She sees blood dripping out of my wrist. Bobo, sitting on the floor, panting, tail knocking on the floor. Amanda, a few steps farther down the stairs in front of her, and Sharon standing next to the cot, holding a flashlight and a knife.
“What?!”
Sharon lowers the flashlight and puts the knife against my throat.
“Put that knife away!” Phyllis shouts as she pushes past Amanda and strides toward us. Sharon spins; the blade meets Phyllis and disappears into her chest. There is no sound. Phyllis jolts and drops to the floor on her knees. Amanda takes a tentative step down the stairs.
Run, Amanda.
Sharon raises the knife and faces Amanda. She’s a witness.
Amanda, run!
Sharon shakes her head as if to say, I’m sorry I have to do this, and moves to the stairs. Amanda backs up, misses a step, loses her footing, falls on her back, and slides down the stairs. She comes to a stop next to Sharon. Sharon raises the knife. In the dim light, I can see Sharon’s face, scrunched up, red in splotches like some kind of eczema, her forehead washed with sweat.
“I told you. I warned you to go away. You wouldn’t listen. This is your fault.”
“Bobo! Attention!”
Bobo snaps her head toward Amanda. Her body stiffens, her tail stops thumping, and every muscle is alert; her whole being is focused on Amanda. She waits for the next command. Amanda raises her arm, stiffens it, and points her index finger at Sharon. Bobo’s eyes follow Amanda’s finger to Sharon.
“Bobo, secret word!” Amanda says.
From deep in her chest, Bobo growls a low rumble, almost a humming sound. I have never heard it before.
“Bobo! Attention! Secret word! Secret word!”
The dog fixes on Sharon. No more a slobbering mutt, she’s a tense, loaded animal. Sharon turns defensively to Bobo, raises the knife.
“Bobo! Secret word! Kiki-kiki! Attack!”
Have you ever been bitten by a dog? Gotten a nip, a warning snap? It’s painful. If the dog clamps its jaws tight, it can numb the nerves without breaking the skin.
This is what happens when a seventy-pound trained attack dog does her work:
Bobo leaps into the air, spins, and grabs Sharon’s wrist in her jaw. The knife drops to the ground. Sharon screams and slams Bobo on the head with the flashlight. Stunned, Bobo releases her grip on Sharon’s wrist. I can see the damage. Her wrist is a mess of blood and flesh. Sharon lifts the flashlight for another blow, but Bobo snatches Sharon’s other wrist in her mouth and twists her head back and forth, fast. The flashlight drops to the floor. Bobo wrestles Sharon’s arm as if she was playing with a rag doll. Sharon’s body jerks left and right. Sharon tries to use her other hand, but she can’t—the nerves are severed, the muscles shredded. It won’t work. It is a mangled stump.
“Bobo, stop!”
The dog releases her. Sharon stares at her wrists. The left one has the white of her radius bone exposed; the right one is a blur of blood and torn flesh. The color drains from her face, her eyes roll back, and she sinks to the floor in shock. Bobo straddles Sharon’s chest, her front paws on the sides of her head, her mouth inches from her throat, growling as she waits for another command from Amanda. If it comes, the dog will tear out Sharon’s throat and kill her. I shake my head, making whatever sounds I can through the duct tape. Amanda takes Bobo’s collar, gently pulling her away from Sharon.
“Come, Bobo.”
The dog’s jaw is dark with Sharon’s blood.
“Sit, Bobo.”
Amanda picks up the knife, cuts the plastic handcuffs on my wrists and ankles. I manage to pull myself up and peel the duct tape from my mouth.
Phyllis.
I slide out of the bed, drop to the floor next to Phyllis, rip open her blouse. There is a saucer-sized circle of blood just below her breast.
“Amanda, my phone is on the table. Call 911. And then give it to me.”
I tear the case off a pillow and apply pressure to Phyllis’s knife wound. On the floor, Sharon writhes in agony.
Fuck her.
“Lucy?” Amanda says.
“It’s Nina.”
“Huh?”
“Nina. It’s my real name.”
“Whatever. You’re bleeding.”
“I need your belt.”
“I know w
hat to do. A tourniquet.”
Amanda removes her belt and ties it around my arm.
“Thanks. Now call 911.”
“Wow, this place looks like an emergency room.”
Which is where we all end up.
Chapter 45
Dear Mom and Sammy,
It’s all done. Done.
You know what? In the basement, we were all female—me, Amanda, Sharon, Phyllis, and Bobo. Three females and a bitch, but the real bitch wasn’t a dog. The paramedics from 911 and the crew from Long Island City Police Department arrived simultaneously. Phyllis survived, thanks to some talented paramedics in her ambulance; she’s in intensive care for now, but the doctor said they’ll move her in a couple of days. She will need a long time in recovery. I lost a lot of blood but got it back via transfusion. I now have a fancy row of black stitches on my arm.
Sharon was touch-and-go but they managed to keep her alive. She may lose the use of her hands. There are three of us who will testify against her, so if she doesn’t go away for killing Daddy, she is looking at a lot of time for attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. I promise she will spend the rest of her days in prison.
Are you wondering about the present state of my mind? Not my mind, my feelings, and where they reside. In my stomach? The back of my skull, my heart? I’m like a rubber ball bouncing off a wall landing on guilt, regret, sadness, then I get this feeling of satisfaction because I did it and then the ball bounces against the wall and I go through the whole thing again.
Sammy, it turns out there were two. We got them. I say we because you were my silent partner, my inspiration. You never let me down. We got her husband, too. He was just as guilty, and we got him. We have been avenged.
I’m sorry you couldn’t be around to see it, but wherever you or your sweet spirit are, you can rest now. Mom, I know after Daddy died you were completely focused on making sure we were safe. All that time, you must have been trying to stay sane. Did you have time to mourn? Did you have time to find peace? You said in your last letter: “The death of someone you love, for me, doesn’t get better. The only thing you learn to do is navigate. In the beginning, you just think you are going to drown. That’s the only way I can describe it. There is a change, but it doesn’t get better.”
I know your love protected me. I survived; I know how much it pained you that Sammy didn’t, despite it. Maybe, like me, you don’t trust any feelings. As I said, they come and go. I see Clyde bent on his knees, about to die. I see Sharon holding up her shredded hands. I feel pleasure. I ask, Who am I, that I could feel that? There are victims of my actions—their children. I killed one parent, and another one is going to spend the rest of her life in prison. Who will take care of them? Will they grow up to be like me and want revenge? Was Clyde a good father? Was Sharon a loving . . . ? Loving? She was a cold-blooded murderer. Can I rationalize their children’s loss by saying it is the fault of their parents, not me? They shouldn’t have killed mine. These are not easy questions; they will accompany me for the rest of my life.
When I learned Clyde didn’t kill Daddy, it never occurred to me that his wife would be the shooter. Men kill, women die.
How did Sharon know I was in Artemis? Someone told her, of course. I suspected Keller.
In the later investigation, Lieutenant Hagen was able to access Sharon’s phone records, her emails and texts. There were plenty of them, and they weren’t from Keller; they were from Detective Higgins. My pal. I remembered Higgins mentioning his Afghanistan combat tour and reading about Clyde’s. They were in the same unit, bonded over their shared pro-life beliefs. When he got back to the States, Higgins joined the Army of God but kept his membership secret and used his police sources to get information to Clyde and his followers on clinics, their security, and addresses and phone numbers of abortion providers.
Higgins said it was another part of his rejection of his parents’ lifestyle. They thought they had raised a little revolutionary destined to follow them and their politics. Instead, he hated everything they stood for: their radical politics that seemed to care more about the oppressed than him, the hiding, keeping track of new names and identities, moving from town to town. In high school, he found companionship and shared politics with the conservative students. He was drawn to the right-to-life movement. His parents were distraught. They gave him books by Richard Dawkins and Bertrand Russell to no avail, until his politics and religious fervor were no longer topics of discussion. In telling Sharon where I was, he was revealing the identity and whereabouts of an undercover police officer. The DA decided not to charge him. They did make him resign from the force. He will have to find adventure elsewhere.
Sharon waited until it was her turn to cook dinner. She put the drug in my food. It was easy. It just required patience, waiting for the right moment, just as Clyde and Sharon did when they rehearsed and waited for the right moment to kill Daddy. I don’t like saying “they were patient,” as it gives them a virtue reserved for teaching a child, learning to play the violin, or speaking French. They were patient in planning a murder. It makes me glad I did what I did.
Mom, there it is, my rage coming back. It will never go away. It will be a part of me. Killing Clyde and sending Sharon to prison won’t change that. It is no small thing to kill another human being. Bobby says the feelings will fade; they will become old and only return in odd dreams or nightmares. He says it won’t be a part of everyday me. I don’t know. I hold on to things. Like my anger. I never let it go, did I? I fed it, and when it started to go away, like just before I went to Hawaii, I found ways to keep it alive.
You know what, Mom? When I feel bad, or guilty, I think of Sammy asking me if I found him. I say, “Yeah, Sammy. I did.”
I can live with that. Did I tell you I am not a policewoman?
Love,
Nina
I was coming out of the emergency room; I see a woman in a wheelchair. Not so uncommon in a hospital, I thought, but . . .
I glance at her, take a police mental photo just in case, add it to my collection. I note a grim square-jawed expression that could be pain or discomfort, or she could just be pissed to be in a wheelchair. I don’t blame her for any of the above.
“Detective Nina Karim?”
“Yes.”
A better look now, as she wheels around to face me. She’s pretty, this blond, frizzy-haired woman, wearing an expensive leather jacket and soft leather pants. Her feet, in Manolo Blahnik boots I couldn’t afford, rest lifelessly on the footstep of the wheelchair.
“Can I walk you to your car? A figure of speech.” She looks at my bandaged wrists. “Or give you a ride? I have a car waiting.”
“I can drive,” I say. “Let’s talk here.”
I walk over to an empty couch in the waiting room and sit. She follows me.
“What can I do for you?”
The woman opens her purse, removes a silver case, and hands me a business card: vali lopez, certified public accountant. No address, just a phone number.
“I work for Artemis. I’m their accountant.”
I realize who she is just as she tells me. She’s the one whose cigarette-flicking husband set her on fire.
“I’m also president of a little club called Friends of Phyllis. I believe you have met one or two of our members. I won’t mention their names. I will simply say when called upon, they donate their time.”
I know their names. Karen the bartender; Janet, widow of a football player; Susan, Ronald’s widow?
“I assume it’s a pretty elite group. What’s the requirement for membership? You have to participate in a murder?”
“Not unlike yourself. We know all about your journey to Malone.”
“Will I be blackmailed?”
“We don’t do blackmail. We don’t want anything from you except silence. We expect the same.”
“I have nothing on you or anyone else. I’m not a cop anymore.”
“Good.”
“Anything else?”
/> “Phyllis is retiring. Would you like the job?
What the fuck?
Chapter 46
Our “new arrival” came in this afternoon. Her name is Cheryl. She’s twenty-six, medium height, and has thick brown hair, except for the round patch on her left temple where her husband, Larry, ripped out a handful. She’s young, kind of punk, with two metal bolts in her left earlobe and a whale tattoo on her shoulder. Her right ear is caked with dried blood where the matching earrings have been torn out. She carried twin girls, asleep in blankets.
Dr. Iskin came over after her rounds at Flushing Hospital and examined Cheryl. Aside from the torn ear, the missing teeth, the bald patch, the cigarette burns, and the abrasions around the neck, where Larry, had been choking her for the last five hours in between punching, kicking, and then raping her while her children screamed in their cribs, Cheryl was in fairly good shape—that is, still alive. Ruth dressed her wounds and gave Cheryl some painkillers. I helped her up the stairs. Amanda and Frankie followed behind us, each carrying one of Cheryl’s little girls.
The police arrested Larry at Starbucks. The judge set bail at one hundred thousand dollars. The DA asked him to deny bail to keep him in jail and away from Cheryl. Larry’s lawyer swore he would obey the judge’s restraining order. He was able to borrow ten thousand to post bond and is now free to find Cheryl—in violation of the restraining order and the ankle bracelet he must wear as a condition of his release. None of this means shit to Larry. When he finds Cheryl, as he will if she ever leaves Artemis, he’ll resume beating and torturing her until she is dead. We are all sure of this: Karen, Phyllis, and me. Cheryl told us Larry drives a black Jeep Renegade to LaGuardia Airport, where he works as a ticket agent for Alaska Airlines. He gets off at nine. Bobby leaves his book club early and follows Larry to his favorite bar on Ditmars Boulevard. They get into a friendly conversation; two beers take them from the Mets to the Knicks to the new Star Wars. Bobby learns Larry plans to fly-fish Sunday on the Esopus Creek near Saugerties. It’s close to Grahamsville, my hometown. What a coincidence. Bobby stops off at the Bum Bum Bar, talks to Karen Marschner about fly-fishing. She says it will be easy and calls one of her Tenacious Dames buds.
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