The Best of the Best American Mystery Stories

by Otto Penzler

Patricia watched his mouth droop when he said this, caught his drop in volume.

  The car curved right, then left. The world they were in was almost a sepia-toned old film: bare winter branches, patches of old snow on the ground, pools of black muck. Patricia had grown up in Chicago, had relatives on a farm downstate. She knew what a tangle those woods would be. What a curious place for a house. She opened her notebook and wrote in shorthand.

  This land belongs to Wayne’s family? she asked.

  It used to. Township owns it now. Wayne had put the land up as collateral for the house, and then when he died, his folks didn’t pay on the loan. I don’t blame them for that. The town might sell it someday, but no one really wants farmland anymore. None of the farmers around here can afford to develop it. An ag company would have to buy it. In the meantime I keep an eye on the place.

  Thompkins slowed and the car jounced into and out of a deep rut. He said, Me, I’d like to see the whole thing plowed under. But I don’t make those choices.

  She wrote his words down.

  They rounded a last bend in the track, and there in front of them was a meadow, and in the center of it the Sullivan house. Patricia had seen pictures of it, but here in person it was much smaller than she’d imagined. She pulled her camera out of her bag.

  It’s ugly, she said.

  That’s the truth, Thompkins said, and put the car into park.

  The house was a two-story of some indeterminate style—closer to a Cape Cod than anything else. The roof was pitched but seemed . . . too small, too flat for the rest of the house. The face suggested by its windows and front door—flanked by faux half-columns—was that of a mongoloid: all chin and mouth, and no forehead. Or like a baby crying. It had been painted an olive color, and now the paint was flaking. The windows had been boarded over with sheets of plywood. The track continued around behind the house, where a two-car garage jutted off at right angles, too big in proportion to the house proper.

  Wayne drew up the plans, Thompkins said. He wanted to do it himself.

  What did Jenny think of it? Do you know?

  She joked about it. Not so Wayne could hear.

  Would he have been angry?

  No. Sad. He’d wanted a house out here since we were kids. He loved these woods.

  Thompkins undid his seat belt. Then he said, I guess he knew the house was a mess, but he . . . it’s hard to say. We all pretended it was fine.

  Why?

  Some folks, you just want to protect their feelings. He wanted us all to be as excited as he was. It just wouldn’t have occurred to us to be . . . blunt with him. You know that type of person? Kind of like a puppy?

  Yes.

  Well, Thompkins said, that was Wayne. You want to go in?

  The interior of the house was dark. Thompkins had brought two electric lanterns; he set one just inside the door and held the other in his hand. He walked inside and then motioned for Patricia to follow.

  The inside of the house stank—an old, abandoned smell of mildew and rot. The carpeting—what was left of it, anyway—seemed to be on the verge of becoming mud, or a kind of algae, and held the stink. Patricia had been in morgues and, for one of her books, had accompanied a homicide detective in Detroit to murder sites. She knew what death—dead human beings—smelled like. That smell might have been in the Sullivan house, underneath everything else, but she couldn’t be sure. It ought to have been.

  Patricia could see no furniture. Ragged holes gaped in the ceilings where light fixtures might have been. Behind the sheriff was a staircase, rising up into darkness, and to the right of it an entrance into what seemed to be the kitchen.

  Shit, Thompkins said.

  What?

  He held the lantern close to a wall in the room to the right of the foyer. There was a spot on the wall, a ragged, spackled patch. Someone had spray-painted an arrow pointing at it, and the word BRAINS.

  Thompkins turned a circle with the lantern held out. He was looking down, and she followed his gaze. She saw cigarette butts, beer cans.

  Kids come in here from Abington, Thompkins said. I run them off every now and then. Sometimes it’s adults, even. Have to come out and see for themselves, I guess. Already the kids say it’s haunted.

  That happens in a lot of places, Patricia said.

  Huh, Thompkins said.

  She took photos of the rooms, the flashbulb’s light dazzling in the dark.

  I guess you want the tour; Thompkins said.

  I do. She put a hand on his arm, and his eyes widened. She said, as cheerfully as she could. Do you mind if I tape our conversation?

  Do you have to? Thompkins asked, looking up from her hand.

  It will help me quote you better.

  Well. I suppose.

  Patricia put a tape into her hand-held recorder, then nodded at him.

  Thompkins held the lantern up. The light gleamed off his dark eyes. His mouth hung open, just a little, and when he breathed out it made a thin line of steam in front of the lantern. He looked different—not sad, not anymore. Maybe, Patricia thought, she saw in him what she was feeling, which was a thrill, what a teenaged girl feels in front of a campfire, knowing a scary story is coming. She reminded herself that actual people had died here, that she was in a place of tremendous sadness, but all the same she couldn’t help herself. Her books sold well because she wrote them well, with fervency, and she wrote that way because she loved to be in forbidden places like this, she loved learning the secrets no one wanted to say. Just as, she suspected, Sheriff Thompkins wanted deep in his heart to tell them to her. Secrets were too big for people to hold—that was what she found in her research, time after time. Secrets had their own agendas.

  Patricia looked at Thompkins, turning a smile into a quick nod.

  All right then, the sheriff said. This way.

  Here’s the kitchen.

  Wayne shot Jenny first, in here. But that first shot didn’t kill her. You can’t tell because of the boards, but the kitchen window looks out over the driveway, just outside the garage. Wayne shot her through the window. Jenny was looking out at Wayne, we know that, because the bullet went in through the front of her right shoulder and out the back, and we know he was outside because the glass was broken and because his footprints were still in the snow when we got there—there was no wind that night. The car was outside the garage. What he did was, he got out of the driver’s side door and went around to the trunk and opened it—best guess is the gun was in there; he’d purchased it that night, up at a shop in Muncie. Then he went around to the passenger door and stood there for a while; the snow was all tramped down. We think he was loading the gun. Or maybe he was talking himself into doing it. I don’t know.

  We figure he braced on the top of the car and shot her from where he stood. The security light over the garage was burnt out when we got here, so from, inside looking out, with the kitchen lights on, Jenny wouldn’t have been able to see what he was doing—not very clearly, if at all. I don’t know why she was turned around looking out the window at him. Maybe he honked the horn. I also don’t know if he aimed to kill her or wound her, but my feeling is he went for a wounding shot. It’s about twenty feet from where he stood to where she stood, so it wasn’t that hard a shot for him to make, and he made most of his others that night. Now down here—

  [The sheriff’s pointing to a spot on the linoleum, slightly stained, see photos.]

  Excuse me?

  [Don’t mind me, Sheriff. Just keep talking.]

  Oh. All right then.

  Well, Jenny—once she was shot, she fell and struggled. There was a lot of blood; we think she probably bled out for seven or eight minutes while Wayne . . . while Wayne killed the others. She tried to pull herself to the living room; there were . . . ah, smears on the floor consistent with her doing that.

  [We’re back in the living room; we’re facing the front door.]

  After he’d shot Jenny, he imlked around the east side of the house to the front door here. He could hav
e come in the garage into the kitchen, but he didn’t. I’m not sure what happened from there exactly. But here’s what I think: The grandmother—Mrs. Murray—and Danny, the four-year-old, were in the living room—in here—next to the tree. She was reading to him; he liked to be read to, and a book of nursery rhymes was open face down on the couch. The grandmother was infirm—she had diabetes and couldn’t walk so well. She was sitting on the couch still when we found her. He shot her once through the head, probably from the doorway.

  [We’re looking at the graffiti wall, see photos.]

  But by this time Jenny would have been . . . she would have been screaming, so we know Wayne didn’t catch the rest of them unawares. Jenny might have called out that Daddy was home before Wayne shot her; hell, this place is in the middle of nowhere, and it was nighttime, so they all knew a car had pulled up. What I’m saying is, I’m guessing there was a lot of confusion at this juncture, a lot of shouting. There’s a bullet hole at waist height on the wall opposite the front door. My best guess is that Danny ran to the door and was in front of it when Wayne opened it. He could have been looking into the kitchen at his, at his mother, or at the door. I think Wayne took a shot at him from the doorway and missed. Danny ran into the living room, and since Mrs. Murray hadn’t tried to straggle to her feet, Wayne shot her next. He took one shot and hit her. Then he shot Danny. Danny was behind the Christmas tree; he probably ran there to hide. Wayne took three shots into the tree, and one of them, or I guess Danny’s struggles, knocked it sideways off its base, But he got Danny, shot his own boy in the head just over his left ear.

  [We’re looking through a door off the dining room; inside is a small room maybe ten by nine, see photos.]

  This was a playroom. Mr. Murray and Alex, the two-year-old, were in it. Mr. Murray reacted pretty quick to the shots, for a guy his age, but he was a vet, and he hunted, so he probably would have been moving at the sound of the first gunshot. He opened that window—

  [A boarded window on the rear of the house, see photos.]

  —which, ah, used, to look out behind the garage, and he dropped Alex through it into the snowdrift beneath. Then he got himself through. Though not without some trouble. The autopsy showed he had a broken wrist, which we figure he broke getting out. But it’s still a remarkable thing. I hope you write that. Sam Murray tried his best to save Alex.

  [I’ll certainly note it. Wayne’s parents also mentioned him.]

  Well, good. Good.

  Sam and Alex got about fifty yards away, toward the woods. Wayne probably went to the doorway of the playroom and saw the window open. He ran back outside, around the west corner of the house, and shot Sam in the back right about where the garden was. There wasn’t a lot of light, but the house lights were all on, and if I remember right, the bodies were just about at the limit of what, you could see from that corner. So Sam almost made it out of range. But I don’t know if he could have got very far once he was in the trees. He was strong for a guy his age, but it was snowy and neither he nor the boy had coats, and it was about ten degrees out that night. Plus Wayne meant to kill everybody, and I think he would have tracked them.

  Sam died instantly. Wayne got him in the heart. He fell, and the boy didn’t go any farther. Wayne walked about fifty feet out and fired a few shots, and one of them got Alex through the neck. Wayne never went any closer. Either he knew he’d killed them both, or he figured the cold would finish the job for him if he hadn’t. Maybe he couldn’t look. I don’t know.

  [We’re in the living room again, at the foot of the stairs.]

  He went bach inside and shut the door behind him. I think he was confronted by the dog, Kodiak, on the stairs, there on the landing. He shot the dog, probably from where you’re standing. Then—

  [We’re looking into the kitchen again.]

  Wayne went to the kitchen and shot—he shot Jenny a second time. The killing shot. We found her facedown. Wayne stood over her and fired from a distance of less than an inch. The bullet went in the back of her head just above the neck. He held her down with his boot on her shoulder. We know because she was wearing a white sweater, and he left a bloodstain on it that held the imprint of his boot sole.

  He called my house at nine-sixteen. You’ve seen the transcript.

  [How did he sound? On the phone?]

  Oh, Jesus. I’d say upset but not hysterical. Like he was out of breath, I guess.

  [Will you tell me again what he said?]

  Hell. Do you really need me to repeat it?

  [If you can.]

  . . . Well, he said, Larry, it’s Wayne. I said, Hey Wayne, Merry Christmas, or something like that. And then he said, No time, Larry, this is a business call. And I said, What’s wrong? And he said, Larry, I killed Jenny and the kids and my in-laws, and as soon as I hang up, I’m going to kill myself. And I said something like, Are you joking? And then he hung up. That’s it. I got in the cruiser and drove up here as fast as I could.

  [You were first on the scene?]

  Yeah. Yeah, I was. I called it in on the way; it took me a while to—to remember. I saw blood through the front windows, and I called for backup as soon as I did. I went inside. I looked, around . . . and saw . . . everyone but Sam and Alex. It took me . . .

  [Sheriff?]

  No, it’s all right. I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t in great shape, which I guess you can imagine, but after a couple of minutes, I found the window open in the playroom. I was out with—with Sam and Alex when the deputies arrived.

  [But you found Wayne first?]

  Yes. I looked for him right off. For all I knew he was still alive.

  [Where was he?]

  Down in here.

  [We’re looking into a door opening off the kitchen; it looks like—the basement?]

  Yeah. Wayne killed himself in his workroom. That was his favorite place, where he went for privacy. We used to drink down there, play darts. He sat in a corner and shot himself with a small handgun, which he also purchased that night. It was the only shot he fired from it. He’d shut the basement door behind him.

  . . . You want to see down there?

  They sat for a while in the cruiser afterward. Thompkins had brought a thermos of coffee, which touched her; the coffee was terrible, but at least it was warm. She held the cup in her hands in front of the dashboard heaters. Thompkins chewed his thumbnail and looked at the house.

  Why did he do it? she asked him.

  Hm?

  Why did Wayne do it?

  I don’t know.

  You don’t have any theories?

  No.

  He said it quickly, an obvious lie. Patricia watched his face and said, I called around after talking with his parents. Wayne was twenty grand behind on his loan payments. If he hadn’t worked at the bank already, this place would have been repossessed.

  Maybe, Thompkins said and sipped his coffee. But half the farms you see out here are twenty grand in the hole, and no one’s slaughtered their entire family over it.

  Patricia watched him while he said this. Thompkins kept his big face neutral, but he didn’t look at her. His ears were pink with cold.

  Wayne’s mother, she said, told me she thought that Jenny might have had affairs.

  Yeah. I heard that too.

  Any truth to it?

  Adultery’s not against the law. So I don’t concern myself with it.

  But surely you’ve heard something.

  Well, Ms. Pike, I have the same answer as before. People have been sleeping around on each other out here for a lot longer than I’ve had this job, and no one ever killed their family over it.

  Thompkins put on his seat belt.

  Besides, he said, if you were a man who’d slept with Jenny Sullivan, would you say anything about it? You wouldn’t, not now. So no, I don’t know for sure. And frankly, I wouldn’t tell you if I did.

  Why?

  Because I knew Jenny, and she was a good woman. She was my prom date, for Christ’s sake. I stood up at her and Wayne’s wedding. Je
nny was always straight, and she was smart. If she had an affair, that was her business. But it’s not mine, now, and it’s not yours.

  It would be motive, Patricia said softly.

  I took the bodies out of that house, Thompkins said, putting the cruiser into reverse. I took my friends out. I felt their necks to see if they were alive. I saw what Wayne did. There’s no reason good enough. No one could have wronged him enough to make him do what he did. I don’t care what it was.

  He turned the cruiser around; the trees rushed by, and Patricia put both hands around her coffee to keep it from spilling. She’d heard speeches like this before. Someone’s brains get opened up, and there’s always some backcountry cop who puts his hand to his heart and pretends the poor soul still has any privacy.

  There’s always a reason, she said.

  Thompkins smirked without humor; the cruiser bounced up and down.

  Then I’m sure you’ll come up with something, he said.

  December 25, 1975

  In the evening, just past sundown, Larry went out again to the Sullivan house. He and the staties had finished with the scene earlier in the day. There hadn’t been much to investigate, really; Wayne had confessed in his phone call, yet Larry had told his deputies to take pictures anyway, to collect what evidence they could. And then all day reporters had come out for pictures, and some of the townspeople had stopped by to gawk or to ask if anything needed to be done, so Larry decided to keep the house under guard. Truth be told, he and the men needed something to do; watching the house was better than fielding questions in town.

  When Larry pulled up in front of the house, his deputy, Troy Bowen, was sitting in his cruiser by the garage, reading a paperback behind the wheel. Larry flashed his lights, and Bowen got out and ambled over to Larry’s car, hands in his armpits.

  Hey Larry, he said. What’re you doing out here?

  Slow night, Larry said, which was true enough. He said, I’ll take over. Go get dinner. I’ll cover until Albie gets here.

  That’s not till midnight, Bowen said, but his face was open and grateful.