by Merry Jones
“What is this? A hideaway?” The shiny steel walls felt like a prison.
Dave shrugged. “A place to escape to.”
“But why would he need this? Did he have enemies?”
“He didn’t get where he was by being nice. He was prepared though. He told me it’s bulletproof, soundproof, and fireproof, with its own air supply. And it seals up tight as a vault.” He looked at her. “How’d you find it?”
“I heard your voices. I followed them and found an opening. The door wasn’t completely shut.” She covered her mouth. “God. If I hadn’t come looking for you, what would have happened?”
Dave was shivering. “Simple. He’d have locked me in here. Maybe he’d have shot me first, maybe not. Either way, I would’ve have died here.”
God. She’d nearly lost him.
For a moment, they sat silent.
“Well,” Nora tried to sound positive. “I found you, and you didn’t die.”
“No.” He paused. “God, Nora, I killed him.”
“Yes.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “You had to.”
“I chased him in here, and the next thing I know, he pulls a gun from the desk. And without a word, he shoots at me. I dodged but it was close. I felt the bullet whiz past.” Dave stood and opened a desk drawer. His hand shook, holding up a box of bullets. “Shit. He’s got dozens of these.” He opened another drawer.
“Dave, stop touching everything.”
“Why?” Shivering, he rifled through some files.
“What happened after he shot at you? How did you get the gun?”
“Oh.” He stopped messing with the desk, hugged himself as if to get warm. “His shot missed me, but I dropped like I was hit and lay still. When he knelt down to check how bad off I was, I jumped him and took the gun. I didn’t plan to shoot him. But when you came in, you saw how he charged at me. Damn. It happened so fast, like a reflex. Goddam mother fucker. I fucking killed him.”
“It was self-defense.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Dave stared at Paul’s body. “Here’s what does. The police know I was helping Barbara leave him. They know I got her a new identity, new bank accounts, new apartment—the works. I told them that the suicide story was bull and that he killed her. They know I hated the son of a bitch, which is motive. And they’ll figure out I had means and opportunity.”
“But I saw it. I’ll tell them what happened.”
“Great.” He took a breath. “That’ll work. You’re my wife so they’ll believe you for sure.”
Cold sweat beaded on Dave’s forehead. He sat beside Nora on the bunk—four elbows on four knees, four eyes watching Paul’s dead, lanky body. They didn’t speak. Air blew slow and steady through a vent. Seconds, minutes, passed. Nora thought about Tommy, about Barbara. About killing. About what she’d have to do, about what she’d already done.
Monday, August 20, 2018, 9:30 a.m.
N
ora couldn’t look away from the clotted blood on Paul’s nose. And in her mind, Marla’s torn and ragged voice scraped like sandpaper, like cement on bare knees. How could he do this? Why? Why? Why? Her father, bereft, said nothing.
Nora saw herself, preteen, gangly and awkward, trying to look stunned, to create tears as policemen had appeared in her parents’ living room. One with a bulging belly, dark skin, and bumpy sores where he’d shaved sat next to her on the sofa, his eyes sharp, prickling her from under big heavy eyelids. How had she gotten along with Tommy? When had she seen him last? Did she know his friends? Had anything happened lately to upset him? Nora was convinced that he knew what she’d done, that he would arrest her and take her to jail. But Philip had interrupted and explained about Tommy, his involvement in solitary activities and tendency to remain distant from others, even his family. His lack of close friends. The detective had eyed her even while her father talked, as if he’s seen past the words and into her brain. As if he’d known the truth.
Paul’s death had roused that memory, and it bubbled up in all its hideousness. Nora resisted, though, focusing on Paul’s corpse instead of Tommy’s, on the present crisis instead of the past. On Paul’s open, staring eyes. Had Tommy’s been open like that when they’d found him? She couldn’t recall. But Tommy’s death hadn’t been unexpected like Paul’s. No, it had been deliberate and planned. Probably he’d closed his eyes in anticipation.
His coffin had been carved from blonde, creamy wood.
Nora glanced at Dave. Didn’t recognize the expression on his face, the twist of his lips, the tautness of his facial muscles. Was he panicking? Feeling remorse? She thought back to Tommy’s death, trying to remember whether she’d felt either.
All she remembered was a great unburdening. A sense of relief. The realization that, without Tommy weighing her down, she’d be free to be her own person, not labeled as the weirdo’s sister, never subjected to his hostile moods and sneak attacks again. She could invite friends over without worrying about what he’d do. She could have parties. Maybe even invite Bobby Baxter.
Now, looking back, she realized that she’d never really grieved for her brother. Her initial numbness had been followed by disbelief. And, God forgive her, outright elation.
Tommy. Who would he have become if he hadn’t died? Sophie and Ellie’s Uncle Tommy would be in his forties. His thick mat of hair would be thinning, or gone. For sure, he’d have lost that cowlick. And his acne. He’d probably still dress in khaki pants and plaid shirts, at least by day. Nights, who knew? He might work at a club. In a smoke-filled lounge, holding a microphone, belting out something from Cats. But Tommy was distracting her, and she couldn’t let him—not now. She had problems to solve.
Like what to do with Paul, whose once handsome, now bludgeoned face was already sinking into his bones. Dave was blinking too fast, rubbing his palms back and forth over his thighs.
“Take deep breaths,” she said.
Dave didn’t. He took his cell phone from his pocket, began to punch in a number, fingers unsteady.
“What are you doing? Don’t!” Nora grabbed his hand. It was cold, his knuckles raw from the fight. “You’re calling the police?”
He yanked his hand away from her and punched in more numbers.
“Stop!” She snatched the phone from him, ended the call.
“Nora.” His voice was hollow. “I have to report this.”
“No. Think a minute. It will look bad. Your career—”
“Is over. Don’t you get it? Everything’s finished. I’m a killer. Christ Almighty, Nora! The kids’ll grow up with the stigma.”
“Not if you don’t report it.”
For the tiniest moment, he hesitated. “I’ve got no choice. I’m an officer of the court.” He reached for his phone, but Nora sat and shoved it under her hip. She gripped his icy hand.
“You’re not calling.” She faced him. “Dave, look at me.”
Dave didn’t. His eyes darted from her hip back to Paul.
“Funny,” his voice quivered. “I thought coming here and punching his lights out would make me feel better. Who’d have guessed this would happen?” He was physically quaking, teeth chattering, big bones rattling, breathing fast and shallow. He stared at Paul.
“Dave.” Nora repeated his name until he turned to her, but his gaze was vague and unfocused. He’d been traumatized, must be in shock. What did you do for someone in shock? In high school, Nora had taken a course in first aid. So, shock. She tried to remember. Was she supposed to elevate his head? Lower it? Have him drink water? Damn. She had no idea, but since he was shivering, she grabbed a blanket off the top bunk and wrapped it around him, wondering even then if any loose hairs or fibers would transfer onto it. And how they’d ever explain their presence to the police.
She wrapped her arms around Dave, felt the familiar bulk of his shoulders, his back. She smelled him, stale and unwashed. He allowed the hug but might not have noticed it. Nora let herself sink into the embrace and felt how unnerved, h
ow fragile Dave was. How he needed her to take charge. She took a breath and counted, preparing for the role, gathering energy.
Then she squared her shoulders and summoned the quiet, nurturing voice she’d used with the children. “Everything’s okay, Dave. You’re going to be okay.”
When had he drifted into stunned silence? He’d been fine just minutes ago, bragging about how he’d fought with Paul and chased him across the house. Maybe the gravity of what had happened had sunk in while they’d been sitting there, while she’d been thinking of Tommy. But he needed to pull himself together. She needed him to focus.
“Dave,” she said again. This time he seemed to see her, though from somewhere far away. “You need to go home.”
For a moment, he gaped at her open-mouthed. “Home?” He reacted as if the idea were absurd, as if she’d said “Paris” or “the North Pole,” and he answered slowly, sounding final. “I can’t leave. Nora, I killed him.”
“No, you didn’t. Dave. You didn’t kill him. In fact, you haven’t even seen him.” Nora cupped his face in her hands and held it, looking into his eyes. “Listen to me. We’re going to erase this. It never happened. You never even came over here.”
His face said the idea was absurd, not worthy of a response.
“Do what I say, Dave. Go home.” She studied him, assessing his state of mind. Gently, she leaned over and kissed his sore lip. “You’re not making any calls. You’re driving straight home. Take a shower and get rid of your clothes and the blanket.”
“What are you saying?” He blinked at her.
“Just do what I said. And don’t worry.”
He argued only a little, probably too exhausted or shocked to think. Probably grateful to be told what to do.
Nora helped him out of the panic room, walked him to the front door and out to his BMW. She tossed the blanket onto the front seat beside him and watched him drive off.
Then she went inside and began cleaning up. She scrubbed blood from Paul’s fists, removed his spattered shirt. Used a clean corner of it to wipe the gun clean. Retracing their path from the front door, she swept broken dishes into garbage bags, righted furniture, and wiped clean everything that may have been touched. She searched for fallen hairs, stains, drops, shoeprints, any signs of Dave or of her.
When she finished, she began again, redoing what she’d done, then wiping down every single miniscule smudge on the wall, the bunk bed, the desk drawers, the mantelpiece, the bullet boxes, the button that opened the hidden door. Finally satisfied that she’d removed all traces of her and Dave’s presence, she took a last look at Paul, his shirtless chest, his long, awkwardly splayed legs, his swollen and disbelieving blue eyes.
If she’d come looking for Dave a half hour earlier, would Paul still be alive? Would Tommy be alive if she’d gone after him? So many ifs. So many wrong choices and disastrous consequences.
Move on. What’s done is done. You made your bed, now lie in it. We do what we have to do.
Wrapping her fingers in a clean swatch of Paul’s shirt, Nora walked out, pressed the button that closed the hidden panel, and shut off his secret room.
Monday, August 20, 2018, 10:30 a.m.
T
hey didn’t talk about what happened. When she got home, Nora simply said that everything had been taken care of. She told Dave not to worry, fixed him a martini and pampered him. When the girls jumped off the camp bus and came running through the front yard, Nora hugged and kissed them as if they’d been away for weeks. She explained that Daddy wasn’t feeling well, that they had to let him rest and keep their voices down, hushing them with quiet praise when they presented their projects of painted baked clay—Ellie’s, a bright, sky blue cow, Sophie’s, a cat splashed with gold and pink. Nora listened as Sophie talked about their day and Ellie interrupted to correct her. “No, it wasn’t a dive, it was a belly flop. No, we didn’t play soccer all afternoon, just for a while before arts and crafts.”
Nora marveled at their healthy color, the glow of their skin. She fixed them a snack of melted cheese on mini bagels while humming “You Are My Sunshine.” She took them to the library and read an Amelia Bedelia book to them in the children’s
section.
Later, she was still humming while she marinated chicken breasts. She thought of Paul in his panic room. By now, rigor mortis must have set in, making him stiff as a mannequin, even the fingers that had invaded her. Even his penis. Nora winced and cut into a cantaloupe.
She kept an eye on Dave, fixed him another martini and made sure he drank it. During dinner, though, he barely ate and didn’t joke or talk with the girls as usual. When they asked why his lip was swollen, he lied, saying that he’d been to the dentist and that now he was very tired. Though it was false, Nora considered this answer promising. “Tired” was curable, a condition that would pass.
That evening, Nora bathed the girls, read stories with them and tucked them in. She kept the routine going on her own, realizing that she’d have to allow Dave time to recover. He wasn’t as tough as she was, at least not in this arena. He’d had no experience with killing, let alone with discrepancies between intentions and results, goals and achievements. He would need help.
That night, when the girls were asleep, she ran the bathtub again and led him upstairs. He didn’t stop her when she undressed him. Didn’t resist when she guided him into the steaming tub and began to soap him. When he was covered with suds, she dropped her own clothes and joined him. He reached for her. His face was bristly against her skin, but Nora didn’t mind. She lowered herself onto him in hot water and closed her eyes. Everything was going to be all right.
Saturday, October 31, 1993
N
ora crept up to the attic, testing each step, avoiding any creaks that might awaken her brother. Scarcely breathing, she opened the door to Tommy’s dark room, turned on the overhead lightbulb, and came face to face with an oversized housefly in black and white, one in a row of photographs hanging from a clothesline.
She rotated, scanning the shelves where he kept his paper and chemicals, the sink, gloves on a hook, pans filled with whatever it was he stuck paper in for developing. Snakelike coils of negatives dangling from beams. Counters buried in photographs. Shadowy nooks stuffed with file boxes.
If Nora found their pictures right away, she might still be able to get them to Annie tonight, and they could burn them, making certain that no one ever saw them.
“We look like lesbians,” Annie had gasped. “If my parents see these—You have no idea, you don’t know. They’d kill me.”
Nora had assumed that Annie was being dramatic. Her parents couldn’t possibly be that strict. But Annie’s eyes had flashed steely, maybe with terror.
But finding the pictures wouldn’t be easy. Tommy had photographs piled everywhere. Hundreds of them, scattered on tables, stored in files, packed in boxes. Most of them pictures of bugs, every kind, size, color, and shape, taken from every distance, magnitude, lighting level, and angle. Grasshoppers. Locusts. Ladybugs. Mosquitoes. Wasps. Bugs she didn’t know the names of.
Nora dug in. She leafed through half a dozen piles, took boxes off shelves, rifled through one, then another. One box held shots of their family. Marla opening a Christmas gift, modeling a new beaver coat. Philip buried in sand. Marla and Nora splashing in the ocean. The box held hundreds of pictures she’d never seen before. There was Grandma Ida, her white hair tied into its usual bun, at some long-ago birthday party with a forkful of cake suspended mid-bite. Nora could almost smell her—that mixture of toilet water and moth balls. But she was getting distracted, had no time for nostalgia. She opened another box, found shots of Tommy’s old ant farm, wasp’s nests, gypsy moth nests, beehives.
The next box didn’t contain what she was looking for either. But what it did contain made her stop breathing and drop to her knees, at once revolted and mesmerized. She stared at the first photograph, confused by the image. She closed her eyes, looked again. Sq
uinted and stared until she was certain of what she was seeing. Even when she was sure of the first photo, she wasn’t sure about the others, and examined them, one by one, until her eyes burned. She pored through them yet again, selecting the most dramatic, or the most unmistakable, or maybe the most shocking, until she had just a few, and slid them into a manila envelope to keep them safe. No question, Tommy would surrender the ones she wanted to get these photos back. They weren’t the ones she’d been looking for, but surely they’d be good enough for Annie, to prove that Nora was nothing like her brother, that she was on Annie’s side.
Annie’s party was still going strong when Nora got back. The rec room was pitch black and reeked of marijuana and booze. The music was so loud that Nora had to shout, asking kids if they’d seen Annie. She found her on the patio, smoking pot.
“I’ve got pictures,” Nora kept her voice low as she pulled Annie aside.
“It’s about time. Give them—”
“No, wait. These aren’t the ones of us.”
“This is bullshit, Nora.”
“Listen. You have to trust me. He’ll give us anything we want to get these back.”
Annie grabbed for the envelope, but Nora held it just out of reach. “This is just between you and me, okay?”
“Sure.” Annie took the envelope, opened it, and took out a picture. “What is this? It’s too dark out here. Does anyone have a light?”
“Annie, no!” Nora scrambled to get the picture back, but Annie snatched it away. Nora grabbed the envelope and Annie tugged it, a standoff, until Craig stepped over, shining a mini flashlight on his keychain into their eyes and taking the envelope from them both.
“Hey, what’s this?”
Nora’s stomach lurched. What was Annie doing? Craig wasn’t part of the deal, never had been. Annie, only Annie, was supposed to see the pictures. Nora lunged for the envelope, clawed at Craig’s arm, but he laughed, holding it high over her head, teasing, telling her to jump for it. Again, Nora reached for his arm, but he spun around, dashing away. In an eyeblink, the struggle for the envelope was over. It was gone. Craig had opened it, was already examining the pictures, holding the light over one, then another. Annie leaned in to see, her jaw dropped.
