Crazy Wanda

by Terry Goodkind

  It had been such an exhilarating experience that she was a bit sad it was over.

  Together they checked her pockets to make sure she didn’t have any identification on her; then they rolled the dead woman up in a blanket and tied rope around it. It wasn’t easy, but they managed to lug her dead weight out to the garage. Ricky opened the back of the truck and they hoisted her in.

  “See? Easy,” Wanda said. “No blood, no evidence.”

  They went back to the bedroom and stuffed a bunch of the dead woman’s clothes and shoes into black plastic garbage bags. Before putting the purse in one of the bags, they took out the keys and all the identification along with a few receipts. They would burn the bags of clothes, but to be on the safe side they wanted to destroy the identification separately in order to be certain that nothing was left. Wanda put the house key in her own pocket.

  Ricky’s wife didn’t have any relatives in Milford Falls. All of her family lived in California. There would be no one to report her missing. If anyone ever called to inquire about her, Ricky’s story would be that their marriage had been falling apart for some time and after a big argument, she’d packed most of her things and left him. He would say that he didn’t know where she had gone but assumed back to California.

  Once they had loaded everything into the Suburban, they were finally on their way. As they drove through town, Wanda took the SIM card out of the dead woman’s phone, folded it back and forth until it broke apart, then tossed the pieces out the window one at a time. She twisted the phone until it broke and threw it in the river as they crossed a bridge.

  Ricky worked in the forests that surrounded Milford Falls, so he knew all the back roads and remote areas. It was late, so there was little traffic. Once they made their way out of town they didn’t see any cars. They drove for nearly an hour down increasingly narrow roads, ending up on a dirt road across private property where he had recently cut trees.

  He finally stopped in a place with a steep drop-off down into a ravine. The road on the large private property had only been used by his logging crew, so no one would come this far out.

  They pulled the dead woman out of the truck and pushed her over the edge. Ricky watched with a flashlight to make sure she went far down the rocky hillside into an inaccessible spot. Leaves and forest debris that the body disturbed tumbled down to cover the corpse.

  Once they had disposed of the body, they drove back to the yard of Ricky’s business. It was located in a remote area just out of town so it would be closer to the woods where they worked. The parked log trucks and other equipment made the place look ghostly in the moonlight.

  Ricky poured some gasoline in two of the big burn barrels where they sometimes burned brush, then pulled clothes out of the bags and tossed them in one at a time so they would burn better. He occasionally tossed in some branches to help keep a fire going so it would burn everything completely. They stood together, his arm around her, as they watched the fires burn. Every once in a while, he would add more clothes and fuel to make sure everything was reduced to ashes.

  Wanda couldn’t wait to get home to her new house.

  CHAPTER 13

  The first night in her new home was exciting. The sex was fantastic, although Ricky seemed distracted. Once she made sure he was well satisfied and had fallen asleep, she explored her new home, marveling at the size of the rooms, the color-coordinated decorating, the quality of the fabrics on couch and chairs, and the beautiful chandelier on a dimmer switch in the dining room. She inspected the knickknacks and looked in closets. She ate leftover chicken she found in the refrigerator as she inspected the dishes in the cabinets and the silverware in the drawers.

  Things were finally working out.

  A couple of days later, Ricky sold his wife’s car to some sleazy characters Wanda knew who dealt in stolen automobiles. Since it was a nearly new, common model, they were eager to have it. The price was dirt cheap on the condition that it never be found. They said they parted out the cars they hooked, so there was no worry of that. Wanda used some of the money to buy herself some new shoes she’d had her eye on.

  It took some time, talking to people she knew who frequented bars, but Wanda finally found out where Albert lived. She was deeply angry that he had told Ricky’s wife about them, leading to the scene at Wanda’s parents’ house, but worse, he had caused Wanda to believe that it had been Angela who had snitched. All that time she had spent with Albert, driving around on godforsaken roads through the woods until they found Angela’s place, he had never once mentioned that he’d told Ricky’s wife about her.

  Because he’d kept that from her, she had mistakenly blamed Angela for betraying her, and as a result she had shot Angela’s dog when it surprised her. She was angry at Albert about that. It turned out that Angela had had nothing to do with telling Ricky’s wife about Wanda. It had been Albert’s doing all along. Angela had been the one person Wanda had trusted, the one person she really cared about, and Wanda had shot her dog.

  It had all been Albert’s fault.

  She had quit her job specifically because she had been so hurt, believing Angela had betrayed her, that she didn’t want to see her ever again. It turned out she had nothing to do with it.

  It had all been Albert’s fault.

  Now that Wanda was with Ricky, she didn’t really need her job back, but she found that she really missed Angela in her life. She’d never missed anyone before. But she missed seeing Angela, missed talking to her.

  Wanda wanted to get back in Angela’s good graces. Angela represented some indescribable core in Wanda’s life. Angela somehow made her want to do better. Angela had always been straight with her, always been honest. Angela always explained how she could get out of problems without calling her names or lecturing her the way her parents did. She just seemed to know the right thing to do when Wanda was completely bewildered as to how to get out of a jam. Angela had been a true friend when no one else cared enough to help her. And Wanda had shot her dog.

  It had all been Albert’s fault.

  While she could never in a million years tell Angela what she had done, she did want to be friends with her again. She thought that maybe she could get her job back working at the bar with Angela and that would help mend their relationship.

  The problem was, there was always a risk of that bastard Albert ratting on her and telling Angela that Wanda had been the one who had shot her dog. Albert had already betrayed her to Ricky’s wife, so he obviously couldn’t be trusted.

  There was only one way to make sure he didn’t talk.

  She was going to have to kill him.

  She had found out he was homeless—no surprise—and lived in a seedy part of town not far from Barry’s Place, off in the woods in a ravine behind some small businesses along a busy street. There were a number of homeless encampments scattered through the area.

  It was late in the day when she finally found Albert’s lair. Tucked under scraggly trees and in among a tangle of brush was a tent of sorts made out of old blue plastic tarps. The roof was held up by ropes and twine strung to trees. The ground all around was littered with empty plastic bottles, food containers, and wine bottles, many of them broken. She suspected that the broken bottles were a poor man’s barbed-wire fence. By the unmistakable, gagging smell, she knew he used the nearby bushes as his toilet.

  Wanda leaned down and spotted his feet just inside the opening. He was asleep. Since he prowled at night, that made sense. She navigated her way through the burglar alarm of empty cans and bottles, through the minefield of broken glass, and stepped over his pink bicycle. Quiet as a mouse, she ducked down and went inside.

  He was snoring in a deep sleep. Seeing used needles and empty booze bottles lying all over the dirt floor of his “home,” she knew why he was sleeping so soundly. She relaxed, realizing that in a drugged state he wasn’t liable to wake easily or be too alert once he did. She had to smile at how easy it was to deal with troublesome people when they were drunk or drugged.


  Wanda had her big .357 Magnum revolver with her, but she was reluctant to use it unless absolutely necessary. She could always shoot him and then make a quick exit. Being a revolver, it had the advantage of not leaving shell casings, the way a semiauto would. Anyone seeing a well-dressed woman walking casually down the street wouldn’t think the shot had come from her. She would simply act as surprised and confused as everyone else as she departed the area.

  She saw a stained pillow off to the side and considered using that to muffle the gunshot. Not ideal, but better than nothing. That was, until she saw something better.

  Albert was lying on his side. Just inside the back waistband of his filthy pants she spotted the handle of a knife sticking up.

  When she yanked the knife out of the sheath, he snorted partially awake and flopped over on his back. Wanda immediately threw her leg over and straddled him to hold him down.

  He opened his bloodshot eyes and blinked up at her in confusion.

  “You little bastard,” she growled down at him.

  He looked left and right, then back up at her face looming over him. “What … Wanda?”

  “That’s right. The Wanda you lied to, the Wanda you tricked, the Wanda you double-crossed.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He sounded like he was getting angry. Good.

  “You told Ricky’s wife about us.”

  He frowned. “So what?”

  “You led me to Angela’s house and didn’t say a thing when I told you how angry I was at her for betraying me. You never said a word about it being you all along. Because of you I shot her dog.”

  “Fuck you!”

  Wanda, already on a hot boil, went over the edge. She slammed the knife into the side of his neck.

  He grabbed her wrist as she yanked it back out, but the damage was done. He was not only old, but still in a fog from whatever he’d drunk or shot up.

  Blood pumped out of the side of his neck in thick spurts. She moved her right leg back so it wouldn’t get on her. His eyes wide, he gasped.

  Wanda wrenched her wrist away from his weak grip and with both hands on the handle put the point of the blade at the base of his throat in the hollow of his neck. Looking into his eyes, she pounced over the knife with all of her weight, shoving the blade all the way in.

  As she got up, she watched the pool of blood under his head grow larger and larger.

  She smiled as his eyes grew big and round, looking at her in confusion the whole time he gasped, trying to get air, one hand over the spurting wound in the side of his neck, trying in vain to stop the bleeding, his other hand waving wildly, trying to snatch at her. Each long pull for air made a gurgling sound as it bubbled through the blood.

  The question in his panicked eyes was obvious.

  “Why?” she asked for him. “Because you made me betray my only friend. You made me betray Angela, the only person in my life who ever treated me decent. The only one. That’s why.”

  He couldn’t answer with the knife blade jammed down through his windpipe. He was too weak to pull the knife out and he couldn’t stop the blood pumping out of him into the dirt floor of his pathetic hovel.

  “You wasted your life, old man. If you really are Angela’s father, you missed out on a lifetime of knowing her. You missed out on knowing how smart and good she is. You missed out on her beautiful smile. You missed out on loving her.”

  She didn’t know if her words registered in his dying brain. She hoped so. Wanda’s parents missed out on loving her, too. All they ever did was tell her how evil she was, make her pray for hours, and beat her for allowing the devil into her heart. They missed out on having her love them as she grew up. Just like this pathetic old man had, they took advantage of her, too.

  He worshiped drugs and booze. If he really was Angela’s father, he should have worshiped her. Just like Wanda’s parents, he missed out on life.

  Wanda’s chest heaved with the excitement of watching him bleed out, with the satisfaction of getting even with someone who had done her wrong.

  The thought occurred to her that he wasn’t the only one.

  CHAPTER 14

  Wanda felt good after leaving Albert dead in his dump. In fact, she felt more than good, she felt invigorated. She had killed a man who had caused her a lot of trouble, a man who needed to be dead. Killed him with her own hands. She felt a deep sense of satisfaction at having rid herself of a problem.

  When someone finally found his body and reported it to the police, they would naturally assume that he had been killed and robbed by another homeless wino. Happened all the time. No one would ever have a reason to suspect Wanda of the killing.

  With the problem of Albert out of the way, she was looking forward to having dinner with Ricky once he finished work for the day. She idly contemplated what she could fix him for dinner, what he would like, what would make him happy. She wanted him to be happy with her.

  As she drove through town she thought about how easy it had been to kill both troublesome people—Ricky’s wife and Albert. Not only had it been easy, it had been deeply satisfying.

  Wanda found herself absently driving home. Not home to her new home with Ricky, but home to where she’d grown up. She was disgusted by the neighborhood as she drove past her parents’ house. Junk lay in yards. Why did people leave junk in their yards? The little house where she had grown up looked even smaller than she remembered.

  There were people out sitting on porches and hanging out on the street, so she drove past and parked in an alley a block away. There were other cars parked in the alley. No one would think anything of her faded, old hatchback. It fit right in.

  She was going to have to tell Ricky to get her a new car.

  Wanda grabbed her big handbag off the passenger seat as she got out of the car.

  It was a short walk out of the alley where she’d parked and into the next one. Her parents’ house was near the middle of the block. Tall, weathered wooden fences surrounded most of the places. At other yards, chain-link fences kept barking dogs in.

  The weedy dirt backyard at her parents’ house was surrounded by a dilapidated wooden fence. Her parents didn’t have a dog, so she didn’t know why they didn’t keep their yard up. They said dogs were a distraction from the Lord’s path. Lawns probably were as well.

  Angela fished her keys out of her handbag. She knew her father had changed the locks on the front door. She smiled to discover he had been too cheap to change them on the back door.

  She was in kind of a daze as she walked into the familiar, haunted house of her childhood nightmares. She stood in the kitchen for a time, taking it in, letting her rage build.

  Her father was due home any moment, so she knew her mother would be in the living room waiting so they could say their evening prayers before dinner. Wanda stood by the back door, waiting, too, and wondering why she hadn’t thought of this sooner.

  She heard the front door and her parents’ voices. Her mother mentioned some things they would need to get from the store. Her father complained about his pants getting torn on a truck fender. Her mother said she could sew them.

  After they had been silent for a time, Wanda pulled the big .357 Magnum revolver out of her purse. It was beginning to feel good in her hands. It made her the equal of those who had always tormented her. It made her better than them.

  She took a deep breath to settle her excitement. She wanted to soak it all in. She had gone over it in her head a thousand times. Today it was finally the day.

  Gun in hand, she walked into the living room. Her parents were kneeling, as she knew they would be at this time of day, before their little shrine in the alcove with a statue of the Virgin Mary to one side. The paint on the old plaster statue had been worn off on the edges in some places and was chipped in others. The tip of the Virgin Mother’s nose was missing.

  On her way into the living room, Wanda plucked the fat throw pillow from her father’s chair and pressed it against the barrel of the gun.r />
  “I’m home,” she announced.

  Startled, her father turned. “How did you get here? I told you, you are corrupt and sinful and aren’t welcome in this God-fearing house anymore!”

  Wanda shot him in the face.

  Just as Brad had told her, the .357 hollow-point went in like a nickel and came out like a sack of quarters. The back of his head exploded out all over the picture of Jesus and the cross beside it. The Virgin Mary got new red robes. Bloody bits dripped down the wall.

  Her mother sprang to her feet in surprise and horror.

  “Wanda!”

  Wanda shot her in the center of the chest before she could start bitching at her.

  Surprisingly, her mother didn’t even take a step. She simply dropped straight down into a heap, her arms and legs at loony angles.

  Wanda looked to make sure she was dead and then tossed the pillow back on her father’s chair. It had worked fairly well at muffling the sound.

  She was a bit surprised at how easy it had all been. A lifetime of wishing they were dead, and now, here they were, dead. She remembered his interminable lectures of “you reap what you sow.” How true. She wondered why she hadn’t done it sooner and saved herself a lot of grief.

  Wanda took her father’s wallet out of his pocket and removed all the cash. There wasn’t enough money to be of any real consequence, but she wanted the police to think it was a home invasion and robbery. In this neighborhood it wouldn’t be surprising. She tossed the wallet aside. She removed her mother’s wedding ring to add to the robbery theme. She would throw it in a dumpster later.

  After making it look like the living room had been tossed looking for valuables, she went upstairs to their bedroom and opened all the dresser drawers, pulling out clothes as she went to make it look like the bad guy had ransacked the place. Since the police wouldn’t know what valuables her parents had, they wouldn’t have any idea what might have been stolen.

  After she finished methodically staging the home invasion, murder, and robbery, she left out the back door. The police would think the bad guy had gotten in through the unlocked door.