Everything You Want Me to Be

by Mindy Mejia

  “You were talking murder with Winifred Erickson that day. Don’t tell me it was about chickens.”

  She nodded, dropping her head. “You’re right. I’m sorry I lied to you about that. We were talking about abortion.”

  “Why did you lie?”

  “I was ashamed, I guess. I didn’t know if I should have this baby, considering.”

  Jake and I exchanged a glance and I leaned in, waiting for Mary Beth to raise her head and meet my eyes. When she did, I took off the gloves.

  “Maybe you did some considering on Friday night when you saw the two of them together. Maybe you took some revenge on your cheating husband.”

  “I didn’t.” She hardly seemed bothered by the accusation, let alone surprised. “If I was going to kill anyone that night, it would have been him, not her.”

  Jake’s eyes widened a bit.

  “So what you’re saying is you’ve been thinking about killing your husband and your baby in the last week, but you didn’t have anything to do with Hattie’s death.”

  “That’s right.”

  I stared at her and she stared right back. Eventually she nodded her head a little, like she’d just told herself something important, and said, “If you’d had the week I’ve had, you would’ve thought the same things.”

  “What did you do after you dropped the knife?”

  “I ran home. I remember it was cold, but that’s about all. When I got back, I turned the lights off in the barn and went into the house. I thought about sitting up and confronting Peter when he got home, but in the end I didn’t even want to look at him. I slept on the cot in Mom’s room instead.”

  “You went home and immediately fell asleep? After seeing what you saw?”

  “Not right away. I cried for a while, soft, so Mom wouldn’t hear. I figured I’d be up all night, but the next thing I knew it was dawn. I guess the baby made me tired—I’ve even been napping in the afternoons lately. On Saturday I was trying to figure out how to confront him, whether I was going to kick him out right away or what, when Winifred came over to tell us about the body.”

  “What was Peter’s reaction to the news?”

  She shrugged. “He was already up at school for the Saturday performance.”

  I went through the whole night with her again and her story didn’t waver. She was somber, dry-eyed, and pale, answering questions directly without fuss or too much explanation. Jake and I stepped out after another half hour.

  “I don’t know, Del.” He wiped a hand over his mouth, avoiding the eyes of everyone else who’d come back to the station after the funeral. The phones were still ringing off the hooks.

  I sighed. “We’ve got nothing to hold her with at the moment. Right now all we can prove is she supplied the murder weapon that we don’t have. We’ll have to wait until Lund’s DA shows up to get his story and go from there.”

  I walked Mary Beth out myself to make sure the reporters kept their distance. Cameras flashed from the other side of the parking lot, but no one came up to harass her. They probably didn’t know she was our suspect’s wife.

  “What’d you decide about the baby?” I asked as she opened her truck door.

  She seemed distracted by the reporters, then shook herself and climbed up into the dusty cab. “Women use sperm donors all the time.”

  “You know, Mary Beth, when your parents had you, it was like they’d gotten a second life.”

  Her face seemed frozen, waiting.

  I glanced at her stomach. “Maybe it’ll be the same for you.”

  For the first time since she walked into the conference room she looked like she might cry. She closed her eyes and nodded and said she hoped so, before closing the door and driving away.

  The DA, such as he was, arrived over an hour later. Jake had gone out to get Dairy Queen for everyone, but I couldn’t eat. I drank a quart of coffee and did some paperwork, warning Nancy not to disturb me until the lawyer showed up. When he did, looking about twelve years old and nervous as hell, Jake and I took him back to introduce him to his client. Then Lund cold-cocked us all with his announcement that he wanted to confess to murder.

  Jake was excited, I could tell, but I couldn’t quite latch on to the feeling. Lund had gone from swearing up and down he hadn’t killed Hattie when we arrested him to coolly confessing that he had, less than two hours later. I pulled him and his lawyer into the conference room and grilled him on the details.

  “How did you get the knife?”

  “It was lying right outside the door.” He spoke quietly to the table, not looking at a single person.

  “I was trying to leave after we had sex. I thought it was just one last time and that she would give me my money back like she promised, but she said she’d already spent it. Then she threatened me. She said she was going to tell the guidance counselor at school about us if I didn’t agree to go away with her. I saw the knife and picked it up.”

  “And then what?”

  He closed his eyes. Everyone inside the room was absolutely silent, even the lawyer.

  “I was just going to scare her with it. I didn’t plan to hurt her, but she kept insisting that I leave Mary and go with her to New York. I just wanted her to go away. I wanted my life back, before any of this had happened. Before her. Before I moved to this godforsaken town. I backed her into the corner and pointed the knife at her, told her to leave me and my family alone. She . . . she started laughing and I just snapped. I stabbed her.”

  “Where?”

  It took him another minute to answer, but when he did his voice was the same. Soft. Emotionless.

  “In the chest. She fell over.”

  “And then what did you do?”

  “I slashed her face. I didn’t want to see her dead face looking at me. I wanted to make it go away.”

  That fit with the remorse bit the profiler talked about and was consistent with the wounds.

  “What did you do with the knife?”

  “I threw it in the lake along with her purse. Then I went home and burned my clothes and took a shower.”

  “Where did you burn your clothes?”

  “In the fire pit behind the garage. I used lighter fluid and made sure all the ashes had scattered.”

  “Did your wife or your mother-in-law see you come home?”

  “No.” He paused and swallowed. “I didn’t see anyone. I went straight to my room—the office, I mean—and stayed there for the rest of the night. I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about . . . the future.”

  I rubbed my chin and leaned back in the chair. Lund’s head hung from his body like some useless, dead weight and he sat absolutely still; I could barely tell he was breathing.

  “Why her purse?”

  He glanced up at that, for the first time in the interview, but his eyes skittered immediately away.

  “Why’d you take her purse, Peter?” I asked again.

  “I needed to get the key.”

  Jake’s eyes flashed and I leaned back in.

  “What key?”

  “She had a key to a locker at the Rochester bus station. She’d said everything we needed to leave town was in there. She had a suitcase ready to go and two one-way tickets, in both of our names, to New York City.

  “She held it up when I asked about the money and explained what it was. Then she put it back in her purse and started threatening me. Later—afterwards—I realized I needed to take the key; otherwise the whole affair would be discovered. I didn’t know then about the condom, that my DNA would be identified. So I took her purse and took the key out of it, then threw it in the lake, too.”

  “Where’s the key now?”

  He lined up his knuckles on the edge of the table and took his time before replying in a low, offhand tone. “In my desk at work.”

  “You didn’t go to the locker?”

  “No. I was going to wait until the case was closed and then destroy the . . . evidence.”

  I stared at him: his bent head, his carefully placed han
ds, the sag of his shoulders under the fancy suit. It fit. It all fit, and everything I knew about being a lawman told me I was sitting across from Hattie’s killer, but something still nagged at me.

  “You went to a lot of trouble, didn’t you, Lund? Thought this all through.”

  He shrugged. “I thought I did.”

  “So tell me this: How’d you go from swearing up and down that you had nothing to do with Hattie’s death not three hours ago to signing your life away now?”

  “Mary.” He answered immediately.

  “Protecting Mary?”

  “That’s what I was trying to do—protect my family. I didn’t know until Mary came today that she’d seen me and Hattie together. She . . . said she’d testify against me, about what she saw. At that point I knew there wasn’t any hope in lying further. I wasn’t going to get away with it.”

  Lund looked up again and met my stare. “To be honest, I’m kind of relieved. I’d just like to get all this over with and start serving my time. Can I do that?”

  He glanced at the lawyer, who seemed to remember he was there as more than just a rapt audience member, and the two of them asked to have a minute alone to discuss sentencing options.

  We tossed him back in the cell with his lawyer for company and drove to the school, found the key, and took it to the Greyhound station in Rochester. Inside the locker we found Hattie’s missing suitcase, still gleaming and smelling like new, and an envelope holding three hundred-dollar bills, a note from Lund breaking off the affair, and two one-way tickets to New York, exactly as he’d described.

  After we photographed and bagged everything, I turned to Jake and nodded.

  “Book him. Murder two.”

  I left the terminal and drove straight to Bud and Mona’s. It was heading toward evening, and even though the burial and lunch were long over, it looked like half the funeral procession had followed them home. Over a dozen vehicles were parked in the driveway, on the lawn, and along the road.

  One of Mona’s sisters let me in and showed me to the living room. Photo albums were scattered everywhere and tagboard posters with pictures of Hattie were propped up against the walls. People crowded on chairs and the floor, surrounding Mona and Bud on the couch. Some were laughing and looking at pictures, some were crying, some were doing a bit of both, but they all stopped and fell silent when I walked into the room.

  When Bud saw me in uniform, he took Mona by the hand and they stood up together.

  “Let’s get some air,” he said.

  We walked out toward the silo with Bear the retriever shadowing our steps. The sky roiled with fat spring clouds that kept the sun at bay, making our path muddy and precarious.

  Once we got out of view of the house, Bud and Mona turned toward me. I didn’t beat around the bush.

  “The DNA came back.”

  Although neither said anything, a fire lit in both their eyes, a terrible anticipation.

  “It was Peter Lund, Hattie’s English teacher.”

  “What?” Mona staggered backward.

  It took Bud a moment to find his voice, but when he did it was at a full bellow. “Her goddamn teacher? He forced himself on her?”

  “No.” I looked him square in the eye. They deserved better than the truth, but the truth was all I had to give them. “They’d been having an affair since January.”

  I registered the fist coming at my face and let it happen. Mona’s scream followed me to the ground, drifting in and out of my ears as the blow rang through my head and Bear barked and jumped around everyone. Bud stood over me, fists up, ignoring Mona’s attempts to haul him back.

  “That’s a filthy lie, Del. A filthy lie! Don’t tell me Hattie was bedding some sick, pervert teacher. She wouldn’t do that.”

  I rubbed my jaw and spoke to Mona, filling in the details, from the emails last fall all the way to the meeting on Friday night.

  Mona was crying hard by the time I finished, still holding on to Bud’s arm. Bear had quieted down and was standing guard by his master. Bud stared through me, past arguing but no less wrathful.

  “I’ll kill him.”

  I stood up cautiously. “You’re not going to kill anybody, Bud.”

  “Where is he now?” Mona managed to ask and Bud echoed her, but in a different voice, a planning voice.

  “Yeah, where is he?”

  “He’s in custody. Locked up. It’s done.”

  Bud’s expression didn’t change, so I tried again.

  “He gave a full confession this afternoon and he’s not going to see light from the free side of a cell anytime soon.”

  Mona leaned against the wall of the silo and covered her face while Bud’s hands were still fisted at his sides and veins popped in his forehead. A crow cawed from some hidden place nearby. I didn’t know what else I could say. There was no peace here, no sense of justice. I’d done what I’d said I would, sitting on their couch not five days ago; I’d handed them a murderer, but stole the last bits of their daughter in the process.

  Greg appeared around the barn, walking toward us, looking as grim and hell-bent as his father. I touched Mona’s shoulder and made my way back to the cruiser, leaving them to their despair.

  We never found the knife. I had a dive crew search the bottom of Lake Crosby for three straight days and all they came up with was a few rusted boat motors. I wanted that knife. I dreamed about it every night between Lund’s confession and the arraignment. Sometimes Hattie was in the dreams, watching me search the barn, the fields, the lake. I couldn’t find the damn thing even in my own head.

  Fortunately, you didn’t need a weapon to prove murder two in Minnesota, not when you had a spot-on confession, a body, and a mountain of other evidence.

  Peter Lund’s arraignment was broadcast on every television from here to Florida. My sister called afterwards to tell me she’d watched it on two channels in Tallahassee. The news crews mostly hung around the courthouse, but some still came out to film their bits on Main Street or in front of the school.

  I stood at the back of the courtroom near one of the bailiffs. Bud and Mona and Greg sat in the front row on the prosecutor’s side and friends and family crowded in behind them. No one was talking. I didn’t see Mary Beth Lund anywhere, but Winifred Erickson stalked in just before the judge entered and sat matter-of-factly down in the same row as Carl Jacobs, behind the county defender.

  When the judge called for the defendant, every pair of eyes in the room watched as Lund appeared. He walked quietly, looking at the floor, and sat down as meek as a kitten. I could only see the back of his head from then on, and he didn’t so much as move a muscle until the judge asked him how he pled.

  “Guilty, Your Honor.” His head tipped up when he said it, straight at the judge, and not a lick of emotion or insanity colored his voice. He might have been ordering office supplies.

  There was a trickle of reaction from the seats. The judge ignored it, set the sentencing hearing for three weeks out, and that was that.

  On her way out of the courtroom, Winifred stopped to chat.

  “I’m blowing that barn up. Next week.”

  “You need a permit for that.”

  “It’s on your desk. Can’t look at the thing anymore. Makes me sick.”

  She nodded behind her, where the Hoffmans were huddled in with the prosecutor, probably getting told that it was going to be a twenty- to thirty-year sentence.

  “I’ve already told Bud and Mona. Whether you sign the damn permit or not, I’m blowing the thing to kingdom come.”

  HATTIE / Friday, April 11, 2008

  THE BARN rose up out of the lake like a water monster, all dark and gloomy on the horizon, like a horror movie set warning people away, but I was excited to see it. Tommy pulled into the parking lot by the beach and let the car idle.

  My body still hummed from the play, the adrenaline of being onstage in the lights and sensing that hushed fascination from the audience. Everything had gone perfectly. No scenery falling over, no injuries,
no fainting. Everyone remembered their lines and Adam and I totally knocked it out of the park. So take that, Portia. I knew after the dress rehearsal she was secretly hoping I’d fall over and break my arm, so she could play Lady Macbeth and act all smug and knowing about the curse. Maybe something would happen tomorrow. The whole gym could fall down tomorrow, for all I cared. Nothing mattered to me except tonight.

  I waited around for a long time, after most everyone else had left, trying to catch a glimpse of Peter. I hoped he’d give me some sort of sign that he was coming tonight, so I took my time getting changed. I threw the bloody costume on to a chair, hung up my crown, and changed into my new sundress with the delicate straps and soft yellow folds of skirt. There was still no sign of Peter when I came out, but Tommy was there. His eyes lit up when he saw my dress and I knew what I had to do. He was even happier when I told him to drive us out to Lake Crosby. Bad as it felt, I just gave him a small smile and stayed quiet during the ride.

  Now that we were here, he cracked open the paneling on the driver’s-side door and pulled a flask out of his secret compartment. He took a long pull and gave it to me.

  “What is it?” I sniffed and made a gross face.

  “My dad’s Jim Beam. Try it.”

  I didn’t get more than my lips wet before gagging on the stuff. Tommy laughed.

  “That’s even worse than beer.”

  “Won’t drink. Won’t have sex. You’re just Daddy’s little angel, aren’t you?” He was smiling as he said it, though, scooting over to my side of the seat. He tried to wedge an arm behind me, but I pushed myself back into the corner.

  “Tommy, we have to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “I can’t go out with you anymore.”

  “What?”

  I repeated it without looking at him, feeling the hot confusion of his stare. It was so tempting to fall back into the part just to avoid hurting him. Focusing on the barn, I took a deep breath and reminded myself what I’d just told Portia less than an hour ago—I was done acting.