The Doomsday Girl

by Dave Stanton

  We went into the dusky bar, where the only patrons were two old ranch-hands with leathery forearms and scarred knuckles. They sat silently, sipping from Coors bottles and smoking Camels. Melanie headed to the ladies room, and I asked her to be quick. I wanted to get the drive over with before full dark, and I didn’t want to give her a chance to become Sasha again.

  In my career I’ve dealt with all sorts of miscreants, and a fair amount of the criminally insane. For the most part, they are a predictable bunch. Criminals usually behave based on habit, just like law-abiding people. That’s why recidivism rates are so high; bad habits are hard to break. But I’d never experienced a multiple personality. I didn’t know what to expect from Melanie from one minute to the next. It was unsettling, especially since I was trapped in my truck with her.

  I sighed and studied the slot machines against one wall, then I turned and looked at the bottles on the tiered shelves behind the bartender. He caught my eye and said, “You like a pop, mister?”

  I shook my head, but at that moment I felt a great surge of weakness. This was the type of bar where I might have holed up for a weekend in bleaker days. An old, ramshackle joint where a smoky darkness filled the spaces between the neon lights. A bartender with a knowing glance, and a quick bottle at the ready. A place far from reality, where time is meaningless, and the blurred conversations are forgiven or forgotten.

  But those days were in my past, I reminded myself. I didn’t drink like that anymore. Not unless I had a damn good reason to, and that wasn’t often. I’d survived my binges, pointless or otherwise, and had outgrown my self-destructive tendencies. With age I’d developed an appreciation for moderation. I watched the bartender pour whiskey for the two ranch hands, and my mouth suddenly went dry, and I felt myself pulled as if my bones were metal and the bar was a giant magnet. The barkeep looked over and gestured with the bottle of Jim Beam he held.

  “A coke, please,” I rasped.

  He hurriedly poured me the soft drink, as if he suddenly understood my predicament and wanted no role in it. I stepped back and sat at a table, and when Melanie came from the ladies room, I rushed her out of the place.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “Nothing. We need to get back on the road.”

  And so we did, fleeing the late afternoon for wherever the pavement would take us, which in twenty minutes was the Nevada-Utah border. Melanie began chatting aimlessly as we crossed the state line, telling me a story about a high school friend of hers, then about a movie she’d seen, and then about her technique for growing tomatoes. She asked me questions and answered them herself, hardly pausing long enough to catch her breath. It occurred to me she was nervous to be nearing her home, to the site of the crime that turned her life upside down. But at least her chatter seemed normal, just a release of tension, a typical reaction to the anxiety I imagined was building in her. I was pleased to hear her continue on. Her soft voice had a comfortable rhythm to it, the words almost like a quiet song. I sensed this was the real Melanie speaking, or at least the one who existed before the attack.

  Melanie’s patter ceased when we reached the outskirts of Cedar City. It was twilight and a low cloud bank looked on fire in the purple sky. A long red rock escarpment rose east of the town, and beyond it, taller ridges were coated with snow.

  “North, right?” I said, as we approached Interstate 15, which ran west of the city.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  Once we’d driven a couple miles, Interstate 15 was nearly as desolate as the highways in Nevada. Only power poles, a few billboards, and random fence lines indicated much in the way of population. A series of mesas and low hills stretched for miles across the desert grasslands before disappearing in the distance.

  “While I was in the hospital, my parents came and sold the chickens,” Melanie said. “So at least that’s done. I mean, I’d hate to see them all starved and dead.”

  “What else did they do?” I asked.

  “My mother said that once the police finished their inspection, or whatever you call it, she cleaned the place and locked it up.”

  We drove for a few more minutes until Melanie said, “Turn here.” It wasn’t a marked exit; the dirt shoulder off the interstate simply broadened, and then I saw a narrow road leading off into some low hills. I slowed and began down the gravel track.

  “It’s two miles in. We’ll come to a gate soon.”

  The road turned behind a rise, and a metal cattle gate appeared. My tires crunched to a stop. The gate was secured by a stout chain, but when I got out, I saw the chain was missing a lock. I pushed and the gate swung open, the chain dropping to the ground.

  I climbed back into my truck, and Melanie said, “The gate was always locked.”

  I looked at the terrain to either side of the track. The ground was uneven, but the scrub was low and any decent four-wheel-drive vehicle could have driven around the gate. I got back out and spent a minute kicking through clumps of sagebrush, searching in the fading light for a discarded padlock.

  “What are you looking for?” Melanie asked when I returned. I started my motor and drove through the gate.

  “Somebody must have cut the lock. But it could have been the police.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Did you see the vehicle that your attackers drove?”

  “No, I never saw it.”

  “Did you hear the vehicle? Did you hear anything before you saw them?”

  “No. I was in the kitchen making dinner, and Jeff was in the other room watching TV. I didn’t hear a thing until one of them came up behind me.”

  “And the other one went to where your husband was.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Was it light outside?”

  “It was around six-thirty, just getting dark. About like now.”

  “This was early December, right?”

  The road dipped and turned to the right, and I saw a reddish building. “Yes, it happened on December first,” Melanie said.

  As I drove around the bend, a house came into view, and then a third building.

  The house, the largest of the three buildings, was single story, and not only struck me as terribly out of place in this rugged landscape, but it was also an unfortunate mishmash of styles. The facing was a pinkish stucco, which I supposed was an attempt at a Mediterranean look, but the front door was set in a circular, gray stone section that rose above the shingled roof in a medieval castle motif. The porch was shaded by a tile-roofed portico supported by squared colonnades, as if the designer couldn’t decide whether to use a hacienda or colonial style, and resolved the matter by choosing both. Regardless of the architectural incongruities, the home looked well-constructed, with considerable attention to detail. It was also big, at least three thousand square feet I estimated, and no doubt expensive to build.

  The structures to either side of the house were painted barnyard red. The one on the right, about twenty yards from the house, was a barn, and beyond it, toward the base of a gentle hillside, was a corral where two horses grazed. The building left of the house was narrow and rectangular, and looked like a chicken coop. In front of it was a forty-foot tall windmill, its blades spinning soundlessly in the evening breeze.

  I parked my truck in the paved driveway, stopping a few feet before the garage door. There was no lawn or shrubbery in front of the home. A faint dirt trail led to the porch. I shut off the motor.

  “Who’s been taking care of the horses?” I asked.

  “My mother has the number for the high school kids I hired. She said they’ve been here every other day.”

  I nodded and sat looking out my window, then I climbed out into the cold dusk and turned in a slow 360. If a car were to approach from the single available road, there was no hidden place to park. If intruders wanted to reach the house unseen, they’d have to leave their vehicle back behind the rise, about a quarter-mile away. Then they could come around from the side of the home, which would be
a more stealthy tack.

  I opened my truck door and looked in at Melanie. Her eyes were wide with uncertainty.

  “Is it safe?”

  “Yeah. No problem. I’d like to take a walk before full dark. Why don’t you grab your coat?”

  She got out as I unlocked the steel box welded behind my cab. I grabbed my industrial strength flashlight and re-locked the box. “What do you want to look for?” she asked.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “We own twenty acres.” She pointed up the hillside behind the house, and then out across a broad field of jade sagebrush and short juniper trees.

  “You can see the fence line out there,” she said. “That’s where the water well is. They had to drill down four hundred feet.”

  “Sounds like a big job.” I looked out at the land, unable to make out much detail in the twilight.

  “Let’s start over here,” I said, walking back the way we’d driven in. “I want to try to recreate the path of the intruders.” She followed me until we reached a spot I felt could be a likely pathway from the road to the house. The sagebrush wasn’t over two feet high, and not dense enough to prevent passage. It would have been easy enough to follow a serpentine trail through the brush, ducking low, and arrive unseen in the twilight. Especially if no one was expecting them.

  I turned on the flashlight and started hiking into the scrub. A thin coating of snow covered much of the bare spots between the sagebrush. We walked for a minute, making our way toward the road. Given the snow, finding footprints was unlikely. I trained the flashlight on the ground, looking for anything to suggest someone had been here.

  “Would you or anybody ever be along this trail?” I asked.

  “No,” Melanie said. “There’s no reason to.”

  We continued for another minute. It was growing dark quickly, and we were at the crest of the small rise that overlooked the house. I stopped at the base of a juniper tree about my height and studied the ground, then I knelt.

  “Did your husband smoke?” I asked.

  “Only occasionally.”

  “What brand?”

  “Marlboro Lights.”

  I plucked aside a broken tangle of twigs and carefully removed a crushed cigarette butt. It was weathered and water-damaged and there wasn’t much color left in the paper. Finding it had been pure luck; I might have missed it even in broad daylight. Holding it between my fingernails, I put it under the light and tried to read the lettering on the filter.

  “What is it?” Melanie asked.

  “You know anybody who smokes Pacific cigarettes?”

  “Pacific? I’ve never heard of that brand.”

  I dropped the butt into a plastic baggy, folded it neatly, and placed it in my shirt pocket.

  “Me neither,” I said. “Let’s go inside, it’s getting too dark.”

  We made our way to the front door. She took a set of keys from her purse and unlocked the doorknob and a deadbolt. She pushed the door open, and we peered into the entrance.

  “Was the door locked when the intruders came?”

  “No,” she replied. “We never locked the house when we were here.”

  We walked in and Melanie flipped a light switch. The foyer was circular and tiled in gray stone. To the left, the front room was carpeted but unfurnished. Curtains were drawn over a large window that faced the front yard. We went to the right, into a spacious kitchen and dining area. The countertops were plywood, but everything else looked finished; polished wood plank flooring, white cabinets, and stainless steel appliances. In the dining room, a walnut table surrounded by six chairs was lit from above by a modest chandelier.

  Melanie stood in the kitchen, looking around as if stupefied. Then she took a step toward the dining room. I noticed some dark spots in the carpet beneath one of the chairs.

  “There,” she said, pointing. “That’s where Jeff sat. That’s where I last saw him.”

  I walked to the chair, then around the table and into an adjoining room. The walls were wood-paneled and a sectional leather couch faced a television mounted on the wall. To one side of the TV was an entertainment center, and on the other side rested a long, glass-doored credenza.

  A brick fireplace dominated the furthest wall. I walked to it and stood looking through an archway that led back to the unfurnished room in the front of the house. From this vantage, it was easy to imagine the assailants quietly entering through the unlocked front door, walking through the front room into the family room, where Jeff Jordan watched TV. From there, they could enter the dining room and kitchen, where Melanie was preparing dinner.

  “How about the bedrooms?” I said.

  We went down a hallway. The doors were all closed. Melanie stood outside the second door and put her hand on the knob. She stood there for a long moment, and then I saw her shudder. “This is Mia’s room,” she said. Her voice was high-pitched and almost childlike. She twisted the knob, and the door opened.

  The bed was made and a small white desk was in one corner. Hand drawn pictures of ponies were taped above the desk and a pink stuffed bear lay on the frilly lavender bedspread. The room was orderly and had probably been looked through by the police and then cleaned by Melanie’s mother, just like the rest of the house.

  Melanie stood in the center of the room. She crossed her arms over her chest, her fingers touching her shoulders. “Mia?” she whispered. She turned in a circle, her eyes glassy and red, her body trembling. “Mia?” she said again. “Where are you, baby girl? Your mom is here and I love you.”

  She turned in a circle again, tears streaming down her cheeks. She reached her hands upward as if beckoning to the heavens. Then she tilted her head back and let out a low moan that started deep in her chest. The moan rose in intensity until it became an anguished, ear-piercing wail. As soon as she ran out of breath she collapsed onto the floor, sobbing.

  I stood over her until she sat up. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she said. “But I feel her here, in my heart. I’m having a hard time dealing…”

  I reached out and helped her to her feet. “Take your time, try to relax,” I said.

  “My head is spinning.”

  “Do you need to sit down?”

  “No, I’ll be okay.”

  She stood staring at the floor, until she mumbled, “Let’s go.” We left Mia’s room and I closed the door behind us.

  “Is that your room?” I asked, pointing to the end of the hallway.

  “Yes,” she said, but before I could take a step she grabbed my arm, her fingernails digging into my skin. “She’s alive. Dan, my daughter is alive. I know it.”

  I looked down at her tear-streaked face, and her round eyes stared at me. “I believe you,” I said.

  “You have to find her. Please find her. I don’t care about anything else.”

  “I’ll do everything I can.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as I have some idea what happened to her.”

  She took a deep breath, seemed to steel herself, then she led me down the hall and opened the door to her bedroom.

  “This is where I slept with my husband,” she said.

  It was large for a bedroom. A king-sized bed was in the center, and there were a dozen empty feet to either side. On the opposite wall was a long closet with mirrored sliding doors. I put my hand on the slider, then looked at Melanie.

  “Go ahead,” she said. She sounded tough and resolute, as if committed to harnessing her emotions.

  In the closet were clothes on hangers and folded shirts on shelves. In the center there was an open space where the closet was deeper. I saw a cord, partially hidden behind a hanging coat. I pulled, and a light came on.

  “What’s back here?” I asked.

  “Some of Jeff’s stuff. Just storage.”

  I slid through the narrow opening, and behind the hanging garments, cardboard boxes were stacked against the wall. “Anything valuable I should know about?”

  When she didn’t respond I turned and,
not seeing her, I sidestepped out of the closet. She was at the opposite side of the room, next to a nightstand. In her hands was an opened jewelry box.

  “Melanie?”

  She looked up, a deep frown on her face. “My wedding ring is gone. All my jewelry is gone,” she said.

  “Are you sure your mother didn’t take it for safe keeping?”

  “She would have told me.”

  I walked over and stared down at the empty box.

  “Those men must have taken it,” she said.

  “That would be the most likely conclusion. But I’ll double-check with your mom.”

  She didn’t say anything for a long moment, then she snapped the box shut and tossed it down onto the nightstand. It clattered off the surface and fell to the floor. She shook her head and muttered, “Just great.” She put her hands on her hips, then turned and walked out of the room.

  We went into the kitchen and she opened a cupboard and grabbed a bottle of red wine. “Would you mind opening this for me?” She handed me a corkscrew.

  “Are you sure you should be drinking?” I said.

  “I’m not sure of anything, except that I need a damn glass of wine.”

  I sighed and uncorked the bottle. She set two stemmed glasses on the kitchen bar and sat on a padded stool. She poured herself a glass, but I moved the second glass away from her. “I’m on the wagon,” I said.

  “That’s too bad. You look like you could use one.”

  I sat at the counter next to her and rubbed my eyes. “You didn’t have much for lunch. You should eat something,” I said.

  “We have plenty of food downstairs. Assuming they didn’t steal that too.”

  “You have a basement?”

  “Just one big room, where we store our food reserves.”

  “Like what?”

  “Freeze-dried meals, canned meats, vegetables, and starch. All with long shelf lives.”

  I watched her sip from her wine glass. Her straight hair was shiny and fell over her shoulders and onto her chest. She took a longer drink, and the freckles under her eyes glowed. Looking at her, I realized I had no idea who she was. She could be a distraught victim one moment, a stoic accountant the next, then a seductress, and then return to the role of a grieving wife and mother. I wondered if behind it all, she may not have been all that unhappy to lose her husband. I couldn’t discount the possibility she’d hatched a scheme to get rid of Jeff. If so, the end result was obviously not what she had in mind. Hell, she’d been lucky to survive.