Quiet. Still. No one’s around.
Perfect.
Cary walked to the curb and climbed into the nanny’s Toyota. She started up the engine and backed the car into the garage, next to the Jetta, being careful to stop short of the body. She parked, climbed out, and closed the garage door.
It rolled shut with a definitive slam.
So far, so good.
Time to load the trunk. She opened the lid and placed the bedsheet on the floor, spreading it out. Then she placed the various items inside: the baseball bat, the towels with the hairs, the coat, the glasses, the purse.
And, finally, the nanny.
She was a little chick, but flopping all over the place. It took several shoves to move her up and over the lip of the trunk. She landed inside in a ridiculously awkward position, looking like a circus contortionist.
Cary slammed the lid shut.
One more item left on the checklist.
Cary went upstairs into the little boy’s bedroom. He was asleep. Looking at him, she felt her heart fill with good, happy feelings. Jesus Christ, he was a beautiful boy.
And she would be a good mom. Better than this Anita woman that Dennis described. Anita had no time for this precious child. She neglected her son and her husband. What kind of a mother was that? Cary needed to set things right. She was simply taking what Anita didn’t want.
Cary would be perfect in the perfect family. A good wife, a good mother. Great husband, great kid. She would not abandon them, ever, not like her own mother had done. And she would not become an evil, stifling bitch like Aunt Margo, turning childhood into Hell House. No, Cary would be the best mom ever.
All the pieces were sliding into place now. She reached into the crib and gently picked up Tim. He maintained his grip on a stuffed brown bear.
For a moment, he seemed to stir and squeak, and Cary freaked. She had not prepared for this. What if he started to scream and cry?
She held him close to her chest, stroked his hair. He smelled so clean. His little arms and legs moved, then relaxed. He sighed. A beautiful sigh. Then he drifted back to sleep…
Cary brought Tim into the garage. She placed him in his car seat in the back of the nanny’s Toyota. The straps took some time to figure out, but she managed to secure him safely and calmly. He stirred some more, but did not make a noise.
Cary checked her watch. 9:00 p.m. Everything had gone like clockwork. Time to leave and head north.
She pressed the garage door opener and brought it into the car with her. Without turning on the headlights, she backed the car out of the garage, shutting the garage door when she reached the end of the driveway.
Mission accomplished.
Perfect.
The Toyota entered Vernon Road. Cary departed from the neighborhood and blended into the streams of evening traffic, without making a ripple.
Mile after mile of Highway 101 disappeared behind her into the night as the hours rolled by.
We did it, Cary told herself over and over. Dennis is mine.
Dennis had said he would never leave Anita unless he could bring Tim. At first it seemed impossible. But, really, nothing is impossible if you set your mind to it.
If you are determined enough, if you have the balls to do whatever it takes, you can spin miracles.
Cary checked her watch frequently, timing her progress with the sequence of events developing back at the Sherwood house.
Anita and Dennis wouldn’t arrive back home for at least two hours…then allow another hour to ninety minutes until the police are fully engaged…that should give her plenty of time to reach her destination.
Her new life was waiting. She couldn’t get there fast enough. The old life would be dead and buried, RIP, goodbye to twenty-two years of shit with a capital S.
For the first time, she would have a real family, not the sack of garbage that stole her childhood. She hated them all. The seriously messed-up father, currently back in jail for another bungled string of armed robberies. The schizo mother who barely made appearances or any sense. The evil stepparents of Hell House: grabby-hands Uncle Jack; the fat, sicko pervert; and sadistic Aunt Margo, AKA scowlface, old yeller, the wicked witch of the world. All gone, all erased. Not her family anymore.
This felt so good. This felt even better than when she torched Hell House on her way out of San Diego two years ago. The fire didn’t kill Uncle Jack or Aunt Margo or even do much damage to the house, but it did send an effective statement about her feelings at the time. With two suitcases of possessions, she took a bus to Berkeley, found the seediest part of town, and moved into a two-bedroom apartment filled with a rotating occupancy of six to eight dropouts, drifters, and burn-outs. To get by, she dealt a little dope, mooched, and shoplifted. She got wasted for days on end and spread her legs for any semi-conscious stoner with a sufficient hard-on. This was her “fuck you” period, Total Rebellion, but it never felt all that good and eventually became a depressing extension of everything that had come before.
It still wasn’t the life she wanted.
So she did a 180, cleaned up, found a real job, and left the apartment of losers for her own tiny place three blocks away, a basement unit on the other side of a boiler room.
The real job was bartending. Her willowy looks and long brown hair drew business, even if she was clumsy and slow. She worked for four months at Sanford’s, a small corner tavern and then, for much better money, accepted a similar gig at the Green Hills Country Club near Rockridge.
Talk about culture shock.
Green Hills was a different class of people than she had ever been exposed to before. Instead of the skanky late-night crowd at Sanford’s, this was afternoon groups of golfing buddies, rich and immaculately groomed. They were almost entirely male, wearing expensive watches, nice sweaters, neatly ironed slacks, smoking fat cigars, and tossing her horny stares. It was fun to flirt with them, serving up beer and chatter. She even bedded a couple of the guys, catching on when they slipped off their wedding rings, usually after the third or fourth beer.
They meant nothing to her. Just recreation.
Then she met Dennis.
There was something different about him. For one, he was not stuffy or condescending like the others. He had a boyish charisma. The age difference didn’t matter. She looked older than her twenty-two years, he looked younger than his thirty-two years, so they met somewhere in the middle.
Unlike the others, she felt like she could connect with him. He reached in and touched her soul. He made her feel special, not cheap. Sex meant something, it wasn’t just a lay.
Dennis was smart, confident, classy, great to look at, a wealthy real estate broker. He had it all.
Unfortunately, that included a wife.
From the beginning, he talked about how the passion had left his marriage. His wife had become a workaholic who cared more about her job than her family. She was never home. He wanted to leave her. But he couldn’t bear to leave his son.
Dennis’s deep devotion and love for his son was the most beautiful thing she had ever known. She wanted him so bad it was breaking her heart in a way she had never felt before. She couldn’t sleep or eat.
When Dennis announced that Anita was leaving her job to spend more time with their son, Cary became alarmed that it might repair the marriage. But Dennis remained adamant about cutting loose from Anita. He continued to see Cary as often as he could, often showing up at her apartment between real estate showings.
She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. He said he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her…but he could never leave the boy, Tim.
In a divorce, Anita would gain custody, and that was unthinkable to him.
As the passion burned, Cary and Dennis dedicated themselves to finding a way to make it work. She suggested killing Anita, but he wouldn’t go there.
Initially, he said it was because he still had feelings for her. Later, he admitted it was a flawed plan because it would be too logical to connect the
m to the crime.
After several Saturday afternoons of long talks in the clubhouse, scribbling half-baked ideas on napkins, they found a twist that was so unexpected, it was perfect:
Fake Tim’s death in order to take him away.
Everything fell into place after that. The weirdo nanny was an ideal scapegoat. Dennis took glee in plotting out the scenario. He had an incredible mind. He was a college graduate, bursting with knowledge. He had all the confidence in the world.
And so did she.
On a Saturday afternoon so beautiful that it chased everyone else outdoors, Cary and Dennis sat at a table in the back of the clubhouse, sharing a bottle of white wine like some kind of storybook romance. Dennis proposed a toast.
“To our new family.”
For the first time since she was a child, Cary cried.
Cary was making great time. Driving in the middle of the night will do that, she concluded.
She only made stops for gas and milk. The milk was for Tim, who murmured and acted fussy about fifty miles from their destination. She bought and filled a sippy cup for him. He gulped about half of it down and returned to sleep. Her presence did not seem to alarm him, although he never appeared fully awake.
Far up the northern California coast, she pulled off Highway 101, following the route so carefully researched and mapped out by Dennis. She took a small, unpaved road that hugged the coastline, coming across no other cars. It was incredibly dark. The redwoods shut out the moonlight, and she drove slowly. She realized she was returning to a bad habit—chewing her fingernails bloody.
“Stop it, Cary,” she told herself.
Suddenly something reflected in the beams of her headlights. It was a parked car. It was the black Acura that she and Dennis had tucked there the prior day.
Destination reached.
Cary killed the engine. She looked back at Tim. He was in a deep sleep, his head to one side, the sippy cup tipped over in his lap, the stuffed bear tucked under an arm.
Cary stepped out of the car and opened the back door. The air was cold and the wind howled through the trees. Cary could hear the crashing waves of the ocean nearby.
The black Acura had been fitted with a brand-new baby car seat. Cary transferred Tim from one car to the other. Briefly, he opened his eyes. For a moment, Cary feared he would freak out, but instead he simply clung closer to her for warmth. He was asleep by the time she strapped him into his new car seat. Cary placed a blanket over him and shut the door.
She faced the nanny’s car. “OK, Pam,” said Cary. “Now it’s your turn. Time to go for a swim.”
Cary approached the trunk, holding the key. She took a deep breath and inserted the key into the lock. She twisted, it clicked. Cary lifted the trunk lid to peer inside.
Pam burst forward, mouth twisted open, screeching like a crazed animal. Her face was distorted into something monstrous. She swung the baseball bat wildly, connecting with Cary’s hand. Cary felt the blow, yelled in alarm, and stumbled backward onto the grass.
Pam continued to scream, raw and horrible, like nothing Cary had ever heard before. The nanny scrambled out of the trunk, maintaining her grip on the bat, facial features purple and swollen, teeth bared. Cary returned to her feet just as the bat sliced the air near her chin.
She could see Pam’s terrified eyes, magnified huge in her glasses. She was panting in deep, hoarse gasps.
The two of them simply stared at one another for a moment, trying to identify positions in the dark. Then Pam took another swing with the bat. Cary dodged it. She would not get hit again. Her hand stung like hell.
Cary sized up Pam.
This was not part of the plan. But no matter. This puny mouse did not stand a chance against her. Hell, she had beaten up guys a lot bigger than this.
“Give me the bat,” spat Cary.
“No!” Pam swung it wildly, which was exactly what Cary wanted, because after it swished past, while Pam was still offbalance from the lunge, Cary moved in, and she grabbed the barrel with both hands.
They struggled, both of them grasping the bat, but Cary kicked the smaller woman squarely in the shin, and it loosened her fingers just enough to lose the bat.
Pam started crying.
Cary didn’t waste any time. She struck the bat against Pam’s cheekbone.
Pam crumbled, screamed, begged.
Cary felt no pity. This little mouse was not going to destroy her new family. No fucking way, no fucking how.
Pam managed to get on all fours, her hands clawing at patches of grass. She was frantically looking for her glasses.
“Please…” she said.
“No thank you,” said Cary, and she struck again.
Pam was still partly conscious when Cary tossed aside the bat and began to move her. Cary was punching, kicking, and shoving. To avoid the blows, Pam kept scrambling away, crawling offbalance and broken, like a dog with three legs.
She was going in the right direction. Cary directed Pam to where the trees vanished and the earth disappeared into an abyss.
The waves below roared and crashed. When Pam realized where she was, it was too late.
Cary gave one final, ferocious shove, sending the smaller woman over the edge. Pam’s hands clutched desperately at the air, and she screamed into the stars. She plummeted.
Cary lost trace of Pam’s descent, but then heard the smack when she hit the rocks, and caught a quick glimpse of her broken body before the black, violent waters sucked her up and took her away.
The threat was over.
Cary took off her gloves. She examined the fingers on her left hand. They hurt like hell, but she could bend them, so they probably weren’t broken. Bitch.
She put the gloves back on. Now on with the show.
Cary returned to Pam’s car. She removed Pam’s purse and coat from the trunk, setting them aside. She gathered the towels, wrapped them in the bed sheet, and placed the bundle in the trunk of the Acura. She added the baseball bat. It was cracked. She closed the trunk gently, careful not to wake Tim, who remained asleep in the back seat, blanket still tucked up to his chin. Positively adorable.
Cary went back to Pam’s purse, picked it up by the straps, and plopped it on the front hood of the Toyota. She took out the cell phone and turned it on. She quickly entered the text message that she and Dennis had composed earlier in the week. Pam’s tearful admission of guilt.
“I LOVE TIMMY. I AM MORE OF A MOTHER…”
When she was done, she entered Anita’s cell phone number and pressed SEND. She shut off the phone and tossed it into Pam’s front seat. Next, she took the five hundred dollars of cash Dennis had given her and stuffed it in Pam’s purse. She placed the purse next to the cell phone and tossed Pam’s coat on top.
Anything else?
She checked the inside of the car. She checked the trunk, closed it. All seemed good to go.
Then she realized: Jesus Christ, don’t forget the mouse’s glasses!
Pam’s bent glasses were in the grass behind her car. Cary picked them up. She carried them to the cliff and flung them out to sea.
That was it, except for one last task. Cary returned to Tim and gently eased the stuffed toy bear out of his grasp.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she whispered.
She took the bear to the cliff and tossed it, watching as it seemed to almost float, twisting in the wind, turning tiny and tinier, until it was gone.
Goodbye, Tim. Hello, Jeffrey.
As the first strains of daylight streaked across the sky, Cary drove Jeffrey to their new temporary home, a small, isolated ranch house outside of Sonoma Valley. The house was a rental, arranged by Dennis, who made good use of his real estate resources to mask her identity under a bogus name.
Jeffrey’s room in the house was already prepared. It had been a joyous experience: shopping for the crib and changing table, picking out the clothes and toys, buying his diapers and food. There were balloons and clowns on the wallpaper. She eagerly looked forward to futur
e trips to buy his things.
She delicately put Jeffrey to bed, under clean new covers. He looked so totally at peace, untouched by the ordeal of the past twelve hours. He was young enough to adjust to the changes—and forget.
The hardest part was over, but there was still so much more to do. Tomorrow she would cut her long brown locks dramatically short and dye her hair blonde. She would do it herself in the bathroom mirror.
Cary left Jeffrey’s room and went to the phone in the kitchen. She dialed Dennis’s voicemail at work. After it picked up, greeted her and beeped, she waited exactly ten seconds before hanging up. The silent message was her signal to him that all had gone according to plan. Well, more or less…
Now it was simply a countdown until Dennis joined them.
Six months, to be exact. That was what Dennis had promised.
“She will throw me out of the house the second week in August,” Dennis had assured her. “I know exactly what buttons to push. Just you watch.”
And he was right, as always. On August 10, Dennis slapped Anita hard across the face.
Following the loss of their child, the loss of his job, the loss of his affection, and his return to alcohol, the slap was truly the last straw in a marriage that had actually been dissolving for years.
Anita told Dennis to leave and never return.
And Dennis obliged.
On the single best day of Cary’s life, Dennis returned to her arms. He returned to his son. The perfect family was now complete.
Immediately, they started plotting their next move. They would relocate far from California and become lost in a large city. They would have new names and new looks. In this new life, there would be no mention of Anita and no memories of Hell House.
It would be a fucking paradise.
XIX
Anita checked her watch again. Now Roy was thirty-five minutes late. What gives?
He had been good, if not totally prompt, about meeting every two hours. Now it was the end of the day, time to return to the hotel and regroup. The meeting place hadn’t changed: the corner bench at Little People Playground.
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