Camp McClane

by Grant Fieldgrove

  Russ chokes up, his eyes go narrow. He swallows a dry gulp then shakes his head yes. “I do. She never flat out said she was going to, but some of the other things she said, things I didn’t think meant anything at the time, all make sense now.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “I… I don’t know. Nothing in particular, just… morbid. Sometimes she would say things that were so morbid. I can’t… I can’t recall anything specific. I’m…I’m sorry. When she said she was going to jump from the falls, I shrugged it off as being over-dramatic. It wasn’t until I came home and saw the note she left taped to my front door that I called the police.”

  The note simply read: I’m sorry.

  The note found at her house was more detailed; ramblings of a suicidal woman teetering on the verge of death.

  The redhead clicks away; the coroner does that tight-lipped, sympathetic nod thing before scribbling a few words in his notebook.

  Next up is me. “Madison Penn,” the coroner says. “Thank you for coming.”

  I smile and then tell them everything I know. I repeat the fact that Morgan loved playing the clarinet. I tell them that I was the last person she probably talked to. She called me to say goodbye then hung up. I called the police immediately but I could offer them no assistance as to where she might be. I ran to her house four blocks away, and when nobody answered, I kicked the door in. The house was empty, quiet. It wasn’t until Russ’s call came through that the police could locate the spot where she jumped, a mere mile from my house, her car parked on the side of the road, her heels sitting side by side on the edge of the bridge, as if they were in her closet, and blood on a rock at the base of the water, a few hairs still encrusted in the dark crimson smear. Then, nothing. Washed out to sea. Fish food.

  I’m sure they could check the phone records if they really needed to back up my story, even though I’m not sure why they would. In fact, they probably already have. When all the facts fit together, it makes an inquest like this all the more easy.

  The night after the officer informed me of my sister’s probable death, I slept. I slept like I hadn’t slept in a while. I’d been pulling double duty, getting no more than a few hours rest a day, for months. It was a relief to finally sleep. I called in sick to work, and slept some more. In fact, leading up to today, I had so much sleep, the events in question seem like yesterday.

  “How was your relationship with your sister?” the coroner asks me.

  I smile as a tear rolls down my cheek. “She was my sister. We shared a womb together. That’s about as close as two people could be, wouldn’t you say?”

  The coroner nods, so does the officer. The suits remain stone-faced and silent. I’m not sure of their purpose. Even if Morgan had life insurance, it would be voided out by her suicide. Her house falls back to me, which I will sell and keep the money. It’ll be a tidy sum, especially with the market value near the beach constantly going up, but so what? The house has been in my family for fifty years and has been paid off for twenty. And, she was my sister. Hardly seems like a legal matter, but I suppose there are formalities. It’s fine. I just want to get this over with.

  I tell a few more stories about my sister’s last days, about how I hadn’t seen her in a few weeks because of our conflicting schedules, but we talked all the time. I told them how we kept in contact through texts and phone calls and Facebook. I told them how she had been closed off lately, how she had made herself scarce around her friends, about the messages I would see on her Facebook wall from people wondering where she had been. Her reply was always that she was super busy, which people just accepted, and there was never any mention of playing at the Five Spot, like it was private; something just for her. The truth was, she stopped showing up to work two months ago. I told them how she was fed up with that place and simply stopped coming in. I told them how she had told me she saved up enough to be jobless for a while, to do what she wanted to do.

  Russ heard this and was confused. Rightfully so. He has no idea where his girlfriend was during the daylight hours when she was supposedly at work. I guess it’s just an enigma, but the mind of a suicidal person often isn’t rational. It’s almost always a mystery and the people who they leave behind are left with unanswered questions. That’s just the way it always is and the sooner everyone accepts that, the easier things will be.

  “One last question,” the coroner says. “Do you believe your sister is dead?”

  I nod. “Yes. I know she is dead. I felt it the minute it happened. Twins have a bond like that.” It was true. The moment she died I felt a part of myself die. “I’m one-hundred-percent positive,” I say.

  Some hushed words are shared between the coroner, the officer and the suits. Words I can’t distinguish. Words the secretary can’t hear either, judging by the sudden stoppage of keyboard clicks.

  The coroner turns his attention back to me, writes one brief statement in his notebook before closing it, then says, “Thank you, Ms. Penn. Thank you all for coming down. I think we’re done here. “

  And just like that my sister is officially dead by her own hand.

  We gather our things and make our way out to the hall. The three hepcats each give me a hug, all smelling of bourbon and cigarettes. I’ll miss those guys. I turn to leave when Russ catches up to me.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says to me.

  “Me too. And I’m sorry for your loss as well.”

  He nods, not being able to think of a proper response. We stand there awkwardly for a few moments before he says, “I miss your sister so much,” then just as quickly as he approached me, he leaves.

  The funny thing is, he’s never met my sister. That was me he fucked in the Five Spot bathroom. It was me who left his bed every night. It was me on stage with the band after spending nearly two years crash-coursing the clarinet.

  Everything was me this whole time.

  It was me sitting in front of my television, sending text messages back and forth, from my phone to my sister’s phone. It was me blowing off her friends on Facebook. It was me who drove her car to the top of the cliff, who left her shoes tucked neatly to the side of the bridge. It was my blood and hair smeared on the rock below, the tests being both right and wrong as we shared everything, including DNA. And handwriting.

  And it was me sacrificing sleep to be Madison during the day and Morgan at night.

  Those tears I cried when I was told about her death…well, I gave them a fair chance. I told them I was an actress.

  Russ Spaulding won’t miss my sister because I killed that bitch three months ago and buried her in my backyard.

  ALIMONY

  I was so sick of her I could hardly stand it. You’d think divorcing someone would be a great solution to never seeing or hearing from them ever again, but that’s not the way it works. At least not when a judge orders you to pay for her lifestyle even after you jump ship.

  Month after month I would shell out thousands of dollars just so she could live in a nice house and not work. She has a housekeeper and no job. I pay for both. She can sleep with as many guys as she wants and never have to worry about getting married again, because as long as she is single, I foot the bill.

  Where is the justice in that, I ask you?

  I was sick of it. I had had enough.

  She was always an insomniac. Sometimes she would go three days without sleeping, sometimes four. Back when we were still married I eventually talked her into seeing a doctor, see if he could prescribe her something.

  Shockingly enough, for once she actually listened to me, and she went. He prescribed her some pill that caused her to sleepwalk. One night it was so bad she got out of bed, got in her car and drove to the 24-hour market about three miles away. She shopped, paid, drove back home, crawled into bed, then had no recollection of it the next day.

  We couldn’t figure it out. We went to bed with our kitchen counter cleared and woke up with six bags of groceries sitting on it, complete with three quarts of ice cream, all tur
ned to liquid, and all dripping onto the floor.

  We found the receipt and drove to the store where the groceries were purchased. On the security camera, at 3:09 am that same morning, there was my wife, shopping.

  Needless to say, the doctor took her right off of those pills and put her one some much stronger ones. They worked and she’s taken them every single night since then.

  Thinking about those pills is where my idea came from.

  I started researching poisons. I needed Ms. Virginia Clifton to finally realize her life was empty and meaningless and thus put an end to it. Only problem is that it’s hard to get someone to take an overdose of sleeping pills, at least without a fight. And where there is a fight, there are marks, and where there are marks, there is foul play.

  So I did my research. I needed something similar to the pills she took every night. If there was a tox scan done soon enough after her death, I needed my poison to be in the same classification of drug.

  It took a while but I finally found it. Nembutal. The hard part now would be getting my hands on it. I knew I wouldn’t be able to find it in the states so I would be packing my bags and taking a trip. I had to take my time with this, even though I knew each month I spent was more money out of my pocket and into hers. Still, better to spend money than spend the rest of my life in prison.

  Patience was key.

  I travelled down to Mexico, by car and by myself, three months ago. I knew Tijuana was too close to the border for my liking, so I drove south into Durango where I got a cheap motel and stayed holed up for a few days. On my third day I sought out a stray dog I could use. It wasn’t hard to find.

  I took the ugly mutt to the local animal hospital and told the vet I needed to have it put down. I asked the doc how he would do it. He said there were two ways it could go down. One was a shot. You’ll never guess what the other way was.

  Nebutal.

  I told you I did my research; I just had to be sure.

  I told the doc I would prefer the shot, to not arouse any suspicion.

  The doctor agreed and said he would be right back.

  They don’t ask a lot of questions in Mexico.

  When the doc came back, I told him I had a change of heart.

  Twenty minutes later the dog was back with his mongrel buddies and I was back in my motel.

  I waited two more nights then made my move.

  I broke the back window of the animal hospital, prepared for a screeching alarm. I was surprised when I heard absolutely nothing. I still didn’t want to take any chances, though, in case of a silent alarm. I made my way through the office and broke into the medicine cabinet where I took everything I could get my hands on. I even stole dog food, leashes, flea collars, you name it. If it fit in my bag, I took it, then I dumped everything but the Nebutal in a dumpster a few miles away, then drove back over the border and back to my Las Vegas home.

  Then I waited another two months, another two hundred and twenty thousand dollars worth of time, but if everything went according to plan, it would have been the best money I ever spent.

  On the second payday since my Mexican getaway, I told Virginia I needed to use the restroom. She agreed and down the hallway I went.

  The good thing about being married to someone for nine years is that you know an awful lot about them, for example: where they hide a spare key.

  I took the key, took a piss, left my hat on the bathroom sink, then showed myself out. I drove straight to a hardware store with a self-service key making kiosk, made a copy, then returned to Virginia’s house, saying I left my hat and I would just run and grab it. She rolled her eyes but didn’t ask questions.

  I returned the original key to its spot and showed myself out once again.

  Never once did I hear a thank you for the six-figure check I had just cut her.

  Two more weeks.

  My patience was wearing thin. Once everything falls into place, it’s hard to continue waiting, but I had to. I had to wait until the 16th; that’s the day she picks up her new bottle of pills from the pharmacy, and I was going to have to make it seem like she took the whole bottle. My original plan was to wait one more month but I just couldn’t. I had to do it now.

  I had to do it now.

  I followed her to the drug store that day, just to make sure. I had to be thorough. Then, that night, when I knew she would be asleep, I let myself in, turned the alarm off with the code she never bothered to change, then walked into her bedroom, where I opened her mouth with my gloved hands and dropped the pill in. I went to the kitchen, grabbed a glass and filled it full with water before dumping most of it back into the sink. An important thing about faking a suicide with pills is that you have to remember that the victim would need a glass of water close by.

  I returned to her room, poured a small amount of water into her mouth, very slowly, to help the pill dissolve. If she didn’t swallow, I would simply try again.

  As luck would have it, the pill went down on the first try. Within minutes her organs would be shutting down.

  I grabbed her prescription bottle from her nightstand drawer and dumped all the pills into my hand, then dropped them into my pocket. I took one last glance around the room, positive I had done everything perfectly, then checked all the doors to make sure they were locked. A suicide is always more convincing when all the doors are locked from the inside.

  Then, I walked out the front door, locking the deadbolt with my key. After a quick look around, I walked off into the warm desert night.

  She was found three days later when she missed a lunch date with her best friend. After failing to get in contact with Virginia, her friend had driven to her house to check on things. When no one answered, she used to her key, which Virginia had given her years ago, and found her dead in her bed.

  It was perfect. Absolutely perfect. I was worried about her housekeeper finding the body the next day, but it seemed fate was on my side; the housekeeper was on vacation. The body was discovered too late to do a successful toxicology exam for her sleeping pills, and under normal circumstances, the trace amounts of drugs left clinging to her dead organs would have easily been written off as her prescription sleeping pills.

  At midnight tonight, I am scheduled to die by lethal injection, unless by some miracle arrives that I am not counting on.

  My perfect plan, my absolutely foolproof, wonderfully perfect plan…well, it would have worked. It absolutely would have worked if only Virginia’s doctor hadn’t secretly changed all her sleeping pills to harmless sugar pills. She could have eaten that entire bottle with zero effect.

  You see, it seems my ex-wife had become depressed. It seems as though she realized her life was empty and meaningless, and she told her doctor she was planning on killing herself.

  If only I had a little more patience Virginia would have done the job for me.

  CHANCE BRIDE

  We made the trip to Maui together as a sort of final farewell to our rapidly fading youth. Both on the edge of thirty, neither of us had done anything very adventurous, and after a few glasses a wine three months ago, we decided now was the time.

  We arrived on the island on Monday, taking the first two days just to get used to the time change. But today, today was for exploring. We’d heard about a place called Hana, on the far side of the island, which was gorgeous, and decided to make that our destination. What we’d also heard, however, was that the road was a long and twisty affair, and Tara was prone to carsickness during such drives.

  We had almost given up on the idea when we encountered two local burnouts outside of a gas station that asked us where we were headed. I explained the situation and one of the burnouts, aptly named Bernie, informed us of the back way.

  The back way, he said, was much more straightforward and quicker, but you had to be careful of the tides. He said there was a reason that road was rarely travelled, except by locals who were well informed of the ocean’s fluctuating highs and lows. He said the road was called The Beyond.

&nb
sp; He was also stoned out of his mind.

  But, with the whole trip planned just to be adventurous, we decided to go for it, although in hindsight, I should have been a little suspicious when the two burnouts started laughing.

  The Beyond, for the most part, looked like a road from an old abandoned town. It was obviously rarely travelled, alternating between dirt, gravel and mangled concrete, and didn’t seem to be any less curvy than the worst of what we could imagine. It was, however, a lot flatter than the road I had Googled the night before. It was, no matter how isolated and quiet, gorgeous. The sea butted up to our right side, and lush grassland to the left.

  Things were going smoothly, Tara was driving slow and taking the turns in a no-rush fashion, until out of nowhere, a wave slammed into the side of the car, forcing Tara to swerve into some foliage.

  It scared the shit out of me and I remember yelling something, although I can’t recall what.

  I do remember Tara yelling holy shit as the car came to a stop in a small ditch.

  Another wave crashed onto the broken asphalt, spraying the car with a salty mist.

  Ahead of us, the road began to disappear and the water began to rise. It was the damnedest thing I’d ever seen, the road just disappearing under water.

  I yelled at Tara to go.

  She pressed her foot onto the gas pedal and we heard the sound of our tires splashing water. We were stuck and the tide was rising.

  We both got out of the car, just as another wave struck me, nearly knocking me off my feet. Tara ran around the front, took my hand, and led me into the plants. We ran until we hit the base of a mountain, about a hundred yards away. We walked up the incline and turn to watch just as our car was devoured.

  “Holy shit,” Tara said, on the verge of tears.

  I tried to be funny and said, “Did we get the insurance?”

  It got a laugh. A nervous, we’re screwed laugh, but a laugh still the same. The sad reality was that we were literally in the middle of nowhere, miles and miles from anyone or anything. We had no food, no water, I was soaking wet, and our purses and phones were both left behind in the car.