by Dan Dillard
*****
I stared at it for longer than I care to admit. The van took on a magical quality and almost glowed as the prize at the end of my short quest. Right there in front of everyone. Its grill and headlights smiled at me. Here I am. I’ve been waiting for you, it said.
She had backed the van into the driveway. That was the best way to get the kids into the house without being seen. Back it up to the edge of the house and take them in through the back door. I looked at my phone, even tapped all the icons on its tiny touch screen and stared at the call back number for Detective Williams. Something made me put it down, a thing that told me the police would take their time investigating and it might be too late. I clicked the handle on the gas pump to shut it off and holstered the hose. Then I pulled my car into one of the marked spots next to the gas station.
After my husband’s death, I had purchased a gun, something I was not proud of. He was against guns and violence. I agreed wholeheartedly back when he was alive, but that day violence was not only acceptable, if that woman had laid a finger (or a tooth) on my babies, it was a given.
The 9mm was in my glove box. It used to sit in my closet, up on a shelf where the kids couldn’t reach, but that made me nervous. I moved it from the top shelf to a lock box, still nervous. It wasn’t until after a colleague of mine was mugged coming into work a few months ago that I put it in the car, just in case. I didn’t have the nerve to carry it but I at least put it in the car. It made me feel safer. Safer, but I never thought I would have a real need for it. How many people really need the guns they own?
I opened the latch on the glove box and slid out the shiny black thing. It felt very heavy in my hand. The loaded clip sat beside it and I snapped it into place. The entire contents of my purse dumped on the floor and slid the weapon inside. My car was still running as I got out and walked across the busy street to the strange house with the smiling van.
As I approached, I felt the front door was too obvious so I made a beeline for the side of the house and peeked cautiously around to the backyard praying I would see a game of tag. A birthday party—even Jeanette passed out drunk, the kids busy decorating her with markers would’ve been a relief, but no. The yard was empty. Cicada’s buzzed and chirped in the summer heat.
I looked at the van. The bumper confirmed my discovery by wearing a smiling sun sticker as if it was a sheriff’s tin star. It was the school’s cute logo and all the further evidence I needed. In the back yard lay a ‘for sale’ sign which had probably been in the front yard that morning.
Tip-toeing to the first window, I peered in on a completely empty house. I walked further to a wooden deck and quickly jumped the steps and touched the back door which was already ajar. It swung in on its hinges.
Inside was quiet and I dared not step in until I heard something…anything. My hand was in my purse, touching the pistol. I just needed to know it was still there. The house smelled old and sour, like it had been for sale a while, sitting in the heat.
Thump thump thump thump. The sound of bare feet on carpeted floor came from upstairs and with each one, I inched further into the house. I walked through the kitchen and into the living room, finally ending in the foyer by the front door and the stairs to the second floor. Back and forth those footsteps went. I listened, tracking them over my head for a moment until they sounded the furthest from the staircase. I held my breath and headed up.
I heard water dripping, first on linoleum or tiles of some kind, and then the deeper sound of drops on carpet. I set my purse down on the steps and pulled the gun to the ready. I’d only fired it once before. Safety. Aim. Squeeze.
Jeanette walked out of the bedroom at the end of the hallway and stood there sopping wet. She was undaunted by my presence. “I have work to do,” she said. “Work to do and I’m almost done.”
She continued on to the bathroom and I followed slowly to find out what she was up to. I really didn’t want to know.
“Almost done,” she said. “Clean up! Clean up! Everybody does their share,” she sang as she always had when I arrived early to pick up Nattie and Mattie.
She knelt over the tub inside the small bathroom. The water was tinged with pink and sloshing out onto the soaked floor as she cradled her bundle and stood. It was one of the Martin girls. Jeanette turned with a smile and I saw the little blonde girls limp body. A gash on her forehead stained the water that dripped down one of her ringlet curls, painting it a sickly orange. Her eyes bulged. I dropped the gun to my side and backed out of the way. Nausea washed over me. The Martin girl was dead, but maybe my children…
“Almost done!” she said again. Jeanette’s eyes were crazed, open wide and darting this way and that, her hair was ragged and her dark nipples and bra shone clearly through the soaking wet t-shirt with the ‘Sunshine and Smiles’ logo on the front. At any moment, she might’ve laughed or cried, either would have been of the hysterical sort. I followed her to the bedroom where she lay the little girl down next to her sister. My world was a hazy, false place that no longer seemed real.
“It’s only a two bedroom, so they will have to share, “she said.
Then she looked at me. Her lips spread into a smile and she put on finger to her mouth.
“Shh. Mattie and Nattie are in there, sleeping,” she said and pointed across the hall.
My blood boiled and I screamed when I saw them lying on the floor, my sleeping angels. The carpet stained about them with water from that tub and blood from their swollen and gashed heads. “What did you do?” I screamed and pointed the gun at her with renewed clarity.
“I saved them,” she said.
I looked over my shoulder at my precious twins and then back at her, keeping the gun pointed at her in my trembling hand. My breathing became erratic, the urge to cry never stronger.
“Saved…them…from…what?” I yelled, teeth clenched.
“Me. See, I kill babies. Three of them now,” she said.
I couldn’t wrap my head around it at first.
“I was pregnant on Wednesday. But not yesterday.” Her smile didn’t quite make it all the way up to those eyes. “It was the third time. That’s why I bit that little boy. He was the last one to get picked up yesterday so I told him my story, but he wasn’t listening. He just kept playing, and I bit him.”
“You drowned these children!” I cried. I wanted to kill her, but something in me needed to hear her reasons.
“No. I saved them,” she said.
The words twisted about in my skull but never quite grabbed on.
“The oldest, she wouldn’t be still under the water, so I hit her with the toilet lid. Then I had to hit them all because they were screaming and crying and I couldn’t think. Quiet makes thinking much easier. That’s what I always tell the children.”
I squeezed the trigger and a brilliant red firework burst from her shoulder knocking her to the ground. I looked back at my children, just to check, and then at the Martin twins. My body shuddered as I cried but I kept the gun pointed at Jeanette.
“We can all live together now,” she said looking at the fresh wound, but not acknowledging the pain it must have caused.
I squeezed the trigger again. This time the red firework was in her right cheek, exploding on the wall, shattering teeth and liquefying her eye. Her words no longer made sense, but became gurgling coughs. A fine mist of blood came out of the hole in her cheek with each hack. I squeezed again and again until the clip was empty. I don’t know if that was twelve shots or fifteen.
When the gun only clicked, I went to hold my babies, and to sing to them. Jesus loves me, this I know. I sang until the police arrived. The young officer was there, and before long, Detective Williams showed up.
“I did your jobs,” I said, still holding my children.
