The Serial Killer's Wife

by Robert Swartwood

  “Let me guess—he said you were the main cause.”

  “That’s right. He even tried to take the nickname he had given Eddie and give it to me, tried calling me The Widower Maker. He speculated about what had driven me to want to kill. He did very little research into my own life. Mostly, he contacted people who had known me—close friends, past students—asking them for their opinion. Most of them told him he was crazy. Some though ... some actually went along with the idea.”

  “What about your family?”

  “My mother was never mentioned. She had probably died by the time he started writing the book.”

  “What about your brother?”

  “He was still over in Africa at the time. And I’m sure if Clarence had managed to track him down, Jim would have told him to go shove it up his ass.”

  “So this guy, he has this book published, and then what?”

  “His overextended fifteen minutes of fame was over. It had taken him too long to write the book, and by the time he completed the thing nobody cared anymore. The publisher canceled the contract. Clarence’s agent parted ways with him. Desperate, he published the book himself and sold copies off his website. He continued what he claimed was his rightful duty to bring the true Widower Maker to justice. He began offering a reward on his website to anyone with any information leading to my eventual capture and arrest. The amount started small, like one thousand dollars, and grew over time.”

  “How much?”

  “A lot. Last I saw, it was over one hundred thousand dollars.”

  “What? How was he able to raise that much money?”

  “By his followers, people who believed what he said about me. He accepted donations. All the money went to the reward.”

  There was a brief silence, and then Todd said, “How many followers does he have?”

  “I don’t know the exact number. But the reward”—she shook her head—“over the years it became less of a reward for my capture than it became something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  Elizabeth said, “The money became a bounty for my head.”

  CHAPTER 31

  IT DIDN’T HIT Elizabeth until they had passed Carlisle that today was Saturday. She thought about what she and Matthew should be doing today. How on Saturdays they slept in until ten o’clock when she made pancakes or French toast or waffles (depending on what Matthew was in the mood for), with eggs and sausage. They would eat at the kitchen table and talk about their week at school and then they would shower and dress and go do some kind of activity. If there was something appropriate and interesting playing at the theater, they would go see a movie. If the weather was nice enough, they would play miniature golf. If the weather wasn’t too nice, they might go to the bowling alley. Then it was back home for a nap, where she would let Matthew sleep an extra hour while she tried to get some chores done. Like cleaning the kitchen or bathroom, always alternating week by week, squirting Soft Scrub into a sponge and scrubbing down the floors and tub and sink. Then it was a late lunch, either grilled cheese and soup or hamburgers and macaroni and cheese, and afterward they would sit on the couch and Elizabeth would read aloud from a book they’d gotten from the library.

  At least that was how their Saturdays had gone until recently, when Todd entered the picture, accompanying them to the movie theater or mini-golf or bowling. Elizabeth remembered one time at the mall, Matthew walking between them, grabbing hold of both of their hands like they were an actual family.

  “Are you hungry?” Todd asked.

  She shook her head. “Are you?”

  “A little.”

  “Stop whenever you want.”

  “We’re not that much farther though, right?”

  A tightness formed in her chest at the knowledge that home was less than two hours away.

  “No,” she said softly, “we’re not.”

  A little while later, having passed through Harrisburg, Elizabeth took a breath and shifted in her seat so her back was to the window.

  Todd said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Elizabeth.”

  Still keeping her back to the window, she said, “There’s something coming up off the highway in the next minute or so I don’t want to see.”

  Todd opened his mouth but quickly shut it. By this point he knew better than to ask questions. If Elizabeth wanted to tell him, she’d tell him.

  Fifty-two seconds later—she was counting them off in her head—Todd said, “You mean that self-storage place?”

  She couldn’t help it, she glanced out her window and there it was, right off the highway, protected by a tall chain-link fence, a sprawling space of storage units. It looked as if in the past ten years they had expanded, and there was a new sign, brighter colors exclaiming U-STORE-IT, WE-PROTECT-IT.

  It was there, right beside them for only a few moments, and then it was gone.

  “More and more stuff is starting to remind me of Eddie. Like in the next couple miles, there will be an exit that would take you to a nice fancy restaurant. He took me there one year for our anniversary.”

  “So that self-storage place,” Todd prompted.

  “Eddie and I both graduated from Penn State, him one year before me. He wanted to stay close to me my last year and got an apartment near State College. He used up all his savings to stay there. When I graduated, I found a long-term substitute-teaching job in Harrisburg. Eddie still hadn’t found a job yet, so we moved there. Problem was, we could only afford a very small apartment, just one bedroom, and our stuff ...”

  “You guys kept it back at that place.”

  She nodded. “It was only for six months or so. By then I had found a teaching job in Lanton. Eddie applied to a bunch of places but couldn’t seem to find any work. Finally a friend of his said he could get him a job working at the same pharmaceutical company, only it was down in Philadelphia.”

  “How far is that from Lanton?”

  “About an hour and a half, two hours, depending on traffic.”

  Todd gave a short whistle. “Talk about a commute.”

  Elizabeth didn’t know why but she smiled. “Yeah. And the crazy thing? He never complained about it. Not once.”

  She went quiet suddenly.

  Todd said, “What wrong?”

  But Elizabeth didn’t answer. She’d spotted something coming up on the side of the highway, what was no doubt a deer carcass.

  “Elizabeth?”

  She shook her head and closed her eyes so she wouldn’t be forced to see the blood.

  CHAPTER 32

  THE CLOSER THEY got to Lanton, the more her memory began to play tricks on her. In fields where there used to be just grass and trees were now endless developments of houses, and then she wondered if whether those developments had actually been there before she left. Strip malls hosted the same Radio Shack and Blockbuster and Chinese restaurant, though there were one or two stores that looked new and she couldn’t tell which was which. The Toyota dealership was gone, replaced now by Honda. There was a new Best Buy, a new Olive Garden (the other one, from what she remembered, was on the other side of town), and at least two new McDonald’s. There was so much more but she was seeing it all too fast and then wondering whether any of it was really new or just her imagination.

  Though Todd maintained the speed limit it felt like they were moving at a crawl. Elizabeth found herself leaning forward in her seat, as if that might help make the Prius move more quickly.

  There was only one person she could think to see—the only person who had the best shot of getting her in to see Eddie—and she gave Todd directions to Foreman’s. Like back in Indianapolis, she suddenly remembered the roads and streets and could picture them perfectly in her mind.

  After ten minutes they came to Foreman’s street. He lived in a development much like everyone else in Lanton. The houses all looking different but also looking the same.

  Before Todd even had the hybrid parked in the driveway, Elizabeth
had her seatbelt off.

  “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  Then she was outside, striding up the walkway to the porch, listening to the stillness of the neighborhood, breathing in the air, and she didn’t know why but she thought there was a different texture to the oxygen here than there had been in Kansas. She hurried up the steps, came to the door, rang the doorbell once, waited a moment, then rang it again.

  Elizabeth glanced back at the Prius in the driveway. She thought about the best way to introduce Todd, the delicate manner in which she would explain their present condition, and then the door opened and Elizabeth turned back, already smiling, already opening her mouth to say hello.

  An older black woman stood in the doorway, squinting back at her through a pair of reading glasses. “Can I help you?”

  Elizabeth opened her mouth, shut it, opened her mouth again and said, “I’m looking for Michael Foreman.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Elizabeth thought fast, said, “We’re from out of town,” motioning at the Prius. “I used to work at Michael Foreman’s law firm. We were friends. Last I knew, he still lived here.”

  The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry, but my husband and I moved in here about three, four years ago.”

  “Oh.” Elizabeth glanced around the porch, at the pumpkins and the decorative wooden chair facing the street. “You wouldn’t happen to know where he moved to, would you?”

  “I do not.” The woman gave her a particular look. “But if he’s your friend, wouldn’t he have told you his new address?”

  “We’ve been out of contact for a while. My husband and I were just passing through, and I thought I’d surprise him. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  “No problem at all.” The woman smiled. “You have a blessed day now.”

  When Elizabeth returned to the car, Todd said, “Wrong house?”

  “Apparently he moved.”

  “Now what?”

  “Now we try Sheila.”

  • • •

  SHEILA RODGERS HAD been her best friend. From day one when Elizabeth started at the middle school they had hit it off. They were not part of the same team—the seventh grade was split up into three teams—but since Sheila taught Computer Science and saw every class, she knew a great deal about all the students and teachers and other faculty and made it possible for Elizabeth to quickly learn the ins and outs.

  Sheila was very web-savvy. She had created a website designed specifically for her students, so if they had any questions at home, they could log onto the website and receive almost any answer. Sometimes it amazed Elizabeth just how much Sheila knew. Elizabeth was no novice when it came to the Internet, but she was content with simply using email and occasional searches on Google. She had no interest in social interaction. So she was amazed by Sheila’s knowledge of computers and the Internet. Once Sheila even showed her a tracking program on her school website, how every time a student visited the site she could tell whether or not that student was using dial-up or cable, the type of browser, sometimes even the location in the county where that student was right that moment.

  Sheila had once told Elizabeth if she thought that was scary, some websites can even track the location of your street, what floor you’re on, what room.

  Elizabeth and Eddie had been regulars at the Rodgers’, making almost monthly appearances at dinners and other social gatherings. Eddie had gotten along well with Sheila’s husband, Bill, as well as their five-year-old twins, Caleb and Tyler. When Elizabeth eventually became pregnant, it was Sheila who helped her along every step of the way, telling her which foods to eat and which books to buy and, when Thomas was born, the secret mothering tricks that couldn’t be found in any baby books.

  When Todd pulled into the driveway fifteen minutes after leaving the house Michael Foreman once owned, Elizabeth was relieved to see the name RODGERS still labeled the mailbox. Like before, she threw off her seatbelt and had her door open before Todd even had a chance to stop the car. Moments later she was at the front door, ringing the doorbell, murmuring, “Come on, come on, come on,” under her breath.

  What she would say when Sheila answered the door, Elizabeth didn’t quite know, but she imagined Sheila would do a double take. Sheila’s own mind would insist that what she was seeing was not real, that it couldn’t be real, that her old best friend Elizabeth was gone and would never come back. But that would only last a few seconds, enough for the mind to then acknowledge the fact that yes, Elizabeth was really here, and then Sheila would step forward and open her arms to embrace her.

  The door opened, and there stood a little boy, almost ten years old, one of the twins Caleb or Tyler, and she smiled, felt her eyes starting to water, as she said, “Hi there, sweetie. Is your mommy home?”

  A voice carried through the house, a woman’s voice saying, “Tyler, who is it?” and then saying, “Caleb, put that down,” and then the sound of footsteps approached and Elizabeth braced herself for seeing Sheila for the first time in five years.

  Only the woman who appeared behind Tyler wasn’t Sheila.

  Sheila, from what Elizabeth remembered, had long dark hair and was well rounded, not fat exactly but not skinny either. This woman here was skinny but in a healthy way, a woman who probably did yoga or Pilates every day, with her blond hair pulled back into a ponytail.

  “Can I help you?” this woman who wasn’t Sheila asked.

  “I’m”—Elizabeth cleared her throat—“I’m looking for Sheila.”

  Something in the woman’s face changed. She leaned down and said into Tyler’s ear, “Go back in and play with your brother, okay?” and when Tyler scampered away the woman crossed her arms and tilted her head at Elizabeth. “What’s this about?”

  “It’s important. I’m an old friend of hers, and I really need to see her.”

  “She doesn’t live here anymore.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “What about Bill?”

  “Bill and that woman divorced years ago,” the woman said, her tone almost venomous when she used the phrase that woman.

  “Is Bill home? He might be able to answer my question.”

  “What question?”

  “I’m looking for another friend of mine. His name is Michael Foreman. He—”

  “How dare you,” the woman said, her voice suddenly sharp. “Coming to our house, knocking on our door, asking for her and then him. Just who do you think you are?”

  Elizabeth didn’t know what to say. This entire conversation had taken a completely different direction in which she had imagined. She said, “Look, I don’t know what your issue is, but I really need to speak to Sheila or Michael Foreman. Do you know how I can contact either of them?”

  The woman continued to stand there, glaring back at her.

  “What about Bill?” Elizabeth said, her patience starting to wane. “Let me speak to him if you don’t think you’re capable of helping me.”

  The woman’s jaw tightened. “He’s not home,” she said through gritted teeth. Then, “Wait here,” and she walked away, leaving the door open. She was gone for maybe a minute, while Elizabeth could hear the twins running around inside the house, shouting and laughing. Then the woman appeared with a Post-It in hand and held it out to Elizabeth. “That’s her address, okay?”

  Elizabeth took the Post-It and stared at the woman’s loopy cursive script, and before she could say anything (even a half-hearted thank you), the woman had shut the door in her face.

  CHAPTER 33

  THE ADDRESS THE woman had given her took them to an apartment complex on the other side of Lanton, the side that they had entered nearly a half hour before. Elizabeth was immediately put in mind of Summer Ridge, her own apartment complex back in Kansas, cookie cutter buildings all huddled close together, the only thing distinguishing them the different colors—reds, blues, greens, yellows—of the doors and window frames.

  Todd drove them through the sprawling serpentine of townhouses until they spotted 178. This ti
me Elizabeth waited until they were parked before she unclipped her seatbelt. The entire drive, she had been replaying her conversation with the woman—the new Mrs. Rodgers, apparently—and none of it made sense. The last time Elizabeth had seen Sheila, her best friend had been happily married and very much in love with her husband.

  She walked up to 178—this door was painted a faded red—and knocked. Like before, she glanced back at where Todd had parked the car, imagining all the different things that might happen when Sheila opened the door. And like before, when the door finally did open, Sheila was not the one standing there.

  “Help you?”

  A man stood in the doorway, big and bald and wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist. He had a tattoo of an eagle over his left bicep.

  “I’m looking for Sheila,” she said, then quickly added: “I’m an old friend.”

  The man stepped back and shouted, “Yo, Sheila, somebody’s here to see you!”

  “Be right there,” a voice called back, and the man looked at Elizabeth just once and shrugged and walked away, leaving the door open.

  Elizabeth didn’t move. She just stood there, waiting, until forty seconds later a woman came down the steps, a big-breasted, heavily-makeup-faced woman wearing a bathrobe who looked nothing like her best friend.

  This woman, this woman who could not be Sheila Rodgers, saying, “Hi, can I help—”

  Their eyes locked then, Elizabeth’s and Sheila’s, because yes, of course this was Sheila, this was her old best friend, her dearest friend in the entire world, and so what if she was wearing way too much foundation, so what if the red of her lipstick was enough to make Elizabeth cringe? This was Sheila, Sheila Rodgers, and nothing—not the day-old perm, not the apparent work she’d had done on her breasts, not the smell of sex wafting off her body—changed that at all.

  “Liz?” Sheila’s tone was incredulous, just as it was to be expected, though somehow her voice managed to raise an octave on the end of that simple one-syllable word. “Is it—is it really you?”