The Ex

by Lutz, John

  David opened the door and entered first.

  Molly saw him stop and stand still. She heard him mutter, “Good Christ!”

  She went in and stood beside him. What she saw seemed to strike her in the stomach. It took her breath away and made her physically ill.

  Then angry. Boiling angry.

  The apartment had been viciously vandalized. Molly’s desk drawers had been removed and the contents dumped on the floor. The desk itself was upside down. One end of the sofa, the end where Molly usually sat, had been slashed and the batting yanked from it to protrude in obscene bulges of cotton and horsehair from the gaping material.

  David walked around slowly, staring in disbelief. “God! Look at this!” He used the toe of his shoe to nudge one of the desk drawers that had been hurled to the floor and lay upside down and broken. “What kind of sick, vicious animal would do something like this?”

  “I’m not surprised,” Molly said, barely containing her fury. “It was Deirdre.”

  David stopped and stared at her. “I don’t know—”

  “Don’t, David! Goddamn you, don’t tell me this wasn’t Deirdre!”

  She was glad he chose not to answer as they walked through the rest of the apartment.

  “Notice?” Molly asked.

  David nodded. “It’s only your things.”

  It became increasingly clear that only objects connected with Molly had been vandalized. Her pillow was slashed. Her clothes had been pulled from the closet and ripped. Brush and comb and cosmetic bottles had been thrown to the floor. The T-shirt she usually slept in was draped from a drawer pull in tatters. Bright red lipstick was smeared wildly on her dresser mirror, as indecipherable as if it were scrawled in a foreign language.

  Molly went to examine something glittering on the floor.

  Shattered glass. A framed wedding photograph of her and David, which had been wrapped in paper on the back of a closet shelf, was broken from its frame and lay in the middle of the glinting fragments of glass. The image of a younger David, grinning in his tuxedo, was untouched. The smiling woman on his arm, Molly, had been shredded with a sharp blade.

  Molly looked at him. “Who’s crazy now, David?”

  “Mol. I never said—”

  “Never mind,” she interrupted. “We both know what you thought.”

  In a way she was glad Deirdre had done this. Deirdre’s duplicity, the danger that she posed, were out in the open now; no one could say they were merely in Molly’s mind. What had been done to the apartment was an explosion of malice and violence that proved Molly was the sane one. Deirdre was mad.

  “I’m sorry, Mol…” David was saying remorsefully.

  Molly ignored him as they returned to the ravaged living room.

  “I’m going to call the police,” he said, and walked to the overturned desk. Near it on the floor lay the phone-equipped answering machine. He replaced the receiver, then gripped the machine and stood up. He paused.

  Molly could see the glowing green digital numeral on the machine.

  “There’s a message,” David said.

  He propped the machine against his hip and pressed the Play button.

  Beep.

  Molly immediately recognized Deirdre’s voice:

  “Hi, David and Molly.” She sounded jarringly normal and cheerful in the middle of such chaos. “This is you-know-who. I hope you like the way I redecorated your apartment. I guess you’ll be busy for a while admiring it, making little personal changes. That’s okay. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings. And don’t be concerned about Michael. I’ve already picked him up at Small Business, so you two can enjoy the rest of the day without worry.”

  Molly and David stood motionless for a few moments.

  Then the full impact of what Deirdre had said hit Molly in a violent rush.

  She was across the room in three strides and grabbed the phone from David.

  “It’s a bluff, Mol,” he said. “We dropped Michael off at Small Business not much more than an hour ago.”

  But Molly was already punching out Small Business’s number on the key pad. “Damn her! I’ll kill her if she’s taken Michael!”

  David gently but firmly worked the receiver from her clutching fingers. She glared at him.

  “You’re in a rage, Mol. Let me talk. Let me see what Julia has to say.”

  She knew he was right. If Julia had let Michael leave the school, she didn’t know what she might say or do.

  She surrendered the phone to him then backed a step away and watched him hold the receiver to his ear and listen to the ringing phone at the other end of the connection.

  Molly waited, fighting back her temper and fear for Michael. She could faintly hear the Small Business phone ringing, seeping from the receiver’s earpiece.

  “Yes, please,” David said abruptly, tightening his grip on the phone. “I’d like to talk to Julia…” He stared inquisitively at Molly.

  “Corera,” she said, assuming he couldn’t remember Julia’s last name.

  “Corera, please. I need to talk to her. Yes, I know, but it’s very important.”

  He stood waiting, not looking at Molly, for more than a minute.

  Then he grew rigid and stood straighter as the receiver returned to life.

  “Julia. This is David Jones. That’s right, Michael’s father. Remember, his mother and I dropped him off at the school a little over an hour ago? We need to know if he’s still there.”

  Molly saw his expression darken and her heart almost stopped.

  After several seconds, he said, “I don’t know. No, there is none. We don’t know. Yes, thanks, Julia…”

  He slammed down the receiver.

  “What did she say?” Molly asked.

  “Julia said Aunt Deirdre came to the school half an hour ago with a note from you saying there was a family emergency. She said they knew Deirdre at the school. She’d been there several times before to see Michael. Trusted her because Michael knew her and seemed fond of her.”

  “So they gave him to her,” Molly said with a quiet rage. “She’s got him! David, she’s got our son!”

  He was obviously alarmed by her expression, by the emotion vibrant in her voice.

  “Mol, listen!”

  It made her even madder that he would try to calm her. “You listen, David! I’m going to kill her! You hear me? I’m going to fucking kill her!”

  “Jesus, Mol! Wait!”

  But she was already out the door and in the hall. Fueled by a hate and desire she knew would scare her if she paused to think about it.

  No time or patience for the elevator. She was aware of David following her as she strode down the hall to the door to the landing, then tromped up the stairs and down the fourth-floor corridor to Deirdre’s apartment.

  She began pounding on the door with her fist.

  “Deirdre! Damn you! Open this door!”

  She felt David grip her upper arms. He pulled her back so she couldn’t reach the door.

  At first she was enraged, thinking he was trying to restrain her to calm her. Then she saw his flushed features, the tightness to his jaw, the look in his eyes she’d seen only a few times during the early, sometimes vicious and hurtful arguments of their marriage. She knew he’d had time to assimilate what had happened and shared her concern and anger.

  When he was sure she wasn’t going to interfere, he took a step back and raised his right leg. Then he shot his foot out so the flat of it struck the door just below the knob.

  The door gave but didn’t open.

  Molly felt like standing next to him so they could kick together. She actually moved toward him.

  But he kicked again, with a loud grunt and much more force, and the doorjamb splintered around the lock.

  The door flew open and bounced off the wall so hard it would have closed again if David’s momentum hadn’t carried him forward so that he struck it a second time with his shoulder. It hit the wall again, but not as hard. Brass screws and metal pieces
of the lock clattered over the wood floor.

  Molly and David exchanged frightened but determined glances.

  She followed him into Deirdre’s apartment.

  48

  The apartment was still disorganized from Deirdre’s move, as if it had occurred only a few days ago. Molly took the lead despite David urging her to stay behind him, and they stormed through the apartment, satisfying themselves that it was unoccupied. They found themselves again in the living room.

  For the first time, Molly looked around carefully at the mismatched and apparently secondhand furniture, the stacks of cardboard boxes against a wall.

  Then the desk near the window caught her eye, and it took her a moment to realize why.

  It closely resembled her own desk. There were the half-dozen reference books supported between quartz bookends, the green-shaded banker’s lamp, the mug stuffed with pens and pencils.

  Molly stepped closer to the desk and saw that the mug was exactly like hers, dark blue with a silver Statue of Liberty on it. Only the slight chip on the rim that marred her mug was missing on this one.

  She began opening drawers.

  “What are you doing, Mol?” she heard David ask behind her.

  “Looking for some clue as to where Deirdre might have taken Michael.”

  The top drawer held only a stapler, a bottle of Liquid Paper, and a few household bills and receipts. Stuffed toward the back were some maps. A road map of Missouri. A street map of New York. A subway guide.

  The second drawer contained only a shoe box.

  Molly lifted the box out with both hands, noting that it was slightly too heavy to be empty. She set it on the desk and opened it.

  Inside were a jumble of newspaper clippings weighted down by a videocassette. She set the cassette aside, then began lifting out the clippings and placing them on the desk.

  She looked at them where they lay overlapping each other:

  WOMAN PLUNGES TO DEA/POLICE ARE LO/TWENTY-STORY FALL FROM ROOFTOP RESTAURAN/RISTINE MATHEWS.

  There was also a newspaper photo of what appeared to be a body lying beneath a bloody sheet.

  “Look at this, David,” Molly said.

  But he was already standing behind her. He reached past her and rearranged the clippings.

  They revealed the name of the woman who’d apparently plunged from the rooftop restaurant: Christine Mathews. It was her body beneath the bloody sheet.

  “What do you think it means?” David asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Molly said. A fear like ice was moving beneath her flesh. “But I don’t like it. I’m going to call the police.”

  As she turned her back to reach for the phone, she didn’t see David pick up the videocassette and slide it beneath his shirt.

  He quietly drifted into the hall leading to the bedrooms and bathroom. When he was far enough from the living room but could still hear Molly’s muted, indecipherable voice as she talked on the phone, David withdrew the cassette from under his shirt. He put on his glasses and held it up to the light.

  The label was neatly printed in capital letters with blue ink: 2ND HNYMN.

  He looked around desperately. He couldn’t let Molly find the cassette. And it couldn’t be in the apartment if the police decided to conduct a search.

  For now, he was stuck with it.

  He slipped it back beneath his shirt, feeling its sharply defined angles press against his bare side beneath his ribs. Then he returned to the living room.

  Molly was hanging up the phone after her conversation with the police.

  She saw him in the corner of her vision and spoke to him. “They said—”

  She and David both heard a slight noise and turned toward the door.

  It was wide open, and Craig Chumley was standing in the doorway. His gray suit was wrinkled, his tie was loosely knotted, and there were perspiration stains on his pale blue shirt. He entered the apartment as if lost in a dream, glancing at the damaged door.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked. He was obviously confused and afraid.

  “What are you doing here?” David asked before Molly could speak.

  “I don’t see where it’s any—”

  “Where are they?” Molly interrupted. Her rage erupted and she flung herself at Chumley, clutching his shirt with both hands. “Tell me!”

  She lost her reason entirely, her place in time, as she tried to shake Chumley, to throw him to the floor, to kill him with the raw anger that devoured her senses.

  Stunned, Chumley spun in a wild dance, giving in to Molly’s efforts rather than fight her.

  Finally she felt David’s hands on her shoulders, pulling her away. Chumley gripped her wrists, not as hard as he might have, and gradually forced her arms back so she lost her grip on his shirt. The expression on his face was strangely kind as well as stricken.

  She was in control of herself again, but breathing as if she’d run for miles.

  “Calm down, Mol,” David was saying. He was up against her back now, his body turned sideways, one arm lowered to encircle her waist. He took a few unsteady backward steps, dragging Molly with him.

  David hugged her hard. “Easy, easy…” She could feel his breath in her ear.

  She willed her body to relax. His grip on her midsection seemed to loosen. Or was it simply that she’d stopped struggling?

  “Gonna be okay?” David asked.

  “Yeah. If you can call it that.” She was breathing easier. Her throat was raw. Her display of violence had achieved nothing; everything was the same, even the weight of her fear in her stomach.

  “Deirdre’s taken Michael,” David said to the florid and flustered Chumley.

  “Your son?” Chumley put his hand to his forehead as if he’d just been assailed by a terrific headache. “Oh, Lord!”

  “What’s your story, Chumley?” David asked. “The police are on their way here, and you’ll be telling them soon enough.”

  Chumley moved his fingertips around to his right temple and bowed his head. His brow creased. Molly saw that his scalp was mottled beneath his thinning hair.

  “I’m married,” he said. “Have been for sixteen years. Deirdre made me forget that. Then, while she didn’t actually threaten me, during the last few days she made it clear…if I didn’t keep her on as an employee as well as a lover, my wife, Shirley, might find out about us.” He glanced up for only a second. “Lately, we haven’t been getting along.”

  “You and your wife?” Molly asked.

  “Me and everybody,” Chumley said despondently. “Friday evening, after Deirdre had gone home, a man named Stan Grocci showed up at my office. He was abusive, desperate. And he was searching for Deirdre.”

  “That’s her former husband,” David said.

  “He said he was still her husband. He also said she was diagnosed as psychotic and dangerous after attacking and injuring a sales clerk with one of those spikes used to spear receipts. Later, she escaped from a psychiatric hospital in Missouri.” He looked at Molly, then down at the floor again. “He also said there was an arrest warrant out for her in Saint Louis for the murder of a woman named Christine Mathews he became involved with while Deirdre was in the mental institution.”

  Molly’s insides turned cold. “Jesus, David! The woman in the clipping! Deirdre must have pushed her from the roof!”

  David was looking hard at Chumley. “You talked to Grocci Friday, you said. Have you seen Deirdre since then?”

  “All weekend I thought about what Grocci had told me, wondering what I should do. This morning, when Deirdre came in to work, I confronted her with what he’d said.”

  “How did she react?”

  “She denied it all and told me Grocci was the mental case and his accusations were preposterous. At that point I didn’t really care. I knew I was in something I couldn’t handle, so I fired her.”

  “And she went without a fight?” David asked incredulously.

  Chumley smiled sadly. “Yeah. That should have alerted me to
trouble. But I’d been thinking with my dick for so long…” He glanced apologetically at Molly. “Sorry.”

  “Think with your head now,” she snapped.

  “I noticed a while back that my files had been disturbed,” Chumley said. “I think she made copies of some papers and took them with her, maybe even had them before I fired her. If she gives them to the wrong people…Well, I’ve been playing a little loose with my taxes. I came here to get the copies back, and to offer Deirdre money so she wouldn’t go to the IRS or to my wife.”

  Molly didn’t care about Chumley’s troubles with his wife or the IRS. She didn’t want to hear about them. She only cared about her son.

  “Do you have any idea where she might have taken Michael?” she asked.

  “No. I really know next to nothing about Deirdre.”

  There were noises in the hall. Voices. Footsteps.

  Then, in the corridor outside the open door, a startling amount of dark blue. Cautious, emotionless eyes.

  The police entered the apartment.

  49

  The uniformed officers listened patiently to Molly and David, then one of them made a phone call while the other gave Deirdre’s apartment a cursory examination.

  Soon afterward a pair of NYPD plainclothes detectives arrived. The shorter, heavier of the two, a graying man named Salter, with the face of an amiable but combative bulldog, was in charge. His partner, a much younger man named Marrivale, took notes while they listened to Molly and David.

  At first Chumley refused to talk before consulting with his attorney, then at Molly’s urging he changed his mind. With an air of doom and resignation, he told the detectives what he’d told Molly and David.

  Neither cop showed any reaction to his story.

  “Has anybody got a photograph of this Deirdre?” Salter asked. He had a rough, heavy smoker’s voice. Three cellophane-clad cigars jutted from the breast pocket of his gray suit coat.

  “Not even an old one,” David said, glancing at Molly.

  Salter looked at Chumley, who shook his head no. “Like I said, she’s really not much more than a stranger to me—in a way.”