The Last Good Day

by Peter Blauner

  So in a way, she’d forced him to do what he did. It was a matter of pure survival. She was going to cut him off. Divorce him. Take the kids and destroy the business. She hadn’t given him any choice. Not that he’d meant to go that far that night. He’d just been trying to catch her stepping out and give himself a little more leverage in negotiating a fair settlement. So he took that diamond stud earring out of her jewelry box and sent her that e-mail with the cop’s address on it, saying, I have a few things of yours that you might want back. You miss that earring?

  The sad irony was that he needn’t have gone to all the trouble of driving down from New London. She’d already left the diary out, meaning for him to read it and see what she really thought of him. But of course he didn’t know that at the time. So he’d been righteous and furious when he busted her in the Motel 6 parking lot that night.

  You bitch. He started in as soon as he got her in the Tempo he’d rented. I can’t believe you did this to me. You ruined my life.

  I ruined your life? I ruined YOUR life? Are you crazy?

  Just shut up. He rolled up the windows and looked back across the lot at the red vacancy sign burning over the dimmed entrance light. Keep your voice down.

  I won’t shut up. You call me stupid in front of my friends. You belittle me in front of the kids. You insist on moving into a house we can’t afford.

  You’re the one who wanted that house. I hate that house.

  You’ve got a lot of nerve.

  I’ve got a lot of nerve?

  You run up ten thousand dollars a month on our Visa, buying fucking Armani suits …

  What do you want me to do? Go around in rags?

  Spending money on whores when I’m begging my father for money to send the kids to summer camp …

  Shut the fuck up …

  Receipts from Club Royale Entertainment in your pants pocket. You think I can’t figure out what that is?

  Yeah, like you’re any better? He pointed to her red Audi sitting across the lot.

  At least I don’t have to pay somebody to fuck me.

  Is this what you want? He’d raised his fist, warning her.

  Yeah, go ahead and hit me, Jeffrey.

  That what you really want?

  Show me what a man you are.

  I will!

  You make me sick. Go find someone else, you fucking leech. I can’t stand the sight of you anymore.

  That was when he hit her. Just a quick little jab aimed at her chin. But no, she had to jerk her head back so he hit her in the throat instead. He knew right away something was wrong.

  Jeffrey, I can’t breathe.

  What do you mean?

  She’d started gasping and frantically pointing to her windpipe.

  Nothing’s getting through, she pantomimed, eyes bulging. I can’t—

  In a panic, he turned the key and tore out of the lot. Where was that hospital sign he’d seen a couple of miles up the road?

  She can’t breathe. She couldn’t physically speak anymore. She just pointed at her throat again and kicked the dashboard, her face swelling up and turning bright red.

  He put on his high beams. The turn was right here before, wasn’t it? His mind was already tripping and stumbling over things he’d say to the nurse in the ER. We had a fight … No! She fell … What?

  She started hitting him on the shoulder, as if they were playing charades. Okay. I get it. You can’t breathe. You’re dying. You’re choking like a fish on land.

  The death rattle was starting: a sound he’d never heard any human make. Like an artic blizzard in the throat. Her body arched and stiffened against him, all the muscles and tendons straining to hang on. We’re not going to make it. Fear swarmed over him. He’d pulled off the Saw Mill into a disused trucker’s weigh station and put her on the ground, trying to give her mouth-to-mouth, but the trachea was too badly damaged.

  She scratched at his face and pulled on his clothes, the drowner trying to take the lifeguard with her. He remembered seeing one of his father’s friends, a retired air force medic, perform an emergency tracheostomy on a beach in Cypress when somebody’d had an allergic reaction to a jellyfish sting. The guy used a knife. Just a regular knife. Jeffrey remembered he still had that little penknife hanging off his keychain that somehow airport security missed at LaGuardia. He opened the blade and tried to steady his hand to make the incision. But she kept writhing and thrashing on the gravel. So instead of making a neat little cut as he’d seen the medic do, he’d opened a tremendous gash, sending blood spurting everywhere, spraying up in his eyes and gurgling down into her lungs. He tried again and felt the blade get stuck in the cartilage, practically lacerating her larynx. She grabbed for his shoulders, begging. He realized he’d never really pitted his strength against hers before, that she’d always been holding back a little, wanting him to think he could win. But now she strained and jerked and gasped until there was absolutely nothing left. Then she’d faded in the passing headlights, staring up doll-eyed in horror.

  He looked down at the shower drain gurgling.

  Those first few minutes were still murky to him, as if he’d been underwater. He remembered wrapping her up in several layers of plastic from his dry-cleaned shirts and then stuffing her body halfway into his suit bag so she wouldn’t bleed all over the trunk. Then he’d started to drive down toward the city, trying to figure out what to do. Cars on the opposite side of the road blinked their high beams. Brake lights flared. Another car stopped short in front of him, and when he swerved he heard a heavy thump in the trunk.

  He had a fleeting thought about turning himself in to the nearest police station, but what would he say? Yes, Officer, it was an accident. I lured my wife to a motel, making her think she was going to meet her lover there. And then we had a fight in the parking lot, and I punched her in the throat.

  They’d think he meant for this to happen. Instead, he found himself driving back toward the house, almost in a fugue state. He cut the motor and sat before the garage for a few minutes, her blood drying on his face and hands. All at once, he felt stained and contaminated. He had to get rid of it all right away before anybody found out. He remembered the garage had its own washing machine and dryer, in case they ever wanted to rent out the upstairs apartment. There was a can of Carbona carpet cleaner on one of the shelves, so he could at least shampoo the rugs from the car’s trunk.

  Once inside the garage with the door closed, he opened the trunk, and the stench almost made him vomit. He held his shirttail over his mouth and nose and forced himself to take a good look. He’d dug a deep smile into her throat.

  He almost didn’t have to make a conscious decision to get rid of the head separately. It just seemed like the natural next step, as if somehow the choice had already been made for him. At least then the police wouldn’t be able to identify her so easily.

  He struggled to get her out of the trunk and then laid her out on the cement floor, worrying that at any minute the kids or Inez the baby-sitter would come out of the house to see what was making all the noise.

  He realized he had to clear his mind and not get stampeded by emotions. You can do this. Yes, you can. Do it for the children. They’re going to need you more than ever. He put a drop cloth over her face so he wouldn’t have to look at her eyes staring up at him and got to work with the hacksaws he still had from the old house on Sycamore.

  He worked right above the drain in the middle of the garage floor. There was a hose hooked up just outside and a bottle of bleach above the washing machine to rinse the blood away afterward. He’d watched enough Court TV and read enough true crime books to know what to do. But after a while, all the cutting and gouging, all the spewing and gaseous bad smells, the sheer physical effort of sawing through bone and containing the quarts of blood spilling across the floor had started to get to him. He decided to forget doing a full-scale dismemberment and just dump the head and body separately into the river, like the drug dealer had done to his girlfriend in the spring. He put t
he wood protector can in the bag with the head and tied a metal stepladder around the torso to try to weigh it down. The sun would be coming up in a little while, and he figured surely the river would wash them down toward the city before full light.

  The drain gave a mighty hollow yawn as he cut the shower off and watched the little whirlpool at his feet. God, who knew the body would backwash on him and end up right next to the train station?

  “Daddy?”

  A small silhouette appeared through the beveled glass of the shower door.

  He shut the water off and wiped his eyes. “Izzy, honey, what is it?”

  He opened the door a crack and saw his daughter staring up at him with those big opal eyes, wearing a pink halter top, the quilted denim jacket Sandi bought her last year at The Gap, and a pair of Powerpuff Girls underpants.

  “I thought you were getting dressed. I laid the clothes out for you.”

  “Mommy dresses me.”

  “But Mommy isn’t here anymore.” He looked around for a towel. “Did you forget again?”

  The Lip came out. It had been weeks since she’d set foot in the bedroom, Jeff realized. Not since the night she’d surprised Daddy in the living room as he tried to sneak upstairs to get a duffle bag and clean clothes to drive back up to Providence in. Everything had been going all right until that moment. In less than two hours, he’d managed to get the garage mostly cleaned, the bleach in the drain, and the body packed away in the trunk, ready to be thrown in the river. He’d even thought of the McDonald’s along I-95 just outside Providence, where he’d toss the saws he’d used in a Dumpster. All he needed was something to carry the head in and a fresh shirt and pants to wear to his meetings the next day. But then he’d heard that squeak on the stairs and looked over to see Izzy hanging over the edge of the banister, staring right at him.

  I want a glass of milk, she’d said, startling him so badly that he’d actually jumped out of the hallway and tried to hide in the living room.

  For the longest three seconds of his life, he’d stood pressed against a wall, footsteps pacing back and forth across his heart, remembering how carefully he’d explained that he’d be away until tomorrow night. Even marking the date on the kitchen calendar so she wouldn’t forget.

  Daddy? he’d heard her creeping along the corridor, stalking him.

  Go back to bed, Iz, he’d called out. I’m not really here. This is only a dream.

  Dutifully, she’d turned and trudged back up the steps without argument, clutching her stuffed Bullwinkle. This is only a dream. Even now, Jeff wasn’t sure what she believed. He only knew that she hadn’t mentioned it since. But two days later he found a light-brownish red smear in the living room where Dylan was playing with his Pokémon toys, right where he’d been standing in the chinos with the bloodsoaked cuffs.

  “Come on, baby.” He turned sideways and tried to cover himself with a washcloth. “Give your daddy a chance to get dressed. I’ll come and help you when I’m done.”

  She stayed where she was, glaring at him accusingly. “But where is Mommy?”

  “I already told you, hon. She’s not coming back.”

  The bottom lip retracted, and the brown eyes narrowed. And in that instant, a terrible knowledge seemed to pass over the child, like a thunderhead. She knows. The water turned freezing cold on his skin. She knows it wasn’t a dream. She knows that I was home when I wasn’t supposed to be. She knows that she’ll never see her mother again. And in just a few years, she’ll understand what it all means.

  He stood before his daughter, naked, teeth chattering. All this time, he’d been waiting to feel something real for the girl. For all of Sandi’s prattling on, a part of him had always remained unmoved by his own children, perhaps even a little resentful at all the space they took up. But now it dawned on him that this secret would bond him forever to his daughter. One day Iz could just wake up and destroy his life as easily as she could knock over one of her little brother’s sand castles. She could ruin him. Send him to prison for the rest of his life, or maybe even Death Row.

  And as she stood outside the shower stall, Isadora seemed to sense that something was changing. She opened the shower door farther, to look more plainly upon her father’s vulnerability. Jeff reached past her to grab a bigger towel off the side rack.

  “Come on, Izzy, what are you doing here?” He wrapped the towel around his middle, finding himself starting to shake uncontrollably.

  His whole future rested in a child’s unsteady hands. He saw the corners of her mouth pull down and her eyes well up. She knows. He started to reach out to touch the child, barely stifling an urge to beg for mercy on credit. Please. I’m your father.

  But without warning, Isadora suddenly threw her arms around his damp knees, hugged him with the blind fervor of a child who knows this is absolutely all she has left in the world, and then ran skipping out of the room, eager to show her daddy she could finally put her clothes on by herself.

  60

  DAYBREAK FOUND THE SIDE of the Schulmans’ garage charred and still smelling from oil smoke. Unable to face it at the moment, Lynn stood by the edge of the swimming pool with a skimming net, watching blackened clumps of dog hair swirl across the aqua-blue surface.

  “Don’t touch anything.” Barry stepped over the yellow crime scene tape with two cups of coffee. “I just got off the phone with Allstate. They’re going to send a claims adjuster this afternoon.”

  “Can’t they just take the police report?” She lowered the pole.

  Harold and Larry Quinn had shown up a half-hour after the firemen put out the garage fire. They’d hauled Stieglitz’s carcass away in a human-size body bag, promising to send someone back today to search for additional evidence on the property.

  “Ah, you know you have to argue with these guys about everything,” Barry said, giving her one of the cups. “Especially if this turns out to be arson. They don’t have much faith in small-town cops.”

  “I don’t think Harold’s trying to whitewash this, Barry. He’s doing the best he can.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But I also called Sean Heffernan this morning.”

  “Your old supervisor from the DA’s office?”

  “He said he’d reach out to somebody he knew at the state police, see if they could get more involved. I asked about the FBI, but they’re a little busy these days …”

  She folded her hands around the cup. “Do you think it’s smart, going over Harold’s head like that?”

  “I don’t see where we have a hell of a lot of choice, do you? They’re not exactly protecting us. And that’s supposed to be their job, last time I looked.”

  Sunlight slowly spread through the surrounding woods, ending just before the fence line and the abrupt slope of the hill that dropped down some one hundred fifty yards to the road below.

  “We still can’t be sure who did this,” she said.

  “You gave the detective that picture of Jeff with the wood protector, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then I think it’s pretty safe to assume that he’s not going to nominate you for Friendly Neighbor of the Year or anything.”

  She buttoned the front of her blue cardigan and shivered in the early chill, noticing how much the dew looked like perspiration on the grass.

  “You think I did the wrong thing?”

  “I think you did the only thing you could do. You had the picture. She was your friend. You weren’t going to sit on it and pretend you didn’t see it. This is what you could do for her.”

  In the sloping distance, he saw the river roll pieces of the sun across its surface like a man studying glass shards in the dark folds of his palm.

  “But that doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “The thing that we have to get our minds around is that we’re on our own.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, no one else is looking out for us. The police. The FBI. School security. The government. We can’t rely on any of them anymore.
There’s just us.”

  A lone sparrow sang from a high branch of the apple tree. Wind shivered the sumac just over the edge of the hill and blew pieces of yellow crime scene tape across the lawn.

  “You’re not making me feel a lot better,” said Lynn.

  “I got a gun.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I bought a .38 from Richie. I’ve had it for a few days.”

  From the woods, he heard the muffled pith of acorns hitting the ground and braced himself for the inevitable tirade. He deserved the worst. He’d been reckless and irresponsible. He’d brought a gun into the house where their children slept. What if Hannah found it? What if Clay found it? He was an asshole, a moral imbecile, a hypocrite. He’d kept the truth from her even after he’d had the audacity to call her a liar. He’d put them all at even greater risk. Didn’t he know how many people got shot with their own guns?

  He was prepared to concede all of the above as long as he didn’t have to get rid of it.

  But instead she gave him that long cool stare.

  “So where is it anyway?” she said. “Don’t you think I ought to know how to use it?”

  61

  HE ROSE WITH the sun and was out the door before his father awoke.

  The day seemed stunned and not quite ready to begin. The river was dark and moving slowly, as if it were still holding a portion of the night under its surface. The other trailers in the waterfront park were silent but for the chirping of the morning talk shows and the disconsolate stacking of breakfast plates. The dressing around his thumb was starting to turn a dim shade of golden brown. Ignoring the fact that he could no longer bend it, he threw the black gym bag onto the front seat of his Tundra and turned the key in the ignition. The engine coughed and raced, and the gas needle refused to rise above the quarter-tank level, but that was fine. He wasn’t going far.

  He decided to take the long way up into the hills, past the first house he grew up in on Bank Street. He remembered sitting on the wicker sofa with the crushed spokes, trying to comfort his mother after JFK’s assassination. Four years old, he must have been. She cried for days afterward. There were newspaper clippings and votive candles everywhere. He’d come running into the bedroom after they said Ruby shot Oswald on the news. Mom, they killed the bad guy. Everything’s going to be all right.