Fear Itself (21 page)

Sarah, but then I had only known her for a short while relatively. But she was the only living person besides Sarah that I cared about. What I felt for her can only be described as love. She responded with an enormous hug. “Why don’t you lie on the couch and take a nap. After Sarah and I have breakfast I’ll watch television and sit with you and rub you feet while you sleep.”

I helped her to the couch and laid her down and kissed her cheek and tucked her in and waited until she fell asleep before I started the process of moving Amber’s body down to her car. I checked on Sarah, who was still asleep, and then I went to the coat closet where Amber had hung her coat and I retrieved her car keys before I crept down the rear stairway and opened the garage and pulled my car out onto the street; then I climbed into Amber’s car. The seat was pushed forward to its furthest setting and I racked my knees on the steering wheel and I winced in pain. I slid the seat back to a comfortable setting while I cursed under my breath and started the car and backed it up into the driveway to just outside the rear door. I got out and opened the rear driver’s side door and then I climbed the rear staircase and slipped into my bedroom and I grabbed the rolled parcel of dead-weight that lay beside my bed. At my bedroom door I peaked out to be sure that all was still quiet and then I hauled Amber’s body, which I had slung over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, out to her waiting car. I heaved her into the back seat head first and tried to close the door but her feet, stiff with Rigor mortis and completely extended, were sticking out too far. I opened the trunk and mentally measured the compartment but aside from the work of removing the spare tire and many other miscellaneous items, I could tell that no matter how I positioned her lifeless body she would never fit without bending and possibly breaking. I could have closed the door by thrusting my body-weight at it but that would have caused trauma to the corpse that would later be the subject of curiosity for the police. I wanted to arrange things so that it looked as if she had died at home. I walked around to the passenger door and opened it and rolled down the window and then closed the door. Reaching in through the window I lifted up on Amber’s head and I pulled her up until her skull was resting on the armrest. I had hoped to make quick work of my effort but I realized that I had consumed an extraordinary amount of time loading Amber into her car so I looked around to be sure that no one was spying on me. When I looked up at Sarah’s bedroom window I almost fell over from the shock of seeing her staring down at me. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t seem at all phased. It was if she had sent me a message not to bring anyone into her life without her tacit approval. And Sarah’s emotional detachment was her exclamation point. Thank God she had an affinity for Melanie, I thought, or I might have had a second corpse to dispose of once I ascended the stairs.

I rounded the car and closed the rear door with only the least bit of resistance and then climbed back into the drivers’ seat. I reached back to the rear door and I rolled up the window with some difficulty as I bumped Amber’s head with each rotation of the handle. Then I backed the car into the garage and opened the trunk again. I grabbed the lime- green ten-speed bicycle that Melanie had convinced me to buy (it was on sale for ninety- nine dollars at the local department store) so that we could go riding together in the spring and I folded it into the trunk and tied the hood as close to closed as I could get it with the front wheel of the bicycle protruding and then I closed the garage door behind me.

Once back inside the house I went to

Sarah’s bedroom door and pushed it open. Sarah was sitting on the edge of her bed.

“What were you doing with Amber’s car?” She didn’t bother to look up. She was mocking me with her indifference to the trouble she had caused me.

“I think you know damned good and well what I was doing.”

Sarah looked up and feigned shock.

“Get out into the kitchen and eat your breakfast.” I said with authority so as to reestablish my position of power over her.

I had to microwave our food to make it edible and still the French-toast which I had labored over was chewy and bland and the yokes of the eggs, once soft inside prepared sunny-side up were thick and dry. We ate in silence as I am sure that Sarah could sense my anger at her behavior.

12

Sarah was a murderess; a sociopath; a serial killer. She would kill and kill and kill for the rest of her life whenever she felt that the circumstances called for such action. She held no value for human life save for her own. She was probably also incapable of love. She was capable of affection, of that I was certain, but as a sociopath she would be incapable of love.

That did not change my feelings toward her. I loved her more than life itself. She wasn’t even my flesh and blood, and yet I loved her as if her soul were conjoined with my own. I knew that I would do anything for her even as I sat brooding over the bind she had gotten me into.

But I dared not confront her. I was resolved to clean up her mess and move on. I couldn’t undo what was already done. All I could do was deal with the situation as pragmatically as possible. I sat on the couch massaging Melanie’s little bare feet waiting for the fearful cover of darkness to fall down upon the earth so that I could return Amber from where she had come. I was sure that her family would be missing her. She had been away from her home for over twenty-four hours. And now that I had more time to consider the mission that awaited me I realized that returning Amber to her home might prove to be a very difficult task. The obvious dilemma of overcoming my fear of the dark aside, there was a good chance that Amber’s family might be huddling in their home in the hopes that she might return. At first I had estimated that they would be at the police station or out searching for her; but this would be unlikely. In all of the police dramas I had watched on television the family was told to stay at home and stand by the phone in case the missing person phoned or returned.

That Amber’s family was concerned there was not doubt. Her cell phone, which I had in my pocket set on vibrate mode, had rung incessantly since noon. Her sister was no doubt still covering for her, but was trying to reach her to find out what had become of her. Her husband had also called several times according to the caller I.D. on Amber’s cell. Every time her phone buzzed in my pocket I jumped like a nervous cricket. I reached into my pocket and turned the phone off. I could not wait to dispose of the cell phone.

Sarah played innocently on the floor with the dollhouse that Amber had bought her for Christmas. I wondered if she had chosen to play with that particular toy on purpose as a sort of snub to Amber. Sarah never gave any indication what-so-ever that she had done anything wrong. She had to know, for God’s sakes, that I couldn’t help but notice a bloody corpse lying next to me in my bed. I drew a deep breath and my eyes teared up at the thought that she was capable of being so unfeeling; so inhuman. Her outward appearance was so innocent. But her behavior was unequivocally disturbing; from her attempt to simulate intercourse with me to her brutal execution of Amber. She was the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing and my heart broke at the realization that she was as capable of barbarism as she was of affection.

And who was at fault? I was. I had made her into the monster that was she. My espousement of her had no doubt caused her confusion and her confusion had led her to brutality and her appetite for blood had been wetted as a result of her jealousy and murder of Catherine. All things stemmed from me. There was no chemical imbalance; no birth defect; no hormonal disproportion. I was to blame. And her life, as a result, would be a painful and short lived affair because eventually she would be found out. The baby that I once held in the palm of my hand, who once laid her head on my chest and slept to the beat of my drumming heart, was a child no more.

The sun that had earlier cast a short beam of light onto the floor through the living room window grew visible from where I sat as it washed the room in a blast of yellow splendor. I adjusted the blanket to shield Melanie’s eyes from the glare in the hope that she would sleep until after I had left; but when I rose from the couch she opened her mouth in a deep yawn as she stretched her legs and extended her toes and blinked her eyes open.

“Where are you going?” she croaked, parched from so many hours of sleep.

“I have to go to work.” I had been mulling a variety of excuses and this was the only lie that I could produce that would preclude her accompaniment.

“But it’s Sunday.” She extended her yawn as she sat up. Her face looked much better than it had earlier, her skin was smooth, no longer baggy about the eyes and her eyes were no longer bloodshot, and neither were the muscles in her face disfigured with tension and rage. She looked as pretty as the day I had first met her. “Who works on a Sunday?”

“Tony called a little while ago. There is a problem at a house we finished wiring on

Friday. The customer lost power to half of their house, so we have to fix it. Their refrigerator doesn’t work and neither does their furnace.” I shrugged, and as a contagion to her yawn I opened my mouth and evoked my own expressive drowse.

“How long will you be gone?”

“I don’t know. How ever long it takes to restore their power. Can you keep an eye on Sarah for me?”

“Sure honey,” she extended her hand and I tugged her up into my arms and I kissed her as she pursed her lips to shield me from her stale sleepy breath.

I hugged Sarah and kissed her forehead and then I looked into her eyes and searched for the innocence that had once lived within her pretty blue eyes but I saw only coldness. I forced a smile, “You be a good girl for Melanie.”

“I will. I like Melanie.”

How reassuring, I thought.

I waited until Melanie retreated into the bathroom before I left so that she would not see me leave in Amber’s car and then I donned a pair of rubber kitchen gloves and climbed into the car and made my way down the street and toward the highway to a route that I had mapped out earlier. I hoped to arrive just as darkness fell to limit my exposure to night. If I had waited until dark to leave the house I knew that I would have lost my nerve.

During the almost hour-long drive from Wichita to Hutchinson the night grew dark and the radio and the dashboard light were my only distractions. The radio played a mixture of

Motown oldies but the song that seemed to stick in my mind was the howling deep voice of Sachmo as he sang “What a Wonderful World”.

With Amber’s corpse riding in the back seat, in my jittery state, I kept waiting for her to unfurl her blanket and rise up behind me and claw at my face with those long red fingernails of hers. I checked my rearview mirror incessantly and several times I was startled as I imagined that she was leaning over the console breathing in my ear. Finally I thought I heard her speak and I could actually hear and feel her warm breath inhaling and exhaling against my cheek. The hairs on my arms stood at attention and I must confess that I panicked. I pulled the car abruptly to the side of the highway and I hopped out of the car leaving my door open and scampered into the road hoping that she would jump out of the car and run off; I was convinced that Amber’s body had reanimated itself with some demonic spirit. Standing in the road I was completely focused on the activity (or lack-there-of) inside of Amber’s car and I was oblivious to the elements outside and I was promptly buzzed by an oncoming tractor-trailer which blared its loud whiny horn as it passed and caused me to leap forward towards the car as I clenched my bowels in my best effort retain my bodily fluids. I stood in my lane with my arms outstretched and my hands open prepared to run but at the same time trying to gather the courage to further approach the car. I crept up to the rear window and peaked inside to find Amber’s body resting peacefully and completely undisturbed. As I stood outside in the dark I became more frightened of the sounds of the country wilderness than I was of the body in the car; the hoot of an owl, the rustling of cattle from a nearby field, the Gregorian chant of the crickets in the grass and the gurgling trickle of a stream; all of these innocent sounds manipulated within the expanse of my imagination became monstrous indescribable beasts from the depths of hell so I scurried back into the driver’s seat and I caught my breath. I thought about turning back but I had driven so far and I still had Amber’s rotting carcass to dispose of. I thought about dumping her body in the drainage ditch along side the road and doing an about face, but I knew in my heart that if I had done so I would have been traced and tracked and found-out. I gathered my composure and I put the car into gear and I continued my journey along the two-lane country road.

As the addresses slowly fell and narrowed to the number I sought I slowed Amber’s car to a crawl. I passed a long dark private driveway with the number 46663 stenciled in black on a white-washed quarter sheet of plywood mounted to a tree, which according to Amber’s driver’s license was her address. I turned around in a neighbor’s driveway about a quarter mile past and then turned off my headlights and much to my chagrin the dashboard light as well, and I slowly cruised to the end of Amber’s private road and drove onto the narrow gravel covered driveway. I could hear the crunch of cinder crumble beneath the tires and despite my slow speed the decibel of the stone crushing under the weight of the car seemed high enough to be heard for miles. When I reached the top of her driveway I spied Amber’s house a few hundred yards down a slope. The house was a sprawling ranch with a sandstone façade across the front, blue vinyl siding (the house was illuminated with up-lighting) to the sides and faux slate gable roof made of asphalt shingles. Three small beams of light emanating from round black plastic spheres embedded in the ground shot up like fountains and lighted the stone fascia of the house casting shifting shadows as the evenings misty air shimmied through their glare. Several more brass fixtures, skinny poles with halogen lamps at the tips, lighted a row of shrubs along a walk of beige brick paving stones which wound from the concrete driveway pad to a long open- walled front porch which was lined with dirt- filled flowerless flower troughs.

The windows were dark but the flicker of a television appeared to illuminate the large picture window at the center of the house. Sweat was pouring from my pores and my pulse was pounding so hard that I could hear the blood throbbing through the veins in my wrists. I killed the engine and I coasted the car onto the concrete slab (that served as a secondary parking area) to the rear of the house and I eased the brake pedal to the floor which caused a high pitched squeal as the metal of the rotors ground against the graphite brake pads.

All sounds for me, no matter how suppressed, seemed amplified as though broadcast through a megaphone and the squeal of the brakes sounded as loud as if it had come from a train as it slid across the iron rails of a track coming to a stop. I hunched my body low in the driver’s seat as I held my foot to the brake; then I realized that the bright red glow of my brake- lights was illuminating the rear wall of the house and the shrubbery that adorned it. I placed the car in park and I lifted my foot from the brake and I waited to see if I had attracted any unwanted attention; but all was quiet.

I eased the car door open and I slipped out of the car and squatted and waddled to the shelter of the prickly shrubs against the house.

I scanned the rear yard for any sign of movement. Below and to the rear of the houses lay a large man-made frozen pond the size and shape of a basketball court only rounded at the corners. Beyond the pier lay a thicket of woods and briar through which could be seen the lights of other houses.

I waddled from the corner of the garage to the man-door at the center of the garage and I peaked into the window. There was a large late model navy-blue pickup truck backed inside so that the bed of the vehicle faced me. I waddled further along the rear of the house until I reached the window to the kitchen. Inside a dim light was cast across the vast grey granite countertops over and above several strings of maple cupboards.

I moved, my back sore at the base, a little more boldly and erectly, as I worked my way to the source of the flickering light, a large-screen television playing a basketball game which rested in the corner of the great- room with a dark plush carpet and white walls with a large stone fireplace as its centerpiece beneath a high vaulted ceiling. It appeared, though my view was obscured, that someone’s foot was sticking out from the end of the sofa. I drew a deep breath and then I stood up and tried to get a better glimpse of the sofa. The top of an adult head laid resting, eyes closed, atop a tier of pillows. Her husband Charlie, I supposed.

I squatted again and I moved toward a window which turned out to belong to one of the children’s bedrooms. A child was sleeping, or so it appeared, with its arm wrapped around a stuffed bear. My heart sank at the thought of the child being motherless. Amber may have been a royal cunt to me but she had been a doting mother to her children. I moved to the next window where the room was too poorly lit to see inside and on to the end of the house where through a set of sliding-glass doors lay the master suite which was lit only by a closet light. I could see a king-size brass bed and a large dresser and bureau painted white and a vaulted ceiling with a large ceiling fan positioned directly over the bed

I pressed on the handle of the sliding- glass door and to my relief and surprise it opened easily. I took off my shoes and I slipped inside. The room was warm compared to the chill air outside. I crawled up against the foot of the bed and listened for the sound of footsteps or movement but there was none. I crawled to the bureau which sat next to the entry door and then moved to the door and peered into the empty hallway before slowly closing the door and locking it from within.

Outside I slipped back into my loosely laced tennis-shoes and I scurried back to the car. I opened the rear passenger door and

Amber’s head slid down until it hung over the seat. I pulled her to me and hoisted her onto my shoulder and I walked slightly slumped through the rear yard.

I stopped dead in my tracks, sliding and almost falling, as I thought I heard Amber whimper, and I was about to drop her and run when I realized that it was the wind whistling in my ears again. I took a deep breath and then I trudged forward to the end of the house and slipped out of my shoes and into Amber’s bedchamber.