Killing Britney (10 page)

twenty

It
was four-thirty Monday morning, and Karl was already at work. The sun wouldn’t rise for three more hours, and he was alone under the ghostly fluorescents of the Bavarian Brat Haus’s packaging center.

He tuned the radio to his favorite station: 102.7, The Viper—classic rock, pure and simple with more music, less talk, and hourly rock blocks to keep you going all day long. Turning the volume up to the max, he spun the nozzle attached to the wall and wheeled out the hose to spray down the room.

He set the hose’s spray gun attachment on the nozzle to its most powerful stream. The water spewed out in a strong jet and as it hit, it shoved the dust forward. As the sprayed area grew, a border of black grime developed around its contour. The trick was to spray in an ever-increasing circle, gradually pushing the grime toward the drainage hole in the dead center of the room.

He sang along to the radio as he worked.
La-a-ayla—darling, won’t you ease my worried mi-i-i-ind.

Once the spraying down was done, Karl had to prepare the processing tools. He unhinged the funnel of the first grinder and pulled out the rotating blades, testing their sharpness on his finger as he ran the diamond steel sharpener over them. He did the same with the grinder plates. He repeated this whole process over again with the second grinder. Then the third. Then the fourth.

Sometimes, when the music was especially soulful and deep, he crooned. “Wild Horses.” “Open Arms.” “Jukebox Hero.”

And then it was on to the butchering knives. The boring knives. The breaking knives. The cimeter knives. The skinner knives. The seven-inch carbon steel cleavers.

When he heard the opening few chords of Zep’s “Black Dog,” he took a break. He pranced around the room, a cleaver in each hand, pretending he was a kung fu master.

Then he laid the knives out in order on the steel tables, one set for each work area.

The Bavarian Brat Haus was a full-service meat-finishing facility. They didn’t kill the animals, but they took them from carcass to premium cut and prepared a whole line of specialty sausages: kaiser brats, Numberger brats, kackwurst and knackwurst and knockwurst and bockwurst and knoblewurst, Wisconsin red brats and classic Sheboygan-style brats, summer sausage, andouille, and, of course, wieners.

For sanitary reasons, they could only make one type of sausage a day, so they packaged on a rotating schedule. Today was the “whites,” as Karl had learned to call them. Munich weisswurst, veal and pork mixed with mild, slightly sweet seasonings.

He danced into the walk-in freezer to select the cuts that were needed today.

A gutted cow hung from a hook in the middle of the freezer. Along one wall was a row of halved pigs. Along the opposite wall was a large shelving unit on which were stacked various cuts of veal and beef. The prime meat was too valuable to be used in sausages. What he was looking for were the end parts, the throwaways. These were usually slopped together in large steel vats against the back wall. They weren’t there, though, today. That was odd.

As he dragged a canister of bloom gelatin (the binding agent the Brat Haus used for its sausages, which is made up of a mixture of head cheese, souse, and blood tongue) from the freezer, the radio fritzed out.

That was even odder, but he shrugged it off, figuring that there was a short in the cord—it was a cheap old thing, after all.

Once he’d placed gelatin next to each of the grinders, he fidgeted with the radio, trying to get it to work again. The cord was sticky and soft, and by feeling his way down it, he was able to feel the wires running inside the plastic sheathing. Near the plug, there was a short stretch where the wire had been exposed and was taped together with electrician’s tape. He stripped this and twisted the wires, trying to get them to form a complete circuit.

“Ow! Shit!”

He gave himself a doozy of a shock.

Giving up on the radio, he returned to the freezer to get the boxes of hog casing that they would need for the sausages.

There was a loud bang, like someone had just smashed a sledgehammer onto the concrete floor, and then the lights went out.

Karl couldn’t see anything. He knew his way around pretty well, though, so he carried the first box out into the dark packing room and set it on one of the tables.

The knives he’d laid out were scattered around, no longer in the nice order he’d placed them in. The cleaver was missing. He must have knocked into them in the darkness. But he hadn’t heard the cleaver clatter to the floor.

“Hello?” he said, looking around to see if anyone was there.

Silence.

He returned to the freezer for the next box. As he bent to pick it up, something moved behind him.

He spun to see what was there, but he was too late. The cleaver was swinging down toward him—slicing his right arm and knocking him back into the shelving. Frozen veal came falling down onto his head.

Someone stood over him, bundled in a heavy black snowmobile suit, face covered by a hunter orange ski mask.

Struggling to his feet, Karl lunged for his attacker. He wasn’t quick enough. The attacker backed away, slashing the air with the cleaver.

Grabbing the first thing he could get his hands on—a frozen veal shank, as it turned out—Karl began swinging wildly. He landed a blow on his attacker’s head, which sent both of them tumbling to the concrete floor, but in his weakened state Karl lost his grip on his weapon in the process.

As they rolled around, Karl tried to grab the cleaver from his assailant’s hands, but his arm was useless. He was losing a lot of blood. He was getting woozy.

The cleaver flicked through the air. Karl’s only defense was to duck and twirl in hopes of staying out of its way, but with each movement, his head grew heavier, his vision became more blurred. He was losing strength quickly.

It finally caught him just above the shoulder blade, severing his carotid artery.

He howled. He clawed at his wounds with his good, left hand. The blood was thick—it froze as soon as it hit the air—but the warm blood pumping out of the open gash in his neck kept coming.

The door slammed shut.

The freezer was pitch black inside.

Karl was cold.

So cold.

Unbearably cold.

twenty-one

Usually
Britney had nothing to say to Dr. Yeager, the soft-spoken, middle-aged shrink her father forced her to visit. Her weekly appointment was for Monday morning at nine, which meant she had to miss the first two periods of school. The rules were that she could talk if she wanted to, and if she didn’t, she could sit there silently and wait for the hour to tick away.

Her father attended with her—they were in family grief counseling, supposedly to help them deal with her mother’s death—and most weeks, he filled up the time with his own stream of consciousness. Memories of playing I Spy on family road trips; of the time Jan ran the Chicago marathon and the hours he put into helping her train, riding his bicycle behind her, spurring her on with encouraging words and carrying her water and PowerBars; of the various times (and he seemed to remember each and every one) when he had let his anxiety over his work create conflict between the two of them.

Sometimes he touched on the psychiatric troubles his wife experienced late in her life, the paranoia and religious fervor, the insomnia and erratic behavior. At these times, his voice fell nearly to a whisper, and the loudest sound in Dr. Yeager’s bright office was Britney’s anxious sighs of discomfort.

But today, he wasn’t there.

She drove to therapy herself, in a separate car from her father, and usually he arrived a good fifteen minutes before she did. The only thing that stopped her from skipping out was that if she did so, he would take the car away from her. It was one of the stipulations he’d laid down when he bought it for her. Seeing that he hadn’t bothered to come today, she felt resentful, like she’d somehow been tricked.

To punish him, she’d opened up to Dr. Yeager today. She spent the time complaining about her father. By nine-thirty, when he still wasn’t there, she’d begun to repeat herself.

“That’s the thing about him,” she said. “One little thing, even if it’s just a tiny thing, a completely unimportant thing, and it will send him spiraling back into his depression. I mean, so his flaky client stood him up? What does he expect? I mean, Karl? Come on. The guy’s a charity case. And he’s creepy.”

“You’ve got some strong feelings about Karl,” said Dr. Yeager.

Britney shrugged.

Prodding, Dr. Yeager said, “I wonder, do you think maybe you’re jealous of the fact that he’s taking up so much of your father’s time?”

This was exactly the sort of statement that Britney expected from Dr. Yeager. Hearing him talk this way reminded her why she usually kept her mouth shut in therapy.

She folded her arms across her chest and fumed. But she continued sitting there. She knew that the doctor wouldn’t bring anything up, not Ricky, not her mother, nothing, unless she gave him a sense that she’d open up to him. She was going to stay silent until the hour was up, whether to punish the doctor or to punish her father, she wasn’t sure.

It was a beautiful day, warm for this time of year—thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. Sunlight glimmered off everything—the windshields of the cars in the parking lot, the snowbanks piled up on the side of the road. The telephone wires looping along overhead were crusted in a thin layer of ice; they shimmered like bands of silver.

The minutes seemed to drag on.

Britney stared at the walls, which were painted a fluffy blue and decorated with intentionally soothing posters of impressionist paintings: Seurat’s
Sunday in the Park,
Monet’s
Water Lilies.
The bookshelf contained a whole collection of self-help books—she’d stared at these titles many times before.

Dr. Yeager broke the silence. “Have you thought about your mom at all recently? I’d think, given all that’s happened, some of those old wounds might have opened up.”

If she were going to be honest, she would have to admit that it was true, she
had
thought about her mom. The rampant fear she’d been experiencing since Ricky’s death was made worse by her worries that she might just be paranoid, more like her mother than she wanted to believe. But she couldn’t allow Dr. Yeager the satisfaction of hearing her admit he was right.

“No,” she mumbled, clicking her jaw.

The silence was excruciating. She wondered, where was her father? This tardiness was becoming a habit.

Finally the chime of her cell phone bailed her out. It was him.

“Where are you?” she said.

“I’m not going to make it.” His voice was muffled. Britney could barely make out what he was saying.

“Why not?”

The long silence on the other end of the line made Britney think she’d lost him for a moment, but he finally said, “I’m over here at Mr. and Mrs. Brown’s house. Melissa’s here too. I can’t really talk right now, so I’m going to come right out and say it. There’s been an … accident.”

Before he even told her what it was, Britney felt the muscles around her stomach clench, as though it were preparing for a punch in the gut.

She lowered her voice. “Oh my God, what?”

Dr. Yeager was watching her as she spoke. She tipped her head and tried to cradle the phone away from his gaze.

“Karl. He … he was found murdered this morning over at the Brat Haus.”

Britney grimaced. She didn’t want to give a single emotion away to the doctor.

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“So I’m going to be over here most of the morning helping. I’m sorry, Pumpkin. I got the call as I was driving over and I haven’t had a chance to get to you until just now.”

“It’s okay,” she lied. She was shaking.

“Do you want to talk to Melissa for a second? I know she’d appreciate hearing your voice.”

“Uh, okay.” She told herself, Hold it together, hold it together.

Melissa’s tears almost made Britney feel like she was going begin sobbing as well.

“You’re one of the strongest people I know,” Britney said, trying to find the words that might best console Melissa. “You’ll get through this. I promise. If you need me for anything—anything at all—I’ll be here. Okay?”

Melissa murmured, “Thanks,” and quickly said she had to go. She was too upset to talk.

“Don’t forget, okay? You’ve been there for me every time, and if …” Knowing there were no words to take Melissa’s pain away, she said, “I love you, Melissa. I’ll see you soon.”

When she hung up, Britney didn’t know where to look. She knew that Dr. Yeager was staring at her. She didn’t want to return his gaze. She settled on the mobile hanging in the corner above the window—dark-stained wooden blocks cut into odd geometric shapes.

“Is everything okay?” asked the doctor.

Britney couldn’t stop herself. “No, everything’s not okay!” she shouted, finally releasing all the panic and fear that had been building up inside her. “Someone’s out to get me! Do you understand that? What happened to Ricky … And Karl’s dead now … It’s all part of their larger plan!”

He jotted something down in the folder on his desk.

“How does that make you feel?” he said calmly.

“You know, what? Forget it.” She covered her face with her hands and moaned. “You people all just think I’m crazy like my mom!”

twenty-two

Melissa’s
parents had offered to come along to help clean out Karl’s meager belongings, but Melissa had insisted on doing it alone. Now here she was in her dead brother’s apartment. Her relationship with Karl had always been troubled. She thought packing up his stuff, holding each item in her hands, looking at the refuse left of his life one parcel at a time, would help her understand him better.

Mr. Johnson, who was taking care of everything for Melissa’s family, even going so far as to work out the funeral arrangements, had dropped her off in the parking lot behind the complex where Karl had lived. Just seeing the place had made Melissa’s heart throb. It was so chintzy. A two-story yellow-brick development behind the multiplex off the Washington Avenue strip—nondescript in every way. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could live here without being terribly lonely.

“Are you sure you don’t want any help?” Mr. Johnson had said.

“No. It’s okay. I sort of want to do this by myself,” she said.

He had handed her a set of keys.

“You see that truck over there?” he’d said, pointing at a beat-up red Ford sitting all alone in the far corner of the parking lot. “That’s Karl’s. You’ll probably be able to fit all his things in the back.”

Not even knowing what his car looked like made her feel terrible. It was sad. She’d paid so little attention to Karl since his getting out of jail. This was the first time she’d even been to his apartment.

The front room was moderately small. It was nearly completely empty and carpeted in an ugly beige. There were no curtains on the windows, no art on the walls, no bookshelves or stereo or television.

What it contained was this: a fold-up card table; a beach chair; a stack of well-thumbed books by Elmore Leonard and Jim Thompson; a CD/cassette boom box with a broken antenna, missing the door to the cassette player; and a few other sundry things. Nothing of any real value. Paper plates and plastic silverware. Half a mushroom pizza, still in its box on the counter.

She recognized his imprint on the space. The empty tallboys of Miller Genuine Draft stacked in a pyramid in the windowsill. Lying on the floor, the baseball signed by Paul Molitor and Robin Yount that he’d cherished since he was a child.

It was hard to imagine what he did with his time here. The image of him slouched back in the beach chair, dirty jeans hanging low on his hips, his naked shoulders and back scratching against the white and green strips of vinyl, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, staring at the wall, staring and staring and waiting for his brain to tell him it was tired—this was what she imagined the substance of his life had been like since he’d been released.

The room stank of sadness, and to think that this sadness was related to her, it was too much to bear.

There were tears in her eyes now.

She was startled to find a shotgun leaning against the wall behind the bedroom door. She wondered where he got it and what kind of trouble he could have been in. Maybe he hadn’t reformed himself as much as Mr. Johnson claimed he had. For some reason, the gun didn’t scare her so much as make her feel even sadder for her brother.

Other than the gun, the bedroom was nearly empty. A mess of clothes in the corner. A futon, a shoe box stuffed with documents. Rummaging through the box, Melissa found Karl’s birth certificate, his social security card, his release papers.

There were letters in the box as well.

The one on top, decorated with florid drawings of pursed lips and cupid hearts, read:

Dear Karl,

It’s Valentine’s Day and you’re in there and I’m out here. It’s not fair. I wish I could at least come to visit you. I can’t, obviously. It would be too risky. But all day today I’ve been imagining what I’d do if I could. Remember that day when we drove out into the country and found that abandoned farmhouse? Do you remember what we did when we got there? I wish I could do that with you today.

That’s not all I would do, though. If I could, I’d put on that Victoria’s Secret slip you bought me—the black lacy one that barely comes down to my thighs. And I’d wear the silky red thong you like so much, or maybe I wouldn’t. I guess it would depend on how good a boy you were. I’d sashay my hips and dance in front of you, teasing you until you couldn’t stand it. You wouldn’t be allowed to touch me. That would be the rule. Not until I said it was okay …

The letter went on to describe an extremely sensual situation. It was so graphic that Melissa flushed. She felt like she was doing something unethical by intruding like this. She knew she should stop reading, put the letter back in the box, and pack the whole thing up with Karl’s other things, let his prison letters remain secret and his, but she couldn’t.

The script the letter was written in was vaguely familiar. She’d seen it before, but she couldn’t place it.

It was unsigned.

There were many more letters like this in the box. All of them sexy. None of them signed.

She racked her brain, trying to place where she’d seen this handwriting before, but she couldn’t remember.

As she continued digging to the bottom of the box, she dreaded what she might find there.

In a sudden rush of memory, she knew where she’d seen the handwriting on the letters before. At Britney’s house. Hundreds of times, on little notes left on the kitchen table reminding the girls that there were cookies in the rabbit jar or lemonade in the fridge, on permission slips for school trips, on all the various scraps of paper that parents leave trailing behind their children.

It was Jan Johnson’s handwriting. Britney’s mother. But she’d died before Karl was sent to prison.

Then she felt something small clinging to the bottom of the shoe box.

A Polaroid.

She was afraid to look at it.