“Hi, y’all.” Letty’s voice rang out cheerfully behind us, like this awful evening was just another day in the life.
She plopped beside me on the couch, the leather cushion offering up a helpless sigh. The yellow smiley faces on her flannel pajamas beamed at me. She wore a matching blue facial mask that cracked a little, like a series of mini-earthquakes, every time her mouth moved. She’d stuck a SpongeBob Band-Aid on the left side of her forehead and tucked her hair into a clear pink plastic shower cap.
“Did I hear y’all talking about that little package I left on Emily’s doorstep a while back? By the way, I’m going to want that outfit back tomorrow before noon. I think I’m close to fitting back into it.”
She patted the shower cap on her head distractedly.
“What are y’all staring at? I’m giving myself one of those Queen Helene Cholesterol Hot Oil Treatments from Walgreens. It’s an old pageant-girl trick. My hair’s under a lot of stress.”
29
Letty had delivered the rape report to my doorstep. Letty. The revelation opened a yawning space in my brain. My ears hummed and the baby somersaulted while Letty’s mouth moved and her blue face cracked in front of me like dry land in a drought. I wondered if it was going to explode and send bits of plaster into my eyes.
Letty delivered the package, just that one, at least that’s what she said when I asked her, in a very faraway voice, about cigars and phone hang-ups. And what kind of person would voluntarily admit the one crazy thing and not the others?
She shrugged it off in the way only Letty could.
“I don’t know what phone hang-ups you’re talking about,” she said. “It’s rude to suggest it. And I don’t smoke. Pageant girls don’t. It makes your lips look like a horse’s butt-hole. I was just doing my job for Harry as head of the background search committee for the new chief of police. It was a lot of work. Ten applicants.
Harry asked me to check out wives, kids, relatives, friends. Turns out, I had a real knack for it.”
Gretchen and I watched, speechless, as Letty blathered on, oblivious to the effect on her audience. I wondered if she’d been born with a slice of her soul missing and if she stored bloody knives with her Little Debbie cakes.
“I checked out all your college records.” She studiously examined a chipped hot-pink nail. “You went to a bunch. I figured you for some kind of a cheater who had to move around. But your transcripts didn’t bear that out. Sweetie, you don’t need to look so shocked about all this. A little money opens lots of doors, always has, always will, even at those Ivy League, stick-up-their-butt schools. I lucked into some student temp at Windsor University’s police department, who was more than happy to help me. Called me back three days later. I guess it took some digging in the basement files to find your name. We agreed that I’d send her a hundred-dollar Urban Outfitters gift card and she’d mail me a copy.”
My secrets in exchange for a pair of skinny jeans.
Dry crumbs from Letty’s face fell like blue dust onto the couch. “Those scholarship kids are always quick to take a dime. Did you just make up the rape? That’s sure what it sounded like.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“Why would you do this, Letty?” Gretchen asked in a strained voice.
“Why the hell do you think? So Harry would have leverage with the new chief if he ever needed it. I was going to hold on to it in case it was ever useful. Small-town politics is a bitch. But then I got pissed when Emily arrived, all snotty and New Yorky, strutting around like a pregnant Demi, at least from the waist down. Not to be downright mean or anything, Emily, but your boobs wouldn’t pass pageant muster. Anyway, it was like we weren’t good enough for you. I thought it would be worth it to take you down a peg. She said I shouldn’t do it, but Caroline wasn’t always right about everything. Look what happened to her. Planted like a crocus bulb in her own backyard.”
“Caroline knew about the report?” I stammered.
“Yep. I showed her the day it arrived because she liked to keep track of things herself. She said it wasn’t important. That we should feel sorry for you. I believe her exact words were, Men are filthy pigs.” Letty sat back on her own little haunches.
“I have to go,” I said.
Juanita appeared with a plastic garbage bag stuffed with my wet clothes. She held out my Manolo Blahniks, which didn’t appear all that worse for taking a dip in Letty’s saltwater pool.
“Keep them,” I said.
“Are you OK?” Gretchen walked beside me to the door, any tension between us erased by Letty’s bizarre confession. She draped her arm around my shoulders, but I could barely feel it.
“I have to go,” I repeated.
Jesse’s headlights chased me all the way home.
When I arrived at the house, Mike was preoccupied in a way I was all too familiar with when it came to his big, ugly cases. Distracted, when I told him that Letty admitted delivering the rape report to our door.
“That’s good,” he said absently, as if it was something to be crossed off a list. He barely glanced up at my disheveled appearance.
A copy of Caroline’s autopsy report was spread out to all four corners of the kitchen table. I had to turn away from the pictures. Gray, red, surreal. Mike made no effort to hide them. He pressed his palms on either side of his head like a vise. “No forensic evidence. No hairs. No blood. No semen. She was drugged with Vicodin, half a bottle of Tylenol PM, and high-proof whiskey. Then he cut her. For four to five days, he toyed with her. There were plenty of wounds before he struck her heart. He stripped her naked and washed her in something that left traces of citric acid and non-fat dry milk. Then he stored her somewhere for a week.”
He was talking more to himself than to me, so I just walked away. He was still at it, making another batch of coffee, when my head hit the pillow. I wondered whether we were finally falling apart. Intellectually, I knew that solving this case was the best way he could love me. But right now, all I wanted were his arms around my baby.
I slept hard and woke up about seven the next morning to an unexpectedly cool, lazy breeze drifting through the screen. The wind rustled the leaves of the forty-year-old live oak outside the window, encouraging me to sink deeper under the birds. I knew that Jesse was on the job out front, so I let nature lull me in and out of a fitful consciousness until mid-morning.
I restlessly piddled around after that. People wonder why women stalked by boyfriends or husbands or strange creeps don’t run. It’s because there is nowhere to run. There’s not enough money to run. Electronic trails everywhere. The only escape is death. His or yours.
Come and get us, jerk, said the little voice in my head, bravely. We’re ready.
This time, I listened.
I slipped my gun out from under a pile of silk panties in my underwear drawer, where I had carelessly hidden it from Mike. I set it on the dresser while I unpacked a small box of jewelry and hooked earrings into place on a little plastic tree. I placed it on the kitchen counter while I washed Mike’s cereal bowl and juice glass. I rested it on top of the dryer while I threw Letty’s tracksuit into the washer. I eventually landed on the stool in front of the computer. I stuck the gun into one of the cubbyholes of Mrs. Drury’s desk and called up my email.
Brook Everheart Marcum added you as a friend on Facebook…
Did it matter anymore? Mike would say no, that I should just leave it alone.
I clicked the link. Brook had 796 friends. Brook Everheart Marcum, bless her heart, was a friend to all.
Brook networked in Miami and Chicago. She was a stay-at-home mom, married, with two children. Her profile picture displayed her on a yacht with a broad grin and healthy cleavage. Arms outstretched, Titanic-style.