Donna nodded.
“Okay.” The kid gave her a smile that landed midway between reassurance and condescension. He slid his laptop into his bag. “I want to say, though, that even if you decide not to let us use your story, I hope you’ll be happy knowing there’s at least one person who doesn’t see you as a killer. I know the truth. You’re just a nice—”
“Old lady.”
The kid’s face flushed. “I was going to say—”
“It’s fine. We’re dealing in truths here, aren’t we?”
“Yes, we are.” The kid rose and shrugged the strap of his bag over his shoulder. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Hold on,” Donna said, and the kid stopped, a look of hopeful expectation spreading across his face. “I know you don’t understand, but there’s one more thing I should show you. Maybe then you will.”
The kid hesitated but sat back down.
Donna crossed the kitchen and made her way to the cabinets, tugging open the drawer where she’d left Sally. She lifted the pistol from the drawer and turned it on the kid. For a moment he looked intrigued, but then his eyes popped open wide. All color drained from his face.
“What—” he began, jumping up and knocking his chair over.
Donna shot twice, catching him first in the stomach, then the shoulder. He fell back on the floor with a thud, then started kicking his heels against the linoleum, trying to push back, away from her.
Donna went to him. Looked him straight in the eye. “Truth is shit. The story’s all that matters. The story Johnny gave me was all I ever had. He didn’t steal my life. You, you little son of a bitch, you’re the one trying to do that.” She aimed at his head and pulled the trigger, then laid the gun on the table.
The fly landed on the kid’s parted lips.
Donna stood there for what seemed a very long time listening to the whir of the overhead fan, watching the fly crawl over the kid’s face. Then she began to move, her own body on automatic, her slippers making squishy, sticky sounds as she traipsed through the kid’s blood to reach the phone. She punched in three numbers.
“I need to report a murder. Yes, I’m safe. I’m the killer.”
The Ankle of Anza
by Eduardo Santiago
Anza
It took awhile for the concerned neighbors to settle down. After the scraping of metal chairs on the worn linoleum, and the greetings of neighbors who rarely saw each other, an expectant silence swept the room. This was Anza, a small community as far as population, but huge in terms of land. Most of it was worthless mountaintop — high desert they called it. Sand and scrub, and too much damn gravity.
But those of us who live here wouldn’t trade it for anything. It’s peaceful and quiet, save the occasional meth lab explosion. And God-fearing country for sure. I turned to face them, each of their dirt-worn faces. There’s a look to us here, beady eyes from squinting against sand and wind, white, weathered skin, thinning hair, even the women, whose long gray strands clogged sinks all over Anza Valley.
The last time they gathered, Jimbo Lure’s cousin had come to propose solar farms. There was an expectation of wealth, as if everyone had an oil well in the backyard just ripe for the picking. But the more the proposal got into crystalline vs. thin film vs. photovoltaic, and words like extrapolation, the audience began to glaze over. Even if they all pooled their money and their land together, as Gordon Lure suggested, he was talking a million-dollar investment before profits. No one here was worth a thousand, let alone a million. No one here was willing to risk the rewards. Coming up on five years ago, that was. There are solar farms here now, but none of the people present were making the money. No one knew those who were profiting, silent partners and all that. But these people whose eyes were on me now, I knew them chapter and verse.
“I want to give you people a heads-up,” I said to them. I’m not used to public speaking, in fact I don’t speak much at all, but these were all people I know. “We have a cat burglar up in here. There’s no denying it any longer.”
There were many whats and what he says and speak ups. This is what’s called an aging community, too many of us on the sliding slope to eighty. We became hard of hearing from wearing old ears and having no one to listen to anymore save for the TV, which can be turned up or down depending on mood or need.
I repeated myself with a bit more vocal power.
“What’s with the cat shit, Dave? Ain’t she just a plain ole fucking burglar?” asked Don Donner, who had never uttered a sentence without a fuck or a shit in it.
“She has the nasty habit of sneaking into your home when no one’s there, locking up when she leaves,” I said. “Opens up your vehicles, takes a few things, locks it all up when she leaves. She’s meticulous, leaves the place like you left it. You just think you’ve misplaced things, but she took ’em. Will slip into an unlocked door, take your things while you’re asleep. She has taken important things from several people that I know, including but not limited to car titles, the key to your PO Box, birth certificates and death certificates, property documents, phones, tablets, laptops, knives, flashlights, food, stuff like deodorants, prescription glasses, wallets, whatever she can carry. Never breaks nothing, not a window, not a lock She’s stealth.”
“That don’t make her no cat,” Donner said, then cleared his throat. I could practically smell his phlegm swirling down the sagging esophagus.
“Don’t believe me if you don’t want to, but she’s a wily one. She will use your electronics, try to access Google accounts, try to get a reverse mortgage just to mess with you.”
Whenever I’m in the same room with Don Donner I find myself trapped in an argument. I try so hard to avoid him, at least to avoid talking with him, but it’s like he sets a trap and I traipse right into it.
Thankfully, a hand went up that wasn’t Donner’s. It was Jasper Grosch, ninety if he’s a day. Came down with Parkinson’s twenty-plus years ago, he’s shaky as hell but he’s still here. I nodded at him to speak.
“This young lady from these parts?”
“Has no permanent address. Made some friends out behind Circle K, betrayed them, robbed them, upset them. They threw her out. She will break into your garage, sheds, storage buildings. Takes small things, doesn’t drive so it has to be stuff she can carry concealed. I’m sure she’s hoarding a lot of the things. I would love to locate her lair, see about recovering some of the loot.”
Don Donner opened his mouth to speak, but I spoke first and I spoke forcefully.
“She’s a goddamn cat burglar, Don.”
Don Donner’s eye roll was so severe that it would have been kinder if he’d told me to fuck off. “Fucking birth certificates,” he spat out.
“Is there camera footage?” came a small voice in the back. Marci Day, born again and dumb as a box of lint. “Maybe post office, bank.”
“She’s not the type to visit either one of those establishments, Marci,” I answered.
“Probably lives in a box somewhere,” Marci said, her head cast down as if to elicit the pity of the Lord.
“A litter box!” shouted Jimbo Lure.
“Seriously, Jimbo?”
Jimbo’s our one and only barber. Every man goes every couple of months and endures jokes Jimbo makes up all on his own, or so he claims. Example: Hear about the girl who wanted to have sex all the time? She had get-down syndrome. I knew Jimbo from school, class clown, disruptive, lonely. Never changed.