Fear Itself (22 page)

I stripped the bed of its quilt and pillows and sheets, tossing them onto the floor, and then I unrolled Amber’s stiff torso from the confines of the new blue blanket. She was still wrapped in the as yet damp bloody bed-sheet. I picked her up in my arms and I could feel her cold familiar and statue-like naked body through the thin cotton fabric. I laid her onto the bed so that her head faced the headboard and I unwrapped her from the bloody sheet. Amber was blue and ensanguined but her body was still beautiful. Her abdomen, the lines of her muscles highlighted by the creases of dried blood, was muscled and firm and narrow. Her breasts were flaccid but round and full. Her face, though frozen in a pained expression, was perfectly shaped in a soft rounded V with a recessed chin like you often find with models, and high cheekbones and those Beautiful blue eyes. Her hair, saturated in blood, appeared to be a mix of strawberry blond and red.

I stretched the fabric of the sheet to the corners of the mattress and wrapped them around the mattress as though I were making the bed. Then I covered Amber with the blue blanket that I had wrapped her in and then with the quilt that was previously on the bed and then I tossed the pillows onto the empty side of the bed stacked as though someone were going to sit up and watch television. I knew even as I laid Amber out on the mattress in specific fashion that the lengths to which I was going were excessive; but I wanted her to look as natural as a Beautiful dead girl could look. It was bad enough that she would be found murdered but I wanted her to at least be presentable. I think I did it more for her than for her family as a last gesture; the least I could do I supposed, and as long as I was taking such a great risk what was the difference. It would be obvious to any detective that she had been transplanted from the site of her murder. If nothing else it would befuddle them.

I crept to the bedroom door and placed my ear up against it and listened for life before unlocking it then I slipped out through the sliding glass doors and into my shoes and I ran to Amber’s car. Using the spray bottle of cleaner I dampened a paper towel and I wiped down every surface I thought I might have touched prior to putting on the rubber gloves, then I popped open the trunk. I pulled my bicycle out and closed the boot and I peddled down the gravel driveway toward the road. I knew that what I had done in leaving Amber’s dead body in her bed was not the right thing, but the right thing was not a viable option for me. And it was far better than dumping her body into a shallow grave; or in the drainage ditch as I had contemplated while I stood at the side of the road scared out of my wits, or into a lake to decompose and rot beyond recognition. At least by leaving her body in her bed for her husband to find I was giving them some immediate finality to Amber’s family and a body to bury that still resembled the woman that they loved. That Amber had turned into a heartless bitch to me and to Melanie was undisputable; but she had redeemed herself to some degree with the letter that she intended to leave for me granting me my freedom, and besides, Amber’s family did not deserve to suffer for her sins. And what I had had with Amber had not been all bad. The Amber that I had come to know through many a telephone conversation was human and likable. I would not have turned to her in crisis had that not been the case. And she had saved my bacon and put her self in harms way by aiding and abetting the fugitive that was me.

Their still remained before me a daunting task. I knew before I left that I would be in for a nightmare of a journey to get back home. It was cold, and more importantly it was dark, and I needed to cover over forty miles without drawing attention to myself to get home and be ready for work in the morning, and around every corner lurked a demon ready to make me leap from my own skin.

When I reached the end of the driveway I started to peddle along the two lane highway heading west, the direction from which I had come, facing what little oncoming traffic there was. The road was completely unlit and I must admit that my fear caused me to pump the peddles of my bicycle with greater dispensation than I would have otherwise been able. I knew, though, that I could not possibly ride my bicycle all the way home; that my body was not that well conditioned and I also knew that I couldn’t hitch a ride from a
local
resident so close to Amber’s house. I needed to be miles away before I stuck out my thumb in beggars’ fashion.

I hadn’t ridden a bicycle in years, and I was grateful for the hard work with Tony that put my muscles in good enough shape to force myself forward, but my lungs were not so hearty as my legs and arms and I huffed and puffed as I pushed my bike up an incline, the devil in the dark my driving inspiration. Strange as it seemed, as long as my bike was moving forward at a decent rate of speed my anxiety was reduced to a fairly low level; but on the inclines as I peddled with every ounce of will, my speed would slow to an intolerable level and the adrenaline would begin to flow through my veins and propel me forward.

After approximately seven exhausting miles of peddling and what seemed like hours I turned south onto a road that ran parallel to the main highway, interstate one-thirty-five into Hutchinson. The flow of traffic on the highway was heavy but as I peddled along the marginal only a few cars passed me. After a few miles I ditched my bicycle in the dumpster of a machine shop and I climbed, my legs wobbly and unsteady from labor, a steep embankment up to the freeway just past a toll booth where traffic was forced to stop and pay, and there I sought out a semi with California license plates and I was given a ride by a husky hairy bearded man in a red flannel jacket who was hauling frozen dog food from a plant in Pittsburgh. I did my best to shield my face though the cab was dark and I doubt that the driver could have gotten a good look at me anyway. Besides, he would be long gone before any investigation would begin.

He gave me a ride all the way to Wichita where he dropped me off on the berm of the freeway within a half dozen blocks of my house. I hopped the chain-link fence that divided the highway from the houses and I walked the remaining distance to my house lazily; my body having been exhausted of all my strength from peddling my bike. When I got home Melanie was asleep on the couch with Sarah snuggled next to her. It was a scene that I had rarely witnessed with Catherine and it made me hopeful that we could perhaps become a family.

I sauntered into my bedroom and looked at the bed. I couldn’t sleep on the mattress that held such horrid memories. I couldn’t let Melanie sleep on such a bed either.

I would have to dispose of the mattress very soon. I would have to burn it to destroy the evidence. I would have to clean the rooms of the house with diligence to be sure that no trace of Amber was left. The garbage bag full of

Amber’s belongings along with her bag of toys was stuffed in the closet. They too would have to be disposed of. But my priority was to get everyone out of my house and into Melanie’s house. It was too late for
that
then so I grabbed a blanket from the linen closet and a pillow from the sofa and I crashed on Sarah’s bed amidst her big fluffy stuffed brown teddy bear and an array of other lifeless creatures.

13

A blunder of such monumental proportion should not have caused me to laugh but the morbid humor of my misstep was more than I could contain. On the drive home from work the next evening, as was my habit, I listened to a classical music station because it helped me to relax. At the six o’clock hour the music was interrupted by the news and after hearing about the Ohio democratic presidential debate between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and other national news the commentator read the local stories. An accident on Interstate one-seventy-six was causing a delay for south-bound traffic into Wichita; a fire on thirty-second street a week earlier was determined by the fire marshal to have been deliberately set; and a missing woman, Amber Havisham, was found naked and dead in the bed of her next-door neighbor.

The proprietor apparently slipped into bed with the corpse thinking that it was his wife (whom he’d been at odds with and had recently made a habit of sleeping in the guest bedroom) beneath the covers. The man, Christopher Kohler, thought that his wife had thawed from her disagreeable state and he slept with the corpse at his side until morning at which time he decided to attempt to rekindle their love. It was then that he discovered the body.

I laughed out loud at the poor sod I had mistakenly set up for the crudest of unintended practical jokes. I pictured in my mind his surprised expression. I felt awful and tickled at the same time. Keep in mind I’d been there twice before
myself
and I must tell you that waking up with a corpse in your bed is about the freakiest thing in the world. I wondered how long it would take for poor mister Kohler to recover from that shock. I supposed that there were two mattresses that would never again be slept upon. If I had gone to the correct house I would probably have been caught.

So tickled was I that when I arrived home to a somber Melanie, who had by then heard the news of Amber’s death and supposed, as did the police, that Amber had been killed by the wife of the cheating Mr. Kohler, that I couldn’t help but to smile and occasionally chuckle to myself despite my most concerted efforts at feigning an acceptable level of grief over Amber’s death. Melanie, regardless of her jealousy and anger, had had a long and close relationship with Amber and I could tell that she was a bit shaken by her death. And I knew that the timing would be awkward but I suggested it anyway,

“Melanie honey, how would you feel about all of us moving back into your house?”

“Why not?” she said, “We’re practically living together anyway.” My suggestion seemed to lift her spirits as she forced a smile.

“How would you feel if we started tonight? I really don’t want to sleep with you on the same mattress where Amber and I slept. There’s something just wrong about that now that all of that is behind us.”

She smiled at my chivalrous notion. “If that’s what you want it’s fine with me but we might as well eat here. Dinners ready and the table is set.”

After dinner Sarah and I packed enough things to last us a few days and over the course of the next few days I went about slowly moving what few possessions we had accumulated to Melanie’s house. I borrowed Tony’s van on the pretense of moving my furnishings and I instead disposed of the bloodied mattress and box-spring in a vacant lot several miles closer to town by saturating them with gasoline and setting them afire. I tossed the bag with Amber’s clothes and her bag of sex-toys onto the pyre and I left before any notice was taken of the blaze.

I rose early each morning and spent my time cleaning the apartment with the strongest cleaners I could find using rubber gloves and paper towels. By the time I was finished the house and its furnishing had neither a trace of a fingerprint nor a spec of Amber’s blood. I removed all evidence that we or any other living creature had ever trespassed there.

The detectives interviewed Melanie down at the police station. She, of course, denied having seen Amber during the past several months but she did admit to talking to her as would have been found out by the telephone calls. The detective had mistakenly honed in on Amber’s poor husband, Charlie, much as they had done to me when Catherine died. But of course they could find no evidence of where she had been killed. I was actually proud of what an excellent job I had done, however accidentally, at disguising my trail. And good fortune also played a role as it rained heavily the night that I had dropped Amber’s body off and there were no identifiable footprints left by the culprit.

14

Risky as it was, Melanie and I decided to attend Amber’s funeral mass. Sarah stayed home. It was painful and sad to see Amber’s children grieving. She had a boy, Steven, about Sarah’s age and I could tell as he walked behind the casket holding his father’s hand that he was doing his best to be courageous in his little black suit and tie and his neatly combed brown hair but the tears that trickled from the corners of his eyes unmasked his efforts. Susie, Amber’s daughter, was only four and her cheeks were red and smudged and inflamed from her ceaseless effort to wipe away her tears as she buried her head in her father’s chest while she sat upon his free arm. Susie looked adorable and pitiful at once in her body-length black adult style dress with a little white bow below the collar. Her blonde hair was pulled up and tied with a black ribbon.

But it was Amber’s husband Charlie who extracted the most sympathy from me; perhaps because I could empathize so closely with his plight. I felt guilty for having placed him in the position of defending himself from a crime that I knew that he did not commit and I empathized with him for the loss of his wife and the realization that he would have to raise his children without her help. I had been diligently keeping up with the evolution of the case both on television and through the newspaper and the morning periodical had made mention of the leads which pointed to Charlie as Amber’s killer but he had not yet been indicted.

I was once a proponent of the death penalty but for obvious reasons I had changed my position over the course of the past year.

We stood between the vast pews of people, a warbling mass of dark bonnets and bobbing heads, as the priest, dressed in his solemn robe of white, praised Amber’s devotion to her children and her fidelity to Charlie. I smiled at the mention of the word
fidelity
in the same sentence as Amber’s name but I quickly donned a deliberately sullen expression when Melanie squeezed my hand and I looked down at her and saw that she was tearing up and sniffling. I was amazed at how Melanie had rationalized her perspective on her relationship with Amber after all of the grief that Amber had caused her over the previous months but I suppose that funerals tend to evoke the fonder memories and thus it enabled Melanie to forgive Amber’s transgressions.

At home with Melanie later that night as we lay in bed side-by-side staring at the spinning blades of the ceiling fan above us, our bodies barely touching, Melanie asked me a startling question.

“Did you kill Amber?”

I heard my throat emit a dry wheezing croak. “No.” I said emphatically (though my voice cracked when I spoke) as I turned and explored her eyes, “How could you ask such a thing?”

Guilt filled her eyes as they welled up like ponds, “I just needed to hear you say it.”

She sniffled.

“Where did that come from?” I lifted up and rested my weight on my elbow.

She drew a deep breath, “I’m sorry for asking.” She turned toward me and leaned her forehead into my chest.

“Okay, but what put that thought into your head?”

“Well,” She drew a long broken breath, “I read that the police said that Amber wasn’t killed in her neighbor’s bed,” She sighed again, and looked up at me “and they said that the semen they found in her didn’t match
his
or her
husbands DNA, and your wife was murdered…and I just thought….”

“I know, but I told you I didn’t sleep with Amber that night.” I tried to hold her gaze so that she would believe my lie.

“But you went out the next night and the newspaper said that her car got dropped off that night…and I don’t know…I just needed to hear you say that you didn’t do it.” She started to sob.

I held her chin in my hand and I stared into her eyes so that she would know that I was being truthful. “I didn’t kill Amber.”

Melanie hugged me, and afterwards we just laid in bed, her head resting on my shoulder and my arm wrapped around her body, listening to each other breath as our thoughts wandered, her I supposed to her memories of happier times with Amber and mine to that eventful night and all that took place. I wondered if I had left any clues behind that could lead them to me. The papers made mentioned that Amber may have had an affair but the authorities couldn’t determine who her lover might have been. Given the history of my relationship and my unknown whereabouts I figured that my name had to at least have been mentioned.

My mind wandered to the locked glove compartment of my car in which sat, wrapped in a brown paper bag sandwiched between a stack of receipts and a leather binder, Amber’s cell phone. I had decided to keep it as a sort of memento though I knew that it was a risky thing to do; but her cell phone reminded me of the good times that we had shared during that year when we petted long distance and Amber was both loving and playful. I wanted to remember her that way before I came to know her face and the familiar touch of her soft tanned flesh and the cold-hearted alien that sometimes lived within that disguise. Amber had childishly adorned her flip-phone with little stickers of tiny red hearts around the outside edge of the face and it made me think about her innocent side; the side that had been so Beautiful before her father had molested her innocence away from her and before she had turned into a sexual deviant herself as so often happens to the victims of pedophiles. During our intimate conversations I often sensed that unsullied side of her personality when we played on the phone. It made her devious behavior seem more erotic, as though I were spoiling her wholesome purity; her virginity. It was as if I were a pedophile myself and I was enticing the child in her, as with a stick of licorice or a sweet-tart, to part her fleshy legs and offer up to me her tender prize.

In any event I couldn’t bring myself to part with Amber’s phone so one day when Melanie was out shopping at the grocery store I took a thin scrap of plywood from her garage and I crafted a false shelf underneath of my bottom bureau drawer (which could only be detected if the drawer were completely removed) and I hid the cell phone there, still wrapped in the brown paper bag. I knew that if

Melanie found out that I had Amber’s cell phone that she would think that I had killed her. I knew that if she found it she would not be able to trust me so I hid it where she would never find it.

During the wet spring days that followed Amber’s funeral, through incessant days of constant coolness and steady showers of unrelenting rain that seemed as though they would never end, Melanie and I settled into a routine of sorts. She rose with me early each morning and made my coffee and breakfast while I showered and dressed for work. After I had left she would summon Sarah (I know this because Sarah told me so) into our bed and she would cuddle her as if she were her mother until Sarah crept from her groggy state of slumber to a blissful wakefulness. Then the two of them would bathe in sweet smelling powders and dry and dress while playfully giggling and teasing one another, as though they were sisters. Melanie spent her days educating and entertaining Sarah; playing games and reading and teaching her how to cook. At night I would come home exhausted from my grueling day of work and we would sit down together as a family and eat whatever delicious concoctions the two of them had created. Afterwards we would watch television together or we would play soft jazz music and read by a warm fire while we nestled on the sofa. I would inevitably fall asleep sandwiched between Melanie and Sarah, and Melanie would wake me when she was ready for bed and we would all retire for the evening.

After nightfall during the week, in the bedroom, the door always bolted, Melanie would often make love to me while I lay upon the bed too tired to take the lead. She was passionate and tender and incredibly thoughtful and I just laid back and effortlessly enjoyed the dreamlike ecstasy that she so generously gifted to me through the haze of endorphins that leaked into my tired head and carried me off to sleep with a feeling of joy and contentment. I often woke up with her soft lithe body resting on my chest and me still buried inside of her and she would sense my arousal and entreat me again to engage her passively in the midst of my delirious state; and
that
lovemaking was the most pleasurable of all as it mixed with the fantasy of my dreams and gently returned me to my sleepy state upon conclusion.

On Saturday and Sunday mornings I would sometimes try to repay Melanie’s benevolence by gently waking her up in a mutually delightful way as she quivered to wakefulness (although, in truth, she would often clump me on the head and complain that she had to pee!) Once I even tested Amber’s sentiment that Melanie could endure endless hours of oral provocation and Melanie came for me six times before my jaw grew so tired that it tingled from the loss of sensation. Her seemingly boundless bliss gave me greater pleasure than the intimate passion that she gave me in reciprocation. As lovers in love we were as made for one another as Catherine and I had been.

On the weekends we wouldn’t roll out of bed until Sarah came knocking and then I would quickly slip into my pajamas and Sarah would squeeze between us and we were as the planets to the sun; in harmony with our universe. On the weekends, too, as the weather broke and summer approached, we took long drives into the country for picnics or we would drive to county fairs or to carnivals. Once we even purchased some fishing rods and reels from a flee market and we went fishing on a small rowboat on a private lake just over the Texas boarder. None of us had ever fished before and the result was as entertaining as it was disastrous. When Sarah caught the first fish I helped her to reel it in and when I pulled the large white fish into the boat it flopped around while Sarah and Melanie screamed and rocked the boat so much that I fell into the lake.

Sometimes we would take little road- trips to video stores and the book stores and we would hunt for old movies or entertaining fiction novels. We would eat in homey little family style diners that catered to the miniscule budget that we were bound to. We shopped at the goodwill store for clothing to replenish

Sarah’s abandoned wardrobe and to alter and enhance Melanie’s attire and as they shopped and tried on dresses and shoes they acted as though they were in Macy’s instead of second hand stores. Sarah and Melanie were like a mother to a daughter and why not; Melanie was about as blood related to Sarah as I was. But we were both as much in love with our little sociopath as we were with each other.

I cannot recall a more contented time in my life. All of the misery that had come crashing into our lives over the previous year, like a flaming meteor shower to the supple body of the earth, seemed a distant memory as the dust settled around us instead of on top of us. I had all but pushed out of my mind the fact that I was a fugitive. We were, all of us, happy.

* * *

It was nearing the end of a wonderful summer and Sarah and I had lived in Kansas for almost two years. Tony and I had finished installing a new breaker panel and electrical service in a small vacant sand-stone colonial home in the small down-town area of Derby that consisted of no more than six city blocks. Tony was beginning to trust me with the more complicated tasks and I had rewired the entire electrical panel, carefully bending the red, black and white wires into neat curves and cutting and skinning the tips of the wires before sliding the bare copper into the ground bus or the compression fittings on the breakers, without his supervision while he paced around on the floor above me, his work-boots clumping like a Holstein on a barn-deck, making calls to his clients from his cell phone.

The job that Tony had scheduled for that particular Friday fell short of the eight hours it was intended to consume so I whistled happily as I drove home with the top down on the mustang from our job in the little town of Derby with the anticipation of spending some extra time at home with Sarah and Melanie. The afternoon was hot and sunny and I could see the shimmy of heat vapor rise from the blacktop in front of me as I drove down the two lane highway and inhaled the scent of freshly cut grass mixed with wildflower pollen while the crickets sang like a monotone chorus. I passed an endless stream of small frame and brick veneer ranch and bungalow houses to my right and a flowing river of colorful purple Coneflower, Blue Flax and Black-eyed-Susan on my left.

As I walked through the door of our house I could tell by Melanie’s worried expression that something was wrong and I could feel the muscles in my face melt like ice into a lax puddle of disquietude. I could discern by her inflamed pink cheeks and the splayed red tributaries coursing across the whites of her eyes that she had been crying. I could see by her wide stare that I had startled her. I wondered immediately if the police had paid a visit while I was away; if they had come for me. I put down my lunchbox and I wasn’t particularly soiled so I took a step toward Melanie to comfort her, but she backed away and almost toppled over a kitchen chair before regaining her balance.

“What’s the matter? What happened?” Her eyes grew wider still.

“What is this?” Melanie held out a trembling hand…with Amber’s cell phone in her palm, the little heart stickers pasted around the face.

“Where…?” I felt like a little boy who had been caught with his pants down. I could feel my face flush red with embarrassment.

“Sarah and I… decided to do some cleaning.” Her eyebrows pinched in above her nose as she sobbed the word
cleaning
. “You said you didn’t kill her!” She yelled through a torrent of tears.

“I didn’t…I didn’t kill her. You have to believe me.” I opened my palms and spread my arms.

“Then what are you doing with her cell phone? Tell me.” She wailed, “How did you get her cell phone? She wouldn’t have left without it! And if she had lost it she would have called for it. But of course she couldn’t call because you killed her!” Melanie was hysterical, like a distraught child. Her facial expressions wavered as the muscles in her face contorted violently from anger to confusion to terror.

I took another step toward her. I wanted to assuage her fear. I wanted to convince her of my innocence; but she backed away again. “Melanie…it’s me…we love each other. Do you actually think that I would hurt you? You’re looking at me as if I were some kind of monster. I love you. I could never hurt you. I couldn’t hurt anyone!”