The Monster Within (18 page)

Slowly, I sneak up to the closet door, looking back down the long hallway to where Mommy’s door is still open from when I scared her real good. She’s still talking on the phone to that guy and I can see her shadow. She’s too busy to notice me. This is the perfect time to get some searching done. I know that good boys don’t search for their presents, but I want to know. I’m tired of waiting and I’ve been waiting for so long. The last time I had a present was at Christmas.

Quietly I reach up and twist the door handle and pull open the closet door, peering into the darkness. Our jackets, raincoats, big, puffy coats, and our snow boots are all inside. It’s too dark to see anything, so I try pushing the coats apart and shoving the boots aside to get a better look. That’s when I finally see them. The first thing I see are the action figures that I’ve been wanting since we went to the store. She got me three of them. There’s two good guys and one bad guy. Behind that is the biggest Nerf gun that I’ve ever seen. It’s even bigger than the one David has. I hope they bring their Nerf guns tomorrow and I can shoot them with mine. Behind that is a few more action figures and a movie. This is the best birthday I’ve ever had.

“Caleb, what are you doing?” Mommy shouts at the top of her lungs. She’s very angry and I jump at the sound of her voice. I look over my shoulder at her and I’m scared that she’s going to smack me. I’m scared that she’s going to give me spankings like she did last time I was bad. I look at her and she’s standing right next to me. How did she sneak up on me like that? Sometimes I think Mommy has magical powers. I don’t know how she did that, but here she is and she’s very mad looking. “Caleb, I told you to be on your best behavior. What is wrong with you? You know you’re not supposed to be looking for these. Why can’t you just be a good boy? Go to your room, Caleb. I’m very mad at you right now!”

I run past her as she smacks me on the butt. It hurts. It stings and I can feel tears boiling in my eyes as I begin to cry, running up the stairs. I pass the bathroom and the play room before I go into my room and dive onto my bed, burying my face in the pillow and crying. I feel so bad. I shouldn’t have done that. Why did I do that to Mommy? I’ve ruined my birthday now. She’s not going to let me have one. She’ll probably take all the toys back and I’ll never get to play with them.

She should take the toys back. I don’t deserve them. I’ve been so bad. I’m not the boy that Mommy deserves. She’s so pretty and smart and funny and I just keep messing up and making her mad at me. Maybe that’s why Daddy left? Maybe I was so bad that Daddy got tired of me and didn’t want me around. Maybe he went and found a new Mommy and a new Caleb, one that doesn’t sneak around and do bad things all the time. I don’t want them to hate me. I don’t want them to be mad at me. I don’t want Mommy to cancel my birthday. I should punish myself. She didn’t give me a punishment, but I should show her that I’m a big boy and that I can punish myself so she won’t return my toys and cancel my birthday. I don’t want her to be mad at me forever.

Climbing off my bed, I walk back to the play room. I’ll show her that I’m a good boy. I’ll tell her that I don’t need the toys. I don’t need any of them. I just want her to be happy and to love me. I turn the light on and listen to hear if Mommy is coming up the stairs. I don’t hear her, so I think I’m safe. I go into the toy room and look around at all the toys I have. My big art stand is in the corner and I decide that I should write her a message. I should tell her that I love her. No, I should warn her. I should warn him. I should write them all a letter. I should keep them from following me.

I grab the big crayon and rip off the sheet of paper where I drew Mommy and me fighting pirates and I start to write them all a message. Maybe this time they’ll get it and they’ll stop with all the spying and the following. I write them the message and look around at all the toys. There’s so many of them. I don’t deserve any of them. I’ll show Mommy that I’m a good boy, that I understand. I’ll show her that she doesn’t have to yell at me anymore. I’ll be a good boy and I’ll do exactly as I’m told from now on. All she has to do is love me and I’ll love her. After all, it’s just me and her. I search the toys around the room. They look different now. They look like something new, like I’ve never had them before. They look like they are much more enjoyable now. I wish I hadn’t made her mad. I need those toys down in the closet. I need them to play with. I want Mommy to give them to me so I can play with all of them and they can go on exciting adventures.

I pick up a soldier toy. He’s a knight with all this cool sharp armor. He’s my favorite.

Wendy Anderson’s home is situated in a nice little corner of the city where old people congregate after retirement. They’re near everything that the aging, working class citizens of this city might want in their declining years. They’re close to everything and there’s hardly any crime. Every once in a while there’s a hood rat or someone desperate who will come lurking up from one of the city’s various ghettos, looking to steal bicycles or smash in car windows to steal a purse, but usually it’s as quiet and as tranquil as anyone in their late sixties would want. The only difference now is that I’m a hammer about to smash the shit out of Wendy Anderson’s world. Well, maybe not her world, but definitely her daughter’s. Two boys are playing out on the porch with toy cars, playing whatever make-believe scenario has popped into their tiny brains.

I never understood playing with cars. What’s the end game with that? I love cars more than I love pretty much everything in this world, but I don’t understand boys playing with them. I hate the noises they make and I hate the way they just roll around making those noises. What’s the point of that? Me, I was always about cops and robbers or army. I used to run around the neighborhood with my old friends shooting them with stick guns and pretending that dirt clods were grenades. Then we discovered what baseball and football were and we threw down our arms and went to a more civilized way of embarrassing and battling each other. But cars, that was never on our itinerary.

Stepping out of my ride, I leave it unlocked. There’s no one here that even knows how to hotwire a car and the most dangerous thing here is getting hit by an old tree branch that might break off and smack the roof of my beloved Shelby. No, this part of town is paradise. I close the door and walk up to the sidewalk and up the concrete of access of the garage to where the white picket fence with roses growing on the inside stops me. I check the yard for dog shit, dog toys, or a little rodent that most old people call dogs. Who wants a dog you can kill with a kick? There’s nothing of the sort, so I open the gate and approach the house.

The boys stare at me with dumb, blank looks on their faces and I completely understand that they might be retarded. They’re playing
vroom vroom
with cars. I look in to their faces and know by the time they’re my age, I will be in the ground, rotting into dust. I’m the previous chapter in the history of life.

“Is your mother home?” I ask them. Dispatch told me their names, but I don’t give a shit. This is a dead end. From what I know about all the other leads I’ve found on these homicides, suicides, whatevers, all these leads are dead ends. Dead, fucking ends. That’s where these roads lead. The boys look at me, not nodding, not shaking their heads. I’m getting a whole lot of nothing from them. Thankfully, someone inside has seen or heard me. I can hear them approaching.

“Can I help you?” a matronly voice calls out to me as she pushes open her screen door and steps out on the porch. Her mere presence is enough for the boys to rise and go inside. They don’t need to be told what to do. They’re afraid of strangers. Good. They might live a little longer if they keep that with them.

“My name is Detective Steven King.” I hold up my ID for her to see. She looks at it, wrinkling her nose and squinting as she looks through her glasses. “I’m here inquiring as to the whereabouts of your daughter, Rebecca Roberts.”

“Becca’s here,” the woman I’m guessing to be Wendy says. “She came here last night when the other detectives told her about what Chad’s been up to.”

“Well, I’m not Robbery,” I say, taking off my glasses. “Do you mind if I have a word with Rebecca Roberts?”

“Mom, who is it?” a voice calls from deeper inside the house. I hear her coming. As she approaches the screen door, the darkness contrasts her silhouette and as she comes into the light, pushing the door open, I see the two boys around her legs, staring at me with their blank, vacant stares. They’re starting to unnerve me. Rebecca stares at me for a moment and I hold her gaze. She has lovely jade eyes that are enormous, larger than I thought eyes could be in proportion to her round face. She’s pretty, but the beauty begins to drip away into fear. “Can I help you?” she asks me.

“This is Detective Steven King,” Wendy introduces me in a tone of voice that makes me sound like a joke. I look at the mother and wonder if I could arrest her for making my name sound stupid. That seems like a crime. defamation of character, I think I could make that one stick for a while, hold her overnight, teach her not to introduce others. “Like the writer,” she adds, twisting the dagger in my side. I smile against the anger inside of me. One day I’ll get used to that.

“I already spoke with Detective Carson,” Rebecca says nervously.

“There’s been a development,” I tell her with as much caution as I can muster. “Mrs. Roberts, is there somewhere private we can talk? I’m not sure you want to hear this out in the open.” I say this, implying that Wendy’s neighbors have nothing better to do than stick their noses in her shit before they roll over and die, but what I really want is her kids out of here. No kid needs to hear that their father chopped off his hands with saws they had in their garage because he went on an armed robbery bender. Thankfully, Rebecca pushes one of her wavy, red locks out of her face and stares at me with a contorted look of confusion and fear. She can sense it. Most people can pick up the bad vibes I carry with me when I come to tell them that death’s claimed one of their loved ones.

“Mom, will you take the boys out for ice cream?” Rebecca asks.

“That sounds delicious.” Wendy can sense it too now and tries to put on a happy, brave face for the boys. This is the face that I’ve seen a lot of parents, a lot of grandparents, or aunts and uncles put on to try and save the innocence that they all know is about to come crashing down with the weight of reality behind it. This is the end of all things pure and lovely. This is the end of childhood. “What do you say, boys?”

“Yeah!” they scream in unison, gleefully oblivious to everything that’s happening around them.

As they vanish into the house, Wendy follows them, leaving her daughter with me on the porch. I look at her and size her up. She’s got a figure, but she’s still working off the weight she gained with the last boy, who looks to be over two years old. She’s still got the ass, but her legs aren’t as nice as they probably once were and her arms are still formless. She’s working on it though, that much is obvious. If she wasn’t, then she would look a whole lot different. She has a pretty face, the kind that reminds me of a porcelain doll. She’s got the whole red hair, pale skin look going on that so many like her have. It’s a beautiful look that none of them truly appreciate the fact that they were chosen to have it.

“Come on in,” she motions for me to follow her.

I hold the screen door as she enters the house and cross the threshold with her. The door closes behind me and I close the interior door as well. I follow her into the dining room where she sits down at the table and waits for me. Her eyes are very emotive and it makes me uncomfortable. I sit down across from her and clear my throat, trying to decide how exactly I want to cut this particular shit pie for her.

“Did you catch him?” she asks me with a quivering voice.

“No,” I shake my head and decide that the first move has been made. “We found your husband early this morning at your house.”

She looks at me with a petrified stare that catches the particular syntax choices that I have selected for my vernacular. She stares at me and reaches out to where her water bottle is sitting on the table. She quickly takes a drink and clears her throat before speaking. “What do you mean ‘found’ him?” she asks me, right on the money.

“We found him in your garage,” I answer. “Right now, all I can tell you is that it appears that your husband took his own life.”

“Appears?” she says for one single moment when her strength still remains. I can almost see the cracks webbing across her face, readying for her to shatter at any moment.

“Well, we’re not ruling out any options until we gather all of the facts,” I tell her.

That’s when she breaks. A single tear breaks free and runs down her cheek before her shoulders buckle and snap forward. Her hands launch to her face and she begins to cry. I was never any good at this part. I’m not supposed to reach out and touch her, comfort her, or console her in any way. When you try comforting the family, people are prone to making exaggerated promises. What’s best is just to sit back and let them get a grip before you continue. Sometimes it takes a few seconds, other times, it takes much longer and you have to encourage them back to reality. I let Rebecca cry and scream for several minutes until it looks like she’s getting a handle on it. I never like this. I hate watching people cry. These are the rewards that my job has to offer me. Everything in this job is sorrow and misery, everywhere. Yet I’ve stayed so many years.

“Why?” she asks after a second of silence, sniffing. I reach into my pocket and hand her a pack of Kleenex I stuffed into my jacket pocket before coming to speak with her. She takes it gratefully, buying me some time before I decide how to accurately phrase what I’m about to tell her. “Why would he do this?” she asks me.

“As you know,” I say calmly, “your husband went on a four day armed robbery spree. When we notified you, it seems that you left a note. It appears he seems to have read the note, saw no other option that was preferable to death, and went into the garage to take his life.”