The Ninth Step (22 page)

The photograph had been taken through a telephoto lens and showed Helen and Edgar ushering a bound Cornell Smith from his burning trailer.

“There’s a whole series of these,” Martha said. “It’s like they tell a little story.”

There was a humming in Helen’s head, as though a high voltage switch had just been flipped, but her mind wasn’t a sufficient transformer to handle the load. It was a synaptic overload. This was more than a human being could be expected to handle. The photograph slid from Helen’s slack hands and landed faceup on the floor. A teardrop cut down her cheek. And her haunted eyes said what her mouth could not:
Life is
not
good, or fair, or even worth living.
There is no escape. Life is just a nightmare.

“It’s what I do, dear. Sorry.”

A never-ending schizonucleotic nightmare.

Helen looked up at Martha, but she was out of focus. Everything was out of focus. The only precise sensory input was the feeling of doom like a concrete wall. All was lost.

“You’ve known all along, right? This is what I do. I sponsor people. And they tell me their sins. Sin after sin after sin. They unburden themselves to me. It all works out in the end. Amends are made.”

Helen shook her head, still unable to see. Her mouth opened to form a question, but she was likewise unable to speak.

“Oh yes. I work four different groups. You people are just so eager to get these nasty little things you do off your chests. Believe me, you’re better off drinking. Well, maybe not you, dear.”

Martha dug in her purse again and retrieved her car keys.

“Don’t worry. It’s not the end of the world. Really it’s not. I’ll call you and we’ll work out the details. I’m sure we won’t have to resort to breaking fingers or anything of that nature. Not with you. No, I think we’ll be able to work out something quite reasonable. Pay as you go.”

As her vision finally cleared, Helen could once again see her old AA sponsor. The permed white hair. The face Helen had once thought of as open and kind. Martha, the benevolent smart-ass. How had she let this happen? How could she have brought herself and Edgar all this way only to end like this?

“And again, I truly am sorry. But that’s just the way I roll.”

Edgar entered the room. “How, exactly, do you roll, Martha?”

Martha jingled the car keys in her hand. “I’ll let Helen tell you later. I’d best motorvate.”

Helen stood and went to Edgar. She grabbed him by the dangling ends of his loose necktie and pulled him down to her level. She brought his face to hers and kissed him. If there was h
ope to be had in this world, this was where she would find it. She yanked one side of the tie, and it slithered free of his shirt collar in a serpentine whisper.

Helen took the tie and in a single fluid motion wrapped it around Martha’s throat. There was no time for Martha to react. No time for Edgar to react. She simply did it.

Martha grimaced. Gave out a short harsh grunt. Her face turned crimson. She looked like a woman who had just gone into cardiac arrest. Or perhaps had a major stroke.

Martha dropped the car keys, her fingers clawing at her neck. Helen stood behind her, gripping the ends of the necktie, twisting it tighter around Martha’s throat.

Edgar’s inertia broke. He took hold of Helen’s hands, trying to break her grip, to peel back her fingers and wrest the tie free. Helen gave out an atavistic bark and motioned her head at the floor. Edgar looked and saw the photograph. He picked it up and although he could understand what he was seeing, he could not comprehend.

Martha bucked with life-or-death reflexes. It took everything Helen had to keep hold of her. She had to pivot her hips to drag Martha backward and keep her flailing limbs from overturning the bassinet.

Helen squeezed as tight as she could, her face showing nothing but grim determination.

Edgar watched, stunned.

As Martha fought her, Helen felt the concrete wall move back. Just a little.

Martha’s movements grew even more extreme, even more
violent. Her fight for life was relentless, unexpectedly harsh, unexpectedly disturbing.

But finally her movements lessened. And this too was disturbing. Her life drained away. The two women crumpled to the floor.

Helen’s concrete wall had dissipated. There was more than one cure for schizonucleosis.

She kept her grip steady, making sure.

Martha was still for what felt like a long time, but Helen wanted to be certain. Then a final seizure-like movement racked Martha’s body.

And after a while, tiny involuntary tics were her only movement.

Until all movement ceased.

Still, Helen held on. She had to be sure.

Edgar reached out and touched Helen’s arm.

And Helen let go.

She nodded at Edgar—as if to say,
Yes, you’re right. My job is done.

Watching the storm through the baby’s room window, Helen saw Edgar’s reflection as he approached her from behind. He placed his hands around her waist and kissed her neck.

They looked into each other’s reflected eyes for a moment, and something unspoken passed between them. Edgar left.

Helen continued to gaze out into the rainy darkness until cries from Isabella drew her attention away. She checked the infant’s diaper and retrieved a fresh one.

Helen soothed the baby with a quiet lullaby as she changed her diaper. Singing softly, almost forlornly.

“Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s going to buy you a mockingbird…”

Helen sang the lullaby so softly, so slowly, it was almost a recital.

No, it was almost an elegy.

Behind Helen, through the window, Edgar trudged through the wet backyard.

Again, he had the wheelbarrow and shovel.

Edgar settled on a new spot at the far edge of their backyard and began to dig.

Helen finished changing her daughter. She scooped the baby into her arms.

Helen turned, holding the baby. They looked out the window together. At Edgar. Digging a hole in the rain.

Helen’s voice grew even more forlorn now, even more elegiac.

“Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring. And if that diamond ring turns brass…”

Even though it was not possible for her to hear it, the sound of the shovel penetrating the drenched ground seemed to accompany Helen’s singing.

Her voice was so soft, so mournful, so out of place with the sickening harshness of the shovel striking earth.

Outside, Edgar looked up from his dark chore to see his wife and child silhouetted in the warm glow of the window.

He continued digging. And it seemed that Helen’s funereal voice accompanied his task.

In the bedroom, the haunting lullaby was almost drowned out by the sound of the shovel violating earth.

“Mama’s gonna buy you a looking glass. And if that looking glass gets broke…”

Mother and child watched Edgar, the husband-father-protector, dig Martha’s grave.

At two thirty in the afternoon, while teaching his last class of the day, ninth-grade geometry teacher Edgar Woolrich reflected on the fact that—in what now seemed like another lifetime—his current wife, Helen Patrice-Woolrich, had successfully covered up the vehicular manslaughter of his first wife, Judy Woolrich. Helen had done this after a night of binge drinking and alcoholic blackout. She’d pulled it off perfectly. She’d gotten away with it. Except that she had forgotten that there was another witness to the crime. Someone else who knew what had happened.

Edgar further reflected that in addition to obstructing a police investigation, bringing a weapon onto school property, threatening a student with said weapon, and discovering that his current wife may or may not have killed his first wife—in
addition to all that, Edgar and Helen had each recently murdered someone. One of these acts of homicide, Edgar’s, could be construed to have been at least partly in self-defense and partly attributable to a species of situational rage, a temporary insanity, as it were (except, of course, for the prolonged period at the end when Edgar had tracked down—
stalked
, the word was
stalked
—Cornell like a wounded animal). The other killing, Helen’s, had been committed, as the saying goes, in cold blood. No denying it. No gussying that one up with legalese. Lipstick would serve no purpose on that particular pig.

Edgar had no idea if this miasma of misdeeds, this cornucopia of crime, would continue to go undetected and unpunished. There were various witnesses to various acts. There was a vehicle that still needed to be disposed of (Martha hadn’t walked there that night, had she?). DNA evidence that could never be entirely obliterated. Stories and alibis that didn’t always make sense. There were dogs that were inclined to dig holes in backyards. Things of that nature.

The other night he’d used Martha’s keys to get into her apartment. He’d found the photographs easily enough. And they did indeed tell a little story. A nasty little story. They weren’t in 3-D, but they reminded Edgar of the View-Master reels he’d looked at as a kid.

There were no negatives, no additional hard copies, but he found the original high-resolution jpegs on the hard drive of Martha’s computer. Most likely she’d only printed up the one photo. As an example. A hook. An attention-getter. Most likely. But who knew for sure? Edgar deleted the photos and emptied
the recycle bin, but your average reasonably bright high school student could recover recently deleted data files. It didn’t take a computer forensics technician. Probably he should go back and retrieve the computer itself. Destroy it. Would the risks of doing that outweigh the perceived benefits? Perhaps Martha backed up all of her files with an online service. And she was almost certainly working with a partner (she’d been talking to someone about breaking fingers). The partner could have copies of the photonovel that was
Edgar and Helen’s Excellent Adventure
. The partner likely knew Martha was planning a late-night visit to Chez Woolrich.

The question was not whether there were loose threads, inconsistencies, and evidence left behind, because there most certainly were. No, the real question was, would anyone ever care enough to even look? Because if someone looked hard enough, there was plenty to see. In fact, there was the ever-growing realization that he and Helen would never be completely free. Edgar knew that now. There would always be a dread sense of the heat closing in. There would always be the paranoid fear of the devil doll stool pigeons, eyes ablaze with feverish glee, hissing their names through yellowed teeth from behind closed doors.

No, trying to prefigure all of the possible outcomes would be like plotting irrational numbers on an infinite grid.

The lines of intersection were beyond reckoning, the variables endless.

God damn.