Retirement Plan (19 page)

“Let’s talk to Vice first. See if they know this guy.”

“What do you think about Ruby Burnett? Do you like her for any of this?”

Morgan shook her head. “I knew this family years ago. Ruby used and sold drugs. She stole what she couldn’t earn—but she never was involved in anything violent.”

“Knew them how?”

“I babysat here several times when I was a kid. I burnt a hole in their couch. I think it might be the same one under that flowered slipcover.”

“Babysat?”

 “Yes. I used to babysit,” Morgan said. “Then I went into law enforcement. Less risk to life and limb.”

Redick eyed her. “This gal has a fairly long rap sheet.”

“No violent crime,” she reminded him.

Behind her, Morgan heard a man shouting. She turned and saw Randy Harris, whose yard backed up to the Burnetts’, shouting at his dog. The dog cowered next to the fence.

“Hey,” she yelled.

Harris looked up. Then he turned and stormed off toward his house.

Redick asked, “What was that?”

“He’s some crazy bastard we used to get domestic violence calls on, seemed like, every Friday night. His wife finally left him when he broke her wrist and a couple of ribs.”

“So he knows you?”

“This is a small town with a big population. Work in uniform long enough and you get to know all the screwballs.”

“Really?”

“Guys like him fly under the radar,” Morgan said. “The system has bigger and badder problems. He’s violent and mean. He thrives on bullying. If you ask me, someone should break a few of his ribs.”

“You aren’t supposed to get emotionally involved with your work.”

“Why?” Morgan put both hands on her hips. “You’re always pissed off at me. That’s emotion.”

“I’m never angry at the perps.”

Morgan opened the car door and slid beneath the wheel. In the passenger seat next to her, Redick fastened his seat belt. With a softer tone, Morgan said, “It’s appropriate to focus a little anger at the bad guys. It gives us an edge.”

“It can also cause stupid mistakes.” 

“I don’t agree.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew Ruby Burnett?”

“I didn’t realize I knew her until we got there.”

“And you didn’t tell me then because…”

Morgan didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure she knew the answer. Redick had told her that he knew the Iraq veteran, and that had helped. She’d gotten a full confession on the second try. Redick might not have been as aggressive with the guy. As she pulled away from the curb, the icy silence returned.

*

On Sunday, the paper was late. Ruby had gone to bed and Lois had run to the store for milk. Sophie brought the paper in, got a cup of fresh coffee, and spread it across the kitchen table. The article was on the bottom of the second page. W
ISCONSIN
W
OMAN
A
RRESTED
. Seeing the photo, Sophie recognized the woman’s owl-like glasses immediately. It was Sara Jumper. She’d tried to pay an undercover officer to kill her husband. Sophie read the article and learned that Mrs. Jumper had been involved in a costly child-custody battle. She had told the police, when arrested, that it cost more to have it out in court than it did to have him killed.

Sophie folded that section of paper and put it on the table at Lois’s place. She turned the pages and separated the ads. Quite by accident she found the obituaries and there he was. Dr. J. Allan Long, her brother. She barely recognized his picture. She hadn’t seen him in almost forty years. Their father had just died when Sophie last tried to contact him. “This is your sister,” she’d said. “I don’t have a sister,” he’d answered.  Stunned, trying to think of something to say, she’d heard him hang up.

“There’s a streak of insanity in this family,” her father had said all those years ago, when she told her parents that she was finally in love. “Remember your crazy cousin Markey?”

“Markey was homicidal,” she’d answered. “I’m homosexual. Big difference.”

“I don’t care what you are. If you go off and live with that woman, you are no longer my daughter.”

She looked across the room at her mother. “Mom?”

“Your mother thinks as I do. Live without that woman or live without us.”

Sophie turned to leave. Her mother followed her to the car and tried to give her money. “I have a job, Mom. I don’t need your money.”

Sophie played that scene over and over in her head as the years passed. It turned out to be the last time she’d seen her mother. Sophie had been angry that day and she’d backed out of the driveway throwing rocks. She thought she’d reconnect with her mother someday. But her mother died before she could. Lois had tried to help her see that most families in those days would have done the same. She pointed out that neither of them could be open where they worked—especially Sophie. That Catholic grade school would have sent her packing.

One thing that Sophie had always been clear on was that she wasn’t crazy like Markey. He had gone on a shooting spree at the courthouse and killed his ex-wife, two of his children, a lawyer, and a court reporter. The judge never walked again. He’d spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Loving Lois wasn’t hurting anyone.

Allan had been away at college and Sophie was ten years old. Markey had been at the courthouse for another postponement of the custody hearing. He’d asked his wife, Ginger, to bring the kids so he could at least see them. No one was sure if he’d meant to kill the toddler and just ran out of bullets or if he’d meant to save her. But with bodies lying everywhere and people hiding behind whatever they could, he’d grabbed Baby Nancy and took off.

As news spread around the little Central Illinois town, people closed their windows and locked their doors. The grade school dismissed all the kids and sent them home. The children were warned not to stop anywhere or talk to anyone. Sophie walked toward an empty house. On the way, a sixth grader told Sophie that her cousin Markey had killed a bunch of people at the courthouse. She asked what part of the courthouse, and the boy just shrugged. “Don’t know. But a bunch of people are dead.”

Until she got home, she’d been terrified that her mother, who actually worked there, was dead.  As it turned out, her mother hadn’t been allowed to leave work until seven that night because the police had to interview everyone. Sophie’s father was out on the country roads delivering mail. The only one there was the twelve-year-old bulldog named Winston.

The phone had been ringing when she let herself in the back door. Her mother’s voice had never sounded better. “Markey’s in some trouble,” she’d said. “Lock up the house, and if he comes around, don’t answer the door.”

“What if he tries to come in anyway?” Sophie asked.

“He won’t,” her mother said, “but if you even see him in the neighborhood, call the police. The number’s on the fridge, remember?”

“Who’s dead?”

Her mother sighed. “Why do you think someone is dead?”

“A boy told me.”

“Some people are hurt. That’s all I know right now. Markey brought his gun to court, and he got mad. You know how he can be when he gets mad.”

Sophie asked, “Can you come home?”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Lock the doors and stay inside. Do your homework or turn on the TV. Try not to think about it. Daddy will be there by two thirty.”

Sophie looked at the clock on the kitchen stove. It was ten after ten. When she hung up, she brought Winston in from the backyard. She put his leash on to make sure he was by her side as she locked all three doors and checked the windows. She wasn’t sure about the windows in the basement, so she pushed some chairs in front of the door to the basement stairs. Then she crawled behind her father’s recliner with Winston and a book. The dog fell asleep with his head in her lap, but she didn’t sleep and she couldn’t read.  She listened to every sound the house made. Twice she heard sirens. They sounded close.

At two thirty the garage door opened and her father came in through the kitchen. She stood up and Winston ran to meet him.

He fired three questions at her quickly. “Why are you home? What are you doing back there? Why was the kitchen door locked?”           

Her skin felt clammy. She stammered, “They let us out early because of Markey.”

“Markey? What’d he do now?”

Sophie wanted to run to her father, but he seemed irritated with her. She swallowed and said, “He shot some people at the courthouse.”

“What?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t say more.

Her father almost tripped over Winston on the way to the phone. He dialed and waited what seemed like a long time. When the phone was finally answered his legs seemed to give out and he dropped into a kitchen chair. He talked to her mother for a few minutes, then looked across the room to where Sophie still stood behind his chair. He motioned for her to come to him and she ran. It had been the best feeling in the world to be in her father’s arms with her mother safe on the other end of the line.

Markey was found in his truck that evening. He’d dropped the baby off at Aunt Cookie’s and left her there alone. Then he’d driven out on a country road, pulled the truck over, and put the gun in his mouth.

Years later when she was teaching classes herself, she questioned why the school had sent all those children out to walk home. Some of them lived quite a distance. Many, like her, opened the door to empty houses. They would have been safer at the school until a parent could pick them up. But it had been a different time. Today, schools are locked down. Back then anyone could just walk in the door. But even so, why did they turn 500 kids out of the school with a madman loose?

Baby Nancy, the only child to live through the ordeal, lived with Aunt Cookie until she was three and her mother’s family won custody. They’d lost track of her over time. Then one day she was in the newspaper. She and three other teenagers had been killed when their truck went out of control on a country road. Sophie’s father said the reason Nancy was racing down country roads was probably something she got from Markey. Sophie wondered then if Baby Nancy had been meant to die at the courthouse with the others all those years before, and it finally caught up with her.

Any time after the day of the gun spree when someone in their family did something unusual, her father brought up Markey, as if that explained everything. When Sophie remembered the day Markey killed his family, she remembered hiding behind her father’s big chair with a sleeping dog for hours. Eventually she came to see that her father’s intolerance was probably a trait he’d inherited from Markey.

“Sara Jumper, my God.”

Sophie hadn’t heard Lois come in, but there she stood. Sophie said, “Read it.”

Lois set a bag of doughnuts and a half gallon of milk on the table and sat. She read, then said, “We need to raise our rates.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “Good grief.”

“No,” Lois said. “Seriously. If it costs less to kill a husband than it does to take him to court, we aren’t charging enough.”

To Sophie, Lois’s comment sounded callous. But killing was a part-time job because it brought in money. Sophie hadn’t forgotten that. In the most recent economic downturn, some of their friends had lost their retirement plans. Because Sophie taught in a Catholic school, she didn’t have teachers’ retirement funds like public-school teachers had. She’d paid into Social Security and it just wasn’t enough.

Sophie hadn’t thought of Markey and his murderous rampage for a long time. But maybe she did have a little of him in her. Murder for hire had been her idea. She’d threatened to do it alone if Lois wouldn’t help her. But she wasn’t angry at the men they killed. Her relatives were the only ones she’d ever been mad at, and they were dying of natural causes.

Lois crossed the kitchen and poured herself some coffee. She set it on the table and returned to the counter for two glasses. Then she opened the milk, poured some for each of them, and offered the doughnut bag to Sophie. “Want one?”

Sophie shook her head.

“What’s the matter?” Lois asked. “Don’t worry about Sara Jumper. We’ll be fine.”

“I’m not worried.”

Lois bit down on a doughnut and spied the obituaries. “Someone we know die?”

Sophie didn’t answer.

Lois reached for the page and scanned it. “Your brother’s dead.”

Sophie said, “I don’t have a brother.”

Chapter Fourteen

Two weeks before Thanksgiving, an ice storm took down several power lines. The storm was followed by three days of subzero temperatures. Schools were closed, and Celia Morning packed a small bag and put her three children in the car. That evening when she pulled out of the driveway, icicles hung along the eaves of her house like a monster’s teeth. The image stayed with her as she drove 143 miles to her mother’s house. By the time they returned, the temperature was above forty degrees and Celia’s power was back on.

As they trudged in, Celia noticed that the house, the kitchen especially, smelled stale. That night they ate supper from a big can of Spaghetti-O’s, then finished a box of oatmeal cookies. The kids were tired and cranky from living like campers at Grandma’s and sitting still during the long drive home. Celia had each of them shower and put them to bed early. The boys were asleep almost instantly, but she could still hear Merris moving around upstairs as she headed to the basement to find a couple of empty boxes and went to work on the refrigerator. Around midnight she carried the heavy boxes of spoiled food to the trash. The kids were scheduled to take a trip over the Thanksgiving holiday with Jack’s parents, and Celia was looking forward to a quiet four days alone. She thought she’d go out to eat on Thanksgiving Day. She’d need milk and bread tomorrow, but she didn’t have to stock up everything else for a while yet.

Celia gathered the trash and carried it to the cans out back. Moving quickly through the cold, clear air, on her way back to the house, Celia saw Merris’s bedroom light on. The girl’s grandmother had bought her the first two books in a new vampire series, and Merris had opened one of them and read all the way home. The corner house where Jason Smallwood had lived a year ago was dark, although the realtor was keeping the power on to prevent broken pipes. With the current mortgage crisis, it was a buyer’s market. Real estate was moving slowly. The bank would probably have to rent the property or auction it. In the dim moonlight she could see that a tree branch had fallen on the corner of Smallwood’s roof. They’d have to get that taken care of before they could show the place again.