The Killing Vision (4 page)

She had found the paper accidentally this morning
while doing the laundry, routinely checking pockets as she always did.  She had
pulled out the note and laid it in the stack with the coins and other objects
she had found in Wade’s and Derek’s clothes, not really paying attention to it
until after she had started the washer and began sorting through the discarded
items.  There was almost a dollar in change, some wadded gum wrappers, a
crumpled pack of cigarettes, Wade’s container of Skoal he was always
misplacing, and the note.

She unfolded the note and stared at it for a
second. 
555-8344 Missy. 
A girl’s writing.  At first, she thought she
must be confused, that the note had come from one of Derek’s pockets.  But she
remembered pulling it from Wade’s work pants.  She smoothed it out on top of
the dryer. 
Missy. 

At first she was numb, trying to decipher it like it
was some secret code.  And when she realized it was a phone number, she felt
the first sparks of hurt and anger.  But not surprise.

She carried the note up to the kitchen and dialed
the number, and when a groggy, young female voice answered, Marla said, “Is
this Missy?”

“Yeah.”

“Hi, Missy.  This is Wade Roberts’s wife.”

The line went dead.

It wasn’t as if this had been the first time.  Wade
had been cheating on her for years, practically since they had been married. 
The few times she had confronted him, he had at first denied it, then admitted
it.  Then flaunted it.  Then punished her for it.

At first she thought maybe she
was
to blame,
that if only she were a little more inventive, a little less prudish, a little
more willing to give him the things he wanted...  And gradually she began to
understand that it didn’t matter.  No matter how much she did for him, he would
want something different, more and more extreme.  He would want to push the
envelope.  That was one of his favorite expressions.  “That Dale Earnhardt— he
knew how to
push the envelope
.”  Or, “Come on, baby, let’s
push the envelope
tonight.”  Once, when they had been married just a few months, he had pushed
the envelope too far, and she had bled for two days.  After that, she started
to become unavailable.  Always sleepy.  Or sick to her stomach.  Not that she
had to pretend to be reviled by him; the thought of his touch was enough to
revolt her, to disgust her.  Little by little, he asked her for it less often,
and by the time she realized what was happening, it was too late.  She had
pushed him away.  Driven him to the sluts and whores he now used to satisfy
himself.

They had been married two years when she found the
first evidence.  She had gone out to the old Buick for the checkbook (she was
always leaving it in the glove box), and when she opened the driver door,
something peeking from beneath the back seat caught her eye.  She pulled it out
and stared at it.  It was a pair of pink panties with a lacey waistband.  A
size smaller than her own. 

That night, when Wade returned home from work and
two-year-old Derek was safely in front of the TV in the other room, she flung
the panties onto the dining room table.  Wade was nursing his second beer of
the evening, and it took him a moment to register what he was seeing in front
of him.  He stared at them.  Took another sip of beer.

“Whose are those?” Marla said, her voice quivering
with anger.

He looked at her, his gaze steady.  “None of your
goddamn business.”

Her breath left her, and she stared at him.  “It
is
my goddamned business.  If somebody else is fucking my husband, I want to know
who it is.”

She never saw the fist coming until it connected
with her jaw.  She was suddenly sitting in the floor, dazed, the room spinning
away, blood dripping from her mouth.  She held out both hands to steady
herself, not believing he had actually punched her.  She moved her tongue, not
surprised to discover that a couple of her teeth were loose.

He towered above her, his chest heaving.  “I said
it’s none of your goddamned business.”

Later, when he rolled into bed beside her, he said
softly, “I’m sorry.  But you hardly ever let me touch you anymore.”  She lay
there with her back to him, silent.  In a few minutes, he was snoring, and she
realized she had been holding her body rigid since he had come into the room.

It was not the last time he exploded.  Over the
years she had learned to stay out of his way, to not provoke him.  She had
learned how to hide bruises and cuts, how to lie about how clumsy she was and
how she kept bumping into things.  She had learned how to pretend everything
was
fine.
 People were always asking how she was—at church, at the
supermarket; she learned how to say, “
Fine
.”  She could even smile when
she said it.

There had been a few times when she thought of
leaving, when she thought of driving away some day while he was at work, but
she knew she could never do that.  She couldn’t do that to Derek.  As much as
she feared Wade, she knew she was the only buffer between his temper and their
son, and if she weren’t there to take the blows, Derek would be the only other
target. And even though he was a big kid, more than capable of defending
himself, she did not want to put him in that position.

And what kind of life could she make on her own? 
She was a high-school dropout with no marketable skills and no money of her
own.  What little she had managed to save (socked away for Derek’s college
education), the asshole had blown on that damned Mustang. 

She knew she certainly couldn’t go back to her
parents; they had made that perfectly clear when she became pregnant.  “If
you’re gonna lay with a dog, you gotta live with his fleas,” her father had
told her. 

But she
did
have a choice.  She looked at the
gun and took a sip of coffee, not tasting it.  She could be ready when he came
home.  She could be sitting right here at the table, pointing it at him when he
came through the back door.  She could shoot him right between the eyes and he
would never know what had hit him.  She could already see the blood and brains
sprayed all over the walls and the window.  It would be one mess she wouldn’t
mind cleaning up.

But she might miss.  And if she did…  If she missed,
God help her.  He would kill her.  She had no doubt about that.  There would be
no hope for either her or Derek then.

She rested her head on her hands and wept.

* * *

3:35 PM

Sarah Jo McElvoy’s mother was not doing well today. 
Not well at all.

She met Halloran and Chapman at the door with red
eyes and tousled hair, looking like she hadn’t slept in days and smelling
faintly of whiskey.  She made no move to let them in, said nothing to them as
she looked at them blankly.  She had been forty when Sarah Jo had been born,
Halloran remembered her telling them, which would make her fifty-four now, but
she looked at least seventy this afternoon.

Halloran licked his dry lips.  “Mrs. McElvoy?”

“What do you want?”

“I’m Detective Mike Halloran,” he said, holding up
his badge.  “This is my partner, John Chapman.  Remember us?”

She continued to stare at them.

“May we come in and talk with you for a minute?”

She moved aside and they stepped into the dark
house.

The living room was dusty and cluttered and smelled
of stale cigarette smoke and cat urine.  Halloran took a seat on a ragged sofa,
and Chapman sat tentatively beside him.  Mrs. McElvoy slumped into a grimy
vinyl recliner opposite them and continued to stare. 

Halloran swallowed and took a memo pad from his
shirt pocket.  She was beginning to unnerve him with her glazed expression. 
“First of all,” he said, “I just want to let you know how sorry we are for—”

“You caught him yet?”

Halloran looked up at her.  “Excuse me?”

“The bastard that killed my little girl.  Have you
caught him yet?”

Halloran managed a grim sympathetic smile.  “Not
yet.”

Mrs. McElvoy was shaking her head.  “Sumbitch is
gonna pay.  He’s gonna pay for what he did to Sarah Jo.”

Halloran glanced at Chapman, then leafed through his
notepad.  “Mrs. McElvoy, when Sarah Jo first disappeared, you told us that you
didn’t know anyone who might have taken her.  Is that still the case?”

She looked at him squarely.  “I don’t know anybody
that would have wanted to hurt Sarah Jo.”  One tear, fat and round, squeezed
from her eye and slid silently down her lined cheek.  “She was sweet.  Such a
sweet girl.”

“What about Sarah Jo’s father?  Have you heard
anything from him?  The last time we talked to you, you said you hadn’t spoken
to him.  Has any of that changed since…”  He started to say “since the body was
found,” but decided that was a bit cold; the poor woman was just now coming to
grips with the fact that her daughter was officially dead, not just missing. 
He cleared his throat.  “Has he contacted you since Sarah Jo was found?”

She shook her head.  “Haven’t heard from the
sumbitch in seven years.  Don’t expect to now.”

Halloran glanced around the cluttered room. 
Pictures of Sarah Jo lined a shelf along one wall.  One of them—the same
photograph that had been repeatedly plastered in shop windows and left to fade
on telephone poles the last three months—showed a smiling, fresh-faced girl on
the verge of womanhood, her large blue eyes staring into the camera lens into
infinity, into the unlucky and damnable fate that awaited her.  Chapman was
staring at it, too, and Halloran quickly looked back at his notepad.

“Mrs. McElvoy,” said Chapman, “just now you said
‘that bastard.’  Do you think it’s a man?”

She snorted, a wretched, ugly sound.  “It’s always a
man, ain’t it?  Ain’t no woman that would kill a little girl and leave her
floatin’ in the river.  Ain’t no woman alive would do that.”

Halloran folded up his memo pad and stuffed it back
into his pocket, glancing about the house.  “Mrs. McElvoy, do you have anyone
staying with you?  Any family?”

“Nope.”

“Friends?”

“Nope.  They’ve come by and stayed for a bit, but I
sent them on home.  Ain’t nothin’ they can do.”

“Do you want us to send someone over for you?  A
counselor or anyone?”

She shook her head.  “I’ll tell you what I told
everybody else.  I just want to be left alone now.  I want to be by myself. 
Just let me grieve in private.”

He nodded, then rose from the sofa.  Chapman, taking
the cue, practically leaped to his feet.  “We’ll be in touch,” Halloran told
her.  “Call us if anything changes.”

He made to give her a reassuring touch on the
shoulder as he passed, and she grabbed his arm.  She looked up at him with
pleading, dazed eyes.  “Tell me one thing before you go.  Tell me the truth.  I
want to know.  I
need
to know.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

She swallowed and looked away.  “Was…was she raped?”

He saw no reason to keep it from her.  “Yes, ma’am,
she was.  In a manner of speaking.  She was violated with an object.”

Mrs. McElvoy, nodded, tears flowing freely down her cheeks
now, her face contorted with agony.  He patted her shoulder, and Chapman
followed him out the door.

Outside, last night’s rain had made the heat more
intense, the air heavy.  Halloran’s forehead broke into an instant sweat.  They
reached the sedan, and he was just opening his door when Mrs. McElvoy’s voice
surprised him.  “She was comin’ home from band practice, you know.”

“Excuse me?”

She stood on the front porch, leaning against one of
the peeling posts, her arms crossed over her chest.  “The day she disappeared. 
She had band practice after school.  She left the schoolhouse walking.  Like
she always did.”

Halloran nodded.  He remembered writing that in the
report himself.  “She always walked past the water treatment plant and up by
the cemetery, didn’t she?”

Mrs. McElvoy wasn’t listening to him.  She was
gazing at the sky.  “She played clarinet.”  She looked at him abruptly.  “Did
you ever find her clarinet?”

Halloran shook his head.  “No, ma’am.”

Without another word, Mrs. McElvoy turned and
disappeared into the house.

Halloran blew out a breath.  It would be a two-beer
night.

* * *

5:22 PM

When Joel dropped him off at home, Wade pulled the
pack of Winstons from his shirt pocket, stuck one between his lips, and lit
it.  It was the first thing he did every afternoon when he got out of the
truck, since the company wouldn’t let them smoke in the goddamn thing.  Like it
was made of gold or something.

He stood for a moment in the front yard, savoring
the taste of the nicotine and the humid weight of the afternoon air.  Part of
him didn’t want to go inside, even though his stomach was growling for dinner. 
He just didn’t want to look at Marla today, listen to her bitch and complain,
see whatever stupid thing she’d done today.  He really just did not want to
deal with it.