Page 31

31

MACK

When Shelby calls us, we’re already on the way to find her. It was hard to understand her through her screaming and the howling wind, but I knew she’d escaped and that she was in danger of freezing to death. Again. At the hands of Evan Carmichael.

We find her on her hands and knees almost half a mile from his house on a two-lane road we could barely even find in the blizzard conditions. Herb was out of the car first, pulling her inside, wrapping her in his coat as I raced along the icy roads to get her inside and warm.

Now we all sit in my living room in front of the fireplace. Shelby is wrapped in blankets in front of the fire next to the dogs sleeping in their beds, and Herb is pouring red wine into glasses on the coffee table. Nobody asks why she didn’t call the police. We all know.

After she calmed down she called her mother and checked on the girls. It took all of us to talk her out of going back over there immediately to kill Evan with her bare hands. We need to be smarter than him. Methodical. She said she’d be up there in the morning and now we’re all quiet with a drink in front of us, not knowing what else to say. Not knowing how we got here—in a world where sweet Evan Carmichael is really a complete monster and where he is so good at it, he has turned the tables to make it look like he’s the victim and has nothing for the police to arrest him for. As we speak he is free, at home, probably with a shredder or a maybe a fire blazing, getting rid of the traces of evidence he has carefully controlled and had plans to destroy when the time came.

“He said my kids are next if I escaped,” Shelby says.

“We won’t let that happen,” I say, kneeling next to her. “Have you called Clay?”

She shakes her head. “I can’t yet. I know if he ever found out who it was, he’d be over there with a shotgun. He’d either take his shot and make it, or miss and be dead, but that would be it for him either way. I just can’t yet,” she says.

Florence picks up her wineglass and leans back in her chair. “For all the reasons you didn’t go to the police because they would never believe you, just know that there is another reason to add to the list…the gun I shot the bastard with came back registered to you,” she says, and we all turn our heads and look at her. “Riley told me.”

Shelby breaks down, head in hands, sobbing. “I’ll never be safe again—my girls! It’s like he’s spent an entire lifetime setting this up. I should just call Riley now and make the report. Even if it’s a formality that they file it—just keep making reports. What else can I do? There’s no getting rid of him,” she cries.

Florence puts down her glass. “Unless there is,” she says.

“What are you trying to say, Flor?” Herb asks.

“Don’t tell the police or Clay or anyone you were there—or what he did, or about that room, any of it. It doesn’t go outside of this circle right here. You start pointing the finger at him, after how they dismissed me? That won’t do a damn thing but make things worse for you. We all know it,” Florence says.

“I want you to know something. I don’t call myself a Buddhist but I very much identify with the principles, and peaceful means are always the answer. I don’t even kill the odd cockroach I find in the kitchen in the summer. I capture it in a cup and take it outside. All life is to be respected. But even the Dalai Lama said that to kill out of absolute necessity to stop a tragic, inevitable chain of events is sometimes justified. I’m paraphrasing, but what I’m saying is…”

“Jesus, Flor. We know what you’re saying, but you can’t be serious…and I knew you used my mug for that cockroach. I asked you about that too. You said you didn’t,” Herb says, staring at her in disbelief.

“Flor,” I say. “This man has set us up so well that if something happens to him, don’t you think me and Shelby will be the only suspects?”

“Use me,” she says.

“Florence,” Herb says, eyes wide.

“We gave Evan an oleander plant when he started working there. It’s one of the most poisonous plants in the world. A few leaves boiled and poured in a drink and he wouldn’t hurt anyone else…ever again.”

“Or get away with what he’s done,” Herb says slowly.

“Until they do the autopsy and tox report and it’s…of all things in the world, oleander? Are you kidding?” I ask, but Florence is calm. I can see she’s thought about this.

“I have a good friend, Alice Wadoski, who’s a retired homicide detective in Milwaukee, and last time she visited she joked that I could get rid of Herb by doing this exact thing—boiling some oleander. Herb was being especially annoying that day and she was just joking of course, but…”

“Jeez, Florence,” he interrupts her to emote how offended he is, but she waves her hand at him.

“Take a pill. She was kidding. Anyway, I said to her, ‘Don’t worry, Millie will talk him to death and Mort will bore him to death without my interference.’”

“Good one,” Herb interjects with a shrug.

“And then I added… ‘Plus, I am not going to prison for killing Herb. That wouldn’t be worth it, now would it?’”

“I’m right here, ya know,” he says.

“And she said they would never know. The tox reports cover all the common toxins, but in a million years they would never test for oleander unless they knew that’s what it was—like the person said they ate a weird flower. Even then, the money and resources to do that kind of testing? Never. So she said, if you ever decide to kill Herb, that’s the way, and we laughed and drank mint juleps and played gin rummy, and she was only kidding, Herb. She likes you.”

We’re all quiet for a few minutes, but Shelby has finally lifted her head and seems to be entertaining this.

“I mean, do I need to say out loud how crazy this is?” I finally say.

Shelby sits up suddenly. “‘When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw,’” she says and Herb stops midsip of his drink to give her a confused look. “That’s what Bernie said before he died,” she says. “He was telling me to defend myself, in his own Bernie way.”

“Well,” Florence says. “Even if the manner of death isn’t caught, me and Shelby would still be suspects, probably be the only and total pariahs in this town—more than we already are, I mean, as if that were even possible.

“That’s why you use us. We’re invisible. That happens to a person after a certain age. You’ll have alibis. Shelby is going to her mother’s. She’ll get receipts, make sure to appear in front of a security camera or two—take the girls to Dave & Buster’s or whatever and be seen by a bunch of people all day thirty miles north of town. You can do that, can’t you?” Florence says, and Shelby nods.

I start thinking about this as a real possibility for a moment and I feel like I’m in a nightmare. But I feel like there is no other way out of it either.

“And I can fly out to see my daughter,” I say quickly, before I lose my nerve.

“Good. Airtight,” Florence says.

“And Evan might write a final note expressing his guilt for what he’s done. A suicide note, maybe,” Herb says, apparently to Florence’s utter surprise, because she almost spits her drink out but then collects herself and shoots down the idea.

“We can’t have handwriting involved, they can figure that out,” Florence says, shaking her head.

“I know the password to his laptop. It’s Porkchops…named after a dog he used to have. He let me use it once to play Minecraft ,” Herb says. Florence pats Herb’s leg and gives him an impressed look.

“And Herb will drive me. I know my way around the man’s kitchen now. It’s the only way,” she says.

“Oh God.” Shelby holds her head in her hands again. “She’s right.”

“It’s a terrible thing, I know, darling,” Florence says.

“Lesser of two evils, though,” I say, coming around to the idea that she’s right.

“He’ll kill my girls. He promised they’re next. He won’t stop until he’s caught, and when will that be? I mean, eventually there will be evidence. Eventually he won’t be able to keep getting away with so goddamn many things, you would think—but when? Who else will have to die first? Not my kids. If he’s dead, they’ll dig into his records, right? All the psychiatric stuff proving he’s psychotic, and that will really seal the deal. Right now all that stuff is sealed—needs a warrant there is no reason for them to order. But this way…along with the note we’ll write for him, confessing to everything…it will show we’ve been right all along. It’s the only way. She’s right. Florence is right.” Shelby sounds almost hysterical, but she has more to lose than the rest of us. We all sit with this for a minute. I take a sip of red wine and stroke the top of Nugget’s head and wonder if we could really pull this off. It’s so unimaginable, but it’s really Shelby’s life at stake.

“Nobody outside of the four of us can ever know. Four people keeping a secret is already statistically fucked,” I say. Everyone nods in agreement. I start searching on my phone to see ticket availability to Boston for early tomorrow.

“I can fly out before 9:00 a.m.,” I say. “And Clay thinks you’re at your mother’s—that she picked you up. That’s what I thought when I called him.”

“That’s the last thing I told him. That’s good. He assumes she picked me up, so he’s not worried. He goes to work in the morning and one of you can drop me off and I’ll take the car up—just call and say Mom picked me up yesterday because she was in the area shopping and it was easier, but now I am staying longer than planned so I need the car after all. He won’t ask questions and I’ll make sure to stop for gas, at a restaurant, keep receipts. Just in case. And I’ll take the pups while you’re gone,” she says to me.

“It sounds like we’re all really doing this,” I say, starting to feel hot and a little shaky.

“And no phone calls between the four of us. No texts. No speaking about this ever again. If this goes right, just keep an eye on the news. If it goes wrong, that’s the only time I’d call, but only to make plans for coffee. To meet and only ever discuss in person no matter what happens. We never say anything about this over the phone,” Florence says, and we all nod.

“Yes,” I agree.

“How the hell will you be able to do it? How will you even get in?” Shelby asks, and Florence turns to Herb, and then we all turn to Herb.

“We have a way,” Florence says.

Herb raises his eyebrows. “I guess we’re all outlaws now.”

“Yeah. But he made us this way,” Shelby says, and we’re all quiet for a long while, staring at the crackling fire, collectively terrified and exhausted. And together, about to kill a man.