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The Nightmare Before Christmas

Jake

I smile at the little old lady tugging her shopping cart up the walk to Dodi’s apartment building, and she narrows her eyes at me suspiciously, as if she, out on an icy walkway at midnight on Christmas Eve, isn’t ten orders of magnitude more out of place than I am. Her wheel catches on the lip of the step and I reach down to pick it up before she can stop me.

“Thank you,” she says pointedly, but I don’t let go. I continue to blast my pure-of-heart church-boy smile at her, and she flounders for a moment before reluctantly letting me into the poinsettia-infested lobby. She stabs me with her eyes in the elevator and shoots several wary glances behind her when she leaves me on the second floor. I beam at her and carry on to the third.

The lights of Dodi’s apartment were on when I stood in the street below, but she doesn’t hear the first knock or the second. I’ve raised my hand to rap again when the door jerks open to rest against the full length of its chain.

“What—” Dodi says, and stops and scowls.

I smile. Merry fucking Christmas!

“You always look unhinged when you smile like that.” She’s fully dressed, but there are creases in her cheek from whatever surface she fell asleep on. Her hair is mussed and her eyeliner smudged.

“Open the door.”

Her response is to make the opening narrower, until she peers at me with one eye. “No. This is exactly what these bolt-and-chain locks are for: creeps knocking in the middle of the night. What do you want?”

What do you want? What do you like? What makes you happy?

Her. It’s always been her. Dolores dela Cruz at the top of my list.

“What are your plans for Christmas dinner?” I ask.

“None of your business.”

“We are married.”

“You’re really hung up on that detail.”

“Not to brag, but I have a turkey,” I say. “And a tree.”

“Well, look at this overachiever. Must be a really nice little cardboard box under the overpass.”

“It’s a house.”

“I’m not coming over,” she says flatly.

She’s completely wrong about that. She’s coming over if I have to toss her over my shoulder and carry Cat under one arm like a piece of luggage. I’m here on her doorstep channeling a higher power: Christmas spirit. It’s Baby Jesus’s birthday wish. It’s Mall Satan’s will that we spend the holiday together.

I should have brought bolt cutters for the chain.

There’s a pause, and then she speaks in a scratchy voice I’ve never heard before. “I can’t. A complete asshole slid into me at an intersection on the way home. I had to get my car towed.”

She shuts the door in my face abruptly, and I stand there, staring at it. But then it reopens, chain dropped.

“Here,” Dodi says, thrusting my bag at me. “You could have warned me there was two hundred thousand dollars cash in there. I could have been fucking robbed. And by the way ,” she says, her scratchy voice pitching higher, “I just got a cryptic email from Cynthia about how she’s putting my name forward for a promotion over that list, and I still have no fucking idea what it is.”

Her little fingers are biting into the edge of the door, the tips white from the pressure. I reach up and touch them with my own. She doesn’t pull away. The door swings wider by an inch, and another. One more.

“I’ll tell you over Christmas dinner.”

I push through the gap, a burglar insinuating himself inside. It takes me a second to make sense of what I’ve stumbled into. A dilapidated fake Christmas tree with one measly string of lights and no ornaments leans drunkenly in one corner, but that’s about it for Christmas decor. A life-sized skeleton sits in one armchair, and bats dangle from the light fixtures. There’s a ghost hanging in one corner, lit up with green light, and plastic pumpkins flickering with fake candlelight are perched on the side tables. Stretched out in every nook and corner conceivable, fake cobwebs. Fake cobwebs everywhere .

Dodi twitches and crosses and uncrosses her arms beside me.

“I still had the Halloween decorations.”

Scattered on the floor is a jumble of ratty, half-used wrapping paper tubes and a pile of presents needing to be wrapped, an open bottle of wine and a half-full glass, scissors, and—

“No tape,” I point out. Dodi crosses her arms again and stares stonily at the floor.

“Tell me about this Christmas dinner,” she says quietly, majestically, her normal voice restored. She tips her chin and manages to stare down at me despite being half a foot shorter. “Where is it? What time?”

“Now,” I say.

“Now?”

“Pack an overnight bag. Everything is ready.”

“What do you mean?”

“You hate Christmas. You said so. I took care of it.”

She blinks at me and waits for more of an explanation, but we stand there in a stalemate because that’s all I’m telling her. She has to see the rest in person.

And maybe she recalls a serial killer date, and a night in Las Vegas, and the magical transformation of a disgraceful termination into a promotion. Maybe she trusts me just a little, because after a minute, without saying anything, she uncoils her crossed arms and pads off to her bedroom to pack.

The beat-up bankers boxes labeled Halloween Decorations are stacked in one corner. In it all goes—pumpkins, ghost, bats. Down come the cobwebs, the spiders. It’s faster coming down than going up, is what I’ve learned tonight. I stack the full boxes by the door. The unwrapped gifts and the wrapping paper, too. It’s all coming with us.

“What are you doing with my stuff?” Dodi barks when she reappears with an overnight bag and a Barbie backpack stuffed to bursting.

“I’m bringing it. Cat’s going to love it.”

Her mouth twists, and she stares hard and unblinking at the crappy tree. She doesn’t say anything as I take the first load down and then the second. I take everything—even the half-full bottle of wine and the skeleton. Finally, the apartment is bare except for the pathetic tree, and Dodi stands waiting for me with Cat in her arms, her sleeping face smooshed on her shoulder, her winter coat draped around her. I take the overnight bags and we go.

There’s one decoration I missed, and in the elevator, I notice it swinging from Dodi’s fingertips by its hair. Fake blood is smeared across her silicone face and there’s a spider glued to her forehead, but I’d know Verity’s glassy gaze anywhere. Dodi feels my eyes on her, and after a minute, she makes eye contact with me over Cat’s head. She shrugs, and I spot the tiniest glimmer of a smile.

It all goes in the trunk in a heap. The snow is coming down now, finally, in big downy flakes that fall slowly like they’re drifting through syrup. I open the back door for Dodi to deposit Cat, and she freezes.

“This car stinks. It reeks .” She coughs and swallows.

Unfortunately, there was a week of above-freezing weather while I was at Bill’s and the bunny juice on the back seat had time to thaw and really come into its own. This is the clean side of the back seat, at least.

“We’ll drive with the windows open.”

But open windows in the middle of a cold winter night during holiday season is a very interesting thing to patrol cars, and my busted taillight from front-ending Charlotte’s dad is a legitimate excuse for a traffic stop.

A police car flashes its lights behind us as we turn onto the Christmas light–festooned Main Street, and I pull off to the side, right beneath an enormous Christmas tree all done up by the local business association. The cop slams his door and strolls up under the golden streetlights, his breath steaming in the cold air, fat snowflakes landing on his shoulders. He looks like he’s fresh out of the academy. I roll down my window and he bends down, leaning right into the car to catch a surreptitious whiff of my breath.

“Your taillight is smashed. License and registration.” He sniffs, then coughs and gags. “What the fucking—” He pulls back and gags again, and a ribbon of spit dangles from his chin. “Fucking Jesus shit . What is that smell?”

“It’s nothing.”

He stares at me in disbelief. I pass him my license and the car’s registration, and he frowns at it.

“This isn’t your vehicle.” He peers at my license and then my face.

“I have permission—”

“I’m going to ask you to step out of the vehicle, sir.” The cop paces a few feet away and pulls his radio off his belt.

Next to me, Dodi’s eyes are wide, her jaw clenched. She turns to look at me. “Is this car stolen?”

I balk. “No. Grant lets me—”

“Did your ex-roommate report this car as stolen?” Her nostrils flare. “I’m practically an acquitted murderer , you fucking idiot!” she whisper-hisses out of the side of her mouth. “I have to toe the fucking line! I can’t be driving around in the middle of the night in a stolen supercar!”

“Sir!” Baby Cop shouts.

I unbuckle my belt and open my door. My fingers are clumsy.

“Don’t let him look in the trunk,” she hisses without moving her lips.

“Why not?”

“Are you—Jesus Christ, Jake,” she says, turning to me and dropping the ventriloquism act. “There’s a mutilated sex doll, a real human skeleton, an open bottle of wine— two hundred thousand American dollars —”

“The skeleton’s real?”

“I don’t know, okay! It was Facebook Marketplace—”

“Out of the vehicle, sir !” the police officer says.

Dodi lunges for my jacket front. “Zip your fucking coat! You still have blood on your shirt!” she hisses. “Can you try not to act like a fucking serial killer for once?”

I snatch my zip up to my chin and step out onto the road.

“Stand right there,” the cop says, pointing. He speaks into his radio some more, and I make out the words “canine” and “backup” and not much else. When he turns back to me, he’s revved up. He’s floating a foot off the ground. This right here is why he went to the police academy. It’s all been building to this moment.

“It smells like a dead body in there.” He’s delighted. Christmas has come…exactly on schedule.

“It’s rotten food,” I explain. “Some packaged meat leaked.”

He peers in the tinted rear passenger window and startles when he notices Cat slumped in the back seat.

“Why is there a minor in the back seat?”

Dodi stares at him in confusion. The sleeping kid is the most normal thing in my vehicle. Maybe he thinks he’s busted a human trafficking ring.

“That’s…our daughter.” It’s possibly the most awkward sentence I’ve ever uttered. I smile at him and channel happy family.

“I’m going to take a look in your trunk.”

“No!” Dodi calls out, and if the cop had a tail, he’d wag it.

“I don’t have to consent to that,” I say.

The gears whirl rapidly in the officer’s brain. He tips his head to the smashed taillight. “I’m thinking your car might need to be towed,” he says, standing in a plastic muscle man action figure stance with his arms bulldogged and his feet apart. He’s loving every second of this. He’s in control. He is God. He probably practices this pose in front of the full-length mirror of his closet every night, reciting his lines. Naked. License and registration. License and registration. License and—

“I would have to do an inventory of contents, if that’s the case,” he continues. “ Including whatever’s in the trunk.” It’s clear this moment of power will be an erotic memory for weeks.

Another patrol car pulls up behind his, “Santa Baby” blasting for a split second before the engine cuts. A man and a woman step out, and when Starsky sees their faces, it’s like someone shoved a pin into a plastic inflatable. He visibly deflates.

“Hiya, Pete,” the woman calls out.

Pete stiffens at the use of his given name. “Officer Stubbs,” he says pointedly. “Where’s the K9?” I can hear him using the letter and number shorthand in his head.

The other two officers exchange looks and Stubbs’s lips twitch. They’re older than Pete, and if Pete is a baby cop, this pair is smoking cigarettes behind the school bleachers. Stubbs beckons Pete, and Pete stiffens. She does it again, crooking her gloved fingers, and Pete dies a little. He glances at me and straightens up, hands on his belt, and swaggers over to them like he was headed that direction anyway.

“You’re not on patrol tonight,” Stubbs says conversationally, voice low in a bid to keep things private, but it’s a silent, holy night in this snow-dampered winter wonderland and I can make out every word. From where she’s sitting, Dodi has her ear craned to them through her open window too.

Baby Cop puffs up. “I don’t stop being an officer of the law at clock-out.”

“No, of course not. You just restlessly patrol the city, guarding the innocents from the lurking danger of busted taillights.”

“Suspected foul play,” Pete hisses.

Stubbs snaps her fingers. “Right! You wanted the dog.” She turns to her partner. “What could that mean, Amir? Drugs? Is someone having a white Christmas?”

My stomach drops out. Would Grant keep a baggy of nose candy stashed somewhere in one of his cars? He would. He fucking would—

“Dunno, Stubbs. Maybe…human remains?” Amir experiences an exaggerated lightbulb moment. “A…decapitated head? Wrapped up in Christmas paper?”

I glance at Dodi at the exact moment she glances at me.

“We are still waiting for the head to turn up,” Officer Stubbs agrees. She claps her hands. “Let’s call it in. Get the whole Homicide Department out to the scene in the middle of the night. Again. ”

Pete is practically vibrating with frustration. “For fuck’s sake, why am I the only one taking what’s clearly a Secret Santa copycat act seriously?”

Dodi’s mouth falls open.

“Whoever was behind that is a psychopath,” Baby Cop continues. “It was a practice murder. It’s going to be a real body next—”

The reason for Baby Cop’s vigilante patrol duty on Christmas Eve comes out. Stubbs adopts an exaggerated, hard-boiled movie cop voice. “Whoever it is, he’s methodical, disciplined, and worst of all, he’s learning .”

Amir matches her voice. “Perfecting his approach. Tweaking it. And watching us scramble to catch up in time for Christmas morning gift opening.”

Pete raises his voice to talk over them. “It’s the same creep who’s been leaving the sex dolls around town, and his fantasies are escalating!”

A hacking cough comes from Dodi’s direction, and I can’t look at her. I haven’t told her about the others. Only Anastasia and Una.

“I’ve entered the coordinates of every location where a doll was found into a map, and this street right here is part of his normal circuit! He’s clever, he’s meticulous, he’s always one step ahead—”

Stubbs carries on, dead serious, her TV cop voice gravelly from sleepless stakeouts and stale coffee. “You’re too close to this, sergeant! I’m taking you off the case!”

“Take some personal time! That’s an order!” says Amir.

Pete talks louder. “He has multiple vehicles— that’s why we can’t pin down the make and model—but there’s always a luxury car around when a doll appears. I’ve tracked down eyewitnesses and interviewed them on my own time—”

He’s obsessed with me. I risk a look and find Dodi staring at me with wide eyes, and I almost think…I want her to know about the others. It was so much work. It feels…flattering to know Baby Cop was watching. No one ever pays attention to me.

Stubbs’s eyebrows ratchet up. “You’ve gone rogue!” she snarls in pretend outrage, imaginary doughnut crumbs puffing out of her mouth.

Amir shakes his head in disgust. “He’s a loose cannon! He’s going to bring this whole detachment down with him!”

“Badge and gun, now!” Stubbs shouts.

“Oh, fuck you!” Pete hisses. He shoves my license and registration into Officer Stubbs’s hands and skulks back to his vehicle without a backward glance. Amir and Stubbs shake with suppressed laughter.

“This isn’t going to bring her back!” she calls out to Pete’s retreating form, and Amir doubles over.

Pete sits behind his wheel, sulking.

Officer Stubbs comes to stand about a dozen feet from me, feet apart, like we’re Wild West cowboys about to duel. I match her stance. She lifts one leg. I lift one leg. We stand balanced like a pair of flamingos.

“Nine steps, straight line, heel toe.”

I comply, coming to a stop in front of her. She lifts one finger, and I lift one finger too, and she rolls her eyes at my stupidity. I quickly drop my hand, and she drags her finger side to side in front of my face, watching my eye movements. She glances in the back seat and her grim face crinkles at the sight of Cat.

“Cutie,” she says, handing over my license and registration. “Can’t wait to break up her house party in ten years. Fix your damn taillight, and have a good holiday.”

She stumps back to her partner and mutters in her wisecracking movie cop voice, “I’m too old for this shit!”

When I slide back into the driver’s seat, Dodi is hyperventilating, tears pouring down her face. It takes me a second to realize she’s laughing.