Chapter 42
Mae stared unseeingly at the glass of milk before her at the kitchen table, mind reeling like a punch-drunk boxer (not a far stretch), veering off into the past, wondering how she got to be right there right then. She automatically brought the plates of lasagna to the sink and scraped the food into the disposal. Her upper left cheek throbbed a wicked pain. Her right ear was numb, which was probably a good thing. She felt her right eye beginning to swell shut. After placing the dishes in the washer she put the warm casserole dish from the oven into the fridge. Her purse sat on the counter. She went inside it and grabbed the large bottle of nearly-empty Ibuprofen, poured four or five in her palm and popped them, chased them with tap water cupped in her hands. With her burnt tongue she flicked at the many flakes of cooked skin at the roof of her mouth.
“Get your ass up here!” Trent yelled from upstairs. It sounded distant, but not nearly as distant as she’d prefer; not continents distant. “We’re having sex before bed!”
“Okay, sweetie!”
She spied Trent’s keys on the counter. A more conspicuous sight there was none, even though she had no idea why just yet. Had this been a dream, there might be a celestial beam of light shining down upon them. Only one key on the ring meant anything to her. It was a black key with a Dodge Ram logo on it. Their only vehicle. She resented Trent for disallowing her to have a license and her own car. She wasn’t granted that privilege, that freedom. She was given a ride to and from work because that’s how Trent wanted it. As she stared at the keys on the counter, she was energized by a sudden desire to take the keys, get in the Dodge Ram and drive as far as she could. Till the truck ran out of gas. Where would she go from there? Did it matter? She’d be away from Trent. Till he found her. Then it would be trouble. Red Trouble. And finding her would be easy for someone with his cunning. Her cell phone was GPS tracked, so she couldn’t bring her phone. She couldn’t use their ATM card or he’d know where she was. She could withdraw the max allowed down the street and then head off. He’d report the truck stolen. She’d have to be long gone by then and need some good luck to boot. Good luck had never been her thing. She couldn’t escape the thought, it beckoned her. It was now or never, as Elvis had sung.
“Fucking shit, Mae! You coming or what?”
“Just cleaning up the kitchen! Be there in a minute!”
She snatched the keys (energizing her to very core), purse, and entered the laundry room. Pancho. She couldn’t leave Pancho. She strode into the living room and scooped him up, hurried back to the laundry room. Quietly she opened the door into the garage, hit the lights. Her heart hammered. Adrenaline surged through her veins, and it felt good. Fucking damn good. She held Pancho in one hand and opened the cab door of the Ram. She sat Pancho on the seat beside two large industrial-strength black garbage bags. She didn’t know what was inside them, yet somehow she sensed what they were. She resisted the urge to feel through them. The odor was there, if only she’d register it. Pancho jumped out of the cab and ran inside the house. Mae didn’t care. She stared at the two bags. Two lumpy bags. One particular lump was fluted; four digits. Fingers? She pressed the bag ever so slightly against a digit with a small protruding band, and traced around it. A ring. With a numbness that could only come from severe shock, she closed the door, extinguished the lights, went through the laundry room into the kitchen.
He murdered Mom and Dad. He murdered whomever that is in the truck. Who else did he kill? Is he the SacTown Slayer? Probably. He’ll kill me, anyway. Just get it over with. Why put off the inevitable? Maybe I’ll see Mom and Dad in Heaven. The idea delivered her into awareness. I can tell them how sorry I am! Mom will embrace me, cry on my shoulder like she did so many times, and forgive me. Forgive me for bringing Trent into our lives.
She selected the largest knife from the kitchen drawer and headed for the stairs.
“Coming!”
Chapter 43
She wouldn’t stand a chance at overcoming Trent, but damned if she was going to die without taking that monster with him. She owed her parents that much. They’d still be alive if it wasn’t for her. It was a realization new to her, one that panged her heart to no end, that she was responsible for their deaths.
She shed her shirt as she mounted the stairs, wrapped it loosely around the knife, concealing it. She evaluated it: looked like a shirt hiding a knife. Down the hall their bedroom door was open, lights on. She couldn’t see inside the room from her angle.
“Horny, sweetie?” she called out toward the bedroom. She sat the knife and shirt down and dropped her pants.
“What the fuck’s taking so long? Yeah, I’m horny.”
Though she couldn’t yet see him, she pictured him naked on the bed, muscles flexed, erection in hand. Arousing himself to speed things up once she arrived. With the wadded up pants and shirt, the knife wasn’t discernible. She figured she’d only get one chance at this, and what hung in the balance was life or death. The crux of it all was that she moments away from finally attaining her freedom, and that freedom would come whether she succeeded or not, at the ultimate price of his life or hers. If she survived she’d gain her freedom from Trent; if she failed and perished, she’d gain her freedom from Trent. When put like that, she couldn’t lose. She grinned at her blessed fortune, for the opportunity that she was a dozen steps away from capitalizing on.
There was no room for error. Trent was a strong and wily man. She needed the element of surprise. And she’d need to stun him, if at all possible. Element of surprise. Stun him. Element of surprise. Stun him.
Then it came to her: her naked body. Her bare body was the only thing she could recall that stole his attention in full. She unhooked her bra, let it fall to the floor, slid out of her panties—panties with an embroidered Trent scrawled across the face of them; an anniversary present given to her years ago. She’d never let his noxious name touch her body ever again, especially in a place so sacred as that.
Why can’t I be on my period? she lamented. It would aid this plan tremendously, and spare her an abundance of razor-sharp pain. She resigned to the certainty that nothing in life is easy, and every great reward is beholden to the sacrifice put into it. This was going to be a dear sacrifice, with a reward surely as sweet as a thousand I love you’s from any man on earth not Trent.
She was just outside their bedroom door, heart palpitating.
Let the sacrifice begin.
She extracted the knife from the jumble of clothes and quickly carved from left wrist to elbow, deep enough to gush blood instantly, while hopefully narrowly avoiding a main artery. The pain wasn’t as severe as she had anticipated. Adrenaline? Knowing you’re about to die? Yes and yes. She needed more blood. Much more. Thicker blood. She made a deep diagonal cut from her left side mid-abdomen up between her breasts and clear to her right shoulder. Twenty-four inches of bright white pain, adrenaline be damned. But the pain from bloodletting served a secondary purpose, one nearly as important as the primary: it galvanized her. Her mind was as sharp as the blade in her hand. Blood seeped down over her right breast and stomach in a thick sheet, something like a liquidy cherry Fruit Rollup. She cupped a hand and swiped some oozing blood, smeared it over her left breast. There was enough blood to create a veritable shirt of blood. Blood from her forearm gash ran down her hand and dripped onto the carpet from her adorned ring finger. She took a second to appreciate the symbolism of the blood dripping off the princess-cut two carat diamond; a ring once representing the informal oath Till death do us part, and now representing precisely the same, only the intentions and means had changed.
She worried that she may have overdone the injuries. In all likelihood, she had fatally overdone them. There was no time to worry about that. She’d have to stifle the hemorrhaging immediately after dealing with Trent, if she lived to do so. She gathered her pile of clothes with the knife hidden inside and entered the bedroom after a deep nervous breath.
Chapter 44
Her boyfriend of five long years,
five painful hate-filled years lay naked on the bed, stimulating himself, just as she had envisioned. Could Trent’s Achilles’ heel really be his predictability? She was almost to the foot of the bed when he took notice of her. He sat bolt upright in a sheen of sweat from masturbatory exertion, imbibed in disbelief the wretched sight of his broken angel. His beautiful Mae, naked as the day she entered this world, stood dripping blood from chest and arm and seemingly a dozen other places, as if someone doused her with a bucket of red paint. But Trent knew better. He was intimately familiar with this shade of red.
“What the fuck?”
There was no anger in his voice. She liked her odds when she heard it. He was confused, concerned, maybe even pained. The innumerable bruises he had inflicted upon her were one thing (they were from him) but now his property had been maliciously debased by an unknown source, and that was anything but okay. It was fucking light-years from okay. Occupying his conscious thought in addition to confusion and concern was now anger, and nothing clouds judgment quite like it, something Mae had been banking on since the idea’s moments-ago conception.
She passed the foot of the bed, between wall and bed-side. Trent’s wide eyes raked over her bleeding body. His attention didn’t draw to the knife that came into view as her clothes fell to the floor. As he watched in horror blood dripping from her left hand, her right hand was thrusting forward, moving her queen to checkmate. Trent’s focus turned to the knife-wielding hand as its tip punctured left-center neck. A third of the blade’s nine inches buried into his throat, severing his carotid artery and hitching on his vertebrae. He never said a word. A creature so vile and corrupted as he, it was only fitting that the last word he uttered in this world was fuck.
Chapter 45
Amber was dialing nine-one-one seconds after Mae casually mentioned the dead body in Trent’s truck. It wasn’t debated. Tag was reeling from his new reality, that of who was likely the deceased in the truck. “There’s been a murder,” Amber said to emergency operator. “The body is in a white Dodge Ram parked at Diamond Smiles in Oroville.”
“Might as well call for an ambulance, too,” Tag said with a broken voice.
Amber requested an ambulance and gave her address.
“He’s going to kill us,” Mae said. A mantra she had been recycling without end.
“No, Mae. Nobody’s going to kill us,” Amber asserted. “It’s over. The police will be here. Trent will go to jail. It’s over.”
Tag left the kitchen in tears. He had presentiments of walking into a morgue to identify a body, Kade’s body.
The EMT wouldn’t allow Amber in the back of the ambulance, so she followed them to the hospital, Tag sitting beside her in his own little world. “You don’t know it’s Kade,” she said hopefully.
“It’s Kade,” he said solemnly. “Kade died for what little he knew, and didn’t know. Or maybe Trent killed him just to set an example to us, what happens if you don’t obey him.”
“You give him too much credit. If it really is Kade, he was probably just a victim of circumstance, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Don’t forget that, that psychopath’s don’t need reasons to do what they do.”
“He’s no psychopath. What he is, all he is, is evil.”
* * *
Tag and Amber refused to leave Mae’s side at the hospital. They observed a doctor administer her a blood transfusion, stitch her arm and chest, and conduct a series of tests. By some miracle, Mae had avoided severing any major arteries last night (which isn’t to say that she hadn’t struck them in varying degrees). It was late morning when they arrived at Enloe Hospital, and early evening when they departed. Mae was released from the hospital following an MRI that showed her cheek bone to have sustained but a hair-line fracture, which was the outcome the doctor had been hoping for.
Before the three made it to the blue Honda parked in the vast Enloe parking lot, the first of many news vans arrived on scene, which seemed a bit drastic to Tag and Amber, having no knowledge of Trent’s murder. Mae was taken into custody and brought to Chico Station where she was questioned (Tag and Amber tailed the cop car, went inside the station alongside Mae). Her mental state was dismal at best, her answers convoluted and paranoid. It was there that Tag and Amber learned that Trent Blackwood had been found slain at his residence. They were stunned. Had Mae killed Trent? Why didn’t she say so? She wouldn’t shut up about Trent coming to kill them. Had she lost her mind?
Tag and Amber were asked to leave by the O.I.C., officer in charge, so that Mae might be questioned in private. The two wanted to sit in on the interrogation, or questioning (depending on the cops’ unknown level of suspicion toward Mae), but wasn’t afforded that privilege. They surmised that due to Mae’s fragile mental state that she’d be unable or at the very least unwilling to offer a debriefing on the officer’s line of inquiry, which did end up being the case. The answers to the questions on record must have gone in Mae’s favor because she was released from their custody. The chief detective conferred with Amber and Tag before leaving, handed them a business card and wondered if they’d be available to interview over the next couple days, which he felt could aid their investigation. Sensing their horror, he allayed their fears by stating that they knew Mae was innocent, that he couldn’t fathom charges being brought up against her. Tag thought it was all a show (the pageantry of the police never ends) as indicated by the detective taking their personal information and saying expect a phone call tomorrow.
Regardless, there were plenty of reasons to be optimistic about things.
* * *
A part-time bartender filled in for Tag that Friday evening. Amber had called her employer hours earlier and discoursed her grave situation to her supervisor. She’d be due back to work on Monday. It was Amber’s idea to get the hell out of Chico for a night or two, so that evening the three rented a hotel room in the little town of Paradise, just outside of Chico. They brought Pancho along hoping he’d comfort Mae, who remained adamant that Trent was coming to get them.
The first night at Paradise Inn Mae didn’t utter a word. Not even nonsense about Trent. She lay face down on the bed and wept more often than not. She refused food and drink. Tag and Amber slept together in one of two double-beds. They agreed to give Mae space, let her sort some things out on her own; she’d talk when she was good and ready.
Sleep was hell. Mae would start bawling at random intervals throughout the night, waking Amber and Tag from their half-sleep state. During one of her more violent outbursts, Amber tried coaxing Mae into a discussion. Mae ignored her, wept on.
The next morning was heavy on the coffee. The Mr. Coffee that the room provided wouldn’t cut it—room service brought two silver carafes and a dish of cream and sugar, three mugs. Tag and Amber considered it progress when Mae accepted a proffered cup of coffee. More progress was made when she petted Pancho. That afternoon Mae got off the bed and went to the bathroom. They heard the shower turn on. Tag stayed behind as Amber hastened her way to the nearest clothing store and bought the first pair of sweat pants and tee-shirt she laid eyes on, a pair of panties and bra (thirty-four C, a lucky guess). It wasn’t a comely outfit, but it would be comfortable and God knew Mae could use the comfort. She made it back as Mae was drying off, tapped on the door. Mae nervously asked who it was.
“It’s Amber. I have clothes for you. Fresh, clean, comfortable clothes.”
“Who’s with you?”
“Just me.” A pause, then the door opened. Mae was wrapped in a towel.
“Come in.”
“I don’t have to, I just wanted to give these to you.”
She handed the bag over to Mae. Mae insisted she come in. Amber closed the door behind her. Mae locked it before dumping the contents of the bag onto the Formica counter. “I’m sorry for involving you,” Mae said as she sorted through the garments.
“Don’t be sorry. Really. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
Mae removed her towel shamelessly—a disregard for the bo
dy that she ascribed no value to, other than its ability to captivate Trent—and handled the panties, bit off the tag. Amber gawked at her bare body, and not for the reason she would have guessed on another day under another circumstance. A stitched scar like a three-foot-long millipede slanted across her torso. There was a sobering plentitude of bruises across her body, most of which had yellowed with age. There were old scars, as well, one of which was over her heart, as if she had heart surgery some time ago. Amber would never look at Mae with a lustful eye again. It was all she could do to keep from crying. But she wouldn’t cry, refused to cry. She would remain strong for Mae.
“I killed him,” she said and stepped into her panties.
“You did the right thing. You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded. “But I didn’t kill him in self-defense. He thought we were going to have sex. I stuck a knife in his throat. I’ll go to prison. And you know what? I think I’m okay with that. It’ll be better than how I lived before.”
“You are not going to prison, believe-you-me. There won’t be any charges brought up against you. Can I ask you something?”
Mae bit the price-tag off the sweat pants and nodded. “Tag and I have been wondering about it. Maybe you told the police—probably you told the police—but yesterday morning when you found me at Diamond Smiles, that was the morning after what had happened at your house. After that asshole got what he deserved. Where were you between? Why did you…?” She sighed, frustrated at her inability to express her thoughts in a cohesive question. “I don’t understand.”
“I’d have went to your place if I knew where you lived. I drove to Diamond Smiles and waited for you.”
“That night? You slept in the truck overnight?”
“I didn’t sleep. It was only a few minutes.”
“It was overnight, hun.”
“Only a few minutes,” Mae insisted.
Chapter 46
Mae had no idea how much money Trent was worth, didn’t figure it mattered much anyway. But there’s a little thing called common-law marriage that she hadn’t heard of—not as it pertains to the legal ramifications, anyway. Five years living together in a union qualified if certain measures were met. It would take a lawyer and a few calendar pages before she’d get what she had coming to her, which by all estimates was a hundred-thousand and change. More than that was the house that was bought and paid for by Trent’s mother. Mae had no intention of living in that hell house so tainted with nightmarish memories, so after selling it she’d be roughly a half a million dollars the richer after taxes. That was down the road, though. For the time being she had a checkbook and debit card and access to enough money to get her own apartment in Chico. She had no friends other than Amber—still getting to know Tag—so she sought an apartment in the same complex as Amber and put a deposit on a place two doors down from her. She’d have to wait three days for it, but that was fine. Amber insisted she stay at her place for the time being. Amber even offered to sleep on the couch, but Mae thought that was stupid and shared the bed with her. With a giggle, Amber requested that Mae wear a ski jacket to bed that first night: Mae was puzzled.