A burst of static and angry words erupted from the radio clipped to the shoulder of the uniformed officer posted outside the bedroom door. The young policeman poked his head into the room and cleared his throat.
“Um,” he tried to look at me while he spoke, but his nervous eyes kept shifting over to Nicole. “Hoskins wants to know when you can get the, uh, suspect out of the room.”
“Can you give me a few more minutes?”
The officer retreated back into the hallway to relay my request. I couldn’t hear what Hoskins said in response, but the tone of the intemperate reply said enough.
“Um, sir? Hoskins said we need to clear out of the room in the next five minutes,” the policeman gritted his teeth. “Or he will have her removed forcefully, evidence be damned. His words, sir.”
I didn’t doubt for a second those were Hoskins words. I was only surprised that the message didn’t contain any more expletives. I imagined the young cop was probably uncomfortable repeating the message verbatim.
For the first time since I sat down, I took a good look around the room. The bedroom resembled a bachelor’s pad. The bed clothes were gray with a simple chevron pattern on the comforter. There was only a few pillows. Clothes were strewn around the room. A dresser in the corner had two drawers open, from which some shirts dangled out as if they had tried to escape. The windows were covered with louvered blinds the mauve color you see in apartments. There was a television mounted on the wall in a position that afforded the best view to a person laying where the dead body currently reposed. There was a cardboard cut out of a race car driver I didn’t recognize in the corner. Someone had placed a red baseball cap on the cutout’s head. White embroidery printed on the front of the cap read “Kiln Valley High Football.” In addition to the whiskey and cigarettes, the night stand on the corpse’s side of the bed held a NASCAR-themed alarm clock, loose change, and the remote for the satellite receiver connected to the TV on the wall.
There was scant evidence that a woman lived here at all. Amid the scattered laundry were panties and a couple bras. Some of the jeans were smaller, obviously the size for Nicole and not her husband. On the nightstand next to what must have been Nicole’s side of the bed there was a small bottle of perfume, a box of tissues, and a small picture frame containing a picture of her mother. Next to the picture frame was a plain alarm clock, the red numbers flashing “12:00” in counterpoint to the lights from the cop cars outside.
After my gaze swept across the room, it returned to Nicole’s face. I looked at her and suddenly I knew why I was there. I knew why she nearly called me instead of the police. I looked at her through the pall of cigarette smoke and I didn’t see the deranged killer Hoskins saw when he arrived on the scene. From where I sat, the bedroom window was behind her and the flashing lights from the emergency vehicles outside back-lit her hair. As the colors shifted from red to blue to white, Nicole’s face would shift as well. The face of the angry killer shifted to that of a wounded teenager to that of a terrified woman.
“I can help you,” I said.
“You’ve said that before, too,” Nicole said as she put the whiskey bottle down next to the pack of cigarettes.
“I know, I’m sorry. But if you don’t want the town glorifying him,” I gestured to the face under the pillow. “Then you’re going to have to let me help you. You’re going to have to listen to me. You’re going to have to talk to lots of people. Other cops, doctors, lawyers. There’s going to be a parade of people that want to talk to you. But the first person you need to talk to is me. Tell me what happened tonight.”
Nicole closed her eyes and for a moment, I thought she might pass out. She took a deep breath in through her nose, tipped her head back, and began her story.
“Every other week there would be something to set him off. A couple months ago a junior offensive tackle busted his knee while skateboarding. The next game, they lost to Pine View and when we got home he spent forty-five minutes berating me about how I had been letting myself go. Three weeks ago we were at the bar and he put money on the first three finishers at Daytona. One of the drivers crashed in the 409th lap. He paid his tab, no tip, and as we were leaving the bar, I could tell he was really drunk. Walking to the car I told him I should drive. He turned and sucker-punched me in the stomach. I fell to my knees and puked onto the asphalt. He said, ‘Looks like you’re not in any shape to drive.’”
Nicole opened her eyes and looked at me with a blank expression.
“Tonight he was pissed because the waitress at the wing shop forgot his extra ranch. We got home and he grabbed my ass as we walked into the bedroom. I have been fighting a cold and told him I was not feeling well but he didn’t give up. He turned me around to try to kiss me but I was in mid-sneeze. I blew snot and spit onto his shoulder and he backhanded me across the face. Then he went to bed and turned on Sports Center.”
Nicole’s face turned hard and the left corner of her upper lip lifted slightly giving her an evil sneer.
“He drank two pitchers of Kokanee and three shots of Fireball at the restaurant so I knew it was only a matter of time until he passed out. I went to the kitchen to make a cup of herbal tea. I sat at the table, let the steam drift across my face, and waited. When I heard the first snore, I nearly jumped out of my chair. It wasn’t the first time I waited for him to go to sleep before I went to bed.”
Nicole stopped to lick her lips and sit up straight.
“But I knew that tonight would have to be different. I knew that tonight I was going to do something drastic and that snore was like a starter pistol. I stood up and walked quietly to the bedroom door. He was dozing, slack-jawed in the light of the TV. He had opened a new bottle of whiskey and must’ve taken a hit before he laid back onto the pillow and fell asleep. I waited for a commercial break. Sometimes they had the power to wake him up but he continued to snore over the OxyClean guy’s pitch. I walked back to the kitchen and grabbed his keys from where he tossed them on the table. I walked out to the driveway and up to his ridiculous truck. I climbed up the rear passenger tire and into the bed. I used the key on his keyring to unlock the toolbox that sits up against the cab.
“A few weeks ago, we helped his buddy bring a new couch home from the store and they had used some kevlar straps to tie the giant leather sofa down. The couch was so fucking big that it stuck three feet out of the back of the truck. His friend had been worried the couch would fall out but my husband told him these straps were stronger than steel. I found the straps in the tool box and carried them back into the house.
“I stopped in the kitchen to put his keys back on the table and finish my tea. Then I walked to the bedroom door and watched him sleep a little longer. When the next commercial break came and went without rousing him, I took the straps to my side of the bed and unrolled them across the floor, under the frame of the bed. I walked over to his side, grabbed the slack, and carefully lifted the remaining length over his body and over to my side of the bed where the metal buckles waited on the floor.
“I ran the straps through the buckles and started to pull the lever on the upper one. I had forgotten how loud the ratchet mechanism was that kept the straps from unrolling and I was worried he’d wake up,” Nicole smiled a little.
“He didn’t wake up so I tightened the one that ran over his knees. When I had him cinched tight, I walked to his night stand, picked up the remote, and turned off the TV. He tossed his head from side to side but he didn’t wake up.
“I climbed on top of his chest and his eyes popped open. They were unfocused and wandered around the ceiling until they landed on my face. I felt the muscles in his chest shift as he tried to lift his arms. His eyes came into focus and looked at me, confused and angry. I could feel that the straps and my weight held him in place. I thought about sitting there for a while. I thought about taking is stupid Zippo and burning him. I thought about cutting him, emasculating him,” she shook her head and continued.
“But the idea of torturing him didn’t stay with me long. It seemed to be something he would do and that disgusted me. So I grabbed my pillow and I put it over his face. I planted both of my hands over it and I pushed with all my strength. I could hear him screaming through the pillow. The heat from his breath went through the stuffing and made my hands damp. His body bucked beneath me like we were having some kind of crazy sex. Soon, the pillow felt cool where his breath wasn’t warming it anymore. His muscles relaxed until he almost felt like he was asleep again. His legs jerked a couple times and I realized I could feel his heartbeat against my thighs. I thought it was my own, but when it started to slow I could tell it was his pulse. I felt the last few beats of is heart and then I felt the last of his muscles relax. I was afraid to let go of the pillow and I’m sure I held it there longer and harder than was necessary. I finally lifted my hands off of the pillow, tried to calm my own heartbeat, and that’s when I saw the smokes. You already know the rest.”
Nicole sniffed and looked around her room as if she suddenly realized where she was. She turned her head and looked at the pillow, which still covered her husband’s face. She tried to look away from it but ended up staring directly at the corpse’s white hand. The knuckles were scuffed, but bloodless. The fingers were tangled in the sheet. The hand seemed to be gripping the fabric tighter, clenching the linen as it had in the last moments before life completely left it. Nicole clenched her eyes shut and dropped her head to her chest.
I stood up and said, “I think it’s about time to get out of here.”
Nicole looked up at me, her red-rimmed eyes no longer looking angry but tired.
“Can you help me up? My ass hurts and my legs have fallen asleep.”
Why I Stayed by Joshua Kautzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.