Full Circle (19 page)

Finally he fell to his knees, his hands up to protect his bleeding head.

How many nights have I spent in front of the TV, watching the heroine in some dumb made-for-TV movie hit the bad guy and run? How many times have I heard my husband grunt and say, ‘Jesus, finish him off, stupid.’ Enough.

I hit him again and again and again, until his entire body fell to the floor. And then I hit him again. And again. Until the butcher block slab split in two in my hands, the matching hickory knives falling on the body on my kitchen floor. I stood up and looked down at the man. His face was so messed up I doubt if I’d recognize him if I knew him. I kicked him, mostly to see if he was conscious. He wasn’t. I wondered if I’d killed him. But only for a moment.

There was someone else upstairs with my kids. I grabbed the flashlight out of the drawer and raced for the dining room where the gun had flown earlier. I picked it up and flashed the light on it.

My father had shown me a gun when I was a teenager. He’d bought it because two houses in the neighborhood had been burglarized. He showed me the safety and how to remove it. He showed me how to hold it and how to fire. Two days later, Mother made him sell it. But I remembered.
Thank you, Daddy
, I thought.

I put one of the smaller knives in the back pocket of my blue jeans and held the gun in both hands, the flashlight under my left arm, and headed for the front of the house and the stairs. I froze as the front door slowly began to open.

ELEVEN

E.J., THE PRESENT

I was hysterical. Partly from fright at what the girls were doing, and partly because it was a front seat viewing of the Keystone Cops. I laughed, suppressed a scream, and laughed again. Then I thought I might puke. While I was suppressing that, Lotta got the car under control and took off. She’d turned a corner before I even got myself together enough to follow her.

I floored the Volvo and shot around the corner, just in time to catch her turning left on a busy street. I heard a screech of tires and got to the corner in time to see the low-rider taking off and a car from the south and one from the north both turned slightly sideways to get out of Lotta’s way. While they were figuring out what to do, I shot between them and headed after the low-rider, which I’d seen taking a right-hand turn three blocks up.

I got to the street where they’d turned, took my own right, and couldn’t see hide nor hair of them. I slowed and looked down side streets. The first was a dead end and I didn’t see the low-rider parked anywhere, the second was too short to have done them any good, but the third led to an-other major street. I headed down that, getting my speed back up.

GRAHAM, THE PRESENT

‘That one chick is really hot!’ Hollister said, looking across the stadium at the girls drinking wine coolers.

‘Hey man!’ I said, as sternly as I could. ‘We’re supposed to be talking about how to get this stalker asshole! Not staring at chicks!’

Hollister shook his head. ‘Sorry, man. Can’t help it. If there are chicks, Hollister is going to stare at them.’

I turned to look at the other guys in my crew. ‘When did he start the third-person crap?’

‘About three weeks ago,’ Leon said. ‘He thinks it makes him sound cool.’

‘It doesn’t,’ Tad said.

‘I know,’ Leon said.

‘OK!’ I said, or shouted, actually. This wasn’t going as planned. ‘Listen. All of you! I need your help.’ I took a deep breath. ‘This could be dangerous. Myra Morris is already dead. This guy is not above killing all of us.’ I said it, even though I sorta doubted it. But this speech called for, well, drama. ‘If any of you feel you can’t handle this, then please say so now. And just walk away.’ They all looked at each other, waiting for one to move so they all could. Nobody moved. I had them. ‘Then you’re with me.’ I put my arms around the two guys nearest me, then they pulled in the third. We huddled like a slightly anemic football team. ‘You guys are my crew,’ I said in a soft voice. ‘Now and forever!’ I said loudly.

And my three best buds shouted, ‘Now and forever!’ at the tops of their voices. This shit was way cool.

ELIZABETH, THE PRESENT

Lotta got out of the car on the dead-end street where we were hiding, creeping to the back of the low-rider, and looked around it to see if the Volvo was in sight. It wasn’t and she ran back to the car and backed it out of its hiding place behind a bright-yellow Hummer. We went back to the street and turned in the opposite direction of the way we’d been going.

‘We lost her!’ Megan shouted, holding up a hand for a high five. Alicia slapped her palm, but Lotta was too busy trying to keep control of the growling beast we were in, and I was too anxious.

‘Now the bowling alley, right?’ asked Lotta.

‘Right!’ I said, sitting back and trying to figure out where to go from there.

BLACK CAT RIDGE, TEXAS, 1999

Willis stuck his head around the door. ‘E.J.?’ he called softly.

I grabbed his arm and pulled him inside, slamming a hand over his mouth. ‘They’re here!’ I whispered. ‘One’s upstairs and one’s in the kitchen.’

He looked wide-eyed toward the kitchen. I shook my head. ‘It’s OK, I think I killed him.’ I caught a giggle coming halfway out of me. I hoped to hell it was just nerves. The only other alternative was I was a secret homicidal maniac.

He removed my hand. ‘Baby, are you OK?’

I nodded. He looked down at the gun in my hand. ‘Where did that come from?’

I nodded toward the kitchen. ‘Willis, one’s upstairs with the kids.’

Slowly he looked toward the top of the stairs. ‘Jesus,’ he breathed. He took the gun from my hand. ‘Does the phone work?’

I ran as quietly as I could into the living room and picked up the receiver. Dead. I ran back to Willis and shook my head.

With his mouth close to my ear, he said, ‘Go next door and call Luna.’

I shook my head. ‘I’m not leaving you.’

‘Screw that! Just do it.’ His voice was soft, but his grip on my arm wasn’t.

I moved quickly into the kitchen, skirting around the body on the floor, and grabbed the Lesters’ house key off the ring inside the Tupperware cabinet. Skirting the body once again, I made it to the back door, gingerly flipped back the deadbolt, and slid out into the darkness.

I made a dash for the Lesters’ back door, the key hitting everywhere but the keyhole as I fumbled in the dark. Finally it went in and I turned the key. The blow to my back shoved me through the door and on to the floor. I heard the door slam as I looked back. A man’s outline stood in silhouette against the lightly curtained window of the door. Was this the man who’d been with my kids, or was this a third member of the group?

‘You’re a hard bitch to kill,’ he said.

I sat up and scooted backwards, quickly blocked by the legs of the kitchen table.

He laughed. It wasn’t a particularly friendly laugh. ‘No place to run, baby, no place to hide. Come to daddy,’ he cooed.

He’d taken his first step towards me when the door behind him crashed forward off its hinges, landing on the man with the gun. The gun skittered across the floor, but the bad guy wasn’t going for it. He was under the door and Willis’s two hundred and something pounds were standing on top of him.

Jumping to my feet, I asked Willis, ‘Are the kids OK?’

He nodded. ‘Sound asleep.’

‘You sure they’re asleep, not . . .’

Again he nodded. ‘I used Graham’s flashlight. They’re OK.’

Willis leaned over from his stance on the broken door and switched on the kitchen light. I went for the gun where it lay on the floor, next to the refrigerator. I handed it to Willis, who got off the door. I flipped the broken wood and glass of our prisoner. ‘Call the cops,’ Willis said.

I ran to the wall phone and dialed Luna’s home number, which I’d certainly had the time to memorize. A sleepy voice answered, ‘Luna.’

‘Hey, it’s E.J.’

‘Jesus. A body could get tired of you.’

‘Two guys broke into my home tonight. I think I killed one of them. The other one we have. He was after our kids. Would you like to do something about this?’

‘Where are you now?’

‘At the Lesters’ house.’

‘What in the hell are you do— never mind. Who’s with the kids?’

My heart began to race. ‘Nobody,’ I said as I dropped the phone and ran back to my house. I took the butcher knife out of my back pocket where I’d put it what seemed like hours before, and I ran up the stairs, the flashlight still in my hand. The kids were asleep. No one was in the house. Unless they were hiding in the attic crawl space. I checked. They weren’t.

Going to the back door again, I met Willis and Mr X coming in. Willis flipped on the kitchen light. ‘They’d turned off the main switch at the breaker. I turned it back on.’

I didn’t look behind me at the mess I’d made on the kitchen floor. Instead I said, ‘Should I get the kids up?’

Willis thought a moment. ‘No. Just check on them again.’

I nodded and went back upstairs, turning on the overhead lights this time to make absolutely sure. Still they slept, no bloodstains or bullet holes, all three little chests moving up and down in a natural sleep rhythm.

By the time I got back downstairs, I could hear the sirens turning on to our street. I went to the front door and opened it. Luna’s private car, an antique Chevy Malibu, pulled in first, followed by two patrol cars and an ambulance. Well, I thought, I finally got somebody’s attention. That’s when I sat down on the first step of the stairs and started bawling. And that’s how Luna found me, crying my eyes out, holding a butcher knife in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

She knelt down in front of me. ‘The kids . . .’ she started.

I nodded. ‘They’re OK,’ I got out. I pointed towards the kitchen. ‘They’re in there. The dead one. And the live one. With Willis.’

She left me, leading her troops towards the kitchen. I sat on the step for only a few minutes when it dawned on me that the live one might tell Luna something. Something important. I asked myself if I could stand being in the same room with the body I’d created. I answered myself that I could.

I went into the kitchen. Luna was supervising the cuffing of the live one. I got my first look at him in the light. He was a scrawny guy in his late twenties, with a weasely face – a face I’d never seen before.

The paramedics knelt by the other intruder, who suddenly moaned. I leaned up against the wall and felt my body relax. I hadn’t killed him. Thank God. I hadn’t killed the son of a bitch. Gingerly, I took a peek over the counter at the mess I’d created on my sparkling clean tile. I was right. I wouldn’t be able to recognize this one if I knew him. I suppressed an urge to gag and leaned back against the wall. At least he was alive. There was that.

One of the uniforms handed Luna a wallet he’d taken from the guy when he’d frisked and cuffed him. Luna opened it. ‘Larry Douglas.’ She smiled. ‘Well, Larry, looks like you two picked the wrong family to mess with this time.’

E.J., THE PRESENT

I hit Main Street going forty miles an hour, taking a fast left, anxious to find the girls. That’s when I heard the ‘woop-woop’ of the cop car behind me. Cursing a blue streak, I pulled over and waited for the officer to get to me.

Just as he did, the dark blue streaked with flames Chevy made a left in front of me on to Main Street, heading south. I lowered my window quickly. ‘I’ve got to catch that Chevy!’ I yelled at him. ‘Call Elena Luna! I’m her neighbor! She’ll know!’ I called to him as I hit the accelerator and took off.

I was hot on their trail when I realized the officer I’d talked to only moments before either hadn’t heard my last comment, or didn’t care. I was cut off from the front by a police car, penned in at the back by a police car, and had one a couple of inches from the driver’s door of the Volvo. Guns were pointed at me. ‘Well, shit,’ I said to myself.

ELIZABETH, THE PRESENT

‘The cops got Mom!’ Megan yelled from the back seat.

I turned around from my shotgun seat in time to see the officers drawing their weapons. I wasn’t too worried about it. Mom seemed to have a get-out-of-jail-free pass by having Elena Luna as a friend. I mean as far as minor infractions go. Which got me to thinking: If we killed this stalker guy, would we all get off? I thought on that for a while until Lotta pulled into the parking lot. I checked my watch. Six-thirty. Daylight savings time meant it wouldn’t get dark until well after eight. We’d have daylight to do some searching around here – and the cover of darkness for any real clandestine searching. Things were working out well.

Lotta pulled into a parking spot fairly close to the front of the bowling alley and cut the engine. We all sat there for a quiet minute staring at the entrance. Then Lotta rolled her window down and we all followed suit. It was getting ‘don’t leave your dog in the car’ hot in there. With the windows down we could all breathe a little better. ‘Now what?’ Lotta asked.

I looked around the parking lot. I didn’t see any motorcycles in the lot. ‘We go in?’ I said, not liking the question mark sound that came out of my mouth. I would have liked to have been a little more assertive.

BLACK CAT RIDGE, TEXAS, APRIL 2009

On this particular Saturday night in April, Graham Pugh found himself in rather dire circumstances. After a fiasco at the bowling alley that had led him to run for his life through the back alleys of Codderville, he had found himself the guest – at gunpoint – of a car full of young Hispanic men taking a leisurely low-rider spin through town. They had stopped only twice, once to get some soda and snacks from the Stop N Go, and once to get their cousin Lotta from her job at the KFC. As the car was crowded with way too many people, Graham happily found himself with Lotta on his lap. As he was falling in love, the low-rider cruised by a local hangout, the Pizza Garden, where Graham saw something out of the corner of his eye. When he registered what it was, he yelled, ‘Stop!’