Ghost Light (3 page)

Debbie shrugged and obviously wanted to say more, but she remained silent.

“I mean, Christ on a cross! I don’t see you out there looking for a job.”

Debbie looked down at the floor, twisting her hands together. “I thought we agreed that I wouldn’t look for work, not until Krissy was in school full time.”

“Oh, yeah—sure! Jesus
Christ
!” He pushed his plate of pizza angrily away from him so fast it shot off the edge of the table and landed face down on the floor, not far from Debbie’s feet. Slouching back in his chair, Alex eyed her angrily, breathing heavily through his nostrils.

“So
that’s
the level of appreciation I get for what I do for you, huh? You wait up ’till after fuckin’
midnight
just so you can start bitchin’ at me how I’m ‘never around.’ What is it? You begrudge me the little time off I get to spend with my friends? Is that it?”

Debbie shook her head tightly. “No,” she said, no more than a whimper. “But I—”

“But you
nothing
!” he said in a sing-song, pouty voice. Then he pounded the table again, even harder. “Christ, you get to fly around all goddamned day, doing whatever the hell you want, pissing away my hard-earned money. I don’t see where my going out for a few beers after work is asking all that much. Do you? ’Never around!’ Jesus
Christ
! You’re fuckin’ lucky I bother to come home at all, considering the bullshit I have to put up with from you!”

“Come on, Alex. Keep your voice down. You might wake up the kids.”

“Yeah—? Well, who gives a
fuck
about the kids! Fuck you
and
the kids! I tell you, I’m sick and fuckin’ tired of the way you lay this bullshit on me.
‘Never around
!’Christ, I’ve had it! Right up to
here
! “He made a quick cutting motion with his hand as if he were trying to slice his own throat. “I’ve fuckin’ had it!”

“Well then maybe I’ll do you a favor, and you won’t have to put up with me anymore,” Debbie said. The words seemed to tumble out of her mouth so fast Alex wasn’t exactly sure he’d heard her correctly. He sucked in a breath between his teeth and held it a moment, scowling at her.

“What’d you say?”

“I said, maybe you won’t
have
to put up with my shit anymore. Maybe I’m just as fed up with all of this as you are!” She swallowed noisily before adding, “Maybe I want out just as much as you do!”

“What’re you sayin’?”

Alex bobbed his head like a chicken and shifted forward in his chair, his fists tightening at his sides. Blood rose to his face in a hot rush.

“What the fuck are you saying?”

Debbie squared her shoulders, but Alex thought it looked like she was shivering. And he saw—
yes,
goddamnit
!—she
was
still smiling at him, smirking, like she had some huge, private joke. And in her eyes, he could see that she was laughing at him, laughing her mother-fucking ass off at him! Hell, she might look a little bit scared of him, but he’d just have to show her. He’d make damned sure she was scared of him! He leapt to his feet, kicking the chair back so it fell behind him as he glared at her, fuming with rage. His fists bobbed at his sides as if he were hefting bricks, testing their weight.

“Are you trying to tell me you want to leave?”

Debbie reached up and gingerly touched the red welt on the side of her face where he had slapped her. She nodded.

Alex stepped around the table moving slowly toward her, like a jaguar, stalking his prey. His wrists and forearms ached with a low, burning heat as he squeezed his fists tightly. He gritted his teeth, grinding them back and forth, bottling up the bellow of rage that was building up inside him.

“Do you think…” It took a great deal of effort to keep his voice steady. “Do you
actually
think that after all the years of putting up with your shit, that I’d let you walk out of here like—like
that
?” He snapped his fingers in front of her face, inches from her chin. She cowered away from him, her back arching over the kitchen sink. Her lower lip was trembling, and her eyes, round and glistening, reflected back two distorted images of himself as he loomed close to her face.

“Is that what you really think?” he hissed, smothering the last word with twisted laughter. “You really think you can just walk out on me and stick me with two kids to raise and an ass-high pile of bills?
Your
fuckin’ bills? Huh? Is that it?”

Debbie whimpered and shook her head, biting down hard on her lower lip. Her breathing was as fast as a frightened rabbit’s, hissing between her teeth.

Alex reached out and, almost gently, cupped the back of her head with one hand. Then he twined his lingers through her long, brown hair and pulled her forward, pressuring her until their noses almost touched. He felt a strong impulse to open his mouth wide and bite her, but instead he smiled, feeling wave after wave of exhilaration when he saw the look of stark terror in her eyes.

“Why, Debbie… Debbie darlin’,” he said in a low gravelly growl. “You know goddamned right well that I can’t let you walk out on me like that. No-fuckin’-way! Whatever gave you the idea that you could?”

“I—we—it’s just that—”

“Your sister! I’ll bet it was your fucking
sister
who put you up to this. She did, didn’t she?”

He balled her hair into his fist and pulled down, shaking her head roughly up and down, as if she were agreeing with him. A flood of tears streamed from Debbie’s eyes. Her lips and face were pale except for the bright red splotch on her cheek.

“
Didn’t
she?”

“… no …”

“Bullshit! I’ll bet my left ball she did. I’ll bet this whole fucking thing is something you and she cooked up, right?
Right
?”

He shook his head as though scolding a small child who had disappointed him.

“But you should have known that I wouldn’t let you do it. Why—hell, darlin’, my life would be a fuckin’ wreck without you. I’d miss your yummy home cookin’.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the pizza smeared on the floor. “And I’d miss the cute little way you wait up for me when I stay out late. And you know, the thing I’d miss most is the way you
fuck
me! I’d miss the cute little way you suck my dick.”

He twisted her hair around so her knees buckled and she had to kneel forward to try to stop the pain. Even so, tears filled her eyes and started streaming down her cheeks. Her lower lip was trembling, and anything she might have been trying to say was lost beneath the blubbering wail of pain coming from her.

“Why don’t you do that for me now, huh?” Alex said. His free hand went down to his crotch as he shifted his hips forward hard enough to knock her head back against the counter. “Why don’t you open wide and suck me dry?”

“… please….”

Alex laughed heartily as he looked down at the top of her head and, grabbing both of her ears, banged her face roughly against his crotch.

“Ah-hah, so you do want it! Don’t you? You want it so bad you’re beggin’ for it? Come on, then. Let’s do it! Let’s fuckin’-A do it!”

He released his grip on her hair and reached down to start unbuckling his belt. As soon as she was free, though, Debbie twisted to one side and started scrambling away from him on her hands and knees. Alex laughed, thinking she looked like a cat, trying to get traction on a slick tile floor. With a shout of rage, he grabbed her arm and tried to yank her to her feet, but she was dead weight and slipped from his grasp. She flopped back against the cupboard, her head lolling to one side as if her neck was no longer connected. Her lips moved. She seemed to be trying to say something as she looked vacantly up at him, but her voice was nothing but a strangled rattle in the back of her throat. A yellowish foam flecked her lips, which looked pale, almost white.

Alex took a step away from her to get better footing, but his foot slipped on the pizza he had dropped, and he flopped forward, slamming Debbie’s head back against the cupboard door. Pots and pans clattered inside the cupboard. Debbie looked at him, her eyes glazed as she exhaled noisily and silently slouched to one side. Disoriented and angry, Alex grabbed her by the shoulders before she could fall to the floor. He checked his footing and then, before he could think clearly about what he was doing, lifted her up to the level of the counter top and slammed her head hard against the edge. There was a heavy, crackling
thud
that sounded in Alex’s ears like a bagful of broken glass hitting the floor.

“There, goddamnit!” he shouted.

Panting heavily, he stood up and let her body slide back slowly onto the floor. He brushed his hands together, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he grinned viciously down at her. He hadn’t yet noticed the bright splash of blood that had squirted across the counter top.

“There, by Jesus!
That’ll
fuckin’ teach you to try ’n fuck with
me
, you bitch!”

He took a deep breath, and when his vision cleared, he saw the blood. An icy jolt traveled up his back to the base of his neck. Leaning forward, he looked closely and, without touching it, saw the deep, triangular indentation just above Debbie’s left ear. Pearly gray fragments of bone stuck out like teeth from underneath her hair, which was clotted with a thick wash of blood that dripped down onto her neck and shoulder, then to the floor.

“Oh, Jesus,” Alex muttered as he straightened up and took several unsteady steps backwards. He could see that Debbie wasn’t breathing, and her eyes were wide open, staring blankly at the floor.

“Oh, Jesus! … Oh,
shit!
”

3

“Well,” Detective Murray said solemnly, “we have reports from your neighbors on both sides of your house that they heard you and your wife arguing earlier tonight.”

Alex nodded agreement. He was sitting on the edge of a metal folding chair, his hands tight fists in his lap. The air-conditioner was running on high, so the squad room seemed arctic cold. At this late hour, the police station echoed with a deserted hollowness. He could see by the large clock on the wall that it was well past three o’clock in the morning. His head was pounding from all the beers he’d had that evening, but after the last two hours of interrogation, he thought he was completely sobered up. He would use the pain to help bring tears to his eyes. His body was trembling, and his breathing was high and fast. He hoped to hell the detective asking him these questions over and over would take all of this as proof that he was completely broken up over his wife’s senseless fatal accident. He had watched in numbed silence as the ambulance crew strapped her to the stretcher and wheeled her from the kitchen. One side of the sheet covering her face had a bright red splotch that had looked almost like a rose. As much as he hated to, for the sake of appearances he had to call Debbie’s sister and ask her to come over and stay with the kids while he went down to the police station and explained what had happened.

“Yeah, we’d had an argument,” Alex said. His voice was strained and raw. “About money. What else do married people argue about? Yesterday afternoon, she’d spent some of this week’s grocery money on sneakers for the kids, and I had thought she spent a little too much, so I kind of freaked out a little.”

“So tell me again—
exactly
—what happened?”

Alex took a shuddering breath and sighed. “Well, I called her from work, to tell her I was going out for a few drinks with some friends—”

“To the strip joint on Morrison Ave—Mark’s Showplace, correct?”

Alex nodded.

“She told me then that she had spent the money, and I got a little hot under the collar at her. We didn’t have an argument then or anything.”

“You mean over the phone.”

“Yeah. I just said something like we’d talk about it when I got home.”

“So then, when you came home—around midnight, right?”

Alex nodded and sniffed.

“Once you got home, that’s when you started arguing, right?”

Alex felt a flush of anger rise under his collar. He hated the way this detective was grinding at him, making him say the same thing over and over again. Shit what was his name? Murphy? Murray? Something like that. He wasn’t thinking straight! How could he keep his story straight if he couldn’t even remember this fucker’s name? The cop had already written everything down in his notebook when he first took his statement. Why the hell did he have to keep at him like this? Alex felt confident that he could hold it together if he could just take his time and think things through. He had to play the shocked, grieving husband, but he was having trouble concentrating with this asshole getting on him like this.

“Well—yeah. Maybe. We’d had some angry words. Nothing major. I mean, I earn a damned good paycheck, working out at the airport, but these days—hell, who can make money stretch far enough, huh? So—yeah. I told her that I thought she had spent a little too much for sneakers, and then she told me she’d also gone out to lunch that afternoon with her sister.”

“And did that upset you?”

Alex fought back the rush of anger he felt just thinking about Cindy, Debbie’s sister, but he was positive it didn’t show. His face remained a twisted, grief-stricken wreck as he squinted his eyes and forced the tears to flow from his eyes.