The Neighbors (20 page)

This time he didn’t pull away.

R
ed and Harlow’s wedding was small, but Harlow insisted on buying an extravagant dress anyway. She walked down the aisle in a fairy-tale gown billowing outward like Cinderella’s dress, with a train nearly six feet long. It was then, seeing her for what felt like the first time, that Red Ward knew he was in over his head. Despite meeting her in the big city, Red was a country boy. He lived the simple life, didn’t need much to be happy. Harlow was his polar opposite. She came from affluence, loved expensive things, and though she had never come out and said it, Red knew that she expected him to provide her with the perfect life.

Soon after they were married, Red found himself committed not only to his new wife, but to a baby on the way. Harlow had been over the moon about the unexpected news. She called their pregnancy a “happy accident” and spent hours in department stores, gazing at tiny pink dresses and bibs that read
Mommy’s Little Girl
.

But a little girl hadn’t come. Harlow named her baby Isaac Anthony—a strong biblical name—and tried to smile through her disappointment.

Red didn’t notice his wife’s disenchantment right away. With a young family to take care of, he didn’t have time for anything but work—and waiting tables at the pizza joint wasn’t going to cut it. He threw himself into supporting his wife and child, trading his apron and dishrag for a pair of slacks. He began selling insurance door-to-door, hating every second of it. Corporate life was his ultimate nightmare.

Despite her initial optimism, motherhood wasn’t a good fit for Harlow either—at least, not when it came to raising a little boy. Depressed, she wept when Isaac wept. She abandoned him in his crib when he wouldn’t sleep; cursed him when he needed to be changed. For the first year of little Isaac’s life, Harlow was hard-pressed to admit she loved him, and the fact that Red loved their son dearly only seemed to make her resent Red as well. Like a king demanding a son to be an heir to the throne, Harlow was the queen who required a princess, the fairest in all the land.

When Harlow discovered that she was pregnant again, she was ecstatic. For the first time in Isaac’s young life, he had a happy, spirited mother who took him to the park and showed him off to the women at church. She bought him all new outfits and even organized a birthday party when Isaac turned two, and Isaac was the happiest two-year-old in all of Kansas City.

But at the height of her optimism, the world came to a standstill.

On a clear summer morning, Harlow awoke with a head full of plans, but her day was stilted before it began. Pulling the sheets aside, she stared wide-eyed at a scene that wouldn’t have fazed her had it not been her own blood. The sheets, her nightgown, her legs, even her arms, were streaked with gore redder than Danny Wilson’s blood. She could hardly scream when she realized what it was.

The baby was gone.

It had been a girl.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Mickey Fitch had insomnia. He glared at the glowing digital readout of the alarm clock as though it were to blame for his inability to dream. It wasn’t even eight yet, and there he was, staring up at the ceiling, his eyes peeled wide open, his hair sweaty and plastered to his forehead.

He knew why he’d woken up so early, but he didn’t want to admit it—not to himself, not to anyone. It pissed him off, because for all these years he hadn’t taken much issue with his employment. He had been able to mentally distance himself from it all. He did it to preserve himself, did it to survive; but then Andrew Morrison showed up and the whole thing came apart. He’d spent years repressing his guilt, but now all of those ugly emotions were bubbling up to the surface. He had to ask himself: Was Drew really that different from the rest of the boys who had come and gone over the years? Did he deserve Mickey’s interest more than any of the other ones did?

The answer was no, and that was what got to him most. Mickey remembered Drew as a scraggly little kid, an overeager child who was all arms and elbows. Those memories snagged on the edge of his sympathy. But his fond memories didn’t make Drew’s life any more valuable.

Mickey had allowed so many to fall into Harlow’s hands, convincing himself that he couldn’t do a damn thing about it because, the moment he tried, Harlow would turn him in. She still had that bag of cocaine, the one with his fingerprints all over it, the one that would indict him in Shawn Tennant’s death. And while he knew that turning him in would lead the cops to Harlow, it didn’t change the fact that he had been involved, a partner in crime, and if the courts didn’t give him the death penalty, there was no denying that he’d get life in prison. It was something Mick had wondered about on more than a few occasions: If he
were caught, which would be better—lethal injection, or day after day of solitary confinement?

Maybe if Drew hadn’t scrubbed the grime out of the toilet bowl, if he hadn’t played video games with Mickey or offered to pick him up a burrito; maybe if he had skipped doing all of those things, Mickey’s ambivalence would be intact, memories or not. Yet there he was, unable to sleep, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about things like guilt and innocence, and whether hell smelled of burning hair and sizzling flesh—the scent of death by electric chair.

Sitting up, he shoved the sheet he was using as a makeshift window shade aside. There, in the sunshine, the Wards’ house stood in all its glory. He knew Drew was over there, performing some menial job that had been done a hundred times before. He rubbed the back of his neck, considering his options. There was no way to stop her from doing what she was planning on doing. If he called the police, she’d call the police right back. He and Red would end up sharing a cell at the state penitentiary, spending their life sentences commiserating, trying to understand how Harlow Ward had turned them into the monsters they had become.

He shuddered, kicked his sheets away, took another peek out the window, and then wandered to the bathroom.

With hot water beating against his back, he had a moment of clarity: If Mickey weren’t around anymore, she’d let Drew go. It would be too risky to cover up the crime herself. Mickey was part of the team now; without him, Harlow would be at a loss.

He had to disappear. It was Andrew’s only chance.

Hearing the Cadillac pull into the garage, Harlow left Andrew in the backyard and reentered the house, her hands balled into fists.
Red was in his chair, reading the paper as usual, back from the store much sooner than she had expected. The mere sight of him sparked rage in the pit of her stomach. Not only had he nearly run Andrew off with his stupid comments, but he now appeared as relaxed as ever. It was as if the man were oblivious to what he had done.

Marching over to Red’s chair, she snatched the newspaper out of his hands, leaned in, and hissed into his ear, “Did you see any articles in there about us, Red?”

Red first looked to his crumpled paper, then turned his head to face his wife.

“That stupid little shit of a junkie is sending up red flags,” she told him. “He’s putting Andy on edge, telling him he should watch himself around us, that he shouldn’t be spending so much time around here.”

Red opened his mouth to say something, but closed it soundlessly after a second of deliberation.

“Do you know what that means?” she asked, paper still crumpled in her right hand.

“It means you should get rid of him,” Red replied flatly.

Harlow smirked as she looked out the bay window. Past the verdant lawn, the preened rosebushes, the whitewashed fence, was a perfectly acceptable house across the street. Harlow had wanted
that
house, not the one next door. But the tunnel would have been impossible to construct beneath the street, so Harlow had turned her attention to the pit next door. She bought the place for the sole purpose of housing a lowlife like Mickey Fitch, and now the lowlife was rattling his chains. The servant was defiant; the slave was taunting its master, and there was only one solution to stop that sort of behavior.

“Exactly,” she snapped. “I want that worthless piece of garbage out of that house. He’s no longer a piece of the puzzle.”

Red cleared his throat as he leaned forward, adopting a more alert posture. She knew that when he suggested she “get rid of
him,” he had meant Andrew, not Mickey. But that wasn’t anywhere near Harlow’s plan.

“Wait.” He paused.

“I’m talking about Fitch,” Harlow clarified.

“So...” Red looked confused. “You want me to go next door and, what, slit his throat?”

Harlow exhaled a snort.

“You?” She rolled her eyes at him. “Please. I’d have a better chance of convincing Andy to do that than you.” Red was squeamish. It was why Harlow had to hire Mickey in the first place. Had it been only her and Red, things would have been less complicated. But there had been no way. If she had relied on her husband, she may as well have done her killing on the police station steps.

But things were going to change. Red was going to buck up and be a man.

Pausing at the window, she gazed down the street toward Mickey’s place. “I’m going to shoot him,” she announced. “But once he’s dead, I’ll be down an employee, won’t I?” She turned to look back at him, lifting an eyebrow, waiting for him to catch her drift.

Red tensed. He sat at the edge of his recliner, his fingers biting into the leather of the armrests.

“Congratulations,” she told him. “You’ve been promoted.”

“This is insane,” Red blurted out, his words tinged with unfamiliar desperation.

She had never asked him to take part in her hobby because she knew he’d refuse, but this time he wouldn’t be given the option. Mickey had become a nuisance, and she certainly wasn’t going to waste her time searching for a fresh errand boy when she had a perfectly healthy man at her disposal.

“I told you no,” Red insisted. “I’m not doing this.”

“Oh, Red.” Shimmying over to him, she slid onto his lap, pushing her fingers through his hair the way she used to. “Don’t
get upset.” Leaning in, she pressed her lips to his cheek, a smile pulling at the corners of her lips. “You knew it would eventually come to this.”

“Come to what?” he asked, his words choked with tension.

“This is your test,” she confessed, leaning back to get a better look at him, her fingers gripping him firmly by his chin. “I’ve never asked you to prove your love for me, have I? Well, now’s your chance.”

Red sat mutely, his eyes wide, disbelieving.

“If I get rid of Mickey Fitch, I don’t have anyone to fill his position, do I? I mean...” She chuckled. “You can’t
possibly
expect me to put an ad in the paper. What’s Mickey’s title anyway, garbage man? Wheat field surveyor? Grave digger? If I get rid of him, you have to do his job.”

“And if I won’t?”

Harlow offered her husband a thoughtful smile, leaned forward, and pressed her mouth to his. He tensed beneath her as if allergic to her touch, but rather than discouraging her, it amused her instead.

“If you won’t,” she whispered against his lips, “then I’ll find someone who will. And you, my darling, will simply have to go.”