Twisted Fate (Tales of Horror) (2 page)

He placed the insulin needle on the tray beside her bed. She looked at him, smiled, and breathed out a long breath in an exaggerated sigh. Rancid was the best word to describe the air quality exhaled from her dying body.

“What took you so long?” Joan asked. “I’ve been waiting all day. The sheets need cleaning. I threw up over there and I haven’t eaten since this morning. Walter, get me some food. I’m sorry for my tone, but I’m used to the nurse being here. We do things a certain way.”

“Joan, you know where I’ve been. I’ll get you something to eat, but you’re going to have to watch how you’re talking to me.”

Her eyes probed him. “What’s wrong with how I talk?”

To avoid a fight, he started for the door.

“I asked you a question,” Joan shouted after him.

Walter turned back to her. “We do not talk to each other this way. You’re confused. Take your needle and I’ll be back with your lunch.” He stepped into the hallway and slammed the door on her protests.

Halfway to the kitchen, his cell phone rang. He ran for his office and snapped it up.

“Hello.”

“Walter? Oh man, this is bad.”

“Mike? Is that you?”

“Yeah. The demolition guys and I are still at the house and …”

“Do I hear a siren in the background?”

“Yes. Police and ambulance are here.”

“What the hell happened?”

“Give me a sec. Let me go where it’ll be a little quieter.”

Mike breathed into the phone as he moved further from the sirens. “There, can you hear me better?”

“Much. Now, tell me what happened.”

“The demolition guys showed up just after you left. I walked them into the foyer and I showed them the couch you wanted. One of the guys walked over to it and sat down. I told him how risky that was as the floor may not support him. He laughed at me and lay out on the couch.”

“Mike, what has this got to do with emergency services?”

“I’m getting there.”

“Get there faster,” Walter said. He’d only left his wife’s room minutes ago, and her screams now reached his office.

“I told the guys to hurry up and get the couch moved so we could get on with the demolition specs. For some reason unknown to me, they looked seriously pissed off, especially the guy who had sat on the couch. They picked up the sofa and carried it outside to the front porch. Then the guy who had sat on the sofa ran back into the house. Let me tell you, he was mad about something. His co-worker yelled after him. We stepped into the foyer, but he was gone.”

“Are you taking your time on purpose? Are you going to tell me why the cops are there?” Walter’s patience had ebbed.

Joan banged something on the floor and shouted. Walter wondered how high her blood pressure was now. He almost shouted back to her but tightened his jaw to avoid hurling abusive slurs her way.

The nurse said to watch for diabetic acidosis. The last stages.

“The guy had climbed upstairs somehow. Then he fell. A piece of the old banister impaled him. He’s dead, Walter, he’s dead.”

His nerves rattled, it took Walter ten minutes to prepare the sandwiches for his wife. He took them to her, doing his best to tune her out on the way up the stairs. The insulin needle lie on the nightstand table, unused. He knocked it off the table. It hit the floor and skidded under the closet door.

“What did you do that for?” Joan asked.

“You will eat your lunch in peace. Then you will sleep. If I hear another word out of you, I will call the hospital and have you taken away. Understood?”

With a subtle tip of her head, Joan nodded her understanding. He knew the threat of the hospital would shut her up.

“Good.”

He stormed out of the bedroom. His cell rang as he entered his office. By the time he got to the phone, he cursed himself for being so abrupt with her. Some days were better than others but, for some reason, today was
his
worst.

He snatched up the phone. “Hello.”

“This is John Mackay. I’m with the Chicago Police Department. Are you the new owner of this house out here on Michigan near 55th?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I was wondering if we could meet up so I could have a word with you.”

Walter sat at his large banker’s desk in his home office and tapped his pen. The demolition team had left the old house after their colleague’s body had been taken away. They’d carried the couch into his office a half hour ago and collected the cash bonus.

He stared across the room at the couch that a dead man had sat on. It didn’t match his office. He’d have to change a few things around so it would fit. Its shape didn’t appear to be anything like a traditional sofa, so he’d looked it up online. It was a kind of chaise lounge with the back piece only on one side. The sitting area was long and designed for a person to extend their legs. A soft floral pattern covered the antique, which was something Walter would normally have detested, but this couch held meaning for him. He had no idea why, but it felt sentimental.

When the doorbell rang, he dropped the pen he’d been tapping.

“Fuck!” he smacked his desk and got up.

The doorbell rang again.

“I’m coming!” he shouted.

By the time he got to the door, he was ready to let the police in on a little secret. His wife was dying in the upstairs room and right now she was sleeping. So the next time they come to his house, could they not fuck with the doorbell.

He grabbed the knob, swung the door open and stepped back in surprise.

Joan stood there, leaning against the door frame in her pajamas.

“What the
hell
is this?” he shouted.

“I noticed something about you,” she said as she pointed her finger at him.

Walter scanned the street looking for nosy neighbors. He grabbed Joan’s arm and yanked her into the house.

“What did you notice, Joan?” He was surprised he had the willpower to keep most of the anger out of his voice.

“You always run when people ring the bell or call your phone, but you don’t run for me when I call you.”

“Actually, I do. I run for you every day. Otherwise you would be in a hospital.”

He helped her up the stairs. She leaned into him hard. He wanted to ask her how she’d made it to the front door on her own if she could barely walk.

“I wanted to ring the bell,” Joan whispered. “I wanted to watch you run for me one more time before I die.”

“You’re not going to start that stuff about dying again, are you?” They were almost at the top of the stairs. “You know that when you call for me, I come running.”

“That’s only partly true. You run to me, not for me. Walter, don’t kid yourself. It’s been a long time since we were a
couple
.”

They reached the top of the stairs, Joan leading the way now. She rolled around the corner with her shoulder on the wall for support. Walter stayed close behind, his hands near her lower back.

“You sound delusional,” he said. “We
are
a couple. You have the best in-home nursing money can buy. You’re not languishing in a hospital bed somewhere. You haven’t got much to complain about, Joan.”

She stopped so abruptly by his office door that Walter almost bumped into her.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the new couch.

“It’s a chaise lounge. I just had it delivered. I retrieved it from the old house they’re going to tear down for the parking lot expansion.”

Joan lumbered across the hall and disappeared into his office. Walter followed, knowing the police officer would be there any minute.

“Joan, what are you up to? You need to get back to bed before you fall. You don’t have the strength for this.”

“There’s something wrong with this thing.”

There’s something wrong with you
.

“Everything is okay. You’ve just had a hard day without your nurse here. Now, come on, let’s go back to your room.” He took her hand and tried to coax her out of his office.

She snapped her hand back and moved toward the sofa.

“What are you doing?” he asked. Like a swarm of bees attacking a hive breaker, anger swelled in him. “Enough with this shit! I have people arriving at any moment for a meeting. You are going to go back to your room and sleep, or I’m going to carry you.”

Joan sneered. Then she dropped onto the couch. She tried to make it look accidental, like she tripped, but Walter could tell it was deliberate. In the time it took him to respond, she was spread out the length of the couch, running her hands along the fabric.

“What the
fuck
are you doing?” He had forgotten how good it felt to get really angry. His fists clenched at the frustration she caused. The anger was so raw and unglued that he tasted blood. It took every ounce of his humanity not to strike her face. Then her body. And not stop until she was a bloody pulp.

The expression on her face changed. She rolled off the couch and hit the floor like a sack of lead balls with no bounce.

Her sobbing and weeping worked on relieving his anger. He unclenched his fists.

What’s happening to me?
Why am I so worked up today
?

Normally her antics didn’t rouse him past annoyed.

He lifted her waif of a body up over his shoulder and carried her out of his office, down the hall, and into her sour room. She didn’t protest. She lay across his shoulder and cried.

He dropped her onto her bed and started for the door.

“Goodbye, Walter.”

“Goodbye, Joan,” he said, mimicking her words with sarcasm. He stopped at the bedroom door. “Do not come out of this room for anything. I’ll bring your dinner and I’ll clean up this fucking mess after my meeting. Understood?”

Joan nodded. “I won’t bother you again.”

He slammed the door so hard the trim near the handle cracked, which pleased him. The crack was his mark, his stamp of anger.

Today is a good day to be angry
.

He wouldn’t excuse it. Emotions were meant to be felt.

“Hello?” A male voice.

He jumped a clear foot. His shout of surprise came out like a pissed-off cat’s cry.

“You okay?” the man asked.

Walter looked over the railing and saw a cop standing just inside his front door. Evidently he had forgotten to close the door after Joan’s little fiasco with the doorbell.

“I knocked,” the cop said, “but it was open. I heard a door slam pretty hard so I stepped in. I’m Officer John Mackay. I called earlier.”

Walter moved for the stairs. “Of course, come on in. May I get you a beverage?” He stepped off the top stair and waited for a reply.

“No, thanks. I just have a few questions for you and then I’ll be on my way.”

“Come on up to my office. We’ll talk in there.”

Officer Mackay followed Walter into his office. Walter sat behind his desk while the cop took a seat in one of the two chairs facing the desk. The officer pulled out a pad and pen and began talking. It took ten minutes to get through most of the preliminary questions for the cop to establish that this was nothing more than a workplace accident.

“So I guess that’s it?” Walter asked.

“For now. Since you own the property and were employing them, the Workplace and Safety Board will want to talk to you, too. You’re going to have to wait on those demolition plans until our full investigation can wrap up. Shouldn’t take longer than a week.”

Walter stood from his chair. “That’s fine. I completely understand. Now, if that’s all, I need to attend to my wife.”

The cop put his pad away, got up and headed for the hallway.

“That’s some couch you have there.”

“Thanks.”

The officer slowed and stopped by the door. “Look at the legs on that thing. They look like claws or talons of some sort. Where would you get an antique like that?”

Was this a trick question?

The cop was just at the house where the couch came from. He talked to Mike and the demolition guys. He had to know the couch came from that house.

“I received it today. In every piece of property that I buy to demolish, I try to find something to bring home. Something to say that the life in the house isn’t completely destroyed. This couch will live on long after the house is converted into a parking lot.”

The cop nodded as if he knew something that Walter didn’t. He could see the cop wanted to play the
I’m smarter than you are
card.

Let’s evaluate pay grades, asshole
.
Then we’ll see who’s smarter
.