AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Wilson says, “I think that married to you, Arlene had a lot to be short-tempered and critical about.”
“She started picking,” Lennie says. “Picking and picking and picking. At first I just felt depressed—”
“Old self-image took a hit, did it?”
“Then I became suspicious.”
“My own wife does some picking,” Wilson says. “Likes to tell me my car’s a traveling pigpen, gets pissy if I forget to put down the toilet seat. But I’m a long way from using a butcher knife on her.”
“I got the red screen. It’s only for a second or two, so they won’t see. But when I saw it, I knew.”
“What I know is this interview is over.” Wilson turns to the mirror on the wall to his left and runs the side of his hand across his throat: cut it.
“It’s subtle,” Lennie says. He’s giving Wilson a look that’s both pitying and superior. “Like that story about how you boil a frog by turning up the heat very slowly. They take from you. They take your self-respect, and when you’re weak…” He jerks his hands upward to the length of the chain and makes a choking gesture. “… they take your life.”
“Women, right?”
“Women or men. It’s not a sexist thing, don’t get that idea.”
“Not The Exorcist, but The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
The wife-killer breaks into a wide grin. “Exactly!”
“You stick to that, Lennie. See how it works out for you.”
Wilson gets home at quarter of seven. Sandi’s in the living room, watching the evening news. One place is set at the kitchen table. It looks lonely.
“Hey, babe,” he calls.
“Your dinner’s in the oven. The chicken’s probably dried out. You said you’d be home by five.”
“Things came up.”
“They always do with you.”
Did he tell Sandi he’d be home by five? Wilson honestly can’t remember. But he remembers Crocker—probably now cooling his heels in Metropolitan Detention—saying It’s subtle.
He gets chicken and potatoes out of the oven and green beans out of the steamer on the stove. He thinks the potatoes will be okay, but the chicken and beans look elderly and unappetizing.
“Did you pick up the dry cleaning?”
He pauses, a slice of chicken breast half-cut. Half-sawn, actually. “What dry cleaning?”
She gets up and stands in the doorway. “Our dry cleaning. I told you last night, Frank. Jesus!”
“I—” His phone rings. He pulls it off his belt and looks at the screen. If the call was from his partner, he would decline. But it’s not. It’s from Captain Alvarez. “I have to take this.”
“Of course you do,” she says and turns back to the living room so as not to miss the latest Coronavirus death count. “Honest to God.”
He thinks of going after her, trying to smooth this over, but it’s his boss, so he pushes accept. He listens to what Alvarez has to say, then sits down. “Are you shitting me? How?”
His voice brings Sandi back into the doorway. His slumped posture—phone to ear, head bent, one forearm resting on his thigh—brings her to the table.
Wilson listens some more, then hangs up. He takes his plate to the sink and dumps everything into the garbage disposer. “The perfect fucking end to a perfect fucking day.”
“What happened?” Sandi puts a hand on his arm. Her touch is light but very welcome to him.
“We had a guy in custody who killed his wife. I was at the scene, a real mess. Blood all over the kitchen, her lying in it. Back at the station, I did the preliminary interrogation. The doer was crazy as a loon. He claimed she was an alien, part of an invasion force.”
