The Perfect Husband

  Afterward, he told her he wanted a boy this time. A boy to name Brian, after his father.

  Jim’s absences grew longer, and his returns crueler. Whatever she did, it wasn’t good enough. She was a bad wife, a horrible mother. She was a stupid, stupid girl who should be grateful he’d agreed to marry her. A handsome, charming, well-respected man like him could certainly do better.

  One day he sat her down in the living room and told her he was going out. He would be gone for a while. Maybe he’d return. Maybe not. He hadn’t decided yet. No matter what, she was not to go down into the basement.”

  “The basement? Why would I go into the basement?”

  “Because I told you not to go there, so now you’re thinking about it. And you’ll think about it the minute I leave. ‘What is in the basement? Why shouldn’t I go into the basement? What is he hiding in the basement?’ I’ve planted the suggestion in your mind, you won’t be able to rest until you go into the basement. I know you that well, Theresa. I can control you that much.”

  “No. I won’t go into the basement. I won’t.”

  But the minute he left, her eyes fell on the basement door. She put her hand on the doorknob. She twisted. She opened the door and stared down into the gloom—

  Tess quickly cut off the rest of the memories. She pressed her fingers against her temples, already tasting bile.

  Some days she could recall things objectively. She could distance herself, analyze the scenes as if they’d happened in somebody else’s life. Some days she couldn’t. Now she concentrated on breathing and the feel of the warm Arizona sun.

  Down the hall, Marion and J.T. continued to war.

  “He is dying, J.T. It’s not some twisted ruse.” Marion’s voice was brittle. “Our father is dying.”

  “Our father? I don’t think so. I gave him to you when you were fourteen. We were playing poker, as I recall, and I was beating you quite badly. You threw a fit. So I said fine, what was the one thing you really wanted—”

  “Fuck you, Jordan Terrance.”

  “—and you said you wanted ‘Daddy’ all to yourself. So I gave him to you lock, stock, and barrel. To this day I believe you got the bad end of that deal. Or tell me, Marion, did you forget that as well?”

  “I didn’t forget anything, J.T. I just choose to remember happier days.” There was a long pause, then Marion said, “It’s because of her, isn’t it?”

  A second pause. “She had a name, Marion. She was a human being.”

  “She was a lying, manipulative prostitute who caught Daddy in a weak moment. He’d just retired, he was vulnerable to . . . to female attention.”

  “Mom will be happy with this analysis.”

  “Mom has more bats in her belfry than a gothic church.”

  “Finally we agree on something.”

  “The point is, Daddy made a mistake—”

  “A mistake? He got a seventeen-year-old girl pregnant. Our father, the pedophile.”

  “He took care of her.”

  “Is that what you call it?” J.T.’s voice dropped to a low tone that prickled the hair on the back of Tess’s neck. Marion didn’t recover quickly this time, but when she did, her retort was sharp.

  “Oh, that’s right. Daddy is the root of all evil. Hell, he was probably the one standing at the grassy knoll.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him. Have you ever watched the JFK tapes closely?”

  “Grow up, J.T. Daddy needs you right now, though God knows why. Maybe you don’t like him, maybe you’re never going to see eye to eye with him, but for chrissake, he gave you life. He put a roof over your head. He raised you and gave you anything you ever asked for—the sports car, West Point, military appointments, cover-up—you got it all.”

  “And it still burns, doesn’t it, Marion?” J.T. said quietly. “Though Roger was hardly a shabby consolation prize.”

  “Roger left me, J.T. But thanks for asking.”

  “What?” J.T. sounded genuinely surprised, perhaps even stunned. “Marion, I’m sorry. I swear to you, I’m sorry—”

  “I did not come here for your pity. You utter those words one more time and they’ll need Super Glue to put your face together again. No, don’t say anything more. I’m sick of this conversation—it never gets any better. I’m staying seven days, J.T. Seven days for you to see the light. Then I wash my hands of this whole mess.”

  “Merry Berry—”

  “Don’t call me that! And tell your ‘guest’ that if I catch either one of you doing anything remotely illegal, I’ll arrest both your asses. Got it?”

  “You don’t have to scream for me to know how much you care.”

  “Oh, go knit yourself a Hallmark card.”

  Tess heard the sharp, ringing sound of heels against hardwood floors. The fast, furious footsteps grew closer and Tess held her breath. But the sound passed her by. Marion stormed to the end bedroom, where her arrival was punctuated by the sound of the door slamming shut.

  Tess released her breath. Her body sagged against the door. Everything was okay. This Marion was an FBI agent, but she was also J.T.’s sister and was here for reasons that had nothing to do with Tess.

  She was safe, no one knew who she was, and she was still in Arizona.

  She couldn’t take any more. It was still afternoon, but her exhausted body demanded rest. She crawled into bed, pulled the covers over her head, and welcomed slumber.

  SIX

  IT WAS COLD in the basement. She could feel a draft but couldn’t identify the source. The light was feeble, just a bare overhead bulb that lengthened the shadows. Beneath her feet she felt hard-packed dirt.

  What was that leaning in the corner? A shovel, a saw, a hammer. Clipping shears and two rakes. Had she ever seen Jim use any of those things? There was a baseball bat as well. A long, golden baseball bat. She’d thought he kept his bats in the coat closet. Why in the basement? They hardly ever went into the basement.

  She smelled fresh dirt and turned toward the scent. In the far corner she saw a mound of dirt perfectly shaped as a fresh grave.

  No. No, no, no.

  A hand clamped over her mouth.

  She screamed. She screamed and the palm shoved the sound back down her throat. She was pinned against a body, struggling and squirming wildly. Dear God, help me.

  Thick fingers dug into her jaw and pinned her head into place. “I thought you wouldn’t come down here, Theresa. I thought you said you wouldn’t.”

  She whimpered helplessly. She was trapped. Now he was going to do something awful.

  She felt his arm move behind her. A black scarf slid over her eyes, shutting out the light, cutting her off from everything.

  She moaned in terror.

  He tied a rolled pillowcase over her mouth, the cloth pressing against her tongue and digging into the sensitive corners of her lips like a horse’s bit.

  He released her and she fell to the ground.

  “I told you not to come down here, but you had to, didn’t you, Theresa? You had to know. You shouldn’t pry if you don’t want answers.”

  He dragged her to her feet and pulled her across the dirt floor. The pungent odor became stronger. The smell of dirt and something else, something astringent. Lime. Fresh lime to cover the scent of decaying corpses. She gagged against the pillowcase.

  “That’s right. You’re standing at the edge of a grave. One push and you’ll tumble right in. Fall into the grave. Want to know what you’ll find there?”

  He pushed her forward into empty space and she screamed in her throat. He jerked her back against him and laughed softly in her ear. “Not quite yet. Let me show you everything else.”

  His fingers dug into her hand, forcing it to reach out. She begged, her words muffled, gasping sobs behind the pillowcase. He was going to make her touch something. Something she didn’t want to touch.

  Her hand was buried into a glass jar. Round, firm, and moist shapes slid around her fingertips. “Eyeballs,” he whispered. “I saved the eyeballs
from all my past wives.”

  He yanked her hand back and plunged it into something else. Hair. Long and smooth and sickeningly damp at the ends. “Scalped ’em too,” he hissed.

  Again he yanked her hand back and plunged her fisted fingers into something else. Squishy and tangled and oily. Caught on her fingers, twisted around her fingers.

  “Guts. Lots and lots of guts.

  “And here, baby, is my crowning achievement. Her heart. Her warm, pulsing heart.”

  Her hand was forcefully closed around the mass. His fingers curled around her throat. Tightening, tightening, tightening as his breathing accelerated with excitement in her ear.

  “You have no idea who I am, Theresa. You have no idea.”

  And just as the spots formed before her eyes, just as the abyss opened before her and she knew she could fall right in and never have to think again, his fingers let her go and the air rushed into her oxygen-starved lungs.

  The blindfold was snatched from her eyes. She was staring down at blood, so much blood. She turned, too horrified to run.

  She saw his face clearly. His leering, cold face.

  J. T. Dillon smirking down at her with coal-black eyes.

  TESS WOKE UP harshly, the scream ripe on her lips, her heart pounding in her chest. She clutched her fist to her throat, gasping for breath. Sweat trickled down her cheeks like tears.

  A pause, then she scampered out of the strange bed and turned on every light she could find. The room had hardly any lamps. She needed more light, lots and lots more to dispel the shadows lurking in the corners.

  She found herself in front of the closet doors, securely blockaded by a chair. Open the damn doors. Know that he’s gone, that you won, you won.

  Suddenly with a cry of rage she kicked the chair away, grabbed the handle, and yanked the door open.

  “Come on, where are you, you bastard?”

  Only empty hangers stared back at her. She took a deep breath, then another, until her body stopped shaking.

  You’re in Arizona. You’re safe. There is no blood on your hands.

  It was a cow’s heart. A cow’s heart, linguine in olive oil, silk threads, and peeled grapes. Stuff from a grade-school haunted house.

  “Look around you, Theresa,” Jim had said after he’d snapped on the basement light. “Look at what you’re so terrified of. If you’re willing to believe peeled grapes are eyeballs, no wonder you look at me and see a monster.”

  She collapsed on the ground.

  He squatted down until he was eye level. “I told you not to come into the basement, but you did. You’re so determined to think I’m doing something wrong. Why do you think so little of your husband, Theresa? Why are you so determined to be afraid of me?”

  She wasn’t able to summon an answer.

  “You know what I think? I think you have really low self-esteem, Theresa. I think your father and his abusive behavior taught you to think of yourself as nothing. And now you have this handsome, charming, decorated police officer who loves you and you just can’t believe that, can you? Rather than accept that a good man loves you, you wonder what’s wrong with me. You obsess that there must be something wrong with me. I suggest you stop focusing on my problems, Theresa, and spend a little bit more time contemplating yours.”

  He left the basement.

  She remained on the floor actually wondering why she questioned her perfect husband.

  Jim had been that good.

  Then other memories, other images overwhelmed her. Jim’s hands around her throat, squeezing, releasing, caressing, soothing, choking. The baseball bat arching up, looking like a fairy’s wand in the moon-light. Whistling down. Her thigh cracking . . .

  She ran for the door, undid the lock, and made it to the bathroom just in time to be violently ill.

  “Was it something I said?” J.T. stood in the doorway.

  Her eyes squeezed shut. She remained hunched over the sink, her arms trembling, her legs shaky. She tasted bile. She tasted despair, by far a more savage flavor.

  “Please go away,” she whispered.

  “Sorry, but there isn’t a Virginia man alive who can walk away from a puking woman. Consider it our southern charm.”

  She heard the patter of his bare feet against the bathroom floor tiles and caught the faint odor of chlorine as he approached. His torso pressed against her. She stiffened and his chest rumbled with a growl of disapproval.

  He said, “Just turning on the water. Tastes like the rusty pipe it uses to visit us all the way from Colorado, but last I checked, it was better than vomit.”

  He stepped away. With a sigh she scooped the water over her face and neck, letting it pour through her mouth. It did taste metallic and rusty.

  “Better?” he said after a moment.

  She turned off the faucet and faced him. He wore nothing but a pair of swimming trunks, which rode too low on his hips, revealing a faint white line of untouched skin. Water trickled across his shoulders, down into the fine black hair on his flat belly.

  He raised a half-filled beer bottle and looking straight into her eyes, polished it off.

  “Take it.”

  “What?”

  “The towel, chiquita. You look like hell.”

  Belatedly she saw the hand towel he was holding. She took it gingerly from him. He hadn’t done anything, but she was scared anyway. In her experience, men—and particularly muscled men—were a clear threat to women. She couldn’t picture her father without seeing his fleshy face turn beet red as he raised his thick fist. She couldn’t picture her ex-husband without seeing his cold blue eyes dispassionately returning her stare as he fed her wedding gown to the flames.

  But J.T. came highly recommended. Surely mercenaries didn’t kill their clients. That had to be bad for business. What about a policeman murdering tax-payers? That was bad for business too.

  But she’d been in J.T.’s house for forty-eight hours without incident. He fed her breakfast. He shielded her from the police. Surely if he had violent tendencies, she would’ve seen some indication.

  Of course, it had taken her two years to recognize the violence in Jim.

  Her hands came up and rubbed her forehead. She wanted to own herself, she wanted to trust herself. Two and a half years after putting Jim in prison, she still wasn’t sure that had happened. She was stuck somewhere between the old Theresa Beckett and the new Tess Williams.

  “Rough night for the Better Homes & Garden lady?”

  “It’s that knit one purl two,” she murmured. “I keep having nightmares of dropping the stitch.”

  “Yeah? And here I keep dreaming of blowing up churches. Come outside, the cool air does a body good.”

  He turned and she realized that he expected her to follow. She looked down at her legs uncovered by her purple Williams College T-shirt. Generally she didn’t follow half-naked men around while wearing only a T-shirt. Her mother had had strong feelings about women showing too much flesh. Only bad women did that, and they went straight to hell, where little devils did horrible things to them every night to punish them for being so wanton.

  The image of herself as a wanton was so absurd, she had to smile. She’d never been a femme fatale, never sparked hidden flames. She’d been the dutiful, confused wife. Now she was the scared, emaciated mother. All signs indicated that J.T. found her about as attractive as an animated skeleton. She was fine with that. She just wanted him for his semiautomatics.

  She followed him out to the deck, shivering as the night air hit her. J.T. didn’t seem to notice. He plopped down on one of the chairs and picked up a gold cigarette case. A six-pack sat on the glass table.

  Her arms wrapped around her middle as she stared up at a rich blue sky dotted with stars. The nights in Williamstown would be cool and clear by now, but the air would be scented with the rich, musty odor of drying leaves and aging pine, the refreshing tang of wind sweeping down from the Berkshires. She wondered what her daughter was doing just then. Probably fast asleep, tucked in be
d with her pink flannel nightgown and her favorite talking doll. If she closed her eyes, she could almost capture the scent of No More Tears shampoo and baby powder.

  Baby, I love you.

  “You eavesdropped, didn’t you?” J.T. asked.

  “Yes.”

  J.T. flipped open the slim cigarette case, banged out a cigarette, and lit it. He stared at her as he dragged deeply. “Filthy habit. Would you like one?”

  He held out the case, then snatched it back. “Wait, I forgot. You can barely walk as it is—no cigarettes for you.”

  He exhaled, leaning back and crossing his ankles.

  “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “I’d quit.”

  “You went out in the middle of the night to buy cigarettes so you could start again?”

  “Nope. I stole Marion’s cigarettes. I was the one who taught her how to smoke, you know.” His lips twisted. “At least that’s what I recall. You’ll have to ask her what she remembers.”

  “There seems to be little love lost between you and your sister.”

  “I’ve never been a fan of revisionist history.”

  Keeping her voice neutral, she asked, “She’s really an FBI agent?”

  “Yes.” Briefly his chest puffed out. “A damn good one.”

  “I heard her say she’s staying for a week.”

  “She is. So if you are a crook, don’t tell her. She’ll drag you in.”

  “And you would let her?”

  “If you’re a crook.”

  “Very good,” she acknowledged. “You’ve covered all the bases. If I stay, I must be legal. If I’m gone in the morning, well, I’ve saved you a bunch of trouble.”