“Real sweet at first, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But then she started ragging on me about hurting Mitch. I told her to shut up, go away, but she wouldn’t. Just kept ragging, calling me names, bitch, gambling slut. You know what she told me then? Take a guess.”
“That she had an affair with your husband six months ago.”
“That’s right. You know about that?”
“I know. But you didn’t until she told you.”
“Stupid. I should’ve known. Right next door, always looking at him like he was a piece of candy. She was the bitch, not me. Dirty little bitch.”
“So you killed her.”
“No, it wasn’t like that. She… I was hung over, sick, and she kept ragging and ragging, saying how much better she was for him than me or that cunt he’s sleeping with now. I told her she could have him, welcome to him, but that didn’t stop her. Kept screaming at me, breaking my eardrums, and then she grabbed my arm and I… I don’t know, I must’ve picked up a knife that was on the sink…” She shook herself, the way a dog does when it comes out of water. “I don’t remember stabbing her. I don’t. She was just… lying there on the floor, blood all over her, eyes wide open. Dead. She… I was sick, shaking so bad I couldn’t think… I don’t know, I don’t remember”
“What did you do then?”
“Had a drink, a big one. Wouldn’t you?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I would’ve called nine-eleven if she hadn’t been dead. I would have. I thought about doing it anyway. But the police… I couldn’t face them. I was scared… real scared… You know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I know what you mean.”
“I sat in the living room with another Scotch and tried to calm down. I don’t know how long it took… a long time.”
“And then?”
She licked chapped lips. “I need a cigarette. Give me one, will you?”
There was an open pack next to the computer. I got up to fetch it and a booklet of matches and the overstuffed ashtray. The smoke in there was bothering my chest, but I could stand it for the few minutes it would take to get the rest of the story out of her. Her hands trembled as she lit one of the cancer sticks; it bobbed between her lips, sending up smoke in erratic patterns around her head.
“All I could think about was getting her out of there. You know? No idea what I’d do with her, not then, but I wanted her out of my house. I… dragged her into the laundry room and out through the back door. The gardener, he’d left a wheelbarrow on the lawn. I wheeled it over and lifted her into it. Like a sack.” She laughed, a sudden bleating sound that showed how close to the edge she was. “Like a big bloody dead sack.”
“Then you wheeled her into the garage and put her into the freezer.”
“No. I went back inside and washed the blood off the knife. I don’t know why I did that. Blood all over the floor, but the knife, on the counter… I don’t know why, I just did.” She blew smoke in a ragged stream. “That’s when I got the idea. While I was washing the blood off the knife.”
“Moving in here, using her money to gamble with.”
“She didn’t need it anymore, did she? She was dead and I’m alive and I… why shouldn’t I use it? Use her house, too, the goddamn bed where she fucked my husband.”
I didn’t say anything.
“She had her purse with her, she was going out somewhere after she finished ragging on me. I looked in her wallet. Credit cards… my God, she had a dozen! Big credit limits on every one, I checked later to make sure. So much money. Why shouldn’t I spend it?”
“And that’s when you put her into the freezer.”
“I had to empty all the frozen stuff out first, so she’d fit. It wasn’t easy getting her in there. A dead person weighs a lot.”
Yeah. “How long did you plan on leaving her there? Until you gambled away all of her money?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think about that. One day at a time, that’s the way I’ve always lived. Thinking too much makes you crazy.”
“Why didn’t you clean up the kitchen before you came over here? The blood smears on the floor.”
“Didn’t I? Jesus, I must’ve been too distracted. And Mitch found them and called you. That’s why you’re here.”
“I’ve been looking for you since Wednesday.”
She waved that away. “Anyhow,” she said, “I needed action real bad. The fever was eating me up. And I knew Rebecca had a computer… if she didn’t have a password to log on, it’d be easy to use it. She didn’t and it was.”
“And you’ve been here ever since.”
Jerky nod. Her cancer stick was almost down to the filter; she lit another one off the burning coal. “Except once when I ran out of cigarettes. I took her car, late, and went out and bought a couple of cartons and some more Scotch. Nobody in the neighborhood saw me. All alone here the rest of the time. Nice and quiet except when the phone rang or somebody rang the doorbell. My God, it was heaven! All that money, play as long as I wanted, shoot the pickle whenever I felt like it. I was ahead fifteen thousand at one point. Did I tell you that?”
“You told me.”
“Fifteen thousand.” The half-hysterical laugh again. “Top of the world, Ma.”
“Only then you fell off.”
“I’d’ve hit another winning streak if you hadn’t showed up,” she said. “I would have, I know it. Only a matter of time.”
I didn’t say anything.
She said, as if the thought had just come to her, “Does Mitch know?”
“Not yet.”
“He’ll be ecstatic when he finds out. No more worries for him.”
“About you? Don’t be so sure.”
“He doesn’t care about me,” she said. “He never did. All he cares about is money and pussy.” With sudden vehemence: “It isn’t fair! He’ll divorce me now and take everything and I’ll get nothing.”
I said, “That’s not the way it works,” and immediately wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
“It isn’t? Why isn’t it?”
Too late now. She’d find out soon enough anyway. “Committing a felony or a series of felonies doesn’t invalidate the no-fault statute,” I said. “It probably should but it doesn’t.”
She stared at me. A long ash fell off the end of the burning weed; she didn’t seem to notice, didn’t brush it off her lap.
“You mean I can still divorce him and get my half?” she said. “Half of everything-the house, the bank accounts?”
“You’ll need it for a good lawyer.”
“But not all of it.” A slow, ghastly smile formed around the cigarette stub. “There’ll be some left. Even if I have to go to prison, there’ll be some left when I get out.”
I lifted myself off the chair. The smoke in the room was making me sick. She was making me sick. Time, past time, to let the law have her.
“Maybe,” I said, “but you won’t keep it for long. Horses, slots, poker… not for long.”
“That’s what you think,” she said. “I’m overdue for a real winning streak. I’ve got a big one coming to me, big and long. You wait and see. Top of the world and this time I won’t fall off.”
She believed it. Sitting there ravaged by her addiction, with another woman’s blood on her hands, and chasing the high and beating the odds was all she cared about, all she believed in. In a way, that made Janice Krochek more unfathomable, more terrible to me than anything else she’d done.
26
