That night the neighbor's music kept Mary awake. The repeating report of cannon shot from some historically distant war. Mary left bed and sat at her desk. She had placed the notebook paper there earlier. A pencil sharpened nearly to the eraser. She drew a line down the center of the page. She wrote Pro above the left column and Con above the right column. The best always comes first. And the worst, that which we don't choose for ourselves or want to think about, comes last. Dessert before dinner. You versus them. An enjoyable ride on a horse instead of reading Descartes. Mary looked at her bookshelf. Meditations on First Philosophy was somewhere in there alongside Ethics and Heraclitus' On Nature. She wondered if Descartes, Spinoza, or Heraclitus ever witnessed a murder.
Mary took her capris from the floor and fumbled around in their pocket and removed the hundred. She flattened it and placed it on the pro-con page. She stared at it for a while.
After checking on her mother, Mary dressed in a bigger shirt and took her housekeys and left. She took the hundred with her. She walked around the neighborhood, not aiming anywhere in particular. Shapes formed themselves from the 3 A.M. night. The dead man's silhouette at the moment of ballistic impact. The floodlights laying bare the crime for all present to see and evaluate. A spillage of blood on the ground.
Mary leaned on a privacy fence and tried to breathe. A sock or something was stuffed all the way down into her chest. Sweat flowed down her forehead. Pain rocked her chest. She could feel her lungs expanding and collapsing. A grotesque feeling arose in her stomach and welled through her throat. She bent forward and vomited into the grass.
She opened her eyes. Her dinner was there ringed in jaundiced liquid. She turned from the scene and slowly walked back home. She wiped tears on her sleeve. She climbed the stairs to their apartment landing and turned left and unlocked the door and went inside.
-
Mary watched the sunrise pearl into being. Hers was the northwest-facing window so the dark remained longer for her. She dressed in fresh clothes and left her bedroom and whipped up some batter and conjured a host of flapjacks and stacked these on a plate in the kitchen for her mother.
Through the kitchen wall she heard quiet jazz playing in Marianne's apartment. Probably Coltrane – it sounded saxophonic. Mary drank some water and went back to her room. She replaced the hundred in her sock drawer and left the apartment.
Her foot landed on something. The pink slice of a headband was sitting on their welcome mat. Mary stared at it. The flowers and paint were speckled with dirt. She snatched it and flung it over the balustrade. It flew through the air and landed in a bush.
Mary stared out at the morning world. A car drove past. She ran her eyes over the horsefield, overgrown with honey locust, traced the trees guarding its far border, the church across the field, the apartments beside the church. She breathed deeply and closed her door and crossed the landing and knocked on Miss Jones's door.
Marianne answered wearing only a towel.
'Oh! Mary. Good morning.'
'Morning. Can I come in?'
Marianne made a why-not face and nodded her head towards the inside. 'You look like you need some coffee.'
Mary stepped inside and sank into the pleather couch that faced a 40inch TV showing the news. Marianne made a small mug of hazelnut coffee in her Keurig. She stood in the kitchen and glanced at Mary every so often until the machine beeped. She handed the mug to Mary. She didn't refuse the coffee, which she usually eschewed. Mary sat drinking and watching the anchors talk about a new planned extension to Crossover Road into Rogers.
Marianne went into her bedroom. She came out dressed in one of her typical summer dresses – rose clusters on a cream field – and made another mug of coffee. She sat down beside Mary.
'So what's up?' Her lipstick left a little half-kiss on its rim.
The male anchor, in perfectly practiced tone-shift, began a story about a corpse discovered on the walking trail. Mary listened. The corpse was a woman, roughly twenty years old. The face was dismembered. She had no ID. They were still awaiting the dental results.
'Mary?' Marianne poked Mary in the shoulder. She shook and looked at Marianne who seemed concerned. 'Did you stay up all night?'
Mary barely registered the question. 'Can I ask you something weird?'
'Shoot.'
'Let's say you have this friend, right? And they saw something. Something really bad. A crime. They saw somebody commit a crime. They think they should go to the police. But my friend's afraid of the recrimination. You know, somebody coming after them if they tell. What should they do? Should they go to the police?'
Marianne had her cup of coffee at her lips ready to take a sip. When Mary finished she paused mid-blow and looked at Mary over the mug. She lowered her mug and sat it down.
'What kind of crime was it?'
'They didn't say.'
Marianne nodded, thinking, and crossed her left leg over her right and took up her mug again and sipped.
'Well. Tell your friend that they should always go to the police if they've seen a crime. They police need help solving cases. And the police can always help protect witnesses if the crime is bad enough. It's always safer to go to the police.'
Mary stared at the TV. 'Okay. I'll tell them.'
'Mary. This whole 'something happened to my friend thing' is a little cliché.' Mrs. Jones raised her eyebrow. 'What'd you see?'
Mary looked at Mrs. Jones. 'Like I said. My friend saw it.' Mary lowered her eyes. 'They saw something horrible happen.'
'Did they see you?'
'It wasn't me. Stop saying it was me.'
She slammed her mug entirely too hard on the glass coffee table and rushed out of Mrs. Jones's apartment. Marianne watched her leave, stunned. She sat back, worried. She looked with disgust at the TV. She picked up the remote. It blinked into death.
-
Mary slammed her bedroom door and screamed into a pillow.
She lay on her bed for quite some time. She heard her mother rise and shuffle past her door. Some early-day somnolent. She heard the clattering of pans and plates and silverware against glass.
Everything drained of meaning in that languid light streaming through her window. Drained of saturation and hue. The stuffed animals piled on her bed stared at her. Mary covered them with a blanket and took the hundred from her sock drawer and stuffed it into her pocket and left her room.
'Is it okay if I go to Sammy's, Mom?'
Her mother seemed stronger this morning. She had three stacked flapjacks with a quarter-slice already eaten. She assented from behind a full mouth. Mary went outside and down the steps and down the street.
-
Kaplan watched her through his binoculars. She strode towards him. She stopped. She seemed to be staring at something on the pavement. She had her hands in her pockets.
Mary turned around. She stopped where the culvert ran under the street and crossed someone's lawn to a big oak that seemed older than the town. Growing beside a ditch. Reaching high its green eaves. Covered in welts and scars and knots. There was a hole in one side. Mary looked around. She took something out of her pocket and stuffed it into the hole. She topped it with fallen tree matter. She cleared off her hands and began walking again.
Kaplan pulled out of the E-Z mart parking lot and traced her to the Henderson house. Sammy came out and boisterously shouted 'GOOD MORNING' at her. Kaplan heard it clear down the street through his window. Mary seemed taken aback. He repeated himself in different voices. GOOD MORNING like Billy Crystal. GOOD MORNING like Arnold Schwarzenegger. GOOD MORNING like Christopher Walken. Someone shouted from inside the house. The two children ran off giggling and disappeared into the backyard.
Kaplan lowered his binoculars. He eased off the brake and drove away.
---
'Stop saying it was me.'
Kaplan stopped the playback and closed his laptop. Night was dark. The stars were out and the moon was just beginning to reform from black nothingness. He checked the tightness on his gloves and walked towards the apartment complex.
The time was eleven thirty-five. Marianne Jones had left three hours ago. Kaplan had traced her to Dickson Street. Kaplan climbed the stairs and tested Mrs. Jones's door. He took a bag of metal pins out of his pocket and in fifteen seconds he had the deadbolt unlocked. He went inside and closed the door. He turned on his flashlight.
An off-white pleather couch, a glass coffee table, the TV. A stereo system adjacent to the bedroom wall. Bookshelf rightwards of the door. He checked the book titles. Gun Care for Pros. So You Want to Be a Samurai. He reached behind the TV and claimed the bug from its backside. He studied the kitchen. Pristine countertops and linoleum and no stains on the stove. Cabinets stocked with dry beans and basmati rice and clean ceramic dishes and a multitude of drink glasses. Liquor cabinet stocked with pints of various liquor and vermouth. Beside the Keurig a well-stocked spice tree.
He felt inside above the doors of each cabinet. He checked the fridge. Milk and half-and-half. Eggs. A gallon bag filled with bacon. Lettuce and cabbage and other vegetables hid within translucent bags. He closed the fridge and checked the freezer. Bags of meat each labeled. Venison and quail and wild swine.
Kaplan closed the freezer and went through the frame into the living room. Two of his hairs brushed the bottom of the top of the frame. He paused.
He went into the bathroom and turned on the light. As clean as the kitchen. He re-adjusted his hair using her mirror. He smelled her perfume. He checked the sink cabinets. He opened the second door that was to the left of the shower. It was a walk-in closet with another door across its dark space. He entered the closet. A bouldering mat. Various rock-climbing paraphernalia hung on a coatrack. Orange hunting gear. A multitude of sundresses. He checked through these and carefully returned them to where they were. He looked at her gun locker sequestered between the back end of a utility closet and the bedroom wall. Each stand was taken. Ruger Kryptek, M&P 15, S&W 1020, Colt M4 carbine. He picked the locks on the main door and the ammunition drawer. He unloaded each firearm and sequestered their bullets and cartridges in the ammunition drawer. The process took him roughly a minute. He carefully replaced the guns and closed the rack silently.
He looked inside the bedroom. Her bed was queen-sized and neatly made. She had a green beanbag chair in the corner. A Jimi Hendrix poster and a Morrissey poster and a rear reclining nude painting of who seemed to be Marianne herself. Kaplan opened and closed her laptop. He checked under the bed and inside her end table and pulled out a Ruger shotgun and three snub-nosed pistols, all Colts. He took their ammunition and threw these inside the Wal-Mart bag she used as a trash-bag for her bedroom can. He tied the bag closed loosely. After replacing the guns he looked under the bed again. There was a box down there. He pulled out the meter-long box. He opened it and watched his reflection analyze the sharpened, polished metal of a katana. Knelt there on the floor, Kaplan heard someone coughing next door. He closed the box and sequestered it behind the gun rack. Kaplan blinked. He removed the katana box and removed an AK 47 from the space behind the rack. He unloaded it and hid the clip and returned the rifle and katana to their hiding place.
He checked under the beanbag chair. His flashlight beam fell on the pillows on her bed. He looked at the pillows and picked them up. Each one was hiding a pistol. The rightward one was also concealing a sheathed kukri. He unsheathed the Nepalese knife and checked its edge. It could have bisected a palm tree. Kaplan unloaded the pistols and replaced each in their indentations and took the kukri and hid it with the katana. He smoothed out the pillows and left the room.
Kaplan found two more long guns and three more handguns and a sharpened Scottish claymore and three bowie knives and a keen machete. The weapons were hidden all over the apartment. The ammunition drawer could barely close.
He heard a car door slam shut. Kaplan cut his flashlight. Darkness overtook the apartment.
Miss Marianne Jones unlocked the deadlock and came inside. The door chain dangled, making an unnerving scraping noise against the wood of the doorframe. She hit her living room light. She had lips printed on her cheeks. She staggered into her bedroom, leaving the lights off, and fell onto her pillow.
Marianne felt under the pillow and not finding her kukri immediately stood out of bed and lifted the skirt of her dress. She drew a derringer from a garter holster and leaving her finger on the side of the trigger pointed it two-handed at the darkness. At any shapes she saw in the dark.
'I know you're here.'
She slowly paced into the bathroom, turning on the light.
'I'll let you off easy if you come out.'
She paused beside the shower. She swept the curtain aside. The tub was empty.
'Come on, bitch.' She looked into her bedroom from behind her bathroom door. 'Where's my knife?' She jumped into the hallway and pointed her gun at the living room. 'What, it just walked off? It just grew legs and walked off?'
She paced into the kitchen. Every corner seemed darker. Marianne felt her eyes drawn towards the slightly cracked utility room door. She smiled. She crept towards the utility room and reached towards the doorknob.
She threw the door open. As she did so Kaplan appeared behind her and swept his garrote around her head. Her feet left the floor. Her neck snapped loudly. She was dead in a heartbeat. Kaplan guided the corpse to the linoleum of the floor. The smell of shit wafted. He saw brown offal trickling down her thighs from underneath her dress.
Kaplan left her on the floor. He carefully reloaded her firearms and changed her bedroom trash can. He replaced her bladed weapons where he found them. He left the utility room door cracked open.
He took his tools from his Prius and came back to the apartment and gave it a final once-over. At the living room, his dark form reflected in the TV's black glass. At the dark bedroom. At her bathroom, his tall body reflected in the mirror. At the kitchen, adorned with the dead woman who shat herself.
Who died with an unfired gun in her hand. Her eyes fixed at the space below the cabinets. Crumbs of chips and bread and cereal eaten long ago. At a roach crawling across its find.
Kaplan set to work.
---
Mary slept that night. When she woke up, the faces in the ceiling disappeared. They disappeared with the coming of morning's pale light. It was five-thirty in the morning. Mary felt oddly rested. She stretched and yawned widely and went into the kitchen. She sprayed butter in the waffle maker and poured batter within. She dug into the finished waffle with relish, eliminating it within three minutes, and ate another. Sammy was coming over later and would bring his Wii-U. Asco would probably come, and that meant Silver too. Maybe even Sarah. She made two more waffles for her mother.
Her mother came into the living room. She had makeup on. Mascara and foundation. The first Mary had seen her use for some time.
'Mom,' she said, surprised. 'You put on makeup?'
Her mother smiled. She sniffed the fresh waffles. Her mother took the syrup bottle and poured upon them a sea. She seemed tired, but she beamed.
'Go get the paper, honey.'
Mary kissed her mother on her bony cheek. She wore her flip-flops and walked outside.
Her flops flapped down on empty concrete. She looked down. Their welcome mat was gone. Mary looked around confusedly, wondering why anyone would steal a welcome mat. The spare key was gone as well.
Mary looked around the patio for the key but it was nowhere. She crossed the threshold to go downstairs. Something caught her eye as she hit the first step. She looked back at Marianne's apartment. The welcome mat sat before her door.
Mary stared down at the mat. It had been placed with meticulous care, as if that were its real home. The door was slightly ajar.
Mary pushed it open with wavering fingers. She looked inside. The apartment was as it had been always. Mary went inside.
She called out for Marianne. Her words echoed timidly in the empty apartment. Or so she imagined. She sensed something dreadful in the kitchen. She slowly paced forward. There was the smell of tangerine air freshener all over. She looked into the kitchen.
Benjamin Franklin from his hundred dollar manifold smiled back at her. Mary felt the air sucked out of her. All sound vanished. The noise of the fridge. Gone. Street noise. Eradicated.
She ran into the bathroom. There was nobody there. She searched the walk-in closet. She checked the bedroom and under the bed. Nobody. She ran back into the kitchen and checked the utility room. Nobody.
She stopped in the kitchen. Mary slowly looked at the floor. On the off-white linoleum, next to the hundred dollar bill, there was a single brown droplet. Mary crouched down and looked at it. She couldn't figure what it was. It was an unaccountable brown splotch. Horror was overtaking her. She reached a tremulous finger towards the brown spot. She stopped herself. That was evidence. And the hundred dollar bill was evidence. Was loaded with evidence. Mary's eyes trembled uncontrollably.
She watched herself take the hundred and stuff it in her pajama waistband and cover it with the hem of her tank top and this someone she watched neglected to close the door and she heard this stranger's flip-flops slapping across the concrete landing.
She stopped at her door and ran back and dragged the welcome mat back to their threshold. Mary went inside and closed their front door and locked it. Her mother looked up.
'Where's the paper?'
Mary heard the words behind a veil of silk. She went back outside and descended the stairs. She looked around the street, up and down. A car drove past. She recognized it as some neighbor's Subaru. She didn't see anyone strange. She didn't know what she was doing. The paper was on the patio beside the door. She went up and got it and retreated inside and locked the door. She put the paper on the counter.
'Mary? What's wrong?'
Mary looked at her mother. 'What?'
'You're sweating like mad.'
Mary felt her forehead. Something made deep humming noises in her ears. She cracked into nervous, then maniacal laughter. Her mother looked worried.
'I-It's really hot outside. Hah.' Mary swallowed then forced a smile. 'I-I'm going to take a shower.'
She went into the bathroom and undressed. The hundred dollar bill fell from her waistband and hid itself in the coiled pajama pants. She pushed it deeper in her pants leg. She turned the water to maximum heat. She stood underneath the steaming water and stared at the coil of her own lost hair modulating among the vortex descending down the drain.
Someone knocked on the bathroom door. Mary jolted back to awareness. The water had turned frigid.
'You've been in there thirty minutes,' shouted her mother. Her mother degenerated into a coughing fit. Mary swallowed. She stopped the water.
'Sorry,' she croaked.
-
She called Sammy and cancelled, telling him her mother was feeling particularly ill. He seemed disappointed but acquiesced. She also called Sarah who seemed unaware that any plans were made in the first place. She turned off her cell phone and hid it in her sock drawer. She could not stop pacing around her room.
At 9:30 at night she made sure her mother was asleep and that her prescriptions were sorted for the next week. She dressed in long shorts and a lavender t-shirt and wore her socks and hiking boots. She packed enough clothes for five days into a backpack. She bagged her toothbrush and the half-empty snail-shell of toothpaste inside a baggie. She packed eight pads. She packed some matches in case she needed a fire. Finally she rolled up her sleeping bag and tied it to the handle of her backpack with a coil of thin rope and stuffed the hundred dollar bill into her rear pocket. She put on a baseball cap and set her backpack by the front door.
Mary went into her mother's room. Her mother was sleeping peacefully. A subdued form in the night under her covers. Mary sat gingerly on the other side of the bed. She watched her mother gently breathe. She put her hand on her mother's head, then her shoulder, then her head again. She planted a kiss on her mother's right cheek and got up and took her backpack and left.
-
Mary walked directly down Leverett Avenue southwards towards the more densely populated University of Arkansas campus. More eyes to see. She looked at the stars. She didn't think she'd want eyes anymore. Eyes that have witnessed. If only she could extricate their memories from within their humors. The moon smiled like wicked teeth. She wiped a hot tear from her cheek. She walked past the E-Z mart. A homeless man between the pumps with a shopping cart full of bags stared at her as she passed.
She crossed Sycamore at the light and continued. Past apartments full of sleepers. She was approaching the mermaid-fountain outside one of the apartment's offices when she heard shuffling far behind her. She turned and looked at the person, still distant, hood up. Hands in pockets. Walking stiffly and calmly.
Mary kept her head low. Her knuckles turned white from their grip on her backpack straps. She stared straight at her feet. When she came to the First Baptist church on the corner of Leverett and North Street she ducked into its driveway that led into the huge parking lot between the back of the church, the walking trail, and the gas station.
Mary hid inside a small space between the fenced-off air conditioning units and an exterior storage shed. She watched around the shed's corner. The figure passed the driveway and disappeared around the street side of the church.
Mary held her breath. She crept around the storage shed. The shadows between the walls and streetlight and driveway were complete. She peered around the corner of the shed and watched the figure cross the street and walk down North Street towards the west. She sighed and closed her eyes. She looked down the street towards her former home. A car was coming, distant, but coming, its headlights bright. Mary ducked back into the darkness, turning to head towards the walking trail.
Kaplan lunged from the shadows and pinned her against a wall, his huge hands twisting his garrote around her neck. Her feet dangled and she kicked uselessly against him. Her eyes bugged. Kaplan stared into her eyes, his teeth bared like those of a mad hound. Mary beat at his wrists with her minute hands. She began to cry but could offer no noise to the red night seething into existence around the edges of her vision.
In the next instant something ripped.
Kaplan dropped her. He staggered backwards, his abdomen caving in and out. His face was a portrait of intense pain. His teeth were still bared. Blood spurted and dripped from a gaping wound in his chest. Something had opened him. Something had impaled his center and torn his flesh into deep canyons. His sternum sat on the ground covered in viscera. His ribs were laid bare. His heart beat madly, open to the world, and spurted great gouts of rich blood. He staggered and crumpled on the ground.
Mary fell against the wall shaking with terror. She couldn't control the trajectories of her hands. She felt wet matter on her face. Her clothes felt damp with something warm. She lost control of her bladder and wet herself. She couldn't breathe. She sucked in breath after breath but nothing stayed. Her heart pounded. She stared at the dead man who licked the pavement.
Mary looked at her hands. They were covered with blood.
'Mary,' said somebody. Mary gasped.