Fever

25

I lowered the freezer lid, quit the garage, and went back through the house and out the way I’d come in. Following a cold, prickly little hunch now. Nothing lost if it didn’t pan out; another few minutes wouldn’t make any difference to the law or Mitchell Krochek or the dead woman in the freezer.

I crossed the strip of lawn that separated the Krochek property from Rebecca Weaver’s. All three of the homes here had the same general layout. The gate in the narrow fenced area next to the garage, where her garbage cans were kept, was unlocked. So was the second gate that gave access to her backyard. And so was the side door into the garage. I opened that one and looked inside. The car in there was a Pontiac Firebird, low-slung and sporty and either new or close to it.

All right. I went through the yard to the back door: also unlocked. Easy, so far. But if the rest of my hunch proved out, it would stop being easy pretty damn quick.

I eased the door open partway, leaned in to listen. Faint sounds somewhere inside, unidentifiable from here. I stepped through onto a utility porch similar to the Krocheks’, then across the kitchen. The sounds were louder now-a familiar and discordant series of electronic beeps, clangs, and bongs. They stopped abruptly as I passed through the kitchen; I stopped, too. The new silence was heavy and unbroken.

The dining room, formal living room, and family room were empty. I made my way down a hallway that bisected the full width of the house, walking soft. Four doors opened off of it; the last one on the west side was open. I edged forward until I had a clear look inside.

It was like looking into some sort of surreal three-dimensional exhibit. Motionless shapes, shadows, one halo of stationary light, and one bright rectangle of shifting colored images in an otherwise darkened room. And all of it wrapped in a hush that put a strain on my eardrums, tweaked at nerve ends.

Spare bedroom turned into an in-home office-desk, chairs, couch, bookshelves, computer workstation. Blinds drawn, the only illumination coming from a halogen desk lamp and the computer screen. She sat hunched forward in front of the screen, her back to me and her body stiff with tension; the only part of her that moved, now and then, were the fingers of her right hand as they manipulated the mouse. The back of her neck and the ends of her hair were wet with sweat. A half-smoked Newport burned in a full ashtray on her left; ash littered the desk around it and the air was thick with smoke. An empty glass, a bottle of Scotch, a woman’s wallet, and a scatter of credit cards were on her right. I didn’t need to see the silent monitor to know what was going on.

I went in there, still walking soft and at an angle until I was parallel with the desk and within the range of her vision. She didn’t notice me; she was in a kind of trancelike zone, as if the images on the monitor had hypnotized her.

“Hello, Mrs. Krochek,” I said.

I had to say the words again before they registered. Her head jerked sideways, but even when the brown eyes focused on me, there was no other physical reaction except a tightening of the muscles around her mouth. “Oh, it’s you,” she said with no discernible emotion. As if it was perfectly natural for me to be there. As if I were no more than a small, annoying interruption, like a buzzing fly.

The look of her was chilling. Hair wildly tangled, no makeup, skin sallow and moist, eyes bagged and feverish with excitement. Clothes wrinkled and soiled. Soiled body, too; the room stank of sweat and unwashed flesh mixed with the stale odors of booze and tobacco smoke. If she’d slept at all in the past three-plus days, it had been for no more than a few minutes at a time. If she’d eaten, it hadn’t been enough to dirty more than the two plates and two cups that sat on the low table in front of the couch. Existing the whole time on Scotch and cigarettes and adrenaline.

Her eyes flicked away, drawn magnetically back to the screen. She stared at it for a few seconds, moved the mouse, moved it again. “Shit,” she said then, still without any inflection. “Another loser. I should’ve kept on playing the twenty-line slots, let this damn site cool off a while longer.”

She was playing seven-card stud now, I saw when I moved a little closer. She clicked on the ante for a new hand, or “posted the blind” as it’s called, looked at her hole cards-king of diamonds, ten of clubs-and made a bet: $50. Reckless and foolish, without a pair in the hole.

“I had a hot streak going for a while,” she said, “shooting the pickle and winning two out of three hands. At one time I was ahead fifteen thousand. Can you believe it? Fifteen thousand! I couldn’t lose.”

“But then you did.”

“Yeah. My luck never holds for-Shit!” She’d lost another hand.

“How much are you down now?”

“I don’t know. Twenty K, maybe. It doesn’t matter.”

“No? Why not?”

“Plenty more where that came from.”

“Rebecca Weaver’s money.”

She didn’t deny it; she was still in the fever zone. “I’ll win it back,” she said. “All of it. My luck’s starting to change again. I can feel it.”

“Credit cards? Or did you tap into her bank account, too?”

She didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed on the screen.

“Is that why you killed her? To get your hands on her money?”

“… What?”

“I found her body,” I said. “In the freezer in your garage.”

Nothing until the hand being played was finished and she’d lost again. Then, as she posted the blind for a new one, “I didn’t do it on purpose. It wasn’t my fault.”

“What happened?”

“… What?”

“What happened with Rebecca, Mrs. Krochek?”

“She came over to my house. She said she wanted to see if I was all right but it wasn’t me she was worried about, it was Mitch. She… Yeah, baby, that’s it, that’s it! Wired aces!”

The bet she made on the aces was $250. I didn’t try to talk to her until the hand played out; she wouldn’t have heard me. She lost that one, too-lost another $1200 of Rebecca Weaver’s money on a single hand.

It was the amount of the loss that made me step forward and do what I should have done sooner: flip the switch on the workstation’s power strip. She let out a yell when the screen and the desk lamp went dark. Sudden rage brought her up out of the chair, sent her flying at me with her hands hooked into claws and her nails digging at my eyes. I couldn’t control her; in her fury she had a man’s strength. The sharp nails got in under my guard and opened burning furrows down the left side of my face. I had no choice then but to clip her. It didn’t hurt her much, but it knocked her down and drove the fight out of her. When I was sure that she wasn’t going to come at me again, I hauled her up by the arms and pushed her down on the couch.

She said, dully now, “You son of a bitch.”

There was a ceiling globe; I switched it on. In the stronger light, she made a pathetic, wasted figure slumped down on the cushions. The excitement had gone cold in her eyes. They were bleak, bloodshot, reflecting the light with the same empty glassiness of an animal’s.

I pulled the chair out from the workstation, straddled it in front of her. My cheek stung like the devil; when I touched the ragged furrows, my fingers came away bloody. I shook out my handkerchief, held it against the wounds. Sometimes it pays to be old-fashioned enough to carry a handkerchief.

“Why did you kill Rebecca Weaver?” I asked her.

“I didn’t mean to.” Her voice wasn’t much louder now than a hoarse whisper. “She made me do it.”

“How did she do that?”

“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.