The Best American Mystery Stories 2004

Timothy Williams Something About Teddy

From Plots with Guns

Halfway between Dayton and Cincinnati, snow spitting and slush gathering on I-75, Tom Lennox regretted telling Teddy his secret. Teddy, nineteen or twenty with greasy blond hair smashed to his forehead by a sock cap and the tattoos and piercings that even nice kids his age had these days, wanted to make it a game.

“What about her?” he asked when they passed a woman in a Honda Civic. “How would you kill her?” Teddy propped his feet on the dash, licked his bottom lip. “You’d play with her first though, wouldn’t you? Do her before you did her.”

Lennox checked his rearview mirror and measured a car-length distance before he glided the Buick back into the right lane. Twenty-seven years on the road as a sales rep for Lindite Bowling Balls had made him a lot of things — twenty pounds overweight, enough money to support his wife’s addiction to Home Shopping, a few friends, and a cautious driver. Once the Buick had settled into its lane, he glanced at Teddy’s filthy Reeboks on the dash and fought the urge to slap him.

The boy was Crude. That was his wife’s term for boys like Teddy. Muriel taught geometry in their hometown of Port Huron, Michigan, and she said most of her students were crude these days. She was thankful that they had never had children. Lennox wasn’t sure. Maybe children would have changed things, would have given him a reason to come home from the road. Muriel’s womb had been the source of their problems. It still was. This afternoon she had an appointment with an oncologist who would confirm what both Muriel and Tom knew. She was beyond treatment. The fact that Muriel had insisted that he continue his sales route instead of coming home to accompany her to the doctor both angered and frightened him.

“Get your shoes off my dash,” Lennox said.

Teddy dropped his feet to the floor, sucked air between his teeth, and grinned. “Hey, you’d pop her before you popped her. Right?”

“I wouldn’t rape her.”

“Sure you wouldn’t,” Teddy said. “In a pig’s eye.”

“I’ve never raped anyone.”

Teddy leaned forward and took a last look through the rearview mirror. “I’d do her,” he said. “A lot of women like that. I read it in a book once.”

Lennox quickened his wipers against the snow and shifted his weight behind the wheel to give his hemorrhoids relief. He reached for a pack of Camel Lights, told himself he could wait ten more miles before he smoked another, and then lit it anyway. He’d been trying to quit for months but nothing worked. Not the patches or the gum or even the fear he felt when he climbed a flight of stairs and felt fluttering in his chest. He was forty-nine, a big, balding man carrying too much weight in his upper stomach, with high blood pressure and an even higher cholesterol count thanks to a lifetime of eating in diners and truck stops from Saginaw, Michigan, to Valdosta, Georgia — the endless ribbon of I-75 that he’d traversed for decades. Sooner or later, a half-clogged artery would clog completely or a platelet would burst free and hit his heart and Tom Lennox, excellent salesman, competent Canasta player, mediocre husband, would be a lump of dead weight for a maid to discover. There were nights when he lay in bed at a Motel 6 in Ohio or a Comfort Inn in Kentucky or a Ramada in Tennessee and prayed for sooner rather than later. He couldn’t imagine life at home without Muriel. The three-bedroom ranch house would be quiet and empty and there would be nothing but the sound of the television for company while he ate and drank alone. It would be exactly like being on the road.

Lennox took a hard drag from his cigarette and thought of the .22 stuffed beneath the front seat. He imagined pressing the barrel to Teddy’s left ear and squeezing the trigger and knew that doing it would push away the worry, the same way saying his prayers before bedtime had kept nightmares at bay when he was a boy.

“What about Fred and Wilma?” Teddy asked as they pulled even with a minivan and a fat, dark-haired man and his redheaded wife. “Gut shoot them, right? Make them suffer a little bit.”

“It’s not about making people suffer,” Lennox said. “I’m not disturbed.”

Teddy cocked his eyebrow and slouched back against the scat. Lennox snubbed his cigarette. He didn’t know how to make the kid understand or see the order and self-control of his murders. Lennox wasn’t a sadist, and he wasn’t excessive. One a year. Twenty-four murders so far, the first a vagrant who slept behind a liquor store in Lexington, Kentucky, the last a seventeen-year-old runaway who solicited travelers at a Waffle House in Dalton, Georgia. Lennox had been so discreet in choosing his victims and so cautious in his methods that the police had never guessed all of the murders were connected.

“You make them beg?” Teddy asked.

The boy would never understand. Lennox wasn’t sure he understood it. Occasionally, he tried to figure out why he’d started killing, but he’d never come up with a satisfactory answer. Sometimes, he thought it was just the road. Years of driving the same, unchanging highway and staring at the same billboards and same cityscapes and the patches of pine trees and grass that were always the same whether the signs told you that you were in northern Ohio or southern Georgia and eating in the same restaurants and diners and listening to the same songs on a dozen different radio stations and vomiting the same spiel a dozen times a day to bored Bowl-A-Rama managers made life as meaningless as the fragments of graffiti he read on overpasses and bathroom walls — Jesus Saves or Sandra’s a Slut, perhaps. One murder a year gave him a reason for his life on the road. The boy would never understand. With his endless chatter and his crudeness, Teddy was making even murder seem meaningless.

“Sure you do,” Teddy said. “You make them beg. I bet you get off on it.”

“Shut up,” Lennox said, surprising even himself with his anger.

Teddy blinked his bright blue eyes. “You don’t have to get pissy,” he said. “I was just talking.”

“That’s the problem.”

Teddy pretended to be fascinated by the billboards advertising Cincinnati FM stations and Budweiser. Lennox shouldn’t have told the boy about the murders and wasn’t sure why he did other than there was something about Teddy that drew Lennox to him. He’d felt it when he spotted the boy hanging around a payphone at a rest area just south of Toledo, and the feeling had been so strong that Lennox had broken his own rule and offered the boy a ride, telling himself it was because in his baggy jeans, windbreaker, and sock cap Teddy was likely to freeze on a snowy January day but knowing that he didn’t want to be alone today, not when the world was as gray and cold as Muriel would be under the hospital’s fluorescent lights.

He’d regretted it five minutes after Teddy got in the car when the boy leered at him, scooted across the seat, and offered to give him a blowjob. Lennox had recoiled, threatened to put him out on the side of the road. He told Teddy that one thing Tom Lennox was not was a faggot. Didn’t he see the wedding ring on his finger? Teddy had shrugged and said there was no reason to get angry. A lot of straight guys wouldn’t turn down a blowjob, and he’d just wanted to say thanks for the ride. Ten miles later, Teddy launched into a long discourse on why he always wore a sock cap. He said if you took your cap off your heat leaked out, which was bad, but sometimes your soul went with it and then where the hell were you, walking around without a soul? That was crazy talk, and it scared Lennox. But Teddy had just smiled as if the whole thing were a joke, and Lennox couldn’t decide if the boy was putting him on or if he was really crazy. Twenty minutes later, Teddy told Lennox that he’d served five years in a juvenile home for armed robbery and that while he was there he’d knifed two boys, but no one had been able to prove it so he walked away free as a bird. Something about Teddy was like a key turning inside Lennox’s mind, and when the boy finished his story, Lennox told his own. Now, Lennox looked at Teddy slumped against the door and felt guilty for the way he’d spoken to him. He wasn’t sure why, just that indefinable something.

“I’m sorry,” Lennox said. “Never mind what I said.”

Teddy’s head popped up, and he reached for a cigarette without asking. “You’re probably just tense,” he said. “You sure you don’t want me to blow you?”

Lennox squinted through the snow at the high rises and bridges that marked the beginnings of Cincinnati. “I told you I’m not a homosexual.”

Teddy blew a smoke ring. “Me neither. I mean not really. But I don’t mind doing a guy a favor.”

Then Teddy said he had a great idea. Why didn’t they kill someone. Make it a special occasion. If they killed somebody together, Lennox would know his secret was safe. The only other way to guarantee it was if Lennox killed him.

“And I don’t meant to be offensive or anything,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure I could take you.”

Lennox told him to stop talking. Traffic was picking up, the road was icy, and he needed to concentrate. They headed south through Cincinnati. With its snow tires and steady wipers, the Buick glided through traffic as anonymous as the first wayward cells of cancer.

They stopped at a Ramada just south of Richmond, Kentucky, and Lennox had Teddy lie across the front seat while he registered. Except for his diet and his smoking, Lennox was cautious in all things. If anything went wrong tonight, he wanted no one to be able to connect him with Teddy.

The sky was stained a molded gray, and snow swirled in a whipping wind that whistled from the foothills outside of town. Three-quarters of the parking lot was already full and yellow lights glowed from dozens of steamed windows.

“Nice room,” Teddy said when Lennox unlocked the door.

It was just a motel room — worn carpet, heavy green drapes, a paisley bedspread on a hard, queen-size bed, a couple of vinyl chairs, a burn-scarred writing table, and a television bolted to a stand on the dresser. Lennox unpacked while Teddy paced the room, turning the faucet on and off, bouncing on the bed, (lipping through channels on the television.

Lennox pulled off his sweater, uncomfortably aware of the way his gut sagged over his Dockers. It was five-thirty EST, which meant Muriel should be home from the doctor. Lennox pulled a pint of Jack Daniel’s from the side pocket of his suitcase, broke the seal, and poured a double shot into a plastic cup and then offered Teddy the bottle.

“I never drink the stuff,” he said. “A beer now and then, but that’s it. That junk will kill you. You don’t believe me ask my old man.”

Lennox downed his whiskey. He poured another two fingers into his cup.

“Don’t get soused,” Teddy said.

“I can handle my whiskey.”

Teddy fiddled with his sock cap. “I’m not preaching or anything.”

Lennox drank, refilled his cup, and told Teddy to keep quiet while he called home. Then he sat on the bed and dialed the number and was surprised that his hands weren’t shaking. The phone rang four times before the answering machine kicked on.

“Pick up,” Lennox said. “It’s me, babe. Pick up, okay?”

The phone beeped to let him know his time was over. He hung up, wondering if Muriel was there, alone in the living room with the lights off, terrified by the certainty of her dying. He dialed home again.

“It’s okay, babe,” he told the machine. “Things will be all right. Just pick up.”

Maybe she’d sent him on the road because she knew what the doctor would say and knew what she was going to do about it. He could see her lying across their king-size bed, her eyes closed, an empty pill bottle on the nightstand.

“Goddamn it,” he said.

Lennox slammed the receiver on the hook and then dialed again.

“Muriel, please answer,” he said. “Let me help you.”

Still no answer. Lennox had another idea that was as horrible as the first. Maybe she’d sent him on the road because there was someone else she wanted to comfort her.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be home tomorrow night. We’ll talk then.” He held the phone, and then just before his time ended, he remembered to say, “I love you.”

He was as tired as he’d ever been in his life. He unlaced his shoes and pulled his shirt from his trousers and lay back on the bed and closed his eyes.

“Trouble at home?” Teddy asked, his voice soft and concerned.

Lennox sat up on the edge of the bed. He told Teddy his story. When he finished, it was as if his body was a balloon that lost its air. His shoulders sagged, his muscles quivered, and he flopped back on the bed, his eyes burning as if the effort of staying open was too much for them. He didn’t think he was crying, but maybe he was.

“Just take it easy,” Teddy said. “Rest awhile.”

Teddy helped him beneath the covers. Then Teddy stood and stretched, took off his windbreaker and tennis shoes. Lennox wasn’t surprised when Teddy slipped in beside him. But then Teddy moved closer and laid an arm over his shoulders, and Lennox stiffened.

“Don’t touch me,” he said.

Teddy put his mouth close to Lennox’s ear. “Don’t push me away,” he said. “Just let me stay here with you.”

Lennox shut his eyes. The whiskey still buzzed through his head, and he felt as if the world were disappearing down a long, narrow tunnel. A few minutes later, he rolled onto his back and told himself it was because his shoulder was aching. When Teddy’s hand moved under the cover, Lennox didn’t stop him.

“I’m not gay,” Lennox whispered.

“Relax,” Teddy said. “You don’t always got to put labels on everything.”

Then Teddy pulled the covers away. Lennox lay still and let the boy do what he wanted and told himself that the moaning in the room was coming from the wind rushing at the windows.

Afterward, Lennox dozed and woke later when he heard the door closing. He sat up, blinking stupidly, and then rushed to the window in time to see the Buick’s taillights easing from the parking lot. His mouth was dry with panic. The boy had stolen his car and probably his wallet and how in God’s name would he explain why he’d picked up a hitchhiker and what they were doing in a motel room with one bed.

“Little queer,” Lennox said. “Goddamn hustler.”

He went for a drink and found the note that Teddy had placed beneath the whiskey. Teddy had “borrowed” a hundred bucks from his wallet and was gone after supplies. Lennox took a shot of the whiskey and lit a cigarette and swore to himself that his relief came from not having to offer an explanation about what happened and not from his fear that he’d never see Teddy again.

Lennox finished his drink and went to the bathroom, stood staring in the mirror at his fat face with bloodshot eyes and broken capillaries on his cheeks. The self-loathing started slowly like water heating on an electric stove. It began with the sight of the bags under his eyes and moved to his hairy gut and then to the shriveled old prick that had stiffened at the touch of another man.

“Faggot,” he said to the mirror.

His disgust passed. He hadn’t touched Teddy. Not once. That proved that he wasn’t gay. A gay guy would have touched back, wouldn’t he? By the time Lennox sat back on the bed with another cup of whiskey, he was sure that almost anyone would have done the same thing under the circumstances. Tonight, they would find a victim, kill him or her together, and say goodbye in the morning. It would be as if none of this had ever happened, and the pain he felt in his chest at the thought of parting with Teddy was just heartburn brought on by too many cigarettes and too much whiskey.

Lennox followed Teddy’s directions. After a lifetime of Michigan winters, he drove expertly in the snow, guiding the Buick around snowdrifts and ice patches while the glowing lights of the fast food joints and strip malls faded and gave way to rolling hills and stretches of field broken only by the occasional farmhouse. Teddy was hyperactive, his hands moving constantly to light a cigarette or pick at the insulated hunting vest he’d bought with Lennox’s money or adjust the sock cap on his head.

“A good time,” he said every few minutes. “This is just too cool.”

Lennox grunted his response and scanned the side of the road for deer. Teddy had been saying the same thing since he came back to the motel with a Wal-Mart bag loaded with a hunting knife, his new jacket, duct tape, and a flashlight. He’d spread their supplies on the bed like a kid showing off his toys on Christmas morning and told Lennox that he’d taken a drive and spotted a target, a house far enough outside of town to give them privacy and yet not too far from the main road to make getting out quickly a problem. Then he stood with his hands in his pocket and waited for Lennox to offer his approval.

“Next right,” Teddy said now.

Lennox took the turn. The snowdrifts were higher here, the road curving and narrow.

“That’s it,” Teddy said.

A small farmhouse sat back from the highway, the last home before a crossroads, and Lennox guessed the nearest neighbor was at least a quarter of a mile away. Teddy had chosen well. Lennox cut his headlights and cased into the drive and killed the engine. His throat was dry and his temples pounded. Teddy was grinning, rubbing his hands together, his eyes wide and manic. Lennox had the urge to let Teddy step out of the car and then lock the door and drive away. He was no stranger to the nerves that came before a killing, but this was different. Teddy was a wild card. Lennox had made him promise that they would play by the rules — they would not be brutal; they would try to terrorize the people as little as possible; when they finished they would slip away, taking nothing with them. Teddy had promised, but now his eyes gleamed and his muscles quivered with anticipation.

“Just do what I tell you,” Lennox said as they started up the drive.

“You’re the expert.”

Teddy slid into the shadows, moving quickly and easily in the dark to the side of the front door just outside the glow of the porch lights. Lennox trudged straight to the floor, out of breath, the snow swirling in his eyes. He kept one hand in his pocket on the butt of the .22 pistol. The ruse was simple. He was a stranger lost in the storm, having car trouble. Just his luck that his cell phone had gone out the first time he really needed it and would they be kind enough to allow him to call Triple A? When they invited him in, Teddy would follow.

He knocked once, waited five seconds, and then knocked again. A thin, thirtyish man with horn-rimmed glasses and a UK sweatshirt opened the door.

“Sorry to bother you,” Lennox said. “But I guess I’m lost and my car’s quit running.”

The man frowned at the intrusion. Then a woman in the background asked who it was. Before the man could answer, Teddy jumped from the shadows, pushed Lennox aside, and rammed his shoulder hard into the door, knocking the thin man off balance.

“Wait!” Lennox shouted.

The thin man brought up his arm, but it was too late. Teddy jabbed the knife hard into the guy’s leg and then hit him in the chin with a right cross that sent him to the knees. A vaguely pretty blond in a bathrobe dropped a bag of microwave popcorn and started screaming. Teddy smiled at her and kicked her husband in the face.

“Please,” the woman said.

She seemed to realize what was happening and broke for a cordless phone on the coffee table. Lennox had no choice. He pulled his gun and told her if she took another step he’d shoot her. Then Teddy hit her.

“Way too cool,” Teddy said when the woman brought her hand to her bloody month and stopped screaming.

Half an hour later, Lennox sat on the sofa and smoked a cigarette while Teddy paced the room and brandished his knife and talked incessantly about zombies and vampires and bogeymen. This was ugly and disorderly, but Lennox was too tired to stop it.

The couple looked at him with pleading eyes, but Lennox shook his head and smoked his cigarette. They were gagged and duct taped to straight-back kitchen chairs. Both of them were bleeding — the husband more profusely than the wife and Lennox figured before long the man would go into shock, since it looked as if Teddy’s knife had nicked an artery — and Lennox just kept thinking. “Thank God they don’t have children.”

Teddy went into the kitchen, came back with a bottle of Budweiser and a roll of salami. “This is a good fucking time, man.”

He downed the beer and pitched the bottle through a mirror over the mantel. Then he tilted his head and let out a grating yell, a poor imitation of Carol Burnett’s imitation of Tarzan. Lennox gave the woman the embarrassed, uneasy smile of an indulgent parent trying to explain the behavior of a toddler. Then he touched the .22 in his lap. He could put an end to it now. All he had to do was lift the gun, aim at the man’s head and then the woman’s. Their suffering would be over. But he couldn’t find the energy to do it.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” Lennox said.

Teddy took a bite of the salami. “Relax. You’re too uptight, man.” He chewed with his mouth open. “It’s all rock ’n’ roll, baby.”

Lennox stared at the television. They’d interrupted the couple’s Blockbuster night. On screen a frightened little boy told Bruce Willis that he saw dead people. Teddy picked up the remote and clicked off the movie.

“I saw that a couple of years ago,” he said. “It’s spooky shit. Gave me nightmares.”

Then Teddy plopped down on the sofa beside Lennox and pointed the knife at the husband. “How long until he bleeds to death?”

Lennox didn’t answer. Teddy said maybe the next one would be in the gut to sort of speed the process along. Then he cocked his head to the side and smiled at the woman and licked his lips.

“What do you think about her?” he asked.

What Lennox thought but wouldn’t admit was that there was something about her hair and the line of her jaw that reminded him of Muriel. He told Teddy to leave her alone.

Teddy smirked. “Don’t get jealous, pop. We could share her.” His smirk spread into a leer. “I mean both at the same time. That’s a real big fantasy for a lot of girls.” He leaned forward and pointed his knife at the woman. “You ever thought about it, hon? Two guys doing you together?”

The woman’s eyes widened, and she began to cry and shake her head. Lennox felt sick to his stomach.

Then Teddy crossed the room. He whispered something in the man’s ear that made him thrash his head and strain against the tape. Lennox didn’t want to watch, so he stared at his fingernails and thought how they needed cutting. When he looked up again, j the woman’s robe gaped open, and Teddy stood smiling and whistling his admiration for her body.

“How’d a geek like you get a babe like this?” he said to the man. Then he slapped the guy’s shoulder. “This is some fucking party.” He came back to Lennox and flopped on the couch. “Let’s do her man,” he said. “That would be too much.”

Lennox shut his eyes and shook his head. He felt ridiculous, like a little boy refusing to eat his peas or carrots. Then Teddy laughed, a deep, knowing laugh that Lennox found repulsive.

“Suit yourself,” he said. “Tell you what. I’ll do her and you can watch.” His hand found Lennox’s lap and squeezed. “Then I’ll take care of you the way you really like it.”

Lennox willed himself to not respond to Teddy’s touch, but he couldn’t help it. When Teddy massaged his erection right in front of the man and woman, Lennox felt ashamed and filthy. Teddy let him go and went for the woman. He cut the tape from her arms and legs and dragged her from the chair by her hair. She struggled and thrashed, but Teddy hit her once and put the knife to her throat, and she stopped fighting. The husband stomped his feet on the floor and thrashed his head and came close to tipping over.

“Come on, honey,” Teddy told the woman. “You know you’ll like it.”

Instead of leading her to the bedroom, he pushed her to the floor and ripped her robe away and told her to get on all fours. The woman kept shaking her head but she did as he told her.

“Doggy style!” Teddy said. “That’s the way uh huh uh huh I like it.”

He ripped her panties and pushed his jeans down and wrapped his arm around her neck to hold her head in place. The woman didn’t move. She just held still and waited for the inevitable.

Teddy craned his neck and grinned at Lennox. “You change your mind you can have sloppy seconds.”

When Teddy turned to mount the woman. Lennox raised the pistol, aimed slowly, and then squeezed the trigger. Blood splattered the husband, who stopped struggling and stared at Lennox in disbelief. Teddy fell forward and his weight drove the woman to the floor. Then Teddy struggled to get back to his knees. He’d almost made it when Lennox shot him again. Teddy fell on top of the wife, and she bucked her hips until he rolled off onto the floor.

“It wasn’t right,” he said.

Lennox nodded his head as if agreeing with himself. He’d repeat that as long as he needed to make himself believe it. If that didn’t work, he’d swear he shot Teddy because the woman reminded him of Muriel. Under no circumstance would he ever believe that a second before he pulled the trigger, he’d thought. “The son of a bitch is cheating on me.”

“It just wasn’t right,” he said again.

Lennox helped the woman to her feet and set her in the chair and grabbed the duct tape to secure her. Then he went to the front window and squinted outside. It was still snowing.

“I’m sorry,” he told them when he turned around.

He pulled the pint of Jack Daniel’s from his overcoat’s pocket and sat on the couch and took a long pull from the bottle. He lit a cigarette and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, searching for the words to tell his story. He wasn’t sure where to begin, but he knew he wanted them to hear all of it — the years on the road with nothing but miles in front of and behind him; the times he’d awakened alone and frightened and certain that he was dying; how he’d first met Muriel at a skating rink in Ohio; the absurd rituals they’d followed in an effort to conceive a baby; the way she’d turned away from him now that she was dying and didn’t want him with her and wouldn’t answer the phone. Afterward, he’d have to decide what to do with them. Would he kill them and move on down the road, or was this the night to put an end to his useless traveling? He took a deep breath and glanced back at the window. He made a bet with himself, a traveling game that he’d played a hundred times to decide meaningless decisions — if he’d eat at McDonald’s or Denny’s, stay on the interstate or break up the drive by taking a state road, stop for a drink or wait until he checked into his motel. If it was still snowing when he finished his story, he’d cut them loose, take one last swallow of bourbon, and put the barrel of the gun in his mouth. If it was clear, he’d make their deaths as quick and as painless as possible and get back on the road.

Lennox smiled at them and then glanced at the dead boy lying on the floor. He knew where his story would begin.

When he finished, Lennox went to the window to discover the future.