Chapter Four

Annie Baxter lay sleepless on her bed. Brief, incandescent flashes of lightning lit the dark room, and thunder shook the house to its foundations. A burglar alarm, triggered by the storm, wailed somewhere, and dogs barked in the night.

The dream she'd had crept into her consciousness. It was a sexual dream, and it disturbed her because it was about Cliff, and it should have been about Keith. In the dream, she was standing naked in front of Cliff, who was fully dressed in his uniform. He was smiling — no, leering at her, and she was trying to cover her nakedness with her hands and arms.

The Cliff Baxter in her dream was younger and better built than the Cliff Baxter she was married to now. More disturbing still was that, in the dream, she was sexually aroused by Cliff's presence, and she'd awakened with the same feeling.

Keith Landry and the other men she'd been with before Cliff were more sensitive and better lovers in the sense that they were willing to experiment and to give her pleasure. Cliff, on the other hand, had been, and still was, into sexual dominance. She had been turned on by this initially, she admitted, like in the dream; but Cliff's rough sex and selfishness now left her feeling unsatisfied, used, and sometimes uneasy. Still, she remembered a time when she was a willing and aroused partner.

Annie felt guilty that she'd once enjoyed that sado-sexual relationship with Cliff and guilty that she still thought and dreamed about it with no revulsion or loathing. In fact, it was quite the opposite, like now, awakening from that dream, moist between her legs. She realized she had to kill that dream and those thoughts once and for all.

She looked at the clock beside the bed: 5:16 A.M. She rose, put on her robe, went down to the kitchen, and poured herself an iced tea. After some hesitation, she picked up the wall phone and called police headquarters.

"Sergeant Blake speaking, Mrs. Baxter."

She knew that her phone number, name, and address appeared on some sort of screen when she dialed, and that annoyed her. Cliff wasn't comfortable with a lot of new technology, but he intuitively recognized the possibilities of the most sinister, Orwellian gadgets available to the otherwise Stone Age police force of Spencerville.

"Everything okay, Mrs. Baxter?"

"Yes. I'd like to speak to my husband."

"Well... he's out making the rounds."

"Then I'll call him on the car phone. Thank you."

"Well, hold on, let's see, he might be... I had some trouble raising him before. The storm, you know? I'll try to get him on the radio and tell him to call you. Anything we can do?"

"No, you've done enough." She hung up and dialed his car phone. After four rings, a recorded voice said the call could not be completed. She hung up and went into the basement. Part of the basement was the laundry room, another part was Cliff's den, carpeted, and finished in pine paneling. On his escorted house tours, he liked to point to the laundry room and say, "Her office," then to his den and say, "My office."

She went into his office and turned on the lights. A dozen mounted animal heads stared down at her from the walls, glassy-eyed, with the trace of a smile around their mouths, as though they were happy to have been killed by Cliff Baxter. The taxidermist, or her husband, had a sick sense of humor; probably both of them did.

The police radio crackled on a countertop, and she heard a patrol car talking clearly to headquarters with not much storm static. She didn't hear Sergeant Blake inquiring about Chief Baxter.

She contemplated the wall-mounted gun rack. A braided metal cord ran through the trigger guards of the dozen rifles and shotguns, through an angle iron, and ended in a loop secured by a heavy padlock. Annie went into the workshop, took a hacksaw, and returned to the gun rack. She pulled the metal cord taut and began sawing. The braided wire began to fray, then the cord separated, and she pulled it loose from the trigger guards. She chose a 12-gauge double-barreled Browning, found the boxes of shotgun shells in a drawer, and slid a heavy-load, steel-shot shell into each of the two chambers.

Annie shouldered the shotgun and went up the stairs into the kitchen. She put the shotgun on the kitchen table and poured herself another glass of iced tea.

The wall phone rang, and she answered it. "Hello."

"Hello, baby doll. You lookin' for me?"

"Yes."

"So, what's cookin', good-lookin?"

She could tell by the static that he was calling from his car phone. She replied, "I couldn't sleep."

"Well, hell, time to rise and shine anyway. What's for breakfast?"

"I thought you'd stop at Park 'n' Eat for breakfast." She added, "Their eggs, bacon, potatoes, and coffee are better than mine."

"Where'd you get that idea?"

"From you and your mother."

He laughed. "Hey, I'm about five minutes away. Put on the coffee."

"Where were you tonight?"

There was a half-second pause, then he replied, "I don't ever want to hear that kind of question from you or nobody." He hung up.

She sat at the kitchen table and laid the shotgun in her lap. She sipped her iced tea and waited.

The minutes dragged by. She said aloud, "So, Mrs. Baxter, you thought it was an intruder?" She replied, "Yes, that's right."

"But there was no forced entry, ma'am, and you knew the chief was on his way home. You had to have cut the cord, ma'am, long before you heard a noise at the door, so it kinda looks premeditated. Like you was layin' in wait for him."

"Nonsense. I loved my husband. Who didn't love him?"

"Well, ain't nobody I know who did love him. Least of all you."

Annie smiled grimly. "That's right. I waited for him and blew his fat ass into the next county. So what?"

Annie thought about Keith Landry, about the possibility of him being dead, laid out at Gibbs Funeral Home. "Excuse me, Mrs. Baxter, that's Parlor B, a Mr. Landry. Mr. Baxter is in Parlor A, ma'am."

But what if Keith wasn't dead? Did that make a difference? Maybe she should wait to hear for sure. And how about Tom and Wendy? This was their father. She vacillated and considered putting the shotgun back in the basement, and would have, except he'd see the cut cord and know why.

The police car pulled into the gravel drive, and she heard the car door open and shut, then his footsteps coming up the porch, and she saw him at the back door window, putting the key in the lock.

The door opened, and Cliff Baxter entered the dark kitchen, silhouetted by the back porch light. He was wiping his face and hands with a handkerchief, then sniffed at his fingers and turned toward the sink.

Annie said, "Good morning."

He swung around and peered into the dark alcove where she sat at the table. "Oh... there you are. Don't smell no coffee."

"I guess not, if you're smelling your fingers."

There was no reply.

Annie said, "Turn on the light."

Cliff went back to the door, found the switch, and the kitchen fluorescents flickered on. He said, "You got a problem, lady?"

"No, sir, you have the problem."

"I ain't got no problem."

"Where were you?"

"Cut the shit and put on the coffee." He walked a few steps toward the hallway.

Annie raised the shotgun from her lap and laid it on the table, pointed toward him. "Stop. Back up."

Cliff stared at the gun, then said softly, "Take your hand away from the trigger."

"Where were you tonight?"

"On the job. On the goddamn job, tryin' to earn a goddamn livin', which is more than you do."

"I'm not allowed to get a paying job. I have to do volunteer work at the hospital thrift shop down the street from the police station where you can keep an eye on me. Remember?"

"You hand me that shotgun, and we'll just forget this happened." He took a tentative step toward her and reached out with his hand.