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Chapter Forty-Seven
Gina
Ido my best to pull myself together. Joel would want me to be rational and sensible. But there is no peace. I can find no logic, and certainly no peace or justice in any of this. In fact, things just keep getting worse.
I have three dead bodies on my hands, and I’m going to need an explanation for how this happened. My first thought is to run, but I know I won’t get far. And even if I did, I’d always be running.
So, I do the only thing I can do. I sit on the front porch steps sipping a glass of iced tea. I know I have to come up with a plan, and fast, and as I sit with the dogs at my feet, one begins to take shape in my mind.
I pick up Joel’s pistol and take it into the house. I grab a dishtowel and wipe the blood and the prints off. Then I cover the trigger with the dishtowel and walk over to Mary Baker and put a bullet in her head.
After that I’m thirsty again, so I go to the sink and refill my glass of tea. I throw the dishtowel in the wash, and I head back outside.
Everything is such a mess. I walk over to Joel’s body, lean down and say, “Please forgive me.”
I use his hand to grip the weapon, and I consider what to do. I can’t really move the bodies without dragging blood everywhere, which will mess up the patterns. That is going to have to be okay. I’m just going to have to use my head. I’m going to have to act my way through this.
I run through every plausible scenario in my head, all the ways things could go from bad to worse. Then I make a decision. I walk back into the house and dial 9-1-1. “Help,” is all I say. “I need help.” The operator rattles off a list of questions, but I remain silent, other than providing our address.
Seven minutes later, a police cruiser comes barreling down our driveway. It feels like déjà vu.
I’m sitting on the porch, knees to my chest, the dogs panting at my feet. The officer parks, and upon seeing the scene, calls for backup. From there, everything unfolds quickly.
Later, after I am checked over for injuries, I am taken to the county sheriff's office for questioning. Of course, the sheriff is dead, so I get some other guy who looks like he’s out for blood. He asks me to tell him the story, then he makes me tell it again. I’m still in shock, so mostly, I let him lead. I simply follow, telling him the answers I think he wants to hear.
“So,” he says, clearing his throat. The room we’re in looks like an old storage closet, not what I expected for an interrogation. It smells musty, like old wet rags left too long in the sun. “Mr. Miller found you through an ad in theFarmer’s Almanac?” This is scandalous news to him, I can tell. I’m guessing this is not how Joel told the folks around town we met, if he told them how at all.
I nod the affirmative.
“And your father placed the ad.”
I nod again. I imagine myself as a character, the same as I did with the letters. I picture a battered woman, someone who is controlled, abused, used for all she is worth.Bought and paid for.I become that woman.
I know that she would be hesitant to make direct eye contact. She would sit with her legs crossed, slouched forward, shoulders folded inward. She would answer questions without words as long as she was allowed to get away with it. She would glance up at the investigator with a fleeting, sad smile, but would immediately look away again.
“You and Mr. Miller were married. In January?”
I study my co-actor carefully. He has a shrewd face, a sharp nose, and large, round eyes. “Yes.”
“What kind of marriage would you say you had?”
I shrug. How could a person possibly as traumatized as I am answer that?
“Would you say it was a good one?”
I shake my head and stare at the floor. Maybe I cry off and on.
He asks me to repeat everything again. The sequence of events. But this time, when I have trouble forming a coherent sentence, he does the talking for me. “So, Mary Baker showed up at your house this afternoon—what would you say—about three o’clock?”
“I think so, yes.”
“You confided in her about the abuse your husband had inflicted.”
I nod.
“This abuse—it was both physical and sexual in nature.”
Another nod, slower this time. Eyes fixed on the table.
