MY ATTEMPT TO FRAME May is stalled but not defeated. Imagine that putz Schultz being there when May discovers the body. Since all’s quiet on the May front, I turn my attention elsewhere. I decide that I can’t get the fresh start I so deserve until I take care of old business.
Loretta Blanchette is a fourth grade teacher from Cape Girardeau who earns a few extra bucks working at a summer enrichment camp near there. I go to one camp after another, and the Summer Daze Springboard Camp is one of them. The campers, very few of whom want to be there, are getting a jump on the next grade level in math and science. I don’t need a jump. I’m several grade levels ahead already.
Mrs. Blanchette either doesn’t know of her students’ desire to avoid humiliation at all costs, or enjoys putting them on the spot.
One rainy afternoon, she calls three students up to the board to work math problems. Class, we’re having a math race. Isn’t that fun? I’m good at math, and left to myself I always get the right answers. When left to myself. Thunder booms outside and rain lashes at the windows as Mrs. Blanchette dictates problems. The other two students keep up easily, so she starts going faster. I fall behind, barely able to copy a problem without solving it before she moves on to the next.
Looking out of the corners of my eyes, I see the other two students finish and raise their hands almost simultaneously. The race is over. I still have several problems to work. I keep at it, moving the chalk slowly as tears run down my cheeks. And then the worst happens. A hot stream runs down my leg into my shoe, and the twenty-eight eyes in the classroom that are not mine watch as my shoe overflows onto the floor. I won’t go into what happens next, but it involves large quantities of hand towels from the bathroom and a trash can. I still have five weeks left of camp, so for thirty-five more days, I go to her room, look at the trash can, and feel the stares of others.
Loretta—I get a little thrill out of calling my teacher by her first name—is retired now, living in the northern suburb of Florissant in a matchbox of a house. I don’t need any sedative for Loretta. She is small enough to be overpowered and nowhere near as formidable as I remember her. I dispatch her with a quick heart stab and she goes fast. A gasp, a moan, and she crumbles to the floor. I do the cutting on Loretta’s kitchen table, one of those Formica-topped ones with gold flecks and chrome trim. I cut here and there, staying primly away from Loretta’s privates, taking instead the finger adorned by a ring that flashed so frightfully and the eyes that laughed when I was driven to wet myself. I was hoping she would do the same, but no such luck.
I leave through the back door, because I’m not happy with that street light right out in front of Loretta’s house. The less time I spend on her front porch with that orange light falling on me like pumpkin rain, the better. As I go down the steps in back, the next-door neighbor’s porch light suddenly comes on. I shrink against the wall of Loretta’s house. Have I made too much noise? Does the neighbor have supernatural hearing powers and has heard the blood gurgling in Loretta’s throat? A blur of white moves down the steps and at first I think the neighbor has thrown something like a white basketball into his yard. Then the basketball barks at me.
A man steps out on the porch to see what all the fuss is about. He glances in my direction. I am not sure if he sees me, but the dog is heading in my direction, barred from viciously attacking my ankles by a chain link fence.
My heart is pounding. This is not part of the plan.
I cringe inside some bushes. The man calls to his dog angrily, yelling at him to do his business and leave that damned cat alone. The dog pees arrogantly on the fence and reluctantly tears itself away from the blood-scented intruder. Climbing the steps in desultory fashion, the dog continues to glare at me until the man scoops it up and shuts the door.
Circling around behind the neighbor’s house, I break a window and shoot him just as he is about to make a phone call, using a gun that I bought years ago. I reported my gun stolen back in September, in preparation for a moment just like this. Details, you know.
I will have to get rid of these clothes along with my gloves, and go through my scrubbing routine, like I’m a doctor getting ready for surgery. There are ways to beat this evidence thing. It isn’t until later that I notice a small tear in my Lycra jersey, just a few threads. It must have happened when I broke the window. There is no tear in my skin, no blood, but do I know for sure about discarded skin cells? No.
Was the neighbor—I’m thinking of him now as The Busybody—about to call the police, or just calling his sweetheart for a little Friday night action? Too late to ask now. That’s unfortunate, but overall I’m pleased. One grudge settled, lots more to go.
If only I could just do that to May.