Michelle picked up Kristy and Kyle from school on the Monday before Thanksgiving. Kristy’s friend was over for a bit, and then she left. Michelle fed them dinner. Maybe she played with them a little while. Maybe they watched some TV. She was supposed to go over and help clean her father’s house to prepare for the holiday, and for her grandmother’s arrival from North Dakota. She never showed up. A neighbor saw Rocky peering in a window around five p.m.
Alyssa had called and called. Monday night, Tuesday morning, Tuesday afternoon, Tuesday evening.
Like Sarah and Gordon, Sally had been cut off since the incident in September, when Michelle recanted. She’d seen the kids once, on Halloween, when Michelle brought them over to show off their costumes. Sarah saw Rocky just once, the day he was bailed out, when she confronted him about breaking into Sally’s house. The story he offered was so very different from how Melanie had described it to her that she said she understood for maybe the very first time what “a pathological liar he was … I said, ‘You’re sick.’ ” It was one of the last things she would ever say to him.
The snow and cold of Billings swept in. Michelle told Alyssa that she had more evidence about Rocky’s supposed affair now, though she didn’t say what specifically. On the Friday before Thanksgiving, Michelle had shown up at Paul’s house with the kids and a suitcase. She said she was finally leaving Rocky and could they spend the night?
In the morning, Michelle made Paul promise not to let Rocky have the kids, no matter what. Rocky must have been casing Paul’s house, because as soon as Michelle left, he was at the door and begging Paul to let him have his kids just for a couple of hours. He promised he wasn’t going to do anything. He just wanted to take them to see Harry Potter. He’d bring them right back after. And Paul believed him.
Rocky spent that night in a hotel with the kids, Michelle frantic with worry. She talked to Melanie and Alyssa, went over and spent hours at Alyssa and Ivan’s—something she’d rarely been allowed to do in the past. They sat in the hot tub talking about how this time Michelle had really had it. She was absolutely and utterly convinced that Rocky was never going to change, and she was going to leave him.
On Sunday, Rocky showed up again at Paul’s house, this time kicking and punching the door, screaming for Michelle. He hurled his body against it as he’d done at Sally’s house six weeks earlier—the dents I would see years later. This time he couldn’t break in, so he switched tactics, told Michelle that Kristy was at home vomiting blood. Surely Michelle was smart enough to recognize the lie, but she went back to her house with him anyway, because what parent wouldn’t? Kristy, of course, was fine. Michelle eventually returned to her father’s house that night, leaving the kids with Rocky for the night.
On Monday, Kristy and Kyle went to school. They wrote little narratives about the upcoming holiday and Kristy wrote about the fun she’d had over the weekend swimming in a hotel pool, about how at Thanksgiving she’d get to see her aunts (ants) and when her grandmother came from North Dakota, they’d sit around a big table together and … pray for god for the good things he has done for us. Kyle wrote about learning to ride a bike.
As the kids sat in their classrooms for the last time, their father picked up the latest Thrifty Nickel and found a guy selling a used .45 caliber Llama pistol. Later, the seller would tell police that Rocky had mentioned buying it for his wife. The guy assumed a gift. Background checks or a three-day waiting period were not mandated by law.
After Michelle collected the kids from school, the three of them went home, to the house in her name. Rocky in the meantime had agreed to stay at Sarah and Gordon’s. Michelle fed the kids dinner, and started the nighttime routine. Their toothbrushes had toothpaste on them, unused. At some point, before bedtime, Rocky showed up.
Maybe she thought, I have to run.
Maybe she thought, How do I get him out of here?
Maybe she thought, I’ve had enough; I’m standing my ground.
No one can know.
Rocky had the gun from the Thrifty Nickel ad, and he had a can of gasoline, and his plan was to burn the house down, make it look like they’d died by accident. A terrible tragedy. A house fire. He took a wad of chewing gum and stuck it in the ignition of Michelle’s car in case she tried to get away.
When he came into the house, Michelle must have panicked, taken the kids to the basement. Her purse was scratched up, the contents scattered. Maybe she was frantically searching for the Mace from her father. Rocky shot her first. Four times. Twice in the chest, once in the head, once in the shoulder. She fell in the far back room of the basement. The children must have watched their father do this. They ran, both of them. Kristy was shot next, in the head, and fell at the base of the stairs. And then Kyle, who nearly made it to the stop of the stairs before his father shot him, too, and he tumbled partway down the stairs and stopped, blood trailing from top to bottom.
Rocky took the family movies, put them in a bag, and put the bag in the garage. He scrawled a note and left it: I am not a cheeter [sic]. And then, I love Michelle with all my heart. Til death do us part.
Then he sprinkled gas around the house, lit a match, went to the basement, and shot himself. The fire burned hot and slow.
He did not die from the gunshot. He died from smoke inhalation. Maybe he lay there thinking about what he’d done, surrounded by his dead family. Maybe that’s when he wrote on his arm: I am the devil. Or was it I deserve to go to hell.
They died on Monday night, the four of them.
The house smoldered, but never really alighted. It was winter, the windows shut tight, so the flames had no oxygen upon which to feed. Smoke circled and swirled until the fire sizzled out, everything left blackened and damaged. The walls looked as if they’d melted. When the police entered the house, the TV was somehow still on, just a blue screen. Alyssa remembers this, too. The blue screen, and how the black plastic sides of the television were all melted. It defied logic. Soot blanketed everything, walls, floors, windows. Most of the furniture was incinerated.
By Tuesday evening, when Michelle still hadn’t picked up her phone, Alyssa made that call to their father. And they called Sally. And the three of them went to the house. And the minute they stepped out of their car in front of the darkened house, they could smell it. The acrid smoke, the gasoline. Paul had a key to the house, and as he made his way toward the door, he had a sudden, terrifying thought. Maybe Rocky had set some sort of booby trap; he told Sally and Alyssa not to touch a thing. Heart hammering in his chest, he opened the door, gingerly took a step inside. He called Michelle’s name. It was an ominous, gut-deep quiet, with crackling sounds here and there, and then that smell that nearly bowled them over. They gagged. “I knew,” Alyssa said later. “I knew. I knew right away.” Sally saw the children on the basement stairs, and at the bottom, Rocky. His face in a grimace. The face haunts her still today, eyes open and staring. Pure evil, she says. The face of the devil. She had to look for a long time to make sure it was really him. She’ll never forget it. Twisted in agony and rage. The face of someone who was also himself once loved. Later she would think his face carried what she called “the turmoil” inside him. “He had a lot of pain,” she said. “The walking wounded in a way.” Though it took her many years to be able to see this.
Sally did not see Michelle, but she knew. She knew. She urinated right there, standing on the stairs, then ran out of the house to the curb. She went to the neighbor’s, where she called the police and borrowed a pair of unsoiled pants.
Alyssa ran to the middle of the front yard, fell to her knees, and vomited.
Paul ran out the back door, looking for Michelle, thinking maybe, maybe she was still alive somehow, somewhere. He ran to the garage where Rocky kept his Mustangs, and there he found videotapes and the note from Rocky.
The police arrived.
And they found Michelle.