The Suicide Killer Page 2

  “Charlie! Get down. I’m sorry Bobby, he usually doesn’t do that.”

  “That’s okay. I guess he likes me,” Bobby said, rubbing the dog’s head. “What kind is he?”

  “He’s a yellow lab. He’s only a year old, so he still gets a little excited,” she said and pulled the dog off Bobby so he could stand up.

  They walked around the playground trying to ignore the delighted screams of the children for their mothers to “look at the doggy.” They sped up their walking until they were safely away from the children. Bobby stopped at the entrance to the trail that would lead him home. First, he fought the urge to take off running up the path. Before she knew it, he would be halfway to his house. But he realized he didn’t really want to do that. It had always been in his nature to flee from everything. Right now all he wanted to do was to be with her. He realized she was watching him look at the path. She probably thought he was crazy.

  “That’s the trail I take to my house.”

  “Well, I was wondering. You looked like you were about to take off running.”

  “Nah, the thought never crossed my mind,” he said, and walked past his escape route.

  “It’s a good thing. Otherwise, I would have had to sic Charlie on you,” she said with a smile. “So do you live alone or have a roommate or something?”

  “I live alone. I lived with my grandmother, but she died last year and left the house to me.”

  Bobby never talked about his personal life with anybody. He never really talked to anybody about anything, but he didn’t feel uncomfortable talking to her about himself.

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “It’s okay. It’s life,” he said with a shrug. “So do you have a roommate or anything?” Bobby asked, hoping to change the subject.

  “No. I live alone too. I have an apartment in Valley Summit, off Red Rock Road. I like it. It’s only five miles from work and the park, so that’s nice too.”

  “Yeah, I know where those are,” Bobby said.

  They walked and occasionally engaged in small talk, but mostly they were silent, the way they were in the coffee shop. The silences they shared were the best Bobby could remember ever having with another person. There was no awkward feeling that somebody should speak, and when they did, it wasn’t something completely off the wall because neither one knew what to say. It was comfortable. They watched Charlie as he rolled in the grass and tried to hold him back when a squirrel taunted him before it dashed off into the woods. They ended up back in the parking lot after walking the two-mile path that meandered throughout the park. After wrestling Charlie into the backseat, Danielle was about to get into the car when she stopped.

  “I had a really nice time with you today.”

  “So did I. We should do it again sometime.”

  Danielle’s green eyes lit up.

  “Great. How about tomorrow?” Her face flushed. “Or I’m here every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. But any day is fine. It doesn’t have to be one of those days. Any day that is good for you will be great too.” Danielle’s face turned a darker shade of red.

  Realizing she could not shut herself up, Bobby stepped in and helped her out.

  “Tomorrow sounds great,” he said.

  Thrilled by his answer and for his help with her anxiety, she leaned in quickly and gave him an awkward hug. She climbed into her car.

  “See you tomorrow,” she said, and closed the door.

  Bobby watched her leave. The hug had been unexpected, and weird. But it was nice. He walked home thinking about his time with Danielle and Charlie.

  Chapter Two

  She saw him kissing the other woman at the entrance to the park and sat in her car, motionless as the tears formed. She wanted to drive away, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t let him think he was getting away with this. Regaining her composure, she stepped from the car on trembling legs.

  The slow, deliberate walk across the parking area was painfully long. The outsider watched, unnoticed, through blurred eyes. The scene in front of her was only disturbed once she purposely crushed the brush under her shoes. The sound caused the paramours to look up with uninterested eyes.

  “How could you do this, Mike?” She could no longer hold the tears back. They ran down her already red face.

  Mike stepped away from his mistress slowly, his hand up as if to reach for her. “I can explain,” he said.

  His voice had the slightest waver to it. She’d caught him in his lies and there was no way he could talk his way out of this.

  With the shock now turning to anger, she said, “So… I guess this is where you say it’s not what it looks like.” He moved to speak, but she wouldn’t let him have his say yet. “I just saw you kissing her. Don’t even bother giving me any of your crap, Mike.”

  Mike looked off toward the woods. For once he seemed at a loss for words. How long had he been cheating on her? His arrogant ass probably knew this day would come, but didn’t even care. Now that she had caught him, he was speechless. Conflicting emotions passed over his face, but she couldn’t tell if he felt bad or relieved that he wasn’t hiding it anymore.

  The woman with Mike froze where she stood, like the police had caught her shoplifting. “I had no idea he was seeing somebody. I just met him last month,” she finally said.

  Last month? The words stung. Mike had been distant, but she thought it was because of the problems she was having.

  “I’m not mad at you. You’ve only been his entertainment,” she said with a surprising false bravado.

  At that statement, Mike snapped out of his shamed state.

  “Now it’s not her fault. Amy didn’t know anything about us.”

  “I … I said I’m not mad at her. Stop trying to make this about somebody else. It’s about you.”

  The small amount of confidence she had faltered, and she was once again letting the hurt take control. She became unsteady and knew she was going to be sick. She walked toward him. Their little scene started to attract an audience, and she feared he would lose his temper and forget he was the one at fault.

  Mike regarded the whispering trail walkers and picnicking families as they watched. His face turned red, and sweat poured down his face. He yelled, but all of his words came out a jumbled mess. The audience shamefully looked in the opposite direction while some of the families closer to them started to move away with their children.

  This was not going how she planned. She only wanted to come to the park and eat her lunch while she enjoyed the sun before the mild early spring turned into another spring day that might as well be summer. She watched as Amy, no longer wanting to be a part of this, walked hastily toward her car.

  Mike advanced on her. Salty tears burned her dry, cracked lips as she looked around for help or a way out. Everything seemed to be going in slow motion. Mike was only a few feet away when his outstretched hand fell low and brushed against her floral spring dress. He tripped over a tree root and laid on the ground in a cloud of dust, his hand still reaching out for her.

  She turned and ran deeper into the park. Her shoe came off, but she didn’t stop for it and hobbled off balance through the grass. She had only seen him like this once before, according to him, she had started a fight in front of his friends. She jumped into their conversation and told everybody he spent more time working on his stupid car than with her. All of his friends thought it was funny. They made more than a few crude jokes about the car’s exhaust pipes. The jokes were horrible, but she wanted to be part of the group and forced herself to laugh. That is when he lost his temper and said if she was jealous of a car she had bigger problems and warned her not to call his car stupid again. Later that night, when they were alone, he warned her never to embarrass him like that again and said that he should have smacked her for acting like that in front of his friends. He squeezed her elbow tighter with every word, leaving red marks where his fingers had been.

  Halfway across the park, she stepped on a stone. Its jagged edge ripped into
her heel, and she fell. Her arms reflexively reached out to brace her fall and park debris sliced into her palms and wrists. She lay on the ground for a short time before clambering to her feet. She looked back and expected to see Mike about to grab her. All she saw was a large cloud of dust as his car fishtailed out of the gravel parking lot.

  Dizzy with the rush of all the emotions flowing through her, she didn’t know if it would have been worse for him to catch her or the fact that he was now leaving her in the middle of the park. He was probably going to try to catch up with Amy. She hoped that he did. Maybe Amy would not be afraid and stand up to him.

  She hobbled toward the back of the park under the dark canopy of trees. She kicked off her remaining shoe and ran as hard as she could. With her shoe gone, she could run faster and her breath became labored as a stitch formed in her side. She recalled the feeling of being a kid again. It had been a long time since she thought about being chased on the playground while the other kids pursued her with their stinging words and stones.

  Mike had been different in the beginning; he had liked her for who she was. He was going to take her away from all the hurt this city had caused her growing up. In the end, he turned out to be just like every other guy she had trusted. She was an easy target for guys who only wanted to take advantage of her before they cast her aside for somebody new. Her stomach churned when she stopped at the edge of the woods. With her hands on her knees, she threw up her breakfast. It came up with a suddenness she wasn’t ready for. As her stomach emptied, she choked, and could taste the vomit and feel it run into her nose.

  The young woman crashed into the forest, one hand on her stomach, while the other pushed low-hanging branches from her path. She doubled over and dry heaved, but her stomach was spent. The pain in her sides became too much for her and she fell to her knees. Tears streamed down her red face, and she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her head ached. She wanted to sit down, but ended up lying on the dirty soil. Questions swirled through her mind.

  How could he have done this? Did he not know how much he meant to her? Was he taking that girl, Amy, to their spot?

  She rocked on the ground and crushed dead leaves beneath her crumpled body. Her mind raced with all the previous events, but at the same time, it was hard for her to think of anything in particular.

  A sudden flash of clarity illuminated her mind. She knew why he was doing this. It was the miscarriage she had two months ago. He acted like he was okay with it, almost relieved, but she knew it bothered him. He had been in a bad mood ever since, or at least, a worse one than his usual mood. He must have thought it was all her fault. Maybe it was. Maybe she didn’t take good enough care of herself, and that’s what had killed their baby. Maybe he thought she would never be able to have children. He probably thought she was damaged goods like everybody else did. Too much baggage to worry about. It was all her fault and Mike knew it. That’s why he was trying to find somebody new.

  She was going to be sick again. As she walked deeper through the forest, she looked down at her stained dress and absently patted her disheveled hair. Everything was like a dream. It happened, but could she trust what actually happened? Her head spun, and she stumbled to a tree perched on top of a cliff overlooking one of the lakes in the park. The stabbing pains in her side felt like her ribs were going to rip through her skin. The aching caused her to lose her bearing, and she tumbled off the edge of the rise.

  Branches and vines pulled at her skin as she rolled down the hill. Her arms moved instinctively to cover her face like they had done so many times as a child. Thorns from the bushes ripped her flesh open like heaved stones. Blood dripped from the leaves as she hurled by.

  She came to rest at the foot of the hill and tried to push herself up, but her arms were too weak. She fell back into the dirt. After what seemed like an eternity, she pushed herself to her feet and walked through the forest. Her whole body was on fire, but she barely registered any of the pain. She stumbled toward the goal she had originally been running toward. It was a fallen tree. It was fresh, still green and clinging to life when she and Mike found it last year. Now it was black and rotten. Mike carved their names into it with his knife. As she ran her hands across the letters in the dead tree, she looked out across one of the rusty lakes they named the park after.

  A shattered wine bottle lay on the ground close to where they would sit together at night after the park closed. Looking at the glass, she screamed and shook uncontrollably; he had been here with her. Mike had brought Amy here before. That was the only reason the bottle could have been there. Mike always filled their bottles up with water and threw them into the lake. He left this one here for her to see the next time they came to their spot. He wanted her to catch him.

  She bent down and grabbed the largest piece she could find and gripped it tightly. The glass bit into her hand. She stabbed the tree where Mike carved their names. The wood chipped away easily as the glass slid across her hand, cutting it deeply.

  Blood splatted like red tears on her dress and the tree where their names had been. She screamed, and turned around. The release of all the pent up rage toward Mike and herself had left her faint. Lightheaded, she slid to the ground in a calm stupor. She looked at her hand as if it were from a foreign body. Blood oozed between her fingers as she squeezed her fists and fingered the slits in her palm. Her head swam, and her body was numb on the inside and out. Mike was going to miss her and everything she did for him.

  She put the broken piece of glass to her pulse and dug into her skin and slid up her arm. Blood poured from her wound like a river overflowing its banks and mixed with the dirt of the floodplain surrounding her. She weakly transferred the glass to the other hand and slid the glass up that arm with no hesitation. The cut on this arm was not as deep or as long as the other one, but the blood still seeped out. She tried to fight the urge to close her eyes, but eternal sleep was taking over. She was calm and serene as she thought about Mike being the one to find her, perhaps with Amy or maybe another girl he had on the side. Then he would see how much he had meant to her.

  As the blood ran down her hand, forming pools of red in the fallen leaves, she realized this was always going to be the way it ended for her. Even if she had never met Mike, her life would have concluded in the same manner. He had only prolonged the inevitable.

  Chapter Three

  Bobby sat on a swing, waiting for Danielle. He felt awkward being there without a child. The cautious mothers kept a casual eye on him but would be ready to pounce if he started showing too much interest in the children running around him. Usually he wouldn’t sit alone in or near the playground. The other side of the parking lot ran down a grassy hill into a creek that fed the largest of the three lakes in the park, and he didn’t want to wait in the parking lot or too close to it and look like he was too eager to see her. So he resided to being uncomfortable for a few minutes, alone with his thoughts. He swung, with only the melancholy squeak of the rusted chains to keep him company.

  The past three weeks he and Danielle met after work and on Saturdays to walk around the park. He was content with the way their relationship was going, but he knew she wanted more. Two times she had told him she was having fun, but they could go and do other things if he would like. He had changed the subject on her and cut their walk short on those days. He didn’t have a particular reason for being that way, though. He was enjoying their time together and didn’t want to risk screwing anything up by changing their routine, but knew, sooner or later, that he would have to do something or she would get bored and move on.

  Danielle pulled into the parking lot. He could see the smile on her face even from afar. As he jumped from the swing and left the playground area, he thought he heard a collective sigh from the mothers, but when he turned and looked at them, they didn’t seem to register his movement. When he got to her car, Charlie greeted him by jumping and pawing at his hands. Distracted by the dog, Bobby didn’t notice Danielle until he felt her soft embrace.
<
br />   “Hey. He was excited to get out of the house today. I think he gets more excited to see you than he does to go for his walks anymore.”

  “Yeah, he’s the reason I keep showing up too,” he said, and rubbed the bouncing dog until he sat and kicked his hind leg.

  “Hey! Not nice,” she said, and pushed his shoulder.

  They walked through the gravel parking lot and down the hill, following the babbling creek. Silent, she walked beside Bobby. He sensed something different with her but didn’t know what it was. Charlie seemed to notice the difference as well. Every day, they would walk past the playground and through the open green space. When they reached his path, they would follow the tree line until they reached the first lake and then they would turn back toward the front of the park. They would walk until they reached the creek and the hill and finally the parking lot again. Today, she led them in the opposite direction. They stopped and watched the small waterfall, and Danielle moved closer to Bobby. She laid her head on his chest and reached for his hand. It looked like she was trying to catch a snake, squirming to get free. Her sudden show of affection caught him off guard. He relaxed his hand, and hers fell into his. They stood watching the water run down the rocks and splash into the small pool, barely large enough for two ducks to swim in, as Charlie tried to play with his reflection in the water.

  Danielle pulled her head away and, on tiptoes, kissed Bobby’s cheek.

  “That was nice,” she said, and pulled him by the hand back to their walk.

  Bobby didn’t say anything. Her words confused him. Was standing there with him nice? Did she mean kissing him? Finally, he decided it didn’t really matter what she was talking about. He wanted to enjoy the rest of his time with her and not get lost in thought over thinking everything.