Nancy Grace - Death on the D-List

Anderson was so scared, a wet spot spread across the front of his boxers. The cops looked disgusted as the urine soaked Anderson’s shorts.

“Okay, you little freak… Why’d you do it?”

“Do what?” Anderson couldn’t comprehend what they wanted him to say. “All I did was sleep with Fallon Malone… that’s it… I swear to God!”

The big cop bitch-slapped him right across the face with the back of his hand.

“Don’t you even say her name, you rich-boy perv! Now tell us… Why’d you do it? And why’d you follow Prentiss Love to the Javits Center; we saw you in the TV footage, you little freak, staring at her, practically drooling. It’s all on video.”

“I wasn’t at the Javits Center…”

“Yes, you were! Don’t lie! It was two years ago in the summer. We saw you, Anderson. Stop lying. You were there, stalking Prentiss Love!”

“Okay! I was there! I was there! But it was to see Phil Niekro! Not Prentiss Love! I got a signed baseball! It’s in my sock drawer! I swear to God! Go look!”

“BS! You don’t deserve to even say Niekro’s name! Give me one stat on Niekro and I won’t shove your mouth down your throat, just one!”

Scott Anderson’s heart was racing and his face was dripping in sweat. “Knuckleball! Knuckleball!” His voice came out high-pitched like a woman’s.

“That doesn’t count! Any idiot could say that!” The cop drew back the big ham at the end of his arm but this time it was balled into a fist. Just before he rammed it into Anderson’s nose, a cop in the corner with his radio to one ear yelled out, “Stop! Wait a minute! It’s not him! He didn’t do it!”

The big cop hulking over Anderson looked disappointed, but still holding his fist wound back, mid-air, he yielded and didn’t land the punch still aimed at Anderson’s face.

“They got the killer downtown. It’s a woman, believe it or not. Some nutso TV producer. Whatever… It’s not him.”

The big cop still held Anderson pinned with his fist pulled back. “I don’t believe it. This creep did something… I feel it.”

“Oh yeah, he’s a perv, all right. You ought to see the porn collection he’s got hidden in his closet. But he did get the baseball.” One of the rookies stepped into the doorway to the den. He held up a baseball. Niekro’s signature was scrawled across it in blue ink.

“Damn.” The big cop, obviously disappointed, let go of Anderson, who fell back down into the deep brown cushions of his beloved pit group. Another cop rolled Anderson over and uncuffed him.

“I would say we’re sorry, Anderson, but to tell you the truth, you got off easy. We know about that restraining order that girl had against you. And we know all about your wife calling the cops when you smacked her and threatened her. Her face was a mess. And it wasn’t the first time, either… you piece of crap.”

They all stood looking at him and for the first time, Scott Anderson realized somebody saw through him… saw through the manners, the good looks, the bleached teeth, the scratch golf game. He said nothing back.

The cops filed out of his den, through the arched door to the living room, and out the front door, shutting it behind them when they left.

Anderson looked around. Everything was the same, nothing was out of place. How they’d gotten in was a mystery, and if he didn’t have a carpet burn on his right cheek and a bruise growing on his shin, he’d never have believed what just happened.

He looked at the digital clock glowing green on top of his cable box. It was 1 a.m. Scott Anderson pulled himself out of the deep cushions of his leather pit group, stood up, and headed back to his bedroom to change his underwear.

IT WAS THE THIRD CIGARETTE BUTT JULES MOREAU HAD CRAMMED DOWN THE back of the pew in Aunt Matilde’s crypt. “There’s just no way Matilde would want to be forever six feet under with the worms and the Devil. She loved the fresh air.”

Jules was dead-set on Aunt Matilde being laid to rest in the sunshine visible from the tiny slits of windows in the elaborate crypt they’d erected here at Crestlawn. Standing there, Jules took a look around the stone crypt and wondered how much the sculpture of the Holy Mother Mary had cost him, even though technically, the cost of the crypt had come straight out of Matilde’s own savings account she’d earmarked for this very purpose, her eternal resting place aboveground .

“Jules, you’re being impractical. You’ve always been impractical. Ever since you were a little boy, you’ve been impractical. Remember when you wanted to jump off the roof with nothing but umbrellas to hold us up? We both got broken arms… broken arms , Jules … broken arms . I could’a played college football if it wasn’t for a bum arm. Then there was the time you thought we should be street vendors down at the Quarter. That was a fiasco…”

“I thought the tourists would like alligator on a stick…”

“I told you nobody flies in from Boca Raton or Indianapolis and wants alligator on a stick. I told you.”

“Would you for one minute forget the alligator on a stick? I don’t see what’s impractical about Aunt Matilde being put to rest right here.” Jules lit up another Winston.

“Upkeep, ma sha … upkeep.” Sensing he was making headway, he used the Creole slang for “my dear” on his cousin. “The price of keeping her here is double what the price will be if we leave her where she is… ad infinitum… Every month we’ll be paying upkeep on dear dead Aunt Matilde’s mausoleum.”

The two had lived off Aunt Matilde their whole lives and now, so did their wives and eight children. She had left each beloved niece and nephew a million dollars apiece at the time of her death. Now, out of earshot of family, friends, neighbors, and priests, Jules Moreau and his cousin, Andre Regard, both dropped the guise that they cared about Aunt Matilde’s wishes.

“Andre Regard, if you weren’t my first cousin and we didn’t share our first Communion, I would think you are lying to me. We save over a hundred grand in just ten years alone if we leave Matilde in the dirt.”

“Hmm. A hundred grand is a nice little piece of change…” He also crushed his cigarette down behind the stone pew.

Just as the two shook hands over the agreement to leave Auntie Matilde where she was, six feet under, the Devil himself interceded, or so the rest of the Moreaus and Regards would tell it in the years to come.

When the last burning butt was crushed down into the crack behind the milky-white stone pew, the whole place blew. The sky above Crestlawn Sacred Grounds lit up like the Fourth of July and the Super Bowl half-time show combined.

Between Francis’s ammo, his stash of Homemade Chemical Bombs, and the twenty or so burning cigarette butts the two Cajuns between them had crushed down on top of the homemade arsenal, the blast had to have been three hundred feet straight up in the air.

Even though the families had to bear the cost of rebuilding the mausoleum, no one complained. The Devil had risen up and roared at the world. Auntie Matilde was clearly too good, too saintly, too holy to remain in the Lower Kingdom. Her divine presence irritated Satan and agitated all his evil minions. And thus, it was decided. Matilde would have her wish and her eternal soul would no longer have to be concerned with washing away in the next flood.

Francis was sitting in his mother’s favorite wingback chair, minus the doilies, his eyes fixed on the living room’s TV set. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d been up all night watching the coverage of the “D-List Killer,” obsessively switching channels during every commercial break so as not to miss a moment. Rooted to the seat of the chair, around midnight, he saw two bloody people, a man and a woman, being wheeled on gurneys out of GNE world headquarters in New York City. The woman had unnaturally bright red hair and was handcuffed to the gurney and surrounded by uniformed NYPD. The man had a bandage over his eye, but was smiling broadly into the camera.