Scott Wittenburg - The May Day Murders

Ann cringed at the sound of the “f” word coming from her daughter’s lips. This time she wasn’t going to excuse it. “You’d better start watching your mouth, young lady! Do you realize how vulgar that sounds?”

Amy glared at Ann defiantly. “Come on, Mother! You say it all the time!”

“That doesn’t give you the right to, though. Not in my house!”

Amy held her mother’s stare and spurted, “Oh, Mom-get a life!” She stormed out of the room.

Ann wanted to chase after her and give her a good piece of her mind but stopped herself. She knew they’d only get in a fight, and Ann wasn’t in the mood for it. When she heard the front door creak open, she hurried down the stairs just as Amy was halfway out the door.

“Come home right after the movie, Amy!” she yelled after her.

The door slammed shut.

Sometimes, I’d like to crown that little brat, Ann thought. With a long sigh, she went back to the bathroom and closed the door.

After her bath, Ann threw on an old faded Ohio State sweatshirt and a pair of sweat pants before retreating to the family room. After turning on the television, she went over to the bar and took out an opened bottle of white wine from the refrigerator. After pouring herself a glass, she plopped down on the sofa.

She sipped her wine and glanced over at the television-yet another new sit-com was premiering on the channel she was watching. She set the wine glass down on the coffee table and reached for the paperback she had started reading a couple of days ago. It was a true story about a young girl in Omaha, Nebraska who had been abducted then murdered by a deranged serial killer and previously convicted child molester. Deciding that the subject matter was hardly what she felt like delving into at the moment, Ann picked up the other three books lying on the table and scanned the titles. She finally opted for a romance novel that Amy had no doubt bought but never finished reading then settled back in the sofa and turned to the first chapter.

Ann was halfway through the third chapter when she thought she heard a scraping sound outside. She shot a glance toward one of the two windows that faced the backyard and listened for a moment but heard nothing more. Feeling her pulse quickening, she pressed the television mute button on the remote control and listened again. Nothing. She was just about to switch the sound back on when she heard the noise again, this time coming from the direction of the other window. In an instant, she sprung up and ran over to the window to look out. The reflection of the room lights in the glass made it difficult to see beyond it so she cupped her hands against the windowpane to blot out the ambient light and squinted her eyes.

At first she couldn’t see anything except light coming from the bathroom window, realizing now that she had forgotten to turn it off. Both the bathroom and family room faced the backyard and were adjacent to one another, the family room jutting out further into the yard where it had been added on to the rest of the house. She felt her heart thumping rapidly in her chest as she stared out into the darkness and waited for her eyes to adjust. From this vantage point she could see the entire backyard, including the white picket fence that surrounded it and formed the boundary with her neighbors’ houses on either side. She stood there for a couple of minutes, surveying the yard in the dim light coming from the bathroom window. After she eyed the gate located at the far end of the house near the backdoor and saw that it was closed and presumably locked, she finally stepped back from the window and breathed a sigh of relief.

This is crazy! she thought. For the second time that night she thought she’d heard something out back, and both times had been false alarms. Why was she being so paranoid? she wondered. Stress? Or was she letting herself get all worked up over Marsha’s murder? A murder that happened a week ago and over a hundred miles away I need a cigarette!

She fled the family room and went into the kitchen to find her purse, which was lying on the counter. She opened it up and was searching frantically inside for her cigarettes when it suddenly dawned on her that she’d made a point of throwing every pack she owned into the trash when she had decided to quit smoking a couple of weeks ago. Cursing herself, she debated whether or not to throw on a coat and drive to the convenient mart to buy a pack. Then she recalled the pack she’d found hidden under Amy’s dresser. She had stashed Amy’s cigarettes in her own dresser as “evidence,” but hadn’t yet confronted her.

Totally disregarding the fact that she was about to break her vow never to smoke again, Ann ran up the stairs to her bedroom and over to the dresser. She opened the top drawer and found them neatly tucked away under her stockings. Snatching up the opened pack of Marlboro Lights like an addict about to give herself a fix, she slammed the drawer shut and ran back downstairs to the family room.

With quivering hands, Ann lit up a cigarette and inhaled deeply, the smoke feeling much harsher in her lungs than her regular brand. Her nerves were frayed to a frazzle, she realized, from the effects of the tumultuous, emotional week, compounded by her sudden grim outlook for the future. A couple of weeks ago she had actually started feeling like she was at last adjusting to her new life as a transplanted divorcee, but Marsha’s untimely death had thrown everything back into turmoil and brought all her doubts to the surface once again.

And now, to top off everything else, she was alone in this house and starting to hear things.

Ann took another drag, retrieved her wine and sipped. She needed to calm her nerves; to try and relax, get a hold of herself. Nothing has really changed, had it? she thought. Her best friend has just been brutally raped and murdered by an unknown assailant, and she was shocked and devastated by this, but as Sam had told her: life goes on. She had to come to grips with her loss, accept it, and let the healing process begin. Marsha’s death had absolutely nothing to do with the present-her insecurity of being alone and on her own, her concern over Amy’s incorrigible and frightening behavior, her doubts about whether she’d done the right thing in divorcing Sam. So why was she so fucking edgy tonight?

Was she in fear for her own life? If so, then why should she be? She was probably safer than anyone in Smithtown was-Woodcrest was a hundred miles away and most likely the last place on earth the murderer would be right now…

Hysteria, Ann decided. That’s it. She, along with every other woman who knew about Marsha’s murder, was naturally going to feel a little temporary hysteria right now, if not at least a little threatened. It was a perfectly normal response, given the circumstances. There was a demented madman on the loose who had just raped and strangled a poor defenseless woman in her own home. No clues, no motives, and the only material witness is a five-year-old who is so traumatized that he can barely utter a single word. What woman wouldn’t be scared out of her wits?

Ann took another drink of wine and managed a weak smile. Amy would be home in a little while and she would feel like her normal self again. She stubbed out her cigarette, picked up the book and settled back in the sofa. Finding the place where she’d left off, Ann resumed reading and was soon totally absorbed in the developing plot. The heroine of the novel, who ironically had just been recently divorced herself and had a teenage child, no less, had just met a tall, dark stranger at the public library. As Ann read on, she started relating the heroine’s thoughts and actions to her own situation and before long decided that maybe Karen Walker was right after all. Maybe she needed to start seeing somebody and get her mind off her troubles…