Page 66 of Nothing Ever Happens Here

The duct tape around my wrists was rushed and there is a piece of it sticking up that has rolled over on itself, and if I could get my mouth free, I could bite it and pull on it enough to tear part of it away and weaken the hold.

There’s nothing I can do to get the tape off my mouth, though. I tried dragging the edge of it across the bedpost, but all I got was a mark on my face, and it didn’t budge.

“Don’t move or your girls are next”is all that repeats in my mind as I struggle to escape. Not if I can get out of here and get to the police before he can get back to me. I have to try. I see the vodka bottle he left open on the dresser top. I know rubbing alcohol removes the sticky residue on tape, so maybe vodka does too. I lean my head down and knock the bottle over onto my hands, and the liquid chugs out of the bottle onto the tape and I can feel it loosening. It’s enough to shrivel the adhesive and create a couple inch gap,enough so at least my hands aren’t taped hard against the wood. I can reach down and grip the tape over my mouth with my fingertip and pull it off. I inhale deeply, wincing at the pain, and examine my hands. There is some wiggle room, but I can’t pull them out, so I try to bite the piece that’s sticking up with my teeth. I pull hard, and it starts to peel away.

I unravel a couple of layers successfully and the tape is weak enough then for me to bite it again and make a tear in the side, which breaks me loose. Oh my God, I did it. I’m free! My heart feels like it will explode it’s racing so fast, and I have to think quickly. I push open the door and stagger down a small hallway, and I’m in the kitchen. There’s a door, but there is also a blizzard starting outside, and the snow is almost blinding. I need my phone. I need to call for help. I start to look, pulling out every drawer. I look in the mudroom and every nook I can find, wondering where he would keep it. And then I see his coat, hanging by the front door. I rifle through the pockets, and it’s there!

He was wheeled off by the medics so fast he couldn’t hide it better and he couldn’t tie me up securely. He slipped up. That fucker finally made a mistake. Florence threw a wrench in his plans and saved my life. I hope again that she’s okay, safe, after whatever Evan did to her. I grab my phone and I don’t know where my coat or boots are because he put them somewhere when I was unconscious, but I can take his. Before I can move one inch to grab the coat, I hear a car pull up. I look out to see headlights coming up the drive. Oh God. No.

I watch Evan get out of the back seat. It’s a taxi he must have taken from the hospital. I have no choice; I have to run. I race to the other side of the house where there is a back door that leads out to a deck and half an acre of yard butting up against a pine forest. I swing the door open, and I run. Into the impossibly cold, driving snow with no shoes or coat. I push my body against the wind,sobbing with every painful step, and I run until my lungs feel like they’re bleeding.

I try to hold my phone with frozen fingers and I can barely see through the snow beating down on me and my tears, but there is still battery left and so I dial, but I don’t call the police this time.

31

MACK

When Shelby calls us, we’re already on the way to find her. It was hard to understand her through her screaming and the howling wind, but I knew she’d escaped and that she was in danger of freezing to death. Again. At the hands of Evan Carmichael.

We find her on her hands and knees almost half a mile from his house on a two-lane road we could barely even find in the blizzard conditions. Herb was out of the car first, pulling her inside, wrapping her in his coat as I raced along the icy roads to get her inside and warm.

Now we all sit in my living room in front of the fireplace. Shelby is wrapped in blankets in front of the fire next to the dogs sleeping in their beds, and Herb is pouring red wine into glasses on the coffee table. Nobody asks why she didn’t call the police. We all know.

After she calmed down she called her mother and checked on the girls. It took all of us to talk her out of going back over there immediately to kill Evan with her bare hands. We need to be smarter than him. Methodical. She said she’d be up there in the morning and now we’re all quiet with a drink in front of us, not knowing what else to say. Not knowing how we got here—in a world where sweet Evan Carmichael is really a complete monster and where he is so good at it, he has turned the tables to make it look like he’s the victim and has nothing for the police to arrest him for. As we speak he is free, at home, probably with a shredder or a maybe a fire blazing, getting rid of the traces of evidence he has carefully controlled and had plans to destroy when the time came.

“He said my kids are next if I escaped,” Shelby says.

“We won’t let that happen,” I say, kneeling next to her. “Have you called Clay?”

She shakes her head. “I can’t yet. I know if he ever found out who it was, he’d be over there with a shotgun. He’d either take his shot and make it, or miss and be dead, but that would be it for him either way. I just can’t yet,” she says.

Florence picks up her wineglass and leans back in her chair. “For all the reasons you didn’t go to the police because they would never believe you, just know that there is another reason to add to the list…the gun I shot the bastard with came back registered to you,” she says, and we all turn our heads and look at her. “Riley told me.”

Shelby breaks down, head in hands, sobbing. “I’ll never be safe again—my girls! It’s like he’s spent an entire lifetime setting this up. I should just call Riley now and make the report. Even if it’s a formality that they file it—just keep making reports. What else can I do? There’s no getting rid of him,” she cries.

Florence puts down her glass. “Unless there is,” she says.

“What are you trying to say, Flor?” Herb asks.

“Don’t tell the police or Clay or anyone you were there—or what he did,or about that room, any of it. It doesn’t go outside of this circle right here. You start pointing the finger at him, after how they dismissed me? That won’t do a damn thing but make things worse for you. We all know it,” Florence says.

“I want you to know something. I don’t call myself a Buddhist but I very much identify with the principles, and peaceful means are always the answer. I don’t even kill the odd cockroach I find in the kitchen in the summer. I capture it in a cup and take it outside. All life is to be respected. But even the Dalai Lama said that to kill out of absolute necessity to stop a tragic, inevitable chain of events is sometimes justified. I’m paraphrasing, but what I’m saying is…”

“Jesus, Flor. We know what you’re saying, but you can’t be serious…and Iknewyou used my mug for that cockroach. I asked you about that too. You said you didn’t,” Herb says, staring at her in disbelief.

“Flor,” I say. “This man has set us up so well that if something happens to him, don’t you think me and Shelby will be the only suspects?”

“Use me,” she says.

“Florence,”Herb says, eyes wide.

“We gave Evan an oleander plant when he started working there. It’s one of the most poisonous plants in the world. A few leaves boiled and poured in a drink and he wouldn’t hurt anyone else…ever again.”

“Or get away with what he’s done,” Herb says slowly.

“Until they do the autopsy and tox report and it’s…of all things in the world, oleander? Are you kidding?” I ask, but Florence is calm. I can see she’s thought about this.

“I have a good friend, Alice Wadoski, who’s a retired homicide detective in Milwaukee, and last time she visited she joked that I could get rid of Herb by doing this exact thing—boiling some oleander. Herb was being especially annoying that day and she was just joking of course, but…”

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