Bad Men

Then he placed the cushion against Barger’s head, pushed the muzzle of the gun into the fabric, and pulled the trigger.

Maria

Except-

Except that during their years together, most of them spent in a little house in Danville, Virginia, she had grown increasingly fearful of this man: of his mood swings, of his intelligence, of his capacity for cruelty to her. He knew where to hit her so that it hurt most and bruised least. He knew places on her body where the mere pressure of his fingers was enough to make her scream. There was money, for he always had money, but he gave her only enough to feed their little family of three, for a son had been born to them during that terrible second year. She was required to produce receipts for everything, and every pe

It had begun almost as soon as they were married. It seemed to her that the marriage license was all that he wanted. He had wooed her, made promises to her, provided them with a house to live in. She had given up the job in Biloxi two weeks before the wedding, and he had told her not to take on anything else for a time, that they would travel, try to see a little of this great country. They had a short honeymoon in Mexico, blighted by bad weather and Moloch’s moods, but the proposed road trip never materialized. She quickly learned not to mention it, for at best he would mutter and tell her that he was too busy, while at other times he would hold her face, begi

“Another time,” he would say. “Another time.” And she did not know if he was referring to the trip, or to some promised treat for himself.

The first time he hurt her badly was when he came home from a “business meeting” in Te

“I don’t want you working,” he said.

“But I need to work,” she replied. “I’m kind of bored.”

“With me?”

The lines in his face deepened, so that she almost expected to glimpse his teeth working through the holes in his cheeks.

“No, not with you. That’s not what I meant.”

“So what did you mean? You say you’re bored, a man’s going to take that to mean something. I don’t do it for you anymore? You want somebody else? Maybe you’ve found somebody else already, is why you want a job, so you’ll have an excuse to leave the house.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s not that at all.”

He was talking as if he was jealous, but there was no real hurt in his words. He was playing a role, and even in her fear she could see that, but it made it harder for her to argue with him when she didn’t understand why he was so a

She didn’t even see him move. One moment they were talking and she was extending her hand toward him, the next her face was pressed against the wall and her arm was being wrenched behind her back. She felt his breath close to her ear.

“I’m being what? Tell me. You think you know me? You don’t. Maybe I should teach you a little about me.”

His left hand and the weight of his body held her in place while his right hand slipped beneath her sweater and found her skin. His fingers began moving on her, exploring.

And then the pain began: in her stomach, in her kidneys, in her groin. Her mouth opened in a silent cry, the agony increasing, turning from yellow to red to black, and the last words she heard were: “Are you learning now?”

She regained consciousness with him moving on top of her as she lay on the kitchen floor. One month later, she found out she was pregnant. Even now, years later, it still hurt her to think that Da

The child had been a mistake. Moloch wanted no children, and had talked of an abortion, but in the end he had relented. She felt that he did so because he believed it would tie her more closely to him, even as he told her that they were now a family, and would always be a family.

He did not hate her. He loved her. He would tell her that, even as he was hurting her.

I love you.

But if you ever try to leave me, I’ll kill you.

His mistake was to underestimate her. Men had always underestimated her: her father, her uncle (drunk at Thanksgiving, stealing kisses from his niece in the quiet of the kitchen, his mouth open, his hands reaching and touching while she maneuvered herself away, trying to placate him without offending him so that she would not put her family’s tenuous status in his house at risk), the men for whom she worked or with whom she slept. It suited her. Where she grew up, men feared and hated women whom they suspected were smarter or stronger than they were. It was better to keep your head down, to smile dumbly. It gave you more room to move, when you needed it.

And so she began listening to snatches of telephone conversations, and using her little car, with its small allowance of gas, to track her husband. She picked up receipts for nonexistent purchases, just a few here and there, for Moloch had become distracted and no longer checked every item in the kitchen and bathroom. She looked for three-for-two offers, for buy-one, get-one-frees, then squirreled away the freebies for use later. It took her the better part of a year but, slowly, she began to accumulate a little money.

There were places that were out of bounds to her-the shed, the attic-but now she began to take chances even in those places. In a fit of daring that left her sleepless for days, she called in a locksmith, explaining to him that she’d lost the keys to the garden shed and the attic and that her husband would be furious when he found out.

Then she began to explore.

First, she marked the location of everything in the shed on a piece of paper and made sure always to return each item to its spot on the plan. The attic was more difficult, seemingly littered with trash and old clothes, but still she made a drawing there too.

In the shed she found nothing at first but a gun wrapped in oilcloth and hidden in a box of nails and screws. It took her two more searches-including one during the course of which Moloch had returned home and she had been forced to keep her hands thrust firmly in her pockets for fear that he would see the dirt and rust upon them-to find the hole in one of the boards on the floor. It looked like a flaw in the wood, an absent knot, but when she lifted it she discovered the bag.

She did not have time to count all of the money that it contained, but she reckoned it was close to $900,000, all in twenties and fifties. She put the board back, then returned to the shed twice more to check that she had left no sign of her presence.

In the attic there were items of jewelry, some old, others quite new. She found a small stack of bearer bonds, worth maybe $50,000 in total. She discovered bank account details in the names of unknown men and women, and credit card records carefully noted, even down to the three-digit security number to be found on the backs of the cards.