Real Murders

I ran back downstairs, glanced into the living room, opened the closets. Nothing. I opened the door to the basement. The light was off, so the steps were dark from halfway down to the bottom. But something white was on one of the lower steps, just visible in the light spilling down from the kitchen. I went down the stairs and crouched to pick it up. It was a baseball card. I heard a muffled noise, and had time to think, Phillip! But then I felt a terrible pain across my shoulder and neck, and I was falling forward, my arms and legs tangled, my face scraping the edge of the steps. The next thing I knew I was on the floor of the basement and looking up at Bankston's face, stolid no more in the dim light but gri

There was another switch at the bottom of the steps, and he turned it on. I heard the noise again, and with great pain turned my head to see Phillip, gagged and with his hands tied, sitting on a straight chair by the dryer. His face was wet with tears and his whole little body was curled into as tight a ball as he could manage on that chair. His feet could not touch the floor. My heart broke.

I'd heard people say that all my life; their heart had broken because their love had deserted them, their heart had broken because their cat had died, their heart had broken because they'd dropped Grandma's vase. I was going to die and I had cost my little brother his life, and my heart broke for what he would endure before they finally tired of him and killed him. "We heard you come in," Bankston said, smiling. "We were down here waiting for you, weren't we, Phillip?"

Incredible, Bankston the banker. Bankston with the matching almond-tone washer and dryer. Bankston arranging a loan for a businessman in the afternoon and smashing Mamie Wright's face in the evening. Melanie the secretary, filling up her idle time while her boss was out of town by slaughtering the Buckleys with a hatchet. The perfect couple.

Phillip was crying hopelessly. "Shut up, Phillip," said the man who'd played baseball with him that afternoon. "Every time you cry, I'll hit your sister. Won't I, sis?" and the golf club whistled through the air and Bankston broke my collarbone. My shriek must have covered Melanie's steps, because suddenly she was there looking down at me with pleasure.

"When I pulled in, the Scarecrow was searching the parking lot," she said to Bankston. "Here's the tape recorder. I can't believe we forgot it!" Gee, what a madcap couple. She sounded for all the world like a housewife who'd remembered the potato salad in the fridge just as the family was leaving on its picnic.

I decided, when the pain had ebbed enough for me to think, that "the Scarecrow" was Robin. I managed to look at Phillip again. God bless him, he was trying so hard not to make sounds, so Bankston wouldn't hit me again. I tried to push the pain away so I could look reassuring, but I could only stare at him and try not to scream myself. If I screamed, Bankston would hit me quite a lot. Or maybe he would hit Phillip.

"What do you think?" Bankston asked her.

"No way we can get them out of here now," Melanie said matter-of-factly. "He said he'd called the police. One of us better go up soon and offer to help search. If we don't the police will want to look in here, I guess, get suspicious. We can't have that, can we?" and she smiled archly, and poked, my leg with her foot, as if I were a piece of naughtiness that they had to conceal for convention's sake. She saw me looking at her. "Get up and get over there by the kid," she said, and then she kicked me. I moaned. "I've always wanted to do that," she said to Bankston with a smile.

It was not only the fall and the blows that made it hard to move, but the shock. I was in this most prosaic basement with these most prosaic people, and they were monsters that were going to kill me, me and my brother. I had read and marvelled for years at people living cheek by jowl with psychopaths, and not suspecting. And here I was, trying desperately to crawl across a concrete floor in a building my mother owned while friends looked for my brother outside, because I had never never thought it could happen to me. I got to Phillip's side in a few moments, though the young woman I'd known all my life and gone to church with did kick me a few times on the journey. I grabbed the edge of the seat and dragged myself to my knees, and clumsily draped my good arm around Phillip. I wished Phillip would faint. His face was more than I could stand, and I had no consolation for him. We were looking at the faces of demons, and all the rules of kindness and courtesy that Phillip and I had been taught so carefully did not apply. No reward for good behavior. "I got the tape recorder, but now we can't use it," Melanie was pouting. "I think that's when she got suspicious, when she saw me pull out of the parking lot. I didn't want to have to help her look, so I had to act like I didn't hear her. I don't guess we'll get to have any fun tonight." "I didn't think this through," Bankston agreed. "Now they'll be out there looking for the boy and her all night, and we'll have to go volunteer, too. At least now we've got her keys, they can't use the master set to come in here." He held them up. I must have dropped them when I fell. "You think they might insist on searching all the apartments?" Melanie asked anxiously. "We can't turn them down if they ask." Bankston pondered. They were at the foot of the steps still. I could not get by them. I could not see any weapons besides the golf club, but even if I did attack them with my one good arm and my little remaining energy, the two of them could easily overcome me and the noise would not be heard by anyone... unless the Crandalls had decided to spend the evening in their basement. "We'll just have to wing it," Bankston said finally.

The baseball! Maybe Robin would see it, like I had.

"Did you talk to anyone when you pulled in?" Bankston was asking. "Just what I told you before. Robin asked me if I had seen the boy, and I said no, but that I'd be glad to help look," Melanie said with no irony whatsoever. "Roe left the back door open, so I closed and relocked it. And I picked up the kid's baseball, it was still out on the patio." That was our death warrant, I reckoned.

Bankston cursed. "How did it end up out there? I was sure I'd brought it in." "Don't worry about it," Melanie said. "Even if they did find it, you could just have said you'd been keeping it for him but he didn't ever show up looking for it."

"You're right," Bankston said fondly. "What shall we do with those two? If we leave them tied up down here while we go help to search, they might somehow get loose. If we kill them right now, we lose our fun with the boy." He strolled over to us and Melanie followed.

"You acted on impulse when you grabbed him," Melanie observed. "We should just go on and take care of them now, and hide them down here good. Then when the search dies down, we'll see if we can get them out to the car and dump them. Next time, no impulses, we'll do what we pla

Her posture changed. I had never seen anything like it. She cringed and folded and became another person. "No, never," she whimpered, and she bent and licked his hand. I saw her eyes, and she was role-playing and it excited her immensely. I was nauseated. I hoped I was blocking Phillip's view sufficiently. I huddled closer to him, though the pain from my collarbone was becoming more insistent. Phillip was shaking and he had wet himself. His breath was getting more and more ragged, and muffled sobs and whimpers broke out from time to time. Melanie and Bankston were giving each other a kiss, and Bankston bent and bit her shoulder. She held him to her as though they would use each other right there, but then they unclenched and she said, "We'd better do it now. Why run any more risks?"