A Web of Black Widows Read online

  But an hour later, when the boys got home from school, she still hadn't come home. He sat on the couch, breathing hard through his nostrils, just waiting for her to walk through the door. The boys wanted to know when dinner was on, but he told them to go to their rooms and wait until he called for them. The young one started crying, and Ed told him not to be a sissy.

  Afternoon shifted into evening. Crimson light filled the house, and then all the windows were dark. Finally, he got a phone call.

  "Yes?"

  "Ah . . . Mr. Carroll?"

  It was a man's voice. Ed immediately lowered his voice and tried to calm down.

  "That's me," he said.

  "Yes, sir. I'm Sergeant Wayne Nicholson with the Nebraska State Police. We found your car here parked on I-80."

  Ed was confused. Nebraska? "Is my wife there?" he asked.

  "No, sir. Car was empty . . . You mean you don't know where she is?"

  The anger flared up again but Ed tried to stay calm. "I'm not sure," he said.

  There was a pause.

  "Well, we do know something else," Sergeant Nicholson said. "It seems kind of odd, but maybe it'll mean something to you. You know a man by the name of Steven Langdon out of Chicago?"

  "I've never heard of him," Ed snapped.

  "Hmm. The reason we're out here is that we got a call from an old farmer. Seems he saw your wife flashing her lights at a van. They both pulled over, and then she got inside and they drove away. This farmer thought the whole thing so unusual that he jotted down their license numbers."

  Ed couldn't believe she would do this to him. Fucking cheating bitch. Leave him in a lurch and run off with some guy in a van. "He probably kidnapped her," Ed said.

  "Well, it doesn't sound like that from what the farmer said. Sounds like she pulled him over."

  Bitch. Cock-sucking whore. He was going to kill her.

  "You mean you won't put out a call on him?" he asked.

  "Calm down, sir."

  "I just can't believe you're not going to do anything."

  "Keep your voice down, sir. It sounds like she went of her own free will."

  "No way!"

  "Sir, what I need to know is what you are planning to do about your Buick. Can you—"

  "You bastards!"

  "Sir, that's not necessary. We're all just trying to—"

  He slammed the phone down. His heart was going like a son of a bitch. He wanted to get his fingers around that stupid woman and choke the life out of her. Leaving him with the boys all by himself. Dear God, what would people think? The word was going to get out, no way about it. He had to think clearly. He had to find this man, Steven Langdon. Find the man and he would find his wife. He would kill this guy. Kill them both for making him look like a god damn fool.

  He had an idea: the Internet. He remembered his nephew Robert telling him about you could find just about anybody's address and phone number. He didn't know how, but he bet Robert would. He looked up the kid's phone number and dialed.

  When someone picked up, Ed heard rock music playing in the background, and it was a moment before someone spoke.

  "What?" It was Robert's voice, and he sounded confused.

  "Hey, son. It's Uncle Ed."

  "Oh . . . How's it going?"

  The kid was definitely stoned. Ed tried to be patient with him.

  "Good. Say, I'm trying to call an old buddy of mine, and I remember how you said you could use the Internet to find someone's phone number."

  "Oh, sure. I'm online right now doing some newsgroup stuff. What's his name?"

  Ed told him.

  "Well," the kid came back after a moment, "there's ton of them just in the U.S. You want them all?

  "No, just the one out of Chicago."

  There were three of them. Ed wrote them down, thanked Robert, then called the first on the list. It was an old woman, and her husband was Steven Langdon. But they didn't own a van. The second on the list was a young man with a lilting voice who said he didn't drive because it hurt the environment. When the third answered, it was a gruff male voice.

  "Yeah?"

  "This Steven Langdon?"

  "No."

  "Do you know where he is?"

  The man didn't speak for a moment. When he did, there was suspicion in his voice.

  "Who wants to know?"

  "Just an old friend," Ed said. "He loaned some money to me and I wanted to pay him back."

  "Oh, " the man said. "Well, that might be kind of tough. I'm watching his place while he's gone."

  Ed tightened his grip on the phone. "He say when he's coming back?"

  "No."

  There was a long moment of silence. Ed heard running water.

  "Look," Ed said, "I really want to find him. I owe him a lot of money, and I feel bad."

  "You could just send it to me. I'll make sure he gets it."

  "I'd rather give it to him. Please. If you could just tell me where he is."

  "Well . . . he's in his van. You heard his wife died of cancer?"

  Ed made an affirmative sound.

  "Well," the man continued, "he met his wife on the Oregon coast. Edson, I guess. They met on a beach there. Joker Beach. Poker Beach. I don't remember exactly what it's called. But he said he was going to drive there and camp out on the beach for a few days."

  "Does he have a cell phone?"

  "Afraid not. Sorry."

  "All right. Thanks."

  "Another thing," the man said. "He's pretty messed up right now, okay? He needs—"

  Ed placed the phone in the cradle without saying another word.

  It wouldn't take long to do what he needed to do. He was going to get his shotgun. Load the chambers and bring extra shells. Throw some food in a brown paper sack. Then he was going to get into his truck and he was going to drive. It would take at least two more days for them to reach the Oregon coast. They had a head start but Ed would catch up. He would drive night and day.

  When he went to retrieve some money from his cigar bin in the barn, he saw that all of the cash was gone.

  She wanted another black widow, this one on her breast. Steven's eyes were getting bleary, so he took his time. No reason to screw up this woman's body for the rest of her life. While he worked, the spider moved. At least, it seemed to move—just a little, the legs twitching. He thought it was just him being tired. When he finished, she didn't need the mirror to admire it this time. She only needed to hold up her breast and peer down at it.

  "Lovely," she said.

  He nodded, handing her the robe. "Now will you go home?"

  She slid off the bench, putting on the robe. Outside, cars rushed by, and Steven felt the van rock in their wake.

  "Where are you going?" she asked.

  He didn't feel like talking about it. "Just somewhere," he said.

  "Where somewhere?"

  "Why do you want to know?"

  "Just cuz."

  "I'm going to the coast. See the ocean."

  "Why?"

  "You ask a lot of questions."

  "Why are you going to the coast?"

  "It's where I met my wife," he said.

  "Where's your wife?"

  "God, what is it with you?"

  "I just want to know. That's all."

  Steven felt his throat tighten. "She died, okay? Now will you leave?"

  "Take me with you," she said.

  "What?"

  "I want you to take me to the ocean. I've never seen it."

  "Jesus."

  "Please. I'll pay you."

  "I don't want your money. I just want to go alone. Don't you have a husband?"

  For the first time, something he said made her frown. Her whole face seemed to darken. It was like she was somebody else. There was no Julie in there. She was somebody he didn't know.

  "No," she said.

  "I'm not taking you with me."

  "Why not?"

  "I want to be alone, that's why."

  She crossed her arms. "You'll hav
e to throw me out."

  Finally the nice man relented and Nancy had her way. He would take her to see the ocean. She didn't know what it looked like except for in pictures, and in her mind, it was as big as the sky.

  They drove all the way to Montana without saying much. Finally, he complained his eyes were tired, and he had to rest. She didn't know how to drive a stick shift, anyway, so she said that was fine. He pulled into a rest stop, telling her to take the cot. He spread out on the floor. When she slept, she dreamed of spiders. Lots of little black spiders crawling all over her body. When she was little, she was afraid of spiders, but not anymore. Now she thought they were beautiful.

  In the middle of the night, when it was quiet except for the chirping crickets, the baby kicked her hard down low and she woke.

  Angela. Tracy. Vicky.

  "Spider," she said.

  She heard the nice man stir on the floor. "Huhnn?"

  "Shh," she said. "Go back to sleep. Little spiders need their rest."

  It wasn't long before his breathing was slow and easy. At some point she drifted off, because the next thing she knew, the van was filled with morning light and the engine was running. The nice man was up at the steering wheel, and she saw the road disappearing beneath them. She shuffled to the passenger seat. She was tired of being in a bathrobe and slippers. "Could use some clothes," she said.

  They stopped at a Wal-Mart in Helena. She gave him a list and some money, and he returned twenty minutes later with some clothes. She put on a purple maternity dress, underwear, and some socks, and felt much better. The shoes didn't fit, but she didn't feel like waiting any longer, so she just wore the pink slippers. They had some breakfast at Denny's, then got back on the road.

  She knew what she was going to do now. She wanted to tell the nice man so he wouldn't feel bad.

  Talk, little spider.

  "I want to say this to you," she said. "I want you to know something so when it happens you won't do anything."

  His hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly his fingers went white. He didn't look at her. "Yes?" he said.

  "When we get to the ocean," she said, "I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go into the water and I'm going to keep on going and never come back. The other thing I should tell you is I don't know how to swim. But I don't want you to try to save me. I want you to let me go."

  His lower lip was trembling. He looked like a little boy.

  "Why?"

  "It's just what I'm going to do," she said.

  "But what about your baby?"

  "The baby's coming with me."

  "But what—"

  "This is what I'm going to do. It's my choice. When the time comes, I don't want you to stop me."

  He banged his hand on the steering wheel several times, hard. His eyes were glistening. "Why? Why do you want to do this? You're not dying. There's nothing wrong."

  She rubbed her belly. "There's lots wrong," she said. "And there's one other thing. I want more tattoos."

  It took them another two days to reach Noker Beach. Steven thought they could reach it the previous night, but he was just too tired. They stopped in Bend, where there was a thin layer of snow on the ground, and he napped for a few hours.

  It was a strange tug-of-war going on inside him. He didn't want to reach the beach too quickly because of what the pregnant woman said, but he also felt the irresistible pull of the ocean. In his mind, he saw Julie standing there waiting for him. Not the Julie from the hospital, but the old Julie, with her hair long and flowing. She was naked and beautiful and everything he remembered.

  They had stopped every few hours so he could add another black widow to Nancy's body. Soon he had done five of them. Each time it went faster. Then she said she wanted them connected with a web, and that didn't take long at all. But then something strange started happening. Each time he did a spider, it seemed to be in a different place the next time he looked at her body. Not just a little, but a lot. Like, he did one around her navel, and the next time, it was up on her chest and her navel was blank. He thought maybe he was forgetting, but he didn't forget things like that. The spiders were moving, moving all over the web. He didn't know why this was happening. It made him afraid.

  When they passed over the forested hills and dropped down into Edson, they drove right into a storm. He had never seen it rain so hard, and the swirling wind made it hard to steer. Light was beginning to brighten the horizon, but he couldn't see much out there. It was as if somebody had taken a watercolor painting before it dried and dipped it in a bathtub. What was out there was like that, smeared and wasted.

  The pregnant woman had her nose so close to her windshield that her breath fogged the glass.

  "That it?" she asked.

  "That's it," he said.

  His heart was beating rapidly when they turned into Noker State Park. They were the only ones in the Day Use area. He didn't bother paying the fee.

  "Remember," the pregnant lady said.

  Steven stepped out into the storm with her. He remembered his promise. He had made a promise to Julie, too, when the end was near. It was her choice. She couldn't take the pain anymore, she said.

  He wouldn't take that choice away from her. Nobody should.

  Since Steven's jacket had no hood, the rain pelted the top of his head, soaking his hair. The water was so cold it hurt. The salt-laced wind pushed against the door, and he had to struggle to close it. The pregnant woman was already heading up over the dune to the ocean, her thin purple dress sticking to her body. When he reached the top, and blinked away the water so that he might see the beach, there was no one there other than her.

  The pregnant woman was running across the sand, her footprints quickly melting in the rain. Steven followed more slowly. The rain had soaked through all of his clothes, and he shivered. When he got to the pregnant woman, she was standing at the edge of the surf. She looked out at the ocean for a long while, then kicked off her slippers and pulled her dress over her head. She yanked down her underwear, then she stood there, naked, her white flesh covered with his handiwork: a web of black widow tattoos. It was hard to see her in the haze created by the rain, but it looked like the spiders were crawling all over her body. He blinked, trying to see clearly, but it was the same: the spiders shimmied up and down her chest like living things.

  She flashed him a smile, then charged out into the water. It was only a second later that Steven heard a shout from behind.

  "Nancy!"

  He turned and saw a man in a plaid shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap running toward him. He looked scrawny and mean. What was more alarming was that the man was carrying a shotgun.

  Suddenly it all made sense to Steven.

  She was trying to get away. Of course. Why else would somebody be running unless they had something to run from?

  The man was going to run straight into the water. That couldn't happen. Steven launched himself at the man as he passed, and the two of them went down. Steven took wet sand in his mouth. They wrestled for control of the shotgun, and finally Steven, who was bigger and stronger, had it in his hands. He got to his feet, pointing the shotgun at the man; his cap had been swept away in the wind.

  "She's drowning, you asshole!" the man cried.

  "This is what she wants," Steven said.

  "Look at her! She's out there trying to swim and she doesn't know how."

  The man in the cap scrambled to his feet. Steven leveled the shot-gun at his chest.

  "Don't," he said.

  The man hesitated a moment, then broke for the waves. He was in the shallows of the surf when Steven pulled the trigger. There was a loud noise and the man went flying. He landed face down in the surf. There was blood everywhere, staining the water.

  A wave came in, and with it, the body of the pregnant woman.

  All the spiders were gone. The black widows. Every single one of them. Her skin was as pale and white as that first day, before his needle had ever touched her flesh. He looked long and hard at
her. He saw the swollen, distended belly, the skin stretched red at her waist. He saw the hair matted and tangled against her head like so much seaweed. He saw the expression on her face, not sad or happy, but just there, blank, as if the ocean had washed away all the good and bad left just a face behind.

  The longer he looked at that face, the more he saw that it wasn't the face of that other woman at all. She was really gone. She had done as she said, gone in the ocean and had not come back. She had gone with the spiders. This was somebody else. He blinked away the rain.

  It was Julie.

  That's when he heard the sirens. Looking up, he saw a police car at the guard rail, the lights flashing, the doors open. Two men in uniform charged over the sandy rise, pistols held high. It would be only a moment until they reached him.

  Marty charged across the sand, his Beretta held high. The man was standing over the two bodies, turned to face the ocean. When Marty got within a dozen feet, he stopped and took aim. His cold hand was shaking. He hadn't fired the damn thing in over five years.

  "Drop the gun!" he shouted.

  The man turned. He had a beat-up face, his neck covered with tattoos. He looked like a mean son of a bitch. His face was twisted with anguish. The shot-gun was held loosely at his side.

  "Drop the gun right now!" Marty said

  The man didn't move. The rain streaked down the man's leather jacket. For a moment, Marty really thought the man was going to raise the shot-gun — not out of anger, but because he knew what would happen if he did. He knew he would be shot dead on the spot. He had this look about him, like maybe he wanted to die. He was wrestling with it. You could see it in his eyes.

  Then the shot-gun dropped to the sand.

  Keeping his Beretta steady, Marty stepped forward, picked up the shot-gun, and stepped back.

  "Get down on your knees," Marty said.

  The man hesitated.

  "Do it!" Marty cried.

  Still, the man didn't move.

  Marty was unsure of what to do when Father Jantz stepped up next to him. He was bent low, hobbling with his cane. Before Marty could stop him, Father Jantz had crossed the distance to the man.

  "No!" Marty said.