No. 5

Chapter One

Michael gave his daughter a kiss goodbye. “Be good to grandma,” he told Ella, then straightened up and waved to Carla, his ex-wife’s mother, who was standing in her front steps with her arms outstretched waiting for her only granddaughter to reach her. Ella ran up the gravel driveway yelling, “Mamita! Mamita!” Michael smiled as he watched the embrace and the kisses that followed. He waived at them again and turned around to get back into his truck. He was on terminal leave from the Army because he decided that being a single dad in the Army was not only hard on him, but was especially hard on Ella, who had to spend up to four weeks at a time with her grandmother when he was out in the field with his unit. He requested a hardship separation, which was granted faster than was typical for the Army because his superiors, just like anyone who watched or read the news in the world, knew about his wife’s crimes and were eager to separate themselves from him.The plan was to move back to his hometown, Salt Lake City, to find work and be close to his family. He needed to start over and leave the horrors of last summer behind him, and he hoped Ella would become the sweet happy child that she was before her mother Sofia went to prison. As he drove up the interstate from Houston, he started picturing his first quiet day off in years. He would be all alone, except for when the movers came, for three more weeks before picking up Ella from her grandmother’s house and making the long trek up to SLC. The first thing he wanted was a beer, then he wanted to sit on the couch, rest his sore back, and do nothing for as long as he could. For the first time since his college days at the University of Utah, where he met and fell in love with Sofia, he felt that good things were coming his way. He got a sense that the end of this bitter chapter of his life would give way to the joy that he longed for. He might even find love again. He was too old for the usual singles scene in Salt Lake City, but he doubted that he would have trouble finding someone his age who was also an ex-Mormon. It was a fast-growing demographic in Utah, after all. He drove the four hours to Killeen and finally arrived at his house as the sun was setting. The air conditioning cooled his sweaty forehead as he walked through the front door. He knew he should drink water after four hours in his hot truck in the middle of the Texas Summer, but no, he was going to drink his beer. As he took off his shoes and his sweat-soaked t-shirt, he had an almost imperceptible feeling of dread. It was as if a tiny needle had punctured his diaphragm. He put on a clean shirt and realized it must be the fact that he was not used to feeling free of the pressures of the military and of taking care of a household, even if it was only temporary, and his mind was struggling to make sense of it. He took a beer out of the fridge, turned on the TV, and then pulled out his phone to check on his village. This mobile game was the only one he allowed himself to play nowadays. 
Michael set out to clean up the trees and bushes around his virtual village without paying attention to the TV. After a few minutes, his subconscious mind picked up the meaning of the words spoken on the TV and this time, instead of a needle, it is as if he had been stabbed through the stomach with a pitchfork. “We continue our coverage of the manhunt for three female death row prisoners who escaped Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas,” said the female voice. His head snapped up and his hands, which were holding his phone up to his face, went limp and dropped the phone onto his lap. “We have unconfirmed reports that one of the women has been killed by police and a second one has barricaded herself in a house and is holding a family hostage. The third one is still at large.” Michael sat frozen in place. The sound from the TV sounded like a far-away echo and his body felt as if he were falling through the couch, through the carpet, through the concrete, spinning as he fell. Once his head stopped spinning, he wondered about the likelihood that Sofia was one of the three.The feeling of dread returned and he suddenly knew what had caused that dread earlier. He smelled a hint of Channel No. 5. How typical of Sofia to get her hands on designer perfume even while in prison waiting to stand trial for murder of 10 men, 15 women, and 4 children during a family event at Fort Hood. She ran them down with the Escalade that she had insisted he buy her for their first wedding anniversary. He stood up slowly and walked around the couch to get his pistol from the safe. Every time the floor creaked, his heartbeat pulsed louder in his ears. He entered the bedroom and moved slowly to the closet to open the safe. He entered the closet and saw that the safe door was ajar. The safe had been emptied of all its contents except for a cheap-looking sparkled star-shaped earring, which was attached to a wet bloody ear and a note that read, “What’s in Ella’s room, Baby?” He muffled a scream, then whipped around from side to side expecting to see his beautiful and demented ex-wife standing there watching him panic with that signature sarcastic smile on her face. She wasn’t there. He picked up his folded-up music stand off the floor and then cleared each room and closet downstairs while holding it up like a baseball bat. His muscles were flexed, ready to swing. There was no one downstairs. He hesitated before climbing the stairs to Ella’s room, then started up the stairs. He cleared the guest bedroom, the bathroom, and towel closet before finally taking a deep breath and turning the knob of the door to Ella’s room. At first glance, everything looked the same. Then he noticed the smear of blood on the carpet trailing to the space behind the moving boxes. He noticed a strand of thick black hair sticking out from behind one of the bigger stacks of boxes. His head was pounding and his heart felt as if it were trying to punch its way through his ribs. He took a step forward, then another. He walked slowly into the room. Had she killed herself and left her ear downstairs to say goodbye? She must have known that she would eventually be found and be taken back to prison. Michael took a deep breath with each step as he prepared himself for what he was about to see. A sense of relief bloomed in his mind. It’s over, he thought, she’s never coming back. We’re free. He paused for a moment and stared at the matted hair on the carpet and clenched his jaw, then he leapt behind the box and looked down expecting to see Sofia's corpse. What he saw instead was the mangled remains of a woman he had only seen in person twice, but he recognized the blue eyeshadow and heavy winged eyeliner. He met Sheryl at the Class Six as he was buying the bottles of booze that he kept hidden in his closet and only drank after Ella had gone to sleep. They flirted back and forth and he got her number. They only went out once and he felt guilty for leaving Ella with the babysitter yet again and was not interested in introducing Sheryl to Ella. Sheryl was trashy, but she was friendly and had a fun sense of humor. She also didn’t ask many questions, which was good, and she was only interested in taking him back to her place. It had been over a year since he had been with anyone, as him and Sofia rarely had sex during the year before she became infamous. The sex was bad, but she didn’t seem to mind and he didn’t spend the night. They flirted back-and-forth on social media during the month after their encounter, but he always deflected her attempts to get together again, blaming it on fictitious Army duties and school recitals. Now she laid here, naked and mangled sprawled on the floor of his daughter’s bedroom. Her face had been slashed. Most of her face was bloody with no recognizable features. Only her wide heavily-lined eyes were intact, staring with horror at nothing.