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  And, God help me, if sacrificing his soul to burn in hell for all eternity would get me out of this marriage, I wouldn’t think twice.

  He is the worst lover I have ever had. Being kissed by him is like going nose-to-nose with a giant Ohio River carp. Those baggy lips are suffocating. He refuses to go down on me, and I love having men go down on me. He’ll touch me, but he won’t taste me. He says it’s not Christian-like. “Show me in the Bible where it says a man cannot perform oral sex on his wife,” I have protested on many occasions. He tried it once and gagged. Gagged! Now he won’t even consider it, which is fine, because I don’t need to be cleaning vomit out of my clit. He’s also a premature ejaculator. On those rare nights when I do consent to having sex with him, it is a very brief affair.

  It’s just another line on the list of things I hate about him. I hate his perfection. I hate the way he pronounces each word with great distinction, and watching those lips roll around every syllable is worse than a yeast infection. I hate it that he constantly corrects my grammar. He’s the most fastidious, hygienically conscious person I’ve ever met. He brushes his teeth one . . . tooth . . . at . . . a . . . time. Then he flosses, flicking little bits of food and teeth boogers on the mirror. Then he gargles with mouthwash, swishes, spits, and repeats. Twice a day. Every day. His dental hygiene routine alone takes a full fifteen minutes. Before coming to bed, he hangs up his bathrobe and places his slippers in precisely the same location under the bed. He wears pajamas—tops and bottoms. He works two jobs and drives a sensible car—beige, four doors, cloth seats—because he wants to save money for the kids for college.

  He makes me crazy. I wish he would die. I wish that it had been him and not Rayce who had been shot to death in the park. Rayce was a miserable human being. He was rough in bed and smelled like soured milk and testosterone, but he had a cock like a donkey and was an incredible fuck. He could go for hours, and he never needed prodding. When I walked in the back door of his house, I could see the hard-on already pushing against his jeans. Every time we were together, he would eat my pussy and ride me until I could barely walk out to the car. He liked to bend me over his dresser, grab my hair, shove my face into the wood, and drive into me from behind. He did it hard, and there were times when I knew he was trying to hurt me. It made me cry, which he liked, and his lack of compassion made me feel like the slut I have become. And the next day, I’d be back at his door.

  I’m embarrassed that I, Dena Marie Conchek, the homecoming queen and the most popular girl at Steubenville High School, ended up married, somehow, to pimple-faced, baggy-lipped Smoochie Xenakis. What in the hell was I thinking? Obviously, I wasn’t. I know all my friends are looking at me, laughing behind my back, and saying, “Oh . . . my . . . God! She married Smoochie.” My mother says I should be grateful that I have a husband who is loyal and kind and has a good career. She says, “Sure, look at all your friends from high school. Their jock husbands all turned out to be adulterers, bums who won’t get off the couch and get a job, or wife beaters. You’ve got a good man who will work for you. You should count your blessings.” She’s right, of course, but I still hate him, and frankly, I’d rather take a good beating from any of a dozen men I know than listen to Smoochie gargle one more time.

  I often wonder how different things would be if that dipstick Johnny Earl had stayed with me. I was absolutely committed to him, but he broke up with me our senior year after he signed a contract to play professional baseball. I was crushed. We had been named Mr. and Miss Steubenville High School. The vote tally came in after he had been drafted by the Orioles. I was a mess. I couldn’t quit crying because I knew he was leaving. Still, we had to get photographed for the yearbook. We met at the photo studio, and he was in his football jersey and varsity jacket and I was wearing my cheerleading uniform. It took us two hours to get the damn photo because I couldn’t stop crying and the mascara kept streaming down my face. I looked like some kind of evil clown, and I had to keep going to the restroom to reapply my makeup. It was a disaster.

  It pains me to say this, but it was my fault. I allowed myself to crumble after Johnny broke up with me. For years, the only thing I had wanted to be after graduation was Mrs. Johnny Earl, and my parents were okay with that. They didn’t think I needed an education beyond high school. My older brother, they preached to him about the importance of an education. He went to the University of Wisconsin and studied economics and now works for a brokerage firm in Philadelphia. I used to say, “What about me?” And my dad would respond, “Honey, you’re pretty.” My brother was smart. I was pretty. I thought that was important. With that as a foundation, I’ve been able to secure a fine career as a twenty-hour-a-week cashier at the A&P grocery store. I shouldn’t blame my parents. I’ve never been a model of ambition. I was okay with the prospects of being a mother and obedient wife, as long as I was being obedient to Johnny Earl.

  We were sexually active in high school. My parents used to go visit my grandmother at the nursing home on Sunday afternoons, and I think they did that so I could have some time alone with Johnny. I used to give him head while he drank my dad’s beer and watched the Steelers games on television. Dad was a loyal Steubenville Big Red athletic booster and openly disappointed that my brother had been gifted with brains and not great athletic ability. However, if his daughter were to marry the greatest athlete in the history of the high school, that would be redemption for the shame of having fathered a mathematics genius. And if his little girl had to give a little head in the process, so be it.

  When Johnny went off to play baseball, I embarked on a series of bad choices. I first married Jack Androski, which was a colossal mistake. Jack was a nice guy, but he was a farmer and the most boring human being I have ever known. He wanted me to help raise chickens, for God’s sake. At the time, I had no better prospects, and I married him in a moment of absolute weakness. My marriage to Jack broke up after I had an affair with Alan Vetcher, who in high school was known as “Vetcher the Lecher,” because of his huge pornography collection. I was never really interested in Alan, and I think I had the affair so I would get caught. Jack was a proud man, and I knew he would never tolerate me having an affair.

  After I married Smoochie, Rayce started coming into the grocery store and flirting, and then he started calling me. He asked if I wanted to go out with a real man. I hung up on him, but he kept calling back. All I could really remember about him in high school was that he went easy on the deodorant. He persisted, and eventually I agreed to let him stop by one night when Smoochie was out of town camping with the kids. I swear I wasn’t planning to sleep with him, even though I was horny as hell. We were talking in the living room and he threw a boner that was pushing up above his belt. I had never seen anything like it. God, what a cock. He pulled me onto him and fucked me on the couch in the living room.

  Someday, just out of sheer meanness, I plan to tell Johnny Earl that Rayce’s dick was the biggest and hardest I’ve ever had. It’ll make Johnny crazy to think that there was something in the world that Rayce had bested him at. And with Rayce being dead, he retired the champion.

  I liked having sex with Rayce because it was dirty and hot and fun, and when it was over I would leave. He wanted me to leave Smoochie and marry him, but in a lifetime of making hideously bad decisions concerning men and my love life, that is one I avoided. I was just using Rayce for the sex.

  I never stopped loving Johnny. After he hurt his leg and all that silliness about a professional baseball career was over, I assumed that we would pick up right where we left off before he left for the minor leagues. He wasn’t interested. He pretended like he was, for a while, but he was just using me to get his nuts out of hock. I went off the pill in hopes of getting pregnant, but it didn’t take. He ended up moving to Pittsburgh and then got sent to prison on a trumped-up drug charge. Rayce set him up, I think. Rayce said Johnny was a drug dealer, but I never believed that. Rayce set him up because he had always been jealous of Johnny. When Johnny got sent to pri
son, I wanted to kill myself. Even though he hadn’t been interested when he came home after baseball, I always figured that he would come to his senses and change his mind. He was never going to find anyone who loved him like I did, and in my heart I always thought that we would be together. I guess you can make yourself believe anything.

  I was a twenty-six-year-old divorcée, a former homecoming queen with a bad reputation, when I met Smoochie Xenakis. Actually, we had gone to high school together, but I have only a vague memory of him. He was a bandie with a bad complexion who was always getting stuffed into the lockers.

  I started talking to Smoochie one day after church. I was not a regular churchgoer, but I had heard that Chip Bromfield and his wife were having problems and I knew that he went to the First Presbyterian Church. Chip had been a couple years ahead of me in school and was a state wrestling champion. He had a body to die for. I hoped Chip would see me in my little white dress, which was probably too slinky for the Presbyterians, and it might spark some interest. Unfortunately, he and his wife had patched things up. On that same Sunday, Smoochie was standing outside the church and showed my kids some lame trick with a fifty-cent piece that losers learn while sitting in their house instead of having a real life. After that, the kids loved him and wanted to go to church every Sunday to “see Mr. Smoochie,” which I have to admit I thought was cute.

  A couple of my friends said, “Oh, he is so nice. You should totally marry him.” Right. They just wanted me to marry him so they could all laugh behind my back. I should have told them, “Yeah, well, if you like him so much, you marry him.” But I didn’t. I made yet another bad decision and married him. I started going to church to align myself with a state wrestling champion, and I ended up married to Mr. Blubber Lips. That was God getting back at me for trolling his church for a married man.

  I can’t imagine why Smoochie wants to stay married to me. I’ve been unfaithful to him. I treat him like dirt. During one particularly trying time, he insisted that I go see a psychiatrist. I agreed to do it. I actually thought it might do me some good. He agreed to pay and not interfere. I went to the first session, and that fucking quack said that I was insecure. Me! Dena Marie Conchek, insecure. Can you believe it? I asked, “What do I have to be insecure about? I was the most popular girl in school. I was the homecoming queen. The Steubenville Winter Festival queen. The Valentine’s Day dance queen and the prom queen. I was Miss Steubenville High School, for Christ’s sake.”

  He said, “The mere fact that at age thirty those accomplishments are still important is a sign that you are insecure.”

  I wanted to slap his chubby face. I never went back. Instead, I left the house like I was going to my session and went shopping. Smoochie was never the wiser.

  Now I’ve gotten myself in a rotten position. He’s adopted my kids. He loves them, and they love him. While I hate to admit this, he is a stabilizing force in their lives. I hate to think that I’m the kind of mother who would sacrifice the happiness and security of her children simply because I’m embarrassed about being married to him, but that pretty much sums it up.

  He’s never going to give me any reason to leave him. Even after he found out I was screwing Rayce, he stayed with me. For Christ’s sake, he even went out and tried to defend my honor. I appreciate the effort, but he was lucky that Rayce didn’t kill him. He came home covered with blood and looking like he had been in a car accident. When we were sitting in the emergency room, he was cradling his arm and looking like a whipped puppy, and I was thinking, You are such a dipshit. I was going to tell him, too, but he was feeling so damn gallant about confronting Rayce and defending my honor that I didn’t want to break his heart.

  I don’t know how he found out about me and Rayce, but I’ll bet it was that prick of a brother of his. I hate him almost as much as I hate my husband.

  When that fat sheriff’s deputy showed up at the house and hauled Smoochie’s sorry ass out of there, I was so excited that I couldn’t speak. I had to fight to control my elation. I tingled from my crotch to my ears thinking that he might be going to prison, maybe even the electric chair, and I would be done with his sorry ass. I could divorce him without guilt. I put the kids to bed and danced by myself in my bedroom. I was so excited that I spread out on the bed and masturbated twice. He was going to be charged with killing Rayce to defend my honor. Oh, how precious. Of course, to think that my husband was capable of murdering someone is laughable. That didn’t matter. The thought of someone killing another man to defend my honor was exciting. Even if they just charged him with the murder, I could file for divorce, claiming I was doing it for the safety of my children. It was so, so delicious. I was in my room daydreaming of all the mileage I would get out of this—a lot of sympathy and attention. I probably would get asked to be on television.

  And then . . .

  A few hours later, I heard the deadbolt on the front door slide open, and that mousy little son of a bitch walked back into my life. When I saw him standing in the foyer, I was so upset I started to bawl. I was crushed. I had envisioned him on the witness stand trying to deny everything while I sat in the gallery, pretending to be the loyal wife in total anguish, while I sent telepathic messages to the jury. He’s guilty, you idiots. Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Convict him.

  Here’s how sad things can get sometimes. I was standing on the landing, crying because he wasn’t in jail. Without a doubt, he thought I was crying for joy because he had returned. It would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so tragic. He wrapped his arms around me, and I shuddered. We went upstairs and, after he brushed and flossed and gargled, he pulled his hard little pecker out of his pajamas. I was so upset I consented. I just endured it and cried about my terrible luck. As usual, he came in about twelve seconds and then fell asleep, drooling on my shoulder. I stared at the ceiling for hours. This was not an acceptable outcome. As slobber rolled over his fat lower lip, I plotted to get rid of him. I had to come up with a plan. I couldn’t allow this opportunity to be wasted.

  It comes down to the fact that I really only care about one thing in life. I still want to be Mrs. Johnny Earl. Despite everything that’s happened, if he would have me, I would go to him in a heartbeat. I know that is the only thing in life that is going to make me happy and settle down and act like a decent human being. I don’t even care that he’s bald. I don’t care that he didn’t become a famous major leaguer. I don’t care that he’s a convicted drug dealer.

  I want to be Mrs. Johnny Earl.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SHERIFF FRANCIS ROBERSON

  When the phone rang at 6:30 a.m., I’d been in bed about forty minutes. I hadn’t slept. A combination of adrenaline and an inability to shut down my brain kept my eyes focused on the sunburst design of the ceiling plaster. I had been up much of the night watching the videotapes that I had confiscated from Rayce Daubner’s house.

  It is astonishing what goes on in a little town like Steubenville. Daubner had set up a small pornography studio in his bedroom. The tapes were grainy and of poor quality, but all featured Daubner servicing numerous women, several of whom I recognized, including Dena Marie. Why he felt compelled to record all these is beyond me. I will say this: the guy was hung like a bear. Unfortunately, none of the tapes revealed any clues as to who might have been his killer. I destroyed the tape with Dena Marie. Cops have gone to jail for destroying evidence, but I was going to copy the tapes and send them to the sheriff’s offices in neighboring counties for assistance in identifying the women, and I didn’t want them watching Rayce bending her over his dresser.

  The lack of sleep was giving me a headache by the time I turned off the television and the tape player and climbed the creaking, curved staircase to the bedroom. The faintest hint of sunrise was already creeping over the West Virginia hills when I crawled into bed. “You stink,” Allison said after I had settled into my side of the bed. “You’ve been smoking again.”

  “I get fidgety when there’s a big case; you know that.”
/>   “You promised the kids that you’d never put another cigarette in your mouth.”

  “So did you,” I whispered. I had showered, but the acrid odor of the smoke lingered on my clothes, which were in a heap on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. I should have put them in the washing machine. Allison fell back asleep; my mind continued to race with thoughts of the dilemma that Daubner’s death was creating for me.

  When the phone rang, I bolted upright and answered it before the second ring.

  “You awake?” Toots asked.

  “I’m vertical,” I said.

  “Well, Sheriff, your day’s about to get off to a bad start. Look out your front window.”

  I slipped my fingers between the drapes and parted them just wide enough to see High Street below. “The Kimbler kid is delivering the Intelligencer to the Farmwalds’,” I said flatly.

  “Not that. Look up,” he said.

  If you walked out my front door and went straight across High Street, though the Farmwalds’ yard, across Delphos Road and Sunshine Park Road, across the old Adena and Ohio Valley Railroad tracks, then up the hillside until you were just outside of the city limits, you would have traversed, as the crow flies, about a mile, and it would put you right at the back door of Rayce Daubner’s house. From that very spot billowed towers of gray and black smoke. I stared at the mushrooming clouds for a few seconds before I finally said, “Don’t tell me.”

  “Oh, yeah. The Daubner mansion,” Toots said. “It’s a torch.”

  “Shit!” I yelled.

  “What?” Allison asked.

  “Daubner’s house is on fire.” She gave me a blank look, but I didn’t see the need to explain further. I grabbed a clean pair of blue jeans from the dresser and pulled them on as I hopped toward the door. A navy T-shirt with a silk-screened sheriff’s badge over the breast rested atop a stack of clean clothes. I pulled it over my head and covered my uncombed hair with a black cap with “Sheriff’s Department” in yellow stitching on the front.