Yes, Virginia, there is a BOB

It was twilight and I was more than a little creeped out. After I finished my conversation with the medical examiner I called the Sheriff then left my office in a daze, telling Joyce that I would be gone the rest of the day. An hour later I picked up the house keys from the Deputy assigned to the case and, with frequent stops to check the map, arrived at the house around sundown.

Yellow police tape was stretched across the front door, and the prime suspect in Adelle’s death was still on the loose. I circled the house looking for any signs of forced entry or exit. I was not playing CSI, I was taking inventory. I was now responsible for, well, everything and I wanted to do it right. A deserted house, especially one that the cops have sealed off, is like a magnet to neighborhood punks and other lowlife looking for a quick score. After all, if the lady of the house is dead and the cops have left, who is there to say “don’t take that”?

Adelle had been one of my best hires, one of the good choices I learned to make after the Mary Kay fiasco. Adelle was born and raised in Europe; she married a member of the U.S. armed services, moved with him to the land of the free and bore him a son. Sometime after their return to the U.S. it became apparent that this man’s love for the bottle outweighed all other loves. Adelle despised weakness and my guess is that the existence of this weakness, more than the drunkenness and philandering, doomed the marriage.

She was a single mom, and single moms make great employees. Couple that with her ambition and Teutonic heritage and you get a real workhorse. She drove everyone around her crazy because she held them to the same impossibly high standard to which she held herself. Of course, she did not hold me to that standard, because I was the boss and could do no wrong. People like that you don’t need to manage; you just give them a little course correction now and again. And listen to everyone else complain. But the work got done, it was done well and on time and I and my little fiefdom looked great to my superiors. All that seemed like yesterday as I broke the yellow tape and slid the key into the front door lock.

I took a breath and pushed the door open. It was the smell of death hanging in the air but, since I had never smelled death before all I could think of was rotten meat. Like when you accidentally cut the power to your fridge before leaving on vacation. The place was a shambles – food, garbage and the detritus of suburban life lay everywhere. In the bedroom, where the brutal act took place, little strings hung from every blood spatter trying to make sense of the trajectory of each blow and shot. The mattress was saturated, oozing with blood. I had a bad feeling or, more accurately, a feeling that something bad was there with me. I gave “it” the name BOB, a nod to the evil demon of Twin Peaks. Beware of Bob. It occurs to me only now that Christians, who have allied themselves with the purest of good, should be acutely sensitive to the purest of evil, especially when it has shed its angel of light costume. This was really bad. I had never before sensed anything so malevolent.

You're Fired!

Mary Kaye was a tall, willowy graduate of a Christian College that, while not the Harvard of Christian Evangelicalism, does have an excellent business school. She seemed so earnest and, because of what we had in common, I thought I knew her. I made that mistake one other time and it altered the course of my life. Mary Kay was so very nice, and that would have made it extra hard to fire her, except that I could no longer stand her. (I can only hope that my tolerance for the unabled has grown over the years.) She could not do the work which, honestly, was of the most entry level variety. I believe she went on to struggle through the consequences of some poor life choices, but we all quickly lost touch with her. That experience taught me a couple of valuable lessons: I became much better at hiring the kind of people who can do the work and I discovered that I had some skill at humanely terminating the employment of others. Both talents have served me well.

My personal life felt like a ride on the Tilt-A-Whirl. I had rented a room in a house owned by three women, and we quickly fell into a routine of platonic domestic bliss. One of them (a fellow WC alum) could really cook and I was pretty good at cleaning up. One of them was good company and the other had many suggestions for my improvement. My new, well-meaning friends were setting me up on blind dates. My office colleagues were setting me up on blind dates. My students were setting me up on blind dates. One student even asked me out “to discuss whether she should apply to law school” (a patent metaphor for “I need a decent meal”). Juxtaposed with all this social nonsense were the times with my dear children, Hansel and Gretel (not their real names). These times were bittersweet. I felt the irrational guilt that only divorced dads feel. Inevitably, I had to return them to that candy-covered cottage in the deep dark woods. Although I told anyone who asked that my wife had been a victim of spontaneous human combustion, she was very much alive and there was a great deal of tension between us. Like I said, a carnival ride.

Joyce was looking at me.

I said into the phone, “What body?”

The voice at the other end said, “Adelle Henton.”

“Why are you calling me?” I asked.

“She left instructions,” he said, “to call you if anything happened to her.”

“What happened to her?” I asked.

“For that,” he said, “you gotta call the Sheriff’s office.”