Citizen Insane

Chapter Thirteen





NOW THE THING ABOUT WANTING to learn how to shoot a gun is that a certain amount of preparatory research is advisable. Colt had suggested it. And I had listened. That’s why I knew that the gun in Bunny Bergen’s suitcase was a Glock 21—the same model that had been used on Michelle Alexander.

If ever there was a time for jumping to conclusions, it was now.

The bowl of lo mein slipped from my hands and fell to the floor, crashing loudly and shattering into several pieces.

“Are you okay, Mom?” Bethany shouted.

“Fine! Just a little accident!” I answered. “Stay downstairs!”

I slammed the door shut and flipped the lock while Bunny dove to her knees and scooped up lo mein noodles. “I found it. It’s not mine, I swear, Barb.”

“Where?” My heart was thumping out of control and I started to feel a little dizzy. “Is this the one?”

“It was there when I found her.” Bunny stood up. Lo mein noodles dangled from her hands. “But I wasn’t thinking and I picked it up after. Now it has my fingerprints all over it—and Michelle’s blood.” Tears dripped onto the noodles. She attempted to dry her eyes with her shoulder. She couldn’t have looked more pitiful if she tried. And I was actually starting to feel sorry for her.

Grabbing several tissues from the box on the dresser behind me, I told her to drop the lo mein noodles and clean her hands. We’d worry about the food mess later. We evidently had a much bigger mess to contend with.

She wiped her hands, dabbed her eyes with some fresh tissues, and sat down on the bed to compose herself.

“I’ll be honest with you, Bunny,” I said, trying to maintain composure. “You’ve been acting . . . a little more than strange lately. Then we saw you arguing with Michelle last night and you did threaten to kill her. But now you’ve brought this gun into my house and I’m REALLY not happy about that. I have my daughters to think about. So I’m giving you two minutes to explain yourself, and then we need to figure out how to get that gun out of here. Depending what you tell me, I may call the police to do it for me.”

Despite my threat to call the police, Bunny had calmed down considerably. She nodded, then started her story. “I don’t know what got into me after the PTA meeting.” She sniffed and dabbed her eyes some more. “I was mad, but I didn’t think I was that mad. But when I was talking to Michelle, my whole head felt like it exploded and I had this powerful urge to just scream at her. I even wanted to punch her. I don’t know where it came from. I’ve never been a violent person ever. You know me. I’m a nice person.”

I nodded, but I don’t know why. I didn’t know her well enough to agree or disagree.

“And those awful things just spilled out. So when I got home later, I felt just terrible. Then Michelle called me and said she really needed to talk and was I still mad? I apologized and told her no I wasn’t still mad, and yes, let’s talk. She told me to meet her at Cappuccino Corner. I was almost there when she called me on my cell and said ‘they’ were following her, she was sure of it. She had gone back home and snuck out the back door headed to the little playground in the woods. Did I have a flashlight and could I meet her there?”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“I don’t know! I had no idea what she was talking about. I was really confused, but she sounded terrified, so I just said I’d come.”

Moms knew about the little playground in the woods. Many of the paths in Rustic Woods led to the delightful park that sat nestled among the trees. It sat next to a stream so kids could swing or slide or look for tadpoles in the water. But it was so deep in the woods that it would be impossible to find at night without illumination.

“Did you have a flashlight?” I asked.

She nodded. “A tiny one I keep on my purse so I can find my keys in the dark. It didn’t help much, but I was able to make my way to the playground.” Her face scrunched all up and she started crying again. “But not in time.” She wept for a good minute before she was calm enough to continue. I was getting worried that the girls would hear her and come to see what was wrong.

“The first shot made me scream. It was just so loud. I’ve never heard anything like it, and then the other two came right after.” She shuddered.

I handed over more tissues. “How far away were you?”

“Not far. I ran about, I don’t know, one hundred feet? Two hundred?” She shook her head. “I’m not good with distances. And there she was on the ground by the slide. She wasn’t making any noise and I was sure she was dead, but I got on the ground and shook her just to see. That’s when she started moaning. I was so relieved. But it didn’t last long. I thought she was dead. I’d run out of my house so fast that I forgot my cell phone, so I got up to run and find a house to tell someone to call 911. That’s when I tripped on something. And I picked it up.” She shook her head.

“The gun?” I asked.

She nodded. “I dropped it, but then realized it had my prints on it, so I picked it up again. I ran with it to my car, terrified that someone would see me with it and think I had killed her. So I drove home and that’s when I called you.”

I was stupefied. If Bunny was telling the truth, Michelle was a living miracle. She must have regained consciousness and, practically on death’s doorstep, managed to walk out of the woods on the path that empties onto Tall Birch where I hit her while driving to Bunny’s house. I couldn’t have written a better, more exciting movie script if I’d tried. But I needed to figure out if Bunny was on the up and up. She did have the gun after all. She could have been fabricating the mysterious “they” story just to throw me off.

“Did she manage to say anything before you ran for help?”

“Yes,” Bunny answered, her face blotched from all of her crying. “She said, ‘In the Pooh Bear’.”

“Pooh Bear?” Bunny couldn’t possibly know that Michelle uttered those same words to me as well. “That’s what she said to me!” I felt ready to jump out of my skin.

Bunny looked confused. “When did she talk to you?”

“Last night. I hit her when I was driving to your house. You didn’t know?”

“No!” Her face lit up with understanding. “So that’s what happened. So she wasn’t found on the playground?”

I shook my head and stared her down. Her story made sense, and I was inclined to believe her. Of course, I’m one of these gullible saps that takes anyone at face value.

“She was still conscious after I hit her,” I explained. “All she could whisper was ‘Pooh Bear.’ I heard today that’s what her husband calls her, so I assumed she was talking about him. He’s being held by the police. They think he did this. Do you?”

She blew her nose. “I don’t know. He doesn’t seem the type. Maybe though. But I’m pretty sure I know what she meant. I think she left a clue.”